Wilsons Tales of the Borders and Scotland, Vol. XXIII. | Page 6

so long a time that it might have suggested the suspicion that the words therein written stuck in his eyes, and would not submit to that strange process whereby, unknown to ourselves, we transfer written vocables to the ear before we can understand them, turned a look upon the woman of dark suspicion--
"Where, in God's name, got you this?" he said.
"Just read it out first," replied she. "Ye read yer ain paper, and why no mine?"
And the writer read, perhaps more easily than he could understand, the strange words:
"This child, born of my wife, and yet neither of my blood nor my lineage, I repudiate, and, unable to push it back into the dark world of nothing from which it came, I leave it with a scowl to the mercy which countervaileth the terrible decree whereby the sins of the parent shall be visited on the child. This I do on the 15th of June 17--. JOHN NAPIER of Eastleys, in the county of Mid-Lothian."
After reading this extraordinary denunciation, Mr. Dallas sat and considered, as if at a loss what to say; but whether it was that scepticism was at the root of his thoughts, or that he assumed it as a mask to conceal misgivings to which he did not like to confess, he put a question:
"Where got you this notable piece of evidence?"
"Ay," replied Mrs. Hislop, "you are getting reasonable on the last dish. That bit of paper, which to me and my dear Henney is werth the haill estate of Eastleys, was found by me carefully pinned to the flannel in which the child was wrapt."
"Wonderful enough surely," repeated he, "_if true_"--the latter words being pronounced with emphasis which made the rough liquid letter sound like a hurling stone; "but," he continued, "the whole document, in its terms of crimination and exposure, and not less the wild manner of its application, is so unlike the act of a man not absolutely frantic, that I cannot believe it to be genuine."
"But you know, Mr. Dallas," replied she, "that Mr. John Napier was a man who, if he threw a stone, cared little whether it struck the kirk window or the mill door."
"That is so far true; but, passionate and unforgiving as he was, he was not so reckless as to be regardless whether the stone did not come back on his own head."
"And it's no genuine!" she resumed, as, disregarding his latter words, she relapsed into her more familiar dialect. "The Lord help ye! canna ye look at first the ae paper and then the ither? and if they're no alike, mustna the ither be the forgery?"
An example of the conditional syllogism which might have amused even a writer to the signet, if he had not been at the very moment busy in the examination of the handwriting of the funeral letter and that of the paper of repudiation and malison--the resemblance, or rather the identity of which was so striking, as to reduce all his theories to confusion.
"By all that's good in heaven, the same," he muttered to himself; and then addressing his visitor, "I confess, Mrs. Hislop," said he, "that this paper has driven me somewhat off my point of confidence; but I suppose you will see that, if the child was actually, as the letter indicates, buried with its mother, Henrietta's rights are at an end. It is just possible, however, I fairly admit, that Mr. Napier, who was a very eccentric man, may have so worded the letter as to induce the world to believe that the so-considered illegitimate child had been dead-born, while he gratified--privately he might verily think--his vengeance by writing this terrible curse. Still I think you are wrong; but as this wonderful paper gives you a plausible plea, I would recommend you to Mr. White, in Mill's Court, who will see to the young woman's rights. He will be the flint, and I the steel; and between our friendly opposition we will produce a spark which will light up the candle of truth."
"Ay," replied she; "only as the spark of fire comes from the steel, we'll just suppose you are the flint--and by my troth you're hard enough; but, come as it may, it will light the lantern that will show Henney Napier to the bonnie haughs of Eastleys."
Mrs. Hislop having got back her paper from Mr. Dallas, left the writer's chambers, and directed her steps to Mill's Court, where she found Mr. White, even as she had Mr. Dallas, busy poring over law papers. She was, as we have seen, one of those people who can make their own introduction acceptable, and, moreover, one of those women, few as they are, who can tell a story with the continuity and fitting emphasis necessary to secure the attention of a