Club, of which he was the founder. There were many heads shaken in

Crossmichael at that judgment; the more so as the man had a villainous

reputation among high and low, and both with the godly and the worldly.

At that very hour of his demise, he had ten going pleas before the

Session, eight of them oppressive. And the same doom extended even to

his agents; his grieve, that had been his right hand in many a left-hand

business, being cast from his horse one night and drowned in a peat-hag

on the Kye-skairs; and his very doer (although lawyers have long spoons)

surviving him not long, and dying on a sudden in a bloody flux.

In all these generations, while a male Rutherford was in the saddle with

his lads, or brawling in a change-house, there would be always a white-

faced wife immured at home in the old peel or the later mansion-house.

It seemed this succession of martyrs bided long, but took their

vengeance in the end, and that was in the person of the last descendant,

Jean. She bore the name of the Rutherfords, but she was the daughter of

their trembling wives. At the first she was not wholly without charm.

Neighbours recalled in her, as a child, a strain of elfin wilfulness,

gentle little mutinies, sad little gaieties, even a morning gleam of

beauty that was not to be fulfilled. She withered in the growing, and

(whether it was the sins of her sires or the sorrows of her mothers)

came to her maturity depressed, and, as it were, defaced; no blood of

life in her, no grasp or gaiety; pious, anxious, tender, tearful, and

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