are silent; and the pictures of Scotland for tourists, which generally seize on any romantic trait connected with a locality or an old ruin, have also overlooked them.  Yet the principal personage in the drama was one whose name was for years in the mouths of the people, not only for peculiarities of character, but retribution of fate; and this local fame has died away only within a comparatively recent period.  It was in my very early years that I saw the Cradle, and heard, imperfectly, its tale from my mother; but her account was comparatively meagre.  I sought long for details; nor was I by any means successful till I fell in with a man named Aminadab Fairweather, a resident at the Scouring Burn, in Dundee, who was in the habit of frequenting Logie House, and who, though very old, remembered many of the circumstances.

The truth is, there were rich flesh-pots in Logie House—­richer than those which supplied the muscles of the Theban mummies, so enduring through long ages, no doubt, from being so well fed; for Mr. Fletcher of Lindertes,[*] who was proprietor of the mansion, was the greatest epicurean and glossogaster that ever lived since Leontine times.  Then a woman called Jenny McPherson, who had in early life, like “a good Scotch louse,” who “aye travels south,” found her way from Lochaber to London, where she had got into George’s kitchen, and learned something better than to make sour kraut, was the individual who administered to her master’s epicureanism, if not gulosity.  Nay, it was said she had a hand in the tragedy of the Cradle; but, however that may be, it is certain she was deep in the confidences of Fletcher.  But then Mrs. McPherson, as she chose to call herself—­though the never a McPherson was connected with her except by the ties of blood, which, like those of all Celts, had their loose terminations dangling into infinity at the beginning of the world’s history—­was given to administering the contents of her savoury flesh-pots to others than the family of Logie; yea, like a true Highlander, she delighted in having henchmen—­or haunchmen truly, in this instance—­who gave her love in return for her edible luxuries.  It happened that our said Aminadab was one of those favoured individuals; and it is lucky for this generation that he was, for if he had not been, there would assuredly have been no records of the Cradle and the black lady.

  [note *:  Mr. Fletcher had also the property of Balinsloe as well
  as Logie.  They’ve all passed into other hands.]

It was in a little parlour off the big kitchen that Janet received her henchmen.  And was there ever man so happy as our good Aminadab?—­and that for several human reasons, whereof the first was certainly the Logie flesh-pots; the second, the stories about the romantic place wherewith she contrived to garnish and spice these savoury mouthfuls; and last, Janet herself, who was always under the feminine delusion that she was the corporate representative of the first