"Be composed, my dear John," said he. "It is a melancholy tale. I would more willingly spare your feelings than wound them by the relation; but it were cruel now to withhold it from you. You will have no cause to blush for your relatives. My own history is so deeply interwoven with that of your parents, that I cannot disentangle them, and therefore must give them, connected as they are. It was upon the borders of the romantic Esk I first awoke to consciousness, in the hospitable house of your grandfather, to whom my father had been head servant for many years. I was within a few weeks of the same age as John, your father, his third son. I was his foster-brother and playfellow, unequal as was our rank. I loved him with more than a brother's love, and would have risked my life for him, had he been in danger. He was my young master; his comfort was all my duty and care; and swiftly the days and hours passed on, until the period arrived that he was to go to Edinburgh to attend the classes at the university, and whither I was to accompany him. We were both young and inexperienced. Your father was of a fearless, open, and generous temper; and his rank in life gave him access to the best society in the city. At one of the assemblies he became acquainted with a young lady, the orphan daughter of an officer who had fallen in the wars of Marlborough. She resided with two rich maiden aunts, upon whom she depended for her present support and future fortune. Their intimacy soon ripened, unfortunately, into love. As politics raged at this time with a force and bitterness that divided friends and relations, even the sacred mysteries of love were interrupted by the offerings to the stern genius of discord. Rose's aunts were stern Whigs, supporters of what were then styled by us the Hanoverian usurpers; and their only surviving brother was an officer high of rank in their armies; while your grandfather was faithful to his lawful king, and as true a Tory as ever lived or bled for the Stewarts. Neither your father nor myself had ever troubled ourselves about the rival factions; yet we were, as we had been bred, staunch adherents to the royal exiles; but Love is of no party, and we were both under his influence. From the cause I have mentioned, your father's visits were unacceptable at Rose's aunts; their interviews were stolen, and, of course, more sweet. She was at times allowed to walk out for exercise, and to visit, but never unaccompanied by her maid, who had been her servant before her mother's death. She was a bar in my master's way; and, if he dared to converse with his beloved, she would have been kept entirely from his sight. To aid him in his interviews, I became acquainted with Mary, the servant, and was soon as deep in love as my master. Little did our young and joyous hearts dream of the bitter dregs that lay in the cup of pleasure we quaffed in the hours of romance, as we walked, or sat scarce in sight of each other, among the cliffs and sheltered valleys of Arthur Seat. Nothing but my love for your father could have blinded me to the folly he was guilty of, and the ruin that awaited his future prospects in life. As for myself, I could not be other than I was. Mary was of my own rank, born to toil, and with little to lose; while they had a fearful height to fall from, if they wedded without consent of friends. But when, alas! did ever youthful love calculate consequences aright, until the calculation is useless?