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It was at this period that he married for the second time. He was nearly sixty, in shattered health and worn with many fatigues, and it was scarcely wonderful that his enemies should have said that nothing but witchcraft could have induced a noble young lady, Lord Ochiltree's daughter, a Stewart not far from the blood royal, to bestow her youth upon the old preacher.
As soon as she could command her trembling limbs sufficiently to make them carry her, she rushed out of the house and down the street, bareheaded, covering in an incredibly short time the few blocks that separated Mrs. Ochiltree's residence from that of her niece.
"Serve where you please, you have no title to intrude on us," said M'Intyre, "or" and he lifted his cane in terrorem, though without the idea of touching the old man. But Ochiltree's courage was roused by the insult. "Haud down your switch, Captain M'Intyre!
But hae there's some crumbs t'ye, an ye are sae merry; and troth ye hae some reason to sing an ye kent it, for your cage comes by nae faut o' your ain, and I may thank mysell that I am closed up in this weary place." Ochiltree's soliloquy was disturbed by a peace-officer, who came to summon him to attend the magistrate.
As a stone dropped into a pool of water sets in motion a series of concentric circles which disturb the whole mass in varying degree, so Mrs. Ochiltree's enigmatical remark had started in her niece's mind a disturbing train of thought. Had her words, Mrs. Carteret asked herself, any serious meaning, or were they the mere empty babblings of a clouded intellect?
If you will explain where you got the gold, and the silk purse that contained it, which is said to be Mrs. Ochiltree's, you will be back home before night." Old Mr. Delamere's faculties, which had been waning somewhat in sympathy with his health, were stirred to unusual acuteness by his servant's danger. He was watching Sandy with all the awakened instincts of the trial lawyer.
Ochiltree's faculties had shared insensibly in the decline of her health. This weakness manifested itself by fits of absent-mindedness, in which she would seemingly lose connection with the present, and live over again, in imagination, the earlier years of her life. She had buried two husbands, had tried in vain to secure a third, and had never borne any children.
"Serve where you please, you have no title to intrude on us," said M'Intyre, "or" and he lifted his cane in terrorem, though without the idea of touching the old man. But Ochiltree's courage was roused by the insult. "Haud down your switch, Captain M'Intyre!
"You kept the rattle in the right-hand corner of the chest," said Tom, "in the box with the red silk purse, from which you took the gold piece you gave me every Christmas." A smile shone on Mrs. Ochiltree's severe features at this appreciation, like a ray of sunlight on a snowbank. "Aunt Polly's chest is like the widow's cruse," said Mrs. Carteret, "which was never empty."
Ochiltree's eyes assumed an introspective expression, and her story, as it advanced, became as keenly dramatic as though memory had thrown aside the veil of intervening years and carried her back directly to the events which she now described. "Your father," she said, "while living with that woman, left home one morning the picture of health.
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