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"To Earlscraig with Hector:" this notice was repeated many times, until the record closed abruptly with the tremulous thanksgiving "My dear son and heir, Hector, recovered of his malady by the blessing of God." Very plainly lay the life-clue of that silent heart, traced in the faded ink of those yellowing pages. How old men cherished their offspring!
This Earlscraig was now little more than a grim, grey turret, seldom occupied; the companion body of the building had been destroyed nearly a score of years before by a fire the tragedy of the country-side, as it consummated the ruin of an old family and in its horrors a lady of the house perished miserably.
Have you come back sorely tired from the hunt or the race? Weary fa' the men folk that let you lie down with the dew-draps on your bonny curls bonnier than Miss Alice's, for a' their fleechin' as if it were high noon. No but noontide has its ills, too; but you would never heed a bonnet, neither for sun nor wind. A wild laddie, a wild laddie, Earlscraig!"
Beware!" menaced the nurse; then, as Leslie would have broken from her "Have it, then! He is the brother of that Alice Boswell who perished in the burning of Earlscraig nigh twenty years ago." "Poor lady, Bridget," Leslie said, with a bewildered, excited sob. "Poor unhappy lady; but what has that to do with him, with me? I understand no better. Help me, Bridget Kennedy a woman, like myself.
Were you, too, cheated and bereft of your due? left a cold, shrinking woman, withering, not suddenly, but for a whole lifetime?" Leslie sat long weighing her burden, until a tap at the door and Bridget Kennedy's voice disturbed her. "Earlscraig is gone, madam; Master Hector is sitting alone with his thoughts in your room.
Hark! a pistol-shot! that must be Boswell's appeal for aid; and yonder lay Earlscraig yonder also was Hector toiling to rescue his ancient friend and persistent foe. She should be there too. At Earlscraig their destiny would be wrought out.
He was calm now, and smiling, but with a face wan and shadowed with an inexpressible cloud. "It may not be, Leslie," he said, soft and low; "Nigel Boswell's boat is in sight, struggling to make Earlscraig; he was always rash and unskilled, though seaward born and bred. If he is not forestalled, his boat will be bottom upmost, or crushed like glass within the hour.
Even the old bed-ridden nurse, so blind and stupid with age that none could satisfy her of the cause of the tumult and din, was carried out, and placed on the grass terrace beside the master; where no sooner did she apprehend intuitively the neighbourhood of her proudly cherished nursling, than she left off her weak wailing, and began to croon over him as fondly and contentedly as when he lay an innocent babe in his cradle: "Are you weary, Earlscraig?
So dense was the vapour that suddenly gathered over Earlscraig, till like an electric flash, a jet of flame sprang from a high casement and lit up the gathering obscurity.
May be, he is missing his cup of tea, or, if you please, madam, his lady's company that he is used to at this hour." Leslie rose mechanically, walked out, and entered her drawing-room. What did he there, his eyes fixed on the broken turret of Earlscraig, defined clearly on the limited horizon, his memory hovering over the fate of fair Alice Boswell?
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