“Then you shall know, Mr Riddel,” replied Jean, with a sudden determination of manner. “They’re noo awa that micht tak ony scaith frae what I’ll noo tell ye; an’, forbye, it’s a thing I hae lang resolved upon, an’ sae I’ll e’en tak this opportunity o’ doin’t. Come aside wi’ me, here, a wee bit, Mr Riddel,” added Jean; “an’ you, too, Gordon,” she said; “come, till I speak to ye baith.” And she led the way to a little distance from the other persons who were present on the occasion, and who had hitherto been auditors of all that passed. “Mr Riddel,” now said Jean, “do ye mind the Hawick Spate?” “Mind it!” replied the person addressed—“to be sure I do, Jean; I have but too much reason to mind it.” And here Mr Riddel’s voice became tremulous with emotion. “It deprived me of my only child—of the only child I ever had. This you doubtless know, Jean,” he continued; “as everybody in Hawick, and for many miles round it, who recollects the spate, knows that my child—and a fine little fellow he was—was swept away in his cradle, by the stream, and never afterwards heard tell of. The cradle was, indeed, found,” added Mr Riddel, in a melancholy tone, “but not the infant. But why do ye ask this question, Jean?” “Just to bring to yer recollection the very circumstance ye hae mentioned, Mr Riddel,” replied the gipsy. “Noo, sir,” she went on, “tak a look o’ that lad, [pointing to Gordon,] an’ tell me if ye wad ken him to be yer ain son. And you, Gordon,” she said, “look at that gentleman, an’ see if ye wad tak him to be yer faither; for, as God’s in heaven,” she continued, “that’s the relationship in which ye twa staun to are anither!” “Woman! what do you mean?” exclaimed Mr. Riddel in an angry tone. “Are you deranged? What absurd nonsense is this you talk? I never had any son but the child that was drowned.” “I didna say ye had, Mr. Riddel,” replied Jean; “but that’s yer son, nevertheless. This I swear, by a’ my hopes o’ a hereafter!” “Gracious God!—explain, woman! explain!” exclaimed Mr. Riddel, now greatly agitated—a glimmering of the possibility of what had actually occurred suddenly bursting on his mind. “Tell me, I beseech you, what you mean at once, and without further evasion.” Thus entreated, Jean Gordon proceeded to detail the whole of the circumstances connected with the saving of the child (whom, we presume, we need not inform the reader in more explicit terms, was, indeed, the son of the person to whose paternity Jean ascribed him) from the Hawick flood. When she had concluded— “Extraordinary! most extraordinary!” exclaimed Mr. Riddel, now overwhelmed with a variety of new and strange feelings. “Can it be possible? O God! thy ways are inscrutable. But what proof have I of the truth of your story, Jean?” said the agitated father, gazing on his son. “Proof!” exclaimed the gipsy; “look at the lad, Mr. Riddel—look at him, closely; an’ if ye dinna find proof enough in that face, ye’ll be hard to convince. Is he no your very counterpart?”