together, and how you thought it was the church she worshipped, when the curate was the object of her adoration. Don't you ever believe about single young women worshipping the church when there's a bachelor inside it! I heard she was a decent body, so I said that, sooner than leave you, the last of the Macleods of Pittenquhair, a barren stock, the girl should have you.

"The thing was how-with you and your 'celibate priest' stuff and nonsense. But Providence helps those who help themselves— so 'Miss Vesey' tumbled from the skies.

"I saw her first at a thought-reading séance. She did some very funny things, and she plays the piano like an angel. She certainly had a gift that way, for, with the aid of her music, she played all sorts of tricks on the fools who were there. I thought to myself, what tricks she might play on you if you came within her range! Then, all of a sudden, the whole thing was hatched in my brain. I made her acquaintance. I took her home to supper. Afterwards, inspired by the largest quantity of champagne I ever saw a woman drink, she told me all about herself. She was the most candid young woman I ever met.

"She was married-to an unfrocked parson. But, according to her own account, she was more than his match. A perfect limb! And as clever as she was wicked-one of those wicked women who are born, not made, for she was not yet twenty-one. I told her all about you. I said that if, through her, you married the doctor's daughter at Swaffham-on-Sea, she should have five hundred pounds upon your wedding day. She came into the scheme at once. So we arranged it all together.

Among other things, her husband was one of those scamps who pose, in the advertisement sheets, as distressed clergymen whose large families depend for sustenance on their being able to dispose of some article or other at one third of its cost price. Just then his line was apostle spoons-which he bought for five shillings and sold for twenty. I was to summon you up to town. I was to bully you about your marriage. And then, when I had thoroughly upset youwhich, I explained to her, it was the easiest thing in the world to do -I was to call your attention to his advertisement of the apostle spoons. I was to march you off then and there to buy them. When I had got you into her house I was to leave the rest to her.

"She was to pose as her husband's daughter, which she was young enough to be-in years, at any rate. She said that if I brought you to her in a state of agitation and confusion bordering on imbecilitywhich I undertook to do-and if you were the sort of man I had

described to her, within half an hour she would induce you to use language which might be construed into an offer of marriage. Then, with her husband's aid, she would so drive you to distraction as to send you flying into Miss Bayley's arms as into a harbour of refuge. "I need not describe to you how she succeeded-though we had neither of us bargained that you would be quite the fool you were. When I heard of your eloping with the doctor's daughter the instant 'Miss Vesey' put in an appearance on the scene, I owned that I had at last attained to one article of faith-an implicit belief in the infinite capacity for folly to be found in the human animal in trousers.

"It is unnecessary, under these circumstances, to say that I congratulate you upon your marriage. I hope that your wife will be a sensible woman, and present you, without loss of time, with a son -or, better still, with half a dozen, so that I may have an opportunity of finding at least one among them who shail not be quite such a fool as his father.-Your affectionate aunt, Janet Macleod (of Pittenquhair)."

finished reading this letter, he Then he wiped his glasses. Such a letter was a bitter

When Miss Macleod's nephew had wiped the perspiration from his brow. Then he sat thinking, not too pleasantly. pill to swallow. Then, not desirous that his aunt's epistle should be read by his wife, he tore it into strips, and burned them one by one. He told himself that he would never forgive his aunt-never! and that, willingly, he would never look upon her face again.

But to so resolve was only to add another to his list of follies. Within twenty-four hours of his marriage-fortunately for him-his wife had proved that the grey mare was once more the better horse. Now she had got her man, at last, the strong vein of common sense that was in her came to the front. When Miss Macleod came to see her, she received her with open arms; and, as a matter of course, where she led her husband followed.

To one thing Alan has been constant-to the doctrine of the "celibate priest." According to him, a "priest" married was not a "priest" at all. Immediately after his marriage, therefore, nobody offering the least objection, he quitted the "priesthood." He is now a gentleman of leisure. Probably with a view of providing him with some occupation his wife bids fair to come up to his aunt's standard of a sensible woman, and to present him with half a dozen sons.

There is, therefore, no fear of the Macleods of Pittenquhair becoming-like certain volcanoes-extinct, at least in the present generation.

THE HISTORICAL ASPECT OF

BURGLARY.

Na chronological history of crime the first chapter would undoubtedly be devoted to murder. In the teeth of Biblical evidence, a conscientious historian could not do otherwise. Moreover, in the natural order of things, personal crimes would precede offences against property.

But that burglary is a crime of very great antiquity is not to be wondered at, for it is an offence directed against the very foundation of peaceable existence. Cicero, in the Oratio pro Domo, eloquently discourses upon the sanctity of home, but he did not invent the sentiment.

The idea of home was one of the first which began to formulate in the human mind as man emerged from absolute barbarism. The protection of that home would be his first thought.

The cave dwellers in Dordogne and the inhabitants of the now submerged Lake Dwellings show us how this thought was carried

out.

The expression "a man's house is his castle," is English, but the feeling contained in the expression is of no nationality; it is universal. It is implanted in every human heart.

Sir Matthew Hale, speaking of burglary and housebreaking, says that such crimes were classed in our law under the head of "hamesecken." From the use of the term and the context with which it is found, he seems to have considered the word to be "home-sacking," which, at first sight, would appear, plausibly enough, to be correct. But it is clearly derived from the Anglo-Saxon ham, a house or home, and socne, liberty or immunity. We find the same meaning in the words "socmanni," "socage," ," "sac," and "soc," all of which contain the primary signification of franchise, liberty, freedom, &c.

In the seventeenth century, however, if not earlier, the word had lost its primary meaning of "home-freedom"; and under the form of "hamesecken" denoted all those offences which were aimed

against the safety of the house, and it was this diversion of its original meaning which confused Sir Matthew Hale.

Sir Henry Spelman, in his Glossary, tells us that hamsoca, or hamsocna, or hamsoken, for the word is spelt in various ways, was the privilege appertaining to the home, or freedom of the dwelling-house, the word being derived as above stated. "Ancient laws," he says, "everywhere accorded to the home of each individual the most undoubted security, and permitted nothing to be done therein against the will of the owner; in fact, every man's house was accounted his castle, fortified by ramparts of the law, wherein each man, were he ever so poor, was recognised as lord of his own household, wherein he might give his orders at pleasure, live securely, and freely ward off violence and injury." For these reasons it was laid down in the laws of Edmund, Rex Anglo-Saxonicus, cap. 6, that disturbers of the freedom of the home in all cases were to be punished at the discretion of the king, in whose hands also was the power of life and death.

For similar reasons by the laws of Canute, cap. 39, it was enacted that the king had, with other privileges, the right of deciding cases where the dwelling-house of any subject had been invaded. Moreover (cap. 52), he had in addition the power of inflicting a fine.

Bracton (lib. iii. tract. 2, cap. 23) defines hamsocne as an “invasio domus contra pacem domini regis." Ranulfus Castrensis (lib. i. cap. 50) calls hamsockne "vel hamfare (sic) insultus factus in domo." Another book, the MS. Coxfordiensis Monasterii, defines the term more fully. Under the head of Hamsockne it informs us that "the Prior will hold pleas in his own court concerning those who enter the house or dwelling of any man for the purpose of embroiling him in a lawsuit, or of robbing him, or of taking away anything, or of doing any other thing whatsoever against the will of him to whom the house or dwelling belongs."

In ancient documents or charters in which privileges were granted to individuals by the magistrates, the term is of frequent occurrence. In some of these charters the expression "let nothing be said about hamsoca" is made use of, which afforded an opportunity of committing crimes of this nature with impunity. But generally the term "hamsoca" was added to the charter without limitation, and it may be inferred that thereby the privilege was given to the grantee of the charter, of adjudicating in his own territory upon all crimes perpetrated against the safety of the house, and of then and there imposing and exacting a fine.

Another writer defines "hamesoken" to be freedom from amercements, or punishments by the purse, and from the violent inroads of

strangers without the permission and against the peace of the king. The difference between amercements and fines is that the latter are certain and created by statute: they can only be imposed by courts The former are arbitrarily imposed by courts not of record, such as a court leet, for instance. The same writer goes on to say that a man may have jurisdiction over crimes of this nature, in his own house and on his own property,

The actual term burglary, which may be derived from the Saxon burg, a house, and larron, a thief (Latin, latro), appears to have been introduced by the Normans, as in Saxon writings (apud Saxones), according to Sir Henry Spelman, it is not to be found. The laws of Canute class it, or its equivalent, among the inexpiabilia crimina.

The difference between burglary and housebreaking, according to the modern idea, must have sprung up not long before Sir Henry Spelman's time, since he defines burglary as a "Nocturna diruptio habitaculi alicujus vel ecclesiæ, etiam murorum portarumve civitatis aut burgi, ad feloniam aliquam perpetrandam. Nocturna, dico, recentiores secutus, veteres enim hoc non adjungunt." Both crimes seem to have been punishable with death, as appears from the ancient laws of Canute and from a statute of Henry I.

It is also stated elsewhere that "all robbers of houses (burgatores domorum), or breakers of churches, or the walls or gates civitatis regis vel burgorum, effecting their entrance maliciously or feloniously, are to be condemned to death, "id est," as the sentence ominously concludes, "suspendantur." "They are called burgatores," it goes on to say, "because while some plunder up and down in the fields afar off, these, with more pertinacity, assail the walls and break into villas and houses, and there commit their depredations. The words bur and bour, moreover, signify not only habitations, but a part even more sacred still, that is to say, the inner hall and bedchambers, which are not safe from robbers of this quality."

Lord Coke's definition of burglary is even more concise than that of Sir Henry Spelman. "A burglar," he says, "is he that in the night time breaketh and entereth into a mansion house of another, of intent to kill some reasonable creature or to commit some felony within the same, whether his felonious intent be executed or not." In those days, as of course, the indictment was required to be drawn with exceeding accuracy. The alleged entrance must have been stated to be noctanter or nocte ejusdem diei, for if it was in the day time it was not burglary. "It was necessary that it be said in the indictment burglariter, without which burglary cannot be expressed, with any kind of other word or other circumlocution; and therefore