What a scene was exhibited, in a few days, on this peaceful shore! Two women, the one old, and scarcely able to support her head, and the other young, beautiful, but stripped down to the waist, and tied to a stake within flood-mark on the Frith of Cree; a guard of dragoons surrounding the spot, and an officer of rank riding, ever and anon, to the saddlegirths into the swelling flood, and questioning the poor sufferers very hard. But it was all in vain; Thomas Nivison was neither betrayed by sister nor by grandmother. In fact, they knew not, though they might have their suspicions, of his retreat. Can it be believed in the present times--and yet this is a fact attested by history as well as by tradition--that these two helpless and guiltless beings were permitted to perish, to be suffocated by inches and gulps amidst the tide? The poor old woman died first. Her stake was mercifully sunk farther into the stream. She died, however, speaking encouragement to her grandchild. "It will soon be over, Nanny--it will not last long--it will not be ill to bear--and there we shall be free" (looking up to heaven)--"_there_, there is nothing to hurt or to destroy; and my father is there, Nanny; and my mother is there; and my son--oh, my poor murdered boy!--is there! and you and I will be there, and he, too, will soon, soon follow; but his blood be on the guilty, Nanny, and not on us! We will not shed one drop of it for all that man can give--for all that man can do-- 'For anything that man can do I shall not be afraid.'" These were the last words which she spoke, at least which were heard; for, in the beautiful language of Scripture, "she bowed her head, and gave up the ghost." She was not drowned, but chilled to death. The case was different with youth, strength, and beauty. Again and again was the offer made to her, to spare her life, on condition of her betraying a brother. Nature pled hard for life and length of days; and one of the dragoons, more humane, or rather less brutal, than the rest, was heard to exclaim-- "Oh, sir, she has said it--she has said it!" "Said what?" responded Douglas, in a sharp voice. "Has she said where her renegade brother is to be found?" Hearing this question thus fearfully put, she exclaimed, in an agony-- "Oh no--no--no!--never--never! Let me go--let me go!" "The waters wild Come o'er the child!" THE COUNTESS OF CASSILIS. At a short distance from the ancient castle of Tyningham--the seat, at the period of our story (the beginning of the seventeenth century), of Thomas, first Earl of Haddington, a man remarkable at once for his talents and successful ambition--there is a sequestered little spot, enclosed with steep banks, now cleared and cultivated, but then covered with natural wood, which, together with the abruptness of the rising ground, excluded all view of the smooth strip of green sward that lay between, until approached within a few yards' distance.