A CHAPTER ON ANNUALS. 499 



infant on his knee, while his wife spun, or mended his nets beside him, he at 

 least felt that the world did not contain for him a spot so blessed as his own 

 little home. 



" But there was one heart in the group that felt as though it dared not be 

 happy. Margaret Weir, the young wife of Allan, loved her husband with a 

 depth and intensity of affection which had led her to do as she had done to 

 violate filial duty for his sake ; but which could not teach her to forget the 

 fault she had committed, or the parent whom she had deserted ; and the con- 

 sciousness of her disobedience was with her, in her happiest hour, to sink her 

 heart as with a weight of lead. She was the only child of a wealthy farmer, 

 originally from Ayrshire, who had come during his daughter's childhood, 

 immediately after the death of his wife, to settle in Stirlingshire, not far from 

 the Bridge of Allan. Andrew Weir was one of those who still retain, almost 

 in all their original strictness, the peculiar tenets and ideas of the Camero- 

 nians ; of whom there are many to be found at the present day in the wild 

 and lonely districts of the south-western part of Scotland. His notions of 

 family discipline, and of strict seclusion from those who held a different doc- 

 trine from his own, were extremely rigid ; yet notwithstanding these, the 

 affection which he had borne his daughter was very great, nor had the 

 harmony subsisting between them ever experienced any interruption, until 

 the arrival of Allan Mac Tavish near their place of residence, and his sub- 

 sequent acquaintance with Margaret, first broke in upon the calm tenor of 

 her life, by introducing sensations to which her heart had never before been 

 awakened. The intimacy of his daughter with the young Highlander had 

 continued for a considerable time, ere Andrew Weir became aware of it ; for 

 Margaret knew her father's prejudices too well to dare to make him acquainted 

 with her lover. It came to his knowledge by accident, and his anger was 

 proportionably great. In common with many of his countrymen, Andrew 

 entertained an extreme dislike to Highlanders, which dislike, in the present 

 instance, received tenfold confirmation from the circumstance of Mac Tavish 

 being a Catholic. He would have considered himself as signing the warrant 

 for his daughter's eternal perdition, had he not instantly forbidden all inter- 

 course between them. 



" At this juncture, Allan's foster-brother died, and left him the legacy 

 already mentioned ; but with his death, at the same time, ceased all the 

 reasons for Allan's remaining absent from his own country. He contrived 

 an interview with Margaret ere he should depart. It is needless to linger on 

 an oft-told tale. The struggle between filial affection, and all-powerful love 

 in the heart of the uhsophisticated girl, was severe and long continued ; while 

 the religious feelings in which she had been educated contributed to swell 

 the amount of reluctance and of terror with which she contemplated the step 

 to which she was urged. But love at last prevailed. Margaret fled from her 

 father's house with her lover. They instantly proceeded to Edinburgh, where 

 they were married by a Catholic priest ; and then sought the lonely solitude 

 of Allan's old Argyllshire mountains. But Margaret, so strict had been the 

 filial obedience in which she was brought up, so severe the religious faith of 

 her youth, could not find happiness the portion of her married life, notwith- 

 standing all the kindness of her husband, the loveliness of her infant, and the 

 peacefulness of her home. The image of her grey-haired father going down 

 in his sorrow to a lonely grave, mourning, in bitterness of heart the sin and 

 the falling away of his only child, was ever before her eyes. She concealed 

 from her husband the remorse which embittered her happiness ; but often; 

 when his boat was on the sea, and she was alone in her little dwelling with 

 her infant, not a sight or a sound of a human being near, nothing but the 

 sea-birds screaming from the cliffs, and the sea making wild music to their 

 song, as it plashed and roared against the rocks that shut out the cave from 

 the world often at such an hour, would Margaret look back to the image of 

 the cheerful farm-house in the green sunny holm by Allan water ; to the 



