"Oh, indeed," said Mrs. Ellison, affecting much interest.
"Yes," resumed old George Bethune, with much dignified complacency, "it will be a singular history if ever I find time to trace it out. The whole of that family seem to have been regarded with a kind of superstitious reverence; all their sayings were preserved; and even now, when a proverb is quoted in the Western Isles, they add, 'as the sage of Mull said' or 'as the sage of Islay said.' For _ullahm_, I may inform you, Mrs.--Mrs.--"
"Mrs. Ellison--I beg your pardon--my hearing is not what it was. _Ullahm_, in the Gaelic tongue means at once a Doctor of Medicine and a wise man--"
"They distinguish between the terms in English," put in Vincent.
"--and doctors most of them appear to have been," continued the old man, quite oblivious of interruption: indeed he seemed to be reading something out of his memory, rather than addressing particularly any one of his audience. "A certain Hector Beaton, indeed, got a considerable grant in Islay for having cured one of the Jameses when all the Edinburgh Faculty had failed; and I myself have seen in the island of Iona the tombstone of the last of the Mull doctors of the name, who died so late as 1657. _Hic jacet Johannes Betonus Maclenorum familiæ Medicus_: no doubt there must be some mention of those Beatons in the archives of the various families of Maclean in Mull. Then I daresay I could get a drawing of the tombstone--though I can remember the inscription well enough. The coat of arms, too, has the three mascles of the Bethunes--"
"Of the Bethunes?--then you are of the same family?" said Mrs. Ellison, this time with a little genuine curiosity.
But the interruption had the effect of rousing him from his historical reverie.
"I would rather say," he observed, with some stiffness, "that they were originally of our family. The Norman de Bethune would easily be changed into the Scotch Beaton."
"Then there was Mary Beaton, of the Queen's Maries," Mrs. Ellison suggested.
But at this the old man frowned: he did not wish any fictitious characters brought into these authentic annals.
"An idle tale--a popular rhyme," said he. "There is no real foundation for the story of Mary Hamilton that ever I could get hold of. Of course there may have been a Mary Beaton at Queen Mary's court--what more likely?--and Mary Beaton would come trippingly to the popular tongue in conjunction with Mary Seton; but that is all. It is with real people, and important people, I shall have to deal when I get to the Advocates Library in Edinburgh."