n as giving this work greater moral seriousness than is apparent in other Scott novels. David Deans is a dairy farmer living near Edinburgh in 1737, and he has two daughters, Effie and Jeanie. Effie is the younger of the two and is considered more beautiful. She is seduced by George Staunton, a dissipated young Englishman of a higher social class. He has become involved with a group of criminals in a way he cannot escape. Effie is impregnated, and yet after the birth her baby mysteriously disappears. The law of the time assumes her guilty of child-murder because she told no one of her pregnancy at the time and because the baby cannot now be found. Effie is sentenced to death, and she asks jeanie to save her by stating that she had told her of her condition. This is not true, and Jeanie refuses to lie. Jeanie does not let the matter rest and travels to England to plead for her sister first with the Duke of Argyle and then with the Queen, and she is successful in obtaining a pardon for Effie. Jeanie and her father are befriended by the Duke and live their lives in relative contentment on his estate. Effie marries Staunton, but he is finally killed by his own son, a Highland outlaw, though neither recognizes the other. The plot divides into four sections, corresponding to the four volumes originally published. The fourth section seems to have been added in order to fulfill a contract and not because it was necessary to the rest of the novel, and it has long dissatisfied some critics and readers, who
find that their interest flags; and that the moral effect of the work is considerably weakened by Scott's obvious wish to make virtue more than its own reward and vice more than its own punishment (Lauber, 1966, 108).
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