However, things were ordered otherwise, and Jeanie Mackie did not live
to see the wedding: if you wish to know how and where she died, let me
tell you at once.
Scotland--Argyleshire--Glenmuir; this was the focus of her hopes and
thoughts--that poor old Indian exile! She had left it, as a buxom
bright-haired lassie: but oaks had now grown old that she had planted
acorns; and grandmothers had died palsied, whom she remembered born;
still, around the mountains and the lakes, those changeless features of
her girlhood's rugged home, the old woman's memory wandered; they were
pictured in her mind's eye hard, and clear, and definite as if she
looked upon them now. And her soul's deep hope was to see them once
again.
There was yet another object which made her yearn for Scotland.
Lieutenant Stuart had been the younger of two brothers, the eldest born
of whom became, upon his father's, the old laird's, death, Glenmuir and
Glenmurdock. Now, though twice married, this elder brother, the new
laird, never had a child; and the clear consequence was, that Amy Stuart
was likely to become sole heiress of her ancestor's possessions. The
lieutenant's marriage with an Italian and a Romanist had been,
doubtless, any thing but pleasant to his friends; the strict old
Presbyterians, and the proud unsullied family of Stuart, could not
palate it at all.
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