“Weel, sir,” cried Grizzie, “Ye jist pit me ’at I dinna ken mysel’! Is ’t poassible ye hae forgotten what’s sae weel kent to a’ the cuintry roon’?--the auld captain, ’at canna lie still in ’s grave, because o’--because o’ whatever the rizzon may be? Onygait he’s no laid yet; an’ some thinks he’s doomed to haunt the hoose till the day o’ jeedgment.” “I suspec’ there winna be muckle o’ the hoose left for him to haunt ’gen that time, Grizzie,” said the laird. “But what for sud ye put sic fule things intil the bairn’s heid? An’ gien the ghaist haunt the hoose, isna he better oot o’ ’t? Wad ye hae him come hame to sic company?” This posed Grizzie, and she held her peace for the time. “Come, Cosmo,” said the laird rising; and they set out together for Mr. Simon’s cottage. CHAPTER X. PETER SIMON. This man was not a native of the district, but had for some two years now been a dweller in it. Report said he was the son of a small tradesman in a city at no great distance, but, to those who knew him, he made no secret of the fact, that he had been found by such a man, a child of a few months, lying on a pavement of that city, one stormy, desolate Christmas-eve, when it was now dark, with the wind blowing bitterly from the north, and the said tradesman seemingly the one inhabitant of the coldest city in Scotland who dared face it. He had just closed his shop, had carried home to one of his customers a forgotten order, and was returning to his wife and a childless hearth, when he all but stumbled over the infant. Before stooping to lift him, he looked all about to see if there was nobody to do it instead. There was not a human being, or even what comes next to one, a dog in sight, and the wind was blowing like a blast from a frozen hell. There was no help for it: he must take up the child! He did, and carried it home, grumbling all the way. What right had the morsel to be lying there, a trap and a gin for his character, in the dark and the cold? What would his wife say? And what would the neighbours think? All the way home he grumbled. [Illustration: HE CARRIED IT HOME.] What happened there, how his wife received him with his burden, how she scolded and he grumbled, how it needed but the one day--the Christmas Day, in which nothing could well be done--to reconcile them to the gift, and how they brought him up, blessing the day when they found him, would be a story fit to make the truehearted of my readers both laugh and cry; but I have not room or time for it.