"In Church and State these Hunters great
A foremost place shall take;
With words as bold as theirs of old,
They shall speak for conscience' sake.
"N.B.—Probably refers to speeches made by Alexander Hunter in the House of Commons against the taxation of the Colonies, in 1765, and to the Reverend John Hunter, a famous divine who lived in the reign of George the Second.
"Should Hunter of this noble race
Pride of his house forget,
Ancestors grim shall punish him,
Till his fault he doth regret.
"N.B.—Perhaps this refers to that James Hunter who, through his reckless extravagance, sank deeply into debt, and was confined for many months in the old Canongate Tolbooth in the city of Edinburgh, during the reign of George the Third. His debts were paid by his elder brother, who sold a great part of his property for that purpose—notably that portion of his lands to the south of the loch, and that on which the mansion of the Murray family now stands."
"Fancy that!" said Marjory to herself. "I never knew that all that land once belonged to us. No wonder if the ancestors did punish James; they wouldn't like to see their property disappearing."
Then came a verse which caused the girl's heart to beat fast and her face to flush:—
"The ladies fine of Hunter line
Are fair as fair can be.
Should tresses dark a maiden mark,
Her beloved must cross the sea."
A note followed:—
"It is a curious thing that among all the written descriptions and the paintings at my disposal I can find no record of a dark-haired daughter of the house; fair hair and blue eyes are the rule.—A. H."
It is easy to see that any one of these so-called predictions was more than likely to be fulfilled under any circumstances, and that very probably the whole thing was written in the first place as a joke. Moreover, Marjory was not a Hunter by name, being the child of a daughter of the house and not of a son. Still, she took this saying to mean herself: she, Marjory Davidson, and no other, must be the dark-haired maiden whose beloved must cross the sea. It must mean that, sooner or later, her father would come to her across the sea.