Then he sought legal opinion, and was advised, by President Blair, that he had a claim worth presenting on the estate of Dormont.

"The first decision of the cause," writes Scott, "was favourable." The true heir celebrated his legal victory by a dinner-party, and his friends saluted him as "Dormont." Next morning he was found dead.

Such is the true tale.

As it occupied Scott's mind in 1813, and as he wrote "Guy Mannering" in 1814-15, it is not impossible that he may have borrowed his wandering heir, who returns by pure accident to his paternal domains, and there learns his origin at a woman's lips, from the Dormont case.

The resemblance of the stories, at least, was close enough to strike a shrewd observer some seventy years ago.
Another possible source of the plot--a more romantic origin, certainly--is suggested by Mr.Robert Chambers in "Illustrations of the Author of 'Waverley.'" A Maxwell of Glenormiston, "a religious and bigoted recluse," sent his only son and heir to a Jesuit College in Flanders, left his estate in his brother's management, and died.