"Who dead?" inquired the old man, with increased astonishment.
"Wha dead, ye stupid auld body!—did I no say his wife, as plain as I could speak?"
"Whose wife?" inquired Jonathan, looking from Willie to his master in bewilderment.
"Whose wife!" reiterated Willie, weeping, laughing, and twirling his stick; "shame fa' ye—ye may ask that noo, after knocking my heart oot o' the place o't wi' yer palaver. Whase wife do ye say?—ask Mr Henry."
"Mr Galloway!" interrupted Henry, "am I to understand that you believed this to be the grave of my beloved Helen?—or, how could you suppose it? Has she left Primrose Hall?—or, has our marriage——Tell me all you know, for I wist not what I would ask."
Willie then related to him what the reader already knows—namely, that she had left Dumfries-shire, and was supposed to have gone to his father's.
"Blessings on the day that these eyes beheld the dear lady, then," exclaimed old Jonathan; "for I could vow that she is under my roof now."
"Under your roof!" cried Henry.
"Was ye doited, auld man, that ye didna tell me that before?" said Willie.
"I knew no more of my young master's marriage, until just now, than these gravestones do," said Jonathan; "the dear lady who is with us told nothing to me. Only my wife told me that she knew she loved our young master."