It had been on the second or third day of Alison's incarceration that the mistress of The Mains had been thrown into a flutter by receiving a dispatch from her almost forgotten friend, Nancy Maclehose, craving a night's hospitality for old acquaintance' sake. The country lady now wished to make a good show before the urban one. She could not rival her in the fashions, or in modish gossip, but she could exhibit good store of silver and fine linen, and could set a feast before her of all the country delicacies.

'It'll be a queer thing if I'm not upsides wi' Nancy Maclehose,' she remarked, 'for all the belle that Nancy was; it didna bring her much.'

'Ay, ay, I remember her fine,' said the laird, 'nothing but a lassock when we married, wife—but "pretty Miss Nancy" then, though hardly ten. I mind her well when we were coortin', in the old Glasgow days—pretty Miss Nancy!'

'There'll be none o' the "Miss" and little of the "pretty" about her now, I'se warrant,' said Mrs. Graham, with meaning, 'a wife, and not a wife, and a widow, and not a widow. There's little to be proud o' there, that I can see.'

'Ay, they discorded, to be sure,' said the laird. 'Yet he was a fine sprig, young Maclehose, too. Ye'll mind all the clash about their coortin' you got from Glasgow? That was a neat trick of his about the coach—as neat a trick as ever a young buck played, to my thinking.'

'I never heed such clash,' said the lady, severely.

'Hoots!' said the laird. 'It was when miss was sent to Edinburgh to the school, being become too forward for her age, as all were well agreed, and Maclehose could not get acquaint with her, for all he had tried. So he ups and takes every place in the coach she was going by to Edinburgh, and so he got the lass to himself, and a bonny way to do it, too!'

'And what was the end of it all?' said Mrs. Graham, witheringly. 'If ye must tell thae tales before these lasses,'—they were, indeed, seated at table, and six pairs of ears were taking in with avidity these indiscreet revelations of love's audacity,—'it ill beseems you, the father of a family, to forget the lesson that's aye in them! But I'll tell ye what came o' all that havering trash o' coortin' in a coach, fast enough! They hadn't been married five years, when off goes the fine young buck to live among savages at the West Indies, and leaves his wife and bairns to charity at home. And that's love, misses! Love!' she continued, in tones of immeasurable scorn, 'love, indeed! A guid stick is a better name for it, for that's what it comes to in the end as often as not. I e'en wish your silly sister Alison was down here this minute to get this fine love story! It would do her good!'

And the mother of seven daughters, having pointed a moral with due emphasis, went off to count napkins out of the linen press. The six younger Miss Grahams then relaxed the solemnity of their listening countenances, and chattered among themselves of this tale of a lover and a coach, with a great impatience to behold its heroine.

That lady, meanwhile, in no very heroine-like mood, was being jolted towards The Mains in an old country post-chaise—an interminable cross-country journey along muddy by-roads, in the lashing rain and wind of the autumn day. She almost repented the impulse which had induced her to come out of her way to renew acquaintance with the friends of her girlhood. 'It's little but sad memories I'm like to get for my pains,' said she.