‘Weel, weel, but what I was saying a’ concerns the benefit and advantage o’ our family,’ said Claud, ‘and ye ken as it is our duty to live for one another, and to draw a’ thegither, it behoves us twa, as parents, to see that ilk is properly yocket, sin’ it would surely be a great misfortune, if, after a’ our frugality and gathering, the cart were cowpit in the dirt at last by ony neglek on our part.’ ‘That’s ay what ye say,’ replied the lady,--‘a’s for the family, and nothing for the dividual bairns--noo that’s what I can never understand, for is na our family, Charlie, Watty, Geordie, and Meg?’-- ‘My family,’ said Claud emphatically, ‘was the Walkinshaws of Kittlestonheugh, and let me tell you, Girzy Hypel, if it had na been on their account, there would ne’er hae been a Charlie nor a Watty either between you and me to plea about.’ ‘I’m no denying your parentage--I ne’er said a light word about it, but I canna comprehend how it is, that ye would mak step-bairns o’ your ain blithesome childer on account o’ a wheen auld dead patriarchs that hae been rotten, for aught I ken to the contrary, since before Abraham begat Isaac.’ ‘Haud thy tongue, woman, haud thy tongue. It’s a thrashing o’ the water, and a raising o’ bells, to speak to ane o’ thy capacity on things so far aboon thy understanding. Gae but the house, and see gin the supper’s ready.’ In this manner, the conversations between Grippy and his leddy were usually conducted to their natural issue, a quarrel, which ended in a rupture that was only healed by a peremptory command, which sent her on some household mission, during the performance of which the bickering was forgotten. CHAPTER IX In the meantime, as much friendliness and intercourse was maintained between the families of Grippy and Plealands as could reasonably be expected from the characters and dispositions of the respective inmates. Shortly, however, after the conversation related in the preceding chapter had taken place, it happened that, as Malachi was returning on horseback from Glasgow, where he had lost a law-suit, long prosecuted with the most relentless pertinacity against one of his tenants, he was overtaken on the Mairns Moor by one of those sudden squalls and showers, which the genius of the place so often raises, no doubt purposely, to conceal from the weary traveller the dreariness of the view around, and being wetted into the skin, the cold which he caught in consequence, and the irritation of his mind, brought on a fever, that terminated fatally on the fifth day.