table-bowl, and was brown and distinct. After I had examined it for some short space of time, I rose and awaited some explanation of this demi-pantomime.
"I will ring when I want you," said the sick lady, and the maid, placing the candle upon an old brass-bound oaken box, that stood in a remote corner of the room behind a screen, withdrew.
"That is the sign of murder!" were the first words spoken by her after the door had been closed. She pointed at the brown stain upon the hearth.
"Yes, that is the stain upon the stone; but there is a deeper stain upon many hereabout than that. That stain was made when a young girl died, and that stain can never be washed out. They had better have burned this old wing to ashes than have burned that ring there; better have burned all their fortunes, and all their liveries, and coats of arms, and coronets, and coronation-robes, and themselves, than have burned that little ring upon that long-lasting piece of stone. It was many years ago when that ring was put there, I have only seen it once before to-night, and I wanted you to see it too. It shall never be uncovered after this until I die, and then I hope they will bury this stone near where the young girl is buried. She is forgotten long ago, but not so long that I do not remember her, as the sweetest and gentlest girl in all the broad fields of Scotland. She was the heiress, through her mother's right, to several of the finest estates in this section of the country. She was to be their owner when she should reach her sixteenth year. This property was to have been hers. Here she lived. She was to be the mistress of the great property of ———, where you have been." (I had spent some days there.) "Her mother was dead, but her father lived here with her, he not having any right to the property—not even a life-estate in it—but he managed it for her. She was the only child, and a rich one she was to be; the richest and the fairest of the land. But she stood in the path of others. Should she die, the vast wealth that was to be centered in her, at legal maturity, under the will, would revert to several poorer relations. The laws of Scotland with regard to property are strange, and bring about a great deal of trouble, and so it turned out in this case. I was not a young person by any means
