In the Border, if all tales are true, at least one crime of this nature
was perpetrated.
Not far from Norham Castle, it is said that there stood till well on in
the eighteenth century a large mansion, of which no trace now remains.
As the story goes, the place once belonged to an old Border family, but
the folly and extravagance of more than one generation had brought in
their train what these failings ever must bring, and evil times fell on
that house. Piece by piece, one after the other, the ancient possessions
passed away from their former owners, sacrificed to gratify some passing
whim or to pay some foolishly contracted debt, till, finally, the house
itself and what land remained had also been flung into the melting-pot,
and the last male heir of the old line, with his only child, a daughter,
sat homeless in their old home, awaiting the hour which should bring
with it the new owner, and to them the sorrow of for ever quitting
scenes dear to them from infancy.
By the dying embers of a wood fire they two lingered one December night,
wrapped in no pleasant thoughts, and idly listening to the shrill
piping of a wind that dismally foretold the coming of snow. The father
was a man well advanced in life, on whose good-looking, weak face
dissipation had set its seal; the daughter, a woman of six or seven and
twenty, who preserved more than all her father's good looks, but--as is
so often the case in the females of a decadent family--who, in her
expression, showed no trace of weakness.
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