This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
GUY MANNERING.
145

ed some doubts about the paternity, a weighty question of legitimacy, to the decision of which Hazlewood's opinion was called in as arbiter between his friend and his groom, and which inferred in its consequences, which of the litter should be drowned, which saved. Besides, the Laird himself delayed our young lovers departure for a considerable time, endeavouring, with long and superfluous rhetoric, to insinuate to Sir Robert Hazlewood, through the medium of his son, his own particular ideas respecting the line of a meditated turnpike road. It is greatly to the shame of our young lover's apprehension, that after the tenth reiterated account of the matter, he could not see the advantage to be obtained by the proposed road passing over the Lang-hirst, Windy-knowe, the Goodhouse-park, Hailziecroft, and then crossing the river at Simon's pool, and so by the road to Kippletringan; and the less eligible line pointed out by the English sur-