will
hear you on this topic, should he be deaf to every other. Make your own terms,
for they will be at your own making. You know where I am to be found; and you
may be assured I will not give you the dark side of the hill, as at Muschat's
Cairn; I have no thoughts of stirring from the house I was born in; like the
hare, I shall be worried in the seat I started from. I repeat it - make your own
terms. I need not remind you to ask your sister's life, for that you will do of
course; but make terms of advantage for yourself - ask wealth and reward -
office and income for Butler - ask anything - you will get anything - and all
for delivering to the hands of the executioner a man most deserving of his
office; - one who, though young in years, is old in wickedness, and whose most
earnest desire is, after the storms of an unquiet life, to sleep and be at
rest.«
    This extraordinary letter was subscribed with the initials G.S.
    Jeanie read it over once or twice with great attention, which the slow pace
of the horse, as he stalked through a deep lane, enabled her to do with
facility.
    When she had perused this billet, her first employment was to tear it into
as small pieces as possible, and disperse these pieces in the air by a few at a
time, so that a document containing so perilous a secret might not fall into any
other person's hand.
    The question how far, in point of extremity, she was entitled to save her
sister's life by sacrificing that of a person who, though guilty towards the
state, had done her no injury, formed the next earnest and most painful subject
of consideration. In one sense, indeed, it seemed as if denouncing the guilt of
Staunton, the cause of her sister's errors and misfortunes, would have been an
act of just, and even providential retribution. But Jeanie, in the strict and
severe tone of morality in which she was educated, had to consider not only the
general aspect of a proposed action, but its justness and fitness in relation to
the actor, before she could be, according to her own phrase, free to enter upon
it. What right had she to make a barter between the lives of Staunton and of
Effie, and to sacrifice the one for the safety of the other? His guilt - that
guilt for which he was amenable to the laws - was a crime against