Transactions. 97 
the firm of Stewart, Mathison, & 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 receiving 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!” 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 she returned to Scot- 
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