and confessed that she had never seen any treasure or gold found by Mirabel, and that she had affirmed the contrary solely at his pressing entreaties. Auquier also, having had time to consider, procured proof that on the day when Mirabel affirmed him to have received the bags of money, he was eight leagues distant from the spot. The billet, also, or obligation, seemingly from Auquier to Mirabel, was distinctly shewn to have been forged. Other evidence, which it is needless to recapitulate, finally brought it plainly to view, that corruption of witnesses, forgery of handwriting, skilful selection of time and place, and, in short, every possible means of deception, had been provided and prepared by Mirabel for the success of this scheme. On becoming satisfied of this, the parliament fully acquitted Auquier, sentenced Magdeleine Caillot to pay a fine, and doomed Mirabel to the galleys or hulks, as they are named in England— for life. As he still persisted, however, in asserting the truth of his whole story, he was sentenced to undergo the torture before going to the galleys. The torture changed his tone. He confessed the whole to be a deception, and declared the idea to have occurred to him as a means of exciting notice, and relieving him from the hard labour to which his situation in life subjected him. But the conversion of his deception to the purpose of injuring Auquier, Mirabel declared to have been the suggestion of another person, a man named Barthelemy, who had suborned the witness Deleuil and others to carry out the plot.

Barthelemy, a man known to be the bitter enemy of Auquier, was immediately arrested, and the charge brought clearly home to him. He was sentenced, like Mirabel, to the galleys for life; while Deleuil, and another of the most criminal of the perjured witnesses, were doomed to be hung by the armpits for a time in the public streets-a severe mode of pillorying people, long practised in the country where these scenes took place. Thus ended the treasure-finding of Honoré Mirabel—a man who shewed talents in conducting it worthy of a

better cause. Auquier regained his place in society; but it is lamentable to think what might have been his fate, had the Parliament of Aix been guided in their decisions by the same superstitious prejudices which actuated the supreme judge of Marseille. We may really with some cause flatter ourselves, that the lapse of one century has made a beneficial change on the world in this respect; for certainly, any man who came forward now-a-days to claim restoration of property got after the fashion of Mirabel, would find some difficulty, in the first place, in persuading a French or English court that he had ever possessed it.

CHRISTIAN

NI MM 0:

AN EDINBURGH FIRESIDE STORY.

IN the grounds immediately surrounding the ancient and ruinous castle of Corstorphine, long the seat of the noblo family of Forrester, and situated a little to the west of the capital of Scotland, there stands an old pigeon-house, with a tree, also of great age, at the distance of a few yards from it. At this day, superstition has in a great measure lost its hold of the minds even of the peasantry of the land, yet not many years have passed away since the villagers of Corstorphine, within sight of whose cottages the scene lies, could not turn their eyes after nightfall towards that pigeon-house and tree without feelings of awe and dismay. For there, they averred, was to be seen on moonlight nights the figure of a woman, clothed in a white garment speckled with drops of blood, and carrying in her hand a sword dripping with gore. Round the tree and dovecot, said the tradition, she wandered hour after hour, weeping and wailing continually, from the setting in of night till cock-crow.

This superstition had its foundation in a lamentable

tragedy, which actually took place on that spot, in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The family of Forrester was of great antiquity, and derived their name from the first of their house having been forester or keeper of forests to one of the early Scottish kings, as the hunting-horns indicate, which form the armorialbearings of the family. Sir Adam Forrester, a wealthy burgess of Edinburgh in the fourteenth century, was the founder of this line of the Forresters, or, at least, the first of the name who held the lands of Corstorphine. The tenth baron in direct descent from him was George Forrester, who was first created a baronet by Charles I., and afterwards, in the year 1633, was advanced to the peerage by the style of Lord Forrester of Corstorphine. This nobleman had five daughters, the fourth of whom, the Honourable Joanna Forrester, was married to James Baillie, eldest son of General W. Baillie of Torwoodhead. Having no male issue, Lord Forrester, before his death, got a new charter from the king, by which the peerage was devised to James Baillie and his heirs by Joanna Forrester, and on the same parties was settled the Corstorphine estate. Why the three elder daughters, who were all of them well married, were passed over in this manner, it would be difficult now to discover; but the circumstance was probably not without its influence, as will be seen, in producing the melancholy catastrophe, to the elucidation of which these genealogical particulars are necessary preliminaries.

On the death of the first Lord Forrester, James Baillie, according to the terms of the patent mentioned, took the name of Forrester, and succeeded to the peerage, in the year 1654. His lady, Joanna Forrester, brought him one son, who died in infancy, and was followed to the grave soon afterwards by his mother. Lord Forrester married, as his second wife, a daughter of the Earl of Forth, but was again left a widower, after several children, who took their mother's name of Ruthven, had been born to him. Lord Forrester was not more than forty years of age when his second lady died, and it was subsequently

to that event that he formed the unhappy and criminal connection which is the main object of our present

narration.

In the days to which we allude, many of the merchants of Edinburgh were cadets or younger sons of good families; and history tells us, that the civic honours of the city were then not despised by the landed gentry around. Intermarriages, also, were more common between the more respectable portions of the mercantile order and the families of the landed gentry. There is no cause for marvel, therefore, when we find a granddaughter of the first Lord Forrester married to a merchant of Edinburgh. The name of that merchant was James Nimmo, and his wife's name Christian Hamilton, a daughter of Hamilton of Grange by the Honourable Mary Forrester, third daughter of the first Lord Forrester, and one of those children who were passed over by the deed of entail. Christian Hamilton or Nimmo was a woman of great beauty, but of a haughty disposition and violent temper. Though the wife of a merchant, she appears to have been proud of her birth, and, in particular, of her relationship to the noble family of Corstorphine. From the close neighbourhood of the seat of the Forresters to Edinburgh, Lord Forrester was frequently in the city, even when it was not the season for the residence of the nobility and gentry in their town mansions. Hence it was that habits of intercourse sprang up between Lord Forrester and the family of James Nimmo. His lordship, as has been said, was still far from being old when left a widower a second time, and, unfortunately, he was struck with the youthful bloom and beauty of the wife of Nimmo. Her relationship to him-maritally or in law, though not in blood-as the niece of his first lady, did not deter Lord Forrester from encouraging the growth of such a passion, and the opportunities which that very relationship gave him of visiting the house of Nimmo, were erelong productive of the dishonour of the merchant's wife. From the after- conduct of Christian Nimmo, it is to be feared that her mind was a

stranger to the feelings which might have averted this disgrace.

This guilty intercourse continued for a number of years, and appears, as is not uncommon in such cases, to have become ultimately almost open and undisguised. No divorce, however, took place between Nimmo and his wife, although, on the part of Lord Forrester, such an event was anticipated, and at one time even wished for. His lordship had been noted as one of the supporters of the Presbyterian party; yet, strange to say, he had applied for and obtained, there is good reason to believe, a dispensation from the pope to marry Mrs Nimmoafter a divorce, of course, should have taken place. One can scarcely conceive of any other terms upon which such a dispensation can have been procured or could be useful, except upon the condition of his lordship becoming a Catholic, and giving his influence to that cause. ties such as that existing between Lord Forrester and Mrs Nimmo are seldom permitted to have even the appearance of a happy issue. Based upon one unregulated passion, they excite and nourish others of even a worse nature. So was it in this case.

But

On the morning of the 26th of August 1679, Mrs Nimmo left Edinburgh, attended by her serving-woman, to visit Corstorphine Castle. On reaching the castle, where her presence was but too familiar a spectacle, Mrs Nimmo found that his lordship was not at home; but on making inquiry, she learned that he was at the inn of the village, and had been drinking there since an early hour. She sent for him, and he came at her request. They entered together the garden of Corstorphine Castle, and walked in it for some time. It is believed that the divorce and dispensation formed the subject of the lady's discourse, and that she vehemently pressed his lordship to set on foot the process of separation, and to fulfil his purpose of making her his wife, which, the proud woman thought, her descent from an elder sister of the late Baroness Forrester rendered little less than her due. Excited by the liquor he had taken, and irritated by the