"A true love-gift," ejaculated Helen, "an exchange o' plighted faiths. Dearly had you loved the giver, for, even in sore distress and death it lay upon thy bosom. Cruelly has your love been requited; but rest in peace--your sorrows are past. I will keep this for your babe, and, as soon as he can speak, I will tell him where I found it. I fear it will be a' I will ever be able to inform him of either father or mother." She then placed the ring in her own bosom, until she could shew it to her husband; renewed her offices to the dead; took the babe in her lap, and, weeping over it, resolved, as she thought of its desolate state, without a relation in the world, that, so long as she had life, she would be a parent to it--for death had been a spoiler in her own family of three sons, all of whom it had been her misfortune to bury. The minister arrived again in the evening. They shewed him the ring, and told where it had been found. He examined it closely; but there were neither armorial bearings nor cypher upon it, to lead even to a guess of the person to whom it had belonged--yet the make and chasing were peculiar, and might lead a person who had once examined it to remember it. The mother was interred; the babe baptized by the name of William, put out to nurse; and the usual routine of the cottage once more restored. The boy grew up under the roof of his kind protectors. To his education the minister paid particular attention, and was proud of his pupil--for William Wallace, as he was called, did honour to the labour bestowed upon him. He was quick to learn, yet his mind was not given to literary pursuits--for he delighted in feats of strife, and dwelt with rapture on the feats of the warrior. Sir William Wallace was the hero of his youthful imagination--and he longed to be of man's stature, only that he might be a soldier. Thus years rolled on. William was now eighteen years of age; the labour of the farm, in which he engaged, was irksome to him; yet he restrained his inclinations, and toiled on for his benefactors, who had both become so frail that they required his aid. By the time he arrived at his twentieth year, his foster parents died within a few months of each other, and left him possessor of their little wealth. When spring returned, he made known to his benefactor, the minister, his resolution of leaving the moor and going into the busy world. The stock was turned into cash, and William, bidding a long adieu to the scenes of his youth, set off for the capital, accompanied by the prayers of the good man for his success. Since the death of his protectors he had worn his mother's ring, and he had a vague hope that it might, by some way or other, lead to a discovery of his parents, and enable him to avenge her murder. All the mild lessons of his teacher upon this point had been vain. His mind dwelt with a gloomy satisfaction upon a just retribution. At times his feelings rose to agony--the idea that the guilty individual might be