Tamar instantly sprang to meet him, and seeing that his step was feeble and tottering, she supported him to a chair, in a small parlour which opened into the passage, and there, standing in the midst of the floor between him and Rebecca, she told her errand; nor was she interrupted until she had told all, the old man looking as if her recital had turned him into stone, and the old woman expressing a degree of terror, which at least cleared her in Tamar’s mind, of the guilt of being connected with the thieves of the secret passage.

As soon as the young girl had finished, the old miser broke out in the most bitter and helpless lamentations.  “My jewels!—­my silver!—­my moneys!” he exclaimed, “Oh my moneys!—­my moneys!  Tell me, tell me damsel, what I can do?  Call Jacob.  Where is Jacob?  Oh, my moneys!—­my jewels!”

“Peace, good sir! peace!” said Tamar, “we will befriend you, we will assist you, we will protect you; the Laird is an honourable man, he will protect you.  I have known him long, long,—­since I was a baby; and he would perish before he would wrong any one, or see another wronged.”

“The Laird did you say,” asked Salmon, “your father; he is your father damsel is he not?”

“I have no other,” replied Tamar, “I never knew another.  Why do you ask me?”

“Because,” said Rebecca, “he is doting, and thinks more of other people’s concerns than his own.”

“Has he ever lost a daughter?” asked Tamar.

“He lost a wife in her youth,” answered the old woman, “and he was almost in his dotage when he married her, and he fancies because you have black hair, that you resemble her; but there is no more likeness between you two, than there is between a hooded crow and a raven.”

“There is more though, there is much more though,” muttered the old man, “and Jacob saw it too, and owned that he did.”

“The fool!” repeated Rebecca, “the fool! did I not tell him that he was feeding your poor mind with follies; tell me, how should this poor girl be like your wife?”

The old man shook his head, and answered, “Because, he that made them both, fashioned them to be so; and Rebecca, I have been thinking that had my daughter lived, had Jessica lived till now, she would have been just such a one.”

“Preserve you in your senses, master,” exclaimed Rebecca, “such as they are, they are better than none; but had your daughter lived, she would have been as unlike this damsel as you ever were to your bright browed wife.  Why you are short and shrivelled, so was your daughter; your features are sharp, and so were hers; she was ever a poor pining thing, and when I laid her in her grave beside her mother, it was a corpse to frighten one; it was well for you, as I ever told you, that she died as soon.”

“Yet had she lived, I might have had a thing to love,” replied the old man; and then, looking at Tamar, he added, “They tell me you are the Laird’s daughter,—­is it so, fair maid?”