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youth that comes back along with you; in a very tattered and
withered state, to be sure, but - well! - all that's left of it."

"A great deal better than nothing," said the editor. "But what is
this which is quite in my way?"

"I was coming to that," said Mr. Thomson: "Fate has put it in my
power to honour your arrival with something really original by way
of dessert. A mystery."

"A mystery?" I repeated.

"Yes," said his friend, "a mystery. It may prove to be nothing,
and it may prove to be a great deal. But in the meanwhile it is
truly mysterious, no eye having looked on it for near a hundred
years; it is highly genteel, for it treats of a titled family; and
it ought to be melodramatic, for (according to the superscription)
it is concerned with death."

"I think I rarely heard a more obscure or a more promising
annunciation," the other remarked. "But what is It?"

"You remember my predecessor's, old Peter M'Brair's business?"

"I remember him acutely; he could not look at me without a pang of
reprobation, and he could not feel the pang without betraying it.
He was to me a man of a great historical interest, but the interest
was not returned."

"Ah well, we go beyond him," said Mr. Thomson. "I daresay old
Peter knew as little about this as I do. You see, I succeeded to a
prodigious accumulation of old law-papers and old tin boxes, some
of them of Peter's hoarding, some of his father's, John, first of
the dynasty, a great man in his day. Among other collections, were
all the papers of the Durrisdeers."

"The Durrisdeers!" cried I. "My dear fellow, these may be of the
greatest interest. One of them was out in the '45; one had some
strange passages with the devil - you will find a note of it in
Law's MEMORIALS, I think; and there was an unexplained tragedy, I
know not what, much later, about a hundred years ago - "

"More than a hundred years ago," said Mr. Thomson. "In 1783."

"How do you know that? I mean some death."

"Yes, the lamentable deaths of my Lord Durrisdeer and his brother,
the Master of Ballantrae (attainted in the troubles)," said Mr.
Thomson with something the tone of a man quoting. "Is that it?"

"To say truth," said I, "I have only seen some dim reference to the
things in memoirs; and heard some traditions dimmer still, through
my uncle (whom I think you knew). My uncle lived when he was a boy
in the neighbourhood of St. Bride's; he has often told me of the
avenue closed up and grown over with grass, the great gates never
opened, the last lord and his old maid sister who lived in the back
parts of the house, a quiet, plain, poor, hum-drum couple it would
seem - but pathetic too, as the last of that stirring and brave
house - and, to the country folk, faintly terrible from some
deformed traditions."

"Yes," said Mr. Thomson. "Henry Graeme Durie, the last lord, died
in 1820; his sister, the honourable Miss Katherine Durie, in '27;
so much I know; and by what I have been going over the last few

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