About two years before Norna’s death, Brenda was wedded to Mordaunt Mertoun. It was some time before old Magnus Troil, with all his affection for his daughter, and all his partiality for Mordaunt, was able frankly to reconcile himself to this match. But Mordaunt’s accomplishments were peculiarly to the Udaller’s taste, and the old man felt the impossibility of supplying his place in his family so absolutely, that at length his Norse blood gave way to the natural feeling of the heart, and he comforted his pride while he looked around him, and saw what he considered as the encroachments of the Scottish gentry upon THE COUNTRY, (so Zetland is fondly termed by its inhabitants,) that as well “his daughter married the son of an English pirate, as of a Scottish thief,” in scornful allusion to the
