"My dear little wag of a wife!" I exclaimed; for while Cora's sweet voice rippled over the verse, I could smile now, and tenderly too, at the advice it conveyed.

So much for "Time, the avenger!"

In the second chapter of this long history of myself and my adventures I have related that the Calderwood estates were entailed, and were thus destined to enrich a remote collateral branch, which had long since settled in England, "and lost all locality, and nationality too," as Sir Nigel had it, the baronetcy ending with himself, to whom long life!

Thanks to the legal acumen of Mr. Brassy Wheedleton, and of Messrs. Grab and Screwdriver, writers to the signet, Edinburgh, there were "no end" of flaws discovered in the original entail of 1685, registered when James VII. was king of the realm. They boast that they could have driven a coach-and-six through it; so it was speedily reduced, and the lands of Calderwood Glen, with the place, fortalice, and manor-house thereof, and those of Pitgavel, with the mains, woods, and farm touns thereof, which were Cora's own portion, were all secured to us, our heirs—yes, that was the word which made Cora blush—our executors, and assigns, for ever.

The old title of "Primus Baronettorum Scotiæ," the pride of Sir Nigel's heart, neither I nor mine could inherit; but I have my star of Medjidie, a medal and two clasps for the Crimea, with the French Legion of Honour, and that decoration which I value more than all: the little black bronze Victoria Cross, inscribed "For valour," which I received for the rash attempt I made at Bulganak, with a gallant few, to bring off the mutilated body of poor Rakeleigh, as the reader will find duly recorded in page 336 of the "Army List" for the month in which it was given, if he or she choose to look; and those four prized baubles, won amid blood and danger, shall long be prized as heirlooms in Calderwood Glen.

With the poet, I may exclaim—

Yea! I have found a nobler heart

That I may love with nobler love:

True as the trembling stars thou art,

Pure as the trembling stars above.

And shall I live a nobler life,

Come peace or passion, joy or grief?

Remembrance brings a sweet relief,

And points me to this nobler life.

* * * * *

The grass was growing green on the graves of the Alma, and where Albyn's warpipe sent up its yell of triumph on the Kourgané Hill; greener, perhaps, on the graves of the light brigade in the Valley of Death, through which our six hundred chivalry swept like a thunderbolt; and the sweet spring flowers were blooming in the abandoned trenches of Sebastopol, when I could hear the angel voices of glad little ones waking the peaceful echoes in our old woody glen; and there a dark-eyed Nigel, a golden-haired Newton, and a blooming little Cora, with beaming eyes and dark brown braids, gambolled round the gaitered legs of old Willie Pitblado, and the boot-tops of the sturdy old baronet, or were learning "a taste of the brogue," as they rode on the back of Lanty O'Regan, now our head groom.

And when winter comes to strip the old woods, and hurl their rustling foliage before the west wind, seaward, down the lovely Howe of Fife; and when the snows of Christmas whiten the scalps of Largo and the Lomond Hills, we never forgot, after Cora has spiced the wassail bowl, to fill our glasses, and drink in silence—