“What is the question, I would like to know?” said Lady Eskside, flushing with the heat of argument. “Do I need the Lords of Session to tell me whose son my own bairn is? I think you are all taking leave of your senses with your formalities and your legal proof. Poor Alexander Pringle there, up the water, cannot bring his delicate little girlie to the country for change of air but you think he’s plotting against Val. If this suspicion and distrust of every mortal is what your bonnie law brings, I’m thankful for my part that I know nothing about the law; and I wish everybody was of my mind.” Lord Eskside and his factor went out quite cowed from my lady’s presence. They were half ashamed both of the law and themselves, and I think the visit which they made to the land which was being marked out for “feus” was necessary to get up their spirits. Lord Eskside was rather excited about these feus--allotments of land to be let for building, upon a kind of copyhold which secured a perpetual revenue in the shape of ground-rent to the proprietor: though he was a little disposed at the same time to alarm himself as to the persons who might come to live there, and perhaps bring Radical votes into the county, and corrupt a constituency still stanch, amid Scotland’s many defections, to “the right side.” This public anxiety was a relief to his mind from the private anxiety; for however public-spirited a man may be, and however profound his interest in politics, the biting of a little private trouble is more sharp and keen than that patriotic concern for his country which drives him wild with excitement over a contested election. Willie Maitland the factor--a man “very well connected,” half a lawyer, half a farmer, and spoken of by every soul in the parish and on the estate by his Christian name--was big and burly and easy-minded, and took things much more easily than his lord. “By the time there is any question of the succession,” he said, “the story will be clean forgotten. It will be many a year, I hope, before Richard succeeds, let alone the boy.” “Ay, ay, that is very true,” said the old lord, knitting his brows; “it may be many a year; but it might be a question of days, Willie, for anything you and me can tell. Well, well; for the moment we can make nothing better of it; and here are the feus. Good morning, doctor! I hope you’re all well at the Manse. It is a fine day for a walk. We are going to take a look at Willie Maitland’s pet scheme here.”