Trmisactions. 97 



the tirm of Stewart, Matlusoii, A: Co. George Welsh, Polly's 

 husband, is named a trustee. Polly is evidently outcast, as 

 no provision is made for her in the will, and she is not 

 named except as the mother of her children. The testator, 

 after making certain provisions, appoints that the whole 

 amount of accumulated stock is to be divided equally among his 

 five grandchildren, viz. — "William, Charles, and Alexander 

 Stewarts, and Hannah and Grizel Welshs, daughters of the said 

 George Welsh, and all the five children of "my daughter Polly." 

 A sort of sketch is got of Polly's sons. William is described as 

 having the misfortune of being very lame, and in so bad a state 

 of health that in all probability he never will be able to do any- 

 thing towards his own support. Charles has already evinced a 

 great degree of thoughtlessness and inattention to his education, 

 and has now entered an apprentice on board a merchant vessel. 

 Alexander is still young and at school, and provision is made for 

 his recei\'ing a college education. Charles continued the thought- 

 less course indicated in the will, and Alexander also appears to 

 have become imprudent and unfortunate, as we find by references 

 to them in Polly's letters to the late Mr Pagan, King's Arms 

 Hotel, Maxwelltown. " Poor Charles 1" she writes, " his fate 

 interests me deeply, his heart was good, his kindness to me when 

 last in Scotland made a lasting impression on my lacerated heart." 

 Again, " the precarious life of my poor Charles produces no hope 

 to learn what became of him ; his honest heart was early made 

 to feel the chequered path that marks life. ' Some are made to 

 mourn.'" Of Alexander she writes: " The sudden death of my 

 father proved a fatal stroke to the welfare of Alexander. The 

 volatility of his disposition plunged him into a labyrinth of future 

 misery. Me he deceived at every point; rendered himself 

 wretched and me miserable." The remainder of Polly's own sad 

 story is soon told. At the time she was residing with her father 

 in Maxwelltown, numbers of French officers, prisoners of war, 

 were in Dumfries, and among them a handsome Swiss named 

 Fleitz, to whom she became unfortunately attached. She joined 

 her fate to his, accompanying him to France, where he found 

 employment in the Swiss troops of Louis XVIII. On Louis 

 Phillippe ascending the throne the Swiss mercenaries were dis- 

 missed, when Fleitz with Polly returned to Switzerland. Here 

 Polly wrote a number of deeply interesting letters to Mr Pagan, 

 chiefly in reference to her family, of which one or two extracts 

 have been given. After 30 years' absence slie returned to Scot- 



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