when this affair happened; and I remember well how much was feared always about this heiress. It seemed to be looked upon as a matter of course, that her life was surrounded with danger. Her father watched her life with the vigilance of a sentinel. He was a young man—young in years—but old in the calmness, and the apparent coldness of his disposition. He was like a sentinel. He knew, for he was Scotch, how deep the love of property is in the Scottish character, and he felt that his daughter was not safe.
He never left his home—scarcely ever left her. A head-ache, some little malady, she had, and it went on for a few days, and turned to fever. The approach of the disorder, its consummation in fever, the father watched. He sent for the surgeon from H———; he came; felt her pulse, and went away. Next day, he returned; still the same symptoms of fever; but she was not ill. Again he came. She had passed a pleasant night, free from pain, with a regular pulse. She was better, and she and her father were brighter and more cheerful. The father had watched her all the time. The news of her indisposition had got abroad; the people talked of it. When her fever was at its height, property changed hands, and the poor but titled relations clutched the big money-bags, and rode over the broad acres, and had their land laid out for now tenants, and built up the decayed turrets of their thriftless castles. That evening, when the surgeon came, she was better, but there was a dread of a return of fever. Some warm and soothing draught had better be administered. He felt her pulse. Would that she could have felt his! He took a common bowl from the table, and made the servant pour some hot water into it. He stirred his soothing draft in the boiling water. The father looked on, and then tasted the medicine. The surgeon watched him in his mind, but looked away and felt the pulse of the sweet girl, who sat in her easy chair, looking out at those woods through that window. He gave the cup to the father, and the father gave it to the daughter, and the surgeon took the cup from his hand. In drinking it, a portion had run over the brim, and down the sides of the vessel. Upon that hearth-stone the surgeon placed the cup, and left. He was not heard of for some time afterward, but it is strange what happened to him. That night, as he rode home, his
