"So Lady Eglinton wrote to me." "And if he is knocked on the head,--which God forbid!--his daughter, Flora, will be long under trust, so her estate will be a fair one; and now, Winny, when I add that Mr. Fox and the Opposition are having their hair dressed _à la Brutus_, in imitation of the Parisian rabble, you have all my news." "And now for mine," said she, with a delightful smile. "Your surprise?" "Yes--but you must come with me." "Where?" "To the nursery." "That which was once the nursery, you mean." "And which has become so _again_," she replied, laughing at his bewilderment. Passing her arm through his, she led him to the sleeping-room, which adjoined their own, and desired him to look into Cosmo's little cot. Rohallion did so, and great indeed was his surprise to find a beautiful little boy, whose hair, all golden and curly, and whose form of face, rich bloom, and long dark eyelashes, powerfully reminded him of what Cosmo had been at the same age, when sleeping in the same chamber and in the same cot. "Zounds, Winifred, what in the world does this mean?" said he, with a droll expression twinkling in his dark grey eyes; "whose little fellow is this? Not _ours_, certainly; you can't have been stealing a march on me now-a-days." "'Tis a long story and a sad one; but return with me to the parlour, and I shall tell you all about it," she replied, while selecting the key of her escritoire from the huge, housewife-like bunch that glittered at her _chatelaine_. "Egad, then I'll brew another jug of punch the while; and now, Winny, I am all attention." She related all that the reader knows: the storm on that gloomy November night; the attack made by the armed Frenchman, and the consequent flight of the British ship; her wreck on the Partan Craig and the loss of the crew, with the recovery of the child from a state of insensibility, and the burial of his father, by the ground bailie, John Girvan. "My worthy old quartermaster did right--'twas like my good comrade!" said Lord Rohallion, while his eyes glistened; "I can imagine I see him marching up the glen at the head of the funeral party, erect as ever he marched under fire--a trifle more, maybe. The old Borderer did just what I should have done myself!" Lady Winifred now laid before her husband the ring, the purse with its few franc pieces, and the papers of the drowned stranger, and all of these he examined with interest and commiseration, for he was a kind, generous, and warm-hearted man. "This is sad--very sad, indeed!" he muttered. "By the handwriting, Rohallion, and by the crest on the ring----" "A lily, stalked and leaved, rising from a coronet." "Yes." "Well, Winny?" "I should say they must have been people of figure and fashion--of good quality, at least." "An old fashioned phrase that, and going out now, like our fathers' swords and our mothers' hoops; call them aristocrats--eh, Winny?"