Thus, with the strangest repetition, all the incidents of Dalyell’s fictitious drowning were reproduced; and it did not fail to be remarked in the papers that the accident up the Firth was singularly like the accident that had happened nearly two years before to Mr. Dalyell, of Yalton, on Portobello sands. It was a remarkable coincidence: but the sufferer in this case, it was added, was a stranger, who had arrived at the “Dun Cow” the night before, and was supposed to be a foreigner. The body was found among the rocks, as if he had made a despairing grip upon the seaweeds that covered them to save himself, from which it was judged that the misadventure was wholly accidental; but, naturally, all was conjecture, and this was a thing that never could be known. CHAPTER IX. Fred went to his mother’s room, about which an agitated crowd had already gathered, the two girls and their maid, and an anxious domestic or two from downstairs, besides Mrs. Dalyell’s own maid, who was with her mistress. Foggo stood outside on the staircase, anxious to know if he should go for the doctor, and still more anxious to know what had happened, for there was already a conviction in the house that it was not mere illness which had produced that shriek which startled everybody. Mrs. Dalyell was not the kind of woman to shriek from physical pain, and there had been a whisper in the house that the horseman had been heard in the avenue, which, naturally, was a preparation for trouble. Fred, however, was not admitted till some time later, of which the poor young fellow was glad: for he was in no condition to meet his mother in the nervous and excited state in which she must be, while he himself was so shaken and miserable from the same cause. He went to his own room and endeavoured there to calm himself, and thrust away the appalling question that was now before him. How lately he had said to himself that his father’s previsions had all been mistaken, and instead of having to take upon himself the anxieties and cares of the head of the house, to break off his studies and turn his thoughts to the grave side of life, he had only been more free, more independent, than before, since he had succeeded his father as Dalyell of Yalton. Ah! but who could have thought of this, this further chapter of disaster, unimaginable, incurable, which would involve the name of Dalyell of Yalton in dishonour and shame--the name his ancestors had borne in credit and pride, the name that poverty and ruin could not have stained, but which must now perish amid records of deceit and fraud. Fred’s very heart seemed to shrink and wither up within him when he thought of what he had now to do. It would be his to put the stamp of shame upon that name--to expose the whole disgraceful story, the dishonest means by which downfall had been staved off, only to fall more dreadfully upon the unhappy and innocent now. No, he must not palter