As he eagerly gazed around for something that might confirm his hope that his child yet lived, although in the power of those strange people, a man entered the hut.
It was his old gardener.

'O sir!' said the old man, 'such a night as this I trusted never to live to see! ye maun come to the Place directly!' 'Is my boy found?
is he alive?
have ye found Harry Bertram?
Andrew, have ye found Harry Bertram ?' 'No, sir; but-' 'Then he is kidnapped! I am sure of it, Andrew! as sure as that I tread upon earth! She has stolen him; and I will never stir from this place till I have tidings of my bairn!' 'O, but ye maun come hame, sir! ye maun come hame! We have sent for the Sheriff, and we'll seta watch here a' night, in case the gipsies return; but YOU--ye maun come hame, sir, for my lady's in the dead-thraw.' Bertram turned a stupefied and unmeaning eye on the messenger who uttered this calamitous news; and, repeating the words 'in the dead-thraw!' as if he could not comprehend their meaning, suffered the old man to drag him towards his horse.

During the ride home he only said, 'Wife and bairn baith--mother and son baith,--sair, sair to abide!' It is needless to dwell upon the new scene of agony which awaited him.
The news of Kennedy's fate had been eagerly and incautiously communicated at Ellangowan, with the gratuitous addition, that, doubtless, 'he had drawn the young Laird over the craig with him, though the tide had swept away the child's body; he was light, puir thing, and would flee farther into the surf.' Mrs.Bertram heard the tidings; she was far advanced in her pregnancy; she fell into the pains of premature labour, and, ere Ellangowan had recovered his agitated faculties, so as to comprehend the full distress of his situation, he was the father of a female infant, and a widower..