CRAWFORD’S SAIR STRAIT.

CHAPTER I.

Alexander Crawford sat reading a book which he studied frequently with a profound interest.  Not the Bible:  that volume had indeed its place of honor in the room, but the book Crawford read was a smaller one; it was stoutly bound and secured by a brass lock, and it was all in manuscript.  It was his private ledger, and it contained his bank account.  Its contents seemed to give him much solid satisfaction; and when at last he locked the volume and replaced it in his secretary, it was with that careful respect which he considered due to the representative of so many thousand pounds.

He was in a placid mood, and strangely inclined to retrospection.  Thoughtfully fingering the key which locked up the record of his wealth, he walked to the window and looked out.  It was a dreary prospect of brown moor and gray sea, but Crawford loved it.  The bare land and the barren mountains was the country of the Crawfords.  He had a fixed idea that it always had been theirs, and whenever he told himself—­as he did this night—­that so many acres of old Scotland were actually his own, he was aggressively a Scotchman.

“It is a bonnie bit o’ land,” he murmured, “and I hae done as my father Laird Archibald told me.  If we should meet in another warld I’ll be able to gie a good account o’ Crawford and Traquare.  It is thirty years to-night since he gave me the ring off his finger, and said, ‘Alexander, I am going the way o’ all flesh; be a good man, and grip tight.’  I hae done as he bid me; there is L80,000 in the Bank o’ Scotland, and every mortgage lifted.  I am vera weel pleased wi’ mysel’ to-night.  I hae been a good holder o’ Crawford and Traquare.”

His self-complacent reflections were cut short by the entrance of his daughter.  She stood beside him, and laid her hand upon his arm with a caressing gesture.  No other living creature durst have taken that liberty with him; but to Crawford his daughter Helen was a being apart from common humanity.  She was small, but very lovely, with something almost Puritanical in her dainty, precise dress and carefully snooded golden hair.

“Father!”

“Helen, my bird.”

“Colin is coming home.  I have just had a letter from him.  He has taken high honors in Glasgow.  We’ll both be proud of Colin, father.”

“What has he done?”

“He has written a prize poem in Latin and Greek, and he is second in mathematics.”

“Latin and Greek!  Poor ghostlike languages that hae put off flesh and blood lang syne.  Poetry!  Warse than nonsense!  David and Solomon hae gien us such sacred poetry as is good and necessary; and for sinfu’ love verses and such vanities, if Scotland must hae them, Robert Burns is mair than enough.  As to mathematics, there’s naething against them.  A study that is founded on figures is to be depended upon; it has nae flights and fancies.  You ken what you are doing wi’ figures.  When is this clever fellow to be here?”