 opposite to the
doors which gave access to the apartments. One or two low and dilapidated
outhouses, connected by a courtyard wall equally ruinous, surrounded the
mansion. The court had been paved, but the flags being partly displaced and
partly renewed, a gallant crop of docks and thistles sprung up between them, and
the small garden, which opened by a postern through the wall, seemed not to be
in a much more orderly condition. Over the low-arched gateway which led into the
yard there was a carved stone, exhibiting some attempt at armorial bearings; and
above the inner entrance hung, and had hung, for many years, the mouldering
hatchment, which announced that umquhile Laurence Dumbie of Dumbiedikes had been
gathered to his fathers in Newbattle kirkyard. The approach to this palace of
pleasure was by a road formed by the rude fragments of stone gathered from the
fields, and it was surrounded by ploughed, but unenclosed land. Upon a baulk,
that is, an unploughed ridge of land interposed among the corn, the Laird's
trusty palfrey was tethered by the head, and picking a meal of grass. The whole
argued neglect and discomfort; the consequence, however, of idleness and
indifference, not of poverty.
    In this inner court, not without a sense of bashfulness and timidity, stood
Jeanie Deans, at an early hour in a fine spring morning. She was no heroine of
romance, and therefore looked with some curiosity and interest on the
mansion-house and domains, of which, it might at that moment occur to her, a
little encouragement, such as women of all ranks know by instinct how to apply,
might have made her mistress. Moreover, she was no person of taste beyond her
time, rank, and country, and certainly thought the house of Dumbiedikes, though
inferior to Holyrood House, or the palace at Dalkeith, was still a stately
structure in its way, and the land a »very bonny bit, if it were better seen to
and done to.« But Jeanie Deans was a plain, true-hearted, honest girl, who,
while she acknowledged all the splendour of her old admirer's habitation, and
the value of his property, never for a moment harboured a thought of doing the
Laird, Butler, or herself, the injustice, which many ladies of higher rank would
not have hesitated to do to all three on much less temptation.
    Her present errand being with the Laird, she looked round the offices to see
if she could find any domestic to announce that she wished to see him. As all
was silence,
