The father of the household had been a soldier ‘in the war,’ and, though little more than a peasant by birth, had risen from the ranks and won his commission by sheer daring and bravery. It is very doubtful whether he was much the happier for it. When he had won his epaulettes another piece of luck befell him: he caught the eye and fancy of a pretty, romantic girl, who married him for his valour and his inches and his red coat. To him she was an heiress, though the actual amount of her wealth was small. Probably he meant, in his gratitude and pride, to be a good husband and live happy ever after, and for this end bought the cottage he had been born in, and added some modern additions to it for the comfort of his lady-wife. But Duncan was Duncan still, notwithstanding his good fortune and his epaulettes; and his poor young wife, finding out her mistake, died at the end of a year or two, after bringing a pair of twin girls into the world. After this Captain Diarmid saw a great deal of service in all quarters of the world, and when he came back married again, a homely ‘neighbour lass,’ and died after she too had become the mother of two children. They all lived together in the Glebe Cottage--two sets of people as different as could well be conceived. During the Captain’s lifetime a certain arbitrary link united them; but after his death it was not expected by the country-side that there could be any further family union between the twin sisters to whom everything belonged, and the homely widow with her girl and boy. It was a wonder to many of the genteel people of the neighbourhood when it was discovered that Margaret and Isabel meant to permit their father’s widow, Jean Campbell, to share their house. Even old Miss Catherine at the Lochhead gave it as her opinion that ‘Jean and her bairns had no claim on them.’ But the sisters, it was evident, thought differently, though it was not without a certain conflict within and between themselves that the decision was made. They were then between nineteen and twenty, two girls who had grown up as Nature would, with little training of any description, but with that curious refinement of race or tradition which is so often to be found in those who, springing from a higher origin, have yet lived chiefly among the poor. They were ‘ladies born,’ as was acknowledged by ‘all the Loch’--and universal respect was paid them; although they were not, except on formal occasions, dignified by the title of ‘the Miss Diarmids,’ but were generally distinguished only as ‘the Captain’s Margaret,’ and ‘the Captain’s Isabel.’ Margaret had fallen into bad health some years before her father’s death, and sickness and a more elevated type of character had made her as much the elder of the two as if her seniority had been a matter of years instead of minutes. It was she whose will had prevailed in respect of her stepmother.