Colonel Mannering lost no time in hiring for a season a large and comfortable mansion not far from Ellangowan, having some hopes of ultimately buying that estate.  Besides a sincere desire to serve the distressed, he saw the advantage his daughter Julia might receive from the company of Lucy Bertram, whose prudence and good sense might be relied on, and therefore induced her to become the visitor of a season, and the dominie thereupon required no pressing to accept the office of librarian.  The household was soon settled in its new quarters, and the young ladies followed their studies and amusements together.

Society was quickly formed, most of the families in the neighbourhood visited Colonel Mannering, and Charles Hazlewood soon held a distinguished place in his favour and was a frequent visitor, his parents quite forgetting their old fear of his boyish attachment to penniless Lucy Bertram in the thought that the beautiful Miss Mannering, of high family, with a great fortune, was a prize worth looking after.  They did not know that the colonel’s journey to Westmoreland was in consequence of a letter from his friend there expressing uneasiness about serenades from the lake beside the house.  However, he had returned without making any discovery or any advance in his daughter’s confidence, who might have told him that Brown still lived, had not her natural good sense and feeling been warped by the folly of a misjudging, romantic mother, who had called her husband a tyrant until she feared him as such.

* * * * *

Vanbeest Brown had escaped from captivity and attained the rank of captain after Mannering left India, and his regiment having been recalled home, was determined to persevere in his addresses to Julia while she left him a ray of hope, believing that the injuries he had received from her father might dispense with his using much ceremony towards him.

So, soon after the Mannerings’ settlement in Scotland, he was staying in the inn at Kippletringan; and, as the landlady said, “a’ the hoose was ta’en wi’ him, he was such a frank, pleasant young man.”  There had been a good deal of trouble with the smugglers of late, and one day Brown met the young ladies with Charles Hazlewood.  Julia’s alarm at his appearance misled that young man, and he spoke roughly to Brown, even threatening him with his gun.  In the confusion the gun went off, wounding Hazlewood.

III.—­Glossin’s Villainy

Gilbert Glossin, Esq., now Laird of Ellangowan, and justice of the peace, saw an opportunity of ingratiating himself with the country gentry, and exerted himself to discover the person by whom young Charles Hazlewood had been wounded.  So it was with great pleasure he heard his servants announce that MacGuffog, the thief-taker, had a man waiting his honour, handcuffed and fettered.

The worthy judge and the captive looked at each other steadily.  At length Glossin said: