His executors, in lifting up his desk, the evening after his burial, found "arranged in careful order a series of little objects, which had obviously been so placed there that his eye might rest on them every morning before he began his tasks.

These were the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his mother's toilette, when he, a sickly child, slept in her dressing-room,--the silver taper-stand, which the young advocate had bought for her with his first five-guinea fee,--a row of small packets inscribed with her hand, and containing the hair of those of her offspring that had died before her,--his father's snuff-box, and etui-case,--and more things of the like sort."[2] A story, characteristic of both Sir Walter's parents, is told by Mr.Lockhart which will serve better than anything I can remember to bring the father and mother of Scott vividly before the imagination.

His father, like Mr.Alexander Fairford, in _Redgauntlet_, though himself a strong Hanoverian, inherited enough feeling for the Stuarts from his grandfather Beardie, and sympathized enough with those who were, as he neutrally expressed it, "out in '45," to ignore as much as possible any phrases offensive to the Jacobites.

For instance, he always called Charles Edward not _the Pretender_ but _the Chevalier_,--and he did business for many Jacobites:-- "Mrs.Scott's curiosity was strongly excited one autumn by the regular appearance at a certain hour every evening of a sedan chair, to deposit a person carefully muffled up in a mantle, who was immediately ushered into her husband's private room, and commonly remained with him there until long after the usual bed-time of this orderly family.
Mr.Scott answered her repeated inquiries with a vagueness that irritated the lady's feelings more and more; until at last she could bear the thing no longer; but one evening, just as she heard the bell ring as for the stranger's chair to carry him off, she made her appearance within the forbidden parlour with a salver in her hand, observing that she thought the gentlemen had sat so long they would be better of a dish of tea, and had ventured accordingly to bring some for their acceptance.

The stranger, a person of distinguished appearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the lady and accepted a cup; but her husband knit his brows, and refused very coldly to partake the refreshment.