18010	----	page images generously made available by Early Canadiana Online (http://www.canadiana.org/eco/index.html) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Early Canadiana Online. See http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/ItemRecord/11502?id=d92f22287adc9fbb MARIE GOURDON: A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence. by MAUD OGILVY Montreal: Published by John Lovell & Son 1890 TO MY FRIEND Lady Helen Munro-Ferguson of Raith, THIS LITTLE STORY IS DEDICATED IN REMEMBRANCE OF _Many happy days spent on the banks of the Lower St. Lawrence._ INTRODUCTION This little story is founded on an episode in Canadian history which I found an interesting study, namely, the disbanding of a regiment of Scottish soldiers in the neighborhood of Rimouski and the district about Father Point. Many of these stalwart sons of old Scotia who were thus left adrift strangers in a strange land accepted the situation philosophically, intermarried amongst the French families already in that part of the country, and settled down as farmers in a small way. A visit to that part of the country will show what their industry has effected. Before having been in the district, I had always thought that the coasts of Lower St. Lawrence were almost incapable of any degree of cultivation, and practically of no agricultural value; but when at Father Point, some three summers ago, I was delighted to see all along the sandy road-sides long ridges of ploughed land, with potatoes, cabbages and beans growing in abundance. Back of these ridges, extending for many miles, are large tracts of most luxuriant pasture land on which browse cattle in very excellent condition. The manners of the people of this district, who, "far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife," live in Utopian simplicity, are most gentle and courteous, and would put to shame those of the dwellers of many a more civilized spot. It is very curious to trace the Scottish names of these people, handed down as they have been from generation to generation, though their pronunciation is much altered, and in most instances given a French turn, as, for example, Gourdon for Gordon, Noël for Nowell, and many others. However, in a few cases the names are such as even the most ingenious French tongue finds impossible to alter, and they remain in their original form, for example, Burns, Fraser and McAllister. It is strange to hear these names spoken by people who know no language but the French, and I was much struck by the incongruity. M. O. Montreal, June, 1890. CONTENTS. Introduction I--"Wae's me for Prince Chairlie" II--"Oh! Canada! mon pays, terre adorée, Sol si cher à mes amours." III--"Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai." IV--"Red o'er the forest peers the setting sun, The line of yellow light dies fast away." V--"A parish priest was of the pilgrim train; An awful, reverend and religious man. His eyes diffused a venerable grace, And charity itself was in his face. Rich was his soul, though his attire was poor (As God hath clothed his own ambassador), For such, on earth, his bless'd Redeemer bore." VI--"The love of money is the root of all evil." VII--"Oh! world! thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn in love inseparable shall within this hour break out to bitterest enmity." VIII--TEN YEARS AFTER. "Oh! wouldst thou set thy rank before thyself? Wouldst thou be honored for thyself or that? Rank that excels the wearer doth degrade, Riches impoverish that divide respect." IX--"Alas! Our memories may retrace Each circumstance of time and place; Season and scene come back again, And outward things unchanged remain: The rest we cannot reinstate: Ourselves we cannot re-create, Nor get our souls to the same key Of the remember'd harmony." X--"O! primavera gioventù dell' anno! O! gioventù primavera della vitæ!!!" XI--"Because thou hast believed the wheels of life Stand never idle, but go always round; Hast labor'd, but with purpose; hast become Laborious, persevering, serious, firm-- For this thy track across the fretful foam Of vehement actions without scope or term, Call'd history, keeps a splendor, due to wit, Which saw one clue to life and followed it." XII--"I know, dear heart! that in our lot May mingle tears and sorrow; But love's rich rainbow's built from tears To-day, with smiles to-morrow, The sunshine from our sky may die, The greenness from life's tree, But ever 'mid the warring storm Thy nest shall shelter'd be. The world may never know, dear heart! What I have found in thee; But, though nought to the world, dear heart! Thou'rt all the world to me." EPILOGUE. "Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, The fatal shadows that walk by us still." MARIE GOURDON. CHAPTER I. "Wae's me for Prince Chairlie." Old Scotch Song. It was a dark gloomy night in the year 1745. Huge clouds hung in heavy masses over the sky, ready to discharge their heavy burden at any moment. The thunder echoed and re-echoed with deafening crashes, as if the whole artillery of heaven were arrayed in mighty warfare, and shook even the giant crag on which the castle of Dunmorton was situated. Fierce indeed was the tempest without, but within the castle raged one still fiercer--that of two strong natures fighting a bitter battle. So loud were their voices raised in altercation that the storm without was scarce heeded. Dunmorton was a fine old castle of the Norman type, with a large moat surrounding it, and having all the characteristics appertaining to the feudal state. To the rear of the moat, behind the castle, stretched broad lands, on which were scattered many cottages, whose occupants had paid feu-duty to the Lords of Dunmorton for many a generation. To the left of these cottages stretched a large pinewood, with thickly grown underbrush, where, in blissful ignorance of their coming fate, luxuriated golden pheasants and many a fat brace of partridge. That night, the depths of the pine forest were shaken, for the storm was worse than usual even for the east coast of Scotland, where storms are so frequent. Crossing the drawbridge, and coming to the low Norman arched doorway, one entered at once into the hall. This was a lofty room some twelve feet wide. At one end of it was a broad fire-place, where huge resinous pine logs sent up an odor most grateful to the senses and emitted a pleasant, fitful blaze, lighting up, ever and anon, the faces of The McAllister and his second son Ivan. On the walls hung huge antlers and heads of deer, the trophies of many a hard day's sport, for they had been a race of sportsmen for generations, these McAllisters, a hardy, strong, self-reliant people, like their own harsh mountain breezes. The two representatives of the race now quarrelling in the hall were both fine looking men, though of somewhat different types. The McAllister was a tall old man over six feet in height, well and strongly built. His hair was iron-grey, his eyes blue and piercing, his nose rather inclined to the Roman type, his mouth large and determined, and his chin firm, square and somewhat obstinate. His eyebrows were very thick and bushy, thus lending to his face a sinister and rather forbidding expression. He wore a rough home-spun shooting suit, and had folded round his shoulders a tartan of the McAllister plaid, which from time to time he pushed from him with a hasty impatient gesture, as he addressed his son in angry, menacing tones,-- "An' I tell ye, Ivan, though ye be my son, never mair shall I call ye so, if ye join the rabble that young scamp has got together, and never mair shall ye darken the doors of Dunmorton if ye gae wi' him. Noo choose between that young pretender and your ain people." "Father," said Ivan, "he is not a pretender, of that I am convinced, and you will be soon. He is the descendant of our own King James VI. (whose mother was bonnie Queen Mary), and you paid fealty at Holyrood many years ago to King James. My bonnie Prince Chairlie should by rights be sitting on the throne of Scotland, aye, and of England too, and, by the help of Heaven and our guid Scotch laddies, he will be there ere long." "Never," sneered The McAllister, scornfully. "I am not afraid of that." "Well, that is comforting to you at any rate, sir; then why care about my going to join his army, for I am going, nothing can stop me now." And Ivan McAllister's bonnie face glowed with an enthusiasm almost pathetic as he thought of his beloved leader, for whom he would stake all his worldly prospects, aye, and if need be his very life. "Ivan McAllister," said his father, "I thought ye had mair common sense, though it is rare in lads o' your age. Ye can never imagine that a pack o' young idiots are going to overturn the whole country." "No, sir, I do not, but a mighty army is to join us from the south; in England Prince Chairlie has many friends, and to-morrow I go to join them. The next day a mighty host will move to the west coast to welcome our future King. And then----" "Do you know, Ivan, that by your mad folly you seriously endanger the McAllister estates? An' though it is well known at court that I am not a Jacobite, yet I have many enemies who will soon tell the King my son is with the rebels. You endanger, too, your brother Nowell's position at court." "Well, father, I have promised to go, and a McAllister never breaks his word." "What! you are determined? You persist in your selfish course of folly? You will go in spite of all I say?" "Yes, father, I must go, my word is pledged." The McAllister's ruddy face grew white with anger, he clenched his hands as if he would strike his son and by main force reduce him to obedience, then with a great effort he controlled his anger and said in an ominously calm voice: "Then, Ivan McAllister, I tell ye, never mair shall ye set foot in this house, at least, when I am above ground; never mair call yourself son of mine, and may----" raising his right hand solemnly as if invoking supernatural aid. But here he was interrupted by a gentle voice which said: "Nay, nay, Nowell, ye shall not curse your son," and a soft hand was laid on his upraised arm. The McAllister paused and turned towards the speaker, a gentler expression coming over his stern face, for Lady Jean had the greatest influence over her husband, an influence which was always for good. She was a tall, slightly built woman of some fifty-eight years of age. Her hair was snow-white, contrasting admirably with her clear complexion and dark eyes, and was combed back high above her forehead, and surmounted by a mutch (cap) of finest lace. She was dressed in a gown of pale green silk, which trailed in soft folds behind her and made a rustling noise as she walked. A most distinguished lady was Jean McAllister, for the blood of the Stuarts ran in her veins. Her face was beautiful, though not altogether with the beauty of correct features, and certainly not with the beauty of youth, but it had in it that indescribable loveliness, which one sees only in the faces of very good women. It was what might be called a helpful face, and had upon it that reflection of a divine light--all sympathetic natures possess, to some degree. "No angel, but a dearer being all dipt in angel instincts, breathing Paradise." Her voice was of soft and gentle _timbre_, soothing and tranquillizing even at this heated moment, as she turned to her son and said:-- "Oh, me bairn, me bonnie bairn, could ye no' stay wi' us a while longer? It is sair and lonely wi'out ye here, and Prince Chairlie has many mair to fight for him. Can ye not stay wi' us?" "No, mother dear; much as I should like to be wi' ye all, I fear I cannot. A promise is a promise, you know. _You_ have always taught me that. Remember our motto, 'For God and the truth.' You would not wish me to be the first McAllister who broke his word." "Ah! my dear one," sobbed his mother, now fairly breaking down and weeping piteously, "must ye go, must ye go?" "Yes, mother dear; but don't distress yourself about me, I shall be all right, and when bonnie Prince Chairlie comes into his own, we shall meet again, and you, my ain bonnie mither, will be one of the first ladies at the court of Holyrood. Now I must go. Father," he said, turning to The McAllister, who was watching the scene in grim silence with folded arms and countenance cold and stern. "Father, do you mean what you said just now? Do you mean to say you will never forgive me if I go to my prince?" "Yes," the old man thundered out. "Yes, by heaven, I do mean it." "Then you have driven me for ever from you, and I leave your house to-night. You are hard, unjust, cruel," and, kissing Lady Jean, hastily, without more ado, Ivan left the hall. Then he walked swiftly into the court yard, saddled his favorite horse, and whistling to his collie dog rode off into the dark tempestuous night to face the unknown. The unknown is always terrible, but at three and twenty the heart is light, care is easily shaken off, and hope springs up eternal. A merciful gift of the good God this, and more especially so in the case of Ivan McAllister, for, poor lad, he was doomed to have many disappointments. Some weeks after leaving his father's house, he joined the troops of the young Pretender, Charles Edward; and three days afterwards was fought the battle of Culloden, a battle fraught with such disastrous results to the hopes of many gallant and enthusiastic Scotchmen. CHAPTER II. "Oh! Canada, mon pays, terre adorée, Sol si cher à mes amours" French Canadian Folk Song It was a bright August afternoon. The sun was shining down with that intense brilliancy which, I think, is only to be seen in Canada, or in the sunny climes of those countries bordering on the Mediterranean sea. The little village of Rimouski seemed this afternoon all asleep, for the heat made every one drowsy, and the old French Canadian women at their doorsteps were nodding sleepily over their spinning-wheels. Spinning-wheels, improbable as it sounds to nineteenth century ears, are not yet out of date in this part of the country, and many a table-cloth and fine linen sheet, spun by the women of the district, find their way to the shops of Quebec and Montreal. A quaint picturesque little village this; the houses are scattered and at uneven distances from each other. Nearly all of them have large verandahs projecting far out on the roadside, which is covered with uneven planks,--pitfalls in many places to the benighted traveller. There are not many houses of importance here, but there is a fine convent, where the young women of the district are sent to be educated. There is also a school for boys, which adjoins the house of M. le curé. The shops--picture it, ye dwellers in Montreal or Quebec!--are three in number, and are carried on in the co-operative style. Everything may be bought in them, from a box of matches or a pound of tobacco, to the fine black silk to serve for a Sunday gown for Madame De la Garde, the lady of the Seigneury. Then, of course, there is the church, for in what village, however small, in Lower Canada is there not a church? This particular one is not very interesting. It is very large, and has the inevitable tin roof common to most Canadian churches, a glaringly ugly object to behold on a hot afternoon, taking away by its obtrusiveness the restful feeling one naturally associates with a sacred edifice. This on the outside; inside, fortunately, all is different, and more like the Gothic architecture of Northern France than one would imagine from the exterior. Next comes the railway station, a large ugly building painted a neutral brown. Here everything was very quiet this afternoon, for except at the seasons of the pilgrimages to the church of the Good Saint Anne of Father Point, five miles lower down the line, there is as a rule little traffic going on. Between Rimouski and Father Point (called by the French Pointe à Père) is a long dusty road, very flat, and, except where the gulf comes in to the coast in frequent little bays, very uninteresting. There are few houses on this road, and these are far apart. At the doorstep of one of these cottages--a well-kept, clean and neat little dwelling--sat, this August afternoon, an old woman, spinning busily. She, although some of her neighbors might be, was not asleep. Oh, no! Seldom was Madame McAllister caught napping, save at orthodox hours, between ten p.m. and six a.m. In spite of her seventy-six years, was she hale and hearty, bright and active. She was a brisk little body, and had a most intelligent face. Her eyes were dark and bright with animation, and her coloring was brown and healthy, unlike that of her neighbors of the same age, for, as a rule, French Canadian women of the lower classes lead very hard-working lives, often marrying at sixteen or seventeen, and have scarcely any youth, entering, as they do, on the trials and duties of womanhood before an English girl of the same age has left the schoolroom. But, as I said before, Madame McAllister was hale and hearty. This circumstance was due most probably to the admixture of Scottish blood in her veins, for her grandfather, Peter Fraser, had been one of the stanchest adherents of the young Pretender. Disappointed in his hopes, he had come out to Quebec to help in the wars against the French, and, after his regiment had been disbanded near Rimouski, he remained in the district. His colonel, a certain Ivan McAllister, persuaded many of his men to remain in that part of the country with him, cherishing the quixotic hope that in this new world he might form a kingdom over which his idol, Prince Chairlie, should reign. However, after struggling for some years to make a stronghold for his rather erratic chieftain, he at length lost heart and gave up his idea. Most of his men remained in the district, and intermarried with the French families already settled there. Poor Colonel McAllister never got over the blow to his hopes. For the sake of the bonnie prince, so unworthy of his true devotion, he had been estranged from his family, and had spent his small fortune in coming to Canada. Here he was, perforce, obliged to remain. After a while he settled down as a farmer, and managed to make enough to keep body and soul together. Perhaps one of the most sensible things he ever did was to marry Eugenie Laforge, the daughter of the mayor of Rimouski. She was a pretty girl, and had a nice little fortune, for money went further in those days than it does now; and thus the McAllisters were fairly well to do. Their life for ten years was a happy, uneventful one, most of it spent by the colonel in writing an account of Prince Charlie's adventures. This unfortunate young man, I need hardly remind the reader, had long ago, in the dissipations of various European courts, forgotten that there still existed such a person as Ivan McAllister. True, the colonel did give certain spare hours to the education of his son, but the Prince was ever first in his mind. One morning,--strangely enough, the anniversary of the battle of Culloden--Ivan McAllister died quietly after a few hours' illness. Even at the last he was true to his idol, for his parting words were not addressed to wife or child, but it seemed that memory, bridging over the gulf of years, brought him back to the old days, and there was something very pathetic in his dying words: "Oh, my Prince, my bonnie Prince, I shall see you soon!" He was buried, according to a wish he had expressed some years before, in the churchyard of Rimouski, and at the head of his grave was placed a roughly hewn cross, bearing on it this inscription: "Here lies Ivan McAllister, Colonel, of the 200th Regiment of Highlanders, second son of The McAllister of Dunmorton Castle Fife, Scotland. R. I. P." In his later days Ivan McAllister had, under the influence of the curé of Rimouski, become a devout Roman Catholic. His son inherited his little savings, and lived on at the farm, situated between Father Point and Rimouski, and the McAllisters continued there from father to son up to the year 1877, when my story opens. Madame McAllister, sitting at the doorstep this summer afternoon was the widow of a Robert McAllister, who had died two years ago, leaving one son, a promising young man of three-and-twenty. Just now she was waiting for the home-coming of her son Noël, who had been absent on a long fishing expedition to the north shore of the St. Lawrence. Suddenly the old lady lifted her head, for her quick ear heard the sound of an approaching footstep. She rose hurriedly, as her son drew near, and cried out in her pretty French voice: "Oh, Noël, my son, is that you?--is it indeed you? How long you have been away! and, oh! how I have missed you! Noël, my son, it is good to see you again." "Yes, my mother, it is I. We landed at Father Point early this morning. We have had such good sport, and very hard work. I am hungry, though, my mother, for the walk up to Rimouski gave me an appetite." "Yes, my son, you must be. For three days, at this hour I have had a meal prepared for you, and yet you did not come. I was beginning to get anxious, though the Gulf is like glass, and the curé said there were no signs of a storm. To-night also your supper awaits you, so come in." The old lady led the way into the house, which was small, but exquisitely neat and well kept. The first apartment, which opened from a tiny hall, served as sitting and dining room. Like most other French Canadian houses, Madame McAllister's was carpeted in all the rooms with a rag carpet of three colors--red, white and blue. This carpeting is extensively woven by the good nuns at Rimouski Convent, and is pretty and effective, besides having the advantage of being cheap. On the walls of Madame McAllister's sitting room hung the inevitable pictures of the Good St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin, and of Pope Pius IX. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a house in the district which did not possess one or more of these engravings. Through a half-opened door could be seen a glimpse of madame's bedroom--a dainty interior. The wooden floor was snowy white, with here and there a bright-colored mat spread on it; the brown roughly-hewn bedstead was covered with a quilt of palest pink and blue patchwork, the patient result of the old lady's years of industrious toil. Madame McAllister busied herself getting supper ready, all the while talking to her son. "Well, Noël, my son, what did you get this time? I trust a great quantity." "Yes, my mother, we did very well. The first day we captured a fine porpoise, and after that six large seals." "Ah! that was good," replied madame. Both mother and son spoke French in the Lower Canadian _patois_, rather puzzling to English ears trained to understand only Parisian French. For, not only is the pronunciation different, but several Scotch words are used by the inhabitants of this district, and one puzzles hopelessly over their derivation, until remembering the origin of the people. "Where did you leave your boat?" questioned madame. "At Father Point light-house with Jean Gourdon. He is to drive up with the pilot to-morrow, and by that time will have skinned the seals." "Surely the steamer is late this week?" "Yes, but she will pass Father Point early to-morrow morning; she was telegraphed from Matane, where there has been a dense fog." "I am glad, Noël, you had such good luck this time." "Yes, the porpoise will keep us in oil all winter, and as for the seal-skins, I can sell them at Quebec for a good round price. So far so good. But this is the first stroke of luck this year. It has been a poor season. Have you any news, my mother?" "No, nothing much, my son. There is to be a great pilgrimage to the shrine of the Good St. Anne next week. Hundreds of lame, blind and sick folk are coming from all parts of the country--from Quebec, and even from Gaspé. Oh, my son, it is wonderful what the Good St. Anne does for her children." "Yes, yes," said Noël, impatiently, "but I want to hear the news of the people here. How is Marie Gourdon?" "Marie Gourdon? Oh! much as usual--always singing or playing the organ at the church, and M. Bois-le-Duc encourages her. I call it nonsense myself," and the old lady shrugged her shoulders deprecatingly. "But, my mother, she sings like an angel." "Yes, yes, Noël; so Eugène Lacroix says too." "Eugène Lacroix!" said Noël, starting; "I thought he was in Montreal." "He has been here for the last week. He came down for a holiday, and is always with Marie Gourdon." "Yes, yes, they are old friends. I do not care much for Eugène Lacroix. He seems to me a dreamy, impractical sort of person, and only thinks of his books and those absurd pictures he is always making." "You think them absurd?" replied madame. "M. Bois-le-Duc told me he had great talent. You know that, for a time the curé sent him to Laval at his own expense, and now talks of sending him to Paris." "To Paris! and for what purpose?" "Oh! the curé thinks he will make a great painter. He is always painting during his holidays. I'm sure I can't see the good of it." "Well, my mother, M. Bois-le-Duc is a very clever man, and whatever he does is good, but I, for one, have no very high opinion of Eugène Lacroix." While this conversation had been going on, Noël McAllister did ample justice to the good fare his mother set before him. Madame McAllister was nothing if not practical, and cooking was one of her strong points. Her _bouillon_, a sort of hotch-potch, was so good that a hungry Esau might well have bartered his birthright for it. Her pancakes and _galettes_ were marvels of culinary skill. Noël, having appeased his appetite, sharpened by the salt sea breezes, and after enjoying a pipe, said, "Now, my mother, I think I shall go out for a walk and hear the news. I shall not be late." "Very well, my son. Come back soon," said the old lady, and, as she heard the door close on Noël, she smiled grimly to herself and muttered, "The news, eh? The news! That is to say in plain words, Marie Gourdon." CHAPTER III. "Il y a longtemps qui je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai." French Canadian Song. It is a beautiful evening. The tide is rushing in over the crisp yellow sands of the beach at Father Point. The sun is setting slowly, as if loath to leave this part of the world, and, as he departs, touches with his rays the gold and crimson tops of the maple and sumach trees, which border the road leading into the churchyard of the Good St. Anne. The clouds are scudding over the sky in great masses of copper color and gold, parting every here and there, and showing glimpses of clear translucent blue beyond. And how quickly the whole panorama changes as the sun sinks to his bed in the sea. Anon everything was golden and amethystine, like a foreshadowing of the splendor of the New Jerusalem. A moment later and all is a deep vivid crimson, flooding the scene with its rich radiance and casting into shade even the tints of yon tall sumach tree in the prime of its early autumn coloring. The old grey slate boulders on the beach are illumined by it, and stand out in prominence from the yellow sands. All is still to-night, save for the beating of the waves against the rocks, or ever and anon the sound of a gun fired from the distant light-house. The light-house of Father Point stands out clear and distinct on a long neck of rocky land running into the St. Lawrence. All is still. But hark! A song comes faintly, carried on the evening breeze, and presently it grows clearer, louder, more distinct. The words now can be heard plainly. They are those of that old French Canadian song so familiar to all dwellers in the Province of Quebec: "A la claire fontaine, M'en allant promener, J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle Que je me suis baigné. Il y a longtemps que je t'aime Jamais je ne t'oublierai." The voice was tuneful, strong, and full and clear, though lacking in cultivation. It was that of a girl, who was sitting under the shadow of a large boulder on the beach. She seemed about eighteen, though, in the uncertain wavering light of the sunset, it was impossible to distinguish her features clearly. Her gown was of simple pink cotton, and on her head she wore a large peaked straw hat, which gave her a quaint old-world appearance. Her brown hair had escaped from beneath this large head-gear, and blew about in pretty, untidy curls round her neck and shoulders. In her hand was a roll of music, which she had just brought from the church, where she had been practising for the morrow's mass. The girl was Marie Gourdon, only daughter of old Jean Baptiste Gourdon, fisherman of Father Point. As far as the educational advantages of Father Point and Rimouski could take her Marie had gone, but that was not saying much. Her father was fairly well-to-do for that part of the world, and had sent her, at an early age, to the convent of Rimouski. There she was brought up under the careful training of Mother Annette, the superioress, and received enough musical instruction to enable her to act as organist at the Father Point church, and to direct the choir at Grand Mass. Marie Gourdon was rather a lonely girl, although she had more outside interests than many of her age. She had few companions, for most of the young girls of the district obtained situations in Quebec, or some of the large towns, finding the dullness of Father Point insupportable. Her father and brother had this summer been on long fishing expeditions, one taking them even so far as the Island of Anticosti, so that Marie was left much to her own devices. Noël McAllister, it is true, was often here, but neither his mother nor M. Bois-le-Duc seemed to like to see him in Marie Gourdon's society. This evening she had been thinking over these things after choir-practice. Lately she had found time pass very slowly. Her father and brother had come home early in the evening, but went off directly after supper to skin the seals, and she would see no more of them that night. In all probability in a few days they would go on another expedition. A quick footstep crunching the sand and a voice saying, "Good evening, Marie," made the girl turn round to see Noël McAllister standing beside her. She sprang to her feet and exclaimed, with a certain glad ring in her voice: "Oh! Noël, is that you? I am so pleased you are back." "Yes, Marie, it is I, not my ghost, though you look as if you had seen one. And are you pleased to see me?" "Of course I am. I think you need scarcely ask that question." "And what have you been doing, my dear one, since I have been away?" "Oh! Noël, the time has seemed so long, so wearisome. There has been no one here to speak to, except for a week or two when Eugène Lacroix came home for his holidays. I used to watch him paint, and he talked to me about his work at Laval." "Marie, I don't like Eugène Lacroix. He is stupid, conceited, impractical." "Indeed, I think you are mistaken. M. Bois-le-Duc calls him a genius. Eugène, too, is a most interesting companion, and he has told me many tales of countries far beyond here." "Well, he may be a genius, though I for my part cannot see it. And you, my dear one, do you long to see those countries beyond the sea? I know I do. I am tired of this life, this continual struggle for a bare existence. The same thing day after day, year after year; nothing new happens. Why did M. Bois-le-Duc teach me of an outer world beyond the bleak Gulf of St. Lawrence? Why did he teach me to read Virgil and Plato? He did it for the best, no doubt; but I think he did wrong. He has stirred up within me a restless evil spirit of discontent. Oh! Marie, to think I am doomed to be a fisherman here all my life. It is hard." "Yes, Noël, it is hard. It has always seemed to me that you with your talents, your learning, are thrown away here. But why not go to Quebec or Montreal? You would have a wider sphere there." "I would go to-morrow, Marie, if it were not for one thing." "What is that, Noël?" "Marie, do you not know?" "I suppose your reason is that you do not wish to leave your mother," said the girl hesitatingly. "No, Marie, that is not the reason. My mother would let me go to-morrow, if I wished." "Then I cannot understand why you stay. You would do much better in Quebec, you with your ability." "You cannot understand, Marie? You do not know that it is because of _you_, and you alone, that I stay on in this place, smothering all my ambitions, my hopes of advancement. No, Marie, you say you do not understand. If you spoke more truly you would say you did not care where I went." "Noël," said the girl gently, and looking distressed, "you know, my dear one, that I do care very much, and I cannot think why you speak to me in that bitter way." "Marie, do you care? You have seemed lately so indifferent to my plans, and it has made me angry, for, my darling, you must have seen that my love for you is deep, strong, mighty, like the flow of yonder great river. Aye, it is stronger, greater, more unchangeable." A glad light came into the girl's pale face, but she did not speak, and Noël went on: "It is not as if my love for you were a thing of yesterday, for I can never remember the time when you were not first in my thoughts. Yes, Marie-- 'Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai.'" "What, Noël, never? That is a long, long time. Are you sure, Noël?" "Am I sure, Marie? Is yonder great rock, on which countless tides have beaten, sure? Is the mighty Gulf sure of its ebb and flow? Is anything sure in this world, Marie?" The girl did not answer, and he went on: "Tell me, Marie, do you care for me or do you not?" Marie hesitated, and Noël impatiently gathered up some loose pebbles and threw them into the water, walking hurriedly up and down the beach. "Marie, you must answer me to-night; I must come to a decision." The girl rose slowly from her seat, and, coming towards Noël, put both her hands in his, and lifting up her great brown eyes, lighted with happiness and perfect trust, said deliberately,-- "'Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai.'" CHAPTER IV. "Red o'er the forest peers the setting sun, The line of yellow light dies fast away." Keble. "Well, I'm afraid, Webster, it's a thankless task. There are plenty of Scotch names about here, but not the one we want. I'm heartily tired of going about from churchyard to churchyard, poking around like ghouls or medical students. We've been to all the graves in the neighborhood, and, interesting as such a pursuit may be to an antiquary like yourself, I find it very slow. I'm one of those sensible people who believe in living in the present, and letting the dead past bury its dead, as the poet says." "Are you, indeed?" retorted his companion drily. "Too lazy, I suppose, to do anything else." "Well, that may be the case; but this I know, that I'm going to cable Lady McAllister to-morrow, and tell her that I'm going back. You may stay here if you like, as you appear to find the country so charming." "It is very kind, indeed, of you to give me your permission," replied the other. "But, my gay and festive friend, I doubt very much whether Lady McAllister will allow you to return. You know, as well as I, how decided she is. When she has once got an idea into her head, it is hard to get it out." "But, my dear sir," said the younger man, "it is such an utterly ridiculous idea that she has got into her head now." "Not quite so ridiculous as you think. It is a well-known fact that, about the year 1754, Ivan McAllister, with a regiment of Scottish soldiers, did embark for Canada, and landed at Quebec. It is just as well known that a Scottish regiment was disbanded near Rimouski a few years later, and we have every reason to believe, from our correspondence with the Quebec Government, that Ivan McAllister settled in this district." "I grant you all that, but he is dead long ago." "Yes, but in all probability he has descendants living. If not, of course the McAllister male line is extinct, and Lady McAllister's hopes will receive a terrible blow." "Poor Lady McAllister! she seems to have taken the thing very much to heart. I hope she won't be disappointed, but I wish I hadn't come on this wild-goose chase." "You have come," said the elder, "so you had better make the best of it." "Well, a precious lucky fellow this McAllister will be, if he exists. Why, Dunmorton Castle with its woods must be worth half a million sterling." "Umph!" said the old man. "There is a condition." "Yes, yes, but not a very dreadful one. Still, I'm not sure that I'd like to marry Lady Janet myself." "My young friend, your speculation on the subject is idle, for you will never get the chance." "Well, it doesn't matter," said his young friend philosophically, and with a sentimental air, "my heart is another's." "Ah, indeed! And who may the un--" (he had nearly said unfortunate, but corrected himself in time) "fortunate damsel be?" "Miss Sally Perkins. Yes, she is the girl of my choice. Oh! that I had never crossed the briny ocean, so far away from Clapham and my Sally. The Sunday I broke the news of my departure to her I shall never forget. It was at tea; we were eating shrimps and brown bread and butter. She had just poured out tea, and had eaten only two shrimps, when I told her I was going across the broad Atlantic. She could eat no more shrimps that day. She was overcome." "Poor Miss Perkins!" said his companion. "Sure devotion could no further go. She must be very fond of you." "She is; and I must go back to England." "You have come, and now I advise you to wait till I return. And, let me tell you that cabling is very expensive just now. You will only waste your money for nothing, and besides will be snubbed for your pains by Lady McAllister." The speaker who gave this sage advice was a little old man, with a wizened face like parchment. His keen blue eyes had a shrewd twinkle in them, and altogether he gave one the impression that he could see further into a stone wall than most people. He was the confidential lawyer and intimate friend of Lady McAllister, of Dunmorton Castle in Fife, and had served the family for more than forty years. His companion was a young Londoner, somewhat of the Cockney stamp, by name Thomas Brown, a youth chiefly celebrated for his immense estimation of his own capabilities. The two men had arrived a week before by one of the mail steamers, and had, in accordance with Lady McAllister's commands, visited nearly every churchyard in the district to discover the name of McAllister. Hitherto this had been a thankless task. Now, dispirited and fatigued, they were leaning upon the rough wooden fence which divided the burying ground of Father Point church from the road. This church, dedicated to the Good St. Anne, had been built by the pious efforts of pilots on the ships plying the River St. Lawrence and the Gulf. It was intended to be a thankful recognition to their patron saint for their deliverance from the perils of the deep. And the church had become a noted place for pilgrimages. Indeed, it was said that miraculous cures were effected by the agency of a sacred relic of St. Anne, and many a sufferer was brought here in the hope that, by performing his devotions at the shrine of St. Anne, he would be cured of his maladies. There was something very pathetic about the lonely little churchyard of Father Point, with its borders of overgrown raspberry bushes straggling in untidy clusters round the graves. At one end of the ground were five graves, marked each by plain wooden crosses, painted a dull black, with the Christian names in white of those who slept beneath. These rough crosses marked the resting-places of the good nuns, who had spent their lives working in this part of the country. All that is left to serve as remembrance of their struggles, their trials, their brief glimpses of happiness, are these wooden crosses, from which the rain of a few autumn days effaced even the names of those who labored so long and faithfully. This evening everything is very calm and still, and the peace of nature is only disturbed by the tinkling of the bells on the necks of the cattle as they are driven home by the French Canadian cow-herds. A silence seems to have settled over the whole face of nature. Presently, however, from the open windows of the church comes a song, faint at first, but swelling louder and stronger, on the evening breeze: "Maria, Maria, ora pro nobis, Ora, ora pro nobis, Sancta Maria." It is the evening hymn of the curé and his acolytes pealing out on the still evening air. Higher and higher one treble voice goes like the cry of a soul in agonized entreaty: "Maria, Maria, Sancta Maria, Ora, ora pro nobis." Then it dies away, and all is still except the ever-present swish! swish! of the rising tide against the great boulders on the beach. "Oh! I say, Webster," said young Brown, in his mincing, affected tone, "why not, after they have finished in there," he pointed to the church, "go in and ask the priest whether he knows anything of these people? He ought to know them if anyone does. Good idea, eh?" "Yes," said the old lawyer, turning round suddenly and looking rather annoyed, for in spite of his hard crust of Scotch dryness, his young clerk's voice has jarred on him at this moment. He had been deeply moved by the beauty of the scene, and the sweet tones coming from the church had stirred within him long-forgotten memories. "Yes, for once you have hit on a bright idea, and we will act on it. Let us go in and see the priest. And, my young friend, remember that most of these priests are gentlemen, so mind your manners." "I expect that house next the church is his," replied young Brown. "We can walk slowly on, and, in the meantime, the priest will come from his devotions." CHAPTER V. "A parish priest was of the pilgrim train; An awful reverend and religious man. His eyes diffused a venerable grace, And charity itself was in his face. Rich was his soul, though his attire was poor (As God hath clothed his own ambassador), For such, on earth, his bless'd Redeemer bore." Dryden. Réné Bois-le-Duc, curé of Father Point, had just come home, and was preparing to take his ease after a hard day's toil, anticipating the arrival of the pilgrims, who were about to visit the church of the Good St. Anne. The curé was a man of some sixty years of age, though looking older, for his had been a hard and toilsome life. Though secluded from the busy world, he had had heavy responsibilities forced upon him, and there was no one of his own class and education in these parts to cheer and sympathize with him in his rare moments of leisure. Belonging to one of the oldest families in Brittany, Réné Bois-le-Duc had, in spite of the strong attractions of worldly society, early conceived a high ideal of what life ought to be. This ideal was fostered by the influence of his instructors at college. His enthusiastic temperament and ascetic leanings led him to think seriously of entering holy orders when quite young, but this idea met with strong opposition from his parents; so, for a time, he abandoned it. In Paris for one short winter with his elder brother Octave, he was much sought after for his rare musical talents, as well as his personal attractiveness, which charmed all with whom he came in contact. Madame la Marquise was proud of both her sons, but Réné she idolized, and he returned her affection with a devotion rare even in the best of children. Like a sudden clap of thunder, there came on the gay world of Paris one spring morning the news that Réné Bois-le-Duc had joined the great Dominican order, and had been hurriedly sent off at a moment's notice on a mission to America. At first it could not be believed possible; but at length, after a year when he did not return, the fact could not be doubted. But what was the reason for this sudden step? Why had he not told his friends? Why did he leave in this way? There was a mystery about it, and his former friends were not slow in inventing evil reports about the absent one. Octave Bois-le-Duc never mentioned his brother, nor was the mystery ever cleared up. All this, of course, happened many years before my story opens; and though at first Réné Bois-le-Duc found his new life hard, exiled as he was from all his former associates, he had never returned to France. At times he had been sorely tempted to do so, but he knew that none could replace him in his work at Father Point, and he had grown to love his people--to be, indeed, a father unto them, mindful both of their spiritual and temporal well-being. Nor can it be said that his talents were entirely thrown away, for from time to time some highly polished poem or literary critique would find its way from the lonely little house on the banks of the St. Lawrence to a standard French magazine; and old schoolmates of the curé would shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh, here is a capital thing by Réné Bois-le-Duc. I thought he was dead and buried long ago." And he was, indeed, so far as men of his own standing and education were concerned. Except for an annual visit from his bishop, and occasionally one from a pilot or sea captain, M. Bois le-Duc seldom heard news of the outer world. On the whole, his life was not an unhappy one, and certainly not idle. Most of the hours not spent in parish work were occupied in perfecting the education of several of the young men in whom he was interested. With Noël McAllister he took special pains. Whether the results were satisfactory in this particular case may be doubted; still he did what he considered best, and left the issue to Providence. In Marie Gourdon, too, he took a great interest. Her mother had died when she was scarcely six months old. Her father had never troubled his dull head about her; and, after she left the convent at Rimouski, she led a very lonely life for so young a girl. There was much to interest even such a cultivated man as M. Bois-le-Duc in Marie Gourdon. She had inherited from her mother a remarkable talent for music, such as many of the French Canadians have strongly developed. Her soprano voice was powerful, clear and flexible, and her ear was very correct. The good curé judged that, if given proper training, and the advantages Paris alone could afford, the little Canadian girl might become an artist of the first rank. But how send her to Paris? The thing seemed impossible. Where was the money to come from? True, M. le curé had been well paid for his last review in the Catholic Journal, but he had exhausted this money in sending Eugène Lacroix, another _protégé_, to Laval for a twelvemonth. Alas now his treasury was empty; his cupboard was bare! This evening he was thinking all these matters over, when suddenly he was roused from his meditations by the voice of Julie, his old housekeeper, calling out: "M. le curé, there is a gentleman asking for you at the door." "For me, Julie, at this hour? Who is he?" "Not a Frenchman, that is very certain, monsieur; I should think not, indeed; his accent is execrable;" and the good woman lifted her hands with a gesture of despair. "Could you not understand what he wanted?" asked the priest. "No, monsieur; the only word I could make out was '_la cooré_,' so I thought that might mean you." "Well, well," said M. Bois-le-Duc, laughing, "the best thing is for me to see him myself." He went out into the tiny dark passage where Mr. Webster and his clerk were standing. "Good-evening," he said, in his polished courtly manner. "I must apologize for having kept you waiting so long. Pray come into my study. I fear Julie was somewhat brusque and rude to you. She is a good soul, though. Please be seated, gentlemen." "M. _la cooré_," said Webster, struggling hard with his one French word, and breaking down lamentably. "I can speak English," said the priest, "if that will help you." "Oh, yes," replied Webster, drawing a deep sigh of relief; "thank Heaven for that." M. le curé smiled benignly. "Well, sir," went on the lawyer, "I've come to ask you whether you knew a family called McAllister, supposed to be living in these parts." "McAllister! Why, of course I do. I have known them for years." "Oh, my good sir, you have relieved my mind of a heavy burden. For the last three weeks my clerk and I have been searching every churchyard round about here for the name, and have hitherto failed to find it. To-night the idea entered my head that you might know." "My head, if you please," murmured young Brown _sotto voce_. "I shall be most happy to be of any service to you," said M. Bois-le-Duc. "Madame McAllister, with her son Noël, lives about three miles down the road. You cannot mistake the cottage. It is a plain white one with a red-tiled roof--the only red-roofed cottage on the road." "Thank you very much, sir," said Webster. "You will like Noël McAllister," went on the curé; "he is a fine manly young fellow, and was my pupil for many years, so I know him well." "I am infinitely obliged to you, sir," said Webster, gratefully. "I suppose we may call at the cottage the first thing in the morning. The only house on the road with a red-tiled roof you said? Thanks. We shall not detain you longer. Good-evening, sir, good-evening." And Webster, having obtained the desired information, marched off with his clerk, leaving the curé in wondering perplexity as to his relations with the McAllisters. CHAPTER VI. "The love of money is the root of all evil." "Yes, Mr. McAllister, there is no choice. The estates are so left by the old lord that unless you marry your cousin you can have no part of them. An empty title you will have, to be sure; much good that is to anyone nowadays! In case of your refusing the conditions imposed upon you by the late lord's will, which Lady McAllister is determined to see faithfully carried out, my advice to you is to stay here and remain a fisherman all your life. A pleasant prospect that for a young fellow of your talents." "I must marry my cousin?" questioned Noël. "Yes, that is imperative." "What is she like?" "Oh, she is like herself, no one else I ever saw. I'm not good at descriptions, especially of ladies. She has yellow hair, I can tell you that." "Yellow hair--yes, yes; but her disposition, her character? Is she amiable?" "Well, I don't think that amiable is quite the word to apply to Lady Margaret. She is self-reliant, sensible, a thorough woman of business, and the very one to help you on in the world." "Oh, indeed; but if I ever possess Dunmorton I shall be helped on enough." "What! have you no wish for more? Would you not like to go into Parliament to make a name for yourself? Your cousin could help you in that. They say she used to write all her father's speeches, and very good speeches they were." "And Marie Gourdon?" said Noël slowly. "What of her? How can I leave her?" "Oh, nonsense!" said the little lawyer impatiently; "really I wonder at a man of your sense hesitating in such a matter. This Marie will get over it; all girls do. It's only a matter of time. She'll forget all about you in a month." Noël's thoughts went back to the scene on the beach two evenings ago, and he did not consider it at all probable that Marie Gourdon would ever forget him. At any rate, he did not care to entertain the possibility. "Yes," went on Webster, "I don't see that you can have any hesitation. Here you are, at the opening of your life, offered one of the finest chances I ever heard of, hesitating because of a little French girl. Umph! I've no patience with you, but, young man, you've got to decide before to-morrow's mail goes out. I must write to Lady McAllister. Good-bye I'm going for a walk to the light-house. The keeper is a most interesting man, and a great mathematician. Good-bye. I hope next time I see you you'll have come to your senses." And Webster walked off, evidently imagining that there could be no hesitation about the matter of the inheritance. The whole of that day was a miserable failure to Noël McAllister. He had one of those natures which hate making a decision. He was restless, and could settle down to nothing, and walked up and down his mother's little verandah like a caged animal. He could not bear the thought of giving up Marie, yet, on the other hand, he could not bear the thought of giving up his inheritance. It was too tempting. To leave forever the monotony of a life at Father Point, to plunge all at once into luxury and riches, that was a dazzling prospect, with only Marie Gourdon on the other side to counter-balance these attractions. And she had been so slow in telling him she cared for him that even now he half doubted whether she really did, in spite of the truthfulness in her great brown eyes, when she repeated the refrain of that old French song. And the lawyer had said she would forget in a month, like all other girls, and she was not different from other girls. Yes, it was a difficult question to decide, there was no doubt about that. He despised himself for thinking of giving up Marie, the mere thought horrified him, and yet--Dunmorton, ease, riches, luxury! To give all these up without a struggle would have been difficult, even to a more heroic nature than Noël McAllister's. There was not long, however, for him to decide the question, and as evening came on, and he thought that by next morning the die must be cast one way or the other, his head ached with the effort of anxious thought. Fresh air he felt he must have, so he went out from the cottage, and walked hurriedly down the road. The moon was shining cold and clear, showing distinctly the delicate tracery of each branch and leaf overhanging the pathway. The cold, clear light threw into strong relief each giant maple tree darkly looming against the silvery evening sky. McAllister walked hurriedly on, deeply thinking, for about a quarter of a mile. His head was bent, and he saw nothing, so absorbed was he in his own meditations. Presently, however, a figure crossed his path. He started, and looked up to see a girl in a red cloak standing in the pathway. She stopped before him. It was Marie Gourdon, the last person in the world he wished to meet just then. "Marie, my dear one," he said, "what are you doing out so far alone, and at this hour too? Come; let me take you home." "Noël, I came to see you. I hoped to have met you. I have something important to say to you." "Indeed, Marie, what can it be? You should have sent for me. You cannot talk to me here. Let me take you home, and then you can tell me." "No, no," said Marie persistently. "Jean and my father are in the house, and I wish to speak to you alone, and what I am going to tell you I must say to-night." "What is this tremendous secret?" She did not answer the question but said abruptly: "M. Bois-le-Duc tells me you are going away." "Going away? Um--um--I don't know," Noël replied hesitatingly. "I think not. No no, M. Bois-le-Duc makes a great mistake." "You are not going away?" said the girl, a glad light coming into her eyes. "What, Noël you have not come into this fortune?" "Oh! yes, there is no doubt about that; but there are conditions, and I can't accept them." "What are the conditions?" "One is that I shall have to leave you, to give you up." "Noël, there would be no need of that." "Why, what do you mean, Marie?" "I give _you_ up," said Marie proudly. "I could never stand in your way of advancement." "Marie, did you not say to me most solemnly only the other night: 'Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai.'" "What has that to do with it, Noël? That does not alter the case. It is just because of that I will not let you stay here. You may think it an easy thing to decide now, but in after years you would regret remaining here. With your gifts, your ambition, you would be thrown away. No, Noël, _I_ bid you go. You must not stay. Good-bye, dear one, for the last time. You must tell them to-morrow that you will go." "It is impossible," said Noël, in an angry tone. "You can never have cared for me to give me up in a moment like this." "You know that is not true, Noël. I can see into the future, and it is just because I do care so much for you that I do not wish you to waste your life here." She spoke with an effort, and as if she were repeating a lesson learned beforehand. "No, that is not it," said Noël; "I am perfectly sure you never cared for me or you could not give me up like this in a moment." The girl did not answer for a time, for she was deeply wounded at his want of understanding, his non-comprehension of her most unselfish motives. Presently she turned to him, and said in a hurried tone, for she could scarcely control herself just then, "Noël, believe me it is for the best. Good-bye." Before he had time to answer she had walked swiftly away, and was hid from his sight by the turn of the road. All had happened so quickly, the momentous decision had been made so entirely without effort on his part, that his breath was fairly taken away. But, beneath all his surprise and wounded pride was a feeling of relief scarce acknowledged to himself, though his first exclamation was one of distressed self-love, as he exclaimed angrily, "She has no feeling; she does not care." Ah! M. Bois-le-Duc, your training of Noël McAllister was at fault somewhere. You grounded him thoroughly in Latin and the classics, but you taught him little of the study of human character, that most profoundly interesting of all studies. Had your teaching been different, Noël McAllister might have had a different estimation of the depths of a nature like Marie Gourdon's, of a woman's true unselfish devotion. He might have made an effort to keep what he had already won--which was above all price. Had your teaching not failed in this one essential point, Noël McAllister's life and career would have been far different. Well for him had it been so! CHAPTER VII. "O world! thy slippery turns! Friends, now fast sworn in love inseparable, shall within this hour break out to bitterest enmity." Coriolanus, Act iv., Scene iv. It was two months later, a chilly October afternoon. The glory of the maple and the sumach had departed, and a dingy russet brown had succeeded the more brilliant tints of early autumn. The tide was high, and the waves dashed angrily against the long pier at Rimouski. On this pier were gathered six persons, awaiting the arrival from Quebec of the outward-bound steamer. They were Madame McAllister and her son Noël, Marie Gourdon, Pierre, her father, Jean, her brother, and M. Bois-le-Duc. What was the matter with M. le curé this afternoon? He looked anxious and care-worn, and scarcely spoke to anyone. Marie, on the contrary, was very bright, and tried to keep up Madame McAllister's spirits, which were at the lowest ebb. On the whole, there was not much talking done, for a cloud seemed to hang over the whole party. Presently, some miles out on the gulf, at first like a tiny black speck, appeared the steamer. Nearer and nearer it came, growing larger and larger as it approached. The dark waters heaved up in huge waves as her bow pierced their depths. The foam dashed high, as if in angry protest at the intruder. And Madame McAllister, glancing at the ship, said in her quaint, pathetic way: "Ah! Noël, my son, here is the ship like some huge monster come to swallow you up. I cannot let you go. Oh! my son, my son!" At length the steamer "Peruvian"--for Lady McAllister desired that Noël should travel in every way befitting her heir--reached the pier. Ropes were thrown out and caught by the fishermen. The mails, in great leather bags, were thrown on board, and shouts were heard of "All passengers aboard!" During all this bustle Noël McAllister stepped aside, and said to M. Bois-le-Duc, in a hurried, anxious tone: "And now, my father, are you not going to give me your blessing?" M. Bois-le-Duc, strangely enough, had made no advance towards his favorite pupil; in fact, during the whole of the last month had seemed to avoid him. Now, when thus directly questioned, he answered: "Yes, Noël, I wish you all happiness in your new life, and hope you will have a safe and pleasant voyage." "And is that all you have to say to me, my father?" The curé did not reply, but pointed to Madame McAllister, who was gazing at her son with eager, wistful eyes, jealously counting every moment of absence from her side. He obeyed the curé's unspoken command, and returned to his mother, conscience-stricken at the silent rebuke of this his best and most valued friend. No change of plan was possible now. The die was cast for good or evil. Weakness had triumphed over strength. Blame him--he was worthy of blame; but, pausing for a moment, may it not be said that nine men out of ten would have decided as did Noël McAllister? "Oh! my mother, you know I shall write every week. Do not distress yourself. Marie, good-bye. Remember always it was you who bade me go. Good-bye, Monsieur Gourdon. Good-bye, Jean." He was off at last, and the steamer moved out from the pier. How bitter these partings are and how hard to bear, but the thought crossed M. Bois-le-Duc's mind just then that there were worse things than partings. "Take me home," said Madame McAllister. "I cannot stay here watching my boy disappear." She was terribly distressed, and the curé and Jean Gourdon led her home. No one seemed to think of Marie. She had disappeared behind a huge pile of lumber, and had sat down to rest on a great log. There she sat for she knew not how long; she seemed unconscious, oblivious of all, save that tiny black speck which was sinking lower and lower on the horizon. Finally it disappeared down the great waste of interminable ocean. The sun set, and the air grew chill; the tide rose high; the curlews hovered round with their weird cries; the Angelus from the church came wafted across the waters, faint and sweet in its distant music, and the laborers in the fields paused a moment in their tasks to do homage to the Holy Maiden in murmured prayers. But Marie Gourdon heard none of these sounds, felt not the cold of the evening air. Her senses were benumbed, and she was only conscious of a dull, aching pain. Two hours passed, and during these two hours Marie fought out her battle with herself. When M. le curé missed her, he went to look for her at her father's house, and not finding her there, the idea occurred to him that she might be still on the pier. Returning, he found her. Laying a gentle hand on her down-bent head, he said: "My child, come home with me. You must not give way like this, such grief is wrong, and--he is not worthy of it." "Oh! my father," said Marie, lifting a wan, white face to his, "life is indeed hard." "Yes," said the curé, raising his hat reverently, and looking out towards the cold, unfathomable waters of the great Gulf. "And, my child, there is only One who can help us on that rough path." CHAPTER VIII TEN YEARS AFTER. "Oh! wouldst thou set thy rank before thyself? Wouldst thou be honored for thyself or that? Rank that excels the wearer, doth degrade, Riches impoverish that divide respect." _Sheridan Knowles_ The morning-room at Glen McAllister was an ideal room of its kind, in a rather plain and severe style. The floor was covered with dainty blue and white straw matting, and huge rugs of musk-ox skin, from the wilds of the great North-West of Canada, were scattered here and there about the room. At a large desk, looking as if it might belong to a man with an immense business connection, sat Lady Margaret McAllister. She was adding accounts with a methodical accuracy and speed even a bank clerk could not hope to excel. She was a woman of about forty, though looking younger, her hair being of that tawny shade of yellow that rarely turns grey, and her complexion bright and fresh, bearing witness to a healthy outdoor life. That morning she was very busy counting up the week's expenses, and trying to explain to her husband that the conduct of their bailiff was most reprehensible. Lady Margaret always used long words in preference to short ones, which might express exactly the same meaning. This was one of her peculiarities. "Three months' rent for the Mackay's farm is due, Noël. I really think you might bestir yourself a little to look after the estate. Jones is the most execrable manager I ever knew. Here you are, with nothing to do all day except smoke or shoot, letting things go to rack and ruin. We shall be in the poor-house soon. Umph! I've no patience with you." "No, my dear, you never had, and each year you have less. I am, indeed, a sore trial to you," replied her husband, smiling placidly. "You are, there can be no question about that," said Lady Margaret, bitterly. Noël took his cigar out of his mouth, looked at her calmly for a moment, and said: "Then why----" "Why--Yes, I know what you are going to say, you have said it so frequently--why did I marry you?" she interrupted. "You have guessed rightly, my dear; that was just what I was about to remark." "I married you because I could not help myself." "Oh, yes, you could. You might have refused, and I would have gone back to Canada--would gladly have done so." "No, Noël," said his wife, rising and standing before him, a rather terrifying figure; "be at least truthful. You would not have given up the estate even though it was burdened with an incubus like me." "Well, well, my dear," said Noël, yawning aggravatingly, "all that is over. As your poet says, 'Let the dead past bury its dead.'" "Inexact in small things as well as great," said Lady Margaret, who had returned to her accounts. "Your poet, you mean, for your quotation is from Longfellow, and he lived nearer your country than mine." "Oh! I never remember these fellows' names. I take it for granted you are right. You always are, my dear. But let us return to prose. Are you going to Lady Severn's to-night to dinner?" "Of course I am, and so are you. You know the famous prima donna, Mademoiselle Laurentia is staying at the Castle, and we shall hear her sing." "Who is she? Another of old Lady Severn's _protégées_, I suppose. All her swans turn out geese. I only hope this one will not be a worse failure than usual." "You at least, Noël, ought to be interested in Mademoiselle Laurentia, for she comes from your part of the world--from the backwoods of Canada." "Really?" he questioned, with some show of interest at last. "Yes; and Elsie Severn began to tell me some romantic story about her which I can't remember, for, just as she was at the most exciting part, Jones came in and related the account of the arrears in the Mackays' rent, and that put all Elsie's story out of my head." "Yes, my dear, you have a faculty of remembering all the disagreeable things and forgetting all the pleasant ones. This adds much to your worth as a charming companion. I, who am honored with so much of your society, fully appreciate this quality." Fortunately Lady Margaret did not hear this tender speech, for she was again deep in the recalcitrant Jones' accounts. Let us glance for a moment at Noël McAllister, and see how years and prosperity have agreed with him. Lazily smoking in a comfortable arm-chair, this man is very different from the tall and slender youth we saw last on the pier at Rimouski. He certainly had improved in appearance, and was a tall, fine-looking man of about five-and-thirty. He wore a light-colored tweed shooting suit, which contrasted well with his dark hair and bronzed complexion. A remarkably handsome man was The McAllister of Dunmorton, but to a close observer there was something lacking in his face--the old weakness about the mouth and chin, which time, instead of eradicating, had only served to develop. The hard school of adversity would have been a wholesome experience for Noël McAllister. His life was not a busy one by any means: in fact, he spent most of his time in hunting or shooting, taking little interest in his tenants. After much persuasion from Lady Margaret, he had been induced to run for the county, and was returned unopposed, owing to the energetic canvassing of his wife, and the fact that most of the electors were his own tenants. Poor Lady Margaret! she, indeed, had her trials. A woman of unbounded energy and ambition, she wished above all things that her husband should make his mark in the world. Vain hope!--a silent member in the House of Commons he was, and a silent member he would remain. When he first arrived from Canada, ten years ago, his cousin anticipated great things from him. She saw his strong points as well as his weaknesses, and, being by some years his senior, hoped to mould him to her will. Alas! it was like beating against a stone wall--a wall of indifference and apathy. McAllister had got his estate and the large revenue it yielded, and that was all he wanted. Lady Margaret was an appendage, and a very tiresome one into the bargain. She could not touch his sympathies, for whatever heart he ever had was far across the sea, where the cold green waters of the great St. Lawrence beat in unceasing murmur against the rocky beach at Father Point. McAllister heard occasionally from his mother, whom he had often begged to come over to Scotland to share his prosperity, but the old lady always refused, saying that she was too old to venture so far from home. He had written several times to M. Bois-le-Duc, but never had received any answer or news of the curé until a year ago, when a friar from Quebec had come to Scotland on a visit, and had brought a letter of introduction from the curé of Father Point to McAllister. The letter consisted only of a few short lines. Noël had often questioned his mother about Marie Gourdon, but on this subject the old lady was silent,--it is so easy to leave questions unanswered in letters. "Margaret," Noël called out suddenly, rousing himself from his meditations, "I am going out now, and I shall not be back till five o'clock. I am going to ride up the Glen." "Very well, but remember to be back in time to dress for dinner. Last time we were invited to the Severn's you were half an hour late, and Lady Severn has not forgiven you yet." "Oh! all right. I shall be strictly on time this evening, and trust to make my peace with the old lady. Au revoir." CHAPTER IX. "Alas! our memories may retrace Each circumstance of time and place; Season and scene come back again, And outward things unchanged remain: The rest we cannot reinstate; Ourselves we cannot re-create, Nor get our souls to the same key Of the remember'd harmony." Longfellow. The dinner party at Mount Severn this evening was an undoubted success, as were most of Lady Severn's entertainments, for she possessed to a great degree that invaluable gift of a hostess--the art of allowing people to entertain themselves. And, added to the charm of her manner, and her undoubted tact in bringing the right people together, Lady Severn had all the accessories to make a dinner party go off well. The large dining-room was a long, low, octagonal apartment, with a small conservatory opening out at the lower end. There were numerous small alcoves in the wall, and in the recesses of each of these were huge pots of maidenhair fern. All along the oak-panelled walls at short intervals were placed old-fashioned brass sconces with candles in them, which shed a clear though subdued light on the dinner table and the faces of the guests, and brought into prominence the bright hues of the ladies' gowns and the sparkling crystal and silver on the dinner table. At the head of the table sat Lord Severn, a hale, hearty old gentleman of seventy. He was devoted to fox-hunting, and always ready to get up at five o'clock in the morning when a good run was in prospect. His wife sat opposite him. She was a beautiful old lady, her face clear-cut as a cameo. Her features were regular, and her bright black eyes flashed under her high intellectual forehead with a brilliancy a girl of sixteen might have envied. Her hair was snowy white, and rolled back _à la pompadour_. To-night she was dressed in a gown of heliotrope satin, trimmed with white point lace, and here and there in her hair and gown she wore pins made of the Severn diamonds. Round her neck glistened a magnificent necklace of these gems, which were of world-wide fame, having been given to Lord Severn by an Indian rajah as a recompense for saving him from drowning. Lady Severn had been talking about her celebrated guest, who was not at dinner this evening. "I am sorry you have not met Mademoiselle Laurentia; unfortunately she has been suffering for the last two days with a very severe nervous headache, and to-night did not feel inclined to come to dinner. However, I hope later on she will be better, and able to sing for you. Before dinner she went out into the garden, thinking the cool air would do her head good." "Yes, I am very anxious to meet her," replied Lady Margaret, "and Noël is, for him, quite excited about her, coming as she does from Canada." "Yes, she comes from Canada, and she has quite a romantic history. Perhaps she will tell you about that herself some day. She has only been with us a week, but already we are very fond of her, she is such a winning little creature, and her French Canadian songs are charming." "Oh! Noël will be delighted," said Lady Margaret; "he waxes enthusiastic on the subject of French Canadian boat-songs. Do you think Mademoiselle Laurentia would spend a week with us at the Glen?" "No, I'm afraid not; she is engaged to sing at Her Majesty's next week, and goes from here to London. You may have better luck in the autumn, though, when her London engagement is over." "I'm sorry she can't come now, for we should have been delighted to have her at the Glen." "Elsie dear," said Lady Severn to her daughter, a tall, fair girl of nineteen, who was endeavoring to amuse The McAllister, a difficult task--"Elsie dear, what part of Canada does Mademoiselle Laurentia come from?" "Oh! somewhere on the banks of the St. Lawrence--some unpronounceable name." "Delightfully vague," said Noël McAllister. "The ideas you English people have about our country are refreshing. One young lady, whom I supposed to have been fairly well educated, asked me, in the most matter-of-fact tone, whether we went down the rapids in toboggans. I can assure you it required a strong effort of will on my part to refrain from laughing outright." "What did you tell her?" inquired Elsie. "Oh! I said if she had ever seen either a rapid or a toboggan; she would hardly think of associating the two." "Some day I wish you and Lady Margaret would make an excursion to Canada, and take me with you. It would be so exciting----" "Come, Elsie," interrupted her mother, "come, we must go. Mademoiselle Laurentia will be lonely." The ladies rose to go, Elsie saying in an undertone to The McAllister: "Now, don't spend an hour over those stupid politics. I want you to hear mademoiselle sing." "Politics!" he replied, with a disdainful shrug of his shoulders. "I take no interest whatever in them. Do not fear, Miss Elsie." "I should like to know what you do take an interest in," remarked the young lady mischievously, as she hurried out of the room. On entering the drawing-room they failed to find Mademoiselle Laurentia, so Lady Severn proposed that they should go into the garden. "Elsie, run up to my room and fetch some shawls; the evening is quite chilly." It was a lovely night in the end of April; the moon was full, and glimmering with sheeny whiteness over the distant hills. The garden at Mount Severn was an old-fashioned one, laid out in the early Elizabethan style in stately terraces and winding paths. On each terrace were planted beds of luxuriant scarlet geraniums and early spring flowers. Every once in a while one came across a huge copper beech, and gloomy close-clipped hedges of yew divided the garden proper from the adjacent park. Somewhere in the distance could be heard the trickling of a tiny rivulet, which supplied the fountain in the middle of the garden. There were many roughly-hewn, picturesque-looking rustic chairs scattered about, and near one of these Lady Margaret paused. "May we sit here?" she said, turning to her hostess. "I really think this is the most delightful garden I ever saw in my life. They talk about Devonshire; I never saw anything half so lovely there." "Yes, certainly it is pretty," assented its proprietress. "But where is Mademoiselle Laurentia?" "In her favorite nook beside the old copper beech. See, you can catch a glimpse of her if you look round that tree." Yes, there was Mademoiselle Laurentia, and a very insignificant little person she appeared at first sight. Her hands were clasped, and she was apparently deep in thought. She was clad in a gown of some soft shimmery white material, which fell in graceful folds about her, and in the clear beams of the moon looked like a robe of woven silver. Round her throat was a row of pearls, and in her dark brown hair were two or three diamond pins. As Elsie Severn returned and came towards her, she lifted her head, and her face could be distinctly seen. A very sweet face it was, too, albeit not that of a woman in the first freshness of her youth. The eyes were dark and bright, the forehead broad and low, with lines of strong determination marked on it. The mouth, that most characteristic feature, was somewhat large and expressive. But the successful prima donna's face wore a not altogether happy expression, though when she spoke the sad look went out of it; only when in repose it was always there. "Well, Mademoiselle Laurentia, how is your head now? Better, I hope?" "Yes, dear, the pain is quite gone now. And how did your dinner-party go off?" "Oh! very well. I sat next The McAllister, and he was a little more lively than usual. He is most anxious to meet you. You know he comes from Canada." "Yes, I know," said Mademoiselle Laurentia abruptly. "Did you ever meet him there?" went on Elsie. "I used to know a family called McAllister a long time ago, when I was quite young." "Indeed? But, mademoiselle, don't talk as if you were a hundred. I'm sure you don't look much older than I." "In years, perhaps, I am not so very much older; but in thought, Elsie, a century." "Poor Mademoiselle Laurentia, your life has been a hard one, in spite of all its success. I don't want to intrude, but I often think you must have had some great sorrow. Have you?" "Yes, my dear, I have. I cannot talk of it to-night, though. No, no, not to-night at any rate." Elsie rather wondered why she laid such particular stress on the present time, but did not like to pursue the subject. "Elsie, would you like me to sing for you now?" asked Mademoiselle Laurentia suddenly. "This garden is an inspiration." "Yes, I should, above all things, if you feel well enough." "Then what shall it be? Choose." "Oh! if you please, Gounod's Slumber-song. This is just the time and place for it." Accordingly, with only the rippling of the fountain as an accompaniment, the sweet clear notes rose, and the highly-trained voice of the prima donna performed the difficult runs and trills of this most beautiful of slumber-songs with that precision and delicacy attained by years of practice and hard training. The song came to an end, and for a few moments no one spoke, till at length Elsie Severn, drawing a deep sigh of relief, said in her impulsive way: "Why, Mademoiselle Laurentia, I have never heard you sing like that before. I thought I had heard you at your best in London, but I never _felt_ your singing so much as to-night." "I am glad you were pleased, my dear. Would you like another?" "Yes, above all things. Just wait a moment though; I want to speak to mamma." Elsie crossed over to where Lady Severn sat, and whispered to her saying: "If the gentlemen come out while mademoiselle is singing, don't let any of them come over to us. She can't bear a crowd round her, and I don't want her to be disturbed." "Very well, child; it shall be as you wish. I hope, though, you did not ask mademoiselle to sing; you must not do that." "No, no, indeed I did not, mamma. She offered to sing for me." A curious friendship had sprung up last winter in London between Elsie Severn and the famous prima donna. They had met one afternoon at a reception, and been mutually pleased with each other. There was something about the frank outspoken manner of the young girl which appealed to Mademoiselle Laurentia, wearied as she was with the conventional adulation, in reality amounting to so little, of the world in which she moved. "Now, mademoiselle," said Elsie, "I am ready. It is so good of you to sing for me." "My child, you know I love to give you pleasure," she replied, stroking the girl's fair hair caressingly. "Listen! I will sing for you a song I have not sung for years--ah! so many, many years." She began softly, slowly, a Canadian boat-song, heard often on the raftsman's barge or habitant's canoe, on the Ottawa or great St. Lawrence--a national song, with its quaint monotonous melody and simple pathetic words. And the voice which rendered so effectively the technical difficulties of Wagner and Gounod sang this simple air with a pathos and feeling all its own: "A la claire fontaine M'en allant promener, J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle Que je me suis baigné. Il y a longtemps que je t'aime Jamais je ne t'oublierai. Il y a longtemps que je t'aime Jamais je ne t'oublierai." "Why, McAllister, whatever is the matter with you? Have you seen a ghost? You are as white as a sheet. Are you ill?" "No, no, I'm not ill. Do be quiet, Jack. What a row you're making! I do feel a little seedy; it's these horrid cigars of yours." "Nonsense!" retorted Jack Severn. "You couldn't get better ones; it isn't that. I believe you've seen the ghost of old Lady Severn, my great-grandmother, walking with her head in her hands. This is the time of year she always turns up. It must be the spring house-cleaning that disturbs her rest. _Did_ you see her? I've sat up night after night to try and catch sight of the old lady, and I've always missed her. Where was she? Tell me quickly. I'll run after her." "I didn't see your great-grandmother or anybody else, so do stop chattering, Jack, and for goodness' sake let me hear that song," said McAllister irritably. "Well, well," muttered Jack Severn to himself, "I never saw The McAllister in such a temper before. As a rule, he is too lazy to be angry at anything, I really think he must be ill." Mademoiselle Laurentia finished singing. The McAllister's thoughts by this time were far away on the pebbly beach at Father Point, where the tide was coming in rippling over the stones, and his memory had gone back to an evening ten years ago. He was again standing beside a huge boulder, on which sat a girl in a pink cotton frock. She was singing in a sweet low voice: "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai." And he was saying to her: "Marie, you know, my dear one-- 'Il y a longtemps que je t'aime.' Yes, for years. My love for you is deep as that great river, and stronger, mightier." And the girl had answered, looking at him with her great brown eyes full of unutterable tenderness and faith: "Yes, Noël, I believe you will never change;" and their voices joined in the refrain of that old boat-song, awaking the echoes: "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai." "Mr. McAllister, how ill you look," said Elsie Severn, coming towards him, and noticing his weary, abstracted expression. "Yes, that's just what I was saying," put in the irrepressible Jack. "I think he'd better go home." "How rude you are!" said his sister. "Come, Mr. McAllister, come into the house, and I will give you a cup of tea. That will do you good, and then I will introduce you to Mademoiselle Laurentia." "Oh! Miss Elsie, there's nothing the matter with me. I should like to be introduced to Mademoiselle Laurentia now." "Very well. See, she is coming this way," said Elsie. "Is she not pretty? Have you ever seen her before?" "Seen her before? How could I have seen her before?" He told the untruth unblushingly; it was by no means his first. Mademoiselle Laurentia was close to them now, and Elsie said, in her clear, distinct tones: "Let me introduce Mr. McAllister to you, mademoiselle. You are compatriots." Just then Lady Severn called Elsie, and Marie Gourdon and Noël McAllister were left alone for a moment. She was the first to break the awkward silence, as she said in her quiet voice, without the faintest shade of embarrassment in it: "How do you like this country, Mr. McAllister?" "How do I like this country? Is that all you have to say to me after these years?" "What else can I have to say to you? Is not this a fine old garden? How brightly the moon shines!" "Marie Gourdon, do not speak to me in that calm, aggravating way. Reproach me! Anything but this. I cannot bear your indifference." "Reproach you? For what? Do you mean for leaving me? If so, that is an old story, told long, long ago. I am thankful now you did leave me. And, Mr. McAllister, I must remind you that only to my most intimate friends am I known as Marie Gourdon. I must beg you to excuse me now; Lady Severn is calling me." CHAPTER X. "O! primavera gioventù dell' anno! O! gioventù primavera della vitæ!!!" It was a beautiful afternoon in the middle of June, and the London season was at its height. Everyone who was anybody of importance was now in town. Sweet, fresh-looking girls, in the full enjoyment of their first season, were cantering by, gaily chattering in the Row, their faces glowing with excitement and pleasure as they caught sight of some pedestrian acquaintances and nodded their greetings. Stately old dowagers were enjoying to the full the bright sunshine, as they lay comfortably back in their well-padded broughams. Here were brilliantly apparelled men and women, the very butterflies of London society, talking of the events of yesterday, and speculating on the evening's entertainment, as they walked leisurely up and down the broad promenade of the Park. But near, and almost touching the skirts of these favored ones, ran an undercurrent of poverty, distress and misery. So close allied were the two streams of human life, that scarce an arm's length divided them. Here and there, just outside the Park gates, were pale, emaciated women and young girls, in whom was left no youth, for in truth their hard lives had served to age them before their time. With thin, white hands they stretched out their offerings of flowers to sell the passer-by--bright spring flowers--crocuses, daffodils and violets, whose freshness and purity served only to enhance the miserable aspect of their vendors. In verity it was a scene of velvet and rags, satin and sackcloth, riches and poverty: Lazarus looking longingly at Dives, and Dives going on his way unheeding. At the marble arch entrance to the Park there stood this afternoon a tall, rather melancholy looking man, dressed in deep mourning. He was watching, with apparently little interest, the busy throng about them. From time to time he lifted his hat in a mechanical manner as he recognized some acquaintance, but there was nothing enthusiastic in his greetings. He had been standing at the entrance for about half-an-hour, when he was roused from his state of abstraction by a tremendous slap on the back, and a sturdy voice, which said: "Hello! McAllister, old boy, how are you? Why are you star-gazing here? Wake up, old boy, wake up!" "Oh! Jack, how are you?" said McAllister, for he it was, turning round sharply. "I'm glad to see you. I thought you were in France." "Well, so I was, but the fellow I went with couldn't speak a word of French, and you know I can't. We started on this walking tour through the Pyrenees, where no English is spoken. The consequence was that we were nearly starved--couldn't make the people understand. I got tired of making signs, as if I were a deaf mute, so I just turned back and came home, and here I am." "How are Lady Severn and Miss Elsie?" "Both very well, thank you. Elsie is enjoying her season thoroughly. I never saw such a girl before in my life. She is out morning, noon and night. I declare she tires me out, and I can't begin to keep pace with her. One ball at nine, another at ten; rush, rush, all the time, it is terrible. She has the constitution of a horse, I believe." "Not very complimentary to Miss Elsie," said Noël laughing. "True, nevertheless. I say, McAllister, you look very glum. What is the matter with you? Oh! ah! I beg your pardon, I--I----What an ass I am, always putting my foot into it. Pray forgive me." "Yes," said Noël, "it was very sad. You know, Lady Margaret always would drive those ponies; we could not prevent her. She was determined to break them in, and, when she decided on a thing, she always carried her point. That morning, she drove to the Glen; the precipice there is very steep, and something frightened the ponies, and--and you know the rest." "Yes, yes," said Jack shuddering, "I heard it all. I am very sorry for you, old boy. Lady Margaret was very kind to me. She used to scold me occasionally, but I expect I deserved it. No, no, don't talk about it any more. You must cheer up, old boy. Come with me to the opera to-night. Mademoiselle Laurentia is going to sing in 'Aida.'" "Mademoiselle Laurentia?" "Yes, don't you remember her? She was up at Mount Severn last autumn." "Oh, yes! I remember her well enough; but, Jack, I can't go to the opera, much as I should like it. You see it would not look well," touching the crape band on his hat. "No, no, of course not," said Jack hurriedly; "pray pardon me, how stupid I am; but I know what we can do. I have tickets for a conversazione at the Academy to-morrow--there can be no harm in your going to that. I hear there are some very good things at the Academy this year." "Yes, so I heard, I have not been there yet." "Every one is in ecstasies over a painting by a man called Lacroix; they say it's the best thing that has been on view for a long time." "What! painted by a man called Eugène Lacroix? Does he come from Father Point?" "Yes. My dear McAllister, you Canadians are having it all your own way in London this year. Whether it is this Colonial Exhibition, or whether you are all extremely gifted people, I don't know." "What is Eugène Lacroix like?" asked The McAllister. "I used to know him a long time ago. He was a quiet sort of man then." "He is quiet yet. He won't go out anywhere, but works, works all the time. Sometimes he comes to tea at my mother's on Sunday afternoon, but that is the only time we see anything of him. Mademoiselle Laurentia introduced him to us. All the Academy people speak well of him, strange to say, for he is a foreigner, and they are prejudiced against outsiders, as a rule. He has had several things hung at the _Salon_ in Paris, and a head he painted of Mademoiselle Laurentia made a great hit last spring. But, old boy, I must be going now, I've got to take Elsie to a dinner party to-night. Fearful bore, but when duty calls me, I always obey. You'll come with me to-morrow, eh? Then just drive round to the house at two o'clock sharp. Au revoir." "Stop a moment, Jack. Can you give me Mademoiselle Laurentia's address?" "Yes, certainly, Number 17, The Grove Highgate. Are you going to see her? It always struck me that you and she didn't get on very well last autumn at Mount Severn." "Did it strike you in that way?" "Yes, it did, and I couldn't help noticing that whenever you came in one door she seemed to go out of the other; in fact, old boy, I'm sure she didn't like you much." "Are you?" "Yes, and Elsie thought just as I do." "Indeed, you are wonderfully observant, Jack. I did not credit you with such powers of perspicacity." "I don't know what you mean by that, but I can see through a stone wall as well as any one else, though I was always very stupid at school." "Well, perhaps what you say may be true, Jack, but I'm going to call on Mademoiselle Laurentia. You know we Canadians are very patriotic." "I admire you for your forgiving disposition. If you really want to see Mademoiselle Laurentia, the only time to catch her in is between five and six. Good-bye, old fellow, I must be off. Don't forget to-morrow at two o'clock sharp." After Jack went, McAllister hesitated for a moment, then glanced at his watch, hailed a passing hansom, jumped in, and called out to the driver, "Go to 17, The Grove, Highgate. A sovereign if you get there before six o'clock." The cabman shook his head doubtfully and said, "I'll try my best, sir, but I'm afraid I can't do it. It's a long way off, you know." He did try his best at any rate, and off they went at break-neck speed, on! on! on! past rows and rows of houses, past wildernesses of brick and mortar. Far behind them they left churches, hospitals, buildings innumerable, the mansions of the rich and the wretched dwellings of the poor, the squalid habitations of outcast London, on! on! on! Up the great hill of Highgate, where the tender green foliage of early summer and of the great oak trees bordered the roadside, and where the almond blossoms perfumed all the heated air with a subtle delicate fragrance, on! on! on! Quickly they dashed past many an historic spot, past the house where Coleridge lived, past the walls of the great cemetery, which contains the ashes of hundreds of illustrious dead, past the little church, perched on the summit of the hill, from whose belfry could be heard the chimes for evensong, coming faintly on the still air; on! on! on! But it is a long lane that has no turning, and at length the hansom drew up before a little cottage far back from the road. A long porch of lattice-work led up to the front door, and tall elm trees shaded the little garden. It was a pleasant enough little abode on the outside at any rate, sheltered from the noise and bustle of the great city. "No. 17, The Grove, sir," called out the cabman, breathless, but triumphant, "and it's only five minutes to six." "Well done," said McAllister, "here's your well-earned sovereign. Now take your horse to the stables over there and wait for me." The cabman departed radiant, wondering over such unwonted generosity, and musing as to the rank and wealth of his fare. McAllister knocked at the door of the cottage, and presently it was opened by a neat maid-servant, who, in answer to his inquiry, said: "I am afraid, sir, Mademoiselle Laurentia will not be able to see you. What name shall I say, please, sir?" "Oh, say I'm a Canadian. I have no cards with me; but I have come on a matter of the utmost importance, and I must see your mistress." "Very well, sir; please walk up this way," and the maid led the way to Mademoiselle Laurentia's boudoir. It was a dainty little room furnished in blue and silver. On the walls hung numerous water-colors and engravings, showing that the prima donna had an artistic eye. McAllister had not long to wait before the mistress of the house came in. She was dressed for her part in "Aida," and wore an Egyptian robe of soft white cashmere, embroidered in dull gold silk with a quaint conventional pattern. Her gown was slightly open at the throat, round which was a necklace of dull gold beads. Heavy bracelets of the same material encircled her arms, and a row of them held back her dark brown hair, which fell in heavy masses far below her knees. She came into the room with her hands stretched out in welcome, but at the sight of McAllister drew back looking surprised. "How do you do, Mr. McAllister," she said, in a formal tone. "This is indeed an unexpected pleasure. Pray pardon my theatrical dress, but I have such a long drive into town that I am obliged to dress early." "Certainly, Marie; your dress is very becoming; in fact, you look altogether charming." "Mr. McAllister, before you speak again, I think I may tell you that once before I have had to remind you that only to my most intimate friends am I known as Marie Gourdon." "Am I not your friend? I have known you all your life." "I do not wish to continue that subject; and pardon me, Mr. McAllister, if I seem rude, but it is now past six o'clock, and I must leave here in twenty minutes. It is a long drive into town, and I must be at the opera on time." "I have something very important to say to you. My wife is dead." "What! Lady Margaret dead? I am really very sorry to hear that. She was always very kind to me. Poor Lady Margaret." "And do you know, Marie, what her death means to me?" "No, I don't quite follow you, Mr. McAllister. You say your wife is dead, I suppose you _mean_ she is dead." "Yes, yes, of course," replied Noël irritably, "but it means more. It means that I am free." "Free! What do you mean?" "Marie, can you ask me that? Can you pretend not to understand? For the last ten years my life has been a burden to me. The thought of you has ever been with me. The memories of Father Point, of the happy days spent there, haunt me always. And now, Marie, I have come to tell you that Dunmorton is yours, the Glen is yours, all that I have is yours, and Marie _I_ am yours." During this outburst Marie Gourdon's face grew at first crimson, then very white, and for a moment she did not answer; then she rose from her chair, and, looking straight at The McAllister, said in a very quiet tone, without the faintest touch of anger in it: "Noël McAllister, you are strangely mistaken in me. Do you think I am exactly the same person I was ten years ago? Do you think I am the same little country girl whose heart you won so easily and threw aside when better prospects offered?" "Marie, it was you who bade me go." "Yes, I bade you go. What else could I do? I saw you wished to be free. I saw that my feelings, yes--if you will have the truth--my love for you weighed as nothing in the scale against your newly-found fortune. I saw you waver, hesitate. _I_ did not hesitate. And now I am rich, I am famous, you come to me. You offer me that worthless thing,--your love. When I was poor, struggling alone, friendless, did you even write to me? Did you by word or look recognize me? No! The farce is played out. I wonder at your coming to see me after all." "Marie, listen; a word----" "No, not one word, Noël McAllister. I have said all I shall ever say to you. Dunmorton, the Glen, all your possessions are very fine things, but there are others I value infinitely more. Dear me! is that half-past six striking? I believe I hear the carriage at the door. I must beg of you to excuse me. You know my duties are pressing, and managers wait for no one. Good-evening, Mr. McAllister." CHAPTER XI. "Because thou hast believed the wheels of life Stand never idle, but go always round; Hast labored, but with purpose; hast become Laborious, persevering, serious, firm-- For this thy track across the fretful foam Of vehement actions without scope or term, Call'd history, keeps a splendor, due to wit, Which saw one clue to life and followed it." Matthew Arnold. The day so long anxiously looked for of the great reception at the Royal Academy came at last. Fortunately the weather was beautiful, and the sun shone on the London streets with an unusual brightness even for that time of year. Long rows of carriages lined the streets approaching the entrance to the Academy. The great staircase leading into the main hall was carpeted with crimson baize, for Royal visitors were expected, and on each stair were placed luxuriant pots of hothouse plants which perfumed the heated air with an almost over-powering fragrance. As the lucky possessors of invitation cards passed in, a footman resplendent in crimson and gold livery handed each a catalogue of the pictures. What a motley throng it was! Bohemia rubbing shoulders with orthodox conventionality. Duchesses, actors, artists, bishops, newspaper men out at elbows, deans, girl art students, spruce looking Eton boys in tall hats and short jackets, all eagerly pushing their way to the envied goal. A frantic endeavor it was, too. To tell the truth, few of the throng came to see the pictures; most of them, firmly believing that "the proper study of mankind is man," assembled to view each other. Of course there were some conscientious art critics, but these were few and far between. The Gallery rapidly filled, and the guests by degrees formed themselves into little groups. Four or five men of the most Bohemian type were gathered in front of a large canvas hung on the line, an enviable position. They were all foreigners, and were attracting much attention by their shrill voices and gesticulations. "Yes," said one, a little Frenchman, "I know he's not an Englishman, no Englishman ever painted like that. No, I should think not. The tone, the purity, the--the----" "No, he's not an Englishman," said a representative of the British nation passing just then, and pausing to take up the cudgels for his country. "He's not an Englishman, but I don't like your prejudice; he's not a Frenchman either, for that matter, so you can't claim him." "What is he, then?" demanded the little Frenchman. "He's a Canadian." "Canadian, ah! What's his name?" "Lacroix." "Oh! he's half French at any rate," said the little artist triumphantly, "and I know he studied in Paris. Well, this is a masterpiece I know, no matter who painted it." The picture which had caused so much discussion was a very large one, covering some five feet of canvas. In the foreground was a long sandy road, on which was a procession of all manner of vehicles of different kinds. Hay-carts, calashes, buck-boards, and rude specimens of cabs were being driven by French-Canadian habitants along the road. In the middle distance was a churchyard crowded with people, most of them looking very ill, and many of them leaning on crutches. The invalids seemed to be attended by their relatives or friends, whose strongly-knit frames and sun-burned faces contrasted vividly with those of the pilgrims. The wonderful thing about this picture was the distinct manner with which each of the many faces was brought out on the canvas. In a marvellous way, too, the interior of the church just beyond the graveyard was portrayed. Through the door, flung widely open, and crowded with an eager multitude, could be seen the High Altar, the candles brightly burning in honor of the Holy Sacrament, and at the rail were lines of pilgrims awaiting the approach of the officiating priest. The priest, an imposing figure clad in the gorgeous vestments of the Roman Catholic church, was bending down and allowing the worshippers to touch a relic of the Good St. Anne, in whose miraculous power of healing they so firmly trusted. A well-put together picture, the critics said, and a new scene which in these days is much to be desired. The manner in which Lacroix had arranged to show both the exterior and interior of the church was a clever hit, every one agreed. Outside, with the clear blue sky for background, the spire of the church was clearly defined, and on a niche just above the main doorway stood an exquisitely carved statue of the patron St. Anne, holding by the hand her little daughter, the Blessed Virgin. And beyond the church and the mass of sorrowing, suffering human life at its doors was the great River St. Lawrence, a molten silver stream glimmering with a million iridescent lights, flowing swiftly, silently on. Far across its broad expanse, in the dim distance, like huge clouds, were the misty blue Laurentian hills, grand, eternal, steadfast, an emblem of Omnipotence itself. "Where is the painter of this masterpiece?" asked one; and a friend of his, a Royal Academician of some standing, replied: "Oh! Lacroix has just come in. The prince admired 'The Pilgrimage' and inquired for the artist, so the president sent for him. The prince was most affable to him, and, it is said, has bought the picture. Ah! there is Lacroix now. Wait a moment and I will bring him over here." Presently he returned with Lacroix, who was enthusiastically received by his fellow artists, and congratulated heartily on his success. Lacroix was a tall, rather uncouth-looking man of between thirty-five and forty, and his face wore a stern, care-worn expression. But, to an observer who cared to study his countenance, over the stern gravity of the artist's face there was often a gleam of pleasing expression, more particularly when lighted up by one of his rare smiles. To-day he did not seem very much elated by his success; rather the contrary. Success had come to Lacroix too late in life for him to have any very jubilant feeling about it. It seemed that he had long out-lived his youth, its hopes and ambitions. Work was what he lived for now, work and his art; if success followed, well and good; if not, he did not much care. "Yes," he said, in a voice with a slight French accent, in reply to some question they had asked him, "I studied in Paris, then I came to London last year, and have been here ever since; but, I may say, I received all my training in France." "Ah! I thought so," said the little French artist. "Your style is too good for the English school. You are a Canadian, I hear. We have a good many Canadians in London this year. I went to hear one sing last night at Her Majesty's, Mademoiselle Laurentia. Do you know her? I can assure you she is superb. She is a Canadian, too." "I did know her many, years ago," said Lacroix; "but I have seldom seen her of late; in fact, I don't think she would remember me now." "She is here to-day, I am told," said the little Frenchman, looking round the gallery. "Ah! there she is talking to Lady D----. See, there, that little lady in grey!" Lacroix glanced in the direction indicated. Was that fashionable little lady conversing completely at her ease with one of the highest in the land indeed Marie Gourdon, the daughter of the fisherman at Father Point? Yes; there was no mistaking her, and he wondered a little whether Marie had changed mentally as much as her outward circumstances had altered. "So, you did know the prima donna before?" went on the little French artist. "Oh! yes; we are both natives of Father Point, on the Lower St. Lawrence." "Indeed, how interesting. Remain here a moment, and I shall ask Mademoiselle Laurentia to come over and look at your picture;" and the little man dashed off impulsively, and, detaching the prima donna from Lady D----, brought her over to the spot where Eugène was standing. No; she had not forgotten him, for she held out her hand and shook his warmly, saying, in the frank, sympathetic voice he remembered so well: "I am very glad, indeed, to see you, M. Lacroix. Let me add my congratulations to the many you have already received. Your picture is indeed a masterpiece." "Thank you. You are, I suppose, the only one here to-day who can say whether my picture is true to nature." "Yes, indeed, I can; it takes me back to the old days at Father Point, and how real it all is! There is M. Bois-le-Duc, dear M. Bois-le-Duc. I can almost fancy I am standing on the road watching the pilgrims go into the church." "I am glad you like it. By the way, I heard from M. Bois-le-Duc by yesterday's mail. He wrote me a long letter this time. Would you like to read it?" "Yes, very much," said the prima donna, eagerly; "very much, indeed." "I think I have it here," searching hurriedly through his numerous pockets. "Ah! no; but I shall send it to you." "Why not bring it, M. Lacroix?" "May I?" "Yes. I shall be very pleased to see you as well as the letter," said mademoiselle, smiling graciously. "I am always at home at five o'clock. You know my address, number 17, The Grove, Highgate." "Thanks, I will come to-morrow, with your permission. My time in London, you know, is very short, for I sail for Canada the first week of next month." "Indeed, so soon? How I envy you. I am sorry you are going, though. Good-bye for the present, I must go back to Lady D----. Remember, five o'clock to-morrow." "Au revoir, mademoiselle. I shall see you to-morrow." Mademoiselle Laurentia had not left him many moments before the president crossed the room to where he was standing, and said in a cordial tone: "My dear Lacroix, I am happy to tell you that the prince has bought your picture." "'The Pilgrimage,' do you mean?" "Yes, yes; you don't seem very delighted about it." "Well," said Lacroix, "the fact is that I shall miss it. It has been part of my life for the last four years. Oh! yes, I shall miss it." "But, my dear Lacroix, do be practical. Just think of the price you will get. Think, too, of the _éclat_. What a queer unworldly sort of creature you are. Any other man would be fairly beside himself with joy at such success as yours." "Yes," replied Lacroix, wearily; "of course I know it is a great thing for me. I appreciate it, indeed I do." "You do not show your appreciation very enthusiastically," said the president, as he moved off to speak to some other guests who were just coming into the gallery. Next day, early in the afternoon, Lacroix started for his long walk up Highgate Hill, with M. Bois-le-Duc's letter safely in his pocket this time. He was a good walker and used to outdoor exercise, and enjoyed the prospect of the long tramp this bright summer day. He did not hurry himself, for there was plenty of time before five o'clock, and he stopped every few moments to examine some wayside plant, and to listen with the ardor of a true lover of nature to the merry voices of the thrush and blackbird singing a gladsome carol. And he was often tempted by the fascinating beauty of the quiet landscape, as he left the grimy smoke of London far behind him and ascended into the pure fresh country, to take out his sketch-book and dot down dainty little glimpses, thus laying up a store for future work. But at length he reached number 17, The Grove, and the door was opened by the trim little maid-servant, who replied, in answer to his inquiry-- "Yes, sir, Mademoiselle Laurentia is at home. Please walk up this way." CHAPTER XII. "I know, dear heart! that in our lot May mingle tears and sorrow; But love's rich rainbow's built from tears To-day, with smiles to [**-?]morrow. The sunshine from our sky may die, The greenness from life's tree, But ever 'mid the warring storm Thy nest shall shelter'd be. The world may never know, dear heart! What I have found in thee; But, though naught to the world, dear heart! Thou'rt all the world to me." Gerald Massey. Mademoiselle Laurentia was sitting at her five o'clock tea-table, a dainty little wicker-work affair, covered with delicate china of palest pink, blue and green tints. The cups and saucers were clustered invitingly round a huge old-fashioned silver teapot, and, on the nob of the little fire-place a kettle was singing away merrily. A great rug of white bear-skin was stretched on the floor, and curled up comfortably in its warmest corner lay a large Persian cat, which, at the entrance of the visitor, merely turned languidly to see whether he had a dog, and then sank into sleep again. A very homelike scene it was that Eugène Lacroix was ushered upon that summer afternoon, and the greeting of his hostess set him at once at his ease. "How do you feel, Mr. Lacroix, to-day, after all your triumphs yesterday? You received quite an ovation at the reception." "Oh, I feel very well, indeed, thank you; this fresh country air puts new life into one. You were wise, mademoiselle, to choose your home in such a spot." "Yes, I think I did well, though the place has its drawbacks. It is a long way from London and the opera. Still, I could not bear to live quite in town; the air there stifles me. After the clear bracing air of Canada, I find London very oppressive. But, M. Lacroix, you must be tired after your long walk up the hill. Do take that comfortable arm-chair and let me give you a cup of tea." "Yes, gladly; tea is one of my weaknesses. Oh! how I missed it in Paris. It is almost impossible to get a good cup of tea there." "I always make mine myself, and have it regularly at five o'clock, and, even now, I still keep the fire lighted here, for the evenings are apt to be chilly, and I have to take care of my throat. That is _my_ fortune, you know." "Yes, it is indeed, mademoiselle. How strange that all three of the curé's pupils should have succeeded so well in life, and all so far from their own land." "It is indeed strange. That thought has often occurred to me, too," said Marie, musingly. "But," went on Lacroix, "though, of course, I like London and Paris and all this excitement for a time, I often pine for our fresh Canadian breezes, for the dash of the Gulf against the rocks at Father Point! City life is so trammelled, and I long for the unconventional home life from which I have been removed so long." "Ah! I see you have _mal de pays_; you see I know the symptoms," said Marie, smiling. "Yes, I suppose it must be that." "But how delighted you must be at the success of your picture. I saw by this morning's paper that it was bought by the prince." "Of course, I am glad of my success. True, it has come late in life; but still it _has_ come. But I shall miss my picture very much." "Naturally." "However, I shall soon see the reality again. I am going home for a holiday next month." "Indeed? How I envy you." "Yes, I am really going, and I am counting the days until it is time to sail. But, mademoiselle, I am forgetting to show you M. Bois-le-Duc's letter. I have it with me; shall I leave it here?" "No, M. Lacroix. I am very lazy this afternoon, and if you would read it to me while I just sit in this comfortable arm-chair and do nothing but listen, I should enjoy that above all things." "Certainly, mademoiselle; nothing would please me better. I imagine your days of laziness, as you call it, are few and far between. Now, I will begin. The letter is dated Father Point, April 20th, 1887:-- "My Dear Eugène, "I was very pleased to receive your last letter, and more than pleased to hear of your success; but the news that delighted me most of all was to hear that you were coming here this summer. "What you tell me about my brother is very satisfactory; I knew he would be kind to you. I like to think of you as you describe yourself sitting in the great hall of the Hôtel Bois-le-Duc, in Paris, where I spent so many happy days. I knew you and the marquise would have many subjects in common, and, as you say, she is one of the ladies of the old school, now alas! past, yet she can sympathize with Bohemianism, provided that talent is allied with it. She is a woman good as she is charming, and highly cultivated. True, I have not seen my sister-in-law for years, but her letters to me are as clever and interesting as those of Madame de Stael, and I know from them how her mind, instead of being dimmed with advancing years, has developed with every day. "Your description of the old garden, with its rippling fountains and quaint _parterres_, reminds me of the days of my youth, when my mother gave her receptions there. Yes, my dear pupil, the halls of that old house and the old-fashioned garden have been the scene of many gay gatherings in the olden time, when France had a true aristocracy. And not only stately dames and courtiers thronged to the Hôtel Bois-le-Duc, but the foremost minds of the day lent brilliancy to my mother's _salons_. Wits, authors, poets, artists, statesmen, whose words could change the fate of Europe, were proud to call the marquise friend. I am an old man now, and you must forgive an old man's prosiness; but a little sadness comes into my thoughts when I muse on the past. How many of those illustrious souls, then so full of life and power, remain? And I, long exiled from all I cherished, how have I progressed? No, no, Eugène; not even to you would I complain. What has a faithful follower of the Cross to do with the vanities of this world? "It is one of my temptations, still, to think on what might have been had I not chosen the hard road, had I not renounced the gay world and its fascinations, for it had, and _has_ fascinations yet for me. Eugène, my reward will be hereafter; but, as an old man, and one who has endeavored to do his duty for many years, I often wonder whether I mistook my vocation. But away with such doubts, they are a snare of the arch-enemy himself, a subtle snare. "My dear pupil, hard as it was to let you go, I am glad you left me. I knew those years of labor _must_ tell in the end. I knew so much zeal could not be thrown away. "Of Marie Gourdon, all you tell me is most satisfactory. When first I sent her to fight her way in the world, I had fears. In her profession there are so many evil influences to contend with that, in spite of her undoubted talent, I hesitated before letting her go. But I need not have feared. Marie Gourdon has one of those pure white souls----" "Perhaps I had better not go on?" said Eugène, smiling. Marie nodded and murmured half to herself--"Dear M. Bois-le-Duc, I am glad to hear he thinks so well of me. Please continue." "--one of those pure white souls that can pass through the fire of any temptation and come out purer, stronger, holier. She has doubly repaid me for any pains I took with her education. Long ago she insisted on returning the money spent on her training, and every year regularly, she sends me two hundred dollars to be spent on the poor suffering pilgrims, who come to the church at Father Point. Yes, I am justly proud of two of my pupils; the disappointment I suffer because of the conduct of the third only serves to heighten the contrast. I beg of you never to mention his name again to me. Never allude to Noël McAllister in your letters in the slightest way. The manner in which he treated----" Here Lacroix hesitated, grew very red and lost his place. Marie, observing his distress, remarked placidly: "Please go on, I do not mind; that is all a closed page in my history." "The manner in which he treated," continued Lacroix, "that poor girl was unpardonable. At an age, too, when she should have been most carefully guarded, when her feelings were most sensitive, he, for all he knew to the contrary, broke her heart. And, under the cowardly pretence that it was she who bade him go, he left her to live, for aught he cared, a dreary, colorless existence at Father Point. "Fortunately Marie was a girl of no ordinary stamp. She could rise above disappointments--remember, I do not say forget them; and she threw her whole energies into her art. I am a priest, and know human nature, its weakness and its strength--and human nature is the same all the world over--and I can honestly say that the daughter of the fisherman at Father Point is the noblest woman I have ever met. "I can feel no interest in what you tell me of Noël McAllister. As I said before, I do not wish you to mention him. Madame McAllister died last week, very calmly and peacefully. We laid her in the churchyard beside her husband and his ancestors. She had been very frail of late years, but of course she was a great age, ninety-six. "You will scarcely know Father Point when you return. An enterprising merchant from Montreal has built a large summer hotel on the Point, and hopes to attract crowds of visitors during the warm weather. "Of course you have heard of the honor conferred on our Archbishop. I went up to Quebec to attend the ceremony when they gave him his Cardinal's hat, and he is soon to visit my humble parish, and I trust will approve of our progress, both in things spiritual and temporal. "Hoping to see you soon, and with every good wish for your safe voyage, "Believe me, as ever, "Your very sincere friend, "Réné Bois-le-Duc, "Curé of Father Point, Province of Quebec, Canada." * * * * * "Dear M. Bois-le-Duc," repeated Marie, "I am glad he thinks so well of me. The approval of one true friend like that is worth more than all the applause I get night after night at the opera. He knows me for myself; they only recognize my art and the pleasure it affords them." "Yes; you were always a first favorite with the curé," said Lacroix. "How angry he is with Noël McAllister; needlessly so. _I_ have forgiven him long ago." "Have you, indeed? And have you heard about Lady Margaret?" "Yes. Mr. McAllister did me the honor of calling on me the other day." "Noël McAllister called on you, Marie?" The old name slipped out accidentally, and, in his excitement, he did not notice the mistake. "Yes." "And he told you about Lady Margaret, about his wife being dead?" "Yes." "Was that all he told you?" Marie looked rather surprised at being cross-questioned in this abrupt manner; but replied quietly:-- "No; it was not all. He told me much more." "Yes! yes!" said Lacroix, with the persistency of a cross-examining lawyer, "And you Marie, what did you say?" "If you really want to know exactly what I said, my words were to the effect that I had no time to reopen a closed chapter in my life, and that my carriage was at the door." A strange expression, almost of relief, with surprise mingled, crossed the artist's grave face, and he did not speak for a moment. Then he said, slowly, in a tone of half-pitying contempt: "Poor McAllister! What with you and M. Bois-le-Duc, he is not a very enviable person." "Then you are sorry for him?" "Pardon me, I am not. I have only one feeling towards him, and that would be wiser to keep to myself. Marie, long ago, at Father Point, I saw it all, though you imagined I was so taken up with my painting and my own affairs. I knew McAllister was wholly unworthy of the respect and affection you and M. Bois-le-Duc lavished on him. "I knew him better than either of you, his weakness, his indecision; but it was not for me to warn you, how could I? Then, Marie, changes came to all of us. McAllister came into his inheritance; you went to seek your fortune; I to work hard in a merchant's office in Montreal. For four years, I labored there at most uncongenial work, but I managed to scrape enough together to pay for my course of study at the school of one of the best masters in Paris. These years of drudgery in Montreal and Paris were only brightened by one hope--a hope I scarcely dared acknowledge to myself, so vain did it appear." "Yes," said Marie. "But you have succeeded, and your hope has been realized." "It has not been realized; it is as far from realization as ever." "I am astonished to hear you speak in such a way after your brilliant success of yesterday." "Yes, success is satisfactory, and it is a means to an end in this case. Marie, my dear one, through all those long years of drudgery I heard of you only through M. Bois-le-Duc at rare intervals. But, through all that weary time, I never ceased to think of you, though as one far, far removed from me. Then you rose to fame and wealth; to me, a poor struggling artist, further off than ever, and for a time I despaired. You were fêted by the highest in the land, all London was at your feet--what had I to do with the brilliant prima donna? What claim had I to remind her of the old days at Father Point, of my life-long devotion? Oh! Marie, my darling, to keep silence, to think that I might lose you after all, was almost unendurable. Now, though, I _can_ speak. I, too, have achieved success as the world counts it. We may now, on that score, meet as equals. Were it not so, I should keep silence always. Marie, I have loved you ever since I knew you. I have watched with interest your whole career, your failures, your successes. I dare not hope my affection is returned--that is too much--and I must ask pardon for having spoken to you to-day." The self-possessed prima donna had been very still while Lacroix spoke, and sat shading her face with one hand, and, strange to say, endeavoring to hide the tears which would come in spite of her efforts. "Marie, speak, my dear one. Have I distressed you? Oh! Marie, I should not have spoken, only the thought of putting the Atlantic between us without telling you was too hard, Marie." "Eugène, why should you put the Atlantic between us?" said Marie, and something in the expression of her face gave him courage to ask-- "Marie, I am going to Father Point next month. Will you come with me?" "Yes, Eugène, with you anywhere," placing her hands in his, a look of perfect rest and peace coming over her sweet, care-worn face. "Remember, Marie," he said gravely, "it is no small thing I ask--to give up your place at the opera, to sacrifice the applause of the world and the pleasing excitement of your life." "I am tired of it all, Eugène, it is such an empty life." "And I may be in Canada a whole year--think of it, a year away from London. You must consider all this, and, my dear one, I am not a rich man." "But I am rich," she said laughing, "very rich, and I never was so glad of it before. Now, have you any more objections to make, for I am beginning to think you don't want me to go to Father Point with you after all." That night at the opera Mademoiselle Laurentia, the critics said, surpassed herself, though, strange occurrence for usually one so punctual, she kept the audience waiting for a quarter of an hour. Never before had she sung so well. Great was the indignation of Monsieur Scherzo, her manager, when next day she told him that after this month she would sing no more in public. He swore, he stormed, he tore his hair, and finding threats were in vain he wept in his excitable fashion, but neither threats nor entreaties moved mademoiselle from her decision. "Bah!" he said, "it is the way with them all, a woman can never be a true artist. Directly she rises to any height she goes off and gets married, ten to one to some idiot, who interferes in all her arrangements, and so her career is spoiled. I did think Mademoiselle Laurentia was above such frivolity. I imagined that, at last, I had discovered a true artist, one to whom her art was everything. No, I am again mistaken, and Mademoiselle Laurentia--why, she is not even going to marry a duke, there might be some sense in that, but only a beggarly artist. Bah! what folly!" Some six weeks later, one sunny afternoon, there came up the Gulf of St. Lawrence a ship crowded with passengers bound for all quarters of the great Dominion. It had been a backward season, and even so late as the beginning of July great icebergs were still floating down the Gulf, huge, white and glistening in the summer sun, as they floated on to their destruction in the southern seas. However, the good ship "Vancouver" passed safely through the perils of storms and icebergs, and after a fairly prosperous passage of ten days arrived safely at Rimouski. There she paused for a few hours to let off the mails and two passengers. These two passengers had been the cause of a great deal of gossip and attention on the voyage out, for they were both, in their different spheres, celebrated personages, and known to fame on both sides of the Atlantic. It seemed rather strange that they should land at a little out-of-the-way place like Rimouski. "Oh!" exclaimed one of the celebrities, a little lady clad in furs. "Oh, Eugène, everything is just the same as it used to be in the old days, and look over there on the pier is M. Bois-le-Duc." Yes, there stood the tall, venerable priest, his hair now snowy white, and his shoulders bent under the weight of years. But the good curé was energetic as of old, and his eyes gleamed with excitement as the ship approached. His hands were stretched out in welcome, and a smile of most intense happiness lighted up his handsome features, and, as the travellers stepped from the gangway to the pier, he went quickly forward to greet them, exclaiming, in his bright cheery manner:-- "Eugène, Marie, my children, welcome home, a thousand times welcome. Heaven has indeed been good to me. My heart's desire is now fulfilled." EPILOGUE. "Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, The fatal shadows that walk by us still." Beaumont. Far up on the east coast of Scotland, where the huge breakers of the Atlantic dash in angry tumult against the granite crags of that rugged shore, stands the castle of Dunmorton, a grim historic pile. For generations it has been the home of the McAllisters, and is still little changed since the days of Bruce and Balliol, when armed men issued from the low, arched doorway, to work destruction on their enemies of the South. The last of the race dwells there now; a man yet in the prime of life, though one who takes but little interest in the doings of the busy world. He leads a melancholy and purposeless existence, and seems, as the years go on, to grow more morbid. Some say that he never got over the shock of his wife's sudden death, and that the terrible accident completely shattered his nerves. Others, chiefly, old wives, who have lived on the estate for years, and are deeply versed in all matters connected with their chief's family, shake their heads wisely, and mutter that there is a curse overhanging this branch of the clan. They say it has been so since the '45, when The McAllister of that day turned his son Ivan adrift. Be that as it may, the present chief is a most miserable man. He has wealth, and everything wealth can command. He has broad lands, power, unbounded influence, for fortune has marked him for one of her favorites. But in the long winter evenings, when the great hall of Dunmorton, with its splendid trophies of the chase and grand oak panelling, is lighted up by the fitful glow of the huge pinewood fire, Noël McAllister sees a vision, which freezes the blood within his veins. From a dim eerie in the great hall there glides with a slow, noiseless movement a tall, slight lady, clad in a gown of pale green silk. Her snow-white hair is crowned by a cap of finest lace. Her hands are clasped together convulsively, and she stretches them out and sobs in agonized entreaty: "Oh, Ivan, me bairn! me bonnie bairn, it is sair and lonely wi'out ye here. Will ye no stay wi' us a while longer? Oh! Ivan, me bairn!" And night after night, so surely as the waves beat against the rocky crag of Dunmorton does the tall pale lady come, always as the clock strikes twelve, no matter who the guests may be. Doors may be barred, every precaution taken, nothing can prevent her entrance. It comes to pass that after a time gay visitors from London decline The McAllister's invitations, even the splendid shooting of the Glen does not compensate them for the shock to their nerves caused by The McAllister spectre, as they call it. Noël is left much alone, but he has Dunmorton, its broad lands and vast revenues. For these he bartered his honor, his integrity. By his own rule he should be happy, for all his early ambitions are fulfilled. But in truth he has very little happiness or real satisfaction in his prosperity, and there are few even of his poorest neighbors who would care to change places with the "haunted laird." Far away across the sea, removed from the din and bustle of their busy London lives, for two months in every year, Marie and Eugène Lacroix make their home at Father Point. Although the famous prima donna has retired from public life, still, on the occasion of pilgrimages in honor of the Good St. Anne, she graciously consents to sing for her own people during the celebration of Grand Mass at the pilots' church. There may be heard the clear, sweet notes of the favorite pupil of the good curé, who, after a life spent in good works, has passed to his eternal reward, but the memory of whose sainted example will ever remain in the minds of two people, who owe so much to the holy precepts of Réné Bois-le-Duc, curé of Father Point. 
41031	----	THE KIRRIEMUIR EDITION OF THE WORKS OF J. M. BARRIE WHEN A MAN'S SINGLE A Tale of Literary Life BY J. M. BARRIE HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 1913 CONTENTS CHAPTER I ROB ANGUS IS NOT A FREE MAN 1 CHAPTER II ROB BECOMES FREE 17 CHAPTER III ROB GOES OUT INTO THE WORLD 27 CHAPTER IV 'THE SCORN OF SCORNS' 43 CHAPTER V ROB MARCHES TO HIS FATE 62 CHAPTER VI THE ONE WOMAN 80 CHAPTER VII THE GRAND PASSION? 99 CHAPTER VIII IN FLEET STREET 113 CHAPTER IX MR. NOBLE SIMMS 129 CHAPTER X THE WIGWAM 139 CHAPTER XI ROB IS STRUCK DOWN 156 CHAPTER XII THE STUPID SEX 169 CHAPTER XIII THE HOUSE-BOAT 'TAWNY OWL' 183 CHAPTER XIV MARY OF THE STONY HEART 195 CHAPTER XV COLONEL ABINGER TAKES COMMAND 210 CHAPTER XVI THE BARBER OF ROTTEN ROW 222 CHAPTER XVII ROB PULLS HIMSELF TOGETHER 234 CHAPTER XVIII THE AUDACITY OF ROB ANGUS 245 CHAPTER XIX THE VERDICT OF THRUMS 254 CHAPTER I ROB ANGUS IS NOT A FREE MAN One still Saturday afternoon some years ago a child pulled herself through a small window into a kitchen in the kirk-wynd of Thrums. She came from the old graveyard, whose only outlet, when the parish church gate is locked, is the windows of the wynd houses that hoop it round. Squatting on a three-legged stool she gazed wistfully at a letter on the chimney-piece, and then, tripping to the door, looked up and down the wynd. Snecky Hobart, the bellman, hobbled past, and, though Davy was only four years old, she knew that as he had put on his blue top-coat he expected the evening to be fine. Tammas McQuhatty, the farmer of T'nowhead, met him at the corner, and they came to a standstill to say, 'She's hard, Sneck,' and 'She is so, T'nowhead,' referring to the weather. Observing that they had stopped they moved on again. Women and children and a few men squeezed through their windows into the kirkyard, the women to knit stockings on fallen tombstones, and the men to dander pleasantly from grave to grave reading the inscriptions. All the men were well up in years, for though, with the Auld Lichts, the Sabbath began to come on at six o'clock on Saturday evening, the young men were now washing themselves cautiously in tin basins before going into the square to talk about women. The clatter of more than one loom could still have been heard by Davy had not her ears been too accustomed to the sound to notice it. In the adjoining house Bell Mealmaker was peppering her newly-washed floor with sand, while her lodger, Hender Robb, with a rusty razor in his hand, looked for his chin in a tiny glass that was peeling on the wall. Jinny Tosh had got her husband, Aundra Lunan, who always spoke of her as She, ready, so to speak, for church eighteen hours too soon, and Aundra sat stiffly at the fire, putting his feet on the ribs every minute, to draw them back with a scared look at Her as he remembered that he had on his blacks. In a bandbox beneath the bed was his silk hat, which had been knocked down to him at Jamie Ramsay's roup, and Jinny had already put his red handkerchief, which was also a pictorial history of Scotland, into a pocket of his coat-tails, with a corner hanging gracefully out. Her puckered lips signified that, however much her man might desire to do so, he was not to carry his handkerchief to church in his hat, where no one could see it. On working days Aundra held his own, but at six o'clock on Saturday nights he passed into Her hands. Across the wynd, in which a few hens wandered, Pete Todd was supping in his shirt-sleeves. His blacks lay ready for him in the coffin-bed, and Pete, glancing at them at intervals, supped as slowly as he could. In one hand he held a saucer, and in the other a chunk of bread, and they were as far apart as Pete's outstretched arms could put them. His chair was a yard from the table, on which, by careful balancing, he rested a shoeless foot, and his face was twisted to the side. Every time Easie Whamond, his wife, passed him she took the saucer from his hand, remarking that when a genteel man sat down to tea he did not turn his back on the table. Pete took this stolidly, like one who had long given up trying to understand the tantrums of women, and who felt that, as a lord of creation, he could afford to let it pass. Davy sat on her three-legged stool keeping guard over her uncle Rob the saw-miller's letter, and longing for him to come. She screwed up her eyebrows as she had seen him do when he read a letter, and she felt that it would be nice if every one would come and look at her taking care of it. After a time she climbed up on her stool and stretched her dimpled arms toward the mantelpiece. From a string suspended across this, socks and stockings hung drying at the fire, and clutching one of them Davy drew herself nearer. With a chuckle, quickly suppressed, lest it should bring in Kitty Wilkie, who ought to have been watching her instead of wandering down the wynd to see who was to have salt-fish for supper, the child clutched the letter triumphantly, and, toddling to the door, slipped out of the house. For a moment Davy faltered at the mouth of the wynd. There was no one there to whom she could show the letter. A bright thought entered her head, and immediately a dimple opened on her face and swallowed all the puckers. Rob had gone to the Whunny muir for wood, and she would take the letter to him. Then when Rob saw her he would look all around him, and if there was no one there to take note he would lift her to his shoulder, when they could read the letter together. Davy ran out of the wynd into the square, thinking she heard Kitty's Sabbath voice, which reminded the child of the little squeaking saw that Rob used for soft wood. On week-days Kitty's voice was the big saw that puled and rasped, and Mag Wilkie shivered at it. Except to her husband Mag spoke with her teeth closed, so politely that no one knew what she said. Davy stumbled up the steep brae down which men are blown in winter to their work, until she reached the rim of the hollow in which Thrums lies. Here the road stops short, as if frightened to cross the common of whin that bars the way to the north. On this common there are many cart-tracks over bumpy sward and slippery roots, that might be the ribs of the earth showing, and Davy, with a dazed look in her eyes, ran down one of them, the whins catching her frock to stop her, and then letting go, as if, after all, one child more or less in the world was nothing to them. By and by she found herself on another road, along which Rob had trudged earlier in the day with a saw on his shoulder, but he had gone east, and the child's face was turned westward. It is a muddy road even in summer, and those who use it frequently get into the habit of lifting their legs high as they walk, like men picking their way through beds of rotting leaves. The light had faded from her baby face now, but her mouth was firm-set, and her bewildered eyes were fixed straight ahead. The last person to see Davy was Tammas Haggart, who, with his waistcoat buttoned over his jacket, and garters of yarn round his trousers, was slowly breaking stones, though the road swallowed them quicker than he could feed it. Tammas heard the child approaching, for his hearing had become very acute, owing to his practice when at home of listening through the floor to what the folks below were saying, and of sometimes joining in. He leant on his hammer and watched her trot past. The strength went gradually from Tammas's old arms, and again resting on his hammer he removed his spectacles and wiped them on his waistcoat. He took a comprehensive glance around at the fields, as if he now had an opportunity of seeing them for the first time during his sixty years' pilgrimage in these parts, and his eyes wandered aimlessly from the sombre firs and laughing beeches to the white farms that dot the strath. In the foreground two lazy colts surveyed him critically across a dyke. To the north the frowning Whunny hill had a white scarf round its neck. Something troubled Tammas. It was the vision of a child in a draggled pinafore, and stepping into the middle of the road he looked down it in the direction in which Davy had passed. 'Chirsty Angus's lassieky,' he murmured. Tammas sat down cautiously on the dyke and untied the red handkerchief that contained the remnants of his dinner. When he had smacked his lips over his flagon of cold kail, and seen the last of his crumbling oatmeal and cheese, his uneasiness returned, and he again looked down the road. 'I maun turn the bairn,' was his reflection. It was now, however, half an hour since Davy had passed Tammas Haggart's cairn. To Haggart, pondering between the strokes of his hammer, came a mole-catcher who climbed the dyke and sat down beside him. 'Ay, ay,' said the new-comer; to which Tammas replied abstractedly-- 'Jamie.' 'Hae ye seen Davy Dundas?' the stone-breaker asked, after the pause that followed this conversation. The mole-catcher stared heavily at his corduroys. 'I dinna ken him,' he said at last, 'but I hae seen naebody this twa 'oors.' 'It's no a him, it's a her. Ye canna hae been a' winter here withoot kennin' Rob Angus.' 'Ay, the saw-miller. He was i' the wud the day. I saw his cart gae hame. Ou, in coorse I ken Rob. He's an amazin' crittur.' Tammas broke another stone as carefully as if it were a nut. 'I dinna deny,' he said, 'but what Rob's a curiosity. So was his faither afore 'im.' 'I've heard auld Rob was a queer body,' said Jamie, adding incredulously, 'they say he shaved twice i' the week an' wore a clean dickey ilka day.' 'No what ye wad say ilka day, but oftener than was called for. Rob wasna naturally ostentatious; na, it was the wife 'at insistit on't. Nanny was a terrible tid for cleanness. Ay, an' it's a guid thing in moderation, but she juist overdid it; yes, she overdid it. Man, it had sic a hand on her 'at even on her deathbed they had to bring a basin to her to wash her hands in.' 'Ay, ay? When there was sic a pride in her I wonder she didna lat young Rob to the college, an' him sae keen on't.' 'Ou, he was gaen, but ye see auld Rob got gey dottle after Nanny's death, an' so young Rob stuck to the saw-mill. It's curious hoo a body misses his wife when she's gone. Ay, it's like the clock stoppin'.' 'Weel, Rob's no gettin' to the college hasna made 'im humble.' 'Ye dinna like Rob?' 'Hoo did ye find that oot?' asked Jamie, a little taken aback. 'Man, Tammas,' he added admiringly, 'ye're michty quick i' the uptak.' Tammas handed his snuff-mull to the mole-catcher, and then helped himself. 'I daursay, I daursay,' he said thoughtfully. 'I've naething to say agin the saw-miller,' continued Jamie, after thinking it out, 'but there's something in's face at's no sociable. He looks as if he was takkin ye aff in's inside.' 'Ay, auld Rob was a sarcestic stock too. It rins i' the blood.' 'I prefer a mair common kind o' man, bein' o' the common kind mysel.' 'Ay, there's naething sarcestic about you, Jamie,' admitted the stone-breaker. 'I'm an ord'nar man, Tammas.' 'Ye are, Jamie, ye are.' 'Maybe no sae oncommon ord'nar either.' 'Middlin' ord'nar, middlin' ord'nar.' 'I'm thinkin' ye're braw an' sarcestic yersel, Tammas?' 'I'd aye that repootation, Jeames. 'Am no an everyday sarcesticist, but juist noos an' nans. There was ae time I was speakin' tae Easie Webster, an' I said a terrible sarcestic thing. Ay, I dinna mind what it was, but it was michty sarcestic.' 'It's a gift,' said the mole-catcher. 'A gift it is,' said Tammas. The stone-breaker took his flagon to a spring near at hand and rinsed it out. Several times while pulling it up and down the little pool an uneasy expression crossed his face as he remembered something about a child, but in washing his hands, using sand for soap, Davy slipped his memory, and he returned cheerfully to the cairn. Here Jamie was wagging his head from side to side like a man who had caught himself thinking. 'I'll warrant, Tammas,' he said, 'ye cudna tell's what set's on to speak aboot Rob Angus?' 'Na, it's a thing as has often puzzled me hoo we select wan topic mair than anither. I suppose it's like shootin'; ye juist blaze awa at the first bird 'at rises.' 'Ye was sayin', had I seen a lass wi' a lad's name. That began it, I'm thinkin'.' 'A lass wi' a lad's name? Ay, noo, that's oncommon. But mebbe ye mean Davy Dundas?' 'That's the name.' Tammas paused in the act of buttoning his trouser pocket. 'Did ye say ye'd seen Davy?' he asked. 'Na, it was you as said 'at ye had seen her.' 'Ay, ay, Jamie, ye're richt. Man, I fully meant to turn the bairn, but she ran by at sic a steek 'at there was nae stoppin' her. Rob'll mak an awfu' ring-ding if onything comes ower Davy.' 'Is't the litlin 'at's aye wi' Rob?' 'Ay, it's Chirsty Angus's bairn, her 'at was Rob's sister. A' her fowk's deid but Rob.' 'I've seen them i' the saw-mill thegither. It didna strick me 'at Rob cared muckle for the crittury.' 'Ou, Rob's a reserved stock, but he's michty fond o' her when naebody's lookin'. It doesna do, ye ken, to lat on afore company at ye've a kind o' regaird for yere ain fowk. Na, it's lowerin'. But if it wasna afore your time, ye'd seen the cradle i' the saw-mill.' 'I never saw ony cradle, Tammas.' 'Weel, it was unco ingenious o' Rob. The bairn's father an' mither was baith gone when Davy was nae age, an' auld Rob passed awa sune efter. Rob had it all arranged to ging to the college--ay, he'd been workin' far on into the nicht the hale year to save up siller to keep 'imsel at Edinbory, but ye see he promised Chirsty to look after Davy an' no send her to the parish. He took her to the saw-mill an' brocht her up 'imsel. It was a terrible disappointment to Rob, his mind bein' bent on becomin' a great leeterary genius, but he's been michty guid to the bairn. Ay, she's an extr'or'nar takkin dawty, Davy, an' though I wudna like it kent, I've a fell notion o' her mysel. I mind ance gaen in to Rob's, an', wud ye believe, there was the bit lassieky sitting in the airm-chair wi' ane o' Rob's books open on her knees, an' her pertendin' to be readin' oot in't to Rob. The tiddy had watched him readin', ye un'erstan', an', man, she was mimickin' 'im to the life. There's nae accountin' for thae things, but ondootedly it was attractive.' 'But what aboot a cradle?' 'Ou, as I was sayin', Rob didna like to lat the bairn oot o' his sicht, so he made a queer cradle 'imsel, an' put it ower the burn. Ye'll mind the burn rins through the saw-mill? Ay, weel, Davie's cradle was put across't wi' the paddles sae arranged 'at the watter rocked the cradle. Man, the burn was juist like a mither to Davy, for no only did it rock her to sleep, but it sang to the bairn the hale time.' 'That was an ingenious contrivance, Tammas; but it was juist like Rob Angus's ind'pendence. The crittur aye perseests in doin' a'thing for 'imsel. I mind ae day seein' Cree Deuchars puttin' in a window into the saw-mill hoose, an' Rob's fingers was fair itchin' to do't quick 'imsel; ye ken Cree's fell slow? "See haud o' the potty," cries Rob, an' losh, he had the window in afore Cree cud hae cut the glass. Ay, ye canna deny but what Rob's fearfu' independent.' 'So was his faither. I call to mind auld Rob an' the minister ha'en a termendous debate aboot justification by faith, an' says Rob i' the tail o' the day, gettin' passionate-like, "I tell ye flat, Mester Byars," he says, "if I dinna ging to heaven in my ain wy, I dinna ging ava!"' 'Losh, losh! he wudna hae said that, though, to oor minister; na, he wudna hae daured.' 'Ye're a U.P., Jamie?' asked the stone-breaker. 'I was born U.P.,' replied the mole-catcher firmly, 'an' U.P. I'll die.' 'I say naething agin yer releegion,' replied Tammas, a little contemptuously, 'but to compare yer minister to oors is a haver. Man, when Mester Byars was oor minister, Sanders Dobie, the wricht, had a standin' engagement to mend the poopit ilka month.' 'We'll no speak o' releegion, Tammas, or we'll be quarrellin'. Ye micht tell's, though, hoo they cam to gie a lassieky sic a man's name as Davy.' 'It was an accident at the christenin'. Ye see, Hendry Dundas an' Chirsty was both vary young, an' when the bairn was born, they were shy-like aboot makkin the affair public; ay, Hendry cud hardly tak courage to tell the minister. When he was haddin' up the bit tid in the kirk to be baptized he was remarkable egitated. Weel, the minister--it was Mester Dishart--somehoo had a notion 'at the litlin was a laddie, an' when he reads the name on the paper, "Margaret Dundas," he looks at Hendry wi' the bairny in 's airms, an' says he, stern-like, "The child's a boy, is he not?"' 'Sal, that was a predeecament for Hendry.' 'Ay, an' Hendry was confused, as a man often is wi' his first; so says he, all trem'lin', "Yes, Mr. Dishart." "Then," says the minister, "I cannot christen him Margaret, so I will call him David." An' Davit the litlin was baptized, sure eneuch.' 'The mither wud be in a michty wy at that?' 'She was so, but as Hendry said, when she challenged him on the subject, says Hendry, "I dauredna conterdick the minister."' Haggart's work being now over for the day, he sat down beside Jamie to await some other stone-breakers who generally caught him up on their way home. Strange figures began to emerge from the woods, a dumb man with a barrowful of roots for firewood, several women in men's coats, one smoking a cutty-pipe. A farm-labourer pulled his heavy legs in their rustling corduroys alongside a field of swedes, a ragged potato-bogle brandished its arms in a sudden puff of wind. Several men and women reached Haggart's cairn about the same time, and said, 'It is so,' or 'Ay, ay,' to him, according as they were loquacious or merely polite. 'We was speakin' aboot matermony,' the mole-catcher remarked, as the back-bent little party straggled toward Thrums. 'It's a caution,' murmured the farm-labourer, who had heard the observation from the other side of the dyke. 'Ay, ye may say so,' he added thoughtfully, addressing himself. With the mole-catcher's companions, however, the talk passed into another rut. Nevertheless Haggart was thinking matrimony over, and by and by he saw his way to a joke, for one of the other stone-breakers had recently married a very small woman, and in Thrums, where women have to work, the far-seeing men prefer their wives big. 'Ye drew a sma' prize yersel, Sam'l,' said Tammas, with the gleam in his eye which showed that he was now in sarcastic fettle. 'Ay,' said the mole-catcher, 'Sam'l's Kitty is sma'. I suppose Sam'l thocht it wud be prudent-like to begin in a modest wy.' 'If Kitty hadna haen sae sma' hands,' said another stone-breaker, 'I wud hae haen a bid for her mysel.' The women smiled; they had very large hands. 'They say,' said the youngest of them, who had a load of firewood on her back, ''at there's places whaur little hands is thocht muckle o'.' There was an incredulous laugh at this. 'I wudna wonder, though,' said the mole-catcher, who had travelled; 'there's some michty queer ideas i' the big toons.' 'Ye'd better ging to the big toons, then, Sam'l,' suggested the merciless Tammas. Sam'l woke up. 'Kitty's sma',' he said, with a chuckle, 'but she's an auld tid.' 'What made ye think o' speirin' her, Sam'l?' 'I cudna say for sartin,' answered Sam'l reflectively. 'I had nae intention o't till I saw Pete Proctor after her, an' syne, thinks I, I'll hae her. Ay, ye micht say as Pete was the instrument o' Providence in that case.' 'Man, man,' murmured Jamie, who knew Pete, 'Providence sometimes maks use o' strange instruments.' 'Ye was lang in gettin' a man yersel, Jinny,' said Tammas to an elderly woman. 'Fower-an'-forty year,' replied Jinny. 'It was like a stockin', lang i' the futin', but turned at last.' 'Lasses nooadays,' said the old woman who smoked, 'is partikler by what they used to be. I mind when Jeames Gowrie speired me: "Ye wud raither hae Davit Curly, I ken," he says. "I dinna deny 't," I says, for the thing was well kent, "but ye'll do vara weel, Jeames," says I, an' mairy him I did.' 'He was a harmless crittur, Jeames,' said Haggart, 'but queer. Ay, he was full o' maggots.' 'Ay,' said Jeames's widow, 'but though it's no for me to say 't, he deid a deacon.' 'There's some rale queer wys o' speirin' a wuman,' began the mole-catcher. 'Vary true, Jamie,' said a stone-breaker. 'I mind hoo----' 'There was a chappy ower by Blair,' continued Jamie, raising his voice, ''at micht hae been a single man to this day if it hadna been for the toothache.' 'Ay, man?' 'Joey Fargus was the stock's name. He was oncommon troubled wi' the toothache till he found a cure.' 'I didna ken o' ony cure for sair teeth?' 'Joey's cure was to pour cauld watter strecht on into his mooth for the maiter o' twa 'oors, an' ae day he cam into Blair an' found Jess McTaggart (a speerity bit thingy she was--ou, she was so) fair greetin' wi' sair teeth. Joey advised the crittur to try his cure, an' when he left she was pourin' the watter into her mooth ower the sink. Weel, it so happened 'at Joey was in Blair again aboot twa month after, an' he gies a cry in at Willie's--that's Jess's father's, as ye'll un'erstan'. Ay, then, Jess had haen anither fit o' the toothache, an' she was hingin' ower the sink wi' a tanker o' watter in her han', just as she'd been when he saw her last. "What!" says Joey, wi' rale consairn, "nae better yet?" The stock thocht she had been haddin' gaen at the watter a' thae twa month.' 'I call to mind,' the stone-breaker broke in again, 'hoo a body----' 'So,' continued Jamie, 'Joey cudna help but admire the patience o' the lassie, an' says he, "Jess," he says, "come oot by to Mortar Pits, an' try oor well." That's hoo Joey Fargus speired's wife, an' if ye dinna believe's, ye've nae mair to do but ging to Mortar Pits an' see the well yersels.' 'I recall,' said the stone-breaker, 'a vary neat case o' speirin'. It was Jocky Wilkie, him 'at's brither was grieve to Broken Busses, an' the lass was Leeby Lunan. She was aye puttin' Jocky aff when he was on the point o' speirin' her, keepin' 'im hingin' on the hook like a trout, as ye may say, an' takkin her fling wi' ither lads at the same time.' 'Ay, I've kent them do that.' 'Weel, it fair maddened Jocky, so ae nicht he gings to her father's hoose wi' a present o' a grand thimble to her in his pooch, an' afore the hale hoosehold he perdooces't an' flings't wi' a bang on the dresser: "Tak it," he says to Leeby, "or leave't." In coorse the thing's bein' done sae public-like, Leeby kent she had to mak up her mind there an' then. Ay, she took it.' 'But hoo did ye speir Chirsty yersel, Dan'l?' asked Jinny of the speaker. There was a laugh at this, for, as was well known, Dan'l had jilted Chirsty. 'I never kent I had speired,' replied the stone-breaker, 'till Chirsty told me.' 'Ye'll no say ye wasna fond o' her?' 'Sometimes I was, an' syne at other times I was indifferent-like. The mair I thocht o't the mair risky I saw it was, so i' the tail o' the day I says to Chirsty, says I, "Na, na, Chirsty, lat's be as I am."' 'They say she took on terrible, Dan'l.' 'Ay, nae doot, but a man has 'imsel to conseeder.' By this time they had crossed the moor of whins. It was a cold, still evening, and as they paused before climbing down into the town they heard the tinkle of a bell. 'That's Snecky's bell,' said the mole-catcher; 'what can he be cryin' at this time o' nicht?' 'There's something far wrang,' said one of the women. 'Look, a'body's rinnin' to the square.' The troubled look returned to Tammas Haggart's face, and he stopped to look back across the fast-darkening moor. 'Did ony o' ye see little Davy Dundas, the saw-miller's bairny?' he began. At that moment a young man swept by. His teeth were clenched, his eyes glaring. 'Speak o' the deil,' said the mole-catcher; 'that was Rob Angus.' CHAPTER II ROB BECOMES FREE As Haggart hobbled down into the square, in the mole-catcher's rear, Hobart's cracked bell tinkled up the back-wynd, and immediately afterwards the bellman took his stand by the side of Tam Peter's fish-cart. Snecky gave his audience time to gather, for not every day was it given to him to cry a lost bairn. The words fell slowly from his reluctant lips. Before he flung back his head and ejected his proclamation in a series of puffs he was the possessor of exclusive news, but his tongue had hardly ceased to roll round the concluding sentence when the crowd took up the cry themselves. Wives flinging open their windows shouted their fears across the wynds. Davy Dundas had wandered from the kirkyard, where Rob had left her in Kitty Wilkie's charge till he returned from the woods. What had Kitty been about? It was believed that the litlin had taken with her a letter that had come for Rob. Was Rob back from the woods yet? Ay, he had scoured the whole countryside already for her. Men gathered on the saw-mill brig, looking perplexedly at the burn that swivelled at this point, a sawdust colour, between wooden boards; but the women pressed their bairns closely to their wrappers and gazed in each other's face. A log of wood, with which some one had sought to improvise a fire between the bricks that narrowed Rob Angus's grate, turned peevishly to charcoal without casting much light on the men and women in the saw-mill kitchen. Already the burn had been searched near the mill, with Rob's white face staring at the searchers from his door. The room was small and close. A closet-bed with the door off afforded seats for several persons; and Davit Lunan, the tinsmith, who could read Homer with Rob in the original, sat clumsily on the dresser. The pendulum of a wag-at-the-wa' clock swung silently against the wall, casting a mouse-like shadow on the hearth. Over the mantelpiece was a sampler in many colours, the work of Rob's mother when she was still a maid. The bookcase, fitted into a recess that had once held a press, was Rob's own handiwork, and contained more books than any other house in Thrums. Overhead the thick wooden rafters were crossed with saws and staves. There was a painful silence in the gloomy room. Snecky Hobart tried to break the log in the fireplace, using his leg as a poker, but desisted when he saw every eye turned on him. A glitter of sparks shot up the chimney, and the starling in the window began to whistle. Pete Todd looked undecidedly at the minister, and, lifting a sack, flung it over the bird's cage, as if anticipating the worst. In Thrums they veil their cages if there is a death in the house. 'What do ye mean, Pete Todd?' cried Rob Angus fiercely. His voice broke, but he seized the sack and cast it on the floor. The starling, however, whistled no more. Looking as if he could strike Pete Todd, Rob stood in the centre of his kitchen, a saw-miller for the last time. Though they did not know it, his neighbours there were photographing him in their minds, and their children were destined to gape in the days to come over descriptions of Rob Angus in corduroys. These pictures showed a broad-shouldered man of twenty-six, whose face was already rugged. A short brown beard hid the heavy chin, and the lips were locked as if Rob feared to show that he was anxious about the child. His clear grey eyes were younger-looking than his forehead, and the swollen balls beneath them suggested a student rather than a working man. His hands were too tanned and hard ever to be white, and he delved a little in his walk, as if he felt uncomfortable without a weight on his back. He was the best saw-miller in his county, but his ambition would have scared his customers had he not kept it to himself. Many a time strangers had stared at him as he strode along the Whunny road, and wondered what made this stalwart man whirl the axe that he had been using as a staff. Then Rob was thinking of the man he was going to be when he could safely leave little Davy behind him, and it was not the firs of the Whunny wood that were in his eye, but a roaring city and a saw-miller taking it by the throat. There had been a time when he bore no love for the bairn who came between him and his career. Rob was so tall that he could stand erect in but few rooms in Thrums, and long afterwards, when very different doors opened to him, he still involuntarily ducked, as he crossed a threshold, to save his head. Up to the day on which Davy wandered from home he had never lifted his hat to a lady; when he did that the influence of Thrums would be broken for ever. 'It's oncommon foolish o' Rob,' said Pete Todd, retreating to the side of the mole-catcher, 'no to be mair resigned-like.' 'It's his ind'pendence,' answered Jamie; 'ay, the wricht was sayin' the noo, says he, "If Davy's deid, Rob'll mak the coffin 'imsel, he's sae michty ind'pendent."' Tammas Haggart stumbled into the saw-miller's kitchen. It would have been a womanish kind of thing to fling-to the door behind him. 'Fine growin' day, Rob,' he said deliberately. 'It is so, Tammas,' answered the saw-miller hospitably, for Haggart had been his father's bosom friend. 'No much drowth, I'm thinkin',' said Hobart, relieved by the turn the conversation had taken. Tammas pulled from beneath the table an unsteady three-legged stool--Davy's stool--and sat down on it slowly. Rob took a step nearer as if to ask him to sit somewhere else, and then turned away his head. 'Ay, ay,' said Haggart. Then, as he saw the others gathering round the minister at the door, he moved uneasily on his stool. 'Whaur's Davy?' he said. 'Did ye no ken she was lost?' the saw-miller asked, in a voice that was hardly his own. 'Ay, I kent,' said Tammas; 'she's on the Whunny road.' Rob had been talking to the minister in what both thought English, which in Thrums is considered an ostentatious language, but he turned on Tammas in broad Scotch. In the years to come, when he could wear gloves without concealing his hands in his pockets, excitement brought on Scotch as a poultice raises blisters. 'Tammas Haggart,' he cried, pulling the stone-breaker off his stool. The minister interposed. 'Tell us what you know at once, Tammas,' said Mr. Dishart, who, out of the pulpit, had still a heart. It was a sad tale that Haggart had to tell, if a short one, and several of the listeners shook their heads as they heard it. 'I meant to turn the lassieky,' the stone-breaker explained, 'but, ou, she was past in a twinklin'.' On the saw-mill brig the minister quickly organised a search party, the brig that Rob had floored anew but the week before, rising daily with the sun to do it, because the child's little boot had caught in a worn board. From it she had often crooned to watch the dank mill-wheel climbing the bouncing burn. Ah, Rob, the rotten old planks would have served your turn. 'The Whunny road' were the words passed from mouth to mouth, and the driblet of men fell into line. Impetuous is youth, and the minister was not perhaps greatly to blame for starting at once. But Lang Tammas, his chief elder, paused on the threshold. 'The Lord giveth,' he said solemnly, taking off his hat and letting the night air cut through his white hair, 'and the Lord taketh away: blessed be the name of the Lord.' The saw-miller opened his mouth, but no words came. The little search party took the cold Whunny road. The day had been bright and fine, and still there was a smell of flowers in the air. The fickle flowers! They had clustered round Davy and nestled on her neck when she drew the half-ashamed saw-miller through the bleating meadows, and now they could smile on him when he came alone--all except the daisies. The daisies, that cannot play a child false, had craned their necks to call Davy back as she tripped over them, and bowed their heavy little heads as she toddled on. It was from them that the bairn's track was learned after she wandered from the Whunny road. By and by the hills ceased to echo their wailing response to Hobart's bell. Far in the rear of the more eager searchers, the bellman and the joiner had found a seat on a mossy bank, and others, footsore and weary, had fallen elsewhere from the ranks. The minister and half a dozen others scattered over the fields and on the hillsides, despondent, but not daring to lag. Tinkers cowered round their kettles under threatening banks, and the squirrels were shadows gliding from tree to tree. At a distant smithy a fitful light still winked to the wind, but the farm lamps were out and all the land was hushed. It was now long past midnight in country parts. Rob Angus was young and strong, but the heaven-sent gift of tears was not for him. Blessed the moaning mother by the cradle of her eldest-born, and the maid in tears for the lover who went out so brave in the morning and was not at evenfall, and the weeping sister who can pray for her soldier brother, and the wife on her husband's bosom. Some of his neighbours had thought it unmanly when Rob, at the rumble of a cart, hurried from the saw-mill to snatch the child in his arms, and bear her to a bed of shavings. At such a time Davy would lift a saw to within an inch of her baby face, and then, letting it fall with a wicked chuckle, run to the saw-miller's arms, as sure of her lover as ever maiden was of man. A bashful lover he had been, shy, not of Davy but of what men would say, and now the time had come when he looked wistfully back to a fevered child tossing in a dark bed, the time when a light burned all night in Rob's kitchen, and a trembling, heavy-eyed man sat motionless on a high-backed chair. How noiselessly he approached the bonny mite and replaced the arm that had wandered from beneath the coverlet! Ah, for the old time when a sick imperious child told her uncle to lie down beside her, and Rob sat on the bed, looking shamefacedly at the minister. Mr. Dishart had turned away his head. Such things are not to be told. They are between a man and his God. Far up the Whunny hill they found Davy's little shoe. Rob took it in his hand, a muddy, draggled shoe that had been a pretty thing when he put it on her foot that morning. The others gathered austerely around him, and strong Rob stood still among the brackens. 'I'm dootin' she's deid,' said Tammas Haggart. Haggart looked into the face of old Rob's son, and then a strange and beautiful thing happened. To the wizened stone-breaker it was no longer the sombre Whunny hill that lay before him. Two barefooted herd-laddies were on the green fields of adjoining farms. The moon looking over the hills found them on their ragged backs, with the cows munching by their side. They had grown different boys, nor known why, among the wild roses of red and white, and trampling neck-high among the ferns. Haggart saw once again the raspberry bushes they had stripped together into flagons gleaming in the grass. Rob had provided the bent pin with which Tammas lured his first trout to land, and Tammas in return had invited him to thraw the neck of a doomed hen. They had wandered hand-in-hand through thirsty grass, when scythes whistled in the corn-fields, and larks trilled overhead, and braes were golden with broom. They are two broad-shouldered men now, and Haggart's back is rounding at the loom. From his broken window he can see Rob at the saw-mill, whistling as the wheel goes round. It is Saturday night, and they are in the square, clean and dapper, talking with other gallants about lasses. They are courting the same maid, and she sits on a stool by the door, knitting a stocking, with a lover on each side. They drop in on her mother straining the blaeberry juice through a bag suspended between two chairs. They sheepishly admire while Easie singes a hen; for love of her they help her father to pit his potatoes; and then, for love of the other, each gives her up. It is a Friday night, and from a but and ben around which the rabble heave and toss, a dozen couples emerge in strangely gay and bright apparel. Rob leads the way with one lass, and Tammas follows with another. It must be Rob's wedding-day. Dim grow Tammas's eyes on the Whunny hill. The years whirl by, and already he sees a grumpy gravedigger go out to dig Rob's grave. Alas! for the flash into the past that sorrow gives. As he clutches young Rob's hand the light dies from Tammas's eyes, his back grows round and bent, and the hair is silvered that lay in tousled locks on a lad's head. A nipping wind cut the search party and fled down the hill that was changing in colour from black to grey. The searchers might have been smugglers laden with whisky bladders, such as haunted the mountain in bygone days. Far away at Thrums mothers still wrung their hands for Davy, but the men slept. Heads were bared, and the minister raised his voice in prayer. One of the psalms of David trembled in the grey of the morning straight to heaven; and then two young men, glancing at Mr. Dishart, raised aloft a fallen rowan-tree, to let it fall as it listed. It fell pointing straight down the hill, and the search party took that direction; all but Rob, who stood motionless, with the shoe in his hand. He did not seem to comprehend the minister's beckoning. Haggart took him by the arm. 'Rob, man, Rob Angus,' he said, 'she was but fower year auld.' The stone-breaker unbuttoned his trouser pocket, and with an unsteady hand drew out his snuff-mull. Rob tried to take it, but his arm trembled, and the mull fell among the heather. 'Keep yourselves from idols,' said Lang Tammas sternly. But the minister was young, and children lisped his name at the white manse among the trees at home. He took the shoe from the saw-miller who had once been independent, and they went down the hill together. Davy lay dead at the edge of the burn that gurgles on to the saw-mill, one little foot washed by the stream. The Whunny had rocked her to sleep for the last time. Half covered with grass, her baby-fist still clutched the letter. When Rob saw her, he took his darling dead bairn in his arms and faced the others with cracking jaws. 'I dinna ken,' said Tammas Haggart, after a pause, 'but what it's kind o' nat'ral.' CHAPTER III ROB GOES OUT INTO THE WORLD One evening, nearly a month after Rob Angus became 'single,' Mr. George Frederick Licquorish, editor and proprietor of the _Silchester Mirror_, was sitting in his office cutting advertisements out of the _Silchester Argus_, and pasting each on a separate sheet of paper. These advertisements had not been sent to the _Mirror_, and, as he thought this a pity, he meant, through his canvasser, to call the attention of the advertisers to the omission. Mr. Licquorish was a stout little man with a benevolent countenance, who wrote most of his leaders on the backs of old envelopes. Every few minutes he darted into the composing-room, with an alertness that was a libel on his genial face; and when he returned it was pleasant to observe the kindly, good-natured manner in which he chaffed the printer's devil who was trying to light the fire. It was, however, also noticeable that what the devil said subsequently to another devil was--'But, you know, he wouldn't give me any sticks.' The _Mirror_ and the _Argus_ are two daily newspapers published in Silchester, each of which has the largest circulation in the district, and is therefore much the better advertising medium. Silchester is the chief town of an English midland county, and the _Mirror's_ business notepaper refers to it as the centre of a population of half a million souls. The _Mirror's_ offices are nearly crushed out of sight in a block of buildings, left in the middle of a street for town councils to pull down gradually. This island of houses, against which a sea of humanity beats daily, is cut in two by a narrow passage, off which several doors open. One of these leads up a dirty stair to the editorial and composing-rooms of the _Daily Mirror_, and down a dirty stair to its printing-rooms. It is the door at which you may hammer for an hour without any one's paying the least attention. During the time the boy took to light Mr. Licquorish's fire, a young man in a heavy overcoat knocked more than once at the door in the alley, and then moved off as if somewhat relieved that there was no response. He walked round and round the block of buildings, gazing upwards at the windows of the composing-room; and several times he ran against other pedestrians on whom he turned fiercely, and would then have begged their pardons had he known what to say. Frequently he felt in his pocket to see if his money was still there, and once he went behind a door and counted it. There was three pounds seventeen shillings altogether, and he kept it in a linen bag that had been originally made for carrying worms in when he went fishing. When he re-entered the close he always drew a deep breath, and if any persons emerged from the _Mirror_ office he looked after them. They were mostly telegraph boys, who fluttered out and in. When Mr. Licquorish dictated an article, as he did frequently, the apprentice-reporter went into the editor's room to take it down, and the reporters always asked him, as a favour, to shut George Frederick's door behind him. This apprentice-reporter did the police reports and the magazine notices, and he wondered a good deal whether the older reporters really did like brandy and soda. The reason why John Milton, which was the unfortunate name of this boy, was told to close the editorial door behind him was that it was close to the door of the reporters' room, and generally stood open. The impression the reporters' room made on a chance visitor varied according as Mr. Licquorish's door was ajar or shut. When they heard it locked on the inside, the reporters and the sub-editor breathed a sigh of relief; when it opened they took their legs off the desk. The editor's room had a carpet, and was chiefly furnished with books sent in for review. It was more comfortable, but more gloomy-looking than the reporters' room, which had a long desk running along one side of it, and a bunk for holding coals and old newspapers on the other side. The floor was so littered with papers, many of them still in their wrappers, that, on his way between his seat and the door, the reporter generally kicked one or more into the bunk. It was in this way, unless an apprentice happened to be otherwise disengaged, that the floor was swept. In this room were a reference library and an old coat. The library was within reach of the sub-editor's hand, and contained some fifty books, which the literary staff could consult, with the conviction that they would find the page they wanted missing. The coat had hung unbrushed on a nail for many years, and was so thick with dust that John Milton could draw pictures on it with his finger. According to legend, it was the coat of a distinguished novelist, who had once been a reporter on the _Mirror_, and had left Silchester unostentatiously by his window. It was Penny, the foreman in the composing-room, who set the literary staff talking about the new reporter. Penny was a lank, loosely-jointed man of forty, who shuffled about the office in slippers, ruled the compositors with a loud voice and a blustering manner, and was believed to be in Mr. Licquorish's confidence. His politics were respect for the House of Lords, because it rose early, enabling him to have it set before supper-time. The foreman slithered so quickly from one room to another that he was at the sub-editor's elbow before his own door had time to shut. There was some copy in his hand, and he flung it contemptuously upon the desk. 'Look here, Mister,' he said, flinging the copy upon the sub-editor's desk, 'I don't want that.' The sub-editor was twisted into as little space as possible, tearing telegrams open and flinging the envelopes aside, much as a housewife shells peas. His name was Protheroe, and the busier he was the more he twisted himself. On Budget nights he was a knot. He did voluntarily so much extra work that Mr. Licquorish often thought he gave him too high wages; and on slack nights he smiled to himself, which showed that something pleased him. It was rather curious that this something should have been himself. 'But--but,' cried Protheroe, all in a flutter, 'it's town council meeting; it--it must be set, Mr. Penny.' 'Very well, Mister; then that special from Birmingham must be slaughtered.' 'No, no, Mr. Penny; why, that's a speech by Bright.' Penny sneered at the sub-editor, and flung up his arms to imply that he washed his hands of the whole thing, as he had done every night for the last ten years, when there was pressure on his space. Protheroe had been there for half of that time, yet he still trembled before the autocrat of the office. 'There's enough copy on the board,' said Penny, 'to fill the paper. Any more specials coming in?' He asked this fiercely, as if of opinion that the sub-editor arranged with leading statesmen nightly to flood the composing-room of the _Mirror_ with speeches, and Protheroe replied abjectly, as if he had been caught doing it--'Lord John Manners is speaking to-night at Nottingham.' The foreman dashed his hand upon the desk. 'Go it, Mister, go it,' he cried; 'anything else? Tell me Gladstone's dead next.' Sometimes about two o'clock in the morning Penny would get sociable, and the sub-editor was always glad to respond. On those occasions they talked with bated breath of the amount of copy that would come in should anything happen to Mr. Gladstone; and the sub-editor, if he was in a despondent mood, predicted that it would occur at midnight. Thinking of this had made him a Conservative. 'Nothing so bad as that,' he said, dwelling on the subject, to show the foreman that they might be worse off; 'but there's a column of local coming in, and a concert in the People's Hall, and----' 'And you expect me to set all that?' the foreman broke in. 'Why, the half of that local should have been set by seven o'clock, and here I've only got the beginning of the town council yet. It's ridiculous.' Protheroe looked timidly towards the only reporter present, and then apologetically towards Penny for having looked at the reporter. 'The stuff must be behind,' growled Tomlinson, nicknamed Umbrage, 'as long as we're a man short.' Umbrage was very short and stout, with a big moon face, and always wore his coat unbuttoned. In the streets, if he was walking fast and there was a breeze, his coat-tails seemed to be running after him. He squinted a little, from a habit he had of looking sideways at public meetings to see if the audience was gazing at him. He was 'Juvenal' in the _Mirror_ on Friday mornings, and headed his column of local gossip which had that signature, 'Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy.' 'I wonder,' said the sub-editor, with an insinuating glance at the foreman, 'if the new man is expected to-night.' Mr. Licquorish had told him that this was so an hour before, but the cunning bred of fear advised him to give Penny the opportunity of divulging the news. That worthy smiled to himself, as any man has a right to do who has been told something in confidence by his employer. 'He's a Yorkshireman, I believe,' continued the crafty Protheroe. 'That's all you know,' said the foreman, first glancing back to see if Mr. Licquorish's door was shut. 'Mr. George Frederick has told me all about him; he's a Scotsman called Angus, that's never been out of his native county.' 'He's one of those compositors taken to literature, is he?' asked Umbrage, who by literature meant reporting, pausing in the middle of a sentence he was transcribing from his note-book. 'Just as I expected,' he added contemptuously. 'No,' said the foreman, thawing in the rays of such ignorance; 'Mr. George Frederick says he's never been on a newspaper before.' 'An outsider!' cried Umbrage, in the voice with which outsiders themselves would speak of reptiles. 'They are the ruin of the profession, they are.' 'He'll make you all sit up, Mister,' said Penny, with a chuckle. 'Mr. George Frederick has had his eye on him for a twelvemonth.' 'I don't suppose you know how Mr. George Frederick fell in with him?' said the sub-editor, basking in Penny's geniality. 'Mr. George Frederick told me everythink about him--everythink,' said the foreman proudly. 'It was a parson that recommended him.' 'A parson!' ejaculated Umbrage, in such a tone that if you had not caught the word you might have thought he was saying 'An outsider!' again. 'Yes, a parson whose sermon this Angus took down in shorthand, I fancy.' 'What was he doing taking down a sermon?' 'I suppose he was there to hear it.' 'And this is the kind of man who is taking to literature nowadays!' Umbrage cried. 'Oh, Mr. George Frederick has heard a great deal about him,' continued Penny maliciously, 'and expects him to do wonders. He's a self-made man.' 'Oh,' said Umbrage, who could find nothing to object to in that, having risen from comparative obscurity himself. 'Mr. George Frederick,' Penny went on, 'offered him a berth here before Billy Tagg was engaged, but he couldn't come.' 'I suppose,' said Juvenal, with the sarcasm that made him terrible on Fridays, 'the _Times_ offered him something better, or was it the _Spectator_ that wanted an editor?' 'No, it was family matters. His mother or his sister, or--let me see, it was his sister's child--was dependent on him, and could not be left. Something happened to her, though. She's dead, I think, so he's a free man now.' 'Yes, it was his sister's child, and she was found dead,' said the sub-editor, 'on a mountain-side, curiously enough, with George Frederick's letter in her hand offering Angus the appointment.' Protheroe was foolish to admit that he knew this, for it was news to the foreman, but it tries a man severely to have to listen to news that he could tell better himself. One immediate result of the sub-editor's rashness was that Rob Angus sank several stages in Penny's estimation. 'I dare say he'll turn out a muff,' he said, and flung out of the room, with another intimation that the copy must be cut down. The evening wore on. Protheroe had half a dozen things to do at once, and did them. Telegraph boys were dropping the beginning of Lord John Manners's speech through a grating on to the sub-editorial desk long before he had reached the end of it at Nottingham. The sub-editor had to revise this as it arrived in flimsy, and write a summary of it at the same time. His summary was set before all the speech had reached the office, which may seem strange. But when Penny cried aloud for summary, so that he might get that column off his hands, Protheroe made guesses at many things, and, risking, 'the right hon. gentleman concluded his speech, which was attentively listened to, with some further references to current topics,' flung Lord John to the boy, who rushed with him to Penny, from whose hand he was snatched by a compositor. Fifteen minutes afterwards Lord John concluded his speech at Nottingham. About half-past nine Protheroe seized his hat and rushed home for supper. In the passage he nearly knocked himself over by running against the young man in the heavy top-coat. Umbrage went out to see if he could gather any information about a prize-fight. John Milton came in with a notice of a concert, which he stuck conspicuously on the chief reporter's file. When the chief reporter came in, he glanced through it and made a few alterations, changing 'Mr. Joseph Grimes sang out of tune,' for instance, to 'Mr. Grimes, the favourite vocalist, was in excellent voice.' The concert was not quite over yet, either; they seldom waited for the end of anything on the _Mirror_. When Umbrage returned, Billy Kirker, the chief reporter, was denouncing John Milton for not being able to tell him how to spell 'deceive.' 'What is the use of you?' he asked indignantly, 'if you can't do a simple thing like that?' 'Say "cheat,"' suggested Umbrage. So Kirker wrote 'cheat.' Though he was the chief of the _Mirror's_ reporting department, he had only Umbrage and John Milton at present under him. As Kirker sat in the reporters' room looking over his diary, with a cigarette in his mouth, he was an advertisement for the _Mirror_, and if he paid for his velvet coat out of his salary, the paper was in a healthy financial condition. He was tall, twenty-two years of age, and extremely slight. His manner was languid, though his language was sometimes forcible, but those who knew him did not think him mild. This evening his fingers looked bare without the diamond ring that sometimes adorned them. This ring, it was noticed, generally disappeared about the middle of the month, and his scarf-pin followed it by the twenty-first. With the beginning of the month they reappeared together. The literary staff was paid monthly. Mr. Licquorish looked in at the door of the reporters' room to ask pleasantly if they would not like a fire. Had Protheroe been there he would have said 'No'; but Billy Kirker said 'Yes.' Mr. Licquorish had thought that Protheroe was there. This was the first fire in the reporters' room that season, and it smoked. Kirker, left alone, flung up the window, and gradually became aware that some one with a heavy tread was walking up and down the alley. He whistled gently in case it should be a friend of his own, but, getting no response, resumed his work. Mr. Licquorish also heard the footsteps, but though he was waiting for the new reporter, he did not connect him with the man outside. Rob had stopped at the door a score of times, and then turned away. He had arrived at Silchester in the afternoon, and come straight to the _Mirror_ office to look at it. Then he had set out in quest of lodgings, and, having got them, had returned to the passage. He was not naturally a man crushed by a sense of his own unworthiness, but, looking up at these windows and at the shadows that passed them every moment, he felt far away from his saw-mill. What a romance to him, too, was in the glare of the gas and in the _Mirror_ bill that was being reduced to pulp on the wall at the mouth of the close! It had begun to rain heavily, but he did not feel the want of an umbrella, never having possessed one in Thrums. Fighting down the emotions that had mastered him so often, he turned once more to the door, and as he knocked more loudly than formerly, a compositor came out, who told him what to do if he was there on business. 'Go upstairs,' he said, 'till you come to a door, and then kick.' Rob did not have to kick, however, for he met Mr. Licquorish coming downstairs, and both half stopped. 'Not Mr. Angus, is it?' asked Mr. Licquorish. 'Yes,' said the new reporter, the monosyllable also telling that he was a Scotsman, and that he did not feel comfortable. Mr. Licquorish shook him warmly by the hand, and took him into the editor's room. Rob sat in a chair there with his hat in his hand, while his new employer spoke kindly to him about the work that would begin on the morrow. 'You will find it a little strange at first,' he said; 'but Mr. Kirker, the head of our reporting staff, has been instructed to explain the routine of the office to you, and I have no doubt we shall work well together.' Rob said he meant to do his best. 'It is our desire, Mr. Angus,' continued Mr. Licquorish, 'to place every facility before our staff, and if you have suggestions to make at any time on any matter connected with your work, we shall be most happy to consider them and to meet you in a cordial spirit.' While Rob was thanking Mr. Licquorish for his consideration, Kirker in the next room was wondering whether the new reporter was to have half-a-crown a week less than his predecessor, who had begun with six pounds a month. 'It is pleasant to us,' Mr. Licquorish concluded, referring to the novelist, 'to know that we have sent out from this office a number of men who subsequently took a high place in literature. Perhaps our system of encouraging talent by fostering it has had something to do with this, for we like to give every one his opportunity to rise. I hope the day will come, Mr. Angus, when we shall be able to recall with pride the fact that you began your literary career on the _Mirror_.' Rob said he hoped so too. He had, indeed, very little doubt of it. At this period of his career it made him turn white to think that he might not yet be famous. 'But I must not keep you here any longer,' said the editor, rising, 'for you have had a weary journey, and must be feeling tired. We shall see you at ten o'clock to-morrow?' Once more Rob and his employer shook hands heartily. 'But I might introduce you,' said Mr. Licquorish, 'to the reporting-room. Mr. Kirker, our chief, is, I think, here.' Rob had begun to descend the stairs, but he turned back. He was not certain what you did when you were introduced to any one, such formalities being unknown in Thrums; but he held himself in reserve to do as the other did. 'Ah, Mr. Kirker,' said the editor, pushing open the door of the reporting-room with his foot, 'this is Mr. Angus, who has just joined our literary staff.' Nodding genially to both, Mr. Licquorish darted out of the room; but before the door had finished its swing, Mr. Kirker was aware that the new reporter's nails had a rim of black. 'What do you think of George Frederick?' asked the chief, after he had pointed out to Rob the only chair that such a stalwart reporter might safely sit on. 'He was very pleasant,' said Rob. 'Yes,' said Billy Kirker thoughtfully, 'there's nothing George Frederick wouldn't do for any one if it could be done gratis.' 'And he struck me as an enterprising sort of man.' '"Enterprise without outlay" is the motto of this office,' said the chief. 'But the paper seems to be well conducted,' said Rob, a little crestfallen. 'The worst conducted in England,' said Kirker cheerfully. Rob asked how the _Mirror_ compared with the _Argus_. 'They have six reporters to our three,' said Kirker, 'but we do double work and beat them.' 'I suppose there is a great deal of rivalry between the staffs of the two papers?' Rob asked, for he had read of such things. 'Oh no,' said Kirker, 'we help each other. For instance, if Daddy Walsh, the _Argus_ chief, is drunk, I help him; and if I'm drunk, he helps me. I'm going down to the Frying Pan to see him now.' 'The Frying Pan?' echoed Rob. 'It's a literary club,' Kirker explained, 'and very exclusive. If you come with me I'll introduce you.' Rob was somewhat taken aback at what he had heard, but he wanted to be on good terms with his fellow-workers. 'Not to-night,' he said. 'I think I'd better be getting home now.' Kirker lit another cigarette, and saying he would expect Rob at the office next morning, strolled off. The new reporter was undecided whether to follow him at once, or to wait for Mr. Licquorish's reappearance. He was looking round the office curiously, when the door opened and Kirker put his head in. 'By the bye, old chap,' he said, 'could you lend me five bob?' 'Yes, yes,' said the new reporter. He had to undo the string of his money-bag, but the chief was too fine a gentleman to smile. 'Thanks, old man,' Kirker said carelessly, and again withdrew. The door of the editor's room was open as Rob passed. 'Ah, Mr. Angus,' said Mr. Licquorish, 'here are a number of books for review; you might do a short notice of some of them.' He handed Rob the two works that happened to lie uppermost, and the new reporter slipped them into his pockets with a certain elation. The night was dark and wet, but he lit his pipe and hurried up the muddy streets to the single room that was now his home. Probably his were the only lodgings in his street that had not the portrait of a young lady on the mantelpiece. On his way he passed three noisy young men. They were Kirker and two reporters on the _Argus_ trying which could fling his hat highest in the rain. Sitting in his lonely room Rob examined his books with interest. One of them was Tennyson's new volume of poems, and a month afterwards the poet laureate's publishers made Rob march up the streets of Silchester with his chest well forward by advertising 'The _Silchester Mirror_ says, "This admirable volume."' After all, the great delight of being on the Press is that you can patronise the Tennysons. Doubtless the poet laureate got a marked copy of Rob's first review forwarded him, and had an anxious moment till he saw that it was favourable. There had been a time when even John Milton felt a thrill pass through him as he saw Messrs. Besant and Rice boasting that he thought their _Chaplain of the Fleet_ a novel of sustained interest, 'which we have read without fatigue.' Rob sat over his empty grate far on into the night, his mind in a jumble. As he grew more composed the _Mirror_ and its staff sank out of sight, and he was carrying a dead child in his arms along the leafy Whunny road. His mouth twitched, and his head drooped. He was preparing to go to bed when he sat down again to look at the other book. It was a novel by 'M.' in one thin volume, and Rob thought the title, _The Scorn of Scorns_, foolish. He meant to write an honest criticism of it, but never having reviewed a book before, he rather hoped that this would be a poor one, which he could condemn brilliantly. Poor Rob! he came to think more of that book by and by. At last Rob wound up the big watch that neighbours had come to gaze at when his father bought it of a pedlar forty years before, and took off the old silver chain that he wore round his neck. He went down on his knees to say his prayers, and then, remembering that he had said them already, rose up and went to bed. CHAPTER IV 'THE SCORN OF SCORNS' St. Leonard's Lodge is the residence of Mr. William Meredith, an ex-mayor of Silchester, and stands in the fashionable suburb of the town. There was at one time considerable intercourse between this house and Dome Castle, the seat of Colonel Abinger, though they are five miles apart and in different counties; and one day, after Rob had been on the Press for a few months, two boys set out from the castle to show themselves to Nell Meredith. They could have reached the high road by a private walk between a beech and an ivy hedge, but they preferred to climb down a steep path to the wild-running Dome. The advantage of this route was that they risked their necks by taking it. Nell, who did not expect visitors, was sitting by the fire in her boudoir dreaming. It was the room in which she and Mary Abinger had often discussed such great questions as Woman, her Aims, her Influence; Man, his Instability, his Weakness, his Degeneration; the Poor, how are we to Help them; why Lady Lucy Gilding wears Pink when Blue is obviously her Colour. Nell was tucked away in a soft arm-chair, in which her father never saw her without wondering that such a little thing should require eighteen yards for a dress. 'I'm not so little,' she would say on these occasions, and then Mr. Meredith chuckled, for he knew that there were young men who considered his Nell tall and terrible. He liked to watch her sweeping through a room. To him the boudoir was a sea of reefs. Nell's dignity when she was introduced to a young gentleman was another thing her father could never look upon without awe, but he also noticed that it soon wore off. On the mantelpiece lay a comb and several hairpins. There are few more mysterious things than hairpins. So far back as we can go into the past we see woman putting up her hair. It is said that married men lose their awe of hairpins and clean their pipes with them. A pair of curling-tongs had a chair to themselves near Nell, and she wore a short blue dressing-jacket. Probably when she woke from her reverie she meant to do something to her brown hair. When old gentlemen called at the Lodge they frequently told their host that he had a very pretty daughter; when younger gentlemen called they generally called again, and if Nell thought they admired her the first time she spared no pains to make them admire her still more the next time. This was to make them respect their own judgment. It was little Will Abinger who had set Nell a-dreaming, for from wondering if he was home yet for the Christmas holidays her thoughts wandered to his sister Mary, and then to his brother Dick. She thought longer of Dick in his lonely London chambers than of the others, and by and by she was saying to herself petulantly, 'I wish people wouldn't go dying and leaving me money.' Mr. Meredith, and still more Mrs. Meredith, thought that their only daughter, an heiress, would be thrown away on Richard Abinger, barrister-at-law, whose blood was much bluer than theirs, but who was, nevertheless, understood to be as hard-up as his father. The door-bell rang, and two callers were ushered into the drawing-room without Nell's knowing it. One of them left his companion to talk to Mrs. Meredith, and clattered upstairs in search of the daughter of the house. He was a bright-faced boy of thirteen, with a passion for flinging stones, and, of late, he had worn his head in the air, not because he was conceited, but that he might look with admiration upon the face of the young gentleman downstairs. Bouncing into the parlour, he caught sight of the object of his search before she could turn her head. 'I say, Nell, I'm back.' Miss Meredith jumped from her chair. 'Will!' she cried. When the visitor saw this young lady coming toward him quickly, he knew what she was after and tried to get out of her way. But Nell kissed him. 'Now, then,' he said indignantly, pushing her from him. Will looked round him fearfully, and then closed the door. 'You might have waited till the door was shut, at any rate,' he grumbled. 'It would have been a nice thing if any one had seen you!' 'Why, what would it have mattered, you horrid little boy!' said Nell. 'Little boy! I'm bigger than you, at any rate. As for its not mattering--but you don't know who is downstairs. The captain----' 'Captain!' cried Nell. She seized her curling-tongs. 'Yes,' said Will, watching the effect of his words, 'Greybrooke, the captain of the school. He is giving me a week just now.' Will said this as proudly as if his guest was Napoleon Bonaparte, but Nell laid down her curling-irons. The intruder interpreted her action and resented it. 'You're not his style,' he said; 'he likes bigger women.' 'Oh, does he?' said Nell, screwing up her little Greek nose contemptuously. 'He's eighteen,' said Will. 'A mere schoolboy.' 'Why, he shaves.' 'Doesn't the master whip him for that?' 'What? Whip Greybrooke!' Will laughed hysterically. 'You should just see him at breakfast with old Jerry. Why, I've seen him myself, when half a dozen of us were asked to tea by Mrs. Jerry, and though we were frightened to open our mouths, what do you think Greybrooke did?' 'Something silly, I should say.' 'He asked old Jerry, as cool as you like, to pass the butter! That's the sort of fellow Greybrooke is.' 'How is Mary?' 'Oh, she's all right. No, she has a headache. I say, Greybrooke says Mary's rather slow.' 'He must be a horror,' said Nell, 'and I don't see why you brought him here.' 'I thought you would like to see him,' explained Will. 'He made a hundred and three against Rugby, and was only bowled off his pads.' 'Well,' said Nell, yawning, 'I suppose I must go down and meet your prodigy.' Will, misunderstanding, got between her and the door. 'You're not going down like that,' he said anxiously, with a wave of his hand that included the dressing-jacket and the untidy hair. 'Greybrooke's so particular, and I told him you were a jolly girl.' 'What else did you tell him?' asked Nell suspiciously. 'Not much,' said Will, with a guilty look. 'I know you told him something else?' 'I told him you--you were fond of kissing people.' 'Oh, you nasty boy, Will--as if kissing a child like you counted!' 'Never mind,' said Will soothingly, 'Greybrooke's not the fellow to tell tales. Besides, I know you girls can't help it. Mary's just the same.' 'You are a goose, Will, and the day will come when you'll give anything for a kiss.' 'You've no right to bring such charges against a fellow,' said Will indignantly, strutting to the door. Half-way downstairs he turned and came back. 'I say, Nell,' he said, 'you--you, when you come down, you won't kiss Greybrooke?' Nell drew herself up in a way that would have scared any young man but Will. 'He's so awfully particular,' Will continued apologetically. 'Was it to tell me this you came upstairs?' 'No, honour bright, it wasn't. I only came up in case you should want to kiss me, and to--to have it over.' Nell was standing near Will, and before he could jump back she slapped his face. The snow was dancing outside in a light wind when Nell sailed into the drawing-room. She could probably still inform you how she was dressed, but that evening Will and the captain could not tell Mary. The captain thought it was a reddish dress or else blue; but it was all in squares like a draught-board, according to Will. Forty minutes had elapsed since Will visited her upstairs, and now he smiled at the conceit which made her think that the captain would succumb to a pretty frock. Of course Nell had no such thought. She always dressed carefully because--well, because there is never any saying. Though Miss Meredith froze Greybrooke with a glance, he was relieved to see her. Her mother had discovered that she knew the lady who married his brother, and had asked questions about the baby. He did not like it. These, he thought, were things you should pretend not to know about. He had contrived to keep his nieces and nephews dark from the fellows at school, though most of them would have been too just to attach any blame to him. Of this baby he was specially ashamed, because they had called it after him. Mrs. Meredith was a small, stout lady, of whose cleverness her husband spoke proudly to Nell, but never to herself. When Nell told her how he had talked, she exclaimed, 'Nonsense!' and then waited to hear what else he had said. She loved him, but probably no woman can live with a man for many years without having an indulgent contempt for him, and wondering how he is considered a good man of business. Mrs. Meredith, who was a terribly active woman, was glad to leave the entertainment of her visitors to Nell, and that young lady began severely by asking 'how you boys mean to amuse yourselves?' 'Do you keep rabbits?' she said to the captain sweetly. 'I say, Nell!' cried Will warningly. 'I have not kept rabbits,' Greybrooke replied, with simple dignity, 'since I was a boy.' 'I told you,' said Will, 'that Greybrooke was old--why, he's nearly as old as yourself. She's older than she looks, you know, Greybrooke.' The captain was gazing at Nell with intense admiration. As she raised her head indignantly he thought she was looking to him for protection. That was a way Nell had. 'Abinger,' said the captain sternly, 'shut up.' 'Don't mind him, Miss Meredith,' he continued; 'he doesn't understand girls.' To think he understands girls is the last affront a youth pays them. When he ceases trying to reduce them to fixed principles he has come of age. Nell, knowing this, felt sorry for Greybrooke, for she foresaw what he would have to go through. Her manner to him underwent such a change that he began to have a high opinion of himself. This is often called falling in love. Will was satisfied that his friend impressed Nell, and he admired Greybrooke's politeness to a chit of a girl, but he became restless. His eyes wandered to the piano, and he had a lurking fear that Nell would play something. He signed to the captain to get up. 'We'll have to be going now,' he said at last; 'good-bye.' Greybrooke glared at Will, forgetting that they had arranged beforehand to stay as short a time as possible. 'Perhaps you have other calls to make?' said Nell, who had no desire to keep them there longer than they cared to stay. 'Oh yes,' said Will. 'No,' said the captain, 'we only came into Silchester with Miss Abinger's message for you.' 'Why, Will,' exclaimed Nell, 'you never gave me any message?' 'I forgot what it was,' Will explained cheerily; 'something about a ribbon, I think.' 'I did not hear the message given,' the captain said, in answer to Nell's look, 'but Miss Abinger had a headache, and I think Will said it had to do with that.' 'Oh, wait a bit,' said Will, 'I remember something about it now. Mary saw something in a Silchester paper, the _Mirror_, I think, that made her cry, and she thinks that if you saw it you would cry too. So she wants you to look at it.' 'The idea of Mary's crying!' said Nell indignantly. 'But did she not give you a note?' 'She was too much upset,' said Will, signing to the captain not to let on that they had refused to wait for the note. 'I wonder what it can be?' murmured Nell. She hurried from the room to her father's den, and found him there surrounded by newspapers. 'Is there anything in the _Mirror_, father?' she asked. 'Nothing,' said Mr. Meredith, who had made the same answer to this question many hundreds of times; 'nothing except depression in the boot trade.' 'It can't be that,' said Nell. 'Can't be what?' 'Oh, give me the paper,' cried the ex-mayor's daughter impatiently. She looked hastily up and down it, with an involuntary glance at the births, deaths, and marriages, turned it inside out and outside in, and then exclaimed 'Oh!' Mr. Meredith, who was too much accustomed to his daughter's impulses to think that there was much wrong, listened patiently while she ejaculated, 'Horrid!' 'What a shame!' 'Oh, I wish I was a man!' and, 'Well, I can't understand it.' When she tossed the paper to the floor, her face was red and her body trembled with excitement. 'What is it, Nelly?' asked her father. Whether Miss Abinger cried over the _Mirror_ that day is not to be known, but there were indignant tears in Nell's eyes as she ran upstairs to her bedroom. Mr. Meredith took up the paper and examined it carefully at the place where his daughter had torn it in her anger. What troubled her seemed to be something in the book notices, and he concluded that it must be a cruel 'slating' of a novel in one volume called _The Scorn of Scorns_. Mr. Meredith remembered that Nell had compelled him to read that book and to say that he liked it. 'That's all,' he said to himself, much relieved. He fancied that Nell, being a girl, was distressed to see a book she liked called 'the sentimental out-pourings of some silly girl who ought to confine her writing to copy-books.' In a woman so much excitement over nothing seemed quite a natural thing to Mr. Meredith. The sex had ceased to surprise him. Having retired from business, Mr. Meredith now did things slowly as a good way of passing the time. He had risen to wealth from penury, and counted time by his dining-room chairs, having passed through a cane, a horsehair, and a leather period before arriving at morocco. Mrs. Meredith counted time by the death of her only son. It may be presumed that Nell would not have locked herself into her bedroom and cried and stamped her feet on an imaginary critic had _The Scorn of Scorns_ not interested her more than her father thought. She sat down to write a note to Mary. Then she tore it up, and wrote a letter to Mary's elder brother, beginning with the envelope. She tore this up also, as another idea came into her head. She nodded several times to herself over this idea, as a sign that the more she thought of it the more she liked it. Then, after very nearly forgetting to touch her eyes with something that made them look less red, she returned to the drawing-room. 'Will,' she said, 'have you seen the new ponies papa gave me on my birthday?' Will leapt to his feet. 'Come on, Greybrooke,' he cried, making for the door. The captain hesitated. 'Perhaps,' said Nell, with a glance at him, 'Mr. Greybrooke does not have much interest in horses?' 'Doesn't he just!' said Will; 'why----' 'No,' said Greybrooke; 'but I'll wait here for you, Abinger.' Will was staggered. For a moment the horrible thought passed through his mind that these girls had got hold of the captain. Then he remembered. 'Come on,' he said, 'Nell won't mind.' But Greybrooke had a delicious notion that the young lady wanted to see him by himself, and Will had to go to the stables alone. 'I won't be long,' he said to Greybrooke, apologising for leaving him alone with a girl. 'Don't bother him too much,' he whispered to Nell at the door. As soon as Will had disappeared Nell turned to Greybrooke. 'Mr. Greybrooke,' she said, speaking rapidly in a voice so low that it was a compliment to him in itself, 'there is something I should like you to do for me.' The captain flushed with pleasure. 'There is nothing I wouldn't do for you,' he stammered. 'I want you,' continued Miss Meredith, with a most vindictive look on her face, 'to find out for me who wrote a book review in to-day's _Mirror_, and to--to--oh, to thrash him.' 'All right,' said the captain, rising and looking for his hat. 'Wait a minute,' said Nell, glancing at him admiringly. 'The book is called _The Scorn of Scorns_, and it is written by--by a friend of mine. In to-day's _Mirror_ it is called the most horrid names, sickly sentimental, not even grammatical, and all that.' 'The cads!' cried Greybrooke. 'But the horribly mean, wicked thing about it,' continued Nell, becoming more and more indignant as she told her story, 'is that not two months ago there was a review of the book in the same paper, which said it was the most pathetic and thoughtful and clever tale that had ever been published by an anonymous author!' 'It's the lowest thing I ever heard of,' said Greybrooke, 'but these newspaper men are all the same.' 'No, they're not,' said Nell sharply (Richard Abinger, Esq.'s, only visible means of sustenance was the press), 'but they are dreadfully mean, contemptible creatures on the _Mirror_--just reporters, you know.' Greybrooke nodded, though he knew nothing about it. 'The first review,' Nell continued, 'appeared on the 3rd of October, and I want you to show them both to the editor, and insist upon knowing the name of the writer. After that find the wretch out, and----' 'And lick him,' said the captain. His face frightened Nell. 'You won't hit him very hard?' she asked apprehensively, adding as an afterthought, 'perhaps he is stronger than you.' Greybrooke felt himself in an unfortunate position. He could not boast before Nell, but he wished very keenly that Will was there to boast for him. Most of us have experienced the sensation. Nell having undertaken to keep Will employed until the captain's return, Greybrooke set off for the _Mirror_ office with a look of determination on his face. He went into two shops, the one a news-shop, where he bought a copy of the paper. In the other he asked for a thick stick, having remembered that the elegant cane he carried was better fitted for swinging in the air than for breaking a newspaper man's head. He tried the stick on a paling. Greybrooke felt certain that Miss Meredith was the novelist. That was why he selected so thick a weapon. He marched into the advertising office, and demanded to see the editor of the _Mirror_. ''Stairs,' said a clerk, with his head in a ledger. He meant upstairs, and the squire of dames took his advice. After wandering for some time in a labyrinth of dark passages, he opened the door of the day composing-room, in which half a dozen silent figures were bending over their cases. 'I want the editor,' said Greybrooke, somewhat startled by the sound his voice made in the great room. ''Stairs,' said one of the figures, meaning downstairs. Greybrooke, remembering who had sent him here, did not lose heart. He knocked at several doors, and then pushed them open. All the rooms were empty. Then he heard a voice saying-- 'Who are you? What do you want?' Mr. Licquorish was the speaker, and he had been peering at the intruder for some time through a grating in his door. He would not have spoken at all, but he wanted to go into the composing-room, and Greybrooke was in the passage that led to it. 'I don't see you,' said the captain; 'I want the editor.' 'I am the editor,' said the voice, 'but I can see no one at present except on business.' 'I am here on business,' said Greybrooke. 'I want to thrash one of your staff.' 'All the members of my literary staff are engaged at present,' said Mr. Licquorish, in a pleasant voice; 'which one do you want?' 'I want the low cad who wrote a review of a book called _The Scorn of Scorns_, in to-day's paper.' 'Oh!' said Mr. Licquorish. 'I demand his name,' cried Greybrooke. The editor made no answer. He had other things to do than to quarrel with schoolboys. As he could not get out he began a leaderette. The visitor, however, had discovered the editorial door now, and was shaking it violently. 'Why don't you answer me?' he cried. Mr. Licquorish thought for a moment of calling down the speaking-tube which communicated with the advertisement office for a clerk to come and take this youth away, but after all he was good-natured. He finished a sentence, and then opened the door. The captain strode in, but refused a chair. 'Are you the author of the book?' the editor asked. 'No,' said Greybrooke, 'but I am her friend, and I am here to thrash----' Mr. Licquorish held up his hand to stop the flow of the captain's indignation. He could never understand why the public got so excited over these little matters. 'She is a Silchester lady?' he asked. Greybrooke did not know how to reply to this. He was not sure whether Nell wanted the authorship revealed. 'That has nothing to do with the matter,' he said. 'I want the name of the writer who has libelled her.' 'On the press,' said Mr. Licquorish, repeating some phrases which he kept for such an occasion as the present, 'we have a duty to the public to perform. When books are sent us for review we never allow prejudice or private considerations to warp our judgment. The _Mirror_ has in consequence a reputation for honesty that some papers do not possess. Now I distinctly remember that this book, _The Vale of Tears_----' '_The Scorn of Scorns._' 'I mean _The Scorn of Scorns_, was carefully considered by the expert to whom it was given for review. Being honestly of opinion that the treatise----' 'It is a novel.' 'That the novel is worthless, we had to say so. Had it been clever, we should----' Mr. Licquorish paused, reading in the other's face that there was something wrong. Greybrooke had concluded that the editor had forgotten about the first review. 'Can you show me a copy of the _Mirror_,' the captain asked, 'for October 3rd?' Mr. Licquorish turned to the file, and Greybrooke looked over his shoulder. 'There it is!' cried the captain indignantly. They read the original notice together. It said that, if _The Scorn of Scorns_ was written by a new writer, his next story would be looked for with great interest. It 'could not refrain from quoting the following exquisitely tender passage.' It found the earlier pages 'as refreshing as a spring morning,' and the closing chapters were a triumph of 'the art that conceals art.' 'Well, what have you to say to that?' asked Greybrooke fiercely. 'A mistake,' said the editor blandly. 'Such things do happen occasionally.' 'You shall make reparation for it!' 'Hum,' said Mr Licquorish. 'The insult,' cried Greybrooke, 'must have been intentional.' 'No. I fancy the authoress must be to blame for this. Did she send a copy of the work to us?' 'I should think it very unlikely,' said Greybrooke, fuming. 'Not at all,' said the editor, 'especially if she is a Silchester lady.' 'What would make her do that?' 'It generally comes about in this way. The publishers send a copy of the book to a newspaper, and owing to pressure on the paper's space, no notice appears for some time. The author, who looks for it daily, thinks that the publishers have neglected their duty, and sends a copy to the office himself. The editor, forgetful that he has had a notice of the book lying ready for printing for months, gives the second copy to another reviewer. By and by the first review appears, but owing to an oversight the editor does not take note of it, and after a time, unless his attention is called to the matter, the second review appears also. Probably that is the explanation in this case.' 'But such carelessness on a respectable paper is incomprehensible,' said the captain. The editor was looking up his books to see if they shed any light on the affair, but he answered-- 'On the contrary, it is an experience known to most newspapers. Ah, I have it!' Mr. Licquorish read out, '_The Scorn of Scorns_, received September 1st, reviewed October 3rd.' Several pages farther on he discovered, '_The Scorn of Scorns_, received September 24th, reviewed December 19th.' 'You will find,' he said, 'that this explains it.' 'I don't consider the explanation satisfactory,' replied the captain, 'and I insist, first, upon an apology in the paper, and second, on getting the name of the writer of the second review.' 'I am busy this morning,' said Mr. Licquorish, opening his door, 'and what you ask is absurd. If the authoress can give me her word that she did not send the book and so bring this upon herself, we shall insert a word on the subject but not otherwise. Good-morning.' 'Give me the writer's name,' cried the captain. 'We make a point of never giving names in that way,' said Mr. Licquorish. 'You have not heard the last of this,' Greybrooke said from the doorway. 'I shall make it my duty to ferret out the coward's name, and----' 'Good-morning,' Mr. Licquorish repeated. The captain went thumping down the stairs, and meeting a printer's devil at the bottom, cuffed him soundly because he was part of the _Mirror_. To his surprise, Miss Meredith's first remark when he returned was-- 'Oh, I hope you didn't see him.' She looked at Greybrooke's face, fearing it might be stained with blood, and when he told her the result of his inquiries she seemed pleased rather than otherwise. Nell was soft-hearted after all, and she knew how that second copy of the novel had reached the _Mirror_ office. 'I shall find the fellow out, though,' said Greybrooke, grasping his cudgel firmly. 'Why, you are as vindictive as if you had written the book yourself,' said Nell. Greybrooke murmured, blushing the while, that an insult to her hurt him more than one offered to himself. Nell opened the eyes of astonishment. 'You don't think I wrote the book?' she asked; then seeing that it was so from his face, added, 'oh no, I'm not clever enough. It was written by--by a friend of mine.' Nell deserves credit for not telling Greybrooke who the friend was, for that was a secret. But there was reason to believe that she had already divulged it to twelve persons (all in the strictest confidence). When the captain returned she was explaining all about it by letter to Richard Abinger, Esq. Possibly that was why Greybrooke thought she was not nearly so nice to him now as she had been an hour before. Will was unusually quiet when he and Greybrooke said adieu to the whole family of Merediths. He was burning to know where the captain had been, and also what Nell called him back to say in such a low tone. What she said was-- 'Don't say anything about going to the _Mirror_ office, Mr. Greybrooke, to Miss Abinger.' The captain turned round to lift his hat, and at the same time expressed involuntarily a wish that Nell could see him punishing loose bowling. Mrs. Meredith beamed to him. 'There is something very nice,' she said to Nell, 'about a polite young man.' 'Yes,' murmured her daughter, 'and even if he isn't polite.' CHAPTER V ROB MARCHES TO HIS FATE On the morning before Christmas a murder was committed in Silchester, and in murders there is 'lineage.' As a consequence, the head reporter attends to them himself. In the _Mirror_ office the diary for the day was quickly altered. Kirker set off cheerfully for the scene of the crime, leaving the banquet in the Henry Institute to Tomlinson, who passed on his dinner at Dome Castle to Rob, whose church decorations were taken up by John Milton. Christmas Eve was coming on in snow when Rob and Walsh, of the _Argus_, set out for Dome Castle. Rob disliked doing dinners at any time, partly because he had not a dress suit. The dinner was an annual one given by Will's father to his tenants, and reporters were asked because the colonel made a speech. His neighbours, when they did likewise, sent reports of their own speeches (which they seemed to like) to the papers; and some of them, having called themselves eloquent and justly popular, scored the compliments out, yet in such a way that the editor would still be able to read them, and print them if he thought fit. Rob did not look forward to Colonel Abinger's reception of him, for they had met some months before, and called each other names. It was one day soon after Rob reached Silchester. He had gone a-fishing in the Dome and climbed unconsciously into preserved waters. As his creel grew heavier his back straightened; not until he returned home did the scenery impress him. He had just struck a fine fish, when a soldierly-looking man at the top of the steep bank caught sight of him. 'Hi, you sir!' shouted the onlooker. Whir went the line--there is no music like it. Rob was knee-deep in water. 'You fellow!' cried the other, brandishing his cane, 'are you aware that this water is preserved?' Rob had no time for talk. The colonel sought to attract his attention by flinging a pebble. 'Don't do that,' cried Rob fiercely. Away went the fish. Away went Rob after it. Colonel Abinger's face was red as he clambered down the bank. 'I shall prosecute you,' he shouted. 'He's gone to the bottom; fling in a stone!' cried Rob. Just then the fish showed its yellow belly and darted off again. Rob let out more line. 'No, no,' shouted the colonel, who fished himself, 'you lose him if he gets to the other side; strike, man, strike!' The line tightened, the rod bent--a glorious sight. 'Force him up stream,' cried the colonel, rolling over boulders to assist. 'Now, you have him. Bring him in. Where is your landing-net?' 'I haven't one,' cried Rob; 'take him in your hands.' The colonel stooped to grasp the fish and missed it. 'Bungler!' screamed Rob. This was too much. 'Give me your name and address,' said Colonel Abinger, rising to his feet; 'you are a poacher.' Rob paid no attention. There was a struggle. Rob did not realise that he had pushed his assailant over a rock until the fish was landed. Then he apologised, offered all his fish in lieu of his name and address, retired coolly so long as the furious soldier was in sight, and as soon as he turned a corner disappeared rapidly. He could not feel that this was the best introduction to the man with whom he was now on his way to dine. The reporter whose long strides made Walsh trot as they hurried to Dome Castle, was not quite the Rob of three months before. Now he knew how a third-rate newspaper is conducted, and the capacity for wonder had gone from him. He was in danger of thinking that the journalist's art is to write readably, authoritatively, and always in three paragraphs on a subject he knows nothing about. Rob had written many leaders, and followed readers through the streets wondering if they liked them. Once he had gone with three others to report a bishop's sermon. A curate appeared instead, and when the reporters saw him they shut their notebooks and marched blandly out of the cathedral. A public speaker had tried to bribe Rob with two half-crowns, and it is still told in Silchester how the wrathful Scotsman tore his benefactor out of the carriage he had just stepped into, and, lifting him on high, looked round to consider against which stone wall he should hurl him. He had discovered that on the first of the month Mr. Licquorish could not help respecting his staff, because on that day he paid them. Socially Rob had acquired little. Protheroe had introduced him to a pleasant family, but he had sat silent in a corner, and they told the sub-editor not to bring him back. Most of the literary staff were youths trying to be Bohemians, who liked to feel themselves sinking, and they never scaled the reserve which walled Rob round. He had taken a sitting, however, in the Scotch church, to the bewilderment of the minister, who said, 'But I thought you were a reporter?' as if there must be a mistake somewhere. Walsh could tell Rob little of Colonel Abinger. He was a brave soldier, and for many years had been a widower. His elder son was a barrister in London, whom Silchester had almost forgotten, and Walsh fancied there was some story about the daughter's being engaged to a baronet. There was also a boy, who had the other day brought the captain of his school to a Silchester football ground to show the club how to take a drop-kick. 'Does the colonel fish?' asked Rob, who would, however, have preferred to know if the colonel had a good memory for faces. 'He is a famous angler,' said Walsh; 'indeed, I have been told that his bursts of passion are over in five minutes, except when he catches a poacher.' Rob winced, for Walsh did not know of the fishing episode. 'His temper,' continued Walsh, 'is such that his male servants are said never to know whether he will give them a shilling or a whirl of his cane--until they get it. The gardener takes a look at him from behind a tree before venturing to address him. I suppose his poverty is at the bottom of it, for the estate is mortgaged heavily, and he has had to cut down trees, and even to sell his horses. The tenants seem to like him, though, and if they dared they would tell him not to think himself bound to give them this annual dinner. There are numberless stories of his fierce temper, and as many of his extravagant kindness. According to his servants, he once emptied his pocket to a beggar at a railway station, and then discovered that he had no money for his own ticket. As for the ne'er-do-weels, their importuning makes him rage, but they know he will fling them something in the end if they expose their rags sufficiently.' 'So,' said Rob, who did not want to like the colonel, 'he would not trouble about them if they kept their misery to themselves. That kind of man is more likely to be a philanthropist in your country than in mine.' 'Keep that for a Burns dinner,' suggested Walsh. Rob heard now how Tomlinson came to be nicknamed Umbrage. 'He was sub-editing one night,' Walsh explained, 'during the time of an African war, and things were going so smoothly that he and Penny were chatting amicably together about the advantages of having a few Latin phrases in a leader, such as _dolce far niente_, or _cela va sans dire_----' 'I can believe that,' said Rob, 'of Penny certainly.' 'Well, in the middle of the discussion an important war telegram arrived, to the not unnatural disgust of both. As is often the case, the message was misspelt, and barely decipherable, and one part of it puzzled Tomlinson a good deal. It read: "Zulus have taken Umbrage; English forces had to retreat." Tomlinson searched the map in vain for Umbrage, which the Zulus had taken; and Penny, being in a hurry, was sure it was a fortress. So they risked it, and next morning the chief lines in the _Mirror_ contents bill were: "LATEST NEWS OF THE WAR; CAPTURE OF UMBRAGE BY THE ZULUS."' By this time the reporters had passed into the grounds of the castle, and, being late, were hurrying up the grand avenue. It was the hour and the season when night comes on so sharply, that its shadow may be seen trailing the earth as a breeze runs along a field of corn. Heard from a height, the roar of the Dome among rocks might have been the rustle of the surrounding trees in June; so men and women who grow old together sometimes lend each other a voice. Walsh, seeing his opportunity in Rob's silence, began to speak of himself. He told how his first press-work had been a series of letters he had written when at school, and contributed to a local paper under the signatures of 'Paterfamilias' and 'An Indignant Ratepayer.' Rob scarcely heard. The bare romantic scenery impressed him, and the snow in his face was like a whiff of Thrums. He was dreaming, but not of the reception he might get at the castle, when the clatter of horses awoke him. 'There is a machine behind us,' he said, though he would have written trap. A brougham lumbered into sight. As its lamps flashed on the pedestrians, the coachman jerked his horses to the side, and Rob had a glimpse of the carriage's occupant. The brougham stopped. 'I beg your pardon,' said the traveller, opening his window, and addressing Rob, 'but in the darkness I mistook you for Colonel Abinger.' 'We are on our way to the castle,' said Walsh, stepping forward. 'Ah, then,' said the stranger, 'perhaps you will give me your company for the short distance we have still to go?' There was a fine courtesy in his manner that made the reporters feel their own deficiencies, yet Rob thought the stranger repented his offer as soon as it was made. Walsh had his hand on the door, but Rob said-- 'We are going to Dome Castle as reporters.' 'Oh!' said the stranger. Then he bowed graciously, and pulled up the window. The carriage rumbled on, leaving the reporters looking at each other. Rob laughed. For the first time in his life the advantage a handsome man has over a plain one had struck him. He had only once seen such a face before, and that was in marble in the Silchester Art Museum. This man looked thirty years of age, but there was not a line on his broad white brow. The face was magnificently classic, from the strong Roman nose to the firm chin. The eyes, too beautiful almost for his sex, were brown and wistful, of the kind that droop in disappointment oftener than they blaze with anger. All the hair on his face was a heavy drooping moustache that almost hid his mouth. Walsh shook his fist at this insult to the Press. 'It is the baronet I spoke of to you,' he said. 'I forget who he is; indeed, I rather think he travelled _incognito_ when he was here last. I don't understand what he is doing here.' 'Why, I should say this is just the place where he would be if he is to marry Miss Abinger.' 'That was an old story,' said Walsh. 'If there ever was an engagement it was broken off. Besides, if he had been expected we should have known of it at the _Argus_.' Walsh was right. Sir Clement Dowton was not expected at Dome Castle, and, like Rob, he was not even certain that he would be welcome. As he drew near his destination his hands fidgeted with the window strap, yet there was an unaccountable twinkle in his eye. Had there been any onlookers they would have been surprised to see that all at once the baronet's sense of humour seemed to overcome his fears, and instead of quaking, he laughed heartily. Sir Clement was evidently one of the men who carry their joke about with them. This unexpected guest did Rob one good turn. When the colonel saw Sir Clement he hesitated for a moment as if not certain how to greet him. Then the baronet, who was effusive, murmured that he had something to say to him, and Colonel Abinger's face cleared. He did Sir Clement the unusual honour of accompanying him upstairs himself, and so Rob got the seat assigned to him at the dinner-table without having to meet his host in the face. The butler marched him down a long table with a twist in it, and placed him under arrest, as it were, in a chair from which he saw only a few of the company. The dinner had already begun, but the first thing he realised as he took his seat was that there was a lady on each side of him, and a table-napkin in front. He was not sure if he was expected to address the ladies, and he was still less certain about the table-napkin. Of such things he had read, and he had even tried to be prepared for them. Rob looked nervously at the napkin, and then took a covert glance along the table. There was not a napkin in sight except one which a farmer had tied round his neck. Rob's fingers wanted to leave the napkin alone, but by an effort he forced them toward it. All this time his face was a blank, but the internal struggle was sharp. He took hold of the napkin, however, and spread it on his knees. It fell to the floor immediately afterwards, but he disregarded that. It was no longer staring at him from the table, and with a heavy sigh of relief he began to feel more at ease. There is nothing like burying our bogies. His position prevented Rob's seeing either the colonel at the head of the table or Miss Abinger at the foot of it, and even Walsh was hidden from view. But his right-hand neighbour was a local doctor's wife, whom the colonel had wanted to honour without honouring too much, and she gave him some information. Rob was relieved to hear her address him, and she was interested in a tame Scotsman. 'I was once in the far north myself,' she said, 'as far as Orkney. We were nearly drowned in crossing that dreadful sea between it and the mainland. The Solway Firth, is it?' Rob thought for a moment of explaining what sea it is, and then he thought, why should he? 'Yes, the Solway Firth,' he said. 'It was rather an undertaking,' she pursued, 'but though we were among the mountains for days, we never encountered any of those robber chieftains one reads about--caterans I think you call them?' 'You were very lucky,' said Rob. 'Were we not? But, you know, we took such precautions. There was quite a party of us, including my father, who has travelled a great deal, and all the gentlemen wore kilts. My father said it was always prudent to do in Rome as the Romans do.' 'I have no doubt,' said Rob, 'that in that way you escaped the caterans. They are very open to flattery.' 'So my father said. We also found that we could make ourselves understood by saying "whatever," and remembering to call the men "she" and the women "he." What a funny custom that is!' 'We can't get out of it,' said Rob. 'There is one thing,' the lady continued, 'that you can tell me. I have been told that in winter the wild boars take refuge in the streets of Inverness, and that there are sometimes very exciting hunts after them?' 'That is only when they run away with children,' Rob explained. 'Then the natives go out in large bodies and shoot them with claymores. It is a most exciting scene.' When the doctor's wife learned that this was Rob's first visit to the castle, she told him at once that she was there frequently. It escaped his notice that she paused here and awaited the effect. She was not given to pausing. 'My husband,' she said, 'attended on Lady Louisa during her last illness--quite ten years ago. I was married very young,' she added hurriedly. Rob was very nearly saying he saw that. The words were in his mouth, when he hesitated, reflecting that it was not worth while. This is only noticeable as showing that he missed his first compliment. 'Lady Louisa?' he repeated instead. 'Oh yes, the colonel married one of Lord Tarlington's daughters. There were seven of them, you know, and no sons, and when the youngest was born it was said that a friend of his lordship sent him a copy of Wordsworth, with the page turned down at the poem "We are Seven "--a lady friend, I believe.' 'Is Miss Abinger like the colonel?' asked Rob, who had heard it said that she was beautiful, and could not help taking an interest in her in consequence. 'You have not seen Miss Abinger?' asked the doctor's wife. 'Ah, you came late, and that vulgar-looking farmer hides her altogether. She is a lovely girl, but----' Rob's companion pursed her lips. 'She is so cold and proud,' she added. 'As proud as her father?' Rob asked, aghast. 'Oh, the colonel is humility itself beside her. He freezes at times, but she never thaws.' Rob sighed involuntarily. He was not aware that his acquaintances spoke in a similar way of him. His eyes wandered up the table till they rested of their own accord on a pretty girl in blue. At that moment she was telling Greybrooke that he could call her Nell, because 'Miss' Meredith sounded like a reproach. The reporter looked at Nell with satisfaction, and the doctor's wife followed his thoughts so accurately that, before she could check herself, she said, 'Do you think so?' Then Rob started, which confused both of them, and for the remainder of the dinner the loquacious lady seemed to take less interest in him, he could not understand why. Flung upon his own resources, he remembered that he had not spoken to the lady on his other side. Had Rob only known it, she felt much more uncomfortable in that great dining-room than he did. No one was speaking to her, and she passed the time between the courses breaking her bread to pieces and eating it slowly, crumb by crumb. Rob thought of something to say to her, but when he tried the words over in his own mind they seemed so little worth saying that he had to think again. He found himself counting the crumbs, and then it struck him that he might ask her if she would like any salt. He did so, but she thought he asked for salt, and passed the salt-cellar to him, whereupon Rob, as the simplest way to get out of it, helped himself to more salt, though he did not need it. The intercourse thus auspiciously begun, went no further, and they never met again. It might have been a romance. The colonel had not quite finished his speech, which was to the effect that so long as his tenants looked up to him as some one superior to themselves they would find him an indulgent landlord, when the tread of feet was heard outside, and then the music of the waits. The colonel frowned and raised his voice, but his guests caught themselves tittering, and read their host's rage in his darkening face. Forgetting that the waits were there by his own invitation, he signed to James, the butler, to rush out and mow them down. James did not interpret the message so, but for the moment it was what his master meant. While the colonel was hesitating whether to go on, Rob saw Nell nod encouragingly to Greybrooke. He left his seat, and before any one knew what he was about, had flung open one of the windows. The room filled at once with music, and, as if by common consent, the table was deserted. Will opened the remaining windows, and the waits, who had been singing to shadows on the white blinds, all at once found a crowded audience. Rob hardly realised what it meant, for he had never heard the waits before. It was a scene that would have silenced a schoolgirl. The night was so clear, that beyond the lawn where the singers were grouped the brittle trees showed in every twig. No snow was falling, and so monotonous was the break of the river, that the ear would only have noticed it had it stopped. The moon stood overhead like a frozen round of snow. Looking over the heads of those who had gathered at one of the windows, Rob saw first Will Abinger and then the form of a girl cross to the singers. Some one followed her with a cloak. From the French windows steps dropped to the lawn. A lady beside Rob shivered and retired to the fireside, but Nell whispered to Greybrooke that she must run after Mary. Several others followed her down the steps. Rob, looking round for Walsh, saw him in conversation with the colonel. Probably he was taking down the remainder of the speech. Then a lady's voice said, 'Who is that magnificent young man?' The sentence ended 'with the hob-nailed boots,' and the reference was to Rob, but he only caught the first words. He thought the baronet was spoken of, and suddenly remembered that he had not appeared at the dinner-table. As Sir Clement entered the room at that moment in evening dress, making most of those who surrounded him look mean by comparison, Rob never learned who the magnificent young man was. Sir Clement's entrance was something of a sensation, and Rob saw several ladies raise their eyebrows. All seemed to know him by name, and some personally. The baronet's nervousness had evidently passed away, for he bowed and smiled to every one, claiming some burly farmers as old acquaintances though he had never seen them before. His host and he seemed already on the most cordial terms, but the colonel was one of the few persons in the room who was not looking for Miss Abinger. At last Sir Clement asked for her. 'I believe,' said some one in answer to the colonel's inquiring glance round the room, 'that Miss Abinger is speaking with the waits.' 'Perhaps I shall see her,' said Dowton, stepping out at one of the windows. Colonel Abinger followed him to the window, but no farther, and at that moment a tall figure on the snowy lawn crossed his line of vision. It was Rob, who, not knowing what to do with himself, had wandered into the open. His back was toward the colonel, and something in his walk recalled to that choleric officer the angler whom he had encountered on the Dome. 'That is the man--I was sure I knew the face,' said Colonel Abinger. He spoke in a whisper to himself, but his hands closed with a snap. Unconscious of all this, Rob strolled on till he found a path that took him round the castle. Suddenly he caught sight of a blue dress, and at the same moment a girl's voice exclaimed, 'Oh, I am afraid it is lost!' The speaker bent, as if to look for something in the snow, and Rob blundered up to her. 'If you have lost anything,' he said, 'perhaps I can find it.' Rob had matches in his pocket, and he struck one of them. Then, to his surprise, he noticed that Nell was not alone. Greybrooke was with her, and he was looking foolish. 'Thank you very much,' said Nell sweetly; 'it is a--a bracelet.' Rob went down on his knees to look for the bracelet, but it surprised him a little that Greybrooke did not follow his example. If he had looked up, he would have seen that the captain was gazing at Nell in amazement. 'I am afraid it is lost,' Nell repeated, 'or perhaps I dropped it in the dining-room.' Greybrooke's wonder was now lost in a grin, for Nell had lost nothing, unless perhaps for the moment her sense of what was fit and proper. The captain had followed her on to the lawn, and persuaded her to come and look down upon the river from the top of the cliff. She had done so, she told herself, because he was a boy; but he had wanted her to do it because she was a woman. On the very spot where Richard Abinger, barrister-at-law, had said something to her that Nell would never forget, the captain had presumptuously kissed her hand, and Nell had allowed him, because after all it was soon over. It was at that very moment that Rob came in sight, and Nell thought she was justified in deceiving him. Rob would have remained a long time on the snow if she had not had a heart. 'Yes, I believe I did drop it in the dining-room,' said Nell, in such a tone of conviction that Rob rose to his feet. His knees were white in her service, and Nell felt that she liked this young man. 'I am so sorry to have troubled you, Mr.----Mr.----' began the young lady. 'My name is Angus,' said Rob; 'I am a reporter on the _Silchester Mirror_.' Greybrooke started, and Nell drew back in horror, but the next second she was smiling. Rob thought it was kindliness that made her do it, but it was really a smile of triumph. She felt that she was on the point of making a discovery at last. Greybrooke would have blurted out a question, but Nell stopped him. 'Get me a wrap of some kind, Mr. Greybrooke,' she said, with such sweet imperiousness that the captain went without a word. Half-way he stopped to call himself a fool, for he had remembered all at once about Raleigh and his cloak, and seen how he might have adapted that incident to his advantage by offering to put his own coat round Nell's shoulders. It was well that Greybrooke did not look back, for he would have seen Miss Meredith take Rob's arm--which made Rob start--and lead him in the direction in which Miss Abinger was supposed to have gone. 'The literary life must be delightful,' said artful Nell, looking up into her companion's face. Rob appreciated the flattery, but his pride made him say that the literary life was not the reporter's. 'I always read the _Mirror_,' continued Nell, on whom the moon was having a bad effect to-night, 'and often I wonder who writes the articles. There was a book-review in it a few days ago that I--I liked very much.' 'Do you remember what the book was?' asked Rob, jumping into the pit. 'Let me see,' said Nell, putting her head to the side, 'it was--yes, it was a novel called--called _The Scorn of Scorns_.' Rob's good angel was very near him at that moment, but not near enough to put her palm over his mouth. 'That review was mine,' said Rob, with uncalled-for satisfaction. 'Was it?' cried his companion, pulling away her arm viciously. The path had taken them to the top of the pile of rocks, from which it is a sheer descent of a hundred feet to the Dome. At this point the river is joined by a smaller but not less noisy stream, which rushes at it at right angles. Two of the castle walls rise up here as if part of the cliff, and though the walk goes round them, they seem to the angler looking up from the opposite side of the Dome to be part of the rock. From the windows that look to the west and north one can see down into the black waters, and hear the Ferret, as the smaller stream is called, fling itself over jagged boulders into the Dome. The ravine coming upon him suddenly, took away Rob's breath, and he hardly felt Nell snatch away her arm. She stood back, undecided what to do for a moment, and they were separated by a few yards. Then Rob heard a man's voice, soft and low, but passionate. He knew it to be Sir Clement Dowton's, though he lost the words. A girl's voice answered, however, a voice so exquisitely modulated, so clear and pure, that Rob trembled with delight in it. This is what it said-- 'No, Sir Clement Dowton, I bear you no ill-will, but I do not love you. Years ago I made an idol and worshipped it, because I knew no better, but I am a foolish girl no longer, and I know now that it was a thing of clay.' To Rob's amazement he found himself murmuring these words even before they were spoken. He seemed to know them so well, that had the speaker missed anything, he could have put her right. It was not sympathy that worked this marvel. He had read all this before, or something very like it, in _The Scorn of Scorns_. Nell, too, heard the voice, but did not catch the words. She ran forward, and as she reached Rob, a tall girl in white, with a dark hood over her head, pushed aside a bush and came into view. 'Mary,' cried Miss Meredith, 'this gentleman here is the person who wrote _that_ in the _Mirror_. Let me introduce you to him, Mr. Angus, Miss----' and then Nell shrank back in amazement, as she saw who was with her friend. 'Sir Clement Dowton!' she exclaimed. Rob, however, did not hear her, nor see the baronet, for looking up with a guilty feeling at his heart, his eyes met Mary Abinger. CHAPTER VI THE ONE WOMAN Daybreak on the following morning found the gas blazing in Rob's lodgings. Rob was seated in an arm-chair, his feet on the cold hearth. _The Scorn of Scorns_ lay on the mantelpiece carefully done up in brown paper, lest a speck of dust should fall on it, and he had been staring at the ribs of the fireplace for the last three hours without seeing them. He had not thought of the gas. His bed was unslept on. His damp boots had dried on his feet. He did not feel cold. All night he had sat there, a man mesmerised. For the only time in his life he had forgotten to wind up his watch. At times his lips moved as if he were speaking to himself, and a smile lit up his face. Then a change of mood came, and he beat the fender with his feet till the fire-irons rattled. Thinking over these remarks brought the rapture to his face: 'How do you do, Mr. Angus?' 'You must not take to heart what Miss Meredith said.' 'Please don't say any more about it. I am quite sure you gave your honest opinion about my book.' 'I am so glad you think this like Scotland, because, of course, that is the highest compliment a Scotsman can pay.' 'Good-night, Mr. Angus.' That was all she had said to him, but the more Rob thought over her remarks the more he liked them. It was not so much the words themselves that thrilled him as the way they were said. Other people had asked, 'How do you do, Mr. Angus?' without making an impression, but her greeting was a revelation of character, for it showed that though she knew who he was she wanted to put him at his ease. This is a delightful attribute in a woman, and worth thinking about. Just before Miss Abinger said, 'How do you do, Mr. Angus?' Rob had realised what people meant by calling her proud. She was holding her head very high as she appeared in the path, and when Nell told her who Rob was she flushed. He looked hopelessly at her, bereft of speech, as he saw a tear glisten on her eyelid; and as their eyes met she read into the agony that he was suffering because he had hurt her. It was then that Mary made that memorable observation, 'How do you do, Mr. Angus?' They turned toward the castle doors, Nell and the baronet in front, and Rob blurted out some self-reproaches in sentences that had neither beginning nor end. Mary had told him not to take it so terribly to heart, but her voice trembled a little, for this had been a night of incident to her. Rob knew that it was for his sake she had checked that tear, and as he sat in his lodgings through the night he saw that she had put aside her own troubles to lessen his. When he thought of that he drew a great breath. The next moment his whole body shuddered to think what a brute he had been, and then she seemed to touch his elbow again, and he half rose from his chair in a transport. As soon as he reached his lodgings Rob had taken up _The Scorn of Scorns_, which he had not yet returned to Mr. Licquorish, and re-read it in a daze. There were things in it so beautiful now that they caught in his throat and stopped his reading; they took him so far into the thoughts of a girl that to go farther seemed like eavesdropping. When he read it first _The Scorn of Scorns_ had been written in a tongue Rob did not know, but now he had the key in his hands. There is a universal language that comes upon young people suddenly, and enables an English girl, for instance, to understand what a Chinaman means when he looks twice at her. Rob had mastered it so suddenly that he was only its slave at present. His horse had run away with him. Had the critic of _The Scorn of Scorns_ been a bald-headed man with two chins, who did not know the authoress, he would have smiled at the severity with which she took perfidious man to task, and written an indulgent criticism without reading beyond the second chapter. If he had been her father he would have laughed a good deal at her heroics, but now and again they would have touched him, and he would have locked the book away in his desk, seeing no particular cleverness in it, but feeling proud of his daughter. It would have brought such thoughts to him about his wife as suddenly fill a man with tenderness--thoughts he seldom gives expression to, though she would like to hear them. Rob, however, drank in the book, his brain filled with the writer of it. It was about a young girl who had given her heart to a stranger, and one day when she was full of the joy of his love he had disappeared. She waited, wondering, fearing, and then her heart broke, and her only desire was to die. No one could account for the change that came over her, for she was proud, and her relatives were not sympathetic. She had no mother to go to, and her father could not have understood. She became listless, and though she smiled and talked to all, when she went to her solitary bed-chamber she turned her face in silence to the wall. Then a fever came to her, and after that she had to be taken to the Continent. What shook her listlessness was an accident to her father. It was feared that he was on his deathbed, and as she nursed him she saw that her life had been a selfish one. From that moment she resolved if he got better (is it not terrible this, that the best of us try to make terms with God?) to devote her life to him, and to lead a nobler existence among the poor and suffering ones at home. The sudden death of a relative who was not a good man frightened her so much that she became ill again, and now she was so fearful of being untruthful that she could not make a statement of fact without adding 'I think so,' under her breath. She let people take advantage of her lest she should be taking advantage of them, and when she passed a cripple on the road she walked very slowly so that he should not feel his infirmity. Years afterwards she saw the man who had pretended to love her and then ridden away. He said that he could explain everything to her, and that he loved her still; but she drew herself up, and with a look of ineffable scorn, told him that she no longer loved him. When they first met, she said, she had been little more than a child, and so she had made an idol of him. But long since the idol had crumbled to pieces, and now she knew that she had worshipped a thing of clay. She wished him well, but she no longer loved him. As Lord Caltonbridge listened he knew that she spoke the truth, and his eyes drooped before her dignified but contemptuous gaze. Then, concludes the author, dwelling upon this little triumph with a satisfaction that hardly suggests a heart broken beyond mending, he turned upon his heel, at last realising what he was; and, feeling smaller and meaner than had been his wont, left the Grange for the second and last time. How much of this might be fiction, Rob was not in a mind to puzzle over. It seemed to him that the soul of a pure-minded girl had been laid bare to him. To look was almost a desecration, and yet it was there whichever way he turned. A great longing rose in his heart to see Mary Abinger again and tell her what he thought of himself now. He rose and paced the floor, and the words he could not speak last night came to his lips in a torrent. Like many men who live much alone, Rob often held imaginary conversations with persons far distant, and he denounced himself to this girl a score of times as he paced back and forwards. Always she looked at him in reply with that wonderful smile which had pleaded with him not to be unhappy on her account. Horrible fears laid hold of him that after the guests had departed she had gone to her room and wept. That villain Sir Clement had doubtless left the castle for the second and last time, 'feeling smaller and meaner than had been his wont' (Rob clenched his fists at the thought of him), but how could he dare to rage at the baronet when he had been as great a scoundrel himself? Rob looked about him for his hat; a power not to be resisted was drawing him back to Dome Castle. He heard the clatter of crockery in the kitchen as he opened his door, and it recalled him to himself. At that moment it flashed upon him that he had forgotten to write any notice of Colonel Abinger's speech. He had neglected the office and come straight home. At any other time this would have startled him, but now it seemed the merest trifle. It passed for the moment from his mind, and its place was taken by the remembrance that his boots were muddy and his coat soaking. For the first time in his life the seriousness of going out with his hair unbrushed came home to him. He had hitherto been content to do little more than fling a comb at it once a day. Rob returned to his room, and, crossing to the mirror, looked anxiously into it to see what he was like. He took off his coat and brushed it vigorously. Having laved his face, he opened his box, and produced from it two neckties, which he looked at for a long time before he could make up his mind which to wear. Then he changed his boots. When he had brushed his hat he remembered with anxiety some one on the _Mirror's_ having asked him why he wore it so far back on his head. He tilted it forward, and carefully examined the effect in the looking-glass. Then forgetful that the sounds from the kitchen betokened the approach of breakfast, he hurried out of the house. It was a frosty morning, and already the streets were alive, but Rob looked at no one. For women in the abstract he now felt an unconscious pity, because they were all so very unlike Mary Abinger. He had grown so much in the night that the Rob Angus of the day before seemed but an acquaintance of his youth. He was inside the grounds of Dome Castle again before he realised that he had no longer a right to be there. By fits and starts he remembered not to soil his boots. He might have been stopped at the lodge, but at present it had no tenant. A year before, Colonel Abinger had realised that he could not keep both a horse and a lodge-keeper, and that he could keep neither if his daughter did not part with her maid. He yielded to Miss Abinger's entreaties, and kept the horse. Rob went on at a swinging pace till he turned an abrupt corner of the walk and saw Dome Castle standing up before him. Then he started, and turned back hastily. This was not owing to his remembering that he was trespassing, but because he had seen a young lady coming down the steps. Rob had walked five miles without his breakfast to talk to Miss Abinger, but as soon as he saw her he fled. When he came to himself he was so fearful of her seeing him, that he hurried behind a tree, where he had the appearance of a burglar. Mary Abinger came quickly up the avenue, unconscious that she was watched, and Rob discovered in a moment that after all the prettiest thing about her was the way she walked. She carried a little basket in her hand, and her dress was a blending of brown and yellow, with a great deal of fur about the throat. Rob, however, did not take the dress into account until she had passed him, when, no longer able to see her face, he gazed with delight after her. Had Rob been a lady he would probably have come to the conclusion that the reason why Miss Abinger wore all that fur instead of a jacket was because she knew it became her better. Perhaps it was. Even though a young lady has the satisfaction of feeling that her heart is now adamant, that is no excuse for her dressing badly. Rob's opinion was that it would matter very little what she wore, because some pictures look lovely in any frame, but that was a point on which he and Miss Abinger always differed. Only after long consideration had she come to the conclusion that the hat she was now wearing was undoubtedly the shape that suited her best, and even yet she was ready to spend time in thinking about other shapes. What would have seemed even more surprising to Rob was that she had made up her mind that one side of her face was better than the other side. No mere man, however, could ever have told which was the better side of Miss Abinger's face. It was a face to stir the conscience of a good man, and make unworthy men keep their distance, for it spoke first of purity, which can never be present anywhere without being felt. All men are born with a craving to find it, and they never look for it but among women. The strength of the craving is the measure of any man's capacity to love, and without it love on his side would be impossible. Mary Abinger was fragile because she was so sensitive. She carried everywhere a fear to hurt the feelings of others, that was a bodkin at her heart. Men and women in general prefer to give and take. The keenness with which she felt necessitated the garment of reserve, which those who did not need it for themselves considered pride. Her weakness called for something to wrap it up. There were times when it pleased her to know that the disguise was effective, but not when it deceived persons she admired. The cynicism of _The Scorn of Scorns_ was as much a cloak as her coldness, for she had an exquisite love of what is good and fine in life that idealised into heroes persons she knew or heard of as having a virtue. It would have been cruel to her to say that there are no heroes. When she found how little of the heroic there was in Sir Clement Dowton she told herself that there are none, and sometimes other persons had made her repeat this since. She seldom reasoned about things, however, unless her feelings had been wounded, and soon again she was dreaming of the heroic. Heroes are people to love, and Mary's idea of what love must be would have frightened some persons from loving her. With most men affection for a woman is fed on her regard for them. Greatness in love is no more common than greatness in leading armies. Only the hundredth man does not prefer to dally where woman is easiest to win; most finding the maids of honour a satisfactory substitute for the princess. So the boy in the street prefers two poor apples to a sound one. It may be the secret of England's greatness. On this Christmas Day Mary Abinger came up the walk rapidly, scorning herself for ever having admired Sir Clement Dowton. She did everything in the superlative degree, and so rather wondered that a thunderbolt was not sent direct from above to kill him--as if there were thunderbolts for every one. If we got our deserts most of us would be knocked on the head with a broomstick. When she was out of sight, Rob's courage returned, and he remembered that he was there in the hope of speaking to her. He hurried up the walk after her, but when he neared her he fell back in alarm. His heart was beating violently. He asked himself in a quaver what it was that he had arranged to say first. In her little basket Mary had Christmas presents for a few people, inhabitants of a knot of houses not far distant from the castle gates. They were her father's tenants, and he rather enjoyed their being unable to pay much rent, it made them so dependent. Had Rob seen how she was received in some of these cottages, how she sat talking merrily with one bed-ridden old woman whom cheerfulness kept alive, and not only gave a disabled veteran a packet of tobacco, but filled his pipe for him, so that he gallantly said he was reluctant to smoke it (trust an old man for gallantry), and even ate pieces of strange cakes to please her hostesses, he would often have thought of it afterwards. However, it would have been unnecessary prodigality to show him that, for his mind was filled with the incomparable manner in which she knocked at doors and smiled when she came out. Once she dropped her basket, and he could remember nothing so exquisite as her way of picking it up. Rob lurked behind trees and peered round hedges, watching Miss Abinger go from one house to another, but he could not shake himself free of the fear that all the world had its eye on him. Hitherto not his honesty but its bluntness had told against him (the honesty of a good many persons is only stupidity asserting itself), and now he had not the courage to be honest. When any wayfarers approached he whistled to the fields as if he had lost a dog in them, or walked smartly eastward (until he got round a corner) like one who was in a hurry to reach Silchester. He looked covertly at the few persons who passed him, to see if they were looking at him. A solitary crow fluttered into the air from behind a wall, and Rob started. In a night he had become self-conscious. At last Mary turned homewards, with the sun in her face. Rob was moving toward the hamlet when he saw her, and in spite of himself he came to a dead stop. He knew that if she passed inside the gates of the castle his last chance of speaking to her was gone; but it was not that which made him keep his ground. He was shaking as the thin boards used to do when they shot past his circular saw. His mind, in short, had run away and left him. On other occasions Mary would not have thought of doing more than bow to Rob, but he had Christmas Day in his favour, and she smiled. 'A happy Christmas to you, Mr. Angus,' she said, holding out her hand. It was then that Rob lifted his hat, and overcame his upbringing. His unaccustomed fingers insisted on lifting it in such a cautious way that, in a court of law, it could have been argued that he was only planting it more firmly on his head. He did not do it well, but he did it. Some men would have succumbed altogether on realising so sharply that it is not women who are terrible, but a woman. Here is a clear case in which the part is greater than the whole. Rob would have liked to wish Miss Abinger a happy Christmas too, but the words would not form, and had she chosen she could have left him looking very foolish. But Mary had blushed slightly when she caught sight of Rob standing helplessly in the middle of the road, and this meant that she understood what he was doing there. A girl can overlook a great deal in a man who admires her. She feels happier. It increases her self-respect. So Miss Abinger told him that, if the frost held, the snow would soon harden, but if a thaw came it would melt; and then Rob tore out of himself the words that tended to slip back as they reached his tongue. 'I don't know how I could have done it,' he said feebly, beginning at the end of what he had meant to say. There he stuck again. Mary knew what he spoke of, and her pale face coloured. She shrank from talking of _The Scorn of Scorns_. 'Please don't let that trouble you,' she said, with an effort. 'I was really only a schoolgirl when I wrote it, and Miss Meredith got it printed recently as a birthday surprise for me. I assure you I would never have thought of publishing it myself for--for people to read. Schoolgirls, you know, Mr. Angus, are full of such silly sentiment.' A breeze of indignation shook 'No, no!' out of Rob, but Mary did not heed. 'I know better now,' she said; 'indeed, not even you, the hardest of my critics, sees more clearly than I the--the childishness of the book.' Miss Abinger's voice faltered a very little, and Rob's sufferings allowed him to break out. 'No,' he said, with a look of appeal in his eyes that were as grey as hers, 'it was a madness that let me write like that. _The Scorn of Scorns_ is the most beautiful, the tenderest----' He stuck once more. Miss Abinger could have helped him again, but she did not. Perhaps she wanted him to go on. He could not do so, but he repeated what he had said already, which may have been the next best thing to do. 'You do surprise me now, Mr. Angus,' said Mary, light-hearted all at once, 'for you know you scarcely wrote like that.' 'Ah, but I have read the book since I saw you,' Rob blurted out, 'and that has made such a difference.' A wiser man might have said a more foolish thing. Mary looked up smiling. Her curiosity was aroused, and at once she became merciless. Hitherto she had only tried to be kind to Rob, but now she wanted to be kind to herself. 'You can hardly have re-read my story since last night,' she said, shaking her fair head demurely. 'I read it all through the night,' exclaimed Rob, in such a tone that Mary started. She had no desire to change the conversation, however; she did not start so much as that. 'But you had to write papa's speech?' she said. 'I forgot to do it,' Rob answered awkwardly. His heart sank, for he saw that here was another cause he had given Miss Abinger to dislike him. Possibly he was wrong. There may be extenuating circumstances that will enable the best of daughters to overlook an affront to her father's speeches. 'But it was in the _Mirror_. I read it,' said Mary. 'Was it?' said Rob, considerably relieved. How it could have got there was less of a mystery to him than to her, for Protheroe had sub-edited so many speeches to tenants that in an emergency he could always guess at what the landlords said. 'It was rather short,' Mary admitted, 'compared with the report in the _Argus_. Papa thought----' She stopped hastily. 'He thought it should have been longer?' asked Rob. Then before he had time to think of it, he had told her of his first meeting with the colonel. 'I remember papa was angry at the time,' Mary said, 'but you need not have been afraid of his recognising you last night. He did recognise you.' 'Did he?' 'Yes; but you were his guest.' Rob could not think of anything more to say, and he saw that Mary was about to bid him good-morning. He found himself walking with her in the direction of the castle gates. 'This scenery reminds me of Scotland,' he said. 'I love it,' said Mary (man's only excellence over woman is that his awe of this word prevents his using it so lightly), 'and I am glad that I shall be here until the season begins.' Rob had no idea what the season was, but he saw that some time Mary would be going away, and his face said, what would he do then? 'Then I go to London with the Merediths,' she continued, adding thoughtfully, 'I suppose you mean to go to London, Mr. Angus? My brother says that all literary men drift there.' 'Yes, oh yes,' said Rob. 'Soon?' 'Immediately,' he replied recklessly. They reached the gates, and, as Mary held out her hand, the small basket was tilted upon her arm, and a card fluttered out. 'It is a Christmas card a little boy in one of those houses gave me,' she said, as Rob returned it to her. 'Have you got many Christmas cards to-day, Mr. Angus?' 'None,' said Rob. 'Not even from your relatives?' asked Mary, beginning to pity him more than was necessary. 'I have no relatives,' he replied; 'they are all dead.' 'I was in Scotland two summers ago,' Mary said, very softly, 'at a place called Glen Quharity; papa was there shooting. But I don't suppose you know it?' 'Our Glen Quharity!' exclaimed Rob; 'why, you must have passed through Thrums?' 'We were several times in Thrums. Have you been there?' 'I was born in it; I was never thirty miles away from it until I came here.' 'Oh,' cried Mary, 'then you must be the literary----' She stopped and reddened. 'The literary saw-miller,' said Rob, finishing her sentence; 'that was what they called me, I know, at Glen Quharity Lodge.' Mary looked up at him with a new interest, for when she was there Glen Quharity had been full of the saw-miller, who could not only talk in Greek, but had a reputation for tossing the caber. 'Papa told me some months ago,' she said, in surprise, 'that the liter----, that you had joined the Press in England, but he evidently did not know of your being in Silchester.' 'But how could he have known anything about me?' asked Rob, surprised in turn. 'This is so strange,' Mary answered. 'Why, papa takes credit for having got you your appointment on the press.' 'It was a minister, a Mr. Rorrison, who did that for me,' said Rob; 'indeed, he was so good that I could have joined the Press a year ago by his help, had not circumstances compelled me to remain at home.' 'I did not know the clergyman's name,' Mary said, 'but it was papa who spoke of you to him first. Don't you remember writing out this clergyman's sermon in shorthand, and a messenger's coming to you for your report on horseback next day?' 'Certainly I do,' said Rob, 'and he asked me to write it out in longhand as quickly as possible. That was how I got to know Mr. Rorrison; and, as I understood, he had sent for the report of the sermon, on hearing accidentally that I had taken it down, because he had some reason for wanting a copy of it.' 'Perhaps that was how it was told to you afterwards,' Mary said, 'but it was really papa who wanted the sermon.' 'I should like to know all about it,' Rob said, seeing that she hesitated. Colonel Abinger had not seemed to him the kind of man who would send a messenger on horseback about the country in quest of sermons. 'I am afraid,' Mary explained, 'that it arose out of a wager. This clergyman was staying at the Lodge, but papa was the only other person there who would go as far as Thrums to hear him preach. I was not there that year, so I don't know why papa went, but when he returned he told the others that the sermon had been excellent. There is surely an English church in Thrums, for I am sure papa would not think a sermon excellent that was preached in a chapel?' 'There is,' said Rob; 'but in Thrums it is called the chapel.' 'Well, some badinage arose out of papa's eulogy, and it ended in a bet that he could not tell the others what this fine sermon was about. He was to get a night to think it over. Papa took the bet a little rashly, for when he put it to himself he found that he could not even remember the text. As he told me afterwards (here Mary smiled a little), he had a general idea of the sermon, but could not quite put it into words, and he was fearing that he would lose the wager (and be laughed at, which always vexes papa), when he heard of your report. So a messenger was sent to Thrums for it--and papa won his bet.' 'But how did Mr. Rorrison hear of my report, then?' 'Oh, I forgot; papa told him afterwards, and was so pleased with his victory, that when he heard Mr. Rorrison had influence with some press people, he suggested to him that something might be done for you.' 'This is strange,' said Rob, 'and perhaps the strangest thing about it is that if Colonel Abinger could identify me with the saw-miller, he would be sorry that he had interfered.' Mary saw the force of this so clearly that she could not contradict him. 'Surely,' she said, 'I heard when I was at the Lodge of your having a niece, and that you and the little child lived alone in the saw-mill?' 'Yes,' Rob answered hoarsely, 'but she is dead. She wandered from home, and was found dead on a mountain-side.' 'Was it long ago?' asked Mary, very softly. 'Only a few months ago,' Rob said, making his answer as short as possible, for the death of Davy moved him still. 'She was only four years old.' Mary's hand went half-way toward his involuntarily. His mouth was twitching. He knew how good she was. 'That card,' he began, and hesitated. 'Oh, would you care to have it?' said Mary. But just then Colonel Abinger walked into them, somewhat amazed to see his daughter talking to one of the lower orders. Neither Rob nor Mary had any inclination to tell him that this was the Scotsman he had befriended. 'This is Mr. Angus, papa,' said Mary, 'who--who was with us last night.' 'Mr. Angus and I have met before, I think,' replied her father, recalling the fishing episode. His brow darkened, and Rob was ready for anything, but Colonel Abinger was a gentleman. 'I always wanted to see you again, Mr. Angus,' he said, with an effort, 'to ask you--what flies you were using that day?' Rob muttered something in answer, which the colonel did not try to catch. Mary smiled and bowed, and the next moment she had disappeared with her father down the avenue. What followed cannot be explained. When Rob roused himself from his amazement at Mary Abinger's having been in Thrums without his feeling her presence, something made him go a few yards inside the castle grounds, and, lying lightly on the snow, he saw the Christmas card. He lifted it up as if it were a rare piece of china, and held it in his two hands as though it were a bird which might escape. He did not know whether it had dropped there of its own accord, and doubt and transport fought for victory on his face. At last he put the card exultingly into his pocket, his chest heaved, and he went toward Silchester whistling. CHAPTER VII THE GRAND PASSION? One of the disappointments of life is that the persons we think we have reason to dislike are seldom altogether villains; they are not made sufficiently big for it. When we can go to sleep in an arm-chair this ceases to be a trouble, but it vexed Mary Abinger. Her villain of fiction, on being haughtily rejected, had at least left the heroine's home looking a little cowed. Sir Clement in the same circumstances had stayed on. The colonel had looked forward resentfully for years to meeting this gentleman again, and giving him a piece of his stormy mind. When the opportunity came, however, Mary's father instead asked his unexpected visitor to remain for a week. Colonel Abinger thought he was thus magnanimous because his guest had been confidential with him, but it was perhaps rather because Sir Clement had explained how much he thought of him. To dislike our admirers is to be severe on ourselves, and is therefore not common. The Dome had introduced the colonel to Sir Clement as well as to Rob. One day Colonel Abinger had received by letter from a little hostelry in the neighbourhood the compliments of Sir Clement Dowton, and a request that he might be allowed to fish in the preserved water. All that Mary's father knew of Dowton at that time was that he had been lost to English society for half a dozen years. Once in many months the papers spoke of him as serving under Gordon in China, as being taken captive by an African king, as having settled down in a cattle-ranch in the vicinity of Manitoba. His lawyers were probably aware of his whereabouts oftener than other persons. All that society knew was that he hated England because one of its daughters had married a curate. The colonel called at the inn, and found Sir Clement such an attentive listener that he thought the baronet's talk quite brilliant. A few days afterwards the stranger's traps were removed to the castle, and then he met Miss Abinger, who was recently home from school. He never spoke to her of his grudge against England. It is only the unselfish men who think much, otherwise Colonel Abinger might have pondered a little over his guest. Dowton had spoken of himself as an enthusiastic angler, yet he let his flies drift down the stream like fallen leaves. He never remembered to go a-fishing until it was suggested to him. He had given his host several reasons for his long absence from his property, and told him he did not want the world to know that he was back in England, as he was not certain whether he would remain. The colonel at his request introduced him to the few visitors at the castle as Mr. Dowton, and was surprised to discover afterwards that they all knew his real name. 'I assure you,' Mary's father said to him, 'that they have not learned it from me. It is incomprehensible how a thing like that leaks out.' 'I don't understand it,' said Dowton, who, however, should have understood it, as he had taken the visitors aside and told them his real name himself. He seemed to do this not of his free will, but because he could not help it. It never struck the colonel that his own society was not what tied Sir Clement to Dome Castle; for widowers with grown-up daughters are in a foreign land without interpreters. On that morning when the baronet vanished, nevertheless, the master of Dome Castle was the only person in it who did not think that it would soon lose its mistress, mere girl though she was. Sir Clement's strange disappearance was accounted for at the castle, where alone it was properly known, in various ways. Miss Abinger, in the opinion of the servants' hall, held her head so high that there he was believed to have run away because she had said him no. Miss Abinger excused and blamed him alternately to herself, until she found a dull satisfaction in looking upon him as the villain he might have been had his high forehead spoken true. As for the colonel, he ordered Mary (he had no need) never to mention the fellow's name to him, but mentioned it frequently himself. Nothing had happened, so far as was known, to disturb the baronet's serenity; neither friends nor lawyers had been aware that he was in England, and he had received no letters. Mary remembered his occasional fits of despondency, but on the whole he seemed to revel in his visit, and had never looked happier than the night before he went. His traps were sent by the colonel in a fury to the little inn where he had at first taken up his abode, but it was not known at the castle whether he ever got them. Some months afterwards a letter from him appeared in the _Times_, dated from Suez, and from then until he reappeared at Dome Castle, the colonel, except when he spoke to himself, never heard the baronet's name mentioned. Sir Clement must have been very impulsive, for on returning to the castle he had intended to treat Miss Abinger with courteous coldness, as if she had been responsible for his flight, and he had not seen her again for ten minutes before he asked her to marry him. He meant to explain his conduct in one way to the colonel, and he explained it in quite another way. When Colonel Abinger took him into the smoking-room on Christmas Eve to hear what he had to say for himself, the baronet sank into a chair, with a look of contentment on his beautiful face that said he was glad to be there again. Then the colonel happened to mention Mary's name in such a way that he seemed to know of Sir Clement's proposal to her three years earlier. At once the baronet began another story from the one he had meant to tell, and though he soon discovered that he had credited his host with a knowledge the colonel did not possess, it was too late to draw back. So Mary's father heard to his amazement that the baronet had run away because he was in love with Miss Abinger. Colonel Abinger had read _The Scorn of Scorns_, but it had taught him nothing. 'She was only a schoolgirl when you saw her last,' he said, in bewilderment; 'but I hardly see how that should have made you fly the house like--yes, like a thief.' Dowton looked sadly at him. 'I don't know,' he said, speaking as if with reluctance, 'that in any circumstances I should be justified in telling you the whole miserable story. Can you not guess it? When I came here I was not a free man.' 'You were already married?' 'No, but I was engaged to be married.' 'Did Mary know anything of this?' 'Nothing of that engagement, and but little, I think, of the attachment that grew up in my heart for her. I kept that to myself.' 'She was too young,' said the wise colonel, 'to think of such things then; and even now I do not see why you should have left us as you did.' Sir Clement rose to his feet and paced the room in great agitation. 'It is hard,' he said at last, 'to speak of such a thing to another man. But let me tell you, Abinger, that when I was with you three years ago there were times when I thought I would lose my reason. Do you know what it is to have such a passion as that raging in your heart and yet have to stifle it? There were whole nights when I walked up and down my room till dawn. I trembled every time I saw Miss Abinger alone lest I should say that to her which I had no right to say. Her voice alone was sufficient to unman me. I felt that my only safety was in flight.' 'I have run away from a woman myself in my time,' the colonel said, with a grim chuckle. 'There are occasions when it is the one thing to do, but this was surely not one of them, if Mary knew nothing.' 'Sometimes I feared she did know that I cared for her. That is a hard thing to conceal, and, besides, I suppose I felt so wretched that I was not in a condition to act rationally. When I left the castle that day I had not the least intention of not returning.' 'And since then you have been half round the world again? Are you married?' 'No.' 'Then I am to understand----' 'That she is dead,' said Sir Clement, in a low voice. There was a silence between them, which was at last broken by the colonel. 'What you have told me,' he said, 'is a great surprise, more especially with regard to my daughter. Being but a child at the time, however, she could not, I am confident, have thought of you in any other light than as her father's friend. It is, of course, on that footing that you return now?' 'As her father's friend, certainly, I hope,' said the baronet firmly, 'but I wish to tell you now that my regard for her has never changed. I confess I would have been afraid to come back to you had not my longing to see her again given me courage.' 'She has not the least idea of this,' murmured the colonel, 'not the least. The fact is that Mary has lived so quietly with me here that she is still a child. Miss Meredith, whom I dare say you have met here, has been almost her only friend, and I am quite certain that the thought of marriage has never crossed their minds. If you, or even if I, were to speak of such a thing to Mary, it would only frighten her.' 'I should not think of speaking to her on the subject at present,' the baronet interposed, rather hurriedly, 'but I thought it best to explain my position to you. You know what I am, that I have been almost a vagrant on the face of the earth since I reached manhood, but no one can see more clearly than I do myself how unworthy I am of her.' 'I do not need to tell you,' said the colonel, taking the baronet's hand, 'that I used to like you, Dowton, and indeed I know no one whom I would prefer for a son-in-law. But you must be cautious with Mary.' 'I shall be very cautious,' said the baronet; 'indeed there is no hurry, none whatever.' Colonel Abinger would have brought the conversation to a close here, but there was something more for Dowton to say. 'I agree with you,' he said, forgetting, perhaps, that the colonel had not spoken on this point, 'that Miss Abinger should be kept ignorant for the present of the cause that drove me on that former occasion from the castle.' 'It is the wisest course to adopt,' said the colonel, looking as if he had thought the matter out step by step. 'The only thing I am doubtful about,' continued Dowton, 'is whether Miss Abinger will not think that she is entitled to some explanation. She cannot, I fear, have forgotten the circumstances of my departure.' 'Make your mind easy on that score,' said the colonel; 'the best proof that Mary gave the matter little thought, even at the time, is that she did not speak of it to me. Sweet seventeen has always a short memory.' 'But I have sometimes thought since that Miss Abinger did care for me a little, in which case she would have unfortunate cause to resent my flight.' While he spoke the baronet was looking anxiously into the colonel's face. 'I can give you my word for it,' said the colonel cheerily, 'that she did not give your disappearance two thoughts; and now I much question whether she will recognise you.' Dowton's face clouded, but the other misinterpreted the shadow. 'So put your mind at rest,' said the colonel kindly, 'and trust an old stager like myself for being able to read into a woman's heart.' Shortly afterwards Colonel Abinger left his guest, and for nearly five minutes the baronet looked dejected. It is sometimes advantageous to hear that a lady with whom you have watched the moon rise has forgotten your very name, but it is never complimentary. By and by, however, Sir Clement's sense of humour drove the gloom from his chiselled face, and a glass bracket over the mantelpiece told him that he was laughing heartily. It was a small breakfast party at the castle next morning, Sir Clement and Greybrooke being the only guests, but the baronet was so gay and morose by turns that he might have been two persons. In the middle of a laugh at some remark of the captain's, he would break off with a sigh, and immediately after sadly declining another cup of coffee from Mary, he said something humorous to her father. The one mood was natural to him and the other forced, but it would have been difficult to decide which was which. It is, however, one of the hardest things in life to remain miserable for any length of time on a stretch. When Dowton found himself alone with Mary his fingers were playing an exhilarating tune on the window-sill, but as he looked at her his hands fell to his side, and there was pathos in his fine eyes. Drawn toward her, he took a step forward, but Miss Abinger said 'No' so decisively that he stopped irresolute. 'I shall be leaving the castle in an hour,' Sir Clement said slowly. 'Papa told me,' said Mary, 'that he had prevailed upon you to remain for a week.' 'He pressed me to do so, and I consented, but you have changed everything since then. Ah, Mary----' 'Miss Abinger,' said Mary. 'Miss Abinger, if you would only listen to what I have to say. I can explain everything. I----' 'There is nothing to explain,' said Mary, 'nothing that I have either a right or a desire to hear. Please not to return to this subject again. I said everything there was to say last night.' The baronet's face paled, and he bowed his head in deep dejection. His voice was trembling a little, and he observed it with gratification as he answered-- 'Then, I suppose, I must bid you good-bye?' 'Good-bye,' said Mary. 'Does papa know you are going?' 'I promised to him to stay on,' said Sir Clement, 'and I can hardly expect him to forgive me if I change my mind.' This was put almost in the form of a question, and Mary thought she understood it. 'Then you mean to remain?' she asked. 'You compel me to go,' he replied dolefully. 'Oh no,' said Mary, 'I have nothing to do with your going or staying.' 'But it--it would hardly do for me to remain after what took place last night,' said the baronet, in the tone of one who was open to contradiction. For the first time in the conversation Mary smiled. It was not, however, the smile every man would care to see at his own expense. 'If you were to go now,' she said, 'you would not be fulfilling your promise to papa, and I know that men do not like to break their word to--to other men.' 'Then you think I ought to stay?' asked Sir Clement eagerly. 'It is for you to think,' said Mary. 'Perhaps, then, I ought to remain--for Colonel Abinger's sake,' said the baronet. Mary did not answer. 'Only for a few days,' he continued almost appealingly. 'Very well,' said Mary. 'And you won't think the worse of me for it?' asked Dowton anxiously. 'Of course, if I were to consult my own wishes I would go now, but as I promised Colonel Abinger----' 'You will remain out of consideration for papa. How could I think worse of you for that?' Mary rose to leave the room, and as Sir Clement opened the door for her he said-- 'We shall say nothing of all this to Colonel Abinger?' 'Oh no, certainly not,' said Mary. She glanced up in his face, her mouth twisted slightly to one side, as it had a habit of doing when she felt disdainful, and the glory of her beauty filled him of a sudden. The baronet pushed the door close and turned to her passionately, a film over his eyes and his hands outstretched. 'Mary,' he cried, 'is there no hope for me?' 'No,' said Mary, opening the door for herself, and passing out. Sir Clement stood there motionless for a minute. Then he crossed to the fireplace, and sank into a luxuriously cushioned chair. The sunlight came back to his noble face. 'This is grand, glorious,' he murmured, in an ecstasy of enjoyment. In the days that followed, the baronet's behaviour was a little peculiar. Occasionally at meals he seemed to remember that a rejected lover ought not to have a good appetite. If, when he was smoking in the grounds, he saw Mary approaching, he covertly dropped his cigar. When he knew that she was sitting at a window he would pace up and down the walk with his head bent as if life had lost its interest to him. By and by his mind wandered, on these occasions, to more cheerful matters, and he would start to find that he had been smiling to himself and swishing his cane playfully, like a man who walked on air. It might have been said of him that he tried to be miserable and found it hard work. Will, who discovered that the baronet did not know what l.b.w. meant, could not, nevertheless, despise a man who had shot lions, but he never had quite the same respect for the king of beasts again. As for Greybrooke, he rather liked Sir Clement, because he knew that Nell (in her own words) 'loathed, hated, and despised' him. Greybrooke had two severe disappointments that holiday, both of which were to be traced to the capricious Nell. It had dawned on him that she could not help liking him a little if she saw him take a famous jump over the Dome, known to legend as the 'Robber's Leap.' The robber had lost his life in trying to leap the stream, but the captain practised in the castle grounds until he felt that he could clear it. Then he formally invited Miss Meredith to come and see him do it, and she told him instead that he was wicked. The captain and Will went back silently to the castle, wondering what on earth she would like. Greybrooke's other disappointment was still more grievous. One evening he and Will returned to the castle late for dinner, an offence the colonel found it hard to overlook, although they were going back to school on the following day. Will reached the dining-room first, and his father frowned on him. 'You are a quarter of an hour late, William,' said the colonel sternly. 'Where have you been?' Will hesitated. 'Do you remember,' he said at last, 'a man called Angus, who was here reporting on Christmas Eve?' Mary laid down her knife and fork. 'A painfully powerful-looking man,' said Dowton, 'in hob-nailed boots. I remember him.' 'Well, we have been calling on him,' said Will. 'Calling on him, calling on that impudent newspaper man!' exclaimed the colonel; 'what do you mean?' 'Greybrooke had a row with him some time ago,' said Will; 'I don't know what about, because it was private; but the captain has been looking for the fellow for a fortnight to lick him--I mean punish him. We came upon him two days ago, near the castle gates.' Here Will paused, as if he would prefer to jump what followed. 'And did your friend "lick" him then?' asked the colonel, at which Will shook his head. 'Why not?' asked Sir Clement. 'Well,' said Will reluctantly, 'the fellow wouldn't let him. He--he lifted Greybrooke up in his arms, and--and dropped him over the hedge.' Mary could not help laughing. 'The beggar--I mean the fellow--must have muscles like ivy roots,' Will blurted out admiringly. 'I fancy,' said Dowton, 'that I have seen him near the gates several times during the last week.' 'Very likely,' said the colonel shortly. 'I caught him poaching in the Dome some months ago. There is something bad about that man.' 'Papa!' said Mary. At this moment Greybrooke entered. 'So, Mr. Greybrooke,' said the colonel, 'I hear you have been in Silchester avenging an insult.' The captain looked at Will, who nodded. 'I went there,' admitted Greybrooke, blushing, 'to horsewhip a reporter fellow, but he had run away.' 'Run away?' 'Yes. Did not Will tell you? We called at the _Mirror_ office, and were told that Angus had bolted to London two days ago.' 'And the worst of it,' interposed Will, 'is that he ran off without paying his landlady's bill.' 'I knew that man was a rascal,' exclaimed the colonel. Mary flushed. 'I don't believe it,' she said. 'You don't believe it,' repeated her father angrily; 'and why not, pray?' 'Because--because I don't,' said Mary. CHAPTER VIII IN FLEET STREET Mary was wrong. It was quite true that Rob had run away to London without paying his landlady's bill. The immediate result of his meeting with Miss Abinger had been to make him undertake double work, and not do it. Looking in at shop-windows, where he saw hats that he thought would just suit Mary (he had a good deal to learn yet), it came upon him that he was wasting his time. Then he hurried home, contemptuous of all the rest of Silchester, to write an article for a London paper, and when he next came to himself, half an hour afterwards, he was sitting before a blank sheet of copy paper. He began to review a book, and found himself gazing at a Christmas card. He tried to think out the action of a government, and thought out a ring on Miss Abinger's finger instead. Three nights running he dreamt that he was married, and woke up quaking. Without much misgiving Rob heard it said in Silchester that there was some one staying at Dome Castle who was to be its mistress's husband. On discovering that they referred to Dowton, and not being versed in the wonderful ways of woman, he told himself that this was impossible. A cynic would have pointed out that Mary had now had several days in which to change her mind. Cynics are persons who make themselves the measure of other people. The philosopher who remarked that the obvious truths are those which are most often missed, was probably referring to the time it takes a man to discover that he is in love. Women are quicker because they are on the outlook. It took Rob two days, and when it came upon him checked his breathing. After that he bore it like a man. Another discovery he had to make was that, after all, he was nobody in particular. This took him longer. Although the manner of his going to London was unexpected, Rob had thought out solidly the inducements to go. Ten minutes or so after he knew that he wanted to marry Mary Abinger, he made up his mind to try to do it. The only obstacles he saw in his way were, that she was not in love with him, and lack of income. Feeling that he was an uncommon type of man (if people would only see it), he resolved to remove this second difficulty first. The saw-mill and the castle side by side did not rise up and frighten him, and for the time he succeeded in not thinking about Colonel Abinger. Nothing is hopeless if we want it very much. Rob calculated that if he remained on the _Mirror_ for another dozen years or so, and Mr. Licquorish continued to think that it would not be cheaper to do without him, he might reach a salary of £200 per annum. As that was not sufficient, he made up his mind to leave Silchester. There was only one place to go to. Rob thought of London until he felt that it was the guardian from whom he would have to ask Mary Abinger; he pictured her there during the season, until London, which he had never seen, began to assume a homely aspect. It was the place in which he was to win or lose his battle. To whom is London much more? It is the clergyman's name for his church, the lawyer's for his office, the politician's for St. Stephen's, the cabman's for his stand. There was not a man on the Press in Silchester who did not hunger for Fleet Street, but they were all afraid to beard it. They knew it as a rabbit-warren; as the closest street in a city where the bootblack has his sycophants, and you have to battle for exclusive right to sweep a crossing. The fight forward had been grimmer to Rob, however, than to his fellows, and he had never been quite beaten. He was alone in the world, and poverty was like an old friend. There was only one journalist in London whom he knew even by name, and he wrote to him for advice. This was Mr. John Rorrison, a son of the minister whose assistance had brought Rob to Silchester. Rorrison was understood to be practically editing a great London newspaper, which is what is understood of a great many journalists until you make inquiries, but he wrote back to Rob asking him why he wanted to die before his time. You collectors who want an editor's autograph may rely upon having it by return of post if you write threatening to come to London with the hope that he will do something for you. Rorrison's answer discomfited Rob for five minutes, and then, going out, he caught a glimpse of Mary Abinger in the Merediths' carriage. He tore up the letter, and saw that London was worth risking. One forenoon Rob set out for the office to tell Mr. Licquorish of his determination. He knew that the entire staff would think him demented, but he could not see that he was acting rashly. He had worked it all out in his mind, and even tranquilly faced possible starvation. Rob was congratulating himself on not having given way to impulse when he reached the railway station. His way from his lodgings to the office led past the station, and as he had done scores of times before, he went inside. To Rob all the romance of Silchester was concentrated there; nothing stirred him so much as a panting engine; the shunting of carriages, the bustle of passengers, the porters rattling to and fro with luggage, the trains twisting serpent-like into the station and stealing out in a glory to be gone, sent the blood to his head. On Saturday nights, when he was free, any one calling at the station would have been sure to find him on the platform from which the train starts for London. His heart had sunk every time it went off without him. Rob woke up from a dream of Fleet Street to see the porters slamming the doors of the London train. He saw the guard's hand upraised, and heard the carriages rattle as the restive engine took them unawares. Then came the warning whistle, and the train moved off. For a second of time Rob felt that he had lost London, and he started forward. Some one near him shouted, and then he came upon the train all at once, a door opened, and he shot in. When he came to himself, Silchester was a cloud climbing to the sky behind him, and he was on his way to London. Rob's first feeling was that the other people in the carriage must know what he had done. He was relieved to find that his companions were only an old gentleman who spoke fiercely to his newspaper because it was reluctant to turn inside out, a little girl who had got in at Silchester and consumed thirteen halfpenny buns before she was five miles distant from it, and a young woman, evidently a nurse, with a baby in her arms. The baby was noisy for a time, but Rob gave it a look that kept it silent for the rest of the journey. He told himself that he would get out at the first station, but when the train stopped at it he sat on. He twisted himself into a corner to count his money covertly, and found that it came to four pounds odd. He also took the Christmas card from his pocket, but replaced it hastily, feeling that the old gentleman and the little girl were looking at him. A feeling of elation grew upon him as he saw that whatever might happen afterwards he must be in London shortly, and his mind ran on the letters he would write to Mr. Licquorish and his landlady. In lieu of his ticket he handed over twelve shillings to the guard, under whose eyes he did not feel comfortable, and he calculated that he owed his landlady over two pounds. He would send it to her and ask her to forward his things to London. Mr. Licquorish, however, might threaten him with the law if he did not return. But then the _Mirror_ owed Rob several pounds at that moment, and if he did not claim it in person it would remain in Mr. Licquorish's pockets. There was no saying how far that consideration would affect the editor. Rob saw a charge of dishonesty rise up and confront him, and he drew back from it. A moment afterwards he looked it in the face, and it receded. He took his pipe from his pocket. 'This is not a smoking carriage,' gasped the little girl, so promptly that it almost seemed as if she had been waiting her opportunity ever since the train started. Rob looked at her. She seemed about eight, but her eye was merciless. He thrust his pipe back into its case, feeling cowed at last. The nurse, who had been looking at Rob and blushing when she caught his eye, got out with her charge at a side station, and he helped her rather awkwardly to alight. 'Don't mention it,' he said, in answer to her thanks. 'Not a word; I'm not that kind,' she replied, so eagerly that he started back in alarm, to find the little girl looking suspiciously at him. As Rob stepped out of the train at King's Cross he realised sharply that he was alone in the world. He did not know where to go now, and his heart sank for a time as he paced the platform irresolutely, feeling that it was his last link to Silchester. He turned into the booking-office to consult a time-table, and noticed against the wall a railway map of London. For a long time he stood looking at it, and as he traced the river, the streets familiar to him by name, the districts and buildings which were household words to him, he felt that he must live in London somehow. He discovered Fleet Street in the map, and studied the best way of getting to it from King's Cross. Then grasping his stick firmly, he took possession of London as calmly as he could. Rob never found any difficulty afterwards in picking out the shabby eating-house in which he had his first meal in London. Gray's Inn Road remained to him always its most romantic street because he went down it first. He walked into the roar of London in Holborn, and never forgot the alley into which he retreated to discover if he had suddenly become deaf. He wondered when the crowd would pass. Years afterwards he turned into Fetter Lane, and suddenly there came back to his mind the thoughts that had held him as he went down it the day he arrived in London. A certain awe came upon Rob as he went down Fleet Street on the one side and up it on the other. He could not resist looking into the faces of the persons who passed him, and wondering if they edited the _Times_. The lean man who was in such a hurry that wherever he had to go he would soon be there, might be a man of letters whom Rob knew by heart, but perhaps he was only a broken journalist with his eye on half a crown. The mild-looking man whom Rob smiled at because, when he was half way across the street, he lost his head and was chased out of sight by half a dozen hansom cabs, was a war correspondent who had been so long in Africa that the perils of a London crossing unmanned him. The youth who was on his way home with a pork chop in his pocket edited a society journal. Rob did not recognise a distinguished poet in a little stout man who was looking pensively at a barrowful of walnuts, and he was mistaken in thinking that the bearded gentleman who held his head so high must be somebody in particular. Rob observed a pale young man gazing wistfully at him, and wondered if he was a thief or a sub-editor. He was merely an aspirant who had come to London that morning to make his fortune, and he took Rob for a leader-writer at the least. The offices, however, and even the public buildings, the shops, the narrowness of the streets, all disappointed Rob. The houses seemed squeezed together for economy of space, like a closed concertina. Nothing quite fulfilled his expectations but the big letter holes in the district postal offices. He had not been sufficiently long in London to feel its greatest charm, which has been expressed in many ways by poet, wit, business man, and philosopher, but comes to this, that it is the only city in the world in whose streets you can eat penny buns without people's turning round to look at you. In a few days Rob was part of London. His Silchester landlady had forwarded him his things, and Mr. Licquorish had washed his hands of him. The editor of the _Mirror's_ letter amounted to a lament that a man whom he had allowed to do two men's work for half a man's wages should have treated him thus. Mr. Licquorish, however, had conceived the idea of 'forcing' John Milton, and so saving a reporter, and he did not insist on Rob's returning. He expressed a hope that his ex-reporter would do well in London, and a fear, amounting to a conviction, that he would not. But he sent the three pounds due to him in wages, pointing out, justifiably enough, that, strictly speaking, Rob owed him a month's salary. Rob had not expected such liberality, and from that time always admitted that there must have been a heroic vein in Mr. Licquorish after all. Rob established himself in a little back room in Islington, so small that a fairly truthful journalist might have said of it, in an article, that you had to climb the table to reach the fireplace, and to lift out the easy-chair before you could get out at the door. The room was over a grocer's shop, whose window bore the announcement: 'Eggs, new laid, 1s. 3d.; eggs, fresh, 1s. 2d.; eggs, warranted, 1s.; eggs, 10d.' A shop across the way hinted at the reputation of the neighbourhood in the polite placard, 'Trust in the Lord: every other person cash.' The only ornament Rob added to the room was the Christmas card in a frame. He placed this on his mantelpiece and looked at it frequently, but when he heard his landlady coming he slipped it back into his pocket. Yet he would have liked at times to have the courage to leave it there. Though he wanted to be a literary man he began his career in London with a little sense, for he wrote articles to editors instead of calling at the offices, and he had the good fortune to have no introductions. The only pressman who ever made anything by insisting on seeing the editor, was one--a Scotsman, no doubt--who got him alone and threatened to break his head if he did not find an opening for him. The editor saw that this was the sort of man who had made up his mind to get on, and yielded. During his first month in London Rob wrote thirty articles, and took them to the different offices in order to save the postage. There were many other men in the streets at night doing the same thing. He got fifteen articles back by return of post, and never saw the others again. But here was the stuff Rob was made of. The thirty having been rejected, he dined on bread-and-cheese and began the thirty-first. It was accepted by the _Minotaur_, a weekly paper. Rob drew a sigh of exultation as he got his first proof in London, and remembered that he had written the article in two hours. The payment, he understood, would be two pounds at least, and at the rate of two articles a day, working six days a week, this would mean over six hundred a year. Rob had another look at the Christmas card, and thought it smiled. Every man is a fool now and then. Except to his landlady, who thought that he dined out, Rob had not spoken to a soul since he arrived in London. To celebrate his first proof he resolved to call on Rorrison. He had not done so earlier because he thought that Rorrison would not be glad to see him. Though he had kept his disappointments to himself, however, he felt that he must remark casually to some one that he was writing for the _Minotaur_. Rorrison had chambers at the top of one of the Inns of Court, and as he had sported his oak, Rob ought not to have knocked. He knew no better, however, and Rorrison came grumbling to the door. He was a full-bodied man of middle age, with a noticeably heavy chin, and wore a long dressing-gown. 'I'm Angus from Silchester,' Rob explained. Rorrison's countenance fell. His occupation largely consisted in avoiding literary young men, who, he knew, were thirsting to take him aside and ask him to get them sub-editorships. 'I'm glad to see you,' he said gloomily; 'come in.' What Rob first noticed in the sitting-room was that it was all in shadow, except one corner, whose many colours dazzled the eye. Suspended over this part of the room on a gas bracket was a great Japanese umbrella without a handle. This formed an awning for a large cane chair and a tobacco-table, which also held a lamp, and Rorrison had been lolling on the chair looking at a Gladstone bag on the hearthrug until he felt that he was busy packing. 'Mind the umbrella,' he said to his visitor. The next moment a little black hole that had been widening in the Japanese paper just above the lamp cracked and broke, and a tongue of flame swept up the umbrella. Rob sprang forward in horror, but Rorrison only sighed. 'That makes the third this week,' he said, 'but let it blaze. I used to think they would set the place on fire, but somehow they don't do it. Don't give the thing the satisfaction of seeming to notice it.' The umbrella had been frizzled in a second, and its particles were already trembling through the room like flakes of snow. 'You have just been in time to find me,' Rorrison said; 'I start to-morrow afternoon for Egypt in the special correspondent business.' 'I envy you,' said Rob, and then told the manner of his coming to London. 'It was a mad thing to do,' said Rorrison, looking at him not without approval, 'but the best journalists frequently begin in that way. I suppose you have been besieging the newspaper offices since you arrived; any result?' 'I had a proof from the _Minotaur_ this evening,' said Rob. Rorrison blew some rings of smoke into the air and ran his finger through them. Then he turned proudly to Rob, and saw that Rob was looking proudly at him. 'Ah, what did you say?' asked Rorrison. 'The _Minotaur_ has accepted one of my things,' said Rob. Rorrison said 'Hum,' and then hesitated. 'It is best that you should know the truth,' he said at last. 'No doubt you expect to be paid by the _Minotaur_, but I am afraid there is little hope of that--unless you dun them. A friend of mine sent them something lately, and Roper (the editor, you know) wrote asking him for more. He sent two or three other things, and then called at the office, expecting to be paid.' 'Was he not?' 'On the contrary,' said Rorrison, 'Roper asked him for the loan of five pounds.' Rob's face grew so long that even the hardened Rorrison tried to feel for him. 'You need not let an experience that every one has to pass through dishearten you,' he said. 'There are only about a dozen papers in London that are worth writing for, but I can give you a good account of them. Not only do they pay handsomely, but the majority are open to contributions from any one. Don't you believe what one reads about newspaper rings. Every thing sent in is looked at, and if it is suitable any editor is glad to have it. Men fail to get a footing on the Press because--well, as a rule, because they are stupid.' 'I am glad to hear you say that,' said Rob, 'and yet I had thirty articles rejected before the _Minotaur_ accepted that one.' 'Yes, and you will have another thirty rejected if they are of the same kind. You beginners seem able to write nothing but your views on politics, and your reflections on art, and your theories of life, which you sometimes even think original. Editors won't have that because their readers don't want it. Every paper has its regular staff of leader-writers, and what is wanted from the outside is freshness. An editor tosses aside your column and a half about evolution, but is glad to have a paragraph saying that you saw Herbert Spencer the day before yesterday gazing solemnly for ten minutes in at a milliner's window. Fleet Street at this moment is simply running with men who want to air their views about things in general.' 'I suppose so,' said Rob dolefully. 'Yes, and each thinks himself as original as he is profound, though they have only to meet to discover that they repeat each other. The pity of it is, that all of them could get on to some extent if they would send in what is wanted. There is copy in every man you meet, and, as a journalist on this stair says, when you do meet him you feel inclined to tear it out of him and use it yourself.' 'What sort of copy?' asked Rob. 'They should write of the things they have seen. Newspaper readers have an insatiable appetite for knowing how that part of the world lives with which they are not familiar. They want to know how the Norwegians cook their dinners and build their houses, and ask each other in marriage.' 'But I have never been out of Britain.' 'Neither was Shakspeare. There are thousands of articles in Scotland yet. You must know a good deal about the Scottish weavers--well, there are articles in them. Describe the daily life of a gillie: "The Gillie at Home" is a promising title. Were you ever snowed up in your saw-mill? Whether you were or not, there is a seasonable subject for January. "Yule in a Scottish Village" also sounds well, and there is a safe article in a Highland gathering.' 'These must have been done before, though,' said Rob. 'Of course they have,' answered Rorrison; 'but do them in your own way: the public has no memory, and besides, new publics are always springing up.' 'I am glad I came to see you,' said Rob, brightening considerably; 'I never thought of these things.' 'Of course you need not confine yourself to them. Write on politics if you will, but don't merely say what you yourself think; rather tell, for instance, what is the political situation in the country parts known to you. That should be more interesting and valuable than your individual views. But I may tell you that, if you have the journalistic faculty, you will always be on the look-out for possible articles. The man on the stair I have mentioned to you would have had an article out of you before he had talked with you as long as I have done. You must have heard of Noble Simms?' 'Yes, I know his novel,' said Rob; 'I should like immensely to meet him.' 'I must leave you an introduction to him,' said Rorrison; 'he wakens most people up, though you would scarcely think it to look at him. You see this pipe here? Simms saw me mending it with sealing-wax one day, and two days afterwards there was an article about it in the _Scalping Knife_. When I went off for my holidays last summer I asked him to look in here occasionally and turn a new cheese which had been sent me from the country. Of course he forgot to do it, but I denounced him on my return for not keeping his solemn promise, so he revenged himself by publishing an article entitled "Rorrison's Oil-Painting." In this it was explained that just before Rorrison went off for a holiday he got a present of an oil-painting. Remembering when he had got to Paris that the painting, which was come to him wet from the easel, had been left lying on his table, he telegraphed to the writer to have it put away out of reach of dust and the cat. The writer promised to do so, but when Rorrison returned he found the picture lying just where he left it. He rushed off to his friend's room to upbraid him, and did it so effectually that the friend says in his article, "I will never do a good turn for Rorrison again!"' 'But why,' asked Rob, 'did he turn the cheese into an oil-painting?' 'Ah, there you have the journalistic instinct again. You see a cheese is too plebeian a thing to form the subject of an article in the _Scalping Knife_, so Simms made a painting of it. He has had my Chinese umbrella from several points of view in three different papers. When I play on his piano I put scraps of paper on the notes to guide me, and he made his three guineas out of that. Once I challenged him to write an article on a straw that was sticking to the sill of my window, and it was one of the most interesting things he ever did. Then there was the box of old clothes and other odds and ends that he promised to store for me when I changed my rooms. He sold the lot to a hawker for a pair of flower-pots, and wrote an article on the transaction. Subsequently he had another article on the flower-pots; and when I appeared to claim my belongings he got a third article out of that.' 'I suppose he reads a great deal?' said Rob. 'He seldom opens a book,' answered Rorrison; 'indeed, when he requires to consult a work of reference he goes to the Strand and does his reading at a bookstall. I don't think he was ever in the British Museum.' Rob laughed. 'At the same time,' he said, 'I don't think Mr. Noble Simms could get any copy out of me.' Just then some one shuffled into the passage, and the door opened. CHAPTER IX MR. NOBLE SIMMS The new-comer was a young man with an impassive face and weary eyes, who, as he slouched in, described a parabola in the air with one of his feet, which was his way of keeping a burned slipper on. Rorrison introduced him to Rob as Mr. Noble Simms, after which Simms took himself into a corner of the room, like a man who has paid for his seat in a railway compartment and refuses to be drawn into conversation. He would have been a handsome man had he had a little more interest in himself. 'I thought you told me you were going out to-night,' said Rorrison. 'I meant to go,' Simms answered, 'but when I rang for my boots the housekeeper thought I asked for water, and brought it, so, rather than explain matters to her, I drank the water and remained indoors.' 'I read your book lately, Mr. Simms,' Rob said, after he had helped himself to tobacco from Simms's pouch, 'Try my tobacco,' being the Press form of salutation. 'You did not buy the second volume, did you?' asked Simms, with a show of interest, and Rob had to admit that he got the novel from a library. 'Excuse my asking you,' Simms continued, in his painfully low voice; 'I had a special reason. You see I happen to know that, besides what went to the libraries, there were in all six copies of my book sold. My admirer bought two, and I myself bought three and two-thirds, so that only one volume remains to be accounted for. I like to think that the purchaser was a lady.' 'But how did it come about,' inquired Rob, while Rorrison smoked on imperturbably, 'that the volumes were on sale singly?' 'That was to tempt a public,' said Simms gravely, 'who would not take kindly to the three volumes together. It is a long story, though.' Here he paused, as if anxious to escape out of the conversation. 'No blarney, Simms,' expostulated Rorrison. 'I forgot to tell you, Angus, that this man always means (when he happens to have a meaning) the reverse of what he says.' 'Don't mind Rorrison,' said Simms to Rob. 'It was in this way. My great work of fiction did fairly well at the libraries, owing to a mistake Mudie made about the name. He ordered a number of copies under the impression that the book was by the popular novelist, Simmons, and when the mistake was found out he was too honourable to draw back. The surplus copies, however, would not sell at all. My publisher offered them as Saturday evening presents to his young men, but they always left them on their desks; so next he tried the second-hand book-shops, in the hope that people from the country would buy the three volumes because they looked so cheap at two shillings. However, even the label "Published at 31s. 6d.: offered for 2s.," was barren of results. I used to stand in an alley near one of these book-shops, and watch the people handling my novel.' 'But no one made an offer for it?' 'Not at two shillings, but when it came down to one-and-sixpence an elderly man with spectacles very nearly bought it. He was undecided between it and a Trigonometry, but in the end he went off with the Trigonometry. Then a young lady in grey and pink seemed interested in it. I watched her reading the bit about Lord John entering the drawing-room suddenly and finding Henry on his knees, and once I distinctly saw her smile.' 'She might have bought the novel if only to see how it ended.' 'Ah, I have always been of opinion that she would have done so, had she not most unfortunately, in her eagerness to learn what Henry said when he and Eleanor went into the conservatory, knocked a row of books over with her elbow. That frightened her, and she took to flight.' 'Most unfortunate,' said Rob solemnly, though he was already beginning to understand Simms--as Simms was on the surface. 'I had a still greater disappointment,' continued the author, 'a few days afterwards. By this time the book was marked "Very Amusing, 1s., worth 1s. 6d."; and when I saw a pale-looking young man, who had been examining it, enter the shop, I thought the novel was as good as sold. My excitement was intense when a shopman came out for the three volumes and carried them inside, but I was puzzled on seeing the young gentleman depart, apparently without having made a purchase. Consider my feelings when the shopman replaced the three volumes on his shelf with the new label, "924 pp., 8d.; worth 1s."' 'Surely it found a purchaser now?' 'Alas, no. The only man who seemed to be attracted by it at eightpence turned out to be the author of _John Mordaunt's Christmas Box_ ("Thrilling! Published at 6s.: offered at 1s. 3d."), who was hanging about in the interests of his own work.' 'Did it come down to "Sixpence, worth ninepence"?' 'No; when I returned to the spot next day I found volumes One and Three in the "2d. any vol." box, and I carried them away myself. What became of volume Two I have never been able to discover. I rummaged the box for it in vain.' 'As a matter of fact, Angus,' remarked Rorrison, 'the novel is now in its third edition.' 'I always understood that it had done well,' said Rob. 'The fourth time I asked for it at Mudie's,' said Simms, the latter half of whose sentences were sometimes scarcely audible, 'I inquired how it was doing, and was told that it had been already asked for three times. Curiously enough there is a general impression that it has been a great success, and for that I have to thank one man.' 'The admirer of whom you spoke?' 'Yes, my admirer, as I love to call him. I first heard of him as a business gentleman living at Shepherd's Bush, who spoke with rapture of my novel to any chance acquaintances he made on the tops of buses. Then my aunt told me that a young lady knew a stout man living at Shepherd's Bush who could talk of nothing but my book; and on inquiry at my publisher's I learnt that a gentleman answering to this description had bought two copies. I heard of my admirer from different quarters for the next month, until a great longing rose in me to see him, to clasp his hand, to ask what part of the book he liked best, at the least to walk up and down past his windows, feeling that two men who appreciated each other were only separated by a pane of glass.' 'Did you ever discover who he was?' 'I did. He lives at 42 Lavender Crescent, Shepherd's Bush, and his name is Henry Gilding.' 'Well?' said Rob, seeing Simms pause as if this was all. 'I am afraid, Mr. Angus,' the author murmured in reply, 'that you did not read the powerful and harrowing tale very carefully, or you would remember that my hero's name was also Henry Gilding.' 'Well, but what of that?' 'There is everything in that. It is what made the Shepherd's Bush gentleman my admirer for life. He considers it the strangest and most diverting thing in his experience, and every night, I believe, after dinner, his eldest daughter has to read out to him the passages in which the Henry Gildings are thickest. He chuckles over the extraordinary coincidence still. He could take that joke with him to the seaside for a month, and it would keep him in humour all the time.' 'Have done, Simms, have done,' said Rorrison; 'Angus is one of us, or wants to be, at all events. The _Minotaur_ is printing one of his things, and I have been giving him some sage advice.' 'Any man,' said Simms, 'will do well on the Press if he is stupid enough; even Rorrison has done well.' 'I have just been telling him,' responded Rorrison, 'that the stupid men fail.' 'I don't consider you a failure, Rorrison,' said Simms, in mild surprise. 'What stock-in-trade a literary hand requires, Mr. Angus, is a fire to dry his writing at, jam or honey with which to gum old stamps on to envelopes, and an antimacassar.' 'An antimacassar?' Rob repeated. 'Yes; you pluck the thread with which to sew your copy together out of the antimacassar. When my antimacassars are at the wash I have to take a holiday.' 'Well, well, Simms,' said Rorrison, 'I like you best when you are taciturn.' 'So do I,' said Simms. 'You might give Angus some advice about the likeliest papers for which to write. London is new to him.' 'The fact is, Mr. Angus,' said Simms, more seriously, 'that advice in such a matter is merely talk thrown away. If you have the journalistic instinct, which includes a determination not to be beaten, as well as an aptitude for selecting the proper subjects, you will by and by find an editor who believes in you. Many men of genuine literary ability have failed on the Press because they did not have that instinct, and they have attacked journalism in their books in consequence.' 'I am not sure that I know what the journalistic instinct precisely is,' Rob said, 'and still less whether I possess it.' 'Ah, just let me put you through your paces,' replied Simms. 'Suppose yourself up for an exam. in journalism, and that I am your examiner. Question One: "The house was soon on fire; much sympathy is expressed with the sufferers." Can you translate that into newspaper English?' 'Let me see,' answered Rob, entering into the spirit of the examination. 'How would this do: "In a moment the edifice was enveloped in shooting tongues of flame: the appalling catastrophe has plunged the whole street into the gloom of night"?' 'Good. Question Two: A man hangs himself; what is the technical heading for this?' 'Either "Shocking Occurrence" or "Rash Act."' 'Question Three: "_Pabulum_," "_Cela va sans dire_," "_Par excellence_," "_Ne plus ultra_." What are these? Are there any more of them?' 'They are scholarship,' replied Rob, 'and there are two more, namely, "_tour de force_" and "_terra firma_."' 'Question Four: A. (a soldier) dies at 6 P.M. with his back to the foe. B. (a philanthropist) dies at 1 A.M.: which of these, speaking technically, would you call a creditable death?' 'The soldier's, because time was given to set it.' 'Quite right. Question Five: Have you ever known a newspaper which did not have the largest circulation in its district, and was not the most influential advertising medium?' 'Never.' 'Question Six: Mr. Gladstone rises to speak in the House of Commons at 2 A.M. What would be the sub-editor's probable remark on receiving the opening words of the speech, and how would he break the news to the editor? How would the editor be likely to take it?' 'I prefer,' said Rob, 'not to answer that question.' 'Well, Mr. Angus,' said Simms, tiring of the examination, 'you have passed with honours.' The conversation turned to Rorrison's coming work in Egypt, and by and by Simms rose to go. 'Your stick, I suppose, Mr. Angus?' he said, taking Rob's thick staff from a corner. 'Yes,' answered Rob, 'it has only a heavy knob, you see, for a handle, and a doctor once told me that if I continued to press so heavily on it I might suffer from some disease in the palm of the hand.' 'I never heard of that,' said Simms, looking up for the first time since he entered the room. Then he added, 'You should get a stick like Rorrison's. It has a screw handle which he keeps loose, so that the slightest touch knocks it off. It is called the compliment-stick, because if Rorrison is in the company of ladies, he contrives to get them to hold it. This is in the hope that they will knock the handle off, when Rorrison bows and remarks exultingly that the stick is like its owner--when it came near them it lost its head. He has said that to fifteen ladies now, and has a great reputation for gallantry in consequence. Good-night.' 'Well, he did not get any copy out of me,' said Rob. 'Simms is a curious fellow,' Rorrison answered. 'Though you might not expect it, he has written some of the most pathetic things I ever read, but he wears his heart out of sight. Despite what he says, too, he is very jealous for the Press's good name. He seemed to take to you, so I should not wonder though he were to look you up here some night.' 'Here? How do you mean?' 'Why, this. I shall probably be away from London for some months, and as I must keep on my rooms, I don't see why you should not occupy them. The furniture is mine, and you would be rent free, except that the housekeeper expects a few shillings a week for looking after things. What do you think?' Rob could have only one thought as he compared these comfortable chambers to his own bare room, and as Rorrison, who seemed to have taken a warm liking to him, pressed the point, arguing that as the rent must be paid at any rate the chambers were better occupied, he at last consented, on the understanding that they could come to some arrangement on Rorrison's return. 'It will please my father, too,' Rorrison added, 'to know that you are here. I always remember that had it not been for him you might never have gone on to the Press.' They sat so late talking this matter over that Rob eventually stayed all night, Rorrison having in his bedroom a couch which many journalists had slept on. Next morning the paper whose nickname is the _Scalping Knife_ was served up with breakfast, and the first thing Rob saw in it was a leaderette about a disease generated in the palm of the hand by walking-sticks with heavy knobs for handles. 'I told you,' said Rorrison, 'that Simms would make his half-guinea out of you.' When Rorrison went down to Simms's chambers later in the day, however, to say that he was leaving Rob tenant of his rooms, he was laughing at something else. 'All during breakfast,' he said to Simms, 'I noticed that Angus was preoccupied, and anxious to say something that he did not like to say. At last he blurted it out with a white face, and what do you think it was?' Simms shook his head. 'Well,' said Rorrison, 'it was this. He has been accustomed to go down on his knees every night to say his prayers--as we used to do at school, but when he saw that I did not do it he did not like to do it either. I believe it troubled him all night, for he looked haggard when he rose.' 'He told you this?' 'Yes; he said he felt ashamed of himself,' said Rorrison, smiling. 'You must remember he is country-bred.' 'You were a good fellow, Rorrison,' said Simms gravely, 'to put him into your rooms, but I don't see what you are laughing at.' 'Why,' said Rorrison, taken aback, I thought you would see it in the same light.' 'Not I,' said Simms; 'but let me tell you this, I shall do what I can for him. I like your Angus.' CHAPTER X THE WIGWAM Rob had a tussle for it, but he managed to live down his first winter in London, and May-day saw him sufficiently prosperous and brazen to be able to go into restaurants and shout out 'Waiter.' After that nothing frightened him but barmaids. For a time his chief struggle had been with his appetite, which tortured him when he went out in the afternoons. He wanted to dine out of a paper bag, but his legs were reluctant to carry him past a grill-room. At last a compromise was agreed upon. If he got a proof over night, he dined in state next day; if it was only his manuscript that was returned to him, he thought of dining later in the week. For a long time his appetite had the worse of it. It was then that he became so great an authority on penny buns. His striking appearance always brought the saleswomen to him promptly, and sometimes he blushed, and often he glared, as he gave his order. When they smiled he changed his shop. There was one terrible month when he wrote from morning to night and did not make sixpence. He lived by selling his books, half a dozen at a time. Even on the last day of that black month he did not despair. When he wound up his watch at nights before going hungry to bed, he never remembered that it could be pawned. The very idea of entering a pawnshop never struck him. Many a time when his rejected articles came back he shook his fist in imagination at all the editors in London, and saw himself twisting their necks one by one. To think of a different death for each of them exercised his imagination and calmed his passion, and he wondered whether the murder of an editor was an indictable offence. When he did not have ten shillings, 'I will get on' cried Rob to himself. 'I'm not going to be starved out of a big town like this. I'll make my mark yet. Yes,' he roared, while the housekeeper at the other side of the door quaked to hear him, 'I will get on; I'm not going to be beaten.' He was waving his arms fiercely, when the housekeeper knocked. 'Come in,' said Rob, subsiding meekly into his chair. Before company he seemed to be without passion, but they should have seen him when he was alone. One night he dreamt that he saw all the editors in London being conveyed (in a row) to the hospital on stretchers. A gratified smile lit up his face as he slept, and his arm, going out suddenly to tip one of the stretchers over, hit against a chair. Rob jumped out of bed and kicked the chair round the room. By and by, when his articles were occasionally used, he told his proofs that the editors were capital fellows. The only acquaintances he made were with journalists who came to his chambers to see Rorrison, who was now in India. They seemed just as pleased to see Rob, and a few of them, who spoke largely of their connection with literature, borrowed five shillings from him. To his disappointment Noble Simms did not call, though he sometimes sent up notes to Rob suggesting likely articles, and the proper papers to which to send them. 'I would gladly say "Use my name,"' Simms wrote, 'but it is the glory of anonymous journalism that names are nothing and good stuff everything. I assure you that on the Press it is the men who have it in them that succeed, and the best of them become the editors.' He advised Rob to go to the annual supper given by a philanthropic body to discharged criminals and write an account of the proceedings; and told him that when anything remarkable happened in London he should at once do an article (in the British Museum) on the times the same thing had happened before. 'Don't neglect eclipses,' he said, 'nor heavy scoring at cricket matches any more than what look like signs of the times, and always try to be first in the field.' He recommended Rob to gather statistics of all kinds, from the number of grandchildren the crowned heads of Europe had to the jockeys who had ridden the Derby winner more than once, and suggested the collecting of anecdotes about celebrities, which everybody would want to read if his celebrities chanced to die, as they must do some day; and he assured him that there was a public who liked to be told every year what the poets had said about May. Rob was advised never to let a historic house disappear from London without compiling an article about its associations, and to be ready to run after the fire brigade. He was told that an article on flagstone artists could be made interesting. 'But always be sure of your facts,' Simms said. 'Write your articles over again and again, avoid fine writing as much as dishonest writing, and never spoil a leaderette by drawing it out into a leader. By and by you may be able to choose the kind of subject that interests yourself, but at present put your best work into what experienced editors believe interests the general public.' Rob found these suggestions valuable, and often thought, as he passed Simms's door, of going in to thank him, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that Simms did not want him. Of course Rob was wrong. Simms had feared at first to saddle himself with a man who might prove incapable, and besides, he generally liked those persons best whom he saw least frequently. For the great part of the spring Simms was out of town; but one day after his return he met Rob on the stair, and took him into his chambers. The sitting-room had been originally furnished with newspaper articles; Simms, in his younger days, when he wanted a new chair or an etching having written an article to pay for it, and then pasted the article on the back. He had paid a series on wild birds for his piano, and at one time leaderettes had even been found in the inside of his hats. Odd books and magazines lay about his table, but they would not in all have filled a library shelf; and there were no newspapers visible. The blank wall opposite the fireplace showed in dust that a large picture had recently hung there. It was an oil-painting which a month earlier had given way in the cord and fallen behind the piano, where Simms was letting it lie. 'I wonder,' said Rob, who had heard from many quarters of Simms's reputation, 'that you are content to put your best work into newspapers.' 'Ah,' answered Simms, 'I was ambitious once, but, as I told you, the grand book was a failure. Nowadays I gratify myself with the reflection that I am not stupid enough ever to be a great man.' 'I wish you would begin something really big,' said Rob earnestly. 'I feel safer,' replied Simms, 'finishing something really little.' He turned the talk to Rob's affairs as if his own wearied him, and, after hesitating, offered to 'place' a political article by Rob with the editor of the _Morning Wire_. 'I don't say he'll use it, though,' he added. This was so much the work Rob hungered for that he could have run upstairs and begun it at once. 'Why, you surely don't work on Saturday nights?' said his host, who was putting on an overcoat. 'Yes,' said Rob, 'there is nothing else to do. I know no one well enough to go to him. Of course I do nothing on the Sab--I mean on Sundays.' 'No? Then how do you pass your Sundays?' 'I go to church, and take a long walk, or read.' 'And you never break this principle--when a capital idea for an article strikes you on Sunday evening, for instance?' 'Well,' said Rob, 'when that happens I wait until twelve o'clock strikes, and then begin.' Perceiving nothing curious in this, Rob did not look up to see Simms's mouth twitching. 'On those occasions,' asked Simms, 'when you are waiting for twelve o'clock, does the evening not seem to pass very slowly?' Then Rob blushed. 'At all events, come with me to-night,' said Simms, 'to my club. I am going now to the Wigwam, and we may meet men there worth your knowing.' The Wigwam is one of the best known literary clubs in London, and as they rattled to it in a hansom, the driver of which was the broken son of a peer, Rob remarked that its fame had even travelled to his saw-mill. 'It has such a name,' said Simms in reply, 'that I feel sorry for any one who is taken to it for the first time. The best way to admire the Wigwam is not to go to it.' 'I always thought it was considered the pleasantest club in London,' Rob said. 'So it is,' said Simms, who was a member of half a dozen; 'most of the others are only meant for sitting in on padded chairs and calling out "sh-sh" when any other body speaks.' At the Wigwam there is a special dinner every Saturday evening, but it was over before Simms and Rob arrived, and the members were crowding into the room where great poets have sat beating time with churchwardens, while great artists or coming Cabinet ministers sang songs that were not of the drawing-room. A popular novelist, on whom Rob gazed with a veneration that did not spread to his companion's face, was in the chair when they entered, and the room was full of literary men, actors, and artists, of whom, though many were noted, many were also needy. Here was an actor who had separated from his wife because her notices were better than his; and another gentleman of the same profession took Rob aside to say that he was the greatest tragedian on earth if he could only get a chance. Rob did not know what to reply when the eminent cartoonist sitting next him, whom he had looked up to for half a dozen years, told him, by way of opening a conversation, that he had just pawned his watch. They seemed so pleased with poverty that they made as much of a little of it as they could, and the wisest conclusion Rob came to that night was not to take them too seriously. It was, however, a novel world to find oneself in all of a sudden, one in which everybody was a wit at his own expense. Even Simms, who always upheld the Press when any outsider ran it down, sang with applause some verses whose point lay in their being directed against himself. They began-- When clever pressmen write this way, 'As Mr. J. A. Froude would say,' Is it because they think he would, And have they read a line of Froude? Or is it only that they fear The comment they have made is queer, And that they either must erase it, Or say it's Mr. Froude who says it? Every one abandoned himself to the humour of the evening, and as song followed song, or was wedged between entertainments of other kinds, the room filled with smoke until it resembled London in a fog. By and by a sallow-faced man mounted a table to show the company how to perform a remarkable trick with three hats. He got his hats from the company, and having looked at them thoughtfully for some minutes, said that he had forgotten the way. 'That,' said Simms, mentioning a well-known journalist, 'is K----. He can never work unless his pockets are empty, and he would not be looking so doleful at present if he was not pretty well off. He goes from room to room in the house he lodges in, according to the state of his finances, and when you call on him you have to ask at the door which floor he is on to-day. One week you find him in the drawing-room, the next in the garret.' A stouter and brighter man followed the hat entertainment with a song, which he said was considered by some of his friends a recitation. 'There was a time,' said Simms, who was held a terrible person by those who took him literally, 'when that was the saddest man I knew. He was so sad that the doctors feared he would die of it. It all came of his writing for _Punch_.' 'How did they treat him?' Rob asked. 'Oh, they quite gave him up, and he was wasting away visibly, when a second-rate provincial journal appointed him its London correspondent, and saved his life.' 'Then he was sad,' asked Rob, 'because he was out of work?' 'On the contrary,' said Simms gravely, 'he was always one of the successful men, but he could not laugh.' 'And he laughed when he became a London correspondent?' 'Yes; that restored his sense of humour. But listen to this song; he is a countryman of yours who sings it.' A man, who looked as if he had been cut out of a granite block, and who at the end of each verse thrust his pipe back into his mouth, sang in a broad accent, that made Rob want to go nearer him, some verses about an old university-- 'Take off the stranger's hat!'--The shout We raised in fifty-nine Assails my ears, with careless flout, And now the hat is mine. It seems a day since I was here, A student slim and hearty, And see, the boys around me cheer, 'The ancient-looking party!' Rough horseplay did not pass for wit When Rae and Mill were there; I see a lad from Oxford sit In Blackie's famous chair. And Rae, of all our men the one We most admired in quad (I had this years ago), has gone Completely to the bad. In our debates the moral Mill Had infinite address, Alas! since then he's robbed a till, And now he's on the press. And Tommy Robb, the ploughman's son, Whom all his fellows slighted, From Rae and Mill the prize has won, For Tommy's to be knighted. A lanky loon is in the seat Filled once by manse-bred Sheen, Who did not care to mix with Peate, A bleacher who had been. But watch the whirligig of time, Brave Peate became a preacher, His name is known in every clime, And Sheen is now the bleacher. McMillan, who the medals carried, Is now a judge, 'tis said, And curly-headed Smith is married, And Williamson is dead. Old Phil and I who shared our books Now very seldom meet, And when we do, with frowning looks We pass by in the street. The college rings with student slang As in the days of yore, The self-same notice boards still hang Upon the class-room door: An essay (I expected that) On Burns this week, or Locke, 'A theory of creation' at Precisely seven o'clock. There's none here now who knows my name, My place is far away, And yet the college is the same, Not older by a day. But curious looks are cast at me, Ah! herein lies the change, All else is as it used to be, And I alone am strange! 'Now, you could never guess,' Simms said to Rob, 'what profession our singer belongs to.' 'He looks more like a writer than an artist,' said Rob, who had felt the song more than the singer did. 'Well, he is more an artist than a writer, though, strictly speaking, he is neither. To that man is the honour of having created a profession. He furnishes rooms for interviews.' 'I don't quite understand,' said Rob. 'It is in this way,' Simms explained. 'Interviews in this country are of recent growth, but it has been already discovered that what the public want to read is not so much a celebrity's views on any topic as a description of his library, his dressing-gown, or his gifts from the king of Kashabahoo. Many of the eminent ones, however, are very uninteresting in private life, and have no curiosities to show their interviewer worth writing about, so your countryman has started a profession of providing curiosities suitable for celebrities at from five pounds upwards, each article, of course, having a guaranteed story attached to it. The editor, you observe, intimates his wish to include the distinguished person in his galaxy of "Men of the Moment," and then the notability drops a line to our friend saying that he wants a few of his rooms arranged for an interview. Your countryman sends the goods, arranges them effectively, and puts the celebrity up to the reminiscences he is to tell about each.' 'I suppose,' said Rob, with a light in his eye, 'that the interviewer is as much taken in by this as--well, say, as I have been by you?' 'To the same extent,' admitted Simms solemnly. 'Of course he is not aware that before the interview appears the interesting relics have all been packed up and taken back to our Scottish friend's show-rooms.' The distinguished novelist in the chair told Rob (without having been introduced to him) that his books were beggaring his publishers. 'What I make my living off,' he said, 'is the penny dreadful, complete in one number. I manufacture two a week without hindrance to other employment, and could make it three if I did not have a weak wrist.' It was thus that every one talked to Rob, who, because he took a joke without changing countenance, was considered obtuse. He congratulated one man on his article on chaffinches in the _Evening Firebrand_, and the writer said he had discovered, since the paper appeared, that the birds he described were really linnets. Another man was introduced to Rob as the writer of _In Memoriam_. 'No,' said the gentleman himself, on seeing Rob start, 'my name is not Tennyson. It is, indeed, Murphy. Tennyson and the other fellows, who are ambitious of literary fame, pay me so much a page for poems to which they put their names.' At this point the applause became so deafening that Simms and Rob, who had been on their way to another room, turned back. An aged man, with a magnificent head, was on his feet to describe his first meeting with Carlyle. 'Who is it?' asked Rob, and Simms mentioned the name of a celebrity only a little less renowned than Carlyle himself. To Rob it had been one of the glories of London that in the streets he sometimes came suddenly upon world-renowned men, but he now looked upon this eminent scientist for the first time. The celebrity was there as a visitor, for the Wigwam cannot boast quite such famous members as he. The septuagenarian began his story well. He described the approach to Craigenputtock on a warm summer afternoon, and the emotions that laid hold of him as, from a distance, he observed the sage seated astride a low dyke, flinging stones into the duck-pond. The pedestrian announced his name and the pleasure with which he at last stood face to face with the greatest writer of the day; and then the genial author of _Sartor Resartus_, annoyed at being disturbed, jumped off the dyke and chased his visitor round and round the duck-pond. The celebrity had got thus far in his reminiscence when he suddenly stammered, bit his lip as if enraged at something, and then trembled so much that he had to be led back to his seat. 'He must be ill,' whispered Rob to Simms. 'It isn't that,' answered Simms; 'I fancy he must have caught sight of Wingfield.' Rob's companion pointed to a melancholy-looking man in a seedy coat, who was sitting alone glaring at the celebrity. 'Who is he?' asked Rob. 'He is the great man's literary executor,' Simms replied: 'come along with me and hearken to his sad tale; he is never loth to tell it.' They crossed over to Wingfield, who received them dejectedly. 'This is not a matter I care to speak of, Mr. Angus,' said the sorrowful man, who spoke of it, however, as frequently as he could find a listener. 'It is now seven years since that gentleman'--pointing angrily at the celebrity, who glared in reply--'appointed me his literary executor. At the time I thought it a splendid appointment, and by the end of two years I had all his remains carefully edited and his biography ready for the Press. He was an invalid at that time, supposed to be breaking up fast; yet look at him now.' 'He is quite vigorous in appearance now,' said Rob. 'Oh, I've given up hope,' continued the sad man dolefully. 'Still,' remarked Simms, 'I don't know that you could expect him to die just for your sake. I only venture that as an opinion, of course.' 'I don't ask that of him,' responded Wingfield. 'I'm not blaming him in any way; all I say is that he has spoilt my life. Here have I been waiting, waiting for five years, and I seem farther from publication than ever.' 'It is hard on you,' said Simms. 'But why did he break down in his story,' asked Rob, 'when he saw you?' 'Oh, the man has some sense of decency left, I suppose, and knows that he has ruined my career.' 'Is the Carlylean reminiscence taken from the biography?' inquired Simms. 'That is the sore point,' answered Wingfield sullenly. 'He used to shun society, but now he goes to clubs, banquets, and "At Homes," and tells the choice things in the memoir at every one of them. The book will scarcely be worth printing now.' 'I dare say he feels sorry for you,' said Simms, 'and sees that he has placed you in a false position.' 'He does in a way,' replied the literary executor, 'and yet I irritate him. When he was ill last December I called to ask for him every day, but he mistook my motives; and now he is frightened to be left alone with me.' 'It is a sad business,' said Simms, 'but we all have our trials.' 'I would try to bear up better,' said the sad man, 'if I got more sympathy.' It was very late when Simms and Rob left the Wigwam, yet they were amongst the first to go. 'When does the club close?' Rob asked, as they got into the fresh air. 'No one knows,' answered Simms wearily, 'but I believe the last man to go takes in the morning's milk.' In the weeks that followed Rob worked hard at political articles for the _Wire_, and at last began to feel that he was making some headway. He had not the fatal facility for scribbling that distinguishes some journalists, but he had felt life before he took to writing. His style was forcible if not superfine, and he had the faculty that makes a journalist, of only seeing things from one point of view. The successful political writer is blind in one eye. Though one in three of Rob's articles was now used, the editor of the _Wire_ did not write to say that he liked them, and Rob never heard any one mention them. Even Simms would not read them, but then Simms never read any paper. He got his news from the placards, and bought the _Scalping Knife_, not to read his own articles, but to measure them and calculate how much he would get for them. Then he dropped them into the gutter. Some weeks had passed without Rob's seeing Simms, when one day he got a letter that made him walk round and round his table like a circus horse. It was from the editor of the _Wire_, asking him to be in readiness to come to the office any evening he might be wanted to write. This looked like a step toward an appointment on the staff if he gave satisfaction (a proviso which he took complacently), and Rob's chest expanded, till the room seemed quite small. He pictured Thrums again. He jumped to Mary Abinger, and then he distinctly saw himself in the editorial chair of the _Times_. He was lying back in it, smoking a cigar, and giving a Cabinet minister five minutes. Nearly six months had passed since Rob saw Miss Abinger--a long time for a young man to remain in love with the same person. Of late Rob had been less given to dreaming than may be expected of a man who classifies the other sex into one particular lady and others, but Mary was coming to London in the early summer, and when he thought of summer he meant Mary. Rob was oftener in Piccadilly in May than he had been during the previous four months, and he was always looking for somebody. It was the third of June, a day to be remembered in his life, that he heard from the editor of the _Wire_. At five o'clock he looked upon that as what made it a day of days, but he had changed his mind by a quarter past. Rob had a silk hat now, and he thrust it on his head, meaning to run downstairs to tell Simms of his good fortune. He was in the happy frame of mind that makes a man walk round improbabilities, and for the first time since he came to London he felt confident of the future, without becoming despondent immediately afterwards. The future, like the summer, was an allegory for Miss Abinger. For the moment Rob's heart filled with compassion for Simms. The one thing our minds will not do is leave our neighbours alone, and Rob had some time before reached the conclusion that Simms's nature had been twisted by a disappointment in love. There was nothing else that could account for his fits of silence, his indifference to the future. He was known to have given the coat off his back to some miserable creature in the street, and to have been annoyed when he discovered that a friend saw him do it. Though Simms's walls were covered with engravings, Rob remembered all at once that there was not a female figure in one of them. To sympathise with others in a love affair is delightful to every one who feels that he is all right himself. Rob went down to Simms's rooms with a joyous step and a light heart. The outer door stood ajar, and as he pushed it open he heard a voice that turned his face white. From where he stood paralysed he saw through the dark passage into the sitting-room. Mary Abinger was standing before the fireplace, and as Rob's arm fell from the door, Simms bent forward and kissed her. CHAPTER XI ROB IS STRUCK DOWN Rob turned from Simms's door and went quietly downstairs, looking to the beadle, who gave him a good-evening at the mouth of the inn, like a man going quietly to his work. He could not keep his thoughts. They fell about him in sparks, raised by a wheel whirling so fast that it seemed motionless. Sleep-walkers seldom come to damage until they awake; and Rob sped on, taking crossings without a halt; deaf to the shouts of cabmen, blind to their gesticulations. When you have done Oxford Circus you can do anything; but he was not even brought to himself there, though it is all savage lands in twenty square yards. For a time he saw nothing but that scene in Simms's chambers, which had been photographed on his brain. The light of his life had suddenly been turned out, leaving him only the last thing he saw to think about. By and by he was walking more slowly, laughing at himself. Since he met Mary Abinger she had lived so much in his mind that he had not dared to think of losing her. He had only given himself fits of despondency for the pleasure of dispelling them. Now all at once he saw without prejudice the Rob Angus who had made up his mind to carry off this prize, and he cut such a poor figure that he smiled grimly at it. He realised as a humorous conception that this uncouth young man who was himself must have fancied that he was, on the whole, less unworthy of Miss Abinger than were most of the young men she was likely to meet. With the exaggerated humility that comes occasionally to men in his condition, without, however, feeling sufficiently at home to remain long, he felt that there was everything in Simms a girl could find lovable, and nothing in himself. He was so terribly open that any one could understand him, while Simms was such an enigma as a girl would love to read. His own clumsiness contrasted as disastrously with Simms's grace of manner as his blunt talk compared with Simms's wit. Not being able to see himself with the eyes of others, Rob noted only one thing in his favour, his fight forward; which they, knowing, for instance, that he was better to look at than most men, would have considered his chief drawback. Rob in his calmer moments had perhaps as high an opinion of his capacity as the circumstances warranted, but he never knew that a good many ladies felt his presence when he passed them. Most men are hero and villain several times in a day, but Rob went through the whole gamut of sensations in half an hour, hating himself the one moment for what seemed another's fault the next, fancying now that he was blessing the union of Mary with the man she cared for, and, again, that he had Simms by the throat. He fled from the fleeting form of woman, and ran after it. Simms had deceived him, had never even mentioned Silchester, had laughed at the awakening that was coming to him. All these months they had been waiting for Mary Abinger together, and Simms had not said that when she came it would be to him. Then Rob saw what a foolish race these thoughts ran in his brain, remembering that he had only seen Simms twice for more than a moment, and that he himself had never talked of Silchester. He scorned his own want of generosity, and recalled his solicitude for Simms's welfare an hour before. Rob saw his whole future life lying before him. The broken-looking man with the sad face aged before his time, who walked alone up Fleet Street, was Rob Angus, who had come to London to be happy. Simms would ask him sometimes to his house to see her, but it was better that he should not go. She would understand why, if her husband did not. Her husband! Rob could not gulp down the lump in his throat. He rushed on again, with nothing before him but that picture of Simms kissing her. Simms was not worthy of her. Why had he always seemed an unhappy, disappointed man if the one thing in the world worth striving for was his? Rob stopped abruptly in the street with the sudden thought, Was it possible that she did not care for Simms? Could that scene have had any other meaning? He had once heard Simms himself say that you never knew what a woman meant by anything until she told you, and probably not even then. But he saw again the love in her eyes as she looked up into Simms's face. All through his life he would carry that look with him. They took no distinct shape, but wild ways of ending his misery coursed through his brain, and he looked on calmly at his own funeral. A terrible stolidity seized him, and he conceived himself a monster from whom the capacity to sympathise had gone. Children saw his face and fled from him. He had left England far behind, and dwelt now among wild tribes who had not before looked upon a white face. Their sick came to him for miracles, and he either cured them or told them to begone. He was not sure whether he was a fiend or a missionary. Then something remarkable happened, which showed that Rob had not mistaken his profession. He saw himself in the editorial chair that he had so often coveted, and Mary Abinger, too, was in the room. Always previously when she had come between him and the paper he had been forced to lay down his pen, but now he wrote on and on, and she seemed to help him. He was describing the scene that he had witnessed in Simms's chambers, describing it so vividly that he heard the great public discussing his article as if it were an Academy picture. His passion had subsided, and the best words formed slowly in his brain. He was hesitating about the most fitting title, when some one struck against him, and as he drew his arm over his eyes he knew with horror that he had been turning Mary Abinger into copy. For the last time that night Rob dreamt again, and now it was such a fine picture he drew that he looked upon it with sad complacency. Many years had passed. He was now rich and famous. He passed through the wynds of Thrums, and the Auld Lichts turned out to gaze at him. He saw himself signing cheques for all kinds of charitable objects, and appearing in the subscription lists, with a grand disregard for glory that is not common to philanthropists, as X. Y. Z. or 'A Wellwisher.' His walls were lined with books written by himself, and Mary Abinger (who had not changed in the least with the years) read them proudly, knowing that they were all written for her. (Simms somehow had not fulfilled his promise.) The papers were full of his speech in the House of Commons the night before, and he had declined a seat in the Cabinet from conscientious motives. His imagination might soon have landed him master in the Mansion House, had it not deserted him when he had most need of it. He fell from his balloon like a stone. Before him he saw the blank years that had to be traversed without any Mary Abinger, and despair filled his soul. All the horrible meaning of the scene he had fled from came to him like a rush of blood to the head, and he stood with it, glaring at it, in the middle of a roaring street. Three hansoms shaved him by an inch, and the fourth knocked him senseless. An hour later Simms was lolling in his chambers smoking, his chair tilted back until another inch would have sent him over it. His gas had been blazing all day because he had no blotting-paper, and the blinds were nicely pulled down because Mary Abinger and Nell were there to do it. They were sitting on each side of him, and Nell had on a round cap, about which Simms subsequently wrote an article. Mary's hat was larger and turned up at one side; the fashion which arose through a carriage wheel's happening to pass over the hat of a leader of fashion and make it perfectly lovely. Beyond the hats one does not care to venture, but out of fairness to Mary and Nell it should be said that there were no shiny little beads on their dresses. They had put on their hats to go, and then they had sat down again to tell their host a great many things that they had told him already. Even Mary, who was perfect in a general sort of way, took a considerable time to tell a story, and expected it to have more point when it ended than was sometimes the case. Simms, with his eyes half closed, let the laughter ripple over his head, and drowsily heard the details of their journey from Silchester afresh. Mary had come up with the Merediths on the previous day, and they were now staying at the Langham Hotel. They would only be in town for a few weeks; 'just to oblige the season,' Nell said, for she had inveigled her father into taking a house-boat on the Thames, and was certain it would prove delightful. Mary was to accompany them there too, having first done her duty to society, and Colonel Abinger was setting off shortly for the Continent. In the middle of her prattle, Nell distinctly saw Simms's head nod, as if it was loose in its socket. She made a mournful grimace. Simms sat up. 'Your voices did it,' he explained, unabashed. 'They are as soothing to the jaded journalist as the streams that murmur through the fields in June.' 'Cigars are making you stupid, Dick,' said Mary; 'I do wonder why men smoke.' 'I have often asked myself that question,' thoughtfully answered Simms, whom it is time to call by his real name of Dick Abinger. 'I know some men who smoke because they might get sick otherwise when in the company of smokers. Others smoke because they began to do so at school, and are now afraid to leave off. A great many men smoke for philanthropic motives, smoking enabling them to work harder, and so being for their family's good. At picnics men smoke because it is the only way to keep the midges off the ladies. Smoking keeps you cool in summer and warm in winter, and is an excellent disinfectant. There are even said to be men who admit that they smoke because they like it, but for my own part I fancy I smoke because I forget not to do so.' 'Silly reasons,' said Nell. If there was one possible improvement she could conceive in Dick it was that he might make his jests a little easier. 'It is revealing no secret,' murmured Abinger in reply, 'to say that drowning men clutch at straws.' Mary rose to go once more, and sat down again, for she had remembered something else. 'Do you know, Dick,' she said, 'that your two names are a great nuisance. On our way to London yesterday there was an acquaintance of Mr. Meredith's in the carriage, and he told us he knew Noble Simms well.' 'Yes,' said Nell, 'and that this Noble Simms was an old gentleman who had been married for thirty years. We said we knew Mr. Noble Simms and that he was a barrister, and he laughed at us. So you see some one is trading on your name.' 'Much good may it do him,' said Abinger generously. 'But it is horrid,' said Nell, 'that we should have to listen to people praising Noble Simms's writings, and not be allowed to say that he is Dick Abinger in disguise.' 'It must be very hard on you, Nell, to have to keep a secret,' admitted Dick, 'but you see I must lead two lives or be undone. In the Temple you will see the name of Richard Abinger, barrister-at-law, but in Frobisher's Inn he is J. Noble Simms.' 'I don't see the good of it,' said Nell. 'My ambition, you must remember,' explained Dick, 'is to be Lord Chancellor or Lord Chief Justice, I forget which, but while I wait for that post I must live, and I live by writings (which are all dead the morning after they appear). Now such is the suspicion with which literature is regarded by the legal mind, that were it known I wrote for the Press my chance of the Lord Chancellorship would cease to be a moral certainty. The editor of the _Scalping Knife_ has not the least notion that Noble Simms is the rising barrister who has been known to make as much by the law as a guinea in a single month. Indeed, only my most intimate friends, some of whom practise the same deception themselves, are aware that the singular gifts of Simms and Abinger are united in the same person.' 'The housekeeper here must know?' asked Mary. 'No, it would hopelessly puzzle her,' said Dick; 'she would think there was something uncanny about it, and so she is happy in the belief that the letters which occasionally come addressed to Abinger are forwarded by me to that gentleman's abode in the Temple.' 'It is such an ugly name, Noble Simms,' said Nell; 'I wonder why you selected it.' 'It is ugly, is it not?' said Dick. 'It struck me at the time as the most ridiculous name I was likely to think of, and so I chose it. Such a remarkable name sticks to the public mind, and that is fame.' As he spoke he rose to get the two girls the cab that would take them back to the hotel. 'There is some one knocking at the door,' said Mary. 'Come in,' murmured Abinger. The housekeeper opened the door, but half shut it again when she saw that Dick was not alone. Then she thought of a compromise between telling her business and retiring. 'If you please, Mr. Simms,' she said apologetically, 'would you speak to me a moment in the passage?' Abinger disappeared with her, and when he returned the indifferent look had gone from his face. 'Wait for me a few minutes,' he said; 'a man upstairs, one of the best fellows breathing, has met with an accident, and I question if he has a friend in London. I am going up to see him.' 'Poor fellow!' said Mary to Nell, after Dick had gone; 'fancy his lying here for weeks without any one going near him but Dick.' 'But how much worse it would be without Dick!' said Nell. 'I wonder if he is a barrister,' said Mary. 'I think he will be a journalist rather,' Nell said thoughtfully, 'a tall, dark, melancholy-looking man, and I should not wonder though he had a broken heart.' 'I'm afraid it is more serious than that,' said Mary. Nell set off on a trip round the room, remarking with a profound sigh that it must be awful to live alone and have no one to speak to for whole hours at a time. 'I should go mad,' she said, in such a tone of conviction that Mary did not think of questioning it. Then Nell, who had opened a drawer rather guiltily, exclaimed, 'Oh, Mary!' A woman can put more meaning into a note of exclamation than a man can pack in a sentence. It costs Mr. Jones, for instance, a long message simply to telegraph to his wife that he is bringing a friend home to dinner, but in a sixpenny reply Mrs. Jones can warn him that he had better do no such thing, that he ought to be ashamed of himself for thinking of it, that he must make some excuse to his friend, and that he will hear more of this when he gets home. Nell's 'Oh, Mary!' signified that chaos was come. Mary hastened round the table, and found her friend with a letter in her hand. 'Well,' said Mary, 'that is one of your letters to Dick, is it not?' 'Yes,' answered Nell tragically; 'but fancy his keeping my letters lying about carelessly in a drawer--and--and, yes, using them as scribbling paper!' Scrawled across the envelopes in a barely decipherable handwriting were such notes as these: 'Schoolboys smoking master's cane-chair, work up'; 'Return of the swallows (poetic or humorous?)'; 'My First Murder (magazine?)'; 'Better do something pathetic for a change.' There were tears in Nell's eyes. 'This comes of prying,' said Mary. 'Oh, I wasn't prying,' said Nell; 'I only opened it by accident. That is the worst of it. I can't say anything about them to him, because he might think I had opened his drawer to--to see what was in it--which is the last thing in the world I would think of doing. Oh, Mary,' she added woefully, 'what do you think?' 'I think you are a goose,' said Mary promptly. 'Ah, you are so indifferent,' Nell said, surrendering her position all at once. 'Now when I see a drawer I am quite unhappy until I know what is in it, especially if it is locked. When we lived opposite the Burtons I was miserable because they always kept the blind of one of their windows down. If I had been a boy I would have climbed up to see why they did it. Ah! that is Dick; I know his step.' She was hastening to the door, when she remembered the letters, and subsided primly into a chair. 'Well?' asked Mary, as her brother re-entered with something in his hand. 'The poor fellow has had a nasty accident,' said Dick; 'run over in the street, it seems. He ought to have been taken to the infirmary, but they got a letter with his address on it in his pocket, and brought him here.' 'Has a doctor seen him?' 'Yes, but I hardly make out from the housekeeper what he said. He was gone before I went up. There are some signs, however, of what he did. The poor fellow seems to have been struck on the head.' Mary shuddered, understanding that some operation had been found necessary. 'Did he speak to you?' asked Nell. 'He was asleep,' said Dick, 'but talking more than he does when he is awake.' 'He must have been delirious,' said Mary. 'One thing I can't make out,' Dick said, more to himself than to his companions. 'He mumbled my name to himself half a dozen times while I was upstairs.' 'But is there anything remarkable in that,' asked Mary, 'if he has so few friends in London?' 'What I don't understand,' explained Dick, 'is that the word I caught was Abinger. Now, I am quite certain that he only knew me as Noble Simms.' 'Some one must have told him your real name,' said Mary. 'Is he asleep now?' 'That reminds me of another thing,' said Dick, looking at the torn card in his hand. 'Just as I was coming away he staggered off the couch where he is lying to his desk, opened it, and took out this card. He glared at it, and tore it in two before I got him back to the couch.' There were tears in Nell's eyes now, for she felt that she understood it all. 'It is horrible to think of him alone up there,' she cried. 'Let us go up to him, Mary.' Mary hesitated. 'I don't think it would be the thing,' she said, taking the card from Nell's hand. She started slightly as she looked at it, and then became white. 'What is his name, Dick?' she faltered, in a voice that made Nell look at her. 'Angus,' said Dick. 'He has been on the Press here for some months.' The name suggested nothing at the moment to Nell, but Mary let the card fall. It was a shabby little Christmas card. 'I think we should go up and see if we can do anything,' Dick's sister said. 'But would it be the thing?' Nell asked. 'Of course it would,' said Mary, a little surprised at Nell. CHAPTER XII THE STUPID SEX Give a man his chance, and he has sufficient hardihood for anything. Within a week of the accident Rob was in Dick Abinger's most luxurious chair, coolly taking a cup and saucer from Nell, while Mary arranged a cushion for his poor head. He even made several light-hearted jests, at which his nurses laughed heartily--because he was an invalid. Rob's improvement dated from the moment he opened his eyes and heard the soft rustle of a lady's skirts in the next room. He lay quietly listening, and realised by and by that he had known she was Mary Abinger all along. 'Who is that?' he said abruptly to Dick, who was swinging his legs on the dressing-table. Dick came to him as awkwardly as if he had been asked to hold a baby, and saw no way of getting out of it. Sick-rooms chilled him. 'Are you feeling better now, old fellow?' he asked. 'Who is it?' Rob repeated, sitting up in bed. 'That is my sister,' Dick said. Rob's head fell back. He could not take it in all at once. Dick thought he had fallen asleep, and tried to slip gently from the room, discovering for the first time as he did so that his shoes creaked. 'Don't go,' said Rob, sitting up again. 'What is your sister's name?' 'Abinger, of course, Mary Abinger,' answered Dick, under the conviction that the invalid was still off his head. He made for the door again, but Rob's arm went out suddenly and seized him. 'You are a liar, you know,' Rob said feebly; 'she's not your sister.' 'No, of course not,' said Dick, humouring him. 'I want to see her,' Rob said authoritatively. 'Certainly,' answered Dick, escaping into the other room to tell Mary that the patient was raving again. 'I heard him,' said Mary. 'Well, what's to be done?' asked her brother. 'He's madder than ever.' 'Oh no, I think he's getting on nicely now,' Mary said, moving toward the bedroom. 'Don't,' exclaimed Dick, getting in front of her; 'why, I tell you his mind is wandering. He says you're not my sister.' 'Of course he can't understand so long as he thinks your name is Simms.' 'But he knows my name is Abinger. Didn't I tell you I heard him groaning it over to himself?' 'Oh, Dick,' said Mary, 'I wish you would go away and write a stupid article.' Dick, however, stood at the door, ready to come to his sister's assistance if Rob got violent. 'He says you are his sister,' said the patient to Mary. 'So I am,' said Mary softly. 'My brother writes under the name of Noble Simms, but his real name is Abinger. Now you must lie still and think about that; you are not to talk any more.' 'I won't talk any more,' said Rob slowly. 'You are not going away, though?' 'Just for a little while,' Mary answered. 'The doctor will be here presently.' 'Well, you have quieted him,' Dick admitted. They were leaving the room, when they heard Rob calling. 'There he goes again,' said Dick, groaning. 'What is it?' Mary asked, returning to the bedroom. 'Why did he say you were not his sister?' Rob said, very suspiciously. 'Oh, his mind was wandering,' Mary answered cruelly. She was retiring again, but stopped undecidedly. Then she looked from the door to see if her brother was within hearing. Dick was at the other end of the sitting-room, and she came back noiselessly to Rob's bedside. 'Do you remember,' she asked, in a low voice, 'how the accident happened? You know you were struck by a cab.' 'Yes,' answered Rob at once, 'I saw him kissing you. I don't remember anything after that.' Mary, looking like a culprit, glanced hurriedly at the door. Then she softly pushed the invalid's unruly hair off his brow, and glided from the room smiling. 'Well?' asked Dick. 'He was telling me how the accident happened,' Mary said. 'And how was it?' 'Oh, just as you said. He got bewildered at a crossing and was knocked over.' 'But he wasn't the man to lose his reason at a crossing,' said Dick. 'There must have been something to agitate him.' 'He said nothing about that,' replied Mary, without blushing. 'Did he tell you how he knew my name was Abinger?' Dick asked, as they went downstairs. 'No,' his sister said, 'I forgot to ask him.' 'There was that Christmas card, too,' Dick said suddenly. 'Nell says Angus must be in love, poor fellow.' 'Nell is always thinking people are in love,' Mary answered severely. 'By the way,' said Dick, 'what became of the card? He might want to treasure it, you know.' 'I--I rather think I put it somewhere,' Mary said. 'I wonder,' Dick remarked curiously, 'what sort of girl Angus would take to?' 'I wonder,' said Mary. They were back in Dick's chambers by this time, and he continued with some complacency--for all men think they are on safe ground when discussing an affair of the heart:-- 'We could build the young lady up from the card, which, presumably, was her Christmas offering to him. It was not expensive, so she is a careful young person; and the somewhat florid design represents a blue bird sitting on a pink twig, so that we may hazard the assertion that her artistic taste is not as yet fully developed. She is a fresh country maid, or the somewhat rich colouring would not have taken her fancy, and she is short, a trifle stout, or a big man like Angus would not have fallen in love with her. Reserved men like gushing girls, so she gushes and says "Oh my!" and her nicest dress (here Dick shivered) is of a shiny satin with a dash of rich velvet here and there. Do you follow me?' 'Yes,' said Mary; 'it is wonderful. I suppose, now, you are never wrong when you "build up" so much on so little?' 'Sometimes we go a little astray,' admitted Dick. 'I remember going into a hotel with Rorrison once, and on a table we saw a sailor-hat lying, something like the one Nell wears--or is it you?' 'The idea of your not knowing!' said his sister indignantly. 'Well, we discussed the probable owner. I concluded, after narrowly examining the hat, that she was tall, dark, and handsome, rather than pretty. Rorrison, on the other hand, maintained that she was a pretty, baby-faced girl, with winning ways.' 'And did you discover if either of you was right?' 'Yes,' said Dick slowly. 'In the middle of the discussion a little boy in a velvet suit toddled into the room, and said to us, "Gim'me my hat."' In the weeks that followed, Rob had many delicious experiences. He was present at several tea-parties in Abinger's chambers, the guests being strictly limited to three; and when he could not pretend to be ill any longer, he gave a tea-party himself in honour of his two nurses--his one and a half nurses, Dick called them. At this Mary poured out the tea, and Rob's eyes showed so plainly (though not to Dick) that he had never seen anything like it, that Nell became thoughtful, and made a number of remarks on the subject to her mother as soon as she returned home. 'It would never do,' Nell said, looking wise. 'Whatever would the colonel say!' exclaimed Mrs. Meredith. 'After all, though,' she added--for she had been to see Rob twice, and liked him because of something he had said to her about his mother--'he is just the same as Richard.' 'Oh no, no,' said Nell, 'Dick is an Oxford man, you must remember, and Mr. Angus, as the colonel would say, rose from obscurity.' 'Well, if he did,' persisted Mrs. Meredith, 'he does not seem to be going back to it, and universities seem to me to be places for making young men stupid.' 'It would never, never do,' said Nell, with doleful decision. 'What does Mary say about him?' asked her mother. 'She never says anything,' said Nell. 'Does she talk much to him?' 'No; very little.' 'That is a good sign,' said Mrs. Meredith. 'I don't know,' said Nell. 'Have you noticed anything else?' 'Nothing except--well, Mary is longer in dressing now than I am, and she used not to be.' 'I wonder,' Mrs. Meredith remarked, 'if Mary saw him at Silchester after that time at the castle?' 'She never told me she did,' Nell answered, 'but sometimes I think--however, there is no good in thinking.' 'It isn't a thing you often do, Nell. By the way, he saw the first Sir Clement at Dome Castle, did he not?' 'Yes,' Nell said, 'he saw the impostor, and I don't suppose he knows there is another Sir Clement. The Abingers don't like to speak of that. However, they may meet on Friday, for Dick has got Mr. Angus a card for the Symphonia, and Sir Clement is to be there.' 'What does Richard say about it?' asked Mrs. Meredith, going back apparently upon their conversation. 'We never speak about it, Dick and I,' said Nell. 'What do you speak about, then?' 'Oh, nothing,' said Nell. Mrs. Meredith sighed. 'And you such an heiress, Nell,' she said; 'you could do so much better. He will never have anything but what he makes by writing; and if all stories be true, half of that goes to the colonel. I'm sure your father never will consent.' 'Oh yes, he will,' Nell said. 'If he had really tried to get on at the Bar,' Mrs. Meredith pursued, 'it would not have been so bad, but he is evidently to be a newspaper man all his life.' 'I wish you would say journalist, mamma,' Nell said, pouting, 'or literary man. The profession of letters is a noble one.' 'Perhaps it is,' Mrs. Meredith assented, with another sigh, 'and I dare say he told you so, but I can't think it is very respectable.' Rob did not altogether enjoy the Symphonia, which is a polite club attended by the literary fry of both sexes; the ladies who write because they cannot help it, the poets who excuse their verses because they were young when they did them, the clergymen who publish their sermons by request of their congregations, the tourists who have been to Spain and cannot keep it to themselves. The club meets once a fortnight, for the purpose of not listening to music and recitations; and the members, of whom the ladies outnumber the men, sit in groups round little lions who roar mildly. The Symphonia is very fashionable and select, and having heard the little lions a-roaring, you get a cup of coffee and go home again. Dick explained that he was a member of the Symphonia because he rather liked to put on the lion's skin himself now and again, and he took Mrs. Meredith and the two girls to it to show them of what literature in its higher branches is capable. The elegant dresses of the literary ladies, and the suave manner of the literary gentlemen, impressed Nell's mother favourably, and the Symphonia, which she had taken for an out-at-elbows club, raised letters in her estimation. Rob, however, who never felt quite comfortable in evening dress, had a bad time of it, for Dick carried him off at once, and got him into a group round the authoress of _My Baby Boy_, to whom Rob was introduced as a passionate admirer of her delightful works. The lion made room for him, and he sat sadly beside her, wishing he was not so big. Both of the rooms of the Symphonia club were crowded, but a number of gentlemen managed to wander from group to group over the skirts of ladies' gowns. Rob watched them wistfully from his cage, and observed one come to rest at the back of Mary Abinger's chair. He was a medium-sized man, and for five minutes Rob thought he was Sir Clement Dowton. Then he realised that he had been deceived by a remarkable resemblance. The stranger said a great deal to Mary, and she seemed to like him. After a long time the authoress's voice broke in on Rob's cogitations, and when he saw that she was still talking without looking tired, a certain awe filled him. Then Mary rose from her chair, taking the arm of the gentleman who was Sir Clement's double, and they went into the other room, where the coffee was served. Rob was tempted to sit there stupidly miserable, for the easiest thing to do comes to us first. Then he thought it was better to be a man, and, drawing up his chest, boldly asked the lion to have a cup of coffee. In another moment he was steering her through the crowd, her hand resting on his arm, and, to his amazement, he found he rather liked it. In the coffee-room Rob could not distinguish the young lady who moved like a swan, but he was elated with his social triumph, and cast about for any journalist of his acquaintance who, he thought, might like to meet the authoress of _My Baby Boy_. It struck Rob that he had no right to keep her all to himself. Quite close to him his eye lighted on Marriott, the author of _Mary Hooney: a Romance of the Irish Question_, but Marriott saw what he was after, and dived into the crowd. A very young gentleman, with large empty eyes, begged Rob's pardon for treading on his toes, and Rob, who had not felt it, saw that this was his man. He introduced him to the authoress as another admirer, and the round-faced youth seemed such a likely subject for her next work that Rob moved off comfortably. A shock awaited him when he met Dick, who had been passing the time by taking male guests aside and asking them in an impressive voice what they thought of his great book, _Lives of Eminent Washer-women_, which they had no doubt read. 'Who is the man so like Dowton?' he repeated, in answer to Rob's question. 'Why, it is Dowton.' Then Dick looked vexed. He remembered that Rob had been at Dome Castle on the previous Christmas Eve. 'Look here, Angus,' he said bluntly, 'this is a matter I hate to talk about. The fact is, however, that this is the real Sir Clement. The fellow you met was an impostor, who came from no one knows where. Unfortunately, he has returned to the same place.' Dick bit his lip while Rob digested this. 'But if you know the real Dowton,' Rob asked, 'how were you deceived?' 'Well, it was my father who was deceived rather than myself, but we did not know the real baronet then. The other fellow, if you must know, traded on his likeness to Dowton, who is in the country now for the first time for many years. Whoever the impostor is, he is a humorist in his way, for when he left the castle in January he asked my father to call on him when he came to town. The fellow must have known that Dowton was coming home about that time; at all events, my father, who was in London shortly afterwards, looked up his friend the baronet, as he thought, at his club, and found that he had never set eyes on him before. It would make a delicious article if it had not happened in one's own family.' 'The real Sir Clement seems great friends with Miss Abinger,' Rob could not help saying. 'Yes,' said Dick, 'we struck up an intimacy with him over the affair, and stranger things have happened than that he and Mary----' He stopped. 'My father, I believe, would like it,' he added carelessly, but Rob had turned away. Dick went after him. 'I have told you this,' he said, 'because, as you knew the other man, it had to be done, but we don't like it spoken of.' 'I shall not speak of it,' said miserable Rob. He would have liked to be tearing through London again, but as that was not possible he sought a solitary seat by the door. Before he reached it his mood changed. What was Sir Clement Dowton, after all, that he should be frightened at him? He was merely a baronet. An impostor who could never have passed for a journalist had succeeded in passing for Dowton. Journalism was the noblest of all professions, and Rob was there representing it. The seat of honour at the Symphonia was next to Mary Abinger, and the baronet had held it too long already. Instead of sulking, Rob approached the throne like one who had a right to be there. Sir Clement had risen for a moment to put down Mary's cup, and when he returned Rob was in his chair, with no immediate intention of getting out of it. The baronet frowned, which made Rob say quite a number of bright things to Miss Abinger. When two men are in love with the same young lady one of them must be worsted. Rob saw that it was better to be the other one. The frightfully Bohemian people at the Symphonia remained there even later than eleven o'clock, but the rooms thinned before then, and Dick's party were ready to go by half-past ten. Rob was now very sharp. It did not escape his notice that the gentlemen were bringing the ladies' cloaks, and he calmly made up his mind to help Mary Abinger on with hers. To his annoyance, Sir Clement was too quick for him. The baronet was in the midst of them, with the three ladies' cloaks, just as Rob wondered where he would have to go to find them. Nell's cloak Sir Clement handed to Dick, but he kept Mary's on his arm while he assisted Mrs. Meredith into hers. It was a critical moment. All would be over in five seconds. 'Allow me,' said Rob. With apparent coolness he took Mary's cloak from the baronet's arm. He had not been used to saying 'allow me,' and his face was white, but he was determined to go on with this thing. 'Take my arm,' he said to Mary, as they joined the crowd that swayed toward the door. After he said it he saw that he had spoken with an air of proprietorship, but he was not sorry. Mary did it. It took them some time to reach their cab, and on the way Mary asked Rob a question. 'I gave you something once,' she said, 'but I suppose you lost it long ago.' Rob reddened, for he had been sadly puzzled to know what had become of his Christmas card. 'I have it still,' he answered at last. 'Oh,' said Mary coldly; and at once Rob felt a chill pass through him. It was true, after all, that Miss Abinger could be an icicle on occasion. Rob, having told a lie, deserved no mercy, and got none. The pity of it is that Mary might have thawed a little had she known that it was only a lie. She thought that Rob was not aware of his loss. A man taking fickleness as the comparative degree of an untruth is perhaps only what may be looked for, but one does not expect it from a woman. Probably the lights had blinded Mary. Rob had still an opportunity of righting himself, but he did not take it. 'Then you did mean the card for me,' he said, in foolish exultation; 'when I found it on the walk I was not certain that you had not merely dropped it by accident.' Alas! for the fatuity of man. Mary looked up in icy surprise. 'What card?' she said. 'I don't know what you are talking about.' 'Don't you remember?' asked Rob, very much requiring to be sharpened again. He looked so woebegone, that Mary nearly had pity on him. She knew, however, that if it was not for her sex, men would never learn anything. 'No,' she replied, and turned to talk to Sir Clement. Rob walked home from the Langham that night with Dick, and, when he was not thinking of the two Sir Clements, he was telling himself that he had climbed his hill valiantly, only to topple over when he neared the top. Before he went to bed he had an article to finish for the _Wire_, and, while he wrote, he pondered over the ways of women; which, when you come to think of it, is a droll thing to do. Mr. Meredith had noticed Rob's dejection at the hotel, and remarked to Nell's mother that he thought Mary was very stiff to Angus. Mrs. Meredith looked sadly at her husband in reply. 'You think so,' she said, mournfully shaking her head at him, 'and so does Richard Abinger. Mr. Angus is as blind as the rest of you.' 'I don't understand,' said Mr. Meredith, with much curiosity. 'Nor do they,' replied his wife contemptuously; 'there are no men so stupid, I think, as the clever ones.' She could have preached a sermon that night, with the stupid sex for her text. CHAPTER XIII THE HOUSE-BOAT 'TAWNY OWL' 'Mr. Angus, what is an egotist?' 'Don't you know, Miss Meredith?' 'Well, I know in a general sort of way, but not precisely.' 'An egotist is a person who--but why do you want to know?' 'Because just now Mr. Abinger asked me what I was thinking of, and when I said of nothing he called me an egotist.' 'Ah! that kind of egotist is one whose thoughts are too deep for utterance.' It was twilight. Rob stood on the deck of the house-boat _Tawny Owl_, looking down at Nell, who sat in the stern, her mother beside her, amid a blaze of Chinese lanterns. Dick lay near them, prone, as he had fallen from a hammock whose one flaw was that it gave way when any one got into it. Mr. Meredith, looking out from one of the saloon windows across the black water that was now streaked with glistening silver, wondered whether he was enjoying himself, and Mary, in a little blue nautical jacket with a cap to match, lay back in a camp-chair on deck with a silent banjo in her hands. Rob was brazening it out in flannels, and had been at such pains to select colours to suit him that the effect was atrocious. He had spent several afternoons at Molesey during the three weeks the _Tawny Owl_ had lain there, but this time he was to remain overnight at the Island Hotel. The _Tawny Owl_ was part of the hoop of house-boats that almost girded Tagg's Island, and lights sailed through the trees, telling of launches moving to their moorings near the ferry. Now and again there was the echo of music from a distant house-boat. For a moment the water was loquacious as dingeys or punts shot past. Canadian canoes, the ghosts that haunt the Thames by night, lifted their heads out of the river, gaped, and were gone. An osier-wand dipped into the water under a weight of swallows, all going to bed together. The boy on the next house-boat kissed his hand to a broom on board the _Tawny Owl_, taking it for Mrs. Meredith's servant, and then retired to his kitchen smiling. From the boat-house across the river came the monotonous tap of a hammer. A reed-warbler rushed through his song. There was a soft splashing along the bank. 'There was once a literary character,' Dick murmured, 'who said that to think of nothing was an impossibility, but he lived before the days of house-boats. I came here a week ago to do some high thinking, and I believe I have only managed four thoughts--first, that the cow on the island is an irate cow; second, that in summer the sun shines brightly; third, that the trouble of lighting a cigar is almost as great as the pleasure of smoking it; and fourth, that swans--the fourth thought referred to swans, but it has slipped my memory.' He yawned like a man glad to get to the end of his sentence, or sorry that he had begun it. 'But I thought,' said Mrs. Meredith, 'that the reason you walk round and round the island by yourself so frequently is because you can think out articles on it?' 'Yes,' Dick answered, 'the island looks like a capital place to think on, and I always start off on my round meaning to think hard. After that all is a blank till I am back at the _Tawny Owl_, when I remember that I have forgotten to think.' 'Will ought to enjoy this,' remarked Nell. 'That is my brother, Mr. Angus,' Mary said to Rob; 'he is to spend part of his holidays here.' 'I remember him,' Rob answered, smiling. Mary blushed, however, remembering that the last time Will and Greybrooke met Rob there had been a little scene. 'He will enjoy the fishing,' said Dick. 'I have only fished myself three or four times, and I am confident I hooked a minnow yesterday.' 'I saw a little boy,' Nell said, 'fishing from the island to-day, and his mother had strapped him to a tree in case he might fall in.' 'When I saw your young brother at Silchester,' Rob said to Mary, 'he had a schoolmate with him.' 'Ah, yes,' Dick said; 'that was the man who wanted to horsewhip you, you know.' 'I thought he and Miss Meredith were great friends,' Rob retorted. He sometimes wondered how much Dick cared for Nell. 'It was only the young gentleman's good-nature,' Abinger explained, while Nell drew herself up indignantly; 'he found that he had to give up either Nell or a cricket match, and so Nell was reluctantly dropped.' 'That was not how you spoke,' Nell said to Dick in a low voice, 'when I told you all about him, poor boy, in your chambers.' 'You promised to be a sister to him, I think,' remarked Abinger. 'Ah, Nell, it is not a safe plan that. How many brothers have you now?' Dick held up his hand for Mary's banjo, and, settling himself comfortably in a corner, twanged and sang, while the lanterns caught myriads of flies, and the bats came and went. When Coelebs was a bolder blade, And ladies fair were coy, His search was for a wife, he said, The time I was a boy. But Coelebs now has slothful grown (I learn this from her mother), Instead of making her his own, He asks to be her brother. Last night I saw her smooth his brow, He bent his head and kissed her; They understand each other now, She's going to be his sister. Some say he really does propose, And means to gain or lose all, And that the new arrangement goes, To soften her refusal. He talks so wild of broken hearts, Of futures that she'll mar, He says on Tuesday he departs For Cork or Zanzibar. His death he places at her door, Yet says he won't resent it; Ah, well, he talked that way before, And very seldom meant it. Engagements now are curious things, 'A kind of understandin',' Although they do not run to rings, They're good to keep your hand in. No rivals now, Tom, Dick, and Hal, They all love one another, For she's a sister to them all, And every one's her brother. In former days when men proposed, And ladies said them No, The laws that courtesy imposed Made lovers pack and go. But now that they may brothers be, So changed the way of men is, That, having kissed, the swain and she Resume their game at tennis. Ah, Nelly Meredith, you may Be wiser than your mother, But she knew what to do when they Proposed to be her brother. Of these relations best have none, They'll only you encumber; Of wives a man may have but one, Of sisters any number. Dick disappeared into the kitchen with Mrs. Meredith to show her how they make a salad at the Wigwam, and Nell and her father went a-fishing from a bedroom window. The night was so silent now that Rob and Mary seemed to have it to themselves. A canoe in a blaze of coloured light drifted past without a sound. The grass on the bank parted, and water-rats peeped out. All at once Mary had nothing to say, and Rob shook on his stool. The moon was out looking at them. 'Oh,' Mary cried, as something dipped suddenly in the water near them. 'It was only a dabchick,' Rob guessed, looking over the rail. 'What is a dabchick?' asked Mary. Rob did not tell her. She had not the least desire to know. In the river, on the opposite side from where the _Tawny Owl_ lay, a stream drowns itself. They had not known of its existence before, but it was roaring like a lasher to them now. Mary shuddered slightly, turning her face to the island, and Rob took a great breath as he looked at her. His hand held her brown sunshade that was ribbed with velvet, the sunshade with the preposterous handle that Mary held upside down. Other ladies carried their sunshades so, and Rob resented it. Her back was toward him, and he sat still, gazing at the loose blue jacket that only reached her waist. It was such a slender waist that Rob trembled for it. The trees that hung over the house-boat were black, but the moon made a fairyland of the sward beyond. Mary could only see the island between heavy branches, but she looked straight before her until tears dimmed her eyes. Who would dare to seek the thoughts of a girl at such a moment? Rob moved nearer her. Her blue cap was tilted back, her chin rested on the rail. All that was good in him was astir when she turned and read his face. 'I think I shall go down now,' Mary said, becoming less pale as she spoke. Rob's eyes followed her as she moved toward the ladder. 'Not yet,' he called after her, and could say no more. It was always so when they were alone; and he made himself suffer for it afterwards. Mary stood irresolutely at the top of the ladder. She would not turn back, but she did not descend. Mr. Meredith was fishing lazily from the lower deck, and there was a murmur of voices in the saloon. On the road running parallel to the river traps and men were shadows creeping along to Hampton. Lights were going out there. Mary looked up the stretch of water and sighed. 'Was there ever so beautiful a night?' she said. 'Yes,' said Rob, at her elbow, 'once at Dome Castle, the night I saw you first.' 'I don't remember,' said Mary hastily, but without going down the ladder. 'I might never have met you,' Rob continued grimly, 'if some man in Silchester had not murdered his wife.' Mary started and looked up at him. Until she ceased to look he could not go on. 'The murder,' he explained, 'was of more importance than Colonel Abinger's dinner, and so I was sent to the castle. It is rather curious to trace these things back a step. The woman enraged her husband into striking her, because she had not prepared his supper. Instead of doing that she had been gossiping with a neighbour, who would not have had time for gossip had she not been laid up with a sprained ankle. It came out in the evidence that this woman had hurt herself by slipping on a marble, so that I might never have seen you had not two boys, whom neither of us ever heard of, challenged each other to a game at marbles.' 'It was stranger that we should meet again in London,' Mary said. 'No,' Rob answered, 'the way we met was strange, but I was expecting you.' Mary pondered how she should take this, and then pretended not to hear it. 'Was it not rather _The Scorn of Scorns_ that made us know each other?' she asked. 'I knew you after I read it a second time,' he said; 'I have got that copy of it still.' 'You said you had the card.' 'I have never been able to understand,' Rob answered, 'how I lost that card. But,' he added sharply, 'how do you know that I lost it?' Mary glanced up again. 'I hate being asked questions, Mr. Angus,' she said sweetly. 'Do you remember,' Rob went on, 'saying in that book that men were not to be trusted until they reached their second childhood?' 'I don't know,' Mary replied, laughing, 'that they are to be trusted even then.' 'I should think,' said Rob, rather anxiously, 'that a woman might as well marry a man in his first childhood as in his second. Surely the golden mean----' Rob paused. He was just twenty-seven. 'We should strike the golden mean, you think?' asked Mary demurely. 'But you see it is of such short duration.' After that there was such a long pause that Mary could easily have gone down the ladder had she wanted to do so. 'I am glad that you and Dick are such friends,' she said at last. 'Why?' asked Rob quickly. 'Oh, well,' said Mary. 'He has been the best friend I have ever made,' Rob continued warmly, 'though he says our only point in common is a hatred of rice pudding.' 'He told me,' said Mary, 'that you write on politics in the _Wire_.' 'I do a little now, but I have never met any one yet who admitted that he had read my articles. Even your brother won't go so far as that.' 'I have read several of them,' said Mary. 'Have you?' Rob exclaimed, like a big boy. 'Yes,' Mary answered severely; 'but I don't agree with them. I am a Conservative, you know.' She pursed up her mouth complacently as she spoke, and Rob fell back a step to prevent his going a step closer. He could hear Mr. Meredith's line tearing the water. The boy on the next house-boat was baling the dingey, and whistling a doleful ditty between each canful. 'There will never be such a night again,' Rob said, in a melancholy voice. Then he waited for Mary to ask why, when he would have told her, but she did not ask. 'At least, not to me,' he continued, after a pause, 'for I am not likely to be here again. But there may be many such nights to you.' Mary was unbuttoning her gloves and then buttoning them again. There is something uncanny about a woman who has a chance to speak and does not take it. 'I am glad to hear,' said Rob, 'that my being away will make no difference to you.' A light was running along the road to Hampton Court, and Mary watched it. 'Are you glad?' asked Rob desperately. 'You said I was,' answered Mary, without turning her head. Dick was thrumming the banjo below. Her hand touched a camp-chair, and Rob put his over it. He would have liked to stand like that and talk about things in general now. 'Mary,' said Rob. The boy ceased to whistle. All nature in that quarter was paralysed, except the tumble of water across the river. Mary withdrew her hand, but said nothing. Rob held his breath. He had not even the excuse of having spoken impulsively, for he had been meditating saying it for weeks. By and by the world began to move again. The boy whistled. A swallow tried another twig. A moor-hen splashed in the river. They had thought it over, and meant to let it pass. 'Are you angry with me?' Rob asked. Mary nodded her head, but did not speak. Suddenly Rob started. 'You are crying,' he said. 'No, I'm not,' said Mary, looking up now. There was a strange light in her face that made Rob shake. He was so near her that his hands touched her jacket. At that moment there was a sound of feet on the plank that communicated between the _Tawny Owl_ and the island, and Dick called out-- 'You people up there, are you coming once round the island before you have something to eat?' Rob muttered a reply that Dick fortunately did not catch, but Mary answered 'Yes,' and they descended the ladder. 'You had better put a shawl over your shoulders,' said Rob, in rather a lordly tone. 'No,' Mary answered, thrusting away the shawl he produced from the saloon; 'a wrap on a night like this would be absurd.' Something caught in her throat at that moment, and she coughed. Rob looked at her anxiously. 'You had better,' he said, putting the shawl over her shoulders. 'No,' said Mary, flinging it off. 'Yes,' said Rob, putting it on again. Mary stamped her foot. 'How dare you, Mr. Angus?' she exclaimed. Rob's chest heaved. 'You must do as you are told,' he said. Mary looked at him while he looked at her, but she did not take off the shawl again, and that was the great moment of Rob's life. The others had gone on before. Although it was a white night the plank was dark in shadow, and as she stepped off it she slipped back. Rob's arm went round her for a moment. They walked round the island together behind the others, but neither uttered a word. Rob was afraid even to look at her, so he did not see that Mary looked once or twice at him. Long after he was supposed to be in the hotel Rob was still walking round the island, with no one to see him but the cow. All the Chinese lanterns were out now, but red window-blinds shone warm in several house-boats, and a terrier barked at his footsteps. The grass was silver-tipped, as in an enchanted island, and the impatient fairies might only have been waiting till he was gone. He was wondering if she was offended. While he paced the island she might be vowing never to look at him again, but perhaps she was only thinking that he was very much improved. At last Rob wandered to the hotel, and reaching his bedroom sat down on a chair to think it out again by candle-light. He rose and opened the window. There was a notice over the mantelpiece announcing that smoking was not allowed in the bedrooms, and having read it thoughtfully he filled his pipe. A piece of crumpled paper lay beneath the dressing-table, and he lifted it up to make a spill of it. It was part of an envelope, and it floated out of Rob's hand as he read the address in Mary Abinger's handwriting, 'Sir Clement Dowton, Island Hotel.' CHAPTER XIV MARY OF THE STONY HEART A punt and a rowing-boat were racing lazily toward Sunbury on a day so bright that you might have passed women with their hair in long curls and forgiven them. 'I say, Dick,' said one of the scullers, 'are they engaged?' Will was the speaker, and in asking the question he caught a crab. Mary, with her yellow sleeves turned up at the wrist, a great straw hat on her head, ran gaily after her pole, and the punt jerked past. If there are any plain girls let them take to punting and be beautiful. Dick, who was paddling rather than pulling stroke, turned round on his young brother sharply. 'Whom do you mean?' he asked, speaking low, so that the other occupants of the boat should not hear him, 'Mary and Dowton?' 'No,' said Will, 'Mary and Angus. I wonder what they see in her.' They were bound for a picnicking resort up the river; Mrs. Meredith, Mary, and Sir Clement in the punt, and the others in the boat. If Rob was engaged he took it gloomily. He sat in the stern with Mr. Meredith, while Nell hid herself away beneath a many-coloured umbrella in the prow; and when he steered the boat into a gondola, he only said vacantly to its occupants, 'It is nothing at all,' as if they had run into him. Nell's father said something about not liking the appearance of the sky, and Rob looked at him earnestly for such a length of time before replying that Mr. Meredith was taken aback. At times the punt came alongside, and Mary addressed every one in the boat except Rob. The only person in the punt whom Rob never looked at was Mary. Dick watched them uneasily, and noticed that once, when Mary nearly followed her pole into the water, Rob, who seemed to be looking in the opposite direction, was the first to see what had happened. Then Dick pulled so savagely that he turned the boat round. That morning at breakfast in his chambers Rob had no thought of spending the day on the river. He had to be at the _Wire_ office at ten o'clock in the evening, and during the day he meant to finish one of the many articles which he still wrote for other journals that would seldom take them. The knowledge that Sir Clement Dowton had been to Molesey disquieted him, chiefly because Mary Abinger had said nothing about it. Having given himself fifty reasons for her reticence, he pushed them from him, and vowed wearily that he would go to the house-boat no more. Then Dick walked in to suggest that they might run down for an hour or two to Molesey, and Rob agreed at once. He shaped out in the train a subtle question about Sir Clement that he intended asking Mary, but on reaching the plank he saw her feeding the swans, with the baronet by her side. Rob felt like a conjurer whose trick has not worked properly. Giving himself just half a minute to reflect that it was all over, he affected the coldly courteous, and smiled in a way that was meant to be heart-rending. Mary did not mind that, but it annoyed her to see the band of his necktie slipping over his collar. It was the day of the Sunbury Regatta, but the party from the _Tawny Owl_ twisted past the racers, leaving Dick, who wanted a newspaper, behind. When he rejoined them beyond the village, the boat was towing the punt. 'Why,' said Dick, in some astonishment to Rob, who was rowing now, 'I did not know you could scull like that.' 'I have been practising a little,' answered Rob. 'When he came down here the first time,' Mrs. Meredith explained to Sir Clement, 'he did not know how to hold an oar. I am afraid he is one of those men who like to be best at everything.' 'He certainly knows how to scull now,' admitted the baronet, beginning to think that Rob was perhaps a dangerous man. Sir Clement was a manly gentleman, but his politics were that people should not climb out of the station they were born into. 'No,' Dick said, in answer to a question from Mr. Meredith, 'I could only get a local paper. The woman seemed surprised at my thinking she would take in the _Scalping Knife_ or the _Wire_, and said, "We've got a paper of our own."' 'Read out the news to us, Richard,' suggested Mrs. Meredith. Dick hesitated. 'Here, Will,' he said to his brother, 'you got that squeaky voice of yours specially to proclaim the news from a boat to a punt ten yards distant. Angus is longing to pull us up the river unaided.' Will turned the paper round and round. 'Here is a funny thing,' he bawled out, 'about a stick. "A curious story, says a London correspondent, is going the round of the clubs to-day about the walking-stick of a well-known member of Parliament, whose name I am not at liberty to mention. The story has not, so far as I am aware, yet appeared in print, and it conveys a lesson to all persons who carry walking-sticks with knobs for handles, which generate a peculiar disease in the palm of the hand. The member of Parliament referred to, with whom I am on intimate terms----"' Rob looked at Dick, and they both groaned. 'My stick again,' murmured Rob. 'Read something else,' cried Dick, shivering. 'Eh, what is wrong?' asked Mr. Meredith. 'You must know,' said Dick, 'that the first time I met Angus he told me imprudently some foolish story about a stick that bred a disease in the owner's hand, owing to his pressing so heavily on the ball it had by way of a handle. I touched the story up a little, and made half a guinea out of it. Since then that note has been turning up in a new dress in the most unlikely places. First the London correspondents swooped down on it, and telegraphed it all over the country as something that had happened to well-known Cabinet Ministers. It appeared in the Paris _Figaro_ as a true story about Sir Gladstone, and soon afterwards it was across the Channel as a reminiscence of Thiers. Having done another tour of the provinces, it was taken to America by a lecturer, who exhibited the stick. Next it travelled the Continent, until it was sent home again by Paterfamilias Abroad, writing to the _Times_, who said that the man who owned the stick was a well-known Alpine guide. Since then we have heard of it fitfully as doing well in Melbourne and Arkansas. It figured in the last volume, or rather two volumes, of autobiography published, and now, you see, it is going the round of the clubs again, preparatory to starting on another tour. I wish you had kept your stick to yourself, Angus.' 'That story will never die,' Rob said, in a tone of conviction. 'It will go round and round the world till the crack of doom. Our children's children will tell it to each other.' 'Yes,' said Dick, 'and say it happened to a friend of theirs.' A field falls into the river above Sunbury, in which there is a clump of trees of which many boating parties know. Under the shadow of these Mrs. Meredith cast a table-cloth and pegged it down with salt-cellars. 'As we are rather in a hurry,' she said to the gentlemen, 'I should prefer you not to help us.' Rob wandered to the river-side with Will, who would have liked to know whether he could jump a gate without putting his hands on it; and the other men leant against the trees, wondering a little, perhaps, why ladies enjoy in the summer-time making chairs and tables of the ground. Rob was recovering from his scare, and made friends with Mary's young brother. By particular request he not only leapt the gate, but lifted it off its hinges, and this feat of strength so impressed Will that he would have brought the whole party down to see it done. Will was as fond of Mary as a proper respect for himself would allow, but he thought she would be a lucky girl if she got a fellow who could play with a heavy gate like that. Being a sharp boy, Will noticed a cloud settle on Rob's face, and looking toward the clump of trees, he observed that Mary and the baronet were no longer there. In the next field two figures were disappearing, the taller, a man in a tennis jacket, carrying a pail. Sir Clement had been sent for water, and Mary had gone with him to show him the spring. Rob stared after them; and if Will could have got hold of Mary he would have shaken her for spoiling everything. Mrs. Meredith was meditating sending some one to the spring to show them the way back, when Sir Clement and Mary again came into sight. They did not seem to be saying much, yet were so engrossed that they zigzagged toward the rest of the party like persons seeking their destination in a mist. Just as they reached the trees Mary looked up so softly at her companion that Rob turned away in an agony. 'It is a long way to the spring,' were Mary's first words, as if she expected to be taken to task for their lengthened absence. 'So it seems,' said Dick. The baronet crossed with the pail to Mrs. Meredith, and stopped half-way like one waking from a dream. Mrs. Meredith held out her hand for the pail, and the baronet stammered with vexation. Simultaneously the whole party saw what was wrong, but Will only was so merciless as to put the discovery into words. 'Why,' cried the boy, pausing to whistle in the middle of his sentence, 'you have forgotten the water!' It was true. The pail was empty. Sir Clement turned it upside down, and made a seat of it. 'I am so sorry,' he said to Mrs. Meredith, trying to speak lightly. 'I assure you I thought I had filled the pail at the spring. It is entirely my fault, for I told Miss Abinger I had done so.' Mary's face was turned from the others, so that they could not see how she took the incident. It gave them so much to think of that Will was the only one of the whole party who saw its ridiculous aspect. 'Put it down to sunstroke, Miss Meredith,' the baronet said to Nell; 'I shall never allow myself to be placed in a position of trust again.' 'Does that mean,' asked Dick, 'that you object to being sent back again to the spring?' 'Ah, I forgot,' said Sir Clement. 'You may depend on me this time.' He seized the pail once more, glad to get away by himself to some place where he could denounce his stupidity unheard, but Mrs. Meredith would not let him go. As for Mary, she was looking so haughty now that no one would have dared to mention the pail again. During the meal Dick felt compelled to talk so much that he was unusually dull company for the remainder of the week. The others were only genial now and again. Sir Clement sought in vain to gather from Mary's eyes that she had forgiven him for making the rest of the party couple him and her in their thoughts. Mrs. Meredith would have liked to take her daughter aside and discuss the situation, and Nell was looking covertly at Rob, who, she thought, bore it bravely. Rob had lately learned carving from a handbook, and was dissecting a fowl, murmuring to himself, 'Cut from _a_ to _b_ along the line _f g_, taking care to sever the wing at the point _k_.' Like all the others, he thought that Mary had promised to be the baronet's wife, and Nell's heart palpitated for him when she saw how gently he passed Sir Clement the mustard. Such a load lay on Rob that he felt suffocated. Nell noticed indignantly that Mary was not even 'nice' to him. For the first time in her life, or at least for several weeks, Miss Meredith was wroth with Miss Abinger. Mary might have been on the rack, but she went on proudly eating bread and chicken. Relieved of his fears, Dick raged internally at Mary for treating Angus cruelly, and Nell, who had always dreaded lest things should not go as they had gone, sat sorrowfully because she had not been disappointed. They all knew how much they cared for Rob now, all except Mary of the stony heart. Sir Clement began to tell some travellers' tales, omitting many things that were creditable to his bravery, and Rob found himself listening with a show of interest, wondering a little at his own audacity in competing with such a candidate. By and by some members of the little party drifted away from the others, and an accident left Mary and Rob together. Mary was aimlessly plucking the berries from a twig in her hand, and all the sign she gave that she knew of Rob's presence was in not raising her head. If love is ever unselfish his was at that moment. He took a step forward, and then Mary, starting back, looked round hurriedly in the direction of Sir Clement. What Rob thought was her meaning flashed through him, and he stood still in pain. 'I am sorry you think so meanly of me,' he said, and passed on. He did not see Mary's arms rise involuntarily, as if they would call him back. But even then she did not realise what Rob's thoughts were. A few yards away Rob, moving blindly, struck against Dick. 'Ah, I see Mary there,' her brother said, 'I want to speak to her. Why, how white you are, man!' 'Abinger,' Rob answered hoarsely, 'tell me. I must know. Is she engaged to Dowton?' Dick hesitated. He felt sore for Rob. 'Yes, she is,' he replied. 'You remember I spoke of this to you before.' Then Dick moved on to have it out with Mary. She was standing with the twig in her hand, just as Rob had left her. 'Mary,' said her brother bluntly, 'this is too bad. I would have expected it from any one sooner than from you.' 'What are you talking about?' asked Mary frigidly. 'I am talking about Angus, my friend. Yes, you may smile, but it is not play to him.' 'What have I done to your friend?' said Mary, looking Dick in the face. 'You have crushed the life for the time being out of as fine a fellow as I ever knew. You might at least have amused yourself with some one a little more experienced in the ways of women.' 'How dare you, Dick!' exclaimed Mary, stamping her foot. All at once Dick saw that though she spoke bravely her lips were trembling. A sudden fear seized him. 'I presume that you are engaged to Dowton?' he said quickly. 'It is presumption certainly,' replied Mary. 'Why, what else could any one think after that ridiculous affair of the water?' 'I shall never forgive him for that,' Mary said, flushing. 'But he----' 'No. Yes, he did, but we are not engaged.' 'You mean to say that you refused him?' 'Yes.' Dick thought it over, tapping the while on a tree-trunk like a woodpecker. 'Why?' he asked at last. Mary shrugged her shoulders, but said nothing. 'You seemed exceedingly friendly,' said Dick, 'when you returned here together.' 'I suppose,' Mary said bitterly, 'that the proper thing in the circumstances would have been to wound his feelings unnecessarily as much as possible?' 'Forgive me, dear,' Dick said kindly; 'of course I misunderstood--but this will be a blow to our father.' Mary looked troubled. 'I could not marry him, you know, Dick,' she faltered. 'Certainly not,' Dick said, 'if you don't care sufficiently for him; and yet he seems a man that a girl might care for.' 'Oh, he is,' Mary exclaimed. 'He was so manly and kind that I wanted to be nice to him.' 'You have evidently made up your mind, sister mine,' Dick said, 'to die a spinster.' 'Yes,' said Mary, with a white face. Suddenly Dick took both her hands, and looked her in the face. 'Do you care for any other person, Mary?' he asked sharply. Mary shook her head, but she did not return her brother's gaze. Her hands were trembling. She tried to pull them from him, but he held her firmly until she looked at him. Then she drew up her head proudly. Her hands ceased to shake. She had become marble again. Dick was not deceived. He dropped her hands, and leant despondently against a tree. 'Angus----' he began. 'You must not,' Mary cried; and he stopped abruptly. 'It is worse than I could have feared,' Dick said. 'No, it is not,' said Mary quickly. 'It is nothing. I don't know what you mean.' 'It was my fault bringing you together. I should have been more----' 'No, it was not. I met him before. Whom are you speaking about?' 'Think of our father, Mary.' 'Oh, I have!' 'He is not like you. How could he dare----' 'Dick, don't.' Will bounced towards them with a hop, step, and jump, and Mrs. Meredith was signalling that she wanted both. 'Never speak of this again,' Mary said in a low voice to Dick as they walked toward the others. 'I hope I shall never feel forced to do so,' Dick replied. 'You will not,' Mary said, in her haste. 'But, Dick,' she added anxiously, 'surely the others did not think what you thought? It would be so unpleasant for Sir Clement.' 'Well, I can't say,' Dick answered. 'At all events, he did not?' 'Who is he?' 'Oh, Dick, I mean Mr. Angus?' Dick bit his lip, and would have replied angrily; but perhaps he loved this sister of his more than any other person in the world. 'Angus, I suppose, noticed nothing,' he answered, in order to save Mary pain, 'except that you and Dowton seemed very good friends.' Dick knew that this was untrue. He did not remember then that the good-natured lies live for ever like the others. Evening came on before they returned to the river, and Sunbury, now blazing with fireworks, was shooting flaming arrows at the sky. The sweep of water at the village was one broad bridge of boats, lighted by torches and Chinese lanterns of every hue. Stars broke overhead, and fell in showers. It was only possible to creep ahead by pulling in the oars and holding on to the stream of craft of all kinds that moved along by inches. Rob, who was punting Dick and Mary, had to lay down his pole and adopt the same tactics, but boat and punt were driven apart, and soon tangled hopelessly in different knots. 'It is nearly eight o'clock,' Dick said, after he had given up looking for the rest of the party. 'You must not lose your train, Angus.' 'I thought you were to stay overnight, Mr. Angus,' Mary said. Possibly she meant that had she known he had to return to London, she would have begun to treat him better earlier in the day, but Rob thought she only wanted to be polite for the last time. 'I have to be at the _Wire_,' he replied, 'before ten.' Mary, who had not much patience with business, and fancied that it could always be deferred until next day if one wanted to defer it very much, said, 'Oh!' and then asked, 'Is there not a train that would suit from Sunbury?' Rob, blinder now than ever, thought that she wanted to get rid of him. 'If I could catch the 8.15 here,' he said, 'I would reach Waterloo before half-past nine.' 'What do you think?' asked Dick. 'There is no time to lose.' Rob waited for Mary to speak, but she said nothing. 'I had better try it,' he said. With difficulty the punt was brought near a landing-stage, and Rob jumped out. 'Good-bye,' he said to Mary. 'Good-night,' she replied. Her mouth was quivering, but how could he know? 'Wait a moment,' Dick exclaimed. 'We might see him off, Mary?' Mary hesitated. 'The others might wonder what had become of us,' she said. 'Oh, we need not attempt to look for them in this maze,' her brother answered. 'We shall only meet them again at the _Tawny Owl_.' The punt was left in charge of a boatman, and the three set off silently for the station, Mary walking between the two men. They might have been soldiers guarding a deserter. What were Mary's feelings? She did not fully realise as yet that Rob thought she was engaged to Dowton. She fancied that he was sulky because a circumstance of which he knew nothing made her wish to treat Sir Clement with more than usual consideration; and now she thought that Rob, having brought it on himself, deserved to remain miserable until he saw that it was entirely his own fault. But she only wanted to be cruel to him now to forgive him for it afterwards. Rob had ceased to ask himself if it was possible that she had not promised to be Dowton's wife. His anger had passed away. Her tender heart, he thought, made her wish to be good to him--for the last time. As for Dick, he read the thoughts of both, and inwardly called himself a villain for not reading them out aloud. Yet by his merely remaining silent these two lovers would probably never meet again, and was not that what would be best for Mary? Rob leant out of the carriage window to say good-bye, and Dick, ill at ease, turned his back on the train. It had been a hard day for Mary, and, as Rob pressed her hand warmly, a film came over her eyes. Rob saw it, and still he thought that she was only sorry for him. There are far better and nobler things than loving a woman and getting her, but Rob wanted Mary to know, by the last look he gave her, that so long as it meant her happiness his misery was only an unusual form of joy. CHAPTER XV COLONEL ABINGER TAKES COMMAND One misty morning, about three weeks after the picnic, Dick found himself a prisoner in the quadrangle of Frobisher's Inn. He had risen to catch an early train, but the gates were locked, and the porter in charge had vanished from his box. Dick chafed, and tore round the Inn in search of him. It was barely six o'clock; which is three hours after midnight in London. The windows of the Inn had darkened one by one, until for hours the black building had slept heavily with only one eye open. Dick recognised the window, and saw Rob's shadow cast on its white blind. He was standing there, looking up a little uneasily, when the porter tramped into sight. 'Is Mr. Angus often as late as this?' Mary's brother paused to ask at the gate. 'Why, sir,' the porter answered, 'I am on duty until eight o'clock, and as likely as not he will still be sitting there when I go. His shadow up there has become a sort of companion to me in the long nights, but I sometimes wonder what has come over the gentleman of late.' 'He is busy, I suppose; that is all,' Dick said sharply. The porter shook his head doubtfully, like one who knew the ways of literary hands. He probably wrote himself. 'Mr. Angus only came in from his office at three o'clock,' he said, 'and you would think he would have had enough of writing by that time. You can see his arm going on the blind though yet, and it won't be out of his common if he has another long walk before he goes to bed.' 'Does he walk so late as this?' asked Dick, to whom six in the morning was an hour of the night. 'I never knew such a gentleman for walking,' replied the porter, 'and when I open the gate to him he is off at six miles an hour. I can hear the echo of his feet two or three streets off. He doesn't look as if he did it for pleasure either.' 'What else would he do it for?' 'I can't say. He looks as if he wanted to run away from himself.' Dick passed out, with a forced laugh. He knew that since saying good-bye to Mary at Sunbury Station, Rob had hardly dared to stop working and face the future. The only rest Rob got was when he was striding along the great thoroughfares, where every one's life seemed to have a purpose except his own. But it was only when he asked himself for what end he worked that he stopped working. There were moments when he could not believe that it was all over. He saw himself dead, and the world going on as usual. When he read what he had written the night before, he wondered how people could be interested in such matters. The editor of the _Wire_ began to think of this stolid Scotsman every time there was a hitch in the office, but Rob scarcely noticed that he was making progress. It could only mean ten or twenty pounds more a month; and what was that to a man who had only himself to think of, and had gathered a library on twenty shillings a week? He bought some good cigars, however. Dick, who was longing for his father's return from the Continent, so that the responsibility for this miserable business might be transferred to the colonel's shoulders, frequently went into Rob's rooms to comfort him, but did not know how to do it. They sat silently on opposite sides of the very hearthrug which Mary had once made a remark about--Rob had looked interestedly at the rug after she went away--and each thought that, but for the other's sake, he would rather be alone. What Dick felt most keenly was Rob's increased regard for him. Rob never spoke of the _Tawny Owl_ without an effort, but he showed that he appreciated Dick's unspoken sympathy. If affairs could have righted themselves in that way, Mary's brother would have preferred to be turned with contumely out of Rob's rooms, where, as it was, and despite his friendship for Rob, he seemed now to be only present on false pretences. Dick was formally engaged to Nell now, but he tried at times to have no patience with Rob. Perhaps he thought a little sadly in his own rooms that to be engaged is not all the world. Dick had hoped that the misunderstanding which parted Rob and Mary at Sunbury would keep them apart without further intervention from him. That was not to be. The next time he went to Molesey he was asked why he had not brought Mr. Angus with him, and though it was not Mary who asked the question, she stopped short on her way out of the saloon to hear his answer. 'He did not seem to want to come,' Dick replied reluctantly. 'I know why Mr. Angus would not come with you,' Nell said to Dick when they were alone; 'he thinks Mary is engaged to Sir Clement.' 'Nonsense,' said Dick. 'I am sure of it,' said Nell; 'you know we all thought so that day we were up the river.' 'Then let him think so if he chooses,' Dick said harshly. 'It is no affair of his.' 'Oh, it is!' Nell exclaimed. 'But I suppose it would never do, Dick?' 'What you are thinking of is quite out of the question,' replied Dick, feeling that it was a cruel fate which compelled him to act a father's part to Mary; 'and besides, Mary does not care for him like that. She told me so herself.' 'Oh, but she does,' Nell replied, in a tone of conviction. 'Did she tell you so?' 'No, she said she didn't,' answered Nell, as if that made no difference. 'Well,' said Dick wearily, 'it is much better that Angus should not come here again.' Nevertheless, when Dick returned to London he carried in his pocket an invitation to Rob to spend the following Saturday at the _Tawny Owl_. It was a very nice note in Mary Abinger's handwriting, and Dick would have liked to drop it over the Hungerfield Bridge. He gave it to Rob, however, and stood on the defensive. The note began, 'Dear Mr. Angus, Mrs. Meredith would be very pleased if you could----' The blood came to Rob's face as he saw the handwriting, but it went as quickly. 'They ask me down next Saturday,' Rob said bluntly to Dick, 'but you know why I can't go.' 'You had better come,' miserable Dick said, defying himself. 'She is to marry Dowton, is she not?' Rob asked, but with no life in his voice. Dick turned away his head, to leave the rest to fate. 'So, of course I must not go,' Rob continued bravely. Dick did not dare to look him in the face, but Rob put his hand on the shoulder of Mary's brother. 'I was a madman,' he said, 'to think that she could ever have cared for me, but this will not interfere with our friendship, Abinger?' 'Surely not,' said Dick, taking Rob's hand. It was one of those awful moments in men's lives when they allow, face to face, that they like each other. Rob concluded that Mrs. Meredith, knowing nothing of his attachment for Mary, saw no reason why he should not return to the house-boat, and that circumstances had compelled Mary to write the invitation. His blundering honesty would not let him concoct a polite excuse for declining it, and Mrs. Meredith took his answer amiss, while Nell dared not say what she thought for fear of Dick. Mary read his note over once, and then went for a solitary walk round the island. Rob saw her from the tow-path where he had been prowling about for hours in hopes of catching a last glimpse of her. Her face was shaded beneath her big straw hat, and no baby-yacht, such as the Thames sports, ever glided down the river more prettily than she tripped along the island path. Once her white frock caught in a dilapidated seat, and she had to stoop to loosen it. Rob's heart stopped beating for a moment just then. The way Mary extricated herself was another revelation. He remembered having thought it delightful that she seldom knew what day of the month it was, and having looked on in an ecstasy while she searched for the pocket of her dress. The day before Mrs. Meredith had not been able to find her pocket, and Rob had thought it foolish of ladies not to wear their pockets where they could be more easily got at. Rob did not know it, but Mary saw him. She had but to beckon, and in three minutes he would have been across the ferry. She gave no sign, however, but sat dreamily on the ramshackle seat that patient anglers have used until the Thames fishes must think seat and angler part of the same vegetable. Though Mary would not for worlds have let him know that she saw him, she did not mind his standing afar off and looking at her. Once after that Rob started involuntarily for Molesey, but realising what he was about by the time he reached Surbiton, he got out of the train there and returned to London. An uneasy feeling possessed Dick that Mary knew of the misunderstanding which kept Rob away, and possibly even of her brother's share in fostering it. If so, she was too proud to end it. He found that if he mentioned Rob to her she did not answer a word. Nell's verbal experiments in the same direction met with a similar fate, and every one was glad when the colonel reappeared to take command. Colonel Abinger was only in London for a few days, being on his way to Glen Quharity, the tenant of which was already telegraphing him glorious figures about the grouse. Mary was going too, and the Merediths were shortly to return to Silchester. 'There is a Thrums man on this stair,' Dick said to his father one afternoon in Frobisher's Inn, 'a particular friend of mine, though I have treated him villainously.' 'Ah,' said the colonel, who had just come up from the house-boat, 'then you might have him in, and make your difference up. Perhaps he could give me some information about the shooting.' 'Possibly,' Dick said; 'but we have no difference to make up, because he thinks me as honest as himself. You have met him, I believe.' 'What did you say his name was?' 'His name is Angus.' 'I can't recall any Angus.' 'Ah, you never knew him so well as Mary and I do.' 'Mary?' asked the colonel, looking up quickly. 'Yes,' said Dick. 'Do you remember a man from a Silchester paper who was at the castle last Christmas?' 'What!' cried the colonel, 'an underbred, poaching fellow who----' 'Not at all,' said Dick, 'an excellent gentleman, who is to make his mark here, and, as I have said, my very particular friend.' 'That fellow turned up again,' groaned the colonel. 'I have something more to tell you of him,' continued Dick remorselessly. 'I have reason to believe, as we say on the Press when hard up for copy, that he is in love with Mary.' The colonel sprang from his seat. 'Be calm,' said Dick. 'I am calm,' cried the colonel, not saying another word, so fearful was he of what Dick might tell him next. 'That would not, perhaps, so much matter,' Dick said, coming to rest at the back of a chair, 'if it were not that Mary seems to have an equal regard for him.' Colonel Abinger's hands clutched the edge of the table, and it was not a look of love he cast at Dick. 'If this be true,' he exclaimed, his voice breaking in agitation, 'I shall never forgive you, Richard, never. But I don't believe it.' Dick felt sorry for his father. 'It is a fact that has to be faced,' he said, more gently. 'Why, why, why, the man is a pauper!' 'Not a bit of it,' said Dick. 'He may be on the regular staff of the _Wire_ any day now.' 'You dare to look me in the face, and tell me you have encouraged this, this----' cried the colonel, choking in a rush of words. 'Quite the contrary,' Dick said; 'I have done more than I had any right to do to put an end to it.' 'Then it is ended?' 'I can't say.' 'It shall be ended,' shouted the colonel, making the table groan under his fist. 'In a manner,' Dick said, 'you are responsible for the whole affair. Do you remember when you were at Glen Quharity two or three years ago asking a parson called Rorrison, father of Rorrison the war correspondent, to use his son's Press influence on behalf of a Thrums man? Well, Angus is that man. Is it not strange how this has come about?' 'It is enough to make me hate myself,' replied the irate colonel, though it had not quite such an effect as that. When his father had subsided a little, Dick told him of what had been happening in England during the last month or two. There had been a change of Government, but the chief event was the audacity of a plebeian in casting his eyes on a patrician's daughter. What are politics when the pipes in the bath-room burst? 'So you see,' Dick said in conclusion, 'I have acted the part of the unrelenting parent fairly well, and I don't like it.' 'Had I been in your place,' replied the colonel, 'I would have acted it a good deal better.' 'You would have told Angus that you considered him, upon the whole, the meanest thing that crawls, and that if he came within a radius of five miles of your daughter you would have the law of him? Yes; but that sort of trespassing is not actionable nowadays; and besides, I don't know what Mary might have said.' 'Trespassing!' echoed the colonel; 'I could have had the law of him for trespassing nearly a year ago.' 'You mean that time you caught him fishing in the Dome? I only heard of that at second-hand, but I have at least no doubt that he fished to some effect.' 'He can fish,' admitted the colonel; 'I should like to know what flies he used.' Dick laughed. 'Angus,' he said, 'is a man with a natural aptitude for things. He does not, I suspect, even make love like a beginner.' 'You are on his side, Richard.' 'It has not seemed like it so far, but, I confess, I have certainly had enough of shuffling.' 'There will be no more shuffling,' said the colonel fiercely. 'I shall see this man and tell him what I think of him. As for Mary----' He paused. 'Yes,' said Dick, 'Mary is the difficulty. At present I cannot even tell you what she is thinking of it all. Mary is the one person I could never look in the face when I meditated an underhand action--I remember how that sense of honour of hers used to annoy me when I was a boy--and so I have not studied her countenance much of late.' 'She shall marry Dowton,' said the colonel decisively. 'It is probably a pity, but I don't think she will,' replied Dick. 'Of course you can prevent her marrying Angus by simply refusing your consent.' 'Yes, and I shall refuse it.' 'Though it should break her heart she will never complain,' said Dick, 'but it does seem a little hard on Mary that we should mar her life rather than endure a disappointment ourselves.' 'You don't look at it in the proper light,' said the colonel, who, like most persons, made the proper light himself; 'in saving her from this man we do her the greatest kindness in our power.' 'Um,' said Dick, 'of course. That was how I put it to myself, but just consider Angus calmly, and see what case we have against him.' 'He is not a gentleman,' said the colonel. 'He ought not to be, according to the proper light, but he is.' 'Pshaw!' the colonel exclaimed pettishly. 'He may have worked himself up into some sort of position, like other discontented men of his class, but he never had a father.' 'He says he had a very good one. Weigh him, if you like, against Dowton, who is a good fellow in his way, but never, so far as I know, did an honest day's work in his life. Dowton's whole existence has been devoted to pleasure-seeking, while Angus has been climbing up ever since he was born, and with a heavy load on his back, too, most of the time. If he goes on as he is doing, he will have both a good income and a good position shortly.' 'Dowton's position is made,' said the colonel. 'Exactly,' said Dick, 'and Angus is making his for himself. Whatever other distinction we draw between them is a selfish one, and I question if it does us much credit.' 'I have no doubt,' said the colonel, 'that Mary's pride will make her see this matter as I do.' 'It will at least make her sacrifice herself for our pride, if you insist on that.' Mary's father loved her as he had loved her mother, though he liked to have his own way with both of them. His voice broke a little as he answered Dick. 'You have a poor opinion of your father, my boy,' he said. 'I think I would endure a good deal if Mary were to be the happier for it.' Dick felt a little ashamed of himself. 'Whatever I may say,' he answered, 'I have at least acted much as you would have done yourself. Forgive me, father.' The colonel looked up with a wan smile. 'Let us talk of your affairs rather, Richard,' he said. 'I have at least nothing to say against Miss Meredith.' Dick moved uncomfortably in his chair, and then stood up, thinking he heard a knock at the door. 'Are you there, Abinger?' some one called out. 'I have something very extraordinary to tell you.' Dick looked at his father, and hesitated. 'It is Angus,' he said. 'Let him in,' said the colonel. CHAPTER XVI THE BARBER OF ROTTEN ROW Rob started when he saw Mary's father. 'We have met before, Mr. Angus,' said the colonel courteously. 'Yes,' answered Rob, without a tremor; 'at Dome Castle, was it not?' This was the Angus who had once been unable to salute anybody without wondering what on earth he ought to say next. This was the colonel whose hand had gaped five minutes before for Rob's throat. The frown on the face of Mary's father was only a protest against her lover's improved appearance. Rob was no longer the hobbledehoy of last Christmas. He was rather particular about the cut of his coat. He had forgotten that he was not a colonel's social equal. In short, when he entered a room now he knew what to do with his hat. Their host saw the two men measuring each other. Dick never smiled, but sometimes his mouth twitched, as now. 'You had something special to tell me, had you not?' he asked Rob. 'Well,' Rob replied, with hesitation, 'I have something for you in my rooms.' 'Suppose my father,' began Dick, meaning to invite the colonel upstairs, but pausing as he saw Rob's brows contract. The colonel saw too, and resented it. No man likes to be left on the outskirts of a secret. 'Run up yourself, Abinger,' Rob said, seating himself near Mary's father; 'and, stop, here are my keys. I locked it in.' 'Why,' asked Dick, while his father also looked up, 'have you some savage animal up there?' 'No,' Rob said, 'it is very tame.' Dick climbed the stair, after casting a quizzical look behind him, which meant that he wondered how long the colonel and Rob would last in a small room together. He unlocked the door of Rob's chambers more quickly than he opened it, for he had no notion of what might be caged up inside, and as soon as he had entered he stopped, amazed. All men of course are amazed once in their lives--when they can get a girl to look at them. This was Dick's second time. It was the hour of the evening when another ten minutes can be stolen from the day by a readjustment of one's window curtains. Rob's blind, however, had given way in the cords, and instead of being pulled up was twisted into two triangles. Just sufficient light straggled through the window to let Dick see the man who was standing on the hearthrug looking sullenly at his boots. There was a smell of oil in the room. Dowton!' Dick exclaimed; 'what masquerade is this?' The other put up his elbow as if to ward off a blow, and then Dick opened the eyes of anger. 'Oh,' he said, 'it is you, is it?' They stood looking at each other in silence. 'Just stand there, my fine fellow,' Dick said, 'until I light the gas. I must have a better look at you.' The stranger turned longing eyes on the door as the light struck him. 'Not a single step in that direction,' said Dick, 'unless you want to go over the banisters.' Abinger came closer to the man who was Sir Clement Dowton's double, and looked him over. He wore a white linen jacket, and an apron to match, and it would have been less easy to mistake him for a baronet aping the barber than it had been for the barber to ape the baronet. 'Your name?' asked Dick. 'Josephs,' the other mumbled. 'You are a barber, I presume?' 'I follow the profession of hair-dressing,' replied Josephs, with his first show of spirit. Had Dick not possessed an inscrutable face, Josephs would have known that his inquisitor was suffering from a sense of the ludicrous. Dick had just remembered that his father was downstairs. 'Well, Josephs, I shall have to hand you over to the police.' 'I think not,' said Josephs, in his gentlemanly voice. 'Why not?' asked Dick. 'Because then it would all come out.' 'What would all come out?' 'The way your father was deceived. The society papers would make a great deal of it, and he would not like that.' Dick groaned, though the other did not hear him. 'You read the society journals, Josephs?' 'Rather!' said Josephs. 'Perhaps you write for them?' Josephs did not say. 'Well, how were you brought here?' Dick asked. 'Your friend,' said Josephs sulkily, 'came into our place of business in Southampton Row half an hour ago, and saw me. He insisted on bringing me here at once in a cab. I wanted to put on a black coat, but he would not hear of it.' 'Ah, then, I suppose you gave Mr. Angus the full confession of your roguery as you came along?' 'He would not let me speak,' said Josephs. 'He said it was no affair of his.' 'No? Then you will be so good as to favour me with the pretty story.' Dick lit a cigar and seated himself. The sham baronet looked undecidedly at a chair. 'Certainly not,' said Dick; 'you can stand.' Josephs told his tale demurely, occasionally with a gleam of humour, and sometimes with a sigh. His ambition to be a gentleman, but with no desire to know the way, had come to him one day in his youth when another gentleman flung a sixpence at him. In a moment Josephs saw what it was to belong to the upper circles. He hurried to a street corner to get his boots blacked, tossed the menial the sixpence, telling him to keep the change, and returned home in an ecstasy, penniless, but with an object in life. That object was to do it again. At the age of eighteen Josephs slaved merrily during the week, but had never any money by Monday morning. He was a gentleman every Saturday evening. Then he lived; for the remainder of the week he was a barber. One of his delights at this period was to have his hair cut at Truefitt's and complain that it was badly done. Having reproved his attendant in a gentlemanly way, he tipped him handsomely and retired in a glory. It was about this time that he joined a Conservative association. Soon afterwards Josephs was to be seen in Rotten Row, in elegant apparel, hanging over the railing. He bowed and raised his hat to the ladies who took his fancy, and, though they did not respond, glowed with the sensation of being practically a man of fashion. Then he returned to the shop. The years glided by, and Josephs discovered that he was perfectly content to remain a hairdresser if he could be a gentleman now and again. Having supped once in a fashionable restaurant, he was satisfied for a fortnight or so with a sausage and onions at home. Then the craving came back. He saved up for two months on one occasion, and then took Saturday to Monday at Cookham, where he passed as Henry K. Talbot Devereux. He was known to the waiters and boatmen there as the gentleman who had quite a pleasure in tossing them half-crowns, and for a month afterwards he had sausage without onions. So far this holiday had been the memory of his life. He studied the manners and language of the gentlemen who came to the shop in which he was employed, and began to dream of a big thing annually. He had learnt long ago that he was remarkably good-looking. For a whole year Josephs abstained from being a gentleman except in the smallest way, for he was burning to have a handle to his name, and feared that it could not be done at less than twenty pounds. His week's holiday came, and found Josephs not ready for it. He had only twelve pounds. With a self-denial that was magnificent he crushed his aspirations, took only two days of delight at Brighton, and continued to save up for the title. Next summer saw him at the Anglers' Retreat, near Dome Castle. 'Sir Clement Dowton' was the name on his Gladstone bag. A dozen times a day he looked at it till it frightened him, and then he tore the label off. Having done so, he put on a fresh one. Josephs had selected his baronetcy with due care. Years previously he had been told that he looked like the twin-brother of Sir Clement Dowton, and on inquiry he had learned that the baronet was not in England. As for the Anglers' Retreat, he went there because he had heard that it was frequented by persons in the rank of life to which it was his intention to belong for the next week. He had never heard of Colonel Abinger until they met. The rest is known. Josephs dwelt on his residence at Dome Castle with his eyes shut, like a street-arab lingering lovingly over the grating of a bakery. 'Well, you are a very admirable rogue,' Dick said, when Josephs had brought his story to an end, 'and, though I shall never be proud again, your fluency excuses our blindness. Where did you pick it up?' The barber glowed with gratification. 'It came naturally to me,' he answered. 'I was intended for a gentleman. I dare say, now, I am about the only case on record of a man who took to pickles and French sauces the first time he tried them. Mushrooms were not an acquired taste with me, nor black coffee, nor caviare, nor liqueurs, and I enjoy celery with my cheese. What I liked best of all was the little round glasses you dip your fingers into when the dinner is finished. I dream of them still.' 'You are burst up for the present, Josephs, I presume?' 'Yes, but I shall be able to do something in a small way next Christmas. I should like to put it off till summer, but I can't.' 'There must be no more donning the name of Dowton,' said Dick, trying to be stern. 'I suppose I shall have to give that up,' the barber said with a sigh. 'I had to bolt, you see, last time, before I meant to go.' 'Ah, you have not told me yet the why and wherefore of those sudden disappearances. Excuse my saying so, Josephs, but they were scarcely gentlemanly.' 'I know it,' said Josephs sadly, 'but however carefully one plans a thing, it may take a wrong turning. The first time I was at the castle I meant to leave in a carriage and pair, waving my handkerchief, but it could not be done at the money.' 'The colonel would have sent you to Silchester in his own trap.' 'Ah, I wanted a brougham. You see I had been a little extravagant at the inn, and I could not summon up courage to leave the castle without tipping the servants all round.' 'So you waited till you were penniless, and then stole away?' 'Not quite penniless,' said Josephs; 'I had three pounds left, but----' He hesitated. 'You see,' he blurted out, blushing at last, 'my old mother is dependent on me, and I kept the three pounds for her.' Dick took his cigar from his mouth. 'I am sorry to hear this, Josephs,' he said, 'because I meant to box your ears presently, and I don't know that I can do it now. How about the sudden termination to the visit you honoured the colonel with last Christmas?' 'I had to go,' said Josephs, 'because I read that Sir Clement Dowton had returned to England. Besides, I was due at the shop.' 'But you had an elegant time while your money held out?' Josephs wiped a smile from his face. 'It was grand,' he said. 'I shall never know such days again.' 'I hope not, Josephs. Was there no streak of cloud in those halcyon days?' The barber sighed heavily. 'Ay, there was,' he said, 'hair oil.' 'Explain yourself, my gentle hairdresser.' 'Gentlemen,' said Josephs, 'don't use hair oil. I can't live without it. That is my only stumbling-block to being a gentleman.' He put his fingers through his hair, and again Dick sniffed the odour of oil. 'I had several bottles of it with me,' Josephs continued, 'but I dared not use it.' 'This is interesting,' said Dick. 'I should like to know now, from you who have tried both professions, whether you prefer the gentleman to the barber.' 'I do and I don't,' answered Josephs. 'Hair-dressing suits me best as a business, but gentility for pleasure. A fortnight of the gentleman sets me up for the year. I should not like to be a gentleman all the year round.' 'The hair oil is an insurmountable obstacle.' 'Yes,' said the barber; 'besides, to be a gentleman is rather hard work.' 'I dare say it is,' said Dick, 'when you take a short cut to it. Well, I presume this interview is at an end. You may go.' He jerked his foot in the direction of the door, but Josephs hesitated. 'Colonel Abinger well?' asked the barber. 'The door, Josephs,' replied Dick. 'And Miss Abinger?' Dick gave the barber a look that hurried him out of the room and down the stairs. Abinger's mouth twitched every time he took the cigar out of it, until he started to his feet. 'I have forgotten that Angus and my father are together,' he murmured. 'I wonder,' he asked himself, as he returned to his own chambers, 'how the colonel will take this? Must he be told? I think so.' Colonel Abinger was told, as soon as Rob had left, and it added so much fuel to his passion that it put the fire out. 'If the story gets abroad,' he said, with a shudder, 'I shall never hold up my head again.' 'It is a safe secret,' Dick answered; 'the fellow would not dare to speak of it anywhere. He knows what that would mean for himself.' 'Angus knows of it. Was it like the chivalrous soul you make him to flout this matter before us?' 'You are hard up for an argument against Angus, father. I made him promise to let me know if he ever came on the track of the impostor, and you saw how anxious he was to keep the discovery from you. He asked me at the door when he was going out not to mention it to either you or Mary.' 'Confound him,' cried the colonel testily; 'but he is right about Mary; we need not speak of it to her. She never liked the fellow.' 'That was fortunate,' said Dick, 'but you did, father. You thought that Josephs was a gentleman, and you say that Angus is not. Perhaps you have made a mistake in both cases.' 'I say nothing against Angus,' replied the colonel, 'except that I don't want him to marry my daughter.' 'Oh, you and he got on well together, then?' 'He can talk. The man has improved.' 'You did not talk about Mary?' asked Dick. 'We never mentioned her; how could I, when he supposes her engaged to Dowton? I shall talk about him to her, though.' Two days afterwards Dick asked his father if he had talked to Mary about Angus yet. 'No, Richard,' the old man admitted feebly, 'I have not. The fact is that she is looking so proud and stately just now, that I feel nervous about broaching the subject.' 'That is exactly how I feel,' said Dick, 'but Nell told me to-day that, despite her hauteur before us, Mary is wearing her heart away.' The colonel's fingers beat restlessly on the mantelpiece. 'I'm afraid she does care for Angus,' he said. 'As much as he cares for her, I believe,' replied Dick. 'Just think,' he added bitterly, 'that these two people love each other for the best that is in them, one of the rarest things in life, and are nevertheless to be kept apart. Look here.' Dick drew aside his blind, and pointed to a light cast on the opposite wall from a higher window. 'That is Angus's light,' he said. 'On such a night as this, when he is not wanted at the _Wire_, you will see that light blazing into the morning. Watch that moving shadow; it is the reflection of his arm as he sits there writing, writing, writing with nothing to write for, and only despair to face him when he stops. Is it not too bad?' 'They will forget each other in time,' said the colonel. 'Let Dowton have another chance. He is to be at the Lodge.' 'But if they don't forget each other; if Dowton fails again, and Mary continues to eat her heart in silence, what then?' 'We shall see.' 'Look here, father. I cannot play this pitiful part before Angus for ever. Let us make a bargain. Dowton gets a second chance; if he does not succeed, it is Angus's turn. Do you promise me so much?' 'I cannot say,' replied the colonel thoughtfully. 'It may come to that.' Rob was as late in retiring to rest that night as Dick had predicted, but he wrote less than usual. He had something to think of as he paced his room, for, unlike her father and brother, he knew that when Mary was a romantic schoolgirl she had dressed the sham baronet, as a child may dress her doll, in the virtues of a hero. He shuddered to think of her humiliation should she ever hear the true story of Josephs--as she never did. Yet many a lady of high degree has given her heart to a baronet who was better fitted to be a barber. CHAPTER XVII ROB PULLS HIMSELF TOGETHER In a London fog the street-lamps are up and about, running maliciously at pedestrians. He is in love or writing a book who is struck by one without remonstrating. One night that autumn a fog crept through London a month before it was due, and Rob met a lamp-post the following afternoon on his way home from the _Wire_ office. He passed on without a word, though he was not writing a book. Something had happened that day, and, but for Mary Abinger, Rob would have been wishing that his mother could see him now. The editor of the _Wire_ had called him into a private room, in which many a young gentleman, who only wanted a chance to put the world to rights, has quaked, hat in hand, before now. It is the dusty sanctum from which Mr. Rowbotham wearily distributes glory or consternation, sometimes with niggardly hand, and occasionally like an African explorer scattering largess among the natives. Mr. Rowbotham might be even a greater editor than he is if he was sure that it is quite the proper thing for so distinguished a man as himself to believe in anything, and some people think that his politics are to explain away to-day the position he took up yesterday. He seldom writes himself, and, while directing the line to be adopted by his staff, he smokes a cigar which he likes to probe with their pens. He is pale and thin, and has roving eyes, got from always being on the alert against aspirants. All the chairs in the editorial room, except Mr. Rowbotham's own, had been converted, like the mantelpiece, into temporary bookcases. Rob tumbled the books off one (your _Inquiry into the State of Ireland_ was among them, gentle reader) much as a coal-heaver topples his load into a cellar, or like a housewife emptying her apron. 'You suit me very well, Angus,' the editor said. 'You have no lurking desire to write a book, have you?' 'No,' Rob answered; 'since I joined the Press that ambition seems to have gone from me.' 'Quite so,' said Mr. Rowbotham, his tone implying that Rob now left the court without a stain upon his character. The editor's cigar went out, and he made a spill of a page from _Sonnets of the Woods_, which had just come in for review. 'As you know,' the editor continued, 'I have been looking about me for a leader-writer for the last year. You have a way of keeping your head that I like, and your style is not so villainously bad. Are you prepared to join us?' 'I should think so,' said Rob. 'Very well. You will start with £800 a year. Ricketts, as you may have heard, has half as much again as that, but he has been with us some time.' 'All right,' said Rob calmly, though his chest was swelling. He used to receive an order for a sack of shavings in the same tone. 'You expected this, I dare say?' asked the editor. 'Scarcely,' said Rob. 'I thought you would offer the appointment to Marriott; he is a much cleverer man than I am.' 'Yes,' assented Mr. Rowbotham, more readily than Rob thought necessary. 'I have had Marriott in my eye for some time, but I rather think Marriott is a genius, and so he would not do for us.' 'You never had that suspicion of me?' asked Rob, a little blankly. 'Never,' said the editor frankly. 'I saw from the first that you were a man to be trusted. Moderate Radicalism is our policy, and not even Ricketts can advocate moderation so vehemently as you do. You fight for it with a flail. By the way, you are Scotch, I think?' 'Yes,' said Rob. 'I only asked,' the editor explained, 'because of the shall and the will difficulty. Have you got over that yet?' 'No,' Rob said sadly, 'and never will.' 'I shall warn the proof-readers to be on the alert,' Mr. Rowbotham said, laughing, though Rob did not see what at. 'Dine with me at the Garrick on Wednesday week, will you?' Rob nodded, and was retiring, when the editor called after him-- 'You are not a married man, Angus?' 'No,' said Rob, with a sickly smile. 'Ah, you should marry,' recommended Mr. Rowbotham, who is a bachelor. 'You would be worth another two hundred a year to us then. I wish I could find the time to do it myself.' Rob left the office a made man, but looking as if it all had happened some time ago. There were men shivering in Fleet Street as he passed down it who had come to London on the same day as himself, every one with a tragic story to tell now, and some already seeking the double death that is called drowning care. Shadows of university graduates passed him in the fog who would have been glad to carry his bag. That night a sandwich-board man, who had once had a thousand a year, crept into the Thames. Yet Rob bored his way home, feeling that it was all in vain. He stopped at Abinger's door to tell him what had happened, but the chambers were locked. More like a man who had lost £800 a year than one who had just been offered it, he mounted to his own rooms, hardly noticing that the door was now ajar. The blackness of night was in the sitting-room, and a smell of burning leather. 'Another pair of slippers gone,' said a voice from the fireplace. It was Dick, and if he had not jumped out of one of the slippers he would have been on fire himself. Long experience had told him the exact moment to jump. 'I tried your door,' Rob said. 'I have news for you.' 'Well,' said Dick, 'I forced my way in here because I have something to tell you, and resolved not to miss you. Who speaks first? My news is bad--at least for me.' 'Mine is good,' said Rob; 'we had better finish up with it.' 'Ah,' Dick replied, 'but when you hear mine you may not care to tell me yours.' Dick spoke first, however, and ever afterwards was glad that he had done so. 'Look here, Angus,' he said bluntly, 'I don't know that Mary is engaged to Dowton.' Rob stood up and sat down again. 'Nothing is to be gained by talking in that way,' he said shortly. 'She was engaged to him six weeks ago.' 'No,' said Dick, 'she was not, though for all I know she may be now.' Then Dick told his tale under the fire of Rob's eyes. When it was ended Rob rose from his chair, and stared silently for several minutes at a vase on the mantelpiece. Dick continued talking, but Rob did not hear a word. 'I can't sit here, Abinger,' he said; 'there is not room to think. I shall be back presently.' He was gone into the fog the next moment. 'At it again,' muttered the porter, as Rob swung past and was lost ten paces off. He was back in an hour, walking more slowly. 'When the colonel writes to you,' he said, as he walked into his room, 'does he make any mention of Dowton?' 'He never writes,' Dick answered; 'he only telegraphs me now and again, when a messenger from the Lodge happens to be in Thrums.' 'Miss Abinger writes?' 'Yes. I know from her that Dowton is still there, but that is all.' 'He would not have remained so long,' said Rob, 'unless--unless----' 'I don't know,' Dick answered. 'You see it would all depend on Mary. She had a soft heart for Dowton the day she refused him, but I am not sure how she would take his reappearance on the scene again. If she resented it, I don't think the boldest baronet that breathes would venture to propose to Mary in her shell.' 'The colonel might press her?' 'Hardly, I think, to marry a man she does not care for. No, you do him an injustice. What my father would like to have is the power to compel her to care for Dowton. No doubt he would exercise that if it was his.' 'Miss Abinger says nothing--sends no messages--I mean, does she ever mention me when she writes?' 'Never a word,' said Dick. 'Don't look pale, man; it is a good sign. Women go by contraries, they say. Besides, Mary is not like Mahomet. If the mountain won't go to her, she will never come to the mountain.' Rob started, and looked at his hat. 'You can't walk to Glen Quharity Lodge to-night,' said Dick, following Rob's eyes. 'Do you mean that I should go at all?' 'Why, well, you see, it is this awkward want of an income that spoils everything. Now, if you could persuade Rowbotham to give you a thousand a year, that might have its influence on my father.' 'I told you,' exclaimed Rob; 'no, of course I did not. I joined the staff of the _Wire_ to-day at £800.' 'Your hand, young man,' said Dick, very nearly becoming excited. 'Then that is all right. On the Press every one with a good income can add two hundred a year to it. It is only those who need the two hundred that cannot get it.' 'You think I should go north?' said Rob, with the whistle of the train already in his ears. 'Ah, it is not my affair,' answered Dick; 'I have done my duty. I promised to give Dowton a fair chance, and he has had it. I don't know what use he has made of it, remember. You have overlooked my share in this business, and I retire now.' 'You are against me still, Abinger.' 'No, Angus, on my word I am not. You are as good a man as Dowton, and if Mary thinks you better----' Dick shrugged his shoulders to signify that he had freed them of a load of prejudice. 'But does she?' said Rob. 'You will have to ask herself,' replied Dick. 'Yes; but when?' 'She will probably be up in town next season.' 'Next season,' exclaimed Rob; 'as well say next century.' 'Well, if that is too long to wait, suppose you come to Dome Castle with me at Christmas?' Rob pushed the invitation from him contemptuously. 'There is no reason,' he said, looking at Dick defiantly, 'why I should not go north to-night.' 'It would be a little hurried, would it not?' Dick said to his pipe. 'No,' Rob answered, with a happy inspiration. 'I meant to go to Thrums just now, for a few days at any rate. Rowbotham does not need me until Friday.' Rob looked up and saw Dick's mouth twitching. He tried to stare Mary's brother out of countenance, but could not do it. Night probably came on that Tuesday as usual, for Nature is as much as man a slave to habit, but it was not required to darken London. If all the clocks and watches had broken their mainsprings no one could have told whether it was at noon or midnight that Rob left for Scotland. It would have been equally impossible to say from his face whether he was off to a marriage or a funeral. He did not know himself. 'This human nature is a curious thing,' thought Dick, as he returned to his rooms. 'Here are two of us in misery, the one because he fears he is not going to be married, and the other because he knows he is.' He stretched himself out on two chairs. 'Neither of us, of course, is really miserable. Angus is not, for he is in love; and I am not, for----' He paused, and looked at his pipe. 'No, I am not miserable; how could a man be miserable who has two chairs to lie upon, and a tobacco jar at his elbow? I fancy, though, that I am just saved from misery by lack of sentiment. 'Curious to remember that I was once sentimental with the best of them. This is the Richard who sat up all night writing poems to Nell's eyebrows. Ah, poor Nell! 'I wonder, is it my fault that my passion burned itself out in one little crackle? With most men, if the books tell true, the first fire only goes out after the second is kindled, but I seem to have no more sticks to light. 'I am going to be married, though I would much rather remain single. My wife will be the only girl I ever loved, and I like her still more than any other girl I know. Though I shuddered just now when I thought of matrimony, there can be little doubt that we shall get on very well together. 'I should have preferred her to prove as fickle as myself, but how true she has remained to me! Not to me, for it is not the real Dick Abinger she cares for, and so I don't know that Nell's love is of the kind to make a man conceited. Is marriage a rash experiment when the woman loves the man for qualities he does not possess, and has not discovered in years of constant intercourse the little that is really lovable in him? Whatever I say to Nell is taken to mean the exact reverse of what I do mean; she reads my writings upside down, as one might say; she cries if I speak to her of anything more serious than flowers and waltzes, but she thinks me divine when I treat her like an infant. 'Is it weakness or strength that has kept me what the world would call true to Nell? Is a man necessarily a villain because love dies out of his heart, or has his reason some right to think the affair over and show him where he stands? 'Yes, Nell after all gets the worse of the bargain. She will have for a husband a man who is evidently incapable of a lasting affection for anybody. That, I suppose, means that I find myself the only really interesting person I know. Yet, I think, Richard, you would at times rather be somebody else--anybody almost would do. 'It is a little humiliating to remember that I have been lying to Angus for the last month or two--I, who always thought I had such a noble admiration for the truth. I did it very easily too, so I suppose there can be no doubt that I really am a very poor sort of creature. I wonder if it was for Mary's sake I lied, or merely because it would have been too troublesome to speak the truth? Except by fits and starts I have ceased apparently to be interested in anything. The only thing nowadays that rouses my indignation is the attempt on any one's part to draw me into an argument on any subject under the sun. Here is this Irish question; I can pump up an article in three paragraphs on it, but I don't really seem to care whether it is ever settled or not. Should we have a republic? I don't mind; it is all the same to me: but don't give me the casting vote. Is Gladstone a god? is Gladstone the devil? They say he is one or other, and I am content to let them fight it out. How long is it since I gave a thought to religion? What am I? There are men who come into this room and announce that they are agnostics, as if that were a new profession. Am I an agnostic? I think not; and if I was I would keep it to myself. My soul does not trouble me at all, except for five minutes or so now and again. On the whole I seem to be indifferent as to whether I have one, or what is to become of it.' Dick rose and paced the room, until his face gave the lie to everything he had told himself. His lips quivered and his whole body shook. He stood in an agony against the mantelpiece with his head in his hands, and emotions had possession of him compared with which the emotions of any other person described in this book were but children's fancies. By and by he became calm, and began to undress. Suddenly he remembered something. He rummaged for his keys in the pocket of the coat he had cast off, and, opening his desk, wrote on a slip of paper that he took from it, '_Scalping Knife_, Man Frightened to Get Married (humorous)!' 'My God!' he groaned, 'I would write an article, I think, on my mother's coffin.' CHAPTER XVIII THE AUDACITY OF ROB ANGUS Colonel Abinger had allowed the other sportsmen to wander away from him, and now lay on his back on Ben Shee, occasionally raking the glen of Quharity through a field-glass. It was a purple world he saw under a sky of grey and blue; with a white thread that was the dusty road twisting round a heavy sweep of mountain-side, and a broken thread of silver that was the Quharity straggling back and forward in the valley like a stream reluctant to be gone. To the naked eye they were bare black peaks that overlooked the glen from every side but the south. It was not the mountains, however, but the road that interested the colonel. By and by he was sitting up frowning, for this is what he saw. From the clump of trees to the north that keeps Glen Quharity Lodge warm in winter, a man and a lady emerged on horseback. They had not advanced a hundred yards, when the male rider turned back as if for something he had forgotten. The lady rode forward alone. A pedestrian came into sight about the same time, a mile to the south of the colonel. The field-glass lost him a dozen times, but he was approaching rapidly, and he and the rider must soon meet. The nearest habitation to Colonel Abinger was the schoolhouse, which was some four hundred yards distant. It stands on the other side of the white road, and is approached by a straight path down which heavy carts can jolt in the summer months. Every time the old dominie goes up and down this path, his boots take part of it along with him. There is a stone in his house, close to the door, which is chipped and scarred owing to his habit of kicking it to get the mud off his boots before he goes inside. The dominie was at present sitting listlessly on the dyke that accompanies this path to the high road. The colonel was taking no interest in the pedestrian as yet, but he sighed as he watched the lady ride slowly forward. Where the road had broken through a bump in the valley her lithe form in green stood out as sharply as a silhouette against the high ragged bank of white earth. The colonel had recognised his daughter, and his face was troubled. During all the time they had been at the Lodge he had never mentioned Rob Angus's name to Mary, chiefly because she had not given him a chance to lose his temper. She had been more demonstrative in her love for her father than of old, and had anticipated his wants in a way that gratified him at the moment but disturbed him afterwards. In his presence she seemed quite gaily happy, but he had noticed that she liked to slip away on to the hillside by herself, and sit there alone for hours at a time. Sir Clement Dowton was still at the Lodge, but the colonel was despondent. He knew very well that, without his consent, Mary would never give her hand to any man, but he was equally aware that there his power ended. Where she got her notions he did not know, but since she became his housekeeper she had impressed the colonel curiously. He was always finding himself taking for granted her purity to be something so fine that it behoved him to be careful. Mary affected other people in the same way. They came to know that she was a very rare person, and so in her company they became almost fine persons themselves. Thus the natural goodness of mankind asserted itself. Of late the colonel had felt Mary's presence more than ever; he believed in her so much (often to his annoyance) that she was a religion to him. While Colonel Abinger sat in the heather, perturbed in mind, and trying to persuade himself that it was Mary's fault, the pedestrian drew near rapidly. Evidently he and the rider would meet near the schoolhouse, and before the male rider, who had again emerged from the clump of trees, could make up on his companion. The dominie, who did not have such a slice of the outer world as this every day, came to the end of his path to have a look at the persons who were nearing him from opposite directions. He saw that the pedestrian wore an elegant silk hat and black coat, such as were not to be got in these parts. Only the delve with which he walked suggested a man from Thrums. The pedestrian made a remark about the weather as he hurried past the dominie. He was now so near the colonel that his face could be distinctly seen through the field-glass. The colonel winced, and turned white and red. Then the field-glass jumped quickly to the horsewoman. The pedestrian started as he came suddenly in sight of her, and at the same moment her face lit up with joy. The colonel saw it and felt a pain at his heart. The glass shook in his hand, thus bringing the dominie accidentally into view. The dominie was now worth watching. No sooner had the pedestrian passed him than the old man crouched so as not to seem noticeable, and ran after him. When he was within ten yards of his quarry he came to rest, and the field-glass told that he was gaping. Then the dominie turned round and hurried back to the schoolhouse, muttering as he ran: 'It's Rob Angus come home in a lum hat, and that's one o' the leddies frae the Lodge. I maun awa to Thrums wi' this. Rob Angus, Robbie Angus, michty, what a toon there'll be aboot this!' Rob walked up to Mary Abinger, feeling that to bid her good afternoon was like saying 'Thank you' in a church when the organ stops. He felt himself a saw-miller again. The finest thing in the world is that a woman can pass through anything, and remain pure. Mary had never been put to the test, but she could have stood it. Her soul spoke in her face, and as Rob looked at her the sound of his own voice seemed a profanation. Yet Mary was not all soul. She understood, for instance, why Rob stammered so much as he took her hand, and she was glad that she had on her green habit instead of the black one. Sir Clement Dowton rode forward smartly to make up on Miss Abinger, and saw her a hundred yards before him from the top of a bump which the road climbs. She was leaning forward in her saddle talking to a man whom he recognised at once. The baronet's first thought was to ride on, but he drew rein. 'I have had my chance and failed,' he said to himself grimly. 'Why should not he have his?' With a last look at the woman he loved, Sir Clement turned his horse, and so rode out of Mary Abinger's life. She had not even seen him. 'Papa has been out shooting,' she said to Rob, who was trying to begin, 'and I am on my way to meet him. Sir Clement Dowton is with me.' She turned her head to look for the baronet, and Rob, who had been aimlessly putting his fingers through her horse's mane, started at the mention of Sir Clement's name. 'Miss Abinger,' he said, 'I have come here to ask you one question. I have no right to put it, but Sir Clement, he----' 'If you want to see him,' said Mary, 'you have just come in time. I believe he is starting for a tour of the world in a week or so.' Rob drew a heavy breath, and from that moment he liked Dowton. But he had himself to think of at present. He remembered that he had another question to ask Miss Abinger. 'It is a very long time since I saw you,' he said. 'Yes,' said Mary, sitting straight in her saddle, 'you never came to the house-boat those last weeks. I suppose you were too busy.' 'That was not what kept me away,' Rob said. 'You know it was not.' Mary looked behind her again. 'There was nothing else,' she said; 'I cannot understand what is detaining Sir Clement.' 'I thought----' Rob began. 'You should not,' said Mary, looking at the schoolhouse. 'But your brother----' Rob was saying, when he paused, not wanting to incriminate Dick. 'Yes, I know,' said Mary, whose intellect was very clear to-day. She knew why Rob stopped short, and there was a soft look in her eyes as they were turned upon him. 'Your brother advised me to come north,' Rob said, but Mary did not answer. 'I would not have done so,' he continued, 'if I had known that you knew why I stayed away from the house-boat.' 'I think I must ride on,' Mary said. 'No,' said Rob, in a voice that put it out of the question. So Mary must have thought, for she remained there. 'You thought it better,' he went on huskily, 'that, whatever the cause, I should not see you again.' Mary was bending her riding-whip into a bow. 'Did you not?' cried Rob, a little fiercely. Mary shook her head. 'Then why did you do it?' he said. 'I didn't do anything,' said Mary. 'In all London,' said Rob, speaking at a venture, 'there has not been one person for the last two months so miserable as myself.' Mary's eyes wandered from Rob's face far over the heather. There might be tears in her eyes at any moment. The colonel was looking. 'That stream,' said Rob, with a mighty effort, pointing to the distant Whunny, 'twists round the hill on which we are now standing, and runs through Thrums. It turns the wheel of a saw-mill there, and in that saw-mill I was born and worked with my father for the greater part of my life.' 'I have seen it,' said Mary, with her head turned away. 'I have been in it.' 'It was on the other side of the hill that my sister's child was found dead. Had she lived I might never have seen you.' 'One of the gamekeepers,' said Mary, 'showed me the place where you found her with her foot in the water.' 'I have driven a cart through this glen a hundred times,' continued Rob doggedly. 'You see that wooden shed at the schoolhouse; it was my father and I who put it up. It seems but yesterday since I carted the boards from Thrums.' 'The dear boards,' murmured Mary. 'Many a day my mother has walked from the saw-mill into this glen with my dinner in a basket.' 'Good mother,' said Mary, 'Now,' said Rob, 'now, when I come back here and see you, I remember what I am. I have lived for you from the moment I saw you, but however hard I might toil for you, there must always be a difference between us.' He was standing on the high bank, and their faces were very close. Mary shuddered. 'I only frighten you,' cried Rob. Mary raised her head, and, though her face was wet, she smiled. Her hand went out to him, but she noticed it and drew it back. Rob saw it too, but did not seek to take it. They were looking at each other bravely. His eyes proposed to her, while he could not say a word, and hers accepted him. On the hills men were shooting birds. Rob knew that Mary loved him. An awe fell upon him. 'What am I?' he cried, and Mary put her hand in his. 'Don't, dear,' she said, as his face sank on it; and he raised his head and could not speak. The colonel sighed, and his cheeks were red. His head sank upon his hands. He was young again, and walking down an endless lane of green with a maiden by his side, and her hand was in his. They sat down by the side of a running stream. Her fair head lay on his shoulder, and she was his wife. The colonel's lips moved as if he were saying to himself words of love, and his arms went out to her who had been dead this many a year, and a tear, perhaps the last he ever shed, ran down his cheek. 'I should not,' Mary said at last, 'have let you talk to me like this.' Rob looked up with sudden misgiving. 'Why not?' he cried. 'Papa,' she said, 'will never consent, and I--I knew that; I have known it all along.' 'I am not going to give you up now,' Rob said passionately, and he looked as if he would run away with her at that moment. 'I had no right to listen to you,' said Mary. 'I did not mean to do so, but I--I'--her voice sank into a whisper--'I wanted to know----' 'To know that I loved you! Ah, you have known all along.' 'Yes,' said Mary, 'but I wanted--I wanted to hear you say so yourself.' Rob's arms went over her like a hoop. 'Rob, dear,' she whispered, 'you must go away, and never see me any more.' 'I won't,' cried Rob; 'you are to be my wife. He shall not part us.' 'It can never be,' said Mary. 'I shall see him--I shall compel him to consent.' Mary shook her head. 'You don't want to marry me,' Rob said fiercely, drawing back from her. 'You do not care for me. What made you say you did?' 'I shall have to go back now,' Mary said, and the softness of her voice contrasted strangely with the passion in his. 'I shall go with you,' Rob answered, 'and see your father.' 'No, no,' said Mary; 'we must say good-bye here, now.' Rob turned on her with all the dourness of the Anguses in him. 'Good-bye,' he said, and left her. Mary put her hand to her heart, but he was already turning back. 'Oh,' she cried, 'do you not see that it is so much harder to me than to you?' 'Mary, my beloved,' Rob cried. She swayed in her saddle, and if he had not been there to catch her she would have fallen to the ground. Rob heard a footstep at his side, and, looking up, saw Colonel Abinger. The old man's face was white, but there was a soft look in his eye, and he stooped to take Mary to his breast. 'No,' Rob said, with his teeth close, 'you can't have her. She's mine.' 'Yes,' the colonel said sadly; 'she's yours.' CHAPTER XIX THE VERDICT OF THRUMS On a mild Saturday evening in the following May, Sandersy Riach, telegraph boy, emerged from the Thrums post-office, and, holding his head high, strutted off towards the Tenements. He had on his uniform, and several other boys flung gutters at it, to show that they were as good as he was. 'Wha's deid, Sandersy?' housewives flung open their windows to ask. 'It's no a death,' Sandersy replied. 'Na, na, far frae that. I daurna tell ye what it is, because it's agin' the regalations, but it'll cause a michty wy doin' in Thrums this nicht.' 'Juist whisper what it's aboot, Sandersy, my laddie.' 'It canna be done, Easie; na, na. But them 'at wants to hear the noos, follow me to Tammas Haggart's.' Off Sandersy went, with some women and a dozen children at his heels, but he did not find Tammas in. 'I winna hae't lyin' aboot here,' Chirsty, the wife of Tammas, said, eyeing the telegram as something that might go off at any moment; 'ye'll better tak it on to 'imsel. He's takkin a dander through the buryin' ground wi' Snecky Hobart.' Sandersy marched through the east town end at the head of his following, and climbed the steep, straight brae that leads to the cemetery. There he came upon the stone-breaker and the bellman strolling from grave to grave. Silva McQuhatty and Sam'l Todd were also in the burying-ground for pleasure, and they hobbled toward Tammas when they saw the telegram in his hand. '"Thomas Haggart,"' the stone-breaker murmured, reading out his own name on the envelope, '"Tenements, Thrums."' Then he stared thoughtfully at his neighbours to see whether that could be looked upon as news. It was his first telegram. 'Ay, ay, deary me,' said Silva mournfully. 'She's no very expliceet, do ye think?' asked Sam'l Todd. Snecky Hobart, however, as an official himself, had a general notion of how affairs of state are conducted. 'Rip her open, Tammas,' he suggested. 'That's but the shell, I'm thinkin'.' 'Does she open?' asked Tammas, with a grin. He opened the telegram gingerly, and sat down on a prostrate tombstone to consider it. Snecky's fingers tingled to get at it. 'It begins in the same wy,' the stone-breaker said deliberately; '"Thomas Haggart, Tenements, Thrums."' 'Ay, ay, deary me,' repeated Silva. 'That means it's to you,' Snecky said to Tammas. 'Next,' continued Tammas, 'comes, "Elizabeth Haggart, 101, Lower Fish Street, Whitechapel, London."' 'She's a' names thegether,' muttered Sam'l Todd, in a tone of remonstrance. 'She's a' richt,' said Snecky, nodding to Tammas to proceed. 'Elizabeth Haggart--that's wha the telegram comes frae.' 'Ay, ay,' said the stone-breaker doubtfully, 'but I ken no Elizabeth Haggart.' 'Hoots,' said Snecky; 'it's your ain dochter Lisbeth.' 'Keep us a',' said Tammas, 'so it is. I didna un'erstan' at first; ye see we aye called her Leeby. Ay, an' that's whaur she bides in London too.' 'Lads, lads,' said Silva, 'an' is Leeby gone? Ay, ay, we all fade as a leaf; so we do.' 'What!' cried Tammas, his hand beginning to shake. 'Havers,' said Snecky, 'ye hinna come to the telegram proper yet, Tammas. What mair does it say?' The stone-breaker conned over the words, and by and by his face wrinkled with excitement. He puffed his cheeks, and then let the air rush through his mouth like an escape of gas. 'It's Rob Angus,' he blurted out. 'Man, man,' said Silva, 'an' him lookit sae strong an' snod when he was here i' the back-end o' last year.' 'He's no deid,' cried Tammas, 'he's mairit. Listen, lads, "The thing is true Rob Angus has married the colonel's daughter at a castle Rob Angus has married the colonel."' 'Losh me!' said Sam'l, 'I never believed he would manage't.' 'Ay, but she reads queer,' said Tammas. 'First she says Rob's mairit the dochter, an' neist 'at he's mairit the colonel.' 'Twa o' them!' cried Silva, who was now in a state to believe anything. Snecky seized the telegram, and thought it over. 'I see what Leeby's done,' he said admiringly. 'Ye're restreected to twenty words in a telegram, an' Leeby found she had said a' she had to say in fourteen words, so she's repeated hersel to get her full shilling's worth.' 'Ye've hit it, Snecky,' said Tammas. 'It's juist what Leeby would do. She was aye a michty thrifty, shrewd crittur.' 'A shilling's an awfu' siller to fling awa, though,' said Sam'l. 'It's weel spent in this case,' retorted Tammas, sticking up for his own; 'there hasna been sic a startler in Thrums since the English kirk steeple fell.' 'Ye can see Angus's saw-mill frae here,' exclaimed Silva, implying that this made the affair more wonderful than ever. 'So ye can,' said Snecky, gazing at it as if it were some curiosity that had been introduced into Thrums in the night-time. 'To think,' muttered Tammas, ''at the saw-miller doon there should be mairit in a castle. It's beyond all. Oh, it's beyond, it's beyond.' 'Sal, though,' said Sam'l suspiciously, 'I wud like a sicht o' the castle. I mind o' readin' in a booky 'at every Englishman's hoose is his castle, so I'm thinkin' castle's but a name in the sooth for an ord'nar hoose.' 'Weel a wat, ye never can trust thae foreigners,' said Silva; 'it's weel beknown 'at English is an awful pretentious langitch too. They slither ower their words in a hurried wy 'at I canna say I like; no, I canna say I like it.' 'Will Leeby hae seen the castle?' asked Sam'l. 'Na,' said Tammas; 'it's a lang wy frae London; she'll juist hae heard o' the mairitch.' 'It'll hae made a commotion in London, I dinna doot,' said Snecky, 'but, lads, it proves as the colonel man stuck to Rob.' 'Ay, I hardly expected it.' 'Ay, ay, Snecky, ye 're richt. Rob'll hae manage't him. Weel, I will say this for Rob Angus, he was a crittur 'at was terrible fond o' gettin' his ain wy.' 'The leddy had smoothed the thing ower wi' her faither,' said Tammas, who was notorious for his knowledge of women; 'ay, an' there was a brither, ye mind? Ane o' the servants up at the Lodge said to Kitty Wobster 'at they were to be mairit the same day, so I've nae doot they were.' 'Ay,' said Sam'l, pricking up his ears, 'an' wha was the brither gettin'?' 'Weel, it was juist gossip, ye understan'. But I heard tell 'at the leddy had a tremendous tocher, an' 'at she was called Meredith.' 'Meredith!' exclaimed Silva McQuhatty, 'what queer names some o' thae English fowk has; ay, I prefer the ord'nar names mysel.' 'I wonder,' said Snecky, looking curiously at the others, 'what Rob has in the wy o' wages?' 'That's been discuss't in every hoose in Thrums,' said Sam'l, 'but there's no doubt it's high, for it's a salary; ay, it's no wages.' 'I dinna ken what Rob has,' Silva said, 'but some o' thae writers makes awfu' sums. There's the yeditor o' the _Tilliedrum Weekly Herald_ noo. I canna tell his income, but I have it frae Dite Deuchars, wha kens, 'at he pays twa-an'-twenty pound o' rent for's hoose.' 'Ay, but Rob's no a yeditor,' said Sam'l. 'Ye're far below the mark wi' Rob's salary,' said Tammas. 'My ain opeenion is 'at he has a great hoose in London by this time, wi' twa or three servants, an' a lad in knickerbuckers to stan' ahent his chair and reach ower him to cut the roast beef.' 'It may be so,' said Snecky, who had heard of such things, 'but if it is it'll irritate Rob michty no to get cuttin' the roast 'imsel. Thae Anguses aye likit to do a'thing for themsels.' 'There's the poseetion to think o',' said Tammas. 'Thrums'll be a busy toon this nicht,' said Sam'l, 'when it hears the noos. Ay, I maun awa an' tell the wife.' Having said this, Sam'l sat down on the tombstone. 'It'll send mair laddies on to the papers oot o' Thrums,' said Tammas. 'There's three awa to the printin' trade since Rob was here, an' Susie Byars is to send little Joey to the business as sune as he's auld eneuch.' 'Joey'll do weel in the noospaper line,' said Silva; 'he writes a better han' than Rob Angus already.' 'Weel, weel, that's the main thing, lads.' Sam'l moved off slowly to take the news into the east town end. 'It's to Rob's creedit,' said Tammas to the two men remaining, ''at he wasna at all prood when he came back. Ay, he called on me very frank like, as ye'll mind, an' I wasna in, so Chirsty dusts a chair for 'im, and comes to look for me. Lads, I was fair ashamed to see 'at in her fluster she'd gien him a common chair, when there was hair-bottomed anes in the other room. Ye may be sure I sent her for a better chair, an' got him to change, though he was sort o' mad like at havin' to shift. That was his ind'pendence again.' 'I was aye callin' him Rob,' said Snecky, 'forgettin' what a grand man he was noo, an', of coorse, I corrected mysel, and said Mr. Angus. Weel, when I'd dune that mebbe a dozen times he was fair stampin's feet wi' rage, as ye micht say. Ay, there was a want o' patience aboot Rob Angus.' 'He slippit a gold sovereign into my hand,' said Silva, 'but, losh, he wudna lat me thank 'im. "Hold yer tongue," he says, or words to that effec', when I insistit on't.' At the foot of the burying-ground road Sam'l Todd could be seen laying it off about Rob to a little crowd of men and women. Snecky looked at them till he could look no longer. 'I maun awa wi' the noos to the wast toon end,' he said, and by and by he went, climbing the dyke for a short cut. 'Weel, weel, Rob Angus is mairit,' said Silva to Tammas. 'So he is, Silva,' said the stone-breaker. 'It's an experiment,' said Silva. 'Ye may say so, but Rob was aye venturesome.' 'Ye saw the leddy, Tammas?' 'Ay, man, I did mair than that. She spoke to me, an' speired a lot aboot the wy Rob took on when little Davy was fund deid. He was fond o' his fowk, Rob, michty fond.' 'What was your opeenion o' her then, Tammas?' 'Weel, Silva, to tell the truth I was oncommon favourably impreesed. She shook hands wi' me, man, an' she had sic a saft voice an' sic a bonny face I was a kind o' carried awa; yes, I was so.' 'Ay, ye say that, Tammas. Weel, I think I'll be movin'. They'll be keen to hear aboot this in the square.' 'I said to her,' continued Tammas, peering through his half-closed eyes at Silva, ''at Rob was a lucky crittur to get sic a bonny wife.' 'Ye did!' cried Silva. 'An' hoo did she tak that?' 'Ou,' said Tammas complacently, 'she took it weel.' 'I wonder,' said Silva, now a dozen yards away, ''at Rob never sent ony o' the papers he writes to Thrums juist to lat's see them.' 'He sent a heap,' said Tammas, 'to the minister, meanin' them to be passed roond, but Mr. Dishart didna juist think they were quite the thing, ye un'erstan', so he keeps them lockit up in a press.' 'They say in the toon,' said Silva, ''at Rob would never hae got on sae weel if Mr. Dishart hadna helpit him. Do you think there's onything in that?' Tammas was sunk in reverie, and Silva at last departed. He was out of sight by the time the stone-breaker came to. 'I spoke to the minister aboot it,' Tammas answered, under the impression that Silva was still there, 'an' speired at him if he had sent a line aboot Rob to the London yeditors, but he wudna say.' Tammas moved his head round, and saw that he was alone. 'No,' he continued thoughtfully, addressing the tombstones, 'he would neither say 'at he did nor 'at he didna. He juist waved his han' like, to lat's see 'at he was at the bottom o't, but didna want it to be spoken o'. Ay, ay.' Tammas hobbled thoughtfully down one of the steep burying-ground walks, until he came to a piece of sward with no tombstone at its head. 'Ay,' he said, 'there's mony an Angus lies buried there, an' Rob's the only are left noo. I hae helpit to hap the earth ower five, ay, sax o' them. It's no to be expeckit, no, i' the course o' natur' it's no to be expeckit, 'at I should last oot the seventh: no, but there's nae sayin'. Ay, Rob, ye wasna sae fu' o' speerits as I'll waurant ye are the noo, that day ye buried Davy. Losh, losh, it's a queer warld.' 'It's a pretty spot to be buried in,' he muttered, after a time; and then his eyes wandered to another part of the burying-ground. 'Ay,' he said, with a chuckle, 'but I've a snod bit cornery up there for mysel. Ou ay.' THE END Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press 
611	----	PRESTER JOHN by JOHN BUCHAN TO LIONEL PHILLIPS Time, they say, must the best of us capture, And travel and battle and gems and gold No more can kindle the ancient rapture, For even the youngest of hearts grows old. But in you, I think, the boy is not over; So take this medley of ways and wars As the gift of a friend and a fellow-lover Of the fairest country under the stars. J. B. CONTENTS I. The Man on the Kirkcaple Shore II. Furth! Fortune! III. Blaauwildebeestefontein IV. My Journey to the Winter-Veld V. Mr Wardlaw Has a Premonition VI. The Drums Beat at Sunset VII. Captain Arcoll Tells a Tale VIII. I Fall in Again with the Reverend John Laputa IX. The Store at Umvelos' X. I Go Treasure-Hunting XI. The Cave of the Rooirand XII. Captain Arcoll Sends a Message XIII. The Drift of the Letaba XIV. I Carry the Collar of Prester John XV. Morning in the Berg XVI. Inanda's Kraal XVII. A Deal and Its Consequences XVIII. How a Man May Sometimes Put His Trust in a Horse XIX. Arcoll's Shepherding XX. My Last Sight of the Reverend John Laputa XXI. I Climb the Crags a Second Time XXII. A Great Peril and a Great Salvation XXIII. My Uncle's Gift Is Many Times Multiplied CHAPTER I THE MAN ON THE KIRKCAPLE SHORE I mind as if it were yesterday my first sight of the man. Little I knew at the time how big the moment was with destiny, or how often that face seen in the fitful moonlight would haunt my sleep and disturb my waking hours. But I mind yet the cold grue of terror I got from it, a terror which was surely more than the due of a few truant lads breaking the Sabbath with their play. The town of Kirkcaple, of which and its adjacent parish of Portincross my father was the minister, lies on a hillside above the little bay of Caple, and looks squarely out on the North Sea. Round the horns of land which enclose the bay the coast shows on either side a battlement of stark red cliffs through which a burn or two makes a pass to the water's edge. The bay itself is ringed with fine clean sands, where we lads of the burgh school loved to bathe in the warm weather. But on long holidays the sport was to go farther afield among the cliffs; for there there were many deep caves and pools, where podleys might be caught with the line, and hid treasures sought for at the expense of the skin of the knees and the buttons of the trousers. Many a long Saturday I have passed in a crinkle of the cliffs, having lit a fire of driftwood, and made believe that I was a smuggler or a Jacobite new landed from France. There was a band of us in Kirkcaple, lads of my own age, including Archie Leslie, the son of my father's session-clerk, and Tam Dyke, the provost's nephew. We were sealed to silence by the blood oath, and we bore each the name of some historic pirate or sailorman. I was Paul Jones, Tam was Captain Kidd, and Archie, need I say it, was Morgan himself. Our tryst was a cave where a little water called the Dyve Burn had cut its way through the cliffs to the sea. There we forgathered in the summer evenings and of a Saturday afternoon in winter, and told mighty tales of our prowess and flattered our silly hearts. But the sober truth is that our deeds were of the humblest, and a dozen of fish or a handful of apples was all our booty, and our greatest exploit a fight with the roughs at the Dyve tan-work. My father's spring Communion fell on the last Sabbath of April, and on the particular Sabbath of which I speak the weather was mild and bright for the time of year. I had been surfeited with the Thursday's and Saturday's services, and the two long diets of worship on the Sabbath were hard for a lad of twelve to bear with the spring in his bones and the sun slanting through the gallery window. There still remained the service on the Sabbath evening--a doleful prospect, for the Rev. Mr Murdoch of Kilchristie, noted for the length of his discourses, had exchanged pulpits with my father. So my mind was ripe for the proposal of Archie Leslie, on our way home to tea, that by a little skill we might give the kirk the slip. At our Communion the pews were emptied of their regular occupants and the congregation seated itself as it pleased. The manse seat was full of the Kirkcaple relations of Mr Murdoch, who had been invited there by my mother to hear him, and it was not hard to obtain permission to sit with Archie and Tam Dyke in the cock-loft in the gallery. Word was sent to Tam, and so it happened that three abandoned lads duly passed the plate and took their seats in the cock-loft. But when the bell had done jowing, and we heard by the sounds of their feet that the elders had gone in to the kirk, we slipped down the stairs and out of the side door. We were through the churchyard in a twinkling, and hot-foot on the road to the Dyve Burn. It was the fashion of the genteel in Kirkcaple to put their boys into what were known as Eton suits--long trousers, cut-away jackets, and chimney-pot hats. I had been one of the earliest victims, and well I remember how I fled home from the Sabbath school with the snowballs of the town roughs rattling off my chimney-pot. Archie had followed, his family being in all things imitators of mine. We were now clothed in this wearisome garb, so our first care was to secrete safely our hats in a marked spot under some whin bushes on the links. Tam was free from the bondage of fashion, and wore his ordinary best knickerbockers. From inside his jacket he unfolded his special treasure, which was to light us on our expedition--an evil-smelling old tin lantern with a shutter. Tam was of the Free Kirk persuasion, and as his Communion fell on a different day from ours, he was spared the bondage of church attendance from which Archie and I had revolted. But notable events had happened that day in his church. A black man, the Rev. John Something-or-other, had been preaching. Tam was full of the portent. 'A nagger,' he said, 'a great black chap as big as your father, Archie.' He seemed to have banged the bookboard with some effect, and had kept Tam, for once in his life, awake. He had preached about the heathen in Africa, and how a black man was as good as a white man in the sight of God, and he had forecast a day when the negroes would have something to teach the British in the way of civilization. So at any rate ran the account of Tam Dyke, who did not share the preacher's views. 'It's all nonsense, Davie. The Bible says that the children of Ham were to be our servants. If I were the minister I wouldn't let a nigger into the pulpit. I wouldn't let him farther than the Sabbath school.' Night fell as we came to the broomy spaces of the links, and ere we had breasted the slope of the neck which separates Kirkcaple Bay from the cliffs it was as dark as an April evening with a full moon can be. Tam would have had it darker. He got out his lantern, and after a prodigious waste of matches kindled the candle-end inside, turned the dark shutter, and trotted happily on. We had no need of his lighting till the Dyve Burn was reached and the path began to descend steeply through the rift in the crags. It was here we found that some one had gone before us. Archie was great in those days at tracking, his ambition running in Indian paths. He would walk always with his head bent and his eyes on the ground, whereby he several times found lost coins and once a trinket dropped by the provost's wife. At the edge of the burn, where the path turns downward, there is a patch of shingle washed up by some spate. Archie was on his knees in a second. 'Lads,' he cried, 'there's spoor here;' and then after some nosing, 'it's a man's track, going downward, a big man with flat feet. It's fresh, too, for it crosses the damp bit of gravel, and the water has scarcely filled the holes yet.' We did not dare to question Archie's woodcraft, but it puzzled us who the stranger could be. In summer weather you might find a party of picnickers here, attracted by the fine hard sands at the burn mouth. But at this time of night and season of the year there was no call for any one to be trespassing on our preserves. No fishermen came this way, the lobster-pots being all to the east, and the stark headland of the Red Neb made the road to them by the water's edge difficult. The tan-work lads used to come now and then for a swim, but you would not find a tan-work lad bathing on a chill April night. Yet there was no question where our precursor had gone. He was making for the shore. Tam unshuttered his lantern, and the steps went clearly down the corkscrew path. 'Maybe he is after our cave. We'd better go cannily.' The glim was dowsed--the words were Archie's--and in the best contraband manner we stole down the gully. The business had suddenly taken an eerie turn, and I think in our hearts we were all a little afraid. But Tam had a lantern, and it would never do to turn back from an adventure which had all the appearance of being the true sort. Half way down there is a scrog of wood, dwarf alders and hawthorn, which makes an arch over the path. I, for one, was glad when we got through this with no worse mishap than a stumble from Tam which caused the lantern door to fly open and the candle to go out. We did not stop to relight it, but scrambled down the screes till we came to the long slabs of reddish rock which abutted on the beach. We could not see the track, so we gave up the business of scouts, and dropped quietly over the big boulder and into the crinkle of cliff which we called our cave. There was nobody there, so we relit the lantern and examined our properties. Two or three fishing-rods for the burn, much damaged by weather; some sea-lines on a dry shelf of rock; a couple of wooden boxes; a pile of driftwood for fires, and a heap of quartz in which we thought we had found veins of gold--such was the modest furnishing of our den. To this I must add some broken clay pipes, with which we made believe to imitate our elders, smoking a foul mixture of coltsfoot leaves and brown paper. The band was in session, so following our ritual we sent out a picket. Tam was deputed to go round the edge of the cliff from which the shore was visible, and report if the coast was clear. He returned in three minutes, his eyes round with amazement in the lantern light. 'There's a fire on the sands,' he repeated, 'and a man beside it.' Here was news indeed. Without a word we made for the open, Archie first, and Tam, who had seized and shuttered his lantern, coming last. We crawled to the edge of the cliff and peered round, and there sure enough, on the hard bit of sand which the tide had left by the burn mouth, was a twinkle of light and a dark figure. The moon was rising, and besides there was that curious sheen from the sea which you will often notice in spring. The glow was maybe a hundred yards distant, a little spark of fire I could have put in my cap, and, from its crackling and smoke, composed of dry seaweed and half-green branches from the burnside thickets. A man's figure stood near it, and as we looked it moved round and round the fire in circles which first of all widened and then contracted. The sight was so unexpected, so beyond the beat of our experience, that we were all a little scared. What could this strange being want with a fire at half-past eight of an April Sabbath night on the Dyve Burn sands? We discussed the thing in whispers behind a boulder, but none of us had any solution. 'Belike he's come ashore in a boat,' said Archie. 'He's maybe a foreigner.' But I pointed out that, from the tracks which Archie himself had found, the man must have come overland down the cliffs. Tam was clear he was a madman, and was for withdrawing promptly from the whole business. But some spell kept our feet tied there in that silent world of sand and moon and sea. I remember looking back and seeing the solemn, frowning faces of the cliffs, and feeling somehow shut in with this unknown being in a strange union. What kind of errand had brought this interloper into our territory? For a wonder I was less afraid than curious. I wanted to get to the heart of the matter, and to discover what the man was up to with his fire and his circles. The same thought must have been in Archie's head, for he dropped on his belly and began to crawl softly seawards. I followed, and Tam, with sundry complaints, crept after my heels. Between the cliffs and the fire lay some sixty yards of _débris_ and boulders above the level of all but the high spring tides. Beyond lay a string of seaweedy pools and then the hard sands of the burnfoot. There was excellent cover among the big stones, and apart from the distance and the dim light, the man by the fire was too preoccupied in his task to keep much look-out towards the land. I remember thinking he had chosen his place well, for save from the sea he could not be seen. The cliffs are so undercut that unless a watcher on the coast were on their extreme edge he would not see the burnfoot sands. Archie, the skilled tracker, was the one who all but betrayed us. His knee slipped on the seaweed, and he rolled off a boulder, bringing down with him a clatter of small stones. We lay as still as mice, in terror lest the man should have heard the noise and have come to look for the cause. By-and-by when I ventured to raise my head above a flat-topped stone I saw that he was undisturbed. The fire still burned, and he was pacing round it. On the edge of the pools was an outcrop of red sandstone much fissured by the sea. Here was an excellent vantage-ground, and all three of us curled behind it, with our eyes just over the edge. The man was not twenty yards off, and I could see clearly what manner of fellow he was. For one thing he was huge of size, or so he seemed to me in the half-light. He wore nothing but a shirt and trousers, and I could hear by the flap of his feet on the sand that he was barefoot. Suddenly Tam Dyke gave a gasp of astonishment. 'Gosh, it's the black minister!' he said. It was indeed a black man, as we saw when the moon came out of a cloud. His head was on his breast, and he walked round the fire with measured, regular steps. At intervals he would stop and raise both hands to the sky, and bend his body in the direction of the moon. But he never uttered a word. 'It's magic,' said Archie. 'He's going to raise Satan. We must bide here and see what happens, for he'll grip us if we try to go back. The moon's ower high.' The procession continued as if to some slow music. I had been in no fear of the adventure back there by our cave; but now that I saw the thing from close at hand, my courage began to ebb. There was something desperately uncanny about this great negro, who had shed his clerical garments, and was now practising some strange magic alone by the sea. I had no doubt it was the black art, for there was that in the air and the scene which spelled the unlawful. As we watched, the circles stopped, and the man threw something on the fire. A thick smoke rose of which we could feel the aromatic scent, and when it was gone the flame burned with a silvery blueness like moonlight. Still no sound came from the minister, but he took something from his belt, and began to make odd markings in the sand between the inner circle and the fire. As he turned, the moon gleamed on the implement, and we saw it was a great knife. We were now scared in real earnest. Here were we, three boys, at night in a lonely place a few yards from a savage with a knife. The adventure was far past my liking, and even the intrepid Archie was having qualms, if I could judge from his set face. As for Tam, his teeth were chattering like a threshing-mill. Suddenly I felt something soft and warm on the rock at my right hand. I felt again, and, lo! it was the man's clothes. There were his boots and socks, his minister's coat and his minister's hat. This made the predicament worse, for if we waited till he finished his rites we should for certain be found by him. At the same time, to return over the boulders in the bright moonlight seemed an equally sure way to discovery. I whispered to Archie, who was for waiting a little longer. 'Something may turn up,' he said. It was always his way. I do not know what would have turned up, for we had no chance of testing it. The situation had proved too much for the nerves of Tam Dyke. As the man turned towards us in his bowings and bendings, Tam suddenly sprang to his feet and shouted at him a piece of schoolboy rudeness then fashionable in Kirkcaple. 'Wha called ye partan-face, my bonny man?' Then, clutching his lantern, he ran for dear life, while Archie and I raced at his heels. As I turned I had a glimpse of a huge figure, knife in hand, bounding towards us. Though I only saw it in the turn of a head, the face stamped itself indelibly upon my mind. It was black, black as ebony, but it was different from the ordinary negro. There were no thick lips and flat nostrils; rather, if I could trust my eyes, the nose was high-bridged, and the lines of the mouth sharp and firm. But it was distorted into an expression of such a devilish fury and amazement that my heart became like water. We had a start, as I have said, of some twenty or thirty yards. Among the boulders we were not at a great disadvantage, for a boy can flit quickly over them, while a grown man must pick his way. Archie, as ever, kept his wits the best of us. 'Make straight for the burn,' he shouted in a hoarse whisper; we'll beat him on the slope.' We passed the boulders and slithered over the outcrop of red rock and the patches of sea-pink till we reached the channel of the Dyve water, which flows gently among pebbles after leaving the gully. Here for the first time I looked back and saw nothing. I stopped involuntarily, and that halt was nearly my undoing. For our pursuer had reached the burn before us, but lower down, and was coming up its bank to cut us off. At most times I am a notable coward, and in these days I was still more of one, owing to a quick and easily-heated imagination. But now I think I did a brave thing, though more by instinct than resolution. Archie was running first, and had already splashed through the burn; Tam came next, just about to cross, and the black man was almost at his elbow. Another second and Tam would have been in his clutches had I not yelled out a warning and made straight up the bank of the burn. Tam fell into the pool--I could hear his spluttering cry--but he got across; for I heard Archie call to him, and the two vanished into the thicket which clothes all the left bank of the gully. The pursuer, seeing me on his own side of the water, followed straight on; and before I knew it had become a race between the two of us. I was hideously frightened, but not without hope, for the screes and shelves of this right side of the gully were known to me from many a day's exploring. I was light on my feet and uncommonly sound in wind, being by far the best long-distance runner in Kirkcaple. If I could only keep my lead till I reached a certain corner I knew of, I could outwit my enemy; for it was possible from that place to make a detour behind a waterfall and get into a secret path of ours among the bushes. I flew up the steep screes, not daring to look round; but at the top, where the rocks begin, I had a glimpse of my pursuer. The man could run. Heavy in build though he was he was not six yards behind me, and I could see the white of his eyes and the red of his gums. I saw something else--a glint of white metal in his hand. He still had his knife. Fear sent me up the rocks like a seagull, and I scrambled and leaped, making for the corner I knew of. Something told me that the pursuit was slackening, and for a moment I halted to look round. A second time a halt was nearly the end of me. A great stone flew through the air, and took the cliff an inch from my head, half-blinding me with splinters. And now I began to get angry. I pulled myself into cover, skirted a rock till I came to my corner, and looked back for the enemy. There he was scrambling by the way I had come, and making a prodigious clatter among the stones. I picked up a loose bit of rock and hurled it with all my force in his direction. It broke before it reached him, but a considerable lump, to my joy, took him full in the face. Then my terrors revived. I slipped behind the waterfall and was soon in the thicket, and toiling towards the top. I think this last bit was the worst in the race, for my strength was failing, and I seemed to hear those horrid steps at my heels. My heart was in my mouth as, careless of my best clothes, I tore through the hawthorn bushes. Then I struck the path and, to my relief, came on Archie and Tam, who were running slowly in desperate anxiety about my fate. We then took hands and soon reached the top of the gully. For a second we looked back. The pursuit had ceased, and far down the burn we could hear the sounds as of some one going back to the sands. 'Your face is bleeding, Davie. Did he get near enough to hit you?' Archie asked. 'He hit me with a stone. But I gave him better. He's got a bleeding nose to remember this night by.' We did not dare take the road by the links, but made for the nearest human habitation. This was a farm about half a mile inland, and when we reached it we lay down by the stack-yard gate and panted. 'I've lost my lantern,' said Tam. 'The big black brute! See if I don't tell my father.' 'Ye'll do nothing of the kind,' said Archie fiercely. 'He knows nothing about us and can't do us any harm. But if the story got out and he found out who we were, he'd murder the lot of US.' He made us swear secrecy, which we were willing enough to do, seeing very clearly the sense in his argument. Then we struck the highroad and trotted back at our best pace to Kirkcaple, fear of our families gradually ousting fear of pursuit. In our excitement Archie and I forgot about our Sabbath hats, reposing quietly below a whin bush on the links. We were not destined to escape without detection. As ill luck would have it, Mr Murdoch had been taken ill with the stomach-ache after the second psalm, and the congregation had been abruptly dispersed. My mother had waited for me at the church door, and, seeing no signs of her son, had searched the gallery. Then the truth came out, and, had I been only for a mild walk on the links, retribution would have overtaken my truantry. But to add to this I arrived home with a scratched face, no hat, and several rents in my best trousers. I was well cuffed and sent to bed, with the promise of full-dress chastisement when my father should come home in the morning. My father arrived before breakfast next day, and I was duly and soundly whipped. I set out for school with aching bones to add to the usual depression of Monday morning. At the corner of the Nethergate I fell in with Archie, who was staring at a trap carrying two men which was coming down the street. It was the Free Church minister--he had married a rich wife and kept a horse--driving the preacher of yesterday to the railway station. Archie and I were in behind a doorpost in a twinkling, so that we could see in safety the last of our enemy. He was dressed in minister's clothes, with a heavy fur-coat and a brand new yellow-leather Gladstone bag. He was talking loudly as he passed, and the Free Church minister seemed to be listening attentively. I heard his deep voice saying something about the 'work of God in this place.' But what I noticed specially--and the sight made me forget my aching hinder parts--was that he had a swollen eye, and two strips of sticking-plaster on his cheek. CHAPTER II FURTH! FORTUNE! In this plain story of mine there will be so many wild doings ere the end is reached, that I beg my reader's assent to a prosaic digression. I will tell briefly the things which happened between my sight of the man on the Kirkcaple sands and my voyage to Africa. I continued for three years at the burgh school, where my progress was less notable in my studies than in my sports. One by one I saw my companions pass out of idle boyhood and be set to professions. Tam Dyke on two occasions ran off to sea in the Dutch schooners which used to load with coal in our port; and finally his father gave him his will, and he was apprenticed to the merchant service. Archie Leslie, who was a year my elder, was destined for the law, so he left Kirkcaple for an Edinburgh office, where he was also to take out classes at the college. I remained on at school till I sat alone by myself in the highest class--a position of little dignity and deep loneliness. I had grown a tall, square-set lad, and my prowess at Rugby football was renowned beyond the parishes of Kirkcaple and Portincross. To my father I fear I was a disappointment. He had hoped for something in his son more bookish and sedentary, more like his gentle, studious self. On one thing I was determined: I should follow a learned profession. The fear of being sent to an office, like so many of my schoolfellows, inspired me to the little progress I ever made in my studies. I chose the ministry, not, I fear, out of any reverence for the sacred calling, but because my father had followed it before me. Accordingly I was sent at the age of sixteen for a year's finishing at the High School of Edinburgh, and the following winter began my Arts course at the university. If Fate had been kinder to me, I think I might have become a scholar. At any rate I was just acquiring a taste for philosophy and the dead languages when my father died suddenly of a paralytic shock, and I had to set about earning a living. My mother was left badly off, for my poor father had never been able to save much from his modest stipend. When all things were settled, it turned out that she might reckon on an income of about fifty pounds a year. This was not enough to live on, however modest the household, and certainly not enough to pay for the colleging of a son. At this point an uncle of hers stepped forward with a proposal. He was a well-to-do bachelor, alone in the world, and he invited my mother to live with him and take care of his house. For myself he proposed a post in some mercantile concern, for he had much influence in the circles of commerce. There was nothing for it but to accept gratefully. We sold our few household goods, and moved to his gloomy house in Dundas Street. A few days later he announced at dinner that he had found for me a chance which might lead to better things. 'You see, Davie,' he explained, 'you don't know the rudiments of business life. There's no house in the country that would take you in except as a common clerk, and you would never earn much more than a hundred pounds a year all your days. If you want to better your future you must go abroad, where white men are at a premium. By the mercy of Providence I met yesterday an old friend, Thomas Mackenzie, who was seeing his lawyer about an estate he is bidding for. He is the head of one of the biggest trading and shipping concerns in the world--Mackenzie, Mure, and Oldmeadows--you may have heard the name. Among other things he has half the stores in South Africa, where they sell everything from Bibles to fish-hooks. Apparently they like men from home to manage the stores, and to make a long story short, when I put your case to him, he promised you a place. I had a wire from him this morning confirming the offer. You are to be assistant storekeeper at--' (my uncle fumbled in his pocket, and then read from the yellow slip) 'at Blaauwildebeestefontein. There's a mouthful for you.' In this homely way I first heard of a place which was to be the theatre of so many strange doings. 'It's a fine chance for you,' my uncle continued. 'You'll only be assistant at first, but when you have learned your job you'll have a store of your own. Mackenzie's people will pay you three hundred pounds a year, and when you get a store you'll get a percentage on sales. It lies with you to open up new trade among the natives. I hear that Blaauw--something or other, is in the far north of the Transvaal, and I see from the map that it is in a wild, hilly country. You may find gold or diamonds up there, and come back and buy Portincross House.' My uncle rubbed his hands and smiled cheerily. Truth to tell I was both pleased and sad. If a learned profession was denied me I vastly preferred a veld store to an Edinburgh office stool. Had I not been still under the shadow of my father's death I might have welcomed the chance of new lands and new folk. As it was, I felt the loneliness of an exile. That afternoon I walked on the Braid Hills, and when I saw in the clear spring sunlight the coast of Fife, and remembered Kirkcaple and my boyish days, I could have found it in me to sit down and cry. A fortnight later I sailed. My mother bade me a tearful farewell, and my uncle, besides buying me an outfit and paying my passage money, gave me a present of twenty sovereigns. 'You'll not be your mother's son, Davie,' were his last words, 'if you don't come home with it multiplied by a thousand.' I thought at the time that I would give more than twenty thousand pounds to be allowed to bide on the windy shores of Forth. I sailed from Southampton by an intermediate steamer, and went steerage to save expense. Happily my acute homesickness was soon forgotten in another kind of malady. It blew half a gale before we were out of the Channel, and by the time we had rounded Ushant it was as dirty weather as ever I hope to see. I lay mortal sick in my bunk, unable to bear the thought of food, and too feeble to lift my head. I wished I had never left home, but so acute was my sickness that if some one had there and then offered me a passage back or an immediate landing on shore I should have chosen the latter. It was not till we got into the fair-weather seas around Madeira that I recovered enough to sit on deck and observe my fellow-passengers. There were some fifty of us in the steerage, mostly wives and children going to join relations, with a few emigrant artisans and farmers. I early found a friend in a little man with a yellow beard and spectacles, who sat down beside me and remarked on the weather in a strong Scotch accent. He turned out to be a Mr Wardlaw from Aberdeen, who was going out to be a schoolmaster. He was a man of good education, who had taken a university degree, and had taught for some years as an under-master in a school in his native town. But the east winds had damaged his lungs, and he had been glad to take the chance of a poorly paid country school in the veld. When I asked him where he was going I was amazed to be told, 'Blaauwildebeestefontein.' Mr Wardlaw was a pleasant little man, with a sharp tongue but a cheerful temper. He laboured all day at primers of the Dutch and Kaffir languages, but in the evening after supper he would walk with me on the after-deck and discuss the future. Like me, he knew nothing of the land he was going to, but he was insatiably curious, and he affected me with his interest. 'This place, Blaauwildebeestefontein,' he used to say, 'is among the Zoutpansberg mountains, and as far as I can see, not above ninety miles from the railroad. It looks from the map a well-watered country, and the Agent-General in London told me it was healthy or I wouldn't have taken the job. It seems we'll be in the heart of native reserves up there, for here's a list of chiefs--'Mpefu, Sikitola, Majinje, Magata; and there are no white men living to the east of us because of the fever. The name means the "spring of the blue wildebeeste," whatever fearsome animal that may be. It sounds like a place for adventure, Mr Crawfurd. You'll exploit the pockets of the black men and I'll see what I can do with their minds.' There was another steerage passenger whom I could not help observing because of my dislike of his appearance. He, too, was a little man, by name Henriques, and in looks the most atrocious villain I have ever clapped eyes on. He had a face the colour of French mustard--a sort of dirty green--and bloodshot, beady eyes with the whites all yellowed with fever. He had waxed moustaches, and a curious, furtive way of walking and looking about him. We of the steerage were careless in our dress, but he was always clad in immaculate white linen, with pointed, yellow shoes to match his complexion. He spoke to no one, but smoked long cheroots all day in the stern of the ship, and studied a greasy pocket-book. Once I tripped over him in the dark, and he turned on me with a snarl and an oath. I was short enough with him in return, and he looked as if he could knife me. 'I'll wager that fellow has been a slave-driver in his time,' I told Mr Wardlaw, who said, 'God pity his slaves, then.' And now I come to the incident which made the rest of the voyage pass all too soon for me, and foreshadowed the strange events which were to come. It was the day after we crossed the Line, and the first-class passengers were having deck sports. A tug-of-war had been arranged between the three classes, and a half-dozen of the heaviest fellows in the steerage, myself included, were invited to join. It was a blazing hot afternoon, but on the saloon deck there were awnings and a cool wind blowing from the bows. The first-class beat the second easily, and after a tremendous struggle beat the steerage also. Then they regaled us with iced-drinks and cigars to celebrate the victory. I was standing at the edge of the crowd of spectators, when my eye caught a figure which seemed to have little interest in our games. A large man in clerical clothes was sitting on a deck-chair reading a book. There was nothing novel about the stranger, and I cannot explain the impulse which made me wish to see his face. I moved a few steps up the deck, and then I saw that his skin was black. I went a little farther, and suddenly he raised his eyes from his book and looked round. It was the face of the man who had terrified me years ago on the Kirkcaple shore. I spent the rest of the day in a brown study. It was clear to me that some destiny had prearranged this meeting. Here was this man travelling prosperously as a first-class passenger with all the appurtenances of respectability. I alone had seen him invoking strange gods in the moonlight, I alone knew of the devilry in his heart, and I could not but believe that some day or other there might be virtue in that knowledge. The second engineer and I had made friends, so I got him to consult the purser's list for the name of my acquaintance. He was down as the Rev. John Laputa, and his destination was Durban. The next day being Sunday, who should appear to address us steerage passengers but the black minister. He was introduced by the captain himself, a notably pious man, who spoke of the labours of his brother in the dark places of heathendom. Some of us were hurt in our pride in being made the target of a black man's oratory. Especially Mr Henriques, whose skin spoke of the tar-brush, protested with oaths against the insult. Finally he sat down on a coil of rope, and spat scornfully in the vicinity of the preacher. For myself I was intensely curious, and not a little impressed. The man's face was as commanding as his figure, and his voice was the most wonderful thing that ever came out of human mouth. It was full and rich, and gentle, with the tones of a great organ. He had none of the squat and preposterous negro lineaments, but a hawk nose like an Arab, dark flashing eyes, and a cruel and resolute mouth. He was black as my hat, but for the rest he might have sat for a figure of a Crusader. I do not know what the sermon was about, though others told me that it was excellent. All the time I watched him, and kept saying to myself, 'You hunted me up the Dyve Burn, but I bashed your face for you.' Indeed, I thought I could see faint scars on his cheek. The following night I had toothache, and could not sleep. It was too hot to breathe under cover, so I got up, lit a pipe, and walked on the after-deck to ease the pain. The air was very still, save for the whish of water from the screws and the steady beat of the engines. Above, a great yellow moon looked down on me, and a host of pale stars. The moonlight set me remembering the old affair of the Dyve Burn, and my mind began to run on the Rev. John Laputa. It pleased me to think that I was on the track of some mystery of which I alone had the clue. I promised myself to search out the antecedents of the minister when I got to Durban, for I had a married cousin there, who might know something of his doings. Then, as I passed by the companion-way to the lower deck, I heard voices, and peeping over the rail, I saw two men sitting in the shadow just beyond the hatch of the hold. I thought they might be two of the sailors seeking coolness on the open deck, when something in the figure of one of them made me look again. The next second I had slipped back and stolen across the after-deck to a point just above them. For the two were the black minister and that ugly yellow villain, Henriques. I had no scruples about eavesdropping, but I could make nothing of their talk. They spoke low, and in some tongue which may have been Kaffir or Portuguese, but was in any case unknown to me. I lay, cramped and eager, for many minutes, and was just getting sick of it when a familiar name caught my ear. Henriques said something in which I caught the word 'Blaauwildebeestefontein.' I listened intently, and there could be no mistake. The minister repeated the name, and for the next few minutes it recurred often in their talk. I went back stealthily to bed, having something to make me forget my aching tooth. First of all, Laputa and Henriques were allies. Second, the place I was bound for had something to do with their schemes. I said nothing to Mr Wardlaw, but spent the next week in the assiduous toil of the amateur detective. I procured some maps and books from my friend, the second engineer, and read all I could about Blaauwildebeestefontein. Not that there was much to learn; but I remember I had quite a thrill when I discovered from the chart of the ship's run one day that we were in the same latitude as that uncouthly-named spot. I found out nothing, however, about Henriques or the Rev. John Laputa. The Portuguese still smoked in the stern, and thumbed his greasy notebook; the minister sat in his deck-chair, and read heavy volumes from the ship's library. Though I watched every night, I never found them again together. At Cape Town Henriques went ashore and did not return. The minister did not budge from the ship the three days we lay in port, and, indeed, it seemed to me that he kept his cabin. At any rate I did not see his great figure on deck till we were tossing in the choppy seas round Cape Agulhas. Sea-sickness again attacked me, and with short lulls during our stoppages at Port Elizabeth and East London, I lay wretchedly in my bunk till we sighted the bluffs of Durban harbour. Here it was necessary for me to change my ship, for in the interests of economy I was going by sea to Delagoa Bay, and thence by the cheap railway journey into the Transvaal. I sought out my cousin, who lived in a fine house on the Berea, and found a comfortable lodging for the three days of my stay there. I made inquiries about Mr Laputa, but could hear nothing. There was no native minister of that name, said my cousin, who was a great authority on all native questions. I described the man, but got no further light. No one had seen or heard of such a being, 'unless,' said my cousin, 'he is one of those American Ethiopian rascals.' My second task was to see the Durban manager of the firm which I had undertaken to serve. He was a certain Mr Colles, a big fat man, who welcomed me in his shirt-sleeves, with a cigar in his mouth. He received me pleasantly, and took me home to dinner with him. 'Mr Mackenzie has written about you,' he said. 'I'll be quite frank with you, Mr Crawfurd. The firm is not exactly satisfied about the way business has been going lately at Blaauwildebeestefontein. There's a grand country up there, and a grand opportunity for the man who can take it. Japp, who is in charge, is an old man now and past his best, but he has been long with the firm, and we don't want to hurt his feelings. When he goes, which must be pretty soon, you'll have a good chance of the place, if you show yourself an active young fellow.' He told me a great deal more about Blaauwildebeestefontein, principally trading details. Incidentally he let drop that Mr Japp had had several assistants in the last few years. I asked him why they had left, and he hesitated. 'It's a lonely place, and they didn't like the life. You see, there are few white men near, and young fellows want society. They complained, and were moved on. But the firm didn't think the more of them.' I told him I had come out with the new schoolmaster. 'Yes,' he said reflectively, 'the school. That's been vacant pretty often lately. What sort of fellow is this Wardlaw? Will he stay, I wonder?' 'From all accounts,' I said, 'Blaauwildebeestefontein does not seem popular.' 'It isn't. That's why we've got you out from home. The colonial-born doesn't find it fit in with his idea of comfort. He wants society, and he doesn't like too many natives. There's nothing up there but natives and a few back-veld Dutchmen with native blood in them. You fellows from home are less set on an easy life, or you wouldn't be here.' There was something in Mr Colles's tone which made me risk another question. 'What's the matter with the place? There must be more wrong with it than loneliness to make everybody clear out. I have taken on this job, and I mean to stick to it, so you needn't be afraid to tell me.' The manager looked at me sharply. 'That's the way to talk, my lad. You look as if you had a stiff back, so I'll be frank with you. There is something about the place. It gives the ordinary man the jumps. What it is, I don't know, and the men who come back don't know themselves. I want you to find out for me. You'll be doing the firm an enormous service if you can get on the track of it. It may be the natives, or it may be the takhaars, or it may be something else. Only old Japp can stick it out, and he's too old and doddering to care about moving. I want you to keep your eyes skinned, and write privately to me if you want any help. You're not out here for your health, I can see, and here's a chance for you to get your foot on the ladder. 'Remember, I'm your friend,' he said to me again at the garden gate. 'Take my advice and lie very low. Don't talk, don't meddle with drink, learn all you can of the native jabber, but don't let on you understand a word. You're sure to get on the track of something. Good-bye, my boy,' and he waved a fat hand to me. That night I embarked on a cargo-boat which was going round the coast to Delagoa Bay. It is a small world--at least for us far-wandering Scots. For who should I find when I got on board but my old friend Tam Dyke, who was second mate on the vessel? We wrung each other's hands, and I answered, as best I could, his questions about Kirkcaple. I had supper with him in the cabin, and went on deck to see the moorings cast. Suddenly there was a bustle on the quay, and a big man with a handbag forced his way up the gangway. The men who were getting ready to cast off tried to stop him, but he elbowed his way forward, declaring he must see the captain. Tam went up to him and asked civilly if he had a passage taken. He admitted he had not, but said he would make it right in two minutes with the captain himself. The Rev. John Laputa, for some reason of his own, was leaving Durban with more haste than he had entered it. I do not know what passed with the captain, but the minister got his passage right enough, and Tam was even turned out of his cabin to make room for him. This annoyed my friend intensely. 'That black brute must be made of money, for he paid through the nose for this, or I'm a Dutchman. My old man doesn't take to his black brethren any more than I do. Hang it all, what are we coming to, when we're turning into a blooming cargo boat for niggers?' I had all too little of Tam's good company, for on the afternoon of the second day we reached the little town of Lourenco Marques. This was my final landing in Africa, and I mind how eagerly I looked at the low, green shores and the bush-covered slopes of the mainland. We were landed from boats while the ship lay out in the bay, and Tam came ashore with me to spend the evening. By this time I had lost every remnant of homesickness. I had got a job before me which promised better things than colleging at Edinburgh, and I was as keen to get up country now as I had been loth to leave England. My mind being full of mysteries, I scanned every Portuguese loafer on the quay as if he had been a spy, and when Tam and I had had a bottle of Collates in a cafe I felt that at last I had got to foreign parts and a new world. Tam took me to supper with a friend of his, a Scot by the name of Aitken, who was landing-agent for some big mining house on the Rand. He hailed from Fife and gave me a hearty welcome, for he had heard my father preach in his young days. Aitken was a strong, broad-shouldered fellow who had been a sergeant in the Gordons, and during the war he had done secret-service work in Delagoa. He had hunted, too, and traded up and down Mozambique, and knew every dialect of the Kaffirs. He asked me where I was bound for, and when I told him there was the same look in his eyes as I had seen with the Durban manager. 'You're going to a rum place, Mr Crawfurd,' he said. 'So I'm told. Do you know anything about it? You're not the first who has looked queer when I've spoken the name.' 'I've never been there,' he said, 'though I've been pretty near it from the Portuguese side. That's the funny thing about Blaauwildebeestefontein. Everybody has heard of it, and nobody knows it.' 'I wish you would tell me what you have heard.' 'Well, the natives are queer up thereaways. There's some kind of a holy place which every Kaffir from Algoa Bay to the Zambesi and away beyond knows about. When I've been hunting in the bush-veld I've often met strings of Kaffirs from hundreds of miles distant, and they've all been going or coming from Blaauwildebeestefontein. It's like Mecca to the Mohammedans, a place they go to on pilgrimage. I've heard of an old man up there who is believed to be two hundred years old. Anyway, there's some sort of great witch or wizard living in the mountains.' Aitken smoked in silence for a time; then he said, 'I'll tell you another thing. I believe there's a diamond mine. I've often meant to go up and look for it.' Tam and I pressed him to explain, which he did slowly after his fashion. 'Did you ever hear of I.D.B.--illicit diamond broking?' he asked me. 'Well, it's notorious that the Kaffirs on the diamond fields get away with a fair number of stones, and they are bought by Jew and Portuguese traders. It's against the law to deal in them, and when I was in the intelligence here we used to have a lot of trouble with the vermin. But I discovered that most of the stones came from natives in one part of the country--more or less round Blaauwildebeestefontein--and I see no reason to think that they had all been stolen from Kimberley or the Premier. Indeed some of the stones I got hold of were quite different from any I had seen in South Africa before. I shouldn't wonder if the Kaffirs in the Zoutpansberg had struck some rich pipe, and had the sense to keep quiet about it. Maybe some day I'll take a run up to see you and look into the matter.' After this the talk turned on other topics till Tam, still nursing his grievance, asked a question on his own account. 'Did you ever come across a great big native parson called Laputa? He came on board as we were leaving Durban, and I had to turn out of my cabin for him.' Tam described him accurately but vindictively, and added that 'he was sure he was up to no good.' Aitken shook his head. 'No, I don't know the man. You say he landed here? Well, I'll keep a look-out for him. Big native parsons are not so common.' Then I asked about Henriques, of whom Tam knew nothing. I described his face, his clothes, and his habits. Aitken laughed uproariously. 'Tut, my man, most of the subjects of his Majesty the King of Portugal would answer to that description. If he's a rascal, as you think, you may be certain he's in the I.D.B. business, and if I'm right about Blaauwildebeestefontein you'll likely have news of him there some time or other. Drop me a line if he comes, and I'll get on to his record.' I saw Tam off in the boat with a fairly satisfied mind. I was going to a place with a secret, and I meant to find it out. The natives round Blaauwildebeestefontein were queer, and diamonds were suspected somewhere in the neighbourhood. Henriques had something to do with the place, and so had the Rev. John Laputa, about whom I knew one strange thing. So did Tam by the way, but he had not identified his former pursuer, and I had told him nothing. I was leaving two men behind me, Colles at Durban and Aitken at Lourenco Marques, who would help me if trouble came. Things were shaping well for some kind of adventure. The talk with Aitken had given Tam an inkling of my thoughts. His last words to me were an appeal to let him know if there was any fun going. 'I can see you're in for a queer job. Promise to let me hear from you if there's going to be a row, and I'll come up country, though I should have to desert the service. Send us a letter to the agents at Durban in case we should be in port. You haven't forgotten the Dyve Burn, Davie?' CHAPTER III BLAAUWILDEBEESTEFONTEIN The Pilgrim's Progress had been the Sabbath reading of my boyhood, and as I came in sight of Blaauwildebeestefontein a passage ran in my head. It was that which tells how Christian and Hopeful, after many perils of the way, came to the Delectable Mountains, from which they had a prospect of Canaan. After many dusty miles by rail, and a weariful journey in a Cape-cart through arid plains and dry and stony gorges, I had come suddenly into a haven of green. The Spring of the Blue Wildebeeste was a clear rushing mountain torrent, which swirled over blue rocks into deep fern-fringed pools. All around was a tableland of lush grass with marigolds and arum lilies instead of daisies and buttercups. Thickets of tall trees dotted the hill slopes and patched the meadows as if some landscape-gardener had been at work on them. Beyond, the glen fell steeply to the plains, which ran out in a faint haze to the horizon. To north and south I marked the sweep of the Berg, now rising high to a rocky peak and now stretching in a level rampart of blue. On the very edge of the plateau where the road dipped for the descent stood the shanties of Blaauwildebeestefontein. The fresh hill air had exhilarated my mind, and the aromatic scent of the evening gave the last touch of intoxication. Whatever serpent might lurk in it, it was a veritable Eden I had come to. Blaauwildebeestefontein had no more than two buildings of civilized shape; the store, which stood on the left side of the river, and the schoolhouse opposite. For the rest, there were some twenty native huts, higher up the slope, of the type which the Dutch call _rondavels_. The schoolhouse had a pretty garden, but the store stood bare in a patch of dust with a few outhouses and sheds beside it. Round the door lay a few old ploughs and empty barrels, and beneath a solitary blue gum was a wooden bench with a rough table. Native children played in the dust, and an old Kaffir squatted by the wall. My few belongings were soon lifted from the Cape-cart, and I entered the shop. It was the ordinary pattern of up-country store--a bar in one corner with an array of bottles, and all round the walls tins of canned food and the odds and ends of trade. The place was empty, and a cloud of flies buzzed over the sugar cask. Two doors opened at the back, and I chose the one to the right. I found myself in a kind of kitchen with a bed in one corner, and a litter of dirty plates on the table. On the bed lay a man, snoring heavily. I went close to him, and found an old fellow with a bald head, clothed only in a shirt and trousers. His face was red and swollen, and his breath came in heavy grunts. A smell of bad whisky hung over everything. I had no doubt that this was Mr Peter Japp, my senior in the store. One reason for the indifferent trade at Blaauwildebeestefontein was very clear to me: the storekeeper was a sot. I went back to the shop and tried the other door. It was a bedroom too, but clean and pleasant. A little native girl--Zeeta, I found they called her--was busy tidying it up, and when I entered she dropped me a curtsy. 'This is your room, Baas,' she said in very good English in reply to my question. The child had been well trained somewhere, for there was a cracked dish full of oleander blossom on the drawers'-head, and the pillow-slips on the bed were as clean as I could wish. She brought me water to wash, and a cup of strong tea, while I carried my baggage indoors and paid the driver of the cart. Then, having cleaned myself and lit a pipe, I walked across the road to see Mr Wardlaw. I found the schoolmaster sitting under his own fig-tree reading one of his Kaffir primers. Having come direct by rail from Cape Town, he had been a week in the place, and ranked as the second oldest white resident. 'Yon's a bonny chief you've got, Davie,' were his first words. 'For three days he's been as fou as the Baltic.' I cannot pretend that the misdeeds of Mr Japp greatly annoyed me. I had the reversion of his job, and if he chose to play the fool it was all in my interest. But the schoolmaster was depressed at the prospect of such company. 'Besides you and me, he's the only white man in the place. It's a poor look-out on the social side.' The school, it appeared, was the merest farce. There were only five white children, belonging to Dutch farmers in the mountains. The native side was more flourishing, but the mission schools at the locations got most of the native children in the neighbourhood. Mr Wardlaw's educational zeal ran high. He talked of establishing a workshop and teaching carpentry and blacksmith's work, of which he knew nothing. He rhapsodized over the intelligence of his pupils and bemoaned his inadequate gift of tongues. 'You and I, Davie,' he said, 'must sit down and grind at the business. It is to the interest of both of us. The Dutch is easy enough. It's a sort of kitchen dialect you can learn in a fortnight. But these native languages are a stiff job. Sesuto is the chief hereabouts, and I'm told once you've got that it's easy to get the Zulu. Then there's the thing the Shangaans speak--Baronga, I think they call it. I've got a Christian Kaffir living up in one of the huts who comes every morning to talk to me for an hour. You'd better join me.' I promised, and in the sweet-smelling dust crossed the road to the store. Japp was still sleeping, so I got a bowl of mealie porridge from Zeeta and went to bed. Japp was sober next morning and made me some kind of apology. He had chronic lumbago, he said, and 'to go on the bust' now and then was the best cure for it. Then he proceeded to initiate me into my duties in a tone of exaggerated friendliness. 'I took a fancy to you the first time I clapped eyes on you,' he said. 'You and me will be good friends, Crawfurd, I can see that. You're a spirited young fellow, and you'll stand no nonsense. The Dutch about here are a slim lot, and the Kaffirs are slimmer. Trust no man, that's my motto. The firm know that, and I've had their confidence for forty years.' The first day or two things went well enough. There was no doubt that, properly handled, a fine trade could be done in Blaauwildebeestefontein. The countryside was crawling with natives, and great strings used to come through from Shangaan territory on the way to the Rand mines. Besides, there was business to be done with the Dutch farmers, especially with the tobacco, which I foresaw could be worked up into a profitable export. There was no lack of money either, and we had to give very little credit, though it was often asked for. I flung myself into the work, and in a few weeks had been all round the farms and locations. At first Japp praised my energy, for it left him plenty of leisure to sit indoors and drink. But soon he grew suspicious, for he must have seen that I was in a fair way to oust him altogether. He was very anxious to know if I had seen Colles in Durban, and what the manager had said. 'I have letters,' he told me a hundred times, 'from Mr Mackenzie himself praising me up to the skies. The firm couldn't get along without old Peter Japp, I can tell you.' I had no wish to quarrel with the old man, so I listened politely to all he said. But this did not propitiate him, and I soon found him so jealous as to be a nuisance. He was Colonial-born and was always airing the fact. He rejoiced in my rawness, and when I made a blunder would crow over it for hours. 'It's no good, Mr Crawfurd; you new chums from England may think yourselves mighty clever, but we men from the Old Colony can get ahead of you every time. In fifty years you'll maybe learn a little about the country, but we know all about it before we start.' He roared with laughter at my way of tying a _voorslag_, and he made merry (no doubt with reason) on my management of a horse. I kept my temper pretty well, but I own there were moments when I came near to kicking Mr Japp. The truth is he was a disgusting old ruffian. His character was shown by his treatment of Zeeta. The poor child slaved all day and did two men's work in keeping the household going. She was an orphan from a mission station, and in Japp's opinion a creature without rights. Hence he never spoke to her except with a curse, and used to cuff her thin shoulders till my blood boiled. One day things became too much for my temper. Zeeta had spilled half a glass of Japp's whisky while tidying up the room. He picked up a sjambok, and proceeded to beat her unmercifully till her cries brought me on the scene. I tore the whip from his hands, seized him by the scruff and flung him on a heap of potato sacks, where he lay pouring out abuse and shaking with rage. Then I spoke my mind. I told him that if anything of the sort happened again I would report it at once to Mr Colles at Durban. I added that before making my report I would beat him within an inch of his degraded life. After a time he apologized, but I could see that thenceforth he regarded me with deadly hatred. There was another thing I noticed about Mr Japp. He might brag about his knowledge of how to deal with natives, but to my mind his methods were a disgrace to a white man. Zeeta came in for oaths and blows, but there were other Kaffirs whom he treated with a sort of cringing friendliness. A big black fellow would swagger into the shop, and be received by Japp as if he were his long-lost brother. The two would collogue for hours; and though at first I did not understand the tongue, I could see that it was the white man who fawned and the black man who bullied. Once when Japp was away one of these fellows came into the store as if it belonged to him, but he went out quicker than he entered. Japp complained afterwards of my behaviour. ''Mwanga is a good friend of mine,' he said, 'and brings us a lot of business. I'll thank you to be civil to him the next time.' I replied very shortly that 'Mwanga or anybody else who did not mend his manners would feel the weight of my boot. The thing went on, and I am not sure that he did not give the Kaffirs drink on the sly. At any rate, I have seen some very drunk natives on the road between the locations and Blaauwildebeestefontein, and some of them I recognized as Japp's friends. I discussed the matter with Mr Wardlaw, who said, 'I believe the old villain has got some sort of black secret, and the natives know it, and have got a pull on him.' And I was inclined to think he was right. By-and-by I began to feel the lack of company, for Wardlaw was so full of his books that he was of little use as a companion. So I resolved to acquire a dog, and bought one from a prospector, who was stony-broke and would have sold his soul for a drink. It was an enormous Boer hunting-dog, a mongrel in whose blood ran mastiff and bulldog and foxhound, and Heaven knows what beside. In colour it was a kind of brindled red, and the hair on its back grew against the lie of the rest of its coat. Some one had told me, or I may have read it, that a back like this meant that a dog would face anything mortal, even to a charging lion, and it was this feature which first caught my fancy. The price I paid was ten shillings and a pair of boots, which I got at cost price from stock, and the owner departed with injunctions to me to beware of the brute's temper. Colin--for so I named him--began his career with me by taking the seat out of my breeches and frightening Mr Wardlaw into a tree. It took me a stubborn battle of a fortnight to break his vice, and my left arm to-day bears witness to the struggle. After that he became a second shadow, and woe betide the man who had dared to raise his hand to Colin's master. Japp declared that the dog was a devil, and Colin repaid the compliment with a hearty dislike. With Colin, I now took to spending some of my ample leisure in exploring the fastnesses of the Berg. I had brought out a shot-gun of my own, and I borrowed a cheap Mauser sporting rifle from the store. I had been born with a good eye and a steady hand, and very soon I became a fair shot with a gun and, I believe, a really fine shot with the rifle. The sides of the Berg were full of quail and partridge and bush pheasant, and on the grassy plateau there was abundance of a bird not unlike our own blackcock, which the Dutch called _korhaan_. But the great sport was to stalk bush-buck in the thickets, which is a game in which the hunter is at small advantage. I have been knocked down by a wounded bush-buck ram, and but for Colin might have been badly damaged. Once, in a kloof not far from the Letaba, I killed a fine leopard, bringing him down with a single shot from a rocky shelf almost on the top of Colin. His skin lies by my fireside as I write this tale. But it was during the days I could spare for an expedition into the plains that I proved the great qualities of my dog. There we had nobler game to follow--wildebeest and hartebeest, impala, and now and then a koodoo. At first I was a complete duffer, and shamed myself in Colin's eyes. But by-and-by I learned something of veld-craft: I learned how to follow spoor, how to allow for the wind, and stalk under cover. Then, when a shot had crippled the beast, Colin was on its track like a flash to pull it down. The dog had the nose of a retriever, the speed of a greyhound, and the strength of a bull-terrier. I blessed the day when the wandering prospector had passed the store. Colin slept at night at the foot of my bed, and it was he who led me to make an important discovery. For I now became aware that I was being subjected to constant espionage. It may have been going on from the start, but it was not till my third month at Blaauwildebeestefontein that I found it out. One night I was going to bed, when suddenly the bristles rose on the dog's back and he barked uneasily at the window. I had been standing in the shadow, and as I stepped to the window to look out I saw a black face disappear below the palisade of the backyard. The incident was trifling, but it put me on my guard. The next night I looked, but saw nothing. The third night I looked, and caught a glimpse of a face almost pressed to the pane. Thereafter I put up the shutters after dark, and shifted my bed to a part of the room out of line with the window. It was the same out of doors. I would suddenly be conscious, as I walked on the road, that I was being watched. If I made as if to walk into the roadside bush there would be a faint rustling, which told that the watcher had retired. The stalking was brilliantly done, for I never caught a glimpse of one of the stalkers. Wherever I went--on the road, on the meadows of the plateau, or on the rugged sides of the Berg--it was the same. I had silent followers, who betrayed themselves now and then by the crackling of a branch, and eyes were always looking at me which I could not see. Only when I went down to the plains did the espionage cease. This thing annoyed Colin desperately, and his walks abroad were one continuous growl. Once, in spite of my efforts, he dashed into the thicket, and a squeal of pain followed. He had got somebody by the leg, and there was blood on the grass. Since I came to Blaauwildebeestefontein I had forgotten the mystery I had set out to track in the excitement of a new life and my sordid contest with Japp. But now this espionage brought back my old preoccupation. I was being watched because some person or persons thought that I was dangerous. My suspicions fastened on Japp, but I soon gave up that clue. It was my presence in the store that was a danger to him, not my wanderings about the countryside. It might be that he had engineered the espionage so as to drive me out of the place in sheer annoyance; but I flattered myself that Mr Japp knew me too well to imagine that such a game was likely to succeed. The mischief was that I could not make out who the trackers were. I had visited all the surrounding locations, and was on good enough terms with all the chiefs. There was 'Mpefu, a dingy old fellow who had spent a good deal of his life in a Boer gaol before the war. There was a mission station at his place, and his people seemed to me to be well behaved and prosperous. Majinje was a chieftainess, a little girl whom nobody was allowed to see. Her location was a miserable affair, and her tribe was yearly shrinking in numbers. Then there was Magata farther north among the mountains. He had no quarrel with me, for he used to give me a meal when I went out hunting in that direction; and once he turned out a hundred of his young men, and I had a great battue of wild dogs. Sikitola, the biggest of all, lived some distance out in the flats. I knew less about him; but if his men were the trackers, they must have spent most of their days a weary way from their kraal. The Kaffirs in the huts at Blaauwildebeestefontein were mostly Christians, and quiet, decent fellows, who farmed their little gardens, and certainly preferred me to Japp. I thought at one time of riding into Pietersdorp to consult the Native Commissioner. But I discovered that the old man, who knew the country, was gone, and that his successor was a young fellow from Rhodesia, who knew nothing about anything. Besides, the natives round Blaauwildebeestefontein were well conducted, and received few official visitations. Now and then a couple of Zulu policemen passed in pursuit of some minor malefactor, and the collector came for the hut-tax; but we gave the Government little work, and they did not trouble their heads about us. As I have said, the clues I had brought out with me to Blaauwildebeestefontein began to occupy my mind again; and the more I thought of the business the keener I grew. I used to amuse myself with setting out my various bits of knowledge. There was first of all the Rev. John Laputa, his doings on the Kirkcaple shore, his talk with Henriques about Blaauwildebeestefontein, and his strange behaviour at Durban. Then there was what Colles had told me about the place being queer, how nobody would stay long either in the store or the schoolhouse. Then there was my talk with Aitken at Lourenco Marques, and his story of a great wizard in the neighbourhood to whom all Kaffirs made pilgrimages, and the suspicion of a diamond pipe. Last and most important, there was this perpetual spying on myself. It was as clear as daylight that the place held some secret, and I wondered if old Japp knew. I was fool enough one day to ask him about diamonds. He met me with contemptuous laughter. 'There's your ignorant Britisher,' he cried. 'If you had ever been to Kimberley you would know the look of a diamond country. You're as likely to find diamonds here as ocean pearls. But go out and scrape in the spruit if you like; you'll maybe find some garnets.' I made cautious inquiries, too, chiefly through Mr Wardlaw, who was becoming a great expert at Kaffir, about the existence of Aitken's wizard, but he could get no news. The most he found out was that there was a good cure for fever among Sikitola's men, and that Majinje, if she pleased, could bring rain. The upshot of it all was that, after much brooding, I wrote a letter to Mr Colles, and, to make sure of its going, gave it to a missionary to post in Pietersdorp. I told him frankly what Aitken had said, and I also told him about the espionage. I said nothing about old Japp, for, beast as he was, I did not want him at his age to be without a livelihood. CHAPTER IV MY JOURNEY TO THE WINTER-VELD A reply came from Colles, addressed not to me but to Japp. It seemed that the old fellow had once suggested the establishment of a branch store at a place out in the plains called Umvelos', and the firm was now prepared to take up the scheme. Japp was in high good humour, and showed me the letter. Not a word was said of what I had written about, only the bare details about starting the branch. I was to get a couple of masons, load up two wagons with bricks and timber, and go down to Umvelos' and see the store built. The stocking of it and the appointment of a storekeeper would be matter for further correspondence. Japp was delighted, for, besides getting rid of me for several weeks, it showed that his advice was respected by his superiors. He went about bragging that the firm could not get on without him, and was inclined to be more insolent to me than usual in his new self-esteem. He also got royally drunk over the head of it. I confess I was hurt by the manager's silence on what seemed to me more vital matters. But I soon reflected that if he wrote at all he would write direct to me, and I eagerly watched for the post-runner. No letter came, however, and I was soon too busy with preparations to look for one. I got the bricks and timber from Pietersdorp, and hired two Dutch masons to run the job. The place was not very far from Sikitola's kraal, so there would be no difficulty about native helpers. Having my eyes open for trade, I resolved to kill two birds with one stone. It was the fashion among the old-fashioned farmers on the high-veld to drive the cattle down into the bush-veld--which they call the winter-veld--for winter pasture. There is no fear of red-water about that season, and the grass of the plains is rich and thick compared with the uplands. I discovered that some big droves were passing on a certain day, and that the owners and their families were travelling with them in wagons. Accordingly I had a light _naachtmaal_ fitted up as a sort of travelling store, and with my two wagons full of building material joined the caravan. I hoped to do good trade in selling little luxuries to the farmers on the road and at Umvelos'. It was a clear cold morning when we started down the Berg. At first my hands were full with the job of getting my heavy wagons down the awesome precipice which did duty as a highway. We locked the wheels with chains, and tied great logs of wood behind to act as brakes. Happily my drivers knew their business, but one of the Boer wagons got a wheel over the edge, and it was all that ten men could do to get it back again. After that the road was easier, winding down the side of a slowly opening glen. I rode beside the wagons, and so heavenly was the weather that I was content with my own thoughts. The sky was clear blue, the air warm, yet with a wintry tonic in it, and a thousand aromatic scents came out of the thickets. The pied birds called 'Kaffir queens' fluttered across the path. Below, the Klein Labongo churned and foamed in a hundred cascades. Its waters were no more the clear grey of the 'Blue Wildebeeste's Spring,' but growing muddy with its approach to the richer soil of the plains. Oxen travel slow, and we outspanned that night half a day's march short of Umvelos'. I spent the hour before sunset lounging and smoking with the Dutch farmers. At first they had been silent and suspicious of a newcomer, but by this time I talked their taal fluently, and we were soon on good terms. I recall a discussion arising about a black thing in a tree about five hundred yards away. I thought it was an aasvogel, but another thought it was a baboon. Whereupon the oldest of the party, a farmer called Coetzee, whipped up his rifle and, apparently without sighting, fired. A dark object fell out of the branch, and when we reached it we found it a _baviaan_[1] sure enough, shot through the head. 'Which side are you on in the next war?' the old man asked me, and, laughing, I told him 'Yours.' After supper, the ingredients of which came largely from my _naachtmaal_, we sat smoking and talking round the fire, the women and children being snug in the covered wagons. The Boers were honest companionable fellows, and when I had made a bowl of toddy in the Scotch fashion to keep out the evening chill, we all became excellent friends. They asked me how I got on with Japp. Old Coetzee saved me the trouble of answering, for he broke in with _Skellum_! _Skellum_![2] I asked him his objection to the storekeeper, but he would say nothing beyond that he was too thick with the natives. I fancy at some time Mr Japp had sold him a bad plough. We spoke of hunting, and I heard long tales of exploits--away on the Limpopo, in Mashonaland, on the Sabi and in the Lebombo. Then we verged on politics, and I listened to violent denunciations of the new land tax. These were old residenters, I reflected, and I might learn perhaps something of value. So very carefully I repeated a tale I said I had heard at Durban of a great wizard somewhere in the Berg, and asked if any one knew of it. They shook their heads. The natives had given up witchcraft and big medicine, they said, and were more afraid of a parson or a policeman than any witch-doctor. Then they were starting on reminiscences, when old Coetzee, who was deaf, broke in and asked to have my question repeated. 'Yes,' he said, 'I know. It is in the Rooirand. There is a devil dwells there.' I could get no more out of him beyond the fact that there was certainly a great devil there. His grandfather and father had seen it, and he himself had heard it roaring when he had gone there as a boy to hunt. He would explain no further, and went to bed. Next morning, close to Sikitola's kraal, I bade the farmers good-bye, after telling them that there would be a store in my wagon for three weeks at Umvelos' if they wanted supplies. We then struck more to the north towards our destination. As soon as they had gone I had out my map and searched it for the name old Coetzee had mentioned. It was a very bad map, for there had been no surveying east of the Berg, and most of the names were mere guesses. But I found the word 'Rooirand' marking an eastern continuation of the northern wall, and probably set down from some hunter's report. I had better explain here the chief features of the country, for they bulk largely in my story. The Berg runs north and south, and from it run the chief streams which water the plain. They are, beginning from the south, the Olifants, the Groot Letaba, the Letsitela, the Klein Letaba, and the Klein Labongo, on which stands Blaauwildebeestefontein. But the greatest river of the plain, into which the others ultimately flow, is the Groot Labongo, which appears full-born from some subterranean source close to the place called Umvelos'. North from Blaauwildebeestefontein the Berg runs for some twenty miles, and then makes a sharp turn eastward, becoming, according to my map, the Rooirand. I pored over these details, and was particularly curious about the Great Labongo. It seemed to me unlikely that a spring in the bush could produce so great a river, and I decided that its source must lie in the mountains to the north. As well as I could guess, the Rooirand, the nearest part of the Berg, was about thirty miles distant. Old Coetzee had said that there was a devil in the place, but I thought that if it were explored the first thing found would be a fine stream of water. We got to Umvelos' after midday, and outspanned for our three weeks' work. I set the Dutchmen to unload and clear the ground for foundations, while I went off to Sikitola to ask for labourers. I got a dozen lusty blacks, and soon we had a business-like encampment, and the work went on merrily. It was rough architecture and rougher masonry. All we aimed at was a two-roomed shop with a kind of outhouse for stores. I was architect, and watched the marking out of the foundations and the first few feet of the walls. Sikitola's people proved themselves good helpers, and most of the building was left to them, while the Dutchmen worked at the carpentry. Bricks ran short before we got very far, and we had to set to brick-making on the bank of the Labongo, and finish off the walls with green bricks, which gave the place a queer piebald look. I was not much of a carpenter, and there were plenty of builders without me, so I found a considerable amount of time on my hands. At first I acted as shopkeeper in the _naachtmaal_, but I soon cleared out my stores to the Dutch farmers and the natives. I had thought of going back for more, and then it occurred to me that I might profitably give some of my leisure to the Rooirand. I could see the wall of the mountains quite clear to the north, within an easy day's ride. So one morning I packed enough food for a day or two, tied my sleeping-bag on my saddle, and set off to explore, after appointing the elder of the Dutchmen foreman of the job in my absence. It was very hot jogging along the native path with the eternal olive-green bush around me. Happily there was no fear of losing the way, for the Rooirand stood very clear in front, and slowly, as I advanced, I began to make out the details of the cliffs. At luncheon-time, when I was about half-way, I sat down with my Zeiss glass--my mother's farewell gift--to look for the valley. But valley I saw none. The wall--reddish purple it looked, and, I thought, of porphyry--was continuous and unbroken. There were chimneys and fissures, but none great enough to hold a river. The top was sheer cliff; then came loose kranzes in tiers, like the seats in a gallery, and, below, a dense thicket of trees. I raked the whole line for a break, but there seemed none. 'It's a bad job for me,' I thought, 'if there is no water, for I must pass the night there.' The night was spent in a sheltered nook at the foot of the rocks, but my horse and I went to bed without a drink. My supper was some raisins and biscuits, for I did not dare to run the risk of increasing my thirst. I had found a great bank of _débris_ sloping up to the kranzes, and thick wood clothing all the slope. The grass seemed wonderfully fresh, but of water there was no sign. There was not even the sandy channel of a stream to dig in. In the morning I had a difficult problem to face. Water I must find at all costs, or I must go home. There was time enough for me to get back without suffering much, but if so I must give up my explorations. This I was determined not to do. The more I looked at these red cliffs the more eager I was to find out their secret. There must be water somewhere; otherwise how account for the lushness of the vegetation? My horse was a veld pony, so I set him loose to see what he would do. He strayed back on the path to Umvelos'. This looked bad, for it meant that he did not smell water along the cliff front. If I was to find a stream it must be on the top, and I must try a little mountaineering. Then, taking my courage in both my hands, I decided. I gave my pony a cut, and set him off on the homeward road. I knew he was safe to get back in four or five hours, and in broad day there was little fear of wild beasts attacking him. I had tied my sleeping bag on to the saddle, and had with me but two pocketfuls of food. I had also fastened on the saddle a letter to my Dutch foreman, bidding him send a native with a spare horse to fetch me by the evening. Then I started off to look for a chimney. A boyhood spent on the cliffs at Kirkcaple had made me a bold cragsman, and the porphyry of the Rooirand clearly gave excellent holds. But I walked many weary miles along the cliff-foot before I found a feasible road. To begin with, it was no light task to fight one's way through the dense undergrowth of the lower slopes. Every kind of thorn-bush lay in wait for my skin, creepers tripped me up, high trees shut out the light, and I was in constant fear lest a black _mamba_ might appear out of the tangle. It grew very hot, and the screes above the thicket were blistering to the touch. My tongue, too, stuck to the roof of my mouth with thirst. The first chimney I tried ran out on the face into nothingness, and I had to make a dangerous descent. The second was a deep gully, but so choked with rubble that after nearly braining myself I desisted. Still going eastwards, I found a sloping ledge which took me to a platform from which ran a crack with a little tree growing in it. My glass showed me that beyond this tree the crack broadened into a clearly defined chimney which led to the top. If I can once reach that tree, I thought, the battle is won. The crack was only a few inches wide, large enough to let in an arm and a foot, and it ran slantwise up a perpendicular rock. I do not think I realized how bad it was till I had gone too far to return. Then my foot jammed, and I paused for breath with my legs and arms cramping rapidly. I remember that I looked to the west, and saw through the sweat which kept dropping into my eyes that about half a mile off a piece of cliff which looked unbroken from the foot had a fold in it to the right. The darkness of the fold showed me that it was a deep, narrow gully. However, I had no time to think of this, for I was fast in the middle of my confounded crack. With immense labour I found a chockstone above my head, and managed to force my foot free. The next few yards were not so difficult, and then I stuck once more. For the crack suddenly grew shallow as the cliff bulged out above me. I had almost given up hope, when I saw that about three feet above my head grew the tree. If I could reach it and swing out I might hope to pull myself up to the ledge on which it grew. I confess it needed all my courage, for I did not know but that the tree might be loose, and that it and I might go rattling down four hundred feet. It was my only hope, however, so I set my teeth, and wriggling up a few inches, made a grab at it. Thank God it held, and with a great effort I pulled my shoulder over the ledge, and breathed freely. My difficulties were not ended, but the worst was past. The rest of the gully gave me good and safe climbing, and presently a very limp and weary figure lay on the cliff-top. It took me many minutes to get back my breath and to conquer the faintness which seized me as soon as the need for exertion was over. When I scrambled to my feet and looked round, I saw a wonderful prospect. It was a plateau like the high-veld, only covered with bracken and little bushes like hazels. Three or four miles off the ground rose, and a shallow vale opened. But in the foreground, half a mile or so distant, a lake lay gleaming in the sun. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I ran towards it, and doubts of a mirage haunted me. But it was no mirage, but a real lake, perhaps three miles in circumference, with bracken-fringed banks, a shore of white pebbles, and clear deep blue water. I drank my fill, and then stripped and swam in the blessed coolness. After that I ate some luncheon, and sunned myself on a flat rock. 'I have discovered the source of the Labongo,' I said to myself. 'I will write to the Royal Geographical Society, and they will give me a medal.' I walked round the lake to look for an outlet. A fine mountain stream came in at the north end, and at the south end, sure enough, a considerable river debauched. My exploring zeal redoubled, and I followed its course in a delirium of expectation. It was a noble stream, clear as crystal, and very unlike the muddy tropical Labongo at Umvelos'. Suddenly, about a quarter of a mile from the lake, the land seemed to grow over it, and with a swirl and a hollow roar, it disappeared into a mighty pot-hole. I walked a few steps on, and from below my feet came the most uncanny rumbling and groaning. Then I knew what old Coetzee's devil was that howled in the Rooirand. Had I continued my walk to the edge of the cliff, I might have learned a secret which would have stood me in good stead later. But the descent began to make me anxious, and I retraced my steps to the top of the chimney whence I had come. I was resolved that nothing would make me descend by that awesome crack, so I kept on eastward along the top to look for a better way. I found one about a mile farther on, which, though far from easy, had no special risks save from the appalling looseness of the _débris_. When I got down at length, I found that it was near sunset. I went to the place I had bidden my native look for me at, but, as I had feared, there was no sign of him. So, making the best of a bad job, I had supper and a pipe, and spent a very chilly night in a hole among the boulders. I got up at dawn stiff and cold, and ate a few raisins for breakfast. There was no sign of horses, so I resolved to fill up the time in looking for the fold of the cliff which, as I had seen from the horrible crack of yesterday, contained a gully. It was a difficult job, for to get the sidelong view of the cliff I had to scramble through the undergrowth of the slopes again, and even a certain way up the kranzes. At length I got my bearings, and fixed the place by some tall trees in the bush. Then I descended and walked westwards. Suddenly, as I neared the place, I heard the strangest sound coming from the rocks. It was a deep muffled groaning, so eerie and unearthly that for the moment I stood and shivered. Then I remembered my river of yesterday. It must be above this place that it descended into the earth, and in the hush of dawn the sound was naturally louder. No wonder old Coetzee had been afraid of devils. It reminded me of the lines in _Marmion_-- 'Diving as if condemned to lave Some demon's subterranean cave, Who, prisoned by enchanter's spell, Shakes the dark rock with groan and yell.' While I was standing awestruck at the sound, I observed a figure moving towards the cliffs. I was well in cover, so I could not have been noticed. It was a very old man, very tall, but bowed in the shoulders, who was walking slowly with bent head. He could not have been thirty yards from me, so I had a clear view of his face. He was a native, but of a type I had never seen before. A long white beard fell on his breast, and a magnificent kaross of leopard skin covered his shoulders. His face was seamed and lined and shrunken, so that he seemed as old as Time itself. Very carefully I crept after him, and found myself opposite the fold where the gully was. There was a clear path through the jungle, a path worn smooth by many feet. I followed it through the undergrowth and over the screes till it turned inside the fold of the gully. And then it stopped short. I was in a deep cleft, but in front was a slab of sheer rock. Above, the gully looked darker and deeper, but there was this great slab to pass. I examined the sides, but they were sheer rock with no openings. Had I had my wits about me, I would have gone back and followed the spoor, noting where it stopped. But the whole thing looked black magic to me; my stomach was empty and my enterprise small. Besides, there was the terrible moaning of the imprisoned river in my ears. I am ashamed to confess it, but I ran from that gully as if the devil and all his angels had been following me. Indeed, I did not slacken till I had put a good mile between me and those uncanny cliffs. After that I set out to foot it back. If the horses would not come to me I must go to them. I walked twenty-five miles in a vile temper, enraged at my Dutchmen, my natives, and everybody. The truth is, I had been frightened, and my pride was sore about it. It grew very hot, the sand rose and choked me, the mopani trees with their dull green wearied me, the 'Kaffir queens' and jays and rollers which flew about the path seemed to be there to mock me. About half-way home I found a boy and two horses, and roundly I cursed him. It seemed that my pony had returned right enough, and the boy had been sent to fetch me. He had got half-way before sunset the night before, and there he had stayed. I discovered from him that he was scared to death, and did not dare go any nearer the Rooirand. It was accursed, he said, for it was an abode of devils, and only wizards went near it. I was bound to admit to myself that I could not blame him. At last I had got on the track of something certain about this mysterious country, and all the way back I wondered if I should have the courage to follow it up. [1] Baboon. [2] Schelm: Rascal. CHAPTER V MR WARDLAW HAS A PREMONITION A week later the building job was finished, I locked the door of the new store, pocketed the key, and we set out for home. Sikitola was entrusted with the general care of it, and I knew him well enough to be sure that he would keep his people from doing mischief. I left my empty wagons to follow at their leisure and rode on, with the result that I arrived at Blaauwildebeestefontein two days before I was looked for. I stabled my horse, and went round to the back to see Colin. (I had left him at home in case of fights with native dogs, for he was an ill beast in a crowd.) I found him well and hearty, for Zeeta had been looking after him. Then some whim seized me to enter the store through my bedroom window. It was open, and I crawled softly in to find the room fresh and clean from Zeeta's care. The door was ajar, and, hearing voices, I peeped into the shop. Japp was sitting on the counter talking in a low voice to a big native--the same 'Mwanga whom I had bundled out unceremoniously. I noticed that the outer door giving on the road was shut, a most unusual thing in the afternoon. Japp had some small objects in his hand, and the two were evidently arguing about a price. I had no intention at first of eavesdropping, and was just about to push the door open, when something in Japp's face arrested me. He was up to no good, and I thought it my business to wait. The low tones went on for a little, both men talking in Kaffir, and then Japp lifted up one of the little objects between finger and thumb. It was a small roundish stone about the size of a bean, but even in that half light there was a dull lustre in it. At that I shoved the door open and went in. Both men started as if they had been shot. Japp went as white as his mottled face permitted. 'What the--' he gasped, and he dropped the thing he was holding. I picked it up, and laid it on the counter. 'So,' I said, 'diamonds, Mr Japp. You have found the pipe I was looking for. I congratulate you.' My words gave the old ruffian his cue. 'Yes, yes,' he said, 'I have, or rather my friend 'Mwanga has. He has just been telling me about it.' The Kaffir looked miserably uncomfortable. He shifted from one leg to the other, casting longing glances at the closed door. 'I tink I go,' he said. 'Afterwards we will speak more.' I told him I thought he had better go, and opened the door for him. Then I bolted it again, and turned to Mr Japp. 'So that's your game,' I said. 'I thought there was something funny about you, but I didn't know it was I.D.B. you were up to.' He looked as if he could kill me. For five minutes he cursed me with a perfection of phrase which I had thought beyond him. It was no I.D.B., he declared, but a pipe which 'Mwanga had discovered. 'In this kind of country?' I said, quoting his own words. 'Why, you might as well expect to find ocean pearls as diamonds. But scrape in the spruit if you like; you'll maybe find some garnets.' He choked down his wrath, and tried a new tack. 'What will you take to hold your tongue? I'll make you a rich man if you'll come in with me.' And then he started with offers which showed that he had been making a good thing out of the traffic. I stalked over to him, and took him by the shoulder. 'You old reprobate,' I roared, 'if you breathe such a proposal to me again, I'll tie you up like a sack and carry you to Pietersdorp.' At this he broke down and wept maudlin tears, disgusting to witness. He said he was an old man who had always lived honestly, and it would break his heart if his grey hairs were to be disgraced. As he sat rocking himself with his hands over his face, I saw his wicked little eyes peering through the slits of his fingers to see what my next move would be. 'See here, Mr Japp,' I said, 'I'm not a police spy, and it's no business of mine to inform against you. I'm willing to keep you out of gaol, but it must be on my own conditions. The first is that you resign this job and clear out. You will write to Mr Colles a letter at my dictation, saying that you find the work too much for you. The second is that for the time you remain here the diamond business must utterly cease. If 'Mwanga or anybody like him comes inside the store, and if I get the slightest hint that you're back at the trade, in you go to Pietersdorp. I'm not going to have my name disgraced by being associated with you. The third condition is that when you leave this place you go clear away. If you come within twenty miles of Blaauwildebeestefontein and I find you, I will give you up.' He groaned and writhed at my terms, but in the end accepted them. He wrote the letter, and I posted it. I had no pity for the old scamp, who had feathered his nest well. Small wonder that the firm's business was not as good as it might be, when Japp was giving most of his time to buying diamonds from native thieves. The secret put him in the power of any Kaffir who traded him a stone. No wonder he cringed to ruffians like 'Mwanga. The second thing I did was to shift my quarters. Mr Wardlaw had a spare room which he had offered me before, and now I accepted it. I wanted to be no more mixed up with Japp than I could help, for I did not know what villainy he might let me in for. Moreover, I carried Zeeta with me, being ashamed to leave her at the mercy of the old bully. Japp went up to the huts and hired a slattern to mind his house, and then drank heavily for three days to console himself. That night I sat smoking with Mr Wardlaw in his sitting-room, where a welcome fire burned, for the nights on the Berg were chilly. I remember the occasion well for the queer turn the conversation took. Wardlaw, as I have said, had been working like a slave at the Kaffir tongues. I talked a kind of Zulu well enough to make myself understood, and I could follow it when spoken; but he had real scholarship in the thing, and knew all about the grammar and the different dialects. Further, he had read a lot about native history, and was full of the doings of Tchaka and Mosilikatse and Moshesh, and the kings of old. Having little to do in the way of teaching, he had made up for it by reading omnivorously. He used to borrow books from the missionaries, and he must have spent half his salary in buying new ones. To-night as he sat and puffed in his armchair, he was full of stories about a fellow called Monomotapa. It seems he was a great black emperor whom the Portuguese discovered about the sixteenth century. He lived to the north in Mashonaland, and had a mountain full of gold. The Portuguese did not make much of him, but they got his son and turned him into a priest. I told Wardlaw that he was most likely only a petty chief, whose exploits were magnified by distance, the same as the caciques in Mexico. But the schoolmaster would not accept this. 'He must have been a big man, Davie. You know that the old ruins in Rhodesia, called Zimbabwe, were long believed to be Phoenician in origin. I have a book here which tells all about them. But now it is believed that they were built by natives. I maintain that the men who could erect piles like that'--and he showed me a picture--'were something more than petty chiefs.' Presently the object of this conversation appeared. Mr Wardlaw thought that we were underrating the capacity of the native. This opinion was natural enough in a schoolmaster, but not in the precise form Wardlaw put it. It was not his intelligence which he thought we underrated, but his dangerousness. His reasons, shortly, were these: There were five or six of them to every white man; they were all, roughly speaking, of the same stock, with the same tribal beliefs; they had only just ceased being a warrior race, with a powerful military discipline; and, most important, they lived round the rim of the high-veld plateau, and if they combined could cut off the white man from the sea. I pointed out to him that it would only be a matter of time before we opened the road again. 'Ay,' he said, 'but think of what would happen before then. Think of the lonely farms and the little dorps wiped out of the map. It would be a second and bloodier Indian mutiny. 'I'm not saying it's likely,' he went on, 'but I maintain it's possible. Supposing a second Tchaka turned up, who could get the different tribes to work together. It wouldn't be so very hard to smuggle in arms. Think of the long, unwatched coast in Gazaland and Tongaland. If they got a leader with prestige enough to organize a crusade against the white man, I don't see what could prevent a rising.' 'We should get wind of it in time to crush it at the start,' I said. 'I'm not so sure. They are cunning fellows, and have arts that we know nothing about. You have heard of native telepathy. They can send news over a thousand miles as quick as the telegraph, and we have no means of tapping the wires. If they ever combined they could keep it as secret as the grave. My houseboy might be in the rising, and I would never suspect it till one fine morning he cut my throat.' 'But they would never find a leader. If there was some exiled prince of Tchaka's blood, who came back like Prince Charlie to free his people, there might be danger; but their royalties are fat men with top hats and old frock-coats, who live in dirty locations.' Wardlaw admitted this, but said that there might be other kinds of leaders. He had been reading a lot about Ethiopianism, which educated American negroes had been trying to preach in South Africa. He did not see why a kind of bastard Christianity should not be the motive of a rising. 'The Kaffir finds it an easy job to mix up Christian emotion and pagan practice. Look at Hayti and some of the performances in the Southern States.' Then he shook the ashes out of his pipe and leaned forward with a solemn face. 'I'll admit the truth to you, Davie. I'm black afraid.' He looked so earnest and serious sitting there with his short-sighted eyes peering at me that I could not help being impressed. 'Whatever is the matter?' I asked. 'Has anything happened?' He shook his head. 'Nothing I can put a name to. But I have a presentiment that some mischief is afoot in these hills. I feel it in my bones.' I confess I was startled by these words. You must remember that I had never given a hint of my suspicions to Mr Wardlaw beyond asking him if a wizard lived in the neighbourhood--a question anybody might have put. But here was the schoolmaster discovering for himself some mystery in Blaauwildebeestefontein. I tried to get at his evidence, but it was very little. He thought there were an awful lot of blacks about. 'The woods are full of them,' he said. I gathered he did not imagine he was being spied on, but merely felt that there were more natives about than could be explained. 'There's another thing,' he said. 'The native bairns have all left the school. I've only three scholars left, and they are from Dutch farms. I went to Majinje to find out what was up, and an old crone told me the place was full of bad men. I tell you, Davie, there's something brewing, and that something is not good for us.' There was nothing new to me in what Wardlaw had to tell, and yet that talk late at night by a dying fire made me feel afraid for the second time since I had come to Blaauwildebeestefontein. I had a clue and had been on the look-out for mysteries, but that another should feel the strangeness for himself made it seem desperately real to me. Of course I scoffed at Mr Wardlaw's fears. I could not have him spoiling all my plans by crying up a native rising for which he had not a scrap of evidence. 'Have you been writing to anybody?' I asked him. He said that he had told no one, but he meant to, unless things got better. 'I haven't the nerve for this job, Davie,' he said; 'I'll have to resign. And it's a pity, for the place suits my health fine. You see I know too much, and I haven't your whinstone nerve and total lack of imagination.' I told him that it was simply fancy, and came from reading too many books and taking too little exercise. But I made him promise to say nothing to anybody either by word of mouth or letter, without telling me first. Then I made him a rummer of toddy and sent him to bed a trifle comforted. The first thing I did in my new room was to shift the bed into the corner out of line with the window. There were no shutters, so I put up an old table-top and jammed it between the window frames. Also, I loaded my shot-gun and kept it by my bedside. Had Wardlaw seen these preparations he might have thought more of my imagination and less of my nerve. It was a real comfort to me to put out a hand in the darkness and feel Colin's shaggy coat. CHAPTER VI THE DRUMS BEAT AT SUNSET Japp was drunk for the next day or two, and I had the business of the store to myself. I was glad of this, for it gave me leisure to reflect upon the various perplexities of my situation. As I have said, I was really scared, more out of a sense of impotence than from dread of actual danger. I was in a fog of uncertainty. Things were happening around me which I could only dimly guess at, and I had no power to take one step in defence. That Wardlaw should have felt the same without any hint from me was the final proof that the mystery was no figment of my nerves. I had written to Colles and got no answer. Now the letter with Japp's resignation in it had gone to Durban. Surely some notice would be taken of that. If I was given the post, Colles was bound to consider what I had said in my earlier letter and give me some directions. Meanwhile it was my business to stick to my job till I was relieved. A change had come over the place during my absence. The natives had almost disappeared from sight. Except the few families living round Blaauwildebeestefontein one never saw a native on the roads, and none came into the store. They were sticking close to their locations, or else they had gone after some distant business. Except a batch of three Shangaans returning from the Rand, I had nobody in the store for the whole of one day. So about four o'clock I shut it up, whistled on Colin, and went for a walk along the Berg. If there were no natives on the road, there were plenty in the bush. I had the impression, of which Wardlaw had spoken, that the native population of the countryside had suddenly been hugely increased. The woods were simply _hotching_ with them. I was being spied on as before, but now there were so many at the business that they could not all conceal their tracks. Every now and then I had a glimpse of a black shoulder or leg, and Colin, whom I kept on the leash, was half-mad with excitement. I had seen all I wanted, and went home with a preoccupied mind. I sat long on Wardlaw's garden-seat, trying to puzzle out the truth of this spying. What perplexed me was that I had been left unmolested when I had gone to Umvelos'. Now, as I conjectured, the secret of the neighbourhood, whatever it was, was probably connected with the Rooirand. But when I had ridden in that direction and had spent two days in exploring, no one had troubled to watch me. I was quite certain about this, for my eye had grown quick to note espionage, and it is harder for a spy to hide in the spare bush of the flats than in the dense thickets on these uplands. The watchers, then, did not mind my fossicking round their sacred place. Why, then, was I so closely watched in the harmless neighbourhood of the store? I thought for a long time before an answer occurred to me. The reason must be that going to the plains I was going into native country and away from civilization. But Blaauwildebeestefontein was near the frontier. There must be some dark business brewing of which they may have feared that I had an inkling. They wanted to see if I proposed to go to Pietersdorp or Wesselsburg and tell what I knew, and they clearly were resolved that I should not. I laughed, I remember, thinking that they had forgotten the post-bag. But then I reflected that I knew nothing of what might be happening daily to the post-bag. When I had reached this conclusion, my first impulse was to test it by riding straight west on the main road. If I was right, I should certainly be stopped. On second thoughts, however, this seemed to me to be flinging up the game prematurely, and I resolved to wait a day or two before acting. Next day nothing happened, save that my sense of loneliness increased. I felt that I was being hemmed in by barbarism, and cut off in a ghoulish land from the succour of my own kind. I only kept my courage up by the necessity of presenting a brave face to Mr Wardlaw, who was by this time in a very broken condition of nerves. I had often thought that it was my duty to advise him to leave, and to see him safely off, but I shrank from severing myself from my only friend. I thought, too, of the few Dutch farmers within riding distance, and had half a mind to visit them, but they were far off over the plateau and could know little of my anxieties. The third day events moved faster. Japp was sober and wonderfully quiet. He gave me good-morning quite in a friendly tone, and set to posting up the books as if he had never misbehaved in his days. I was so busy with my thoughts that I, too, must have been gentler than usual, and the morning passed like a honeymoon, till I went across to dinner. I was just sitting down when I remembered that I had left my watch in my waistcoat behind the counter, and started to go back for it. But at the door I stopped short. For two horsemen had drawn up before the store. One was a native with what I took to be saddle-bags; the other was a small slim man with a sun helmet, who was slowly dismounting. Something in the cut of his jib struck me as familiar. I slipped into the empty schoolroom and stared hard. Then, as he half-turned in handing his bridle to the Kaffir, I got a sight of his face. It was my former shipmate, Henriques. He said something to his companion, and entered the store. You may imagine that my curiosity ran to fever-heat. My first impulse was to march over for my waistcoat, and make a third with Japp at the interview. Happily I reflected in time that Henriques knew my face, for I had grown no beard, having a great dislike to needless hair. If he was one of the villains in the drama, he would mark me down for his vengeance once he knew I was here, whereas at present he had probably forgotten all about me. Besides, if I walked in boldly I would get no news. If Japp and he had a secret, they would not blab it in my presence. My next idea was to slip in by the back to the room I had once lived in. But how was I to cross the road? It ran white and dry some distance each way in full view of the Kaffir with the horses. Further, the store stood on a bare patch, and it would be a hard job to get in by the back, assuming, as I believed, that the neighbourhood was thick with spies. The upshot was that I got my glasses and turned them on the store. The door was open, and so was the window. In the gloom of the interior I made out Henriques' legs. He was standing by the counter, and apparently talking to Japp. He moved to shut the door, and came back inside my focus opposite the window. There he stayed for maybe ten minutes, while I hugged my impatience. I would have given a hundred pounds to be snug in my old room with Japp thinking me out of the store. Suddenly the legs twitched up, and his boots appeared above the counter. Japp had invited him to his bedroom, and the game was now to be played beyond my ken. This was more than I could stand, so I stole out at the back door and took to the thickest bush on the hillside. My notion was to cross the road half a mile down, when it had dropped into the defile of the stream, and then to come swiftly up the edge of the water so as to effect a back entrance into the store. As fast as I dared I tore through the bush, and in about a quarter of an hour had reached the point I was making for. Then I bore down to the road, and was in the scrub about ten yards off it, when the clatter of horses pulled me up again. Peeping out I saw that it was my friend and his Kaffir follower, who were riding at a very good pace for the plains. Toilfully and crossly I returned on my tracks to my long-delayed dinner. Whatever the purport of their talk, Japp and the Portuguese had not taken long over it. In the store that afternoon I said casually to Japp that I had noticed visitors at the door during my dinner hour. The old man looked me frankly enough in the face. 'Yes, it was Mr Hendricks,' he said, and explained that the man was a Portuguese trader from Delagoa way, who had a lot of Kaffir stores east of the Lebombo Hills. I asked his business, and was told that he always gave Japp a call in when he was passing. 'Do you take every man that calls into your bedroom, and shut the door?' I asked. Japp lost colour and his lip trembled. 'I swear to God, Mr Crawfurd, I've been doing nothing wrong. I've kept the promise I gave you like an oath to my mother. I see you suspect me, and maybe you've cause, but I'll be quite honest with you. I have dealt in diamonds before this with Hendricks. But to-day, when he asked me, I told him that that business was off. I only took him to my room to give him a drink. He likes brandy, and there's no supply in the shop.' I distrusted Japp wholeheartedly enough, but I was convinced that in this case he spoke the truth. 'Had the man any news?' I asked. 'He had and he hadn't,' said Japp. 'He was always a sullen beggar, and never spoke much. But he said one queer thing. He asked me if I was going to retire, and when I told him "yes," he said I had put it off rather long. I told him I was as healthy as I ever was, and he laughed in his dirty Portugoose way. "Yes, Mr Japp," he says, "but the country is not so healthy." I wonder what the chap meant. He'll be dead of blackwater before many months, to judge by his eyes.' This talk satisfied me about Japp, who was clearly in desperate fear of offending me, and disinclined to return for the present to his old ways. But I think the rest of the afternoon was the most wretched time in my existence. It was as plain as daylight that we were in for some grave trouble, trouble to which I believed that I alone held any kind of clue. I had a pile of evidence--the visit of Henriques was the last bit--which pointed to some great secret approaching its disclosure. I thought that that disclosure meant blood and ruin. But I knew nothing definite. If the commander of a British army had come to me then and there and offered help, I could have done nothing, only asked him to wait like me. The peril, whatever it was, did not threaten me only, though I and Wardlaw and Japp might be the first to suffer; but I had a terrible feeling that I alone could do something to ward it off, and just what that something was I could not tell. I was horribly afraid, not only of unknown death, but of my impotence to play any manly part. I was alone, knowing too much and yet too little, and there was no chance of help under the broad sky. I cursed myself for not writing to Aitken at Lourenco Marques weeks before. He had promised to come up, and he was the kind of man who kept his word. In the late afternoon I dragged Wardlaw out for a walk. In his presence I had to keep up a forced cheerfulness, and I believe the pretence did me good. We took a path up the Berg among groves of stinkwood and essenwood, where a failing stream made an easy route. It may have been fancy, but it seemed to me that the wood was emptier and that we were followed less closely. I remember it was a lovely evening, and in the clear fragrant gloaming every foreland of the Berg stood out like a great ship above the dark green sea of the bush. When we reached the edge of the plateau we saw the sun sinking between two far blue peaks in Makapan's country, and away to the south the great roll of the high veld. I longed miserably for the places where white men were thronged together in dorps and cities. As we gazed a curious sound struck our ears. It seemed to begin far up in the north--a low roll like the combing of breakers on the sand. Then it grew louder and travelled nearer--a roll, with sudden spasms of harsher sound in it; reminding me of the churning in one of the pot-holes of Kirkcaple cliffs. Presently it grew softer again as the sound passed south, but new notes were always emerging. The echo came sometimes, as it were, from stark rock, and sometimes from the deep gloom of the forests. I have never heard an eerier sound. Neither natural nor human it seemed, but the voice of that world between which is hid from man's sight and hearing. Mr Wardlaw clutched my arm, and in that moment I guessed the explanation. The native drums were beating, passing some message from the far north down the line of the Berg, where the locations were thickest, to the great black population of the south. 'But that means war,' Mr Wardlaw cried. 'It means nothing of the kind,' I said shortly. 'It's their way of sending news. It's as likely to be some change in the weather or an outbreak of cattle disease.' When we got home I found Japp with a face like grey paper. 'Did you hear the drums?'he asked. 'Yes,' I said shortly. 'What about them?' 'God forgive you for an ignorant Britisher,' he almost shouted. 'You may hear drums any night, but a drumming like that I only once heard before. It was in '79 in the 'Zeti valley. Do you know what happened next day? Cetewayo's impis came over the hills, and in an hour there wasn't a living white soul in the glen. Two men escaped, and one of them was called Peter Japp.' 'We are in God's hands then, and must wait on His will,' I said solemnly. There was no more sleep for Wardlaw and myself that night. We made the best barricade we could of the windows, loaded all our weapons, and trusted to Colin to give us early news. Before supper I went over to get Japp to join us, but found that that worthy had sought help from his old protector, the bottle, and was already sound asleep with both door and window open. I had made up my mind that death was certain, and yet my heart belied my conviction, and I could not feel the appropriate mood. If anything I was more cheerful since I had heard the drums. It was clearly now beyond the power of me or any man to stop the march of events. My thoughts ran on a native rising, and I kept telling myself how little that was probable. Where were the arms, the leader, the discipline? At any rate such arguments put me to sleep before dawn, and I wakened at eight to find that nothing had happened. The clear morning sunlight, as of old, made Blaauwildebeestefontein the place of a dream. Zeeta brought in my cup of coffee as if this day were just like all others, my pipe tasted as sweet, the fresh air from the Berg blew as fragrantly on my brow. I went over to the store in reasonably good spirits, leaving Wardlaw busy on the penitential Psalms. The post-runner had brought the mail as usual, and there was one private letter for me. I opened it with great excitement, for the envelope bore the stamp of the firm. At last Colles had deigned to answer. Inside was a sheet of the firm's notepaper, with the signature of Colles across the top. Below some one had pencilled these five words: '_The Blesbok[1] are changing ground._' I looked to see that Japp had not suffocated himself, then shut up the store, and went back to my room to think out this new mystification. The thing had come from Colles, for it was the private notepaper of the Durban office, and there was Colles' signature. But the pencilling was in a different hand. My deduction from this was that some one wished to send me a message, and that Colles had given that some one a sheet of signed paper to serve as a kind of introduction. I might take it, therefore, that the scribble was Colles' reply to my letter. Now, my argument continued, if the unknown person saw fit to send me a message, it could not be merely one of warning. Colles must have told him that I was awake to some danger, and as I was in Blaauwildebeestefontein, I must be nearer the heart of things than any one else. The message must therefore be in the nature of some password, which I was to remember when I heard it again. I reasoned the whole thing out very clearly, and I saw no gap in my logic. I cannot describe how that scribble had heartened me. I felt no more the crushing isolation of yesterday. There were others beside me in the secret. Help must be on the way, and the letter was the first tidings. But how near?--that was the question; and it occurred to me for the first time to look at the postmark. I went back to the store and got the envelope out of the waste-paper basket. The postmark was certainly not Durban. The stamp was a Cape Colony one, and of the mark I could only read three letters, T. R. S. This was no sort of clue, and I turned the thing over, completely baffled. Then I noticed that there was no mark of the post town of delivery. Our letters to Blaauwildebeestefontein came through Pietersdorp and bore that mark. I compared the envelope with others. They all had a circle, and 'Pietersdorp' in broad black letters. But this envelope had nothing except the stamp. I was still slow at detective work, and it was some minutes before the explanation flashed on me. The letter had never been posted at all. The stamp was a fake, and had been borrowed from an old envelope. There was only one way in which it could have come. It must have been put in the letter-bag while the postman was on his way from Pietersdorp. My unknown friend must therefore be somewhere within eighty miles of me. I hurried off to look for the post-runner, but he had started back an hour before. There was nothing for it but to wait on the coming of the unknown. That afternoon I again took Mr Wardlaw for a walk. It is an ingrained habit of mine that I never tell anyone more of a business than is practically necessary. For months I had kept all my knowledge to myself, and breathed not a word to a soul. But I thought it my duty to tell Wardlaw about the letter, to let him see that we were not forgotten. I am afraid it did not encourage his mind. Occult messages seemed to him only the last proof of a deadly danger encompassing us, and I could not shake his opinion. We took the same road to the crown of the Berg, and I was confirmed in my suspicion that the woods were empty and the watchers gone. The place was as deserted as the bush at Umvelos'. When we reached the summit about sunset we waited anxiously for the sound of drums. It came, as we expected, louder and more menacing than before. Wardlaw stood pinching my arm as the great tattoo swept down the escarpment, and died away in the far mountains beyond the Olifants. Yet it no longer seemed to be a wall of sound, shutting us out from our kindred in the West. A message had pierced the wall. If the blesbok were changing ground, I believed that the hunters were calling out their hounds and getting ready for the chase. [1] A species of buck. CHAPTER VII CAPTAIN ARCOLL TELLS A TALE It froze in the night, harder than was common on the Berg even in winter, and as I crossed the road next morning it was covered with rime. All my fears had gone, and my mind was strung high with expectation. Five pencilled words may seem a small thing to build hope on, but it was enough for me, and I went about my work in the store with a reasonably light heart. One of the first things I did was to take stock of our armoury. There were five sporting Mausers of a cheap make, one Mauser pistol, a Lee-Speed carbine, and a little nickel-plated revolver. There was also Japp's shot-gun, an old hammered breech-loader, as well as the gun I had brought out with me. There was a good supply of cartridges, including a stock for a .400 express which could not be found. I pocketed the revolver, and searched till I discovered a good sheath-knife. If fighting was in prospect I might as well look to my arms. All the morning I sat among flour and sugar possessing my soul in as much patience as I could command. Nothing came down the white road from the west. The sun melted the rime; the flies came out and buzzed in the window; Japp got himself out of bed, brewed strong coffee, and went back to his slumbers. Presently it was dinner-time, and I went over to a silent meal with Wardlaw. When I returned I must have fallen asleep over a pipe, for the next thing I knew I was blinking drowsily at the patch of sun in the door, and listening for footsteps. In the dead stillness of the afternoon I thought I could discern a shuffling in the dust. I got up and looked out, and there, sure enough, was some one coming down the road. But it was only a Kaffir, and a miserable-looking object at that. I had never seen such an anatomy. It was a very old man, bent almost double, and clad in a ragged shirt and a pair of foul khaki trousers. He carried an iron pot, and a few belongings were tied up in a dirty handkerchief. He must have been a _dacha_[1] smoker, for he coughed hideously, twisting his body with the paroxysms. I had seen the type before--the old broken-down native who had no kin to support him, and no tribe to shelter him. They wander about the roads, cooking their wretched meals by their little fires, till one morning they are found stiff under a bush. The native gave me a good-day in Kaffir, then begged for tobacco or a handful of mealie-meal. I asked him where he came from. 'From the west, Inkoos,' he said, 'and before that from the south. It is a sore road for old bones.' I went into the store to fetch some meal, and when I came out he had shuffled close to the door. He had kept his eyes on the ground, but now he looked up at me, and I thought he had very bright eyes for such an old wreck. 'The nights are cold, Inkoos,' he wailed, 'and my folk are scattered, and I have no kraal. The aasvogels follow me, and I can hear the blesbok.' 'What about the blesbok?' I asked with a start. 'The blesbok are changing ground,' he said, and looked me straight in the face. 'And where are the hunters?' I asked. 'They are here and behind me,' he said in English, holding out his pot for my meal, while he began to edge into the middle of the road. I followed, and, speaking English, asked him if he knew of a man named Colles. 'I come from him, young Baas. Where is your house? Ah, the school. There will be a way in by the back window? See that it is open, for I'll be there shortly.' Then lifting up his voice he called down in Sesuto all manner of blessings on me for my kindness, and went shuffling down the sunlit road, coughing like a volcano. In high excitement I locked up the store and went over to Mr Wardlaw. No children had come to school that day, and he was sitting idle, playing patience. 'Lock the door,' I said, 'and come into my room. We're on the brink of explanations.' In about twenty minutes the bush below the back-window parted and the Kaffir slipped out. He grinned at me, and after a glance round, hopped very nimbly over the sill. Then he examined the window and pulled the curtains. 'Is the outer door shut?' he asked in excellent English. 'Well, get me some hot water, and any spare clothes you may possess, Mr Crawfurd. I must get comfortable before we begin our _indaba_.[2] We've the night before us, so there's plenty of time. But get the house clear, and see that nobody disturbs me at my toilet. I am a modest man, and sensitive about my looks.' I brought him what he wanted, and looked on at an amazing transformation. Taking a phial from his bundle, he rubbed some liquid on his face and neck and hands, and got rid of the black colouring. His body and legs he left untouched, save that he covered them with shirt and trousers from my wardrobe. Then he pulled off a scaly wig, and showed beneath it a head of close-cropped grizzled hair. In ten minutes the old Kaffir had been transformed into an active soldierly-looking man of maybe fifty years. Mr Wardlaw stared as if he had seen a resurrection. 'I had better introduce myself,' he said, when he had taken the edge off his thirst and hunger. 'My name is Arcoll, Captain James Arcoll. I am speaking to Mr Crawfurd, the storekeeper, and Mr Wardlaw, the schoolmaster, of Blaauwildebeestefontein. Where, by the way, is Mr Peter Japp? Drunk? Ah, yes, it was always his failing. The quorum, however, is complete without him.' By this time it was about sunset, and I remember I cocked my ear to hear the drums beat. Captain Arcoll noticed the movement as he noticed all else. 'You're listening for the drums, but you won't hear them. That business is over here. To-night they beat in Swaziland and down into the Tonga border. Three days more, unless you and I, Mr Crawfurd, are extra smart, and they'll be hearing them in Durban.' It was not till the lamp was lit, the fire burning well, and the house locked and shuttered, that Captain Arcoll began his tale. 'First,' he said, 'let me hear what you know. Colles told me that you were a keen fellow, and had wind of some mystery here. You wrote him about the way you were spied on, but I told him to take no notice. Your affair, Mr Crawfurd, had to wait on more urgent matters. Now, what do you think is happening?' I spoke very shortly, weighing my words, for I felt I was on trial before these bright eyes. 'I think that some kind of native rising is about to commence.' 'Ay,' he said dryly, 'you would, and your evidence would be the spying and drumming. Anything more?' 'I have come on the tracks of a lot of I.D.B. work in the neighbourhood. The natives have some supply of diamonds, which they sell bit by bit, and I don't doubt but they have been getting guns with the proceeds.' He nodded, 'Have you any notion who has been engaged in the job?' I had it on my tongue to mention Japp, but forbore, remembering my promise. 'I can name one,' I said, 'a little yellow Portugoose, who calls himself Henriques or Hendricks. He passed by here the day before yesterday.' Captain Arcoll suddenly was consumed with quiet laughter. 'Did you notice the Kaffir who rode with him and carried his saddlebags? Well, he's one of my men. Henriques would have a fit if he knew what was in those saddlebags. They contain my change of clothes, and other odds and ends. Henriques' own stuff is in a hole in the spruit. A handy way of getting one's luggage sent on, eh? The bags are waiting for me at a place I appointed.' And again Captain Arcoll indulged his sense of humour. Then he became grave, and returned to his examination. 'A rising, with diamonds as the sinews of war, and Henriques as the chief agent. Well and good! But who is to lead, and what are the natives going to rise about?' 'I know nothing further, but I have made some guesses.' 'Let's hear your guesses,' he said, blowing smoke rings from his pipe. 'I think the main mover is a great black minister who calls himself John Laputa.' Captain Arcoll nearly sprang out of his chair. 'Now, how on earth did you find that out? Quick, Mr Crawfurd, tell me all you know, for this is desperately important.' I began at the beginning, and told him the story of what happened on the Kirkcaple shore. Then I spoke of my sight of him on board ship, his talk with Henriques about Blaauwildebeestefontein, and his hurried departure from Durban. Captain Arcoll listened intently, and at the mention of Durban he laughed. 'You and I seem to have been running on lines which nearly touched. I thought I had grabbed my friend Laputa that night in Durban, but I was too cocksure and he slipped off. Do you know, Mr Crawfurd, you have been on the right trail long before me? When did you say you saw him at his devil-worship? Seven years ago? Then you were the first man alive to know the Reverend John in his true colours. You knew seven years ago what I only found out last year.' 'Well, that's my story,' I said. 'I don't know what the rising is about, but there's one other thing I can tell you. There's some kind of sacred place for the Kaffirs, and I've found out where it is.' I gave him a short account of my adventures in the Rooirand. He smoked silently for a bit after I had finished. 'You've got the skeleton of the whole thing right, and you only want the filling up. And you found out everything for yourself? Colles was right; you're not wanting in intelligence, Mr Crawfurd.' It was not much of a compliment, but I have never been more pleased in my life. This slim, grizzled man, with his wrinkled face and bright eyes, was clearly not lavish in his praise. I felt it was no small thing to have earned a word of commendation. 'And now I will tell you my story,' said Captain Arcoll. 'It is a long story, and I must begin far back. It has taken me years to decipher it, and, remember, I've been all my life at this native business. I can talk every dialect, and I have the customs of every tribe by heart. I've travelled over every mile of South Africa, and Central and East Africa too. I was in both the Matabele wars, and I've seen a heap of other fighting which never got into the papers. So what I tell you you can take as gospel, for it is knowledge that was not learned in a day.' He puffed away, and then asked suddenly, 'Did you ever hear of Prester John?' 'The man that lived in Central Asia?' I asked, with a reminiscence of a story-book I had as a boy. 'No, no,' said Mr Wardlaw, 'he means the King of Abyssinia in the fifteenth century. I've been reading all about him. He was a Christian, and the Portuguese sent expedition after expedition to find him, but they never got there. Albuquerque wanted to make an alliance with him and capture the Holy Sepulchre.' Arcoll nodded. 'That's the one I mean. There's not very much known about him, except Portuguese legends. He was a sort of Christian, but I expect that his practices were as pagan as his neighbours'. There is no doubt that he was a great conqueror. Under him and his successors, the empire of Ethiopia extended far south of Abyssinia away down to the Great Lakes.' 'How long did this power last?' I asked wondering to what tale this was prologue. 'That's a mystery no scholar has ever been able to fathom. Anyhow, the centre of authority began to shift southward, and the warrior tribes moved in that direction. At the end of the sixteenth century the chief native power was round about the Zambesi. The Mazimba and the Makaranga had come down from the Lake Nyassa quarter, and there was a strong kingdom in Manicaland. That was the Monomotapa that the Portuguese thought so much of.' Wardlaw nodded eagerly. The story was getting into ground that he knew about. 'The thing to remember is that all these little empires thought themselves the successors of Prester John. It took me a long time to find this out, and I have spent days in the best libraries in Europe over it. They all looked back to a great king in the north, whom they called by about twenty different names. They had forgotten about his Christianity, but they remembered that he was a conqueror. 'Well, to make a long story short, Monomotapa disappeared in time, and fresh tribes came down from the north, and pushed right down to Natal and the Cape. That is how the Zulus first appeared. They brought with them the story of Prester John, but by this time it had ceased to be a historical memory, and had become a religious cult. They worshipped a great Power who had been their ancestor, and the favourite Zulu word for him was Umkulunkulu. The belief was perverted into fifty different forms, but this was the central creed--that Umkulunkulu had been the father of the tribe, and was alive as a spirit to watch over them. 'They brought more than a creed with them. Somehow or other, some fetich had descended from Prester John by way of the Mazimba and Angoni and Makaranga. What it is I do not know, but it was always in the hands of the tribe which for the moment held the leadership. The great native wars of the sixteenth century, which you can read about in the Portuguese historians, were not for territory but for leadership, and mainly for the possession of this fetich. Anyhow, we know that the Zulus brought it down with them. They called it _Ndhlondhlo_, which means the Great Snake, but I don't suppose that it was any kind of snake. The snake was their totem, and they would naturally call their most sacred possession after it. 'Now I will tell you a thing that few know. You have heard of Tchaka. He was a sort of black Napoleon early in the last century, and he made the Zulus the paramount power in South Africa, slaughtering about two million souls to accomplish it. Well, he had the fetich, whatever it was, and it was believed that he owed his conquests to it. Mosilikatse tried to steal it, and that was why he had to fly to Matabeleland. But with Tchaka it disappeared. Dingaan did not have it, nor Panda, and Cetewayo never got it, though he searched the length and breadth of the country for it. It had gone out of existence, and with it the chance of a Kaffir empire.' Captain Arcoll got up to light his pipe, and I noticed that his face was grave. He was not telling us this yarn for our amusement. 'So much for Prester John and his charm,' he said. 'Now I have to take up the history at a different point. In spite of risings here and there, and occasional rows, the Kaffirs have been quiet for the better part of half a century. It is no credit to us. They have had plenty of grievances, and we are no nearer understanding them than our fathers were. But they are scattered and divided. We have driven great wedges of white settlement into their territory, and we have taken away their arms. Still, they are six times as many as we are, and they have long memories, and a thoughtful man may wonder how long the peace will last. I have often asked myself that question, and till lately I used to reply, "For ever because they cannot find a leader with the proper authority, and they have no common cause to fight for." But a year or two ago I began to change my mind. 'It is my business to act as chief Intelligence officer among the natives. Well, one day, I came on the tracks of a curious person. He was a Christian minister called Laputa, and he was going among the tribes from Durban to the Zambesi as a roving evangelist. I found that he made an enormous impression, and yet the people I spoke to were chary of saying much about him. Presently I found that he preached more than the gospel. His word was "Africa for the Africans," and his chief point was that the natives had had a great empire in the past, and might have a great empire again. He used to tell the story of Prester John, with all kinds of embroidery of his own. You see, Prester John was a good argument for him, for he had been a Christian as well as a great potentate. 'For years there has been plenty of this talk in South Africa, chiefly among Christian Kaffirs. It is what they call "Ethiopianism," and American negroes are the chief apostles. For myself, I always thought the thing perfectly harmless. I don't care a fig whether the native missions break away from the parent churches in England and call themselves by fancy names. The more freedom they have in their religious life, the less they are likely to think about politics. But I soon found out that Laputa was none of your flabby educated negroes from America, and I began to watch him. 'I first came across him at a revival meeting in London, where he was a great success. He came and spoke to me about my soul, but he gave up when I dropped into Zulu. The next time I met him was on the lower Limpopo, when I had the pleasure of trying to shoot him from a boat.' Captain Arcoll took his pipe from his mouth and laughed at the recollection. 'I had got on to an I.D.B. gang, and to my amazement found the evangelist among them. But the Reverend John was too much for me. He went overboard in spite of the crocodiles, and managed to swim below water to the reed bed at the side. However, that was a valuable experience for me, for it gave me a clue. 'I next saw him at a Missionary Conference in Cape Town, and after that at a meeting of the Geographical Society in London, where I had a long talk with him. My reputation does not follow me home, and he thought I was an English publisher with an interest in missions. You see I had no evidence to connect him with I.D.B., and besides I fancied that his real game was something bigger than that; so I just bided my time and watched. 'I did my best to get on to his dossier, but it was no easy job. However, I found out a few things. He had been educated in the States, and well educated too, for the man is a good scholar and a great reader, besides the finest natural orator I have ever heard. There was no doubt that he was of Zulu blood, but I could get no traces of his family. He must come of high stock, for he is a fine figure of a man. 'Very soon I found it was no good following him in his excursions into civilization. There he was merely the educated Kaffir; a great pet of missionary societies, and a favourite speaker at Church meetings. You will find evidence given by him in Blue-Books on native affairs, and he counted many members of Parliament at home among his correspondents. I let that side go, and resolved to dog him when on his evangelizing tours in the back-veld. 'For six months I stuck to him like a leech. I am pretty good at disguises, and he never knew who was the broken-down old Kaffir who squatted in the dirt at the edge of the crowd when he spoke, or the half-caste who called him "Sir" and drove his Cape-cart. I had some queer adventures, but these can wait. The gist of the thing is, that after six months which turned my hair grey I got a glimmering of what he was after. He talked Christianity to the mobs in the kraals, but to the indunas[3] he told a different story.' Captain Arcoll helped himself to a drink. 'You can guess what that story was, Mr Crawfurd. At full moon when the black cock was blooded, the Reverend John forgot his Christianity. He was back four centuries among the Mazimba sweeping down on the Zambesi. He told them, and they believed him, that he was the Umkulunkulu, the incarnated spirit of Prester John. He told them that he was there to lead the African race to conquest and empire. Ay, and he told them more: for he has, or says he has, the Great Snake itself, the necklet of Prester John.' Neither of us spoke; we were too occupied with fitting this news into our chain of knowledge. Captain Arcoll went on. 'Now that I knew his purpose, I set myself to find out his preparations. It was not long before I found a mighty organization at work from the Zambesi to the Cape. The great tribes were up to their necks in the conspiracy, and all manner of little sects had been taken in. I have sat at tribal councils and been sworn a blood brother, and I have used the secret password to get knowledge in odd places. It was a dangerous game, and, as I have said, I had my adventures, but I came safe out of it--with my knowledge. 'The first thing I found out was that there was a great deal of wealth somewhere among the tribes. Much of it was in diamonds, which the labourers stole from the mines and the chiefs impounded. Nearly every tribe had its secret chest, and our friend Laputa had the use of them all. Of course the difficulty was changing the diamonds into coin, and he had to start I.D.B. on a big scale. Your pal, Henriques, was the chief agent for this, but he had others at Mozambique and Johannesburg, ay, and in London, whom I have on my list. With the money, guns and ammunition were bought, and it seems that a pretty flourishing trade has been going on for some time. They came in mostly overland through Portuguese territory, though there have been cases of consignments to Johannesburg houses, the contents of which did not correspond with the invoice. You ask what the Governments were doing to let this go on. Yes, and you may well ask. They were all asleep. They never dreamed of danger from the natives, and in any case it was difficult to police the Portuguese side. Laputa knew our weakness, and he staked everything on it. 'My first scheme was to lay Laputa by the heels; but no Government would act on my information. The man was strongly buttressed by public support at home, and South Africa has burned her fingers before this with arbitrary arrests. Then I tried to fasten I.D.B. on him, but I could not get my proofs till too late. I nearly had him in Durban, but he got away; and he never gave me a second chance. For five months he and Henriques have been lying low, because their scheme was getting very ripe. I have been following them through Zululand and Gazaland, and I have discovered that the train is ready, and only wants the match. For a month I have never been more than five hours behind him on the trail; and if he has laid his train, I have laid mine also.' Arcoll's whimsical, humorous face had hardened into grimness, and in his eyes there was the light of a fierce purpose. The sight of him comforted me, in spite of his tale. 'But what can he hope to do?' I asked. 'Though he roused every Kaffir in South Africa he would be beaten. You say he is an educated man. He must know he has no chance in the long run.' 'I said he was an educated man, but he is also a Kaffir. He can see the first stage of a thing, and maybe the second, but no more. That is the native mind. If it was not like that our chance would be the worse.' 'You say the scheme is ripe,' I said; 'how ripe?' Arcoll looked at the clock. 'In half an hour's time Laputa will be with 'Mpefu. There he will stay the night. To-morrow morning he goes to Umvelos' to meet Henriques. To-morrow evening the gathering begins.' 'One question,' I said. 'How big a man is Laputa?' 'The biggest thing that the Kaffirs have ever produced. I tell you, in my opinion he is a great genius. If he had been white he might have been a second Napoleon. He is a born leader of men, and as brave as a lion. There is no villainy he would not do if necessary, and yet I should hesitate to call him a blackguard. Ay, you may look surprised at me, you two pragmatical Scotsmen; but I have, so to speak, lived with the man for months, and there's fineness and nobility in him. He would be a terrible enemy, but a just one. He has the heart of a poet and a king, and it is God's curse that he has been born among the children of Ham. I hope to shoot him like a dog in a day or two, but I am glad to bear testimony to his greatness.' 'If the rising starts to-morrow,' I asked, 'have you any of his plans?' He picked up a map from the table and opened it. 'The first rendezvous is somewhere near Sikitola's. Then they move south, picking up contingents; and the final concentration is to be on the high veld near Amsterdam, which is convenient for the Swazis and the Zulus. After that I know nothing, but of course there are local concentrations along the whole line of the Berg from Mashonaland to Basutoland. Now, look here. To get to Amsterdam they must cross the Delagoa Bay Railway. Well, they won't be allowed to. If they get as far, they will be scattered there. As I told you, I too have laid my train. We have the police ready all along the scarp of the Berg. Every exit from native territory is watched, and the frontier farmers are out on commando. We have regulars on the Delagoa Bay and Natal lines, and a system of field telegraphs laid which can summon further troops to any point. It has all been kept secret, because we are still in the dark ourselves. The newspaper public knows nothing about any rising, but in two days every white household in South Africa will be in a panic. Make no mistake, Mr Crawfurd; this is a grim business. We shall smash Laputa and his men, but it will be a fierce fight, and there will be much good blood shed. Besides, it will throw the country back another half-century. Would to God I had been man enough to put a bullet through his head in cold blood. But I could not do it--it was too like murder; and maybe I shall never have the chance now.' 'There's one thing puzzles me,' I said. 'What makes Laputa come up here to start with? Why doesn't he begin with Zululand?' 'God knows! There's sure to be sense in it, for he does nothing without reason. We may know to-morrow.' But as Captain Arcoll spoke, the real reason suddenly flashed into my mind: Laputa had to get the Great Snake, the necklet of Prester John, to give his leadership prestige. Apparently he had not yet got it, or Arcoll would have known. He started from this neighbourhood because the fetich was somewhere hereabouts. I was convinced that my guess was right, but I kept my own counsel. 'To-morrow Laputa and Henriques meet at Umvelos', probably at your new store, Mr Crawfurd. And so the ball commences.' My resolution was suddenly taken. 'I think,' I said, 'I had better be present at the meeting, as representing the firm.' Captain Arcoll stared at me and laughed. 'I had thought of going myself,' he said. 'Then you go to certain death, disguise yourself as you please. You cannot meet them in the store as I can. I'm there on my ordinary business, and they will never suspect. If you're to get any news, I'm the man to go.' He looked at me steadily for a minute or so. 'I'm not sure that's such a bad idea of yours. I would be better employed myself on the Berg, and, as you say, I would have little chance of hearing anything. You're a plucky fellow, Mr Crawfurd. I suppose you understand that the risk is pretty considerable.' 'I suppose I do; but since I'm in this thing, I may as well see it out. Besides, I've an old quarrel with our friend Laputa.' 'Good and well,' said Captain Arcoll. 'Draw in your chair to the table, then, and I'll explain to you the disposition of my men. I should tell you that I have loyal natives in my pay in most tribes, and can count on early intelligence. We can't match their telepathy; but the new type of field telegraph is not so bad, and may be a trifle more reliable.' Till midnight we pored over maps, and certain details were burned in on my memory. Then we went to bed and slept soundly, even Mr Wardlaw. It was strange how fear had gone from the establishment, now that we knew the worst and had a fighting man by our side. [1] Hemp. [2] Council. [3] Lesser chiefs. CHAPTER VIII I FALL IN AGAIN WITH THE REVEREND JOHN LAPUTA Once, as a boy, I had earnestly desired to go into the army, and had hopes of rising to be a great general. Now that I know myself better, I do not think I would have been much good at a general's work. I would have shirked the loneliness of it, the isolation of responsibility. But I think I would have done well in a subaltern command, for I had a great notion of carrying out orders, and a certain zest in the mere act of obedience. Three days before I had been as nervous as a kitten because I was alone and it was 'up to me,' as Americans say, to decide on the next step. But now that I was only one wheel in a great machine of defence my nervousness seemed to have fled. I was well aware that the mission I was bound on was full of risk; but, to my surprise, I felt no fear. Indeed, I had much the same feeling as a boy on a Saturday's holiday who has planned a big expedition. One thing only I regretted--that Tam Dyke was not with me to see the fun. The thought of that faithful soul, now beating somewhere on the seas, made me long for his comradeship. As I shaved, I remember wondering if I would ever shave again, and the thought gave me no tremors. For once in my sober life I was strung up to the gambler's pitch of adventure. My job was to go to Umvelos' as if on my ordinary business, and if possible find out something of the evening's plan of march. The question was how to send back a message to Arcoll, assuming I had any difficulty in getting away. At first this puzzled us both, and then I thought of Colin. I had trained the dog to go home at my bidding, for often when I used to go hunting I would have occasion to visit a kraal where he would have been a nuisance. Accordingly, I resolved to take Colin with me, and, if I got into trouble, to send word by him. I asked about Laputa's knowledge of our preparations. Arcoll was inclined to think that he suspected little. The police and the commandos had been kept very secret, and, besides, they were moving on the high veld and out of the ken of the tribes. Natives, he told me, were not good scouts so far as white man's work was concerned, for they did not understand the meaning of what we did. On the other hand, his own native scouts brought him pretty accurate tidings of any Kaffir movements. He thought that all the bush country of the plain would be closely watched, and that no one would get through without some kind of pass. But he thought also that the storekeeper might be an exception, for his presence would give rise to no suspicions. Almost his last words to me were to come back hell-for-leather if I saw the game was hopeless, and in any case to leave as soon as I got any news. 'If you're there when the march begins,' he said, 'they'll cut your throat for a certainty.' I had all the various police posts on the Berg clear in my mind, so that I would know where to make for if the road to Blaauwildebeestefontein should be closed. I said good-bye to Arcoll and Wardlaw with a light heart, though the schoolmaster broke down and implored me to think better of it. As I turned down into the gorge I heard the sound of horses' feet far behind, and, turning back, saw white riders dismounting at the dorp. At any rate I was leaving the country well guarded in my rear. It was a fine morning in mid-winter, and I was in very good spirits as I jogged on my pony down the steep hill-road, with Colin running beside me. A month before I had taken the same journey, with no suspicion in my head of what the future was to bring. I thought about my Dutch companions, now with their cattle far out on the plains. Did they know of the great danger, I wondered. All the way down the glen I saw no sign of human presence. The game-birds mocked me from the thicket; a brace of white _berghaan_ circled far up in the blue; and I had for pleasant comrade the brawling river. I dismounted once to drink, and in that green haven of flowers and ferns I was struck sharply with a sense of folly. Here were we wretched creatures of men making for each other's throats, and outraging the good earth which God had made so fair a habitation. I had resolved on a short cut to Umvelos', avoiding the neighbourhood of Sikitola's kraal, so when the river emerged from the glen I crossed it and struck into the bush. I had not gone far before I realized that something strange was going on. It was like the woods on the Berg a week before. I had the impression of many people moving in the bush, and now and then I caught a glimpse of them. My first thought was that I should be stopped, but soon it appeared that these folk had business of their own which did not concern me. I was conscious of being watched, yet it was clear that the bush folk were not there for the purpose of watching me. For a little I kept my spirits, but as the hours passed with the same uncanny hurrying to and fro all about me my nerves began to suffer. Weeks of espionage at Blaauwildebeestefontein had made me jumpy. These people apparently meant me no ill, and had no time to spare on me, But the sensation of moving through them was like walking on a black-dark night with precipices all around. I felt odd quiverings between my shoulder blades where a spear might be expected to lodge. Overhead was a great blue sky and a blazing sun, and I could see the path running clear before me between the walls of scrub. But it was like midnight to me, a midnight of suspicion and unknown perils. I began to wish heartily I had never come. I stopped for my midday meal at a place called Taqui, a grassy glade in the bush where a tiny spring of water crept out from below a big stone, only to disappear in the sand. Here I sat and smoked for half an hour, wondering what was going to become of me. The air was very still, but I could hear the rustle of movement somewhere within a hundred yards. The hidden folk were busy about their own ends, and I regretted that I had not taken the road by Sikitola's and seen how the kraals looked. They must be empty now, for the young men were already out on some mission. So nervous I got that I took my pocket-book and wrote down certain messages to my mother, which I implored whoever should find my body to transmit. Then, a little ashamed of my childishness, I pulled myself together, and remounted. About three in the afternoon I came over a low ridge of bush and saw the corrugated iron roof of the store and the gleam of water from the Labongo. The sight encouraged me, for at any rate it meant the end of this disquieting ride. Here the bush changed to trees of some size, and after leaving the ridge the road plunged for a little into a thick shade. I had forgotten for a moment the folk in the bush, and when a man stepped out of the thicket I pulled up my horse with a start. It was a tall native, who carried himself proudly, and after a glance at me, stalked along at my side. He wore curious clothes, for he had a kind of linen tunic, and around his waist hung a kilt of leopard-skin. In such a man one would have looked for a _ting-kop_,[1] but instead he had a mass of hair, not like a Kaffir's wool, but long and curled like some popular musician's. I should have been prepared for the face, but the sight of it sent a sudden chill of fright through my veins. For there was the curved nose, the deep flashing eyes, and the cruel lips of my enemy of the Kirkcaple shore. Colin was deeply suspicious and followed his heels growling, but he never turned his head. 'The day is warm, father,' I said in Kaffir. 'Do you go far?' He slackened his pace till he was at my elbow. 'But a short way, Baas,' he replied in English; 'I go to the store yonder.' 'Well met, then,' said I, 'for I am the storekeeper. You will find little in it, for it is newly built and not yet stocked. I have ridden over to see to it.' He turned his face to me. 'That is bad news. I had hoped for food and drink yonder. I have travelled far, and in the chill nights I desire a cover for my head. Will the Baas allow me to sleep the night in an outhouse?' By this time I had recovered my nerve, and was ready to play the part I had determined on. 'Willingly,' I said. 'You may sleep in the storeroom if you care. You will find sacks for bedding, and the place is snug enough on a cold night.' He thanked me with a grave dignity which I had never seen in any Kaffir. As my eye fell on his splendid proportions I forgot all else in my admiration of the man. In his minister's clothes he had looked only a heavily built native, but now in his savage dress I saw how noble a figure he made. He must have been at least six feet and a half, but his chest was so deep and his shoulders so massive that one did not remark his height. He put a hand on my saddle, and I remember noting how slim and fine it was, more like a high-bred woman's than a man's. Curiously enough he filled me with a certain confidence. 'I do not think you will cut my throat,' I said to myself. 'Your game is too big for common murder.' The store at Umvelos' stood as I had left it. There was the sjambok I had forgotten still lying on the window sill. I unlocked the door, and a stifling smell of new paint came out to meet me. Inside there was nothing but the chairs and benches, and in a corner the pots and pans I had left against my next visit. I unlocked the cupboard and got out a few stores, opened the windows of the bedroom next door, and flung my kaross on the cartel which did duty as bed. Then I went out to find Laputa standing patiently in the sunshine. I showed him the outhouse where I had said he might sleep. It was the largest room in the store, but wholly unfurnished. A pile of barrels and packing-cases stood in the corner, and there was enough sacking to make a sort of bed. 'I am going to make tea,' I said. 'If you have come far you would maybe like a cup?' He thanked me, and I made a fire in the grate and put on the kettle to boil. Then I set on the table biscuits, and sardines, and a pot of jam. It was my business now to play the fool, and I believe I succeeded to admiration in the part. I blush to-day to think of the stuff I talked. First I made him sit on a chair opposite me, a thing no white man in the country would have done. Then I told him affectionately that I liked natives, that they were fine fellows and better men than the dirty whites round about. I explained that I was fresh from England, and believed in equal rights for all men, white or coloured. God forgive me, but I think I said I hoped to see the day when Africa would belong once more to its rightful masters. He heard me with an impassive face, his grave eyes studying every line of me. I am bound to add that he made a hearty meal, and drank three cups of strong tea of my brewing. I gave him a cigar, one of a lot I had got from a Dutch farmer who was experimenting with their manufacture--and all the while I babbled of myself and my opinions. He must have thought me half-witted, and indeed before long I began to be of the same opinion myself. I told him that I meant to sleep the night here, and go back in the morning to Blaauwildebeestefontein, and then to Pietersdorp for stores. By-and-by I could see that he had ceased to pay any attention to what I said. I was clearly set down in his mind as a fool. Instead he kept looking at Colin, who was lying blinking in the doorway, one wary eye cocked on the stranger. 'You have a fine dog,' he observed. 'Yes,' I agreed, with one final effort of mendacity, 'he's fine to look at, but he has no grit in him. Any mongrel from a kraal can make him turn tail. Besides, he is a born fool and can't find his way home. I'm thinking of getting rid of him.' Laputa rose and his eye fell on the dog's back. I could see that he saw the lie of his coat, and that he did not agree with me. 'The food was welcome, Baas,' he said. 'If you will listen to me I can repay hospitality with advice. You are a stranger here. Trouble comes, and if you are wise you will go back to the Berg.' 'I don't know what you mean,' I said, with an air of cheerful idiocy. 'But back to the Berg I go the first thing in the morning. I hate these stinking plains.' 'It were wise to go to-night,' he said, with a touch of menace in his tone. 'I can't,' I said, and began to sing the chorus of a ridiculous music-hall song-- 'There's no place like home--but I'm afraid to go home in the dark.' Laputa shrugged his shoulders, stepped over the bristling Colin, and went out. When I looked after him two minutes later he had disappeared. [1] The circlet into which, with the aid of gum, Zulu warriors weave their hair. CHAPTER IX THE STORE AT UMVELOS' I sat down on a chair and laboured to collect my thoughts. Laputa had gone, and would return sooner or later with Henriques. If I was to remain alive till morning, both of them must be convinced that I was harmless. Laputa was probably of that opinion, but Henriques would recognize me, and I had no wish to have that yellow miscreant investigating my character. There was only one way out of it--I must be incapably drunk. There was not a drop of liquor in the store, but I found an old whisky bottle half full of methylated spirits. With this I thought I might raise an atmosphere of bad whisky, and for the rest I must trust to my meagre gifts as an actor. Supposing I escaped suspicion, Laputa and Henriques would meet in the outhouse, and I must find some means of overhearing them. Here I was fairly baffled. There was no window in the outhouse save in the roof, and they were sure to shut and bolt the door. I might conceal myself among the barrels inside; but apart from the fact that they were likely to search them before beginning their conference, it was quite certain that they would satisfy themselves that I was safe in the other end of the building before going to the outhouse. Suddenly I thought of the cellar which we had built below the store. There was an entrance by a trap-door behind the counter, and another in the outhouse. I had forgotten the details, but my hope was that the second was among the barrels. I shut the outer door, prised up the trap, and dropped into the vault, which had been floored roughly with green bricks. Lighting match after match, I crawled to the other end and tried to lift the door. It would not stir, so I guessed that the barrels were on the top of it. Back to the outhouse I went, and found that sure enough a heavy packing-case was standing on a corner. I fixed it slightly open, so as to let me hear, and so arranged the odds and ends round about it that no one looking from the floor of the outhouse would guess at its existence. It occurred to me that the conspirators would want seats, so I placed two cases at the edge of the heap, that they might not be tempted to forage in the interior. This done, I went back to the store and proceeded to rig myself out for my part. The cellar had made me pretty dirty, and I added some new daubs to my face. My hair had grown longish, and I ran my hands through it till it stood up like a cockatoo's crest. Then I cunningly disposed the methylated spirits in the places most likely to smell. I burned a little on the floor, I spilt some on the counter and on my hands, and I let it dribble over my coat. In five minutes I had made the room stink like a shebeen. I loosened the collar of my shirt, and when I looked at myself in the cover of my watch I saw a specimen of debauchery which would have done credit to a Saturday night's police cell. By this time the sun had gone down, but I thought it better to kindle no light. It was the night of the full moon--for which reason, I supposed, Laputa had selected it--and in an hour or two the world would be lit with that ghostly radiance. I sat on the counter while the minutes passed, and I confess I found the time of waiting very trying for my courage. I had got over my worst nervousness by having something to do, but whenever I was idle my fears returned. Laputa had a big night's work before him, and must begin soon. My vigil, I told myself, could not be long. My pony was stalled in a rough shed we had built opposite the store. I could hear him shaking his head and stamping the ground above the croaking of the frogs by the Labongo. Presently it seemed to me that another sound came from behind the store--the sound of horses' feet and the rattle of bridles. It was hushed for a moment, and then I heard human voices. The riders had tied up their horses to a tree and were coming nearer. I sprawled gracefully on the counter, the empty bottle in my hand, and my eyes fixed anxiously on the square of the door, which was filled with the blue glimmer of the late twilight. The square darkened, and two men peered in. Colin growled from below the counter, but with one hand I held the scruff of his neck. 'Hullo,' I said, 'ish that my black friend? Awfly shorry, old man, but I've f'nish'd th' whisky. The bo-o-ottle shempty,' and I waved it upside down with an imbecile giggle. Laputa said something which I did not catch. Henriques laughed an ugly laugh. 'We had better make certain of him,' he said. The two argued for a minute, and then Laputa seemed to prevail. The door was shut and the key, which I had left in the lock, turned on me. I gave them five minutes to get to the outhouse and settle to business. Then I opened the trap, got into the cellar, and crawled to the other end. A ray of light was coming through the partially raised door. By a blessed chance some old bricks had been left behind, and of these I made a footstool, which enabled me to get my back level with the door and look out. My laager of barrels was intact, but through a gap I had left I could see the two men sitting on the two cases I had provided for them. A lantern was set between them, and Henriques was drinking out of a metal flask. He took something--I could not see what--out of his pocket, and held it before his companion. 'Spoils of war,' he said. 'I let Sikitola's men draw first blood. They needed it to screw up their courage. Now they are as wild as Umbooni's. Laputa asked a question. 'It was the Dutchmen, who were out on the Koodoo Flats with their cattle. Man, it's no good being squeamish. Do you think you can talk over these surly back-veld fools? If we had not done it, the best of their horses would now be over the Berg to give warning. Besides, I tell you, Sikitola's men wanted blooding. I did for the old swine, Coetzee, with my own hands. Once he set his dogs on me, and I don't forget an injury.' Laputa must have disapproved, for Henriques' voice grew high. 'Run the show the way you please,' he cried; 'but don't blame me if you make a hash of it. God, man, do you think you are going to work a revolution on skim milk? If I had my will, I would go in and stick a knife in the drunken hog next door.' 'He is safe enough,' Laputa replied. 'I gave him the chance of life, and he laughed at me. He won't get far on his road home.' This was pleasant hearing for me, but I scarcely thought of myself. I was consumed with a passion of fury against the murdering yellow devil. With Laputa I was not angry; he was an open enemy, playing a fair game. But my fingers itched to get at the Portugoose--that double-dyed traitor to his race. As I thought of my kindly old friends, lying butchered with their kinsfolk out in the bush, hot tears of rage came to my eyes. Perfect love casteth out fear, the Bible says; but, to speak it reverently, so does perfect hate. Not for safety and a king's ransom would I have drawn back from the game. I prayed for one thing only, that God in His mercy would give me the chance of settling with Henriques. I fancy I missed some of the conversation, being occupied with my own passion. At any rate, when I next listened the two were deep in plans. Maps were spread beside them, and Laputa's delicate forefinger was tracing a route. I strained my ears, but could catch only a few names. Apparently they were to keep in the plains till they had crossed the Klein Labongo and the Letaba. I thought I caught the name of the ford of the latter; it sounded like Dupree's Drift. After that the talk became plainer, for Laputa was explaining in his clear voice. The force would leave the bush, ascend the Berg by the glen of the Groot Letaba, and the first halt would be called at a place called Inanda's Kraal, where a promontory of the high-veld juts out behind the peaks called the Wolkberg or Cloud Mountains. All this was very much to the point, and the names sunk into my memory like a die into wax. 'Meanwhile,' said Laputa, 'there is the gathering at Ntabakaikonjwa.[1] It will take us three hours' hard riding to get there.' Where on earth was Ntabakaikonjwa? It must be the native name for the Rooirand, for after all Laputa was not likely to use the Dutch word for his own sacred place. 'Nothing has been forgotten. The men are massed below the cliffs, and the chiefs and the great indunas will enter the Place of the Snake. The door will be guarded, and only the password will get a man through. That word is "Immanuel," which means, "God with us."' 'Well, when we get there, what happens?' Henriques asked with a laugh. 'What kind of magic will you spring on us?' There was a strong contrast between the flippant tone of the Portugoose and the grave voice which answered him. 'The Keeper of the Snake will open the holy place, and bring forth the Isetembiso sami.[2] As the leader of my people, I will assume the collar of Umkulunkulu in the name of our God and the spirits of the great dead.' 'But you don't propose to lead the march in a necklace of rubies,' said Henriques, with a sudden eagerness in his voice. Again Laputa spoke gravely, and, as it were, abstractedly. I heard the voice of one whose mind was fixed on a far horizon. 'When I am acclaimed king, I restore the Snake to its Keeper, and swear never to clasp it on my neck till I have led my people to victory.' 'I see,' said Henriques. 'What about the purification you mentioned?' I had missed this before and listened earnestly. 'The vows we take in the holy place bind us till we are purged of them at Inanda's Kraal. Till then no blood must be shed and no flesh eaten. It was the fashion of our forefathers.' 'Well, I think you've taken on a pretty risky job,' Henriques said. 'You propose to travel a hundred miles, binding yourself not to strike a blow. It is simply putting yourself at the mercy of any police patrol.' 'There will be no patrol,' Laputa replied. 'Our march will be as secret and as swift as death. I have made my preparations.' 'But suppose you met with opposition,' the Portugoose persisted, 'would the rule hold?' 'If any try to stop us, we shall tie them hand and foot, and carry them with us. Their fate will be worse than if they had been slain in battle.' 'I see,' said Henriques, whistling through his teeth. 'Well, before we start this vow business, I think I'll go back and settle that storekeeper.' Laputa shook his head. 'Will you be serious and hear me? We have no time to knife harmless fools. Before we start for Ntabakaikonjwa I must have from you the figures of the arming in the south. That is the one thing which remains to be settled.' I am certain these figures would have been most interesting, but I never heard them. My feet were getting cramped with standing on the bricks, and I inadvertently moved them. The bricks came down with a rattle, and unfortunately in slipping I clutched at the trap. This was too much for my frail prop, and the door slammed down with a great noise. Here was a nice business for the eavesdropper! I scurried along the passage as stealthily as I could and clambered back into the store, while I heard the sound of Laputa and Henriques ferreting among the barrels. I managed to throttle Colin and prevent him barking, but I could not get the confounded trap to close behind me. Something had jammed in it, and it remained half a foot open. I heard the two approaching the door, and I did the best thing that occurred to me. I pulled Colin over the trap, rolled on the top of him, and began to snore heavily as if in a drunken slumber. The key was turned, and the gleam of a lantern was thrown on the wall. It flew up and down as its bearer cast the light into the corners. 'By God, he's gone,' I heard Henriques say. 'The swine was listening, and he has bolted now.' 'He won't bolt far,' Laputa said. 'He is here. He is snoring behind the counter.' These were anxious moments for me. I had a firm grip on Colin's throat, but now and then a growl escaped, which was fortunately blended with my snores. I felt that a lantern was flashed on me, and that the two men were peering down at the heap on the half-opened trap. I think that was the worst minute I ever spent, for, as I have said, my courage was not so bad in action, but in a passive game it oozed out of my fingers. 'He is safe enough,' Laputa said, after what seemed to me an eternity. 'The noise was only the rats among the barrels.' I thanked my Maker that they had not noticed the other trap-door. 'All the same I think I'll make him safer,' said Henriques. Laputa seemed to have caught him by the arm. 'Come back and get to business,' he said. 'I've told you I'll have no more murder. You will do as I tell you, Mr Henriques.' I did not catch the answer, but the two went out and locked the door. I patted the outraged Colin, and got to my feet with an aching side where the confounded lid of the trap had been pressing. There was no time to lose for the two in the outhouse would soon be setting out, and I must be before them. With no better light than a ray of the moon through the window, I wrote a message on a leaf from my pocket-book. I told of the plans I had overheard, and especially I mentioned Dupree's Drift on the Letaba. I added that I was going to the Rooirand to find the secret of the cave, and in one final sentence implored Arcoll to do justice on the Portugoose. That was all, for I had no time for more. I carefully tied the paper with a string below the collar of the dog. Then very quietly I went into the bedroom next door--the side of the store farthest from the outhouse. The place was flooded with moonlight, and the window stood open, as I had left it in the afternoon. As softly as I could I swung Colin over the sill and clambered after him. In my haste I left my coat behind me with my pistol in the pocket. Now came a check. My horse was stabled in the shed, and that was close to the outhouse. The sound of leading him out would most certainly bring Laputa and Henriques to the door. In that moment I all but changed my plans. I thought of slipping back to the outhouse and trying to shoot the two men as they came forth. But I reflected that, before I could get them both, one or other would probably shoot me. Besides, I had a queer sort of compunction about killing Laputa. I understood now why Arcoll had stayed his hand from murder, and I was beginning to be of his opinion on our arch-enemy. Then I remembered the horses tied up in the bush. One of them I could get with perfect safety. I ran round the end of the store and into the thicket, keeping on soft grass to dull my tread. There, tied up to a merula tree, were two of the finest beasts I had seen in Africa. I selected the better, an Africander stallion of the _blaauw-schimmel_, or blue-roan type, which is famous for speed and endurance. Slipping his bridle from the branch, I led him a little way into the bush in the direction of the Rooirand. Then I spoke to Colin. 'Home with you,' I said. 'Home, old man, as if you were running down a tsessebe.'[3] The dog seemed puzzled. 'Home,' I said again, pointing west in the direction of the Berg. 'Home, you brute.' And then he understood. He gave one low whine, and cast a reproachful eye on me and the blue roan. Then he turned, and with his head down set off with great lopes on the track of the road I had ridden in the morning. A second later and I was in the saddle, riding hell-for-leather for the north. [1] Literally, 'The Hill which is not to be pointed at'. [2] Literally, 'Very sacred thing'. [3] A species of buck, famous for its speed. CHAPTER X I GO TREASURE-HUNTING For a mile or so I kept the bush, which was open and easy to ride through, and then turned into the path. The moon was high, and the world was all a dim dark green, with the track a golden ivory band before me. I had looked at my watch before I started, and seen that it was just after eight o'clock. I had a great horse under me, and less than thirty miles to cover. Midnight should see me at the cave. With the password I would gain admittance, and there would wait for Laputa and Henriques. Then, if my luck held, I should see the inner workings of the mystery which had puzzled me ever since the Kirkcaple shore. No doubt I should be roughly treated, tied up prisoner, and carried with the army when the march began. But till Inanda's Kraal my life was safe, and before that came the ford of the Letaba. Colin would carry my message to Arcoll, and at the Drift the tables would be turned on Laputa's men. Looking back in cold blood, it seems the craziest chain of accidents to count on for preservation. A dozen possibilities might have shattered any link of it. The password might be wrong, or I might never get the length of those who knew it. The men in the cave might butcher me out of hand, or Laputa might think my behaviour a sufficient warrant for the breach of the solemnest vow. Colin might never get to Blaauwildebeestefontein, Laputa might change his route of march, or Arcoll's men might fail to hold the Drift. Indeed, the other day at Portincross I was so overcome by the recollection of the perils I had dared and God's goodness towards me that I built a new hall for the parish kirk as a token of gratitude. Fortunately for mankind the brain in a life of action turns more to the matter in hand than to conjuring up the chances of the future. Certainly it was in no discomfort of mind that I swung along the moonlit path to the north. Truth to tell, I was almost happy. The first honours in the game had fallen to me. I knew more about Laputa than any man living save Henriques; I had my finger on the central pulse of the rebellion. There was hid treasure ahead of me--a great necklace of rubies, Henriques had said. Nay, there must be more, I argued. This cave of the Rooirand was the headquarters of the rising, and there must be stored their funds--diamonds, and the gold they had been bartered for. I believe that every man has deep in his soul a passion for treasure-hunting, which will often drive a coward into prodigies of valour. I lusted for that treasure of jewels and gold. Once I had been high-minded, and thought of my duty to my country, but in that night ride I fear that what I thought of was my duty to enrich David Crawfurd. One other purpose simmered in my head. I was devoured with wrath against Henriques. Indeed, I think that was the strongest motive for my escapade, for even before I heard Laputa tell of the vows and the purification, I had it in my mind to go at all costs to the cave. I am a peaceable man at most times, but I think I would rather have had the Portugoose's throat in my hands than the collar of Prester John. But behind my thoughts was one master-feeling, that Providence had given me my chance and I must make the most of it. Perhaps the Calvinism of my father's preaching had unconsciously taken grip of my soul. At any rate I was a fatalist in creed, believing that what was willed would happen, and that man was but a puppet in the hands of his Maker. I looked on the last months as a clear course which had been mapped out for me. Not for nothing had I been given a clue to the strange events which were coming. It was foreordained that I should go alone to Umvelos', and in the promptings of my own fallible heart I believed I saw the workings of Omnipotence. Such is our moral arrogance, and yet without such a belief I think that mankind would have ever been content to bide sluggishly at home. I passed the spot where on my former journey I had met the horses, and knew that I had covered more than half the road. My ear had been alert for the sound of pursuit, but the bush was quiet as the grave. The man who rode my pony would find him a slow traveller, and I pitied the poor beast bucketed along by an angry rider. Gradually a hazy wall of purple began to shimmer before me, apparently very far off. I knew the ramparts of the Rooirand, and let my _schimmel_ feel my knees in his ribs. Within an hour I should be at the cliff's foot. I had trusted for safety to the password, but as it turned out I owed my life mainly to my horse. For, a mile or so from the cliffs, I came to the fringes of a great army. The bush was teeming with men, and I saw horses picketed in bunches, and a multitude of Cape-carts and light wagons. It was like a colossal gathering for _naachtmaal_[1] at a Dutch dorp, but every man was black. I saw through a corner of my eye that they were armed with guns, though many carried in addition their spears and shields. Their first impulse was to stop me. I saw guns fly to shoulders, and a rush towards the path. The boldest game was the safest, so I dug my heels into the _schimmel_ and shouted for a passage. 'Make way!' I cried in Kaffir. 'I bear a message from the Inkulu.[2] Clear out, you dogs!' They recognized the horse, and fell back with a salute. Had I but known it, the beast was famed from the Zambesi to the Cape. It was their king's own charger I rode, and who dared question such a warrant? I heard the word pass through the bush, and all down the road I got the salute. In that moment I fervently thanked my stars that I had got away first, for there would have been no coming second for me. At the cliff-foot I found a double line of warriors who had the appearance of a royal guard, for all were tall men with leopard-skin cloaks. Their rifle-barrels glinted in the moon-light, and the sight sent a cold shiver down my back. Above them, among the scrub and along the lower slopes of the kranzes, I could see further lines with the same gleaming weapons. The Place of the Snake was in strong hands that night. I dismounted and called for a man to take my horse. Two of the guards stepped forward in silence and took the bridle. This left the track to the cave open, and with as stiff a back as I could command, but a sadly fluttering heart, I marched through the ranks. The path was lined with guards, all silent and rigid as graven images. As I stumbled over the stones I felt that my appearance scarcely fitted the dignity of a royal messenger. Among those splendid men-at-arms I shambled along in old breeches and leggings, hatless, with a dirty face, dishevelled hair, and a torn flannel shirt. My mind was no better than my body, for now that I had arrived I found my courage gone. Had it been possible I would have turned tail and fled, but the boats were burned behind me, and I had no choice. I cursed my rash folly, and wondered at my exhilaration of an hour ago. I was going into the black mysterious darkness, peopled by ten thousand cruel foes. My knees rubbed against each other, and I thought that no man had ever been in more deadly danger. At the entrance to the gorge the guards ceased and I went on alone. Here there was no moonlight, and I had to feel my way by the sides. I moved very slowly, wondering how soon I should find the end my folly demanded. The heat of the ride had gone, and I remember feeling my shirt hang clammily on my shoulders. Suddenly a hand was laid on my breast, and a voice demanded, 'The word?' 'Immanuel,' I said hoarsely. Then unseen hands took both my arms, and I was led farther into the darkness. My hopes revived for a second. The password had proved true, and at any rate I should enter the cave. In the darkness I could see nothing, but I judged that we stopped before the stone slab which, as I remembered, filled the extreme end of the gorge. My guide did something with the right-hand wall, and I felt myself being drawn into a kind of passage. It was so narrow that two could not go abreast, and so low that the creepers above scraped my hair. Something clicked behind me like the turnstile at the gate of a show. Then we began to ascend steps, still in utter darkness, and a great booming fell on my ear. It was the falling river which had scared me on my former visit, and I marvelled that I had not heard it sooner. Presently we came out into a gleam of moonlight, and I saw that we were inside the gorge and far above the slab. We followed a narrow shelf on its left side (or 'true right', as mountaineers would call it) until we could go no farther. Then we did a terrible thing. Across the gorge, which here was at its narrowest, stretched a slab of stone. Far, far below I caught the moonlight on a mass of hurrying waters. This was our bridge, and though I have a good head for crags, I confess I grew dizzy as we turned to cross it. Perhaps it was broader than it looked; at any rate my guides seemed to have no fear, and strode across it as if it was a highway, while I followed in a sweat of fright. Once on the other side, I was handed over to a second pair of guides, who led me down a high passage running into the heart of the mountain. The boom of the river sank and rose as the passage twined. Soon I saw a gleam of light ahead which was not the moon. It grew larger, until suddenly the roof rose and I found myself in a gigantic chamber. So high it was that I could not make out anything of the roof, though the place was brightly lit with torches stuck round the wall, and a great fire which burned at the farther end. But the wonder was on the left side, where the floor ceased in a chasm. The left wall was one sheet of water, where the river fell from the heights into the infinite depth, below. The torches and the fire made the sheer stream glow and sparkle like the battlements of the Heavenly City. I have never seen any sight so beautiful or so strange, and for a second my breath stopped in admiration. There were two hundred men or more in the chamber, but so huge was the place that they seemed only a little company. They sat on the ground in a circle, with their eyes fixed on the fire and on a figure which stood before it. The glow revealed the old man I had seen on that morning a month before moving towards the cave. He stood as if in a trance, straight as a tree, with his arms crossed on his breast. A robe of some shining white stuff fell from his shoulders, and was clasped round his middle by a broad circle of gold. His head was shaven, and on his forehead was bound a disc of carved gold. I saw from his gaze that his old eyes were blind. 'Who comes?' he asked as I entered. 'A messenger from the Inkulu,' I spoke up boldly. 'He follows soon with the white man, Henriques.' Then I sat down in the back row of the circle to await events. I noticed that my neighbour was the fellow 'Mwanga whom I had kicked out of the store. Happily I was so dusty that he could scarcely recognize me, but I kept my face turned away from him. What with the light and the warmth, the drone of the water, the silence of the folk, and my mental and physical stress, I grew drowsy and all but slept. [1] The Communion Sabbath. [2] A title applied only to the greatest chiefs. CHAPTER XI THE CAVE OF THE ROOIRAND I was roused by a sudden movement. The whole assembly stood up, and each man clapped his right hand to his brow and then raised it high. A low murmur of 'Inkulu' rose above the din of the water. Laputa strode down the hall, with Henriques limping behind him. They certainly did not suspect my presence in the cave, nor did Laputa show any ruffling of his calm. Only Henriques looked weary and cross. I guessed he had had to ride my pony. The old man whom I took to be the priest advanced towards Laputa with his hands raised over his head. A pace before they met he halted, and Laputa went on his knees before him. He placed his hands on his head, and spoke some words which I could not understand. It reminded me, so queer are the tricks of memory, of an old Sabbath-school book I used to have which had a picture of Samuel ordaining Saul as king of Israel. I think I had forgotten my own peril and was enthralled by the majesty of the place--the wavering torches, the dropping wall of green water, above all, the figures of Laputa and the Keeper of the Snake, who seemed to have stepped out of an antique world. Laputa stripped off his leopard skin till he stood stark, a noble form of a man. Then the priest sprinkled some herbs on the fire, and a thin smoke rose to the roof. The smell was that I had smelled on the Kirkcaple shore, sweet, sharp, and strange enough to chill the marrow. And round the fire went the priest in widening and contracting circles, just as on that Sabbath evening in spring. Once more we were sitting on the ground, all except Laputa and the Keeper. Henriques was squatting in the front row, a tiny creature among so many burly savages. Laputa stood with bent head in the centre. Then a song began, a wild incantation in which all joined. The old priest would speak some words, and the reply came in barbaric music. The words meant nothing to me; they must have been in some tongue long since dead. But the music told its own tale. It spoke of old kings and great battles, of splendid palaces and strong battlements, of queens white as ivory, of death and life, love and hate, joy and sorrow. It spoke, too, of desperate things, mysteries of horror long shut to the world. No Kaffir ever forged that ritual. It must have come straight from Prester John or Sheba's queen, or whoever ruled in Africa when time was young. I was horribly impressed. Devouring curiosity and a lurking nameless fear filled my mind. My old dread had gone. I was not afraid now of Kaffir guns, but of the black magic of which Laputa had the key. The incantation died away, but still herbs were flung on the fire, till the smoke rose in a great cloud, through which the priest loomed misty and huge. Out of the smoke-wreaths his voice came high and strange. It was as if some treble stop had been opened in a great organ, as against the bass drone of the cataract. He was asking Laputa questions, to which came answers in that rich voice which on board the liner had preached the gospel of Christ. The tongue I did not know, and I doubt if my neighbours were in better case. It must have been some old sacred language--Phoenician, Sabaean, I know not what--which had survived in the rite of the Snake. Then came silence while the fire died down and the smoke eddied away in wreaths towards the river. The priest's lips moved as if in prayer: of Laputa I saw only the back, and his head was bowed. Suddenly a rapt cry broke from the Keeper. 'God has spoken,' he cried. 'The path is clear. The Snake returns to the House of its Birth.' An attendant led forward a black goat, which bleated feebly. With a huge antique knife the old man slit its throat, catching the blood in a stone ewer. Some was flung on the fire, which had burned small and low. 'Even so,' cried the priest, 'will the king quench in blood the hearth-fires of his foes.' Then on Laputa's forehead and bare breast he drew a bloody cross. 'I seal thee,' said the voice, 'priest and king of God's people.' The ewer was carried round the assembly, and each dipped his finger in it and marked his forehead. I got a dab to add to the other marks on my face. 'Priest and king of God's people,' said the voice again, 'I call thee to the inheritance of John. Priest and king was he, king of kings, lord of hosts, master of the earth. When he ascended on high he left to his son the sacred Snake, the ark of his valour, to be God's dower and pledge to the people whom He has chosen.' I could not make out what followed. It seemed to be a long roll of the kings who had borne the Snake. None of them I knew, but at the end I thought I caught the name of Tchaka the Terrible, and I remembered Arcoll's tale. The Keeper held in his arms a box of curiously wrought ivory, about two feet long and one broad. He was standing beyond the ashes, from which, in spite of the blood, thin streams of smoke still ascended. He opened it, and drew out something which swung from his hand like a cascade of red fire. 'Behold the Snake,' cried the Keeper, and every man in the assembly, excepting Laputa and including me, bowed his head to the ground and cried 'Ow.' 'Ye who have seen the Snake,' came the voice, 'on you is the vow of silence and peace. No blood shall ye shed of man or beast, no flesh shall ye eat till the vow is taken from you. From the hour of midnight till sunrise on the second day ye are bound to God. Whoever shall break the vow, on him shall the curse fall. His blood shall dry in his veins, and his flesh shrink on his bones. He shall be an outlaw and accursed, and there shall follow him through life and death the Avengers of the Snake. Choose ye, my people; upon you is the vow.' By this time we were all flat on our faces, and a great cry of assent went up. I lifted my head as much as I dared to see what would happen next. The priest raised the necklace till it shone above his head like a halo of blood. I have never seen such a jewel, and I think there has never been another such on earth. Later I was to have the handling of it, and could examine it closely, though now I had only a glimpse. There were fifty-five rubies in it, the largest as big as a pigeon's egg, and the least not smaller than my thumbnail. In shape they were oval, cut on both sides en cabochon, and on each certain characters were engraved. No doubt this detracted from their value as gems, yet the characters might have been removed and the stones cut in facets, and these rubies would still have been the noblest in the world. I was no jewel merchant to guess their value, but I knew enough to see that here was wealth beyond human computation. At each end of the string was a great pearl and a golden clasp. The sight absorbed me to the exclusion of all fear. I, David Crawfurd, nineteen years of age, an assistant-storekeeper in a back-veld dorp, was privileged to see a sight to which no Portuguese adventurer had ever attained. There, floating on the smoke-wreaths, was the jewel which may once have burned in Sheba's hair. As the priest held the collar aloft, the assembly rocked with a strange passion. Foreheads were rubbed in the dust, and then adoring eyes would be raised, while a kind of sobbing shook the worshippers. In that moment I learned something of the secret of Africa, of Prester John's empire and Tchaka's victories. 'In the name of God,' came the voice, 'I deliver to the heir of John the Snake of John.' Laputa took the necklet and twined it in two loops round his neck till the clasp hung down over his breast. The position changed. The priest knelt before him, and received his hands on his head. Then I knew that, to the confusion of all talk about equality, God has ordained some men to be kings and others to serve. Laputa stood naked as when he was born. The rubies were dulled against the background of his skin, but they still shone with a dusky fire. Above the blood-red collar his face had the passive pride of a Roman emperor. Only his great eyes gloomed and burned as he looked on his followers. 'Heir of John,' he said, 'I stand before you as priest and king. My kingship is for the morrow. Now I am the priest to make intercession for my people.' He prayed--prayed as I never heard man pray before--and to the God of Israel! It was no heathen fetich he was invoking, but the God of whom he had often preached in Christian kirks. I recognized texts from Isaiah and the Psalms and the Gospels, and very especially from the two last chapters of Revelation. He pled with God to forget the sins of his people, to recall the bondage of Zion. It was amazing to hear these bloodthirsty savages consecrated by their leader to the meek service of Christ. An enthusiast may deceive himself, and I did not question his sincerity. I knew his heart, black with all the lusts of paganism. I knew that his purpose was to deluge the land with blood. But I knew also that in his eyes his mission was divine, and that he felt behind him all the armies of Heaven. _'Thou hast been a strength to the poor,' said the voice, 'a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the Terrible Ones is as a storm against a wall._ _'Thou shalt bring down the noise of strangers, as the heat in a dry place; the branch of the Terrible Ones shall be brought low._ _'And in this mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow._ _'And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is brought over all nations._ _'And the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth; for the Lord hath spoken it.'_ I listened spellbound as he prayed. I heard the phrases familiar to me in my schooldays at Kirkcaple. He had some of the tones of my father's voice, and when I shut my eyes I could have believed myself a child again. So much he had got from his apprenticeship to the ministry. I wondered vaguely what the good folks who had listened to him in churches and halls at home would think of him now. But there was in the prayer more than the supplications of the quondam preacher. There was a tone of arrogant pride, the pride of the man to whom the Almighty is only another and greater Lord of Hosts. He prayed less as a suppliant than as an ally. A strange emotion tingled in my blood, half awe, half sympathy. As I have said, I understood that there are men born to kingship. He ceased with a benediction. Then he put on his leopard-skin cloak and kilt, and received from the kneeling chief a spear and shield. Now he was more king than priest, more barbarian than Christian. It was as a king that he now spoke. I had heard him on board the liner, and had thought his voice the most wonderful I had ever met with. But now in that great resonant hall the magic of it was doubled. He played upon the souls of his hearers as on a musical instrument. At will he struck the chords of pride, fury, hate, and mad joy. Now they would be hushed in breathless quiet, and now the place would echo with savage assent. I remember noticing that the face of my neighbour, 'Mwanga, was running with tears. He spoke of the great days of Prester John, and a hundred names I had never heard of. He pictured the heroic age of his nation, when every man was a warrior and hunter, and rich kraals stood in the spots now desecrated by the white man, and cattle wandered on a thousand hills. Then he told tales of white infamy, lands snatched from their rightful possessors, unjust laws which forced the Ethiopian to the bondage of a despised caste, the finger of scorn everywhere, and the mocking word. If it be the part of an orator to rouse the passion of his hearers, Laputa was the greatest on earth. 'What have ye gained from the white man?' he cried. 'A bastard civilization which has sapped your manhood; a false religion which would rivet on you the chains of the slave. Ye, the old masters of the land, are now the servants of the oppressor. And yet the oppressors are few, and the fear of you is in their hearts. They feast in their great cities, but they see the writing on the wall, and their eyes are anxiously turning lest the enemy be at their gates.' I cannot hope in my prosaic words to reproduce that amazing discourse. Phrases which the hearers had heard at mission schools now suddenly appeared, not as the white man's learning, but as God's message to His own. Laputa fitted the key to the cipher, and the meaning was clear. He concluded, I remember, with a picture of the overthrow of the alien, and the golden age which would dawn for the oppressed. Another Ethiopian empire would arise, so majestic that the white man everywhere would dread its name, so righteous that all men under it would live in ease and peace. By rights, I suppose, my blood should have been boiling at this treason. I am ashamed to confess that it did nothing of the sort. My mind was mesmerized by this amazing man. I could not refrain from shouting with the rest. Indeed I was a convert, if there can be conversion when the emotions are dominant and there is no assent from the brain. I had a mad desire to be of Laputa's party. Or rather, I longed for a leader who should master me and make my soul his own, as this man mastered his followers. I have already said that I might have made a good subaltern soldier, and the proof is that I longed for such a general. As the voice ceased there was a deep silence. The hearers were in a sort of trance, their eyes fixed glassily on Laputa's face. It was the quiet of tense nerves and imagination at white-heat. I had to struggle with a spell which gripped me equally with the wildest savage. I forced myself to look round at the strained faces, the wall of the cascade, the line of torches. It was the sight of Henriques that broke the charm. Here was one who had no part in the emotion. I caught his eye fixed on the rubies, and in it I read only a devouring greed. It flashed through my mind that Laputa had a foe in his own camp, and the Prester's collar a votary whose passion was not that of worship. The next thing I remember was a movement among the first ranks. The chiefs were swearing fealty. Laputa took off the collar and called God to witness that it should never again encircle his neck till he had led his people to victory. Then one by one the great chiefs and indunas advanced, and swore allegiance with their foreheads on the ivory box. Such a collection of races has never been seen. There were tall Zulus and Swazis with _ringkops_ and feather head-dresses. There were men from the north with heavy brass collars and anklets; men with quills in their ears, and earrings and nose-rings; shaven heads, and heads with wonderfully twisted hair; bodies naked or all but naked, and bodies adorned with skins and necklets. Some were light in colour, and some were black as coal; some had squat negro features, and some thin, high-boned Arab faces. But in all there was the air of mad enthusiasm. For a day they were forsworn from blood, but their wild eyes and twitching hands told their future purpose. For an hour or two I had been living in a dream-world. Suddenly my absorption was shattered, for I saw that my time to swear was coming. I sat in the extreme back row at the end nearest the entrance, and therefore I should naturally be the last to go forward. The crisis was near when I should be discovered, for there was no question of my shirking the oath. Then for the first time since I entered the cave I realized the frightful danger in which I stood. My mind had been strung so high by the ritual that I had forgotten all else. Now came the rebound, and with shaky nerves I had to face discovery and certain punishment. In that moment I suffered the worst terror of my life. There was much to come later, but by that time my senses were dulled. Now they had been sharpened by what I had seen and heard, my nerves were already quivering and my fancy on fire. I felt every limb shaking as 'Mwanga went forward. The cave swam before my eyes, heads were multiplied giddily, and I was only dimly conscious when he rose to return. Nothing would have made me advance, had I not feared Laputa less than my neighbours. They might rend me to pieces, but to him the oath was inviolable. I staggered crazily to my feet, and shambled forwards. My eye was fixed on the ivory box, and it seemed to dance before me and retreat. Suddenly I heard a voice--the voice of Henriques--cry, 'By God, a spy!' I felt my throat caught, but I was beyond resisting. It was released, and I was pinned by the arms. I must have stood vacantly, with a foolish smile, while unchained fury raged round me. I seemed to hear Laputa's voice saying, 'It is the storekeeper.' His face was all that I could see, and it was unperturbed. There was a mocking ghost of a smile about his lips. Myriad hands seemed to grip me and crush my breath, but above the clamour I heard a fierce word of command. After that I fainted. CHAPTER XII CAPTAIN ARCOLL SENDS A MESSAGE I once read--I think in some Latin writer--the story of a man who was crushed to a jelly by the mere repeated touch of many thousand hands. His murderers were not harsh, but an infinite repetition of the gentlest handling meant death. I do not suppose that I was very brutally manhandled in the cave. I was trussed up tight and carried out to the open, and left in the care of the guards. But when my senses returned I felt as if I had been cruelly beaten in every part. The raw-hide bonds chafed my wrists and ankle and shoulders, but they were the least part of my aches. To be handled by a multitude of Kaffirs is like being shaken by some wild animal. Their skins are insensible to pain, and I have seen a Zulu stand on a piece of red-hot iron without noticing it till he was warned by the smell of burning hide. Anyhow, after I had been bound by Kaffir hands and tossed on Kaffir shoulders, I felt as if I had been in a scrimmage of mad bulls. I found myself lying looking up at the moon. It was the edge of the bush, and all around was the stir of the army getting ready for the road. You know how a native babbles and chatters over any work he has to do. It says much for Laputa's iron hand that now everything was done in silence. I heard the nickering of horses and the jolt of carts as they turned from the bush into the path. There was the sound of hurried whispering, and now and then a sharp command. And all the while I lay, staring at the moon and wondering if I was going to keep my reason. If he who reads this doubts the discomfort of bonds let him try them for himself. Let him be bound foot and hand and left alone, and in half an hour he will be screaming for release. The sense of impotence is stifling, and I felt as if I were buried in some landslip instead of lying under the open sky, with the night wind fanning my face. I was in the second stage of panic, which is next door to collapse. I tried to cry, but could only raise a squeak like a bat. A wheel started to run round in my head, and, when I looked at the moon, I saw that it was rotating in time. Things were very bad with me. It was 'Mwanga who saved me from lunacy. He had been appointed my keeper, and the first I knew of it was a violent kick in the ribs. I rolled over on the grass down a short slope. The brute squatted beside me, and prodded me with his gun-barrel. 'Ha, Baas,' he said in his queer English. 'Once you ordered me out of your store and treated me like a dog. It is 'Mwanga's turn now. You are 'Mwanga's dog, and he will skin you with a sjambok soon.' My wandering wits were coming back to me. I looked into his bloodshot eyes and saw what I had to expect. The cheerful savage went on to discuss just the kind of beating I should get from him. My bones were to be uncovered till the lash curled round my heart. Then the jackals would have the rest of me. This was ordinary Kaffir brag, and it made me angry. But I thought it best to go cannily. 'If I am to be your slave,' I managed to say, 'it would be a pity to beat me so hard. You would get no more work out of me.' 'Mwanga grinned wickedly. 'You are my slave for a day and a night. After that we kill you--slowly. You will burn till your legs fall off and your knees are on the ground, and then you will be chopped small with knives.' Thank God, my courage and common sense were coming back to me. 'What happens to me to-morrow,' I said, 'is the Inkulu's business, not yours. I am his prisoner. But if you lift your hand on me to-day so as to draw one drop of blood the Inkulu will make short work of you. The vow is upon you, and if you break it you know what happens.' And I repeated, in a fair imitation of the priest's voice, the terrible curse he had pronounced in the cave. You should have seen the change in that cur's face. I had guessed he was a coward, as he was most certainly a bully, and now I knew it. He shivered, and drew his hand over his eyes. 'Nay, Baas,' he pleaded, 'it was but a joke. No harm shall come on you to-day. But tomorrow--' and his ugly face grew more cheerful. 'To-morrow we shall see what we shall see,' I said stoically, and a loud drum-beat sounded through the camp. It was the signal for moving, for in the east a thin pale line of gold was beginning to show over the trees. The bonds at my knees and ankles were cut, and I was bundled on to the back of a horse. Then my feet were strapped firmly below its belly. The bridle of my beast was tied to 'Mwanga's, so that there was little chance of escape even if I had been unshackled. My thoughts were very gloomy. So far all had happened as I planned, but I seemed to have lost my nerve, and I could not believe in my rescue at the Letaba, while I thought of Inanda's Kraal with sheer horror. Last night I had looked into the heart of darkness, and the sight had terrified me. What part should I play in the great purification? Most likely that of the Biblical scapegoat. But the dolour of my mind was surpassed by the discomfort of my body. I was broken with pains and weariness, and I had a desperate headache. Also, before we had gone a mile, I began to think that I should split in two. The paces of my beast were uneven, to say the best of it, and the bump-bump was like being on the rack. I remembered that the saints of the Covenant used to journey to prison this way, especially the great Mr Peden, and I wondered how they liked it. When I hear of a man doing a brave deed, I always want to discover whether at the time he was well and comfortable in body. That, I am certain, is the biggest ingredient in courage, and those who plan and execute great deeds in bodily weakness have my homage as truly heroic. For myself, I had not the spirit of a chicken as I jogged along at 'Mwanga's side. I wished he would begin to insult me, if only to distract my mind, but he kept obstinately silent. He was sulky, and I think rather afraid of me. As the sun got up I could see something of the host around me. I am no hand at guessing numbers, but I should put the fighting men I saw at not less than twenty thousand. Every man of them was on this side his prime, and all were armed with good rifles and bandoliers. There were none of your old roers[1] and decrepit Enfields, which I had seen signs of in Kaffir kraals. These guns were new, serviceable Mausers, and the men who bore them looked as if they knew how to handle them. There must have been long months of training behind this show, and I marvelled at the man who had organized it. I saw no field-guns, and the little transport they had was evidently for food only. We did not travel in ranks like an orthodox column. About a third of the force was mounted, and this formed the centre. On each wing the infantry straggled far afield, but there was method in their disorder, for in the bush close ranks would have been impossible. At any rate we kept wonderfully well together, and when we mounted a knoll the whole army seemed to move in one piece. I was well in the rear of the centre column, but from the crest of a slope I sometimes got a view in front. I could see nothing of Laputa, who was probably with the van, but in the very heart of the force I saw the old priest of the Snake, with his treasure carried in the kind of litter which the Portuguese call a machila, between rows of guards. A white man rode beside him, whom I judged to be Henriques. Laputa trusted this fellow, and I wondered why. I had not forgotten the look on his face while he had stared at the rubies in the cave. I had a notion that the Portugoose might be an unsuspected ally of mine, though for blackguard reasons. About ten o'clock, as far as I could judge by the sun, we passed Umvelos', and took the right bank of the Labongo. There was nothing in the store to loot, but it was overrun by Kaffirs, who carried off the benches for firewood. It gave me an odd feeling to see the remains of the meal at which I had entertained Laputa in the hands of a dozen warriors. I thought of the long sunny days when I had sat by my nachtmaal while the Dutch farmers rode in to trade. Now these men were all dead, and I was on my way to the same bourne. Soon the blue line of the Berg rose in the west, and through the corner of my eye, as I rode, I could see the gap of the Klein Labongo. I wondered if Arcoll and his men were up there watching us. About this time I began to be so wretched in body that I ceased to think of the future. I had had no food for seventeen hours, and I was dropping from lack of sleep. The ache of my bones was so great that I found myself crying like a baby. What between pain and weakness and nervous exhaustion, I was almost at the end of my tether, and should have fainted dead away if a halt had not been called. But about midday, after we had crossed the track from Blaauwildebeestefontein to the Portuguese frontier, we came to the broad, shallow drift of the Klein Labongo. It is the way of the Kaffirs to rest at noon, and on the other side of the drift we encamped. I remember the smell of hot earth and clean water as my horse scrambled up the bank. Then came the smell of wood-smoke as fires were lit. It seemed an age after we stopped before my feet were loosed and I was allowed to fall over on the ground. I lay like a log where I fell, and was asleep in ten seconds. I awoke two hours later much refreshed, and with a raging hunger. My ankles and knees had been tied again, but the sleep had taken the worst stiffness out of my joints. The natives were squatting in groups round their fires, but no one came near me. I satisfied myself by straining at my bonds that this solitude gave no chance of escape. I wanted food, and I shouted on 'Mwanga, but he never came. Then I rolled over into the shadow of a wacht-en-beetje bush to get out of the glare. I saw a Kaffir on the other side of the bush who seemed to be grinning at me. Slowly he moved round to my side, and stood regarding me with interest. 'For God's sake get me some food,' I said. 'Ja, Baas,' was the answer; and he disappeared for a minute, and returned with a wooden bowl of hot mealie-meal porridge, and a calabash full of water. I could not use my hands, so he fed me with the blade of his knife. Such porridge without salt or cream is beastly food, but my hunger was so great that I could have eaten a vat of it. Suddenly it appeared that the Kaffir had something to say to me. As he fed me he began to speak in a low voice in English. 'Baas,' he said, 'I come from Ratitswan, and I have a message for you.' I guessed that Ratitswan was the native name for Arcoll. There was no one else likely to send a message. 'Ratitswan says,' he went on, "'Look out for Dupree's Drift." I will be near you and cut your bonds; then you must swim across when Ratitswan begins to shoot.' The news took all the weight of care from my mind. Colin had got home, and my friends were out for rescue. So volatile is the mood of 19 that I veered round from black despair to an unwarranted optimism. I saw myself already safe, and Laputa's rising scattered. I saw my hands on the treasure, and Henriques' ugly neck below my heel. 'I don't know your name,' I said to the Kaffir, 'but you are a good fellow. When I get out of this business I won't forget you.' 'There is another message, Baas,' he said. 'It is written on paper in a strange tongue. Turn your head to the bush, and see, I will hold it inside the bowl, that you may read it.' I did as I was told, and found myself looking at a dirty half-sheet of notepaper, marked by the Kaffir's thumbs. Some words were written on it in Wardlaw's hand; and, characteristically, in Latin, which was not a bad cipher. I read-- '_Henricus de Letaba transeunda apud Duprei vada jam nos certiores fecit._'[2] I had guessed rightly. Henriques was a traitor to the cause he had espoused. Arcoll's message had given me new heart, but Wardlaw's gave me information of tremendous value. I repented that I had ever underrated the schoolmaster's sense. He did not come out of Aberdeen for nothing. I asked the Kaffir how far it was to Dupree's Drift, and was told three hours' march. We should get there after the darkening. It seemed he had permission to ride with me instead of 'Mwanga, who had no love for the job. How he managed this I do not know; but Arcoll's men had their own ways of doing things. He undertook to set me free when the first shot was fired at the ford. Meantime I bade him leave me, to avert suspicion. There is a story of one of King Arthur's knights--Sir Percival, I think--that once, riding through a forest, he found a lion fighting with a serpent. He drew his sword and helped the lion, for he thought it was the more natural beast of the two. To me Laputa was the lion, and Henriques the serpent; and though I had no good will to either, I was determined to spoil the serpent's game. He was after the rubies, as I had fancied; he had never been after anything else. He had found out about Arcoll's preparations, and had sent him a warning, hoping, no doubt, that, if Laputa's force was scattered on the Letaba, he would have a chance of getting off with the necklace in the confusion. If he succeeded, he would go over the Lebombo to Mozambique, and whatever happened afterwards in the rising would be no concern of Mr Henriques. I determined that he should fail; but how to manage it I could not see. Had I had a pistol, I think I would have shot him; but I had no weapon of any kind. I could not warn Laputa, for that would seal my own fate, even if I were believed. It was clear that Laputa must go to Dupree's Drift, for otherwise I could not escape; and it was equally clear that I must find the means of spoiling the Portugoose's game. A shadow fell across the sunlight, and I looked up to see the man I was thinking of standing before me. He had a cigarette in his mouth, and his hands in the pockets of his riding-breeches. He stood eyeing me with a curious smile on his face. 'Well, Mr Storekeeper,' he said, 'you and I have met before under pleasanter circumstances.' I said nothing, my mind being busy with what to do at the drift. 'We were shipmates, if I am not mistaken,' he said. 'I dare say you found it nicer work smoking on the after-deck than lying here in the sun.' Still I said nothing. If the man had come to mock me, he would get no change out of David Crawfurd. 'Tut, tut, don't be sulky. You have no quarrel with me. Between ourselves,' and he dropped his voice, 'I tried to save you; but you had seen rather too much to be safe. What devil prompted you to steal a horse and go to the cave? I don't blame you for overhearing us; but if you had had the sense of a louse you would have gone off to the Berg with your news. By the way, how did you manage it? A cellar, I suppose. Our friend Laputa was a fool not to take better precautions; but I must say you acted the drunkard pretty well.' The vanity of 19 is an incalculable thing. I rose to the fly. 'I know the kind of precaution you wanted to take,' I muttered. 'You heard that too? Well, I confess I am in favour of doing a job thoroughly when I take it up.' 'In the Koodoo Flats, for example,' I said. He sat down beside me, and laughed softly. 'You heard my little story? You are clever, Mr Storekeeper, but not quite clever enough. What if I can act a part as well as yourself?' And he thrust his yellow face close to mine. I saw his meaning, and did not for a second believe him; but I had the sense to temporize. 'Do you mean to say that you did not kill the Dutchmen, and did not mean to knife me?' 'I mean to say that I am not a fool,' he said, lighting another cigarette. 'I am a white man, Mr Storekeeper, and I play the white man's game. Why do you think I am here? Simply because I was the only man in Africa who had the pluck to get to the heart of this business. I am here to dish Laputa, and by God I am going to do it.' I was scarcely prepared for such incredible bluff. I knew every word was a lie, but I wanted to hear more, for the man fascinated me. 'I suppose you know what will happen to you,' he said, flicking the ashes from his cigarette. 'To-morrow at Inanda's Kraal, when the vow is over, they will give you a taste of Kaffir habits. Not death, my friend--that would be simple enough--but a slow death with every refinement of horror. You have broken into their sacred places, and you will be sacrificed to Laputa's god. I have seen native torture before, and his own mother would run away shrieking from a man who had endured it.' I said nothing, but the thought made my flesh creep. 'Well,' he went on, 'you're in an awkward plight, but I think I can help you. What if I can save your life, Mr Storekeeper? You are trussed up like a fowl, and can do nothing. I am the only man alive who can help you. I am willing to do it, too--on my own terms.' I did not wait to hear those terms, for I had a shrewd guess what they would be. My hatred of Henriques rose and choked me. I saw murder and trickery in his mean eyes and cruel mouth. I could not, to be saved from the uttermost horror, have made myself his ally. 'Now listen, Mr Portugoose,' I cried. 'You tell me you are a spy. What if I shout that through the camp? There will be short shrift for you if Laputa hears it.' He laughed loudly. 'You are a bigger fool than I took you for. Who would believe you, my friend. Not Laputa. Not any man in this army. It would only mean tighter bonds for these long legs of yours.' By this time I had given up all thought of diplomacy. 'Very well, you yellow-faced devil, you will hear my answer. I would not take my freedom from you, though I were to be boiled alive. I know you for a traitor to the white man's cause, a dirty I.D.B. swindler, whose name is a byword among honest men. By your own confession you are a traitor to this idiot rising. You murdered the Dutchmen and God knows how many more, and you would fain have murdered me. I pray to Heaven that the men whose cause you have betrayed and the men whose cause you would betray may join to stamp the life out of you and send your soul to hell. I know the game you would have me join in, and I fling your offer in your face. But I tell you one thing--you are damned yourself. The white men are out, and you will never get over the Lebombo. From black or white you will get justice before many hours, and your carcass will be left to rot in the bush. Get out of my sight, you swine.' In that moment I was so borne up in my passion that I forgot my bonds and my grave danger. I was inspired like a prophet with a sense of approaching retribution. Henriques heard me out; but his smile changed to a scowl, and a flush rose on his sallow cheek. 'Stew in your own juice,' he said, and spat in my face. Then he shouted in Kaffir that I had insulted him, and demanded that I should be bound tighter and gagged. It was Arcoll's messenger who answered his summons. That admirable fellow rushed at me with a great appearance of savagery. He made a pretence of swathing me up in fresh rawhide ropes, but his knots were loose and the thing was a farce. He gagged me with what looked like a piece of wood, but was in reality a chunk of dry banana. And all the while, till Henriques was out of hearing, he cursed me with a noble gift of tongues. The drums beat for the advance, and once more I was hoisted on my horse, while Arcoll's Kaffir tied my bridle to his own. A Kaffir cannot wink, but he has a way of slanting his eyes which does as well, and as we moved on he would turn his head to me with this strange grimace. Henriques wanted me to help him to get the rubies--that I presumed was the offer he had meant to make. Well, thought I, I will perish before the jewel reaches the Portuguese's hands. He hoped for a stampede when Arcoll opposed the crossing of the river, and in the confusion intended to steal the casket. My plan must be to get as near the old priest as possible before we reached the ford. I spoke to my warder and told him what I wanted. He nodded, and in the first mile we managed to edge a good way forward. Several things came to aid us. As I have said, we of the centre were not marching in close ranks, but in a loose column, and often it was possible by taking a short cut on rough ground to join the column some distance ahead. There was a vlei, too, which many circumvented, but we swam, and this helped our lead. In a couple of hours we were so near the priest's litter that I could have easily tossed a cricket ball on the head of Henriques who rode beside it. Very soon the twilight of the winter day began to fall. The far hills grew pink and mulberry in the sunset, and strange shadows stole over the bush. Still creeping forward, we found ourselves not twenty yards behind the litter, while far ahead I saw a broad, glimmering space of water with a high woody bank beyond. 'Dupree's Drift;' whispered my warder. 'Courage, Inkoos;[3] in an hour's time you will be free.' [1] Boer elephant guns. [2] 'Henriques has already told us about the crossing at Dupree's Drift.' [3] Great chief. CHAPTER XIII THE DRIFT OF THE LETABA The dusk was gathering fast as we neared the stream. From the stagnant reaches above and below a fine white mist was rising, but the long shallows of the ford were clear. My heart was beginning to flutter wildly, but I kept a tight grip on myself and prayed for patience. As I stared into the evening my hopes sank. I had expected, foolishly enough, to see on the far bank some sign of my friends, but the tall bush was dead and silent. The drift slants across the river at an acute angle, roughly S.S.W. I did not know this at the time, and was amazed to see the van of the march turn apparently up stream. Laputa's great voice rang out in some order which was repeated down the column, and the wide flanks of the force converged on the narrow cart-track which entered the water. We had come to a standstill while the front ranks began the passage. I sat shaking with excitement, my eyes straining into the gloom. Water holds the evening light for long, and I could make out pretty clearly what was happening. The leading horsemen rode into the stream with Laputa in front. The ford is not the best going, so they had to pick their way, but in five or ten minutes they were over. Then came some of the infantry of the flanks, who crossed with the water to their waists, and their guns held high above their heads. They made a portentous splashing, but not a sound came from their throats. I shall never know how Laputa imposed silence on the most noisy race on earth. Several thousand footmen must have followed the riders, and disappeared into the far bush. But not a shot came from the bluffs in front. I watched with a sinking heart. Arcoll had failed, and there was to be no check at the drift. There remained for me only the horrors at Inanda's Kraal. I resolved to make a dash for freedom, at all costs, and was in the act of telling Arcoll's man to cut my bonds, when a thought occurred to me. Henriques was after the rubies, and it was his interest to get Laputa across the river before the attack began. It was Arcoll's business to split the force, and above all to hold up the leader. Henriques would tell him, and for that matter he must have assumed himself, that Laputa would ride in the centre of the force. Therefore there would be no check till the time came for the priest's litter to cross. It was well that I had not had my bonds cut. Henriques came riding towards me, his face sharp and bright as a ferret's. He pulled up and asked if I were safe. My Kaffir showed my strapped elbows and feet, and tugged at the cords to prove their tightness. 'Keep him well,' said Henriques, 'or you will answer to Inkulu. Forward with him now and get him through the water.' Then he turned and rode back. My warder, apparently obeying orders, led me out of the column and into the bush on the right hand. Soon we were abreast of the litter and some twenty yards to the west of it. The water gleamed through the trees a few paces in front. I could see the masses of infantry converging on the drift, and the churning like a cascade which they made in the passage. Suddenly from the far bank came an order. It was Laputa's voice, thin and high-pitched, as the Kaffir cries when he wishes his words to carry a great distance. Henriques repeated it, and the infantry halted. The riders of the column in front of the litter began to move into the stream. We should have gone with them, but instead we pulled our horses back into the darkness of the bush. It seemed to me that odd things were happening around the priest's litter. Henriques had left it, and dashed past me so close that I could have touched him. From somewhere among the trees a pistol-shot cracked into the air. As if in answer to a signal the high bluff across the stream burst into a sheet of fire. 'A sheet of fire' sounds odd enough for scientific warfare. I saw that my friends were using shot-guns and firing with black powder into the mob in the water. It was humane and it was good tactics, for the flame in the grey dusk had the appearance of a heavy battery of ordnance. Once again I heard Henriques' voice. He was turning the column to the right. He shouted to them to get into cover, and take the water higher up. I thought, too, that from far away I heard Laputa. These were maddening seconds. We had left the business of cutting my bonds almost too late. In the darkness of the bush the strips of hide could only be felt for, and my Kaffir had a woefully blunt knife. Reims are always tough to sever, and mine had to be sawn through. Soon my arms were free, and I was plucking at my other bonds. The worst were those on my ankles below the horse's belly. The Kaffir fumbled away in the dark, and pricked my beast so that he reared and struck out. And all the while I was choking with impatience, and gabbling prayers to myself. The men on the other side had begun to use ball-cartridge. I could see through a gap the centre of the river, and it was filled with a mass of struggling men and horses. I remember that it amazed me that no shot was fired in return. Then I remembered the vow, and was still more amazed at the power of a ritual on that savage horde. The column was moving past me to the right. It was a disorderly rabble which obeyed Henriques' orders. Bullets began to sing through the trees, and one rider was hit in the shoulder and came down with a crash. This increased the confusion, for most of them dismounted and tried to lead their horses in the cover. The infantry coming in from the wings collided with them, and there was a struggle of excited beasts and men in the thickets of thorn and mopani. And still my Kaffir was trying to get my ankles loose as fast as a plunging horse would let him. At last I was free, and dropped stiffly to the ground. I fell prone on my face with cramp, and when I got up I rolled like a drunk man. Here I made a great blunder. I should have left my horse with my Kaffir, and bidden him follow me. But I was too eager to be cautious, so I let it go, and crying to the Kaffir to await me, I ran towards the litter. Henriques had laid his plans well. The column had abandoned the priest, and by the litter were only the two bearers. As I caught sight of them one fell with a bullet in his chest. The other, wild with fright, kept turning his head to every quarter of the compass. Another bullet passed close to his head. This was too much for him, and with a yell he ran away. As I broke through the thicket I looked to the quarter whence the bullets had come. These, I could have taken my oath, were not fired by my friends on the farther bank. It was close-quarter shooting, and I knew who had done it. But I saw nobody. The last few yards of the road were clear, and only out in the water was the struggling shouting mass of humanity. I saw a tall man on a big horse plunge into the river on his way back. It must be Laputa returning to command the panic. My business was not with Laputa but with Henriques. The old priest in the litter, who had been sleeping, had roused himself, and was looking vacantly round him. He did not look long. A third bullet, fired from a dozen yards away, drilled a hole in his forehead. He fell back dead, and the ivory box, which lay on his lap, tilted forward on the ground. I had no weapon of any kind, and I did not want the fourth bullet for myself. Henriques was too pretty a shot to trifle with. I waited quietly on the edge of the shade till the Portugoose came out of the thicket. I saw him running forward with a rifle in his hand. A whinny from a horse told me that somewhere near his beast was tied up. It was all but dark, but it seemed to me that I could see the lust of greed in his eyes as he rushed to the litter. Very softly I stole behind him. He tore off the lid of the box, and pulled out the great necklace. For a second it hung in his hands, but only for a second. So absorbed was he that he did not notice me standing full before him. Nay, he lifted his head, and gave me the finest chance of my life. I was something of a boxer, and all my accumulated fury went into the blow. It caught him on the point of the chin, and his neck cricked like the bolt of a rifle. He fell limply on the ground and the jewels dropped from his hand. I picked them up and stuffed them into my breeches pocket. Then I pulled the pistol out of his belt. It was six-chambered, and I knew that only three had been emptied. I remembered feeling extraordinarily cool and composed, and yet my wits must have been wandering or I would have never taken the course I did. The right thing to do--on Arcoll's instructions--was to make for the river and swim across to my friends. But Laputa was coming back, and I dreaded meeting him. Laputa seemed to my heated fancy omnipresent. I thought of him as covering the whole bank of the river, whereas I might easily have crossed a little farther down, and made my way up the other bank to my friends. It was plain that Laputa intended to evade the patrol, not to capture it, and there, consequently, I should be safe. The next best thing was to find Arcoll's Kaffir, who was not twenty yards away, get some sort of horse, and break for the bush. Long before morning we should have been over the Berg and in safety. Nay, if I wanted a mount, there was Henriques' whinnying a few paces off. Instead I did the craziest thing of all. With the jewels in one pocket, and the Portugoose's pistol in the other, I started running back the road we had come. CHAPTER XIV I CARRY THE COLLAR OF PRESTER JOHN I ran till my breath grew short, for some kind of swift motion I had to have or choke. The events of the last few minutes had inflamed my brain. For the first time in my life I had seen men die by violence--nay, by brutal murder. I had put my soul into the blow which laid out Henriques, and I was still hot with the pride of it. Also I had in my pocket the fetich of the whole black world; I had taken their Ark of the Covenant, and soon Laputa would be on my trail. Fear, pride, and a blind exultation all throbbed in my veins. I must have run three miles before I came to my sober senses. I put my ear to the ground, but heard no sound of pursuit. Laputa, I argued, would have enough to do for a little, shepherding his flock over the water. He might surround and capture the patrol, or he might evade it; the vow prevented him from fighting it. On the whole I was clear that he would ignore it and push on for the rendezvous. All this would take time, and the business of the priest would have to wait. When Henriques came to he would no doubt have a story to tell, and the scouts would be on my trail. I wished I had shot the Portugoose while I was at the business. It would have been no murder, but a righteous execution. Meanwhile I must get off the road. The sand had been disturbed by an army, so there was little fear of my steps being traced. Still it was only wise to leave the track which I would be assumed to have taken, for Laputa would guess I had fled back the way to Blaauwildebeestefontein. I turned into the bush, which here was thin and sparse like whins on a common. The Berg must be my goal. Once on the plateau I would be inside the white man's lines. Down here in the plains I was in the country of my enemies. Arcoll meant to fight on the uplands when it came to fighting. The black man might rage as he pleased in his own flats, but we stood to defend the gates of the hills. Therefore over the Berg I must be before morning, or there would be a dead man with no tales to tell. I think that even at the start of that night's work I realized the exceeding precariousness of my chances. Some twenty miles of bush and swamp separated me from the foot of the mountains. After that there was the climbing of them, for at the point opposite where I now stood the Berg does not descend sharply on the plain, but is broken into foot-hills around the glens of the Klein Letaba and the Letsitela. From the spot where these rivers emerge on the flats to the crown of the plateau is ten miles at the shortest. I had a start of an hour or so, but before dawn I had to traverse thirty miles of unknown and difficult country. Behind me would follow the best trackers in Africa, who knew every foot of the wilderness. It was a wild hazard, but it was my only hope. At this time I was feeling pretty courageous. For one thing I had Henriques' pistol close to my leg, and for another I still thrilled with the satisfaction of having smitten his face. I took the rubies, and stowed them below my shirt and next my skin. I remember taking stock of my equipment and laughing at the humour of it. One of the heels was almost twisted off my boots, and my shirt and breeches were old at the best and ragged from hard usage. The whole outfit would have been dear at five shillings, or seven-and-six with the belt thrown in. Then there was the Portugoose's pistol, costing, say, a guinea; and last, the Prester's collar, worth several millions. What was more important than my clothing was my bodily strength. I was still very sore from the bonds and the jog of that accursed horse, but exercise was rapidly suppling my joints. About five hours ago I had eaten a filling, though not very sustaining, meal, and I thought I could go on very well till morning. But I was still badly in arrears with my sleep, and there was no chance of my snatching a minute till I was over the Berg. It was going to be a race against time, and I swore that I would drive my body to the last ounce of strength. Moonrise was still an hour or two away, and the sky was bright with myriad stars. I knew now what starlight meant, for there was ample light to pick my way by. I steered by the Southern Cross, for I was aware that the Berg ran north and south, and with that constellation on my left hand I was bound to reach it sooner or later. The bush closed around me with its mysterious dull green shades, and trees, which in the daytime were thin scrub, now loomed like tall timber. It was very eerie moving, a tiny fragment of mortality, in that great wide silent wilderness, with the starry vault, like an impassive celestial audience, watching with many eyes. They cheered me, those stars. In my hurry and fear and passion they spoke of the old calm dignities of man. I felt less alone when I turned my face to the lights which were slanting alike on this uncanny bush and on the homely streets of Kirkcaple. The silence did not last long. First came the howl of a wolf, to be answered by others from every quarter of the compass. This serenade went on for a bit, till the jackals chimed in with their harsh bark. I had been caught by darkness before this when hunting on the Berg, but I was not afraid of wild beasts. That is one terror of the bush which travellers' tales have put too high. It was true that I might meet a hungry lion, but the chance was remote, and I had my pistol. Once indeed a huge animal bounded across the road a little in front of me. For a moment I took him for a lion, but on reflection I was inclined to think him a very large bush-pig. By this time I was out of the thickest bush and into a piece of parkland with long, waving tambuki grass, which the Kaffirs would burn later. The moon was coming up, and her faint rays silvered the flat tops of the mimosa trees. I could hear and feel around me the rustling of animals. Once or twice a big buck--an eland or a koodoo--broke cover, and at the sight of me went off snorting down the slope. Also there were droves of smaller game--rhebok and springbok and duikers--which brushed past at full gallop without even noticing me. The sight was so novel that it set me thinking. That shy wild things should stampede like this could only mean that they had been thoroughly scared. Now obviously the thing that scared them must be on this side of the Letaba. This must mean that Laputa's army, or a large part of it, had not crossed at Dupree's Drift, but had gone up the stream to some higher ford. If that was so, I must alter my course; so I bore away to the right for a mile or two, making a line due north-west. In about an hour's time the ground descended steeply, and I saw before me the shining reaches of a river. I had the chief features of the countryside clear in my mind, both from old porings over maps, and from Arcoll's instructions. This stream must be the Little Letaba, and I must cross it if I would get to the mountains. I remembered that Majinje's kraal stood on its left bank, and higher up in its valley in the Berg 'Mpefu lived. At all costs the kraals must be avoided. Once across it I must make for the Letsitela, another tributary of the Great Letaba, and by keeping the far bank of that stream I should cross the mountains to the place on the plateau of the Wood Bush which Arcoll had told me would be his headquarters. It is easy to talk about crossing a river, and looking to-day at the slender streak on the map I am amazed that so small a thing should have given me such ugly tremors. Yet I have rarely faced a job I liked so little. The stream ran yellow and sluggish under the clear moon. On the near side a thick growth of bush clothed the bank, but on the far side I made out a swamp with tall bulrushes. The distance across was no more than fifty yards, but I would have swum a mile more readily in deep water. The place stank of crocodiles. There was no ripple to break the oily flow except where a derelict branch swayed with the current. Something in the stillness, the eerie light on the water, and the rotting smell of the swamp made that stream seem unhallowed and deadly. I sat down and considered the matter. Crocodiles had always terrified me more than any created thing, and to be dragged by iron jaws to death in that hideous stream seemed to me the most awful of endings. Yet cross it I must if I were to get rid of my human enemies. I remembered a story of an escaped prisoner during the war who had only the Komati River between him and safety. But he dared not enter it, and was recaptured by a Boer commando. I was determined that such cowardice should not be laid to my charge. If I was to die, I would at least have given myself every chance of life. So I braced myself as best I could, and looked for a place to enter. The veld-craft I had mastered had taught me a few things. One was that wild animals drink at night, and that they have regular drinking places. I thought that the likeliest place for crocodiles was at or around such spots, and, therefore, I resolved to take the water away from a drinking place. I went up the bank, noting where the narrow bush-paths emerged on the water-side. I scared away several little buck, and once the violent commotion in the bush showed that I had frightened some bigger animal, perhaps a hartebeest. Still following the bank I came to a reach where the undergrowth was unbroken and the water looked deeper. Suddenly--I fear I must use this adverb often, for all the happenings on that night were sudden--I saw a biggish animal break through the reeds on the far side. It entered the water and, whether wading or swimming I could not see, came out a little distance. Then some sense must have told it of my presence, for it turned and with a grunt made its way back. I saw that it was a big wart-hog, and began to think. Pig, unlike other beasts, drink not at night, but in the daytime. The hog had, therefore, not come to drink, but to swim across. Now, I argued, he would choose a safe place, for the wart-hog, hideous though he is, is a wise beast. What was safe for him would, therefore, in all likelihood be safe for me. With this hope to comfort me I prepared to enter. My first care was the jewels, so, feeling them precarious in my shirt, I twined the collar round my neck and clasped it. The snake-clasp was no flimsy device of modern jewellery, and I had no fear but that it would hold. I held the pistol between my teeth, and with a prayer to God slipped into the muddy waters. I swam in the wild way of a beginner who fears cramp. The current was light and the water moderately warm, but I seemed to go very slowly, and I was cold with apprehension. In the middle it suddenly shallowed, and my breast came against a mudshoal. I thought it was a crocodile, and in my confusion the pistol dropped from my mouth and disappeared. I waded a few steps and then plunged into deep water again. Almost before I knew, I was among the bulrushes, with my feet in the slime of the bank. With feverish haste I scrambled through the reeds and up through roots and undergrowth to the hard soil. I was across, but, alas, I had lost my only weapon. The swim and the anxiety had tired me considerably, and though it meant delay, I did not dare to continue with the weight of water-logged clothes to impede me. I found a dry sheltered place in the bush and stripped to the skin. I emptied my boots and wrung out my shirt and breeches, while the Prester's jewels were blazing on my neck. Here was a queer counterpart to Laputa in the cave! The change revived me, and I continued my way in better form. So far there had been no sign of pursuit. Before me the Letsitela was the only other stream, and from what I remembered of its character near the Berg I thought I should have little trouble. It was smaller than the Klein Letaba, and a rushing torrent where shallows must be common. I kept running till I felt my shirt getting dry on my back. Then I restored the jewels to their old home, and found their cool touch on my breast very comforting. The country was getting more broken as I advanced. Little kopjes with thickets of wild bananas took the place of the dead levels. Long before I reached the Letsitela, I saw that I was right in my guess. It ran, a brawling mountain stream, in a narrow rift in the bush. I crossed it almost dry-shod on the boulders above a little fall, stopping for a moment to drink and lave my brow. After that the country changed again. The wood was now getting like that which clothed the sides of the Berg. There were tall timber-trees--yellowwood, sneezewood, essenwood, stinkwood--and the ground was carpeted with thick grass and ferns. The sight gave me my first earnest of safety. I was approaching my own country. Behind me was heathendom and the black fever flats. In front were the cool mountains and bright streams, and the guns of my own folk. As I struggled on--for I was getting very footsore and weary--I became aware of an odd sound in my rear. It was as if something were following me. I stopped and listened with a sudden dread. Could Laputa's trackers have got up with me already? But the sound was not of human feet. It was as if some heavy animal were plunging through the undergrowth. At intervals came the soft pad of its feet on the grass. It must be the hungry lion of my nightmare, and Henriques' pistol was in the mud of the Klein Letaba! The only thing was a tree, and I had sprung for one and scrambled wearily into the first branches when a great yellow animal came into the moonlight. Providence had done kindly in robbing me of my pistol. The next minute I was on the ground with Colin leaping on me and baying with joy. I hugged that blessed hound and buried my head in his shaggy neck, sobbing like a child. How he had traced me I can never tell. The secret belongs only to the Maker of good and faithful dogs. With him by my side I was a new man. The awesome loneliness had gone. I felt as if he were a message from my own people to take me safely home. He clearly knew the business afoot, for he padded beside me with never a glance to right or left. Another time he would have been snowking in every thicket; but now he was on duty, a serious, conscientious dog with no eye but for business. The moon went down, and the starry sky was our only light. The thick gloom which brooded over the landscape pointed to the night being far gone. I thought I saw a deeper blackness ahead which might be the line of the Berg. Then came that period of utter stillness when every bush sound is hushed and the world seems to swoon. I felt almost impious hurrying through that profound silence, when not even the leaves stirred or a frog croaked. Suddenly as we came over a rise a little wind blew on the back of my head, and a bitter chill came into the air. I knew from nights spent in the open that it was the precursor of dawn. Sure enough, as I glanced back, far over the plain a pale glow was stealing upwards into the sky. In a few minutes the pall melted into an airy haze, and above me I saw the heavens shot with tremors of blue light. Then the foreground began to clear, and there before me, with their heads still muffled in vapour, were the mountains. Xenophon's Ten Thousand did not hail the sea more gladly than I welcomed those frowning ramparts of the Berg. Once again my weariness was eased. I cried to Colin, and together we ran down into the wide, shallow trough which lies at the foot of the hills. As the sun rose above the horizon, the black masses changed to emerald and rich umber, and the fleecy mists of the summits opened and revealed beyond shining spaces of green. Some lines of Shakespeare ran in my head, which I have always thought the most beautiful of all poetry: 'Night's candles are burned out, and jocund day Walks tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.' Up there among the clouds was my salvation. Like the Psalmist, I lifted my eyes to the hills from whence came my aid. Hope is a wonderful restorative. To be near the hills, to smell their odours, to see at the head of the glens the lines of the plateau where were white men and civilization--all gave me new life and courage. Colin saw my mood, and spared a moment now and then to inspect a hole or a covert. Down in the shallow trough I saw the links of a burn, the Machudi, which flowed down the glen it was my purpose to ascend. Away to the north in the direction of Majinje's were patches of Kaffir tillage, and I thought I discerned the smoke from fires. Majinje's womankind would be cooking their morning meal. To the south ran a thick patch of forest, but I saw beyond it the spur of the mountain over which runs the highroad to Wesselsburg. The clear air of dawn was like wine in my blood. I was not free, but I was on the threshold of freedom. If I could only reach my friends with the Prester's collar in my shirt, I would have performed a feat which would never be forgotten. I would have made history by my glorious folly. Breakfastless and footsore, I was yet a proud man as I crossed the hollow to the mouth of Machudi's glen. My chickens had been counted too soon, and there was to be no hatching. Colin grew uneasy, and began to sniff up wind. I was maybe a quarter of a mile from the glen foot, plodding through the long grass of the hollow, when the behaviour of the dog made me stop and listen. In that still air sounds carry far, and I seemed to hear the noise of feet brushing through cover. The noise came both from north and south, from the forest and from the lower course of the Machudi. I dropped into shelter, and running with bent back got to the summit of a little bush-clad knoll. It was Colin who first caught sight of my pursuers. He was staring at a rift in the trees, and suddenly gave a short bark. I looked and saw two men, running hard, cross the grass and dip into the bed of the stream. A moment later I had a glimpse of figures on the edge of the forest, moving fast to the mouth of the glen. The pursuit had not followed me; it had waited to cut me off. Fool that I was, I had forgotten the wonders of Kaffir telegraphy. It had been easy for Laputa to send word thirty miles ahead to stop any white man who tried to cross the Berg. And then I knew that I was very weary. CHAPTER XV MORNING IN THE BERG I was perhaps half a mile the nearer to the glen, and was likely to get there first. And after that? I could see the track winding by the waterside and then crossing a hill-shoulder which diverted the stream. It was a road a man could scarcely ride, and a tired man would have a hard job to climb. I do not think that I had any hope. My exhilaration had died as suddenly as it had been born. I saw myself caught and carried off to Laputa, who must now be close on the rendezvous at Inanda's Kraal. I had no weapon to make a fight for it. My foemen were many and untired. It must be only a matter of minutes till I was in their hands. More in a dogged fury of disappointment than with any hope of escape I forced my sore legs up the glen. Ten minutes ago I had been exulting in the glories of the morning, and now the sun was not less bright or the colours less fair, but the heart had gone out of the spectator. At first I managed to get some pace out of myself, partly from fear and partly from anger. But I soon found that my body had been tried too far. I could plod along, but to save my life I could not have hurried. Any healthy savage could have caught me in a hundred yards. The track, I remember, was overhung with creepers, and often I had to squeeze through thickets of tree-ferns. Countless little brooks ran down from the hillside, threads of silver among the green pastures. Soon I left the stream and climbed up on the shoulder, where the road was not much better than a precipice. Every step was a weariness. I could hardly drag one foot after the other, and my heart was beating like the fanners of a mill, I had spasms of acute sickness, and it took all my resolution to keep me from lying down by the roadside. At last I was at the top of the shoulder and could look back. There was no sign of anybody on the road so far as I could see. Could I have escaped them? I had been in the shadow of the trees for the first part, and they might have lost sight of me and concluded that I had avoided the glen or tried one of the faces. Before me, I remember, there stretched the upper glen, a green cup-shaped hollow with the sides scarred by ravines. There was a high waterfall in one of them which was white as snow against the red rocks. My wits must have been shaky, for I took the fall for a snowdrift, and wondered sillily why the Berg had grown so Alpine. A faint spasm of hope took me into that green cup. The bracken was as thick as on the Pentlands, and there was a multitude of small lovely flowers in the grass. It was like a water-meadow at home, such a place as I had often in boyhood searched for moss-cheepers' and corncrakes' eggs. Birds were crying round me as I broke this solitude, and one small buck--a klipspringer--rose from my feet and dashed up one of the gullies. Before me was a steep green wall with the sky blue above it. Beyond it was safety, but as my sweat-dimmed eyes looked at it I knew that I could never reach it. Then I saw my pursuers. High up on the left side, and rounding the rim of the cup, were little black figures. They had not followed my trail, but, certain of my purpose, had gone forward to intercept me. I remember feeling a puny weakling compared with those lusty natives who could make such good going on steep mountains. They were certainly no men of the plains, but hillmen, probably some remnants of old Machudi's tribe who still squatted in the glen. Machudi was a blackguard chief whom the Boers long ago smashed in one of their native wars. He was a fierce old warrior and had put up a good fight to the last, till a hired impi of Swazis had surrounded his hiding-place in the forest and destroyed him. A Boer farmer on the plateau had his skull, and used to drink whisky out of it when he was merry. The sight of the pursuit was the last straw. I gave up hope, and my intentions were narrowed to one frantic desire--to hide the jewels. Patriotism, which I had almost forgotten, flickered up in that crisis. At any rate Laputa should not have the Snake. If he drove out the white man, he should not clasp the Prester's rubies on his great neck. There was no cover in the green cup, so I turned up the ravine on the right side. The enemy, so far as I could judge, were on the left and in front, and in the gully I might find a pot-hole to bury the necklet in. Only a desperate resolution took me through the tangle of juniper bushes into the red screes of the gully. At first I could not find what I sought. The stream in the ravine slid down a long slope like a mill-race, and the sides were bare and stony. Still I plodded on, helping myself with a hand on Colin's back, for my legs were numb with fatigue. By-and-by the gully narrowed, and I came to a flat place with a long pool. Beyond was a little fall, and up this I climbed into a network of tiny cascades. Over one pool hung a dead tree-fern, and a bay from it ran into a hole of the rock. I slipped the jewels far into the hole, where they lay on the firm sand, showing odd lights through the dim blue water. Then I scrambled down again to the flat space and the pool, and looked round to see if any one had reached the edge of the ravine. There was no sign as yet of the pursuit, so I dropped limply on the shingle and waited. For I had suddenly conceived a plan. As my breath came back to me my wits came back from their wandering. These men were not there to kill me, but to capture me. They could know nothing of the jewels, for Laputa would never have dared to make the loss of the sacred Snake public. Therefore they would not suspect what I had done, and would simply lead me to Laputa at Inanda's Kraal. I began to see the glimmerings of a plan for saving my life, and by God's grace, for saving my country from the horrors of rebellion. The more I thought the better I liked it. It demanded a bold front, and it might well miscarry, but I had taken such desperate hazards during the past days that I was less afraid of fortune. Anyhow, the choice lay between certain death and a slender chance of life, and it was easy to decide. Playing football, I used to notice how towards the end of a game I might be sore and weary, without a kick in my body; but when I had a straight job of tackling a man my strength miraculously returned. It was even so now. I lay on my side, luxuriating in being still, and slowly a sort of vigour crept back into my limbs. Perhaps a half-hour of rest was given me before, on the lip of the gully, I saw figures appear. Looking down I saw several men who had come across from the opposite side of the valley, scrambling up the stream. I got to my feet, with Colin bristling beside me, and awaited them with the stiffest face I could muster. As I expected, they were Machudi's men. I recognized them by the red ochre in their hair and their copper-wire necklets. Big fellows they were, long-legged and deep in the chest, the true breed of mountaineers. I admired their light tread on the slippery rock. It was hopeless to think of evading such men in their own hills. The men from the side joined the men in front, and they stood looking at me from about twelve yards off. They were armed only with knobkerries, and very clearly were no part of Laputa's army. This made their errand plain to me. 'Halt!' I said in Kaffir, as one of them made a hesitating step to advance. 'Who are you and what do you seek?' There was no answer, but they looked at me curiously. Then one made a motion with his stick. Colin gave a growl, and would have been on him if I had not kept a hand on his collar. The rash man drew back, and all stood stiff and perplexed. 'Keep your hands by your side,' I said, 'or the dog, who has a devil, will devour you. One of you speak for the rest and tell me your purpose.' For a moment I had a wild notion that they might be friends, some of Arcoll's scouts, and out to help me. But the first words shattered the fancy. 'We are sent by Inkulu,' the biggest of them said. 'He bade us bring you to him.' 'And what if I refuse to go?' 'Then, Baas, we must take you to him. We are under the vow of the Snake.' 'Vow of fiddlestick!' I cried. 'Who do you think is the bigger chief, the Inkulu or Ratitswan? I tell you Ratitswan is now driving Inkulu before him as a wind drives rotten leaves. It will be well for you, men of Machudi, to make peace with Ratitswan and take me to him on the Berg. If you bring me to him, I and he will reward you; but if you do Inkulu's bidding you will soon be hunted like buck out of your hills.' They grinned at one another, but I could see that my words had no effect. Laputa had done his business too well. The spokesman shrugged his shoulders in the way the Kaffirs have. 'We wish you no ill, Baas, but we have been bidden to take you to Inkulu. We cannot disobey the command of the Snake.' My weakness was coming on me again, and I could talk no more. I sat down plump on the ground, almost falling into the pool. 'Take me to Inkulu,' I stammered with a dry throat, 'I do not fear him;' and I rolled half-fainting on my back. These clansmen of Machudi were decent fellows. One of them had some Kaffir beer in a calabash, which he gave me to drink. The stuff was thin and sickly, but the fermentation in it did me good. I had the sense to remember my need of sleep. 'The day is young,' I said, 'and I have come far. I ask to be allowed to sleep for an hour.' The men made no difficulty, and with my head between Colin's paws I slipped into dreamless slumber. When they wakened me the sun was beginning to climb the sky, I judged it to be about eight o'clock. They had made a little fire and roasted mealies. Some of the food they gave me, and I ate it thankfully. I was feeling better, and I think a pipe would have almost completed my cure. But when I stood up I found that I was worse than I had thought. The truth is, I was leg-weary, which you often see in horses, but rarely in men. What the proper explanation is I do not know, but the muscles simply refuse to answer the direction of the will. I found my legs sprawling like a child's who is learning to walk. 'If you want me to go to the Inkulu, you must carry me,' I said, as I dropped once more on the ground. The men nodded, and set to work to make a kind of litter out of their knobkerries and some old ropes they carried. As they worked and chattered I looked idly at the left bank of the ravine--that is, the left as you ascend it. Some of Machudi's men had come down there, and, though the place looked sheer and perilous, I saw how they had managed it. I followed out bit by bit the track upwards, not with any thought of escape, but merely to keep my mind under control. The right road was from the foot of the pool up a long shelf to a clump of juniper. Then there was an easy chimney; then a piece of good hand-and-foot climbing; and last, another ledge which led by an easy gradient to the top. I figured all this out as I have heard a condemned man will count the windows of the houses on his way to the scaffold. Presently the litter was ready, and the men made signs to me to get into it. They carried me down the ravine and up the Machudi burn to the green walls at its head. I admired their bodily fitness, for they bore me up those steep slopes with never a halt, zigzagging in the proper style of mountain transport. In less than an hour we had topped the ridge, and the plateau was before me. It looked very homelike and gracious, rolling in gentle undulations to the western horizon, with clumps of wood in its hollows. Far away I saw smoke rising from what should be the village of the Iron Kranz. It was the country of my own people, and my captors behoved to go cautiously. They were old hands at veld-craft, and it was wonderful the way in which they kept out of sight even on the bare ridges. Arcoll could have taught them nothing in the art of scouting. At an incredible pace they hurried me along, now in a meadow by a stream side, now through a patch of forest, and now skirting a green shoulder of hill. Once they clapped down suddenly, and crawled into the lee of some thick bracken. Then very quietly they tied my hands and feet, and, not urgently, wound a dirty length of cotton over my mouth. Colin was meantime held tight and muzzled with a kind of bag strapped over his head. To get this over his snapping jaws took the whole strength of the party. I guessed that we were nearing the highroad which runs from the plateau down the Great Letaba valley to the mining township of Wesselsburg, away out on the plain. The police patrols must be on this road, and there was risk in crossing. Sure enough I seemed to catch a jingle of bridles as if from some company of men riding in haste. We lay still for a little till the scouts came back and reported the coast clear. Then we made a dart for the road, crossed it, and got into cover on the other side, where the ground sloped down to the Letaba glen. I noticed in crossing that the dust of the highway was thick with the marks of shod horses. I was very near and yet very far from my own people. Once in the rocky gorge of the Letaba we advanced with less care. We scrambled up a steep side gorge and came on to the small plateau from which the Cloud Mountains rise. After that I was so tired that I drowsed away, heedless of the bumping of the litter. We went up and up, and when I next opened my eyes we had gone through a pass into a hollow of the hills. There was a flat space a mile or two square, and all round it stern black ramparts of rock. This must be Inanda's Kraal, a strong place if ever one existed, for a few men could defend all the approaches. Considering that I had warned Arcoll of this rendezvous, I marvelled that no attempt had been made to hold the entrance. The place was impregnable unless guns were brought up to the heights. I remember thinking of a story I had heard--how in the war Beyers took his guns into the Wolkberg, and thereby saved them from our troops. Could Arcoll be meditating the same exploit? Suddenly I heard the sound of loud voices, and my litter was dropped roughly on the ground. I woke to clear consciousness in the midst of pandemonium. CHAPTER XVI INANDA'S KRAAL The vow was at an end. In place of the silent army of yesterday a mob of maddened savages surged around me. They were chanting a wild song, and brandishing spears and rifles to its accompaniment. From their bloodshot eyes stared the lust of blood, the fury of conquest, and all the aboriginal passions on which Laputa had laid his spell. In my mind ran a fragment from Laputa's prayer in the cave about the 'Terrible Ones.' Machudi's men--stout fellows, they held their ground as long as they could--were swept out of the way, and the wave of black savagery seemed to close over my head. I thought my last moment had come. Certainly it had but for Colin. The bag had been taken from his head, and the fellow of Machudi's had dropped the rope round his collar. In a red fury of wrath the dog leaped at my enemies. Though every man of them was fully armed, they fell back, for I have noticed always that Kaffirs are mortally afraid of a white man's dog. Colin had the sense to keep beside me. Growling like a thunderstorm he held the ring around my litter. The breathing space would not have lasted long, but it gave me time to get to my feet. My wrists and feet had been unbound long before, and the rest had cured my leg-weariness. I stood up in that fierce circle with the clear knowledge that my life hung by a hair. 'Take me to Inkulu,' I cried. 'Dogs and fools, would you despise his orders? If one hair of my head is hurt, he will flay you alive. Show me the way to him, and clear out of it.' I dare say there was a break in my voice, for I was dismally frightened, but there must have been sufficient authority to get me a hearing. Machudi's men closed up behind me, and repeated my words with flourishes and gestures. But still the circle held. No man came nearer me, but none moved so as to give me passage. Then I screwed up my courage, and did the only thing possible. I walked straight into the circle, knowing well that I was running no light risk. My courage, as I have already explained, is of little use unless I am doing something. I could not endure another minute of sitting still with those fierce eyes on me. The circle gave way. Sullenly they made a road for me, closing up behind on my guards, so that Machudi's men were swallowed in the mob, Alone I stalked forward with all that huge yelling crowd behind me. I had not far to go. Inanda's Kraal was a cluster of kyas and rondavels, shaped in a half-moon, with a flat space between the houses, where grew a big merula tree. All around was a medley of little fires, with men squatted beside them. Here and there a party had finished their meal, and were swaggering about with a great shouting. The mob into which I had fallen was of this sort, and I saw others within the confines of the camp. But around the merula tree there was a gathering of chiefs, if I could judge by the comparative quiet and dignity of the men, who sat in rows on the ground. A few were standing, and among them I caught sight of Laputa's tall figure. I strode towards it, wondering if the chiefs would let me pass. The hubbub of my volunteer attendants brought the eyes of the company round to me. In a second it seemed every man was on his feet. I could only pray that Laputa would get to me before his friends had time to spear me. I remember I fixed my eyes on a spur of hill beyond the kraal, and walked on with the best resolution I could find. Already I felt in my breast some of the long thin assegais of Umbooni's men. But Laputa did not intend that I should be butchered. A word from him brought his company into order, and the next thing I knew I was facing him, where he stood in front of the biggest kya, with Henriques beside him, and some of the northern indunas. Henriques looked ghastly in the clear morning light, and he had a linen rag bound round his head and jaw, as if he suffered from toothache. His face was more livid, his eyes more bloodshot, and at the sight of me his hand went to his belt, and his teeth snapped. But he held his peace, and it was Laputa who spoke. He looked straight through me, and addressed Machudi's men. 'You have brought back the prisoner. That is well, and your service will be remembered. Go to 'Mpefu's camp on the hill there, and you will be given food.' The men departed, and with them fell away the crowd which had followed me. I was left, very giddy and dazed, to confront Laputa and his chiefs. The whole scene was swimming before my eyes. I remember there was a clucking of hens from somewhere behind the kraal, which called up ridiculous memories. I was trying to remember the plan I had made in Machudi's glen. I kept saying to myself like a parrot: 'The army cannot know about the jewels. Laputa must keep his loss secret. I can get my life from him if I offer to give them back.' It had sounded a good scheme three hours before, but with the man's hard face before me, it seemed a frail peg to hang my fate on. Laputa's eye fell on me, a clear searching eye with a question in it. There was something he was trying to say to me which he dared not put into words. I guessed what the something was, for I saw his glance run over my shirt and my empty pockets. 'You have made little of your treachery,' he said. 'Fool, did you think to escape me? I could bring you back from the ends of the earth.' 'There was no treachery,' I replied. 'Do you blame a prisoner for trying to escape? When shooting began I found myself free, and I took the road for home. Ask Machudi's men and they will tell you that I came quietly with them, when I saw that the game was up.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'It matters very little what you did. You are here now.-- Tie him up and put him in my kya,' he said to the bodyguard. 'I have something to say to him before he dies.' As the men laid hands on me, I saw the exultant grin on Henriques' face. It was more than I could endure. 'Stop,' I said. 'You talk of traitors, Mr Laputa. There is the biggest and blackest at your elbow. That man sent word to Arcoll about your crossing at Dupree's Drift. At our outspan at noon yesterday he came to me and offered me my liberty if I would help him. He told me he was a spy, and I flung his offer in his face. It was he who shot the Keeper by the river side, and would have stolen the Snake if I had not broken his head. You call me a traitor, and you let that thing live, though he has killed your priest and betrayed your plans. Kill me if you like, but by God let him die first.' I do not know how the others took the revelation, for my eyes were only for the Portugoose. He made a step towards me, his hands twitching by his sides. 'You lie,' he screamed in that queer broken voice which much fever gives. 'It was this English hound that killed the Keeper, and felled me when I tried to save him. The man who insults my honour is dead.' And he plucked from his belt a pistol. A good shot does not miss at two yards. I was never nearer my end than in that fraction of time while the weapon came up to the aim. It was scarcely a second, but it was enough for Colin. The dog had kept my side, and had stood docilely by me while Laputa spoke. The truth is, he must have been as tired as I was. As the Kaffirs approached to lay hands on me he had growled menacingly, but when I spoke again he had stopped. Henriques' voice had convinced him of a more urgent danger, and so soon as the trigger hand of the Portugoose rose, the dog sprang. The bullet went wide, and the next moment dog and man were struggling on the ground. A dozen hands held me from going to Colin's aid, but oddly enough no one stepped forward to help Henriques. The ruffian kept his head, and though the dog's teeth were in his shoulder, he managed to get his right hand free. I saw what would happen, and yelled madly in my apprehension. The yellow wrist curved, and the pistol barrel was pressed below the dog's shoulder. Thrice he fired, the grip relaxed, and Colin rolled over limply, fragments of shirt still hanging from his jaw. The Portugoose rose slowly with his hand to his head, and a thin stream of blood dripping from his shoulder. As I saw the faithful eyes glazing in death, and knew that I had lost the best of all comrades, I went clean berserk mad. The cluster of men round me, who had been staring open-eyed at the fight, were swept aside like reeds. I went straight for the Portugoose, determined that, pistol or no pistol, I would serve him as he had served my dog. For my years I was a well-set-up lad, long in the arms and deep in the chest. But I had not yet come to my full strength, and in any case I could not hope to fight the whole of Laputa's army. I was flung back and forwards like a shuttlecock. They played some kind of game with me, and I could hear the idiotic Kaffir laughter. It was blind man's buff, so far as I was concerned, for I was blind with fury. I struck out wildly left and right, beating the air often, but sometimes getting in a solid blow on hard black flesh. I was soundly beaten myself, pricked with spears, and made to caper for savage sport. Suddenly I saw Laputa before me, and hurled myself madly at his chest. Some one gave me a clout on the head, and my senses fled. When I came to myself, I was lying on a heap of mealie-stalks in a dark room. I had a desperate headache, and a horrid nausea, which made me fall back as soon as I tried to raise myself. A voice came out of the darkness as I stirred--a voice speaking English. 'Are you awake, Mr Storekeeper?' The voice was Laputa's, but I could not see him. The room was pitch dark, except for a long ray of sunlight on the floor. 'I'm awake,' I said. 'What do you want with me?' Some one stepped out of the gloom and sat down near me. A naked black foot broke the belt of light on the floor. 'For God's sake get me a drink,' I murmured. The figure rose and fetched a pannikin of water from a pail. I could hear the cool trickle of the drops on the metal. A hand put the dish to my mouth, and I drank water with a strong dash of spirits. This brought back my nausea, and I collapsed on the mealie-stalks till the fit passed. Again the voice spoke, this time from close at hand. 'You are paying the penalty of being a fool, Mr Storekeeper. You are young to die, but folly is common in youth. In an hour you will regret that you did not listen to my advice at Umvelos'.' I clawed at my wits and strove to realize what he was saying. He spoke of death within an hour. If it only came sharp and sudden, I did not mind greatly. The plan I had made had slipped utterly out of my mind. My body was so wretched, that I asked only for rest. I was very lighthearted and foolish at that moment. 'Kill me if you like,' I whispered. 'Some day you will pay dearly for it all. But for God's sake go away and leave me alone.' Laputa laughed. It was a horrid sound in the darkness. 'You are brave, Mr Storekeeper, but I have seen a brave man's courage ebb very fast when he saw the death which I have arranged for you. Would you like to hear something of it by way of preparation?' In a low gentle voice he began to tell me mysteries of awful cruelty. At first I scarcely heard him, but as he went on my brain seemed to wake from its lethargy. I listened with freezing blood. Not in my wildest nightmares had I imagined such a fate. Then in despite of myself a cry broke from me. 'It interests you?' Laputa asked. 'I could tell you more, but something must be left to the fancy. Yours should be an active one,' and his hand gripped my shaking wrist and felt my pulse. 'Henriques will see that the truth does not fall short of my forecast,' he went on. 'For I have appointed Henriques your executioner.' The name brought my senses back to me. 'Kill me,' I said, 'but for God's sake kill Henriques too. If you did justice you would let me go and roast the Portugoose alive. But for me the Snake would be over the Lebombo by this time in Henriques' pocket.' 'But it is not, my friend. It was stolen by a storekeeper, who will shortly be wishing he had died in his mother's womb.' My plan was slowly coming back to me. 'If you value Prester John's collar, you will save my life. What will your rising be without the Snake? Would they follow you a yard if they suspected you had lost it?' 'So you would threaten me,' Laputa said very gently. Then in a burst of wrath he shouted, 'They will follow me to hell for my own sake. Imbecile, do you think my power is built on a trinket? When you are in your grave, I will be ruling a hundred millions from the proudest throne on earth.' He sprang to his feet, and pulled back a shutter of the window, letting a flood of light into the hut. In that light I saw that he had in his hands the ivory box which had contained the collar. 'I will carry the casket through the wars,' he cried, 'and if I choose never to open it, who will gainsay me? You besotted fool, to think that any theft of yours could hinder my destiny!' He was the blustering savage again, and I preferred him in the part. All that he said might be true, but I thought I could detect in his voice a keen regret, and in his air a touch of disquiet. The man was a fanatic, and like all fanatics had his superstitions. 'Yes,' I said, 'but when you mount the throne you speak of, it would be a pity not to have the rubies on your neck after all your talk in the cave.' I thought he would have throttled me. He glowered down at me with murder in his eyes. Then he dashed the casket on the floor with such violence that it broke into fragments. 'Give me back the _Ndhlondhlo_,' he cried, like a petted child. 'Give me back the collar of John.' This was the moment I had been waiting for. 'Now see here, Mr Laputa,' I said. 'I am going to talk business. Before you started this rising, you were a civilized man with a good education. Well, just remember that education for a minute, and look at the matter in a sensible light. I'm not like the Portugoose. I don't want to steal your rubies. I swear to God that what I have told you is true. Henriques killed the priest, and would have bagged the jewels if I had not laid him out. I ran away because I was going to be killed to-day, and I took the collar to keep it out of Henriques' hands. I tell you I would never have shot the old man myself. Very well, what happened? Your men overtook me, and I had no choice but to surrender. Before they reached me, I hid the collar in a place I know of. Now, I am going to make you a fair and square business proposition. You may be able to get on without the Snake, but I can see you want it back. I am in a tight place and want nothing so much as my life. I offer to trade with you. Give me my life, and I will take you to the place and put the jewels in your hand. Otherwise you may kill me, but you will never see the collar of John again.' I still think that was a pretty bold speech for a man to make in a predicament like mine. But it had its effect. Laputa ceased to be the barbarian king, and talked like a civilized man. 'That is, as you call it, a business proposition. But supposing I refuse it? Supposing I take measures here--in this kraal--to make you speak, and then send for the jewels.' 'There are several objections,' I said, quite cheerfully, for I felt that I was gaining ground. 'One is that I could not explain to any mortal soul how to find the collar. I know where it is, but I could not impart the knowledge. Another is that the country between here and Machudi's is not very healthy for your people. Arcoll's men are all over it, and you cannot have a collection of search parties rummaging about in the glen for long. Last and most important, if you send any one for the jewels, you confess their loss. No, Mr Laputa, if you want them back, you must go yourself and take me with you.' He stood silent for a little, with his brows knit in thought. Then he opened the door and went out. I guessed that he had gone to discover from his scouts the state of the country between Inanda's Kraal and Machudi's glen. Hope had come back to me, and I sat among the mealie-stalks trying to plan the future. If he made a bargain I believed he would keep it. Once set free at the head of Machudi's, I should be within an hour or two of Arcoll's posts. So far, I had done nothing for the cause. My message had been made useless by Henriques' treachery, and I had stolen the Snake only to restore it. But if I got off with my life, there would be work for me to do in the Armageddon which I saw approaching. Should I escape, I wondered. What would hinder Laputa from setting his men to follow me, and seize me before I could get into safety? My only chance was that Arcoll might have been busy this day, and the countryside too full of his men to let Laputa's Kaffirs through. But if this was so, Laputa and I should be stopped, and then Laputa would certainly kill me. I wished--and yet I did not wish--that Arcoll should hold all approaches. As I reflected, my first exhilaration died away. The scales were still heavily weighted against me. Laputa returned, closing the door behind him. 'I will bargain with you on my own terms. You shall have your life, and in return you will take me to the place where you hid the collar, and put it into my hands. I will ride there, and you will run beside me, tied to my saddle. If we are in danger from the white men, I will shoot you dead. Do you accept?' 'Yes,' I said, scrambling to my feet, and ruefully testing my shaky legs. 'But if you want me to get to Machudi's you must go slowly, for I am nearly foundered.' Then he brought out a Bible, and made me swear on it that I would do as I promised. 'Swear to me in turn,' I said, 'that you will give me my life if I restore the jewels.' He swore, kissing the book like a witness in a police-court. I had forgotten that the man called himself a Christian. 'One thing more I ask,' I said. 'I want my dog decently buried.' 'That has been already done,' was the reply. 'He was a brave animal, and my people honour bravery.' CHAPTER XVII A DEAL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES My eyes were bandaged tight, and a thong was run round my right wrist and tied to Laputa's saddle-bow. I felt the glare of the afternoon sun on my head, and my shins were continually barked by stones and trees; but these were my only tidings of the outer world. By the sound of his paces Laputa was riding the _schimmel_, and if any one thinks it easy to go blindfold by a horse's side I hope he will soon have the experience. In the darkness I could not tell the speed of the beast. When I ran I overshot it and was tugged back; when I walked my wrist was dislocated with the tugs forward. For an hour or more I suffered this breakneck treatment. We were descending. Often I could hear the noise of falling streams, and once we splashed through a mountain ford. Laputa was taking no risks, for he clearly had in mind the possibility of some accident which would set me free, and he had no desire to have me guiding Arcoll to his camp. But as I stumbled and sprawled down these rocky tracks I was not thinking of Laputa's plans. My whole soul was filled with regret for Colin, and rage against his murderer. After my first mad rush I had not thought about my dog. He was dead, but so would I be in an hour or two, and there was no cause to lament him. But at the first revival of hope my grief had returned. As they bandaged my eyes I was wishing that they would let me see his grave. As I followed beside Laputa I told myself that if ever I got free, when the war was over I would go to Inanda's Kraal, find the grave, and put a tombstone over it in memory of the dog that saved my life. I would also write that the man who shot him was killed on such and such a day at such and such a place by Colin's master. I wondered why Laputa had not the wits to see the Portugoose's treachery and to let me fight him. I did not care what were the weapons--knives or guns, or naked fists--I would certainly kill him, and afterwards the Kaffirs could do as they pleased with me. Hot tears of rage and weakness wet the bandage on my eyes, and the sobs which came from me were not only those of weariness. At last we halted. Laputa got down and took off the bandage, and I found myself in one of the hill-meadows which lie among the foothills of the Wolkberg. The glare blinded me, and for a little I could only see the marigolds growing at my feet. Then I had a glimpse of the deep gorge of the Great Letaba below me, and far to the east the flats running out to the hazy blue line of the Lebombo hills. Laputa let me sit on the ground for a minute or two to get my breath and rest my feet. 'That was a rough road,' he said. 'You can take it easier now, for I have no wish to carry you.' He patted the _schimmel_, and the beautiful creature turned his mild eyes on the pair of us. I wondered if he recognized his rider of two nights ago. I had seen Laputa as the Christian minister, as the priest and king in the cave, as the leader of an army at Dupree's Drift, and at the kraal we had left as the savage with all self-control flung to the winds. I was to see this amazing man in a further part. For he now became a friendly and rational companion. He kept his horse at an easy walk, and talked to me as if we were two friends out for a trip together. Perhaps he had talked thus to Arcoll, the half-caste who drove his Cape-cart. The wooded bluff above Machudi's glen showed far in front. He told me the story of the Machudi war, which I knew already, but he told it as a saga. There had been a stratagem by which one of the Boer leaders--a Grobelaar, I think--got some of his men into the enemy's camp by hiding them in a captured forage wagon. 'Like the Trojan horse,' I said involuntarily. 'Yes,' said my companion, 'the same old device,' and to my amazement he quoted some lines of Virgil. 'Do you understand Latin?' he asked. I told him that I had some slight knowledge of the tongue, acquired at the university of Edinburgh. Laputa nodded. He mentioned the name of a professor there, and commented on his scholarship. 'O man!' I cried, 'what in God's name are you doing in this business? You that are educated and have seen the world, what makes you try to put the clock back? You want to wipe out the civilization of a thousand years, and turn us all into savages. It's the more shame to you when you know better.' 'You misunderstand me,' he said quietly. 'It is because I have sucked civilization dry that I know the bitterness of the fruit. I want a simpler and better world, and I want that world for my own people. I am a Christian, and will you tell me that your civilization pays much attention to Christ? You call yourself a patriot? Will you not give me leave to be a patriot in turn?' 'If you are a Christian, what sort of Christianity is it to deluge the land with blood?' 'The best,' he said. 'The house must be swept and garnished before the man of the house can dwell in it. You have read history. Such a purging has descended on the Church at many times, and the world has awakened to a new hope. It is the same in all religions. The temples grow tawdry and foul and must be cleansed, and, let me remind you, the cleanser has always come out of the desert.' I had no answer, being too weak and forlorn to think. But I fastened on his patriotic plea. 'Where are the patriots in your following? They are all red Kaffirs crying for blood and plunder. Supposing you were Oliver Cromwell you could make nothing out of such a crew.' 'They are my people,' he said simply. By this time we had forded the Great Letaba, and were making our way through the clumps of forest to the crown of the plateau. I noticed that Laputa kept well in cover, preferring the tangle of wooded undergrowth to the open spaces of the water-meadows. As he talked, his wary eyes were keeping a sharp look-out over the landscape. I thrilled with the thought that my own folk were near at hand. Once Laputa checked me with his hand as I was going to speak, and in silence we crossed the kloof of a little stream. After that we struck a long strip of forest and he slackened his watch. 'If you fight for a great cause,' I said, 'why do you let a miscreant like Henriques have a hand in it? You must know that the man's only interest in you is the chance of loot. I am for you against Henriques, and I tell you plain that if you don't break the snake's back it will sting you.' Laputa looked at me with an odd, meditative look. 'You misunderstand again, Mr Storekeeper. The Portuguese is what you call a "mean white." His only safety is among us. I am campaigner enough to know that an enemy, who has a burning grievance against my other enemies, is a good ally. You are too hard on Henriques. You and your friends have treated him as a Kaffir, and a Kaffir he is in everything but Kaffir virtues. What makes you so anxious that Henriques should not betray me?' 'I'm not a mean white,' I said, 'and I will speak the truth. I hope, in God's name, to see you smashed; but I want it done by honest men, and not by a yellow devil who has murdered my dog and my friends. Sooner or later you will find him out; and if he escapes you, and there's any justice in heaven, he won't escape me.' 'Brave words,' said Laputa, with a laugh, and then in one second he became rigid in the saddle. We had crossed a patch of meadow and entered a wood, beyond which ran the highway. I fancy he was out in his reckoning, and did not think the road so near. At any rate, after a moment he caught the sound of horses, and I caught it too. The wood was thin, and there was no room for retreat, while to recross the meadow would bring us clean into the open. He jumped from his horse, untied with amazing quickness the rope halter from its neck, and started to gag me by winding the thing round my jaw. I had no time to protest that I would keep faith, and my right hand was tethered to his pommel. In the grip of these great arms I was helpless, and in a trice was standing dumb as a lamp-post; while Laputa, his left arm round both of mine, and his right hand over the _schimmel_'s eyes, strained his ears like a sable antelope who has scented danger. There was never a more brutal gagging. The rope crushed my nose and drove my lips down on my teeth, besides gripping my throat so that I could scarcely breathe. The pain was so great that I became sick, and would have fallen but for Laputa. Happily I managed to get my teeth apart, so that one coil slipped between, and eased the pain of the jaws. But the rest was bad enough to make me bite frantically on the tow, and I think in a little my sharp front teeth would have severed it. All this discomfort prevented me seeing what happened. The wood, as I have said, was thin, and through the screen of leaves I had a confused impression of men and horses passing interminably. There can only have been a score at the most; but the moments drag if a cord is gripping your throat. When Laputa at length untied me, I had another fit of nausea, and leaned helplessly against a tree. Laputa listened till the sound of the horses had died away; then silently we stole to the edge of the road, across, and into the thicker evergreen bush on the far side. At a pace which forced me to run hard, we climbed a steepish slope, till ahead of us we saw the bald green crown of the meadowlands. I noticed that his face had grown dark and sullen again. He was in an enemy's country, and had the air of the hunted instead of the hunter. When I stopped he glowered at me, and once, when I was all but overcome with fatigue, he lifted his hand in a threat. Had he carried a sjambok, it would have fallen on my back. If he was nervous, so was I. The fact that I was out of the Kaffir country and in the land of my own folk was a kind of qualified liberty. At any moment, I felt, Providence might intervene to set me free. It was in the bond that Laputa should shoot me if we were attacked; but a pistol might miss. As far as my shaken wits would let me, I began to forecast the future. Once he got the jewels my side of the bargain was complete. He had promised me my life, but there had been nothing said about my liberty; and I felt assured that Laputa would never allow one who had seen so much to get off to Arcoll with his tidings. But back to that unhallowed kraal I was resolved I would not go. He was armed, and I was helpless; he was strong, and I was dizzy with weakness; he was mounted, and I was on foot: it seemed a poor hope that I should get away. There was little chance from a wandering patrol, for I knew if we were followed I should have a bullet in my head, while Laputa got off on the _schimmel_. I must wait and bide events. At the worst, a clean shot on the hillside in a race for life was better than the unknown mysteries of the kraal. I prayed earnestly to God to show me His mercy, for if ever man was sore bested by the heathen it was I. To my surprise, Laputa chose to show himself on the green hill-shoulder. He looked towards the Wolkberg and raised his hands. It must have been some signal. I cast my eyes back on the road we had come, and I thought I saw some figures a mile back, on the edge of the Letaba gorge. He was making sure of my return. By this time it was about four in the afternoon, and as heavenly weather as the heart of man could wish. The meadows were full of aromatic herbs, which, as we crushed them, sent up a delicate odour. The little pools and shallows of the burns were as clear as a Lothian trout-stream. We were now going at a good pace, and I found that my earlier weariness was growing less. I was being keyed up for some great crisis, for in my case the spirit acts direct on the body, and fatigue grows and ebbs with hope. I knew that my strength was not far from breaking-point; but I knew also that so long as a chance was left me I should have enough for a stroke. Before I realized where we were we had rounded the hill, and were looking down on the green cup of the upper Machudi's glen. Far down, I remember, where the trees began, there was a cloud of smoke. Some Kaffir--or maybe Arcoll--had fired the forest. The smoke was drifting away under a light west wind over the far plains, so that they were seen through a haze of opal. Laputa bade me take the lead. I saw quite clear the red kloof on the far side, where the collar was hid. To get there we might have ridden straight into the cup, but a providential instinct made me circle round the top till we were on the lip of the ravine. This was the road some of Machudi's men had taken, and unthinkingly I followed them. Twenty minutes' riding brought us to the place, and all the while I had no kind of plan of escape. I was in the hands of my Maker, watching, like the Jews of old, for a sign. Laputa dismounted and looked down into the gorge. 'There is no road there,' I said. 'We must go down to the foot and come up the stream-side. It would be better to leave your horse here.' He started down the cliff, which from above looks a sheer precipice. Then he seemed to agree with me, took the rope from the _schimmel_'s neck, and knee-haltered his beast. And at that moment I had an inspiration. With my wrist-rope in his hand, he preceded me down the hill till we got to the red screes at the foot of the kloof. Then, under my guidance, we turned up into the darkness of the gorge. As we entered I looked back, and saw figures coming over the edge of the green cup--Laputa's men, I guessed. What I had to do must be done quickly. We climbed up the burn, over the succession of little cataracts, till we came to the flat space of shingle and the long pool where I had been taken that morning. The ashes of the fire which Machudi's men had made were plain on the rock. After that I had to climb a waterfall to get to the rocky pool where I had bestowed the rubies. 'You must take off this thong,' I said. 'I must climb to get the collar. Cover me with a pistol if you like. I won't be out of sight.' Laputa undid the thong and set me free. From his belt he took a pistol, cocked it, and held it over his left hand. I had seen this way of shooting adopted by indifferent shots, and it gave me a wild hope that he might not be much of a marksman. It did not take me long to find the pool, close against the blackened stump of a tree-fern. I thrust in my hand and gathered up the jewels from the cool sand. They came out glowing like living fires, and for a moment I thrilled with a sense of reverence. Surely these were no common stones which held in them the very heart of hell. Clutching them tightly, I climbed down to Laputa. At the sight of the great Snake he gave a cry of rapture. Tearing it from me, he held it at arm's length, his face lit with a passionate joy. He kissed it, he raised it to the sky; nay, he was on his knees before it. Once more he was the savage transported in the presence of his fetich. He turned to me with burning eyes. 'Down on your knees,' he cried, 'and reverence the _Ndhlondhlo_. Down, you impious dog, and seek pardon for your sacrilege.' 'I won't,' I said. 'I won't bow to any heathen idol.' He pointed his pistol at me. 'In a second I shoot where your head is now. Down, you fool, or perish.' 'You promised me my life,' I said stubbornly, though Heaven knows why I chose to act thus. He dropped the pistol and flung himself on me. I was helpless as a baby in his hands. He forced me to the ground and rolled my face in the sand; then he pulled me to my feet and tossed me backward, till I almost staggered into the pool. I saved myself, and staggered instead into the shallow at the foot of it, close under the ledge of the precipice. That morning, when Machudi's men were cooking breakfast, I had figured out a route up the cliff. This route was now my hope of escape. Laputa had dropped his pistol, and the collar had plunged him in an ecstasy of worship. Now, if ever, was my time. I must get on the shelf which ran sideways up the cliff, and then scramble for dear life. I pretended to be dazed and terrified. 'You promised me my life,' I whimpered. 'Your life,' he cried. 'Yes, you shall have your life; and before long you will pray for death.' 'But I saved the Collar,' I pleaded. 'Henriques would have stolen it. I brought it safe here, and now you have got it.' Meantime I was pulling myself up on the shelf, and loosening with one hand a boulder which overhung the pool. 'You have been repaid,' he said savagely. 'You will not die.' 'But my life is no use without liberty,' I said, working at the boulder till it lay loose in its niche. He did not answer, being intent on examining the Collar to see if it had suffered any harm. 'I hope it isn't scratched,' I said. 'Henriques trod on it when I hit him.' Laputa peered at the gems like a mother at a child who has had a fall. I saw my chance and took it. With a great heave I pulled the boulder down into the pool. It made a prodigious splash, sending a shower of spray over Laputa and the Collar. In cover of it I raced up the shelf, straining for the shelter of the juniper tree. A shot rang out and struck the rock above me. A second later I had reached the tree and was scrambling up the crack beyond it. Laputa did not fire again. He may have distrusted his shooting, or seen a better way of it. He dashed through the stream and ran up the shelf like a klipspringer after me. I felt rather than saw what was happening, and with my heart in my mouth I gathered my dregs of energy for the last struggle. You know the nightmare when you are pursued by some awful terror, and, though sick with fear, your legs have a strange numbness, and you cannot drag them in obedience to the will. Such was my feeling in the crack above the juniper tree. In truth, I had passed the bounds of my endurance. Last night I had walked fifty miles, and all day I had borne the torments of a dreadful suspense. I had been bound and gagged and beaten till the force was out of my limbs. Also, and above all, I had had little food, and I was dizzy with want of sleep. My feet seemed leaden, my hands had no more grip than putty. I do not know how I escaped falling into the pool, for my head was singing and my heart thumping in my throat. I seemed to feel Laputa's great hand every second clawing at my heels. I had reason for my fears. He had entered the crack long before I had reached the top, and his progress was twice as fast as mine. When I emerged on the topmost shelf he was scarcely a yard behind me. But an overhang checked his bulky figure and gave me a few seconds' grace. I needed it all, for these last steps on the shelf were the totterings of an old man. Only a desperate resolution and an extreme terror made me drag one foot after the other. Blindly I staggered on to the top of the ravine, and saw before me the _schimmel_ grazing in the light of the westering sun. I forced myself into a sort of drunken run, and crawled into the saddle. Behind me, as I turned, I could see Laputa's shoulders rising over the edge. I had no knife to cut the knee-halter, and the horse could not stir. Then the miracle happened. When the rope had gagged me, my teeth must have nearly severed it at one place, and this Laputa had not noticed when he used it as a knee-halter. The shock of my entering the saddle made the _schimmel_ fling up his head violently, and the rope snapped. I could not find the stirrups, but I dug my heels into his sides, and he leaped forward. At the same moment Laputa began to shoot. It was a foolish move, for he might have caught me by running, since I had neither spurs nor whip, and the horse was hampered by the loose end of rope at his knee. In any case, being an indifferent shot, he should have aimed at the _schimmel_, not at me; but I suppose he wished to save his charger. One bullet sang past my head; a second did my business for me. It passed over my shoulder, as I lay low in the saddle, and grazed the beast's right ear. The pain maddened him, and, rope-end and all, he plunged into a wild gallop. Other shots came, but they fell far short. I saw dimly a native or two--the men who had followed us--rush to intercept me, and I think a spear was flung. But in a flash we were past them, and their cries faded behind me. I found the bridle, reached for the stirrups, and galloped straight for the sunset and for freedom. CHAPTER XVIII HOW A MAN MAY SOMETIMES PUT HIS TRUST IN A HORSE I had long passed the limit of my strength. Only constant fear and wild alternations of hope had kept me going so long, and now that I was safe I became light-headed in earnest. The wonder is that I did not fall off. Happily the horse was good and the ground easy, for I was powerless to do any guiding. I simply sat on his back in a silly glow of comfort, keeping a line for the dying sun, which I saw in a nick of the Iron Crown Mountain. A sort of childish happiness possessed me. After three days of imminent peril, to be free was to be in fairyland. To be swishing through the long bracken or plunging among the breast-high flowers of the meadowlands in a world of essential lights and fragrances, seemed scarcely part of mortal experience. Remember that I was little more than a lad, and that I had faced death so often of late that my mind was all adrift. To be able to hope once more, nay, to be allowed to cease both from hope and fear, was like a deep and happy opiate to my senses. Spent and frail as I was, my soul swam in blessed waters of ease. The mood did not last long. I came back to earth with a shock, as the _schimmel_ stumbled at the crossing of a stream. I saw that the darkness was fast falling, and with the sight panic returned to me. Behind me I seemed to hear the sound of pursuit. The noise was in my ears, but when I turned it ceased, and I saw only the dusky shoulders of hills. I tried to remember what Arcoll had told me about his headquarters, but my memory was wiped clean. I thought they were on or near the highway, but I could not remember where the highway was. Besides, he was close to the enemy, and I wanted to get back into the towns, far away from the battle-line. If I rode west I must come in time to villages, where I could hide myself. These were unworthy thoughts, but my excuse must be my tattered nerves. When a man comes out of great danger, he is apt to be a little deaf to the call of duty. Suddenly I became ashamed. God had preserved me from deadly perils, but not that I might cower in some shelter. I had a mission as clear as Laputa's. For the first time I became conscious to what a little thing I owed my salvation. That matter of the broken halter was like the finger of Divine Providence. I had been saved for a purpose, and unless I fulfilled that purpose I should again be lost. I was always a fatalist, and in that hour of strained body and soul I became something of a mystic. My panic ceased, my lethargy departed, and a more manly resolution took their place. I gripped the _schimmel_ by the head and turned him due left. Now I remembered where the highroad ran, and I remembered something else. For it was borne in on me that Laputa had fallen into my hands. Without any subtle purpose I had played a master game. He was cut off from his people, without a horse, on the wrong side of the highroad which Arcoll's men patrolled. Without him the rising would crumble. There might be war, even desperate war, but we should fight against a leaderless foe. If he could only be shepherded to the north, his game was over, and at our leisure we could mop up the scattered concentrations. I was now as eager to get back into danger as I had been to get into safety. Arcoll must be found and warned, and that at once, or Laputa would slip over to Inanda's Kraal under cover of dark. It was a matter of minutes, and on these minutes depended the lives of thousands. It was also a matter of ebbing strength, for with my return to common sense I saw very clearly how near my capital was spent. If I could reach the highroad, find Arcoll or Arcoll's men, and give them my news, I would do my countrymen a service such as no man in Africa could render. But I felt my head swimming, I was swaying crazily in the saddle, and my hands had scarcely the force of a child's. I could only lie limply on the horse's back, clutching at his mane with trembling fingers. I remember that my head was full of a text from the Psalms about not putting one's trust in horses. I prayed that this one horse might be an exception, for he carried more than Caesar and his fortunes. My mind is a blank about those last minutes. In less than an hour after my escape I struck the highway, but it was an hour which in the retrospect unrolls itself into unquiet years. I was dimly conscious of scrambling through a ditch and coming to a ghostly white road. The _schimmel_ swung to the right, and the next I knew some one had taken my bridle and was speaking to me. At first I thought it was Laputa and screamed. Then I must have tottered in the saddle, for I felt an arm slip round my middle. The rider uncorked a bottle with his teeth and forced some brandy down my throat. I choked and coughed, and then looked up to see a white policeman staring at me. I knew the police by the green shoulder-straps. 'Arcoll,' I managed to croak. 'For God's sake take me to Arcoll.' The man whistled shrilly on his fingers, and a second rider came cantering down the road. As he came up I recognized his face, but could not put a name to it. 'Losh, it's the lad Crawfurd,' I heard a voice say. 'Crawfurd, man, d'ye no mind me at Lourenco Marques? Aitken?' The Scotch tongue worked a spell with me. It cleared my wits and opened the gates of my past life. At last I knew I was among my own folk. 'I must see Arcoll. I have news for him--tremendous news. O man, take me to Arcoll and ask me no questions. Where is he? Where is he?' 'As it happens, he's about two hundred yards off,' Aitken said. 'That light ye see at the top of the brae is his camp.' They helped me up the road, a man on each side of me, for I could never have kept in the saddle without their support. My message to Arcoll kept humming in my head as I tried to put it into words, for I had a horrid fear that my wits would fail me and I should be dumb when the time came. Also I was in a fever of haste. Every minute I wasted increased Laputa's chance of getting back to the kraal. He had men with him every bit as skilful as Arcoll's trackers. Unless Arcoll had a big force and the best horses there was no hope. Often in looking back at this hour I have marvelled at the strangeness of my behaviour. Here was I just set free from the certainty of a hideous death, and yet I had lost all joy in my security. I was more fevered at the thought of Laputa's escape than I had been at the prospect of David Crawfurd's end. The next thing I knew I was being lifted off the _schimmel_ by what seemed to me a thousand hands. Then came a glow of light, a great moon, in the centre of which I stood blinking. I was forced to sit down on a bed, while I was given a cup of hot tea, far more reviving than any spirits. I became conscious that some one was holding my hands, and speaking very slowly and gently. 'Davie,' the voice said, 'you're back among friends, my lad. Tell me, where have you been?' 'I want Arcoll,' I moaned. 'Where is Ratitswan?' There were tears of weakness running down my cheeks. 'Arcoll is here,' said the voice; 'he is holding your hands, Davie. Quiet, lad, quiet. Your troubles are all over now.' I made a great effort, found the eyes to which the voice belonged, and spoke to them. 'Listen. I stole the collar of Prester John at Dupree's Drift. I was caught in the Berg and taken to the kraal--I forget its name--but I had hid the rubies.' 'Yes,' the voice said, 'you hid the rubies,--and then?' 'Inkulu wanted them back, so I made a deal with him. I took him to Machudi's and gave him the collar, and then he fired at me and I climbed and climbed ... I climbed on a horse,' I concluded childishly. I heard the voice say 'Yes?' again inquiringly, but my mind ran off at a tangent. 'Beyers took guns up into the Wolkberg,' I cried shrilly. 'Why the devil don't you do the same? You have the whole Kaffir army in a trap.' I saw a smiling face before me. 'Good lad. Colles told me you weren't wanting in intelligence. What if we have done that very thing, Davie?' But I was not listening. I was trying to remember the thing I most wanted to say, and that was not about Beyers and his guns. Those were nightmare minutes. A speaker who has lost the thread of his discourse, a soldier who with a bayonet at his throat has forgotten the password--I felt like them, and worse. And to crown all I felt my faintness coming back, and my head dropping with heaviness. I was in a torment of impotence. Arcoll, still holding my hands, brought his face close to mine, so that his clear eyes mastered and constrained me. 'Look at me, Davie,' I heard him say. 'You have something to tell me, and it is very important. It is about Laputa, isn't it? Think, man. You took him to Machudi's and gave him the collar. He has gone back with it to Inanda's Kraal. Very well, my guns will hold him there.' I shook my head. 'You can't. You may split the army, but you can't hold Laputa. He will be over the Olifants before you fire a shot.' 'We will hunt him down before he crosses. And if not, we will catch him at the railway.' 'For God's sake, hurry then,' I cried. 'In an hour he will be over it and back in the kraal.' 'But the river is a long way.' 'River?' I repeated hazily. 'What river? The Letaba is not the place. It is the road I mean.' Arcoll's hands closed firmly on my wrists. 'You left Laputa at Machudi's and rode here without stopping. That would take you an hour. Had Laputa a horse?' 'Yes; but I took it,' I stammered. 'You can see it behind me.' Arcoll dropped my hands and stood up straight. 'By God, we've got him!' he said, and he spoke to his companions. A man turned and ran out of the tent. Then I remembered what I wanted to say. I struggled from the bed and put my hands on his shoulders. 'Laputa is our side of the highroad. Cut him off from his men, and drive him north--north--away up to the Rooirand. Never mind the Wolkberg and the guns, for they can wait. I tell you Laputa is the Rising, and he has the collar. Without him you can mop up the Kaffirs at your leisure. Line the high-road with every man you have, for he must cross it or perish. Oh, hurry, man, hurry; never mind me. We're saved if we can chivy Laputa till morning. Quick, or I'll have to go myself.' The tent emptied, and I lay back on the bed with a dim feeling that my duty was done and I could rest. Henceforth the affair was in stronger hands than mine. I was so weak that I could not lift my legs up to the bed, but sprawled half on and half off. Utter exhaustion defeats sleep. I was in a fever, and my eyes would not close. I lay and drowsed while it seemed to me that the outside world was full of men and horses. I heard voices and the sound of hoofs and the jingle of bridles, but above all I heard the solid tramp of an army. The whole earth seemed to be full of war. Before my mind was spread the ribbon of the great highway. I saw it run white through the meadows of the plateau, then in a dark corkscrew down the glen of the Letaba, then white again through the vast moonlit bush of the plains, till the shanties of Wesselsburg rose at the end of it. It seemed to me to be less a road than a rampart, built of shining marble, the Great Wall of Africa. I saw Laputa come out of the shadows and try to climb it, and always there was the sound of a rifle-breech clicking, a summons, and a flight. I began to take a keen interest in the game. Down in the bush were the dark figures of the hunted, and on the white wall were my own people--horse, foot, and artillery, the squadrons of our defence. What a general Arcoll was, and how great a matter had David Crawfurd kindled! A man came in--I suppose a doctor. He took off my leggings and boots, cutting them from my bleeding feet, but I knew no pain. He felt my pulse and listened to my heart. Then he washed my face and gave me a bowl of hot milk. There must have been a drug in the milk, for I had scarcely drunk it before a tide of sleep seemed to flow over my brain. The white rampart faded from my eyes and I slept. CHAPTER XIX ARCOLL'S SHEPHERDING While I lay in a drugged slumber great things were happening. What I have to tell is no experience of my own, but the story as I pieced it together afterwards from talks with Arcoll and Aitken. The history of the Rising has been compiled. As I write I see before me on the shelves two neat blue volumes in which Mr Alexander Upton, sometime correspondent of the _Times_, has told for the edification of posterity the tale of the war between the Plains and the Plateau. To him the Kaffir hero is Umbooni, a half-witted ruffian, whom we afterwards caught and hanged. He mentions Laputa only in a footnote as a renegade Christian who had something to do with fomenting discontent. He considers that the word 'Inkulu,' which he often heard, was a Zulu name for God. Mr Upton is a picturesque historian, but he knew nothing of the most romantic incident of all. This is the tale of the midnight shepherding of the 'heir of John' by Arcoll and his irregulars. At Bruderstroom, where I was lying unconscious, there were two hundred men of the police; sixty-three Basuto scouts under a man called Stephen, who was half native in blood and wholly native in habits; and three commandoes of the farmers, each about forty strong. The commandoes were really companies of the North Transvaal Volunteers, but the old name had been kept and something of the old loose organization. There were also two four-gun batteries of volunteer artillery, but these were out on the western skirts of the Wolkberg following Beyers's historic precedent. Several companies of regulars were on their way from Pietersdorp, but they did not arrive till the next day. When they came they went to the Wolkberg to join the artillery. Along the Berg at strategic points were pickets of police with native trackers, and at Blaauwildebeestefontein there was a strong force with two field guns, for there was some fear of a second Kaffir army marching by that place to Inanda's Kraal. At Wesselsburg out on the plain there was a biggish police patrol, and a system of small patrols along the road, with a fair number of Basuto scouts. But the road was picketed, not held; for Arcoll's patrols were only a branch of his Intelligence Department. It was perfectly easy, as I had found myself, to slip across in a gap of the pickets. Laputa would be in a hurry, and therefore he would try to cross at the nearest point. Hence it was Arcoll's first business to hold the line between the defile of the Letaba and the camp at Bruderstroom. A detachment of the police who were well mounted galloped at racing speed for the defile, and behind them the rest lined out along the road. The farmers took a line at right angles to the road, so as to prevent an escape on the western flank. The Basutos were sent into the woods as a sort of advanced post to bring tidings of any movement there. Finally a body of police with native runners at their stirrups rode on to the drift where the road crosses the Letaba. The place is called Main Drift, and you will find it on the map. The natives were first of all to locate Laputa, and prevent him getting out on the south side of the triangle of hill and wood between Machudi's, the road, and the Letaba. If he failed there, he must try to ford the Letaba below the drift, and cross the road between the drift and Wesselsburg. Now Arcoll had not men enough to watch the whole line, and therefore if Laputa were once driven below the drift, he must shift his men farther down the road. Consequently it was of the first importance to locate Laputa's whereabouts, and for this purpose the native trackers were sent forward. There was just a chance of capturing him, but Arcoll knew too well his amazing veld-craft and great strength of body to build much hope on that. We were none too soon. The advance men of the police rode into one of the Kaffirs from Inanda's Kraal, whom Laputa had sent forward to see if the way was clear. In two minutes more he would have been across and out of our power, for we had no chance of overtaking him in the woody ravines of the Letaba. The Kaffir, when he saw us, dived back into the grass on the north side of the road, which made it clear that Laputa was still there. After that nothing happened for a little. The police reached their drift, and all the road west of that point was strongly held. The flanking commandoes joined hands with one of the police posts farther north, and moved slowly to the scarp of the Berg. They saw nobody; from which Arcoll could deduce that his man had gone down the Berg into the forests. Had the Basutos been any good at woodcraft we should have had better intelligence. But living in a bare mountain country they are apt to find themselves puzzled in a forest. The best men among the trackers were some renegades of 'Mpefu, who sent back word by a device known only to Arcoll that five Kaffirs were in the woods a mile north of Main Drift. By this time it was after ten o'clock, and the moon was rising. The five men separated soon after, and the reports became confused. Then Laputa, as the biggest of the five, was located on the banks of the Great Letaba about two miles below Main Drift. The question was as to his crossing. Arcoll had assumed that he would swim the river and try to get over the road between Main Drift and Wesselsburg. But in this assumption he underrated the shrewdness of his opponent. Laputa knew perfectly well that we had not enough men to patrol the whole countryside, but that the river enabled us to divide the land into two sections and concentrate strongly on one or the other. Accordingly he left the Great Letaba unforded and resolved to make a long circuit back to the Berg. One of his Kaffirs swam the river, and when word of this was brought Arcoll began to withdraw his posts farther down the road. But as the men were changing 'Mpefu's fellows got wind of Laputa's turn to the left, and in great haste Arcoll countermanded the move and waited in deep perplexity at Main Drift. The salvation of his scheme was the farmers on the scarp of the Berg. They lit fires and gave Laputa the notion of a great army. Instead of going up the glen of Machudi or the Letsitela he bore away to the north for the valley of the Klein Letaba. The pace at which he moved must have been amazing. He had a great physique, hard as nails from long travelling, and in his own eyes he had an empire at stake. When I look at the map and see the journey which with vast fatigue I completed from Dupree's Drift to Machudi's, and then look at the huge spaces of country over which Laputa's legs took him on that night, I am lost in admiration of the man. About midnight he must have crossed the Letsitela. Here he made a grave blunder. If he had tried the Berg by one of the faces he might have got on to the plateau and been at Inanda's Kraal by the dawning. But he over-estimated the size of the commandoes, and held on to the north, where he thought there would be no defence. About one o'clock Arcoll, tired of inaction and conscious that he had misread Laputa's tactics, resolved on a bold stroke. He sent half his police to the Berg to reinforce the commandoes, bidding them get into touch with the post at Blaauwildebeestefontein. A little after two o'clock a diversion occurred. Henriques succeeded in crossing the road three miles east of Main Drift. He had probably left the kraal early in the night and had tried to cross farther west, but had been deterred by the patrols. East of Main Drift, where the police were fewer, he succeeded; but he had not gone far till he was discovered by the Basuto scouts. The find was reported to Arcoll, who guessed at once who this traveller was. He dared not send out any of his white men, but he bade a party of the scouts follow the Portugoose's trail. They shadowed him to Dupree's Drift, where he crossed the Letaba. There he lay down by the roadside to sleep, while they kept him company. A hard fellow Henriques was, for he could slumber peacefully on the very scene of his murder. Dawn found Laputa at the head of the Klein Letaba glen, not far from 'Mpefu's kraal. He got food at a hut, and set off at once up the wooded hill above it, which is a promontory of the plateau. By this time he must have been weary, or he would not have blundered as he did right into a post of the farmers. He was within an ace of capture, and to save himself was forced back from the scarp. He seems, to judge from reports, to have gone a little way south in the thicker timber, and then to have turned north again in the direction of Blaauwildebeestefontein. After that his movements are obscure. He was seen on the Klein Labongo, but the sight of the post at Blaauwildebeestefontein must have convinced him that a _korhaan_ could not escape that way. The next we heard of him was that he had joined Henriques. After daybreak Arcoll, having got his reports from the plateau, and knowing roughly the direction in which Laputa was shaping, decided to advance his lines. The farmers, reinforced by three more commandoes from the Pietersdorp district, still held the plateau, but the police were now on the line of the Great Letaba. It was Arcoll's plan to hold that river and the long neck of land between it and the Labongo. His force was hourly increasing, and his mounted men would be able to prevent any escape on the flank to the east of Wesselsburg. So it happened that while Laputa was being driven east from the Berg, Henriques was travelling north, and their lines intersected. I should like to have seen the meeting. It must have told Laputa what had always been in the Portugoose's heart. Henriques, I fancy, was making for the cave in the Rooirand. Laputa, so far as I can guess at his mind, had a plan for getting over the Portuguese border, fetching a wide circuit, and joining his men at any of the concentrations between there and Amsterdam. The two were seen at midday going down the road which leads from Blaauwildebeestefontein to the Lebombo. Then they struck Arcoll's new front, which stretched from the Letaba to the Labongo. This drove them north again, and forced them to swim the latter stream. From there to the eastern extremity of the Rooirand, which is the Portuguese frontier, the country is open and rolling, with a thin light scrub in the hollows. It was bad cover for the fugitives, as they found to their cost. For Arcoll had purposely turned his police into a flying column. They no longer held a line; they scoured a country. Only Laputa's incomparable veld-craft and great bodily strength prevented the two from being caught in half an hour. They doubled back, swam the Labongo again, and got into the thick bush on the north side of the Blaauwildebeestefontein road. The Basuto scouts were magnificent in the open, but in the cover they were again at fault. Laputa and Henriques fairly baffled them, so that the pursuit turned to the west in the belief that the fugitives had made for Majinje's kraal. In reality they had recrossed the Labongo and were making for Umvelos'. All this I heard afterwards, but in the meantime I lay in Arcoll's tent in deep unconsciousness. While my enemies were being chased like partridges, I was reaping the fruits of four days' toil and terror. The hunters had become the hunted, the wheel had come full circle, and the woes of David Crawfurd were being abundantly avenged. I slept till midday of the next day. When I awoke the hot noontide sun had made the tent like an oven. I felt better, but very stiff and sore, and I had a most ungovernable thirst. There was a pail of water with a tin pannikin beside the tent pole, and out of this I drank repeated draughts. Then I lay down again, for I was still very weary. But my second sleep was not like my first. It was haunted by wild nightmares. No sooner had I closed my eyes than I began to live and move in a fantastic world. The whole bush of the plains lay before me, and I watched it as if from some view-point in the clouds. It was midday, and the sandy patches shimmered under a haze of heat. I saw odd little movements in the bush--a buck's head raised, a paauw stalking solemnly in the long grass, a big crocodile rolling off a mudbank in the river. And then I saw quite clearly Laputa's figure going east. In my sleep I did not think about Arcoll's manoeuvres. My mind was wholly set upon Laputa. He was walking wearily, yet at a good pace, and his head was always turning, like a wild creature snuffing the wind. There was something with him, a shapeless shadow, which I could not see clearly. His neck was bare, but I knew well that the collar was in his pouch. He stopped, turned west, and I lost him. The bush world for a space was quite silent, and I watched it eagerly as an aeronaut would watch the ground for a descent. For a long time I could see nothing. Then in a wood near a river there seemed to be a rustling. Some guinea-fowl flew up as if startled, and a stembok scurried out. I knew that Laputa must be there. Then, as I looked at the river, I saw a head swimming. Nay, I saw two, one some distance behind the other. The first man landed on the far bank, and I recognized Laputa. The second was a slight short figure, and I knew it was Henriques. I remember feeling very glad that these two had come together. It was certain now that Henriques would not escape. Either Laputa would find out the truth and kill him, or I would come up with him and have my revenge. In any case he was outside the Kaffir pale, adventuring on his own. I watched the two till they halted near a ruined building. Surely this was the store I had built at Umvelos'. The thought gave me a horrid surprise. Laputa and Henriques were on their way to the Rooirand! I woke with a start to find my forehead damp with sweat. There was some fever on me, I think, for my teeth were chattering. Very clear in my mind was the disquieting thought that Laputa and Henriques would soon be in the cave. One of two things must happen--either Henriques would kill Laputa, get the collar of rubies, and be in the wilds of Mozambique before I could come up with his trail; or Laputa would outwit him, and have the handling himself of the treasure of gold and diamonds which had been laid up for the rising. If he thought there was a risk of defeat, I knew he would send my gems to the bottom of the Labongo, and all my weary work would go for nothing. I had forgotten all about patriotism. In that hour the fate of the country was nothing to me, and I got no satisfaction from the thought that Laputa was severed from his army. My one idea was that the treasure would be lost, the treasure for which I had risked my life. There is a kind of courage which springs from bitter anger and disappointment. I had thought that I had bankrupted my spirit, but I found that there was a new passion in me to which my past sufferings taught no lesson. My uneasiness would not let me rest a moment longer. I rose to my feet, holding on by the bed, and staggered to the tent pole. I was weak, but not so very weak that I could not make one last effort. It maddened me that I should have done so much and yet fail at the end. From a nail on the tent pole hung a fragment of looking-glass which Arcoll used for shaving. I caught a glimpse of my face in it, white and haggard and lined, with blue bags below the eyes. The doctor the night before had sponged it, but he had not got rid of all the stains of travel. In particular there was a faint splash of blood on the left temple. I remembered that this was what I had got from the basin of goat's blood that night in the cave. I think that the sight of that splash determined me. Whether I willed it or not, I was sealed of Laputa's men. I must play the game to the finish, or never again know peace of mind on earth. These last four days had made me very old. I found a pair of Arcoll's boots, roomy with much wearing, into which I thrust my bruised feet. Then I crawled to the door, and shouted for a boy to bring my horse. A Basuto appeared, and, awed by my appearance, went off in a hurry to see to the _schimmel_. It was late afternoon, about the same time of day as had yesterday seen me escaping from Machudi's. The Bruderstroom camp was empty, though sentinels were posted at the approaches. I beckoned the only white man I saw, and asked where Arcoll was. He told me that he had no news, but added that the patrols were still on the road as far as Wesselsburg. From this I gathered that Arcoll must have gone far out into the bush in his chase. I did not want to see him; above all, I did not want him to find Laputa. It was my private business that I rode on, and I asked for no allies. Somebody brought me a cup of thick coffee, which I could not drink, and helped me into the saddle. The _schimmel_ was fresh, and kicked freely as I cantered off the grass into the dust of the highroad. The whole world, I remember, was still and golden in the sunset. CHAPTER XX MY LAST SIGHT OF THE REVEREND JOHN LAPUTA It was dark before I got into the gorge of the Letaba. I passed many patrols, but few spoke to me, and none tried to stop me. Some may have known me, but I think it was my face and figure which tied their tongues. I must have been pale as death, with tangled hair and fever burning in my eyes. Also on my left temple was the splash of blood. At Main Drift I found a big body of police holding the ford. I splashed through and stumbled into one of their camp-fires. A man questioned me, and told me that Arcoll had got his quarry. 'He's dead, they say. They shot him out on the hills when he was making for the Limpopo.' But I knew that this was not true. It was burned on my mind that Laputa was alive, nay, was waiting for me, and that it was God's will that we should meet in the cave. A little later I struck the track of the Kaffirs' march. There was a broad, trampled way through the bush, and I followed it, for it led to Dupree's Drift. All this time I was urging the _schimmel_ with all the vigour I had left in me. I had quite lost any remnant of fear. There were no terrors left for me either from Nature or man. At Dupree's Drift I rode the ford without a thought of crocodiles. I looked placidly at the spot where Henriques had slain the Keeper and I had stolen the rubies. There was no interest or imagination lingering in my dull brain. My nerves had suddenly become things of stolid, untempered iron. Each landmark I passed was noted down as one step nearer to my object. At Umvelos' I had not the leisure to do more than glance at the shell which I had built. I think I had forgotten all about that night when I lay in the cellar and heard Laputa's plans. Indeed, my doings of the past days were all hazy and trivial in my mind. I only saw one sight clearly--two men, one tall and black, the other little and sallow, slowly creeping nearer to the Rooirand, and myself, a midget on a horse, spurring far behind through the bush on their trail. I saw the picture as continuously and clearly as if I had been looking at a scene on the stage. There was only one change in the setting; the three figures seemed to be gradually closing together. I had no exhilaration in my quest. I do not think I had even much hope, for something had gone numb and cold in me and killed my youth. I told myself that treasure-hunting was an enterprise accursed of God, and that I should most likely die. That Laputa and Henriques would die I was fully certain. The three of us would leave our bones to bleach among the diamonds, and in a little the Prester's collar would glow amid a little heap of human dust. I was quite convinced of all this, and quite apathetic. It really did not matter so long as I came up with Laputa and Henriques, and settled scores with them. That mattered everything in the world, for it was my destiny. I had no means of knowing how long I took, but it was after midnight before I passed Umvelos', and ere I got to the Rooirand there was a fluttering of dawn in the east. I must have passed east of Arcoll's men, who were driving the bush towards Majinje's. I had ridden the night down and did not feel so very tired. My horse was stumbling, but my own limbs scarcely pained me. To be sure I was stiff and nerveless as if hewn out of wood, but I had been as bad when I left Bruderstroom. I felt as if I could go on riding to the end of the world. At the brink of the bush I dismounted and turned the _schimmel_ loose. I had brought no halter, and I left him to graze and roll. The light was sufficient to let me see the great rock face rising in a tower of dim purple. The sky was still picked out with stars, but the moon had long gone down, and the east was flushing. I marched up the path to the cave, very different from the timid being who had walked the same road three nights before. Then my terrors were all to come: now I had conquered terror and seen the other side of fear. I was centuries older. But beside the path lay something which made me pause. It was a dead body, and the head was turned away from me. I did not need to see the face to know who it was. There had been only two men in my vision, and one of them was immortal. I stopped and turned the body over. There was no joy in my heart, none of the lust of satisfied vengeance or slaked hate. I had forgotten about the killing of my dog and all the rest of Henriques' doings. It was only with curiosity that I looked down on the dead face, swollen and livid in the first light of morning. The man had been strangled. His neck, as we say in Scotland, was 'thrawn', and that was why he had lain on his back yet with his face turned away from me. He had been dead probably since before midnight. I looked closer, and saw that there was blood on his shirt and hands, but no wound. It was not his blood, but some other's. Then a few feet off on the path I found a pistol with two chambers empty. What had happened was very plain. Henriques had tried to shoot Laputa at the entrance of the cave for the sake of the collar and the treasure within. He had wounded him--gravely, I thought, to judge from the amount of blood--but the quickness and marksmanship of the Portuguese had not availed to save his life from those terrible hands. After two shots Laputa had got hold of him and choked his life out as easily as a man twists a partridge's neck. Then he had gone into the cave. I saw the marks of blood on the road, and hastened on. Laputa had been hours in the cave, enough to work havoc with the treasure. He was wounded, too, and desperate. Probably he had come to the Rooirand looking for sanctuary and rest for a day or two, but if Henriques had shot straight he might find a safer sanctuary and a longer rest. For the third time in my life I pushed up the gully between the straight high walls of rock, and heard from the heart of the hills the thunder of the imprisoned river. There was only the faintest gleam of light in the cleft, but it sufficed to show me that the way to the cave was open. The hidden turnstile in the right wall stood ajar; I entered, and carelessly swung it behind me. The gates clashed into place with a finality which told me that they were firmly shut. I did not know the secret of them, so how should I get out again? These things troubled me less than the fact that I had no light at all now. I had to go on my knees to ascend the stair, and I could feel that the steps were wet. It must be Laputa's blood. Next I was out on the gallery which skirted the chasm. The sky above me was growing pale with dawn, and far below the tossing waters were fretted with light. A light fragrant wind was blowing on the hills, and a breath of it came down the funnel. I saw that my hands were all bloody with the stains on the steps, and I rubbed them on the rock to clean them. Without a tremor I crossed the stone slab over the gorge, and plunged into the dark alley which led to the inner chamber. As before, there was a light in front of me, but this time it was a pin-point and not the glare of many torches. I felt my way carefully by the walls of the passage, though I did not really fear anything. It was by the stopping of these lateral walls that I knew I was in the cave, for the place had only one single speck of light. The falling wall of water stood out grey green and ghostly on the left, and I noticed that higher up it was lit as if from the open air. There must be a great funnel in the hillside in that direction. I walked a few paces, and then I made out that the spark in front was a lantern. My eyes were getting used to the half-light, and I saw what was beside the lantern. Laputa knelt on the ashes of the fire which the Keeper had kindled three days before. He knelt before, and half leaned on, a rude altar of stone. The lantern stood by him on the floor, and its faint circle lit something which I was not unprepared for. Blood was welling from his side, and spreading in a dark pool over the ashes. I had no fear, only a great pity--pity for lost romance, for vain endeavour, for fruitless courage. 'Greeting, Inkulu!' I said in Kaffir, as if I had been one of his indunas. He turned his head and slowly and painfully rose to his feet. The place, it was clear, was lit from without, and the daylight was growing. The wall of the river had become a sheet of jewels, passing from pellucid diamond above to translucent emerald below. A dusky twilight sought out the extreme corners of the cave. Laputa's tall figure stood swaying above the white ashes, his hand pressed to his side. 'Who is it?' he said, looking at me with blind eyes. 'It is the storekeeper from Umvelos',' I answered. 'The storekeeper of Umvelos',' he repeated. 'God has used the weak things of the world to confound the strong. A king dies because a pedlar is troublesome. What do they call you, man? You deserve to be remembered.' I told him 'David Crawfurd.' 'Crawfurd,' he repeated, 'you have been the little reef on which a great vessel has foundered. You stole the collar and cut me off from my people, and then when I was weary the Portuguese killed me.' 'No,' I cried, 'it was not me. You trusted Henriques, and you got your fingers on his neck too late. Don't say I didn't warn you.' 'You warned me, and I will repay you. I will make you rich, Crawfurd. You are a trader, and want money. I am a king, and want a throne. But I am dying, and there will be no more kings in Africa.' The mention of riches did not thrill me as I had expected, but the last words awakened a wild regret. I was hypnotized by the man. To see him going out was like seeing the fall of a great mountain. He stretched himself, gasping, and in the growing light I could see how broken he was. His cheeks were falling in, and his sombre eyes had shrunk back in their sockets. He seemed an old worn man standing there among the ashes, while the blood, which he made no effort to staunch, trickled down his side till it dripped on the floor. He had ceased to be the Kaffir king, or the Christian minister, or indeed any one of his former parts. Death was stripping him to his elements, and the man Laputa stood out beyond and above the characters he had played, something strange, and great, and moving, and terrible. 'We met for the first time three days ago,' he said, 'and now you will be the last to see the Inkulu.' 'Umvelos' was not our first meeting,' said I. 'Do you mind the Sabbath eight years since when you preached in the Free Kirk at Kirkcaple? I was the boy you chased from the shore, and I flung the stone that blacked your eye. Besides, I came out from England with you and Henriques, and I was in the boat which took you from Durban to Delagoa Bay. You and I have been long acquaint, Mr Laputa.' 'It is the hand of God,' he said solemnly. 'Your fate has been twisted with mine, and now you will die with me.' I did not understand this talk about dying. I was not mortally wounded like him, and I did not think Laputa had the strength to kill me even if he wished. But my mind was so impassive that I scarcely regarded his words. 'I will make you rich,' he cried. 'Crawfurd, the storekeeper, will be the richest man in Africa. We are scattered, and our wealth is another's. He shall have the gold and the diamonds--all but the Collar, which goes with me.' He staggered into a dark recess, one of many in the cave, and I followed him. There were boxes there, tea chests, cartridge cases, and old brass-ribbed Portuguese coffers. Laputa had keys at his belt, and unlocked them, his fingers fumbling with weakness. I peered in and saw gold coin and little bags of stones. 'Money and diamonds,' he cried. 'Once it was the war chest of a king, and now it will be the hoard of a trader. No, by the Lord! The trader's place is with the Terrible Ones.' An arm shot out, and my shoulder was fiercely gripped. 'You stole my horse. That is why I am dying. But for you I and my army would be over the Olifants. I am going to kill you, Crawfurd,' and his fingers closed in to my shoulder blades. Still I was unperturbed. 'No, you are not. You cannot. You have tried to and failed. So did Henriques, and he is lying dead outside. I am in God's keeping, and cannot die before my time.' I do not know if he heard me, but at any rate the murderous fit passed. His hand fell to his side and his great figure tottered out into the cave. He seemed to be making for the river, but he turned and went through the door I had entered by. I heard him slipping in the passage, and then there was a minute of silence. Suddenly there came a grinding sound, followed by the kind of muffled splash which a stone makes when it falls into a deep well. I thought Laputa had fallen into the chasm, but when I reached the door his swaying figure was coming out of the corridor. Then I knew what he had done. He had used the remnant of his giant strength to break down the bridge of stone across the gorge, and so cut off my retreat. I really did not care. Even if I had got over the bridge I should probably have been foiled by the shut turnstile. I had quite forgotten the meaning of fear of death. I found myself giving my arm to the man who had tried to destroy me. 'I have laid up for you treasure in heaven,' he said. 'Your earthly treasure is in the boxes, but soon you will be seeking incorruptible jewels in the deep deep water. It is cool and quiet down there, and you forget the hunger and pain.' The man was getting very near his end. The madness of despair came back to him, and he flung himself among the ashes. 'We are going to die together, Crawfurd,' he said. 'God has twined our threads, and there will be only one cutting. Tell me what has become of my army.' 'Arcoll has guns on the Wolkberg,' I said. 'They must submit or perish.' 'I have other armies ... No, no, they are nothing. They will all wander and blunder and fight and be beaten. There is no leader anywhere ... And I am dying.' There was no gainsaying the signs of death. I asked him if he would like water, but he made no answer. His eyes were fixed on vacancy, and I thought I could realize something of the bitterness of that great regret. For myself I was as cold as a stone. I had no exultation of triumph, still less any fear of my own fate. I stood silent, the half-remorseful spectator of a fall like the fall of Lucifer. 'I would have taught the world wisdom.' Laputa was speaking English in a strange, thin, abstracted voice. 'There would have been no king like me since Charlemagne,' and he strayed into Latin which I have been told since was an adaptation of the Epitaph of Charles the Great. '_Sub hoc conditorio_,' he crooned, '_situm est corpus Joannis, magni et orthodoxi Imperatoris, qui imperium Africanum nobiliter ampliavit, et multos per annos mundum feliciter rexit_.'[1] He must have chosen this epitaph long ago. He lay for a few seconds with his head on his arms, his breast heaving with agony. 'No one will come after me. My race is doomed, and in a little they will have forgotten my name. I alone could have saved them. Now they go the way of the rest, and the warriors of John become drudges and slaves.' Something clicked in his throat, he gasped and fell forward, and I thought he was dead. Then he struggled as if to rise. I ran to him, and with all my strength aided him to his feet. 'Unarm, Eros,' he cried. 'The long day's task is done.' With the strange power of a dying man he tore off his leopard-skin and belt till he stood stark as on the night when he had been crowned. From his pouch he took the Prester's Collar. Then he staggered to the brink of the chasm where the wall of green water dropped into the dark depth below. I watched, fascinated, as with the weak hands of a child he twined the rubies round his neck and joined the clasp. Then with a last effort he stood straight up on the brink, his eyes raised to the belt of daylight from which the water fell. The light caught the great gems and called fires from them, the flames of the funeral pyre of a king. Once more his voice, restored for a moment to its old vigour, rang out through the cave above the din of the cascade. His words were those which the Keeper had used three nights before. With his hands held high and the Collar burning on his neck he cried, 'The Snake returns to the House of its Birth.' 'Come,' he cried to me. 'The Heir of John is going home.' Then he leapt into the gulf. There was no sound of falling, so great was the rush of water. He must have been whirled into the open below where the bridge used to be, and then swept into the underground deeps, where the Labongo drowses for thirty miles. Far from human quest he sleeps his last sleep, and perhaps on a fragment of bone washed into a crevice of rock there may hang the jewels that once gleamed in Sheba's hair. [1] 'Under this stone is laid the body of John, the great and orthodox Emperor, who nobly enlarged the African realm, and for many years happily ruled the world.' CHAPTER XXI I CLIMB THE CRAGS A SECOND TIME I remember that I looked over the brink into the yeasty abyss with a mind hovering between perplexity and tears. I wanted to sit down and cry--why, I did not know, except that some great thing had happened. My brain was quite clear as to my own position. I was shut in this place, with no chance of escape and with no food. In a little I must die of starvation, or go mad and throw myself after Laputa. And yet I did not care a rush. My nerves had been tried too greatly in the past week. Now I was comatose, and beyond hoping or fearing. I sat for a long time watching the light play on the fretted sheet of water and wondering where Laputa's body had gone. I shivered and wished he had not left me alone, for the darkness would come in time and I had no matches. After a little I got tired of doing nothing, and went groping among the treasure chests. One or two were full of coin--British sovereigns, Kruger sovereigns, Napoleons, Spanish and Portuguese gold pieces, and many older coins ranging back to the Middle Ages and even to the ancients. In one handful there was a splendid gold stater, and in another a piece of Antoninus Pius. The treasure had been collected for many years in many places, contributions of chiefs from ancient hoards as well as the cash received from I.D.B. I untied one or two of the little bags of stones and poured the contents into my hands. Most of the diamonds were small, such as a labourer might secrete on his person. The larger ones--and some were very large--were as a rule discoloured, looking more like big cairngorms. But one or two bags had big stones which even my inexperienced eye told me were of the purest water. There must be some new pipe, I thought, for these could not have been stolen from any known mine. * * * After that I sat on the floor again and looked at the water. It exercised a mesmeric influence on me, soothing all care. I was quite happy to wait for death, for death had no meaning to me. My hate and fury were both lulled into a trance, since the passive is the next stage to the overwrought. It must have been full day outside now, for the funnel was bright with sunshine, and even the dim cave caught a reflected radiance. As I watched the river I saw a bird flash downward, skimming the water. It turned into the cave and fluttered among its dark recesses. I heard its wings beating the roof as it sought wildly for an outlet. It dashed into the spray of the cataract and escaped again into the cave. For maybe twenty minutes it fluttered, till at last it found the way it had entered by. With a dart it sped up the funnel of rock into light and freedom. I had begun to watch the bird in idle lassitude, I ended in keen excitement. The sight of it seemed to take a film from my eyes. I realized the zest of liberty, the passion of life again. I felt that beyond this dim underworld there was the great joyous earth, and I longed for it. I wanted to live now. My memory cleared, and I remembered all that had befallen me during the last few days. I had played the chief part in the whole business, and I had won. Laputa was dead and the treasure was mine, while Arcoll was crushing the Rising at his ease. I had only to be free again to be famous and rich. My hopes had returned, but with them came my fears. What if I could not escape? I must perish miserably by degrees, shut in the heart of a hill, though my friends were out for rescue. In place of my former lethargy I was now in a fever of unrest. My first care was to explore the way I had come. I ran down the passage to the chasm which the slab of stone had spanned. I had been right in my guess, for the thing was gone. Laputa was in truth a Titan, who in the article of death could break down a bridge which would have taken any three men an hour to shift. The gorge was about seven yards wide, too far to risk a jump, and the cliff fell sheer and smooth to the imprisoned waters two hundred feet below. There was no chance of circuiting it, for the wall was as smooth as if it had been chiselled. The hand of man had been at work to make the sanctuary inviolable. It occurred to me that sooner or later Arcoll would track Laputa to this place. He would find the bloodstains in the gully, but the turnstile would be shut and he would never find the trick of it. Nor could he have any kaffirs with him who knew the secret of the Place of the Snake. Still if Arcoll knew I was inside he would find some way to get to me even though he had to dynamite the curtain of rock. I shouted, but my voice seemed to be drowned in the roar of the water. It made but a fresh chord in the wild orchestra, and I gave up hopes in that direction. Very dolefully I returned to the cave. I was about to share the experience of all treasure-hunters--to be left with jewels galore and not a bite to sustain life. The thing was too commonplace to be endured. I grew angry, and declined so obvious a fate. 'Ek sal 'n plan maak,' I told myself in the old Dutchman's words. I had come through worse dangers, and a way I should find. To starve in the cave was no ending for David Crawfurd. Far better to join Laputa in the depths in a manly hazard for liberty. My obstinacy and irritation cheered me. What had become of the lack-lustre young fool who had mooned here a few minutes back. Now I was as tense and strung for effort as the day I had ridden from Blaauwildebeestefontein to Umvelos'. I felt like a runner in the last lap of a race. For four days I had lived in the midst of terror and darkness. Daylight was only a few steps ahead, daylight and youth restored and a new world. There were only two outlets from that cave--the way I had come, and the way the river came. The first was closed, the second a sheer staring impossibility. I had been into every niche and cranny, and there was no sign of a passage. I sat down on the floor and looked at the wall of water. It fell, as I have already explained, in a solid sheet, which made up the whole of the wall of the cave. Higher than the roof of the cave I could not see what happened, except that it must be the open air, for the sun was shining on it. The water was about three yards distant from the edge of the cave's floor, but it seemed to me that high up, level with the roof, this distance decreased to little more than a foot. I could not see what the walls of the cave were like, but they looked smooth and difficult. Supposing I managed to climb up to the level of the roof close to the water, how on earth was I to get outside on to the wall of the ravine? I knew from my old days of rock-climbing what a complete obstacle the overhang of a cave is. While I looked, however, I saw a thing which I had not noticed before. On the left side of the fall the water sluiced down in a sheet to the extreme edge of the cave, almost sprinkling the floor with water. But on the right side the force of water was obviously weaker, and a little short of the level of the cave roof there was a spike of rock which slightly broke the fall. The spike was covered, but the covering was shallow, for the current flowed from it in a rose-shaped spray. If a man could get to that spike and could get a foot on it without being swept down, it might be possible--just possible--to do something with the wall of the chasm above the cave. Of course I knew nothing about the nature of that wall. It might be as smooth as a polished pillar. The result of these cogitations was that I decided to prospect the right wall of the cave close to the waterfall. But first I went rummaging in the back part to see if I could find anything to assist me. In one corner there was a rude cupboard with some stone and metal vessels. Here, too, were the few domestic utensils of the dead Keeper. In another were several locked coffers on which I could make no impression. There were the treasure-chests too, but they held nothing save treasure, and gold and diamonds were no manner of use to me. Other odds and ends I found--spears, a few skins, and a broken and notched axe. I took the axe in case there might be cutting to do. Then at the back of a bin my hand struck something which brought the blood to my face. It was a rope, an old one, but still in fair condition and forty or fifty feet long. I dragged it out into the light and straightened its kinks. With this something could be done, assuming I could cut my way to the level of the roof. I began the climb in my bare feet, and at the beginning it was very bad. Except on the very edge of the abyss there was scarcely a handhold. Possibly in floods the waters may have swept the wall in a curve, smoothing down the inner part and leaving the outer to its natural roughness. There was one place where I had to hang on by a very narrow crack while I scraped with the axe a hollow for my right foot. And then about twelve feet from the ground I struck the first of the iron pegs. To this day I cannot think what these pegs were for. They were old square-headed things which had seen the wear of centuries. They cannot have been meant to assist a climber, for the dwellers of the cave had clearly never contemplated this means of egress. Perhaps they had been used for some kind of ceremonial curtain in a dim past. They were rusty and frail, and one of them came away in my hand, but for all that they marvellously assisted my ascent. I had been climbing slowly, doggedly and carefully, my mind wholly occupied with the task; and almost before I knew I found my head close under the roof of the cave. It was necessary now to move towards the river, and the task seemed impossible. I could see no footholds, save two frail pegs, and in the corner between the wall and the roof was a rough arch too wide for my body to jam itself in. Just below the level of the roof--say two feet--I saw the submerged spike of rock. The waters raged around it, and could not have been more than an inch deep on the top. If I could only get my foot on that I believed I could avoid being swept down, and stand up and reach for the wall above the cave. But how to get to it? It was no good delaying, for my frail holds might give at any moment. In any case I would have the moral security of the rope, so I passed it through a fairly staunch pin close to the roof, which had an upward tilt that almost made a ring of it. One end of the rope was round my body, the other was loose in my hand, and I paid it out as I moved. Moral support is something. Very gingerly I crawled like a fly along the wall, my fingers now clutching at a tiny knob, now clawing at a crack which did little more than hold my nails. It was all hopeless insanity, and yet somehow I did it. The rope and the nearness of the roof gave me confidence and balance. Then the holds ceased altogether a couple of yards from the water. I saw my spike of rock a trifle below me. There was nothing for it but to risk all on a jump. I drew the rope out of the hitch, twined the slack round my waist, and leaped for the spike. It was like throwing oneself on a line of spears. The solid wall of water hurled me back and down, but as I fell my arms closed on the spike. There I hung while my feet were towed outwards by the volume of the stream as if they had been dead leaves. I was half-stunned by the shock of the drip on my head, but I kept my wits, and presently got my face outside the falling sheet and breathed. To get to my feet and stand on the spike while all the fury of water was plucking at me was the hardest physical effort I have ever made. It had to be done very circumspectly, for a slip would send me into the abyss. If I moved an arm or leg an inch too near the terrible dropping wall I knew I should be plucked from my hold. I got my knees on the outer face of the spike, so that all my body was removed as far as possible from the impact of the water. Then I began to pull myself slowly up. I could not do it. If I got my feet on the rock the effort would bring me too far into the water, and that meant destruction. I saw this clearly in a second while my wrists were cracking with the strain. But if I had a wall behind me I could reach back with one hand and get what we call in Scotland a 'stelf.' I knew there was a wall, but how far I could not judge. The perpetual hammering of the stream had confused my wits. It was a horrible moment, but I had to risk it. I knew that if the wall was too far back I should fall, for I had to let my weight go till my hand fell on it. Delay would do no good, so with a prayer I flung my right hand back, while my left hand clutched the spike. I found the wall--it was only a foot or two beyond my reach. With a heave I had my foot on the spike, and turning, had both hands on the opposite wall. There I stood, straddling like a Colossus over a waste of white waters, with the cave floor far below me in the gloom, and my discarded axe lying close to a splash of Laputa's blood. The spectacle made me giddy, and I had to move on or fall. The wall was not quite perpendicular, but as far as I could see a slope of about sixty degrees. It was ribbed and terraced pretty fully, but I could see no ledge within reach which offered standing room. Once more I tried the moral support of the rope, and as well as I could dropped a noose on the spike which might hold me if I fell. Then I boldly embarked on a hand traverse, pulling myself along a little ledge till I was right in the angle of the fall. Here, happily, the water was shallower and less violent, and with my legs up to the knees in foam I managed to scramble into a kind of corner. Now at last I was on the wall of the gully, and above the cave. I had achieved by amazing luck one of the most difficult of all mountaineering operations. I had got out of a cave to the wall above. My troubles were by no means over, for I found the cliff most difficult to climb. The great rush of the stream dizzied my brain, the spray made the rock damp, and the slope steepened as I advanced. At one overhang my shoulder was almost in the water again. All this time I was climbing doggedly, with terror somewhere in my soul, and hope lighting but a feeble lamp. I was very distrustful of my body, for I knew that at any moment my weakness might return. The fever of three days of peril and stress is not allayed by one night's rest. By this time I was high enough to see that the river came out of the ground about fifty feet short of the lip of the gully, and some ten feet beyond where I stood. Above the hole whence the waters issued was a loose slope of slabs and screes. It looked an ugly place, but there I must go, for the rock-wall I was on was getting unclimbable. I turned the corner a foot or two above the water, and stood on a slope of about fifty degrees, running from the parapet of stone to a line beyond which blue sky appeared. The first step I took the place began to move. A boulder crashed into the fall, and tore down into the abyss with a shattering thunder. I lay flat and clutched desperately at every hold, but I had loosened an avalanche of earth, and not till my feet were sprayed by the water did I get a grip of firm rock and check my descent. All this frightened me horribly, with the kind of despairing angry fear which I had suffered at Bruderstroom, when I dreamed that the treasure was lost. I could not bear the notion of death when I had won so far. After that I advanced, not by steps, but by inches. I felt more poised and pinnacled in the void than when I had stood on the spike of rock, for I had a substantial hold neither for foot nor hand. It seemed weeks before I made any progress away from the lip of the waterhole. I dared not look down, but kept my eyes on the slope before me, searching for any patch of ground which promised stability. Once I found a scrog of juniper with firm roots, and this gave me a great lift. A little further, however, I lit on a bank of screes which slipped with me to the right, and I lost most of the ground the bush had gained me. My whole being, I remember, was filled with a devouring passion to be quit of this gully and all that was in it. Then, not suddenly as in romances, but after hard striving and hope long deferred, I found myself on a firm outcrop of weathered stone. In three strides I was on the edge of the plateau. Then I began to run, and at the same time to lose the power of running. I cast one look behind me, and saw a deep cleft of darkness out of which I had climbed. Down in the cave it had seemed light enough, but in the clear sunshine of the top the gorge looked a very pit of shade. For the first and last time in my life I had vertigo. Fear of falling back, and a mad craze to do it, made me acutely sick. I managed to stumble a few steps forward on the mountain turf, and then flung myself on my face. When I raised my head I was amazed to find it still early morning. The dew was yet on the grass, and the sun was not far up the sky. I had thought that my entry into the cave, my time in it, and my escape had taken many hours, whereas at the most they had occupied two. It was little more than dawn, such a dawn as walks only on the hilltops. Before me was the shallow vale with its bracken and sweet grass, and farther on the shining links of the stream, and the loch still grey in the shadow of the beleaguering hills. Here was a fresh, clean land, a land for homesteads and orchards and children. All of a sudden I realized that at last I had come out of savagery. The burden of the past days slipped from my shoulders. I felt young again, and cheerful and brave. Behind me was the black night, and the horrid secrets of darkness. Before me was my own country, for that loch and that bracken might have been on a Scotch moor. The fresh scent of the air and the whole morning mystery put song into my blood. I remembered that I was not yet twenty. My first care was to kneel there among the bracken and give thanks to my Maker, who in very truth had shown me 'His goodness in the land of the living.' After a little I went back to the edge of the cliff. There where the road came out of the bush was the body of Henriques, lying sprawled on the sand, with two dismounted riders looking hard at it. I gave a great shout, for in the men I recognized Aitken and the schoolmaster Wardlaw. CHAPTER XXII A GREAT PERIL AND A GREAT SALVATION I must now take up some of the ragged ends which I have left behind me. It is not my task, as I have said, to write the history of the great Rising. That has been done by abler men, who were at the centre of the business, and had some knowledge of strategy and tactics; whereas I was only a raw lad who was privileged by fate to see the start. If I could, I would fain make an epic of it, and show how the Plains found at all points the Plateau guarded, how wits overcame numbers, and at every pass which the natives tried the great guns spoke and the tide rolled back. Yet I fear it would be an epic without a hero. There was no leader left when Laputa had gone. There were months of guerrilla fighting, and then months of reprisals, when chief after chief was hunted down and brought to trial. Then the amnesty came and a clean sheet, and white Africa drew breath again with certain grave reflections left in her head. On the whole I am not sorry that the history is no business of mine. Romance died with 'the heir of John,' and the crusade became a sorry mutiny. I can fancy how differently Laputa would have managed it all had he lived; how swift and sudden his plans would have been; how under him the fighting would not have been in the mountain glens, but far in the high-veld among the dorps and townships. With the Inkulu alive we warred against odds; with the Inkulu dead the balance sank heavily in our favour. I leave to others the marches and strategy of the thing, and hasten to clear up the obscure parts in my own fortunes. Arcoll received my message from Umvelos' by Colin, or rather Wardlaw received it and sent it on to the post on the Berg where the leader had gone. Close on its heels came the message from Henriques by a Shangaan in his pay. It must have been sent off before the Portugoose got to the Rooirand, from which it would appear that he had his own men in the bush near the store, and that I was lucky to get off as I did. Arcoll might have disregarded Henriques' news as a trap if it had come alone, but my corroboration impressed and perplexed him. He began to credit the Portugoose with treachery, but he had no inclination to act on his message, since it conflicted with his plans. He knew that Laputa must come into the Berg sooner or later, and he had resolved that his strategy must be to await him there. But there was the question of my life. He had every reason to believe that I was in the greatest danger, and he felt a certain responsibility for my fate. With the few men at his disposal he could not hope to hold up the great Kaffir army, but there was a chance that he might by a bold stand effect my rescue. Henriques had told him of the vow, and had told him that Laputa would ride in the centre of the force. A body of men well posted at Dupree's Drift might split the army at the crossing, and under cover of the fire I might swim the river and join my friends. Still relying on the vow, it might be possible for well-mounted men to evade capture. Accordingly he called for volunteers, and sent off one of his Kaffirs to warn me of his design. He led his men in person, and of his doings the reader already knows the tale. But though the crossing was flung into confusion, and the rear of the army was compelled to follow the northerly bank of the Letaba, there was no sign of me anywhere. Arcoll searched the river-banks, and crossed the drift to where the old Keeper was lying dead. He then concluded that I had been murdered early in the march, and his Kaffir, who might have given him news of me, was carried up the stream in the tide of the disorderly army. Therefore, he and his men rode back with all haste to the Berg by way of Main Drift, and reached Bruderstroom before Laputa had crossed the highway. My information about Inanda's Kraal decided Arcoll's next move. Like me he remembered Beyers's performance, and resolved to repeat it. He had no hope of catching Laputa, but he thought that he might hold up the bulk of his force if he got guns on the ridge above the kraal. A message had already been sent for guns, and the first to arrive got to Bruderstroom about the hour when I was being taken by Machudi's men in the kloof. The ceremony of the purification prevented Laputa from keeping a good look-out, and the result was that a way was made for the guns on the north-western corner of the rampart of rock. It was the way which Beyers had taken, and indeed the enterprise was directed by one of Beyers's old commandants. All that day the work continued, while Laputa and I were travelling to Machudi's. Then came the evening when I staggered into camp and told my news. Arcoll, who alone knew how vital Laputa was to the success of the insurrection, immediately decided to suspend all other operations and devote himself to shepherding the leader away from his army. How the scheme succeeded and what befell Laputa the reader has already been told. Aitken and Wardlaw, when I descended from the cliffs, took me straight to Blaauwildebeestefontein. I was like a man who is recovering from bad fever, cured, but weak and foolish, and it was a slow journey which I made to Umvelos', riding on Aitken's pony. At Umvelos' we found a picket who had captured the _schimmel_ by the roadside. That wise beast, when I turned him loose at the entrance to the cave, had trotted quietly back the way he had come. At Umvelos' Aitken left me, and next day, with Wardlaw as companion, I rode up the glen of the Klein Labongo, and came in the afternoon to my old home. The store was empty, for Japp some days before had gone off post-haste to Pietersdorp; but there was Zeeta cleaning up the place as if war had never been heard of. I slept the night there, and in the morning found myself so much recovered that I was eager to get away. I wanted to see Arcoll about many things, but mainly about the treasure in the cave. It was an easy journey to Bruderstroom through the meadows of the plateau. The farmers' commandoes had been recalled, but the ashes of their camp fires were still grey among the bracken. I fell in with a police patrol and was taken by them to a spot on the Upper Letaba, some miles west of the camp, where we found Arcoll at late breakfast. I had resolved to take him into my confidence, so I told him the full tale of my night's adventure. He was very severe with me, I remember, for my daft-like ride, but his severity relaxed before I had done with my story. The telling brought back the scene to me, and I shivered at the picture of the cave with the morning breaking through the veil of water and Laputa in his death throes. Arcoll did not speak for some time. 'So he is dead,' he said at last, half-whispering to himself. 'Well, he was a king, and died like a king. Our job now is simple, for there is none of his breed left in Africa.' Then I told him of the treasure. 'It belongs to you, Davie,' he said, 'and we must see that you get it. This is going to be a long war, but if we survive to the end you will be a rich man.' 'But in the meantime?' I asked. 'Supposing other Kaffirs hear of it, and come back and make a bridge over the gorge? They may be doing it now.' 'I'll put a guard on it,' he said, jumping up briskly. 'It's maybe not a soldier's job, but you've saved this country, Davie, and I'm going to make sure that you have your reward.' After that I went with Arcoll to Inanda's Kraal. I am not going to tell the story of that performance, for it occupies no less than two chapters in Mr Upton's book. He makes one or two blunders, for he spells my name with an 'o,' and he says we walked out of the camp on our perilous mission 'with faces white and set as a Crusader's.' That is certainly not true, for in the first place nobody saw us go who could judge how we looked, and in the second place we were both smoking and feeling quite cheerful. At home they made a great fuss about it, and started a newspaper cry about the Victoria Cross, but the danger was not so terrible after all, and in any case it was nothing to what I had been through in the past week. I take credit to myself for suggesting the idea. By this time we had the army in the kraal at our mercy. Laputa not having returned, they had no plans. It had been the original intention to start for the Olifants on the following day, so there was a scanty supply of food. Besides, there were the makings of a pretty quarrel between Umbooni and some of the north-country chiefs, and I verily believe that if we had held them tight there for a week they would have destroyed each other in faction fights. In any case, in a little they would have grown desperate and tried to rush the approaches on the north and south. Then we must either have used the guns on them, which would have meant a great slaughter, or let them go to do mischief elsewhere. Arcoll was a merciful man who had no love for butchery; besides, he was a statesman with an eye to the future of the country after the war. But it was his duty to isolate Laputa's army, and at all costs, it must be prevented from joining any of the concentrations in the south. Then I proposed to him to do as Rhodes did in the Matoppos, and go and talk to them. By this time, I argued, the influence of Laputa must have sunk, and the fervour of the purification be half-forgotten. The army had little food and no leader. The rank and file had never been fanatical, and the chiefs and indunas must now be inclined to sober reflections. But once blood was shed the lust of blood would possess them. Our only chance was to strike when their minds were perplexed and undecided. Arcoll did all the arranging. He had a message sent to the chiefs inviting them to an indaba, and presently word was brought back that an indaba was called for the next day at noon. That same night we heard that Umbooni and about twenty of his men had managed to evade our ring of scouts and got clear away to the south. This was all to our advantage, as it removed from the coming indaba the most irreconcilable of the chiefs. That indaba was a queer business. Arcoll and I left our escort at the foot of a ravine, and entered the kraal by the same road as I had left it. It was a very bright, hot winter's day, and try as I might, I could not bring myself to think of any danger. I believed that in this way most temerarious deeds are done; the doer has become insensible to danger, and his imagination is clouded with some engrossing purpose. The first sentries received us gloomily enough, and closed behind us as they had done when Machudi's men haled me thither. Then the job became eerie, for we had to walk across a green flat with thousands of eyes watching us. By-and-by we came to the merula tree opposite the kyas, and there we found a ring of chiefs, sitting with cocked rifles on their knees. We were armed with pistols, and the first thing Arcoll did was to hand them to one of the chiefs. 'We come in peace,' he said. 'We give you our lives.' Then the indaba began, Arcoll leading off. It was a fine speech he made, one of the finest I have ever listened to. He asked them what their grievances were; he told them how mighty was the power of the white man; he promised that what was unjust should be remedied, if only they would speak honestly and peacefully; he harped on their old legends and songs, claiming for the king of England the right of their old monarchs. It was a fine speech, and yet I saw that it did not convince them. They listened moodily, if attentively, and at the end there was a blank silence. Arcoll turned to me. 'For God's sake, Davie,' he said, 'talk to them about Laputa. It's our only chance.' I had never tried speaking before, and though I talked their tongue I had not Arcoll's gift of it. But I felt that a great cause was at stake, and I spoke up as best I could. I began by saying that Inkulu had been my friend, and that at Umvelos' before the rising he had tried to save my life. At the mention of the name I saw eyes brighten. At last the audience was hanging on my words. I told them of Henriques and his treachery. I told them frankly and fairly of the doings at Dupree's Drift. I made no secret of the part I played. 'I was fighting for my life,' I said. 'Any man of you who is a man would have done the like.' Then I told them of my last ride, and the sight I saw at the foot of the Rooirand. I drew a picture of Henriques lying dead with a broken neck, and the Inkulu, wounded to death, creeping into the cave. In moments of extremity I suppose every man becomes an orator. In that hour and place I discovered gifts I had never dreamed of. Arcoll told me afterwards that I had spoken like a man inspired, and by a fortunate chance had hit upon the only way to move my hearers. I told of that last scene in the cave, when Laputa had broken down the bridge, and had spoken his dying words--that he was the last king in Africa, and that without him the rising was at an end. Then I told of his leap into the river, and a great sigh went up from the ranks about Me. 'You see me here,' I said, 'by the grace of God. I found a way up the fall and the cliffs which no man has ever travelled before or will travel again. Your king is dead. He was a great king, as I who stand here bear witness, and you will never more see his like. His last words were that the Rising was over. Respect that word, my brothers. We come to you not in war but in peace, to offer a free pardon, and the redress of your wrongs. If you fight you fight with the certainty of failure, and against the wish of the heir of John. I have come here at the risk of my life to tell you his commands. His spirit approves my mission. Think well before you defy the mandate of the Snake, and risk the vengeance of the Terrible Ones.' After that I knew that we had won. The chiefs talked among themselves in low whispers, casting strange looks at me. Then the greatest of them advanced and laid his rifle at my feet. 'We believe the word of a brave man,' he said. 'We accept the mandate of the Snake.' Arcoll now took command. He arranged for the disarmament bit by bit, companies of men being marched off from Inanda's Kraal to stations on the plateau where their arms were collected by our troops, and food provided for them. For the full history I refer the reader to Mr Upton's work. It took many days, and taxed all our resources, but by the end of a week we had the whole of Laputa's army in separate stations, under guard, disarmed, and awaiting repatriation. Then Arcoll went south to the war which was to rage around the Swaziland and Zululand borders for many months, while to Aitken and myself was entrusted the work of settlement. We had inadequate troops at our command, and but for our prestige and the weight of Laputa's dead hand there might any moment have been a tragedy. The task took months, for many of the levies came from the far north, and the job of feeding troops on a long journey was difficult enough in the winter season when the energies of the country were occupied with the fighting in the south. Yet it was an experience for which I shall ever be grateful, for it turned me from a rash boy into a serious man. I knew then the meaning of the white man's duty. He has to take all risks, recking nothing of his life or his fortunes, and well content to find his reward in the fulfilment of his task. That is the difference between white and black, the gift of responsibility, the power of being in a little way a king; and so long as we know this and practise it, we will rule not in Africa alone but wherever there are dark men who live only for the day and their own bellies. Moreover, the work made me pitiful and kindly. I learned much of the untold grievances of the natives, and saw something of their strange, twisted reasoning. Before we had got Laputa's army back to their kraals, with food enough to tide them over the spring sowing, Aitken and I had got sounder policy in our heads than you will find in the towns, where men sit in offices and see the world through a mist of papers. By this time peace was at hand, and I went back to Inanda's Kraal to look for Colin's grave. It was not a difficult quest, for on the sward in front of the merula tree they had buried him. I found a mason in the Iron Kranz village, and from the excellent red stone of the neighbourhood was hewn a square slab with an inscription. It ran thus: 'Here lies buried the dog Colin, who was killed in defending D. Crawfurd, his master. To him it was mainly due that the Kaffir Rising failed.' I leave those who have read my tale to see the justice of the words. CHAPTER XXIII MY UNCLE'S GIFT IS MANY TIMES MULTIPLIED We got at the treasure by blowing open the turnstile. It was easy enough to trace the spot in the rock where it stood, but the most patient search did not reveal its secret. Accordingly we had recourse to dynamite, and soon laid bare the stone steps, and ascended to the gallery. The chasm was bridged with planks, and Arcoll and I crossed alone. The cave was as I had left it. The bloodstains on the floor had grown dark with time, but the ashes of the sacramental fire were still there to remind me of the drama I had borne a part in. When I looked at the way I had escaped my brain grew dizzy at the thought of it. I do not think that all the gold on earth would have driven me a second time to that awful escalade. As for Arcoll, he could not see its possibility at all. 'Only a madman could have done it,' he said, blinking his eyes at the green linn. 'Indeed, Davie, I think for about four days you were as mad as they make. It was a fortunate thing, for your madness saved the country.' With some labour we got the treasure down to the path, and took it under a strong guard to Pietersdorp. The Government were busy with the settling up after the war, and it took many weeks to have our business disposed of. At first things looked badly for me. The Attorney-General set up a claim to the whole as spoils of war, since, he argued, it was the war-chest of the enemy we had conquered. I do not know how the matter would have gone on legal grounds, though I was advised by my lawyers that the claim was a bad one. But the part I had played in the whole business, more especially in the visit to Inanda's Kraal, had made me a kind of popular hero, and the Government thought better of their first attitude. Besides, Arcoll had great influence, and the whole story of my doings, which was told privately by him to some of the members of the Government, disposed them to be generous. Accordingly they agreed to treat the contents of the cave as ordinary treasure trove, of which, by the law, one half went to the discoverer and one half to the Crown. This was well enough so far as the gold was concerned, but another difficulty arose about the diamonds; for a large part of these had obviously been stolen by labourers from the mines, and the mining people laid claim to them as stolen goods. I was advised not to dispute this claim, and consequently we had a great sorting-out of the stones in the presence of the experts of the different mines. In the end it turned out that identification was not an easy matter, for the experts quarrelled furiously among themselves. A compromise was at last come to, and a division made; and then the diamond companies behaved very handsomely, voting me a substantial sum in recognition of my services in recovering their property. What with this and with my half share of the gold and my share of the unclaimed stones, I found that I had a very considerable fortune. The whole of my stones I sold to De Beers, for if I had placed them on the open market I should have upset the delicate equipoise of diamond values. When I came finally to cast up my accounts, I found that I had secured a fortune of a trifle over a quarter of a million pounds. The wealth did not dazzle so much as it solemnized me. I had no impulse to spend any part of it in a riot of folly. It had come to me like fairy gold out of the void; it had been bought with men's blood, almost with my own. I wanted to get away to a quiet place and think, for of late my life had been too crowded with drama, and there comes a satiety of action as well as of idleness. Above all things I wanted to get home. They gave me a great send-off, and sang songs, and good fellows shook my hand till it ached. The papers were full of me, and there was a banquet and speeches. But I could not relish this glory as I ought, for I was like a boy thrown violently out of his bearings. Not till I was in the train nearing Cape Town did I recover my equanimity. The burden of the past seemed to slip from me suddenly as on the morning when I had climbed the linn. I saw my life all lying before me; and already I had won success. I thought of my return to my own country, my first sight of the grey shores of Fife, my visit to Kirkcaple, my meeting with my mother. I was a rich man now who could choose his career, and my mother need never again want for comfort. My money seemed pleasant to me, for if men won theirs by brains or industry, I had won mine by sterner methods, for I had staked against it my life. I sat alone in the railway carriage and cried with pure thankfulness. These were comforting tears, for they brought me back to my old common-place self. My last memory of Africa is my meeting with Tam Dyke. I caught sight of him in the streets of Cape Town, and running after him, clapped him on the shoulder. He stared at me as if he had seen a ghost. 'Is it yourself, Davie?' he cried. 'I never looked to see you again in this world. I do nothing but read about you in the papers. What for did ye not send for me? Here have I been knocking about inside a ship and you have been getting famous. They tell me you're a millionaire, too.' I had Tam to dinner at my hotel, and later, sitting smoking on the terrace and watching the flying-ants among the aloes, I told him the better part of the story I have here written down. 'Man, Davie,' he said at the end, 'you've had a tremendous time. Here are you not eighteen months away from home, and you're going back with a fortune. What will you do with it?' I told him that I proposed, to begin with, to finish my education at Edinburgh College. At this he roared with laughter. 'That's a dull ending, anyway. It's me that should have the money, for I'm full of imagination. You were aye a prosaic body, Davie.' 'Maybe I am,' I said; 'but I am very sure of one thing. If I hadn't been a prosaic body, I wouldn't be sitting here to-night.' * * * Two years later Aitken found the diamond pipe, which he had always believed lay in the mountains. Some of the stones in the cave, being unlike any ordinary African diamonds, confirmed his suspicions and set him on the track. A Kaffir tribe to the north-east of the Rooirand had known of it, but they had never worked it, but only collected the overspill. The closing down of one of the chief existing mines had created a shortage of diamonds in the world's markets, and once again the position was the same as when Kimberley began. Accordingly he made a great fortune, and to-day the Aitken Proprietary Mine is one of the most famous in the country. But Aitken did more than mine diamonds, for he had not forgotten the lesson we had learned together in the work of resettlement. He laid down a big fund for the education and amelioration of the native races, and the first fruit of it was the establishment at Blaauwildebeestefontein itself of a great native training college. It was no factory for making missionaries and black teachers, but an institution for giving the Kaffirs the kind of training which fits them to be good citizens of the state. There you will find every kind of technical workshop, and the finest experimental farms, where the blacks are taught modern agriculture. They have proved themselves apt pupils, and to-day you will see in the glens of the Berg and in the plains Kaffir tillage which is as scientific as any in Africa. They have created a huge export trade in tobacco and fruit; the cotton promises well; and there is talk of a new fibre which will do wonders. Also along the river bottoms the india-rubber business is prospering. There are playing-fields and baths and reading-rooms and libraries just as in a school at home. In front of the great hall of the college a statue stands, the figure of a black man shading his eyes with his hands and looking far over the plains to the Rooirand. On the pedestal it is lettered 'Prester John,' but the face is the face of Laputa. So the last of the kings of Africa does not lack his monument. Of this institution Mr Wardlaw is the head. He writes to me weekly, for I am one of the governors, as well as an old friend, and from a recent letter I take this passage:-- 'I often cast my mind back to the afternoon when you and I sat on the stoep of the schoolhouse, and talked of the Kaffirs and our future. I had about a dozen pupils then, and now I have nearly three thousand; and in place of a tin-roofed shanty and a yard, I have a whole countryside. You laughed at me for my keenness, Davie, but I've seen it justified. I was never a man of war like you, and so I had to bide at home while you and your like were straightening out the troubles. But when it was all over my job began, for I could do what you couldn't do--I was the physician to heal wounds. You mind how nervous I was when I heard the drums beat. I hear them every evening now, for we have made a rule that all the Kaffir farms on the Berg sound a kind of curfew. It reminds me of old times, and tells me that though it is peace nowadays we mean to keep all the manhood in them that they used to exercise in war. It would do your eyes good to see the garden we have made out of the Klein Labongo glen. The place is one big orchard with every kind of tropical fruit in it, and the irrigation dam is as full of fish as it will hold. Out at Umvelos' there is a tobacco-factory, and all round Sikitola's we have square miles of mealie and cotton fields. The loch on the Rooirand is stocked with Lochleven trout, and we have made a bridle-path up to it in a gully east of the one you climbed. You ask about Machudi's. The last time I was there the place was white with sheep, for we have got the edge of the plateau grazed down, and sheep can get the short bite there. We have cleaned up all the kraals, and the chiefs are members of our county council, and are as fond of hearing their own voices as an Aberdeen bailie. It's a queer transformation we have wrought, and when I sit and smoke my pipe in the evening, and look over the plains and then at the big black statue you and Aitken set up, I thank the Providence that has guided me so far. I hope and trust that, in the Bible words, "the wilderness and the solitary place are glad for us." At any rate it will not be my fault if they don't "blossom as the rose". Come out and visit us soon, man, and see the work you had a hand in starting....' I am thinking seriously of taking Wardlaw's advice. 
21227	----	Shenac's Work at Home By Margaret Murray Robertson ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ SHENAC'S WORK AT HOME BY MARGARET MURRAY ROBERTSON CHAPTER ONE. A long time ago, something very sad happened in one of the districts of Scotland. I cannot tell you how it all came about, but a great many people were obliged to leave their homes where they and their forefathers had lived for many generations. A few scattered themselves through other parts of the country; a few went to the great towns to seek for a livelihood; but by far the greater number made up their minds to leave for ever the land of their birth, and rose in the new, strange world beyond the sea a home for themselves and their children. I could never make you understand what a sorrowful time that was to these poor people, or how much they suffered in going away. For some of the old left children behind them, and some of the young left their parents, or brothers, or sisters; and all left the homes where they had lived through happy years, the kirks where they had worshipped God together, and the kirkyards where lay the dust of the dear ones they had lost. And, besides all this, they knew little of the land to which they were going, and between them and it lay the great ocean, with all its terrors. For then they did not count by days, as we do now, the time that it took to cross the sea, but by weeks, or even by months; and many a timid mother shrank from the thought of all her children might have to suffer ere the sea was passed. Even more than the knowledge of the many difficulties and discouragements which might await them beyond it, did the thought of the dangers of the sea appal them. And to all their other sorrows was added the bitter pain of saying farewell for ever and for ever to Scotland, their native land. It is true that not among all her hills or valleys, or in all her great and prosperous towns, could be found room for them and theirs; it is true that a home in the beloved land was denied them: but it was their native land all the same, and eyes that had refused to weep at the last look of dear faces left behind, grew dim with tears as the broken outline of Scotland's hills faded away in the darkness. But out of very sorrowful events God oftentimes causes much happiness to spring; and it was so to these poor people in their banishment. Into the wide Canadian forests they came, and soon the wilderness and the solitary place were glad for them; soon the wild woods were made to rejoice with the sound of joyful voices ringing out from many a happy though humble home. And though there were those among the aged or the discontented who never ceased to pine for the heather hills of the old land, the young grew up strong and content, troubled by no fear that, for many and many a year to come, the place would become too strait for them or for their children. They did not speak English these people, but a language called Gaelic, not at all agreeable to English ears, but very dear to the heart of the Scottish Highlander. It is passing somewhat out of use now; but even at this day I have heard of old people who will go many miles to hear a sermon preached in that language--the precious gospel itself seeming clearer and richer and more full of comfort coming to them in the language which they learned at their mother's knee. "It was surely the language first spoken on earth, before the beguiling serpent came to our mother," once said an old man to me; "and maybe afterwards too, till the foolish men on the plain of Shinar brought Babel on the earth. And indeed it may be the language spoken in heaven to-day, so sweet and grand and fit for the expression of high and holy thoughts is it." It is passing out of use now, however, even among the Highlanders themselves. Gaelic is the household language still, where the father and mother are old, or where the grand-parents live with the rising generation; but English is the language of business, of the newspapers, and of all the new books that find their way among the people. It is fast becoming the language in which public worship is conducted too. There are very few books in the Gaelic. There are the Bible and the Catechism, and some poems which they who understand them say are very grand and beautiful; and there are a few translations of religious books, such as "The Pilgrim's Progress," and some of the works of such writers as Flavel and Baxter. But though there are not many, they are of a kind which, read often and earnestly, cannot fail to bring wisdom; and a grave and thoughtful people were they who made their homes in this wilderness. Among those who were most earnest in overcoming the difficulties which at every step meet the settler in a new country were two brothers, Angus and Evan MacIvor. Their farms lay next to each other. They were fortunate in securing good land, and they were moderately successful in clearing and cultivating it. They lived to a good old age, and the youngest son of each succeeded him in the possession of the land. It is about the families of these two sons that my story is to be told. The two cousins bore the same name, Angus MacIvor; but they were not at all alike either in appearance or character. The one was fair, with light hair and bright blue eyes; and because of this he was called Angus Bhan, or Angus the fair, to distinguish him from his cousin, who was very dark. He had a frank, open face and kind manner; and if anyone in the neighbourhood wanted a favour done, his first thought was sure to be of Angus Bhan. His cousin Angus Dhu, or Angus the black, had a good reputation among people in general. He was honest and upright in his dealings, his word could be relied on; but his temper was uncertain, and his neighbours called him "close," and few of them would have thought of looking to Angus Dhu when they wanted a helping hand. When these two began life they were very much in the same circumstances. Their farms were alike as to the quality of the soil and as to the number of acres cleared and under cultivation. They were both free from debt, both strong men accustomed to farm-work, and both, in the opinion of their neighbours, had a fair chance of becoming rich, according to the idea of wealth entertained by these people. But when twenty years had passed away the affairs of the two men stood very differently. Angus Dhu had more than realised the expectations of his neighbours. He was rich--richer even than his neighbours supposed. More than half of his farm of two hundred acres was cleared and under cultivation. It was well stocked, well tilled, and very productive. Near the site of the log-house built by his father stood a comfortable farm-house of stone. All this his neighbours saw, and called him a prosperous man; and now and then they speculated together as to the amount of bank-stock to which he might justly lay claim. The world had not gone so well with Angus Bhan. There was not so much land under cultivation, neither was what he had so well cultivated as his cousin's. He had built a new house too, but he had been unfortunate as to the time chosen to build. Materials were dear, and a bad harvest or two put him sadly back in the world. He was obliged to run into debt, and the interest of the money borrowed from his cousin was an additional burden. He was not successful in the rearing of stock, and some heavy losses of cattle fell on him. Worse than all, his health began to fail, for then his courage failed too; and when there came to that part of the country rumours of wonderful discoveries of the precious metals in the western parts of the continent, he only faintly withstood the entreaties of his eldest son that he might be permitted to go away and search for gold among the mountains of California. His going away nearly broke his mother's heart; and some among the neighbours said it would have been far wiser for young Allister to stay at home and help his father to plough and sow and gather in the harvest, than to go so far and suffer so much for gold, which might be slow in coming, and which must be quick in going should sickness overtake him in the land of strangers. But the young are always hopeful, and Allister was sure of success; and he comforted his mother by telling her that in two or three years at most he could earn money enough to pay his father's debt to Angus Dhu, and then he would come home again, and they would all live happily together as before. So Allister went away, and left a sorrowful household behind. And there was another sorrowful household in Glengarry about that time. There was only _sorrow_ in the hearts of Angus Bhan and his wife when their first-born son went away; for he went with their consent, and carried their blessing with him. But there were sorrow and bitter anger in the heart of Angus Dhu when he came to know that his son had also gone away. He was not a man of many words, and he said little to anyone about his son; but in his heart he believed that he had been beguiled away by the son of Angus Bhan, and bitter resentment rose within him at the thought. A few months passed away, and there came a letter from Allister, written soon after his arrival in California. His cousin Evan Dhu was with him. They had done nothing to earn money as yet, but they were in high spirits, and full of hope that they would do great things. This letter gave much comfort to them all; but it was a long time before they heard from the wanderers again. In the meantime the affairs of Angus Bhan did not grow more prosperous. It became more and more difficult for him to pay the interest of his debt; and though his cousin seldom alluded in words to his obligation, he knew quite well that he would not abate a penny either of principal or interest when the time of payment came. A year passed away. No more letters came from Allister, and his father's courage grew fainter and fainter. There seemed little hope of his ever being able to pay his debt; and so, when Angus Dhu asked him to sell a part of his farm to him, he went home with a heavy heart to consult his wife about it. They agreed that something must be done at once; and so it was arranged that if Allister was not heard from, or if some other means of paying at least the interest did not offer before the spring, the hundred acres of their land that lay next to the farm of Angus Dhu should be given up to him. It was sad enough to have to do this; but Angus Bhan said to his wife,-- "If anything were to happen to me, you and the children would be far better with half the land free from debt, than with all burdened as it must be till Allister comes home." They did not say much to each other, but their hearts were very sore-- his, that he must give up the land left to him by his father; hers, for his sake, and also for the sake of her first-born son, a wanderer far away. That autumn, when the harvest was over, the second son, Lewis, set off with some young men of the place to join a company of lumberers, who were, as is their custom, to pass the winter in the woods. It was a time of great prosperity with lumber-merchants then, and good wages could be earned in their service. There was nothing to be done at home in the winter which his father, with the help of the younger children, could not do; and Lewis, who was eighteen, was eager to earn money to help at home, and eager also to enter into the new and, as he thought, the merry life in the woods. So Lewis went away, and there were left at home Hamish and Shenac, who were twins, Dan, Hugh, Colin, and little Flora, the youngest and dearest of them all. The anxieties of the parents were not suffered to sadden the lives of the children, and the little MacIvors Bhan were as merry young people as one could wish to see. Though they were not so prosperous, they were a far happier household than the MacIvors Dhu. There was the same number of children in each family; but Angus Dhu's children were most of them older than their cousins, and while Angus Bhan had six sons and two daughters, Angus Dhu had six daughters and two sons. "His cousin should have been a far richer man than he, with so many sons," Angus Dhu used to say grimly. But three of the boys of Angus Bhan were only children still, and one of them was a cripple. And as for the daughters of Angus Dhu, they had been as good as sons even for the farm-work, labouring in the fields, as is the custom for young women in this part of the country, as industriously and as efficiently as men--far more so, indeed, than their own brother Evan did; for he was often impatient of the closeness with which his father kept them all at work, and it was this, quite as much as his love of adventure and his wish to see the world, that made him go away at last. The two eldest daughters were married, and the third was living away from home; so, after Evan left, there were four in their father's house--three girls and Dan, the youngest of the family, who was twelve years of age. The children of these two families had always been good friends. Indeed, the younger children of Angus Dhu had more pleasure in the house of their father's cousin than in their own home; and many a winter evening they were in the habit of passing there. They had a very quiet winter after Lewis went away. There was less visiting and going about in the moonlight evenings than ever before; for the boys were all too young to go with them except Hamish, and he was a cripple, and not so well as usual this winter, and though the girls were quite able to take care of themselves, they had little pleasure in going alone. So Angus Dhu's girls used to take their knitting and their sewing to the other house, and they all amused themselves in the innocent, old-fashioned ways of that time. Shenac seldom went to visit her cousins; for, besides the fact that her father's house was the pleasantest meeting-place, her brother Hamish could not often go out at night, and she would rarely consent to leave him; and no one added so much to the general amusement as Hamish. He was very skilful at making puzzles and at all sorts of arithmetical questions, and not one of them could sing so many songs or tell so many stories as he. He was very merry and sweet-tempered too. His being a cripple, and different from all the rest, had not made him peevish and difficult to deal with as such misfortunes are so apt to do, and there was no one in all the world that Shenac loved so well as her twin-brother Hamish. I suppose I ought to describe Shenac more particularly, as my story is to be more about her than any of the other MacIvors. A good many years after the time of which I am now writing; I heard Shenac MacIvor--or, as English lips made it, Jane MacIvor--spoken of as a very beautiful woman (the Gaelic spelling is Sinec); but at this time I do not think it ever came into the mind of anybody to think whether she was beautiful or not. She had one attribute of beauty--perfect health. There never bloomed among the Scottish hills, which her father and mother only just remembered, roses and lilies more fresh and fair than bloomed on the happy face of Shenac, and her curls of golden brown were the admiration and envy of her dark haired cousins. They called little Flora a beauty, and a rose, and a precious darling; but of Shenac they said she was bright and good, and very helpful for a girl of her age; and her brother Hamish thought her the best girl in the world--indeed, quite without a fault, which was very far from being true. For Shenac had plenty of faults. She had a quick, hot temper, which, when roused, caused her to say many things which she ought not to have said. Hamish thought all those sharp words were quite atoned for by Shenac's quick and earnest repentance, but there is a sense in which it is true that hasty and unkind words can never be unsaid. Shenac liked her own way too in all things. This did not often make trouble, however; for she had learned her mother's household ways, and, indeed, had wonderful taste and talent for these matters. Being the only daughter of the house, except little Flora, and her mother not being very strong, Shenac had less to do in the fields than her cousins, and was busy and happy in the house, except in harvest-time, when even the little lads, her brothers, were expected to do their part there. Hamish and Shenac were very much alike, as twins very often are--that is, they were both fair, and had the same-coloured hair and eyes. But, while Shenac was rosy and strong, the very picture of health, her brother was thin and pale, and often of late there had been a look of pain on his face that it made his mother's heart ache to see. They were all in all to each other--Shenac and Hamish. They missed Lewis less on this account, and they knew very little of the troubles that so often made their father and mother anxious; and the first months of winter passed happily over them after Lewis went away. Christmas passed, and the new year came in. A few more pleasant weeks went by, and then there came terrible tidings to the house of Angus Bhan. Far away, on one of the rapids of the Grand River, a boat had been overturned. Three young men had been lost under the ice. The body of one had been recovered: it was the body of Lewis MacIvor. "We should be thankful that we can at least bring him home," said Angus Bhan to his wife, while she made preparations for his sad journey. But he said it with very pale, trembling lips, and his wife struggled to restrain the great burst of weeping that threatened to have way, that he might have the comfort of thinking that she was bearing her trouble well. But when she was left alone all these sad days of waiting, she was ready to say, in the bitterness of her heart, that there was no sorrow like her sorrow. One son was a wanderer, another was dead, and on the face of the dearly-beloved Hamish was settling the look of habitual suffering, so painful to see. Her cup of sorrow was full to the brim, she declared, but she knew not what she said. For, when a few days had passed, there were brought home for burial two dead bodies instead of one. Her husband was no more. He had nearly accomplished his sorrowful errand, when death overtook him. He had complained to the friend who was with him of feeling cold, and had left the sleigh to walk a mile or two to warm himself. They waited in vain for him at the next resting-place, and when they went back to look for him they found him lying with his face in the snow, quite dead. He had not died from cold, the doctor said, but from heart-disease, and probably without suffering; and this comfort the bereaved widow tried to take to herself. But her cup of sorrow was not full yet. The very night before the burial was to be, the house caught fire and burned to the ground. It was with difficulty that the few neighbours who gathered in time to help could save the closed coffins from the flames; and it seemed a small matter, at the time, that nearly all their household stuff was lost. The mother's cup _did_ seem full now. I do not think that the coming of any trouble, however great, could at this time have added to her grief. She had striven to be submissive under the repeated strokes that had fallen upon her, but the horrors of that night were too much for her, weakened as she was by sorrow. For a time she was quite distracted, heeding little the kind efforts of her neighbours to alleviate her distress and the distress of her children. All that kind hearts and willing hands could do was done for them. The log house which their grandfather had built still stood. It was repaired, and filled with gifts from every family in the neighbourhood, and the widow and her children found refuge there. "Oh, what a sad beginning for a story!" I think some of my young readers may say, in tones of disappointment. It is indeed a sad beginning, but every sorrowful word is true. Every day there are just such sorrowful events happening in the world, though it is not often that trouble falls so heavily at once on any household. I might have left all this out of my story; but then no one could have understood so well the nature of the work that fell to Shenac, or have known the difficulties she had to overcome in trying to do it well. CHAPTER TWO. It was May-day. Oftentimes in the northern country this month is ushered in by drizzling rain, or even by the falling snow; but this year brought a May-day worthy of the name--clear, mild, and balmy. There was not a cloud in all the sky, nor wind enough to stir the catkins hanging close over the waters of the creek. The last days of April had been warm and bright, and there was a tender green on the low-lying fields, and on the poplars that fringed the wood; and the boughs of the maple-trees in the sugar-bush looked purple and brown over the great grey trunks. There is never a May-day when some flowers cannot be found beneath these trees, and in the warm hollows along the margin of the creek; but this year there were more than a few. Besides the pale little "spring flower," which hardly waits for the snow to go away before it shows itself, there were daffodils and anemones and wake-robins, and from the lapful which little Flora MacIvor sat holding on the bank close beside the great willow peeped forth violets, blue and white. There were lady-slippers too somewhere not far away, Flora was sure, if only Dan or Hughie could be persuaded to look for them a little farther down the creek, in the damp ground under the cedars, where she had promised her mother she would not go. But the lads had something else to do than to look for flowers for Flora. Down the creek, which was broad and full because of the melting snow, a number of great cedar chips were floating. Past the foot-bridge, and past the eddy by the great rock, and over the pool into which the creek widened by the old ashery, the mimic fleet sailed safely; while the lads shouted and ran, and strove by the help of long sticks to pilot them all into the little cove by the willow where little Flora was sitting, till even the flower-loving little maiden forgot her treasures, and grew excited like the rest. You would never have thought, looking at those bright faces, that heavy trouble had been in their home for months. Listening to their merry, voices, you would never have imagined that there were, in some hearts that loved them, grave doubts whether for the future they were to have a home together or no. But so it was. Higher up the bank, where the old ashery used to stand, Shenac and Hamish were sitting. The triumphant shout with which the last and largest of the boats was landed, startled them out of the silence in which they had been musing, and the girl said sadly,-- "Children forget so soon!" Hamish made no answer. He was not watching the little sailors. His face was quite turned away from them, and looked gloomy and troubled enough. The girl watched a moment anxiously; and then turning her eyes where his had been for some time resting, she cried passionately,-- "I wish a fire would break out and burn it to ashes, every stick!" "What would be the good of that? Angus Dhu would put it all up again," said Hamish bitterly. "He might save himself the trouble, though. He means to have _all_ the land shortly." They were watching the progress of a fence of great cedar rails which three or four men were building; and no wonder they watched it with vexation, for it went from line to line, dividing in two parts the land that had belonged to their father. He was dead now, and their brother Allister was far away, they knew not where, in search of gold; and there was no one now, besides themselves, except their mother, and the little ones who were so thoughtless, making merry with the great cedar chips which Angus Dhu sent, floating down the stream. "Nobody but you and me to do anything; and what can _we_ do?" continued the lad with a desponding gesture. "And my mother scarcely seems to care to try." "Whisht, Hamish dear; there's no wonder," said Shenac in a low voice. "But about the land. Angus Dhu can never get it surely!" "He has gotten the half of it already. Who is to hinder his getting the rest?" said Hamish. "And he might as well have it. What can _we_ do with it?" "Was it wrong for him to take it, do you think, Hamish?" asked Shenac gravely. "Not in law. Angus Dhu would never do what is unlawful. But he was hard on my father, and he says--" Hamish paused to ask himself whether it was worth while to vex Shenac with the unkind words of Angus Dhu. But Shenac would not be denied the knowledge. "What was it, Hamish? He would never dare to say a light word of our father. Did you not then and there show him the door?" Shenac's blue eye flashed. She was quite capable of doing that and more to vindicate her father's memory. "Whisht, Shenac," said Hamish. "Angus Dhu loved my father, though he was hard on him. There were tears in his eyes when he spoke to my mother about him. But he says that the half of the land is justly his, for money that my father borrowed at different times, and for the interest which he could not pay. And he wants to buy the other half; for he says we can never carry on the farm, and I am afraid he is right," added the lad despondingly. "And what would become of us all?" asked Shenac, her cheeks growing pale in the pain and surprise of the moment. "He would put out the money in such a way that it would bring an income to my mother, who could live here still, with Colin and little Flora. He says he will take Dan to keep till he is of age, and Elder McMillan will take Hugh. You are old enough to do for yourself, he says; and as for me--" He turned away, so that his sister might not see the working of his face. But Shenac was thinking of something else, and did not notice him. "But, Hamish, we have written to Allister, and he will be sure to come home when he hears what has happened to us." Hamish shook his head. "Black Angus says Allister will never come back. He says he was an unsettled lad before he went away. And, Shenac, he says our Allister beguiled Evan, or he never would have left home. He looked black when he said it. He was angry." Shenac's eyes blazed again. "Our Allister unsettled--he that went away for our father's sake, and for us all! Our Allister to beguile Evan, that wild lad! And you sat and heard him say it, Hamish!" "What else could I do?" said Hamish bitterly. "And my mother?" said Shenac. "She could only cry, and say that Allister had always been a good son to her and to my father, and a dear brother to us all." There was a long pause. Shenac never removed her eyes from the men, who were gradually drawing nearer and nearer, as one after another of the great cedar rails was laid on the foundation of logs and stones already prepared for them along the field; and anger gathered in her heart and showed itself in her face as she gazed. Hamish had turned quite away from the fence and from his sister, towards the creek where his brothers were still shouting at their play. But he was not thinking of his brothers; he did not see them, indeed. He made an effort to keep back the tears, which, in spite of all he could do, would flow. If Shenac had spoken to him, they must have gushed out; but he had time to force them back before Shenac turned away with an angry gesture. "It's of no use, Shenac," he said then. "There's reason in what Angus Dhu says. We will have to give up the farm." "Hamish, that shall never be done!" said Shenac. "It would break my mother's heart." "It seems broken already," said Hamish hoarsely. "And it is easy to say the land must be kept. But what can we do with it? Who is to work it?" "You and I and the little lads," cried Shenac. "There is no fear. God will help us," she added reverently--"the widow and orphan's God. Hamish, don't you mind?" Hamish had no voice with which to answer for a moment; but in a little while he said with some difficulty,-- "It is easy for _you_ to say what you will do, Shenac--you who are strong and well; but look at me! I am not getting stronger, as we always hoped. What could I do at the plough? I had better go to some town, as Angus Dhu advised my mother, and learn to make shoes." "Oh, but he's fine at making plans, that Angus Dhu," said Shenac scornfully. "But we'll need to tell him that we're for none of his help. Hamish," she added, suddenly stooping down over him, "do you think any plan made to separate you and me will prosper? I think I see black Angus coming between you and me with his plans." Her words and her caress were quite too much for Hamish, and he surprised himself and her too by a sudden burst of tears. The sight of this banished Shenac's softness in a moment. She raised herself from her stooping posture with an angry cry. Separated from the rest of the fence-makers, and approaching the knoll where the brother and sister had, been sitting, were two men. One was Angus Dhu, and the other was his friend, and a relation of his wife, Elder McMillan. He was a good man, people said, but one who liked to move on with the current,--one who went for peace at all risks, and so forgot sometimes that purity was to be set before even peace. There was nothing in Shenac's knowledge of the man to make her afraid of him, and she took three steps towards them, and said,-- "Angus Dhu, do you mind what the Bible says of them that oppress the widow and the fatherless? Have you forgotten the verse that says, `Remove not the ancient land-mark'?" She stopped, as if waiting for an answer. The two men stood still from sheer surprise, and looked at her. Shenac continued:-- "And do you mind what's said of them that add field to field? and--" "Shenac, my woman," said the elder at last, "it's no becoming in you to speak in that kind of a way to one older than your father was. I doubt you're forgetting--" But Shenac put his words aside with a gesture of indifference. "And to speak false words of our Allister to his mother in her trouble as though he had led your wild lad Evan astray. You little know what our Allister saved him from more than once. But that is not for to-day. I have this to, say to you, Angus Dhu: you must be content with the half you have gotten; for not another acre of my father's land shall ever be yours, though all the elders in Glengarry stood at your back.--I will not whisht, Hamish. He is to know that he is not to meddle between my mother and me. It's not or the like of Angus Dhu to say that my mother's children shall be taken from her in her trouble. Our affairs may be bad enough, but they'll be none the better for your meddling in them." "Shenac," entreated Hamish, "you'll be sorry for speaking that way to our father's cousin." "Our father's oppressor rather," she insisted scornfully. But she had said her say; and, besides, the lads and little Flora had heard their voices, and were drawing near. "Children," said Shenac, "you are to come home. And mind, you are not to set foot on this bank again without our mother's leave. It's Angus Dhu's land now, he says, and not ours." The creek--that part of it near which the willows grew, and where the old ashery used to stand--had been their daily resort every summer-day all their lives; and they all looked at her with astonishment and dismay, but none of them spoke. "Come home to our mother, boys.--Flora, come home." And Shenac lifted her little sister over the foundation of great stones, and beckoned to the boys to follow her. "Come, Hamish, it's time we were home." And Hamish obeyed her as silently as the rest had done. "Hamish," said the elder, "speak here, man. You have some sense, and tales such as yon wild girl is like to tell may do your father's cousin much harm." In his heart Hamish knew Shenac to be foolish and wrong to speak as she had done, but he was true to her all the same, and would hold no parley with the enemy. So he gave no heed to the elder's words, but followed the rest through the field. Shenac's steps grew slower as they approached the house. "Hamish," she said a little shamefacedly, "there will be no use vexing our mother by telling her all this." "That's true enough," said Hamish. "But mind, Hamish, I'm not sorry that I said it. I have aye meant to say something to Angus Dhu about the land; though I daresay it would have been as well to say it when that clattering body, Elder McMillan, was out of hearing." "And John and Rory McLean," murmured Hamish. "Hamish, man, they never could have heard. Not that I am caring," continued Shenac. "It's true that Angus Dhu has gotten half our father's land, and that he is seeking the other half; but _that_ he'll never get--_never_!" And she flashed an angry glance towards the spot where the men were still standing. Hamish knew it was always best to leave his sister till her anger cooled, so he said nothing in reply. He grieved for the loss of the land as much as Shenac did, but he did not resent it like her. Though he believed that Angus Dhu had been hard on his father, he did not believe that he had dealt unjustly by him. And he was right. Even in taking half the land he had taken only what he believed to be his due, and in wishing to possess himself, of the rest, he believed he was about to do a kindness to the widow and children of his dead cousin. He believed they could never get their living from the land. They must give it up, he thought; and it was far better that it should fall into his hands than into the hands of a stranger. Had his cousin lived, he would never have wished for the land; and he said to himself that he would do much for them all, and that the widow and orphans should never suffer while he could befriend them. At the same time, he could not deny that he would be glad to get the land. When Evan came home, it might keep the lad near him to have this farm ready for him. He had allowed himself to think a great deal about this of late. He would not confess to himself that any part of the uncomfortable feelings that Shenac's outbreak had stirred within him sprang from disappointment. But he was mistaken. For when the girl planted her foot on the other side of the new fence, and looked back at him defiantly, he felt that she would make good her word, and hold the land, at least, until Allister came home. He did not care much what the neighbours might say about him; but he told Elder McMillan that he cared, and that doubtless yon wild girl would have plenty: to say about things she did not understand, and that she would get ill-minded folks enough to hearken to her and to urge her on. And he tried to make himself believe that it was this, and nothing else, that vexed him in the matter. "And what's to be done?" asked the elder uneasily, as Shenac and the rest disappeared. "Done!" repeated his friend angrily. "_I_ shall do nought. If they can go on by themselves, all the better. I shall be well pleased. Why should I seek to have the land?" "Why, indeed?" said the elder. "I shall neither make nor meddle in their affairs, till I am asked to do it," continued Angus Dhu; but the look on his face said, as plainly as words could have done, "and it will not be very long before that will happen." But he made a mistake, as even wise men will sometimes do. CHAPTER THREE. I am glad to say that Shenac did not let the sun go down on her wrath. Indeed, long before sunset she was heartily ashamed of her outbreak towards Angus Dhu, and acknowledged as much to Hamish. Not that she believed he had acted justly and kindly in his past dealings with her father; nor was she satisfied that the future interests of the family would be safe in his hands. Even while acknowledging how wrong and foolish she had been in speaking as she had done, she declared to Hamish that Angus Dhu should neither "make nor meddle" in their affairs. They must cling together, and do the best they could, till Allister should come home, whatever Angus Dhu might say. That her mother might yield to persuasion on this point, she thought possible; for the widow had lost courage, and saw only the darker side of their affairs. But Shenac stoutly declared that day to Hamish that no one should be suffered to persuade her mother to the breaking of her heart. No one had a right to interfere in their affairs further than should be welcome to them all. For her part, she was not afraid of Angus Dhu, nor of Elder McMillan, nor of any one else, when it came to the question of breaking up their home and sending them, one here and another there, away from the mother. Shenac felt very strong and brave as she said all this to Hamish; and yet when, as it was growing dark that night, she saw Elder McMillan opening their gate, her first impulse was to run away. She did not, however, but said to herself, "Now is the time to stand by my mother, and help her to resist the elder's efforts to get little Hugh away from us." Besides, she could not go away without being seen, and it would look cowardly; so she placed herself behind the little wheel which the mother had left for a moment, and when the elder came in she was as busy and as quiet as (in his frequently-expressed opinion) it was the bounden duty of all young women to be. Now, there was nothing in the whole round of Shenac's duties so distasteful to her as spinning on the little wheel. The constant and unexciting employment for hands and mind that spinning afforded, and perhaps the pleasant monotony of the familiar humming of the wheel, always exerted a soothing influence on the mother; and one of the first things that had given them hope of her recovery after the shock of the burning of the house was her voluntary bringing out of the wheel. But it was very different with Shenac. The strength and energy so invaluable to her in her household work or her work in the fields were of no avail to her here. To sit following patiently and constantly the gradual forming and twisting of the thread, did not suit her as it did her mother; and watchful and excited as she was that night, she could hardly sit quiet while the elder went through his usual salutations to her mother and the rest. He was in no haste to make known his errand, if he had one, and he was in no haste to go. He spoke in slow, unwilling sentences, as he had done many times before, of the mysterious dealings of Providence with the family, making long pauses between. And through his talk and his silence the widow sat shedding a few quiet tears in the dark, and now and then uttering a word of reply. What was the good of it all Shenac would have liked to shake him, and to bid him "say his say" and go; but the elder seemed to have no say, at least concerning Hugh. He went slowly through his accustomed round of condolence with her mother and advice to the boys and Shenac, and, as he rose to go, added something about a bee which some of the neighbours had been planning to help the widow with the ploughing and sowing of her land, and then he went away. "Some of the neighbours," repeated Shenac in a whisper to her brother. "That's the elder's way of heaping coals on my head--good man!" "What do you suppose the elder cares about a girl like you, or Angus Dhu either?" asked Hamish with a shrug. Shenac laughed, but had no time to answer. "I was afraid it might be about wee Hughie that the elder wanted to speak," said the mother with a sigh of relief as she came in from the door, where she had bidden the visitor good-night. "And what about Hughie?" asked Shenac, resuming her spinning. She knew very well what about him; but her mother had not told her, and this was as good a way as any to begin about their plans for the summer. Instead of answering her question, the mother said, after a moment's silence,-- "He's a good man, Elder McMillan." "Oh yes, I daresay he's a good man," said Shenac with some sharpness; "but that's no reason why he should want to have our Hughie." The little boys were all in bed by this time, and Hamish and Shenac were alone with their mother. After a little impatient twitching of her thread, Shenac put aside her wheel, swept up the hearth, and moved about putting things in order in the room, and then she came and sat down beside her mother. She did not speak, however; she did not know what to say. Any allusion to the summer's work was almost surer to make her mother shed tears, and Shenac could not bear to grieve her. She darted an impatient glance at Hamish, who seemed to have no intention of helping her to-night. He was sitting with his face upon his hands, just as he had been sitting through the elder's visit, and Shenac could not catch his eye. It seemed wrong to risk the bringing on of a wakeful, moaning, miserable night to her mother; and she was thinking she would say no more till morning, when her mother spoke again. "Yes, Elder McMillan is a good man. I would not be afraid for Hugh, and he would be near at hand." "Yes," said Shenac, making an effort to speak quietly, "if Hugh must go, he might as well go to Elder McMillan's as anywhere--" She stopped. "And Dan needs a firm hand, they say," continued the mother, her voice breaking a little; "but I'm afraid for him. Angus Dhu is a stern man, and Dan has been used to a hand gentle as well as firm. But he would not be far away." Shenac broke out impatiently,-- "Angus Dhu's hand was not firm enough to keep his own son at home, and he could never guide our Dan. Mother, never heed them that tell you any ill of Dan. Has he ever disobeyed you once since--since then?" Shenac's voice failed a little, then she went on again, "Why should Dan go away, or any of us? Why can't we bide all together, and do the best we can, till Allister comes home?" "But that must be a long time yet, if he ever comes," said the mother, sighing. "Yes, it may be long," said Shenac eagerly. "Of course it cannot be for the spring work, and maybe not for the harvest, but he's sure to come, mother; and think of Allister coming and finding no home! Yes, I know you are to bide here; but the land would be gone, and it would be no home long to Allister or any of us without the land. Angus Dhu should be content with what he's got," continued Shenac bitterly. "Allister will never be content to let my father's land go out of our hands; and Angus Dhu promised my father to give it up to Allister. Mother, we must do nothing till Allister comes home.--Hamish, why don't you tell my mother to wait till Allister comes home?" "Till Allister comes home! When Allister comes home!" This had been the burden of all Shenac's comforting to her mother, even when she could take no comfort from it herself. For a year seemed a long time to Shenac; but three months of the year had passed already, and surely, surely Allister would come. Hamish raised his face as Shenac appealed to him, but it was anything but a hopeful face, and Shenac was glad that her mother was looking the other way. "But what are we to do in the meantime?" he asked, and his voice was as little hopeful as his face. For a moment Shenac was indignant at her brother. It would need the courage of both to make the future look otherwise than dark to their mother, and she thought Hamish was going to fail her. She was growing very eager; but she knew that the quick, hot words that might carry Hamish with her would have no force with her mother, and she put a strong restraint on herself, and said quietly,-- "We can manage through the summer, mother. The wheat was sown in the fall, you know, and the elder said we were to have a bee next week for the oats, and we can do the rest ourselves--Hamish and Dan and I--till Allister comes home." "It would be a hard fight for you all," said the mother despondingly. "You should say Dan and you and little Hugh and Colin," said Hamish bitterly. "They could help far more than I can, unless I am much better than I am now." And then he dropped his head on his hands again. Shenac rose suddenly and placed herself between him and her mother, and then she said quietly,-- "And, mother, the elder thinks we can do it, or he wouldn't have spoken about the bee. Nobody can think it right that Angus Dhu should take our father's land from us; and the elder said nothing about Hugh; and Dan would never bide with Angus Dhu and work our father's land for him. Never! never! Mother, we must try what we can do till Allister comes home." There was not much said after that. There was no decision in words as to their plans, but Shenac knew they were to make a trial of the summer's work--she and her brothers--and she was content. There were but two rooms downstairs in the little log house, and the mother and Flora slept in the one in which they had been sitting. So when Hamish came back from looking whether the gates and barn-doors were safely shut, he found Shenac, who had much to say to him, waiting for him outside. "Hamish," she said eagerly, "what ails you? Why did you not speak to my mother and tell her what we ought to do? Hamish," she added, putting out her hand to detain him as he tried to pass her--"Hamish, speak to me. What ails you to-night, Hamish?" "What right have I to tell my mother--I, who can do nothing?" He shook off her detaining hand as if he was angry; but there was a sound of tears in his voice, and Shenac's momentary feeling of offence was gone. She would not be shaken off, and putting her arms round his neck she held him fast. He did not try to free himself after the first moment, but he turned away his face. "Hamish," she repeated, "what is it? Don't you think we can manage to keep together till Allister comes home? Is it that, Hamish? Tell me what you think it is right for us to do." "It is not that, Shenac; and I have no right to say anything--I, who can do nothing." "Hamish!" exclaimed his sister, in a tone in which surprise and pain were mingled. "If I were like the rest," continued Hamish--"I, who am the eldest; but even Dan can do more than I can. You must not think of me, Shenac, in your plans." For a moment Shenac was silent from astonishment; this was so unlike the cheerful spirit of Hamish. Then she said,-- "Hamish, the work is not all. What could Dan or any of us do without you to plan for us? We are the hands, you are the head." Hamish made an impatient movement. "Allister would be head and hands too," he said bitterly. "But, Hamish, you are not Allister; you are Hamish, just as you have always been. You are not surely going to fail our mother now--you, who have done more than all of us put together to comfort her since then?" Hamish made no answer. "It is wrong for you to look at it in that way, Hamish," continued Shenac. "I once heard my father say that though you were lame, God might have higher work for you to do than for any of the rest of us. I did not know what he meant then, but I know now." "Hush! don't, Shenac," said Hamish. "No; I must speak, Hamish. It is not right to fret because the work you have to do is not just the work you would choose. And you'll break my heart if you vex yourself about--because you are not like the rest. Not one of us all is so dear to my mother and the rest as you are; you know _that_, Hamish. And why should you think of this now, more than before?" "Shenac, I have been a child till now, thinking of nothing. My looking forward was but the dreaming of idle dreams. I have wakened since my father died--wakened to find myself useless, a burden, with so much to be done." "Hamish," said Shenac gravely, "that is not true, and it's foolish, besides. If you _were_ useless--blind as well as lame--if you were as cankered and ill to do with as you are mild and sweet, there would be no question of burden, because you are one of us, our own. If you were thinking of Angus Dhu, you might speak of burdens; but it is nonsense to say that to me. You know that you are more to my mother than any of us, and you are more to me than all my brothers put together; but I need not tell you _that_. Hamish, if it had not been for you, I think my mother must have died. What is Dan, or what am I, in comparison to you? Hamish, you must take heart and be strong, for all our sakes." They were sitting on the doorstep by this time, and Shenac laid her head on her brother's shoulder as she spoke. "I know I am all wrong, Shenac. I know I ought to be content as I am," said Hamish at last, but he could say no more. Shenac's heart filled with love and pity unspeakable. She would have given him her health and strength, and would have taken up his burden of weakness and deformity to bear them henceforth for his sake. But she did not tell him so; where would have been the good? She sat quite still, only stroking his hand now and then, till he spoke again. "Perhaps I am wrong to speak to you about it, Shenac, but I seem to myself to be quite changed; I seem to have nothing to look forward to. If it had been me who was taken instead of Lewis." "Hamish," said Shenac gravely, "it is not saying it to me that is wrong, but thinking it. And why should you have nothing to look forward to? We are young. A year seems a long time; but it will pass, and when Allister comes home, and we are prosperous again, it will be with you as it would have been if my father had lived. You will get to your books again, and learn and grow a wise man; and what will it signify that you are little and lame, when you have all the honour that wisdom wins? Of course all these sad changes are worse for you than for the rest. _We_ will only have to work a little harder, but your life is quite changed; and, Hamish, it will only be for a little while, till Allister comes home." "But, Shenac," said Hamish eagerly, "you are not to think I mind _that_ most; I am not so bad as that. If I were strong--if I were like the rest--I would like nothing so well as to labour always for my mother and you all; but I can do little." "Yes, I know," said Shenac; "but Dan can do that, and so can I But your work will be different--far higher and nobler than ours. Only you must not be impatient because you are hindered a little just now. Hamish, bhodach, what is a year out of a whole lifetime? Never fear, you will find your true work in time." "Bhodach" is "old man" in the language in which these children were speaking. But on Shenac's lips it meant every sweet and tender name; and, listening to her, Hamish forgot his troubles, or looked beyond them, and his spirit grew bright and trustful again--peaceful for that night at least. The shadow fell on him many a time again; but it never fell so darkly but that the sunshine of his sister's face had power to chase it away, till, by-and-by, there fell on both the light before which all shadows for ever and for ever flee away. CHAPTER FOUR. And so, with a good heart, they began their work. I daresay it would be amusing to some of my young readers if I were to go into particulars, and tell them all that was done by each from day to day; but I have no time nor space for this. The bee was a very successful one. As everybody knows, a bee is a collection of the neighbours to help to do in one day work which it would take one or two persons a long time to do. It is not usually to do such work as ploughing or sowing that bees are had; but all the neighbours were glad to help the Widow MacIvor with her spring work, and so two large fields, one of oats and another of barley, were in those two days ploughed and harrowed, and sowed and harrowed again. Shenac was not quite at her ease about the bee, partly because she thought it had been the doing of Angus Dhu and the elder, and partly because she felt if they were to be kept together they must depend, not on their neighbours, but upon themselves. But it was well they had this help, for the young people were quite inexperienced in such work as ploughing and sowing, and the summers are so short in Canada that a week or two sooner or later makes a great difference in the sowing of the seed. There was enough left for Shenac and her brothers to keep them busy from sunrise to sunset, during the months of May and June. There was the planting of potatoes and corn, and the sowing of carrots and turnips; and then there was the hoeing and keeping them all free from weeds. There was also the making of the garden, and the keeping of it in order when it was made. This had always been more the work of Hamish than of any of the rest, and he made it his work still; and though he was not so strong as he used to be, there never had been so much pains taken with the garden before. Everybody knows what comfort for a family comes out of a well-kept garden, even though there may be only the common vegetables and very little fruit in it; and Hamish made the most of theirs that summer, and so did they all. It must not be supposed that because Shenac was a girl she had no part in the field-work. Even now, in that part of the country, the wives and daughters of farmers help their fathers and brothers during the busy seasons of spring and harvest; and for many years after the opening up of the country the females helped to clear the land, putting their hands to all kinds of out-door work as cheerfully as need be. As for Shenac, she would have scorned the idea that there was any work that her brothers could do for which they had not the strength and skill. Indeed, Shenac had her full share of the field-work, and much to do in the house besides. The mother was not strong yet, either in mind or body: she would never be strong again, Shenac sometimes feared, and she must be saved as far as possible from all care and anxiety. So the heaviest of the household work fell to Shenac. They had not a large dairy, and never could have again; for the greater part of their pasture and mowing land lay on the wrong side of the high cedar fence so hotly resented by the children. But the three cows which they had were her peculiar care. She milked them morning and evening, and, when the days were longest, at noon too; and though her mother prepared the dishes for the milk and skimmed the cream, Shenac always made the butter, because churning needed strength as well as skill; and oftener than otherwise it was done before she called her brothers in the morning. Much may be accomplished in a short time by a quick eye and a ready hand, and Shenac had both. The minutes after meal-time which her brothers took for rest, or for lingering about to talk together, she filled with the numberless items of household work which seem little in the doing, but which being left undone bring all things into disorder. When any number of persons are brought together in circumstances where decision and action become necessary, the leadership will naturally fall on the one among them who is best fitted by natural gifts or acquired knowledge to assume responsibility. It is the same in families where the head has been suddenly removed. Quite unconsciously to herself, Shenac assumed the leadership in the household; and it was well for her brothers that she had duties within-doors as well as in the fields. There were days in these months of May and June which were not half long enough for the accomplishment of her plans and wishes. I am afraid that at such times the strength of Hamish and the patience of Dan must have given out before she found it too dark to go on with their labours. But the thought of the mother, weary with the work at home, made her shorten the day to her brothers and lengthen it to herself. One of Shenac's faults was a tendency to go to extremes in all things that interested her. She had made up her mind that the summer's work must be successful; and to insure success all other things must be made to yield. It was easy for her to forget the weakness of Hamish, for he was only too willing to forget it himself; and as for Dan, though there was some truth in Angus Dhu's assertion to his mother that "he was a wild lad, and needed a firm hand to guide him," he gave no tokens of breaking away as yet. Shenac had so impressed him with the idea that they must keep the farm as their own, and show the neighbours that they could keep it in order, that to him every successful day's work seemed a triumph over Angus Dhu as well as over circumstances. His industry was quite of his own free will, as he believed, and he gave Shenac none of the credit of keeping him busy, and indeed she took none of the credit to herself. In her determination to do the most that could be done, she might have forgotten her mother's comfort too; but this was not permitted. For if the mother tired herself with work, or if she saw anything forgotten or neglected in the house, she became fretful and desponding, and against this Shenac always strove to guard. If Shenac were ever so tired at night, it rested her to turn back to look over the fields beginning to grow green and beautiful under their hands. They worked in those days to some purpose, everybody acknowledged. In no neighbourhood, far or near, were the fields better worth looking at than those that had been so faithfully gone over by Shenac and her brothers. Many a farmer paused, in passing, to admire them, saying to himself that the Widow MacIvor's children were a credit to her and to themselves; and few were so churlish as to refrain from speaking a word of encouragement to them when an opportunity came. Even Angus Dhu gave many a glance of wonder and pleasure over his cedar rails, and gave them credit for having done more than well. He was very glad. He said so to himself, and he said so to his neighbours. And I believe he was glad, in a way. He was too good a farmer not to take pleasure in seeing land made the most of; and I think he was glad, too, to see the children of his dead friend and cousin capable of doing so well for themselves. It is just possible that deep down in his heart, unknown or unacknowledged to himself, there lurked a hope that when Shenac should marry, as he thought she was sure to do, and when wild Dan should have gone away, as his brothers had done before him, those well-tilled fields might still become his. Perhaps I am wrong, and hard upon him, as Shenac was. She gave him no credit for his kind thoughts, but used to say to her brothers, when she caught a glimpse of his face over the fence,-- "There stands Angus Dhu, glowering and glooming at us. He's not praying for summer rain on our behalf, I'll warrant.--Oh well, Angus man, we'll do without your prayers, as we do without your help, and as you'll have to do without our land. Make the most of what you have got, and be content." "Shenac," said Hamish on one of these occasions, "you're hard on Angus Dhu." "Am I, Hamish?" said Shenac, laughing. "Well, maybe I am; but it will not harm him, I daresay." "But it may harm yourself, Shenac," said Hamish gravely. "I think I would rather lose all the work we have done this spring than have it said that our Shenac was bearing false witness against our neighbour, and he of our own kin, too." "Nobody would dare to say that of me," said Shenac, reddening. "But if it is true, what is the difference whether it is said or not?" said Hamish. "You seem more glad of our success because you think it vexes Angus Dhu, than because it pleases our mother and keeps us all at home together. It does not vex him, I'm sure of that; and, whether it does or not, it is wrong for you always to be thinking and saying it. You are not to be grieved or angry at my saying it, Shenac." But both grieved and angry Shenac was at her brother's reproof. She did not know which was greater, her anger or her grief. She did not trust herself to answer him, and in a little time Hamish spoke again:-- "It cannot harm him--at least, I think it cannot really harm him, though it may vex him; and I'm sure it must grieve the girls to hear that you say such things about their father. But that is not what I was thinking about. It must harm yourself most. You are growing hard and bitter. You are not like yourself, Shenac, when you speak of Angus Dhu." The sting of her brother's words was in the last sentence, but it was the first part that Shenac answered. "You know very well, Hamish, that I never speak of Angus Dhu except to you--not even to my mother." "You have spoken to Dan--at least, you have spoken in his hearing. What do you think I heard him saying the other day to Shenac yonder?" "Shenac yonder" was the youngest daughter of Angus Dhu, so called by the brothers to distinguish her from their sister, who was "our Shenac" to them. Other people distinguished between the cousins as they had between the fathers. One was Shenac Bhan; the other, Shenac Dhu. "I don't know," said Shenac, startled. "What was it?" "Something like what you were saying to me just now. You may think how Shenac's black eyes looked when she heard him." Shenac was shocked. "She would not mind what Dan said." "No. It was only when Dan told her that _you_ said it that she seemed to mind," said Hamish gravely. "Dan had no business to tell her," said Shenac hotly; then she paused. "No," said Hamish; "I told him that." "I'll give him a hearing," began Shenac. "I think, Shenac, you should say nothing to Dan about it," said Hamish. "Only take care never to say more than you think before the little ones, or indeed before any one again. You may vex Angus Dhu, and Shenac yonder, and the rest, but the real harm is done to us at home, and especially to yourself, Shenac; for you no more believe that Angus Dhu is a robber--the oppressor of the widow and the fatherless--than I do." Shenac uttered an exclamation of impatience. "I shall give it to Dan." "No, Shenac, you will not. Dan must be carefully dealt with. He has a strong will of his own, and if it comes into his mind that you or any one, except our mother, is trying to govern him, he'll slip through our fingers some fine day." "You've been taking a leaf out of Angus Dhu's book. There's no fear of Dan," said Shenac. "There's no fear of him as long as he thinks he's pleasing himself, and that his sister is the best and the wisest girl to be found," said Hamish. "But if it were to come to a trial of strength between you, Dan would be sure to win." Shenac was silent. She knew it would not be well to risk her influence over Dan by a struggle of any sort. But she was very angry with him. "He might have had more sense," she said, after a moment. "And indeed, Shenac, so might you," said Hamish gravely. "There should be no more said about Angus Dhu, for his sake and ours. He has been very friendly to us this summer, considering all things." "Considering what I said to him, you mean," said Shenac sharply. "I was sorry for that as soon as I said it. But, Hamish, if you think I'm going down on my knees to Angus Dhu to tell him so, you're mistaken. He may not be a thief and a robber, but he's a dour carle, though he is of our own kin, and as different from our father as the dark is different from the day. And I can say nothing else of him, even for your sake, Hamish." "It is not for my sake that I am speaking, Shenac, but for your own. You are doing yourself a great wrong, cherishing this bitterness in your heart." Shenac was too much grieved and too angry to speak. She knew very well that she was neither very good nor very wise; but it had hitherto been her great pleasure in life to know that Hamish thought her so, and his words were very painful to her. She was vexed with him, and with Dan, and with all the world. Above all, she was vexed with herself. She would not confess it, but in her heart she knew that a little of the zest would be taken from their labours if she were sure that their success would not be a source of vexation to Angus Dhu. And then Hamish had said she was injuring Dan--encouraging him in what was wrong-- perhaps risking her influence for good over him. The longer she thought about all this, the more unhappy she became. "Bearing false witness!" she repeated. It was a great sin she had been committing. It had been done thoughtlessly, but it was none the less a sin for that, Shenac knew. Hamish was right. She was growing very hard and wicked; and no wonder that he had come to think so meanly of her. Shenac said all this to herself, with many sorrowful and some angry tears. But the anger passed away before the sorrow. There were no confessions made openly; but, whatever may have been her secret thoughts of Angus Dhu, neither Dan nor Hamish nor anybody else ever heard Shenac speak a disrespectful word of him again. Dan never got the "hearing" with which she had threatened him. She checked him more than once, when in the old way he began to remark on the evident interest that their father's cousin took in their work; but she did it gently, remembering her own fault. The intercourse which had almost ceased between the families was gradually renewed--at least, between the younger ones. Shenac could not bring herself to go often to her cousins' house. She always felt, as she said to Hamish, as though Angus Dhu "eyed her" at such times. And, besides, she was too busy to go there or anywhere else. But her cousins came often to see her when the day's work was over; and Shenac, the youngest, who was her father's favourite, and who could take liberties that none of the others could have done at her age, came at other times. She was older than our Shenac by a year or so; but she was little and merry, and her jet-black hair was cut close to her head like a child's, so she seemed much younger. She could not come too often. She was equally welcome to the grave, quiet Hamish and the boyish Dan, and more welcome to Shenac than to either. For she never hindered work, but helped it rather. She brought the news, too, and fought hot, merry battles with the lads, and for the time shook even Hamish out of the grave ways that were becoming habitual to him, and did Shenac herself good by reminding her that she was not an old woman burdened with care, but a young girl not sixteen, to whom fun and frolic ought to be natural. There were not many newspapers taken in those parts about that time; but Angus Dhu took one, and Shenac used to come over the fence with it, and, giving it to Hamish, would take his hoe or rake and go on with his work while he read the news to the rest. The newspaper was English, of course. Gaelic was the language spoken at home--the language in which the Bible was read, and the Catechism said; but the young people all spoke and read English. And very good English too, as far as it went; for it was book-English, learned at school from books that are now considered out of date. But they were very good books for all that. They used to have long discussions about the state of the world as they gathered it from the newspapers--not always grave or wise, but useful, especially to Shenac, by keeping her in mind of what in her untiring industry she was in danger of forgetting, that there was a wide world beyond these quiet lines within which they were living, where nobler work than the mere earning of bread was being done by worthy and willing hands. CHAPTER FIVE. July had come. There was a little pause in the field-work, for all the seed had been sown and all the weeds pulled up, and they were waiting for a week or two to pass, and then the haying was to begin. Even haying did not promise to be a very busy season with them, for the cutting and caring for the hay in their largest field would this year fall to the lot of Angus Dhu. It was as well so, Shenac said to herself with a sigh, for they could not manage much hay by themselves, and paying wages would never do for them. Indeed, they would need some help even with the little they had; for Dan had never handled a scythe except in play, and Hamish, even if he had the skill, had not the strength. And then the wool. They must have their cloth early this year, for last year they had been obliged to sell the wool, and the boys' clothes were threadbare. If they could get the wool spun early, McLean the weaver would weave their cloth first. She must try to see what could be done. But, oh, that weary little wheel! Shenac's mother thought it was a wonderful little wheel; and so indeed it was. It had been part of the marriage outfit of Shenac's grandmother before she left her Highland home. It had been in almost constant use all these years, and bade fair to be as good as ever for as many years to come. There was no wearing it out or putting it out of order, for, like most things made in those old times, it had strength if not elegance, and Shenac's mother was as careful of it as a modern musical lady is of her grand piano. I cannot describe it to you, for I am not very well acquainted with such instruments of labour. It was not at all like the wheels which are used now-a-days in districts where the great manufactories have not yet put wheels out of use. It was a small, low, complicated affair, at which the spinner sat, using both foot and hand. It needed skill and patience to use it well, and strength too. A long day's work well done on the little wheel left one far wearier than a day's work in the field. As for Shenac, the very thought of it made her weary. If she had lived in the present day, she would have said it made her nervous. But, happily for Shenac, she did not know that she had any nerves, and her mother's wheel got the blame of her discomfort. Not that she ever ventured to speak a disrespectful word of it. The insane idea that perhaps her mother might be induced to sell it and buy one of the new-fashioned kind, like that Archie Matheson's young wife had brought with her, _did_ come into her head once, but she never spoke of it. It would have been wrong as well as foolish to do so, for her mother would never try to learn to use the new one, and half the comfort of her life would be gone without her faithful friend, the little wheel. "Oh, if I could get one for myself!" said Shenac. She had seen and used Mary Matheson's last summer, and now, hurried as she was at home, she took an afternoon to go with Hamish to see it again. "Could you not make one, Hamish?" she said entreatingly; "you can do so many things." But Hamish shook his head. "I might make the stock if I had tools; but the rest of it--no." The sheep were shorn. There were sixteen fleeces piled up in the barn; but a great deal must be done to it before it could be ready for the boys to wear. One thing Shenac had determined on. It should be sent and carded at the mill. The mill was twenty miles away, to be sure-- perhaps more; but the time taken for the journey would be saved ten times over. Shenac thought she might possibly get through the spinning, but to card it by hand, with all there was to do in the fields, would be quite impossible. This matter troubled Shenac all the more that she could not share her vexation with Hamish. The idea of selling the grandmother's wheel seemed to him little short of sacrilege; and neither he nor their cousin Shenac could see why the mother could not dye and card and spin the wool, as she had been accustomed to do. But Shenac knew this to be impossible. Her mother was able for no such work now, though she might think so herself; and Shenac knew that to try and fail would make the mother miserable. What was to be done? Over this question she pondered with an earnestness, and, alas! with a uselessness, that gave impatience to her hand and sharpness to her voice at last. "What aileth thee, Shenac Bhan, bonny Shenac, Shenac the farmer, Shenac the fair? Wherefore rests the shadow on thy brow, and the look of sadness in thine azure eyes?" Hamish had been reading to them Gaelic Ossian, and Shenac Dhu had caught up the manner of the poem, and spoke in a way that made them all laugh. Shenac Bhan laughed too; but not because she was merry, for her cousin's nonsense always vexed her when she was "out of sorts." But her cousin Christie was there, Mrs More, the eldest sister of Shenac Dhu; and so Shenac Bhan laughed with the rest. She was here on a visit from the city of M--- where she lived, and had come over to see her aunt, as Angus Dhu's children always called the widow. A heavy summer shower was falling, and all the boys had taken refuge from it in the house, and there were noise and confusion for a time. "I want Christie to come into the barn and see our wool," said Shenac Bhan at last, when the shower was over. "And, Shenac--dark Shenac, doleful Shenac--you are to stay and keep the lads in order till we come back." Shenac Dhu made a face, but let them go. Mrs More was a pale, quiet woman, with a grave but kind manner, which put Shenac at her ease at once, though she had not seen her since her marriage, which was more than five years before. She had always been very kind to the children when she lived at home, and the memory of this gave Shenac courage to ask her help out of at least one of her difficulties. "How much you have grown, Shenac!" said her cousin. "I hardly think I would have known you if I had seen you anywhere else. Yes, I think I would have known your face anywhere. But you are a woman now, and doing a woman's work, they tell me." "We have all been busy this summer," said Shenac; "but our hurry is over now for a while." Heedless of the little pools that were shining here and there, they went first into the garden, and then round the other buildings, and over to the spot, still black and charred, where the house had stood. But little was said by either of them. "Do you like living in the city?" said Shenac at last. "For some things I like it--for most things, indeed; but sometimes I long for a sight of the fields and woods, more for my wee Mary's sake than for my own." "This is our wool," said Shenac, as they entered the barn; "I wish it was spun." "Shenac," said her cousin kindly, "have you not undertaken too much? It's all very well for you to speak of Hamish and Dan, but the weight must fall on you. I see that plainly." But Shenac would not let her think so. "I only do my share," said she eagerly. "I think you could have helped them more by coming to M--- and taking a situation. You could learn to do anything, Shenac, if you were to try." But Shenac would not listen. "We must keep together," said she; "and the land must be kept for Allister. There is no fear. We shall not grow rich, but we can live, if we bide all together and do our best." "Shenac," persisted her cousin, "I do not want to discourage you; but there are so many things which a girl like you ought not to do--cannot do, indeed, without breaking your health. I know. I was the eldest at home. I know what there is to do in a place like yours. The doctor tells me I shall never be quite well again, because of the long strain of hard work and exposure when I was young like you. Think, if your health was to fail." Shenac turned her compassionate eyes upon her. "But your father was hard on you, folks say, and I have the work at my own taking." Mrs More shook her head sadly. "Ah, Shenac dear, circumstances may be far harder on you than ever my father was on me. You do not know what may lie before you. No girl like you should have such responsibility. If you will come with me or follow me, you and Hamish, I can do much for you. You could learn to do anything, Shenac, and Hamish is very clever. There are places where his littleness and his lameness would not be against him, as they must be on the land. Let my father take Dan, as he wished, and let Hughie go to the elder's for a while. The land can lie here safe enough till Allister comes home, if that is what you wish. Indeed, Shenac, you do not know what you are undertaking." "Cousin Christie," said Shenac gently, "you are very kind, but I cannot leave my mother; and I am strong--stronger than you think. Christie, you speak as though you thought Allister would never come home. Was our Allister a wild lad, as your father says? Surely, he'll come home to his mother, now that his father is dead." She sat down on the pile of wool, and turned a very pale, frightened face to her cousin. Mrs More stooped down and kissed her. "My dear," she said gently, "Allister was not a wild lad in my time, but good and truthful--one who honoured his parents. But, Shenac, the world is wide, and there are so many things that those who have lived in this quiet place all their lives cannot judge of. And even if Allister were to come back, he might not be content to settle down here in the old quiet way. The land would seem less to him than it seems to you." "But if Allister should not come home, or if he should not stay, my mother will need me all the more. No, Cousin Christie, you must not discourage me. I must try it. And, indeed, it is not I alone. Hamish has so much sense and judgment, and Dan is growing so strong. And we will try it anyway." "Well, Shenac, you deserve to succeed, and you will succeed if anybody could," said her cousin. "I will not discourage you. I wish I could help you instead." "You can help me," said Shenac eagerly; "that's what I brought you out to say. Our wool--you are going back soon, and if the waggon goes, will you ask your father to let our wool go to the mill? The carding takes so long, and my mother is not so strong as she used to be. And that is one of the things I cannot abide. The weary little wheel is bad enough. Will you ask your father, Christie?" Mrs More laughed. "That is but a small favour, Shenac. Of course my father will take it, and he'll bring it back too; for, though it is not his usual plan at this time of the year, he's going on all the way to M--- with butter. There came word yesterday that there was great demand for it. The wool will be done by the time he comes back; and he is to take his own too, I believe." Shenac gave a sigh of relief. "Well, that's settled." "Why did you not ask my father himself?" said Mrs More. "Are not you and he good friends, Shenac?" Shenac muttered something about not liking to give trouble and not liking to ask Angus Dhu. Mrs More laughed again. "I think you are hard on my father, Shenac. I think he would be a good friend to you if you would let him. You must not mind a sharp word from the like of him. His bark is worse than his bite." Shenac was inexpressibly uncomfortable, remembering that all the hard words had come from her and not from Angus Dhu. "Well, never mind," said Mrs More; "the carrying of the wool is my father's favour. What can I do for you, Shenac?" "You can do one thing for me," said Shenac briskly, glad to escape from a painful subject, and laying her hand on a shining instrument of steel that peeped from beneath the wool on which she was sitting. "You can cut my hair off. My mother does not like to do it, and Hamish won't. I was going to ask Shenac yonder; but you will do it better." And she began to loosen the heavy braids. "What's that about Shenac yonder?" said that young person, coming in upon them. "I should like to know what you are plotting, you two, together--and bringing in my innocent name too!" "Nothing very bad," said Shenac, laughing. "I want Christie to cut my hair, it is such a trouble; it takes a whole half-hour at one time or other of the day to keep it neat, and half-hours are precious." "I don't like to do it, Shenac," said Mrs More. Shenac Dhu held up her hands in astonishment. "Cut your hair off! Was the like ever heard of?--Nonsense, Christie! she never means it; and Hamish would never let her, besides. She'll look no better than the rest of us without her hair," continued she, taking the heavy braids out of Shenac's hands and pushing her back on the pile of wool from which she had risen. "Christie, tell Shenac about John Cameron, as you told us last night." While Shenac listened to the account of a sad accident that had happened to a young man from another part of the country, Shenac Dhu let down the long, fair hair of her cousin, and, by the help of an old card that lay near, smoothed it till it lay in waves and ripples of gold far below her waist. Then, as Shenac Bhan still sat, growing pale and red by turns as she listened, she with great care rolled the shining mass into thick curls over neck and shoulders. "Now stand up and show yourself," said she, as she finished. "Is she not a picture? Christie, you should take her to the town with you and put her up in your husband's shop-window. You would make her fortune and your own too." Shenac Bhan had this advantage over her cousin, and indeed over most people--that the sun that made them as brown as a berry, after the first few days' exposure left her as fair and unfreckled as ever; and she really was a very pretty picture as she stood laughing and blushing before her cousins. The door opened, and Hamish came in. "My mother sent me to bid you all come in to tea;" but he stopped as his eye fell on his sister. "Tea!" cried Shenac Bhan. "I meant to do all that myself. Who would have thought that we had been here so long?" And she made a movement, as if to bind back her hair, that she might hasten away. "Be quiet; stay till I bid you go," said Shenac Dhu, hastily letting the curls fall again. "I wonder if all the puddles are dried up?--She ought to see herself. Cut them off! The vain creature! Never fear, Hamish." "Christie is to cut it," said Shenac Bhan, laughing, and holding the wool-shears towards Mrs More. "I must do it, Hamish; it takes such a time to keep it decently neat. My mother does not care, and why should you?" "Whisht, Hamish," said Shenac Dhu, "you're going to quote Saint Paul and Saint Peter about a woman's hair being a covering and a glory. Don't fash yourself. Why, she would deserve to be a Scots worthy more than George Wishart, or than the woman who was drowned even, if she were to do it!" "You had your own cut," said Shenac Bhan, looking at her cousin with some surprise. "Why should I not do the same?" "You are not me. Everybody has not my strength of mind," said Shenac Dhu, nodding gravely. "Toch! you cut yours that it might grow long and thick like our Shenac's," said Dan, who had been with them for some time. "Think of your hair, and look at this." And he lifted the fair curls admiringly. Shenac Bhan laughed. "It's an awful bother, Dan." "But it would be a pity to lose it. What a lot of it there is!" And the boy walked round his sister, touching it as he went. "She never meant to do it; but after that she could not," said Shenac Dhu, pretending to whisper. "Our Shenac never says what she doesn't mean," said Dan hotly. "Whatever other people's Shenacs do," said Hamish laughing. Shenac Dhu made as if she would charge him with the great shears. "Give them to Christie," said Shenac Bhan. "What a work to make about nothing!" "She does not mean to do it yet," said Shenac Dhu; but she handed the shears to her sister. "I don't like to do it, Shenac," said Mrs More. "Think how long it will take to grow again; and it is beautiful hair," she added, as she came near and passed her fingers through it. "Nonsense, Christie, she's not in earnest," persisted Shenac Dhu. With a quick, impatient motion, Shenac Bhan took the shears from her cousin's hand and severed one--two--three of the bright curls from the mass. Shenac Dhu uttered a cry. "There! did I not tell you?" cried Dan, forgetting everything else in his triumph over Shenac Dhu. Hamish turned and went out without a word. "There," said Shenac Bhan; "you must do it now, Christie." Mrs More took the great shears and began to cut without a word; and no one spoke again till the curls lay in a shining heap at their feet. Then Shenac Dhu drew a long breath, and said,-- "Don't say afterwards it was my fault." "It was just your fault, Shenac Dhu, you envious, spiteful thing," exclaimed the indignant Dan. "Nonsense, Cousin Shenac.--Be quiet, Dan. She had nothing to do with it. It has been a trouble all summer, and I'm glad to be rid of it. I only wish I could spin it, like the wool." "What a lot of it there is!" And Shenac Dhu stooped down and lifted a long tress or two tenderly, as if they had life. "What will you do with it, Shenac?" "Burn it, since I cannot make stockings of it. Put them in here." And she held up her apron. "Will you give your hair to me, Shenac?" asked Mrs More. "What can you do with it?" asked Shenac in some surprise. "Surely I'll give it to you, so that I hear no more about it." The curls were carefully gathered, and tied in Mrs More's handkerchief. "Shenac Bhan," said the other Shenac solemnly, "you look like a shorn sheep. I shall never see you again without thinking of the young woman tied to the stake on the sands, and the sea coming up and up--" "Shenac, be quiet. It is sinful to speak lightly of so solemn a thing," said her sister gravely. "Solemn!" said Shenac. "Lightly! By no means. I was putting two solemn things together. I don't know which is more solemn. For my part, I would as soon feel the cold water creeping up my back, like--" "Shenac," said our Shenac entreatingly, "don't say foolish things and vex my mother and Hamish." Her cousin put her hand on her mouth. "You have heard my last word." But the last word about the shining curls was not spoken yet. CHAPTER SIX. The day when the haying was to have commenced was very rainy, and so was every day for a week or more. People were becoming a little anxious as to the getting in of the hay; for in almost all the fields it was more than ripe, and everybody knows that it should not stand long after that. The fields of the Macivors were earlier than those of most people, and Shenac was especially careful to get the hay in at the right time and in good condition, because they had so much less of it than ever before. And besides, the wheat-harvest was coming on, and where there were so few to help, every day made a difference. Whenever there came a glimpse of sunshine, Dan was out in the field, making good use of his scythe; for mowing was new and exciting work to him, though he had seen it done every summer of his life. It is not every boy of fourteen that could swing a scythe to such good purpose as Dan, and he might be excused for being a little proud and a little unreasonable in the matter. And after all, I daresay he knew quite as much about it as Shenac. When she told him how foolish it was to cut down grass when there was no chance of getting it dried, he only laughed and pointed to the fields of Angus Dhu, where there were three men busy, and acres and acres of grass lying as it had fallen. "You are a good farmer, Shenac, but Angus Dhu, you must confess, has had more experience, and is a better judge of the weather. We're safe enough to follow him." There was reason in this, but it vexed Shenac to have Angus Dhu quoted as authority; and it vexed her too that Dan should take the matter into his own hands without regard to her judgment. "Angus Dhu can get all the help he needs to make the hay when it fairs," said she. "But if we have too much down we shall not be able to manage it right, I'm afraid." "There's no fear of having too much down. I must keep at it. Where there's only one man to cut, he must keep at it," said Dan gravely. "If you and the rest of the children are busy when the sun shines, you will soon overtake me." "Only one man!" "You and the rest of the children!" Vexed as Shenac was, she could not help being amused, and fortunately a good deal of her vexation passed away in the laugh, in which Dan heartily joined. This week of rain was a trying time to Shenac. Nothing could be done out of doors, for the rain was constant and heavy. If she could have had the wheel to herself, she would have got on with the spinning, and that would have been something, she thought. Her mother was spinning, however; and though she could not sit at the wheel all day, she did not like to have her work interfered with, and Shenac could not make use of the time when her mother was not employed, and very little was accomplished. There was mending to be done, which her mother could have done so much better than she could, Shenac thought. But her mother sat at the wheel, and Shenac wearied herself over the shirts and trousers of her brothers, and at last startled herself and every one else by speaking sharply to little Flora and shaking Colin well for bringing in mud on their feet when they came home from school. After that she devoted her surplus energies to the matter of house-cleaning, and that did better. Everything in the house, both upstairs and down, and everything in the dairy, passed through her hands. Things that could be scrubbed were scrubbed, and things that could be polished were polished. The roof and the walls were whitewashed, and great maple-branches hung here and there upon them, that the flies might not soil their whiteness; and then Shenac solemnly declared to Hamish that it was time the rain should cease. Hamish laughed. The week had passed far less uncomfortably to him than to his sister. He had made up his mind to the necessity of staying within-doors during such weather; and he could do so all the more easily as, with a good conscience, he could give himself up to the enjoyment of a book that had fallen into his hands. It was not a new book. Two or three of the first pages were gone, but it was as good as new to Hamish. It was a new kind of arithmetic, his friend Rugg, the peddler, told him. He knew Hamish liked that sort of thing, and so he had brought it to him. Hamish was quite occupied with it. He forgot the hay, and the rain, and even his own rheumatic pains, in the interest with which he pored over it. Shenac did not grudge him his pleasure. She even tried to get up an interest in the unknown quantities, whose values, Hamish assured her, were so easily discovered by the rules laid down in the book. But she did not enter heartily into her brother's pleasure, as she usually did. She wondered at him, and thought it rather foolish in him to be so taken up with trifles when there was so much to think about. She forgot to be glad that her brother had found something to keep him from vexing himself, as he had done so much of late, by thinking how little he could do for his mother and the rest; and she said to herself that Christie More had been right when she said that it was upon her that the burden of care and labour must fall. "You are tired to-night, Shenac," said Hamish, as she sat gazing silently and listlessly into the fire. "Tired!" repeated Shenac scornfully. "What with, I wonder. Yes, I am tired with staying within-doors, when there is so much to be done outside. If my mother would only let me take the wheel, that would be something." "But my mother is busy with it herself," said Hamish. "Surely you do not think you can do more or better than my mother?" "Not better, but more; twice as much in a day as she is doing now. We'll not get our cloth by the new year, at the rate the spinning is going on, and the lads' clothes will hardly hold together even now." Shenac gave an impatient sigh. "But, Shenac," said her brother, "there is no use in fretting about it; that will do no good." "No; if only one could help it," said Shenac. "Shenac, my woman," said the mother from the other side of the fire, "I doubt you'll need to go to The Eleventh to-morrow for the dye-stuffs. I am not able to go so far myself, I fear." The townships, or towns, of that part of the country are all divided off into portions, a mile in width, called concessions; and as the little cluster of houses where the store was had no name as yet, it was called The Eleventh; and indeed, all the different localities were named from the concession in which they were found. "There is no particular hurry about going, I suppose, mother," Shenac answered indifferently. "The sooner the better," said her mother. "The things are as well here as there, and we'll need them soon. What is to hinder you from going to-morrow?" "If the morning is fair, I'll need Shenac's help at the hay, mother," said Dan with an air. "I'll need Shenac's help!" It might have been Angus Dhu himself, by the way it was said, Shenac thought. It was ludicrous. Her mother did not seem to see anything ludicrous in it, however; for she only answered,-- "Oh yes, Dan; if it should be fair, I suppose I can wait." Hamish was busy with his book again. "It's a very heavy crop," continued Dan. "It is all that a man can do to cut yon grass and keep at it steady." Of course Dan did not mean to take the credit of the heavy crop to himself, but it sounded exactly as if he did; and there was something exceedingly provoking to Shenac in the way in which he stretched himself up when he said, "all that a man can do." A laughing glance that came to her over the top of Hamish's book dispelled her momentary anger, however. "If Hamish does not mind, I'm sure _I_ need not," she said to herself. Dan went on:--"I shall put what I have cut to-day in the long barn. It will be just the thing for the spring's work." Dan's new-found far-sightedness was too much for the gravity of Hamish, and Shenac joined heartily in the laugh. Dan looked a little discomfited. "You must settle it with Shenac and your brother," said the mother. "All right, Dan, my boy," said Hamish heartily; "it's always best to look ahead, as Mr Rugg would say.--What do you think, Shenac?" "All right; only you should not say `my boy' to our Dan, but `my man,'" said Shenac gravely. Even little Flora could understand the joke of Dan's assuming the airs of manhood, and all laughed heartily. Dan joined in the laugh good-humouredly enough. "You see, Shenac," said Hamish, during the few minutes they always lingered together after the others had gone to bed, "Dan may be led, but he will not be driven--at least, not by you or me." "Led!" exclaimed Shenac; "I think he means to lead us all. That scythe has made a man of him all at once. I declare it goes past my patience to hear the monkey." "It must not go past your patience if you can help it, Shenac," said her brother. "All that nonsense will be laughed out of him, but it must not be by you or me." "Oh, well, I'm not caring," said Shenac. "I only hope it will be fair to-morrow, so that I can get to help him. I could mow as well as he, if my mother would let me. However, it's all the same whether I help him or he helps me, so that the work is done some way." "We'll all help one another," said Hamish. "Shenac, you were right the other day when you told me I was wrong to murmur because I could not do more than God had given me strength to do. It does not matter what work falls to each of us, so that it is well done; and we can never do it unless we keep together." "No fear, Hamish, bhodach, we'll keep together," said Shenac heartily. "I do hope to-morrow may be fine." CHAPTER SEVEN. But to-morrow was not fine; it was quite the contrary. Shenac milked in the rain, and gathered vegetables for dinner in the rain, and would gladly have made hay all day in the rain, if that had been possible. Not a pin cared Shenac for the rain. It wet her face, and twined her hair into numberless little rings all over her head, and that was the very worst it could do. It could not spoil her shoes, for in summer she did not wear any, unless she was in the field; and it took the rain a long time to penetrate through the thick woollen dress she always wore in rainy weather. Indeed, she rather liked to be out in the rain, especially when there was a high wind, against which she might measure her strength; and she was just going to propose to her mother that she should set out to The Eleventh for the dye-stuffs, when the door opened, and her cousin Shenac came in. Rain or shine, Shenac Dhu was always welcome, and quite a chorus of exclamations greeted her. "Toch! what about the rain! I'm neither salt nor sugar to melt in it," she said, as Shenac Bhan took off her wet plaid and drew her towards the fire. "I must not stay," she continued.--"Hamish, have you done with your book? Mr Rugg stayed at our house last night, and he's coming here next, and so I ran over the field to see his pretty things.--O Shenac, he has such a pretty print this time--blue and white." "But could you not see his pretty things last night? And are you to get a dress of the blue and white?" asked Shenac Bhan. "Of course I could see them, but I could not take a good look at them because my father was there. He thinks me a sensible woman, and I can't bear to undeceive him; and my eyes have a trick of looking at pretty things as though I wanted them, and that looks greedy. But I'm not for a dress of the blue and white. Mysie Cairns in The Sixteenth has one, and that's enough for one township." "But Mr Rugg will not open his packs here; we want nothing," said Shenac Bhan, "unless he may have dye-stuffs for my mother." "He has no dye-stuffs--you'll get that at The Eleventh," said Shenac Dhu; "but it's nonsense about not wanting anything. I'll venture to say that Mr Rugg will leave more here than he left at our house, or at any house in the town-ship. I wish he would come." They all had plenty to say to Shenac Dhu, but that her mind was full of other things it was easy to see. She laughed and chatted, but she watched the window till the long, high waggon of the peddler came in sight, and then she drew Shenac Bhan into a corner and kept her there till the door opened. "Good-morning, good-morning," said the peddler as he came in. Glancing round the room, he stood still on the door-mat with a comical look of indecision on his face. "I don't suppose you want to see me enough to pay for the tracks I shall make on the floor," he said to Shenac Bhan. "I don't know as I should have come round this way this time, only I've got something for you--something you'll be glad to have." Everybody was indignant at the idea of his not coming in. "Never mind the floor," said Shenac Bhan. "We don't want anything to-day, but we are glad to see you all the same." "Don't say you don't want anything till you see what I've got," said Mr Rugg gravely. "I ha'n't no doubt there's a heap of things you would like, if you could get them. Now, a'n't there?" "She wants a wig, for one thing," said Shenac Dhu. "Well, no; I calculate she'll get along without that as well as most folks. I don't see as you spoiled your looks, for all Mrs More said," he added, as he touched with his long forefinger one of the little rings that clustered round Shenac's head. "Come, now, a'n't there something I've got that you want?" he asked as Shenac turned away with an impatient shrug. "No; not if you haven't a wig. Do we want anything, mother? It is not worth while to open your box in the rain." Mr Rugg was already out of hearing. "We can look at them, at any rate," said Shenac Dhu. But Shenac Bhan looked very much as if she did not intend to do even that, till the door opened again, and Mr Rugg walked in, followed by Dan, and between them they carried a spinning-wheel. "A big wheel, just like Mary Matheson's!" exclaimed Shenac Bhan. "No; a decided improvement upon that," said Mr Rugg, preparing to put on the rim and the head. The band was ready, too; and he turned the wheel and pulled out an imaginary thread with such gravity that all laughed. "Well, what do you think of it, girls?" he asked after a little time. "Will you have it, Miss Shenac?" "I should like to borrow it for a month," said Shenac with a sigh. "It a'n't to be lent nor to be borrowed," said the peddler; "leastways, it a'n't for me to lend. The owner may do as she likes." "How much would it cost?" asked Shenac with a vague, wild idea that possibly at some future time she might get one. "I can tell you that exactly," said the peddler. "I've got the invoice here all right, and another document with it;" and he handed Shenac a letter, directed, as she knew at a glance, in the handwriting of her cousin, Mrs More. "It's from Christie," said Shenac Dhu, looking over her shoulder. "Open it, Shenac; what ails you?" Shenac opened the letter, and the other Shenac read it with her. It need not be given here. It told how Mrs More had taken Shenac's hair to a hair-dresser in the city, and how the money she had received for it had been given into the hands of Mr Rugg, who was to buy a wheel with it, as something Shenac would be sure to value. "And here it is," said Mr Rugg; "as good a wheel as need be.--It will put yours quite out of fashion, Mrs Macivor." It was with some difficulty that the mother could be made to understand that the wheel was Shenac's--bought and paid for. As for Shenac, she could only stand and look at it, saying not a word. Shenac Dhu shook her heartily. "Here I have come all the way in the rain to hear what you would say, and you stand and glower and say nothing at all." "Try it, Shenac," said Hamish, bringing a handful of rolls of wool from his mother's wheel. "She'll need to learn first," said Shenac Dhu. But Shenac had tried Mary Matheson's wheel more than once; and besides, as Mr Rugg had often said, and now triumphantly repeated, she had a "faculty." There really did seem nothing that she could not learn to do more easily than other people. Now the long thread was drawn out even and fine as any that ever passed through the mother's hands on the precious little wheel. The mother examined and approved, Shenac Dhu exclaimed, and the little lads laughed and clapped their hands. As for Shenac Bhan, she could hardly believe in her own good fortune. She did not seem to hear the talk or the laugh, but, with a face intent and grave, walked up and down, drawing out the long, even threads, and then letting them roll up smoothly on the spindle. "Take it moderate, Miss Shenac," said the peddler, "take it moderate. It don't pay to overdo even a good thing." But Shenac was busy calculating how many days' work there might be in the wool, and how long it would take her to finish it. "The rainy days will not be lost now," she said to herself triumphantly. "Of course I must stick to the hay; but mornings and evenings and rainy days I can spin. No fear for the lads' clothes now." "Hamish," said Shenac Dhu, "I shall never see her without fancying she has a wheel on her head." Hamish laughed. His pleasure in the pleasure of his sister was intense. "I don't know what we can ever say to Christie for her kindness," he said. "We'll write a letter to her, Hamish, you and I together," said his sister eagerly. "I can't think how it all happened. But I am so glad and thankful; and I must tell Christie." The next day was fair. When Shenac went out with little Hugh to the milking in the pasture, she thought she heard the pleasant sound of the whetting of scythes nearer than the fields of Angus Dhu. She could see nothing, however, because of the mist that lay close over the low lands. But when she went out after breakfast to spread the grass cut by Dan during the rainy days, she found work going on that made Dan's efforts seem like play. "Is it a bee?" said Shenac to herself. No, it was not a bee, Aleck Munroe said, but he and the other lads thought there was as much hay down in their fields as could be well cared for, and so they thought they would see what could be done in their neighbour's. It was likely to continue fine now, as the weather had cleared at the change of the moon; and a few hours would help here, without hindering there. "Help! Yes, indeed!" thought Shenac as she watched the swinging of the scythes, and saw the broad swaths of grain that fell as they passed on. Dan followed, but he made small show after the young giants that had taken the work in hand; and in a little while he made a virtue of necessity and exchanged the scythe for the spreading-pole, to help Shenac and the little ones in the merry, healthful work. After this there were no more rainy days while the hay-time lasted. Shenac and Dan were not the first in all the concessions to finish the getting in of the hay, but they were by no means the last. It was all got in in a good state, too; and the grain-harvest began cheerfully and ended successfully. Shenac took the lead in the cutting of the grain. In those days, in that part of the country, there were none of those wonderful machines which now begin to make farm-work light. The horses were used to draw the grain and hay to the barn or the stacks when it was ready; but there were no patent rakes or mowing or reaping machines for them to draw. All the wheat, and a good deal of the other grain, was cut down with the old-fashioned hook or sickle, the reapers stooping low to their work. It was tedious and exhausting labour, and slow, too. Shenac's "faculty" and perfect health stood her in good stead at this work as at other things. She tired herself thoroughly every day, but she was young and strong; and though the summer nights were short there was no part of them lost to her, for she fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. Even thoughts of the weary and suffering Hamish did not often disturb her rest. She slept the dreamless sleep of perfect health till the dawn awakened her, cheerful and ready for another day's labour. They had very little help for the harvest. There was one moonlight bee. They say the grain is more easily cut with the dew upon it; and moonlight bees are common in Glengarry even now. But Shenac and her brothers knew nothing of this one till, on going out in the morning, they found more than half of their wheat lying ready to be bound up in sheaves. The rest of the harvest was very successful. Indeed, it was a favourable harvest everywhere that year. There was rejoicing through all the township--through many town-ships; and even the most earthly and churlish of the farmers assented with a good grace when a day of thanksgiving was appointed, and kept it outwardly in appearance, if not inwardly with the heart. As for Shenac, it would be impossible to describe her triumph and thankfulness when the last sheaf was safely gathered in. For she was truly thankful, though I am afraid her triumphant self-congratulation went even beyond her thankfulness. Her thankfulness was not displayed in a way that made it apparent to others; but it filled her heart and gave her courage to look forward. It did more than this: it gave her a self-reliance quite unusual--indeed not very desirable--in one so young; and there was danger, all the greater because she was quite unconscious of it, that it might degenerate into something different from an humble yet earnest self-reliance. But there was nothing of that as yet, and all the little household rejoiced together. The spinning too had prospered. In the mornings and evenings, and on rainy days, the wheel had been busy; and now the yarn, dyed and ready, lay in the house of weaver McLean, waiting to be woven into heavy cloth for the boys; and the flannel for shirts and gowns would not be long behind. So Shenac made a pause, and took time to breathe, as Hamish said. And, really, with a plentiful harvest gathered safely in, there seemed little danger of want; and Shenac's thoughts were more hopeful than anxious when she looked forward. The mother was more cheerful, too, than she had been since the father's death. She was always cheerful now, when matters went smoothly and regularly among them. It was only when vexations arose, when Dan was restless or inclined to be rebellious, or when the children stood in need of anything which they could not get, or when she fancied that the affairs of the farm were not going on well, that she grieved over the past or fretted for the home-coming of Allister. The little ones went to school again after the harvest--the little boys and Flora; and altogether matters seemed to promise to move smoothly on, and so the mother was content. There was one thing that troubled the mother and Shenac too. The harvest-work had been hard on Hamish, and in the haste and eagerness of the busy time Shenac had not been so mindful of him as she might have been, and he suffered for it afterwards; and it grieved them all that his voice should be so seldom heard as it was among them, for Hamish never complained. The more he suffered, the more quiet he grew. It was not bodily pain alone with which he struggled on in silence. It was something harder to bear--a sense of helplessness and uselessness, a fear of becoming a burden when there was so much to bear already. And, worse than even this, there was the knowledge that there lay no bright future before him, as there might lie before the rest. He must always be a helpless cripple. He could have no hope beyond the weary round of suffering which fell to his lot day by day. What the others did with a will, with a sense of power and pleasure, was a weariness to him. There were times when he wished that death might come and end it all; but he never spoke of himself, unless Shenac made him speak. His fits of depression did not occur often, and Shenac came at last to think it was better to let them pass without notice; and, though her eye grew more watchful and her voice more tender, she said nothing for a while, but waited patiently for more cheerful days. CHAPTER EIGHT. I dislike to speak about the faults of Shenac. It would be far pleasanter to go on telling all that she did for her mother and brothers and little Flora--how her courage never failed, and her patience and temper very seldom; and how the neighbours looked on with wonder and pleasure at all the young girl was able to accomplish by her sense and energy, till they quite forgot that she was little more than a child-- not sixteen when her father died--and spoke of her as a woman of prudence and a credit to her family. She looked like a woman. She was tall and strong. She seemed, indeed, to have the health and strength which should have fallen to her twin-brother Hamish; and she was growing to seem to all the neighbours much older than he. I suppose this change would have come in any circumstances, after a while, for girls of seventeen are generally more mature than boys of the same age; but the change was more decided in Shenac because of the care that had fallen on her so early. Still, they were alike. They had the same golden-brown hair, though the brother's was of a darker shade, the same blue eyes, and frank, open brow. But the eyes of Hamish had a weary look, and his brow looked higher and broader because of the thin pale cheeks beneath it; and while he grew more quiet and retiring every day, no one could have been long in the house without seeing in many ways that Shenac was the ruling spirit there. It was right it should be so. It could not have been otherwise, for her mother was broken in health and spirits, and Allister was away. Hamish was not able to take the lead in the labour, because of his lameness and his feeble health; and though he had great influence in the family councils, it was exercised indirectly, by quiet, sensible words, and by a silent good example to the rest. As for Dan, his will was strong enough to command an army, and he had a great deal of good sense hidden beneath a reckless manner; but he was two years younger than his sister--quite too young and inexperienced, even if he had been steady and industriously disposed, to take the lead. So of course the leadership fell upon Shenac. They all said, after a while--the neighbours, I mean--that it could not have fallen into better hands; and, as far as the family affairs were concerned, that was true. But for Shenac herself it was not so well. It is never well to take girls quickly out of their childhood, and it was especially bad for her to have so much the guidance of these affairs, for she naturally liked to lead--to have her own way; and, without being at all conscious of it, there were times when she grew sharp and arbitrary, expecting to be obeyed unquestioningly by them all. She was always gentle with the mother, who sometimes was desponding and irritable, and needed a great deal of patient attendance; but even with the mother she liked to have her own way. Generally, Shenac's way was the best, to be sure; for the mother, weakened in mind and body, saw difficulties in very trifling things, and fancied dangers and troubles where the bright, cheerful spirit of her daughter saw none. So, though she yielded in word, she often in deed gave less heed to the mother's wishes than she ought to have done, and she was in danger, through this, of growing less lovable as the years went on. But a sadder thing happened to Shenac than this. In the eagerness with which she devoted herself to her work she forgot higher duties. For there is a higher duty than that which a child owes to parents and friends--the duty owed to God. I do not mean that these are distinct and separate, or that they naturally and necessarily interfere with each other. Quite the contrary. It is only as our duty to our Father in heaven is understood and acknowledged that any other duty can be well or acceptably performed. And so, in forgetting God, Shenac was in danger of allowing her work to become a snare to her. Humbly acknowledging God in all her ways, asking and expecting and waiting for his blessing in all that she undertook, she would hardly have grown unduly anxious or arbitrary or heedless of her mother's wish and will. Conscious of her own weakness, and leaning on eternal strength, she would hardly have grown proud with success, or sinfully impatient when her will was crossed. But in those long, busy summer days, Shenac said to herself she had no time to think of other things than the work which each day brought. They had worship always, morning and evening, whatever the hurry might be. The Scriptures were read and a psalm was sung, and then the mother or Hamish offered a few words of prayer. They would as soon have thought of going without their morning and evening meals as without worship. It would have been a godless and graceless house, indeed, without that, in the opinion of those who had been accustomed to family worship all their lives. Shenac was not often consciously impatient of the time it took, and her voice was clearest and sweetest always in their song of praise. But too often it was her voice only that rose to Heaven. Her heart was full of other things; her thoughts often wandered to the field or the dairy, even when the words of prayer or praise were on her lips. She lost the habit of the few minutes' quiet reading of her Bible in the early morning, and also before she went to bed; and her prayers were brief and hurried, and sometimes they were forgotten altogether. She and Hamish had always been fond of reading, and though few new books found their way among them, they had gone over and over the old ones, liking them chiefly because of the long talks to which they gave rise between them. Many of their favourite books were religious, and various were the speculations as to doctrine and duty into which they used to fall. There might have been some danger in this, had not a spirit of reverence for God's authority been deep and strong within them. It was to the infallible standard of the inspired volume that all things were brought. With what is written there all theories and opinions were compared, and received or rejected according as they agreed with or differed from the voice of inspiration. I do not mean that they were always right in their judgment, or that their speculations were not sometimes foolish and vain. But their spirit was right. They sought to know the truth, and, in a way, they helped each other to walk in it. But all this seemed past now. There was no time for reading or for talking--at least Shenac had none. All day she was too busy, and at night she was too weary. Even the long, quiet Sabbath-day was changed. Not that there was work done on that day, either within or without the house. I daresay there were many in the township who did not keep the law of the Sabbath rest in spirit; but there were none in those days who did not keep it in letter, in appearance. In the fields, which through the week were the scenes of busy labour, on the Sabbath not a sound was heard save in the pastures--the lowing of the cattle and the bleating of the sheep. Few people made the labour of the week an excuse for turning the Sabbath into a day of rest for the body only. The old hereditary respect for God's day and house still prevailed among them, and the great, grey, barn-like house of worship, which had been among the first built in the settlement, was always filled to overflowing with a grave and reverent congregation. But among them, during all that long summer, Shenac was seldom seen. Her mother went when it was not too warm to walk the long three miles that lay between their house and the kirk, or when she got a seat in a neighbour's waggon; and Hamish and Dan were seldom away. But Shenac as seldom went. "What is the use of going?" she said, in answer to her mother's expostulations, "when I fall asleep the moment the text is given out. It's easy to say I should pay attention to the sermon. The minister's voice would put me to sleep if I were standing at the wheel. Sometimes it takes the sound of the water, and sometimes of the wind; but it's hush-a-by that it says to me all the time. And, mother, I think it's a shame to sleep in the kirk, like old Donald or Elspat Smith. Somebody must stay at home, and it may as well be me." I daresay it was not altogether the fault of the minister that Shenac fell asleep, though his voice was a drowsy drone to many a one besides her. The week's activity was quite sufficient to account for her drowsiness, to say nothing of the bright sunshine streaming in through ten uncurtained windows, and the air growing heavy with the breathing of a multitude. Shenac tried stoutly, once and again; but it would not do. The very earnestness with which she fixed her eyes on the kindly, inanimate face of the minister hastened the slumber; and, touched by her mother or Hamish, she would waken to see two or three pairs of laughing eyes fastened upon her. Indeed she did think it a shame; but it was a hard struggle listening to words which bore little interest, scarcely a meaning, to her. So she stayed at home, and made the Sabbath-day a day of rest literally; for as soon as the others were away, and her light household tasks finished, she took her book and fell asleep, as surely, and far more comfortably, than she did when she went to the kirk; so that, as a day in which to grow wiser and better, the Sabbath was lost to Shenac. She was by no means satisfied with herself because of this, for in her heart she did not believe her weariness was a sufficient excuse for staying away from the kirk; so whenever there was a meeting of any sort in the school-house, which happened once a month generally, Shenac was sure to be there. It was close by, and it was in the evening, and she could take Flora and her little brothers, who could seldom go so far as the kirk. "Shenac," said her cousin one day, "why were you not at the kirk last Sabbath? Such a fine day as it was; and to think of your letting Hamish go by himself!" "He did not go by himself; Dan went with him, and you came home with him. And I did go to the kirk--at least I went to the school-house, where old Mr Forbes preached," said Shenac. "Toch!" exclaimed Shenac Dhu scornfully; "do you call _that_ going to the kirk? Yon poor old body--do you call _him_ a minister? They say he used to make shoes at home. I'm amazed at you, Shenac! you that's held up to the rest of us as a woman of sense!" Shenac Bhan laughed. "Oh, as to his making shoes, you mind Paul made tents; and his sermons are just like other folk's sermons: I see no difference." "The texts are like other folk's, you mean," said Shenac Dhu slyly. "I daresay you take a nap when he's preaching." "No," said Shenac Bhan, not at all offended; "that's just the difference. I never sleep in the school-house. I suppose because it's cool, and I have a sleep before I go," she added candidly. "But as for the sermons, they are just like other folk's." "But that is nonsense," said Shenac Dhu. "He's just a common man, and does not even preach in Gaelic." "But our Shenac would say Paul did not do that, nor Dr Chalmers, nor plenty more," said Hamish, laughing. "Hamish," said Shenac Dhu severely, "don't encourage her in what is wrong. Elder McMillan says it's wrong to go, and so does my father. They don't even sing the Psalms, they say." "That's nonsense, at any rate," said Shenac Bhan. "The very last Sabbath they sang,-- "`I to the hills will lift mine eyes.' "You can tell the elder that, and your father, if it will be any consolation to them." "Our Shenac sang it," said little Hugh. "John Keith wasn't there, and the minister himself began the tune of Dundee. You should have heard him when he came to the high part." "I've heard him," said Shenac Dhu; and she raised her voice in a shrill, broken quaver, that made them all laugh, though Shenac Bhan was indignant too, and bade her cousin mind about the bears that tore the mocking children. "But our Shenac sang it after, and me and little Flora," continued Hugh. "And, Shenac, what was it that the minister said afterwards about the new song?" But Shenac would have no more said about it. She cared very little for Shenac Dhu's opinion, or for her father's either. She went to the school whenever the old man held a meeting there, and took the children with her. It was a great deal less trouble than taking them all so far as to the kirk, she told her mother; and whatever the elder and Angus Dhu might say, the old man's sermons were just like other folk's sermons. About this time there came a letter from Allister. The tidings of his father's death had reached him just as he was about to start for the mining district with his cousin and others; he had entered into engagements which made it necessary for him to go with them,--or he thought so. He said he would return home as soon as possible; but for the sake of all there he must not come till he had at least got gold enough to pay the debt, so that he might start fair. He could not, at so great a distance, advise his mother what to do; but he knew she had kind friends and neighbours, who would not let things go wrong till he came home, which would be at the earliest possible day. In the meantime, he sent some money--not much, but all he had--and he begged his mother to keep her courage up, for the sake of the children with her, and for his sake who was far away. This letter had been so long in coming, that somehow they had fallen into the way of thinking that there would be no letter, but that Allister must be on his way; so, when Shenac got it, it was with many doubts and fears that she carried it home to her mother. She dreaded the effect this disappointment might have on her in her enfeebled state, and shrank in dismay from a renewal of the scenes that had followed her father's death and the burning of the house. But she need not have feared. It was indeed a disappointment to the mother that the coming home of her son must be delayed, and she grieved for a day or two. But everything went on just as usual, and gradually she settled down contentedly to her spinning and knitting again; and you may be sure that whatever troubles fell to the lot of Shenac, she did not suffer her mother to be worried by them. And Shenac had many anxieties about this time. Of course she had none peculiar to herself; that is, she had none which were not shared by Hamish, and in a certain sense by Dan. But Hamish would have been content with moderate things. Just to rub on as quietly and easily as possible till Allister came home, was all he thought they should try to do. And as for Dan, the future and its troubles lay very lightly on him. But with Shenac it was different. That the hay and grain were safely in was by no means enough to satisfy her. If Allister had been coming soon, it might have been; but now there was the fall ploughing, and the sowing of the wheat, and the flax must be broken and dressed, and the winter's wood must be got up, and there were fifty other things that ought to be done before the snow came. There was far more to do than could be done by herself, or she would not have fretted. But when Hamish told her to "take no thought for the morrow," and that she ought to trust as well as work, she lost patience with him. And when Dan quoted Angus Dhu, and spoke vaguely of what must be done in the spring, quite losing sight of what lay ready at his hand to do, she nearly lost patience with him too. Not quite, though. It was a perilous experiment to try on Dan--a boy who might be led, but who would not be driven; and many a time Shenac wearied herself with efforts so to arrange matters that what fell to Dan to do might seem to be his own proposal, and many a time he was suffered to do things in his own way, though his way was not always the best, because otherwise there was some danger that he would not do them at all. Not that Dan was a bad boy, or very wilful, considering all things. But he was approaching the age when boys are supposed to see very clearly their masculine superiority; and to be directed by a woman how to do a man's work was more than a man could stand. If he could have been trusted, Shenac thought, she would gladly have given up to him the guidance of affairs, and put herself at his disposal to be directed. Perhaps she was mistaken in this. She enjoyed the leadership. She enjoyed encountering and conquering difficulties. She enjoyed astonishing (and, as she thought, disappointing) Angus Dhu; and though she would have scorned the thought, she enjoyed the knowledge that all the neighbours saw and wondered at, and gave her the credit of, the successful summer's work. But her being willing or unwilling made no difference. Dan was not old enough nor wise enough to be trusted with the management. The burden of care must fall on her, and the burden of labour too; and she set herself to the task with more intentness than ever when the letter came saying that Allister was not coming home. CHAPTER NINE. It was a bright day in the end of September. Shenac had been busy at the wheel all the morning, but the very last thread of their flannel was spun now. The wheel was put away, and Shenac stood before her mother, dressed in her black gown made for mourning when her father died. Her mother looked surprised, for this gown was never worn except at church, or when a visit was to be made. "Mother," said Shenac, "I have made ready the children's supper, and filled the sacks in case Dan should want to go to the mill, and I want to go over to see if Shenac and Maggie can come some day to help me with the flax." The mother assented, well pleased, for it was a long time since Shenac had gone to the house of Angus Dhu of her own will. "And, mother, maybe I'll go with Shenac as far as The Eleventh. It's a long time since I have seen Mary Matheson, and I'll be home before dark." "Well, well, go surely, if you like," said her mother; "and you might speak to McLean about the flannel, and bespeak McCallum the tailor to come as soon as he can to make the lads' clothes; and you might ask about the shoes." "Yes, mother, I'll mind them all. I'll just speak to Hamish first, and then I'll away." Hamish was in the garden digging and smoothing the ground where their summer's potatoes had grown, because he had nothing else to do, he said, and it would be so much done before the spring. Shenac seated herself on the fence, and began pulling, one by one, the brown oak leaves that hung low over it. There was no gate to the garden. It was doubtful whether a gate could have been made with sufficient strength, or fastened with sufficient ingenuity, to prevent the incursions of the pigs and calves, which, now that the fields were clear from grain, were permitted to wander over them at their will. So the garden was entered by a sort of stile--a board was placed with one end on the ground, and the other on the middle rail of the fence--and it was on this that Shenac sat down. "Hamish," she said after a little, "what do you think of my asking John Firinn to plough the land for the wheat--and to sow it too, for that matter?" "I don't think you had better call him by _that_ name, if you want him to do you a favour," said Hamish, laughing. "But why ask John Firinn of all the folk in the world?" ("Firinn" is the Gaelic name for "truth," and it was added to the name of one of the many John McDonalds of the neighbourhood; not, I am sorry to say, because he always spoke the truth, but because he did not.) Shenac laughed. "No; it's not likely. But I'm doing it for him because his wife has been sick all the summer, and has not a thread of her wool spun yet, and I am going to change work with them." "But, Shenac," said Hamish gravely, "does our mother know? I am sure she will think you have enough to do at home, without going to spin at John Firinn's." "I should not go there, of course; they must let me bring the wool home. And there's no use in telling my mother till I see whether they'll agree. It would only vex her. And, Hamish, it's all nonsense about my having too much to do. There's only the potatoes; and Hugh can bide at home from the school to gather them and the turnips, and Dan will be as well pleased if I leave them to him. I am only afraid that he has been fancying he is to plough, and he's not fit for it." "No, he's not fit for it," said Hamish. "But I don't like John Firinn. Is there no one else?" "No; for if we speak to the Camerons or Angus Dhu, it will just be the same as saying we want them to make a bee. I hate bees,--for us, I mean. It was well enough when they all thought it was just for the summer, and that then Allister would be home. But now we must do as other folk do, and be independent. So I must speak to John. He's not very trustworthy, I'm afraid; but that's maybe because few trust him. I don't think he'll wrong my mother, if he promises to do the land." "Perhaps you are right, Shenac," said Hamish with a sigh. "But, Hamish," said Shenac eagerly, "_you_ could not do this work, even if you were well and strong." She was not answering his words, but the thoughts which she knew were in his heart. "Come with me, Hamish. It will do you good, and it would be far better for you to make a bargain with John Firinn than for me. Shenac yonder is going. Come with us, Hamish." "No," said Hamish. "The children are at the school, and maybe Dan will go to the mill; and my mother must not be left alone. And you are the one to make the bargain about the spinning. I don't believe John will be hard upon you; and if you are shamefaced, Shenac yonder will speak for you." But Shenac did not intend her cousin to know anything about the matter till it should be settled, though she did not tell her brother so. She went away a little anxious and uncertain. For though she had been the main dependence all summer for the work both in the house and in the field, she had had very little to do with other people; and her heart failed her at the thought of speaking to any one about their affairs, especially to John Firinn. So it was with a slow step and a troubled face that she took her way over the field to find her cousin. She had been a little doubtful all day whether she should find Shenac at home and at liberty to go with her, but she never thought of finding Shenac's father there. They were rolling--that is, clearing off--the felled trees in Angus Dhu's farther field, she knew, and Shenac might be there, and she thought that her father must be. She had not met Angus Dhu face to face fairly since that May-day by the creek; that is, she had never seen him unless some one else was present, and the thought of doing so was not at all pleasant to her. So when, on turning the corner, she saw his tall and slightly-bent figure moving towards her, in her first surprise and dismay she had some thoughts of turning and running away. She did not, however, but came straight on up the path. "I was not sure it was you, Shenac," was her uncle's greeting; "you are seen here so rarely. It must be something more than common that brings you from home to-day, you have grown such a busy woman." "I came for Cousin Shenac to go with me to Mary Matheson's, if she can be spared. Is she at home to-day?" said Shenac, with some hesitation, for she would far rather have made her request to Shenac's mother. "Oh yes, she's at home. Go into the house. I daresay her mother will spare her." And he repeated a Gaelic proverb, which being translated into English would mean something like, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Shenac smiled to herself as she thought of her mother's many messages and her dreaded mission to John Firinn. It did not seem much like play to her. But burdens have a way of slipping easily from young shoulders, and the two Shenacs went on their way cheerily enough, and I daresay a stranger meeting them might have fancied that our Shenac was the lighter-hearted of the two. The cloud fell again, however, when they came to the turn of the road that took them to Mary Matheson's. "I have to go down to the McDonalds', Shenac. Just go on, and I will follow you in two or three minutes." "To the McDonalds'!" repeated Shenac Dhu. "Not to John Firinn's surely? What in all the world can you have to do with him? You had better take me with you, Shenac. They say John has a trick of forgetting things sometimes. You might need me for a witness." Shenac Bhan laughed and shook her head. "There's no need. Go on to Mary's, and tell her I am coming. I shall not be long." She wished heartily that Hamish had been with her, or that she could have honestly said her mother had sent her; for it seemed to her that she was taking too much upon her to be trying to make a bargain with a man like John Firinn. There was no help for it now, however, and she knocked at the door, and then lifted the latch and went in with all the courage she could summon. She did not need her courage for a little time, however; but her tact and skill in various matters--her "faculty," as Mr Rugg called it-- stood her in good stead for the next half-hour. Seated on a low chair, looking ill and harassed, was poor Mrs McDonald, with a little wailing baby on her knee, and her other little ones clustering round her, while her husband, the formidable John himself, was doing his best to prepare dinner for all of them. It was long past dinner-time, and it promised to be longer still before these little hungry mouths would be stopped by the food their father was attempting to prepare. For he was unaccustomed and inexpert, and it must have added greatly to the sufferings of his wife to see his blundering movements, undoing with one hand what he did with the other, and using his great strength where only a little skill was needed. Shenac hesitated a moment, and then advanced to Mrs McDonald. "Are you no better? Can I do anything for you?--Let me do that," she added hastily, as she saw the success of the dinner put in jeopardy by an awkward movement of the incompetent cook. In another moment Shenac's black dress was pinned up, and soon the dinner was on the table, and the father and children were seated at it. To her husband's entreaty that she would try and eat something, the poor woman did not yield. She was flushed and feverish, and evidently in great pain. "I am afraid you are in pain," said Shenac, as she turned to her, offering to take the baby. "Yes; I let my sister go home too soon, and what with one thing and another, I am nearly as bad as ever again." And she pressed her hand on her breast as she spoke. A few more words told the state of the case, and in a little time the pain was relieved by a warm application, and the weary woman lay down to rest. Then there was some porridge made for the baby. Unsuitable food it seemed, but the little creature ate it hungrily, and was soon asleep. Then the kettle was boiled, and the poor woman surprised herself and delighted Shenac by drinking a cup of tea and eating a bit of toasted bread with relish. Then her hands and face were bathed, and her cap straightened, and she declared herself to be much better, as indeed it was easy to see she was. Then Shenac cleared the dinner-things away and swept the hearth, the husband and wife looking on. When all this was done, Shenac did not think it needed so much courage to make her proposal about the change of work. Mrs McDonald looked anxiously at her husband, who had listened without speaking. "I think I could spin it to please you," said Shenac. "My mother is pleased with ours, though she did not like the big wheel at first; and you can speak to weaver McLean. I don't think he has had much trouble with the weaving. I would do my best." "Could you come here and do it?" asked John. "Because, if you could, it would be worth while doing the ploughing just to see you round, let alone the wool." Shenac shook her head. She was quite too much in earnest to notice the implied compliment. "No; that would be impossible. I could not be away from home. My mother could not spare me. She is not so strong as she used to be. But I would soon do it at home. Our work is mostly over now. Our land does much the best with the fall wheat, and the wheat is our main dependence." "I'm rather behind with my own work," began John; "and I heard something said about the Camerons doing your field, with some help." "Oh, a bee," said Shenac. "But that is just what I will not have. I don't want to seem ungrateful. All the neighbours have been very kind," she added humbly. "But now that Allister is not coming home, we must carry on the place by ourselves, or give it up. We must not be expecting too much from our neighbours, or they will tire of us. And I don't want a bee; though everybody has been very kind to us in our trouble." She was getting anxious and excited. "Bees are well enough in their way," said Mrs McDonald. "And some of the neighbours were saying they would gather one to help me with the wool. But, John, man, if you could do this for the widow Macivor, I would far rather let Shenac do the wool." "I would do it well," said Shenac. "I would begin to-morrow." "But if you were to do the wool, and then something was to happen that I could not plough or sow the field, what then?" asked John gravely. Shenac looked at him, but said nothing. "What could happen, John, man?" said his wife. "We could have it written down, however," said John, "and that would keep us to our bargain. Should we have it written down, Shenac?" "If you like," said Shenac gravely; "but there is no need. I would begin the wool to-morrow, and do it as soon as I could." "Oh ay, oh ay! but you might need the bit of writing to bind _me_, Shenac, my wise woman. I might slip out of it when the wool was done." "John, man!" remonstrated his wife. "You would never do that," said Shenac quietly. "If you wished to do it, a paper would not hold you to it. I don't see the use of a writing; but if you want one I don't care, of course." But neither did John care, and so they made the bargain. John was to charge the widow a certain sum for the work to be done, and Shenac was to be allowed the usual price for a day's work of spinning; and it was thought that when the wool was spun and the field ploughed and sowed, they would be about even. There might be a little due on one side or the other, but it would not be much. "Well then, it's all settled," said Shenac, and she did not attempt to conceal her satisfaction. It came into John's mind that being settled was one thing and being done was quite another; but he did not say so. He said to himself, as he saw Shenac busy about his wife and child,-- "If there is a way to put that wheat in better than wheat was ever put in before, I shall find it out and do it." He said the same to his wife, as together they watched her running down the road to meet Shenac Dhu. "What in the world kept you so long?" asked her cousin. "Have you been hearkening to one of John Firinn's stories? Better not tell it again. What made you bide so long?" "Do you know how ill the wife has been?" asked Shenac Bhan. Then she told how she found the poor woman suffering, and about the children and their dinner, and so was spared the necessity of telling what her business with John had been. Greatly to the surprise of Angus Dhu and all the neighbours, in due time John McDonald brought his team into the widow Macivor's field. Many were the prophecies brought by Dan to Hamish and Shenac as to the little likelihood there was of his doing the work to the satisfaction of all concerned. "It will serve you right too, Shenac," said the indignant Dan. "To think of a girl like you fancying you could make a bargain with a man like John Firinn!" "Is it Angus Dhu that is concerned, and the Camerons?" asked Shenac. "It's a pity they shouldn't be satisfied. But if the work is done to please the mother and Hamish and me, they'll need to content themselves, I doubt, Dannie, my lad." "Johnnie Cameron said they were just going to call a bee together and do it up in a day or two; and then it would have been done right, and you would have been saved three weeks' spinning besides." "We're obliged to the Camerons all the same," said Shenac a little sharply. "But if it had needed six weeks' spinning instead of three, it would please me better to do it than to trouble the Camerons or anybody. Why should we need help more than other folk?" she added impatiently. "I'm ashamed of you, Dan, with your bees." "Well, I'll tell them what you say, and you'll not be troubled with their offers again, I can tell you," said Dan sulkily. "You'll do nothing of the kind," said Hamish. "Nonsense, Dan, my lad; Shenac is right, and she's wrong too. She's right in thinking the less help we need the better; but she should not speak as though she did not thank the neighbours for their wishing to help us." "Oh, I'm very thankful," said Shenac, dropping a mocking courtesy to Dan. "But I'm not half so thankful for their help as I am for the chance to spin John Firinn's wool. And Dan can tell the Camerons what he likes. I'm not caring; only don't let us hear any more of their bees and their prophecies." Lightly as Shenac spoke of the spinning of the wool, it was no light work to do. For her mother was not pleased that she had undertaken it without her knowledge and consent, and fretted, and cast difficulties in the way, till Shenac, more harassed and unhappy than she had ever been before, offered to break the bargain and send back the wool. Her mother did not insist on this, however, and Shenac span on in the midst of her murmurings. Then Hamish took the mother away to visit her sister in the next township, and during their absence Shenac kept little Flora away from the school to do such little things as she could do about the house, and finished the wool by doing six days' work in three, and then confessed to Dan in confidence, that she was as tired as she ever wished to be. She need not have hurried so much, for mother came home quite reconciled to the spinning--indeed a little proud of all that had been said in Shenac's praise when the matter was laid before the friends they had been to see. So she said, as Mrs McDonald was far from well yet, she would dye her worsted for her; and Shenac was glad to rest herself with the pleasant three miles' walk to give the message and get directions. Shenac's part of the bargain was fulfilled in spirit and letter; and certainly nothing less could be said as to the part of John Firinn. Even Angus Dhu and John Cameron, who kept sharp eyes on him during his work, had no fault to find with the way in which it was done. It was done well and in the right time, and it was with satisfaction quite inexpressible that Shenac looked over the smooth field and listened to her mother's congratulations that this was one good job well and timely done. Ever after that she was John McDonald's fast friend, and the friend of his sickly wife. No one ever ventured to speak a disrespectful word of John before her; and the successful sowing of the wheat-field was by no means the last piece of work he did, and did well, for the widow and her children. CHAPTER TEN. Winter set in early that year, but not too early for Shenac and her brothers. The winter preparations had all been made before the delightful stormy morning came, when Hugh and Colin and little Flora chased one another round and round in the door-yard, making many paths in the new-fallen snow. The house had been banked up with earth, and every crack and crevice in the roof and walls closed. The garden had been dug and smoothed as if the seeds were to be sown the next day. The barn and stable were in perfect order. The arrangements for tying up oxen and cows, which are always sure to get out of order in summer, had been made anew, and the farming-tools gathered safely under cover. These may seem little things; but the comfort of many a household has been interfered with because such little things have been neglected. What may be done at any time is very often left till the right time is past, and disorder and discomfort are sure to follow. I daresay the early snow fell that year on many a plough left in the furrow, and on many a hoe and spade left in garden or yard. But all was as it should be at Mrs Macivor's. In summer, when a long day's work in the field was the order of things, when those who were strong and able were always busy, it seemed to Hamish that he was of little use. This was a mistake of his. He was of great use in many ways, even when he went to the field late and left it early; for though Shenac took the lead in work and planning, she was never sure that her plans were wise, or even practicable, till she had talked them over with Hamish. She would have lost patience with Dan and the rest, and with her mother even, if she had not had Hamish to "empty her heart to." But even Shenac, though she loved her brother dearly, and valued his counsels and sympathy as something which she could not have lived and laboured without--even she did not realise how much of their comfort depended on the work of his weak hands. It was Hamish who banked the house and made the garden; it was he who drove nails and filled cracks, who gathered up tools and preserved seeds, quietly doing what others did not do and remembering what others forgot. It was Hamish who cared for the creatures about the place; it was he who made and mended and kept in order many things which it would have cost money to get or much inconvenience to go without. So it may be said that it was owing to Hamish that the early snow did not find them unprepared. A grave matter was under discussion within-doors that morning while little Flora and her brothers were chasing each other through the snow. It was whether Dan was to go to the school that winter. It was seldom that any but young children could go to school in the summer-time, the help of the elder ones being needed in the field as soon as they were old enough to help. But in the winter few young people thought themselves too old to go to school while the teacher could carry them on. Hamish and Shenac had gone up to the time of their father's death. But as for Dan, he thought himself old enough now to have done with school. He had never been, in country phrase, "a good scholar?"--that is, he had never taken kindly to his books--a circumstance which seemed almost like disgrace in the eyes of Shenac; and she was very desirous that he should get the good of this winter, especially as they were to have a new teacher, whose fame had preceded him. Dan was taking it for granted that he was the mainstay at home, and that for him school was out of the question. But the rest thought differently; and it was decided, much to his discontent, that when the winter's wood was brought, to school he must go. Great was his disgust--so great that he began to talk about going to the woods with the lumberers; at which Shenac laughed, but Hamish looked grave, and bade him think twice before he gave his mother so sore a heart as such a word as that would do. Dan did think twice, and said nothing more about the woods. His going to school, however, did not do him much good in the way of learning, but it did in the way of discipline. At any rate, it left him less idle time than he would otherwise have had; and though his boyish mischief vexed Shenac often, things might have been worse with Dan, as Hamish said, and little harm was done. Winter is a pleasant time in a country farm-house. In our country the summers are so short, and so much work must be crowded into them, that there is little time for any enjoyment, save that of doing well what is to be done, and watching the successful issue. But in winter there is leisure--leisure for enjoyment of various kinds, visiting, sewing, singing; and it is generally made the most of. As for Shenac, the feeling that all the summer's work was successfully ended, that the farm-products were safely housed beyond loss, gave her a sense of being at leisure, though her hands were full of work, and would be for a long time yet. The fulled cloth and the flannel came home. The tailor came for a week to make the lads' clothes, and she helped him with them; and tailor McCallum, though as a general thing rather contemptuous of woman's help, acknowledged that she helped him to purpose. A great deal may be learned by one who begins by thinking nothing too difficult to learn; and Shenac's stitching and button-holes were something to wonder at before the tailor's visit was over. Then came Katie Matheson to help with the new gowns. Shenac felt herself quite equal to these, but, as Shenac Dhu insisted, "Katie had been at M--- within the year, and knew the fashions;" so Katie came for a day or two. Of this wish to follow the fashion, the mother was inclined to speak severely; for what had young folk with their bread to win to do with the fashions of the idle people of the world? But even the mother did not object to following them when she found the wide, useless sleeves, so much sought after by foolish young girls, giving place to the small coat-sleeves which had been considered the thing in her own and her mother's youth. They were, as she said, far more sensible-like, and a saving besides. The additional width which Katie quietly appropriated to Shenac's skirt would have been declared a piece of sinful extravagance, if the mother had known of it before Shenac was turning round, from one to another, to be admired with the new dress on. She did cry out at the length. Why the stocking could only just be seen above the shoe tied round the slender ankle! There was surely no call to waste good cloth by making the skirt so long. "Never mind," said Katie: "Flora's should be all the shorter;" and by that means little Flora was in the fashion too. I daresay Shenac's pleasure in her new dress might have awakened amusement, perhaps contempt, among young people to whom new dresses are not so rare a luxury. But never a young belle of them all could have the same right to take pleasure and pride in silk or satin as Shenac had to be proud of her simple shepherd's plaid. She had shorn the wool, and spun and dyed it with her own hands. She had made it too, with Katie's help; and never was pleasure more innocent or more unmixed than hers, as she stood challenging admiration for it from them all. Indeed, both the dress and the wearer might have successfully challenged admiration from a larger and less interested circle than that--at least, so thought the new master, who came in with Hamish while the affair was in progress. He had seen prettier faces, and nicer dresses too, it is to be supposed; but he had certainly never seen anything prettier or nicer than Shenac's innocent pride and delight in her own handiwork. Shenac Dhu gave the whole a finishing touch as she drew round her cousin's not very slender waist a black band fastened with a silver clasp--an heirloom in the family since the time that the Macivors used to wear the Highland garb among their native hills. "Now walk away and let us see you," said she, giving her a gentle push. Shenac minced and swung her skirts as she moved, as little children do when they are playing "fine ladies." Even her mother could not help laughing, it was so unlike the busy, anxious Shenac of the last few months. "Is she not a vain creature?" said Shenac Dhu. "No wonder that you look at her that way, Hamish, lad." The eyes of Hamish shone with pride and pleasure as they followed his sister. "Next year I'll weave it myself," said Shenac, coming back again. "You need not laugh, Shenac Dhu. You'll see." "Yes, I daresay. And where will you get your loom?" And Shenac Dhu put up both hands and made-believe to cut her hair. Shenac Bhan shook her head at her. "I can learn to weave; you'll see. Anybody can learn anything if they try," said Shenac. "Except the binomial theorem," said Hamish, laughing. His sister shook her head at him too. Charmed with the "new kind of arithmetic" which Mr Rugg had brought, yet not enjoying any pleasure to the full unless his sister enjoyed it with him, Hamish had tried to beguile her into giving her spare hours to the study. But Shenac's mind was occupied with other things, and, rather scornful of labour which seemed to come to nothing, she had given little heed to it. "I could learn that too, but what would be the good of it?" asked Shenac. "Ask the master," said Hamish. "Well?" said Shenac, turning to Mr Stewart. "Do you mean what is the good of algebra, or what would be the good of it to you?" asked Mr Stewart. "What would be the good of it to me? I can never have any use for the like of that." "The discipline of learning it might be good for you," said Mr Stewart. "I once heard a lady say that her knowledge of Euclid had helped her to cut and make her children's clothes." Shenac laughed. "I daresay Katie here could have taught her more about it with less trouble." "I daresay you are right," said the master. "And the discipline of the wheel and the loom, and of household care, may be far better than the discipline of study to prepare you for life and what it may bring you. I am sure this gown, for instance," he added, laying his finger on the sleeve, "has been worth far more to you already than the money it would bring. I mean the patience and energy expended on it will be of far more value to you; for you know these good gifts, well bestowed, leave the bestower all the richer for the giving." "I don't know how that may be," said Shenac, "but I know I would rather have this gown of my own making than the prettiest one that Katie has made for twelve months." I do not know how I came to speak of the winter as a season of leisure in connection with Shenac, for this winter was a very busy time with her. True, her work did not press upon her, so as to make her anxious or impatient, as it sometimes used to do in summer; but she was never idle. There were sewing and housework and a little wool-spinning, and much knitting of stockings and mittens for them all. The knitting was evening work, and, when Hamish was not reading aloud, Shenac's hands and eyes were busy with different matters. She read while she knitted, and enjoyed it greatly, much to her own surprise, for, as she told Hamish, she thought she had given up caring about anything but to work and to get on. They had more books than usual this winter, and more help to understand them, so that instead of groping on alone, sometimes right and sometimes wrong, Hamish made great progress; and wherever Hamish was, Shenac was not far away. It was a very quiet winter in one way--there was not much visiting here and there. Hamish was not fit for that. Shenac went without him sometimes now. She was young, and her mind being at ease, she took pleasure in the simple, innocent merry-makings of the place. She was content to leave Hamish when she did not have to leave him alone, which rarely happened now. The master lived in the house of Angus Dhu, but it seemed that the humbler home of the widow and the company of Hamish suited him best, for scarcely two evenings passed without finding him there; and Shenac could go with a good heart, knowing that her brother was busy and happy at home. Afterwards, when changes came, and new anxieties and cares pressed upon her, Shenac used to look back on this winter as the happiest time of her life. It was not merely that the summer's work had been successful, but that the summer's success seemed to make all their future secure. There was no doubt now about their being able to keep together and carry on the farm. That was settled. She was at rest--they were all at rest-- about that. Their future did not depend now upon Allister's uncertain coming home. It would not be true to say she saw no difficulties in the way; but she saw none to daunt her. Even Dan seemed to have come to himself. He seemed to have forgotten his self-assertion--his "contrariness," as Shenac called it--and was a boy again, noisy and full of fun, but gentle and helpful too. The little ones were well and happy, and getting on well in school, as all the Macivors were bound to do. The mother was comparatively well and cheerful. Her monotonous flax-spinning filled up the quiet, uneventful days, and, untroubled by out-door anxieties, she was content. But, in looking back over this happy time, it was to Hamish that Shenac's thoughts most naturally turned, for it was the happiness of her twin-brother, more than all the rest put together, that made the happiness of Shenac. And Hamish was happier, more like himself, than ever he had been since their troubles began. Not so merry, perhaps, as the Hamish of the former days; but he was happy, that was sure. He was far from well, and he sometimes suffered a good deal; but his illness was not of a kind to alarm them for his life, and unless he had been exposed in some way, or a sudden change of the weather brought on his old rheumatic pains, he was, on the whole, comfortable in health. But whether he suffered or not, he was happy, that was easily seen. There was no sitting silent through the long gloamings now, no weary drooping of his head upon his hands, no wearier struggle to look up and join in the household talk of the rest. There were no heart-sick broodings over his own helplessness, no murmurings as to the burden he might yet become. He did not often speak of his happiness in words, just as he had seldom spoken of his troubles; but every tone of his gentle voice and every glance of his loving eye spoke to the heart of his sister, filling it with content for his sake. What was the cause of the change? what was the secret of her brother's peace? Shenac wondered and wondered. She knew it was through his friend, Mr Stewart, that her brother's life seemed changed; but, knowing this, she wondered none the less. What was his secret power? What could Hamish see in that plain, dark man, so grave and quiet, so much older than he? True, they had the common tie of a love of knowledge, and pored together over lines and figures and strange books as though they would never grow weary of it all. It was true that, more than any one had ever done before, the master had opened new paths of knowledge to the eager lad-- that by a few quiet words he put more life and heart into a subject than others could do by hours and hours of talk. But all these things Shenac shared and enjoyed without being able to understand how, through the master, a new and peaceful influence seemed to have fallen on the life of Hamish. She did not grudge it to him. She was not jealous of the new interest that had come to brighten her brother's life--at least at this time she was not. Afterwards, when new cares and vexations pressed upon her, she vexed herself with the thought that something had come between her brother and herself which made her troubles not so much his as they used to be, and she blamed this new friendship for the difference. But no such thoughts vexed these first pleasant months. Hamish was indeed changed. Unrealised at first by himself, the most wonderful change that can come between the cradle and the grave had happened to him. He had found a secret spring of peace, hidden as yet from his sister's eyes. He had obtained a staff to lean on, which made his weakness stronger than her strength; and this had come to him through the master. There was a bond between the friends, stronger, sweeter, and more enduring than even that which united the twin brother and sister--the BOND OF BROTHERHOOD IN CHRIST. On Norman Stewart had been conferred the highest of all honours; to him had been given the chief of all happiness. Through _his_ voice the voice of Jesus had spoken peace to a troubled soul. To him it had been given so to hold forth the word of life that to a soul sitting in darkness a great light sprang up. I cannot tell you how it came about, except that the heart of the master being full of love to Christ, it could not but overflow in loving words from his lips. Attracted first to Hamish by the patience and gentleness with which he suffered, he could not do otherwise than seek to lead him to the Great Healer; and his touch was life. Then all the shadows that had darkened the past and the future to the lame boy fled away. Gradually all the untoward circumstances of his life seemed to adjust themselves anew. His lameness, his suffering, his helplessness were no longer parts of a mystery, darkening all the future to him, but parts of a plan through which something better than a name and a place in the world might be obtained. Little by little he came to know himself to be one of God's favoured ones; and then he would not have turned his hand to win the lot that all his life had seemed the most desirable to him. Before his friend he saw such a life--a life of labour for the highest of all ends. Before himself he saw a life of suffering, a narrow sphere of action, helplessness, dependence; but he no longer murmured. He was coming to know, through the new life given him, how that "to do God's will is sweet, and to bear God's will is sweet--the one as sweet as the other, to those to whom he reveals himself;" and to have learned this is to rejoice for evermore. The master's term of office came to an end, and the friends were to part. It was June by this time; and when he had bidden all the rest goodbye, Mr Stewart lingered still with Hamish at the gate. Hamish had said something about meeting again, and the master answered,-- "Yes, surely we shall meet again--if not here, yonder;" and he pointed upward. "We shall be true friends there, Hamish, bhodach; be sure of that." Tears that were not all sorrowful stood on the cheeks of Hamish, and he laid his face down on the master's shoulder without speaking. "Much may lie between us and that time," continued the master--"much to do, and, it may be, much to suffer; but it is sure to come." "For me, too," murmured Hamish. "They also serve who only wait." "Yes," said the master; "they who wait are blessed." "And I shall thank God all my life that he sent you here to me," said Hamish. "And I too," said the master. "It seemed to me an untoward chance indeed that turned me aside from the path I had chosen and sent me here, and the good Father has put my doubts and fears to shame, in that he has given me you, and, through you, others, to be stars in my crown of rejoicing against that day. God bless you! Farewell." "God bless you, and farewell," echoed Hamish. So Mr Stewart went away, and Hamish watched till he was out of sight, and still stood long after that, till Shenac came to chide him for lingering out in the damp, and drew him in. She did not speak to him. There were tears on his cheek, she thought, and her own voice failed her. But when they came to the light the tears were gone, but the look of peace that had rested on his face all these months rested on it still. CHAPTER ELEVEN. The happy winter drew to an end, and spring came with some pleasures and many cares. I am not going to tell all about what was done this spring and summer; it would take too long. Shenac and her brother had not the same eagerness and excitement in looking forward to the summer's work that they had had the spring before; but they had some experience, and were not afraid of failure. The spring work was well done, and with comparatively little help. The garden was made, and the first crop of weeds disposed of from some of the beds; and Shenac was beginning to look forward to the little pause in outdoor work that was to give her time for the wool again, when something happened. It was something which Shenac declared delighted her more than anything that had happened for a long time; and yet it filled her with dismay. An uncle, a brother of their mother, who resided in the neighbourhood of the C--- Springs, celebrated for their beneficial effects on persons troubled with rheumatic complaints, sent for Hamish to pass the rest of the summer at his house. The invitation was urgent. Hamish would be sure to get much benefit from the use of the baths, and would return home before winter, a new man. Hamish alone hesitated; all the rest declared that he must go, and none more decidedly than Shenac. In the first delighted moment, she thought only of the good that Hamish was to get, and not at all of how they were to get on without him. She did not draw back when she thought of it, but worked night and day to get his things ready before the appointed time. I do not know whether the union between twins is more tender and intimate than that between other brothers and sisters, but when Hamish went away it seemed to Shenac that half her heart had gone with him. The house seemed desolate, the garden and fields forsaken. Her longing for a sight of his face was unspeakable. All missed him. A strange silence seemed to fall upon the household. They had hardly missed the master, in the bustle that had preceded the going away of Hamish; but now they missed them both. The quiet grew irksome to Dan, and he used in the evenings to go elsewhere--to Angus Dhu's or the Camerons'--thus leaving it all the quieter for the rest. The mother fretted a little for the lame boy, till a letter came telling that he had arrived safe and well, and not very tired; and then she was content. As for Shenac, she betook herself with more energy than ever to her work. She did not leave herself time to be lonely. It was just the first moment of coming into the house and the sitting down at meals that she found unbearable. For the first few days her appetite quite failed her--a thing that had never happened within her memory before. But try as she might, the food seemed to choke her. There was nothing for it but to work, within doors or without, till she was too weary to stand, and then go to bed. And, indeed, there was plenty to do. Not too much, however, Shenac thought--though having the share of Hamish added to her own made a great difference. But she would not have minded the work if only Dan had been reasonable. She had said to herself often, before Hamish went away, that she would be ten times more patient and watchful over herself than ever she had been before, and that Dan should have no excuse from her for being wilful and idle. It had come into her mind of late that Angus Dhu had not been far wrong when he said Dan was a wild lad, and she had said as much to Hamish. But Hamish had warned her from meddling with Dan. "You must trust him, and show that you trust him, Shenac, if you would get any good out of him. He is just at the age to be uneasy, and to have plans and ways of his own, having no one to guide him. We must have patience with Dan a while." "If patience would do it," said Shenac sadly. But she made up her mind that, come what might, she would watch her words and her actions too with double care till Hamish came home again. She was very patient with Dan, or she meant to be so; but she had a great many things pressing on her at this time, and it vexed her beyond measure when he, through carelessness or indifference to her wishes, let things intrusted to him go wrong. She had self-command enough almost always to refrain from speaking while she was angry, but she could not help her vexed looks; and the manner in which she strove to mend matters, by doing with her own hands what he had done imperfectly or neglected altogether, angered Dan far more than words could have done. They missed the peace-maker. Oh, how Shenac missed him in all things where Dan was concerned! She had not realised before how great had been the influence of Hamish over his brother, or, indeed, over them all. A laughing remark from Hamish would do more to put Dan right than any amount of angry expostulation or silent forbearance from her. Oh, how she missed him! How were they to get through harvest-time without him? "Mother," said Dan, as he came in to his dinner one day, "have you any message to The Sixteenth? I am going over to McLay's raising to-morrow." "But, Dan, my lad, the barley is losing; and, for all that you could do at the putting up of the barn, it hardly seems worth your while to go so far," said his mother. Shenac had not come in yet, but Shenac Dhu, who had come over on a message, was there. "Oh, I have settled that, mother. The Camerons and Sandy McMillan are coming here in the morning. The barley will be all down by dinner-time, and they'll take their dinner here, and we'll go up together." "But, Dan, lad, they have barley of their own. What will Shenac say? Have you spoken to your sister about it?" asked his mother anxiously. "Oh, what about Shenac?" said Dan impatiently. "They will be glad to come. What's a short forenoon to them? And I believe Shenac hates the sight of one and all. What's the use of speaking to her?" "Did you tell them that when you asked them?" said Shenac Dhu dryly. "I haven't asked them yet," said Dan. "But what would they care for a girl like Shenac, if I were to tell?" "Try and see," said Shenac Dhu. "You're a wise lad, Dan, about some things. Do you think it's to oblige you that Sandy McMillan is hanging about here and bothering folk with his bees and his bees? Why, he would go fifty miles and back again, any day of his life, for one glance from your sister's eye. Don't fancy that folk are caring for _you_, lad." "Shenac Dhu, my dear," said her aunt in a tone of vexation, "don't say such foolish things, and put nonsense into the head of a child like our Shenac." "Well, I won't, aunt; indeed I dare not," said Shenac Dhu, laughing, as at that moment Shenac Bhan came in. "Shenac, what kept you?" said her mother fretfully. "Your dinner is cold. See, Dan has finished his." "I could not help it, mother," said Shenac, sitting down. "It was that Sandy McMillan that hindered me. He offered to come and help us with the barley." "And what did you say to him?" asked Shenac Dhu demurely. "Oh, I thanked him kindly," said Shenac, with a shrug of her shoulders. "I must see him. Where is he, Shenac?" said Dan. "He must come to-morrow, and the Camerons, and then we'll go to the raising together. Is he coming to-morrow?" "No," said Shenac sharply; "I told him their own barley was as like to suffer for the want of cutting as ours. When we want him we'll send for him." "But you did not anger him, Shenac, surely?" said her mother. "No; I don't think it. I'm not caring much whether I did or not," said Shenac. "Anger him!" cried Dan. "You may be sure she did. She's as grand as if she were the first lady in the country." This was greeted by a burst of merry laughter from the two Shenacs. Even the mother laughed a little, it was so absurd a charge to bring against Shenac. Dan looked sheepishly from one to the other. "Well, it's not me that says it," said Dan angrily; "plenty folk think that of our Shenac.--And you had no business to tell him not to come, when I had spoken to him." "What will Sandy care for a girl like Shenac?" asked his cousin mockingly. "Well, _I_ care," persisted Dan. "She's always interfering and having her own way about things--and--" "Whisht, Dan, lad," pleaded the mother. "I didn't know that you had spoken to Sandy--not that it would have made any difference, however," added Shenac candidly. "And, Dan, you don't suppose any one will care for what a girl like Shenac Bhan may say. He'll come all the same to please you," said Cousin Shenac. "Whether he comes or not, I'm going to McLay's raising," said Dan angrily. "Shenac's not _my_ mistress, yet a while." "Whisht, Dan; let's have no quarrelling," pleaded the mother.--"Why do you vex him?" she continued, as Dan rushed out of the room. "I did not mean to vex him, mother," said Shenac gently. This was only one of many vexatious discussions that had troubled their peace during the summer. Sometimes Shenac's conscience acquitted her of all blame; but, whether it did or not, she always felt that if Hamish had been at home all this might have been prevented. She did not know how to help it. Sometimes her mother blamed her more than was quite fair for Dan's fits of wilfulness and idleness, and she longed for Hamish to be at home again. Dan went to the raising, and, I daresay, was none the better for the companionship of the offended Sandy. Shenac stayed at home and worked at the barley till it grew dark. She even did something at it when the moon rose, after her mother had gone to bed; but she herself was in bed and asleep before Dan came, so there was nothing more said at that time. The harvest dragged a little, but they got through with it in a reasonable time. There were more wet weather and more anxiety all through the season than there had been last year; but, on the whole, they had reason to be thankful that it had ended so well. Shenac was by no means so elated as she had been last year. She was very quiet and grave, and in her heart she was beginning to ask herself whether Angus Dhu might not have been right, and whether she might not have better helped her mother and all of them in some other way. They had only just raised enough on the farm to keep them through the year, and surely they might have managed just to live with less difficulty. Even if Dan had been as good and helpful as he ought to have been, it would not have made much difference. Shenac would not confess it to herself, much less to any one else, but the work of the summer had been a little too much for her strength and spirits. Her courage revived with a little rest and the sight of her brother. He did not come back quite a new man, but he was a great deal better and stronger than he had been for years; and the delight of seeing him go about free from pain chased away the half of Shenac's troubles. Even Dan's freaks did not seem so serious to her now, and she made up her mind to say as little as possible to Hamish about the vexations of the summer, and to think of nothing unpleasant now that she had him at home again. But unpleasant things are not so easily set aside out of one's life, and Shenac's vexations with Dan were not over. He was more industrious than usual about this time, and worked at cutting and bringing up the winter's wood with a zeal that made her doubly glad that she had said little about their summer's troubles. He talked less and did more than usual; and Hamish bade his mother and Shenac notice how quiet and manly he was growing, when he startled them all by a declaration that he was going with the Camerons and some other lads to the lumbering, far up the Grand River. "I'm not going to the school. I would not, even if Mr Stewart were coming back; and I am not needed at home, now that you are better, Hamish. You can do what is needed in the winter, so much of the wood is up; and, at any rate, I am going." Hamish entreated him to stay at home for his mother's sake, or to choose some less dangerous occupation, if he must go away. "Dangerous! Nonsense, Hamish! Why should it be more dangerous to me than to the rest? I cannot be a child all my life to please my mother and Shenac." "No; that is true," said Hamish; "but neither can you be a man all at once to please yourself. You are neither old enough nor strong enough for such work as is done in the woods, whatever you may think." "There are younger lads going to the woods than I am," muttered Dan sulkily. "Yes; but they are not going to do men's work nor get men's wages. If you are wise, you will bide at home." But all that Hamish could get from Dan was a promise that he would not go, as he had first intended, without his mother's leave. This was not easy to get, for the fate of Lewis might well fill the mother's heart with terror for Dan, who was much younger than his brother had been. But she consented at last, and Shenac and Hamish set themselves to make the best of Dan's going, for their mother's sake. "He'll be in safe keeping with the Camerons, mother, and it will do him good to rough it a little. We'll have him back in the spring, more of a man and easier to do with," said Hamish. But the mother was not easily comforted. Dan's going brought too vividly back the going of those who had never returned; and the mother fretted and pined for the lad, and murmured sometimes that, if Shenac had been more forbearing with him, he might not have wanted to go. She did not know how she hurt her daughter, or she never would have said anything like that, for in her heart she knew that Shenac was not to blame for the waywardness of Dan. But Shenac did not defend herself, and the mother murmured on till the first letter came, saying that Dan was well and doing well, and then she was content. About this time they had a visit from their Uncle Allister, their mother's brother, in whose house Hamish had passed the summer. He brought his two daughters--pretty, cheerful girls--who determined between themselves, encouraged by Hamish, that they should carry off Shenac for a month's visit when they went home. They succeeded too, though Shenac declared and believed it to be impossible that she should leave home, even up to the day before they went. The change did her a great deal of good. She came back much more like the Shenac of two years ago than she had seemed for a long time; and, as spring drew on, she could look forward to the labours of another summer without the miserable misgivings that had so vexed her in the fall. Indeed, now that Hamish was well, whether Dan came home or not, she felt sure of success, and of a quiet and happy summer for them all. But before spring came something happened. There came a letter from Allister--not this time to the mother, but to Angus Dhu. It told of wonderful success which had followed his going to the gold country, and made known to Angus Dhu that in a certain bank in the city of M--- he would find a sum of money equal to all his father's debt, with interest up to the first day of May following, at which time he trusted that he would give up all claim to the land that had been in his possession for the last two years, according to the promise made to his father. He was coming home soon, he added; he could not say just when. He meant to make more money first, and then, if all things were to his mind, he should settle down on his father's land and wander no more. It was also added, quite at the end of the paper, as though he had not intended to speak of it at first, that he had had nothing to do with the going away of his cousin, as he had heard the lad's father had supposed, but that he should do his best to bring him home again; "for," he added, "it is not at all a happy life that folk must live in this golden land." To say that Angus Dhu was surprised when this letter came would not be saying enough. He was utterly amazed. He had often thought that when Allister was tired of his wanderings in foreign lands he might wander home again and claim his share of what his father had left. But that he had gone away and stayed away all this time for the purpose of redeeming the land which his father had lost, he never for a moment supposed. He even now thought it must have been a fortunate chance that had given the money first into Allister's hand and then into his own. He made up his mind at once that he should give up the land. It did not cost him half as much to do so as it would have cost him two years ago not to get it. It had come into his mind more than once of late, as he had seen how well able the widow's children were to manage their own affairs, that they might have been trusted to pay their father's debt in time; and, whatever his neighbours thought, he began to think himself that he had been hard on his cousin. Of course he did not say so; but he made up his mind to take the money and give up the land. And what words shall describe the joyful pride of Shenac? She did not try to express it in words while Angus Dhu was there, but "her face and her sparkling eyes were a sight to behold," as the old man afterwards in confidence told his daughter Shenac. There were papers to be drawn up and exchanged, and a deal of business of one kind or another to be settled between the widow and Angus Dhu, and a deal of talk was needed, or at least expended, in the course of it; but in it Shenac took no part. She placed entire reliance on the sense and prudence of Hamish, and she kept herself quite in the background through it all. She would not acknowledge to any one who congratulated her on Allister's success, that any surprise mingled with her pleasure; and once she took Shenac Dhu up sharply--gave her a down-setting, as that astonished young woman expressed it--because she did not take the coming of the money quite as a matter of course, and ventured to express a little surprise as well as pleasure at the news. "And what is there surprising in it?" demanded Shenac Bhan. "Is our Allister one whose well-doing need astonish any one? But I forgot. He is not _your_ brother. You don't know our Allister, Shenac." "Don't I?" said Shenac Dhu, opening her black eyes a little wider than usual. "Well, I don't wonder that you are proud of your brother. But you need not take a body up like that. I'm not surprised that he minded you all, and sent the money when he got it; but it is not, as a general thing, the good, true hearts that get on in this world. I was aye sure he would come back, but I never thought of his being a rich man." Shenac Dhu sighed, as if she had been bemoaning his poverty. "She's thinking of Evan yonder," said Shenac Bhan to herself. "Our Allister is not a rich man," she said gravely. "He sent enough to pay the debt and the interest. There is a little over, because your father won't take the interest for the last two years, having had the land. But our Allister is not rich." "But he means to be rich before he comes home," persisted Shenac Dhu; "and neither he nor Evan will be content to bide quietly here again-- never. It aye spoils people to go away and grow rich." Shenac Bhan looked at her with some surprise. "I cannot answer for Evan, but our Allister says he is coming home to stay. I'm not afraid for him." "Oh, but he must be changed after all these years. He has forgotten how different life is here," said Shenac Dhu with a sigh. "But, Shenac, your Allister speaks kindly of our Evan--in the letter your mother got, I mean." "That he does," said Shenac Bhan eagerly. "He says they are like brothers, and he says your father need not be sorry that Evan went away. He needed hardening, and he'll win through bravely; and Allister says he'll bring Evan with him when he comes. You may trust our Allister, Shenac." "May I?" said Shenac Dhu a little wistfully. "Well, I will," she added, laughing. "But, Shenac, I cannot help it. I _am_ surprised that Allister should turn out a rich man. He is far too good for the like of that. But there is one good thing come out of it--my father has got quit of the land. You can never cast that up again, Shenac Bhan." Shenac Bhan's cheek was crimsoned. "I never cast it up to you, Shenac Dhu," said she hastily. "I never spoke to any one but himself; and I was sorry as soon as I said it." "You need not be. He thought none the worse of you, after the first anger. But, Shenac, my father is not so hard a man as folk think. I do believe he is less glad for the money than he is for Allister and you all. If Evan would only come home! My father has so set his heart on Evan." Though Shenac took the matter quietly as far as the rest of the world was concerned, she "emptied her heart" to Hamish. To him she confessed she had grown a little doubtful of Allister. "But, Hamish, I shall never doubt or be discouraged again. If Allister only comes safe home to my mother and to us all, I shall be content. We are too young, Hamish. It does not harm you, I know; but as for me, I am getting as hard as a stone, and as cross as two sticks. I shall be glad when the time comes that I can do as I am bidden again." Hamish laughed. "Are you hard, Shenac, and cross? Well, maybe just a little sometimes. I am not afraid for you, though. It will all come right, I think, in the end. But I am glad Allister is coming home, and more glad for your sake than for all the rest." CHAPTER TWELVE. It is May-day again--not so bright and pleasant as the May-day two years ago, when Hamish and Shenac sat so drearily watching Angus Dhu's fence-building. They are sitting on the same spot now, and the children are under the big willow, sailing boats as they did that day--all but Dan. You could not make him believe that he had done such a foolish thing as that two years ago. Two years! It might be ten for the difference they have made in Dan. He only came back from the Grand River two days ago, and Shenac has not ceased wondering and laughing at the change in him. It is not merely his new-fashioned coat and astonishing waistcoat that have changed him. He has grown amazingly, and his voice is almost always as deep and rough as Angus Dhu's; and the man and the boy are so blended in all he says and does, that Shenac has much ado to answer him as gravely as he expects. "Hamish," he called out from the top of the fence on which he was sitting, "you are a man of sense, and I want to ask you a question. Whose fence is this that I am sitting on? Is it ours, or Angus Dhu's?" Hamish had not considered the question. Indeed, Dan did not wait for an answer. "Because, it is of no use here. If it is ours, we'll draw the rails up to the high field, and get them out of the way before Allister comes home. If it belongs to Angus Dhu, we'll--we'll throw the rails into the creek." "There's no hurry about it, is there?" said a voice behind him; and Dan, jumping down, turned about, and with more shamefacedness than Shenac would have believed possible, met the offered hand of Angus Dhu. "I heard you had come back again, Dan, lad; and I thought you would not let the grass grow under your feet.--Are you for putting my good rails in the creek, Hamish, man?" Hamish was laughing too much at Dan's encounter to be able to answer at once. Shenac was laughing too; but she was nearly as shamefaced as Dan, remembering her own encounter on the same ground. "If it is Allister you're thinking about, he's not here yet, and you need not be in a hurry. And as to whether the rails are yours or mine, when the goods are bought and paid for there need be no words about the string that ties them. But for all that, Dan, lad, I have something to say to your mother yet, and you may as well let them be where they are a while.--Are you for sending my good rails down the creek, too?" he added suddenly, turning to Shenac. "It was Dan's plan, not mine," said Shenac. "Though once I would have liked to do it," she added candidly. "No, Shenac," said Hamish; "you wanted to burn it. Don't you mind?" "O Hamish!" exclaimed Shenac. Angus Dhu smiled. "That would be a pity. They are good rails--the very best. And if they were put up too soon, they can be taken down again. You have heard from your brother again?" "No; not since about the time of your letter," said Hamish. "We are thinking he may be on the way." For an instant an eager look crossed the face of the old man, but he shook his head. "No. With gold comes the love of it. He will stay where he is a while yet." "You don't know our Allister," exclaimed Shenac hotly. But Hamish laid his hand on hers. "Whisht. He's thinking of Evan," he said softly. "He'll not be here this while yet," continued Angus Dhu, not heeding the interruption. "You'll have the summer before you, I'm thinking; and the question is, whether you'll take down the fence just now, while the creek is full," he added, smiling significantly at Dan, "or whether you'll let things be as they are till you have more help. I have done well by the land, and will yet, and give you what is just and right for the use of it till your brother comes. But for what am I saying all this to children like you? It is your mother that must decide it." Accordingly, before the mother the matter was laid; but it was not the mother who decided it. Shenac could hardly sit still while he spoke of the time that might pass before Allister should come home. But when he went on to say that, unless they had more help, the boys and Shenac could not manage more land than they had already, she felt that it was true. Hamish thought so too, and said heartily to Angus Dhu that the land would be better under his care till Allister should come. Dan was indignant. He felt himself equal to anything, and declared that, with two men at his disposal, he could make the farm look like a different place. But the rest had less faith in Dan than he had in himself. He did not conceal his disgust at the idea of creeping on through another summer in the old, quiet way, and talked of leaving it to Hamish and Shenac and seeking work somewhere else. But they knew very well he would never do that, now that Allister might be home among them any day; and he did not. There was no pulling down of the fence, however. It stood as firm as ever; but it was not an eyesore to Shenac now. The spring passed, and the summer wore away slowly, for there was no more word of Allister. Shenac did not weary herself with field-work, as she had done the last two years; for she felt that they might get help now, and, besides, she was needed more in the house. Her mother had allowed herself to think that only a few weeks would pass before she should see her first-born, and the waiting and suspense told upon her sadly. It told upon Shenac, too. In spite of her declaration to Hamish, she did feel anxious and discouraged many a time. Hamish was ill again, not always able to see to things; and Dan was not proving himself equal to the emergency, now that he was having his own way out-of-doors. That would not matter much, if Allister were come. He would set all things right again, and Dan would not be likely to resist his oldest brother's lawful authority. But if Allister did not come soon? Shenac shrank from this question. If he did not come soon, she would have something else to think about besides Dan's delinquencies. Her mother could not endure this suspense much longer. It was wearing out her health and spirits; and it needed all Shenac's strength and courage to get through some of these summer days. It was worse when Hamish went again for a few weeks to his uncle's. He must go, Shenac said, to be strong and well to welcome Allister; and much as it grieved him to leave his sister, he knew that a few weeks of the baths would give him the best chance to be able to help her should this sad suspense change to sadder certainty and Allister never come home again. So he went away. Often and often, during the long days that followed his going away, Shenac used to wonder at herself for ever having been weary of the labour that had fallen to her during the last two years. Now, when her mother had a better day than usual, when little Flora could do all that was needed for her, so that Shenac could go out to the field, she was comparatively at peace. The necessity for bodily exertion helped her for the time to set aside the fear that was growing more terrible every day. But, when the days came that she could not leave her mother, when she must sit by her side, or wander with her into the garden or fields, saying the same hopeful words or answering the same questions over and over again, it seemed to her that she could not very long endure it. A fear worse than the fear of death grew upon her--the fear that her mother's mind would give way at last, and that she would not know her son when he came. Even the fear that he might never come seemed easier to bear than this. Shenac Dhu helped her greatly at this time. Not that she was very cheerful herself, poor girl; but the quick, merry ways she would assume with her aunt did her good. She would speak of the coming home of Allister as certain and near at hand, and she would tell of all that was to be done and said, of the house that he was to build, and of the gowns that Shenac Bhan was to wear, while her aunt would listen contentedly for a while. And when the old shadow came back, and the old moan rose, she would just begin and go over it all again. She was needed at home during the day; but all the time that Hamish was away she shared with Shenac Bhan the task of soothing the weary, wakeful nights of the mother. She sat one night in the usual way, speaking softly, and singing now and then, till the poor weary mother had dropped asleep. Rising quietly and going to the door, she found Shenac Bhan sitting on the step, with her head on her hands. "Shenac," she said, "why did you not go to bed, as I bade you? I'll need to begin on you, now that aunt is settled for the night. You are tired, Shenac. Why don't you go to bed?" Her cousin moved and made room for her on the step beside her. The children were in bed, and Dan had gone away with one of Angus Dhu's men to a preaching that was going on in a new kirk several miles away. It was moonlight--so bright that they could see the shadows of the trees far over the fields, and only a star was visible here and there in the blue to which, for a time, the faces of both were upturned. "You're tired, Shenac Bhan," said her cousin again; "more tired than usual, I mean." "No, not more tired than you are. Do you know, Shenac, your eyes look twice as big as they used to do, and twice as black?" "Do they? Well, so do yours. But no wonder that you are growing thin and pale; for I do believe, you foolish Shenac Bhan, that it sometimes comes into your mind that Allister may never come home. Now confess." "I often think it," said Shenac, in an awed voice. "Toch! I knew it by your face. You are as bad as my aunt." "Do you never think so?" asked our Shenac. "Think it!" said Shenac Dhu scornfully. "I trow not. Why should I think it? I will not think it! He'll come and bring Evan. Oh, I'm sure he'll come." "Well, I'm not always hopeless; there is no reason," said Shenac. "He did not say he would come at once; but he should write." "Oh, you may be sure he has written and the letter has been lost. I hardly ever take up a paper but I read of some ship that has gone down, and think of the letters that must go down with it, and other things." Each saw the emotions that the face of the other betrayed in the moonlight. "And think of the sailors," continued Shenac Dhu. "O Shenac, darling, we are only wearying for a lost letter; but think of the lost sailors, and the mothers and sisters that are waiting for them!" A strong shudder passed over Shenac Bhan. "I don't think you know what you are saying, Shenac," said she. "Yes; about the lost letters, and the sailors," said Shenac Dhu hurriedly. "The very worst that can happen to us is that we may lose the letters. God would never give us the hope of seeing them, and then let them be drowned in the sea." The thought was too much for them, and they burst into bitter weeping. "We are two fools," said Shenac Dhu, "frightening ourselves for nothing. We need Hamish to scold us and set us right. Why should we be afraid? If there was any cause for fear there would be plenty to tell us of it. Nobody seems afraid for them except my father; and it is not fear with him. He has never settled down in the old way since the letter came saying that Allister would bring Evan home." Yes, they needed Hamish more than they knew. It was the anxiety for the mother, the sleepless nights and unoccupied days, that, all together, unnerved Shenac Bhan. It was the dwelling on the same theme, the going over and over the same thing--"nothing would happen to him?"--"he would be sure to come?"--till the words seemed to mock her, they made her so weary of hoping and waiting. For, indeed, nobody seemed to think there was anything strange in the longer stay of Allister. He had stayed so long and done so well, he might be trusted surely to come home when the right time came. No, there was no real cause for fear, Shenac repeated to herself often. If her mother had been well and quite herself, and if Hamish had been at home, she thought she would never have fallen into this miserable dread. She was partly right. It was better for them all when Hamish came home. He was well, for him, and cheerful. He had never imagined how sadly the time was passing at home, or he would not have stayed away so long. He was shocked at the wan looks of the two girls, and quite unable to understand how they should have grown so troubled at a few weeks' or even a few months' delay. His wonder at their trouble did them good. It could not be so strange--the silence and the delay--or Hamish would surely see it. The mother was better too after the return of Hamish. The sight of him, and his pleasant, gentle talk, gave a new turn to her thoughts, and she was able again to take an interest in what was going forward about her; and when there came a return of the old restlessness and pain, it was Hamish who stayed in the house to soothe her and to care for her, while Shenac betook herself with her old energy to the harvest-field. The harvest passed. Dan kept very steady at it, though every night he went to the new kirk, where the meetings were still held. He did not say much about these meetings even when questioned, but they seemed to have a wonderful charm for him; for night after night, wet or dry, he and Angus Dhu's man, Peter, walked the four miles that lay between them and the new kirk to hear--"What?" Shenac asked one night. "Oh, just preaching, and praying, and singing." "But that is nonsense," insisted Shenac. "You are not so fond of preaching as all that. What is it, Dan?" "It's just that," said Dan; "that is all they do. The minister speaks to folk, and sometimes the elders; and that's all. But, Shenac, it's wonderful to see so many folk listening and solemn, as if it was the judgment day; and whiles one reads and prays--folk that never used; and I'm always wondering who it will be next. Last night it was Sandy McMillan. You should have heard him, Shenac." "Sandy McMillan!" repeated Shenac contemptuously. "What next, I wonder? I think the folk are crazed. It must be the singing. I mind when I was at Uncle Allister's last year I went to the Methodist watch-meeting, and the singing--oh, you should have heard the singing, Hamish! I could not keep back the tears, do what I would. It must be the singing, Dan." Dan shook his head. "They just sing the psalms, Shenac. I never heard anything else--and the old tunes. They do sound different, though." "Well, it goes past me," said Shenac. "But it is all nonsense going every night, Dan--so far too." "There are plenty of folk who go further," said Dan. "You should go yourself, Shenac." "I have something else to do," said Shenac. "Everybody goes," continued Dan; and he repeated the names of many people, far and near, who were in the new kirk night after night. "Come with me and Peter to-night, Shenac." But Shenac had other things to think about, she said. Still she thought much of this too. "I wonder what it is, Hamish," said she when they were alone. "I can understand why Dan and Peter McLay should go--just because other folk go; and I daresay there's some excitement in seeing all the folk, and that is what they like. But so many others, sensible folk, and worldly folk, and all kinds of folk, in this busy harvest-time! You should go, Hamish, and see what it is all about." But the way was long and the meetings were late, and Hamish needed to save his strength; and he did not go, though many spoke of the meetings, and the wonderful change which was wrought in the heart and life of many through their means. He wondered as well as Shenac, but not in the same way; for he had felt in his own heart the wondrous power that lies in the simple truth of God to comfort and strengthen and enlighten; and it came into his mind, sometimes, that the good days of which he had read were coming back again, when the Lord used to work openly in the eyes of all the people, making his Church the instrument of spreading the glory of his name by the conversion of many in a day. It did not trouble or stumble him, as it did his sister, that it was not in their church--the church of their fathers--that this was done. They were God's people, and it made no difference; and so, while she only wondered, he wondered and rejoiced. But about this time news came that put all other thoughts out of their minds for a while. The mother was sleeping, and Shenac and Hamish were sitting in the firelight one evening in September, when the door opened and their cousin Shenac came in. She seemed greatly excited, and there were tears on her cheeks, and she did not speak, but came close up to Shenac Bhan, without heeding the exclamations of surprise with which they both greeted her. "Did I not tell you, Shenac, that God would never drown them in the sea?" She had run so fast that she had hardly a voice to say the words, and she sank down at her cousin's feet, gasping for breath. In her hands she held a letter. It was from Evan--the first he had written to his father since he went away. Shenac told them that her father had received it in the morning, but said nothing about it then, going about all day with a face like death, and only told them when he broke down at worship-time, when he prayed as usual for "all distant and dear." "Then he told my mother and me," continued Shenac Dhu, spreading out a crushed morsel of paper with hands that trembled. It was only a line or two, broken and blurred, praying for his father's forgiveness and blessing on his dying son. He meant to come home with his cousin. They were to meet at Saint F---, and sail together, But he had been hurt, and had fallen ill of fever in an inland town, and he was dying. "And now the same ship that takes this to you will take Allister home. He will not know that I am dying, but will think I have changed my mind as I have done before. I would not let him know if I could; for he would be sure to stay for my sake, and his heart is set on getting home to his mother and the rest. And, father, I want to tell you that it was not Allister that beguiled me from home, but my own foolishness. He has been more than a brother to me. He has saved my life more than once, and he has saved me from sins worse than death; and you must be kind to him and to them all for my sake." "And then," said Shenac Dhu, "there is his name, written as if he had been blind; and that is all." The three young people sat looking at one another in silence. Shenac Bhan's heart beat so strongly that she thought her mother must hear it in her bed; but she could not put her thought in words--"Allister is coming home." Shenac Dhu spoke first. "Hamish--Shenac, I told my father that Allister would never leave our Evan alone to die among strangers." She paused, looking eagerly first at one and then at the other. "No," said Hamish; "he would never do that, if he knew it in time to stay. We can but wait and see." "Wait and see!" Shenac Bhan echoed the words in her heart. If they had heard that he was to stay for months, or even for years, she thought she could bear it better than this long suspense. "Shenac," said her cousin, reading her thought, "you would not have Allister come and leave him? It will only be a little longer whether Evan lives or dies." "No," said Shenac; "but my mother." "We will not tell her for a little while," said Hamish. "If Allister is coming it will be soon; and if he has stayed, it will give my mother more hope of his coming home at last to hear that he is well and that he is waiting for Evan." "And my father," said Shenac Dhu. "Oh! if you had seen how he grasped at the hope when I said Allister was sure to stay, you would not grudge him for a day or two. Think of the poor lad dying so far from home and from us all!" And poor Shenac clung to her cousin, bursting into sobs and bitter tears. "Whisht, Shenac, darling," said her cousin, her own voice broken with sobs; "we can only have patience." "Yes," said Hamish; "we can do more than that--we can trust and pray. And we will not fear for the mother, Shenac. She will be better, now that there is a reason for Allister's stay.--And, Cousin Shenac, you must take hope for your brother. No wonder he was downcast thinking of being left. You must tell your father that there is no call to give up hope for Evan." "O Hamish, my father loved Evan dearly, though he was hard on him. He has grown an old man since he went away; and to-day,--oh, I think to-day his heart is broken." "The broken and contrite heart He will not despise," murmured Hamish. "We have all need of comfort, Shenac, and we'll get it if we seek it." And the two girls were startled first, and then soothed, as the voice of Hamish rose in prayer. It was no vague, formal utterance addressed to a God far away and incomprehensible. He was pleading with a Brother close at hand--a dear and loving elder Brother--for their brothers far away. He did not plead as one who feared denial, but trustfully, joyfully, seeking first that God's will might be done in them and theirs. Hamish was not afraid; nothing could be plainer than that. So the two Shenacs took a little comfort, and waited and trusted still. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. And so they waited. For a few days it did not seem impossible to Shenac that Allister might come; and she watched each hour of the day and night, starting and trembling at every sound. But he did not come, and in a little while Hamish broke the tidings to his mother, how they had heard that Allister was to have sailed on a certain day, but his Cousin Evan having been taken ill, they were to wait for another ship; but they would be sure to come soon. Happily, the mother's mind rested more on having heard that her son was well, and was coming some time, than on his being delayed; and she was better after that. She fell back for a little time into her old ways, moving about the house, and even betaking herself to the neglected flax-spinning. But she was very feeble, going to bed early, and rising late, and requiring many an affectionate stratagem on the part of her children to keep her from falling into invalid ways. It was a sad and weary waiting to them all, but to none more than to Angus Dhu. If he had heard of his son's death, it would not have been so terrible to him as the suspense which he often told himself need not be suspense. There was no hope, there could be none, after the words written by his son's trembling hands. He grew an old, feeble man in the short space between the harvest and the new year. The grief which had fallen on all the family when Evan's letter came gave way before the anxiety with which they all saw the change in him. His wife was a quiet, gentle woman, saying little at any time, perhaps feeling less than her stern husband. They all sorrowed, but it was on the father that the blight fell heaviest. It was a fine Sabbath morning in October. It was mild, and not very bright, and the air was motionless. It was just like an Indian-summer day, only the Indian summer is supposed to come in November, after some snow has fallen on brown leaves and bare boughs; and now the woods were brilliant with crimson and gold, except where the oak-leaves rustled brown, or the evergreens mingled their dark forms with the pervading brightness. It was a perfect Sabbath day, hushed and restful. But it must be confessed that Shenac shrank a little from its long, quiet, unoccupied hours; and when something was said about the great congregation that would be sure to assemble in the new kirk, she said she would like to go. "Go, by all means," said the mother; "and Hamish too, if you are able for the walk. Little Flora can do all that is to be done. There's nothing to hinder, if you would like to go." There was nothing to hinder; the mother seemed better and more cheerful than she had seemed for many days. They might very well leave her for a little while; they would be home again in the afternoon. So they went early--long before the people were setting out--partly that they might have time to rest by the way, and partly that they might enjoy the walk together. And they did enjoy it. They were young, and unconsciously their hearts strove to throw off the burden of care that had pressed so long and so heavily upon them. "It has seemed like the old days again," said Shenac as they came in sight of the new kirk, round which many people had already gathered. They were strangers mostly, or, at least, people that they did not know very well; and, a little shy and unaccustomed to a crowd, they went into the kirk and sat down near the door. It was a very bright, pleasant house, quite unlike the dim, dreary old place they were accustomed to worship in; and they looked round them with surprise and interest. In a little time the congregation began to gather, and soon the pews were filled and the aisles crowded with an eager multitude; then the minister came in, and worship began. First the psalm was named, and then there was a pause till the hundreds of Bibles or psalm books were opened and the place found. Then the old familiar words were heard, and yet could they be the same? Shenac looked at her Bible. The very same. She had learned the psalm years ago. She had heard it many a time in the minister's monotonous voice in the old kirk; and yet she seemed to hear it now for the first time. Was it the minister's voice that made the difference? Every word fell sweet and clear and full from his lips--from his heart--touching the hearts of the listening hundreds. Then the voice of praise arose "like the sound of many waters." After the first verse Hamish joined, but through it all Shenac listened; she alone was silent. With the full tones of youth and middle age mingled the shrill, clear notes of little children, and the cracked and trembling voices of old men and women, dwelling and lingering on the sweet words as if they were loath to leave them. It might not be much as music, but as praise it rose to Heaven. Then came the prayer. Shenac thought of Jacob wrestling all night with the angel at Jabbok, and said to herself, "As a prince he hath power with God." Then came the reading of the Scriptures, then more singing, and then the sermon began. Shenac did not fall asleep when the text was read; she listened, and looked, and wondered. There were no sleepers there that day, even old Donald and Elspat Smith were awake and eager. Every face was turned upward towards the minister. Many of them were unknown to Shenac; but on those that were familiar to her an earnestness, new and strange, seemed to rest as they listened. What could it be? The sermon seemed to be just like other sermons, only the minister seemed to be full of the subject, and eager to make the truth known to the people. Shenac turned to her brother: she quite started when she saw his face. It was not peace alone, or joy, or triumph, but peace and joy and triumph were brightly blended on the boy's face as he hung on the words of life spoken there that day. "They with the fatness of thy house Shall be well satisfied; From rivers of thy pleasures thou Wilt drink to them provide," repeated Shenac. And again it came into her mind that Hamish was changed, and held in his heart a treasure which she did not share; and still the words of the psalm came back:-- "Because of life the fountain pure Remains alone with thee; And in that purest light of thine We clearly light shall see." Did Hamish see that light? She looked away from her brother's fair face to the congregation about them. Did these people see it? did old Donald and Elspat Smith see it? did big Maggie Cairns, at whose simplicity and queerness all the young people used to laugh, see it? Yes, even on her plain, common face a strange, bright look seemed to rest, as she turned it to the minister. There were other faces too with that same gleam of brightness on them--old weather-beaten faces, some of them careworn women's faces, and the faces of young girls and boys, one here and another there, scattered through the earnest, listening crowd. By a strong effort Shenac turned her attention to the minister's words. They were earnest words, surely, but wherein did they differ from the words of other men? They seemed to her just like the truths she had heard before--more fitly spoken, perhaps, than when they fell from the lips of good old Mr Farquharson, but just the same. "For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." This was the text. It was quite familiar to her; and so were the truths drawn from it, she thought. What could be the cause of the interest that she saw in the faces of those eager hundreds? Did they see something hidden from her? did they hear in those words something to which her ears were deaf? Her eyes wandered from one familiar face to another, coming back to her brother's always with the same wonder; and she murmured again and again,-- "From rivers of thy pleasures thou Wilt drink to them provide." "He that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." "That is for Hamish, I'm sure of that. I wonder how it all happened to him? I'll ask him." But she did not. The bright look was on his face when the sermon ended, and while the psalm was sung. It was there when the great congregation slowly dispersed, and all the way as they walked home with the neighbours. It was there all day, and all the week; and it never left him. Even when pain and sickness set their mark on his face, through all their sorrowful tokens the bright look of peace shone still; and Shenac watched and wondered, but she did not speak of it yet. This was Shenac's first visit to the new kirk, but it was by no means the last. It would be out of place to enter here into any detailed history of this one of those awakenings of God's people which have taken place at different times in this part of the country; and yet it cannot be quite passed over. For a long time all the settlers in that neighbourhood worshipped in the same kirk; but when the time came which proved the Church in the motherland--the time which separated into two bodies that which had long been one--the same division extended to the far-away lands where the Scottish form of worship had prevailed. After a time, they who went away built another house in which they might worship the God of their fathers; and it was at the time of the opening of this house that the Lord visited his people. A few of those to whom even the dust of Zion is dear, seeking to consecrate the house, and with it themselves, more entirely to God's service, met for prayer for a few nights before the public dedication; and from that time for more than a year not a night passed in which the voice of prayer and praise did not arise within its walls. All through the busy harvest-time, through the dark autumn evenings, when the unmade roads of the country were deep and dangerous, and through the frosts and snows of a bitter winter, the people gathered to the house of prayer. Old people, who in former years had thought themselves too feeble to brave the night and the storm for the sake of a prayer-meeting, were now never absent. Young people forsook the merry gatherings of singers and dancers, to join the assemblies of God's people. It was a wonderful time, all say who were there then. Connected with it were none of those startling circumstances which in many minds are associated with a time of revival. The excitement was deep, earnest, and silent; there was in use none of the machinery for creating or keeping up an interest in the meetings. A stranger coming into one of those assemblies might have seen nothing different from the usual weekly gatherings of God's people. The minister held forth the word of life as at other times. It was the simple gospel, the preaching of Christ and him crucified, that prevailed, through the giving of God's grace, to the saving of many. At some of the meetings others besides the minister took part. At first it was only the elders or the old people who led the devotions of the rest, or uttered words of counsel or encouragement; but later, as God gave them grace and courage, younger men raised their voices in thanksgivings or petitions, or to tell of God's dealings with them. But all was done gravely and decently. There was no pressing of excited and ignorant young people to the "anxious seats," no singing of "revival hymns." They sang the Psalms from first to last--the old, rough version, which people nowadays criticise and smile at, wondering how ever the cramped lines and rude metre could find so sure and permanent a place in the hearts and memories of their fathers. It is said now that these old psalms are quite insufficient for all occasions of praise; but to those people, with hearts overflowing with revived or new-found love, it did not seem so. The suffering and sorrowful saint found utterance in the cry of the psalmist, and the rejoicing soul found in his words full expression for the most triumphant and joyful praise. They who after many wanderings were coming back to their first love, and they who had never come before, alike took his words of self-abasement as their own. So full and appropriate and sufficient did they prove, that at last old and experienced Christians could gather from the psalm chosen what were the exercises of the reader's mind; and the ignorant, or those unaccustomed to put their thoughts in words, found a voice in the words which the Sabbath singing and family worship had made familiar to them. After a time, when the number of inquirers became so numerous that they could not be conveniently received at the manse or at the houses of the elders, they were requested to stay when the congregation dispersed; and oftentimes the few went while the most remained. Then was there many a word "fitly spoken;" many a "word in season" uttered from heart to heart; many a seeking sinner pointed to the Lamb of God; many a sorrowful soul comforted; many a height of spiritual attainment made visible to upward-gazing eyes; many a vision of glory revealed. I must not linger on these scenes, wondrous in the eyes of all who witnessed them. Many were gathered into the Church, into the kingdom, and the name of the Lord was magnified. In the day when all things shall be made manifest, it shall be known what wonders of grace were there in silence wrought. For a long time Shenac came to these meetings very much as Dan had done--because of the interest she took in seeing others deeply moved. She came as a spectator, wondering what it all meant, interested in what was said because of the earnestness of the speakers, and enjoying the clear and simple utterance of truth, hitherto only half understood. But gradually her attitude was changed. It was less easy after a while to set herself apart, for many a truth came home to her sharply and suddenly. Now and then a momentary gleam of light flashed upon her, showing how great was her need of the help which Heaven alone could give. Many troubled and anxious thoughts she had, but she kept them all to herself. She never lingered behind with those who wished for counsel; she never even spoke to Hamish of all that was passing in her heart. This was, for many reasons, a time of great trial for Shenac. Day after day and week after week passed, and still there came no tidings from Allister or Evan, and every passing day and week seemed to her to make the hope of their return more uncertain. The mother was falling into a state which was more terrible to Shenac than positive illness would have been. Her memory was failing, and she was becoming in many things like a child. She was more easily dealt with in one sense, for she was hardly ever fretful or exacting now; but the gentle passiveness that assented to all things, the forgetfulness of the trifles of the day, and the pleased dwelling on scenes and events of long ago, were far more painful to her children than her fretfulness had ever been. With a jealousy which all may not be able to understand, Shenac strove to hide from herself and others that her mother's mind was failing. She punished any seeming neglect or disrespect to their mother on the part of the little ones with a severity that no wrong-doing had ever called forth before, and resented any sympathising allusions of the neighbours to her mother's state as an insult and a wrong. She never left her. Even the nightly assembling in the kirk, which soon began to interest her so deeply, could not beguile her from home till her mother had been safely put to rest, with Hamish to watch over her. All this, added to her household cares, told upon Shenac. But a worse fear, a fear more terrible than even the uncertainty of Allister's fate or the doubt as to her mother's recovery, was taking hold upon her. Her determination to drive it from her served to keep it ever in view, for it made her watch every change in the face and in the strength of her beloved brother with an eagerness which she could not conceal. Yes, Hamish was less strong than he had been last year. The summer's visit to the springs had not done for him this year what it had done before. He was thinner and paler, and less able to exert himself, than ever. Even Dan saw it, and gave up all thoughts of going to the woods again, and devoted himself to out-door matters with a zeal that left Shenac free to attend to her many cares within. At last she took courage and spoke to her brother about her fears for him. He was greatly surprised, both at her fears and at the emotion with which she spoke of them. She meant to be very quiet, but when she opened her lips all that was in her heart burst forth. He would not acknowledge himself ill. He suffered less than he had often done when he went to the fields daily, though there still lingered enough of rheumatic trouble about him to make him averse to move much, and especially to brave the cold. That was the reason he looked so wan and wilted--that and the anxious thoughts about his mother. "And, indeed, Shenac, you are more changed than I am in looks, for that matter." Shenac made an incredulous movement. "I am perfectly well," said she. "Yes; but you are changed. You are much thinner than you used to be, and sometimes you look pale and very weary, and you are a great deal older-looking." "Well, I am older than I used to be," said Shenac. She rose and crossed the room to look at herself in the glass. "I don't see any difference," she added, after a moment. "Not just now, maybe, because you have been busy and your cheeks are red. And as for being a great deal older, how old are you, Shenac?" "I am--I shall be nineteen in September; but I feel a great deal older than that," said Shenac. "Yes; that is what I was saying. You are changed as well as I. And you are not to fancy things about me and add to your trouble. I am quite well. If I were not, I would tell you, Shenac. It would be cruel kindness to keep it from you; I know that quite well." Shenac looked wistfully in her brother's face. "I know I am growing a coward," she said in a broken voice. "O Hamish, it does seem as though our troubles were too many and hard to bear just now!" "He who sent them knows them--every one; and He can make his grace sufficient for us," said Hamish softly. "Ay, for you, Hamish." "And for you too, Shenac. You are not very far from the light, dear sister. Never fear." "And in that purest light of thine We clearly light shall see," murmured Shenac. They were ever coming into her mind--bits of the psalms she had been hearing so much lately; and they brought comfort, though sometimes she hesitated to take it to her heart as she might. But light was near at hand, and peace and comfort were not far away. Afterwards, Shenac always looked back to this night as the beginning of her Christian life. This night she went to the house of prayer, from which her fears for Hamish had for a long time kept her, and there the Lord met her. Oh, how weary in body and mind and heart she was as she sat down among the people! It seemed to her that not one of all the congregation was so hopeless or so helpless as she--that no one in all the world needed a Saviour more. As she sat there in the silence that preceded the opening of the meeting, all her fears and anxieties came over her like a flood, and she felt herself unable to stand up against them in her own strength. She was hardly conscious of putting into words the cry of her heart for help; but words are not needed by Him from whom alone help can come. God does not always choose the wisest and greatest, even among his own people, to do his noblest work. It was a very humble servant of God through whose voice words of peace were spoken to Shenac. In the midst of her trouble she heard a voice--an old man's weak, quavering voice-- saying,-- "Praise God. The Lord praise, O my soul. I'll praise God while I live; While I have being to my God In songs I'll praises give. Trust not in princes;" and so on to the fifth verse, which he called the key-note of the psalm:-- "O happy is that man and blest, Whom Jacob's God doth aid; Whose hope upon the Lord doth rest, And on his God is stay'd;" and so on to the end of the 146th Psalm, pausing on every verse to tell, in plain and simple words, why it is that they who trust in God are so blessed. I daresay there were some in the kirk that night who grew weary of the old man's talk, and would fain have listened to words more fitly chosen; but Shenac was not one of these. As she listened, there came upon her a sense of her utter sinfulness and helplessness, and then an inexpressible longing for the help of Him who is almighty. And I cannot tell how it came to pass, but even as she sat there she felt her heaviest burdens roll away; the clouds that had hung over her so long, hiding the light, seemed to disperse; and she saw, as it were, face to face, Him who came to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, and thenceforth all was well with her. Well in the best sense. Not that her troubles and cares were at an end. She had many of these yet; but after this she lived always in the knowledge that she had none that were not of God's sending, so she no longer wearied herself by trying to bear her burdens alone. It was not that life was changed to her. _She_ was changed. The same Spirit who, through God's Word and the example and influence of her brother, made her dissatisfied with her own doings, still wrought in her, enlightening her conscience, quickening her heart, and filling her with love to Him who first loved her. It would not have been easy for her, in the first wonder and joy of the change, to tell of it in words, except that, like the man who was born blind, she might have said, "One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." But her life told what her lips could not, and in a thousand ways it became evident to those at home, and to all who saw her, that something had happened to Shenac--that she was at peace with herself and with all the world as she had not been before; and as for Hamish, he said to himself many a time, "It does not matter what happens to Shenac now. All will be well with her, now and always." CHAPTER FOURTEEN. After long waiting, Allister came home. Shenac and Hamish had no intention of watching the going out of the old year and the coming in of the new; but they lingered over the fire, talking of many things, till it grew late. And while they sat, the door opened, and Allister came in. They did not know that he was Allister. The dark-bearded man lingering on the threshold was very little like the fair-faced youth who had left them four years ago. He made a step forward into the room, and said,-- "This is Hamish, I know; but can this be our little Shenac?" And then they knew him. It would be vain to try to describe the meeting. The very happiest meeting after years of separation must be sorrowful too. Death had been among them since Allister went, and the bereavement seemed new to the returned wanderer, and his tears fell as he listened to the few words Hamish said about his father's last days. When the first surprise and joy and sorrow were a little abated, Shenac whispered,-- "And Evan--Hamish, should we go to-night to tell Angus Dhu that Allister has come home?" "What about Evan, Allister?" said Hamish. "Do you not know? Did you not get my letter? I waited for Evan. He had been robbed and hurt, and thought himself dying. But it was not so bad as that. He is better now--quite well, I think. I left him at his father's door." "At home! Evan at home! What did his father say? Did you see Angus Dhu?" Shenac was quite breathless by the time her questions were asked. "No; I could not wait. The field between there and here seemed wider to me than the ocean. When I saw the light, I left him there." And the manly voice had much ado to keep from breaking into sobs again as he spoke. "His father has been so anxious. No letter has come to us since Evan's came to his father to say that he was dying. I wish the old man had been prepared," said Shenac. "Oh, I am grieved! If I had but thought," said Allister regretfully. "It is quite as well that he was not prepared," said Hamish. And he was right. Shenac Dhu told them about it afterwards. "My mother went to the door, and when she saw Evan she gave a cry and let the light fall. And then we all came down; and my father came out of his bed just as he was, and when he saw my mother crying and clinging about the lad, he dropped down in the big chair and held out his hands without saying a word. You may be sure Evan was not long in taking them; and then he sank down on his knees, and my father put his arms round him, and would not move--not even to put his clothes on," continued Shenac Dhu, laughing and sobbing at the same time. "So I got a plaid and put about him; and there they would have sat, I dare say, till the dawn, but after just the first, Evan looked pale and weary, and my father said he must go to bed at once. `But first tell us about your cousin Allister,' my father said. Evan said it would take him all night, and many a night, to tell all that Allister had done for him; and then my father said, `God bless him!' over and over. And I cannot tell you any more," said Shenac Dhu, laughing and crying and hiding her face in her hands. "But as to my father being prepared," she added gravely, after a moment's pause, "I am afraid if he had had time to think about it, it would have seemed his duty to be stern at first with Evan. But it is far better as it is; and he can hardly bear him out of his sight. Oh, I'm glad it is over! I know now, by the joy of the home-coming, how terrible the waiting must have been to him." Very sad to Allister was his mother's only half-conscious recognition of him. She knew him, and called him by name; but she spoke, too, of his father and Lewis, not as dead and gone, but as they used to be in the old days when they were all at home together, when Hamish and Shenac were little children. She was content, however, and did not suffer. There were times, too, when she seemed to understand that he had been away, and had come home to care for them all; and she seemed to trust him entirely that "he would be good to Hamish and the rest when she was no more." "Folk get used to the most sorrowful things at last," said Shenac to herself, as, after a time, Allister could turn quietly from the mother, so broken and changed, to renew his playful sallies with his brothers and little Flora. Indeed, it was a new acquaintance that he had to make with them. They had grown quite out of his remembrance, and he was not at all like the brother Allister of their imaginations; but this making friends with one another was a very pleasant business to them all. He had to renew his acquaintance with others too--with his cousins and the neighbours. He had much to hear and much to tell, and after a while he had much to do too; and through all the sayings and doings, the comings and goings,--of the first few weeks, both Hamish and Shenac watched their brother closely and curiously. Apart from their interest in him as their brother whom they loved, and in whose hands the future of all the rest seemed to lie, they could not but watch him curiously. He was so exactly like the merry, gentle, truthful Allister of old times, and yet so different! He had grown so strong and firm and manly. He knew so many things. He had made up his mind about the world and the people in it, and could tell his mind too. "Our Allister is a man!" said Shenac, as she sat in the kitchen one night with Shenac Dhu and the rest. The words were made to mean a great deal by the way in which they were spoken, and they all laughed. But her cousin answered the words merely, and not the manner:-- "That is not saying much. Men are poor creatures enough, sometimes." "But our Allister is not one of that kind," said Dan, before his sister had time to answer. "He _is_ a man. He is made to rule. His will must be law wherever he is." Dan had probably some private reason for knowing this better than the rest, and Shenac Dhu hinted as much. But Dan took no notice, and went on,-- "You should hear Evan tell about him. Why, he saved the lives of the whole band more than once, by his firmness and wisdom." "I have heard our Evan speaking of him," said Shenac Dhu, her dark eyes softening, as she sat looking into the fire; "but if one is to believe all that Evan says, your Allister is not a man at all, but--don't be vexed, Dan--an angel out of heaven." "Oh, I don't know about that part of it," said Dan; "but I know one thing: he'll be chief of the clan, boss of the shanty, or he'll know the reason why.--O Shenac, dear, I'm sorry for you; your reign is over, I doubt. You'll be farmer-in-chief no longer." The last words were spoken with a mingled triumph and pathos that were irresistible. They all laughed. "Don't be too sorry for me, Dan," said his sister. "I'll try to bear it." "Oh yes, I know: you think you won't care, but I know better. You like to rule as well as Allister. You'll see, when spring comes, that you won't put him aside as you used to put me." "There won't be the same need," said Shenac, laughing. "Won't there? It is all very fine, now that Allister is new. But wait and see. You won't like to be second-best, after having been first so long." Both Hamish and Shenac Dhu were observing her. She caught their look, and reddened a little. "Do you think so, Shenac Dhu?--You surely cannot think so meanly of me, Hamish?" "I think there may be a little truth in what Dan says, but I cannot think meanly of you because of that," said Hamish. "Nonsense, Hamish!" said Shenac Dhu; "you don't know anything about it. It is one thing to give up to a lad without sense, like Dan, but quite another thing to yield to a man like Allister, strong and wise and gentle. You are not to make Shenac afraid of her brother." "I shall never be afraid of Allister," said Shenac Bhan gravely; "and indeed, Hamish, I don't think it is quite kind in you to think I like my own way best of all--" "I did not mean that, Shenac," said her brother. "But you are afraid I will not like to give up to Allister. You need not--at least, I think you need not," she added meditatively. "I shall be glad and thankful to have our affairs managed by stronger hands and a wiser head than mine." "If stronger and wiser could be found, Shenac, dear," said a new voice, and Shenac's face was bent back, while her brother kissed her on the cheek and lip. "Uncle Angus thinks it would not be easy to do that." They were all taken aback a little at this interruption, and each wondered how much he had heard of what had been said. "Have you been long here, Allister?" asked Dan. "No; I came this minute from the other house. Your mother told me you were here, Shenac Dhu." "Did you hear what we were saying?" asked Dan, not content to let well alone. "No; what was it?" said Allister surprised, and a little curious. "Oh, you should have heard these girls," said Dan mischievously. "Such stuff as they have been talking!" "The chief of the clan, and the boss of the shanty," said Hamish gravely; "and that was you, Dan, was it not?" "Oh! what I said is nothing. It was the two Shenacs," said Dan. Shenac Dhu, as a general thing, was able enough to take her own part; but she looked a little shamefaced at the moment, and said nothing. "What did they say, Dan?" asked Allister, laughing. Shenac Dhu need not have feared. Dan went on to say,-- "I have been telling our Shenac that she will have to `knock under,' now that you are come home; but she says she is not afraid." "Why should she be?" asked Allister, who still stood behind his sister, passing his hand caressingly over her hair. "Oh, you don't know our Shenac," said Dan, nodding wisely, as though he could give some important information on the subject. The rest laughed. "I'm not sure that I know anybody's Shenac very well," said Allister gravely; "but in time I hope to do so." "Oh, but our Shenac's not like the rest of the girls. She's hard and proud, and looks at folk as though she didn't see them. You may laugh, but I have heard folk say it; and so have you, Shenac Dhu." "No, I never did," said Shenac Dhu; "but maybe it's true for all that: there's Sandy McMillan--" "And more besides him," said Dan. "There's your father--" "My father! Oh, he's no mark. He believes Shenac Bhan to be at least fifteen years older than I am, and wiser in proportion. But as for her not seeing people, that's nonsense, Dan." But Shenac Bhan would have no more of it. "Shenac Dhu, you are as foolish as Dan to talk so. Don't encourage him. What will Allister think?" Shenac laughed, but said no more. They were right. Allister was a man of the right sort. Whether, if circumstances had been different, he would have been content to come back and settle down as a farmer on his father's land, it is not easy to say. But as it was, he did not hesitate for a moment. Hamish would never be able to do hard work. Dan might be steady enough by-and-by to take the land; but in the meantime Shenac must not be left with a burden of care too heavy for her. So he set himself to his work with a good will. He had not come back a rich man according to the idea of riches held by the people he had left behind him; but he was rich in the opinion of his neighbours, and well enough off in his own opinion. That is, he had the means of rebuilding his father's house, and of putting the farm in good order, and something besides. He lost no time in commencing his labours, and he worked, and made others work, with a will. There were among the neighbours those who shook their cautious old heads when they spoke of his energetic measures, as though they would not last long; but this was because they did not know Allister Macivor. He had not been at home two days before he made up his mind that his mother should not pass another winter in the little log-house that had sheltered them since his father's death; and he had not been at home ten days when preparations for the building of a new house were commenced. Before the snow went away, stone and lime for the walls and bricks for the chimneys were collected, and the carpenters were at work on windows and doors. As soon as the frost was out of the ground, the cellar was dug and stoned, and everything was prepared for the masons and carpenters, so that when the time for the farm-work came, nothing had to be neglected in the fields because of the work going on at the new house. So even the slow, cautious ones among the neighbours confessed that, as far as could be judged yet, Allister was a lad of sense; for the true farmer will attend to his fields at the right time and in the right way, whatever else may be neglected. But the house went on bravely--faster than ever house went on in those parts before, for all things were ready to the workmen's hands. May-day came, and found Allister and Dan busy in taking down Angus Dhu's fence--at least, that part of it that lay between the house-field and the creek. "I didn't think the old man meant to let us have these rails," said Dan. "Not that they are his by rights. I should not wonder if he were down upon us, after all, for taking them away." And Dan put up his hands to shade his eyes, as he turned in the direction of Angus Dhu's house. "Nonsense, Dan; I bought the rails," said Allister. Dan whistled. "If I had been you, I would have taken them without his leave," said he. "Pooh! and quarrelled with a neighbour for the sake of a few rails." "But right is right," insisted Dan. "Not that I think he would have made much ado about it, though. The old man has changed lately. I always think the hearing that our Shenac gave him on this very place did him a deal of good." Dan looked mysterious, and Allister was a little curious. "I have always told you that you don't know our Shenac. Whether it is your coming home, or my mother's not being well, that has changed her, I can't say. Or maybe it is something else," added Dan thoughtfully. He had an idea that others in the parish were changed as well as Shenac. "She's changed, anyway. She's as mild as summer now. But if you had seen her when Angus Dhu was making this fence--Elder McMillan was here;" and Dan went off into a long account of the matter, and of other matters of which Allister had as yet heard nothing. "Angus Dhu don't seem to bear malice," said he, when Dan paused. "He has a great respect for Shenac." "Oh yes, of course; so have they all." And Dan launched into a succession of stories to prove that Shenac had done wonders in the way of winning respect. For though he had sometimes been contrary enough, and even now thought it necessary to remind his sister that, being a girl, she must be content to occupy but a humble place in the world, Shenac had no more stanch friend and supporter than he. Indeed, Dan was one who, though restless and jealous of his rights when he thought they were to be interfered with, yielded willingly to a strong hand and rightful authority; and he had greatly improved already under the management of his elder brother, of whom he was not a little proud. "Yes," continued he, "I think they would have scattered us to the four winds if it had not been for Shenac. She always said that you would come home, and that we must manage to keep together till then. Man, you should have seen her when Angus Dhu said to my mother that he doubted that you had gone for your own pleasure, and would stay for the same. She could not show him the door, because my mother was there, and he is an old man; but she turned her back upon him and walked out like a queen, and would not come in again while he stayed, though Shenac Dhu cried, and begged her not to mind." "I suppose Shenac Dhu was of the same mind--that I was not to be trusted," said Allister. Dan shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, as to that, I don't know. She's only a girl, and it does not matter what she thinks. But how it vexed her to be told what our Shenac said about her father." "But the two Shenacs were never unfriendly?" said Allister incredulously. "No," said Dan; "I don't think they ever were. Partly because Shenac yonder did not believe all I said, I suppose, and partly because she was vexed herself with her father. Oh yes, they are fast friends, the two Shenacs. You should have seen them the night Angus Dhu came to speak to my mother about the letter that came from Evan. Our Shenac was as proud of you as a hen is of one chicken, though she did not let the old man see it; and Shenac Dhu was as bad, and said over and over again to her father, `I told you, father, that Allister was good and true. He'll never leave Evan; don't be afraid.' I doubt Evan was a wild lad out yonder, Allister." "Not wilder than many another," said Allister gravely. "But it is a bad place for young men, Dan. Evan was like a brother to me always." "You were a brother to him, at any rate," said Dan. "We were like brothers," said Allister. "Oh, well, it's all right, I daresay," said Dan. "It has come out like a story in a book, you both coming home together. And, Allister, I was wrong about our Shenac in one thing. She does not mind in the least letting you do as you like. She seems all the better pleased when you are pleased; but she was hard on me, I can tell you." "That's queer, too," said Allister, with a look in his eyes that made Dan laugh in spite of himself. "Oh yes, I know what you are thinking: that there is a difference between you and me. But there is a difference in Shenac too." CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Dan was right,--Shenac was changed. Even if Allister had not come home, if the success of the summer's work had depended, as it had hitherto mainly done, upon her, it would have been a very different summer from the last. The labour, though it had been hard enough, from early morning till night every day of the year, was not what had been worst for her. The constant care and anxiety had been harder to bear. Not the fear of want. That had never really troubled her. She knew that it would never come to that with them. But the welfare of all the family had depended on her strength and wisdom while they kept together, and the responsibility had been too heavy for her. How much too heavy it had been she only knew by the blessed sense of relief which followed its removal. But it would have been different now, even had her cares been the same, for a new element mingled in her life--a firm trust in God. She had known, in a way, all along that, labour as she might, the increase must come from God. She had always assented to her brother's gentle reminders of the heavenly care and keeping promised to the widow and the fatherless; but she had wearied and vexed herself, taking all the weight of the burden, just as if there had been no promise given, no help made sure. It would have been quite different now. Even failure would have brought no such burden as had come with a sense of success before, because of her sure and certain knowledge that all that concerned her was safe in the best and most loving care. And, with Allister between her and the summer's work, she had no need to trouble herself. Every day had strengthened her trust in him, not only as a loving brother, but as a wise man and a good farmer; and many a time she laughed merrily to herself as Dan's foolish words about her not wishing to give place to Allister came to her mind. She could never tell him or any one else how blessed was the sense of relief and peace which his being at home gave her. She awoke every morning with the restful feeling fresh in her heart. There was no half-conscious planning about ways and means before her eyes were open; no shrinking from possible encounters with Dan's idleness or wilfulness; no balancing of possibilities as to his doing well, or doing at all, some piece of work depending upon him. She heard more in the song of the birds now than just the old burden, "It is time to be at work again." It gave her quite a sense of pleasure now and then to find herself looking over the fields with delight just because they were fresh and green and beautiful, and not at all because of the tons of hay or the bushels of grain which they were to yield. Of course it was pleasant to anticipate a good harvest, and it was pleasant to know that there were wider fields to harvest this year, and that the barns would be full to overflowing. It did not in the least lessen the pleasure to know that this year success would not be due to her. Indeed, her pride in Allister's work was quite as great as it ever had been in her own, and the pleasure had fewer drawbacks. She could speak of it and triumph in it, and did so with Hamish and Shenac Dhu, and sometimes with Allister himself. She was happy, too, in a half-conscious coming back to the thoughts and enjoyments of the time before their troubles had overtaken them. She was very young still, quite young enough to grow light-hearted and mirthful; and if her mother had been well, it would truly have seemed like the old happy days again. Not that she had very much leisure even now. She did not go to the fields; but what with the dairy and the house-work, and after a little while the wool, she had plenty to do. There were two more cows in the enlarged pasture, and some of the people who were busy about the new house took their meals with them, so there was little time for lingering over anything. Besides, the house-work, which in the busy seasons had seemed a secondary concern, was done differently now. Shenac took pride and pleasure in doing everything in the very best way, and in having the house in order, the linen snow-white, and the table neatly laid; and the little log-house was a far pleasanter home than many a more commodious dwelling. If there had lingered in Angus Dhu's heart any indignation towards Shenac for having interfered with his plans, and for having spoken her mind to him so plainly, it was gone now. They had no more frequent visitor than he, and few who were more welcome. His coming was for Allister's sake, his sister used to think; and, indeed, the old man seemed to see no fault in the young farmer. He gave him his confidence as he had never given it to any one before. After the first meeting he never spoke of what Allister had done for him in bringing Evan home, but he knew it was through his care and tenderness that he had ever seen his son's face again, and he was deeply grateful. There was another reason why he found pleasure in the young man's society. He had loved Allister's father when they had been young together, before the love of money had hardened his heart and blinded his eyes. His long trouble and fear for his son had made him feel that wealth is not enough to give peace. It had shaken his faith in the "god of this world;" and as God's blessing on his sorrow softened his heart, the worldly crust fell away, and he came back to his old thoughts--or rather, I should say, his young thoughts of life again. Allister was just what his father had been at his age--as gentle, as manly, and kind-hearted; having, besides, the strength of character, the knowledge of men and things, which his father had lacked. He had always been a bold, frank lad. Even in the old times he had never stood in awe of "the dour old man," as the rest had done. In the old times his frankness had been resented as an unwarrantable liberty; but it was very different now. Even his own children felt a little restraint in the presence of the stern old man; but Allister always greeted him cheerfully, talked with him freely, and held his own opinions firmly, though they often differed widely enough from those of Angus Dhu. But they never quarrelled. The old man's dogmatic ways vexed and irritated Shenac many a time; even Hamish had much ado to keep his patience and the thread of his argument at the same time; but Allister never lost his temper, and if the old man grew bitter and disagreeable, as he sometimes did, the best cure for it was Allister's good-humoured determination not to see it, and so they always got on well together. Of all their friends, Angus Dhu was the one whom their mother never failed to recognise. She did not always remember how the last few years had passed, and spoke to him, as she so often did to others, as though her husband were still living and her children young; but almost always she was recalled to the present by the sight of him, and rejoiced over Allister's return, and the building of the new house, and the prosperity which seemed to be coming back to them. But, whether she was quite herself or not, he was always very gentle with her, answering the same questions and telling the same incidents over and over again for her pleasure, with a patience very different from anything that might have been expected from him. There was one thing about Allister, and Shenac too, which greatly vexed their uncle. In his eyes it seemed almost like forsaking the God of their fathers when, Sabbath after Sabbath, they passed by the old kirk and sat in the new. He would have excused it on the days when old Mr Farquharson was not there and the old kirk was closed; but that they should hold with these "new folk" at all times was a scandal in his eyes. It was in vain that Hamish proved to him that in doctrine and discipline--in everything, indeed, except one thing, which could not affect them in this country--the new folk were just like the old. This only made the matter less excusable in the eyes of Angus Dhu. The separation which circumstances might have made necessary at home--as these people still lovingly called the native land of their fathers--was surely not needed here, and it grieved and vexed the old man sorely to see so many leaving the old minister and the kirk their fathers had built and had worshipped in so long. But even Angus Dhu himself ventured into the forbidden ground of the new kirk, when word was brought that Mr Stewart, the schoolmaster of two years ago, was come to supply the minister's place there for a while. He had a great respect for Mr Stewart, and some curiosity, now that he was an ordained minister, to hear him preach; and having heard him, he acknowledged to himself, though he was slow to speak of it to others, that the word of God was held forth with power, and he began to think that, after all, the scores of young people who flocked to hear him were as well while listening here as when sleeping quietly under the monotonous voice of the good old minister; and very soon no objection was made when his own Evan and Shenac Dhu went with the rest. Mr Stewart had changed much since he came among them first. His health was broken then, and he was struggling with a fear that he was not to be permitted to work the work for which he had all his lifetime been preparing. That fear had passed away. He was well now, and well-fitted to declare God's gospel to men. It was a labour of love to him, all could see. The grave, quiet man seemed transformed when he stood in the pulpit He spoke with authority, as one who knew from deep, blessed experience the things which he made known, and no wonder that all listened eagerly. Hamish was very happy in the renewal of their friendship, and Allister was almost as happy in coming to know the minister. He came sometimes to see them, but not very often, for he had many engagements, and his visits made "white days" for them all. Hamish saw much more of him than the rest, for he was comparatively idle this summer, and drove the minister to his different preaching stations, and on his visits to the people, with much profit to himself and much pleasure to both. It was a very pleasant summer, for many reasons, to Shenac and them all. The only drawback was the state of the mother. She was not getting better--would probably never be better, the doctor said, whom Allister had brought from far to see her. But she might live a long time in her present state. She did not suffer, and was almost always quite content. All that the tenderest care could do for her was done, and her uneventful days were made happy by her children's watchful love. The entire renewal of confidence and intercourse between the two families was a source of pleasure to all, but especially to Shenac, who had never been quite able to believe herself forgiven by her uncle before. Two of Angus Dhu's daughters were married in the spring, and left their father's house; and partly because she was more needed at home, and partly for other reasons, Shenac Dhu did not run into their house so often as she used to do. But Evan was often there. He and Hamish were much together, for neither of them was strong, and much help was not expected from them on the land or elsewhere. Evan was hardly what he had been before his departure from home. He was improved, they thought, on the whole; but his health was not firm, and his spirits and temper were variable, and, as Shenac said, he was as different from Allister as weakness is from strength, or as darkness is from the day. But they were always glad to see him, and his intercourse with these healthy, cheerful young people did him much good. The new house progressed rapidly. There was a fair prospect that they might get into it before winter, and already Shenac was planning ways and means towards the furnishing of it. The wool was sorted and dyed with reference to the making of such a carpet as had never been seen in those parts before; and every pound of butter that was put down was looked upon as so much security for a certain number of things for use or for adornment in the new house. For Shenac had a natural love for pretty things, and it was pleasant to feel that she might gratify her taste to a reasonable degree without hazarding the comfort of any one. She made no secret of her pleasure in the prospect of living in a nice house with pretty things about her, and discussed her plans and intentions with great enjoyment with her cousin Shenac, who did not laugh at her little ambitions as much as might have been expected. Indeed, she was rather grave and quiet about this time, and seemed to shun, rather than to seek, these confidences. She was too busy now that Mary and Annie were both gone, to leave home often, and when our Shenac wished to see her she had to go in search of her. It was not quite so formidable an affair as it used to be to go to Angus Dhu's house now, and Shenac and her brother often found themselves there on summer evenings. But at home, as elsewhere, Shenac Dhu was quiet and staid, and not at all like the merry Shenac of former times. This change was not noticed by Shenac Bhan so quickly as it would have been if she had been less occupied with her own affairs; but she did notice it at last, and one night, drawing her away from the door-step where the rest were sitting, she told her what she was thinking, and entreated to know what ailed her. "What ails me?" repeated Shenac Dhu, reddening a little. "What in the world should all me? I am busier than I used to be, that is all." "You were always busy; it is not that. I think you might tell _me_, Shenac." "Well," began her cousin mysteriously, "I will tell you if you will promise not to mention it. I am growing wise." Shenac Bhan laughed. "Well, I don't see what there is to laugh at. It's time for me to grow wise, when you are growing foolish." Shenac Bhan looked at her cousin a little wistfully. "Am I growing foolish, Shenac? Is it about the house and all the things? Perhaps I am thinking too much about them. But it is not for myself, Shenac; at least, it's not all for myself." But Shenac Dhu stopped her. "You really _are_ foolish now. No; of course the house has nothing to do with it. I called you foolish for saying that something ails me, which is nonsense, you know. What could ail me? I put it to yourself." "But that is what I am asking you. How can I tell? Many a thing might go wrong with you," said Shenac Bhan. "Yes; I might take the small-pox, or the bank might break and I might lose my money, or many a thing might happen, as you say; and when anything does happen, I'll tell you, you may be sure. Now tell me, is the wide stripe in the new carpet to be red or green?" "You are laughing at me, Cousin Shenac," said our Shenac, gravely. "I daresay it is foolish in me, and may be wrong, to be thinking so much about these things and teasing you about them; but, Shenac, our Allister is a man now, and folk think much of him, and I want his house to be nice, and I do take pleasure in thinking about it. And you know we have been so poor and so hard pressed for the last few years, with no time to think of anything but just what must be done to live; and it will be so nice when we are fairly settled. And, Shenac, our Allister is so good. There never was such a brother as Allister--never. I would not speak so to every one, Shenac; but _you_ know." Shenac Dhu nodded. "Yes, I know." "If my mother were only well!" continued Shenac Bhan, and the tears that had risen to her eyes fell on her cheeks now. "We would be too happy then, I suppose. But it seems sad enough that she should not be able to enjoy it all, and take her own place in the new house, after all she has gone through." "Yes," said Shenac Dhu, "it is very sad." "And yet I cannot but take pleasure in it; and perhaps it is foolish and unkind to my mother too. Is it, Shenac?" There were two or three pairs of eyes watching--no, not watching, but seeing--the two girls from the doorstep, and Shenac Dhu drew her cousin down the garden-path towards the plum-tree before she answered her. Then she put her arms round her neck, and kissed her two or three times before she answered,-- "You are not wrong or foolish. You are right to take pride and pleasure in your brother and his house, and in all that belongs to him. And he is just as proud of you, Shenac, my darling." "That is nonsense, you know, Cousin Shenac," said Allister's sister; but she smiled and blushed too, as she said it, with pure pleasure. There was no chance after this to say anything more about the change, real or supposed, that had taken place in Shenac Dhu, for she talked on, allowing no pause till they had come quite round the garden and back to the door-step; but Shenac Bhan knew all about it before she saw her cousin again. That night, as she was going home through the field with Allister, he asked her rather suddenly,-- "What were you and Cousin Shenac speaking about to-night when you went round the garden?" "Allister," said his sister, "do you think Cousin Shenac is changed lately?" "Changed!" repeated Allister. "How?" "Oh, of course you cannot tell; but she used to be so merry, and now she is quite quiet and grave, and we hardly ever see her over with us now. I was asking her what ailed her." "And what did she say?" "Oh, she laughed at me, and denied that anything ailed her, and then she said she was growing wise. But I know something is wrong with her, though she would not tell me." "What do you think it is, Shenac?" "I cannot tell. It is not only that she is quieter--I could understand that; but she hardly ever comes over now, and something is vexing her, I'm sure. Could it be anything Dan has said? He used to vex her sometimes. What do you think it can be, Allister?" There was a little pause, and then Allister said,-- "I think I know what it is, Shenac." "You!" exclaimed Shenac. "What is it? Have I anything to do with it? Am I to blame?" "You have something to do with it, but you are not to blame," said Allister. "Tell me, Allister," said his sister. There was a silence of several minutes, and then Allister said,-- "Shenac, I have asked Cousin Shenac to be my wife." Shenac stood perfectly still in her surprise and dismay. Yes, she _ was_ dismayed. I have heard it said that the tidings of a brother's engagement rarely bring unmixed pleasure to a sister. I daresay there is some truth in this. Many sisters make their brothers their first object in life-- pride themselves on their talents, their worth, their success, live in their lives, glory in their triumphs; till a day comes when it is softly said of some stranger, or some friend--it may be none the pleasanter to hear because it is a friend--"She is more to him than you could ever be." Is it only to jealous hearts, ignoble minds, that such tidings come with a shock of pain? Nay, the truer the heart the keener the pain. It may be short, but it is sharp. The second thought may be, "It is well for him; I am glad for him." But the pang is first, and inevitable. Allister had been always first, after Hamish, in Shenac's heart--perhaps not even after Hamish. She had never thought of him in connection with any change of this kind. In all her plans for the future, no thought of possible separation had come. She stood perfectly still, till her brother touched her. "Well, Shenac?" Then she moved on without speaking. She was searching about among her astonished and dismayed thoughts for something to say, for she felt that Allister was waiting for her to speak. At last she made a grasp at the question they had been discussing, and said hurriedly,-- "But there is nothing to vex Shenac in that, surely?" "No; unless she is right in thinking that you will not be glad too." "I am glad it is Shenac. I would rather it would be Shenac than any one else in the whole world--" "I was sure of it," said her brother, kissing her fondly. Even without the kiss she would hardly have had the courage to add,-- "If it must be anyone." "And, Shenac," continued her brother, "you must tell her so. She fancies that for some things you will not like it, and she wants to put it off for ever so long--till--till something happens--till you are married yourself, I suppose." Now Shenac was vexed. She was in the way--at least, Allister and Shenac Dhu thought so. It was quite as well that the sound of footsteps gave her no time to speak the words that rose to her lips. They were overtaken by Mr Stewart and Hamish. It had been to see the minister that they had all gone to Angus Dhu's, for he was going away in the morning, and they did not know when they might see him again. It was late, and the farewells were brief and earnest. "God bless you, Shenac!" was all that Mr Stewart said; and Shenac answered never a word. "I'll walk a little way with you," said Allister. Hamish and Shenac stood watching them till they passed through the gate, and then Shenac sat down on the doorstep with a sigh, and laid her face upon her hands. Hamish looked a little astonished, but he smiled too. "He will come back again, Shenac," he said at last. "Yes, I know," said she, rising slowly. "I must tell you before he comes. We must not stay here. Come in; you will take cold. I don't know what to think. He expected me to be pleased, and I shall be in a little while, I think, after I have told you. Do you know it, Hamish?" "I know--he told me; but I thought he had not spoken to you," said the puzzled Hamish. "Did Allister tell you? Are you glad, Hamish?" "Allister?" repeated Hamish. "Allister has asked Shenac Dhu to be his wife," said Shenac in a whisper. "Is that it? No, I had not heard that, though I thought it might be-- some time. You must have seen it, Shenac?" "Seen it! the thought never came into my mind--never once--till he told me to-night." "Well, that's odd, too," said Hamish, smiling. "They say girls are quick enough to see such things. Are you not pleased, Shenac?" "I don't know. Should I be pleased, Hamish? I think perhaps in a little while I shall be." Then she added, "It will make a great difference." "Will it?" asked Hamish. "Cousin Shenac has almost been like one of ourselves so long." "I suppose it is foolish, and maybe it is wrong, but it does seem to put Allister farther from us--from me, at least. He seems less our own." "Don't say that, Shenac dear," said her brother gently. "Allister can never be less than a dear and loving brother to us all. It is very natural and right that this should happen. It might have been a stranger. We all love Shenac Dhu dearly." "Yes," said Shenac; "I said that to Allister." "And, Shenac, I am very glad this should happen. Allister will settle down content, and be a good and useful man." "He would have done that anyway," said Shenac, a little dolefully. "He might, but he might not," said Hamish. "They say marriage is the natural and proper state. I am glad for Allister, Shenac; and you will be glad by-and-by. I wish I had known this a little sooner. I am very glad, Shenac." Shenac sighed. "I suppose it is altogether mean and miserable in me not to be glad all at once; and I'll try to be. I suppose we must stay here now, Hamish," she added, glancing round the low room. "Do you think so?" said Hamish in surprise. "No, you must not say so. I am sure it would grieve Cousin Shenac." "There are so many of us, Hamish, and our mother is a great care; it would not be fair to Shenac. I must stay here and take care of my mother and you." There was a long silence. "Shenac," said her brother at last, "don't think about this just now; don't make up your mind. It is not going to happen soon." "Allister says soon, but Shenac says not till--" She stopped. "Well, soon or late, never mind; it will all come right. Let us be more anxious to do right than for anything else. God will guide us, Shenac. Don't let us say anything to vex Allister. It would vex him greatly, I know, to think that you and all of us would not go with him and Shenac." "But it would not be fair to Shenac herself. Think what a large family there is of us." "Whisht, Shenac, there may be fewer of us soon. You may marry yourself." "And leave my mother and you?" Shenac smiled incredulously. "Stranger things have happened," said her brother. "But, Shenac, our mother will not be here long, and Allister's house is her place, and you can care for her all the same there--better indeed. I am glad of this marriage, for all our sakes. Shenac Dhu is like one of ourselves; she will always care for the little ones as no stranger could, and for our mother. It _is_ a little hard that _you_ should not have the first place in the new house for a while, till you get a home of your own, after all the care and trouble you have had for us here--" "Do you think that has anything to do with it, Hamish?" said Shenac reproachfully. "It never came into my mind; only when Allister told me it seemed as though I would be so little to him now. Maybe you are right, though. Everybody seems to think that I like to be first. I know I have thought a great deal about the new house; but it has been for the rest, and for Allister most of all." "Shenac, you must not vex yourself thinking about it," said her brother. "I am more glad of this for your sake than for all the rest. I cannot tell you how glad I am." "Well, I am glad too--I think I am glad; I think it will be all right, Hamish. I am not really afraid of anything that can happen now." "You need not be, dear; why should you be afraid even of trouble?" said her brother. "And this is not trouble, but a great blessing for us all." But Shenac thought about it a great deal, and, I am afraid, vexed herself somewhat, too. She did not see Shenac Dhu for a day or two, for her cousin was away; and it was as well to have a little time to think about it before she saw her. There came no order out of the confusion, however, with all her thinking. That they were all to be one family she knew was Allister's plan, and Hamish approved it, though the brothers had not exchanged a word about the matter. But this did not seem the best plan to her, nor did she think it would seem so to her cousin; it was not best for any of them. She could do far better for her mother, and Hamish too, living quietly in their present home; and the young people would be better without them. Of course they must get their living from the farm, at least partly; but she could do many things to earn something. She could spin and knit, and she would get a loom and learn to weave, and little Flora should help her. "If Allister would only be convinced; but they will think I am vexed about the house, and I don't think I really cared much about it for myself--it was for Allister and the rest. Oh, if my mother were only able to decide it, I do think she would agree with me about it." She thought and thought till she was weary, and it all came to this:-- "I will wait and see what will happen, and I will trust. Surely nothing can go wrong when God guides us. At any rate, I shall say nothing to vex Allister or Shenac; but I wish it was well over." It was the first visit to Shenac Dhu which, partly from shyness and partly from some other feeling, she did dread a little; but she need not have feared it so much. She did not have to put a constraint on herself to _seem_ glad; for the very first glimpse she caught of Shenac's sweet, kind face put all her vexed thoughts to flight, and she was really and truly glad for Allister and for herself too. She went to her uncle's one night, not at all expecting to see her cousin; but she had returned sooner than was expected, and when she went in she found her sitting with her father and Allister. Shenac did not see her brother, however. She hastily greeted her uncle, and going straight to her cousin put her arms round her neck and kissed her many times. Shenac Dhu looked up in surprise. "I know it now, Cousin Shenac," said Allister's sister; and in a moment Allister's arms were round them both. It was Angus Dhu's turn to be surprised now. He had not been so startled since the day that Shenac Bhan told him her mind down by the creek. The girls escaped, and Allister explained how matters stood. The old man was pleased, but he grumbled a little, too, at the thought of losing his last daughter. "You must make an exchange, Allister, my man. If you could give us your Shenac--" Allister laughed. In his heart he thought his sister too good to be sent there, and he was very glad he had not the matter to decide. "Shenac, my woman," said the old man as they were going away, "I wonder at you being so willing to give up the fine new house. I think it is very good in you." "I would not--to anybody else," said she, laughing. "But she's not going to give it up, father," said Shenac Dhu eagerly. "Well, well, maybe not, if you can keep her." Shenac still pondered over the question of what would be best for them all, and wearied herself with it many a time; but she gave none the less interest to the progress of the house and its belongings. She spun the wool for the carpet, and bleached the new linen to snowy whiteness, and made all other preparations just the same as if she were to have the guiding and governing of the household. She was glad with Allister and glad with Shenac, and, for herself and the rest, quite content to wait and see what time would bring to pass. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. But a day came when Shenac saw how needless all her anxious thoughts about her mother's future had been, when she acknowledged, with tears of mingled sorrow and joy, that she had tenderer care and safer keeping than son or daughter could give. All through the long harvest-days the mother failed slowly--so slowly that even the watchful eyes of Shenac did not see how surely. Then, as the autumn wore away, and the increasing cold no longer permitted the daily sitting in the sunshine, the change became more rapid. Then there was a time of sharper suffering. The long days and nights lingered out into weeks, and then all suffering was over--the tired heart ceased to struggle with the burden of life, and the widow was laid to rest beside her husband and son. That this was a time of great sorrow in the household need not be told. Neighbours came from far and near with offers of help and sympathy. All that kind hearts and experienced hands could do to aid these young people in the care of their suffering mother was done; but all was only a little. It was the strong arm of Allister which lifted and laid down, and moved unceasingly, the never-resting form of the mother. It was Shenac who smoothed her pillow and moistened her lips, and performed all the numberless offices so necessary to the sick, yet too often so useless to soothe pain. It was the voice of Hamish that sometimes had the power to soothe to quietness, if not to repose, the ever-moaning sufferer. Friends came with counsel and encouragement, but her children never left her through all. It was a terrible time to them. Their mother's failure had been so gradual that the thought of her death had not been forced upon them; and, quite unaccustomed to the sight of so great suffering, as the days and nights wore on, bringing no change, no respite, but ever the same moaning and agony, they looked into one another's faces appalled. It was terrible; but it came to an end at last. They could not sorrow for her when the close came. They rejoiced rather that she had found rest. But they were motherless and desolate. It was a very hushed and sorrowful home that night, when all the friends who had returned with them from the grave were gone, and the children were alone together; and for many days after that. If this trouble had come upon them a year ago, there would have been some danger that the silence and sadness that rested upon them might have changed to gloom and despondency on Shenac's part; for she felt that her mother's death had "unsettled old foundations," and when she looked forward to what her life might be now, it was not always that she could do so hopefully. But she was quiet and not impatient--willing to wait and see what time might bring to them all. By-and-by the affairs of the house and of the farm fell back into the old routine, and life flowed quietly on. The new house made progress. It was so nearly completed that they had intended to remove to it about the time their mother became worse. The work went on through all their time of trouble, and one after another the workmen went away; but nothing was said of any change to be made, till the year was drawing to a close. It was Hamish who spoke of it then, first to Shenac and then to Allister; and before Christmas they were quite settled in their new home. Christmas passed, and the new year came in, and a month or two more went by, and then one night Shenac said to her brother,-- "Allister, when are you going to bring Shenac home?" Allister had been the gravest and quietest of them all during the time that had passed since their mother's death. He was silent, though he started a little when his sister spoke. In a moment she came close to him, and standing behind him, laid her hand on his shoulder, and said softly,-- "It would be no disrespect to the memory of our mother, coming now. Hamish says so too. Shenac is not like a stranger; and it might be very quiet." Allister turned and touched with his lips the hand that lay on his shoulder, and then drew her down on the seat beside him. This was one of the things which made Allister so different from other people in Shenac's eyes. Even Hamish, loving and kind as he was, had not Allister's gentle, caressing ways. A touch, a smile, a fond word, came so naturally from him; and these were all the more sweet to Shenac because she was shy of giving such tokens herself, even where she loved best. "If Shenac would come," said Allister. Shenac smiled. "And will she not?" "Should I ask it now, dear?" "Yes, I think so," said his sister gravely. "The spring will soon be here, and the busy time. I think it should be soon. Have you spoken to Shenac since?" "No; I have not. Though I may wish it, and Shenac might consent, there is more to be thought of. We will not have you troubled, after all you have gone through, till you are quite ready for it--you and Hamish." "But surely Shenac cannot doubt I will speak to her myself; and I think it should be soon," said his sister. They were sitting in the new, bright kitchen, and it was growing dark. There was a stove in it, one of the latest kind, for use; but there was a great wide fireplace too, for pleasure; and all the light that was in the room came from the great maple logs and glowing embers. Little Flora had gone to the mill with Dan, Hamish was at his uncle's, and the other lads were not come in; so they had the house to themselves. There was silence between them for a little while, and then his sister said again,-- "I'll speak to Shenac." The chance to do so was nearer than she thought; for there was a touch at the door-latch, and a voice said softly,-- "Are you here, Cousin Shenac? I want to speak to you. Hamish told me you were quite alone." "Yes, she's quite alone, except me." And Allister made one stride across the floor, and Shenac Dhu was held fast. She could not have struggled from that gentle and firm clasp, and she did not try. "I thought you were at The Sixteenth, Allister," said she. "I was there, but I am here now. And our Shenac wants to speak to you." He brought her to the fire-light, where our Shenac was waiting, a little shyly--that is, Shenac waited shyly. Allister brought the other Shenac forward, not at all shyly, quite triumphantly, indeed, and then our Shenac said softly,-- "When are you coming home, sister Shenac?" With that the startled little creature gave one look into our Shenac's face, and breaking from Allister's gentle hold, she clasped her round the neck, and wept and sobbed in a way that astonished them more than a little. For indeed there was no cause for tears, said Shenac Bhan; and indeed she was very foolish to cry, said Allister--though there were tears in his own eyes; and as for Shenac Bhan, the tears did not stay in her eyes, but ran down over her face and fell on the soft black braids of the other Shenac's bowed head; for joy will make tears fall as well as sorrow sometimes, and joy and sorrow mingled is the source of these. But indeed, indeed, I never thought of telling all this. When I began my story I never meant to put a word of love or marriage in it. I meant to end it at the happy day when Allister came home. But all Shenac's work at home was not done when her good and loving brother took the place she had filled so well. So my story has gone on, and will go on a little longer; though that night, when Shenac Dhu went away and Allister went with her, leaving Shenac Bhan to her own thoughts, she said to herself that very soon there would be nothing more for her to do. Allister and Shenac Dhu would care for the little ones better than she ever could have done; for the lads were wilful often, and sometimes her patience failed, and Allister would make men of them--wise, and strong, and gentle, like himself. And Shenac, sweet, kind, merry Shenac Dhu, would never be hard with the lads or little Flora, for she loved them dearly; and it would be better for the children just to have Allister and Shenac Dhu, and no elder sister to appeal to from them. It would be better that she should go away--at least for a little while, till other authority than hers should be established. Yes; her work for the children was done. She said it over and over again, repeating that it was better so, and that she was glad and thankful that all would be so well. But she said it with many a tear and many a sigh and sob; for, having no experience of life beyond her long labour and care for them, it seemed to this foolish Shenac that really and truly her life's work was done. No, she did not say it in words, even to herself; but the future looked blank and bare to her. Any future that seemed possible to her looked rather dark than bright; and she feared--oh, so much!--to take her destiny in her hands and go away alone. But not a word of all this had been spoken to Allister and Shenac Dhu. Not even Hamish had been told of her plans. No, not her plans--she had none--but the vague blending of wishes and fears that came with all her thoughts of the future. There would be time enough by-and-by to tell him; and, indeed, Shenac was a little afraid to let the light of her brother's sense and wisdom in on all her thoughts. For Hamish had a way of putting things in a light that made them look quite different. Sometimes this made her laugh, and sometimes it vexed her; but, whether or not, the chances were she would come round in time to see things as he saw them. And, besides, there was something in this matter that she could not tell to Hamish--at least, it seemed to her that she could not, even if it would be right and kind to do so; and without this she feared that her wish to go away from home might not commend itself to him. Indeed, if it had not been for this thing which could not be told, she might not have wished to leave home. She would hardly have found courage to break away from them all and go to a new, untried life, of her own free will, even though her work at home were done. This was the thing which Shenac thought she never could tell even to Hamish. One night, on her way home from his house, she had been waylaid by Angus Dhu, and startled out of measure by a request, nay, an entreaty, that "she would be kind to poor Evan." Then the old man had gone on to say how welcome she would be if she would come home and be the daughter of the house when his Shenac went to Allister. He told her how fondly she should be cherished by them all, and how everything within and without should be ordered according to her will; for he was sure that union with one of her firm yet gentle nature was just what was needed to make a good man of his wayward lad. She had listened, because she could not break away, wishing all the time that the earth would open and that she might creep away into the fissure and get out of sight. For, indeed, she had never thought of such a thing as that. Nor Evan either, she was sure--she thought--she did not know. Oh, well, perhaps he had thought of it, and had tried to make it known to her in his foolish way. But she never really would have found it out or thought about it if his father had not spoken; and now she would never be able to think about anything else in the presence of either. It was too bad, and wrong, and miserable, and uncomfortable, and I don't know what else, she said to herself, for it could never be--never. And yet, why not? It would seem natural enough to people generally; her aunt would like it, her uncle's heart was set on it, and Allister and Shenac Dhu would be pleased. Even Hamish would not object. And Evan himself? Oh, no; it could never be. She would never care for him in that way. He was not like Allister, nor like any one she cared for--so different from--from--Shenac was sitting alone in the dark, but she suddenly dropped her face in her hands. For quite unbidden, with a shock of surprise and pain that made her heart stand still for a moment, and then set it beating wildly, a name had come to her lips--the name of one so wise and good in her esteem that to speak it at such a time, even in her thoughts, seemed desecration. "I am growing foolish, I think, with all this vexation and nonsense; and I won't think about it any more. I have enough to keep me busy till Shenac Dhu comes home, and then I'll have it out with Hamish." The wedding was a very quiet one. It was hardly a wedding at all, said the last-married sisters, who had gone away amid feasting and music. There was no groomsman nor bridesmaid, for Shenac Bhan could hardly stand in her black dress, and Shenac Dhu would have no one else; and there were no guests out of the two families. Old Mr Farquharson came up one morning, and it was "put over quietly," as Angus Dhu said; and after dinner, which might have served half the township both for quantity and quality, Allister and his bride went away for their wedding trip, which was only to the town of M--- to see Christie More and make a few purchases. They were to be away a week--certainly no longer--and then the new life was to begin. Shenac Bhan stood watching till they were out of sight; and then she stood a little longer, wondering whether she might not go straight home without turning into the house. No; she could not. They were all expected to stay the rest of the day and have tea, and visit with her cousins, who lived at some distance, and had been little in their father's house since they went to their own. "Mind you are not to stay away, Hamish, bhodach," whispered Shenac, as they turned towards the house; and Hamish, who had been thinking of it, considered himself in honour bound to return after he had gone to see that all was right at home. It was not so very bad, after all. The two young wives were full of their own affairs, and compared notes about the butter and cheese-making which they had carried on during the summer, and talked about flannel and full-cloth and the making of blankets in a way that must have set their mother's heart at rest about their future as notable house-keepers. And Shenac Bhan listened and joined, seemingly much interested, but wondering all the time why she did not care a pin about it all. Flannel and full-cloth, made with much labour and pains, as the means of keeping Hamish and little Flora and the lads from the cold, had been matters of intense interest; and butter put down, and cheese disposed of, as the means of getting sugar and tea and other things necessary to the comfort of her mother and the rest, had been prized to their utmost value. But flannel and full-cloth, butter and cheese, were in themselves, or as a means of wealth, matters of indifference. Allister's good heart and strong arm were between them and a struggle for these things now; and that made the difference. But, as she sat listening and wondering, Shenac did not understand all this, and felt vexed and mortified with herself at the change. Annie and Mary, her cousins, were content to look forward to a long routine of spinning and weaving, dairy-work and house-work, and all the rest. Why should she not do the same? She used to do so. No; she used to work without looking forward. She could do so still, if there were any need for it--any good in it--if it were to come to anything. But to work on for yards of flannel and pounds of butter that Flora and the rest, and all the world indeed, would be just as well without--the thought of that was not pleasant. She grew impatient of her thoughts, as well as the talk, at last, and went to help her aunt to set out the table for tea. This was better. She could move about and chat with her concerning the cream-cheese made for the occasion, and of the cake made by Shenac Dhu from a recipe sent by Christie More, of which her mother had stood in doubt till it was cut, but no longer. Then there were the new dishes of the bride, which graced the table--pure white, with just a little spray of blue. They were quite beautiful, Shenac thought. Then her aunt let her into the secret of a second set of knives and forks--very handsome, which even the bride herself had not seen yet; and so on till Hamish came in with Angus Dhu. Then Shenac could have cried with vexation, she felt so awkward and uncomfortable under the old man's watchful, well-pleased eye; and when Evan and the two Dans came in it was worse. She laid hands on a long grey stocking, her aunt's work, and betook herself to the corner where Annie and Mary were still talking more earnestly than ever. She startled them by the eagerness with which she questioned first one and then the other as to the comparative merits of madder and--something else--for dyeing red. It was a question of vital importance to her, one might have supposed, and it was taken up accordingly. Mrs McLay thought the other thing was best--gave much the brighter colour; but Mrs McRea declared for the madder, because, instead of fading, it grew prettier the longer it was worn and the oftener it was washed. But each had enough to say about it; and this lasted till the lads and little Flora came in from their play, and Shenac busied herself with them till tea was ready. After tea they had worship, and sung a little while, and then they went home. "Oh, what a long day this has been!" said Shenac, as they came in. "Yes; I fancied you were a little weary of it all," said Hamish. "It would be terrible to be condemned to do nothing but visit all one's life. It is the hardest work I ever undertook--this doing nothing," said Shenac. Hamish laughed. "Well, there is comfort in knowing that you have not had much of that kind of work to do in your lifetime, and are not likely to have." There were several things to attend to after coming home, and by the time all these were out of the way the children had gone to bed, and Hamish and Shenac were alone. "I may as well speak to Hamish to-night," said Shenac to herself. "Oh dear! I wish it were well over. If Hamish says it is right to go, I shall be sure I am right, and I shall not be afraid. But I must go--I think it will be right to go--whether Hamish thinks so or not. Hamish can do without me; but how shall I ever do without him?" She sat looking into the fire, trying to think how she should begin, and started a little when Hamish said,-- "Well, Shenac, what is it? You have something to tell me." "I am going to ask you something," said his sister gravely. "Do you think it is wrong for me to wish to go away from home--for a while, I mean?" "From home? Why? When? Where? It all depends on these things," said Hamish, laughing a little. "Hamish, what should I do?" asked his sister earnestly. "I cannot do much good by staying here, can I? Ought I to stay? Don't tell me that I ought not to go away--that you have never thought of such a thing." "No, I cannot tell you that, Shenac; for I have thought a great deal about it; and I believe you ought to go--though what we are to do without you is more than I can tell." So there were to be no objections from Hamish. She said to herself that was good, and she was glad; but her heart sank a little too, and she was silent. "You have been thinking about us and caring for us all so long, it is time we were thinking what is good for you," said Hamish. "You are laughing at me, Hamish." "No, I am not. I think it would be very nice for us if you would be content to stay at home and do for us all as you have been doing; but it would not be best for you." "It would be best for me if it were needful," said Shenac eagerly; "but, Hamish, it is not much that I could do here now. I mean Allister and Shenac Dhu will care for you all; and just what I could do with my hands is not much. Anybody could do it." "And you think you could do higher work somewhere else?" "Not higher work, Hamish. But I think there must be work somewhere that I could do better--more successfully--than I can do on the farm. Even when I was doing most, before Allister came, Dan could go before me when he cared to do it. And he did it so easily, forgetting it all the moment it was out of his hand; while I vexed myself and grew weary often, with planning and thinking of what was done and what was still to do. I often feel now it was a wild thing in us to think of carrying on the farm by ourselves. If I had known all, I would hardly have been so bold with Angus Dhu that day." "But it all ended well. You did not undertake more than you carried through," said Hamish. "No; it kept us all together. But, Hamish, I often think that Allister came home just in time. If it had gone on much longer, I must either have given out or become an earth-worm at last, with no thought but how to slave and save and turn everything to account." "I don't think that would ever have happened, Shenac," said her brother. "But I think it was well for us all, and especially for you, that Allister came home just when he did." "I don't mean that field-labour may not in some cases be woman's work. For a girl living at home, of course, it must be right to help in whatever way help is needed; but I don't think it is the work a woman should choose, except just to help with the rest. Surely I can learn to do something else. If I were to go to Christie More, she could find a place of some kind for me. Don't you mind, Hamish, what she once said about our going with her to M---, you and me? Oh, if we could only go together!" But Hamish shook his head. "No, Shenac. It would be useless for me. I must be far stronger than I am now to undertake anything of that kind. And you must not be in a hurry to get away. You must not let Shenac think you are running away from her. Wait a while. A month or two will make no difference, and by that time the way will open before us. I don't like the thought of your taking any place that Christie More could get for you. You will be far better at home for a while." "But, Hamish, you really think it will be better for me to go?" "Yes--some time. Why should you be in haste? Is there any reason that you have not told me why you should wish to go?" Shenac did not answer for a moment. "Is it about Evan, Shenac?" asked her brother. "That could never be, I suppose." "Who told you, Hamish? No; I think it could never be. Allister would like it, and Shenac Dhu; and I suppose to folk generally it would seem a good thing for me. But I don't like Evan in that way. No, I don't think it could ever be." "Evan will be a rich man some day, Shenac; and you could have it all your own way there." "Yes; Allister said that to me once. They all seem to think I would like to rule and to be rich. But I did not think you would advise me because of that, Hamish, or because Evan will be a rich man." "I am not advising you, Shenac," said Hamish eagerly. "If you cared for Evan it would be different; but I am very glad you do not." "I might come to care for him in time," said Shenac, a little wearily. "But I never thought about him in that way till--till Angus Dhu spoke to me." "Angus Dhu!" exclaimed Hamish. "Yes--and frightened me out of my wits," said Shenac, laughing a little. "I never answered a word, and maybe he thinks that I am willing. Allister spoke about it too. Would it please you, Hamish? I might come to like him well enough, in time." "No, Shenac. It would by no means please me. I am very glad you do not care for Evan--in that way. I would not like to see you Evan's wife." There was not much said after that, though they sat a long time together in the firelight. "Did I tell you that I had a letter from Mr Stewart to-day, Shenac?" Hamish asked at last. "No," said Shenac; "was he well?" "He has a call to be minister of the church in H---, and he is to go there soon; and he says if he can possibly do it he will come this way. It will be in six weeks or two months, if he comes at all." Shenac said nothing to this; but when Hamish had added a few more particulars, she said,-- "Perhaps it may seem foolish, Hamish, but I want to go soon." "Because of Evan?" asked her brother. "Partly; or rather, because of Angus Dhu," she said, laughing. "And Allister and Shenac would like it." "But they would never urge it against your will." "No; I suppose not. But it is uncomfortable; and, Hamish, it is not impossible that I might let myself be persuaded." Hamish looked grave. "I don't know but it is the best thing that could happen to me," Shenac continued. "I am not fit for any other life, I am afraid. But I must go away for a while at any rate." Hamish said nothing, though he looked as if he had something to say. "If you are willing, Hamish, it will go far to satisfy Allister. And I can come back again if I should find nothing to do." CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. But Shenac's work at home was not all done yet. Sitting that night by the fireside with her brother, could she have got a glimpse of the next few months and all they were to bring about, her courage might have failed her; for sorrowful as some of the past days had been, more sorrowful days were awaiting her--sorrowful days, yet sweet, and very precious in remembrance. A very quiet and happy week passed, and then Allister and his wife came home. There was some pleasure-seeking then, in a quiet way; for the newly-married pair were entertained by their friends, and there were a few modest gatherings in the new house, and the hands of the two Shenacs were full with the preparations, and with the arrangement of new furniture, and making all things as they ought to be in the new house. But in the midst of the pleasant bustle Hamish fell ill. It was not much, they all thought--a cold only, which proved rather obstinate and withstood all the mild attempts made with herb-drinks and applications to remove it. But they were not alarmed about it. Even when the doctor was sent for, even when he came again of his own accord, and yet again, they were not much troubled. For Hamish had been so much better all the winter. He had had no return of his old rheumatic pains. He would soon be well again, they all said,--except himself; and he said nothing. They were inclined to make light of his present illness, rejoicing that he was no longer racked with the terrible pains that in former winters had made his nights sleepless and his days a weariness. He suffered now, especially at first, but not as he had suffered then. All through March he kept his bed, and through April he kept his room; but he was comfortable, comparatively--only weak, very weak. He could read, and listen to reading, and enjoy the family conversation; and his room became the place where, in the gloaming, all dropped in to have a quiet time. This room had been called during the building of the house "the mother's room," but when Hamish became ill it was fitted up for him. It was a pleasant room, having a window which looked towards the south over the finest fields of the farm, and one which looked west, where the sun went down in glory, over miles and miles of unbroken forest. Even now, though years have passed since then, Shenac, shutting her eyes, can see again the fair picture which that western window framed. There is the mingling of gorgeous colours--gold, and crimson, and purple, fading into paler tints above. There is the glory of the illuminated forest, and on this side the long shadows of the trees upon the hills. Within, there is the beautiful pale face, radiant with a light which is not all reflected from the glory without--her brother's dying face. Now, when troubles come, when fightings without and fears within assail her, when household cares make her weary, and the thought of guiding wayward hearts and wandering feet makes her afraid, the remembrance of this room comes back to her as the remembrance of Bethel or Peniel must have come to Jacob in his after-wanderings, and her strength is renewed. For there _she_ met God face to face. There she was _smitten_, and there the same hand healed her. There she tasted the sweetness of the cup of bitterness which God puts to the lips of those of his children who humbly and willingly, through grace which he gives, drink it to the dregs. The memory of that room and the western window is like the memory of the stone which the prophet set up--"The stone of help." "I will trust, and not be afraid." "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." The words seem to come again from the dear dying lips; and as they were surely his to trust to, to lean on when nought else could avail, so in all times of trouble Shenac knows that they are most surely hers. But much sorrow came before the joy. March passed, and April, and May-day came, warm and bright this year again; and for the first time for many weeks Hamish went out-of-doors. He did not go far; just down to the creek, now flowing full again, to sit a little in the sunshine, with a plaid about his shoulders and another under his feet. It was pleasant to feel the wind in his face. All the sights and sounds of spring were pleasant to him--the gurgle of the water, the purple tinge on the woods, the fields growing fair with a tender green. Allister left the plough in the furrow, and came striding down the long field, just to say it was good to see him there. Dan shouted, "Well done, Hamish, lad!" in the distance; and little Flora risked being too late for the school, in her eagerness to gather a bunch of spring flowers for him. As for Shenac, she was altogether triumphant. There was no cloud of care darkening the brightness of her loving eyes, no fear from the past or for the future resting on her face. Looking at her, and at his fair little sister tying up her treasures for him, Hamish for a moment longed--oh, so earnestly!--to live, for their sakes. Hidden away among Flora's most precious treasures is a faded bunch of spring-flowers, tied with a thread broken from the fringe of the plaid on which her brother sat that day; and looking at them now, she knows that when Hamish took them from her hand, and kissed and blessed her with loving looks, it was with the thought in his heart of the long parting drawing near. But she did not dream of it then, nor did Shenac. He watched with wistful eyes the little figure dancing over the field and down the road, saying softly as she disappeared,-- "I would like to live a little while, for their sakes." Shenac did not catch the true sense of his words, and mistaking him, she said eagerly,-- "Ah, yes, if we could manage it--you and Flora and I. Allister might have the lads; he will make men of them. I am not wise enough nor patient enough. But you and Flora and I--it would be so nice for us to live together till we grow old." And Shenac cast longing looks towards the little log-house where they had lived so long and so happily. But Hamish shook his head. "I doubt it can never be, my Shenac." "No, I suppose not," said Shenac, with a sigh; "for Allister is to take down the old house--the dear old shelter--to make the garden larger. He is an ambitious lad, our Allister," she added laughing, "and means to have a place worthy of the chief of the clan. But, somewhere and some time, we'll have a wee house together, Hamish--you and I and Flora. Don't shake your wise head, lad. There is nothing that may not happen-- some time. "Do you remember, Hamish," she continued (and her voice grew low and awed as she said it)--"do you remember the night you were so ill? I did not say it to you, but I feared that night that you were going to die, and I said to myself, if God would spare you to my prayers, I would never doubt nor despond again; I would trust God always. And I will." "But, Shenac, what else could you do but trust God if I were to die?" asked her brother gravely. "My living or dying would make no difference as to that." "But, Hamish, that is not what I mean. It may seem a bold thing to say, but I think God heard my prayer that night, and spared you to us; and it would seem so wrong, so ungrateful, to doubt now. All will be for the best now, I am sure, now that he has raised you up again." "For a little while," said Hamish softly. "But, Shenac, all will be for the best, whether I live or die. You do not need me to tell you that, I am sure." "But you _are_ better," said Shenac eagerly, a vague trouble stirring at her heart. "Surely I am better. But that is not the question. I want you to say to me that you will trust and not be afraid even if I were to die, Shenac, my darling. Think where your peace and strength come from, think of Him in whom you trust; and what difference can the staying or going of one like me make, if He is with you?" For just a moment it was clear to Shenac how true this was--how safe they are whom God keeps, how much better than a brother's love is the love divine, which does not shield from all suffering, but which most surely saves from all real evil. "Yes, Hamish," she said humbly, "I see it. But, oh, I am glad you are better again!" But was he really better? Shenac asked herself the question many a time in the days that followed. For the May that had come in so brightly was, after all, a dreary month. There were some cold days and some rainy days, and never a day, till June came, that was mild enough for Hamish to venture out again. And when he did, it was not on the hillock by the creek where Shenac spread the plaid, but close to the end of the old log-house, where the mother used to sit in the sunshine. For the creek seemed a long way off to Hamish now. When Allister came down the hill to speak to his brother, it came into Shenac's mind that his face was graver, and his greeting not so cheery, as it had been that May-day. As for Dan, he did not hail him as he had done then, but only looked a moment with wistful eyes, and then went away. "Truly, the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun," said Hamish softly, as he leaned back against the wall. "I thought, the last time I was out, that nothing could be lovelier than the sky and the fields were then; but they are lovelier to-day. It helps one to realise `the living green' that the hymn speaks about, Shenac:-- "`There everlasting spring abides, And never-withering flowers,'" he murmured. But Shenac had no answer ready. Day by day she was coming to the knowledge of what must be, but she could not speak about it yet. Nay, she had never really put it to herself in words that her brother was going to die. She had all these days been putting the fear from her, as though by that means she might also put away the cause. Now in the sunshine it looked her in the face, and would not be put aside. But, except that she sat very still and was very pale, she gave no token of her thoughts to Hamish; and if he noticed her, he said nothing. "Shenac," said he in a little while, "when Allister takes away the poor old house to make the garden larger, he should make a summer-seat here, just where the end of the house comes, to mind you all of my mother and me. Will you tell him, Shenac?" "He may never change the garden as he thought to do," answered Shenac. "He will have little heart for the plans we have all been making." "Yes, just at first, I know; but afterwards, Shenac. Think of the years to come, when Allister's children will be growing up about him. He will not forget me; but he will be quite happy without me, as the time goes on; and you too, Shenac. It is well that it should be so." Shenac neither assented nor denied. Soon Hamish continued:-- "I thought it would be my work to lay out the new garden. I would like to have had the thought of poor lame Hamish joined with the change; but it does not really matter. You will not forget me; but, Shenac, afterwards you must tell Allister about the summer-seat." "Afterwards!" Ah, well, there would be time enough for many a thing afterwards--for the tears and bitter cries which Shenac could only just keep back, for the sickness of the heart that would not be driven away. Now she could only promise quietly that afterwards Allister should be told; and then gather closer about him the plaid, which her brother's hand had scarcely strength to hold. "You are growing weary, Hamish," she said. "Yes," said Hamish; and they rose to go. But first they would go into the old house for a moment, for the sake of old times. "For, with all your cares, and all my painful days and nights, we were very happy here, Shenac," said Hamish, as the wide, low door swung back and they stepped down into the room. Oh, how unspeakably dreary it looked to Shenac--dreary, though so familiar! There was a bedstead in the room yet, and some old chairs; and the heavy bunk, which was hardly fit for the new house. There was the mother's wheel, too; and on the walls hung bunches of dried herbs and bags of seeds, and an old familiar garment or two. There was dust on the floor, and ashes and blackened brands were lying in the wide fireplace, and the sunshine streaming in on all through the open door. Shenac shivered as she entered, but Hamish looked round with a smile, and with eyes that were taking farewell of them all. Even in her bitter pain she thought of him first. She made him sit down on the bunk, and gathered the plaid about him again, for the air was chill. It all came back: the many, many times she had seen him sitting there, in health and in sickness, in sorrow and in joy; all their old life, all the days that could never, never come again. Kneeling down beside him, she laid her head upon his breast, and just this once--the first time and the last in his presence--gave way to her grief. "O Hamish! Hamish, bhodach! Must it be? Must it be?" He did not speak. She did not move till she felt tears that were not her own falling on her face. Then she rose, and putting her arms round him, she made him lean on her, all the while softly soothing him with hand and voice. "I am grieved for you, my Shenac," said he. "We two have been nearer to each other than the rest. You have not loved me less because I am little and lame, but rather more for the trouble I have been to you; and I know something will be gone from your life when I am not here." "Oh, what will be left?" said Shenac. "Shenac, my darling, I know something that you do not know, and I see such a beautiful life before you. You are strong. There is much for you to do of the very highest work--God's work; and then at the end we shall meet all the happier because of the heart-break now." But beyond the shadow that was drawing nearer, Shenac's eyes saw nothing, and she thought indeed that her heart was breaking--dying with the sharpness of the pain. "It won't be long, at the very longest; and after just the first, there are many happy days waiting you." Shenac withdrew herself from her brother, she trembled so, and slipping down beside him, she laid her face on his bosom again. Then followed words which I shall not write down--words of prayer, which touched the sore place in Shenac's heart as they fell, but which came back afterwards many a time with a comforting and healing power. All through the long summer afternoon Hamish slumbered and woke and slumbered again, while his sister sat beside him, heart-sick with the dread, which was indeed no longer dread, but sorrowful certainty. "It is coming nearer," she said to herself, over and over again--"it is coming nearer." But she strove to quiet herself, that her face might be calm for his waking eyes to rest upon. Allister and his wife came in as usual to sit a little while with him, when the day's work was done; and then Shenac slipped away, to be alone a little while with her grief. An hour passed, and then another, and a third was drawing to a close, and she did not return. "She must have fallen asleep. She is weary with the long day," said Hamish. "And you are weary too, Allister and Shenac. Go to bed. I shall not need anything till my Shenac comes." Shenac Dhu went out and opened the door of her sister's room. Little Flora was sleeping sweetly, but there was no Shenac. Very softly she went here and there, looking and listening in vain. The late moon, just rising, cast long shadows on the dewy grass as she opened the door and looked out. The pleasant sounds of a summer night fell on her ear, but no human voice mingled with the music. All at once there came into her mind the remembrance of the brother and sister as they sat in the afternoon at the old house-end, and, hardly knowing why, she went through the yard and down the garden-path. All was still without, but from within the house there surely came a sound. Yes; it was the sound of weeping--not loud and bitter, but as when a "weaned child" has quieted itself, and sobs and sighs through its slumbers. "Alone with God and her sorrow!" Shenac Dhu dared not enter; nor shall we. When a stricken soul lies in the dust before God, no eye should gaze, no lip tell the story. Who would dare to speak of the mystery of suffering and blessing through which a soul passes when God first smites, then heals? What written words could reveal his secret of peace spoken to such a one? That night all the grief of Shenac's sore heart was spread out before the Lord. All the rebellion of the will that clung still to an earthly idol rose up against him; and in his loving-kindness and in the multitude of his tender mercies he had compassion upon her. That night she "did eat angels' food," on the strength of which she went for many a day. Shenac Dhu still listened and waited, meaning to steal away unseen; but when the door opened, and the moonlight fell on her sister's tear-stained face, so pale and calm, now that the struggle was over, she forgot all else, and clung to her, weeping. Shenac did not weep; but, weary and spent with the long struggle, she trembled like a leaf, and, guiding each other through the dim light, they went home. Shenac Dhu was herself again when she crossed the threshold, and when her cousin would have turned towards the door of her brother's room, she gently but firmly drew her past it. "No; it is Allister's turn and mine to-night," she said; and Shenac had no strength to resist, but suffered herself to be laid down by little Flora's side without a word. She rose next morning refreshed; and after this all was changed. She gave Hamish up after that night; or, rather, she had given up her own will, and waited that God's will might be done in him and in her. It was not that she suffered, and had strength to hide her suffering from her brother's eye. She did not suffer as she had done before. She did not love her brother less, but she no longer grudged him to his Lord and hers. It was not that for him the change would be most blessed, nor that for her the waiting would not be long. It was because God willed that her brother should go hence; and therefore she willed it too. And what blessed days those were that followed! Surely never traveller went down the dark valley cheered by warmer love or tenderer care. There was no cloud, no shadow of a cloud, between the brother and sister after that night. Though Shenac never said it, Hamish knew that after that night she gave him up and was at peace. It was a peaceful time to all the household, and to the friends who came now and then to see them; but there was more than peace in the hallowed hours to the brother and sister. It was a foretaste of "the rest that remaineth." To one, that rest was near. Between it and the other lay life--it might be long--a life of care and labour and trial; but to her the rest "remaineth" all the same. He did not suffer much--just enough to make her loving care constant and very sweet to him--just enough to make her not grudge too much, for his sake, the passing of the days. Oh, how peacefully they glided on! The valley was steep, but it never was dark. Not a shadow, to the very last, came to dim the brightness of those days; and in remembrance the brightness lingers still. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. But I must go back again to the June days when Shenac's peace was new. The light came in through the western window, not from the sun, but from the glory he had left behind; and with his face upturned towards the golden clouds, Hamish sat gazing, as if he saw heaven beyond. "Ready and waiting!" thought Shenac--"ready and waiting!" For a moment she thought she must have spoken the words aloud, as her brother turned and said,-- "I have just one thing left to wish for, Shenac. If I could only see Mr Stewart once again." "He said he would come, dear, in August or September," said Shenac, after a moment's pause. "I shall not see him, then," said Hamish softly. "He might come sooner, perhaps, if he knew," said Shenac. "Allister might write to him." "I so long to see him!" continued Hamish. "I do love him so, Shenac dear--next to you, I think. Indeed, I know not which I love best. Oh, I could never tell you all the cause I have to love him." "He would be sure to come," said his sister. "I want to see him because I love him, and because he loves me, and because--" He paused. "Have you anything to say to him that I could tell him afterwards? But he will be sure to come." "You could write and ask him, Shenac." "Yes; oh yes. Only Allister could do it better," said Shenac; "but I could let him know that you are longing to see him again." But it was Hamish himself who wrote--two broken lines, very unlike the letters he used to take so much pains to make perfect. But the irregular, almost illegible, characters were eloquent to his friend; and in a few days there came an answer, saying that in a day or two business would bring him within fifty miles of their home, and it would go hard with him if he could not get a day for his friend. And almost as soon as his letter he himself came. He had travelled all night to accomplish it, and must travel all night again; but in the meantime there was a long summer day before them. A long, happy day it was, and long to be remembered. They had it mostly to themselves. All the morning Mr Stewart sat beside the low couch of Hamish, and spoke or was silent as he had strength to listen or reply. On the other side sat Shenac, never speaking, never moving, except when her brother needed her care. Once, when Hamish slumbered, Mr Stewart, touching her bowed head with his hand, whispered,-- "Is it well?" And Shenac answered, "It is well. I would not have it otherwise." "And afterwards?" said her friend. "I cannot look beyond," she murmured. He stooped to whisper,-- "I will not fear, though the earth be removed, though the mountains be cast into the midst of the sea." "I am not afraid," said Shenac. "I do not think when the time comes I shall be afraid." After that Mr Stewart carried Hamish out to the end of the house, and there they were alone. When they came in again, one and another of his friends came to see Mr Stewart, and Hamish rested. As it grew dark, they all gathered in to worship, and then it was time for Mr Stewart to go. When all was ready, and he came to say farewell, Hamish slumbered. Shenac stooped down and spoke his name. Mr Stewart bent over him and kissed him on the brow and lips. As he raised himself, the closed eyes opened, and the smiling lips murmured, as Shenac stooped again to catch the words,-- "He will come again, to care for you always. I could hardly have borne to leave my Shenac, but for that." Shenac lifted her startled eyes to Mr Stewart's face. "Is he wandering?" she asked. "No. Will you let me care for you always, Shenac, good and dear child?" Shenac did not catch the true meaning of his words, but she saw that his lip quivered, and the hand he held out trembled; so she placed hers in it for a farewell. Then he kissed her as he had kissed her brother, and then he went away. There was no break in the long summer days after this. Sabbaths and weekdays were all the same in the quiet room. Once or twice Hamish was carried in Allister's strong arms to the door, or to the seat at the end of the house, and through almost all July he sat for an hour or two each day in the great chair by the western window. But after August came in, the only change he had was between his bed and the low couch beside it. He did not suffer much pain, but languor and restlessness overpowered him often; and then the strong, kind arms of his elder brother never were wearied, even when the harvest-days were longest, but bore him from bed to couch, and from couch to bed again, till he could rest at last. Sometimes, when he could rest nowhere else, he would slumber a little while with his head on his sister's shoulder, and her arms clasped about him. When a friend came in to sit with him for a while, or when he was easy or slumbered through the day, Shenac made herself busy with household matters; for, what with the milk and the wool and the harvest-people, Shenac Dhu had more than she could well do, even with the help of her handmaid Maggie, and her sister strove to lighten the labour. But the care of her brother was the work that fell to her now, and at night she never left him. She slept by snatches in the great chair when he slept, and whiled away the wakeful hours when his restless turns came on. She was not doing too much for her strength; she was quite fit for it all. The neighbours were more than kind, and many of them would gladly have shared the watching at night with her; but Hamish was not used to have any one else about him, and it could hardly be called watching, for she slept all she needed. And, besides, it was harvest-time, and all were busy in the fields, and those who worked all day could not watch at night. She was quite well--a little thin and pale--"bleached," her aunt said, by being in the house and not out in the harvest-field; but she was always alert and cheerful. The coming sorrow was more hers than any of the others. They all thought with dismay of the time when Shenac should be alone, with half her heart in the grave of Hamish. But she did not look beyond the end to that time, and sought no sympathy because of this. It is a happy, thing that they who bear the burdens of others by this means lighten their own; and Shenac, careful for her young brothers and little Flora, anxious that the few hushed moments in their brother's room--his prayers, his loving words, his gentle patience, his immortal hope--should henceforth be blended with all their inward life, never to be forgotten, never to be set aside, thought more of them than of herself through all those days and nights of waiting. When a sudden shower or a rainy day gave the harvesters a little leisure, she used to make herself busy in the house that Dan might feel himself of use to Hamish, and might hear, with no one else to listen, a sweet, persuasive word or two from his dying brother's lips. For Shenac's heart yearned over her brother Dan. He did so need some high aim, some powerful motive of action, some strengthening, guiding principle of life. All need this; but Dan more than others, she thought. If he did not go straight to the mark, he would go very far astray. He would soon be his own master, free to guide himself, and he would either do very well or very ill in life; and there had been times, even since the coming home of Allister, when Shenac feared that "very ill" it was to be. And yet at one time he had seemed not very far from the kingdom. During all the long season of religious interest, no one had seemed more interested, in one way, than he. Without professing to be personally earnest in the matter, he had attended all the meetings, and watched-- with curiosity, perhaps, but with awe and interest too--the coming out from the world of many of his companions, their changed life, their higher purpose. But all this had passed away without any real change to himself, and, as a reaction from that time, Dan had grown a little more than careless--very willing to be called careless, and more, by some who grieved, and by others who laughed. So Shenac watched and prayed, and forgot herself in longings that, amid the influences of a time so solemn and so sweet, Dan might find that which should make him wise and strong, and place him far beyond all her doubts and fears for ever. It was a day in the beginning of harvest--a rainy day, coming after so long a time of drought and dust and heat that all rejoiced in it, even though it fell on golden sheaves and on long swaths of new-cut grain. It was not a misty, drizzling rain; it came down with a will in sudden showers, leaving little pools in the chip-yard and garden-paths. Every now and then the clouds broke away, as if they were making preparation for the speedy return of the sunshine; but the sun did not show his face till he had only time to tinge the clouds with golden glory before he sank behind the forest. "Carry me to the window, Dan," said Hamish. "Thank you: that is nice. You carry me as strongly and firmly as Allister himself. You are as strong, and nearly as tall, I think," continued he, when he had been placed in the great chair and had rested a little. At any other time Dan would have straightened himself up to declare how he was an eighth of an inch taller than Allister, or he would have attempted some extraordinary feat--such as lifting the stove or the chest of drawers-- to prove his right to be called a strong man. But, looking down on his brother's fragile form and beautiful colourless face, other thoughts moved him. Love and compassion, for which no words could be found, filled his heart and looked out from his wistful eyes. It came to him as it had never come before--what a sorrowful, suffering life his brother's had been; and now he was dying! Hamish seemed not to need words in order that he might understand his thoughts. "I used to fret about it, Dan; but that is all past. It does not matter, as I am lying now. I would not change my weakness for your strength to-day, dear lad." A last bright ray of sunlight lighted up the fair, smiling face, and flecked with golden gleams the curls that lay about it. There came into Dan's mind thoughts of the time when Hamish was a little lad, strong and merry as any of them all; and his heart was moved with vague wonder and regret at the mystery that had changed his happy life to one of suffering and comparative helplessness. And yet, what did it matter, now that the end had come? Perhaps all that trouble and pain had helped to make the brightness of to-day, for there was no shadow in the dying eyes, no regret for the past, no fear for the future. He let his own eyes wander from his brother's face away to the clouds and the sinking sun and the illuminated forest, with a vague notion that, if his feelings were not suppressed, he should do dishonour to his manliness soon. Hamish touched his hand, as he said,-- "It looks dark to you, Dan, with the shadow of death drawing nearer and nearer; but it is only a shadow, lad, only a shadow, and I am not afraid." Dan felt that he must break down if he met that smile a moment longer, and, with a sudden wrench, he turned himself away; but he could not have spoken a word, if his reputation for strength had depended on it. Hamish spoke first. "Sit down, lad, if you are not needed, and read a while to me, till Shenac comes back again." "All right," said Dan. He could endure it with something to do, he thought. "What book, Hamish?" "There is only one book now, Dan, lad," said Hamish as he lifted the little, worn Bible from the window-seat. Dan could do several things better than he could read, but he took the book from his brother's hand. Even reading would be better than silence--more easily borne. "Anywhere, I suppose?" said he. The book opened naturally at a certain place, where it had often been opened before, and he read:-- "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." The sigh of satisfaction with which Hamish laid himself back, as the words came slowly, said more to Dan than a sermon could have done. He read on, thinking, as verse by verse passed his lips, "That is for Hamish," till he came to this:-- "For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." "Was this for Hamish only?" Dan's voice was not quite smooth through this verse; it quite broke down when he tried the next; and then his face was hidden, and the sobs that had been gathering all this time burst forth. "Why, Dan, lad! what is it, Dan?" said Hamish; and the thin, transparent fingers struggled for a moment to withdraw the great, brown, screening hands from his eyes. Then his arm was laid across his brother's neck. "They are all for you, Dan, as well as for me," he murmured. "O Dan, do not sob like that. Look up, dear brother, I have something to say to you." If I were to report the broken words that followed, they might not seem to have much meaning or weight; but, falling from those dear dying lips, they came with power to the heart of Dan. And this was but the beginning. The veil being once lifted from Dan's heart, he did not shrink again from his brother's gentle and faithful ministrations. There were few days after that in which the brothers were not left alone together for a little while. Though the days were not many, in Dan's life they counted more than all the years that had gone before. The harvest was drawing to a close before the last day came. The dawn was breaking after a long and weary night More than once, during the slowly-passing hours, Shenac had turned to the door to call her brothers; but thoughts of the long laborious day restrained her, and now a little respite had come. Hamish slumbered peacefully. It was not very long, however, before his eyes opened on his sister's face with a smile. "It is drawing nearer, my Shenac," he murmured. Her answering smile was tearful, but very bright. "Yes, it is drawing nearer." "And you do not grudge me to my rest, dear?" "No; even at my worst time I did not do that. For myself, the way looked weary; but at the very worst time I was glad for you." The brightness of her tearful smile never changed till his weary eyes closed again. The day passed slowly. They thought him dying in the afternoon, and they all gathered in his room; but he revived, and when night came he was left alone with Shenac. There were others up in the house all night, and now and then a face looked in at the open door; but they slept, or seemed to sleep--Shenac in the great chair, with her head laid on her brother's pillow and her bright hair mingling with his. On her cheek, pale with watching and with awe of the presence that overshadowed them, one thin, white hand was laid. The compressed lips and dimmed eyes of Hamish never failed to smile as in answer to his touch she murmured some tender word--not her own, but _His_ whose words alone can avail when it comes to a time like this. As the day dawned they gathered again--first Dan, then Allister and Shenac Dhu, then Flora and the little lads; for the change which cannot be mistaken had come to the dying face, and they waited in silence for the King's messenger. He slumbered peacefully with a smile upon his lips, but his eyes opened at last and fastened on his sister's face. She had never moved through the coming in of them all; she did not move now, but spoke his name. "Hamish, bhodach!" Did he see her? "How bright it is in the west! It will be a fair day for the harvest to-morrow." It must have been a glimpse of the "glory to be revealed" breaking through the dimness of death; for he did not see the dear face so close to his, and if he heard her voice, he was past all answering now. Just once again his lips moved, murmuring a name--the dearest of all--"Jesus;" and then he "saw him as he is." CHAPTER NINETEEN. And having closed the once beaming eyes and straightened the worn limbs for the grave, Shenac's work at home was done. Through the days of waiting that followed, she sat in the great chair with folded hands. Many came and went, and lingered night and day in the house of death, as is the custom of this part of the country, now happily passing away; and through all the coming and going Shenac sat still. Sometimes she roused herself to answer the friends who came with well-meant sympathy; but oftener she sat silent, scarcely seeming to hear their words. She was "_resting_," she said to Dan, who watched her through those days with wistful and anxious eyes. Yes, she was resting from the days and nights of watching, and from the labours and cares and anxieties of the years that had gone before. All her weariness seemed to fall upon her at once. Even when death enters the door, the cares and duties of such a household cannot be altogether laid aside. There was much to do with so many comers and goers; but there were helpful hands enough, and she took no part in the necessary work, but rested. She took little heed of the preparations going on about her--different in detail, but in all the sad essentials the same, in hut and hall, at home and abroad--the preparations for burying our dead out of our sight. During the first day, Allister and his wife said, thankfully, to each other, "How calm she is!" The next day they said it a little anxiously. Then they watched for the reaction, feeling sure it must come, and longing that it should be over. "It will be now," said Shenac Dhu as they brought in the coffin; and she waited at her sister's door to hear her cry out, that she might weep with her. But it was not then; nor afterwards, when the long, long procession moved away from the house so slowly and solemnly; nor when they stood around the open grave in the kirkyard. When the first clod fell on the coffin--oh, heart-breaking sound!--Dan made one blind step towards Shenac, and would have fallen but for Angus Dhu. Little Flora cried out wildly, and her sister held her fast. She did not shriek, nor swoon, nor break into weeping, as did Shenac Dhu; but "her face would never be whiter," said they who saw it, and many a kindly and anxious eye followed her as the long line of mourners slowly turned on their homeward way again. After the first day or two, Shenac tried faithfully to fall back into her old household ways--or, rather, she tried to settle into some helpful place in her brother's household. The wheel was put to use again, and, indeed, there was need, for all things had lagged a little during the summer; and Shenac did her day's work, and more, as she used to do. She strove to be interested in the discussions of ways and means which Allister's wife was so fond of holding, but she did not always strive successfully. It was a weariness to her; everything was a weariness at times. It was very wrong, she said, and very strange, for she really did wish to be useful and happy in her brother's household. She thought little of going away now; she had not the heart for it. The thought of beginning some new, untried work made her weary, and the thought of going away among strangers made her afraid. When it was suggested that she and little Flora should pay a long-promised visit to their uncle, at whose house Hamish had passed so many weeks, and that they should go soon, that they might have the advantage of the fine autumn weather, she shrank from the proposal in dismay. "Not yet, Allister," she pleaded; "I shall like it by-and-by, but not yet." So nothing of the kind was urged again. They made a mistake, however. A change of some kind was greatly needed by her at this time. Her brother's long illness and death had been a greater strain on her health and spirits than any one dreamed. She was not ill, but she was in that state when if she had been left to herself, or had had nothing to do, she might have become ill, or have grown to fancy herself so, which is a worse matter often, and worse to cure. As it was, with her good constitution and naturally cheerful spirit, she would have recovered herself in time, even if something had not happened to rouse and interest her. But something did happen. Shenac went one fair October afternoon over the fields to the beech woods to gather nuts with Flora and the young lads, and before they returned a visitor had arrived. They fell in with Dan on their way home, and as they came in sight of the house, chatting together eagerly, there was something like the old light in Shenac's eye and the old colour in her cheek. If she had known whose eyes were watching her from the parlour window, she would hardly have lingered in the garden while the children spread their nuts on the old house-floor to dry. She did not know till she went into the house--into the room. She did not know till he was holding her hands in his, that Mr Stewart had come. "Shenac, good, dear child, is it well with you?" She had heard the words before. All the scene came back--the remembrance of the summer days, her dying brother and his friend--all that had happened since then. She strove to answer him--to say it was well, that she was glad to see him, and why had he not come before? But she could not for her tears. She struggled hard; but, long restrained, they came in a flood now. When she felt that to struggle was vain, she would have fled; but she was held fast, and the tears were suffered to have way for a while. When she could find voice, she said,-- "I am not grieving too much; you must not think that. Ask Allister. I did not mean to cry, but when I saw you it all came back." Again her face was hidden, for her tears would not be stayed; but only one hand was given to the work. Mr Stewart held the other firmly, while he spoke just such words as she needed to hear of her brother and herself--of all they had been to each other, of all that his memory would be to her in the life that might lie before her. Then he spoke of the endless life which was before them, which they should pass together when this life--short at the very longest--should be over. She listened, and became quiet; and by-and-by, in answer to his questions, she found herself telling him of her brother's last days and words, and then, with a little burst of joyful tears, of Dan, and all that she hoped those days had brought to him. Never since the old times, when she used "to empty her heart out" to Hamish, had she found such comfort in being listened to. When she came to the tea-table, after brushing away her tears, she seemed just as usual, Shenac Dhu thought; and yet not just the same, she found, when she looked again. She gave a little nod at her husband, who smiled back at her, and then she said softly to Mr Stewart,-- "You have done her good already." Of course Mr Stewart, being a minister, whose office it is to do good to people, was very glad to have done good to Shenac. Perhaps he thought it best to let _well_ alone, for he did not speak to her again during tea-time, nor while she was gathering up the tea-things--"just as she used to do in the old house long ago," he said to himself. She washed them, too, there before them all; for it was Shenac Dhu's new china--Christie More's beautiful wedding present--that had been spread in honour of the occasion, and it was not to be thought of that they should be carried into the kitchen to be washed like common dishes. She was quiet, as usual, all the evening and at the time of worship, when Angus Dhu and his wife and Evan and some other neighbours, having heard of the minister's arrival, came in. She was just as usual, they all said, only she did not sing. If she had raised her voice in her brother's favourite psalm,-- "I to the hills will lift mine eyes," she must have cried again; and she was afraid of the tears which it seemed impossible to stop when once they found a way. Mr Stewart fully intended for that night to "let well alone." Shenac had welcomed him warmly as the dearest friend of her dead brother, and he would be content for the present with that. He had something to say to her, and a question or two to ask; but he must wait a while, he thought. She must not be disturbed yet. But when the neighbours were gone, and he found himself alone with her for a moment, he felt sorely tempted to change his mind. As he watched her sitting there with folded hands, so quiet and grave and sweet, so unconscious of his presence, as it seemed to him, a fear came over him-- a fear as to the answer his question might receive. It was not at all a pleasant state of mind. He endured it only while he walked up and down the room two or three times; then pausing beside her, he said softly,-- "Is this my Shenac?" She looked up with only wonder in her eyes, he saw, with a little shock of pain; but he went on,-- "Hamish gave his sister to me, to keep and cherish always. Did he never tell you?" "I do not understand you, Mr Stewart," said Shenac; but the sudden drooping of the eye and the rush of colour over her face seemed to say something else. "To be my wife," he said, sitting down beside her and drawing her gently towards him. She did not resist, but she said hastily,-- "Oh, no; I am not fit for that." "But if I am content, and can make you content?" "But that is not enough. I am not fit. No; it is _not_ humility. I know myself, and I am not fit." It is just possible that Mr Stewart wished that he had for that night "let well alone." "But I must have it out with her, now that I have begun," he said to himself as he rose and went to the door, at which a footstep had paused. Whoever it was, no one came in; and, shutting the door, he came and sat down again. In the meantime, Shenac had been calling up a vision of the new minister's wife, the one who had succeeded old Mr Farquharson, and, in view of the prettily-dressed, gentle-mannered, accomplished little lady that presented herself to her mind, she had repeated to herself, more emphatically,-- "No, I am _not_ fit." So when Mr Stewart came back she was sitting with closely-folded hands, looking straight before her, very grave indeed. They were both silent for a moment; then Mr Stewart said,-- "Now, Shenac, tell me why." Shenac started. "You must know quite well." "But indeed I do not. Tell me, Shenac." It was not easy to do so. In the unspeakable embarrassment that came over her, she actually thought of flight. "I am not educated," she murmured. "I have never been anywhere but at home. I can only do common work. I am not fit." "Hamish thought you fit," said Mr Stewart softly. "Ah, yes; Hamish, bhodach!" Her voice fell with such a loving cadence. All the pain and embarrassment passed out of her face, giving place to a soft and tender light, as she turned towards him. "I was perfect in his eyes; but--you know better, Mr Stewart." "The eyes of the dying are very clear to see things as they are," said Mr Stewart. "And as we sat at the end of the house that day, I think Hamish was more glad for me than for you. He was willing to give you to me, even for your sake; but he knew what a treasure he was giving to his friend, if I could win you for my own." Her tears were falling softly. She did not try to speak. "Will you tell me in what respect you think you are not fit?" She did not know how to answer. She was deficient in so many ways--in every way, indeed, it seemed to her. She did not know where to begin; but she must speak, and quickly too, that she might get away before she quite broke down. Putting great force upon herself, she turned to him, and said,-- "I can do so few things; I know so little. I could keep your house, and--and care for you in that way; but I have seen so little. I am only an ignorant country girl--" "Yes; I thought that myself once," said Mr Stewart. "You must have thought it many times," said Shenac with a pang. It was not pleasant to hear it from his lips, let it be ever so true. But it took the quiver from her voice, and gave her courage to go on, "And all you care for is so different from anything I have ever seen or known, I should be quite left out of your real life. You do not need me for that, I know; but I don't think I could bear it--to be so near you and so little to you." She rose to go. She was trembling very much, and could hardly utter the words. "You are very kind, and I thank you; but--you know I am not fit. An ignorant country girl--you have said so yourself." "Shall I tell you when I thought so, Shenac? Do you mind the night that I brought little Flora home, crying with the cold? It was the first time I saw your face. Do you mind how you comforted Flora, and put the little lads to shame for having left her? And then you thanked me, and asked me to sit down. And do you mind how you made pancakes for supper, and never let one of them burn, though you were listening all the time to Hamish and me? I remember everything that happened that night, Shenac--how you put away the things, and made a new band for the mother's wheel, and took up the lost loops in little Flora's stocking. Then you helped the little lads with their tables, and kept Dan in order, listening all the time to your brother and me; and, best of all, you bade me be sure and come again. Have you forgotten, Shenac?" "It was for the sake of Hamish," said Shenac, dropping her head; but she raised it again quickly. "That does not make any difference." "Listen. That night, as I went over the fields to Angus Dhu's, I said to myself that if ever I grew strong and well again, if ever I should live to have a kirk and a manse of my own--was I too bold, Shenac?--I said to myself you should help me to do my work in them as I ought." Shenac shook her head. "It was not a wise thought. You little know how unfit I was then, how unfit I am now." "Say that you do not care for me, Shenac," said Mr Stewart gravely. "No, I cannot say that; it would not be true. I mean, that has nothing to do with my being fit." Mr Stewart thought it had a great deal to do with it, but he did not say so. "You said you would be left out of my real life. What do you mean, Shenac? Do you know what my life's work is to be? It is, with God's help, to be of use to souls. Don't you care for that, Shenac? Do you think a year or two of life in the world--common life--could be to you what these months by your brother's death-bed have been, as a preparation for real life-work--yours and mine? Do you think that any school could do for you what all these years of forgetting yourself and caring for others have done--all your loving patience with your afflicted mother, all your care of your sister and the little lads, all your forbearance with Dan, all your late joy in him? If you cared for me, Shenac, you would not say you are not fit." It was very pleasant to listen to all this. There was some truth in it, too, Shenac could not but acknowledge. He was very much in earnest, at any rate, and sincere in every word, except perhaps the last He wanted to hear her say again that she eared for him; but she did not fall into the trap, whether she saw it or not. "I know I care for your work," she said, "and you are right--in one way. I think all our cares and troubles have done me good, have made me see things differently. But I could not help you much, I'm afraid." "Don't say that, Shenac; you could give me what I need most--sympathy; you could help my weakness with your strength and courage of spirit. Think what you were to Hamish. You would be tenfold more to me. Oh, I need you so much, Shenac!" "Hamish was different. You would have a right to expect more than Hamish." But she grew brave again, and, looking into his face, said,-- "I do sympathise in your work, Mr Stewart, and I would like it to be mine in a humble way; but there are so many things that I cannot speak about. Think of your own sisters. How different I must be from them! Allister and Shenac saw your sister Jessie when they were in M---, and they said she was so accomplished--such a perfect little lady--and yet so good and sweet and gentle. No, Mr Stewart, I could never bear to have people say your wife was not worthy of you, even though I might know it to be true." "I was thinking how our bonnie little Jessie might sit at your feet to learn everything--almost everything--that it is worth a woman's while to know." "You are laughing at me now," said she, troubled. "No, I am not; and, Shenac, you must not go. I have a question to ask. I should have begun with it. Will you answer me simply and truly, as Hamish would have wished his sister to answer his friend?" "I will try," said she, looking up with a peculiar expression that always came at the name of Hamish. He bent down and whispered it. "I have always thought you wise and good, more than any one, and--" There was another pause. "It is a pleasant thing to hear that you have always thought me wise and good; but you have not answered my question, Shenac." "Yes, I do care for you, Mr Stewart. It would make me happy to share your work; but I am not fit for it--at least, not yet." In his joy and simplicity he thought all the rest would be easy; and, to tell the truth, so did Allister and his wife, who ought to have known our Shenac better. When Shenac Dhu kissed her, and whispered something about Christmas, and how they could ever bear to lose her so soon, Shenac spoke. She was going away before Christmas, and they could spare her very well; but she was not going with Mr Stewart for two years at the very least Allister had told her there was something laid up for her against the time she should need it, and it would be far better that she should use it to furnish her mind than to furnish her house; and she was going to school. "To school!" repeated Mrs Allister in dismay. "Does Mr Stewart know?" "No; you must tell him, Shenac--you and Allister. I am not fit to be his wife. You will not have people saying--saying things. You must see it, Shenac. I know so little; and it makes me quite wretched to think of going among strangers, I am so shy and awkward. I am not fit to be a minister's wife," she added with a little laugh that was half a sob. Shenac Dhu laughed too, and clapped her hands. "A minister's wife, no less! Our Shenac!" And then she added gravely, "I think you are right, Shenac. I know you are good enough and dear enough to be Mr Stewart's wife, though he were the prince of that name, if there be such a person. But there are little things that folk can only learn by seeing them in others, and I think you are quite right; but you will not get Mr Stewart to think so." "If it is right he will come to think so; and you must be on my side, Shenac--you and Allister, too." Shenac Dhu promised, but in her heart she thought that her sister would not be suffered to have her own way in this matter. She was mistaken, however. Shenac was firm without the use of many words. She cared for him, but she was not fit to be his wife yet. This was the burden of her argument, gone over and over in all possible ways; and the first part was so sweet to Mr Stewart that he was fain to take patience and let her have her own way in the rest. In Shenac's country, happily, it is not considered a strange thing that a young girl should wish to pursue her education even after she is twenty, so she had no discomfort to encounter on the score of being out of her 'teens. She lived first with her cousin, Christie More, who no longer occupied rooms behind her husband's shop, but a handsome house at a reasonable distance towards the west end of the town. Afterwards she lived in the school-building, because it gave her more time and a better chance for study. She spent all the money that Allister had put aside for her; but she was moderately successful in her studies, and considered it well spent. And when the time for the furnishing of the western manse came, there was money forthcoming for that too; for Angus Dhu had put aside the interest of the sum sent to him by Allister for her use from the very first, meaning it always to furnish her house. It is possible that it was another house he had been thinking of then; but he gave it to her now in a way that greatly increased its value in her eyes, kissing her and blessing her before them all. All these years Shenac's work has been constant and varied; her duties have been of the humblest and of the highest, from the cutting and contriving, the making and mending of little garments, to the guiding of wandering feet and the comforting of sorrowful souls. In the manse there have been the usual Saturday anxieties and Monday despondencies, needing cheerful sympathy and sometimes patient forbearance. In the parish there have been times of trouble and times of rejoicing; times when the heavens have seemed brass above, and the earth beneath, iron; and times when the church has been "like a well-watered garden," having its trees "filled with the fruits of righteousness." And in the manse and in the parish Shenac has never, in her husband's estimation, failed to fill well her allotted place. The firm health and cheerful temper which helped her through the days before Allister came home, have helped her to bear well the burdens which other years have brought to her. The firm will, the earnest purpose, the patience, the energy, the forgetfulness of self, which made her a stronghold of hope to her mother and the rest in the old times, have made her a tower of strength in her home and among the people. And each passing year has deepened her experience and brightened her hope, has given her clearer views of God's truth and a clearer sense of God's love; and thus she has grown yearly more fit to be a helper in the great work beside which all other work seems trifling--the work in which God has seen fit to make his people co-workers with himself--the work of gathering in souls, to the everlasting glory of his name. And so, when her work on earth is over, there shall a glad "Well done!" await her in heaven. THE END. 
36945	----	A TATTER OF SCARLET A TATTER OF SCARLET ADVENTUROUS EPISODES OF THE COMMUNE IN THE MIDI 1871 BY S. R. CROCKETT SECOND EDITION HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO _Printed in 1913_ CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I HOW THE TRICOLOUR CAME DOWN 1 CHAPTER II KITH AND KIN 9 CHAPTER III THE LAUNDRY DOOR 13 CHAPTER IV THROUGH THE ENEMY'S LINES 21 CHAPTER V THE DEVENTER GIRLS 30 CHAPTER VI AN OLD MAN MASTERFUL 34 CHAPTER VII OUR FIRST COMMUNARD 44 CHAPTER VIII I SEE THE SCARLET TATTER NEAR AT HAND 50 CHAPTER IX A REUNION OF THE REDS 57 CHAPTER X JEANNE'S VELVET EYES 65 CHAPTER XI HOW MEN SEE RED 73 CHAPTER XII "GOOD-BYE, RHODA POLLY" 78 CHAPTER XIII WE SEEK GARIBALDI 84 CHAPTER XIV "THE CHILDREN" 96 CHAPTER XV FIRST BLOOD 101 CHAPTER XVI THE COMING OF ALIDA 107 CHAPTER XVII A DESERT PRINCESS 117 CHAPTER XVIII THE PRINCESS COMMANDS 126 CHAPTER XIX KELLER BEY COMES TO ARAMON 132 CHAPTER XX I PLAY "THREE'S COMPANY" 138 CHAPTER XXI THE GOLDEN HEART OF RHODA POLLY 145 CHAPTER XXII IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 149 CHAPTER XXIII THE MISGIVINGS OF ALIDA 156 CHAPTER XXIV PEACE BEFORE STORM 169 CHAPTER XXV THE PROCLAMATION 175 CHAPTER XXVI KELLER BEY, INSURGENT 185 CHAPTER XXVII UNDER WHICH KING, BEZONIAN? 199 CHAPTER XXVIII STORM GATHERING 208 CHAPTER XXIX WITHIN THE PALE 216 CHAPTER XXX DEVIL'S TALK 226 CHAPTER XXXI THE BLACK BAND 233 CHAPTER XXXII "READY!" 239 CHAPTER XXXIII "HELL UPSIDE DOWN!" 251 CHAPTER XXXIV THE PASSING OF KELLER BEY 259 CHAPTER XXXV A CAPTAIN OF BRIGANDS 266 CHAPTER XXXVI LEFT-HANDED MATTHEW 273 CHAPTER XXXVII LOOT 284 CHAPTER XXXVIII THE LAST ADVENTURE OF THE BLACK BAND 291 CHAPTER XXXIX THE CONVERSION OF CHANOT 306 CHAPTER XL THE LAST OF THE "TATTER OF SCARLET" 312 A TATTER OF SCARLET CHAPTER I HOW THE TRICOLOUR CAME DOWN Deventer and I leaned on the parapet and watched the curious things which were happening in Aramon across the river. We were the biggest boys in the school and kept even the Seniors in awe, being "Les Anglais" to them--and so familiar with the "boxe"--though Deventer was an Irishman, and I, Angus Cawdor, a Scot of the Scots. We had explained the difference to them many times by arguments which may have temporarily persuaded some, but without in the least affecting the fixed French notion that all English-speaking people are of English race. Behind us circulated the usual menagerie-promenade of the "Grands," gabbling and whispering tremendous secrets in files of two and three. Hugh Deventer was a great hulk of a fellow who would take half a dozen French Seniors and rub their heads together if I told him, laughing loudly at their protestations as to loss of honour. He had been challenged several times to fight duels with small swords, but the Frenchmen had given that up now. For Deventer spat on his palms and pursued the seconds who came with the challenge round and round the playground till he caught and smacked them. Whereat he laughed again. His father was chief of the Small Arms Factory, which of late years had been added to the arsenal works of New Aramon opposite to us on the left bank of the Rhône. My own father was a clergyman, who for the sake of his health had retired to the dry sunny Rhône valley, and had settled in a green and white villa at Aramon because of the famous _lycée_ which was perched up on the heights of Aramon le Vieux. There was not much to distinguish Aramon the Old from Aramon the New, that is, from a distance. Both glowed out startingly white and delicately creamy between the burnished river and the flawless sapphire of the Provençal sky. It was still winter time by the calendar, but the sun beat on our bowed shoulders as we bent over the solid masonry of the breastwork, and the stones were hotter than in English dog-days as we plucked away our hands from it. Deventer and I looked across at the greater New Aramon where his father lived. It was the Aramon of shops and hotels and factories, while Aramon le Vieux, over which our great _lycée_ throned it like a glorified barracks, was a place of crumbling walls, ancient arcaded streets, twelfth-century palaces let as tenements, and all the interesting _débris_ of a historical city on the verges of Languedoc. Our French _lycéens_ were too used to all this beauty and antiquity to care anything about it, but we English did. We were left pretty much to ourselves on our rare days of liberty, and as the professors, and especially the _proviseur_, knew that we were to be trusted, we were allowed to poke about the old Languedocian outpost much as we pleased. It was the month of January, 1871. France was invaded, beaten, but not conquered; but here in the far South, though tongues wagged fiercely, in his heart the good bourgeois was glad to be out of it all. At any rate, the _lycée_ was carried on just as usual. Punishments were dealt out and tasks exacted. _Pions_ watched constantly over our unstable morals, and occasionally reported misdemeanours of a milder kind, not daring to make their position worse by revealing anything that really mattered. But, generally speaking, Aramon le Vieux dreamed away the hours, blinking in the sunshine. The war did not touch it save in the fierce clatter of _café_ dispute. Only in the forts that rose about the arsenal of the newer city opposite to us a feeble guard of artillery and linesmen lingered as a protection for the Small Arms Factory. For the new Paris Government was still far from stable, and some feared a renewal of the White Terror of 1815, and others the Red of the Commune of 1848. The workmen of the arsenal, hastily gathered from all quarters, were mostly sealed to the "Internationale," but it was supposed that the field-pieces in Fort St. André could easily account for any number of these hot-heads. Besides Hugh Deventer and I there were several other English boys, but they were still screeching like seagulls somewhere in the Lower School and so did not count, except when an anxious mamma besought us with tears in her voice to look after her darling, abandoned all day to his fate among these horrid French. To "look after" them Deventer and I could not do, but we gathered them into a sort of fives team, and organised a poor feckless game in the windowless angle of the refectory. We also got hockey sticks and bastinadoed their legs for their souls' good to the great marvel of the natives. Deventer had even been responsible for a trial of lacrosse, but good missionaries though we were, we made no French converts. The Juniors squealed like driven piglings when the ball came their way, while the Seniors preferred walking up and down their paved cattle-pen, interminably talking with linked arms and lips close to the ear of a chosen friend. Always one or two read as they walked alone, memorising fiercely against next Saturday's examination. The pariah _pion_ or outcast usher, a most unhappy out-at-elbows youth, was expected to keep us all under his eye, but we saw to it early that that eye passed leniently over Deventer and myself. Otherwise he counted for nothing. The War--the War--nothing but talk of the War came to our ears from the murmuring throng behind us. How "France has been betrayed." "How the new armies of the Third Republic would liberate Paris and sweep the Prussians back to Berlin. From every side brave patriots were even now closing in upon the beleaguered city. Ha, then the spiked helmets would see!" Still, a few facts grew more clear to us. At Lyons and Grenoble, Bourbaki was organising the army of the South-East. There came a sound from nowhere in particular that this army was to be joined and led by Garibaldi himself with thirty thousand of his red jackets from Italy. Deventer and I were immensely excited. We made plans for immediate invasion. We would fight for France and wear a red cardigan in the Foreign Legion. But the _Lycée_ St. André was well guarded, and so far no one had succeeded in escaping. I do not know that they tried very hard. They were French lads and brave--as many of them showed afterwards--but they were of the Midi, and even then the Midi was proverbially hard to budge. Not as in the North and East had the iron of the invasion entered the soul. The parapet upon which we leaned was of very ancient masonry, solid blocks laid clean and Cyclopean with very little visible cement. It had formed part of the defences of an ancient castle, long since overwhelmed by the college buildings, the materials of which had mostly been quarried from its imposing mass. Beneath us ran the Rhône in a fine, broad, half-mile-wide sweep, five or six miles an hour, yet save for the heaped hillocks of water about the bridge piers, and the swirl where the far bank curved over, as smooth as a mirror. Hugh Deventer and I had been talking of the great '61 campaign of Garibaldi in Sicily and through Naples--a thousand red-shirts and a kingdom in the dust! Ah, the glory of that time! But as we leaned and looked we fell silent. We saw Aramon the New opposite to us, as it were at our feet, across only that span of water. The factories were curiously silent, and from one fort after another darted the white spurt of smoke which meant artillery practice. We listened, knowing that in a little we should hear the report. _Boom! Boom! Rattle-rattle-chirr!_ Fighting--they were fighting in Aramon! Deventer's father would be in the thick of it. We looked and longed, but the way was closed. What could it be? Deventer knew that there were continually troubles between the operatives and the "masters," or rather the representatives of the masters of whom his father was the chief. The great _Compagnie d'Armes de Guerre Aramoise_ was not distinguished for generosity. The men were well lodged but poorly paid. In these war times they had been over-driven. So many hundreds of rifles to turn out daily--field artillery, too, and a new department to be set up for the manufacture of mitrailleuses. Outside, Dennis Deventer said little about the politics of the works, nothing at all to his son Hugh. We of the _lycée_ knew that France was already fairly evenly divided between true Republicans and those others who looked upon Gambetta's republic as a step to a monarchy or even the restoration of the Napoleons. The sons of functionaries mostly held the latter opinion. The scions of the aristocratic families of the neighbourhood, the old Whites of the Midi, prayed for the Bourbon flag and the coming of Henry V to his own again. So when we heard the ripple of musketry fire and the sullen boom of the artillery, Deventer and I supposed that a mutiny of sorts had broken out at the works, or that news had come from Paris of some sudden change of government. We were not far from the mark. There had been news from Paris and a mutiny had broken out. At any rate, they were fighting over in Aramon, and we must find out what it was all about. For the moment this was impossible for us. The cliff was too sheer on the side of our recreation ground. There were over many eyes upon us. We must wait for the night, and in the meantime Deventer could only sniff the battle from afar, and hold in the desire to set off and help his father. "The Dad doesn't want me," he said. "Of course, I know that. He would most likely tan me well for breaking bounds, but I can't bear being cooped up here doing silly mathematics when over yonder----But listen to them!" A patter of what might have been heavy rain on a tin roof came faintly to our ears. A little white cloud hung over the statue in the market square, and presently flung down devilish fingers earthward. We did not then know the signs of the explosion of shrapnel. By this time the school was crowding about us, as curious as ourselves. The bell clanged for classes to resume, but no one moved. The _pion_ screamed impotently in the rear. None took any notice, and the windows above were black with the gowns of the professors. Some thought that the noise was only the letting off of blasts in the Pierre de Montagne quarries, but it was pointed out that such explosions took place only at eight, one, and four, the hours when the men would be out of the quarries at their meals. Besides, the crackle of small fire was unaccounted for, and each moment it became more lively. Practice at the Chassepot factories? Very likely--but at human targets. Finally the college authorities caused discipline to prevail, and Deventer and I watched alone by the parapet. We had both passed our _bachot_, and were an honour to the college. So the strictness of rule and line was relaxed in our case. Our hearts beat, and in the instancy of our watch we would not have turned our heads if the _proviseur_ himself had been at our side. Presently we could see soldiers marching, the flash of bayonets, and groups of a dozen, as if pushed beyond their patience, turning and firing with rapid irregularity. All this in flashes of vision, mostly at the bridge-end, or at the intersection of two streets. Through the northern gate a kind of uncertain retreat began to dribble--the red breeches of the linesmen, the canter of the artillery horses attacking the hill, with stragglers here and there looking about for their regiments. Neither Deventer nor I knew enough to explain these things. "There are no Germans nearer than Toul or Besançon," he said, with a puzzled anxiety. The field guns answered him smartly. From all the houses about the northern gate a storm of rifle fire broke out. The soldiers on foot hastened their retreat. The artillerymen, better led or of firmer courage, faced about, and with one volley pitted the façades of the houses from which the attack had come. They withdrew regularly, covering the retreat of the infantry, and spat out their little devils' claws of shrapnel over every group which showed itself outside the wall. Slowly the soldiers passed out of sight. The artillery bucketed over the knolls of the Montagne of Aramon among the evergreen odoriferous plants and the faint traces of the last snow wreaths. There was nothing left for us to see now except the town of Aramon, its green and white houses sleeping in the sun, the tall chimney of the Small Arms Factory, now smokeless--and the broad Rhône sweeping grave and placid between them and us. Nevertheless we waited alone on the recreation ground, our heads a little dizzy. The swooning hum of the class-rooms awoke behind us, but we heeded not at all. We saw the tricolour of the Republic come down with a run from the tall flagstaff on Fort St. André, and presently, irregularly tugged, rising a few feet at a time, a red flag fluttered out, probably an improvised table-cover or bedspread. It flapped out bravely in the brisk breeze off the water. We had had our first glimpse of "The Tatter of Scarlet." CHAPTER II KITH AND KIN I don't think I troubled much about my father when I resolved to run away from the _Lycée_ St. André. He had, as I thought, never troubled much about me. Afterwards I found that I had been mistaken, but perhaps not more than most. For it is the rarest thing in the world to find a son entering upon life, able to do justice to his father's ideas and motives. Yet it was for my sake that he had given up the society of his fellow savants and had exiled himself to Aramon le Vieux, with only his books for company. At Nice, Mentone, or Cap Martin, the author of "The History and Growth of Italian Art" could have lived a great part of the year among kindred spirits, but because of me and St. André, he had shut himself up with his books and collections in the Villa Gobelet on the piney southern slopes of the long convent ridge, the summit of which was crowned by the immense acreage of rambling white masonry which constituted our _lycée_. My father, Gordon Cawdor, mixed freely enough with the engineers in New Aramon. But I knew very well that he endured rather than enjoyed their society. They talked of springs and hoppers, of pauls and recoil tampons, and my father sat with his gentle wise head nodding as if taking in each point. But he never spoke to them of his own work, and, excepting Deventer's father, there was not one who knew more about Italian art than a dim memory of a bad lithograph of Da Vinci's "Last Supper" could recall to him. Dennis Deventer, a tall dark grey man with the most mobile eyebrows I ever saw in my life, lives much in my early memories of my father's house. He seems now to have been always there, though of course he could really have come but seldom--a massive, slow-moving, swiftly scrutinising man, who bent shaggy eyebrows upon his son and myself, and in whose presence it was not good to make the easily forged excuses which served so well for my scholarly father. Hugh said that it was because he listened all day to excuses and explanations over at the Arms Factory, without believing any one of them. He had succeeded a manager who had been driven from Aramon because he was afraid of his men. But now the men, though they hated him as the representative of the Company, freely acknowledged his courage and austere justice. His house was the largest in New Aramon, and he had within it three daughters all verging on, or just overlapping early womanhood, besides a comfortable wife who purred her way contented and motherly through all domestic storms. She alone could tame her husband's furies. They sank before her eye, her husband changing obviously to all men's sight, his factory oaths silenced, his bullying temper visibly crumbling, and the man growing sweet and wholesome as newly ground meal. These were the two houses best known to me as a boy, and indeed to the edge of manhood. Judge ye which I liked the best? My father was a beautifully profiled Scottish minister of the old school, whom an unexpected fortune had enabled to follow his impulses in the matter of work. He had long ago retired from his parish, indeed before I could remember, and as I learned from his steadfast retainer, old Saunders McKie, immediately after the death of my mother. "Irongray Parish was no more for him, oh no," Saunders would say, sententiously pausing in the polishing of my father's silver shoe-buckles. "He laid down his wark as if he had been stricken. He never preached again, and his pulpit was silent for three whole weeks after her death. Assistants and siccan cattle werena sae common to come at then as now--when ye send a telegram in the morning, and the laddie is down on the six train wi' his baggie. So the elders juist read a portion, and sent down to the Cameronian meeting-house for a man fit to put up a prayer. We were Established, ye see, so the like was no to be expected o' _us_! "Eh, a broken man was your farther in thae days. He would wander from room to room, tak' down a book here, look at it a while and then put it up again with a muttered 'Tush' as if he could make nothing of it. I doubt if he so much as saw the print line by line, but all troubled-like, as one might through a green whorl of skylight glass. Then he would dawner into the room where you were lying, or maybe being fed, and at sight o' ye, the state that man would be in! "He could not get out o' the nursery quick enough, yet for all that he would be back within the hour." Saunders was a great standby. His humour jumped with mine far more nearly than my father's. This, too, in spite of the fact that I rarely saw him without calling down the vials of his wrath. My father seldom reproved me, never in anger, but Saunders, with the care of my young soul heavy on his Calvinistic conscience, laboured faithfully with me in season and out of season. One good he did me. He kept me from forgetting my Scottish tongue, and there was never a day that he did not supply me with some phrase sappy with mother wit and drowned in Scotland. "Aängus," he would say, "I kenna wha it is ye favour--nane o' your faither's folk at any rate--all chestnut-brown and quick as an eel. No wonder ye can tie knots in yoursel' at the parallel bars that were siccan a trouble to set up for ye to caper on, and your e'en like sloes after the first frosts. It's a gipsy ye are and no real Cawdor of all. Though they do say that the Cawdors have gipsy blood on the distaff side. At ony rate ye will never be the 'sponsible sober man your faither is." In spite of all this I stood high in the good graces of Saunders, and he would sometimes ask my father for the additional pocket-money which I dared not hint at myself. Saunders often wandered back into reminiscence of the time when he had been a jobbing stonemason on the Cromarty Firth, a companion of Hugh Miller's, and "the very deevil for raking the country." He had tramped scores of miles with Hugh Miller only for the sake of hearing him talk, yet I gathered that he had not believed a single word he had been told about the great fishes and curious monsters that once swam in the lakes of the Old Red Sandstone. "But I never telled him sae," he would conclude; "oh, no, Saunders kenned better. Hugh Miller was no doubt a wonderful genius, but at that time he was a man easily angered, and when roused, violent of his hands." So now I have sketched the school, and the several domestic surroundings which we proposed to leave behind us. I do not think that we thought much about these. I know that I did not, and I don't believe that Deventer did either--not, that is, till we saw the soldiers retreating from the barracks and forts of Aramon, and that little oblong blot of red in the sky which meant insurrection, and God only knew what of terror and destruction, fluttering in the brisk mistral wind from the tower on which we had so long seen the tricolour. At that time we had only the vaguest idea of what the Commune was, and none whatsoever of the new ideas of justice and equality which underlay that cumbrously ill-managed business. CHAPTER III THE LAUNDRY DOOR After a while Deventer and I went back to our joint study, where we essayed to do some work. But mostly we spoke apart, with lips that hardly moved, of our plans and all that lay in liberty-land beyond the walls. Deventer would go nowhere but to his father's house, and though I meant to end up with the red blouse of Garibaldi on my chest, I did not see how I could fail him at such a time. We had to wait till night, and the time was almost unendurably long. The lines in our text-books which our eyes followed did not bite upon our minds. We were thinking so hard of other things that philosophies slid aside impotent and discomfited. We began immediately to plan our escape, or at least I planned and Deventer, his great shaggy head on his hands and his eyes tight shut to concentrate thought, gave himself to the task of spotting the weak points. At the bottom of the junior promenade was a door which opened upon the river, and on the opposite side dwelt a man who owned a skiff. The elders of the upper school used to employ this man, Jules Rameau by name, to ferry them across as often as they had enough money for a secret supper at a cabaret in some shy street. But some ill-paid _pion_ must be bribed to allow the key to be "lifted" from the inside of his door. He must also take care to be in the deepest of sleep when it was returned. But this would not do for us. We were not coming back at all, and we could not allow any wretched usher to be sent about his business on our account. In our leisure time we had studied the whole of the ground plan of St. André. The school buildings occupied an enormous amount of space, far more than was needed for educational purposes. By sticking to it we made some astonishing discoveries. For instance, after passing through the kitchen, by descending a flight of steps which led to an unoccupied wing, where all sorts of educational rubbish had been accumulated--globes, wall-maps, ancient copy-books with headlines set by hand, and a good bust of the first Napoleon--we reached a clean-smelling, brightly lighted range of offices all set out with tubs, soap, boiling vats, and blue stains which ran over smooth boards. We had come upon the laundry of the college. On pegs, which ran all round, overalls were hung. There was even a shawl here and there, or a bonnet or two, as it were, flaunting their sex in this temple of the masculine virtues. Not Crusoe on his island was more astonished when he came on the footprint. For it was not known to any of us, not even to the _pions_, that a single feminine foot profaned any part of the _lycée_. But, whatever our surprise, it did not prevent us from locking the door and extracting the key of one of the range of exits which led out from the fixed washtubs upon the narrow drying ground, a terrace wholly invisible and unsuspected from our quarters on the opposite waterfront of the building. Of course, Deventer and I said nothing about our discovery. We did not want the whole upper school playing leap-frog through the kitchens, or telling lies as to their conquests among the laundry maids. It was possible that the lock of the door might be changed immediately, but we considered it more likely that the forewoman or caretaker in charge would say nothing at all about the loss, and trust to the key turning up. We thought the whole matter well over, and considered it probable that a gate in the wall would be left permanently open to facilitate the comings and goings of the workwomen in the early morning. Such an opening in the wall must lead immediately out upon the main road that wound circuitously up the hill, and by which all stores and provisions were brought to the porter's lodge. Then we made ready for the trip, laying out our most comfortable and inconspicuous town-going suits to take the place of the brass-buttoned _lycée_ uniform. With our door carefully locked, we raised a piece of the skirting board of our study and examined our store of arms, a couple of revolvers procured by Deventer in some vague inexplicable way at the works, three packets of ammunition apiece, and a couple of "surins," or long Apache knives--the use of which we had learned from the sous-préfet's son, a youth precondemned to the gallows, who before expulsion had sojourned an eventful and long-remembered three months at St. André. We profited by his instructions as to guards and undercuts by practising with models whittled in wood. This we were enabled to do in open playground by the simple expedient of calling the exercise legerdemain. Except what we could carry in our pockets, and the warlike accoutrement mentioned above, we left the whole of our property at the college. At the last minute Deventer packed away a Globe Shakespeare, and I found room for a limp Bagster Bible of small size, which my father had given me. The clatter of the bedward-driven flocks began to tramp past our study door. The hum of lesson preparation in the schoolrooms ceased. We carefully set our house in order, for it was time for our evening visit from Professor Renard. But he was called "Renard by Name and Renard by Nature" among the Juniors whose small deceits he had the knack of seeing through, even before the explanation was well under way. He was a Jesuit of the newer school, of an educated candour, which seemed natural to our young eyes, and a ready sympathy for our misdemeanours, which made him the most popular professor in the _lycée_ of St. André. He always tapped at our door before entering. He never listened nor made use of the information of the common school spy. These things counted for much. "Well, gentlemen," he said, as he came in and sat down in our one arm-chair, "you were too long on the terrace to-day to have a good report of your studies!" We convinced him to the contrary. For we had always gone on the principle that who does his work early and well has his way made plain for him, and in him a thousand things are overlooked for which a "slacker" would get himself jumped upon. After he had examined our exercises and approved of them, he looked up at us suddenly from under his overhanging brows. "You understood what the disturbance was about over there?" he demanded. "I knew," said Deventer, before I could stop him, "that if my father was left behind with his factories to look after, he would find himself mightily short-handed. He would have only the English staff to support him." "Ah," said Professor Renard, "you look at it from a personal point of view, as is natural. Your father----" "I have also a mother and sisters over there----" "I think I can promise that they will be safe whatever happens to your father. And you can trust to my judgment. By custom and training my class, the clergy of France, parochial and regular, are royalists. The fight over yonder was only tiger eating leopard. The reds of Gambetta's hue were chased out by the deeper scarlet of the Commune. Did you see that flag of theirs to-night, just before sunset? It glowed with the true hell-fire light." I had been in the habit of arguing in favour of the working men who were to constitute the brain and brawn of the Commune, but to-night I said nothing. Renard did not notice my silence, however, but continued his diatribe. "We have had Napoleons of victory and Napoleons of disaster--republics of guillotine and republics of veiled Cæsarism. And now we have a third which is a house divided against itself. Listen well, young men--the Bible speaks the truth--it cannot stand. Even now the time for its fall is almost come. The little financier Thiers will pay off the Germans from the chimney-corner hoards of the peasants. Oh, make no mistake, lads, we are beaten as a nation, because we have not obeyed God and His anointed king. The atheist Garibaldi, spoiler of churches and enemy of the Pope, will do nothing for France, except to widen the area over which the German flood will spread. Their armies of Rouen, of the Loire, and of the South-East are condemned in advance. It is as if the Lord of Hosts had said, 'I am against thee, O France! Thou wast once the eldest daughter of the Church. Now thou hast defiled thyself with the unbeliever, with the captains of Assyria, and art become a castaway.'" He seemed to recall himself. He was speaking as he did in the pulpit. The glow faded from his features. He smiled a little contemptuously at himself. "I am gabbling like a novice of the first year, and withal to a couple of Protestants," he said, getting up and extending his hands, one to each, as was his habit. "Forgive me!" Cramming our special themes into his pocket for after-consideration, he went downstairs with a heavy regular tread, and the noisy dormitories hushed at the sound. The Renard could not be taken in with the usual explanation that they had been reciting their prayers. Not till he was safe in his own room did the hum and clatter begin all over again. It was past midnight before we judged it prudent to begin our descent. Safe of course it was not, nor could ever be. In a school directed by clerical influences, supervision is personal and unceasing. The two of us owed our comparative immunity to our having passed our recent _baccalauréat_, and to having done honour to the college in the national examinations, but still more to the fact that we were English heretics, whose eternal damnation was assured beforehand, and whose lesser transgressions, therefore, mattered little, so long as they did not flaunt themselves before the pupils, devout, Catholic, and Roman. There was a faint sufficient light from the southern windows, for the moon was nearly full. The empty class-rooms smelt heavy and sour, and their doors stood open like the portholes of a battery, setting our hearts fluttering. We did not mean to let anything stand in the way of our purpose, but as we had been on good terms with the heads of the _lycée_ of St. André, we did not want any trouble now at the eleventh hour, or rather when for us the time was close on the stroke of twelve. We passed through the schoolrooms unchallenged. The dormitories were hushed and silent. We could see the dim light of the _pions'_ watch-candles under the doors. We considered that we had passed the zone of danger, and were hurrying forward with less precaution, when a light in the open door of the kitchen pulled us up all standing. I was lighter than Deventer, so I slipped my shoes and went forward on my stocking-soles to spy out the land. A "mitron," or cook-boy, was writing a letter to his sweetheart with incredible pains. He wrote with his hands, with his body, with the wrinkles on his brow, and the tongue which stuck out of his mouth, responsively vibrant as a compass-needle to the spirit of his composition. Here was a pretty pass. We must wait on this white-capped, dirty-aproned rascal who seemed in no hurry to finish his task. He had a file of feuilletons bound in brown paper before him, and he turned over the leaves of these in search of expressions which had pleased him, and which he now desired to appropriate. There seemed no end to his literary zeal, and if he was not hurried morning might come before we could get clear. Then I remembered that among Deventer's accomplishments was that of being able to imitate the wheezy asthmatic breathing and hollow cough of the _proviseur_. So I sent him back with instructions to carry out his imitation at the foot of the kitchen stairs. At the first wheeze and accompanying shuffle of a hand on the smooth wooden stair-rail, out went the "mitron's" candle. I could hear him gathering up his home-bound books of feuilletons, and whisking away his letter paper. I drew back as close to the wall as possible, for I suspected he would pass my way in order to reach his bedroom. I was no more than in time, for he stumbled over my foot, which had been carelessly thrust forward into the passage way. He did not stop to inquire into this, probably thinking that someone had put out their shoes to be cleaned in the morning. It was a narrow escape, for if it had chanced to be the boot-boy instead of an amorous 'prentice-cook we might not have escaped so easily. Deventer and I crossed the kitchen quickly. The wick of the "mitron's" candle was still smoking red, as we stole down the corkscrew stair which led to the laundry. Everything here smelt strongly of damp clothes and lye, but somewhere a window was open, for the current of air was pronounced, and suggested possible alternative if the lock of our door had been changed. But in this we were fortunate. The key which I had carried so long in the inner pocket of my jacket turned easily. The door swung noiselessly inwards, and the clean breath of the salt breeze from the Camargue marshes made our faces pleasantly chill and our lips sticky. We locked the door on the outside, and in another minute stood in the roadway, looking back at the great ghostly pile of the Palace of the Monks--as Louis the XIV had called it, when he cut down the plans so that it should not rival in dimensions that "abyss of expenditure" which was Versailles. But it was no time to stand sentimentalising upon architecture. We turned and went down the vacant white road as fast as our legs would serve us. CHAPTER IV THROUGH THE ENEMY'S LINES "Halt there!" cried Deventer suddenly to me. We were passing a pleasant white and green villa with a light in one ground-floor window. I stopped, and Deventer took me by the arm, with forceful compulsion. "I am going to help _my_ father," he whispered. "Don't you run off without telling yours what you mean to do. He can't prevent you, if you have made your mind up." "He won't try--he will only be glad to get back to his books." "Perhaps, but at any rate tell him yourself. He will like it better than when the hue and cry gets up to-morrow over yonder. You take my word for it, Angus Cawdor." I did not want to go, for at that time I did not understand nor much like my father. But Deventer said that if I would not walk he would carry me, a threat which at any other time would have made me smile. However, to please him I walked carefully to the window. With his habitual thoughtlessness about external things, the sash swung a little open and the light air blew the curtains back. My father was sitting like a student, with a shawl over his knees, a quite necessary fire of olive roots smouldering on the andirons, and his head, shining and silvery, bent over a book in which he was making notes. I did not wish to startle him, so I spoke in English, and in as commonplace a tone as I could muster. "Father," I said, as if my calling hours were the most ordinary in the world, "will you come across to the window for a moment?" He rose instantly and came over to the open window, one half of which I had pushed wide. The note-book was still in his hand, and the breeze ruffled its leaves so that he shut and clasped it. "Why, Angus, where do you come from?" he said. "Is it late? Won't you come in? Are you on your way back to college?" "No, father," I said; "I ought to be, but I have made up my mind to go to the war. I have had enough of learning, and examinations disgust me even when I come out first." He looked at me long and quietly, and then nodded his head. "I know--I know," he said, "it is the riot in the blood. I do not say that you do wrong to go, but you will need some money. I have a few hundred francs by me for which I have no use. They will not come amiss. Let me see--six, seven, eight hundred and fifty. Does Deventer go with you?" "He is waiting on the road below." "I thought as much--well, bid him good luck from me, and now good night, and God be with you, boy! Get your wild-oat sowing done as soon as possible and come back. You will find me waiting for you. You and I will do something yet." My father coughed a little in the draught through the open window, whereupon I made haste to be gone. The movement was purely unconscious, yet it was just such slight things that kept me such a long while from understanding my father. He seemed to be so careful for himself in little matters of health, that he had no care to spare for me, his only son, and this thought, I am ashamed to say, I carried away with me, even while my fingers caressed the eight hundred and fifty francs nestling safely in my breeches pocket. On the road I found Deventer waiting for me. "Well," he said, "I see you are glad you went?" "Yes," I answered, "eight hundred and fifty francs glad, but the old man hurried up my going, because the open window made a draught that irritated his cough." Deventer did not answer directly. "My governor thinks a lot of yours!" he said, and left the reproach to sink in. The which it did, all the more because _I_ thought a lot of Deventer's father, and was presently to think more and better. We took our road between the rows of sleeping houses, alternately black in shadow and mildly radiant under the moon. Not a light showed anywhere, not even in the _auberge_, with the huge branch stuck over the door in token of the excellence of the wine served out within. A vagrant cat or two, a baying dog spasmodically darting in and out of an alley-way, alone took note of our bygoing. The crowning buildings of the _lycée_ on the Convent Ridge showed up massive and almost martial among the dark pines. Then, after a sprinkle of villas, we struck the close-packed town with the clean water from the Gardon river prattling in the sewers at either side of every street. Aramon was one of the towns of the Midi (now rare) where they had not forgotten ancient Roman lessons as to the value of running water. As we descended the flat plain the river-meadow came up to meet us. We crossed the market-place among the splotched trunks of the plane trees, and turned along the quay of the great canal of the Little Rhône. Barges in long lines and solid tiers occupied it from end to end, and on each of these was a dog. So that we passed through a chorus of yelping curs, till the massive pillars of the great suspension bridge rose stark and marble-white in the moonlight. On the Old Aramon side the _douanier_ was asleep in his little creeper-covered cabin. We saw his head pillowed on his crossed arms as he bent over the table, and a smoking tallow candle guttered low at his elbow. Along the wide quadruple track of the bridge, stretched like the taut string of a bow for half a mile ahead of us, we saw nothing except the glistening planks underfoot, and overhead the mighty webbing of chains. But as we were stepping down the little descent which leads into the newer town of Aramon-les-Ateliers, we found our way suddenly barred. A couple of fellows, not much older than ourselves, suddenly sprang out of the shadows, and set shining bayonets to our breasts, demanding at the same time where we came from and whither we were going. It had been arranged between us previously that in any difficulty Deventer was to let me do the talking. Somehow he did not tell his lies with conviction, at least not yet. I gave our names, and said that we were runaway Seniors from the _lycée_ on the hill, on our way to enlist with the red-shirts of Garibaldi. I think that on hearing this one of the youths would have let us go on our way, but the younger, a cautious lad, spoke out in favour of taking us to head-quarters. "What! And leave the bridge unguarded!" cried his companion. "Either shoot them out of hand, say I, or let them go on to seek their Garibaldi. They wear the red as well as we. We have heard of his army at Dijon, but his son is recruiting at Orange, so your tramp will be so much the shorter." Finally they permitted us to pass after a whispered consultation, but the younger put several questions to us to prove whether we really came from the college or not--what days certain meats were served, the names of the lay brothers, the woodman, the _ramoneur_ or sweep, with personal details of several others. These we answered promptly, and to his apparent satisfaction. He knew much about the _lycée_, but we could not place him. His smooth face was hidden under a great Biscayan bonnet with red tassel, and his common speech was probably assumed. They directed us to follow the outer boulevard which skirted the town, and which should bring us to the Avignon gate without our needing to enter Aramon at all. The younger drew out a small box filled with inkpads and brass _tampons_, with which he stamped an order that would permit us to pass the opposite gate without annoyance. Naturally we took the road between the scant white poplars, as it had been indicated to us, and stuck to it faithfully so long as we were in sight of the post at the bridge-end. Then, at a particularly dark corner where the blank gable of a workshop loomed up to meet the overhanging flange of a fitting-shed, Deventer, who was now on his own ground, slid suddenly aside, and was lost in a devious track along which I had hard work to follow him. I could see his big figure, black against the glimmer of white-washed walls. I stumbled over anvils and heavy gearing scattered about, among which Deventer steered his way with the crafty experience and dainty serenity of a night-raking cat. From this labyrinth we emerged on innumerable tiny little gardens, with the stubs of cabbages and a few trenches of early vegetables for sole contents. Rickety cane hedges leaning over at every angle surrounded these, and Deventer pushed his way through them with the silent expertness of an Indian on the trail. Soon we came out on a wide park which was surrounded by a high wall. Deventer made directly for this. He struck it at a spot where a tree had thrust a sturdy limb through a fissure. The crack had been mended with plaster, but perhaps from curiosity, perhaps owing to carelessness, the branch of the tree had been allowed to go on growing. It was easy to swing oneself upon it and so gain the top of the wall. Deventer and I had made a good straight rush from cover, and flattered ourselves that we should be able to mount unnoticed, but a patter of bullets went buzzing like bees over our heads, while others buried themselves with a sullen "spat" which threw up little fountains of black leaf-mould in the ground at the foot of the wall. None, however, came our way, and the next moment Deventer and I were crouching among the lean spiky laurels and green-bedripped statues of his father's garden. "They are besieged," he whispered; "we must be careful. We are not inside yet, and you may be sure they will shoot quite as readily as the insurgent jacks behind there, and with better aim too. Dad kept the English and Americans on the ranges every evening all last summer." It was I who had the idea this time. "Lend me your lantern and I will Morse them a message." "The sentinel may not be able to read it off." "No, but he will bring someone who can. At any rate let us try." We established ourselves in an old summer-house at the edge of a pond, with a foolishly rustic door which opened straight upon the front of the house. Our light would be seen only by someone on the balconies, or at the windows of the upper floors. It was entirely dark, of course, but Deventer had no doubt that his father was there with all his faithful forces, "keeping his end up like a good old fighting Derryman," as his son expressed it. "Hugh--Deventer--and--his--friend--Cawdor-are--down--here. Answer--by--Morse--by--which--door--they--can--enter--the--house." I had Morsed this message three times before any notice was taken from within, and I had begun to give up hope. There must be nobody inside Château Schneider, as the place was called. But Deventer was far more hopeful. "They have gone to waken my father," he whispered. "You see, they daren't do anything in these parts without the old bird. He is quite a different man from the one you saw poking about among your father's books, or drinking in his wisdom. Here he makes people do things. Try her again." It was tedious work, but I flashed the whole message over again, according to the Morse code. This time the reply came back short and sweet. "What--the--devil--are--you--doing--there?" "That's Dad," said Hugh Deventer triumphantly. "Now we shall catch it." I answered that having seen the soldiers retreat, we had come to help. "Did--anybody--send--word--that--you--were--wanted?" twinkled the point of fire somewhere high among the chimney-stacks on the roof. These were a rarity in a district where one chimney for a house is counted a good average, but after one winter's experience of the windy Rhône valley, Dennis Deventer had refused to be done out of an open fireplace in every room. Now he reaped the fruit of his labours, for in summer he had sat behind his low wall and taken the air of an evening, and now it needed little to convert the chimney-stacks on the flat roof of his house into reliable defences. It was difficult to say in slow Morse alphabetage what we were doing down in the old summer-house, but at least I managed to convey that we had run the insurgent pickets and were in danger of being captured. We got our reply quickly enough. "Hugh--knows--the--door--under--the--main-outer--staircase." "Of course," said Hugh, "I always went in that way when my feet were dirty. Come on!" And we hurried across the sward, keeping between a sundial and fountain-basin railed about, into which half a dozen copper frogs sent each a thin thrill of water, with a sound quite unexpectedly cheerful and domestic thus heard in the darkness of the night. This time there was no clatter of firing behind us. The sharpshooters of the insurrectionaries had learned a lesson of caution near the house of the manager of the Small Arms Factory. Dennis Deventer had been training his assistants and lieutenants the whole year at movable butts. He had rigged up a defile of six men-shaped figures which passed in front of a firing party, or, bent forward in the attitude of men running, dashed one by one across the men's field of vision as they lay at the firing line. Hugh Deventer and I took for our goal the great double flight of steps, broad as a couple of carriage ways, which in the style of the Adams architecture united in front of a debased Corinthian portico at the height of the first floor windows of the Château. "What, Jack Jaikes!" cried Hugh to the grinning young man who opened the door for us. "Aye, just Jack Jaikes same as yesterday, and eh, but the chief is going to leather ye properly afore he sends ye back to school." "But we are not going to school any more!" "Maybe not--maybe not, but in this house we mostly go by what the master says. 'Tis more comfortable like all round. Eh, but ye have come in time to be leathered proper. If the lads of the Internationale yonder had been brisk at the firing ye might have gotten off, but as it is the auld man has nothing better to do than attend to ye on the spot!" This made me a little uncomfortable as to our reception, but Deventer did not seem greatly disturbed. "You tell me where my sisters are, and then go and find somebody else who will believe your lies, Jack Jaikes!" The dark young man with the large hands grinned still more. "Where should the three young ladies be at this time of night but in their beds? Go and take your dose, young gentlemen. No use stopping to think it over. In an hour, maybe, the worst of the sting will be by with--and at any rate there are sofas in the parlour!" "Get out, Jack Jaikes! Hannah and Liz may be in bed, but I warrant that Rhoda Polly is somewhere on the look-out with a gun ready." "Correct!" admitted Jaikes, with a chuckle. "I saw her at the window just over this old stone staircase a minute before t'owd man shouted the order for me to let you in." "Come on then, Cawdor," Hugh cried; "let's find Rhoda Polly!" He ran upstairs as fast as he could, anxious to find his sister before having the first interview with his father. For though he knew that Jack Jaikes had been lying, he could not be sure on what basis of fact so much imagination reposed. And then there was the message flashed from behind the chimney-pots, "Did anyone send you word that you were to come?" "You did not want to go and see your father," he whispered, as we stood close together, panting in the dark of the second landing. "You came away with well on a thousand francs in your pocket--got without asking, too. I run a thousand dangers to see my father, and all I am likely to get is a hiding." The moon was lighting up one side of the landing, and showing where mattresses and corn-sacks had been used to block the windows damaged by rifle fire. The house was wonderfully still, astonishingly so when one thought how many people were in it on the alert. But we must have made more noise than we had supposed in coming up the stairs, for as we stood here out of breath with the speed of our rush, a voice came calmly from the shadows by the window curtains. "Come over here, Hugh--and you, Angus Cawdor--I am Rhoda Polly." CHAPTER V THE DEVENTER GIRLS I suppose this is as good a place as any to bring in and explain the daughters of the house of Deventer. I had known them ever since I could remember. First as "kids" to be properly despised, then as long-legged, short-skirted, undistinguishable entities, useful at fielding, but remarkably bad at throwing in to the wicket. During our long stay at the _lycée_ these creatures had been at schools of their own. Their hair had gradually darkened and lengthened, so that it could be more easily tugged. It had been gathered up and arranged about their heads at a period which synchronised with the lengthening of their skirts, and the complete retirement of the ankles which had once been so freely whacked with hockey sticks and even (I regret to say) kicked at football practice. There was no great difference in age between the girls. They might have been triplets, but denied the accusation fiercely and unanimously, with more of personal feeling than seemed necessary. Often as court of last appeal the arbitration of their mother had to be referred to. In her gentle cooing voice she would give the names of the various medical men who had ushered them into the world. These were settled in various mineralogical centres. "There was Doctor Laidlaw of Coatbridge. He was Rhoda Polly's. A fine sharp man was Doctor Laidlaw, sandy-whiskered, but given to profane swearing. Not that he ever swore in _my_ presence, but he had the name for it among the colliers and ironworkers." "It's from him," insinuated Hugh, "that Rhoda Polly gets her vocabulary." "That's as it may be," his mother would reply patiently, her thoughts travelling before her to pick out number two. "Let me see. For Hannah I had Doctor Butterworth--Tom Butterworth of Barrow-in-Furness--and of all the upsetting conceited creatures on this earth, commend me to Tom. Tom-Show-a-Leg he was called, because he came to the balls in knee-breeches and silk stockings. But for all that I will never deny that he did his duty by Hannah, though at times I had my own adoes to keep Dennis from heaving him out of the window. "And there was Liz, poor thing. She had to put up with a 'locum' at Herbestal, in Belgium, before your father came here. There was not an English doctor in the place, but it made no great difference, for Madame Batyer was wiser than a whole college of doctors, and I will always think that beginning to be used to the language so soon has improved Liz's French accent!" Obviously it was impossible for me during my salad days to escape from falling in love with one or other of these three pretty girls. I solved the question by falling in love with all three in turns, the rotation of crops being determined chiefly by whose vacations coincided with mine. This bred no jealousies, for the girls were large-minded, and at that time a sweetheart more or less had no particular significance for them. Rhoda Polly was the learned one; she had been to college at Selborne, and still retained in speech and manner something Oxonian and aloof. But really she was gentle and humble-minded, eager with sympathy, and only shy because afraid of proffering it where it was not wanted. Rhoda Polly was a creamy blonde with abundant rippling hair, clearly cut small features, and the most sensitive of mouths. Yet she was full of the most unselfish courage, ready for long smiling endurances, and with that unusual feminine silence which enables a woman to keep her griefs to herself and even to deceive others into thinking she has none. Did anyone want anything, Rhoda Polly would find it. Had two tickets only been sent for the theatre, Rhoda Polly would not mind staying at home. Rhoda Polly never minded anything. She did not cry half the afternoon like Hannah over a spoilt dress, nor fall into any of Liz's miniature rages. She was Rhoda Polly, and everybody depended upon her. The girls confided in her largely, and never expected her to have any secrets of her own for truck, barter, or exchange. Hannah had been delicate always--or at least had been so considered by her mother. Her character had been formed between her mother's favour and her elder sister's habit of giving way rather than face an argument. She was dark and slender, placidly sure of being always right, and of looking best in a large picture hat with a raven plume. Hannah had been sent to school near Lausanne, which was kept by the daughter of the famous Froebel, assisted by a relative of the still more famous Pestalozzi. An English lady was in residence at the Pestalozzi-Froebel Institute, to teach the pupils the aristocratic manners, so rare and necessary an accomplishment in a country where the President of the Republic returns from his high office to put on his grocer's apron, and goes on weighing out pounds of tea at the counter of the old shop which had been his father's before him. Liz was all dimples and easy manners, the plaything of the house. She knew she could do no wrong, so long as she went on opening wide her eyes of myosotis blue, now purring and now scratching like a kitten; she would often dart away for no reason whatever, only to come back a minute after, having apparently forgotten the cause of her brusque disappearance. She was accordingly a good deal spoilt, not only by the young engineers who frequented the Château Schneider, but by her parents and sisters as well. One of the former, asked the reason of a decided preference for Liz, declared that it was because she could never be mistaken for a French convent-bred girl. It was pointed out to him that the same might be said for the other two, but he stuck to his point. Rhoda Polly with her Oxford manner of condescending to undergraduates, and Hannah with the Pestalozzi Institute refinements, might speak and look as if they had a duenna hidden in the background, but Liz--never! She was more likely to box somebody's ears. CHAPTER VI AN OLD MAN MASTERFUL Deventer and I came upon Rhoda Polly while we were getting our breath after the rush upstairs. We were old friends, and Rhoda Polly did not even put aside her rifle to greet us. "Come from school without leave--run away--good!" she exclaimed. "Have you made it all right with father?" "Not yet--that is--the fact is---we thought you might as well come along with us, Rhoda Polly." "You think there will be a storm, Hugh?" "Sure of it, but at least you can tell the Pater that Cawdor here is no prodigal. He comes with his father's blessing and a whole pile of paper money." "Father is among his entrenchments on the roof," said the girl; "better wait till he comes down. He is never quite himself when he is up there and the wind is blowing. Now tell me what made you run away?" "We are going to enlist among Garibaldi's volunteers, and fight for France--at least that's what Cawdor says. But I mean to stay here till all is safe for mother and you." At this moment Rhoda Polly nudged us. There was a sound of heavy decided footsteps grating on the steel ladder which led to the roof, then a thump and the noise of feet stamping on the floor above us. "He has been lying behind the chimney till he is stiff," whispered Rhoda Polly. "Give him time to limber himself." For a minute all was quiet along the Potomac, and then a mighty voice was heard demanding "those two young rascals." Deventer's smile was somewhat forced, and it might only have been the moonlight, but he certainly looked both sick and white about the gills. I was not greatly affected, but then I had not had his discipline. My case and credit were clear. All the same, it was obvious that the Dennis Deventer who captained his forces against the insurgents within the walls of Château Schneider, and the seeker after knowledge who prowled about my father's library or listened modestly to his interminable expositions, were very different persons. "Better not keep him waiting," said Rhoda Polly. "I will take you. He has a room for himself fitted up on the third floor." At the opening of the door we saw a long table covered with guns and revolvers, each ready to the hand, while behind the centre ran a continuous mountain range of ammunition in packets of gay-coloured green, red, and yellow. "What's all this, boys?" said Dennis Deventer gruffly, as soon as he caught sight of us. "Now, you Rhoda Polly, hold your tongue! You are not put up to tell their story. Come--out with it. What is it?" He thrust his hands through his crisping mane of hair with quick, nervous movements. "Come, get it into word, Master Hugh Deventer. You were put to do your duty at school. Why didn't you stay put?" Hugh Deventer had a difficulty about articulation. He was bold and brave really, besides being extraordinarily strong of body, but something in the tones of his father's voice seemed to make all these qualities, which I had seen proved so often, of no use to him. I looked at Rhoda Polly, and, to my amazement, even she appeared a little anxious. I began vaguely to understand the difference among parents, and to realise that with a father of the calibre of the Old Man Masterful I might have turned out a very different sort of son. Finally Deventer managed to stammer out his account of the retreat of the troops and the hoisting of the Red Flag. "I knew that they would be besieging you," he said, "so I came. I could not stop there doing mathematics, hearing the shots go off, and thinking what might be happening to my mother and the girls!" I could see in a moment that he had taken good ground with his father. The strong muscular hands were laid flat on the table, with a loud clap which made the pistols spring. "You did pretty well in your examinations--they tell me?" "Second--Cawdor was first. He coached me, or I should never have got within smelling distance. As it was we halved the honours, and were asked to dine with the _proviseur_ and professors when we got back." "You look a perfect ox for strength. Let me see if you can lift this table without disturbing anything." Deventer smiled for the first time, and after trying about for a little time so as to find the proper centre of gravity, he lifted the table, guns, ammunition and all, holding them with flexible arm on the level of his father's eyes. I think he was perfectly happy at that moment. Old Dennis did not smile like his son. He only nodded, and said, "Yes, you may be useful. Can you shoot?" "Fairly," Deventer admitted, "but not so well as Cawdor; and you should just see him send the Frenchmen's foils twirling to the roof of the gymnasium. He has fought three duels, Pater, and won every time. Even the Frenchmen could not deny it!" "Gilt-edged nonsense--duelling," old Dennis broke out, "though your grandfather was out a score of times in County Down in his day. But what do you do when the Frenchmen challenge you?" "Oh," cried Hugh gleefully, "I just chase them or their seconds till I catch them, and then I spank them till they agree that honour is satisfied. Generally by that time they are crying with rage, but that does not matter. However, they mostly let me alone now." "Well done, Hugh," said his father; "have something to eat, and then come up and find me on the roof. We ought to have something lively to amuse you before the morning. By the way, Cawdor, what does your father say to all this?" Deventer forestalled me, for he was anxious that I should say nothing about the draught from the window or my father's sending me off. "His father sent him along with his blessing, and eight hundred and fifty francs." "Well," rapped out the old man with the mane of grey hair, "you can keep the blessing, but I will take care of the money for you." And with that he held out his hand. Quite instinctively I gave it to him, without thinking what I was doing. Then, the next moment, I regretted the act and strove to undo it. I remembered muttering something about fighting for France and joining the levies of Garibaldi, when I should need all the money I could get. But old Dennis calmly locked my banknotes away in his safe, and assured me that I might 'list if I liked, but that it would be a downright fool's trick to carry about so much money among a parcel of Italians. He would send it on to me as I wanted it--twenty francs at a time. I could pick it up as I went, either at a bank, or from a correspondent of the Small Arms firm. Once left to ourselves, Rhoda Polly seemed to think that we had come rather well out of the scrape. "But it was Cawdor being there that saved you," said Rhoda Polly. "Father got so keen about Angus not spending his father's money, that he forgot about you. Now, you have only to run straight and do as you are bid----" "Do you think I shall be able to go with Cawdor when this simmers down? I want to wear the red blouse as much as he does." "As to that I don't know," said Rhoda Polly. "I don't believe he took it that you wanted to go soldiering as well. He means to put you into the works--fair field--no favour--up at five in the morning, breakfast in a tin can--that sort of thing--and as for Garibaldi's red jackets, he will sell them guns, but I rather fancy he will keep his son at home." "Well," said Deventer, "I shall be ready for the works all in good time, but if Cawdor goes off with Garibaldi, I go. I could not stay behind. Nor could even the Pater keep me. He would not chain me to a wall, and----" "At any rate," broke in the watchful Rhoda Polly, "here you are now, and the better you please the commander-in-chief the better chance there will be for you afterwards when the time comes. I shall do what I can for you, Hugh." "Thanks, old girl," said Deventer. "Where are Hannah and Liz?" "Where should they be but in bed, where, of course, I ought to be also. Only I have a dispensation to get what sleep I can in the daytime. I can see in the dark better than anyone in the house. I saw them gathering for the attack under the shadow of the pines on Thursday night, an hour after the moon had gone down. The Pater said it was a near shave, and spoke about my 'high-power vision' as if it were an attachment he had had fitted before I was born." The defence of the Château was undertaken by the entire English-speaking colony of Aramon. The wives and children of the overseers and foremen were lodged in the rooms looking on the inner quadrangle, but took their meals in the great hall floored with many-coloured marbles. Their husbands and the younger unmarried men looked in occasionally when they could get off, ate what snacks stood handy on the sideboard and disappeared. It was their duty to keep a watch over the workshops of the Company, and on the roof of the stables were half a dozen mitrailleuses ready to sweep the open square which lay out flat as a billiard-board beneath the windows of the Château Schneider, surrounded by workshops and storehouses on every side. But a far more dangerous task was the raid through the ateliers themselves, which Dennis Deventer ordered to be made at irregular intervals. "The divils would be breaking up the Company's machinery if I did not keep all their little plans in the back of my head. And that's none so easy, young Cawdor, for mark me this, 'tis easy to keep track of what a clever man will imagine to do. You have only to think what you would do yourself in his place. But you never know where ignorant stupid fools will break out, and that's the danger of it, Angus me lad!" "But," I said, "they cannot all be such fools, for with my own eyes I saw them send the regular soldiers to the rightabout." "The regular soldiers--raw levies mostly, I tell you," burst out old Dennis fiercely. "I should know, for I armed them man by man out of my own gun-sheds and rifle-racks. And I tell ye that beyond a few instruction sergeants from the artillery, there was divil a man among them who could point a chassepot or lay a piece. Our noisy revolutionaries simply frightened them out of the town, and if it had not been for our little stock company here, the biggest manufacturing arsenal in France would have been in their hands. Even as it is they have found enough rifles to arm themselves, but so far we have saved the mitrailleuses and the field artillery. The deputation which came from Marseilles did not go away very much the richer." "But what is it that they want, sir?" I asked. Dennis Deventer looked at me straight between the eyes. "They want what they ought to have, Angus me boy, and what they should have, if I were not a servant of the Small Arms Company." I was taken aback at his answer, though I had heard something like it from my father. But in his case I had taken it for mere poetry or philosophy, and so thought no more about it. But a man like Dennis Deventer, who was fighting these very insurgents--why, I tell you it was a curious thing to listen to, and made me wonder if I had heard aright. The old man continued, his bold blue eyes looking straight over my shoulder as if he saw something beyond me. "You ask me why in that case I am fighting men who are in the right? Right is right, and wrong is wrong, you say. But bide a moment, Master Angus. I agree that these poor devils should have better wages, shorter hours, and a chance to lead the lives of human beings. I agree that at least half of the net profits we make ought to go to the men who made every penny. The proportion would not be too large. I should be willing that my own share should be cut down to help this along. But, also, Angus me lad, I know that murder and arson are not the best way for men to get their rights. General insurrection is still worse. They have tried to kill me, who am their best friend. That is nothing. It belongs to the business of manager. It is one of our risks. But they have also tried to break the machinery and to set fire to the buildings. They would burn Aramon if they could--they are so ill-advised. And what for? Only to find themselves left stranded without work or wages. "This is a flea-bite," he went on. "I defend the Château because of my wife and daughters. But the business began when the men saw the masters flaunting their riches, entertaining the Emperor and Empress at the cost of millions on the very day when processes were being served from door to door of the rows of cottages belonging to the Company. A man may burn his hand or hurt his foot, but he must by no means get behind with his rent. If we had not laid a dozen firebrands by the heels without troubling the police, blood would have been shed in Aramon that day of the Imperial reception." Dennis Deventer had spoken with such determination and cold anger, that it took me with a new surprise to see him spring like a boy up the steel ladder on to the roof in answer to some call unheard by me. Rhoda Polly followed, and Hugh and I did not stay behind. Rhoda Polly gave us both a hand. "Mind your feet," she whispered, "there are all sorts of things scattered about." I could hear the voice of Dennis Deventer somewhere in the darkness. The stars were still keen and bright, though the morning of the Midi was nigh to the breaking. "Clear machine-guns three, four, and six," he ordered. "Train them on the doors of the fitting-shed. There are lights over yonder I don't like, and I can sniff the paraffin in the air!" Deventer and I stood quite still with Rhoda Polly between us. Neither of us knew what to do. We had received no word of command, and what we had just heard had somehow dislocated our simple world of duty. We had imagined all the right to be on one side, all the wrong on the other. Now quite unexpectedly we saw the "tatter of scarlet" from a new angle. Its colour heightened till it glowed like a ruby. After all it stood for an idea--the ideal even which had brought us from school, and sent us on our wild-goose chase for Garibaldi. The weak were to be supported against the strong. Perhaps, after all, those who had been long driven to the wall were at last to hold the crown of the causeway. Meanwhile, peering into the night we could see the dark masses of men clustering about the street corners of Aramon. The stars were paling a little when we saw them suddenly bunch together and run towards the long tiled roofs of the fitting-sheds, filled with valuable new machinery. Lanterns winked and tossed as they went, torches flamed high, and there came to our ears a kind of smothered cheer. "Are you there, Jack Jaikes?" "Here, sir." "Aim well in front of them, and let them have it as soon as they get close to the buildings. The ricochet from the walls will scare them as well as anything else." There was no hesitation in the Old Man's fighting dispositions, whatever he might think privately of the men's cause. He would protect his master's property, and point out in the most practical way to the men that they were going the wrong way about to get their wrongs redressed. "B-r-r-r! B-r-r-r!" whirred and spluttered the mitrailleuses. These first machine-guns made a curious noise like the explosion of many sulphur matches held one after the other over a lamp chimney. The effect, however, was wonderful. The black rush of men checked itself a score of paces from the fitting-sheds. Several fell to the ground, with a clatter of spilt petroleum cans, but the most turned tail and ran as hard as possible for the shelter of the streets and the trees along the boulevards. One man only, very broad in the shoulders, bareheaded and belted with a red sash, kept on. He was carrying a torch dipped with tar, and this he thrust repeatedly under the doorway of the atelier. "Give me Number 27, quick!" commanded Dennis Deventer. "I know who that man is, and I am sorry, but he must be stopped." Jack Jaikes placed the rifle in the old man's hand, and everybody held their breaths. The lintel of the fitting-shed protected the fire-raiser a little. We could see him thrusting with his torch till the sparks and smoke almost enveloped him. Then he threw down the torch and ran heavily back. He took hold of the first jar of petroleum which had been abandoned in the flight, and was hastening back with it when Number 27 spoke. The man appeared to gather himself up. Then he made a spring forwards, spilling the oil in a gush in the direction of the smouldering torch. But there came no answering burst of flame. The distance was too great. Dennis watched a moment after reloading, then shook his head gloomily. "He was a good workman too--yet that does not help a man when once the maggot begins to gnaw underneath the brain pan." The next day broke fresh and bright, with only that faint touch of Camargue mist which the sun dissolves in his first quarter of an hour. From the roof and northern balcony we could hear a curious thudding sound in the direction of the moulding-works. "The steam hammer," said Jack Jaikes; "pity we did not think to put her out of gear." When he came down the chief listened a moment with his better ear turned towards the sound. Then he smiled ironically. "They are trying to get a big field-gun ready for us. Luckily we have sent off the last we had in store. But they can't do it. At least they can't do it in time. There are good workmen and capital fitters among them, but who is to do their calculations?" "No matter," grumbled Jack Jaikes, half to himself, "they will go by rule of thumb, and though their gun would not pass army tests, they will make it big enough and strong enough to drive a solid shell in at one side of this house and out at the other." At that moment the girls came down for breakfast, and there was no more talk about the insurgents, or the state of siege at Château Schneider. CHAPTER VII OUR FIRST COMMUNARD Hannah and Liz Deventer came in arm and arm. Hannah grave and sweet, with her air of taking admiration for granted and being rather bored by it; Liz dimpled and glancing from one to the other, deciding which of the young men would best serve her for cavalier that day. As for Rhoda Polly she had been in and out of the room for an hour, enforcing authority in the kitchen, rousing new courage in frightened servants whom only her example and abounding vitality shamed into remaining at their duty. Dennis Deventer did not appear. Jack Jaikes came down presently and carried him up a pot of strong coffee and some rolls. Most of us hardly made even a pretence of sitting down, so eager were we to get back to our posts, but Hugh Deventer and a young apprentice, Laurent, the son of an English mother and a French father, stayed to keep the two younger girls company. As for me, I followed Rhoda Polly out upon the roof. There I cleaned her rifle for her carefully, while she sat and watched me, her chin upon her palms. We were both quite comfortably hidden behind the stack of north-looking chimneys. Rhoda Polly had always been a friend of mine, and there was no false shame between us, any more than between two college comrades of the same age and standing. In quickly lapsing phrases she told me how the trouble had begun. "It was," she said, "altogether a political matter at first. It had to do with the position of Procureur of the Republic, held by young Gaston Cremieux of Marseilles. He had been appointed by Gambetta in September, in the war year. But he was a 'red' and belonged to the Internationale, so that the solid people of the department, royalists for the most part, set about to try and dislodge him. He used to come often to our house, and he and father sat long arguing. I think we all liked him. He had great influence with the men up at the works, and so long as he was permitted to speak to them and go to their reunions, we had no trouble. "But when Gambetta lost his power, and Thiers became dictator, or president, or something, Gaston Cremieux could not long remain Procureur. They stripped him of his office, and gave it to a dry-as-dust lawyer who did as the military tribunals bade him." I put a question here. "No," continued Rhoda Polly, with a flash of indignation, "if you knew my father better, you would know that he does not shelter himself behind anyone. Still, Cremieux was undoubtedly a help. My father can explain better than I can, but the men down here wanted to make our department a sovereign state like the American ones--New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and so on." "But," said I, "over there they have just fought a long and bloody war for the purpose of proving that no state is sovereign, but each must be subordinate to the central authority at Washington." "Well, I don't know," said Rhoda Polly, "at least, that was the idea of these people down here, and I suppose all over France wherever there are many workmen. The peasants and agriculturists are different. They want only two things: low taxes and high prices." Rhoda Polly was swinging herself back and forward on the low parapet which ran round the roof in so careless a fashion, that I begged her to take care that she did not lose her balance. At my words she stopped, cast a glance behind her, was instantly brought to her feet by what she saw, and ran towards the steel ladder crying, "It is Gaston Cremieux. I must let him in." I went to the parapet holding the cleaned gun idly in my hand. A tall young man, with dark hair and a slight pointed beard, was coming straight across from the head-quarters of the insurgents. He walked easily and with a confident swing up the wide Stair of Honour which led to the front door. Before he had reached the top the bolts were already shooting from within, and the door soon stood open; for Rhoda Polly had gathered in Jack Jaikes on her way, to help in undoing the intricate barrage and strengthening of the defence. I am not sure that Jack Jaikes looked with much favour upon the welcome which Rhoda Polly gave to the young ex-Procureur of the Republic, but the lady knew well what she was about. In losing his office he had neither lost in influence nor authority, and she knew that if anyone could help to end the strife, it was this polite and deferential young man. "I have been over at Nîmes seeing the family of my friend Rossel," he explained. "I heard there was some trouble at the works, so I took Aramon-les-Ateliers on my way back to Marseilles." "That was good of you," said Rhoda Polly, "if anyone can set things right, you can. You know what my father thinks, and what he has done for the men, but he will not have the firm's machinery tampered with if he can help it." Gaston Cremieux nodded his head of crisp black curls. "_I_ understand," he said; "but there are men over yonder who cannot understand the uprightness of a man like your father. Worse still, they cannot believe that he wishes them well, just because he is a manager in the pay of the Company. He must on that very account be their enemy, they say, and they remain blind to the fact that he alone can put their needs and demands before the masters." "Come up and see my father," said the girl, and without waiting for any word of consent, she turned and led the way, flitting before him with the lithe grace learned in the gymnasia of Selborne College. Some minutes afterwards I encountered Jack Jaikes who had returned from re-bolting and restrengthening the door. "If I could break that young scoundrel's neck I would be doing some good. He is at the bottom of all this trouble. I went to one of his speechifyings to see what he was after, and he led them like a flock of lambs. He was preaching revolt and red revolution, so far as I could make out--the works to belong to the workers and such-like clotted nonsense--and now Rhoda Polly receives him like an angel from heaven, and up they go to throw dust in the eyes of the old man. If I had my way of it--_augh_!" And here Jack Jaikes turned away snorting to express the suddenness and certainty with which he would regulate the case of ex-Procureur Gaston Cremieux, if the matter were left in his hands. On the roof another view was being taken. I heard the details from Hugh Deventer, who at this time was constantly with his father, now that he had been forgiven and, as it were, taken back into the general scheme of things as conceived by Dennis Deventer. "Rhoda Polly brought him up" (so ran his narrative), "and it was like watching a hen with a new brood of chickens to see the pair of them. Rhoda Polly is like that. She was quite sure that she had found the specific remedy for all our woes, so she could hardly let the man speak at first, so anxious was she that he should say the right thing. "She kept at it interrupting so long, that at last the Pater, who was not specially patient just then, told her to go away and let them talk it out in peace. And that is pretty strong from the Pater to Rhoda Polly, for mostly he encourages her to say and do just what she likes. She is not like the others. There is nothing of the mother's-apron-string-girl about Rhoda Polly. She likes running about the works in a dirty blouse much better than sitting all day, with embroidery on her knee, listening to mother purring. "As for Cremieux and my father, they understood each other from the first. It was wonderful to find how much they had in common. And he will help to stop the rioting. He says he will not go away from Aramon till the men are back at work. Cremieux's opinion is that these sporadic risings do no good, even when run on the best lines, without personal violence or destruction of property. To succeed, the thing must be a national movement, concerted and directed from each one of the great towns, otherwise the bourgeois government merely waits till its feet are free elsewhere, and then tramples out one by one all the little revolts." At that moment Deventer caught me by the arm. "Hold hard," he whispered, "here he comes with the Chief. I declare they are as thick as thieves, and yet in an hour he may be leading the rascals over yonder to burn down the Château." The restless eyes of Dennis Deventer spied me out. "Ah, Angus me boy," he hailed, "come this way. You two ought to know one another. This is our philosopher's son from Gobelet, who has run away from college to take service under Garibaldi." "If he casts his eyes in that direction," said the dark young man, smiling, "I can find him more profitable work nearer home." "Come, none of your proselytising on my ground!" said Dennis Deventer, laying a heavy hand on his companion's shoulder. "If he chooses to go and get a bullet in him for the sake of France, that is his own affair. But I will not have him mixed up in your little revolutions about which he knows nothing at all." "But I will teach him. He is intelligent--of a fine race--it is such men we need. Let me speak to him, I beg." But Dennis Deventer would listen to nothing. He pushed his visitor out of the hall, laughing and shaking his head good-humouredly. "Take anyone you like from my rank and file," he said, "but leave my staff officers alone." But I did not forget that tall, grave young man, who talked so earnestly and pleaded so strongly for a chance to teach me the wisdom of insurrection. CHAPTER VIII I SEE THE SCARLET TATTER NEAR AT HAND I might have thought much more about Gaston Cremieux and the dark fatality of his eyes, if other things had not immediately distracted my attention. The garrison had had its noon dinner in the great hall, and at one o'clock the family were served in the fine red and gold dining-room, the furnishings of which had been the gift of the Emperor. Dennis Deventer sat at the top of the table with the gleeful air of having dispatched the business of the day. There was a feeling of picnic unceremoniousness about the feast. The servants were somewhat thinned by flight, and as there was no hard-and-fast etiquette in Dennis Deventer's house on any occasion, several of the younger apprentice engineers assisted in the service, partly from a general feeling of loyalty, and partly because they liked to steal glances at the three Deventer girls--glances of which only Liz appeared conscious and or in any way prompt with a return fire. Even Jack Jaikes, a dark figure of a Spanish hidalgo, in engineer's blue serge and pockets continually bulging with spanners, looked in and said with brusque courtesy: "Anything I can do for you, Chief?" "Nothing," said Dennis Deventer, over his shoulder, "except to come in and sit down with us." "Thank you, Chief," answered Jaikes, "but I have dined already. I am watching the rascals from the roof. They have gone away for a while to their 'speak-house,' where doubtless they are talking over the matter. But it will not do to trust to appearances. I wish you would let me run that live wire from the big dynamo in the power-house. That would curl them up by the score if they tried any more of their rushes." Dennis Deventer turned on him savagely, the carving-knife in hand and upheld threateningly. "You pirate," he cried, "do as I tell you, and if I hear of your meddling with the wires I will blow your brains out. Don't you see that we have got to go on living here, and the men we have to work the factory with are the fellows out in the brush yonder? They will try to kill us now, but they will not bear any lasting malice if a few of them are bowled over while we are defending ourselves. But electrocution by a live wire is a different thing. They can't fight us with those weapons, and I am not going to have our lives made impossible by any wholesale scientific butchery." Jack Jaikes held his ground in the doorway, his thin body flattened against the panels to let the hurrying servants and apprentices pass. "I don't know about 'scientific butchery,'" he said, "but I do know that some one of them is pretty handy with the trick of short-circuiting our new Gramme armature. It wasn't any garlic-smelling 'Gugusse' who worked that out. I have put it right three times, so I know it was no accident. But at any rate I am going to watch, if I have to slink about the dynamo-sheds all night. I shall carry the new Henry thirteen repeater I had from Edinburgh yesterday, and if I don't touch up that other gang of scientific ruffians my name is not Jack Jaikes, and I never smelt the good Clyde water from the Broomielaw." Having thus had the last word, he shouldered his notable new Henry rifle and strode off with his head in the air. "Bit of buccaneer blood in that fellow," said Dennis Deventer, "a hard horse to hold in sober times, but deuced dependable in an emergency. Hates the Frenchmen, however, and does not get on with them. Mostly I have to keep him on special duty, or in the office, though he is a capital engineer, and a capital 'driver' with Englishmen or Scots of his own breed who understand him. But if he is not careful he will get something for himself one of these days--a knife between the shoulder-blades as like as not." Gentle Mrs. Dennis had her lament to make. "I wish you would give him to me to look after. He can do almost anything. He mended my spare sewing-machine which has not worked for years, and made the missing parts himself. I believe some of them were given to Liz to play with when she was a little girl, and I have never seen them since." "By all means have Jack Jaikes to tinker at your embroidery frames--that is, if you can tame him. For myself I do not see him in the rôle of family emergency man. But you must wait till we get the things all fixed here and the shops running handily. Then I dare say it may be just as well for Jaikes to eclipse himself for a day or two. If you can persuade him to spend his time in the Château without coming into the works till things cool off a bit, it will be best for all of us. He will not find himself exactly popular for a while." "Of course I can, Dennis," said his wife, who never doubted her powers of persuasion. "There are hundreds of things that need to be done, and the girls and I can easily find him work for a year. The place is going to rack and ruin. High or low hardly a bolt will slide. Not a door will lock except the outer ones which you yourself have had looked to recently. What do you say, girls?" "It is quite true, father," said Rhoda Polly. "I was trying to get Hugh to do some little things down in the kitchen yesterday, but whatever they teach him up at St. André, to make himself useful is certainly not among them. He was as dense as a French plum-pudding, and I had far more idea of how to handle a tool, for all he is older and twice my size." Both Hannah and Liz agreed that there was a decided missionary call for the assistance of Jack Jaikes in the Château as soon as possible. Something in the tone of his youngest daughter touched Dennis Deventer's educated ear. He looked up sharply from his plate. "Now, Liz," he said, "I will have no nonsense of _that_ kind!" Liz blushed and dimpled, but kept her eyes well on her knife and fork without a word. But there was a smile which lurked about the corners of her mouth which said that her father, though a wise and masterful man in his own house, could not control what was in the mind of a young girl. It was a family tradition that at table Dennis Deventer should not be argued with. Their mother might say inconsequent things in her purring fashion, but only Rhoda Polly was allowed to stand up to their Old Man. Even she rarely interfered, except in case of flagrant injustice or misunderstanding, or when the subject matter under discussion had been agreed upon beforehand in the family conclave. In Liz's case Rhoda Polly judged there was no cause to interfere. It had become too much Liz's habit to count all males coming to the house as "her meat," hardly excluding the halt, the maimed, and the blind. If her father had noticed this growing peculiarity, he had done so "off his own bat," and on the whole it was a good thing. The knowledge that she was under suspicion at head-quarters might do something to keep Liz within bounds. At least if she did get tangled up in her own snares, she would not have the face to go to their father for pity or demands for disentanglement. Rhoda Polly hoped that this would put some of the iron which was in her own blood into that of her more temperamental and impulsive younger sister. The turmoil, the constant clatter of knives, forks, and plates, the discussion which swayed from one side of the table to the other, the well-worn family jests, which, because I held no key to their origin, shut me out from the shouts of merriment they provoked--all produced on me a feeling of dazed isolation. I liked the Deventers singly, especially Rhoda Polly and her father. I could talk to each with ease and an honest eye to my own profit or amusement. But I will not hide it from you that I found the entire Deventer family, taken together, too much for me. I think I inherit my father's feeling for a "twa-handed crack" as the only genuine method of intercourse among reasoning beings. More than three in a conversation only serves to darken counsel by words without knowledge. In a company of four my father is reduced to complete silence, unless, indeed, he assumes his gown professorial and simply prelects. In this way alone, and on condition that nobody says a word, my father could be induced to give forth of his wisdom in company. But a sympathetic touch on the shoulder from Rhoda Polly, one of whose peculiarities was that she understood things without being told, delivered me from my awkwardness. "I don't think you have been here since we all grew up," she said, with a smile. "We _are_ rather _assommant_, I admit. We stun people with our trick of throwing ourselves at each other's heads. But you will soon get used to the clamour. Meantime, if I were you, I should go out and walk in the acacia avenue. It is a good place to be quiet in, and I have it in my mind that you may learn something there"--she paused a moment--"something that will take the taste of Jack Jaikes' threatenings and slaughters out of your mouth." She had moved back her chair a little so as to let me slip out, and then with a nod and half-smile she launched herself into the fiercest of the fray. So keen was challenge and _réplique_ just at that moment that I was outside the fine old tapestried dining-room without being perceived by anyone. I ran downstairs and reported to the sentinel on duty at the front door. I told him that I did not feel well and was going to take the air. He asked if I had my revolvers with me, and was only pacified at sight of them. He had gone often with messages from the Chief to my father at Gobelet, and so took an interest in me. I skirted the house, and was just plunging into a belt of woodland through which I could gain the acacia walk without being seen, when I was hailed from the roof by Jack Jaikes. He wanted to know where I was going, and what I was going to do when I got there. Instead of being rude and obvious I made him the reply which I knew would baffle him. "Ask Rhoda Polly!" I said, and he swore aloud. If he had not been safe on the roof he would have come after me at once. As it was I advised him that he had as much responsibility as one man could safely shoulder, and that he would do wisely not to fret about me. With that I waved my hand and stepped into the thickest of the bushes. The little wood ran round an artificial lake, and was prolonged right to the great wall of the Château policies half a mile away. It was the part of the grounds most distant from the works, and from what might be called the centre of disturbance. I climbed a young but good-sized plane which overtopped the wall. It had been pollarded, and the step from the tree to the top of the wall was rather a long one. I managed it, however, without difficulty, thanks to the bough of an acacia which came swaying and trembling over from the highway beyond. The next moment I had dropped like a cat out of the acacia boughs into the road. A young man was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, pensively smoking a cigarette, his hat pulled low on his brow, and his eyes on the road. I had no chance to escape his notice, for the sound of my feet attracted him and he looked up at once. He rose smilingly and held out his hand. It was Gaston Cremieux. CHAPTER IX A REUNION OF THE REDS "Did Rhoda Polly send you?" Cremieux asked, though I am sure he knew. "She bade me come here, saying that perhaps I might learn something to my advantage." He looked at me queerly, and with a shade of suspicion which I quite misunderstood. "Then I may take it that she does not mean to come herself?" "I am sure she has not the least idea of that. She was in the very thick of a discussion upon the possibility of factories and ateliers being run entirely by working men. The whole family had taken sides, and when I came away I expected every moment to see them leap at each other's throats." "They are extraordinary, but quite admirable," he said, throwing away his cigarette and rising. "We cannot breed anything of the kind in France. Our spirit of family discipline forbids it. We have the cult of ancestor worship as in China, only we do not get farther back than father and mother. It is mainly the mother who leads the young men of France. We have them among us too, these good mothers, women who teach their sons to fight to the death for the great Day of Freedom. But they are scarce. Our women are still under the heel of the priesthood, and the young men, though they may follow us, still keep the inmost corner of their hearts for their mothers; and one day when we most want them, we may find them missing at roll-call. His mother cannot bear that her son should be outcast and accursed. He need not go to Mass, but if he will only see her favourite priest a moment in secret, she is sure that he will stay at home with her. Like you, Rossel is a Protestant and has not this to put up with. He is now in Metz with Bazaine, but he will return, and then you and the world will see a man." I asked him what the men meant to do, and if he thought he could not prevent further fighting and burning. Before he had time to answer a bell began clanging furiously in the town. "That is the signal," he said; "the Commune of Aramon is to meet in general assembly. Will you come? You will be quite safe with me, even though I am going to make them very angry. And besides, as Rhoda Polly says, you will learn something to your advantage." "Do you think she meant that?" I asked. "Ah, you may go far and look long before you find out all that is in Rhoda Polly's mind, but at any rate I suppose she meant that you would be safe with me, and might hear a few things that are not included in the curriculum of the _Lycée_ St. André." We took our way towards the clanging bell, and it had the weirdest effect as we topped a knoll, where the noise came so fierce and angry as to put a stop to our conversation. Anon descending into deep dells out of which the pines shot straight upwards like darts, sheer trunks for a hundred feet before the first branch was poised delicately outwards as if to grasp the light, we lost the sound of the rebellious tocsin, or it came to our ears soft as the Angelus floated over the fields to a worshipping peasantry in days that were yet of faith. But Gaston Cremieux kept on his way without paying much notice to the woodland sights about him. His colour rose, and his shoulders were bent forward with a certain eagerness. The bell seemed to be calling him, and I doubt not he was thinking of the responsibility of guiding aright these darkened souls. His convictions, his aspirations were theirs. But their volcanic outbursts of destructive energy, sudden, spiteful, and inexplicable, vexed and troubled him. Yet the reason plainly was that they had been hurt by those in authority over them, and they struck back as naturally and instinctively as bees fly out to sting when their hive is overturned. That the affair is partly an accident does not matter either to bee or workman. Presently we began to pass little villas--"Mon Plaisir," "Mont Dore," and "Château des Roses." The mountain path among the pines began to widen into a made road, and to carry traces of wheelmarks. My leader quickened his pace, and after a few minutes of threading our way among the houses of New Aramon, we turned aside and entered a wide space in the centre of which was a hall roofed with corrugated iron. Doors wide and high as those of a barn stood open, and in the interior we could see many people, men and women, already seated on rude benches. There were also groups outside, but these were mostly younger men, sullen-faced and furtive of eye. To me it seemed as if they regarded my companion with no favourable looks. Several had been wounded in the fighting, and now carried bandaged arms or white-wrapped heads. Somehow I knew at once that this was the dangerous element, and I knew that the whirring machine guns behind which glanced the pitiless eye of Jack Jaikes, had had something to say to them. Outwardly the Reunion of the Reds had nothing to distinguish it from other political gatherings in the Midi. Indeed the type had been struck out in the earlier pre-Robespierre period of the great Revolution, improved upon in 1830 and 1848, and had now imposed itself even upon the anarchists. A president was appointed, who had his pair of vice-presidents and a couple of secretaries to prepare a report of the proceedings exactly as you may find described in Mirabeau's _Courier de Provence_. The Hall of the People at Aramon had been an old riding-school in the days before Solferino, when the scheming Emperor was hotly preparing for his campaign across the Milanese plains. It was now a rather dimly lighted, well-ventilated meeting-place, with a clean light-varnished platform in front for speakers, and behind a broader space on which cane chairs had been set out for the "assessors"--as we would say "members of committee." These were being filled as we entered the hall. Names were called out, and sturdy fathers of families rose from beside their spouses to tramp up to the "assessors" chairs, not without a certain conscious dignity as citizens whose worth was unexpectedly made apparent to all men. I have seen the same expression since on the faces of men pressed to become members of a municipality, or even a village council, and I suppose Cabinet Ministers look like that when the new Prime Minister hints at the object of his visit. The entrance of Gaston Cremieux called forth a kind of shrill cheer, but the Latin races had not at that time learned the full-bodied roar which greets and encourages a favourite orator in England or America. I was seated at the right of the speaker's platform, and a little behind in shadow--which was as well, for there I could see without being seen. And what I saw astonished me. There were nearly a couple of thousand people in the riding-school by the time that Gaston Cremieux had shaken hands with the President and taken his seat. The iron galleries which ran round contained the younger people, many girls and their sweethearts, while at the far end were a score or two of long-limbed fellows clustered together--probably day labourers whose dusky tints and clustering black curls indicated their Italian origin. So long as the great doors remained open, I could see outside the restless hither and thither of the young men who had scowled at us as we came into the court. It was not long before the President and Bureau of Workmen of the Ateliers des Armes at Aramon declared that this properly called and constituted general meeting was open. It was evident that some of the elder men were ready enough to speak, and a grave-faced grey-headed man rose to make his way towards the speaker's platform. But long before he reached the _estrade_, it had already been taken possession of by a young man with a shaggy head and wild beady eyes. This was Georges Barrès, a moulder in the new big gun factory. He had but recently arrived from St. Etienne, and had instantly become a notable firebrand. The speech into which he plunged was a fierce denunciation of the masters and managers, through which ran the assertion that all property was theft. The workers, therefore, were justified in redressing their wrongs with the strong hand, and he and his companions would see to it that they did not die of starvation with so many rich and fine houses all about them. As for Monsieur Deventer and his English vermin of overseers, they must be killed out like rats. Only so would the town be purified. Only so would their dead comrades be avenged, and a solid foundation be laid for the Free Commune in which the works and all within them, the profits and everything included in the year's trading, should belong absolutely to the workers. There was some applause from the groups that had gathered in, ceasing their rapid caged-wolf sentry-go to hear their leader. But for the most part the meeting sat silent and unresponsive. At a nod from the chairman a sturdy mechanician rose. He was an "assembler," or skilled workman, who takes the parts of the gun as they are sent in from the various departments, and then with file, saw, and sandpaper, but especially by the wisdom of the eye, "assembles" them into one complete weapon such as can be issued to fill the orders of the Government. Père Félix was a man much regarded in Aramon les Ateliers, and a silence followed his taking of the speaker's place. He was in no hurry to begin. He knew his power and the worth of his opinion, and was determined to conduct himself with the restraint and gravity which he demanded from his audience. Père Félix opened by a word as to the speaker who had preceded him on the rostrum. Comrade Barrès had spoken (he said) with an earnestness which would have been noble if it had been allied with wisdom. But of course their companion laboured under the double disadvantage of being a foreigner himself, a Spaniard from Catalonia, and of knowing nothing about the district. The Englishmen who were to be killed like rats had been for the most part of them friends and neighbours ever since the works were opened, and in any case for a much longer period than Comrade Barrès had spent in France. Besides, like themselves, they were men with wives and families. They had aided each other in sickness, their wives had interchanged kindlinesses, their children had played together--why should they be doomed to a slaughter of the innocents worse than that of Bethlehem? As for Director Deventer, he had defended himself when he was attacked in his own house as every man has a right to do. And what was the use of founding an Internationale in Aramon to bring about universal peace if its first action was to send men sneaking forth under cloud of night to kill women and children? Blood had been shed and he regretted it, but the lesson learned was a useful one, bitter in the mouth, but sweet in the belly. When Gaston Cremieux rose to give an account of his mission he was received with a storm of applause, but the young men at the back, clustered near the door, were conspicuously silent. But lately Cremieux had been their idol, and would be so again; but for the moment he was under deep suspicion, and they stood sullenly glowering at him, occasionally murmuring to each other the accusations so typical of men of Latin race, when their idol does not exactly fulfil their expectations. Gaston was a traitor. He had sold himself. So much was evident to them, though as usual it was difficult to see who would have money or interest to buy the traitor to the Cause. But after all there is something communicative in the thunderous applause of a great assembly, and many of those who had come to hoot were readiest with their cheers before Cremieux had uttered a score of sentences. He spoke rather slowly, with marked emphasis, and repeated each point of his argument in different words till he had firmly impressed his meaning on his audience. Yes, he had seen the manager. He had talked with him on the subject of their grievances, and he knew that so far as the power lay with Monsieur Dennis Deventer, their demands would be granted. Moreover, the Director would use what influence he had with the Government to prevent reprisals for the expulsion of the garrison from the town on the 21st of January. They, on their side, must return as good workmen to take up their jobs. Nothing would be said. No man would suffer for the past, and pay on the higher scale would begin from the day they started work. "And the comrades who died fighting, what of them?" The question came bitter and scornful from the back of the hall, deep under the shadow of the gallery. "What of them?" answered Gaston Cremieux calmly. "Well, we are all travelling the same road. We shall all end the same. They a little earlier, I a little later. We are not making revolution by sprinkling rosewater. From the beginning your Aramon outbreak was a mistake, as all such things done in a corner must be. When the bells ring for that august Twilight of the Newer Gods, you must waste no time storming through the streets of Aramon, shooting and destroying. You must go in mass to the railway, requisition trains, get yourselves instantly transported to Marseilles, to Lyons, or to Paris. There your brothers will have formed governments which your disciplined bayonets must sustain. Then, having established a firm rule over the big towns, the submission of the rural districts is only a matter of time. "But," he added, with slow emphasis, "we can only succeed by being sure of our comrades. They must wait for the signal, and the signal may not be long in coming." He concluded with a moving picture of the new Heavens and earth which would arise when the workman was made part owner of his factory, and when wars were no longer made by kings and emperors against the will of the people--a glad peaceful world, well ordered, well content, and without poverty. It was very noble and very convincing, delivered with a kind of austere fire strange in one so young and fragile. The people shouted for "Gaston" as if he had been a son of each of their houses. The motherly women shed tears, and I heard prayers spoken aloud that this and that saint, or more especially the Holy Virgin, should protect him. There was no doubt at all that he carried the meeting with him. The works of Aramon would be reopened next day, and the director's terms would be accepted. This was the sense of the meeting as interpreted by the President. It was put to the vote and carried unanimously, but the sullen young men under the gallery had already opened the doors and passed silently out. I could see them resuming their wolf's prowl in little packs of four or five, keeping quite distinct from the decent burgesses who had so lately filled the body of the riding-school, and were now pouring towards their homes in Aramon in dense black streams. CHAPTER X JEANNE'S VELVET EYES "These are our potential Troppmanns," said Gaston Cremieux, as we passed through the grounds of the riding-school. "We must not blame them too much. It is partly our fault. We have taken their religion from them, and they have not yet enough moral sense to balance the loss. They have learned at our meetings and conferences that they have not come to their own, and they want to break their way to immediate wealth and independence by the stroke of their own hands. All they can see is that the rich have pleasures from which they are shut out--wine, women, and feasting chiefly. This orgy of their imaginations heats the blood so that the younger of them have come to think such things the only good. The schoolmasters also are to blame. They have not instructed them in noble thoughts and duties. The Church which has let them slip without effort is to blame. But we of the liberating societies are most to blame, for we have given them nothing to replace the Catechism they learned, and the mystic trappings of that religion in which we have taught them not to believe. Hence they are our Troppmanns in haste to be rich, on edge to taste every sort of forbidden fruit, and in order to reach their pleasure they are ready to slaughter men, women, and little children with as much cold-bloodedness as did the murderer of the Kinck family at Pantin." Gaston spoke of a terrible crime which had shaken France the year before, when a young man of twenty, active and intelligent, had with devilish cunning slain an entire family of eight, his friends and neighbours, in order that he might "get rich quick," and begin a new life in a new country. Cremieux seemed to feel himself in some measure responsible for these lost sheep, but he made no attempt at present to conciliate them, feeling perhaps that the pains would be thrown away or his motives misunderstood. "If we can keep them from active mischief till we want them, all will be well," he kept repeating. "A time will come when such as they will be invaluable, but at present they exist in every town and village in France--budding 'hooligans' or 'Apaches,' ready for robbery and murder, counting their own life a light thing and the taking of another's a jest. If only they would take service with Garibaldi and be made into men! That is where the North and East are going to outstrip us in the coming years. Their Troppmanns are all being swept into the fighting line, and will come out honourable citizens, while we of the South, untouched by the German armies, have our idle rascals on our hands, becoming a greater curse and burden every year, and a standing menace to the next generation. "But," he paused thoughtfully upon the phrase, "when the day for the real struggle begins, we can find them work to do, and shoot them if they will not do it. To keep them quiet in the meantime is the difficulty." By the time Gaston Cremieux had thus delivered his soul upon the question of the town-bred ne'er-do-weels--the Vauriens of the Midi--he was striding along the edge of the Rhône, till at the end of the quay we turned in the direction of the Durance, the swift river which comes rushing from the mountains, and the muddy torrent of which makes turbulent the clear glaucous-blue of the Rhône from a little below Avignon. By this time my stomach, always on campaign, began to remind me that, though I had been learning the secrets of Communism, particularism was still rampant within my body. "Let us go to see Madame Félix," I suggested. "Her husband spoke at the reunion to-day. He is a chief among the workmen, but his wife is worth a score of him when a fellow is hungry, and his daughter Jeanne Félix is the girl best worth looking at in these parts--our friends at the Château alone excepted." Gaston Cremieux smiled indulgently and with a sort of patient scorn for my enthusiasms. "I hardly know what it is to be hungry," he said gently; "and except some of our brave mothers of the Commune, and of course Rhoda Polly, one woman is much the same to me as another." It was on the tip of my tongue to say, as I should have done to Deventer, "Then the more fool you!" But there was actually something about the young ex-Procureur of the Republic which made one shrink from familiarity. Instead, I turned through a growth of tall rushes, the cane-brakes peculiar to Provence, in the direction of the little ferry-house. It was war-year, and nobody had thought of cutting them. The stiff leaves whistled frostily as we pushed our way through, the supple yellow _cannes_ clattering behind us as they sprang back. After them came a tangle of withered vines, still clinging to the trellis of a dismantled house, and then we found ourselves on the river bank overlooking the cottage belonging to Mère Félix of the Durance Ferry. The boats were all on the other side, so I was obliged to make a trumpet of my hands and call loud and long for "Mariana," which besides being the baptismal name of the lady of the house, is an excellent resonant word to carry across an estuary. Now the Durance, though an absurdly tricky river, is no arm of the sea. Its race is short and turbulent, though it makes as much trouble as possible (which is no little) for those who dwell on its banks. It plays with inundations, whirlpools, eddies, and deceitful currents, as a child with toys. You cannot row for ten strokes straight upon it, for it will bubble up and snatch the oar out of your hand, or failing in this, it will suddenly send the bow of your boat deep into a reed-bed as if it were part of a conjuring trick. I knew somewhat more of the matter than most, for had not Jeanne Félix taught me? I had often gone over to spend a day there during the long vacations. For my father, buried among his books, made no objections to my roaming the country at will. Cremieux and I presently stood at the top of a rough and tumble-down flight of steps which led to a pier in somewhat better condition. I recognised the work of my own hands upon this last. For Jeanne and I had coopered it up only last year, so that her passengers might land without risking their lives each time. Paths extended both up and down stream, but as yet nothing had been done to the flight of rough-hewn steps of split pinewood leading to the forest above. These things I did not communicate to my new revolutionary friend, for I was busy wondering what effect Jeanne Félix would have upon him. My fourth or fifth shout brought the Mère Félix wrathfully down to the river edge where her white cap and broad head ribbons showed between the tall _cannes_. She had a couple of oars upon one shoulder and called across at us, "Who is making such a noise with their Marianas? There is no Mariana here except to my husband, the Père Félix, who is now from home, doubtless at one of his foolish reunions----" "Dear Mariana," I answered, showing myself at the end of the little pier, "push out a boat and you can kiss me for it. My father says you may. Also send Jeanne quickly, for she and I can row so well together." "It is that rascal of an English student, Monsieu' Aügoose from Gobelet. Well, I might have guessed. Yet it is not playtime at St. André that I have heard. I shall have you sent back and whipped. What, they do not whip at St. André? Ah, it is no wonder, then, that you young people wax so impertinent. If only you were _my_ boy, I should not call upon Père Félix to help me. No, no--I would----" and the old lady, smacking one hard hand upon the other, conveyed her meaning exactly. "Send Jeanne," I repeated, taking no notice of her pantomime. "Send Jeanne," she imitated my college-trained voice, "Jeanne--Jeanne--it is always Jeanne!" "Perhaps," I ventured, "when you were Jeanne's age it was always 'Mariana'! I'll wager that more people than Père Félix called you that in those days, petite mère!" "Here comes Jeanne at last," she called, so that I could hear. "Do not put up with his insolence, Jeanne. He is a spoilt schoolboy, nothing more." Jeanne stepped sagely into the skiff, with a foot so light and practised that the frail craft hardly quivered in the water. She was a tall, dark girl with a supple figure, both light and well-rounded, remarkably Diana-ish in a land where the women, save a few, are inclined to shortness, and in addition are already overshadowed by the stoutness which inevitably overtakes them after marriage. Jeanne Félix received us without the least embarrassment into her boat. When I mentioned my friend's name in introducing him, there was one rapid up-and-down flicker of the drooping eyelashes, a flash of velvet eyes, and then without a word or a salutation she handed me the bow oar as if we had parted only the night before. When we landed on the neat little _embarcadère_, below the Restaurant Sambre-et-Meuse, Madame Félix had vanished. I knew her to be already busy with the _menu_ of our dinner, a matter which, in spite of her abuse of me, she would entrust to nobody. There was a great chestnut tree before the door, and though the month was January, my pocket thermometer registered 62° Fahrenheit in our shadowed nook. Here we sat and waited, talking with Jeanne till her mother should call us in to lunch. The reformer smoked innumerable cigarettes, but he said little. I fancy he had not much small talk, and at times he seemed so far away that I wondered whether he heard the light badinage in which Jeanne and I are fond of engaging. Jeanne is freed from all fear of her mother's reproof and I do as I like, because I am a choice favourite with that lady, being the only person in the world she permits herself to abuse grossly, except her goodman Père Félix--who, according to her, is still more _impayable_ and gifted with a faculty of irritation not to be told. As for me, I am younger and not her husband, but she has known me since I could really receive from her palm the manual chastisement she had so familiarly illustrated. Still, I must admit that so far as Cremieux was concerned, interest in the Restaurant Sambre-et-Meuse awaked only when from the river-path along the Durance we heard the sound of voices, and presently Père Félix emerged talking eagerly with Pipe-en-Bois Soult, nicknamed the Marshal, and several of the Old Guard of the Commune. Then his eyes lit up suddenly. He rose as if throwing a weight from his shoulders. He had come to his own again. This man bore the weight of a bullet he had gained on the day of the _coup d-étât_. Pipe-en-Bois had been in front of the battle about the Luxembourg that morning of 1848 when Cavaignac's fusillade proved the futility of moderate Republican promises. In the kitchen was great rattling of dishes, the voice of Mère Félix calling on her daughter Jeanne, summoning from a great way off her "torchon" Babette, a kind of scullery-maid gathered chance-wise from among the numerous squatter families clustered along the river's edge. Such long-limbed slatterns were plentiful as blackberries and of as rank a growth all along the Durance. Monsieur Brunet, horsemaster and former "Red of the Midi," owned the water meadows all about, and smilingly allowed the little street of wooden houses fringing the banks. A stray rabbit might be caught out of the pine knolls, but Monsieur's grazing rights must be respected, and his ponies and brood-mares left in peace. Probably none except the family Félix all along that riverine sweep of reed-bed paid a penny of rent or a tax to the Government. The rural guard with his sash and his great brass plate of office must, of course, have known of the colony. But for some reason or another he said nothing, and all the time the huts of the "zoniers" tailed out at both ends into more and more ramshackle sheds and _bicoques_. Here arose the danger of the community. They could only exist by attracting no attention, and many of the ancient inhabitants, in good odour with the Sieur Brunet, were compelled to replace the fences which had been torn down to burn, or used as building material by their less scrupulous neighbours. Hence came quarrels, sharp words, and occasionally the breaking of heads. The chief penalty was that no offenders against the unwritten law of the settlement were allowed to drink under the cool shade of Mère Félix's vine trellises. The men who had come back with the proprietor of the Restaurant Sambre-et-Meuse were, of course, the fine flower of this scattering Faubourg Durance. They were full of admiration for their host, but every man of them knew that Père Félix would occupy a very different position at the Sambre-et-Meuse from what had been his in the late great meeting of citizens at the riding-school of Aramon. They seemed to be wishing to make up to him all the way for the coming loss of prestige. At the journey's end he would have to submit to his wife's inevitable dictatorship, and support in his own proper person the reproach of the whole company. He became responsible (among other things) for the misdeeds of the half-wild cook-maid, for the uncertainties of the weather, for the lack of fuel, and for the vicissitudes of the lady's culinary apparatus. Like many a high officer, colonel, or commandant, whose word is law to a thousand men in barracks, the Père Félix came home to do pack-drill and practise the goose-step under the eye of a severe drill-sergeant armed with a broomstick. But the good woman allowed no one except herself to treat her husband lightly, so that in a measure his self-esteem was re-established before company. The more guests there were at the Sambre-et-Meuse, the more consideration was it necessary to show for the proprietor. A chicken had been set aside for me, and of that I was not to be deprived, or at least of as great a portion as could be piled on my plate within her inviolable kitchen, by Mariana of the liberal hand. Gaston Cremieux, though she looked upon him as a perverter of youth, and the worst of examples for her husband, was still a guest of honour, and he had come there in my company. Therefore he should have a share in the chicken. Roast mutton, soup, and boiled beef out of the soup-pot which had simmered all day by the fire were good enough for the others. There was plenty of good bread, better than rich men could buy in Paris at that moment--let the newcomers "bank up" with that and be thankful. These, with regard to food supply, were the conclusions of Mariana of the Restaurant of Sambre-et-Meuse among the reed-beds of the Durance. CHAPTER XI HOW MEN SEE RED I need not tell at length of the wonderful talk, so new and strange to me, in which men and things were judged wholly from a revolutionary point of view. But all the same I began to perceive that the men before me were really and fundamentally simple souls, to whom the future state of Liberty and Equality appeared as a kind of fairy godmother. Out of some inexhaustible bag she would pay each man according to his family needs, money sufficient for his wants and pleasures. He would labour just long enough to place an equivalent in the Fairy Godmother's hands, but no longer. Their wives would keep in order the wardrobes of the bachelor leaders and orators. They would at certain hours also set their houses in order. Others would clean the schools and public-buildings, and for such services additional monies would accrue. The immediate settlement with the Small Arms Company and its manager was considered purely a temporary matter. Oh, yes, Monsieur Deventer was a good man, and no one could find any fault with him so far as the work was concerned. But, of course, there would be no real peace till they themselves owned the mines and factories, the rolling-mills, the assembling sheds and the hard-stone quarries. Then, indeed, a golden flood would flow directly into their pockets, and in a year or two they might be busily building houses "like proprietors." It was their own word, and even then they did see the delightful incongruity of the proposal. I did not think it worth while to point out that if they disinherited the mill-owners, a younger and still more advanced generation would very hastily expropriate any villas they might build. But one question I did put to them. "Supposing," I said, "that you take possession of the Arms Factories and carry them on dividing the proceeds among you in proper ratio, after all machinery such as you use is delicate. It wears out quickly. Who is to replace it? Will you keep back so much each week from your wages? Whom will you entrust with the money? How do you know that he will not escape to Switzerland or Italy, carrying your new machinery with him in his breeches pocket?" This they could not answer themselves. They had not thought of it. Of course, they were accustomed to seeing Deventer and his gang installing a new machine, but where it came from or who paid for it never crossed their minds. With one accord they looked to Gaston Cremieux. He would know what to reply, for he had taught them all they knew. Only by his teaching did they understand even so much. His answer was ready. "The Commune will lay aside so much of the factory profits each week or month for repairs, the renewal of machinery, the introduction of new types, and so on. This deduction shall be made before wages can be paid." Such was the oracle's decision, which to me seemed just and natural, but it was wonderful to see the swiftly darkening brows of those who listened. "What, the Commune would keep back a part of our earnings!" cried Pipe-en-Bois. "Then I say that we will only have exchanged one master for another, and it is not worth the trouble." Nor could he be moved from his position. Gaston Cremieux could silence him, telling him that doubtless he would himself be a member of the Commune of Aramon. But the man's dark mask as of a gargoyle only took on a deeper scowl, and he looked from one to the other of his companions, sure of their sympathy as he repeated, "What is the use of changing when the Commune will steal from us the earnings of our hands even as the masters do now?" These were early days and militant theorists (as at present) found construction as difficult as destruction was easy. Marvelling I sat, and viewed about me these grave men, the elect of the factories and mills, accomplished artisans, yet even now incapable of leadership, or even of submitting to the guiding brain which would give them a chance of success. This thoughtful young advocate of Marseilles was their idol, yet for a mere difference of opinion they were ready to cast him down from the throne they had just set for him. I conceived a new opinion as to the value of popular favour, and I noted that the head of an iconoclast had no easier a resting-pillow than that of the king whose crown he threatened. We waited till the feast had begun to degenerate a little. Sundry jests and snatches of song seemed to offend the austere thoughtfulness of Cremieux. So I made a signal to Jeanne, previously agreed upon, and she hastened away to get ready the boat, while Gaston and I regulated the expenses with the good hostess, her face still shining from her culinary labours. While she was changing a ten-franc piece from an immense pocket which swung from her side under her blue rep petticoat, she seemed suddenly to become aware of the noise within. She stepped to the door of the dining-room, listened a moment, and then opening it sharply, said, "Père Félix, if you continue as you are doing, I shall ask you to leave my house!" "Pardon, Madame," said her husband instantly, rising to his feet and bowing, and the company, feeling themselves somehow vaguely in the wrong, rose to their feet and bowed also in the direction of the door at which appeared the heated face of Madame la Ménagère. There was no doubt about it that Mère Félix intended to be both master and mistress in her own house, and behind her back the men rubbed their hands and thought how differently _they_ could manage a woman. We stepped outside into the clean well-aired vault of the twilight. The breeze was from the east, which in Provence of the South has not the terrors of our wind of that name, but is soft and perfumed with the early blossoms along the Gulf of Genoa. The Coast of Azure was sending us up an evening blessing. We strolled a long way in silence, taking the river road which leads towards Aramon. Then Cremieux broke the silence by asking me brusquely if I had known Rhoda Polly long. I did not think the question ought to have been asked in that tone, but he had done a good deal for me that day and I most certainly owed him a civil answer. "I have known Rhoda Polly," I said, "ever since I can remember. We used to fight in the garden for pig-nuts and in the woods for acorns. Rhoda Polly scratched my face with long sharp nails, and I thumped her back with little attention to chivalry. She could run faster than I, scratch more savagely, and when trapped she would sometimes bite like a little squirrel taken in the hand--yes, bite till the blood came." Gaston Cremieux listened with a rather forced smile upon his lips. "And the others--were they present? Were you two allowed to run about the woods all by yourselves?" You can change anything about a Frenchman except his idea concerning the co-education of the sexes. Here the anarchist is at one with Monsieur the Count de Mun, and Monsieur Jean Jaurès with the Archbishop of Paris. The convent rule, whether applied by lay mistress or sister of the Sacré Coeur, constant supervision, a fiction of ignorance of things of the commonest knowledge, the girl never to be out of sight of her mother or aunt till the day she is delivered to her husband--these are what the heart of every Frenchman believes to be the only path which the girls he would marry should be allowed to tread. He may praise English and American methods, allow the charm of the result, but in his heart he prefers for himself his "snow-white gosling." "Tell me about the college to which Rhoda Polly went," he continued, putting aside the early fightings and scratchings as too unsatisfactory for comment. I told him of the restless yet ordered activity of Selborne College, of the work and of the professors, of the days when the students were permitted to receive young men of other colleges, properly introduced and vouched for. I dwelt mischievously upon the friendships which arose during the common intellectual life of these years. I pitched it all a little strong, because I could not see why in the world he could not take Rhoda Polly as she was, and accept her marked kindness to him without submitting her past to hostile analysis. When I told him all, he seemed to shake himself suddenly as a man half awake by force of will breaks his way out of a bad dream. "Good night," he said, "I must go back to Aramon." And so he left me planted open-mouthed upon the river bank. CHAPTER XII "GOOD-BYE, RHODA POLLY" At Château Schneider I was received with tumultuary questioning on my return from the reed-beds. Where had I been? What had I been doing? I might easily have got my throat cut and no one would have been sorry. It was a scurvy trick I played them, slipping off like that. And so on--Hugh De venter being the loudest and most persistent. "My friend in whom I trusted," was his cry. His grievance was not that I had broken bounds and would give no account of myself, but that I had sneaked off alone without giving him a chance to come along with me. However, a glance from Rhoda Polly and the smiling response of her eyes shut my ears to all this hubbub. She understood, and that was enough. I would, of course, tell her about it, making only a mental reservation in the little private matter of Jeanne Félix, and the spraying shadows which her long lashes cast on her eyes of purple-velvet. With a woman, there is no use of talking of another woman--not at least till the listener is well over fifty, and even then it must be done with circumspection. But I knew my duty, and with another glance at Rhoda Polly I demanded to know where her father was, and in five minutes was sitting among the chimney-pots with that old fighter and captain of men stuffing a pipe bowl and preparing to listen. He nodded his head gravely when I told of my meeting with Gaston Cremieux. He grew restless as a caged beast himself when I described to him the hither-and-yon wolf's prowl of the sullen young men in front of the riding-school. But when I told him of the men's resolve to go at once to work, he rose suddenly to his feet with a shout. "Jaikes, Irvin, Allerdyce, Brown, Macallister! Here!" And at his cry these subordinates came running to him like dogs at the shepherd's whistle. Eagerness was in their faces, and confidence in their leader showed in their eyes. "Young Cawdor has brought good news," he said. "The men are coming back. It may not be for long, but they are coming. They have taken the terms, and now I shall have to fight the masters single-handed. However, I can manage that. Run, fellows! Get the squads together. Set the furnaces going, and steam up in the boilers. It will be the easier for the men when they come in if they find everything ready for them. A few will troop in first in a non-committal way, then will set in a steady trickle of the secretly willing, and lastly the factory benches will fill up with a rush. In two days we will have the ateliers working at high pressure, and we may begin to send out our orders by Saturday." The engineering sub-chiefs swung their hats in the air and yelled. It was the best of news for them, and they did not even wait to ask how I chanced to be so well informed. Dennis Deventer had doubtless assured himself of that. That was his business, not theirs. They rattled down the ladder one after the other as quickly as a barrel would roll the same distance. They simply fell through the trap-door and disappeared from sight. Presently we could see them leading their emergency gangs across the courtyard to the entrance of the works. In Jack Jaikes's contingent I noticed the broad shoulders and rough blond head of Hugh Deventer, towering like a Viking among the wiry Clydeside and bearded Tynemouth men about him. His father must have noticed him too, for he turned to me with a smile. "Yonder goes our Hugh. He is a strong lad, but has no spring. He falls all over himself at present. If you are still set on soldiering, you can take him with you. He has little sense as yet, but I can see that he will do what you tell him." "Thank you, sir," I said; "war is a stranger business than we young fellows dream of. I cannot be responsible for accidents, but if you trust me with Hugh--well, he is my comrade, and I shall look after him as myself." He held out his hand, after first glancing about to see that we were not overlooked, and grasped my fingers. Such demonstrations of emotion were by no means in his way. "With Hugh it is a case of thews and brawn," he said. "When it comes to the marching, see that you make him carry your musket as well as his own. He has no heavy load in his top story." Of course I had to see Rhoda Polly before our final marching off towards the north. As I came down the great front steps of the Château Schneider I saw her crossing the lawn far away to the right. She was going in the direction of the vegetable garden, and I stood still on the steps till I watched her into the potting-house. With her hand on the latch she cast a look over her shoulder in my direction. "Amaryllis desires to be first seen," I muttered, and after a comprehensive tour of the grounds I approached the potting-house from the rear. Rhoda Polly was sitting on a bench with peat and leaf-mould in little boxes about her, and a red flowerpot held firmly between her knees while she kneaded the black flaky mass down with urgent little knuckles. "If I don't get those Alan Richardson roses to do this year--why, the devil fly away with me!" She spoke in French, and the words had not the same sound as in English. Something gay and Rhoda Polly-ish rang cheerfully in my heart. "Really you should not swear!" said I. "What would Miss Balfour-Lansdowne say to that at Selborne College?" "Oh, sometimes we said a good deal worse than that on the hockey ground, or in the heat of an argument. Besides, if you did not want to hear, you need not have followed me." "Rhoda Polly," I said, "you know that I followed you because you made me a signal that you wanted to talk to me." "Yes, I know," owned up Rhoda Polly, who scorned concealment. "Well, what have you to tell me now that you are here? I let you go just now and unbosom yourself to the Paternal without complaining. That was only playing the game, but certainly you owe it to me to stand and deliver as soon as you got clear." "Well, and here I am, Rhoda Polly--which will you have--plain narrative--question and answer--the Socratic method, or a judicious mixture of the two?" I knew the inquiry would resolve itself into the latter. Rhoda Polly went on with the potting of her Alan Richardson, biting her under lip at critical points, but ever and anon flashing a pertinent query at me over the boxes of mould without once raising her head. With the exception of my talks with Jeanne and the harmless little philandering we had indulged in to pass the time, I confided the whole of my day's adventures to Rhoda Polly. I told her also of the permission that her father had given that Hugh should go north and join the new armies with me. Then at last Rhoda Polly did lift her eyes with a vividness of reproach in them. "You cannot find enough to do here?" she said. "You trust these men at the works? I tell you they are not to be trusted. I know them better than either you or my father, I have heard their women-folk talking, and I know what they mean to do." "I know what they _say_ they mean to do," I retorted. "I also have heard them in their cups, but it is only folly and emptiness." "Do not be too sure," she said, patting the flowerpot round the edges and squinting down at it as if it were a work of art symmetrically finished. "I warn you we may need you here sooner than you think, and then Gaston Cremieux may not be so friendly as he is to-day." I asked her why, but she only bent more over her work and shook her head. It had been clear to me from Cremieux's questions that he was in love with Rhoda Polly, and now from Rhoda Polly's prophecy of his future unfriendliness that she had made up her mind to reject him. But, in the meantime, it was my clear duty to go on and do what I could in the army. We could not hope to defeat the Germans, but at least every additional man in the ranks added to the chance of withstanding them. If we could only hold them at bay till the politicians did their work, all this peaceful Southland would be spared the horrors of war and the more wearing pains of occupation and pillage. I said this to Rhoda Polly and she could not help agreeing. Her assent, however, came from her clear head and trained intelligence, but her heart was still unconvinced that Hugh and I ought to go, leaving that houseful of women in Château Schneider. All this was perhaps natural enough, and certainly it made me feel warmer within to know that Rhoda Polly would regret me. "I owe you a grudge," she said, as she stood up and rubbed the black crumbly mould briskly from her hands, "for without you we should at least have had Hugh. He would never have thought of going by himself." Rhoda Polly had finished with her roses. She set out the boxes in a row, and then stood up facing me. Her eyes were steady and level like a man's--I mean a man of the North. They did not droop and flutter like Jeanne's at the Ferry. Her breast did not heave nor her full throat swell. The pent-up emotion in Rhoda Polly's bosom found no such commonplace feminine vents. Only the firm lines about her mouth betrayed her, and perhaps a certain moist luminousness of eye. "I would not hinder you, Angus Cawdor," she said steadily, "let a man do what he knows he ought. But at least you owe it to me to come back the very day the war is over. It is not till then that the storm here will break. I have it from the women. They advise us to go out of the country, but I have a better plan in my head. You must be here to help me carry it out." "I shall be here, Rhoda Polly, if I get through all right!" "If you get through all right----?" The words fell uncertainly. "If I live, Rhoda Polly." "Ah, if you live," repeated the girl, mechanically holding out her hand. And even as I looked, the bold bright look in her eyes was dimmed, as a pool greys over with the first coming of a breeze. And thus I took my real farewell of Rhoda Polly. There was some of the black mould on my fingers as I went over to the shops to search for Hugh Deventer. CHAPTER XIII WE SEEK GARIBALDI Hugh Deventer and I reached Orange only to hear that the recruiting parties of the Garibaldians had gone away north. But on the railway, hundreds of wagons laden with supplies were moving in the same direction, and with the conductors of these we made what interest we could. We showed the letter we had brought from Gaston Cremieux, but these were men of the Saône and Isère, who had never heard of the agitator. But Hugh's willing help during heavy hours of loading and "transhipment," and perhaps also the multitude and flavour of my tales of Scotland, gained us a footing. From them we heard with pride of what had already been done by Garibaldi, with such wretched material, and how the great Manteuffel himself, in his dispatches, had allowed the excellence of Garibaldi's tactics. What we were most afraid of was that the whole war would be over before we got a chance. The men of the Isère, however, who on the strength of six months' campaigning considered themselves veterans, laughed scornfully at our young enthusiasms. They would march. They would fight. But as for beating the Germans in the long run it was impossible. That time had gone by when Bazaine had let himself be locked up in Metz. "All we can do is to help the Republic to get out of the mess with some credit!" said a tall sergeant who sat in the open door of a bullock wagon. And the others agreed with him. They were on tenterhooks to know why we English should be so eager to take up their quarrel. The thousand Italians they could understand. They came because Garibaldi did, touched by the glory of his name, but we English--what had we to do with the affair? Me they suspected of Southern blood from my quick slimness and swarthy colour, but Deventer was a joy to them. "That Englishman!" they cried, and laughed as at an excellent jest. His big hearty blundering ways, his ignorance of military affairs kept them perpetually on the grin. But when they saw him strip and repair a chassepot with no more tools than a pocket screw-driver and a nail file, they changed the fashion of their countenances. Hugh was not the son of Dennis Deventer for nothing. Presently we found ourselves privileged stowaways, whirling in the direction of Lyons, protected by these good fellows, who hid us carefully from the rounds of inspection which visited the wagons at every stopping place. Mostly, however, no severe examination was made, and the word of the sergeant was taken that all was right inside. But as soon as the train slackened speed we sprang on a shelf which ran along one end of the wagon, and there lay snug behind a couple of bags of potatoes. At last, near Civry, a little town on the foothills of the Côte d'Or, we were abruptly ordered down. It was a dark night and raining as we set our noses out. We would much rather have remained behind the potato sacks, but there was no help for it. Out we must come along with the rest, for Manteuffel's Uhlans were off on a raid and had cut the line between us and Dijon. At first we could only see the blackness and the shapes of the trees bent eastward by many winter blasts, but after a time our eyes grew accustomed, and we became aware of a long line of wagoners' teams drawn up on a road that skirted the railway. We did our best to assist at the changing of the provisions and ammunition, and would have been glad of permission to accompany the convoy through the hills to its destination. But we had the ill fortune to fall in the way of a captain of regulars who asked us our business there, and on our telling him, he answered with evident contempt, that in that case we had better go and look for "Monsieur Garibaldi." As far as he was concerned, if he found us in his convoy again he would have us shot for spies. Hugh Deventer and I could not rejoice enough that we had left our two beautiful Henry rifles and our stores of ammunition on our sleeping shelf. We knew well that our protector the sergeant and his men would say nothing about the matter, though they looked with unrestrained envy and desire of possession upon our repeating rifles. Accordingly I advised Hugh to confide to the sergeant in private the name of his father, and promise that a similar rifle would be sent to him with the next consignment of chassepots. The sergeant's eyes glowed, and he told us that he was under orders for his native town of Epinal, which he hoped to reach in about a fortnight. Hugh promised that he would find a Henry repeater with an abundant supply of cartridges waiting for him there at his mother's house. And accordingly he sat down in the empty wagon, and by the light of the lantern wrote a note to his father which he gave into the sergeant's hands to be posted at the first opportunity. He in his turn entrusted it to the care of the engine driver, who was getting ready to take his empty wagons rattling southward again to bring further supplies from the rich Rhône valley. The sergeant also arranged that we should accompany the rear-guard so far as was possible during the night, when we were to strike off diagonally to the west to pick up Autun, where Menotti Garibaldi was reported to be waiting with a large force to cut off the retreat of the German raiders. So we started on our march, and had soon reason to be glad that we were not stumbling at hazard up and down those leg-breaking vine-terraces. The convoy had relays of peasants as guides, and at least we were kept along some semblance of a path. We could hear the rumbling and creaking of the wheels before us, but for that night the goad superseded the loud crack of the whip, and the language beloved of all nationalities of teamsters was, if not wholly silenced, at least sunk to a whisper. We marched far enough in the rear to be rid of the cloud of dust raised by the convoy, which fell quickly in the damp night air. Occasionally an orderly would gallop back, dust-mantled in grey from head to heel. He was sent to see that we of the rear-guard kept our distance and did not straggle. The Isère and Grenoble men with whom we marched were veterans and in no ways likely to desert, so that the adjutant's report was at once accepted, and the officer galloped back. All the same we two regularly sneaked aside into a belt of trees or took refuge behind the vine-terraces as soon as the sound of hoofs was heard. We had marched many hours in the darkness--from eight or nine of the evening till the small hours were passing one by one with infinite weariness. I was lighter on my feet than Hugh, having less to carry in the way of "too, too solid flesh." Consequently he suffered more, both from the weight of his rifle, and the dumb remorseless steadiness of the marching column. Forward we went, however, stumbling now and then with sleep, our feet blistered, and the rattle and wheeze of the ammunition wagons coming back to us mixed with a jingle of mules' gear through the dark. At last, when it seemed as if we could do no more, the column halted, and our grateful sergeant came back in order to set us on the road to Autun. "Yonder," he said, "you can see a hill which cuts the stars. It is high and steep, but to the right of it is a pass, and when you reach the top you will look down upon the lights of Autun." He bade us a rapid good-bye, and hastened away to his own place in the column. With a final word of thanks to the adjutant (who is here a kind of sergeant-major), we left our kindly rear-guard and set out to find Garibaldi. The night grew suddenly darker as we missed the shoulder-touch of a comrade on either side of us. We rolled over vine-terraces, clutching at the gnarled roots, or stumbled with a breath-expelling "ouch" into dry ditches all laid out for the summer irrigation. Fence rails and the corner posts of vineyard guard-shelters marked us black, and blue, but aloft or alow we held firm to the Henry rifles which were to be our chief treasures, when we should at last don the red cardigan of the Garibaldian troops. To us it seemed as if we never would reach the top of that pass. We could see the mountain towering up on our left hand, and once a shower of stones came rumbling down as a warning not to venture too near. The wind was now soft and equal, and the unusual warmth had served no doubt to loosen the frost-bound rocks above, as well as to keep us in a gentle perspiration while we climbed the corkscrew pathway towards the hill crest. Things became easier after we had left the vineyards beneath us, and our road lay over the clean grassy plateau on which the sheep had that day been grazing. We rested a while in a shepherd's shelter hut, and did not scruple to refresh ourselves with some slices of bread and sausage, washed down by a long swig from a skin of wine. We left a franc in payment, stuck into the cut end of the sausage, with a note appended that we were two recruits on our way to join Garibaldi. Little did we imagine that in a few weeks we should, without hurt to our consciences, simply have transferred the whole supply to our haversacks without thanks or payment. There was still no hint of dawn when we started out, but beyond the lowest part of the ridge immediately above us a kind of faint illumination appeared. It burned steadily, and for a long while we could not explain it. It could not be the approaching sunrise, for our compasses told us that we were marching as near as possible due west. Quite suddenly we topped the crest, and saw beneath us the lights of Autun gleaming hazily through a kind of misty drizzle. But that which struck our faces was in no wise wetting. It only struck a chill through us, making our greatcoats welcome. We had so far carried them _en bandoulière_. The west side of the ridge was, in fact, already spotted with fine sifted snow, which blew in our faces and sought a way down our necks. Its coming had caused the fluorescent light we had seen as we were mounting the eastern slopes, and now with bowed heads and our rifles as well "happed" as possible, we strode downhill in the direction of the town. At the limits of the chestnut woods the vineyards began again, and our troubles threatened to be as great as they had been after we left the convoy. But though fine snow fell steadily, its clinging whiteness showed up the stone-dykes and terraces as black objects to be avoided. There was, therefore, less tumbling about among the ledges of loose stones, and presently we came out upon a regular "departmental" road, with drainage ditches on either side, rows of pollarded willows and poplars, and kilometric pillars, with numbers on them which it was too dark to see. Along this we made all haste, for we were bent on getting to Autun as soon as possible, and indeed it was not long before we were in the way of getting our wish. "Halt! Who goes there?" came a challenge out of the unseen. Well was it for us that we had attempted no stealthy approach upon the town, but serenely clattered down the middle of the turnpike. Luckier still that we fell into the hands of regular mobiles of the army of the Vosges, instead of a stray company of _franc-tireurs_, who as like as not, would have cut our throats for the sake of our rifles, the stores of ammunition, and the few silver coins we carried. We had come upon a picket of men of the regiment of Gray on the borders of the Haute Saône. It was like one of Napoleon's levies after Moscow--young lads of sixteen and men of forty or fifty standing by each other cheerfully, and without distinction of age or previous occupation. We stated our purpose and asked to be taken to head-quarters. Like most of such casual recruits, we thought we would be taken directly into the presence of Garibaldi, but the Gray men astonished us by the information that the great soldier was almost a recluse, and indeed so much of an invalid that he could only review his troops from a carriage. His sons, Menotti and Ricciotti, were his fighting generals, but all directing power was centred in Colonel Bordone, through whom all orders came to the army. In the meantime we were conveyed amicably to the temporary head-quarters of the 14th Mobiles of the Haute Saône. Here we found several officers, but after a look at us and a civil enough demand for the production of our papers, we were permitted to betake ourselves to the snug kitchen of an ancient monastery, where the soldiers of the outpost guard were sitting around a huge fire, or lying extended on couches of straw, sleeping the sleep of men who had marched far the day before, and expected to do as much more on the morrow. Our clothes were soon dry, and our overcoats spread out to the blaze, after being well shaken and thumped to get rid of the clinging snow. The morning began to come tardily, and as if reluctantly. The snow had ceased, but a thin whitish mist had been left behind, softening and dimming all outlines. The town of Autun bethought itself of waking up. A few shopkeepers took down their shutters in a leisurely fashion, the first of these being a couple of ladies, venders of sweet cakes, both pretty and apparently exceedingly attractive to the young Italian officers, all of whom had the racial sweet tooth as well as the desire to rival each other in the eyes of beauty. Our men of Gray were rather contemptuous, but could not deny that these young sweet-suckers fought well and bravely whenever it came to blows. "And I dare say, after all," said a tall brigadier, "it is better to munch sugar cakes flavoured with cinnamon than to swallow the filth they serve out to you in the _cafés_." The others agreed, but we did not observe that their teetotal sentiments were more than platonic. At least, during all our stay with the 3rd Corps in the town of Autun, the Frenchmen went to the _café_ and the Italians to the _pâtissière_. It was nine o'clock when the brigadier of the post detailed two men to accompany us to the Cadran Bleu, the inn where the army head-quarters was established. We had a short time to wait, for the officers within were judging the case of a spy, a dull heavy-witted fellow who had formerly served in a line regiment, but who had had the ill thought to turn his knowledge of the army of the Vosges to account by compiling a careful estimate of the strength of Garibaldi's command, and offering it by ordinary letter post to General Werder of the Prussian service. The letter was addressed to his brother-in-law at Macon, who was to arrange terms. He, however, preferred patriotism (and the chance of a possible heritage) to his relative's life. So the officer of the day was already picking out the firing-party, for, as was the way of the army of the Vosges under Garibaldi, a very short shrift was given to any traitor. Though the supreme judges were Italian and the man a Frenchman, the good sense of the soldiers supported them in the certainty and rapidity of such military punishments. I saw the man come out between a couple of Mobiles with fixed bayonets. His hair fell in an unkempt mass over his brow. His face was animal and stupid, but he had little pig's eyes that glanced rapidly from one side to the other as if seeking for any way of escape. But there was none for him, as the rattle of musketry testified almost before we had reached the antechamber. Here there were half a dozen young French officers and many Italians all talking together, who turned from their conversations to gaze at us. We had made what toilets we could, and the men of the Gray regiments had rolled up our overcoats in military style. "Two English come from Aramon to enlist," we heard them say, with a certain resentment as if they had been offered an affront. "Do all the foreigners in the world think that France has need of them to fight her battles?" However, one of the sub-lieutenants, a handsome lad, from a Protestant family in the Isère, came over to talk to us. The ice was at once broken, and the next moment we had quite a gathering round us admiring our Henry repeaters, and asking questions. "That is the new Remington action!" said one who stated that he read English and American periodicals, but became appallingly unintelligible as soon as he attempted to speak a single sentence of the language. "No," said Hugh Deventer, "the movement was invented by my father." "And who may your father be? Are you travelling for the firm?" "My father," said Hugh steadily, "is Monsieur Dennis Deventer, director-in-chief of the Arms Factory at Aramon-sur-Rhône, and he will supply as many of these repeaters as the Company is paid for. The Government have the matter under consideration, but if they do not hurry, the war will be over before their minds are made up." An officer in the red cloak of the Italian corps pushed a door open, spoke an order in imperfect French, and the next moment we found ourselves in an apartment where two men were sitting rolling cigarettes at opposite sides of a long table. They were both tall, dark-bearded men with swarthy faces, clad in uniforms much the worse for wear. I knew them by instinct to be Menotti and Ricciotti Garibaldi. Both had a look of the common lithograph portraits of their father, but perhaps no more than one weather-beaten shepherd on a Scottish hill resembles his comrade on the next. We stood at attention after the English manner instilled into us by Jack Jaikes and the numerous old soldiers who by Dennis Deventer's orders had taken us for drill during vacation time at the works. The two grave men looked at one another and smiled. "We have seen something like this when the English lads came to us in Sicily eleven years ago, eh, brother? Tell us your names, little ones! Can you speak Italian?" We could, and that made us, if not of the "children," at least something very different from the dull peasants whom Gambetta's conscription supplied, or the innumerable company of ne'er-do-weels who appeared from nowhere in particular, drawn by the mere sound of Garibaldi's name. Hugh Deventer did not much like to be called a "little one," but the Italian speech is not like our English, which lends itself more easily to oaths and cursing than to the "little language" and the expression of emotion. We presented the letters with which we had been furnished--one a personal epistle to Ricciotti from Dennis Deventer--the others for the most part addressed to the General himself. That, however, made no difference. His sons opened them all without hesitation or apology. Indeed, we soon learned that, excepting the conduct of the campaign, Father Garibaldi was not allowed to concern himself with anything. "Ah, Dennis Deventer," said Ricciotti, starting up and embracing Hugh on both cheeks. "I owe much to your father, more than I am likely to pay for some while. He took our word for it that the chassepots for the new troops would be paid for, even though he knows that the Government is likely to fall into the hands of those who hate us. Also the new twelve-pounders--Menotti, brother, what shall we do for this man's son?" "I must stay with my comrade, Angus Cawdor," put in Hugh Deventer. "He is far more clever than I am, and I should be lost without him. I am only a boy, but he----" "Has the thoughts of a man--I see," interrupted Menotti, who had been considering us from under his hand without speaking. "I think it would be no kindness to add two recruits of such mettle to the number of the admirably combed and pressed young gentlemen in the anteroom out there. You had better take them, Ricciotti. You will be sure to find old Manteuffel hammering away at you on your return to Dijon, and the lads can take bite and sup with the 'Enfants.' Since they speak Italian no explanations need be made. They can be fitted out by the commissariat adjutant." "The favour is an unusual one, brother. There will be grumbling." "The circumstances are unusual, and so are the lads. There is but one Dennis Deventer, and we must do the best we can for his son." And in this manner we became part of the personal following of Ricciotti Garibaldi, and were destined to take part in the war game which he played out successfully against Manteuffel and Werder till the coming of the armistice stopped all fighting. CHAPTER XIV "THE CHILDREN" "The Children" were young men, some of them hardly more than boys, who had followed the Dictator from Italy. They came from all parts of the Peninsula, but the wide windy Milanese plain supplied most of them. A curious exaltation reigned in the camp. It was like the mystic aura of a new religion. One became infected with it after a few hours among the troops. They were already veterans in their own opinion, and, feeling that the eyes of their General was always upon them, they claimed as their monopoly all desperate ventures, the front rank in stubborn defences, the rear-guard in retreat, and they died with an "Evviva, Garibaldi!" upon their lips. One snatched the standard from a falling comrade that he might carry it closer to the Prussian lines, only in most cases to fall in his turn under the fatal steadiness of the needle-gun. The rest of the army of the Vosges fought under the tricolour of France, but for "Les Enfants" Garibaldi had devised his own emblem. It was sufficiently striking and characteristic of the man, but in France at least it only excited astonishment among the masses, and hatred and contempt among the clerical and aristocratic party, which was at that time in a great majority in the provinces. The flag was of a vivid crimson, darker a little than the "Tatter of Scarlet" I had seen go up at Aramon when the Communards expelled the troops from the town. There was no device upon it--only the one word in large letters: "PATATRAC!" I saw the rustics gazing open-mouthed upon it every day, yet it was a word admirably descriptive and one which I have heard in frequent use among the peasant folk of the South. "Patatrac!" or "Patatras!" the labourer will exclaim when he lets a bucket fall at a stair-head and hears it go rumbling down. "Patatrac!" a housewife will say when she describes how a careless maid drops a trayful of crockery. It is the crashing sound of the fall that is represented, and in this fashion Garibaldi had been so accustomed to bring down in thunderous earthquake ruin all the brood of century-old tyrannies. It was his well-earned boast that he had made the device good against all comers (except his special _bête noires_ of the Papacy) until the fell day at Mentana when the French chassepots rather belatedly gave him as we say at home "his kail through the reek!" Yet here he was, only five years after, a broken man, fighting for that same France, just because she had shaken off the yoke of the tyrant and become a republic. Wonderful always to hear the soldiers speak of their leader. They did not cheer him as did the French corps. They clustered close about his carriage as he moved slowly along, his thin hand, which had so long held a sword, touching their heads, and his feeble sick man's voice saying: "My children--oh, my children!" Neither of his sons accompanied him on these pilgrimages in the shabby hired barouche in which he drove out every day, but Bordone was always with him--watchful, stern, and devoted, the real tyrant of the little army. Menotti and Ricciotti were always with their troops, perhaps from jealousy of Bordone, perhaps because they had enough to do licking their raw levies into some manner of fighting shape. The winter was bitter even among bitter winters, and the snow soon began to be trampled hard. The troops, continually arriving, were quartered all over Autun, and in the villages about. Finally the churches had to be occupied, and though nothing was done there that would not have happened with any army of occupation, Garibaldi the polluter was cursed from one end of France to the other as if he had torn down the golden cross upon St. Peter's dome. Not that it mattered to the old Dictator. In silence and solitude he made his plans. He read the reports and dispatches as they came in. He issued his orders through Bordone, before driving out in the halting ramshackle barouche, sometimes with two horses, more often with only one. At every halt he spoke a word or two to the troops as he passed among them, words treasured by the true "Children" like the oracles of God. Then he would return to his lodgings, sit down to his bowl of soup, his loaf of bread, and his glass of water, exactly as if he were on his own island farm within hearing of the waves breaking on the rocks of Caprera. We found ourselves among Ricciotti's fourth corps of Guides. We were sent to the outfitting captain whose quarters were established in a long hangar overlooking the river. There we found a little rotund man, very bright of eye and limber of tongue, who fitted us out with many compliments and bows. We had brought a letter from the commander himself. Our first uniform was the gayest ever seen--too picturesque indeed for sober British tastes. It consisted of a red shirt, blue-grey riding breeches, and high boots with jingling silver spurs (for which last we paid from our own purses). On our heads we wore a fascinating "biretta," or cap with a tall feather. The captain of outfitting showed us how to sport it with a conquering air, and with what a grace to swing the short red cloak over one shoulder so that we should not be able to pass a girl in Autun who did not turn and look after us. This was what the master of the stores said as he stood with his back against the rough pine door-post of his quarters and rubbed his shoulder-blades luxuriously. But in practice I looked like a carnival Mephistopheles, while Hugh Deventer's feather generally drooped over one eye in a drunken fashion. We were not long in suppressing these gauds, though we did our duty in them as gallopers for several days. Finally we went to Ricciotti and begged to be allowed to carry our rifles in one of the foot regiments. We did not want to leave the foreign troops, knowing something of the ostracism and persecution which would be our part among the French regiments. So we were allowed to return our chargers to the remounting officer, and make another visit to the small rotund outfitter in his wooden barrack by the river. There of all our gallant array we retained only our red shirts, and for the rest were rigged out in sober dark blue, a _képi_ apiece, and a pair of stout marching shoes on our feet. We mounted knapsack and haversack, shouldered our Henry rifles, and in an hour found ourselves established among the first "Etranger," a Milanese regiment with three or four mountain companies from Valtelline and the Bergel. Now it chanced that I had spent some part of my vacations climbing among the peaks about Promontonio. There I had taken, more as companion than as guide, a Swiss-Italian, or to be exact "Ladin"--of my own age or a little older, by the name of Victor Dor. He was a pleasant lad, and we talked of many things as we shared the contents of our rük-sacks on the perilous shoulder of some mountain just a few feet removed from the overhang of the glacier. And here and now, with the chevrons of a sergeant, was this same Victor Dor, who embraced me as if he had been my brother. "Oh, the happiness to see you!" he cried. "And among the children of our father. I know you do not come to save the French who shot us down at Mentana. You are like us. You come because our father calls, and yet to think of those long days in the Val Bergel when we never knew that we were brothers. And yet I do not know. You spoke of the Man who was a Carpenter at Nazareth, and who called his disciples to follow him. So our father came, and we followed him. Princes and Emperors scatter honours. Republics give decorations and offices. But look at our lads lying on the straw yonder. Where will they be in a week? In the hospital or in the grave? Some of these men are well off at home, others are poor. No matter! All share alike, and all are equal before our father. Ah, that is it! You see there is nothing to be gained except the joy of following him. Our poor dear father Garibaldi, what has he to offer? He has nothing for himself but a barren isle, and even that he owes to you English.[1] The liberty of following him, of seeing his face when he passes by, of hearing his voice as he calls us his children, the pride of being his very own chosen, who have shared his perils and never deserted him to the last. These are our rewards. Tell me if they are of this world?" [Footnote 1: See Hamerton's "Round my House."] CHAPTER XV FIRST BLOOD On the third morning after our entry into the Ricciotti's first foreign legion, both Hugh and I awoke stiff and chilled by the frost. The lucky among us had early found quarters in byres and cattle-sheds, where the closely packed animals kept the place warm. We had to make the best of it on a floor of beaten earth, still sparsely strewn with heads of wheat and flecks of straw. The fodder had been requisitioned to the last armful, and not enough was left to build a nest for a sparrow. The barn was doorless, and, except for the shelter of the roof, we might as well have slept in the open air. At least so we thought, but next day men on the outposts told us a different tale. That night the head-quarters thermometers had showed twenty below zero, and many men slept never again to waken, under the open sky--slept leaning on their chassepots, and so died standing up, no one guessing they were dead till they fell over all in one piece like an icicle snapped. But even Hugh Deventer and I were sorely tried in our open barn. We had lain soft and fed well all our lives. We were not yet broken to the work like the campaigners of Sicily, or even like those who had passed through the war since the autumn. "If I bored a hole or two where the joints are," groaned Hugh, "one of Jack Jaikes's oil cans might easy my bearings greatly this morning!" "From what I can guess," said Victor Dor, "you will find it warm enough in an hour or two. Manteuffel is going to make a push for it to-day. Ricciotti managed to capture a couple of Werder's Uhlans, and one of our _franc-tireurs_ says that the whole Pomeranian army corps is coming upon us as fast as the men can march." "A _franc-tireur_ always lies," said another Valtelline man, Marius Girr, scornfully, but enunciating a principle generally received in the army. "Still, it is possible that this one told the truth by mistake--at any rate, it is not a safe thing to lie to Ricciotti about a matter which, in a few days, will prove itself true or untrue. Ricciotti knows the use of a firing party at twelve yards just as well as Bordone." The morning grew more and more threatening as time passed. The chill tang of coming snow clung to the nostrils. We had breakfasted meagrely on the last rinds of bacon and scraps of sausage in our haversacks. We longed for hot coffee till we ached, but had to content ourselves with sucking an icicle or two from the roof of the barn, good for the thirst, but very afflicting to the tongue at a temperature of minus twenty. Presently the inexorable bugles called us forward to the trenches, which extended in a vast hollow crescent from the Arroux bank opposite Autun to the hills above St. Leger on the borders of the Nièvre. We could see against the snow dark masses of overcoated Prussians defiling this way and that among the valleys, and at sight of them our field-guns began to speak. With eyes that hardly yet understood we watched the shells bursting and the marching columns shred suddenly apart to be reformed automatically only an instant after, as the narrow strips of dark blue uncoiled themselves towards the plain. Hugh and I lay close against a railway embankment from which the rails had been ruthlessly torn up. I was inclined to make an additional shelter of these, and indeed Hugh and I had begun the work when Victor Dor stopped us. "As much earth as you like," he said; "earth or sand stops bullets, but iron only makes them glance off, and often kill two in place of one. Scatter all the rails, plates, and ties down our side of the slope. I will show you something that is far better!" And with the edge of the shallow iron saucepan which he carried like a targe at his back, he scooped up the earth so that we soon had in front of us a very competent breastwork, giving sufficient cover for our heads and shoulders as well as a resting-place for our rifles. During the next hour we heard the roar of the German artillery away in the direction of St. Léger, and the resounding "boom-boom" of our heavy mortars and twelve-pounders answering them. "What would Jack Jaikes give to see these in action," I said in Hugh's ear. "And still more my father," he answered. Our outposts began to be driven in, but they had stubbornly defended our front, nor did they yield till the masses of blue battalions showed thickly, and then only to give the artillery free play. It was in waiting behind us, and the first crash as the shells hurtled over our heads made Hugh and I feel very strange in the pits of our stomachs--something like incipient sea-sickness. The veterans never once looked aloft, but only cuddled their rifles and wriggled their bodies to find a comfortable niche from which to fire. "Dig your toes into the embankment, you English," Marius Girr of our company called to us; "if you don't, the first recoil of the rifle will send you slipping down into the ditch." It was good advice, and with a few kicks we dug solid stances for our feet, in which our thick marching shoes were ensconced to the heels. We excavated also hollow troughs for our knees, and, as Hugh said, we behaved generally like so many burying beetles instead of gallant soldiers. All this was not done easily, for the ground was frozen hard, and in the river behind us we could hear the solid blocks of ice clinking and crunching together as the sullen grey-green current swept them along. It was Sunday, and upon the town road a little behind our line, but quite within the zone of fire, comfortable mammas and trim little daughters were trotting to Mass with their service books wrapped in white napkins. Hugh and I yelled at them to go home, but it was no use. Luckily I remembered their fear of the Iron Chancellor, and assured them by all the saints that "Bismarck was coming," whereupon they kilted their petticoats and made off homeward, their fat white-stockinged legs twinkling in the pearl-grey twilight. It was like a Dutch picture--trampled snow, low brooding sky, white-capped matrons and little girls wrapped in red shawls. But in a few moments we had other matters to occupy us. The Tanara regiment was on our right, and the sweep of the crescent being farther advanced than at our position, they received the first rush of the Pomeranians. But there was no waiting, for suddenly out of the woods in front of us stiff lines of blue emerged and began moving forward with the Noah's Ark regularity of marionettes. It seemed impossible that these could be soldiers charging. But we were soon convinced. The dip of the ground hid them for a long time, and then suddenly they appeared not four hundred yards off, no longer in column, but in two lines close together, with a supporting third some distance in the rear. We could see them extending companies far away on either side. But this we knew to be in vain, for the river protected us on the right, while on the left our entrenchments reached as far as the St. Leger hills which were crowned with our forts. Then came the splitting growl of the mitrailleuses behind us. These were still held to be rather uncertain weapons. Men familiarly called them pepper-pots, and it was as likely as not that a few bullets might come spattering our way, spread-eagled as we were on the railway embankment, and offering a far more practicable target than the advancing Germans. But there were no casualties, at least near us, and in a moment the Germans fired a volley which swept the embankment like hail. The rifles of the first Milanese cracked on every side, but I bade Hugh hold his fire till the charging enemy was only a hundred yards away. Our Henry rifles gave us an immense advantage in speed of firing. They came on, breaking at last through a dark barrier of yew and poplar hedge, and as they came we could see their bayonets flash like silver in the dull light. Their colonel was mounted on a black charger, a tall fine-looking man who pushed his horse up every knoll in order the better to see whom and what he was attacking. But he dropped a little way from the yew hedge, and almost before he reached the ground two men with a stretcher were lifting up their officer, while a third had taken the horse by the bridle and was leading him to the rear, as composedly as a groom in a stable-yard. "Now, then, Hugh," I cried, "you take the right of the line and I will take the left. But sight carefully and don't aim high." "_Crack_--_crack_--_crack!_!" went our magazine rifles, and the big Pomeranians went down as if an invisible sickle had mown them. As I expected, Hugh was finished before me, but we had scarcely time to adjust our new cartridge holders before the line broke and the blue coats turned and ran. A few officers and a man or two immediately in their wake got as far as the curve of the embankment--only, however, to be shot down. The air rang with the shouts of "Evivva Garibaldi!" And a few minutes afterwards the Tanara regiment, encouraged by our success, repulsed the enemy's bayonet charge, so that in an instant our whole line was disengaged. Only out in the open the trampled earth and the glistening crushed-sugar snow were starred here and there with spots and splotches of red and the contorted bodies of men, some still moving, but mostly stricken into the strange stiff attitudes of death. It was our first battle in the service of Garibaldi. It was destined to be our last. For that night the news of the fall of Paris and the signing of the armistice stopped the fighting everywhere, except at Belfort and along the desperate rear-guard line of Bourbaki's army, which was being driven like a pack of famished wolves into the passes of the Jura. CHAPTER XVI THE COMING OF ALIDA It was the evening of the 27th of January, and we were back in Autun. The Milanese were later than most in getting inside the gates. We had pushed far forward after the retreating Pomeranians, and now our lot was to bivouac in the square. The houses were full, and the churches with their damp floors did not tempt us. Besides, we were full of the glow of victory, and for that night a camp-fire in the middle of the square satisfied us. The evening had fallen mild and still--clear too, though rapidly growing misty under the red loom of camp-fire smoke. There was not much open rejoicing. The French would not believe that the end had come, and the Italians, still flushed with victory, felt that they had come a long way to do but little. Still, as we lay close to our camp-fires or threshed our arms about to keep warm, we could not keep out of our minds the hope of better days. I know not of what Hugh Deventer thought, but for me I was talking to Rhoda Polly, or lazily steering the ferry-boat across the river while before me Jeanne Félix bent lissomly to the oars. It was clear that I had not yet reached the age of the grand expulsive passion which ignores partage. Indeed, given a temperament like mine, no youth is worth his salt who at twenty-one cannot drive several teams abreast. Hugh and I put in the night wandering up and down, rendered restless by the thoughts of peace, and unable to sleep about the camp-fires before which we had spread our blankets. Upon the advice of a stranger in a doorway we penetrated into a school, and from the first class-room brought out benches and desks enough to feed our camp-fires all night in the square of Autun. With a stroke or two of the axe Hugh smashed these across the middle, and we soon built up such a range of blaze that the heat drove back the sleepers, some of whom, caught betwixt two, were in peril of being roasted. Those who did not waken we dragged off by the shoulders, usually to be soundly cursed for our officiousness. Then we went back to find the man who had told us of the school-house treasure. He was standing at his door grimly regarding our bonfires. We thanked him courteously in the name of the regiment. "At least the Jesuits will teach no more lies to poor children on those benches," he said. "You are true Garibaldians, though you do speak French like Linn and myself!" He was a tall man with a grey beard that came half-way to his waistbelt, and when he invited us in we were wondering who Linn might be. We found ourselves in a comfortable little kitchen, floored with red brick. On the walls, trophies of matchlocks and Dervish swords on a ground of palm leaves and alfa grass told us that we were in the dwelling of one who in his day had made the campaign of the Atlas. Over the mantelshelf, and framed in oak in a rough but artistic manner, was a document which attracted me. One side was written in Arabic of the dashing and ornamental sort. I had seen many such in my father's library. The other side was ruled with a pencil, and there the writing was that of a schoolboy just beyond the stage of pot-hooks. "Is it permitted to read?" I asked, for my curiosity was great. The man with the long beard was talking to Hugh, but he turned to me with a courteous wave of the hand, and said with a ceremony that was never learned in Autun: "Sir, this house and all that it contains are at your service." I followed the ill-traced letters of the translation. It was dated "From my prison-house, in the fortress-city called Amboise," and was signed "Sheik Abd-el-Kader." It contained, after the usual compliments, greetings and affection to the brave fellow soldier and commander of his forces, Keller Bey--with a congratulation on his release from imprisonment. So it became immediately evident to me that our host had indeed made the campaign of the Atlas, but that he had fought against and not for the tricolour. He seemed to watch out of the corner of his eye the effect of the framed certificate. "You are English," he said, "and though you have stolen much yourselves, you can still feel for a great man defending his country, and not condemn the little man who helped him." "You are Keller Bey?" I asked, pointing to the name on the much crumpled sheet. "I am Keller," he said, "Keller grown old and staid. Linn keeps me at home. She had the devil's own job ere she got me buckled down, but she did it, and now there is only Linn and our daughter Alida for me to think about." And in the silence of the house he lifted his voice and called aloud for "Linn." Presently we heard footsteps coming swiftly along the passage which led from the inner rooms. A woman entered--tall, gaunt, and angular. Her aspect was severe to the borders of being forbidding, and she frowned upon us as Keller, ex-officer of Abd-el-Kader, made some brief introduction. But the smile with which she held out her hand was transfiguring. The face which had been almost ugly suddenly became attractive and even fascinating. One saw that her eyes were of forget-me-not blue, and when she said "You are welcome" to one and the other of us, it was clear that Linn Keller possessed gifts of attraction which do not depend upon age or external beauty. She was taller than her husband, but awkward and angular in her movement. She walked with a curious shuffle as if the slipper on one foot was always on the point of coming off, yet--in a moment we found ourselves at home with her, and in five minutes we were calling her "Linn" just as her husband had done. The assurance of youth can surely no farther go. The lamp on the mantelpiece was of an Oriental design. Curtains and rugs were abundantly scattered about, and in one corner a looped-up hanging showed an oblong bath sunk in the tiled floor. "This house is our own," said Linn; "we have arranged some things to suit ourselves, having been so long abroad that it seems impossible to do without them. But at any rate you must stay and see Alida. You must rise early, for she has to go out to give her lessons. Alida is a teacher of music. We have put everything except this house and a provision for our old age into Alida's education." I explained to the pair that we would indeed be most grateful for the warmth and refuge of the kitchen, but that if that were inconvenient we could return at any hour of the morning, always provided the regiment did not march. "They are fine lads, eh, Linn?" said Keller, turning to his wife. "Can we not do something better for them than the kitchen floor?" I assured them that we asked no more than permission to stretch ourselves on a couple of rugs with knapsacks beneath our heads. But Linn's housewifery instinct was roused. She took us to a room on the entresol, with two beds, and even insisted on helping us off with our boots. There we should sleep, and she would keep an eye on the regiment, and have us on parade in good time. As for her she was a barrack's child and understood such things. Besides, Keller and she were back and forward all night like the Arabs among whom they had lived. Never had the touch of sheets felt more caressing. Never did sleep fall upon us so deep and dreamless as when our heads touched the pillow. It was still dark when we were awakened by a light touch on the shoulder, and sitting up each on an elbow we beheld Linn stalking about the room and putting back our uniforms all carefully brushed and folded. A candle stood on a stand, and farther back a gigantic Linn was grotesquely shadowed upon the walls. "Breakfast is ready," she said, when we had somewhat got over our first blankness. "You have a good hour before you, and if you dress now you will have time to breakfast, and besides you shall see Alida." I do not know whether it was the breakfast or the prospect of Alida seen in the flesh which aroused us, but no sooner was the door closed behind Linn's back than we flung ourselves into our uniforms with that ordered rapidity which only a soldier understands. Everything we touched had been warmed and cared for with that affectionate motherliness which looked out of Linn's eyes. We had never experienced any kindness like this before, and it seemed the more marvellous that by merely putting aside the blinds of our sleeping-room we could see our comrades still lying about the fires, and the cooks for the week beginning with their bayonet butts to crush and grind the berries for the morning coffee. Yonder were Victor Dor and Marius Girr looking down at our sleeping places, and presently beginning to roll up our blankets. It seemed a shame that we should have passed the night between sheets, thus basely abandoning our comrades among the trampled snow of the market square of Autun. But there interposed between them and us two necessities: a "made" breakfast which we must eat--eat till we could eat no more, and--we must see Alida Keller, daughter of the Atlas "goums." I don't know what Hugh expected. But for myself I mingled Linn and the ideal music mistress. Tall, forceful, and striding she must be, with energy to bring into such evident subjection Keller Bey and his wife. Something younger and less weather-beaten than Linn, of course--perhaps with a certain passing glow of good looks which would fade out like the mist bloom upon the peach trees in the frost of April. But when at last she came in, and stood a moment to give a hand to each of us, before nestling into her familiar corner of a low old Oriental couch--I think both our hearts cried out at the same moment: "Oh, the perfect creature!" She was not like Linn in the least. Her father still less resembled her. It is almost impossible to describe this girl of the South, nevertheless I can but try, Alida Keller was little, but shaped with such delicate perfection that she gave the impression of a greater height. Her skin was of a creamy duskiness through which went and came colour now as faint as that of a rose leaf, which anon flamed out into a vivid red, the colour of the pomegranate flower. Her father and Linn served her like a princess, and to this she seemed accustomed, for except that she patted Linn's hand, or with a smile said "Petit Père" to her father, she seemed unconscious of their attentions. As for Hugh and myself, I declare that we were completely cheated out of that admirable breakfast. We had meant to square our elbows, grasp our knives and forks, and fall on. We had rank appetites, sharpened with fighting and hard fare, but the mere presence of Alida cut at the roots of hunger as a scythe cuts down reeds. We simply sat and gazed at her. She was not in the least put out, ate well and daintily, and looked at us impartially from under her dark lashes. For the instant--I will not admit more--I forgot Rhoda Polly and Jeanne Félix. But I am not much to be blamed. For the burden of the conversation fell on me. Hugh Deventer could only sit and gape, lifting the same morsel half a dozen times to his mouth without once getting it safely in. He uttered not a word, save sometimes in answer to a direct question he would produce a "yes" or "no," so jerky and mechanical that I was obliged to kick his shins under the table to keep him aware of himself. Of this Keller and Linn saw nothing. They were all eyes and ears for Alida, and had not a glance for us. The table was covered--we were soldiers and could help ourselves. Meantime I was kept busy answering the questions of Alida. She spoke in a low and thrilling contralto, a voice that had a _ron-ron_ in it, something like the pulsing whisper of a bell after it has been rung in a church tower. How had we left school? We must tell her. Tell her I did, describing as vividly as possible the laundry and the secret way out upon the road, then the good-bye call at my father's house, and our escape from the sentinel at the bridge end. It was lovely to see the cheeks of Alida now going pale now flaming scarlet, and I admit that I made the most of my opportunity. I passed rapidly over the troubles in Aramon-les-Ateliers, both because I knew such things could not interest Alida Keller--also (and chiefly) because I gathered that Keller and Linn would be altogether on the side of the workmen, and I did not feel called upon to defend the difficult position of Dennis Deventer as Manager of the Small Arms Factory--at least not just then. Our later adventures with the transport train, our march by night, our incorporation in the Garibaldi army, and the many skirmishes culminating in the big fight when we had defeated the Prussians, were all easy to tell--and I had scarcely finished when Linn came in with the news that the regiments were forming up for roll-call. We had hardly time to promise to come back before we were equipped and pushed out by Linn with well-plenished haversacks. We scurried across the square and appeared in our places out of nowhere in particular, to the great astonishment of Victor and Marius, who hastily arranged our blankets across our shoulders so that we might pass inspection. "You English fear nothing, I know," said Victor Dor, "but you almost ran things a trifle fine this morning. See yonder!" He pointed with a finger towards a narrow street which debouched into the upper end of the Market Square. At first we could see nothing--and then--lo, the ramshackle barouche, and the two fatigued white horses of the General himself! "_Garibaldi! Garibaldi!_" The "Children" of the Milanese regiment could hardly keep their lines. We front-rank men felt an impulse as if someone were pushing us from behind. It was the concentred yearning of a thousand men. Our officers kept whispering to us, "Stand firm. Not just now. He will return. See how the Tanara regiment is standing--would you have them put us to shame before our father?" So the Milanese men stood quivering each like a tuning-fork while their General passed by. Bordone was with him, and Ricciotti rode on the side farthest from the lines. I saw him clearly, and noted the waxen pallor of his face. But his eye was still bright, and the smile kindly on his lips as he passed down the lines. It was the face of a philosopher, a thinker, or a prophet, rather than that of the greatest leader of irregular troops the world had ever seen. But when the carriage turned at the end of the square, the men could no longer be held. They surrounded the old barouche, hanging round it in clusters, like grapes, or more exactly like bees about their queen in her summer flight. Hugh Deventer and I stood a little back, for we felt that this was, as one might say, a family matter, and no concern of ours. But Ricciotti spied us out, and putting his horse into the press, brought us forward to introduce us personally to his father. The old man extended his hand which, instead of kissing, we shook in the English fashion. The difference pleased him. "It is like Sicily to see you here. I had once over eight hundred of you, and not a white feather or a faint heart among them all. I trusted them as I trusted my children. They were as my children. Well may I love England. They fought for me seeking no reward, and afterwards when there was talk of expelling me, they bought my island and gave it to me, so that none could take it away for ever." He moved on, nodding his head and smiling, while Bordone glooming on the seat opposite seemed vastly relieved. Ricciotti was in high spirits. "The Chief is better to-day than I have seen him for years," he confided to us. "He said we had done well against Manteuffel--yes, even I, his son whom he never praises." Victor Dor and Marius Girr came and shook hands with us repeatedly. It was an honour to the company that the General had so distinguished us, and would we tell them what he had said--yes, every word. From their archway Keller and Linn had beheld, one standing on either side of the door, and a slight vibration of the window curtains suggested that perhaps Alida herself was not wholly without curiosity. Then the troops were dismissed. The town was placarded with the white oblongs reserved for Government proclamations. The Armistice (they said) had been concluded with the Emperor of Germany, but in the meantime its army of the Vosges was to remain under arms for the reason that poor Bourbaki's army of the East was excepted from the cessation of hostilities. At first no one could imagine why, because it was now little more than a broken troop, hardly able to fight a rearguard action, and ready to be driven through the perishing cold of the mountain passes to surrender to a Swiss colonel beyond the frontier. Later the truth appeared. By their own politicians the army of the East had been wholly overlooked and forgotten! And Bismarck, irritated by the stubborn resistance of Denfert at Belfort, was willing to take advantage of this fact to overrun two additional French departments. Thus it came to pass that we remained full three weeks more kicking our heels in Autun. We were allowed to make our own arrangements for _billets de logement_, which carried us naturally to the house in the square inhabited by Keller Bey, his wife Linn, and--Alida. The officers all knew that the war was over and chafed at the delay. So I think did most of the soldiers excepting ourselves. Hugh and I alone were content, of all the army of the Vosges encamped in and about Autun. CHAPTER XVII A DESERT PRINCESS We occupied the two big gable rooms looking east on the second floor of the Kellers' house in the market square of Autun. This suited us admirably, though we were obliged to keep quiet so as not to disturb Alida, who had the corresponding suite on the first floor below. We found that the room in the entresol where we had slept the first night was the proper bedroom of Keller and Linn his wife. But as a matter of habit, neither of them appeared to care very much for a regular night's rest. You would catch them, indeed, closing their eyes after dinner over a newspaper, or when Alida was practising on her noble grand piano, the chief pride and luxury of the Keller house. But Hugh and I, who slept with our door of communication open in order to talk to one another in case of sleeplessness, could hear Keller and Linn moving about at all hours of the night down in the silence of the ground floor--sometimes advertising their presence by a little silvery rattle of glass set on a tray, the dull fall of a log on the chimney and irons, or the curious slip-shuffle of Linn's walk. Sometimes, too, we heard voices, but that not often. Once about the end of the first week, when I could not sleep, I slipped down for a stroll about the town. It was half-past two of a black February morning, and the snow swirls were waltzing like spinning tops all about the market square. But there in the archway, his back to the carven lintel, stood Keller Bey, calmly smoking his pipe and looking out on the black turmoil as though it had been the cool of an August evening. Linn heard us talking, and came quickly to see who was there. Even at that hour she was in her ordinary dress, and she dried her hands composedly on a long sheath apron of blue _toile nationale_. "Why are you not asleep?" she demanded sharply. "Keller, you are teaching this young man bad habits." His wife's accusation only made Keller wag his head wisely. Instantly I took all blame upon myself. I had not been able to sleep, I said, I was ashamed to disturb Deventer by my restlessness. "You drank too much of that black coffee last night, Monsieur Auguste" (thus had Angus gone wrong). "I must ration you in future, so that you can get your natural sleep as young folks should." I hastened out into the night with Keller's huge "pellerine" cast about my shoulders, and the hood reaching my ears. It was a comfortable garment of some unknown African cloth, rough as frieze and warm as wool. The sudden dashes of snow swooping upon me were turned victoriously aside by its formidable brown folds, and I felt as I wandered in the black of the streets with the buildings towering dim and shadowy above me, like one who in a storm has by some magic carried his house along with him. No soldiers were bivouacking in the streets that night. The squares were void of bonfires. All the red shirts and blue breeches had alike found shelter, for the superfluous regiments were now quartered upon the neighbouring villages, or had marched to their head-quarters at Dijon. Back and forth I tramped, from the Mairie clock with its dim one-candle power illumination of face to the dark mass of the towers of the Holy Trinity, I patrolled the town from end to end. It was perhaps an hour or a little more that I wandered so, tiring myself for sleep, my face beaten upon pleasantly by the fierce gusts of snow charging down from among the chimney-pots, or driving level across the open spaces. At last I turned my face towards the market square, which I entered by the little dusky street of the Arches, and so came suddenly upon the Keller house at the angle opposite to the mayoral belfry. I had expected Keller in the same position waiting for me, but when I sheltered in the archway, no Keller was in sight. Behind me, however, the door stood open, and as I stood dusting down and shaking out the thick folds of Keller's pellerine, I was conscious of a stir behind me. I turned my head in doubt, and was just in time to see the man himself whisk upstairs with the curious enamelled iron water-jug in his hand, which is known through all the South as a "bouillotte." The fire had newly been made up in the kitchen, and glowed warmly. The kettle sang shrill, and even the German stove, used on the occasions of great feast, had hastily been put into commission. Feeling sure that something was gravely wrong, I took off my boots to dry slowly on the high bar alongside those of Keller and Hugh. I tiptoed upward, hoping to gain my room without running across any one. But on the first floor the door of the sitting-room stood wide open, and all was bright within. I saw Alida sobbing bitterly, Linn kneeling beside her with bottles of Cologne water and smelling-salts. She was murmuring something evidently designed to be comforting. The girl's long dark hair fell around her in loose masses, overspreading and almost inundating the low canary-coloured divan of soft Oriental silk on which she was reclining. Keller hovered helplessly about the couch, or proffered a suggestion, to be swept off the scene with a sharp word from Linn which sent him to the far end of the room, only to begin again a stealthy approach. I promise you I was passing the door as cautiously as might be, and giving myself no small credit for my excellent management of the business, when suddenly I heard my name called as only one in the house could speak it. "Aügoos Cawdori--Aügoos, I want you--I want to tell you!" Alida, leaning on her elbow, had caught sight of me, and I could see Linn's gesture of something like despair, which I took to mean--"There---the secret is out. We can never stop it if once she speaks." She bent forward and spoke earnestly into Alida's ear. But the girl merely signed to Linn to retire. The gesture was made unconsciously, but with all the dignity of a princess accustomed to be unquestioningly obeyed. "Let Monsieur Cawdori come hither at once. I must speak with him. His advice is good. You and Keller Bey are old and speak as the old. Aügoos Cawdori is young as I am young, but he has the wise heart. So much I have seen from the first." She spoke in French, but with a curious redundancy and largeness of phrasing unnatural to a language which is an exact science. In all moments of agitation Alida seemed to be translating from another and more copious tongue. Obedient to her command I entered the sitting-room where she was lying among the cushions of the yellow divan. The room was fitted up with a certain barbaric splendour, and the only touches of modern life to be seen were a bookcase of prettily bound books--red, green, and gold--set in a corner, the big Steinway Grand with its cabinets of music ready to hand, and the piano-stool upon which Alida often amused herself by spinning round and round, her tiny feet in their heelless slippers of golden brocade showing beneath the flutter of her light silk robe. As she lay on the divan, I could see that she wore under her dressing-gown a blouse of white silk flowered with gold, and an abundant pair of trousers of the same gathered close about her ankles by a button and a knot of golden cord. "I will speak," she cried. "This young man is worthy of my confidence, and you know it, Linn. If my father had wished me to go with Said Ali Mohammed, the slave prince, he would not have committed me to you. No, he would have sent me to nibble sweetmeats among the women behind the veil. But I am not a woman of the harem. I am free and French. Obey I shall not. I would rather die!" She suddenly threw off a slipper, reached out a bare brown foot exquisitely moulded, deftly picked up a letter from the floor with her toes, and handed it to me. It was in Arabic, and at the sight of the characters I shook my head. "My father could read it, but not I," I said mournfully, wishing that I had spent less time on Greek and Latin at the _Lycée_ St. André. "Then you must learn--you must--I shall teach you to speak, and your father shall drill you in the verbs. Listen, Aügoos Cawdori, I am not, save in love and in the kindness which not even my life could repay, the daughter of these best and dearest folk in the world. No, parents are not so kind as Keller and Linn. They are more selfish, though God forbid that I should speak so of my father. He was, ever since I can remember, a prisoner of war--even the great Emir Abd-el-Kader himself. I am the daughter of his one Queen, his first wife--no child of the 'Smala,' but a princess, the daughter of a princess. Abd-el-Kader, thinking himself near his end, committed me to the care of his old officer and his wife, instructing them that in all things I should be brought up as a maiden of the Franks. This they have done. You Linn, and you Keller, have kept watch about me day and night. The God who is the God of Jesus and of Mahomet reward you, as surely he will. I am a European girl in that which I have learned. I have chosen a profession in which I can be happy, here in this little town among the hills, till I seek larger fields and try my fate in other cities." She paused in her tale and smiled. The tears were falling steadily down Linn's face, and she seemed suddenly to have aged a quarter of a century. But Keller Bey, no longer restless, stood stiffly at attention as if he had been listening to the commands of his master, the great Emir. Alida looked from one to the other. Then lightly as a cat leaping from the floor to a window-sill, she sprang to her feet and embraced them tenderly. "I am your true daughter always. Do not forget it. I owe everything to you, and I shall never quit you if you will let me stay." She sat down again, and taking her letter, she began: "This is from my father, Abd-el-Kader, presently living at Brousse in Syria on the road to Damascus. He is old, he says, and he desires to see me about him in his latter days. All is good in Syria. The water of Brousse is sweet, and the French Government gives him much money. He has found a husband for me, a prince royal of Egypt, though not of Arab race. Sidi ben Mohammed is his name, the man whom he sends with a letter that I may see him, upon receipt of which his servant Keller Bey and his wife will hasten to bring me to Brousse under the protection and escort of this Prince of Egypt. Upon my arrival the solemn rites shall be observed, and I shall be the first wife of Ali Mohammed the Prince, a worthy man and one of great power in his own country. "So it is written, and my father signs and seals, but whether it was written for him or by him, I cannot tell. At any rate he has made his signature with the flourish which none can mistake, and an order is an order. What say you, Aügoos Cawdori? Must I obey, and become the chief wife of this coffee-coloured fellah, no Arab of my father's race, say the Egyptians what they will?" Alida sat among the scatter of cushions regarding me fixedly. "Tell me," she said, with a pitiful little gesture of appeal, "must I obey my father? _They_ think so, though I know well it will break their hearts as it would mine. Rather would I use this little toy" (she showed a dainty pair of golden scissors, with which the high born of her people sometimes open their arteries in a bath) "than I would go to Brousse to wed the brown man with the skin greasy like that of a toad--A-ä-ä-ch!" She shuddered and flung herself back on the cushions. I stood there in my stockinged feet as if I had been in a mosque, but no one remarked my bootless condition. "Now," said Alida, "you have heard the letter of the Emir, my father--what am I to reply to him? Tell me and I shall say it. You are the gift of God. The messenger with the message. I knew as much when I saw you passing the door. You have come out of the darkness to bring me light." It was a difficult position for my father's son. I was conscious of no message from heaven. But on my spirits preyed the same disgust as had fallen on her own. It was a thing impossible that this delicate girl, educated, well-read, accomplished, should mate with an African brute, with his Oriental ideas of the servitude of woman. "Princess Alida," I began, but she cried out instantly, "Alida--just Alida the music mistress--no princess at all!" "Well, then," I acquiesced, "Alida be it. You ask for my opinion. I will give it you. But I warn you that perhaps I am not the best of advisers, for having a good father after his ideas (which are not mine) I have not obeyed him very well, nor, indeed, has he asked me to obey. "But it seems to me that your father, by making you over to Keller Bey and Linn there--by ordering you to be brought up as their daughter, by allowing and encouraging you to acquire the tastes and arts of the Western people--has now no right to summon you back to a life which would be worse to you than death. I should refuse now and always. If necessary I should make good my French citizenship, and claim the protection of the Government. The mere threat of the loss of his great pension would be sufficient for Abd-el-Kader!" The delicious little brown head was bent low, and Alida's fingers pulled nervously at the gold threads on the sleeve of her long dressing-gown. She was carefully considering my advice, but I could see that she flushed her brightest scarlet at my words about her father. The proud little spirit within her spoke freely of the Emir, but resented the speech of others. I regretted that I had been so plain, but it was my manifest duty (so at least I regarded it) to save this daintiest of human creatures from the pollution and mental death of a harem, surrounded with evil-talking slave girls and sweet-sucking, moon-faced concubines. Alida was a product of the West, in spite of her ancestry. The whole business appeared ludicrous and impossible. I seemed to be listening and talking in a dream from which I would presently awaken. Alida would don her smart walking dress, and with her brown leather music roll under her arm would set off to give the Sous-Préfet's young wife her daily music lesson, Linn stalking majestically beside her like a great Danish hound on guard. At last she spoke, but without looking at me. "Though I agree that the thing itself is impossible--that I cannot marry Ali Mohammed the slave and slave's son--tell me what is to be done? I shall ruin these good people whom I love, who are paid to take care of me. Or if I do not ruin them, I shall be obliged to live on their scanty savings, for I know that they have spent the moneys they received from the Emir on my education." Linn gave one look at Keller, and flung herself down beside the girl. "Whatever we have is yours--we shall do very well. Everyone is pleased with you. Your professors prophesy great things for you. Keller, you dumb dog, tell her we shall manage very well, and that she shall never know the difference!" "If she decides to disobey her father," said Keller Bey, "we must do as things will do with us. But I wash my hands of the responsibility." For the first time I saw the flash in Linn's eyes. "Wash your hands of the responsibility, will you, Keller? So did Pilate. But I cannot hear that much good came of that! You and I must stand between, and prevent a Calvary for our Alida--or a Golgotha, for she will never marry that man alive!--I know her--I brought her up, and I never mastered her once. No more shall her father by one letter brought by a brown thick-lipped prince in a frock coat and glossy hat!" "Let us say no more about it," murmured Alida. "I will send away the slave's son to-morrow. I shall write to my father also. Doubtless he will be angry, but then--surely it is true that he and those about him are imagining a vain thing. He should have kept me veiled and cloistered, without a book, without music, without a mind. Then I might have been fit for the plaything of an idle man, but that time is past. I am a woman of the Occident, fitted to carry out my life alone, to earn my living, and to be the mate of some man who shall be altogether mine!" CHAPTER XVIII THE PRINCESS COMMANDS We slept late the next morning, Hugh and I. Indeed, Hugh always slept late unless he had the luck to be awakened. We did not breakfast till Linn had returned from her watch-dog march along with Alida to the house of the Sous-Préfet. There was now no regular drill, and instead of roll-call it was regarded sufficient if we reported to the guard which remained in permanence playing at cards and "bouchon" under the central bastion of the fort. This Hugh and I did, remaining a little while to gossip with Victor Dor and others of our company who were lounging about the barrack square. I fear that during those weeks we passed for rather sulky dogs who would not share our bone with our neighbours. For, having little to do, the young fellows of the first Milanese often followed with admiring eyes the daily progress of Alida and Linn in the direction of the Sous-Préfecture. We had requests for introductions even from the younger officers, but all such we referred to Keller Bey, knowing that the old man would be able to deal with any intrusion. And indeed matters stopped there till the regiment was disbanded, and the Italians were sent home at the expense of the French Republic. Meantime we continued, as Saunders McKie would have said, "living at hack and manger," free of the privileges of the house of Keller Bey and Linn his wife. Since Alida had taken my advice and written to her father that she would not marry the brown man, nor leave the life for which he had educated her for that of the harem, she had treated me as an intimate friend and adviser. We had long talks together, so often and so long, indeed, that I could see that Keller Bey and Linn were seriously troubled. Perhaps they were a little jealous also, but for all that they did not dream of opposing their wills to the slightest wish of their ward. "What shall I do when you are gone?" Alida cried one day. It was still early forenoon, for the Sous-Préfet's lady had to attend a Government function. Besides, it was a dismalish day outside with a low crawl of leaden clouds overhead, and along the horizon only one swiftly eclipsed streak of gold bead-work to show where the sunshine was at work. "I can _not_ stay on here, content with only the round of teaching visits, and the love of these two good souls! 'I have had playmates--I have had companions,' as your poet sings, and now there is you--and Hugh--who have come to me to show me how lonely I was." She thought a while, and then in her imperious way she sketched a programme. "There is no reason why Keller Bey and Linn should stop here. The house is well placed, and one of the best in the town. It would let to-morrow. Why should we not all go to Aramon and be happy? We could find a house there and company--all those girls, Hugh's sisters, of whom you have told me. I should be so happy. And we would get away from the brown man. He would not know where to find us if he should come back!" She clapped her hands joyfully, as if the matter were already settled, and ran upstairs to break the matter to Keller and Linn. When next I saw these two I was conscious of a little chill in the atmosphere. They thought that I was responsible for the wish of Alida to leave Autun and go to Aramon. "Do you think it is a proper thing," said Linn, "that a maid should follow two young men?" "I think you wrong her," I said, "unwittingly of course, but certainly you mistake Alida. It springs from no feeling of love for either of us, but she has now tasted comradeship and the equality of years for the first time. She thinks there is nothing else worth living for in the world. She will change her mind by and by. Her mind and affection will turn again to her elders." So I spoke from the unplumbed depths of a youthful self-sufficiency--that curious malady (happily fleeting) which compels all clever young men to feel called upon to lay down rules for their elders and for the world about them, at or about the age of twenty-one. Linn and Keller looked at one another in a kind of hopeless bewilderment. I think they felt that this was only the first of a series of changes from the quiet life they had been leading. They told themselves that they need expect no more happy uneventful days and delicious nights when they used their house as of old they had done many an Arab encampment, a place to wander and dally in, to lie down and rise up, to drowse and wake, to smoke in, and to play bezique together when the heart told them to. A sort of terror seized them as they saw themselves going off to bed at reasonable hours like mere untravelled burghers, each with a candle in hand, and nothing but the drum of the rain on the roof or the gnawing of a mouse in the wainscot to help them over the dead hours till the sun should rise. It was Keller who this time broke the silence. "Of course," he said, speaking slowly, and poising each word carefully, "if Alida has set her heart upon it of her own free will, there is nothing to be said. Linn and I must obey, at whatever cost to ourselves. For all we have is hers, and has come to us because of her. On that score we need not fear. We have enough for ourselves, and enough to leave to Alida. We can go to Aramon, but the business will need to be carefully gone about, and not too soon after your return. Alida is a girl among ten thousand. You are well-looking young men, and doubtless there are as many evil tongues in Aramon as there are in all places where human creatures herd together." This was a great concession, and accordingly I plucked up heart and began to make plans and suggest ways and means, eager to get ahead of all possible objections on the part of Linn. "There is an empty house at the corner of my father's property of Gobelet--not one so large as this, but quite large enough and pleasantly situated within the grounds. My father has never let it, but I know that he would be glad of a brave soldier and his wife to take care of it and keep it in order. The place is retired and he would feel protected. The gate in the wall opens on to the road to the _lycée_ of St. André, so that you would come and go without any overlooking. Besides, my father is a student and interferes with no one. He would talk as much Arabic to you as you wish. So too would old Professor Renard up at the College. He was once Vicar Apostolic out in your parts. You would have the best companions for Alida, in the sisters Deventer and their friends. If you like I will write to my father to-day? Not that there is any need. I know that he will be delighted, nay, that he will offer you a wing of Gobelet itself, which is much too large for him. But do not accept, the Garden Cottage is ten times as amusing, and infinitely prettier." I could see that I was making some way. Linn and her husband looked at each other, and if they did not smile, at least there was a more hopeful look on their faces. Linn was touched by the thought of the companionship of the Deventer girls, for in this matter Autun had been gravely lacking. Nor did the bribe of Arabic-speaking students to talk with appear to be wholly lost upon Keller Bey, even though he spoke still somewhat restively. "I have little acquaintance with book Arabic beyond the Koran, but it is a noble language in which to vent one's thoughts." I reassured him that both the ex-Vicar Apostolic and my father found it so. They would sit smoking and talking Arabic all a long evening over their parchments. "All this must I come and see for myself," said Keller Bey; "such a plant as Alida is not to be pulled up by the roots till we know where we shall find better ground and more fertile in which to reset her. But tell me, is not this Aramon of yours an unsafe town? The mob had possession of it for some days lately, attacking the works and the manager's house--can we safely take Alida to such a place?" Then in mighty haste I showed him the difference between the unceasing activity of Aramon-of-the-Workshops and the scholastic calm of Aramon le Vieux. I extended the width of the dividing river to a three-quarters of a mile, a size to which it only reaches in times of flood when the tall ladder of the painted scale by the bridge-end is wholly covered, and still the flood creeps up inch by inch till the people of Vallabrègues and Saint Jacques are crying for succour from the roofs of their drowned-out houses, and the pigs and poultry go out to sea feet up on a six-knot current. Keller and Linn sat and listened--Linn with a lost air of someone whose scheme of life has suddenly become impossible. I think Linn had expected the quiet days, the morning promenades with Alida, the cheerful suppers of the house in the square in Autun to go on always. Alida would always be as content with them as she had been when a little girl. Had she not come back from school to the warm love and unbounded spoiling which awaited her there? As they sat and pondered, Alida entered, her roll of music in her hand. "What," she cried, "you are all sitting as gloomy as crows in a cemetery. Where is Hugh? I want you both to come out and walk by the river. The early violets are out, and yesterday Madame the Sous-Préfet found a daffodil." "Alida," said I, "at Aramon all the flowers are out, and the broom runs along the river banks like a mile-wide flame of fire. Everywhere is yellow in spring, ranunculus, buttercups, celandine, and the yellow wallflowers sprouting among all the old walls of Gobelet. When will you come and see them?" Alida went prettily to Linn and kissed her. Then she put her arms about Keller without saying anything. The game was won. No more remained but to make the arrangements. "As soon as these two dear people will let me!" she said. Bless her! She might have started next morning if she had been set upon the matter! That is, so far as Keller and Linn were concerned. Afterwards while we were walking home Hugh looked edgeways at me. "Angus," said he gravely, "I should not like to have your responsibility. Are you sure that she will take to the family at Château Schneider? Or they to her? We are rather a handful, you know, and she--well, she is not exactly ordinary." "As to that I don't know," I said sharply, for I did not like to hear my darling project decried or even suspected, "and what is more, I don't care. The garden and the Garden Cottage at Gobelet are large enough and safe enough." "Pardon," he retorted, more unpleasantly than he had ever spoken to me. "I was under the impression that Alida was going to Aramon for society." "Well, and suppose she finds it without crossing the bridge--what then?" "Oh, nothing," he said, "I was only considering what you meant to do for yourself in the way of a career!" CHAPTER XIX KELLER BEY COMES TO ARAMON Keller Bey came to Aramon ten days after the time of our return. Before letting us go Alida decided that I must write her every day, and Hugh once a week. She had never seen a line from either, but she judged from our faculty of conversation--often quite a false test, as witness Cowper and Gray. For the details of that first visit of Keller to Aramon I must have recourse to the daily letters which I wrote at that time to Alida. _Monday, February_--, 1871. "NOBLE AND SWEET,-- "The Bey came last night into the station of Aramon-les-Ateliers, where Hugh and I met him. A manifestation of the Internationale was crowding the platform to welcome some delegate who was to address the companions in their hall. I could see the old soldier quiver at the sight of the red flags they carried. If the St. André diligence had not been waiting at the station portico, I hardly think we could have persuaded him to go on. Any opposition to the tricolour, which he hates with the hatred of an old Atlas fighter, appears to excite him. We shall have trouble with him at Aramon if events thicken as they seem to be doing. "But for the time being, everything marched as to music. The Bey was installed beside me, and Hugh very considerately took his leave. I am sending him over a message to-day telling him how matters fell out. The view from the bridge enchanted Keller. Aramon the Elder was rich with sunset glow--'a rose-red city half as old as time,' with the tall Montmorency keep standing up from its rock as firm and proud as the day it was finished five centuries ago. "He asked concerning the fort on the top, and gloom overspread his face when he heard that St. André had long been a famous _lycée_. I think he feared the neighbourhood of hosts of Jesuits. But I tranquillised his mind, telling him that he would find Professor Renard as free a thinker and as tolerant a listener as even my father. "Before long we stopped at the gate of Gobelet, and to my astonishment and delight my father opened it in person. He had even made toilet to the extent of a rough pilot suit and a pair of patent leather slippers. "Keller instinctively saluted as my father held out his hand. He seemed unaccountably shy of taking it, but at last he did and even shook it warmly if somewhat jerkily, 'after the English fashion' as he was eager to inform me afterwards--making a useful comparison of French and English characteristics between 'serrer la main' and hand-shaking. "I let the old gentlemen go on by themselves, sure that they would thus become better friends, and if you will believe me, Alida, they were not at the corner of the path leading to the Garden Cottage before they were deep in Arabic, and the next thing I knew was my father leading the Bey prisoner through the open windows of his study that he might show him some singular and infinitely precious manuscript. "Well, I left them till supper time. We are simple folk and sup early. Then I went into the study, where I had some difficulty in awakening them to a world where people washed hands before eating and drinking. "'Well, we must thresh that out again,' I heard my father say, and I am sure he never showed himself so much interested by any of my performances, not even when I brought home the gold medal for the first place in the _baccalauréat_. They could hardly let each other go, and if you, Alida, were present at that moment in the mind of the Bey, you were relegated to some distant hinterland, by me unexplored. "At supper, before Saunders McKie and the domestics I steered my barque with care. For the ears of Saunders were growing long and lop like a rabbit's, with sheer intensity of listening. Once or twice things became a little sultry, as when the Bey described the bannered procession he had seen at the station. "'Ah, politics,' said my father. 'I am glad they do not manifest over on this side of the water. White, red, or tricolour, it is all one to a man among his books.' "'Not to me!' said the Bey, somewhat explosively. "'Of course not--you are a soldier, and these things have been your life's business. But you must make allowances for a recluse and a scholar!' "I did not think my father could have been so tactful. "So _Salaam_, for to-night, dear lady! I kiss your golden feet." "_Tuesday._ "The freshness of this high air to you! I take up my tale. The Bey and my father have continued inseparable. Twice have I guided Keller to the Garden Cottage, and twice has he beheld it with wandering eyes. I am so sure that he has taken little in and that he will be able to give Linn no proper satisfaction, that I have made a plan of each floor to scale, marking all the cupboards deep and shallow, all exits and entrances, and the distance from Gobelet itself, with the garden walks and coppices on a separate plan. These I send now, so that you can have them well studied before the Bey's return, when Linn and you will know a great deal more about the Garden Cottage than he will. The third expert in Arabic came to dinner to-night, and to my relief he wore his college gown. I was afraid that he might appear in the full black uniform of the Company of Jesus. Keller did not turn a hair. They addressed each other in the current Arabic of Algeria, and in a clapping of hands they were deep in the discussion of Abd-el-Kader and all manner of recent tribal matters among the clans of the Atlas. "I did not understand very much, and indeed even the scholarly Arabic of my father was momentarily put out by words and expressions so richly local that the recollection of them caused the Vicar Apostolic to laugh aloud. "As far as I could make out, however, there was talk of a threatened rebellion because of the defeat and humiliation of France, and how, from his home in Brousse, Abd-el-Kader was doing all he could to prevent it. The dinner was a great success, but my chief amusement was to watch the face of old Saunders McKie. "'Losh-an-entie, Maister Aängus,' he said afterwards, 'to think that men wha can talk a reasonable civilised langwage like English, or even a chatter-chatter like the French, should bemean themselves to roar at yin anither like the beasts o' the forest!' "I told him that in all probability Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples spoke a dialect of it. Now I did not know how closely Aramaic approached Arabic, but I did know that the argument was calculated to impress Saunders. However, he only said, 'Maybe, but I think none the mair o' them for a caper like that, and I have ay been informed by them that kens a deal mair than you, Maister Aängus, that when the disceeples spak' or wrote, they set their tongues to the Greek, which is a decent responsible dead language, and weel thocht o' amang learned folks, or they would never spend sae muckle time learning it to the puir divinity laddies at the college.' I argued, somewhat foolishly, that most universities now had a professor of Arabic, but Saunders only said, 'Guid peety them that has to sit under _him_!' "Before going out, for I had stayed behind to smoke a cigarette and enjoy the dismay of the old servant, Saunders betrayed the reason of his anger at the use of Arabic. "'And to think,' he grumbled, as he went about dumping trays on the sideboard, 'that there's Mistress Syme and a' the rest o' them in the kitchen waiting for me to tell them a' that was said, and me has to gang doon never a bit the wiser, wi' my finger in my mouth like a bairn that hasna learned his lesson!'" So much I wrote to Alida of the successful reception and early doings of Keller Bey, ancient war-leader under the Emir of the Atlas. He had taken enthusiastically to Aramon le Vieux, and certainly Aramon in the person of my father and Professor Renard had taken enthusiastically to him. My father duly made the offer that I had side-tracked by anticipation. There was room enough for half a dozen families of that size in Gobelet. The servants were lazy, and needed something to do. Renard should come down, and all of them should dwell together in a haze of Arabic poetry and tobacco smoke. Besides, my father found the Bey a night-bird after his own heart, and absolutely rejoiced in having someone under his roof whom at any hour he might find awake and smoking in the library, if he should find himself restless. But this I would have at no price. I begged Keller Bey to remember that he was here to arrange for Alida and Linn. If they were to be under my father's roof, they would be eternally exposed to the jealous spying of Saunders and of the other servants, while at the Garden Cottage they would have a wall, and if necessary a locked gate, between them and any espionage. But by far the most delicate part of my mission was to break the news to the Deventer family. I had sworn Hugh by solemn oath not to forestall me in the matter, and I think he awaited my attempt with a kind of malicious pleasure. Certainly it was a large task to explain an unseen Alida to such a contradictory and turbulent family as the Deventers. Yet upon them and their manner of receiving Alida, befriending or showing her the cold shoulder, the whole success of the plan depended. I might indeed bluster to Hugh that we could make a society sufficient for her within the garden bounds of Gobelet, but even as I spoke I knew the emptiness of the boast. To be happy Alida must meet and mix with girls of her own education and, so far as the Western world was concerned, social position. I resolved to begin with Rhoda Polly, and a Rhoda Polly not argumentative and combative as in the family circle, but Rhoda Polly walking along the river bank, her eyes full of the sunset light, and the reeds whistling musically in a gentle fanning wind from the west. Not till two days after the return of Keller Bey to Autun did I get my chance, which brought us to Saturday afternoon. The occupancy of the Garden Cottage was decided upon, and after a severe struggle on my father's part a rent, low yet not merely nominal, was agreed upon. But I knew from the expression of my father's face that he meant to be even with his tenant for all that. CHAPTER XX I PLAY "THREE'S COMPANY" I met Rhoda Polly by arrangement made openly on a post card, which could be discussed in conclave and passed from hand to hand. I should be walking over to the restaurant of Mère Félix, and as the river Durance was in flood it might be worth while seeing. The day I mentioned, Saturday, was generally chosen by Hannah and Liz for their private outings, and I judged that the project would be unlikely to interest them in any case, not even if the Durance swept the plain, so long as the railway to Aramon remained open to them, by which to bring home their finery. Hugh was back with his father in the works, and Mrs. Deventer might be counted a fixture at the Château Schneider. Remained, therefore, only Rhoda Polly, but would Rhoda Polly come? That would depend on how Hugh Deventer had kept his promise to me. Still, I thought that in any case, there being no jealousy in the matter, I could trust Rhoda Polly's curiosity in the matter of Jeanne Félix. It must be admitted that in taking her over to the Restaurant of Sambre-et-Meuse I was sailing very near indeed to the wind. For though my conscience (such as it was) remained clear of any overact of love-making with regard to Rhoda Polly, it was by no means the same when I came to review my dealings with Jeanne. Not that I mean for a moment that Jeanne thought anything of the matter, or cherished any deep feelings for me. She was no daughter of the sainted bourgeoisie. She was frankly of the people, and had not been educated out of her sphere. She was just a simple frank girl, such as one might find by Dee or Nithwater, not ignorant of the world, nor of the designs of man, and for a French girl wonderfully capable of looking after herself. Still, whether Jeanne was capable of recognising in Rhoda Polly a mere comrade of mine after the manner of the English, was a problem which could only be solved by experiment. Rhoda Polly met me at the corner of the garden of the Château Schneider about half-past ten of that Saturday morning. The works were crashing away behind, and the new big gun factory especially was noisy with roaring blast furnaces and spitting jets of white steam. We did not shake hands nor make any demonstration beyond the lifting of a hat on my part and a slight nod on Rhoda Polly's. We might have been the merest acquaintances, yet no sooner were we alongside each other, walking on the same path, than the old understanding, trustful and confident, took hold of us. The spring on the slopes of the Rhône and the Durance comes early, and is the fairest time of the year. On the sandy tracts between the rivers we passed a world of fine things. The whole peninsula, almost correctly V-shaped, had been so often overflowed by the turbulent Durance that the permanent shrubs, the bushes of broom, thyme, and cistus had ascended the little rocky knolls which could keep their heads above water. But where our path wound was a delightful wilderness of alternate sun and shadow, black umbrageous stone pines, laurel, myrtle, and clove, planted out as in a nursery garden, yet all wild, the seeds brought down by the river, and now (like Shem and his brothers scattering from Ararat) true Children of the Flood. On the way Rhoda Polly ran hither and thither gathering flowers. With us at Aramon the spring is well under way before the autumn flowers are tired of blooming. She gathered purple colt's-foot and orchis, yellow iris and goats' honeysuckle. Troops of butterflies attended us, especially the Red Admiral and the swift poising Humming Bird Moth, some of them so large as to look like the bird itself. Even Bates on his beloved Amazon was deceived by it, as I took care to tell Rhoda Polly. We arrived at the edge of the crossing, and from the bank I shouted for Jeanne to take us over. She came down tall and nonchalant, an oar over her shoulder, unlocked the padlock and rowed unconcernedly across. She stood to help Rhoda Polly in, and then handed me the bow oar as was our habit like one long accustomed to such visits. I delayed introductions till we had reached the farther side. Rhoda Polly gave Jeanne her hand with the swift grip of liking. But I saw a glow in Jeanne's eyes as she took the oar away from me and marched with them both over her shoulder to the house. "Mademoiselle Deventer, mother," she cried, "come to visit us. Monsieur has brought her--so kind of Monsieur!" And Jeanne vanished round the corner with a kind of swirl of her pretty figure, the oar-blades swooping perilously after her. "I say," whispered Rhoda Polly, "that girl has never worn stays. Did you see her waist and hips when she turned--a full half circle? None of us, pinched-up wretches that we are, could do that! It was beautiful, the poetry of motion." I did not say so aloud, but I knew that it was something quite different on Jeanne's part--in fact, a little fling of temper. And with the thought of opening out the matter of Alida on the way home, I began to wish that Rhoda Polly and I had taken another road than that which led to the riverside hostelry of the Sambre-et-Meuse. Mère Félix was clamorous with welcomes, smiling heartsomely upon the daughter of the powerful manager of her husband's works, and quite willing to accept me as an elderly relative placed in charge of the outing. In which she made mistake, for nothing is more certain that all such expeditions were conducted according to the sole will of Rhoda Polly. We arranged for lunch to be served under the _tonnelle_ overlooking the river, and I stayed in the kitchen along with Mère Félix and the moon-faced maid-of-all-work. It was in my mind that perhaps Rhoda Polly might strike up one of her friendships with Jeanne, or at least do something to explain away the rather strained situation. Nor did I seem to be altogether wrong, for presently I saw the two girls amicably putting a boat to rights after a night's fishing in the flooded river. They were too distant for me to gather anything from their behaviour to one another. But presently it was evident that Rhoda Polly was talking in her wild harum-scarum fashion, for Jeanne threw back her head suddenly with a tinkle of laughter and a flash of brown throat showing pleasantly under a scarlet kerchief. I said in my heart--so vain and foolish was I--that the battle was to the cunning, and I thought no small potatoes of myself at that moment. I soon found, however, that Jeanne, though she might laugh at Rhoda Polly's freely expressed yarns, had no intention of forgiving me. If Rhoda Polly was heart-free, that was certainly not my fault. So when they came back to the house I tried in vain to inveigle Jeanne behind the barns where the fish-ponds lay safe and solitary, so that I might explain at my leisure. But it was "Monsieur is too good, but a poor girl has her work to do. _She_ has no time to go off sightseeing of a forenoon even with so charming a cicerone as Monsieur!" The little vixen! She tossed her head as she said it, and I declare that her small white teeth snapped together like a rat-trap. When I spoke to her after this, she answered me only with the distant civility of a well-trained servitor: "What can I do for Monsieur? If Monsieur will only take the trouble to rest himself in the _salle_ while I send Babette to attend to his wants!" (Babette was the moon-faced, rather besmutted scullion of the kitchen and the courtyard.) "Why, Jeanne," I cried, seeing that Rhoda Polly was at a safe distance learning the receipt for some sauce or dish from the Mère Félix, "Jeanne, why do you treat me like this? Are we not old comrades? Do you remember the day among the reeds after the boat went down and we had to tramp all the way home barefoot? I wrapped your feet in our handkerchiefs, Jeanne, because you had lost your shoes and stockings in the boat." "I do not know to what Monsieur is good enough to refer. I think that the walk in the sun from Château Schneider must have made Monsieur a little light-headed!" Of course if I had been wiser or older I would have said nothing more, and left Time to do his own perfect work. But I could not be content. I forgot all about Alida, and it seemed to me at that moment that nothing else mattered so long as Jeanne Félix remained friends with me. I have always been like that, and I cannot say that the business has worked out badly in the long run. No matter what a tangled web I wove, I always managed in the end to retain the good will of my dear lost loves, even when the losing was entirely my fault. The thought that was most prominent in my own mind at that moment was how pleasant it would be to obey the imperious rule of Alida the Princess on the sunny slopes below St. André, without prejudice to the charming boy-and-girl comradeship I enjoyed with Rhoda Polly on the walks and river promenades of Aramon-les-Ateliers--neither of these to interfere in the least with the sweetness of Jeanne's breath and the touch of her surrendered lips in the bosky thickets along the Durance. The young male of twenty-one has a heart which can beat for considerably more than one. At least so it was in my time. It surprised me, and I must admit rather shocked me, when Jeanne of all girls refused to lend herself to any such combination. I might have dotted the twin rivers with my loves and Rhoda Polly would not have cared, but such conduct from Jeanne Félix I could only look upon as highly unsatisfactory. I had never expected it of Jeanne. It would teach me to walk very warily in the matter of Alida. Foolish Jeanne, thus to have killed the pure flower of candour in my bosom! I made a last appeal to her, which to myself seemed irresistible. There was (I averred) a relationship in the world which might be called real brother-and-sisterhood, a fraternity of the spirit. This existed between Rhoda Polly and myself. We had always been conscious of it. When we played in pinafores in the dust we chose to be together, and left the others to their noisier sports. Afterwards we studied the same subjects at college--she at Selborne, I at St. André. We compared notes afterwards. We talked, but Jeanne must not think that there was more in the business than that. I could, would, must, and did assure her that the whole matter began and ended in a close spiritual brotherhood---- "Spiritual fiddlestick!" burst out Jeanne, turning fiercely upon me. "Have you ever kissed her?" Now I could lie upon occasion to oblige a lady, but the question was shot out at me so unexpectedly that my lips moved but I spake not. Jeanne eyed me one instant, with a length, breadth, and depth of contempt which cut to the quick even my self-conceit, at that time a young and exceedingly healthy growth. Then without a word she turned on her heel and went into the house. We saw no more of her that day. And when Rhoda Polly asked after her to say good-bye as we were leaving, the Mère Félix, after taking counsel with a casual stable-boy, informed us that Jeanne had rowed away up the river to visit a friend whose father kept a _pépinière_ or nursery of young trees at Cabannes farther up the Durance. Yes, Jeanne was often there. She and Blanche Eymard had been at school together. It was an old friendship. Besides, there was more company and gaiety at Cabannes--what would you, maids are but young once, and with a daughter so "sage" as Jeanne--why, Père Félix and she never disquieted themselves for a moment. She sometimes stayed a week or a fortnight, for she loved the culture of the young trees and the flower seeds. The work at the _pépinière_ was like a play to her with so many young people about her! CHAPTER XXI THE GOLDEN HEART OF RHODA POLLY I admit that I was gloomy and disappointed as I turned to walk back with Rhoda Polly--disappointed in the turn things had taken, in the ill success of my cherished diplomacy, and especially disappointed in the desertion of Jeanne, who had carried what ought at least to have been a broken heart, to the consolation of a newer and gayer place where doubtless young men abounded, as full of admiration and eagerness to please as I had been--well, any time these last two years. It did not strike me at the time that I was only a vain young fool, whose corns had been most deservedly trampled upon, and that here was the lesson which of all others would benefit me the most. It was therefore in a most humbled and chastened frame of mind that I opened out to Rhoda Polly the vexed and difficult problem of Alida. Perhaps it was well that I was still suffering from the rods with which Jeanne had chastised me. For, had I begun on the way towards the Restaurant Félix, when I was rampant and haughty of crest, I might not have made my points so well. But for once I forgot my silly self, and devoted all my energies to pleading for Alida. I painted her solitary condition, and the unlikelihood that, if she (Rhoda Polly) refused to help her, she would find any other friend of her rank in Aramon. "Why, of course I will!" cried Rhoda Polly the golden-hearted; "why did it ever get into your stupid old noddle that I would not? And so will the rest--specially mother, who will be the most useful of us all. She has never had any mother, really, this Alida of yours! Oh, of course, your Linn has done her best, but then, you see, she knew she was a princess, and from early association Madame Keller would be little more than a servant. Oh, I shall understand, never fear. Mother will be as grand a dame as she is, and I--well, I shall be the daughter of the Great Emir of the Aramon Small Arms Factory. I wish she had been coming to stay with us--but no, it is better as it is. The Garden Cottage!--Think of it, what a Princess of the Sleeping Woods she will make. We are too noisy. But why did Hugh never tell us? I should have thought he would simply have raved about such a marvel. But he has been as silent as mumchance!" "Forgive me. I wanted to tell you myself," I said, still humbly; "it was very good of Hugh, but I really could not let anyone else tell you, and it seemed so hard to get hold of you these days--I mean without your fighting tail." "The fighting tail have gone off to-day to rustle chiffons," cried Rhoda Polly; "but never mind them! Tell me about this Princess from the East. I never thought I should see one, yet I once saw her father, a patch of white on the high promenade at Amboise, the year that Dad took me with him for company. He was bringing out a new carbine for the Cavalry School at Saumur on the Loire. So it was from there that we went one day to see the great man." Then I told Rhoda Polly about the brown prince of the Khedival house, his visit and the answer he had carried back. "Of course she could not," she cried, all on fire in a moment. "It would be like imprisonment for life, only far more dreadful." Rhoda Polly's eyes, unused to untimeous moisture, were at least vague and misty, but that might only be because she was looking into the blue distance towards the Alps of Mont Ventoux. "Poor precious waif," she said, "if she is wayward and a little difficult--who can wonder? We shall all try hard to make her happy. We will come and pay court to her in the garden." I explained that a girl who had been a music mistress to the exigent Sous-Préfectoral dames and other ladies of Autun, might not be so difficult to deal with as she seemed to expect. It was only Keller Bey and Linn who, if spoiling had been possible, had spoilt her ever since she came to them as a little child, the charge committed to them by their master, the battle Emir of the Atlas. "Oh," cried Rhoda Polly, hardly able to curb her feet to a decent walk, "how mean it will be if they stop Keller Bey's money, and that wretch of an old Emir getting so much from the Government. I wish I did not spend every centime of my allowance without ever knowing where it goes to! But at any rate I mean for the future to share with Alida if she will let me." I explained how from what Keller had told me Alida would have enough to live upon even if they never saw another sixpence of her father's money. Also I described what my father was doing to the Garden Cottage to fit it for their coming. "Oh, do let me come and help. Ask your father. I should love to! And I should have far more idea than a man. I could get mother to come too, sometimes, though you know how loath she is to move far out of her own house. Still, she could drive over." Never was there so short a walk as that between the pier above Mère Felix's and the gate of Château Schneider. Rhoda Polly was so eager that she would have gone right across the river there and then, and climbed the hill to Garden Cottage, if I had not insisted on delivering her to her mother, and generally giving an account of my stewardship. Before going in, however, I warned her that the secret of Alida the Princess must be kept. It was only for herself. To the rest of the family she must be Mademoiselle Keller, the daughter of Keller Bey and his wife Linn. The need to keep so great a matter secret seemed to damp the girl's enthusiasm for a moment, but almost instantly she caught me by the hand in her impulsive boyish way. "I promise," she said, "and you are quite right. It was splendid of you to tell me. I am so grateful for that." "Of course I told you, Rhoda Polly. Who else could I have told?" She meditated a little, finger on lip before speaking. "Do you know it is rather a pity not to tell mother," she said at last. "She does not interfere, but she moderates and eases off the hard places. She has a great deal of influence in a quiet way--more than any-one--and she would never tell a soul. I really think that it would do Alida more good than anything else to have mother on our side from the first. We are all trumpeters like father (except perhaps Hugh, who is not like any of our brood), but it is mother who tells the trumpets when to stop sounding." I assured Rhoda Polly that she could do as she thought best in the matter. Mrs. Deventer was all she said and more. She possessed, besides, a pleasant quality of motherhood that glinted kindly through her spectacles. Then, of course, Rhoda Polly knew best. All that I wanted to avoid was having the secret which had been entrusted to me being battered about in the daily brawls of the Deventer family--still less did I wish that it should get abroad to set talking the commonplace gossips of the town. "Ah, _mon ami_," said Rhoda Polly, "you need not fear my mother. She knows the secrets of every one of us, I think--except perhaps Hugh's, who is too young to have any--and yet when we girls come to confide some tremendous fact to each other, we are astonished to find that mother has known it all the time." CHAPTER XXII IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW Garden Cottage was occupied on the eleventh of March, 1871. For several days before that, the great discharging lorries lent by Mr. Deventer had toiled up the hill, the four stout horses leaning hard on the collar and their drivers ready to insert the wheel-rest at every turning. Ever since this time began, Rhoda Polly had almost lived at our house, and she it was who had done the ordering of all the strange Oriental furnishings, partly from her own taste and partly from questioning me as to the arrangement of the different rooms I had seen at Autun. Mrs. Deventer came across the bridge every day in her little blue Victoria--taking a peep in at us in the morning and hurrying back to tend her flocks, but in the afternoon, stopping over tea till she could drive a rather soiled Rhoda Polly home, as it were a much ruffled chick under a motherly wing. For indeed Rhoda Polly spared neither man nor beast, least of all did she spare herself. A tack-hammering, painting and varnishing, cellar-to-garret Rhoda Polly pervaded the house, swooping upon all and sundry and compelling strict attention to business among the much-promising, little-performing tradesmen of Aramon. My father had already done his part, for he was a man who could not endure the chill mistral of the Rhône valley. Every room which had a chimney was equipped above with a wind shield, and beneath with steel andirons, beside which the cut faggots lay ready piled. The chambers without chimneys had been fitted with porcelain German stoves, the pipes of which bristled like lightning-rods along the roof ridges, and in the hall a great open fire-place shone with brass and copper, the spoil of an ancient Spanish monastery condemned in 1835 by Mendizabal, prime minister and Jew share-broker. What wonder if Rhoda Polly went home dishevelled and not over clean, but full of excitement and ready to battle for her new fad with the family at Château Schneider. Once there her mother plumped her into a hot bath, and after a smart douche to close the pores, Rhoda Polly came down literally as fresh as paint, to do battle for her new enthusiasms. Hannah and Liz Deventer came once or twice to see what it was all about, but as they would not help, but only went round accumulating brickbats to pelt Rhoda Polly with later in the day, on the second occasion that capable young woman turned them both out _vi et armis_, though she must have weighed a good third less than Hannah. The girls went good-humouredly enough, and having found my father talked with him in the Gobelet garden, by the old sundial which bore the arms of a former Marquis de Gallifet, and a date which commemorated the visit of Mesdames de Grignan and de Sevigné during the governorship of the former's husband. Gordon Cawdor, my father, pleased all women, and I must admit most men--though up till now I had not been able to allow him the full measure of my sympathy or admiration. To do him justice he did not seem in the least conscious of the need of these, so long as I behaved decently and did my duty at school and college. He was a man wonderfully stoical about the modern lack of filial recognition, no doubt saying to himself, as I came to do later, that the bringing up of sons was a poor business if one looked for direct returns on the capital and labour expended. But he never complained, and must, I think, have been finally and lastingly astonished when the long-barren fields of my filial piety ripened of themselves. At any rate I began to know him better during these days. I marked his gentle ways, his enormous reading and erudition, never flaunted, never refused, never at fault. He had already finished his part of the work at the Garden Cottage, so he sat either in his study with the tall French window on the hasp ready to a visitor's hand--or, if the sun shone and the mistral was stilled, out on the broad wooden bench by the fish pond, a volume in his hand to read or annotate when alone--but quite ready to drop it into the pocket of his velvet jacket, and turn the gaze of his gentle scholarly eyes upon whomsoever had come forth in need of society or soul refreshment. I learned a lesson in those days--to know how other people estimated my father. Of course, I had seen Dennis Deventer drinking in the knowledge he felt the lack of, as from a fountain. I knew what Professor Renard and the Bey thought of him. Yet, after all, these were men of Gordon Cawdor's own age and stamp. But when I saw the fine sweet house-motherliness of Mrs. Deventer sitting at my father's feet and talking confidentially yet with respect, the thing seemed to me strange. I have seen her finish the review and arrangement of a series of china and napery closets, the laying down of fresh papers in chests of drawers, or the ordering of knick-knacks gathered in the Bey's campaigns. Then she would throw a fold of black Spanish lace over her pretty grey hair, always shining and neat--and so, without explanation or apology, hie herself out to find my father. "A talk with him is my refreshment!" she said once when she came back and laid the folded lace scarf down beside the work she was next to attack. More than once I had passed them speaking low and earnestly, and I am sure she was consulting him about some intimate affairs of which she had spoken to no one else. Or it was the turn of Rhoda Polly and her procedure was different. She would remove the provision of tin-tacks, French nails, or whatnot from her mouth, her habitual ready receptacle, throw a wisp or two of rebellious ripe-corn hair back from her brow, and demand to be told if there were any very bad smuts on her face! When she presented her handkerchief or the hem of her apron to me I knew from long experience what was expected of me. I was to remove the offending smuts from Rhoda Polly's face with the oldest and most natural of cleansers, exactly as we had done to one another when the dinner bell or the voice of authority called us from some extra grubby tree-climbing or mud-pie making experiment in the days when the world was young. "Spell ho!" Rhoda Polly would cry; "had enough this one time. I am off to talk to your father. He does me good." And now when the other Deventer girls, the stately swan-necked Hannah and the Dresden shepherdess of a dainty Liz, being expelled for "shameless slacking" and "getting in everybody's way," took their road with happy expectant faces to the bench by the sundial, I knew in my heart for the first time that I would never so add to the happiness of humanity as that gentle refined scholarly man who was my father. To my shame I took a cast about the garden, and from the top of a ladder looked down upon the trio in an unworthy and wholly ungentlemanly way. I did not mean to overhear--of course not--but I overheard. My only excuse is that I was in a quandary. I knew that I had somehow been all wrong about my father, and I wanted to find out how I could put matters right. Hannah was seated on the bench beside him, listening and looking down, making diagrams meanwhile in the gravel with the point of her _en-tout-cas_, a sort of long-handled parasol sent from Paris. Liz had characteristically pulled one of the little stools called "banquettes" from under the sundial, and had seated herself between my father's knees. She had taken her hat off and now leaned her elbow on his knee looking up into his face. He was telling them about maidens of old times, how the Lesbia of Catullus looked and dressed, how he and she idled the day by the length a-dream in a boat in the bays about Sirmio. He quoted Tennyson's delicious verses to them, and they promised to look them up that night. "If it were not that Rhoda Polly knows so much, I should begin Latin this very day," said Liz; "but she is such a swell that she can always come down on a fellow. She thinks we know nothing!" "I know I don't," said Hannah, "except how to walk and dance and behave at table." "No, that last you don't," retorted Liz Deventer; "you were far the noisiest (mother said so) in our last big family fight!" "Well, I mean I can do these things when I like, Silly!" said Hannah, unmoved. The hand of my father descended slowly. It had been raised to mark the rhythm of _Olive-silvery-Sirmio_! It now rested on the curly brown locks of Liz Deventer. He ceased to speak, and then suddenly with a sigh he said, "I envy Dennis. I have a good son--yes, a good son," he repeated with emphasis, "but I should have liked a daughter also. There is a side of me she would have understood." Instantly the girls had their arms about his neck, and I hastily descended my shameful ladder, leaving behind me a chorus of "We will be your daughters--Rhoda Polly too--mother too--she thinks----" But I got out of earshot as fast as might be, quite chopfallen and ashamed. I had not been a good son, whatever Gordon Cawdor might say--I knew it. I had held him lightly and withheld what others found their greatest joy in giving him--my confidence. It was no use saying that he never invited it. No more had he invited that of Mrs. Deventer, or of the girls--or, what touched me more nearly, that of Rhoda Polly herself. At last the great day came, and by the same train which had brought the Bey on his errand of inspection the three new tenants of the Cottage arrived. The Bey looked military and imposing as he stood over the baggage counter. Linn, tall and gaunt in unbroken black, accepted my father's arm smilingly almost at the first sound of his voice. He showed her through the narrow shed-like waiting-rooms to the carriage in readiness outside. Mrs. Deventer had received Alida into her arms as she descended from the carriage, and was now cooing over her, watched hungrily by Rhoda Polly, who wearied for her turn to come. It struck me that Alida was not looking quite so well as usual. It had cost her more than I thought to disobey her father--more afterwards perhaps than at the time. For among those of her blood, the servitude of woman goes with heredity, and the culture of Europe, though it may render obedience impossible, does not kill the idea of parental authority. "Though he slay me, yet shall I trust in him!" But when Alida greeted me, I knew in a moment that though the battle had been sore, the victory was won. There would be no looking back. "What, Angoos, _mon ami_, have I all those friends already? I owe them all to you!" I took Rhoda Polly's hand, and put it into the gloved fingers of the little Princess. "Not to me, dear Alida," I said, "but to this girl; she has, as you shall find, a heart of gold." Alida kept the strong roughened fingers in hers, and looked deep into the eyes of Rhoda Polly as if to read her inmost soul. "I shall remember that, Angoos," she said; "that is a beautiful thing when it is said in the language of my own country. It sings itself--it makes poetry. Listen! "'Rhoda Polly of the Golden Heart--Heart of Gold, how true is my maiden!' Wait, I will sing it for you in Arabic----" But suddenly, no one knew why, the female heart being many stringed and unaccountable, even to me, Rhoda Polly was crying--yes, Rhoda Polly the dry-eyed, and who but Alida was comforting her under the stupid gaze of hangers-on about the station of Aramon! CHAPTER XXIII THE MISGIVINGS OF ALIDA At the house in the garden the new servants stood ready, neat and smiling. My father had written to a Protestant pastor at Grenoble to send him two maids of his religion. Accordingly two sisters had arrived, Claire and Hermance Tessier, reliable pleasant-faced girls with no family ties in Aramon and with the difference of religion to keep them apart from indiscriminate gossipry. The wing of the house where they were to sleep had formed a part of the wall, possibly even it may have been an ancient gateway in the time of the Montmorencies. My father had joined it to the main building by a flying bridge of iron roofed with zinc--which was Dennis Deventer's own private contribution to Garden Cottage. I had warned him of the nocturnal habits of Linn and her husband, and he agreed with me that while for Alida's sake they must be served according to the French fashion, they need not be deprived of the nightly freedom of their own house which was their greatest luxury. So at the Cottage door we judged it best to leave them. Rhoda Polly and her mother drove home. My father and I withdrew, I to my den, he to his study. If the new tenants of the Garden Cottage had any changes to make or any fault to find with what had been prepared for them, the alterations could be done quietly and by degrees. Besides, the pale face of Alida haunted me and I thought that a night's rest would be for her the surest medicine. But the general joyousness of the journey up the hill was our best hope that all would be well. The Bey was gay. Even Linn relaxed when she saw the noble prospect of the blue Rhône and the little white and green house among the laurels, walled in like a fortress. Hand in hand but silent Rhoda Polly sat beside Alida as the coachman drove over the bridge and up the winding road, St. André looming up a crenellated wall of red and gold above them. This was the beginning of a wonderful week which, lived in the unseen and unsuspected shadow of disaster, now shines the brighter for the contrast with what was to come after. The last week of the theatres and baths of Pompeii was not more memorable, and we who sunned ourselves upon the limestone slopes of Mont St. André thought as little of the future as the many tinted crowd of merry-makers who thronged the beaches between the city gate and the white sands of Torre del Greco. They came on the 11th of March, and one week after fell the 18th, a date ever memorable in the history of the cities of France. Yet how much happiness did we manage to put in between the one day and the other. Next morning, that is on the 12th, I was up early, so early that no one was visible about the Garden Cottage except the two Grenoble maids, who had settled down to their duties as if they had been on the spot for months. They were indeed lucky, for few new _bonnes_ come to so clean a house--"shining like a soldier's button," averred Claire. Linn and her husband had doubtless spent the night in making an exhaustive survey of the dwelling, and Linn especially would be full of discoveries. At present they were retired in their own chamber, dozing doubtless, after their long nocturnal expeditions, and also probably because after the awakening of the maids they felt the house no more their own. It was a morning when the chill gusting of the mistral wind hurtled and raved about St. André. I had already made friends with the sisters Tessier, of whom Claire was housemaid and Hermance cook. Rhoda Polly had introduced us and that curious and almost affectionate regard which springs up between good servants and friends of the house soon made my visits very agreeable to them. They asked counsels of me--as for example, how Monsieur liked his coffee, if Madame was more set upon the kitchen or the "lingerie," and how best to serve Mademoiselle, who, as they had been given to understand (probably by Linn), was of chief standing in the house. I told them that they needed no more than to be good brave girls and all would go well. But I warned them that both Madame and her husband had been accustomed to many things in the wild countries where they had dwelt, which would be looked upon as strange by a burgher who had never set a head outside his own wall. I prepared them for the Bey's occasional absences, and for Linn's restless wanderings and perpetual rangings of cupboards. They were quite contented, thanked me blithely, and Claire took up the morning breakfast of rolls and _café au lait_ with shining success. All that she had to tell when she came down was that Mademoiselle had asked her to rub her feet in order to awaken her. Whereupon I pointed the not unuseful moral that what I had said applied to Mademoiselle also. She had spent her childhood in Africa and though the best and sweetest lady in the world, might do or ask for things that need not be repeated outside the house. The Tessiers quite saw the necessity. "They are all tattlers in the south," said Claire, "I have heard it from my friend who had service here. It is different at Nîmes or Grenoble, where the families are mostly Protestant." They knew somehow that my father had once been a _pasteur_ and they had all the Scottish weakness for a "son of the manse." When at last Linn began to make her presence heard in the upper story, I retreated without being discovered, extremely satisfied with my diplomacy. After all, this transplantation was a hazardous experiment, and all who had taken part in the business must see to it that the little foxes did not spoil the vineyard by any side entrance. I had scarcely begun my task of writing for the day, when I was called from my desk by a message from Alida. It was a cunningly folded note, sealed with the great seal which had been her father's. The bright splash of red wax occupied quite a third of the back. So, not to tear the paper, I laid it a moment on the hob, and then with the thinnest blade of my knife, I lifted it cleanly away in one piece. After which I unfolded the rustling sheet. "Come and see me before anyone else." That was all and indeed quite enough, for with quick beating pulses I hastened to obey. Linn was waiting for me at the first turn of the wooded path, and as we paced along together towards Garden Cottage I could feel the "gleg" inquisitorial eyes of Saunders McKie boring into my back. I wished Linn had sent over one of the Tessiers on this first occasion, but I do not suppose it ever occurred to her to let another do for Alida what she could do herself. The Bey was within the walled garden, pacing up and down, revolving in his mind something which pleased him but little. "What is it, Keller Bey?" I asked sharply. "Do you not find yourself comfortable among us?" "Too comfortable by half," he grunted, "here are many things which must have cost much money, and yet I am told by Alida that they are presents of welcome for which I must not pay--whereupon, of course, Linn agrees with her, and I who was the right hand of Abd-el-Kader and thought myself indebted to no man, am made in my own eyes a veritable pauper!" "Keller Bey," I said, "you speak in ignorance of our English customs. At a house-warming or the taking possession of a new residence, all your friends are under obligation to bring their contribution to the home. It is our way of wishing you good luck and a happy tenancy. Nothing could be more unfortunate than any offer of payment for such a service." "Yes--yes--I understand," he broke in testily, "I suppose I have been too long among the black tents. I learn your ways with difficulty. I am sure every one means well, but how am I to do all that thanking? Can I bow backs at my age and say grace for what I would rather have done without?" "You cannot," I said, laughing at his perturbed face, "for we do not tell the name of the givers lest it should bring ill-luck. But where is Alida?" Alida, it seemed, was in the pleasant gable parlour which, with so much anxious forethought, we had fitted up for her. She had been arranging her books on the shelves, and was now going from picture to picture and from window to window. She gave me both hands when she saw me and said immediately, "Angoos, who would have thought that we had among us at Autun such an observant boy! You have reproduced my room there with hardly a change, save the pictures and the pottery. Has your father let them to us along with the house?" "No," I said, "they are loving gifts from Madame Deventer, and as for the arrangement, Rhoda Polly did that, questioning me as she went, and forcing me to recall exactly whether I would or not." "I sent for you," said Alida, "to tell me all about this family who have been so kind, so that I may make no mistake. And first, why did only the women come?--where was Monsieur Hugh, who dwelt with us at Autun?" I explained to her the mystery of a great factory, where were thousands of men all doing different things, and how Hugh, though but a small wheel in such a mechanism, could not leave his post at will without interfering with the work of many others. I sketched rough, strong, imperious Dennis to her. Rhoda Polly purposely somewhat vague, because I knew that she would soon enough find out about Rhoda Polly for herself. But I made word cameos of Hannah and Liz and concluded with a full-length portrait of Mrs. Deventer, in whom I hoped (though I took care not to say so) Alida would find the mother her youth had lacked. She listened with lowered eyes and a silent attention as if she were weighing every word. "Yes," she said, "I shall like them all. I feel sure--or almost." Then she asked suddenly, "Does Rhoda Polly sing? Can she play?" "In a way," I answered lamely enough; "she has had the usual lessons before she went to college, but her voice has never been trained." "Is she very clever?" "Yes, at driving nails, hanging pictures, laying down carpets, and getting a house ready--I never saw anyone to match her." "But I mean--she is very learned--will she look down upon me who have to step carefully among abysses of ignorance?" "Alida," I said earnestly, "she is likely to spoil you far more than is good for you. The others will do so also, but you will find that Rhoda Polly will win your heart more than all of us put together." "I do not think so," said Alida composedly. And then, struck by the astonishment in my face, she continued, "I shall not like her if you praise her so much!" "Do not be foolish, Alida," I said, "you should have heard me praising you to Rhoda Polly when I got back from Autun. It took me nearly one whole day, and ever since she has been painting, varnishing, and scrubbing, that the nest should be worthy of such a bird of Paradise as I described." "Oh, I know," pouted Alida, "she is infinitely better than I, more unselfish, and--and--you love her!" "She is certainly more unselfish," I said, firing up; "you have yet to learn what the word means. Perhaps that partly explains your charm, but all the same you must love Rhoda Polly." "Because _you_ do?" I was tempted to deny my gods and declare that I did not love Rhoda Polly, when the remembrance of a particular smear on her nose one day of mutual paintwork on opposite sides of a fireplace, and a way she had of throwing her head back to toss the blonde curls out of her eyes, stopped me. "Of course I love Rhoda Polly, and so will you (and more than I love her) when your eyes are opened!" And with that I left Alida to digest the fact of her own selfishness. At the time I considered myself a kind of hero for having so spoken. Now I am not so sure. She was what Keller and Linn had made her, and I ought to have remembered the snubs and rebuffs which she must have suffered from Sous-Préfecture dames and other exacting though respectable ladies of Autun. * * * * * This week held many other matters and the seeds of more. Rhoda Polly came to take Alida out in her mother's Victoria, and spent a long day in the garden instead, sending back the coachman to be ready to take Mrs. Deventer to the works to drive her husband home to lunch, as was her daily custom. I do not know what the girls said to one another. I kept out of the way, but when I came into the dining-room with my father a little before noon, I was certain that Alida had been crying and that Rhoda Polly had been dabbing her eyes with hasty inexperienced fingers. I thought this no ill sign of coming friendship, and indeed it was not an hour before I received a first confidence on the subject from Alida. "She is all you say and more. She makes me so ashamed of myself!" "So she does me!" I answered, thinking of my dealings with Jeanne and our walk home from the restaurant of Mère Félix. Alida held out her hand quickly. "Does she make you feel that too?--I am glad," she said, and smiled gratefully like a child consoled. Then came Rhoda Polly's mother, and my father, who had been talking to Rhoda Polly by the sundial, rose and with a word and smile excused himself and went indoors. The interview that followed I should have loved well to watch and hear. But after all I doubt if any great part of the gentle influences which rained from Mrs. Deventer could have been written down. No stenographer could take note of those captivating intonations, the soft subtle pauses of speech, the lingering tender understanding in her motherly eyes, the way she had of laying her hand upon Alida's. She had been a counsellor to many, and had never forgotten a sore heart even when healed, nor told a tale out of that gracious confessional. Certain it is that the conquest of Alida was soon made, in so far as Mrs. Deventer could make it. They saw each other every day, and the sight of Rhoda Polly and Alida striking across the big bridge with the wind right in their faces--or of Alida, with Linn, like a gaunt watch-dog, thrusting a combative shoulder into the mistral to fend a way for her charge--became familiar on the windy sidewalks of the great suspension bridge. All went as we could have wished it, till one day I took the Bey across to go over the works. Dennis Deventer was to afford enough time to conduct us in person. It was no small honour, for visitors were generally either refused altogether, or handed over to Jack Jaikes with instructions that they should see as little as possible. I was wholly at ease about the meeting of the Bey and Dennis Deventer. Two such fighters, I thought, could not but be delighted with one another. I was only partly right. They met with mutual respect. Dennis had been in Algeria at a more recent date than the Bey, and could give news of deaths of chiefs, of successions disputed and consequently bloody, and of all the tangled politics of the South Oran. But once in the hum and turmoil of the works, the power-straps running overhead like lightning flashes, the spinning lathes, the small busy mechanisms installed on tables and set going by tiny levers, the Bey's attention wandered. Instead of attending to the wonderful fittings and the constant jingle of the finished parts, he seemed to search out each man's face, in a manner to compel their attention. Usually when a visitor goes round with the "chief," the men make it a point of honour to turn away their eyes almost disdainfully. But it was different with the personally conducted trip of Keller Bey. At him the men gazed with sudden evident respect, and we were not half-way through the first room before the whisper of our coming ran far ahead of us through the workshops. I could see nothing about Keller Bey to explain this sudden interest. He did not make masonic signs with his hands. He hardly spoke a word. He never looked at the men who were devouring him with their eyes. All I could see was that he wore the red tie habitual to him, clasped by a little pin made of two crossed standards drooped upon their _hampes_, one red with rubies and the other formed of black diamonds. It was the only jewellery Keller Bey ever wore and naturally, since I had never seen him without it, it seemed a part of him like his collar-stud or his sleeve-links. Dennis Deventer, who never missed anything in the works, noted the men's behaviour, but continued his exposition of the secret of preventing the jamming of the mitrailleuses. "I am a little late with my invention," he said, "I shall have to wait for the next war to make my demonstration complete." "You may not have to wait so long as you think!" said the Bey quietly. "Had you not a little private war of your own a month ago?" The time was so ill chosen as to make Keller's reference almost a disaster. There were men within earshot who had driven the troops of the Republic out of Aramon, perhaps even some who had assaulted the house of the Chief Director. "We had some little trouble like other folks," said Dennis Deventer lightly, "but we have forgotten all about that!" "Ah!" said the Bey reflectively, as they passed on. In the big gun foundry a huge Hercules of a fellow, naked to the waist, thrust his way through the little crowd about us, seized Keller Bey by the hand, murmured something to us unintelligible. The Bey took no notice beyond nodding briefly to the man. Then turning to Deventer he continued unconcernedly, "About that feeding gear, you were saying----?" But Dennis Deventer looked at Keller Bey curiously. "Did you know that man?" he asked earnestly. "No, I never set eyes on him before," said the Bey carelessly as before; "is there anything against him?" "Not exactly," replied Deventer, "but he is one of the most dangerous men in the works--almost as strong in body as I am myself, and much listened to by the men. I wish I could say he leads them wisely." Keller Bey shook his head gravely, but except repeating that he knew nothing whatever about the foundryman, he uttered no word of excuse or commendation. However, Dennis Deventer was in no mind to let him off so easily. "You are having such a success among the men as I never saw the like of, and would not have believed if I had not seen with my own eyes. Have you been to St. Etienne or Creusot? Many of our fellows come from there. It is possible that they may recognise you." "I have never been in either place in my life," said Keller Bey simply, and so cut off discussion. But I could see that a doubt remained and brooded upon the spirit of Dennis Deventer. He brought the visit abruptly and rather disappointingly to a close, by saying that there was a man waiting for him in his office. But as men were always waiting to see Dennis Deventer at any hour of the day, his taking himself off must have been an excuse. I felt vaguely to blame. Indeed, I was wholly at sea, the more so when just outside the great gates of the Small Arms Company's yards Keller was met by half a dozen workmen of a superior sort, who saluted him respectfully and asked for a private interview. I said I should go and wait for him at the bridge-end, and he kept me waiting for an hour and a half, which I would much rather have spent with Rhoda Polly. Keller Bey was altogether too much of a responsibility in Aramon-les-Ateliers. If he had further visits to pay on this side, he could find his way himself, so far as I was concerned. I would not waste a whole morning only to get myself suspected by Rhoda Polly's father. I sat down on the parapet and watched the drowsy _douaniers_ at the receipt of custom, or the still drowsier fishermen dropping baited lines into a seven-knot current, which banked itself up and then swirled high between the piers. And lazying thus in the sunshine, I cast my mind over many things, but particularly I thought of Hugh. Had I indeed lost Hugh Deventer? Why was he no longer my faithful confidant and comrade as of old? Had we gone together to the wars, slept under one blanket, only to bring about this separation? Even to-day I had not seen him. Had he of set purpose hid himself away? Certainly he was no more the dreamily affectionate companion, a little slow in comprehension but rapid and accurate in execution, upon whose thews and muscles I had been wont to depend. Hugh Deventer was lost to me. More than that, he could hardly any more be said to belong to the family circle at Château Schneider. He had furnished a room for himself down at the works, where he read and slept. His meals were cooked by the wife of the chief night-watchman and at home no one was surprised. For the Deventers were, even before coming of age, in fact as soon as they had left school, a law to themselves. And I think that Dennis was secretly pleased at his boy's setting up for himself. But I knew that Hugh was not driven by any noble desire for independence. Sitting there in the warm sun which beat upon the bridge parapet, I set aside one possible cause for our estrangement after another. It was not on account of Jeanne or Rhoda Polly. No jealousy possessed Hugh Deventer because I sat at his father's table far oftener than he did. One reason only could explain all the circumstances. He had been at Autun and had supposed that Alida's idea of coming to the Garden Cottage had originated with me. Evidently he had resented this, and since our return he had kept himself, in all save the most formal fashion, apart from all the rejoicing over the new tenants. Obviously he must consider himself in love with Alida, which was, of course, wholly natural and within his right. But why vent his humour upon me? I could not make Alida return his love, and certainly sulking in the holes and corners of a factory would do nothing to soften the heart of that imperious little lady. He had indeed become little more than a memory to Alida. "I don't think Hugh likes me," she said, more than once. "He never comes to see me--not even to tell me how selfish I am!" CHAPTER XXIV PEACE BEFORE STORM The 18th of March dawned clear and bright, the wind still a little chill, but the whole land, as we looked down upon it from our Gobelet watch-tower on the front of St. Andre's hill, tinted white and pink with blossom, almond, peach, pear, plum, and cherry. It was wonderful to see them running up, as it were scrambling over fence and rock scarp, till they broke in a sunshiny spray of hawthorn blossom against the grey walls of the _lycée_ of St. André. Never was there a quieter day nor one that seemed filled with more happy promise. For the first time Linn and Alida had resumed their old understanding. For there is no doubt that Linn had been somewhat jealous of the absorbing commerce between the house of Deventer and the cottage in the laurel bushes beyond the garden of Gobelet. Keller had gone to Aramon, Linn said. He might be away all night, for he had it in his mind to push as far as Marseilles. I knew of the Bey's absences from Autun, and so thought no more of the matter. Linn, put in good humour by having Alida to herself (for me she did not count), talked freely of the beauties of their installation. The Basse Cour and the poultry especially delighted her, and she had already prepared a ruled book which was to show in parallel columns the cost of feeding as compared with the result in chickens and eggs. All that day no one crossed over the bridge from Château Schneider and the time was blessed for Linn. She knew very well that it was for just such companionship that Alida had come to Aramon. She had herself supported the necessity for change, even against her husband. But all the same, now when she got her Princess a day to herself she made the most of it, falling back into her old caressing habits and ready to treat Alida as the little girl who long ago had been put in her hands with all a queen's habits of command and the sweet waywardness of a child. I helped when I could and fetched huge stuffed buffets and cushions, so that Alida could install herself beside my father at the fishpond, and then I left him to make his usual conquest. He was smiling and tranquil as I remember, but with an unwonted eagerness in his eye, which did not by any means come from the anticipation of a morning with Alida. I remembered afterwards that he had had an interview the night before with Keller Bey in which they had talked much Arabic, and early this morning he had dispatched Saunders McKie over the water with a letter to Dennis Deventer. But these things did not fall into place in my mind, at least not till long afterwards. We had a happy day among the sunflecked glades of Gobelet--that is, Alida, my father and I. When they two were alone, they talked Arabic, but ceased as soon as I joined them. Conscious of the awkwardness Alida renewed her offer to teach me colloquially if my father would put me in the way of learning the grammar, while I regretted bitterly having wasted my time at St. André. Finally to change the subject we fell to talking over the Montmorencies and their _Tour Carrée_ on the heights of Aramon le Vieux. Here at hand, where the Tessiers slept at the far side of Dennis Deventer's flying bridge of steel, was their gateway tower, still pitted by the balls of Mazarin's troops. For a Montmorency of those days, probably held in leash by his wife, had taken the popular side in the wars of the Fronde. Down there on that islet in the reign of Louis XII (said my father) a great tournament was held in which the knights of France, light and lissom, overwhelmed the weightier champions of Burgundy. If we had been more watchful as we talked, we might have seen the smoke die out of the tall chimneys of Aramon-les-Ateliers, the blast furnaces withdraw their crowns of pale flame, and an unnatural quiet settle down upon the busy city. But our minds were bent wholly on giving pleasure to Alida. She must be taken through this glade, climb this steep path, and see the marvellous spectacle of the Rhône delta with its wide wastes wandered over by fierce cattle, its sinuous waterways blocked by the only beavers remaining in Europe, and far away beyond it the violet-blue bar of the Midland Sea. We did indeed conduct Alida from admiration to admiration, and she had what I fear Rhoda Polly would have called "the time of her life." It did strike me several times how strange it was that since my father had sent his morning message to Dennis Deventer, we had had no news of the household at Château Schneider. I sounded Saunders on the subject, but he knew nothing, or at least would tell nothing. "The letter? Oh, Maister Dennis just read it and put it in his waistcoat pooch. Syne, says he, 'Saunders, will ye drink?' 'No,' says I; for if I did, when I gaed hame I micht smell! So he gied me yin o' thae French sovereigns as easy as puttin' a penny in the plate. Oh, a grand man is Maister Deventer when ye get the richt side o' him, but as they tell me the very deevil and a' when his monkey is up. Do you ken, Maister Aängus, he was just trying me on, by asking me to drink? For if I had ta'en as muckle as a sup frae his hand, I micht hae whistled for the wee French sovereign--whilk is only barely worth saxteen shillings when a' is said and done!" Nevertheless in the full bliss of ignorance we idled away the day while about us the flowers grew as we looked at them, so keen an edge was on that spring day. Linn ranged her napery cupboards to her most perfect content, not that she could do it better than Mrs. Deventer had done, but simply for the satisfaction of, as it were, expressing her mind and doing it differently. The shadows passed steadily across the sundial. The underneath inscription became more strongly incised as the sun dipped westward. The rock plants on the little island in the pond fell into shadow and some closed up their petals for the night. And still in the midst of a great silence we moved and smiled and were happy. Aramon le Vieux drowsed beneath us. The good wives at their doors were out gossiping their hardest, but in undertones which must not pass from one group to another. Cats sunned themselves in window sills beyond the reach of the prowling cur, and the majestic river, so soon to be split and worried into a hundred waterways, _étangs_ and backwaters, passed noiselessly in front of us in one noble rush, level, calm, and swift. I think it was about three o'clock in the afternoon when Professor Renard, coming from the post office, where the telegraph had been recently installed, brought tidings. "There is a revolt in Paris," he said, "the soldiers and the National Guard have expelled the Government. That is the news they have received, but no one knows whether it is false or true." Nor in the midst of our quiet park with the fruit trees in blossom everywhere could we have any guess at the turmoil, the riding of orderlies, and the hasty ordering of official carriages in Paris. Indeed, the talk passed to other matter and on the surface, and the tidings seemed to affect us little. So having left Linn still busy with her linen, Alida and I took our way to the look-out summer-house above the aerial swing of the suspension bridge, leaving the elders talking very soberly together. "Surely there is no danger here?" the girl asked when we had seated ourselves. She spoke not from any fear but that she might contrive means of helping her friends the Deventers if they needed it. "Not that I know of," I answered, "but the workmen of Aramon are always fiery and hard to handle. We _have_ had battles and sieges, yet things were smoothed over and the works went on as before--the men who had been busily shooting each other down talking over details of work and taking orders from one another as if nothing had happened." "How long ago was that?" "Only about two months," I explained, "but you need expect nothing of that kind on this side. The workmen never cross the bridge save when on pleasure bent, or when our July fair-time fills the green yonder with the din of booths, circuses, and penny theatres." Nevertheless, Alida's face continued to express trouble. "But Rhoda Polly, her mother, and the others--are they in danger?" "Not, I think, for the moment. The more serious the news from Paris, the less will the men think of their grievances against the Company and the Company's manager. Last time the siege was bitter and determined on both sides. Many were killed. Yet it was no more than a trade dispute which Mr. Deventer could have settled in half an hour if the men had brought their grievances directly to him, instead of trying to wreck the works for the safety of which he is responsible." "We must go and see for ourselves," said Alida imperiously. "If there is danger for my friends, I must be there to share it." "You must not do anything of the kind," I cried, "you do not understand the fierce blindness which comes upon men at such times. I shall go, if necessary, and you shall stay with my father and Linn in the refuge which those who love you have chosen for you." "Then if I let you go, you will come back and tell me all--remember, do not put me off with lies such as they tell to ordinary women." I promised, and as we stood looking across the glistening waters I saw for the second time in my life the tricolour flutter down from its staff, and after a pause the shining "Tatter of Scarlet" of the red revolution blow out on the valley wind. CHAPTER XXV THE PROCLAMATION The street lamps had not been lighted when I landed on the left bank of the river, well above any outposts of the new revolt. I pulled my skiff safely under shelter of some bushes. The spot I had chosen was one well known to me, and exceedingly safe. My father often sent me over to bring plants and seeds from Arcadius, the gardener at Les Linottes, whose extensive grounds ran right down to the river's edge. A soft, rather hulking, good-natured man was Arcadius, who went through the world apparently breathing to the full ease of life. His body somewhat resembled a large slug supported on two smaller slugs, which were his legs. He worked in his garden, his pipe continually between his lips. At a first glance the slowness of his movements seemed laughable and ridiculous. But leave him half an hour and then see what he had accomplished. There was no man in Aramon who could get through so much work as Arcadius the Slug. By a kind of instinct he saw exactly where every stroke ought to fall, how much or how little was to be done, and the completed task ran out behind him like the wake from a well-rowed boat. It was in a little bay behind a promontory filled with the Slug's sapling pines that I landed. I knew the place well, I knew also that Arcadius would almost certainly be in his potting house, putting things to rights after the labours of the day (the middle of March is high season for every gardener in the Midi). There indeed I found him surrounded with repaired hoes and rakes, and at that moment putting a new handle into the small gardener's _bêche_ (or mattock) which was hardly ever out of his hands while in the open air. Arcadius was not a man of politics. "I have never known politics to improve the weather or keep off frosts!" he said. "I have yet to learn what good they do to a working gardener!" I asked about the works and the town. "Oh," he said, "my 'prentice lads stayed with me till six o'clock because I had put the fear of death on them if they tried to run. Yet I could see that they were itching to be off, and as soon as six struck from the Mairie, they dropped their tools and were over the wall. Only my Italians stayed and went soberly to bed. More I do not know. But, though there has been much noise of cheering in the square, there has been no shooting." I told Arcadius of the skiff fastened up behind his sapling copse. He nodded easily and looked out of doors to examine the weather signs. "It is not likely to rain, but it will hurt nothing to turn her upside down and stay her with a rope and a pair of stones. She will be ready when you want her. If you are bound on going into Aramon to-night, you may want her with great suddenness." I left him at the upper gate of his garden opposite to the waste ground where the harmless bull fights of Provence took place. "Now," he said, "there is a key for you. Put it in your pocket. Cross that bull yard and go through the passage, at the end of which you will come upon a door. When you open it you will find yourself in the narrow street by the new Lay Schools of the town." Then my kindly Slug took himself off without waiting for thanks, shaking all over like a jelly, and his lantern making a trickle of clear yellow light on the pathway in front of him. His wife was calling him in to supper, "Arcad-arcad-ar-cad-i-oos!" I crossed the road hastily. All was empty and desolate, and in a moment more I was fronted by the barricade over which every Sunday the "amateurs" of this innocent bull-baiting leaped back to safety and the applause of their friends. Almost I had lost my way among piled benches, when a faint light showed through a much barred door. I passed through the money-taker's box with double doors and found myself facing the dark tunnel of which Arcadius had spoken. It looked dismal and uninviting enough, but at least there was no reason to suppose that any revolutionaries would be skulking there. Even if there were, what had I, an old Garibaldian, to fear? The passage had evidently been used for bringing the bull into the arena, and I was glad enough when the massive double portal stopped me, even though it was the bump on my forehead which first acquainted me with its position. I felt for the keyhole and found that it took all my strength to turn the wards of the ancient lock which in that damp place creaked dismally. The half of the heavy door swung back ponderously. The street without seemed dim and forlorn in front of me, glimmering with a kind of bluish light. I was glad that I had not to step at once into the bright illumination of the Cours or the more restrained golden glow which distinguished the Place de la Mairie. I made what slight toilet I could, carefully wiping my muddy boots on the door-mat of a perfect stranger to whom in days to come I make belated acknowledgments. I peered out and it was well I did so, for not ten yards from the end of the passage a sentry was posted in the dress of the National Guard of Aramon, blue breeches, blue coat liberally faced with red, and a red _képi_. I could see the light from an unseen lamp shining on the flat of his sword-bayonet, no doubt fresh from the storehouse of Dennis Deventer. For since the ignominious retreat of the military two months ago, the Government had insisted that a National Guard on the Paris model should be established in Aramon and, for that matter, in all the larger towns of the Midi. Dennis Deventer warned the prefect of the department of Rhône-et-Durance that they were laying up trouble for themselves. He told them that if they armed the workmen of the Arms Factories on the slightest outbreak in Paris, all power in Aramon-les-Ateliers would pass instantly into their hands. The like would also happen in every town of the Midi. "You of the South are afraid when a mouse squeaks," the Secretary of the Interior had replied (for Dennis and he were closeted together). "We accounted for the Reds easily enough in October and again in January. They have lost both in power and numbers since then. If anything grave does happen, we can always take Cavaignac's way--isolate suburb from suburb and--shoot!" "Very well," said Dennis, "if you are sure of your regular army that may do for Paris--but at Aramon, at Marseilles, our suburbs are our rich quarters. The men of the revolt live in the city, and to put arms into their hands is to centralise all power there." But the watchword of the Government for the moment was "trust of the people," and it was not till its generals were being shot down under the bloody apple blossom of the Rue des Rosiers, its army fraternising with the revolutionaries, and the chiefs of the Government clattering with foaming steeds and strained harness on the way to Versailles, that they became aware that Dennis Deventer had been right. At any rate, there was I, who had not been consulted in the affair, almost within arms' length of a National Guard, my refuge in the doorway liable to be intruded upon at any moment, and all exit blocked. I began to ask myself what I was doing there. Yet I had no idea of going back. I must know what had happened at Château Schneider. I must see Rhoda Polly. There was no sound except a confused murmur like wind overhead in high trees. No shots were fired, and except the erect sentinel in his blue coat, his red _kêpi_ tipped rakishly over one ear, and his shining rifle and sword-bayonet, I heard no sound of civil strife. I watched him carefully. He was new to his work and fidgeted constantly, now coming a little down the street and then going a little way up, but never a moment losing sight of my alley arch, which seemed to attract him like a sort of black hole into the unknown. Twice or thrice he fumbled in his pockets, and once he drew out a short pipe which he eyed with longing. But apparently he had had his orders, for he put it back again, changed his piece from one shoulder to another, and resumed his uneasy guard. I think that it must have been a good hour that I stood there watching the shining of that fellow's broad bayonet. So we might have stood indefinitely had not the pipe in my gentleman's pocket proved in time too much for him. He looked this way and that, ducked suddenly under my archway, bayonet and all, and then proceeded to strike a match. I can affirm in excuse for what followed that I had no time to form plans. The most natural defence was that which most concerned me. My opponent was armed and strong, I only agile, young, and unarmed. So while the vile governmental match still stank and hissed with its blue flame, I leaped upon him like a cat. He screamed, dropped his pipe, and made immediately for the street. If he reached it I was a dead man. So I throttled him, pulling back his head till I feared his neck might crack. He fell, and in a twinkling I had tossed aside his gun and revolver, strapped his hands with my waistbelt and thrust a handkerchief into his mouth, fastening it in with another which I found in his own pocket. Then I dragged him backwards towards the door and after some difficulty opened it. I lifted him as well as I could upon my shoulders so that only his feet trailed. But he must have received some stunning blow about the head, for he never moved, though it was with relief that I felt him breathing when I laid him down. I extended him comfortably on a fodder crib in the bull enclosure, for which luckily my key was also good. Then I hastily reckoned the chances such as they were. It was clear I could not go about the streets of Aramon as I was, with armed sentinels at every corner. The man's red _képi_ gave me an idea. It had fallen off. I picked it up, cleaned it, and was about to replace it, when I suddenly snatched it away again. I lifted the man up and took off his cloak and blue uniform coat. I would be a National Guard for the night, and I felt sure that with my experience of soldiering I could look the part. I bestowed my coat upon him, and gazed with longing at his blue breeches, but gave up that exchange as too long and perilous an undertaking. Dark brown must serve in place of the regulation blue pattern on the principle that at night all cats are grey. But I put on the coat which was considerably too big. I carefully cleaned the skirts of the cloak, and then added to my array the red _képi_. The door once locked upon my prisoner, I left him to come to himself at his own time and as he would. On my way out I gathered up the arms that were missing. Already I had provided myself with his cartridge belt, his haversack and all accessories. The revolver was safe in its case near the door-mat and the rifle and sword-bayonet were soon polished on one of the tails of the coat. I kept the cloak open a little so that the broad red facings might show. With a beating heart I peeped out. The street was empty, and it struck me forcibly that the sooner I got away from there the better. The military organisation of the Revolt might be more complete than I supposed. They might send out Grand Rounds to visit their sentinels, or the guard might be changed---both of which events would be exceedingly awkward for me, especially as I was wholly without knowledge of the password. Not more than an instant did I hesitate on the threshold. Then with (I admit) my heart in my mouth, I stepped out and marched directly for the end of the alley. The broad Place de la République (as it had been named for six months, vice "Imperial" superseded) was filled with a dim but pervading illumination. The resinous smell of many torches filled the air, and as I turned towards the Hôtel de Ville I saw the reason. On the broad platform over the doorway, many men were standing bareheaded, and a little in advance of the others one was holding a document in his hand. Flags that certainly were not tricolour drooped on either hand of this balcony and cascaded down the front of the building, hiding the first-floor windows and reaching the ground. I saw many National Guards hurrying from their places, some singly, some in little groups of three and four. I let myself be carried along till I reached the press in front of the ceremony. Discreetly I did not try to penetrate, but kept well on the outskirts, as far from the hundred torches as possible. Mine was not a popular position, for the reek of the tar set people coughing, and most were not slow to move away. But I stood as if on faction, and as such was saluted and passed by a hurrying officer, who, barely saluting, barked at me the single word "Marx," shooting it in my direction like a missile. I saluted in return and he went his way, leaving me in possession of the password for the night. It was no immediate service, for all there were too intent on the ceremony in front of the town hall to look at one National Guard more or less. When I had accustomed my eyes to the acrid sting of the smoke, I moved nearer in order to hear better, and then for the first time I became aware that the man who was proclaiming the Commune in Aramon was--Keller Bey himself! The accents of the voice, falling clamorously on my ear, had indeed sounded familiar, but I had rather thought of Père Félix, Pipe-en-Bois, Soult or any other valiants of the former revolutions. What was Keller doing here? Suppositions crowded dizzily about me. Of course, there had always been an unknown side to Keller Bey, and his hatred of the priests and the bourgeoisie had been things to reckon with. "Who is the speaker?" I asked of a man beside me, still in the blouse of his daily work, his eyes red with tending furnaces and his hands grimy with coal. He cast one look of contempt on me. "Where have you come from," he demanded, "that you do not know Keller Chief of the Secret Council of the Internationale?" "I have been fighting along with Garibaldi," I answered truthfully enough, "I have not been long in the National Guard." Which in its way was still truer. "Ah," he answered carelessly, "the Italian! I have heard of him. What sort of a fellow was he?" I explained enthusiastically, but as usual quite in vain. "Well," said the man, cursing the smoke and beginning to move off, "he might as well have stopped at home for all the good he did. That's my way of it!" And I will not conceal from the reader that this summed up pretty fairly the bulk of French opinion upon the great leader. As may well be imagined I stood far back, shrouded in shadow and smoke till Keller Bey had finished his speech. He told how in Paris the revolt of the proletariat had been completely successful, how the army had gone over to the cause of the people, how the bourgeois Government had fled to Versailles with hardly one to do them honour--how in all the great cities of France the new Commune was being declared and established. At Marseilles Gambetta's young Procureur-Général, the citizen Gaston Cremieux, headed the movement. He read a dispatch that moment received, urging Aramon to send a thousand men to help their brothers in Marseilles, threatened with troops from overseas and exposed to daily attacks from the still untaken forts. "We shall be glad to aid our brothers in Marseilles if we are let alone here. We desire no fighting. The troops of the tricolour are not within our gates, and though there are some left who think differently from us, we can, I believe, live on excellent terms with them, until our Government is solidified and the Company of Arms is ready to nationalise its works. Till that day we must deal prudently, rule well, allow no attempts on private property, and behave as if we were all in reality as well as in name comrades and brothers." So far as I could judge, I think Keller Bey carried the audience with him. I did not hear a murmur of dissent. Only, on the other hand, the plaudits could not be called long-continued or well-nourished. The workers of Aramon-les-Ateliers cherished a secret doubt--a doubt which they wished set at rest. "What of Dennis?" they cried. "Dennis Deventer? Are the works to be closed? Where is the week's wage to come from?" Keller Bey rose again, brushing aside the Père Félix. "To-morrow," he said "you shall elect your Commune--twenty citizens of weight and mark to take the place of the present provisional government which has declared Aramon a city of liberty. Choose you good strong men who can deal with the Company and the Company's agent. Have no fear. Our cause is just. Marseilles and the great cities are with us. And to-morrow, doubt it not, France shall be with us also. We have inaugurated the reign of international peace. Let us begin by keeping the peace within our own borders. If we are to govern at all, we must show an example of good government, so that every city, town, and hamlet shall desire to throw in its lot with us. There is to be no wrecking of machinery, which we know must one day belong to the workers. We shall make friends with the foremen of departments, and when we come to restarting the works on the Communist plan we shall pay every man his wage according to his deserts--aye, and to Dennis Deventer his, for a head we must have. A business without a head is like an army without a general." At this moment I was suddenly gripped solidly from behind, my weapons snatched away from me, and with the butt of the rifle such a blow was delivered on the back of my head that the marvel is I am here writing of it to-day. My gentleman of the bull enclosure had been cleverer than I had anticipated. Most likely he had been shamming dead, and now, having loosened himself, he had leaped the fence, made a detour of the boulevard and appeared from behind me at the moment when I was expecting him as little as he had looked for me in the archway. That gun-butt was enough for me. I sank swooning on the ground under the low smoke drift from the dim torches and with the words of Keller Bey as to universal peace and concord still in my ears. CHAPTER XXVI KELLER BEY, INSURGENT Among the panelled mirrors and gilt splendours of the Hôtel de Ville of Aramon I opened my eyes. A doctor had been attending me. My head was tightly bandaged and my left hand was also bound up. From many aches and pains I judged that in my quality of detected spy I had been somewhat severely dealt with, by the crowd, or perhaps my own man had remembered the taste of the gag and had perpetrated some little personal atrocities on his own account, before delivering me up to justice, in order to square the account. The doctor was talking to Keller Bey. It was broad day, and abundant light, filtering through the plane trees, flooded the great room. It was usually the Salle des Mariages, but for the time being it had been converted into a lounging place for the people of Aramon. I had in fact awakened on election day, and in the new Commune my vote was as good as that of any other man. At one end was a space boarded off in the regular way, into which one elector after another passed with his voting ticket, and having deposited it under the eyes of the four watchful questors, walked immediately out by the opposite door. Presently Keller Bey passed into an inner room, which, from the gilding upon the door and the allegorical figures above holding swords of justice and ill-adjusted balances, I took to be a court room. It was in fact the mayoral parlour, and the comfortable office coat and even the dressing-gown of the late occupant still hung on the pegs behind the door. Keller Bey gave an order and I was immediately brought in and laid upon a wide and springy sofa which furnished one whole side of the apartment. I noticed the device of the crossed red and black flags had been removed from his tie, and was now worn upon the lapel of his coat like a decoration. As soon as the room was clear he came over and sat down beside me. At sight of me his grim face softened almost as it was wont to do when Linn or Alida spoke to him. "All this may seem very strange to you," he said, with a faint feeling of apology in his voice, "you who have only seen me going about the house like a tame cat. But since I was raised to high place and consideration in the Internationale, the old fighting spirit rose within me. I could not deny the appeal of my brothers to stand by them, and so you find me here, at the head of the Commune of Aramon--at least till the will of the voters is ascertained. The men who are with me are honest fellows, but, so far as I see, quite incapable of leadership. I do not believe that the vote will strip me of any authority or responsibility." I thought that he was talking straight on without stopping in order to escape the question which he must have seen on my lips. "And your duty to Linn and Alida?" I demanded abruptly. I could see him flush and pale. "Personal and private interests must give way at such times," he answered firmly enough, but his tones did not carry conviction, not even, I think, to himself. "Besides," he added, after a pause, "Linn knew that it would have to come. I dare not refuse a call of duty because of the danger." "It is lucky for Linn and Alida," I said with the studied cruelty only attained by boys, "that they have friends who put them before all public duties." "Sir," said Keller Bey, his cheek blanching to a kind of cadaveric rigidity, so great was the intensity of his anger, "I do not allow anyone to call my actions into question." "Call in your soldiers, Monsieur of the Internationale," I said tauntingly, "you can soon get even with me. There are many walls between here and the cottage in my father's garden. My shooting will not have the _éclat_ of the assassination of the Paris generals, but it will come as blithe news for the three left wondering in the garden of Gobelet." I spoke like a bad, spiteful boy, conscious of a power to wound to the quick and thoroughly enjoying my triumph. Keller Bey did not answer directly to my railings. He felt instinctively that he could not meet me along these lines. "How did you come here?" he demanded abruptly, "and why in the coat of a Garde Nationale?" "Because," I said, looking at him with my bandaged head lifted on my hand, "_I_ do not forget old kindnesses. Nor yet new ones--though _my_ house had not been set in order and largely furnished by the kindness of the Deventers. I crossed the river in a boat and was going to find them--to help them if I could, if necessary to fight and die with them, if your people should besiege them as they have done before." Keller Bey threw out his arms suddenly with the gesture of a tortured man who seeks something to grip in his agony. "I had not thought youth so cruel," he moaned. "Do you not understand that I am here to prevent all that? I stand between the hotheads and Dennis Deventer. His wife and family are as safe here as mine in your father's garden, of which you are so good as repeatedly to remind me!" I am afraid that my expression expressed unbelief. "You must pardon me," I said suavely and still provocatively, "but I have been among the chimneys of the Château Schneider when the mitrailleuses were talking. You intend to rule justly and love mercy, but what of the men about you? I have seen them streaming across the open court wrecking and destroying." "Exactly," said Keller Bey, with suddenly recovered dignity, "but then I was not at the direction of affairs. If any man now disobeys he shall be made to feel the vengeance of the Internationale! We shall sow fear among them as corn is sown on a windy day." At this moment Keller was summoned outside, and I could hear his voice dominating and allaying a quarrel between functionaries, as I lay back listening and determined to find out what he intended to do with myself as soon as he came back. But one thing and another was referred to him for judgment, and it was the better part of an hour before he came in holding a sheaf of telegrams in his hand. A secretary accompanied him, and I had perforce to put off my demand. Keller Bey had evidently regained some of the old military readiness which had made him the favourite lieutenant of the great Emir. He dictated telegrams and dispatches to Paris, to St. Etienne, to Narbonne, and especially a long communication to Gaston Cremieux at Marseilles. There were (he said) certainly men at Aramon and to spare, but for the moment each Commune in revolt must depend upon itself. When the provisional Government of Aramon, of which he was the head, had handed over its powers to a properly elected Commune, then would be the time to speak of sending reinforcements to a greater neighbour. It was true that there were no troops belonging to the expelled Government of Versailles in the city of Aramon itself, but to the north the ancient, highly clerical Avignon offered an excellent centre for collecting an army corps. The Government of the Assembly, exiled to Versailles, had its hands tied by the marvellous success of the Paris revolt. But save that the Commune of Paris was sending a pair of delegates to arrange terms of association, no help need be looked for from that quarter. At last Keller Bey made an end and dismissed the secretary. Then he sat a while with his head upon his hands in deep thought. I interrupted his meditation with my question. "And now, Keller Bey, what do you mean to do with me?" He did not reply instantly, but continued his meditations in silence. I was compelled to put the question three times, and the third time with some heat, before he raised his head to answer. "In the meantime I shall keep you by me as a hostage. The voting is not yet over, and, though I do not anticipate any violent change, there is always a possibility that the fiery spirits may urge violent measures. In that case I shall use you for a messenger to our friends at Château Schneider. In any case, you have come to me and here you had better stay. It may be necessary also to communicate with my family and in that matter I could trust only you." This was a great disappointment to me, who had thought that an hour would see me inside the walls of the Château Schneider, talking with Mrs. Deventer or sneaking off into the conservatory or out upon the roof with Rhoda Polly for one of our long talks about everything in heaven above and on the earth beneath. But it was very evident that Keller Bey had made up his mind, and, at any rate, I had galled him too bitterly in the beginning of our conversation to admit of my finishing it by asking a favour. I only shrugged my shoulders and said mockingly: "Perhaps you would like me to lead your thousand men to Marseilles as well?" "Indeed," he replied unexpectedly, "I am not sure but that it is an excellent idea--you are a friend of Gaston Cremieux. I could send you as civil delegate without awakening any jealousy among the chiefs of battalion. It is a suggestion which will bear thinking over--certainly not to be lost sight of." * * * * * I had many and excellent opportunities of watching Keller Bey in his new character of insurrectional leader during the days which followed. As every one anticipated, his name led the list of the new Commune by many thousands majority. The others came meekly behind, even the Père Félix only emerging from the crowd by a head. What specially gratified Keller Bey was that no member of the noisy gang of wreckers had been chosen. "What did I tell you?" he cried, patting me on the shoulder; "our Government is to be a model of firmness and sobriety." And so it was, as far as Keller Bey could make it. But there remained dangerous elements of which he was ignorant, but which were very clear to Dennis Deventer, who had seen the leaven of evil at work for many years. On the morrow began the organisation of the services of the new Government. It was a strange installation, and I sat there like a spectator in a good seat at a theatre and watched the play. None of those who were on the stage seemed to have any idea of the ridiculousness of the performance. Only I, outside all wire-pulling, saw the truth. The rest were hypnotised by the wonderful thing which had happened--a Commune at Aramon! Hour by hour I saw Aramon being cut off from the world. At the first news of the election of a Commune the officials of the post office had disappeared. Piles of letters accumulated on the desks and before the ranged pigeon-holes. Sacks arrived by train so long as these were running, and were heaped in corners. The telegraphic machines were set down where the operators had abandoned them. I amused myself by calling up the different towns in our neighbourhood, but received answers only from Marseilles and Narbonne. The rest had nothing to say to a revolted city like ours. By and by Narbonne was abruptly cut off, probably at Cette or some intervening town favourable to the Government of Versailles. Half of Keller Bey's time was taken up with such matters as the choice of a new post office staff. Where they came from I cannot imagine, these seekers after office. And their credentials! One highly recommended claimant for the office of receiver of contributions had been expelled by the brutal tyranny of Napoleon from a Tobacco Bureau. He had thereafter languished in prison, not, as he gave Keller to understand, as a political victim, but as a good, solid embezzler of Government money. Yet he was supported by a Commandant of the National Guards, a relative of his own, and but for my chance recognition of him, would doubtless have been appointed. The post office staff was soon complete--director, assistants, money-order clerks, telegraph clerks, and messengers--postmen for the district town deliveries, postmen for the rural rounds--but after the first solemn sorting of the _débris_ left behind by the old staff, not so much as a letter or a newspaper, to pass from hand to hand, even as a curiosity! The civil services, the mayoral staff, the judges of the tribunal, judges of the commercial court, Procureur of the Republic and so forth gave a little more trouble. Père Félix was appointed President of the Tribunal, and his good nature and popularity promised easy sentences for the malefactors of Aramon. But they gave him for public prosecutor one Raoux, a little wizened wisp of a man, a shoemaker and bold orator of the bars, who in his readiness of denunciation threw Fouquier-Tinville into the shade, and in irreverence and insolence approached Raoul Rigault himself. Raoux was high in the National Guards, which Keller Bey had not yet begun to recognise as the power behind his throne. Consequently he had a real influence and soon aspired to nothing less than a ministry of justice, both making denunciations and by his authority sending the denounced to prison. The officers of the city gaol were almost the only ones who remained of the civil servants of the Empire. They were mostly Corsicans, and as their chief Calvi said: "They had come to France to keep prisoners safely." He would give a receipt for each on arrival, and exact a similar receipt on his leaving the Château du Monsieur le Duc. But he would take the same pains with the prisoners of the new Government as with those of the old--and so, since, in fact, no Communard wished to become a turnkey, a _garde-chiourme_, Calvi and his staff were left in undisputed possession of the Central Prison and House of correction of the department of Rhône-et-Durance. Some of the happenings were curious. The prisoners within, sentenced to various terms of reclusion and imprisonment under the Empire, found themselves on their release walking about in a world which knew not Joseph. Some were rearrested as spies, but even the vibrant little cobbler Raoux could not break down the excellence of the alibi which they had ready to hand. Some alarmed good women by asking news of the Emperor, or loudly expressing disbelief in a _café_ when the disasters of the war were hinted at. A ruffianly fellow, excited by his first cup of spirits for some years, offered to fight any man who dared to say that the Germans had entered Paris. So fiercely did he assault the original patriot who had mentioned the fact, that the rest of the party, gathered over their cards and mulled wine in the Café Jacquard, denied one by one that they had ever heard of such a thing. Finally the tyranny of the "nervi" or ticket-of-leave man became so overbearing that it took half a company of National Guards with fixed bayonets to convey him to the "gendarmerie," and from thence, after due committal, to the gloomy prison-house of Monsieur le Duc, from which he had been but three hours released. He had struggled gallantly against bayonet prick and rifle butt. The escort, amateurs at this kind of work, had pitied the few wardens who must handle such a desperado. But when the first policeman appeared he merely bade the "nervi" lay his thumbs together, and in an instant he was leading the formidable warrior whither he would as submissive and obedient as a child. Calvi was called and came hastily in, donning a uniform coat, and leaving a half-played game of "dames" behind him. He examined the order of the new Procureur. The stamp was as usual. The signature mattered nothing to Calvi, who looked up at the rioter with a kind of reproach. "Number 333," he said, with severity, "if you had told us that we were to be honoured with your custom so soon again, you would have saved us the trouble of whitewashing your cell. Take care not to overturn the materials which have been left, make yourself as comfortable as you can to-night, and you can do the rest of the work to-morrow. Good night, gentlemen of the National Guard!" He should have said "citizens," and every man knew it; but after all he was a miserable child of the Isle of Despots, and besides, no citizen, however loyal, objects to being called a gentleman once in a way. Keller gave me work to do occasionally. I drafted proclamations and, after rounding the sentences to make them more sonorous, I carried them to the Communal printing office, which did not differ from other printing offices, save that, in the absence of a master, each printer lounged and smoked about the cases, or took himself off to the nearest grog-shop in the intervals of labour. Often I had to work Keller Bey's name for all it was worth, and threaten a guard and the Bastille of Aramon before I could get anything done. Sometimes, during my long hours of waiting at the printing office of the Commune, I strolled up to the Aramon station. Only a stray lamp-cleaner sat with his legs dangling from the platform and spat upon the quickly rusting rails, looking over his shoulder occasionally to throw a remark to the single Garde National, who, though on duty, had laid his rifle and cartridge-belt upon a luggage-barrow, sought out a pile of "returned empty" sacks of coarse jute, arranged these to his mind, and finally had laid himself down on them, only rolling over occasionally to refill his pipe or to wheel his couch into a shady place or one more convenient for a friendly gossip. On the whole this was the man I liked best. His "relief," a burly fellow from the Hard Stone Quarries above the town, calmly divested himself of his coat, wrapped his feet in his cloak, drew his coat loosely over him, put his head on his knapsack, and slept his watch out on the green velvet cushions of the first-class waiting-room. Above, the man really responsible, the station-master of Aramon Junction, was supposed to be busying himself with a report of the reopening of the line between Lyons and Marseilles. This news had been brought to Keller Bey by my friend of the travelling bed on the luggage truck. He considered it hard that Monsieur Weyse never came down to patrol the platform and pass the time of day. He yearned for society, and one of the comfortable arm-chairs in the station-master's room would have appealed to him strongly. It was the unseen official's own fault if a man so naturally companionable as he of the luggage-barrow were driven by neglect to prefer a complaint against him. The expanse of empty quays and innumerable parallels of iron rails preyed on his spirits. He tired of the man who cleaned lamps and sat upon the stone parapet. He had already heard all his opinions, knew where he was going to place his oaths, and scented his grotesque and improper anecdotes afar off--with a sense of loathing because, in addition to all, the lamp-man spat with a regularity and vigour singularly disgustful to a Frenchman, who does not use his tobacco in the "plug" form. I was sent to interview the station-master as to the famous report. I found him comfortably ensconced at his fireside, his legs embracing one side and the other of the hearth, a huge pile of the complete works of Victor Hugo, the Brussels edition, on a chair by his side. He was fathoms deep in the third volume of "Les Misérables." I never saw a man more enraptured nor one more enviable. I stood and looked at him, a broad, beefy man with a shrewd Scottish countenance. His uniformed coat and gold-broidered cap were neatly placed on a chair behind him. But the man himself, in a long blouse drawn well above his knees, so that he might feel the comforting of the fire, continued his reading without a pause, stirring the logs occasionally with his toe. I was sorry to interrupt him, but I was resolved to make a friend, for here was a man with a set of Hugo. I had already been at the Municipal Library, but there, the collection dating entirely from the times of the Empire, it of course contained nothing of Hugo's later than "Hernani." "Your servant, sir!" Already at a mere waft of my entrance he had sprung to his feet and laid down his book. "You take me a little by surprise--ah--from Keller Bey? Are you a Communard, young man?" I reassured him. Keller Bey's family lived with my father across the water in Languedoc. I had been captured and had given my parole, but I was no partisan. I acted as occasional secretary to Keller Bey, that was all. He shook his head sorrowfully, for I think the verdancy of my youth appealed to him. "Do not run with the wolves too long or the wolf-hunters may not stop to ask the difference. There is a fable about that--which I have read somewhere--in Perrault or La Fontaine. Take back your parole and get out of Aramon. All this foolishness will go like that----" (he snapped his finger and thumb in the air), "and I only hope that I shall have time to read Hugo once through before I have again to think of a train every five minutes pouring north and south, east and west, through Aramon Junction!" I put the question of the report as delicately as possible. I have rarely seen a Frenchman laugh more boisterously. "But I have made no report. Why should I? I have received none and written none. The wires are cut in all directions. I have not a telegraphist on the place. There are my files if you want to look. Everything is going by the branch lines on the other side, but even of that I know only what I can see from my bedroom window, the white steam of trains trailing off among the green woods, and sometimes the dull rumble of a heavily laden goods convoy crossing a bridge. Of positive knowledge concerning railway affairs I have none. I sit and read Hugo and wait for the end of things. The old life will come back soon enough. Meanwhile I am earning my salary, and when traffic opens a pretty sum will be owing to me on the books of the company. "See here," he said, chuckling, "this is my only report. I will write it before your eyes." He pointed to a folio which lay open with the day and date, but all else blank. He took a pen and wrote: "As yesterday--no change. Guards--Caspar and Nolli. Both quiet. Messenger from Communal Government to ask about a report I am supposed to be making. Exhibit this." "There you are--you can copy that if you like. I give you my word of honour that is all the report I ever write, and that is just enough to prove me on the spot, able for duty, and to claim my pay!" I told Monsieur Weyse that I would not trouble him further. I should explain the foolish rumour to Keller Bey, and in all things he might count upon me. At the same time _if_ there happened to be any volume of Hugo he was not using----! Well, he might imagine my gratitude. He sprang to his feet with a kind of smothered whoop and began to delve among the pile which occupied the chair and slopped over upon the floor. "Here--here," he explained, "take the first two volumes of "Les Misérables." It is the best of all. I shall read faster than you, for I have nothing else to do, and I keep it up far into the night. Why, my friend, if you come to-morrow, I shall have the third volume ready for you. No, no, don't thank me, but go instead and get your head clear of this noose. This Communist Aramon is going to be no safe place to play unpaid secretary in after a week or two. Those white wreaths of smoke against the Cevennes tell me that. The Company and the Government are working together over there, and when they are ready--it will be good not to be here and in your shoes!" "But, Monsieur Weyse, you will be here!" "Ah, that is different! I am a lonely man, and a servant in the way of his duty. Nothing can come amiss to me. Even if either side fortifies the junction buildings--why, I am the station-master acting for the Company. I sit and write my report once a day, and for the rest I read Hugo. Nothing is more simple. But as for you, take an old man's word. You are better anywhere than where you are!" CHAPTER XXVII UNDER WHICH KING, BEZONIAN? The station-master was right. I saw how things were tending and how the revolt was sure to end. Yet I was by nature so curious of the oddities of the business that I put off speaking to Keller Bey. For one thing, I did not want to find myself shut up in the Duke's Castle along with the other martyrs of the new rule. I preferred the open air and risk. Besides, I could each day assure myself of the well-being of Dennis Deventer and his family. I discovered where Jack Jaikes was usually to be found on guard, and, early in the dusk of the morning, I slipped from my room in order to speak half an hour with him in private. He first abused me like a pickpocket for taking sides with such a dirty pack, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he could be persuaded that there was after all a difference between a Communard and a prisoner on parole. He did not trouble to conceal his opinion of the latter. "Jump over the wall," he whispered, "see, catch hold of my belt. I tell ye, man, in business we cannot afford to be so fine. I learned that in Glasgow long syne, when a brither-in-law o' mine took my job from me. Now, he was my brither, though not by blood, and in a manner o' speaking I had promised to love, honour, and obey. But instead I just bashed him till he was laid up in bed for six weeks--so I got my job back! Now tell me, where would I have been if I had minded about honour and 'paroles' and them things?" It was in vain that I pointed out to Jack Jaikes that, after all, it was not he but his sister who had promised to love, honour, and obey the maltreated job-jumper. "It doesna maitter. It's all the wan thing!" was all that I could get out of Jack Jaikes. "Now then, catch a haud and I'll hae ye beside me in the crack o' a cow's tail!" Now, though I had fought duels on the sly at St. André on the most approved principles of French honour, I had done so chiefly because I possessed an excellent method and a supple wrist trained by years of the "Salle." Really I cared nothing about any artificial code of honour. But it was quite a different thing to have passed my word to Keller Bey, and entirely unthinkable to leave him in the lurch by making my escape without telling him. I began about this time to imagine a vain thing. It seemed that in some way I could save both Keller Bey and the Deventers. I would be on both sides of the fence at once, and play a universal providence. I did not then see that I should end by being outlawed by both sides--as, save for a curious interposition, I should have been. Jack Jaikes had, however, sufficiently impressed me that I went to Keller Bey and told him that he must trust me completely without any parole. He must give me back my word about escaping. I might (I explained) disappear for a time without leaving him altogether. In reality I did not mean to do anything of the kind, and if it came to any trouble about saving the Deventers, he would find me again at his side. All this I believed perfectly feasible at the time. Indeed, I spoke with such earnestness and spontaneity that he finished by shutting his eyes, even as I was doing, to the difficulties or, rather, impossibilities of the position. Somehow he clung to my presence among these men to whom he was already no more than a symbol of authority. They did not know the man Keller Bey. I did. And he seemed to wish to keep me near him as a link with a past with which he had broken. In his heart I am sure he regretted the garden and his talks with my father and Professor Renard, while as to Linn and Alida, they did not simply bear thinking about. Yet he was possessed by that driving fate, ambition, call of duty, what you will---which sends men forth from comfortable homes to battle for life about the frozen pole, to die miserably, to leave their bones there--though all the while in bright homes the loving hearts of women and the laughter of children are waiting for them. Keller Bey was fate-driven. This Aramon rising had fallen accidentally in his way. The idealist in the man tempted him to believe that he could make a Socialist Land of Promise out of those factories and arsenals, which had grown up in such a beauty spot of nature, where (it was Keller Bey's word) "merely to be alive between sea, sky, and earth was a daily revelation of religion." He thought nothing of the small questions of pay and personal interest which really made up the gist of the matter to the workmen. Perhaps also, though quite unwillingly, he had been led astray by Dennis Deventer. Dennis was an idealist also, and he saw the workmen's side of the question of private ownership. He would express these opinions with such dialectic sympathy that it almost seemed to the listener that he would be found one day persuading the owners of the factories to make over their possessions to the workers. His wife often reproached him with this treachery of words. "I know, I know, colleen," he would answer contritely, "'tis Irish Dennis hot in my brain that will get talking--then when I _do_ things Deventer the Scot sets the count right." "But, then, how about the people with whom you have talked, and who may be depending on your words?" "'Tis more the pity of them," he would say quizzically, "but, anyway, I am no worse than these young chicks that you have brought up." "That is nonsense, Dennis--you are the master and yet you talk like a 'red' as often as not--very likely when you have just sent Jack Jaikes to fix a new gun where it will command a street or a gate by which you may be attacked." Then Dennis would hold up his hand in token of surrender. It was all gospel truth, due perhaps as much as anything to the family habit of free discussion, when Dennis would take up a losing cause and champion it to the bitter end. There is, however, room to commiserate Keller Bey, from whom these things were hidden. He reported to the Commune of Aramon at its daily séances, of the favourable dispositions of the representative of the Company. Nay, during the space of a week, it was quite on the cards that the men should return to work on the basis of some half-understood (and wholly misunderstood) word of Dennis's, which Keller Bey and his Social Commission had taken to mean the admission of the men's right to a share in the half-yearly profits. Fortunately or unfortunately, another phrase at a succeeding interview had revealed that Dennis Deventer had no intention of committing his owners to anything. Nor had he the power. He had merely been willing to cast his own salary and commissions into the common fund gained by all the workers, and leave the total to be divided by the committee according to their idea of equity. But then, though this was exceedingly generous, Dennis was also a partner and a rich man. The men, except Keller Bey, were indignant at what they counted a cheat--a false offer. Very unjustly, for to Dennis Deventer the rights of labour extended to what a man earned. Those of property, equally important to him, included the defence of his wife's money invested in the Small Arms Company, and also what he had been able to put aside during the years of his strenuous life. This is how the great misunderstanding arose, and I do not see that any of the parties to it were free from blame--certainly not Dennis. But I hasten to tell how the events fell out and what was my part in the adventure. The same day that I had required my parole back from Keller Bey I marched boldly and in the face of all to the gate of Château Schneider, which was shut and boarded up, strengthened besides by criss-cross work of iron bars, so that the half which was opened creaked and groaned on its hinges when it turned. So careful was the watch that when at last after parley and explanation Jack Jaikes let me in, it was only to find myself commanded by three separate batteries of machine guns from behind which peered the perplexed faces of McAllister's gang. They were simple men and they could not understand this running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. I do not blame them. No one who did not know Keller Bey and the need of standing by him could possibly have understood. Jack Jaikes explained as well as he could, but not being convinced himself of the goodness of my cause, I fear his words only darkened counsel. It was generally understood by those on guard at Château Schneider that "I would bear watching," and indeed it was not long before the sentinels of the National Guard on the other side of the wall came to exactly the same conclusion, so to please all parties I was blindfolded. But the welcome I had from the household of Deventer made up for all this enveloping suspicion. Here, at least, I stood clear. I was re-established in my own conceit, in my position a most valuable asset. Was I not a martyr to duty, a prisoner on parole, one castaway among wild and dangerous people, because I had ventured out by night to join the Deventer defence? Jack Jaikes had evidently done his part well. He had given me the rough side of his tongue, but had permitted the Deventers to understand that in the morning hours he had held converse with a hero and martyr to duty. Mrs. Deventer came over and graciously kissed me, and I verily believe that I might have kissed all three girls--yes, even Hannah--under the eye maternal, without a reprimand. Hugh was more comrade-like than he had been for a long time, and linked arms with me in the good old St. André way as we stood by the fire-place. Dennis Deventer came in smiling. "Now our family is more like itself again. Angus me boy, and how did ye leave my good friend the commander of the forces?" I told him that Keller Bey was well but much worried by the cares of office. At this he laughed a little mischievously, and burst out in one of his usual phrases: "St. Patrick's Day and a fine morning to be whittling shillalahs. But Keller Bey has not seen the first green of his wild oat-sowing. Let him wait till his lambs begin to frolic. Then I do not envy him his task. As for me, Jack Jaikes and I are making this place so strong that they might blow it piece by piece about our ears without making us surrender." Presently I found myself at luncheon at the Deventers' table. Nothing appeared to have changed, except that the young apprentices were no longer to be seen, and indeed there was no external service of any kind. We cut and poured out at the sideboard for ourselves. Mrs. Deventer was the only one waited upon, Rhoda Polly bringing her what she wanted. The discussion grew as loud as ever, but hushed instantly when a messenger appeared at the door, cap in hand and a little breathless, to report the situation of the various posts, or to request instructions. Sometimes Dennis merely bade the messenger to "Ask Jack Jaikes!" More often he reeled off a detailed and technical explanation which the apprentice understood though I did not. Or again he would dash a few lines on the leaf of a note-book, indicate a design sketchily, and send the lad off again as fast as he could clatter down the stairs. I could not help being struck with admiration of the Chief's method and science. Keller Bey was a leader of men, but I could not help seeing, apart from his indubitable personal magnetism, how things were bungled for lack of those very qualities of science and method. It went well in Château Schneider. No need for speech or lifted hand. Silence fell like a spell whenever the runner appeared in that ever-open doorway. And while the master of men launched his commands there was not even the ordinary clatter of knives and forks. Everyone seemed to feel the importance of the decision to be given. All were proud of the giver, though the moment before and the moment after they would be refuting his arguments, denying his statements, and generally assaulting his positions in a Donnybrook of sound and fury, without the least apparent reverence for the grey hairs to which he often appealed with mock pathos. I took care not to see any of the defences of the workshops, or those about the Château. These had been wholly reorganised since the attempts of January, and were now nearing completion on a far more serious scale. I had to go back and I should assuredly be questioned. If I did not answer I might doubtless be suspected. Therefore it was arranged that when the time came for me to go Jack Jaikes should blindfold me and lead me out by the main fortified entrance of the works, which was immediately in front of a large post of National Guards. I was longing to get Rhoda Polly by herself and hear the news from her own lips, but Dennis was so eager for more and more detailed gossip about this one and that other among the members of the Commune, that he detained me a long while. He did not fish for secrets nor ask me to divulge any of Keller's plans. I think he felt himself too strong and sure for that. He was, moreover, genuinely interested in the men, and wishful to know how they conducted themselves in their new spheres. He was specially amused at my account of the staffing of the Post-Office-Without-Letters, and when he heard the names he instantly baptized it "The Bureau of the Incompetents"--a sobriquet which afterwards got abroad and became a saying, so that many of those who had earned the name left the place to escape from it. At last Rhoda Polly and I did manage to take refuge up on the roof behind our favourite chimney-stack at a place where the parapet was almost breast high. It was comfortable hiding and quite secluded--the fortifications of the Château roof being long perfected, and indeed only to be used as a watch-tower or as a last line of defence. Rhoda Polly told me how she had sent three messengers to Alida, of whom only one had been faithful to his trust. She had had to enlist Jack Jaikes in the business, and between them they had called up lads from the town, butchers' boys and such-like, known to the foreman from the Clyde. To each of these she had perforce to commit her letter, taking care that it should contain nothing compromising in case of capture. But only one ever returned with an answer, and he a little bare-footed rascal of a boot-black, from whom nothing had been expected. He had even brought back a letter from Alida, telling her friend that they were well but that for safety's sake Linn and she, with the two Tessier maids, had been taken into the main building of Gobelet, where at least they should be farther from the road and have men to protect them. Alida went on to say that Linn went about as usual, but evidently grieved for her husband in silence. She herself was occupied in learning Latin from Mr. Cawdor, and already could read in a book called "Cæsar" and in another by an author named Sallust. I saw the letter as Rhoda Polly turned it over, and noted that not a word of inquiry was wasted upon myself. My name was not once mentioned. The Lady Alida had taken dire offence at my flight, and this was in spite of the fact that Rhoda Polly had mentioned that I was with Keller Bey in the city of Aramon. CHAPTER XXVIII STORM GATHERING On my return I was, as I had expected, put to the question, with lenience by Keller Bey, but with biting irony and something like personal dislike by the Procureur Raoux. Then stood apparent all the man's bitter nature, mordantly distilled from years of poverty and hatred of the well-to-do. The name of Dennis Deventer set his eyes ablaze, and the idea of his family sitting down to a comfortable meal in spite of their isolation from markets was to him gall and wormwood. He would hardly believe the tale of the National Guards that they had seen me come down the steps of the Château already blindfolded and under escort, and that I had so continued till I was pushed out of the main entrance of the works by Jack Jaikes. How many guns had I seen? The little man shot out the question at me. "Only those on the roof," I answered readily, "those which had been used in January. They were hooded and protected from rain by waterproof jackets." "How did you know that?" "Because I went up there to take the air after dinner, and I leaned my back against one while I smoked." "Was it a big gun? Three--four-pounder?" I could not say exactly, but I should think four. I knew nothing about any defensive works within the square of the factory. I had traversed all that part blindfold. The fierce little man grunted disbelievingly, but desisted when it was obvious that he could make nothing more of me. "Let Dennis Deventer take care," he snarled, "he speaks smooth words now. Oh, the great things he will do for the workmen, but not for all his promises does he stop that Jacques Jaikes from fortifying and placing guns. Oh, I know more than you or Keller Bey are aware of. I do not go about with my eyes blindfolded. What is the use of a tower of Saint Crispin if a shoemaker may not climb it and spy out the works of his enemy?" "That will do, Raoux," said Keller Bey, somewhat impatiently. "I shall send for you again when I need you." He went out slowly, with a lingering, backward look, full of spite and malice, his words and face distilling hatred like the poison-fangs of a viper. I heard him mutter as he passed: "You will send for me when you want me--take care I do not come when you want me least!" It was indeed time to get away--the Commune of Aramon stood on the verge of a volcano which might blow us into the air any day. Yet, how could I leave Keller Bey to his fate, and, if I did, how could I face Linn and Alida? * * * * * The days passed heavily in Aramon, yet with a kind of feverish excitement too--an undercurrent of danger which thrills a swimmer cutting his way through smooth upper waters when he feels the swirl of the undertow. The Commune of Aramon met daily for discussion, and reports of its meetings are still to be found in the little red-covered, tri-weekly sheet, _Le Flambeau du Midi_, of which I possess a set. They appear to have discussed the most anodyne matters. They gabbled of drainage and water supplies, the suspension of rents and pawnbrokers' pledges for six months. They came to sharp words, almost to blows--"Moderates" and "Mountain," as in the old days of 1793--while outside the companies of the Avengers of Marat, the dark young men of the wolf-like prowl, kept their watch and took their sullen counsel. Provisions showed no visible stoppage. The country about Aramon was an early one--the great market for _primeurs_ being Château Renard, only ten miles away. Thither Père Félix, learned in the arts of restaurant supply, sent a little permanent guard to direct the provisioning of Aramon city. I think the only man outside Château Schneider who saw what was coming upon the new Government was my Hugolâtre of a station-master up at the junction. I went to see him every day and he never ceased to urge me to clear out of the town lest worse should befall me. "They are arming," he said one day in early April, "they are coming nearer. Put your eye to that telescope--no, don't alter it--tell me what you see. A signal post on the railway--semaphore you call it! Yes, but did you ever see such a semaphore on a railway? With us the stiff arm drops and all is clear. It rises half-way--'_go slowly!_' It stands at right angles to the post--'_stop_--_the way is barred!_' But what do you see yonder? The stiff arms are moving this way and that. You who can Morse out a message on the telegraph apparatus, why cannot you read something infinitely more simple? That is on the other side of the river and tells me that the Government engineers are creeping nearer. There is no railway line where the semaphore is. They are signalling to their comrades on this side. The storm is gathering--be very sure. For the present there is no great hurry. Little Dictator Thiers has many irons in the fire. He has no time to read Hugo like me, nor has he time to give much thought to Aramon. But yonder are those who are preparing a path for his feet, and for the feet of his little Breton Moblots when the time comes." It appeared to me that I ought to look into this myself, but in a way that would not compromise my friend the station-master. So I made my way boldly up into St. Crispin's tower and turned the long spyglass, old as the first Napoleon, upon the semaphore ridge. It was wagging away cheerfully, spelling out messages which I could not understand. I went at once to Keller Bey. "The Government of Versailles is not so far off as you think," I said, "they are watching you from the other side of the river, and I believe talking across the water to the commanders of troops on this side." And with that I told him of the semaphore and of what I had seen from the tower of St. Crispin. He sent instantly for someone who could read semaphore messages, and within half an hour a deserter from the engineers quartered at Avignon was brought to him--a small, brown, snippet of a man whom I christened at sight "the runt," but whose real name was Pichon--one of a clan mighty in all the southland of Languedoc. Keller Bey came with us to witness the trial, and we had not reached the summit when we heard behind us the wheezing, asthmatic breathing of the Procureur Raoux sorely tried by the hasty ascent. "Why, why, why?" he gasped, poking his head through the door--"who gave you the liberty? Ah, Keller Bey--I beg your pardon. I was not aware of your presence." "This young man has brought us important information," said Keller Bey. "He has discovered a semaphore signal newly erected on a spur among the olive trees. The enemy have a post there, and are busily sending messages to corresponding bodies making an advance southward upon this side." By this time I had the glass into position, and was moving gingerly out of the way to let in the ex-engineer of Avignon, when the little cobbler fairly rushed at the vacant seat, catching a foot on one of the legs of the tripod and, of course, entirely losing the semaphore on the opposite bank of the Rhône. "I can see nothing--there is nothing to see!" he cried, gesticulating fiercely with fingers like claws, "it is the lies of the English. I know them. They have always lied to us. Dennis Deventer lies. There is no message--no semaphore. There is no regiment nearer than Lyons or Marseilles, and there I warrant Gaston Cremieux, Procureur-Général like myself, is giving them as much as they can think about." With extreme difficulty Keller persuaded the acrid little man to allow me to try. "I will send him to the Central Prison if he has been bringing us false news--and of course he has. What a blessing! I have a committal form with me." I did not shrink from the test, and while Keller Bey maintained the cobbler-magistrate in some degree of quiet on the other side of the platform, the expert deserter quickly got his eye on the signalling apparatus. "I have it," he cried, his brow glued to the eyepiece and his hand signalling for stillness. "Oh, do be quiet!" Raoux's dancing feet were shaking the crazy platform. "The devil is in the fellow's legs," said Keller Bey. "Will you be quiet, Raoux, or shall I drop you over to the glory of your patron saint?" He held him for a moment asprawl over the edge with a drop of two hundred feet clear upon the packed causeway stones. Something of helplessness in the grip of Keller Bey for a moment took the madness out of Raoux. He kept fairly still when Keller placed him again on the floor of the platform, and with a pair of huge hands, one on each shoulder, held him in place. Without taking his eyes from the spyglass the engineer searched and found a dirty note-book to which was attached by a string a stump of pencil. Presently he began to spell out a message from one side of the river to the other. I could see his fingers shaking with excitement as he jotted down the letters. "Why," he exclaimed at the first pause, "it's our fellows from Avignon, and they are not even troubling to code the message--shows what they think of us." "Tell us what they say," said Keller Bey. "One moment--they are beginning again," and the pencil stub began to travel. "_Gun platform can be laid out on spur mountain, 250 feet above present shelter trenches. Will command bridge-head of Aramon--possibly also rebel headquarters._" I saw Keller Bey turn pale to the lips. He understood well enough. He had campaigned against those same invisible, tireless French engineers for many desperate African years, and he knew that in the long run they always made out to do the task set for them. But Raoux the cobbler-procureur was quite unmoved. "They are playing with levels and angle-machines as they used to do when I was at Avignon. They went out every day clean and came back dirty. The colonel could find nothing better for them to do. To-morrow we shall send half a column of ours and shoot a few. Then the rest will keep further up the river where they belong." "As you will," said Keller Bey, "but you had better send a battalion at least with provisions for three days." "Provisions for three days--absurd nonsense!" foamed the little man, for this was touching his tenderest spot, "our citizen soldiers are the National Guard of Aramon, and will not consent to sleep away from their houses, not for all the wig-wagging engineers and railway signalling in France! We are not slaves but freemen. No, no, a day's excursion to brush away these impudent land surveyors with a volley from our patriotic rifles--and then back again before dark with victory on our untarnished banners--that is what you can expect from the lion hearts of our young men. We defend the Commune. We do not make war outside it. And why should we when the chief strength of the enemy remains unassaulted and untaken within our walls?" Keller Bey called off the ex-engineer. With such a war method as that which was evidently popular in Aramon, it was no use wasting time reading semaphore messages. The Chief and I returned very mournfully to the Mairie. I could see that his reflections were bitter. "They do not understand the Commune or what it means--they do not know the spirit of the Internationale here. They care nothing except for their little municipal quarrels. They cherish wild, vague hopes about the works, and would attack the man upon whose charity they are living. But of the fact that France will one day speak to them with a voice of authority--nay, is now speaking in warning--to that they will pay no heed. At the Commune meeting to-day a whole day was wasted arguing for or against an extra duty on potatoes when brought across the bridge from the Protestant department of the Deux Rives. Protestant potatoes, Catholic and Roman potatoes! What irony, when the dusky signal-men are crawling from hill to hill ever nearer, and any day may bring our doom upon us!" I let it sink well in, for I could see that Keller Bey was at last conscious of the mistake he had made. "You must go," he said, "I cannot fairly keep you longer. Go to your friends and advise the good women of them to accept a safe conduct across the river. I have still enough authority for that, if I promise an ultimatum and an assault on the works to follow. It would make me happy to think of these kind folk who welcomed Alida and Linn so warmly, safely lodged under your father's roof as in a city of refuge." He paused and looked pensively out on the uniformed groups of National Guard lounging and smoking in the white courtyard of Fontveille stone. "As for me," he said, "there is no room for any going back. The Government would accept no resignation or belated repentance. I have dreamed my dream. I thought (as thought Carl Marx) that these working men were ready for an ideal reform, for government over themselves. I saw other cities joining themselves to us, the good seed sown over the country from department to department, till all should work for all and no man only for himself. Now I see that the nature of man cannot be changed by a theory or a form of government. Go, young man, to your friends. I, Keller Bey, bid you! Be kind to Linn and to Alida, my master's daughter. Perhaps all this has come because I disobeyed him for the first time when he sent the prince of the house of Ali to bring home his daughter. I may be justly punished, yet, nevertheless, the will of Alida is nearer to my heart than that of the Emir Abd-el-Kader in his house at Brousse!" CHAPTER XXIX WITHIN THE PALE It was indeed high time that I went away from the perils of Aramon-les-Ateliers. Indeed, Keller Bey was in greater danger and condemned to greater isolation owing to my stay. At first he had counted it a happiness to talk with me of things outside his unfortunate office as head of the Commune. But even Père Félix and the more dependable of the little band of members of the Government, faithful to their head, showed something like the cold shoulder when Keller withdrew regularly to find me in his parlour as soon as the séance was over. I waited most of a dark and moonless night for the coming of Jack Jaikes to the corner of the wall. At the first sound of my voice he threw over a rope to help me to scramble up. He himself was astride the top when I got there and we were inside the fortifications within thirty seconds. And lo! how easy it all was--and what a difference! I seemed a thousand miles away from everyone on the town side, and now only a few rods divided me from the house of friends--from the sudden breaking ires of Dennis Deventer and the quiet smiles of his wife, a mistress within her own domain. Yes, and from Rhoda Polly--though I have left her to the last, I had not forgotten Rhoda Polly. "Well," said Jack Jaikes, "ye've come at last, as ye had much better have done at the first, biding there among anarchists' trash and breakers of God's beautiful machinery. God knows I am as good a Liberal as ever voted for what Maister Gladstone said was right--yes, me and my faither before me. But before I would mix mysel' up with such a lazy, unclean, unsatisfied, cankered crew--sakes alive, I wad raither turn Tory at yince and lose my self-respect!" This was a terrible threat for Jack Jaikes, who had brought away from Scotland no particular religion, except (as was common in these years) that unbounded adoration of Mr. Gladstone, which culminated in 1880. For that night Jack Jaikes made me a shake-down among his own gang, and urged me to get the Chief to let me serve there. "Man, I could be doing wi' ye fine," he said, "even though ye do not ken one end of a gun from anither till she goes off! But there's a headpiece on ye and they tell me that ye are fair bursting with the mathematics!" I told him I was better at classics, and he was, I think, more desirous of my company than ever. "My brither passed for the kirk and was something of a dab at the Greek. You learned yours here in France--will that be the same sort? It will? That's grand. Ye can gie me a bit help, then? I have some o' his auld college buiks in my box. I hae put in heaps o' spadewark at readin' them, but it is a dreary business by yersel'! For ane foot that ye gang forward, ye slip back twa, as the Irishman said aboot the road covered with ice!" Above my head great steel armatures rose high in the air. The flitting lanterns brought out now the brass knobs of a governor, now the dim glistening bulk of a huge fly-wheel away up near the roof of the shed which Jack Jaikes and his men used as a dormitory. There was one fixed light which shone upon the instrument attached to a little field telegraph. Jack Jaikes had given up his idea of a wholesale electrocution of an attacking force--that is, Dennis Deventer had compelled him to give it up. But he had perfected a kind of burglar alarm applied to a wider area, which completely encircled the works and (separately) protected the Château and its grounds. If anyone interfered with his wires at any point, Jack Jaikes could instantly warn the nearest post to the disturbance, and the men would swarm out like wasps. The plan had its little inconveniences. Cats in particular loved and were loved upon the great factory wall. But Jack Jaikes devised means, by "stinging them up a bit" electrically, to make them "leave that," as he expressed it. Rooks also came to perch and left with a whoop of terror, or clung desperately head down with paralysed claws firmly knotted till the men plucked them off and threw them into a corner to recover. But the first company of the Avengers, tentatively scrambling about the north-west corner to see what sort of watch the English kept, were promptly checked by a dozen bayonets thrust down from above, and having received information, they departed without standing on ceremony. Let it not be thought that I slept much in the power-house. It was altogether too picturesque and vivid for me. My heart beat with a rousing and incommunicable joy. I was again among my own kind. I had done my best to sympathise with those others over the wall. I had tried to help and understand Keller Bey, but though I might wear the red cardigan, follow Garibaldi, run up the "tatter of scarlet" under Keller Bey's orders, my heart beat with the after-guard. My instincts were "yellow"--the rest was but the rash of the blood which came with youth and would pass like a malady of childhood. Small wonder I did not sleep. Into that entrancing and mysterious hangar, hooded and cloaked men stole from nowhere in particular. Each gave a kick or a shake in passing to other men, who, silently rising, cloaked themselves, seized arms, adjusted belts, and so wordlessly clanked away into the dark. Then the new-comers would go over to the embers of the fire on the forge in the corner, where the red glow would reveal him as a pleasant-faced English lad, munching ardently his bread and sausage, or heating his coffee on the coals. In the gloom of the dormitory shake-downs men would talk rapidly, muttering in their sleep. If a man snored too vigorously, Jack Jaikes, or a lieutenant of that considerable sub-chief, would turn him over on his side, or, in extreme case, send him to the boiler-room, where the men had room to snore one against the other. These Jack Jaikes, always reminiscent of Glasgow, called the "Partick Social Warblers," in memory of a certain church glee-club soirée, to enter which he had once paid a "silver collection" in the unfulfilled expectation of "tea and a bag." But that night as I lay I kept awake for the pure joy of knowing myself alive. I loved the breathing of the men about me, the ordered mystery of the comings and goings, the clicking of the telegraphic machine as Jack Jaikes bent over it, even the little circle of golden light which the lamp shed, and the bristly way his moustache had of standing out beyond the wicks of his grimly humorous mouth. I wondered if he ever slept. Certainly he lay down. He had a blanket with which he covered himself, head and all. It was not much of a blanket, being pierced in the centre so that it could be worn with the head thrust through, poncho-wise, as he stalked about. It was full of burnt holes, showing where he had thrown himself down on cinders, some of which had proved too recent. About four there came a shrill _tirr-r-r-r_ of the small call-bell and every sleeper was instantly on his feet. How Jack Jaikes got to the ticker I do not know, but long before the men had their belts snapped, he was reading off to them the location of the alarm. "Between posts 48 and 49, Norwell and Omand warned. Ready there, file out!" The dark figures passed one by one out of the faint copper glow of the forge, stood each a moment against the blue-black mystery of the night framed in the doorway, and were then lost in the obscurity. I thought of following, but first of all I was afraid of Jack Jaikes, who had made no sign to me, and secondly and chiefly, in a yard and among defences so sown with dangers and (for all I knew) corded with live wires, I might easily do myself much harm, and the general welfare of the cause little good. So, sorely against the grain, I stayed where I was. Presently the men came laughingly back, their humour quite vanished. Two of the town goats--for Aramon was near enough to the mountains and to Spain to possess many of these--had chosen to contest the narrow way to the factory wall, from a pure point of honour as gentlemen should, for there was no lady in the case. They had died fighting, and a bayonet's point had been requisitioned to dislodge them both. They were now brought in and handed over to the cook for preparation. Both had been hard fighters in their time, and looked as if they would furnish what Caroline in "The Heir at Law" calls "not an inviting meal." Everybody was now fully waked up, and no one thought any more of sleep. The night was still of the indigo dark peculiar to the South, and outside, I could see the stars sinking one by one. The glow on the forge-hearth was set blazing, tea billies were soon boiling, and there was a fragrant smell of coffee in the air. The clean, appetising hiss of frying bacon struck a joyous note. Someone set a big globe of electric light flaring, when, _whisk-whisk_, a quartette of bullets tore through the shed and knocked it to flinders. Then in like an avenging genie entered Jack Jaikes. "If I kenned wha that idiot was that set yon infernal thing blazing, I would knock the amazing friskiness out o' him. Have I not telled ye a score o' times that ye are no to make exhibitions o' yerselves? Exhibitions, did I say, waur nor that, juist blank eediot targets that the Frenchmen haena sense enough to hit!" He made a silence about him, for all knew that his angers were black and that he would stick at nothing, but, if provoked, strike with what came nearest to his hand. But the mood passed, the globe and carbons were renewed, and by the end of their early breakfast his good-humour also was quite restored. The men moved easily again without casting furtive eyes to see how the black dog was riding Jack Jaikes. They knew him for an incomparable fighting leader, an engineer without rival in the camp, but there was no doubt that he needed humouring when, as he would have said himself, "his birse was up." It had been remarked, even before he left the Clyde, that he was "far ower handy wi' a spanner," and that might have been the reason why he had tried Bristol and the Tyne before finding his master in Dennis Deventer of the Arms Factory of Aramon. I broke in upon the Deventers at breakfast--a meal which in defiance of all local custom they took together as they had been used to do far away in Barrow under the Cumberland fells. Or rather it was Jack Jaikes himself who did the breaking. He could not deny himself that. We heard the noise and clatter as we mounted the stairs. "A fight," chuckled Jack Jaikes, half to himself, "but two to one on Rhoda Polly, anyway." But he had his little effect to make. He flung the door open, grounded his rifle with a ringing clash, and announced in a stentorian voice: "A deserter!" The clamour ceased instantly. Every face was turned towards the door, Dennis Deventer half rose, his napkin in his hand. I could see the pale, clear-cut features of Rhoda Polly, her red lips parted, peering over her father's shoulder. Dennis Deventer received me with a friendly push that sent me in the direction of Hugh, who "cleared" like a goal-keeper, and I fell into a chair beside Rhoda Polly. "Come in, Jack Jaikes--what will you take? Try those kidneys--they are rather good. No, no, your chaps can't want you so soon. You are not hatching them out there, you know!" These and other cries at last persuaded Jack Jaikes to do what he was yearning to do--sit down and eat a second breakfast with his master's family. His grin was at once triumphant and sardonic, yet he left me to answer for myself. His pleasure was not to talk much at these festivals of his soul. I think he was fearful of what he called "langwage"--such as he used occasionally in the works--escaping his control. At any rate he was a happy listener, and the few words he uttered were always destined to foment a discussion, acerbate a verbal quarrel, so that he could lay mental bets upon his admired Rhoda Polly. When she made a good hit, he felt inclined (as he confessed) to rise up and yell, "like a gallery student on an opera night"--a set of savages whom he had known during the college days of his brother, now a creditable and responsible "placed" minister in Scotland. When I announced that I had come to stay Rhoda Polly nearly trod my foot off under the table, a vulgar disgrace to our comradeship for which she apologised afterwards. "I had to do it," she said, "or I should have been blubbering on your shoulder with my arms about your neck! How would you have liked that, Angus my lad?" I answered, that before company I should have liked it ill enough, but proffered my shoulder for the purpose since we were in private. Rhoda Polly in her turn cried shame upon me. If I could not remember our compact, she would not forget it. She also reminded me of saying of my own accord that she and I had put away childish things. In vain I represented to her that I had just returned from great danger and that if she had been so overwhelmed with joy at breakfast as to make pemmican of my foot, she must have still some remaining for which a suitable expression might be found without looking out the word in the dictionary. But Rhoda Polly would have none of my suggestions. She was glad she had shown her feelings, however irregularly, but now if I pleased we would resume our good old talks together, at least when the incidents of the siege permitted. Her father did not allow her to run round the yard or about the posts with the men, as she had been wont to do during the first January difficulties. "Oh, it isn't that," she said, answering a question in my eyes which was also an accusation; "of course some of them think I'm nice and all that. But it isn't that! I'm not Liz! Only father says that there are snipers on the towers--the cathedral, St. Servan's, St. Marthe's, and St. Crispin's--and he doesn't want any accidents happening to his eldest daughter. But I am sure the boys miss me. I know Jack Jaikes does. He told me so when he came in to arrange mother's sewing machine, which I 'wrongulated' on purpose to hear the news." Later I retold Dennis Deventer the story of the coming trouble in Aramon and the despair of Keller Bey. He listened without surprise, his deep-set Irish eyes almost hidden under his twitching, bushy brows. "There's a man that is obleeged to me, Angus me lad. He runs a copper ore boat from Huelva--that's in Spain--to Marseilles. If we could get the owld Keller man down there, I know a boatman in the Joliette who would give him shelter till the steamer lifts her anchor. There is no need for him to be desperate about any such thing. The world is wide and Governments in this country are made of cardboard and bad paste. He will be amnestied in a year or two. Can the man not be reasonable?" I told him that the difficulty lay there. Keller Bey considered himself bound to those who had helped him to set up the Commune in Aramon. He would make no separate peace for himself. "Separate fiddlesticks!" shouted Dennis Deventer. "Does he mean such comfortable old soup-bags as Père Félix, or wine-skins like Pipe-en-Bois, or alcohol gutters like the Marshal Soult? Let him set his mind at rest. They are safe. No Government while I live shall harm a hair of their heads. They will never stand behind a barricade--never fire a shot; if they will be careful not to fall downstairs after celebration suppers to the memory of Danton and Marat and the men of '48, they will all die in their beds and have their memories honoured in turn by the suppers of another and redder generation!" There was truth in what Dennis said. These were not the men who would die fighting when the day of reckoning came. The young sullen wolf's breed of the sidelong glances and the whispered counsels--these were those who would line the last ditches of the defence of Aramon. But, then, Keller Bey felt that he was responsible also for them. He was their chief and normal leader. He had the secrets of the Internationale and he had made proselytes, even among the young people. Could he leave them and flee? I knew very well Keller Bey's line of argument, and I put it to Dennis. He clapped his knee testily. "Oh, for a good Scots or Ulster head on a man--even English would do because of the fine, solid underpinning and bodygear the Lord God puts into his southern-built vessels. But when a man gets this megrim of honour in his brain, there is no saying beforehand what he will or will not do--except that it will surely be eediocy." "It's a pity, too," he added, after thought, "a man that can be talking the Arab or the Turkish with men like your father (God bless him) and old Professor Renard." I suggested that there was one factor we were overlooking--that it was more than likely that before long the Conservative Commune of Aramon would be displaced and with it would disappear the rule of Keller. No, I did not think they would kill him. They would probably expel the ex-Dictator and let him go where he would. Then would be the time to secure him, and send him to the captain of the Huelva cargo-boat. Dennis patted me on the head. "We cannot be sure of doing much," he said, "but we can always have a try. We shall probably be desperately busy ourselves if the wild rakes take the lead over the wall yonder. They will come at us, not this time in undisciplined rush, but with method and well armed--thanks to the folly of the National Assembly." Still, Dennis Deventer had a card up his sleeve. "You must wait with us and see the rubber played out." CHAPTER XXX DEVILS' TALK The black day which was coming upon Aramon was not long in dawning. Barrès and Imbert were the leaders of the anarchist party, which had always secretly opposed the Marxian communism of Keller Bey and his adherents. These were the men of the opposition, dark-browed cub-engineers and piece-workers, not high in their professions--being far too careless and off-hand for regular work, but with a dashing strain in them, and a way of putting the matter which imposed upon the younger men. Were they hungry? There was food in the shops. Was their miserable fifteen pence a day insufficient? Yonder were the villas of the traders who had sucked and grown rich on the money they had earned, inadequate as it was. Had any man a wrong? The Government had put arms in his hands--let him go and right it!--It may be imagined what was the outcome of this kind of talk. So long as Keller Bey kept his hold there was no night plundering, and several men caught playing at "individual expropriation" were first threatened with the provost marshal and then with a firing party. Instead they were sent to the care of Calvi in the prison of Monsieur le Duc because the heart of Keller was tender. This gloomy, four-square hulk of a mediæval keep had been built in the thirteenth century by the Duke of Burgundy, to awe the riotous Frankish burghers of Aramon le Vieux, and stands still, machicolated and fossed, much as he left it. It was difficult now to think of the Aramon with its strong guild of hammer men, its coppersmiths swarming from their clattering toil, its tanners and booth-men pouring out of these same _ruelles_ and squares, now grey with mistral or dreamy in the white sunshine. To-day not a cat would jump for a dozen Dukes of Burgundy, but seven hundred years ago Aramon le Vieux had a fierce _élan_ of its own and knew how to singe the beard of an oppressor, especially if he were at some considerable distance. After the building of the great feudal keep on the opposite bank, we hear little more of the turbulent traders, and the likelihood is that they paid their dues and gave no trouble ever afterwards, especially after the Duke constructed a bridge of boats which opened at both sides to allow of traffic. Now, however, the lofty walls of the fortress of Monsieur le Duc became the rallying place of revolt. Every evening in front of the grand entrance, or upon the _fossé_ bridge, Georges Barrès preached the doctrine of plunder and petroleum. There were in Aramon a certain number of "haves"--let those who heard him see to it that there were ten times that number of "takes"! For what were their brethren shut up there (he pointed to the Loches-like cliff of masonry above him, nearly twice the height of Rochester Castle), and answered, "For retaking their own--for redressing the wrongs of the poor!" "For plain theft--they stole hens!" proclaimed a voice in the crowd. "Down with the spy--kill the royalist--dismember the traitor!" howled the mob. And to show their honesty they fell upon a good citizen of Aramon, a respectable apothecary, come there almost at random. He had been discreetly silent. It was not he who had made the outcry, but wore he not a black frock-coat and looked he not sleek and well fed? If he were not a spy, what was he doing there? So they threw him in the Rhône. He was fished out half a mile below, where for a long distance the workshop wall skirts the river. Jack Jaikes did the job with grumbling thoroughness and the man of drugs was brought to with a science and celerity unknown in his own pharmacy. Having thus asserted its power, the crowd turned with self-approval to listen to its favourite orator. "Here in Aramon we have a Government, and over it presides a Great Shadow which has been sent us from the Internationale. What did ever the Internationale do for us? Did it stop this war? Did it force back the Germans? You tell me that we owe to this shadow the thirty sous a day on which we starve. What of that? It is a bribe to keep us from taking all they possess. Every day in that Château yonder the silver gleams on the white table-cloth, the red wine mantles in the glass, the champagne foams, and--my great God! you can hear them laughing--from the miserable lairs where your children are clamouring for bread, and your wives are weeping because there is none to give them!" Now the soul of such crowds is most strange. In all that listening assembly there was no single man who did not know that every word was false. There was a special grant for families, and if any worker's children had not enough bread, it was because the patriot himself had spent the money on absinthe! Every worker knew this. Yet tears started to their eyes, and a deep-throated roar of anger went out against the Government which had arranged such a monstrous iniquity. "Yonder lie the workshops--the place where money is spun--money such as you have no idea of--millions a week--all the fruit of your toil. Do not break the machinery. We will set it spinning money on our own account--but first we must be quit of Dennis Deventer and his foreign gang. Keller Bey will tell you that they are workers like yourselves--citizens, of equal rights before the Internationale. Why then did they collect together yonder, these brave citizens, these honest workers, these noble revolutionaries? Why are they not walking about these streets and taking their turn at mounting guard? I will tell you. Because they are the guardians of the treasures of the masters--they are keeping locked in Dennis Deventer's safes the millions which have been wrung from you in cruelty and blood and tears!" Such a roar as went up from that black assembly in which the white caps of women were dotted and the massed blue knots of the National Guard could be seen! It reached the council, drearily debating in the town house, and there was a general desire to adjourn. The air was electric with coming trouble. These duly elected members of the Commune felt themselves caught between two great unknown forces--the Government of Versailles, which was represented by the pushing surveyors of the engineers' corps, the first skirmishers of an army which was certain to come upon them from the north, and this uprising of the idlers and workspoilers of their own kind. Personally their Socialism was not deep-rooted. They had the national respect for small property-holders, and even if they possessed none themselves, Oncle Jean Marie or Tante Frizade were _propriétaires_ in their own right. When these heritages fell in none of their loving nephews and nieces would fight harder for their share than the red-begirt members of the Commune of Aramon. Only men like Keller Bey and Gaston Cremieux lived in a world beyond such things--and on the other hand were those who, like Barrès and Imbert, had nothing to gain or to lose however fortune's wheel might turn. Père Félix pushed his way into the dense masses about the entrance of the prison keep. He was sure of himself, but very indignant at those of the Commune who had allowed him to come alone. Of course it was not fitting that Keller Bey should expose his person, but if the twenty of Aramon had marched together in a body, each with his crimson scarf of office girding him, they might have dominated the mob and silenced the hair-brained Barrès. Still, all the more honour to himself, when he should go back to twit them with their fears and tell them the story of his triumph! "We don't want to hear Père Félix! Down with the traitor! Trample him, spit upon him!" He could not believe his ears. For then began a din such as he had never heard. The young men on the outskirts had seized the instruments of the band of the National Guard and were now blowing, bellowing, and clanging upon them. He stood beside Barrès, who looked at him contemptuously, tossing the light fall of hair off his brow with a regular movement, as a challenged bull tosses his horns. "Comrades and citizens, in the name of the Commune of Aramon, elected by you, I address you----" Brazen horns brayed, tin trays and kettles were beaten, the big drum thundered just underneath. Words issued from the mouth of Père Félix. They must have done so, for his lips were moving, but not even himself heard a word, and the sardonic smile on the face of the Catalan Barrès became a grin. The old orator, who had swayed all meetings of the plebs in Aramon ever since '48, threw up his hands in hopeless misery. "They will not hear me," he cried, so that this time the words reached the ear of Barrès. "Why will they not hear me?" Now Barrès was by this time content with his triumph, and he put his hand to the old man's ear and shouted, "Because your day is past--you are down, you and all your gang. You silenced me at the Riding School meeting three months ago, but then you had Gaston Cremieux to help you. You had better go home. I shall see to it that you do go home, and let not Aramon see your face again. Keep on the farther side of the Durance and no man shall meddle with you. But from this day forth take notice that Aramon means to do without you!" He beckoned a few determined-looking fellows from the crowd, each armed with a rifle and cartridge-belt. A few instructions, a determined push through the crowd which divided to right and left, shouting hateful words all the time he was passing, and Père Félix found himself thrust ignominiously out of the northern gate of Aramon. His captors had treated him with a certain hasty roughness, but had up till now refrained from insult. Now they tore the red scarf of office from about his body and trampled it in the dust. The rule of the Twenty was over in Aramon. Slowly and mournfully Père Félix took the way under the beautiful trees of the water road toward the Durance. He did not see where he was going. His foot caught more than once in twisted roots from which the soil had been washed away by the winter floods. Under the willows and among the glimmering poplars shedding blue and gold, he drew nearer the broken pier and the little height of sandy dune from which he could see the blue reek curl upward from the kitchen chimney of the restaurant of the Sambre-et-Meuse. When he saw it his heart gave a sudden throb, as if he had recognised suddenly the face of a friend unseen and neglected for years. "This is mine," he muttered, "and what have I been caring for? The popular applause! Mariana told me they would turn upon me and kick me at the last. Then perhaps I would remember that I had a home. They trampled my red sash in the dust. It was they who gave it to me--it was their own authority vested in me. They ought to have remembered!" There were tears in the eyes of Père Félix. The tribune of the people could not all at once bring himself to accept a final defeat. But as he looked a different feeling gathered warm about his heart. Yonder was Jeanne bringing back a boat-load of firewood gathered from the flood mark. How tall she was, and how beautiful! He had not noticed these things before. How nobly and regularly she stood in the stern and poled the boat with the current--a splash or two and she was safe within the little backwater. Beyond was Mariana, busy with her fowls, scattering feed for them with the shrill _chook_--_chook-chookychooks_ used on such occasions by the hen-wives of all nations. Père Félix could see the birds running stumblingly with wings outspread to the feast. Mariana turned, glanced across the water, put on her spectacles, and called aloud to Jeanne without any surprise. "There is your father, Jeanne--go, fetch him home!" And suddenly, as his daughter leaped lightly out of the boat and kissed him on both cheeks, the colour flushing to her face and her bosom heaving, Père Félix felt himself no more ashamed and outcasted. "Father," said Jeanne, "I have found such a nest of logs--fine burning wood. You are just in time to cut it into faggots for me. Then I can go and bring away the rest while you are at work." "Félix, you are just in time for dinner," his wife cried out at sight of him. "There is roast lamb and green peas from Les Cabannes. You old gourmand, I'll wager you knew and came home on purpose!" No, Père Félix had not known, but he certainly did come on purpose and on purpose he meant to stay. CHAPTER XXXI THE BLACK BAND The first Commune of Aramon had fallen. Its place was taken by a Committee of Public Safety sitting at the Riding School. Of these the chiefs were Georges Barrès, the Catalan, who called himself "of Perpignan"; Chanot, the cadet of a good house, just released from a term of imprisonment (which he described as being for political offences); Auroy, the proprietor of an hotel by no means of the highest class, and Chardon, whose knowledge of the world extended as far as New Caledonia. They were a crew of desperadoes who had been employed chiefly in labourers' work at the factories. They knew no handicraft--at least none sufficiently well to pass the eye of such foremen as worked for Dennis Deventer. And, in addition, they were lazy in working hours, given to obscene conversation and to drinking pure alcohol out of pocket flasks. So it may be well believed that they were not popular with the oversmen at the works, and when they fell under Jack Jaikes' rebuke he was apt to chastise them with whips of scorpions. At the same time, desperate and careless though they were, and backed by the majority of the unthinking younger men of the National Guard, they had some qualms as to disturbing Keller Bey in his fastness of the Mairie. He had still a number of faithful defenders, and like an old lion of the Atlas he would certainly sell his life dearly. So Barrès and the Committee of Public Safety laid aside his case for the moment. They had other matters which pressed. Their "rapine and pillage" adherents desired to begin work. On the outskirts were many villas and houses of summer resort which promised loot. Barrès had preached so much, that (though with no great good-will) he was now driven to a little practice. Yet he knew instinctively that in France offences against property are far longer remembered and far more severely dealt with than crimes against persons--shooting and assassination not excluded. Still, he had to satisfy his followers, and in the bosom of the committee there were already experts--the ex-political prisoner Chanot and the traveller to the coasts of Cayenne were not at their first essay in "personal expropriation." It was clearly unsafe to cross the river. The town of Aramon le Vieux was a hornets' nest, all Gambetta republicans and royalists. The department, too, had a fine National Guard, mostly Protestants or commanded by Protestants, and the Moblots or Mobiles of the department of Deux Rives were drilling every day. What plundering was to be done must be on this side of the bridge, but there was abundance and to spare for all, if the business were rightly managed. The first step was to disarm the doubtful companies, and re-enlist only those who were of proper anarchist hue and ready for "expropriation." This was done in the Riding School where the Committee sat all day devising mischief and laying out evil as on a map. On the night of the 6th of April they were ready. The villas and country houses left vacant by the officers of the troops formerly quartered in Aramon had remained unoccupied, and, as the soldiers went right off to the seat of war from Aramon Junction, the furniture and personal belongings were equally untouched. The wives and children had been dispatched to the care of parents paternal and maternal in Limousin castles and Norman apple-orchards. Only an ancient caretaker or two remained, hiding in some niche of the ground floor and cautiously venturing out to make a hasty and furtive "market" in the grey of the morning. For the adepts of "individual redistribution" these served to whet an appetite. By midnight Jack Jaikes called me up on the roof of the Château. All along the river front houses were already flaming. Some, as I looked, climaxed their particular display by the crashing down of roofs and the falling in of floor after floor, followed by bursts of flame many hundreds of feet high, which lit up the dim river and the white houses of Aramon le Vieux. I could see the ancient battlements of the Lycée St. André serrated against a velvet-black sky--nay, I could make out that very forehead of promenade from which we had watched, that day in January, the tricolour give place to the Tatter of Scarlet. The rabble were giving tongue down there like packs of wolves, and at the sound Jack Jaikes stamped and cursed as men swear only in Clydeside ship-building yards. "Whist now, Jackie," said the voice of Dennis Deventer at my elbow, "what's the use of using all the Lord's fine big words that are meant to embellish Scripture on the like of them? Is it not tempting Providence to be cursing fools who are sprinting hot-foot to damnation by themselves?" "Wait--oh, wait," growled Jack Jaikes, jerking his joints till they creaked in a way he had when he was excited; "I shall make them sing to a different tune. Listen to them baying. Chief" (he turned suddenly to Dennis) "could I not just lob over half a dozen shrapnel among these cattle? They seem to be having it all their own way. Let me remind them that there's a God left in the universe." "You've got your business to attend to, young man. Be good enough to leave your Maker's alone. He can manage His own affairs, Jack Jaikes, and has been doing so for quite a while." Yet I understood the haste of the senior lieutenant and gangforeman. Apart from the uncompromising temperament of the Strathclyde man, it was difficult even for me to stand idle and listen to the shrieks of demoniac mirth as each new villa was attacked. In the silence of the night we could hear the crash of doors beaten in, the splintering of wood and the jangle of glass. Then came the dull rumble of many feet beating irregularly on wooden floors, the rush upstairs, the windows flung open, their green outer _volets_ clattering against the walls, to let in the clear shining of a moon which had been full only the night before. "What could not a score of us be doing with plenty of ammunition and our Deventer rifles?" I whispered to Jack Jaikes. He hardly looked at me. He was in the mood for anything except disobedience. He merely heaved a protesting sigh in the direction of his Chief, a sigh which was eloquent of all that he could do if he were not controlled by a higher power. "Will our turn never come?" I asked him, as he stood and gazed, his eyes red and as if injected in the glowing of the burning buildings. "I fear not to-night," he said, "the beasts will slink back to their lairs to deposit their loot. To-morrow night we may expect something serious for ourselves. But in any case I can't stand here hopping about like a hen on a hot plate. Let us go and see that the posts are all on the look-out." I did not go out with him, however, instead I remained with Rhoda Polly, whom I had run downstairs to find. She told me the names of the burning houses and to whom they belonged--the Villa Mireille, built recently by a great Paris grocer--Sans Souci, that of a local sausage-maker, and so forth. All these people had long left the district, and, as I said, the smaller houses had been let to the officers of the former Imperial garrison. Presently Dennis Deventer came and sat down beside us. Said Rhoda Polly, "Father, I never knew that we harboured such wretches among our men. Surely they do not come from the Works?" "No," said Dennis, settling himself with his back to the chimney pots, "I rather judge we have to thank your friend Gaston Cremieux for most of these. His experience as Gambetta's Procureur made him intimately acquainted with all bad characters in Marseilles. So when he became dictator, a few executions along the Old Port, and the posting up of a warning proclamation set the whole hive of cosmopolitan ill-doers scattering northwards. I think Aramon got the cream of them, and they are now acting after their kind, sure of an immunity which they could not hope for under the rule of Gaston Cremieux." "But Keller Bey?" said Rhoda Polly, astonishment in her accent, "why should he allow it? He is a soldier. Alida told me of his campaigns in the Atlas." "Yes, Rhoda Polly," her father answered, "but though they let Keller Bey alone in the Mairie, he has no more power in Aramon. The party of the Reprise Individuelle, that is to say of plump and plain robbery, is in full possession, and I doubt not but that before long we shall have such a siege of Château Schneider as will make us forget the other altogether. Only remember this, Miss Rhoda Polly Deventer, we about the Yard and Works do not wish your assistance or countenance on any pretext." "I do not see why," said Rhoda Polly, pouting, "I know I am at least of as much use as Hugh." "He is a man--my son!" "Well, if it is _that_ you are thinking of," snapped Rhoda Polly, "you can afford better to lose a daughter than a son. You've got three of us, Dennis, don't forget! Take my advice. Risk a daughter, and send Hugh down cellar with the Mater!" "Not one like you, little spitfire!" Her father spoke more tenderly than I had ever heard him, and before going away he let his hand lie for an instant on the vaporous curls about her brow. We kept awake most of the night, while the moon sailed overhead and the tall chimney stalks of the factories were made picturesque by the red glow from the entire riverside quarter of Aramon. The shouting and the tumult died down with the incendiary fires. The river, sometime of molten copper, was again grey, unpolished silver under the moon, save where the webbed and delicate shadow of the great suspension bridge slept on the water. At the dawning of the day mighty sleep passed upon the two of us sitting there, and there Jack Jaikes found us sitting hand in hand, my head on Rhoda Polly's shoulder, shamelessly slumbering under the risen sun. CHAPTER XXXII "READY!" The weather changed brusquely during the day of the 7th April. Till now it had been lovely spring weather--indeed, save for the shorter days, comparable to our finest summers in England. Then about noon came a thunderstorm--a sudden blackening and indigoing of the south horizon--a constant darting of lightning flashes very far off, this way and that--no thunder, only the inky storm advancing over the sea. Wild fire playing about it and a white froth of spring cloud-tufts tossing along its front. By two the flashes were raging about us, the thunder continuous and deafening, and the hailstones hopping like crickets on the roof of Château Schneider. Then it rained a great rain, every gargoyle spouting, every gap and pipe gurgling full. The wind bent double the tall poplars and lashed the lithe willows till they fished the stream. At half-past two all was past, for the moment at least. The roofs were giving off a fine, visible steam under bright sunshine. The land reeked with rising moisture, and over the water the wet roofs of Aramon le Vieux and St. André winked like heliographs. So it continued all day, the thunder passing off to this hand and the other--the mountains of Languedoc or among the dainty fringe of the dentelated Alpines behind Daudet's three windmills--which were not yet his. But it never quite left us alone. The Rhône Valley is the laid track and ready-made road for all thunderstorms. Even those from the west turn into it as from a side lane, glad of the space and the easy right of way. I rose from my proper bed just in time to see the best of the thunderstorm. Rhoda Polly had been up "ages before," as she asserted. She had lunched with the family and confided to me that there had been less row than usual, for the Chief had not been able to take the meal with them. She had, therefore, been deprived of the pleasure of crying to their father, "Hey, Dennis, hold hard there!" Or, plaintively, "Now, Dennis, you _know_ that is not true!" So they had solaced themselves by teasing Hannah, who had first threatened assault and battery and then retired in the sulks to her own room, the door of which they had heard locked and double locked. Mrs. Deventer had reproved them for their cruelty to their sister--which was grossly unfair, seeing that she had appeared to enjoy the performance itself, and even contributed a homily on Hannah's love of finery. Altogether it had been a stupid lunch, and I had done well to keep out of it. Oh, certainly, Rhoda Polly would gladly get me something to eat. Indeed, she did not mind having a pauper's plateful of scraps herself. Lunch proper was such an accidental meal that oftentimes all that reached the mouth was the bare fork! So on scraps and a glass of ale Rhoda Polly and I lunched together with great amity and content. We spoke of the coming (or at least expected) attack, and Rhoda Polly revealed to me her plans for seeing all she could and yet keeping clear of the eyes of her father. This was undutiful, but certainly not more so than shouting "You, Dennis!" at him down the whole length of an uproarious dinner-table. Jack Jaikes looked in upon us in a search for the Chief. There was no privacy of any kind in Château Schneider in those days. You simply went from room to room and from floor to floor till you ran your quarry to earth. Rhoda Polly and I were sitting with the width of the table between us, our two chins on our palms, the eyes of one never leaving those of the other, drowned in our high debate. Jack Jaikes gazed at us a moment and then, with a grin which might have meant "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," if Jack Jaikes had read any poetry, he turned on his heel and went out again without speaking. "I say," said Rhoda Polly, "he never told about catching us asleep up behind the chimney pots with the sun baking our noses brick-red----" "Holding hands too, and my head----" "Glory, I'm glad it wasn't Hugh who caught us--then we should never have heard the last of it. What sillies we must have looked. I say, Angus Cawdor, that Jack Jaikes is a very decent sort. Suppose he had brought the others up! Hanged if I could have kept from telling!" "Oh, it was not to spare me, don't you deceive yourself. It was for your sake, Rhoda Polly. He would aid and abet you in forging the Governor's name to a cheque for a dressmaker's bill." Rhoda Polly went to find her mother, after promising to lie down awhile and so be fresher for the night. Dennis Deventer had instituted four-hour watches for the same reason, and everyone not on duty was sent to turn in. But the restless Jack Jaikes refused obedience. He had a thousand things to do. Oh, yes, everything was in readiness, of course. Things always were "last gaiter button" and that sort of rubbish, but to look everything over from one end to the other of all the posts was by no means useless, and to this he, Jack Jaikes, meant to devote himself. At any rate I slept, and I believe so also did Rhoda Polly. At least there was a period which otherwise could not be accounted for in that young lady's diurnal of her time. Supper was a snatch meal, and I don't think anyone thought much about eating, but Rhoda Polly was down in the kitchen seeing that the men's rations were sent out to the posts. At six I reported for duty to Jack Jaikes who had asked for me particularly. He gave me a powerful pair of night-glasses, presented to him for life-saving, as an inscription upon the instrument itself testified. "You know the streets of Aramon as well as I do," he said, "you have only got to keep your eyes about you, and report all you see. There is a nice little Morse installed on the top of the gateway, and you will be fairly safe behind the parapet--at least as safe as anywhere." The little tower he spoke of carried a clock and was placed not directly over the main gate, but to the side above the offices of the time-keepers and accountants. "I suppose," he added, "Rhoda Polly is coming. If so, don't let her fire, and, of course, don't fire yourself. You are the watch, so keep all dark above. Not a light, not a cigarette. And when Rhoda Polly comes, make her stay behind those sand-bags in the corner. I hiked a few up on purpose for her." "I know nothing about it," I asserted, "I never thought of it for an instant. If Rhoda Polly comes it will not be because I asked her." He looked at me with a slight contemptuous grin. "Do not worry yourself," he said; "if Rhoda Polly wants to come she will come, and neither you will entice her, nor her father forbid her." And he went his way. * * * * * I watched the wide Cours of Aramon, white under the moon, with its plane trees casting inky shadows on the flat stones and trampled earth. A silence had fallen upon the streets that opened on it, and no lights showed from the houses. The anarchists knew the value of darkness as well as we. But for a while the moon continued to block them. The sky filled and as regularly emptied of great white clouds, charioting up from the Mediterranean like angelic harvest-wains. I did not see anything worth reporting from the top of the clock-tower, nor hear anything except a distant hammering. An intense quiet reigned over the town of Aramon-les-Ateliers. I saw no new conflagrations. The old were extinct, and no yelling mobs poured out towards the well-to-do suburbs. The Extremists of the Commune had withdrawn their sentries and outposts--at least from within sight of the defences of the works. Jack Jaikes argued that this alone showed that they were plotting mischief. "These gutter scrapings of a hundred ports and a thousand prisons" was what he called "the new lot" who had supplanted Keller Bey. I think he secretly rejoiced. For, so long as it was a matter of fighting the elected Commune with Keller Bey at its head, he knew that the Chief had been lukewarm about extreme measures. He had even negotiated in the early time, which Jack Jaikes called "a burning shame. The best way to negotiate wi' a rattlesnake is to break his back wi' a stick!" He recognised, however, it was no use holding back when the Chief said "March!" "But noo, lad," he confided to me, "they are coming for what they will get. They are going to harry and burn and kill. There are four women yonder, and Dennis kens as well as me that if they win in on us, it will be death and hell following after. So he will let us turn on the fire-hose from the first, and let off no volleys in the air. That suits Jack Jaikes. This is no Sunday-school treat wi' tugs-o'-war and shying at Aunt Sally for coco-nits! Aye, a-richt, you below--haud a wee, I'm comin'!" He had hardly remained five minutes with me, but he had put some iron into my blood. We were no longer fighting against theorists like Keller Bey, or broad-beamed, first-class mechanicians like the Père Félix. And then the women--they would not bear thinking about, and indeed I had not time, for prompt, as if answering to a call, Rhoda Polly plumped down beside me in the sand-bag niche. "I met Jack Jaikes," she explained. "He said he knew I was coming and had made all snug for me. How did he know? You did not?" "He must have guessed, Rhoda Polly--perhaps it was something you said." "Nonsense, he is altogether too previous, that Jack Jaikes, but all the same these sand-bags are comfy, and I can see as from an upper box." "There is not much to see." I was saying the very words when with a crash a wall on the opposite side of the Cours seemed to crumble in upon itself. There was a jet of flame, a rain of stones, which reached half-way to the defences of the works, and then a gap, dark and vague in the veiled moonlight. "That was dynamite," said Rhoda Polly, "though the report was not loud. There is, quarrymen say, a silent zone in which the explosion is not heard. We must be just on the verge of that. I wonder if there is more to come." We waited--I straining my eyes into the darkness and seeing nothing. The moon did not reach down into the gulf which the explosion had created. But I was vaguely conscious of shapes that moved and of a curious crushing noise like that of the steam-roller upon the fresh macadam of a roadway in the making. But though Jack Jaikes came up to see for himself, none of us could make out anything--till Rhoda Polly, whose eyes were like those of a cat, made a telescope of her hands and after a long look whispered eagerly, "I see something they have got in there. It is like a bear on end--you know--when it is dancing." "Try again, Rhoda Polly. Try the night-glass!" "I can do better without it, Jack Jaikes--yes, I see better now--it is like a big boiler for washing clothes or boiling pig's-meat with the mouth tilted towards us. It looks as if it were mounted on a kind of cradle!" The words were hardly out of her mouth when Jack Jaikes exclaimed, in a voice which might have been heard half across the wide oblong of the Cours, "A mortar--I never thought of that--they have got a mortar. They were clearing a way for using it--at short range too. They can plug us anywhere now." He sprang towards the Morse telegraph, but he did not reach it. A concussion and a roar shook the tower to its base. I saw the flame shoot out a yard wide from the gap in the defence wall. Our main gate and part of the rampart to the right had been badly smashed, quite enough for a determined storming party to penetrate if the new gun made any more successes. "They are firing solid shell at us," said Jack Jaikes, frantically manipulating the keys of the telegraph instrument. "Now I must get a gun to play upon them. It will need something big, for though we can scourge their gun emplacement with mitraille fire, the merit of their plan is that the gunners lie hid in a ditch. Only one man, or two at most, are needed to slip round and drop in the charge and shell." "I see them," said Rhoda Polly, pointing where we saw only blank darkness. "Give me a rifle, Jack Jaikes. I believe I can pick that man off!" "You shall have number 27, Rhoda Polly, the best ever made. Oh, if only I had eyes like you!" Jack Jaikes groaned aloud, and Rhoda Polly settled herself behind the sand-bags. But she glanced up almost instantly. "He is gone!" she said. "Then look out!" cried Jack Jaikes. We both saw the broad stream of fire this time, and the wall on the other side of the gate came rattling down, while a big ball went skipping across the yard of the works, kicking the dust into clouds and bringing up with a dull smack against the wall of the foundry just opposite. "No harm done this journey, just topped us and brought down a few stones. But this can't last. They will get the range and make hay of us." He was already making off on his quest. "Better get down out of that, Rhoda Polly," he called back, as his feet clattered among the fallen bricks and masonry. "Go to the cellar, Rhoda Polly!" "Go to the cellar yourself, Jack Jaikes--I'm going to watch for the man who does the loading of that gun!" And Jack Jaikes laughed, well pleased. I felt vaguely humiliated, for I was a far better shot than Rhoda Polly, only I could not see. Furthermore I wished her well out of the clock-tower, for the flash of a rifle from the top of it would almost certainly cause us to be bombarded, and with the lobbing action of the mortar shot the projectile might very well land right on top of us, in which case the sand-bags would prove no protection. All I could do, however, was to stick to the Morse machine and send down the reports that Rhoda Polly threw at me over her shoulder. As soon as Jack Jaikes had made a tour of the posts, a hail of rifle fire broke from the wall of our defences, directed upon the gap in the wall and the _débris_ which sheltered the mortar. "It's no use! Tell them to stop," called out Rhoda Polly; "they are only making the plaster fall." I transmitted the message, and the firing from our side slackened and ceased. The smoke of the volleys drifted slowly along the wall, blinding and provoking the watcher. She waved it petulantly away with her hands. "They will make me miss my chance," she mourned. "The gunners can do what they like behind that. I wish Jack Jaikes had had more sense. What is the use of shooting at sparrows' nests under the eaves when the men are down in a ditch?" She was quite right, the next shell was a live one, and passed quite near us with a whistling sound. It exploded just under the big iron door, which was blown from its fastenings and fell backward into the yard with a heavy, jangling crash which went to all our hearts like a warning. The square of the doorway, seen over the edge of the clock-tower, was now quite open. The mortar of the anarchists had done good work, and our carefully-thought-out positions were endangered. I could see Dennis Deventer walking about from post to post, where there was danger of an attack. The wall was not high, especially on the side of the Château, and it would not do to leave these posts denuded of men. At the moment while I was looking at him, Jack Jaikes with a full gunners' team came galloping across the yard with a four-inch Deventer quick-firing field-gun lurching after them. If once they could get that up to the doorway they might be able to make some efficient reply to the enemy's mortar. But a gun of that size needs some sort of emplacement, and an approach to the doorway must be contrived. Dennis was on the spot and I could hear him giving his orders in sharp, lapidary phrases. In the interest below me I had not been watching Rhoda Polly, and so the sharp report of her No. 27 startled me. Of course I could discern nothing in the huge black gash torn by the explosion. But Rhoda Polly was triumphant. "I got him," she whispered; "I saw him coming out and before he could get the shell into the muzzle, I fired. He dropped the shell and fell on top of it. What a pity it did not go off!" Such a bloodthirsty Rhoda Polly! But the truth was that, when it came to fighting and what she called "taking a hand," Rhoda Polly felt absolutely at one with the defence. She only strove to outdo those who were her comrades, and the matter of sex, never prominent in Rhoda Polly's mind, was altogether in abeyance. I tapped the keys of the Morse viciously. It was all I was good for. "Rhoda Polly has shot the gunner--now is your time!" But still the embankment for the four-inch did not quite please Dennis. He preferred to take his chance and wait. It seemed a long, weariful time. Rhoda Polly peered into the blackness along the tube of No. 27. Rhoda Polly wriggled and settled herself. "Bang!" said No. 27. "Winged him! But he made off!" said the marksman disgustedly. "He was quarrying under the other fellow for the shell, so they can't have many or he would have brought out a fresh one. I do wish father would hurry up. In a minute or two there will be such a beautiful chance--just before they are going to fire. They will send three or four men this next time so that I can't shoot them all. If our folk are not speedy, down will come this old clock-tower!" Rhoda Polly was a good prophet, and when next she spoke she had to report that there was a little cloud of men on either side, hiding behind the wall and preparing to load the piece, when their comrades were ready, at any hazard. The four-inch was now poking a lean snout out of the door which had been smashed open by the mortar, and stretched along, laying her on the centre of the darkness, was Jack Jaikes, cursing the Providence which had not given him eyes like Rhoda Polly's. "Now," said my mentor hastily, "tell them now is the time. They can't miss if they fire into the brown! Right in the centre of the gap in the line of that white chimney." The discharge of the big gun beneath us quite made us gasp. It shook Rhoda Polly's aim, and this time No. 27 went off pretty much at random. But what we saw within the gap opposite made up for everything. The shell burst under the mortar or perhaps within it--I could not distinguish which. At any rate, something black and huge rose in the air, poised as if for flight, and then, turning over, fell with a clangorous reverberation into the house behind, smashing down the white chimney and causing the blue-coated National Guards with which it was filled to swarm out. Some took to their heels and were no more heard of in the history of the revolt of Aramon. Others pulled off their coats and fought it through in their shirts. Dennis Deventer waved his hat, and all except Jack Jaikes yelled. He was busy getting the gun ready for a second discharge. But Dennis stopped him. "Jackie, my lad," he said, "no more from this good lady the day--get up the mitrailleuses. They had only that one big fellow and you have tumbled him in scrap through the house behind. I don't know how you sighted as you did." "I did not," said Jack Jaikes grumpily--"only where Rhoda Polly told me." "Well, never mind--that job's done," said the Chief soothingly; "hurry with the machine guns. They will take ten minutes to get over that little surprise and wash it down with absinthe. Then we shall have to look out. They will come, and if we have not their welcome ready, they will come to stay." At this point I begged for permission to come down and join Jack Jaikes' gang. I was no use up there, I said, Rhoda Polly could see all round me. She must call down the news, as there was no time to teach her the Morse. "Well, come along then," said Dennis, and I did not stop even to say good-bye to Rhoda Polly. At last I was going to have a chance. When I got to my gang Dennis Deventer was speaking. "I will give you what help I can by sending men from the north wall and that next the river. I don't expect any assault there. But I cannot weaken the defence along the side of the Château orchard. That is where we are weakest, and where I must go myself. For they are sharp enough to know it. I leave you in charge here, Jack Jaikes. Keep the men steady and don't allow swearing in the ranks!" CHAPTER XXXIII "HELL UPSIDE DOWN!" There was strangely little exultation. Each man felt the tussle was yet to come and nerved himself for it. The big square lay out silent under the moon, splashed with the shadows of the pollarded poplars, the benches upturned, a tree or two uprooted, and beyond all the black gash knocked in the row of white houses. It had a strange look, sinister, threatening, all the more so because it had always been so peaceful and well-ordered--like a man's tranquil life till the day Fate's mortal-shell bursts and there is no more peace for ever and ever. "Now mind, you fellows," said Jack Jaikes, "fire low and steady. They are ten times our numbers, but we will fight in shelter and we have these beauties!" He patted the three mitrailleuses in turn. He had taken charge of the middle one himself, and set his friend Allerdyce and young Brown to command those on either side. We stood at attention, each man knowing that the time could not be long. Far down towards the Château we heard the rush and jar of an attack. A similar noise came from farther up the wall towards the fitting shops. "Jehoshaphat, they are flanking us!" exclaimed Jack Jaikes. And before anyone could interfere--supposing that any had so dared--Jack Jaikes had stepped outside the wall into the cumbered Cours of Aramon. I took the liberty of following. Away to the right we could see nothing, except the clouds of smoke drifting up or being tossed by the rough sudden swoop of the blast, stooping down out of the moonlit heavens and the night of stars. Jack Jaikes must have been conscious of my presence, but he did not order me back. He was talking to himself and he wanted a listener. As Bacon says, he wanted a friend with whom to toss his ideas as a haymaker tosses hay. "Down there by the Château doesn't matter," he said, looking that way long and earnestly, "Dennis Deventer is there--with MacIntyre and the whole Clydebank gang--little to fear there. Listen, young fellow, how the machine guns are barking--_U-r-r-r-rh!_ I wish ours were talking too, but that mortar shot rather scared them--though it ought not--easy thing to rush a four-inch gun firing shell at that distance and with their numbers. One hole in the line, and then you are upon her. But--see, young un, there they go butting in at the corner of the wall yonder. We must give them a volley. Fellows, run out the mitrailleuses--my own one first. Easy there over the stones! Now the others!" Presently with the three machine guns we were standing completely shelterless in the Cours of Aramon with half a dozen darksome streets and alleyways gaping at us truculently. "Turn them to the left," he shouted. "Farther out, Allerdyce! Keep your alignment, you Brown--swearing's forbidden, but think that ye hear Donald Iverach at it!" The light little guns with the pepperpot snouts were swiftly swung round in the direction of the scaling ladders and the hurrying clouds of men. Each man, Allerdyce, Brown, and Jack Jaikes himself, had his hand on the handle which was to grind death. "Lie down, you sweeps!" he called to us. "Flat--not a head up." We lay down, but I looked sideways between the wheels of the centre machine gun. The long legs of Jack Jaikes almost bestrode me. "GO!" And then all hell broke loose. The noise of the jarring explosions melted into one infernal whoop, and seemed to ride the storm which at this moment was mounting to the heavens from the south and shutting out the moon. The attacking party was mown as with a clean-swept scythe. For an instant three swathes were clearly visible--Jack Jaikes, Brown, and Allerdyce had each made his share of the crop lie down. There came an explosion of rage and anguish. "Again!" shouted Jack Jaikes. "Keep down that head," he cried to me, and kicked savagely in my direction as he danced about. I obeyed. No account could be required of men at such moments. He might stamp on my head if he found it in his way. "Sweep the wall and fire low!" was the next order. "Mind, Donald Iverach and the boys are on top. We must not shoot them, but we _must_ help those ladders down. It is a pity we dare not run out the four-inch--only we could never get her back." Again the rending siren shriek divided the night. We lay on the ground seeing gigantic shapes twisted in seeming agony over guns high above us. Our chins were in the dust and the play of the lightning flashes made the thing somehow demoniacal and unearthly. "Hell upside down!" as the man next to me pithily said--a parson's son like myself, but from Kent, Pembury in Kent, where young Battersby is still not forgotten. The mitrailleuses flared red below and the skies flared blue above. The thunder roared continuously and the noise of the machine guns cut it like the thin notes in the treble corner of a piano. Heaven raged against earth, and earth in the person of Jack Jaikes ground out shrill defiance. But that night the bolts from the earthly artillery were the more deadly. "Cleaned the beggars out!" shouted Jack Jaikes, or at least that is near enough to what he said. "Now then, up you fellows and we will get them back!" It was easier said than done. For it was one thing to get the little guns down the rubble heaps beneath the battered gateway and quite another to fetch them back. We were compelled to put all our three gun crews into one, and even then we could not have succeeded without the help of the men with ropes pulling from within. I saw Rhoda Polly tugging like one possessed, though why she was not on her tower I do not know. We had left the other two machine guns unprotected and had to jump back to rescue them. Still there was no enemy in sight and we got Brown's fine No. 1 back into shelter. Remained Allerdyce, and as we rattled down to fetch her up, suddenly the whole of the square in front of us was swept by a storm of bullets. Somehow I found Hugh Deventer beside me. "You gave us a good easement up at the corner," he said, "I was sure they would get back on you next. Give me a place. I can hoist a gun better than you!" He was behind the wheel, but even as he set his weight to it Allerdyce---eternally smiling Scot from Ayrshire, called Soda Bannocks--collapsed over the piece he had commanded and worked. Another man yelled with sudden pain, and I felt a sharp blow on the calf of my leg. "Clear!" shouted Jack Jaikes, "I will fetch the men. Up with the gun." And he drew Allerdyce off the top of the mitrailleuse as one might gather a wet rag. The storm passed and as we panted upwards the bullets still tore our ranks. It could not be done. We had not the force. We paused half-way and blocked the wheels with stones so that she would not slip back. "Great God, what's that?" I turned at the anguish and surprise in the voice of Jack Jaikes, and I saw clear under the rain-washed splendours of the moon Keller Bey walking down the main Cours of Aramon. One hand held aloft a white flag, and on the other side clasping his arm was--Alida! I dreamed--I was sure I dreamed. That bullet--those fellows knocked over--Allerdyce smiling and abominably limp on the top of his own gun--Jack Jaikes gathering him up--all these things had crazed me, and no wonder. I saw "cats in corners," as I used to do in old college days when I studied too much and too long. But yet I looked and saw the vision continued. Moreover I heard. Keller Bey was calling out something as he waved the flag. Black cats did not speak. They keep an exact distance away--about four yards and always in the corner of a room or in a stairway--never in the open. What was he saying? One word recurred. "Trêve!--Trêve!--Trêve!" "I proclaim a truce in the name of the Internationale!" Mocking laughter answered him. The Internationale! What did they care for the Internationale? They were out to kill and to take. Little groups began to gather at the dark alley mouths. I could see the glitter of rifles and bayonets. Present fear was arrested when they saw us withdrawing our guns. Hope sprang into their minds that they might capture the mitrailleuse abandoned halfway up. Their losses stung them to a wild and reckless fury. I do not know whence the first bullets came--I think from the north end of the Cours Nationale, where some men had been busy removing their dead and wounded. At any rate it was the signal for a general discharge. The streets and alley-ways vomited fire. The crackle of rifle shots sprang from the windows of houses. Somehow we found ourselves outside on the Cours. We had abandoned the gun. Jack Jaikes seemed to be giving some kind of instructions, but I could not make out what he was saying. What I saw was too terrible--Keller Bey on the ground, the white flag of truce stained with blood, and Alida kneeling beside him. "Take them up!" yelled Jack Jaikes, "run for it!" Before me strode Hugh Deventer, huge and blond like a Viking. He caught up Alida and would have marched off with her, but that Jack Jaikes barred the way. "Idiot," he cried, "who can carry a man of Keller's size but you? Give the girl to Cawdor!" I think at that moment Hugh could have killed him, but he gave me Alida as bidden, and bending he shouldered the dead weight of the wounded man. "Put him higher, then, you fool," he shouted to Jack Jaikes. "I can't, they are coming at us with the white weapon. Heave him yourself," yelled back Jack Jaikes. I heard no more for Alida, waking suddenly to her position, fought desperately in my arms, escaped, and ran up the broken stones past the abandoned machine gun till I lost sight of her in the dusk of the broken gateway. Hugh Deventer, stumbling after with Keller Bey, cursed me for getting in his road. We did and said a number of things that night which can't well go in a log book, not even now. I turned and in a moment was with the small band which Jack Jaikes had gathered about the gun. At any cost we must not lose that. There were too many men in Aramon who knew how to make ammunition for any purpose. Yes, they were coming. They were so near that I had just time to snap in my bayonet and get beside Jack Jaikes. I saw him shake something wet from his hand. "Are you wounded?" I asked anxiously, for that would have been the crown of our misfortunes. "No, that's Allerdyce!" he answered, with ghastly brevity, but nevertheless the thing somehow nerved me. We all might be even as Allerdyce, but in the meantime we must stop that ugly black rush--the charge "with the white" as they called a bayonet charge. Behind was the gun--Allerdyce's gun--and beyond that the open defenceless port, the waiting men clewed there by their duty--and the girls! Lord, how slow they were--these running men! "Now then, one volley," said Jack Jaikes, "scourge them and then steady for the steel! Remember we are taller men and we have on an average a foot longer reach than they have. You, Gregory, keep behind and blow holes in anybody you can see running." I cannot remember very clearly this part. How could I? I rather think we did not stand very firm. I seem to remember charging out to meet them--the others too--and Jack Jaikes laying about him in front of everybody with clubbed rifle, grunting like a man who fells bullocks. The lines met with a clash of steel. I remember the click and lunge perfectly. Then suddenly we seemed to be all back to back, and somehow or other the centre of a terrible mixed business, a sort of whirlpool of fighting. Men quite unknown to us had appeared mysteriously from the direction of the Mairie. They were attacking our assailants on the flank. It was warm there under the trees of the promenade for a few minutes. But after a volley or two, as if they had come to seek for Keller Bey, our new allies decided to retire without him. They sucked back firing as they went, and taking with them the red mayoral flag they had carried. We were left with our own battle to fight. But they had done something. The solidity of the attack had been somewhat fused down. We were not now so closely surrounded. "Glory, the tucker's out of them!" cried Jack Jaikes, "give them a volley--Henry rifles to the front. Scourge them!" It was his word--"scourge them." And that to the best of our ability was what we did. The shooting was not very good, or we should have been rid of the enemy much more quickly. "Stand clear, there!" commanded a voice from above our heads. Rhoda Polly had got a team of men together to lever up Allerdyce's machine gun. She was now bending over it, and those who remained of the dead man's crew bent themselves to the task of getting it in order. "To right and left, and fire as they run. Now then----!" commanded Rhoda Polly. "Re-r-r-r-rach-rach-rach!" The mitrailleuse spat hate and revenge over our heads. The young "second-in-command," trained by Allerdyce, stood calmly to his post and swept the muzzle wherever he saw a cluster of assailants. "Allerdyce! Allerdyce!" yelled the crew of No. 4. They did not mean him to hear. Allerdyce would never hear anything again--neither the voice of his native Doon, running free over the shallows, nor the raucous voice of his beloved gun, nor even the shouting of his men as they wrote their vengeance for a dead leader across the Cours of Aramon in letters of blood. This happened almost at the end of the battle, but what I remember best of it all, in all that unknown and unknowable turmoil of death, is the half-wild, half-quixotic, altogether heroic figure of Jack Jaikes, dancing and vapouring under the splendours of the moonlight. "Come back and fecht!" he yelled. "Come back and fecht for the sowl o' Allerdyce! On'y ten o' ye. I tell ye I'll slay ye for the sake o' Allerdyce! Ye made what's no human o' him. Come back and I will choke ye wi' my bare hands. We were chums, Allerdyce and me, at the Clydebank yaird. God curdle your blood for what ye did to Allerdyce. Come back and fecht, ye hounds o' hell, come back and fecht!" CHAPTER XXXIV THE PASSING OF KELLER BEY We were hard put to it before we got the madman in, and then it was worse than ever. For he, our master, the bravest man that I ever saw or think to see, sat down beside his friend and wept like a child. He did not even look at us when we took up Allerdyce and buried him in a long trench with the others who had fallen--five in all, a heavy loss for us who were so few. "I never want to see Greenock again!" wailed Jack Jaikes, "we were that pack, Allerdyce and me----" "Go and fetch your father, Rhoda Polly," said I, "this will never do. It would be no use to telegraph. He would never believe the like of Jack Jaikes." "May God grant he can come!" said Rhoda Polly, and darted off. I went into the outhouse where Keller Bey lay. Harold Wilson was bending over him, a steel probe in his hand. He stood up as I came in, looking narrowly at the point. "I think we shall pull him through, but so long as we have that young lady"--he pointed at Alida, who was exhausting herself in a long outburst of Oriental sorrow--"I fear we can do nothing radical." "Wait till Rhoda Polly comes back," I said, "she will get her friend away." "I do not think so," he said, "she has been trying for some time." "Could he be moved?" "Far?" queried the doctor. "Well, across the river in a boat, and up the hill to my father's house." Wilson winced. "That is rather a responsibility," he said dubiously; "still, the man is unconscious and will probably remain so for many hours. It certainly would be a good thing if we could be rid of him and of that young woman--though in ordinary circumstances we should not be in such a hurry to send her off." He grinned pleasantly, and asked how I proposed to set about the business. I told him it would be easy to get Keller Bey down to the nursery gardens by the waterside. Here I would rout out my friend the patron Arcadius, who would do as much for three or four of his gardeners--Italians all, and not touched with local politics. My boat was there, and the gardener lads would carry the stretcher up the hill. They did harder tasks every day of their lives. "Well, but you see I can't leave all these--where's your doctor?" I told him I could bring down the resident from the college hospital. "Oh, I know him, Vallier, a very decent fellow for an _interne_. He'll do. Well, off with you. I will give you a note for him." "We must wait till we get this stopped." I pointed to Jack Jaikes. "You can't do anything I suppose?" He shook his head. "No, it needs moral authority for that. He would care as little for me as for you--less perhaps. But here comes Mr. Deventer!" "Thank God!" I gasped. "Jaikes," commanded Dennis Deventer, "bring the guns forward." Jack Jaikes staggered to his feet and looked irresolutely about him. Was he going to obey? Did he even understand? For a moment it seemed doubtful. But whether his mind grasped the situation or not he answered the voice of Dennis Deventer. "What guns, sir?" "Allerdyce's, Brown's, and your own!" said Dennis firmly. "Take command. Forward with them into the breach," and the machine guns moved forward, the remnant of their crews being reinforced by men from other posts. "Hold yourself ready there, Jack Jaikes," said Dennis, "this is your business. So far you have done well. We had to fight hard all along our wall, but you have beaten us!" "But you scourged them too?" demanded Jack Jaikes, lowering and truculent. Dennis drew a sigh of relief. His lieutenant was himself again. "Yes, Jack Jaikes, we scourged them!" For answer Jack Jaikes swept his index finger round the half-circle of the Cours of Aramon, dotted with black bodies lying still. "It's a pity ye can't see them all," he said, "they are lying in heaps up in the corner yonder, where we cut the scaling ladders from beneath them!" * * * * * Though our gallant little Dr. Wilson permitted the removal of Keller Bey, the task before me was one to tax me to the utmost. I think I should have given it up and let Keller Bey lie, but for Rhoda Polly. She came out from a long consultation with Alida, and at once took charge of the situation, much as her father might have done. I don't know in the least what the girls said to one another, or what reason Alida gave Rhoda Polly for her presence in Aramon or for her dislike of me, but whatever these might have been, they must at least have been sufficient. As I say, Rhoda Polly took hold. She commandeered an improvised carrying stretcher, which had been prepared at the orchard end of the Château policies. She prevailed on her father to lend her a carrying party as far as the river. The thought of letting any fraction of his few defenders go outside even for such a purpose made Dennis Deventer frown. "It will not take ten poor minutes," pleaded Rhoda Polly. "I will see that they get safe back. Let me, Dennis!" It was not often that she called him by his Christian name save in the heat of wordy strife, and perhaps the very unexpectedness of it touched him. "Have it your own way then, but be quick--don't forget I am risking the whole defence. I do not see in the least why Wilson could not have attended to him here." She stepped up and whispered in his ear. He looked first doubtful, then incredulous, and a smile flickered a moment on his face. "Ah, so!" he exclaimed, "I did not know you were so fanciful, my lady." But he made no further objection, and we lifted up Keller Bey and put him in the stretcher, where he lay without speech or knowledge. Wilson tried his pulse and listened to his respiration. "Get him away," he commanded, "the quicker the better!" Rhoda Polly, Hugh and I helped the men over the wall with him, and held the _brancard_ in place till they could get over to our assistance. We did not try to go straight to the landing place through the bull ring, but instead cast a wide circuit about the town, and finally came out upon the little house of gardener Arcadius buried among its trees. Him I awakened with care, first a hail of pebbles on his window panes, followed the scratching teeth of a garden rake to indicate a friend, and lastly my own voice calling softly his name. He looked sleepily out, for he cared nothing about the town and its ongoings, if the early blossoms were not frosted and his young trees were not eaten by predatory goats. He made me a sign that he would be down immediately, and he was buckling an equatorial waistbelt even as he opened the door. He started back at the sight of the _brancard_. "What! A dead man?" I explained the desperate need of Keller Bey and his daughter--how they must cross the river and how we counted on him to give us porters. For the boat Rhoda Polly and I would be sufficient, but for the carrying of the stretcher up the hill we had need of four stout fellows. "I have my Italians," he said, "that is, if none of them have decamped; I locked them in, but the lads from the Peninsula are very handy with a crooked nail." As we went, Arcadius, lurching in front like a huge sea-lion doing tricks, waved a lantern and spoke of the prospects of his garden. The hard winter had done no harm. It had broken the clods and killed the grubs. The war, the Commune, the black terror of Aramon did not exist for Arcadius. Barrès would not come to expropriate his cauliflowers and early potatoes. He asked no questions about Keller Bey and genially cut short any offer of explanation. His business was the soil, the fruit trees, planting and transplanting, and the sale of young vegetables. Beyond these he desired to know nothing. His four Italians were there, big, good-looking lads from the north, who found gardening more to their taste than making roads or piling up railway embankments. Arcadius addressed them in a kind of _lingua franca_ which included much gesticulation and even foot-stamping. The men appeared to understand, and I put in a few words as to remuneration in their own tongue. For the son of the historian of Italian Art had, of course, been bred to the language. They started and turned upon me eager eyes, and then broke into a torrent of Tuscan which took me instantly to the scented bean-fields and beautiful hills about Siena. Of course they would be proud to carry my friend up the hill. I was the son of the Wise Man of the Many Books. I had been with Garibaldi. Ah, then, that said all. One had a brother who had died following the Little Father. Another had even been told to get out of the way by hasty Menotti. He laughed at the oath which accompanied the command. Of course they were all ready. They could find the boat. It was quite safe. They knew where. They had emptied it once when a squall had overturned it, so that it lay on its side facing the rain. So with Hugh, Rhoda Polly, one of the Tuscans and myself at the oars we were soon letting ourselves slip away from the shore on which stood Arcadius and his lantern, urging us to bring the lads safe back, because there was a big job with the sweet peas on the morrow. We went slantingly, not fighting the current too hard, but gliding easily, and avoiding the shallows where we could hear the current roar over the sand and pebbles. Presently we grounded in the shadow of woods. I knew the place well. The path led almost directly up past Rameau's hut to the little door of the Lycée St. André. We could not have fallen better. We would escape the town altogether, and along a _clairière_ or open vista of cleared forest land we could easily gain the garden gate of Gobelet. Keller Bey lay still, the wound on his head keeping him in a state of unconsciousness, which was very helpful to our project. The bullet had glanced from the bone and was now imbedded in the muscles of the neck. During the transit Alida clove to Rhoda Polly when she could, and when she could not (because of that young person's surprising activity), she fell back on Hugh Deventer. Not once did she look at me, and if I approached she would slip away to the other side. The four Italians lifted the stretcher and began the ascent. Morn was just beginning to break, so there was not much time. The Tuscans marched to a kind of grunting chorus, as if they were counting numbers slowly. They arranged their own work and rested when they had enough. Once the cleared alley-way of the forest was reached the work became easy. Now the march was on the level. We found the garden gate locked on the inside, but Hugh gave me a hoist up, and in a moment I had it open. My father, ever a light sleeper, was easily awakened, indeed his student's lamp still burned in his room, and he took it up when he went to warn Linn. She came out sternly composed, listened silently to my report of what Dr. Wilson had said, and what still remained to be done. Then she nodded, still without words, and with a decided air she moved towards their bedroom. At first sight of Linn, Alida had sprung forward and caught her foster-mother in her arms. Linn gently kissed her, but immediately released herself, that she might be able to give all her attention to her husband. The leave-takings were of the scantiest. The Italians were on fire to be off before the morning broke. I repeated the directions about the _interne_ Vallier up at the hospital to my father. Then we struck riverward through the pines, racing the sun. Rhoda Polly arrived far in front, and in a few minutes we were on the water again. It was not till we landed on the little greensward above the backwater where I hid the boat that we asked one another, "Where is Hugh?" As we did so the sun rose and lighted up the world and all its problems with the terrible clarity of morn, and by it we saw clearly that Hugh Deventer had stayed behind. Rhoda Polly and I looked at one another till we could look no longer, and then, in spite of the danger, we burst into a peal of the gayest laughter. CHAPTER XXXV A CAPTAIN OF BRIGANDS The beaten wolves had slunk back to their lairs, but the fierceness of their hate may be guessed from the fact that they would neither bury their dead nor permit us to do it. Thrice was a burying party fired upon, and it was only in the dead of night that Jack Jaikes and Brown succeeded in cleaning the wide square in front of the main gate of the factory. Dennis Deventer had the iron gate new clamped and strengthened. On the second night it was swung into place by the aid of an improvised crane, which Dennis made, if not like the Creator "out of nothing," yet out of the first things which came handy. Our messes were now rather smaller. Between the Orchard and the Main Gate attacks we had lost so many that the posts had to be strung out wider to cover the long mileage of wall which had to be guarded. The elated feeling of the earlier siege had departed. But in its place we were conscious of a kind of proven and almost apathetic courage. We might be called upon by any peril, and we knew now that we could do what should be required of us. I lived altogether with the gang now, only occasionally (by Jack Jaikes' permission) running in to take a meal with the Deventers and to sun myself in the approval of Rhoda Polly. Of course, I saw her often. She had taken strongly to Allerdyce's gang, and, I think, cherished a hope that Jack Jaikes might one day allow her to command it. But, fond of Rhoda Polly as he was, Jack Jaikes had no idea of the equality of the sexes when it came to a battery of machine guns. So he gave the captaincy to Penman, a tall, thoughtful fellow of a dusky skin, from the south, a good mechanician and a man dependable on all occasions. Rhoda Polly sulked a little and confided in me. I pointed out to her that nothing more delicate than a mitrailleuse had yet been invented. They jammed. They jibbed. They refused to fire when they ought, but let go a shot or two without the least excuse, when they might place those who served them in the greatest danger. What could she, Rhoda Polly, do to remedy these ills? Nothing--whereas Penman had been reared in the factory where they were made, and had long been a foreman "assembler." "Yes, but," she said, "I could tell him to do all that, and I am sure that I could direct the fighting better. I have been a lot with my father and I have kept my eyes open." I told her to take her complaints to Jack Jaikes, but she knew better than that. This is how she explained the apparent contempt of the second in command. "He has seen us sitting sleeping on the roof, hand in hand, when the sunlight was two hours old, and you will see that neither you nor I will ever get farther than we are at present under the consulship of Jack Jaikes. He considers us in the light of a good joke, all because of that unhappy rencontre!" I was not ambitious like Rhoda Polly, and my position as confidential lieutenant to Jack Jaikes suited me exactly. I do not mean that he ever consulted me, or asked for my opinion on matters of business. But he liked a listener and he loved to thresh out every question immediately and to put down the contradictor. I must have been an immense comfort to him, for I contradicted regularly, with or without conviction, and as regularly allowed myself to be beaten down. That was what I was there _for_! Dennis Deventer had placed Jack Jaikes over the whole of the Works, as distinct from the defences of the Château--which, as the less defensible and the more likely to be attacked, he kept in his own hand. He strengthened the wall of the orchard with palisades, and established posts at either end with a machine gun to sweep its length. In spite of all, the Old Orchard remained the weak spot in our defences, and the sight of it with the enemy's posts so near put an idea into my head. I went directly to Dennis Deventer. He was sitting placidly watching the "assembling" of a new machine gun, the parts of which had been all ready before the stoppage of the Works. He looked on critically, but without needing to put in a word. Penman, Brown, and the rest were far too good engineers to need even a suggestion. All the same they doubtless knew themselves to be under the eye of the master. "Chief," said I, "we took Keller Bey and Alida across the water for safety, and I saw them into my father's care at Gobelet, where Hugh remains as a guard. Now the real weakness of our position here is the presence in our midst of Mrs. Deventer and your two daughters!" "Two daughters--I have three!" said he, but I thought somewhat quizzically and as if comprehending very well. "Oh, I do not include Rhoda Polly," I answered, "she is as good a soldier as any of us, and could be trusted in all circumstances, even if she were rushed----" "Rushed?" he said sharply. "How that? How trusted?" I spoke and I saw him wince. Then, in a moment, he answered me, "You are quite right--ten times right. And you mean that the others--could not!" "I am speaking of what I pray God may never happen, but yet--the odds against us are great. If it were as I suggested--with the other three women--that would be your duty!" He drew in his breath, hissing, between his teeth, like one who feels the first sharp incision of the knife. His hands clenched and something like a groan came from the strong man. I pursued my advantage. "You might not be there, Mr. Deventer--you might be lying as I saw Allerdyce along the top of your gun. So might I--so might anyone you dared delegate." "God forgive you--you put water into my veins. How could any man 'delegate' such a thing!" "No," said I, "I feel as you do, and for that reason I beg of you to let me escort your wife and daughters to the care of my father." "And suppose," he said, "that our friends the enemy, finding us a hard nut to crack and probably with little kernel when cracked, should take it into their heads to cross the bridge and plunder the houses on the hill of St. André?" "I think not, sir," I answered steadily. "There are Government troops in Aramon le Vieux. The National Guard there is all against the revolutionists. In the old town the tricolour has never been in the least danger. The whole department would move upon them if they attempted such a thing." "Well argued, my Cicero," said he, "you are your father's son. But these black-a-vised rogues of ours defy reasoning. They may do the very thing all wisdom shows that they ought not to do. And a visit to Gobelet on the hill is one of these temptations which may prove too much for the gaol birds who shelter themselves under the black flag of anarchy. I do not see that the danger would be much lessened, considering the devil's crew with whom we have to deal. A raid across the water, made by night, would be an exploit worthy of them." So my proposition was for the time rejected, but I did not despair. For I knew, or thought I knew, that the absence of the women would relieve us who were fighting the lines of the Château and Factory from an almost intolerable fear. In this respect I now think I was wrong. For the idea of the girls and their mother being entrusted to them to defend, made every man behind the defences hate the enemy with a deep steady hatred. Each became in his own eyes charged with the care of Liz or Hannah, of Rhoda Polly or their mother, according to where, or in what relation of life--sweetheart, sister, or mother--their hearts were tenderest. Outside the situation changed but slowly. The Committee of Public Safety had taken possession of the Mairie after Keller Bey had been abandoned by his colleagues--and when with Alida he had come forth to make a last effort at conciliation. Except the desperate Chanot, none of the leaders of the Revolt-against-the-Revolt had taken any part in the fighting. Barrès, Chardon, even Bonnot had sat and directed operations from the safe shelter of the Hôtel de Ville. It was not cowardice, the scoundrels were brave enough, as they showed afterwards--but they had reached what seemed a haven of peace, and the share of the plunder which had been claimed by the "administration" assured them of good restaurant meals and such joyous company as was to be found in Aramon. Speaking to Chardon, his lieutenant Chanot treated the whole business lightly. "Why should we not take the best of life we can? It may not be for long," he said, referring to this period. "You people of the Château had taken toll of our numbers. Well, I do not complain. There was the more left for the rest. We had appropriated, and who had a better right to spend? There was no more cant of liberty and individualism among us, and each man being a law and a religion to himself, we stole from one another when we could. That is, if we found a friend's cash-box in a place where a hand might grasp it, we thought how much good it would do him to drink of his own brewing. So we 'individually expropriated' him. That is why Lasalle of St. Gilles was killed by Auroy. Auroy found him mixed up with a roll of bank-notes he had hidden in his mattress. There had been a new election for the Quartier St. Marthe, and as nobody thought of voting, we nominated Eusèbe le Plan who had lost an arm in the fighting and would be a long time in hospital. This made the plums go still farther round." "The old 'reds'? Oh, they were in the town mostly, hidden in garrets, passing their time like Troppman in reading 'The Picturesque Magazine'" (here he laughed), "and listening for our footsteps and the grounding of our rifle-butts before their doors. They thought we wanted them. What in the devil's name should we want with such feeble, broken, bellowing cattle? They had brought nothing to the office. They had been content with their fifteen pence a day. Not one of them had a sou to rub against another, and their wives hardly knew where the next day's soup was to come from. Oh, yes, I know now, that which had I known then, some blood would have splashed the garden walls--that Dennis Deventer had his own folk among them who distributed money and food. They were his best workmen and it was an agreed thing that when all this had blown over and when we who had turned them out were all shot or beheaded, he should enlist them again, and they would go back in the 'shops' to speak with deference and sobriety as becomes an inferior to his superior!" * * * * * I do not mean that there was any regular truce--rather a kind of inaction and exhaustion. The first ardours of the political brigands had been cooled by machine gun practice--Napoleon's old prescription of "the whiff of grapeshot." A good many of this miscellaneous collection of rascals, especially those who had done well in the earlier work of incendiarism among the villas along the riverside, tailed off without crying a warning. They made their way, some to Marseilles, where the troops were just putting down the rule of Gaston Cremieux, some to Narbonne, which was still in the wildest revolt, while others scattered over the country, committing crimes in lonely places, hiding in the forests by day and tramping by night, till for the most part they managed to get themselves out of the country into Germany, Switzerland, or Spain--wherever, indeed, they were least known. But those who were left behind at Aramon waxed all the more deadly and desperate because of these desertions. If only they had guessed how severe our losses had been, they would have attacked with more vigour than they did, but I think they judged that the "scourging" inflicted upon them by Jack Jaikes had been almost without loss to ourselves. Alas, besides the mound in the Orchard, the double row of graves in the beaten earth of the courtyard told another tale! I do not think anyone ever passed the spot without lifting his hat to Allerdyce and his troop of gallant men, to whom the noble May days and the starry nights of the last days of our siege mattered so little. CHAPTER XXXVI LEFT-HANDED MATTHEW It was about this time that Matteo le Gaucher--Matteo the Left-handed--began to interest himself in our concerns. At first sight nothing was more unlikely than that Matteo could ever make the slightest difference to the fate of any human soul. Yet great and even final events hung upon Matteo le Gaucher. He was an Italian from Arquà, and, as was said by his comrades, a "spiteful toad." He was deformed in body, and of course carried with him the repute of a _jettatore_. The evil eye certainly looked out from under his low brows, but it was with his evil tongue that he could actually do the most mischief. He had been employed by Arcadius in his garden. He was not a bad workman. "The ground," as he said, "was not too far off for him." He could work when he chose, better than anyone at the task of the day. But he was a born fault-finder, a born idler, insolent and quarrelsome. The four who were his room-mates and who worked with him bore longer with him because of his bodily infirmity and also because of the Evil Eye, which they mocked at but devoutly believed in. At last he aroused Arcadius, across whose path he had always been loath to come. Arcadius found a fault. Matteo found a knife. All men knew the light gardening hoe which seldom left the hand of Arcadius. Well, the master's eye was accurate, and Matteo went to the town hospital with a broken wrist and a right hand almost hagged off. Let no one for a moment be sorry for Matteo. In that comprehensive interval he began to plot many things rendered natural by years of vendetta practice. Directly, he could not hurt Arcadius. He had tried that and Chanot had only laughed at him. No, even to please him, the Committee of Public Safety would not shoot the man who sent them their finest, indeed their only, early fruits. Arcadius had no store of gold hid in his chimney. He had spent it all with Chanot's uncle the notary, buying new land, ever more and more--and some still not paid for--but all regularly being covered instalment and interest. This Chanot knew, because in his days of (oh, so dull) respectability, Chanot had had to make out the receipts. And how he hated the thought of the long days of deskwork. Matteo mourned over his broken wrist, which hurt the more abominably whenever he hated anyone and could in no wise wreck his hatred. He must think out something else. He retired into his pillows, turned his face to the wall, and for a day and a night thought by what means he could best hurt Arcadius or the friends of the master-gardener. He had been in the corner of the hangar-dormitory that night when the four Tuscans had been called up to follow the lantern of Arcadius. The Toad, with the venom attributed to him for centuries, had risen quietly and from behind the great arbutus, had seen the boat with Keller Bey lying stark on his stretcher, and the beautiful girl watching over him, push out into the night. On their return the Tuscans had exhibited their newly earned gold, and all innocently had striven to set his cupidity wild by tales of the wonderful paradise of fertility and riches under the brow of the hill of Mont St. André. Matteo le Gaucher snarled at them, denying that the coins were good, or, if good, that they had been won (as they asserted) by merely carrying a sick man up a hill. Not for such service did men give gold Napoleons. They lied, Carlo, Beppo, Lorenzo, and the oaf from San Ghomigniano of the Seven Towers. They all lied, and Matteo, who was certainly in most evil humour that day, tried to knock up the hand in which the Tuscan was jingling them. He of the City of the Seven Towers felled Matteo, who would never have forgiven him, if the bone-splintering blow of the mattock in the hand of Arcadius had not come to fill the hater with the hope of a greater vengeance. Nevertheless the thought of the rich man who dwelt on the slopes of Mont St. André, with sacks of golden Napoleons on either side of every room, kept haunting him. Matteo could neither eat nor sleep till he had seen. So he took a half-holiday without asking permission (the beginning of his quarrel with the huge Arcadius) and, stealing a skiff from a neighbouring landing, scrambled up the steep face of Mont St. André. Fortune willed that he should meet the junior _lycéens_ out for a walk, two and two, with only a weak _pion_ to restrain them. Naturally Matteo was mocked and mobbed. Matteo drew a knife, and grinned like a wild cat, but recognised his error in time, accepted the situation, and with the hate of hell in his heart, began to show the juniors knife tricks--how to let it fall always with the point down, how to send it whizzing like a gleam of light deep into the heart of a tree, which might just as well have been the heart of a man. At last he got clear of them, smiling and bowing, till the sober-coated little rascals were lost to sight on the high path. Then he brandished his knife in fury, and vowed that if he could he would cut the throat of every wretched imp among them. But at the sound of voices he subdued his anger, and, humbly asking his way from this passer-by and that other, he at last made his way to Gobelet. He knocked long for admission at the porter's lodge, but the porteress seeing such a calumny on God's handiwork outside, and scenting appeals for charity, eyed him disfavourably through the little cross-barred spy-window and let him knock. A little farther down the road, he was quite as unsuccessful at the tower port of the Garden Cottage, over which the Tessiers had been wont to sleep. There was no one in the house at all, yet Matteo le Gaucher quickly running to the top of the bank opposite, imagined he saw faces mocking him at every window. It chanced that for his sins (whatever they may have been) my father was at that moment coming leisurely down the hill, his hands behind his back. He had been up to call upon his friend Renard before his siesta, and they two had argued over-long as to the purport of the fourteenth chapter of the Koran. Suddenly full in his path he found Matteo grovelling before him, his hands and knees covered with blood, foam from his lips, and to all appearance in a state of extreme exhaustion. Now my father, Gordon Cawdor, was a man of very simple and direct mind, so far as the actions of those about him went. He believed that what he saw was the reality. Indeed, so transparent was his honesty that men took fright at it, counting it as the last achievement of duplicity, so that on an average he was as seldom deceived as any other man in the country. Now he cried out for help, and after one or two shouts Saunders McKie and Hugh Deventer came through the gate and took up the seeming epileptic. Saunders was wholly sceptical and when ordered by his master to wash the froth from the sufferer's mouth prospected with such good will for soap within that Matteo, had he dared, would gladly have bitten the finger off. He was compelled to swallow what might have served him another time. "Dowse him wi' a bucket o' water, and let him gang his ways. I like not the look o' the speldron. He is like the Brownie that my Uncle Jock yince saw on the Lang Hill o' Lowden--a fearsome taed it was, juist like this Eytalian." "Hold your peace, Saunders," commented my father. "You, he, and I are as God made us, and little that matters. What is written of us in the Book, _that_ alone shall praise or condemn us!" "Lord's sake, Maister Cawdor," said Saunders, who always wilted before my father in his moments of spiritual reproof, "I was sayin' and thinkin' no different. The Book and What is Written Therein! That's the rub, an' no to be spoken o' lichtly. And after a' the craitur's a craitur, though I will say----" "Say nothing, Saunders, till you have given the unfortunate to eat and drink. Then when he is recovered I shall speak with him a moment." "Weel, Maister Cawdor, let your speech be silver, and no gowden." "You mean, Saunders?" "I juist mean that the buckie has a gallow's look aboot him, and if ye are so ill-advised and--aye, I will say it--sae wicked as to gie him gold, we shall a' hae our throats cuttit in our beds yin o' thae nichts!" Whereupon my father reproved his old servant for narrow-mindedness and evil thinking, but Saunders held his own. "Narrow-mindedness here and ill-thinkin' there," he said, "blessed are they that think no evil, I ken, and that blessing ye are sure o', Maister Cawdor. But ye pay me a wage to keep watch and ward for ye over all evil-doers, and may I never taste porridge mair if this lad doesna smell the reek o' the deil's peats a mile away." Saunders prevailed in the matter of the gold, and it was only a five-franc piece that Matteo carried away from the gate of Gobelet. Hugh Deventer and Alida came out to see off the man who had caused such a disturbance in the peace of the quiet villa. Matteo gazed at Alida with the look of a wild beast before whose cage passes a fine-skinned plump gazelle. He was full to the lips with rage, bitterness, and all uncharitableness. Gobelet he had seen, but owing to the machinations of that enemy of mankind, Saunders, only the great paved kitchen in which the menservants and maidservants passed to and fro, all gazing at him with inquisitive and contemptuous eyes. Ah, if only he could make them smart for that, those full-fed minions whose broken meats had been set down to him, Matteo of Arquà. Not but that these were good, yes, and the wine was excellent. It might be worth while, when he should decide to turn honest, to find some such place, perhaps as porter or lodge-keeper against his old age. So after ringing the piece of a hundred sous on a stone, Matteo gave himself to meditation as he descended to his boat. The house was rich. There were many servants, and access to the money-bags along the wall would be impossible to him. But there were others who would think but little of the task. If only he were at Arquà, he knew of as pretty a gang as ever donned masks--honest, too, in their way, men who would not cheat the indicator of good business out of his lawful share. But here Matteo le Gaucher must think things over. It was vain for him to give away a valuable secret without some guarantee of gain. So Matteo crept back and took to his bed, where he turned the matter over and turned it over, till he began to despair of ever finding a way of bettering his condition without having to work. The touch of the five-franc piece in his pocket, gained by a little dissimulation, had disgusted him with the culture of cauliflower and early potato. Next morning he scamped his work, fell athwart the bluff bows of Arcadius, and so found himself with a broken bone and a wounded wrist in the hospital of La Grâce at Aramon. Here he fell in the way of ex-notary's clerk Chanot, whose practice in his uncle's office soon wormed Matteo's whole confidence from him--that is, save on one point which he kept obstinately to himself. It had long been a question with the Committee of Public Safety where Keller had disappeared to. It was not believed that he had remained long in the Château. A boat had been seen in mid-stream--the sound of voices heard by watchers on the bridge. He might have been less seriously wounded than they supposed, and at Arles, Aix, or even Marseilles he might be seeking help from old-fashioned revolutionaries like himself. The Committee of Public Safety had for some time abandoned all pretence of government. The little red newspaper had stopped. The shops were put under weekly contributions in return for permission to open their doors. No maids or wives came any more to the Aramon markets, and though provisions continued to arrive, they were brought in by farmers who came in bands and well armed. The "government" sat no more in the seats of the mighty, but lounged and swung their legs from the tables, openly and shamelessly discussing the next _coup à faire_, houses to dismantle, or rich men to hold to ransom or doom to death. They smoked and deliberated, an oath at every word. Men who had worked at the Small Arms Factory were now few, though there were still several who had dug the foundations of the big-gun annex--a professional bully or two from the city, deprived by the war of his hareem and his means of livelihood, one or two well-educated youths, _lycée_-bred even, who had "turned out badly," a few clever apprentice workmen from the town, locksmiths and plumbers chiefly, who appreciated idleness and a share in the profits of their skill in opening locks more than the lash of the patron's tongue and the long day's toil from six to six, year in and year out. But all were less martial and more cautious now. They did not think any more of attacking the strong, entrenched position behind which Dennis Deventer and Jack Jaikes kept watch and ward, night and day. They had courage--no man could truthfully say that they lacked that. They had given their proofs. But they knew that the men within the Works were growing stronger. There were rumours that Dennis Deventer had only to hold up his hand and that he would have all the men he wanted within the Château walls. The men who had fought the troops, cleared the town, and set up the "Tatter of Scarlet," the "Old Reds of the Midi," were no longer with the rabble who used the black flag as an excuse for plunder and massacre. The original Commune of Aramon (like that of Paris) had always been meticulously careful as to the rights of private property. No Communalist in Paris enriched himself one sou, at a time when the wealth of all the banks and shops lay within the push of a gun-butt or the explosion of a dynamite cartridge. The men of the Old Commune had come to Dennis, Père Félix at their head, as Nicodemus came to Another long ago, secretly by night. Their chief prayer had been to be allowed, though late, to take part in the defence. Père Félix appealed to Dennis not to discourage these willing hearts. They were all approved Republicans and would fight for their opinion if necessary, but they were no robbers nor murderers--nor would they have any dealings with such. But Dennis had enough men and desired no more. He had kept his own bounds and let any attack him at their peril. Still, there was much they could do. They could send him word of any new scheme of devilry. A written word wrapped about a stone and tossed over the wall at a convenient corner, where a watch was kept, would be sufficient. Or, if proper notice were given, they could come, as to-night, to the Orchard port. But this only upon matters of serious import which could not be put off. Moreover, since Père Félix had all the country of Vaucluse open to him, he could collect provisions from Orange to the Durance. For anything fresh and portable good prices would be given. Yes, they could be delivered at the Orchard gate. Three times a week, on such nights as Père Félix would appoint, he would have a guard put there to receive and transport. Jack Jaikes would settle the bills. They all knew Jack Jaikes. The men looked from one to the other and smiled. Yes, they all knew Monsieur Jack. There was never a man nor a boy in all the Ateliers but knew Monsieur Jack. He had a way with him. He asked for what he wanted, did Monsieur Jack. And he could do more with his bare hands and booted feet when it came to a mêlée (what Jack Jaikes would have called a scrap) than half a dozen ordinary men armed to the teeth. Oh yes, a well-known figure in the Works, Monsieur Jack. In fact, quite a favourite! And they winked at one another, being quite aware that, without the quiver of an eyelash, Dennis Deventer was winking too. * * * * * Matteo lay on his couch in the Hôpital de Grâce nursing his arm. The wound had healed and they were treating the bone by friction now--reducing and suppling it, but causing Matteo a good deal of incidental pain, which the hospital doctors in their careless way took very much as a matter of course. If Matteo had had the long Arquà knife which had been taken away from him, the two _internes_ might have been surprised by a sudden revelation of the sentiments of the patient under treatment. Matteo had privileges, however. The house surgeons only tortured him once a day, and generally about four Chanot came to bring him a screw of tobacco, a little brandy, and the news of the town, adroitly seasoned to suit Matteo's taste in publicity. "Ah, my good Matteo," he would say, as he came in with that nonchalant ease in his gait and that devilish glitter in his eye which made Matteo at once envy and adore him. "Matteo of the left hand, how goes the other to-day? Have you had dreams of the beautiful lady you saw--or imagined you saw--at the house on the hill?" "It was no dream, Master," said the Gaucher, "I saw her. She had brown hair, a wilderness of it, and her lips were redder than the grenadine flower." "The house was a rich one?" "Wonderfully rich. I did not see much of it myself, being only on the ground floor with the servants, but I have four comrades who saw the bags of golden coins heaped up like corn sacks against the wall, and the master is an old man, very wise and learned, who speaks my speech only with a southern accent. He dips his hands into the gold and draws out the Napoleons, jingling and glittering. They run over his palms, set close together like a cup, and slip through his fingers upon the floor, where they lie, for it is not worth while among so much to pick them up. The sweeper has them for his pains in stooping. It is true Master, as God is in heaven. My comrades saw all this and swore on the bones of the blessed Saint Catherine of Siena, whose servant I am, that they spoke no lie." Then would Chanot rise and go his way meditating. There might be some truth at the bottom of this fairy tale. It was worth while thinking over. But there were points to study. Should he take the whole gang into his confidence or only a few? That would depend on the number and courage of the servants--their dispositions to fight for their master--and then the girl--that also was a point to be weighed most carefully. Yet Chanot could by no means put off too long, for the hill of St. André was not far away, and the wind of the rich trover might be wafted down on any breeze. Chanot had no need of temptations to plot or to do evil. These came natural to him. He was better acquainted with the evil he had done than with that which he was going to do. His future was not, if one might say so, on the knees of his gods, but on those of his devils. Anton Chanot had been bred good, but up till now he had never thought, desired, or done aught but evil. Evil, indeed, was his good, and if on occasion he showed himself a little kind, as in the bringing of Matteo's tobacco, it was only that he might obtain the secrets of some man's heart. But Matteo was an Italian, and an Italian of Arquà. He was full of ruse and as little trustful as a Norman peasant. He saw through Chanot's little luxuries. He weighed the news gossip as in a balance, and even the tobacco he smelt curiously, and found of second quality. One person he meant at all hazards to benefit, and that person was Matteo le Gaucher. He was a shrewd schemer, and if it had not been for one thing his conclusions would have been sound. He had forgotten that Anton Chanot would just as lief kill him as any other, without thought or remorse, smiling all the while as when he handed him over the daily paper of tobacco in the hospital of Aramon. CHAPTER XXXVII LOOT I now enter on the final struggle, but before doing so I must recapitulate if only to remind myself of where stands the tale and how much yet remains to be told. It was on the 21st of May and a Sunday. In Paris the lucky Ducatel of the Roads and Bridges was guiding into the city the first division of Vinoy's army under the astonished eyes of Thiers and Mac-Mahon who were looking down from Mont Valerien. There were in Paris in the Tuileries garden thousands who had come to listen to a concert for the wounded of the Commune. Disarray, and a muddling purblindness, kept the Commune talking and talking in the Hôtel de Ville. But the men there at least were honest as other men, and when they became exiles and prisoners they had brought no spoil away with them. Men there were among them who, in the midst of the wholesale slaughter of the Versailles troops, were ready to shoot hostages as did Rigaut and Ferré, or to burn public buildings when driven out, as the Russians did at Moscow--but no thieves. But nowhere, save in one or two towns in the Midi, had the inhabitants to taste the rule of cosmopolitan rascaldom. The Chanot gang made hardly any pretext now, even before the people. The band which ruled Aramon still called itself the Committee of Public Safety, and still met daily at the town house. But all the men knew that they might just as well have been named "The Black Band" or the "Gang of Cartouche." A few belonged to the town and its bordering hamlets--Chanot, Auroy, Grau. But the great majority were adventurers of all grades and nations, come from far, and eager to secure and carry away as much booty as possible from the turmoil. From amongst these, Chanot, quietly ripening his plans, picked out his attacking force. Each had his price, and Chanot chose those younger men, almost lads, who being still apprentices would be content with less, and at the critical moment would not be so likely to get out of hand. The Château and the Factories were held as before, but now more strongly, being strengthened by the steady flood-tide of a public opinion which of all things desired peace. Dennis held to his determination to allow none but his English, Scots, Irish, and Americans within the walls. But even this self-denying prohibition strengthened him and brought other men to his side. The Committee of Public Safety arrested one or two who were over free with their tongues in the public debates of the _cafés_. But the prisoners were soon released, the measure being as useless as unpopular. Besides, they had something else to think about, these patriots of the loot-bag and the _pince-monseigneur_. For all that Chanot made speeches and signed manifestos which were duly posted. A collection of these is under my eyes as I write, and forms one of the most amazing monuments of human impudence it is possible to conceive. "The work of Social equalisation continues." (Such was the edict promulgated on this fateful Sunday.) "The ill-gotten gains of the robbers of the proletariat are slowly being added to the sums held in trust for the people. The Quartier St. Jacques began to be visited last week and the results were so excellent that further perquisitions will be made by our admirable expropriation brigade. "The citizens of Aramon are therefore freed from all taxes of every sort, and the public service of every kind will be carried on with the suborned wealth restored to its proper owners. "During the strike at Creusot, that great oppressor of the people, Schneider, declared that the stoppage of work was costing him eight hundred thousand francs a day!--We may make ourselves happy that the present strike for which we are responsible is costing at least as much to Deventer and the bloodthirsty Company which he represents. Let him not flatter himself because he has escaped so long. His time is near at hand and his doom terrible and sure. "A. CHANOT, "P. CHARDON, &c. "For the Committee of Public Safety. "The Mairie, Aramon-les-Ateliers. "May 21st, 1871." But on the Monday the proclamation of Thiers to the Mayors of Communes throughout France, sent on the Sunday night of the entry, reached Aramon. The text may be given, since the effect was so tremendous and, indeed, cataclysmic. "_Versailles, 21st May, 7.30, evening._ "_The gate of St. Cloud has been forced by the fire of our batteries. General Douai precipitated his command into the breach. At this moment he is occupying Paris with his troops. Ladmirault and Clinchant are moving in support._ "A. THIERS." The message was false in detail, though true in the main fact. A full week's hard fighting in the streets of Paris lay between the army of Versailles and the end of the revolt. But none of those who in the Mairie of Aramon-les-Ateliers bent their heads over the flimsy message doubted for a moment that the day of their own doom was at hand. They began to think of the best means of reaching the most convenient frontier--Italy, Switzerland, or Spain. Some were limited in their choice, owing to previous troubles with the justice of otherwise eligible countries. But all, without exception, knew that the game was up and resolved on flight. Unfortunately the receipts of the Quartier St. Jacques had not come up to expectation, and a general blankness overspread the company till Anton Chanot hinted at a final scheme which would make them rich enough to live years in the safe seclusion of Barcelona or Genoa. He did not tell all he had planned at once. He wished to take only a chosen few into his inner secrets, but he could not make a raid which would involve an armed attack upon the soil of a hostile department without the whole force at this disposal. Chanot therefore flashed before the eyes of the committee promises of boundless loot to be attained by attacking the rich foundation of St. André on the hill over Aramon le Vieux. The church was an ancient one and the treasury had long been one of the sights of the neighbourhood--gold cups, patens, _ciboires_, boxes of inlaid thirteenth-century work, and the jewelled pastoral staff of the saint himself, ablaze with precious stones--all were there, and of a value which would make them rich men, and render their exile, so long as they chose to remain, agreeable and easy. They must refrain, Chanot added, from any disturbance or looting in the town itself. If the monks fought, care must be taken of the school, and the safes in the _économe's_ office, and the treasure of the golden vessels in the church must alone be touched. Marseilles was under military law and had been declared in a state of siege. The troops of General Espivent de la Villeboisnet occupied the city and constituted a barrier not to be passed. No rogue's paradise could be found in Marseilles under martial law. The expedition into the department of Deux Rives, and the attack upon St. André, was therefore their last chance, and it was a great one, of a comfortable exile. Chanot and Chardon counted their adherents who could be trusted, who numbered about thirty, all proven men--not an old "Red," a theoretic Communard or a National Guard among them. They were chary even of any whose families were connected with the Small Arms Factory, for the business must be gone about with the most perfect secrecy. Meantime Chanot took Chardon more fully into his confidence. "We will let these fools thresh away at the walls of the _lycée_. I know a professor there who has a good knowledge of defence. That business will keep them busy all night. Renard is the man's name. He was in the Algerian wars--grand high priest he was, or something like that. But they say that he kilted his petticoats and charged with the regiment. He will be a hard nut to crack if they get out of bed quick enough to man the walls." "But," suggested Chardon, "our business is to take the place before the man is awake. They will keep no watch." "Monks and priests are always about at night in a place like St. André. They have midnight Masses, and they take turns to play the spy on the boys and ushers. Besides" (he beckoned Chardon closer to him and spoke in his ear) "we do not want them to finish the business too soon!" "How so?" cried Chardon, much astonished; "the sooner we get our treasure back the sooner we can divide it and scatter out of Aramon. The game is up." "Up, indeed--I believe you," said Chanot; "but what are some fragments of gold plate? How will they divide those? There will be a battle royal if it comes to that. Do you want to be there and go running helter-skelter over the fields with that rabble? No, you and I have something better on hand. I know where Keller Bey is, his treasure and his daughter!" Chardon looked his amazement, but he did not interrupt. Chanot was a kind of god to him, and it had always been his chief pride to be chosen as his confidant. "No," said the Expropriator-in-Chief, "we will choose two other fellows as determined as ourselves, only more stupid. We will attack the house where Keller Bey lies. I do not know exactly where it is, but I have a guide ready--Matteo le Gaucher, you know him? Well, that does not matter. He has been in hospital but is able for his task now. I have been cooking him with talk and tobacco all through his illness, and I wormed the secret out of him. He was not unwilling. I think he was glad of somebody to confide in, or else he had some vengeance on hand. He is a little twisted atomy and thinks himself at war with all the world." "Can you trust him?" demanded Chardon. "Yes, with a pistol at his ear and a hand on his arm. Otherwise I should as soon think of trusting him as a Protestant pastor!" Chardon grinned delightedly and they began to lay out their plans. They chose the pair who were to share the secret with them. "We want men of action, not gabblers like Barrès. I have a boat ready at Les Saintes to take us off, we must get fellows who can ride, for if we are pursued we must borrow horses and make straight across the Camargue." "Leduc is of that country," said Chardon, "he could guide us, and Violet was a rough-rider in the eleventh hussars." "But are they men to trust?" demanded Chanot, with a sharp suspicion. A man of the country and an ex-cavalryman might account for Chardon and himself in that wild country and no one be any the wiser. Besides, who would trouble themselves about the fate of a couple of fleeing outlaws? "They are as good as you will get," said Chardon, "and we shall be more than their match in any case. They cannot get the boat without you, and without a boat on the coast of Les Saintes a man is like an eel in a trap. He can get in but he cannot get out." CHAPTER XXXVIII THE LAST ADVENTURE OF THE BLACK BAND The last hours of the Black Band in Aramon were marked by many exploits still remembered in the town. Citizens, even men marked for their former devotion to the cause of the workmen, were stopped in the streets and relieved of all they had about them, to their very watches and chains. Shopkeepers were given the alternative of executing an immediate forced loan or having their premises burnt over their heads. Some, running too complacently to the hiding-places of their wealth, found themselves despoiled of all. The two banks were threatened and squeezed alternately. A poll-tax was levied on the population and exacted at the point of the bayonet. Underground reaction growled and raged in Aramon, and if the Committee of Public Safety had remained a few days more, it is likely that they would have found themselves hunted and shot like mad dogs. But they had no such intentions. They acted precisely as does a fraudulent bankrupt who lays his hand on every shilling in preparation for an immediate flight. They did not intend ever to set eyes on Aramon again, and they cared nothing for the dissatisfaction caused by their last measures of rapacity. But the favour accorded to Matteo le Gaucher by the chief of the band at the Mairie had not escaped the notice of his compatriots. The little hunchback one day appeared sunning himself on the bridge wall, with his wrist displaying a gold bangle, which everyone recognised as that which had been worn by Chanot. Instantly the quick Italian suspicions were aroused--and in all Italy none are so silent and shrewd as the men of Tuscany. But though they tried this way and that for a good clue, they were beaten. All they could learn was that Le Gaucher was in the pay of the Bad Men, and that boded no good to their master. So, because they were fond of the big, slow-moving, kindly man, they went back and told him. Arcadius served out a litre of wine apiece to mark his sense of their good-will, but as for any danger from Matteo, he merely shrugged his shoulders. But Arcadius, as he moved in his garden with his dainty mattock in his hand, and in his pocket his garden-scissors, which were strong enough to cut through a branch the thickness of his own thumb, had a vast deal of time for thinking. And generally Arcadius thought to some purpose. He was persuaded that neither Chanot nor any other would trouble their heads about him. They would leave him with his flower seeds, his tree plants, and his brussels-sprouts in peace between the great gate of the cemetery and the rush of the river waters to the sea. But for what, then, would so selfish and insolent a dog as Chanot not only be willing to be openly on good terms with an impossible reptile like Matteo, but actually present him with the gold bangle which he was supposed to wear in memory of an ancient love affair? Arcadius delved and thought. He pruned and snipped and thought, and finally he finished by coming to a conclusion. A wise man was Arcadius, and like all who cultivate the ground his thoughts were longer and wiser than his speech--though that was wise, too, when the slow sluices were raised and Arcadius, under the influence of friendship or wine, let his talk run free. The night of the 24th May, when at Paris the whole city seemed to be burning, was one of great quiet in Aramon. The Band at the Mairie seemed to have tired of their house searchings and the town had rest behind the bolted doors and barred windows which garnished every house, yet in spite of which no man felt safe. With many doubts the burgesses drew on their night-caps, and before climbing into bed, looked out back and front to see if the horizon were lit by the torches of burning houses in the suburbs, and to listen if the gun-butts were not beating some neighbour's door in, trembling all the while lest their time should come next. But for that night the grocer and the wineseller, the grain merchant and the locksmith might sleep in peace beside their coiffed and bonneted spouses. The Black Band had left the Mairie empty and resonant. A part had passed the river in boats. Others had stolen one by one across the bridge, but instead of continuing down the main street of Aramon le Vieux, had twisted sharply round to the left, passed under the railway embankment, threaded a beautiful but difficult pathway overlooking the river, and so at length, a mile below the town, found the boating-parties waiting for them. The four of the inner circle, Chanot, Chardon, Leduc, and Violet, with the necessary Matteo, kept together and avoided any conspicuous part in the arrangements. But Barrès did the talking for everybody. He was most anxious to distinguish himself. He had been taunted with his careful inaction, and now against schoolboys and their professors, mostly men of the peaceful robe, he had suddenly grown very brave indeed. Chanot had his reasons for thinking otherwise. He was playing a game so quaintly double and triple to-night that he smiled as he thought it over, and admired the intricate subtlety of his own brain as compared with the simple criminal instincts of his coadjutors. All the way he kept a hand on the collar of Matteo. The hunchback of Arquà did not fill him with confidence. Indeed, he trusted only Chardon, whose innocent admiration he had long proven sincere. Leduc and Violet were better than the rest, but taken because strictly necessary for the business in hand. After that he, Chanot, would attend to their case. They could not expect to share equally with him. He had discovered Matteo. He had wormed his secret out of him. His was the idea of the masking attack on the Lycée St. André, which would make a noise and occupy the attention of the National Guard of Aramon le Vieux. He had thought of the boat at Les Saintes, and had arranged for it to be in time to meet them there. What had Leduc and Violet to do with these things? Nothing whatever, they were simply privates called from the ranks, and he would see to it that they did not interfere with the perquisites of the Commander-in-Chief. He had even permitted himself to drop a hint of the proposed attack upon Mont St. André in quarters which would ensure a prompt transmission of the news to Dennis Deventer. Chanot only waited the proper moment to disassociate himself from the brigands whom he despised for their ignorance and almost (but not quite) pitied for their simplicity. The scaling party would have lost itself among the trees if it had not been for Chanot. He had been born in the neighbourhood and, if he had chosen, could have led them blindfold. But for his own purposes he allowed them to stumble on, bruising and buffeting themselves against the rocks and trees, losing nerve and temper. Then, just when they were worn out, he found the well-trodden path by the boat-hirer's house, guided them along it, and with encouraging words adjured them to greater silence and caution. In fact, he behaved in every way like the model leader of an expedition. If any had doubted him before, he had repented in dust and ashes when Anton the wise, Anton Chanot, turned over the leadership to Barrès, who, as his manner was, grasped it eagerly, without thanks, and simply as a right too long withheld. The attack had been timed for midnight, when the ditches of the old fortress were to be crossed, the scaling-ladders which they had carried applied to the walls, and they would find themselves inside. The treasure was in the chapel, at least the bulk of it. The rest was in the safes of the _économe_, who had his bureaux opposite. That wing, therefore, of the college must be held against all comers, while with chisel and file, jemmy and dynamite the "expropriators" were busy with their task. So little did these men trust each other that one man from each company was nominated to see the enumeration of the plate and to watch the opening of the safes. One man they trusted, Chanot, and their respect was heightened by his declaration that he desired no part of the spoil for himself. They had followed him faithfully, and if he could reward those who had stood by him when the majority drew back to save their skins, he was content. A base of simplicity and even sentimentality underlies the brutality of many criminals. One has only to note the songs which are applauded at a penitentiary or reformatory concert. These men believed Chanot, and preferred his self-abnegation to the rhodomontades of Barrès, who repeatedly declared that he, and he alone, would lead them to victory. The black half-hour of waiting was horribly trying to the nerves. They were quite on the top of things, and though the night was so dark, they could see the walls of St. André cutting the sky and shutting out the stars. The woods through which they had come were now retired farther back--or at least so it seemed. The plateau stretched out behind, mysteriously grey, gradually descending towards Nîmes and St. Gilles, but almost imperceptibly. Indeed, to the eyes of those town birds of prey, it seemed a plain. That was their path of safety. By it they would make good their retreat, laden with a golden spoil. The signal was to be the striking of the Mairie clock, the golden, illuminated dial of which, almost beneath their feet, testified in the tranquillity which had not ceased to reign in Aramon le Vieux. The old conservative and Protestant town had known how to keep its gates closed, its inhabitants safe (if not very prosperous), and always behind the dial of its Mairie clock was to be seen the equal shining of the mellowest and gentlest light in the world. During ten minutes the hand of Chanot pushed Matteo steadily before him into the dusky covert of the wood. At the same moment three men at different parts of the attacking line glided away unnoticed. The hands of the clock moved on. Though the figuring of the dial was too distant to be made out, the black lines of the minutes and hour hands could be seen approaching one another. It was time for Chanot to be elsewhere. He had other work and Matteo must guide him. They slipped in Indian file through the wood, Chanot still with his hand upon the Left Handed man's shoulder. For an instant Matteo seemed to hesitate. He had ascended from the other side and Gobelet was hard to find, but at last he struck the main road between the town and the _lycée_ above. It appeared to be perfectly empty, but Chanot whispered angrily in his guide's ear. They must get back into shelter. Here they were exposed to any passers-by--nay, to the first faint-hearted deserter from the attack above. A thrill passed through Matteo's heart. He gave thanks to his patron saint and promised candles for his altar when he should be rich. Before him was the bombed forehead of the gatehouse of Gobelet. The gate itself was padlocked securely, and the top adorned with spikes, but Chanot made no attempt there. He only skirted the wall till he found a place which pleased him. Then he ordered Leduc and Violet to make a ladder up which the light Chardon climbed. Then came Matteo and Chanot himself. Lastly the ladder was dissolved into its elements and all found themselves on the inner side of the garden wall of Gobelet. Matteo now advanced with more certainty. Yes, the house lay there through this gate, along this path. There was the well-shelter he had seen, and above them rose the dark side of the house, where was the kitchen entrance and all the apartments of service. "BONG--BONG--BONG!" Solemnly, and with an air of detachment from merely worldly affairs, the big hammer gave out the twelve strokes of midnight. Just so had it once called holy nuns to prayer in the Convent of the Visitation, and it tolled just the same to let loose a pack of the worst ruffians on earth upon the chapel of St. André. Anton Chanot listened carefully. He knew that now the _fossés_ would be crossed and the scaling-ladders laid against the walls. But sudden and startling there came down the hill a wild yell, mingled of pain and anger. Rifles ripped and crashed. A light filtered through the tree-tops, which faintly illuminated the covered well-stoop under which the five were hiding. "What fools!" said Chanot, cursing his late companions. "They have begun firing too soon! And the light? Can they have already set fire to the chapel?" He did not know that fate and a message from Dennis Deventer had served him well--that is, so far as his immediate purpose was concerned. The missive which Hugh Deventer received at Gobelet contained these words in his father's hand: "St. André to be attacked to-night. Go up and see what you can do. I send you some arms--also Brown with an electric-light plant which you may find useful." Hugh was compelled to go, and though he hated to leave Gobelet and Alida, he dared not disobey his father. Besides, hidden among its woods and showing no façade to tempt plunderers, he did not believe that my father's house was in any great danger. In this he was right so far as the Band of the Mairie was concerned, but he had not taken into account the vendetta of Matteo, the ambitions of Chanot, and the plot against the person of Alida. The noise on the hill-top seemed rather to increase than to diminish, volley responded to volley, and to the yells of the brigands another cry, shriller and more piercing, replied. Chanot had altered his plans and taken his cue while he stood listening. He had some remarkable qualities and this readiness was one of them. He had intended to break his way into Gobelet before the noise of the assault brought up the swarming town or the National Guard of Aramon le Vieux. But this (he saw now) would not do. Already on the Place Beauvais they were beating to arms. Well, he must make the more haste. So without an alteration of his determined bearing he walked round the house and knocked loudly at the main door. My father, who as usual was not yet in bed, threw open a first-floor window (for those on the ground floor had been closed and strengthened by the hand of Hugh Deventer). "What can I do for you?" my father inquired courteously. "Let us in for God's sake, they are killing everyone up at the _lycée_. We have escaped--my friends and I, _pions_, and the others, three honest fellows from the gardens, whom we picked up on our way." "Wait a moment, gentlemen," my father called out, "and if you will pardon the delay, you shall have all the shelter and succour my house can give you!" "What a lamb!" murmured Chanot, "he presents us with his fleece. Are all foreigners fools?" "All English are," snarled Matteo. "In my country we give them to our children to cheat--to prove their teeth upon." The door opened, and there before them, a lamp in his hand, stood the gentle scholar, Gordon Cawdor, with a smile of welcome on his face. The less instructed four would have leaped upon him immediately, but Chanot held them back. I can see my father standing there before his potential butchers, inviting them to enter with a single large movement of the hand, infinitely noble and touching to me to think of to-day. He precedes them with an apology. They tramp after him, treading on one another's heels in haste to see the sacks of coin reported by Matteo. That worthy has drawn his knife from its sheath. The others have made ready their revolvers. Only Chanot has the education and the strength of will to keep a hold upon himself--which in turn gives him a hold upon his comrades. A stern gesture bade them put up their arms. They must play out their parts and follow his lead. In the study they found lights, a fire, and tier upon tier of books climbing to the ceiling--a marvellous place, undreamed of by any of them. But where were the bags of coin, the wallets stuffed with bank-notes with which they were to flee across the wilderness of the Camargue? "Seat yourselves, gentlemen, a welcome to you," said the host. "You are well out of the trouble and safe with me." And he set before them meat and drink, such as he could find in the cupboards of Saunders McKie. "I do not disturb my servants for what I can do myself," he added smilingly, "but you are welcome and--here is Madame Keller and her daughter Alida--which means that our dear invalid goes better. Madame, Mademoiselle, let me introduce to you some new friends who have taken refuge with us. The _lycée_ has been beset by brigands and these gentlemen have come to claim, what Gobelet has never refused, the right of asylum." At sight of Alida in her white, gauzy robes, standing in the doorway, a thrill ran through the blood of Chanot. Never had he looked on such beauty. His heart beat thick, and instinctively he glanced sideways at his followers. Matteo sat bent forward, almost crouched as for a spring, his eyes small and glowing red like those of a wild boar before he charges. Chardon was open-mouthed, but watchful of his leader. Leduc and Violet showed their teeth and fingered the hilts of their revolvers. A kind of revulsion of feeling passed over Chanot, perhaps as much akin to what we in Scotland would call conversion as can be imagined of a trained and thorough-paced French scoundrel. Under his breath he bade Leduc and his companion to keep their seats, and kept his own hand hard on the shoulder of Matteo. "We thank you, ladies, for your presence," he said, with his pleasantest manner. "We had not expected so great an honour." But Alida, glad of new faces and eager for news of Hugh Deventer, whose desertion had left her companionless, asked many questions, to some of which it took all Chanot's readiness to answer. She was, however, called off by Linn, who presently issued from the kitchen with a dish of eggs hastily cooked. "There is bread on the sideboard, cut it for these gentlemen!" said Linn. And Alida hastened to serve each in turn, with a smile that was an accomplishment in flattery. Then followed a strange hour. The sound of shouting and continuous firing could be heard from above. On the road outside the hoofs of horses clattered, and more than once Chanot thought that he heard the jingle of harness. But with my father at the head of the table talking gently and equably, and Alida at the foot with her chin on her clasped hands, the men sat and listened. Chardon answered when he was spoken to, but he kept looking at his chief for guidance. Leduc and Violet drank steadily, though Chanot tried to kick them under the table. Matteo alone could not be still. His breath whistled between his teeth. He leaned over to Chanot and whispered, "Kill, kill--if you do not, I shall!" But even for him the influence of these peaceful surroundings had its power. The richly carpeted floor, the table with many flowers, the rows on rows of beautifully bound books, were so much powerful necromancy to the Man from Arquà. But it could not last. The wolf must spring, and Chanot watched him with an anxious eye. "_Kill--kill!_" The words came like the hiss of a poison snake. They had come to the end of the meal now and were trifling with their wineglasses--that is, Chanot and Chardon did so. Leduc and Violet looked on stupidly, but not yet ready for any movement against their chief. Only Matteo had become intractable. He at least would not be done out of his prize by a handful of fine words. So Chanot should know. Matteo was in the house of the treasure, and he meant to have his fingers among the clinking pieces. "_Kill, man, kill, or I shall kill!_" Chanot looked about apprehensively. Surely this time they must have heard. But my father continued his talk upon the early art of Provence and from her end of the table Alida placidly listened, all her thoughts intent on the speaker. Matteo rose unsteadily and stumbled towards her. She sat back in her chair with a gesture of fear. For the big hairy hands of the Arquàn were groping to seize her. "Oh, take him away," she cried, turning to Chanot as the leader, perhaps also because of the human qualities she had seen in his eyes--not exactly good, but with the capacity for good. "I shall take the _donzella_!" cried Matteo, and caught her about the neck. Linn was beside her in a moment, but even her powerful hands could not disengage that hairy clutch. The fierce visage frothing at the lips was close to Alida's face. She moved her head this way and that. "Save me--save me!" she cried out in an agony of fear. "_Kill--kill--lay out the others--take your gold--the gold I found for you--the girl for me!_" All were now on their feet. Chardon was watching his chief. Chanot's face was pale as wood ash, but there was on it a kind of joy--the strength of a new resolve. "To the door--Leduc, and you, Violet," he ordered, "wait for me outside. I have something which will satisfy you!" The men moved uncertainly away. Things were turning out strangely. Was Chanot turning traitor? If so--they would see. But the power of the stronger will was upon them, and they were soon in the garden. They came out on a dark, shadowy world, in which all things seemed of the same colour, but scented of flowers and the full bloom of the _tilleul_, the bee-haunted lime tree of the south. Above them they heard the irregular rattle of musketry, and the din of combat. A fierce light beat upon the tree-tops at intervals. No fire could pierce like that. The gleam was far too steady. It looked like the beam of an electric arc-lamp, but how could the Jesuit professors of St. André have come into possession of such a thing? Within the house of Gobelet they heard the voice of Matteo uplifted. "_Kill--kill--you have turned soft, I shall kill you, Chanot. Matteo of Arquà is not to be cheated!_" Leduc and Violet looked back through the door out of which they had come. The hall was dusk, but a light was burning somewhere out of sight. They could see a couple emerge out of the passage which led to the study--Chanot pushed the Arquàn in front of him. The face of the chief was calm, but of a ghastly pallor--his lips almost disappearing, so firmly were they set. His blue eyes had the dull glitter of lapis lazuli, or rather of malachite--green rather than blue. But they were not good to see. Death looked out of them, and chilled the marrow of Leduc and Violet. Not for the world would they have crossed the will of Chanot at that moment. They could see Chardon shutting the door of the study from within, and guessed that he was left there on guard, but they could not hear Chanot's courteous last words of excuse for Matteo, "I fear this gentleman is ill. He is from Italy and troubled with fever. He will be better outside. I will conduct him." "Shut the door and let no one pass," he added to Chardon, in a rapid whisper, "talk as if nothing had happened till I come back!" And the next moment he was pushing his prisoner along the corridor. Leduc and Violet saw them come, and made ready to fall in behind, but they were not prepared for what followed so swiftly. Matteo le Gaucher suddenly dropped to the floor, pulling his collar out of the grasp of his captor. Then, quick as thought, he drew a long knife from his belt and struck the deadly forward blow at Chanot--the Arquàn blow below the belt for which there is no parry. But Chanot had not for nothing been President of the Athletic and Sportive Association of the Midi. He was in admirable training and his eye forestalled the Gaucher's movement. It was a fine thrust, delivered with the broad-cutting edge upward. No man, even in Arquà, could have saved himself. But Chanot had leaped aside, nimble as a cat. And the next moment the knife was stricken from the Arquàn's hand. There was a wild, fierce struggle there on the threshold, the movements of the combatants being so quick that Leduc and Violet dared not interfere lest they should harm the wrong man. Biting, kicking, and scratching, Matteo le Gaucher was shoved out across the gravel, over the lawn and into a little _clairière_ upon which shone directly the beam of Hugh Deventer's electric installation up on the heights of Mont St. André. Leduc and Violet had followed marvelling, their eyes starting from their heads, eager to see the end like children at a play. They knew that this was the chief's business and that he must finish it for himself. In the middle of the green cleared space was a rustic bench, and the ground was thickly strewn with pine-cones and needles. Chanot thrust his prisoner's head down till he lay across the back of the seat, and then, without haste and calmly as a man who consults his watch, he drew from his pocket a revolver and fired once behind Matteo's ear. There was no struggle. That had gone before. Chanot was very calm, and as for Matteo he only shuddered and sank in a heap, his body swinging arms down over the rustic bench. The fierce light of the arc-lamp lay on the _clairière_ and Matteo's shadow made a strange toad-like patch on the grey-green sward. That was all. "Now, Leduc, and you, Violet, take up this carrion and carry him near enough to the fighting up yonder to be clear of all connection with this house. There is no treasure here. He deceived us, like the Italian he was. But I shall not deceive you." He opened his pocket-book and took out small notes for two thousand francs. One thousand he gave to Leduc and the other to Violet. "I shall meet you in Spain," he said, "and there I shall expect to receive from you an account of this night's mission. I am not to be trifled with as you see. I warn you to be very faithful. Take up the Arquàn, and I will see you safe outside the wall." He unlocked the gate which opened from the grounds of the Garden Cottage into the road, and stood watching them, as they toiled painfully up the hill, Violet leading with the dead man's legs over his shoulders, and Leduc supporting his head, the long, hairy arms which had wrought so much evil trailing in the dust. "_Missa est! Amen!!_" said Chanot, who had served Mass in his time, and turning on his heel he strode back towards the house of Gobelet. CHAPTER XXXIX THE CONVERSION OF CHANOT "The gentleman has perfectly recovered," he announced with sympathetic gravity in answer to Alida's questions. "Matteo of Arquà has long been subject to such attacks, but the best medical advice agrees that they have lost force of late, and, in fact, are not likely again to recur. As for Messieurs, the gentlemen who have taken him for an airing, they have business which calls them away before the morning, so they will not be able to return. I make their apologies. They came with us--yes--for safety, but they were not quite of our world, Chardon's and mine--eh, Chardon?" Chardon mutely acquiesced, and Chanot sat down beside Alida, who, with a gesture of gratitude, gave him her hand. "He frightened me," she said, smiling gratefully, "that man from Arquà. He has the Evil Eye. Thank you for taking him away. Ugh!--I can feel his hands upon me still." Chanot kept the little hand with the silver ring upon it in both of his. He bent and kissed it reverently. As he did so the door opened and there stood in the dark passage-way a startling figure. It was Keller Bey, his head wrapped about with bandages like cere cloths, his reddish white beard shaggy and unkempt, his arm bandaged, and his dressing-gown frayed and tarnished. But in his eyes the fire of fever burned like the braise of a Yule log, dull and ominous. With one lean finger he pointed to Chanot as he sat by the table. He called him by name. "What do you here, bandit and traitor?" he demanded. "But for you there would have been peace in Aramon, the best of governments, and--you broke it all up. Touch not the hand of the daughter of kings! There is blood upon your own, sower of the wind, assassin, wild ass of the desert!" Here he leaped into Arabic, understood only by Alida and Gordon Cawdor. "Go--get hence, hound!" he thundered. "You have done enough evil--would you pursue me even to this quiet place?" "Hush, father!" said Alida, going hastily to his side; "he has saved my life--perhaps all our lives." "He is my enemy!" "He is my friend!" As Alida said this, she turned and smiled upon Chanot. The young man repressed a groan. "If I had known," he muttered, "ah, if I had known. But it is too late." Linn had been watching her time, and now, by a swift intervention, got Keller Bey out of the library and back to his own room. He had in fact missed her presence and wandered out in search. Then, at sight of the arch-enemy of his ideal rule, memory had returned to him. After the departure of Keller Bey my father left the room to assure himself that all was well in the sick man's chamber, and that Linn wanted for nothing. Chanot and Alida were left practically alone, for Chardon, obedient to his chief's eye, had withdrawn into an alcove where, with a book in his hand, he slept or pretended to sleep. "My father is wandering in his mind," she said, letting the light of her young eyes dwell upon his. "He had a bullet which grazed the brain----" "I fired that bullet," said Chanot, with bent head. "But not in anger--not to do him any hurt?" The voice of Alida was almost pleading now. She wanted to think well of this young man. "Not more than any other," he answered, after a look at her. "We did not wish--we could not permit--I will not weary you with politics, but I want you to know that I put down Keller Bey. I fired the River Quarter. I was the chief of the plunderers. I deserve death a score of times. I came here to rob and if necessary to kill----" "No--no!" cried Alida, reaching out her hand a second time. "I saw you with the little Italian. He had a knife. I saw him reaching for it, and that made me feel for mine. You see, I am from Algeria and go armed. He came to kill, if you like. But not you--you are a gentleman!" "Thank you," said Chanot quickly, but still not taking her hand, "it will help--that which you have said--when it comes to the pinch. I am--I was a gentleman!" "A brave one and true," said the girl, and then, something she had heard or read working in her head, she added, "gentle and a gentleman." The day was coming up over the river, and soon the lamps in the room burned faint and yellow. Chardon, waking, opened the window by which he sat and the fresh air of the May morning fanned out the heated atmosphere. The coolness brought a faint flush to Alida's cheek and her lips grew redder. Chanot rose to his feet and held out his hand. "Good-bye, dear lady--I have met you too late. Yet do not think quite unkindly of me, of whom much evil will be spoken." "Chardon," he said, "I leave you here on guard. I commit these ladies to you--should--should any of our people--you understand." Chardon stood without bareheaded, watching his leader go. Chanot reached the Garden Cottage in time to find himself face to face with a company of soldiers--red-breeched infantry men they were, of the 131st of the line. These were under the command of a very young officer in a tremendous haste. He held a piece of paper in one hand and with the other he knocked loudly, with the hilt of his recently acquired sword, on the door of the Garden Cottage. "I have a warrant for the instant arrest of the chief of the Aramon insurrection. I am advised that he lives here. His name is Keller, Charles Keller." "I am the chief of the Aramon insurrection," said Chanot calmly, "I am Keller!" The rattle of the _peloton_ fire came irregularly from above, among the rocks of St. André. Chanot heard it and knew his fate. No lingering trial for him, no stupid military commanders murmuring sleepily over a foregone verdict. "There against the wall--we must cross the river--there is no time to lose. Form a firing party." The young officer, in a hurry, fairly jetted out his orders. "_Mon lieutenant_," said Chanot coolly, "there are ladies within the Château of Gobelet--the house you see yonder through the trees. It belongs to a great English scholar, who is a friend of Monsieur Thiers, and a historian like him. I have no objections to being shot, but you will have the goodness to let me march with you till we turn the corner of the policies. Then we will have a steep cliff and the river below, which will be convenient." The lieutenant nodded. His men were ordered in that direction, and so it chanced that twenty of the defenders of our Château Schneider witnessed the end of the Black Insurrection of Aramon. Jack Jaikes and the others of the old machine-gun gang greeted the appearance of Chanot guarded and marching to execution with a yell of triumph. "Allerdyce--Allerdyce!" they shouted, and turned aside that they might see. I also went with them, not knowing aught of the history of the night. We came out on a plain sward overlooking the river. A path ran along and there was a low wall, with lizards darting everyway in the sun. The _peloton_ formed up with the readiness of practice, and the officer raised his sword. Chanot stepped briskly to the wall, and as he drew up his tall figure and stood facing us with squared shoulders, I think I never saw anyone so transfigured. The sullen wolfishness was all gone. His eyes shone like those of a boy engaged in some innocent frolic. But his mien was grave as befitted the circumstances. He had been smoking a cigarette when the officer accosted him. He threw away the remainder with a smile. "Have you anything to say?" demanded the officer. "Only good-bye!" "Anything to leave?" "Only life!" "Then you are ready?" "I am ready!" The officer let his sword drop and as from a great distance I seemed to hear his voice commanding "Fire!" The volley rang out, and Chanot, taking a step backwards as if driven by the impact of the bullets, toppled over into the deep and rapid Rhône and was seen no more. The young officer was methodical. He drew out of his breast a note-book, and into this he entered several lines which, perhaps that we might bear witness, he read aloud. "May 25th, 1871. Upon the hill called St. André, immediately above the Rhône, I caused to be executed one Charles Keller, upon his own confession, as being the chief of the revolt in Aramon-les-Ateliers." "No, no!" cried Jack Jaikes and several others before they thought. "Eh! what's that?" demanded the infantry lieutenant, wheeling upon us with his note-book and pencil still in his hand. I had just time to whisper one word to Jack Jaikes. That word was "Fool!" To the others I conveyed as well as I could that they were to hold their tongues. "Who are you, and what do you mean by 'No, no'?" "I am Dennis Deventer's second-in-command," said Jack Jaikes. "I stood the two sieges in command of the machine guns, which I had made myself, and by saying 'No--no' I meant that there were other chiefs besides this one whom you have sent to his account!" "No doubt," said the officer drily; "the others are up yonder under the walls. We surrounded them while they were blocked by young Deventer's wire entanglements and dazzled by his electric light. But why have you left your fortifications and why----" He stopped his questions, for just then Rhoda Polly strolled nonchalantly upon the sward. He stood staring at her. Rhoda Polly held out her hand to the young man. "I am Dennis Deventer's daughter," she said, English, smiling, and frank, "not his only one, but the only one who counts on days like these." The lieutenant flushed and bowed. He wished the firing party would stand a little closer about a certain square of the green turf. He need not have troubled, Rhoda Polly's mind was a hundred miles from any idea of minute observation at that moment. "_Tiens!_ The 131st!" she exclaimed. "If you cross the river you must go up and see my father. Your colonel is rather a pet of his!" At the idea of their fire-eating bristling old colonel being anybody's pet, a smile passed among the rank and file, but the lieutenant being well-mannered remained grave. "I shall immediately do myself the honour of waiting on your father!" He marched his men down the hill. Jack Jaikes and his party stepped out on the highway which led to St. André. Only Rhoda Polly and I lingered. CHAPTER XL THE LAST OF THE "TATTER OF SCARLET" Rhoda Polly was on her way to see her friend Alida, and knowing well that parental permission would be refused her in the troublous state of the neighbourhood, she had taken it and followed unobtrusively in the wake of Jack Jaikes and his party. I had trouble even now to get her away from the scene of the execution. She would have sat down on the very spot, save that I hastened her departure, saying that I must go back and see her father. I had, I said, both news and a message for him. So we walked through the woods to Gobelet, very quietly and without much talk between us. We reached there to find that Dennis Deventer had just arrived from the Château, that Chardon had disappeared, and that Hugh was in the full flush of his morning's triumph. His father nodded approval. As for Alida she clung to his arm and looked up in his face. I do not think she was conscious of my presence in the room, and even upon Rhoda Polly she only bestowed a left-handed greeting without letting go her hold upon Hugh Deventer. Verily the manners of the East are strange. I knew very well that she would find her hero one day, but I never supposed he would come to her in my poor Hugh's likeness. I felt a sudden leap of loneliness in my heart and moved nearer to Rhoda Polly. _She_ would never look at me like that. But instead she stood on tiptoe till her lips were near my ear and whispered, "I have always known it would be so--don't they look silly?" It was a point of view, though at that moment hardly mine, but who was I that I should grudge Hugh Deventer his one hour of triumph? He was telling his story. "I heard them all about us, and I knew they were getting ready for the rush. There were about forty of us, professors, _pions_, and seniors, to whom rifles could be served. I tell you I had a time finding out who could shoot even a bit. I had to try each with a dummy gun to see how he handled it. They lied so--yes, even the professors! "But your old Renard was a brick. He spotted the sportsmen as if by magic and remembered the boys whose fathers had shootings. He helped a lot, I can tell you--and tucked up his black gown and hopped about on his thin legs (which were black too) as lively as a cricket. "Brown was attending to the electric lamp and barbed-wire obstacles while I was doing the drill sergeant, and by ten we had the business in pretty fair shape. I set the posts as you told me, sir, or as near as possible. For, of course, having been a pupil, the old place was like my bedroom to me, and I knew just where they would try to rush us." His father nodded, and the smile which accompanied the nod encouraged the hero to continue. Not that this was necessary, for at his elbow Alida was behaving most foolishly. ("_You_ never looked at me like that, Rhoda Polly," I whispered, "the night when we blew them back from the Big Gate, when Jack Jaikes and I fought in the open." "Hadn't time," retorted Rhoda Polly, "besides, I was in that business as well as you. Did you think that I had been left behind in the Château cellar?") "Just when twelve struck," Hugh proceeded, "they dashed into the ditch with a yell--just at the places you said, father, when I showed you the plan I had made. But the wire and stakes brought them all up standing. My black regiment fired all round the wall. I don't believe they hit many, but the crackle of the rifle fire was a very disconcerting circumstance, and at any rate Brown and I 'scourged' them well with your repeaters, sir. Brown had switched on his big search-light and everything was as bright as glory. "'How many were there?' That I could not say, sir. They looked a lot when they clumped together, which was not often. But the line was thin-sown when they spread out to take cover. The professors swore to a hundred, but I could not really make it more than fifty. "They let fly at us, but we were all behind the big stone wall. The bullets whizzed over us, and spotted the walls, but that was all. Then they drew off to hold a council. "Once they nearly got us. They had dynamite or some infernal stuff, and they blew up the outer main gate. But then, as you know, that did not much matter, for the really strong one is twenty yards farther on, and those who ran in found themselves up Blind Alley. I tell you, sir, Brown and I sacrificed them before they got out. But they kept it up, firing at us till dawn without ever making a hit. They saw the uselessness of this at last, and were just hopping off over the plateau on the road to Spain, when the red breeches put in an appearance, and nabbed the lot--that is very nearly all, for some got away by the woods. "'After that?'--Well, sir. I shall tell you the rest to-night. I came down here to see how Mr. Cawdor was getting on." Hugh Deventer had so clearly the floor that I did not attempt to interfere. Nor did I grudge him his glory. Had we not, Jack Jaikes, Rhoda Polly, and I, seen a greater thing--the fight over Allerdyce's gun before the main entrance? "Come out on the terrace, Rhoda Polly," I said, for I really had had enough of Hugh's strutting and Alida's languorous glances. We passed through the tall window out upon the lawn, and went slowly to the crescent sweep of the promenade, which made so beautiful a look-out station over the river. The morning smoke was rising over Aramon-les-Ateliers. Within the factory some of the tall chimneys were already sending forth long trails of vapour. Dennis Deventer's gangs were preparing for a return to normal conditions. The secret negotiations had been going on some time. The men were wearying to get back. The tyranny of the Black Band was wholly dissipated, and honest folks breathed freely. The women were more anxious than the men. For if the city should be occupied by troops--if military tribunals were set up, where would their husbands be so safe as in the factory? Dennis Deventer had the long arm. Dennis Deventer could protect his own. I looked at Rhoda Polly, and she smiled. "I suppose there is really nothing to say," I said, answering her glance. "This is not proper love-making, but we simply can't do without one another, can we, Rhoda Polly? So it has just got to be." "I suppose so," said Rhoda Polly, looking far out across the flat lands to the blue line of the Mediterranean. "But what are you going to do all day--and I? We are busy people, Angus Cawdor, and in idleness we should soon quarrel!" She swung her legs engagingly, awaiting my answer. "Well," I said, "I will let you into a secret. My father's next book, 'A History of the Third Republic,' is to have both our names on the title-page. Also I am to translate all his books into French. You have got to help." "I shall love it," cried Rhoda Polly, "but what else am I to do?" "You will have this house of Gobelet to be sole mistress of, and, besides, you and your mother must superintend the housekeeping of Linn and Keller Bey in the Garden Cottage!" "But, Angus, have you thought of Jeanne?" "What Jeanne?" "Jeanne Félix, sir!" I was so stunned I could not answer, so great was my astonishment. Rhoda Polly had not been so blind as I had supposed--or was it possible that Jeanne herself----? No, I thanked Heaven that at least need not be thought of. Rhoda Polly laughed a ringing, joyous laugh, and gave my arm a little playful clutch. "Silly," she said, "I will put you out of any remorse you may feel for any of your misdeeds. Jeanne is to be married to young Emile Bert, the fruit-grower of Les Cabannes. She is at last going to reward his constancy--as I am yours!" She looked at me with gay, ironic eyes. The vixen! I did not answer. It was indeed a difficult corner to turn with plain lying, but most happily at that moment we saw a strange and memorable thing. Across the river, from the fort which dominated the town, and also from the high tower of the Mairie, we saw the red flag of revolt flutter down, and simultaneously, like a burst of sunlight, the tricolour was broken out at each mast-head, gay and hopeful in that entrancing Provençal air. Instinctively Rhoda Polly's hand sought mine. We both stood silent and bareheaded as in the presence of the dead, for both of us knew that we had looked our last upon the "Tatter of Scarlet." THE END WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ PRINCESS PENNILESS Crown 8vo, net, 2_s._ Popular Edition, 6_d._ THE DEW OF THEIR YOUTH Crown 8vo, cloth, 6_s._ Popular Edition, 6_d._ ROSE OF THE WILDERNESS Cloth, net, 2_s._ Popular Edition, 6_d._ THE CHERRY RIBBAND New Cloth Edition, net, 1_s._ LADS' LOVE Popular Edition, 6_d._ DEEP MOAT GRANGE Popular Edition, 6_d._ LOVE IN PERNICKETTY TOWN Crown 8vo, cloth, 6_s._ Popular Edition, 6_d._ THE SMUGGLERS Crown 8vo, cloth, 6_s._ Cloth, net, 7_d._ ANNE OF THE BARRICADES Crown 8vo, cloth, 6_s._ THE MOSS TROOPERS Crown 8vo, cloth, 6_s._ SWEETHEARTS AT HOME Crown 8vo, cloth, 6_s._ LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON Transcriber's Notes: Dialect was not altered. Alternate and obsolete spellings in English were retained; French words with circonflex or that lack an accent aigu were not altered. Remaining punctuation was standardized. The list of books by the same author was moved from the beginning to the end of the book. One footnote is indented and follows the paragraph in which the anchor occurs. Other alterations: changed "remoneur" to "ramoneur" ... the woodman, the _ramoneur_ or sweep,... changed "Guguss" to "Gugusse" ... garlic-smelling 'Gugusse' who ... changed "as" to "at" ... just at that moment ... changed "Préfeture" to "Préfecture" ... of the Sous-Préfecture.... added a space between "after a" ... putting a boat to rights after a night's fishing ... changed "beng" to "being" ... roof being long perfected ... changed "wil" to "will" ... the beasts will slink back to their lairs ... removed hyphen from 'fairy-tale' ... at the bottom of this fairy tale.... changed "Espivnet" to "Espivent" ... troops of General Espivent ... 
6942	----	[Illustration: Bookcover] [Illustration: Spine THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN By Walter Scott TALES OF MY LANDLORD COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM, SCHOOLMASTER AND PARISH CLERK OF GANDERCLEUGH. SECOND SERIES. [Illustration: Frontispiece] [Illustration: Titlepage_1] [Illustration: First Poem] THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. Hear, Land o' Cakes and brither Scots, Frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat's, If there's a hole in a' your coats, I rede ye tent it; A chiel's amang you takin' notes, An' faith he'll prent it! Burns. EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. SCOTT began to work on "The Heart of Mid-Lothian" almost before he had completed "Rob Roy." On Nov. 10, 1817, he writes to Archibald Constable announcing that the negotiations for the sale of the story to Messrs. Longman have fallen through, their firm declining to relieve the Ballantynes of their worthless "stock." "So you have the staff in your own hands, and, as you are on the spot, can manage it your own way. Depend on it that, barring unforeseen illness or death, these will be the best volumes which have appeared. I pique myself on the first tale, which is called 'The Heart of Mid-Lothian.'" Sir Walter had thought of adding a romance, "The Regalia," on the Scotch royal insignia, which had been rediscovered in the Castle of Edinburgh. This story he never wrote. Mr. Cadell was greatly pleased at ousting the Longmans--"they have themselves to blame for the want of the Tales, and may grumble as they choose: we have Taggy by the tail, and, if we have influence to keep the best author of the day, we ought to do it."--[Archibald Constable, iii. 104.] Though contemplated and arranged for, "The Heart of Mid-Lothian" was not actually taken in hand till shortly after Jan. 15, 1818, when Cadell writes that the tracts and pamphlets on the affair of Porteous are to be collected for Scott. "The author was in great glee . . . he says that he feels very strong with what he has now in hand." But there was much anxiety concerning Scott's health. "I do not at all like this illness of Scott's," said James Ballantyne to Hogg. "I have eften seen him look jaded of late, and am afraid it is serious." "Hand your tongue, or I'll gar you measure your length on the pavement," replied Hogg. "You fause, down-hearted loon, that ye are, you daur to speak as if Scott were on his death-bed! It cannot be, it must not be! I will not suffer you to speak that gait." Scott himself complains to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe of "these damned spasms. The merchant Abudah's hag was a henwife to them when they give me a real night of it." "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," in spite of the author's malady, was published in June 1818. As to its reception, and the criticism which it received, Lockhart has left nothing to be gleaned. Contrary to his custom, he has published, but without the writer's name, a letter from Lady Louisa Stuart, which really exhausts what criticism can find to say about the new novel. "I have not only read it myself," says Lady Louisa, "but am in a house where everybody is tearing it out of each other's hands, and talking of nothing else." She preferred it to all but "Waverley," and congratulates him on having made "the perfectly good character the most interesting. . . . Had this very story been conducted by a common hand, Effie would have attracted all our concern and sympathy, Jeanie only cold approbation. Whereas Jeanie, without youth, beauty, genius, warns passions, or any other novel-perfection, is here our object from beginning to end." Lady Louisa, with her usual frankness, finds the Edinburgh lawyers tedious, in the introduction, and thinks that Mr. Saddletree "will not entertain English readers." The conclusion "flags"; "but the chief fault I have to find relates to the reappearance and shocking fate of the boy. I hear on all sides 'Oh, I do not like that!' I cannot say what I would have had instead, but I do not like it either; it is a lame, huddled conclusion. I know you so well in it, by-the-by! You grow tired yourself, want to get rid of the story, and hardly care how." Lady Lousia adds that Sir George Staunton would never have hazarded himself in the streets of Edinburgh. "The end of poor Madge Wildfire is most pathetic. The meeting at Muschat's Cairn tremendous. Dumbiedikes and Rory Beau are delightful. . . . I dare swear many of your readers never heard of the Duke of Argyle before." She ends: "If I had known nothing, and the whole world had told me the contrary, I should have found you out in that one parenthesis, 'for the man was mortal, and had been a schoolmaster.'" Lady Louisa omits a character who was probably as essential to Scott's scheme as any--Douce Davie Deans, the old Cameronian. He had almost been annoyed by the criticism of his Covenanters in "Old Mortality," "the heavy artillery out of the Christian Instructor or some such obscure field work," and was determined to "tickle off" another. There are signs of a war between literary Cavaliers and literary Covenanters at this time, after the discharge of Dr. McCrie's "heavy artillery." Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was presented by Surtees of Mainsforth with a manuscript of Kirkton's unprinted "History of the Church of Scotland." This he set forth to edite, with the determination not to "let the Whig dogs have the best of it." Every Covenanting scandal and absurdity, such as the old story of Mess David Williamson--"Dainty Davie"--and his remarkable prowess, and presence of mind at Cherrytrees, was raked up, and inserted in notes to Kirkton. Scott was Sharpe's ally in this enterprise. "I had in the persons of my forbears a full share, you see, of religious persecution . . . for all my greatgrandfathers were under the ban, and I think there were hardly two of them out of jail at once." "I think it would be most scandalous to let the godly carry it oft thus." "It" seems to have been the editing of Kirkton. "It is very odd the volume of Wodrow, containing the memoir of Russell concerning the murder, is positively vanished from the library" (the Advocates' Library). "Neither book nor receipt is to be found: surely they have stolen it in the fear of the Lord." The truth seems to have been that Cavaliers and Covenanters were racing for the manuscripts wherein they found smooth stones of the brook to pelt their opponents withal. Soon after Scott writes: "It was not without exertion and trouble that I this day detected Russell's manuscript (the account of the murder of Sharpe by one of the murderers), also Kirkton and one or two others, which Mr. McCrie had removed from their place in the library and deposited in a snug and secret corner." The Covenanters had made a raid on the ammunition of the Cavaliers. "I have given," adds Sir Walter, "an infernal row on the subject of hiding books in this manner." Sharpe replies that the "villainous biographer of John Knox" (Dr. McCrie), "that canting rogue," is about to edite Kirkton. Sharpe therefore advertised his own edition at once, and edited Kirkton by forced marches as it were. Scott reviewed the book in the Quarterly (Jan. 1818). He remarked that Sharpe "had not escaped the censure of these industrious literary gentlemen of opposite principles, who have suffered a work always relied upon as one of their chief authorities to lie dormant for a hundred and forty years." Their "querulous outcries" (probably from the field-work of the Christian Instructor) he disregards. Among the passions of this literary "bicker," which Scott allowed to amuse him, was Davie Deans conceived. Scott was not going to be driven by querulous outcries off the Covenanting field, where he erected another trophy. This time he was more friendly to the "True Blue Presbyterians." His Scotch patriotism was one of his most earnest feelings, the Covenanters, at worst, were essentially Scotch, and he introduced a new Cameronian, with all the sterling honesty, the Puritanism, the impracticable ideas of the Covenant, in contact with changed times, and compelled to compromise. He possessed a curious pamphlet, Haldane's "Active Testimony of the true blue Presbyterians" (12mo, 1749). It is a most impartial work, "containing a declaration and testimony against the late unjust invasion of Scotland by Charles, Pretended Prince of Wales, and William, Pretended Duke of Cumberland." Everything and everybody not Covenanted, the House of Stuart, the House of Brunswick, the House of Hapsburg, Papists, Prelatists and Turks, are cursed up hill and down dale, by these worthy survivors of the Auld Leaven. Everybody except the authors, Haldane and Leslie, "has broken the everlasting Covenant." The very Confession of Westminster is arraigned for its laxity. "The whole Civil and Judicial Law of God," as given to the Jews (except the ritual, polygamy, divorce, slavery, and so forth), is to be maintained in the law of Scotland. Sins are acknowledged, and since the Covenant every political step--Cromwell's Protectorate, the Restoration, the Revolution, the accession of the "Dukes of Hanover"--has been a sin. A Court of Elders is to be established to put in execution the Law of Moses. All offenders against the Kirk are to be "capitally punished." Stage plays are to be suppressed by the successors of the famous convention at Lanark, Anno 1682. Toleration of all religions is "sinful," and "contrary to the word of God." Charles Edward and the Duke of Cumberland are cursed. "Also we reckon it a great vice in Charles, his foolish Pity and Lenity, in sparing these profane, blasphemous Redcoats, that Providence delivered into his hand, when, by putting them to death, this poor land might have been eased of the heavy burden of these vermin of Hell." The Auld Leaven swore terribly in Scotland. The atrocious cruelties of Cumberland after Culloden are stated with much frankness and power. The German soldiers are said to have carried off "a vast deal of Spoil and Plunder into Germany," and the Redcoats had Plays and Diversions (cricket, probably) on the Inch of Perth, on a Sabbath. "The Hellish, Pagan, Juggler plays are set up and frequented with more impudence and audacity than ever." Only the Jews, "our elder Brethren," are exempted from the curses of Haldane and Leslie, who promise to recover for them the Holy Land. "The Massacre in Edinburgh" in 1736, by wicked Porteous, calls for vengeance upon the authors and abettors thereof. The army and navy are "the most wicked and flagitious in the Universe." In fact, the True Blue Testimony is very active indeed, and could be delivered, thanks to hellish Toleration, with perfect safety, by Leslie and Haldane. The candour of their eloquence assuredly proves that Davie Deans is not overdrawn; indeed, he is much less truculent than those who actually were testifying even after his decease. In "The Heart of Mid-Lothian" Scott set himself to draw his own people at their best. He had a heroine to his hand in Helen Walker, "a character so distinguished for her undaunted love of virtue," who, unlike Jeanie Deans, "lived and died in poverty, if not want." In 1831 he erected a pillar over her grave in the old Covenanting stronghold of Irongray. The inscription ends-- Respect the Grave of Poverty, When combined with Love of Truth And Dear Affection. The sweetness, the courage, the spirit, the integrity of Jeanie Deans have made her, of all Scott's characters, the dearest to her countrymen, and the name of Jeanie was given to many children, in pious memory of the blameless heroine. The foil to her, in the person of Effie, is not less admirable. Among Scott's qualities was one rare among modern authors: he had an affectionate toleration for his characters. If we compare Effie with Hetty in "Adam Bede," this charming and genial quality of Scott's becomes especially striking. Hetty and Dinah are in very much the same situation and condition as Effie and Jeanie Deans. But Hetty is a frivolous little animal, in whom vanity and silliness do duty for passion: she has no heart: she is only a butterfly broken on the wheel of the world. Doubtless there are such women in plenty, yet we feel that her creator persecutes her, and has a kind of spite against her. This was impossible to Scott. Effie has heart, sincerity, passion, loyalty, despite her flightiness, and her readiness, when her chance comes, to play the fine lady. It was distasteful to Scott to create a character not human and sympathetic on one side or another. Thus his robber "of milder mood," on Jeanie's journey to England, is comparatively a good fellow, and the scoundrel Ratcliffe is not a scoundrel utterly. "'To make a Lang tale short, I canna undertake the job. It gangs against my conscience.' 'Your conscience, Rat?' said Sharpitlaw, with a sneer, which the reader will probably think very natural upon the occasion. 'Ou ay, sir,' answered Ratcliffe, calmly, 'just my conscience; a body has a conscience, though it may be ill wunnin at it. I think mine's as weel out o' the gate as maist folk's are; and yet it's just like the noop of my elbow, it whiles gets a bit dirl on a corner.'" Scott insists on leaving his worst people in possession of something likeable, just as he cannot dismiss even Captain Craigengelt without assuring us that Bucklaw made a provision for his necessities. This is certainly a more humane way of writing fiction than that to which we are accustomed in an age of humanitarianism. Nor does Scott's art suffer from his kindliness, and Effie in prison, with a heart to be broken, is not less pathetic than the heartless Hetty, in the same condemnation. As to her lover, Robertson, or Sir George Staunton, he certainly verges on the melodramatic. Perhaps we know too much about the real George Robertson, who was no heir to a title in disguise, but merely a "stabler in Bristol" accused "at the instance of Duncan Forbes, Esq. of Culloden, his Majesty's advocate, for the crimes of Stouthrieff, Housebreaking, and Robbery." Robertson "kept an inn in Bristo, at Edinburgh, where the Newcastle carrier commonly did put up," and is believed to have been a married man. It is not very clear that the novel gains much by the elevation of the Bristo innkeeper to a baronetcy, except in so far as Effie's appearance in the character of a great lady is entertaining and characteristic, and Jeanie's conquest of her own envy is exemplary. The change in social rank calls for the tragic conclusion, about which almost every reader agrees with the criticism of Lady Louisa Stuart and her friends. Thus the novel "filled more pages" than Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham had "opined," and hence comes a languor which does not beset the story of "Old Mortality." Scott's own love of adventure and of stirring incidents at any cost is an excellent quality in a novelist, but it does, in this instance, cause him somewhat to dilute those immortal studies of Scotch character which are the strength of his genius. The reader feels a lack of reality in the conclusion, the fatal encounter of the father and the lost son, an incident as old as the legend of Odysseus. But this is more than atoned for by the admirable part of Madge Wildfire, flitting like a _feu follet_ up and down among the douce Scotch, and the dour rioters. Madge Wildfire is no repetition of Meg Merrilies, though both are unrestrained natural things, rebels against the settled life, musical voices out of the past, singing forgotten songs of nameless minstrels. Nowhere but in Shakspeare can we find such a distraught woman as Madge Wildfire, so near akin to nature and to the moods of "the bonny lady Moon." Only he who created Ophelia could have conceived or rivalled the scene where Madge accompanies the hunters of Staunton on the moonlit hill and sings her warnings to the fugitive. When the glede's in the blue cloud, The lavrock lies still; When the hound's in the green-wood, The hind keeps the hill. There's a bloodhound ranging Tinwald wood, There's harness glancing sheen; There's a maiden sits on Tinwald brae, And she sings loud between. O sleep ye sound, Sir James, she said, When ye suld rise and ride? There's twenty men, wi' bow and blade, Are seeking where ye hide. The madness of Madge Wildfire has its parallel in the wildness of Goethe's Marguerite, both of them lamenting the lost child, which, to Madge's fancy, is now dead, now living in a dream. But the gloom that hangs about Muschat's Cairn, the ghastly vision of "crying up Ailie Muschat, and she and I will hae a grand bouking-washing, and bleach our claise in the beams of the bonny Lady Moon," have a terror beyond the German, and are unexcelled by Webster or by Ford. "But the moon, and the dew, and the night-wind, they are just like a caller kail-blade laid on my brow; and whiles I think the moon just shines on purpose to pleasure me, when naebody sees her but mysell." Scott did not deal much in the facile pathos of the death-bed, but that of Madge Wildfire has a grace of poetry, and her latest song is the sweetest and wildest of his lyrics, the most appropriate in its setting. When we think of the contrasts to her--the honest, dull good-nature of Dumbiedikes; the common-sense and humour of Mrs. Saddletree; the pragmatic pedantry of her husband; the Highland pride, courage, and absurdity of the Captain of Knockdander--when we consider all these so various and perfect creations, we need not wonder that Scott was "in high glee" over "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," "felt himself very strong," and thought that these would be "the best volumes that have appeared." The difficulty, as usual, is to understand how, in all this strength, he permitted himself to be so careless over what is really by far the easiest part of the novelist's task--the construction. But so it was; about "The Monastery" he said, "it was written with as much care as the rest, that is, with no care at all." His genius flowed free in its own unconscious abundance: where conscious deliberate workmanship was needed, "the forthright craftsman's hand," there alone he was lax and irresponsible. In Shakspeare's case we can often account for similar incongruities by the constraint of the old plot which he was using; but Scott was making his own plots, or letting them make themselves. "I never could lay down a plan, or, having laid it down, I never could adhere to it; the action of composition always diluted some passages and abridged or omitted others; and personages were rendered important or insignificant, not according to their agency in the original conception of the plan, but according to the success or otherwise with which I was able to bring them out. I only tried to make that which I was actually writing diverting and interesting, leaving the rest to fate. . . When I chain my mind to ideas which are purely imaginative--for argument is a different thing--it seems to me that the sun leaves the landscape, that I think away the whole vivacity and spirit of my original conception, and that the results are cold, tame, and spiritless." In fact, Sir Walter was like the Magician who can raise spirits that, once raised, dominate him. Probably this must ever be the case, when an author's characters are not puppets but real creations. They then have a will and a way of their own; a free-will which their creator cannot predetermine and correct. Something like this appears to have been Scott's own theory of his lack of constructive power. No one was so assured of its absence, no one criticised it more severely than he did himself. The Edinburgh Review about this time counselled the "Author of Waverley" to attempt a drama, doubting only his powers of compression. Possibly work at a drama might have been of advantage to the genius of Scott. He was unskilled in selection and rejection, which the drama especially demands. But he detested the idea of writing for actors, whom he regarded as ignorant, dull, and conceited. "I shall not fine and renew a lease of popularity upon the theatre. To write for low, ill-informed, and conceited actors, whom you must please, for your success is necessarily at their mercy, I cannot away with," he wrote to Southey. "Avowedly, I will never write for the stage; if I do, 'call me horse,'" he remarks to Terry. He wanted "neither the profit nor the shame of it." "I do not think that the character of the audience in London is such that one could have the least pleasure in pleasing them." He liked helping Terry to "Terryfy" "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," and his other novels, but he had no more desire than a senator of Rome would have had to see his name become famous by the Theatre. This confirmed repulsion in one so learned in the dramatic poets is a curious trait in Scott's character. He could not accommodate his genius to the needs of the stage, and that crown which has most potently allured most men of genius he would have thrust away, had it been offered to him, with none of Caesar's reluctance. At the bottom of all this lay probably the secret conviction that his genius was his master, that it must take him where it would, on paths where he was compelled to follow. Terse and concentrated, of set purpose, he could not be. A notable instance of this inability occurs in the Introductory Chapter to "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," which has probably frightened away many modern readers. The Advocate and the Writer to the Signet and the poor Client are persons quite uncalled for, and their little adventure at Gandercleugh is unreal. Oddly enough, part of their conversation is absolutely in the manner of Dickens. "'I think,' said I, . . . 'the metropolitan county may, in that case, be said to have a sad heart.' "'Right as my glove, Mr. Pattieson,' added Mr. Hardie; 'and a close heart, and a hard heart--Keep it up, Jack.' "'And a wicked heart, and a poor heart,' answered Halkit, doing his best. "'And yet it may be called in some sort a strong heart, and a high heart,' rejoined the advocate. 'You see I can put you both out of heart.'" Fortunately we have no more of this easy writing, which makes such very melancholy reading. The narrative of the Porteous mob, as given by the novelist, is not, it seems, entirely accurate. Like most artists, Sir Walter took the liberty of "composing" his picture. In his "Illustrations of the Author of Waverley" (1825) Mr. Robert Chambers records the changes in facts made by Scott. In the first place, Wilson did not attack his guard, and enable Robertson to escape, after the sermon, but as soon as the criminals took their seats in the pew. When fleeing out, Robertson tripped over "the plate," set on a stand to receive alms and oblations, whereby he hurt himself, and was seen to stagger and fall in running down the stairs leading to the Cowgate. Mr. McQueen, Minister of the New Kirk, was coming up the stairs. He conceived it to be his duty to set Robertson on his feet again, "and covered his retreat as much as possible from the pursuit of the guard." Robertson ran up the Horse Wynd, out at Potter Row Port, got into the King's Park, and headed for the village of Duddingston, beside the loch on the south-east of Arthur's Seat. He fainted after jumping a dyke, but was picked up and given some refreshment. He lay in hiding till he could escape to Holland. The conspiracy to hang Porteous did not, in fact, develop in a few hours, after his failure to appear on the scaffold. The Queen's pardon (or a reprieve) reached Edinburgh on Thursday, Sept. 2; the Riot occurred on the night of Sept. 7. The council had been informed that lynching was intended, thirty-six hours before the fatal evening, but pronounced the reports to be "caddies' clatters." Their negligence, of course, must have increased the indignation of the Queen. The riot, according to a very old man, consulted by Mr. Chambers, was headed by two butchers, named Cumming, "tall, strong, and exceedingly handsome men, who dressed in women's clothes as a disguise." The rope was tossed out of a window in a "small wares shop" by a woman, who received a piece of gold in exchange. This extravagance is one of the very few points which suggest that people of some wealth may have been concerned in the affair. Tradition, according to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, believed in noble leaders of the riot. It is certain that several witnesses of good birth and position testified very strongly against Porteous, at his trial. According to Hogg, Scott's "fame was now so firmly established that he cared not a fig for the opinion of his literary friends beforehand." He was pleased, however, by the notice of "Ivanhoe," "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," and "The Bride of Lammermoor" in the Edinburgh Review of 1820, as he showed by quoting part of its remarks. The Reviewer frankly observed "that, when we began with one of these works, we were conscious that we never knew how to leave off. The Porteous mob is rather heavily described, and the whole part of George Robertson, or Staunton, is extravagant and displeasing. The final catastrophe is needlessly improbable and startling." The critic felt that he must be critical, but his praise of Effie and Jeanie Deans obviously comes from his heart. Jeanie's character "is superior to anything we can recollect in the history of invention . . . a remarkable triumph over the greatest of all difficulties in the conduct of a fictitious narrative." The critique ends with "an earnest wish that the Author would try his hand in the lore of Shakspeare"; but, wiser than the woers of Penelope, Scott refused to make that perilous adventure. ANDREW LANG. An essay by Mr. George Ormond, based on manuscripts in the Edinburgh Record office (Scottish Review, July, 1892), adds little to what is known about the Porteous Riot. It is said that Porteous was let down alive, and hanged again, more than once, that his arm was broken by a Lochaber axe, and that a torch was applied to the foot from which the shoe had fallen. A pamphlet of 1787 says that Robertson became a spy on smugglers in Holland, returned to London, procured a pardon through the Butcher Cumberland, and "at last died in misery in London." It is plain that Colonel Moyle might have rescued Porteous, but he was naturally cautious about entering the city gates without a written warrant from the civil authorities. TO THE BEST OF PATRONS, A PLEASED AND INDULGENT READER JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM WISHES HEALTH, AND INCREASE, AND CONTENTMENT. Courteous Reader, If ingratitude comprehendeth every vice, surely so foul a stain worst of all beseemeth him whose life has been devoted to instructing youth in virtue and in humane letters. Therefore have I chosen, in this prolegomenon, to unload my burden of thanks at thy feet, for the favour with which thou last kindly entertained the Tales of my Landlord. Certes, if thou hast chuckled over their factious and festivous descriptions, or hadst thy mind filled with pleasure at the strange and pleasant turns of fortune which they record, verily, I have also simpered when I beheld a second storey with attics, that has arisen on the basis of my small domicile at Gandercleugh, the walls having been aforehand pronounced by Deacon Barrow to be capable of enduring such an elevation. Nor has it been without delectation that I have endued a new coat (snuff-brown, and with metal buttons), having all nether garments corresponding thereto. We do therefore lie, in respect of each other, under a reciprocation of benefits, whereof those received by me being the most solid (in respect that a new house and a new coat are better than a new tale and an old song), it is meet that my gratitude should be expressed with the louder voice and more preponderating vehemence. And how should it be so expressed?--Certainly not in words only, but in act and deed. It is with this sole purpose, and disclaiming all intention of purchasing that pendicle or poffle of land called the Carlinescroft, lying adjacent to my garden, and measuring seven acres, three roods, and four perches, that I have committed to the eyes of those who thought well of the former tomes, these four additional volumes of the Tales of my Landlord. Not the less, if Peter Prayfort be minded to sell the said poffle, it is at his own choice to say so; and, peradventure, he may meet with a purchaser: unless (gentle reader) the pleasing pourtraictures of Peter Pattieson, now given unto thee in particular, and unto the public in general, shall have lost their favour in thine eyes, whereof I am no way distrustful. And so much confidence do I repose in thy continued favour, that, should thy lawful occasions call thee to the town of Gandercleugh, a place frequented by most at one time or other in their lives, I will enrich thine eyes with a sight of those precious manuscripts whence thou hast derived so much delectation, thy nose with a snuff from my mull, and thy palate with a dram from my bottle of strong waters, called by the learned of Gandercleugh, the Dominie's Dribble o' Drink. It is there, O highly esteemed and beloved reader, thou wilt be able to bear testimony, through the medium of thine own senses, against the children of vanity, who have sought to identify thy friend and servant with I know not what inditer of vain fables; who hath cumbered the world with his devices, but shrunken from the responsibility thereof. Truly, this hath been well termed a generation hard of faith; since what can a man do to assert his property in a printed tome, saving to put his name in the title-page thereof, with his description, or designation, as the lawyers term it, and place of abode? Of a surety I would have such sceptics consider how they themselves would brook to have their works ascribed to others, their names and professions imputed as forgeries, and their very existence brought into question; even although, peradventure, it may be it is of little consequence to any but themselves, not only whether they are living or dead, but even whether they ever lived or no. Yet have my maligners carried their uncharitable censures still farther. These cavillers have not only doubted mine identity, although thus plainly proved, but they have impeached my veracity and the authenticity of my historical narratives! Verily, I can only say in answer, that I have been cautelous in quoting mine authorities. It is true, indeed, that if I had hearkened with only one ear, I might have rehearsed my tale with more acceptation from those who love to hear but half the truth. It is, it may hap, not altogether to the discredit of our kindly nation of Scotland, that we are apt to take an interest, warm, yea partial, in the deeds and sentiments of our forefathers. He whom his adversaries describe as a perjured Prelatist, is desirous that his predecessors should be held moderate in their power, and just in their execution of its privileges, when truly, the unimpassioned peruser of the annals of those times shall deem them sanguinary, violent, and tyrannical. Again, the representatives of the suffering Nonconformists desire that their ancestors, the Cameronians, shall be represented not simply as honest enthusiasts, oppressed for conscience' sake, but persons of fine breeding, and valiant heroes. Truly, the historian cannot gratify these predilections. He must needs describe the cavaliers as proud and high-spirited, cruel, remorseless, and vindictive; the suffering party as honourably tenacious of their opinions under persecution; their own tempers being, however, sullen, fierce, and rude; their opinions absurd and extravagant; and their whole course of conduct that of persons whom hellebore would better have suited than prosecutions unto death for high-treason. Natheless, while such and so preposterous were the opinions on either side, there were, it cannot be doubted, men of virtue and worth on both, to entitle either party to claim merit from its martyrs. It has been demanded of me, Jedediah Cleishbotham, by what right I am entitled to constitute myself an impartial judge of their discrepancies of opinions, seeing (as it is stated) that I must necessarily have descended from one or other of the contending parties, and be, of course, wedded for better or for worse, according to the reasonable practice of Scotland, to its dogmata, or opinions, and bound, as it were, by the tie matrimonial, or, to speak without metaphor, _ex jure sanguinis,_ to maintain them in preference to all others. But, nothing denying the rationality of the rule, which calls on all now living to rule their political and religious opinions by those of their great-grandfathers, and inevitable as seems the one or the other horn of the dilemma betwixt which my adversaries conceive they have pinned me to the wall, I yet spy some means of refuge, and claim a privilege to write and speak of both parties with impartiality. For, O ye powers of logic! when the Prelatists and Presbyterians of old times went together by the ears in this unlucky country, my ancestor (venerated be his memory!) was one of the people called Quakers, and suffered severe handling from either side, even to the extenuation of his purse and the incarceration of his person. Craving thy pardon, gentle Reader, for these few words concerning me and mine, I rest, as above expressed, thy sure and obligated friend,* J. C. GANDERCLEUGH, this 1st of April, 1818. * Note A. Author's connection with Quakerism. INTRODUCTION TO THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN--(1830). The author has stated, in the preface to the Chronicles of the Canongate, 1827, that he received from an anonymous correspondent an account of the incident upon which the following story is founded. He is now at liberty to say, that the information was conveyed to him by a late amiable and ingenious lady, whose wit and power of remarking and judging of character still survive in the memory of her friends. Her maiden name was Miss Helen Lawson, of Girthhead, and she was wife of Thomas Goldie, Esq. of Craigmuie, Commissary of Dumfries. Her communication was in these words:-- "I had taken for summer lodgings a cottage near the old Abbey of Lincluden. It had formerly been inhabited by a lady who had pleasure in embellishing cottages, which she found perhaps homely and even poor enough; mine, therefore, possessed many marks of taste and elegance unusual in this species of habitation in Scotland, where a cottage is literally what its name declares. "From my cottage door I had a partial view of the old Abbey before mentioned; some of the highest arches were seen over, and some through, the trees scattered along a lane which led down to the ruin, and the strange fantastic shapes of almost all those old ashes accorded wonderfully well with the building they at once shaded and ornamented. "The Abbey itself from my door was almost on a level with the cottage; but on coming to the end of the lane, it was discovered to be situated on a high perpendicular bank, at the foot of which run the clear waters of the Cluden, where they hasten to join the sweeping Nith, 'Whose distant roaring swells and fa's.' As my kitchen and parlour were not very far distant, I one day went in to purchase some chickens from a person I heard offering them for sale. It was a little, rather stout-looking woman, who seemed to be between seventy and eighty years of age; she was almost covered with a tartan plaid, and her cap had over it a black silk hood, tied under the chin, a piece of dress still much in use among elderly women of that rank of life in Scotland; her eyes were dark, and remarkably lively and intelligent; I entered into conversation with her, and began by asking how she maintained herself, etc. "She said that in winter she footed stockings, that is, knit feet to country-people's stockings, which bears about the same relation to stocking-knitting that cobbling does to shoe-making, and is of course both less profitable and less dignified; she likewise taught a few children to read, and in summer she whiles reared a few chickens. "I said I could venture to guess from her face she had never been married. She laughed heartily at this, and said, 'I maun hae the queerest face that ever was seen, that ye could guess that. Now, do tell me, madam, how ye cam to think sae?' I told her it was from her cheerful disengaged countenance. She said, 'Mem, have ye na far mair reason to be happy than me, wi' a gude husband and a fine family o' bairns, and plenty o' everything? for me, I'm the puirest o' a' puir bodies, and can hardly contrive to keep mysell alive in a' the wee bits o' ways I hae tell't ye.' After some more conversation, during which I was more and more pleased with the old womans sensible conversation, and the _naivete_ of her remarks, she rose to go away, when I asked her name. Her countenance suddenly clouded, and she said gravely, rather colouring, 'My name is Helen Walker; but your husband kens weel about me.' "In the evening I related how much I had been pleased, and inquired what was extraordinary in the history of the poor woman. Mr. ---- said, there were perhaps few more remarkable people than Helen Walker. She had been left an orphan, with the charge of a sister considerably younger than herself, and who was educated and maintained by her exertions. Attached to herby so many ties, therefore, it will not be easy to conceive her feelings, when she found that this only sister must be tried by the laws of her country for child-murder, and upon being called as principal witness against her. The counsel for the prisoner told Helen, that if she could declare that her sister had made any preparations, however slight, or had given her any intimation on the subject, that such a statement would save her sister's life, as she was the principal witness against her. Helen said, 'It is impossible for me to swear to a falsehood; and, whatever may be the consequence, I will give my oath according to my conscience.' "The trial came on, and the sister was found guilty and condemned; but in Scotland six weeks must elapse between the sentence and the execution, and Helen Walker availed herself of it. The very day of her sister's condemnation she got a petition drawn, stating the peculiar circumstances of the case, and that very night set out on foot to London. "Without introduction or recommendation, with her simple (perhaps ill-expressed) petition, drawn up by some inferior clerk of the court, she presented herself, in her tartan plaid and country attire, to the late Duke of Argyle, who immediately procured the pardon she petitioned for, and Helen returned with it on foot just in time to save her sister. "I was so strongly interested by this narrative, that I determined immediately to prosecute my acquaintance with Helen Walker; but as I was to leave the country next day, I was obliged to defer it till my return in spring, when the first walk I took was to Helen Walker's cottage. "She had died a short time before. My regret was extreme, and I endeavoured to obtain some account of Helen from an old woman who inhabited the other end of her cottage. I inquired if Helen ever spoke of her past history--her journey to London, etc., 'Na,' the old woman said, 'Helen was a wily body, and whene'er ony o' the neebors asked anything about it, she aye turned the conversation.' "In short, every answer I received only tended to increase my regret, and raise my opinion of Helen Walker, who could unite so much prudence with so much heroic virtue." This narrative was inclosed in the following letter to the author, without date or signature-- "Sir,--The occurrence just related happened to me twenty-six years ago. Helen Walker lies buried in the churchyard of Irongray, about six miles from Dumfries. I once proposed that a small monument should have been erected to commemorate so remarkable a character, but I now prefer leaving it to you to perpetuate her memory in a more durable manner." The reader is now able to judge how far the author has improved upon, or fallen short of, the pleasing and interesting sketch of high principle and steady affection displayed by Helen Walker, the prototype of the fictitious Jeanie Deans. Mrs. Goldie was unfortunately dead before the author had given his name to these volumes, so he lost all opportunity of thanking that lady for her highly valuable communication. But her daughter, Miss Goldie, obliged him with the following additional information:-- "Mrs. Goldie endeavoured to collect further particulars of Helen Walker, particularly concerning her journey to London, but found this nearly impossible; as the natural dignity of her character, and a high sense of family respectability, made her so indissolubly connect her sister's disgrace with her own exertions, that none of her neighbours durst ever question her upon the subject. One old woman, a distant relation of Helen's, and who is still living, says she worked an harvest with her, but that she never ventured to ask her about her sister's trial, or her journey to London; 'Helen,' she added, 'was a lofty body, and used a high style o' language.' The same old woman says, that every year Helen received a cheese from her sister, who lived at Whitehaven, and that she always sent a liberal portion of it to herself, or to her father's family. This fact, though trivial in itself, strongly marks the affection subsisting between the two sisters, and the complete conviction on the mind of the criminal that her sister had acted solely from high principle, not from any want of feeling, which another small but characteristic trait will further illustrate. A gentleman, a relation of Mrs. Goldie's, who happened to be travelling in the North of England, on coming to a small inn, was shown into the parlour by a female servant, who, after cautiously shutting the door, said, 'Sir, I'm Nelly Walker's sister.' Thus practically showing that she considered her sister as better known by her high conduct than even herself by a different kind of celebrity. "Mrs. Goldie was extremely anxious to have a tombstone and an inscription upon it erected in Irongray Churchyard; and if Sir Walter Scott will condescend to write the last, a little subscription could be easily raised in the immediate neighbourhood, and Mrs. Goldie's wish be thus fulfilled." It is scarcely necessary to add that the request of Miss Goldie will be most willingly complied with, and without the necessity of any tax on the public.* Nor is there much occasion to repeat how much the author conceives himself obliged to his unknown correspondent, who thus supplied him with a theme affording such a pleasing view of the moral dignity of virtue, though unaided by birth, beauty, or talent. If the picture has suffered in the execution, it is from the failure of the author's powers to present in detail the same simple and striking portrait exhibited in Mrs. Goldie's letter. Abbotsford, April 1, 1830. * [Note B. Tombstone to Helen Walker.] POSTSCRIPT. Although it would be impossible to add much to Mrs. Goldie's picturesque and most interesting account of Helen Walker, the prototype of the imaginary Jeanie Deans, the Editor may be pardoned for introducing two or three anecdotes respecting that excellent person, which he has collected from a volume entitled, _Sketches from Nature,_ by John M'Diarmid, a gentleman who conducts an able provincial paper in the town of Dumfries. Helen was the daughter of a small farmer in a place called Dalwhairn, in the parish of Irongray; where, after the death of her father, she continued, with the unassuming piety of a Scottish peasant, to support her mother by her own unremitted labour and privations; a case so common, that even yet, I am proud to say, few of my countrywomen would shrink from the duty. Helen Walker was held among her equals _pensy,_ that is, proud or conceited; but the facts brought to prove this accusation seem only to evince a strength of character superior to those around her. Thus it was remarked, that when it thundered, she went with her work and her Bible to the front of the cottage, alleging that the Almighty could smite in the city as well as in the field. Mr. M'Diarmid mentions more particularly the misfortune of her sister, which he supposes to have taken place previous to 1736. Helen Walker, declining every proposal of saving her relation's life at the expense of truth, borrowed a sum of money sufficient for her journey, walked the whole distance to London barefoot, and made her way to John Duke of Argyle. She was heard to say, that, by the Almighty strength, she had been enabled to meet the Duke at the most critical moment, which, if lost, would have caused the inevitable forfeiture of her sister's life. Isabella, or Tibby Walker, saved from the fate which impended over her, was married by the person who had wronged her (named Waugh), and lived happily for great part of a century, uniformly acknowledging the extraordinary affection to which she owed her preservation. Helen Walker died about the end of the year 1791, and her remains are interred in the churchyard of her native parish of Irongray, in a romantic cemetery on the banks of the Cairn. That a character so distinguished for her undaunted love of virtue, lived and died in poverty, if not want, serves only to show us how insignificant, in the sight of Heaven, are our principal objects of ambition upon earth. INTRODUCTORY So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn, glides The Derby dilly, carrying six insides. Frere. The times have changed in nothing more (we follow as we were wont the manuscript of Peter Pattieson) than in the rapid conveyance of intelligence and communication betwixt one part of Scotland and another. It is not above twenty or thirty years, according to the evidence of many credible witnesses now alive, since a little miserable horse-cart, performing with difficulty a journey of thirty miles _per diem,_ carried our mails from the capital of Scotland to its extremity. Nor was Scotland much more deficient in these accommodations than our rich sister had been about eighty years before. Fielding, in his Tom Jones, and Farquhar, in a little farce called the Stage-Coach, have ridiculed the slowness of these vehicles of public accommodation. According to the latter authority, the highest bribe could only induce the coachman to promise to anticipate by half-an-hour the usual time of his arrival at the Bull and Mouth. But in both countries these ancient, slow, and sure modes of conveyance are now alike unknown; mail-coach races against mail-coach, and high-flyer against high-flyer, through the most remote districts of Britain. And in our village alone, three post-coaches, and four coaches with men armed, and in scarlet cassocks, thunder through the streets each day, and rival in brilliancy and noise the invention of the celebrated tyrant:-- Demens, qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen, AEre et cornipedum pulsu, simularat, equorum. Now and then, to complete the resemblance, and to correct the presumption of the venturous charioteers, it does happen that the career of these dashing rivals of Salmoneus meets with as undesirable and violent a termination as that of their prototype. It is on such occasions that the Insides and Outsides, to use the appropriate vehicular phrases, have reason to rue the exchange of the slow and safe motion of the ancient Fly-coaches, which, compared with the chariots of Mr. Palmer, so ill deserve the name. The ancient vehicle used to settle quietly down, like a ship scuttled and left to sink by the gradual influx of the waters, while the modern is smashed to pieces with the velocity of the same vessel hurled against breakers, or rather with the fury of a bomb bursting at the conclusion of its career through the air. The late ingenious Mr. Pennant, whose humour it was to set his face in stern opposition to these speedy conveyances, had collected, I have heard, a formidable list of such casualties, which, joined to the imposition of innkeepers, whose charges the passengers had no time to dispute, the sauciness of the coachman, and the uncontrolled and despotic authority of the tyrant called the guard, held forth a picture of horror, to which murder, theft, fraud, and peculation, lent all their dark colouring. But that which gratifies the impatience of the human disposition will be practised in the teeth of danger, and in defiance of admonition; and, in despite of the Cambrian antiquary, mail-coaches not only roll their thunders round the base of Penman-Maur and Cader-Idris, but Frighted Skiddaw hears afar The rattling of the unscythed car. And perhaps the echoes of Ben Nevis may soon be awakened by the bugle, not of a warlike chieftain, but of the guard of a mail-coach. It was a fine summer day, and our little school had obtained a half-holiday, by the intercession of a good-humoured visitor.* * His honour Gilbert Goslinn of Gandercleugh; for I love to be precise in matters of importance.--J. C. I expected by the coach a new number of an interesting periodical publication, and walked forward on the highway to meet it, with the impatience which Cowper has described as actuating the resident in the country when longing for intelligence from the mart of news.-- The grand debate, The popular harangue,--the tart reply,-- The logic, and the wisdom, and the wit, And the loud laugh,--I long to know them all;-- I burn to set the imprisoned wranglers free, And give them voice and utterance again. It was with such feelings that I eyed the approach of the new coach, lately established on our road, and known by the name of the Somerset, which, to say truth, possesses some interest for me, even when it conveys no such important information. The distant tremulous sound of its wheels was heard just as I gained the summit of the gentle ascent, called the Goslin-brae, from which you command an extensive view down the valley of the river Gander. The public road, which comes up the side of that stream, and crosses it at a bridge about a quarter of a mile from the place where I was standing, runs partly through enclosures and plantations, and partly through open pasture land. It is a childish amusement perhaps,--but my life has been spent with children, and why should not my pleasures be like theirs?--childish as it is then, I must own I have had great pleasure in watching the approach of the carriage, where the openings of the road permit it to be seen. The gay glancing of the equipage, its diminished and toy-like appearance at a distance, contrasted with the rapidity of its motion, its appearance and disappearance at intervals, and the progressively increasing sounds that announce its nearer approach, have all to the idle and listless spectator, who has nothing more important to attend to, something of awakening interest. The ridicule may attach to me, which is flung upon many an honest citizen, who watches from the window of his villa the passage of the stage-coach; but it is a very natural source of amusement notwithstanding, and many of those who join in the laugh are perhaps not unused to resort to it in secret. On the present occasion, however, fate had decreed that I should not enjoy the consummation of the amusement by seeing the coach rattle past me as I sat on the turf, and hearing the hoarse grating voice of the guard as he skimmed forth for my grasp the expected packet, without the carriage checking its course for an instant. I had seen the vehicle thunder down the hill that leads to the bridge with more than its usual impetuosity, glittering all the while by flashes from a cloudy tabernacle of the dust which it had raised, and leaving a train behind it on the road resembling a wreath of summer mist. But it did not appear on the top of the nearer bank within the usual space of three minutes, which frequent observation had enabled me to ascertain was the medium time for crossing the bridge and mounting the ascent. When double that space had elapsed, I became alarmed, and walked hastily forward. As I came in sight of the bridge, the cause of delay was too manifest, for the Somerset had made a summerset in good earnest, and overturned so completely, that it was literally resting upon the ground, with the roof undermost, and the four wheels in the air. The "exertions of the guard and coachman," both of whom were gratefully commemorated in the newspapers, having succeeded in disentangling the horses by cutting the harness, were now proceeding to extricate the insides by a sort of summary and Caesarean process of delivery, forcing the hinges from one of the doors which they could not open otherwise. In this manner were two disconsolate damsels set at liberty from the womb of the leathern conveniency. As they immediately began to settle their clothes, which were a little deranged, as may be presumed, I concluded they had received no injury, and did not venture to obtrude my services at their toilette, for which, I understand, I have since been reflected upon by the fair sufferers. The _outsides,_ who must have been discharged from their elevated situation by a shock resembling the springing of a mine, escaped, nevertheless, with the usual allowance of scratches and bruises, excepting three, who, having been pitched into the river Gander, were dimly seen contending with the tide like the relics of AEneas's shipwreck,-- Rari apparent mantes in gurgite vasto. I applied my poor exertions where they seemed to be most needed, and with the assistance of one or two of the company who had escaped unhurt, easily succeeded in fishing out two of the unfortunate passengers, who were stout active young fellows; and, but for the preposterous length of their greatcoats, and the equally fashionable latitude and longitude of their Wellington trousers, would have required little assistance from any one. The third was sickly and elderly, and might have perished but for the efforts used to preserve him. When the two greatcoated gentlemen had extricated themselves from the river, and shaken their ears like huge water-dogs, a violent altercation ensued betwixt them and the coachman and guard, concerning the cause of their overthrow. In the course of the squabble, I observed that both my new acquaintances belonged to the law, and that their professional sharpness was likely to prove an overmatch for the surly and official tone of the guardians of the vehicle. The dispute ended in the guard assuring the passengers that they should have seats in a heavy coach which would pass that spot in less than half-an-hour, provided it were not full. Chance seemed to favour this arrangement, for when the expected vehicle, arrived, there were only two places occupied in a carriage which professed to carry six. The two ladies who had been disinterred out of the fallen vehicle were readily admitted, but positive objections were stated by those previously in possession to the admittance of the two lawyers, whose wetted garments being much of the nature of well-soaked sponges, there was every reason to believe they would refund a considerable part of the water they had collected, to the inconvenience of their fellow-passengers. On the other hand, the lawyers rejected a seat on the roof, alleging that they had only taken that station for pleasure for one stage, but were entitled in all respects to free egress and regress from the interior, to which their contract positively referred. After some altercation, in which something was said upon the edict _Nautae caupones stabularii,_ the coach went off, leaving the learned gentlemen to abide by their action of damages. They immediately applied to me to guide them to the next village and the best inn; and from the account I gave them of the Wallace Head, declared they were much better pleased to stop there than to go forward upon the terms of that impudent scoundrel the guard of the Somerset. All that they now wanted was a lad to carry their travelling bags, who was easily procured from an adjoining cottage; and they prepared to walk forward, when they found there was another passenger in the same deserted situation with themselves. This was the elderly and sickly-looking person, who had been precipitated into the river along with the two young lawyers. He, it seems, had been too modest to push his own plea against the coachman when he saw that of his betters rejected, and now remained behind with a look of timid anxiety, plainly intimating that he was deficient in those means of recommendation which are necessary passports to the hospitality of an inn. I ventured to call the attention of the two dashing young blades, for such they seemed, to the desolate condition of their fellow-traveller. They took the hint with ready good-nature. "O, true, Mr. Dunover," said one of the youngsters, "you must not remain on the pave' here; you must go and have some dinner with us--Halkit and I must have a post-chaise to go on, at all events, and we will set you down wherever suits you best." The poor man, for such his dress, as well as his diffidence, bespoke him, made the sort of acknowledging bow by which says a Scotsman, "It's too much honour for the like of me;" and followed humbly behind his gay patrons, all three besprinkling the dusty road as they walked along with the moisture of their drenched garments, and exhibiting the singular and somewhat ridiculous appearance of three persons suffering from the opposite extreme of humidity, while the summer sun was at its height, and everything else around them had the expression of heat and drought. The ridicule did not escape the young gentlemen themselves, and they had made what might be received as one or two tolerable jests on the subject before they had advanced far on their peregrination. "We cannot complain, like Cowley," said one of them, "that Gideon's fleece remains dry, while all around is moist; this is the reverse of the miracle." "We ought to be received with gratitude in this good town; we bring a supply of what they seem to need most," said Halkit. "And distribute it with unparalleled generosity," replied his companion; "performing the part of three water-carts for the benefit of their dusty roads." "We come before them, too," said Halkit, "in full professional force--counsel and agent"-- "And client," said the young advocate, looking behind him; and then added, lowering his voice, "that looks as if he had kept such dangerous company too long." It was, indeed, too true, that the humble follower of the gay young men had the threadbare appearance of a worn-out litigant, and I could not but smile at the conceit, though anxious to conceal my mirth from the object of it. When we arrived at the Wallace Inn, the elder of the Edinburgh gentlemen, and whom I understood to be a barrister, insisted that I should remain and take part of their dinner; and their inquiries and demands speedily put my landlord and his whole family in motion to produce the best cheer which the larder and cellar afforded, and proceed to cook it to the best advantage, a science in which our entertainers seemed to be admirably skilled. In other respects they were lively young men, in the hey-day of youth and good spirits, playing the part which is common to the higher classes of the law at Edinburgh, and which nearly resembles that of the young Templars in the days of Steele and Addison. An air of giddy gaiety mingled with the good sense, taste, and information which their conversation exhibited; and it seemed to be their object to unite the character of men of fashion and lovers of the polite arts. A fine gentleman, bred up in the thorough idleness and inanity of pursuit, which I understand is absolutely necessary to the character in perfection, might in all probability have traced a tinge of professional pedantry which marked the barrister in spite of his efforts, and something of active bustle in his companion, and would certainly have detected more than a fashionable mixture of information and animated interest in the language of both. But to me, who had no pretensions to be so critical, my companions seemed to form a very happy mixture of good-breeding and liberal information, with a disposition to lively rattle, pun, and jest, amusing to a grave man, because it is what he himself can least easily command. The thin pale-faced man, whom their good-nature had brought into their society, looked out of place as well as out of spirits; sate on the edge of his seat, and kept the chair at two feet distance from the table; thus incommoding himself considerably in conveying the victuals to his mouth, as if by way of penance for partaking of them in the company of his superiors. A short time after dinner, declining all entreaty to partake of the wine, which circulated freely round, he informed himself of the hour when the chaise had been ordered to attend; and saying he would be in readiness, modestly withdrew from the apartment. "Jack," said the barrister to his companion, "I remember that poor fellow's face; you spoke more truly than you were aware of; he really is one of my clients, poor man." "Poor man!" echoed Halkit--"I suppose you mean he is your one and only client?" "That's not my fault, Jack," replied the other, whose name I discovered was Hardie. "You are to give me all your business, you know; and if you have none, the learned gentleman here knows nothing can come of nothing." "You seem to have brought something to nothing though, in the case of that honest man. He looks as if he were just about to honour with his residence the Heart of Mid-Lothian." "You are mistaken--he is just delivered from it.--Our friend here looks for an explanation. Pray, Mr. Pattieson, have you been in Edinburgh?" I answered in the affirmative. "Then you must have passed, occasionally at least, though probably not so faithfully as I am doomed to do, through a narrow intricate passage, leading out of the north-west corner of the Parliament Square, and passing by a high and antique building with turrets and iron grates, Making good the saying odd, 'Near the church and far from God'"-- Mr. Halkit broke in upon his learned counsel, to contribute his moiety to the riddle--"Having at the door the sign of the Red man"-- "And being on the whole," resumed the counsellor interrupting his friend in his turn, "a sort of place where misfortune is happily confounded with guilt, where all who are in wish to get out"-- "And where none who have the good luck to be out, wish to get in," added his companion. "I conceive you, gentlemen," replied I; "you mean the prison." "The prison," added the young lawyer--"You have hit it--the very reverend Tolbooth itself; and let me tell you, you are obliged to us for describing it with so much modesty and brevity; for with whatever amplifications we might have chosen to decorate the subject, you lay entirely at our mercy, since the Fathers Conscript of our city have decreed that the venerable edifice itself shall not remain in existence to confirm or to confute its." "Then the Tolbooth of Edinburgh is called the Heart of Mid-Lothian?" said I. "So termed and reputed, I assure you." "I think," said I, with the bashful diffidence with which a man lets slip a pun in presence of his superiors, "the metropolitan county may, in that case, be said to have a sad heart." "Right as my glove, Mr. Pattieson," added Mr. Hardie; "and a close heart, and a hard heart--Keep it up, Jack." "And a wicked heart, and a poor heart," answered Halkit, doing his best. "And yet it may be called in some sort a strong heart, and a high heart," rejoined the advocate. "You see I can put you both out of heart." "I have played all my hearts," said the younger gentleman. "Then we'll have another lead," answered his companion.--"And as to the old and condemned Tolbooth, what pity the same honour cannot be done to it as has been done to many of its inmates. Why should not the Tolbooth have its 'Last Speech, Confession, and Dying Words?' The old stones would be just as conscious of the honour as many a poor devil who has dangled like a tassel at the west end of it, while the hawkers were shouting a confession the culprit had never heard of." "I am afraid," said I, "if I might presume to give my opinion, it would be a tale of unvaried sorrow and guilt." "Not entirely, my friend," said Hardie; "a prison is a world within itself, and has its own business, griefs, and joys, peculiar to its circle. Its inmates are sometimes short-lived, but so are soldiers on service; they are poor relatively to the world without, but there are degrees of wealth and poverty among them, and so some are relatively rich also. They cannot stir abroad, but neither can the garrison of a besieged fort, or the crew of a ship at sea; and they are not under a dispensation quite so desperate as either, for they may have as much food as they have money to buy, and are not obliged to work, whether they have food or not." "But what variety of incident," said I (not without a secret view to my present task), "could possibly be derived from such a work as you are pleased to talk of?" "Infinite," replied the young advocate. "Whatever of guilt, crime, imposture, folly, unheard-of misfortunes, and unlooked-for change of fortune, can be found to chequer life, my Last Speech of the Tolbooth should illustrate with examples sufficient to gorge even the public's all-devouring appetite for the wonderful and horrible. The inventor of fictitious narratives has to rack his brains for means to diversify his tale, and after all can hardly hit upon characters or incidents which have not been used again and again, until they are familiar to the eye of the reader, so that the development, _enle'vement,_ the desperate wound of which the hero never dies, the burning fever from which the heroine is sure to recover, become a mere matter of course. I join with my honest friend Crabbe, and have an unlucky propensity to hope, when hope is lost, and to rely upon the cork-jacket, which carries the heroes of romance safe through all the billows of affliction." He then declaimed the following passage, rather with too much than too little emphasis:-- Much have I feared, but am no more afraid, When some chaste beauty by some wretch betrayed, Is drawn away with such distracted speed, That she anticipates a dreadful deed. Not so do I--Let solid walls impound The captive fair, and dig a moat around; Let there be brazen locks and bars of steel, And keepers cruel, such as never feel; With not a single note the purse supply, And when she begs, let men and maids deny; Be windows there from which she dare not fall, And help so distant, 'tis in vain to call; Still means of freedom will some Power devise, And from the baffled ruffian snatch his prize. "The end of uncertainty," he concluded, "is the death of interest; and hence it happens that no one now reads novels." "Hear him, ye gods!" returned his companion. "I assure you, Mr. Pattieson, you will hardly visit this learned gentleman, but you are likely to find the new novel most in repute lying on his table,--snugly intrenched, however, beneath Stair's Institutes, or an open volume of Morrison's Decisions." "Do I deny it?" said the hopeful jurisconsult, "or wherefore should I, since it is well known these Delilahs seduce my wisers and my betters? May they not be found lurking amidst the multiplied memorials of our most distinguished counsel, and even peeping from under the cushion of a judge's arm-chair? Our seniors at the bar, within the bar, and even on the bench, read novels; and, if not belied, some of them have written novels into the bargain. I only say, that I read from habit and from indolence, not from real interest; that, like ancient Pistol devouring his leek, I read and swear till I get to the end of the narrative. But not so in the real records of human vagaries--not so in the State Trials, or in the Books of Adjournal, where every now and then you read new pages of the human heart, and turns of fortune far beyond what the boldest novelist ever attempted to produce from the coinage of his brain." "And for such narratives," I asked, "you suppose the History of the Prison of Edinburgh might afford appropriate materials?" "In a degree unusually ample, my dear sir," said Hardie--"Fill your glass, however, in the meanwhile. Was it not for many years the place in which the Scottish parliament met? Was it not James's place of refuge, when the mob, inflamed by a seditious preacher, broke, forth, on him with the cries of 'The sword of the Lord and of Gideon--bring forth the wicked Haman?' Since that time how many hearts have throbbed within these walls, as the tolling of the neighbouring bell announced to them how fast the sands of their life were ebbing; how many must have sunk at the sound--how many were supported by stubborn pride and dogged resolution--how many by the consolations of religion? Have there not been some, who, looking back on the motives of their crimes, were scarce able to understand how they should have had such temptation as to seduce them from virtue; and have there not, perhaps, been others, who, sensible of their innocence, were divided between indignation at the undeserved doom which they were to undergo, consciousness that they had not deserved it, and racking anxiety to discover some way in which they might yet vindicate themselves? Do you suppose any of these deep, powerful, and agitating feelings, can be recorded and perused without exciting a corresponding depth of deep, powerful, and agitating interest?--Oh! do but wait till I publish the _Causes Ce'le'bres_ of Caledonia, and you will find no want of a novel or a tragedy for some time to come. The true thing will triumph over the brightest inventions of the most ardent imagination. _Magna est veritas, et praevalebit._" "I have understood," said I, encouraged by the affability of my rattling entertainer, "that less of this interest must attach to Scottish jurisprudence than to that of any other country. The general morality of our people, their sober and prudent habits"-- "Secure them," said the barrister, "against any great increase of professional thieves and depredators, but not against wild and wayward starts of fancy and passion, producing crimes of an extraordinary description, which are precisely those to the detail of which we listen with thrilling interest. England has been much longer a highly civilised country; her subjects have been very strictly amenable to laws administered without fear or favour, a complete division of labour has taken place among her subjects, and the very thieves and robbers form a distinct class in society, subdivided among themselves according to the subject of the depredations, and the mode in which they carry them on, acting upon regular habits and principles, which can be calculated and anticipated at Bow Street, Hatton Garden, or the Old Bailey. Our sister kingdom is like a cultivated field,--the farmer expects that, in spite of all his care, a certain number of weeds will rise with the corn, and can tell you beforehand their names and appearance. But Scotland is like one of her own Highland glens, and the moralist who reads the records of her criminal jurisprudence, will find as many curious anomalous facts in the history of mind, as the botanist will detect rare specimens among her dingles and cliffs." "And that's all the good you have obtained from three perusals of the Commentaries on Scottish Criminal Jurisprudence?" said his companion. "I suppose the learned author very little thinks that the facts which his erudition and acuteness have accumulated for the illustration of legal doctrines, might be so arranged as to form a sort of appendix to the half-bound and slip-shod volumes of the circulating library." "I'll bet you a pint of claret," said the elder lawyer, "that he will not feel sore at the comparison. But as we say at the bar, 'I beg I may not be interrupted;' I have much more to say, upon my Scottish collection of _Causes Ce'le'bres._ You will please recollect the scope and motive given for the contrivance and execution of many extraordinary and daring crimes, by the long civil dissensions of Scotland--by the hereditary jurisdictions, which, until 1748, rested the investigation of crises in judges, ignorant, partial, or interested--by the habits of the gentry, shut up in their distant and solitary mansion-houses, nursing their revengeful Passions just to keep their blood from stagnating--not to mention that amiable national qualification, called the _perfervidum ingenium Scotorum,_ which our lawyers join in alleging as a reason for the severity of some of our enactments. When I come to treat of matters so mysterious, deep, and dangerous, as these circumstances have given rise to, the blood of each reader shall be curdled, and his epidermis crisped into goose skin.--But, hist!--here comes the landlord, with tidings, I suppose, that the chaise is ready." It was no such thing--the tidings bore, that no chaise could be had that evening, for Sir Peter Plyem had carried forward my landlord's two pairs of horses that morning to the ancient royal borough of Bubbleburgh, to look after his interest there. But as Bubbleburgh is only one of a set of five boroughs which club their shares for a member of parliament, Sir Peter's adversary had judiciously watched his departure, in order to commence a canvass in the no less royal borough of Bitem, which, as all the world knows, lies at the very termination of Sir Peter's avenue, and has been held in leading-strings by him and his ancestors for time immemorial. Now Sir Peter was thus placed in the situation of an ambitious monarch, who, after having commenced a daring inroad into his enemy's territories, is suddenly recalled by an invasion of his own hereditary dominions. He was obliged in consequence to return from the half-won borough of Bubbleburgh, to look after the half-lost borough of Bitem, and the two pairs of horses which had carried him that morning to Bubbleburgh were now forcibly detained to transport him, his agent, his valet, his jester, and his hard-drinker, across the country to Bitem. The cause of this detention, which to me was of as little consequence as it may be to the reader, was important enough to my companions to reconcile them to the delay. Like eagles, they smelled the battle afar off, ordered a magnum of claret and beds at the Wallace, and entered at full career into the Bubbleburgh and Bitem politics, with all the probable "Petitions and complaints" to which they were likely to give rise. In the midst of an anxious, animated, and, to me, most unintelligible discussion, concerning provosts, bailies, deacons, sets of boroughs, leets, town-clerks, burgesses resident and non-resident, all of a sudden the lawyer recollected himself. "Poor Dunover, we must not forget him;" and the landlord was despatched in quest of the _pauvre honteux,_ with an earnestly civil invitation to him for the rest of the evening. I could not help asking the young gentlemen if they knew the history of this poor man; and the counsellor applied himself to his pocket to recover the memorial or brief from which he had stated his cause. "He has been a candidate for our _remedium miserabile,_" said Mr. Hardie, "commonly called a _cessio bonorum._ As there are divines who have doubted the eternity of future punishments, so the Scotch lawyers seem to have thought that the crime of poverty might be atoned for by something short of perpetual imprisonment. After a month's confinement, you must know, a prisoner for debt is entitled, on a sufficient statement to our Supreme Court, setting forth the amount of his funds, and the nature of his misfortunes, and surrendering all his effects to his creditors, to claim to be discharged from prison." "I had heard," I replied, "of such a humane regulation." "Yes," said Halkit, "and the beauty of it is, as the foreign fellow said, you may get the _cessio,_ when the _bonorums_ are all spent--But what, are you puzzling in your pockets to seek your only memorial among old play-bills, letters requesting a meeting of the Faculty, rules of the Speculative Society,* syllabus' of lectures--all the miscellaneous contents of a young advocate's pocket, which contains everything but briefs and bank-notes? * [A well-known debating club in Edinburgh.] Can you not state a case of _cessio_ without your memorial? Why, it is done every Saturday. The events follow each other as regularly as clock-work, and one form of condescendence might suit every one of them." "This is very unlike the variety of distress which this gentleman stated to fall under the consideration of your judges," said I. "True," replied Halkit; "but Hardie spoke of criminal jurisprudence, and this business is purely civil. I could plead a _cessio_ myself without the inspiring honours of a gown and three-tailed periwig--Listen.--My client was bred a journeyman weaver--made some little money--took a farm--(for conducting a farm, like driving a gig, comes by nature)--late severe times--induced to sign bills with a friend, for which he received no value--landlord sequestrates--creditors accept a composition--pursuer sets up a public-house--fails a second time--is incarcerated for a debt of ten pounds seven shillings and sixpence--his debts amount to blank--his losses to blank--his funds to blank--leaving a balance of blank in his favour. There is no opposition; your lordships will please grant commission to take his oath." Hardie now renounced this ineffectual search, in which there was perhaps a little affectation, and told us the tale of poor Dunover's distresses, with a tone in which a degree of feeling, which he seemed ashamed of as unprofessional, mingled with his attempts at wit, and did him more honour. It was one of those tales which seem to argue a sort of ill-luck or fatality attached to the hero. A well-informed, industrious, and blameless, but poor and bashful man, had in vain essayed all the usual means by which others acquire independence, yet had never succeeded beyond the attainment of bare subsistence. During a brief gleam of hope, rather than of actual prosperity, he had added a wife and family to his cares, but the dawn was speedily overcast. Everything retrograded with him towards the verge of the miry Slough of Despond, which yawns for insolvent debtors; and after catching at each twig, and experiencing the protracted agony of feeling them one by one elude his grasp, he actually sunk into the miry pit whence he had been extricated by the professional exertions of Hardie. "And, I suppose, now you have dragged this poor devil ashore, you will leave him half naked on the beach to provide for himself?" said Halkit. "Hark ye,"--and he whispered something in his ear, of which the penetrating and insinuating words, "Interest with my Lord," alone reached mine. "It is _pessimi exempli,_" said Hardie, laughing, "to provide for a ruined client; but I was thinking of what you mention, provided it can be managed--But hush! here he comes." The recent relation of the poor man's misfortunes had given him, I was pleased to observe, a claim to the attention and respect of the young men, who treated him with great civility, and gradually engaged him in a conversation, which, much to my satisfaction, again turned upon the _Causes Ce'le'bres_ of Scotland. Imboldened by the kindness with which he was treated, Mr. Dunover began to contribute his share to the amusement of the evening. Jails, like other places, have their ancient traditions, known only to the inhabitants, and handed down from one set of the melancholy lodgers to the next who occupy their cells. Some of these, which Dunover mentioned, were interesting, and served to illustrate the narratives of remarkable trials, which Hardie had at his finger-ends, and which his companion was also well skilled in. This sort of conversation passed away the evening till the early hour when Mr. Dunover chose to retire to rest, and I also retreated to take down memorandums of what I had learned, in order to add another narrative to those which it had been my chief amusement to collect, and to write out in detail. The two young men ordered a broiled bone, Madeira negus, and a pack of cards, and commenced a game at picquet. Next morning the travellers left Gandercleugh. I afterwards learned from the papers that both have been since engaged in the great political cause of Bubbleburgh and Bitem, a summary case, and entitled to particular despatch; but which, it is thought, nevertheless, may outlast the duration of the parliament to which the contest refers. Mr. Halkit, as the newspapers informed me, acts as agent or solicitor; and Mr. Hardie opened for Sir Peter Plyem with singular ability, and to such good purpose, that I understand he has since had fewer play-bills and more briefs in his pocket. And both the young gentlemen deserve their good fortune; for I learned from Dunover, who called on me some weeks afterwards, and communicated the intelligence with tears in his eyes, that their interest had availed to obtain him a small office for the decent maintenance of his family; and that, after a train of constant and uninterrupted misfortune, he could trace a dawn of prosperity to his having the good fortune to be flung from the top of a mail-coach into the river Gander, in company with an advocate and a writer to the Signet. The reader will not perhaps deem himself equally obliged to the accident, since it brings upon him the following narrative, founded upon the conversation of the evening. THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN CHAPTER FIRST. Whoe'er's been at Paris must needs know the Gre've, The fatal retreat of the unfortunate brave, Where honour and justice most oddly contribute, To ease heroes' pains by an halter and gibbet. There death breaks the shackles which force had put on, And the hangman completes what the judge but began; There the squire of the poet, and knight of the post, Find their pains no more baulked, and their hopes no more crossed. Prior. In former times, England had her Tyburn, to which the devoted victims of justice were conducted in solemn procession up what is now called Oxford Street. In Edinburgh, a large open street, or rather oblong square, surrounded by high houses, called the Grassmarket, was used for the same melancholy purpose. It was not ill chosen for such a scene, being of considerable extent, and therefore fit to accommodate a great number of spectators, such as are usually assembled by this melancholy spectacle. On the other hand, few of the houses which surround it were, even in early times, inhabited by persons of fashion; so that those likely to be offended or over deeply affected by such unpleasant exhibitions were not in the way of having their quiet disturbed by them. The houses in the Grassmarket are, generally speaking, of a mean description; yet the place is not without some features of grandeur, being overhung by the southern side of the huge rock on which the Castle stands, and by the moss-grown battlements and turreted walls of that ancient fortress. It was the custom, until within these thirty years or thereabouts, to use this esplanade for the scene of public executions. The fatal day was announced to the public by the appearance of a huge black gallows-tree towards the eastern end of the Grassmarket. This ill-omened apparition was of great height, with a scaffold surrounding it, and a double ladder placed against it, for the ascent of the unhappy criminal and executioner. As this apparatus was always arranged before dawn, it seemed as if the gallows had grown out of the earth in the course of one night, like the production of some foul demon; and I well remember the fright with which the schoolboys, when I was one of their number, used to regard these ominous signs of deadly preparation. On the night after the execution the gallows again disappeared, and was conveyed in silence and darkness to the place where it was usually deposited, which was one of the vaults under the Parliament House, or courts of justice. This mode of execution is now exchanged for one similar to that in front of Newgate,--with what beneficial effect is uncertain. The mental sufferings of the convict are indeed shortened. He no longer stalks between the attendant clergymen, dressed in his grave-clothes, through a considerable part of the city, looking like a moving and walking corpse, while yet an inhabitant of this world; but, as the ultimate purpose of punishment has in view the prevention of crimes, it may at least be doubted, whether, in abridging the melancholy ceremony, we have not in part diminished that appalling effect upon the spectators which is the useful end of all such inflictions, and in consideration of which alone, unless in very particular cases, capital sentences can be altogether justified. On the 7th day of September 1736, these ominous preparations for execution were descried in the place we have described, and at an early hour the space around began to be occupied by several groups, who gazed on the scaffold and gibbet with a stern and vindictive show of satisfaction very seldom testified by the populace, whose good nature, in most cases, forgets the crime of the condemned person, and dwells only on his misery. But the act of which the expected culprit had been convicted was of a description calculated nearly and closely to awaken and irritate the resentful feelings of the multitude. The tale is well known; yet it is necessary to recapitulate its leading circumstances, for the better understanding what is to follow; and the narrative may prove long, but I trust not uninteresting even to those who have heard its general issue. At any rate, some detail is necessary, in order to render intelligible the subsequent events of our narrative. Contraband trade, though it strikes at the root of legitimate government, by encroaching on its revenues,--though it injures the fair trader, and debauches the mind of those engaged in it,--is not usually looked upon, either by the vulgar or by their betters, in a very heinous point of view. On the contrary, in those countries where it prevails, the cleverest, boldest, and most intelligent of the peasantry, are uniformly engaged in illicit transactions, and very often with the sanction of the farmers and inferior gentry. Smuggling was almost universal in Scotland in the reigns of George I. and II.; for the people, unaccustomed to imposts, and regarding them as an unjust aggression upon their ancient liberties, made no scruple to elude them whenever it was possible to do so. The county of Fife, bounded by two firths on the south and north, and by the sea on the east, and having a number of small seaports, was long famed for maintaining successfully a contraband trade; and, as there were many seafaring men residing there, who had been pirates and buccaneers in their youth, there were not wanting a sufficient number of daring men to carry it on. Among these, a fellow called Andrew Wilson, originally a baker in the village of Pathhead, was particularly obnoxious to the revenue officers. He was possessed of great personal strength, courage, and cunning,--was perfectly acquainted with the coast, and capable of conducting the most desperate enterprises. On several occasions he succeeded in baffling the pursuit and researches of the king's officers; but he became so much the object of their suspicions and watchful attention, that at length he was totally ruined by repeated seizures. The man became desperate. He considered himself as robbed and plundered; and took it into his head that he had a right to make reprisals, as he could find opportunity. Where the heart is prepared for evil, opportunity is seldom long wanting. This Wilson learned that the Collector of the Customs at Kirkcaldy had come to Pittenweem, in the course of his official round of duty, with a considerable sum of public money in his custody. As the amount was greatly within the value of the goods which had been seized from him, Wilson felt no scruple of conscience in resolving to reimburse himself for his losses, at the expense of the Collector and the revenue. He associated with himself one Robertson, and two other idle young men, whom, having been concerned in the same illicit trade, he persuaded to view the transaction in the same justifiable light in which he himself considered it. They watched the motions of the Collector; they broke forcibly into the house where he lodged,--Wilson, with two of his associates, entering the Collector's apartment, while Robertson, the fourth, kept watch at the door with a drawn cutlass in his hand. The officer of the customs, conceiving his life in danger, escaped out of his bedroom window, and fled in his shirt, so that the plunderers, with much ease, possessed themselves of about two hundred pounds of public money. The robbery was committed in a very audacious manner, for several persons were passing in the street at the time. But Robertson, representing the noise they heard as a dispute or fray betwixt the Collector and the people of the house, the worthy citizens of Pittenweem felt themselves no way called on to interfere in behalf of the obnoxious revenue officer; so, satisfying themselves with this very superficial account of the matter, like the Levite in the parable, they passed on the opposite side of the way. An alarm was at length given, military were called in, the depredators were pursued, the booty recovered, and Wilson and Robertson tried and condemned to death, chiefly on the evidence of an accomplice. Many thought that, in consideration of the men's erroneous opinion of the nature of the action they had committed, justice might have been satisfied with a less forfeiture than that of two lives. On the other hand, from the audacity of the fact, a severe example was judged necessary; and such was the opinion of the Government. When it became apparent that the sentence of death was to be executed, files, and other implements necessary for their escape, were transmitted secretly to the culprits by a friend from without. By these means they sawed a bar out of one of the prison-windows, and might have made their escape, but for the obstinacy of Wilson, who, as he was daringly resolute, was doggedly pertinacious of his opinion. His comrade, Robertson, a young and slender man, proposed to make the experiment of passing the foremost through the gap they had made, and enlarging it from the outside, if necessary, to allow Wilson free passage. Wilson, however, insisted on making the first experiment, and being a robust and lusty man, he not only found it impossible to get through betwixt the bars, but, by his struggles, he jammed himself so fast, that he was unable to draw his body back again. In these circumstances discovery became unavoidable, and sufficient precautions were taken by the jailor to prevent any repetition of the same attempt. Robertson uttered not a word of reflection on his companion for the consequences of his obstinacy; but it appeared from the sequel, that Wilson's mind was deeply impressed with the recollection that, but for him, his comrade, over whose mind he exercised considerable influence, would not have engaged in the criminal enterprise which had terminated thus fatally; and that now he had become his destroyer a second time, since, but for his obstinacy, Robertson might have effected his escape. Minds like Wilson's, even when exercised in evil practices, sometimes retain the power of thinking and resolving with enthusiastic generosity. His whole thoughts were now bent on the possibility of saving Robertson's life, without the least respect to his own. The resolution which he adopted, and the manner in which he carried it into effect, were striking and unusual. Adjacent to the tolbooth or city jail of Edinburgh, is one of three churches into which the cathedral of St. Giles is now divided, called, from its vicinity, the Tolbooth Church. It was the custom that criminals under sentence of death were brought to this church, with a sufficient guard, to hear and join in public worship on the Sabbath before execution. It was supposed that the hearts of these unfortunate persons, however hardened before against feelings of devotion, could not but be accessible to them upon uniting their thoughts and voices, for the last time, along with their fellow-mortals, in addressing their Creator. And to the rest of the congregation, it was thought it could not but be impressive and affecting, to find their devotions mingling with those, who, sent by the doom of an earthly tribunal to appear where the whole earth is judged, might be considered as beings trembling on the verge of eternity. The practice, however edifying, has been discontinued, in consequence of the incident we are about to detail. The clergyman, whose duty it was to officiate in the Tolbooth Church, had concluded an affecting discourse, part of which was particularly directed to the unfortunate men, Wilson and Robertson, who were in the pew set apart for the persons in their unhappy situation, each secured betwixt two soldiers of the city guard. The clergyman had reminded them, that the next congregation they must join would be that of the just, or of the unjust; that the psalms they now heard must be exchanged, in the space of two brief days, for eternal hallelujahs, or eternal lamentations; and that this fearful alternative must depend upon the state to which they might be able to bring their minds before the moment of awful preparation: that they should not despair on account of the suddenness of the summons, but rather to feel this comfort in their misery, that, though all who now lifted the voice, or bent the knee in conjunction with them, lay under the same sentence of certain death, _they_ only had the advantage of knowing the precise moment at which it should be executed upon them. "Therefore," urged the good man, his voice trembling with emotion, "redeem the time, my unhappy brethren, which is yet left; and remember, that, with the grace of Him to whom space and time are but as nothing, salvation may yet be assured, even in the pittance of delay which the laws of your country afford you." Robertson was observed to weep at these words; but Wilson seemed as one whose brain had not entirely received their meaning, or whose thoughts were deeply impressed with some different subject;--an expression so natural to a person in his situation, that it excited neither suspicion nor surprise. The benediction was pronounced as usual, and the congregation was dismissed, many lingering to indulge their curiosity with a more fixed look at the two criminals, who now, as well as their guards, rose up, as if to depart when the crowd should permit them. A murmur of compassion was heard to pervade the spectators, the more general, perhaps, on account of the alleviating circumstances of the case; when all at once, Wilson, who, as we have already noticed, was a very strong man, seized two of the soldiers, one with each hand, and calling at the same time to his companion, "Run, Geordie, run!" threw himself on a third, and fastened his teeth on the collar of his coat. Robertson stood for a second as if thunderstruck, and unable to avail himself of the opportunity of escape; but the cry of "Run, run!" being echoed from many around, whose feelings surprised them into a very natural interest in his behalf, he shook off the grasp of the remaining soldier, threw himself over the pew, mixed with the dispersing congregation, none of whom felt inclined to stop a poor wretch taking his last chance for his life, gained the door of the church, and was lost to all pursuit. The generous intrepidity which Wilson had displayed on this occasion augmented the feeling of compassion which attended his fate. The public, where their own prejudices are not concerned, are easily engaged on the side of disinterestedness and humanity, admired Wilson's behaviour, and rejoiced in Robertson's escape. This general feeling was so great, that it excited a vague report that Wilson would be rescued at the place of execution, either by the mob or by some of his old associates, or by some second extraordinary and unexpected exertion of strength and courage on his own part. The magistrates thought it their duty to provide against the possibility of disturbance. They ordered out, for protection of the execution of the sentence, the greater part of their own City Guard, under the command of Captain Porteous, a man whose name became too memorable from the melancholy circumstances of the day, and subsequent events. It may be necessary to say a word about this person, and the corps which he commanded. But the subject is of importance sufficient to deserve another chapter. CHAPTER SECOND. And thou, great god of aquavitae! Wha sways the empire of this city (When fou we're sometimes capernoity), Be thou prepared, To save us frae that black banditti, The City Guard! Fergusson's _Daft Days._ Captain John Porteous, a name memorable in the traditions of Edinburgh, as well as in the records of criminal jurisprudence, was the son of a citizen of Edinburgh, who endeavoured to breed him up to his own mechanical trade of a tailor. The youth, however, had a wild and irreclaimable propensity to dissipation, which finally sent him to serve in the corps long maintained in the service of the States of Holland, and called the Scotch Dutch. Here he learned military discipline; and, returning afterwards, in the course of an idle and wandering life, to his native city, his services were required by the magistrates of Edinburgh in the disturbed year 1715, for disciplining their City Guard, in which he shortly afterwards received a captain's commission. It was only by his military skill and an alert and resolute character as an officer of police, that he merited this promotion, for he is said to have been a man of profligate habits, an unnatural son, and a brutal husband. He was, however, useful in his station, and his harsh and fierce habits rendered him formidable to rioters or disturbers of the public peace. The corps in which he held his command is, or perhaps we should rather say _was,_ a body of about one hundred and twenty soldiers divided into three companies, and regularly armed, clothed, and embodied. They were chiefly veterans who enlisted in this cogs, having the benefit of working at their trades when they were off duty. These men had the charge of preserving public order, repressing riots and street robberies, acting, in short, as an armed police, and attending on all public occasions where confusion or popular disturbance might be expected.* * The Lord Provost was ex-officio commander and colonel of the corps, which might be increased to three hundred men when the times required it. No other drum but theirs was allowed to sound on the High Street between the Luckenbooths and the Netherbow. Poor Fergusson, whose irregularities sometimes led him into unpleasant rencontres with these military conservators of public order, and who mentions them so often that he may be termed their poet laureate,* thus admonishes his readers, warned doubtless by his own experience:-- * [Robert Fergusson, the Scottish Poet, born 1750, died 1774.] "Gude folk, as ye come frae the fair, Bide yont frae this black squad: There's nae sic savages elsewhere Allowed to wear cockad." In fact, the soldiers of the City Guard, being, as we have said, in general discharged veterans, who had strength enough remaining for this municipal duty, and being, moreover, for the greater part, Highlanders, were neither by birth, education, nor former habits, trained to endure with much patience the insults of the rabble, or the provoking petulance of truant schoolboys, and idle debauchees of all descriptions, with whom their occupation brought them into contact. On the contrary, the tempers of the poor old fellows were soured by the indignities with which the mob distinguished them on many occasions, and frequently might have required the soothing strains of the poet we have just quoted-- "O soldiers! for your ain dear sakes, For Scotland's love, the Land o' Cakes, Gie not her bairns sic deadly paiks, Nor be sae rude, Wi' firelock or Lochaber-axe, As spill their bluid!" On all occasions when a holiday licensed some riot and irregularity, a skirmish with these veterans was a favourite recreation with the rabble of Edinburgh. These pages may perhaps see the light when many have in fresh recollection such onsets as we allude to. But the venerable corps, with whom the contention was held, may now be considered as totally extinct. Of late the gradual diminution of these civic soldiers reminds one of the abatement of King Lear's hundred knights. The edicts of each succeeding set of magistrates have, like those of Goneril and Regan, diminished this venerable band with the similar question, "What need we five-and-twenty?--ten?--or five?" And it is now nearly come to, "What need one?" A spectre may indeed here and there still be seen, of an old grey-headed and grey-bearded Highlander, with war-worn features, but bent double by age; dressed in an old fashioned cocked-hat, bound with white tape instead of silver lace; and in coat, waistcoat, and breeches, of a muddy-coloured red, bearing in his withered hand an ancient weapon, called a Lochaber-axe; a long pole, namely, with an axe at the extremity, and a hook at the back of the hatchet.* * This hook was to enable the bearer of the Lochaber-axe to scale a gateway, by grappling the top of the door, and swinging himself up by the staff of his weapon. Such a phantom of former days still creeps, I have been informed, round the statue of Charles the Second, in the Parliament Square, as if the image of a Stuart were the last refuge for any memorial of our ancient manners; and one or two others are supposed to glide around the door of the guardhouse assigned to them in the Luckenbooths, when their ancient refuge in the High Street was laid low.* * This ancient corps is now entirely disbanded. Their last march to do duty at Hallowfair had something in it affecting. Their drums and fifes had been wont on better days to play, on this joyous occasion, the lively tune of "Jockey to the fair;" but on his final occasion the afflicted veterans moved slowly to the dirge of "The last time I came ower the muir." But the fate of manuscripts bequeathed to friends and executors is so uncertain, that the narrative containing these frail memorials of the old Town Guard of Edinburgh, who, with their grim and valiant corporal, John Dhu (the fiercest-looking fellow I ever saw), were, in my boyhood, the alternate terror and derision of the petulant brood of the High School, may, perhaps, only come to light when all memory of the institution has faded away, and then serve as an illustration of Kay's caricatures, who has preserved the features of some of their heroes. In the preceding generation, when there was a perpetual alarm for the plots and activity of the Jacobites, some pains were taken by the magistrates of Edinburgh to keep this corps, though composed always of such materials as we have noticed, in a more effective state than was afterwards judged necessary, when their most dangerous service was to skirmish with the rabble on the king's birthday. They were, therefore, more the objects of hatred, and less that of scorn, than they were afterwards accounted. To Captain John Porteous, the honour of his command and of his corps seems to have been a matter of high interest and importance. He was exceedingly incensed against Wilson for the affront which he construed him to have put upon his soldiers, in the effort he made for the liberation of his companion, and expressed himself most ardently on the subject. He was no less indignant at the report, that there was an intention to rescue Wilson himself from the gallows, and uttered many threats and imprecations upon that subject, which were afterwards remembered to his disadvantage. In fact, if a good deal of determination and promptitude rendered Porteous, in one respect, fit to command guards designed to suppress popular commotion, he seems, on the other, to have been disqualified for a charge so delicate, by a hot and surly temper, always too ready to come to blows and violence; a character void of principle; and a disposition to regard the rabble, who seldom failed to regale him and his soldiers with some marks of their displeasure, as declared enemies, upon whom it was natural and justifiable that he should seek opportunities of vengeance. Being, however, the most active and trustworthy among the captains of the City Guard, he was the person to whom the magistrates confided the command of the soldiers appointed to keep the peace at the time of Wilson's execution. He was ordered to guard the gallows and scaffold, with about eighty men, all the disposable force that could be spared for that duty. But the magistrates took farther precautions, which affected Porteous's pride very deeply. They requested the assistance of part of a regular infantry regiment, not to attend upon the execution, but to remain drawn up on the principal street of the city, during the time that it went forward, in order to intimidate the multitude, in case they should be disposed to be unruly, with a display of force which could not be resisted without desperation. It may sound ridiculous in our ears, considering the fallen state of this ancient civic corps, that its officer should have felt punctiliously jealous of its honour. Yet so it was. Captain Porteous resented, as an indignity, the introducing the Welsh Fusileers within the city, and drawing them up in the street where no drums but his own were allowed to be sounded without the special command or permission of the magistrates. As he could not show his ill-humour to his patrons the magistrates, it increased his indignation and his desire to be revenged on the unfortunate criminal Wilson, and all who favoured him. These internal emotions of jealousy and rage wrought a change on the man's mien and bearing, visible to all who saw him on the fatal morning when Wilson was appointed to suffer. Porteous's ordinary appearance was rather favourable. He was about the middle size, stout, and well made, having a military air, and yet rather a gentle and mild countenance. His complexion was brown, his face somewhat fretted with the sears of the smallpox, his eyes rather languid than keen or fierce. On the present occasion, however, it seemed to those who saw him as if he were agitated by some evil demon. His step was irregular, his voice hollow and broken, his countenance pale, his eyes staring and wild, his speech imperfect and confused, and his whole appearance so disordered, that many remarked he seemed to be _fey,_ a Scottish expression, meaning the state of those who are driven on to their impending fate by the strong impulse of some irresistible necessity. One part of his conduct was truly diabolical, if indeed it has not been exaggerated by the general prejudice entertained against his memory. When Wilson, the unhappy criminal, was delivered to him by the keeper of the prison, in order that he might be conducted to the place of execution, Porteous, not satisfied with the usual precautions to prevent escape, ordered him to be manacled. This might be justifiable from the character and bodily strength of the malefactor, as well as from the apprehensions so generally entertained of an expected rescue. But the handcuffs which were produced being found too small for the wrists of a man so big-boned as Wilson, Porteous proceeded with his own hands, and by great exertion of strength, to force them till they clasped together, to the exquisite torture of the unhappy criminal. Wilson remonstrated against such barbarous usage, declaring that the pain distracted his thoughts from the subjects of meditation proper to his unhappy condition. "It signifies little," replied Captain Porteous; "your pain will soon be at an end." "Your cruelty is great," answered the sufferer. "You know not how soon you yourself may have occasion to ask the mercy which you are now refusing to a fellow-creature. May God forgive you!" These words, long afterwards quoted and remembered, were all that passed between Porteous and his prisoner; but as they took air, and became known to the people, they greatly increased the popular compassion for Wilson, and excited a proportionate degree of indignation against Porteous; against whom, as strict, and even violent in the discharge of his unpopular office, the common people had some real, and many imaginary causes of complaint. When the painful procession was completed, and Wilson, with the escort, had arrived at the scaffold in the Grassmarket, there appeared no signs of that attempt to rescue him which had occasioned such precautions. The multitude, in general, looked on with deeper interest than at ordinary executions; and there might be seen, on the countenances of many, a stern and indignant expression, like that with which the ancient Cameronians might be supposed to witness the execution of their brethren, who glorified the Covenant on the same occasion, and at the same spot. But there was no attempt at violence. Wilson himself seemed disposed to hasten over the space that divided time from eternity. The devotions proper and usual on such occasions were no sooner finished than he submitted to his fate, and the sentence of the law was fulfilled. He had been suspended on the gibbet so long as to be totally deprived of life, when at once, as if occasioned by some newly received impulse, there arose a tumult among the multitude. Many stones were thrown at Porteous and his guards; some mischief was done; and the mob continued to press forward with whoops, shrieks, howls, and exclamations. A young fellow, with a sailor's cap slouched over his face, sprung on the scaffold, and cut the rope by which the criminal was suspended. Others approached to carry off the body, either to secure for it a decent grave, or to try, perhaps, some means of resuscitation. Captain Porteous was wrought, by this appearance of insurrection against his authority, into a rage so headlong as made him forget, that, the sentence having been fully executed, it was his duty not to engage in hostilities with the misguided multitude, but to draw off his men as fast as possible. He sprung from the scaffold, snatched a musket from one of his soldiers, commanded the party to give fire, and, as several eye-witnesses concurred in swearing, set them the example, by discharging his piece, and shooting a man dead on the spot. Several soldiers obeyed his command or followed his example; six or seven persons were slain, and a great many were hurt and wounded. After this act of violence, the Captain proceeded to withdraw his men towards their guard-house in the High Street. The mob were not so much intimidated as incensed by what had been done. They pursued the soldiers with execrations, accompanied by volleys of stones. As they pressed on them, the rearmost soldiers turned, and again fired with fatal aim and execution. It is not accurately known whether Porteous commanded this second act of violence; but of course the odium of the whole transactions of the fatal day attached to him, and to him alone. He arrived at the guard-house, dismissed his soldiers, and went to make his report to the magistrates concerning the unfortunate events of the day. Apparently by this time Captain Porteous had began to doubt the propriety of his own conduct, and the reception he met with from the magistrates was such as to make him still more anxious to gloss it over. He denied that he had given orders to fire; he denied he had fired with his own hand; he even produced the fusee which he carried as an officer for examination; it was found still loaded. Of three cartridges which he was seen to put in his pouch that morning, two were still there; a white handkerchief was thrust into the muzzle of the piece, and re-turned unsoiled or blackened. To the defence founded on these circumstances it was answered, that Porteous had not used his own piece, but had been seen to take one from a soldier. Among the many who had been killed and wounded by the unhappy fire, there were several of better rank; for even the humanity of such soldiers as fired over the heads of the mere rabble around the scaffold, proved in some instances fatal to persons who were stationed in windows, or observed the melancholy scene from a distance. The voice of public indignation was loud and general; and, ere men's tempers had time to cool, the trial of Captain Porteous took place before the High Court of Justiciary. After a long and patient hearing, the jury had the difficult duty of balancing the positive evidence of many persons, and those of respectability, who deposed positively to the prisoner's commanding his soldiers to fire, and himself firing his piece, of which some swore that they saw the smoke and flash, and beheld a man drop at whom it was pointed, with the negative testimony of others, who, though well stationed for seeing what had passed, neither heard Porteous give orders to fire, nor saw him fire himself; but, on the contrary, averred that the first shot was fired by a soldier who stood close by him. A great part of his defence was also founded on the turbulence of the mob, which witnesses, according to their feelings, their predilections, and their opportunities of observation, represented differently; some describing as a formidable riot, what others represented as a trifling disturbance such as always used to take place on the like occasions, when the executioner of the law, and the men commissioned to protect him in his task, were generally exposed to some indignities. The verdict of the jury sufficiently shows how the evidence preponderated in their minds. It declared that John Porteous fired a gun among the people assembled at the execution; that he gave orders to his soldiers to fire, by which many persons were killed and wounded; but, at the same time, that the prisoner and his guard had been wounded and beaten, by stones thrown at them by the multitude. Upon this verdict, the Lords of Justiciary passed sentence of death against Captain John Porteous, adjudging him, in the common form, to be hanged on a gibbet at the common place of execution, on Wednesday, 8th September 1736, and all his movable property to be forfeited to the king's use, according to the Scottish law in cases of wilful murder.* * The signatures affixed to the death-warrant of Captain Porteous were-- Andrew Fletcher of Milton, Lord Justice-Clerk. Sir James Mackenzie, Lord Royston. David Erskine, Lord Dun. Sir Walter Pringle, Lord Newhall. Sir Gilbert Elliot, Lord Minto. CHAPTER THIRD. "The hour's come, but not the man."* * There is a tradition, that while a little stream was swollen into a torrent by recent showers, the discontented voice of the Water Spirit was heard to pronounce these words. At the some moment a man, urged on by his fate, or, in Scottish language, _fey,_ arrived at a gallop, and prepared to cross the water. No remonstrance from the bystanders was of power to stop him--he plunged into the stream, and perished. Kelpie. On the day when the unhappy Porteous was expected to suffer the sentence of the law, the place of execution, extensive as it is, was crowded almost to suffocation. There was not a window in all the lofty tenements around it, or in the steep and crooked street called the Bow, by which the fatal procession was to descend from the High Street, that was not absolutely filled with spectators. The uncommon height and antique appearance of these houses, some of which were formerly the property of the Knights Templars, and the Knights of St. John, and still exhibit on their fronts and gables the iron cross of these orders, gave additional effect to a scene in itself so striking. The area of the Grassmarket resembled a huge dark lake or sea of human heads, in the centre of which arose the fatal tree, tall, black, and ominous, from which dangled the deadly halter. Every object takes interest from its uses and associations, and the erect beam and empty noose, things so simple in themselves, became, on such an occasion, objects of terror and of solemn interest. Amid so numerous an assembly there was scarcely a word spoken, save in whispers. The thirst of vengeance was in some degree allayed by its supposed certainty; and even the populace, with deeper feeling than they are wont to entertain, suppressed all clamorous exultation, and prepared to enjoy the scene of retaliation in triumph, silent and decent, though stern and relentless. It seemed as if the depth of their hatred to the unfortunate criminal scorned to display itself in anything resembling the more noisy current of their ordinary feelings. Had a stranger consulted only the evidence of his ears, he might have supposed that so vast a multitude were assembled for some purpose which affected them with the deepest sorrow, and stilled those noises which, on all ordinary occasions, arise from such a concourse; but if he had gazed upon their faces, he would have been instantly undeceived. The compressed lip, the bent brow, the stern and flashing eye of almost everyone on whom he looked, conveyed the expression of men come to glut their sight with triumphant revenge. It is probable that the appearance of the criminal might have somewhat changed the temper of the populace in his favour, and that they might in the moment of death have forgiven the man against whom their resentment had been so fiercely heated. It had, however, been destined, that the mutability of their sentiments was not to be exposed to this trial. The usual hour for producing the criminal had been past for many minutes, yet the spectators observed no symptom of his appearance. "Would they venture to defraud public justice?" was the question which men began anxiously to ask at each other. The first answer in every case was bold and positive,--"They dare not." But when the point was further canvassed, other opinions were entertained, and various causes of doubt were suggested. Porteous had been a favourite officer of the magistracy of the city, which, being a numerous and fluctuating body, requires for its support a degree of energy in its functionaries, which the individuals who compose it cannot at all times alike be supposed to possess in their own persons. It was remembered, that in the Information for Porteous (the paper, namely, in which his case was stated to the Judges of the criminal court), he had been described by his counsel as the person on whom the magistrates chiefly relied in all emergencies of uncommon difficulty. It was argued, too, that his conduct, on the unhappy occasion of Wilson's execution, was capable of being attributed to an imprudent excess of zeal in the execution of his duty, a motive for which those under whose authority he acted might be supposed to have great sympathy. And as these considerations might move the magistrates to make a favourable representation of Porteous's case, there were not wanting others in the higher departments of Government, which would make such suggestions favourably listened to. The mob of Edinburgh, when thoroughly excited, had been at all times one of the fiercest which could be found in Europe; and of late years they had risen repeatedly against the Government, and sometimes not without temporary success. They were conscious, therefore, that they were no favourites with the rulers of the period, and that, if Captain Porteous's violence was not altogether regarded as good service, it might certainly be thought, that to visit it with a capital punishment would render it both delicate and dangerous for future officers, in the same circumstances, to act with effect in repressing tumults. There is also a natural feeling, on the part of all members of Government, for the general maintenance of authority; and it seemed not unlikely, that what to the relatives of the sufferers appeared a wanton and unprovoked massacre, should be otherwise viewed in the cabinet of St. James's. It might be there supposed, that upon the whole matter, Captain Porteous was in the exercise of a trust delegated to him by the lawful civil authority; that he had been assaulted by the populace, and several of his men hurt; and that, in finally repelling force by force, his conduct could be fairly imputed to no other motive than self-defence in the discharge of his duty. These considerations, of themselves very powerful, induced the spectators to apprehend the possibility of a reprieve; and to the various causes which might interest the rulers in his favour, the lower part of the rabble added one which was peculiarly well adapted to their comprehension. It was averred, in order to increase the odium against Porteous, that while he repressed with the utmost severity the slightest excesses of the poor, he not only overlooked the license of the young nobles and gentry, but was very willing to lend them the countenance of his official authority, in execution of such loose pranks as it was chiefly his duty to have restrained. This suspicion, which was perhaps much exaggerated, made a deep impression on the minds of the populace; and when several of the higher rank joined in a petition, recommending Porteous to the mercy of the Crown, it was generally supposed he owed their favour not to any conviction of the hardship of his case, but to the fear of losing a convenient accomplice in their debaucheries. It is scarcely necessary to say how much this suspicion augmented the people's detestation of this obnoxious criminal, as well as their fear of his escaping the sentence pronounced against him. While these arguments were stated and replied to, and canvassed and supported, the hitherto silent expectation of the people became changed into that deep and agitating murmur, which is sent forth by the ocean before the tempest begins to howl. The crowded populace, as if their motions had corresponded with the unsettled state of their minds, fluctuated to and fro without any visible cause of impulse, like the agitation of the waters, called by sailors the ground-swell. The news, which the magistrates had almost hesitated to communicate to them, were at length announced, and spread among the spectators with a rapidity like lightning. A reprieve from the Secretary of State's office, under the hand of his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, had arrived, intimating the pleasure of Queen Caroline (regent of the kingdom during the absence of George II. on the Continent), that the execution of the sentence of death pronounced against John Porteous, late Captain-Lieutenant of the City Guard of Edinburgh, present prisoner in the Tolbooth of that city, be respited for six weeks from the time appointed for his execution. The assembled spectators of almost all degrees, whose minds had been wound up to the pitch which we have described, uttered a groan, or rather a roar of indignation and disappointed revenge, similar to that of a tiger from whom his meal has been rent by his keeper when he was just about to devour it. This fierce exclamation seemed to forbode some immediate explosion of popular resentment, and, in fact, such had been expected by the magistrates, and the necessary measures had been taken to repress it. But the shout was not repeated, nor did any sudden tumult ensue, such as it appeared to announce. The populace seemed to be ashamed of having expressed their disappointment in a vain clamour, and the sound changed, not into the silence which had preceded the arrival of these stunning news, but into stifled mutterings, which each group maintained among themselves, and which were blended into one deep and hoarse murmur which floated above the assembly. Yet still, though all expectation of the execution was over, the mob remained assembled, stationary, as it were, through very resentment, gazing on the preparations for death, which had now been made in vain, and stimulating their feelings, by recalling the various claims which Wilson might have had on royal mercy, from the mistaken motives on which he acted, as well as from the generosity he had displayed towards his accomplice. "This man," they said,--"the brave, the resolute, the generous, was executed to death without mercy for stealing a purse of gold, which in some sense he might consider as a fair reprisal; while the profligate satellite, who took advantage of a trifling tumult, inseparable from such occasions, to shed the blood of twenty of his fellow-citizens, is deemed a fitting object for the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy. Is this to be borne?--would our fathers have borne it? Are not we, like them, Scotsmen and burghers of Edinburgh?" The officers of justice began now to remove the scaffold, and other preparations which had been made for the execution, in hopes, by doing so, to accelerate the dispersion of the multitude. The measure had the desired effect; for no sooner had the fatal tree been unfixed from the large stone pedestal or socket in which it was secured, and sunk slowly down upon the wain intended to remove it to the place where it was usually deposited, than the populace, after giving vent to their feelings in a second shout of rage and mortification, began slowly to disperse to their usual abodes and occupations. The windows were in like manner gradually deserted, and groups of the more decent class of citizens formed themselves, as if waiting to return homewards when the streets should be cleared of the rabble. Contrary to what is frequently the case, this description of persons agreed in general with the sentiments of their inferiors, and considered the cause as common to all ranks. Indeed, as we have already noticed, it was by no means amongst the lowest class of the spectators, or those most likely to be engaged in the riot at Wilson's execution, that the fatal fire of Porteous's soldiers had taken effect. Several persons were killed who were looking out at windows at the scene, who could not of course belong to the rioters, and were persons of decent rank and condition. The burghers, therefore, resenting the loss which had fallen on their own body, and proud and tenacious of their rights, as the citizens of Edinburgh have at all times been, were greatly exasperated at the unexpected respite of Captain Porteous. It was noticed at the time, and afterwards more particularly remembered, that, while the mob were in the act of dispersing, several individuals were seen busily passing from one place and one group of people to another, remaining long with none, but whispering for a little time with those who appeared to be declaiming most violently against the conduct of Government. These active agents had the appearance of men from the country, and were generally supposed to be old friends and confederates of Wilson, whose minds were of course highly excited against Porteous. If, however, it was the intention of these men to stir the multitude to any sudden act of mutiny, it seemed for the time to be fruitless. The rabble, as well as the more decent part of the assembly, dispersed, and went home peaceably; and it was only by observing the moody discontent on their brows, or catching the tenor of the conversation they held with each other, that a stranger could estimate the state of their minds. We will give the reader this advantage, by associating ourselves with one of the numerous groups who were painfully ascending the steep declivity of the West Bow, to return to their dwellings in the Lawnmarket. "An unco thing this, Mrs. Howden," said old Peter Plumdamas to his neighbour the rouping-wife, or saleswoman, as he offered her his arm to assist her in the toilsome ascent, "to see the grit folk at Lunnon set their face against law and gospel, and let loose sic a reprobate as Porteous upon a peaceable town!" "And to think o' the weary walk they hae gien us," answered Mrs. Howden, with a groan; "and sic a comfortable window as I had gotten, too, just within a penny-stane-cast of the scaffold--I could hae heard every word the minister said--and to pay twalpennies for my stand, and a' for naething!" "I am judging," said Mr. Plumdamas, "that this reprieve wadna stand gude in the auld Scots law, when the kingdom was a kingdom." "I dinna ken muckle about the law," answered Mrs. Howden; "but I ken, when we had a king, and a chancellor, and parliament men o' our ain, we could aye peeble them wi' stanes when they werena gude bairns--But naebody's nails can reach the length o' Lunnon." "Weary on Lunnon, and a' that e'er came out o't!" said Miss Grizel Damahoy, an ancient seamstress; "they hae taen away our parliament, and they hae oppressed our trade. Our gentles will hardly allow that a Scots needle can sew ruffles on a sark, or lace on an owerlay." "Ye may say that--Miss Damahoy, and I ken o' them that hae gotten raisins frae Lunnon by forpits at ance," responded Plumdamas; "and then sic an host of idle English gaugers and excisemen as hae come down to vex and torment us, that an honest man canna fetch sae muckle as a bit anker o' brandy frae Leith to the Lawnmarket, but he's like to be rubbit o' the very gudes he's bought and paid for.--Weel, I winna justify Andrew Wilson for pitting hands on what wasna his; but if he took nae mair than his ain, there's an awfu' difference between that and the fact this man stands for." "If ye speak about the law," said Mrs. Howden, "here comes Mr. Saddletree, that can settle it as weel as ony on the bench." The party she mentioned, a grave elderly person, with a superb periwig, dressed in a decent suit of sad-coloured clothes, came up as she spoke, and courteously gave his arm to Miss Grizel Damahoy. It may be necessary to mention, that Mr. Bartoline Saddletree kept an excellent and highly-esteemed shop for harness, saddles, &c. &c., at the sign of the Golden Nag, at the head of Bess Wynd.* * [Maitland calls it Best's Wynd, and later writers Beth's Wynd. As the name implies, it was an open thoroughfare or alley leading from the Lawnmarket, and extended in a direct line between the old Tolbooth to near the head of the Cowgate. It was partly destroyed by fire in 1786, and was totally removed in 1809, preparatory to the building of the new libraries of the Faculty of Advocates and writers to the Signet.] His genius, however (as he himself and most of his neighbours conceived), lay towards the weightier matters of the law, and he failed not to give frequent attendance upon the pleadings and arguments of the lawyers and judges in the neighbouring square, where, to say the truth, he was oftener to be found than would have consisted with his own emolument; but that his wife, an active painstaking person, could, in his absence, make an admirable shift to please the customers and scold the journeymen. This good lady was in the habit of letting her husband take his way, and go on improving his stock of legal knowledge without interruption; but, as if in requital, she insisted upon having her own will in the domestic and commercial departments which he abandoned to her. Now, as Bartoline Saddletree had a considerable gift of words, which he mistook for eloquence, and conferred more liberally upon the society in which he lived than was at all times gracious and acceptable, there went forth a saying, with which wags used sometimes to interrupt his rhetoric, that, as he had a golden nag at his door, so he had a grey mare in his shop. This reproach induced Mr. Saddletree, on all occasions, to assume rather a haughty and stately tone towards his good woman, a circumstance by which she seemed very little affected, unless he attempted to exercise any real authority, when she never failed to fly into open rebellion. But such extremes Bartoline seldom provoked; for, like the gentle King Jamie, he was fonder of talking of authority than really exercising it. This turn of mind was, on the whole, lucky for him; since his substance was increased without any trouble on his part, or any interruption of his favourite studies. This word in explanation has been thrown in to the reader, while Saddletree was laying down, with great precision, the law upon Porteous's case, by which he arrived at this conclusion, that, if Porteous had fired five minutes sooner, before Wilson was cut down, he would have been _versans in licito;_ engaged, that is, in a lawful act, and only liable to be punished _propter excessum,_ or for lack of discretion, which might have mitigated the punishment to _poena ordinaria._ "Discretion!" echoed Mrs. Howden, on whom, it may well be supposed, the fineness of this distinction was entirely thrown away,--"whan had Jock Porteous either grace, discretion, or gude manners?--I mind when his father" "But, Mrs. Howden," said Saddletree-- "And I," said Miss Damahoy, "mind when his mother" "Miss Damahoy," entreated the interrupted orator "And I," said Plumdamas, "mind when his wife" "Mr. Plumdamas--Mrs. Howden--Miss Damahoy," again implored the orator,--"Mind the distinction, as Counsellor Crossmyloof says--'I,' says he, 'take a distinction.' Now, the body of the criminal being cut down, and the execution ended, Porteous was no longer official; the act which he came to protect and guard, being done and ended, he was no better than _cuivis ex populo._" "_Quivis--quivis,_ Mr. Saddletree, craving your pardon," said (with a prolonged emphasis on the first syllable) Mr. Butler, the deputy-schoolmaster of a parish near Edinburgh, who at that moment came up behind them as the false Latin was uttered. "What signifies interrupting me, Mr. Butler?--but I am glad to see ye notwithstanding--I speak after Counsellor Crossmyloof, and he said _cuivis._" "If Counsellor Crossmyloof used the dative for the nominative, I would have crossed his loof with a tight leathern strap, Mr. Saddletree; there is not a boy on the booby form but should have been scourged for such a solecism in grammar." "I speak Latin like a lawyer, Mr. Butler, and not like a schoolmaster," retorted Saddletree. "Scarce like a schoolboy, I think," rejoined Butler. "It matters little," said Bartoline; "all I mean to say is, that Porteous has become liable to the _poena extra ordinem,_ or capital punishment--which is to say, in plain Scotch, the gallows--simply because he did not fire when he was in office, but waited till the body was cut down, the execution whilk he had in charge to guard implemented, and he himself exonered of the public trust imposed on him." "But, Mr. Saddletree," said Plumdamas, "do ye really think John Porteous's case wad hae been better if he had begun firing before ony stanes were flung at a'?" "Indeed do I, neighbour Plumdamas," replied Bartoline, confidently, "he being then in point of trust and in point of power, the execution being but inchoat, or, at least, not implemented, or finally ended; but after Wilson was cut down it was a' ower--he was clean exauctorate, and had nae mair ado but to get awa wi' his guard up this West Bow as fast as if there had been a caption after him--And this is law, for I heard it laid down by Lord Vincovincentem." "Vincovincentem?--Is he a lord of state, or a lord of seat?" inquired Mrs. Howden.* * A nobleman was called a Lord of State. The Senators of the College * of Justice were termed Lords of Seat, or of the Session. "A lord of seat--a lord of session.--I fash mysell little wi' lords o' state; they vex me wi' a wheen idle questions about their saddles, and curpels, and holsters and horse-furniture, and what they'll cost, and whan they'll be ready--a wheen galloping geese--my wife may serve the like o' them." "And so might she, in her day, hae served the best lord in the land, for as little as ye think o' her, Mr. Saddletree," said Mrs. Howden, somewhat indignant at the contemptuous way in which her gossip was mentioned; "when she and I were twa gilpies, we little thought to hae sitten doun wi' the like o' my auld Davie Howden, or you either, Mr. Saddletree." While Saddletree, who was not bright at a reply, was cudgelling his brains for an answer to this homethrust, Miss Damahoy broke in on him. "And as for the lords of state," said Miss Damahoy, "ye suld mind the riding o' the parliament, Mr. Saddletree, in the gude auld time before the Union,--a year's rent o' mony a gude estate gaed for horse-graith and harnessing, forby broidered robes and foot-mantles, that wad hae stude by their lane wi' gold brocade, and that were muckle in my ain line." "Ay, and then the lusty banqueting, with sweetmeats and comfits wet and dry, and dried fruits of divers sorts," said Plumdamas. "But Scotland was Scotland in these days." "I'll tell ye what it is, neighbours," said Mrs. Howden, "I'll ne'er believe Scotland is Scotland ony mair, if our kindly Scots sit doun with the affront they hae gien us this day. It's not only the blude that _is_ shed, but the blude that might hae been shed, that's required at our hands; there was my daughter's wean, little Eppie Daidle--my oe, ye ken, Miss Grizel--had played the truant frae the school, as bairns will do, ye ken, Mr. Butler" "And for which," interjected Mr. Butler, "they should be soundly scourged by their well-wishers." "And had just cruppen to the gallows' foot to see the hanging, as was natural for a wean; and what for mightna she hae been shot as weel as the rest o' them, and where wad we a' hae been then? I wonder how Queen Carline (if her name be Carline) wad hae liked to hae had ane o' her ain bairns in sic a venture?" "Report says," answered Butler, "that such a circumstance would not have distressed her majesty beyond endurance." "Aweel," said Mrs. Howden, "the sum o' the matter is, that, were I a man, I wad hae amends o' Jock Porteous, be the upshot what like o't, if a' the carles and carlines in England had sworn to the nay-say." "I would claw down the Tolbooth door wi' my nails," said Miss Grizel, "but I wad be at him." "Ye may be very right, ladies," said Butler, "but I would not advise you to speak so loud." "Speak!" exclaimed both the ladies together, "there will be naething else spoken about frae the Weigh-house to the Water-gate, till this is either ended or mended." The females now departed to their respective places of abode. Plumdamas joined the other two gentlemen in drinking their _meridian_ (a bumper-dram of brandy), as they passed the well-known low-browed shop in the Lawnmarket, where they were wont to take that refreshment. Mr. Plumdamas then departed towards his shop, and Mr. Butler, who happened to have some particular occasion for the rein of an old bridle (the truants of that busy day could have anticipated its application), walked down the Lawnmarket with Mr. Saddletree, each talking as he could get a word thrust in, the one on the laws of Scotland, the other on those of syntax, and neither listening to a word which his companion uttered. CHAPTER FOURTH. Elswhair he colde right weel lay down the law, But in his house was meek as is a daw. Davie Lindsay. "There has been Jock Driver the carrier here, speering about his new graith," said Mrs. Saddletree to her husband, as he crossed his threshold, not with the purpose, by any means, of consulting him upon his own affairs, but merely to intimate, by a gentle recapitulation, how much duty she had gone through in his absence. "Weel," replied Bartoline, and deigned not a word more. "And the laird of Girdingburst has had his running footman here, and ca'd himsell (he's a civil pleasant young gentleman), to see when the broidered saddle-cloth for his sorrel horse will be ready, for he wants it agane the Kelso races." "Weel, aweel," replied Bartoline, as laconically as before. "And his lordship, the Earl of Blazonbury, Lord Flash and Flame, is like to be clean daft, that the harness for the six Flanders mears, wi' the crests, coronets, housings, and mountings conform, are no sent hame according to promise gien." "Weel, weel, weel--weel, weel, gudewife," said Saddletree, "if he gangs daft, we'll hae him cognosced--it's a' very weel." "It's weel that ye think sae, Mr. Saddletree," answered his helpmate, rather nettled at the indifference with which her report was received; "there's mony ane wad hae thought themselves affronted, if sae mony customers had ca'd and naebody to answer them but women-folk; for a' the lads were aff, as soon as your back was turned, to see Porteous hanged, that might be counted upon; and sae, you no being at hame" "Houts, Mrs. Saddletree," said Bartoline, with an air of consequence, "dinna deave me wi' your nonsense; I was under the necessity of being elsewhere--_non omnia_--as Mr. Crossmyloof said, when he was called by two macers at once--_non omnia possumus--pessimus--possimis_--I ken our law-latin offends Mr. Butler's ears, but it means, Naebody, an it were the Lord President himsell, can do twa turns at ance." "Very right, Mr. Saddletree," answered his careful helpmate, with a sarcastic smile; "and nae doubt it's a decent thing to leave your wife to look after young gentlemen's saddles and bridles, when ye gang to see a man, that never did ye nae ill, raxing a halter." "Woman," said Saddletree, assuming an elevated tone, to which the _meridian_ had somewhat contributed, "desist,--I say forbear, from intromitting with affairs thou canst not understand. D'ye think I was born to sit here brogging an elshin through bend-leather, when sic men as Duncan Forbes, and that other Arniston chield there, without muckle greater parts, if the close-head speak true, than mysell maun be presidents and king's advocates, nae doubt, and wha but they? Whereas, were favour equally distribute, as in the days of the wight Wallace" "I ken naething we wad hae gotten by the wight Wallace," said Mrs. Saddletree, "unless, as I hae heard the auld folk tell, they fought in thae days wi' bend-leather guns, and then it's a chance but what, if he had bought them, he might have forgot to pay for them. And as for the greatness of your parts, Bartley, the folk in the close-head* maun ken mair about them than I do, if they make sic a report of them." * [_Close-head,_ the entrance of a blind alley.] "I tell ye, woman," said Saddletree, in high dudgeon, "that ye ken naething about these matters. In Sir William Wallace's days there was nae man pinned down to sic a slavish wark as a saddler's, for they got ony leather graith that they had use for ready-made out of Holland." "Well," said Butler, who was, like many of his profession, something of a humorist and dry joker, "if that be the case, Mr. Saddletree, I think we have changed for the better; since we make our own harness, and only import our lawyers from Holland." "It's ower true, Mr. Butler," answered Bartoline, with a sigh; "if I had had the luck--or rather, if my father had had the sense to send me to Leyden and Utrecht to learn the Substitutes and Pandex" "You mean the Institutes--Justinian's Institutes, Mr. Saddletree?" said Butler. "Institutes and substitutes are synonymous words, Mr. Butler, and used indifferently as such in deeds of tailzie, as you may see in Balfour's Practiques, or Dallas of St. Martin's Styles. I understand these things pretty weel, I thank God but I own I should have studied in Holland." "To comfort you, you might not have been farther forward than you are now, Mr. Saddletree," replied Mr. Butler; "for our Scottish advocates are an aristocratic race. Their brass is of the right Corinthian quality, and _Non cuivis contigit adire Corinthum_--Aha, Mr. Saddletree?" "And aha, Mr. Butler," rejoined Bartoline, upon whom, as may be well supposed, the jest was lost, and all but the sound of the words, "ye said a gliff syne it was _quivis,_ and now I heard ye say _cuivis_ with my ain ears, as plain as ever I heard a word at the fore-bar." "Give me your patience, Mr. Saddletree, and I'll explain the discrepancy in three words," said Butler, as pedantic in his own department, though with infinitely more judgment and learning, as Bartoline was in his self-assumed profession of the law--"Give me your patience for a moment--You'll grant that the nominative case is that by which a person or thing is nominated or designed, and which may be called the primary case, all others being formed from it by alterations of the termination in the learned languages, and by prepositions in our modern Babylonian jargons--You'll grant me that, I suppose, Mr. Saddletree?" "I dinna ken whether I will or no--_ad avisandum,_ ye ken--naebody should be in a hurry to make admissions, either in point of law, or in point of fact," said Saddletree, looking, or endeavouring to look, as if he understood what was said. "And the dative case," continued Butler "I ken what a tutor dative is," said Saddletree, "readily enough." "The dative case," resumed the grammarian, "is that in which anything is given or assigned as properly belonging to a person or thing--You cannot deny that, I am sure." "I am sure I'll no grant it, though," said Saddletree. "Then, what the _deevil_ d'ye take the nominative and the dative cases to be?" said Butler, hastily, and surprised at once out of his decency of expression and accuracy of pronunciation. "I'll tell you that at leisure, Mr. Butler," said Saddletree, with a very knowing look; "I'll take a day to see and answer every article of your condescendence, and then I'll hold you to confess or deny as accords." "Come, come, Mr. Saddletree," said his wife, "we'll hae nae confessions and condescendences here; let them deal in thae sort o' wares that are paid for them--they suit the like o' us as all as a demipique saddle would suit a draught ox." "Aha!" said Mr. Butler, "_Optat ephippia bos piger,_ nothing new under the sun--But it was a fair hit of Mrs. Saddletree, however." "And it wad far better become ye, Mr. Saddletree," continued his helpmate, "since ye say ye hae skeel o' the law, to try if ye can do onything for Effie Deans, puir thing, that's lying up in the tolbooth yonder, cauld, and hungry, and comfortless--A servant lass of ours, Mr. Butler, and as innocent a lass, to my thinking, and as usefu' in the shop--When Mr. Saddletree gangs out,--and ye're aware he's seldom at hame when there's ony o' the plea-houses open,--poor Effie used to help me to tumble the bundles o' barkened leather up and down, and range out the gudes, and suit a' body's humours--And troth, she could aye please the customers wi' her answers, for she was aye civil, and a bonnier lass wasna in Auld Reekie. And when folk were hasty and unreasonable, she could serve them better than me, that am no sae young as I hae been, Mr. Butler, and a wee bit short in the temper into the bargain. For when there's ower mony folks crying on me at anes, and nane but ae tongue to answer them, folk maun speak hastily, or they'll ne'er get through their wark--Sae I miss Effie daily." "_De die in diem,_" added Saddletree. "I think," said Butler, after a good deal of hesitation, "I have seen the girl in the shop--a modest-looking, fair-haired girl?" "Ay, ay, that's just puir Effie," said her mistress. "How she was abandoned to hersell, or whether she was sackless o' the sinful deed, God in Heaven knows; but if she's been guilty, she's been sair tempted, and I wad amaist take my Bible-aith she hasna been hersell at the time." Butler had by this time become much agitated; he fidgeted up and down the shop, and showed the greatest agitation that a person of such strict decorum could be supposed to give way to. "Was not this girl," he said, "the daughter of David Deans, that had the parks at St. Leonard's taken? and has she not a sister?" "In troth has she,--puir Jeanie Deans, ten years aulder than hersell; she was here greeting a wee while syne about her tittie. And what could I say to her, but that she behoved to come and speak to Mr. Saddletree when he was at hame? It wasna that I thought Mr. Saddletree could do her or ony ither body muckle good or ill, but it wad aye serve to keep the puir thing's heart up for a wee while; and let sorrow come when sorrow maun." "Ye're mistaen though, gudewife," said Saddletree scornfully, "for I could hae gien her great satisfaction; I could hae proved to her that her sister was indicted upon the statute saxteen hundred and ninety, chapter one--For the mair ready prevention of child-murder--for concealing her pregnancy, and giving no account of the child which she had borne." "I hope," said Butler,--"I trust in a gracious God, that she can clear herself." "And sae do I, Mr. Butler," replied Mrs. Saddletree. "I am sure I wad hae answered for her as my ain daughter; but wae's my heart, I had been tender a' the simmer, and scarce ower the door o' my room for twal weeks. And as for Mr. Saddletree, he might be in a lying-in hospital, and ne'er find out what the women cam there for. Sae I could see little or naething o' her, or I wad hae had the truth o' her situation out o' her, I'se warrant ye--But we a' think her sister maun be able to speak something to clear her." "The haill Parliament House," said Saddletree, "was speaking o' naething else, till this job o' Porteous's put it out o' head--It's a beautiful point of presumptive murder, and there's been nane like it in the Justiciar Court since the case of Luckie Smith the howdie, that suffered in the year saxteen hundred and seventy-nine." "But what's the matter wi' you, Mr. Butler?" said the good woman; "ye are looking as white as a sheet; will ye tak a dram?" "By no means," said Butler, compelling himself to speak. "I walked in from Dumfries yesterday, and this is a warm day." "Sit down," said Mrs. Saddletree, laying hands on him kindly, "and rest ye--yell kill yoursell, man, at that rate.--And are we to wish you joy o' getting the scule, Mr. Butler?" "Yes--no--I do not know," answered the young man vaguely. But Mrs. Saddletree kept him to point, partly out of real interest, partly from curiosity. "Ye dinna ken whether ye are to get the free scule o' Dumfries or no, after hinging on and teaching it a' the simmer?" "No, Mrs. Saddletree--I am not to have it," replied Butler, more collectedly. "The Laird of Black-at-the-Bane had a natural son bred to the kirk, that the Presbytery could not be prevailed upon to license; and so" "Ay, ye need say nae mair about it; if there was a laird that had a puir kinsman or a bastard that it wad suit, there's enough said.--And ye're e'en come back to Liberton to wait for dead men's shoon?--and for as frail as Mr. Whackbairn is, he may live as lang as you, that are his assistant and successor." "Very like," replied Butler, with a sigh; "I do not know if I should wish it otherwise." "Nae doubt, it's a very vexing thing," continued the good lady, "to be in that dependent station; and you that hae right and title to sae muckle better, I wonder how ye bear these crosses." "_Quos diligit castigat,_" answered Butler; "even the pagan Seneca could see an advantage in affliction, The Heathens had their philosophy, and the Jews their revelation, Mrs. Saddletree, and they endured their distresses in their day. Christians have a better dispensation than either--but doubtless" He stopped and sighed. "I ken what ye mean," said Mrs. Saddletree, looking toward her husband; "there's whiles we lose patience in spite of baith book and Bible--But ye are no gaun awa, and looking sae poorly--ye'll stay and take some kale wi' us?" Mr. Saddletree laid aside Balfour's Practiques (his favourite study, and much good may it do him), to join in his wife's hospitable importunity. But the teacher declined all entreaty, and took his leave upon the spot. "There's something in a' this," said Mrs. Saddletree, looking after him as he walked up the street; "I wonder what makes Mr. Butler sae distressed about Effie's misfortune--there was nae acquaintance atween them that ever I saw or heard of; but they were neighbours when David Deans was on the Laird o' Dumbiedikes' land. Mr. Butler wad ken her father, or some o' her folk.--Get up, Mr. Saddletree--ye have set yoursell down on the very brecham that wants stitching--and here's little Willie, the prentice.--Ye little rin-there-out deil that ye are, what takes you raking through the gutters to see folk hangit?--how wad ye like when it comes to be your ain chance, as I winna ensure ye, if ye dinna mend your manners?--And what are ye maundering and greeting for, as if a word were breaking your banes?--Gang in by, and be a better bairn another time, and tell Peggy to gie ye a bicker o' broth, for ye'll be as gleg as a gled, I'se warrant ye.--It's a fatherless bairn, Mr. Saddletree, and motherless, whilk in some cases may be waur, and ane would take care o' him if they could--it's a Christian duty." "Very true, gudewife," said Saddletree in reply, "we are _in loco parentis_ to him during his years of pupillarity, and I hae had thoughts of applying to the Court for a commission as factor _loco tutoris,_ seeing there is nae tutor nominate, and the tutor-at-law declines to act; but only I fear the expense of the procedure wad not be _in rem versam,_ for I am not aware if Willie has ony effects whereof to assume the administration." He concluded this sentence with a self-important cough, as one who has laid down the law in an indisputable manner. "Effects!" said Mrs. Saddletree, "what effects has the puir wean?--he was in rags when his mother died; and the blue polonie that Effie made for him out of an auld mantle of my ain, was the first decent dress the bairn ever had on. Poor Effie! can ye tell me now really, wi' a' your law, will her life be in danger, Mr. Saddletree, when they arena able to prove that ever there was a bairn ava?" "Whoy," said Mr. Saddletree, delighted at having for once in his life seen his wife's attention arrested by a topic of legal discussion--"Whoy, there are two sorts of _murdrum_ or _murdragium,_ or what you _populariter et vulgariser_ call murther. I mean there are many sorts; for there's your _murthrum per vigilias et insidias,_ and your _murthrum_ under trust." "I am sure," replied his moiety, "that murther by trust is the way that the gentry murther us merchants, and whiles make us shut the booth up--but that has naething to do wi' Effie's misfortune." "The case of Effie (or Euphemia) Deans," resumed Saddletree, "is one of those cases of murder presumptive, that is, a murder of the law's inferring or construction, being derived from certain _indicia_ or grounds of suspicion." "So that," said the good woman, "unless poor Effie has communicated her situation, she'll be hanged by the neck, if the bairn was still-born, or if it be alive at this moment?" "Assuredly," said Saddletree, "it being a statute made by our Sovereign Lord and Lady, to prevent the horrid delict of bringing forth children in secret--The crime is rather a favourite of the law, this species of murther being one of its ain creation." "Then, if the law makes murders," said Mrs. Saddletree, "the law should be hanged for them; or if they wad hang a lawyer instead, the country wad find nae faut." A summons to their frugal dinner interrupted the farther progress of the conversation, which was otherwise like to take a turn much less favourable to the science of jurisprudence and its professors, than Mr. Bartoline Saddletree, the fond admirer of both, had at its opening anticipated. CHAPTER FIFTH. But up then raise all Edinburgh. They all rose up by thousands three. Johnnie Armstrang's _Goodnight._ Butler, on his departure from the sign of the Golden Nag, went in quest of a friend of his connected with the law, of whom he wished to make particular inquiries concerning the circumstances in which the unfortunate young woman mentioned in the last chapter was placed, having, as the reader has probably already conjectured, reasons much deeper than those dictated by mere humanity for interesting himself in her fate. He found the person he sought absent from home, and was equally unfortunate in one or two other calls which he made upon acquaintances whom he hoped to interest in her story. But everybody was, for the moment, stark-mad on the subject of Porteous, and engaged busily in attacking or defending the measures of Government in reprieving him; and the ardour of dispute had excited such universal thirst, that half the young lawyers and writers, together with their very clerks, the class whom Butler was looking after, had adjourned the debate to some favourite tavern. It was computed by an experienced arithmetician, that there was as much twopenny ale consumed on the discussion as would have floated a first-rate man-of-war. Butler wandered about until it was dusk, resolving to take that opportunity of visiting the unfortunate young woman, when his doing so might be least observed; for he had his own reasons for avoiding the remarks of Mrs. Saddletree, whose shop-door opened at no great distance from that of the jail, though on the opposite or south side of the street, and a little higher up. He passed, therefore, through the narrow and partly covered passage leading from the north-west end of the Parliament Square. He stood now before the Gothic entrance of the ancient prison, which, as is well known to all men, rears its ancient front in the very middle of the High Street, forming, as it were, the termination to a huge pile of buildings called the Luckenbooths, which, for some inconceivable reason, our ancestors had jammed into the midst of the principal street of the town, leaving for passage a narrow street on the north; and on the south, into which the prison opens, a narrow crooked lane, winding betwixt the high and sombre walls of the Tolbooth and the adjacent houses on the one side, and the butresses and projections of the old Cathedral upon the other. To give some gaiety to this sombre passage (well known by the name of the Krames), a number of little booths, or shops, after the fashion of cobblers' stalls, are plastered, as it were, against the Gothic projections and abutments, so that it seemed as if the traders had occupied with nests, bearing the same proportion to the building, every buttress and coign of vantage, as the martlett did in Macbeth's Castle. Of later years these booths have degenerated into mere toy-shops, where the little loiterers chiefly interested in such wares are tempted to linger, enchanted by the rich display of hobby-horses, babies, and Dutch toys, arranged in artful and gay confusion; yet half-scared by the cross looks of the withered pantaloon, or spectacled old lady, by whom these tempting stores are watched and superintended. But, in the times we write of, the hosiers, the glovers, the hatters, the mercers, the milliners, and all who dealt in the miscellaneous wares now termed haberdasher's goods, were to be found in this narrow alley. To return from our digression. Butler found the outer turnkey, a tall thin old man, with long silver hair, in the act of locking the outward door of the jail. He addressed himself to this person, and asked admittance to Effie Deans, confined upon accusation of child-murder. The turnkey looked at him earnestly, and, civilly touching his hat out of respect to Butler's black coat and clerical appearance, replied, "It was impossible any one could be admitted at present." "You shut up earlier than usual, probably on account of Captain Porteous's affair?" said Butler. The turnkey, with the true mystery of a person in office, gave two grave nods, and withdrawing from the wards a ponderous key of about two feet in length, he proceeded to shut a strong plate of steel, which folded down above the keyhole, and was secured by a steel spring and catch. Butler stood still instinctively while the door was made fast, and then looking at his watch, walked briskly up the street, muttering to himself, almost unconsciously-- Porta adversa, ingens, solidoque adamante columnae; Vis ut nulla virum, non ipsi exscindere ferro Coelicolae valeant--Stat ferrea turris ad auras--etc.* Dryden's _Virgil,_ Book vi. * Wide is the fronting gate, and, raised on high, With adamantine columns threats the sky; Vain is the force of man, and Heaven's as vain, To crush the pillars which the pile sustain: Sublime on these a tower of steel is reard. Having wasted half-an-hour more in a second fruitless attempt to find his legal friend and adviser, he thought it time to leave the city and return to his place of residence, in a small village about two miles and a half to the southward of Edinburgh. The metropolis was at this time surrounded by a high wall, with battlements and flanking projections at some intervals, and the access was through gates, called in the Scottish language _ports,_ which were regularly shut at night. A small fee to the keepers would indeed procure egress and ingress at any time, through a wicket left for that purpose in the large gate; but it was of some importance, to a man so poor as Butler, to avoid even this slight pecuniary mulct; and fearing the hour of shutting the gates might be near, he made for that to which he found himself nearest, although, by doing so, he somewhat lengthened his walk homewards. Bristo Port was that by which his direct road lay, but the West Port, which leads out of the Grassmarket, was the nearest of the city gates to the place where he found himself, and to that, therefore, he directed his course. He reached the port in ample time to pass the circuit of the walls, and entered a suburb called Portsburgh, chiefly inhabited by the lower order of citizens and mechanics. Here he was unexpectedly interrupted. He had not gone far from the gate before he heard the sound of a drum, and, to his great surprise, met a number of persons, sufficient to occupy the whole front of the street, and form a considerable mass behind, moving with great speed towards the gate he had just come from, and having in front of them a drum beating to arms. While he considered how he should escape a party, assembled, as it might be presumed, for no lawful purpose, they came full on him and stopped him. "Are you a clergyman?" one questioned him. Butler replied that "he was in orders, but was not a placed minister." "It's Mr. Butler from Liberton," said a voice from behind, "he'll discharge the duty as weel as ony man." "You must turn back with us, sir," said the first speaker, in a tone civil but peremptory. "For what purpose, gentlemen?" said Mr. Butler. "I live at some distance from town--the roads are unsafe by night--you will do me a serious injury by stopping me." "You shall be sent safely home--no man shall touch a hair of your head--but you must and shall come along with us." "But to what purpose or end, gentlemen?" said Butler. "I hope you will be so civil as to explain that to me." "You shall know that in good time. Come along--for come you must, by force or fair means; and I warn you to look neither to the right hand nor the left, and to take no notice of any man's face, but consider all that is passing before you as a dream." "I would it were a dream I could awaken from," said Butler to himself; but having no means to oppose the violence with which he was threatened, he was compelled to turn round and march in front of the rioters, two men partly supporting and partly holding him. During this parley the insurgents had made themselves masters of the West Port, rushing upon the Waiters (so the people were called who had the charge of the gates), and possessing themselves of the keys. They bolted and barred the folding doors, and commanded the person, whose duty it usually was, to secure the wicket, of which they did not understand the fastenings. The man, terrified at an incident so totally unexpected, was unable to perform his usual office, and gave the matter up, after several attempts. The rioters, who seemed to have come prepared for every emergency, called for torches, by the light of which they nailed up the wicket with long nails, which, it seemed probable, they had provided on purpose. While this was going on, Butler could not, even if he had been willing, avoid making remarks on the individuals who seemed to lead this singular mob. The torch-light, while it fell on their forms and left him in the shade, gave him an opportunity to do so without their observing him. Several of those who seemed most active were dressed in sailors' jackets, trousers, and sea-caps; others in large loose-bodied greatcoats, and slouched hats; and there were several who, judging from their dress, should have been called women, whose rough deep voices, uncommon size, and masculine, deportment and mode of walking, forbade them being so interpreted. They moved as if by some well-concerted plan of arrangement. They had signals by which they knew, and nicknames by which they distinguished each other. Butler remarked, that the name of Wildfire was used among them, to which one stout Amazon seemed to reply. The rioters left a small party to observe the West Port, and directed the Waiters, as they valued their lives, to remain within their lodge, and make no attempt for that night to repossess themselves of the gate. They then moved with rapidity along the low street called the Cowgate, the mob of the city everywhere rising at the sound of their drum, and joining them. When the multitude arrived at the Cowgate Port, they secured it with as little opposition as the former, made it fast, and left a small party to observe it. It was afterwards remarked, as a striking instance of prudence and precaution, singularly combined with audacity, that the parties left to guard those gates did not remain stationary on their posts, but flitted to and fro, keeping so near the gates as to see that no efforts were made to open them, yet not remaining so long as to have their persons closely observed. The mob, at first only about one hundred strong, now amounted to thousands, and were increasing every moment. They divided themselves so as to ascend with more speed the various narrow lanes which lead up from the Cowgate to the High Street; and still beating to arms as they went, an calling on all true Scotsmen to join them, they now filled the principal street of the city. The Netherbow Port might be called the Temple Bar of Edinburgh, as, intersecting the High Street at its termination, it divided Edinburgh, properly so called, from the suburb named the Canongate, as Temple Bar separates London from Westminster. It was of the utmost importance to the rioters to possess themselves of this pass, because there was quartered in the Canongate at that time a regiment of infantry, commanded by Colonel Moyle, which might have occupied the city by advancing through this gate, and would possess the power of totally defeating their purpose. The leaders therefore hastened to the Netherbow Port, which they secured in the same manner, and with as little trouble, as the other gates, leaving a party to watch it, strong in proportion to the importance of the post. The next object of these hardy insurgents was at once to disarm the City Guard, and to procure arms for themselves; for scarce any weapons but staves and bludgeons had been yet seen among them. The Guard-house was a long, low, ugly building (removed in 1787), which to a fanciful imagination might have suggested the idea of a long black snail crawling up the middle of the High Street, and deforming its beautiful esplanade. This formidable insurrection had been so unexpected, that there were no more than the ordinary sergeant's guard of the city-corps upon duty; even these were without any supply of powder and ball; and sensible enough what had raised the storm, and which way it was rolling, could hardly be supposed very desirous to expose themselves by a valiant defence to the animosity of so numerous and desperate a mob, to whom they were on the present occasion much more than usually obnoxious. There was a sentinel upon guard, who (that one town-guard soldier might do his duty on that eventful evening) presented his piece, and desired the foremost of the rioters to stand off. The young Amazon, whom Butler had observed particularly active, sprung upon the soldier, seized his musket, and after a struggle succeeded in wrenching it from him, and throwing him down on the causeway. One or two soldiers, who endeavoured to turn out to the support of their sentinel, were in the same manner seized and disarmed, and the mob without difficulty possessed themselves of the Guard-house, disarming and turning out of doors the rest of the men on duty. It was remarked, that, notwithstanding the city soldiers had been the instruments of the slaughter which this riot was designed to revenge, no ill usage or even insult was offered to them. It seemed as if the vengeance of the people disdained to stoop at any head meaner than that which they considered as the source and origin of their injuries. On possessing themselves of the guard, the first act of the multitude was to destroy the drums, by which they supposed an alarm might be conveyed to the garrison in the castle; for the same reason they now silenced their own, which was beaten by a young fellow, son to the drummer of Portsburgh, whom they had forced upon that service. Their next business was to distribute among the boldest of the rioters the guns, bayonets, partisans, halberts, and battle or Lochaber axes. Until this period the principal rioters had preserved silence on the ultimate object of their rising, as being that which all knew, but none expressed. Now, however, having accomplished all the preliminary parts of their design, they raised a tremendous shout of "Porteous! Porteous! To the Tolbooth! To the Tolbooth!" [Illustration: Tolbooth, Cannongate] They proceeded with the same prudence when the object seemed to be nearly in their grasp, as they had done hitherto when success was more dubious. A strong party of the rioters, drawn up in front of the Luckenbooths, and facing down the street, prevented all access from the eastward, and the west end of the defile formed by the Luckenbooths was secured in the same manner; so that the Tolbooth was completely surrounded, and those who undertook the task of breaking it open effectually secured against the risk of interruption. The magistrates, in the meanwhile, had taken the alarm, and assembled in a tavern, with the purpose of raising some strength to subdue the rioters. The deacons, or presidents of the trades, were applied to, but declared there was little chance of their authority being respected by the craftsmen, where it was the object to save a man so obnoxious. Mr. Lindsay, member of parliament for the city, volunteered the perilous task of carrying a verbal message, from the Lord Provost to Colonel Moyle, the commander of the regiment lying in the Canongate, requesting him to force the Netherbow Port, and enter the city to put down the tumult. But Mr. Lindsay declined to charge himself with any written order, which, if found on his person by an enraged mob, might have cost him his life; and the issue, of the application was, that Colonel Moyle having no written requisition from the civil authorities, and having the fate of Porteous before his eyes as an example of the severe construction put by a jury on the proceedings of military men acting on their own responsibility, declined to encounter the risk to which the Provost's verbal communication invited him. More than one messenger was despatched by different ways to the Castle, to require the commanding officer to march down his troops, to fire a few cannon-shot, or even to throw a shell among the mob, for the purpose of clearing the streets. But so strict and watchful were the various patrols whom the rioters had established in different parts of the streets, that none of the emissaries of the magistrates could reach the gate of the Castle. They were, however, turned back without either injury or insult, and with nothing more of menace than was necessary to deter them from again attempting to accomplish their errand. The same vigilance was used to prevent everybody of the higher, and those which, in this case, might be deemed the more suspicious orders of society, from appearing in the street, and observing the movements, or distinguishing the persons, of the rioters. Every person in the garb of a gentleman was stopped by small parties of two or three of the mob, who partly exhorted, partly required of them, that they should return to the place from whence they came. Many a quadrille table was spoilt that memorable evening; for the sedan chairs of ladies; even of the highest rank, were interrupted in their passage from one point to another, in spite of the laced footmen and blazing flambeaux. This was uniformly done with a deference and attention to the feelings of the terrified females, which could hardly have been expected from the videttes of a mob so desperate. Those who stopped the chair usually made the excuse, that there was much disturbance on the streets, and that it was absolutely necessary for the lady's safety that the chair should turn back. They offered themselves to escort the vehicles which they had thus interrupted in their progress, from the apprehension, probably, that some of those who had casually united themselves to the riot might disgrace their systematic and determined plan of vengeance, by those acts of general insult and license which are common on similar occasions. Persons are yet living who remember to have heard from the mouths of ladies thus interrupted on their journey in the manner we have described, that they were escorted to their lodgings by the young men who stopped them, and even handed out of their chairs, with a polite attention far beyond what was consistent with their dress, which was apparently that of journeymen mechanics.* * A near relation of the author's used to tell of having been stopped by the rioters, and escorted home in the manner described. On reaching her own home one of her attendants, in the appearance a _baxter_, a baker's lad, handed her out of her chair, and took leave with a bow, which, in the lady's opinion, argued breeding that could hardly be learned at the oven's mouth. It seemed as if the conspirators, like those who assassinated Cardinal Beatoun in former days, had entertained the opinion, that the work about which they went was a judgment of Heaven, which, though unsanctioned by the usual authorities, ought to be proceeded in with order and gravity. While their outposts continued thus vigilant, and suffered themselves neither from fear nor curiosity to neglect that part of the duty assigned to them, and while the main guards to the east and west secured them against interruption, a select body of the rioters thundered at the door of the jail, and demanded instant admission. No one answered, for the outer keeper had prudently made his escape with the keys at the commencement of the riot, and was nowhere to be found. The door was instantly assailed with sledge-hammers, iron crows, and the coulters of ploughs, ready provided for the purpose, with which they prized, heaved, and battered for some time with little effect; for the door, besides being of double oak planks, clenched, both endlong and athwart, with broad-headed nails, was so hung and secured as to yield to no means of forcing, without the expenditure of much time. The rioters, however, appeared determined to gain admittance. Gang after gang relieved each other at the exercise, for, of course, only a few could work at once; but gang after gang retired, exhausted with their violent exertions, without making much progress in forcing the prison door. Butler had been led up near to this the principal scene of action; so near, indeed, that he was almost deafened by the unceasing clang of the heavy fore-hammers against the iron-bound portal of the prison. He began to entertain hopes, as the task seemed protracted, that the populace might give it over in despair, or that some rescue might arrive to disperse them. There was a moment at which the latter seemed probable. The magistrates, having assembled their officers, and some of the citizens who were willing to hazard themselves for the public tranquillity, now sallied forth from the tavern where they held their sitting, and approached the point of danger. Their officers went before them with links and torches, with a herald to read the riot-act, if necessary. They easily drove before them the outposts and videttes of the rioters; but when they approached the line of guard which the mob, or rather, we should say, the conspirators, had drawn across the street in the front of the Luckenbooths, they were received with an unintermitted volley of stones, and, on their nearer approach, the pikes, bayonets, and Lochaber-axes, of which the populace had possessed themselves, were presented against them. One of their ordinary officers, a strong resolute fellow, went forward, seized a rioter, and took from him a musket; but, being unsupported, he was instantly thrown on his back in the street, and disarmed in his turn. The officer was too happy to be permitted to rise and run away without receiving any farther injury; which afforded another remarkable instance of the mode in which these men had united a sort of moderation towards all others, with the most inflexible inveteracy against the object of their resentment. The magistrates, after vain attempts to make themselves heard and obeyed, possessing no means of enforcing their authority, were constrained to abandon the field to the rioters, and retreat in all speed from the showers of missiles that whistled around their ears. The passive resistance of the Tolbooth gate promised to do more to baffle the purpose of the mob than the active interference of the magistrates. The heavy sledge-hammers continued to din against it without intermission, and with a noise which, echoed from the lofty buildings around the spot, seemed enough to have alarmed the garrison in the Castle. It was circulated among the rioters, that the troops would march down to disperse them, unless they could execute their purpose without loss of time; or that, even without quitting the fortress, the garrison might obtain the same end by throwing a bomb or two upon the street. Urged by such motives for apprehension, they eagerly relieved each other at the labour of assailing the Tolbooth door: yet such was its strength, that it still defied their efforts. At length, a voice was heard to pronounce the words, "Try it with fire." The rioters, with an unanimous shout, called for combustibles, and as all their wishes seemed to be instantly supplied, they were soon in possession of two or three empty tar-barrels. A huge red glaring bonfire speedily arose close to the door of the prison, sending up a tall column of smoke and flame against its antique turrets and strongly-grated windows, and illuminating the ferocious and wild gestures of the rioters, who surrounded the place, as well as the pale and anxious groups of those, who, from windows in the vicinage, watched the progress of this alarming scene. The mob fed the fire with whatever they could find fit for the purpose. The flames roared and crackled among the heaps of nourishment piled on the fire, and a terrible shout soon announced that the door had kindled, and was in the act of being destroyed. The fire was suffered to decay, but, long ere it was quite extinguished, the most forward of the rioters rushed, in their impatience, one after another, over its yet smouldering remains. Thick showers of sparkles rose high in the air, as man after man bounded over the glowing embers, and disturbed them in their passage. It was now obvious to Butler, and all others who were present, that the rioters would be instantly in possession of their victim, and have it in their power to work their pleasure upon him, whatever that might be.* * Note C. The Old Tolbooth. CHAPTER SIXTH. The evil you teach us, We will execute; and it shall go hard, but we will Better the instruction. Merchant of Venice. The unhappy object of this remarkable disturbance had been that day delivered from the apprehension of public execution, and his joy was the greater, as he had some reason to question whether Government would have run the risk of unpopularity by interfering in his favour, after he had been legally convicted by the verdict of a jury, of a crime so very obnoxious. Relieved from this doubtful state of mind, his heart was merry within him, and he thought, in the emphatic words of Scripture on a similar occasion, that surely the bitterness of death was past. Some of his friends, however, who had watched the manner and behaviour of the crowd when they were made acquainted with the reprieve, were of a different opinion. They augured, from the unusual sternness and silence with which they bore their disappointment, that the populace nourished some scheme of sudden and desperate vengeance; and they advised Porteous to lose no time in petitioning the proper authorities, that he might be conveyed to the Castle under a sufficient guard, to remain there in security until his ultimate fate should be determined. Habituated, however, by his office, to overawe the rabble of the city, Porteous could not suspect them of an attempt so audacious as to storm a strong and defensible prison; and, despising the advice by which he might have been saved, he spent the afternoon of the eventful day in giving an entertainment to some friends who visited him in jail, several of whom, by the indulgence of the Captain of the Tolbooth, with whom he had an old intimacy, arising from their official connection, were even permitted to remain to supper with him, though contrary to the rules of the jail. It was, therefore, in the hour of unalloyed mirth, when this unfortunate wretch was "full of bread," hot with wine, and high in mistimed and ill-grounded confidence, and alas! with all his sins full blown, when the first distant' shouts of the rioters mingled with the song of merriment and intemperance. The hurried call of the jailor to the guests, requiring them instantly to depart, and his yet more hasty intimation that a dreadful and determined mob had possessed themselves of the city gates and guard-house, were the first explanation of these fearful clamours. Porteous might, however, have eluded the fury from which the force of authority could not protect him, had he thought of slipping on some disguise, and leaving the prison along with his guests. It is probable that the jailor might have connived at his escape, or even that in the hurry of this alarming contingency, he might not have observed it. But Porteous and his friends alike wanted presence of mind to suggest or execute such a plan of escape. The former hastily fled from a place where their own safety seemed compromised, and the latter, in a state resembling stupefaction, awaited in his apartment the termination of the enterprise of the rioters. The cessation of the clang of the instruments with which they had at first attempted to force the door, gave him momentary relief. The flattering hopes, that the military had marched into the city, either from the Castle or from the suburbs, and that the rioters were intimidated, and dispersing, were soon destroyed by the broad and glaring light of the flames, which, illuminating through the grated window every corner of his apartment, plainly showed that the mob, determined on their fatal purpose, had adopted a means of forcing entrance equally desperate and certain. The sudden glare of light suggested to the stupified and astonished object of popular hatred the possibility of concealment or escape. To rush to the chimney, to ascend it at the risk of suffocation, were the only means which seemed to have occurred to him; but his progress was speedily stopped by one of those iron gratings, which are, for the sake of security, usually placed across the vents of buildings designed for imprisonment. The bars, however, which impeded his farther progress, served to support him in the situation which he had gained, and he seized them with the tenacious grasp of one who esteemed himself clinging to his last hope of existence. The lurid light which had filled the apartment, lowered and died away; the sound of shouts was heard within the walls, and on the narrow and winding stair, which, eased within one of the turrets, gave access to the upper apartments of the prison. The huzza of the rioters was answered by a shout wild and desperate as their own, the cry, namely, of the imprisoned felons, who, expecting to be liberated in the general confusion, welcomed the mob as their deliverers. By some of these the apartment of Porteous was pointed out to his enemies. The obstacle of the lock and bolts was soon overcome, and from his hiding place the unfortunate man heard his enemies search every corner of the apartment, with oaths and maledictions, which would but shock the reader if we recorded them, but which served to prove, could it have admitted of doubt, the settled purpose of soul with which they sought his destruction. A place of concealment so obvious to suspicion and scrutiny as that which Porteous had chosen, could not long screen him from detection. He was dragged from his lurking-place, with a violence which seemed to argue an intention to put him to death on the spot. More than one weapon was directed towards him, when one of the rioters, the same whose female disguise had been particularly noticed by Butler, interfered in an authoritative tone. "Are ye mad?" he said, "or would ye execute an act of justice as if it were a crime and a cruelty? This sacrifice will lose half its savour if we do not offer it at the very horns of the altar. We will have him die where a murderer should die, on the common gibbet--We will have him die where he spilled the blood of so many innocents!" A loud shout of applause followed the proposal, and the cry, "To the gallows with the murderer!--to the Grassmarket with him!" echoed on all hands. "Let no man hurt him," continued the speaker; "let him make his peace with God, if he can; we will not kill both his soul and body." "What time did he give better folk for preparing their account?" answered several voices. "Let us mete to him with the same measure he measured to them." But the opinion of the spokesman better suited the temper of those he addressed, a temper rather stubborn than impetuous, sedate though ferocious, and desirous of colouring their cruel and revengeful action with a show of justice and moderation. For an instant this man quitted the prisoner, whom he consigned to a selected guard, with instructions to permit him to give his money and property to whomsoever he pleased. A person confined in the jail for debt received this last deposit from the trembling hand of the victim, who was at the same time permitted to make some other brief arrangements to meet his approaching fate. The felons, and all others who, wished to leave the jail, were now at full liberty to do so; not that their liberation made any part of the settled purpose of the rioters, but it followed as almost a necessary consequence of forcing the jail doors. With wild cries of jubilee they joined the mob, or disappeared among the narrow lanes to seek out the hidden receptacles of vice and infamy, where they were accustomed to lurk and conceal themselves from justice. Two persons, a man about fifty years old and a girl about eighteen, were all who continued within the fatal walls, excepting two or three debtors, who probably saw no advantage in attempting their escape. The persons we have mentioned remained in the strong room of the prison, now deserted by all others. One of their late companions in misfortune called out to the man to make his escape, in the tone of an acquaintance. "Rin for it, Ratcliffe--the road's clear." "It may be sae, Willie," answered Ratcliffe, composedly, "but I have taen a fancy to leave aff trade, and set up for an honest man." "Stay there, and be hanged, then, for a donnard auld deevil!" said the other, and ran down the prison stair. The person in female attire whom we have distinguished as one of the most active rioters, was about the same time at the ear of the young woman. "Flee, Effie, flee!" was all he had time to whisper. She turned towards him an eye of mingled fear, affection, and upbraiding, all contending with a sort of stupified surprise. He again repeated, "Flee, Effie, flee! for the sake of all that's good and dear to you!" Again she gazed on him, but was unable to answer. A loud noise was now heard, and the name of Madge Wildfire was repeatedly called from the bottom of the staircase. "I am coming,--I am coming," said the person who answered to that appellative; and then reiterating hastily, "For God's sake--for your own sake--for my sake, flee, or they'll take your life!" he left the strong room. The girl gazed after him for a moment, and then, faintly muttering, "Better tyne life, since tint is gude fame," she sunk her head upon her hand, and remained, seemingly, unconscious as a statue of the noise and tumult which passed around her. That tumult was now transferred from the inside to the outside of the Tolbooth. The mob had brought their destined victim forth, and were about to conduct him to the common place of execution, which they had fixed as the scene of his death. The leader, whom they distinguished by the name of Madge Wildfire, had been summoned to assist at the procession by the impatient shouts of his confederates. "I will insure you five hundred pounds," said the unhappy man, grasping Wildfire's hand,--"five hundred pounds for to save my life." The other answered in the same undertone, and returning his grasp with one equally convulsive, "Five hundredweight of coined gold should not save you.--Remember Wilson!" A deep pause of a minute ensued, when Wildfire added, in a more composed tone, "Make your peace with Heaven.--Where is the clergyman?" Butler, who in great terror and anxiety, had been detained within a few yards of the Tolbooth door, to wait the event of the search after Porteous, was now brought forward, and commanded to walk by the prisoner's side, and to prepare him for immediate death. His answer was a supplication that the rioters would consider what they did. "You are neither judges nor jury," said he. "You cannot have, by the laws of God or man, power to take away the life of a human creature, however deserving he may be of death. If it is murder even in a lawful magistrate to execute an offender otherwise than in the place, time, and manner which the judges' sentence prescribes, what must it be in you, who have no warrant for interference but your own wills? In the name of Him who is all mercy, show mercy to this unhappy man, and do not dip your hands in his blood, nor rush into the very crime which you are desirous of avenging!" "Cut your sermon short--you are not in your pulpit," answered one of the rioters. "If we hear more of your clavers," said another, "we are like to hang you up beside him." "Peace--hush!" said Wildfire. "Do the good man no harm--he discharges his conscience, and I like him the better." He then addressed Butler. "Now, sir, we have patiently heard you, and we just wish you to understand, in the way of answer, that you may as well argue to the ashlar-work and iron stanchels of the Tolbooth as think to change our purpose--Blood must have blood. We have sworn to each other by the deepest oaths ever were pledged, that Porteous shall die the death he deserves so richly; therefore, speak no more to us, but prepare him for death as well as the briefness of his change will permit." They had suffered the unfortunate Porteous to put on his night-gown and slippers, as he had thrown off his coat and shoes, in order to facilitate his attempted escape up the chimney. In this garb he was now mounted on the hands of two of the rioters, clasped together, so as to form what is called in Scotland, "The King's Cushion." Butler was placed close to his side, and repeatedly urged to perform a duty always the most painful which can be imposed on a clergyman deserving of the name, and now rendered more so by the peculiar and horrid circumstances of the criminal's case. Porteous at first uttered some supplications for mercy, but when he found that there was no chance that these would be attended to, his military education, and the natural stubbornness of his disposition, combined to support his spirits. "Are you prepared for this dreadful end?" said Butler, in a faltering voice. "O turn to Him, in whose eyes time and space have no existence, and to whom a few minutes are as a lifetime, and a lifetime as a minute." "I believe I know what you would say," answered Porteous sullenly. "I was bred a soldier; if they will murder me without time, let my sins as well as my blood lie at their door." "Who was it," said the stern voice of Wildfire, "that said to Wilson at this very spot, when he could not pray, owing to the galling agony of his fetters, that his pains would soon be over?--I say to you to take your own tale home; and if you cannot profit by the good man's lessons, blame not them that are still more merciful to you than you were to others." [Illustration: The Porteous Mob--95] The procession now moved forward with a slow and determined pace. It was enlightened by many blazing, links and torches; for the actors of this work were so far from affecting any secrecy on the occasion, that they seemed even to court observation. Their principal leaders kept close to the person of the prisoner, whose pallid yet stubborn features were seen distinctly by the torch-light, as his person was raised considerably above the concourse which thronged around him. Those who bore swords, muskets, and battle-axes, marched on each side, as if forming a regular guard to the procession. The windows, as they went along, were filled with the inhabitants, whose slumbers had been broken by this unusual disturbance. Some of the spectators muttered accents of encouragement; but in general they were so much appalled by a sight so strange and audacious, that they looked on with a sort of stupified astonishment. No one offered, by act or word, the slightest interruption. The rioters, on their part, continued to act with the same air of deliberate confidence and security which had marked all their proceedings. When the object of their resentment dropped one of his slippers, they stopped, sought for it, and replaced it upon his foot with great deliberation.* * This little incident, characteristic of the extreme composure of this extraordinary mob, was witnessed by a lady, who, disturbed like others from her slumbers, had gone to the window. It was told to the Author by the lady's daughter. As they descended the Bow towards the fatal spot where they designed to complete their purpose, it was suggested that there should be a rope kept in readiness. For this purpose the booth of a man who dealt in cordage was forced open, a coil of rope fit for their purpose was selected to serve as a halter, and the dealer next morning found that a guinea had been left on his counter in exchange; so anxious were the perpetrators of this daring action to show that they meditated not the slightest wrong or infraction of law, excepting so far as Porteous was himself concerned. Leading, or carrying along with them, in this determined and regular manner, the object of their vengeance, they at length reached the place of common execution, the scene of his crime, and destined spot of his sufferings. Several of the rioters (if they should not rather be described as conspirators) endeavoured to remove the stone which filled up the socket in which the end of the fatal tree was sunk when it was erected for its fatal purpose; others sought for the means of constructing a temporary gibbet, the place in which the gallows itself was deposited being reported too secure to be forced, without much loss of time. Butler endeavoured to avail himself of the delay afforded by these circumstances, to turn the people from their desperate design. "For God's sake," he exclaimed, "remember it is the image of your Creator which you are about to deface in the person of this unfortunate man! Wretched as he is, and wicked as he may be, he has a share in every promise of Scripture, and you cannot destroy him in impenitence without blotting his name from the Book of Life--Do not destroy soul and body; give time for preparation." "What time had they," returned a stern voice, "whom he murdered on this very spot?--The laws both of God and man call for his death." "But what, my friends," insisted Butler, with a generous disregard to his own safety--"what hath constituted you his judges?" "We are not his judges," replied the same person; "he has been already judged and condemned by lawful authority. We are those whom Heaven, and our righteous anger, have stirred up to execute judgment, when a corrupt Government would have protected a murderer." "I am none," said the unfortunate Porteous; "that which you charge upon me fell out in self-defence, in the lawful exercise of my duty." "Away with him--away with him!" was the general cry. "Why do you trifle away time in making a gallows?--that dyester's pole is good enough for the homicide." The unhappy man was forced to his fate with remorseless rapidity. Butler, separated from him by the press, escaped the last horrors of his struggles. Unnoticed by those who had hitherto detained him as a prisoner,--he fled from the fatal spot, without much caring in what direction his course lay. A loud shout proclaimed the stern delight with which the agents of this deed regarded its completion. Butler, then, at the opening into the low street called the Cowgate, cast back a terrified glance, and, by the red and dusky light of the torches, he could discern a figure wavering and struggling as it hung suspended above the heads of the multitude, and could even observe men striking at it with their Lochaber-axes and partisans. The sight was of a nature to double his horror, and to add wings to his flight. The street down which the fugitive ran opens to one of the eastern ports or gates of the city. Butler did not stop till he reached it, but found it still shut. He waited nearly an hour, walking up and down in inexpressible perturbation of mind. At length he ventured to call out, and rouse the attention of the terrified keepers of the gate, who now found themselves at liberty to resume their office without interruption. Butler requested them to open the gate. They hesitated. He told them his name and occupation. "He is a preacher," said one; "I have heard him preach in Haddo's-hole." "A fine preaching has he been at the night," said another "but maybe least said is sunest mended." Opening then the wicket of the main gate, the keepers suffered Butler to depart, who hastened to carry his horror and fear beyond the walls of Edinburgh. His first purpose was instantly to take the road homeward; but other fears and cares, connected with the news he had learned in that remarkable day, induced him to linger in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh until daybreak. More than one group of persons passed him as he was whiling away the hours of darkness that yet remained, whom, from the stifled tones of their discourse, the unwonted hour when they travelled, and the hasty pace at which they walked, he conjectured to have been engaged in the late fatal transaction. Certain it was, that the sudden and total dispersion of the rioters, when their vindictive purpose was accomplished, seemed not the least remarkable feature of this singular affair. In general, whatever may be the impelling motive by which a mob is at first raised, the attainment of their object has usually been only found to lead the way to farther excesses. But not so in the present case. They seemed completely satiated with the vengeance they had prosecuted with such stanch and sagacious activity. When they were fully satisfied that life had abandoned their victim, they dispersed in every direction, throwing down the weapons which they had only assumed to enable them to carry through their purpose. At daybreak there remained not the least token of the events of the night, excepting the corpse of Porteous, which still hung suspended in the place where he had suffered, and the arms of various kinds which the rioters had taken from the city guard-house, which were found scattered about the streets as they had thrown them from their hands when the purpose for which they had seized them was accomplished. The ordinary magistrates of the city resumed their power, not without trembling at the late experience of the fragility of its tenure. To march troops into the city, and commence a severe inquiry into the transactions of the preceding night, were the first marks of returning energy which they displayed. But these events had been conducted on so secure and well-calculated a plan of safety and secrecy, that there was little or nothing learned to throw light upon the authors or principal actors in a scheme so audacious. An express was despatched to London with the tidings, where they excited great indignation and surprise in the council of regency, and particularly in the bosom of Queen Caroline, who considered her own authority as exposed to contempt by the success of this singular conspiracy. Nothing was spoke of for some time save the measure of vengeance which should be taken, not only on the actors of this tragedy, so soon as they should be discovered, but upon the magistrates who had suffered it to take place, and upon the city which had been the scene where it was exhibited. On this occasion, it is still recorded in popular tradition, that her Majesty, in the height of her displeasure, told the celebrated John Duke of Argyle, that, sooner than submit to such an insult, she would make Scotland a hunting-field. "In that case, Madam," answered that high-spirited nobleman, with a profound bow, "I will take leave of your Majesty, and go down to my own country to get my hounds ready." The import of the reply had more than met the ear; and as most of the Scottish nobility and gentry seemed actuated by the same national spirit, the royal displeasure was necessarily checked in mid-volley, and milder courses were recommended and adopted, to some of which we may hereafter have occasion to advert.* * Note D. Memorial concerning the murder of Captain Porteous. CHAPTER SEVENTH Arthur's Seat shall be my bed, The sheets shall ne'er be pressed by me, St. Anton's well shall be my drink, Sin' my true-love's forsaken me. Old Song. If I were to choose a spot from which the rising or setting sun could be seen to the greatest possible advantage, it would be that wild path winding around the foot of the high belt of semicircular rocks, called Salisbury Crags, and marking the verge of the steep descent which slopes down into the glen on the south-eastern side of the city of Edinburgh. The prospect, in its general outline, commands a close-built, high-piled city, stretching itself out beneath in a form, which, to a romantic imagination, may be supposed to represent that of a dragon; now, a noble arm of the sea, with its rocks, isles, distant shores, and boundary of mountains; and now, a fair and fertile champaign country, varied with hill, dale, and rock, and skirted by the picturesque ridge of the Pentland mountains. But as the path gently circles around the base of the cliffs, the prospect, composed as it is of these enchanting and sublime objects, changes at every step, and presents them blended with, or divided from, each other, in every possible variety which can gratify the eye and the imagination. When a piece of scenery so beautiful, yet so varied,--so exciting by its intricacy, and yet so sublime,--is lighted up by the tints of morning or of evening, and displays all that variety of shadowy depth, exchanged with partial brilliancy, which gives character even to the tamest of landscapes, the effect approaches near to enchantment. This path used to be my favourite evening and morning resort, when engaged with a favourite author, or new subject of study. It is, I am informed, now become totally impassable; a circumstance which, if true, reflects little credit on the taste of the Good Town or its leaders.* * A beautiful and solid pathway has, within a few years, been formed around these romantic rocks; and the Author has the pleasure to think, that the passage in the text gave rise to the undertaking. It was from this fascinating path--the scene to me of so much delicious musing, when life was young and promised to be happy, that I have been unable to pass it over without an episodical description--it was, I say, from this romantic path that Butler saw the morning arise the day after the murder of Porteous. It was possible for him with ease to have found a much shorter road to the house to which he was directing his course, and, in fact, that which he chose was extremely circuitous. But to compose his own spirits, as well as to while away the time, until a proper hour for visiting the family without surprise or disturbance, he was induced to extend his circuit by the foot of the rocks, and to linger upon his way until the morning should be considerably advanced. While, now standing with his arms across, and waiting the slow progress of the sun above the horizon, now sitting upon one of the numerous fragments which storms had detached from the rocks above him, he is meditating, alternately upon the horrible catastrophe which he had witnessed, and upon the melancholy, and to him most interesting, news which he had learned at Saddletree's, we will give the reader to understand who Butler was, and how his fate was connected with that of Effie Deans, the unfortunate handmaiden of the careful Mrs. Saddletree. Reuben Butler was of English extraction, though born in Scotland. His grandfather was a trooper in Monk's army, and one of the party of dismounted dragoons which formed the forlorn hope at the storming of Dundee in 1651. Stephen Butler (called from his talents in reading and expounding, Scripture Stephen, and Bible Butler) was a stanch Independent, and received in its fullest comprehension the promise that the saints should inherit the earth. As hard knocks were what had chiefly fallen to his share hitherto in the division of this common property, he lost not the opportunity which the storm and plunder of a commercial place afforded him, to appropriate as large a share of the better things of this world as he could possibly compass. It would seem that he had succeeded indifferently well, for his exterior circumstances appeared, in consequence of this event, to have been much mended. The troop to which he belonged was quartered at the village of Dalkeith, as forming the bodyguard of Monk, who, in the capacity of general for the Commonwealth, resided in the neighbouring castle. When, on the eve of the Restoration, the general commenced his march from Scotland, a measure pregnant with such important consequences, he new-modelled his troops, and more especially those immediately about his person, in order that they might consist entirely of individuals devoted to himself. On this occasion Scripture Stephen was weighed in the balance, and found wanting. It was supposed he felt no call to any expedition which might endanger the reign of the military sainthood, and that he did not consider himself as free in conscience to join with any party which might be likely ultimately to acknowledge the interest of Charles Stuart, the son of "the last man," as Charles I. was familiarly and irreverently termed by them in their common discourse, as well as in their more elaborate predications and harangues. As the time did not admit of cashiering such dissidents, Stephen Butler was only advised in a friendly way to give up his horse and accoutrements to one of Middleton's old troopers who possessed an accommodating conscience of a military stamp, and which squared itself chiefly upon those of the colonel and paymaster. As this hint came recommended by a certain sum of arrears presently payable, Stephen had carnal wisdom enough to embrace the proposal, and with great indifference saw his old corps depart for Coldstream, on their route for the south, to establish the tottering Government of England on a new basis. The _zone_ of the ex-trooper, to use Horace's phrase, was weighty enough to purchase a cottage and two or three fields (still known by the name of Beersheba), within about a Scottish mile of Dalkeith; and there did Stephen establish himself with a youthful helpmate, chosen out of the said village, whose disposition to a comfortable settlement on this side of the grave reconciled her to the gruff manners, serious temper, and weather-beaten features of the martial enthusiast. Stephen did not long survive the falling on "evil days and evil tongues," of which Milton, in the same predicament, so mournfully complains. At his death his consort remained an early widow, with a male child of three years old, which, in the sobriety wherewith it demeaned itself, in the old-fashioned and even grim cast of its features, and in its sententious mode of expressing itself, would sufficiently have vindicated the honour of the widow of Beersheba, had any one thought proper to challenge the babe's descent from Bible Butler. Butler's principles had not descended to his family, or extended themselves among his neighbours. The air of Scotland was alien to the growth of independency, however favourable to fanaticism under other colours. But, nevertheless, they were not forgotten; and a certain neighbouring Laird, who piqued himself upon the loyalty of his principles "in the worst of times" (though I never heard they exposed him to more peril than that of a broken head, or a night's lodging in the main guard, when wine and cavalierism predominated in his upper storey), had found it a convenient thing to rake up all matter of accusation against the deceased Stephen. In this enumeration his religious principles made no small figure, as, indeed, they must have seemed of the most exaggerated enormity to one whose own were so small and so faintly traced, as to be well nigh imperceptible. In these circumstances, poor widow Butler was supplied with her full proportion of fines for nonconformity, and all the other oppressions of the time, until Beersheba was fairly wrenched out of her hands, and became the property of the Laird who had so wantonly, as it had hitherto appeared, persecuted this poor forlorn woman. When his purpose was fairly achieved, he showed some remorse or moderation, of whatever the reader may please to term it, in permitting her to occupy her husband's cottage, and cultivate, on no very heavy terms, a croft of land adjacent. Her son, Benjamin, in the meanwhile, grew up to mass estate, and, moved by that impulse which makes men seek marriage, even when its end can only be the perpetuation of misery, he wedded and brought a wife, and, eventually, a son, Reuben, to share the poverty of Beersheba. The Laird of Dumbiedikes* had hitherto been moderate in his exactions, perhaps because he was ashamed to tax too highly the miserable means of support which remained to the widow Butler. * Dumbiedikes, selected as descriptive of the taciturn character of the imaginary owner, is really the name of a house bordering on the King's Park, so called because the late Mr. Braidwood, an instructor of the deaf and dumb, resided there with his pupils. The situation of the real house is different from that assigned to the ideal mansion. But when a stout active young fellow appeared as the labourer of the croft in question, Dumbiedikes began to think so broad a pair of shoulders might bear an additional burden. He regulated, indeed, his management of his dependants (who fortunately were but few in number) much upon the principle of the carters whom he observed loading their carts at a neighbouring coal-hill, and who never failed to clap an additional brace of hundredweights on their burden, so soon as by any means they had compassed a new horse of somewhat superior strength to that which had broken down the day before. However reasonable this practice appeared to the Laird of Dumbiedikes, he ought to have observed, that it may be overdone, and that it infers, as a matter of course, the destruction and loss of both horse, and cart, and loading. Even so it befell when the additional "prestations" came to be demanded of Benjamin Butler. A man of few words, and few ideas, but attached to Beersheba with a feeling like that which a vegetable entertains to the spot in which it chances to be planted, he neither remonstrated with the Laird, nor endeavoured to escape from him, but, toiling night and day to accomplish the terms of his taskmaster, fell into a burning fever and died. His wife did not long survive him; and, as if it had been the fate of this family to be left orphans, our Reuben Butler was, about the year 1704-5, left in the same circumstances in which his father had been placed, and under the same guardianship, being that of his grandmother, the widow of Monk's old trooper. The same prospect of misery hung over the head of another tenant of this hardhearted lord of the soil. This was a tough true-blue Presbyterian, called Deans, who, though most obnoxious to the Laird on account of principles in church and state, contrived to maintain his ground upon the estate by regular payment of mail-duties, kain, arriage, carriage, dry multure, lock, gowpen, and knaveship, and all the various exactions now commuted for money, and summed up in the emphatic word rent. But the years 1700 and 1701, long remembered in Scotland for dearth and general distress, subdued the stout heart of the agricultural whig. Citations by the ground-officer, decreets of the Baron Court, sequestrations, poindings of outside and inside plenishing, flew about his ears as fast as the tory bullets whistled around those of the Covenanters at Pentland, Bothwell Brigg, or Airsmoss. Struggle as he might, and he struggled gallantly, "Douce David Deans" was routed horse and foot, and lay at the mercy of his grasping landlord just at the time that Benjamin Butler died. The fate of each family was anticipated; but they who prophesied their expulsion to beggary and ruin were disappointed by an accidental circumstance. On the very term-day when their ejection should have taken place, when all their neighbours were prepared to pity, and not one to assist them, the minister of the parish, as well as a doctor from Edinburgh, received a hasty summons to attend the Laird of Dumbiedikes. Both were surprised, for his contempt for both faculties had been pretty commonly his theme over an extra bottle, that is to say, at least once every day. The leech for the soul, and he for the body, alighted in the court of the little old manor-house at almost the same time; and when they had gazed a moment at each other with some surprise, they in the same breath expressed their conviction that Dumbiedikes must needs be very ill indeed, since he summoned them both to his presence at once. Ere the servant could usher them to his apartment, the party was augmented by a man of law, Nichil Novit, writing himself procurator before the sheriff-court, for in those days there were no solicitors. This latter personage was first summoned to the apartment of the Laird, where, after some short space, the soul-curer and the body-curer were invited to join him. Dumbiedikes had been by this time transported into the best bedroom, used only upon occasions of death and marriage, and called, from the former of these occupations, the Dead-Room. There were in this apartment, besides the sick person himself and Mr. Novit, the son and heir of the patient, a tall gawky silly-looking boy of fourteen or fifteen, and a housekeeper, a good buxom figure of a woman, betwixt forty and fifty, who had kept the keys and managed matters at Dumbiedikes since the lady's death. It was to these attendants that Dumbiedikes addressed himself pretty nearly in the following words; temporal and spiritual matters, the care of his health and his affairs, being strangely jumbled in a head which was never one of the clearest. "These are sair times wi' me, gentlemen and neighbours! amaist as ill as at the aughty-nine, when I was rabbled by the collegeaners.* * Immediately previous to the Revolution, the students at the Edinburgh College were violent anti-catholics. They were strongly suspected of burning the house of Prestonfield, belonging to Sir James Dick, the Lord Provost; and certainly were guilty of creating considerable riots in 1688-9. --They mistook me muckle--they ca'd me a papist, but there was never a papist bit about me, minister.--Jock, ye'll take warning--it's a debt we maun a' pay, and there stands Nichil Novit that will tell ye I was never gude at paying debts in my life.--Mr. Novit, ye'll no forget to draw the annual rent that's due on the yerl's band--if I pay debt to other folk, I think they suld pay it to me--that equals aquals.--Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping.* * The Author has been flattered by the assurance, that this _naive_ mode of recommending arboriculture (which was actually delivered in these very words by a Highland laird, while on his death-bed, to his son) had so much weight with a Scottish earl as to lead to his planting a large tract of country. "My father tauld me sae forty years sin', but I ne'er fand time to mind him--Jock, ne'er drink brandy in the morning, it files the stamach sair; gin ye take a morning's draught, let it be aqua mirabilis; Jenny there makes it weel--Doctor, my breath is growing as scant as a broken-winded piper's, when he has played for four-and-twenty hours at a penny wedding--Jenny, pit the cod aneath my head--but it's a' needless!--Mass John, could ye think o' rattling ower some bit short prayer, it wad do me gude maybe, and keep some queer thoughts out o' my head, Say something, man." "I cannot use a prayer like a rat-rhyme," answered the honest clergyman; "and if you would have your soul redeemed like a prey from the fowler, Laird, you must needs show me your state of mind." "And shouldna ye ken that without my telling you?" answered the patient. "What have I been paying stipend and teind, parsonage and vicarage, for, ever sin' the aughty-nine, and I canna get a spell of a prayer for't, the only time I ever asked for ane in my life?--Gang awa wi' your whiggery, if that's a' ye can do; auld Curate Kilstoup wad hae read half the prayer-book to me by this time--Awa wi' ye!--Doctor, let's see if ye can do onything better for me." The doctor, who had obtained some information in the meanwhile from the housekeeper on the state of his complaints, assured him the medical art could not prolong his life many hours. "Then damn Mass John and you baith!" cried the furious and intractable patient. "Did ye come here for naething but to tell me that ye canna help me at the pinch? Out wi' them, Jenny--out o' the house! and, Jock, my curse, and the curse of Cromwell, go wi' ye, if ye gie them either fee or bountith, or sae muckle as a black pair o' cheverons!"* *_Cheverons_--gloves. The clergyman and doctor made a speedy retreat out of the apartment, while Dumbiedikes fell into one of those transports of violent and profane language, which had procured him the surname of Damn-me-dikes. "Bring me the brandy bottle, Jenny, ye b--," he cried, with a voice in which passion contended with pain. "I can die as I have lived, without fashing ony o' them. But there's ae thing," he said, sinking his voice--"there's ae fearful thing hings about my heart, and an anker of brandy winna wash it away.--The Deanses at Woodend!--I sequestrated them in the dear years, and now they are to flit, they'll starve--and that Beersheba, and that auld trooper's wife and her oe, they'll starve--they'll starve! --Look out, Jock; what kind o' night is't?" "On-ding o' snaw, father," answered Jock, after having opened the window, and looked out with great composure. "They'll perish in the drifts!" said the expiring sinner--"they'll perish wi' cauld!--but I'll be het eneugh, gin a' tales be true." This last observation was made under breath, and in a tone which made the very attorney shudder. He tried his hand at ghostly advice, probably for the first time in his life, and recommended as an opiate for the agonised conscience of the Laird, reparation of the injuries he had done to these distressed families, which, he observed by the way, the civil law called _restitutio in integrum._ But Mammon was struggling with Remorse for retaining his place in a bosom he had so long possessed; and he partly succeeded, as an old tyrant proves often too strong for his insurgent rebels. "I canna do't," he answered, with a voice of despair. "It would kill me to do't--how can ye bid me pay back siller, when ye ken how I want it? or dispone Beersheba, when it lies sae weel into my ain plaid-nuik? Nature made Dumbiedikes and Beersheba to be ae man's land--She did, by Nichil, it wad kill me to part them." "But ye maun die whether or no, Laird," said Mr. Novit; "and maybe ye wad die easier--it's but trying. I'll scroll the disposition in nae time." "Dinna speak o't, sir," replied Dumbiedikes, "or I'll fling the stoup at your head.--But, Jock, lad, ye see how the warld warstles wi' me on my deathbed--be kind to the puir creatures, the Deanses and the Butlers--be kind to them, Jock. Dinna let the warld get a grip o' ye, Jock--but keep the gear thegither! and whate'er ye do, dispone Beersheba at no rate. Let the creatures stay at a moderate mailing, and hae bite and soup; it will maybe be the better wi' your father whare he's gaun, lad." After these contradictory instructions, the Laird felt his mind so much at ease, that he drank three bumpers of brandy continuously, and "soughed awa," as Jenny expressed it, in an attempt to sing "Deil stick the Minister." His death made a revolution in favour of the distressed families. John Dumbie, now of Dumbiedikes, in his own right, seemed to be close and selfish enough, but wanted the grasping spirit and active mind of his father; and his guardian happened to agree with him in opinion, that his father's dying recommendation should be attended to. The tenants, therefore, were not actually turned out of doors among the snow-wreaths, and were allowed wherewith to procure butter-milk and peas-bannocks, which they ate under the full force of the original malediction. The cottage of Deans, called Woodend, was not very distant from that at Beersheba. Formerly there had been but little intercourse between the families. Deans was a sturdy Scotsman, with all sort of prejudices against the southern, and the spawn of the southern. Moreover, Deans was, as we have said, a stanch Presbyterian, of the most rigid and unbending adherence to what he conceived to be the only possible straight line, as he was wont to express himself, between right-hand heats and extremes and left-hand defections; and, therefore, he held in high dread and horror all Independents, and whomsoever he supposed allied to them. But, notwithstanding these national prejudices and religious professions, Deans and the widow Butler were placed in such a situation, as naturally and at length created some intimacy between the families. They had shared a common danger and a mutual deliverance. They needed each other's assistance, like a company, who, crossing a mountain stream, are compelled to cling close together, lest the current should be too powerful for any who are not thus supported. On nearer acquaintance, too, Deans abated some of his prejudices. He found old Mrs. Butler, though not thoroughly grounded in the extent and bearing of the real testimony against the defections of the times, had no opinions in favour of the Independent party; neither was she an Englishwoman. Therefore, it was to be hoped, that, though she was the widow of an enthusiastic corporal of Cromwell's dragoons, her grandson might be neither schismatic nor anti-national, two qualities concerning which Goodman Deans had as wholesome a terror as against papists and malignants, Above all (for Douce Davie Deans had his weak side), he perceived that widow Butler looked up to him with reverence, listened to his advice, and compounded for an occasional fling at the doctrines of her deceased husbands to which, as we have seen, she was by no means warmly attached, in consideration of the valuable counsels which the Presbyterian afforded her for the management of her little farm. These usually concluded with "they may do otherwise in England, neighbour Butler, for aught I ken;" or, "it may be different in foreign parts;" or, "they wha think differently on the great foundation of our covenanted reformation, overturning and mishguggling the government and discipline of the kirk, and breaking down the carved work of our Zion, might be for sawing the craft wi' aits; but I say peace, peace." And as his advice was shrewd and sensible, though conceitedly given, it was received with gratitude, and followed with respect. The intercourse which took place betwixt the families at Beersheba and Woodend became strict and intimate, at a very early period, betwixt Reuben Butler, with whom the reader is already in some degree acquainted, and Jeanie Deans, the only child of Douce Davie Deans by his first wife, "that singular Christian woman," as he was wont to express himself, "whose name was savoury to all that knew her for a desirable professor, Christian Menzies in Hochmagirdle." The manner of which intimacy, and the consequences thereof, we now proceed to relate. CHAPTER EIGHTH. Reuben and Rachel, though as fond as doves, Were yet discreet and cautious in their loves, Nor would attend to Cupid's wild commands, Till cool reflection bade them join their hands; When both were poor, they thought it argued ill Of hasty love to make them poorer still. Crabbe's _Parish Register._ While widow Butler and widower Deans struggled with poverty, and the hard and sterile soil of "those parts and portions" of the lands of Dumbiedikes which it was their lot to occupy, it became gradually apparent that Deans was to gain the strife, and his ally in the conflict was to lose it. The former was a Man, and not much past the prime of life--Mrs. Butler a woman, and declined into the vale of years, This, indeed, ought in time to have been balanced by the circumstance, that Reuben was growing up to assist his grandmothers labours, and that Jeanie Deans, as a girl, could be only supposed to add to her father's burdens. But Douce Davie Deans know better things, and so schooled and trained the young minion, as he called her, that from the time she could walk, upwards, she was daily employed in some task or other, suitable to her age and capacity; a circumstance which, added to her father's daily instructions and lectures, tended to give her mind, even when a child, a grave, serious, firm, and reflecting cast. An uncommonly strong and healthy temperament, free from all nervous affection and every other irregularity, which, attacking the body in its more noble functions, so often influences the mind, tended greatly to establish this fortitude, simplicity, and decision of character. On the other hand, Reuben was weak in constitution, and, though not timid in temper might be safely pronounced anxious, doubtful, and apprehensive. He partook of the temperament of his mother, who had died of a consumption in early age. He was a pale, thin, feeble, sickly boy, and somewhat lame, from an accident in early youth. He was, besides, the child of a doting grandmother, whose too solicitous attention to him soon taught him a sort of diffidence in himself, with a disposition to overrate his own importance, which is one of the very worst consequences that children deduce from over-indulgence. Still, however, the two children clung to each other's society, not more from habit than from taste. They herded together the handful of sheep, with the two or three cows, which their parents turned out rather to seek food than actually to feed upon the unenclosed common of Dumbiedikes. It was there that the two urchins might be seen seated beneath a blooming bush of whin, their little faces laid close together under the shadow of the same plaid drawn over both their heads, while the landscape around was embrowned by an overshadowing cloud, big with the shower which had driven the children to shelter. On other occasions they went together to school, the boy receiving that encouragement and example from his companion, in crossing the little brooks which intersected their path, and encountering cattle, dogs, and other perils, upon their journey, which the male sex in such cases usually consider it as their prerogative to extend to the weaker. But when, seated on the benches of the school-house, they began to con their lessons together, Reuben, who was as much superior to Jeanie Deans in acuteness of intellect, as inferior to her in firmness of constitution, and in that insensibility to fatigue and danger which depends on the conformation of the nerves, was able fully to requite the kindness and countenance with which, in other circumstances, she used to regard him. He was decidedly the best scholar at the little parish school; and so gentle was his temper and disposition, that he was rather admired than envied by the little mob who occupied the noisy mansion, although he was the declared favourite of the master. Several girls, in particular (for in Scotland they are taught with the boys), longed to be kind to and comfort the sickly lad, who was so much cleverer than his companions. The character of Reuben Butler was so calculated as to offer scope both for their sympathy and their admiration, the feelings, perhaps, through which the female sex (the more deserving part of them at least) is more easily attached. But Reuben, naturally reserved and distant, improved none of these advantages; and only became more attached to Jeanie Deans, as the enthusiastic approbation of his master assured him of fair prospects in future life, and awakened his ambition. In the meantime, every advance that Reuben made in learning (and, considering his opportunities, they were uncommonly great) rendered him less capable of attending to the domestic duties of his grandmother's farm. While studying the _pons asinorum_ in Euclid, he suffered every _cuddie_ upon the common to trespass upon a large field of peas belonging to the Laird, and nothing but the active exertions of Jeanie Deans, with her little dog Dustiefoot, could have saved great loss and consequent punishment. Similar miscarriages marked his progress in his classical studies. He read Virgil's Georgics till he did not know bere from barley; and had nearly destroyed the crofts of Beersheba while attempting to cultivate them according to the practice of Columella and Cato the Censor. These blunders occasioned grief to his grand-dame, and disconcerted the good opinion which her neighbour, Davie Deans, had for some time entertained of Reuben. "I see naething ye can make of that silly callant, neighbour Butler," said he to the old lady, "unless ye train him to the wark o' the ministry. And ne'er was there mair need of poorfu' preachers than e'en now in these cauld Gallio days, when men's hearts are hardened like the nether mill-stone, till they come to regard none of these things. It's evident this puir callant of yours will never be able to do an usefu' day's wark, unless it be as an ambassador from our Master; and I will make it my business to procure a license when he is fit for the same, trusting he will be a shaft cleanly polished, and meet to be used in the body of the kirk; and that he shall not turn again, like the sow, to wallow in the mire of heretical extremes and defections, but shall have the wings of a dove, though he hath lain among the pots." The poor widow gulped down the affront to her husband's principles, implied in this caution, and hastened to take Butler from the High School, and encourage him in the pursuit of mathematics and divinity, the only physics and ethics that chanced to be in fashion at the time. Jeanie Deans was now compelled to part from the companion of her labour, her study, and her pastime, and it was with more than childish feeling that both children regarded the separation. But they were young, and hope was high, and they separated like those who hope to meet again at a more auspicious hour. While Reuben Butler was acquiring at the University of St. Andrews the knowledge necessary for a clergyman, and macerating his body with the privations which were necessary in seeking food for his mind, his grand-dame became daily less able to struggle with her little farm, and was at length obliged to throw it up to the new Laird of Dumbiedikes. That great personage was no absolute Jew, and did not cheat her in making the bargain more than was tolerable. He even gave her permission to tenant the house in which she had lived with her husband, as long as it should be "tenantable;" only he protested against paying for a farthing of repairs, any benevolence which he possessed being of the passive, but by no means of the active mood. In the meanwhile, from superior shrewdness, skill, and other circumstances, some of them purely accidental, Davie Deans gained a footing in the world, the possession of some wealth, the reputation of more, and a growing disposition to preserve and increase his store; for which, when he thought upon it seriously, he was inclined to blame himself. From his knowledge in agriculture, as it was then practised, he became a sort of favourite with the Laird, who had no great pleasure either in active sports or in society, and was wont to end his daily saunter by calling at the cottage of Woodend. Being himself a man of slow ideas and confused utterance, Dumbiedikes used to sit or stand for half-an-hour with an old laced hat of his father's upon his head, and an empty tobacco-pipe in his mouth, with his eyes following Jeanie Deans, or "the lassie" as he called her, through the course of her daily domestic labour; while her father, after exhausting the subject of bestial, of ploughs, and of harrows, often took an opportunity of going full-sail into controversial subjects, to which discussions the dignitary listened with much seeming patience, but without making any reply, or, indeed, as most people thought, without understanding a single word of what the orator was saying. Deans, indeed, denied this stoutly, as an insult at once to his own talents for expounding hidden truths, of which he was a little vain, and to the Laird's capacity of understanding them. He said, "Dumbiedikes was nane of these flashy gentles, wi' lace on their skirts and swords at their tails, that were rather for riding on horseback to hell than gauging barefooted to heaven. He wasna like his father--nae profane company-keeper--nae swearer--nae drinker--nae frequenter of play-house, or music-house, or dancing-house--nae Sabbath-breaker--nae imposer of aiths, or bonds, or denier of liberty to the flock.--He clave to the warld, and the warld's gear, a wee ower muckle, but then there was some breathing of a gale upon his spirit," etc. etc. All this honest Davie said and believed. It is not to be supposed, that, by a father and a man of sense and observation, the constant direction of the Laird's eyes towards Jeanie was altogether unnoticed. This circumstance, however, made a much greater impression upon another member of his family, a second helpmate, to wit, whom he had chosen to take to his bosom ten years after the death of his first. Some people were of opinion, that Douce Davie had been rather surprised into this step, for, in general, he was no friend to marriages or giving in marriage, and seemed rather to regard that state of society as a necessary evil,--a thing lawful, and to be tolerated in the imperfect state of our nature, but which clipped the wings with which we ought to soar upwards, and tethered the soul to its mansion of clay, and the creature-comforts of wife and bairns. His own practice, however, had in this material point varied from his principles, since, as we have seen, he twice knitted for himself this dangerous and ensnaring entanglement. Rebecca, his spouse, had by no means the same horror of matrimony, and as she made marriages in imagination for every neighbour round, she failed not to indicate a match betwixt Dumbiedikes and her step-daughter Jeanie. The goodman used regularly to frown and pshaw whenever this topic was touched upon, but usually ended by taking his bonnet and walking out of the house, to conceal a certain gleam of satisfaction, which, at such a suggestion, involuntarily diffused itself over his austere features. The more youthful part of my readers may naturally ask, whether Jeanie Deans was deserving of this mute attention of the Laird of Dumbiedikes; and the historian, with due regard to veracity, is compelled to answer, that her personal attractions were of no uncommon description. She was short, and rather too stoutly made for her size, had grey eyes, light coloured hair, a round good-humoured face, much tanned with the sun, and her only peculiar charm was an air of inexpressible serenity, which a good conscience, kind feelings, contented temper, and the regular discharge of all her duties, spread over her features. There was nothing, it may be supposed, very appalling in the form or manners of this rustic heroine; yet, whether from sheepish bashfulness, or from want of decision and imperfect knowledge of his own mind on the subject, the Laird of Dumbiedikes, with his old laced hat and empty tobacco-pipe, came and enjoyed the beatific vision of Jeanie Deans day after day, week after week, year after year, without proposing to accomplish any of the prophecies of the stepmother. This good lady began to grow doubly impatient on the subject, when, after having been some years married, she herself presented Douce Davie with another daughter, who was named Euphemia, by corruption, Effie. It was then that Rebecca began to turn impatient with the slow pace at which the Laird's wooing proceeded, judiciously arguing, that, as Lady Dumbiedikes would have but little occasion for tocher, the principal part of her gudeman's substance would naturally descend to the child by the second marriage. Other step-dames have tried less laudable means for clearing the way to the succession of their own children; but Rebecca, to do her justice, only sought little Effie's advantage through the promotion, or which must have generally been accounted such, of her elder sister. She therefore tried every female art within the compass of her simple skill, to bring the Laird to a point; but had the mortification to perceive that her efforts, like those of an unskilful angler, only scared the trout she meant to catch. Upon one occasion, in particular, when she joked with the Laird on the propriety of giving a mistress to the house of Dumbiedikes, he was so effectually startled, that neither laced hat, tobacco-pipe, nor the intelligent proprietor of these movables, visited Woodend for a fortnight. Rebecca was therefore compelled to leave the Laird to proceed at his own snail's pace, convinced, by experience, of the grave-digger's aphorism, that your dull ass will not mend his pace for beating. Reuben, in the meantime, pursued his studies at the university, supplying his wants by teaching the younger lads the knowledge he himself acquired, and thus at once gaining the means of maintaining himself at the seat of learning, and fixing in his mind the elements of what he had already obtained. In this manner, as is usual among the poorer students of divinity at Scottish universities, he contrived not only to maintain himself according to his simple wants, but even to send considerable assistance to his sole remaining parent, a sacred duty, of which the Scotch are seldom negligent. His progress in knowledge of a general kind, as well as in the studies proper to his profession, was very considerable, but was little remarked, owing to the retired modesty of his disposition, which in no respect qualified him to set off his learning to the best advantage. And thus, had Butler been a man given to make complaints, he had his tale to tell, like others, of unjust preferences, bad luck, and hard usage. On these subjects, however, he was habitually silent, perhaps from modesty, perhaps from a touch of pride, or perhaps from a conjunction of both. He obtained his license as a preacher of the gospel, with some compliments from the Presbytery by whom it was bestowed; but this did not lead to any preferment, and he found it necessary to make the cottage at Beersheba his residence for some months, with no other income than was afforded by the precarious occupation of teaching in one or other of the neighbouring families. After having greeted his aged grandmother, his first visit was to Woodend, where he was received by Jeanie with warm cordiality, arising from recollections which had never been dismissed from her mind, by Rebecca with good-humoured hospitality, and by old Deans in a mode peculiar to himself. Highly as Douce Davie honoured the clergy, it was not upon each individual of the cloth that he bestowed his approbation; and, a little jealous, perhaps, at seeing his youthful acquaintance erected into the dignity of a teacher and preacher, he instantly attacked him upon various points of controversy, in order to discover whether he might not have fallen into some of the snares, defections, and desertions of the time. Butler was not only a man of stanch Presbyterian principles, but was also willing to avoid giving pain to his old friend by disputing upon points of little importance; and therefore he might have hoped to have come like fine gold out of the furnace of Davie's interrogatories. But the result on the mind of that strict investigator was not altogether so favourable as might have been hoped and anticipated. Old Judith Butler, who had hobbled that evening as far as Woodend, in order to enjoy the congratulations of her neighbours upon Reuben's return, and upon his high attainments, of which she was herself not a little proud, was somewhat mortified to find that her old friend Deans did not enter into the subject with the warmth she expected. At first, in he seemed rather silent than dissatisfied; and it was not till Judith had essayed the subject more than once that it led to the following dialogue. "Aweel, neibor Deans, I thought ye wad hae been glad to see Reuben amang us again, poor fellow." "I _am_ glad, Mrs. Butler," was the neighbour's concise answer. "Since he has lost his grandfather and his father (praised be Him that giveth and taketh!), I ken nae friend he has in the world that's been sae like a father to him as the sell o'ye, neibor Deans." "God is the only father of the fatherless," said Deans, touching his bonnet and looking upwards. "Give honour where it is due, gudewife, and not to an unworthy instrument." "Aweel, that's your way o' turning it, and nae doubt ye ken best; but I hae ken'd ye, Davie, send a forpit o' meal to Beersheba when there wasna a bow left in the meal-ark at Woodend; ay, and I hae ken'd ye" "Gudewife," said Davie, interrupting her, "these are but idle tales to tell me; fit for naething but to puff up our inward man wi' our ain vain acts. I stude beside blessed Alexander Peden, when I heard him call the death and testimony of our happy martyrs but draps of blude and scarts of ink in respect of fitting discharge of our duty; and what suld I think of ony thing the like of me can do?" "Weel, neibor Deans, ye ken best; but I maun say that, I am sure you are glad to see my bairn again--the halt's gane now, unless he has to walk ower mony miles at a stretch; and he has a wee bit colour in his cheek, that glads my auld een to see it; and he has as decent a black coat as the minister; and" "I am very heartily glad he is weel and thriving," said Mr. Deans, with a gravity that seemed intended to cut short the subject; but a woman who is bent upon a point is not easily pushed aside from it. "And," continued Mrs. Butler, "he can wag his head in a pulpit now, neibor Deans, think but of that--my ain oe--and a'body maun sit still and listen to him, as if he were the Paip of Rome." "The what?--the who?--woman!" said Deans, with a sternness far beyond his usual gravity, as soon as these offensive words had struck upon the tympanum of his ear. "Eh, guide us!" said the poor woman; "I had forgot what an ill will ye had aye at the Paip, and sae had my puir gudeman, Stephen Butler. Mony an afternoon he wad sit and take up his testimony again the Paip, and again baptizing of bairns, and the like." "Woman!" reiterated Deans, "either speak about what ye ken something o', or be silent; I say that independency is a foul heresy, and anabaptism a damnable and deceiving error, whilk suld be rooted out of the land wi' the fire o' the spiritual, and the sword o' the civil magistrate." "Weel, weel, neibor, I'll no say that ye mayna be right," answered the submissive Judith. "I am sure ye are right about the sawing and the mawing, the shearing and the leading, and what for suld ye no be right about kirkwark, too?--But concerning my oe, Reuben Butler" "Reuben Butler, gudewife," said David, with solemnity, "is a lad I wish heartily weel to, even as if he were mine ain son--but I doubt there will be outs and ins in the track of his walk. I muckle fear his gifts will get the heels of his grace. He has ower muckle human wit and learning, and thinks as muckle about the form of the bicker as he does about the healsomeness of the food--he maun broider the marriage-garment with lace and passments, or it's no gude eneugh for him. And it's like he's something proud o' his human gifts and learning, whilk enables him to dress up his doctrine in that fine airy dress. But," added he, at seeing the old woman's uneasiness at his discourse, "affliction may gie him a jagg, and let the wind out o' him, as out o' a cow that's eaten wet clover, and the lad may do weel, and be a burning and a shining light; and I trust it will be yours to see, and his to feel it, and that soon." Widow Butler was obliged to retire, unable to make anything more of her neighbour, whose discourse, though she did not comprehend it, filled her with undefined apprehensions on her grandson's account, and greatly depressed the joy with which she had welcomed him on his return. And it must not be concealed, in justice to Mr. Deans's discernment, that Butler, in their conference, had made a greater display of his learning than the occasion called for, or than was likely to be acceptable to the old man, who, accustomed to consider himself as a person preeminently entitled to dictate upon theological subjects of controversy, felt rather humbled and mortified when learned authorities were placed in array against him. In fact, Butler had not escaped the tinge of pedantry which naturally flowed from his education, and was apt, on many occasions, to make parade of his knowledge, when there was no need of such vanity. Jeanie Deans, however, found no fault with this display of learning, but, on the contrary, admired it; perhaps on the same score that her sex are said to admire men of courage, on account of their own deficiency in that qualification. The circumstances of their families threw the young people constantly together; their old intimacy was renewed, though upon a footing better adapted to their age; and it became at length understood betwixt them, that their union should be deferred no longer than until Butler should obtain some steady means of support, however humble. This, however, was not a matter speedily to be accomplished. Plan after plan was formed, and plan after plan failed. The good-humoured cheek of Jeanie lost the first flush of juvenile freshness; Reuben's brow assumed the gravity of manhood, yet the means of obtaining a settlement seemed remote as ever. Fortunately for the lovers, their passion was of no ardent or enthusiastic cast; and a sense of duty on both sides induced them to bear, with patient fortitude, the protracted interval which divided them from each other. In the meanwhile, time did not roll on without effecting his usual changes. The widow of Stephen Butler, so long the prop of the family of Beersheba, was gathered to her fathers; and Rebecca, the careful spouse of our friend Davie Deans, wa's also summoned from her plans of matrimonial and domestic economy. The morning after her death, Reuben Butler went to offer his mite of consolation to his old friend and benefactor. He witnessed, on this occasion, a remarkable struggle betwixt the force of natural affection and the religious stoicism which the sufferer thought it was incumbent upon him to maintain under each earthly dispensation, whether of weal or woe. On his arrival at the cottage, Jeanie, with her eyes overflowing with tears, pointed to the little orchard, "in which," she whispered with broken accents, "my poor father has been since his misfortune." Somewhat alarmed at this account, Butler entered the orchard, and advanced slowly towards his old friend, who, seated in a small rude arbour, appeared to be sunk in the extremity of his affliction. He lifted his eyes somewhat sternly as Butler approached, as if offended at the interruption; but as the young man hesitated whether he ought to retreat or advance, he arose, and came forward to meet him with a self-possessed, and even dignified air. "Young man," said the sufferer, "lay it not to heart, though the righteous perish, and the merciful are removed, seeing, it may well be said, that they are taken away from the evils to come. Woe to me were I to shed a tear for the wife of my bosom, when I might weep rivers of water for this afflicted Church, cursed as it is with carnal seekers, and with the dead of heart." "I am happy," said Butler, "that you can forget your private affliction in your regard for public duty." "Forget, Reuben?" said poor Deans, putting his handkerchief to his eyes--"She's not to be forgotten on this side of time; but He that gives the wound can send the ointment. I declare there have been times during this night when my meditation hae been so rapt, that I knew not of my heavy loss. It has been with me as with the worthy John Semple, called Carspharn John,* upon a like trial--I have been this night on the banks of Ulai, plucking an apple here and there!" * Note E. Carspharn John. Notwithstanding the assumed fortitude of Deans, which he conceived to be the discharge of a great Christian duty, he had too good a heart not to suffer deeply under this heavy loss. Woodend became altogether distasteful to him; and as he had obtained both substance and experience by his management of that little farm, he resolved to employ them as a dairy-farmer, or cowfeeder, as they are called in Scotland. The situation he chose for his new settlement was at a place called Saint Leonard's Crags, lying betwixt Edinburgh and the mountain called Arthur's Seat, and adjoining to the extensive sheep pasture still named the King's Park, from its having been formerly dedicated to the preservation of the royal game. Here he rented a small lonely house, about half-a-mile distant from the nearest point of the city, but the site of which, with all the adjacent ground, is now occupied by the buildings which form the southeastern suburb. An extensive pasture-ground adjoining, which Deans rented from the keeper of the Royal Park, enabled him to feed his milk-cows; and the unceasing industry and activity of Jeanie, his oldest daughter, were exerted in making the most of their produce. She had now less frequent opportunities of seeing Reuben, who had been obliged, after various disappointments, to accept the subordinate situation of assistant in a parochial school of some eminence, at three or four miles' distance from the city. Here he distinguished himself, and became acquainted with several respectable burgesses, who, on account of health, or other reasons, chose that their children should commence their education in this little village. His prospects were thus gradually brightening, and upon each visit which he paid at Saint Leonard's he had an opportunity of gliding a hint to this purpose into Jeanie's ear. These visits were necessarily very rare, on account of the demands which the duties of the school made upon Butler's time. Nor did he dare to make them even altogether so frequent as these avocations would permit. Deans received him with civility indeed, and even with kindness; but Reuben, as is usual in such cases, imagined that he read his purpose in his eyes, and was afraid too premature an explanation on the subject would draw down his positive disapproval. Upon the whole, therefore, he judged it prudent to call at Saint Leonard's just so frequently as old acquaintance and neighbourhood seemed to authorise, and no oftener. There was another person who was more regular in his visits. [Illustration: The Laird in Jeanie's Cottage--130] When Davie Deans intimated to the Laird of Dumbiedikes his purpose of "quitting wi' the land and house at Woodend," the Laird stared and said nothing. He made his usual visits at the usual hour without remark, until the day before the term, when, observing the bustle of moving furniture already commenced, the great east-country _awmrie_ dragged out of its nook, and standing with its shoulder to the company, like an awkward booby about to leave the room, the Laird again stared mightily, and was heard to ejaculate,--"Hegh, sirs!" Even after the day of departure was past and gone, the Laird of Dumbiedikes, at his usual hour, which was that at which David Deans was wont to "loose the pleugh," presented himself before the closed door of the cottage at Woodend, and seemed as much astonished at finding it shut against his approach as if it was not exactly what he had to expect. On this occasion he was heard to ejaculate, "Gude guide us!" which, by those who knew him, was considered as a very unusual mark of emotion. From that moment forward Dumbiedikes became an altered man, and the regularity of his movements, hitherto so exemplary, was as totally disconcerted as those of a boy's watch when he has broken the main-spring. Like the index of the said watch did Dumbiedikes spin round the whole bounds of his little property, which may be likened unto the dial of the timepiece, with unwonted velocity. There was not a cottage into which he did not enter, nor scarce a maiden on whom he did not stare. But so it was, that although there were better farm-houses on the land than Woodend, and certainly much prettier girls than Jeanie Deans, yet it did somehow befall that the blank in the Laird's time was not so pleasantly filled up as it had been. There was no seat accommodated him so well as the "bunker" at Woodend, and no face he loved so much to gaze on as Jeanie Deans's. So, after spinning round and round his little orbit, and then remaining stationary for a week, it seems to have occurred to him that he was not pinned down to circulate on a pivot, like the hands of the watch, but possessed the power of shifting his central point, and extending his circle if he thought proper. To realise which privilege of change of place, he bought a pony from a Highland drover, and with its assistance and company stepped, or rather stumbled, as far as Saint Leonard's Crags. Jeanie Deans, though so much accustomed to the Laird's staring that she was sometimes scarce conscious of his presence, had nevertheless some occasional fears lest he should call in the organ of speech to back those expressions of admiration which he bestowed on her through his eyes. Should this happen, farewell, she thought, to all chance of a union with Butler. For her father, however stouthearted and independent in civil and religious principles, was not without that respect for the laird of the land, so deeply imprinted on the Scottish tenantry of the period. Moreover, if he did not positively dislike Butler, yet his fund of carnal learning was often the object of sarcasms on David's part, which were perhaps founded in jealousy, and which certainly indicated no partiality for the party against whom they were launched. And lastly, the match with Dumbiedikes would have presented irresistible charms to one who used to complain that he felt himself apt to take "ower grit an armfu' o' the warld." So that, upon the whole, the Laird's diurnal visits were disagreeable to Jeanie from apprehension of future consequences, and it served much to console her, upon removing from the spot where she was bred and born, that she had seen the last of Dumbiedikes, his laced hat, and tobacco-pipe. The poor girl no more expected he could muster courage to follow her to Saint Leonard's Crags than that any of her apple-trees or cabbages which she had left rooted in the "yard" at Woodend, would spontaneously, and unaided, have undertaken the same journey. It was therefore with much more surprise than pleasure that, on the sixth day after their removal to Saint Leonard's, she beheld Dumbiedikes arrive, laced hat, tobacco-pipe, and all, and, with the self-same greeting of "How's a' wi' ye, Jeanie?--Whare's the gudeman?" assume as nearly as he could the same position in the cottage at Saint Leonard's which he had so long and so regularly occupied at Woodend. He was no sooner, however, seated, than with an unusual exertion of his powers of conversation, he added, "Jeanie--I say, Jeanie, woman"--here he extended his hand towards her shoulder with all the fingers spread out as if to clutch it, but in so bashful and awkward a manner, that when she whisked herself beyond its reach, the paw remained suspended in the air with the palm open, like the claw of a heraldic griffin--"Jeanie," continued the swain in this moment of inspiration--"I say, Jeanie, it's a braw day out-by, and the roads are no that ill for boot-hose." [Illustration: Jeanie--I say, Jeanie, woman--133 "The deil's in the daidling body," muttered Jeanie between her teeth; "wha wad hae thought o' his daikering out this length?" And she afterwards confessed that she threw a little of this ungracious sentiment into her accent and manner; for her father being abroad, and the "body," as she irreverently termed the landed proprietor, "looking unco gleg and canty, she didna ken what he might be coming out wi' next." Her frowns, however, acted as a complete sedative, and the Laird relapsed from that day into his former taciturn habits, visiting the cowfeeder's cottage three or four times every week, when the weather permitted, with apparently no other purpose than to stare at Jeanie Deans, while Douce Davie poured forth his eloquence upon the controversies and testimonies of the day. CHAPTER NINTH. Her air, her manners, all who saw admired, Courteous, though coy, and gentle, though retired; The joy of youth and health her eyes displayed; And ease of heart her every look conveyed. Crabbe. The visits of the Laird thus again sunk into matters of ordinary course, from which nothing was to be expected or apprehended. If a lover could have gained a fair one as a snake is said to fascinate a bird, by pertinaciously gazing on her with great stupid greenish eyes, which began now to be occasionally aided by spectacles, unquestionably Dumbiedikes would have been the person to perform the feat. But the art of fascination seems among the _artes perditae,_ and I cannot learn that this most pertinacious of starers produced any effect by his attentions beyond an occasional yawn. In the meanwhile, the object of his gaze was gradually attaining the verge of youth, and approaching to what is called in females the middle age, which is impolitely held to begin a few years earlier with their more fragile sex than with men. Many people would have been of opinion, that the Laird would have done better to have transferred his glances to an object possessed of far superior charms to Jeanie's, even when Jeanie's were in their bloom, who began now to be distinguished by all who visited the cottage at St. Leonard's Crags. Effie Deans, under the tender and affectionate care of her sister, had now shot up into a beautiful and blooming girl. Her Grecian shaped head was profusely rich in waving ringlets of brown hair, which, confined by a blue snood of silk, and shading a laughing Hebe countenance, seemed the picture of health, pleasure, and contentment. Her brown russet short-gown set off a shape, which time, perhaps, might be expected to render too robust, the frequent objection to Scottish beauty, but which, in her present early age, was slender and taper, with that graceful and easy sweep of outline which at once indicates health and beautiful proportion of parts. These growing charms, in all their juvenile profusion, had no power to shake the steadfast mind, or divert the fixed gaze of the constant Laird of Dumbiedikes. But there was scarce another eye that could behold this living picture of health and beauty, without pausing on it with pleasure. The traveller stopped his weary horse on the eve of entering the city which was the end of his journey, to gaze at the sylph-like form that tripped by him, with her milk-pail poised on her head, bearing herself so erect, and stepping so light and free under her burden, that it seemed rather an ornament than an encumbrance. The lads of the neighbouring suburb, who held their evening rendezvous for putting the stone, casting the hammer, playing at long bowls, and other athletic exercises, watched the motions of Effie Deans, and contended with each other which should have the good fortune to attract her attention. Even the rigid Presbyterians of her father's persuasion, who held each indulgence of the eye and sense to be a snare at least if not a crime, were surprised into a moment's delight while gazing on a creature so exquisite,--instantly checked by a sigh, reproaching at once their own weakness, and mourning that a creature so fair should share in the common and hereditary guilt and imperfection of our nature, which she deserved as much by her guileless purity of thought, speech, and action, as by her uncommon loveliness of face and person. Yet there were points in Effie's character which gave rise not only to strange doubt and anxiety on the part of Douce David Deans, whose ideas were rigid, as may easily be supposed, upon the subject of youthful amusements, but even of serious apprehension to her more indulgent sister. The children of the Scotch of the inferior classes are usually spoiled by the early indulgence of their parents; how, wherefore, and to what degree, the lively and instructive narrative of the amiable and accomplished authoress of "Glenburnie"* has saved me and all future scribblers the trouble of recording. * [The late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton.] Effie had had a double share of this inconsiderate and misjudged kindness. Even the strictness of her father's principles could not condemn the sports of infancy and childhood; and to the good old man, his younger daughter, the child of his old age, seemed a child for some years after she attained the years of womanhood, was still called the "bit lassie," and "little Effie," and was permitted to run up and down uncontrolled, unless upon the Sabbath, or at the times of family worship. Her sister, with all the love and care of a mother, could not be supposed to possess the same authoritative influence; and that which she had hitherto exercised became gradually limited and diminished as Effie's advancing years entitled her, in her own conceit at least, to the right of independence and free agency. With all the innocence and goodness of disposition, therefore, which we have described, the Lily of St. Leonard's possessed a little fund of self-conceit and obstinacy, and some warmth and irritability of temper, partly natural perhaps, but certainly much increased by the unrestrained freedom of her childhood. Her character will be best illustrated by a cottage evening scene. The careful father was absent in his well-stocked byre, foddering those useful and patient animals on whose produce his living depended, and the summer evening was beginning to close in, when Jeanie Deans began to be very anxious for the appearance of her sister, and to fear that she would not reach home before her father returned from the labour of the evening, when it was his custom to have "family exercise," and when she knew that Effie's absence would give him the most serious displeasure. These apprehensions hung heavier upon her mind, because, for several preceding evenings, Effie had disappeared about the same time, and her stay, at first so brief as scarce to be noticed, had been gradually protracted to half-an-hour, and an hour, and on the present occasion had considerably exceeded even this last limit. And now, Jeanie stood at the door, with her hand before her eyes to avoid the rays of the level sun, and looked alternately along the various tracks which led towards their dwelling, to see if she could descry the nymph-like form of her sister. There was a wall and a stile which separated the royal domain, or King's Park, as it is called, from the public road; to this pass she frequently directed her attention, when she saw two persons appear there somewhat suddenly, as if they had walked close by the side of the wall to screen themselves from observation. One of them, a man, drew back hastily; the other, a female, crossed the stile, and advanced towards her--It was Effie. She met her sister with that affected liveliness of manner, which, in her rank, and sometimes in those above it, females occasionally assume to hide surprise or confusion; and she carolled as she came-- "The elfin knight sate on the brae, The broom grows bonny, the broom grows fair; And by there came lilting a lady so gay, And we daurna gang down to the broom nae mair." "Whisht, Effie," said her sister; "our father's coming out o' the byre." --The damsel stinted in her song.--"Whare hae ye been sae late at e'en?" "It's no late, lass," answered Effie. "It's chappit eight on every clock o' the town, and the sun's gaun down ahint the Corstorphine hills--Whare can ye hae been sae late?" "Nae gate," answered Effie. "And wha was that parted wi' you at the stile?" "Naebody," replied Effie once more. "Nae gate?--Naebody?--I wish it may be a right gate, and a right body, that keeps folk out sae late at e'en, Effie." "What needs ye be aye speering then at folk?" retorted Effie. "I'm sure, if ye'll ask nae questions, I'll tell ye nae lees. I never ask what brings the Laird of Dumbiedikes glowering here like a wull-cat (only his een's greener, and no sae gleg), day after day, till we are a' like to gaunt our charts aft." "Because ye ken very weel he comes to see our father," said Jeanie, in answer to this pert remark. "And Dominie Butler--Does he come to see our father, that's sae taen wi' his Latin words?" said Effie, delighted to find that by carrying the war into the enemy's country, she could divert the threatened attack upon herself, and with the petulance of youth she pursued her triumph over her prudent elder sister. She looked at her with a sly air, in which there was something like irony, as she chanted, in a low but marked tone, a scrap of an old Scotch song-- "Through the kirkyard I met wi' the Laird, The silly puir body he said me nae harm; But just ere 'twas dark, I met wi' the clerk" Here the songstress stopped, looked full at her sister, and, observing the tears gather in her eyes, she suddenly flung her arms round her neck, and kissed them away. Jeanie, though hurt and displeased, was unable to resist the caresses of this untaught child of nature, whose good and evil seemed to flow rather from impulse than from reflection. But as she returned the sisterly kiss, in token of perfect reconciliation, she could not suppress the gentle reproof--"Effie, if ye will learn fule sangs, ye might make a kinder use of them." "And so I might, Jeanie," continued the girl, clinging to her sister's neck; "and I wish I had never learned ane o' them--and I wish we had never come here--and I wish my tongue had been blistered or I had vexed ye." "Never mind that, Effie," replied the affectionate sister; "I canna be muckle vexed wi' ony thing ye say to me--but O, dinna vex our father!" "I will not--I will not," replied Effie; "and if there were as mony dances the morn's night as there are merry dancers in the north firmament on a frosty e'en, I winna budge an inch to gang near ane o' them." "Dance!" echoed Jeanie Deans in astonishment. "O Effie, what could take ye to a dance?" It is very possible, that, in the communicative mood into which the Lily of St. Leonard's was now surprised, she might have given her sister her unreserved confidence, and saved me the pain of telling a melancholy tale; but at the moment the word dance was uttered, it reached the ear of old David Deans, who had turned the corner of the house, and came upon his daughters ere they were aware of his presence. The word _prelate,_ or even the word _pope,_ could hardly have produced so appalling an effect upon David's ear; for, of all exercises, that of dancing, which he termed a voluntary and regular fit of distraction, he deemed most destructive of serious thoughts, and the readiest inlet to all sorts of licentiousness; and he accounted the encouraging, and even permitting, assemblies or meetings, whether among those of high or low degree, for this fantastic and absurd purpose, or for that of dramatic representations, as one of the most flagrant proofs of defection and causes of wrath. The pronouncing of the word _dance_ by his own daughters, and at his own door, now drove him beyond the verge of patience. "Dance!" he exclaimed. "Dance!--dance, said ye? I daur ye, limmers that ye are, to name sic a word at my door-cheek! It's a dissolute profane pastime, practised by the Israelites only at their base and brutal worship of the Golden Calf at Bethel, and by the unhappy lass wha danced aff the head of John the Baptist, upon whilk chapter I will exercise this night for your farther instruction, since ye need it sae muckle, nothing doubting that she has cause to rue the day, lang or this time, that e'er she suld hae shook a limb on sic an errand. Better for her to hae been born a cripple, and carried frae door to door, like auld Bessie Bowie, begging bawbees, than to be a king's daughter, fiddling and flinging the gate she did. I hae often wondered that ony ane that ever bent a knee for the right purpose, should ever daur to crook a hough to fyke and fling at piper's wind and fiddler's squealing. And I bless God (with that singular worthy, Peter Walker the packman at Bristo-Port),* that ordered my lot in my dancing days, so that fear of my head and throat, dread of bloody rope and swift bullet, and trenchant swords and pain of boots and thumkins, cauld and hunger, wetness and weariness, stopped the lightness of my head, and the wantonness of my feet. * Note F. Peter Walker. And now, if I hear ye, quean lassies, sae muckle as name dancing, or think there's sic a thing in this warld as flinging to fiddler's sounds, and piper's springs, as sure as my father's spirit is with the just, ye shall be no more either charge or concern of mine! Gang in, then--gang in, then, hinnies," he added, in a softer tone, for the tears of both daughters, but especially those of Effie, began to flow very fast,--"Gang in, dears, and we'll seek grace to preserve us frae all, manner of profane folly, whilk causeth to sin, and promoteth the kingdom of darkness, warring with the kingdom of light." The objurgation of David Deans, however well meant, was unhappily timed. It created a division of feelings in Effie's bosom, and deterred her from her intended confidence in her sister. "She wad hand me nae better than the dirt below her feet," said Effie to herself, "were I to confess I hae danced wi' him four times on the green down by, and ance at Maggie Macqueens's; and she'll maybe hing it ower my head that she'll tell my father, and then she wad be mistress and mair. But I'll no gang back there again. I'm resolved I'll no gang back. I'll lay in a leaf of my Bible,* and that's very near as if I had made an aith, that I winna gang back." * This custom of making a mark by folding a leaf in the party's Bible, when a solemn resolution is formed, is still held to be, in some sense, an appeal to Heaven for his or her sincerity. And she kept her vow for a week, during which she was unusually cross and fretful, blemishes which had never before been observed in her temper, except during a moment of contradiction. There was something in all this so mysterious as considerably to alarm the prudent and affectionate Jeanie, the more so as she judged it unkind to her sister to mention to their father grounds of anxiety which might arise from her own imagination. Besides, her respect for the good old man did not prevent her from being aware that he was both hot-tempered and positive, and she sometimes suspected that he carried his dislike to youthful amusements beyond the verge that religion and reason demanded. Jeanie had sense enough to see that a sudden and severe curb upon her sister's hitherto unrestrained freedom might be rather productive of harm than good, and that Effie, in the headstrong wilfulness of youth, was likely to make what might be overstrained in her father's precepts an excuse to herself for neglecting them altogether. In the higher classes, a damsel, however giddy, is still under the dominion of etiquette, and subject to the surveillance of mammas and chaperons; but the country girl, who snatches her moment of gaiety during the intervals of labour, is under no such guardianship or restraint, and her amusement becomes so much the more hazardous. Jeanie saw all this with much distress of mind, when a circumstance occurred which appeared calculated to relieve her anxiety. Mrs. Saddletree, with whom our readers have already been made acquainted, chanced to be a distant relation of Douce David Deans, and as she was a woman orderly in her life and conversation, and, moreover, of good substance, a sort of acquaintance was formally kept up between the families. Now, this careful dame, about a year and a half before our story commences, chanced to need, in the line of her profession, a better sort of servant, or rather shop-woman. "Mr. Saddletree," she said, "was never in the shop when he could get his nose within the Parliament House, and it was an awkward thing for a woman-body to be standing among bundles o' barkened leather her lane, selling saddles and bridles; and she had cast her eyes upon her far-awa cousin Effie Deans, as just the very sort of lassie she would want to keep her in countenance on such occasions." In this proposal there was much that pleased old David,--there was bed, board, and bountith--it was a decent situation--the lassie would be under Mrs. Saddletree's eye, who had an upright walk, and lived close by the Tolbooth Kirk, in which might still be heard the comforting doctrines of one of those few ministers of the Kirk of Scotland who had not bent the knee unto Baal, according to David's expression, or become accessory to the course of national defections,--union, toleration, patronages, and a bundle of prelatical Erastian oaths which had been imposed on the church since the Revolution, and particularly in the reign of "the late woman" (as he called Queen Anne), the last of that unhappy race of Stuarts. In the good man's security concerning the soundness of the theological doctrine which his daughter was to hear, he was nothing disturbed on account of the snares of a different kind, to which a creature so beautiful, young, and wilful, might be exposed in the centre of a populous and corrupted city. The fact is, that he thought with so much horror on all approaches to irregularities of the nature most to be dreaded in such cases, that he would as soon have suspected and guarded against Effie's being induced to become guilty of the crime of murder. He only regretted that she should live under the same roof with such a worldly-wise man as Bartoline Saddletree, whom David never suspected of being an ass as he was, but considered as one really endowed with all the legal knowledge to which he made pretension, and only liked him the worse for possessing it. The lawyers, especially those amongst them who sate as ruling elders in the General Assembly of the Kirk, had been forward in promoting the measures of patronage, of the abjuration oath, and others, which, in the opinion of David Deans, were a breaking down of the carved work of the sanctuary, and an intrusion upon the liberties of the kirk. Upon the dangers of listening to the doctrines of a legalised formalist, such as Saddletree, David gave his daughter many lectures; so much so, that he had time to touch but slightly on the dangers of chambering, company-keeping, and promiscuous dancing, to which, at her time of life, most people would have thought Effie more exposed, than to the risk of theoretical error in her religious faith. Jeanie parted from her sister with a mixed feeling of regret, and apprehension, and hope. She could not be so confident concerning Effie's prudence as her father, for she had observed her more narrowly, had more sympathy with her feelings, and could better estimate the temptations to which she was exposed. On the other hand, Mrs. Saddletree was an observing, shrewd, notable woman, entitled to exercise over Effie the full authority of a mistress, and likely to do so strictly, yet with kindness. Her removal to Saddletree's, it was most probable, would also serve to break off some idle acquaintances, which Jeanie suspected her sister to have formed in the neighbouring suburb. Upon the whole, then, she viewed her departure from Saint Leonard's with pleasure, and it was not until the very moment of their parting for the first time in their lives, that she felt the full force of sisterly sorrow. While they repeatedly kissed each other's cheeks, and wrung each other's hands, Jeanie took that moment of affectionate sympathy, to press upon her sister the necessity of the utmost caution in her conduct while residing in Edinburgh. Effie listened, without once raising her large dark eyelashes, from which the drops fell so fast as almost to resemble a fountain. At the conclusion she sobbed again, kissed her sister, promised to recollect all the good counsel she had given her, and they parted. During the first weeks, Effie was all that her kinswoman expected, and even more. But with time there came a relaxation of that early zeal which she manifested in Mrs. Saddletree's service. To borrow once again from the poet, who so correctly and beautifully describes living manners:-- Something there was,--what, none presumed to say,-- Clouds lightly passing on a summer's day; Whispers and hints, which went from ear to ear, And mixed reports no judge on earth could clear. During this interval, Mrs. Saddletree was sometimes displeased by Effie's lingering when she was sent upon errands about the shop business, and sometimes by a little degree of impatience which she manifested at being rebuked on such occasions. But she good-naturedly allowed, that the first was very natural to a girl to whom everything in Edinburgh was new and the other was only the petulance of a spoiled child, when subjected to the yoke of domestic discipline for the first time. Attention and submission could not be learned at once--Holyrood was not built in a day--use would make perfect. It seemed as if the considerate old lady had presaged truly. Ere many months had passed, Effie became almost wedded to her duties, though she no longer discharged them with the laughing cheek and light step, which had at first attracted every customer. Her mistress sometimes observed her in tears, but they were signs of secret sorrow, which she concealed as often as she saw them attract notice. Time wore on, her cheek grew pale, and her step heavy. The cause of these changes could not have escaped the matronly eye of Mrs. Saddletree, but she was chiefly confined by indisposition to her bedroom for a considerable time during the latter part of Effie's service. This interval was marked by symptoms of anguish almost amounting to despair. The utmost efforts of the poor girl to command her fits of hysterical agony were, often totally unavailing, and the mistakes which she made in the shop the while, were so numerous and so provoking that Bartoline Saddletree, who, during his wife's illness, was obliged to take closer charge of the business than consisted with his study of the weightier matters of the law, lost all patience with the girl, who, in his law Latin, and without much respect to gender, he declared ought to be cognosced by inquest of a jury, as _fatuus, furiosus,_ and _naturaliter idiota._ Neighbours, also, and fellow-servants, remarked with malicious curiosity or degrading pity, the disfigured shape, loose dress, and pale cheeks, of the once beautiful and still interesting girl. But to no one would she grant her confidence, answering all taunts with bitter sarcasm, and all serious expostulation with sullen denial, or with floods of tears. At length, when Mrs. Saddletree's recovery was likely to permit her wonted attention to the regulation of her household, Effie Deans, as if unwilling to face an investigation made by the authority of her mistress, asked permission of Bartoline to go home for a week or two, assigning indisposition, and the wish of trying the benefit of repose and the change of air, as the motives of her request. Sharp-eyed as a lynx (or conceiving himself to be so) in the nice sharp quillits of legal discussion, Bartoline was as dull at drawing inferences from the occurrences of common life as any Dutch professor of mathematics. He suffered Effie to depart without much suspicion, and without any inquiry. It was afterwards found that a period of a week intervened betwixt her leaving her master's house and arriving at St. Leonard's. She made her appearance before her sister in a state rather resembling the spectre than the living substance of the gay and beautiful girl, who had left her father's cottage for the first time scarce seventeen months before. The lingering illness of her mistress had, for the last few months, given her a plea for confining herself entirely to the dusky precincts of the shop in the Lawnmarket, and Jeanie was so much occupied, during the same period, with the concerns of her father's household, that she had rarely found leisure for a walk in the city, and a brief and hurried visit to her sister. The young women, therefore, had scarcely seen each other for several months, nor had a single scandalous surmise reached the ears of the secluded inhabitants of the cottage at St. Leonard's. Jeanie, therefore, terrified to death at her sister's appearance, at first overwhelmed her with inquiries, to which the unfortunate young woman returned for a time incoherent and rambling answers, and finally fell into a hysterical fit. Rendered too certain of her sister's misfortune, Jeanie had now the dreadful alternative of communicating her ruin to her father, or of endeavouring to conceal it from him. To all questions concerning the name or rank of her seducer, and the fate of the being to whom her fall had given birth, Effie remained as mute as the grave, to which she seemed hastening; and indeed the least allusion to either seemed to drive her to distraction. Her sister, in distress and in despair, was about to repair to Mrs. Saddletree to consult her experience, and at the same time to obtain what lights she could upon this most unhappy affair, when she was saved that trouble by a new stroke of fate, which seemed to carry misfortune to the uttermost. David Deans had been alarmed at the state of health in which his daughter had returned to her paternal residence; but Jeanie had contrived to divert him from particular and specific inquiry. It was therefore like a clap of thunder to the poor old man, when, just as the hour of noon had brought the visit of the Laird of Dumbiedikes as usual, other and sterner, as well as most unexpected guests, arrived at the cottage of St. Leonard's. These were the officers of justice, with a warrant of justiciary to search for and apprehend Euphemia, or Effie Deans, accused of the crime of child-murder. The stunning weight of a blow so totally unexpected bore down the old man, who had in his early youth resisted the brow of military and civil tyranny, though backed with swords and guns, tortures and gibbets. He fell extended and senseless upon his own hearth; and the men, happy to escape from the scene of his awakening, raised, with rude humanity, the object of their warrant from her bed, and placed her in a coach, which they had brought with them. The hasty remedies which Jeanie had applied to bring back her father's senses were scarce begun to operate, when the noise of the wheels in motion recalled her attention to her miserable sister. To ran shrieking after the carriage was the first vain effort of her distraction, but she was stopped by one or two female neighbours, assembled by the extraordinary appearance of a coach in that sequestered place, who almost forced her back to her father's house. The deep and sympathetic affliction of these poor people, by whom the little family at St. Leonard's were held in high regard, filled the house with lamentation. Even Dumbiedikes was moved from his wonted apathy, and, groping for his purse as he spoke, ejaculated, "Jeanie, woman!--Jeanie, woman! dinna greet--it's sad wark, but siller will help it;" and he drew out his purse as he spoke. The old man had now raised himself from the ground, and, looking about him as if he missed something, seemed gradually to recover the sense of his wretchedness. "Where," he said, with a voice that made the roof ring, "where is the vile harlot, that has disgraced the blood of an honest man?--Where is she, that has no place among us, but has come foul with her sins, like the Evil One, among the children of God?--Where is she, Jeanie?--Bring her before me, that I may kill her with a word and a look!" All hastened around him with their appropriate sources of consolation--the Laird with his purse, Jeanie with burnt feathers and strong waters, and the women with their exhortations. "O neighbour--O Mr. Deans, it's a sair trial, doubtless--but think of the Rock of Ages, neighbour--think of the promise!" "And I do think of it, neighbours--and I bless God that I can think of it, even in the wrack and ruin of a' that's nearest and dearest to me--But to be the father of a castaway--a profligate--a bloody Zipporah--a mere murderess!--O, how will the wicked exult in the high places of their wickedness!--the prelatists, and the latitudinarians, and the hand-waled murderers, whose hands are hard as horn wi' handing the slaughter-weapons--they will push out the lip, and say that we are even such as themselves. Sair, sair I am grieved, neighbours, for the poor castaway--for the child of mine old age--but sairer for the stumbling-block and scandal it will be to all tender and honest souls!" "Davie--winna siller do't?" insinuated the laird, still proffering his green purse, which was full of guineas. "I tell ye, Dumbiedikes," said Deans, "that if telling down my haill substance could hae saved her frae this black snare, I wad hae walked out wi' naething but my bonnet and my staff to beg an awmous for God's sake, and ca'd mysell an happy man--But if a dollar, or a plack, or the nineteenth part of a boddle, wad save her open guilt and open shame frae open punishment, that purchase wad David Deans never make!--Na, na; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, life for life, blood for blood--it's the law of man, and it's the law of God.--Leave me, sirs--leave me--I maun warstle wi' this trial in privacy and on my knees." Jeanie, now in some degree restored to the power of thought, joined in the same request. The next day found the father and daughter still in the depth of affliction, but the father sternly supporting his load of ill through a proud sense of religious duty, and the daughter anxiously suppressing her own feelings to avoid again awakening his. Thus was it with the afflicted family until the morning after Porteous's death, a period at which we are now arrived. CHAPTER TENTH. Is all the counsel that we two have shared, The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us--Oh!--and is all forgot? Midsummer Night's Dream. We have been a long while in conducting Butler to the door of the cottage at St. Leonard's; yet the space which we have occupied in the preceding narrative does not exceed in length that which he actually spent on Salisbury Crags on the morning which succeeded the execution done upon Porteous by the rioters. For this delay he had his own motives. He wished to collect his thoughts, strangely agitated as they were, first by the melancholy news of Effie Deans's situation, and afterwards by the frightful scene which he had witnessed. In the situation also in which he stood with respect to Jeanie and her father, some ceremony, at least some choice of fitting time and season, was necessary to wait upon them. Eight in the morning was then the ordinary hour for breakfast, and he resolved that it should arrive before he made his appearance in their cottage. Never did hours pass so heavily. Butler shifted his place and enlarged his circle to while away the time, and heard the huge bell of St. Giles's toll each successive hour in swelling tones, which were instantly attested by those of the other steeples in succession. He had heard seven struck in this manner, when he began to think he might venture to approach nearer to St. Leonard's, from which he was still a mile distant. Accordingly he descended from his lofty station as low as the bottom of the valley, which divides Salisbury Crags from those small rocks which take their name from Saint Leonard. It is, as many of my readers may know, a deep, wild, grassy valley, scattered with huge rocks and fragments which have descended from the cliffs and steep ascent to the east. This sequestered dell, as well as other places of the open pasturage of the King's Park, was, about this time, often the resort of the gallants of the time who had affairs of honour to discuss with the sword. Duels were then very common in Scotland, for the gentry were at once idle, haughty, fierce, divided by faction, and addicted to intemperance, so that there lacked neither provocation, nor inclination to resent it when given; and the sword, which was part of every gentleman's dress, was the only weapon used for the decision of such differences. When, therefore, Butler observed a young man, skulking, apparently to avoid observation, among the scattered rocks at some distance from the footpath, he was naturally led to suppose that he had sought this lonely spot upon that evil errand. He was so strongly impressed with this, that, notwithstanding his own distress of mind, he could not, according to his sense of duty as a clergyman, pass this person without speaking to him. There are times, thought he to himself, when the slightest interference may avert a great calamity--when a word spoken in season may do more for prevention than the eloquence of Tully could do for remedying evil--And for my own griefs, be they as they may, I shall feel them the lighter, if they divert me not from the prosecution of my duty. Thus thinking and feeling, he quitted the ordinary path, and advanced nearer the object he had noticed. The man at first directed his course towards the hill, in order, as it appeared, to avoid him; but when he saw that Butler seemed disposed to follow him, he adjusted his hat fiercely, turned round, and came forward, as if to meet and defy scrutiny. Butler had an opportunity of accurately studying his features as they advanced slowly to meet each other. The stranger seemed about twenty-five years old. His dress was of a kind which could hardly be said to indicate his rank with certainty, for it was such as young gentlemen sometimes wore while on active exercise in the morning, and which, therefore, was imitated by those of the inferior ranks, as young clerks and tradesmen, because its cheapness rendered it attainable, while it approached more nearly to the apparel of youths of fashion than any other which the manners of the times permitted them to wear. If his air and manner could be trusted, however, this person seemed rather to be dressed under than above his rank; for his carriage was bold and somewhat supercilious, his step easy and free, his manner daring and unconstrained. His stature was of the middle size, or rather above it, his limbs well-proportioned, yet not so strong as to infer the reproach of clumsiness. His features were uncommonly handsome, and all about him would have been interesting and prepossessing but for that indescribable expression which habitual dissipation gives to the countenance, joined with a certain audacity in look and manner, of that kind which is often assumed as a mask for confusion and apprehension. Butler and the stranger met--surveyed each other--when, as the latter, slightly touching his hat, was about to pass by him, Butler, while he returned the salutation, observed, "A fine morning, sir--You are on the hill early." "I have business here," said the young man, in a tone meant to repress farther inquiry. "I do not doubt it, sir," said Butler. "I trust you will forgive my hoping that it is of a lawful kind?" "Sir," said the other, with marked surprise, "I never forgive impertinence, nor can I conceive what title you have to hope anything about what no way concerns you." "I am a soldier, sir," said Butler, "and have a charge to arrest evil-doers in the name of my Master." "A soldier!" said the young man, stepping back, and fiercely laying his hand on his sword--"A soldier, and arrest me! Did you reckon what your life was worth, before you took the commission upon you?" "You mistake me, sir," said Butler, gravely; "neither my warfare nor my warrant are of this world. I am a preacher of the gospel, and have power, in my Master's name, to command the peace upon earth and good-will towards men, which was proclaimed with the gospel." "A minister!" said the stranger, carelessly, and with an expression approaching to scorn. "I know the gentlemen of your cloth in Scotland claim a strange right of intermeddling with men's private affairs. But I have been abroad, and know better than to be priest-ridden." "Sir, if it be true that any of my cloth, or, it might be more decently said, of my calling, interfere with men's private affairs, for the gratification either of idle curiosity, or for worse motives, you cannot have learned a better lesson abroad than to contemn such practices. But in my Master's work, I am called to be busy in season and out of season; and, conscious as I am of a pure motive, it were better for me to incur your contempt for speaking, than the correction of my own conscience for being silent." "In the name of the devil!" said the young man impatiently, "say what you have to say, then; though whom you take me for, or what earthly concern you have with me, a stranger to you, or with my actions and motives, of which you can know nothing, I cannot conjecture for an instant." "You are about," said Butler, "to violate one of your country's wisest laws--you are about, which is much more dreadful, to violate a law, which God himself has implanted within our nature, and written as it were, in the table of our hearts, to which every thrill of our nerves is responsive." "And what is the law you speak of?" said the stranger, in a hollow and somewhat disturbed accent. "Thou shalt do no murder," said Butler, with a deep and solemn voice. The young man visibly started, and looked considerably appalled. Butler perceived he had made a favourable impression, and resolved to follow it up. "Think," he said, "young man," laying his hand kindly upon the stranger's shoulder, "what an awful alternative you voluntarily choose for yourself, to kill or be killed. Think what it is to rush uncalled into the presence of an offended Deity, your heart fermenting with evil passions, your hand hot from the steel you had been urging, with your best skill and malice, against the breast of a fellow-creature. Or, suppose yourself the scarce less wretched survivor, with the guilt of Cain, the first murderer, in your heart, with the stamp upon your brow--that stamp which struck all who gazed on him with unutterable horror, and by which the murderer is made manifest to all who look upon him. Think" The stranger gradually withdrew himself from under the hand of his monitor; and, pulling his hat over his brows, thus interrupted him. "Your meaning, sir, I dare say, is excellent, but you are throwing your advice away. I am not in this place with violent intentions against any one. I may be bad enough--you priests say all men are so--but I am here for the purpose of saving life, not of taking it away. If you wish to spend your time rather in doing a good action than in talking about you know not what, I will give you an opportunity. Do you see yonder crag to the right, over which appears the chimney of a lone house? Go thither, inquire for one Jeanie Deans, the daughter of the goodman; let her know that he she wots of remained here from daybreak till this hour, expecting to see her, and that he can abide no longer. Tell her, she _must_ meet me at the Hunter's Bog to-night, as the moon rises behind St. Anthony's Hill, or that she will make a desperate man of me." "Who or what are you," replied Butler, exceedingly and most unpleasantly surprised, "who charge me with such an errand?" "I am the devil!"--answered the young man hastily. Butler stepped instinctively back, and commanded himself internally to Heaven; for, though a wise and strong-minded man, he was neither wiser nor more strong-minded than those of his age and education, with whom, to disbelieve witchcraft or spectres, was held an undeniable proof of atheism. The stranger went on without observing his emotion. "Yes! call me Apollyon, Abaddon, whatever name you shall choose, as a clergyman acquainted with the upper and lower circles of spiritual denomination, to call me by, you shall not find an appellation more odious to him that bears it, than is mine own." This sentence was spoken with the bitterness of self-upbraiding, and a contortion of visage absolutely demoniacal. Butler, though a man brave by principle, if not by constitution, was overawed; for intensity of mental distress has in it a sort of sublimity which repels and overawes all men, but especially those of kind and sympathetic dispositions. The stranger turned abruptly from Butler as he spoke, but instantly returned, and, coming up to him closely and boldly, said, in a fierce, determined tone, "I have told you who and what I am--who and what are you? What is your name?" "Butler," answered the person to whom this abrupt question was addressed, surprised into answering it by the sudden and fierce manner of the querist--"Reuben Butler, a preacher of the gospel." At this answer, the stranger again plucked more deep over his brows the hat which he had thrown back in his former agitation. "Butler!" he repeated--"the assistant of the schoolmaster at Liberton?" "The same," answered Butler composedly. The stranger covered his face with his hand, as if on sudden reflection, and then turned away, but stopped when he had walked a few paces; and seeing Butler follow him with his eyes, called out in a stern yet suppressed tone, just as if he had exactly calculated that his accents should not be heard a yard beyond the spot on which Butler stood. "Go your way, and do mine errand. Do not look after me. I will neither descend through the bowels of these rocks, nor vanish in a flash of fire; and yet the eye that seeks to trace my motions shall have reason to curse it was ever shrouded by eyelid or eyelash. Begone, and look not behind you. Tell Jeanie Deans, that when the moon rises I shall expect to meet her at Nicol Muschat's Cairn, beneath Saint Anthony's Chapel." [Illustration: St. Anthony's Chapel--159] As he uttered these words, he turned and took the road against the hill, with a haste that seemed as peremptory as his tone of authority. Dreading he knew not what of additional misery to a lot which seemed little capable of receiving augmentation, and desperate at the idea that any living man should dare to send so extraordinary a request, couched in terms so imperious, to the half-betrothed object of his early and only affection, Butler strode hastily towards the cottage, in order to ascertain how far this daring and rude gallant was actually entitled to press on Jeanie Deans a request, which no prudent, and scarce any modest young woman, was likely to comply with. Butler was by nature neither jealous nor superstitious; yet the feelings which lead to those moods of the mind were rooted in his heart, as a portion derived from the common stock of humanity. It was maddening to think that a profligate gallant, such as the manner and tone of the stranger evinced him to be, should have it in his power to command forth his future bride and plighted true love, at a place so improper, and an hour so unseasonable. Yet the tone in which the stranger spoke had nothing of the soft half-breathed voice proper to the seducer who solicits an assignation; it was bold, fierce, and imperative, and had less of love in it than of menace and intimidation. The suggestions of superstition seemed more plausible, had Butler's mind been very accessible to them. Was this indeed the Roaring Lion, who goeth about seeking whom he may devour? This was a question which pressed itself on Butler's mind with an earnestness that cannot be conceived by those who live in the present day. The fiery eye, the abrupt demeanour, the occasionally harsh, yet studiously subdued tone of voice,--the features, handsome, but now clouded with pride, now disturbed by suspicion, now inflamed with passion--those dark hazel eyes which he sometimes shaded with his cap, as if he were averse to have them seen while they were occupied with keenly observing the motions and bearing of others--those eyes that were now turbid with melancholy, now gleaming with scorn, and now sparkling with fury--was it the passions of a mere mortal they expressed, or the emotions of a fiend, who seeks, and seeks in vain, to conceal his fiendish designs under the borrowed mask of manly beauty? The whole partook of the mien, language, and port of the ruined archangel; and, imperfectly as we have been able to describe it, the effect of the interview upon Butler's nerves, shaken as they were at the time by the horrors of the preceding night, were greater than his understanding warranted, or his pride cared to submit to. The very place where he had met this singular person was desecrated, as it were, and unhallowed, owing to many violent deaths, both in duels and by suicide, which had in former times taken place there; and the place which he had named as a rendezvous at so late an hour, was held in general to be accursed, from a frightful and cruel murder which had been there committed by the wretch from whom the place took its name, upon the person of his own wife.* * Note G. Muschat's Cairn. It was in such places, according to the belief of that period (when the laws against witchcraft were still in fresh observance, and had even lately been acted upon), that evil spirits had power to make themselves visible to human eyes, and to practise upon the feelings and senses of mankind. Suspicions, founded on such circumstances, rushed on Butler's mind, unprepared as it was by any previous course of reasoning, to deny that which all of his time, country, and profession believed; but common sense rejected these vain ideas as inconsistent, if not with possibility, at least with the general rules by which the universe is governed,--a deviation from which, as Butler well argued with himself, ought not to be admitted as probable, upon any but the plainest and most incontrovertible evidence. An earthly lover, however, or a young man, who, from whatever cause, had the right of exercising such summary and unceremonious authority over the object of his long-settled, and apparently sincerely returned affection, was an object scarce less appalling to his mind, than those which superstition suggested. His limbs exhausted with fatigue, his mind harassed with anxiety, and with painful doubts and recollections, Butler dragged himself up the ascent from the valley to St. Leonard's Crags, and presented himself at the door of Deans's habitation, with feelings much akin to the miserable reflections and fears of its inhabitants. CHAPTER ELEVENTH. Then she stretched out her lily hand, And for to do her best; "Hae back thy faith and troth, Willie, God gie thy soul good rest!" Old Ballad. "Come in," answered the low and sweet-toned voice he loved best to hear, as Butler tapped at the door of the cottage. He lifted the latch, and found himself under the roof of affliction. Jeanie was unable to trust herself with more than one glance towards her lover, whom she now met under circumstances so agonising to her feelings, and at the same time so humbling to her honest pride. It is well known, that much, both of what is good and bad in the Scottish national character, arises out of the intimacy of their family connections. "To be come of honest folk," that is, of people who have borne a fair and unstained reputation, is an advantage as highly prized among the lower Scotch, as the emphatic counterpart, "to be of a good family," is valued among their gentry. The worth and respectability of one member of a peasant's family is always accounted by themselves and others, not only a matter of honest pride, but a guarantee for the good conduct of the whole. On the contrary, such a melancholy stain as was now flung on one of the children of Deans, extended its disgrace to all connected with him, and Jeanie felt herself lowered at once, in her own eyes, and in those of her lover. It was in vain that she repressed this feeling, as far subordinate and too selfish to be mingled with her sorrow for her sister's calamity. Nature prevailed; and while she shed tears for her sister's distress and danger, there mingled with them bitter drops of grief for her own degradation. As Butler entered, the old man was seated by the fire with his well-worn pocket Bible in his hands, the companion of the wanderings and dangers of his youth, and bequeathed to him on the scaffold by one of those, who, in the year 1686, sealed their enthusiastic principles with their blood. The sun sent its rays through a small window at the old man's back, and, "shining motty through the reek," to use the expression of a bard of that time and country, illumined the grey hairs of the old man, and the sacred page which he studied. His features, far from handsome, and rather harsh and severe, had yet from their expression of habitual gravity, and contempt for earthly things, an expression of stoical dignity amidst their sternness. He boasted, in no small degree, the attributes which Southey ascribes to the ancient Scandinavians, whom he terms "firm to inflict, and stubborn to endure." The whole formed a picture, of which the lights might have been given by Rembrandt, but the outline would have required the force and vigour of Michael Angelo. Deans lifted his eye as Butler entered, and instantly withdrew it, as from an object which gave him at once surprise and sudden pain. He had assumed such high ground with this carnal-witted scholar, as he had in his pride termed Butler, that to meet him, of all men, under feelings of humiliation, aggravated his misfortune, and was a consummation like that of the dying chief in the old ballad--"Earl Percy sees my fall!" Deans raised the Bible with his left hand, so as partly to screen his face, and putting back his right as far as he could, held it towards Butler in that position, at the same time turning his body from, him, as if to prevent his seeing the working of his countenance. Butler clasped the extended hand which had supported his orphan infancy, wept over it, and in vain endeavoured to say more than the words--"God comfort you--God comfort you!" "He will--he doth, my friend," said Deans, assuming firmness as he discovered the agitation of his guest; "he doth now, and he will yet more in his own gude time. I have been ower proud of my sufferings in a gude cause, Reuben, and now I am to be tried with those whilk will turn my pride and glory into a reproach and a hissing. How muckle better I hae thought mysell than them that lay saft, fed sweet, and drank deep, when I was in the moss-haggs and moors, wi' precious Donald Cameron, and worthy Mr. Blackadder, called Guess-again; and how proud I was o' being made a spectacle to men and angels, having stood on their pillory at the Canongate afore I was fifteen years old, for the cause of a National Covenant! To think, Reuben, that I, wha hae been sae honoured and exalted in my youth, nay, when I was but a hafflins callant, and that hae borne testimony again the defections o' the times yearly, monthly, daily, hourly, minutely, striving and testifying with uplifted hand and voice, crying aloud, and sparing not, against all great national snares, as the nation-wasting and church-sinking abomination of union, toleration, and patronage, imposed by the last woman of that unhappy race of Stuarts; also against the infringements and invasions of the just powers of eldership, whereanent, I uttered my paper, called a 'Cry of an Howl in the Desert,' printed at the Bow-head, and sold by all flying stationers in town and country--and _now_" Here he paused. It may well be supposed that Butler, though not absolutely coinciding in all the good old man's ideas about church government, had too much consideration and humanity to interrupt him, while he reckoned up with conscious pride his sufferings, and the constancy of his testimony. On the contrary, when he paused under the influence of the bitter recollections of the moment, Butler instantly threw in his mite of encouragement. "You have been well known, my old and revered friend, a true and tried follower of the Cross; one who, as Saint Jerome hath it, '_per infamiam et bonam famam grassari ad immortalitatem,_' which may be freely rendered, 'who rusheth on to immortal life, through bad report and good report.' You have been one of those to whom the tender and fearful souls cry during the midnight solitude--'Watchman, what of the night?--Watchman, what of the night?'--And, assuredly, this heavy dispensation, as it comes not without divine permission, so it comes not without its special commission and use." "I do receive it as such," said poor Deans, returning the grasp of Butler's hand; "and if I have not been taught to read the Scripture in any other tongue but my native Scottish" (even in his distress Butler's Latin quotation had not escaped his notice), "I have nevertheless so learned them, that I trust to bear even this crook in my lot with submission. But, oh! Reuben Butler, the kirk, of whilk, though unworthy, I have yet been thought a polished shaft, and meet to be a pillar, holding, from my youth upward, the place of ruling elder--what will the lightsome and profane think of the guide that cannot keep his own family from stumbling? How will they take up their song and their reproach, when they see that the children of professors are liable to as foul backsliding as the offspring of Belial! But I will bear my cross with the comfort, that whatever showed like goodness in me or mine, was but like the light that shines frae creeping insects, on the brae-side, in a dark night--it kythes bright to the ee, because all is dark around it; but when the morn comes on the mountains, it is, but a puir crawling kail-worm after a'. And sae it shows, wi' ony rag of human righteousness, or formal law-work, that we may pit round us to cover our shame." As he pronounced these words, the door again opened, and Mr. Bartoline Saddletree entered, his three-pointed hat set far back on his head, with a silk handkerchief beneath it to keep it in that cool position, his gold-headed cane in his hand, and his whole deportment that of a wealthy burgher, who might one day look to have a share in the magistracy, if not actually to hold the curule chair itself. Rochefoucault, who has torn the veil from so many foul gangrenes of the human heart, says, we find something not altogether unpleasant to us in the misfortunes of our best friends. Mr. Saddletree would have been very angry had any one told him that he felt pleasure in the disaster of poor Effie Deans, and the disgrace of her family; and yet there is great question whether the gratification of playing the person of importance, inquiring, investigating, and laying down the law on the whole affair, did not offer, to say the least, full consolation for the pain which pure sympathy gave him on account of his wife's kinswoman. He had now got a piece of real judicial business by the end, instead of being obliged, as was his common case, to intrude his opinion where it was neither wished nor wanted; and felt as happy in the exchange as a boy when he gets his first new watch, which actually goes when wound up, and has real hands and a true dial-plate. But besides this subject for legal disquisition, Bartoline's brains were also overloaded with the affair of Porteous, his violent death, and all its probable consequences to the city and community. It was what the French call _l'embarras des richesses,_ the confusion arising from too much mental wealth. He walked in with a consciousness of double importance, full fraught with the superiority of one who possesses more information than the company into which he enters, and who feels a right to discharge his learning on them without mercy. "Good morning, Mr. Deans,--good-morrow to you, Mr. Butler,--I was not aware that you were acquainted with Mr. Deans." Butler made some slight answer; his reasons may be readily imagined for not making his connection with the family, which, in his eyes, had something of tender mystery, a frequent subject of conversation with indifferent persons, such as Saddletree. The worthy burgher, in the plenitude of self-importance, now sate down upon a chair, wiped his brow, collected his breath, and made the first experiment of the resolved pith of his lungs, in a deep and dignified sigh, resembling a groan in sound and intonation--"Awfu' times these, neighbour Deans, awfu' times!" "Sinfu', shamefu', heaven-daring times!" answered Deans, in a lower and more subdued tone. "For my part," continued Saddletree, swelling with importance, "what between the distress of my friends, and my poor auld country, ony wit that ever I had may be said to have abandoned me, sae that I sometimes think myself as ignorant as if I were _inter rusticos._ Here when I arise in the morning, wi' my mind just arranged touching what's to be done in puir Effie's misfortune, and hae gotten the haill statute at my finger-ends, the mob maun get up and string Jock Porteous to a dyester's beam, and ding a' thing out of my head again." Deeply as he was distressed with his own domestic calamity, Deans could not help expressing some interest in the news. Saddletree immediately entered on details of the insurrection and its consequences, while Butler took the occasion to seek some private conversation with Jeanie Deans. She gave him the opportunity he sought, by leaving the room, as if in prosecution of some part of her morning labour. Butler followed her in a few minutes, leaving Deans so closely engaged by his busy visitor, that there was little chance of his observing their absence. The scene of their interview was an outer apartment, where Jeanie was used to busy herself in arranging the productions of her dairy. When Butler found an opportunity of stealing after her into this place, he found her silent, dejected, and ready to burst into tears. Instead of the active industry with which she had been accustomed, even while in the act of speaking, to employ her hands in some useful branch of household business, she was seated listless in a corner, sinking apparently under the weight of her own thoughts. Yet the instant he entered, she dried her eyes, and, with the simplicity and openness of her character, immediately entered on conversation. "I am glad you have come in, Mr. Butler," said she, "for--for--for I wished to tell ye, that all maun be ended between you and me--it's best for baith our sakes." "Ended!" said Butler, in surprise; "and for what should it be ended?--I grant this is a heavy dispensation, but it lies neither at your door nor mine--it's an evil of God's sending, and it must be borne; but it cannot break plighted troth, Jeanie, while they that plighted their word wish to keep it." "But, Reuben," said the young woman, looking at him affectionately, "I ken weel that ye think mair of me than yourself; and, Reuben, I can only in requital think mair of your weal than of my ain. Ye are a man of spotless name, bred to God's ministry, and a' men say that ye will some day rise high in the kirk, though poverty keep ye doun e'en now. Poverty is a bad back-friend, Reuben, and that ye ken ower weel; but ill-fame is a waur ane, and that is a truth ye sall never learn through my means." "What do you mean?" said Butler, eagerly and impatiently; "or how do you connect your sister's guilt, if guilt there be, which, I trust in God, may yet be disproved, with our engagement?--how can that affect you or me?" "How can you ask me that, Mr. Butler? Will this stain, d'ye think, ever be forgotten, as lang as our heads are abune the grund? Will it not stick to us, and to our bairns, and to their very bairns' bairns? To hae been the child of an honest man, might hae been saying something for me and mine; but to be the sister of a--O my God!"--With this exclamation her resolution failed, and she burst into a passionate fit of tears. The lover used every effort to induce her to compose herself, and at length succeeded; but she only resumed her composure to express herself with the same positiveness as before. "No, Reuben, I'll bring disgrace hame to nae man's hearth; my ain distresses I can bear, and I maun bear, but there is nae occasion for buckling them on other folk's shouthers. I will bear my load alone--the back is made for the burden." A lover is by charter wayward and suspicious; and Jeanie's readiness to renounce their engagement, under pretence of zeal for his peace of mind and respectability of character, seemed to poor Butler to form a portentous combination with the commission of the stranger he had met with that morning. His voice faltered as he asked, "whether nothing but a sense of her sister's present distress occasioned her to talk in that manner?" "And what else can do sae?" she replied with simplicity. "Is it not ten long years since we spoke together in this way?" "Ten years!" said Butler. "It's a long time--sufficient perhaps for a woman to weary" "To weary of her auld gown," said Jeanie, "and to wish for a new ane if she likes to be brave, but not long enough to weary of a friend--The eye may wish change, but the heart never." "Never!" said Reuben,--"that's a bold promise." "But not more bauld than true," said Jeanie, with the same quiet simplicity which attended her manner in joy and grief in ordinary affairs, and in those which most interested her feelings. Butler paused, and looking at her fixedly--"I am charged," he said, "with a message to you, Jeanie." "Indeed! From whom? Or what can ony ane have to say to me?" "It is from a stranger," said Butler, affecting to speak with an indifference which his voice belied--"A young man whom I met this morning in the Park." "Mercy!" said Jeanie, eagerly; "and what did he say?" "That he did not see you at the hour he expected, but required you should meet him alone at Muschat's Cairn this night, so soon as the moon rises." "Tell him," said Jeanie, hastily, "I shall certainly come." "May I ask," said Butler, his suspicions increasing at the ready alacrity of the answer, "who this man is to whom you are so willing to give the meeting at a place and hour so uncommon?" "Folk maun do muckle they have little will to do, in this world," replied Jeanie. "Granted," said her lover; "but what compels you to this?--who is this person? What I saw of him was not very favourable--who, or what is he?" "I do not know," replied Jeanie, composedly. "You do not know!" said Butler, stepping impatiently through the apartment--"You purpose to meet a young man whom you do not know, at such a time, and in a place so lonely--you say you are compelled to do this--and yet you say you do not know the person who exercises such an influence over you!--Jeanie, what am I to think of this?" "Think only, Reuben, that I speak truth, as if I were to answer at the last day.--I do not ken this man--I do not even ken that I ever saw him; and yet I must give him the meeting he asks--there's life and death upon it." "Will you not tell your father, or take him with you?" said Butler. "I cannot," said Jeanie; "I have no permission." "Will you let _me_ go with you? I will wait in the Park till nightfall, and join you when you set out." "It is impossible," said Jeanie; "there maunna be mortal creature within hearing of our conference." "Have you considered well the nature of what you are going to do?--the time--the place--an unknown and suspicious character?--Why, if he had asked to see you in this house, your father sitting in the next room, and within call, at such an hour, you should have refused to see him." "My weird maun be fulfilled, Mr. Butler; my life and my safety are in God's hands, but I'll not spare to risk either of them on the errand I am gaun to do." "Then, Jeanie," said Butler, much displeased, "we must indeed break short off, and bid farewell. When there can be no confidence betwixt a man and his plighted wife on such a momentous topic, it is a sign that she has no longer the regard for him that makes their engagement safe and suitable." Jeanie looked at him and sighed. "I thought," she said, "that I had brought myself to bear this parting--but--but--I did not ken that we were to part in unkindness. But I am a woman and you are a man--it may be different wi' you--if your mind is made easier by thinking sae hardly of me, I would not ask you to think otherwise." "You are," said Butler, "what you have always been--wiser, better, and less selfish in your native feelings, than I can be, with all the helps philosophy can give to a Christian--But why--why will you persevere in an undertaking so desperate? Why will you not let me be your assistant--your protector, or at least your adviser?" "Just because I cannot, and I dare not," answered Jeanie.--"But hark, what's that? Surely my father is no weel?" In fact, the voices in the next room became obstreperously loud of a sudden, the cause of which vociferation it is necessary to explain before we go farther. When Jeanie and Butler retired, Mr. Saddletree entered upon the business which chiefly interested the family. In the commencement of their conversation he found old Deans, who in his usual state of mind, was no granter of propositions, so much subdued by a deep sense of his daughter's danger and disgrace, that he heard without replying to, or perhaps without understanding, one or two learned disquisitions on the nature of the crime imputed to her charge, and on the steps which ought to be taken in consequence. His only answer at each pause was, "I am no misdoubting that you wuss us weel--your wife's our far-awa cousin." Encouraged by these symptoms of acquiescence, Saddletree, who, as an amateur of the law, had a supreme deference for all constituted authorities, again recurred to his other topic of interest, the murder, namely, of Porteous, and pronounced a severe censure on the parties concerned. "These are kittle times--kittle times, Mr. Deans, when the people take the power of life and death out of the hands of the rightful magistrate into their ain rough grip. I am of opinion, and so I believe will Mr. Crossmyloof and the Privy Council, that this rising in effeir of war, to take away the life of a reprieved man, will prove little better than perduellion." "If I hadna that on my mind whilk is ill to bear, Mr. Saddletree," said Deans, "I wad make bold to dispute that point wi' you." "How could you dispute what's plain law, man?" said Saddletree, somewhat contemptuously; "there's no a callant that e'er carried a pock wi' a process in't, but will tell you that perduellion is the warst and maist virulent kind of treason, being an open convocating of the king's lieges against his authority (mair especially in arms, and by touk of drum, to baith whilk accessories my een and lugs bore witness), and muckle worse than lese-majesty, or the concealment of a treasonable purpose--It winna bear a dispute, neighbour." "But it will, though," retorted Douce Davie Deans; "I tell ye it will bear a disputer never like your cauld, legal, formal doctrines, neighbour Saddletree. I haud unco little by the Parliament House, since the awfu' downfall of the hopes of honest folk that followed the Revolution." "But what wad ye hae had, Mr. Deans?" said Saddletree, impatiently; "didna ye get baith liberty and conscience made fast, and settled by tailzie on you and your heirs for ever?" "Mr. Saddletree," retorted Deans, "I ken ye are one of those that are wise after the manner of this world, and that ye hand your part, and cast in your portion, wi' the lang heads and lang gowns, and keep with the smart witty-pated lawyers of this our land--Weary on the dark and dolefu' cast that they hae gien this unhappy kingdom, when their black hands of defection were clasped in the red hands of our sworn murtherers: when those who had numbered the towers of our Zion, and marked the bulwarks of Reformation, saw their hope turn into a snare, and their rejoicing into weeping." "I canna understand this, neighbour," answered Saddletree. "I am an honest Presbyterian of the Kirk of Scotland, and stand by her and the General Assembly, and the due administration of justice by the fifteen Lords o' Session and the five Lords o' Justiciary." "Out upon ye, Mr. Saddletree!" exclaimed David, who, in an opportunity of giving his testimony on the offences and backslidings of the land, forgot for a moment his own domestic calamity--"out upon your General Assembly, and the back of my hand to your Court o' Session!--What is the tane but a waefu' bunch o' cauldrife professors and ministers, that sate bien and warm when the persecuted remnant were warstling wi' hunger, and cauld, and fear of death, and danger of fire and sword upon wet brae-sides, peat-haggs, and flow-mosses, and that now creep out of their holes, like bluebottle flees in a blink of sunshine, to take the pu'pits and places of better folk--of them that witnessed, and testified, and fought, and endured pit, prison-house, and transportation beyond seas?--A bonny bike there's o' them!--And for your Court o' Session" "Ye may say what ye will o' the General Assembly," said Saddletree, interrupting him, "and let them clear them that kens them; but as for the Lords o' Session, forby that they are my next-door neighbours, I would have ye ken, for your ain regulation, that to raise scandal anent them, whilk is termed to _murmur_ again them, is a crime _sui generis,_--_sui generis,_ Mr. Deans--ken ye what that amounts to?" "I ken little o' the language of Antichrist," said Deans; "and I care less than little what carnal courts may call the speeches of honest men. And as to murmur again them, it's what a' the folk that loses their pleas, and nine-tenths o' them that win them, will be gey sure to be guilty in. Sae I wad hae ye ken that I hand a' your gleg-tongued advocates, that sell their knowledge for pieces of silver--and your worldly-wise judges, that will gie three days of hearing in presence to a debate about the peeling of an ingan, and no ae half-hour to the gospel testimony--as legalists and formalists, countenancing by sentences, and quirks, and cunning terms of law, the late begun courses of national defections--union, toleration, patronages, and Yerastian prelatic oaths. As for the soul and body-killing Court o' Justiciary" The habit of considering his life as dedicated to bear testimony in behalf of what he deemed the suffering and deserted cause of true religion, had swept honest David along with it thus far; but with the mention of the criminal court, the recollection of the disastrous condition of his daughter rushed at once on his mind; he stopped short in the midst of his triumphant declamation, pressed his hands against his forehead, and remained silent. Saddletree was somewhat moved, but apparently not so much so as to induce him to relinquish the privilege of prosing in his turn afforded him by David's sudden silence. "Nae doubt, neighbour," he said, "it's a sair thing to hae to do wi' courts of law, unless it be to improve ane's knowledge and practique, by waiting on as a hearer; and touching this unhappy affair of Effie--ye'll hae seen the dittay, doubtless?" He dragged out of his pocket a bundle of papers, and began to turn them over. "This is no it--this is the information of Mungo Marsport, of that ilk, against Captain Lackland, for coming on his lands of Marsport with hawks, hounds, lying-dogs, nets, guns, cross-bows, hagbuts of found, or other engines more or less for destruction of game, sic as red-deer, fallow-deer, cappercailzies, grey-fowl, moor-fowl, paitricks, herons, and sic like; he, the said defender not being ane qualified person, in terms of the statute sixteen hundred and twenty-ane; that is, not having ane plough-gate of land. Now, the defences proponed say, that _non constat_ at this present what is a plough-gate of land, whilk uncertainty is sufficient to elide the conclusions of the libel. But then the answers to the defences (they are signed by Mr. Crossmyloof, but Mr. Younglad drew them), they propone, that it signifies naething, _in hoc statu,_ what or how muckle a plough-gate of land may be, in respect the defender has nae lands whatsoever, less or mair. 'Sae grant a plough-gate'" (here Saddletree read from the paper in his hand) "'to be less than the nineteenth part of a guse's grass'--(I trow Mr. Crossmyloof put in that--I ken his style),--'of a guse's grass, what the better will the defender be, seeing he hasna a divot-cast of land in Scotland?--_Advocatus_ for Lackland duplies, that _nihil interest de possessione,_ the pursuer must put his case under the statute'--(now, this is worth your notice, neighbour),--'and must show, _formaliter et specialiter,_ as well as _generaliter,_ what is the qualification that defender Lackland does _not_ possess--let him tell me what a plough-gate of land is, and I'll tell him if I have one or no. Surely the pursuer is bound to understand his own libel, and his own statute that he founds upon. _Titius_ pursues _Maevius_ for recovery of ane _black_ horse lent to Maevius--surely he shall have judgment; but if Titius pursue Maevius for ane _scarlet_ or _crimson_ horse, doubtless he shall be bound to show that there is sic ane animal _in rerum natura._ No man can be bound to plead to nonsense--that is to say, to a charge which cannot be explained or understood'--(he's wrang there--the better the pleadings the fewer understand them),--'and so the reference unto this undefined and unintelligible measure of land is, as if a penalty was inflicted by statute for any man who suld hunt or hawk, or use lying-dogs, and wearing a sky-blue pair of breeches, without having--'But I am wearying you, Mr. Deans,--we'll pass to your ain business,--though this cue of Marsport against Lackland has made an unco din in the Outer House. Weel, here's the dittay against puir Effie: 'Whereas it is humbly meant and shown to us,' etc. (they are words of mere style), 'that whereas, by the laws of this and every other well-regulated realm, the murder of any one, more especially of an infant child, is a crime of ane high nature, and severely punishable: And whereas, without prejudice to the foresaid generality, it was, by ane act made in the second session of the First Parliament of our most High and Dread Sovereigns William and Mary, especially enacted, that ane woman who shall have concealed her condition, and shall not be able to show that she hath called for help at the birth in case that the child shall be found dead or amissing, shall be deemed and held guilty of the murder thereof; and the said facts of concealment and pregnancy being found proven or confessed, shall sustain the pains of law accordingly; yet, nevertheless, you, Effie, or Euphemia Deans'" "Read no farther!" said Deans, raising his head up; "I would rather ye thrust a sword into my heart than read a word farther!" "Weel, neighbour," said Saddletree, "I thought it wad hae comforted ye to ken the best and the warst o't. But the question is, what's to be dune?" "Nothing," answered Deans firmly, "but to abide the dispensation that the Lord sees meet to send us. Oh, if it had been His will to take the grey head to rest before this awful visitation on my house and name! But His will be done. I can say that yet, though I can say little mair." "But, neighbour," said Saddletree, "ye'll retain advocates for the puir lassie? it's a thing maun needs be thought of." "If there was ae man of them," answered Deans, "that held fast his integrity--but I ken them weel, they are a' carnal, crafty, and warld-hunting self-seekers, Yerastians, and Arminians, every ane o' them." "Hout tout, neighbour, ye mauna take the warld at its word," said Saddletree; "the very deil is no sae ill as he's ca'd; and I ken mair than ae advocate that may be said to hae some integrity as weel as their neighbours; that is, after a sort o' fashion' o' their ain." "It is indeed but a fashion of integrity that ye will find amang them," replied David Deans, "and a fashion of wisdom, and fashion of carnal learning--gazing, glancing-glasses they are, fit only to fling the glaiks in folk's een, wi' their pawky policy, and earthly ingine, their flights and refinements, and periods of eloquence, frae heathen emperors and popish canons. They canna, in that daft trash ye were reading to me, sae muckle as ca' men that are sae ill-starred as to be amang their hands, by ony name o' the dispensation o' grace, but maun new baptize them by the names of the accursed Titus, wha was made the instrument of burning the holy Temple, and other sic like heathens!" "It's Tishius," interrupted Saddletree, "and no Titus. Mr. Crossmyloof cares as little about Titus or the Latin as ye do.--But it's a case of necessity--she maun hae counsel. Now, I could speak to Mr. Crossmyloof--he's weel ken'd for a round-spun Presbyterian, and a ruling elder to boot." "He's a rank Yerastian," replied Deans; "one of the public and polititious warldly-wise men that stude up to prevent ane general owning of the cause in the day of power!" "What say ye to the auld Laird of Cuffabout?" said Saddletree; "he whiles thumps the dust out of a case gey and well." "He? the fause loon!" answered Deans--"he was in his bandaliers to hae joined the ungracious Highlanders in 1715, an they had ever had the luck to cross the Firth." "Weel, Arniston? there's a clever chield for ye!" said Bartoline, triumphantly. "Ay, to bring popish medals in till their very library from that schismatic woman in the north, the Duchess of Gordon."* * [James Dundas younger of Arniston was tried in the year 1711 upon charge of leasing-making, in having presented, from the Duchess of Gordon, medal of the Pretender, for the purpose, it was said, of affronting Queen Anne.] "Weel, weel, but somebody ye maun hae--What think ye o' Kittlepunt?" "He's an Arminian." "Woodsetter?" "He's, I doubt, a Cocceian." "Auld Whilliewhaw?" "He's ony thing ye like." "Young Naemmo?" "He's naething at a'." "Ye're ill to please, neighbour," said Saddletree: "I hae run ower the pick o' them for you, ye maun e'en choose for yoursell; but bethink ye that in the multitude of counsellors there's safety--What say ye to try young Mackenyie? he has a' his uncle's Practiques at the tongue's end." "What, sir, wad ye speak to me," exclaimed the sturdy Presbyterian in excessive wrath, "about a man that has the blood of the saints at his fingers' ends? Did na his eme [Uncle] die and gang to his place wi' the name of the Bluidy Mackenyie? and winna he be kend by that name sae lang as there's a Scots tongue to speak the word? If the life of the dear bairn that's under a suffering dispensation, and Jeanie's, and my ain, and a' mankind's, depended on my asking sic a slave o' Satan to speak a word for me or them, they should a' gae doun the water thegither for Davie Deans!" It was the exalted tone in which he spoke this last sentence that broke up the conversation between Butler and Jeanie, and brought them both "ben the house," to use the language of the country. Here they found the poor old man half frantic between grief and zealous ire against Saddletree's proposed measures, his cheek inflamed, his hand clenched, and his voice raised, while the tear in his eye, and the occasional quiver of his accents, showed that his utmost efforts were inadequate to shaking off the consciousness of his misery. Butler, apprehensive of the consequences of his agitation to an aged and feeble frame, ventured to utter to him a recommendation to patience. "I _am_ patient," returned the old man sternly,--"more patient than any one who is alive to the woeful backslidings of a miserable time can be patient; and in so much, that I need neither sectarians, nor sons nor grandsons of sectarians, to instruct my grey hairs how to bear my cross." "But, sir," continued Butler, taking no offence at the slur cast on his grandfather's faith, "we must use human means. When you call in a physician, you would not, I suppose, question him on the nature of his religious principles!" "Wad I _no?_" answered David--"but I wad, though; and if he didna satisfy me that he had a right sense of the right hand and left hand defections of the day, not a goutte of his physic should gang through my father's son." It is a dangerous thing to trust to an illustration. Butler had done so and miscarried; but, like a gallant soldier when his musket misses fire, he stood his ground, and charged with the bayonet.--"This is too rigid an interpretation of your duty, sir. The sun shines, and the rain descends, on the just and unjust, and they are placed together in life in circumstances which frequently render intercourse between them indispensable, perhaps that the evil may have an opportunity of being converted by the good, and perhaps, also, that the righteous might, among other trials, be subjected to that of occasional converse with the profane." "Ye're a silly callant, Reuben," answered Deans, "with your bits of argument. Can a man touch pitch and not be defiled? Or what think ye of the brave and worthy champions of the Covenant, that wadna sae muckle as hear a minister speak, be his gifts and graces as they would, that hadna witnessed against the enormities of the day? Nae lawyer shall ever speak for me and mine that hasna concurred in the testimony of the scattered, yet lovely remnant, which abode in the clifts of the rocks." So saying, and as if fatigued, both with the arguments and presence of his guests, the old man arose, and seeming to bid them adieu with a motion of his head and hand, went to shut himself up in his sleeping apartment. "It's thrawing his daughter's life awa," said Saddletree to Butler, "to hear him speak in that daft gate. Where will he ever get a Cameronian advocate? Or wha ever heard of a lawyer's suffering either for ae religion or another? The lassie's life is clean flung awa." During the latter part of this debate, Dumbiedikes had arrived at the door, dismounted, hung the pony's bridle on the usual hook, and sunk down on his ordinary settle. His eyes, with more than their usual animation, followed first one speaker then another, till he caught the melancholy sense of the whole from Saddletree's last words. He rose from his seat, stumped slowly across the room, and, coming close up to Saddletree's ear, said in a tremulous anxious voice, "Will--will siller do naething for them, Mr. Saddletree?" "Umph!" said Saddletree, looking grave,--"siller will certainly do it in the Parliament House, if ony thing _can_ do it; but where's the siller to come frae? Mr. Deans, ye see, will do naething; and though Mrs. Saddletree's their far-awa friend, and right good weel-wisher, and is weel disposed to assist, yet she wadna like to stand to be bound _singuli in solidum_ to such an expensive wark. An ilka friend wad bear a share o' the burden, something might be dune--ilka ane to be liable for their ain input--I wadna like to see the case fa' through without being pled--it wadna be creditable, for a' that daft whig body says." "I'll--I will--yes" (assuming fortitude), "I will be answerable," said Dumbiedikes, "for a score of punds sterling."--And he was silent, staring in astonishment at finding himself capable of such unwonted resolution and excessive generosity. "God Almighty bless ye, Laird!" said Jeanie, in a transport of gratitude. "Ye may ca' the twenty punds thretty," said Dumbiedikes, looking bashfully away from her, and towards Saddletree. "That will do bravely," said Saddletree, rubbing his hands; and ye sall hae a' my skill and knowledge to gar the siller gang far--I'll tape it out weel--I ken how to gar the birkies tak short fees, and be glad o' them too--it's only garring them trow ye hae twa or three cases of importance coming on, and they'll work cheap to get custom. Let me alane for whilly-whaing an advocate:--it's nae sin to get as muckle flue them for our siller as we can--after a', it's but the wind o' their mouth--it costs them naething; whereas, in my wretched occupation of a saddler, horse milliner, and harness maker, we are out unconscionable sums just for barkened hides and leather." "Can I be of no use?" said Butler. "My means, alas! are only worth the black coat I wear; but I am young--I owe much to the family--Can I do nothing?" "Ye can help to collect evidence, sir," said Saddletree; "if we could but find ony ane to say she had gien the least hint o' her condition, she wad be brought aft wi' a wat finger--Mr. Crossmyloof tell'd me sae. The crown, says he, canna be craved to prove a positive--was't a positive or a negative they couldna be ca'd to prove?--it was the tane or the tither o' them, I am sure, and it maksna muckle matter whilk. Wherefore, says he, the libel maun be redargued by the panel proving her defences. And it canna be done otherwise." "But the fact, sir," argued Butler, "the fact that this poor girl has borne a child; surely the crown lawyers must prove that?" said Butler. Saddletree paused a moment, while the visage of Dumbiedikes, which traversed, as if it had been placed on a pivot, from the one spokesman to the other, assumed a more blithe expression. "Ye--ye--ye--es," said Saddletree, after some grave hesitation; "unquestionably that is a thing to be proved, as the court will more fully declare by an interlocutor of relevancy in common form; but I fancy that job's done already, for she has confessed her guilt." "Confessed the murder?" exclaimed Jeanie, with a scream that made them all start. "No, I didna say that," replied Bartoline. "But she confessed bearing the babe." "And what became of it, then?" said Jeanie, "for not a word could I get from her but bitter sighs and tears." "She says it was taken away from her by the woman in whose house it was born, and who assisted her at the time." "And who was that woman?" said Butler. "Surely by her means the truth might be discovered.--Who was she? I will fly to her directly." "I wish," said Dumbiedikes, "I were as young and as supple as you, and had the gift of the gab as weel." "Who is she?" again reiterated Butler impatiently.--"Who could that woman be?" "Ay, wha kens that but herself?" said Saddletree; "she deponed farther, and declined to answer that interrogatory." "Then to herself will I instantly go," said Butler; "farewell, Jeanie;" then coming close up to her--"Take no _rash steps_ till you hear from me. Farewell!" and he immediately left the cottage. "I wad gang too," said the landed proprietor, in an anxious, jealous, and repining tone, "but my powny winna for the life o' me gang ony other road than just frae Dumbiedikes to this house-end, and sae straight back again." "Yell do better for them," said Saddletree, as they left the house together, "by sending me the thretty punds." "Thretty punds!" hesitated Dumbiedikes, who was now out of the reach of those eyes which had inflamed his generosity; "I only said _twenty_ punds." "Ay; but," said Saddletree, "that was under protestation to add and eik; and so ye craved leave to amend your libel, and made it thretty." "Did I? I dinna mind that I did," answered Dumbiedikes. "But whatever I said I'll stand to." Then bestriding his steed with some difficulty, he added, "Dinna ye think poor Jeanie's een wi' the tears in them glanced like lamour beads, Mr. Saddletree?" "I kenna muckle about women's een, Laird," replied the insensible Bartoline; "and I care just as little. I wuss I were as weel free o' their tongues; though few wives," he added, recollecting the necessity of keeping up his character for domestic rule, "are under better command than mine, Laird. I allow neither perduellion nor lese-majesty against my sovereign authority." The Laird saw nothing so important in this observation as to call for a rejoinder, and when they had exchanged a mute salutation, they parted in peace upon their different errands. CHAPTER TWELFTH. I'll warrant that fellow from drowning, were the ship no stronger than a nut-shell. The Tempest. Butler felt neither fatigue nor want of refreshment, although, from the mode in which he had spent the night, he might well have been overcome with either. But in the earnestness with which he hastened to the assistance of the sister of Jeanie Deans, he forgot both. In his first progress he walked with so rapid a pace as almost approached to running, when he was surprised to hear behind him a call upon his name, contending with an asthmatic cough, and half-drowned amid the resounding trot of a Highland pony. He looked behind, and saw the Laird of Dumbiedikes making after him with what speed he might, for it happened, fortunately for the Laird's purpose of conversing with Butler, that his own road homeward was for about two hundred yards the same with that which led by the nearest way to the city. Butler stopped when he heard himself thus summoned, internally wishing no good to the panting equestrian who thus retarded his journey. "Uh! uh! uh!" ejaculated Dumbiedikes, as he checked the hobbling pace of the pony by our friend Butler. "Uh! uh! it's a hard-set willyard beast this o' mine." He had in fact just overtaken the object of his chase at the very point beyond which it would have been absolutely impossible for him to have continued the pursuit, since there Butler's road parted from that leading to Dumbiedikes, and no means of influence or compulsion which the rider could possibly have used towards his Bucephalus could have induced the Celtic obstinacy of Rory Bean (such was the pony's name) to have diverged a yard from the path that conducted him to his own paddock. Even when he had recovered from the shortness of breath occasioned by a trot much more rapid than Rory or he were accustomed to, the high purpose of Dumbiedikes seemed to stick as it were in his throat, and impede his utterance, so that Butler stood for nearly three minutes ere he could utter a syllable; and when he did find voice, it was only to say, after one or two efforts, "Uh! uh! uhm! I say, Mr.--Mr. Butler, it's a braw day for the har'st." "Fine day, indeed," said Butler. "I wish you good morning, sir." "Stay--stay a bit," rejoined Dumbiedikes; "that was no what I had gotten to say." "Then, pray be quick, and let me have your commands," rejoined Butler; "I crave your pardon, but I am in haste, and _Tempus nemini_--you know the proverb." Dumbiedikes did not know the proverb, nor did he even take the trouble to endeavour to look as if he did, as others in his place might have done. He was concentrating all his intellects for one grand proposition, and could not afford any detachment to defend outposts. "I say, Mr. Butler," said he, "ken ye if Mr. Saddletree's a great lawyer?" "I have no person's word for it but his own," answered Butler, drily; "but undoubtedly he best understands his own qualities." "Umph!" replied the taciturn Dumbiedikes, in a tone which seemed to say, "Mr. Butler, I take your meaning." "In that case," he pursued, "I'll employ my ain man o' business, Nichil Novit (auld Nichil's son, and amaist as gleg as his father), to agent Effie's plea." And having thus displayed more sagacity than Butler expected from him, he courteously touched his gold-laced cocked hat, and by a punch on the ribs, conveyed to Rory Bean, it was his rider's pleasure that he should forthwith proceed homewards; a hint which the quadruped obeyed with that degree of alacrity with which men and animals interpret and obey suggestions that entirely correspond with their own inclinations. Butler resumed his pace, not without a momentary revival of that jealousy which the honest Laird's attention to the family of Deans had at different times excited in his bosom. But he was too generous long to nurse any feeling which was allied to selfishness. "He is," said Butler to himself, "rich in what I want; why should I feel vexed that he has the heart to dedicate some of his pelf to render them services, which I can only form the empty wish of executing? In God's name, let us each do what we can. May she be but happy!--saved from the misery and disgrace that seems impending--Let me but find the means of preventing the fearful experiment of this evening, and farewell to other thoughts, though my heart-strings break in parting with them!" He redoubled his pace, and soon stood before the door of the Tolbooth, or rather before the entrance where the door had formerly been placed. His interview with the mysterious stranger, the message to Jeanie, his agitating conversation with her on the subject of breaking off their mutual engagements, and the interesting scene with old Deans, had so entirely occupied his mind as to drown even recollection of the tragical event which he had witnessed the preceding evening. His attention was not recalled to it by the groups who stood scattered on the street in conversation, which they hushed when strangers approached, or by the bustling search of the agents of the city police, supported by small parties of the military, or by the appearance of the Guard-House, before which were treble sentinels, or, finally, by the subdued and intimidated looks of the lower orders of society, who, conscious that they were liable to suspicion, if they were not guilty of accession to a riot likely to be strictly inquired into, glided about with an humble and dismayed aspect, like men whose spirits being exhausted in the revel and the dangers of a desperate debauch over-night, are nerve-shaken, timorous, and unenterprising on the succeeding day. None of these symptoms of alarm and trepidation struck Butler, whose mind was occupied with a different, and to him still more interesting subject, until he stood before the entrance to the prison, and saw it defended by a double file of grenadiers, instead of bolts and bars. Their "Stand, stand!" the blackened appearance of the doorless gateway, and the winding staircase and apartments of the Tolbooth, now open to the public eye, recalled the whole proceedings of the eventful night. Upon his requesting to speak with Effie Deans, the same tall, thin, silver-haired turnkey, whom he had seen on the preceding evening, made his appearance, "I think," he replied to Butler's request of admission, with true Scottish indirectness, "ye will be the same lad that was for in to see her yestreen?" Butler admitted he was the same person. "And I am thinking," pursued the turnkey, "that ye speered at me when we locked up, and if we locked up earlier on account of Porteous?" "Very likely I might make some such observation," said Butler; "but the question now is, can I see Effie Deans?" "I dinna ken--gang in by, and up the turnpike stair, and turn till the ward on the left hand." The old man followed close behind him, with his keys in his hand, not forgetting even that huge one which had once opened and shut the outward gate of his dominions, though at present it was but an idle and useless burden. No sooner had Butler entered the room to which he was directed, than the experienced hand of the warder selected the proper key, and locked it on the outside. At first Butler conceived this manoeuvre was only an effect of the man's habitual and official caution and jealousy. But when he heard the hoarse command, "Turn out the guard!" and immediately afterwards heard the clash of a sentinel's arms, as he was posted at the door of his apartment, he again called out to the turnkey, "My good friend, I have business of some consequence with Effie Deans, and I beg to see her as soon as possible." No answer was returned. "If it be against your rules to admit me," repeated Butler, in a still louder tone, "to see the prisoner, I beg you will tell me so, and let me go about my business.--_Fugit irrevocabile tempus!_" muttered he to himself. "If ye had business to do, ye suld hae dune it before ye cam here," replied the man of keys from the outside; "yell find it's easier wunnin in than wunnin out here--there's sma' likelihood o' another Porteous mob coming to rabble us again--the law will haud her ain now, neighbour, and that yell find to your cost." "What do you mean by that, sir?" retorted Butler. "You must mistake me for some other person. My name is Reuben Butler, preacher of the gospel." "I ken that weel eneugh," said the turnkey. "Well, then, if you know me, I have a right to know from you in return, what warrant you have for detaining me; that, I know, is the right of every British subject." "Warrant!" said the jailor,--"the warrant's awa to Libberton wi' twa sheriff officers seeking ye. If ye had staid at hame, as honest men should do, ye wad hae seen the warrant; but if ye come to be incarcerated of your ain accord, wha can help it, my jo?" "'So I cannot see Effie Deans, then," said Butler; "and you are determined not to let me out?" "Troth will I no, neighbour," answered the old man, doggedly; "as for Effie Deans, ye'll hae eneuch ado to mind your ain business, and let her mind hers; and for letting you out, that maun be as the magistrate will determine. And fare ye weel for a bit, for I maun see Deacon Sawyers put on ane or twa o' the doors that your quiet folk broke down yesternight, Mr. Butler." There was something in this exquisitely provoking, but there was also something darkly alarming. To be imprisoned, even on a false accusation, has something in it disagreeable and menacing even to men of more constitutional courage than Butler had to boast; for although he had much of that resolution which arises from a sense of duty and an honourable desire to discharge it, yet, as his imagination was lively, and his frame of body delicate, he was far from possessing that cool insensibility to danger which is the happy portion of men of stronger health, more firm nerves, and less acute sensibility. An indistinct idea of peril, which he could neither understand nor ward off, seemed to float before his eyes. He tried to think over the events of the preceding night, in hopes of discovering some means of explaining or vindicating his conduct for appearing among the mob, since it immediately occurred to him that his detention must be founded on that circumstance. And it was with anxiety that he found he could not recollect to have been under the observation of any disinterested witness in the attempts that he made from time to time to expostulate with the rioters, and to prevail on them to release him. The distress of Deans's family, the dangerous rendezvous which Jeanie had formed, and which he could not now hope to interrupt, had also their share in his unpleasant reflections. Yet, impatient as he was to receive an _e'claircissement_ upon the cause of his confinement, and if possible to obtain his liberty, he was affected with a trepidation which seemed no good omen; when, after remaining an hour in this solitary apartment, he received a summons to attend the sitting magistrate. He was conducted from prison strongly guarded by a party of soldiers, with a parade of precaution, that, however ill-timed and unnecessary, is generally displayed _after_ an event, which such precaution, if used in time, might have prevented. He was introduced into the Council Chamber, as the place is called where the magistrates hold their sittings, and which was then at a little distance from the prison. One or two of the senators of the city were present, and seemed about to engage in the examination of an individual who was brought forward to the foot of the long green-covered table round which the council usually assembled. "Is that the preacher?" said one of the magistrates, as the city officer in attendance introduced Butler. The man answered in the affirmative. "Let him sit down there for an instant; we will finish this man's business very briefly." "Shall we remove Mr. Butler?" queried the assistant. "It is not necessary--Let him remain where he is." Butler accordingly sate down on a bench at the bottom of the apartment, attended by one of his keepers. It was a large room, partially and imperfectly lighted; but by chance, or the skill of the architect, who might happen to remember the advantage which might occasionally be derived from such an arrangement, one window was so placed as to throw a strong light at the foot of the table at which prisoners were usually posted for examination, while the upper end, where the examinants sate, was thrown into shadow. Butler's eyes were instantly fixed on the person whose examination was at present proceeding, in the idea that he might recognise some one of the conspirators of the former night. But though the features of this man were sufficiently marked and striking, he could not recollect that he had ever seen them before. The complexion of this person was dark, and his age somewhat advanced. He wore his own hair, combed smooth down, and cut very short. It was jet black, slightly curled by nature, and already mottled with grey. The man's face expressed rather knavery than vice, and a disposition to sharpness, cunning, and roguery, more than the traces of stormy and indulged passions. His sharp quick black eyes, acute features, ready sardonic smile, promptitude and effrontery, gave him altogether what is called among the vulgar a _knowing_ look, which generally implies a tendency to knavery. At a fair or market, you could not for a moment have doubted that he was a horse-jockey, intimate with all the tricks of his trade; yet, had you met him on a moor, you would not have apprehended any violence from him. His dress was also that of a horse-dealer--a close-buttoned jockey-coat, or wrap-rascal, as it was then termed, with huge metal buttons, coarse blue upper stockings, called boot-hose because supplying the place of boots, and a slouched hat. He only wanted a loaded whip under his arm and a spur upon one heel, to complete the dress of the character he seemed to represent. "Your name is James Ratcliffe?" said the magistrate. "Ay--always wi' your honour's leave." "That is to say, you could find me another name if I did not like that one?" "Twenty to pick and choose upon, always with your honour's leave," resumed the respondent. "But James Ratcliffe is your present name?--what is your trade?" "I canna just say, distinctly, that I have what ye wad ca' preceesely a trade." "But," repeated the magistrate, "what are your means of living--your occupation?" "Hout tout--your honour, wi' your leave, kens that as weel as I do," replied the examined. "No matter, I want to hear you describe it," said the examinant. "Me describe!--and to your honour!--far be it from Jemmie Ratcliffe," responded the prisoner. "Come, sir, no trifling--I insist on an answer." "Weel, sir," replied the declarant, "I maun make a clean breast, for ye see, wi' your leave, I am looking for favour--Describe my occupation, quo' ye?--troth it will be ill to do that, in a feasible way, in a place like this--but what is't again that the aught command says?" "Thou shalt not steal," answered the magistrate. "Are you sure o' that?" replied the accused.--"Troth, then, my occupation, and that command, are sair at odds, for I read it, thou _shalt_ steal; and that makes an unco difference, though there's but a wee bit word left out." "To cut the matter short, Ratcliffe, you have been a most notorious thief," said the examinant. "I believe Highlands and Lowlands ken that, sir, forby England and Holland," replied Ratcliffe, with the greatest composure and effrontery. "And what d'ye think the end of your calling will be?" said the magistrate. "I could have gien a braw guess yesterday--but I dinna ken sae weel the day," answered the prisoner. "And what would you have said would have been your end, had you been asked the question yesterday?" "Just the gallows," replied Ratcliffe, with the same composure. "You are a daring rascal, sir," said the magistrate; "and how dare you hope times are mended with you to-day?" "Dear, your honour," answered Ratcliffe, "there's muckle difference between lying in prison under sentence of death, and staying there of ane's ain proper accord, when it would have cost a man naething to get up and rin awa--what was to hinder me from stepping out quietly, when the rabble walked awa wi' Jock Porteous yestreen?--and does your honour really think I staid on purpose to be hanged?" "I do not know what you may have proposed to yourself; but I know," said the magistrate, "what the law proposes for you, and that is, to hang you next Wednesday eight days." "Na, na, your honour," said Ratcliffe firmly, "craving your honour's pardon, I'll ne'er believe that till I see it. I have kend the law this mony a year, and mony a thrawart job I hae had wi' her first and last; but the auld jaud is no sae ill as that comes to--I aye fand her bark waur than her bite." "And if you do not expect the gallows, to which you are condemned (for the fourth time to my knowledge), may I beg the favour to know," said the magistrate, "what it is you _do_ expect, in consideration of your not having taken your flight with the rest of the jail-birds, which I will admit was a line of conduct little to have been expected?" "I would never have thought for a moment of staying in that auld gousty toom house," answered Ratcliffe, "but that use and wont had just gien me a fancy to the place, and I'm just expecting a bit post in't." "A post!" exclaimed the magistrate; "a whipping-post, I suppose, you mean?" "Na, na, sir, I had nae thoughts o' a whuppin-post. After having been four times doomed to hang by the neck till I was dead, I think I am far beyond being whuppit." "Then, in Heaven's name, what _did_ you expect?" "Just the post of under-turnkey, for I understand there's a vacancy," said the prisoner; "I wadna think of asking the lockman's* place ower his head; it wadna suit me sae weel as ither folk, for I never could put a beast out o' the way, much less deal wi' a man." * Note H. Hangman, or Lockman. "That's something in your favour," said the magistrate, making exactly the inference to which Ratcliffe was desirous to lead him, though he mantled his art with an affectation of oddity. "But," continued the magistrate, "how do you think you can be trusted with a charge in the prison, when you have broken at your own hand half the jails in Scotland?" "Wi' your honour's leave," said Ratcliffe, "if I kend sae weel how to wun out mysell, it's like I wad be a' the better a hand to keep other folk in. I think they wad ken their business weel that held me in when I wanted to be out, or wan out when I wanted to hand them in." The remark seemed to strike the magistrate, but he made no further immediate observation, only desired Ratcliffe to be removed. When this daring and yet sly freebooter was out of hearing, the magistrate asked the city clerk, "what he thought of the fellow's assurance?" "It's no for me to say, sir," replied the clerk; "but if James Ratcliffe be inclined to turn to good, there is not a man e'er came within the ports of the burgh could be of sae muckle use to the Good Town in the thief and lock-up line of business. I'll speak to Mr. Sharpitlaw about him." Upon Ratcliffe's retreat, Butler was placed at the table for examination. The magistrate conducted his inquiry civilly, but yet in a manner which gave him to understand that he laboured under strong suspicion. With a frankness which at once became his calling and character, Butler avowed his involuntary presence at the murder of Porteous, and, at the request of the magistrate, entered into a minute detail of the circumstances which attended that unhappy affair. All the particulars, such as we have narrated, were taken minutely down by the clerk from Butler's dictation. When the narrative was concluded, the cross-examination commenced, which it is a painful task even for the most candid witness to undergo, since a story, especially if connected with agitating and alarming incidents, can scarce be so clearly and distinctly told, but that some ambiguity and doubt may be thrown upon it by a string of successive and minute interrogatories. The magistrate commenced by observing, that Butler had said his object was to return to the village of Libberton, but that he was interrupted by the mob at the West Port. "Is the West Port your usual way of leaving town when you go to Libberton?" said the magistrate, with a sneer. "No, certainly," answered Butler, with the haste of a man anxious to vindicate the accuracy of his evidence; "but I chanced to be nearer that port than any other, and the hour of shutting the gates was on the point of striking." "That was unlucky," said the magistrate, drily. "Pray, being, as you say, under coercion and fear of the lawless multitude, and compelled to accompany them through scenes disagreeable to all men of humanity, and more especially irreconcilable to the profession of a minister, did you not attempt to struggle, resist, or escape from their violence?" Butler replied, "that their numbers prevented him from attempting resistance, and their vigilance from effecting his escape." "That was unlucky," again repeated the magistrate, in the same dry inacquiescent tone of voice and manner. He proceeded with decency and politeness, but with a stiffness which argued his continued suspicion, to ask many questions concerning the behaviour of the mob, the manners and dress of the ringleaders; and when he conceived that the caution of Butler, if he was deceiving him, must be lulled asleep, the magistrate suddenly and artfully returned to former parts of his declaration, and required a new recapitulation of the circumstances, to the minutest and most trivial point, which attended each part of the melancholy scene. No confusion or contradiction, however, occurred, that could countenance the suspicion which he seemed to have adopted against Butler. At length the train of his interrogatories reached Madge Wildfire, at whose name the magistrate and town-clerk exchanged significant glances. If the fate of the Good Town had depended on her careful magistrate's knowing the features and dress of this personage, his inquiries could not have been more particular. But Butler could say almost nothing of this person's features, which were disguised apparently with red paint and soot, like an Indian going to battle, besides the projecting shade of a curch, or coif, which muffled the hair of the supposed female. He declared that he thought he could not know this Madge Wildfire, if placed before him in a different dress, but that he believed he might recognise her voice. The magistrate requested him again to state by what gate he left the city. "By the Cowgate Port," replied Butler. "Was that the nearest road to Libberton?" "No," answered Butler, with embarrassment; "but it was the nearest way to extricate myself from the mob." The clerk and magistrate again exchanged glances. "Is the Cowgate Port a nearer way to Libberton from the Grassmarket than Bristo Port?" "No," replied Butler; "but I had to visit a friend." "Indeed!" said the interrogator--"You were in a hurry to tell the sight you had witnessed, I suppose?" "Indeed I was not," replied Butler; "nor did I speak on the subject the whole time I was at St. Leonard's Crags." "Which road did you take to St. Leonard's Crags?" "By the foot of Salisbury Crags," was the reply. "Indeed? you seem partial to circuitous routes," again said the magistrate. "Whom did you see after you left the city?" One by one he obtained a description of every one of the groups who had passed Butler, as already noticed, their number, demeanour, and appearance; and, at length, came to the circumstance of the mysterious stranger in the King's Park. On this subject Butler would fain have remained silent, But the magistrate had no sooner got a slight hint concerning the incident, than he seemed bent to possess himself of the most minute particulars. "Look ye, Mr. Butler," said he, "you are a young man, and bear an excellent character; so much I will myself testify in your favour. But we are aware there has been, at times, a sort of bastard and fiery zeal in some of your order, and those, men irreproachable in other points, which has led them into doing and countenancing great irregularities, by which the peace of the country is liable to be shaken.--I will deal plainly with you. I am not at all satisfied with this story, of your setting out again and again to seek your dwelling by two several roads, which were both circuitous. And, to be frank, no one whom we have examined on this unhappy affair could trace in your appearance any thing like your acting under compulsion. Moreover, the waiters at the Cowgate Port observed something like the trepidation of guilt in your conduct, and declare that you were the first to command them to open the gate, in a tone of authority, as if still presiding over the guards and out-posts of the rabble, who had besieged them the whole night." "God forgive them!" said Butler; "I only asked free passage for myself; they must have much misunderstood, if they did not wilfully misrepresent me." "Well, Mr. Butler," resumed the magistrate, "I am inclined to judge the best and hope the best, as I am sure I wish the best; but you must be frank with me, if you wish to secure my good opinion, and lessen the risk of inconvenience to yourself. You have allowed you saw another individual in your passage through the King's Park to Saint Leonard's Crags--I must know every word which passed betwixt you." Thus closely pressed, Butler, who had no reason for concealing what passed at that meeting, unless because Jeanie Deans was concerned in it, thought it best to tell the whole truth from beginning to end. "Do you suppose," said the magistrate, pausing, "that the young woman will accept an invitation so mysterious?" "I fear she will," replied Butler. "Why do you use the word _fear_ it?" said the magistrate. "Because I am apprehensive for her safety, in meeting at such a time and place, one who had something of the manner of a desperado, and whose message was of a character so inexplicable." "Her safety shall be cared for," said the magistrate. "Mr. Butler, I am concerned I cannot immediately discharge you from confinement, but I hope you will not be long detained.--Remove Mr. Butler, and let him be provided with decent accommodation in all respects." He was conducted back to the prison accordingly; but, in the food offered to him, as well as in the apartment in which he was lodged, the recommendation of the magistrate was strictly attended to. CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. Dark and eerie was the night, And lonely was the way, As Janet, wi' her green mantell, To Miles' Cross she did gae. Old Ballad. Leaving Butler to all the uncomfortable thoughts attached to his new situation, among which the most predominant was his feeling that he was, by his confinement, deprived of all possibility of assisting the family at St. Leonard's in their greatest need, we return to Jeanie Deans, who had seen him depart, without an opportunity of farther explanation, in all that agony of mind with which the female heart bids adieu to the complicated sensations so well described by Coleridge,-- Hopes, and fears that kindle hope, An undistinguishable throng; And gentle wishes long subdued-- Subdued and cherished long. It is not the firmest heart (and Jeanie, under her russet rokelay, had one that would not have disgraced Cato's daughter) that can most easily bid adieu to these soft and mingled emotions. She wept for a few minutes bitterly, and without attempting to refrain from this indulgence of passion. But a moment's recollection induced her to check herself for a grief selfish and proper to her own affections, while her father and sister were plunged into such deep and irretrievable affliction. She drew from her pocket the letter which had been that morning flung into her apartment through an open window, and the contents of which were as singular as the expression was violent and energetic. "If she would save a human being from the most damning guilt, and all its desperate consequences,--if she desired the life an honour of her sister to be saved from the bloody fangs of an unjust law,--if she desired not to forfeit peace of mind here, and happiness hereafter," such was the frantic style of the conjuration, "she was entreated to give a sure, secret, and solitary meeting to the writer. She alone could rescue him," so ran the letter, "and he only could rescue her." He was in such circumstances, the billet farther informed her, that an attempt to bring any witness of their conference, or even to mention to her father, or any other person whatsoever, the letter which requested it, would inevitably prevent its taking place, and ensure the destruction of her sister. The letter concluded with incoherent but violent protestations, that in obeying this summons she had nothing to fear personally. The message delivered to her by Butler from the stranger in the Park tallied exactly with the contents of the letter, but assigned a later hour and a different place of meeting. Apparently the writer of the letter had been compelled to let Butler so far into his confidence, for the sake of announcing this change to Jeanie. She was more than once on the point of producing the billet, in vindication of herself from her lover's half-hinted suspicions. But there is something in stooping to justification which the pride of innocence does not at all times willingly submit to; besides that the threats contained in the letter, in case of her betraying the secret, hung heavy on her heart. It is probable, however, that had they remained longer together, she might have taken the resolution to submit the whole matter to Butler, and be guided by him as to the line of conduct which she should adopt. And when, by the sudden interruption of their conference, she lost the opportunity of doing so, she felt as if she had been unjust to a friend, whose advice might have been highly useful, and whose attachment deserved her full and unreserved confidence. To have recourse to her father upon this occasion, she considered as highly imprudent. There was no possibility of conjecturing in what light the matter might strike old David, whose manner of acting and thinking in extraordinary circumstances depended upon feelings and principles peculiar to himself, the operation of which could not be calculated upon even by those best acquainted with him. To have requested some female friend to have accompanied her to the place of rendezvous, would perhaps have been the most eligible expedient; but the threats of the writer, that betraying his secret would prevent their meeting (on which her sister's safety was said to depend) from taking place at all, would have deterred her from making such a confidence, even had she known a person in whom she thought it could with safety have been reposed. But she knew none such. Their acquaintance with the cottagers in the vicinity had been very slight, and limited to trifling acts of good neighbourhood. Jeanie knew little of them, and what she knew did not greatly incline her to trust any of them. They were of the order of loquacious good-humoured gossips usually found in their situation of life; and their conversation had at all times few charms for a young woman, to whom nature and the circumstance of a solitary life had given a depth of thought and force of character superior to the frivolous part of her sex, whether in high or low degree. Left alone and separated from all earthly counsel, she had recourse to a friend and adviser, whose ear is open to the cry of the poorest and most afflicted of his people. She knelt, and prayed with fervent sincerity, that God would please to direct her what course to follow in her arduous and distressing situation. It was the belief of the time and sect to which she belonged, that special answers to prayer, differing little in their character from divine inspiration, were, as they expressed it, "borne in upon their minds" in answer to their earnest petitions in a crisis of difficulty. Without entering into an abstruse point of divinity, one thing is plain;--namely, that the person who lays open his doubts and distresses in prayer, with feeling and sincerity, must necessarily, in the act of doing so, purify his mind from the dross of worldly passions and interests, and bring it into that state, when the resolutions adopted are likely to be selected rather from a sense of duty, than from any inferior motive. Jeanie arose from her devotions, with her heart fortified to endure affliction, and encouraged to face difficulties. "I will meet this unhappy man," she said to herself--"unhappy he must be, since I doubt he has been the cause of poor Effie's misfortune--but I will meet him, be it for good or ill. My mind shall never cast up to me, that, for fear of what might be said or done to myself, I left that undone that might even yet be the rescue of her." With a mind greatly composed since the adoption of this resolution, she went to attend her father. The old man, firm in the principles of his youth, did not, in outward appearance at least, permit a thought of hit family distress to interfere with the stoical reserve of his countenance and manners. He even chid his daughter for having neglected, in the distress of the morning, some trifling domestic duties which fell under her department. "Why, what meaneth this, Jeanie?" said the old man--"The brown four-year-auld's milk is not seiled yet, nor the bowies put up on the bink. If ye neglect your warldly duties in the day of affliction, what confidence have I that ye mind the greater matters that concern salvation? God knows, our bowies, and our pipkins, and our draps o' milk, and our bits o' bread, are nearer and dearer to us than the bread of life!" Jeanie, not unpleased to hear her father's thoughts thus expand themselves beyond the sphere of his immediate distress, obeyed him, and proceeded to put her household matters in order; while old David moved from place to place about his ordinary employments, scarce showing, unless by a nervous impatience at remaining long stationary, an occasional convulsive sigh, or twinkle of the eyelid, that he was labouring under the yoke of such bitter affliction. The hour of noon came on, and the father and child sat down to their homely repast. In his petition for a blessing on the meal, the poor old man added to his supplication, a prayer that the bread eaten in sadness of heart, and the bitter waters of Marah, might be made as nourishing as those which had been poured forth from a full cup and a plentiful basket and store; and having concluded his benediction, and resumed the bonnet which he had laid "reverently aside," he proceeded to exhort his daughter to eat, not by example indeed, but at least by precept. "The man after God's own heart," he said, "washed and anointed himself, and did eat bread, in order to express his submission under a dispensation of suffering, and it did not become a Christian man or woman so to cling to creature-comforts of wife or bairns"--(here the words became too great, as it were, for his utterance),--"as to forget the fist duty,--submission to the Divine will." To add force to his precept, he took a morsel on his plate, but nature proved too strong even for the powerful feelings with which he endeavoured to bridle it. Ashamed of his weakness, he started up, and ran out of the house, with haste very unlike the deliberation of his usual movements. In less than five minutes he returned, having successfully struggled to recover his ordinary composure of mind and countenance, and affected to colour over his late retreat, by muttering that he thought he heard the "young staig loose in the byre." He did not again trust himself with the subject of his former conversation, and his daughter was glad to see that he seemed to avoid farther discourse on that agitating topic. The hours glided on, as on they must and do pass, whether winged with joy or laden with affliction. The sun set beyond the dusky eminence of the Castle and the screen of western hills, and the close of evening summoned David Deans and his daughter to the family duty of the night. It came bitterly upon Jeanie's recollection, how often, when the hour of worship approached, she used to watch the lengthening shadows, and look out from the door of the house, to see if she could spy her sister's return homeward. Alas! this idle and thoughtless waste of time, to what evils had it not finally led? and was she altogether guiltless, who, noticing Effie's turn to idle and light society, had not called in her father's authority to restrain her?--But I acted for the best, she again reflected, and who could have expected such a growth of evil, from one grain of human leaven, in a disposition so kind, and candid, and generous? As they sate down to the "exercise," as it is called, a chair happened accidentally to stand in the place which Effie usually occupied. David Deans saw his daughter's eyes swim in tears as they were directed towards this object, and pushed it aside, with a gesture of some impatience, as if desirous to destroy every memorial of earthly interest when about to address the Deity. The portion of Scripture was read, the psalm was sung, the prayer was made; and it was remarkable that, in discharging these duties, the old man avoided all passages and expressions, of which Scripture affords so many, that might be considered as applicable to his own domestic misfortune. In doing so it was perhaps his intention to spare the feelings of his daughter, as well as to maintain, in outward show at least, that stoical appearance of patient endurance of all the evil which earth could bring, which was in his opinion essential to the character of one who rated all earthly things at their just estimate of nothingness. When he had finished the duty of the evening, he came up to his daughter, wished her good-night, and, having done so, continued to hold her by the hands for half-a-minute; then drawing her towards him, kissed her forehead, and ejaculated, "The God of Israel bless you, even with the blessings of the promise, my dear bairn!" It was not either in the nature or habits of David Deans to seem a fond father; nor was he often observed to experience, or at least to evince, that fulness of the heart which seeks to expand itself in tender expressions or caresses even to those who were dearest to him. On the contrary, he used to censure this as a degree of weakness in several of his neighbours, and particularly in poor widow Butler. It followed, however, from the rarity of such emotions in this self-denied and reserved man, that his children attached to occasional marks of his affection and approbation a degree of high interest and solemnity; well considering them as evidences of feelings which were only expressed when they became too intense for suppression or concealment. With deep emotion, therefore, did he bestow, and his daughter receive, this benediction and paternal caress. "And you, my dear father," exclaimed Jeanie, when the door had closed upon the venerable old man, "may you have purchased and promised blessings multiplied upon you--upon _you,_ who walk in this world as though you were not of the world, and hold all that it can give or take away but as the _midges_ that the sun-blink brings out, and the evening wind sweeps away!" She now made preparation for her night-walk. Her father slept in another part of the dwelling, and, regular in all his habits, seldom or never left his apartment when he had betaken himself to it for the evening. It was therefore easy for her to leave the house unobserved, so soon as the time approached at which she was to keep her appointment. But the step she was about to take had difficulties and terrors in her own eyes, though she had no reason to apprehend her father's interference. Her life had been spent in the quiet, uniform, and regular seclusion of their peaceful and monotonous household. The very hour which some damsels of the present day, as well of her own as of higher degree, would consider as the natural period of commencing an evening of pleasure, brought, in her opinion, awe and solemnity in it; and the resolution she had taken had a strange, daring, and adventurous character, to which she could hardly reconcile herself when the moment approached for putting it into execution. Her hands trembled as she snooded her fair hair beneath the riband, then the only ornament or cover which young unmarried women wore on their head, and as she adjusted the scarlet tartan screen or muffler made of plaid, which the Scottish women wore, much in the fashion of the black silk veils still a part of female dress in the Netherlands. A sense of impropriety as well as of danger pressed upon her, as she lifted the latch of her paternal mansion to leave it on so wild an expedition, and at so late an hour, unprotected, and without the knowledge of her natural guardian. When she found herself abroad and in the open fields, additional subjects of apprehension crowded upon her. The dim cliffs and scattered rocks, interspersed with greensward, through which she had to pass to the place of appointment, as they glimmered before her in a clear autumn night, recalled to her memory many a deed of violence, which, according to tradition, had been done and suffered among them. In earlier days they had been the haunt of robbers and assassins, the memory of whose crimes is preserved in the various edicts which the council of the city, and even the parliament of Scotland, had passed for dispersing their bands, and ensuring safety to the lieges, so near the precincts of the city. The names of these criminals, and, of their atrocities, were still remembered in traditions of the scattered cottages and the neighbouring suburb. In latter times, as we have already noticed, the sequestered and broken character of the ground rendered it a fit theatre for duels and rencontres among the fiery youth of the period. Two or three of these incidents, all sanguinary, and one of them fatal in its termination, had happened since Deans came to live at St. Leonard's. His daughter's recollections, therefore, were of blood and horror as she pursued the small scarce-tracked solitary path, every step of which conveyed het to a greater distance from help, and deeper into the ominous seclusion of these unhallowed precincts. As the moon began to peer forth on the scene with a doubtful, flitting, and solemn light, Jeanie's apprehensions took another turn, too peculiar to her rank and country to remain unnoticed. But to trace its origin will require another chapter. CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. The spirit I have seen May be the devil. And the devil has power To assume a pleasing shape. Hamlet. Witchcraft and demonology, as we have already had occasion to remark, were at this period believed in by almost all ranks, but more especially among the stricter classes of Presbyterians, whose government, when their party were at the head of the state, had been much sullied by their eagerness to inquire into and persecute these imaginary crimes. Now, in this point of view, also, Saint Leonard's Crags and the adjacent Chase were a dreaded and ill-reputed district. Not only had witches held their meetings there, but even of very late years the enthusiast or impostor, mentioned in the _Pandaemonium_ of Richard Bovet, Gentleman,* had, among the recesses of these romantic cliffs, found his way into the hidden retreats where the fairies revel in the bowels of the earth. * Note I. The Fairy Boy of Leith. With all these legends Jeanie Deans was too well acquainted to escape that strong impression which they usually make on the imagination. Indeed, relations of this ghostly kind had been familiar to her from her infancy, for they were the only relief which her father's conversation afforded from controversial argument, or the gloomy history of the strivings and testimonies, escapes, captures, tortures, and executions of those martyrs of the Covenant, with whom it was his chiefest boast to say he had been acquainted. In the recesses of mountains, in caverns, and in morasses, to which these persecuted enthusiasts were so ruthlessly pursued, they conceived they had often to contend with the visible assaults of the Enemy of mankind, as in the cities, and in the cultivated fields, they were exposed to those of the tyrannical government and their soldiery. Such were the terrors which made one of their gifted seers exclaim, when his companion returned to him, after having left him alone in a haunted cavern in Sorn in Galloway, "It is hard living in this world-incarnate devils above the earth, and devils under the earth! Satan has been here since ye went away, but I have dismissed him by resistance; we will be no more troubled with him this night." David Deans believed this, and many other such ghostly encounters and victories, on the faith of the Ansars, or auxiliaries of the banished prophets. This event was beyond David's remembrance. But he used to tell with great awe, yet not without a feeling of proud superiority to his auditors, how he himself had been present at a field-meeting at Crochmade, when the duty of the day was interrupted by the apparition of a tall black man, who, in the act of crossing a ford to join the congregation, lost ground, and was carried down apparently by the force of the stream. All were instantly at work to assist him, but with so little success, that ten or twelve stout men, who had hold of the rope which they had cast in to his aid, were rather in danger to be dragged into the stream, and lose their own lives, than likely to save that of the supposed perishing man. "But famous John Semple of Carspharn," David Deans used to say with exultation, "saw the whaup in the rape.--'Quit the rope,' he cried to us (for I that was but a callant had a hand o' the rape mysell), 'it is the Great Enemy! he will burn, but not drown; his design is to disturb the good wark, by raising wonder and confusion in your minds; to put off from your spirits all that ye hae heard and felt.'--Sae we let go the rape," said David, "and he went adown the water screeching and bullering like a Bull of Bashan, as he's ca'd in Scripture."* * Note J. Intercourse of the Covenanters with the invisible world. Trained in these and similar legends, it was no wonder that Jeanie began to feel an ill-defined apprehension, not merely of the phantoms which might beset her way, but of the quality, nature, and purpose of the being who had thus appointed her a meeting, at a place and hour of horror, and at a time when her mind must be necessarily full of those tempting and ensnaring thoughts of grief and despair, which were supposed to lay sufferers particularly open to the temptations of the Evil One. If such an idea had crossed even Butler's well-informed mind, it was calculated to make a much stronger impression upon hers. Yet firmly believing the possibility of an encounter so terrible to flesh and blood, Jeanie, with a degree of resolution of which we cannot sufficiently estimate the merit, because the incredulity of the age has rendered us strangers to the nature and extent of her feelings, persevered in her determination not to omit an opportunity of doing something towards saving her sister, although, in the attempt to avail herself of it, she might be exposed to dangers so dreadful to her imagination. So, like Christiana in the Pilgrim's Progress, when traversing with a timid yet resolved step the terrors of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, she glided on by rock and stone, "now in glimmer and now in gloom," as her path lay through moonlight or shadow, and endeavoured to overpower the suggestions of fear, sometimes by fixing her mind upon the distressed condition of her sister, and the duty she lay under to afford her aid, should that be in her power; and more frequently by recurring in mental prayer to the protection of that Being to whom night is as noon-day. Thus drowning at one time her fears by fixing her mind on a subject of overpowering interest, and arguing them down at others by referring herself to the protection of the Deity, she at length approached the place assigned for this mysterious conference. It was situated in the depth of the valley behind Salisbury Crags, which has for a background the north-western shoulder of the mountain called Arthur's Seat, on whose descent still remain the ruins of what was once a chapel, or hermitage, dedicated to St. Anthony the Eremite. A better site for such a building could hardly have been selected; for the chapel, situated among the rude and pathless cliffs, lies in a desert, even in the immediate vicinity of a rich, populous, and tumultuous capital: and the hum of the city might mingle with the orisons of the recluses, conveying as little of worldly interest as if it had been the roar of the distant ocean. Beneath the steep ascent on which these ruins are still visible, was, and perhaps is still pointed out, the place where the wretch Nichol Muschat, who has been already mentioned in these pages, had closed a long scene of cruelty towards his unfortunate wife, by murdering her, with circumstances of uncommon barbarity.* * See Note G. Muschat's Cairn. The execration in which the man's crime was held extended itself to the place where it was perpetrated, which was marked by a small _cairn,_ or heap of stones, composed of those which each chance passenger had thrown there in testimony of abhorrence, and on the principle, it would seem, of the ancient British malediction, "May you have a cairn for your burial-place!" [Illustration: Muschat's Cairn--221] As our heroine approached this ominous and unhallowed spot, she paused and looked to the moon, now rising broad in the north-west, and shedding a more distinct light than it had afforded during her walk thither. Eyeing the planet for a moment, she then slowly and fearfully turned her head towards the cairn, from which it was at first averted. She was at first disappointed. Nothing was visible beside the little pile of stones, which shone grey in the moonlight. A multitude of confused suggestions rushed on her mind. Had her correspondent deceived her, and broken his appointment?--was he too tardy at the appointment he had made?--or had some strange turn of fate prevented him from appearing as he proposed?--or, if he were an unearthly being, as her secret apprehensions suggested, was it his object merely to delude her with false hopes, and put her to unnecessary toil and terror, according to the nature, as she had heard, of those wandering demons?--or did he purpose to blast her with the sudden horrors of his presence when she had come close to the place of rendezvous? These anxious reflections did not prevent her approaching to the cairn with a pace that, though slow, was determined. When she was within two yards of the heap of stones, a figure rose suddenly up from behind it, and Jeanie scarce forbore to scream aloud at what seemed the realisation of the most frightful of her anticipations. She constrained herself to silence, however, and, making a dead pause, suffered the figure to open the conversation, which he did, by asking, in a voice which agitation rendered tremulous and hollow, "Are you the sister of that ill-fated young woman?" "I am--I am the sister of Effie Deans!" exclaimed Jeanie. "And as ever you hope God will hear you at your need, tell me, if you can tell, what can be done to save her!" "I do _not_ hope God will hear me at my need," was the singular answer. "I do not deserve--I do not expect he will." This desperate language he uttered in a tone calmer than that with which he had at first spoken, probably because the shook of first addressing her was what he felt most difficult to overcome. Jeanie remained mute with horror to hear language expressed so utterly foreign to all which she had ever been acquainted with, that it sounded in her ears rather like that of a fiend than of a human being. The stranger pursued his address to her, without seeming to notice her surprise. "You see before you a wretch, predestined to evil here and hereafter." "For the sake of Heaven, that hears and sees us," said Jeanie, "dinna speak in this desperate fashion! The gospel is sent to the chief of sinners--to the most miserable among the miserable." "Then should I have my own share therein," said the stranger, "if you call it sinful to have been the destruction of the mother that bore me--of the friend that loved me--of the woman that trusted me--of the innocent child that was born to me. If to have done all this is to be a sinner, and survive it is to be miserable, then am I most guilty and most miserable indeed." "Then you are the wicked cause of my sister's ruin?" said Jeanie, with a natural touch of indignation expressed in her tone of voice. "Curse me for it, if you will," said the stranger; "I have well deserved it at your hand." "It is fitter for me," said Jeanie, "to pray to God to forgive you." "Do as you will, how you will, or what you will," he replied, with vehemence; "only promise to obey my directions, and save your sister's life." "I must first know," said Jeanie, "the means you would have me use in her behalf." "No!--you must first swear--solemnly swear, that you will employ them when I make them known to you." "Surely, it is needless to swear that I will do all that is lawful to a Christian to save the life of my sister?" "I will have no reservation!" thundered the stranger; "lawful or unlawful, Christian or heathen, you shall swear to do my hest, and act by my counsel, or--you little know whose wrath you provoke!" "I will think on what you have said," said Jeanie, who began to get much alarmed at the frantic vehemence of his manner, and disputed in her own mind, whether she spoke to a maniac, or an apostate spirit incarnate--"I will think on what you say, and let you ken to-morrow." "To-morrow!" exclaimed the man with a laugh of scorn--"And where will I be to-morrow?--or, where will you be to-night, unless you swear to walk by my counsel?--there was one accursed deed done at this spot before now; and there shall be another to match it, unless you yield up to my guidance body and soul." As he spoke, he offered a pistol at the unfortunate young woman. She neither fled nor fainted, but sunk on her knees, and asked him to spare her life. "Is that all you have to say?" said the unmoved ruffian. "Do not dip your hands in the blood of a defenceless creature that has trusted to you," said Jeanie, still on her knees. "Is that all you can say for your life?--Have you no promise to give?--Will you destroy your sister, and compel me to shed more blood?" "I can promise nothing," said Jeanie, "which is unlawful for a Christian." He cocked the weapon, and held it towards her. "May God forgive you!" she said, pressing her hands forcibly against her eyes. "D--n!" muttered the man; and, turning aside from her, he uncocked the pistol, and replaced it in his pocket--"I am a villain," he said, "steeped in guilt and wretchedness, but not wicked enough to do you any harm! I only wished to terrify you into my measures--She hears me not--she is gone!--Great God! what a wretch am I become!" As he spoke, she recovered herself from an agony which partook of the bitterness of death; and, in a minute or two, through the strong exertion of her natural sense and courage, collected herself sufficiently to understand he intended her no personal injury. "No!" he repeated; "I would not add to the murder of your sister, and of her child, that of any one belonging to her!--Mad, frantic, as I am, and unrestrained by either fear or mercy, given up to the possession of an evil being, and forsaken by all that is good, I would not hurt you, were the world offered me for a bribe! But, for the sake of all that is dear to you, swear you will follow my counsel. Take this weapon, shoot me through the head, and with your own hand revenge your sister's wrong, only follow the course--the only course, by which her life can be saved." "Alas! is she innocent or guilty?" "She is guiltless--guiltless of every thing, but of having trusted a villain!--Yet, had it not been for those that were worse than I am--yes, worse than I am, though I am bad indeed--this misery had not befallen." "And my sister's child--does it live?" said Jeanie. "No; it was murdered--the new-born infant was barbarously murdered," he uttered in a low, yet stern and sustained voice.--"but," he added hastily, "not by her knowledge or consent." "Then, why cannot the guilty be brought to justice, and the innocent freed?" "Torment me not with questions which can serve no purpose," he sternly replied--"The deed was done by those who are far enough from pursuit, and safe enough from discovery!--No one can save Effie but yourself." "Woe's me! how is it in my power?" asked Jeanie, in despondency. "Hearken to me!--You have sense--you can apprehend my meaning--I will trust you. Your sister is innocent of the crime charged against her" "Thank God for that!" said Jeanie. "Be still and hearken!--The person who assisted her in her illness murdered the child; but it was without the mother's knowledge or consent--She is therefore guiltless, as guiltless as the unhappy innocent, that but gasped a few minutes in this unhappy world--the better was its hap, to be so soon at rest. She is innocent as that infant, and yet she must die--it is impossible to clear her of the law!" "Cannot the wretches be discovered, and given up to punishment?" said Jeanie. "Do you think you will persuade those who are hardened in guilt to die to save another?--Is that the reed you would lean to?" "But you said there was a remedy," again gasped out the terrified young woman. "There is," answered the stranger, "and it is in your own hands. The blow which the law aims cannot be broken by directly encountering it, but it may be turned aside. You saw your sister during the period preceding the birth of her child--what is so natural as that she should have mentioned her condition to you? The doing so would, as their cant goes, take the case from under the statute, for it removes the quality of concealment. I know their jargon, and have had sad cause to know it; and the quality of concealment is essential to this statutory offence.* * Note K. Child Murder. Nothing is so natural as that Effie should have mentioned her condition to you--think--reflect--I am positive that she did." "Woe's me!" said Jeanie, "she never spoke to me on the subject, but grat sorely when I spoke to her about her altered looks, and the change on her spirits." "You asked her questions on the subject?" he said eagerly. "You _must_ remember her answer was, a confession that she had been ruined by a villain--yes, lay a strong emphasis on that--a cruel false villain call it--any other name is unnecessary; and that she bore under her bosom the consequences of his guilt and her folly; and that he had assured her he would provide safely for her approaching illness.--Well he kept his word!" These last words he spoke as if it were to himself, and with a violent gesture of self-accusation, and then calmly proceeded, "You will remember all this?--That is all that is necessary to be said." "But I cannot remember," answered Jeanie, with simplicity, "that which Effie never told me." "Are you so dull--so very dull of apprehension?" he exclaimed, suddenly grasping her arm, and holding it firm in his hand. "I tell you" (speaking between his teeth, and under his breath, but with great energy), "you _must_ remember that she told you all this, whether she ever said a syllable of it or no. You must repeat this tale, in which there is no falsehood, except in so far as it was not told to you, before these Justices--Justiciary--whatever they call their bloodthirsty court, and save your sister from being murdered, and them from becoming murderers. Do not hesitate--I pledge life and salvation, that in saying what I have said, you will only speak the simple truth." "But," replied Jeanie, whose judgment was too accurate not to see the sophistry of this argument, "I shall be man-sworn in the very thing in which my testimony is wanted, for it is the concealment for which poor Effie is blamed, and you would make me tell a falsehood anent it." "I see," he said, "my first suspicions of you were right, and that you will let your sister, innocent, fair, and guiltless, except in trusting a villain, die the death of a murderess, rather than bestow the breath of your mouth and the sound of your voice to save her." "I wad ware the best blood in my body to keep her skaithless," said Jeanie, weeping in bitter agony, "but I canna change right into wrang, or make that true which is false." "Foolish, hardhearted girl," said the stranger, "are you afraid of what they may do to you? I tell you, even the retainers of the law, who course life as greyhounds do hares, will rejoice at the escape of a creature so young--so beautiful, that they will not suspect your tale; that, if they did suspect it, they would consider you as deserving, not only of forgiveness, but of praise for your natural affection." "It is not man I fear," said Jeanie, looking upward; "the God, whose name I must call on to witness the truth of what I say, he will know the falsehood." "And he will know the motive," said the stranger, eagerly; "he will know that you are doing this--not for lucre of gain, but to save the life of the innocent, and prevent the commission of a worse crime than that which the law seeks to avenge." "He has given us a law," said Jeanie, "for the lamp of our path; if we stray from it we err against knowledge--I may not do evil, even that good may come out of it. But you--you that ken all this to be true, which I must take on your word--you that, if I understood what you said e'en now, promised her shelter and protection in her travail, why do not _you_ step forward, and bear leal and soothfast evidence in her behalf, as ye may with a clear conscience?" "To whom do you talk of a clear conscience, woman?" said he, with a sudden fierceness which renewed her terrors,--"to _me?_--I have not known one for many a year. Bear witness in her behalf?--a proper witness, that even to speak these few words to a woman of so little consequence as yourself, must choose such an hour and such a place as this. When you see owls and bats fly abroad, like larks, in the sunshine, you may expect to see such as I am in the assemblies of men.--Hush--listen to that." A voice was heard to sing one of those wild and monotonous strains so common in Scotland, and to which the natives of that country chant their old ballads. The sound ceased--then came nearer, and was renewed; the stranger listened attentively, still holding Jeanie by the arm (as she stood by him in motionless terror), as if to prevent her interrupting the strain by speaking or stirring. When the sounds were renewed, the words were distinctly audible: "When the glede's in the blue cloud, The lavrock lies still; When the hound's in' the green-wood, The hind keeps the hill." The person who sung kept a strained and powerful voice at its highest pitch, so that it could be heard at a very considerable distance. As the song ceased, they might hear a stifled sound, as of steps and whispers of persons approaching them. The song was again raised, but the tune was changed: "O sleep ye sound, Sir James, she said, When ye suld rise and ride; There's twenty men, wi' bow and blade, Are seeking where ye hide." "I dare stay no longer," said the stranger; "return home, or remain till they come up--you have nothing to fear--but do not tell you saw me--your sister's fate is in your hands." So saying, he turned from her, and with a swift, yet cautiously noiseless step, plunged into the darkness on the side most remote from the sounds which they heard approaching, and was soon lost to her sight. Jeanie remained by the cairn terrified beyond expression, and uncertain whether she ought to fly homeward with all the speed she could exert, or wait the approach of those who were advancing towards her. This uncertainty detained her so long, that she now distinctly saw two or three figures already so near to her, that a precipitate flight would have been equally fruitless and impolitic. CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. She speaks things in doubt, That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing, Yet the unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection; they aim at it, And botch the words up to fit their own thoughts. Hamlet. Like the digressive poet Ariosto, I find myself under the necessity of connecting the branches of my story, by taking up the adventures of another of the characters, and bringing them down to the point at which we have left those of Jeanie Deans. It is not, perhaps, the most artificial way of telling a story, but it has the advantage of sparing the necessity of resuming what a knitter (if stocking-looms have left such a person in the land) might call our "dropped stitches;" a labour in which the author generally toils much, without getting credit for his pains. "I could risk a sma' wad," said the clerk to the magistrate, "that this rascal Ratcliffe, if he were insured of his neck's safety, could do more than ony ten of our police-people and constables to help us to get out of this scrape of Porteous's. He is weel acquent wi' a' the smugglers, thieves, and banditti about Edinburgh; and, indeed, he may be called the father of a' the misdoers in Scotland, for he has passed amang them for these twenty years by the name of Daddie Rat." "A bonny sort of a scoundrel," replied the magistrate, "to expect a place under the city!" "Begging your honour's pardon," said the city's procurator-fiscal, upon whom the duties of superintendent of police devolved, "Mr. Fairscrieve is perfectly in the right. It is just sic as Ratcliffe that the town needs in my department; an' if sae be that he's disposed to turn his knowledge to the city service, yell no find a better man.--Ye'll get nae saints to be searchers for uncustomed goods, or for thieves and sic like;--and your decent sort of men, religious professors, and broken tradesmen, that are put into the like o' sic trust, can do nae gude ava. They are feared for this, and they are scrupulous about that, and they arena free to tell a lie, though it may be for the benefit of the city; and they dinna like to be out at irregular hours, and in a dark cauld night, and they like a clout ower the crown far waur; and sae between the fear o' God, and the fear o' man, and the fear o' getting a sair throat, or sair banes, there's a dozen o' our city-folk, baith waiters, and officers, and constables, that can find out naething but a wee bit skulduddery for the benefit of the Kirk treasurer. Jock Porteous, that's stiff and stark, puir fallow, was worth a dozen o' them; for he never had ony fears, or scruples, or doubts, or conscience, about onything your honours bade him." "He was a gude servant o' the town," said the Bailie, "though he was an ower free-living man. But if you really think this rascal Ratcliffe could do us ony service in discovering these malefactors, I would insure him life, reward, and promotion. It's an awsome thing this mischance for the city, Mr. Fairscrieve. It will be very ill taen wi' abune stairs. Queen Caroline, God bless her! is a woman--at least I judge sae, and it's nae treason to speak my mind sae far--and ye maybe ken as weel as I do, for ye hae a housekeeper, though ye arena a married man, that women are wilfu', and downa bide a slight. And it will sound ill in her ears, that sic a confused mistake suld come to pass, and naebody sae muckle as to be put into the Tolbooth about it." "If ye thought that, sir," said the procurator-fiscal, "we could easily clap into the prison a few blackguards upon suspicion. It will have a gude active look, and I hae aye plenty on my list, that wadna be a hair the waur of a week or twa's imprisonment; and if ye thought it no strictly just, ye could be just the easier wi' them the neist time they did onything to deserve it; they arena the sort to be lang o' gieing ye an opportunity to clear scores wi' them on that account." "I doubt that will hardly do in this case, Mr. Sharpitlaw," returned the town-clerk; "they'll run their letters,* and be adrift again, before ye ken where ye are." * A Scottish form of procedure, answering, in some respects, to the English Habeas Corpus. "I will speak to the Lord Provost," said the magistrate, "about Ratcliffe's business. Mr. Sharpitlaw, you will go with me, and receive instructions--something may be made too out of this story of Butler's and his unknown gentleman--I know no business any man has to swagger about in the King's Park, and call himself the devil, to the terror of honest folks, who dinna care to hear mair about the devil than is said from the pulpit on the Sabbath. I cannot think the preacher himsell wad be heading the mob, though the time has been, they hae been as forward in a bruilzie as their neighbours." "But these times are lang by," said Mr. Sharpitlaw. "In my father's time, there was mair search for silenced ministers about the Bow-head and the Covenant Close, and all the tents of Kedar, as they ca'd the dwellings o' the godly in those days, than there's now for thieves and vagabonds in the Laigh Calton and the back o' the Canongate. But that time's weel by, an it bide. And if the Bailie will get me directions and authority from the Provost, I'll speak wi' Daddie Rat mysell; for I'm thinking I'll make mair out o' him than ye'll do." Mr. Sharpitlaw, being necessarily a man of high trust, was accordingly empowered, in the course of the day, to make such arrangements as might seem in the emergency most advantageous for the Good Town. He went to the jail accordingly, and saw Ratcliffe in private. The relative positions of a police-officer and a professed thief bear a different complexion, according to circumstances. The most obvious simile of a hawk pouncing upon his prey is often least applicable. Sometimes the guardian of justice has the air of a cat watching a mouse, and, while he suspends his purpose of springing upon the pilferer, takes care so to calculate his motions that he shall not get beyond his power. Sometimes, more passive still, he uses the art of fascination ascribed to the rattlesnake, and contents himself with glaring on the victim, through all his devious flutterings; certain that his terror, confusion, and disorder of ideas, will bring him into his jaws at last. The interview between Ratcliffe and Sharpitlaw had an aspect different from all these. They sat for five minutes silent, on opposite sides of a small table, and looked fixedly at each other, with a sharp, knowing, and alert cast of countenance, not unmingled with an inclination to laugh, and resembled more than anything else, two dogs, who, preparing for a game at romps, are seen to couch down, and remain in that posture for a little time, watching each other's movements, and waiting which shall begin the game. "So, Mr. Ratcliffe," said the officer, conceiving it suited his dignity to speak first, "you give up business, I find?" "Yes, sir," replied Ratcliffe; "I shall be on that lay nae mair--and I think that will save your folk some trouble, Mr. Sharpitlaw?" "Which Jock DaIgleish" (then finisher of the law* in the Scottish metropolis) "wad save them as easily," returned the procurator-fiscal. * [Among the flying leaves of the period, there is one called "Sutherland's Lament for the loss of his post,--with his advice, to John Daglees his successor." He was whipped and banished 25th July 1722. There is another, called the Speech and dying words of John Dalgleish, lockman _alias_ hangman of Edinburgh, containing these lines:-- Death, I've a Favour for to beg, That ye wad only gie a Fleg, And spare my Life; As I did to ill-hanged Megg, The Webster's Wife."] "Ay; if I waited in the Tolbooth here to have him fit my cravat--but that's an idle way o' speaking, Mr. Sharpitlaw." "Why, I suppose you know you are under sentence of death, Mr. Ratcliffe?" replied Mr. Sharpitlaw. "Aye, so are a', as that worthy minister said in the Tolbooth Kirk the day Robertson wan off; but naebody kens when it will be executed. Gude faith, he had better reason to say sae than he dreamed off, before the play was played out that morning!" "This Robertson," said Sharpitlaw, in a lower and something like a confidential tone, "d'ye ken, Rat--that is, can ye gie us ony inkling where he is to be heard tell o'?" "Troth, Mr. Sharpitlaw, I'll be frank wi' ye; Robertson is rather a cut abune me--a wild deevil he was, and mony a daft prank he played; but except the Collector's job that Wilson led him into, and some tuilzies about run goods wi' the gaugers and the waiters, he never did onything that came near our line o' business." "Umph! that's singular, considering the company he kept." "Fact, upon my honour and credit," said Ratcliffe, gravely. "He keepit out o' our little bits of affairs, and that's mair than Wilson did; I hae dune business wi' Wilson afore now. But the lad will come on in time; there's nae fear o' him; naebody will live the life he has led, but what he'll come to sooner or later." "Who or what is he, Ratcliffe? you know, I suppose?" said Sharpitlaw. "He's better born, I judge, than he cares to let on; he's been a soldier, and he has been a play-actor, and I watna what he has been or hasna been, for as young as he is, sae that it had daffing and nonsense about it." "Pretty pranks he has played in his time, I suppose?" "Ye may say that," said Ratcliffe, with a sardonic smile; "and" (touching his nose) "a deevil amang the lasses." "Like enough," said Sharpitlaw. "Weel, Ratcliffe, I'll no stand niffering wi' ye; ye ken the way that favour's gotten in my office; ye maun be usefu'." "Certainly, sir, to the best of my power--naething for naething--I ken the rule of the office," said the ex-depredator. "Now the principal thing in hand e'en now," said the official person, "is the job of Porteous's; an ye can gie us a lift--why, the inner turnkey's office to begin wi', and the captainship in time--ye understand my meaning?" "Ay, troth do I, sir; a wink's as gude as a nod to a blind horse; but Jock Porteous's job--Lord help ye!--I was under sentence the haill time. God! but I couldna help laughing when I heard Jock skirting for mercy in the lads' hands. Mony a het skin ye hae gien me, neighbour, thought I, tak ye what's gaun: time about's fair play; ye'll ken now what hanging's gude for." "Come, come, this is all nonsense, Rat," said the procurator. "Ye canna creep out at that hole, lad; you must speak to the point--you understand me--if you want favour; gif-gaf makes gude friends, ye ken." "But how can I speak to the point, as your honour ca's it," said Ratcliffe, demurely, and with an air of great simplicity, "when ye ken I was under sentence and in the strong room a' the while the job was going on?" "And how can we turn ye loose on the public again, Daddie Rat, unless ye do or say something to deserve it?" "Well, then, d--n it!" answered the criminal, "since it maun be sae, I saw Geordie Robertson among the boys that brake the jail; I suppose that will do me some gude?" "That's speaking to the purpose, indeed," said the office-bearer; "and now, Rat, where think ye we'll find him?" "Deil haet o' me kens," said Ratcliffe; "he'll no likely gang back to ony o' his auld howffs; he'll be off the country by this time. He has gude friends some gate or other, for a' the life he's led; he's been weel educate." "He'll grace the gallows the better," said Mr. Sharpitlaw; "a desperate dog, to murder an officer of the city for doing his duty! Wha kens wha's turn it might be next?--But you saw him plainly?" "As plainly as I see you." "How was he dressed?" said Sharpitlaw. "I couldna weel see; something of a woman's bit mutch on his head; but ye never saw sic a ca'-throw. Ane couldna hae een to a' thing." "But did he speak to no one?" said Sharpitlaw. "They were a' speaking and gabbling through other," said Ratcliffe, who was obviously unwilling to carry his evidence farther than he could possibly help. "This will not do, Ratcliffe," said the procurator; "you must speak _out--out--out,_" tapping the table emphatically, as he repeated that impressive monosyllable. "It's very hard, sir," said the prisoner; "and but for the under-turnkey's place" "And the reversion of the captaincy--the captaincy of the Tolbooth, man--that is, in case of gude behaviour." "Ay, ay," said Ratcliffe, "gude behaviour!--there's the deevil. And then it's waiting for dead folk's shoon into the bargain." "But Robertson's head will weigh something," said Sharpitlaw; "something gey and heavy, Rat; the town maun show cause--that's right and reason--and then ye'll hae freedom to enjoy your gear honestly." "I dinna ken," said Ratcliffe; "it's a queer way of beginning the trade of honesty--but deil ma care. Weel, then, I heard and saw him speak to the wench Effie Deans, that's up there for child-murder." "The deil ye did? Rat, this is finding a mare's nest wi' a witness.--And the man that spoke to Butler in the Park, and that was to meet wi' Jeanie Deans at Muschat's Cairn--whew! lay that and that together? As sure as I live he's been the father of the lassie's wean." "There hae been waur guesses than that, I'm thinking," observed Ratcliffe, turning his quid of tobacco in his cheek, and squirting out the juice. "I heard something a while syne about his drawing up wi' a bonny quean about the Pleasaunts, and that it was a' Wilson could do to keep him frae marrying her." Here a city officer entered, and told Sharpitlaw that they had the woman in custody whom he had directed them to bring before him. "It's little matter now," said he, "the thing is taking another turn; however, George, ye may bring her in." The officer retired, and introduced, upon his return, a tall, strapping wench of eighteen or twenty, dressed, fantastically, in a sort of blue riding-jacket, with tarnished lace, her hair clubbed like that of a man, a Highland bonnet, and a bunch of broken feathers, a riding-skirt (or petticoat) of scarlet camlet, embroidered with tarnished flowers. Her features were coarse and masculine, yet at a little distance, by dint of very bright wild-looking black eyes, an aquiline nose, and a commanding profile, appeared rather handsome. She flourished the switch she held in her hand, dropped a courtesy as low as a lady at a birth-night introduction, recovered herself seemingly according to Touchstone's directions to Audrey, and opened the conversation without waiting till any questions were asked. "God gie your honour gude-e'en, and mony o' them, bonny Mr. Sharpitlaw!--Gude-e'en to ye, Daddie Ratton--they tauld me ye were hanged, man; or did ye get out o' John Dalgleish's hands like half-hangit Maggie Dickson?" "Whisht, ye daft jaud," said Ratcliffe, "and hear what's said to ye." "Wi' a' my heart, Ratton. Great preferment for poor Madge to be brought up the street wi' a grand man, wi' a coat a' passemented wi' worset-lace, to speak wi' provosts, and bailies, and town-clerks, and prokitors, at this time o' day--and the haill town looking at me too--This is honour on earth for ance!" "Ay, Madge," said Mr. Sharpitlaw, in a coaxing tone; "and ye're dressed out in your braws, I see; these are not your every-days' claiths ye have on." "Deil be in my fingers, then!" said Madge--"Eh, sirs!" (observing Butler come into the apartment), "there's a minister in the Tolbooth--wha will ca' it a graceless place now?--I'se warrant he's in for the gude auld cause--but it's be nae cause o' mine," and off she went into a song-- "Hey for cavaliers, ho for cavaliers, Dub a dub, dub a dub, Have at old Beelzebub,-- Oliver's squeaking for fear." "Did you ever see that mad woman before?" said Sharpitlaw to Butler. "Not to my knowledge, sir," replied Butler. "I thought as much," said the procurator-fiscal, looking towards Ratcliffe, who answered his glance with a nod of acquiescence and intelligence.-- "But that is Madge Wildfire, as she calls herself," said the man of law to Butler. "Ay, that I am," said Madge, "and that I have been ever since I was something better--Heigh ho"--(and something like melancholy dwelt on her features for a minute)--"But I canna mind when that was--it was lang syne, at ony rate, and I'll ne'er fash my thumb about it.-- I glance like the wildfire through country and town; I'm seen on the causeway--I'm seen on the down; The lightning that flashes so bright and so free, Is scarcely so blithe or so bonny as me." "Hand your tongue, ye skirling limmer!" said the officer who had acted as master of the ceremonies to this extraordinary performer, and who was rather scandalised at the freedom of her demeanour before a person of Mr. Sharpitlaw's importance--"haud your tongue, or I'se gie ye something to skirl for!" "Let her alone, George," said Sharpitlaw, "dinna put her out o' tune; I hae some questions to ask her--But first, Mr. Butler, take another look of her." "Do sae, minister--do sae," cried Madge; "I am as weel worth looking at as ony book in your aught.--And I can say the single carritch, and the double carritch, and justification, and effectual calling, and the assembly of divines at Westminster, that is" (she added in a low tone), "I could say them ance--but it's lang syne--and ane forgets, ye ken." And poor Madge heaved another deep sigh. "Weel, sir," said Mr. Sharpitlaw to Butler, "what think ye now?" "As I did before," said Butler; "that I never saw the poor demented creature in my life before." "Then she is not the person whom you said the rioters last night described as Madge Wildfire?" "Certainly not," said Butler. "They may be near the same height, for they are both tall, but I see little other resemblance." "Their dress, then, is not alike?" said Sharpitlaw. "Not in the least," said Butler. "Madge, my bonny woman," said Sharpitlaw, in the same coaxing manner, "what did ye do wi' your ilka-day's claise yesterday?" "I dinna mind," said Madge. "Where was ye yesterday at e'en, Madge?" "I dinna mind ony thing about yesterday," answered Madge; "ae day is eneugh for ony body to wun ower wi' at a time, and ower muckle sometimes." "But maybe, Madge, ye wad mind something about it, if I was to gie ye this half-crown?" said Sharpitlaw, taking out the piece of money. "That might gar me laugh, but it couldna gar me mind." "But, Madge," continued Sharpitlaw, "were I to send you to the workhouse in Leith Wynd, and gar Jock Dalgleish lay the tawse on your back" "That wad gar me greet," said Madge, sobbing, "but it couldna gar me mind, ye ken." "She is ower far past reasonable folks' motives, sir," said Ratcliffe, "to mind siller, or John Dalgleish, or the cat-and-nine-tails either; but I think I could gar her tell us something." "Try her, then, Ratcliffe," said Sharpitlaw, "for I am tired of her crazy pate, and be d--d to her." "Madge," said Ratcliffe, "hae ye ony joes now?" "An ony body ask ye, say ye dinna ken.--Set him to be speaking of my joes, auld Daddie Ratton!" "I dare say, ye hae deil ane?" "See if I haena then," said Madge, with the toss of the head of affronted beauty--"there's Rob the Ranter, and Will Fleming, and then there's Geordie Robertson, lad--that's Gentleman Geordie--what think ye o' that?" Ratcliffe laughed, and, winking to the procurator-fiscal, pursued the inquiry in his own way. "But, Madge, the lads only like ye when ye hae on your braws--they wadna touch you wi' a pair o' tangs when you are in your auld ilka-day rags." "Ye're a leeing auld sorrow then," replied the fair one; "for Gentle Geordie Robertson put my ilka-day's claise on his ain bonny sell yestreen, and gaed a' through the town wi' them; and gawsie and grand he lookit, like ony queen in the land." "I dinna believe a word o't," said Ratcliffe, with another wink to the procurator. "Thae duds were a' o' the colour o' moonshine in the water, I'm thinking, Madge--The gown wad be a sky-blue scarlet, I'se warrant ye?" "It was nae sic thing," said Madge, whose unretentive memory let out, in the eagerness of contradiction, all that she would have most wished to keep concealed, had her judgment been equal to her inclination. "It was neither scarlet nor sky-blue, but my ain auld brown threshie-coat of a short-gown, and my mother's auld mutch, and my red rokelay--and he gied me a croun and a kiss for the use o' them, blessing on his bonny face--though it's been a dear ane to me." "And where did he change his clothes again, hinnie?" said Sharpitlaw, in his most conciliatory manner. "The procurator's spoiled a'," observed Ratcliffe, drily. And it was even so; for the question, put in so direct a shape, immediately awakened Madge to the propriety of being reserved upon those very topics on which Ratcliffe had indirectly seduced her to become communicative. "What was't ye were speering at us, sir?" she resumed, with an appearance of stolidity so speedily assumed, as showed there was a good deal of knavery mixed with her folly. "I asked you," said the procurator, "at what hour, and to what place, Robertson brought back your clothes." "Robertson?--Lord hand a care o' us! what Robertson?" "Why, the fellow we were speaking of, Gentle Geordie, as you call him." "Geordie Gentle!" answered Madge, with well-feigned amazement--"I dinna ken naebody they ca' Geordie Gentle." "Come, my jo," said Sharpitlaw, "this will not do; you must tell us what you did with these clothes of yours." Madge Wildfire made no answer, unless the question may seem connected with the snatch of a song with which she indulged the embarrassed investigator:-- "What did ye wi' the bridal ring--bridal ring--bridal ring? What did ye wi' your wedding ring, ye little cutty quean, O? I gied it till a sodger, a sodger, a sodger, I gied it till a sodger, an auld true love o' mine, O." Of all the madwomen who have sung and said, since the days of Hamlet the Dane, if Ophelia be the most affecting, Madge Wildfire was the most provoking. The procurator-fiscal was in despair. "I'll take some measures with this d--d Bess of Bedlam," said he, "that shall make her find her tongue." "Wi' your favour, sir," said Ratcliffe, "better let her mind settle a little--Ye have aye made out something." "True," said the official person; "a brown short-gown, mutch, red rokelay--that agrees with your Madge Wildfire, Mr. Butler?" Butler agreed that it did so. "Yes, there was a sufficient motive for taking this crazy creature's dress and name, while he was about such a job." "And I am free to say _now,_" said Ratcliffe "When you see it has come out without you," interrupted Sharpitlaw. "Just sae, sir," reiterated Ratcliffe. "I am free to say now, since it's come out otherwise, that these were the clothes I saw Robertson wearing last night in the jail, when he was at the head of the rioters." "That's direct evidence," said Sharpitlaw; "stick to that, Rat--I will report favourably of you to the provost, for I have business for you to-night. It wears late; I must home and get a snack, and I'll be back in the evening. Keep Madge with you, Ratcliffe, and try to get her into a good tune again." So saying he left the prison. CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. And some they whistled--and some they sang, And some did loudly say, Whenever Lord Barnard's horn it blew, "Away, Musgrave away!" Ballad of Little Musgrave. When the man of office returned to the Heart of Mid-Lothian, he resumed his conference with Ratcliffe, of whose experience and assistance he now held himself secure. "You must speak with this wench, Rat--this Effie Deans--you must sift her a wee bit; for as sure as a tether she will ken Robertson's haunts--till her, Rat--till her without delay." "Craving your pardon, Mr. Sharpitlaw," said the turnkey elect, "that's what I am not free to do." "Free to do, man? what the deil ails ye now?--I thought we had settled a' that?" "I dinna ken, sir," said Ratcliffe; "I hae spoken to this Effie--she's strange to this place and to its ways, and to a' our ways, Mr. Sharpitlaw; and she greets, the silly tawpie, and she's breaking her heart already about this wild chield; and were she the mean's o' taking him, she wad break it outright." "She wunna hae time, lad," said Sharpitlaw; "the woodie will hae it's ain o' her before that--a woman's heart takes a lang time o' breaking." "That's according to the stuff they are made o' sir," replied Ratcliffe--"But to make a lang tale short, I canna undertake the job. It gangs against my conscience." "_Your_ conscience, Rat?" said Sharpitlaw, with a sneer, which the reader will probably think very natural upon the occasion. "Ou ay, sir," answered Ratcliffe, calmly, "just my conscience; a'body has a conscience, though it may be ill wunnin at it. I think mine's as weel out o' the gate as maist folk's are; and yet it's just like the noop of my elbow, it whiles gets a bit dirl on a corner." "Weel, Rat," replied Sharpitlaw, "since ye are nice, I'll speak to the hussy mysell." Sharpitlaw, accordingly, caused himself to be introduced into the little dark apartment tenanted by the unfortunate Effie Deans. The poor girl was seated on her little flock-bed, plunged in a deep reverie. Some food stood on the table, of a quality better than is usually supplied to prisoners, but it was untouched. The person under whose care she was more particularly placed, said, "that sometimes she tasted naething from the tae end of the four-and-twenty hours to the t'other, except a drink of water." Sharpitlaw took a chair, and, commanding the turnkey to retire, he opened the conversation, endeavouring to throw into his tone and countenance as much commiseration as they were capable of expressing, for the one was sharp and harsh, the other sly, acute, and selfish. "How's a' wi' ye, Effie?--How d'ye find yoursell, hinny?" A deep sigh was the only answer. "Are the folk civil to ye, Effie?--it's my duty to inquire." "Very civil, sir," said Effie, compelling herself to answer, yet hardly knowing what she said. "And your victuals," continued Sharpitlaw, in the same condoling tone,--"do you get what you like?--or is there onything you would particularly fancy, as your health seems but silly?" "It's a' very weel, sir, I thank ye," said the poor prisoner, in a tone how different from the sportive vivacity of those of the Lily of St. Leonard's!--"it's a' very gude--ower gude for me." "He must have been a great villain, Effie, who brought you to this pass," said Sharpitlaw. The remark was dictated partly by a natural feeling, of which even he could not divest himself, though accustomed to practise on the passions of others, and keep a most heedful guard over his own, and partly by his wish to introduce the sort of conversation which might, best serve his immediate purpose. Indeed, upon the present occasion, these mixed motives of feeling and cunning harmonised together wonderfully; for, said Sharpitlaw to himself, the greater rogue Robertson is, the more will be the merit of bringing him to justice. "He must have been a great villain, indeed," he again reiterated; "and I wish I had the skelping o' him." "I may blame mysell mair than him," said Effie; "I was bred up to ken better; but he, poor fellow,"--(she stopped). "Was a thorough blackguard a' his life, I dare say," said Sharpitlaw. "A stranger he was in this country, and a companion of that lawless vagabond, Wilson, I think, Effie?" "It wad hae been dearly telling him that he had ne'er seen Wilson's face." "That's very true that you are saying, Effie," said Sharpitlaw. "Where was't that Robertson and you were used to howff thegither? Somegate about the Laigh Calton, I am thinking." The simple and dispirited girl had thus far followed Mr. Sharpitlaw's lead, because he had artfully adjusted his observations to the thoughts he was pretty certain must be passing through her own mind, so that her answers became a kind of thinking aloud, a mood into which those who are either constitutionally absent in mind, or are rendered so by the temporary pressure of misfortune, may be easily led by a skilful train of suggestions. But the last observation of the procurator-fiscal was too much of the nature of a direct interrogatory, and it broke the charm accordingly. "What was it that I was saying?" said Effie, starting up from her reclining posture, seating herself upright, and hastily shading her dishevelled hair back from her wasted but still beautiful countenance. She fixed her eyes boldly and keenly upon Sharpitlaw--"You are too much of a gentleman, sir,--too much of an honest man, to take any notice of what a poor creature like me says, that can hardly ca' my senses my ain--God help me!" "Advantage!--I would be of some advantage to you if I could," said Sharpitlaw, in a soothing tone; "and I ken naething sae likely to serve ye, Effie, as gripping this rascal, Robertson." "O dinna misca' him, sir, that never misca'd you!--Robertson?--I am sure I had naething to say against ony man o' the name, and naething will I say." "But if you do not heed your own misfortune, Effie, you should mind what distress he has brought on your family," said the man of law. "O, Heaven help me!" exclaimed poor Effie--"My poor father--my dear Jeanie--O, that's sairest to bide of a'! O, sir, if you hae ony kindness--if ye hae ony touch of compassion--for a' the folk I see here are as hard as the wa'-stanes--If ye wad but bid them let my sister Jeanie in the next time she ca's! for when I hear them put her awa frae the door, and canna climb up to that high window to see sae muckle as her gown-tail, it's like to pit me out o' my judgment." And she looked on him with a face of entreaty, so earnest, yet so humble, that she fairly shook the steadfast purpose of his mind. "You shall see your sister," he began, "if you'll tell me,"--then interrupting himself, he added, in a more hurried tone,--"no, d--n it, you shall see your sister whether you tell me anything or no." So saying, he rose up and left the apartment. When he had rejoined Ratcliffe, he observed, "You are right, Ratton; there's no making much of that lassie. But ae thing I have cleared--that is, that Robertson has been the father of the bairn, and so I will wager a boddle it will be he that's to meet wi' Jeanie Deans this night at Muschat's Cairn, and there we'll nail him, Rat, or my name is not Gideon Sharpitlaw." "But," said Ratcliffe, perhaps because he was in no hurry to see anything which was like to be connected with the discovery and apprehension of Robertson, "an that were the case, Mr. Butler wad hae kend the man in the King's Park to be the same person wi' him in Madge Wildfire's claise, that headed the mob." "That makes nae difference, man," replied Sharpitlaw--"the dress, the light, the confusion, and maybe a touch o' a blackit cork, or a slake o' paint-hout, Ratton, I have seen ye dress your ainsell, that the deevil ye belang to durstna hae made oath t'ye." "And that's true, too," said Ratcliffe. "And besides, ye donnard carle," continued Sharpitlaw, triumphantly, "the minister _did_ say that he thought he knew something of the features of the birkie that spoke to him in the Park, though he could not charge his memory where or when he had seen them." "It's evident, then, your honour will be right," said Ratcliffe. "Then, Rat, you and I will go with the party oursells this night, and see him in grips or we are done wi' him." "I seena muckle use I can be o' to your honour," said Ratcliffe, reluctantly. "Use?" answered Sharpitlaw--"You can guide the party--you ken the ground. Besides, I do not intend to quit sight o' you, my good friend, till I have him in hand." "Weel, sir," said Ratcliffe, but in no joyful tone of acquiescence; "Ye maun hae it your ain way--but mind he's a desperate man." "We shall have that with us," answered Sharpitlaw, "that will settle him, if it is necessary." "But, sir," answered Ratcliffe, "I am sure I couldna undertake to guide you to Muschat's Cairn in the night-time; I ken the place as mony does, in fair day-light, but how to find it by moonshine, amang sae mony crags and stanes, as like to each other as the collier to the deil, is mair than I can tell. I might as soon seek moonshine in water." "What's the meaning o' this, Ratcliffe?" said Sharpitlaw, while he fixed his eye on the recusant, with a fatal and ominous expression,--"Have you forgotten that you are still under sentence of death?" "No, sir," said Ratcliffe, "that's a thing no easily put out o' memory; and if my presence be judged necessary, nae doubt I maun gang wi' your honour. But I was gaun to tell your honour of ane that has mair skeel o' the gate than me, and that's e'en Madge Wildfire." "The devil she has!--Do you think me as mad as she, is, to trust to her guidance on such an occasion?" "Your honour is the best judge," answered Ratcliffe; "but I ken I can keep her in tune, and garr her haud the straight path--she often sleeps out, or rambles about amang thae hills the haill simmer night, the daft limmer." "Weel, Ratcliffe," replied the procurator-fiscal, "if you think she can guide us the right way--but take heed to what you are about--your life depends on your behaviour." "It's a sair judgment on a man," said Ratcliffe, "when he has ance gane sae far wrang as I hae done, that deil a bit he can be honest, try't whilk way he will." Such was the reflection of Ratcliffe, when he was left for a few minutes to himself, while the retainer of justice went to procure a proper warrant, and give the necessary directions. The rising moon saw the whole party free from the walls of the city, and entering upon the open ground. Arthur's Seat, like a couchant lion of immense size--Salisbury Crags, like a huge belt or girdle of granite, were dimly visible. Holding their path along the southern side of the Canongate, they gained the Abbey of Holyrood House, and from thence found their way by step and stile into the King's Park. They were at first four in number--an officer of justice and Sharpitlaw, who were well armed with pistols and cutlasses; Ratcliffe, who was not trusted with weapons, lest, he might, peradventure, have used them on the wrong side; and the female. But at the last stile, when they entered the Chase, they were joined by other two officers, whom Sharpitlaw, desirous to secure sufficient force for his purpose, and at the same time to avoid observation, had directed to wait for him at this place. Ratcliffe saw this accession of strength with some disquietude, for he had hitherto thought it likely that Robertson, who was a bold, stout, and active young fellow, might have made his escape from Sharpitlaw and the single officer, by force or agility, without his being implicated in the matter. But the present strength of the followers of justice was overpowering, and the only mode of saving Robertson (which the old sinner was well disposed to do, providing always he could accomplish his purpose without compromising his own safety), must be by contriving that he should have some signal of their approach. It was probably with this view that Ratcliffe had requested the addition of Madge to the party, having considerable confidence in her propensity to exert her lungs. Indeed, she had already given them so many specimens of her clamorous loquacity, that Sharpitlaw half determined to send her back with one of the officers, rather than carry forward in his company a person so extremely ill qualified to be a guide in a secret expedition. It seemed, too, as if the open air, the approach to the hills, and the ascent of the moon, supposed to be so portentous over those whose brain is infirm, made her spirits rise in a degree tenfold more loquacious than she had hitherto exhibited. To silence her by fair means seemed impossible; authoritative commands and coaxing entreaties she set alike at defiance, and threats only made her sulky and altogether intractable. "Is there no one of you," said Sharpitlaw, impatiently, "that knows the way to this accursed place--this Nichol Muschat's Cairn--excepting this mad clavering idiot?" "Deil ane o' them kens it except mysell," exclaimed Madge; "how suld they, the puir fule cowards! But I hae sat on the grave frae batfleeing time till cook-crow, and had mony a fine crack wi' Muschat and Ailie Muschat, that are lying sleeping below." "The devil take your crazy brain," said Sharpitlaw; "will you not allow the men to answer a question?" The officers obtaining a moment's audience while Ratcliffe diverted Madge's attention, declared that, though they had a general knowledge of the spot, they could not undertake to guide the party to it by the uncertain light of the moon, with such accuracy as to insure success to their expedition. "What shall we do, Ratcliffe?" said Sharpitlaw, "if he sees us before we see him,--and that's what he is certain to do, if we go strolling about, without keeping the straight road,--we may bid gude day to the job, and I would rather lose one hundred pounds, baith for the credit of the police, and because the provost says somebody maun be hanged for this job o' Porteous, come o't what likes." "I think," said Ratcliffe, "we maun just try Madge; and I'll see if I can get her keepit in ony better order. And at ony rate, if he suld hear her skirting her auld ends o' sangs, he's no to ken for that that there's onybody wi' her." "That's true," said Sharpitlaw; "and if he thinks her alone, he's as like to come towards her as to rin frae her. So set forward--we hae lost ower muckle time already--see to get her to keep the right road." "And what sort o' house does Nichol Muschat and his wife keep now?" said Ratcliffe to the mad woman, by way of humouring her vein of folly; "they were but thrawn folk lang syne, an a' tales be true." "Ou, ay, ay, ay--but a's forgotten now," replied Madge, in the confidential tone of a gossip giving the history of her next-door neighbour--"Ye see, I spoke to them mysell, and tauld them byganes suld be byganes--her throat's sair misguggled and mashackered though; she wears her corpse-sheet drawn weel up to hide it, but that canna hinder the bluid seiping through, ye ken. I wussed her to wash it in St. Anthony's Well, and that will cleanse if onything can--But they say bluid never bleaches out o' linen claith--Deacon Sanders's new cleansing draps winna do't--I tried them mysell on a bit rag we hae at hame that was mailed wi' the bluid of a bit skirting wean that was hurt some gate, but out it winna come--Weel, yell say that's queer; but I will bring it out to St. Anthony's blessed Well some braw night just like this, and I'll cry up Ailie Muschat, and she and I will hae a grand bouking-washing, and bleach our claes in the beams of the bonny Lady Moon, that's far pleasanter to me than the sun--the sun's ower het, and ken ye, cummers, my brains are het eneugh already. But the moon, and the dew, and the night-wind, they are just like a caller kail-blade laid on my brow; and whiles I think the moon just shines on purpose to pleasure me, when naebody sees her but mysell." This raving discourse she continued with prodigious volubility, walking on at a great pace, and dragging Ratcliffe along with her, while he endeavoured, in appearance at least, if not in reality, to induce her to moderate her voice. All at once she stopped short upon the top of a little hillock, gazed upward fixedly, and said not one word for the space of five minutes. "What the devil is the matter with her now?" said Sharpitlaw to Ratcliffe--"Can you not get her forward?" "Ye maun just take a grain o' patience wi' her, sir," said Ratcliffe. "She'll no gae a foot faster than she likes herself." "D--n her," said Sharpitlaw, "I'll take care she has her time in Bedlam or Bridewell, or both, for she's both mad and mischievous." In the meanwhile, Madge, who had looked very pensive when she first stopped, suddenly burst into a vehement fit of laughter, then paused and sighed bitterly,--then was seized with a second fit of laughter--then, fixing her eyes on the moon, lifted up her voice and sung,-- "Good even, good fair moon, good even to thee; I prithee, dear moon, now show to me The form and the features, the speech and degree, Of the man that true lover of mine shall be. But I need not ask that of the bonny Lady Moon--I ken that weel eneugh mysell--_true_-love though he wasna--But naebody shall sae that I ever tauld a word about the matter--But whiles I wish the bairn had lived--Weel, God guide us, there's a heaven aboon us a',"--(here she sighed bitterly), "and a bonny moon, and sterns in it forby" (and here she laughed once more). "Are we to stand, here all night!" said Sharpitlaw, very impatiently. "Drag her forward." "Ay, sir," said Ratcliffe, "if we kend whilk way to drag her, that would settle it at ance.--Come, Madge, hinny," addressing her, "we'll no be in time to see Nichol and his wife, unless ye show us the road." "In troth and that I will, Ratton," said she, seizing him by the arm, and resuming her route with huge strides, considering it was a female who took them. "And I'll tell ye, Ratton, blithe will Nichol Muschat be to see ye, for he says he kens weel there isna sic a villain out o' hell as ye are, and he wad be ravished to hae a crack wi' you--like to like ye ken--it's a proverb never fails--and ye are baith a pair o' the deevil's peats I trow--hard to ken whilk deserves the hettest corner o' his ingle-side." Ratcliffe was conscience-struck, and could not forbear making an involuntary protest against this classification. "I never shed blood," he replied. "But ye hae sauld it, Ratton--ye hae sauld blood mony a time. Folk kill wi' the tongue as weel as wi' the hand--wi' the word as weel as wi' the gulley!-- It is the 'bonny butcher lad, That wears the sleeves of blue, He sells the flesh on Saturday, On Friday that he slew." "And what is that I ain doing now?" thought Ratcliffe. "But I'll hae nae wyte of Robertson's young bluid, if I can help it;" then speaking apart to Madge, he asked her, "Whether she did not remember ony o' her auld Sangs?" "Mony a dainty ane," said Madge; "and blithely can I sing them, for lightsome sangs make merry gate." And she sang,-- "When the glede's in the blue cloud, The lavrock lies still; When the hound's in the greenwood. The hind keeps the hill." "Silence her cursed noise, if you should throttle her," said Sharpitlaw; "I see somebody yonder.--Keep close, my boys, and creep round the shoulder of the height. George Poinder, stay you with Ratcliffe and tha mad yelling bitch; and you other two, come with me round under the shadow of the brae." And he crept forward with the stealthy pace of an Indian savage, who leads his band to surprise an unsuspecting party of some hostile tribe. Ratcliffe saw them glide of, avoiding the moonlight, and keeping as much in: the shade as possible. "Robertson's done up," said he to himself; "thae young lads are aye sae thoughtless. What deevil could he hae to say to Jeanie Deans, or to ony woman on earth, that he suld gang awa and get his neck raxed for her? And this mad quean, after cracking like a pen-gun, and skirling like a pea-hen for the haill night, behoves just to hae hadden her tongue when her clavers might have dune some gude! But it's aye the way wi' women; if they ever hand their tongues ava', ye may swear it's for mischief. I wish I could set her on again without this blood-sucker kenning what I am doing. But he's as gleg as MacKeachan's elshin,* that ran through sax plies of bendleather and half-an-inch into the king's heel." * [_Elshin,_ a shoemaker's awl.] He then began to hum, but in a very low and suppressed tone, the first stanza of a favourite ballad of Wildfire's, the words of which bore some distant analogy with the situation of Robertson, trusting that the power of association would not fail to bring the rest to her mind:-- "There's a bloodhound ranging Tinwald wood, There's harness glancing sheen: There's a maiden sits on Tinwald brae, And she sings loud between." Madge had no sooner received the catch-word, than she vindicated Ratcliffe's sagacity by setting off at score with the song:-- "O sleep ye sound, Sir James, she said, When ye suld rise and ride? There's twenty men, wi' bow and blade, Are seeking where ye hide." Though Ratcliffe was at a considerable distance from the spot called Muschat's Cairn, yet his eyes, practised like those of a cat to penetrate darkness, could mark that Robertson had caught the alarm. George Poinder, less keen of sight, or less attentive, was not aware of his flight any more than Sharpitlaw and his assistants, whose view, though they were considerably nearer to the cairn, was intercepted by the broken nature of the ground under which they were screening themselves. At length, however, after the interval of five or six minutes, they also perceived that Robertson had fled, and rushed hastily towards the place, while Sharpitlaw called out aloud, in the harshest tones of a voice which resembled a saw-mill at work, "Chase, lads--chase--haud the brae--I see him on the edge of the hill!" Then hollowing back to the rear-guard of his detachment, he issued his farther orders: "Ratcliffe, come here, and detain the woman--George, run and kepp the stile at the Duke's Walk--Ratcliffe, come here directly--but first knock out that mad bitch's brains!" "Ye had better rin for it, Madge," said Ratcliffe, "for it's ill dealing wi' an angry man." Madge Wildfire was not so absolutely void of common sense as not to understand this innuendo; and while Ratcliffe, in seemingly anxious haste of obedience, hastened to the spot where Sharpitlaw waited to deliver up Jeanie Deans to his custody, she fled with all the despatch she could exert in an opposite direction. Thus the whole party were separated, and in rapid motion of flight or pursuit, excepting Ratcliffe and Jeanie, whom, although making no attempt to escape, he held fast by the cloak, and who remained standing by Muschat's Cairn. CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. You have paid the heavens your function, and the prisoner the very debt of your calling. Measure for Measure. Jeanie Deans,--for here our story unites itself with that part of the narrative which broke off at the end of the fourteenth chapter,--while she waited, in terror and amazement, the hasty advance of three or four men towards her, was yet more startled at their suddenly breaking asunder, and giving chase in different directions to the late object of her terror, who became at that moment, though she could not well assign a reasonable cause, rather the cause of her interest. One of the party (it was Sharpitlaw) came straight up to her, and saying, "Your name is Jeanie Deans, and you are my prisoner," immediately added, "But if you will tell me which way he ran I will let you go." "I dinna ken, sir," was all the poor girl could utter; and, indeed, it is the phrase which rises most readily to the lips of any person in her rank, as the readiest reply to any embarrassing question. "But," said Sharpitlaw, "ye _ken_ wha it was ye were speaking wi', my leddy, on the hill side, and midnight sae near; ye surely ken _that,_ my bonny woman?" "I dinna ken, sir," again iterated Jeanie, who really did not comprehend in her terror the nature of the questions which were so hastily put to her in this moment of surprise. "We will try to mend your memory by and by, hinny," said Sharpitlaw, and shouted, as we have already told the reader, to Ratcliffe, to come up and take charge of her, while he himself directed the chase after Robertson, which he still hoped might be successful. As Ratcliffe approached, Sharpitlaw pushed the young woman towards him with some rudeness, and betaking himself to the more important object of his quest, began to scale crags and scramble up steep banks, with an agility of which his profession and his general gravity of demeanour would previously have argued him incapable. In a few minutes there was no one within sight, and only a distant halloo from one of the pursuers to the other, faintly heard on the side of the hill, argued that there was any one within hearing. Jeanie Deans was left in the clear moonlight, standing under the guard of a person of whom she knew nothing, and, what was worse, concerning whom, as the reader is well aware, she could have learned nothing that would not have increased her terror. When all in the distance was silent, Ratcliffe for the first time addressed her, and it was in that cold sarcastic indifferent tone familiar to habitual depravity, whose crimes are instigated by custom rather than by passion. "This is a braw night for ye, dearie," he said, attempting to pass his arm across her shoulder, "to be on the green hill wi' your jo." Jeanie extricated herself from his grasp, but did not make any reply. "I think lads and lasses," continued the ruffian, "dinna meet at Muschat's Cairn at midnight to crack nuts," and he again attempted to take hold of her. "If ye are an officer of justice, sir," said Jeanie, again eluding his attempt to seize her, "ye deserve to have your coat stripped from your back." "Very true, hinny," said he, succeeding forcibly in his attempt to get hold of her, "but suppose I should strip your cloak off first?" "Ye are more a man, I am sure, than to hurt me, sir," said Jeanie; "for God's sake have pity on a half-distracted creature!" "Come, come," said Ratcliffe, "you're a good-looking wench, and should not be cross-grained. I was going to be an honest man--but the devil has this very day flung first a lawyer, and then a woman, in my gate. I'll tell you what, Jeanie, they are out on the hill-side--if you'll be guided by me, I'll carry you to a wee bit corner in the Pleasance, that I ken o' in an auld wife's, that a' the prokitors o' Scotland wot naething o', and we'll send Robertson word to meet us in Yorkshire, for there is a set o' braw lads about the midland counties, that I hae dune business wi' before now, and sae we'll leave Mr. Sharpitlaw to whistle on his thumb." It was fortunate for Jeanie, in an emergency like the present, that she possessed presence of mind and courage, so soon as the first hurry of surprise had enabled her to rally her recollection. She saw the risk she was in from a ruffian, who not only was such by profession, but had that evening been stupifying, by means of strong liquors, the internal aversion which he felt at the business on which Sharpitlaw had resolved to employ him. "Dinna speak sae loud," said she, in a low voice; "he's up yonder." "Who?--Robertson?" said Ratcliffe, eagerly. "Ay," replied Jeanie; "up yonder;" and she pointed to the ruins of the hermitage and chapel. "By G--d, then," said Ratcliffe, "I'll make my ain of him, either one way or other--wait for me here." But no sooner had he set off as fast as he could run, towards the chapel, than Jeanie started in an opposite direction, over high and low, on the nearest path homeward. Her juvenile exercise as a herdswoman had put "life and mettle" in her heels, and never had she followed Dustiefoot, when the cows were in the corn, with half so much speed as she now cleared the distance betwixt Muschat's Cairn and her father's cottage at St. Leonard's. To lift the latch--to enter--to shut, bolt, and double bolt the door--to draw against it a heavy article of furniture (which she could not have moved in a moment of less energy), so as to make yet farther provision against violence, was almost the work of a moment, yet done with such silence as equalled the celerity. Her next anxiety was upon her father's account, and she drew silently to the door of his apartment, in order to satisfy herself whether he had been disturbed by her return. He was awake,--probably had slept but little; but the constant presence of his own sorrows, the distance of his apartment from the outer door of the house, and the precautions which Jeanie had taken to conceal her departure and return, had prevented him from being sensible of either. He was engaged in his devotions, and Jeanie could distinctly hear him use these words:--"And for the other child thou hast given me to be a comfort and stay to my old age, may her days be long in the land, according to the promise thou hast given to those who shall honour father and mother; may all her purchased and promised blessings be multiplied upon her; keep her in the watches of the night, and in the uprising of the morning, that all in this land may know that thou hast not utterly hid thy face from those that seek thee in truth and in sincerity." He was silent, but probably continued his petition in the strong fervency of mental devotion. His daughter retired to her apartment, comforted, that while she was exposed to danger, her head had been covered by the prayers of the just as by an helmet, and under the strong confidence, that while she walked worthy of the protection of Heaven, she would experience its countenance. It was in that moment that a vague idea first darted across her mind, that something might yet be achieved for her sister's safety, conscious as she now was of her innocence of the unnatural murder with which she stood charged. It came, as she described it, on her mind, like a sun-blink on a stormy sea; and although it instantly vanished, yet she felt a degree of composure which she had not experienced for many days, and could not help being strongly persuaded that, by some means or other, she would be called upon, and directed, to work out her sister's deliverance. She went to bed, not forgetting her usual devotions, the more fervently made on account of her late deliverance, and she slept soundly in spite of her agitation. We must return to Ratcliffe, who had started, like a greyhound from the slips when the sportsman cries halloo, as soon as Jeanie had pointed to the ruins. Whether he meant to aid Robertson's escape, or to assist his pursuers, may be very doubtful; perhaps he did not himself know but had resolved to be guided by circumstances. He had no opportunity, however, of doing either; for he had no sooner surmounted the steep ascent, and entered under the broken arches of the rains, than a pistol was presented at his head, and a harsh voice commanded him, in the king's name, to surrender himself prisoner. "Mr. Sharpitlaw!" said Ratcliffe, surprised, "is this your honour?" "Is it only you, and be d--d to you?" answered the fiscal, still more disappointed--"what made you leave the woman?" "She told me she saw Robertson go into the ruins, so I made what haste I could to cleek the callant." "It's all over now," said Sharpitlaw; "we shall see no more of him to-night; but he shall hide himself in a bean-hool, if he remains on Scottish ground without my finding him. Call back the people, Ratcliffe." Ratcliffe hollowed to the dispersed officers, who willingly obeyed the signal; for probably there was no individual among them who would have been much desirous of a rencontre, hand to hand, and at a distance from his comrades, with such an active and desperate fellow as Robertson. "And where are the two women?" said Sharpitlaw. "Both made their heels serve them, I suspect," replied Ratcliffe, and he hummed the end of the old song-- "Then hey play up the rin-awa bride, For she has taen the gee." "One woman," said Sharpitlaw,--for, like all rogues, he was a great calumniator of the fair sex,*--"one woman is enough to dark the fairest ploy that was ever planned; and how could I be such an ass as to expect to carry through a job that had two in it? * Note L. Calumniator of the Fair Sex. But we know how to come by them both, if they are wanted, that's one good thing." Accordingly, like a defeated general, sad and sulky, he led back his discomfited forces to the metropolis, and dismissed them for the night. The next morning early, he was under the necessity of making his report to the sitting magistrate of the day. The gentleman who occupied the chair of office on this occasion (for the bailies, _Anglice',_ aldermen, take it by rotation) chanced to be the same by whom Butler was committed, a person very generally respected among his fellow-citizens. Something he was of a humorist, and rather deficient in general education; but acute, patient, and upright, possessed of a fortune acquired by honest industry which made him perfectly independent; and, in short, very happily qualified to support the respectability of the office, which he held. Mr. Middleburgh had just taken his seat, and was debating in an animated manner, with one of his colleagues, the doubtful chances of a game at golf which they had played the day before, when a letter was delivered to him, addressed "For Bailie Middleburgh; These: to be forwarded with speed." It contained these words:-- "Sir,--I know you to be a sensible and a considerate magistrate, and one who, as such, will be content to worship God, though the devil bid you. I therefore expect that, notwithstanding the signature of this letter acknowledges my share in an action, which, in a proper time and place, I would not fear either to avow or to justify, you will not on that account reject what evidence I place before you. The clergyman, Butler, is innocent of all but involuntary presence at an action which he wanted spirit to approve of, and from which he endeavoured, with his best set phrases, to dissuade us. But it was not for him that it is my hint to speak. There is a woman in your jail, fallen under the edge of a law so cruel, that it has hung by the wall like unsecured armour, for twenty years, and is now brought down and whetted to spill the blood of the most beautiful and most innocent creature whom the walls of a prison ever girdled in. Her sister knows of her innocence, as she communicated to her that she was betrayed by a villain.--O that high Heaven Would put in every honest hand a whip, To scourge me such a villain through the world! "I write distractedly--But this girl--this Jeanie Deans, is a peevish puritan, superstitious and scrupulous after the manner of her sect; and I pray your honour, for so my phrase must go, to press upon her, that her sister's life depends upon her testimony. But though she should remain silent, do not dare to think that the young woman is guilty--far less to permit her execution. Remember the death of Wilson was fearfully avenged; and those yet live who can compel you to drink the dregs of your poisoned chalice.--I say, remember Porteous, and say that you had good counsel from "One of his Slayers." The magistrate read over this extraordinary letter twice or thrice. At first he was tempted to throw it aside as the production of a madman, so little did "the scraps from play-books," as he termed the poetical quotation, resemble the correspondence of a rational being. On a re-perusal, however, he thought that, amid its incoherence, he could discover something like a tone of awakened passion, though expressed in a manner quaint and unusual. "It is a cruelly severe statute," said the magistrate to his assistant, "and I wish the girl could be taken from under the letter of it. A child may have been born, and it may have been conveyed away while the mother was insensible, or it may have perished for want of that relief which the poor creature herself--helpless, terrified, distracted, despairing, and exhausted--may have been unable to afford to it. And yet it is certain, if the woman is found guilty under the statute, execution will follow. The crime has been too common, and examples are necessary." "But if this other wench," said the city-clerk, "can speak to her sister communicating her situation, it will take the case from under the statute." "Very true," replied the Bailie; "and I will walk out one of these days to St. Leonard's, and examine the girl myself. I know something of their father Deans--an old true-blue Cameronian, who would see house and family go to wreck ere he would disgrace his testimony by a sinful complying with the defections of the times; and such he will probably uphold the taking an oath before a civil magistrate. If they are to go on and flourish with their bull-headed obstinacy, the legislature must pass an act to take their affirmations, as in the case of Quakers. But surely neither a father nor a sister will scruple in a case of this kind. As I said before, I will go speak with them myself, when the hurry of this Porteous investigation is somewhat over; their pride and spirit of contradiction will be far less alarmed, than if they were called into a court of justice at once." "And I suppose Butler is to remain incarcerated?" said the city-clerk. "For the present, certainly," said the magistrate. "But I hope soon to set him at liberty upon bail." "Do you rest upon the testimony of that light-headed letter?" asked the clerk. "Not very much," answered the Bailie; "and yet there is something striking about it too--it seems the letter of a man beside himself, either from great agitation, or some great sense of guilt." "Yes," said the town-clerk, "it is very like the letter of a mad strolling play-actor, who deserves to be hanged with all the rest of his gang, as your honour justly observes." "I was not quite so bloodthirsty," continued the magistrate. "But to the point, Butler's private character is excellent; and I am given to understand, by some inquiries I have been making this morning, that he did actually arrive in town only the day before yesterday, so that it was impossible he could have been concerned in any previous machinations of these unhappy rioters, and it is not likely that he should have joined them on a suddenty." "There's no saying anent that--zeal catches fire at a slight spark as fast as a brunstane match," observed the secretary. "I hae kend a minister wad be fair gude-day and fair gude-e'en wi' ilka man in the parochine, and hing just as quiet as a rocket on a stick, till ye mentioned the word abjuration-oath, or patronage, or siclike, and then, whiz, he was off, and up in the air an hundred miles beyond common manners, common sense, and common comprehension." "I do not understand," answered the burgher-magistrate, "that the young man Butler's zeal is of so inflammable a character. But I will make farther investigation. What other business is there before us?" And they proceeded to minute investigations concerning the affair of Porteous's death, and other affairs through which this history has no occasion to trace them. In the course of their business they were interrupted by an old woman of the lower rank, extremely haggard in look, and wretched in her appearance, who thrust herself into the council room. "What do you want, gudewife?--Who are you?" said Bailie Middleburgh. "What do I want!" replied she, in a sulky tone--"I want my bairn, or I want naething frae nane o' ye, for as grand's ye are." And she went on muttering to herself with the wayward spitefulness of age--"They maun hae lordships and honours, nae doubt--set them up, the gutter-bloods! and deil a gentleman amang them."--Then again addressing the sitting magistrate, "Will _your honour_ gie me back my puir crazy bairn?--_His_ honour!--I hae kend the day when less wad ser'd him, the oe of a Campvere skipper." "Good woman," said the magistrate to this shrewish supplicant--"tell us what it is you want, and do not interrupt the court." "That's as muckle as till say, Bark, Bawtie, and be dune wi't!--I tell ye," raising her termagant voice, "I want my bairn! is na that braid Scots?" "Who _are_ you?--who is your bairn?" demanded the magistrate. "Wha am I?--wha suld I be, but Meg Murdockson, and wha suld my bairn be but Magdalen Murdockson?--Your guard soldiers, and your constables, and your officers, ken us weel eneugh when they rive the bits o' duds aff our backs, and take what penny o' siller we hae, and harle us to the Correctionhouse in Leith Wynd, and pettle us up wi' bread and water and siclike sunkets." "Who is she?" said the magistrate, looking round to some of his people. "Other than a gude ane, sir," said one of the city officers, shrugging his shoulders and smiling. "Will ye say sae?" said the termagant, her eye gleaming with impotent fury; "an I had ye amang the Figgat-Whins,* wadna I set my ten talents in your wuzzent face for that very word?" and she suited the word to the action, by spreading out a set of claws resembling those of St. George's dragon on a country sign-post. * [This was a name given to a tract of sand hillocks extending along the sea-shore from Leith to Portobello, and which at this time were covered with _whin_-bushes or furze.] "What does she want here?" said the impatient magistrate--"Can she not tell her business, or go away?" "It's my bairn!--it's Magdalen Murdockson I'm wantin'," answered the beldam, screaming at the highest pitch of her cracked and mistuned voice--"havena I been telling ye sae this half-hour? And if ye are deaf, what needs ye sit cockit up there, and keep folk scraughin' t'ye this gate?" "She wants her daughter, sir," said the same officer whose interference had given the hag such offence before--"her daughter, who was taken up last night--Madge Wildfire, as they ca' her." "Madge Hellfire, as they ca' her!" echoed the beldam "and what business has a blackguard like you to ca' an honest woman's bairn out o' her ain name?" "An _honest_ woman's bairn, Maggie?" answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to madness the furious old shrew. "If I am no honest now, I was honest ance," she replied; "and that's mair than ye can say, ye born and bred thief, that never kend ither folks' gear frae your ain since the day ye was cleckit. Honest, say ye?--ye pykit your mother's pouch o' twalpennies Scots when ye were five years auld, just as she was taking leave o' your father at the fit o' the gallows." "She has you there, George," said the assistants, and there was a general laugh; for the wit was fitted for the meridian of the place where it was uttered. This general applause somewhat gratified the passions of the old hag; the "grim feature" smiled and even laughed--but it was a laugh of bitter scorn. She condescended, however, as if appeased by the success of her sally, to explain her business more distinctly, when the magistrate, commanding silence, again desired her either to speak out her errand, or to leave the place. "Her bairn," she said, "_was_ her bairn, and she came to fetch her out of ill haft and waur guiding. If she wasna sae wise as ither folk, few ither folk had suffered as muckle as she had done; forby that she could fend the waur for hersell within the four wa's of a jail. She could prove by fifty witnesses, and fifty to that, that her daughter had never seen Jock Porteous, alive or dead, since he had gien her a laundering wi' his cane, the neger that he was! for driving a dead cat at the provost's wig on the Elector of Hanover's birthday." Notwithstanding the wretched appearance and violent demeanour of this woman, the magistrate felt the justice of her argument, that her child might be as dear to her as to a more fortunate and more amiable mother. He proceeded to investigate the circumstances which had led to Madge Murdockson's (or Wildfire's) arrest, and as it was clearly shown that she had not been engaged in the riot, he contented himself with directing that an eye should be kept upon her by the police, but that for the present she should be allowed to return home with her mother. During the interval of fetching Madge from the jail, the magistrate endeavoured to discover whether her mother had been privy to the change of dress betwixt that young woman and Robertson. But on this point he could obtain no light. She persisted in declaring, that she had never seen Robertson since his remarkable escape during service-time; and that, if her daughter had changed clothes with him, it must have been during her absence at a hamlet about two miles out of town, called Duddingstone, where she could prove that she passed that eventful night. And, in fact, one of the town-officers, who had been searching for stolen linen at the cottage of a washer-woman in that village, gave his evidence, that he had seen Maggie Murdockson there, whose presence had considerably increased his suspicion of the house in which she was a visitor, in respect that he considered her as a person of no good reputation. "I tauld ye sae," said the hag; "see now what it is to hae a character, gude or bad!--Now, maybe, after a', I could tell ye something about Porteous that you council-chamber bodies never could find out, for as muckle stir as ye mak." All eyes were turned towards her--all ears were alert. "Speak out!" said the magistrate. "It will be for your ain gude," insinuated the town-clerk. "Dinna keep the Bailie waiting," urged the assistants. She remained doggedly silent for two or three minutes, casting around a malignant and sulky glance, that seemed to enjoy the anxious suspense with which they waited her answer. And then she broke forth at once,--"A' that I ken about him is, that he was neither soldier nor gentleman, but just a thief and a blackguard, like maist o' yoursells, dears--What will ye gie me for that news, now?--He wad hae served the gude town lang or provost or bailie wad hae fund that out, my jo!" While these matters were in discussion, Madge Wildfire entered, and her first exclamation was, "Eh! see if there isna our auld ne'er-do-weel deevil's-buckie o' a mither--Hegh, sirs! but we are a hopeful family, to be twa o' us in the Guard at ance--But there were better days wi' us ance--were there na, mither?" Old Maggie's eyes had glistened with something like an expression of pleasure when she saw her daughter set at liberty. But either her natural affection, like that of the tigress, could not be displayed without a strain of ferocity, or there was something in the ideas which Madge's speech awakened, that again stirred her cross and savage temper. "What signifies what we, were, ye street-raking limmer!" she exclaimed, pushing her daughter before her to the door, with no gentle degree of violence. "I'se tell thee what thou is now--thou's a crazed hellicat Bess o' Bedlam, that sall taste naething but bread and water for a fortnight, to serve ye for the plague ye hae gien me--and ower gude for ye, ye idle taupie!" Madge, however, escaped from her mother at the door, ran back to the foot of the table, dropped a very low and fantastic courtesy to the judge, and said, with a giggling laugh,--"Our minnie's sair mis-set, after her ordinar, sir--She'll hae had some quarrel wi' her auld gudeman--that's Satan, ye ken, sirs." This explanatory note she gave in a low confidential tone, and the spectators of that credulous generation did not hear it without an involuntary shudder. "The gudeman and her disna aye gree weel, and then I maun pay the piper; but my back's broad eneugh to bear't a'--an' if she hae nae havings, that's nae reason why wiser folk shouldna hae some." Here another deep courtesy, when the ungracious voice of her mother was heard. "Madge, ye limmer! If I come to fetch ye!" "Hear till her," said Madge. "But I'll wun out a gliff the night for a' that, to dance in the moonlight, when her and the gudeman will be whirrying through the blue lift on a broom-shank, to see Jean Jap, that they hae putten intill the Kirkcaldy Tolbooth--ay, they will hae a merry sail ower Inchkeith, and ower a' the bits o' bonny waves that are poppling and plashing against the rocks in the gowden glimmer o' the moon, ye ken.--I'm coming, mother--I'm coming," she concluded, on hearing a scuffle at the door betwixt the beldam and the officers, who were endeavouring to prevent her re-entrance. Madge then waved her hand wildly towards the ceiling, and sung, at the topmost pitch of her voice, "Up in the air, On my bonny grey mare, And I see, and I see, and I see her yet;" and with a hop, skip, and jump, sprung out of the room, as the witches of Macbeth used, in less refined days, to seem to fly upwards from the stage. Some weeks intervened before Mr. Middleburgh, agreeably to his benevolent resolution, found an opportunity of taking a walk towards St. Leonard's, in order to discover whether it might be possible to obtain the evidence hinted at in the anonymous letter respecting Effie Deans. In fact, the anxious perquisitions made to discover the murderers of Porteous occupied the attention of all concerned with the administration of justice. In the course of these inquiries, two circumstances happened material to our story. Butler, after a close investigation of his conduct, was declared innocent of accession to the death of Porteous; but, as having been present during the whole transaction, was obliged to find bail not to quit his usual residence at Liberton, that he might appear as a witness when called upon. The other incident regarded the disappearance of Madge Wildfire and her mother from Edinburgh. When they were sought, with the purpose of subjecting them to some farther interrogatories, it was discovered by Mr. Sharpitlaw that they had eluded the observation of the police, and left the city so soon as dismissed from the council-chamber. No efforts could trace the place of their retreat. In the meanwhile the excessive indignation of the Council of Regency, at the slight put upon their authority by the murder of Porteous, had dictated measures, in which their own extreme desire of detecting the actors in that conspiracy were consulted in preference to the temper of the people and the character of their churchmen. An act of Parliament was hastily passed, offering two hundred pounds reward to those who should inform against any person concerned in the deed, and the penalty of death, by a very unusual and severe enactment, was denounced against those who should harbour the guilty. But what was chiefly accounted exceptionable, was a clause, appointing the act to be read in churches by the officiating clergyman, on the first Sunday of every month, for a certain period, immediately before the sermon. The ministers who should refuse to comply with this injunction were declared, for the first offence, incapable of sitting or voting in any church judicature, and for the second, incapable of holding any ecclesiastical preferment in Scotland. This last order united in a common cause those who might privately rejoice in Porteous's death, though they dared not vindicate the manner of it, with the more scrupulous Presbyterians, who held that even the pronouncing the name of the "Lords Spiritual" in a Scottish pulpit was, _quodammodo,_ an acknowledgment of prelacy, and that the injunction of the legislature was an interference of the civil government with the _jus divinum_ of Presbytery, since to the General Assembly alone, as representing the invisible head of the kirk, belonged the sole and exclusive right of regulating whatever pertained to public worship. Very many also, of different political or religious sentiments, and therefore not much moved by these considerations, thought they saw, in so violent an act of parliament, a more vindictive spirit than became the legislature of a great country, and something like an attempt to trample upon the rights and independence of Scotland. The various steps adopted for punishing the city of Edinburgh, by taking away her charter and liberties, for what a violent and overmastering mob had done within her walls, were resented by many, who thought a pretext was too hastily taken for degrading the ancient metropolis of Scotland. In short, there was much heart-burning, discontent, and disaffection, occasioned by these ill-considered measures.* * The magistrates were closely interrogated before the House of Peers, concerning the particulars of the Porteous Mob, and the _patois_ in which these functionaries made their answers, sounded strange in the ears of the Southern nobles. The Duke of Newcastle having demanded to know with what kind of shot the guard which Porteous commanded had loaded their muskets, was answered, naively, "Ow, just sic as ane shoots _dukes and fools_ with." This reply was considered as a contempt of the House of Lords, and the Provost would have suffered accordingly, but that the Duke of Argyle explained, that the expression, properly rendered into English, meant _ducks and waterfowls._ Amidst these heats and dissensions, the trial of Effie Deans, after she had been many weeks imprisoned, was at length about to be brought forward, and Mr. Middleburgh found leisure to inquire into the evidence concerning her. For this purpose, he chose a fine day for his walk towards her father's house. The excursion into the country was somewhat distant, in the opinion of a burgess of those days, although many of the present inhabit suburban villas considerably beyond the spot to which we allude. Three-quarters of an hour's walk, however, even at a pace of magisterial gravity, conducted our benevolent office-bearer to the Crags of St. Leonard's, and the humble mansion of David Deans. The old man was seated on the deas, or turf-seat, at the end of his cottage, busied in mending his cart-harness with his own hands; for in those days any sort of labour which required a little more skill than usual fell to the share of the goodman himself, and that even when he was well to pass in the world. With stern and austere gravity he persevered in his task, after having just raised his head to notice the advance of the stranger. It would have been impossible to have discovered, from his countenance and manner, the internal feelings of agony with which he contended. Mr. Middleburgh waited an instant, expecting Deans would in some measure acknowledge his presence, and lead into conversation; but, as he seemed determined to remain silent, he was himself obliged to speak first. "My name is Middleburgh--Mr. James Middleburgh, one of the present magistrates of the city of Edinburgh." "It may be sae," answered Deans laconically, and without interrupting his labour. "You must understand," he continued, "that the duty of a magistrate is sometimes an unpleasant one." "It may be sae," replied David; "I hae naething to say in the contrair;" and he was again doggedly silent. "You must be aware," pursued the magistrate, "that persons in my situation are often obliged to make painful and disagreeable inquiries of individuals, merely because it is their bounden duty." "It may be sae," again replied Deans; "I hae naething to say anent it, either the tae way or the t'other. But I do ken there was ance in a day a just and God-fearing magistracy in yon town o' Edinburgh, that did not bear the sword in vain, but were a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to such as kept the path. In the glorious days of auld worthy faithfu' Provost Dick,* when there was a true and faithfu' General Assembly of * Note M. Sir William Dick of Braid. the Kirk, walking hand in hand with the real noble Scottish-hearted barons, and with the magistrates of this and other towns, gentles, burgesses, and commons of all ranks, seeing with one eye, hearing with one ear, and upholding the ark with their united strength--And then folk might see men deliver up their silver to the state's use, as if it had been as muckle sclate stanes. My father saw them toom the sacks of dollars out o' Provost Dick's window intill the carts that carried them to the army at Dunse Law; and if ye winna believe his testimony, there is the window itsell still standing in the Luckenbooths--I think it's a claith-merchant's booth the day*--at the airn stanchells, five doors abune Gossford's Close. * I think so too--But if the reader be curious, he may consult Mr. Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh. --But now we haena sic spirit amang us; we think mair about the warst wallydraigle in our ain byre, than about the blessing which the angel of the covenant gave to the Patriarch even at Peniel and Mahanaim, or the binding obligation of our national vows; and we wad rather gie a pund Scots to buy an unguent to clear out auld rannell-trees and our beds o' the English bugs as they ca' them, than we wad gie a plack to rid the land of the swarm of Arminian caterpillars, Socinian pismires, and deistical Miss Katies, that have ascended out of the bottomless pit, to plague this perverse, insidious, and lukewarm generation." It happened to Davie Deans on this occasion, as it has done to many other habitual orators; when once he became embarked on his favourite subject, the stream of his own enthusiasm carried him forward in spite of his mental distress, while his well-exercised memory supplied him amply with all the types and tropes of rhetoric peculiar to his sect and cause. Mr. Middleburgh contented himself with answering--"All this may be very true, my friend; but, as you said just now, I have nothing to say to it at present, either one way or other.--You have two daughters, I think, Mr. Deans?" The old man winced, as one whose smarting sore is suddenly galled; but instantly composed himself, resumed the work which, in the heat of his declamation, he had laid down, and answered with sullen resolution, "Ae daughter, sir--only _ane._" "I understand you," said Mr. Middleburgh; "you have only one daughter here at home with you--but this unfortunate girl who is a prisoner--she is, I think, your youngest daughter?" The Presbyterian sternly raised his eyes. "After the world, and according to the flesh, she _is_ my daughter; but when she became a child of Belial, and a company-keeper, and a trader in guilt and iniquity, she ceased to be a bairn of mine." "Alas, Mr. Deans," said Middleburgh, sitting down by him, and endeavouring to take his hand, which the old man proudly withdrew, "we are ourselves all sinners; and the errors of our offspring, as they ought not to surprise us, being the portion which they derive of a common portion of corruption inherited through us, so they do not entitle us to cast them off because they have lost themselves." "Sir," said Deans impatiently, "I ken a' that as weel as--I mean to say," he resumed, checking the irritation he felt at being schooled--a discipline of the mind which those most ready to bestow it on others do themselves most reluctantly submit to receive--"I mean to say, that what ye o serve may be just and reasonable--But I hae nae freedom to enter into my ain private affairs wi' strangers--And now, in this great national emergency, When there's the Porteous' Act has come doun frae London, that is a deeper blow to this poor sinfu' kingdom and suffering kirk than ony that has been heard of since the foul and fatal Test--at a time like this" "But, goodman," interrupted Mr. Middleburgh, "you must think of your own household first, or else you are worse even than the infidels." "I tell ye, Bailie Middleburgh," retorted David Deans, "if ye be a bailie, as there is little honour in being ane in these evil days--I tell ye, I heard the gracious Saunders Peden--I wotna whan it was; but it was in killing time, when the plowers were drawing alang their furrows on the back of the Kirk of Scotland--I heard him tell his hearers, gude and waled Christians they were too, that some o' them wad greet mair for a bit drowned calf or stirk than for a' the defections and oppressions of the day; and that they were some o' them thinking o' ae thing, some o' anither, and there was Lady Hundleslope thinking o' greeting Jock at the fireside! And the lady confessed in my hearing that a drow of anxiety had come ower her for her son that she had left at hame weak of a decay*--And what wad he hae said of me if I had ceased to think of the gude cause for a castaway--a--It kills me to think of what she is!" * See _Life of Peden,_ p. 14. "But the life of your child, goodman--think of that--if her life could be saved," said Middleburgh. "Her life!" exclaimed David--"I wadna gie ane o' my grey hairs for her life, if her gude name be gane--And yet," said he, relenting and retracting as he spoke, "I wad make the niffer, Mr. Middleburgh--I wad gie a' these grey hairs that she has brought to shame and sorrow--I wad gie the auld head they grow on for her life, and that she might hae time to amend and return, for what hae the wicked beyond the breath of their nosthrils?--but I'll never see her mair--No!--that--that I am determined in--I'll never see her mair!" His lips continued to move for a minute after his voice ceased to be heard, as if he were repeating the same vow internally. "Well, sir," said Mr. Middleburgh, "I speak to you as a man of sense; if you would save your daughter's life, you must use human means." "I understand what you mean; but Mr. Novit, who is the procurator and doer of an honourable person, the Laird of Dumbiedikes, is to do what carnal wisdom can do for her in the circumstances. Mysell am not clear to trinquet and traffic wi' courts o' justice as they are now constituted; I have a tenderness and scruple in my mind anent them." "That is to say," said Middleburgh, "that you are a Cameronian, and do not acknowledge the authority of our courts of judicature, or present government?" "Sir, under your favour," replied David, who was too proud of his own polemical knowledge to call himself the follower of any one, "ye take me up before I fall down. I canna see why I suld be termed a Cameronian, especially now that ye hae given the name of that famous and savoury sufferer, not only until a regimental band of souldiers, [H. M. 26th Foot] whereof I am told many can now curse, swear, and use profane language, as fast as ever Richard Cameron could preach or pray, but also because ye have, in as far as it is in your power, rendered that martyr's name vain and contemptible, by pipes, drums, and fifes, playing the vain carnal spring called the Cameronian Rant, which too many professors of religion dance to--a practice maist unbecoming a professor to dance to any tune whatsoever, more especially promiscuously, that is, with the female sex.* A brutish fashion it is, whilk is the beginning of defection with many, as I may hae as muckle cause as maist folk to testify." * See Note F. Peter Walker. "Well, but, Mr. Deans," replied Mr. Middleburgh, "I only meant to say that you were a Cameronian, or MacMillanite, one of the society people, in short, who think it inconsistent to take oaths under a government where the Covenant is not ratified." "Sir," replied the controversialist, who forgot even his present distress in such discussions as these, "you cannot fickle me sae easily as you do opine. I am _not_ a MacMillanite, or a Russelite, or a Hamiltonian, or a Harleyite, or a Howdenite*--I will be led by the nose by none--I take my name as a Christian from no vessel of clay. I have my own principles and practice to answer for, and am an humble pleader for the gude auld cause in a legal way." * All various species of the great genus Cameronian. "That is to say, Mr. Deans," said Middleburgh, "that you are a _Deanite,_ and have opinions peculiar to yourself." "It may please you to say sae," said David Deans; "but I have maintained my testimony before as great folk, and in sharper times; and though I will neither exalt myself nor pull down others, I wish every man and woman in this land had kept the true testimony, and the middle and straight path, as it were, on the ridge of a hill, where wind and water shears, avoiding right-hand snares and extremes, and left-hand way-slidings, as weel as Johnny Dodds of Farthing's Acre, and ae man mair that shall be nameless." "I suppose," replied the magistrate, "that is as much as to say, that Johnny Dodds of Farthing's Acre, and David Deans of St. Leonard's, constitute the only members of the true, real, unsophisticated Kirk of Scotland?" "God forbid that I suld make sic a vain-glorious speech, when there are sae mony professing Christians!" answered David; "but this I maun say, that all men act according to their gifts and their grace, 'sae that it is nae marvel that" "This is all very fine," interrupted Mr. Middleburgh; "but I have no time to spend in hearing it. The matter in hand is this--I have directed a citation to be lodged in your daughter's hands--If she appears on the day of trial and gives evidence, there is reason to hope she may save her sister's life--if, from any constrained scruples about the legality of her performing the office of an affectionate sister and a good subject, by appearing in a court held under the authority of the law and government, you become the means of deterring her from the discharge of this duty, I must say, though the truth may sound harsh in your ears, that you, who gave life to this unhappy girl, will become the means of her losing it by a premature and violent death." So saying, Mr. Middleburgh turned to leave him. "Bide awee--bide awee, Mr. Middleburgh," said Deans, in great perplexity and distress of mind; but the Bailie, who was probably sensible that protracted discussion might diminish the effect of his best and most forcible argument, took a hasty leave, and declined entering farther into the controversy. Deans sunk down upon his seat, stunned with a variety of conflicting emotions. It had been a great source of controversy among those holding his opinions in religious matters how far the government which succeeded the Revolution could be, without sin, acknowledged by true Presbyterians, seeing that it did not recognise the great national testimony of the Solemn League and Covenant? And latterly, those agreeing in this general doctrine, and assuming the sounding title of "The anti-Popish, anti-Prelatic, anti-Erastian, anti-Sectarian, true Presbyterian remnant," were divided into many petty sects among themselves, even as to the extent of submission to the existing laws and rulers, which constituted such an acknowledgment as amounted to sin. At a very stormy and tumultuous meeting, held in 1682, to discuss these important and delicate points, the testimonies of the faithful few were found utterly inconsistent with each other.* * This remarkable convocation took place upon 15th June 1682, and an account of its confused and divisive proceedings may be found in Michael Shield's _Faithful Contendings Displayed_ (first printed at Glasgow, 1780, p. 21). It affords a singular and melancholy example how much a metaphysical and polemical spirit had crept in amongst these unhappy sufferers, since amid so many real injuries which they had to sustain, they were disposed to add disagreement and disunion concerning the character and extent of such as were only imaginary. The place where this conference took place was remarkably well adapted for such an assembly. It was a wild and very sequestered dell in Tweeddale, surrounded by high hills, and far remote from human habitation. A small river, or rather a mountain torrent, called the Talla, breaks down the glen with great fury, dashing successively over a number of small cascades, which has procured the spot the name of Talla Linns. Here the leaders among the scattered adherents to the Covenant, men who, in their banishment from human society, and in the recollection of the seventies to which they had been exposed, had become at once sullen in their tempers, and fantastic in their religious opinions, met with arms in their hands, and by the side of the torrent discussed, with a turbulence which the noise of the stream could not drown, points of controversy as empty and unsubstantial as its foam. It was the fixed judgment of most of the meeting, that all payment of cess or tribute to the existing government was utterly unlawful, and a sacrificing to idols. About other impositions and degrees of submission there were various opinions; and perhaps it is the best illustration of the spirit of those military fathers of the church to say, that while all allowed it was impious to pay the cess employed for maintaining the standing army and militia, there was a fierce controversy on the lawfulness of paying the duties levied at ports and bridges, for maintaining roads and other necessary purposes; that there were some who, repugnant to these imposts for turnpikes and pontages, were nevertheless free in conscience to make payment of the usual freight at public ferries, and that a person of exceeding and punctilious zeal, James Russel, one of the slayers of the Archbishop of St. Andrews, had given his testimony with great warmth even against this last faint shade of subjection to constituted authority. This ardent and enlightened person and his followers had also great scruples about the lawfulness of bestowing the ordinary names upon the days of the week and the months of the year, which savoured in their nostrils so strongly of paganism, that at length they arrived at the conclusion that they who owned such names as Monday, Tuesday, January, February, and so forth, "served themselves heirs to the same, if not greater punishment, than had been denounced against the idolaters of old." David Deans had been present on this memorable occasion, although too young to be a speaker among the polemical combatants. His brain, however, had been thoroughly heated by the noise, clamour, and metaphysical ingenuity of the discussion, and it was a controversy to which his mind had often returned; and though he carefully disguised his vacillation from others, and, perhaps from himself, he had never been able to come to any precise line of decision on the subject. In fact, his natural sense had acted as a counterpoise to his controversial zeal. He was by no means pleased with the quiet and indifferent manner in which King William's government slurred over the errors of the times, when, far from restoring the Presbyterian kirk to its former supremacy, they passed an act of oblivion even to those who had been its persecutors, and bestowed on many of them titles, favours, and employments. When, in the first General Assembly which succeeded the Revolution, an overture was made for the revival of the League and Covenant, it was with horror that Douce David heard the proposal eluded by the men of carnal wit and policy, as he called them, as being inapplicable to the present times, and not falling under the modern model of the church. The reign of Queen Anne had increased his conviction, that the Revolution government was not one of the true Presbyterian complexion. But then, more sensible than the bigots of his sect, he did not confound the moderation and tolerance of these two reigns with the active tyranny and oppression exercised in those of Charles II. and James II. The Presbyterian form of religion, though deprived of the weight formerly attached to its sentences of excommunication, and compelled to tolerate the coexistence of Episcopacy, and of sects of various descriptions, was still the National Church; and though the glory of the second temple was far inferior to that which had flourished from 1639 till the battle of Dunbar, still it was a structure that, wanting the strength and the terrors, retained at least the form and symmetry, of the original model. Then came the insurrection in 1715, and David Deans's horror for the revival of the Popish and prelatical faction reconciled him greatly to the government of King George, although he grieved that that monarch might be suspected of a leaning unto Erastianism. In short, moved by so many different considerations, he had shifted his ground at different times concerning the degree of freedom which he felt in adopting any act of immediate acknowledgment or submission to the present government, which, however mild and paternal, was still uncovenanted, and now he felt himself called upon, by the most powerful motive conceivable, to authorise his daughter's giving testimony in a court of justice, which all who have been since called Cameronians accounted a step of lamentable and direct defection. The voice of nature, however, exclaimed loud in his bosom against the dictates of fanaticism; and his imagination, fertile in the solution of polemical difficulties, devised an expedient for extricating himself from the fearful dilemma, in which he saw, on the one side, a falling off from principle, and, on the other, a scene from which a father's thoughts could not but turn in shuddering horror. "I have been constant and unchanged in my testimony," said David Deans; "but then who has said it of me, that I have judged my neighbour over closely, because he hath had more freedom in his walk than I have found in mine? I never was a separatist, nor for quarrelling with tender souls about mint, cummin, or other the lesser tithes. My daughter Jean may have a light in this subject that is hid frae my auld een--it is laid on her conscience, and not on mine--If she hath freedom to gang before this judicatory, and hold up her hand for this poor castaway, surely I will not say she steppeth over her bounds; and if not"--He paused in his mental argument, while a pang of unutterable anguish convulsed his features, yet, shaking it off, he firmly resumed the strain of his reasoning--"And if not--God forbid that she should go into defection at bidding of mine! I wunna fret the tender conscience of one bairn--no, not to save the life of the other." A Roman would have devoted his daughter to death from different feelings and motives, but not upon a more heroic principle of duty. CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. To man, in this his trial state, The privilege is given, When tost by tides of human fate, To anchor fast on heaven. Watts's _Hymns._ It was with a firm step that Deans sought his daughter's apartment, determined to leave her to the light of her own conscience in the dubious point of casuistry in which he supposed her to be placed. The little room had been the sleeping apartment of both sisters, and there still stood there a small occasional bed which had been made for Effie's accommodation, when, complaining of illness, she had declined to share, as in happier times, her sister's pillow. The eyes of Deans rested involuntarily, on entering the room, upon this little couch, with its dark-green coarse curtains, and the ideas connected with it rose so thick upon his soul as almost to incapacitate him from opening his errand to his daughter. Her occupation broke the ice. He found her gazing on a slip of paper, which contained a citation to her to appear as a witness upon her sister's trial in behalf of the accused. For the worthy magistrate, determined to omit no chance of doing Effie justice, and to leave her sister no apology for not giving the evidence which she was supposed to possess, had caused the ordinary citation, or _subpoena,_ of the Scottish criminal court, to be served upon her by an officer during his conference with David. This precaution was so far favourable to Deans, that it saved him the pain of entering upon a formal explanation with his daughter; he only said, with a hollow and tremulous voice, "I perceive ye are aware of the matter." "O father, we are cruelly sted between God's laws and man's laws--What shall we do?--What can we do?" Jeanie, it must be observed, had no hesitation whatever about the mere act of appearing in a court of justice. She might have heard the point discussed by her father more than once; but we have already noticed that she was accustomed to listen with reverence to much which she was incapable of understanding, and that subtle arguments of casuistry found her a patient, but unedified hearer. Upon receiving the citation, therefore, her thoughts did not turn upon the chimerical scruples which alarmed her father's mind, but to the language which had been held to her by the stranger at Muschat's Cairn. In a word, she never doubted but she was to be dragged forward into the court of justice, in order to place her in the cruel position of either sacrificing her sister by telling the truth, or committing perjury in order to save her life. And so strongly did her thoughts run in this channel, that she applied her father's words, "Ye are aware of the matter," to his acquaintance with the advice that had been so fearfully enforced upon her. She looked up with anxious surprise, not unmingled with a cast of horror, which his next words, as she interpreted and applied them, were not qualified to remove. "Daughter," said David, "it has ever been my mind, that in things of ane doubtful and controversial nature, ilk Christian's conscience suld be his ain guide--Wherefore descend into yourself, try your ain mind with sufficiency of soul exercise, and as you sall finally find yourself clear to do in this matter--even so be it." "But, father," said Jeanie, whose mind revolted at the construction which she naturally put upon his language, "can this-this be a doubtful or controversial matter?--Mind, father, the ninth command--'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.'" David Deans paused; for, still applying her speech to his preconceived difficulties, it seemed to him as if _she,_ a woman, and a sister, was scarce entitled to be scrupulous upon this occasion, where he, a man, exercised in the testimonies of that testifying period, had given indirect countenance to her following what must have been the natural dictates of her own feelings. But he kept firm his purpose, until his eyes involuntarily rested upon the little settle-bed, and recalled the form of the child of his old age, as she sate upon it, pale, emaciated, and broken-hearted. His mind, as the picture arose before him, involuntarily conceived, and his tongue involuntarily uttered--but in a tone how different from his usual dogmatical precision!--arguments for the course of conduct likely to ensure his child's safety. "Daughter," he said, "I did not say that your path was free from stumbling--and, questionless, this act may be in the opinion of some a transgression, since he who beareth witness unlawfully, and against his conscience, doth in some sort bear false witness against his neighbour. Yet in matters of compliance, the guilt lieth not in the compliance sae muckle, as in the mind and conscience of him that doth comply; and, therefore, although my testimony hath not been spared upon public defections, I haena felt freedom to separate mysell from the communion of many who have been clear to hear those ministers who have taken the fatal indulgence because they might get good of them, though I could not." When David had proceeded thus far, his conscience reproved him, that he might be indirectly undermining the purity of his daughter's faith, and smoothing the way for her falling off from strictness of principle. He, therefore, suddenly stopped, and changed his tone:--"Jeanie, I perceive that our vile affections,--so I call them in respect of doing the will of our Father,--cling too heavily to me in this hour of trying sorrow, to permit me to keep sight of my ain duty, or to airt you to yours. I will speak nae mair anent this overtrying matter--Jeanie, if ye can, wi' God and gude conscience, speak in favour of this puir unhappy"--(here his voice faltered)--"She is your sister in the flesh--worthless and castaway as she is, she is the daughter of a saint in heaven, that was a mother to you, Jeanie, in place of your ain--but if ye arena free in conscience to speak for her in the court of judicature, follow your conscience, Jeanie, and let God's will be done." After this adjuration he left the apartment, and his daughter remained in a state of great distress and perplexity. It would have been no small addition to the sorrows of David Deans, even in this extremity of suffering, had he known that his daughter was applying the casuistical arguments which he had been using, not in the sense of a permission to follow her own opinion on a dubious and disputed point of controversy, but rather as an encouragement to transgress one of those divine commandments which Christians of all sects and denominations unite in holding most sacred. "Can this be?" said Jeanie, as the door closed on her father--"Can these be his words that I have heard, or has the Enemy taken his voice and features to give weight unto the counsel which causeth to perish?--a sister's life, and a father pointing out how to save it!--O God, deliver me!--this is a fearfu' temptation." Roaming from thought to thought, she at one time imagined her father understood the ninth commandment literally, as prohibiting false witness _against_ our neighbour, without extending the denunciation against falsehood uttered _in favour_ of the criminal. But her clear and unsophisticated power of discriminating between good and evil, instantly rejected an interpretation so limited, and so unworthy of the Author of the law. She remained in a state of the most agitating terror and uncertainty--afraid to communicate her thoughts freely to her father, lest she should draw forth an opinion with which she could not comply,--wrung with distress on her sister's account, rendered the more acute by reflecting that the means of saving her were in her power, but were such as her conscience prohibited her from using,--tossed, in short, like a vessel in an open roadstead during a storm, and, like that vessel, resting on one only sure cable and anchor,--faith in Providence, and a resolution to discharge her duty. Butler's affection and strong sense of religion would have been her principal support in these distressing circumstances, but he was still under restraint, which did not permit him to come to St. Leonard's Crags; and her distresses were of a nature, which, with her indifferent habits of scholarship, she found it impossible to express in writing. She was therefore compelled to trust for guidance to her own unassisted sense of what was right or wrong. It was not the least of Jeanie's distresses, that, although she hoped and believed her sister to be innocent, she had not the means of receiving that assurance from her own mouth. The double-dealing of Ratcliffe in the matter of Robertson had not prevented his being rewarded, as double-dealers frequently have been, with favour and preferment. Sharpitlaw, who found in him something of a kindred genius, had been intercessor in his behalf with the magistrates, and the circumstance of his having voluntarily remained in the prison, when the doors were forced by the mob, would have made it a hard measure to take the life which he had such easy means of saving. He received a full pardon; and soon afterwards, James Ratcliffe, the greatest thief and housebreaker in Scotland, was, upon the faith, perhaps, of an ancient proverb, selected as a person to be entrusted with the custody of other delinquents. When Ratcliffe was thus placed in a confidential situation, he was repeatedly applied to by the sapient Saddletree and others, who took some interest in the Deans family, to procure an interview between the sisters; but the magistrates, who were extremely anxious for the apprehension of Robertson, had given strict orders to the contrary, hoping that, by keeping them separate, they might, from the one or the other, extract some information respecting that fugitive. On this subject Jeanie had nothing to tell them. She informed Mr. Middleburgh, that she knew nothing of Robertson, except having met him that night by appointment to give her some advice respecting her sister's concern, the purport of which, she said, was betwixt God and her conscience. Of his motions, purposes, or plans, past, present, or future, she knew nothing, and so had nothing to communicate. Effie was equally silent, though from a different cause. It was in vain that they offered a commutation and alleviation of her punishment, and even a free pardon, if she would confess what she knew of her lover. She answered only with tears; unless, when at times driven into pettish sulkiness by the persecution of the interrogators, she made them abrupt and disrespectful answers. At length, after her trial had been delayed for many weeks, in hopes she might be induced to speak out on a subject infinitely more interesting to the magistracy than her own guilt or innocence, their patience was worn out, and even Mr. Middleburgh finding no ear lent to farther intercession in her behalf, the day was fixed for the trial to proceed. It was now, and not sooner, that Sharpitlaw, recollecting his promise to Effie Deans, or rather being dinned into compliance by the unceasing remonstrances of Mrs. Saddletree, who was his next-door neighbour, and who declared it was heathen cruelty to keep the twa brokenhearted creatures separate, issued the important mandate, permitting them to see each other. On the evening which preceded the eventful day of trial, Jeanie was permitted to see her sister--an awful interview, and occurring at a most distressing crisis. This, however, formed a part of the bitter cup which she was doomed to drink, to atone for crimes and follies to which she had no accession; and at twelve o'clock noon, being the time appointed for admission to the jail, she went to meet, for the first time for several months, her guilty, erring, and most miserable sister, in that abode of guilt, error, and utter misery. CHAPTER NINETEENTH. Sweet sister, let me live! What sin you do to save a brother's life, Nature dispenses with the deed so far, That it becomes a virtue. Measure for Measure. Jeanie Deans was admitted into the jail by Ratcliffe. This fellow, as void of shame as of honesty, as he opened the now trebly secured door, asked her, with a leer which made her shudder, "whether she remembered him?" A half-pronounced and timid "No," was her answer. "What! not remember moonlight, and Muschat's Cairn, and Rob and Rat?" said he, with the same sneer;--"Your memory needs redding up, my jo." If Jeanie's distresses had admitted of aggravation, it must have been to find her sister under the charge of such a profligate as this man. He was not, indeed, without something of good to balance so much that was evil in his character and habits. In his misdemeanours he had never been bloodthirsty or cruel; and in his present occupation, he had shown himself, in a certain degree, accessible to touches of humanity. But these good qualities were unknown to Jeanie, who, remembering the scene at Muschat's Cairn, could scarce find voice to acquaint him, that she had an order from Bailie Middleburgh, permitting her to see her sister. "I ken that fa' weel, my bonny doo; mair by token, I have a special charge to stay in the ward with you a' the time ye are thegither." "Must that be sae?" asked Jeanie, with an imploring voice. "Hout, ay, hinny," replied the turnkey; "and what the waur will you and your tittie be of Jim Ratcliffe hearing what ye hae to say to ilk other?--Deil a word ye'll say that will gar him ken your kittle sex better than he kens them already; and another thing is, that if ye dinna speak o' breaking the Tolbooth, deil a word will I tell ower, either to do ye good or ill." Thus saying, Ratcliffe marshalled her the way to the apartment where Effie was confined. Shame, fear, and grief, had contended for mastery in the poor prisoner's bosom during the whole morning, while she had looked forward to this meeting; but when the door opened, all gave way to a confused and strange feeling that had a tinge of joy in it, as, throwing herself on her sister's neck, she ejaculated, "My dear Jeanie!--my dear Jeanie! it's lang since I hae seen ye." Jeanie returned the embrace with an earnestness that partook almost of rapture, but it was only a flitting emotion, like a sunbeam unexpectedly penetrating betwixt the clouds of a tempest, and obscured almost as soon as visible. The sisters walked together to the side of the pallet bed, and sate down side by side, took hold of each other's hands, and looked each other in the face, but without speaking a word. In this posture they remained for a minute, while the gleam of joy gradually faded from their features, and gave way to the most intense expression, first of melancholy, and then of agony, till, throwing themselves again into each other's arms, they, to use the language of Scripture, lifted up their voices, and wept bitterly. Even the hardhearted turnkey, who had spent his life in scenes calculated to stifle both conscience and feeling, could not witness this scene without a touch of human sympathy. It was shown in a trifling action, but which had more delicacy in it than seemed to belong to Ratcliffe's character and station. The unglazed window of the miserable chamber was open, and the beams of a bright sun fell right upon the bed where the sufferers were seated. With a gentleness that had something of reverence in it, Ratcliffe partly closed the shutter, and seemed thus to throw a veil over a scene so sorrowful. "Ye are ill, Effie," were the first words Jeanie could utter; "ye are very ill." "O, what wad I gie to be ten times waur, Jeanie!" was the reply--"what wad I gie to be cauld dead afore the ten o'clock bell the morn! And our father--but I am his bairn nae langer now--O, I hae nae friend left in the warld!--O, that I were lying dead at my mother's side, in Newbattle kirkyard!" "Hout, lassie," said Ratcliffe, willing to show the interest which he absolutely felt, "dinna be sae dooms doon-hearted as a' that; there's mony a tod hunted that's no killed. Advocate Langtale has brought folk through waur snappers than a' this, and there's no a cleverer agent than Nichil Novit e'er drew a bill of suspension. Hanged or unhanged, they are weel aff has sic an agent and counsel; ane's sure o' fair play. Ye are a bonny lass, too, an ye wad busk up your cockernony a bit; and a bonny lass will find favour wi' judge and jury, when they would strap up a grewsome carle like me for the fifteenth part of a flea's hide and tallow, d--n them." To this homely strain of consolation the mourners returned no answer; indeed, they were so much lost in their own sorrows as to have become insensible of Ratcliffe's presence. "O Effie," said her elder sister, "how could you conceal your situation from me? O woman, had I deserved this at your hand?--had ye spoke but ae word--sorry we might hae been, and shamed we might hae been, but this awfu' dispensation had never come ower us." "And what gude wad that hae dune?" answered the prisoner. "Na, na, Jeanie, a' was ower when ance I forgot what I promised when I faulded down the leaf of my Bible. See," she said, producing the sacred volume, "the book opens aye at the place o' itsell. O see, Jeanie, what a fearfu' Scripture!" Jeanie took her sister's Bible, and found that the fatal mark was made at this impressive text in the book of Job: "He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone. And mine hope hath he removed like a tree." "Isna that ower true a doctrine?" said the prisoner "Isna my crown, my honour, removed? And what am I but a poor, wasted, wan-thriven tree, dug up by the roots, and flung out to waste in the highway, that man and beast may tread it under foot? I thought o' the bonny bit them that our father rooted out o' the yard last May, when it had a' the flush o' blossoms on it; and then it lay in the court till the beasts had trod them a' to pieces wi' their feet. I little thought, when I was wae for the bit silly green bush and its flowers, that I was to gang the same gate mysell." "O, if ye had spoken ae word," again sobbed Jeanie,--"if I were free to swear that ye had said but ae word of how it stude wi' ye, they couldna hae touched your life this day." "Could they na?" said Effie, with something like awakened interest--for life is dear even to those who feel it is a burden--"Wha tauld ye that, Jeanie?" "It was ane that kend what he was saying weel eneugh," replied Jeanie, who had a natural reluctance at mentioning even the name of her sister's seducer. "Wha was it?--I conjure you to tell me," said Effie, seating herself upright.--"Wha could tak interest in sic a cast-by as I am now?--Was it--was it _him?_" "Hout," said Ratcliffe, "what signifies keeping the poor lassie in a swither? I'se uphaud it's been Robertson that learned ye that doctrine when ye saw him at Muschat's Cairn." "Was it him?" said Effie, catching eagerly at his words--"was it him, Jeanie, indeed?--O, I see it was him--poor lad, and I was thinking his heart was as hard as the nether millstane--and him in sic danger on his ain part--poor George!" Somewhat indignant at this burst of tender feeling towards the author of her misery, Jeanie could not help exclaiming--"O Effie, how can ye speak that gate of sic a man as that?" "We maun forgie our enemies, ye ken," said poor Effie, with a timid look and a subdued voice; for her conscience told her what a different character the feelings with which she regarded her seducer bore, compared with the Christian charity under which she attempted to veil it. "And ye hae suffered a' this for him, and ye can think of loving him still?" said her sister, in a voice betwixt pity and blame. "Love him!" answered Effie--"If I hadna loved as woman seldom loves, I hadna been within these wa's this day; and trow ye, that love sic as mine is lightly forgotten?--Na, na--ye may hew down the tree, but ye canna change its bend--And, O Jeanie, if ye wad do good to me at this moment, tell me every word that he said, and whether he was sorry for poor Effie or no!" "What needs I tell ye onything about it?" said Jeanie. "Ye may be sure he had ower muckle to do to save himsell, to speak lang or muckle about ony body beside." [Illustration: Jeanie and Effie--304] "That's no true, Jeanie, though a saunt had said it," replied Effie, with a sparkle of her former lively and irritable temper. "But ye dinna ken, though I do, how far he pat his life in venture to save mine." And looking at Ratcliffe, she checked herself and was silent. "I fancy," said Ratcliffe, with one of his familiar sneers, "the lassie thinks that naebody has een but hersell--Didna I see when Gentle Geordie was seeking to get other folk out of the Tolbooth forby Jock Porteous?--but ye are of my mind, hinny--better sit and rue, than flit and rue--ye needna look in my face sae amazed. I ken mair things than that, maybe." "O my God! my God!" said Effie, springing up and throwing herself down on her knees before him--"D'ye ken where they hae putten my bairn?--O my bairn! my bairn! the poor sackless innocent new-born wee ane--bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh!--O man, if ye wad e'er deserve a portion in Heaven, or a brokenhearted creature's blessing upon earth, tell me where they hae put my bairn--the sign of my shame, and the partner of my suffering! tell me wha has taen't away, or what they hae dune wi't?" "Hout tout," said the turnkey, endeavouring to extricate himself from the firm grasp with which she held him, "that's taking me at my word wi' a witness--Bairn, quo' she? How the deil suld I ken onything of your bairn, huzzy? Ye maun ask that of auld Meg Murdockson, if ye dinna ken ower muckle about it yoursell." As his answer destroyed the wild and vague hope which had suddenly gleamed upon her, the unhappy prisoner let go her hold of his coat, and fell with her face on the pavement of the apartment in a strong convulsion fit. Jeanie Deans possessed, with her excellently clear understanding, the concomitant advantage of promptitude of spirit, even in the extremity of distress. She did not suffer herself to be overcome by her own feelings of exquisite sorrow, but instantly applied herself to her sister's relief, with the readiest remedies which circumstances afforded; and which, to do Ratcliffe justice, he showed himself anxious to suggest, and alert in procuring. He had even the delicacy to withdraw to the farthest corner of the room, so as to render his official attendance upon them as little intrusive as possible, when Effie was composed enough again to resume her conference with her sister. The prisoner once more, in the most earnest and broken tones, conjured Jeanie to tell her the particulars of the conference with Robertson, and Jeanie felt it was impossible to refuse her this gratification. "Do ye mind," she said, "Effie, when ye were in the fever before we left Woodend, and how angry your mother, that's now in a better place, was wi' me for gieing ye milk and water to drink, because ye grat for it? Ye were a bairn then, and ye are a woman now, and should ken better than ask what canna but hurt you--But come weal or woe, I canna refuse ye onything that ye ask me wi' the tear in your ee." Again Effie threw herself into her arms, and kissed her cheek and forehead, murmuring, "O, if ye kend how lang it is since I heard his name mentioned?--if ye but kend how muckle good it does me but to ken onything o' him, that's like goodness or kindness, ye wadna wonder that I wish to hear o' him!" Jeanie sighed, and commenced her narrative of all that had passed betwixt Robertson and her, making it as brief as possible. Effie listened in breathless anxiety, holding her sister's hand in hers, and keeping her eye fixed upon her face, as if devouring every word she uttered. The interjections of "Poor fellow,"--"Poor George," which escaped in whispers, and betwixt sighs, were the only sounds with which she interrupted the story. When it was finished she made a long pause. "And this was his advice?" were the first words she uttered. "Just sic as I hae tell'd ye," replied her sister. "And he wanted you to say something to yon folks, that wad save my young life?" "He wanted," answered Jeanie, "that I suld be man-sworn." "And you tauld him," said Effie, "that ye wadna hear o' coming between me and the death that I am to die, and me no aughten year auld yet?" "I told him," replied Jeanie, who now trembled at the turn which her sister's reflection seemed about to take, "that I daured na swear to an untruth." "And what d'ye ca' an untruth?" said Effie, again showing a touch of her former spirit--"Ye are muckle to blame, lass, if ye think a mother would, or could, murder her ain bairn--Murder!--I wad hae laid down my life just to see a blink o' its ee!" "I do believe," said Jeanie, "that ye are as innocent of sic a purpose as the new-born babe itsell." "I am glad ye do me that justice," said Effie, haughtily; "ifs whiles the faut of very good folk like you, Jeanie, that, they think a' the rest of the warld are as bad as the warst temptations can make them." "I didna deserve this frae ye, Effie," said her sister, sobbing, and feeling at once the injustice of the reproach, and compassion for the state of mind which dictated it. "Maybe no, sister," said Effie. "But ye are angry because I love Robertson--How can I help loving him, that loves me better than body and soul baith?--Here he put his life in a niffer, to break the prison to let me out; and sure am I, had it stude wi' him as it stands wi' you"--Here she paused and was silent. "O, if it stude wi' me to save ye wi' risk of my life!" said Jeanie. "Ay, lass," said her sister, "that's lightly said, but no sae lightly credited, frae ane that winna ware a word for me; and if it be a wrang word, ye'll hae time eneugh to repent o't." "But that word is a grievous sin, and it's a deeper offence when it's a sin wilfully and presumptuously committed." "Weel, weel, Jeanie," said Effie, "I mind a' about the sins o' presumption in the questions--we'll speak nae mair about this matter, and ye may save your breath to say your carritch and for me, I'll soon hae nae breath to waste on onybody." "I must needs say," interposed Ratcliffe, "that it's d--d hard, when three words of your mouth would give the girl the chance to nick Moll Blood,* that you make such scrupling about rapping** to them. D--n me, if they would take me, if I would not rap to all what d'ye callums--Hyssop's Fables, for her life--I am us'd to't, b--t me, for less matters. Why, I have smacked calf-skin*** fifty times in England for a keg of brandy." * The gallows. ** Swearing. *** Kissed the book. "Never speak mair o't," said the prisoner. "It's just as weel as it is--and gude-day, sister; ye keep Mr. Ratcliffe waiting on--Ye'll come back and see me, I reckon, before"--here she stopped and became deadly pale. "And are we to part in this way," said Jeanie, "and you in sic deadly peril? O Effie, look but up, and say what ye wad hae me to do, and I could find in my heart amaist to say that I wad do't." "No, Jeanie," replied her sister after an effort, "I am better minded now. At my best, I was never half sae gude as ye were, and what for suld you begin to mak yoursell waur to save me, now that I am no worth saving? God knows, that in my sober mind, I wadna wuss ony living creature to do a wrang thing to save my life. I might have fled frae this Tolbooth on that awfu' night wi' ane wad hae carried me through the warld, and friended me, and fended for me. But I said to them, let life gang when gude fame is gane before it. But this lang imprisonment has broken my spirit, and I am whiles sair left to mysell, and then I wad gie the Indian mines of gold and diamonds, just for life and breath--for I think, Jeanie, I have such roving fits as I used to hae in the fever; but, instead of the fiery een and wolves, and Widow Butler's bullseg, that I used to see spieling upon my bed, I am thinking now about a high, black gibbet, and me standing up, and such seas of faces all looking up at poor Effie Deans, and asking if it be her that George Robertson used to call the Lily of St. Leonard's. And then they stretch out their faces, and make mouths, and girn at me, and whichever way I look, I see a face laughing like Meg Murdockson, when she tauld me I had seen the last of my wean. God preserve us, Jeanie, that carline has a fearsome face!" She clapped her hands before her eyes as she uttered this exclamation, as if to secure herself against seeing the fearful object she had alluded to. Jeanie Deans remained with her sister for two hours, during which she endeavoured, if possible, to extract something from her that might be serviceable in her exculpation. But she had nothing to say beyond what she had declared on her first examination, with the purport of which the reader will be made acquainted in proper time and place. "They wadna believe her," she said, "and she had naething mair to tell them." At length, Ratcliffe, though reluctantly, informed the sisters that there was a necessity that they should part. "Mr. Novit," he said, "was to see the prisoner, and maybe Mr. Langtale too. Langtale likes to look at a bonny lass, whether in prison or out o' prison." Reluctantly, therefore, and slowly, after many a tear, and many an embrace, Jeanie retired from the apartment, and heard its jarring bolts turned upon the dear being from whom she was separated. Somewhat familiarised now even with her rude conductor, she offered him a small present in money, with a request he would do what he could for her sister's accommodation. To her surprise, Ratcliffe declined the fee. "I wasna bloody when I was on the pad," he said, "and I winna be greedy--that is, beyond what's right and reasonable--now that I am in the lock.--Keep the siller; and for civility, your sister sall hae sic as I can bestow; but I hope you'll think better on it, and rap an oath for her--deil a hair ill there is in it, if ye are rapping again the crown. I kend a worthy minister, as gude a man, bating the deed they deposed him for, as ever ye heard claver in a pu'pit, that rapped to a hogshead of pigtail tobacco, just for as muckle as filled his spleuchan.* * Tobacco-pouch. But maybe ye are keeping your ain counsel--weel, weel, there's nae harm in that. As for your sister, I'se see that she gets her meat clean and warm, and I'll try to gar her lie down and take a sleep after dinner, for deil a ee she'll close the night. I hae gude experience of these matters. The first night is aye the warst o't. I hae never heard o' ane that sleepit the night afore trial, but of mony a ane that sleepit as sound as a tap the night before their necks were straughted. And it's nae wonder--the warst may be tholed when it's kend--Better a finger aff as aye wagging." CHAPTER TWENTIETH. Yet though thou mayst be dragg'd in scorn To yonder ignominious tree, Thou shalt not want one faithful friend To share the cruel fates' decree. Jemmy Dawson. After spending the greater part of the morning in his devotions (for his benevolent neighbours had kindly insisted upon discharging his task of ordinary labour), David Deans entered the apartment when the breakfast meal was prepared. His eyes were involuntarily cast down, for he was afraid to look at Jeanie, uncertain as he was whether she might feel herself at liberty, with a good conscience, to attend the Court of Justiciary that day, to give the evidence which he understood that she possessed, in order to her sister's exculpation. At length, after a minute of apprehensive hesitation, he looked at her dress to discover whether it seemed to be in her contemplation to go abroad that morning. Her apparel was neat and plain, but such as conveyed no exact intimation of her intentions to go abroad. She had exchanged her usual garb for morning labour, for one something inferior to that with which, as her best, she was wont to dress herself for church, or any more rare occasion of going into society. Her sense taught her, that it was respectful to be decent in her apparel on such an occasion, while her feelings induced her to lay aside the use of the very few and simple personal ornaments, which, on other occasions, she permitted herself to wear. So that there occurred nothing in her external appearance which could mark out to her father, with anything like certainty, her intentions on this occasion. The preparations for their humble meal were that morning made in vain. The father and daughter sat, each assuming the appearance of eating, when the other's eyes were turned to them, and desisting from the effort with disgust, when the affectionate imposture seemed no longer necessary. At length these moments of constraint were removed. The sound of St. Giles's heavy toll announced the hour previous to the commencement of the trial; Jeanie arose, and with a degree of composure for which she herself could not account, assumed her plaid, and made her other preparations for a distant walking. It was a strange contrast between the firmness of her demeanour, and the vacillation and cruel uncertainty of purpose indicated in all her father's motions; and one unacquainted with both could scarcely have supposed that the former was, in her ordinary habits of life, a docile, quiet, gentle, and even timid country maiden, while her father, with a mind naturally proud and strong, and supported by religious opinions of a stern, stoical, and unyielding character, had in his time undergone and withstood the most severe hardships, and the most imminent peril, without depression of spirit, or subjugation of his constancy. The secret of this difference was, that Jeanie's mind had already anticipated the line of conduct which she must adopt, with all its natural and necessary consequences; while her father, ignorant of every other circumstance, tormented himself with imagining what the one sister might say or swear, or what effect her testimony might have upon the awful event of the trial. He watched his daughter, with a faltering and indecisive look, until she looked back upon him, with a look of unutterable anguish, as she was about to leave the apartment. "My dear lassie," said he, "I will." His action, hastily and confusedly searching for his worsted mittans* and staff, showed his purpose of accompanying her, though his tongue failed distinctly to announce it. * A kind of worsted gloves, used by the lower orders. "Father," said Jeanie, replying rather to his action than his words, "ye had better not." "In the strength of my God," answered Deans, assuming firmness, "I will go forth." And, taking his daughter's arm under his, he began to walk from the door with a step so hasty, that she was almost unable to keep up with him. A trifling circumstance, but which marked the perturbed state of his mind, checked his course. "Your bonnet, father?" said Jeanie, who observed he had come out with his grey hairs uncovered. He turned back with a slight blush on his cheek, being ashamed to have been detected in an omission which indicated so much mental confusion, assumed his large blue Scottish bonnet, and with a step slower, but more composed, as if the circumstance, had obliged him to summon up his resolution, and collect his scattered ideas, again placed his daughter's arm under his, and resumed the way to Edinburgh. The courts of justice were then, and are still, held in what is called the Parliament Close, or, according to modern phrase, Parliament Square, and occupied the buildings intended for the accommodation of the Scottish Estates. This edifice, though in an imperfect and corrupted style of architecture, had then a grave, decent, and, as it were, a judicial aspect, which was at least entitled to respect from its antiquity. For which venerable front, I observed, on my last occasional visit to the metropolis, that modern taste had substituted, at great apparent expense, a pile so utterly inconsistent with every monument of antiquity around, and in itself so clumsy at the same time and fantastic, that it may be likened to the decorations of Tom Errand the porter, in the _Trip to the Jubilee,_ when he appears bedizened with the tawdry finery of Beau Clincher. _Sed transeat cum caeteris erroribus._ The small quadrangle, or Close, if we may presume still to give it that appropriate, though antiquated title, which at Lichfield, Salisbury, and elsewhere, is properly applied to designate the enclosure adjacent to a cathedral, already evinced tokens of the fatal scene which was that day to be acted. The soldiers of the City Guard were on their posts, now enduring, and now rudely repelling with the butts of their muskets, the motley crew who thrust each other forward, to catch a glance at the unfortunate object of trial, as she should pass from the adjacent prison to the Court in which her fate was to be determined. All must have occasionally observed, with disgust, the apathy with which the vulgar gaze on scenes of this nature, and how seldom, unless when their sympathies are called forth by some striking and extraordinary circumstance, the crowd evince any interest deeper than that of callous, unthinking bustle, and brutal curiosity. They laugh, jest, quarrel, and push each other to and fro, with the same unfeeling indifference as if they were assembled for some holiday sport, or to see an idle procession. Occasionally, however, this demeanour, so natural to the degraded populace of a large town, is exchanged for a temporary touch of human affections; and so it chanced on the present occasion. When Deans and his daughter presented themselves in the Close, and endeavoured to make their way forward to the door of the Court-house, they became involved in the mob, and subject, of course, to their insolence. As Deans repelled with some force the rude pushes which he received on all sides, his figure and antiquated dress caught the attention of the rabble, who often show an intuitive sharpness in ascribing the proper character from external appearance,-- "Ye're welcome, whigs, Frae Bothwell briggs," sung one fellow (for the mob of Edinburgh were at that time jacobitically disposed, probably because that was the line of sentiment most diametrically opposite to existing authority). "Mess David Williamson, Chosen of twenty, Ran up the pu'pit stair, And sang Killiecrankie," chanted a siren, whose profession might be guessed by her appearance. A tattered caidie, or errand-porter, whom David Deans had jostled in his attempt to extricate himself from the vicinity of these scorners, exclaimed in a strong north-country tone, "Ta deil ding out her Cameronian een--what gies her titles to dunch gentlemans about?" "Make room for the ruling elder," said yet another; "he comes to see a precious sister glorify God in the Grassmarket!" "Whisht; shame's in ye, sirs," said the voice of a man very loudly, which, as quickly sinking, said in a low but distinct tone, "It's her father and sister." All fell back to make way for the sufferers; and all, even the very rudest and most profligate, were struck with shame and silence. In the space thus abandoned to them by the mob, Deans stood, holding his daughter by the hand, and said to her, with a countenance strongly and sternly expressive of his internal emotion, "Ye hear with your ears, and ye see with your eyes, where and to whom the backslidings and defections of professors are ascribed by the scoffers. Not to themselves alone, but to the kirk of which they are members, and to its blessed and invisible Head. Then, weel may we take wi' patience our share and portion of this outspreading reproach." The man who had spoken, no other than our old friend, Dumbiedikes, whose mouth, like that of the prophet's ass, had been opened by the emergency of the case, now joined them, and, with his usual taciturnity, escorted them into the Court-house. No opposition was offered to their entrance either by the guards or doorkeepers; and it is even said that one of the latter refused a shilling of civility-money tendered him by the Laird of Dumbiedikes, who was of opinion that "siller wad make a' easy." But this last incident wants confirmation. Admitted within the precincts of the Court-house, they found the usual number of busy office-bearers, and idle loiterers, who attend on these scenes by choice, or from duty. Burghers gaped and stared; young lawyers sauntered, sneered, and laughed, as in the pit of the theatre; while others apart sat on a bench retired, and reasoned highly, _inter apices juris,_ on the doctrines of constructive crime, and the true import of the statute. The bench was prepared for the arrival of the judges. The jurors were in attendance. The crown-counsel, employed in looking over their briefs and notes of evidence, looked grave, and whispered with each other. They occupied one side of a large table placed beneath the bench; on the other sat the advocates, whom the humanity of the Scottish law (in this particular more liberal than that of the sister-country) not only permits, but enjoins, to appear and assist with their advice and skill all persons under trial. Mr. Nichil Novit was seen actively instructing the counsel for the panel (so the prisoner is called in Scottish law-phraseology), busy, bustling, and important. When they entered the Court-room, Deans asked the Laird, in a tremulous whisper, "Where will _she_ sit?" Dumbiedikes whispered Novit, who pointed to a vacant space at the bar, fronting the judges, and was about to conduct Deans towards it. "No!" he said; "I cannot sit by her--I cannot own her--not as yet, at least--I will keep out of her sight, and turn mine own eyes elsewhere--better for us baith." Saddletree, whose repeated interference with the counsel had procured him one or two rebuffs, and a special request that he would concern himself with his own matters, now saw with pleasure an opportunity of playing the person of importance. He bustled up to the poor old man, and proceeded to exhibit his consequence, by securing, through his interest with the bar-keepers and macers, a seat for Deans, in a situation where he was hidden from the general eye by the projecting corner of the bench. "It's gude to have a friend at court," he said, continuing his heartless harangues to the passive auditor, who neither heard nor replied to them; "few folk but mysell could hae sorted ye out a seat like this--the Lords will be here incontinent, and proceed _instanter_ to trial. They wunna fence the Court as they do at the Circuit--the High Court of Justiciary is aye fenced.--But, Lord's sake, what's this o't--Jeanie, ye are a cited witness--Macer, this lass is a witness--she maun be enclosed--she maun on nae account be at large.--Mr. Novit, suldna Jeanie Deans be enclosed?" Novit answered in the affirmative, and offered to conduct Jeanie to the apartment, where, according to the scrupulous practice of the Scottish Court, the witnesses remain in readiness to be called into Court to give evidence; and separated, at the same time, from all who might influence their testimony, or give them information concerning that which was passing upon the trial. "Is this necessary?" said Jeanie, still reluctant to quit her father's hand. "A matter of absolute needcessity," said Saddletree, "wha ever heard of witnesses no being enclosed?" "It is really a matter of necessity," said the younger counsellor, retained for her sister; and Jeanie reluctantly followed the macer of the Court to the place appointed. "This, Mr. Deans," said Saddletree, "is ca'd sequestering a witness; but it's clean different (whilk maybe ye wadna fund out o' yoursell) frae sequestering ane's estate or effects, as in cases of bankruptcy. I hae aften been sequestered as a witness, for the Sheriff is in the use whiles to cry me in to witness the declarations at precognitions, and so is Mr. Sharpitlaw; but I was ne'er like to be sequestered o' land and gudes but ance, and that was lang syne, afore I was married. But whisht, whisht! here's the Court coming." As he spoke, the five Lords of Justiciary, in their long robes of scarlet, faced with white, and preceded by their mace-bearer, entered with the usual formalities, and took their places upon the bench of judgment. The audience rose to receive them; and the bustle occasioned by their entrance was hardly composed, when a great noise and confusion of persons struggling, and forcibly endeavouring to enter at the doors of the Court-room, and of the galleries, announced that the prisoner was about to be placed at the bar. This tumult takes place when the doors, at first only opened to those either having right to be present, or to the better and more qualified ranks, are at length laid open to all whose curiosity induces them to be present on the occasion. With inflamed countenances and dishevelled dresses, struggling with, and sometimes tumbling over each other, in rushed the rude multitude, while a few soldiers, forming, as it were, the centre of the tide, could scarce, with all their efforts, clear a passage for the prisoner to the place which she was to occupy. By the authority of the Court, and the exertions of its officers, the tumult among the spectators was at length appeased, and the unhappy girl brought forward, and placed betwixt two sentinels with drawn bayonets, as a prisoner at the bar, where she was to abide her deliverance for good or evil, according to the issue of her trial. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. We have strict statutes, and most biting laws-- The needful bits and curbs for headstrong steeds-- Which, for these fourteen years, we have let sleep, Like to an o'ergrown lion in a cave, That goes not out to prey. Measure for Measure. "Euphemia Deans," said the presiding Judge, in an accent in which pity was blended with dignity, "stand up and listen to the criminal indictment now to be preferred against you." The unhappy girl, who had been stupified by the confusion through which the guards had forced a passage, cast a bewildered look on the multitude of faces around her, which seemed to tapestry, as it were, the walls, in one broad slope from the ceiling to the floor, with human countenances, and instinctively obeyed a command, which rung in her ears like the trumpet of the judgment-day. "Put back your hair, Effie," said one of the macers. For her beautiful and abundant tresses of long fair hair, which, according to the costume of the country, unmarried women were not allowed to cover with any sort of cap, and which, alas! Effie dared no longer confine with the snood or riband, which implied purity of maiden-fame, now hung unbound and dishevelled over her face, and almost concealed her features. On receiving this hint from the attendant, the unfortunate young woman, with a hasty, trembling, and apparently mechanical compliance, shaded back from her face her luxuriant locks, and showed to the whole court, excepting one individual, a countenance, which, though pale and emaciated, was so lovely amid its agony, that it called forth a universal murmur of compassion and sympathy. Apparently the expressive sound of human feeling recalled the poor girl from the stupor of fear, which predominated at first over every other sensation, and awakened her to the no less painful sense of shame and exposure attached to her present situation. Her eye, which had at first glanced wildly around, was turned on the ground; her cheek, at first so deadly pale, began gradually to be overspread with a faint blush, which increased so fast, that, when in agony of shame she strove to conceal her face, her temples, her brow, her neck, and all that her slender fingers and small palms could not cover, became of the deepest crimson. All marked and were moved by these changes, excepting one. It was old Deans, who, motionless in his seat, and concealed, as we have said, by the corner of the bench, from seeing or being seen, did nevertheless keep his eyes firmly fixed on the ground, as if determined that, by no possibility whatever, would he be an ocular witness of the shame of his house. "Ichabod!" he said to himself--"Ichabod! my glory is departed!" While these reflections were passing through his mind, the indictment, which set forth in technical form the crime of which the panel stood accused, was read as usual, and the prisoner was asked if she was Guilty, or Not Guilty. "Not guilty of my poor bairn's death," said Effie Deans, in an accent corresponding in plaintive softness of tone to the beauty of her features, and which was not heard by the audience without emotion. The presiding Judge next directed the counsel to plead to the relevancy; that is, to state on either part the arguments in point of law, and evidence in point of fact, against and in favour of the criminal; after which it is the form of the Court to pronounce a preliminary judgment, sending the cause to the cognisance of the jury, or assize. The counsel for the crown briefly stated the frequency of the crime of infanticide, which had given rise to the special statute under which the panel stood indicted. He mentioned the various instances, many of them marked with circumstances of atrocity, which had at length induced the King's Advocate, though with great reluctance, to make the experiment, whether, by strictly enforcing the Act of Parliament which had been made to prevent such enormities, their occurrence might be prevented. "He expected," he said, "to be able to establish by witnesses, as well as by the declaration of the panel herself, that she was in the state described by the statute. According to his information, the panel had communicated her pregnancy to no one, nor did she allege in her own declaration that she had done so. This secrecy was the first requisite in support of the indictment. The same declaration admitted, that she had borne a male child, in circumstances which gave but too much reason to believe it had died by the hands, or at least with the knowledge or consent, of the unhappy mother. It was not, however, necessary for him to bring positive proof that the panel was accessory to the murder, nay, nor even to prove, that the child was murdered at all. It was sufficient to support the indictment, that it could not be found. According to the stern, but necessary severity of this statute, she who should conceal her pregnancy, who should omit to call that assistance which is most necessary on such occasions, was held already to have meditated the death of her offspring, as an event most likely to be the consequence of her culpable and cruel concealment. And if, under such circumstances, she could not alternatively show by proof that the infant had died a natural death, or produce it still in life, she must, under the construction of the law, be held to have murdered it, and suffer death accordingly." The counsel for the prisoner, Mr. Fairbrother, a man of considerable fame in his profession, did not pretend directly to combat the arguments of the King's Advocate. He began by lamenting that his senior at the bar, Mr. Langtale, had been suddenly called to the county of which he was sheriff, and that he had been applied to, on short warning, to give the panel his assistance in this interesting case. He had had little time, he said, to make up for his inferiority to his learned brother by long and minute research; and he was afraid he might give a specimen of his incapacity, by being compelled to admit the accuracy of the indictment under the statute. "It was enough for their Lordships," he observed, "to know that such was the law, and he admitted the advocate had a right to call for the usual interlocutor of relevancy." But he stated, "that when he came to establish his case by proof, he trusted to make out circumstances which would satisfactorily elide the charge in the libel. His client's story was a short, but most melancholy one. She was bred up in the strictest tenets of religion and virtue, the daughter of a worthy and conscientious person, who, in evil times, had established a character for courage and religion, by becoming a sufferer for conscience' sake." David Deans gave a convulsive start at hearing himself thus mentioned, and then resumed the situation, in which, with his face stooped against his hands, and both resting against the corner of the elevated bench on which the Judges sate, he had hitherto listened to the procedure in the trial. The Whig lawyers seemed to be interested; the Tories put up their lip. "Whatever may be our difference of opinion," resumed the lawyer, whose business it was to carry his whole audience with him if possible, "concerning the peculiar tenets of these people" (here Deans groaned deeply), "it is impossible to deny them the praise of sound, and even rigid morals, or the merit of training up their children in the fear of God; and yet it was the daughter of such a person whom a jury would shortly be called upon, in the absence of evidence, and upon mere presumptions, to convict of a crime more properly belonging to a heathen, or a savage, than to a Christian and civilised country. It was true," he admitted, "that the excellent nurture and early instruction which the poor girl had received, had not been sufficient to preserve her from guilt and error. She had fallen a sacrifice to an inconsiderate affection for a young man of prepossessing manners, as he had been informed, but of a very dangerous and desperate character. She was seduced under promise of marriage--a promise, which the fellow might have, perhaps, done her justice by keeping, had he not at that time been called upon by the law to atone for a crime, violent and desperate in itself, but which became the preface to another eventful history, every step of which was marked by blood and guilt, and the final termination of which had not even yet arrived. He believed that no one would hear him without surprise, when he stated that the father of this infant now amissing, and said by the learned Advocate to have been murdered, was no other than the notorious George Robertson, the accomplice of Wilson, the hero of the memorable escape from the Tolbooth Church, and as no one knew better than his learned friend the Advocate, the principal actor in the Porteous conspiracy" "I am sorry to interrupt a counsel in such a case as the present," said, the presiding Judge; "but I must remind the learned gentleman that he is travelling out of the case before us." The counsel bowed and resumed. "He only judged it necessary," he said, "to mention the name and situation of Robertson, because the circumstance in which that character was placed, went a great way in accounting for the silence on which his Majesty's counsel had laid so much weight, as affording proof that his client proposed to allow no fair play for its life to the helpless being whom she was about to bring into the world. She had not announced to her friends that she had been seduced from the path of honour--and why had she not done so?--Because she expected daily to be restored to character, by her seducer doing her that justice which she knew to be in his power, and believed to be in his inclination. Was it natural--was it reasonable--was it fair, to expect that she should in the interim, become _felo de se_ of her own character, and proclaim her frailty to the world, when she had every reason to expect, that, by concealing it for a season, it might be veiled for ever? Was it not, on the contrary, pardonable, that, in such an emergency, a young woman, in such a situation, should be found far from disposed to make a confidant of every prying gossip, who, with sharp eyes, and eager ears, pressed upon her for an explanation of suspicious circumstances, which females in the lower--he might say which females of all ranks, are so alert in noticing, that they sometimes discover them where they do not exist? Was it strange or was it criminal, that she should have repelled their inquisitive impertinence with petulant denials? The sense and feeling of all who heard him would answer directly in the negative. But although his client had thus remained silent towards those to whom she was not called upon to communicate her situation,--to whom," said the learned gentleman, "I will add, it would have been unadvised and improper in her to have done so; yet, I trust, I shall remove this case most triumphantly from under the statute, and obtain the unfortunate young woman an honourable dismission from your Lordships' bar, by showing that she did, in due time and place, and to a person most fit for such confidence, mention the calamitous circumstances in which she found herself. This occurred after Robertson's conviction, and when he was lying in prison in expectation of the fate which his comrade Wilson afterwards suffered, and from which he himself so strangely escaped. It was then, when all hopes of having her honour repaired by wedlock vanished from her eyes,--when an union with one in Robertson's situation, if still practicable, might, perhaps, have been regarded rather as an addition to her disgrace,--it was _then,_ that I trust to be able to prove that the prisoner communicated and consulted with her sister, a young woman several years older than herself, the daughter of her father, if I mistake not, by a former marriage, upon the perils and distress of her unhappy situation." "If, indeed, you are able to instruct _that_ point, Mr. Fairbrother," said the presiding Judge. "If I am indeed able to instruct that point, my Lord," resumed Mr. Fairbrother, "I trust not only to serve my client, but to relieve your Lordships from that which I know you feel the most painful duty of your high office; and to give all who now hear me the exquisite pleasure of beholding a creature, so young, so ingenuous, and so beautiful, as she that is now at the bar of your Lordships' Court, dismissed from thence in safety and in honour." This address seemed to affect many of the audience, and was followed by a slight murmur of applause. Deans, as he heard his daughter's beauty and innocent appearance appealed to, was involuntarily about to turn his eyes towards her; but, recollecting himself, he bent them again on the ground with stubborn resolution. "Will not my learned brother, on the other side of the bar," continued the advocate, after a short pause, "share in this general joy, since, I know, while he discharges his duty in bringing an accused person here, no one rejoices more in their being freely and honourably sent hence? My learned brother shakes his head doubtfully, and lays his hand on the panel's declaration. I understand him perfectly--he would insinuate that the facts now stated to your Lordships are inconsistent with the confession of Euphemia Deans herself. I need not remind your Lordships, that her present defence is no whit to be narrowed within the bounds of her former confession; and that it is not by any account which she may formerly have given of herself, but by what is now to be proved for or against her, that she must ultimately stand or fall. I am not under the necessity of accounting for her choosing to drop out of her declaration the circumstances of her confession to her sister. She might not be aware of its importance; she might be afraid of implicating her sister; she might even have forgotten the circumstance entirely, in the terror and distress of mind incidental to the arrest of so young a creature on a charge so heinous. Any of these reasons are sufficient to account for her having suppressed the truth in this instance, at whatever risk to herself; and I incline most to her erroneous fear of criminating her sister, because I observe she has had a similar tenderness towards her lover (however undeserved on his part), and has never once mentioned Robertson's name from beginning to end of her declaration. "But, my Lords," continued Fairbrother, "I am aware the King's Advocate will expect me to show, that the proof I offer is consistent with other circumstances of the, case, which I do not and cannot deny. He will demand of me how Effie Deans's confession to her sister, previous to her delivery, is reconcilable with the mystery of the birth,--with the disappearance, perhaps the murder (for I will not deny a possibility which I cannot disprove) of the infant. My Lords, the explanation of this is to be found in the placability, perchance, I may say, in the facility and pliability, of the female sex. The _dulcis Amaryllidis irae,_ as your Lordships well know, are easily appeased; nor is it possible to conceive a woman so atrociously offended by the man whom she has loved, but that she will retain a fund of forgiveness, upon which his penitence, whether real or affected, may draw largely, with a certainty that his bills will be answered. We can prove, by a letter produced in evidence, that this villain Robertson, from the bottom of the dungeon whence he already probably meditated the escape, which he afterwards accomplished by the assistance of his comrade, contrived to exercise authority over the mind, and to direct the motions, of this unhappy girl. It was in compliance with his injunctions, expressed in that letter, that the panel was prevailed upon to alter the line of conduct which her own better thoughts had suggested; and, instead of resorting, when her time of travail approached, to the protection of her own family, was induced to confide herself to the charge of some vile agent of this nefarious seducer, and by her conducted to one of those solitary and secret purlieus of villany, which, to the shame of our police, still are suffered to exist in the suburbs of this city, where, with the assistance, and under the charge, of a person of her own sex, she bore a male child, under circumstances which added treble bitterness to the woe denounced against our original mother. What purpose Robertson had in all this, it is hard to tell, or even to guess. He may have meant to marry the girl, for her father is a man of substance. But, for the termination of the story, and the conduct of the woman whom he had placed about the person of Euphemia Deans, it is still more difficult to account. The unfortunate young woman was visited by the fever incidental to her situation. In this fever she appears to have been deceived by the person that waited on her, and, on recovering her senses, she found that she was childless in that abode of misery. Her infant had been carried off, perhaps for the worst purposes, by the wretch that waited on her. It may have been murdered, for what I can tell." He was here interrupted by a piercing shriek, uttered by the unfortunate prisoner. She was with difficulty brought to compose herself. Her counsel availed himself of the tragical interruption, to close his pleading with effect. "My Lords," said he, "in that piteous cry you heard the eloquence of maternal affection, far surpassing the force of my poor words--Rachel weeping for her children! Nature herself bears testimony in favour of the tenderness and acuteness of the prisoner's parental feelings. I will not dishonour her plea by adding a word more." "Heard ye ever the like o' that, Laird?" said Saddletree to Dumbiedikes, when the counsel had ended his speech. "There's a chield can spin a muckle pirn out of a wee tait of tow! Deil haet he kens mair about it than what's in the declaration, and a surmise that Jeanie Deans suld hae been able to say something about her sister's situation, whilk surmise, Mr. Crossmyloof says, rests on sma' authority. And he's cleckit this great muckle bird out o' this wee egg! He could wile the very flounders out o' the Firth.--What garr'd my father no send me to Utrecht?--But whisht, the Court is gaun to pronounce the interlocutor of relevancy." And accordingly the Judges, after a few words, recorded their judgment, which bore, that the indictment, if proved, was relevant to infer the pains of law: And that the defence, that the panel had communicated her situation to her sister, was a relevant defence: And, finally, appointed the said indictment and defence to be submitted to the judgment of an assize. CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND. Most righteous judge! a sentence.--Come, prepare. Merchant of Venice. It is by no means my intention to describe minutely the forms of a Scottish criminal trial, nor am I sure that I could draw up an account so intelligible and accurate as to abide the criticism of the gentlemen of the long robe. It is enough to say that the jury was impanelled, and the case proceeded. The prisoner was again required to plead to the charge, and she again replied, "Not Guilty," in the same heart-thrilling tone as before. The crown counsel then called two or three female witnesses, by whose testimony it was established, that Effie's situation had been remarked by them, that they had taxed her with the fact, and that her answers had amounted to an angry and petulant denial of what they charged her with. But, as very frequently happens, the declaration of the panel or accused party herself was the evidence which bore hardest upon her case. In the event of these tales ever finding their way across the Border, it may be proper to apprise the southern reader that it is the practice in Scotland, on apprehending a suspected person, to subject him to a judicial examination before a magistrate. He is not compelled to answer any of the questions asked of him, but may remain silent if he sees it his interest to do so. But whatever answers he chooses to give are formally written down, and being subscribed by himself and the magistrate, are produced against the accused in case of his being brought to trial. It is true, that these declarations are not produced as being in themselves evidence properly so called, but only as adminicles of testimony, tending to corroborate what is considered as legal and proper evidence. Notwithstanding this nice distinction, however, introduced by lawyers to reconcile this procedure to their own general rule, that a man cannot be required to bear witness against himself, it nevertheless usually happens that these declarations become the means of condemning the accused, as it were, out of their own mouths. The prisoner, upon these previous examinations, has indeed the privilege of remaining silent if he pleases; but every man necessarily feels that a refusal to answer natural and pertinent interrogatories, put by judicial authority, is in itself a strong proof of guilt, and will certainly lead to his being committed to prison; and few can renounce the hope of obtaining liberty by giving some specious account of themselves, and showing apparent frankness in explaining their motives and accounting for their conduct. It, therefore, seldom happens that the prisoner refuses to give a judicial declaration, in which, nevertheless, either by letting out too much of the truth, or by endeavouring to substitute a fictitious story, he almost always exposes himself to suspicion and to contradictions, which weigh heavily in the minds of the jury. The declaration of Effie Deans was uttered on other principles, and the following is a sketch of its contents, given in the judicial form, in which they may still be found in the Books of Adjournal. The declarant admitted a criminal intrigue with an individual whose name she desired to conceal. "Being interrogated, what her reason was for secrecy on this point? She declared, that she had no right to blame that person's conduct more than she did her own, and that she was willing to confess her own faults, but not to say anything which might criminate the absent. Interrogated, if she confessed her situation to any one, or made any preparation for her confinement? Declares, she did not. And being interrogated, why she forbore to take steps which her situation so peremptorily required? Declares, she was ashamed to tell her friends, and she trusted the person she has mentioned would provide for her and the infant. Interrogated if he did so? Declares, that he did not do so personally; but that it was not his fault, for that the declarant is convinced he would have laid down his life sooner than the bairn or she had come to harm. Interrogated, what prevented him from keeping his promise? Declares, that it was impossible for him to do so, he being under trouble at the time, and declines farther answer to this question. Interrogated, where she was from the period she left her master, Mr. Saddletree's family, until her appearance at her father's, at St. Leonard's, the day before she was apprehended? Declares, she does not remember. And, on the interrogatory being repeated, declares, she does not mind muckle about it, for she was very ill. On the question being again repeated, she declares, she will tell the truth, if it should be the undoing of her, so long as she is not asked to tell on other folk; and admits, that she passed that interval of time in the lodging of a woman, an acquaintance of that person who had wished her to that place to be delivered, and that she was there delivered accordingly of a male child. Interrogated, what was the name of that person? Declares and refuses to answer this question. Interrogated, where she lives? Declares, she has no certainty, for that she was taken to the lodging aforesaid under cloud of night. Interrogated, if the lodging was in the city or suburbs? Declares and refuses to answer that question. Interrogated, whether, when she left the house of Mr. Saddletree, she went up or down the street? Declares and refuses to answer the question. Interrogated, whether she had ever seen the woman before she was wished to her, as she termed it, by the person whose name she refuses to answer? Declares and replies, not to her knowledge. Interrogated, whether this woman was introduced to her by the said person verbally, or by word of mouth? Declares, she has no freedom to answer this question. Interrogated, if the child was alive when it was born? Declares, that--God help her and it!--it certainly was alive. Interrogated, if it died a natural death after birth? Declares, not to her knowledge. Interrogated, where it now is? Declares, she would give her right hand to ken, but that she never hopes to see mair than the banes of it. And being interrogated, why she supposes it is now dead? the declarant wept bitterly and made no answer. Interrogated, if the woman, in whose lodging she was, seemed to be a fit person to be with her in that situation? Declares, she might be fit enough for skill, but that she was an hard-hearted bad woman. Interrogated, if there was any other person in the lodging excepting themselves two? Declares, that she thinks there was another woman; but her head was so carried with pain of body and trouble of mind, that she minded her very little. Interrogated, when the child was taken away from her? Declared that she fell in a fever, and was light-headed, and when she came to her own mind, the woman told her the bairn was dead; and that the declarant answered, if it was dead it had had foul play. That, thereupon, the woman was very sair on her, and gave her much ill language; and that the deponent was frightened, and crawled out of the house when her back was turned, and went home to Saint Leonard's Crags, as well as a woman in her condition dought.* * i.e. Was able to do. Interrogated, why she did not tell her story to her sister and father, and get force to search the house for her child, dead or alive? Declares, it was her purpose to do so, but she had not time. Interrogated, why she now conceals the name of the woman, and the place of her abode? The declarant remained silent for a time, and then said, that to do so could not repair the skaith that was done, but might be the occasion of more. Interrogated, whether she had herself, at any time, had any purpose of putting away the child by violence? Declares, never; so might God be merciful to her--and then again declares, never, when she was in her perfect senses; but what bad thoughts the Enemy might put into her brain when she was out of herself, she cannot answer. And again solemnly interrogated, declares, that she would have been drawn with wild horses, rather than have touched the bairn with an unmotherly hand. Interrogated, declares, that among the ill-language the woman gave her, she did say sure enough that the declarant had hurt the bairn when she was in the brain fever; but that the declarant does not believe that she said this from any other cause than to frighten her, and make her be silent. Interrogated, what else the woman said to her? Declares, that when the declarant cried loud for her bairn, and was like to raise the neighbours, the woman threatened her, that they that could stop the wean's skirling would stop hers, if she did not keep a' the founder.* * i.e. The quieter. And that this threat, with the manner of the woman, made the declarant conclude, that the bairn's life was gone, and her own in danger, for that the woman was a desperate bad woman, as the declarant judged from the language she used. Interrogated, declares, that the fever and delirium were brought on her by hearing bad news, suddenly told to her, but refuses to say what the said news related to. Interrogated, why she does not now communicate these particulars, which might, perhaps, enable the magistrate to ascertain whether the child is living or dead; and requested to observe, that her refusing to do so, exposes her own life, and leaves the child in bad hands; as also that her present refusal to answer on such points is inconsistent with her alleged intention to make a clean breast to her sister? Declares, that she kens the bairn is now dead, or, if living, there is one that will look after it; that for her own living or dying, she is in God's hands, who knows her innocence of harming her bairn with her will or knowledge; and that she has altered her resolution of speaking out, which she entertained when she left the woman's lodging, on account of a matter which she has since learned. And declares, in general, that she is wearied, and will answer no more questions at this time." Upon a subsequent examination, Euphemia Deans adhered to the declaration she had formerly made, with this addition, that a paper found in her trunk being shown to her, she admitted that it contained the credentials, in consequence of which she resigned herself to the conduct of the woman at whose lodgings she was delivered of the child. Its tenor ran thus:-- "Dearest Effie,--I have gotten the means to send to you by a woman who is well qualified to assist you in your approaching streight; she is not what I could wish her, but I cannot do better for you in my present condition. I am obliged to trust to her in this present calamity, for myself and you too. I hope for the best, though I am now in a sore pinch; yet thought is free--I think Handie Dandie and I may queer the stifler* for all that is come and gone. * Avoid the gallows. You will be angry for me writing this to my little Cameronian Lily; but if I can but live to be a comfort to you, and a father to your babie, you will have plenty of time to scold.--Once more, let none knew your counsel--my life depends on this hag, d--n her--she is both deep and dangerous, but she has more wiles and wit than ever were in a beldam's head, and has cause to be true to me. Farewell, my Lily--Do not droop on my account--in a week I will be yours or no more my own." Then followed a postscript. "If they must truss me, I will repent of nothing so much, even at the last hard pinch, as of the injury I have done my Lily." Effie refused to say from whom she had received this letter, but enough of the story was now known, to ascertain that it came from Robertson; and from the date, it appeared to have been written about the time when Andrew Wilson (called for a nickname Handie Dandie) and he were meditating their first abortive attempt to escape, which miscarried in the manner mentioned in the beginning of this history. The evidence of the Crown being concluded, the counsel for the prisoner began to lead a proof in her defence. The first witnesses were examined upon the girl's character. All gave her an excellent one, but none with more feeling than worthy Mrs. Saddletree, who, with the tears on her cheeks, declared, that she could not have had a higher opinion of Effie Deans, nor a more sincere regard for her, if she had been her own daughter. All present gave the honest woman credit for her goodness of heart, excepting her husband, who whispered to Dumbiedikes, "That Nichil Novit of yours is but a raw hand at leading evidence, I'm thinking. What signified his bringing a woman here to snotter and snivel, and bather their Lordships? He should hae ceeted me, sir, and I should hae gien them sic a screed o' testimony, they shauldna hae touched a hair o' her head." "Hadna ye better get up and tryt yet?" said the Laird. "I'll mak a sign to Novit." "Na, na," said Saddletree, "thank ye for naething, neighbour--that would be ultroneous evidence, and I ken what belangs to that; but Nichil Novit suld hae had me ceeted _debito tempore._" And wiping his mouth with his silk handkerchief with great importance, he resumed the port and manner of an edified and intelligent auditor. Mr. Fairbrother now premised, in a few words, "that he meant to bring forward his most important witness, upon whose evidence the cause must in a great measure depend. What his client was, they had learned from the preceding witnesses; and so far as general character, given in the most forcible terms, and even with tears, could interest every one in her fate, she had already gained that advantage. It was necessary, he admitted, that he should produce more positive testimony of her innocence than what arose out of general character, and this he undertook to do by the mouth of the person to whom she had communicated her situation--by the mouth of her natural counsellor and guardian--her sister.--Macer, call into court, Jean, or Jeanie Deans, daughter of David Deans, cowfeeder, at Saint Leonard's Crags!" When he uttered these words, the poor prisoner instantly started up, and stretched herself half-way over the bar, towards the side at which her sister was to enter. And when, slowly following the officer, the witness advanced to the foot of the table, Effie, with the whole expression of her countenance altered, from that of confused shame and dismay, to an eager, imploring, and almost ecstatic earnestness of entreaty, with outstretched hands, hair streaming back, eyes raised eagerly to her sister's face, and glistening through tears, exclaimed in a tone which went through the heart of all who heard her,--"O Jeanie, Jeanie, save me, save me!" With a different feeling, yet equally appropriated to his proud and self-dependent character, old Deans drew himself back still farther under the cover of the bench; so that when Jeanie, as she entered the court, cast a timid glance towards the place at which she had left him seated, his venerable figure was no longer visible. He sate down on the other side of Dumbiedikes, wrung his hand hard, and whispered, "Ah, Laird, this is warst of a'--if I can but win ower this part--I feel my head unco dizzy; but my Master is strong in his servant's weakness." After a moment's mental prayer, he again started up, as if impatient of continuing in any one posture, and gradually edged himself forward towards the place he had just quitted. Jeanie in the meantime had advanced to the bottom of the table, when, unable to resist the impulse of affections she suddenly extended her hand to her sister. Effie was just within the distance that she could seize it with both hers, press it to her mouth, cover it with kisses, and bathe it in tears, with the fond devotion that a Catholic would pay to a guardian saint descended for his safety; while Jeanie, hiding her own face with her other hand, wept bitterly. The sight would have moved a heart of stone, much more of flesh and blood. Many of the spectators shed tears, and it was some time before the presiding Judge himself could so far subdue his emotion as to request the witness to compose herself, and the prisoner to forbear those marks of eager affection, which, however natural, could not be permitted at that time, and in that presence. The solemn oath,--"the truth to tell, and no truth to conceal, as far as she knew or should be asked," was then administered by the Judge "in the name of God, and as the witness should answer to God at the great day of judgment;" an awful adjuration, which seldom fails to make impression even on the most hardened characters, and to strike with fear even the most upright. Jeanie, educated in deep and devout reverence for the name and attributes of the Deity, was, by the solemnity of a direct appeal to his person and justice, awed, but at the same time elevated above all considerations, save those which she could, with a clear conscience, call Him to witness. She repeated the form in a low and reverent, but distinct tone of voice, after the Judge, to whom, and not to any inferior officer of the Court, the task is assigned in Scotland of directing the witness in that solemn appeal which is the sanction of his testimony. When the Judge had finished the established form, he added in a feeling, but yet a monitory tone, an advice, which the circumstances appeared to him to call for. "Young woman," these were his words, "you come before this Court in circumstances, which it would be worse than cruel not to pity and to sympathise with. Yet it is my duty to tell you, that the truth, whatever its consequences may be, the truth is what you owe to your country, and to that God whose word is truth, and whose name you have now invoked. Use your own time in answering the questions that gentleman" (pointing to the counsel) "shall put to you.--But remember, that what you may be tempted to say beyond what is the actual truth, you must answer both here and hereafter." The usual questions were then put to her:--Whether any one had instructed her what evidence she had to deliver? Whether any one had given or promised her any good deed, hire, or reward, for her testimony? Whether she had any malice or ill-will at his Majesty's Advocate, being the party against whom she was cited as a witness? To which questions she successively answered by a quiet negative. But their tenor gave great scandal and offence to her father, who was not aware that they are put to every witness as a matter of form. "Na, na," he exclaimed, loud enough to be heard, "my bairn is no like the Widow of Tekoah--nae man has putten words into her mouth." One of the judges, better acquainted, perhaps, with the Books of Adjournal than with the Book of Samuel, was disposed to make some instant inquiry after this Widow of Tekoah, who, as he construed the matter, had been tampering with the evidence. But the presiding Judge, better versed in Scripture history, whispered to his learned brother the necessary explanation; and the pause occasioned by this mistake had the good effect of giving Jeanie Deans time to collect her spirits for the painful task she had to perform. Fairbrother, whose practice and intelligence were considerable, saw the necessity of letting the witness compose herself. In his heart he suspected that she came to bear false witness in her sister's cause. "But that is her own affair," thought Fairbrother; "and it is my business to see that she has plenty of time to regain composure, and to deliver her evidence, be it true, or be it false--_valeat quantum._" Accordingly, he commenced his interrogatories with uninteresting questions, which admitted of instant reply. "You are, I think, the sister of the prisoner?" "Yes, sir." "Not the full sister, however?" "No, sir--we are by different mothers." "True; and you are, I think, several years older than your sister?" "Yes, sir," etc. After the advocate had conceived that, by these preliminary and unimportant questions, he had familiarised the witness with the situation in which she stood, he asked, "whether she had not remarked her sister's state of health to be altered, during the latter part of the term when she had lived with Mrs. Saddletree?" Jeanie answered in the affirmative. "And she told you the cause of it, my dear, I suppose?" said Fairbrother, in an easy, and, as one may say, an inductive sort of tone. "I am sorry to interrupt my brother," said the Crown Counsel, rising; "but I am in your Lordships' judgment, whether this be not a leading question?" "If this point is to be debated," said the presiding Judge, "the witness must be removed." For the Scottish lawyers regard with a sacred and scrupulous horror every question so shaped by the counsel examining, as to convey to a witness the least intimation of the nature of the answer which is desired from him. These scruples, though founded on an excellent principle, are sometimes carried to an absurd pitch of nicety, especially as it is generally easy for a lawyer who has his wits about him to elude the objection. Fairbrother did so in the present case. "It is not necessary to waste the time of the Court, my Lord since the King's Counsel thinks it worth while to object to the form of my question, I will shape it otherwise.--Pray, young woman, did you ask your sister any question when you observed her looking unwell?--take courage--speak out." "I asked her," replied Jeanie, "what ailed her." "Very well--take your own time--and what was the answer she made?" continued Mr. Fairbrother. Jeanie was silent, and looked deadly pale. It was not that she at any one instant entertained an idea of the possibility of prevarication--it was the natural hesitation to extinguish the last spark of hope that remained for her sister. "Take courage, young woman," said Fairbrother.--"I asked what your sister said ailed her when you inquired?" "Nothing," answered Jeanie, with a faint voice, which was yet heard distinctly in the most distant corner of the Court-room,--such an awful and profound silence had been preserved during the anxious interval, which had interposed betwixt the lawyer's question and the answer of the witness. Fairbrother's countenance fell; but with that ready presence of mind, which is as useful in civil as in military emergencies, he immediately rallied.--"Nothing? True; you mean nothing at _first_--but when you asked her again, did she not tell you what ailed her?" The question was put in a tone meant to make her comprehend the importance of her answer, had she not been already aware of it. The ice was broken, however, and with less pause than at first, she now replied,--"Alack! alack! she never breathed word to me about it." A deep groan passed through the Court. It was echoed by one deeper and more agonised from the unfortunate father. The hope to which unconsciously, and in spite of himself, he had still secretly clung, had now dissolved, and the venerable old man fell forward senseless on the floor of the Court-house, with his head at the foot of his terrified daughter. The unfortunate prisoner, with impotent passion, strove with the guards betwixt whom she was placed. "Let me gang to my father!--I _will_ gang to him--I _will_ gang to him--he is dead--he is killed--I hae killed him!"--she repeated, in frenzied tones of grief, which those who heard them did not speedily forget. Even in this moment of agony and general confusion, Jeanie did not lose that superiority, which a deep and firm mind assures to its possessor under the most trying circumstances. "He is my father--he is our father," she mildly repeated to those who endeavoured to separate them, as she stooped,--shaded aside his grey hairs, and began assiduously to chafe his temples. The Judge, after repeatedly wiping his eyes, gave directions that they should be conducted into a neighbouring apartment, and carefully attended. The prisoner, as her father was borne from the Court, and her sister slowly followed, pursued them with her eyes so earnestly fixed, as if they would have started from their sockets. But when they were no longer visible, she seemed to find, in her despairing and deserted state, a courage which she had not yet exhibited. "The bitterness of it is now past," she said, and then boldly, addressed the Court. "My Lords, if it is your pleasure to gang on wi' this matter, the weariest day will hae its end at last." The Judge, who, much to his honour, had shared deeply in the general sympathy, was surprised at being recalled to his duty by the prisoner. He collected himself, and requested to know if the panel's counsel had more evidence to produce. Fairbrother replied, with an air of dejection, that his proof was concluded. The King's Counsel addressed the jury for the crown. He said in a few words, that no one could be more concerned than he was for the distressing scene which they had just witnessed. But it was the necessary consequence of great crimes to bring distress and ruin upon all connected with the perpetrators. He briefly reviewed the proof, in which he showed that all the circumstances of the case concurred with those required by the act under which the unfortunate prisoner was tried: That the counsel for the panel had totally failed in proving, that Euphemia Deans had communicated her situation to her sister: That, respecting her previous good character, he was sorry to observe, that it was females who possessed the world's good report, and to whom it was justly valuable, who were most strongly tempted, by shame and fear of the world's censure, to the crime of infanticide: That the child was murdered, he professed to entertain no doubt. The vacillating and inconsistent declaration of the prisoner herself, marked as it was by numerous refusals to speak the truth on subjects, when, according to her own story, it would have been natural, as well as advantageous, to have been candid; even this imperfect declaration left no doubt in his mind as to the fate of the unhappy infant. Neither could he doubt that the panel was a partner in this guilt. Who else had an interest in a deed so inhuman? Surely neither Robertson, nor Robertson's agent, in whose house she was delivered, had the least temptation to commit such a crime, unless upon her account, with her connivance, and for the sake of saying her reputation. But it was not required of him, by the law, that he should bring precise proof of the murder, or of the prisoner's accession to it. It was the very purpose of the statute to substitute a certain chain of presumptive evidence in place of a probation, which, in such cases, it was peculiarly difficult to obtain. The jury might peruse the statute itself, and they had also the libel and interlocutor of relevancy to direct them in point of law. He put it to the conscience of the jury, that under both he was entitled to a verdict of Guilty. The charge of Fairbrother was much cramped by his having failed in the proof which he expected to lead. But he fought his losing cause with courage and constancy. He ventured to arraign the severity of the statute under which the young woman was tried. "In all other cases," he said, "the first thing required of the criminal prosecutor was to prove unequivocally that the crime libelled had actually been committed, which lawyers called proving the _corpus delicti._ But this statute, made doubtless with the best intentions, and under the impulse of a just horror for the unnatural crime of infanticide, ran the risk of itself occasioning the worst of murders, the death of an innocent person, to atone for a supposed crime which may never have been committed by anyone. He was so far from acknowledging the alleged probability of the child's violent death, that he could not even allow that there was evidence of its having ever lived." The King's Counsel pointed to the woman's declaration; to which the counsel replied--"A production concocted in a moment of terror and agony, and which approached to insanity," he said, "his learned brother well knew was no sound evidence against the party who emitted it. It was true, that a judicial confession, in presence of the Justices themselves, was the strongest of all proof, insomuch that it is said in law, that '_in confitentem nullae sunt partes judicis._' But this was true of judicial confession only, by which law meant that which is made in presence of the justices, and the sworn inquest. Of extrajudicial confession, all authorities held with the illustrious Farinaceus and Matthaeus, '_confessio extrajudicialis in se nulla est; et quod nullum est, non potest adminiculari._' It was totally inept, and void of all strength and effect from the beginning; incapable, therefore, of being bolstered up or supported, or, according to the law phrase, adminiculated, by other presumptive circumstances. In the present case, therefore, letting the extrajudicial confession go, as it ought to go, for nothing," he contended, "the prosecutor had not made out the second quality of the statute, that a live child had been born; and _that,_ at least, ought to be established before presumptions were received that it had been murdered. If any of the assize," he said, "should be of opinion that this was dealing rather narrowly with the statute, they ought to consider that it was in its nature highly penal, and therefore entitled to no favourable construction." He concluded a learned speech, with an eloquent peroration on the scene they had just witnessed, during which Saddletree fell fast asleep. It was now the presiding Judge's turn to address the jury. He did so briefly and distinctly. "It was for the jury," he said, "to consider whether the prosecutor had made out his plea. For himself, he sincerely grieved to say, that a shadow of doubt remained not upon his mind concerning the verdict which the inquest had to bring in. He would not follow the prisoner's counsel through the impeachment which he had brought against the statute of King William and Queen Mary. He and the jury were sworn to judge according to the laws as they stood, not to criticise, or evade, or even to justify them. In no civil case would a counsel have been permitted to plead his client's case in the teeth of the law; but in the hard situation in which counsel were often placed in the Criminal Court, as well as out of favour to all presumptions of innocence, he had not inclined to interrupt the learned gentleman, or narrow his plea. The present law, as it now stood, had been instituted by the wisdom of their fathers, to check the alarming progress of a dreadful crime; when it was found too severe for its purpose it would doubtless be altered by the wisdom of the Legislature; at present it was the law of the land, the rule of the Court, and, according to the oath which they had taken, it must be that of the jury. This unhappy girl's situation could not be doubted; that she had borne a child, and that the child had disappeared, were certain facts. The learned counsel had failed to show that she had communicated her situation. All the requisites of the case required by the statute were therefore before the jury. The learned gentleman had, indeed, desired them to throw out of consideration the panel's own confession, which was the plea usually urged, in penury of all others, by counsel in his situation, who usually felt that the declarations of their clients bore hard on them. But that the Scottish law designed that a certain weight should be laid on these declarations, which, he admitted, were _quodammodo_ extrajudicial, was evident from the universal practice by which they were always produced and read, as part of the prosecutor's probation. In the present case, no person who had heard the witnesses describe the appearance of the young woman before she left Saddletree's house, and contrasted it with that of her state and condition at her return to her father's, could have any doubt that the fact of delivery had taken place, as set forth in her own declaration, which was, therefore, not a solitary piece of testimony, but adminiculated and supported by the strongest circumstantial proof. "He did not," he said, "state the impression upon his own mind with the purpose of biassing theirs. He had felt no less than they had done from the scene of domestic misery which had been exhibited before them; and if they, having God and a good conscience, the sanctity of their oath, and the regard due to the law of the country, before their eyes, could come to a conclusion favourable to this unhappy prisoner, he should rejoice as much as anyone in Court; for never had he found his duty more distressing than in discharging it that day, and glad he would be to be relieved from the still more painful task which would otherwise remain for him." The jury, having heard the Judge's address, bowed and retired, preceded by a macer of Court, to the apartment destined for their deliberation. CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD. Law, take thy victim--May she find the mercy In yon mild heaven, which this hard world denies her! It was an hour ere the jurors returned, and as they traversed the crowd with slow steps, as men about to discharge themselves of a heavy and painful responsibility, the audience was hushed into profound, earnest, and awful silence. "Have you agreed on your chancellor, gentlemen?" was the first question of the Judge. The foreman, called in Scotland the chancellor of the jury, usually the man of best rank and estimation among the assizers, stepped forward, and with a low reverence, delivered to the Court a sealed paper, containing the verdict, which, until of late years, that verbal returns are in some instances permitted, was always couched in writing. The jury remained standing while the Judge broke the seals, and having perused the paper, handed it with an air of mournful gravity down to the clerk of Court, who proceeded to engross in the record the yet unknown verdict, of which, however, all omened the tragical contents. A form still remained, trifling and unimportant in itself, but to which imagination adds a sort of solemnity, from the awful occasion upon which it is used. A lighted candle was placed on the table, the original paper containing the verdict was enclosed in a sheet of paper, and, sealed with the Judge's own signet, was transmitted to the Crown Office, to be preserved among other records of the same kind. As all this is transacted in profound silence, the producing and extinguishing the candle seems a type of the human spark which is shortly afterwards doomed to be quenched, and excites in the spectators something of the same effect which in England is obtained by the Judge assuming the fatal cap of judgment. When these preliminary forms had been gone through, the Judge required Euphemia Deans to attend to the verdict to be read. After the usual words of style, the verdict set forth, that the Jury having made choice of John Kirk, Esq., to be their chancellor, and Thomas Moore, merchant, to be their clerk, did, by a plurality of voices, find the said Euphemia Deans Guilty of the crime libelled; but, in consideration of her extreme youth, and the cruel circumstances of her case, did earnestly entreat that the Judge would recommend her to the mercy of the Crown. "Gentlemen," said the Judge, "you have done your duty--and a painful one it must have been to men of humanity like you. I will undoubtedly transmit your recommendation to the throne. But it is my duty to tell all who now hear me, but especially to inform that unhappy young woman, in order that her mind may be settled accordingly, that I have not the least hope of a pardon being granted in the present case. You know the crime has been increasing in this land, and I know farther, that this has been ascribed to the lenity in which the laws have been exercised, and that there is therefore no hope whatever of obtaining a remission for this offence." The jury bowed again, and, released from their painful office, dispersed themselves among the mass of bystanders. The Court then asked Mr. Fairbrother whether he had anything to say, why judgment should not follow on the verdict? The counsel had spent some time in persuing and reperusing the verdict, counting the letters in each juror's name, and weighing every phrase, nay, every syllable, in the nicest scales of legal criticism. But the clerk of the jury had understood his business too well. No flaw was to be found, and Fairbrother mournfully intimated, that he had nothing to say in arrest of judgment. The presiding Judge then addressed the unhappy prisoner:--"Euphemia Deans, attend to the sentence of the Court now to be pronounced against you." She rose from her seat, and with a composure far greater than could have been augured from her demeanour during some parts of the trial, abode the conclusion of the awful scene. So nearly does the mental portion of our feelings resemble those which are corporeal, that the first severe blows which we receive bring with them a stunning apathy, which renders us indifferent to those that follow them. Thus said Mandrin, when he was undergoing the punishment of the wheel; and so have all felt, upon whom successive inflictions have descended with continuous and reiterated violence.* * [The notorious Mandrin was known as the Captain-General of French & smugglers. See a Tract on his exploits, printed 1753.] "Young woman," said the Judge, "it is my painful duty to tell you, that your life is forfeited under a law, which, if it may seem in some degree severe, is yet wisely so, to render those of your unhappy situation aware what risk they run, by concealing, out of pride or false shame, their lapse from virtue, and making no preparation to save the lives of the unfortunate infants whom they are to bring into the world. When you concealed your situation from your mistress, your sister, and other worthy and compassionate persons of your own sex, in whose favour your former conduct had given you a fair place, you seem to me to have had in your contemplation, at least, the death of the helpless creature, for whose life you neglected to provide. How the child was disposed of--whether it was dealt upon by another, or by yourself--whether the extraordinary story you have told is partly false, or altogether so, is between God and your own conscience. I will not aggravate your distress by pressing on that topic, but I do most solemnly adjure you to employ the remaining space of your time in making your peace with God, for which purpose such reverend clergymen, as you yourself may name, shall have access to you. Notwithstanding the humane recommendation of the jury, I cannot afford to you, in the present circumstances of the country, the slightest hope that your life will be prolonged beyond the period assigned for the execution of your sentence. Forsaking, therefore, the thoughts of this world, let your mind be prepared by repentance for those of more awful moments--for death, judgment, and eternity.--Doomster, read the sentence."* * Note N. Doomster, or Dempster, of Court. When the Doomster showed himself, a tall haggard figure, arrayed in a fantastic garment of black and grey, passmented with silver lace, all fell back with a sort of instinctive horror, and made wide way for him to approach the foot of the table. As this office was held by the common executioner, men shouldered each other backward to avoid even the touch of his garment, and some were seen to brush their own clothes, which had accidentally become subject to such contamination. A sound went through the Court, produced by each person drawing in their breath hard, as men do when they expect or witness what is frightful, and at the same time affecting. The caitiff villain yet seemed, amid his hardened brutality, to have some sense of his being the object of public detestation, which made him impatient of being in public, as birds of evil omen are anxious to escape from daylight, and from pure air. Repeating after the Clerk of Court, he gabbled over the words of the sentence, which condemned Euphemia Deans to be conducted back to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and detained there until Wednesday the day of ---; and upon that day, betwixt the hours of two and four o'clock afternoon, to be conveyed to the common place of execution, and there hanged by the neck upon a gibbet. "And this," said the Doomster, aggravating his harsh voice, "I pronounce for _doom._" He vanished when he had spoken the last emphatic word, like a foul fiend after the purpose of his visitation had been accomplished; but the impression of horror excited by his presence and his errand, remained upon the crowd of spectators. The unfortunate criminal,--for so she must now be termed,--with more susceptibility, and more irritable feelings than her father and sister, was found, in this emergence, to possess a considerable share of their courage. She had remained standing motionless at the bar while the sentence was pronounced, and was observed to shut her eyes when the Doomster appeared. But she was the first to break silence when that evil form had left his place. "God forgive ye, my Lords," she said, "and dinna be angry wi' me for wishing it--we a' need forgiveness.--As for myself, I canna blame ye, for ye act up to your lights; and if I havena killed my poor infant, ye may witness a' that hae seen it this day, that I hae been the means of killing my greyheaded father--I deserve the warst frae man, and frae God too--But God is mair mercifu' to us than we are to each other." With these words the trial concluded. The crowd rushed, bearing forward and shouldering each other, out of the Court, in the same tumultuary mode in which they had entered; and, in excitation of animal motion and animal spirits, soon forgot whatever they had felt as impressive in the scene which they had witnessed. The professional spectators, whom habit and theory had rendered as callous to the distress of the scene as medical men are to those of a surgical operation, walked homeward in groups, discussing the general principle of the statute under which the young woman was condemned, the nature of the evidence, and the arguments of the counsel, without considering even that of the Judge as exempt from their criticism. The female spectators, more compassionate, were loud in exclamation against that part of the Judge's speech which seemed to cut off the hope of pardon. "Set him up, indeed," said Mrs. Howden, "to tell us that the poor lassie behoved to die, when Mr. John Kirk, as civil a gentleman as is within the ports of the town, took the pains to prigg for her himsell." "Ay, but, neighbour," said Miss Damahoy, drawing up her thin maidenly form to its full height of prim dignity--"I really think this unnatural business of having bastard-bairns should be putten a stop to.--There isna a hussy now on this side of thirty that you can bring within your doors, but there will be chields--writer-lads, prentice-lads, and what not--coming traiking after them for their destruction, and discrediting ane's honest house into the bargain--I hae nae patience wi' them." "Hout, neighbour," said Mrs. Howden, "we suld live and let live--we hae been young oursells, and we are no aye to judge the warst when lads and lasses forgather." "Young oursells! and judge the warst!" said Miss Damahoy. "I am no sae auld as that comes to, Mrs. Howden; and as for what ye ca' the warst, I ken neither good nor bad about the matter, I thank my stars!" "Ye are thankfu' for sma' mercies, then," said Mrs. Howden with a toss of her head; "and as for you and young--I trow ye were doing for yoursell at the last riding of the Scots Parliament, and that was in the gracious year seven, sae ye can be nae sic chicken at ony rate." Plumdamas, who acted as squire of the body to the two contending dames, instantly saw the hazard of entering into such delicate points of chronology, and being a lover of peace and good neighbourhood, lost no time in bringing back the conversation to its original subject. "The Judge didna tell us a' he could hae tell'd us, if he had liked, about the application for pardon, neighbours," said he "there is aye a wimple in a lawyer's clew; but it's a wee bit of a secret." "And what is't--what is't, neighbour Plumdamas?" said Mrs. Howden and Miss Damahoy at once, the acid fermentation of their dispute being at once neutralised by the powerful alkali implied in the word secret. "Here's Mr. Saddletree can tell ye that better than me, for it was him that tauld me," said Plumdamas as Saddletree came up, with his wife hanging on his arm, and looking very disconsolate. When the question was put to Saddletree, he looked very scornful. "They speak about stopping the frequency of child-murder," said he, in a contemptuous tone; "do ye think our auld enemies of England, as Glendook aye ca's them in his printed Statute-book, care a boddle whether we didna kill ane anither, skin and birn, horse and foot, man, woman, and bairns, all and sindry, _omnes et singulos,_ as Mr. Crossmyloof says? Na, na, it's no _that_ hinders them frae pardoning the bit lassie. But here is the pinch of the plea. The king and queen are sae ill pleased wi' that mistak about Porteous, that deil a kindly Scot will they pardon again, either by reprieve or remission, if the haill town o' Edinburgh should be a' hanged on ae tow." "Deil that they were back at their German kale-yard then, as my neighbour MacCroskie ca's it," said Mrs. Howden, "an that's the way they're gaun to guide us!" "They say for certain," said Miss Damahoy, "that King George flang his periwig in the fire when he heard o' the Porteous mob." "He has done that, they say," replied Saddletree, "for less thing." "Aweel," said Miss Damahoy, "he might keep mair wit in his anger--but it's a' the better for his wigmaker, I'se warrant." "The queen tore her biggonets for perfect anger,--ye'll hae heard o' that too?" said Plumdamas. "And the king, they say, kickit Sir Robert Walpole for no keeping down the mob of Edinburgh; but I dinna believe he wad behave sae ungenteel." "It's dooms truth, though," said Saddletree; "and he was for kickin' the Duke of Argyle* too." * Note O. John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. "Kickin' the Duke of Argyle!" exclaimed the hearers at once, in all the various combined keys of utter astonishment. "Ay, but MacCallummore's blood wadna sit down wi' that; there was risk of Andro Ferrara coming in thirdsman." "The duke is a real Scotsman--a true friend to the country," answered Saddletree's hearers. "Ay, troth is he, to king and country baith, as ye sall hear," continued the orator, "if ye will come in bye to our house, for it's safest speaking of sic things _inter parietes._" When they entered his shop, he thrust his prentice boy out of it, and, unlocking his desk, took out, with an air of grave and complacent importance, a dirty and crumpled piece of printed paper; he observed, "This is new corn--it's no every body could show you the like o' this. It's the duke's speech about the Porteous mob, just promulgated by the hawkers. Ye shall hear what Ian Roy Cean* says for himsell. * Red John the warrior, a name personal and proper in the Highlands to John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, as MacCummin was that of his race or dignity. My correspondent bought it in the Palace-yard, that's like just under the king's nose--I think he claws up their mittans!--It came in a letter about a foolish bill of exchange that the man wanted me to renew for him. I wish ye wad see about it, Mrs. Saddletree." Honest Mrs. Saddletree had hitherto been so sincerely distressed about the situation of her unfortunate prote'ge'e, that she had suffered her husband to proceed in his own way, without attending to what he was saying. The words bills and renew had, however, an awakening sound in them; and she snatched the letter which her husband held towards her, and wiping her eyes, and putting on her spectacles, endeavoured, as fast as the dew which collected on her glasses would permit, to get at the meaning of the needful part of the epistle; while her husband, with pompous elevation, read an extract from the speech. "I am no minister, I never was a minister, and I never will be one" "I didna ken his Grace was ever designed for the ministry," interrupted Mrs. Howden. "He disna mean a minister of the gospel, Mrs. Howden, but a minister of state," said Saddletree, with condescending goodness, and then proceeded: "The time was when I might have been a piece of a minister, but I was too sensible of my own incapacity to engage in any state affair. And I thank God that I had always too great a value for those few abilities which Nature has given me, to employ them in doing any drudgery, or any job of what kind soever. I have, ever since I set out in the world (and I believe few have set out more early), served my prince with my tongue; I have served him with any little interest I had, and I have served him with my sword, and in my profession of arms. I have held employments which I have lost, and were I to be to-morrow deprived of those which still remain to me, and which I have endeavoured honestly to deserve, I would still serve him to the last acre of my inheritance, and to the last drop of my blood" Mrs. Saddletree here broke in upon the orator:--"Mr. Saddletree, what _is_ the meaning of a' this? Here are ye clavering about the Duke of Argyle, and this man Martingale gaun to break on our hands, and lose us gude sixty pounds--I wonder what duke will pay that, quotha--I wish the Duke of Argyle would pay his ain accounts--He is in a thousand punds Scots on thae very books when he was last at Roystoun--I'm no saying but he's a just nobleman, and that it's gude siller--but it wad drive ane daft to be confused wi' deukes and drakes, and thae distressed folk up-stairs, that's Jeanie Deans and her father. And then, putting the very callant that was sewing the curpel out o' the shop, to play wi' blackguards in the close--Sit still, neighbours, it's no that I mean to disturb _you;_ but what between courts o' law and courts o' state, and upper and under parliaments, and parliament houses, here and in London, the gudeman's gane clean gyte, I think." The gossips understood civility, and the rule of doing as they would be done by, too well, to tarry upon the slight invitation implied in the conclusion of this speech, and therefore made their farewells and departure as fast as possible, Saddletree whispering to Plundamas that he would "meet him at MacCroskie's" (the low-browed shop in the Luckenbooths, already mentioned), "in the hour of cause, and put MacCallummore's speech in his pocket, for a' the gudewife's din." When Mrs. Saddletree saw the house freed of her importunate visitors, and the little boy reclaimed from the pastimes of the wynd to the exercise of the awl, she went to visit her unhappy relative, David Deans, and his elder daughter, who had found in her house the nearest place of friendly refuge. 
56675	----	_THE ATTIC GUEST_ _A NOVEL_ _By_ _ROBERT E. KNOWLES_ _Author of "The Web of Time" "St. Cuthbert's" etc._ _New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh_ Copyright, 1909, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street _To My Father_ _FOREWORD_ This story, which the authoress herself entitled "The Attic Guest," would probably have never been given to the world but for an incidental visit which I paid to a certain manse. It was then and there that the following chapters, now first presented to the public, were entrusted to my hands. The hands which placed the manuscript in my own were those of a lady of much charm, modest, cultured, winsome; and no one could know her without feeling that her qualities of heart were even greater than of intellect. She was a minister's wife, as I need hardly say; and the busy years in that most mellow of all vineyards had given her face much of its own spiritual beauty, something of the deep harvest-joy shining through her eyes. Tranquil eyes were hers, chastened by many a sorrow, yet aglow with a native merriment that the stern schooling of a lifetime seemed powerless to subdue. She asked that I would read her story; "and send it forth," said she, "if your heart approve." Her plea for asking this service at my hands was that I had had some humble association with the world of letters. Mayhap she thought this pleased me well--and perhaps it did. I urged her to send her book forth with her own name upon it--but this she firmly refused. She shrank from the publicity it would involve, she said, as must any Southern lady. I believed her implicitly. "Especially," she went on--dwelling earnestly on this--"since my book is the frank and artless story of the most sacred things of life, of a woman's life at that. Some will smile," said she, "and some deride, and many disbelieve; but the story is the story of my inmost work and life and love. Let it see the light if you think it worthy." I promised; and thus my promise is redeemed and my humble part is done. ROBERT E. KNOWLES. _Galt, Ontario._ CONTENTS I. The Light Fantastic II. Just Eighteen III. The Bridge That Lay Between IV. The Danger Zone V. An Alternative VI. The Glint of the Heather VII. "The Glory of Their Strength" VIII. Dealings with the Samaritans IX. Love's Tutorship X. The River Leading to the Sea XI. A Mother Confessor XII. The Wail of the Lowly XIII. The Lynching XIV. Girding on the Armour XV. "Our Lady of the Snows" XVI. A Knightly Guest XVII. My Ordination XVIII. The Dayspring from on High XIX. The Taint of Heresy XX. Harold's Sister--and Another XXI. "Love's Old Sweet Song" XXII. When Joy and Sorrow Meet XXIII. "The Voice of Rachel" XXIV. "Come, Ettrick; Yarrow, Come" XXV. A Select Congregation XXVI. The News a Broker Brought XXVII. Where Gus Cast Anchor XXVIII. "To Old Point Comfort, Dear" XXIX. The Hour of Healing XXX. Eden in the Attic _THE ATTIC GUEST_ I _THE LIGHT FANTASTIC_ "That room in the third story is good enough for any elder," my mother was saying as I came into the library; "more than likely they'll send us a country elder anyhow, and he'll never know the difference--he'll think it's the spare room, I reckon." I was only eighteen then, and I didn't care much where elders slept, or whether they slept at all or not. Besides, it was already nine o'clock, and I was going to a little party where "Tripping the light fantastic" was to be the order of the evening. By the way, I only found out the other day that Milton was the author of that fantastic toe phrase--and the news startled me about as much as if some one had told me Cromwell invented "Blind Man's Buff." "Has Dinah got me buttoned right?" I asked, backing up to my Aunt Agnes. Aunt Agnes was my mother's sister. I can see her yet, her hands going up in an abstracted kind of way to correct one of Dinah's oversights; for she was still revolving the great question of the elder and the attic, the attic and the elder. "You're all right now, honey," she said in a moment, giving me a gentle push away, her whole mind reverting to the subject of family concern. "I'm sure," she went on in the same breath, "it's going to be an elder from the country. Mr. Furvell told me to wait after prayer-meeting last night; and he said the billeting committee sat till two in the morning trying to divide the ministers and elders as fairly as they could--and he thought we were going to get an elder from Pollocksville." "Let us hear what Henry thinks about it," my mother suddenly interrupted, her face turned towards the door as she spoke. "Sit here, Henry," as she made room on the sofa for my uncle; "sister Agnes thinks it will be dreadful to send our delegate to the attic if he's to be a minister--but she doesn't mind a bit if he's an elder." My uncle smiled as he took his place beside my mother. And the face that was turned in fondness upon his wife at the other side of the room had a look of kindly drollery. For uncle was the tenderest of men, and his countenance reflected the purity and gentleness of his heart. He was a gentleman of the old school, was uncle. His great-grandfather before him had been born in our quaint little Virginian town, and the gracious culture of a century and a half had not been for nothing. The mist of years lies between me and that April evening when we discussed the approaching Presbytery that was to honour our little town by convening in our midst, pondering our approaching guests as solemnly as though they had been envoys from a royal court; but I can still see the tall athletic form, not yet bowed with age--he was less than fifty--and the careless-fitting, becoming clothes that wrapped it in sober black, and the easy dignity of his poise as he held out his hands to the fire--above all, there rises clear before me the grave and noble face, strength and gentleness blending in the mobile mouth and aquiline nose, while the large gray eyes looked out with the loving simplicity of childhood upon the little circle that was so dear to him and to which he was so dear. Yet there was latent fire in those gentle eyes; when in complete repose, they looked out like two slumbering furnaces that needed only to be blown--and any one familiar with the best type of Southern gentlemen would have descried the old Virginian looking through them, the native courage, the inborn anger against meanness, the swift resentment of a wrong, the reverence of womanhood, the pride of family, that were such salient features of the old-time patrician of the South. "What's your say on the subject, Uncle Henry?" my mother asked again, breaking the silence. For my uncle's gaze had wandered from his wife's face and was now fixed upon the fire. It was April, as I have said, but a generous flame was leaping on the hearth. So generous, indeed, that the back window whose tiny panes looked towards the west was open; this is a form of conflicting luxuries which only Southern folks indulge in. "I just think the other way round," Uncle Henry finally responded; "different from Agnes, I mean," his eyes smiling as they met his wife's. "I'd send him to the attic if he's a preacher; a minister wouldn't be so apt to misunderstand, because they're trained to sleep anywhere at a moment's notice--and they know what it is to have to stow their own company away in every nook and corner. Besides, it's those same preachers that make heaps o' folk sleep sitting right bolt up in church. But an elder," Uncle Henry went on reflectively, "an elder kind o' wants to make the most of it when he's visitin'--it's more of an event to him, you see; they look on going to Presbytery as a kind of rehearsal for going to heaven." "Then they ought to be glad to get the highest place," broke in my Aunt Agnes triumphantly, for she had a ready wit. "Depends on how you get there," retorted Uncle Henry after a very brief but very busy pause; he had no mind to be worsted in an argument if he could help it. "Everything depends on how it's given to you. There's all the difference in the world between being lifted and being hoisted--I saw a fellow tossed by a bull one day out at Cap'n Lyon's farm; he got the highest place, all right, but he didn't seem to relish the promotion." My mother, who was accustomed to act as umpire in these little contests, turned a humorous eye towards Aunt Agnes. The latter, we all knew, was fumbling frantically for some response which seemed to elude her; my mother's pose reminded me a little of the man who had held the watch the week before, down at Jacksonville, when two gentlemen of the ring had paid their respects to each other. I knew all about how they're counted out if they don't show up within a certain time; yet it isn't likely I'd have known anything about it if Mr. Furvell hadn't warned us from the pulpit that we mustn't read the account of the affair--he said the details were shocking. So I had to wait till Aunt Agnes was finished with the paper. I really do not know how the argument concluded, for at this juncture a very sable face appeared suddenly at the door and a liquid voice announced: "Please, Miss Helen, Misteh Slocum's waitin' fo' yeh in de parluh." I was ready for the intimation, for I had heard the old brass knocker muttering a minute or two before--and I was just at the age when I knew the different knocks of different gallants. And not a few of these latter were wont to lift that frowning brass face on our front door and let it fall again--the wonderful thing about it was, that the oftener they came the more gentle grew the knock--but this is the way with all knockers at all Southern homes that shelter comely maidens. And I am neither modest enough nor untruthful enough to deny that I deserved the adjective aforesaid--especially as this story may never see the light till my eyes give it back no more. "I'm hoping he'll be a minister," I volunteered, as I turned a moment at the door. "Why?" cried my mother. "What for?" chimed my Aunt Agnes. "Well," I answered, "elders pray too long--I went to sleep one night at worship when that elder from Hickory was here at the Synod. And he said I was a devout worshipper, don't you mind, when I kept kneeling after you all got up. I don't think that was very nice for a religious man to say," I averred, tugging at a reluctant glove. "He wouldn't think so if he saw you now--starting for a dance," suggested my Aunt Agnes. "But you look mighty sweet, honey--though I don't believe you've got enough on for a chilly night like this. Be sure you have something round you when you're coming home." "Mr. Slocum will see to that," assured Uncle Henry, his expression interpreting his words. "Hush," said my mother chidingly; "the child doesn't know what you mean." Every word of that evening's conversation is vivid to me yet, as it well might be; and I have often wondered why my mother held such a sanguine view of my simplicity. I don't remember much about the succeeding frivolities of that April evening. Sometimes I catch again a few fugitive snatches of the melody that inspired the mazy throng; I remember what I wore--it served long years of umbrageous usefulness as a lamp shade after I was through with it; and I think I danced nearly every dance, no foreboding of soberer days chastening the gladness. And I forgot all about the elder question, wondering no more where he might lay his devoted head. But before Mr. Frank Slocum bade me good-night as I disappeared within the heavy oaken door of my uncle's house, he unwittingly recalled the subject. "You're expecting a visitor to-morrow, aren't you?" he said. "Oh, yes," I answered, suddenly remembering. "Yes, we're going to have one of the men attending the Presbytery; I think it's to be an elder--and I'm afraid it's him for the attic," I concluded. It was half-past two and I was too tired to bother about grammar. "I wasn't thinking about the Presbytery," returned Mr. Slocum, and he smiled in the moonlight. "Somebody else is coming, isn't he?" Whereat I hope I blushed; it was the time for that mystic operation. For I knew he referred to Charlie, dear old Charlie, who made his pious pilgrimage once a month--and I was the shrine. "Yes, he's coming," I said, toying with the knocker as I spoke. "You don't seem as jubilant about it as you ought to be," ventured Mr. Frank. "You don't know how I feel," said I; "maybe I'm jubilant inside." "Then you shouldn't sigh," pursued my escort. "I didn't know I sighed--but, even if I did, perhaps sighs are like dreams, and go by contraries," I returned, making the best stand I could. "A maiden's heart is an unknown sea," I affirmed, quoting from some distant poem. "Besides," Frank went on, disdainful of all poetry, "if you really cared like you ought to, you wouldn't be out so late the night before; you'd be having your beauty sleep right now, just to be lovely when he came--or, at least, to be even lovelier," he amended; for Frank was a Southern gentleman. "I never had it bad enough to go to bed over it," I admitted; "but he'll be here to-morrow--he'll be here to-morrow," I chanted, as ecstatically as I could. Yet I felt at the time that the words didn't ring much; it was a little like trying to peal a chime on a row of pillows. Then, before I knew it, I yawned, yawned brazenly into the face of the brass knocker on the door. "Exactly!" said Frank, his hand moving to his hat, "that's just about the size of it--Miss Helen, you're a little idiot," and his honest eyes shone bright with their candour of affection. "Sir!" said I, employing a splendid intonation. And I gave a little stamp on the stone step beneath me--all true Southern girls love to stamp. "Sir!" I repeated, "you forget yourself." "But I don't forget _you_," Frank retorted swiftly, his face quivering a little; "though I wish I could, a little more. And I know you don't care anything about him, the way he thinks you do--or the way he wants you to. And God help him--and you too--if something doesn't happen; you have either gone too far, or not far enough, Miss Helen," he declared boldly, looking straight into my eyes in the moonlight. And I couldn't help gazing back, for his look and his words both had a kind of fascination for me; I reckon I knew they both were true. So I didn't get angry--only a lot of things, all connected with the past, rushed like a flood before me. But I will tell them all in another chapter. I had no mind to discuss them with Frank just then. So I simply said "Good-night, I'm going in." And Frank said good-night with great respect and turned to go away. I peeped through the crack just before I closed the door, and I could see that his eyes were on the pavement and his step was slow. Yet I cared nothing for that, except as it boded what might be of interest to myself. II _JUST EIGHTEEN_ As I sit and look back on it all now, I feel almost sure that a girl's real life begins at somewhere about eighteen years of age. A boy is different; his life begins at a great many different times. To start with, he has a distinct promotion at four or five--he casts off skirts forever, with contempt, and that itself is a promotion. Then he takes on the uniform of manhood, glorying in the frank two-leggedness of his kind; and in quite a real sense this marks the beginning of his manhood. Indeed, a boy has mile-posts all along the way. Top boots come next, and the first pair, clothing his knees with their red leather crown, give life a rosy splendour. This pales, of course, as does all other glory--but the day reappears in divers forms. His curls are one day amputated, falling fast, the hour of their doom still bright with an undaunted sheen--and the young Samson shakes himself gleefully in this new token of manly strength. Then comes his first game of ball, or his first venture with tools; or he is one day permitted to hold a slumbering butcher-horse while its master steps within; in return, he is allowed to drive a block or two--trifling enough, as some one smiles and says, but every boy remembers it and it marks a new stage of power. About this time he learns to swim; all the past is forgotten, the future all despised, till he becomes amphibious. Then comes his first watch--time is annihilated in the tumult of that hour; then a gun of his own--its first report is heard around the world. And so it goes on, ever onward, from one lock to another in life's long waterway. By and by the stream widens far; he must choose his profession--then his partner--then someone, and the romance seems never at an end. But a girl's life has no such variety; skirts are her abiding portion, from swaddling clothes to shroud. And her curls, undisturbed, thicken with the years. No top boots for her, nor game of ball, nor wizardry of tools; for her nothing but the long drab way of girlhood, beginning with the nursery and ending with the same. Till she is about eighteen. Then comes, or almost always comes, the first waterfall in the stream of time. And what a wild cataract it is, leaping with the tidal movement of her soul! And how mystically deep that spring of love which is its far-off source! And how the light of heaven plays upon it all! I was just eighteen when this first came to me. And all my eighteen years before seem now, as I recall them, like a placid afternoon such as slips by unnoticed in the summer-time; the clock strikes the hour, I suppose, but no one hears it. I was born in 187-. No woman is ever quite content to tell the very year, but the decade does not matter. And my mother has often told me what a lovely October day it was--my dawn was mingled with the deepening twilight, and the flowers were still abloom in the garden, and some darky children were playing in the dusty road before the door, and the soft autumn sky was now wreathed in smiles, now bathed in tears, fitting symbol of the checkered life that lay before me. My father died when I was two and a half. My only recollection of him is an impression of his great height and strength as he once bore me on his shoulder, when I had toddled a few yards from the door to meet him. My mother tells me I often started forth on very uncertain feet, as often borne back with my arms about his neck--but there lingers with me the memory of only one such pilgrimage. Yet it is distinct and vivid, I am thankful to say, and I can see yet the low brick fence, with its cope of stone, all vine-entangled as it was; and to this day I never catch the breath of the magnolia without seeing again the full-bloomed beauty that stood close to the steps within the wall. I think I plucked a spray as I was borne past it that evening on my father's shoulder. Both my mother and my aunt thought it strange that I have no recollection of my father as he lay in the calm majesty of death; for my mother took me with her alone into the parlour and shut the door upon us three when she took her last farewell--so she has often told me, her voice breaking as she spoke. And she says I wanted to linger after she turned to go, gazing steadfastly upon the silent face, fascinated by the master mystery of life; it seems, too, that even in her grief she noticed my disdain of the lovely flowers that ensconced the coffin, though I had the child's passion for those gratuities of God, so all-absorbing was the witchery of death. And I have been told, though none of my kinsfolk ever mentioned it--the old undertaker told me himself one day when I was playing among the shavings in his shop--how pitifully hard I fought when they began to shovel in the clay after my father had been lowered to his grave. It is one of our Southern customs for the ladies, veiled past recognition, to follow their dead to the uttermost; and it was in the cemetery I dropped my mother's hand and began my unavailing struggle to rescue my father from suffocation and eternal night. I was borne away, probably easily beguiled, and my father was left to his long loneliness. But I remember nothing of either of these incidents, great and tragical as I thought them, and still think them to be; even yet, I never turn away from a new-filled grave without a sense of selfish cruelty--there seem such oceans of God's fresh air everywhere, yet denied to those we leave behind. And I have never been able to free myself from the pain of this bitter helplessness--that there comes a time when the best we can do for our nearest and dearest is to leave them all alone beneath the darkening sky. Those who knew her best say that my mother was never the same again. No melancholy, or despondency, or indifference to life came to mark the change, but her soul took new depth under the influence of sorrow and her outlook was more to the eternal. There was plenty of brightness and merriment--frank laughter, too--all of her after life; but it was the play of the sunlight upon the noble gloom of ocean, stirred gently by some influence from afar. She soon abandoned her own home, leaving it to strangers; they saw no white face on the pillow in the front room up-stairs--they gave dances in the parlour, and no recumbent form disturbed the revelry. My mother's sister was Mrs. Lundy, my Aunt Agnes; her husband was Henry Lundy, my Uncle Henry. To their home we went to live, I in unconscious glee, my mother in hope of healing. There my life was spent till I was eighteen years of age--and later; but my story begins with that particular year, which, as I have hinted, is to so many a maiden's life like the month of April to the Northern river--for then the ice breaks up and the stream moves outward to the sea. I was eighteen when I fell in love. That is, if I fell at all--concerning which I have my doubts. For many a girl thinks she has _fallen_ in love when all the time she _walked_ in. Ah me! those days are far past now; but the words I have just written gave my pen a good half hour's rest while I mused on all the meaning of them. For after a girl becomes a mother, after she has children of her own--which is about the same thing--she is far more fastidious about love, and far more solicitous that it should be genuine, than when she was choosing for herself. And she knows then, what she knew not at eighteen, that the difference between falling in love and walking into it, is just the difference between Heaven and--Hades. (What a convenient word "Hades" is! It was made, I reckon, expressly for woman's use.) Well, I am afraid I _walked_ in, the first time I got in love. Yet I feel it is a sort of blasphemy to say the _first_ time--for no true girl is ever really in love but once; born, loved, died, thus stand the mountain peaks of life, and each can rise but once. So I must amend by saying that the first time I tried to be in love, and everybody else thought I really was, I got there by the pedestrian route. I rather think I honestly wanted to be in love, had almost resolved to be; and when a girl's face is once set in that direction she will see land ahead, though half an ocean lie between--or, to change the figure, she is like those silly chanticleers that crow at midnight, thinking it the dawn. One other thing, too, I must tell in my defense. I was _pushed_ in. A dearer and more devoted mother than mine no girl ever had. But this I will dare to say--and I am old enough to know--I do believe every true mother-heart has, somewhere in its great expanse, a cavity that aches, never to be filled till some one who loves her daughter comes to dwell there evermore, bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh by the great adoption of their united love. Two streams, both different--but the confluence is mighty. And then there is another cavity, farther in, its ache more poignant still--and that place is never filled, that pain never banished, till she scans some baby face, her leaping heart descrying the likeness to her own, all the lovelier because the image of the adopted mingles with it. I am right well aware how horrified my mother would have been if any one had dared to hint that she, or any other gentlewoman, cherished the hope of some day being either mother-in-law or grandmother--or both; and I cannot help a little shudder as I write those terms myself. But the truth as I first set it down, free from those rude bald words, is not to be denied. It was at the seaside that I first met Charlie Giddens. Mother and I met him the same evening, in the midst of a merry dance on the grand piazza. He was tall and dark, and his hair was gloriously rebellious, every way for Sunday. We both noticed that he looked at us a little long, a little earnestly, I thought--but he asked mother to dance first, and that's where his head was level. "Don't fill your program all up, Helen," she whispered as she handed me her fan, gliding out with the tall figure, so handsome in his spotless ducks. "Did you notice how gracefully he handed me to my seat?" mother said after he had left her; "he has the manners of a cavalier." For the old-time Southern lady puts gracefulness next to grace. "He dances like a Dervish of the Desert," I remarked, a little maliciously perhaps--for he had bowed and left us. "Like a courtier, you mean," my mother amended, her eyes still following him. "And his father's a ship owner in Savannah, and his mother comes from one of the oldest families in South Carolina," concluded my mother, naming the ancient house. "That's why you like his dancing," I suggested; "old families all dance exquisitely--the older, the sprightlier, it seems." "He has such a delicate way of putting things," pursued my mother; "he was describing his mother to me, and he said she had a lovely figure, just about my size," surveying somewhat hopefully her rather substantial form the while. For this was a very live issue with my mother; she lived in daily horror of growing stout, and any such reassuring word was balm of Gilead to her. But what's the use of going on with this? This story's main concern is not with my dancing days, and what I have written, or yet shall write, regarding them, is only a streamlet leading towards the river of my life. And my story--if it be ever finished, or however far it roam, must follow the winding current of my changeful years. Yet this I must record, that Mr. Giddens came back that night and stood once again beneath the swinging lanterns that cast their fitful light on mother's face and mine. And he asked for another dance--but it was not from mother. And whenever we swirled before her as we compassed the great piazza, I could see how mother's eyes followed us approvingly, more approving than I had ever known them to be before. And thus it all began--all that never should have been begun at all. That is what I meant when I said, a little farther back, that I was _pushed_ into love--and by my own dear mother. Oh, it all seems so terrible, so cruel to me now, looking back over all the happy years, beautiful in the uncreated light of love--it is really awful to reflect how often the hands that love her most are the fateful hands to many a girlish life, pushing the poor protesting heart, so gently, yet so relentlessly, pressing it on, on to the dark abyss of a loveless union. Mr. Giddens was of gentle birth, I know; he was handsome, cultured, charming,--and he was very rich. All these shed their light about him, and my mother gloried in their radiance. Their light, I said--but it was artificial. The summer sun of love had never shined on me at all; so that while I could not but feel the effulgence of it all, yet only one room of my life was lighted, and that the hallway--the vast world within was still wrapt in darkness. I knew all the time that I did not really love Mr. Giddens. Yet I could not see why I should not--and there the great peril lay. It was that fatal path that misled me. All the outward sign-posts pointed my way as leading towards his own--but these sign-posts were marked by human hands alone, and my mother never tired of spelling out their message. "There's not a girl in Virginia," she said one day, "but would give her head for him. He's aristocratic, and handsome, and rich." "And the greatest of these is rich," quoth I. "For shame!" cried my patrician mother, "that's the least of it." "Not at all," I retorted. "For if a girl doesn't love a man as fiercely as----" "As what!" exclaimed my mother, shocked. "As devotedly as she should," I revised, "she won't get much comfort out of his blue blood--and she can't do much with his beauty--but his cash is a different matter," I affirmed; "she could get her little hands on that all right." "Helen, you're a foolish child," said my mother gravely. "That's what I often think myself," said I, more gravely still. Well, that was the way it went on. I told him "yes" one night. I do not believe he heard me, but he seemed to know I yielded, for he did what he had never done before--nor ever other man beside. And thus life's greatest, holiest moment was stained to me; and the sacred altar was lighted with far different fire than that for which God meant it. I had never been kissed before--at least not that way--and even then I felt how I was cheated of my birthright, and I marvelled at the sense of shame. But that can never be recalled, so I try not to dwell upon it. Nor can it be amended, and the loss is to eternity. I have known the rapture since then, the primal bliss--but the virgin joy was tempered with the cruel thought that it had all been rehearsed before. And the bitterest feature of it all is this, that it had never been, except for her who loved me with a mother's love. But her ambition mingled with her love--and these two are enemies. If I had been a little more in love, I reckon mother would not have tried so hard to urge me on. But I was not--I was a little less. And mother kept kneeling beside the poor little flame on the mean altar of my heart, to quote the old hymn, and she kept the bellows going pretty steadily, if haply she might make the fire burn. Or if I had been a little less in love, perhaps she would have given over--for I was dear to her. But I was not; I admitted he was rich, and handsome, and superior--and these seemed quite enough reason to a girl's mother why there should be true affection. So I was neither a little more, nor yet a little less, in love with Charlie--and that is Hades, to use the convenient word again, when it has to do duty for the real thing. But mother kept on encouraging me, saying she knew I'd be very happy, and drawing lovely pictures of the position I would occupy and the leadership in society that would be mine; and mothers can make ashes look like bread--only they don't have to eat them through the hungry years. III _THE BRIDGE THAT LAY BETWEEN_ "Do you think we're a star chamber?" I said to my mother, as she stood at the parlour door with a cushion under either arm. "Think you're what? Think who's what?" she queried in amazement. "Where are you taking those cushions to?" I pursued, glancing at her burden. "To the up-stairs sitting-room. You know uncle always takes a nap before he goes to bed." Which was true enough; uncle fancied he didn't sleep well if he neglected this preliminary canter on the sofa. That was where he was wont to try divers notes till he struck the proper key for the night's performance. "That's where you all are going to stay this evening," I averred. "Uncle will snooze there while you and aunty play cribbage." "Yes, of course--why?" answered my mother wonderingly. "You and Mr. Giddens will be in the parlour, won't you?" "That's what I meant about the star chamber," I rejoined. "I think it's right foolish, the way you all take to your heels when Charlie spends an evening here. There's a plenty of room in the parlour for us all." "There shouldn't be," my mother made reply; "I never saw the room big enough for more than two when your father and I were lovers--which we were the longest day he lived," she added, her voice softening to the romantic note. "And did you always want to be alone?" I asked seriously; "always alone together--before you were married, I mean?" My mother smiled, her eyes half closing in reminiscent thought. "Yes, child," she answered slowly, "alone--together; I believe those two words describe nearly all the joy of life--alone--together. Don't you know what I mean, Helen?" and there was a deep tenderness in her voice as she dropped one of the cushions on a chair, coming close and taking me in her arms; "doesn't my dear one know the meaning of it? Oh, Helen, I want you to be so happy. And you will be, won't you--you are, aren't you, my darling? You love him, don't you, Helen?" My face was hidden in her bosom. After a minute's silence she drew back, that she might look into my eyes. "You love him, don't you, dear?" "Yes," I said, again seeking the shelter of her breast. "I'm so glad, my darling," she murmured. Then she picked up the fallen cushion and went on her way up-stairs. I stood by the piano, listlessly fingering some music sheets that lay on top of it. Suddenly the stillness was broken by my mother's voice. "Helen," she cried; "oh, Helen." "Yes, dear," I answered, stepping to the door. "I forgot to tell you the news; our Presbytery guest isn't coming till to-morrow. They sent us word just this afternoon--and they're almost sure it's going to be an elder." "Then 'it' will have to go in the attic," I rejoined, shouting the opprobrious pronoun up the stairs. "Helen, dear," the tender voice remonstrated, "how can you speak like that--calling him 'it.' That isn't respectful, child." "It's your word," responded I; "you said it's going to be an elder." "But I didn't actually call him it," my mother defended. Her answer was rather long in coming; I could tell she was struggling with the verbal problem. "Oh, well, I beg his pardon," I conceded; "anyhow he won't care what we called him, when he strikes the attic," and the argument ended in a duet of laughter. "And, Helen," resumed my mother, by this time one or two steps down-stairs, "don't you think you'd better dress? Mr. Giddens ought to be here right soon now, shouldn't he? I think you ought to wear your pink organdy--he says he loves you in pink, you know." "He ought to love me in buckskin," I flung back, "if he loves me at all. He ought to love me for my own sweet self undecorated--you see, mother, how romantic you're making me. If he's really got the frenzy he won't need any pink things to infuriate him," I insisted, laying Spanish bull-fights under tribute. "Please yourself, child," my mother responded as she disappeared, "but I know, when your father was courting me----" "You ought to write a book on the subject, mother," I interrupted gaily; "you've evidently had it down to a science. If you'd write a book and call it 'First Principles of Courtship' or 'Love-making for Beginners' you'd help things on a lot." But by this time mother was beyond the range of conversation and my literary counsel met with no response. I went back to the parlour. The music sheets were fumbled once again. Then I tried to read, but found it impossible to settle down. I turned once more to the piano and presently found myself softly singing a little love-verse, familiar since my childhood. I crooned it once or twice: Still must you call me tender names Still gently stroke my tresses; Still shall my happy answering heart Keep time to your caresses. The words made me lonely--like a phantom song. I involuntarily smiled a little as I caught myself sighing while the piano notes died away; perhaps it was the gathering twilight that gave me such a plaintive feeling in the region of my heart. Suddenly a voice came from above. It was Aunt Agnes this time. "Hear that, Helen?" she sang out. "There's music in that screech, isn't there?" "What screech?" I answered back, a little suspicious that she referred to my simple warblings. Yet I knew she could scarcely have heard. "The locomotive," she promptly replied. "Didn't you hear that engine whistle?--that's his train, you know. I reckon you were listening for it all right." I rose and moved to the window, grimly wondering if ever lover had so many assistants in the business. I could see the white puffs of smoke as the train steamed slowly into the distant station. The dreamy ringing of the bell floated in through the open window, mingling with the pensive sounds of evening. And I was lonely, so lonely! I knew that Charlie had just alighted from the train, doubtless hurrying even now to his hotel. He would soon shake its dust from off his feet, I knew, and old "Rastus"--Rastus knew Charlie's orbit and kept a keen lookout for him--would bring him with fitting haste to me. My cheek reddened, then paled, as I seemed to see Charlie's eager face, his impatient arms, his ardent lips. I quivered a little, and tore two or three of the petals from a rose I had chosen from a bowlful on the table; the harmless things floated to the pavement beneath the window. Suddenly a bird's rich full note fluttered in and fell upon my ear. I listened. And his mate responded--full and sweet and tremulous the answer came. The love-throb pulsed vibrant through it. I thought it beautiful; and I listened, enchanted, as the tender message came again and again. Soon the note grew fainter--and I think I caught a glimpse of the winged lovers as they glided close together into their bridal chamber in the deep shade of the magnolia tree. The rich blossoms hung like curtains, quivering a little where the mated pair had passed within--that fragrant retreat was holy. Still gazing, my attention was diverted by the sound of feet upon the brick pavement that went past our house. I listened, watching. And a minute or two later, all unconscious of my presence, a youth and maiden passed beneath the window. Neither was speaking, and their steps were slow, as if they cared not where they led. Somehow they compelled my interest at once. I knew them both, though their station was quite different from mine. She collected belated accounts for a local laundry--he drove their horse, delivering from door to door. I watched them wistfully as they passed on, by and by leaning out the window to follow their career. They turned to the left and made their way out on to the bridge. And I saw him once--though the dusk was deepening--I saw him take her hand; she withdrew it quickly, but he gently recovered it a moment later, this time without resistance. And thus they went on together, far out on the lonely bridge, every step taking them farther from everybody else, but nearer to each other. The twilight hid them soon; and they were alone together in the shelter of the gathering dark. Then was a wild tumult surging in my heart. I wondered what made it, and why the lump rose so persistently in my throat, even while I feared to know. For she was only a working girl, I thought, and he a swain who drove a beast of burden. Yet I knew that that old bridge, rickety and worn, lay between me and the Celestial. And I wondered who it was that wrote that song about the tender names and the tresses so gently to be stroked. I went back towards the piano; for I heard the distant sound of wheels. Then I rang the bell; a servant appeared in an instant. "Lyddie," I said, "light the gas, please." "Yes, Miss Helen. I done seen a transfeh drivin' to the fwont doah, Miss Helen," as she returned with the taper. "I heard it too," said I. IV _THE DANGER ZONE_ The stealthy dawn was just laying its gray hand on the slowly waking world as I crept the next morning into my mother's room. I was shivering a little, for our April mornings are often far from warm. Besides, I was excited--and the night had been passed in sleeplessness. "Is that you, child?" my mother asked, starting suddenly. "Yes, are you asleep?" "What's the matter? Are you sick?" "No," I answered, creeping in; "but I want to talk to you. I'm frightened." "What frightened you?" and my mother's tone was louder--"anybody trying to break in?" "Oh, no, nothing like that," as I cuddled closer. "But I want to talk to you--Mr. Giddens frightened me." My mother was all awake. "Mr. Giddens, child," she exclaimed, rising a little on the bed; "how on earth could he frighten you? Tell me how," the note in her voice more imperative now. I was silent a moment, not knowing just how to begin. Perhaps I felt a little ridiculous too. "Tell me, Helen," my mother said presently, and quite firmly; "I'm waiting." "Well," I began hesitatingly; "well, it's this--he wants me to get married." My mother made an impatient poke at the bed-clothes. Then she partly rose on her elbow. Then she turned her pillow, finally laying her head back upon it. "Helen Randall," she broke out, and her voice, like the dawn, had a gray tinge about it, "Helen Randall, you're a silly little goose--coming in here trembling, and waking me up and scaring me half to death, only to tell me that the man you're engaged to wants to marry you." "But, mother," I began earnestly, "it's different--you don't understand." "Nonsense, child," she interrupted, "there isn't anything to understand. What do folks get engaged for? What does any lover want, except to get married? And this is the great fright you got; it seems that you got engaged to a man, and then he alarms you by suggesting you get married! Let's go to sleep," and my mother patted the pillow with her cheek, preparing to resume the operation I had interrupted. "But I won't go to sleep," persisted I. "You don't understand--Mr. Giddens wants to marry me right off--right away soon." My mother turned her head a little on the pillow. She was wakening fast. "What's that you say?" she said. I knew she had heard me quite well, but I repeated it willingly enough. "I say he wants to get married--very soon. His family is going to Europe shortly--and it seems his father says we can spend the first part of our honeymoon on the _Sea-Nymph_, and then join them all in Europe later on. And so Charlie has quite made up his mind that----" "What's the _Sea-Nymph_?" interrupted my mother eagerly. "It's the name of the yacht--a new yacht they've got." "A yacht? A private yacht?" breathlessly asked my mother. "Yes, a private yacht," I answered, not much elated about it either. "I knew a family in Norfolk once that had a private yacht," my mother reflected, just a little reverently. "And all those rich New York people keep yachts at Newport," she added in a kindred tone. "That doesn't matter much," I said, a trifle acridly; "half of the people on them seem to be divorced, if you can believe the papers. But Charlie's quite set on this plan of his--of theirs--and I'm distressed to death about it. I don't want to just go right away so soon," and my voice shook in spite of myself as I nestled a little closer to my mother. "What did you tell him, Helen?" she asked in a whisper. "I said no--at first." "And what after?" "Nothing--that's the worst of it." "Why? Why the worst of it?" pursued my mother. "Because he thinks I will--and it frightens me." "Helen," and mother's voice was quite reproachful, "I can't make you out at all, child. You've promised to marry him--and I can't understand you. Why, when your father wanted me to marry him I couldn't get too early a day--and we didn't have any yacht either." "No, but you had father," I interposed. "That's foolish," said my mother. And I thought it was myself, although I felt my rejoinder had a meaning I couldn't just explain. We talked till the sun was pouring in through the eastern window; yet we determined little else than this--that mother thought I should and I was almost sure I couldn't. I think we all felt better in the morning. Mother and I certainly did; even Europe and a yacht didn't impress me so formidably as in the ghostly dawn. We had shad for breakfast, fresh from its briny home; and if shad be skillfully cooked it can colour all the succeeding day. Wherefore, when we were all gathered on the porch in the glorious sunshine mother immediately became communicative. She had previously advised me that it would be better to say nothing to Uncle Henry or Aunt Agnes about the subject that engrossed us both; this of itself was almost a guarantee to me that mother would tell it all, for she generally took this means of reserving that luxury to herself. So it wasn't very long till she had told them all about it. Before she was through, the private yacht had grown to dimensions of a man-of-war fitted up in oriental splendour--and I had been all but presented to half the crowned heads in Europe. "And I've been telling Helen how foolish she is," she concluded earnestly, looking to my aunt and uncle for confirmation of her view. "It isn't every girl gets a chance of a honeymoon on a yacht, is it, Henry?" nodding towards me over her shoulder. But uncle didn't seem as agitated as he should have been. "Oh, I don't know," he replied drawlingly, "it depends on your position on the yacht. I suppose there'll be women aboard, cooks and such like, that nobody'd envy very much." "Position!" my mother ejaculated vigorously; "I should think the wife of the owner would have position enough for anybody." "Yes--if she owns _him_," replied my uncle slowly. "Owns what?" echoed my mother. "What do you mean, Henry?" "I mean if she owns _him_," repeated uncle cheerfully; "if she loves him enough, you know--and if he does the same. Sooner be on an old raft--if they really own each other," uncle went on quite seriously, "than the finest ship in the world--if they don't." "You're great on love," said mother; "and that's all right for a beginning--but there are other things besides. I think love needs a good solid foundation to build on," as she nodded emphatically towards my uncle. "Yachts aren't very solid things," retorted the latter calmly; "and Europe's a long piece away. And if my views on love aren't what they ought to be, blame Agnes there," as he looked in unevasive tenderness towards his wife. I caught the look she cast back at him; it made me think of the lonely bridge. I glanced, too, at the bloom-laden magnolia--and the thought flashed through my mind that an old raft, as uncle said, might be made heavenly enough. "When is Mr. Giddens going to call again?" my mother suddenly enquired. "I heard him say he was going home on Monday." "He's coming now," Aunt Agnes announced in a low voice; "yonder, look--he's just coming past the Hickey's boat-house," her keen eye studying the distant figure. "And who's that with him?" she exclaimed a moment later; "why, it's Mr. Furvell, sure as the world. I reckon he's coming here too--some news about the elder, likely enough. I didn't know he and Mr. Giddens were acquainted." "Neither they are," said my mother. "I reckon they just happened in with each other." "Shouldn't wonder if the dominie's shadowin' him," uncle ventured gravely; "lookin' for a job, you see--this'll be worth two hundred to him at the least, won't it, Helen?" as he looked quizzingly at me. "At the very least," I answered; "I'm pretty expensive--as well as dear," which little playfulness seemed to tickle uncle immensely. He was proceeding to expound the humour to the others when mother interrupted. "Run to the door and meet them, Helen. And bring them right out to the porch." "I'd rather not," I demurred--"I'm shy." But the knocker had already sounded and Lyddie had already started for the door. Uncle Henry immediately arose and made his way to meet our friends. A minute later we were all mingled in a kind of hand-shaking reel on the piazza. "Mr. Giddens and I met at the wharf," explained Mr. Furvell; "we were both taking a look at our noble river--it's superb in the morning sunshine. So we walked up together." "Most happy to see you both, I'm sure," said my Aunt Agnes cordially. "Quite appropriate, I think, that we should hunt in couples," continued Mr. Furvell, a significant twinkle in the minister's eye; "we're here in different capacities--yet they naturally go together," he enlarged, evidently desiring to be questioned. Everybody waited. "Miss Helen will understand," he then went on facetiously; "you see, I'm here as a preacher, and Mr. Giddens as a worshipper," wherewith, much pleased at the success of his little jest, Mr. Furvell led the chorus of applause himself. "Well, if you're as earnest about your part as I am in mine, we've both found our proper callings," rejoined Mr. Giddens, making a courtly bow. "Let's take up the collection," said I, blushing furiously, and not knowing what else to say. "That'll come later," interjected my uncle, winking reverently at the pastor. The pastor seemed to understand right well and took it nothing amiss. My mother's gaze was directed in undisguised admiration upon Charlie. And very handsome he looked, I must admit, his face a little flushed by the satisfaction of his happy speech, his eyes bright and tender, his whole frame lithe and strong with abundant health. Then, besides, he had lovely clothes, even though he was disfigured by two or three blazing diamonds, two in his shirt-front, if I remember right, and one on the little finger of his left hand. But I shouldn't complain; for I had one brilliant beauty on my own hand--and he was its devoted source. I think Charlie must have noticed my mother's steadfast gaze. In any case her question came very suddenly, as if to relieve embarrassment: "I hope your folks are all well at home, Mr. Giddens." "Oh, yes, thank you, ma'am," he replied promptly; "they're busy preparing for a long trip to Europe--they sail next month." Whereat my mother quite involuntarily threw a swift glance at me. And I believe, I'm almost sure, that Charlie's eyes followed hers. "Oh, Mr. Giddens," I broke in, my burning cheeks attesting that it was high time, "you don't know who's coming to be our guest to-day--we're going to have an elder." "What on earth's that?" said Charlie, twirling an ebony cane about with his fingers. "Oh, I forgot, you're not a Presbyterian. It's a man," I elucidated, "a kind of an unordained minister. And he's going to stay here while the Presbytery's meeting." "Are they very solemn?" Charlie enquired; "they sound solemn. I suppose he's about the same thing as we call a warden," for Charlie was an Episcopalian. "A notch higher," ventured Mr. Furvell; "they're in for life. I fancy an elder's more like a bishop than anything you've got in your church." "And he's going on the bridge deck," I added, pointing upward through the porch roof. "Helen means the attic," explained my Aunt Agnes; "and it does seem too bad--but we can't help it without turning everything upside down." "He'll never notice it," Mr. Giddens remarked assuringly. "I know in Savannah, when we have those church pow-wows, half the householders have to sleep in the bath. Is this bishop from the country?" "I believe so," informed Mr. Furvell. "I think the Pollocksville elder is to be your man." "You'll have no end of fun with him," Charlie predicted. "Those old Rubes are great. I hope you've got your bootjack handy, Mr. Lundy," addressing my uncle; "the old chap will need it sure." "I'm not reckonin' on much fun with him," Uncle Henry answered dryly; "that's not our custom with our guests. And I haven't got the instrument you mention--but I'll pull his boots off myself, if he wants any help." There was just the slightest flush on uncle's cheek; hospitality was a sacred thing to him. "Oh, by the way," broke in Mr. Furvell, willing enough to turn the talk into another channel, "I've just had word that we're going to have an outsider at the Presbytery. Dr. Paine notified me to-day that he's bringing an intimate friend that's visiting him for a while. I rather think he's from Edinburgh--but I'm not sure of that. In any case, he's a cleric--and one of our own kind. A young man, I rather think; he wants to see something of our Southern life, Dr. Paine's letter said." "Where's he going to stay?" Aunt Agnes enquired briskly. My aunt kept the census of hosts and visitors for half the town. "Well, that's just what I was going to speak about," replied the minister. "You see, we'll have to get a place extra for him--unless he can be billeted along with Dr. Paine, which I think rather unlikely. And, if you all prefer it, I could send the elder somewhere else, and give you the foreigner--just as you like, though." "Whatever you think best," said Aunt Agnes, drawing her chair a little closer. Such problems were the luxuries of life to her. I know not what impulse prompted me, but I recall, as though it all happened yesterday, the quick way I spoke up and said: "I believe we'll take the Scotchman--I vote for the clergy." "You can't," said my mother archly smiling. "You're not attentive enough to them when we have them here--your preference runs too distinctly along other lines." "Oh, I don't know about that," said I. "Anyhow, I'm for the clergy this time; I reckon it's the Scotch flavour that catches me--and then perhaps he knew Carlyle," for this latter had been long a favourite of mine and I had enjoyed many a good thrill--and many a good snooze--over his books. Mother smiled. "That's a little conceit of my daughter's," she said apologetically to our visitors; "she thinks she'll write a book herself some day." Ah me! how little she knew then that my only book would be the story of my life, or so much of it as is worth the telling. And as I write the words I wonder if any one will ever really read them--in a real book. "No, I fear he never saw Carlyle," informed Mr. Furvell; "he's too young, I fancy. At least, that's the impression I got." "Is he married?" Charlie suddenly broke in, holding the ebony cane out before him as if in deadly earnest. "No, he's not--I'm quite sure of that part," the minister answered promptly; "for Dr. Paine said I mustn't have him stay where he'd be liable to catch any affection of the heart." "Then don't send him here," cried Charlie Giddens, "for this is the danger zone." And everybody laughed but me. "But really, speaking seriously, what do you think we'd better do about it?" pressed my Aunt Agnes, rising to adjust an awning that had got awry. Mental intensity with some women always runs to domestic observation. "I'd hate to put an Edinburgh minister in the attic," she continued thoughtfully. "The attic hasn't anything to do with it," pronounced Uncle Henry, silent hitherto. "But I say--I say," as he looked around the company, "it's going to be the elder. I've made up my mind to that--I took a notion to this Pollocksville elder as soon as I heard of him. So we'll consider that settled, Mr. Furvell, if you please. I've got a queer kind of a notion he's going to do us all good. When does his train arrive, sir?" "This evening at five," said Mr. Furvell. "I'll have him driven up to the house." "Thank you, I'll meet the train myself," said my uncle. "But, Henry," his wife expostulated, "I made an engagement for you for that very hour--Judge Burton and his wife are coming to call." "Can't help it," said my uncle firmly; "not when there's a guest to be met. I'll have to leave them to the ladies," from which resolve my aunt knew well no argument could turn him. It was only a few minutes before our little company broke up when Mr. Furvell rose to go. Charlie took advantage of the confusion to suggest that we two should retire to the parlour. "And you'll sing for me," he said. Half-way along the hall he remarked merrily: "Now's your chance to begin your book, dear. Put your elder in it--and make the Edinburgh parson die of a broken heart--and put me somewhere in the introduction." "Maybe I will," I answered a little defiantly. "You think I can't write, don't you?" "You could do anything you like with anything--or anybody," he answered gallantly; "but don't begin your literary work till we come back from Europe," and his voice was all thrilling as he spoke, his eyes ardent as they turned on me. And his hand went out and rested lovingly on mine as I turned the music over--for we were now at the piano--and I wondered why it was that I didn't lean forward like he did with eager outstretched arms. But I didn't. Yet he kissed me--then I said I was going to sing, as he had asked me, so it was all over in a minute. "Sing that about the tresses," he whispered, bending over me. So I did as he bade me. And the words came softly: "Still must you call me tender names, Still gently stroke my tresses." But somehow I kept thinking about the elder that was so soon to come. I know not why--it was through no will of mine--but the elder would take shape before me as about five-and-twenty years of age; and he was fair; and his accent was like to that of the Scotch Carlyle; and he had a low-crowned hat of felt--and a coat of clerical design. V _AN ALTERNATIVE_ Some things never happen more than once. And these one never can forget. I remember exactly what I wore that evening; what it was, is of no consequence to any one but me. I have a few fragments of it yet, tatters mostly--but their colour never seems to fade. And I can recall the errand that took me forth. It was to get some cream; for what we had didn't know when it was whipped. Such was the simple mission on which I started out, and I had a little pitcher in my hand; even then the days were almost past in which a Southern girl thought such a thing beneath her. I hadn't gone very far when I saw Uncle Henry coming towards me. He was evidently homeward bound, returning from the train. And there was somebody with him; I could see a tall form, clothed in black, beside him--and uncle, to my surprise, was carrying a valise. I don't know why it was, but instantly my pace slackened till I stood almost still. And once I turned and looked back towards the house; I think I held the pitcher out in front of me as if I were pointing with it. I really believe I was contemplating a retreat, but just then uncle sang out something in his cheery way; this let me know I was recognized and expected, whereat I walked calmly on to meet them. As I came closer I kept my eyes fixed as steadfastly on uncle as though I had been looking for him all my life. I believe I bowed to him as he came up; how ridiculous it all seems now. "Where are you off to, Helen?" he asked, glancing at the jug. "I'm going to Humphrey's," I said, gazing into the empty pitcher; "going for cream--ours at home won't whip." Then I felt how silly this must sound to a stranger. For I knew, without being told, that this was no country elder, and that he had never heard of Pollocksville. "Let me introduce Mr. Lord," said my uncle, paying no further attention to my remark; "the Reverend Mr. Lord--the friend of Dr. Paine's that Mr. Furvell told us about. He's to be our guest. Mr. Lord, this is my niece, Miss Helen Randall." The stranger lifted his hat--it was a low-crowned felt--and bowed. His bow was deferential enough, but it lacked the Southern touch. Less low, less obeisant, sooner finished. And he seemed rather surprised when I extended my hand--I noticed how firm and strong was his--and he didn't bow low again when he took it, as a Southern man would have done. Nor did he hold his hat in his hand while we spoke together; this I remarked particularly. "My name's not Lord, Mr. Lundy," he said with a smile as he turned from me; "it's Laird--not a great difference, I'll admit. Only that's the Scotch of it." "Is that so?" said my uncle interestedly. "They do sound something alike, don't they? Perhaps I'm further wrong," he went on smilingly; "it just occurs to me I should say Dr. Laird. Are you a doctor, sir?" enquired Uncle Henry respectfully. The other smiled. "No," he answered slowly, "I'm quite undecorated. You see, D.D.'s aren't quite so--so generously distributed," the smile widening, "on our side of the water. You've either got to be very brilliant--or very prosy--to get one there." "I'm sure you're not one of those two," declared my uncle. "I'd like to know which one," said the stranger; "however, we'll lave it go at that, as an Irish friend of mine says. But anyhow, I'm not a doctor--very plain name mine is, Mr. Lundy; just plain Laird, Gordon Laird. Let me carry that bag," he suddenly digressed, reaching for the valise; "it's pretty heavy--two or three sermons there, you know." His offer of assistance was stoutly rejected, as any one who knew Uncle Henry could easily have foretold. I was silent all this time. But I was busy making notes; and my pen flows easily, as if its story were of yesterday, while I record the impressions that came so fast and have remained so long. I recall how strange the Scottish voice sounded to me, not harsh and strident as I thought all Scottish voices were, but refined and cultured. The way he rolled his "r's" and sounded his final "ings" was in decided contrast to our Southern way of slurring the one and mincing the other. Rather pleasing, too, I thought it. He was tall--taller than uncle--and his figure was of athletic build, erect and supple, as if he had given himself freely to exercise out-of-doors. Especially noticeable were the shoulders, so broad and so well held back, giving the chest an appearance of greater expansion than it really had. But I think the face impressed me most of all. It was ruddy, as the sea-polished faces of those Scotchmen are so apt to be; a strong Scottish face it was, serious, almost stern when in repose--all Scotchmen naturally think much about Eternity--and yet the lips, thin and mobile, looked as if laughter were never far away. The mouth was really remarkable, evidently framed for public speech, although its proximity to a very resolute jaw lent it a look of Scottish fixity that really wasn't there at all, even if he was the Reverend Gordon Laird. His forehead was high--a little too narrow, I thought, to meet my view of what Carlyle would have admired--and evidently harboured much within; for I have a theory that foreheads shine if there is anything bright behind them, as cathedral windows are lightened by an altar fire. This high brow lost itself in a very comely head of hair; auburn, I must frankly state it was, but a very superior kind of auburn, the semi-ruddy wavelets having half a mind to curl after a fashion of youthful days. I verily believe they would have curled, had it not been for the close-buttoned vest and clerical coat he wore; these canonicals never could have kept their dignity in the neighbourhood of kinky hair. The nose was big, as all the best men's noses are. It stood out in a personal kind of way, like an independent promontory; and it had the slightest little terminal tilt--it wasn't turned up, it was aspiring. This, I think, describes fairly well the man who was not an elder and had never heard of Pollocksville. All except the eyes, which deserve a separate paragraph. In fact, there would be no paragraphs and no chapters and no literature at all, were it not for the eyes of men--women too--and all that lies behind the eyes, all the soul of things and the passion of life and the foregleams of Eternity. Well, the eyes of the Reverend Gordon Laird were just such as the Reverend Gordon Laird had a right to have. I'm sure there is no Presbytery in Christendom, nor any bishop, nor any other human judge or authority who could as well determine just what brand of eyes would match that particular name, as could a simple maiden who had never met this certain sort of man before. And I thought the eyes and the name were a perfect match. They--the eyes, I mean--were nearer brown than anything else; the kind of eyes that could never be content to be one particular hue--they seemed to have got their blend from the sky, which, as everybody knows, selects no colour but takes toll of all. And they were frank, so frank and honest--eager, too, inquisitive, in a reverent sort of way; penetrating they seemed to be--the more penetrating because they were rather veiled--and they looked to be in quest of truth, and love, and life. Yes, life; I think the eyes of the Reverend Gordon Laird had more of life in them than any others I have ever seen--not bright, or animated, or brilliant, or anything of that sort; but life, with all its mystery and loneliness and longing, seemed to lie deep in them, like water in a silent well. The two men went on their way a moment later, uncle swinging the valise quite playfully to show how light it was. "I hope to see you later," said the Reverend Gordon Laird as I started on; "and perhaps I'll be introduced to that cream you're going to get," he added, in quite a non ministerial way. "Not till it's whipped," said I, holding the pitcher in both hands. "That's when it'll be good," replied the cleric, something of the moralist in his voice this time. I had gone but a little way when I suddenly stopped, looked back, calculated. For an idea had come to me--and I knew a short cut home. A hasty flight through a neighbour's yard, straight under an old pine tree that George Washington was credited with planting, along a narrow alley that led to our back garden, would bring me there before those deliberate two would have arrived. Three minutes later I was in the sitting-room, breathless almost. "It's a minister," I said, "a young minister--and he's Scotch as heather." I have often wondered since where I got this expression; but I believe I heard it from old McLaughlin. He was the only Scotchman in our whole town, and he always wore a shawl to church, and put a penny on the plate. "Who?" said Aunt Agnes and my mother in unison. They were both in black silk, for they knew it was train time. And my aunt had donned two real tortoise-shell combs that came from Tiffany's. "Our elder," I gasped, standing the pitcher on the mantel; "he isn't an elder at all. He's a minister--with one of those vests that fit around the throat like a sweater--the same as the Episcopalians wear--and fair hair. And I ran back to tell you not to put him in the attic," I concluded, lifting my eyes heavenward as I spoke. "A sweater vest and fair hair!" my aunt echoed in mock gravity; "is that all he has on?" "Not put him in the attic?" exclaimed my mother, scornful of merriment at such an hour; "why shouldn't we put him there--where would you have him put?" "Any of the rooms," I answered promptly; "my room." "Mercy, child, we'd have to get all your things out of it and turn everything upside down," my mother returned seriously, "and they'll be here in a few minutes. What happened to the elder?" "I don't know. I don't remember. Uncle did say something about why he didn't come--I think he's sick, or dead, or something. But I'm not sure. And we can easily keep Mr. Laird down-stairs till we get things changed around. It wouldn't need much--men never look into drawers and closets like women do," I assured them. "Mr. Laird!" echoed both my auditors almost in chorus. "Is that his name?" "Yes," I said, "his name's Laird--Gordon Laird." "Goodness me!" exclaimed my mother, "but you've made good progress. I hope you didn't call him Gordon. How old is he?" "I don't know," I retorted, treating the thrust with silence, "and I don't care--I don't care anything about him. You know I'm not much on preachers--and anyhow, I'm going to the theatre to-night with Charlie. But I took all this trouble for your sakes," I went on in a rather injured tone; "I didn't suppose you'd want to coop anybody like him up at the top of the house. But I don't care," I concluded vehemently. My Aunt Agnes was at the window. "They're coming," she announced, without turning her head. "Your Uncle Henry certainly should have sent Moses for that valise--and he certainly is tall." Mother by this time was at the window too. "He isn't any taller than Mr. Giddens," she pronounced, after a little silence. "Well, what are you going to do about it?" I said, a trifle petulantly, for they both seemed to have forgotten I was there. "Really I hardly know," my aunt began reflectively; "it does seem hardly the thing to----" "There's no use talking about it," my mother broke in; "it's too late to make any change now. And anyhow, Henry wouldn't like it, I'm sure--he'd think it wasn't fair to the elder." "Sacred to the memory of the elder from Pollocksville," chanted my aunt solemnly. "All right," I said, reaching towards the mantel for the pitcher, "just as you like. He's not my guest--and I'm going for the cream." And I reflected as I went--or if I didn't, I have often done so since--how full is life of this same proceeding. Thwarted plans and broken promises and disappointed hopes--yet all that remains for us is to take up our humdrum tasks again, to pick up our waiting pitcher and go our way through some back alley and across some homely yard--for the cream. They were still on the porch when I got back. And Mr. Laird was swinging away in one of the big easy chairs, as much at home as if he had known us all his life. His hat was lying on the floor and his hair was hardly a bit red in the failing light. He rose as I came on to the porch. "Did you get the cream?" he asked seriously, as if it were a matter of importance. "Oh, yes," I said, "Lyn's thrashing away at it by this time. She's our cook, you know," I added informatively. "I'm vastly interested in these darkies," he said as we both sat down. "We have very few of them in Edinburgh--the thermometer doesn't agree with them. They're quite a study, aren't they?" pointing as he spoke to a sable boy who was carrying a pail across the yard. "You'll find the life here very different, won't you, sir?" my uncle remarked; "but I suppose you hear a great deal, even in Scotland, of what's called the 'Nigger problem,' don't you?" "Yes," returned our visitor, "we're reminded of it rather startlingly sometimes--by what we see in the newspapers. But I suppose such despatches--about lynch law, I mean--are decidedly exaggerated." Uncle's face clouded a little. "I never saw any of your papers, of course," he said; "but I should fancy 'twould be difficult to exaggerate much about some things that have happened in the South, sir." "Then there must be some terrible scenes of brutality," rejoined Mr. Laird, looking about the circle in an evident attempt to make the conversation general. "That depends on what you call brutality, sir," my uncle answered, his voice suddenly intense, his eyes fixed very earnestly on his guest. "We reckon here, sir--all Southern gentlemen reckon--that people who have only heard of these things, and who are not--who aren't familiar with the situation; we reckon, sir, that they're hardly justified in pronouncing an opinion." I think Aunt Agnes must have scented danger ahead. In any case she suddenly gave the conversation a mighty jerk in another direction. "Oh, by the way, Henry," she began, as if it had everything to do with the race question, "have you any idea what happened the elder from Pollocksville?" If uncle felt any surprise at the rather violent digression he concealed it remarkably well. "Yes," he answered calmly. "Mr. Furvell got word about him at the last minute. It seems he has thirteen children, and one got lost--you'd think he had enough left, wouldn't you? But he got in quite a fuss about it, and that's why he wasn't able to get away. So we'd have been left without a guest altogether if our friend hadn't happened along," and my uncle made a courtly little bow in the direction of Mr. Laird. "Oh, I see," said the latter, evidently very interested. "I'm an alternative then. Well, I'm here anyhow--and that's the main thing." "Oh, no, Mr. Laird, there was no alternative about it," broke in my aunt, "nothing of the sort. If our elder had come you were to go with Dr. Paine to Mrs. Keen's--and then we'd have lost you," smiling very sweetly as she spoke. "Weel," replied Mr. Laird jocosely, "'it's an ill wind that blaws naebody guid,' as they say in my country. If it hadn't been for that youngster straying away, I wouldn't have been here. So I'm an advocate of large families from this time on." "So am I," said my Aunt Agnes. "But there's a matter in connection with the elder we expected," my mother began rather timidly, "and it's something that's troubling us a little." Mr. Laird looked as if he would like to be enlightened. "And I may just as well tell you now," went on my mother; "it's about where we were going to put him--and that's where we have to put you." "That's the worst of it," ejaculated my Aunt Agnes. "You see," resumed my mother, "we thought you were going to be an elder--and we were going to put him in the attic," the dread tidings coming at last with a splash. "And we do hope you won't mind, Mr. Laird--you see if we had ever thought----" "We won't make any apologies to our guest," my uncle now broke in, his tone indicating that he wouldn't object to being heard. "You're welcome as the flowers in May, Mr. Laird--and there's a fireplace in your room in the attic. I may be wrong, but it's always seemed to me if a fellow's got a welcome and an open fire, the attic's just as good as the parlour." Mr. Laird looked delighted. "I'm in love with it already," he responded gleefully; "I wouldn't trade it for any room in the house. I couldn't imagine," he went on mirthfully, "what was coming. I thought it must be the dog-kennel, or a dark closet, or a wood-shed; but an attic--and a fireplace! Why, bless my heart, there's nothing in the world I love like an attic--secluded, lofty, roomy--it's the best place in the house. Let us see it now." "Where's Moses?" said my uncle; "he'll take your valise up for you. It's plain, but it's comfortable, Mr. Laird. And if you like it, there's just one way I want you to show it." "And what might that be?" asked our visitor. "Don't be in any hurry about leaving," said my uncle with serious air. "No, we'll think you don't like it if you are," chimed in my aunt. "Where's Moses?" asked uncle again. "I don't know where Moses is," said the Reverend Gordon Laird, his face as sober as a judge, "but one thing I do know--I've heard of Southern hospitality, and the half was never told." Uncle bowed; Aunt Agnes smiled graciously. As for me, I had disappeared. "What have you been up to now? You certainly did get out of the way in a hurry--you've been up to the attic yourself, haven't you, now?" for mother saw that I was flurried and out of breath when I returned. It was a little while before I owned up. But I reckoned they'd find out sooner or later anyhow. "Well," I said at last, "yes, if you will know. I ran up and put my silver toilet set on the dresser--it helped ever so much to make things look decent. And I took up those roses from the library--they make the whole room look different." "Those roses!" my mother echoed; "why, child, Mr. Giddens sent you those roses just this morning--they're American beauties, Helen." "I know it," I answered calmly, "so they'll be something new--to him. Besides, there's some respect due a clergyman from Edinburgh." VI _THE GLINT OF THE HEATHER_ Charlie dropped in for supper that evening. I don't remember whether or not he was specially invited and it doesn't matter. He came while everybody except myself was in the last stages of preparation for the evening meal; I was in the hall as he came in. The first thing that caught his eye--after me--was the clerical hat that hung between two of uncle's broad-rimmed grays. He put it on and made very merry over it. It was decidedly too large for him too; as soon as he noticed that, he tipped it jauntily to the back of his head--even then it looked big. The Reverend Gordon's attic was certainly the best room in his bodily edifice. "Your elder didn't turn up?" said Charlie. "No, he didn't come." "And you got the clergyman?" I nodded. "Up-stairs right now?" "Yes." "In the attic?" "That's where he is." Charlie returned the hat to its peg. Then he took off his overcoat, disclosing a faultless evening dress, for the theatre was our objective point that night. "What kind of a cove is this parson?" he enquired carelessly. "He's about your age," said I. "Nice?" "Uncle thinks so," I answered cautiously. "How does your mother like him--has she looked him over?" "I really don't know--he's only been here an hour or two. You certainly do look nice to-night, Charlie." "How long is this cleric going to stay?" he pursued. "I don't know. I heard uncle telling him to stay as long as he could." "What denomination is he?" "Belongs to the true church," said I. "I thought Mr. Furvell said he was Presbyterian." "So he is--he's from Edinburgh. And he's vastly interested in the darkies. They don't grow 'em over there, it seems. He got on pretty thin ice with uncle--they were talking the nigger problem." "They must have been hard up for conversation," said Mr. Giddens, with a little curl of the lip. "But they weren't," I protested; "he's a splendid talker--hush, there he's coming now," as I heard a footfall on the stair. "Come and meet him." I introduced the two men to each other. They stood talking a little in the hall--and I watched them while I listened. Charlie was in full dress, as I have said, with diamond accompaniment; Mr. Laird was in his clericals. They stood close together, chatting very pleasantly; I thought I had never seen two finer types of men, both strong and straight and tall--though Charlie wasn't quite so tall. The Southerner had the keenest face, I thought, bright and animated, with eager, penetrating eyes, and his whole bearing was that of a high-minded and successful man of the world. They were discussing "futures" at the time, I think, suggested doubtless by preliminary remarks about the weather and the prospect of the cotton crop. I know I was surprised to observe that the Reverend Gordon Laird was by no means ignorant of the subject; strange subject, too, when you come to think of it--_futures_, which comprise a great deal more than cotton! Perhaps Charlie had the keener face, as I have said, but there was more of insight in Mr. Laird's. His were the more wistful eyes, as if they were looking for something not to be found on the surface. And really, of the two, the Scotchman seemed to be doing the most of the inspecting; I mean, by that, that Charlie didn't appear to have the slightest chance to patronize him, as business men are so apt to do with clergymen. For the minister, his clerical coat and collar to the contrary notwithstanding, impressed one as having a certain order of business that was just as important as the other's; and he seemed to pride himself on it, too, in a reserved sort of way. In fact, I should hardly say this at all, since I don't know exactly how I could defend it--but there was an undefinable something about him that made one feel Mr. Laird reckoned his work quite as necessary to the world's good as that of any prosperous business man, even of a wealthy ship-owner from Savannah. "Have you been long in our country, sir?" Mr. Giddens took advantage of the first pause to enquire. "No," said the other. "I'm quite a tenderfoot--it's only two weeks since I landed at New York. I came straight South to see Dr. Paine; he took a post-graduate session in Edinburgh, and I met him there. We scraped up quite a friendship--and that's how I came to visit him." "Do you sail from New York, returning, Mr. Laird?" I ventured, thinking I ought to bear some part in the conversation. "That's all very uncertain," he answered thoughtfully; "I've been in communication with the Colonial Committee; and it's just possible I may take work in Canada. They're sorely in need of men there, it seems." "It's a wonderful country," pronounced Charlie; "I spent a week once between Montreal and Quebec. There's untold wealth in Canada, if it were only exploited." "That's what I have heard," said Mr. Laird; "and I'd like to lend a hand," he added quietly, the earnestness of his eyes interpreting his words. But Charlie evidently did not understand him. "You mean in the way of investment, sir?" "Yes," said the Reverend Gordon Laird; "yes, I guess that's it--yes, investment." This somewhat enigmatical conversation was terminated by the advent of the other members of the family, all quite ready for the supper that was waiting. And a decidedly animated circle it was that surrounded our well-laden board. Uncle was in fine spirits, as he ever was when he had congenial company, and the honours of his attention were pretty evenly divided between the Scotchman and the Southerner. It was delightful to watch the interest and surprise of our clerical guest, so new and different did everything appear to him. For our dear Southland has fashions all its own, each one of them more delicious than another. Perhaps this is especially true of what we eat, and of how we go about it. We had a coloured boy with a long feather fan whose duty it was to guard us from the flies. This amused him vastly; especially once when my aunt motioned him to look--the dusky Washington was almost asleep, leaning against the wall. And so many of our dishes seemed to strike the foreigner as the newest and most palatable things on earth. We had the savoury rock in little fish-shaped dishes--they looked all ready to swim--and sweet potatoes and corn bread and fried chicken, and hot biscuits too, and a lot of other things Scotchmen never see. It was lovely to watch Aunt Agnes' face, brightening with every recurring exclamation of surprise or pleasure from our visitor. On the other hand he was hardly less interesting to us. A really new type is something to which a little Southern town is seldom treated--we are so fearfully native-born. And Gordon Laird (the Reverend can't be always used) seemed to bring with him the flavour of the world without. His accent was so different, as I have said; and many of his terms were so unfamiliar to us. For instance, we soon remarked that he referred to the Episcopal church as the Church of England; and once or twice he spoke of the "Kirk Session," which had to be explained; and he rarely used the term "pastor," or "preacher," as we did--it was always "minister" with him. It was most interesting, too, to hear him talk of Edinburgh, of its castle, its Holyrood, its Princes Street, its Scott's monument, its haunts of Knox and memories of Burns. "Fo' de Lawd, Miss Helen, dat new preacher, he's got a heap o' learnin'," Lyddie said one day, "an' he knows how to let it out, dat's sho'." That very first night, that first supper, I mean, found us all listening with great intentness to his description of much we had hardly ever heard of before. I remember he spoke of higher criticism, giving the names of two or three great Scottish scholars, and he seemed a little disappointed to find we had never heard of the latter and but little more than heard of the former. He spoke, it seemed to me, as if this higher criticism were a matter of great importance, almost as if it were troubling his own soul--but this I did not understand till long after. The discussion ran so steadily along church lines that even Charlie, who was not very strong on matters ecclesiastical, contributed a question. "What church does your Queen belong to, Mr. Laird?" he asked. "To the Presbyterian," replied our guest, looking very candidly at the questioner; "when she is in Scotland, that is." "Oh," said Charlie, "I always thought she belonged to the State church." "So she does," replied the other, "and that is the State church of Scotland." "Miss Helen thinks that's fine," broke in my uncle. "I'm sure her far-off ancestors must have been Scotch Presbyterians, Mr. Laird. She's a regular Puritan--in theory." "Then you'll be going to the service at the opening of Presbytery to-night, Miss Randall," said Mr. Laird, turning to me. I was silent, not knowing just what to say. Yet I felt that uncle's statement was quite just all the time. For, ever since a child, I had had a kind of passionate devotion to the church of my fathers; yet it is only fair to add that if there was one girl in all our town who would not have been called religious, who would, in fact, have been called a gay society girl--what a poor garish definition that seems to me now!--I was that very one. "What her uncle says about Helen reminds me of something I must tell you, Mr. Laird," began my mother, breaking the silence that had followed his rather pointed question. "I always taught her the Shorter Catechism when she was a little girl--made her learn it, at least--and one Sunday afternoon I was following her around the yard trying to get her to answer what is Sanctification; well, she suddenly turned to me, and what do you think she said?" "Couldn't imagine, I'm sure," answered Mr. Laird. "'What's the use, mother,' she said, 'of teaching me all this--when perhaps I won't marry a Presbyterian at all?'" "All the more need of it then," replied our guest amid the laugh that followed; "it won't be wasted anyhow, whoever the lucky man may be. It's wonderful how that catechism stays with you, when once it gets in the blood. I learned it on the hills of Scotland," he went on, his deep eyes brightening as if the memory gave him joy, "and I hardly ever wander now in wild or lonely regions without its great words coming back to me. They go well together, I always think--they're both lofty." "On the hills?" echoed Mr. Giddens, who had never lived outside the city; "did your father send you there to learn it?--pretty hard lines, I should say." "Oh, no," Mr. Laird answered simply, "my work lay there. I used to take care of sheep on the hills--I was a herd laddie, as they call them in Scotland. My father is a shepherd." I felt, rather than saw, the consternation that came on every face. "What did you say about your father?" my uncle asked involuntarily, looking up impulsively from his plate. Now, uncle was a gentleman, if ever one was born, but this intimation fairly swept him off his feet. "You were speaking about your father, were you not?" he amended, thinking the question more delicate in this form. "Yes," said Mr. Laird, evidently quite unconscious of having caused a sensation. "I was saying my father is a shepherd. He takes care, along with other herds, of the gentlemen's flocks in Scotland--in Midlothian. The shepherd gets so many sheep for himself each year--that's part of his hire, you see." "Yes, yes, I see," rejoined my uncle. "Have some more of the ice-cream, Mr. Laird. Washington, pass the ice-cream to the gentleman." It was funny, had it not been so real, to see uncle's consternation. This was something new to my patrician relative. "Do let me help you to a little more of this chocolate cake," broke in my aunt. "And your coffee cup is empty," added my mother. Both showed the sudden perturbation that had laid hold of uncle, for which the only outlet was this sudden freshet of hospitality. "No, thank you," our guest answered quietly, "I've had quite enough--you Southerners would soon kill a man with kindness. Yes," he went on, resuming the interrupted theme, "the catechism goes well with the shepherd's crook; if there's any one calling in the world that's been productive of plain living and high thinking, it's the shepherd's." "Half of that programme appeals to me," laughed Charlie Giddens, helping himself generously to the chocolate cake. "I'm afraid I'd make a poor shepherd." Charlie seemed unable to keep his eyes from Mr. Laird's face; this candour of biography was quite beyond him. "But it's a fact," our Scotch visitor went on quite earnestly; "it's wonderful the difference there has been, as a class, between the shepherds and the ploughmen, in Scotland. The shepherds have been so much superior; their eyes were constantly lifted to the hills, you see, and the others had to keep theirs on the ground. Besides, their work developed a sense of responsibility--and it took a tender man to make a good shepherd. Oh, yes, the shepherds of Scotland have been a noble race of men." "And your father is still living in Scotland?" enquired my mother from across the table. "Yes," he answered; "yes, he's still living." "That's a phase of life we haven't been privileged to see," my uncle remarked, concluding quite a lengthy silence; "indeed, we haven't seen anything of your Scottish life at all. I have often thought I'd love especially to see Edinburgh." "I'd sooner see the shepherds on the hills," cried I. "I'd love to see the heather--and the mists rolling back over the mountains, like I've read about in Scott." "Have you never been to the old world, Miss Helen?" our guest enquired of me. "No, never," I replied; "I've never been from under the stars and stripes." "But she's contemplating a European trip, Mr. Laird," Mr. Giddens broke in, looking very knowingly at me. "Yes," chimed my mother, a playful smile lurking about her mouth, "perhaps you'll meet over there before very long." Mr. Laird turned and looked at me. I know my face betrayed me. But if he put two and two together he didn't give us the result. "I hope you'll bring your mother with you when you come," was all he said. "But Mrs. Randall's a poor sailor," quoth Charlie Giddens. "So am I," was my remark. "Then you must choose a fair-weather season for your voyage," pressed Charlie, maintaining an excellent gravity. "But you can't always tell," said I. "Often the storms don't come till you get out to sea." VII _THE GLORY OF THEIR STRENGTH_ We went to the theatre that night, Charlie and I, as we had arranged. But one-half of us didn't enjoy it very much. The play was a light, frivolous thing, and I so defined it to Charlie before the second act was through. "I thought you liked the gay and festive sort," he said; "I do believe this preachers' convocation is having a depressing influence on you," which remark I resented not a little; whatever my weaknesses were, I knew susceptibility to the clergy was not one of them. "Nothing of the sort," I retorted; "but the thing isn't true to life--life was never one long cackle like that. Besides, they haven't any fire on, and it's cold--and I'm going home after the next act." Which I did, sure enough, and took Charlie with me. Our seats were near the front; and I must confess I did enjoy our procession down the aisle. I could see the looks of admiration on every hand--of envy, too, from some maidenly and matronly eyes. Charlie was so tall and straight and handsome, and had such an original head of hair. Besides, most of our townspeople knew he was an aristocrat--our little city made a specialty of aristocracy--and absolutely all of them knew that he was rich. The darkies had a good deal to do with this, I fancy. My admirer had come from far away, from a city, too, and all the sons of Ham invest the stranger from a distance with the glory of wealth untold. But white folks aren't so very different after all; it's a very odd sort of girl that doesn't take some satisfaction out of these far-travelled pilgrims that come hundreds of miles, and stay several days at the best hotel, just to worship at her feet. A local sweetheart is all very well in his way--but the whole town doesn't know when he comes. Besides, it's so convenient for the local to pay his homage that it may mean very much or very little. But when a lover comes across a couple of states, leaving behind him a big city--and all the girls that are sorry to see him go, that's the best of it--that is something else, as we used to say in the South. It means his temperature must be about a hundred and twenty in the shade, as I have heard Uncle Henry say many a time. Yes, I was proud enough of Charlie as we walked the full length of the theatre that night, he keeping close behind and carrying my white opera cloak on his arm. I remember an old maid--and they are the best authority on such matters--telling me that Charlie had a very caressing way of carrying a cloak, as if it were a sacred thing. I have thought quite a little over this, and I believe there's something in it. I cannot say I was sorry when I heard voices in the library as we came in the house. And that's a bad sign when a girl's in love. There should be no such music to a love-lorn pair as dead silence in the library when they come home through the dark. When the poet sang of voices of the night I'm sure he meant just two. The Presbytery meeting was evidently over, for they were all home, Mr. Furvell among them. Now I should have said at the outset that Mr. Furvell, although he was our pastor and much beloved at that, was really quite a Puritan of a man. And I was sure, as soon as he shook hands with me that night, that he was concerned about my soul. "Did you enjoy the play, Miss Helen?" he said, looking as solemnly at me as though I had spent the evening where Dives was when he asked for a drop of water to cool his tongue. "No," said I, "it was a fool play," whereat Mr. Furvell looked a little comforted. "We had a beautiful service at the Presbytery," he went on, his solemnity but little diluted; "the Lord was with us, Miss Helen," with an intonation that implied a monopoly. "You'd have been more profited if you had been there. Don't you think so, Mr. Laird?" I fancy none of us learned much from our visitor's reply. Whatever it was, it was quite evasive; but I remember that he looked at me instead of his questioner--and I felt a little rising anger that my own minister should have put me in this light before a stranger. He would have found out what a frivolous heathen I was quite soon enough, I thought, without any assistance of this kind from Mr. Furvell. The conversation seemed to flag a little after this, and it wasn't very long till Charlie and I slipped off into the library. I didn't slip as cheerfully as Charlie. And he hadn't got more than well begun upon a general criticism of Mr. Laird before uncle knocked at the door--uncle was a very cautious man--"We're going to have prayers; will you and Mr. Giddens come in to worship?" Charlie gave a little gasp. "We're at our devotions right now ourselves," he said, so low that uncle could not hear. Then we had a swift little debate. I was for prayers, and Charlie said he believed they had brought that whole Presbytery together just to convert me. Which, I retorted, would be like training all the guns of the American navy on one little house fly. Anyhow, we went in--even Charlie couldn't have done anything else--and the Reverend Gordon Laird had the Bible in his hand. "Do you sing?" he suddenly enquired, looking up from the book. "Who?" asked my Aunt Agnes, quite amazed. "Oh! I mean, do you have singing at family worship? It's a very common custom in Scotland--they usually go together." Of course we had never heard of such a thing. In fact, family worship in any form was one of the dainties we kept for visitors--if they were able to help themselves. So Mr. Laird spoke a few words about their Scottish Psalmody--I had never heard the term before--and he said there were no hymns to touch them, for strength and grandeur. I consider this epoch-making, in a certain sense; for the psalms of David have been the songs in the house of my pilgrimage for long years now. Suddenly uncle asked him to sing one for us. He seemed quite willing, and we all listened eagerly; except Charlie, who thought, I fancied, that it was a waste of precious time. I love to sit and think again of that wonderful experience. Uncle was there, and my Aunt Agnes, and my precious mother; my promised husband, too, was of the little company. I can see again the look of expectation, surprise, and almost wonder as the young minister, with serious mien, sang us one of the psalms of his native land. He chose the eighty-ninth--I know them nearly all by number now. Our visitor's voice was not so cultured as some I have heard, but it was clear and sweet, and his ear was true,--and, best of all, his whole soul seemed to be in the great words as they rose slowly from his lips. The words are so noble that I must write them out. "Oh! greatly blessed the people are The joyful sound that know-- In brightness of Thy face, oh, Lord, They ever on shall go. "They in Thy name shall all the day Rejoice exceedingly And in Thy righteousness shall they Exalted be on high." So ran the mighty song. But I think we felt the grandeur of it most when he sang the next two lines: "Because the glory of their strength Doth only stand in Thee," which impressed me then, and still impresses me, as the most majestic union of words I ever heard in any form of religious song. "That's wonderful!" said my mother as the psalm was finished. "Beautiful!" contributed my uncle; "sounds like it ought to be sung by a race of giants." "So it was," said Mr. Laird. "The martyrs have sung those words--hundreds of them. That psalm was a favourite with the Covenanters." "The what?" interjected Mr. Giddens. "The Covenanters, did you say? Who were they?" "The Covenanters," replied Mr. Laird. "And I consider that's the greatest name ever given to a band of men." "Were they a religious sect?" asked Charlie. "No, sir--they were a religious army," answered Mr. Laird. "And I've got their blood in my veins. Some of my ancestors laid down their lives for their faith--and this world never saw an aristocracy like to them." His cheeks were flushed, his whole face animated with a wonderful light--and he looked really beautiful. Never shall I forget the expression on the faces round me; they didn't know what to make of this so unfamiliar kind of man. But Charlie was not through with the subject yet. "Well, that kind of thing may have suited them," he began again, "and there certainly is a kind of strength about it. But I don't like it as well as our church hymns," he continued, smiling. "I didn't think you would," replied the minister, not smiling at all. Then Mr. Laird took the Bible and went on with worship. He first read a bit from the Scriptures, though what part it was I cannot remember. After that he prayed. A beautiful, simple prayer--I thought it was so manly, though that's a strange word to apply to a prayer. But he never did think, as I came to know well enough later on, that God cares to have us abase ourselves just for the sake of doing so. Strangely enough, the only one thing I definitely remember about his prayer is that he said: "Give us a good night's rest," and it struck me as a beautifully simple petition. There is one feature of that evening's worship that lingers with me very vividly. After we knelt down--his chair was a few feet from mine--Charlie crept over to the sofa where I was kneeling and bowed down beside me. It thrilled me so--perhaps not in terms of Charlie Giddens exactly--but it was the first time I ever thought of love and prayer going together. And I recall how overpoweringly it came to me that there could, surely, be nothing more sweet than this, that two who loved each other should pray together, and should feel that even death could never separate them, because their love was set in the light of the Invisible. Charlie took my hand, too, and I rather think his eyes were open--I know his face was turned to mine--but I couldn't be sure of this, for my own were tightly closed. I went outside the door with Charlie after he had said good-night to all but me; and I do not think the silent night ever appeared so glorious before. There was no moon, but the stars were shining calmly overhead, and a sweet stillness, fragrant with the breath of spring, was all about us. I could hear the twittering of birds in the magnolia tree, and wondered if they were the love-lorn pair I had seen taking shelter there. I fancy I was still thinking of the great words and the great thoughts of the swelling psalm, but Charlie seemed to have forgotten all about it. He evidently didn't want anything but me. And his voice was full of tender passion as he began and pressed his suit again--right away, he said, it must be right away. And he rang the changes a little on the yacht and Europe--I wished so much he hadn't mentioned these, for I felt, in a kind of hungry way, that they had nothing to do with the real case. He told me how much he loved me, and how empty life would be without me at his side--but this was in between, and I felt, away down in my heart, that he wasn't putting things in their proper places. But he put his arm about me, and kissed me, three or four times, I think. And then he tried again to make me promise--but I wouldn't. "When we go abroad, we'll go and see where that parson used to herd the sheep," he said, and laughed. "It's a wonder he didn't bring his collie with him, isn't it?" and I felt my cheeks burn with resentment at the jest. But I didn't let him see it--for I felt I had no right to resent it. Besides, he had herded sheep on the hills--he said so himself--and that was the worst of it. I thought something like that then, at least, poor fool. "Let me see its light again," said Charlie, taking my hand and looking at my engagement ring; "it makes the whole night radiant, doesn't it?" with which he kissed it, and held it to my lips that I might do the same. I couldn't help glancing proudly at it, too, for it was a beauty--and mother said no girl of our circle had ever had one so valuable. Then Charlie went away and I went back into the parlour. They were all there except Mr. Laird. "Well, I took him to the attic myself," said my Aunt Agnes, "and it was right amusing to see how he went on over it. I had told Lyn to light the fire, and it really looked cozy in the dark when we went in. He said it was a room fit for a king--said he felt sorry for the elder. Oh! he was just lovely about it." My mother's mind was engrossed with something else. "Wasn't that mortifying at the table," she began, "about his having been a shepherd, I mean--he doesn't understand our way of looking at things here, or he'd never have mentioned it. I saw Mr. Giddens fairly jump in his chair." "I thought it was lovely," I broke in with a vehemence I could not restrain; "I don't see any disgrace in that. I think it's all the more to his credit." "Oh! no, of course, I don't mean it's any disgrace," my mother exclaimed, "but--it's so funny. It's so different from anything we've been used to." "You're right there," said my uncle, rising and moving towards the gas jet, for he was sleepy. "That's the truth all right--he's different enough from what we usually see. I think he's refreshing, if you ask me. But he had better go slow about expressing his views on these niggers--if he doesn't want to get into trouble. That's one thing sure." "I wish he had told us a little more about his folks," said my Aunt Agnes, yawning, and winding up her watch. "Did you notice he didn't tell us anything about his father, except that he was a shepherd--that he _is_ a shepherd," she revised, "for he's still living. I do wonder if he's engaged," she added, placing the screen in front of the fire as she spoke. "Of course," said I; "certainly he's engaged." "How could you know?" queried my mother instantly. "Well, of course, I don't--but why shouldn't he be?" No argument could avail against this very easily, and the matter stood as before. "Oh!" my uncle suddenly exclaimed, his hand upon the chandelier, "I forgot to give him this letter--Mr. Furvell gave it to me for him at the church; it was sent on in care of Dr. Paine. But he can get it in the morning," as he deposited it on the mantel. I promptly crossed the room and picked it up. "You inquisitive old maid!" said my mother in mild reproach. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" as I stood examining the missive. "I wanted to see what the old country stamp is like," I answered calmly, my eyes still on the envelope. Aunt Agnes was looking over my shoulder in an instant. "It's a man's handwriting," said she. "Oh!" I said, "yes, I reckon it is." "And it's got Virginia spelled with two n's," she added sorrowfully. "You don't mean to say so!" said my mother, moving over to join us. "The more the merrier," said my uncle; "and I'm going to put out the gas, if it had a dozen. All aboard for the upper deck." Wherewith we all moved towards the stairs. "The last I saw of your Gordon Laird," said my aunt to me as we went up together, "he was standing with his face hidden in those roses." "Oh!" said I, "did you tell him who it was took them to his room?" "No, never thought of it." "I'm so glad," said I--with a little sigh. VIII _"DEALINGS WITH THE SAMARITANS"_ There's something lovely about having a lovely time. Now I know that looks like a very foolish sentence when one reads it over after having written it down. So many sentences are like that; you think they're strong, beautiful, full of meaning and bright with fancy, while you're getting them out--then they appear so pale and thin when you look them over. They're like the fish that you're playing in the water: "What a whopper," you say, "I've got this time!"--but how thin and small when it lies panting on the grass. Yet I venture to repeat, as Mr. Furvell says in his sermons, I venture to repeat: there's something lovely about having a lovely time. In this, I mean, that it can never be taken away from you. There will, you know, be cold, dark days, and bitter disappointments, and burning tears, and emptiness of heart, till you quite forget that ever you were glad. But, even so, all these can never rob you of that one hour, or day, or month of pleasure unalloyed. Mr. Laird used to say something like this in the long happy days that followed his arrival. It had not been hard to persuade him to prolong his visit. Fortunately for us, his friend Dr. Paine was engaged to go, the very next week, to the meeting of the General Assembly at Dallas; so it was arranged Mr. Laird should tarry with us till he returned, perhaps longer--for I think it was about decided that he was to take up mission work in Canada. When I say those days were happy, I mean in a perfectly sane and unfeverish kind of way, of course, with no thought of--of what every woman looks for in every book she reads. That is, no calm and courageous thought of it; although I shouldn't wonder if something of that, more or less diluted, lies back of all real joy. Anyhow, Mr. Laird said that very thing, and more than once, about the unloseableness of one hour or day of real happiness. Whatever has been before of pain, or whatever may be ahead of sorrow, he said, neither the one nor the other can ever make pure gladness as if it had never been. It belongs to you forever, said the Reverend Gordon Laird. I should have known that I had no right to be so happy. For one thing, Charlie had gone back to Savannah, and I should have been miserable over that, if conscience had been half as faithful as it should have been. Then, besides, he was waiting for my decision about Europe and the yacht--and I had no claim to happiness till that was settled. And, most of all, I wasn't sure about my love for him--very far from it--and so I should have been quite wretched. But I wasn't. I was shamefully happy. We were all happy, I think, to see our visitor so thoroughly delighted with everything about him. After all is said and done, American people take it as a compliment when old-country folks seem to like them. I don't think we ever forget, even the most democratic of us, that they have dukes and lords across the sea. And Mr. Laird did seem so perfectly happy. For one thing, the weather was delightful, and morning after morning found him and me--there was no one else to act as cicerone--walking or driving about the lovely haunts that surrounded our quiet little city. Everything was in the glory of bud and blossom; fragrance was wafted on every breeze; the wistaria and the yellow jasmine were gathered from a thousand trees. Sometimes we had picnics too, making our way on our asthmatic little launch up the winding river; sometimes we went together to the oyster market at the wharf, where he seemed to be quite enchanted with the negroes' singing. "On the other side of Jordan," I remember, was a great favourite of his, and he used to get them to sing it again and again. Indeed, everything connected with negroes seemed to have a strange fascination for Mr. Laird. This perplexed me considerably, and mortified me not a little too. Of course, having spent all my life among them, they were a commonplace lot to me, and I regarded them with the kindly disdain which marks every Southern girl's attitude to the negro race. But Mr. Laird seemed to find a new vein in them--and, besides, he was so intensely human and so tremendously interested in all human things. But he didn't know how volcanic was the ground he walked on when he came into contact with the darkies; and I may as well go aside here to tell how this provided the only jarring note in all that memorable visit. One day we were all on the piazza, engaged in that most delightful occupation of waiting for dinner to be announced, catching savoury whiffs the while that betokened its near approach. All of a sudden a coal-black negress came through the back gate and stood at the foot of the porch steps. Beside her stood a little curly-headed boy, about three years of age, clinging to his mother's hand. She had been asking for something at the kitchen door, I think--they were always asking for something, those darkies. Of course we simply looked at her; I don't believe uncle quite did that--I think he pretended to be reading a newspaper. But Mr. Laird, in his impulsive way, went right down the steps and began talking to the woman. It was really aggravating to see how flattered she seemed to be by his attention. And then, to our horror--clergyman as he was and in full ministerial dress--Mr. Laird actually took that pickaninny up, and flung him onto his shoulder, pretending to be a horse or something of that sort. And the little negro dug his hands into Mr. Laird's ruddy locks, while his Anglo-Saxon steed made an exhibition of himself, galloping once or twice around the flower bed. The mother grinned with delight in a way that I knew fairly maddened uncle. When Mr. Laird finally returned, panting, to his chair, uncle had quite a time controlling himself to speak. "Do you know who that child is, sir?" said my uncle, keeping his voice under fine control. "No," said Mr. Laird, innocent of everything; "no, I never saw him before--do you, Mr. Lundy?" Uncle threw his newspaper on the floor without a word. Mr. Laird, still all unconscious, meekly stooped and picked it up. "I guess I'd better go and fix my hair before dinner," he said, running his fingers through the startled thatch. "You'd better wash your hands, sir," said my uncle sternly, oblivious to muttered appeals from both Aunt Agnes and my mother; "I'll tell you who that child is, sir--it's a coon." "What?" said Mr. Laird, beginning to apprehend. "It's a coon, sir," my uncle repeated, as sternly as if he had been defining some cub of the jungle; "it's a nigger coon." "Well?" said Mr. Laird, looking uncle very steadfastly in the eye. "Well," echoed my uncle, "yes, well." Then he paused, but soon gathered fresh strength. "And I hardly need to tell you, I presume, sir, that it's not our custom to fondle darkey babies--they're supposed to soil white hands, sir," he declared, waxing warm. Mr. Laird looked innocently at his own. "It hasn't injured mine any, Mr. Lundy," he said simply. "I don't quite understand what caused the--the panic," he concluded, still looking very steadfastly at uncle. "Well, then, sir, I may as well tell you plainly that such an action as yours would be considered quite--quite improper, to say the least. We don't take familiarities like that with negro children." "It's a harmless enough looking little chap," responded Mr. Laird, nodding towards the receding youngster. He was toddling along beside his mother, his hand in hers. "They're harmless enough while you keep them in their place, sir," retorted my uncle. "But you must know that our people down here have their own way of doing that. And you don't understand the situation, sir, you don't understand the situation," repeated Uncle Henry, employing the favourite formula of the South. "For instance, I heard you express surprise at something the other day. You remember when Smallwood, the rector of the Coloured Episcopal Church, called to ask Mrs. Lundy for a subscription--you seemed horrified that he went to the back door, because he was a preacher and dressed up like a bishop." Mr. Laird nodded. "Well, sir, if he was the Archbishop of Canterbury--or the Pope of Rome--the back door's the place for him--so long as that's the colour of his skin. There isn't a self-respecting white family in the city but would shut the front door in his face. You understand, sir?" "I don't think any more of them for that," was the quiet retort of Mr. Laird. "That may be, sir. They'll stand your contempt, sir--but they won't let a pack of negroes walk all over 'em," my uncle's gorge rising again. "And I hope to God none of our neighbours saw you on the gallop round our back yard with a negro brat astride of you. You'd be finished here, sir, if they did. Just before that wench came in here with her young 'un, I was going to tell you that I met Mr. Furvell, and he asked me to give you an invitation, for him, to preach in our church next Sunday. Well, sir, I hope it'll stand all right--but if it got round town that you made a saddle-horse out of yourself for a nigger whelp to ride, you'd have the church to yourself, sir; I reckon a few old women might go to hear you, but you wouldn't have enough men there to take up the collection." "I can't do it, Mr. Lundy," said the minister, with amazing quietness. "Can't do what?" demanded uncle. "Can't preach for your friend," replied the other. "I'm engaged." "Engaged for what?" "Engaged to preach." "Where?" said uncle, quite forgetful now of the debate. I think the same question came in the same breath from my mother and Aunt Agnes. "In the Coloured Methodist Church--I think they call it Zion," Mr. Laird informed us calmly. "I was there the other day at a funeral--pretty boisterous funeral it was, too--and the preacher got hold of me. They took up a collection," Mr. Laird laughed, "and that was how they located me. I didn't have anything but a shilling--a quarter, you call it. Well, he invited me to preach for him next Sabbath, and I agreed. So I won't be able to oblige Mr. Furvell." "You agreed, sir?" "Yes, Mr. Lundy, I agreed," repeated the stoical Scotchman. "Good God!" said my Uncle Henry. My uncle was not a profane man--but this was something extra. "Don't get excited, Henry, don't," began my mother; "Mr. Laird can easily change all that--he can get released from his engagement. He didn't know we wanted him in our church." "I'm not excited, ma'am," puffed my uncle; "I was never calmer in my life--but the thing's preposterous, madam. It's utterly absurd--it's ridiculous." "Yes, yes," broke in my Aunt Agnes, "of course, it's the easiest thing in the world to arrange. All Mr. Laird has to do is to explain to that coloured preacher that----" "But I can't," interrupted Mr. Laird; "that is, I won't." The word fell strangely on the ears of Southern ladies. "I gave him my promise--and that's the end of it. I'll preach in Zion Church--or whatever they call it--next Sabbath morning. If the Lord will," he added, with what appeared to us all quite superfluous piety. I didn't know then that Scotch people never take any chances. "But you don't realize what you're doing, sir," remonstrated my uncle; "you fail to realize----" "I'm doing what no man will prevent," broke in our visitor, and his eye was flashing like the diamond on my finger; "I'm going to preach the Gospel to them, if I get the chance." "That's all right," began my uncle, "that's all right in its way, but----" "What's all right in its way?" demanded the Reverend Gordon Laird, his voice quite resounding now. "That's all right--that Gospel business," explained my uncle, evidently a little at a loss. "The Gospel's all right in its place, but---- "Thank you," gave back Mr. Laird, his strong Scotch lip trembling, "you're very magnanimous, sir." "But you don't know what you're exposing yourself to," pursued my uncle, apparently deaf to Mr. Laird's retort. "They'll make a fool of you in the pulpit, sir. I'll tell you something, sir. Your sermon will be wasted. We had a man here once--a white man--an evangelist, who expected to move on anyhow. And he tried this little trick of yours--he preached to those coons in their own church one day. And I heard later how they made a fool of him. He preached about folks having to use the means. Good sermon, too, sir. But he was no sooner through than the nigger preacher got up after him--and he said he'd give them a little illustration. Then he told them a ribald yarn, sir, right in the church; said he and his ten-year-old brother were in bed once, and they heard their mother telling their father of some devilment they'd been up to; and the father said he'd go up-stairs when he had finished his supper. Well, this nigger preacher went on to say he got up to pray--but his brother--his brother believed in using the means; and so he said he wouldn't pray, but he'd get up and put something on. That's what he told them, sir--an indecent tale--and the white preacher had to sit and hear it," concluded my uncle, his cheeks burning with indignation. "I won't give the black brother a chance to illustrate," said Mr. Laird stolidly; "I'll close the service when I'm through." Then he laughed. "You're trifling with me, sir," said my Uncle Henry chokingly, rising as he spoke. I saw the quick pallor come to the cheek of my Aunt Agnes; as for my mother, she was fairly trembling. As for me--well, I was terrified. But just at this crisis a remarkable thing occurred. Mr. Laird didn't seem to notice my uncle's movement at all. Indeed, he was not looking in his direction, but sat gazing intently out towards the road that ran down to the river and the bridge. Involuntarily my eyes followed his, and a moment sufficed to reveal the object of his interest. For down the road towards us there crept a fragile figure, swaying unsteadily, overborne with weakness and her heavy load. This too was a negro woman, but cast in finer mould than the stalwart black who had disappeared from view. The one who had just hove in sight, as I could see even at that distance, was a comely creature, more white than black, but yet bearing the fatal hue. She was heavy laden, as I have implied. One arm bore a great bundle enclosed in a white sheet--laundry, doubtless--while on the other she carried a plump and complacent infant, crowing as it came, in that fine oblivion of weight which marks the procession of the heaviest babies everywhere. The young mother was pressing towards the river; a rusty skiff lay beside the bridge, in which, no doubt, she was to make her way to the negro settlement on the farther shore. She seemed ready to faint from the fatigue of her double burden, yet she pressed on with almost rapid steps, as if she must keep up till she reached the boat. It was this that had attracted the attention of Mr. Laird, so rapt in observance that he evidently did not mark my uncle's movements. For the latter had hardly risen before our visitor sprang quickly to his feet--I can see him now, the tall black-robed figure, with high brow and auburn hair--and strode down swiftly towards the road. Another moment brought him alongside of the exhausted negress, whose white eyes could be seen wearily surveying him as he approached. Without a word he seized both burdens from her arms, the baby held high aloft as he led the way down to the boat. The mother straightened herself and followed closely, as if she had taken a new lease of life--it was not all due to the burdens she had lost, I'm sure--and the heavy baby crowed with delight at this improved style of locomotion. When, lo--_miserabile dictu!_ as I learned in Virgil--this second pickaninny, with that tonsorial instinct which seems to mark the race, plunged its pudgy fingers where those of its predecessor had held high revel one brief half hour agone, squealing for very joy as it clutched the auburn mane of the Reverend Gordon Laird. "Don't that beat the--the Dutch?" muttered my Uncle Henry from the porch, gazing at the tall and supple form, the now laughing and half boyish face, as our guest strode on towards the river, the baby and the bale like feathers in his arms. A funny smile was on uncle's face, half of contempt, half of admiration. "Those two brats both into his hair!" he murmured to himself--"and I sure enough got into his wool," as the grin deepened on his face. He stood gazing. Then, recalling his sacred principles, he broke out anew: "Good heavens, he's going over to Slabtown with her," for our undaunted guest had by this time landed the bale in the bow of the skiff. Still holding the baby high, he took the woman's hand and helped her over the gunwale into the boat. A moment later we could see his shirt-sleeves glistening in the sun, he himself seated in the middle of the skiff, starting to pull vigorously for the other shore. "Let him go," said my uncle between his teeth; "he's chosen his company and he can have it. By heavens," he went on hotly, "I was never so insulted in my life. What the--the dickens kind of a man is this Scotchman anyhow?--I've seen men shot for less than this. I remember once in Texas----" "But, Henry," ventured my Aunt Agnes, "you shouldn't be so hard on him--he doesn't understand our----" "Then why the devil doesn't he keep his mouth shut?" snorted my uncle; "comin' down here--like those infernal Yankees--an' tryin' to teach us how to run our niggers. I've seen men reach for their hip pockets for less'n that," declared my uncle, glaring round the circle. "Now, now, Henry," said my mother gently, "that'll do, Henry. You're not much of an assassin--you know that. Besides, you can't help admiring his pluck, can you, now?" "He's too ---- plucky," muttered Uncle Henry, gazing at the now distant boat. Then followed a season of calm, broken only by the soft voices of my aunt and mother as they tried to pour oil on the troubled waters. "And what do you say? What's your opinion of your Gordon Laird--and his nigger friends?" uncle suddenly demanded, turning on me as stern an eye as dear old uncle could ever treat me to. I had not yet spoken. "Do you want to know?" said I, straightening up. "That's what I asked you for--what makes you so white?" "I don't know. But I think he's glorious--just glorious," I said, looking very straight at uncle. "And I don't care who knows it," I added. I believe I stood up as I spoke--and I could feel my eyes flashing. "And you were horrid to him," I cried, my voice trembling. "Helen," my mother broke in reproachfully, "you forget yourself, Helen. And do you know you're taking up with a stranger, against your uncle?" But the latter didn't seem to hear what my mother said. He was staring at me in a way that let me know the battle was won. He was a true Southerner, was uncle, and if anything in the world appealed to him, it was courage. Yet he had by no means surrendered. "Then you can meet him when he comes back," he said slowly in a minute, nodding towards the river; "you can meet him and say good-bye for the rest of us. You'll make our farewells to him, you see. And tell him the world is wide--you can remember that, can't you, Helen?" I smiled up into uncle's face. "I won't say good-bye for anybody but Helen Randall," I replied, speaking just as slowly as he had done, "but I'll do that--if I have to. And I'll tell him--I'll tell him," I repeated, gazing down the sunlit river towards the sea, "that the world isn't so wide after all." And I know not why, but a strange thrill swept over me from head to foot; for the day was beautiful, and the fleecy clouds were overhead, and the air was laden with the sweet breath of flowers, and God's sunlight was on the river--and the river flowed on in silence to the sea. Uncle Henry turned away and presently began a little pace up and down the piazza. Fragments of the storm could still be heard: "Preach the Gospel, indeed--act as assistant to a nigger. A pretty pass, when our guests turn nurse for darkey coons--the attic's too small for him now," as he crossed and recrossed the porch's sounding floor. Presently he stopped and looked out over the river. The rest of us did not need to look--we had been watching all the time. And, away at the end of the long bridge--it was one of the longest in the state, nearly a mile--we could just descry the moving figure, all in black again, of our returning guest. He was coming back afoot, leaving the skiff to its owners. Aunt Agnes took advantage of a long silence on uncle's part. "Well," she said, "I guess I'll order dinner served; we can't wait any longer." "That's what I say," agreed my mother; "we may just as well go on--it'll be better anyhow," she added significantly. "What?" said my Uncle Henry, turning round and looking at us. "We were just saying we wouldn't wait dinner any longer," was the explanation, "and anyhow, 'twould be better to go on--ourselves. Considering everything, you know," and my Aunt Agnes sighed. Uncle stopped still and straightened himself up. "There'll be no dinner till he comes," he said firmly, "if it's an hour. I hope I don't forget what's due to a guest," as he looked gravely round the circle, "and especially a stranger in a strange land." This was said with the air of a king and a very noble king at that. "Call Lyn," he said suddenly to me. I did so. "Where are those niggers anyhow?" he asked impatiently as he waited for her to appear. "I reckon they've all been watching the procession," jerking his thumb towards the river. "Oh, here she is," as the sable attendant pattered onto the porch. "Lyn, make me a mint-julep--make it good." "Yes, sah!" said the vanishing servant. "Lyn! Oh, Lyn," he called again in an instant. "Yes, sah; heah I is, sah!" "Make two mint-juleps--and make them both good." IX _LOVE'S TUTORSHIP_ But those were happy days, as I have said already. Neither of us knew, I fancy, whence came the silent music that was slowly gathering in our hearts. But it was there, even though it came in secret strains, neither recognizing, neither declaring. Of course, I was an engaged girl--and I was trying to live up to it. I flaunted Charlie's ring, sometimes; and I often wrote to him, sitting in the very same room with Mr. Laird the while, at my own little desk in the corner. This itself had been one of Charlie's Christmas presents. And I kept Charlie's letters in the tiny drawer in the top, but I had so often been careless about it that mother saw to it herself that it was kept securely locked; I knew where the key was secreted--on the ledge above the library door. Mother said I really ought to carry it on a little gold chain around my neck; but I had no chain--and I never could bear to have things concealed about my person. Mother never glanced at his letters, of course--but I sometimes used to show her bits of mine after I had written them, and mother would suggest a word here and there, a little tenderer than the original, and I would stick them in like plums in a pudding. Indeed--I may as well tell it--mother rewrote a part of the one in which I kind of finally renounced any immediate prospect of Europe and the yacht. She said no member of our family had ever been so gifted with the pen as I--but that I was a little astray on the facts. So she fixed my letter in a way to prevent it being very final--for she said if it was ordained that I should go even yet, it would be wrong to make it impossible. I fancied at the time that this was a little like lending omnipotence a hand--but mother was an old-time Calvinist, especially on the subject of me and Charlie, so I presumed it must be all right to have it as she said. I don't think any of them, and mother least of all, ever fancied that Mr. Laird had the remotest connection with my engagement to Charlie. For he was a minister--and that itself would be supposed to settle it as far as I was concerned. Besides, he was a minister without a church, a kind of free lance on a holiday. Then, too, we knew he was poor; he never said so, but there are always certain signs; and he took great care of his clothes, and seemed very cautious about money, except when he came across some one who was very poor. And I'm sure we all remembered, though we almost never spoke of it, that he had been a shepherd, and that his father was still keeping sheep on the hills of Scotland--it never seemed to embarrass him a bit to refer to this, which we all thought very strange. Then, on the other hand, we hadn't the slightest reason--for a long time at least--to think he cared a single thing for me. Indeed, I was just a little piqued about this; one evening I took some fresh flowers to his room in the attic, and his diary was lying open on the table. I don't know why--I have no excuses to make at all--but my eye fell on the entry for the first day or two he had been with us. I only glanced at it--any girl would, I think--to see what he said about us. And I found references to uncle, and my mother, and Aunt Agnes--even to Lyn and Moses more than once--but not a single word about me. I didn't care a straw--only I had a good mind to take the violets down-stairs with me again. But I didn't. I have always fancied I would have been a good deal more interested if I had thought he was engaged. But I soon made up my mind he wasn't, although I had declared so stoutly to the contrary. For he never seemed to want to be alone, especially in the twilight--and that's a sure sign; and he left all his letters lying around after he had written them; and when he sang, which he did very nicely, he preferred "Scots Wha' Ha'e" to "Annie Laurie"; and he was never melancholy, and never sighed--and he never asked the price of things you need for house-keeping. So all these signs convinced me thoroughly. I have already said he didn't seem to care a thing for me. And yet--and yet! For one thing, he loved to hear me sing--and he taught me two or three of the old psalms that were in a leather-bound book he brought down-stairs one day. Then he seemed so happy when I said I thought them beautiful. And he talked with me so gently and reasonably about the darkey question that I finally came to admit he did right in preaching in that coloured church. And I wondered why he cared for what I thought at all. Besides all this, he tried to get my promise that I would take a class in the Sunday-school after he was gone--and I remember the gray kind of feeling I had inside of me when he spoke of going away. I wouldn't promise, for I was about as fit to teach a class as I was to be President of the United States--but I promised to help in the library. By and by, though I can't tell how, we even came to speaking about Charlie. And he praised him, said he was such a clever business man, and handsome. I didn't think much of that; but one evening, when we were sitting on the shore all alone, he said he thought an engagement was such a sacred thing--and he urged me, in a veiled kind of way, always to be true to Charlie. And it was then I began to know--any true girl would know there was something, when he talked like that. And it was through that--that kind of conversation, I mean--that it all came about. Because, by and by, I actually told him all about my misgivings and my fears. Of course I did it all loyally enough--I always praised Charlie, and always said I knew we'd likely be so happy because he was, already--and I would try to be. And I told him one day how Charlie was still urging me to consent that it should be soon, right away soon--and any one would have thought, if they watched his expression, that he was very concerned for Charlie's interests. For a strange paleness came upon his face when he broke a silence that seemed rather long, I fancy, to both of us. "I think you should," he said, but his voice was so strange that I wondered where all his strength had gone to. "What makes you say that?" I replied, and I don't believe my own voice was quite natural. "Because I think you'd be happier," he answered--"and I want you to be happy." Then, for the first time, he looked at me, and his wonderful eyes were filled with a kind of yearning such as I never saw before. So different, indeed, from the look in Charlie's eyes, though nobody surely ever yearned more earnestly than Charlie. "I'm about as happy now," I answered, "as any girl could hope to be." He looked at me enquiringly, and I thought the paleness was deeper than before. "Just like I am, I mean," I hastened to enlarge, "with a lovely house, and having a lovely time--and uncle and aunt and mother all so good to me." "It isn't the same," he said. "The same as what?" I pressed, knowing I should not. But I remember yet the thrill of peril and pain and joy that accompanied the words. "The same as love--real love," he answered slowly. "It isn't the same at all--the other is a new life altogether. That's what makes life holy--and beautiful," he said, his voice so low I could scarcely hear. "That's the whole of life--every bit of it," he added softly. I answered never a word. And in a moment he went on. "Yes, that's my highest wish for you, Miss Helen--that you may find a sphere worthy of you. For you'll forgive me, won't you, when I say you haven't found it yet? You've got a wonderful nature," he suddenly startled me with, "and you've got gifts and qualities that can be so useful, so wonderfully useful--and they can give you such deep happiness too," he went earnestly on, "if they only get a chance--if you only give them a chance; if they're developed, I mean. And nothing will ever ripen them but--but that." "But what?" murmured I, who knew right well. "But love," he answered gently. "No woman's life ever really ripens except through love. And--forgive me again, but I must say it--you're not getting the most out of life, living as you are now, Miss Helen." I looked at him searchingly. "As I am now?" I echoed. "Why, what kind of life do you think I'm living?" But even as I spoke the words my own poor heart provided all the answer. I felt rising up within me a conception, not adequate or full, but quite sufficient at the time, of the hollowness and barrenness of the poor frivolous life I was living. And I knew, oh, so well, how far from the well-spring of real joy and peace were the glittering streams at which I had sipped so long. "What do you mean?" I urged, for he had not spoken. "Oh," he began slowly, "I guess you know. Nobody can have a nature like yours without knowing when it's not being satisfied. You have no work--no calling, I mean. And you don't have any recreation, except only pleasure--a little party here, and a picnic there, a card party yonder, and an afternoon tea somewhere else. You know what I mean--all those things--and a nature like yours can't live on confections," he added, smiling. "That's why I'll be glad--when the other happens." "What other?" repeated I, who knew right well again. "You know," he said; and the great eyes looked solemnly and wistfully into-mine. "Do you mean when I marry Mr. Giddens?" said I, dwelling on the words, my eyes never taken from his face. "Yes," he said; "that's what I mean." And his own eyes never flinched, although I could see the pallor deepen on his face. And I rejoiced, though I honestly believe I scarce knew why. "What difference would--would that make?" I asked, looking away. "It would fill your life," he answered quietly, "fill your life to overflowing." "But I wouldn't give up those things even then--card-playing and dancing and everything like that. I've always done those things--and I love them, Mr. Laird. You don't understand me, I'm afraid. You see, your life has been a very different one from mine, hasn't it?" "Wide as the poles asunder," he answered without looking at me. "I never knew any of those things. Yes, very different," he repeated. And he smiled. "Your parents are very religious people, I suppose?" I ventured. "My mother's not living," he said in a hushed voice. "She died when I was ten." "And your father?" I asked in a burst of boldness. "Yes," he said. We were sitting by the river at the time, and the sun was setting, and its last rays bathed the trees with amber light. His head was lying on the ground; and the dying sun shed its beauty on the wavy hair and the wonderfully modulated face. Modulated is the fitting word, for various voices spoke through the different features, yet the master note was tenderness, always so lovable in a man when it is joined to strength. "I'd love to be religious," I said suddenly. "I believe I would have been, too, if I'd been a man." He smiled. "Why would you like to be religious?" he said, picking up a pebble and throwing it far out into the river. "You've just said you love those other things so much." "Oh, yes, I know I did. But I mean what I say, just the same. I admire that sort of people," I went on enthusiastically; "religious people, you know. Really good people--like you," I broke out recklessly. "I knew an awfully religious girl in Richmond once. She was naturally good, no struggle for her at all. Well, she married a minister,"--I laughed as I said it--"and nearly all her friends pity her so. She and her husband live in the country, and he takes care of his own horse--he has three stations. But I never pitied her," I declared earnestly; "I think it must be a perfectly lovely life--when your heart's in it. She loves him to distraction--and his work too; and she visits the people, and she teaches in the Sunday-school. Besides, she has two children--and I think he preaches all his sermons at her on Saturday nights and she fixes them up. But then, of course, she's fitted for that sort of thing--she can pray out loud," I concluded, nodding my head towards Mr. Laird as though this were the acme of all eulogy. "There are better kinds of prayer than that," he answered, smiling again; "and I'm so glad you don't pity her," he added, turning his earnest eyes on me again. "Why?" I could not help enquiring. "Because I was afraid you would," he said meaningly--"and she doesn't need it. Where two hearts are in love with each other and their work--I wouldn't ask any higher heaven than that." Then he sighed; although, as I have said, he wasn't much given to sighing. Then came my question. For days I had been burning to ask it; yet I marvel that I was ever bold enough to form the words. "You talk like a specialist on that subject. Were you ever in love, Mr. Laird?" I shot the words out quickly; otherwise they never would have come. He turned with swift movement and looked at me. It seemed to me he looked me over from head to foot, though I knew he wouldn't do anything so rude. The paleness was all gone now, I noticed, and I thought his lip trembled a little. It was a moment before he spoke. "You've been very kind in giving me your confidence, haven't you, Miss Helen?" he asked, very gravely and slowly. I stammered out my answer. "Forgive me, Mr. Laird," I began penitently; "I had no right to say what I did. And if I've told you anything about--about me and Charlie--it was only because it seemed easy to do it--because I wanted to. Because I trusted you," I added, wishing some one would suddenly appear. But no one did, and Mr. Laird seemed so dreadfully calm. I was waiting, intending to say something more, when he went serenely on. "Well, I can trust you, too," he said; "and it seems easy to tell you. And, anyhow, I don't know why I shouldn't. Yes, I was in love once, long ago. And I was engaged to be married," he continued, in that same tone of reverence with which he always spoke of matters such as this. "But it's long ago now--it was while I was in my second year in the university. And I had to give her up"--he smiled as he turned his eyes on mine--"had to give her up for another man. Her father, like mine, was a shepherd, and she was bright as a sunbeam and as pure as the dewdrop in the dell--that's a line from an old Scotch song," he interjected, smiling rather more broadly than I thought he should have done in mid-narrative of a tragedy like that. "But a fellow came home from across the sea--from Australia--and he was very rich." "Did she give you up for him?" I asked, indignation in my voice. "Not exactly," he answered; "but it amounted to that. She wrote and asked me to release her; said she had found she loved him best." "And you gave her up?" "Certainly," he said, and I thought what a magnificent man he was; "yes, what else could I do? Or what else could she do?" "Didn't you hate her?" "No, of course not--I think she did perfectly right. Anything else would have been false to both of us. And they got married very soon after--they have three bairns now," and I wondered how he could smile such a happy kind of smile. "And do you think," I said, "do you think any girl would be justified in changing--if she found--if she found she loved somebody else?" "Yes," he answered slowly. "Yes, I think she would. But she has no right to find out anything of the sort--I would never find it out," he concluded firmly. "You wouldn't?--why wouldn't you?" "Because I shouldn't," he said; "that's why I wouldn't--if I loved, I'd love always." "Would you have loved _her_ always?" I asked, wondering at my rashness. "Yes," he said after a pause; "yes, if she had let me. Do you know, I believe it's getting chilly--shall we go home?" To which proposal I gave swift assent--outwardly, at least. And as we walked along I marvelled at the restraint of the strong man beside me. I knew, or felt, rather, that his heart was a molten mass of fire--I couldn't have told why, but its burning heat was just as real to me as anything could be. I knew it was aflame; but he was as reserved, and cold, and strong, and silent as though we had been talking of something that had nothing to do with human hearts at all. I hated myself for the weakness I could not conceal. And I fairly loathed that Scotch girl who married the rich Australian--and I hoped all her children had flaming red hair, like I felt sure she had. That same night I was chatting a while with uncle before he went to bed. "And what is your majesty going to decide about Savannah--and the royal yacht--and Europe?" he suddenly enquired, after our talk had run a little on a kindred vein. "I'm not going," I declared vehemently; "at least, not for a long time--I simply can't." "I wouldn't either," he said meaningly, "if I were you--you'll be a fool if you do." "Why?" demanded I. "I reckon you know," said uncle; "if you don't, I won't tell you. And I don't blame you, honey. I think he's a true blue sort of chap--but he'll have to revise his views about the niggers." Well, the result of the whole thing was this, that I spent a good half hour posting my diary that night. I too had begun a diary by this time--and I, too, took good care whose name shouldn't go into it. And the outcome of my half hour's pondering was this brief entry: "Have made up my mind that I can't marry Charlie--and I shall never, never marry the Reverend Gordon Laird." X _THE RIVER LEADING TO THE SEA_ If there is one thing a girl loves more than another, it's being a martyr. If there is any such thing as sweet sorrow, that's where it may be found. And of all kinds of martyrdom the love kind is the sweetest. Now in all this a woman is so different from a man. A man enjoys the suffering that comes with love--if some one else does the suffering; but a woman glories in it--if some one else does the loving. And that was pretty much my case. For I was having lots of love--from Charlie. This was all very well so far as it went; nor can it be denied that it went a considerable way. For every girl prizes a strong man's love, though she return it never so faintly. Like some preachers, she highly esteems a call--even if she has little or no thought of accepting it. But there is nothing, nothing in all the world, so troublesome as love; unless it utterly swamps you--then is the solution simple. But to have just enough to marry on, with no surplus for the years--that's dreadful. That is like launching some mighty ship when the tide is out--and it must be awful to hear the keel grating on the sand. Yes, that's where the martydom comes in, to recall the noble word with which I began the chapter. And when the Judgment Day shall dawn--concerning which I have no doubt, but much misgiving--the most oft-repeated charge against our poor weak womanhood will be that we sold ourselves for nought. Some of our loveliest will be the first to learn, in that great day, how deadly was the barter of their bodies--and of so much more. I have often heard uncle say that when a horse is sold its halter always goes along--but no one ever told me that when a girl sells her body, that sale includes the soul. Reluctant, protesting, even horrified, it yet must cleave to its tenement of clay and meet the tenant's doom. And what a doom! if it be fitting destiny for those who have bartered the sanctity of life, some for bread, some for home, some for gold, some for fame, some for earthly station; and some, nobler these, for very hungriness of heart, crying out for the nameless something that shall satisfy the soul. I hardly know just how or when I resigned myself to such a martyrdom. But I did. I decided to marry Charlie, right soon too--despite the defiant vow I had registered in my diary that night. One thing I'm sure of--and that is, that Europe and the yacht had mighty little to do with it. But whether it was because I feared Charlie might throw himself from the deck of the aforesaid yacht if I didn't marry him; or whether I felt it was a matter of honour; or whether I knew it would throw mother's life into eclipse; or whether I agreed with that semi-intelligent philosopher who once said that all life was a gamble in probabilities, or something of that sort, I cannot say. But anyhow, one midnight hour, I drew my pen through the first half of that diary vow, the part which declared I could never marry Charlie, and I left uninjured the savage promise to myself that I would never, never marry the Reverend Gordon Laird. Besides, he had been horrid. Not in any positive sense, of course, for Mr. Laird was such a perfect gentleman. And yet he was a gentleman after a fashion I had never seen before. He was not in the least like our Southern gallants; he couldn't bow like them, nor make pretty speeches--and he wouldn't jump across the floor to pick up my handkerchief, though I once saw him give Dinah a hand up the back steps with a heavy block of ice that had slipped from her grasp and fallen to the bottom. And he never brought me flowers, or candies, except some wild violets he might sometimes pluck--and once he did give me some molasses taffy, of which his reverence himself partook with almost juvenile enthusiasm. But he was scrupulously polite, and that's so hard for a girl to stand if she's interested in a man at all. And he seemed so strong, and self-possessed, that he was distant without meaning to be--the distance of a sort of superiority, all the worse because you knew he wasn't trying to make you realize it at all; and I had the intolerable feeling that his world was an altogether different one from mine, and that he was interested in things I didn't know about, yet which I felt might be just as much mine as his if I only had a chance. As it was, however, I was a good deal like a child standing knee high to some man whose face was half hidden by the telescope to his eye; if he knew you were there at all, you felt the very most he'd do would be to pat your head and ask you if you'd lost your ball. I don't know what finally decided me. But anyhow I wrote Charlie a letter, and told him Yes. "Yes, right away," was the burden of what I said, "as soon as I can get ready." I thought at the time what a cruel term that was, "getting ready"--as if the milliner and dressmaker had any part to play in that. All the world I would have given to have known how to really "get ready" in my inmost heart and life. But I wrote the letter, and sealed it, and kissed it on the outside--which I felt was the proper thing to do--and then I placed it in the Bible on my dressing-table, taking quite a pious satisfaction in the fancy. Then I sat down and cried till my eyes were sore and the Bible all stained with bitter tears. Later on, I told my mother; her joy was quite enough for two, quite too much for me. And I told Mr. Laird too. Some will ask why, and perhaps make merry over that delicate reserve which Southern women pride themselves upon. But let them ask, and let them make merry as they will. Besides, I had already told Mr. Laird so much that it was surely natural enough for me to tell him this. Moreover, was he not a minister--and what are they for if not to be confided in? So I told him I was going to post a letter. It was the gathering dusk, for such a letter should never sure be launched in the garish light of day. Then I told him what was in it, or, at least, told him enough to let him know; for he was remarkably "quick in the uptake," to adopt a phrase of his own countrymen; I think I referred, too, to his own counsel in the matter. He didn't speak for a little, nor could I see his face. But when he did break the silence, it was to say he'd walk to the post-office with me; he added that the exercise would do him good, since he hadn't had much of an appetite for supper--which was, I thought, one of the shabbiest speeches he could have framed. But I let him come. "Why not row down?" he suddenly suggested as we came to the bend in the road beside the river. Our boat-house, its door wide open, was at the water's edge. "We can land within a square of the office," he enlarged. I should have refused, I know; for the letter to Charlie was in my hand. But I didn't. And I remember yet the sense of sweet helplessness I felt as he turned and led the way to the boat-house. It all comes back to me again. I stand once more alone, outside, while the tall form disappeared within the low-roofed house. The sound of pushing and rolling I hear again as the boat emerged slowly from its home. The rattle of oars comes back, idly rolling to and fro in the rocking skiff; the metallic chink as they were being adjusted in the iron sockets; and the lapping waves, and the soft breath of evening, and the distant noises of the drowsy town. I remember, too, that there was neither moon nor star, the sky all veiled with the gentle haze that often marks our Southern spring. He rowed; and I sat in the armchair in the stern. "You're going too far out," I said suddenly, for we were near the middle of the river. "I want to get a last look at the place," he said, "and one can see better from out here. Doesn't the town look lovely in the dusk?--see all those twinkling lights." "Yes," I agreed, "it's beautiful. Why do you say that?" I asked, trying to conceal the tremor in my voice. "Say what?" "What you said a moment ago--about a last look--why the last?" "Because it is," he answered slowly, the oars hardly moving now. "I'm going away." I looked down at the dimpling track my hand was making in the water. "When?" I said; oh, so carelessly. "To-morrow." "Where?" as I caught at the little throb in my voice. "To Canada--they've got an opening for me there. I'm going to take a mission field." I made no response. But I knew for the first time, in all this life of mine, what it really meant to have a heart on fire. He was not looking, so he could not see the quick rise and fall of my bosom as I looked out through the deepening darkness towards the twinkling shore. I could see the dim outline of a few tall elms on the bank; and muffled sounds floated towards us across the darkling water. But what I remember most was the wonderful stillness that reigned without, while the first real heart-storm I had ever known raged deep within. One hand was in the water, troubling the unconscious element; in the other I still held the letter I had written Charlie. And I leaned far out over the edge of the boat, withdrawing my gaze from the shore; but the silent river gave back nothing except murky blankness. Life had the selfsame colour to me then, poor child and changeling that I was. Suddenly I felt that his eyes were on me, though the gloom was deepening--and I trembled, actually trembled; if I had been alone with him in mid-ocean I could not have trembled more. Perhaps I glanced down the sullen river and remembered that its home was the far waiting sea. Then he moved--and towards me. If there had been a mile between us, instead of a few paltry feet, I could not have been more conscious of his coming. For he never spoke, and I neither spoke nor stirred. In a moment he was beside me, or at my feet, or both. And such a transformation I had never seen. His voice was low and unsteady, choking almost, and I could catch the wonderful fire of his eyes as they were fastened on me in the gloom. "Don't," I said faintly, "please don't--let us row in--we'll miss the mail." But he made no movement, never even glancing at one of the oars which had been lifted from its socket and slipped with a little splash into the stream. The other sulked alone in the darkly dimpling water. "Oh! Helen," he said in an altered voice, such a voice as I had never heard before, "you know--you know all I want to say." He had hold of my hand, the one that held the letter. And still I did not move or speak. But a swift thought flashed through my mind; it was of another day, when another man had thus laid siege to me--and I knew now what life's real passion meant. Yes, I will tell it--and they may smile who will--my whole soul leaped in silent ecstasy, and triumph, and hope. But the greatest of these was hope. I knew, at long last, what it meant to love and to be loved--and no queen ever gloried in the hour of her coronation as I silently rejoiced in mine. I forgot that he was stronger than I, and greater, and nobler; forgot all about the strength of intellect that I had felt as a gulf between us; all the difference, too, of life's aim and purpose was sunk and forgotten now. I even forgot that he was a minister at all, set apart for life to duties and sacrifices for which I had neither gift nor inclination. I only knew I loved him, and that we were alone together--and that he was at my feet. "Helen," he began again, "I'm going away--and you'll forget all about me, won't you, Helen?" It was sweet to hear him speak my name. And his words would mean, of course, that he wanted me to forget--but I knew what they really meant, and I held every tone sacred to my heart. Then I said, and the words were soft as the breeze about us: "I won't." I knew it was wrong--for Charlie's letter was still in the hand he held. But it was glorious. Oh, how I revelled in the words I spoke! They were simple and insignificant, I know,--but the wild breath of a new-born love pulsed through them, and I could see by the kindled face, though the dark was round about us, how his heart had leaped to recognize their meaning. And then his own soul poured itself out in a great gust of passion, pure and holy and resistless and triumphant; all the strength and silentness and self-control that had provoked my wonder through the days seemed now to be turned to leaping flame as he told me--oh, so eloquently and yet so brokenly--of such a love as I had never dreamed could be offered any maiden's heart. "Can you see that steeple there?" he said, his voice hoarse with feeling as he pointed to the distant town; "no, it's too dark--but I can see it. I see it even in my dreams. It was under its shadow I met you first, when your uncle and I were coming from the train. And I knew then, Helen--in that instant I knew, and have known ever since, that there was only one love for me--and it was you, my darling. And I knew, I knew, who put the roses in that attic room of mine--and they made the place like heaven to me ever since. And give me this, Helen--surrender it to me," he went on passionately, his fingers closing stealthily around the letter in my hand. "I cannot," I cried, protesting, summoning what strength I might. "Oh, I cannot--that's my letter to Charlie." His clasp relaxed a little. "I know," he said; "that's why I want it--and you cannot, you must not, send it now." "But you told me, you told me more than once," I pleaded; "you said how true I ought to be--you know you did," and I trembled lest his own counsel should prevail. He seemed to sink back a little--and awful silence reigned a moment. "But I didn't know," he soon began, new earnestness in his voice, "I only knew then that I loved you--and I could have given you up, I really could--but I didn't know then that you belonged to me--to me, my darling," his voice rising to the masterful with the words; "I didn't know then that God meant you for me, and that that was why He led my steps across the sea. I could have given you up--I swear I could," he cried almost fiercely, "if it had meant nothing but a wounded life for me--but when it's you--oh, when it's you, my darling, when your life would be wounded and broken too. For you love me, my own," and his voice had the tenderest strain that ever filled woman's heart with rapture; "don't you, Helen?" he went pleadingly on; "oh, say you do--or tell me, tell me, Helen, if you don't." Then the silence of death reigned about us both, though heaven knows I tried my best to break it, but could make no sound. And then, then--with all the stealth of love and of a strong man's will--he gently drew the letter from my hand, my heart fluttering till it hurt, and without a word he tore it up, slowly, noiselessly, almost reverently, into a hundred pieces, and a moment later they fluttered through the dark out onto the bosom of the silent river. I was like one in a dream, unspeaking still. Perhaps I had a great sense of weakness, even of wrong. But I do not think so. I only knew that life was changed to me in that wonderful hour, and that I cared nothing for the future, all that it might bring, all my unfitness for it. I only knew that I had found at last what my poor, tired, frivolous heart had been seeking in alien ways for long. And I knew that love's great lie, so desperately cherished, had retreated before Love's great Reality. And when he took me in his arms, so strong, so tight, I shut my eyes and rested there; and when he kissed me--only once--I prayed, a swift, wonderful prayer. And I knew at last that love was holy, stainless, and that God was good. XI _A MOTHER CONFESSOR_ They were waiting for us when we got home, wondering a little why we were so late. We told them we had been on the river, and Mr. Laird apologized for the loss of the oar; I remember uncle said it was lucky he was able to paddle his own canoe. I went into mother's room when I went up-stairs to fix my hair--and she noticed that Charlie's ring was absent from my hand. I expected her to, for it was a source of constant joy to her. Then I told her. I shall not describe the gust that followed, except to say that what I remember best about it was mother's appeal to my sense of unfitness for the life of a minister's wife. There was a lot more--Europe and the yacht were not forgotten--about the folly of giving myself to a life of obscurity and poverty when a very different one was open to me. "I'm sick of money," I said foolishly; "I've always had nearly everything I wanted--and I wasn't happy." "You'll know the difference when you don't have your uncle to give you everything you want," said my mother. "He's been the kindest man that ever was," I agreed, "but no uncle that ever lived could give a girl everything she wants. There's only one can do that," I went on, for my heart was singing--"and I've found him at last." It was then that mother appealed to me on the ground of my unfitness for the life I had chosen. And I must admit that _did_ hit me pretty hard. "Look at our minister's wife," she said; "she's meant for it. It's true she looks half starved, and she's always dowdy, and has to make a dress do for years--but she's happy in that kind of life." "Maybe I'll be happy too," I ventured to predict. "How could you be?" retorted my mother. "How could you ever hope to be, when you're not fitted for that kind of work? Mrs. Furvell can lead in prayer." "Well, I can't," I said--"but I can follow. And Mr. Laird says that's better." "And she can take the chair at meetings--and she knows how to talk to ministers when they come--and they say she looks over her husband's sermons, and makes suggestions." "My husband's sermons won't need any," I made reply. And at this I blushed furiously: the word sounded like a beautiful judgment day. I knew how crimson my face and neck all grew, for I was standing in front of a pier glass at the time, my hair flowing down about my shoulders. And I wondered if I was beautiful--I hoped I was, but not for my own sake at all--I can honestly say no vanity was in my thought. Everything was different now. "Of course," conceded my mother, "I believe in a girl marrying for love--but you haven't known him long enough. Now Charlie's different; you've known him so long." "That's just where it comes in," said I, dimly groping for what I felt was a great point. "What do you mean?" said mother. "I don't know," I answered, which was gloriously true. "Besides," digressed my mother, leaving this obscure point unsettled, "what reason have you got to think you'll ever get along agreeably with his folks?" "I'd get along with Choctaw Indians," quoth I, "if it would make him any happier; besides, I won't have to--they're all in Scotland." "Whose happiness do you mean?" enquired my mother, though she knew right well. "Why, his--Mr. Laird's, of course." "Are you going to call him Mr. Laird?" pursued my mother, for womanly curiosity will show itself even amid high tragedy. "I reckon so--I don't know," and I laughed as I spoke; "that never occurred to me." "He didn't ask you to--to call him Gordon?" "Mercy, no--why should he?" I exclaimed aghast. "Why shouldn't he?" replied my mother. "I remember the night your father asked me to marry him--but then, there's no use of that; that's all over now. When is he going to speak to me about it, Helen?" "Oh, mother," I said, putting my arms about her neck, "you're such a woman! I know you're just counting the minutes till you'll be alone with him when he's pleading with you to give your daughter to him. That's the next best thing to getting a proposal yourself, isn't it, mother?" But she was not yet ready for surrender. "It's very easy for you, Helen," she said seriously, "to treat it all as a trifling matter--but you don't know what a heavy heart you've given me. And there's another thing," she went on, a little timidly, I thought: "I suppose you don't forget that his father's a shepherd--a man that takes care of sheep, on the hills?" she enlarged. "No, I haven't forgotten it," I answered, and I felt my colour rising, "nor has he forgotten. And I wouldn't care if his father were a chimney-sweep. Do you mean that, mother?" I demanded, my voice about as stern as she had ever heard it. "Mean what, Helen?" "Do you mean that that--about his father being a shepherd--should make any difference to me? When I love him?" I added, my voice shaking a little. "No, child, no. No, of course not," my mother hastened to reply; "only it'll be a little awkward, I'm afraid. You've got to consider everything, you know." "That's just what I'm doing," I retorted quickly. "And if he's good, and true, and noble--and he is--what difference does it make to me who his father is, or what he does? It won't be as awkward as to be married to a man you don't love--that's what I _would_ call awkward," I cried, "and that's what nearly happened me. And he--Mr. Laird--he tore the letter up and threw it into the river, thank God!" as the tears that could no longer be restrained poured forth at last. Her tender arms tightened about me as she soothed me with some explanation of what she meant, telling me meantime that I was tired and needing rest. Nor did the interview last much longer, being fruitful of but little satisfaction on either side. Mother loved me too well to make any real unpleasantness about it; and, before we finished, she laid most of her grief to the score of Charlie's broken heart. But she did add, rather sorrowfully, that in all probability now I would live and die without ever seeing Europe. I believe there's no place where a girl so feels the trembling joy of love as in her own little room when first she returns to it with her lips still moist from the sacramental kiss. I have often wondered since why this is so. And I do not know. But I remember well, with quickening heart, that almost bridal hour. I did not light the gas--and I wondered at the time why I shrank from doing so--but kindled instead the candle on my dressing-table. The soft and tender light accorded better with my mood, and the flitting shadows that fell across the room seemed beautiful. When I was undressed and robed for the night, I sat long, my hair still flowing on my shoulders, before the pier glass, gazing into my own eyes for very joy. The shallow will say it was empty vanity; but it was not. It was a kind of communion time, searching, so far as I could, the mystic depths of a personality that had been so suddenly wakened to a new and holy life. I know not how long I lingered thus, peering into the hidden future--once or twice I buried my hot face in my hands--marvelling at the ministry of love, before I put the candle out and went to bed. And then, strangely enough, there stole into my mind the verse Charlie used to love to hear me sing. I hummed it softly to myself:-- "Still must you call me tender names Still gently stroke my tresses; Still shall my happy answering heart Keep time to your caresses." But now the words seemed all on fire and I wondered why their beauty had never appeared to me before. I lilted them again and again, the image of my lover, my first real lover, before me all the time--and I wondered when, if ever, I would sing the words for him. But all of a sudden I felt that this was frivolous. For it was beginning to be borne in upon me--scarcely thought of in the first rush of joy--what manner of man this was whose lot I was to share. I was to be a minister's wife! With a wave of cowardice I hid my face under the snowy covers as I thought of it; while visions of other days, of dances and parties and cards, and all sorts of alien things, floated before my eyes. I fought against them all with an intensity they did not deserve, really trying to lead my thoughts into higher channels. And there came into my mind--which I have always considered an intervention from a Higher Source--a line or two of a psalm I had heard Mr. Laird sing more than once. The words came back to me so readily, and I said them over and over again to myself:-- "I to the hills will lift mine eyes From whence doth come mine aid," and, almost before I knew it, I had slipped out of bed and was on my knees in prayer. I must confess that I barely knew how to pray--that is, outside of a little groove along which my devotions had tripped since I was a child. But this time I really did pray--out of my own heart--though I fear it was a very broken and halting prayer, a poor sort of thing compared to those finished efforts of Mrs. Furvell to which my mother had referred. Yet I think it was sincere. I asked God to guard my love--but especially his--and to not let anything happen to spoil it; and to help me give up everything that was wrong or frivolous, and to make me some help to him in his life-work. I was hardly snuggled up in bed again before I heard Mr. Laird coming up-stairs to the attic. I suppose he had been doing some thinking on his own account, all alone in the parlour. His room was right over mine--and that was why I had such a luxurious night. For very soon he began walking up and down the floor--I don't think he knew I was just beneath--and he kept up that lonely tramp for hours. Every step he took was music to me. Back and forward, forward and back, he walked, and I could fairly see the tall, noble form, the serious face, the deep, penetrating eyes. Once or twice he stopped, for a few minutes; and I began to fear he didn't love me as he should. But soon the firm tread began again and then I knew how really dear I was. Dozens of times since then, when I have teased him about it, he has told me those little silences came when he threw himself on his bed and snatched a few minutes' sleep; but that he knew I was listening, so he would shake himself, dash some cold water on his face or wrap a towel about his head, and start on his beat again. But I knew better--and anyhow, he confessed to me once that nothing short of chloroform could have kept him still that night. When we assembled at breakfast the next morning Mr. Laird didn't eat anything except one little half slice of toast--and I could see how this appealed to mother, though she maintained a sad gravity throughout. When the meal was finished he asked mother if he might have a few minutes with her alone. And she asked him what could it possibly be about! XII _THE WAIL OF THE LOWLY_ It was "Gordon" now, always "Gordon"--though of course nobody called him that but me. For he had made yet another little addition to his visit--and he and I had improved the time. But his departure was near at hand. And it does seem sad that what occurred had to happen just before he left. For everything had gone so beautifully. Mother, it is true, used to sigh sometimes, and once or twice expressed the hope that Charlie hadn't killed himself when he got the tidings and the ring. I had no such fears; for the brief note that came back informed me that he would say nothing till he came and saw me; which, he said, he would do as soon as some very urgent business would permit. But mother declared she knew this was only said to conceal the fact that he was prostrate in his bed. I believe Aunt Agnes and Uncle Henry were quite composed about the whole affair--they thought so much of Gordon. And even mother was getting fond of him; she couldn't very well have helped it, he was so strong and tender and dignified and true. And I can't tell how happy it made me to see mother warming up to him; a few days before he intended to go away--and the very day of the explosion I am about to describe--I saw mother pull his hair. Just a little tug, it's true, a little playful pinch of a few of the auburn strands--but it filled my soul with joy, for I think it means more for certain kinds of women to give the hair a little pull like that than if they took the whole man into their arms. So I pretended not to see, lest my Gordon's hair should never be pulled again. We were all pretty resigned, as I have said--especially Gordon and myself. And if Gordon had only gotten away to his Canadian field before that eventful night--or if every negro in the South had only died or been deported the day before--the whole tenor of our after lives might have been changed. We were seated on the porch, uncle and Gordon and I. My mood, I fear, was a rather plaintive one, for I didn't know when my lover would be coming back. Uncle, however, seemed in a very jovial frame of mind; but the worst storms always come on the most placid evenings. He had just been telling Gordon that he thought I would make a pretty fair minister's wife after all. "You know, Mr. Laird," he remarked in mock seriousness, "there's one feature of Helen's record that makes me think she's right religious after all." "Let us have the symptoms," said Gordon, and he couldn't have looked at me more tenderly if he hadn't had a drop of Scotch blood in his whole make-up. "Well, it's this," drawled my uncle; "I've never known Helen to miss a Sunday-school picnic since she was able to toddle--she'd go without her lessons before she'd miss one. Now don't you think that's a good sign?" and uncle indulged himself in the merriment his little joke deserved. Gordon made some laughing response, I have forgotten what. And it was then that uncle began the fatal strain. It really seemed as if it had to be; for, ever since that other darkey outbreak, both men had been careful to steer clear of the dangerous topic. "You'll have to look out," uncle began, "that those folks up North don't tramp on your wife's Southern corns." Gordon gave me a funny look--whether it referred to the sublime word, or the grotesque one, I couldn't tell. "For instance," uncle went on, "the first thing you know, some of them'll be expressing their opinion about slavery and airing their views on the whole question of the darkies. Now I want you to protect her from that--don't let them bring the subject up if you can help it. And, just as like as not, they'll be flaunting that Uncle Tom's Cabin nigger show under your noses. There was a company brought it down here once--but we read the riot act to them. It was 'Katy, bar the door' for them. Some of them just got off with their necks. And I want you to promise me, Helen, that you'll never look at their infernal show; they say it's all whips, and handcuffs, and bloodhounds, and all the rest of the lies that Harriet Beecher Stowe concocted. You'll promise me, won't you, Helen?" "Don't trouble yourself about that, uncle," I answered evasively, being always a cautious maiden along certain lines; "most likely Mr. Laird doesn't know what you're talking about. Do you, Gordon?" I enquired, the change of name very sweet. "Oh, yes," he promptly replied. "Yes, I've read the book--read it on the heathery hills, when I was quite a wee laddie." "Did you ever read such a parcel of lies, sir?" demanded my uncle, fully expecting that there could be only one answer. "I'm really not in a position to give an opinion," Gordon replied judiciously; "you see, I never saw slavery." "Well, I have," uncle responded vigorously, "and the book's a bunch of lies. Of course, I suppose some brutes might mistreat their niggers. But it wasn't natural, sir--it wasn't to their interest to do so--a man wouldn't do it with his horse. And the niggers were enough sight happier then than they are now--they were perfectly contented, sir." "That's the worst of it," said Gordon tersely. "What say, sir? I don't know that I understand you." "That was the saddest feature of it--that they were contented," repeated Gordon calmly; "that's what slavery did for them. But it seems to me, Mr. Lundy," he went on, warming a little to the argument, "it seems to me the book in question doesn't deny that most of the negroes were well used." "It doesn't?" uncle began in a rather fiery tone; "it doesn't, doesn't it? It's the most one-sided book that was ever written--has niggers dying under the lash, and hunted with hounds, and all that sort of thing. What's that, if it isn't one-sided, sir?" "As far as I remember, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' impressed me as decidedly fair, quite impartial," Gordon ventured, his voice very calm. "It's a pack of Yankee lies, sir," interrupted my uncle warmly. Gordon flushed a little. "That's hardly argument, Mr. Lundy," he replied slowly. "You remind me of what Burke said of Samuel Johnson--he said Johnson's style of argument reminded him of a highwayman; if his pistol missed fire, he knocked you down with the butt end of it." "What's that got to do with niggers?" enquired my uncle blankly. "Nothing--just with the argument," answered Gordon. "I said I thought 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' impressed me as impartial--and you retorted it was Yankee lies. That's like calling Euclid a liar because you dissent from his proposition, as your great Lincoln said." "He wasn't ours--and he isn't great," retorted uncle vigorously. "Half of that may be true," Gordon answered in the most amiable tone. "But about the book--I'll state my position. Mrs. Stowe portrays three men, if I remember right, who had to do with slaves. Shelby, St. Clair, Legree, were the names, I think. Well, one of them, Legree, is depicted as a brute--but the other two were like fathers to their slaves. Now, if that isn't fair--two to one--I don't know what is," concluded Gordon placidly, "especially as you've just admitted yourself that the brutal type was always to be found, even if the exception." I was growing nervous by this time, and with abundant cause. It was with a sense of hearty relief I heard Aunt Agnes hurrying towards the porch; and before the argument could further go, she blew in upon the scene with tidings of an invitation she had just received for me and Gordon for that very evening. I wasn't slow to make the most of the digression, and soon the ship of domestic peace was clear of the threatening rocks. Yet I could see, all through the early evening, that the debate had left its impress upon Gordon. It was really wonderful how a question of this kind took hold of him; anything human, especially if connected with sorrow or injustice, seemed to kindle him as nothing else could do. More than once he harked back to it within the next hour or two when he and I were alone. "It's beyond my understanding," he broke out, "how any man--especially a Christian gentleman like your uncle--can defend an institution that made one man a slave of another." "But they were good to them," I defended. "Yet they were in bondage," was his terse reply; "and besides, Helen, you know they often had to sell them--even when they didn't want to. I've talked to coloured women on the streets here, who told me their children were sold away from them long years ago--and they've never seen them since. And they cried," he added, his voice taking what was almost a shrill note, plaintive with sympathy. "And I don't care if they did keep their slaves in luxury---if they had clothed them in purple and fine linen and fanned them all day long--any institution that makes it possible for a child to be sold from his mother, it's--it's damnable," he declared passionately, "and neither God nor man could convince me to the contrary." I was almost frightened at Gordon's vehemence--and I was powerless before his argument. A kind of chill foreboding had me in its grip, I knew not why, that his strange intensity on this so fiery theme was yet to work us ill. For, like other strangers, he had no conception of how deep, almost desperately deep, were the convictions of Southern men on the subject that seemed so thoroughly to engross him. He harboured the romantic notion that all men were created equal, as the framers of our Constitution solemnly decreed, their slaves cringing at their feet the while. He held the quixotic view, too, that it was wrong to cheat the darkies out of their votes--I always thought he was astray on this point, and I think so yet. Gordon contended, also, that they had the same kind of feelings as white folks--but I suppose that will be a debated point while time shall last. Gordon did not know, however, how necessary it was that the darkies should be kept in their proper place; nor did he know the long purgatory our Southland had gone through in the days of reconstruction, and carpetbaggers, and negro rule, and all that sort of thing. He had no idea of the fiery zeal with which white men had to guard their supremacy, enforcing the social distinction, keeping the negro where he belonged, piously preserving the curse of Ham upon him. In a word, Gordon hadn't grasped this fundamental truth--which the world may just as well accept first as last--that, no matter how the negro race may predominate in numbers, or grow in wealth, or develop in intelligence, the white man never will be ruled by the black man. And the only way to prevent his being on top is to keep him at the bottom. So I have heard ten thousand times--and so I heartily believe. I think Gordon and I were discussing this very matter that night as we were walking home from the little gathering of which I have made mention already. Coming along the street that skirts the river, my attention was suddenly attracted by the sound of voices from near the water's edge, negro voices evidently, and marked by tokens of excitement. I at once stopped and called Gordon's attention to it. "They're darkies," I whispered; "what can they be doing there at this hour of the night?" For it was midnight. "And that's uncle's property," which was true enough, he being the possessor of a shed and warehouse there that stood on the river's bank. "What indeed?" Gordon echoed. "You don't suspect anything wrong, do you?" I made some incoherent reply, muttering something about fire, I think. For that is a constant form of dread to the Southern mind. "I'll go over and see," said Gordon. "You come part of the way--wait there, I won't let you out of my sight," as he moved on towards the shadowy figures that could be seen moving in the darkness. A low mysterious wail broke from them at frequent intervals. "What are you doing here?" I heard Gordon's stern Scotch voice ring out a moment after he had left me. A sharp cry of fear broke from the two crouching forms as they turned their dusky faces up to his through the night. They were two negro women and their rolling eyes shone white in the darkness. They stood before him trembling. "Come, speak; what are you doing here?" Gordon's voice came sterner than before. "Please, sah, we's lookin' fo' our chil'uns," one liquid voice wailed forth. I was Southern born and Southern bred--and I had been taught, as carefully as any, the non-humanity of the black. Yet I do not know that I ever felt such a gush of inward tears as rushed upon my heart that moment. The scene is before me yet; the stalwart frame in clerical attire, towering above the cowed and obeisant figures of the stooping women who seemed to crave, rather than expect, some word of human sympathy, some hand of human help. Poor, despised, ignorant, their cry yet echoed with the great note of love, the throb of primal passion pulsing through it; the age-old cry of the mother calling for her child. And I felt a wave of pity surging over me, such as I had never felt before. I rushed forward to where they stood; for the time, at least, we belonged to the self-same race--mine, too, was a woman's heart. Their story was soon told, for it was brief. The two children, a son of each, had been out playing together in the early evening. The last they could learn of them was to the effect that a negro man, named Simkins, had been seen talking to them. Simkins was a drunken loafer. The unhappy women had themselves discovered that a little skiff, in which Simkins had a part interest, was missing from its place--and the tracks of boyish feet in the sand could be seen where the bow of the boat had been. Doubtless Simkins had beguiled them with the prospect of a cruise--and what then? In a moment Gordon was questioning them with eager interest, interpreting their replies with difficulty; for their dialect, unfamiliar to him at the best, was now more unintelligible by reason of their grief. While he spoke with them the women instinctively drew closer, as if confident of a friend. "Where do you suppose he rowed them to?" he asked quickly. The women didn't know. "Where does this man Simkins live?" he asked, after some further questioning. "'Way down by Pickett's Landin'--by de long wauf," one of the women said. "But he done started from heah, sah." "The long wharf," repeated Gordon, turning to me, "where is that wharf? For that's where he'd try to land, likely enough--and if anything's happened, that's where it likely occurred." "I know the place," I answered, "but it's about a mile away." "We'll search this place first," he said decisively, "and if we find no sign we'll look there. Have you any idea where we could get a lantern?" I thought there might possibly be one in uncle's warehouse. A minute later Gordon was inside, having found an unlocked window. Two or three matches flared and spluttered; then a steady light, and in a moment he had reappeared with the lantern. Up and down he strode, examining all the locality, the moaning women following at his heels. "There isn't a sign of anything here," he announced as he jumped down from a little landing from which he had been flashing his lantern on the water. "I've got a feeling, somehow, that this man Simkins would try to land at the wharf nearest his home. Come away--we'll go there." "But you'll have to take me home first," I interposed. "Is it on the way?" Gordon paused long enough to ask. "No, it's the opposite direction." "Then it can't be done," he answered, in a tone no Southern woman is accustomed to hear; "you'll have to come with us," and with a word or two more which I have forgotten, but whose tone of mastery I remember well, he asked the women which road to take. If his manner had been less noble and self-forgetful I would have said he was lacking in the chivalric deference I was accustomed to receive at the hands of gentlemen. But this never seemed to enter Gordon's mind, surrendered as it was to the business in hand. Before I knew it he was off, and I had no option but to follow. A strange procession we must have made as we wound our way through the silent streets. In front marched Gordon, the lantern swinging to his stride, pausing now and then to enquire about a turn in the way; behind him shuffled the crooning women, gratitude and woe mingling in their constant moan; last of all came I, keeping up as best I could. As we moved out on the rickety wharf, to which we came at last, I heard Gordon utter an exclamation of some sort and rush forward. Then he stopped, holding the lantern low; its beams revealed the face of a negro man, lying in drunken oblivion on the wharf. With shrill intonation, rudely shaking him, the women demanded of the unconscious Simkins the whereabouts of their children. But Simkins' only response was a temporarily half-opened eye, immediately reclosed, and a groan of drunken content as he sank deeper into his bestial slumber. An empty bottle lay beside him. Gordon turned from him with a murmur of contempt, bidding the women cease from their pitiful pleading with the unconscious man. Swinging the lantern high, its farthest beams just disclosed a little skiff floating idly near the shore. "He's upset it climbing out, as sure as death," I heard him mutter--"it has shot out from under him." Then like a flash he made his way over the side, creeping stealthily down the unsteady timbers till he was at the water's edge, the lantern still in his hand. A cry of horror broke from his lips, echoed in unreasoning woe from the women above him. He was peering down into the water. "They're there--in each others' arms," broke from him a moment later in a tone of ineffable sadness. "Come down and hold the lantern, Helen." He reached up his hand to me without a word; and, to the accompaniment of sounds of anguish strangely and suddenly subdued, I clambered down till I stood on the broad beam beside him. Still the strange, low chant went on above us, still the silent stars looked down. Slowly, resolutely, still gazing into the placid depths, Gordon removed his coat and vest while I held the lantern as he directed. But I kept my eyes upward to the stars. A swift plunge, a half minute's silence, and he reappeared, one of the hapless playmates in his hand. A second pilgrimage into the depths, and both were side by side upon the beam on which we stood. One by one, he bore them, climbing, and laid them together on the wharf. With loud outcry of anguish the women flung themselves upon their unresponsive dead. They lay together, those little offshoots of an unhappy race, their own life tragedy past and done. Dripping they lay, the peace of death upon their faces, as though the relentless wave had given them kindly welcome. About eight or nine years of age, poor, ragged, despised, they had yet been seeking some scant share of pleasure--out to play--when death claimed them for his own. It was the birthday of one of them--so his mother said, while each wailed above her own--and that was why they had been permitted to play late. Each had her simple tale of love, of admiration; each told, with alternating gusts of grief, of the goodness of her own. Each spoke of the brothers and sisters at home; each wondered what life would be without the one who was gone. I stood, helpless. But I saw, and for the first time, that God had called Gordon to be a pastor. For he knelt beside them--I think sometimes his dripping white-clad arm rested gently on the shoulder of one or the other--and he tried to comfort them. He spoke, so low and tenderly that sometimes I could scarcely hear his voice, of many things; most of which I have forgotten. But I do remember that he said God didn't love them any less than they; and I recall yet how wonderfully he spoke of Everlasting Life. Those very words, and he couldn't have said them more grandly if it had been a Cathedral service. And I think he helped them a little, for they sometimes lifted their heads and looked at him in a dumb, grateful way. But their hearts were broken. It came over me strangely that this was the first time I had ever stood so close to death, and to sorrow--and these mourners were of the dusky race. There was little more that we could do. Of course, Gordon roused somebody and sent for the proper persons. But finally we had to leave them alone, the women and their dead. Silently, as if he were revolving some thought in which I had no share, Gordon walked home beside me. Only one thing I can remember that he said. I think he stood still and looked at me through the dark as he said it: "Helen, the Bible says that God made of one blood all the nations of the earth, doesn't it?" "Yes," I agreed, wondering what was coming. "They don't believe it down here, do they?--the white folks, I mean?" "Maybe not," I answered hesitatingly; "at least, I reckon they don't think it's meant to be taken literally." "Perhaps not," and his eyes glowed like fire and his voice cut like steel; "perhaps not--but He's made of one blood all the mothers of the earth, by God," the words coming out aflame with passion as if his soul were rent with bitter protest. Which indeed it was. "What's that?" I suddenly cried, pointing in the direction of our house, from which we were not far distant now. "Oh, Gordon, quick, what's that?" as the dread sound fell upon my ear again. For a dread sound it was indeed. I do not know that I had ever heard it before--certainly not more than once, and then when but a child--but it had the awful note that can be best described as the baying of furious and avenging men. The Southern heart, I fancy, would recognize it anywhere, just as a huntsman's child would know the far-off voice of hounds. I have heard many sounds since then, sounds that might well strike terror to the stoutest heart, but none so fraught with the savage omen of death and doom as the voice of strong and noble men when they are maddened with revengeful hate and aflame with thirst for blood. Gordon was already hurrying. "Good heavens," I heard him murmur as we turned a sudden jog in the road, "what a furious scene! They're mad, Helen, they're mad," he cried as we hurried closer; "what on earth means this?--look, they've got a halter round the wretch's neck." "Take me home," I said faintly, pointing towards the house, now but a few yards from us. "What does it mean, I say?" he repeated huskily, pressing on as though he did not hear. "It means death," I faltered; "they're going to kill him---- Oh! take me home," as I clutched his arm and staggered half fainting towards the door. XIII _THE LYNCHING_ Needless to say the household was astir. For our house had a fatal location--at least, so it proved that night--standing as it did in a quiet part of the town close to the long bridge that spanned the river. And the crowd was making for the bridge; this was to serve as a scaffold. Uncle was not at home. He had gone forth about midnight, as my aunt told me. A few minutes later he returned, but only for a moment, to explain the cause of his absence, and to tell them not to expect him till they saw him. His eyes were bloodshot, my mother said, and his lips were dry. Yet uncle was the most peaceable of men--but this one thing seems to make savages out of the mildest of Southern gentlemen. It was the old story; this wretched negro had assaulted a woman on the street, a poor ignorant white girl who had been sitting up with a sick friend, and who thought she could slip unattended across the couple of blocks that separated her from her home. He had dragged her into an alley--but God sent somebody. None of these infuriated men--and they comprised the flower of our population, many of them men of wealth and culture--had ever heard of the woman upon whom the black had attempted violence. But this mattered not--had she been the beauty of the city, or the belle of the South itself, their fury could not have been greater. She was white; he was black--that was enough, esteemed by them as a warrant from God Himself. For no thought of the right or wrong of their deadly zeal ever took possession of their minds. No knight of the middle ages was ever more sincere in the ardour that gave the Crusades their glory. If ever men believed they were doing God service, they were these hot-hearted men who hurried their trembling sacrifice onward to the bridge. My aunt had put out the lights; whether to render the house less conspicuous, or to help us see the better, I do not know. For few words passed as the three white faces peered out at the wild scene before us. The moon had risen now, and we could see the faces of some of the men, though many were in masks. A peculiar quietness seemed to come over the throng as they came closer to the bridge, once so tense that we could catch distinctly the pleading wail of the central figure, tugging desperately at the rope around his neck. Poor creature, he knew not the ways of Southern men; or perhaps he did--and yet one drowning in mid-ocean would still swim towards the shore. We saw them drag the miserable culprit on to the bridge--then we turned away. I suppose every Southern woman would cry out in horror at the thought of following them thus far--and every one would have done the same as we. Yet now we turned, faint, from the window--that last dread scene was for other eyes than ours. But suddenly we heard a mighty shout, marvelling what it might portend. A kind of gleeful cry it was, as if something had been discovered, or some better plan devised; which proved to be the case. For I looked again, and lo! they were bearing the wretch back from the bridge. A swift vision of mercy quickened my heart, for I took this to be a reprieve. Yet the doomed man seemed reluctant to be moved, clinging desperately to the railing of the bridge--for his hands were free. The rope about his neck tightened as they dragged him back, and when it relaxed I could hear his piteous appeals, breaking now into loud wails of anguish. They dragged him on. In a moment all was clear. A large post, or pole, stood close beside the bridge; towards this they hauled him, new zeal seeming to animate the breast of every executioner. I saw two or three of the younger men running towards the pole. They had something in their arms. It was wood--and a hot flush came over me from head to foot. "Oh, God," I moaned to myself, "they're going to burn him," and even as I spoke they were tying the struggling man tight to the post, others piling the wood up about him. In an instant all was ready--and I caught the gleam of a lighted match. I stood, transfixed with horror. Then I felt my aunt and my mother tugging faintly at my dress, clutching at my arm, their faces averted meantime. "Come away; for God's sake, come away," they pleaded, faint and sick at heart. I was just obeying and had already turned from the window, when I heard a shout, full of savage wrath and protest--whereat I turned and looked once more. And my eyes fell on a scene that even yet, after all the intervening years, I cannot recall without a bounding heart. For suddenly from out the crowd there had rushed one man, tall, powerful, clothed in black, his face as savage as the others, though it was savagery of a different sort. He has told me since--though we have only spoken of it once or twice through all the years--that his own life was as nothing to him that night. He saw nothing but hundreds of bloodthirsty men, and one guilty wretch, and the first lick of flame about his feet. Out from the crowd had Gordon rushed with sudden impulse, and, when my eyes fell on him, the sticks and faggots were going this way and that, some by his feet, some by his hands outflung. Then, before the wonder-stricken men who were closest to him could interfere, he had trampled on the two or three already lighted brands, trampled them in fury deep into the ground. Then he stood before them; he was close beside the black, whose quivering face was upturned to his in an agony of pleading. There he stood, a mighty figure of a man; at least, so he appeared to me as I gazed, petrified, at the awesome scene. And his pose was the very incarnation of defiance as he towered above them, his face aflame with indignation and courage and contempt. Then I saw a movement in the crowd--or felt it rather--that chilled my heart with terror. I knew what would happen now, knew it, with unerring instinct--and I trembled as a fawn quivers when it hears the first low cry of distant dogs. And swiftly, silently, scorning both aunt and mother, I flew through the door on to the porch, down the steps, gliding like a shadow till I found shelter behind an ancient elm on the outskirts of the swaying crowd. I was as safe there, and as unobserved, as though I had been a hundred miles away. It only took a minute, but Gordon had begun to speak before I got there, his quivering voice ringing like a bell through the night. The men before me were just beginning to recover from the first shock of surprise. "Who is that ---- fool?" I heard one enquire, not more than four feet ahead of me. "I know him," a voice answered. I recognized the informant at once--he had been to our house for supper only a few nights before. "He's a parson that's visiting the Lundys. A ---- Scotchman," he went on contemptuously; "his father's a collie dog over there--takes care of sheep on the hills, he told me." I knew how helpless I was, but my blood was boiling. I shook my fist at the horrid creature from where I stood--I could have lynched _him_, right then and there. "If you must kill him before he's proved guilty," came Gordon's voice, "kill him like white men, not like Indians." A mighty roar went up at this, and the crowd swayed nearer to the central figures. A loud howl of terror came from the negro. But the immediate peril was not for him--the storm was raging now about another head than his. I think a moment later would have seen Gordon in the clutches of the mob, had it not been temporarily restrained by one of the oldest and most honoured of our citizens. I saw him lift his hand as a signal for silence; in a moment he and Gordon seemed to be carrying on an animated argument. I couldn't hear Colonel Mitford, for such was his name; but I could catch Gordon's voice. "I've heard plenty about your Southern chivalry--would you lynch a white man if he offered the same indignity to a black woman as this wretch has done?" The Colonel seemed to pause for a season. And really, it's not much wonder that he should--I am as Southern as any one who ever lived, but that question makes me pause even yet. Soon the Colonel broke out again, this time into quite a prolonged speech. "It's all your rightful heritage," came back Gordon's voice, ringing high; "it's the legacy slavery has left you. You're only reaping what you sowed." At this the clamour was renewed, the crowd pressing in again--and I half started from my hiding-place. But again the Colonel persuaded them to silence, and again he directed his remarks to Gordon He was evidently saying something about the relation of the races. Then came Gordon's thunderbolt: "It seems to me," he cried hotly, recklessly, "it seems to me you couldn't have much more fusion than you have already--this negro's half white himself;" which proved more, as I knew it would, than any Southern man would stand. "Then you can take what you deserve, curse you for a nigger-lover," I heard the Colonel retort madly, his voice lost in the roar of hate, the wild outcry for vengeance that burst from the infuriated crowd. All resistance was now swept away, and a few ringleaders at the front fairly clutched at Gordon. One had him by the throat, the others pressing in upon him with wolfish fury gleaming in their eyes. But before their purpose--what it was I know not, nor probably did they--before it could be carried out, another rushed to the grim theatre. It was my Uncle Henry, his hat gone, lost somewhere in the crowd. He leaped to where Gordon stood, and at his presence the men fell back. "You shan't injure this man," he shouted hoarsely. "Not that I contend he doesn't deserve it--but he's my guest," the word echoing clear. "He's my guest," uncle repeated, for he knew the magic of the word; "he's a stranger amongst us--and an ignorant stranger at that. I'll take the fool home," he went on, casting at Gordon one of the most contemptuous glances I ever saw from human eyes, "and I'll deal with him myself. I'll promise you to deal with him--he's my guest. And you shall do as you please with the nigger." I think the storm abated for a moment. Perhaps it would have subsided altogether, for stranger is a sacred name to Southern ears. But suddenly Colonel Mitford, still ashy pale with wrath, shouted to the crowd: "He said they couldn't have more white blood in them than they've got--he said we're blended now," the words ending in a half snarl, half cry; for if there is anything under God's sky that makes Southern men drunk with fury it is just such a statement as Gordon had been rash enough to make. Some one else shouted a confirmation of the Colonel's words, another added something Gordon had never said; and slowly, relentlessly, the crowd surged in again upon him. My uncle was rudely flung aside--I could hear his voice in protest through the storm. Then, exactly what I feared, some of the assassins, more maddened than the rest, jerked the rope from the negro's neck and flung it with a loud cry over Gordon's head. This was to the crowd what the taste of blood is to the tiger, and a fiendish yell broke from a hundred throats. It is not likely they really meant to kill him--but no one could forecast the limit of their violence. I wouldn't have cared if there had been a million men and every man a Nero. I didn't will to do it, I didn't know I was doing it, didn't calculate what it meant at all. But I just felt I was stronger than them all, and that it was now or never. So, without word or cry, I sprang from behind that ancient elm and leaped to where Gordon stood. I could never remember that I pushed or elbowed through the crowd; I don't believe I did. There seemed to be an open path for me, and in far less time than it takes to tell I was at his side. I remember how close I was--so close that I caught the gleam of that awful negro's eyes and felt his breath upon my cheek as he panted in prospect of his doom. And in a flash I had torn that rope from Gordon's neck, flung it on the ground, stamped on it, as I turned and hurled defiance at the crowd in one long look that I felt myself was all of fire. Then I took Gordon's hand in mine, pointing silently towards the house. He followed me, and uncle walked behind. I don't think the slightest resistance was offered us. The only protest was from Gordon himself. He would have lingered, had he had his way. But some word of mine--I know not what--settled that mad purpose in his mind; and he walked beside me, towering still, his head more erect, his bearing more kingly, than that of any of the throng who turned scornful eyes upon him as we went. We were almost through the crowd when something happened that almost brought the mist of unconsciousness before my eyes, my head reeling, my heart spinning like a top. A voice, instantly familiar, spoke Gordon's name, hurling an epithet of contempt and hate so malignant that he turned a moment, as if he would seek and punish his assailant. Then he smiled disdainfully, took my arm tighter in his own, and walked calmly on. I too turned--and the face I saw was the face of Charlie Giddens. His gaze met mine, and he sought to smile; but I could see his enmity to Gordon gleaming through it all, and I hope my eyes bore themselves as my heart would wish. When we gained our home aunt and mother received us with weeping joy. But uncle uttered never a word. Instead, he went silently about the house, drawing tight the shutters on every window that looked upon the scene we had just deserted. For he knew what was transpiring now. As he came down the stairs, I met him in the hall and flung my arms about his neck. Not a word of chiding escaped his lips--he stroked my hair, and his tenderness was the tenderness of farewell. I told him, with trembling voice, that I had seen Mr. Giddens in the throng. This did not surprise him. "I know it," he said; "he came in on the eleven o'clock train--he heard the noise, of course, and came up. Listen," he suddenly cried, as we heard a footfall on the porch, succeeded by a gentle knock at the door, "what's that? That'll be him--go inside, child," as he walked to the door to open it. Gordon was sitting in the corner of the room, offering speech to nobody, when Mr. Giddens came in. The latter bowed with courtly grace to my mother and my aunt, casting on me a glance that showed he still hoped--perhaps more now than ever. Then he walked straight over till he stood in front of Gordon. "Laird," he said, before any one could speak, "you've tried to ruin my happiness--and I've got to settle with you yet for that." Gordon sprang to his feet. "And you've outraged the sentiment of this city--and you've disgraced this home," the words coming out like pistol-shots, "and I want to know what you've got to say for yourself." "Nothing--to you," said Gordon, his face looking a little terrible, his voice overflowing with contempt. Mr. Giddens turned livid--and he made a motion backward with his hand, a motion familiar to all Southern men; it was towards his pocket. "If it weren't my respect for the house we're in," he hissed through his teeth, "I'd shoot you like a dog." Gordon's face was now altogether terrible. He stepped closer to the Southerner, his eyes fastened on him like balls of flame. "I've heard other cowards talk like that," he said. Then Mr. Giddens' hand flew forward, unarmed; and he struck Gordon full in the face. We were too late--we might as well have raced with lightning. Before we could speak or move, Gordon's mighty grip was on his throat, and he wrenched him back, back, till his head struck with a thud against the corner wall. There is something marvellous about these Scotchmen when madness seizes them. So reserved, so silent, so inscrutable, there is no race on earth so calm and none so deadly. And strength--such fearful strength! Still gripping him with grasp of iron, Gordon drew back his hand, every muscle in neck and wrist standing out like whip-cords as he gathered force for the blow. Then suddenly his hand fell to his side; he seemed to shake himself free from his passion, as a man wakens himself from sleep; the mighty struggle showed in the quivering voice. "I could kill you," he said with fearful quietness; "I could kill you now--go," as he released his antagonist, already purple. Holding his hand to his throat, the hot blood cooled by now, Mr. Giddens staggered over towards my uncle. "Mr. Lundy," he began thickly, "we expect you to deal with this cur--as you said you would. He's brought disgrace on you--and he's insulted every lady in the South by what he did to-night--and we look to you to treat him as he deserves." There was a queer smile about my uncle's mouth. For nearly a minute he did not speak, did not even look towards the man who had addressed him. Then he turned slowly round. "Mr. Giddens," he began, in a voice that sounded strange from him, "I'll deal with him. Yes, sir, I reckon I'll deal with him." "I knew you would, Mr. Lundy," the other returned eagerly; "I knew no Southern gentleman----" "But I'll deal with you _first_, sir," my uncle interrupted stormily; "you knew--you knew, did you? Perhaps you didn't know that no gentleman allows another man to insult his guest. And that's what you've done, sir--that's what you've done--you struck a visitor in my house, struck him in the face, sir. There's the door, sir--the street's the place for you,--go," his voice rolling like thunder now. Mr. Giddens ventured an amiable smile, stepping a little nearer to my uncle. I think he partly held out his hand. "Mr. Lundy," he began in a conciliatory tone, "I meant no disrespect to you. This really isn't necessary, Mr. Lundy. You and I were friends before we knew this--this Scotchman--was on the earth. And it seems a pity----" "Go," thundered my uncle, pointing to the door. Then suddenly his voice grew white with ungovernable wrath, and he whipped a shining pistol from his pocket. "Go, by heavens," he cried huskily; "I had this ready for the nigger--but you'll get it if you speak another word. Go out that door--or you'll be carried out, by God," as he advanced nearer to the already retreating man. When we were alone and all was still again, uncle silently motioned me to follow him. Gordon had already departed in silence to his room. Uncle took me into his own apartment and shut the door behind him. "Helen," he began gravely, "I shall speak no word to--to your friend. Not a word. You must tell him." "Tell him what?" I asked, who had no need to ask. "I reckon you know," my uncle answered quietly. "He can stay here no longer, of course." "No," I assented, my voice choking. "But he needn't leave to-night--tell him he can stay the night. But to-morrow," he concluded significantly. I nodded. "Will you go to him--some day, I mean?" he asked after a long pause. "Yes," I faltered, with downcast head; "yes, some day." "And leave me, Helen?" "Yes." "And your mother--and Aunt Agnes?" "Yes," I murmured low, the hot tears dropping from my eyes. "I suppose you know he can never come back here any more?" he began after a little, the words coming slowly and sadly. "Yes," I answered; "yes, never any more." "You're foolish, Helen," and his own voice was choking as he came over and put his arm around me. "When you remember he's a stranger; and then, your mother and I and----" "Is that all?" I interrupted, sobbing. "Yes," he said slowly, "yes, that's all." "Then I'll tell him," I said brokenly; "I'll tell him now." I stole up-stairs to the attic and knocked at Gordon's door. He opened it; then asked me if I would come in. I looked around; he had begun his simple packing. But he did not speak. Then I held out my arms--and I heard him murmur "Thank God" while he held me tight, so tight, as though he would never let me go. I faltered out that uncle didn't want him to go until the morning. "It's morning now," he said firmly, "and I'm just ready to go," from which resolve I was powerless to dissuade him. "I'll stay at the hotel till to-morrow evening," he added. "But there's a morning train," I interrupted, looking up at him. "I know--but I'm not going till the evening," he said quietly. I knew what he meant. Suddenly he disengaged my arms and held me out in front of him. "Helen Randall," he said solemnly, "will you come to me?" I buried my face again where it had been before; my tightening arms gave him answer. Then he kissed me, kissed me--only twice, I think--but he kissed me as maiden never was kissed before. And he bade me go; which I did after I had clung to him once more. And I remember how his poor face was bruised, where he had been struck the cruel blow. I went to my room. Soon I heard him going down the stairs. I knew, from the sound of his steps, that he was carrying his valise. He saw Aunt Agnes in the hall, I believe, the only one who was there--and to her he said his last farewell. I heard the door close gently; I could catch the dying footfalls echoing through the night. I opened my door before I went to bed. Something was resting against it. Picking it up eagerly, I scanned it beneath the light. It was the old Scotch psalm-book from which Gordon had sometimes sung. And the page was turned over to mark one of the psalms--the forty-sixth--which he had indicated with heavy strokes. My eyes swam as I read the great lines over and over again. They seemed just meant for us: "God is our refuge and our strength, In straits a present aid; Therefore although the earth remove, We will not be afraid." It refreshed me like a breath of mountain air to read the words; I was still murmuring them when I crept into bed. I resolved to try and learn the tune that was set to the noble psalm--Stroudwater it was called--and I wondered when I would sing it to Gordon in our own little home. All of this, I remember, made me think that perhaps I wouldn't make such a bad minister's wife after all. I really loved the psalms. Yet I must confess, before this chapter finds its close, that a girl's heart takes a long time to change. I fear I was very weak and frivolous after all; I know I thought far more of Gordon, and of his love, than I did of religion or of the life-work that awaited me. Because, just as sleep was coming down about me, I found that my willful heart was chanting far other lines--and they seemed sweet and precious: "Still must you call me tender names, Still gently stroke my tresses; Still shall my happy answering heart Keep time to your caresses." It was to their music I fell asleep, and I slept like a little child. But I have come to think long since that the song and the psalm were not such distant relatives after all. XIV _GIRDING ON THE ARMOUR_ The year that followed Gordon's departure for the North was my growing year. It was the sweetest, dreariest, love-brightest, loneliest year of all my life--and it was, as I have said, my progress year. I mean, by that, it was the year which led me farthest in to the real secret of living and the real springs of life. Of course, it was a desolate twelvemonth; I never saw Gordon's face from its beginning to its close; and this was a new side of life to me, to discover that I could miss any one face so much. Nothing pleased me more than the sadness that used to settle down on me every now and then, especially in the twilight hour, when the dear absent one filled all my thought. There was a kind of royal state about my widowhood--if that sombre word can be applied to such a hopeful year--that made me feel I was set apart from all other girls, especially from those who had their happiness on tap right at their hands. Mine seemed to be fed from far-off fountains, farther up the hill; and I felt a kind of envious pity for those whose unromantic luxury it was to see their sweethearts every night. I walked by faith; but they by sight, I thought, paraphrasing a text of Scripture--which, it occurred to me, was the proper thing for a girl with such ministerial prospects as my own. But I suppose they pitied me in turn; which only goes to show what a self-rectifying world this is. Besides, so far as my own household was concerned, I was deliciously alone. I learned, in this connection, something of the martyr's mysterious joy. If there was one thing beyond another that made me love Gordon more and more wildly every day, it was that my family hardly ever spoke his name. Excepting mother, of course; she was still my mother, if a disappointed and saddened one--and sometimes great freshets of tenderness and sympathy flowed from her heart over into mine. But uncle was so stern about it all, so consistently silent. If he had been a rejected lover himself he couldn't have handed me Gordon's daily letter more solemnly than he used to do when he came in with the mail. These I always read alone in secret, putting them away afterwards with reverent hands--and I kept the key myself this time. And such letters as they were! I could be famous over all the world, if I chose to publish the love-letters of Gordon Laird--they were a combination of poetry and fire. Yet I had always read, and heard, that Scotchmen, even when in love, were as reserved and cold as their native mountains. Perhaps they are--but my Scotchman must have been a Vesuvius, with Eolian harp accompaniment, as the world would concede if they could once get their eyes upon his letters. I valiantly renounced everything I thought questionable for a girl whose promised husband was a minister of the Gospel. I gave up cards, of course, though not without a pang. Sometimes I still went to card parties, but I never did anything worse than punch the score cards, which I could do quite dexterously. I never cared for the business though; if there's a mean occupation on earth, it's punching score cards while everybody else is having all the fun. I fancy I felt a good deal like those famous pugilists that drop down at last to holding a sponge, or something of that sort. I began, too, to take a faint interest in temperance; forswore claret punch forever; thought seriously, for several weeks, of giving up syllabubs; even went so far at table as to ask Aunt Agnes if she thought brandy sauce was quite the thing. Aunt said I didn't raise the question till after I had had two helpings. With regard to "the light fantastic," I never danced anything stronger than Sir Roger; used to play, sometimes, while the others waltzed--but that's deadly dry, like punching score cards, or holding a sponge when your fighting days are done. About the brandy sauce, mother told me after that I needn't worry. Did I know how expensive brandy was, she said. And I had already told her how much salary Gordon was getting in his mission field in Canada. There is no need to mention it here--but it was mighty little. He had a country station, somewhere in the rural districts; of which, to my mind at least, Canada seemed to be almost entirely composed. For all I knew of that Dominion was from the geography we learned at school; it gave only a few paragraphs to our nearest neighbour nation--and these were clustered round a picture that would chill you to behold, the picture of a man without coat or vest, knee-deep in snow, lifting up his axe upon the trees of the forest. Gordon's letters, of course, were full of his work and his people. And they didn't contain much that would likely attract a girl brought up as I had been. Little gatherings of people, mostly in country schoolhouses, deadly singing--which must have been hard on Gordon--rude companionship, humble lodgings and humbler fare, long rides and walks, scant results for all his toil. But he seemed to love his work and his people, and never complained. Once or twice he said they were woefully conservative in their theology, and that they were sternly set against all the views of modern scholarship, even though they didn't know what they were. To tell the truth, I didn't know myself, but I felt uneasy at the term; far from religious though I was, I yet always felt that there were no doctrines worth the name except the old ones--the older the better, thought I. And when I asked Mr. Furvell about it he said he hoped Gordon wasn't a disciple of Robertson Smith, and added something darkly about a "higher critic." I didn't know exactly what this last might be--the adjective might apply to Gordon all right, I reckoned, but I didn't like the noun. Anyhow, we were going to be married; that was the principal thing to me, and I went bravely on making preparations for the greatest event of all my life. I hadn't much to bring Gordon as a dower--practically nothing, indeed--for my mother's modest income left no margin for that, and was so bequeathed that it could not survive her. But I wanted to bring him a good true heart and a sound body--with a few lovely things to clothe it. Every girl wants that, or ought to, at least. Of course, it was a sad feature of the case that we were not to be married at our own home. I suppose we might have been. In fact, mother told me as much, and I knew she had it straight from uncle. But I knew right well that it couldn't be a happy wedding there, with matters as they were; and, besides, it would have raked into fire the smouldering embers of that awful blaze that I have told about already. And the whole town would have been agog--not in the way, either, that every girl likes a town to be when she gets married. So it was arranged that our wedding was to take place quietly in Baltimore, at the house of a girl friend of mine whose marriage had taken her there to live. Gordon was to meet me there--though I really believe he would have preferred to beard the lions in their den--and mother was to go North and see me launched on this unknown sea. The first time I was ever angry with Gordon was about six weeks before our wedding day. He wrote me a long letter, full of details about the humbleness of his position, and the slimness of his prospects--and the scarcity of his cash. He wanted to go ahead, of course, he said; but he thought it only fair to tell me, accustomed as I had been to a life of comparative luxury, of the great sacrifice I was making, and to give me a chance even yet, should I shrink from it, to etc., etc. I wrote him that very night and I told him I'd marry him if we had only the north side of a corn-cob to live on, which I inwardly thought was a pretty vigorous stroke and worthy of a nimbler pen than mine. Gordon always kept that letter, he told me long after, lest the corn crop should ever fail. It was a lovely wedding, though there were only four people besides ourselves to see it. Gordon held my hand so tight in his; and what I felt the most, and gloried in, was this--that he was so much stronger than I. My gown looked beautiful, they all said; and I cried a little--two things that are necessary, it seems to me, to any really successful wedding. I remember how Gordon cautioned me to be careful about packing my lovely dress, because, he explained, he wanted his people to see me at my best. This struck me as rather odd, considering the class of people I was to live among--I fancied a linsey-woolsey would please them as well as anything else. And I wondered when I would ever get a chance to wear the beautiful creation. But I had no idea of the surprise that was in store for me. Mother went home by train. My husband and I started on our way by boat. It was a sweet and delicate suggestion on Gordon's part that we should go southward again for a day or two, to begin our married life under the dear familiar skies I loved so well. Wherefore we set sail that evening, exactly at seven o'clock, on the Old Bay Line, our destination to be Old Point Comfort, which we would reach the following morning. It is really a pathetic thought that the bridal joy comes only once into a maiden's life, so quickly past and gone. It leads, no doubt--or ought to lead--into a deeper peace and a more steadfast love; but it leads, too, away from the tranquil care-free days of youth, on in to the storm and stress of life's long battle. I remember yet, with a thrill that never seems to die, the rapture of that hour as we steamed slowly out from Baltimore. There were not many passengers--none that we had ever seen before. We were alone--together. And by and by we found a place on a deserted corner of the deck, our chairs close together, our hands sometimes passionately clasping as we looked out over the darkening bay and thought in silence of the waiting years through which we were to be parted never more. By and by the rising moon clothed the bay in a robe of glory; and thus, with love and light about us, as happy as though no storm could ever disturb our lifelong way, we started on the long, long journey we were to take together. "I've got some news for you, dear," Gordon suddenly startled me by saying. "Do tell me quick, Gordon," said I. Only Gordon wasn't the name I used. "Try and guess." I thought a moment. "They've papered that old house," I said, "without waiting till I came," for Gordon had told me that the natives of his country parish had designs on the old stone manse against my arrival. "Oh, no," he said, laughing. "No, it's good news--at least, I hope it may turn out to be." "Oh," I exclaimed, drawing a long breath, "I'm so glad--the paper they'd choose would give me the jimjams, I know. Well, tell me." "We're not going to the old stone manse at all," he said, turning and looking radiantly at me in the moonlight. "We're not going to Rocanville--I've got a call, Helen." "Where?" I gasped, leaning forward with my elbows on his knees, caring not who saw. "And why didn't you tell me---- Oh, Gordon, did you feel you couldn't trust me?" my voice trembling a little as the first pang of conjugal sorrow smote my bosom. He laughed; then stooped and kissed me, having previously cast a swift Scotch glance about the deck. "I'd trust you with my life, my darling," he murmured--which comforted me a good deal. "But I wasn't exactly sure till two or three days ago--and I wanted to surprise you--and I wanted always to think that when my Helen gave herself to me, she thought she was going into the wilds for love's sweet sake. So it will always be just as precious to me as if you had actually gone." "But where are we going?" I pressed eagerly, not lingering on the sweetness; "don't keep me waiting, Gordon." "To Old Point Comfort," he said with the most provoking deliberation. "Don't tease me, dearest," I protested. Wonderful, isn't it, how brides always employ the tenderest names when they are just a little bit exasperated. And then he told me where it was we were to begin our married life. The church that had called us was named St. Andrew's; and it was the leading church, Gordon said, in Hertford, a Canadian city that shall so be named. "At least," he hastened to add, "it's the richest church, has the richest class of people in it--whether that makes it the leading church or not." "Oh, I'm so glad," I exclaimed breathlessly, my face aglow. "So that's why you wanted me to be so careful of my wedding dress? Isn't it all like a lovely fairy tale? And are we going there right away?" "Yes--after we leave Point Comfort. I'm to be installed there a week from to-day--and there's to be a reception to us in the evening." "Oh, lovely!" I cried; "I didn't think I'd get a chance to wear my finery at all. Do tell me all about it, Gordon," as I snuggled closer in the moonlight. The deck was gloriously deserted now. "There isn't much to tell," he said, and I wondered why he wasn't more jubilant about it all. "They invited me to preach before them a few weeks ago. I went--never dreamed they would call me, though. But they did. And the church isn't such a very large one--but it's very fashionable; too fashionable, I fear. A minister isn't always happiest in a church like that, you know," and again I caught the note in his voice which showed he didn't regard the prospect with unmixed enthusiasm. "But I know we'll be happy, dear," I reassured him, quite frank in my exultation; "that class of people will suit you so much better. They'll appreciate you--you'd have been wasted on those common people at that other outlandish place." "Not wasted, dear," he answered quietly; "a man's never wasted where he does his best. But I'm glad for your sake," he went on more brightly; "I don't think I'd have gone, only I thought you'd be happier there." "I'd be happy anywhere with you," I replied in bridal bliss. "I'd have come to you just the same if you'd been assistant minister of an Indian church at the North Pole. But I'm glad," my happy words went on, "I'm so glad we're going to be among congenial people. And I'm sure we'll have a lovely time--we'll have a lovely social life, I mean." "I hate social life--society life, at least," Gordon suddenly broke out in a voice that quite startled me; "and if they think I'm going to be a gossipy tea-drinking parson, they'll soon find their mistake." "But, Gordon," I remonstrated seriously, "you shouldn't look at it that way. Consider the influence you can have over them--that is, through their social life. I think the minister of rich people has the greatest chance in the world--to do them good, I mean. And I'll help you--I'll help you, dearest." "How?" my husband enquired after a little pause. "Well," I answered slowly; "oh, well, I like that sort of thing. I'm not much good, you know, at--at--religious work, prayer-meetings and things," I floundered on; "but I can--I can do that part, because I like it. I'll try and help you, Gordon--in that department, you know," I concluded, realizing, I fear, that it wasn't a very heroic field. "I want my little wife to help me in all the departments," he answered, smiling. "And you will, won't you, dearest--you'll love my work for its own sake, won't you?" Which I promised swiftly. "But I think I'll love it more in that kind of a church," I added frankly, "than I would at Rocanville. And of course I won't play cards with them, or dance--or anything like that," I affirmed piously, looking to Gordon for an approving smile; "but I suppose it won't be any harm for me to go to those things, will it, dear?" "I hadn't thought of that," he said, looking out over the shining bay; "but I want my wife to find her life-work in mine--and to help me be a truer and better minister, no matter where our field of work may be." All of which I promised, with the gladdest, happiest heart. And I told Gordon I wanted him to write me out a little prayer, a kind of missionary prayer, for opening meetings with, and all that sort of thing. Gordon said I was a ritualist. Then we arose to go inside, for the night was growing chill. "Is there any danger, Gordon," I asked as we walked through the saloon, "any danger, do you think, that my trunks won't get to Hertford the same day we do? They have the reception that night, you said." "Oh, no," he said; "the trunks have gone on ahead already." "I'm so glad," I answered; "it would be too bad to begin our work there with--with any handicap like that, you know." XV _"OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS"_ It was evident there were plenty of rich people in St. Andrew's, as Gordon had told me. I hadn't been half an hour in the parlours of the church that evening of our reception before I was sure of that. My trunks had come to hand all right, and my wedding splendour was making what show it could, but it soon found its level among the costly gowns that were worn by many a fair dame that night. If I had wanted abundant evidence that Gordon was to be minister of a fashionable church, I had every reason to be satisfied. I had never seen so much rich religion in any one organization. Although, of course, the evening wasn't very much on the religious order. There was an opening prayer, I think, and the good brother who offered it prayed that they might all go out into the highways and byways and compel them to come in. I remember thinking most of them would have to change their clothes before they did any highway duty of that kind--and I felt sorry for the wanderers that might be introduced. The people were very kind and cordial in their welcome. But I could see they expected me to realize what a superior sort of people they were, and what a fortunate sort of individual I was. They nearly all shook hands in the high pump-handle fashion that was almost unknown in the South; and they managed, in divers little ways, to let me know they were a very elaborate aggregation of Christian folks. I rather thought one or two of the best groomed of them looked at me as if I had no right to be so decently clothed myself. The evening was far spent when, as my husband was talking to a lady, a very important looking man came up and shook her solemnly by the hand. "We're glad to welcome you, Mrs. Laird," he said; "I have already met your husband--and I hope you'll feel at home amongst us." Whereat Gordon got quite excited. "Oh," he broke in, "this is not my wife--here," as he beckoned to me, "this is Mrs. Laird"--and I hurried forward. I cast a swift glance at the woman he had taken for me, and my cheeks burned with indignation. She was very religious, as I learned afterwards--but she was forty if she was a day, and dressed as if she had just come out of the ark, and wore a bonnet that might have been an heirloom in the family. However, I forgave her, being secretly thankful that it was not I. She was a stranger, I learned, from another church. In a few minutes Mr. Ashton--for such proved to be the gentleman's name--was deep in conversation with me and Gordon. "Yes," he went on, after some casual remarks, "your husband has fell on his feet all right." I started a little at the grammar; for Mr. Ashton was bedecked in the best of clothes, and had one or two diamonds about his person into the bargain. "We had forty-three applications when our pulpit became vacant--and it was quite a strain, picking out the man. You see, this is a very remarkable congregation," he went on in quite a wealthy tone, "and it's not every man could just suit us. But I think you'll give us exactly what we want, Mr. Laird," he added, turning to Gordon; "your style suits me exactly," and he smiled very amiably at my husband. "I haven't anything but the Gospel, Mr. Ashton," Gordon replied, a little distantly I thought, "and I suppose that's what any of the forty-three would have given you." "Yes, yes," replied Mr. Ashton, toying with a ponderous seal that dangled from a very elaborate chain, "the Gospel's the thing. Give me the Gospel--and the old Gospel too--none of your new-fangled ideas for me. No man could have got St. Andrew's pulpit if I'd thought he believed there was two Isaiahs. You don't believe in those new-fangled notions, of course, do you, Mr. Laird?" Gordon flushed slightly. "I don't concern myself much with whether a truth is old or new," he answered presently, "so long as I believe it's the truth. Even if it comes from the critics, I welcome truth from them as quickly as from any other source." "Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Ashton loftily, knitting his brows the while, "to a certain extent, that is. But the old doctrines are good enough for me. And--as I was saying, Mrs. Laird--we've got a very rich congregation; very rich," he repeated, drawing in his breath, "and, I hope, not without a sense of its responsibility too. Last year we had a surplus of eight hundred dollars--no regular salary to pay, you see--and on my own motion, on my own motion, we voted seventy-five of it to foreign missions. None of us felt the poorer for it, I'm sure--and I hope we'll be kept faithful to the end," he went on piously, "faithful to the end, Mr. Laird," as he turned again and smiled at Gordon. "I'd have gone in for giving the whole thing to missions," Gordon ventured boldly. "Very good, Mr. Laird; very good indeed, to a certain extent. But we never expect our minister to bother with the finances," he said patronizingly. "Our last minister got into trouble that way--was always preaching about the poor; talked a great deal about giving, and that sort of thing--used to preach some very worldly sermons. And our people didn't take to it, didn't take to it at all, Mrs. Laird. To be quite frank, our people want the Gospel and nothing but the Gospel--I'm that way myself; none of your financial or political sermons for me," he concluded quite significantly. "If our minister looks after his pulpit and gets up the kind of sermons we expect him to give, we'll--we'll run the finances all right, Mr. Laird." Then he dangled his glittering fob again and smiled up at Gordon; for Gordon was half a head higher than he. "I'm afraid we're keeping you too much to ourselves, Mr. Ashton," Gordon suddenly broke in, offering me his arm and starting to move away; "the others will want to speak to you," as he smilingly withdrew, a light in his eyes that I could interpret quite well, lost though it was on our prosperous parishioner. Before we left, Gordon enquired quietly about Mr. Ashton, and we learned that he owned a huge factory and was quite the richest man in the church. One or two declared he ran the whole institution, and that whatever he said was law. I don't think this cheered Gordon very much. The two years that followed were trying ones for me. It seemed as if I were on exhibition on every hand, and I felt nearly all the time as if I were at some kind of a public meeting. The church had no end of societies, especially women's societies, and they all expected me to be present on every occasion. I did my best but it was pretty hard. I memorized the little prayer Gordon had written out for me--and broke down in the middle of it the first time I tried to deliver it. It was like being lost at sea. And one of the ladies afterwards, whose husband was very rich--he made it out of lard--told me not to be discouraged; she said their previous minister's wife made a living show of herself, time and time again, before she got to be able to pray properly. So I stopped right there, without further exhibition. I bravely attempted teaching a class in the Sunday-school. Things didn't go so badly for the first three Sundays, although the boys asked some questions that dreadfully embarrassed me; I told them they must think these things out for themselves. But the fourth Sunday two of them fell to fighting--over a big glass alley--and they had a quite disgraceful time. There was bloodshed. It really quite unnerved me, as I didn't know the minute they might break out again; so in about six weeks I gave that up. Another thing discouraged me a good deal--and that was that we were comparatively poor. Although the congregation was composed so largely of rich people, they seemed to think--and Mr. Ashton openly avowed--that nothing injured a minister's spiritual life like having too much money. So we were kept pretty safe that way. But there was one lovely thing about the salary--and that was, the manse; within which Gordon and I made our home as soon as we came to Hertford. It seemed a little small to me in comparison with uncle's big house at home; but we fixed it up till it was as sweet and cozy as any little home could be, and Gordon's delight was something to behold. He said it was like a palace to him, and I was its lovely queen. This was very melodious to me, for when Gordon said pretty things he meant them. However, it was rather trying, after all, to be so much harder up than many of our people. Some of these seemed to love to ask me why we didn't keep horses; and whether or not we were going to Europe this summer; and how many servants we employed. They knew right well all the time that we had enough to do to keep ourselves, and that we were about as likely to go to Mars as to Europe--it comforted me a little to know I could have gone if I hadn't fallen in love with Gordon--and as for servants, we had only our red-headed Harriet; but she was first cousin to the wife of one of the richest men in the church. Their fathers were brothers, Harriet told me exultantly; but Harriet's had remained a mechanic, while Mrs. Newcroft's had become a manufacturer. Harriet generally got one afternoon in the week off; Mrs. Newcroft soon found this out, and always chose that day to call, lest Harriet should greet her as Mary Ann--which, in my opinion, she had a perfect right to do. It was a funny aristocracy we had in Hertford--about as cheerful, and hopeful, and mushroomy an aggregation as you could find anywhere. So different from the South, it was; wealth didn't cut much of a figure with our old Southern families. But the patricians of Hertford, for the most part, had bought their way to the seats of the mighty; and nearly all the blue blood was financially blue. Some of the grand dames had been servants themselves in their early days; which was no disgrace to them, I'm sure, only it was amusing to see how they looked down on servants now. In fact, I often felt how discouraging must have been their arduous efforts to build up an aristocracy at all; things would have gone pretty well, had it not been for some mean old outsiders who would insist on remembering back thirty or forty years. Those within the sacred circle generously forgot--each for the other. They let bygones be bygones, to their mutual advantage. But outsiders had cruel memories. Wherefore, just when they were getting their aristocracy nicely established, some of these inconsiderate old-timers would go rummaging in the past; and, the first thing we knew, they would stumble on an anvil, or unearth a plough, or a hod, or something of that kind--whereat the blue-blooded had to begin all over again. For the descendants of hod, or plough, or anvil, had somehow developed the greatest scorn for these honest trade-marks of other days. Gordon never said much to me--I heard him use the term "Shanghai nobility" once, with a smile--but I knew how he despised it all. I could see his eye flash sometimes when some of them were getting off their little speeches, trying to let us know in what lofty society they moved and what superior folks they were. Indeed, it became more and more clear to me that Gordon was never meant to be the minister of a rich congregation at all. His father was a shepherd--it used to mortify the grandees of St. Andrew's dreadfully to hear him say so--and Gordon was full of the simple sincerity and manly independence that I felt sure must have marked his ancestors. And I don't think Gordon ever preached a sermon without unconsciously making them feel that he was independent of them, if ever a man was, which was the simple truth, for my husband had his warrant from far higher hands than theirs, and I don't think he knew what it was to feel the fear of man. Wherefore it came about, and it is not to be wondered at, that Gordon found a great deal of his work among the poor. Little by little, to the dismay of many of the aristocrats, he added to the number of the lowly that made their church home in St. Andrew's. And he founded, and cherished, a mission chapel in Swan Hollow, one of the most degraded parts of the city. I really believe the rich were jealous of the poor, for Gordon seemed to love them best and to be happiest when he was among them. But the poor people worshipped him for it--and I believe I did too. Oh, how I envied him! For he seemed to have a source of happiness of which I knew nothing. I can remember, when my days were full of teas, and at-homes, and all sorts of social functions, how much more full and satisfying his life seemed to be than mine. Sometimes I would get Harriet to make a little jelly, or some delicacy of that sort, for the poor sick folks he used to tell me about; but Gordon gave them his heart, his life, his love--and that made all his work a perpetual joy to him. This was the deep spring from which he drank--and I had no part in it at all. I used to punch the score cards at evening parties, and sometimes I played for the dancers as before--thus did my poor hungry heart nibble at the phantom crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. But both my heart and I were starving. It strikes me as wonderful, now that I sit and look back upon it all, how inevitably, and by what different paths, and under what varying influences I came closer to Gordon's side. XVI _A KNIGHTLY GUEST_ "Do you suppose we could afford a carriage for the Ashtons' dinner?" I asked Gordon one evening, the evening before the function in question. Gordon hesitated. "I'm afraid not, my dear," he said; "surely it isn't very far to walk." "Everybody else will have one," I remonstrated, a little ruefully. "Well," he answered cheerfully, "most of them can afford it better than we can. And those who can't," as he smiled, rather disdainfully I thought, "a good many of those who can't, will have one just the same--even if they daren't look the butcher and the baker in the face. There are a good many like that in Hertford, you know--in St. Andrew's Church, for that matter, I'm afraid," he added. "But a minister couldn't afford that any better than the other," he concluded, reaching for the elaborate invitation I held in my hand the while. "Gordon," I said suddenly, and I fear my face showed what prompted the question, "have you ever thought what a good time we'd have had, if you had been something else--if you had been a doctor, I mean, or a politician, or something of that sort? Or a lawyer," I added; "yes, a lawyer--what a stunning lawyer you'd have made, Gordon. You'd be getting five times your present income, if you'd been a lawyer." "Nonsense," he said, in his rather blunt Scotch way. "It's nothing of the sort," I answered. "You know as well as I do there are a dozen lawyers in Hertford who could buy and sell you over and over again, so far as money is concerned--and they haven't got half the brains you have--aren't in the same class with you as public speakers. And yet here you are, the minister of a lot of fashionable people and----" "We have a good many now that aren't fashionable, thank heaven," he interrupted, as if he were quite proud of it; "you'd be surprised, Helen, if you only knew how many poor people have connected with St. Andrew's since I came. But that doesn't please you much, does it, dear?" a shadow coming over the eager face. "Why?" I asked. Yet I knew the meaning and the truth of his words. "You don't love the poor people," he answered, his words coming slow, as if with pain; his eyes pleadingly fixed on mine. "What makes you say that, Gordon?" and my voice shook a little. "Because I see it every day, dear. You don't care for that part of my work at all," and his voice was inexpressibly sad. "I know what you mean by what you've just said--about wishing I had been a lawyer." "I didn't say I wished it--you know I didn't," I corrected vigorously. "But that's what you meant. I know it--I've known it long. Oh, my darling," he suddenly broke out, like one owning at last to a long-hidden pain, "do you think I've been blind to it all? Do you think I haven't seen the noble efforts my brave little wife has made to be interested in my work--and all her disappointment that we're poor and humble--and her longing for the things that I can never give her. And yet you've been so lovely and unselfish about it all, my dear one, trying to hide it from me," and I could feel my cheeks burn with shame at the words. One of his arms was partly round my neck, his hand toying with my hair; and he drew me close and held me tight. The shelter was wondrous sweet. "Oh, Gordon," I said, the tears coming as I spoke, "don't talk to me like that; please don't--you know I was so young. And I never had any experience like this--I was brought up so differently. And I do want to be happy--so much, I want to be happy. And you, dear, I want you to be happy too." "And so I am," he exclaimed passionately--"except that I'm lonely; I'm so lonely, Helen. Oh, if you only loved the things I love, the poor, the sick, the sorrowing--if you only loved them all, and loved to help them--I wouldn't trade places with the richest and the grandest of them all." "Oh, Gordon," I sobbed, "how could you say it?--you mean you'd trade now! And I've tried so hard." He soothed me, caressing and comforting as though I were a child. "It's been hard for you, my darling," he murmured in my ear; "and you don't know all you've been to me--you really don't." "It was only because I thought you were so clever," I sobbed out like a baby; "and I thought you weren't--weren't getting your reward." "Oh, child, you don't know what rich rewards there are," he said dreamily; "what rich rewards--if men only knew where to look for them." I lay a long time in his arms, the imposing invitation unheeded on the floor. And I longed--I believe I prayed in a faint kind of way--that I might yet know something of the secret joy that made up my husband's hire. Yet I was almost in despair; for the image of all that others did, and all they had, and the vision of what might also have been ours, kept recurring to my mind. I thought our life was pretty gray, its limits hard and stern, and I may as well be candid enough to say so. But I think I would have followed Gordon anywhere--if I could only have found the way. My gropings for it must have been pathetic. "I'll give up the Ashtons' dinner," I said heroically at last, looking up at Gordon through my tears. I knew he would kiss me--and he did. "But you shan't," he said firmly. "You'll go--and so will I. That's the one little triumph I'll never give up; I'm always so proud of my wife at times like that--we can beat them on their own ground." Then he stooped down and recovered the gleaming-edged cardboard from the floor. This invitation was our passport to what was evidently to be a very swell dinner at the Ashtons'. They had a lion in the house--a mighty guest, I mean by that. He was a Sir; not only a Sir, but a Baronet; which, it seems, is a loftier brand, a repeating kind of Sir. His full name was Sir Austin Beachcroft, and he was a British brewer. His appearance gave abundant indication that he was one of his own best customers. Mr. Ashton, it seems, had met him while crossing the Atlantic, and the Baronet was graciously stopping off for a visit of a day or two on his way to the Rockies to hunt grizzlies. He arrived on a Saturday night; and it was impressive to see the solemn hush that came over the congregation in St. Andrew's when the Ashtons led their Baronet down the aisle the next morning. Mr. Ashton came first, and there was a look on his face that showed his doubt as to whether or not he was a mortal man. They came late, of course, but I attribute that to Mrs. Ashton--for that is a womanly wile. I caught a glimpse of her face as she passed--it bore a look of thankfulness, almost of heavenly bliss, as if she were now ready to depart in peace. In an adjoining pew I could see Harriet's cousin; vainly she strove to join the swelling psalm, gazing at the procession as though she considered the ways of Providence unjust. The Baronet, throughout the service, bore himself as piously as though he had never heard of beer. Yet it was evident enough that he never for one moment forgot that he was a creation of his Sovereign. When the hymns were being sung, he looked abstractedly in front of him, as though they were addressed to him; at sudden intervals he would break in and sing about half a line, just to show that he was human like ourselves. Every now and then, while the sermon was in progress, he would cast a swift glance around to make sure that everybody was looking at him; finding that they were, a little jerk and a stare heavenward evinced the slight irritation that rank or genius is supposed to feel in being thus remarked. Once or twice he snapped his watch when Gordon didn't stop just when he might have done. This set me against him at once, for the sermon was a beautiful one; besides, I knew what ailed the Baronet--he wasn't accustomed to go so long without a sample of his wares. When the collection was taken up, he was human enough; even Mr. Ashton started a little at the size of his deposit; for he gave after the fashion of his fathers, which, as Gordon afterwards told me, was formed in the copper age. Well, the very next night came the dinner; to which Gordon and I sallied forth. It does make a woman wince a little when she finds herself coming on foot to a gate quite surrounded by the carriages of her fellow guests. Harriet's cousin, I remember, alighted from her equipage just as I arrived, and we went in together; it was but poor comfort to reflect that my servant called her Mary Ann. "You're the belle of the ball," Gordon whispered to me as we came down the stairs a few minutes later; "I'll bet a sovereign the Baronet will write home about you before he goes to bed." "Don't be surprised," I answered gaily, "if I take to the woods as soon as I meet him--you know, I never saw a real two-legged lordling before." We were duly presented, the Baronet staring at us as though we were so many pretty fawns reclaimed by civilization from the wilds. Harriet's cousin was as red in the face as a turkey-cock, and her attitude was one of reverence itself. Mr. Ashton stood apart in a state of semi-unconscious bliss, looking like a kind of glorified Barnum. His wife was torn between feverish glances towards the glittering table that could be seen in the distance and longing looks fixed upon the Baronet. She was wondering how she might properly surrender herself to be borne in to dinner. In due time, however, we were all seated, my escort proving the wealthy husband of the woman who had comforted me about my prayer--he was the magnate who had made his money out of lard. My first remark to him, after we were seated, disclosed my ignorance of the proper pronunciation of his name. I suppose I was nervous. He corrected me, adding in fine original vein: "But call me what you like, as long as you don't call me too late for dinner," spreading his napkin over an expanse that indicated his counsel was probably serious enough. At this juncture Mr. Ashton asked Gordon to say grace; and the tone of his request showed how highly honoured he considered both the Almighty and his minister to be by the observance. This finished, there followed that peculiar silence which so often wraps a self-conscious company, all of whom are bent on conducting themselves with unusual propriety. But the Baronet was soon in midstream, his spirits rising higher and higher as he remarked the deference with which his every word was greeted. "Yes," he was saying when I first caught the drift of his talk, "I had a great time in New York--was fairly beset with their reporters, though, all wanting interviews. They're a great lot, those New Yorkers," he went grandly on, "nearly all of them either colonels or millionaires--any one who isn't one or the other is sure to be a judge. Greatest conglomeration of newly rich I ever saw in my life--but it's wonderful how they worship what they haven't got. A lot of humbugs," he added scornfully, "pretending to despise titles the way they do--and yet they fairly worship them. The Duke of Marlborough happened to be in New York the same time as me; and, really, there didn't seem to be anything else in the papers except our movements--we simply couldn't sneeze, without it being in the papers. Oh, they're very young yet," he added patronizingly, "they're very young indeed." "Mrs. Laird's a Yankee, Sir Austin," one of the lady guests ventured timidly, designating me by a sideward glance. I dare say I wasn't hard to identify, for I know my cheeks were blazing and my eyes flashing. It's wonderful how much dearer your country grows when you're in exile. The Baronet adjusted his monocle and looked at me with some interest across the table. "Well," he began with a very condescending smile, "there are some nice Yankees, you know--for instance," nodding at me as he spoke. "I'm not a Yankee," I broke in with vehemence. "I'm no more a Yankee than you are, sir." I forgot all about the handle to his name. "Were you addressing Sir Austin?" Mr. Ashton interrupted, meaning reproof; he was so horror-stricken that he had brought his erstwhile busy jaws to a sudden standstill. "I was addressing anybody who calls me a Yankee," I retorted, controlling a voice that would shake in spite of me. "Oh, Mrs. Laird," the informant of a moment ago interjected, "I always understood you were an American." "I suppose I am," I returned, commanding a smile by this time--"but that's a very different being from a Yankee. And I don't know whether I am or not," I went on with a quite ardent heart; "because I'm a Southerner--my father was a Confederate soldier," I broke out, regardless of the canons of good taste, "and he was wounded twice at Gettysburg, so he was." "Did he recover?" the Baronet enquired, in a tone that was meant to be sympathetic. I stared at the man. "Did he recover?" I echoed; "how long do you think it is since Gettysburg was fought, Sir Austin?" I verily believe the title was music to the man. In any case, he mellowed perceptibly. "It was a foolish question--from any one who has ever seen you," he admitted; "and they were a brave lot of men, even if they did get beaten," he continued cordially enough; "they put up a great fight, did those rebels, Mrs.--er?" as he paused for my name. This was too much. "They weren't rebels," I flung back; "nobody has a right to call them rebels--they were soldiers fighting for their country--and they weren't beaten, they were starved," I added; and I wouldn't have cared if he had been the proudest duke in England. The lordlet adjusted his monocle afresh and took a wondering look at me. I do not know what reply, if any, he was about to make; for just then came an interruption fraught with more of consequence than would have appeared likely on the surface. "Mr. Laird's wanted, sir," announced a servant. Wherewith Gordon excused himself for a moment and hurried out to the hall. "I'll have to ask you to let me run away, Mr. Ashton," he said, returning after a brief absence. "I'm afraid I'll have to go." "What!" exclaimed our host incredulously; "have to go!--the dinner's only just begun, sir." "I'm very sorry," replied my husband, "but I've been sent for--somebody wants me, and I must go," with which he turned back into the hall, for Mr. Ashton had already risen from his chair. He was still protesting as he followed him out; the talk around the table began again, but I could still catch the conversation in the hall. "You can't possibly get away; I was counting on you, as you know, to propose the health of Sir Austin. I'll send word that you'll come the first thing in the morning--whoever it is that wants you." I couldn't catch the response; but I knew right well what line it would take. "No, I don't think they belong to St. Andrew's," I heard Gordon a moment later; "not as far as I know, at least. They're very poor, I should fancy, from the quarter they live in." "Then it seems to me you're under no obligation to go," I could just hear Mr. Ashton saying, in a tone that chilled me; "you'll find it quite enough, I imagine, to look after your own people. What's the matter anyway?" "I don't know," said Gordon, "but the messenger said they wanted me right away--it's a matter of duty, Mr. Ashton." Just with this Mr. Ashton drew the door shut behind him. I did not wait to analyze the impulse that suddenly seized me, but hastily arose, with a word of apology to my hostess, and slipped swiftly out into the hall. I do not think either of the men noticed me. "Well, all I've got to say is this," Mr. Ashton was exclaiming, "that I consider it a slight to my guest--a downright slight, sir; an insult, I might almost say, to Sir Austin Beachcroft. And I know he'll have his own opinion of it, sir--and you can explain to him yourself--I'll make no apologies for you, mind." Gordon replied just the way I would have expected him to: "I don't care a rap for all the Sir Austins in the kingdom," he said, moving on up the stairs to get his coat; "it's probable some one's dying--and wants me." Mr. Ashton followed a step or two up the stair. "I suppose I may take that to mean," his voice now thick with anger, "that you don't care a rap for me either; nor for anybody else of the people that--that hire you--and pay you, Mr. Laird," the words coming hot and hissing, his flaming face turned up towards Gordon at the top of the stairs. I could see Gordon's eyes flash from where he stood. "If you think I'm your hired servant, Mr. Ashton--or anybody else's, when my duty's concerned--you'll find out your mistake. We needn't carry this discussion any further," as he turned and went into the dressing-room. "I'll carry it further, sir," Mr. Ashton half shouted in a tone so loud I feared his knightly guest would hear; "I'll carry it till I teach you which side your bread's buttered on--I'll see you from the pulpit to the door. It was me that got you here--and I'll get you out, sir, I'll get you out," he flung as a parting threat, turning to make his way back to the dining-room. My course was clear. I passed our angry host without a word as I climbed the stair; the most ardent days of love and courtship had never found my heart so hungry for the man I loved as it was that moment. "You must not come," said Gordon, as I swept into the room where he was. "What made you leave, dear--please go back. Things are bad enough as they are." But I sealed his lips with my burning own and held him one moment in my arms before I turned to make ready for departure. I could see his face brighten with a wonderful light, and I had my reward in the pride and fondness with which his eyes rested on me. Nobody intercepted, nor did any speak to us, as we made our way out to the street. The night was dark, a few heavy rain-drops beating in our faces. "Where are you going now?" Gordon asked me as we moved away from the gate. "I don't know," said I--"only I'm going with you." "My darling!" was all he said. "I'm afraid there's going to be a storm," I predicted, looking up at the ill-omened sky after we had walked a little way in silence. "The storm is past," he said, his arm stealing about me in the dark; "the night is growing beautiful to me--oh, my wife, my darling!" XVII _MY ORDINATION_ We had walked for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes before we came near our destination, the character of the neighbourhood gradually indicating that the spot we were seeking was near at hand. One or two enquiries sufficed to locate the house, a tumble-down old cottage that stood in a little from the street. "Be you the minister?" asked a woman's voice, as she opened the door in answer to our knock, shading the lamp with her hand; "be you Mr. Laird?" "Yes," said Gordon, "I came as soon as I got your message; and what can I do for you?" Although I think he surmised why she had sent for him; there is that in a mother's face and voice which only one kind of sorrow gives. Besides, he had seen a light burning dimly in the little room at the end of the house. "It's our Jennie," the woman said, standing transfixed a moment as the light of the lamp fell on me. For I was still in my dinner dress; and I was holding the train up in my hand, and there were flowers in my hair. Neither of us, I imagine, had thought of this. "This is my wife," said Gordon; and I never heard him say it with more tenderness or pride--nor had it ever sounded sweeter. The sad and tired face, still wondering, gave me a faint smile of welcome as we passed within the door. "You can stay in the room," she said, leading the way into what I supposed they might call the parlour. At least, there was a table in it, and one or two chromos on the wall; but I noticed a dishevelled couch in the corner, evidently for some tired watcher. "Jennie's been wantin' ye for long," the woman said to Gordon as she set the lamp on the table; "but she's worse the night, an' me an' Martha got afraid. Besides, she was askin' for ye; she went to the Bethany Sunday-school, sir, and she often saw you when you was there"--this was Gordon's mission school--"you put your hand on her head once, at the festival, I think, an' poor Jennie never forgot it, she was that pleased. But I'm feared she'll never be back there again, sir," the woman's voice quivering as she turned her face away. "What's the matter with your daughter?" I asked, for my whole heart went out to the woman in her grief. "Well, ma'am, we don't hardly know. But it began with a cruel bad cough more'n six months ago--an' it keeps always gettin' a little worse. She got it at the factory--her and Martha both worked in the knittin' factory, an' the air was so bad, and the hours was so long; but she just had to keep workin' on, ma'am, 'cause their father's dead, and there's two younger than them. I earn a little now an' again, goin' out washin'--but it was really Jennie and Martha that kep' the home goin'," the woman concluded, heaving a weary sigh. "What factory was your daughter in?" I asked. "Oh, in Mr. Ashton's--Ashton & Quirk," the woman answered, "an' they don't seem to care anythin' for the hands--excep' gettin' the work out o' them," she added, with another sigh; "Jennie wanted to stop and rest, first along, when she wasn't feelin' good--but they said another girl would get her job if she stopped. So she had to go on as long as she could. I guess we'll go in now, sir; we won't be long, ma'am," as she led Gordon from the room. As I sat alone I could hear the dull hacking cough at frequent intervals, sometimes with sounds of struggle and of choking. Then would come a stillness, broken by the low sound of voices; and soon I could catch Gordon's rich tones in prayer. I could not hear the words, but a nameless power seemed to accompany the sound; I knew that his very heart and life were being given to the holy task. A few minutes later Gordon came softly into the room where I was waiting. "Come on in," he said; "come on in and see Jennie. I'm sure it would do her good." I hesitated. "Is she dying?" I asked. Gordon nodded. "It's consumption," he said. "Oh, Gordon, don't ask me to go. I'm so frightened of death; and I couldn't help her any--I couldn't say a word," for if I ever felt my helplessness, it was then. "I'm afraid I would only be in the way," I supplemented, not without much sincerity. "A loving heart's never in the way," my husband answered in the lowest tone. His face, radiant a moment before from its sacred duty, was now shadowed with sorrow; his eyes gave me a final glance of loneliness and longing as he turned to go back to the dying bed. "Oh, Gordon, wait," I cried faintly, sudden resolve gathering in my heart. "Wait, darling, and I'll go," with which I hurried to his side. My reward was in his eyes. I could see them, even in the darkened hall through which we passed into the room of death. Such a humble room it was, bare and unadorned. The bed stood in the corner, and even my untutored eyes saw at a glance that life's race was nearly run for her who lay upon it. Large, dark eyes looked out at me from the wasted face, wistful in death's mysterious appeal. Poor Jennie! she little knew how great was the ministry yet remaining to her. For, as in a moment, the repulsion and the fear all left my heart, filling fast with a pity and a longing I could neither understand nor control. It must have been God's prompting, and nothing else. I saw nothing but the dying face. The mother was there; and Martha, her cheeks wet with tears; the younger pair, too, were standing near the bed. But I seemed to behold none of them--not even Gordon. For I moved instinctively towards the bed, my gaze fixed on the dying girl. Her eyes seemed to call me; the lure of the eternal was within them, and I marvelled, little of spiritual insight though I had, at the deep tranquillity that lay far within. She smiled as she saw me coming closer, and I sat down on the bed beside her. I could not but notice that her eyes rested on my face in eager wonder; she seemed to love to look, so constant was her gaze. And it was evident--so eternal is the womanly--that she was attracted by what I wore; my lovely gown, the lace upon its bosom, the diamond pendant with its chain about my neck, the rich flowers in my hair--all made their appeal to the dying eyes. "Oh, it was lovely!" she murmured, after we had spoken a word or two. "What was, dear?" I answered, for I had no idea. "What he said--what your husband told me. He made it so easy--and so beautiful. I'm not afraid to die--not now, ma'am." I marvelled as I beheld the strange serenity that seemed to wrap her like a garment. "Oh," she went on faintly, "it must be lovely to be able to do that; to be able to tell people, when they're dying, about the Saviour--and about heaven. Do you do it too, ma'am?" I shrank before the pervading eyes, for they seemed to look through and through the soul with the penetrating power that death imparts. "No," I said tremblingly, "no, I don't believe I ever did." "But you will, won't you?" she went on calmly; "he'll tell you how--and you'll tell it too. Oh, it comforts so--I believe it because he does," her eyes turning now in reverence to Gordon's face. "Yes, dear, yes, I'll try," I faltered, and the eager eyes looked content. Something prompted me to put my hands to my hair, though I had forgotten the flowers were there. "Would you like them, Jennie?" as I placed them in the wasted hand. I had no need to ask, so grateful was the light that kindled the wan face. "These comfort too," she murmured. Then suddenly: "Can you sing?--I love when people sing to me, if I love them." "Not very well, Jennie," I answered, for I knew I could not trust my voice. "Please do," she pleaded; "just some little song." I turned to Gordon; he was standing above me. "Let us try," he said; "suppose we sing 'Forever with the Lord'?" I consented. But a quick impulse came to me and I whispered to him: "One of your psalms, Gordon--that lovely one about the Valley." I saw how glad he was. "You must sing it too," he said; and then, in tones of more than womanly gentleness, he began the noble strain. "Yea though I walk in death's dark vale Yet will I fear none ill, For Thou art with me and Thy rod And staff me comfort still." I didn't know then, and hardly know exactly yet, what those two last lines really mean; but no one could fail to see their power. They have been often tested when life's lamp was burning low; and the far-off music of Immortality, whatever be the meaning of the words, echoes through them. Jennie's face was beautiful to see. I had never had hour like to this. I can remember yet how, once or twice, the thought of all the revelry I had left behind floated before my eyes; the lights, the flowers, the richly appointed table, the sumptuous dinner, the circle of exalted guests in glorious array, the speech and the echoing song--but they all seemed to me now as the dust beneath my feet. Pale and tawdry, garish, did it all appear in contrast with the high reality of the scene that had succeeded it. It must have been God's miracle to my soul. I know not. But I speak only the simple truth when I say that what was about me now, the humble home, the squalid room, the dimly burning lamp, the wail of the broken-hearted, the pale light of death upon one wasted face; these stood before me as life, very life--and the other had receded into the phantom shadows of unreality and death. I felt as if I had found myself at last; I knew I had found my husband, long sundered by the cruel shadow my own foolish heart had cast; and I dimly hoped that the dear Father of us all had found us both. An hour or two later Gordon beckoned me out into the little hall. "I guess we'll have to go now," he said; "it's almost midnight--and you'll be tired out." "Don't," I said earnestly, "don't make me go, Gordon. How can we leave here?--she's dying. Do you think we'll ever see her again?" Gordon's look of love was beautiful. "No," he said, "never again, here--and we'll wait, my darling," the words coming low and passionate. "Look," as he cast his eyes within the door, "she wants you--she's motioning for you." Which was true enough, and in a moment I was bending over the dying form. "You'll comfort mother, and Martha, won't you--and the children--when I'm gone? Poor Martha, she'll have it all to do now," the words coming faint and pitiful; "all the work, I mean--she works so hard. And she has to go to the factory, even after she sits up all night." "I'll do all I can, dear," I promised, trying to speak calmly, though the tears were running down my cheeks. "I'll come and see them as often as I can." "Call them all," she said, rousing herself. I had not far to call. In a moment they were all about the bed. Then the emaciated arms stole out and laid hold of a rusty napkin, or towel, that lay upon the bed beside her. Slowly she unfolded it, producing its contents one by one. "This is for you, Ernie," as she handed the little brother a many-coloured flashing tie; "I saved up to get it for you for Christmas--but then I knew I'd have to get it sooner. And I made this for you, Chrissie," as the thin hands held out a little pin-cushion to the younger sister. "And I want you to have my little locket for a keepsake, Martha; it's nearly new. And this is for you, mother," as the sobbing woman bent above her child; "it's my Sunday-school Bible--and it has the tickets I was saving for a prize; I can't ever use them now. And the book-marker that's in it is for you," as her eyes turned to Gordon; "I worked it for you myself, and I was going to give it to you the first Sunday you came down." She sank back, exhausted. One by one they turned away, each bearing the precious treasure. Gordon held his book-marker out before him like a sacred thing, and I could see his breast heaving as his arm went round one of the children. My own eyes were streaming, for I had never witnessed scene so holy; the last will and testament of prince or magnate had never majesty like this. Suddenly Jennie motioned me down beside her again. "I didn't have anything for you," she murmured in pitiful explanation, "because I didn't know you were coming. So I just give you my--my love," she faltered low, "and I want to tell you how much you've helped me--to die. And you'll often do it, won't you?" she went on, reverting to the request that must surely have been prompted by none but God Himself, every word burning its way to my inmost heart. "Yes," I sobbed, "oh, yes, I will, if God will help me--but I can do so little." "No," she whispered back, "no--so much. You don't know how much it helps, for a poor girl like me just to, just to see somebody that's--that's sweet and lovely," she said timidly--"and that wears pretty clothes. Just to see somebody that loves you, even if they didn't speak a word--that helps a lot." I gently hushed the words. The little circle gathered around the bed again. The hours went slowly by. Suddenly her eyes opened wide. "Sing that again," she murmured, struggling now for breath; "that about--about the vale. It's dark." Gordon looked into my eyes; his hand touched mine. Then, in a tone that was part of tenderness and all of triumph, he began, my trembling voice blending with his own: "Yea though I walk through death's dark vale Yet will I fear none ill" and just as we finished the Shepherd Psalm the wasted face lighted up with pallid beauty, the raptured eyes looked their last farewell, and the tired toiler passed into the rest of God. It was a very solemn joy that wrapped our hearts as Gordon and I walked home together through the slowly breaking dawn. I knew that our life-song had begun at last, and my heart was filled with reverent ecstasy. "Take me, Gordon," I said, as we entered and closed the door behind us. "Take me," the tears now flowing fast, "and never, never let me go." "You're mine," was all his answer as his arms closed about me. "God gave me you, my darling." XVIII _THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH_ It matters not how parched and bare the plain of life may be, one living spring of joy can enrich and beautify it all. One master gladness can make the heart strong against all the ills of life; it matters not how fierce and angry be the winds, if the heart have shelter. If God be for us who can be against us? Gordon and I had certainly had our share of the ills of life; and the winds of trouble had found us out. Of course, it doesn't seem so hard to bear, now that it's past; but I reckon few young married couples ever encountered more head wind or sailed more troubled seas. I know everybody thinks their own troubles are the worst; if we could trade with other people for a week, we'd probably be glad to trade back when the time was up. Yet it cannot be denied, so far as we were concerned, that we had a good deal to sadden us. To begin with, we were far from home and kindred. Gordon's relatives--he seldom spoke of any but his father--were far across the sea. Mine were a thousand miles away, in the sunny Southland, separated from me now by the unhappy storm that had gathered about my husband's head. We never spoke of going home; for Gordon, I knew, would not consider it, and I would not go without him. Then, too, there was little now to take me there. My mother had passed away. It was a couple of years after we came to Canada that the end had come. Suddenly stricken with the hand of death while summering in the remote mountains of Western Virginia, the dear spirit had found its rest. I could not be notified till it was too late to go, even for the last sad offices; so I went not at all. The heavenly tenderness of my husband through all those days of sorrow lingers with me as a precious memory. Uncle Henry and Aunt Agnes wrote me once or twice, and always sympathetically enough. But it was evident that they recognized through it all how wide was the gulf that divided me from the days and scenes of girlhood. And they sent their "respects" to Gordon, which is about the politest form of epitaph that can be graven on the tomb of friendship. It was in the very midst of this parched and dreary plain (to quote the words with which I began the chapter) that a spring of living joy suddenly flung forth its waters; amid the troublous winds, our hearts found the dearest of all earthly havens. It seems hard to realize it now--but I don't believe Gordon and I were unhappy before baby came. Unhappy, I mean, because there wasn't any. I don't think we ever felt that life was poor and skimped and silent; I don't believe we looked and longed at all. No, we didn't--and that's the strangest part of it. The troubles that people with children had--the imprisonment by day--and the marches by night--and the plaintive serenades of the early dawn; the care and responsibility and disappointment, and often heartbreak, of later years--these were so frequently mentioned between us that I fear we came to indulge a kind of blasphemous complacency because we were immune. Then, too, we sometimes whispered the old sophistry that we had each other, in devotion undivided with another--which is nothing but a honeyed perjury. Anyhow I know this, that in those pre-parental days I would ask people whom I had just met--and with no misgivings--as to whether or not they had any children. But I never dared to do it after the new love-birds began singing in my mother-heart. It seemed cruel, lest they should be compelled with shame to acknowledge they had none; even in my most inconsiderate years I would never ask a homely spinster if her dance card were full--if I may pluck an illustration from the giddy days of old. It was with trembling joy that we drew near, never so near together, to this great gladness of our lives. Then came my great darkness; then the holy dawn. I swiftly forgot all about the darkness--for joy that a man was born into the world. Gordon was beside me when I realized it all, showering little timid words of endearment down upon me as though he feared I were hardly able to stand them. His lip was quivering when I looked up; and I saw his glance turn from me to something that lay beside me on a pillow. A low gurgling kind of sound came from the little bundle on the top of it. "Isn't that sweet?" I murmured--for I knew--my eyes fallen shut again. Gordon looked at me with overflowing eyes--then he turned and went softly out of the room. I was faint and weak when he came back; but I held his hand, lest he should go away again. "Say a little prayer for the baby," I whispered; "say it out loud," and Gordon knelt low beside the bed and prayed. But I noticed that all his prayer was for me, that I might be given back to him--and I told him, before he had time to get up, that he had forgotten about the baby. So he prayed again, for us both this time; and I don't think I ever before felt what a true priest of God was this man of mine, and I rejoiced that the new life which lay beside me was breath of his breath and soul of his soul. And I think we both forgot, in those blessed days, all the sorrows of the past, the turmoil of the present, the portent of the future. What a new world it all turned out to me! A new heaven, indeed; and a new earth--which was more to us just then--as the Bible says. Everything was wonderful. I can remember yet the foolish delight with which one day I counted all the baby's toes--and found he had exactly ten. I knew, of course, that this had happened often enough before, but still it struck me as beautiful that they should have come out so even; a miscalculation, considering how many have to be outfitted for the journey, would have seemed pardonable in anybody's baby but my own. And I had never known before how intelligent a baby could be in its very early dawn. For instance, mine had a strange habit of lifting his little hand high above his head, then slowly letting it drop. "I can't make out what that gesture means," his father (those words were a new strain of music) said to me one day as we bended over the babe together; "you don't suppose he sees that fly, do you?" referring to a winged intruder that was hovering, like ourselves, above our treasure. "Oh, no," I answered; then suddenly, "Gordon, do you know, I believe I can tell what baby's trying to do. He's trying to pronounce the benediction, just as sure as anything. That's you in him, Gordon; he's going to be a minister." "I believe that's just what he's doing," said Gordon, enchanted; "look--there he's doing it again." "He does it just like you, Gordon," I repeated. "Nobody need ever tell me there's nothing in heredity. Isn't it wonderful?" "It's mysterious," said Gordon, fascinated as he watched the little cleric; "we'll have to call him some name suitable for a minister." "We'll call him Gordon," I said decisively--"that's a good Presbyterian name. I called him that this morning, all alone, and he looked up and cooed like as if he understood." "We'll call him Harold, for your father, if you like," my husband proposed magnanimously. "No, no," I said, "his name shall be Gordon. But we'll call it--I mean--we'll give mother's name to her--if he ever has a little sister." "Mercy!" said Gordon, drawing his breath in fast. "I always think just one's so lonely," I explained, my eyes fastened on the isolated posterity beside me. "I was just one--the only one in our family, you know." "The only one in the world--for me," said Gordon, and he kissed me. "Look, your son's trying to sneeze: isn't it wonderful how soon they pick things up?" "_Our_ son, dear," I corrected reproachfully, after I had helped baby through. Gordon laughed. "We're a pair of idiots," he said. "We'll have to straighten up, Helen, or we'll spoil the youngster. I can see you're going to idolize him already." "Love never spoiled anybody," I protested, "and it won't spoil him either." "No," conceded Gordon, "but he mustn't be indulged too much. I believe in making them obey--and not giving in to them; that old adage about sparing the rod, you know." "He shan't ever be touched," I exclaimed; "nobody shall ever lay a finger on my baby." "_Our_ baby," corrected Gordon, smiling. "But about what you said about the rod," I resumed. "You don't surely mean----" "Don't let us get excited, dear," and Gordon smiled down at me; "but of course children, and especially boys, must be taught to obey. That's one of the great advantages of a public school." "He shan't ever go to a public school," I declared warmly. "No child of mine will ever be sent with a lot of common children--in one of those big schools." "What will you do with them?" said Gordon, intensely interested. "I'll teach them myself," said I. "I'll teach them together; I'll keep them together all the time. There's no influence on a boy like his little sister." By this time Gordon was just as absorbed in them both as I was. "You can train the girl the way you like," he said, stroking my hair while he spoke; "that's a mother's privilege--but I'll have to take a hand with the boy. And I'm a firm believer in punishing them, when they need punishment." "Gordon," I pleaded, as my eyes filled with tears, "do you mean to say you'd whip him?" "Yes," said Gordon, very solemn; "yes, if he needs it." "Oh, Gordon," I cried, for it was all very real to me, "you'll make him afraid of you; he'll learn to dislike you, Gordon--and that would break my heart," the words quivering as they came. "There, there, dear," he said, gently caressing me, "don't let us say any more about it--perhaps I won't have to whip him much. All I mean is, that I don't believe in children getting their own way; we mustn't indulge him, I mean. And you know, dear," this coming with a very winning smile, "you know, I'm older--and I've had more experience than you, dear." "No, you haven't, Gordon," I cried triumphantly; "you shouldn't say that. I've had just as many as you, Gordon--and I know them better; I've studied him more, right here with him all the time." But just then our solitary descendant broke out with an imperious cry that indicated he wanted something. Gordon leaped to duty. "It's his bottle," he exclaimed excitedly, beginning a wild search on the table, under the pillow, beneath the bed, the quest continued in the bathroom and an adjoining chamber. "Yes, yes, baby," he kept saying as he searched; "yes, father'll get him his 'ittle bottle; he's hungy, is he, the tootsy wootsy? Yes, father'll bing it in a minute." The much desired article was finally discovered in the cradle beside the bed; and Gordon, in full canonicals, knelt lowly on the floor as he pacified the clamorous lips. "I thought you didn't believe in giving them their own way?" said I. "He's too little to know the difference yet," said the bending one, his back to me as he adjusted the mechanism anew. "Oh, Gordon," I said, "you're very young, as a father--very young." XIX _THE TAINT OF HERESY_ Our son was growing into a goodly lad (everything happened either before or after baby was born) when it first actually broke on me that Gordon's Doctorate had been a dear-bought prize. For Gordon was now a Doctor of Divinity--and he had won it by examination, too, long years of severe study and wide reading having gone before. I didn't begrudge the time, and the seclusion, this had implied; but I just hated the whole thing when I found out how it had affected Gordon's views. I never did believe much in ministers being such terrible students as many of them are; I verily believe as many preachers are spoiled by books as are helped by them, for they often grow less human while they're growing more profound. The Bible and the daily paper--truth and human life--some great preacher pronounced his two main books, and I'm inclined to agree with him. Gordon gave me one of his deep books to read once--Harnack, I think, was the name of the man who wrote it--and I went to sleep over it for my husband's sake but not for Mr. Harnack's. Gordon may call that kind of theology new, I thought, but it's not interesting. The whole thing--about Gordon's views, I mean--came out this way. Of course I fancy a good many already suspected he was rather modern in his creed; especially Mr. Ashton, who became more orthodox every time he cut the wages of the poor girls in his factory. But I never knew, nor any one else, how far Gordon had drifted from the old moorings, till a certain evangelist came to hold a mission in Hertford. He was a converted prize-fighter--changed from a pounder into an ex-pounder, so to speak--and he loved to give us a whiff of his malodorous past every time he got a chance; I reckon he fancied any one who had had such a violent attack of sin was immune for the rest of his days. I went to hear him several times; but one night he said if he had to choose between a pack of cards in his house or a rattlesnake turned loose among his children, he'd take the snake. I knew then he was either a fool or a liar, one--and I had no mind to listen to either--so I never went near him again. However, Gordon was presiding one night when this man was preaching; and the evangelist suddenly broke out with the statement that the most moral, or the most philanthropic, man in the whole world would get as hot a place in hell as the worst murderer or thief, if he didn't believe what he ought to believe. "Isn't that so, Dr. Laird?" he said, turning to my husband. "No," said Gordon, "it's not." Well, as you may understand, there was something pretty to pay. The evangelist nearly fainted on the spot; as soon as he came to himself he asked them all to join in prayer--and he prayed that Gordon might be converted that very night. Gordon! whose shoe's latchet he was not worthy to unloose. "You've denied your Master, sir," Mr. Ashton accused Gordon afterwards, having waited for him at the door; "you've repudiated the great doctrine of salvation--in the presence of a thousand people, sir." Gordon motioned him aside. When he told me all about it afterwards, he avowed himself ashamed of the degree of temper he had shown, but I said I'd have been ashamed of him if he hadn't. "What's this you accuse me of?" demanded Gordon. "You aren't fit to be a minister," affirmed Mr. Ashton hotly; "I'm ashamed of you as the pastor of St. Andrew's, sir." "Why?" pursued Gordon. "Because our church, sir, our church has always been noted for its orthodoxy. We've always held to the simple Gospel--and you've gone back on it, sir. I knew it was coming; I could tell it by the things you preached about." "What things?" although Gordon knew right well. "Well, take last Sunday for instance; you preached on the duty of employers of labour--a lot of stuff about fresh air, and short hours, and taking care of sick hands--a lot of unspiritual stuff like that. When I go to church, sir, I want the Gospel, the simple Gospel--and nothing but the Gospel. Mr. Seybold's the same way; he says he's disgusted with many of your sermons, about worldly things. You stick to the Gospel, sir, and worldly things will take care of themselves," concluded Mr. Ashton, wagging his pious head. "You mean Seybold the brewer, don't you?" enquired Gordon. "Yes," said Mr. Ashton; "and he's one of the richest men in our church, as you know yourself." "I don't know anything about it," was Gordon's curt reply; "but I don't wonder at his zeal for the Gospel--or yours either. I don't know any men that have more need to make their calling and election sure. He's a vampire, sir--and so are you." "A what?" roared Mr. Ashton. "I'm a what?" He did not know what a vampire was, of course; but there was something in Gordon's voice and eye that made the word tell its meaning. Gordon would have withered him just the same if he had called him a rectangular hypotenuse. "A vampire, I said," Gordon hurled back at him; "both of you live on the defenseless and the poor. It's sickening," and Gordon's voice rang higher, "to hear you, or him, prating about the Gospel, while he makes his wealth out of human misery--and you, you oppress the poor--you grind their faces, and you know it. You take your blood money from poor girls that have to toil in that sweat-box of yours--and you don't care whether they live or die, so long as they serve your selfish ends. I have visited more than one dying girl that got her death in your employ--as Jennie McMillan did--and you prance your horses past the door when they're dying, and even after the crape is on it, and you never stop to ask for them; and then you come prattling to me about not preaching the Gospel!" Gordon paused; out of breath, I reckon. By this time quite a number of the crowd had eddied back, listening attentively, you may be sure, to this candid conversation. One or two of them gave me a detailed account later on. "I appeal," blustered Mr. Ashton, "I appeal to those who know me. I spoke to you as an officer of St. Andrew's. I have been a faithful supporter of the church--and I've always paid my debts," he blurted out irrelevantly, hard put to it to make defense. "Ye ha'ena'," a squeaking voice came suddenly from the bystanders. Mr. Ashton turned sharply round. "I haven't?--where's the man that dares to say I haven't?" he hectored, searching the group for the interrupter. "I'm the mon," came quietly from the lips of a little old Scotchman as he moved slowly to the front; "ye didna' pay oor Jock what ye owed him. He took the consumption workin' for ye," the squeaky voice went on, "an' when he lay deein', ye never lookit near him; an' the day o' his funeral, ye drove by the hoose wi'oot lookin' at us. An' he was a foreman till ye for mair nor twenty year," the plaintive indictment proceeded--"an' ye owed him a wee bit mark o' respec' like that. An' ye never paid it--but it's ower late noo." Then the little man slipped back among the bystanders; Mr. Ashton followed him, loudly protesting that the dead servant had got his wages regularly, the second Tuesday of every month. Gordon took advantage of the diversion to move away; and the story, substantially as I have told it, was given to me on his arrival home. I did not question him closely about the original cause of the discussion--about his theological views, I mean; but it started an uneasiness that grew upon me day by day. And a few weeks later I learned something more that did not reassure me much. I was sitting with Harold--we had named our son Gordon Harold; but the latter half was what we called him, to avoid confusion--one evening in the study; two ministers, visitors to some church gathering and guests of ours, were talking on the piazza. By and by Harold grew silent, and so did I; which, I suppose, led the two brethren to think I had disappeared. And they talked freely. "It's too bad," one of them said, whereat I sat up and listened, "that Laird's gone that way. He can't hold those views, and his pulpit, at the same time." "Have you any idea what his views really are?" the other asked. "They're anything but sound," his friend replied, "and that's the plain English of it. Any man who holds them has no right to be in the ministry." My blood began to sizzle. I knew this reverend brother--a comfortable pastor of a comfortable congregation, who spent most of his time simply trying to be "sound," to use his own word; saving doctrines and losing men, as I heard Gordon say once in a sermon. "What are they?" persisted the other. "Well," began the first, "I don't believe he's very sound on the miracles. And then, he contends we're all divine--doesn't deny the divinity of our Lord, however. But I think he often closes his prayer without saying 'for Christ's sake'; at least, so I've heard." "Perhaps he means it just the same," suggested his companion. "Then he ought to say it--a prayer that hasn't that doesn't go higher than the roof, in my opinion. And I believe he contends no man can explain the Atonement--from an intellectual standpoint, that is. He told me as much--I told him I could explain it all right. He replied that he interpreted it more by his heart than his reason. And that's dangerous ground, Mr. Forest, very dangerous ground." "Is that all?" the other enquired, evidently not overcome by the arraignment. "No, it's not. They say he believes prayer has no power to influence the course of events--regards it only as a kind of pious communion; doesn't believe in praying for anything in particular, I'm told. And he has his doubts as to who wrote the Hebrews. I told him it was Paul--but he still seemed to have doubts. And he thinks the Confession of Faith is too long and too intricate. That's dangerous too--it's the thin end of the wedge, Mr. Forest, the thin end of the wedge," and from where I sat I could hear the censor shut his lips. "He's a mighty devoted minister, anyway," the other interposed; "I've had long talks with him myself. And there's only one thing troubles me--I'm afraid, I really am, that he clings too much to a merely ethical Christ. He's tinged with that, I'm sure; glories in Him as a Teacher, and Healer of mankind, and all that sort of thing. Laird's a great healer himself, you know--he's a marvel with the sick, and the sorrowing, and the poor. But I'm afraid he's drifting--he began with Drummond, and ended with Harnack." I recognized the soporific name. "Oh, yes, there's another thing," resumed the orthodox one; "Laird has doubts as to whether or not sorrow comes from God. Affliction, you know; bereavement, suffering, the death of little children--everything like that. He's inclined, I'm afraid, to attribute it to another source--doesn't seem to be clear that it's God's will for us to suffer," and I could hear the comfortable one settling back in the softly-cushioned chair. "Now, that never troubles me at all--I always feel certain our sorest sorrows come from God; was just saying so yesterday to a woman whose little boy was drowned. He was her only child." "Did you ever lose a child?" the other minister asked quietly. "Oh, no, I've never had any trouble of that kind, thank God. Ours are all well and strong. By the way, Forest, our train goes in a little over an hour. I suppose we'll have dinner before we go--it's tea here, I believe, in the evening. Doesn't suit me altogether, either--I've had a new kind of life since I began taking dinner in the evening," as he rose from his chair and began to move restlessly about. I glided away noiselessly like one in a dream. My heart was leaden, and I thought it was all for love of Gordon and dread of what might thus befall him. My principal thought, as I remember, was of his relation to his work--and his position--and his future. Yet I know now that what gave me the deepest pain was a trembling fear lest those things should slip from _me_--as from him--the things I reckoned the foundation stones of the life that was so happy now. Without knowing it, ever since that night I saw Jennie die, the secret between my heart and Christ had been growing more rich and full. I esteemed Him the meeting-place whereon Gordon and I had found each other; and I feared, though I could not have put it into words, that distance from Him would mean distance from each other. Perhaps it was wrong; perhaps these two passions of my heart should have been reverently kept separate--but they were blended and intertwined in a union that was altogether holy. I kissed Harold gently as I bended over his bed and tucked him in an hour later; he stirred in his sleep as my hot tears fell upon his face. Then I knelt beside him--I remembered how my mother used thus to kneel by me--and I prayed, pleadingly, in the new-found way that had grown so dear. My pleading was all for Gordon, passionate in its intercession, as though he were drifting out to sea, and God alone could bring him back. I was hardly risen from my knees when Gordon came home. He came at once to where I was; and he smiled in that happy way he had, whenever he saw me bending over Harold. It always seemed to delight him so. "You're an idolater, Helen, aren't you?" he said. I clung to him in a very spasm of fondness, as if he were slipping from me. My heart cried out in a wild, hungry way, though my lips were still. I wanted to call him back, back to the shelter where our life's happiness began. "And I don't blame you, dear," he went musingly on as he looked down on the rosy face; "life is all preface till you have children, isn't it?--the real volume comes after that." "I could die for him," I said. (This was with a purpose. I was trying, for the first time, a lesson in theology. It struck me with a kind of amusing pain, my poor attempt to teach Gordon--Gordon so learned, so clever.) "So could I," he murmured. "It makes me understand how--how One died for us all," I faltered, coming to my point with desperate directness. How the angels must have smiled if they heard my first attempt at preaching! "It helps me understand how love and suffering must go together--God can't help it any more than we. If I were a preacher, Gordon, I'd preach that all the time." He turned and looked at me in amazement. Then his arms went round me tight. "Darling," he said gently, "you're a lovely missionary--and I'm a heathen; I'm an idolater--like you--only you're my idol." "But you believe that, don't you, Gordon?" I urged, "that--what I said? You do, don't you, Gordon?" His eyes studied my face, and so gravely, for a moment. "Is my wife growing alarmed about me too?" he said, half seriously; "don't be uneasy, darling--your husband's sound, all right. Only I still plead guilty to idolatry--kiss me, so I'll know you're human," he concluded, laughing. I kissed him, and more than once. But my heart ached on. XX _HAROLD'S SISTER--AND ANOTHER._ The next saddest thing to having no children is having only one. Parental sorrows are to be classified as follows. First, and greatest, if you haven't any; second, if you have only one. For there is no loneliness like the forlornness of a solitary bairn, to use a term of which Gordon was very fond; born to play, yet having none to play with; in need of chastening, yet denied the discipline of other children; hungry for fellowship, yet starving among its seniors. There is no desert so waste and weary as the Sahara that surrounds a solitary child. Life has few moments of surpassing thrill and wonder. Yet there are some; and the loveliest thing about it all is this, that wealth cannot buy them, nor genius create them, nor rank command them. The impartialness of God is beautiful. A few of the superfluities do seem to be a little unevenly distributed--but the great holy luxuries of life are as freely vouchsafed the peasant as the king. The glory and the beauty of life itself; the shelter of a mother's arms and the deeper shelter of her heart; the first dismantling kiss of love; the earliest glimpse of your first-born's face--these are for the ploughman as well as the poet or the prince. And there is another moment when life's so often tawny tide glows with the very light of heaven. It came to me and Gordon the day he led little Harold in, to look upon his sister's face. Ah, me! the tears start even yet when I recall the sacred scene. I was lying there, so weak, so happy. The slumbering babe lay beside me, gurgling now and then those mysterious sounds that a mother's heart translates so readily. I heard them coming--Harold and his father--the strong tread mingling musically with the patter of the little feet. Up the stairs they came, hand in hand along the hall, little Harold puffing with excitement, for he knew something wonderful was to be revealed. I raised my head and saw them as they entered the room. Oh, my son, my son! why did I not value more those days of the dear childish face, as I saw it then? Why did I not realize that the sterner days were coming when those sweet features were to be buffeted by sorrow and assailed by sin? I see him now, the little torn straw hat above the neglected locks--for children _will_ run to seed when the mother is withdrawn--the plump, ruddy cheeks, all stained from the sand pile on the lawn, the dampness on the little forehead, the besmirched but becoming frock; and the eyes, wonderful eyes, so sober, so inquisitive, searching curiously for the unknown, breaking into shy laughter as they fell on me; the pudgy hand, quickly withdrawn from his father's; then the little frame, one half-bare leg dangling in the air, lifted high as Gordon held him up. I feel again the tremble in my fingers as I pulled back the shawl from about his sister's head, and see again the long look of wonder as my son gazed down upon the baby's face; I see the tiny throat swallow once or twice as his emotion gathered, and think of the vast realm in his heart that even his father and I cannot explore. Once again I see the refusing nod--his golden curls shaken the while--when I tell him to kiss his baby sister; his brooding eyes turned to mine, the outstretched arms, the rosy lips coming down to mine to be kissed; and I catch the mist in Gordon's eyes, my own swimming with tender joy, even as they are overflowing now so that I can hardly see to write. The years flew swiftly by, unmarked by incident of note, but full of simple joy. Harold was well on his way in school--clever, like his father--and his sister had left the days of babyhood behind, when a new influence came into our quiet lives, a new Life into our little circle. It was our daughter's birthday night, and Gordon had asked some friends to dinner. For, as I should have said before, he was simply crazy about Dorothy, which was the name we had bestowed upon our daughter--it had been my mother's. Nobody need tell me that a father's master passion is anything else than his first-born girl. Lots of men dissemble, I know, and profess to hold all their children in equal affection--but it's simply moonshine. If I'm a specialist in anything, it's children; and I have satisfied myself over and over again that a father, nineteen times out of twenty, is the bondsman of his eldest daughter. Dorothy looked like me; and I have a theory, which some cleverer brain will have to work out, that Gordon got her kind of mixed up with his sweetheart feelings, and loved the me that was in her, and the her that was in me. Anyhow, he was simply crazy about her, as I have said--and for years I thought it quite unfair how he made Harold play second fiddle for Her Majesty the Baby. And yet, strange though it sound, Harold was his very life--but we shall hear of this before my tale is told. Well, as I have reported, Gordon must have a dinner party. It was to be in honour of Dorothy's original arrival, he said. So we invited some of the very nicest people in the church, some of the most clever and refined, and some of the unspoiled rich. (I believe the grand folks of St. Andrew's were coming to think more of Gordon every day.) And I got up the loveliest little dinner, with Harriet's aid of course, for she was as proud of Dorothy as we were ourselves. The dinner was just in mid-career, and everything was going splendidly, when all of a sudden Harriet came to the dining-room door and beckoned to me. I could see by her face that it was something important. "There's an old man here," she said as the door closed behind us, "and I thought I ought to call you--he says he's related." "Related!" I echoed, "related to whom?" "To Dr. Laird, ma'am," Harriet answered. I knew there must be some mistake, since Gordon's relatives were all across the sea; besides, he had hardly any that I knew of, except his father. I hurried out to the kitchen. As I entered, I saw the figure of a man well advanced in years; tall he was above the ordinary, but evidently stooped with toil. He rose from his chair as I approached, and bowed with a kind of native grace. Then he turned his face to mine and looked me over with one of the steadiest pairs of eyes that ever belonged to mortal. They were deeply set, keen and bright; high cheek bones on either side; ruddy complexion, significant of health; great wavy folds of snowy hair fell almost to his shoulders, those shoulders wrapped in a kind of grayish plaid; flowing beard, white as the locks above. His nose was prominent and strong, the mouth delicate, and firmly set, as though he had a mind of his own and knew how to use it. His clothes were coarse and plain, such as I fancied were worn by the peasants overseas; homespun stuff, I saw; and a flannel shirt, partly open, disclosed a sunburnt throat. He came forward and held out his hand, which I noticed was hard and rough, its clasp firm and strong; the other hand held a long staff, crooked at the top; a bundle, wrapped in a kind of shawl, lay at his feet. "Is this the guidwife o' the hoose?" he asked, in a strong Scottish voice; "micht ye be Gordon's wife?" I acknowledged that I was, my tone indicating that I wouldn't mind knowing who he was. "I'm his faither," he said simply; "this'll be a graun' surprise to Gordon. Is he ben the hoose?" indicating the dining-room by a nod of his head. "Yes," I said--"I'll call him out," my eyes fixed in a kind of fascination on the face and form before me. This was a new type to me; unfamiliar enough, but decidedly picturesque withal. "I wunner will he ken me?" the old man said, a twinkle in his eye. "It's mony a lang day sin' he gaed awa'. But he'll mebbe be busy? Is there some o' his congregation wi' him?" for he heard the sound of voices. "Oh, no," I said, "he can come all right--we're just having dinner." "Mercy on us!" cried the stranger, "but ye're late wi' yir dinner; ha'e ye no' had onythin' sin' breakfast?" I smiled, turning towards the door to call my husband. But he had evidently heard our voices, or something else had prompted him to come out, for he was already on his way to the kitchen. I stood silent, and his eyes turned upon the stranger. They rested there, it seemed to me, a good half minute before a sound escaped his lips. Then with a loud cry he leaped forward, holding out his arms. The hunger on the older face was pitiful to see. Sometimes clasping Gordon tight to his bosom, sometimes holding him back a little to look upon his face, the father heart seemed unable to drink its fill. "Where did you come from, father?" Gordon asked, when speech at length returned. "I cam' frae Scotland--where else?" his father answered, "richt frae the hills. An' I didna' let ye ken--I thocht 'twad be a bonnie surprise to ye. I landed at Montreal last nicht, an' then I cam' richt on. Whaur's the bairns?" "They're inside," said Gordon; "you'll see them in a minute." Then followed a few minutes of swift questioning and answering. "But come on in with us now," Gordon suddenly broke in, taking his father's arm as he spoke, "come, till I introduce you to my friends--come, Helen." I slipped behind the older man; and then, in Indian file, Gordon leading, we returned to our wondering guests. A fine procession, too, we must have made; Gordon in his spotless evening dress, I in my very finest--and between us, tall and stooped, his white locks shaking as he walked, his eagle eye fixing itself half defiantly and half appealingly upon the upturned faces, stood Gordon's father in his homespun, the Scotch shawl still about his shoulders, the huge safety-pin that held it gleaming in the brilliant light. Gordon introduced him to every guest: "My father," he said to each, and no one could fail to see the radiance on his face. Then the old man was given a seat at Gordon's right, the arrears of dinner were brought quickly in, and in a moment our new visitor was the centre of attraction. Before taking his seat he stooped and kissed both the children, looking at them earnestly, then at their father, "The laddie's like yir mither, Gordon," he said, his voice trembling a little; "aye, he's got Elsie's mouth," wherewith he kissed him again, the lad looking up in wonder. "The wee lassie favours yirsel', Mrs. Laird." "My name's Helen," I said quietly. The strong face glowed with pleasure; and I could see what joy my amendment had given Gordon. "The wee girl has yir ain bonnie face, Helen," he corrected, hesitating a little before he spoke my name. It's wonderful what homing instincts children have! For a few minutes later little Dorothy, usually so shy, slipped out of her chair and stole over beside her grandfather, looking wistfully up into his face. He took her on his knee, stroking her head with beautiful tenderness. His plate of soup was now before him, but still Grandfather Laird did not begin. Finally, in some perplexity, he turned to Gordon. "I'll tak' a wee drappie speerits, Gordon, if you please; I maistly tak's juist what ye'd notice afore supper--forbye, I'm tired." Gordon flushed, hesitating. "We haven't such a thing about the house, father--we really never keep it," he began in some embarrassment. "It isn't much of a custom out here, father." The old man sighed as he took up the snow-white napkin beside his plate, pushing it a little farther away lest it should get soiled. "I'm dootin' this country's no' juist what it's thocht to be. The first mon I clappit my eye on in Montreal, he was a beggar, wi' a cup--an' I thocht everybody had plenty siller in Canady. An' noo it seems ye ha'ena' a drappie aboot the hoose. Weel, it's nae matter; I can dae wantin' it. But I'll no' begin wi'oot the blessin'," he added gravely. "Wull ye say it, Gordon?" nodding to his reverend son. "No, father--you say it yourself," replied Gordon, bowing his head, in which he was speedily followed by all of us. Then the old man, his hands outstretched, began a prayer of prodigious length. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving followed in regular order, the whole enriched with many a Scriptural quotation. I could not see the faces of our guests, but I knew right well how mystified they must be. A little shy at first, dispensing diffident glances around the company as they tried to engage him in conversation, the patriarch soon began to feel with what cordiality we all regarded him. Wherewith he grew more and more communicative, this being evidently the occasion of his life; besides, and naturally enough, his heart was full to overflowing. "It's hard to tak' it in, laddie," he said once or twice, laying down his knife and fork and turning full round to gaze at Gordon; "to think we're baith in Ameriky, and me in yir ain hoose--an' you sittin' wi' yin o' thae claw-hammer jackets on ye, like the gentry wear. It seems but the ither day ye were a wee bare-leggit laddie, helpin' yir faither mind the sheep. Ye was as gleg as a collie dog. I didna' think then, laddie, ye'd ever wag yir heid in a pulpit--but the ways o' Providence is wunnerfu'," as the honest eyes shone with pride and joy. I saw one of our minor guests titter a little at this. She looked at Gordon rather as if she were sorry for him; fancied, no doubt, that he would be in sore straits of embarrassment to have his peasant father thus presented. But I never was prouder of my husband than I was that night. I actually felt my eyes grow dim more than once as I remarked the deference with which Gordon treated his father, so different though he was from what anybody would have expected. He seemed to delight to honour him; and while I suppose it was only natural for him to notice how far from cultured he was--reckoning from our standards--yet I know he reverenced him in his inmost heart for the unaffected goodness that none could fail to recognize. Somebody, taking advantage of a momentary pause, asked the old man about his voyage. "Oh," he began enthusiastically, and I knew by his tone that he was off; "oh, we had a graun' time a'thegither. I cam' i' the second cabin, nae doot," he went on without a particle of confusion, "for it didna' cost as muckle as the ither way; but there was a graun' lot o' passengers. We didna' ha'e ower muckle to eat, nae doot--but they gied us porridge morn an' nicht, sae we was fine. An' there was twa ministers wi' us," he went on, warming to his theme, "an' they preachit till us on the Sabbath day. It's wunnerfu', the difference there is in ministers. Yin o' them preachit in the mornin', an' the ither at nicht; the yin i' the mornin' was a puir feckless body; his sermon was a' aboot flowers, an' birds--an' the rainbow," this last coming out contemptuously; "he said a' thae things brocht us nearer God--did ye ever hear sic' haverin'? An' he said they a' taught us aboot th' Almichty--an' them as loved them wud be saved! I thocht mysel' wae, to ha'e to sit an' listen till him. But the ither mon--wha preachit till us at nicht--he had the root o' the matter in him, I tell ye. He preachit aboot sinners bein' turned intil hell--I ha'e the heids and pertikklers," he suddenly exclaimed, diving into a pocket for the same. "Here's his pints; first, naebody kens God wha doesna' ken the doctrines; second, thae wha doesna' ken will be lost," the gray beard shaking solemnly as he rolled out the truth; "third, them wha's lost is lost to a' eternity. Oh, it was a graun' discoorse, I'm tellin' ye. It was unco' refreshing after the baby broth we got i' the mornin'. I pit tuppence in the plate--but I didna' gie a farthin' in the mornin'. Are thae folk a' Presbyterians, Gordon?" he concluded by enquiring, nodding towards the assembled visitors. "Mostly all, father," was Gordon's answer; "in fact, I believe they all are." "Div ye teach them the Catechism, when ye're visitin'?" the old man pursued. "Not very much, I'm afraid," answered Gordon, laughing; "you won't find things just the same here, father, as they are in old Scotland--not in that line, at least." The old man's face clouded. "Thae things shouldna' change," he said solemnly; "sin doesna' change--and the truth o' God's aye the same, my son," as he looked down at the table. "I'm dootin' they're ower anxious aboot makin' money. They tell me maist everybody's rich in Canady--but I saw twa beggars in Montreal," he recalled a little ruefully. Then suddenly: "I ha'e a wee pickle siller wi' me mysel', Gordon," the Scotch instinct showing in his voice; "only it's nae sae little!" At this juncture my husband made heroic efforts to change the subject; but the old Scotchman was as intense about this as about graver matters. "Aye, I ha'e upwards o' a hunnerd pounds," he said impressively, glancing shyly at the company; "ye mind yir mither's Aunt Kirsty?--or mebbe ye never saw her? Weel, onyway, she died. An' she was lang aboot it, I tell ye, for she was ninety-four. Sae it was better for her to gang--better for us baith--an' she willed her wee bit belongings tae me--an' I sold them afore I left. An' yir faither was the prood mon at the funeral, Gordon--I was the chief mourner," he explained impressively; "I was the only yin there that was related to the corpse--and I walked ahint the bearers till the graveyard. A' the folk said I carried mysel' like a minister; the undertaker, he was an awfu' solemn mon--but I was solemner nor him; an' I kenned a' the time, mind ye, that I was the heir. That's hoo I got the siller to pay my way to Canady. But I ha'e a hunnerd pounds left, Gordon--an' I'm gaein' to invest it, after I look aboot a wee bit. Investments is awfu' profitable here, they tell me. It'll mak' a cozy pickle o' siller for me, wull it no', Gordon?" "Don't count too much on it, father," Gordon answered; "money isn't just as universal here as you old-country people think." But the old man seemed reluctant to be convinced of this. A little later in the evening we had some music. Most of the songs, I fear, were of the rather æsthetic type; and I fancied they appealed but little to our venerable friend. He sat quietly in a corner of the parlour, as if lost in thought. Every now and then his eyes would rove to Gordon's face, glowing with pride and affection. As for me, I knew not when I had been so fascinated. I simply sat and watched him, hardly knowing just what it was that held me so. Partly the picturesqueness of this rugged type, I suppose, and partly a dawning recognition of the sterling worth behind the stern exterior; genuineness was written all over him. Then I think I was beginning to love him for my husband's sake--I remember how the thought flashed on me that I never would have had Gordon but for him. Suddenly, availing himself of a temporary lull, the old man cleared his throat: "I'll gie ye a sang mysel'," he offered; "nane o' yir highfalutin kind--but a guid auld yin o' Bobbie Burns. It minds me o' yir mither, Gordon," as he cleared his throat again with mighty din, preparatory to performance. "I'll try and play for you if you tell me what it is, Mr. Laird," volunteered one of the ladies, moving towards the piano. I had seen grandfather eyeing her askance a little while before; indeed, I myself thought her evening dress was rather overdone about the shoulders--underdone, perhaps, would be a better word. "No, no," replied the old man, with a disdainful wave of his hand, "yon clatter wud only throw me aff the tune. I'll sing the way the Almichty meant," with which he broke into a strong, clear baritone that would really have commanded attention in any company. More inspiring still, the whole soul of the man seemed to fuse with the touching words: "My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream; Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream." The applause that greeted the performance seemed to please the old man well. From many standpoints this was evidently the night of his life, and soon his enthusiasm knew no bounds. Not more than half an hour after, this first ovation still lingering gratefully in the performer's mind, one or two of the guests suggested that he favour us with another Scotch song, a proposal that soon grew into a general demand. "I canna'," declined the old man, "I canna' juist the noo. But I'll tell ye what I'll dae wi' ye. I'll gie ye the Hielan' fling--that's fair graun', an' ye'll no' hae it in Canady. Gordon, gie me the bootjack, like a guid laddie--my shoon's ower heavy for dancin'--they're the lang-toppit kind." "We've nothing of the sort, father," Gordon explained reluctantly. "Ah, weel," he answered cheerfully, "ye'll dae fine yirsel'. Staun' aroon' wi' yir back till me--and let yon mon pit his back till ye," indicating an immaculate professor of burly form; who, apprehending, presented himself for Gordon's grasp, the latter in turn taking the already extended foot between his legs and gripping the boot tightly with his hands. Gordon's sire then lifted up the free foot upon his son, pushing mightily, and making a noise the while such as I have heard men employ when raising telegraph poles. A moment later Gordon and the professor were in a heap on the floor, a long boot with a red top between them. The second similarly removed, the old man moved solemnly out to the middle of the floor, called for a couple of walking sticks, laid them crosswise; then broke into the most fantastic dance, leaping to and fro above the imaginary swords, sometimes crouching low, sometimes springing high in air, sometimes whirling like a Dervish with outflowing arms, the whole enriched by an occasional savage yell that was first the terror, afterwards the delight, of one or two of the ladies. But all were entranced, and none more so than the performer himself. Shortly after the excitement had subsided the guests began to make their farewells. But this struck the venerable Scotchman as quite irregular. "Hoots!" he cried, when one or two had proffered me their hands, "ye canna' gang till we've had worship; Gordon wadna' like it. Wha ever heard tell o' freens leavin' the manse wi'oot a word o' prayer? Gordon, tak' the Buik"; and his son, an amused smile playing about his lips, proceeded promptly to do as he was told. "Are ye no' gaein' to sing?" the old man suddenly broke out, for Gordon was just starting to read. "We don't usually, father; it's not customary here," was the answer. "It's a sair custom," rejoined his father, "neglectin' to sing the praise o' Almichty God. But, onyway, we'll ha'e a psalm--I'll raise the tune mysel'," which purpose he carried into effect as soon as a selection had been made. "We'll tak' the eighty-ninth," he said presently; and as he launched the mighty strain I recognized the very words that had given me my first introduction to the psalms, that far-gone night in uncle's house: "Oh, greatly blessed the people are The joyful sound that know," he began, singing onward to the end. Gordon and I alone could join with him, but our leader seemed not to care. His whole heart and mind were absorbed in the great song of his fatherland, and he sang it as only an exile can. Face and voice and soul all seemed to bear witness to the truth of the noble verse which brought the psalm to an end. He looked like one of the old battling Covenanters themselves, his eyes closed, his head thrown back, one hand gently keeping time as he rolled out the crowning stanza: "For God is our defense and He To us doth safety bring; The Holy One of Israel Is our Almighty King." Silence fell. Then Gordon moved over under the light and began to read the Scriptures. The passage he chose was that sublime chapter from Isaiah; and there were few could interpret through the voice as Gordon could. The old man sat, his eyes shaded by his hand, listening reverently. By and by Gordon came to the words: "My servant shall deal prudently ... he shall be exalted and extolled ... his visage was so marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men." "Expound yon," came as a sudden interruption. Gordon looked up from the book. "What's that, father? Do what?" "Expound the Word," his father repeated solemnly; "the minister should aye expound the passage. Tell the folk wha the prophet means." Gordon turned a puzzled look on the page. "Yon aboot the servant," his father explained; "the Suffering Servant, ye ken--Him wha's face was marred wi' cruel men. Ye ken wha the prophet's referrin' to, my son?" Gordon understood. "I see what you mean," he answered slowly; "but I don't know that I'm quite clear about that myself. The best scholarship seems in doubt as to whether----" But the old man was all on fire now. "I dinna' ken naethin' aboot yir scholars," he broke in vehemently, "an' I dinna' care. But yon bit refers to the Man o' Sorrows--ye ken that fine, div ye no'?--it's Christ the prophet means--an' Him sufferin' for sin. Gordon, expound the Word," and there was a stern grandeur about the pose and the voice of this champion of the truth that would have done credit to the ancient prophet himself. "I cannot," said Gordon, his lips quite white; "not as you understand it, father--it isn't clear to me." "Then close the Buik," said the old man sternly; "if it's no' the savour of life unto life, it'll be the savour o' death unto death." And Gordon did. "You'll lead us in prayer, father," he said, his voice so low we could hardly hear. His father seemed to hesitate a moment, looking timidly around upon the strangers. Then he slowly sank on his knees beside the chair, one hand resting on Dorothy's golden curls; and in a moment the Presence seemed about us. It was a wonderful prayer, and came as if out-breathed beneath the very shadow of the Cross. Our guests took their leave in silence. After the children were tucked away I waited long up-stairs for Gordon; but I fell asleep at last, the sound of earnest voices still floating upward from the study. I knew it was a collision of the old school and the new--and I prayed on the father's side. XXI _"LOVE'S OLD SWEET SONG"_ There could be but one end to this. Whether Gordon was right or wrong, he was not at one with the standards of his church. I really believe, although I shrink from saying it, that his idea of _saving_ men came more and more to be confused with the process of simply _helping_ them. This sprang partly, of course, from his nobility of nature, from his large and loving heart--but it was wrong. Gordon, I think, believed in relieving men, then reforming them, both of which were to spell regeneration. And then, besides, he seemed to have adopted some theory about law, and the laws of nature--he knew more about evolution than any other man since Darwin--that had turned the once sweet luxury of prayer, real prayer, into nothing more than a sort of religious exercise. I don't believe he thought prayers that actually asked for things were of any use at all. I suppose, too, although I never could find out much about this, that Gordon didn't just regard the Scriptures in the same way his brother ministers did; yet I knew he reverenced the Bible and simply lived among its teachings. But there could, as I have said, be only one end to all of this--so far, I mean, as Gordon's relation to St. Andrew's was concerned. I felt from the beginning that it would be but a matter of time till he must forsake the pulpit he loved so well. There were two influences that contributed powerfully to this: the one was Gordon's honour--the other, Gordon's father. My husband had a fastidious conscience--and a faithful sire. Grandfather had been with us long--I cannot say exactly how long--before matters actually came to a crisis. But I think he felt from the beginning, with the keen instinct of his kind, that Gordon's official ministry was at an end. One night, sitting in an adjoining room, I overheard the most of a long conversation between the father and the son. The burden of it did not greatly surprise me; grandfather had given me his mind on the matter before, or implied it anyhow, and more than once. But I knew that night that the crisis was at hand. "Ye canna' dae onythin' else," the old man repeated once or twice; "when a minister gi'es up the fundamentals, it's no' richt for him to keep his kirk. A preacher wi'oot a gospel!--he's a sair objec'," the Scotch voice concluded pitifully. I could catch the tone of almost bitter remonstrance in Gordon's answer. "Without a gospel, father!" he cried reproachfully; "surely you don't accuse me of that--surely you're going too far." "Ye dinna' believe Christ died for sinners," the older man said sternly; "an' ony minister wha doesna' believe that--he's wi'oot a gospel, my son." "You don't understand me, father," Gordon remonstrated earnestly; "you state the thing too severely--perhaps I don't just believe it in the way you do, but----" "There's only the yin way to believe yon," interrupted his father; "you an' me's the same kind o' sinners, my son--an' we need the same kind o' a Saviour. Forbye, ye think we're a' divine, I'm dootin'; that's what they say aboot ye, onyway--an' I'm thinkin' I've gathered it from yir sermons mair nor once." "Not exactly, father," I heard Gordon answer. "What I do teach is, that every man has the divine within him; and if we but appeal----" "I dinna' ken what ye've got inside o' ye," broke in the champion of truth, "but I'm sick an' tired o' all inside o' _me_--naethin' but sin an' misery--naethin' but filthy rags," he added, careless of the unseemly metaphor. "An' there's mair--ye dinna' believe there's ony use in prayer; nae guid ava', forbye juist ha'ein' fellowship wi' God. An' ye dinna' believe there's ony use in prayin' for the things we want--ye dinna' think it maks ony difference; ye're feart o' the laws of natur'--ye think God's a servant in His ain hoose, like as if He couldna' dae onythin' He wants to dae." "But I do believe in prayer, father--of course I do. Perhaps I don't just believe that it alters or affects the outward course of things; but at the same time----" "Then ye maun settle it wi' the Word of God," the old man answered solemnly; "it aye bids us to ask for what we want; an' it tells us God's oor Heavenly Faither--an' what for wud He no' dae things for us, Him, wi' all power in His hands. Oh, my son, my son, ye'll change yir mind some day, I'm dootin', when yir sair heart's callin' oot for the love o' the livin' God." And thus the sorrowful dialogue made its way. I think it was the very next day Gordon told me he had resigned St. Andrew's. He told me his reason, too; which I knew already. My heart leaped towards the children, I remember, but I scarce knew why; tenderly, passionately, pityingly, my heart went out to my children, to whom I knew it would mean the most. "Where will we go to live?" was one of the first questions I asked. For I did not seek, then, to turn Gordon from his purpose. I knew too well how impossible that would be; besides, I felt no honourable course was open to him but the one he had already chosen. Gordon's face was very grave as he began to tell me of the only opening he saw before him. "But you'll get another call, Gordon--and another church, won't you?" I asked, dimly fearing. "No, no other call--and no other church," he answered firmly; "at least, no regular church, Helen;" with which he explained to me how the very reasons that prompted him to renounce St. Andrew's must hold him back from any similar position. "But I'll have a field of work just the same--of usefulness, too, please God," he added, in the lowest voice. "I can labour there without being responsible to any one but Him." Then he told me all about the plan he had in view. He would take the little mission in Swan Hollow; this was the sunken part of the city in which he had so long carried on the work that had received so much of his care and love--the same to which Jennie McMillan had belonged, to whom I owed the happiness of all the years between. "We've got a little church there," he said, a note of pride mingling with the sadness of his voice, "and it doesn't belong to anybody but ourselves. The people built it--and I helped them. It's just possible the Presbytery may try to interfere with me--but I don't think so. That's where I'm going to preach now, Helen; and I'll preach the truth as I believe it." "But, Gordon," I remonstrated, "won't it be the same truth that you've preached in St. Andrew's?" He did not answer immediately. And his face was clouded when his words came at length. "It won't be the same as St. Andrew's expects to hear--and wants to hear," he said; "they demand the old orthodox truths in the old orthodox way--and then they're through with them," he added a little bitterly; "till the next Sunday, at least." "But aren't those the same truths your father believes?" I pressed, feeling the strength of my reply. "Yes," he answered, "but my father believes them in his inmost heart--and he lives them." "And don't you believe them in your inmost heart, Gordon?" I cried eagerly--"the way your father does?" "No," he answered gravely, after a long pause, his face very white; "no, I don't believe them as my father does." "Oh, Gordon," I pleaded with sudden entreaty, "come back--come back, my darling. You're drifting; oh, Gordon, you're drifting away from God--and me," for my soul's loneliness was about me like a mist. "Don't," he said huskily, holding out his arms to me, "for God's sake don't make it any harder for me. No man can drift far if he tries to do good in his Master's name--and I intend, I honestly purpose, to give my life to those poor people at the mission. If any man will do His will, we're told, he shall know the doctrine. I'm going to try to do His will, Helen--and I want you close beside me, together, doing our life-work hand in hand. Then we can't be anything but happy, my darling," and his words rang with the note of life and courage. I loved the people of the mission; and I loved the work. But the import of it all rose before me for a moment like a sullen cloud; the squalor of the homes; the ignorance of the people, loving and grateful though they were; the poverty on every hand; the obscurity of the position that must be ours; the pitiful support that we could hope to receive. And our cozy manse seemed to grow and dance before my eyes, clothed suddenly with palatial beauty. I could see little Dorothy, the big sunbonnet shading the dimpled face, as she picked dandelions on the lawn; and Harold, the treasure of my heart, as he swung into the hall and flung his school-bag on the table, calling aloud the while for mother. It is humiliating to write it down; but I think the question of our living, too, of simple bread and butter, actually presented itself to my saddened and bewildered mind. I suppose it was weak and selfish of me--though I cared not for myself--when I flung myself into Gordon's arms and besought him as I did. "Oh, Gordon," I pleaded amid my tears; "don't, dearest, for the children's sakes. It isn't too late yet, Gordon--have you thought of what this means?--we'll likely have to take Harold out of school." He caressed me, trying to soothe me as he might a child. "I know what it means, Helen," he answered; "I've thought of all that. It breaks my heart to think of what it will bring to you--but I am helpless, dear, I'm helpless." "Not me," I sobbed, "not me, Gordon; I'd go with you to the depths of Africa. But the children, Gordon--think of them. We're old," I cried--and I really believed it--"we're old, and our life is nearly done; but Harold and Dorothy are so young, and theirs is all before them. And don't--oh, Gordon, don't--for our children's sakes." "What can I do, my child?" he murmured. "What else can I do?" "Why, Gordon--do what I do. Oh, Gordon, all you need to do is to believe those things--the things I do, and the things your father does--and preach them, like you used to at the first. And then we won't need to go away at all. I believe the people really love you more now than they did years ago--and they'll keep on loving you--and then we won't have to, have to give up all this," I concluded, my tear-dim eyes looking wistfully up into his tired face. He shook his head. "I must follow what light I have," he said. "But, Gordon," I went on, still hoping against hope, "I'm sure it would come all right. We'll study those things out together, dear--and I'll help you. I've learned a lot about them, ever since that night--that night, you remember, when Jennie died. And I'll try and explain everything," I pleaded pitifully, the pathos of it all coming over me as I looked up at the strong and intellectual face, "and we'll both go on together--in the old paths--and I'll try so hard to help you, dear. Then we won't have to go away at all--or give up our house--and it's all so dark ahead of us, for the children, I mean." "I can't sell my soul for bread, Helen," he answered solemnly; "and I know as well as you what it all means. My father's heart is nearly broken now." "And, Gordon," I whispered, still pressing my poor plea, "there's another thing we'll do," as I drew his face down beside my lips. "What, dearest?" "We'll--we'll pray together, Gordon; every day," I faltered, "every day, that God will make us believe the right things. And He will--I know He will." "I've prayed that for long," he murmured low. "Oh, my darling, I love you so," and his lips pressed themselves to mine with a reverence and a passion I had never felt before. * * * * * Let me write it down, for the comfort of every troubled heart, that the holiest hours in all life's retrospect are those that are clothed in sorrow. The years have fled; yet the years are with me still. And when one sits in the gloaming (as I sit now) and looks back at all the distant days, the lure that casts its spell upon the heart comes not from the radiant hour of mirth or ecstasy; nor from the period of glad prosperity; nor from the season of echoing mirth and laughter. Not there does Memory ask leave to linger. But it hovers long, in sweet and heartful reverie, about some hour of tender grief, some season of blessed pain--blessed always, tender evermore, because it has been glorified by love, robbed of all its bitterness by the loyalty of some dear heart that came closer and closer to your own amid the darkness. The home of early married life is the heart's earthly home forever. I knew that now; and memory bathes the soul in tears as I recall our last night beneath the roof of that St. Andrew's manse. Everything was packed and ready. The new house, the tiny, shabby house that was next day to become our home, was waiting for our advent. The rude but loving hands of some of the helpers at the mission had joined with ours to make it ready. And for our living there, they were providing us with a little salary; pitifully small--but our children would have clothes and bread. My heart was like to break; but we spent that last evening in unconquerable brightness. I know I was no less cheerful than Gordon--and ever and anon I wondered if his heart were as sad as mine. The most pitiful feature of it all was Dorothy's unconscious glee--moving was such great fun, she thought. Harold was old enough to catch the contagion of our pain--for pain will show through the best veneer that courage can provide. Both the children, and their grandfather too, were in bed and sound asleep when Gordon and I went up-stairs together about ten o'clock. We went into the children's room, for they were still unparted, the little bed nestling close to the big one; and we stood long above the slumbering forms, our eyes swimming as we looked. "I wonder if it's really so," I heard Gordon murmur. "What, darling?" I said. "That God pities us--like we pity them," the sentence finished in a broken voice. "It solves all life's problems--if that's really so." I could make no answer. But I bowed and kissed Harold's lovely brow; then Dorothy's. "Come with me, Gordon," I said gently, after we had stood a while in silence, starting to move across the hall. He followed me into our own room. "This is harder than all the rest," I said brokenly; "this is the dearest and sacredest room in the world to me. Oh, Gordon," and I was sobbing now, "surely they'll let me--whoever comes here after us--surely they'll let me come sometimes and see it, won't they, Gordon?" His arms were so strong, his voice so tender. "Why, dearest, why? What makes this room so sacred to you?" "Oh, don't you know?" and the words could hardly come for sobbing; "this is where they were born, Gordon--where they both were born. It was right there I lay when I first saw Harold's face. Oh, Gordon, I can't--I don't know how to give it up." His eyes were full of pity and his voice was quivering. "Yes," he said, "yes, it's holy--but we have the children left, my darling," and he began to lead me gently from the room. Nor did he stop till we were standing where we had stood before, looking down on the unconscious forms. "I'm going down to the study for a while," he said a little later; "I won't be long," as he began to descend the stairs, his footsteps echoing through the dismantled house. I went back to my room, weeping, and sat down upon one of the trunks that stood about. Suddenly an impulse came to me--I think it must have been from heaven--and I sprang to my feet, burrowing eagerly towards the bottom of the trunk. Ten minutes later I stole down the stairs. I was arrayed in my wedding gown. The years may have chafed it some, but they had not availed against its beauty and its richness. The pearl trimming--and those other radiant things that have no name--shone triumphant in the light. And I had about my neck, and on my bosom, some precious lace that I had removed long years before. The hall was almost empty--little there but our piano, that had been dragged out and left close beside the door. There was a mirror, too, still undisturbed upon the wall; and I paused before it just as I had done that golden day in Baltimore when Gordon was waiting to take me as his own forever. My eyes rested lovingly on the sweet and stainless vesture--it still fitted me like a glove, thank heaven--and then wandered to the face above. Long, long I gazed into the answering eyes, the past lying deep within them like water in some amber spring. The face was older, of course, and the signs of toil and care were on it; but the golden glow of love, I felt, clothed it with a peace--and a beauty too--which it never knew on that far-off wedding day. Poverty and hardship, I knew, were waiting at the gate; obscurity and struggle were to be our portion. But my husband was sitting in the room just beyond the door; my children--oh, the wealth and sweetness of the word!--my children's breathing I could almost hear; the years were past and gone, from whose hands I had received them all--and in that hour my wedding robes glistened with a holier light than time can cast, and the bridal bliss sprang like a fountain in my heart. "Why so long?" Gordon suddenly sang out; "come in." "I'm coming, dear," I said, and I felt the blitheness of my voice as it echoed through the hall. Very softly I stepped in and stood before him as he sat beside the dying fire. His eyes devoured me with love; they roamed mostly about my dress--which was exactly what I wanted. I think he glanced once or twice about the room, its denuded bareness contrasting strangely with the rich robe I wore. Then he rose and took me into his arms--far, deep in--as into a mighty refuge. "You never looked so sweet, my darling--the years haven't touched it," was all he said. But he kissed my hair, my neck, my lips. It was nearly an hour later when we arose to go up-stairs, and I was still in all my glory as we moved out, Gordon's arm still about me, into the echoing hall. "Sing something," he suddenly requested as we passed the piano. It stood in sullen silence, as if it knew this to be a move for the worse. My hands roved over the keys for a little; it was hard to know what would suit the hour. But some breath of other days was wafted in upon me; and I felt my heart leap beneath the wedding lace upon my bosom as the song gushed into my mind again. The light was dim, the house disrobed, the piano out of tune. But I can still see the rapture in Gordon's face as mine turned up to meet it while the words came one by one: "Still must you call me tender names Still gently stroke my tresses; Still shall my happy answering heart Keep time to your caresses." XXII _WHEN JOY AND SORROW MEET_ "No, I'm never going back again," and the stamp of determination was on Harold's face as he spoke the words; "I'm never going back to school any more." He was gravely adjusting his books in the well-worn bag as he spoke, giving each one a final pat as if in last farewell. "I've been there too long," as he looked up at his father and me. The room was small, the furniture shabby and worn now; for some years had passed since we came to live in the little house that still preserved to us an unbroken circle. We were all seated around the table in the dining-room--which was our only living-room--and Gordon had been telling Dorothy some wonderful story of red Indians when Harold's avowal had suddenly transfixed us all. It is wonderful how a sudden wave of emotion gives prominence, in the memory, to everything connected with it. I could draw, even now, as accurate a picture of all the surroundings as though the event were but of yesterday. The room was small, as already described; but so was the house, for that matter. Yet there was something sweet and lovely, to me at least, about this tiny room that night--for my loved ones were all within it. I was sewing at the time, mending, of which there seemed to be no end; but every now and then my eyes would refresh themselves upon the little group. Gordon was still, despite the years, by far the handsomest of them all. The tokens of toil and care were not to be denied, but a deeper calm and sweetness could be seen upon the noble face as he bended over the golden locks of our little daughter. And very winsome was little Dorothy, laughing up into her father's eyes, reading there, as children are not slow to do, the signs of a consuming love. Grandfather Laird was dozing in the big armchair in the corner, his hand still resting on his shepherd's staff; dear old grandfather, whose race was nearly run, the strong Scottish face stamped more and more with the simple grandeur of his nature as he came nearer to the eternal verities on which his mind had dwelt so long. I think my heart had gone out increasingly to grandfather as the years went by. Denied my own immediate circle in my girlhood's home, my affections had struck deep root amid all that Gordon loved. Perhaps I ought to say here that Gordon more than once had wanted me to go South again--and he would even have accompanied me. But I always felt it was too late, after my mother had entered into rest--besides, there always yawned before me the gulf that still lay between my uncle and my husband. In addition to all this, to tell the honest truth, I don't know how we could have devised ways and means, even if I had been willing to visit my dear Southland again. For nobody will ever know the bitterness of the struggle that we entered upon with our departure from St. Andrew's. The pinching and paring and piteous penury that came with our change of lot lingers with me yet as a troubled dream. Yet I want to say, in case this story should ever see the light and anybody recognize its hero, that I never heard a word of complaint from Gordon's lips. If I loved him before I almost worshipped him now. With utter abandonment of devotion he gave himself to the struggling and sinful people of the needy quarter in which we made our home and among whom we found our work. All his buoyant vigour, his splendid intellect, his glorious heart, were given unreservedly to his lowly toil. And I think I can say, with all regard to modesty, that I honestly tried to help him. His people grew as dear to me, I verily believe, as they were to him. Of course, my work was largely in our humble home, which I tried to make as bright and comfortable for Gordon as I could. The children, too, filled my life with busy joy--but I gave every hour I could spare, and all the strength I could command, to help Gordon in his noble drudgery. I hardly know what I would have done, through all those trying days, if it had not been for grandfather. For one thing, his influence over Harold, now in the perilous paths of youth, filled my heart with thankful gladness. His devotion to his grandson became the passion of his life; he seemed unhappy if Harold was out of his sight, and the boy's future was his absorbing thought. Then, besides, grandfather's life was so full of Christian peace; and his faith, in spite of the awful disappointment that Gordon's course had brought him, remained true and tranquil through it all. I really think he was the best Christian I ever knew. And how he comforted me, no one will ever know till all such secrets be revealed. For ours was a common sorrow. Soon it became evident to us both that Gordon, nobly devoted though he was, was turning more and more from the old truths that his father held so dear. Nor were they, I think, less precious to myself; the deeper the darkness grew, and the more Gordon seemed to turn from the truths that had blessed my life, the more my troubled heart seemed to find its refuge in the great realities of a Divine Saviour, and an atoning Lord, and a Heavenly Father who answers prayer; and I always found grandfather's sorrowing spirit seeking the same solace as my own. I see them all again as they sat that night about the table; the quick motion of Gordon's head is vivid to me now, as he turned from the clamorous Dorothy and gave all his attention to his son. "I've been at school too long," Harold repeated firmly, "and now I'm going to do something--to earn my own living." "What makes you say that, my son?" Gordon asked, the pallor on his face betraying his emotion. "Because I've found out all about it," Harold replied confidently; "surely you don't think I'm such a stupid as not to see all it has meant to you and mother--all the sacrifice, I mean--and all the struggle you've had to keep me going--and all the things you've had to give up. I know how poor we are," he went on passionately, "and I should have stopped long ago, and tried to help instead of being a burden to you." Then he quoted one or two of his proofs, which simple womanly pride forbids me to record; but they were true enough, and it nearly broke my heart to see the sadness on Gordon's face. For there was almost nothing he could say, and his poor remonstrances were of no avail. "Look at mother," Harold broke out vehemently; "look at mother's dress. It's the same one she's had for years--and it's mended," he added in fiery sadness, "and it's the only one she has in the world except just one for Sundays--and it's shabby, too. And that's all for me, for me and Dorothy--but especially for me--and I'm not going to stand it any longer. Besides, I've got a place--and I'm going to begin on Monday. I'm going away to Carletonville. But I'll be home for Christmas," the fiery tone melting into tenderness as he rose from his seat and came over beside me. For he had caught the expression of my face. Ah me! there are few moments in a woman's life like to that which announces the outgoing of her child from her home, how humble soever that home may be, Especially if the outgoing one be her first-born son! It was as if a knife had gone through my heart. "But, what are you going to do, my boy?--what kind of work, I mean?" I asked in a trembling voice, the garment I was mending falling unheeded to the floor. "It's a bank," he answered proudly; "Mr. Duncan got me in. I didn't say anything to anybody till I got it settled. But I wrote the application myself--and they said it was the best letter they ever got from an applicant," a slight flush of pride on the boyish face. "And Mr. Duncan says there's other work I can get to do--at nights--and I'll be able to support myself from the start," his breath coming fast with growing excitement as he turned his eyes first on his father and then on me. "You shan't," I cried, with sudden fear, as it broke on me that he was actually going away. Our poverty was as nothing then. "Oh, Harold, you mustn't--I cannot let you go," and I clung to him as though he were going away that selfsame hour. Gordon seemed unable to speak, sitting still and staring at the boy. Harold's cheeks were glowing and his eyes were sparkling; his arm was still about me. Suddenly my husband found a voice, breaking out into a torrent of remonstrance. Really, it was quite unlike him to grow so agitated--but Gordon's whole life was in his children. "If your mother and I can stand it, there's no reason why you should object," he pleaded, after many other arguments had been pressed in vain. But Harold was immovable; his word had been passed, he said, and he would not recede from it. "Let the laddie gang," came suddenly from grandfather's chair in the corner. I think we had forgotten he was there. "It's the auld way o' the world--the bairnies must leave the nest some time," he added, his own voice shaking. "An' his faither's God wull ha'e him in His guid an' holy keeping--the Almichty'll find the path for him. Come here, my laddie," and he held out his arms. Harold came over, wondering; the patriarch laid his hands in blessing on his head, and then committed him to God in words of such beauty as I think I never heard before. But Gordon protested long and earnestly. "Anything but the bank," he said at last; "I cannot bear, my son, to think of you in a bank." "That's what I think," I cried, eagerly seconding; "they make them work so hard--and it's all indoors--and Harold's not overly strong," I pleaded, careless of the splendid form that stood beside grandfather's chair. "That has nothing to do with it," Gordon interrupted in his abrupt way; "it's not of that I'm thinking at all. It's the peril of the thing, my son--the danger, the temptations--just to think of the money that passes through a lad's hands when he's put into a bank. And that's how so many of them are ruined--for time and eternity," he added solemnly. "Oh, Gordon," I cried in protest, "you don't mean stealing, Gordon, stealing money--you don't mean that?" "That's exactly what I mean," said Gordon, untrained to subterfuge. "I mean the peril of handling so much money." Whereat I fell into a storm of dissent, half in excitement, half in anger, as though my son had been accused already. I fear I spoke words harsh and unreasonable, but my defense must be that I was all unstrung with sudden grief and fear. Till by and by I was as violent in my demand for his father's consent as I had been in denial of my own, so strange are the cross-currents that trouble a woman's heart. But we might as well have all been silent, so far as any effect on Harold was concerned. He had promised and he was going--and that was the end of it. So the outcome of the whole matter was a kind of tacit agreement, before we parted for the night, that Harold was to have his way. When Gordon and I were in our own room, the door tightly shut, I pleaded with him to accept a plan that my poor bewildered mind had conjured up. "Let me write to uncle," was the burden of my cry; "if our boy is leaving us because we're not able to support him, uncle could change all that; he could at least undertake to complete his education--and I know he will, I know he will." But Gordon's face was like marble. In the last appeal a Scotchman is always Scotch--and I knew Gordon was thinking of that last night when he had been all but turned from uncle's door. "Not while we have a crust to eat or a hand to toil," he said, in a tone so low and resolute that I actually feared to press my argument with another word; "no child of mine shall be dependent on his father's enemy;" which language smote me to the heart--nor do I think Gordon would have uttered it in a calmer mood. Before we put out the light, his face still white and drawn, he took me by the hand and led me towards the bed. We knelt and prayed together--but my heart was bleeding. And anyhow--it is hard to write it down--Gordon and I didn't seem so close together now, when we prayed, as we once had been. I had the phantom feeling that we prayed apart. He had beckoned me, years before, in to faith's Holy Place where the Divine Saviour waited for us both; I had faltered in, groping for the way, bringing a broken and contrite heart--and I had found my husband gone. It was the deep dark before the dawn when I slipped noiselessly into Harold's room--and I prayed beside his bed. I loved to hear him breathing; and I wondered if God could hear _me_--my soul, I mean, half panting in its loneliness. XXIII _"THE VOICE OF RACHEL"_ When I began this chapter it was with the purpose of telling about grandfather's home-going. But not to his beloved Scotland, of whose heathery hills he seemed to think more fondly and speak more longingly as the years went by. It never lost its charm for us, this loving talk of the old Scotch shepherd about the far-off hills and valleys of his native land; even I, who had never been near them at all, came to be quite familiar with those sunlit slopes, their glistening heather, their babbling springs, their bleating flocks that roamed from base to brow. No, not to Bonnie Scotland--as he fondly called it--but to a fairer clime, did the weary shepherd turn his face at last. But before I come to this I must tell of something else; something I would to God might be left unrecorded, for my pen is aching while I write. But this other--what I am about to tell--had its own part, I think, in starting dear old grandfather on the long journey from which he will return no more. For it is about Harold, who was grandfather's idol, as I have already said. Our son had gone away, grief and hope mingling with the last farewell. That memory is with me yet. Indeed, I never rise early now, around five or six, without the feeling that some one dear to me is going far away. I remember the sweet calm of the early dawn, the first glad notes of the singing birds, careless of human tears, the sparkle of the dew upon the little lilac bush before the door, as we went past it with Harold's trunk. What a hard time I had to press into Harold's hand the poor little dollar I had saved from our scanty means as my own special gift--how pathetic it was to see the care with which he tucked it away in a painfully capacious pocketbook that grandfather had given him; how lonely it looked in the infinite space around it! And I remember how poor old grandfather noticed it, and how he bewailed himself that he had not kept till then the hundred pounds he had brought with him from Scotland. But this, his only wealth, had been "invested," as he had told us over and over again for months after the investment had been made. Poor grandfather! we had heard nothing for long of the speculation that had looked so rosy to him then. And I remember, most vividly of all, what a time I had trying to comfort Gordon when he came back from the station. After all, perhaps I must admit that a father loves his son quite as much as his first-born girl. And it seemed strange that I had to be the strong one, but so it was. When evening came, and we had family prayers, Gordon's pleading didn't comfort me at all. But I had learned long before this that the new view of prayer refuses to concede that anything can change "the course of nature"--I hate that phrase--and teaches that it is only communion, pious meditation, and not supposed to be used for asking for what you want. So Gordon had gradually given up asking for particular things, though heaven knows there was enough to ask. Higher critics are the highway robbers of the soul. Well, everything went along smoothly enough for nearly a year. Harold wrote twice a week, and seemed delighted with his work. He expected soon to be promoted, one of his last letters said; and Gordon told me that a general manager gets twenty thousand a year--that is, after he gets the position, of course. I used to think Harold was having a pretty lively time--socially, I mean--and he seemed to spend a good deal on clothes. But he did copying, and other things, out of hours, and made almost enough to pay his way. And we knew he was asked out a great deal, as bank clerks always are--and that's enough to turn any young fellow's head. Society seems to do its very best to ruin such youths as turn their footsteps towards a bank; Gordon said himself that most of these clerks do more credit to their tailor than their schoolmaster. As for me, if I had fifty sons not one of them would ever go into that profession with my consent--unless he began as general manager, with twenty thousand a year. By and by Harold began to get interested in sports--mostly lacrosse, I think--and that was the portal to our Gethsemane. I shall not dwell upon the sad and bitter story. But one day a letter came from Carletonville; the envelope bore the bank's name, but the address was not in Harold's hand. "It's about his promotion, Gordon," I said exultantly; "it's about Harold--he's been raised at last. You open it." Gordon was radiant. "No, Helen," he said unselfishly; "he owes it more to you than me--open it yourself. He gets his financial ability from his mother," and he leaned forward to hear me read the news. I opened it so carefully; for I meant to preserve it always--till he was general manager, at least. My eye ran swiftly over the contents and I fell with a loud outcry into Gordon's arms. I scarcely need to tell the story further. The letter was not unkind--I remember remarking that, in a numb, mechanical way, in the midst of all the agony. There was even a little stern note of sympathy in it, as the authorities outlined the piteous tragedy. I suppose they knew we had human hearts. It was the old story; debt, then betting, then petty irregularities in the hope that the deficit would soon be overtaken. Then a little more; then a false signature--I cannot write the other word; then more--and the man who wrote us used the term embezzlement. That was when I fainted in Gordon's arms. All that night I lay awake, alone. Gordon had left by the first train to go to Harold. I pleaded with him to bring our boy home with him. And I shall remember to all eternity how white his lips were when he said he would--_if he could_. I knew what he meant; and I fell to trembling so that I could hardly say good-bye. Then I went to bed and lay all night staring wildly into the dark. And that night, for the first time in all my married life, I cursed poverty--out loud I cursed it with bitter emphasis--the poverty that made us so helpless now. For I fancied, poor thing, that all would be well if the money could only be replaced. I cared nothing for the tokens of poverty that were all about me, the poor and ill-furnished house, the scanty wardrobe, the meagre larder--these were but trifles to me then. But I thought bitterly of the people I knew in Hertford who had plenty of money, once friends of ours, but lost to us now; and I silently impeached the poor people of our mission, as if they were somehow responsible for it all. I blamed Gordon, too--it was all due to his wandering from the beaten path--and I breathed out threatenings and slaughter against every German theologian that ever lived. It was a couple of hours before the dawn when my heart suddenly fell to beating wildly--some one was gently trying the front door, the knob slowly moving back and forward. I listened, trembling; a moment later all was still. Then I heard steps moving round on the walk beneath my room; I rose and crept to the open window, finally summoning strength to call out a timid challenge. "Mother, it's me--it's Harold, mother," came a subdued voice from below. I almost fainted for very joy. I was never so happy before in all my life; an intoxicating sense of gladness, rioting like a flood, rushed over me as I turned and flew down-stairs to the door. A moment later my arms were about my son as I led him, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, back to my room. I remember how tight I closed the door behind us, as if we were to be shut in together forevermore. And then he crept into bed beside me, just as he had done in the dear old days when he was a little fellow; and I lay with my cheek close to his, my arms about him, no word of reproach, even of enquiry coming from my lips. A strange unreasoning joy it was that possessed me--I might have known it could not last--and I called him by all the old tender boyish names while my hands roamed among his hair, sometimes descending to trace the features of his face, just to make sure that he was there. I remember how, more than once, there flitted before me a vision of the far-off days when he had lain a babe beside me, nourished at my breast--at which I held him closer than before, my bosom aching with its load of love. He told me all about it; about the tragedy; and I listened like one dead. I know now what they feel who stand before the Great White Throne, awaiting the word of destiny. Harold's voice grew lower as his speech went on, and as it grew nearer to the dawn. He seemed to fear the return of morning. And slowly, with ghostly outline, it was made clear to me that he could not linger--that he was not my own at all. They were likely in quest of him even now, cruel men, scornful of a mother's love; perhaps already hurrying towards his father's house. My arms were strong, I knew, infinitely strong--and they closed about him again in a passion of possession. Yet I knew how weak and powerless they would be if that other arm, the law's mighty arm, should be outstretched upon him. So I bade him go. First with gentle entreaty, then with insistent urgency, then with vehemence of command, I thrust him from my crying heart. I arose, groping for some garments that might help the disguise he would surely need--with feeble cunning I refused to light a lamp--searching for this and that to serve our piteous purpose. With what difficulty, I remember, did I find one of Gordon's old hats, dusting it carefully, and changing its shape from one form to another to make it look more natural on Harold's head. Soon we were at the door. The dawn was glimmering. "Go, my darling," I said hoarsely, "there will be few about when you catch the morning train. Come to me once again--put your arms around me, tight--kiss me, my son." But he did not move, looking down shame-facedly at the ground. Again I besought him to be gone. "How can I?" he said abruptly at last, the words like to choke him; "I have no money, mother." This smote me like a blow. But suddenly and with a little cry of joy--such strange eddies are there in the stream of sorrow--I remembered a few dollars I had sorely saved for the purchase of the new gown I needed so. I sprang back into the house and reappeared in a moment with the scanty savings--I caught the rumble of distant wheels and knew the world would be soon astir. Harold's face fell as he glanced at the money I thrust so triumphantly into his hand; it was not enough--I might have known it could not be enough. We stood together, bowed with disappointment. Suddenly the rumbling wheels came nearer, till, as they hove in sight around a corner, I saw it was the milkman's wagon. A quick inspiration came to me as I bade Harold slip back into the house. The milkman's ruddy face showed its surprise as his eyes fell on me, for he was accustomed to leave his wares at the back door and go upon his way. I greeted him as calmly as I could; and then, not without shame, I boldly asked him if he could lend me a little money. "A friend of mine is going away," I said, "on the morning train--and he doesn't happen to have quite enough." The honest swain, nothing doubting, fumbled in his pockets, finally producing a good deal more than my poor savings had amounted to. I took the money from him, my heart beating wildly at the sudden deliverance. Then I went in to Harold and put it in his hand. It hurt me, beyond words to tell, to see the confusion and pain with which the poor lad took the money, though it was from his mother. Then his eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Can't I say good-bye to Dorothy?" he said brokenly; "I want to say good-bye to Dorothy." The tenderness of his tone almost overcame me. I put my arm about him and we went up-stairs together, quickly, for the time was passing. We could hear grandfather's heavy breathing as we passed his door; Harold looked in wistfully, but I shook my head. Dorothy was sound asleep, her golden curls dishevelled on the pillow, her lips slightly parted, a much worn doll emerging from beneath one arm. My eyes only glanced at her, then turned to Harold's face, silently filling as I saw the evidences of his grief. He stood a moment above the bed, then stooped and kissed the rosy face; she stirred, smiling in her sleep, her hand unconsciously moving towards her doll. He kissed her again, unwisely--and the blue eyes opened wide. "Harold," she murmured sleepily, "dear Harold--I knew you'd come home--I dreamed you were never going away any more." The boy's lips were quivering, and we turned softly towards the door. But Dorothy, still only half awake, uttered a plaintive protest. "Don't go away, Harold," she mumbled, "get into your bed, Harold--your own beds," one half-opened eye indicating an unused couch beside her. "Say your prayers and then come--kneel down there, Harold," drawing the battered doll away from the side of the bed. He looked at me. I motioned; and we knelt together, Harold's hand close beside the vagrant curls. His voice was faint and faltering: "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take." He paused, preparing to arise. "Say the rest," Dorothy murmured, "say it all, Harold." Again he looked at me. Then his face sank between his hands and once more the broken voice went on: "God bless father, and mother, and Dorothy--and bless Harold and make him a good boy, for Christ's sake. Amen." The little monitor seemed satisfied, slipping back again into the stream of slumber. Harold and I went gently down the stairs. I spoke no word but held him to my bosom, aching still, with such a fierce flame of longing as I had never known before. I opened the door; even then I paused to adjust the hat, so large and serious looking, on his head. He passed out, his face averted, and started running on his way--on, on, away from home, away from his mother's empty arms. I went back to the room where his sister lay. Long I stood above the vacant bed, wondering bitterly why I had not gloried more in those old golden days when two dear tiny heads lay upon the pillows there. A few minutes after I heard the whistling of a train; I sank beside the empty bed and tried to pray--but my lips, I know not why, could frame no words except the words of Harold's prayer. XXIV _"COME, ETTRICK; YARROW, COME"_ It was two long days before Gordon returned to me. He knew the worst, of course, but had lingered at Carletonville in the hope that he might get some trace of Harold. A telegram to me, and another from me to him, told enough to send him home at once. Poor Dorothy's eyes looked wonderingly upon us as her father held me in his arms so long and so silently after he came in the door. Grandfather turned his troubled face away, pretending to gaze out of the window. "You look so old, Gordon," I said unguardedly, as I drew back to look once more on the haggard face. "I _am_ old, my darling," was all his answer, as he drew me to him again. I forget what we talked about that evening--it was a dreadsome hour. And I actually feared for Gordon. He seemed half crushed, and half defiant, sometimes breaking out into a flood of grief, sometimes sitting long in stony silence. I felt guilty in the thought that I was more composed than he; once or twice I caught myself admitting that my faith was stronger than his--but I dismissed the comparison as pharisaical. Yet that was my chief concern for my husband--I feared for the influence this sorrow would have on his secret life. I knew then, oh! how well I knew, that only one anchor could hold amid a storm like this. And the very ones who had taught me this were God and Gordon. The gloaming was just deepening into dark when I came back to the study after telling Dorothy good-night; grandfather's chair was close beside Gordon's, the white head visible through the gloom. "Noo's the time to use yir faith," the old man was saying softly; "naebody needs a licht till the mirk gathers roun' aboot them. An' there's ae thing, there's ae thing, my son, ye maun aye keep sayin' to yirsel': the laddie's juist as dear to God as he is to you an' Helen--if ye love him, it's because God loves us a'," and the quivering voice fell on my harrowed heart like music from some steeple far aloft. "Aye," he went on as if to himself, "Harold canna' wanner ayont the Faither's care--an' we can aye follow him wi' prayer. "Rax Gordon the Buik, lassie," he suddenly said, after we had sat a while in silence. I did as I was bidden and Gordon received it without a word. It seemed to me, though perhaps it was only fancy, as he held it a moment, then opened it slowly and began turning the pages over, that there was a reverent eagerness about it such as had long been wanting. I wondered, fearfully, if this new ministry were already working its blessed way. And he passed Hosea by, though he had been reading for some time from that section of the Scriptures; he had some books on those old writers that he was delving into, and he always read at family worship from the parts he was studying for himself--there was so much of this that I had really grown weary of the prophets, shameful though it may be to confess it. Gordon still turned the leaves, nor stopped till he came to the fourteenth of St. John: "Let not your heart be troubled," which he read with a trembling voice that interpreted it beyond all the power of German scholarship. It was like a great anthem to my soul that night, and I think I gloried as much in Gordon's voice as in the wonderful words. When we knelt to pray I slipped over to Gordon's chair, and we bowed together, his hand tight clasped in mine. I prayed for Gordon all the time we were bended thus, my heart full of a kind of thankful joy that mingled strangely with the passion of loss and loneliness already there. The prayer was beautiful; and just before its close Gordon stopped, tried again, then faltered out with a kind of sob: "And, oh, God, give us back our son--bring him back to us, oh, Father of us all." My heart leaped for joy, like one whose long night was almost past. No word was spoken as grandfather and I slipped out a few minutes later; I went with him to his room, to see that everything was ready. "The guid Shepherd'll bring the wannerin' lamb hame yet," he said as I turned to go, the strong features struggling with emotion; "He'll bring them baith back--back till Himsel'--did ye no' tak' notice o' Gordon's prayer? He's comin' hame, thank God, he's comin' hame," and the old man's voice was touched with heavenly hope. The next morning, grandfather was astir with the birds. The day was bright; and the weather--so long his daily care--was still a specialty of grandfather's. Indeed, he seemed to live more and more in the past, the farther it receded. For days he would talk of little else but the far-off Scottish hills, and the glint of the sun through the clouds upon the heather, and the solemn responsibilities of the lambing season, and the sagacity of his sheep-dogs, all of whose names he remembered. How often, especially, would he tell us of "Ettrick" and "Yarrow," two of his choicest collies, named for his native streams. "This wad be a graun' day for the sheep," or "there'll be mony a lammie i' the plaid-neuk the day," were frequent opinions of his when sunshine or storm provoked them. Poor dear grandfather! Far though he was from his beloved Scotland, it was beautiful to see how deep and tranquil was the happiness of his heart. He knew, of course, how sore was our own poverty, and I think it chafed him sorely that he could not help. When he first came out to the Western world, and to his only child, I really believe he thought the hundred pounds he brought with him would make him well-to-do for life. His idea was that all investments, in this new land, break into golden harvest. So he had duly invested his hundred pounds--some eloquent agent had led him on--in some sort of mining stocks. Old-country people are so prone to think that the earth, on this new continent, and the waters under the earth, and the mountains on top of it, all turn to gold if you touch them. Well, he invested his hundred sovereigns, and that was the end of grandfather's financial career--but have I not told all about this already? Yet he was happy in his children--for so he regarded us both--and in his children's children. But that morning, the morning after Gordon came home, he seemed collapsed with sorrow. Perhaps it was the reaction--I do not know--but it was evident, anyhow, with what absorbing love grandfather's heart had gone out to the now departed Harold. His face was thin and worn, as if he had been ill; his voice was husky and his step was slow. All through breakfast he never broke the silence except to speak of Harold, and it was pathetic to hear the various suggestions the loving heart conjured up as to the best way to get him back. He knew little about law, dear grandfather, except the law of love. Finally Gordon told him, perhaps too candidly, that Harold was doubtless by this time from under his country's flag, and that there was no absolution unless the money were refunded--not even then, he added, except by the grace of those whom he had wronged. "He'll write to us onyway, will he no'?" grandfather asked plaintively at last. "Oh, yes," I said quite confidently; "oh, yes, he'll write." But Gordon seemed anxious to prepare me for possible disappointment. "He likely will, if he's getting on well," he said slowly, fearfully; "if he succeeds, wherever he is, I mean. If he doesn't, I'm--I'm afraid." I dissented warmly from this. Harold loved his mother, I affirmed. And then I remember how Gordon said something about the change in a boy's whole nature that an experience of this kind is liable to bring about; a word or two about the moral sensibilities being blunted, or something of that sort. Whereat I flared up in warm remonstrance, breaking into eulogy of my son. It was not till afterwards that I realized how all my thought of Harold, when he came home that night, and when he went away, was always of his misfortune and never of his sin--almost as if he had been pitifully wronged. But I suppose that is the way of every woman's heart, and I cannot but think it is partly God's way too. Early in the forenoon grandfather disappeared, sending word by a messenger that he had availed himself of an opportunity to go into the country. It was evening when he returned, but I never saw a man more changed. His face was aglow with strange enthusiasm and the signs of healing were upon him. "I juist couldna' help it," he said apologetically as he entered, his shepherd's crook in his hand. "I was fair longin' to see the sheep, an' the hills, yince mair--my heart was sair for them. An' I got a chance wi' a mon that was gaein' oot--he was settin' up some kind o' machinnery. An' I had a graun' day on the hills," he went on delightedly; "it was fair graun'. There was a laddie mindin' some sheep--he was a fine laddie; he minded me o' Harold--and I helpit him a' the day. There wasna' ony heather, nae doot--but the hills were bonnie--and the laddie had a collie dog or twa that minded me o' hame. An' I carried yin puir wee lammie in my arms--it was ailin'--and I lilted the auld psalms yince mair aneath God's blue sky; it was maist as guid as hame," and the aged voice was all aglow with gladness. "You had a lovely day for it, grandfather," I said, smiling. "Aye," he answered, "it was a bonnie day--an' aboot yin or twa o'clock there cam' a wee bit rain--a Scotch mist, ye ken, and it minded me o' hame--oh, it's been a graun' day the day. But I canna' think what it was gied me sic' a longin' for the hills--it was fair fearsome--it's no' a'thegither canny, I'm dootin'," and the old man shook his head in an eerie kind of way, so characteristic of his race. "I'm gaein' to bed," he said, moving already towards the stair; "I'm fair din oot. "What's yon black thing hangin' there?" he suddenly demanded, the keen eyes resting on the door at the back of the hall. I paid little or no attention to the question, deeming it unimportant; we went on talking for a few minutes. "Lassie," he suddenly broke out again, "run, lassie, an' see what's yon black thing hangin' on the door." Dorothy went as directed. "It's mamma's rain coat," she said a moment later, returning with it in her hand. "Aye," said the old man, apparently relieved, "aye, it's naethin' but a cloak--but it fashed me to look at it; I thocht it lookit like--like yin o' thae crape things," he added with an embarrassed little laugh. This gave me a queer creepy feeling at the time, but I thought little more about it then; it came back to us later on, however. Grandfather went to bed immediately, and Gordon and I were not long behind him. It was about one o'clock, I think, or perhaps a little later, when I was wakened from my sleep by a strange sound, half groan, half cry. I went out at once into the hall and soon traced the sign of distress to grandfather's room. The old man was raised up in the bed, partly sitting; and the light I quickly kindled told the story in a flash as I glanced at the ashen face. "It's my heart," he said huskily; "it's yin o' thae spells like I had lang syne. It winna' be lang, I'm dootin'." I was terrified, for I thought I could descry the stamp of death already. There was a majestic calm, an unwonted stillness, upon the old man's face. I called Gordon at once; he evidently shared my fear, for he rushed away for a doctor. It was but a few minutes before he returned with the physician. The latter was not long in telling us the truth. "It's simply a total collapse," he whispered to Gordon and me as we followed him out into the hall. "He can hardly live till the morning; yes, it's his heart--a case of syncope. Don't be alarmed if he grows delirious, or semi-delirious--they often do, just from sheer weakness. That roaming about the country, to-day, that you spoke of--and the excitement of it--have probably been too much for him." "Shall we tell him?" asked Gordon, pale and trembling. "Perhaps it would be just as well. Has he everything in order?--his will, I mean, and everything like that, you know?" "That isn't important," said Gordon; "father had little to will--yet I think he ought to be told. But I cannot--I couldn't do it. Will you?" The doctor nodded and turned slowly towards the room. We did not hear what he said, but a moment later grandfather faintly called for Gordon. We both went into the chamber of death. "Rax me my wallet--you'll find it in the kist," said the old man, pointing towards a trunk in the corner of the room. Gordon handed him a large leather case which a brief search revealed. The shaking hand fumbled a moment or two before it withdrew a somewhat bulky document. "This is what they gi'ed me for my hunnerd pounds," he said, a half-shamed smile coming over the strong features. "They ca'ed them stocks," he added, "stocks in a mine, ye ken. I got the shares for saxpence each--an' they said they was awfu' valuable--and I tuk a' they'd gie me for a hunnerd pounds." Then he named a certain mine in Northern Ontario, and I thought I saw the faintest smile on Gordon's face. He took the paper from his father's hand and laid it on the table. "I made the shares ower to Helen, lang syne," the old man said humbly; "gin they turn oot to be worth onythin', they're for her. I didna' ken when I micht be ta'en awa'--an' it's aye weel to be ready." I faltered some poor words of thanks which the sinking man did not seem to hear. A new, strange light came into his eyes as we waited beside his bed. The doctor had withdrawn now, powerless to do more. "Gang an' fetch the plaidie," he suddenly directed, "the yin I used to wear at hame; an' pit it aboot my shoulders--the nicht's growin' cauld. An' I canna' find the sheep," he suddenly cried, half starting in his bed; "I hear them bleatin' on the hills--but I canna' find them a'." Then his eyes, large and luminous with the light of the unseen, revolved slowly till they fixed themselves on Gordon. "Kneel doon, laddie," he said gently, yet with the majesty of a prophet, "kneel doon beside me." Gordon knelt low by the bed; one trembling hand, outstretched, was laid upon his head. The dying eyes looked far beyond into the Unknown. "Gordon," he said, almost in a whisper, "I see yir mither--she's wi' us noo." I actually started and looked up, following the lifted gaze. "An' she's lookin' doon at ye, my son--an' the love is fair shinin' frae her een. It was her that made ye a minister, my laddie. When ye was a wee bit bairn, me and her gi'ed ye up to God; an' mony a night, when ye didna' ken, she bendit by yir bed an' pleaded wi' God to mak' ye a minister--a minister, my laddie, o' the Everlastin' Gospel. Div ye hear me, Gordon?" "Yes, father, yes," and Gordon was sobbing now; "yes, I hear, father." "An' she wants ye to keep the troth, my son. I'm gaein' to her noo--an' I'll tell her ye'll be a guid minister, Gordon, a guid minister o' the New Testament, leadin' puir sinners to the Cross. Wull ye no' bid me tell her that, my laddie?" and the dying lips paused for answer. "Yes," faltered the broken man beside the bed, "yes, father, tell mother that." The light of peace stole across the aged face. "I'm ready to gang noo," the gentle voice went on, "an' yir mither's beckonin'. I'm comin', mither; I'll be wi' ye soon. An' Gordon's comin' tae--an' Helen--an' they'll bring baith the bairns wi' them." Then his eyes turned slowly upon Gordon. "I'm ready to gang noo in peace," he said faintly--"but there's yin puir lammie," a troubled expression looking out from the dying eyes, "there's yin puir lammie that I canna' find. Oh, my son," the voice rising again and the prophet-like eyes fastened upon Gordon, "tak' guid care o' the sheep--it's an awesome thing to be an unfaithfu' shepherd; tak' care o' the sheep, my laddie--an' where's Harold? Is the bairn no' hame the nicht?" Then swift delirium seemed to seize him, and he rose violently where he lay, the last eddy of life swirling in the sullen stream of death. "I canna' find the lamb that's wannered," he cried, in a voice that startled us; "I canna' find it, an' the mirk is fallin'. Ettrick, come!--ho! Yarrow. Where are ye, Yarrow? Find it, my bonnie--find it and bring it hame." Then suddenly the dying lips pressed themselves together and a faint whistle floated out on the midnight air. I seized Gordon by the shoulder. "Hush," said my husband, his face like death itself; "hush--he's calling his dogs." "They're breakin'," he cried despairingly; "the sheep's scatterin'--they're gaein' to wanner--where's my crook? Gordon, bide ye here, my laddie, till yir faither turns them back. Come, Ettrick--Yarrow, come!" and again the dread whistle floated from his lips. We tried to compose him, speaking tender words. Slowly the look of peace stole back upon the old man's face. He lay with eyes almost closed. "They're a' hame noo," he murmured gently; "aye, they're a' safe in the fold, my laddie, an' they'll gang oot nae mair till the mirk is by--we can rest noo till the mornin'," as he lay back in calm content. Suddenly the dying eyes were lifted to his son. "Lilt me a psalm," he murmured; "we'll sing afore we gang to sleep; but dinna' wake yir mither--yir mither's restin'." "What shall I sing, father?" Gordon asked in an awesome voice. "A psalm, my--laddie," the words coming faint and slow; "ye ken the yin I'm needin'--there's only yin psalm for a shepherd." Gordon looked at me. One hand was in his father's; the other was outstretched to me, and I knelt beside him. Then with trembling voice, my clearer note mingling with Gordon's quivering bass, we sang together: "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want-- He makes me down to lie," and just as we were midway in the majestic strain "Yea though I walk through death's dark vale Yet will I fear none ill" the old shepherd passed through the valley with his Lord. XXV _A SELECT CONGREGATION_ Grandfather was right. The Good Shepherd had brought Gordon back. I am quite at a loss to tell just how the change came about, or what its actual evidences were--but the great ministry in accomplishing it was the ministry of sorrow. Sorrow and love--that ever undivided pair--seemed to have conspired for their perfect work. It began, I think, with the crushing weight that fell upon our hearts in the loss of Harold and in all the shame and anguish connected with it. That was God's way, I have always thought, of teaching Gordon how much a father's heart can suffer--and the inevitable outcome of that is the Cross itself if God our Father be. How could His love escape love's inevitable pain, any more than ours? Then, besides, grandfather's home-going had been a second ordination for Gordon, and the ministry that followed was new and beautiful. So was mine, if I may designate my poor service by such a lofty word; for now I knew beyond a peradventure that God hears and answers prayer. I verily believe grandfather and I prayed him back between us. The very day after Gordon's father entered into rest I was sitting in the gloaming, thinking of the life that had gone from us; one never knows how dear is an aged life, till the silver-haired presence is withdrawn. And I heard something that started my heart singing heavenward with gratitude. Gordon and Dorothy were at the piano, on which our daughter now loved to show her new-found skill. And softly on the evening air there floated out to me the strains of the hymn he had asked her to play. Surely there is no music, this side of heaven, so sweet as that which a man's strong voice and a girl's fluttering note combine to make. "We'll sing it again," I heard Gordon saying; "every word is golden, Dorothy. Come now: 'Jesus loves me, He who died Heaven's gate to open wide; He will wash away my sin Let His little child come in'" and then followed some words of Gordon's which I could hardly catch. But I heard enough to know that he was teaching our little girl the great and blessed doctrine which he himself had learned by his mother's knee. How I gloried in this new theology, asserting once again its holy spell upon my husband's heart, no human tongue can tell. The months went by. And if ever a man was happy in his work, that man was Gordon Laird. In his work, I say--for our home lay still under the shadow of its great and bitter sorrow. After one or two unsatisfactory letters, followed by a final one of despairing note, no word had come from Harold. This was what Gordon had feared. Those months stand out before me now, each one almost separate in its pain, like sombre mountain peaks robed in cloud. I know all about the anguish of those who roam some desert waste searching for a spring, or with parched lips upturned to the unsoftening skies. The slowly dying hope, the burning fever whenever I heard the postman's knock, the sickening disappointment, all surge again like a turgid flood about me when I allow my mind to dwell on those days of silence. Yet if I suffered I believe Gordon, in a deep, silent way, suffered even more. My heart ached more for him than for myself. I almost came to change my mind as to which of the children had first place in Gordon's heart--it seemed to cry out now for Harold as for nothing else on earth. Although, and I write it gladly for the comfort of some like stricken soul, all this worked its gracious ministry upon his troubled life. Embattled long as his spirit had been with inward misgiving and silent doubt, this last dark mystery would have wrought sore havoc, I cannot but believe, had it not been so terrible. Its very fierceness of attack drove him in upon the Lord whom he had found afresh; and his soul found its comfort in simplicity of faith and childlike urgency of prayer. The songs we shall sing in the Yonderland shall give their chiefest praise for the burdens that were too heavy to be borne alone. I have spoken of Gordon's urgency of prayer. It was he, not I, who suggested that we should have a set time, every morning, when we should pray for nothing else but this--that Harold might be brought back to us. And it was Gordon, not I, who led Dorothy to include in her evening prayer the plea that God would bring her brother home. Yes, I think sometimes that the great Father led my husband into the wilderness for this very purpose, to make him a minister after His own heart. I said to him once, just about the time we first began to realize we weren't going to hear from Harold: "All this won't affect your life-work, will it, Gordon--your preaching, I mean?" for it was only natural, after all that had transpired, that I should have some secret misgivings. His answer lingers with me like a chime of bells, though it came in tones subdued and low: "No," he said; "no--I'm going to preach now to broken hearts." "Then you'll never lack a congregation, my darling," was the response I made; and I have always thought it was given me in that hour what to speak. XXVI _THE NEWS A BROKER BROUGHT_ Nor did the congregation fail to come. Gordon had wonderful powers, as everybody must know by this time--he had always had them--and now he had a wonderful message. His heart, and not his brain, was now the source of his splendid sermons; a wounded heart at that--and it is from the crushed and broken flower that the sweetest perfume breathes. So it was no wonder that his humble pulpit became like a golden fount to parched and thirsty souls; and the pathway trodden by the throng that pressed about it became ever more deep and wide. People came to Gordon's little church from every part of Hertford. I did not wonder at this, for rich and poor alike will crowd about a spring; but little by little it became evident that not a few of our worshippers were from Gordon's old congregation in St. Andrew's. It's wonderful how everybody loves a hero--especially if the hero doesn't know he's one. I was the first to notice this; or, at least, the first to say anything about it. Gordon gave no sign of exultation, but I knew it filled his heart to overflowing. Strangely enough, one of those who by and by were most regular in attendance was Mr. Ashton himself, his first appearance almost striking Gordon dumb. But I always thought he really began to esteem my husband that night Gordon dealt so faithfully with him. Besides, he had lost his own son--by the more kindly way of death--and I attributed it partly, too, to that. It matters not. This feature of our congregation--the attendance of St. Andrew's folk, I mean--became so pronounced at last that it began to be rumoured about the city that many of them would like to call their old minister back again, if he would return to their denomination. I spoke of it once to Gordon--my heart could not conceal its eagerness--but he received it after such a fashion that I mentioned it no more. Not then, at least. But I'm afraid I hoped and longed; for I was born a woman, and pride died hard within me. Our means were still as meagre, our struggle as sore as ever. Besides--and how pitiful was the effort--we were trying in a poor helpless way to save a little for the payment of Harold's debt; we tried to set aside just so much as his schooling would have cost, if he had never left us. Every penny thus laid away had our hearts' blood upon it; and was, I doubt not, precious in His sight who gave those two mites their fame. Things were at their very darkest along this line about four or five months after Harold went away. And it was just then something happened that showed conclusively which way the ruling passion of Gordon's heart was turned. I was almost weeping over my accounts that night. These I kept in a ridiculously large scribbling book, marking down the smallest item of expenditure; for Gordon entrusted our finances to my hands, if so elaborate a term may be devoted to so scanty an exchequer. Generally I brought the account out pretty even at the close of every week--"sundries" were a great help towards this happy end. But this particular night everything seemed all "through other," to quote a favourite phrase of grandfather's. Nothing was clear except that there was a deficit--and that was dreadfully evident; but even the all-adjusting sundries could not show just how or whence it came. So there we sat, I with the big scribbling book before me, a freshly sharpened pencil in my hand, a cloud of perplexity on my brow, gazing, a little moistly I'm afraid, at the plaintive statement of receipts and expenditure. "Never mind, Helen," Gordon said, "you've done the best you can--and I know you've made every dollar go as far as any woman in the world could do. Don't bother any more about it--charge that deficit up to profit and loss and call it square." "But it's nothing to laugh about," I answered gloomily; "we're going behind, Gordon--just as sure as anything, we're going behind." "Only financially," he said lightly; "we're going ahead other ways, my dear." "But that's a lot," I protested. "It doesn't seem much to me," Gordon replied, the lightness all vanished now. "What do you mean?" I said, looking up a little testily, I fear. "Oh, only this; when anybody has a sorrow so much greater--like ours--financial troubles don't amount to much. I want Harold--oh, Helen, I want our boy back again," with which he broke out, strong man though he was, into such a storm of crying as would have done credit to the tearfullest of women. This puzzled, almost alarmed, me. Indeed, I was beginning to fear, and not without more reasons than one, that the long tension of grief and disappointment were proving too much for Gordon's intense and sensitive nature. I looked at him a moment as he sat before me with his head bowed in his hands; then I did what I believe was the very wisest thing--I comforted him for a little as best I could in my woman's way, though my heart was just as heavy as his own; then I said we really must go on with our accounts. And in a minute or two we were both bended once again above the big scribbling book, going into every item as carefully as though we were auditing the books of the Bank of England. Suddenly, just as I was declaring that the butcher must have sent that same bill twice, a ring came to the door. I was glad. Gordon answered the summons, as he always did at night. And, to my amazement, our visitor turned out to be a Mr. Bradwin, one of the well-known brokers of Hertford, and a prominent member of our old congregation in St. Andrew's. "Excuse my calling at this time of night, Dr. Laird," he apologized, after he was seated and a few words of greeting had passed between us; "but the fact is I've just received some news that I think you'll find decidedly interesting"--I cannot be positive, but I really think he glanced about the shabbily furnished room as he spoke--"and I couldn't wait till to-morrow to tell you." "I hope it's good news, Mr. Bradwin," said Gordon, a very faint smile playing on his face. My impulsive nature got the better of my judgment. "Is it about St. Andrew's, Mr. Bradwin?" I asked in an eager voice, my eyes leaping from his face to Gordon's. "No, it isn't," replied our caller, and my eyes fell. "But it's good news for all that--decidedly good news, I should say. It's about something a little more important--to you, at least; something that has more to do with your happiness, I fancy." Gordon sprang to his feet and his voice rang out like a pistol-shot: "It's about Harold, sir--it's about our boy!" He was standing in front of Mr. Bradwin now, his cheeks like snow, his eyes like fire. It was almost awful to see him. "Thank God," he cried, his voice half a laugh and half a cry; "you've heard where he is, haven't you?--and you've come to tell us. Why didn't we think of it before, Helen?--we might have known that was the news that couldn't wait. Tell me, sir--tell us both," and in his eagerness he bent over and took the astonished man by the shoulders. A moment later his withdrawn hands were clasped upon his eyes with a gesture of inexpressible grief and he was groping his way to a chair. No word had been uttered; but the denial spoke from Mr. Bradwin's face, or else he shook his head in disavowal--I could not see, but I knew that the hope glowing a moment since in Gordon's heart was in ashes now. Our visitor's news was not of Harold. "I'm so sorry," Mr. Bradwin began confusedly; "I forgot all about that--about your son; and I really almost hate now to tell you what I was so anxious to tell a little while ago. But it's good news, at any rate--even if it's not the best." Having said this he paused, looking from one to the other of his auditors. "What is it, Mr. Bradwin?" I asked, not a little curious. "It's about some stocks--some shares," replied the broker, feeling a little more at ease with the familiar words; "such assets--stocks, I mean, especially mining stocks--are always springing little surprises on the people that hold them. Both ways, Mrs. Laird, you know--both good and bad," as he smiled, a little artificially I thought, at me. "But in this case I'm glad to be able to say the surprise is a pleasant one--a decidedly pleasant one, Mrs. Laird; indeed, uncommonly so, I should say. Quite beyond the ordinary, as I think you'll agree." I stammered out something about my ignorance of all such matters. Gordon said nothing, for interest was now dead within him. "You are aware, of course," Mr. Bradwin resumed, "you're aware, Mrs. Laird, that the shares are in your name?--they were transferred to you by Mr. Laird, your husband's father, before his death." "Oh," I exclaimed, beginning to remember; "you mean those papers grandfather gave us?" "Precisely, madam--at least, I presume we're thinking of the same thing. Your father-in-law invested five hundred dollars, a hundred pounds rather, in the mine--and they've just struck a fine vein of silver--the richest yet discovered in New Ontario, there's no doubt of that. The old gentleman got his shares for a song--about ten cents each, I believe--and now they've jumped to an almost fabulous price. So the profit is tremendous," as Mr. Bradwin drew his chair close up to mine, all embarrassment vanished now. "How much are they worth?" I asked with feminine precipitancy. Mr. Bradwin drew a pencil from his pocket and reached over to the table for a piece of paper. It did seem funny that the scrap he picked up and began to cover with figures was that wretched butcher's bill that had been giving Gordon and me so much trouble a few minutes before. "Surely I've made a mistake," he said after a little silence; "it seems an incredibly large amount. No, that must be it," drawing in his breath in an awe-stricken kind of way after he had revised his reckoning at least three times; "yes, your shares are worth that, at the very lowest computation," and he handed the greasy butcher's bill, transfigured and glorified now, over to my shaking hand. "I'm commissioned to offer you that much, madam, for every share you hold." I don't think I heard him. My first move was to Gordon's desk in the corner, a great womanlike fear seizing me lest the precious papers had been lost, or that they might reveal something to disturb this fairy dream. I fumbled in one of the drawers; they were there; I drew them forth. Yes, it was just as the broker had assured me. The number of shares was so plain that he who ran might read. "Hold on to those certificates, Mrs. Laird," I think I heard Mr. Bradwin say; "there's a heap of happiness in them." But I paid no attention to his words as I moved over, my eyes so cloudy I could hardly see, to where my husband still sat in silence. I cared nothing that a stranger was looking on, thought of nothing, remembered nothing but the long years of bitter poverty and secret struggle through which poor Gordon had carried on his work so bravely. I threw myself into his arms, my whole frame shaken with the emotion that would not be repressed; I clasped him about the neck, the precious documents crushed in my fevered grasp as I drew the yielding head gently down upon my bosom, faltering out as best I could the tidings that our poverty was ended and our days of darkness past and gone. And I told him how I loved him for all the splendid courage and silent self-denial that he would never need to practice more. "I'd advise you not to sell outright, madam--that's my advice to you as a friend," the broker's voice announced in a monotone. I looked up a moment--the man's back was turned; (wherefore I have thought more kindly of brokers ever since). "Your best way will be to sell a certain amount--and retain an interest; an interest, Mrs. Laird. They're going ahead to develop the mine--and then you're sure of both, Mrs. Laird. And I--I congratulate you, madam." I fear my response was very scant, if indeed any came at all. At any rate, Mr. Bradwin withdrew a minute or two later, announcing his purpose to return the following day. But it could not have been more than a minute or two after his departure when we heard the footfall of some one ascending the steps to the door. "He must be coming back," I said; "I suppose he's forgotten something." "I don't think it's a man's step," said Gordon; "it's a boy, if I'm not mistaken." His surmise was correct. A boy it was, and a very agitated and urgent boy at that. He was ragged too. "I want you to come with me," the lad broke out as soon as he was admitted, fixing his earnest gaze on Gordon. "I was at Bethany Sunday-school last Sunday--and I know you--and I want you to come home with me quick," twirling his battered hat in his hand as he spoke. "What's your name, my boy?" asked Gordon, moving over to him. "It's Tim--Tim Rayfield--an' we live on Finner's Flats," naming the most notorious section of the city, part of it bordering on Gordon's parish. "Do you always attend Bethany, Tim?" asked Gordon, smiling down at the desperately earnest face. "No, sir, wasn't there only once," answered the boy; "but I learned a lot--an' won't you come, sir? There ain't no time to lose. My father's dyin', sir--an' I want you to get him in." "What?" and Gordon's face was full of amazement; "in where?--where do you want me to get your father in?--you mean the hospital, do you, my boy?" "No, sir--into heaven. That's what the teacher said about it last Sunday--about when folks was dyin'--an' how they get 'em in. An' dad, he's dyin'--an' I want you to get him in." The face of the poor ignorant child was aglow with its eagerness of hope and fear. The signs of poverty and neglect were everywhere about him, and the ill-nourished frame told how severe had life's struggle been to him. But the glint of the Eternal was on the grimy face, upturned to Gordon in wistful entreaty. His plea was the plea of love, his prayer the prayer of faith; and the scene could not have been more holy if some white-robed priest had been interceding before the Throne. Gordon's arms went out impulsively towards the lad; I believe he put them a moment about his neck. "Yes, my boy," he said in an unsteady voice; "yes, I'll go. And we'll get your father in--yes, please God, we'll get him in." They went out together into the darkness, the boy leading the way with such haste as stirs the feet of those who race with death. And I was left alone, the little table still littered with the relics of our financial conference. The stainful butcher's bill lay on top of all--and the magic document, with its story of our shares, was still held tightly in my hand. I did not open it again; but I sat long looking at it--and it struck me even then how helpless it was to aid in the real tragedies of life. XXVII _WHERE GUS CAST ANCHOR_ I have asked Gordon to write down for me his experiences of that night. Two considerations led me to this course: first, because the incident had so much to do with his own soul's life, his faith, his future ministry; second, because Gordon was so much more able than I, when one of life's great events was concerned, to tell it as it should be told. When I asked him to undertake this duty--to write out the story of that midnight errand--I practically had to tell him I was putting our life experience, or a large portion of it, down in black and white. But I don't think Gordon ever suspected it was meant for other eyes than those of our own immediate dear ones--and one of the great moments of my life will be when my husband sees this book, if, indeed, it shall ever deserve a name so great. Here is Gordon's story of that night, just as he wrote it out himself--I told him my story began with a foreword, so he said he'd have one too. * * * * * _Foreword:_ I am writing this, so personal though it seem, because Helen wants it. If it hadn't been for the children's mother, their father never could have told what he is now about to write. Some time, perhaps long after my poor day's work is done, they may read this page from the volume of their father's life. May the same grace enrich, the same truth ennoble their youthful lives: "The angel that redeemed me from all evil bless" them both, as a father's lips prayed long ago. * * * * * When little Tim Rayfield told me he wanted me to "get his father in," I knew one of the crucial moments of my life had come. Indeed, I felt the hour was almost as critical for me as for Tim's dying father. Why, I need not state at length. But perhaps I ought to say this much, that I felt a new sense of power as I pressed on through the night with Tim's grimy hand in mine. I use the word "new" advisedly--for I must tell, no matter whose eye may yet read the confession, that, for some years before, I had shrunk from such scenes as these in helplessness and despair; I had lost the joy of the miraculous in my ministry; I can honestly say that I always tried to be faithful to every duty, but little by little the glory and the power of a Supernatural Gospel had slipped away from me. I have seen people smile when I use the word "supernatural" as the only fitting term to characterize a gospel. But such as smile have very smiling lives. The word--and all that is behind the word--has a very different meaning when laughter is banished from the lips, when the voice of joy is hushed, when some fateful sorrow falls and we can only stumble on through the encircling gloom. Such an hour came to me, filled with a bitterness worse than death; it was then I found my Lord anew. When the billows overswept and whelmed me I learned to pray; when the shadows closed in about me I descried the Divine Friend among them; when I lost my boy, and my father-heart was broken, I learned of One who gave His own Son, His well-beloved Son. Let me revise my words. It was not I who "found my Lord"; but He found me--He and Helen--and they sought me hand in hand. "That's the room," said Tim, panting from his haste, for the little fellow had led me at great speed; "there, d'ye see that light in the window--that upstairs window?" I saw, and in a moment we were climbing a decrepit stair. Groping our way along an unlighted passage, my guide, still clinging to my hand, turned sharply into the squalid home. It consisted evidently of two rooms, the inner of which contained the couch whereon lay Tim's sinking father. The boy never stopped till he had led me to the very edge of the bed. A few tattered covers wrapped the form of the dying man. His face, already conforming to the stamp of death, told the story of a lifetime's sin. Nobody could look upon it without reading there the tokens of a life of passion and excess. The heavy eyes looked up sullenly into my face as I stood above him. "It's the preacher, Gus--don't," pleaded a woman who bent above him; for his lips were framing some word she evidently feared my ears would catch. "Don't, Gus--he's goin' to help you if he can; Tim fetched him--he's the preacher from the Hollow, an' Tim seen him last Sunday." The man's set features seemed to relax a little as I took his hand. I hesitated as to how I should best begin--but he opened the way himself. "I'm all ready for sea, boss," he broke out with a gasping laugh; "last voyage, looks like--an' nobody don't know the port. But I've got my papers, Cap'n--I've got my papers, an' I'll have to sail." "Don't mind him, sir," his wife said in a hushed voice; "he's an old sailor, you see--only two years since he quit the sea and come here to live. He got his left foot hurt--an' that's what's killin' him now--he's got gangarene, sir." "Goin' to be a dirty night, boss, by the looks o' things," the dying tar broke in with pitiful bravado; "the wind's risin', ain't it--better shorten sail, eh?" I put my face close to his. "Do you want a pilot, my friend?" I asked him low. "Don't call me that," he retorted gruffly; "call me mate--I was mate on the _Dolphin_ when that dam crowbar fell on my foot." "Don't you want a pilot, mate?" I asked again. "Where to take me?" looking far through the window into the dark. "To the harbour," I answered softly. "I don't know where it is." "He knows." "Say," and the eyes were now fixed very intently on me; "I'm goin' to ask ye a question. An' I want an answer straight--no tackin' or manoeuvrin'--d'ye think I'm dyin', Cap'n?" "Yes," I answered; "yes, you're dying, sir." "Then get him in," broke out poor Tim with a piteous wail as he presented himself in front of me and looked up into my face; "please get him in quick, afore he dies--that's what I fetched you for, sir--oh, please get him in." I had seen the day when I almost feared to be alone with a dying man. What I had to say, in those days, could be as well said to others as to him. But now, as Tim besought me, and as his father looked up with eyes in which a yearning hope was already to be seen, I felt that no others must be near while I sought to help his soul. So I asked Tim and his mother if they would withdraw to the adjoining room--they should be called, I said, if the summons came apace. Then I closed the door--for this hour had more than bridal holiness--and I gave myself in love to the dying soul. The mock heroism, the banter, fell off from him like a garment, for I think he saw I believed in God. I need not tell, must not reveal, all he disclosed to me from the dark storehouse of a wasted past. But I met him, and his crimson sins, and his accusing conscience--I met them all, and at every turn, with the Cross of the Lord Jesus and with the all-atoning grace of God. How I gloried in that hour in the great evangel! And how there rolled about me, with tides ample like the ocean's, the thought of the magnitude and infinitude of the love of Christ! And how--oh, blessed memory to my long beleaguered soul--I witnessed the ancient miracle with joy, marvelling anew at the greatness and glory of the Gospel, scorning with high contempt all that would raise its feeble hand against such power as may be seen wherever a sinful soul meets with the pardoning Lord! Over and over again I read to him from the third of John: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son," its richness growing on my own soul as well as his. "Let me see that," said the dying mate; "I want to look at it--every cap'n reads the log himself." I gave him the book and held the lamp above him. "Ye haven't got another of them, have ye, sir?" he asked wistfully. "Of what?" said I. "Of this here book--I want to read it when you're gone; or Tim--Tim could read it to me." I told him, of course, that I would leave the book. "Turn down the page--mark the place," he said, handing me the volume. "I'm afeared I'd soon be driftin' again if we lost it." "I'll mark some other passages too," I suggested, "some almost equally beautiful." "That there one's enough," he said, sinking back faintly on his pillow. I sang him a hymn, the one that dying men should always hear; and then I had a little prayer with him. His hands were folded and his eyes were closed. When I rose from my knees he whispered something that I shall treasure while memory lasts. But it needed only a glance to see that the end was near. I opened the door to call his wife and child back to him. "Did you get him in, sir--did you get my father in?" were the first words that greeted me as little Tim's eyes leaped to mine. "Yes, my boy--yes, please God, your father will get in," though I could hardly speak for the tears that choked me, so full of elemental power was the pleading of the child. "Come, Nancy," and the old tar's voice was very tender; "come close up beside me. My foot ain't hurtin', Nancy--an' my heart ain't hurtin'--nothin's hurtin' any more. I've cast anchor." "What d'ye say, Gus?" his wife asked in a wondering voice. "I've cast anchor--where the preacher read. You'll leave the book, sir?" his voice swelling for a moment--"an' you're sure ye marked the place?" "Yes," I said, "I'll leave it--and it's marked." "Call me mate," the strange impulse prompting him again. "I marked it, mate--and I turned down the page." "Then sing me that again--that bit about the gale." "What gale, mate?" "That gale--the gale of life--that's how it went before." I knew now what he meant. Nancy's face was in her hands and little Tim's eyes were fixed lovingly on me as I began. When I came to the lines: "Hide me, oh my Saviour hide Till the storm of life is past" the dying man suddenly interrupted: "That'll do," he said, his voice barely audible, "that's the bit--that's enough--that, an' the place ye marked." We were soon all standing by his bed. The struggle was quickly over. Suddenly his face assumed an expression of peace so deep that I thought the harbour had been really won. But his eyes opened wide and both hands went feebly out; Nancy took one in hers, the other clasped by little Tim. "The anchor holds," he murmured; "Nancy, the anchor holds." A moment later his wife turned from the bed, her apron to her face, groping her way with bitter outcry towards the adjoining room. Tim followed; and through the open door I could hear the boy's shaking voice: "Don't cry, mammy; oh, mammy, don't cry so hard. Dad got in, mother--the preacher got him in." * * * * * I sat up till Gordon got home that night, for I had much to discuss with him. The precious document, with its wizard tidings of mining shares, was still before me as he entered; and I broke out with some word about what Mr. Bradwin had said. But when I looked up and saw the far-off look of peace on Gordon's face, I knew it was sprung from some other source than this. "You seem so happy, Gordon," I said; "what makes it?" He told me; but when he spoke about that last scene--he has called it the anchor scene ever since--his voice faltered so he could hardly go on. "We'll put these away to-night," I said, picking up the papers. "But what do you intend to do with--with the money, Gordon?" "I hadn't thought of it," he answered calmly. Then, after a pause; "but I think we'll enlarge the chapel. It needs it, you know--and this seems like a glorious chance to do it." I wonder if my face showed my dissent. At any rate, I took the mighty charter and restored it to the desk. "There's one thing we'll do first, Gordon," I said in a voice that implied finality, "and you won't dispute it, either." "What is it, Helen?" his words full of wonder. "We'll pay that--that debt of Harold's," I said, my face averted as I leaned over the desk. He was silent for long. "Yes, Helen," he answered quietly at length; "yes, we'll do that first--that's as holy as the other. Oh, Harold, my son, my son--I wonder where Harold is to-night," the words ringing with a nameless pain. XXVIII _"TO OLD POINT COMFORT, DEAR"_ I shall begin this chapter, perhaps the closing chapter of my artless story, with the simple statement that we were back again in St. Andrew's Church. This restoration was effected about seven months after the incident with which the last chapter had its close. How it came about, or why, I shall not pause to tell. But there was a vacancy there--in St. Andrew's, that is--and the thought of nearly the whole congregation had gradually turned towards Gordon. He had proved his worth, had fought a fight so stern and long, and had come out of it with a faith so clear and a power so manifest, that it was only natural they should covet his ministry again. He returned gladly enough, pride and gratitude mingling in his heart; and the Presbytery seemed rejoiced to welcome him within their fold again. He still retained Swan Hollow--this he insisted upon--as a kind of associate charge. They gave him an assistant, and Gordon selected a young minister fresh from Edinboro', for Scotchmen are the most clannish of all living things--and they worked the two places together, taking the morning and evening services alternately. Going back to the church was gladsome enough to me. But it was the veriest trifle compared with our return to the dear old manse, where our children had been born. What memories thronged about us when the nightfall found us once again beneath the roof of St. Andrew's Manse! A few were there to welcome us; we tried to make merry with them--but my heart ached till they should be gone. And then, hand in hand as in other days, Gordon and I went up-stairs to the little room where our treasures used to lie. Only one was there that night, our lovely Dorothy, and she lay in slumbering beauty where she used to sleep before. The other bed was beside hers as in the days of yore--I had directed that it should be so--but it was empty. Poor Gordon! All the joy, the triumph even, of his return to the scene of our former life was lost in sorrow because that bed was empty. "I'd sooner be in the poorest hovel, Helen," he said as he stood beside the unused couch, "if Harold were only back--Harold and Dorothy. Our cup of happiness would be full, wouldn't it, dear, if both were only here?" "But he'll come back some day," I tried to assure him; "that's why I have his bed all ready--everything has always come right, Gordon, even if it did come late." "If we only knew where he is," Gordon went on, not seeming to hear; "but it looks as if we'd never learn. Do you know," and the strong voice was choked with tears again, "do you know, Helen, what I wonder every night before I go to sleep?" "No, what is it, Gordon?" "I always wonder if he's cold--or hungry. But especially if he's cold. Oh, surely there's nothing so sweet to a father as tucking his children up at night--so they won't be cold. After we left here, the home we went to was so little, and so hard to heat--but don't you remember how we used to go in and tuck them up, so warm and cozy?" I tried my best to comfort him, though my heart had its own load to carry. For the dark mystery still hung about us; we had heard never a word from Harold. His debt was paid--as has been told, or implied, already--and nothing really stood in the way of his coming back except that we did not know where to find him. And every effort to discern his whereabouts had ended in utter failure. But we still kept the little tryst, still kept praying on, still hoping and trusting that the Great Father would staunch the wound which no human hand could heal. The summer passed and still no tidings came. Then I began to fear seriously for Gordon. The very splendour of his make-up was his peril; it is ever so with natures such as his. And his sorrow seemed to find expression in an ever more passionate devotion to his work, a devotion that was making him the idol of his people, even if it brought him daily nearer to collapse. Which came at last. It was one Sabbath in early November, and Gordon had preached that morning from the text, "I will arise and go unto my father." I suppose it was the tragedy whose home was his own broken heart that inspired him; in any case, he poured his soul out that day with a passion and pathos such as none could have imagined who did not feel the torrent of his power. He seemed to interpret the very heart of a lonely and imploring God. But what the effort took out of him nobody saw but me. That he was utterly exhausted was evident as he walked home after church, but I thought little of it; yet, even then, I noticed a strange incoherency in his speech, and a tremulousness about his voice, that boded ill. The collapse came during the afternoon; by eventide he was not my Gordon any more, his mind wandering far, voicing itself in strange plaint and heart-breaking appeal, the name of his absent Harold sounding through it all in pitiful refrain. I don't think the physician I called in haste that day knew anything about the skeleton closet in our home--it is wonderful how soon people forget, even those who know you best--but he located the hidden wound with wonderful acuteness. "It's an utter collapse," he said; "what might be called a severe form of nervous breakdown--it generally occurs with people of strong emotional temperament. Has your husband had any great shock?--or has he been carrying any specially heavy burden, probably for months?" I told him as much as I thought was necessary. "Just what I surmised," he said; "he's suffering from what the German physicians call 'the sad heart'--and all this derangement is due to the sympathy between the brain and the nerves. Highly-strung organism, you see--intense emotional nature, that's evident; all this disturbance is a result of tension--the strain was simply too much for him. But he'll recover all right--only it will take time, time and rest." A consultation followed soon; and the result of it all was that Gordon was to be removed to other scenes just as early as he would be able to travel. I watched by him night and day, and soon the first storm of emotion was succeeded by a deep and silent calm that I found almost harder to be borne than the other. He would sit by the hour poring over Harold's old school books, or gazing at some boyish photographs of the wanderer, or holding his cricket bat or butterfly net lovingly in his hands. Sometimes he spoke of him, but not often. When I told him we were going away for a little holiday he consented readily enough. "Where shall we go, Gordon?" I asked him, with but little hope that he would choose. "We'll go to Old Point Comfort," he answered unhesitatingly; "that's where we went before." I had to turn away. For there came before me, with a flash of memory, the days to which I knew my husband's words referred. Old Point Comfort, of dear and blessed memory!--thither had we turned our steps the night of our wedding day, going forth by the moonlit bay on our love-bright journey, the future years, with all the thorny paths that awaited us, veiled in the mist of happiness that arose from our singing hearts. Ah me! I could see again the unseamed face, the hair untouched by time, the swimming eyes of love, when my lover was still young and joyous, unworn with toil and care. "That's where we'll go," I answered; "we'll go to Old Point, Gordon." The arrangements for our journey were soon complete. I do not think, even were it possible, that I would willingly forego all the discipline--and the blessing--that our years of poverty had brought me; but now I blessed the providence that had made it possible for me to take Gordon away like this. Money was not lacking now--thanks to grandfather and that blessed mine--and I joyed over it as men rejoice in harvest or as robbers that divide the spoil. The evening before the very day we were to start, something occurred which wrung my heart as nothing, not even the loss of Harold, had ever done before. I had been compelled to leave Gordon for a little while, some detail of preparation demanding my attention. Returning to the study, our usual resort, I found it empty; and my heart chilled with fear. "Come, Helen," I suddenly heard Gordon's voice crying from without; "oh, Helen, come, come quick." There was a strange note of excitement, even of rapture, in the voice that called me. Hatless, coatless, I rushed out into the frosty night. And just across the way, in a large adjoining yard, I could see Gordon hurrying fast toward a little pond in the distance. Sometimes he looked back and called me, then hurried on again, the strange exultation still sounding in his voice. When I overtook him, he was clasping in his arms a wondering boy, a solitary skater on the frozen pond. "It's our boy, mother--oh, Helen, he's come at last. It's Harold, mother"--and I noticed in the failing light that the lad was actually about Harold's size and form. "I knew you'd come back, Harold," he cried as he held the youth to his bosom; "oh, my son, I knew you'd come--but what made you stay away so long? And are you cold, Harold?--I've been so afraid you might be cold." Then he held the startled boy out before him, his eyes lingering with pitiful intentness on the face he held upturned to his own. "You've grown some," he said fondly, "but you're my own Harold yet--come, come on home now with me and mother. Your bed's all ready for you, Harold; and Dorothy will be so glad--she's lonely, she's lonely for you, Harold." I stood transfixed and mute with grief. Then the lad made some reply, I know not what. But he broke the awful silence with a word--and Gordon's hands fell to his side like lead. He stood a moment under the trembling stars, then stooped and gazed long into the face that had filled his soul with fleeting rapture. Slowly he turned, looked a moment upward at the wintry sky, then silently moved towards me. "It isn't Harold," he said after a long pause, his eyes searching my face with unutterable yearning; "it's somebody else's boy--let us go home again," as we started back hand in hand. The clock in an adjoining steeple struck the hour as we went our way; and its knell is with me yet. The next day saw us off upon our southward journey, Dorothy and Gordon and I. The doctor had filled me with high hope; the change of air, and especially of scene, he said, were almost sure to do great things for my dear one. And the very features that alarmed me most were those by which he seemed to be reassured. The very acuteness of the malady, he said, was its most hopeful sign. I have often thought of this since and applied it to many things other than bodily infirmities; the acute is the transient, let all sufferers bear in mind, and all who think life's battle hard. We arrived at Old Point in the morning, and the balmy air and genial skies seemed to help Gordon from the first. Oh, sweet Southern air and sweeter Southern skies! how unspeakably dear to me I knew not till I thus returned after all the maze of years. It was so delicious to hear again the soft Southern accent, to catch the liquid voices of the negroes, to breathe in the fragrance of the flowers that bloom in our dear Southland even in November. I remembered--what woman would forget?--the very room that had been ours when we were there in that same hotel on our bridal tour so long ago, the dearest little room, with a tiny balcony that looked out upon the ocean. And I arranged that we should have it now--I would take no other. Not a word did I say to Gordon. But the first night we were there, after Dorothy had been safely stored away, I was sitting beside him, looking out over the moonlit harbour. The night was hushed, the ocean calm; voices of darkey stevedores floated softly up to us as they moved hither and thither with their creaking wheelbarrows on the wharf. Suddenly Gordon turned his face full on mine in the moonlight. "Helen," he began huskily, "do you know what room this is, Helen?" I yielded to his arms as he slowly drew me within their shelter; "it's where we were before--when you were my bride, my lovely, lovely bride," he said softly; "did you know it, Helen?" I nodded, smiling up to his bending face. "Yes, I knew it, darling," I said; "that's why I chose it, Gordon." I know not why it was--I suppose no one could explain it--but the dawn came to us, and the darkness rolled away, in that blessed hour. Tears came at last to Gordon; slowly at first; then in copious flow; then in a gush of feeling that wrung his whole form till it shook and sobbed like the frame of a little child. Passionately he held me, his kisses falling on my lips while he murmured such words of love as the days of courtship had never heard. "It was like this before," he cried, pointing to the radiant sea; "the moon shone on it, just like this. And we were so happy then, darling--we didn't know of the long years, with their care and sorrow, that stretched before us. And you've been so good, Helen, so true and faithful--and so brave; whatever I've done, or been, I owe to you, my darling," and through all the gust of passion his voice had a naturalness, his eye a new-found calm, that told me the long dark night was past. "We were so happy then, weren't we, dear?" he said again after a little stillness. "I'm happier now," I answered, nestling in. "Why?" he exclaimed. Then, suddenly discerning: "I know why--it's because we have the children now. Isn't that why, Helen--isn't it Dorothy and Harold?" I told him Yes; and the fancy, if it can so be called, seemed to help and comfort him. "Yes," he said musingly, "it's wonderful, isn't it, how we could have been happy then at all--when we didn't have them. But God gave them to us, didn't He, Helen?" "Yes," I murmured, my face hidden; "yes, God gave them." "And they're still His to give," he went on, a great peace in his voice such as it thrilled my soul to feel; "they're still His to give. And I know--I'm almost sure--that He'll give us Harold back again. Something tells me that it's coming near; I knew it when I looked out on the water--when the dark fled before the light that flooded it. Don't you think so, my darling?" I forget just what my answer was; but we sat long, soothing and comforting each other, drinking deep from Memory's spring. By and by Gordon fell asleep with his head resting on my arm, the moonlight still playing on the pure and lovely features as we sat by the open window. I brooded above him, thanking God for the change I could see upon the care-worn face. The tide had turned, the reaction had come at last, the strife of battle seemed spent and gone. All night long he slept the sleep of a little child; the morning found him bright and tranquil, and his first waking word was to say that he was well. For a couple of weeks, or perhaps a little longer we lingered on in our quiet retreat, every hour blissful with its evidence of returning strength. Gordon spoke often of Harold, but always now with a sweet trustfulness that was beautiful to see; I really believe God made him well by touching his spirit with the calm of a childlike faith. It was a miracle, I have never ceased to think, let the critics say what they will. And as his strength came back his heart began to turn wistfully towards his work; I really don't believe any one ever knew how much he loved St. Andrew's, and had loved it all through the years. I protested against his returning, but in vain. So it was all arranged that we were to start home on the following Monday. The evening before, Gordon preached for a clergyman whose acquaintance he had formed, the minister of a little Methodist church not far away. I was there, of course; and the sermon was one of the noblest I ever heard Gordon give. It was from the words: "Casting all your care upon Him," and I know every listener felt that the message was heaven-born. After the service was finished I was going down the aisle alone, when suddenly I heard some one pronounce my name. "Miss Helen!" said the voice, and bygone years rolled back upon me at the tone. I swung around, wildly excited. It was a voice from home. "Mr. Slocum!" I cried, so loud that everybody stood still and looked at me; "Frank Slocum!--Oh, Frank!" and I stood gasping in the aisle. It was one of the friends of my early girlhood--the same who had been my escort to the ball that far departed night when we had first discussed the Presbytery, and the attic guest it was to bring us. "I wa'n't right sure," he began, rosy as the dawn; "but some one told me the preacher was Mr. Laird--then I knew you were Mrs. Laird." "Oh, Frank!" I cried, "please call me Helen," for the music of it was refreshing; "come away--come, and go home with me and Gordon." I believe Gordon enjoyed that evening with Frank quite as much as I, which is saying a good deal. He said afterwards that I reminded him of a child running hither and thither through a flower-strewn glade, plucking whatever her hands could reach. Thus did I gather news from Frank. My questions rained in on him from every point of the compass, leaping from one subject to another like a peewee on the shore. (That's a kind of witches' dance in metaphors, I know, but they all mean the same thing anyhow.) I cross-questioned Frank about everything and everybody, while Gordon sat listening with an amused expression on his face. Particularly did I put him through his facings about my old schoolgirl friends. The first question, without exception, was as to how many children they had--till this became so chronic that Frank would begin with this himself, not waiting to be asked. It saddened me some to learn that several of them had twice as many as I. One old friend, Sadie Henderson, had exactly three times as many--but two of them came at once, so that they didn't really count. Others, moreover, had none at all, which brought Gordon and me pretty well up on the average. Frank had little to say about Uncle Henry and Aunt Agnes except that they were getting older, which I would have surmised myself. Besides, Frank had a sensitive nature; and I suppose he remembered the stormy scene when Gordon left my uncle's house. I fancied, in a woman's instinctive way, that there was something he wanted to say to me alone. And I was right enough. For when I walked with him as far as the hotel piazza, while we were gazing out over the shimmering sea Frank told me something that proved to be a word of destiny. "You all are going back by New York, you said?" he began, looking up significantly. The idiom sounded sweet--_you all_--how long since I had heard that brace of words before! "Yes," I answered; "why?" "Well, I'll tell you something interesting; I didn't care to say it before your husband, for fear it might affect his plans--I know how matters stand between him and your uncle, you know--but I think you ought to be told. Your uncle's in New York." "What?" I gasped, and I felt the colour leave my cheek; "uncle's what?--he's where?" "He's in New York," Frank repeated calmly. "I've just come from there--we were staying at the same hotel." "And Aunt Agnes?" I asked swiftly, my eyes fixed on him in the gloom. "No, Mrs. Lundy's at home--your uncle went up on some business, I believe. Mighty successful too, as far as I could judge," Frank added. I cared nothing for this. "What hotel, Frank?" I demanded eagerly; "tell me the hotel." "The St. Denis--opposite Grace Church, you know." Little more was said and I soon bade Frank farewell. Then I walked slowly back to Gordon, trying to compose myself, struggling to subject my impulse to my judgment. But it was of no use. My heart was the heart of childhood once again; all I knew was this, that a few hours would bring us to New York, that we had intended going there anyhow--and that my uncle was within reach of one who had never ceased to love him. I paused a moment before I opened the door and went in where Gordon was still sitting, gazing out on the ever fascinating scene. "Well, dear, did you pump him dry?" he asked jauntily as I entered. "Oh, Gordon," and now I was on his knee (woman's throne of power) with his face between my hands; "oh, Gordon, don't say No. Don't, Gordon--won't you do this for me, this, that I'm going to ask?" Soon I had poured out the whole story to him. I noticed his brow darken a little at first, and the quivering lip told how much I had asked of him. But Gordon was all gold through and through; he always was, my Gordon was, from that first hour when my eyes fell upon his face till now; and the love of this later day, although I suppose folks call us old, exceeds that early ardour as the noontide mocks the dawn. "Yes, my wife," he said, stroking my hair and looking with almost pitying fondness on my face; "yes, brave heart and true--you were his before you were mine. And we'll go, Helen--we'll both go." XXIX _THE HOUR OF HEALING_ The mighty city seemed hushed as I made my way along the corridor of the old hotel. But I suppose the hush was from my heart. "You'll wait here, will you, ma'am?" and the bellboy opened the door of the retired little parlour as he spoke. "I'll bring Mr. Lundy in a minute. Yes, I think he's in, ma'am; his room's on this floor. Don't you want me to take him your card?" "No," I answered; "just tell him a lady wants to see him here--an old friend of his." The boy disappeared along the shadowy hall. I had but a few minutes to wait. "This here's the door, sir," I heard the boy direct; and then I could catch the shuffling step, not yet forgotten, as a tall and bended form came slowly into the room. Keen and curious was the glance that came from the enquiring eyes, swiftly searching amid the failing light. I knew him. Only a glance I had, but it was enough to revive the memories of girlhood, to carry me back over all the waste of years, to recall with lightning speed the love and laughter of the days that were no more. My heart leaped within me as I saw the change that time had made. Uncle was an old man now, and the years had bowed the erect and stalwart frame; snowy white was the hair that had been but streaked with gray when I saw it last; more serious than of old, but flashing the same kindling light, the same lofty pride, were the kindly eyes whose glow no years could quench or dim. "Oh, uncle!" I sobbed, the storm breaking as in a moment; "oh, uncle! Uncle dear, it's me--it's your little girl--it's Helen." He had started back as I moved towards him. But my voice arrested him, that wondrous feature that changes not with changing years. A moment he stood, as though he had heard the trump of doom itself. Then, like an aspen, from head to foot he trembled--and the fear flashed through my mind that I had acted with cruel haste. But the great cry which broke from him--no articulate word--rang with such fullness of joy and strength as to dispel my every fear. A moment later I was in his arms. He bore me to the window, those arms as strong as in other days, smoothing back my hair as he leaned over and peered into my face. "Oh, God!" the words coming like a prayer; "it's Helen--she's come back. But it's been so long--and your hair's getting gray, Helen--and you look older than when you went away." I smiled, gazing up at him in sweet content. "Count the years, uncle." "The years!" he broke out with the old fiery intenseness; "count the years--haven't I counted them?--and the days, and the hours--waiting, always waiting. Oh, Helen, it's been long--it's been so long. But what could I do?--what could any gentleman have done, when I passed my word that---- If your husband----" I laid my finger on his lips; then leaned up and kissed them. And our speech flowed back, half of it almost incoherent, into the sweeter channels that laved the happy past in which we were both content to dwell. Much of it was of my mother, my sainted mother, for whom life's conflict had so long been over--and uncle's tears were mingled with my own. "There's only one thing I reproach you for now, Helen," the gentle voice began, when the dusk had deepened into dark; "one thing you should have done--and that would have made our happiness complete." "What's that, uncle?" I asked, greatly wondering. "You should have brought Gordon with you--the only difference there was, was with him, you know. Surely he doesn't think I'm one of those old vipers that carries things till death?" his voice less steady than before. "He's here," I said softly; "he's down-stairs." Uncle sprang to his feet as if the years had withheld their enfeebling hand. "Bring him up--send for him at once," he ordered, as though commanding a regiment of soldiers. "Ring the bell--where's that boy?--are the servants all asleep? These rascally dogs they've got in the North--I wouldn't give Moses or any good nigger for a bushel of them. And are your children--is the little girl with him now?" His question cut me like a knife. For I had kept back part of our life's story, the bitter part, when uncle had enquired about our children. We only brought one of them, I had said--but hoped he might see Harold later on. Which was true enough, so true, alas! "I don't need you," uncle said abruptly as a servant's head appeared at the door. "I'll go to him," he announced to me--"I'll go to Gordon. I hope I don't forget what's becoming in a Southern gentleman--besides, he's come far enough. You wait here--I'd know him in a thousand, unless he's enough sight plainer than he used to be. Always did have a hankerin' for him, I believe, like a nigger for a watermelon. You wait here, Helen," and he made his way, straightening himself with all the old-time dignity, upon his courtly errand. It was the following evening, the evening of a day that had been filled with unmixed gladness to me and Gordon. If it had not been for that one skeleton closet--which I need not name--the whole house of life would have been one big banqueting hall to his heart and mine. More than once, through that happy day, I noticed Gordon's laughter die away in silence and the brightness leave his eye as there evidently floated before him the vision of the one absent face. Indeed, he said as much to me, that all the gladness only threw into darker contrast the abiding cloud that was always in our sky. But uncle had been so lovely to us both this day; and we had just finished dinner at some resort he had discovered where Southern dishes, new and old, were to be had in all their glory. We were all seated now in uncle's room; and the dear old man was directing all his powers of persuasion upon my husband. "It's the purest play I ever saw in my life," he urged, one hand holding Gordon by the knee; "it's as good as a sermon. I've heard heaps o' sermons that didn't do me as much good as 'The Old Homestead,' I tell you." "I was never at the theatre in my life," my husband made reply, "except twice I went to see Irving--and I don't altogether believe in it." "This is far better'n Irving," uncle urged; "and you'll preach better after it." "I don't feel much in the mood for theatres," Gordon responded; "my days for merriment are past, I fear," which came with a smile that showed he didn't quite believe it. "That's the very time to go," insisted uncle; "that's when you want to get the cobwebs blown out of you--and this'll do it all right." "I'll leave it to Helen," Gordon suddenly exclaimed; "if she wants to go, I'll give in." Five minutes before, I can frankly say, I had hoped Gordon would carry his point. The theatre, that particular night, had no charm for me. Yet now that Gordon had left the matter in my hands, some mysterious impulse settled my resolve at once. Nobody need tell me that women, true women, live far from the unseen. For my resolve was taken on the instant, so suddenly and confidently that it amazed myself. "We'll go," I said quietly. "The play sounds good; I'm sure I've heard of it before--and I want to see it, Gordon." Three-quarters of an hour later we were seated five or six rows from the footlights, watching the haymakers gathered about the moss-grown bucket that gives its charm to the opening scene of "The Old Homestead." But the play had not proceeded far before I began to regret bitterly that we had not stayed away. When it dawned on me that the plot centred about an absent boy, a son for whom a father sought in vain, I knew that Gordon's Gethsemane was deepened by every word and act. This particular kind of anguish was realistic enough to us both, without any representation so vivid. Yet we had to sit there, uncle alternately laughing and weeping at our side, and witness the rehearsal of all we knew so well. I was sitting beside Gordon; and I covertly got a hold of his hand, pressing it silently to let him know my heart was aching too. I found myself, almost before I knew it, leaning forward in an agony of interest and suspense as the great emotions of a parent's love and loneliness were set forth in terrible reality. It was as if Gordon's heart and mine were both laid bare that night; and I found myself wondering if all this meant to any others in that crowded throng what it meant to us. Uncle was enraptured at our fixity; he knew not the source of our deadly interest. "Didn't I tell you?" he whispered to Gordon as the tension came near its height; "ever see anything like that before? Isn't that true to life, eh?" Gordon never spoke, his eyes looking far beyond, as fixed as though set on death itself. "Isn't that true to life?" uncle repeated, accustomed to being answered. "Yes, oh, God, yes--yes, it's true," I heard poor Gordon falter as he bowed forward and covered his face with his hands. Uncle, dumb with wonder now, uttered never a word. I prayed for strength. The tide ebbed and flowed, as is the way in plays, laughter and tears following each other in quick succession. A wave of mirth--about the pillar box incident, I think, when the old man imagines the collector is robbing the mails--had just overswept the audience when Gordon whispered to me that he could stand it no longer. "Don't go yet, Gordon," I whispered; "I think he's going to find him," and I saw his face white with the pallor of the dead. He made no reply; but, clutching his hat, he rose to go, swaying unsteadily where he stood. I began reaching for my wraps and was just rising to follow. He paused to wait for me, holding out his hand, I think--of this I am not sure. But just before we turned to go, my eyes were cast in one farewell glance upon the stage. My head reeled; my heart stood still; my lips clave together, parched and dry. "Oh, Gordon," I cried, bleating, "look, Gordon, look," swimming towards him even as I pointed at the stage. His towering figure turned where he stood; and his burning eyes, aglow with the passion that was rending him, leaped to where I still pointed with outstretched hand. Then I straightened myself too, as one might gather his soul for the Judgment Day, and joined my gaze with his. The eyes of all in the house were upon us, I suppose--but I shall never know. We stood together, oblivious to all except the destiny of weal or woe that waited us, looking, both looking, as the eye of the Eternal itself might look. We could not--we dared not--be sure, lest we might court the bitterness of death. The light was not bright enough, or true enough--for us to stake our souls. We feared exceedingly; and for each other; wherefore neither spoke any word. The scene was the great Broadway scene, where the anguished father finds his son at last. And the tattered youth upon whom that father--that acting father--gazed, on him our eyes were set in dreadful silence, in questioning that involved our souls. We could not--we dared not--know; but suddenly the old man on the stage--oh! the perjured wastery of simulated love like that--broke forth with a wild outcry of love and rapture as he leaped towards the soiled and wasted prodigal before him. And then--and then--mingling with the father's chant, there came from the bowed and broken wanderer one single note; a little cry, a muffled plaint of penitence and hope. It was such a little sound, subdued and faltering as became a broken heart, and it was almost lost in the father's louder strain--but I heard it, and my soul laid hold of God. Only a stifled cry--but it was the same I had heard when I first came out of the valley and my new-born baby boy lay helpless at my breast; the same I had heard a thousand times when he was hurt or wronged and toddled in to me with the boyish story of his grief; the same I had heard when he came home that night and told me of his sin; the same I had heard when he bent above his sleeping sister and kissed her a long farewell. "Oh, Gordon," I said, fainting, "it's Harold--it's our Harold!" He knew it too. And he left me where I was, half conscious in uncle's arms. I see it all again, dismantled though I was, as in a dream. The curtain dropped just as uncle's arm received me, as Gordon glided towards the narrow half-hidden passageway leading to the stage. Slowly it fell, right down close to the floor, shutting out the last fragment of the vision that had flooded our hearts with heaven. Ah, me! no one there--not even uncle--knew that for us life's curtain had really risen, the play, the wonderful play of life, only just begun. The orchestra had softly started some subdued and sympathetic air; I knew not, nor yet do know, what strain it was--but it fell on my reviving heart with the sweetness of such music as angels make--and my eyes flew after Gordon as he was swallowed up of the shadowy passageway that led back to that mysterious region where actors are men and women, players now no more. I think somebody, some hireling who knew not what he did, tried to turn Gordon from his course--as well have tried to stop Niagara. I fancy I caught a glimpse of him as he swept the intruder by--his eye was flashing, fearful in its purpose of love and power, as though he were asserting his claim to life itself. He never stopped--this was described to me afterwards--till he stood beside the pair of actors, the old man and the young, already repairing to the dressing-room behind. And the old man's face, so they told me, was a study to behold as he was swiftly brushed aside, dispossessed, the unreality swallowed up of Life as Gordon took the tattered form into the arms that long emptiness had clothed with almost savage strength. "Oh, my son! Oh, Harold, my son, my son!" was Gordon's low cry that all about could hear; for the stillness of the grave was on every heart. "Come, come, we'll go to mother," came a moment later as he turned and tried to lead Harold gently away. I do not know all the son said to the father. But Gordon told me after how Harold clung to him as though he were hiding for his life, speaking no word, but burying his face as though none must see the shame--or the holy gladness; and in a minute or two, though I know not how long it was, some one in authority said that the play must go on, that the audience would be impatient and indignant. "Then come, my son," said Gordon; "get your clothes on, Harold, and we'll go--your mother, your mother knows it's you," his face radiant, I ween, as it turned upon his boy. But Harold wouldn't--the play must be finished, he said, and he must take his part. Harold's face was resolute, his father said, his words full of determination, when he avowed his purpose to stay till his work was done. And really--it was one of the most amusing sides of my husband's character I ever saw--when Gordon told me this his face fairly shone with pride. "The lad wouldn't forsake his duty," he said, as proudly as if Harold had been a foreign missionary instead of a play-actor; it was too funny to hear Gordon, with the views I knew him to hold about the theatre, belauding Harold because he wouldn't leave his post even at such a time as that. So his father came back and resumed his place beside me. No word escaped his lips, but his eyes spoke the language of Everlasting Life as they were fixed a moment on my own. Uncle gazed at him--I suppose everybody did--but he knew that question or answer had no place in an hour such as this. And the curtain rolled up again--ah, me! how different now--and my hand was once more in Gordon's; but now I could feel the strain of gratitude and gladness that his happy heart was chanting. Our eyes were fixed on Harold only; I heard his voice amid that closing revelry--and my wild heart leaped in my bosom as though my son were born to me anew. We were home at last. In the hotel, I mean, in Gordon's room and mine--for uncle had gone to rest. Only a little tiny bit of a room it was--but it was home; for we had Harold--and Dorothy was asleep in an adjoining room. Gordon went out for a little. He said he wanted to enquire about trains--but I knew why he left us alone together. Gordon was an eloquent minister--but I was Harold's mother. And there are queens and priestesses, as well as kings and priests, unto God. Which Gordon knew. It was while he and I were still alone with each other that Harold broke out with bitter plaint of penitence, so full of gusty sorrow, of self-reproach, of broken vows and purposes. I shall not, must not, write it down. It was all holy to me, and shall ever be; for the breath of spring was in it, and I knew then that God had brought him back, all back, the broken heart sick of the sin and shame that he now hated and deplored. My son was alive again, I knew in that moment; lost had he been indeed--but God had kept aglow his memory of the Home-light that never had gone out. "I couldn't tell this to anybody else," the faltering voice said as his face was hidden on my bosom--"not even to father--what I'm going to tell you now. But I'm going to----" "Tell it to God, my son," and I kissed the quivering lips. Gordon came back just after that. I think he must have known our souls had come close to each other and to Him. For a great peace was on his face--and yet it shone with a kind of human happiness that I thought was truly spiritual. He simply didn't seem to think there was anything that needed reproach, or explanation, or forgiveness. He talked with Harold about his old friends, his old games, his old pursuits; and about what we would do, and see, before we returned to Hertford. Then pretty soon he said it was time we were all in bed, and, in the most natural way, that we would have worship before we separated. So he took the Bible. But, before he opened it, he started one of the old familiar psalms, just as we had always done at home. "We'll sing the one hundred and twenty-sixth," he said, with something of grandeur in his manner that reminded me of Harold's grandfather; for that is one of the sublimities of the Scottish race. I have heard both Gordon and his father declare that something could be found in the psalms to suit every occasion, no matter what. But I wondered what could express the emotion of such a time as this. "We'll sing the one hundred and twenty-sixth," Gordon repeated, already pitching the key to the "grave sweet melody" of a tune that bore the happy name of St. Andrew's. And we sat in silence as he sang "When Zion's bondage God turned back As men that dreamed were we; Then filled with laughter was our mouth Our tongue with melody." Harold's head was bowed; my eyes were fixed on Gordon. For my heart was busy with the thrilling memory of that long distant night when I first had heard the power of that earnest voice, first learned the grandeur of these mighty songs. Gordon seemed unconscious of our presence. His eyes were lifted up, beyond the things of time: he was like one lost among the hills, transported by their grandeur. Something more than human ecstasy throbbed through his voice when he sang the verse: "As streams of water in the south Our bondage, Lord, recall; Who sow in tears, a reaping time Of joy enjoy they shall." Then he read some selection from the Scriptures. It was very short; and he read it slowly, his eyes never lifted from the page. When he prayed, he talked with God--all I can remember was the way he said "Our Father." It was long after midnight when he and I went to our rest--we sat talking for hours and hours, and Harold was asleep in the room next to ours. Just before we put out our light Gordon suddenly turned to me, and his face was as youthful as when I saw it first. "Helen, let us go and tuck Harold in--so he won't be cold." I smiled, for I couldn't but remember Harold's age, but I threw a wrapper about me and Gordon and I went in together. We tucked him in, one on either side; I don't know whether Harold knew or not, but he played the part of childhood once again--when we kissed him good-night he turned a little in his sleep and smiled. XXX _EDEN IN THE ATTIC_ I sometimes wonder what the other guests thought of our behaviour at breakfast the next morning. Uncle was simply ridiculously happy, even boisterously so. And he wouldn't hear to any dissent from the project that possessed his mind. We must all go South with him, and that was the end of it. He and Aunt Agnes had never had a difference in all their married life, he said, but the trouble would begin right there if he went back without us! And he settled the whole thing an hour later by suddenly appearing, after a very mysterious absence, and flaunting in our faces the tickets for the entire party. They were taken via the Old Dominion Line; and the little sea voyage would be the very thing for all of us,--and Harold had assured him that a release from his company could be easily arranged. So Gordon left it to me again--and I left it to Harold, and Harold elected to see his mother's old Virginia home. Dorothy lent loud approval. Thirty-six hours later we were in the dear old Southern town, driving from the old familiar station along the old familiar street. My heart was full; its burden was partly sadness, altogether song. "Stop here," Gordon suddenly said to the driver as we turned on to a street neither of us was likely to forget. "Come, Helen," as he held out his hand to help me from my seat. I knew. It was under that very elm, just opposite the church, I had first come face to face with love--even if I did have a pitcher in my hand, _going for the cream_. "Drive on," said Gordon; "we'll join you later," and the carriage rolled away. We followed, slowly; sometimes looking up into the deep shade of the bending elms, sometimes into each other's faces; with much of speech we walked--of silence, sweeter silence, more. Soon a turn in the road brought us in full view of uncle's house. There it stood, ivy-clad, the same stately, frowning structure, looking forth at us as calmly as though we had gone away but yesterday. There was the magnolia tree beside the steps of stone, not now in bloom but still spreading forth in umbrageous beauty. And there, just beyond, flowing still, its copious stream unfailing, rolled the shining river; rolling on, as time rolls on, unhasting, unresting, bearing all its burdens in silence to the sea. The years had passed and fled, yet the selfsame wavelets could be seen--oh, parable of Time! And the bridge was there; repaired and strengthened some, yet the same bridge it was on which I had seen the love-lorn pair seek the shelter of the dark. And I felt a shudder thrill my frame as I descried the very pier that had been the scene of the tragedy but for which Gordon had never made his noble protest; but for which, our long years of exile had never been. I looked away. Aunt Agnes was at the door as we climbed the steps of stone. She led me in and closed it tight before she told me, with love's speech of silentness, all the joy of welcome that was in her heart. She was thinking, and I was thinking, of the absent one--oh! why these ever-absent ones?--whose face was now withdrawn forever. I roamed the hall; I wandered about the broad porch; I drank my fill of the library, dearest of them all--my mother's face met me at every turn. And I wondered, with passionate hope that it might be so, if she knew that her child had returned to the scene of girlhood days once more; if she knew how laden with the spoils of time I came, rich in the harvest that love and sorrow give, anointed by the holy hand of suffering, by life's fleeting vanities beguiled no more. "Show Harold through the house, Helen," uncle said to me when supper was over and the first tumult had subsided; "let him see the old place from cellar to attic. It will be his some day, I reckon," and his tone and glance left no doubt as to what he meant. I did as he directed, partly. All but the attic. Not yet must any enter there but me. I soon restored Harold to the merry circle--and then my steps turned, almost reverently, towards that upper room. It did not take me long, what I had to do, for love's task is soon accomplished. And I knew it would not be in vain--I knew that Gordon would not fail me. Yet my heart beat fast as I turned at the attic door and looked back once more before I went down-stairs. Everything was perfect--and the gentle breeze was ruffling the curtain of the tiny window. They were all in bed when Gordon and I betook ourselves to the room set apart for us. It was just above the parlour, the largest and most imposing apartment in all that roomy house. A large mahogany bed was planted, immovable, in the centre; hand-carving, richly wrought, made the ceiling and mantel things of beauty; oil-paintings hung upon the lofty wall; soft draperies bedecked the windows. We closed the door and Gordon looked about the splendid room. I began unpacking a valise that lay upon the floor. Suddenly he came over and stood beside me. One hand touched my shoulder and I looked up. "We're not going to sleep here," he said quietly. "Why?" I asked. "Where?" although I knew, and my bounding heart bespoke my joy. "You know--come," with which he took up the valise and led the way aloft. The roof was low and I think Gordon really bowed his head a little as we passed within that attic door. The same discarded articles, finding their limbo here, stood about the walls. But the fire was crackling on the hearth; the coverings on the bed were snowy white; the silver toilet-set on the old bureau was the same I had laid there so stealthily years before. And on the little table in the corner was a bowl of the choicest roses, their fragrance floating through the room. I looked at Gordon. Perhaps I was just a little disappointed that he did not speak. His eyes rested on the fire, turned to the roses, lingering long. "That's the same fire," he said slowly. "Oh, Gordon," and I laughed; "how can you say that?" "The very same," he persisted; "it never has gone out. And the roses too; they're the very same--they've never faded." "I thought you'd want to come here," I said, stupidly enough; but I knew not what else to say. "You know, you said--long ago, when you first came here--you said you always loved an attic." "Yes," he said simply, his eyes fixed on me; "yes, I do." "Why?" I asked, though I knew it was such a foolish question. He stood a long time silent in the firelight, his eyes never moving from my face. "Because it's nearest heaven," he answered low; "come, Helen"--and his arms were open wide. THE END * * * * * By Robert E. Knowles _The Attic Guest_ _The Web of Time_ _The Dawn at Shanty Bay_ Decorated and Illustrated by Griselda M. McClure. _The Undertow_ A Tale of Both Sides of the Sea _St. Cuthbert's_ A Parish Romance 
12669	----	MARRIAGE A Novel by Susan Ferrier "Life consists not of a series of illustrious actions; the greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities--in the performance of daily duties--in the removal of small inconveniences--in the procurement of petty pleasures; and we are well or ill at ease, as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small and frequent interruption."--JOHNSON. Edinburgh Edition IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME I. LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen 1881 _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh._ PREFATORY NOTE. MISS FERRIER'S Novels have, since their first appearance, suffered curtailment in all subsequent Editions. The present Edition is the first reprint from the original Editions, and contains the whole of the omissions in other reprints. It is, therefore, the only perfect Edition of these Novels. Works which have received the praise of Sir Walter Scott and Sir James Mackintosh, and been thought worthy of discussion in the _Noctes Ambrosianae,_ require no further introduction to the reader. The almost exceptional position which they occupy as satirizing the foibles rather than the more serious faults of human nature, and the caustic character of that satire, mingled with such bright wit and genial humour, give Miss Ferrier a place to herself in English fiction; and it is felt that a time has come to recognize this by producing her works in a form which fits them for the library, and in a type which enables them to be read with enjoyment. G.B. NEW BURLINGTON STREET, _December_ _1881._ MISS FERRIER'S NOVELS. [1] In November 1854 there died in Edinburgh one who might, with truth, be called almost the last, if not the last, of that literary galaxy that adorned Edinburgh society in the days of Scott, Jeffrey, Wilson, and others. Distinguished by the friendship and confidence of Sir Walter Scott, the name of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier is one that has become famous from her three clever, satirical, and most amusing novels of _Marriage, The Inheritance,_ and _Destiny._ They exhibit, besides, a keen sense of the ludicrous almost unequalled. She may be said to have done for Scotland what Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth have respectively done for England and Ireland--left portraits, painted in undying colours, of men and women that will live for ever in the hearts and minds of her readers. In the present redundant age of novel writers and novel-readers, and when one would suppose the supply must far exceed the demand from the amount of puerile and often at the same time prurient literature in the department of fiction that daily flows from the press, it is refreshing to turn to the vigorous and, above all, healthy moral tone of this lady's works. To the present generation they are as if they had never been, and to the question, "Did you ever read _Marriage?"_ it is not uncommon in these times to get such an answer as, "No, never. Who wrote it?" "Miss Ferrier." "I never heard of her or her novels." It is with the view, therefore, of enlightening such benighted ones that I pen the following pages. [1] Reprinted from the _Temple Bar_ Magazine for November 1878, Vol I. Miss Ferrier was the fourth and youngest daughter of James Ferrier, Writer to the Signet, and was born at Edinburgh, 7th of September 1782. Her father was bred to that profession in the office of a distant relative, Mr. Archibald Campbell of Succoth (great grandfather of the present Archbishop of Canterbury).To his valuable and extensive business, which included the management of all the Argyll estates, he ultimately succeeded. He was admitted as a member of the Society of Writers to the Signet in the year 1770. He was also appointed a Principal Clerk of Session through the influence (most strenuously exerted) of his friend and, patron, John, fifth Duke of Argyll, [1] and was a colleague in that office with Scott. He also numbered among his friends Henry Mackenzie, the "Man of Feeling," Dr. Hugh Blair, and last, though not least, Burns the poet. His father, John Ferrier, had been in the same office till his marriage with Grizzel, only daughter and heiress of Sir Walter Sandilands Hamilton, Bart., of Westport, county Linlithgow. [2] John Ferrier was the last Laird of Kirklands, county Renfrew, subsequently sold to Lord Blantyre. Mr. James Ferrier was the third son of his parents, and was born 1744. [3] Miss Ferrier was in the habit of frequently visiting at Inveraray Castle in company with her father, and while there had ample opportunity afforded her of studying fashionable life in all its varied and capricious moods, and which have been preserved to posterity in her admirable delineations of character. Her reason for becoming an authoress is from her own pen, as follows, and is entitled a preface to _The Inheritance_:-- [1] To this nobleman, in his later years, Mr. Ferrier devoted much of his time, both at Inveraray and Roseneath. He died in 1806. His Duchess was the lovely Elizabeth Gunning. Mr. Ferrier died at 25 George Street, Edinburgh, January 1829, aged eighty-six. Sir Walter Scott attended his funeral. After his death Miss Ferrier removed to a smaller house, in Nelson Street. [2] Sir Walter's father, Walter Sandilands of Hilderston, a cadet of the Torphichen family (his father was commonly styled Tutor of Calder), assumed the name of Hamilton on his marriage with the heiress of Westport. [3] His brothers were: William, who assumed the name of Hamilton on succeeding his grandfather in the Westport estate. He was in the navy, and at the capture of Quebec, where he assisted the sailors to drag the cannon up the heights of Abraham; m. Miss Johnstone of Straiton, co. Linlithgow; died 1814. Walter; m. Miss Wallace of Cairnhill, co. Ayr, father of the late Colonel Ferrier Hamilton of Cairnhill and Westport. Ilay, major-general in the army; m. first Miss Macqueen, niece of Lord Braxfield, second, Mrs. Cutlar of Orroland, co. Kirkcudbright. He was Governor of Dumbarton Castle, and died there 1824. An introduction had been requested for the first of these three works, _Marriage;_ but while the author was considering what could be said for an already thrice-told tale, it had passed through the press with such rapidity as to outstrip all consideration. Indeed, what can be said for any of them amounts to so little, it is scarcely worth saying at all. The first was begun at the urgent desire of a friend, and with the promise of assistance, which, however, failed long before the end of the first volume; the work was then thrown aside, and resumed some years after. [1] It afforded occupation and amusement for idle and solitary hours, and was published in the belief that the author's name never would be guessed at, or the work heard of beyond a very limited sphere. _'Ce n'est que le premier pas qu'il coute'_ in novel-writing, as in carrying one's head in their hand; _The Inheritance_ and _Destiny _followed as matters of course. It has been so often and confidently asserted that almost all the characters are individual portraits, that the author has little hope of being believed when she asserts the contrary. That some of them were sketched from life is not denied; but the circumstances in which they are placed, their birth, habits, language, and a thousand minute particulars, differ so widely from the originals as ought to refute the charge of personality. With regard to the introduction of religious sentiment into works of fiction, there exists a difference of opinion, which, in the absence of any authoritative command, leaves each free to act according to their own feelings and opinions. Viewing this life merely as the prelude to another state of existence, it does seem strange that the future should ever be_ wholly_ excluded from any representation of it, even in its motley occurrences, scarcely less motley, perhaps, than the human mind itself. The author can only wish it had been her province to have raised plants of nobler growth in the wide field of Christian literature; but as such has not been her high calling, she hopes her 'small herbs of grace' may, without offence, be allowed to put forth their blossoms amongst the briars, weeds, and wild flowers of life's common path. [1] It underwent several changes before its final publication in 1818. "Edinburgh, _April_ 1840." The friend on whose assistance she relied was Miss Clavering, daughter of Lady Augusta Clavering, and niece of the late Duke of Argyll. Between this lady and our author an early friendship existed, which was severed only by death. It commenced in 1797, when Miss Ferrier lost her mother, [1] and when she went with her father to Inveraray Castle she was then fifteen, and her friend only eight. Miss Clavering became the wife of Mr. Miles Fletcher, advocate, but was better known in later years as Mrs. Christison. She inherited all the natural elegance and beauty of face and form for which her mother, and aunt Lady Charlotte Campbell, were so distinguished, and died at Edinburgh, 1869, at an advanced age. While concocting the story of her first novel, Miss Ferrier writes to her friend in a lively and sprightly vein:-- [1] Mrs. Ferrier _(nee_ Coutts) was the daughter of a farmer at Gourdon, near Montrose. She was very amiable, and possessed of great personal beauty, as is attested by her portrait by Sir George Chalmers, Bart., in a fancy dress, and painted 1765. At the time of her marriage (1767) she resided at the Abbey of Holyrood Palace with an aunt, the Honourable Mrs. Maitland, widow of a younger son of Lord Lauderdale's, who had been left in poor circumstances, and had charge of the apartments there belonging to the Argyll family. After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Ferrier occupied a flat in Lady Stair's Close (Old Town of Edinburgh), and which had just been vacated by Sir James Pulteney and his wife Lady Bath. Ten children were the fruit of this union (six sons and four daughters), viz.-- 1. John, W.S., of 12 York Place, Edinburgh, d. 1851; m. Miss Wilson, sister of Professor Wilson, and father of the late Professor Ferrier of St. Andrews, N. B. 2. Archibald Campbell, W.S., d. 1814; m. Miss Garden. 3. Lorn, d. 1801, at Demerara. 4. James, d. in India, 1804. } } Both Officers 5. William Hamilton, d. 1804, in India. } 6. Walter, W.S., d. 1856; m. Miss Gordon. 7. Jane (Mrs. Graham), d. 1846. 8. Janet (Mrs. Connell), d. 1848. 9. Helen (Mrs. Kinloch), d. 1866, at Torquay, aged 90. 10. Susan Edmonstone. "Your proposals flatter and delight me, but how in the name of Postage are we to transport our brains to and fro? I suppose we'd be pawning our flannel petticoats to bring about our heroine's marriage, and lying on straw to give her Christian burial. Part of your plot I like much, some not quite so well--for example, it wants a _moral_--your principal characters are good and interesting, and they are tormented and persecuted and punished from no fault, of their own, and for no possible purpose. Now I don't think, like all penny-book manufacturers, that 'tis absolutely necessary that the good boys and girls should be rewarded and the naughty ones punished. Yet I think, where there is much tribulation, 'tis fitter it should be the _consequence_ rather than the _cause_ of misconduct or frailty. You'll say that rule is absurd, inasmuch as it is not observed in human life: that I allow, but we know the inflictions of Providence are for wise purposes, therefore our reason willingly submits to them. But as the only good purpose of a book is to inculcate morality and convey some lesson of instruction as well as delight, I do not see that what is called a _good moral_ can be dispensed with in a work of fiction. Another fault is your making your hero attempt suicide, which is greatly too shocking, and destroys all the interest his misfortunes would otherwise excite--that, however, could be easily altered, and in other respects I think your plot has great merit. You'll perhaps be displeased at the freedom of my remarks; but in the first place freedom is absolutely necessary in the cause in which we are about to embark, and it must be understood to be one if not the chief article of our creed. In the second (though it should have been the first), know that I always say what I think, or say nothing. Now as to my own deeds--I shall make no apologies (since they must be banished from our code of laws) for sending you a hasty and imperfect sketch of what I think might be wrought up to a tolerable form. I do not recollect ever to have seen the sudden transition of a high-bred English beauty, [1] who thinks she can sacrifice all for love, to an uncomfortable solitary Highland dwelling [2] among tall red-haired sisters and grim-faced aunts. Don't you think this would make a good opening of the piece? Suppose each of us try our hands on it; the moral to be deduced from that is to warn all young ladies against runaway matches, and the character and fate of the two sisters would be _unexceptionable._ I expect it will be the first book every wise matron will put into the hand of her daughter, and even the reviewers will relax of their severity in favour of the morality of this little work. Enchanting sight! already do I behold myself arrayed in an old mouldy covering, thumbed and creased and filled with dogs'-ears. I hear the enchanting sound of some sentimental miss, the shrill pipe of some antiquated spinster, or the hoarse grumbling of some incensed dowager as they severally inquire for me at the circulating library, and are assured by the master that 'tis in such demand that though he has thirteen copies they are insufficient to answer the calls upon it, but that each of them may depend upon having the very first that comes in!!! Child, child, you had need be sensible of the value of my correspondence. At this moment I'm squandering mines of wealth upon you when I might be drawing treasures from the bags of time! But I shall not repine if you'll only repay me in kind--speedy and long is all that I require; for all things else I shall take my chance. Though I have been so impertinent to your book, I nevertheless hope and expect you'll send it to me. Combie [1] and his daughter (or Mare, as you call her) are coming to town about this time, as I'm informed, and you may easily contrive to catch them (wild as they are) and send it by them, for there's no judging what a picture will be like from a mere pen-and-ink outline--if that won't do, is there not a coach or a carrier? One thing let me entreat of you: if we engage in this undertaking, let it be kept a profound secret from every human being. If I was suspected of being accessory to such foul deeds, my brothers and sisters would murder me, and my father bury me alive--and I have always observed that if a secret ever goes beyond those immediately concerned in its concealment it very soon ceases to be a secret." [1] Lady Juliana. [2] Glenfern. Dunderawe Castle, on Loch Fyne, was in Miss Ferrier's mind when she drew this sketch of a "solitary Highland dwelling." Again she writes to her friend and copartner in her literary work:-- "I am boiling to hear from you, but I've taken a remorse of conscience about Lady Maclaughlan and her friends: if I was ever to be detected, or even suspected, I would have nothing for it but to drown myself. I mean, therefore, to let her alone till I hear from you, as I think we might compound some other kind of character for her that might do as well and not be so dangerous. As to the misses, if ever it was to be published they must be altered or I must fly my native land." [1] Campbell of Combie. Miss Clavering writes in answer:-- "ARDENCAPLE CASTLE, _Sunday Morning.-_ "First of all I must tell you that I approve in the most signal manner of Lady Maclaughlan. The sort of character was totally unexpected by me, and I was really transported with her. Do I know the person who is the original? The dress was vastly like Mrs. Damer, [1] and the manners like Lady Frederick. [2] Tell me if you did not mean a touch at her. I love poor Sir Sampson vastly, though it is impossible, in the presence of his lady, to have eyes or ears for anyone else. Now you must not think of altering her, and it must all go forth in the world; neither must the misses upon any account be changed. I have a way now of at least offering it to publication by which you never can be discovered. I will tell the person that I wrote it (indeed, quothà, cries Miss Ferrier, and no great favour; see how she loves to plume herself with borrowed fame!). Well, however, my way is quite sure, and the person would never think of speaking of it again, so never let the idea of detection come across your brain while you are writing to damp your ardour. [1] Daughter of General Seymour Conway, and a distinguished sculptor. She was niece of the fifth Duke of Argyll. [2] Lady Frederick Campbell is believed to have suggested the character of Lady Maclaughlan to Miss Ferrier, and there is little doubt she was the original. She was the widow of Earl Ferrel's, of Tyburn notoriety, and was burnt to death at Coombe Bank, _Kent,_ in 1807. "Positively neither Sir Sampson's lady nor the foolish virgins must be displaced." Again she writes from Inveraray Castle (of date December 1810), eight years before the work was published:-- "And now, my dear Susannah, I must tell you of the success of your first-born. I read it to Lady Charlotte [1] in the carriage when she and I came together from Ardencaple, Bessie [2] having gone with mamma. If you will believe, I never yet in my existence saw Lady C. laugh so much as she did at that from beginning to end; and, seriously, I was two or three times afraid that she would fall into a fit. Her very words were, 'I assure you I think it without the least exception the cleverest thing that ever was written, and in wit far surpassing Fielding.' Then she said as to our other books they would all sink to nothingness before yours, that they were not fit to be mentioned in the same day, and that she felt quite discouraged from writing when she thought of yours. The whole conversation of the aunties [3] made her screech with laughing; and, in short, I can neither record nor describe all that she said; far from exaggerating it, I don't say half enough, but I only wish you had seen the effect it produced. I am sure you will be the first author of the age." [1] Lady Charlotte Campbell, her aunt, better known latterly as Lady Charlotte Bury, and celebrated for her beauty and accomplishments. [2] Miss Mure of Caldwell. [3] These oddities were the three Misses Edmonstone, of the Duntreath family, and old family friends, after one of whom Miss Ferrier was named. In another letter she writes:-- "I had an immense packet from Lady C. the other day, which I confess rather disappointed me, for I expected volumes of new compositions. On opening it, what should it prove but your book returned? so I shall keep it safe till I see you. She was profuse in its praises, and so was mamma, who said she was particularly taken with Lady Juliana's brother, [1] he was so like the duke. Lady C. said she had read it all deliberately and critically, and pronounced it _capital,_ with a dash under it. Lady C. begs that in your enumeration of Lady Olivia's peccadilloes you will omit waltzes." [1] Lord Courtland. That dance had just been introduced in London (1811), and the season of that year Miss Clavering spent with her aunt, Lady Charlotte, in the metropolis, in a round of gaiety, going to parties at Kensington Palace (where the Princess of Wales [1] then lived), Devonshire House, and the witty Duchess of Gordon's, one of the "Empresses of Fashion," as Walpole calls her. _�propos_ of waltzes, she writes to Miss Ferrier:-- [1] Lady Charlotte was one of the Princess's ladies-in-waiting. "They are all of a sudden become so much the rage here that people meet in the morning at one another's houses to learn them. And they are getting on very much. Lady Charlotte and I get great honour for the accomplishment, and I have improved a few scholars. Clanronald [1] is grown so detestably fine. He waltzes with me because he thinks he thereby shows off his figure, but as to speaking to me or Lady Charlotte he thinks himself much above that. He is in much request at present because of his dancing; next to him Lord Hartington is, I think, the best dancer; he is, besides, very fond of it, and is much above being fine; I never met with a more natural, boyish creature." [1] Macdonald of Clanronald, a great beau in the fashionable London world. To return to the novel. The only portion from Miss Clavering's pen is the history of Mrs. Douglas in the first volume, and are, as she herself remarked, "the only few pages that will be skipped." She further adds:-- "Make haste and print it then, lest one of the Miss Edmonstones should die, as then I should think you would scarce venture for fear of being haunted. * * * * * "I shall hasten to burn your last letter, as you mention something of looking out for a father for your _bantling,_ so I don't think it would be decent to let anybody get a sight of such a letter!" At last, in 1818, the novel was published by the late Mr. Blackwood, and drew forth loud plaudits from the wondering public, as to who the author of so original a book could be. "In London it is much admired, and generally attributed to Walter Scott," so writes a friend to Miss Ferrier; and she replies in her humorous style: "Whosever it is, I have met with nothing that has interested me since." Sir Walter must have been flattered at his being supposed its father, for he says, in the conclusion of the _Tales of my Landlord_:-- "There remains behind not only a large harvest, but labourers capable of gathering it in; more than one writer has of late displayed talents of this description, and if the present author, himself a phantom, may be permitted to distinguish a brother, or perhaps a sister, shadow, he would mention in particular the author of the very lively work entitled _Marriage_." Mr. Blackwood, whose opinion is of some value, thought very highly of _Marriage,_ and he writes to Miss Ferrier (1817):-- "Mr. B. will not allow himself to think for one moment that there can be any uncertainty as to the work being completed. Not to mention his own deep disappointment, Mr. B. would almost consider it a crime if a work possessing so much interest and useful instruction were not given to the world. The author is the only critic of whom Mr. B. is afraid, and after what he has said, he anxiously hopes that this censor of the press will very speedily affix the _imprimatur."_ In allusion to Sir Walter's eulogium on the novel above quoted, Mr. Blackwood writes to the author:-- "I have the pleasure of enclosing you this concluding sentence of the new _Tales of my Landlord,_ which are to be published to-morrow. After this call, surely you will be no longer silent. If the great magician does not conjure you I shall give up all hopes." But Miss Ferrier seems to have been proof against the great magician even. _Marriage_ became deservedly popular, and was translated into French, as appears from the annexed:-- "We perceive by the French papers that a translation of Miss Ferrier's clever novel _Marriage_ has been very successful in France."-_New_ _Times,_ 6 Oct. '25. For _Marriage_ she received the sum of £150. Her second venture was more successful in a pecuniary sense. Space, however, prohibits me from dwelling any longer on _Marriage,_ so we come next to _The Inheritance._ This novel appeared six years after, in 1824, and is a work of very great merit. To her sister (Mrs. Kinloch, in London) Miss Ferrier writes:-- "John (her brother) has now completed a bargain with Mr. Blackwood, by which I am to have £1000 for a novel now in hand, but which is not nearly finished, and possibly never may be. Nevertheless he is desirous of announcing it in his magazine, and therefore I wish to prepare you for the _shock._ I can say nothing more than I have already said on the subject of _vigilence,_ if not of secrecy. I never will avow myself, and nothing can hurt and offend me so much as any of my friends doing it for me; this is not _faron de_ _parler,_ but my real and unalterable feeling; I could not bear the fuss of authorism!" Secrecy as to her authorship seems to have been the great desire of her heart, and much of _The Inheritance_ was written in privacy at Morningside House, old Mr. Ferrier's summer retreat near Edinburgh, and she says, "This house is so small, it is very ill-calculated for concealment." It was not till 1851 that she publicly avowed herself by authorising her name to be prefixed to a revised and corrected edition of her works. [1] Sir Walter Scott was delighted with this second novel, a proof of which was conveyed to Miss Ferrier by Mr. Blackwood:-- [1] Published by the late Mr. Richard Bentley, to whom she sold her copyrights in 1841. A previous edition was published by him in 1841. "On Wednesday I dined in company with Sir Walter Scott, and he spoke of the work in the very highest terms. I do not always set the highest value on the baronet's favourable opinion of a book, because he has so much kindness of feeling towards everyone, but in this case he spoke so much _con amore,_ and entered so completely, and at such a length, to me, into the spirit of the book and of the characters, that showed me at once the impression it had made on him. Everyone I have seen who has seen the book gives the some praise of it. Two or three days ago I had a note from a friend, which I copy: 'I have nearly finished a volume of _The Inheritance._ It is unquestionably the best novel of the class of the present day, in so far as I can yet judge. Lord Rossville, Adam Ramsay, Bell Black and the Major, Miss Pratt and Anthony Whyte are capital, and a fine contrast to each other. It is, I think, a more elaborate work than _Marriage_, better told, with greater variety, and displaying improved powers. I congratulate you, and have no doubt the book will make a prodigious _sough'."_ [1] [1] Sensation. Mr. Blackwood adds: "I do not know a better judge nor a more frank and honest one than the writer of this note." Again he writes:-- "On Saturday I lent in confidence to a very clever friend, on whose discretion I can rely, the two volumes of _The Inheritance._ This morning I got them back with the following note: 'My dear Sir--I am truly delighted with _The Inheritance._ I do not find as yet any one character quite equal to Dr. Redgill, [1] except, perhaps, the good-natured, old-tumbled (or troubled, I can't make out which) maiden, [2] but as a novel it is a hundred miles above _Marriage._ It reminds me of Miss Austen's very best things in every page. And if the third volume be like these, no fear of success triumphant.'" [1] In _Marriage_ the gourmet physician to Lord Courtland, and "the living portrait of hundreds, though never before hit off so well." [2] Miss Becky Duguid. Mr. Blackwood again says:-- "You have only to go on as you are going to sustain the character Sir Walter gave me of _Marriage,_ that you had the rare talent of making your conclusion even better than your commencement, for, said this worthy and veracious person, 'Mr. Blackwood, if ever I were to write a novel, I would like to write the two first volumes, and leave anybody to write the third that liked.'" In the following note, Lister, author of _Granby,_ also expresses his admiration in graceful terms, and with a copy of his own novel for Miss Ferrier's acceptance:-- _T. H. Lister to Miss Ferrier._ "17 Heriot Row, _Feb._ 3, 1836. "My DEAR MADAM--I should feel that, in requesting your acceptance of the book which accompanies this note, I should be presuming too much upon the very short time that I have had the honour of being known to you, if Mrs. Lister had not told me that you had kindly spoken of it in approving terms. I hope, therefore, I may be allowed, without presumption, to present to you a book which you have thus raised in the opinion of its writer, and the composition of which is associated in my mind with the recollection of one of the greatest pleasure I have derived from novel-reading, for which I am indebted to you. I believe the only novel I read, or at any rate can now remember to have read, during the whole time I was writing _Granby_, was your _Inheritance_. --Believe me, my dear Madam, your very faithful, T. H. LISTER." From Mrs. Lister (afterwards Lady Theresa Cornewall Lewis) Miss Ferrier also received the following complimentary note:-- _Mrs. Lister to Miss Ferrier._ "_Thursday Night._ 17 HERIOT Row. "My DEAR MISS FERRIER--I cannot leave Edinburgh without a grateful acknowledgment of your very kind and flattering gift. Mr. Lister called upon you in hopes of being able to wish you good-bye, and to tell you in person how much we were pleased with the proof you have given us that we are not unworthy of enjoying and appreciating your delightful works--pray accept our very best thanks, and I hope as _an authoress_ you will not feel offended if I say that they will now have an added charm in our eyes from the regard which our personal acquaintance with the writer has engendered. I knew that, to those who do not mix much in society, the acquaintance with strangers is often irksome: we therefore feel the more obliged to you for having allowed us the pleasure of knowing you, and I hope that if we return in the course of the year that we may find you less suffering in health, but as kindly disposed to receive our visits as you have hitherto been. We feel very grateful for all the kindness we have met with in Edinburgh, and amongst the pleasant reminiscences of the last five months we must always rank high the having received from you as a token of regard so acceptable a gift.--Believe me (or, indeed, I ought to say us), my dear Miss Ferrier, yours most sincerely, M. THERESA LISTER." Lord Murray, the late Scotch Judge, writes to a mutual friend of his and Miss Ferrier's (Miss Walker of Dalry):-- "I received a copy of _Inheritance_ in the name of the author, and as I do not know who the _author_ is, and I suspect that you know more than I do, trust you will find some channel through which you will convey my thanks. I read _Inheritance_ with very great pleasure. The characters are very well conceived, and delineated with great success. I may add I have heard it highly commended by much better judges. Jeffrey speaks very favourably. He is particularly pleased with the Nabob (Major) and spouse, the letter from the Lakes, and the _P.S._ to it. Lord Gwydyr, who lives entirely in fashionable circles, said to me much in its praise, in which I concurred. "From many other symptoms I have no doubt of its complete success." Miss Hannah Mackenzie, daughter of the "Man of Feeling," writes to her friend Miss Ferrier:-- "Walter Scott dined here the other day, and both he and papa joined heartily in their admiration of uncle Adam, and their wish to know who he is. Sir W. also admires Miss Becky Duguid, and said he thought her quite a new character. I should like very much to see you, and talk all over at length, but fear to invite you to my own bower for fear of suspicion; but I trust you will soon come boldly, and face my whole family. I do not think you need fear them much; of course, like other people, they have their thoughts, but by no means speak with certainty, and Margaret has this minute assured us that she does _not_ think it Miss Ferrier's." Uncle Adam, with "his seventy thousand pounds," and as "cross as two sticks," in some degree resembled old Mr. Ferrier, who was somewhat brusque and testy in his manner, and alarmed many people who were otherwise unacquainted with the true genuine worth and honesty of his character. Miss Becky is a poor old maid, saddled with commissions from all her friends of a most miscellaneous description. "She was expected to attend all _accouchements,_ christenings, deaths, chestings, and burials, but she was seldom asked to a marriage, and never to any party of pleasure." She is an admirable pendant to the "Pratt," who is inseparable, however, from her invisible nephew, Mr. Anthony Whyte. Miss Pratt is a sort of female Paul Pry, always turning up at the most unexpected moment at Lord Rossville's, and finally puts the finishing stroke to the pompous old peer by driving up to his castle door in the hearse of Mr. M'Vitie, the Radical distiller, being unable to procure any other mode of conveyance during a heavy snow-storm, and assured every one that she fancied she was the first person who thought herself in luck to have got into a hearse, but considered herself still luckier in having got well out of one. Caroline, Duchess of Argyll, [1] expresses her appreciation of _The Inheritance_ to the author, for whom she entertained a warm friendship:-- [1] Daughter of Lord Jersey, and wife of the first Marquis of Anglesea, whom she divorced, when Lord Paget, in 1810: m. the same year George, sixth Duke of Argyll. "UPPER BROOK STREET, _Monday Evening._ "What can I say sufficiently to express my thanks either to you, my dear Miss Ferrier, or to the _author_ of _The Inheritance,_ whoever she may be, for the most perfect edition of that _most perfect_ book that was ever written! and now that I may be allowed to have my _suspicion,_ I shall read it again with double pleasure. It was so kind of you to remember your promise! When I received your kind letter and books this morning I was quite delighted with my beautiful present, and to find I was not forgotten by one of my best friends." _The Inheritance_--a fact not generally known--was dramatised and produced at Covent Garden, but had a very short run, and was an utter failure, as might have been expected. Mrs. Gore was requested to adapt it for the stage by the chief comic actors of the day, and she writes to Miss Ferrier on the subject:-- "Since the management of Covent Garden Theatre fell into the hands of Laporte, he has favoured me with a commission to write a comedy for him, and the subject proposed by him is again the French novel of _L'Héretière,_ which turns out to be a literal translation of _The Inheritance._ He is quite bent upon having Miss Pratt on the stage. I have not chosen to give Monsieur Laporte any positive answer on the subject without previously applying to yourself to know whether you have any intention or inclination to apply to the stage those admirable talents which are so greatly appreciated in London." Mrs. Gore, meanwhile, had been forestalled in her attempt, as a play on the subject had been laid before the reader to Covent Garden, and she writes again to Miss Ferrier:-- "I have since learned with regret that the play is the production of a certain Mr. Fitzball, the distinguished author of the _Flying Dutchman,_ an sixty other successful melodramas, represented with great applause at the Surrey, Coburg, City, and Pavilion Theatres, etc.; in short, a writer of a very low class. The play of _The Inheritance_ has been accepted at Covent Garden; but, from my knowledge of the general engagements of the theatre, I should say that it has not the slightest chance of approaching to representation. For your sake it cannot be better than in the black-box of the manager's room, which secures it at least from performance at the Coburg Theatre." We must let the curtain, so to speak, drop on _The Inheritance,_ and pass on to _Destiny._ This novel also appeared six years after, in 1831, and was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott. And he acknowledges the compliment as follows:-- _Sir Walter Scott to Miss Ferrier._ "My DEAR MISS FERRIER--Ann returned to-day, and part of her Edinburgh news informs me that you meditated honouring your present literary offspring with my name, so I do not let the sun set without saying how much I shall feel myself obliged and honoured by such a compliment. I will not stand bandying compliments on my want of merit, but can swallow so great a compliment as if I really deserved it, and indeed, as whatever I do not owe entirely to your goodness I may safely set down to your friendship, I shall scarce be more flattered one way or the other. I hope you will make good some hopes, which make Ann very proud, of visiting Abbotsford about April next. Nothing can give the proprietor more pleasure, for the birds, which are a prodigious chorus, are making of their nests and singing in blithe chorus. 'Pray come, and do not make this a flattering dream.' I know a little the value of my future godchild, since I had a peep at some of the sheets when I was in town during the great snowstorm, which, out of compassion for an author closed up within her gates, may prove an apology for his breach of confidence. So far I must say that what I have seen has had the greatest effect in making me curious for the rest. "Believe me, dear Miss Ferrier, with the greatest respect, your most sincere, humble servant, "WALTER SCOTT. "Abbortsford, _Tuesday Evening_." In the next note he acknowledges a copy of _Destiny_, sent him by the author:-- _Sir Walter Scott to Miss Ferrier._ DEAR MISS FERRIER--If I had a spark of gratitude in me I ought to have written you well-nigh a month ago, to thank you in no common fashion for _Destiny,_ which by the few, and at the same time the probability, of its incidents, your writings are those of the first person of genius who has disarmed the little pedantry of the Court of Cupid and of gods and men, and allowed youths and maidens to propose other alliances than those an early choice had pointed out to them. I have not time to tell you all the consequences of my revolutionary doctrine. All these we will talk over when you come here, which I am rejoiced to hear is likely to be on Saturday next, when Mr. Cadell [1] will be happy to be your beau in the Blucher, [2] and we will take care are met with at the toll. Pray do not make this a flattering dream. You are of the initiated, so will not be _de trop_ with Cadell.--I am, always, with the greatest respect and regard, your faithful and affectionate servant, WALTER SCOTT. [1] Destiny was published by Cadell through Sir Walter's intervention, and by it the author realised £1700. [2] Name of the Stage-coach. In 1832, the year after the birth of his godchild _Destiny,_ poor Sir Walter began to show signs of that general break-up of mind and body so speedily followed by his death. Of this sad state Miss Ferrier writes to her sister, Mrs. Kinloch (in London):-- "Alas! the night cometh when no man can work, as is the case with that mighty genius which seems now completely quenched. Well might he be styled 'a bright and benignant luminary,' for while all will deplore the loss of that bright intellect which has so long charmed a world, many will still more deeply lament the warm and steady friend, whose kind and genuine influence was ever freely diffused on all whom it could benefit. I trust, however, he may be spared yet awhile; it might be salutary to himself to con over the lessons of a death-bed, and it might be edifying to others to have his record added to the many that have gone before him, that all below is vanity. But till we _feel_ that we shall never believe it! I _ought_ to feel it more than most people, as I sit in my dark and solitary chamber, shut out, as it seems, from all the 'pride of life'; but, alas! Worldly things make their way into the darkest and most solitary recesses, for their dwelling is in the heart, and from thence God only can expel them." Her first visit to the author of _Waverley_ was in the autumn of 1811, when she accompanied her father to Ashestiel. The invitation came from Scott to Mr. Ferrier:-- _Walter Scott, Esq., to James Ferrier, Esq._ "My DEAR SIR--We are delighted to see that your feet are free and disposed to turn themselves our way--a pleasure which we cannot consent to put off till we have a house at Abbotsford, which is but a distant prospect. We are quite disengaged and alone, saving the company of Mr. Terry the comedian, who is assisting me in planning my cottage, having been bred an architect under Wyat. He reads to us after coffee in the evening, which is very pleasant. This letter will reach you to-morrow, so probably _Thursday_ may be a convenient day of march, when we shall expect you to dinner about five o'clock, unless the weather should be very stormy, in which case we should be sorry Miss Ferrier should risk getting cold. To-day is clearing up after a week's dismal weather, which may entitle us to expect some pleasant October days, not the worst of our climate. The road is by Middleton and Bankhouse; we are ten miles from the last stage, and thirty from Edinburgh, hilly road. There is a ford beneath Ashestiel generally very passable, but we will have the boat in readiness in case Miss Ferrier prefers it, or the water should be full. Mrs. Scott joins in kind respects to Miss Ferrier, and I ever am, dear Sir,--yours truly obliged, W. SCOTT. "Ashestiel, _October_ 7." It was in 1811 that Scott was appointed a clerk of session, and to Mr. Ferrier he was in some measure indebted for that post. Her last visit to Abbotsford is touchingly alluded to by Lockhart in his _Life of Scott:--_ "To assist them in amusing him in the hours which he spent out of his study, and especially that he might make these hours more frequent, his daughter had invited his friend the authoress of _Marriage_ to come out to Abbotsford, and her coming was serviceable. For she knew and loved him well, and she had seen enough of affliction akin to his to be well skilled in dealing with it. She could not be an hour in his company without observing what filled his children with more sorrow than all the rest of the case. He would begin a story as gaily as ever, and go on, in spite of the hesitation in his speech, to tell it with highly picturesque effect--but before he reached the point, it would seem as if some internal spring had given way. He paused and gazed round him with the blank anxiety of look that a blind man has when he has dropped his staff. Unthinking friends sometimes gave him the catch-word abruptly. I noticed the delicacy of Miss Ferrier on such occasions. Her sight was bad, and she took care not to use her glasses when he was speaking, and she affected also to be troubled with deafness, and would say, 'Well, I am getting as dull as a post, I have not heard a word since you said so and so,' being sure to mention a circumstance behind that at which he had really halted. He then took up the thread with his habitual smile of courtesy, as if forgetting his case entirely in the consideration of the lady's infirmity." A very interesting account of her recollections of visits to Ashestiel and Abbotsford appeared in the February (1874) number of this magazine: it is short, but gives a sad and pathetic picture of the great man and his little grandson as they sat side by side at table. The following letter on _Destiny_ is from Mrs. Fletcher, [1] a distinguished citizen of Edinburgh at the commencement of this century, and a leader of the Whig society there. For that reason it is worthy of insertion here. Her son married Miss Clavering, as before mentioned:-- [1] Her _Memoir,_ by her daughter, Lady Richardson, was published not long since. _Mrs. Fletcher to Miss Ferrier._ "TADCASTER, _April_ 16, 1831. "My DEAR MISS FERRIER--I should not have been so long in thanking you for your kind present, had I not wished to subject _Destiny_ to a severer test than that chosen by the French dramatist. _His_ old woman probably partook of the vivacity of her nation, but my old aunt, as Mary will tell you, is sick and often very sorrowful, and yet _Destiny_ has made her laugh heartily, and cheated her of many wearisome hours of lamentation. My grandson, Archibald Taylor, too, forsook football and cricket for your fascinating book, and told me 'he could sit up all night to see what had become of Ronald.' Mr. Ribley and 'Kitty, my dear,' hit his comic fancy particularly. My two most bookish neighbours, one an Oxford divine, and the other a Cambridge student, declare that, Glenroy and M'Dow are exquisite originals.' My own favourite, 'Molly Macaulay,' preserves her good-humour to the last, though I thought you rather unmerciful in shutting her up so long in Johnnie's nursery. The fashionable heartlessness of Lady Elizabeth and her daughter is coloured to the life, and the refreshment of returning to nature, truth, affection, and happiness at Inch Orran is admirably managed. Mary tells me you have returned from Fife with fresh materials for future volumes. Go on, dear Miss Ferrier, you are accountable for the talents entrusted to you. Go on to detect selfishness in all its various forms and foldings; to put pride and vanity to shame; to prove that vulgarity belongs more to character than condition, and that all who make the world their standard are essentially vulgar and low-minded, however noble their exterior or refined their manners may be, and that true dignity and elevation belong only to those to whom Milton's lines may be applied: "'Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light, And hope that reaps not shame.'" The following letter from Joanna Baillie gives a very just and truthful criticism on _Destiny:--_ _Miss Joanna Baillie to Miss Ferrier._ "Hampstead, _May_ 1831. "My DEAR MADAM--I received your very kind present of your last work about three weeks ago, and am very grateful for the pleasure I have had in reading it, and for being thus remembered by you. I thank you also for the pleasure and amusement which my sisters and some other friends have drawn from it. The first volume struck me as extremely clever, the description of the different characters, their dialogues, and the writer's own remarks, excellent. There is a spur both with the writer and the reader on the opening of a work which naturally gives the beginning of a story many advantages, but I must confess that your characters never forget their outset, but are well supported to the very end. Your Molly Macaulay [1] is a delightful creature, and the footing she is on with Glenroy very naturally represented, to say nothing of the rising of her character at the end, when the weight of contempt is removed from her, which is very good and true to nature. Your minister, M'Dow, [2] hateful as he is, is very amusing, and a true representative of a few of the Scotch clergy, and with different language and manners of a great many of the English clergy--worldly, mean men, who boldly make their way into every great and wealthy family for the sake of preferment and good cheer. Your Lady Elizabeth, too, with all her selfishness and excess of absurdity, is true to herself throughout, and makes a very characteristic ending of it in her third marriage. But why should I tease you by going through the different characters? Suffice it to say that I thank you very heartily, and congratulate you on again having added a work of so much merit to our stock of national novels. Perhaps before this you have received a very short publication of mine on a very serious subject. I desired my bookseller to send a copy to you, enclosed along with one to your friend, Miss Mackenzie. How far you will agree with my opinions regarding it I cannot say, but of one thing I am sure, that you will judge with candour and charity. I should have sent one to Mr. Alison had I not thought it presumptuous in me to send such a work to any clergyman, and, with only one exception (a Presbyterian clergyman), I have abstained from doing so. I was very much obliged to Mrs. Mackenzie, Lord M.'s lady, for the letter she was so good as to write me in her sister-in-Iaw's stead. If you should meet her soon, may I beg that you will have the goodness to thank her in my name. I was very sorry indeed to learn from her that Miss Mackenzie had been so ill, and was then so weak, and that the favourable account I had received of your eyes had been too favourable. With all good wishes to you, in which my sister begs to join me,--I remain, my dear Madam, gratefully and sincerely yours, "J. BAILLIE." [1] The humble and devoted dependant of the proud chief Glenroy, and governess to his children. She was drawn from life, for Mrs. Kinloch writes to her sister, Miss Ferrier: "Molly Macaulay is charming; her niece, Miss Cumming, is an old acquaintance of mine, and told me the character was drawn to the life. The old lady is still alive, in her ninety-first year, at Inveraray, and Miss C., who is a very clever, pleasing person, seems delighted with the truth and spirit of the whole character of her aunty." [2] Lord Jeffrey considered M'Dow "an entire and perfect chrysolite, not to be meddled with." Granville Penn, the descendant of the founder of Pennsylvania, records the impression _Destiny_ made on him, and which he communicates to Miss Erskine of Cardross, who copied and sent it to the author, as follows:-- "My DEAR MADAM--I return your book, but I an unable to return you adequate thanks for being the cause of my reading it. I have done this (and all with me) with delight, from the interest and admiration at the whole composition, the novelty and excitement of its plan, the exquisite and thrilling manner of its disclosure, the absence of all flat and heavy intervals, the conception and support of the characters, the sound and salutary moral that pervades it all--these make me love and honour its valuable authoress, and lament that I am not in the number of her acquaintance. We all _doat_ upon Miss Macaulay, and grieve that she is not living at Richmond or Petersham; and Mr. M'Dow has supplied me with a new name for our little young dog, whom I have called, in memorial of his little nephew (or niece), Little M'Fee. With all the thanks, however, that I can offer, etc. GRANVILLE PENN. "Devonshire Cottage, 1_st May_ 1831." The next tribute of admiration bestowed on _Destiny_ was from Sir James Mackintosh:-- _Sir James Mackintosh to Miss Ferrier._ "LONDON, _10th June_ 1831. "DEAR MISS FERRIER--Let me tell you a fact, which I hope you will excuse me from mentioning, as some subsidiary proof of your power. On the day of the dissolution of Parliament, and in the critical hours between twelve and three, I was employed in reading part of the second volume of _Destiny._ My mind was so completely occupied on your colony in Argyleshire, that I did not throw away a thought on kings or parliaments, and was not moved by the general curiosity to stir abroad till I had finished your volume. It would have been nothing if you had so agitated a youth of genius and susceptibility, prone to literary enthusiasm, but such a victory over an old hack is perhaps worthy of your notice.--I am, my dear Miss Ferrier, your friend and admirer, "J. MACKINTOSH." Professor Wilson, "Christopher North," and his uncle, Mr. Robert Sym, W.S., "Timothy Tickler," discuss the merits of _Destiny_ in the far-famed _Noctes_: "_Tickler.--' _I would also except Miss Susan Ferrier. Her novels, no doubt, have many defects, their plots are poor, their episodes disproportionate, and the characters too often caricatures; but they are all thick-set with such specimens of sagacity, such happy traits of nature, such flashes of genuine satire, such easy humour, sterling good sense, and, above all--God only knows where she picked it up--mature and perfect knowledge of the world, that I think we may safely anticipate for them a different fate from what awaits even the cleverest of juvenile novels.' "_North.-' _They are the works of a very clever woman, sir, and they have one feature of true and melancholy interest quite peculiar to themselves. It is in them alone that the ultimate breaking-down and debasement of the Highland character has been depicted. Sir Walter Scott had fixed the enamel of genius over the last fitful gleams of their half-savage chivalry, but a humbler and sadder scene--the age of lucre-banished clans--of chieftains dwindled into imitation squires, and of chiefs content to barter the recollections of a thousand years for a few gaudy seasons of Almacks and Crockfords, the euthanasia of kilted aldermen and steamboat pibrochs was reserved for Miss Ferrier.' "_Tickler.--'_ She in general fails almost as egregiously as Hook does in the pathetic [1] but in her last piece there is one scene of this description worthy of either Sterne or Goldsmith. I mean where the young man [2] supposed to have been lost at sea, revisits, after a lapse of time, the precincts of his own home, watching unseen in the twilight the occupations and bearings of the different members of the family, and resolving, under the influence of a most generous feeling, to keep the secret of his preservation.' [1] This is not true, as there are many pathetic passages in _Destiny_, particularly between Edith, the heroine, and her faithless lover, Sir Reginald. [2] Ronald Malcolm. "_North.-' _I remember it well, and you might bestow the same kind of praise on the whole character of Molly Macaulay. It is a picture of humble, kind-hearted, thorough-going devotion and long-suffering, indefatigable gentleness, of which, perhaps, no sinner of our gender could have adequately filled up the outline. Miss Ferrier appears habitually in the light of a hard satirist, but there is always a fund of romance at the bottom of every true woman's heart who has tried to stifle and suppress that element more carefully and pertinaciously, and yet who has drawn, in spite of herself, more genuine tears than the authoress of _Simple Susan.'"_ The story of _Destiny,_ like its predecessors, is laid in Miss Ferrier's favourite Highlands, and it contains several picturesque and vivid descriptions of scenery there,--Inveraray, and its surroundings generally, forming the model for her graphic pen. Much of this novel was written at Stirling Castle, when she was there on a visit to her sister, Mrs. Graham, [1] whose husband, General Graham, was governor of that garrison. After the publication of this last work, and the offer of a thousand pounds from a London publisher for anything from her pen, [2] she entirely ceased from her literary labours, being content to rest upon the solid and enduring reputation her three "bantlings" (as she called her novels) had won for her. The following fragment, however, was found among her papers, and is the portrait of another old maid, and might serve as a companion to Miss Pratt. As it is amusing, and in the writer's satirical style, I lay it before my readers:-- [1] Celebrated by Burns, the poet, for her beauty. She inspired his muse when turning the corner of George Street, Edinburgh. The lines addressed to her are to be found in his _Poems._ She was also a highly-gifted artist. The illustrations in the work called the _Stirling Heads_ are from her pencil. It was published by Blackwood, 1817. [2] She says (1837) "I made two attempts to write _something_, but could not please myself, and would not publish _anything_." Miss Betty Landon was a single lady of small fortune, few personal charms, and a most jaundiced imagination. There was no event, not even the most fortunate, from which Miss Betty could not extract evil; everything, even the milk of human kindness, with her turned to gall and vinegar. Thus, if any of her friends were married, she sighed over the miseries of the wedded state; if they were single, she bewailed their solitary, useless condition; if they were parents, she pitied them for having children; if they had no children, she pitied them for being childless. But one of her own letters will do greater justice to the turn of her mind than the most elaborate description. "'My DEAR Miss------ I ought to have written to you long before now, but I have suffered so much from the constant changes of the weather that the wonder is I am able to hold a pen. During the whole summer the heat was really quite intolerable, not a drop of rain or a breath of wind, the cattle dying for absolute want, the vegetables dear and scarce, and as for fruit--that, you know, in this town, is at all times scarce and bad, and particularly when there is the greatest occasion for it. In the autumn we never had two days alike, either wind or rain, or frost, or something or another; and as for our winter--you know what that is--either a constant splash of rain, or a frost like to take the skin off you. For these six weeks I may say I have had a constant running at my head, with a return of my old complaint; but as for doctors, I see no good they do, except to load people's stomachs and pick their pockets: everything now is imposition; I really think the very pills are not what they were thirty years ago. How people with families continue to live is a mystery to me; and people still going on marrying, in the face of national debt, taxes, a new war, a starving population, ruined commerce, and no outlet for young men in any quarter--God only knows what is to be the end of all this! In spite of all this, these thoughtless young creatures, the Truemans, have thought proper to make out their marriage; he is just five-and-twenty, and she is not yet nineteen! so you may judge what a prudent, well-managed establishment it will be. He is in a good enough business at present, but in these times who can tell what's to happen? He may be wallowing in wealth to-day, and bankrupt to-morrow. His sister's marriage with Fairplay is now quite off, and her prospects for life, poor thing, completely wrecked! Her looks are entirely gone, and her spirits quite broken. She is not like the same creature, and, to be sure, to a girl who had set her heart upon being married, it must be a great and severe disappointment, for this was her only chance, unless she tries India, and the expense of the outfit must be a complete bar to that. You would hear that poor Lady Oldhouse has had a son--it seemed a desirable thing, situated as they are with an entailed property; and yet when I look around me, and see the way that sons go on, the dissipation and extravagance, and the heartbreak they are to their parents, I think a son anything but a blessing. No word of anything of that kind to the poor Richardsons; with all their riches, they are without anyone to come after them. The Prowleys are up in the air at having got what they call "a fine appointment" for their fourth son, but for my part I'm really sick of hearing of boys going to India, for after all what do they do there? I never hear of their sending home anything but black children, and when they come home themselves, what do they bring but yellow faces, worn-out constitutions, and livers like cocked-hats, crawling about from one watering-place to another, till they are picked up by some light-hearted, fortune-hunting miss, who does not care twopence for them.'" A beautiful and strong feature in Miss Ferrier's character was her intense devotion to her father, and when he died the loss to her was irreparable. She also was much attached to a very handsome brother, James; he was colonel of the 94th regiment, or Scots Brigade, and died in India in 1804, at the early age of twenty-seven. He had been at the siege of Seringapatam in 1799, and was much distinguished by the notice of Napoleon at Paris in February 1803, whence he writes to his sister Susan:-- "I think I wrote you I had been introduced to the Chief Consul. I was on Sunday last presented to his lady, whom I do not at all admire. The great man spoke to me then again, which is a very unusual thing, and I am told by the French I must be in his good graces; however, I myself rather think it was my good fortune only: at all events it has given me much pleasure, for it would have only been doing the thing half if he had not spoken to me. I do not think any of the pictures like him much, although most of them have some resemblance; they give him a frown in general, which he certainly has not--so far from it, that when he speaks he has one of the finest expressions possible." Here, unfortunately, this interesting description comes abruptly to an end, the rest of the letter being lost. On account of failing health and increased bodily languor, Miss Ferrier latterly lived a very retired life, seeing few but very intimate friends, and, as she said, "We are more recluse than ever, as our little circle is yearly contracting, and my eyes are more and more averse to light than ever." Again she writes:-- "I can say nothing good of myself, my cough is very severe, and will probably continue so, at least as long as this weather lasts; but I have many comforts, for which I am thankful; amongst those I must reckon silence and darkness, which are my best companions at present." For years she had suffered from her eyes, being nearly quite blind of one. [1] In 1830 she went to London to consult an oculist, but unfortunately derived little benefit. While there, she visited Isleworth, in order to see a villa belonging to Lord Cassillis, and which subsequently figured in _Destiny_ as "Woodlands," Lady Waldegrave's rural retreat near London. A valued friend [2] who saw much of her remarked:-- [1] Lady Morgan, a fellow-sufferer from her eyes, was most anxious she should consult Mr. Alexander, the eminent oculist, as he entirely cured her after four years' expectation of total blindness. [2] Lady Richardson. "The wonderful vivacity she maintained in the midst of darkness and pain for so many years, the humour, wit, and honesty of her character, as well as the Christian submission with which she bore her great privation and general discomfort when not suffering acute pain, made everyone who knew her desirous to alleviate the tediousness of her days, and I used to read a great deal to her at one time, and I never left her darkened chamber without feeling that I had gained something better than the book we might be reading, from her quick perception of its faults and its beauties, and her unmerciful remarks on all that was mean or unworthy in conduct or expression." But perhaps the most faithful picture of her is conveyed in this brief sentence from Scott's diary, who describes her "As a gifted personage, having, besides her great talents, conversation the least _exigeante_ of any author-female, at least, whom I have ever seen among the long list I have encountered; simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee, and all this without the least affectation of the blue-stocking." From the natural modesty of her character she had a great dislike to her biography, or memorial of her in any shape, being written, for she destroyed all letters that might have been used for such a purpose, publicity of any kind being most distasteful to her, evidence of which is very clearly shown in the first part of this narrative. The chief secret of her success as a novelist (setting aside her great genius) was the great care and time she bestowed on the formation of each novel--an interval of six years occurring between each, the result being delineations of character that are unique. Unfortunately there is little to relate regarding her childhood, that most interesting period of human existence in the lives of (and which is generally distinguished by some uncommon traits of character) people of genius--save that she had for a school companion and playfellow the late Lord Brougham, the distinguished statesman; she was remarkable also for her power of mimicry. An amusing anecdote of this rather dangerous gift is the following: Her brothers and sisters returned home from a ball, very hungry, and entered her room, where they supposed she lay asleep, and, while discussing the events of the evening and the repast they had procured by stealth (unknown to their father), they were suddenly put to flight by the sounds and voice, as they thought, of their dreaded parent ascending the stairs, and in their confusion and exit from the room overturned chairs and tables, much to the amusement of little Susan, who, no doubt, enjoyed the fright and commotion she had caused, and who mimicked under the cover of the bedclothes the accents of her redoubtable parent--a fit punishment, as she thought, for their ruthless invasion of her chamber, and their not offering her a share of their supper. An old Miss Peggy Campbell (sister to Sir Islay Campbell, President of the Court of Session) was also taken off by her, and so like that her father actually came into the room, where she was amusing her hearers, thinking that Miss Campbell was really present. When she died a blank was left in her native city that has not been since filled, the modern Athens having somewhat deteriorated in the wit, learning, and refinement that so distinguished her in the days that are gone. RECOLLECTIONS OF VISITS TO ASHESTIEL AND ABBOTSFORD, [1] [1] Reprinted from the _Temple Bar_ Magazine for February 1874. By SUSAN EDMONSTONE FERRIER, _Author of 'Marriage,' 'Inheritance,' and 'Destiny.'_ I HAVE never kept either note-book or journal, and as my memory is not a retentive one I have allowed much to escape which I should now vainly attempt to recall. Some things must, however, have made a vivid and durable impression on my mind, as fragments remain, after the lapse of years, far more distinct than occurrences of much more recent date; such, amongst others, are my recollections of my visits to Ashestiel and Abbotsford. The first took place in the autumn of 1811, in consequence of repeated and pressing invitations from Mr. Scott to my father, in which I was included. Nothing could be kinder than our welcome, or more gratifying than the attentions we received during our stay; but the weather was too broken and stormy to admit of our enjoying any of the pleasant excursions our more weather-proof host had intended for us. My father and I could therefore only take short drives with Mrs. Scott, while the bard (about one o'clock:) mounted his pony, and accompanied by Mr. Terry the comedian, his own son Walter, and our young relative George Kinloch, sallied forth for a long morning's ride in spite of wind and rain. In the evening Mr. Terry commonly read some scenes from a play, to which Mr. Scott listened with delight, though every word must have been quite familiar to him, as he occasionally took a part in the dialogue impromptu; at other times he recited old and awesome ballads from memory, the very names of which I have forgot. The night preceding our departure had blown a perfect hurricane; we were to leave immediately after breakfast, and while the carriage was preparing Mr. Scott stepped to a writing-table and wrote a few hurried lines in the course of a very few minutes; these he put into my hand as he led me to the carriage; they were in allusion to the storm, coupled with a friendly adieu, and are to be found in my autograph album. "The mountain winds are up, and proud O'er heath and hill careering loud; The groaning forest to its power Yields all that formed our summer bower. The summons wakes the anxious swain, Whose tardy shocks still load the plain, And bids the sleepless merchant weep, Whose richer hazard loads the deep. For me the blast, or low or high, Blows nought of wealth or poverty; It can but whirl in whimsies vain The windmill of a restless brain, And bid me tell in slipshod verse What honest prose might best rehearse; How much we forest-dwellers grieve Our valued friends our cot should leave, Unseen each beauty that we boast, The little wonders of our coast, That still the pile of Melrose gray, For you must rise in minstrel's lay, And Yarrow's birk immortal long For yon but bloom in rural song. Yet Hope, who still in present sorrow Whispers the promise of to-morrow, Tells us of future days to come, When you shall glad our rustic home; When this wild whirlwind shall be still, And summer sleep on glen and hill, And Tweed, unvexed by storm, shall guide In silvery maze his stately tide, Doubling in mirror every rank Of oak and alder on his bank; And our kind guests such welcome prove As most we wish to those we love." [1] _Ashestiel, _October 13, 1811. [1] Lines written by Walter Scott while the carriage was waiting to convey my father and me from Ashestiel.--S. E. F. The invitation had been often repeated, but my dear father's increasing infirmities made him averse to leave home, and when, in compliance with Sir Walter's urgent request, I visited Abbotsford in the autumn of 1829, I went alone. I was met at the outer gate by Sir Walter, who welcomed me in the kindest manner and most flattering terms; indeed, nothing could surpass the courtesy of his address on such occasions. On our way to the house he stopped and called his two little grandchildren, Walter and Charlotte Lockhart, who were chasing each other like butterflies among the flowers--the boy was quite a Cupid, though not an _alfresco_ one; for he wore a Tartan cloak, whose sundry extras fluttered in the breeze as he ran to obey the summons, and gave occasion to his grandfather to present him to me as "Major Waddell;" [1] the pretty little fairy-looking girl he next introduced as "Whipperstowrie," and then (aware of my love for fairy lore) he related the tale, in his own inimitable manner, as he walked slowly and stopped frequently in our approach to the house. As soon as I could look round I was struck with the singular and picturesque appearance of the mansion and its _environs._ Yet I must own there was more of _strangeness_ than of admiration in my feelings; too many objects seemed crowded together in a small space, and there was a "felt want" of breadth and repose for the eye. On entering the house I was however charmed with the rich imposing beauty of the hall, and admired the handsome antique appearance of the dining-room with its interesting pictures. After luncheon Sir Walter was at pains to point them out to my notice, and related the histories of each and all; he then conducted me through the apartments, and showed me so much, and told me so many anecdotes illustrative of the various objects of interest and curiosity they contained, that I retain a very confused and imperfect recollection of what I saw and heard. It was a strong proof of his good-nature that in showing the many works of art and relics of antiquity he had continued to accumulate and arrange with so much taste and skill, he should have been at such pains to point out the merits and relate the history of most of them to one so incapable of appreciating their value. But he never allowed one to feel their own deficiencies, for he never appeared to be aware of them himself. [1] One of Miss Ferrier's characters in her novel of _The Inheritance._ It was in the quiet of a small domestic circle I had again an opportunity of enjoying the society of Sir Walter Scott, and of witnessing, during the ten days I remained, the unbroken serenity of his temper, the unflagging cheerfulness of his spirits, and the unceasing courtesy of his manners. I had been promised a quiet time, else I should not have gone; and indeed the state of the family was a sufficient guarantee against all festivities. Mrs. Lockhart was confined to bed by severe indisposition, while Mr. Lockhart was detained in London by the alarming illness of their eldest boy, and both Captain Scott and his brother were absent. The party, therefore, consisted only of Sir Walter and Miss Scott, Miss Macdonald Buchanan (who was almost one of the family), and myself. Being the only stranger, I consequently came in for a larger share of my amiable host's time and attention than I should otherwise have been entitled to expect. Many a pleasant tale and amusing anecdote I might have had to relate had I written down half of what I daily heard; but I had always an invincible repugnance to playing the _reporter_ and taking down people's words under their own roof. Every day Sir Walter was ready by one o'clock to accompany us either in driving or walking, often in both, and in either there was the same inexhaustible flow of legendary lore, romantic incident, apt quotation, curious or diverting story; and sometimes old ballads were recited, commemorative of some of the localities through which he passed. Those who had seen him only amidst the ordinary avocations of life, or even doing the honours of his own table, could scarcely have conceived the fire and animation of his countenance at such times, when his eyes seemed literally to kindle, and even (as some one has remarked) to change their colour and become a sort of deep sapphire blue; but, perhaps, from being close to him and in the open air, I was more struck with this peculiarity than those whose better sight enabled them to mark his varying expression at other times. Yet I must confess this was an enthusiasm I found as little infectious as that of his antiquarianism. On the contrary, I often wished his noble faculties had been exercised on loftier themes than those which seemed to stir his very soul. The evenings were passed either in Mrs. Lockhart's bedroom or in chatting quietly by the fireside below, but wherever we were he was always the same kind, unostentatious, amusing, and _amusable_ companion. The day before I was to depart Sir David Wilkie and his sister arrived, and the Fergussons and one or two friends were invited to meet him. Mrs. Lockhart was so desirous of meeting this old friend and distinguished person, that, though unable to put her foot to the ground, she caused herself to be dressed and carried down to the drawing-room while the company were at dinner. Great was her father's surprise and delight on his entrance to find her seated (looking well and in high spirits) with her harp before her, ready to sing his favourite ballads. This raised his spirits above their usual quiet pitch, and towards the end of the evening he proposed to wind up the whole by all present standing in a circle with hands joined, singing, "Weel may we a' be! Ill may we never see!" Mrs. Lockhart was, of course, unable to join the festive band. Sir David Wilkie was languid and dispirited from bad health, and my feelings were not such as to enable me to join in what seemed to me little else than a mockery of human life; but rather than "displace the mirth," I _tried,_ but could not long remain a passive spectator; the glee seemed forced and unnatural. It touched no sympathetic chord; it only jarred the feelings; it was the last attempt at gaiety I witnessed within the walls of Abbotsford. Although I had intended to confine my slight reminiscence of Sir Walter Scott to the time I had passed with him under his own roof in the country, yet I cannot refrain from noticing the great kindness I received from him during the following winter in town. I had, when at Abbotsford in the autumn, spoken to him for the _first_ time of my authorship and of the work on which I was then engaged. He entered into the subject with much warmth and earnestness, shook his head at hearing how matters had hitherto been transacted, and said unless I could make a better bargain in this instance I must leave to him the disposal of _Destiny._ I did so, and from the much more liberal terms he made with Mr. Cadell I felt, when too late, I had acted unwisely in not having sooner consulted him or some one versant in these matters. But _secrecy_ at that time was all I was anxious about, and so I paid the penalty of trusting entirely to the good faith of the publishers. I saw Sir Walter frequently during the winter, and occasionally dined _en famille_ with Miss Scott and him, or with one or two friends, as I did not go into parties, neither indeed did he give any, but on account of the state of his affairs lived as retiredly as he possibly could. In the month of February he sustained a paralytic shock; as soon as I heard of this I went to Miss Scott, from whom I learned the particulars. She had seen her father in his study a short time before, apparently in his usual health. She had returned to the drawing room when Sir Walter opened the door, came in, but stood looking at her with a most peculiar and _dreadful_ expression of countenance. It immediately struck her he had come to communicate some very distressing intelligence, and she exclaimed, "Oh, papa! Is Johnnie gone?" He made no reply, but still continued standing still and regarding her with the same fearful expression. She then cried, "Oh, papa! speak! Tell me, is it Sophia herself?" Still he remained immovable. Almost frantic, she then screamed, "It is Walter! it is Walter! I know it is." Upon which Sir Walter fell senseless on the floor. Medical assistance was speedily procured. After being bled he recovered his speech, and his first words were, "It was very strange! very horrible." He afterwards told her he had all at once felt very queer, and as if unable to articulate; he then went upstairs in hopes of getting rid of the sensation by movement; but it would not do, he felt perfectly tongue-tied, or rather _chained,_ till overcome by witnessing her distress. This took place, I think, on the 15th, and on the 18th I was invited to dine with him, and found him without any trace of illness, but as cheerful and animated as usual. Not being very correct as to dates, I should scarcely have ventured to name the day had not a trifling circumstance served to mark it. After dinner he proposed that instead of going to the drawing-room we should remain with him and have tea in the dining room. In the interval the post letters were brought, and amongst others there was one from a sister of Sir Thomas Lawrence (Mrs. Bloxam), enclosing a letter of her brother's, having heard that Sir Walter had expressed a wish to have some memorial of him, "rather of his pencil than his pen," said he, as he handed the letter to me, who, as a collector of autographs, would probably value them more than he did; and on referring to Mrs. Bloxam's letter I find the Edinburgh post-mark February the 18th. I received repeated invitations to Abbotsford, and had fixed to go on the 17th of April, when, the day before, Mrs. Skene called upon me with the sad tidings of another paralytic stroke, which not only put a stop to my visit for the present, but rendered it very doubtful whether I should ever see him again. But the worst fears of his friends were not yet to be realised. Early in May the invitation was renewed in a note from himself, which I availed myself of, too well assured it was a privilege I should enjoy for the last time. On reaching Abbotsford I found some morning visitors (Mr. and Mrs. James, etc.) in the drawing-room, but as soon as they were gone Sir Walter sent for me to his study. I found him seated in his armchair, but with his habitual politeness he insisted upon rising to receive me, though he did so with such extreme difficulty I would gladly have dispensed with this mark of courtesy. His welcome was not less cordial than usual, but he spoke in a slow and somewhat indistinct manner, and as I sat close by him I could perceive but too plainly the change which had taken place since we last met. His figure was unwieldy, not so much from increased bulk as from diminished life and energy; his face was swollen and puffy, his complexion mottled and discoloured, his eyes heavy and dim; his head had been shaved, and he wore a small black silk cap, which was extremely unbecoming. Altogether, the change was no less striking than painful to behold. The impression, however, soon wore off (on finding, as I believed), that his mind was unimpaired and his warm kindly feelings unchanged. There was no company, and the dinner party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Lockhart, Miss Scott, and myself. Sir Walter did not join us till the dessert, when he entered, assisted by his servant, and took his place at the foot of the table. His grandchildren were then brought in, and his favourite, Johnnie Lockhart, was seated by his side. I must have forgot most things before I can cease to recall that most striking and impressive spectacle, each day repeated, as it seemed, with deepening gloom. The first transient glow of cheerfulness which had welcomed my arrival had passed away, and been succeeded by an air of languor and dejection which sank to deepest sadness when his eye rested for a moment on his once darling grandson, the child of so much pride and promise, now, alas! how changed. It was most touching to look upon one whose morning of life had been so bright and beautiful and, still in the sunny days of childhood, transformed into an image of decrepitude and decay. The fair blooming cheek and finely chiselled features were now shrunk and stiffened into the wan and rigid inflexibility of old age; while the black bandages which swathed the little pale sad countenance, gave additional gloom and harshness to the profound melancholy which clouded its most intellectual expression. Disease and death were stamped upon the grandsire and the boy as they sat side by side with averted eyes, each as if in the bitterness of his own heart refusing to comfort or be comforted. The two who had been wont to regard each other so fondly and so proudly, now seemed averse to hold communion together, while their appearance and style of dress, the black cap of the one and the black bandages of the other, denoted a sympathy in suffering if in nothing else. The picture would have been a most affecting and impressive one viewed under any circumstances, but was rendered doubly so by the contrast which everywhere presented itself. The month was May, but the weather had all the warmth of summer with the freshness and sweetness of spring. The windows of the dining-room were open to admit the soft balmy air which "came and went like the warbling of music," but whose reviving influence seemed unfelt by the sufferers. The trees, and shrubs, and flowers were putting forth their tender leaves and fragrant blossoms as if to charm _his_ senses who used to watch their progress with almost paternal interest, and the little birds were singing in sweet chorus as if to cheer _him_ who was wont to listen to their evening song with such placid delight. All around were the dear familiar objects which had hitherto ministered to his enjoyment, but now, alas! miserable comforters were they all! It was impossible to look upon such a picture without beholding in it the realisation of those solemn and affecting passages of Holy Writ which speak to us of the ephemeral nature of all earthly pleasures and of the mournful insignificance of human life, even in its most palmy state, when its views and actions, its hopes and desires, are confined to this sublunary sphere: "Whence then cometh any wisdom, and where is the place of understanding?" "Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might; let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord." MARRIAGE. CHAPTER I. "Love!--A word by superstition thought a God; by use turned to an humour; by self-will made a flattering madness." _Alexander and Campaspe._ "COME hither, child," said the old Earl of Courtland to his daughter, as, in obedience to his summons, she entered his study; "come hither, I say; I wish to have some serious conversation with you: so dismiss your dogs, shut the door, and sit down here." "Lady Juliana rang for the footman to take Venus; bade Pluto be quiet, like a darling, under the sofa; and, taking Cupid in her arms, assured his Lordship he need fear no disturbance from the sweet creatures, and that she would be all attention to his commands--kissing her cherished pug as she spoke. "You are now, I think, seventeen, Juliana," said his Lordship in a solemn important tone. "And a half, papa." "It is therefore time you should be thinking of establishing yourself in the world. Have you ever turned your thoughts that way?" Lady Juliana cast down her beautiful eyes, and was silent. "As I can give you no fortune," continued the Earl, swelling with ill-suppressed importance, as he proceeded, "you have perhaps no great pretensions to a very brilliant establishment." "Oh! none in the world, papa," eagerly interrupted Lady Juliana; "a mere competence with the man of my heart." "The man of a fiddlestick!" exclaimed Lord Courtland in a fury; "what the devil have you to do with a heart, I should like to know? There's no talking to a young woman now about marriage, but she is all in a blaze about hearts, and darts, and--and--But hark ye, child, I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth--that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence--for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. These are the only purposes for which persons of rank ever think of marriage. And pray, what has your heart to say to that?" "Nothing, papa," replied Lady Juliana in a faint dejected tone of voice. "Have done, Cupid!" addressing her favourite, who was amusing himself in pulling and tearing the beautiful lace veil that partly shaded the head of his fair mistress. "I thought not," resumed the Earl in a triumphant tone--"I thought not, indeed." And as this victory over his daughter put him in unusual good humour, he condescended to sport a little with her curiosity. "And pray, can this wonderful wise heart of yours inform you who it is you are going to obtain for a husband?" Had Lady Juliana dared to utter the wishes of that heart she would have been at no loss for a reply; but she saw the necessity of dissimulation; and after naming such of her admirers as were most indifferent to her, she declared herself quite at a loss, and begged her father to put an end to her suspense. "Now, what would you think of the Duke of L---?" asked the Earl in a voice of half-smothered exultation and delight. "The Duke of L-----!" repeated Lady Juliana, with a scream of horror and surprise; "surely, papa, you cannot be serious? Why, he's red-haired and squints, and he's as old as you." "If he were as old as the devil, and as ugly too," interrupted the enraged Earl, "he should be your husband: and may I perish if you shall have any other!" The youthful beauty burst into tears, while her father traversed the apartment with an inflamed and wrathful visage. "If it had been anybody but that odious Duke," sobbed the lovely Juliana. "If it had been anybody but that odious Duke!" repeated the Earl, mimicking her, "they should not have had you. It has been my sole study, ever since I saw your brother settled, to bring about this alliance; and, when this is accomplished, my utmost ambition will be satisfied. So no more whining--the affair is settled; and all that remains for you to do is to study to make yourself agreeable to his Grace, and to sign the settlements. No such mighty sacrifice, me thinks, when repaid with a ducal coronet, the most splendid jewels, the finest equipages, and the largest jointure of any woman in England." Lady Juliana raised her head, and wiped her eyes. Lord Courtland perceived the effect his eloquence had produced upon the childish fancy of his daughter, and continued to expatiate upon the splendid joys that awaited her in a union with a nobleman of the Duke's rank and fortune; till at length, dazzled, if not convinced, she declared herself "satisfied that it was her duty to marry whoever papa pleased; but--" and a sigh escaped her as she contrasted her noble suitor with her handsome lover: "but if I should marry him, papa, I am sure I shall never be able to love him." The Earl smiled at her childish simplicity as he assured her that was not at all necessary; that love was now entirely confined to the _canaille;_ that it was very well for ploughmen and dairymaids to marry for love; but for a young woman of rank to think of such a thing was plebeian in the extreme! Lady Juliana did not entirely subscribe to the arguments of her father; but the gay and glorious vision that floated in her brain stifled for a while the pleadings of her heart; and with a sparkling eye and an elastic step she hastened to prepare for the reception of the Duke. For a few weeks the delusion lasted. Lady Juliana was flattered with the homage she received as a future Duchess; she was delighted with the éclat that attended her, and charmed with the daily presents showered upon her by her noble suitor. "Well, really, Favolle," said she to her maid, one day, as she clasped on her beautiful arm a resplendent bracelet, "it must be owned the Duke has a most exquisite taste in trinkets; don't you think so? And, do you know, I don't think him so very--very ugly. When we are married I mean to make him get a Brutus, cork his eyebrows, and have a set of teeth." But just then the smiling eyes, curling hair, and finely formed person of a certain captivating Scotsman rose to view in her mind's eye; and, with a peevish "pshaw!" she threw the bauble aside. Educated for the sole purpose of forming a brilliant establishment, of catching the eye, and captivating the senses, the cultivation of her mind or the correction of her temper had formed no part of the system by which that aim was to be accomplished. Under the auspices of a fashionable mother and an obsequious governess the froward petulance of childhood, fostered and strengthened by indulgence and submission, had gradually ripened into that selfishness and caprice which now, in youth, formed the prominent features of her character. The Earl was too much engrossed by affairs of importance to pay much attention to anything so perfectly insignificant as the mind of his daughter. Her _person_ he had predetermined should be entirely at his disposal, and therefore contemplated with delight the uncommon beauty which already distinguished it; not with the fond partiality of parental love, but with the heartless satisfaction of a crafty politician. The mind of Lady Juliana was consequently the sport of every passion that by turns assailed it. Now swayed by ambition, and now softened by love, the struggle was violent, but it was short. A few days before the one which was to seal her fate she granted an interview to her lover, who, young, thoughtless, and enamoured as herself, easily succeeded in persuading her to elope with him to Scotland. There, at the altar of Vulcan, the beautiful daughter of the Earl of Courtland gave her hand to her handsome but penniless lover; and there vowed to immolate every ambitious desire, every sentiment of vanity and high-born pride. Yet a sigh arose as she looked on the filthy hut, sooty priest, and ragged witnesses; and thought of the special license, splendid saloon, and bridal pomp that would have attended her union with the Duke. But the rapturous expressions which burst from the impassioned Douglas made her forget the gaudy pleasures of pomp and fashion. Amid the sylvan scenes of the neighbouring lakes the lovers sought a shelter; and, mutually charmed with each other, time flew for a while on downy pinions. At the end of two months, however, the enamoured husband began to suspect that the lips of his "angel Julia" could utter very silly things; while the fond bride, on her part, discovered that though her "adored Henry's" figure was symmetry itself, yet it certainly was deficient in a certain air--a _je ne sais quoi_--that marks the man of fashion. "How I wish I had my pretty Cupid here," said her Ladyship, with a sigh, one day as she lolled on a sofa: "he had so many pretty tricks, he would have helped to amuse us, and make the time pass; for really this place grows very stupid and tiresome; don't you think so, love?" "Most confoundedly so, my darling," replied her husband, yawning sympathetically as he spoke. "Then suppose I make one more attempt to soften papa, and be received into favour again?" "With all my heart." "Shall I say I'm very sorry for what I have done?" asked her Ladyship, with a sigh. "You know I did not say that in my first letter." "Ay, do; and, if it will serve any purpose, you may say that I am no less so." In a few days the letter was returned, in a blank cover; and, by the same post, Douglas saw himself superseded in the Gazette, being absent without leave! There now remained but one course to pursue; and that was to seek refuge at his father's, in the Highlands of Scotland. At the first mention of it Lady Juliana was transported with joy, and begged that a letter might be instantly despatched, containing the offer of a visit: she had heard the Duchess of M. declare nothing could be so delightful as the style of living in Scotland: the people were so frank and gay, and the manners so easy and engaging--oh! it was delightful! And then Lady Jane G. and Lady Mary L., and a thousand other lords and ladies she knew, were all so charmed with the country, and all so sorry to leave it. Then dear Henry's family must be so charming: an old castle, too, was her delight; she would feel quite at home while wandering through its long galleries; and she quite loved old pictures, and armour, and tapestry; and then her thoughts reverted to her father's magnificent mansion in D---shire. At length an answer arrived, containing a cordial invitation from the old Laird to spend the winter with them at Glenfern Castle. All impatience to quit the scenes of their short lived felicity, they bade a hasty adieu to the now fading beauties of Windermere; and, full of hope and expectation, eagerly turned towards the bleak hills of Scotland. They stopped for a short time at Edinburgh, to provide themselves with a carriage, and some other necessaries. There, too, she fortunately met with an English Abigail and footman, who, for double wages, were prevailed upon to attend her to the Highlands; which, with the addition of two dogs, a tame squirrel, and mackaw, completed the establishment. CHAPTER II. "What transport to retrace our early plays, Our easy bliss, when each thing joy supplied; The woods, the mountains, and the warbling maze Of the wild brooks." THOMSON. MANY were the dreary muirs and rugged mountains her Ladyship had to encounter in her progress to Glenfern Castle; and, but for the hope of the new world that awaited her beyond those formidable barriers, her delicate frame and still more sensitive feelings must have sunk beneath the horrors of such a journey. But she remembered the Duchess had said the inns and roads were execrable; and the face of the country, as well as the lower orders of people, frightful; but what signified those things? There were balls, and sailing parties, and rowing matches, and shooting parties, and fishing parties, and parties of every description; and the certainty of being recompensed by the festivities of Glenfern Castle, reconciled her to the ruggedness of the approach. Douglas had left his paternal home and native hills when only eight years of age. A rich relation of his mother's happening to visit them at that time, took a fancy to the boy; and, under promise of making him his heir, had prevailed on his parents to part with him. At a proper age he was placed in the Guards, and had continued to maintain himself in the favor of his benefactor until his imprudent marriage, which had irritated this old bachelor so much that he instantly disinherited him, and refused to listen to any terms of reconciliation. The impressions which the scenes of his infancy had left upon the mind of the young Scotsman, it may easily be supposed, were of a pleasing description. He expatiated to his Juliana on the wild but august scenery that surrounded his father's castle, and associated with the idea the boyish exploits, which though faintly remembered, still served to endear them to his heart. He spoke of the time when he used to make one of a numerous party on the lake, and, when tired of sailing on its glassy surface to the sound of soft music, they would land at some lovely spot; and, after partaking of their banquet beneath a spreading tree, conclude the day by a dance on the grass. Lady Juliana would exclaim, "How delightful! I doat upon picnics and dancing! --_àpropos,_ Henry, there will surely be a ball to welcome our arrival?" The conversation was interrupted; for just at that moment they had gained the summit of a very high hill, and the post-boy, stopping to give his horses breath, turned round to the carriage, pointing at the same time, with a significant gesture, to a tall thin gray house, something resembling a tower, that stood in the vale beneath. A small sullen-looking lake was in front, on whose banks grew neither tree nor shrub. Behind rose a chain of rugged cloud-capped hills, on the declivities of which were some faint attempts at young plantations; and the only level ground consisted of a few dingy turnip fields, enclosed with stone walls, or dykes, as the post-boy called them. It was now November; the day was raw and cold; and a thick drizzling rain was beginning to fall. A dreary stillness reigned all around, broken only at intervals by the screams of the sea-fowl that hovered over the lake, on whose dark and troubled waters was dimly descried a little boat, plied by one solitary being. "What a scene!" at length Lady Juliana exclaimed, shuddering as she spoke. "Good God, what a scene! How I pity the unhappy wretches who are doomed to dwell in such a place! and yonder hideous grim house--it makes me sick to look at it. For Heaven's sake, bid him drive on." Another significant look from the driver made the colour mount to Douglas's cheek, as he stammered out, "Surely it can't be; yet somehow I don't know. Pray, my lad," setting down one of the glasses, and addressing the post-boy, "what is the name of that house?" "Hoose!" repeated the driver; "ca' ye thon a hoose? Thon's gude Glenfern Castle." Lady Juliana, not understanding a word he said, sat silently wondering at her husband's curiosity respecting such a wretched-looking place. "Impossible! you must be mistaken, my lad: why, what's become of all the fine wood that used to surround it?" "Gin you mean a wheen auld firs, there's some of them to the fore yet," pointing to two or three tall, bare, scathed Scotch firs, that scarcely bent their stubborn heads to the wind, that now began to howl around them. "I insist upon it that you are mistaken; you must have wandered from the right road," cried the now alarmed Douglas in a loud voice, which vainly attempted to conceal his agitation. "We'll shune see that," replied the phlegmatic Scot, who, having rested his horses and affixed a drag to the wheel, was about to proceed, when Lady Juliana, who now began to have some vague suspicion of the truth, called to him to stop, and, almost breathless with alarm, inquired of her husband the meaning of what had passed. He tried to force a smile, as he said, "It seems our journey is nearly ended; that fellow persists in asserting that that is Glenfern, though I can scarcely think it. If it is, it is strangely altered since I left it twelve years ago." For a moment Lady Juliana was too much alarmed to make a reply; pale and speechless, she sank back in the carriage; but the motion of it, as it began to proceed, roused her to a sense of her situation, and she burst into tears and exclamations. The driver, who attributed it all to fears at descending the hill, assured her she need na be the least feared, for there were na twa cannier beasts atween that and Johnny Groat's hoose; and that they wad ha'e her at the castle door in a crack, gin they were ance down the brae." Douglas's attempts to soothe his high-born bride were not more successful than those of the driver: in vain he made use of every endearing epithet and tender expression, and recalled the time when she used to declare that she could dwell with him in a desert; her only replies were bitter reproaches and upbraidings for his treachery and deceit, mingled with floods of tears, and interrupted by hysterical sobs. Provoked at her folly, yet softened by her extreme distress, Douglas was in the utmost state of perplexity--now ready to give way to a paroxysm of rage; then yielding to the natural goodness of his heart, he sought to soothe her into composure; and, at length, with much difficulty succeeded in changing her passionate indignation into silent dejection. That no fresh objects of horror or disgust might appear to disturb this calm, the blinds were pulled down, and in this state they reached Glenfern Castle. But there the friendly veil was necessarily withdrawn, and the first object that presented itself to the highbred Englishwoman was an old man clad in a short tartan coat and striped woollen night-cap, with blear eyes and shaking hands, who vainly strove to open the carriage door. Douglas soon extricated himself, and assisted his lady to alight; then accosting the venerable domestic as "Old Donald," asked him if he recollected him. "Weel that, weel that, Maister Hairy, and ye're welcome hame; and ye tu, bonny sir" [1] (addressing Lady Juliana, who was calling to her footman to follow her with the mackaw); then, tottering before them, he led the way, while her Ladyship followed, leaning on her husband, her squirrel on her other arm, preceded by her dogs, barking with all their might, and attended by the mackaw, screaming with all his strength; and in this state was the Lady Juliana ushered into the drawing-room of Glenfern Castle! [1] The Highlanders use this term of respect indifferently to both sexes. CHAPTER III. "What can be worse, Than to dwell here!" _Paradise Lost._ IT was a long, narrow, low-roofed room, with a number of small windows, that admitted feeble lights in every possible direction. The scanty furniture bore every appearance of having been constructed at the same time as the edifice; and the friendship thus early formed still seemed to subsist, as the high-backed worked chairs adhered most pertinaciously to the gray walls, on which hung, in narrow black frames, some of the venerable ancestors of the Douglas family. A fire, which appeared to have been newly kindled, was beginning to burn, but, previous to showing itself in flame, had chosen to vent itself in smoke, with which the room was completely filled, and the open windows seemed to produce no other effect than that of admitting the rain and wind. At the entrance of the stranger a flock of females rushed forward to meet them. Douglas good humouredly submitted to be hugged by three long-chinned spinsters, whom he recognised as his aunts; and warmly saluted five awkward purple girls he guessed to be his sisters; while Lady Julian stood the image of despair, and, scarcely conscious, admitted in silence the civilities of her new relations; till, at length, sinking into a chair, she endeavoured to conceal her agitation by calling to the dogs and caressing her mackaw. The Laird, who had been hastily summoned from his farming operations, now entered. He was a good looking old man, with something the air of a gentleman, in spite of the inelegance of his dress, his rough manner, and provincial accent. After warmly welcoming his son, he advanced to his beautiful daughter-in-law, and, taking her in his arms, bestowed a loud and hearty kiss on each cheek; then, observing the paleness of her complexion, and the tears that swam in her eyes, "What! not frightened for our Hieland hills, my leddy? Come, cheer up--trust me, ye'll find as warm hearts among them as ony ye ha'e left in your fine English _policies_"--shaking her delicate fingers in his hard muscular gripe as he spoke. The tears, which had with difficulty been hitherto suppressed, now burst in torrents from the eyes of the high-bred beauty, as she leant her cheek against the back of a chair, and gave way to the anguish which mocked control. To the loud, anxious inquiries, and oppressive kindness of her homely relatives, she made no reply; but, stretching out her hands to her husband sobbed, "Take, oh, take me from this place!" Mortified, ashamed, and provoked, at a behavior so childish and absurd, Douglas could only stammer out something about Lady Juliana having been frightened and fatigued; and, requesting to be shown to their apartment, he supported her almost lifeless to it, while his aunts followed, all three prescribing different remedies in a breath. "For heaven's sake, take them from me!" faintly articulated Lady Juliana, as she shrank from the many hands that were alternately applied to her pulse and forehead. After repeated entreaties and plausible excuses from Douglas, his aunts at length consented to withdraw, and he then exerted all the rhetoric he was master of to reconcile his bride to the situation love and necessity had thrown her into. But in vain he employed reasoning, caresses, and threats; the only answers he could extort were tears and entreaties to be taken from a place where she declared she felt it impossible to exist. "If you wish my death, Harry," said she, in a voice almost inarticulate from excess of weeping, "oh! kill me quickly, and do not leave me to linger out my days, and perish at last with misery here." "For heaven's sake, tell me what you would have me do," said her husband, softened to pity by her extreme distress, "and I swear that in everything possible I will comply with your wishes." "Oh, fly then, stop the horses, and let us return immediately. Do run, dearest Harry, or they will be gone; and we shall never get away from this odious place." "Where would you go?" asked he, with affected calmness. "Oh, anywhere; no matter where, so as we do but get away from hence: we can be at no loss." "None in the world," interrupted Douglas, with a bitter smile, "as long as there is a prison to receive us. See," continued he, throwing a few shillings down on the table, "there is every sixpence I possess in the world, so help me heaven!" Lady Juliana stood aghast. At that instant the English Abigail burst into the room, and in a voice choking with passion, she requested her discharge, that she might return with the driver who had brought them there. "A pretty way of travelling, to be sure, it will be," continued she, "to go bumping behind a dirty chaise-driver; but better to be shook to a jelly altogether than stay amongst such a set of _Oaten-toads."_ [1] [1] Hottentots. "What do you mean?" inquired Douglas, as soon as the voluble Abigail allowed him an opportunity of asking. "Why, my meaning, sir, is to leave this here place immediately; not that I have any objections either to my Lady or you, sir; but, to be sure, it was a sad day for me that I engaged myself to her Ladyship. Little did I think that a lady of distinction would coming to such a poor pitiful place as this. I am sure I thought I should ha' swooned when I was showed the hole where I was to sleep." At the bare idea of this indignity to her person the fury of the incensed fair one blazed forth with such strength as to choke her utterance. Amazement had hitherto kept Lady Juliana silent; for to such scenes she was a stranger. Born in an elevated rank, reared in state, accustomed to the most obsequious attention, and never approached but with the respect due rather to a _divinity_ than to a mortal, the strain of vulgar insolence that now assailed her was no less new to her ears than shocking to her feelings. With a voice and look that awed the woman in to obedience, she commanded her to quit her presence for ever; and then, no longer able to suppress the motions of insulted pride, wounded vanity, and indignant disappointment, she gave way to a violent fit of hysterics. In the utmost perplexity the unfortunate husband by turns cursed the hour that had given him such a wife; now tried to soothe her into composure; but at length, seriously alarmed at the increasing attack, he called loudly for assistance. In a moment the three aunts and the five sisters all rushed together into the room, full of wonder, exclamation, and inquiry. Many were the remedies that were tried and the experiments that were suggested; and at length the violence of passion exhausted itself, and a faint sob or deep sigh succeeded the hysteric scream. Douglas now attempted to account for the behaviour of his noble spouse by ascribing it to the fatigue she had lately undergone, joined to distress of mind at her father's unrelenting severity towards her. "Oh, the amiable creature!" interrupted the unsuspecting spinsters, almost stifling her with their caresses as they spoke: "Welcome, a thousand times welcome, to Glenfern Castle," said Miss Jacky, who was esteemed by much the most sensible woman, as well as the greatest orator in the whole parish; "nothing shall be wanting, dearest Lady Juliana, to compensate for a parent's rigour, and make you happy and comfortable. Consider this as your future home! My sisters and myself will be as mothers to you; and see these charming young creatures," dragging forward two tall frightened girls, with sandy hair and great purple arms; "thank Providence for having blest you with such sisters!" "Don't, speak too much, Jacky, to our dear niece at present," said Miss Grizzy; "I think one of Lady Maclaughlan's composing draughts would be the best thing for her." "Composing draughts at this time of day!" cried Miss Nicky; "I should think a little good broth a much wiser thing. There are some excellent family broth making below, and I'll desire Tibby to bring a few." "Will you take a little soup, love?" asked Douglas. His lady assented; and Miss Nicky vanished, but quickly re-entered, followed by Tibby, carrying a huge bowl of coarse broth, swimming with leeks, greens, and grease. Lady Juliana attempted to taste it; but her delicate palate revolted at the homely fare; and she gave up the attempt, in spite of Miss Nicky's earnest entreaties to take a few more of these excellent family broth. "I should think," said Henry, as he vainly attempted to stir it round, "that a little wine would be more to the purpose than this stuff." The aunts looked at each other; and, withdrawing to a corner, a whispering consultation took place, in which Lady Maclaughlan's opinion, "birch, balm, currant, heating, cooling, running risks," etc. etc., transpired. At length the question was carried; and some tolerable sherry and a piece of very substantial _shortbread_ were produced. It was now voted by Miss Jacky, and carried _nem. con._ that her Ladyship ought to take a little repose till the hour of dinner. "And don't trouble to dress," continued the considerate aunt, "for we are not very dressy here; and we are to be quite a charming family party, nobody but ourselves; and," turning to her nephew, "your brother and his wife. She is a most superior woman, though she has rather too many of her English prejudices yet to be all we could wish; but I have no doubt, when she has lived a little longer amongst us, she will just become one of ourselves." "I forget who she was," said Douglas. "A grand-daughter of Sir Duncan Malcolm's, a very old family of the --------- blood, and nearly allied to the present Earl. And here they come," exclaimed she, on hearing the sound of a carriage; and all rushed out to receive them. "Let us have a glimpse of this scion from a noble stock," said Lady Juliana, mimicking the accent of the poor spinsters, as she rose and ran to the window. "Good heavens, Henry! do come and behold this equipage;" and she laughed with childish glee as she pointed to a plain, old-fashioned whisky, with a large top. A tall handsome young man now alighted, and lifted out a female figure, so enveloped in a cloak that eyes less penetrating than Lady Juliana's could not, at a single glance, have discovered her to be a "frightful quiz." "Only conceive the effect of this dashing equipage in Bond Street!" continued she, redoubling her mirth at the bright idea; then suddenly stopping, and sighing-- "Ah, my pretty _vis-à-vis!_ I remember the first time I saw you, Henry, I was in it at a review;" and she sighed still deeper. "True; I was then aid-de-camp to your handsome lover, the Duke of L----------." "Perhaps I might think him handsome now. People's tastes alter according to circumstances." "Yours must have undergone a wonderful revolution, if you can find charms in a hunchback of fifty three." "He is not a hunchback," returned her Ladyship warmly; "only a little high shouldered; but at any rate he has the most beautiful place and the finest house in England." Douglas saw the storm gathering on the brow of his capricious wife, and clasping her in his arms, "Are you indeed so changed, my Julia, that you have forgot the time when you used to declare you would prefer a desert with your Henry to a throne with another." "No, certainly, not changed; but--I--I did not very well know then what a desert was; or, at least, I had formed rather a different idea of it." "What was your idea of a desert?" said her husband, laughing. "Do tell me, love." "Oh! I had fancied it a beautiful place, full of roses and myrtles, and smooth green turf, and murmuring rivulets, and, though very retired, not absolutely out of the world; where one could occasionally see one's friends, and give _dejeunés et fêtes champêtres_." "Well, perhaps the time may come, Juliana, when we may realise your Elysian deserts; but at present, you know, I am wholly dependent on my father. I hope to prevail on him to do something for me; and that our stay here will be short; as, you may be sure, the moment I can, I will take you hence. I am sensible it is not a situation for you; but for my sake, dearest Juliana, bear with it for a while, without betraying your disgust. Will you do this, darling?" and he kissed away the sullen tear that hung on her cheek. "You know, love, there's nothing in the world I wouldn't do for you," replied she, as she played with her squirrel; "and as you promise our stay shall be short, if I don't die of the horrors I shall certainly try to make the agreeable. Oh! my cherub!" flying to her pug, who came barking into the room "where have you been, and where's my darling Psyche, and sweet mackaw? Do, Harry, go and see after the darlings." "I must go and see my brother and his wife first. Will you come, love?" "Oh, not now; I don't feel equal to the encounter; besides, I must dress. But what shall I do? Since that vile woman's gone I can't dress myself. I never did such a thing in my life, and I am sure it's impossible that I can," almost weeping at the hardships she was doomed to experience in making her own toilet. "Shall I be your Abigail?" asked her husband, smiling at the distress; "me thinks it would be no difficult task to deck my Julia." "Dear Harry, will you really dress me? Oh! That will be delightful! I shall die with laughing at your awkwardness;" and her beautiful eyes sparkled with childish delight at the idea. "In the meantime," said Douglas, "I'll send someone to unpack your things; and after I have shook hands with Archie, and been introduced to my new sister, I shall enter on my office." "Now do, pray, make haste; for I die to see your great hands tying strings and sticking pins." Delighted with her gaiety and good humour, he left her caressing her favourites; and finding rather a scarcity of female attendance, he despatched two of his sisters to assist his helpless beauty in her arrangements. CHAPTER IV. And ever against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs." _L'Allegro._ WHEN Douglas returned he found the floor strewed with dresses of every description, his sisters on their knees before a great trunk they were busied in unpacking, and his Lady in her wrapper, with her hair about her ears, still amusing herself with her pets. "See how good your sisters are," said she, pointing to the poor girls, whose inflamed faces bore testimony to their labours. "I declare I am quite sorry to see them take so much trouble," yawning as she leant back in her chair; "is it not quite shocking, Tommy? 'kissing her squirrel.' Oh! pray, Henry, do tell me what I am to put on; for I protest I don't know. Favolle always used to choose for me; and so did that odious Martin, for she had an exquisite taste." "Not so exquisite as your own, I am sure; so for once choose for yourself," replied the good-humoured husband; "and pray make haste, for my father waits dinner." Betwixt scolding, laughing, and blundering, the dress was at length completed; and Lady Juliana, in all the pomp of dress and pride of beauty, descended, leaning on her husband's arm. On entering the drawing-room, which was now in a more comfortable state, Douglas led her to a lady who was sitting by the fire: and, placing her hand within that of the stranger, "Juliana, my love," said he, "this is a sister whom you have not yet seen, a with whom I am sure you will gladly make acquaintance." The stranger received her noble sister with graceful ease; and, with a sweet smile and pleasing accent, expressed herself happy in the introduction. Lady Juliana was surprised and somewhat disconcerted. She had arranged her plans, and made up her mind to be _condescending;_ she had resolved to enchant by her sweetness, dazzle by her brilliancy, and overpower by her affability. But there was a simple dignity in the air and address of the lady, before which even high-bred affectation sank abashed. Before she found a reply to the courteous yet respectful salutation of her sister-in-law Douglas introduced his brother; and the old gentleman, impatient at any farther delay, taking Lady Juliana by the hand, pulled, rather than led her into the dining-room. Even Lady Juliana contrived to make a meal of the roast mutton and moorfowl; for the Laird piqued himself on the breed of his sheep, and his son was to good a sportsman to allow his friends to want for game. "I think my darling Tommy would relish this grouse very much," observed Lady Juliana, as she secured the last remaining wing for her favourite." Bring him here!" turning to the tall, dashing lackey who stood behind her chair, and whose handsome livery and well-dressed hair formed a striking contrast to old Donald's tartan jacket and bob-wig. "Come hither, my sweetest cherubs," extending her arms towards the charming trio, as they entered, barking, and chattering, and flying to their mistress. A scene of noise and nonsense ensued. Douglas remained silent, mortified and provoked at the weakness of his wife, which not even the silver tones of her voice or the elegance of her manners could longer conceal from him. But still there was a charm in her very folly, to the eye of love, which had not yet wholly lost its power. After the table was cleared, observing that he was still silent and abstracted, Lady Juliana turned to her husband, and, laying her hand on his shoulder, "You are not well, love!" said she, looking up in his face, and shaking back the redundant ringlets that shaded her own. "Perfectly so," replied her husband, with a sigh. "What? Dull? Then I must sing to enliven you." And, leaning her head on his shoulder, she warbled a verse of the beautiful little Venetian air, _La Biondina in Gondoletta._ Then suddenly stopping, and fixing her eyes on Mrs. Douglas, "I beg pardon, perhaps you don't like music; perhaps my singing's a bore." "You pay us a bad compliment in saying so," said her sister-in-law, smiling; "and the only atonement you can make for such an injurious doubt is to proceed." "Does anybody sing here?" asked she, without noticing this request. "Do, somebody, sing me a song." "Oh! we all sing, and dance too," said one, of the old young ladies; "and after tea we will show you some of our Scotch steps; but in the meantime Mrs. Douglas will favour us with her song." Mrs. Douglas assented good-humouredly, though aware that it would be rather a nice point to please all parties in the choice of a song. The Laird reckoned all foreign music--_i.e._ everything that was not Scotch--an outrage upon his ears; and Mrs. Douglas had too much taste to murder Scotch songs with her English accent. She therefore compromised the matter as well as she could by selecting a Highland ditty clothed in her own native tongue; and sang with much pathos and simplicity the lamented Leyden's "Fall of Macgregor:" "In the vale of Glenorehy the night breeze was sighing O'er the tomb where the ancient Macgregors are lying; Green are their graves by their soft murmuring river, But the name of Macgregor has perished for ever. "On a red stream of light, by his gray mountains glancing, Soon I beheld a dim spirit advancing; Slow o'er the heath of the dead was its motion, Like the shadow of mist o'er the foam of the ocean. "Like the sound of a stream through the still evening dying,-- Stranger! who treads where Macgregor is lying? Darest thou to walk, unappall'd and firm-hearted, 'Mid the shadowy steps of the mighty departed? "See! round thee the caves of the dead are disclosing The shades that have long been in silence reposing; Thro' their forms dimly twinkles the moon-beam descending, As upon thee their red eyes of wrath they are bending. "Our gray stones of fame though the heath-blossom cover, Round the fields of our battles our spirits still hover; Where we oft saw the streams running red from the mountains; But dark are our forms by our blue native fountains. "For our fame melts away like the foam of the river, Like the last yellow leaves on the oak-boughs that shiver: The name is unknown of our fathers so gallant; And our blood beats no more in the breasts of the valiant. "The hunter of red deer now ceases to number The lonely gray stones on the field of our slumber.-- Fly, stranger! and let not thine eye be reverted. Why should'st thou see that our fame is departed?" "Pray, do you play on the harp," asked the volatile lady, scarcely waiting till the first stanza was ended; "and, _apropos,_ have you a good harp here?" "We've a very sweet spinnet," said Miss Jacky, "which, in my opinion, is a far superior instrument: and Bella will give us a tune upon it. Bella, my dear, let Lady Juliana hear how well you can play." Bella, blushing like a peony rose, retired to a corner of the room, where stood the spinnet; and with great, heavy, trembling hands, began to belabour the unfortunate instrument, while the aunts beat time, and encouraged her to proceed with exclamations of admiration and applause. "You have done very well, Bella," said Mrs. Douglas, seeing her preparing to _execute_ another piece, and pitying the poor girl, as well as her auditors. Then whispering Miss Jacky that Lady Juliana looked fatigued, they arose to quit the room. "Give me your arm, love, to the drawing-room," said her Ladyship languidly. "And now, pray, don't be long away," continued she, as he placed her on the sofa, and returned to the gentlemen. CHAPTER V. "You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, With most admired disorder." _Macbeth._ THE interval, which seemed of endless duration to the hapless Lady Juliana, was passed by the aunts in giving sage counsel as to the course of life to be pursued by married ladies. Worsted stockings and quilted petticoats were insisted upon as indispensable articles of dress; while it was plainly insinuated that it was utterly impossible any child could be healthy whose mother had not confined her wishes to barley broth and oatmeal porridge. "Only look at thae young lambs," said Miss Grizzy, pointing to the five great girls; "see what pickters of health they are! I'm sure I hope, my dear niece, your children will be just the same--only boys, for we are sadly in want of boys. It's melancholy to think we have not a boy among us, and that a fine auntient race like ours should be dying away for want of male heirs." And the tears streamed down the cheeks of the good spinster as she spoke. The entrance of the gentlemen put a stop to the conversation. Flying to her husband, Lady Juliana began to whisper, in very audible tones, her inquires, whether he had yet got any money--when they were to go away, etc. etc. "Does your Ladyship choose any tea?" asked Miss Nicky, as she disseminated the little cups of coarse black liquid. "Tea! oh no, I never drink tea. I'll take some coffee though; and Psyche doats on a dish of tea." And she tendered the beverage that had been intended for herself to her favourite. "Here's no coffee," said Douglas, surveying the tea-table; "but I will ring for some," as he pulled the bell. Old Donald answered the summons. "Where's the coffee?" demanded Miss Nicky. "The coffee!" repeated the Highlander; "troth, Miss Nicky, an' it's been clean forgot." "Well, but you can get it yet?" said Douglas. "'Deed, Maister Harry, the night's owre far gane for't noo; for the fire's a' ta'en up, ye see," reckoning with his fingers, as he proceeded; "there's parritch makin' for oor supper; and there's patatees boiling for the beasts; and--" "I'll see about it myself," said Miss Nicky, leaving the room, with old Donald at her back, muttering all the way. The old Laird, all this while, had been enjoying his evening nap; but, that now ended, and the tea equipage being dismissed, starting up, he asked what they were about, that the dancing was not begun. "Come, my Leddy, we'll set the example," snapping his fingers, and singing in a hoarse voice, "The mouse is a merry beastie, And the moudiwort wants the een; But folk sail ne'er get wit, Sae merry as we twa ha'e been.' "But whar's the girlies?" cried he. "Ho! Belle, Becky, Betty, Baby, Beeny--to your posts!" The young ladies, eager for the delights of music and dancing, now entered, followed by Coil, the piper, dressed in the native garb, with cheeks seemingly ready blown for the occasion. After a little strutting and puffing, the pipes were fairly set a going in Coil's most spirited manner. But vain would be the attempt to describe Lady Juliana's horror and amazement at the hideous sounds that for the first time assailed her ear. Tearing herself from the grasp of the old gentleman, who was just setting off in the reel, she flew shrieking to her husband, and threw herself trembling into his arms, while he called loudly to the self delighted Coil to stop. "What's the matter? what's the matter?" cried the whole family, gathering round. "Matter!" repeated Douglas furiously; "you have frightened Lady Juliana to death with your infernal music. What did you mean," turning fiercely to the astonished piper, "by blowing that confounded bladder?" Poor Coil gaped with astonishment; for never before had his performance on the bagpipe been heard but with admiration and applause. "A bonny bargain, indeed, that canna stand the pipes," said the old gentleman, as he went puffing up and down the room. "She's no the wife for a Heelandman. Confoonded blather, indeed! By my faith, ye're no blate!" "I declare it's the most distressing thing I ever met with," sighed Miss Grizzy. "I wonder whether it could be the sight or the sound of the bagpipe that frightened our dear niece. I wish to goodness Lady Maclaughlan was here!" "It's impossible the bagpipe could frighten anybody," said Miss Jacky, in a high key; "nobody with common sense could be frightened at a bagpipe." Mrs. Douglas here mildly interposed, and soothed down the offended pride of the Highlanders by attributing Lady Juliana's agitation entirely to _surprise._ The word operated like a charm; all were ready to admit that it was a surprising thing when heard for the first time. Miss Jacky remarked that we are all liable to be surprised; and the still more sapient Grizzy said that, indeed, it was most surprising the effect that surprise had upon some people. For her own part, she could not deny but that she was very often frightened when she was surprised. Douglas, meanwhile, was employed in soothing the terrors, real or affected, of his delicate bride, who declared herself so exhausted with the fatigue she had undergone, and the sufferings she had endured, that she must retire for the night. Henry, eager to escape from the questions and remarks of his family, gladly availed himself of the same excuse; and, to the infinite mortification of both aunts and nieces, the ball was broken up. CHAPTER VI "What choice to choose for delicacy best." Milton OF what nature were the remarks passed in the parlour upon the new married couple has not reached the writer of these memoirs with as much exactness as the foregoing circumstances; but they may in part be imagined from the sketch already given of the characters which formed the Glenfern party. The conciliatory indulgence of Mrs. Douglas, when aided by the good-natured Miss Grizzy, doubtless had a favourable effect on the irritated pride but short-lived acrimony of the old gentleman. Certain it is that, before the evening concluded, they appeared all restored to harmony, and retired to their respective chambers in hopes of beholding a more propitious morrow. Who has not perused sonnets, odes, and speeches in praise of that balmy blessing sleep; from the divine effusions of Shakespeare down to the drowsy notes of newspaper poets? Yet cannot too much be said in its commendation. Sweet is its influence on the careworn eyes to tears accustomed. In its arms the statesman forgets his harassed thoughts; the weary and the poor are blessed with its charms; and conscience--even conscience--is sometimes soothed into silence, while the sufferer sleeps. But nowhere, perhaps, is its influence more happily felt than in the heart oppressed by the harassing accumulation of petty ills; like a troop of locusts, making up by their number and their stings what they want in magnitude. Mortified pride in discovering the fallacy of our own judgment; to be ashamed of what we love, yet still to love, are feelings most unpleasant; and though they assume not the dignity of deep distress, yet philosophy has scarce any power to soothe their worrying, incessant annoyance. Douglas was glad to forget himself in sleep. He had thought a vast deal that day, and of unpleasant subjects, more than the whole of his foregoing life would have produced. If he did not curse the fair object of his imprudence, he at least cursed his own folly and himself; and these were his last waking thoughts. But Douglas could not repose as long as the seven sleepers, and, in consequence of having retired sooner to bed than he was accustomed to do, he waked at an early hour in the morning. The wonderful activity which people sometimes feel when they have little to do with their bodies, and less with their minds, caused him to rise hastily and dress, hoping to pick up a new set of ideas by virtue of his locomotive powers. On descending to the dining-parlour he found his father seated at the window, carefully perusing a pamphlet written to illustrate the principle, _Let nothing be lost,_ and containing many sage and erudite directions for the composition and dimensions of that ornament to a gentleman's farmyard, and a cottager's front door, ycleped, in the language of the country, a _midden_--with the signification of which we would not, for the world, shock the more refined feelings of our southern readers. Many were the inquiries about dear Lady Juliana; hoped she had rested well; hoped the found the bed comfortable, etc. etc. These inquiries were interrupted by the Laird, who requested is son to take a turn with him while breakfast was getting ready, that they might talk over past events and new plans; that he might see the new planting on the hill; the draining of the great moss; with other agricultural concerns which we shall omit, not having the same power of commanding attention for our readers as the Laird had from his hearers. After repeated summonses and many inquiries from the impatient party already assembled the breakfast table, Lady Juliana made her appearance, accompanied by her favourites, whom no persuasions of her husband could prevail upon her to leave behind. As she entered the room her olfactory nerves were smote with gales, not of "Araby the blest," but of old cheese and herrings, with which the hospitable board was amply provided. The ladies having severally exchanged the salutations of the morning, Miss Nicky commenced the operation of pouring out tea, while the Laird laid a large piece of herring on her Ladyship's plate. "Good heavens! what am I to do with this?" exclaimed she. "Do take it away, or I shall faint!" "Brother, brother!" cried Miss Grizzy in a tone of alarm, "I beg you won't place any unpleasant object before the eyes of our dear niece. I declare! Pray, was it the sight or the smell of the beast [1] that shocked you so much, my dear Lady Juliana? I'm sure I wish to goodness Lady Maclaughlan was come!" [1] In Scotland everything that flies and swims ranks in the bestial tribe. Mr. Douglas, or the Major, as he was styled, immediately rose and pulled the bell. "Desire my gig to be got ready directly!" said he. The aunts drew up stiffly, and looked at each other without speaking; but the old gentleman expressed his surprise that his son should think of leaving them so soon. "May we inquire the reason of this sudden resolution?" at length said Miss Jacky in a tone of stifled indignation. "Certainly, if you are disposed to hear it; it is because I find that there is company expected." The three ladies turned up their hands and eyes in speechless horror. "Is it that virtuous woman Lady Maclaughlan you would shun, nephew?" demanded Miss Jacky. "It is that insufferable woman I would shun," replied her nephew, with a heightened colour and a violence very unusual with him. The good Miss Grizzy drew out her pocket-handkerchief, while Mrs. Douglas vainly endeavoured to silence her husband, and avert the rising storm. "Dear Douglas!" whispered his wife in a tone of reproach. "Oh, pray let him go on," said Miss Jacky, almost choking under the effort she made to appear calm. "Let him go on. Lady Maclaughlan's character, luckily, is far above the reach of calumny; nothing that Mr. Archibald Douglas can say will have power to change our opinions, or, I hope, to prejudice his brother and Lady Juliana against this most exemplary, virtuous woman--a woman of family--of fortune--of talents--of accomplishments; a woman of unblemished reputation--of the strictest morals, sweetest temper, charming heart, delightful spirits, so charitable--every year gives fifty flannel petticoats to the old people of the parish---" "Then such a wife as she is!" sobbed out Miss Grizzy. "She has invented I don't know how many different medicines for Sir Sampson's complaint, and makes a point of his taking some of them every day; but for her I'm sure he would have been in his grave long ago." "She's doing all she can to send him there, as she has done many a poor wretch already, with her infernal compositions." Here Miss Grizzy sank back in her chair, overcome with horror; and Miss Nicky let fall the teapot, the scalding contents of which discharged themselves upon the unfortunate Psyche, whose yells, mingling with the screams of its fair mistress, for a while drowned even Miss Jacky's oratory. "Oh, what shall I do?" cried Lady Juliana, as she bent over her favourite. "Do send for a surgeon; pray, Henry, fly! Do fetch one directly, or she will die; and it would quite kill me to lose my darling. Do run, dearest Harry!" "My dear Julia, how can you be so absurd? There's no surgeon within twenty miles of this." "No surgeon within twenty miles!" exclaimed she, starting up. "How could you bring me to such a place? Good God! those dear creatures may die--I may die myself--before I can get any assistance!" "Don't be alarmed, my dearest niece," said the good Miss Grizzy; "we are all doctors here. I understand something of physic myself; and our friend Lady Maclaughlan, who, I daresay, will be here presently, is perfect mistress of every disease of the human frame." "Clap a cauld potatae to the brute's tae," cried the old Laird gruffly. "I've a box of her scald ointment that will cure it in a minute." "If it don't cure, it will kill," said Mr. Douglas, with a smile. "Brother," said Miss Jacky, rising with dignity from her chair, and waving her hand as she spoke-"brother, I appeal to you to protect the character of this most amiable, respectable matron from the insults and calumny your son thinks proper to load it with. Sir Sampson Maclaughlan is your friend, and it therefore becomes your duty to defend his wife." "Troth, but I'll hae aneugh to do if I am to stand up for a' my friends' wives," said the old gentleman. "But, however, Archie, you are to blame: Leddy Maclaughlan is a very decent woman--at least, as far as I ken--though she is a little free in the gab; and out of respect to my auld friend Sir Sampson, it is my desire that you should remain here to receive him, and that you trait baith him and his Lady discreetly." This was said in too serious a tone to be disputed, and his son was obliged to submit. The ointment meanwhile having been applied to Psyche's paw, peace was restored, and breakfast, recommenced. "I declare our dear niece has not tasted a morsel," observed Miss Nicky. "Bless me, here's charming barley meal scones," cried one, thrusting a plateful of them before her. "Here's tempting pease bannocks," interposed another, "and oat cakes. I'm sure your Ladyship never saw such cakes." "I can't eat any of those things," said their delicate niece, with an air of disgust. "I should like some muffin and chocolate." "You forget you are not in London, my love," said her husband reproachfully. "No indeed, I do not forget it. Well then, give me some toast," with an air of languid condescension. "Unfortunately, we happen be quite out of loaf bread at present," said Miss Nicky; "but we've sent to Drymsine for some. They bake excellent bread at Drymsine." "Is there nothing within the bounds of possibility you would fancy, Julia?" asked Douglas. "Do think, love." "I think I should like some grouse, or a beefsteak, if it was very nicely done," returned her Ladyship in a languishing tone. "Beef-steak!" repeated Miss Grizzy. "Beef-steak!" responded Miss Jacky. "Beef-steak!" reverberated Miss Nicky. After much deliberation and consultation amongst the three spinsters, it was at length unanimously carried that the Lady's whim should be indulged. "Only think, sisters," observed Miss Grizzy in an undertone, "what reflections we should have to make upon ourselves if the child was to resemble a moorfowl!" "Or have a face like a raw beef-steak!" said Miss Nicky. These arguments were unanswerable; and a smoking steak and plump moor-fowl were quickly produced, of which Lady Juliana partook in company with her four-footed favourites. CHAPTER VII "When winter soaks the fields, and female feet-- Too weak to struggle with tenacious clay, Or ford the rivulets--are best at home." _The Task_ THE meal being at length concluded, Glenfern desired Henry to attend him on a walk, as he wished to have a little more private conversation with him. Lady Juliana was beginning a remonstrance against the cruelty of taking Harry away from her, when her husband whispering her that he hoped to make something of the old gentleman, and that he should soon be back, she suffered him to depart in silence. Old Donald having at length succeeded in clearing the table of its heterogeneous banquet, it was quickly covered with the young ladies' work. Miss Nicky withdrew to her household affairs. Miss Jacky sat with one eye upon Lady Juliana, the other upon her five nieces. Miss Grizzy seated herself by her Ladyship, holding a spread letter of Lady Maclaughlan's before her as a screen. While the young ladies busily plied their needles, the elder ones left no means untried to entertain their listless niece, whose only replies were exclamations of weariness, or expressions of affection bestowed upon her favourites. At length even Miss Jacky's sense and Miss Grizzy's good nature were _at fault;_ when a ray of sunshine darting into the room suggested the idea of a walk. The proposal was made, and assented to by her Ladyship, in the twofold hope of meeting her husband and pleasing her dogs, whose whining and scratching had for some time testified their desire of a change. The ladies therefore separated to prepare for their _sortie,_ after many recommendations from the aunts to be sure to _hap_ [1] well; but, as if distrusting her powers in that way, they speedily equipped themselves, and repaired to her chamber, arrayed _cap a' pie_ in the walking costume of Glenfern Castle. And, indeed, it must be owned their style of dress was infinitely more judicious than that of their fashionable niece; and it was not surprising that they, in their shrunk duffle greatcoats, vast poke-bonnets, red worsted neckcloths, and pattens, should gaze with horror at her lace cap, lilac satin pelisse, and silk shoes. Ruin to the whole race of Glenfern, present and future, seemed inevitable from such a display of extravagance and imprudence. Having surmounted the first shock, Miss Jacky made a violent effort to subdue her rising wrath; and, with a sort of convulsive smile, addressed Lady Juliana: "Your Ladyship, I perceive, is not of the opinion of our inimitable bard, who, in his charming poem, 'The Seasons,' says' Beauty needs not the foreign aid of ornament; but is, when unadorned, adorned the most.' That is a truth that ought to be impressed on every young woman's mind." [1] Wrap. Lady Juliana only stared. She was as little accustomed to be advised as she was to hear Thomson's "Seasons" quoted. "I declare that's all quite true," said the more temporising Grizzy; "and certainly our girls are not in the least taken up about their dress, poor things! which is a great comfort. At the same time, I'm sure it's no wonder your Ladyship should be taken up about yours, for certainly that pelisse is most beautiful. Nobody can deny that; and I daresay it is the very newest fashion. At the same time, I'm just afraid that it's rather too delicate, and that it might perhaps get a little dirty on our roads; for although, in general, our roads are quite remarkable for being always dry, which is a great comfort in the country, yet you know the very best roads of course must be wet sometimes. And there's a very bad step just at the door almost, which Glenfern has been always speaking about getting mended. But, to be sure, he has so many things to think about that it's no wonder he forgets sometimes; but I daresay he will get it done very soon now." The prospect of the road being mended produced no better effect than the quotation from Thomson's "Seasons." It was now Miss Nicky's turn. "I'm afraid your Ladyship will frighten our stirks and stots with your finery. I assure you they are not accustomed to see such fine figures; and"--putting her hand out at the window--"I think it's spitting already." [1] [1] A common expression in Scotland to signify slight rain. All three now joined in the chorus, beseeching Lady Juliana to put on something warmer and more wiselike. "I positively have nothing," cried she, wearied with their importunities, "and I shan't get any winter things now till I return to town. My _roquelaire_ does very well for the carriage." The acknowledgment at the beginning of this speech was enough. All three instantly disappeared like the genii of Aladin's lamp, and, like that same person, presently returned, loaded with what, in their eyes, were precious as the gold of Arabia. One displayed a hard worsted shawl, with a flower-pot at each corner; another held up a tartan cloak, with a hood; and a third thrust forward a dark cloth Joseph, lined with flannel; while one and all showered down a variety of old bonnets, fur tippets, hair soles, clogs, pattens, and endless _et ceteras_. Lady Juliana shrank with disgust from these "delightful haps," and resisted all attempts to have them forced upon her, declaring, in a manner which showed her determined to have her own way, that she would either go out as she was or not go out at all. The aunts were therefore obliged to submit, and the party proceeded to what was termed the high road, though a stranger would have sought in vain for its pretensions to that title. Far as the eye could reach--and that was far enough--not a single vehicle could be descried on it, though its deep ruts showed that it was well frequented by carts. The scenery might have had charms for Ossian, but it had none for Lady Juliana, who would rather have been entangled in a string of Bond Street equipages than traversing "the lonely heath, with the stream murmuring hoarsely, the old trees groaning in the wind, the troubled lake," and the still more troubled sisters. As may be supposed, she very soon grew weary of the walk. The bleak wind pierced her to the soul; her silk slippers and lace flounces became undistinguishable masses of mud; her dogs chased the sheep, and were, in their turn, pursued by the "nowts," as the ladies termed the steers. One sister expatiated on the great blessing of having a peat moss at their door; another was at pains to point out the purposed site of a set of new offices; and the third lamented that her Ladyship had not on thicker shoes, that she might have gone and seen the garden. More than ever disgusted and wretched, the hapless Lady Juliana returned to the house to fret away the time till her husband's return. CHAPTER VIII. "On se rend insupportable dans la société par des défauts légers, mais qui se font sentir à tout moment."--VOLTAIRE. THE family of Glenfern have already said so much for themselves that it seems as if little remained to be told by their biographer. Mrs. Douglas was the only member of the community who was at all conscious of the unfortunate association of characters and habits that had just taken place. She was a stranger to Lady Juliana; but she was interested by her youth, beauty, and elegance, and felt for the sacrifice she had made--a sacrifice so much greater than it was possible she ever could have conceived or anticipated. She could in some degree enter into the nature of her feelings towards the old ladies; for she too had felt how disagreeable people might contrive to render themselves without being guilty of any particular fault, and how much more difficult it is to bear with the weaknesses than the vices of our neighbours. Had these ladies' failings been greater in a moral point of view, it might not have been so arduous a task to put up with them. But to love such a set of little, trifling, tormenting foibles, all dignified with the name of virtues, required, from her elegant mind, an exertion of its highest principles--a continual remembrance of that difficult Christian precept, "to bear with one another." A person of less sense than Mrs. Douglas would have endeavoured to open the eyes of their understandings on what appeared to be the folly and narrow mindedness of their ways; but she refrained from the attempt, not from want of benevolent exertion, but from an innate conviction that their foibles all originated in what was now incurable, viz. the natural weakness of their minds, together with their ignorance of the world and the illiberality and prejudices of a vulgar education. "These poor women," reasoned the charitable Mrs. Douglas, "are perhaps, after all, better characters in the sight of God than I am. He who has endowed us all as His wisdom has seen fit, and has placed me amongst them, oh, may He teach me to remember that we are all His children, and enable me to bear with their faults, while I study to correct my own." Thus did this amiable woman contrive not only to live in peace, but, without sacrificing her own liberal ideas, to be actually beloved by those amongst whom her lot had been cast, however dissimilar to herself. But for that Christian spirit (in which must ever be included a liberal mind and gentle temper), she must have felt towards her connexions a still stronger repugnance than was even manifested by Lady Juliana; for Lady Juliana's superiority over them was merely that of refined habits and elegant manners; whereas Mrs. Douglas's was the superiority of a noble and highly-gifted mind, which could hold no intercourse with theirs except by stooping to the level of their low capacities. But, that the merit of her conduct may be duly appreciated, I shall endeavour to give a slight sketch of the female _dramatis personae_ of Glenfern Castle. Miss Jacky, the senior of the trio, was what is reckoned a very sensible woman--which generally means, a very disagreeable, obstinate, illiberal director of all men, women, and children--a sort of superintendent of all actions, time, and place--with unquestioned authority to arraign, judge, and condemn upon the statutes of her own supposed sense. Most country parishes have their sensible woman, who lays down the law on all affairs, spiritual and temporal. Miss Jacky stood unrivalled as the sensible woman of Glenfern. She had attained this eminence partly from having a little more understanding than her sisters, but principally from her dictatorial manner, and the pompous decisive tone in which she delivered the most commonplace truths. At home her supremacy in all matters of sense was perfectly established; and thence the infection, like other superstitions, had spread over the whole neighbourhood. As sensible woman she regulated the family, which she took care to let everybody see; she was conductor of her nieces' education, which she took care to let everybody hear; she was a sort of postmistress general--a detector of all abuses and impositions; and deemed it her prerogative to be consulted about all the useful and useless things which everybody else could have done as well. She was liberal of her advice to the poor, always enforcing upon them the iniquity of idleness, but doing nothing for them in the way of employment--strict economy being one of the many points in which she was particularly sensible. The consequence was, while she was lecturing half the poor women in the parish for their idleness, the bread was kept out of their mouths by the incessant carding of wool and knitting of stockings, and spinning, and reeling, and winding, and pirning, that went on amongst the ladies themselves. And, by-the-bye, Miss Jacky is not the only sensible woman who thinks she is acting a meritorious part when she converts what ought to be the portion of the poor into the employment of the affluent. In short, Miss Jacky was all over sense. A skilful physiognomist would, at a single glance, have detected the sensible woman, in the erect head, the compressed lips, square elbows, and firm judicious step. Even her very garments seemed to partake of the prevailing character of their mistress: her ruff always looked more sensible than any other body's; her shawl sat most sensibly on her shoulders; her walking shoes were acknowledged to be very sensible; and she drew on her gloves with an air of sense, as if the one arm had been Seneca, the other Socrates. From what has been said it may easily be inferred that Miss Jacky was in fact anything but a sensible woman; as indeed no woman can be who bears such visible outward marks of what is in reality the most quiet and unostentatious of all good qualities. But there is a spurious sense, which passes equally well with the multitude; it is easily assumed, and still more easily maintained; common truths and a grave dictatorial air being all that is necessary for its support. Miss Grizzy's character will not admit of so long a commentary as that of her sister. She was merely distinguishable from nothing by her simple good nature, the inextricable entanglement of her thoughts, her love of letter-writing, and her friendship with Lady Maclaughlan. Miss Nicky had about as much sense as Miss Jacky; but, as no kingdom can maintain two kings, so no family can admit of two sensible women; and Nicky was therefore obliged to confine hers to the narrowest possible channels of housekeeping, mantua-making, etc., and to sit down for life (or at least till Miss Jacky should be married) with the dubious character of "not wanting for sense either." With all these little peccadilloes the sisters possessed some good properties. They were well-meaning, kind-hearted, and, upon the whole, good-tempered they loved one another, revered their brother, doated upon their nephews and nieces, took a lively interest in the poorest of their poor cousins, a hundred degrees removed, and had a firm conviction of the perfectibility of human nature, as exemplified in the persons of all their own friends. "Even their failings leaned to virtue's side;" for whatever they did was with the intention of doing good, though the means they made use of generally produced an opposite effect. But there are so many Miss Douglases in the world that doubtless everyone of my readers is as well acquainted with them as I am myself. I shall therefore leave them to finish the picture according to their ideas, while I return to the parlour, where the worthy spinsters are seated in expectation of the arrival of their friend. CHAPTER IX. "Though both Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed-- For contemplation he, and valour formed; For softness she, and sweet attractive grace." MILTON. "WHAT _can_ have come over Lady Maclaughlan?" said Miss Grizzy, as she sat at the window in a dejected attitude. "I think I hear a carriage at last," cried Miss Jacky, turning up her ears. "Wisht! let us listen." "It's only the wind," sighed Miss Grizzy. "It's the cart with the bread," said Miss Nicky. "It's Lady Maclaughlan, I assure you," pronounced Miss Jacky. The heavy rumble of a ponderous vehicle now proclaimed the approach of the expected visitor; which pleasing anticipation was soon changed into blissful certainty by the approach of a high-roofed, square bottomed, pea-green chariot, drawn by two long-tailed white horses, and followed by a lackey in the Highland garb. Out of this equipage issued a figure, clothed in a light-coloured, large-flowered chintz raiment, carefully drawn through the pocket-holes, either for its own preservation, or the more disinterested purpose of displaying a dark short stuff petticoat, which, with the same liberality, afforded ample scope for the survey of a pair of worsted stockings and black leather shoes, something resembling buckets. A faded red cloth jacket, which bore evident marks of having been severed from its native skirts, now acted in the capacity of a spencer. On the head rose a stupendous fabric, in the form of a cap, on the summit of which was placed a black beaver hat, tied _à la poissarde._ A small black satin muff in one hand, and a gold-headed walking-stick in the other, completed the dress and decoration of this personage. The lackey, meanwhile, advanced to the carriage; and, putting in both his hands, as if to catch so something, he pulled forth a small bundle, enveloped in a military cloak, the contents of which would have baffled conjecture, but for the large cocked hat and little booted leg which protruded at opposite extremities. A loud but slow and well-modulated voice now resounded through the narrow stone passage that conducted to the drawing-room. "Bring him in--bring him in, Philistine! I always call my man Philistine, because he has Sampson in his hands. Set him down there," pointing to an easy chair, as the group now entered, headed by Lady Maclaughlan. "Well, girls!" addressing the venerable spinsters, as they severally exchanged a tender salute; "so you're all alive, I see;--humph!" "Dear Lady Maclaughlan, allow me to introduce our beloved niece, Lady Juliana Douglas," said Miss Grizzy, leading her up, and bridling as she spoke with ill-suppressed exultation. "So--you're very pretty--yes, you are very pretty!" kissing the forehead, cheeks, and chin of the youthful beauty between every pause. Then, holding her at arm's length, she surveyed her from head to foot, with elevated brows, and a broad fixed stare. "Pray sit down, Lady Maclaughlan," cried her three friends all at once, each tendering a chair. "Sit down!" repeated she; "why, what should I sit down for? I choose to stand--I don't like to sit--I never sit at home--do I, Sir Sampson?" turning to the little warrior, who, having been seized with a violent fit of coughing on his entrance, had now sunk back, seemingly quite exhausted, while the _Philistine_ was endeavouring to disencumber him of his military accoutrements. "How very distressing Sir Sampson's cough is!" said the sympathising Miss Grizzy. "Distressing, child! No--it's not the least distressing. How can a thing be distressing that does no harm? He's much the better of it--it's the only exercise he gets." "Oh! well, indeed, if that's the case, it would be a thousand pities to stop it," replied the accommodating spinster. "No, it wouldn't be the least pity to stop it!" returned Lady Maclaughlan, in her loud authoritative tone; "because, though it's not distressing, it's very disagreeable. But it cannot be stopped--you might as well talk of stopping the wind--it is a cradle cough." "My dear Lady Maclaughlan!" screamed Sir Sampson in a shrill pipe, as he made an effort to raise himself, and rescue his cough from this aspersion; "how can you persist in saying so, when I have told you so often it proceeds entirely from a cold caught a few years ago, when I attended his Majesty at-----" Here a violent relapse carried the conclusion of the sentence along with it. "Let him alone-don't meddle with him," called his lady to the assiduous nymphs who were bustling around him; "leave him to Philistine; he's in very good hands when he is in Philistine's." Then resting her chin upon the head of her stick, she resumed her scrutiny of Lady Juliana. "You really are a pretty creature! You've got a very handsome nose, and your mouth's very well, but I don't like your eyes; they're too large and too light; they're saucer eyes, and I don't like saucer eyes. Why ha'nt you black eyes? You're not a bit like your father--I knew him very well. Your mother was an heiress; your father married her for her money, and she married him to be a Countess; and so that's the history of their marriage-humph." This well-bred harangue was delivered in an unvarying tone, and with unmoved muscles; for though the lady seldom failed of calling forth some conspicuous emotion, either of shame, mirth, or anger, on the countenances of her hearers, she had never been known to betray any correspondent feelings on her own; yet her features were finely formed, marked, and expressive; and, in spite of her ridiculous dress and eccentric manners, an air of dignity was diffused over her whole person, that screened her from the ridicule to which she must otherwise have been exposed. Amazement at the uncouth garb and singular address of Lady Maclaughlan was seldom unmixed with terror at the stern imperious manner that accompanied all her actions. Such were the feelings of Lady Juliana as she remained subjected to her rude gaze and impertinent remarks. "My Lady?" squeaked Sir Sampson from forth his easy chair. "My love?" interrogated his lady as she leant upon her stick. "I want to be introduced to my Lady Juliana Douglas; so give me your hand," attempting, at the same time, to emerge from the huge leathern receptacle into which he had been plunged by the care of the kind sisters. "Oh, pray sit still, dear Sir Sampson," cried they as usual all at once; "our sweet niece will come to you, don't take the trouble to rise; pray don't," each putting a hand on this man of might, as he was half risen, and pushing him down. "Ay, come here, my dear," said Lady Maclaughlan; "you're abler to walk to Sir Sampson than he to you," pulling Lady Juliana in front of the easy chair; "there--that's her; you see she is very pretty." "Zounds, what is the meaning of all this?" screamed the enraged baronet. "My Lady Juliana Douglas, I am shocked beyond expression at this freedom of my lady's. I beg your ladyship ten thousand pardons; pray be seated. I'm shocked; I am ready to faint at the impropriety of this introduction, so contrary to all rules of etiquette. How _could _you behave in such a manner, my Lady Maclaughlan?" "Why, you know, my dear, your legs may be very good legs, but they can't walk," replied she, with her usual _sang froid._ "My Lady Maclaughlan, you perfectly confound me," stuttering with rage. "My lady Juliana Douglas, see here," stretching out a meagre shank, to which not even the military boot and large spur could give a respectable appearance: "You see that leg strong and straight," stroking it down--; "now, behold the fate of war!" dragging forward the other, which was shrunk and shrivelled to almost one half its original dimensions. "These legs were once the same; but I repine not--I sacrificed it in a noble cause: to that leg my Sovereign owes his life!" "Well, I declare, I had no idea; I thought always it had been rheumatism," burst from the lips of the astonished spinsters, as they crowded round the illustrious limb, and regarded it with looks of veneration. "Humph!" emphatically uttered his lady. "The story's a simple one, ladies, and soon told: I happened to be attending his Majesty at a review; I was then aid-de-camp to Lord -----. His horse took fright, I--I--I,"--here, in spite of all the efforts that could be made to suppress it, the _royal_ _cough _burst forth with a violence that threatened to silence its brave owner for ever. "It's very strange you will talk, my love," said his sympathising lady, as she supported him; "talking never did, nor never will agree with you; it's very strange what pleasure people take in talking--humph!" "Is there anything dear Sir Sampson could take?" asked Miss Grizzy. _"Could_ take? I don't know what you mean by _could_ take. He couldn't take the moon, if you meant hat; but he must take what I give him; so call Philistine; he knows where my cough tincture is." "Oh, we have plenty of it in this press," said Miss Grizzy, flying to a cupboard, and, drawing forth a bottle, she poured out a bumper, and presented it to Sir Sampson. "I'm poisoned!" gasped he feebly; "that's not my lady's cough-tincture." "Not cough-tincture!" repeated the horror-struck doctress, as for the first time she examined the label; "Oh! I declare, neither it is--it's my own stomach lotion. Bless me, what will be done?" and she wrung her hands in despair. "Oh, Murdoch," flying to the _Philistine,_ as he entered with the real cough-tincture, "I've given Sir Sampson a dose of my own stomach lotion by mistake, and I am terrified for the consequences!" "Oo, but hur need na be feared, hur will no be a hair the war o't; for hurs wad na tak' the feesick that the leddie ordered hur yestreen." "Well, I declare things are wisely ordered," observed Miss Grizzy; "in that case it may do dear Sir Sampson a great deal of good." Just as this pleasing idea was suggested, Douglas and his father entered, and the ceremony of presenting her nephew to her friend was performed by Miss Grizzy in her most conciliating manner. "Dear Lady Maclaughlan, this is our nephew Henry, who, I know, has the highest veneration for Sir Sampson and you. Henry, I assure you, Lady Maclaughlan takes the greatest interest in everything that concerns Lady Juliana and you." "Humph!" rejoined her ladyship, as she surveyed him from head to foot. "So your wife fell in love with you, it seems; well, the more fool she; I never knew any good come of love marriages." Douglas coloured, while he affected to laugh at this extraordinary address, and withdrawing himself from her scrutiny, resumed his station by the side of his Juliana. "Now, girls, I must go to my toilet; which of you am I to have for my handmaid?" "Oh, we'll all go," eagerly exclaimed the three nymphs; "our dear niece will excuse us for a little; young people are never at a loss to amuse one another." "Venus and the Graces, by Jove!" exclaimed Sir Sampson, bowing with an air of gallantry; "and now I must go and adonise a little myself." The company then separated to perform the important offices of the toilet. CHAPTER X. "Nature here Wanton'd as in her prime, and played at will Her virgin fancies." MILTON. THE gentlemen were already assembled round the drawing-room fire, impatiently waiting the hour of dinner, when Lady Maclaughlan and her three friends entered. The masculine habiliments of the morning had been exchanged for a more feminine costume. She was now arrayed in a pompadour satin _négligée,_ and petticoat trimmed with Brussels lace. A high starched handkerchief formed a complete breast work, on which, amid a large bouquet of truly artificial roses, reposed a miniature of Sir Sampson, _à la militaire_. A small fly cap of antique lace was scarcely perceptible on the summit of a stupendous frizzled toupee, hemmed in on each side by large curls. The muff and stick had been relinquished for a large fan, something resembling an Indian screen, which she waved to and fro in one hand, while a vast brocaded workbag was suspended from the other. "So, Major Douglas, your servant," said she, in answer to the constrained formal bow with which he saluted her on her entrance. "Why, it's so long since I've seen you that you may be a grandfather for ought I know." The poor awkward Misses at that moment came sneaking into the room: "As for you, girls, you'll never be grandmothers; you'll never be married, unless to wild men of the woods. I suppose you'd like that; it would save you the trouble of combing your hair, and tying your shoes, for then you could go without clothes altogether--humph! You'd be much better without clothes than to put them on as you do," seizing upon the luckless Miss Baby, as she endeavoured to steal behind backs. And here, in justice to the lady, it must be owned that, for once, she had some grounds for animadversion in the dress and appearance of the Misses Douglas. They had stayed out, running races and riding on a pony, until near the dinner hour; and, dreading their father's displeasure should they be too late, they had, with the utmost haste, exchanged their thick morning dresses for thin muslin gowns, made by a mantua-maker of the neighbourhood in the extreme of a two-year-old fashion, when waists _were not._ But as dame Nature had been particularly lavish in the length of theirs, and the stay-maker had, according to their aunt's direction, given them _full measure_ of their new dark stays, there existed a visible breach between the waists of their gowns and the bands of their petticoats, which they had vainly sought to adjust by a meeting. Their hair had been curled, but not combed, and dark gloves had been hastily drawn on to hide red arms. "I suppose," continued the stern Lady Maclaughlan, as she twirled her victim round and round; "I suppose you think yourself vastly smart and well dressed. Yes, you are very neat, very neat indeed; one would suppose Ben Jonson had you in his eye when he composed that song." Then in a voice like thunder, she chanted forth-- "Give me a look, give me a face That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free, Such sweet neglect more taketh me." Miss Grizzy was in the utmost perplexity between her inclination to urge something in extenuation for the poor girls, and her fear of dissenting from Lady Maclaughlan, or rather of not immediately agreeing with her; she therefore steered, as usual, the middle course, and kept saying, "Well, children, really what Lady Maclaughlan says is all very true; at the same time"--turning to her friend--"I declare it's not much to be wondered at; young people are so thoughtless, poor lambs!" "What's aw this wark aboo?" said the old gentleman angrily; "the girlies are weel eneugh; I see naething the matter wi' them; they're no dresse like auld queens or stage-actresses;" and he glance his eye from Lady Maclaughlan to his elegant daughter-in-law, who just then entered, hanging, according to custom, on her husband, and preceded by Cupid. Mrs Douglas followed, and the sound of the dinner bell put a stop to the dispute. "Come, my leddie, we'll see how the dinner's dressed," said the Laird, as he seized Lady Maclaughlan by the tip of the finger, and holding it up aloft, they marched into the dining room. "Permit me, my Lady Juliana Douglas," said the little Baronet, with much difficulty hobbling towards her, and attempting to take her hand. "Come, Harry, love; here, Cupid," cried she; and without noticing the enraged Sir Sampson, she passed on, humming a tune, and leaning upon her husband. "Astonishing! perfectly astonishing!" exclaimed the Baronet; "how a young woman of Lady Juliana's rank and fashion should be guilty of such a solecism in good breeding." "She is very young," said Mrs. Douglas, smiling, as he limped along with her, "and you must make allowances for her; but, indeed, I think her beauty must ever be a sufficient excuse for any little errors she may commit with a person of such taste and gallantry as Sir Sampson Maclaughlan." The little Baronet smiled, pressed the hand he held; and, soothed by the well-timed compliment, he seated himself next to Lady Juliana with some complacency. As she insisted on having her husband on the other side of her, Mr. Douglas was condemned to take his station by the hated Lady Maclaughlan, who, for the first time observing Mrs. Douglas, called to her-- "Come here, my love; I haven't seen you these hundred years;" then seizing her face between her hands, she saluted her in the usual style. "There," at length releasing Mrs Douglas from her gripe--"there's for you! I love you very much; you're neither a fool nor a hoyden; you're a fine intelligent being." Having carefully rolled up and deposited her gloves in her pocket, she pulled out a pin-cushion, and calling Miss Bella, desired her to pin her napkin over her shoulders; which done, she began to devour her soup in silence. Peace was, however, of short duration. Old Donald, in removing a dish of whipt cream, unfortunately overturned one upon Lady Maclaughlan's pompadour satin petticoat--the only part of her dress that was unprotected. "Do you see what you have done, you old Donald, you?" cried she, seizing the culprit by the sleeve; "why, you've got St. Vitus's dance. A fit hand to carry whipt cream, to be sure! Why, I could as well carry a custard on the point of a bayonet--humph!" "Dear me, Donald, how could you be so senseless?" cried Miss Jacky. "Preserve me, Donald, I thought you had more sense!" squeaked Miss Nicky. "I am sure, Donald, that was na like you!" said Miss Grizzy, as the friends all flocked around the petticoat, each suggesting a different remedy. "It's all of you, girls, that his has happened. Why can't you have a larger tablecloth upon your table! And that old man has the palsy. Why don't you electrify him?' in a tone admirably calculated to have that effect. "I declare, it's all very true," observed Miss Grizzy; "the tablecloth _is_ very small, and Donald certainly _does_ shake, that cannot be denied;" but, lowering her voice, "he is so obstinate, we really don't know what to do with him. My sisters and I attempted to use the flesh-brush with him." "Oh, and an excellent thing it is; I make Philistine rub Sir Sampson every morning and night. If it was not for that and his cough, nobody would know whether he were dead or alive; I don't believe he would know himself--humph!" Sir Sampson's lemon face assumed an orange hue as he overheard this domestic detail; but not daring to contradict the facts, he prudently turned a deaf ear to them, and attempted to carryon a flirtation with Lady Juliana through the medium of Cupid, whom he had coaxed upon his knee. Dinner being at length ended, toasts succeeded: and each of the ladies having given her favourite laird, the signal of retreat was given, and a general movement took place. Lady Juliana, throwing herself upon a sofa with her pugs, called Mrs. Douglas to her. "Do sit down here and talk with me," yawned she. Her sister-in-law, with great good-humour, fetched her work, and seated herself by the spoilt child. "What strange thing is that you are making?" asked she, as Mrs. Douglas pulled out her knitting. "It's a child's stocking," replied her sister-in-law. "A child's stocking! Oh, by-the-bye, have you a great many children?" "I have none," answered Mrs. Douglas, with a half-stifled sigh. "None at all?" repeated Lady Juliana, with surprise "then, why do you make children's stockings?" "I make them for those whose parents cannot afford to purchase them." "La! what poor wretches they must be, that can't afford to buy stockings," rejoined Lady Juliana, with a yawn. "It's monstrous good of you to make them, to be sure; but it must be a shocking bore! and such a trouble!" and another long yawn succeeded. "Not half such a bore to me as to sit idle," returned Mrs. Douglas, with a smile, "nor near so much trouble as you undergo with your favourites." Lady Juliana made no reply, but turning from her sister-in-law, soon was, or affected to be, sound a sleep, from which she was only roused by the entrance of the gentlemen. "A rubber or a reel, my Leddie?" asked the Laird, going up to his daughter-in-law. "Julia, love," said her husband, "my father asks you if you choose cards or dancing." "There's nobody to dance with," said she, casting a languid glance around; "I'll play at cards." "Not whist, surely!" said Henry. "Whist! Oh, heavens, no." "Weel, weel, you youngsters will get a roundgame; come, my Leddy Maclaughlan, Grizzy, Mrs. Douglas, hey for the odd trick and the honours!" "What would your Ladyship choose to play at?' asked Miss Jacky, advancing with a pack of cards in one hand, and a box of counters in the other. "Oh, anything; I like 100 very well, or quadrille, or--1 really don't care what." The Misses, who had gathered round, and were standing gaping in joyful expectation of Pope Joan, or a pool at commerce, here exchanged sorrowful glances. "I am afraid the young people don't play these games," replied Miss Jacky; "but we've counters enough," shaking her little box, "for Pope Joan, and we all know that." "Pope Joan! I never heard of such a game," replied Lady Juliana. "Oh, we can soon learn you," said Miss Nicky, who having spread the green cloth on the tea-table, now advanced to join the consultation. "I hate to be taught," said Lady Juliana, with a yawn; "besides, I am sure it must be something very stupid." "Ask if she plays commerce," whispered Miss Bella to Miss Baby. The question was put, but with no better success, and the young ladies' faces again bespoke their disappointment, which their brother observing, he good-naturedly declared his perfect knowledge of commerce; "and I must insist upon teaching you, Juliana," gently dragging her to the table. "What's the pool to be?" asked one of the young ladies. "I'm sure I don't know," said the aunts, looking to each other. "I suppose we must make it sixpence," said Miss Jacky, after a whispering consultation with her sister. "In that case we can afford nothing to the best hand," observed Miss Nicky. "And we ought to have five lives and grace," added one of the nieces. These points having been conceded, the preliminaries were at length settled. The cards were slowly _doled_ out by Miss Jacky; and Lady Juliana was carefully instructed in the rules of the game, and strongly recommended always to try for a sequence, or pairs, etc. "And if you win," rejoined Miss Nicky, shaking the snuffer-stand in which were deposited the sixpences, "you get all this." As may be conjectured, Lady Juliana's patience could not survive more than one life; she had no notion of playing for sixpences, and could not be at the trouble to attend to any instructions; she therefore quickly retired in disgust, leaving the aunts and nieces to struggle for the glorious prize. "My dear child, you played that last stroke like a perfect natural," cried Lady Maclaughlan to Miss Grizzy, as the rubber ended, they arose from the table. "Indeed, I declare, I daresay I did," replied her friend in a deprecating tone. "Daresay you did! I know you did-humph! I knew the ace lay with you; I knew that as well as if I had seen it. I suppose you have eyes--but I don't know; if you have, didn't you see Glenfern turn up the king, and yet you returned his lead--returned our adversary's lead in the face of his king. I've been telling you these twenty years not to return your adversary's lead; nothing can be more despicable; nothing can be a greater proof of imbecility of mind--humph!" Then, seating herself, she began to exercise her fan with considerable activity. "This has been the most disagreeable day I ever spent in this house, girls. I don't know what's come over you, but you are all wrong; my petticoat's ruined; my pockets picked at cards. It won't do, girls; it won't do--humph!" "I am sure I can't understand it," said Miss Grizzy in a rueful accent; "there really appears to have been some fatality." "Fatality!--humph! I wish you would give everything its right name. What do you mean by fatality?" "I declare--I am sure--I--I really don't know," stammered the unfortunate Grizzy. "Do you mean that the spilling of the custard was the work of an angel?" demanded her unrelenting friend. "Oh, certainly not." "Or that it was the devil tempted you to throw away your ace there? I suppose there's a fatality in our going to supper just now," continued she, as her deep-toned voice resounded through the passage that conducted to the dining-room; "and I suppose it will be called a fatality if that old Fate," pointing to Donald, "scalds me to death with that mess of porridge he's going to put on the table--humph!" No such fatality, however, occurred; and the rest of the evening passed off in as much harmony as could be expected from the very heterogeneous parts of which the society was formed. The family group had already assembled round the breakfast-table, with the exception of Lady Juliana, who chose to take that meal in bed; but, contrary to her usual custom, no Lady Maclaughlan had yet made her appearance. "The scones will be like leather," said Miss Grizzy, as she wrapped another napkin round them. "The eggs will be like snowballs," cried Miss Jacky, popping them into the slop-basin. "The tea will be like brandy," observed Miss Nicky, as she poured more water to the three teaspoonfuls she had infused. "I wish we saw our breakfast," said the Laird, as he finished the newspapers, and deposited his spectacles in his pocket. At that moment the door opened, and the person in question entered in her travelling dress, followed by Sir Sampson, Philistine bringing up the rear with a large green bag and a little band-box. "I hope your bed was warm and comfortable. I hope you rested well. I hope Sir Sampson's quite well!" immediately burst as if from a thousand voices, while the sisters officiously fluttered round their friend. "I rested very ill; my bed was very uncomfortable; and Sir Sampson's as sick as a cat--humph!" Three disconsolate "Bless me's!" here burst forth. "Perhaps your bed was too hard?" said Miss Grizzy. "Or too soft?" suggested Miss Jacky. "Or too hot?" added Miss Nicky. "It was neither too hard, nor too soft, nor too hot, nor too cold," thundered the Lady, as she seated herself at the table; "but it was all of them." "I declare, that's most distressing," said Miss Grizzy, in a tone of sorrowful amazement. "Was your head high enough, dear Lady Maclaughlan?" "Perhaps it was too high," said Miss Jacky. "I know nothing more disagreeable than a high head," remarked Miss Nicky. "Except a fool's head--humph!" The sound of a carriage here set all ears on full stretch, and presently the well-known pea-green drew up. "Dear me! Bless me! Goodness me!" shrieked the three ladies at once. "Surely, Lady Maclaughlan, you can't--you don't--you won't; this must be a mistake." "There's no mistake in the matter, girls," replied their friend, with her accustomed _sang froid._ "I'm going home; so I ordered the carriage; that's all--humph!" "Going home!" faintly murmured the disconsolate spinsters. "What! I suppose you think I ought to stay here and have another petticoat spoiled; or lose another half-crown at cards; or have the finishing stroke put to Sir Sampson--humph!" "Oh! Lady Maclaughlan!" was three times uttered in reproachful accents. "I don't know what else I should stay for; you are not yourselves, girls; you've all turned topsy-turvy. I've visited here these twenty years, and I never saw things in the state they are now--humph!" "I declare it's very true," sighed Miss Grizzy; "we certainly are a little in confusion, that can't be denied." "Denied! Why, can you deny that my petticoat's ruined?" Can you deny that my pocket was picked of half-a-crown for nothing? Can you deny that Sir Sampson has been half-poisoned? And---" "My Lady Maclaughlan," interrupted the enraged husband, "I--I--I am surprised--I am shocked! Zounds, my Lady, I won't suffer this! I cannot stand it;" and pushing his tea-cup away, he arose, and limped to the window. Philistine here entered to inform his mistress that "awthing was ready." "Steady, boys, steady! I always am ready," responded the Lady in a tone adapted to the song. "Now I am ready; say nothing, girls--you know my rules. Here, Philistine, wrap up Sir Sampson, and put him in. Get along, my love. Good-bye, girls; and I hope you will all be restored to your right senses soon." "Oh, Lady Maclaughlan!" whined the weeping Grizzy, as she embraced her friend, who, somewhat melted at the signs of her distress, bawled out from the carriage, as the door was shut, "Well, God bless you, girls, and make you what you have been; and come to Lochmarlie Castle soon, and bring your wits along with you." The carriage then drove off, and the three disconsolate sisters returned to the parlour to hold a cabinet council as to the causes of the late disasters. CHAPTER XI. "If there be cure or charm To respite or relieve, or slack the pain Of this ill mansion." MILTON. TIME, which generally alleviates ordinary distresses, served only to augment the severity of Lady Juliana's, as day after day rolled heavily on, and found her still an inmate of Glenfern Castle. Destitute of very resource in herself, she yet turned with contempt from the scanty sources of occupation or amusement that were suggested by others; and Mrs. Douglas's attempts to teach her to play at chess and read Shakespeare were as unsuccessful as the endeavours of the good aunts to persuade her to study Fordyce's Sermons and make baby linen. In languid dejection or fretful repinings did the unhappy beauty therefore consume the tedious hours, while her husband sought alternately to soothe with fondness he no longer felt, or flatter with hopes which he knew to be groundless. To his father alone could he now look for any assistance, and from him he was not likely to obtain it in the form he desired; as the old gentleman repeatedly declared his utter inability to advance him any ready money, or to allow him more than a hundred a year--moreover, to be paid quarterly--a sum which could not defray their expenses to London. Such was the state of affairs when the Laird one morning entered the dining-room with a face of much importance, and addressed his son with, "Weel, Harry, you're a lucky man; and it's an ill wind that blaws naebody gude: here's puir Macglashan gane like snaw aff a dyke." "Macglashan gone!" exclaimed Miss Grizzy. "Impossible, brother; it was only yesterday I sent him a blister for his back!" "And I," said Miss Jacky, "talked to him for upwards of two hours last night on the impropriety of his allowing his daughter to wear white gowns on Sunday." "By my troth, an' that was eneugh to kill ony man," muttered the Laird. "How I am to derive any benefit from this important demise is more than I can perceive," said Henry in a somewhat contemptuous tone. "You see," replied his father, "that by our agreement his farm falls vacant in consequence." "And I hope I am to succeed to it!" replied the son, with a smile of derision. "Exactly! By my faith, but you have a be in downset. There's three thousand and seventy-five acres of as good sheep walk as any in the whole country-side; and I shall advance you stocking and stedding, and everything complete, to your very peatstacks. What think ye of that?" slapping his son's shoulder, and rubbing his own hands with delight as he spoke. Horrorstruck at a scheme which appeared to him a thousand times worse than anything his imagination had ever painted, poor Henry stood in speechless consternation; while "Charming! Excellent! Delightful!" was echoed by the aunts, as they crowded round, wishing him joy, and applauding their brother's generosity. "What will our sweet niece say to this, I wonder?" said the innocent Grizzy, who in truth wondered none. "I would like to see her face when she hears it;" and her own was puckered into various shapes of delight. "I have no doubt but her good sense will teach her to appreciate properly the blessings of her lot," observed the more reflecting Jacky. "She has had her own good luck," quoth the sententious Nicky, "to find such a down set all cut and dry." At that instant the door opened, and the favoured individual in question entered. In vain Douglas strove to impose silence on his father and aunts. The latter sat, bursting with impatience to break out into exclamation, while the former, advancing to his fair daughter-in-law, saluted her as "Lady Clackandow?" Then the torrent burst forth, and, stupefied with surprise, Lady Juliana suffered herself to be kissed and hugged by the whole host of aunts and nieces, while the very walls seemed to reverberate the shouts, and the pugs and mackaw, who never failed to take part in every commotion, began to bark and scream in chorus. The old gentleman, clapping his hands to his ears, rushed out of the room. His son, cursing his aunts, and everything around him, kicked Cupid, and gave the mackaw a box on the ear, as he also quitted the apartment, with more appearance of anger than he had ever yet betrayed. The tumult at length began to subside. The mackaw's screams gave place to a low quivering croak; and the insulted pug's yells yielded to a gentle whine. The aunts' obstreperous joy began to be chastened with fear for the consequences that might follow an abrupt disclosure; and, while Lady Juliana condoled with her favourites, it was concerted between the prudent aunts that the joyful news should be broke to their niece in the most cautious manner possible. For that purpose Misses Grizzy and Jacky seated themselves on each side of her; and, after duly preparing their voices by sundry small hems, Miss Grizzy thus began: "I'm sure-I declare-I dare say, my dear Lady Juliana, you must think we are all distracted." Her auditor made no attempt to contradict the supposition. "We certainly ought, to be sure, to have been more cautious, considering your delicate situation; but the joy--though, indeed, it seems cruel to say so. And I am sure you will sympathise, my dear niece, in the cause, when you hear that it is occasioned by your poor neighbour Macglashan's death, which, I'm sure, was quite unexpected. Indeed, I declare I can't conceive how it came about; for Lady Maclaughlan, who is an excellent judge of these things, thought he was really a remarkably stout-looking man for his time of life; and indeed, except occasional colds, which you know we are all subject to, I really never knew him complain. At the same time--" "I don't think, sister, you are taking the right method of communicating the intelligence to our niece," said Miss Jacky. "You cannot communicate anything that would give me the least pleasure, unless you could tell me that I was going to leave this place," cried Lady Juliana in a voice of deep despondency. "Indeed! if it can afford your Ladyship so much pleasure to be at liberty to quit the hospitable mansion of your amiable husband's respectable father," said Miss Jacky, with an inflamed visage and outspread hands, "you are at perfect liberty to depart when you think proper. The generosity, I may say the munificence, of my excellent brother, has now put it in your power to do as you please, and to form your own plans." "Oh, delightful!" exclaimed Lady Juliana, starting up; "now I shall be quite happy. Where's Harry! Does he know? Is he gone to order the carriage! Can we get away to-day?" And she was flying out of the room when Miss Jacky caught her by one hand, while Miss Grizzy secured the other. "Oh, pray don't detain me! I must find Harry; and I have all my things to put up," struggling to release herself from the gripe of the sisters; when the door opened, and Harry entered, eager, yet dreading to know the effects of the _éclaircissernent._ His surprise extreme at beholding his wife, with her eyes sparkling, her cheeks glowing, and her whole countenance expressing extreme pleasure. Darting from her keepers, she bounded towards him with the wildest ejaculations of delight; while he stood alternately gazing at her and his aunts, seeking by his eyes the explanation he feared to demand. "My dearest Juliana, what is the meaning of all this?" he at length articulated. "Oh, you cunning thing! So you think I don't know that your father has given you a great, great quantity of money, and that we may go away whenever we please, and do just as we like, and live in London, and--and--oh, delightful!" And she bounded and skipped before the eyes of the petrified spinsters. "In the name of heaven, what does all this mean?" asked Henry, addressing his aunts, who, for the first time in their lives, were struck dumb by astonishment. But Miss Jacky, at length recollecting herself, turned to Lady Juliana, who was still testifying her delight by a variety of childish but graceful movements, and thus addressed her: "Permit me to put a few questions to your Ladyship, in presence of those who were witnesses of what has already passed." "Oh, I can't endure to be asked questions; besides, I have no time to answer them." "Your Ladyship must excuse me; But I can't permit you to leave this room under the influence of an error. Have the goodness to answer me the following questions, and you will then be at liberty to depart. Did I inform your Ladyship that my brother had given my nephew a great quantity of money?" "Oh yes! a great, great deal; I don't know how much, though--" "Did I?" returned her interrogator. "Come, come, have done with all this confounded nonsense!" exclaimed Henry passionately. "Do you imagine I will allow Lady Juliana to stand here all day, to answer all the absurd questions that come into the heads of three old women? You stupefy and bewilder her with your eternal tattling and roundabout harangues." And he paced the room in a paroxysm of rage, while his wife suspended her dancing, and stood in breathless amazement. "I declare--I'm sure--it's a thousand pities that there should have been any mistake made," whined poor Miss Grizzy. "The only remedy is to explain the matter quickly," observed Miss Nicky; "better late than never." "I have done," said Miss Jacky, seating herself with much dignity. "The short and the long of it is this," said Miss Nicky, "My brother has not made Henry a present of money. I assure you money is not so rife; but he has done what is much better for you both,--he has made over to him that fine thriving farm of poor Macglashan's." "No money!" repeated Lady Juliana in a disconsolate tone: then quickly brightening up, "It would have been better, to be sure, to have had the money directly; but you know we can easily sell the estate. How long will it take?--a week?" "Sell Clackandow!" exclaimed the three horrorstruck daughters of the house of Douglas. "Sell Clackandow! Oh! oh! oh!" "What else could we do with it?" inquired her Ladyship. "Live at it, to be sure," cried all three. "Live at it!" repeated she, with a shriek of horror that vied with that of the spinsters--"Live at it! Live on a thriving farm! Live all my life in such a place as this! Oh! the very thought is enough to kill me!" "There is no occasion to think or say any more about it," interrupted Henry in a calmer tone; and, glancing round on his aunts, "I therefore desire no more may be said on the subject." "And is this really all? And have you got no money? And are we not going away?" gasped the disappointed Lady Juliana, as she gave way to a violent burst of tears, that terminated in a fit of hysterics; at sight of which, the good spinsters entirely forgot their wrath; and while one burnt feathers under her nose, and another held her hands, a third drenched her in floods of Lady Maclaughlan'shysteric water. After going through the regular routine, the lady's paroxysm subsided; and being carried to bed, she soon sobbed herself into a feverish slumber; in which state the harassed husband left her to attend a summons from his father. CHAPTER XII. "See what delight in sylvan scenes appear!" Pope. "Haply this life is best, Sweetest to you, well corresponding With your stiff age; but unto us it is A cell of ignorance, a prison for a debtor." _Cymbeline._ HE found the old gentleman in no very complaisant humour, from the disturbances that had taken place, but the chief cause of which he was still in ignorance of. He therefore accosted his son with: "What was the meaning o' aw that skirling and squeeling I heard a while ago? By my faith, there's nae bearing this din! Thae beasts o' your wife's are eneugh to drive a body oot o' their judgment. But she maun gi'e up thae maggots when she becomes a farmer's wife. She maun get stirks and stots to mak' pets o', if she maun ha'e _four-fitted _favourites; but, to my mind, it wad set her better to be carrying a wiselike wean in her arms, than trailing aboot wi' thae confoonded dougs an' paurits." Henry coloured, bit his lips, but made no reply to this elegant address of his father's, who continued, "I sent for you, sir, to have some conversation about this farm of Macglashan's; so sit down there till I show you the plans." Hardly conscious of what he was doing, poor Henry gazed in silent confusion, as his father pointed out the various properties of this his future possession. Wholly occupied in debating within himself how he was to decline the offer without a downright quarrel, he heard, without understanding a word, all the old gentleman's plans and proposals for building dikes, draining moss, etc.; and, perfectly unconscious of what he was doing, yielded a ready assent to all the improvements that were suggested. "Then as for the hoose and offices,-let me see," continued the Laird, as he rolled up the plans of the farm, and pulled forth that of the dwelling-house from a bundle of papers. "Ay, here it is. By my troth, ye'll be weel lodged here. The hoose is in a manner quite new, for it has never had a brush upon it yet. And there's a byre--fient a bit, if I would mean the best man i' the country to sleep there himsel.'" A pause followed, during which Glenfern was busily employed in poring over his parchment; then taking off his spectacles, and surveying his son, "And now, sir, that you've heard a' the oots an' ins o' the business, what think you your farm should bring you at the year's end?" "I--I--I'm sure--I--I don't know," stammered poor Henry, awakening from his reverie. "Come, come, gi'e a guess." "I really--I cannot--I haven't the least idea." "I desire, sir, ye'll say something directly, that I may judge whether or no ye ha'e common sense," cried the old gentleman angrily. "I should suppose-I imagine-I don't suppose it will exceed seven or eight hundred a year," said his son, in the greatest trepidation at this trial of his intellect. "Seven or eight hunder deevils!" cried the incensed Laird, starting up and pushing his papers from him. "By my faith, I believe ye're a born idiot! Seven or eight hunder pounds!" repeated he, at least a dozen times, as he whisked up and down the little apartment with extraordinary velocity, while poor Henry affected to be busily employed in gathering up the parchments with which the floor was strewed. "I'll tell you what, sir," continued he, stopping; "you're no fit to manage a farm; you're as ignorant as yon coo, an' as senseless as its cauf. Wi' gude management, Clackandow should produce you twahunder and odd pounds yearly; but in your guiding I doot if it will yield the half. However, tak' it or want it, mind me, sir, that it's a' ye ha'e to trust to in my lifetime; so ye may mak' the maist o't." Various and painful were the emotions that struggled in Henry's breast at this declaration. Shame, regret, indignation, all burned within him; but the fear he entertained of his father, and the consciousness of his absolute dependence, chained his tongue, while the bitter emotions that agitated him painted themselves legibly in his countenance. His father observed his agitation; and, mistaking the cause, felt somewhat softened at what he conceived his son's shame and penitence for his folly. He therefore extended his hand towards him, saying, "Weel, weel, nae mairaboot it; Clackandow's yours, as soon as I can put you in possession. In the meantime, stay still here, and welcome." "I--am much obliged to you for the offer, sir; I--feel very grateful for your kindness," at length articulated his son; "but--I--am, as you observe, so perfectly ignorant of country matters, that I--I--in short, I am afraid I should make a bad hand of the business." "Nae doot, nae doot ye would, if ye was left to your ain discretion; but ye'll get mair sense, and I shall put ye upon a method, and provide ye wi' a grieve; an' if you are active, and your wife managing, there's nae fear o' you." "But Lady Juliana, sir, has never been accustomed--" "Let her serve an apprenticeship to your aunts; she couldna be in a better school." "But her education, sir, has been so different from what would be required in that station," resumed her husband, choking with vexation, at the idea of his beauteous high-born bride being doomed to the drudgery of household cares. "Edication! what has her edication been, to mak' her different frae other women? If a woman can nurse her bairns, mak' their claes, and manage her hoose, what mair need she do? If she can playa tune on the spinnet, and dance a reel, and play a rubber at whist--nae doot these are accomplishments, but they're soon learnt. Edication! pooh!--I'll be bound Leddy Jully Anie wull mak' as gude a figure by-and-by as the best edicated woman in the country." "But she dislikes the country, and--" "She'll soon come to like it. Wait a wee till she has a wheen bairns, an' a hoose o' her ain, an' I'll be bound she'll be happy as the day's lang." "But the climate does not agree with her," continued the tender husband, almost driven to extremities by the persevering simplicity of his father. "Stay a wee till she gets to Clackandow! There's no a finer, freer-aired situation in a' Scotland. The air's sharpish, to be sure, but fine and bracing; and you have a braw peat-moss at your back to keep you warm." Finding it in vain to attempt _insinuating_ his objections to a pastoral life, poor Henry was at length reduced to the necessity of coming to the point with the old gentleman, and telling him plainly that it was not at all suited to his inclinations, or Lady Juliana's rank and beauty. Vain would be the attempt to paint the fiery wrath and indignation of the ancient Highlander as the naked truth stood revealed before him:--that his son despised the occupation of his fathers, even the feeding of sheep and the breeding of black cattle; and that his high-born spouse was above fulfilling those duties which he had ever considered the chief end for which woman was created. He swore, stamped, screamed, and even skipped with rage, and, in short, went through all the evolutions as usually performed by testy old gentlemen on first discovering that they have disobedient sons and undutiful daughters. Henry, who, though uncommonly good-tempered, inherited a portion of his father's warmth, became at length irritated at the invectives that were so liberally bestowed on him, and replied in language less respectful than the old Laird was accustomed to hear; and the altercation became so violent that they parted in mutual anger; Henry returning to his wife's apartment in a state of the greatest disquietude he had ever known. To her childish complaints, and tiresome complaints, he no longer vouchsafed to reply, but paced the chamber with a disordered mien, in sullen silence; till at length, distracted by her reproaches, and disgusted with her selfishness, he rushed from the apartment and quitted the house. CHAPTER XIII. "Never talk to me; I will weep." _As You Like It._ TWICE had the dinner bell been loudly sounded by old Donald, and the family of Glenfern were all assembled, yet their fashionable guests had not appeared. Impatient of delay, Miss Jacky hastened to ascertain the cause. Presently she returned in the utmost perturbation, and announced that Lady Juliana was in bed in a high fever, and Henry nowhere to be found. The whole eight rushed upstairs to ascertain the fact, leaving the old gentleman much discomposed at this unseasonable delay. Some time elapsed ere they again returned, which they did with lengthened faces, and in extreme perturbation. They had found their noble niece, according to Miss Jacky's report, in bed-according to Miss Grizzy's opinion, in a brain fever; as she no sooner perceived them enter, than she covered her head with the bedclothes, and continued screaming for them to be gone, till they had actually quitted the apartment." "And what proves beyond a doubt that our sweet niece is not herself," continued poor Miss Grizzy, in a lamentable tone, "is that we appeared to her in every form but our own! She sometimes took us for cats; then thought we were ghosts haunting her; and, in short, it is impossible to tell all the things she called us; and she screams so for Harry to come and take her away that I am sure--I declare--I don't know what's come over her!" Mrs. Douglas could scarce suppress a smile at the simplicity of the good spinsters. Her husband and she had gone out immediately after breakfast to pay a visit a few miles off, and did not return till near the dinner hour. They were therefore ignorant of all that had been acted during their absence; but as she suspected something was amiss, she requested the rest of the company would proceed to dinner, and leave her to ascertain the nature of Lady Juliana's disorder. "Don't come near me!" shrieked her Ladyship, on hearing the door open. "Send Harry to take me away; I don't want anybody but Harry!"--and a torrent of tears, sobs, and exclamations followed. "My dear Lady Juliana," said Mrs. Douglas, softly approaching the bed, "compose yourself; and if my presence is disagreeable to you I shall immediately withdraw." "Oh, is it you?" cried her sister-in-law, uncovering her face at the sound of her voice. "I thought it had been these frightful old women come to torment me; and I shall die--I know I shall--if ever I look at them again. But I don't dislike _you;_ so you may stay if you choose, though I don't want anybody but Harry to come and take me away." A fresh fit of sobbing here impeded her utterance; and Mrs. Douglas, compassionating her distress, while she despised her folly, seated herself by the bedside, and taking her hand, in the sweetest tone of complacency attempted to soothe her into composure. "The only way in which you can be less miserable," said Mrs. Douglas in a soothing tone, "is to support your present situation with patience, which you may do by looking forward to brighter prospects. It is _possible_ that your stay here may be short; and it is _certain_ that it is in your own power to render your life more agreeable by endeavouring to accommodate yourself to the peculiarities of your husband's family. No doubt they are often tiresome and ridiculous; but they are always kind and well-meaning." "You may say what you please, but I think them all odious creatures; and I won't live here with patience; and I shan't be agreeable to them; and all the talking in the world won't make me less miserable. If you were me, you would be just the same; but you have never been in London--that's the reason." "Pardon me," replied her sister-in-law, "I spent many years of my life there." "You lived in London!" repeated Lady Juliana in astonishment. "And how, then, can you contrive to exist here?" "I not only contrive to exist, but to be extremely contented with existence," said Mrs. Douglas, with a smile. Then assuming a more serious air, "I possess health, peace of mind, and the affections of a worthy husband; and I should be very undeserving of these blessings were I to give way to useless regrets or indulge in impious repinings because my happiness might once have been more perfect, and still admits of improvement." "I don't understand you," said Lady Juliana, with a peevish yawn. "Who did you live with in London?" "With my aunt, Lady Audley." "With Lady Audley!" repeated her sister-in-law in accents of astonishment. "Why, I have heard of her; she lived quite in the world; and gave balls and assemblies; so that's the reason you are not so disagreeable as the rest of them. Why did you not remain with her, or marry an Englishman? But I suppose, like me, you didn't know what Scotland was!" Happy to have excited an interest, even through the medium of childish curiosity, in the bosom of her fashionable relative, Mrs. Douglas briefly related such circumstances of her past life as she judged proper to communicate; but as she sought rather to amuse than instruct by her simple narrative, we shall allow her to pursue her charitable intentions, while we do more justice to her character by introducing her regularly to the acquaintance of our readers. History of Mrs. Douglas. "The selfish heart deserves the pang it feels; More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts, And conscious virtue mitigates the pang." --YOUNG. MRS. DOUGLAS was, on the maternal side, related to an English family. Her mother had died in giving birth to her; and her father, shortly after, falling in the service of his country, she had been consigned in infancy to the care of her aunt. Lady Audley had taken charge of her, on condition that she should never be claimed by her Scottish relations, for whom that lady entertained as much aversion as contempt. A latent feeling of affection for her departed sister, and a large portion of family pride, had prompted her wish of becoming the protectress of her orphan niece; and, possessed of a high sense of rectitude and honour, she fulfilled the duty thus voluntarily imposed in a manner that secured the unshaken gratitude of the virtuous Alicia. Lady Audley was a character more esteemed and feared than loved, even by those with whom she was most intimate. Firm, upright, and rigid, she exacted from others those inflexible virtues which in herself she found no obstacle to performing. Neglecting these softer attractions which shed their benign influence over the commerce of social life, she was content to enjoy the extorted esteem of her associates; for friends she had none. She sought in the world for objects to fill up the void which her heart could not supply. She loved _éclat,_ and had succeeded in creating herself an existence of importance in the circles of high life, which she considered more as due to her consequence than essential to her enjoyment. She had early in life been left a widow, with the sole tutelage and management of an only son, whose large estate she regulated with the most admirable prudence and judgment. Alicia Malcolm was put under the care of her aunt at two years of age. A governess had been procured for her, whose character was such as not to impair the promising dispositions of her pupil. Alicia was gifted by nature with a warm affectionate heart, and a calm imagination attempered its influence. Her governess, a woman of a strong understanding and enlarged mind, early instilled into her a deep and strong sense of religion; and to it she owed the support which had safely guided her through the most trying vicissitudes. When at the age of seventeen Alicia Malcolm was produced in the world. She was a rational, cheerful, and sweet-tempered girl, with a finely formed person, and a countenance in which was so clearly painted the sunshine of her breast, that it attracted the _bienveillance_ even of those who had not taste or judgment to define the charm. Her open natural manner, blending the frankness of the Scotch with the polished reserve of the English woman, her total exemption from vanity, calculated alike to please others and maintain her own cheerfulness undimmed by a single cloud. Lady Audley felt for her niece a sentiment which she mistook for affection; her self-approbation was gratified at the contemplation of a being who owed every advantage to her, and whom she had rescued from the coarseness and vulgarity which she deemed inseparable from the manners of every Scotchwoman. If Lady Audley really loved any human being it was her son. In him were centred her dearest interests; on his aggrandisement and future importance hung her most sanguine hopes. She had acted contrary to the advice of her male relations, and followed her own judgment, by giving her son a private education. He was brought up under her own eye by a tutor of deep erudition, but who was totally unfitted for forming the mind, and compensating for those advantages which may be derived from a public education. The circumstances of his education, however, combined rather to stifle the exposure than to destroy the existence of some very dangerous qualities that seemed inherent in Sir Edmund's nature. He was ardent, impetuous, and passionate, though these propensities were cloaked by a reserve, partly natural, and partly arising from of his mother and tutor. His was not the effervescence of character which bursts forth on every trivial occasion; but when any powerful cause awakened the slumbering inmates, of his breast, they blazed with an uncontrolled fury that defied all opposition, and overleaped all bounds of reason and decorum. Experience often shows us that minds formed of the most opposite attributes more forcibly attract each other than those which appear cast in the same mould. The source of this fascination is difficult to trace; it possesses not reason for its basis, yet it is perhaps the more tyrannical in its influence from that very cause. The weakness of our natures occasionally makes us feel a potent charm in "errors of a noble mind." Sir Edmund Audley and Alicia Malcolm proved examples of this observation. The affection of childhood had so gradually ripened into a warmer sentiment, that neither was conscious of the nature of that sentiment till after it had attained strength to cast a material influence on their after lives. The familiarity of near relatives associating constantly together produced a warm sentiment of affection, cemented by similarity of pursuits, and enlivened by diversity of character; while the perfect tranquillity of their lives afforded no event that could withdraw the veil of ignorance from their eyes. Could a woman of Lady Audley's discernment, it may be asked, place two young persons in such a situation, and doubt the consequences? Those who are no longer young are liable to forget that love is a plant of early growth, and that the individuals that they have but a short time before beheld placing their supreme felicity on a rattle and a go-cart can so soon be actuated by the strongest passions of the human breast. Sir Edmund completed his nineteenth year, and Alicia entered her eighteenth, when this happy state of unconscious security was destroyed by a circumstance which rent the veil from her eyes, and disclosed his sentiments in all their energy and warmth. This circumstance was no other than a proposal of marriage to Alicia from a gentleman of large fortune and brilliant connexions who resided in their neighbourhood. His character was as little calculated as his appearance to engage the affections of a young woman of delicacy and good sense. But he was a man of consequence; heir to an earldom; member for the county; and Lady Audley, rejoicing at what she termed Alicia's good fortune, determined that she should become his wife. With mild firmness she rejected the honour intended her; but it was with difficulty that Lady Audley's mind could adopt or understand the idea of an opposition to her wishes. She could not seriously embrace the conviction that Alicia was determined to disobey her; and in order to bring her to a right understanding she underwent a system of persecution that tended naturally to increase the antipathy her suitor had inspired. Lady Audley, with the indiscriminating zeal of prejudiced and overbearing persons, strove to recommend him to her niece br all those attributes which were of value in her own eyes; making allowance for a certain degree of in decision in her niece, but never admitting a doubt that in due time her will should be obeyed, as it had always hitherto been. At this juncture Sir Edmund came down to the country, and was struck by the altered looks and pensive manners of his once cheerful cousin. About a week after his arrival he found Alicia one morning in tears, after a long conversation with Lady Audley. Sir Edmund tenderly soothed her, and entreated to be made acquainted with the cause of her distress. She was so habituated to impart every thought to her cousin, the intimacy and sympathy of their souls were so entire, that she would not have concealed the late occurrence from him had she not been withheld by the natural timidity and delicacy a young woman feels in making her own conquests the subject of conversation. But now so pathetically and irresistibly persuaded by Sir Edmund, and sensible that every distress of hers wounded his heart, Alicia candidly related to him the pursuit of her disagreeable suitor, and the importunities of Lady Audley in his favour. Every word she had spoken had more and, more dispelled the mist that had so long hung over Sir Edmund's inclinations. At the first mention of a suitor, he had felt that to be hers was a happiness that comprised all others; and that the idea of losing her made the whole of existence appear a frightful blank. These feelings were no sooner known to himself than spontaneously poured into her delighted ears; while she felt that every sentiment met a kindred one in her breast. Alicia sought not a moment to disguise those feelings, which she now, for the first time, became aware of; they were known to the object of her innocent affection as soon as to herself, and both were convinced that, though not conscious before of the nature of their sentiments, love had long been mistaken for friendship in their hearts. But this state of blissful serenity did not last long. On the evening of the following day Lady Audley sent for her to her dressing-room. On entering, Alicia was panic-struck at her aunt's pale countenance, fiery eyes, and frame convulsed with passion. With difficulty Lady Audley, struggling for calmness, demanded an instant and decided reply to the proposals of Mr. Compton, the gentleman who had solicited her hand. Alicia entreated her aunt to waive the subject, as she found it impossible ever to consent to such a union. Scarcely was her answer uttered when Lady Audley's anger burst forth uncontrollably. She accused her niece of the vilest ingratitude in having seduced her son from the obedience he owed his mother; of having plotted to ally her base Scotch blood to the noble blood of the Audleys; and, having exhausted every opprobrious epithet, she was forced to stop from want of breath to proceed. As Alicia listened to the cruel, unfounded reproaches of her aunt, her spirit rose under the unmerited ill-usage, but her conscience absolved her from all intention of injuring or deceiving a human being; and she calmly waited till Lady Audley's anger should have exhausted itself, and then entreated to know what part of her conduct had excited her aunt's displeasure. Lady Audley's reply was diffuse and intemperate. Alicia gathered from it that her rage had its source in a declaration her son had made to her of his affection for his cousin, and his resolution of marrying her as soon as he was of age; which open avowal of his sentiments had followed Lady Audley's injunctions to him to forward the suit of Mr. Compton. That her son, for whom she had in view one of the first matches in the kingdom, should dare to choose for himself; and, above all, to choose one whom she considered as much his inferior in birth as she was in fortune, was a circumstance quite insupportable to her feelings. Of the existence of love Lady Audley had little conception; and she attributed her son's conduct to wilful disobedience and obstinacy. In proportion as she had hitherto found him complying and gentle, her wrath had kindled at his present firmness and inflexibility. So bitter were her reflections on his conduct, so severe her animadversions on the being he loved, that Sir Edmund, fired with resentment, expressed his resolution of acting according to the dictates of his own will; and expressed his contempt for her authority in terms the most unequivocal. Lady Audley, ignorant of the arts of persuasion, by every word she uttered more and more widened the breach her imperiousness had occasioned, until Sir Edmund, feeling himself no longer master of his temper, announced his intention of leaving the house, to allow his mother time to reconcile herself to the inevitable misfortune of beholding him the husband of Alicia Malcolm. He instantly ordered his horses and departed, leaving the following letter for his cousin:-- "I have been compelled by motives of prudence, of which you are the sole object, to depart without seeing you. My absence became necessary from the unexpected conduct of Lady Audley, which has led me so near to forgetting that she was my mother, that I dare not remain, and subject myself to excesses of temper which I might afterwards repent. Two years must elapse before I can become legally my own master, and should Lady Audley so far depart from the dictates of cool judgment as still to oppose what she knows to be inevitable, I fear that we cannot meet till then. My heart is well known to you; therefore I need not enlarge on the pain I feel at this unlooked-for separation. At the same time, I am cheered with the prospect of the unspeakable happiness that awaits me-the possession of your hand; and the confidence I feel in your constancy is in proportion to the certainty I experience in my own; I cannot, therefore, fear that any of the means which may be put in practice to disunite us will have more effect on you than on me. "Looking forward to the moment that shall make you mine for ever, I remain with steady confidence: and unspeakable affection, your "EDMUND AUDLEY." With a trembling frame Alicia handed the note to Lady Audley, and begged leave to retire for a short time; expressing her willingness to reply at another moment to any question her aunt might choose to put to her with regard to her engagement with Sir Edmund. In the solitude of her own chamber Alicia gave way to those feelings of wretchedness which she had with difficulty stifled in the presence of Lady Audley, and bitterly wept over the extinction of her bright and newly-formed visions of felicity. To yield to unmerited ill-usage, or to crouch beneath imperious and self-arrogated power, was not in the nature of Alicia; and had Lady Audley been a stranger to her, the path of duty would have been less intricate. However much her own pride might have been wounded by entering into a family which considered her as an intruding beggar, never would she have consented to sacrifice the virtuous inclinations of the man she loved to the will of an arrogant and imperious mother. But alas! the case was far different. The recent ill-treatment she had experienced from Lady Audley could not efface from her noble mind the recollection of benefits conferred from the earliest period of her life, and of unvarying attention to her welfare. To her aunt she owed all but existence; she had wholly supported her; bestowed on her the most liberal education; and from Lady Audley sprang every pleasure she had hitherto enjoyed. Had she been brought up by her paternal relations, she would in all probability never have beheld her cousin; and the mother and son might have lived in uninterrupted concord. Could she be the person to inflict on Lady Audley the severest disappointment she could experience? The thought was too dreadful to bear; and, knowing that procrastination could but increase her misery, no sooner had she felt convinced of the true nature of her duty than she made a steady resolution to perform and to adhere to it. Lady Audley had _vowed that while she had life she could never give her consent and approbation to her son's marriage;_ and Alicia was too well acquainted with her disposition to have the faintest expectation that she would relent. But to remain any longer under her protection was impossible; and she resolved to anticipate any proposal of that sort from her protectress. When Lady Audley's passion had somewhat cooled, she again sent for Alicia. She began by repeating her _eternal enmity_ to the marriage in a manner impressive to the greatest degree, and still more decisive in its form by the cool collectedness of her manner. She then desired to hear what Alicia had to say in exculpation of her conduct. The profound sorrow which filled the heart of Alicia left no room for timidity or indecision. She answered her without hesitation and embarrassment, and asserted her innocence of all deceit in such a manner as to leave no doubt at least of honourable proceeding. In a few impressive words she proved herself sensible of the benefits her aunt had through life conferred upon her; and, while she openly professed to think herself, in the present instance, deeply wronged, she declared her determination of never uniting herself to her cousin without Lady Audley's permission, which she felt convinced was unattainable. She then proceeded to ask where she should deem it most advisable for her to reside in future. Happy to find her wishes thus prevented, the unfeeling aunt expressed her satisfaction at Alicia's good sense and discretion; represented, in what she thought glowing colours, the unheard-of presumption it would have been in her to take advantage of Sir Edmund's momentary infatuation; and then launched out into details of her ambitious views for him in a matrimonial alliance--views which she affected now to consider without obstacle. Alicia interrupted the painful and unfeeling harangue. It was neither, she said, for Sir Edmund's advantage nor to gratify his mother's pride, but to perform the dictates of her own conscience, that she had resigned him; she even ventured to declare that the sharpest pang which that resignation had cost her was the firm conviction that it would inflict upon him a deep and lasting sorrow. Lady Audley, convinced that moderate measures would be most likely to ensure a continuation of Alicia's obedience, expressed herself grieved at the necessity of parting with her, and pleased that she should have the good sense to perceive the propriety of such a separation. Sir Duncan Malcolm, the grandfather of Alicia, had, in the few communications that had passed between Lady Audley and him, always expressed a wish to see his granddaughter before he died. Her ladyship's antipathy to Scotland was such that she would have deemed it absolute contamination for her niece to have entered the country; and she had therefore always eluded the request. It was now, of all plans, the most eligible; and she graciously offered to convey her niece as far as Edinburgh. The journey was immediately settled; and before Alicia left her aunt's presence a promise was exacted with unfeeling tenacity, and given with melancholy firmness, never to unite herself to Sir Edmund unsanctioned by his mother. Alas! how imperfect is human wisdom! Even in seeking to do right how many are the errors we commit! Alicia judged wrong in thus sacrificing the happiness of Sir Edmund to the pride and injustice of his mother; but her error was that of a noble, self-denying spirit, entitled to respect, even though it cannot claim approbation. The honourable open conduct of her niece had so far gained upon Lady Audley that she did not object to her writing to Sir Edmund, "DEAR SIR EDMUND--A painful line of conduct is pointed out to me by duty; yet of all the regrets I feel not one is so poignant as the consciousness of that which you will feel at learning that I have forever resigned the claims you so lately gave me to your heart and hand. It was not weakness--it could not be inconstancy--that produced the painful sacrifice of a distinction still more gratifying to my heart than flattering to my pride. "Need I remind you that to your mother I owe every benefit in life? Nothing can release me from the tribute of gratitude which would be ill repaid by braving her authority and despising her will. Should I give her reason to regret the hour she received me under her roof, to repent of every benefit she has hitherto bestowed on me; should I draw down a mother's displeasure, what reasonable hopes could we entertain of solid peace through life? I am not in a situation which entitles me to question the justice of Lady Audley's will; and that will has pronounced that I shall never be Sir Edmund's wife. "Your first impulse may perhaps be to accuse me of coldness and ingratitude in quitting the place and country you inhabit, and resigning you back to yourself, without personally taking leave of you; but I trust that you will, on reflection, absolve me from the charge. "Could I have had any grounds to suppose that a personal interview would be productive of comfort to you, I would have joyfully supported the sufferings it would have inflicted on myself. But question your own heart as to the use you would have made of such a meeting; bear in mind that Lady Audley has my solemn promise never to be yours--a promise not lightly given; then imagine what must have been an interview between us under such circumstances. "In proof of an affection which I can have no reason to doubt, I conjure you to listen to the last request I shall ever make to my dear cousin. Give me the heartfelt satisfaction to know that my departure has put an end to those disagreements between mother and son of which I have been the innocent cause. "You have no reason to blame Lady Audley for this last step of mine. I have not been intimidated--threats, believe me, never would have extorted from me a promise to renounce you, had not Virtue herself dictated the sacrifice; and my reward will spring from the conviction that, as far as my judgment could discern, I have acted right. "Forget, I entreat you, this inauspicious passion. Resolve, like me, to resign yourself, without murmuring, to what is now past recall; and, instead of indulging melancholy, regain, by a timely exertion of mind and body, that serenity which is the portion of those who have obeyed the dictates of rectitude. "Farewell, Sir Edmund. May every happiness attend your future life! While I strive to forget my ill-fated affection, the still stronger feelings of gratitude and esteem for you can never fade from the heart of "ALICIA MALCOLM." To say that no tears were shed during the composition of this letter would be to overstrain fortitude beyond natural bounds. With difficulty Alicia checked the effusions of her pen. She wished to have said much more, and to have soothed the agony of renunciation by painting with warmth her tenderness and her regret; but reason urged that, in exciting his feelings and displaying her own, she would defeat the chief purpose of her letter. She hastily closed and directed it, with a feeling almost akin to despair. The necessary arrangements for the journey having been hastily made, the ladies set out two days after Sir Edmund had so hastily quitted them. The uncomplaining Alicia buried her woes in her own bosom; and neither murmurs on the one hand, nor reproaches on the other, were heard. At the end of four days the travellers entered Scotland; and when they stopped for the night, Alicia, fatigued and dispirited, retired immediately to her apartment. She had been there but a few minutes when the chambermaid knocked at the door, and informed her that she was wanted below. Supposing that Lady Audley had sent for her, she followed the girl without observing that she was conducted in an opposite direction; when, upon entering an apartment, what was her astonishment at finding herself, not in the presence of Lady Audley, but in the arms of Sir Edmund! In the utmost agitation, she sought to disengage herself from his almost frantic embrace; while he poured forth a torrent of rapturous exclamations, and swore that no human power should ever divide them again. "I have followed your steps, dearest Alicia, from the moment I received your letter. We are now in Scotland-in this blessed land of liberty. Everything is arranged; the clergyman is now in waiting; and in five minutes you shall be my own beyond the power of fate to sever us." Too much agitated to reply, Alicia wept in silence; and in the delight of once more beholding him she had thought never more to behold, forgot, for a moment, the duty she had imposed upon herself. But the native energy of her character returned. She raised her head, and attempted to withdraw from the encircling arms of her cousin. "Never until you have vowed to be mine! The clergyman--the carriage--everything is in readiness. Speak but the word, dearest." And he knelt at her feet. At this juncture the door opened, and, pale with rage, her eyes flashing fire, Lady Audley stood before them. A dreadful scene now ensued. Sir Edmund disdained to enter into any justification of his conduct, or even to reply to the invectives of his mother, but lavished the most tender assiduities on Alicia; who, overcome more by the conflicts of her own heart than with alarm at Lady Audley's violence, sat the pale and silent image of consternation. Baffled by her son's indignant disregard, Lady Audley turned all her fury on her niece; and, in the most opprobrious terms that rage could invent, upbraided her with deceit and treachery--accusing her of making her pretended submission instrumental to the more speedy accomplishment of her marriage. Too much incensed to reply, Sir Edmund seized his cousin's hand, and was leading her from the room. "Go, then--go, marry her; but first hear me swear, solemnly swear"-- and she raised her hand and eyes to heaven--"that my malediction shall be your portion! Speak but the word, and no power shall make me withhold it!" "Dear Edmund!" exclaimed Alicia, distractedly, "never ought I to have allowed time for the terrifying words that have fallen from Lady Audley's lips; never for me shall your mother's malediction fall on you. Farewell for ever!" and, with the strength of desperation, she rushed past him, and quitted the room. Sir Edmund madly followed, but in vain. Alicia's feelings were too highly wrought at that moment to be touched even by the man she loved; and, without an additional pang, she saw him throw himself into the carriage which he had destined for so different a purpose, and quit for ever the woman he adored. It may easily be conceived of how painful a nature must have been the future intercourse betwixt Lady Audley and her niece. The former seemed to regard her victim with that haughty distance which the unrelenting oppressor never fails to entertain towards the object of his tyranny; while even the gentle Alicia, on her part, shrank, with ill-concealed abhorrence, from the presence of that being whose stern decree had blasted all the fairest blossoms of her happiness. Alicia was received with affection by her grandfather; and she laboured to drive away the heavy despondency which pressed on her spirits by studying his taste and humours, and striving to contribute to his comfort and amusement. Sir Duncan had chosen the time of Alicia's arrival to transact some business; and instead of returning immediately to the Highlands, he determined to remain some weeks in Edinburgh for her amusement. But, little attractive as dissipation had been, it was now absolutely repugnant to Alicia. She loathed the idea of mixing in scenes of amusement with a heart incapable of joy, a spirit indifferent to every object that surrounded her; and in solitude alone she expected gradually to regain her peace of mind. In the amusements of the gay season of Edinburgh, Alicia expected to find all the vanity, emptiness, and frivolity of London dissipation, without its varied brilliancy and elegant luxury; yet, so much was it the habit of her mind to look to the fairest side of things, and to extract some advantage from every situation in which she was placed, that pensive and thoughtful as was her disposition, the discriminating only perceived her deep dejection, while all admired her benevolence of manner and unaffected desire to please. By degrees Alicia found that in some points she had been inaccurate in her idea of the style of living of those who form the best society of Edinburgh. The circle is so confined that its members are almost universally known to each other; and those various gradations of gentility, from the city's snug party to the duchess's most crowded assembly, all totally distinct and separate, which are to be met with in London, have no prototype in Edinburgh. There the ranks and fortunes being more on an equality, no one is able greatly to exceed his neighbour in luxury and extravagance. Great magnificence, and the consequent gratification produced by the envy of others being out of the question, the object for which a reunion of individuals was originally invented becomes less of a secondary consideration. Private parties for the actual purpose of society and conversation are frequent, and answer the destined end; and in the societies of professed amusement are to be met the learned, the studious, and the rational; not presented as shows to the company by the host and hostess, but professedly seeking their own gratification. Still the lack of beauty, fashion, and elegance disappoint the stranger accustomed to their brilliant combination in a London world. But Alicia had long since sickened in the metropolis at the frivolity of beauty, the heartlessness of fashion, and the insipidity of elegance; and it was a relief to her to turn to the variety of character she found beneath the cloak of simple, eccentric, and sometimes coarse manners. We are never long so totally abstracted by our own feelings as to be unconscious of the attempts of others to please us. In Alicia, to be conscious of it and to be grateful was the same movement. Yet she was sensible that so many persons could not in that short period have become seriously interested in her. The observation did not escape her how much an English stranger is looked up to for fashion and taste in Edinburgh, though possessing little merit save that of being English; yet she felt gratified and thankful for the kindness and attention that greeted her appearance on all sides. Amongst the many who expressed goodwill towards Alicia there were a few whose kindness and real affection failed not to meet with a return from her; and others whose rich and varied powers of mind for the first time afforded her a true specimen of the exalting enjoyment produced by a communion of intellect. She felt the powers of her understanding enlarge in proportion; and, with this mental activity, she sought to solace the languor of her heart and save it from the listlessness of despair. Alicia had been about six weeks in Edinburgh when she received a letter from Lady Audley. No allusions were made to the past; she wrote upon general topics, in the cold manner that might be used to a common acquaintance; and slightly named her son as having set out upon a tour to the Continent. Alicia's heart was heavy as she read the heartless letter of the woman whose cruelty ad not been able to eradicate wholly from her breast he strong durable affection of early habit. Sir Duncan and Alicia spent two months in Edinburgh, at the end of which time they went to his country seat in---shire. The adjacent country was picturesque; and Sir Duncan's residence, though bearing marks of the absence of taste and comfort in its arrangements, possessed much natural beauty. Two years of tranquil seclusion had passed over her head when her dormant feeling were all aroused by a letter from Sir Edmund. It informed her that he was now of age; that his affection remained unalterable; that he was newly arrived from abroad; and that, notwithstanding the death-blow she had given to his hopes, he could not refrain, on returning to his native land, from assuring her that he was resolved never to pay his addresses to any other woman. He concluded by declaring his intent on of presenting himself at once to Sir Duncan, and soliciting his permission to claim her hand: when all scruples relating to Lady Audley must, from her change of abode, be at an end. Alicia read the letter with grateful affection and poignant regret. Again she shed he bitter tears of disappointment, at the hard task of refusing for a second time so noble and affectionate a heart. But conscience whispered that to hold a passive line of conduct would be, in some measure, to deceive Lady Audley's expectations; and she felt, with exquisite anguish, that she had no means to put a final stop to Sir Edmund's pursuits, and to her own trials, but by bestowing her hand on another. The first dawning of this idea was accompanied by the most violent burst of anguish; but, far from driving away the painful subject, she strove to render it less appalling by dwelling upon it, and labouring to reconcile herself to what seemed her only plan of conduct. She acknowledged to herself that, to remain still single, a prey to Sir Edmund's importunities and the continual temptations of her own heart, was, for the sake of present indulgence, submitting to a fiery ordeal, from which she could not escape unblamable without the most repeated and agonising conflicts. Three months still remained for her of peace and liberty, after which Sir Duncan would go to Edinburgh. There she would be sure of meeting with the loved companion of her youthful days; and the lurking weakness of her own breast would then be seconded by the passionate eloquence of the being she most loved and admired upon earth. She wrote to him, repeating her former arguments; declaring that she could never feel herself absolved from the promise she had given Lady Audley but by that lady herself, and imploring him to abandon a pursuit which would be productive only of lasting pain to both. Her arguments, her representations, all failed in their effect on Sir Edmund's impetuous character. His answer was short and decided; the purport of it, that he should see her in Edinburgh the moment she arrived there. "My fate then is fixed," thought Alicia, as she read this letter; "I must finish the sacrifice." The more severe had been the struggle between love and victorious duty, the more firmly was she determined to maintain this dear-bought victory. Alicia's resolution of marrying was now decided, and the opportunity was not wanting. She had become acquainted, during the preceding winter in Edinburgh, with Major Douglas, eldest son of Mr. Douglas of Glenfern. He had then paid her the most marked attention; and, since her return to the country, had been a frequent visitor at Sir Duncan's. At length he avowed his partiality, which was heard by Sir Duncan with pleasure, by Alicia with dread and submission. Yet she felt less repugnance towards him than to any other of her suitors. He was pleasing in his person; quiet and simple in his manners; and his character stood high for integrity, good temper, and plain sense. The sequel requires little further detail. Alicia Malcolm became the wife of Archibald Douglas. An eternal constancy is a thing so rare to be met with, that persons who desire that sort of reputation strive to obtain it by nourishing the ideas that recall the passion, even though guilt and sorrow should go hand in hand with it. But Alicia, far from piquing herself in the lovelorn pensiveness she might have assumed, had she yielded to the impulse of her feelings, diligently strove not only to make up her mind to the lot which had devolved to her, but to bring it to such a frame of cheerfulness as should enable her to contribute to her husband's happiness. When the soul is no longer buffeted by the storms of hope or fear, when all is fixed unchangeably for life, sorrow for the past will never long prey on a pious and well-regulated mind. If Alicia lost the buoyant spirit of youth, the bright and quick play of fancy, yet a placid contentment crowned her days; and at the end of two years she would have been astonished had anyone marked her as an object of compassion. She scarcely ever heard from Lady Audley; and in the few letters her aunt had favoured her with, she gave favourable, though vague accounts of her son. Alicia did not court a more unreserved communication, and had long since taught herself to hope that he was now happy. Soon after their marriage Major Douglas quitted the army, upon succeeding to a small estate on the banks of Lochmarlie by the death of an uncle; and there, in the calm seclusion of domestic life, Mrs. Douglas found that peace which might have been denied her amid gayer scenes. CHAPTER XIV. And joyous was the scene in early summer." MADOC. ON Henry's return from his solitary ramble Mrs. Douglas learnt from him the cause of the misunderstanding that had taken place; and judging that, in the present state of affairs, a temporary separation might be of use to both parties, as they were now about to return home she proposed to her husband to invite his brother and Lady Juliana to follow and spend a few weeks with them at Lochmarlie Cottage. The invitation was eagerly accepted; for though Lady Juliana did not anticipate any positive pleasure from the change, still she thought that every place must be more agreeable than her present abode, especially as she stipulated for the utter exclusion of the aunts from the party. To atone for this mortification Miss Becky was invited to fill the vacant seat in the carriage; and, accordingly, with a cargo of strong shoes, greatcoats, and a large work-bag well stuffed with white-seam, she took her place at the appointed hour. The day they had chosen for their expedition was one that "sent a summer feeling to the heart." The air was soft and genial; not a cloud stained the bright azure of the heavens; and the sun shone out in all his splendour, shedding life and beauty even over all the desolate heath-clad hills of Glenfern. But, after they had journeyed a few miles, suddenly emerging from the valley, a scene of matchless beauty burst at once upon the eye. Before them lay the dark-blue waters of Lochmarlie, reflecting, as in a mirror, every surrounding object, and bearing on its placid transparent bosom a fleet of herring-boats, the drapery of whose black suspended nets contrasted with picturesque effect the white sails of the larger vessels, which were vainly spread to catch a breeze. All around, rocks, meadows, woods, and hills, mingled in wild and lovely irregularity. On a projecting point of land stood a little fishing village, its white cottages reflected in the glassy waters that almost surrounded it. On the opposite side of the lake, or rather estuary, embosomed in wood, rose the lofty turrets of Lochmarlie Castle; while here and there, perched on some mountain's brow, were to be seen the shepherd's lonely hut, and the heath-covered summer shealing. Not a breath was stirring, not a sound was heard save the rushing of a waterfall, the tinkling of some silver rivulet, or the calm rippling of the tranquil lake; now and then, at intervals, the fisherman's Gaelic ditty chanted, as he lay stretched on the sand in some sunny nook; or the shrill distant sound of childish glee. How delicious to the feeling heart to behold so fair a scene of unsophisticated Nature, and to listen to her voice alone, breathing the accents of innocence and joy! But none of the party who now gazed on it had minds capable of being touched with the emotions it was calculated to inspire. Henry, indeed, was rapturous in his expressions of admiration; but he concluded his panegyrics by wondering his brother did not keep a cutter, and resolving to pass a night on board one of the herring boats, that he might eat the fish in perfection. Lady Juliana thought it might be very pretty, if, instead of those frightful rocks and shabby cottages, there could be villas, and gardens, and lawns, and conservatories, and summer-houses, and statues. Miss Becky observed, if it was hers, she would cut down the woods, and level the hills, and have races. The road wound along the sides of the lake, sometimes overhung with banks of natural wood, which, though scarcely budding, grew so thick as to exclude the prospect; in other places surmounted by large masses of rock, festooned with ivy, and embroidered by mosses of a thousand hues that glittered under the little mountain streamlets. Two miles farther on stood the simple mansion of Mr. Douglas. It was situated in a wild sequestered nook, formed by a little bay at the farther end of the lake. On three sides it was surrounded by wooded hills that offered a complete shelter from every nipping blast. To the south the lawn, sprinkled with trees and shrubs, sloped gradually down to the water. At the door they were met by Mrs. Douglas, who welcomed them with the most affectionate cordiality, and conducted them into the house through a little circular hall, filled with flowering shrubs and foreign plants. "How delightful!" exclaimed Lady Juliana, as she stopped to inhale the rich fragrance. "Moss roses! I do delight in them," twisting off a rich cluster of flowers and buds in token of her affection; "and I quite doat upon heliotrope," gathering a handful of flowers as she spoke. Then extending her hand towards a most luxuriant Cape jessamine-- "I must really petition you to spare this, my favourite child," said her sister-in-law, as she gently withheld her arm; "and, to tell you the truth, dear Lady Juliana, you have already infringed the rules of my little conservatory, which admit only of the gratification of two senses--seeing and smelling." "What! don't you like your flowers to be gathered?" exclaimed Lady Juliana in a tone of surprise and disappointment; "I don't know any other use they're of. What quantities I used to have from Papa's hothouses!" Mrs. Douglas made no reply; but conducted her to the drawing-room, where her chagrin was dispelled by the appearance of comfort and even elegance that it bore. "Now, this is really what I like," cried she, throwing herself on one of the couches; "a large fire, open windows, quantities of roses, comfortable Ottomans, and pictures; only what a pity you haven't a larger mirror." Mrs. Douglas now rang for refreshments, and apologised for the absence of her husband, who, she said, was so much interested in his ploughing that he seldom made his appearance till sent for. Henry then proposed that they should all go out and surprise his brother; and though walking in the country formed no part of Lady Juliana's amusements, yet, as Mrs. Douglas assured her the walks were perfectly dry, and her husband was so pressing, she consented. The way lay through a shrubbery, by the side of a brawling brook, whose banks retained all the wildness of unadorned nature. Moss and ivy and fern clothed the ground; and under the banks the young primroses and violets began to raise their heads; while the red wintry berry still hung thick on the hollies. "This is really very pleasant," said Henry, stopping to contemplate a view of the lake through the branches of a weeping birch; "the sound of the stream, and the singing of the birds, and all those wild flowers make it appear as if it was summer in this spot; and only look, Julia, how pretty that wherry looks lying at anchor." Then whispering to her, "What would you think of such a desert as this, with the man of your heart?" Lady Juliana made no reply but by complaining of the heat of the sun, the hardness of the gravel, and the damp from the water. Henry, who now began to look upon the condition of a Highland farmer with more complacency than formerly, was confirmed in his favourable sentiments at sight of his brother, following the primitive occupation of the plough, his fine face glowing with health, and lighted up with good humour and happiness. He hastily advanced towards the party, and shaking his brother and sister-in-law most warmly by the hand, expressed, with all the warmth of a good heart, the pleasure he had in receiving them at his house. Then observing Lady Juliana's languid air, and imputing to fatigue of body what, in fact, was the consequence of mental vacuity, he proposed returning home by a shorter road than that by which they had come. Henry was again in raptures at the new beauties this walk presented, and at the high order and neatness in which the grounds were kept. "This must be a very expensive place of yours, though," said he, addressing his sister-in-law; "there is so much garden and shrubbery, and such a number of rustic bridges, bowers, and so forth: it must require half a dozen men to keep it in any order." "Such an establishment would very ill accord with our moderate means," replied she; "we do not pretend to one regular gardener; and had our little embellishments been productive of much expense, or tending solely to my gratification, I should never have suggested them. When we first took possession of this spot it was a perfect wilderness, with a dirty farm-house on it; nothing but mud about the doors; nothing but wood and briers and brambles beyond it; and the village presented a still more melancholy scene of rank luxuriance, in its swarms of dirty idle girls and mischievous boys. I have generally found that wherever an evil exists the remedy is not far off; and in this case it was strikingly obvious. It was only engaging these ill-directed children by trifling rewards to apply their lively energies in improving instead of destroying the works of nature, as had formerly been their zealous practice. In a short time the change on the moral as well as the vegetable part of creation became very perceptible: the children grew industrious and peaceable; and instead of destroying trees, robbing nests, and worrying cats, the bigger boys, under Douglas's direction, constructed these wooden bridges and seats, or cut out and gravelled the little winding paths that we had previously marked out. The task of keeping everything n order is now easy, as you may believe, when I tell you the whole of our pleasure-grounds, as you are pleased to term them, receive no other attention than what is bestowed by children under twelve years of age. And now, having, I hope, acquitted myself of the charge of extravagance, I ought to beg Lady Juliana's pardon for this long, and, I fear, tiresome detail." Having now reached the house, Mrs. Douglas conducted her guest to the apartment prepared for her, while the brothers pursued their walk. As long as novelty retained its power, and the comparison between Glenfern and Lochmarlie was fresh in remembrance, Lady Juliana, charmed with everything, was in high good-humour. But as the horrors of the one were forgotten, and the comforts of the other became familiar, the demon of ennui again took possession of her vacant mind, and she relapsed into all her capricious humours and childish impertinences. The harpsichord, which, on her first arrival, she had pronounced to be excellent, was now declared quite shocking; so much out of tune that there was no possibility of playing upon it. The small collection of well-chosen novels she soon exhausted, and then they became the "stupidest books she had ever read;" the smell of the heliotrope now gave her the headache; the sight of the lake made her sea-sick. Mrs. Douglas heard all these civilities in silence, and much more "in sorrow than in anger." In the wayward inclinations, variable temper, and wretched inanity of this poor victim of indulgence, she beheld the sad fruits of a fashionable education; and thought with humility that, under similar circumstances, such might have been her own character. "Oh, what an awful responsibility do those parents incur," she would mentally exclaim, "who thus neglect or corrupt the noble deposit of an immortal soul! And who, alas! can tell where the mischief may end? This unfortunate will herself become a mother; yet wholly ignorant of the duties, incapable of the self-denial of that sacred office, she will bring into the world creatures to whom she can only transmit her errors and her weaknesses!" These reflections at times deeply affected the generous heart and truly Christian spirit of Mrs. Douglas; and she sought, by every means in her power, to restrain those faults which she knew it would be vain to attempt eradicating. To diversify the routine of days which grew more and more tedious to Lady Juliana, the weather being remarkably fine, many little excursions were made to the nearest country seats; which, though they did not afford her any actual pleasure, answered the purpose of consuming a considerable portion of her time. Several weeks passed away, during which little inclination was shown on the part of the guests to quit their present residence, when Mr. and Mrs. Douglas were summoned to attend the sick-bed of Sir Duncan Malcolm; and though they pressed their guests to remain during their absence, yet Henry felt it would be highly offensive to his father were they to do so, and therefore resolved immediately to return to Glenfern. CHAPTER XV. "They steeked doors,' they steeked yetts, Close to the cheek and chin; They steeked them a' but a little wicket, And Lammikin crap in. "Now quhere's the lady of this castle?" _Old Ballad._ THE party were received with the loudest acclamations of joy by the good old ladies; and even the Laird seemed to have forgotten that his son had refused to breed black cattle, and that his daughter-in-law was above the management of her household. The usual salutations were scarcely over when Miss Grizzy, flying to her little writing-box, pulled out a letter, and, with an air of importance, having enjoined silence, she read as follows:-- "LOCMARLIE CASTLE, _March_ 27,17--. "DEAR CHILD-Sir Sampson's stomach has been as bad as it could well be, but not so bad as your roads. He was shook to a jelly. My petticoat will never do. Mrs. M'Hall has had a girl. I wonder what makes people have girls; they never come to good. Boys may go to the mischief, and be good for something--if girls go, they're good for nothing I know of. I never saw such roads. I suppose Glenfern means to bury you all in the highway; there are holes enough to make you graves, and stones big enough for coffins. You must all come and spend Tuesday here--not all, but some of you--you, dear child, and your brother, and a sister, and your pretty niece, and handsome nephew--I love handsome people. Miss M'Kraken has bounced away with her father's footman--I hope he will clean his knives on her. Come early, and come dressed, to your loving friend, "ISABELLA MACLAUGHLAN." The letter ended, a volley of applause ensued, which at length gave place to consultation. "Of course we all go--at least as many as the carriage will hold: we have no engagements, and there can be no objections." Lady Juliana had already frowned a contemptuous refusal, but in due time it was changed to a sullen assent, at the pressing entreaties of her husband, to whom any place was now preferable to home. In truth, the mention of a party had more weight with her than either her husband's wishes or her aunts' remonstrances; and they had assured her that she should meet with a large assemblage of the very first company at Lochmarlie Castle. The day appointed for the important visit arrived; and it was arranged that two of the elder ladies and one of the young ones should accompany Lady Juliana in her barouche, which Henry was to drive. At peep of dawn the ladies were astir, and at eight o'clock breakfast was hurried over that they might begin the preparations necessary for appearing with dignity at the shrine of this their patron saint. At eleven they reappeared in all the majesty of sweeping silk trains and well-powdered toupees. In outward show Miss Becky was not less elaborate; the united strength and skill of her three aunts and four sisters had evidently been exerted in forcing her hair into every position but that for which nature had intended it; curls stood on end around her forehead, and tresses were dragged up from the roots, and formed into a club on the crown; her arms had been strapped back till her elbows met, by means of a pink ribbon of no ordinary strength or doubtful hue. Three hours were past in all the anguish of full-dressed impatience; an anguish in which every female breast must be ready to sympathise. But Lady Juliana sympathised in no one's distresses but her own, and the difference of waiting in high dress or in déshabille was a distinction to her inconceivable. But those to whom _to be dressed _is an event will readily enter into the feelings of the ladies in question as they sat, walked, wondered, exclaimed, opened windows, wrung their hands, adjusted their dress, etc. etc., during the three tedious hours they were doomed to wait the appearance of their niece. Two o'clock came, and with it Lady Juliana, as if purposely to testify her contempt, in a loose morning dress and mob cap. The sisters looked blank with disappointment; for having made themselves mistresses of the contents of her ladyship's wardrobe, they had settled amongst themselves that the most suitable dress for the occasion would be black velvet, and accordingly many hints had been given the preceding evening on the virtues of black velvet gowns. They were warm, and not too warm; they were dressy, and not too dressy; Lady Maclaughlan was a great admirer of black velvet gowns; she had one herself with long sleeves, and that buttoned behind; black velvet gowns were very much wore; they knew several ladies who had them; and they were certain there would be nothing else wore amongst the matrons at Lady Maclaughlan's, etc. etc. Time was, however, too precious to be given either to remonstrance or lamentation. Miss Jacky could only give an angry look, and Miss Grizzy a sorrowful one, as they hurried away to the carriage, uttering exclamations of despair at the lateness of the hour, and the impossibility that anybody could have time to dress after getting to Lochmarlie Castle. The consequence of the delay was that it was dark by the time they reached the place of destination. The carriage drove up to the grand entrance; but neither lights nor servants greeted their arrival; and no answer was returned to the ringing of the bell. "We had best get out and try the back. This is most alarming, I declare!" cried Miss Grizzy. "It is quite incomprehensible!" observed Miss Jacky. "We had best get out and try the back door." The party alighted, and another attack being made upon the rear, it met with better success; for a little boy now presented himself at a narrow opening of the door, and in a strong Highland accent demanded "wha ta war seekin'?" "Lady Maclaughlan, to be sure, Colin," was the reply. "Weel, weel," still refusing admittance; "but te leddie's no to be spoken wi' to-night." "Not to be spoken with!" exclaimed Miss Grizzy, almost sinking to the ground with apprehension. "Good gracious I--I hope I--I declare I--Sir Sampson!----" "OO ay, hur may see Lochmarlie hursel." Then opening the door, he led the way, and ushered them into the presence of Sir Sampson, who was reclining in an easy chair, arrayed in a _robe de chambre_ and nightcap. The opening of the door seemed to have broken his slumber; for, gazing around with a look of stupefaction, he demanded in a sleepy peevish tone, "Who was there?" "Bless me, Sir Sampson!" exclaimed both spinsters at once, darting forward and seizing a hand; "bless me, don't you know us? And here is our niece, Lady Juliana." "My Lady Juliana Douglas!" cried he, with a shriek of horror, sinking again upon his cushions. "I am betrayed--I--Where is my Lady Maclaughlan?--Where is Philistine?-- Where is--the devil! This is not to be borne! My Lady Juliana Douglas, the Earl of Courtland's daughter, to be introduced to Lochmarlie Castle in so vile a manner, and myself surprised in so indecorous a situation!" And, his lips quivering with passion, he rang the bell. The summons was answered by the same attendant that had acted as gentleman usher. "'Where are all my people?" demanded his incensed master. "Hurs aw awa tull ta Sandy More's." "Where is my Lady?" "Hurs i' ta teach tap." [1] [1] House top. "'Where is Murdoch?" "Hur's helpin' ta leddie i' ta teach tap." "Oh, we'll all go upstairs, and see what Lady Maclaughlan and Philistine are about in the laboratory," said Miss Grizzy. "So pray, just go on with your nap, Sir Sampson; we shall find the way--don't stir;" and taking Lady Juliana by the hand, away tripped the spinsters in search of their friend. "I cannot conceive the meaning of all this," whispered Miss Grizzy to her sister as they went along. "Something must be wrong; but I said nothing to dear Sir Sampson, his nerves are so easily agitated. But what can be the meaning of all this? I declare it's quite a mystery." After ascending several long dark stairs, and following divers windings and turnings, the party at length reached the door of the _sanctum sanctorum,_ and having gently tapped, the voice of the priestess was heard in no very encouraging accents, demanding "Who was there?" "It's only us," replied her trembling friend. "Only us? humph! I wonder what fool is called _only us!_ Open the door, Philistine, and see what _only us_ wants." The door was opened and the party entered. The day was closing in, but by the faint twilight that mingled with the gleams from a smoky smouldering fire, Lady Maclaughlan was dimly discernible, as she stood upon the hearth, watching the contents of an enormous kettle that emitted both steam and odour. She regarded the invaders with her usual marble aspect, and without moving either joint or muscle as they drew near. "I declare--I don't think you know us, Lady Maclaughlan," said Miss Grizzy in a tone of affected vivacity, with which she strove to conceal her agitation. "Know you!" repeated her friend--"humph! Who you are, I know very well; but what brings you here, I do _not_ know. Do you know yourselves?" "I declare---I can't conceive----" began Miss Grizzy; but her trepidation arrested her speech, and her sister therefore proceeded-- "Your ladyship's declaration is no less astonishing than incomprehensible. We have waited upon you by your own express invitation on the day appointed by yourself; and we have been received in a manner, I must say, we did not expect, considering this is the first visit of our niece Lady Juliana Douglas." "I'll tell you what, girls," replied their friend, as she still stood with her back to the fire, and her hands behind her; "I'll tell you what,--you are not yourselves--you are all lost--quite mad--that's all--humph!" "If that's the case, we cannot be fit company for your ladyship," retorted Miss Jacky warmly; "and therefore the best thing we can do is to return the way we came. Come, Lady Juliana--come, sister." "I declare, Jacky, the impetuosity of your temper is--I really cannot stand it--" and the gentle Grizzy gave way to a flood of tears. "You used to be rational, intelligent creatures," resumed her ladyship; "but what has come over you, I don't know. You come tumbling in here at the middle of the night--and at the top of the house nobody knows how--when I never was thinking of you; and because I don't tell a parcel of lies, and pretend I expected you, you are for flying off again --humph! Is this the behaviour of women in their senses? But since you are here, you may as well sit down and say what brought you. Get down, Gil Blas--go along, Tom Jones," addressing two huge cats, who occupied a three-cornered leather chair by the fireside, and who relinquished it with much reluctance. "How do you do, pretty creature?" kissing Lady Juliana, as she seated her in this cat's cradle. "Now, girls, sit down, and tell what brought you here to-day--humph!" "Can your Ladyship ask such a question, after having formally invited us?" demanded the wrathful Jacky. "I'll tell you what, girls; you were just as much invited by me to dine here to-day as you were appointed to sup with the Grand Seignior--humph!" "What day of the week does your Ladyship call this?" "I call it Tuesday; but I suppose the Glenfern calendar calls it Thursday: Thursday was the day I invited you to come." "I'm sure--I'm thankful we're got to the bottom of it at last," cried Miss Grizzy; "I read it, because I'm sure you wrote it, Tuesday." "How could you be such a fool, my love, as to read it any such thing? Even if it had been written Tuesday, you might have had the sense to know it meant Thursday. When did you know me invite anybody for a Tuesday?" "I declare it's very true; I certainly ought to have known better. I am quite confounded at my own stupidity; for, as you observe, even though you had said Tuesday, I might have known that you must have meant Thursday." "Well, well, no more about it. Since you are here you must stay here, and you must have something to eat, I suppose. Sir Sampson and I have dined two hours ago; but you shall have your dinner for all that. I must shut shop for this day, it seems, and leave my resuscitating tincture all in the deadthraw--Methusalem pills quite in their infancy. But there's no help for it. Since you are here you must stay here, and you must be fed and lodged; so get along, girls, get along. Here, Gil Blas--come, Tom Jones." And, preceded by her cats, and followed by her guests, she led the way to the parlour. CHAPTER XVI. "Point de milieu: l'hymen et ses liens Sont les plus grands ou des maux ou des biens." _L' Enfant Prodigue._ ON returning to the parlour they found Sir Sampson had, by means of the indefatigable Philistine, been transported into a suit of regimentals and well-powdered peruke, which had in some measure restored him to his usual complacency. Henry, who had gone in quest of some person to take charge of the horses, now entered; and shortly after a tray of provisions was brought, which the half-famished party eagerly attacked, regardless of their hostess's admonitions to eat sparingly, as nothing was so dangerous as eating heartily when people were hungry. The repast being at length concluded, Lady Maclaughlan led her guests into the saloon. They passed through an antechamber, which seemed, by the faint light of the lamp, to contain nothing but piles on piles of china, and entered the room of state. The eye at first wandered in uncertain obscurity; and the guests cautiously proceeded over a bare oaken floor, whose dark polished surface seemed to emulate a mirror, through an apartment of formidable extent. The walls were hung with rich but grotesque tapestry. The ceiling, by its height and massy carving, bespoke the age of the apartment; but the beauty of the design was lost in the gloom. A Turkey carpet was placed in the middle of the floor; and on the middle of the carpet stood the card table, at which two footmen, hastily summoned from the revels at Sandy More's, were placing chairs and cards; seemingly eager to display themselves, as if to prove that they were always at their posts. Cards were a matter of course with Sir Sampson and his lady; but as whist was the only game they ever played, a difficulty arose as to the means of providing amusement for the younger part of the company. "I have plenty of books for you, my loves," said Lady Maclaughlan; and, taking one of the candles, she made a journey to the other end of the room, and entered a small turret, from which her voice was heard issuing most audibly, "All the books that should ever have been published are here. Read these, and you need read no more: all the world's in these books--humph! Here's the Bible, great and small, with apocrypha and concordance! Here's Floyer's Medicina Gerocomica, or the Galenic Art of Preserving Old Men's Health;--Love's Art of Surveying and Measuring Land;--Transactions of the Highland Society;--Glass's Cookery;--Flavel's Fountain of Life Opened;--Fencing Familiarised;--Observations on the Use of Bath Waters;--Cure for Soul Sores;--De Blondt's Military Memoirs;--MacGhie's Book-keeping;--Mead on Pestilence;--Astenthology, or the Art of Preserving Feeble Life!" As she enumerated the contents of her library, she paused at the end of each title, in hopes of hearing the book called for; but she was allowed to proceed without interruption to the end of her catalogue. "Why, what would you have, children?" cried she in one of her sternest accents. "I don't know! Do you know yourselves? Here are two novels, the only ones worth any Christian's reading." Henry gladly accepted the first volumes of Gil Bias and Clarissa Harlowe; and, giving the latter to Lady Juliana, began the other himself. Miss Becky was settled with her hands across; and, the whist party being arranged, a solemn silence ensued. Lady Juliana turned over a few pages of her own book, then begged Henry would exchange with her; but both were in so different a style from the French and German school she had been accustomed to, that they were soon relinquished in disappointment and disgust. On the table, which had been placed by the fire for her accommodation, lay an English newspaper; and to that she had recourse, as a last effort at amusement. But, alas! even the dulness of Clarissa Harlowe was delight compared to the anguish with which this fatal paper was fraught, in the shape of the following paragraph, which presented itself to the unfortunate fair one's eye:-- "Yesterday was married, by special license, at the house of Mrs. D---, his Grace the Duke of L---, to the beautiful and accomplished Miss D---. His Royal Highness the Duke of ---- was gracious enough to act as father to the bride upon this occasion, and was present in person, as were their Royal Highnesses the Dukes of ---, and of ---. The bride looked most bewitchingly lovely, in a simple robe of the finest Mechlin lace, with a superb veil of the same costly material, which hung down to her feet. She wore a set of pearls estimated at thirty thousand pounds, whose chaste elegance corresponded with the rest of the dress. Immediately after the ceremony they partook of a sumptuous collation, and the happy pair set off in a chariot and four, attended by six outriders, and two coaches and four. "After spending the honeymoon at his Grace's unique villa on the Thames, their Graces will receive company at their splendid mansion in Portman Square. The wedding paraphernalia is said to have cost ten thousand pounds; and her Grace's jewel-box is estimated at little less than half a million." Wretched as Lady Juliana had long felt herself to be, her former state of mind was positive happiness compared to what she now endured. Envy, regret, self-reproach, and resentment, all struggled in the breast of the self-devoted beauty, while the paper dropped from her hand, and she cast a fearful glance around, as if to ascertain the reality of her fate. The dreadful certainty smote her with a sense of wretchedness too acute to be suppressed; and, darting a look of horror at her unconscious husband, she threw herself back in her chair, while the scalding tears of envy, anger, and repentance fell from her eyes. Accustomed as Henry now was to these ebullitions of _feeling_ from his beauteous partner, he was not yet so indifferent as to behold them unmoved; and he sought to soothe her by the kindest expressions and most tender epithets. These indeed had long since ceased to charm away the lady's ill-humour, but they sometimes succeeded in mollifying it. But now their only effect seemed to be increasing the irritation, as she turned from all her husband's inquiries, and impatiently withdrew her hands from his. Astonished at a conduct so incomprehensible, Douglas earnestly besought an explanation. "There!" cried she, at length, pushing the paper towards him, "see there what I might have been but for you; and then compare it with what you have made me!" Confounded by this reproach, Henry eagerly snatched up the paper, and his eye instantly fell on the fatal paragraph--the poisoned dart that struck the death-blow to all that now remained to him of happiness--the fond idea that, even amidst childish folly and capricious estrangement, still in the main he was beloved! With a quivering lip, and cheek blanched with mortification and indignant contempt, he laid down the paper; and without casting a look upon, or uttering a word to, his once _adored and adoring Juliana,_ quitted the apartment in all that bitterness of spirit which a generous nature must feel when it first discovers the fallacy of a cherished affection. Henry had indeed ceased to regard his wife with the ardour of romantic passion; nor had the solid feelings of affectionate esteem supplied its place; but he loved her still, because he believed himself the engrossing object of her tenderness; and in that blest delusion he had hitherto found palliatives for her folly and consolation for all his own distresses. To indifference he might for a time have remained insensible; because, though his feelings were strong, his perceptions were not acute. But the veil of illusion was now rudely withdrawn. He beheld himself detested where he imagined himself adored; and the anguish of disappointed affection was heightened by the stings of wounded pride and deluded self-love. CHAPTER XVII. "What's done, cannot be undone; to bed, to bed, to bed!" _Exit Lady Macbeth._ THE distance at which the whist party had placed themselves, and the deep interest in which their senses were involved while the fate of the odd trick was pending, had rendered them insensible to the scene that was acting at the other extremity of the apartment. The task of administering succour to the afflicted fair one therefore devolved upon Miss Becky, whose sympathetic powers never had been called into action before. Slowly approaching the wretched Lady Juliana as she lay back in her chair, the tears coursing each other down her cheeks, she tendered her a smelling-bottle, to which her own nose, and the noses of her sisters, were wont to be applied whenever, as they choicely expressed it, they wanted a "fine smell." But upon this trying occasion she went still farther. She unscrewed the stopper, unfolded a cotton handkerchief, upon which she poured a few drops of lavender water, and offered it to her ladyship, deeming that the most elegant and efficient manner in which she could afford relief. But the well-meant offering was silently waved off; and poor Miss Becky, having done all that the light of reason suggested to her, retreated to her seat, wondering what it was her fine sister-in-law would be at. By the time the rubber was ended her ladyship's fears of Lady Maclaughlan had enabled her to conquer her feelings so far that they had now sunk into a state of sullen dejection, which the good aunts eagerly interpreted into the fatigue of the journey, Miss Grizzy declaring that although the drive was most delightful--nobody could deny that--and they all enjoyed it excessively, as indeed everybody must who had eyes in their head; yet she must own, at the same time, that she really felt as if all her bones were broke. A general rising therefore took place at an early hour, and Lady Juliana, attended by all the females of the party, was ushered into the chamber of state, which was fitted up in a style acknowledged to be truly magnificent, by all who had ever enjoyed the honour of being permitted to gaze on its white velvet bed curtains, surmounted by the family arms, and gracefully tucked up by hands _sinister-couped _at the wrists, etc. But lest my fashionable readers should be of a different opinion, I shall refrain from giving an inventory of the various articles with which this favoured chamber was furnished. Misses Grizzy and Jacky occupied the green room which had been fitted up at Sir Sampson's birth. The curtains hung at a respectful distance from the ground; the chimney-piece was far beyond the reach even of the majestic Jacky's arm; and the painted tiffany toilet was covered with a shoal of little tortoise-shell boxes of all shapes and sizes. A grim visage, scowling from under a Highland bonnet, graced by a single black feather, hung on high. Miss Grizzy placed herself before it, and, holding up the candle, contemplated it for about the nine hundredth time, with an awe bordering almost on adoration. "Certainly Sir Eneas must have been a most wonderful man--nobody can deny that; and there can be no question but he had the second-sight to the greatest degree--indeed, I never heard it disputed; many of his prophecies, indeed, seem to have been quite incomprehensible; but that is so much the more extraordinary; you know--for instance, the one with regard to our family," lowering her voice; "for my part I declare I never could comprehend it; and yet there must be something in it, too; but how any branch from the Glenfern tree--of course, you know, that can only mean the family tree--should help to prop Lochmarlie's walls, is what I can't conceive. If Sir Sampson had a son, to be sure, some of the girls--for you know it can't be any of us; at least I declare for my own part--I'm sure even if any thing which I trust, in goodness, there is not the least chance of, should ever happen to dear Lady Maclaughlan, and Sir Sampson should take it into his head--which, of course, is a thing not to be thought about--and indeed I'm quite convinced it would be very much out of respect to dear Lady Maclaughlan, a friendship for us, if such a thing was ever into his head." Here the tender Grizzy got so involved in her own ideas as to the possibility of Lady Maclaughlan's death, and the propriety of Sir Sampson's proposals, together with the fulfilling of Sir Eneas the seer's prophecy, that there is no saying how far she strayed in her self-created labyrinth. Such as choose to follow her may. For our part, we prefer accompanying the youthful Becky to her chamber, whither she was also attended by the lady of the mansion. Becky's destiny for the night lay at the top of one of those little straggling wooden stairs common in old houses, which creaked in all directions. The bed was placed in a recess dark as Erebus, and betwixt the bed and the wall, was a depth profound, which Becky's eye dared not attempt to penetrate. "You will find everything right here, child," said Lady Maclaughlan; "and if anything should be wrong you must think it right. I never suffer anything to be wrong here--humph!" Becky, emboldened by despair, cast a look towards the recess; and in a faint voice ventured to inquire, "Is there no fear that Tom Jones or Gil Blas may be in that place behind the bed?" "And if they should," answered her hostess in her most appalling tone, "what is that to you? Are you a mouse, that you are afraid they will eat you? Yes, I suppose you are. You are perhaps the princess in the fairy tale, who was a woman by day and a mouse by night. I believe you are bewitched! So I wish your mouseship a good night." And she descended the creaking stair, singing, "Mrs. Mouse, are you within?" till even her stentorian voice was lost in distance. Poor Becky's heart died with the retreating sounds, and only revived to beat time with the worm in the wood. Long and eerie was the night, as she gave herself up to all the horrors of a superstitious mind--ghosts, gray, black, and white, flitted around her couch; cats, half human, held her throat; the deathwatch ticked in her ears. At length the light of morning shed its brightening influence on the dim opaque of her understanding; and when all things stood disclosed in light, she shut her eyes and oped her mouth in all the blissfulness of security. The light of day was indeed favourable for displaying to advantage the beauties of Lochmarlie Castle, which owed more to nature than art. It was beautifully situated on a smooth green bank, that rose somewhat abruptly from the lake, and commanded a view, which, if not extensive, was yet full of variety and grandeur. Its venerable turrets reared themselves above the trees which seemed coeval with them; and the vast magnificence of its wide-spreading lawns and extensive forests seemed to appertain to some feudal prince's lofty domain. But in vain were creation's charms spread before Lady Juliana's eyes. Woods and mountains and lakes and rivers were odious things; and her heart panted for dusty squares and suffocating drawing-rooms. Something was said of departing by the sisters when the party met at breakfast; but this was immediately negatived in the most decided manner by their hostess. "Since you have taken your own time to come, my dears, you must take mine to go. Thursday was the day I invited you for, or at least wanted you for, so you must stay Thursday, and go away on Friday, and my blessing go with you--humph!" The sisters, charmed with what they termed the hospitality and friendship of this invitation, delightedly agreed to remain; and as things were at least conducted in better style there than at Glenfern, uncomfortable as it was, Lady Juliana found herself somewhat nearer home there than at the family chateau. Lady Maclaughlan, who _could _be commonly civil in her own house, was at some pains to amuse her guest by showing her collection of china and cabinet of gems, both of which were remarkably fine. There was also a library, and a gallery, containing some good pictures, and, what Lady Juliana prized still more, a billiard table. Thursday, the destined day, at length arrived, and a large party assembled to dinner. Lady Juliana, as she half reclined on a sofa, surveyed the company with a supercilious stare, and without deigning to take any part in the general conversation that went on. It was enough that they spoke with a peculiar accent--everything they said must be barbarous; but she was pleased once more to eat off plate, and to find herself in rooms which, though grotesque and comfortless, yet wore an air of state, and whose vastness enabled her to keep aloof from those with whom she never willingly came in contact. It was therefore with regret she saw the day of her departure arrive, and found herself once more an unwilling inmate of her only asylum; particularly as her situation now required comforts and indulgences which it was there impossible to procure. CHAPTER XVIII. "No mother's care Shielded my infant innocence with prayer: * * * * * Mother, miscall'd, farewell!" Savage. THE happy period, so long and anxiously anticipated by the ladies of Glenfern, at length arrived and Lady Juliana presented to the house of Douglas--not, alas! the ardently-desired heir to its ancient consequence, but twin-daughters, who could only be regarded as additional burdens on its poverty. The old gentleman's disappointment was excessive; and, as he paced up and down the parlour, with his hands in his pockets, he muttered, "Twa lasses! I ne'er heard tell o' the like o't. I wonder whar their tochers are to come frae?" Miss Grizzy, in great perturbation, declared it certainly was a great pity it had so happened, but these things couldn't be helped; she was sure Lady Maclaughlan would be greatly surprised. Miss Jacky saw no cause for regret, and promised herself an endless source of delight in forming the minds and training the ideas of her infant nieces. Miss Nicky wondered how they were to be nursed. She was afraid Lady Juliana would not be able for both, and wet-nurses had such stomachs! Henry, meanwhile, whose love had all revived in anxiety for the safety, and anguish for the sufferings of his youthful partner, had hastened to her apartment, and, kneeling by her side, he pressed her hands to his lips with feelings of the deepest emotion. "Dearer--a thousand times dearer to me than ever," whispered he, as he fondly embraced her, "and those sweet pledges of our love!" "Ah, don't mention them," interrupted his lady in a languid tone. "How very provoking! I hate girls so--and two of them--oh!" and she sighed deeply. Her husband sighed too; but from a different cause. The nurse now appeared, and approached with her helpless charges; and both parents, for the first time looked on their own offspring. "What nice little creatures!" said the delighted father, as, taking them in his arms, he imprinted the first kiss on the innocent faces of his daughters, and then held them to their mother; who, turning from them with disgust, exclaimed, "How can you kiss them, Harry? They are so ugly, and they squall so! Oh do, for heaven's sake, take them away! And see, there is poor Psyche quite wretched at being so long away from me. Pray, put her on the bed." "She will grow fond of her babies by-and-by," said poor Henry to himself, as he quitted the apartment, with feelings very different from those with which he entered it. At the pressing solicitations of her husband, the fashionable mother was prevailed upon to attempt nursing one of her poor starving infants; but the first trial proved also the last, as she declared nothing upon earth should ever induce her to perform so odious an office; and as Henry's entreaties and her aunts' remonstrances served alike to irritate and agitate her, the contest was, by the advice of her medical attendant, completely given up. A wet-nurse was therefore procured; but as she refused to undertake both children, and the old gentleman would not hear of having two such encumbrances in his family, it was settled, to the unspeakable delight of the maiden sisters, that the youngest should be entrusted entirely to their management, and brought up by hand. The consequence was such as might have been foreseen. The child, who was naturally weak and delicate at its birth, daily lost a portion of its little strength, while its continued cries declared the intensity of its sufferings, though they produced no other effect on its unfeeling mother than her having it removed to a more distant apartment, as she could not endure to hear the cross little thing scream so for nothing. On the other hand, the more favoured twin, who was from its birth a remarkably strong lively infant, and met with all justice from its nurse, throve apace, and was pronounced by her to be the very picture of the _bonnie leddie, its mamma,_ and then, with all the low cunning of her kind, she would launch forth into panegyrics of its beauty, and prophecies of the great dignities and honours that would one day be showered upon it; until, by her fawning and flattery, she succeeded in exciting a degree of interest, which nature had not secured for it in the mother's breast. Things were in this situation when, at the end of three weeks, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas arrived to offer their congratulations on the birth of the twins. Lady Juliana received her sister-in-law in her apartment, which she had not yet quitted, and replied to her congratulations only by querulous complaints and childish murmurs. "I am sure you are very happy in not having children," continued she, as the cries of the little sufferer reached her ear; "I hope to goodness I shall never have any more. I wonder if anybody ever had twin daughters before, and I, too, who hate girls so!" Mrs Douglas, disgusted with her unfeeling folly, knew not what to reply, and a pause ensued; but afresh burst of cries from the unfortunate baby again called forth its mother's indignation. "I wish to goodness that child was gagged," cried she, holding her hands to her ears. "It has done nothing but scream since the hour it was born, and it makes me quite sick to hear it." "Poor little dear!" said Mrs. Douglas compassionately, "it appears to suffer a great deal." "Suffer!" repeated her sister-in-law; "what can it suffer? I am sure it meets with a great deal attention than any person in the house. These three old women do nothing but feed it from morning to night, with everything they can think of, and make such a fuss about it!" "I suspect, my dear sister, you would be very sorry for yourself," said Mrs. Douglas, with a smile, "were you to endure the same treatment as your poor baby; stuffed with improper food and loathsome drugs, and bandied about from one person to another." "You may say what you please," retorted Lady Juliana pettishly; "but I know it's nothing but ill temper: nurse says so too; and it is so ugly with constantly crying that I cannot bear to look at it;" and she turned away her head as Miss Jacky entered with the little culprit in her arms, which she was vainly endeavouring to _talk _into silence, while she dandled it in the most awkward _maiden-like_ manner imaginable. "Good heavens! what a fright!" exclaimed the tender parent, as her child was held up to her. "Why, it is much less than when it was born, an its skin is as yellow as saffron, and it squints! Only look what a difference," as the nurse advanced and ostentatiously displayed her charge, who had just waked out of a long sleep; its checks flushed with heat; its skin completely filled up; and its large eyes rolling under its already dark eyelashes. "The bonny wean's just her mamma's pickter," drawled out the nurse, "but the wee missy's uncolike her aunties." "Take her away," cried Lady Juliana in a tone of despair; "I wish I could send her out of my hearing altogether, for her noise will be the death of me." "Alas! what would I give to hear the blessed sound of a living child!" exclaimed Mrs. Douglas, taking the infant in her arms. "And how great would be my happiness could I call the poor rejected one mine!" "I'm sure you are welcome to my share of the little plague," said her sister-in-law, with a laugh, "if you can prevail upon Harry to give up his." "I would give up a great deal could my poor child find a mother," replied her husband, who just then entered. "My dear brother!" cried Mrs. Douglas, her eyes beaming with delight, "do you then confirm Lady Juliana's kind promise? Indeed I will be a mother to your dear baby, and love her as if she were my own; and in a month--oh! in much less time--you shall see her as stout as her sister." Henry sighed, as he thought, "'Why has not my poor babe such a mother of its own?" Then thanking his sister-in-law for her generous intentions, he reminded her that she must consult her husband, as few men liked to be troubled with any children but their own. "You are in the right," said Mrs. Douglas, blushing at the impetuosity of feeling which had made her forget for an instant the deference due to her husband; "I shall instantly ask his permission, and he is so indulgent to all my wishes that I have little doubt of obtaining his consent;" and, with the child in her arms, she hastened to her husband, and made known her request. Mr. Douglas received the proposal with considerable coolness; wondering what his wife could see in such an ugly squalling thing to plague herself about it. If it had been a boy, old enough to speak and run about, there might be some amusement in it; but he could not see the use of a squalling sickly infant--and a girl too! His wife sighed deeply, and the tears stole down her cheeks as she looked on the wan visage and closed eyes of the little sufferer. "God help thee, poor baby!" said she mournfully; "you are rejected on all hands, but your misery will soon be at a end;" and she was slowly leaving the room with her helpless charge when her husband, touched at the sight of her distress, though the feeling that caused it he did not comprehend, called to her, "I am sure, Alicia, if you really wish to take charge of the infant I have no objections; only I think you will find it la great plague, and the mother is such a fool." "Worse than a fool," said Mrs. Douglas indignantly, "for she hates and abjures this her poor unoffending babe" "Does she so?" cried Mr. Douglas, every kindling feeling roused within him at the idea of his blood being hated and abjured; "then, hang me! if she shall have any child of Harry's to hate as long as I have a house to shelter it and a sixpence to bestow upon it," taking the infant in his arms, and kindly kissing it. Mrs. Douglas smiled through her tears as she embraced her husband, and praised his goodness and generosity; then, full of exultation and delight, she flew to impart the success of her mission to the parents of her _protégée._ Great was the surprise of the maiden nurses at finding they were to be bereft of their little charge. "I declare, I think the child is doing as well as possible," said Miss Grizzy. "To be sure it does yammer constantly--that can't be denied; and it is uncommonly small--nobody can dispute that. At the same time, I am sure, I can't tell what makes it cry, for I've given it two colic powders every day, and a tea-spoonful of Lady Maclaughlan's carminative every three hours." "And I've done nothing but make water-gruel and chop rusks for it," quoth Miss Nicky, "and yet it is never satisfied; I wonder what it would be at." "I know perfectly well what it would be at," said Miss Jacky, with an air of importance. "All this crying and screaming is for nothing else but a nurse; but it ought not to be indulged. There is no end of indulging the desires, and 'tis amazing how cunning children are, and how soon they know how to take advantage of people's weakness," glancing an eye of fire at Mrs. Douglas. "Were that my child, I would feed her on bread and water before I would humour her fancies. A pretty lesson, indeed! if she's to have her own way before she's a month old." Mrs. Douglas knew that it was in vain to attempt arguing with her aunts. She therefore allowed them to wonder and declaim over their sucking pots, colic powders, and other instruments of torture, while she sent to the wife of one of her tenants who had lately lain-in, and who wished for the situation of nurse, appointing her to be at Lochmarlie the following day. Having made her arrangements, and collected the scanty portion of clothing Mrs. Nurse chose to allow, Mrs. Douglas repaired to her sister-in-law's apartment, with her little charge in her arms. She found her still in bed, and surrounded with her favourites. "So you really are going to torment yourself with that little screech-owl?" said she. "Well, I must say it's very good of you; but I am afraid you will soon tire of her. Children are such plagues! Are they not, my darling?" added she, kissing her pug. "You will not say so when you have seen my little girl a month hence," said Mrs. Douglas, trying to conceal her disgust for Henry's sake, who had just then entered the room. "She has promised me never to cry any more; so give her a kiss, and let us be gone." The high-bred mother slightly touched the cheek of her sleeping babe, extended her finger to her sister-in-law, and carelessly bidding them good-bye, returned to her pillow and her pugs. Henry accompanied Mrs. Douglas to the carriage, and before they parted he promised his brother to ride over to Lochmarlie in a few days. He said nothing of his child, but his glistening eye and the warm pressure of his hand spoke volumes to the kind heart of his brother, who assured him that Alicia would be very good to his little girl, and that he was sure she would get quite well when she got a nurse. The carriage drove off, and Henry, with a heavy spirit, returned to the house to listen to his father's lectures, his aunts' ejaculations, and his wife's murmurs. CHAPTER XIX. "We may boldly spend upon the hope of what Is to come in." _Henry IV_. THE birth of twin daughters awakened the young father to a still stronger sense of the total dependence and extreme helplessness of his condition. Yet how to remedy it he knew not. To accept of his father's proposal was out of the question, and it was equally impossible for him, were he ever so inclined, to remain much longer a burden on the narrow income of the Laird of Glenfern. One alternative only remained, which was to address the friend and patron of his youth, General Cameron; and to him he therefore wrote, describing all the misery of his situation, and imploring his forgiveness and assistance. "The old General's passion must have cooled by this time," thought he to himself, as he sealed the letter, "and as he has often overlooked former scrapes, I think, after all, he will help me out of this greatest one of all." For once Henry was not mistaken. He received an answer to his letter, in which the General, after execrating his folly in marrying a lady of quality, swearing at the birth of his twin daughters, and giving him some wholesome counsel as to his future mode of life, concluded by informing him that he had got him reinstated in his former rank in the army; that he should settle seven hundred per annum on him till he saw how matters were conducted, and, in the meantime, enclosed a draught for four hundred pounds, to open the campaign. Though this was not, according to Henry's notions, "coming down handsomely," still it was better than not coming down at all, and with a mixture of delight and disappointment he flew to communicate the tidings to Lady Juliana. "Seven hundred pounds a year!" exclaimed she, in raptures: "Heavens! what a quantity of money! why, we shall be quite rich, and I shall have such a beautiful house, and such pretty carriages, and give such parties, and buy so many fine things. Oh dear, how happy I shall be!" "You know little of money, Julia, if you think seven hundred pounds will do all that," replied her husband gravely. "I hardly think we can afford a house in town; but we may have a pretty cottage at Richmond or Twickenham, and I can keep a curricle, and drive you about, you know; and we may give famous good dinners." A dispute here ensued; her ladyship hated cottages and curricles and good dinners as much as her husband despised fancy balls, opera boxes, and chariots. The fact was that the one knew very nearly as much of the real value of money as the other, and Henry's _sober_ scheme was just as practicable as his wife's extravagant one. Brought up in the luxurious profusion of great house; accustomed to issue her orders and have them obeyed, Lady Juliana, at the time she married, was in the most blissful state of ignorance respecting the value of pounds, shillings, and pence. Her maid took care to have her wardrobe supplied with all things needful, and when she wanted a new dress or a fashionable jewel, it was only driving to Madame D.'s, or Mr. Y.'s, and desiring the article to be sent to herself, while the bill went to her papa. From never seeing money in its own vulgar form, Lady Juliana had learned to consider it as a mere nominal thing; while, on the other hand, her husband, from seeing too much of it, had formed almost equally erroneous ideas of its powers. By the mistake kindness of General Cameron he had been indulged in all the fashionable follies of the day, and allowed to use his patron's ample fortune as if it had already been his own; nor was it until he found himself a prisoner at Glenfern from want of money that he had ever attached the smallest importance to it. In short, both the husband and wife had been accustomed to look upon it in the same light as the air they breathed. They knew it essential to life, and concluded that it would come some way or other; either from the east or west, north or south. As for the vulgar concerns of meat and drink, servants' wages, taxes, and so forth, they never found a place in the calculations of either. Birthday dresses, fetes, operas, equipages, and state liveries whirled in rapid succession through Lady Juliana's brain, while clubs, curricles, horses, and claret, took possession of her husband's mind. However much they differed in the proposed modes of showing off in London, both agreed perfectly in the necessity of going there, and Henry therefore hastened to inform his father of the change in his circumstances, and apprise him of his intention of immediately joining his regiment, the ---- Guards. "Seven hunder pound a year!" exclaimed the old gentleman; "Seven hunder pound! O' what can ye mak' o' a' that siller? Ye'll surely lay by the half o't to tocher your bairns. Seven hunder pound a year for doing naething!" Miss Jacky was afraid, unless they got some person of sense (which would not be an easy matter) to take the management of it, it would perhaps be found little enough in the long-run. Miss Grizzy declared it was a very handsome income, nobody could dispute that; at the same time, everybody must allow that the money could not have been better bestowed. Miss Nicky observed "there was a great deal of good eating and drinking in seven hundred a year, if people knew how to manage it." All was bustle and preparation throughout Glenfern Castle, and the young ladies' good-natured activity and muscular powers were again in requisition to collect the wardrobe, and pack the trunks, imperial, etc., of their noble sister. Glenfern remarked "that fules war fond o' flitting, for they seemed glad to leave the good quarters they were in." Miss Grizzy declared there was a great excuse for their being glad, poor things! young people were always so fond of a change; at the same time, nobody could deny but that it would have been quite natural for them to feel sorry too. Miss Jacky was astonished how any person's mind could be so callous as to think of leaving Glenfern without emotion. Miss Nicky wondered what was to become of the christening cake she had ordered from Perth; it might be as old as the hills before there would be another child born amongst them. The Misses were ready to weep at the disappointment of the dreaming-bread. In the midst of all this agitation, mental and bodily, the long-looked-for moment arrived. The carriage drove round ready packed and loaded, and, absolutely screaming with delight, Lady Juliana sprang into it. As she nodded and kissed her hand to the assembled group, she impatiently called to Henry to follow. His adieus were, however, not quite so tonish as those of his high-bred lady, for he went duly and severally through all the evolutions of kissing, embracing, shaking of hands, and promises to write; then taking his station by the side of the nurse and child--the rest of the carriage being completely filled by the favourites--he bade a long farewell to his paternal halls and the land of his birth. CHAPTER XX. "For trifles why should I displease The man I love? For trifles such as these To serious mischiefs lead the man I love." HORACE. BRIGHT prospects of future happiness and endless plans of expense floated through Lady Juliana's brain, and kept her temper in some degree of serenity during the journey. Arrived in London, she expressed herself enraptured at being once more in a civilised country, and restored to the society of human creatures. An elegant house and suitable establishment were immediately provided; and a thousand dear friends, who had completely forgotten her existence, were now eager to welcome her to her former haunts, and lead her thoughtless and willing steps in the paths of dissipation and extravagance. Soon after their arrival they were visited by General Cameron. It was two o'clock, yet Lady Juliana had not appeared; and Henry, half-stretched upon a sofa, was dawdling over his breakfast with half-a-dozen newspapers scattered round. The first salutations over, the General demanded, "Am I not to be favoured with a sight of your lady? Is she afraid that I am one of your country relations, and taken her flight from the breakfast-table in consequence?" "She has not yet made her appearance," replied Douglas; "but I will let her know you are here. I am sure she will be happy to make acquaintance with one to whom I am so much indebted." A message was despatched to Lady Juliana, who returned for answer that she would be down immediately. Three quarters of an hour, however, elapsed; and the General, provoked with this inattention and affectation, was preparing to depart when the Lady made her appearance. "Juliana, my love," said her husband, "let me present you to General Cameron--the generous friend who has acted the part of a father towards me, and to whom you owe all the comforts you enjoy." Lady Juliana slightly bowed with careless ease, and half uttered a "How d'ye do?--very happy indeed," as she glided on to pull the bell for breakfast. "Cupid, Cupid!" cried she to the dog, who had flown upon the General, and was barking most vehemently. "Poor darling Cupid! are you almost starved to death? Harry, do give him that muffin on your plate." "You are very late to-day, my love," cried the mortified husband. "I have been pestered for the last hour with Duval and the court dresses, and I could not fix on what I should like." "I think you might have deferred the ceremony of choosing to another opportunity. General Cameron has been here above an hour." "Dear! I hope you did not wait for me. I shall be quite shocked!" drawled out her ladyship in a tone denoting how very indifferent the answer would be to her. "I beg your ladyship would be under no uneasiness on that account," replied the General in an ironical tone, which, though lost upon her, was obvious enough to Henry. "Have you breakfasted?" asked Lady Juliana, exerting herself to be polite. "Absurd, my love!" cried her husband. "Do you suppose I should have allowed the General to wait for that too all this time, if he had not breakfasted many hours ago?" "How cross you are this morning, my Harry! I protest my Cupidon is quite ashamed of your _grossièreté! "_ A servant now entered to say Mr. Shagg was come to know her ladyship's final decision about the hammer-cloths; and the new footman was come to be engaged; and the china merchant was below. "Send up one of them at a time; and as to the footman, you may say I'll have him at once," said Lady Juliana. "I thought you had engaged Mrs. D.'s footman last week. She gave him the best character, did she not?" asked her husband. "Oh yes! his character was good enough; but he was a horrid cheat for all that. He called himself five feet nine, and when he was measured he turned out to be only five feet seven and a half." "Pshaw!" exclaimed Henry angrily. "What the devil did that signify if the man had a good character?" "How absurdly you talk, Harry, as if a man's character signified who has nothing to do but to stand behind my carriage! A pretty figure he'd made there beside Thomas, who is at least five feet ten!" The entrance of Mr. Shagg, bowing and scraping, and laden with cloths, lace, and fringes, interrupted the conversation. "Well, Mr. Shagg," cried Lady Juliana, "what's to be done with that odious leopard's skin? You must positively take it off my hands. I would rather never go in a carriage again as show myself in the Park with that frightful thing." "Certainly, my Lady," replied the obsequious Mr. Shagg, "anything your Ladyship pleases; your Ladyship can have any hammer-cloth you like; and I have accordingly brought patterns of the very newest fashions for your Ladyship to make choice. Here are some uncommon elegant articles. At the same time, my Lady, your Ladyship must be sensible that it is impossible that we can take back the leopard's skin. It was not only cut out to fit your Ladyship's coach-box--and consequently your Ladyship understands it would not fit any other--but the silver feet and crests have also been affixed quite ready for use, so that the article is quite lost to us. I am confident, therefore, that your Ladyship will consider of this, and allow it to be put down in your bill." "Put it anywhere but on my coach-box, and don't bore me!" answered Lady Juliana, tossing over all the patterns, and humming a tune. "What," said her husband, "is that the leopard's skin you were raving about last week, and your are tired of it before it has been used?" "And no wonder. Who do you think I saw in the Park yesterday but that old quiz Lady Denham, just come from the country, with her frightful old coach set off with a hammer-cloth precisely like the one I had ordered. Only fancy people saying, Lady Denham sets the fashion for Lady Juliana Douglas!! Oh, there's confusion and despair in the thought!" Confusion, at least, if not despair, was painted in Henry's face as he saw the General's glance directed alternately with contempt at Lady Juliana, and at himself, mingled with pity. He continued to fidget about in all directions, while Lady Juliana talked nonsense to Mr. Shagg, and wondered if the General never meant to go away. But he calmly kept his ground till the man was dismissed, and another introduced, loaded with china jars, monsters, and distorted teapots, for the capricious fair one's choice and approbation. "Beg ten thousand pardons, my Lady, for not calling yesterday, according to appointment--quite an unforeseen impediment. The Countess of Godolphin had somehow got private intelligence that I had a set of fresh commodities just cleared from the custom house, and well knowing such things are not long in hand, her La'ship came up from the country on purpose--the Countess has so much taste!--she drove straight to my warehouse, and kept me a close prisoner till after your La'ship's hour; but I hope it may not be taken amiss, seeing that it is not a customary thing with us to be calling on customers, not to mention that this line of goods is not easily transported about. However, I flatter myself the articles now brought for your Ladyship's inspection will not be found beneath your notice. Please to observe this choice piece--it represents a Chinese cripple squat on the ground, with his legs crossed. Your Ladyship may observe the head and chin advanced forwards, as in the act of begging. The tea pours from the open mouth; and, till your Ladyship tries, you can have no idea of the elegant effect it produces." "That is really droll," cried Lady Juliana, with a laugh of delight; "and I must have the dear sick beggar; he is so deliciously hideous." "And here," continued Mr. Brittle, "is an amazing delicate article, in the way of a jewel--a frog of Turkish agate for burning pastiles in, my Lady; just such as they use in the seraglio; and indeed this one I may call invaluable, for it was the favourite toy of one of the widowed Sultanas till she grew devout and gave up perfumes. One of her slaves disposed of it to my foreign partner. Here it opens at the tail, where you put in the pastiles, and closing it up, the vapour issues beautifully through the nostrils, eyes, ears, and mouth, all at once. Here, sir," turning to Douglas, "if you are curious in new workmanship, I would have you examine this. I defy any jeweller in London to come up to the fineness of these hinges, and delicacy of the carving---" "Pshaw, damn it!" said Douglas, turning away, and addressing some remark to the General, who was provokingly attentive to everything that went on. "Here," continued Mr. Brittle, "are a set of jars, teapots, mandarins, sea-monsters, and pug-dogs, all of superior beauty, but such as your Ladyship may have seen before." "Oh, the dear, dear little puggies! I must have them to amuse my own darlings. I protest here is one the image of Psyche; positively I must kiss it!" "Oh dear! I am sure," cried Mr. Brittle, simpering, and making a conceited bow, "your Ladyship does it and me too much honour. But here, as I was going to say, is the phoenix of all porcelain ware--the _ne plus ultra_ of perfection--what I have kept in my backroom, concealed from all eyes, until your Ladyship shall pronounce upon it. Somehow one of my shopmen got word of it, and told her Grace of L----- (who has a pretty taste in these things for a young lady) that I had some particular choice article that I was keeping for a lady that was a favourite of mine. Her Grace was in the shop the matter of a full hour and a half, trying to wheedle me out of a sight of this rare piece; and I, pretending not to know what her Grace would be after, but showing her thing after thing, to put it out of her head. But she was not so easily bubbled, and at last went away ill enough pleased. Now, my Lady, prepare all your eyes." He then went to the door, and returned, carrying with difficulty a large basket, which till then had been kept by one of his satellites. After removing coverings of all descriptions, an uncouth group of monstrous size was displayed, which, on investigation, appeared to be a serpent coiled in regular folds round the body of a tiger placed on end; and the whole structure, which was intended for a vessel of some kind, was formed of the celebrated green mottled china, invaluable to connoisseurs. "View that well," exclaimed Mr. Brittle, in a transport of enthusiasm, "for such a specimen not one of half the size has ever been imported to Europe. There is a long story about this my phoenix, as I call it; but, to be brief, it was secretly procured from one of the temples, where, gigantic as it may seem, and uncouth for the purpose, it was the idol's principal teapot!" "Oh delicious!" cried Lady Juliana, clasping her hands in ecstasy. "I will give a party for the sole purpose of drinking tea out of this machine; and I will have the whole room fitted up like an Indian temple. Oh! it will be so new! I die to send out my cards. The Duchess of B----- told me the other day, with such a triumphant air, when I was looking at her two little green jars, not a quarter the size of this, that there was not a bit more of that china to be had for love or money. Oh, she will be so provoked!" And she absolutely skipped for joy. A loud rap at the door now announcing a visitor, Lady Juliana ran to the balcony, crying, "Oh, it must be Lady Gerard, for she promised to call early in the morning, that we might go together to a wonderful sale in some far-off place in the city--at Wapping, for aught I know. Mr. Brittle, Mr. Brittle, for the love of heaven, carry the dragon into the back drawing-room--I purchase it, remember!--make haste!--Lady Gerard is not to get a glimpse of it for the world." The servant now entered with a message from Lady Gerard, who would not alight, begging that Lady Juliana would make haste down to her, as they had not a moment to lose. She was flying away, without further ceremony than a "Pray, excuse me," to the General, when her husband called after her to know whether the child was gone out, as he wished to show her to the General. "I don't know, indeed," replied the fashionable mother; "I haven't had time to see her to-day;" and, before Douglas could reply she was downstairs. A pause ensued--the General whistled a quickstep, and Douglas walked up and down the room in a pitiable state of mind, guessing pretty much what was passing in the mind of his friend, and fully sensible that it must be of a severer nature than anything he could yet allow himself to think of his Juliana. "Douglas," said the General, "have you made any step towards a reconciliation with your father-in-law? I believe it will become shortly necessary for your support." "Juliana wrote twice after her marriage," replied he; "but the reception which her letters met with was not such as to encourage perseverance on our part. With regard to myself, it is not an affair in which delicacy will permit me to be very active, as I might be accused of mercenary motives, which I am far from having." "Oh, of that I acquit you; but surely it ought to be a matter of moment, even to a---Lady Juliana. The case is now altered. Time must have accustomed him to the idea of this imaginary affront; and, on my honour, if he thought like a gentleman and a man of sense, I know where he would think the misfortune lay. Nay, don't interrupt me. The old Earl must now, I say, have cooled in his resentment; perhaps, too, his grandchildren may soften his heart; this must have occurred to you. Has her Ladyship taken any further steps since her arrival in town?" "I--I believe she has not; but I will put her in mind." "A daughter who requires to have her memory refreshed on such a subject is likely to make a valuable wife!" said the General drily. Douglas felt as if it was incumbent on him to be angry, but remained silent. "Hark ye, Douglas," continued the General, "I speak this for your interest. You cannot go on without the Earl's help. You know I am not on ceremony with you; and if I refrain from saying what you see I think about your present ruinous mode of life, it is not to spare your feelings, but from a sense of the uselessness of any such remonstrance. What I do give you is with goodwill; but all my fortune would not suffice to furnish pug-dogs and deformed teapots for such a vitiated taste; and if it would, hang me if it should! But enough on this head. The Earl has been in bad health, and is lately come to town. His son, too, and his lady are to come about the same time, and are to reside with him during the season. I have heard Lord Lindore spoken of as a good-natured easy man, and he would probably enter willingly into any scheme to reinstate his sister into his father's good graces. Think of this, and make what you can of it; and my particular advice to you personally is, try to exchange into a marching regiment; for a fellow like you, with such a wife, London is the very devil! And so good morning to you." He snatched up his hat, and was off in a moment. CHAPTER XXI. "To reckon up a thousand of her pranks, Her pride, her wasteful spending, her unkindness, Her scolding, pouting, . . . Were to reap an endless catalogue." _Old Play._ WHEN Lady Juliana returned from her expedition, it was so late that Douglas had not time to speak to her; and separate engagements carrying them different ways, he had no opportunity to do so until the following morning at breakfast. He then resolved no longer to defer what he had to say, and began by reproaching her with the cavalier manner in which she had behaved to his good friend the General. "Upon my life, Harry, you are grown perfectly savage," cried his Lady. "I was most particularly civil; I wonder what you would have me to do? You know very well I cannot have anything to say to old men of that sort." "I think," returned Henry, "you might have been gratified by making an acquaintance with my benefactor, and the man to whom you owe the enjoyment of your favourite pleasures. At any rate, you need not have made yourself ridiculous. May I perish if I did not wish myself underground while you were talking nonsense to those sneaking rascals who wheedle you out of your money! S'death! I had a good mind to throw them and their trumpery out of the window when I saw you make such a fool of yourself." "A fool of myself! how foolishly you talk! and as for that vulgar, awkward General, he ought to have been too much flattered. Some of the monsters were so like himself, I am sure he must have thought I took them for the love of his round bare pate." "Upon my soul, Julia, I am ashamed of you! Do leave off this excessive folly, and try to be rational. What I particularly wished to say to you is that your father is in town, and it will be proper that you should make another effort to be reconciled to him." "I dare say it will," answered Lady Juliana, with a yawn. "And you must lose no time. When will you write?" "There's no use in writing, or indeed doing anything in the matter. I am sure he won't forgive me." "And why not?" "Oh, why should he do it now? He did not forgive me when I asked him before." "And do you think, then, for a father's forgiveness it is not worth while to have a little perseverance?" "I am sure he won't do it; so 'tis in vain to try," repeated she, going to the glass, and singing, _"Papa non dite di no_," etc. "By heavens, Julia!" cried her husband passionately, "you are past all endurance! Can nothing touch you?--nothing fix your thoughts, and make you serious for a single moment? Can I not make you understand that you are ruining yourself and me; that we have nothing to depend upon but the bounty of that man whom you disgust by your caprice, extravagance, and impertinence; and that if you don't get reconciled to your father what is to become of you? You already know what you have to expect from my family, and how you like living with them." "Heavens, Harry!" exclaimed her Ladyship, "what is all this tirade about? Is it because I said papa wouldn't forgive me? I'm sure I don't mind writing to him; I have no objection, the first leisure moment I have; but really, in town, one's time is so engrossed." At this moment her maid entered in triumph, carrying on her arms a satin dress, embroidered with gold and flowers. "See, my Lady," cried she, "your new robe, as Madame has sent home half a day sooner than her word; and she has disobliged several of the quality by not giving the pattern." "Oh, lovely! charming! Spread it out, Gage; hold it to the light; all my own fancy. Only look, Harry; how exquisite! how divine!" Harry had no time to express his contempt for embroidered robes; for just then one of his knowing friends came, by appointment, to accompany him to Tattersal's, where he was to bid for a famous pair of curricle grays. Days passed on without Lady Juliana's ever thinking it worth while to follow her husband's advice about applying to her father; until a week after, Douglas overheard the following conversation between his wife and one of her acquaintance. "You are going to this grand _fete,_ of course," said Mrs. G. "I'm told it is to eclipse everything that has been yet seen or heard of." "Of what _fete_ do you speak?" demanded Lady Juliana. "Lord, my dear creature, how Gothic you are! Don't you know anything about this grand affair that everybody has been talking of for two days? Lady Lindore gives, at your father's house, an entertainment which is to be a concert, ball, and masquerade at once. All London is asked, of any distinction, _c'a s'entend._ But, bless me, I beg pardon, I totally forgot that you were not on the best terms possible in that quarter; but never mind, we must have you go; there is not a person of fashion that will stay away; I must get you asked; I shall petition Lady Lindore in your favour." "Oh pray don't trouble yourself," cried Lady Juliana, in extreme pique. "I believe I can get this done without your obliging interference; but I don't know whether I shall be in town then." From this moment Lady Juliana resolved to make a vigorous effort to regain a footing in her father's house. Her first action the next morning was to write to her brother, who had hitherto kept aloof, because he could not be at the trouble of having a difference with the Earl, entreating him to use his influence in promoting a reconciliation between her father and herself. No answer was returned for four days, at the end of which time Lady Juliana received the following note from her brother:-- "DEAR JULIA--I quite agree with you in thinking that you have been kept long enough in the corner, and shall certainly tell Papa that you are ready to become a good girl whenever he shall please to take you out of it. I shall endeavour to see Douglas and you soon.--Yours affectionately, LINDORE." "Lady Lindore desires me to say you can have tickets for her ball, if you choose to come _en masque._" Lady Juliana was delighted with this billet, which she protested was everything that was kind and generous; but the postscript was the part on which she dwelt with the greatest delight, as she repeatedly declared it was a great deal more than she expected. "You see, Harry," said she, as she tossed the note to him, "I was in the right. Papa won't forgive me; but Lindore says he will send me a ticket for the _fete;_ it is vastly attentive of him, for I did not ask it. But I must go disguised, which is monstrous provoking, for I'm afraid nobody will know me." A dispute here ensued. Henry swore she should not steal into her father's house as long as she was his wife. The lady insisted that she should go to her brother's _fete_ when she was invited; and the altercations ended as altercations commonly do, leaving both parties more wedded to their own opinion than at first. In the evening Lady Juliana went to a large party; and as she was passing from one room into another she was startled by a little paper pellet thrown at her. Turning round to look for the offender, she saw her brother standing at a little distance, smiling at her surprise. This was the first time she had seen him for two years, and she went up to him with an extended hand, while he gave her a familiar nod, and a "How d'ye do, Julia?" and one finger of his hand, while he turned round to speak to one of his companions. Nothing could be more characteristic of both parties than this fraternal meeting; and from this time they were the best friends imaginable. CHAPTER XXII. "Helas! où donc chercher ou trouver le bonheur, Nulle part tout entier, partout avec mesure!" VOLTAIRE. SOME days before the expected _fete_ Lady Juliana, at the instigation of her adviser, Lady Gerard, resolved upon taking the field against the Duchess of L---. Her Grace had issued cards for a concert; and after mature deliberation it was decided that her rival should strike out something new, and announce a christening for the same night. The first intimation Douglas had of the honour intended him by this arrangement was through the medium of the newspaper, for the husband and wife were now much too fashionable to be at all _au fait_ of each other's schemes. His first emotion was to be extremely surprised; the next to be exceedingly displeased; and the last to be highly gratified at the _éclat_ with which his child was to be made a Christian. True, he had intended requesting the General to act as godfather upon the occasion; but Lady Juliana protested she would rather the child never should be christened at all (which already seemed nearly to have been the case) than have that cross vulgar-Iooking man to stand sponsor. Her Ladyship, however, so far conceded that the General was to have the honour of giving his name to the next, if a boy, for she was now near her second confinement; and, with this promise Henry was satisfied to slight the only being in the world to whom he looked for support to himself and his children. In the utmost delight the fond mother drove away to consult her confidants upon the name and decorations of the child, whom she had not even looked at for many days. Everything succeeded to admiration. Amid crowds of spectators, in all the pomp of lace and satin, surrounded by princes and peers, and handed from duchesses to countesses, the twin daughter of Henry Douglas, and the heroine of future story, became a Christian by the names of Adelaide Julia. Some months previous to this event Lady Juliana had received a letter from Mrs. Douglas, informing her of the rapid improvement that had taken place in her little charge, and requesting to know by what name she should have her christened; at the same time gently insinuating her wish that, in compliance with the custom of the country, and as a compliment due to the family, it should be named after his paternal grandmother. Lady Juliana glanced over the first line of the letter, then looked at the signature, resolved to read the rest as soon as she should have time to answer it; and in the meantime tossed it into a drawer, amongst old visiting cards and unpaid bills. After vainly waiting for an answer, much beyond the accustomed time when children are baptized, Mrs. Douglas could no longer refuse to accede to the desires of the venerable inmates of Glenfern; and about a month before her favoured sister received her more elegant appellations, the neglected twin was baptized by the name of Mary. Mrs. Douglas's letter had been enclosed in the following one from Miss Grizzy, and as it had not the good fortune to be perused by the person to whom it was addressed, we deem it but justice to the writer to insert it here:-- "GLENFERN CASTLE, _July 30th,_ 17--. "My DEAREST NIECE, LADY JULIANA--I am Certain, as indeed we all are, that it will Afford your Ladyship and our dear Nephew the greatest Pleasure to see this letter Franked by our Worthy and Respectable Friend Sir Sampson Maclaughlan, Bart., especially as it is the First he has ever franked; out of compliment to you, as I assure you he admires you excessively, as indeed we all do. At the same Time, you will of course, I am sure, Sympathise with us all in the distress Occasioned by the melancholy Death of our late Most Obliging Member, Duncan M'Dunsmuir, Esquire, of Dhunacrag and Auchnagoil, who you never have had the Pleasure of seeing. What renders his death Particularly distressing, is, that Lady Maclaughlan is of opinion it was entirely owing to eating Raw oysters, and damp feet. This ought to be a warning to all Young people to take care of Wet feet, and Especially eating Raw oysters, which are certainly Highly dangerous, particularly where there is any Tendency to Gout. I hope, my dear Niece, you have got a pair of Stout walking shoes, and that both Henry and you remember to Change your feet after Walking. I am told Raw Oysters are much the fashion in London at present; but when this Fatal Event comes to be Known, it will of course Alarm people very much, and put them upon their guard both as to Damp Feet and Raw oysters. Lady Maclaughlan is in High spirits at Sir Sampson's Success, though, at the Same Time, I assure you, she Felt much for the Distress of poor Mr. M'Dunsmuir, and had sent him a Large Box of Pills, and a Bottle of Gout Tincture, only two days before he died. This will be a great Thing for you, and especially for Henry, my dear niece, as Sir Sampson and Lady Maclaughlan are going to London directly to take his Seat in Parliament; and she will make a point of Paying you every attention, and will Matronise you to the play, and any other Public places you may wish to go; as both my Sisters and I are of opinion you are rather Young to matronise yourself yet, and you could not get a more Respectable Matron than Lady Maclaughlan. I hope Harry wont take it amiss if Sir Sampson does not pay him so much Attention as he might expect; but he says that he will not be master of a moment of his own Time in London. He will be so much taken up with the King and the Duke of York, that he is afraid he will Disoblige a great Number of the Nobility by it, besides injuring his own health by such Constant application to business. He is to make a very fine Speech in Parliament, but it is not yet Fixed what his First Motion is to be upon. He himself wishes to move for a New Subsidy to the Emperor of Germany; but Lady Maclaughlan is of opinion that it would be better to Bring in a Bill for Building a bridge over the Water of Dlin; which, to be sure, is very much wanted, as a Horse and Cart were drowned at the Ford last Speat. We are All, I am happy to Say, in excellent Health. Becky is recovering from the Measles as well as could be Wished, and the Rose [1] is quite gone out of Bella's Face. Beennie has been prevented from Finishing a most Beautiful Pair of bottle Sliders for your Ladyship by a whitlow, but it is now Mending, and I hope will be done in Time to go with Babby's Vase Carpet, which is extremely elegant, by Sir S. and Lady Maclaughlan. This Place is in great Beauty at present, and the new Byre is completely finished. My Sisters and I regret Excessively that Henry and you should have seen Glenfern to such disadvantage; but when next you favour us with a visit, I hope it will be in Summer, and the New Byre you will think a Prodigious Improvement. Our dear Little Grand-niece is in great health, and much improved. We reckon her Extremely like our Family, Particularly Becky; though she has a great Look of Bella, at the Same Time, Then she Laughs. Excuse the Shortness of this Letter, my dear Niece, as I shall Write a much Longer one by Lady Maclaughlan. [1] Erysipelas. "Meantime, I remain, my "Dear Lady Juliana, yours and "Henry's most affect. aunt, "GRIZZEL DOUGLAS." In spite of her husband's remonstrance Lady Juliana persisted in her resolution of attending her sister-in-law's masked ball, from which she returned, worn out with amusement and surfeited with pleasure; protesting all the while she dawdled over her evening breakfast the following day that there was nobody in the world so much to be envied as Lady Lindore. Such jewels! such dresses! such a house! such a husband! so easy and good-natured, and rich and generous! She was sure Lindore did not care what his wife did. She might give what parties she pleased, go where she liked, spend as much money as she chose, and he would never trouble his head about the matter. She was quite certain Lady Lindore had not a single thing to wish for: _ergo, _she must be the happiest woman in the world! All this was addressed to Henry, who had, however, attained the happy art of not hearing above one word out of a hundred that happened to fall from the angel lips of his adored Julia; and, having finished the newspapers, and made himself acquainted with all the blood-horses, thoroughbred _fillies_, and brood mares therein set forth, with a yawn and whistle sauntered away to G-----'s, to look at the last regulation epaulettes. Not long after, as Lady Juliana was stepping into the carriage that was to whirl her to Bond Street she was met by her husband, who, with a solemnity of manner that would have startled anyone but his volatile lady, requested she would return with him into the house, as he wished to converse with her upon a subject of some importance. He prevailed on her to return, upon condition that he would not detain her above five minutes. When, shutting the drawing room doors, he said, with earnestness, "I think, Julia, you were talking of Lady Lindore this morning: oblige me by repeating what you said, as I was reading the papers, and really did not attend much to what passed." Her Ladyship, in extreme surprise, wondered how Harry could be so tiresome and absurd as to stop her airing for any such purpose. She really did not know what she said. How could she? It was more than an hour ago. "Well, then, say what you think of her now," cried Douglas impatiently. "Think of her! why, what all the world must think--that she is the happiest woman in it. She looked so uncommonly well last night, and was in such spirits, in her fancy dress, before she masked. After that, I quite lost sight of her." "As everyone else has done. She has not been seen since. Her favourite St. Leger is missing too, and there is hardly a doubt but that they are gone off together." Even Lady Juliana was shocked at this intelligence, though the folly, more than the wickedness, of the thing, seemed to strike her mind; but Henry was no nice observer, and was therefore completely satisfied with the disapprobation she expressed for her sister-in-law's conduct. "I am so sorry for poor dear Lindore," said Lady Juliana after having exhausted herself in invectives against his wife. "Such a generous creature as he to be used in such a manner--it is quite shocking to think of it! If he had been an ill-natured stingy wretch it would have been nothing; but Frederick is such a noble-hearted fellow--I dare say he would give me a thousand pounds if I were to ask him, for he don't care about money." "Lord Lindore takes the matter very coolly, understand," replied her husband; "but--don't be alarmed, dear Julia--your father has suffered a little from the violence of his feelings. He has had a sort of apoplectic fit, but is not considered in immediate danger." Lady Juliana burst into tears, desired the carriage might be put up, as she should not go out, and even declared her intention of abstaining from Mrs. D-----'s assembly that evening. Henry warmly commended the extreme propriety of these measures; and, not to be outdone in greatness of mind, most heroically sent an apology to a grand military dinner at the Duke of Y---'s; observing, at the same time, that, in the present state of the family, one or two friends to a quiet family dinner was as much as they should be up to. CHAPTER XXIII. "I but purpose to embark with thee On the smooth surface of a summer sea, While gentle zephyrs play in prosp 'rous gales, And Fortune's favour fills the swelling sails." _Henry and Emma._ How long these voluntary sacrifices to duty and propriety might have been made it would mot be difficult to guess; but Lady Juliana's approaching confinement rendered her seclusion more and more a matter of necessity; and shortly after these events took place she presented her delighted husband with a son. Henry lost no time in announcing the birth of his child to General Cameron, and at the same time requesting he would stand godfather, and give his name to the child. The answer was as follows;-- "HORT LODGE, BERKS. "DEAR HENRY--By this time twelve month I hope it will be my turn to communicate to you a similar event in my family to that which your letter announces to me. As a preliminary step, I am just about to march into quarters for life with a young woman, daughter to my steward. She is healthy, good-humoured, and of course vulgar, since she is no connoisseur in china, and never spoke to a pug-dog in her life. "Your allowance will be remitted regularly from my Banker until the day of my death; you will then succeed to ten thousand pounds, secured to your children, which is all you have to expect from me. If, after this, you think it worth your while, you are very welcome to give your son the name of yours faithfully, WILLIAM CAMERON." Henry's consternation at the contents of this epistle was almost equalled by Juliana's indignation. "The daughter of a steward!--Heavens! it made her sick to think of it. It was too shocking! The man ought to be shut up. Henry ought to prevent him from disgracing his connexions in such a manner. There ought to be a law against old men marrying--" "And young ones too," groaned Douglas, as he thought of the debts he had contracted on the faith and credit of being the General's heir; for with all the sanguine presumption of thoughtless youth and buoyant spirits, Henry had no sooner found his fault forgiven than he immediately fancied it forgotten, and himself completely restored to favour. His friends and the world were of the same opinion; and, as the future possessor of immense wealth, he found nothing so easy as to borrow money and contract debts, which he now saw the impossibility of ever discharging. Still he flattered himself the General might only mean to frighten him; or he might relent; or the marriage might go off; or he might not have any children; and, with these _mighty_ hopes, things went on as usual for some time longer. Lady Juliana, who, to do her justice, was not of a more desponding character than her husband, had also her stock of hopes and expectations always ready to act upon. She was quite sure that if papa ever came to his senses (for he had remained in a state of stupefaction since the apoplectic stroke) he would forgive her, and take her to live with him, now that that vile Lady Lindore was gone, or, if he should never recover, she was equally sure of benefiting by his death; for though he had said he was not to leave her a shilling, she did not believe it. She was sure papa would never do anything so cruel; and at any rate, if he did, Lindore was so generous, he would do something very handsome for her; and so forth. At length the bubbles burst. The same paper that stated the marriage of General William Cameron to Judith Broadcast, Spinster, announced, in all the dignity of woe, the death of that most revered noble man and eminent statesman, Augustus, Earl of Courtland. In weak minds it has generally been remarked that no medium can be maintained. Where hope holds her dominion she is too buoyant to be accompanied by her anchor; and between her and despair there are no gradations. Desperate indeed now became the condition of the misjudging pair. Lady Juliana's name was not even mentioned in her father's will, and the General's marriage rendered his settlements no longer a secret. In all the horrors of desperation, Henry now found himself daily beset by creditors of every description. At length the fatal blow came. Horses, carriages, everything they could call their own, were seized. The term for which they held the house was expired, and they found themselves on the point of being turned into the street, when Lady Juliana, who had been for two days, as her woman expressed it, _out of one fit into another,_ suddenly recovered strength to signify her desire of being conveyed to her brother's house. A hackney coach was procured, into which the hapless victim of her own follies was carried. Shuddering with disgust, and accompanied by her children and their attendants, she was set down at the noble mansion from which she had fled two years before. Her brother, whom she fortunately found at home, lolling upon a sofa with a new novel in his hand, received her without any marks of surprise; said those things happened every day; hoped Captain Douglas would contrive to get himself extricated from this slight embarrassment; and informed his sister that she was welcome to occupy her old apartments, which had been lately fitted up for Lady Lindore. Then ringing the bell, he desired the housekeeper might show Lady Juliana upstairs, and put the children in the nursery; mentioned that he generally dined at eight o'clock; and, nodding to his sister as she quitted the room, returned to his book, as if nothing had occurred to disturb him from it. In ten minutes after her entrance into Courtland house Lady Juliana had made greater advances in _religion_ and _philosophy_ than she had done in the whole nineteen years of her life; for she not only perceived that "out of evil cometh good," but was perfectly ready to admit that "all is for the best," and that "whatever is, is right." "How lucky is it for me," exclaimed she to herself, as she surveyed the splendid suite of apartments that were destined for her accommodation--"how very fortunate that things have turned out as they have done; that Lady Lindore should have run off, and that the General's marriage should have taken place just at the time of poor papa's death "--and, in short, Lady Juliana set no bounds to her self-gratulations on the happy turn of affairs which had brought about this change in her situation. To a heart not wholly devoid of feeling, and a mind capable of anything like reflection, the desolate appearance of this magnificent mansion would have excited emotions of a very different nature. The apartments of the late Earl, with their wide extended doors and windows, sheeted furniture, and air of dreary order, exhibited that waste and chilling aspect which marks the chambers of death; and even Lady Juliana shuddered, she knew not why, as she passed through them. Those of Lady Lindore presented a picture not less striking, could her thoughtless successor have profited by the lesson they offered. Here was all that the most capricious fancy, the most boundless extravagance, the most refined luxury, could wish for or suggest. The bedchamber, dressing-room, and boudoir were each fitted up in a style that seemed rather suited for the pleasures of an Eastern sultana or Grecian courtesan than for the domestic comfort of a British matron. "I wonder how Lady Lindore could find in her heart to leave this delicious boudoir," observed Lady Juliana to the old housekeeper. "I rather wonder, my Lady, how she could find in her heart to leave these pretty babies," returned the good woman, as a little boy came running into the room, calling, "Mamma, mamma!" Lady Juliana had nothing to say to children beyond a "How d'ye do, love?" and the child, after regarding her for a moment, with a look of disappointment, ran away back to his nursery. When Lady Juliana had fairly settled herself in her new apartments, and the tumult of delight began to subside, it occurred to her that something must be done for poor Harry, whom she had left in the hands of a brother officer, in a state little short of distraction. She accordingly went in search of her brother, to request his advice and assistance, and found him, it being nearly dark, preparing to set out on his morning's ride. Upon hearing the situation of his brother-in-law he declared himself ready to assist Mr. Douglas as far as he was able; but he had just learned from his people of business that his own affairs were somewhat involved. The late Earl had expended enormous sums on political purposes; Lady Lindore had run through a prodigious deal of money, he believed; and he himself had some debts, amounting, he was told, to seventy thousand pounds. Lady Juliana was all aghast at this information, which was delivered with the most perfect _nonchalance_ by the Earl, while he amused himself with his Newfoundland dog. Unable to conceal her disappointment at these effects of her brother's "liberality and generosity," Lady Juliana burst into tears. The Earl's sensibility was akin to his generosity; he gave money (or rather allowed it to be taken) freely when he had it, from indolence and easiness of temper; he hated the sight of distress in any individual, because it occasioned trouble, and was, in short, a _bore. _He therefore made haste to relieve his sister's alarm by assuring her that these were mere trifles; that, as for Douglas's affairs, he would order his agent to arrange everything in his name; hoped to have the pleasure of seeing him at dinner; recommended to his sister to have some pheasant pies for luncheon; and, calling Carlo, set out upon his ride. However much Lady Juliana had felt mortified and disappointed at learning the state of her brother's finances, she began, by degrees, to extract the greatest consolation from the comparative insignificance of her own debts to those of the Earl; and accordingly, in high spirits at this newly discovered and judicious source of comfort, she despatched the following note to her husband:-- "DEAREST HENRY--I have been received in the kindest manner imaginable by Frederick, and have been put in possession of my old apartments, which are so much altered, I should never have known them. They were furnished by Lady Lindore, who really has a divine taste. I long to show you all the delights of this abode. Frederick desired me to say that he expects to see you here at dinner, and that he will take charge of paying all our bills whenever he gets money. Only think of his owing a hundred thousand pounds, besides all papa's and Lady Lindore's debts! I assure you I was almost ashamed to tell him of ours, they sounded so trifling; but it is quite a relief to find other people so much worse. Indeed, I always thought it quite natural for us to run in debt, considering that we had no money to pay anything, while Courtland, who is as rich as a Jew, is so hampered. I shall expect you at eight, until when, adieu, _mio caro_, "Your JULIE. "I am quite wretched about you." This tender and consolatory billet Henry had not the satisfaction of receiving, having been arrested, shortly after his wife's departure, at the suit of Mr. Shagg, for the sum of two thousand some odd hundreds, for carriages jobbed, bought, exchanged, repaired, returned, etc. Lady Juliana's horror and dismay at the news of her husband's arrest were excessive. Her only ideas of confinement were taken from those pictures of the Bastile and Inquisition that she had read so much of in French and German novels; and the idea of a prison was indissolubly united in her mind with bread and water, chains and straw, dungeons and darkness. Callous and selfish, therefore, as she might be, she was not yet so wholly void of all natural feeling as to think with indifference of the man she had once fondly loved reduced to such a pitiable condition. Almost frantic at the phantom of her own creation, she flew to her brother's apartment, and, in the wildest and most incoherent manner, besought him to rescue her poor Henry from chains and a dungeon. With some difficulty Lord Courtland at length apprehended the extent of his brother-in-Iaw's misfortune; and, with his usual _sang froid_, smiled at his sister's simplicity, assured her the King's Bench was the pleasantest place in the world; that some of his own most particular friends were there, who gave capital dinners, and led the most desirable lives imaginable. "And will he really not be fed on bread and water, and wear chains, and sleep upon straw?" asked the tender wife in the utmost surprise and delight. "Oh, then, he is not so much to be pitied, though I dare say he would rather get out of prison too." The Earl promised to obtain his release the following day, and Lady Juliana returned to her toilet with a much higher opinion of prisons than she had ever entertained before. Lord Courtland, for once in his life, was punctual to his promise; and even interested himself so thoroughly in Douglas's affairs, though without inquiring into any particulars, as to take upon himself the discharge of his debts, and to procure leave for him to exchange into a regiment of the line, then under orders for India. Upon hearing of this arrangement Lady Juliana's grief and despair, as usual, set all reason at defiance. She would not suffer her dear, dear Harry to leave her. She knew she could not live without him; she was sure she should die; and Harry would be sea sick, and grow so yellow and so ugly that when he came back she should never have any comfort in him again. Henry, who had never doubted her readiness to accompany him, immediately hastened to assuage her anguish by assuring her that it had always been his intention to take her along with him. That was worse and worse: she wondered how he could be so barbarous and absurd as to think of her leaving all her friends and going to live amongst savages. She had done a great deal in living so long contentedly with him in Scotland; but she never could nor would make such another sacrifice. Besides, she was sure poor Courtland could not do without her; she knew he never would marry again; and who would take care of his dear children, and educate them properly, if she did not? It would be too ungrateful to desert Frederick, after all he had done for them. The pride of the man, as much as the affection of the husband, was irritated by this resistance to this will; and a violent scene of reproach and recrimination terminated in an eternal farewell. CHAPTER XXIV. "In age, in infancy, from others' aid Is all our hope; to teach us to be kind, That nature's first, last lesson." YOUNG. THE neglected daughter of Lady Juliana Douglas experienced all the advantages naturally to be expected from her change of situation. Her watchful aunt superintended the years of her infancy, and all that a tender and judicious mother _could_ do--all that most mothers _think_ they do--she performed. Mrs. Douglas, though not a woman either of words or systems, possessed a reflecting mind, and a heart warm with benevolence towards everything that had a being; and all the best feelings of her nature were excited by the little outcast thus abandoned by her unnatural parent. As she pressed the unconscious babe to her bosom she thought how blest she should have been had a child of her own thus filled her arms; but the reflection called forth no selfish murmurs from her chastened spirit. While the tear of soft regret trembled in her eye, that eye was yet raised in gratitude to Heaven for having called forth those delightful affections which might otherwise have slumbered in her heart. Mrs. Douglas had read much, and reflected more, and many faultless theories of education had floated in her mind. But her good sense soon discovered how unavailing all theories were whose foundations rested upon the inferred wisdom of the teacher, and how intricate and unwieldy must be the machinery for the human mind where the human hand alone is to guide and uphold it. To engraft into her infant soul the purest principles of religion was therefore the chief aim of Mary's preceptress. The fear of God was the only restraint imposed upon her dawning intellect; and from the Bible alone was she taught the duties of morality--not in the form of a dry code of laws, to be read with a solemn face on Sundays, or learned with weeping eyes as a week-day task--but adapted to her youthful capacity by judicious illustration, and familiarised to her taste by hearing its stories and precepts from the lips she best loved. Mrs. Douglas was the friend and confidant of her pupil: to her all her hopes and fears, wishes and dreads were confided; and the first effort of her reason was the discovery that to please her aunt she must study to please her Maker. "L'inutilité de la vie des femmes est la premier source de leurs désordres." Mrs. Douglas was fully convinced of the truth of this observation, and that the mere selfish cares and vulgar bustle of life are not sufficient to satisfy the immortal soul, however they may serve to engross it. A portion of Mary's time was therefore devoted to the daily practice of the great duties of life; in administering in some shape or other to the wants and misfortunes of her fellow-creatures, without requiring from them that their virtue should have been immaculate, or expecting that their gratitude should be everlasting. "It is better," thought Mrs. Douglas, "that we should sometimes be deceived by others than that we should learn to deceive ourselves; and the charity and goodwill that is suffered to lie dormant, or feed itself on speculative acts of beneficence, for want of proper objects to call it into use, will soon become the corroding rust that will destroy the best feelings of our nature." But although Mary strenuously applied herself to the uses of life, its embellishments were by no means neglected. She was happily endowed by nature; and, under the judicious management of her aunt, made rapid though unostentatious progress in the improvement of the talents committed to her care. Without having been blessed with the advantages of a dancing master, her step was light, and her motions free and graceful; and if her aunt had not been able to impart to her the favourite graces of the most fashionable singer of the day, neither had she thwarted the efforts of her own natural taste in forming a style full of simplicity and feeling. In the modern languages she was perfectly skilled; and if her drawings wanted the enlivening touches of the master to give them effect, as an atonement they displayed a perfect knowledge of the rules of perspective and the study of the bust. All this was, however, mere leather and prunella to the ladies of Glenfern; and many were the cogitations and consultations that took place n the subject of Mary's mismanagement. According to their ideas there could be but one good system of education; and that was the one that had been pursued with them, and through them transmitted to their nieces. To attend the parish church and remember the text; to observe who was there and who was _not_ there; and to wind up the evening with a sermon stuttered and stammered through by one of the girls (the worst reader always piously selected, for the purpose of improving their reading), and particularly addressed to the Laird, openly and avowedly snoring in his arm-chair, though at every pause starting up with a peevish "Weel?"--this was the sum total of their religious duties. Their moral virtues were much upon the same scale; to knit stockings, scold servants, cement china, trim bonnets, lecture the poor, and look up to Lady Maclaughlan, comprise nearly their whole code. But these were the virtues of ripened years and enlarged understandings--which their pupils might hope to arrive at, but could not presume to meddle with. _Their_ merits consisted in being compelled to sew certain large portions of white-work; learning to read and write in the worst manner; occasionally _wearing_ a _collar,_ and learning the notes on the spinnet. These acquirements, accompanied with a great deal of lecturing and fault-finding, sufficed for the first fifteen years; when the two next, passed at a provincial boarding-school, were supposed to impart every graceful accomplishment to which women could attain. Mrs. Douglas's method of conveying instruction, it may easily be imagined, did not square with their ideas on that subject. They did nothing themselves without a bustle, and to do a thing quietly was to them the same as not doing it at all--it could not be done, for nobody had ever heard of it. In short, like many other worthy people, their ears were their only organs of intelligence. They believed everything they were told; but unless they were told, they believed nothing. They had never heard Mrs. Douglas expatiate on the importance of the trust reposed in her, or enlarge on the difficulties of female education; _ergo,_ Mrs. Douglas could have no idea of the nature of the duties she had undertaken. Their visits to Lochmarlie only served to confirm the fact. Miss Jacky deponed that during the month she was there she never could discover when or how it was that Mary got her lessons; luckily the child was quick, and had contrived, poor thing, to pick up things wonderfully, nobody knew how, for it was really astonishing to see how little pains were bestowed upon her and the worst of it was, that she seemed to do just as she liked, for nobody ever heard her reproved, and everybody knew that young people never could have enough said to them. All this differed widely from the éclat of their system, and could not fail of causing great disquiet to the sisters. "I declare I'm quite confounded at all this!" said Miss Grizzy, at the conclusion of Miss Jacky's communication. "It really appears as if Mary, poor thing, was getting no education at all; and yet she _can_ do things, too. I can't understand it; and it's very odd in Mrs. Douglas to allow her to be so much neglected, for certainly Mary's constantly with herself; which, to be sure, shows that she is very much spoilt; for although our girls are as fond of us as I am sure any creatures can be, yet, at the same time, they are always very glad--which is quite natural--to run away from us." "I think it's high time Mary had done something fit to be seen," said Miss Nicky; "she is now sixteen past." "Most girls of Mary's time of life that ever _I_ had anything to do with," replied Jacky, with a certain wave of the head, peculiar to sensible women, "had something to show before her age. Bella had worked the globe long before she was sixteen; and Baby did her filigree tea-caddy the first quarter she was at Miss Macgowk's," glancing with triumph from the one which hung over the mantelpiece, to the other which stood on the tea-table, shrouded in a green bag. "And, to be sure," rejoined Grizzy, "although Betsy's screen did cost a great deal of money--that can't be denied; and her father certainly grudged it very much at the time--there's no doubt of that; yet certainly it does her the greatest credit, and it is a great satisfaction to us all to have these things to show. I am sure nobody would ever think that ass was made of crape, and how naturally it seems to be eating the beautiful chenille thistle! I declare, I think the ass is as like an ass as anything can be!" "And as to Mary's drawing," continued the narrator of her deficiencies, "there is not one of them fit for framing: mere scratches with a chalk pencil--what any child might do." "And to think," said Nicky, with indignation, "how little Mrs. Douglas seemed to think of the handsome coloured views the girls did at Miss Macgowk's." "All our girls have the greatest genius for drawing," observed Grizzy; "there can be no doubt of that; but it's a thousand pities, I'm sure, that none of them seem to like it. To be sure they say--what I daresay is very true--that they can't get such good paper as they got at Miss Macgowk's; but they have showed that they _can _do, for their drawings are quite astonishing. Somebody lately took them to be Mr. Touchup's own doing; and I'm sure there couldn't be a greater compliment than that! I represented all that to Mrs. Douglas, and urged her very strongly to give Mary the benefit of at least a quarter of Miss Macgowk's, were it only for the sake of her carriage; or, at least, to make her wear our collar." This was the tenderest of all themes, and bursts of sorrowful exclamations ensued. The collar had long been a galling yoke upon their minds; it iron had entered into their very souls; for it was a collar presented to the family of Glenfern by the wisest, virtuousest, best of women and of grandmothers, the the good Lady Girnachgowl; and had been worn in regular rotation by every female of the family till now that Mrs. Douglas positively refused to subject Mary's pliant form to its thraldom. Even the Laird, albeit no connoisseur in any shapes save those of his kine, was of opinion that since the thing was in the house it was a pity it should be lost. Not Venus's girdle even was supposed to confer greater charms than the Girnachgowl collar. "It's really most distressing!" said Miss Grizzy to her friend Lady Maclaughlan. "Mary's back won't be worth a farthing, and we have always been quite famous for our back." "Humph!--that's the reason people are always so glad to see them, child." With regard to Mary's looks, opinions were not so decided. Mrs. Douglas thought her, what she was, an elegant, interesting-looking girl. The Laird, as he peered at her over his spectacles, pronounced her to be but a shilpit thing, though weel eneugh, considering the ne'er-do-weels that were aught her. Miss Jacky opined that she would have been quite a different creature had she been brought up like any other girl. Miss Grizzy did not know what to think; she certainly was pretty--nobody could dispute that. At the same time, many people would prefer Bella's looks; and Baby was certainly uncommonly comely. Miss Nicky thought it was no wonder she looked pale sometimes. She never supped her broth in a wiselike way at dinner; and it was a shame to hear of a girl of Mary's age being set up with tea to her breakfast, and wearing white petticoats in winter--and such roads, too! Lady Maclaughlan pronounced (and that was next to a special revelation) that the girl would be handsome when she was forty, not a day sooner; and she would be clever, for her mother was a fool; and foolish mothers had always wise children, and _vice versa,_ "and your mother was a very clever woman, girls--humph!" Thus passed the early years of the almost forgotten twin; blest in the warm affection and mild authority of her more than mother. Sometimes Mrs. Douglas half formed the wish that her beloved pupil should mix in society and become known to the world; but when she reflected on the dangers of that world, and on the little solid happiness its pleasures afford, she repressed the wish, and only prayed she might be allowed to rest secure in the simple pleasures she then enjoyed. "Happiness is not a plant of this earth," said she to herself with a sigh; "but God gives peace and tranquillity to the virtuous in all situations, and under every trial. Let me then strive to make Mary virtuous, and leave the rest to Him who alone knoweth what is good for us!" CHAPTER XXV. "Th' immortal line in sure succession reigns, The fortune of the family remains, And grandsires' grandsons the long list contains." DRYDEN'S _Virgil._ "We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." _Tempest._ BUT Mary's back and Mary's complexion now ceased to be the first objects of interest at Glenfern; for, to the inexpressible delight and amazement of the sisters, Mrs. Douglas, after due warning, became the mother of a son. How this event had been brought about without the intervention of Lady Maclaughlan was past the powers of Miss Grizzy's comprehension. To the last moment they had been sceptical, for Lady Maclaughlan had shook her head and humphed whenever the subject was mentioned. For several months they had therefore vibrated between their own sanguine hopes and their oracle's disheartening doubts; and even when the truth was manifest, a sort of vague tremor took possession of their mind, as to what Lady Maclaughlan would think of it. "I declare I don't very well know how to announce this happy event to Lady Maclaughlan," said Miss Grizzy, as she sat in a ruminating posture, with her pen in her hand; "it will give her the greatest pleasure, I know that; she has such a regard for our family, she would go any lengths for us. At the same time, everybody must be sensible it is a delicate matter to tell a person of Lady Maclaughlan's skill they have been mistaken. I'm sure I don't know how she may take it: and yet she can't suppose it will make any difference in our sentiments for her. She must be sensible we have all the greatest respect for her opinion." "The wisest people are sometimes mistaken," observed Miss Jacky. "I'm sure, Jacky, that's very true," said Grizzy, brightening up at the brilliancy of this remark. "And it's better she should have been mistaken than Mrs. Douglas," followed up Miss Nicky. "I declare, Nicky, you are perfectly right; and I shall just say so at once to Lady Maclaughlan." The epistle was forthwith commenced by the enlightened Grizelda. Miss Joan applied herself to the study of "The Whole Duty of Man," which she was, determined to make herself mistress of for the benefit of her grand-nephew; and Miss Nicholas fell to reckoning all who could, would, or should be at the christening, that she might calculate upon the quantity of _dreaming-bread_ that would be required. The younger ladies were busily engaged in divers and sundry disputes regarding the right to succession to a once-white lutestring negligee of their mother's, which three of them had laid their accounts with figuring in at the approaching celebration. The old gentleman was the only one in the family who took the least of the general happiness. He had got into a habit of being fretted about everything that happened, and he could not entirely divest himself of it even upon this occasion. His parsimonious turns, too, had considerably increased; and his only criterion of judging of anything was according to what it would bring. "Sorra tak me if ane wadnae think, to hear ye, this was the first bairn that e'er was born! 'What'sa' the fraize aboot, ye gowks?" (to his daughters)--"a whingin get! that'll tak mail' oot o' fowk's pockets than e'er it'll pit into them! Mony a guid profitable beast's been brought into the warld and ne'er a word in in'ts heed." All went on smoothly. Lady Maclaughlan testified no resentment. Miss Jacky had the "The Whole Duty of Man" at her finger-ends; and Miss Nicky was not more severe than could have been expected, considering, as she did, how the servants at Lochmarlie must be living at hack and manger. It had been decided at Glenfern that the infant heir to its consequence could not with propriety be christened any where but at the seat of his forefathers. Mr. and Mrs. Douglas had good-humouredly yielded the point; and, as soon as she was able for the change, the whole family took up their residence for a season under the paternal roof. Blissful visions floated around the pillows of the happy spinsters the night preceding the christening, which were duly detailed at the breakfast-table the following morning. "I declare I don't know what to think of my dream," began Miss Grizzy. "I dreamt that Lady Maclaughlan was upon her knees to you, brother, to get you to take an emetic; and just as she had mixed it up so nicely in some of our black-currant jelly, little Norman snatched it out of your hand and ran away with it." "You're eneugh to turn onybody's stamick wi'your nonsense," returned the Laird gruffly. "And I," said Miss Jacky, "thought I saw you standing in your shirt, brother, as straight as a rash, and good Lady Girnachgowl buckling her collar upon you with her own hands." "I wish ye wadna deive me wi' your havels!" still more indignantly, and turning his shoulder to the fair dreamer, as he continued to con over the newspaper. "And I," cried Miss Nicky, eager to get her mystic tale disclosed, "I thought, brother, I saw you take and throw all the good dreaming-bread into the ash-hole." "By my troth, an' ye deserve to be thrown after't!" exclaimed the exasperated Laird, as he quitted the room in high wrath, muttering to himself, "Hard case--canna get peace--eat my vittals--fules-- tawpies--clavers!" etc. etc. "I declare I can't conceive why Glenfern should be so ill pleased at our dreams," said Miss Grizzy. "Everybody knows dreams are always contrary; and even were it otherwise, I'm sure I should think no shame to take an emetic, especially when Lady Maclaughlan was at the trouble of mixing it up so nicely." "And we have all worn good Lady Girnachgowl's collar before now," said Miss Jacky. "I think I had the worst of it, that had all my good dreaming-bread destroyed," added Mis Nicky. "Nothing could be more natural than you dreams," said Mrs. Douglas, "considering how all these subjects have engrossed you for some time past. You, Aunt Grizzy, may remember how desirous you were of administering one of Lady Maclaughlan's powders to my little boy yesterday; and you, Aunt Jacky, made a point of trying Lady Girnachgowl's collar upon Mary, to convince her how pleasant it was; while you, Aunt Nicky, had experienced a great alarm in supposing your cake had been burned in the oven. And these being the most vivid impression you had received during the day, it was perfectly natural that they should have retained their influence during a portion of the night." The interpretations were received with high disdain. One and all declared they never dreamed of anything that _had_ occurred; and therefore the visions of the night portended some extraordinary good fortune to the family in general, and to little Norman in particular. "The best fortune I can wish for him, and all of us, for this day is, that he should remain quiet during the ceremony," said his mother, who was not so elated as Lady Macbeth at the predictions of the sisters. The christening party mustered strong; and the rites of baptism were duly performed by the Rev. Duncan M'Drone. The little Christian had been kissed by every lady in company, and pronounced by the matrons to be "a dainty little _doug!_" and by the misses to be "the sweetest lamb they had ever seen!" The cake and wine was in its progress round the company; when, upon its being tendered to the old gentleman, who was sitting silent in his arm-chair, he abruptly exclaimed, in a most discordant voice, "Hey! what's a' this wastery for?"--and ere an answer could be returned his jaw dropped, his eyes fixed, and the Laird of Glenfern ceased to breathe! CHAPTER XXVI. "They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors; ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear."--_All's Well that Ends Well_. ALL attempts to reanimate the lifeless form proved unavailing; and the horror and consternation that reigned in the castle of Glenfern may be imagined, but cannot be described. There is perhaps no feeling of our nature so vague, so complicated, so mysterious, as that with which we look upon the cold remains of our fellow-mortals. The dignity with which death invests even the meanest of his victims inspires us with an awe no living thing can create. The monarch on his throne is less awful than the beggar in his shroud. The marble features--the powerless hand--the stiffened limbs--oh! who can contemplate these with feelings that can be defined? These are the mockery of all our hopes and fears, our fondest love our fellest hate. Can it be that we now shrink with horror from the touch of that hand which but yesterday was fondly clasped in our own? Is that tongue, whose accents even now dwell in our ear, forever chained in the silence of death? These black and heavy eyelids, are they for ever to seal up in darkness the eyes whose glance no earthly power could restrain? And the spirit which animated the clay, where is it now? Is it wrapt in bliss, or dissolved in woe? Does it witness our grief, and share our sorrows? Or is the mysterious tie that linked it with mortality forever broken? And the remembrance of earthly scenes, are they indeed to the enfranchised spirit as the morning dream, or the dew upon the early flower? Reflections such as these naturally arise in every breast. Their influence is felt, though their import cannot always be expressed. The principle is in all the same, however it may differ in its operations. In the family assembled round the lifeless form that had so long been the centre of their domestic circle, grief showed itself under various forms. The calm and manly sorrow of the son; the saint-like feelings of his wife; the youthful agitation of Mary; the weak superstitious wailings of the sisters; and the loud uncontrolled lamentations of the daughters; all betokened an intensity of suffering that arose from the same source, varied according to the different channels in which it flowed. Even the stern Lady Maclaughlan was subdued to something of kindred feeling; and though no tears dropped from her eyes, she sat by her friends, and sought, in her own way, to soften their affliction. The assembled guests, who had not yet been able to take their departure, remained in the drawing-room in a sort of restless solemnity peculiar to seasons of collateral affliction, where all seek to highten the effect upon others, and shift the lesson from themselves. Various were the surmises and speculations as to the cause of the awful transition that had just taken place. "Glenfern was nae like a man that wad hae gaen aff in this gate," said one. "I dinna ken," said another; "I've notic'd a chainge on Glenfern for a gey while noo." "I agree wi' you, sir," said a third. "In my mind Glenfern's been droopin' very sair ever since the last tryst." "At Glenfern's time o' life it's no surprisin'," remarked a fourth, who felt perfectly secure of being fifteen years his junior. "Glenfern was na that auld neither," retorted a fifth, whose conscience smote him with being years his senior. "But he had a deal o' vexation frae his faemily," said an elderly bachelor. "Ye offen see a hale stoot man, like oor puit freend, gang like the snuff o' a cannel," coughed up a pthisicky gentleman. "He was aye a tume, boss-looking man ever since I mind him," wheezed out a swollen asthmatic figure. "An' he took nae care o' himsel'," said he Laird of Pettlechass. "His diet was nae what it should hae been at his time o' life. An' he was oot an' in, up an' doon, in a' wathers, wat an' dry." "Glenfern's doings had naething to du wi' his death," said an ancient gentlewoman with solemnity. "They maun ken little wha ne'er heard the bod-word of the family." And she repeated in Gaelic words to the following effect:-- "When Loehdow shall turn to a lin, [1] In Glenfern ye'll hear the din; When frae Benenck they shool the sna', O'er Glenfern the leaves will fa'; When foreign geer grows on Benenck tap, Then the fir tree will be Glenfern's hap." [1] Cataract. "An' noo, ma'am, will ye be sae gude as point oot the meanin' o' this freet," said an incredulous-looking member of the company; "for when I passed Lochdow this mornin' I neither saw nor heard o' a lin; an' frae this window we can a' see Benenck wi' his white night-cap on; an' he wad hae little to do that wad try to shoal it aff." "It's neither o' the still water nor the stay brae that the word was spoke," replied the dame, with a disdainful frown; "they tak' nae part in our doings: but kent ye nae that Lochdow himsel' had tined his sight in a cataract; an' is nae there dule an' din eneuch in Glenfern the day? An' kent ye nae that Benenck had his auld white pow shaven, an' that he's gettin' a jeezy frae Edinburgh?--an' I'se warran' he'll be in his braw wig the very day that Glenfern'll be laid in his deal coffin." The company admitted the application was too close to be resisted; but the same sceptic (who, by-the-bye, was only a low country merchant, elevated by purchase to the dignity of a Highland laird) was seen to shrug his shoulders, and hear to make some sneering remarks on the days of second-sights and such superstitious nonsense being past. This was instantly laid hold of; and amongst many others of the same sort, the truth of the following story was attested by one of the party, as having actually occurred in his family within his own remembrance. "As Duncan M'Crae was one evening descending Benvoilloich, he perceived a funeral procession in the vale beneath. He was greatly surprised, not having heard of any death in the country; and this appeared to be the burial of some person of consequence, from the number of the attendants. He made all the haste he could to get down; and as he drew near the counted all the lairds of the country except my father, Sir Murdoch. He was astonished at this, till he recollected that he was away to the low country to his cousin's marriage; but he felt curious to know who it was, though some unaccountable feeling prevented him from mixing with the followers. He therefore kept on the ridge of the hill, right over their heads, and near enough to hear them speak; but although he saw them move their lips, no sound reached his ear. He kept along with the procession in this way till it reached the Castle Dochart burying-ground, and there it stopped. The evening was close and warm, and a thick mist had gathered in the glen, while the tops of the hills shone like gold. Not a breath of air was stirring, but the trees that grew round the burying-ground waved and soughed, and some withered leaves were swirled round and round, as if by the wind. The company stood a while to rest, and then they proceeded to open the iron gates of the burying-ground; but the lock was rusted and would not open. Then they began to pull down part of the wall, and Duncan thought how angry his master would be at this, and he raised his voice and shouted and hallooed to them, but to no purpose. Nobody seemed to hear him. At last the wall was taken down, and the coffin was lifted over, and just then the sun broke out, and glinted on a new-made grave; and as they were laying the coffin in it, it gave way, and disclosed Sir Murdoch himself in his dead clothes; and then the mist grew so thick, Duncan could see no more, and how to get home he knew not; but when he entered his own door he was bathed in sweat, and white as any corpse; and all that he could say was, that he had seen Castle Dochart's burying. "The following day," continued the narrator, "he was more composed, and gave the account you have now heard; and three days after came the intelligence of my father's death. He had dropped down in a fit that very evening, when entertaining a large company in honour of his cousin's marriage; and that day week his funeral passed through Glenvalloch exactly as described by Duncan M'Crae, with all the particulars: The gates of the burying-ground could not he opened; part of the wall was taken down to admit the coffin, which received some injury, and gave way as they were placing it in the grave." Even the low-country infidel was silenced by the solemnity of this story; and soon after the company dispersed, everyone panting to be the first to circulate the intelligence of Glenfern's death. But soon--oh, how soon! "dies in human hearts the thought of death!" Even the paltry detail which death creates serves to detach out minds from the cause itself. So it was with the family of Glenfern. Their light did not "shine inward;" and after the first burst of sorrow their ideas fastened with avidity on all the paraphernalia of affliction. Mr. Douglas, indeed, found much to do and to direct to be done. The elder ladies began to calculate how many yards of broad hemming would be required, and to form a muster-roll of the company; with this improvement, that it was to be ten times as numerous as the one that had assembled at the christening; while the young ones busied their imaginations as to the effect of new mournings--a luxury to them hitherto unknown. Mrs. Douglas and Mary were differently affected. Religion and reflection had taught the former the enviable lesson of possessing her soul in patience under every trial; and while she inwardly mourned the fate of the poor old man who had been thus suddenly snatched from the only world that ever had engaged his thoughts, her outward aspect was calm and serene. The impression made upon Mary's feelings was of a more powerful nature. She had witnessed suffering, and watched by sick-beds; but death, and death in so terrific a form, was new to her. She had been standing by her grandfather's chair--her head was bent to his--her hand rested upon his, when, by a momentary convulsion, she beheld the last dread change--the living man transformed into the lifeless corpse. The countenance but now fraught with life and human thoughts, in the twinkling of an eye was covered with the shades of death! It was in vain that Mary prayed and reasoned and strove against the feelings that had been thus powerfully excited. One object alone possessed her imagination--the image of her grandfather dying--dead; his grim features, his ghastly visage, his convulsive grasp, were ever present, by day and by night. Her nervous system had received a shock too powerful for all the strength of her understanding to contend with. Mrs. Douglas sought by every means to soothe her feelings and divert her attention; and flattered herself that a short time would allay the perturbation of her youthful emotions. Five hundred persons, horse and foot, high and low, male and female, graced the obsequies of the Laird of Glenfern. Benenck was there in his new wig, and the autumnal leaves dropped on the coffin as it was borne slowly along the vale! CHAPTER XXVII. "It is no diminution, but a recommendation of human nature, that, in some instances, passion gets the better of reason, and all that we can think is impotent against half what we feel."--_Spectator._ "LIFE is a mingled yarn;" few of its afflictions but are accompanied with some alleviation--none of its blessings that do not bring some alloy. Like most other events that long have formed the object of yearning and almost hopeless wishes, and on which have been built the fairest structure of human felicity, the arrival of the young heir of Glenfern produced a less extraordinary degree of happiness than had been anticipated. The melancholy event which had marked the first ceremonial of his life had cast its gloom alike on all nearly connected with him; and when time had dispelled the clouds of recent mourning, and restored the mourners to their habitual train of thought and action, somewhat of the novelty which had given him such lively interest in the hearts of the sisters had subsided. The distressing conviction, too, more and more forced itself upon them, that their advice and assistance were likely to be wholly overlooked in the nurture of the infant mind and management of the thriving frame of their little nephew. Their active energies, therefore, driven back to the accustomed channels, after many murmurs and severe struggles, again revolved in the same sphere as before. True, they sighed and mourned for a time, but soon found occupation congenial to their nature in the little departments of life--dressing crape; reviving black silk; converting narrow hems into broad hems; and in short, who so busy, who so important, as the ladies of Glenfern? As Madame de Staël, or de Something says, "they fulfilled their destinies." Their walk lay amongst threads and pickles; their sphere extended from the garret to the pantry; and often as they sought to diverge from it, their instinct always led them to return to it, as the tract in which they were destined to move. There are creatures of the same sort in the male part of the creation, but it is foreign to my purpose to describe them at present. Neither are the trifling and insignificant of either sex to be treated with contempt, or looked upon as useless by those whom God has gifted with higher powers. In the arrangements of an all-wise Providence there is nothing created in vain. Every link of the vast chain that embraces creation helps to hold together the various relations of life; and all is beautiful gradation, from the human vegetable to the glorious archangel. If patient hope, if unexulting joy, and chastened anticipation, sanctifying a mother's love, could have secured her happiness, Mrs. Douglas would have found, in the smiles of her infant, all the comfort her virtue deserved. But she still had to drink of that cup of sweet and bitter, which must bathe the lips of all who breathe the breath of life. While the instinct of a parent's love warmed her heart, as she pressed her infant to her bosom, the sadness of affectionate and rational solicitude stifled every sentiment of pleasure as she gazed on the altered and drooping form of her adopted daughter of the child who had already repaid the cares that had been lavished on her, and in whom she descried the promise of a plenteous harvest from the good seed she had sown. Though Mary had been healthy in childhood, her constitution was naturally delicate, and she had latterly outgrown her strength. The shock she had sustained by her grandfather's death, thus operating on a weakened frame, had produced an effect apparently most alarming; and the efforts she made to exert herself only served to exhaust her. She felt all the watchful solicitude, the tender anxieties of her aunt, and bitterly reproached herself with not better repaying these exertions for her happiness. A thousand times she tried to analyse and extirpate the saddening impression that weighed upon her heart. "It is not sorrow," reasoned she with herself, "that thus oppresses me; for though I reverenced my grandfather, yet the loss of his society has scarcely been felt by me. It cannot be fear--the fear of death; for my soul is not so abject as to confine its desires to this sublunary scene. What, then, is this mysterious dread that has taken possession of me? Why do I suffer my mind to suggest to me images of horror, instead of visions of bliss? Why can I not, as formerly, picture to myself the beauty and the brightness of a soul casting off mortality? Why must the convulsed grasp, the stifled groan, the glaring eye, for ever come betwixt heaven and me?" Alas! Mary was unskilled to answer. Hers was the season for feeling, not for reasoning. She knew not that hers was the struggle of imagination striving to maintain its ascendency over reality. She had heard and read, and thought and talked of death; but it was of death in its fairest form, in its softest transition: and the veil had been abruptly torn from her eyes; the gloomy pass had suddenly disclosed itself before her, not strewed with flowers but shrouded in horrors. Like all persons of sensibility, Mary had a disposition to view everything in a _beau ideal:_ whether that is a boon most fraught with good or ill it were difficult to ascertain. While the delusion lasts it is productive of pleasure to its possessor; but oh! the thousand aches that heart is destined to endure which clings to the stability and relies on the permanency of earthly happiness! But the youthful heart must ever remain a stranger to this saddening truth. Experience only can convince us that happiness is not a plant of this world; and that, though many an eye hath beheld its blossoms no mortal hand hath ever gathered its fruits. This, then, was Mary's first lesson in what is called the knowledge of life, as opposed to the _beau ideal_ of a young and ardent imagination in love with life, and luxuriating in its own happiness. And, upon such a mind it could not fail of producing a powerful impression. The anguish Mrs. Douglas experienced as she witnessed the changing colour, lifeless step, and forced smile of her darling _élève _was not mitigated by the good sense or sympathy of those around her. While Mary had prospered under her management, in the consciousness that she was fulfilling her duty to the best of her abilities, she could listen with placid cheerfulness to the broken hints of disapprobation, or forced good wishes for the success of her new-fangled schemes, that were levelled at her by the sisters. But now, when her cares seemed defeated, it was an additional thorn in her heart to have to endure the commonplace wisdom and self-gratulations of the almost exulting aunts; not that they had the slightest intention of wounding the feelings of their niece, whom they really loved, but the temptation was irresistible of proving that they had been in the right and she in the wrong, especially as no such acknowledgment had yet been extorted from her. "It is nonsense to ascribe Mary's dwining to her grandfather's death," said Miss Jacky. "We were all nearer to him in propinquity than she was, and none of our healths have suffered." "And there's his own daughters," added Miss Grizzy, "who, of course, must have felt a great deal more than anybody else--there can be no doubt of that--such sensible creatures as them must feel a great deal; but yet you see how they have got up their spirits--I'm sure it's wonderful!" "It shows their sense and the effects of education," said Miss Jacky. "Girls that sup their porridge will always cut a good figure," quoth Nicky. "With their fine feelings I'm sure we have all reason to be thankful that they have been blest with such hearty stomachs," observed Miss Grizzy; "if they had been delicate, like poor Mary's, I'm sure I declare I don't know what we would have done; for certainly they were all most dreadfully affected at their excellent father's death; which was quite natural, poor things! I'm sure there's no pacifying poor Baby, and even yet, neither Bella nor Betsey can bear to be left alone in a dark room. Tibby has to sleep with them still every night; and alighted candle too-which is much to their credit--and yet I'm sure it's not with reading. I'm certain-indeed, I think there's no doubt of it--that reading does young people much harm. It puts things into their heads that never would have been there but for books. I declare, I think reading's a very dangerous thing; I'm certain all Mary's bad health is entirely owing to reading. You know we always thought she read a great deal too much for her good." "Much depends upon the choice of books," said Jacky, with an air of the most profound wisdom, "Fordyce's Sermons and the History of Scotland are two of the very few books _I_ would put into the hands of a young woman. Our girls have read little else,"--casting a look at Mrs. Douglas, who was calmly pursuing her work in the midst of this shower of darts all levelled at her. "To be sure," returned Grizzy, "it is a thousand pities that Mary has been allowed to go on so long; not, I'm sure, that any of us mean to reflect upon you, my dear Mrs. Douglas; for of course it was all owing to your ignorance and inexperience; and that, you know, you could not help; for it as not your fault; nobody can blame you. I'm certain you would have done what is right if you had only known better; but of course we must all know much better than you; because, you know, we are all a great deal older, and especially Lady Maclaughlan, who has the greatest experience in the diseases of old men especially, and infants. Indeed it has been he study of her life almost; for, you know, poor Sir Sampson is never well; and I dare say, if Mary had taken some of her nice worm-lozenges, which certainly cured Duncan M'Nab's wife's daughter's little girl of the jaundice, and used that valuable growing embrocation, which we are all sensible made Baby great deal fatter, I dare say there would have been thing the matter with her to-day." "Mary has been too much accustomed to spend both her time and money amongst idle vagrants," said Nicky. "Economy of both," subjoined Jacky, with an air of humility, "_I_ confess I have ever been accustomed to consider as virtues. These handsome respectable new bonnets"--looking _from_ Mrs. Douglas--"that our girls got just before their poor father's death, were entirely the fruits of their own savings." "And I declare," said Grizzy, who did not excel in innuendos, "I declare, for my part--although at the same time, my dear niece, I'm certain you are far from intending it--I really think it's very disrespectful to Sir Sampson and Lady Maclaughlan, in anybody, and especially such near neighbours, to give more in charity than they do; for you may be sure they give as much as they think proper, and they must be the best judges, and can afford to give what they please; for Sir Sampson could buy and sell all of us a hundred times over if he liked. It's long since the Lochmarlie estate was called seven thousand a year; and besides that there's the Birkendale property and the Glenmavis estate, and I'm sure I can't tell you all what; but there's no doubt he's a man of immense fortune." Well it was known and frequently was it discussed, the iniquity of Mary being allowed to waste her time and squander her money amongst the poor, instead of being taught the practical virtues of making her own gowns, and of hoarding up her pocket-money for some selfish gratification. In colloquies such as these day after day passed on without any visible improvement taking place in her health. Only one remedy suggested itself to Mrs. Douglas, and that was to remove her to the south of England for the winter. Milder air and change of scene she had no doubt would prove efficacious; and her opinion was confirmed by that of the celebrated Dr.-----, who, having been summoned to the Laird of Pettlechass, had paid a visit at Glenfern _en passant._ How so desirable an event was to be accomplished was the difficulty. By the death of his father a variety of business and an extent of farming had devolved upon Mr. Douglas which obliged him to fix his residence at Glenfern, and rendered it impossible for him to be long absent from it. Mrs. Douglas had engaged in the duties of a nurse to her little boy, and to take him or leave him was equally out of the question. In this dilemma the only resource that offered was that of sending Mary for a few months to her mother. True, it was a painful necessity; for Mrs. Douglas seldom heard from her sister-in-law, and when she did, her letters were short and cold. She sometimes desired "a kiss to her (Mrs. Douglas's) little girl," and once, in an extraordinary fit of good humour, had actually sent a locket with her hair in a letter by post, for which Mrs. Douglas had to pay something more than the value of the present. This was all that Mary knew of her mother, and the rest of her family were still greater strangers to her. Her father remained in a distant station in India, and was seldom heard of. Her brother was gone to sea; and though she had written repeatedly to her sister, her letters remained unnoticed. Under these circumstances there was something revolting in the idea of obtruding Mary upon the notice of her relations, and trusting to their kindness even for a few months; yet her health, perhaps her life, was at stake, and Mrs. Douglas felt she had scarcely a right to hesitate. "Mary has perhaps been too long an alien from her own family," said she to herself; "this will be a means of her becoming acquainted with them, and of introducing her to that sphere in which she is probably destined to walk. Under her uncle's roof she will surely be safe, and in the society of her mother and sister she cannot be unhappy. New scenes will give a stimulus to her mind; the necessity of exertion will brace the languid faculties of her soul, and a few short months, I trust, will restore her to me such and even superior to what she was. Why, then, should I hesitate to do what my conscience tells me ought to be done? Alas! it is because I selfishly shrink from the pain of separation, and am unwilling to relinquish, even for a season, one of the many blessings Heaven has bestowed upon me." And Mrs. Douglas, noble and disinterested as ever, rose superior to the weakness that she felt was besetting her. Mary listened to her communication with a throbbing heart and eyes suffused with tears; to part from her aunt was agony; but to behold her mother--she to whom she owed her existence, to embrace a sister too--and one for whom she felt all those mysterious yearnings which twins are said to entertain towards each other--oh, there was rapture in the thought, and Mary's buoyant heart fluctuated between the extremes of anguish and delight. The venerable sisters received the intelligence with much surprise: they did not know very well what to say about it; there was much to be said both for and against it. Lady Maclaughlan had a high opinion of English air; but then they had heard the morals of the people were not so good, and there were a great many dissipated young men in England; though, to be sure, there was no denying but the mineral waters were excellent; and, in short, it ended in Miss Grizzy's sitting down to concoct an epistle to Lady Maclaughlan; in Miss Jacky's beginning to draw up a code of instructions for a young woman upon her entrance into life; and Miss Nicky hoping that if Mary did go, she would take care not to bring back any extravagant English notions with her. The younger set debated amongst themselves how many of them would be invited to accompany Mary to England, and from thence fell to disputing the possession of a brown hair trunk, with a flourished D in brass letters on the top. Mrs. Douglas, with repressed feelings, set about offering the sacrifice she had planned, and in a letter to Lady Juliana, descriptive of her daughter's situation, she sought to excite her tenderness without creating an alarm. How far she succeeded will be seen hereafter. In the meantime we must take a retrospective glance at the last seventeen years of her Ladyship's life. CHAPTER XXVIII. _Her_ "only labour was to kill the time; And labour dire it is, and weary woe." _Castle of Indolence._ YEARS had rolled on amidst heartless pleasures and joyless amusements, but Lady Juliana was made neither the wiser nor the better by added years and increased experience. Time had in vain turned his glass before eyes still dazzled with the gaudy allurements of the world, for she took "no note of time" but as the thing that was to take her to the Opera and the Park, and that sometimes hurried her excessively, and sometimes bored her to death. At length she was compelled to abandon her chase after happiness in the only sphere where she believed it was to be found. Lord Courtland's declining health unfitted him for the dissipation of a London life; and, by the advice of his physician, he resolved upon retiring to a country seat which he possessed in the vicinity of Bath. Lady Juliana was in despair at the thoughts of this sudden wrench from what she termed "life;" but she had no resource; for though her good-natured husband gave her the whole of General Cameron's allowance, that scarcely served to keep her in clothes; and though her brother was perfectly willing that she and her children should occupy apartments in his house, yet he would have been equally acquiescent had she proposed to remove from it. Lady Juliana had a sort of instinctive knowledge of this, which prevented her from breaking out into open remonstrance. She therefore contented herself with being more than usually peevish and irascible to her servants and children, and talking to her friends of the prodigious sacrifice she was about to make for her brother and his family, as if it had been the cutting off of a hand or the plucking out of an eye. To have heard her, anyone unaccustomed to the hyperbole of fashionable language would have deemed Botany Bay the nearest possible point of destination. Parting from her fashionable acquaintances was tearing herself from all she loved; quitting London was bidding adieu to the world. Of course there could be no society where she was going, but still she would do her duty; she would not desert dear Frederick and his poor children! In short, no martyr was ever led to the stake with half the notions of heroism and self-devotion as those with which Lady Juliana stepped into the barouche that was to conduct her to Beech Park. In the society of piping bullfinches, pink canaries, gray parrots, goldfish, green squirrels, Italian greyhounds, and French poodles, she sought a refuge from despair. But even these varied charms, after a while, failed to please. The bullfinches grew hoarse; the canaries turned brown; the parrots became stupid; the gold fish would not eat; the squirrels were cross; the dogs fought; even a shell grotto that was constructing fell down; and by the time the aviary and conservatory were filled, they had lost their interest. The children were the next subjects for her Ladyship's ennui to discharge itself upon. Lord Courtland had a son some years older, and a daughter nearly of the same age as her own. It suddenly occurred to her that they must be educated, and that she would educate the girls herself. As the first step she engaged two governesses, French and Italian; modern treatises on the subject of education were ordered from London, looked at, admired, and arranged on gilded shelves and sofa tables; and could their contents have exhaled with the odours of their Russia leather bindings, Lady Juliana's dressing-room would have been what Sir Joshua Reynolds says every seminary of learning _is,_ "an atmosphere of floating knowledge." But amidst this splendid display of human lore, THE BOOK found no place. She _had_ heard of the Bible, however, and even knew it was a book appointed to be read in churches, and given to poor people, along with Rumford soup and flannel shirts; but as the rule of life, as the book that alone could make wise unto salvation, this Christian parent was ignorant as the Hottentot or Hindoo. Three days beheld the rise, progress, and decline of Lady Juliana's whole system of education; and it would have been well for the children had the trust been delegated to those better qualified to discharge it. But neither of the preceptresses was better skilled in the only true knowledge. Signora Cicianai was a bigoted Catholic, whose faith hung upon her beads, and Madame Grignon was an _esprit forte,_ who had no faith in anything but _le plaisir._ But the Signora's singing was heavenly, and Madame's dancing was divine, and what lacked there more? So passed the first years of beings training for immortality. The children insensibly ceased to be children, and Lady Juliana would have beheld the increasing height and beauty of her daughter with extreme disapprobation, had not that beauty, by awakening her ambition, also excited her affection, if the term affection could be applied to that heterogeneous mass of feelings and propensities that "shape had none distinguishable." Lady Juliana had fallen into an error very common with wiser heads than hers that of mistaking the _effect_ for the _cause._ She looked no farther than to her union with Henry Douglas for the foundation of all her unhappiness; it never once occurred to her that her marriage was only the _consequence_ of something previously wrong; she saw not the headstrong passions that had impelled her to please herself--no matter at what price. She thought not of the want of principle, she blushed not at the want of delicacy, that had led her to deceive a parent and elope with a man to whose character she was a total stranger. She therefore considered herself as having fallen a victim to love; and could she only save her daughter from a similar error she might yet by her means retrieve her fallen fortune. To implant principles of religion and virtue in her mind was not within the compass of her own; but she could scoff at every pure and generous affection; she could ridicule every disinterested attachment; and she could expatiate on the never-fading joys that attend on wealth and titles, jewels and equipages; and all this she did in the belief that she was acting the part of a most wise and tender parent! The seed, thus carefully sown, promised to bring forth an abundant harvest. At eighteen Adelaide Douglas was as heartless and ambitious as she was beautiful and accomplished; but the surface was covered with flowers, and who would have thought of analysing the soil? It sometimes happens that the very means used with success in the formation of one character produce a totally opposite effect upon another. The mind of Lady Emily Lindore had undergone exactly the same process in its formation as that of her cousin; yet in all things they differed. Whether it were the independence of high birth, or the pride of a mind conscious of its own powers, she had hitherto resisted the sophistry of her governesses and the solecisms of her aunt. But her notions of right and wrong were too crude to influence the general tenor of her life, or operate as restraints upon a naturally high spirit and impetuous temper. Not all the united efforts of her preceptresses had been able to form a manner for their pupil; nor could their authority restrain her from saying what she thought, and doing what she pleased; and, in spite of both precept and example, Lady Emily remained as insupportably natural and sincere as she was beautiful and _piquante._ At six years old she had declared her intention of marrying her cousin Edward Douglas, and at eighteen her words were little less equivocal. Lord Courtland, who never disturbed himself about anything, was rather diverted with this juvenile attachment; and Lady Juliana, who cared little for her son, and still less for her niece, only wondered how people could be such fools as to think of marrying for love, after she had told them how miserable it would make them. CHAPTER XXIX. "Unthought of frailties cheat us in the wise; The fool lies hid in inconsistencies." POPE. SUCH were the female members of the family to whom Mary was about to be introduced. In her mother's heart she had no place, for of her absent husband and neglected daughter she seldom thought; and their letters were scarcely read, and rarely answered. Even good Miss Grizzy's elaborate epistle, in which were curiously entwined the death of her brother and the birth and christening of her grand-nephew, in a truly Gordian manner, remained disentangled. Had her Ladyship only read to the middle of the seventh page she would have learned the indisposition of her daughter, with the various opinions thereupon; but poor Miss Grizzy's labours were vain, for her letter remains a dead letter to this day. Mrs. Douglas was therefore the first to convey the unwelcome intelligence, and to suggest to the mind of the mother that her alienated daughter still retained some claims upon her care and affection; and although this was done with all the tenderness and delicacy of a gentle and enlightened mind, it called forth the most bitter indignation from Lady Juliana. She almost raved at what she termed the base ingratitude and hypocrisy of her sister-in-law. After the sacrifice she had made in giving up her child to her when she had none of her own, it was a pretty return to send her back only to die. But she saw through it. She did not believe a word of the girl's silliness; that was a trick to get rid of her. Now they had a child of their own, they had no use for hers; but she was not to be made a fool of in such a way, and by such people, etc. etc. "If Mrs. Douglas is so vile a woman," said the provoking Lady Emily, "the sooner my cousin is taken from her the better." "You don't understand these things, Emily," returned her aunt impatiently. "What things?" "The trouble and annoyance it will occasion me to take charge of the girl at this time." "Why at this time more than at any other?" "Absurd, my dear! how can you ask so foolish a question? Don't you know that you and Adelaide are both to bring out this winter, and how can I possibly do you justice with a dying girl upon my hands?" "I thought you suspected it was all a trick," continued the persecuting Lady Emily. "So I do; I haven't the least doubt of it. The whole story is the most improbable stuff I ever heard." "Then you will have less trouble than you expect." "But I hate to be made a dupe of, and imposed upon by low cunning. If Mrs. Douglas had told me candidly she wished me to take the girl, I would have thought nothing of it; but I can't bear to be treated like a fool." "I don't see anything at all unbecoming in Mrs. Douglas's treatment." "Then what can I do with a girl who has been educated in Scotland? She must be vulgar--all Scotchwomen are so. They have red hands and rough voices; they yawn, and blow their noses, and talk, and laugh loud, and do a thousand shocking things. Then, to hear the Scotch brogue--oh, heavens! I should expire every time she opened her mouth!" "Perhaps my sister may not speak so _very_ broad," kindly suggested Adelaide in her sweetest accents. "You are very good, my love, to think so; but nobody can live in that odious country without being infected with its _patois._ I really thought I should have caught it myself; and Mr. Douglas" (no longer Henry) "became quite gross in his language after living amongst his relations." "This is really too bad," cried Lady Emily indignantly. "If a person speaks sense and truth, what does it signify how it is spoken? And whether your Ladyship chooses to receive your daughter here or not, I shall at any rate invite my cousin to my father's house." And, snatching up a pen, she instantly began a letter to Mary. Lady Juliana was highly incensed at this freedom of her niece; but she was a little afraid of her, and therefore, after some sharp altercation, and with infinite violence done to her feelings, she was prevailed upon to write a decently civil sort of a letter to Mrs. Douglas, consenting to receive her daughter for a _few months;_ firmly resolving in her own mind to conceal her from all eyes and ears while she remained, and to return her to her Scotch relations early in the summer. This worthy resolution formed, she became more serene and awaited the arrival of her daughter with as much firmness as could reasonably have been expected. CHAPTER XXX. "And for unfelt imaginations They often feel a world of restless cares." SHAKESPEARE. LITTLE weened the good ladies of Glenfern the ungracious reception their _protégée_ was likely to experience from her mother; for, in spite of the defects of her education, Mary was a general favourite in the family; and however they might solace themselves by depreciating her to Mrs. Douglas, to the world in general, and their young female acquaintances in particular, she was upheld as an epitome of every perfection above and below the sun. Had it been possible for them to conceive that Mary could have been received with anything short of rapture, Lady Juliana's letter might in some measure have opened the eyes of their understanding; but to the guileless sisters it seemed everything that was proper. Sorry for the necessity Mrs. Douglas felt under of parting with her adopted daughter, was "prettily expressed;" had no doubt it was merely a slight nervous affection, "was kind and soothing;" and the assurance, more than once repeated, that her friends might rely upon her being returned to them in the course of a very few months, "showed a great deal of feeling and consideration." But as their minds never maintained a just equilibrium long upon any subject, but, like falsely adjusted scales, were ever hovering and vibrating at either extreme, so they could not rest satisfied in the belief that Mary was to be happy; there must be something to counteract that stilling sentiment; and that was the apprehension that Mary would be spoilt. This, for the present, was the pendulum of their imaginations. "I declare, Mary, my sisters and I could get no sleep last night for thinking of you," said Miss Grizzy; _"we_ are all certain that Lady Juliana especially, but indeed all your English relations, will think so much of you--from not knowing you, you know--which will be quite natural. I'm sure that my sisters and I have taken it into our heads--but I hope it won't be the case, as you have a great deal of good sense of your own--that they will quite turn your head." "Mary's head is on her shoulders to little purpose," followed up Miss Jacky, "if she can't stand being made of when she goes amongst strangers; and she ought to know by this time that a mother's partiality is no proof of a child's merit." "You hear that, Mary," rejoined Miss Grizzy; "so I'm sure I hope you won't mind a word that your mother says to you, I mean about yourself; for of course you know she can't be such a good judge of you as us, who have known you all your life. As to other things, I daresay she is very well informed about the country, and politics, and these sort of things--I'm certain Lady Juliana knows a great deal." "And I hope, Mary, you will take care and not get into the daadlin' handless ways of the English women," said Miss Nicky; "I wouldn't give a pin for an Englishwoman." "And I hope you will never look at an Englishman, Mary," said Miss Grizzy, with equal earnestness; "take my word for it they are a very dissipated, unprincipled set. They all drink, and game, and keep race-horses; and many of them, I'm told, even keep play-actresses; so you may think what it would be for all of us if you were to marry any of them,"--and tears streamed from the good spinster's eyes at the bare supposition of such a calamity. "Don't be afraid, my dear aunt," said Mary, with a kind caress; "I shall come back to you your own 'Highland Mary.' No Englishman with his round face and trim meadows shall ever captivate me. Heath covered hills and high cheek-bones are the charms that must win my heart." "I'm delighted to hear you say so, my dear Mary," said the literal-minded Grizzy. "Certainly nothing can be prettier than the heather when it's in flower; and there is something very manly--nobody can dispute that--in high cheek-bones; and besides, to tell you a secret, Lady Maclaughlan has a husband in her eye for you. We none of us can conceive who it is, but of course he must be suitable in every respect; for you know Lady Maclaughlan has had three husbands herself; so of course she must be an excellent judge of a good husband." "Or a bad one," said Mary, "which is the same thing. Warning is as good as example." Mrs. Douglas's ideas and those of her aunt, did not coincide upon this occasion more than upon most others. In her sister-in-Iaw's letter she flattered herself she saw only fashionable indifference; and she fondly hoped that would soon give way to a tenderer sentiment, as her daughter became known to her. At any rate it was proper that Mary should make the trial, and whichever way it ended, it must be for her advantage. "Mary has already lived too long in these mountain solitudes," thought she; "her ideas will become romantic, and her taste fastidious. If it is dangerous to be too early initiated into the ways of the world, it is perhaps equally so to live too long secluded from it. Should she make herself a place in the heart of her mother and sister it will be so much happiness gained; and should it prove otherwise, it will be a lesson learnt--a hard one indeed! but hard are the lessons we must all learn in the school of life!" Yet Mrs. Douglas's fortitude almost failed her as the period of separation approached. It had been arranged by Lady Emily that a carriage and servants should meet Mary at Edinburgh, whither Mr. Douglas was to convey her. The cruel moment came; and mother, sister, relations, friends,--all the bright visions which Mary's sanguine spirit had conjured up to soften the parting pang, all were absorbed in one agonising feeling, one overwhelming thought. Oh, who that for the first time has parted from the parent whose tenderness and love were entwined with our earliest recollections, whose sympathy had soothed our infant sufferings, whose fondness had brightened our infant felicity;--who that has a heart, but must have felt it sink beneath the anguish of a first farewell! Yet bitterer still must be the feelings of the parent upon committing the cherished object of their cares and affections to the stormy ocean of life. When experience points to the gathering cloud and rising surge which soon may assail their defenceless child, what can support the mother's heart but trust in Him whose eye slumbereth not, and whose power extendeth over all? It was this pious hope, this holy confidence, that enabled this more than mother to part from her adopted child with a resignation which no earthly motive could have imparted to her mind. It seems almost profanation to mingle with her elevated feelings the coarse yet simple sorrows of the aunts, old and young, as they clung around the nearly lifeless Mary, each tendering the parting gift they had kept as a solace for the last. Poor Miss Grizzy was more than usually incoherent as she displayed "a nice new umbrella that could be turned into a nice walking-stick, or anything;" and a dressing-box, with a little of everything in it; and, with a fresh burst of tears, Mary was directed where she would _not_ find eye-ointment, and where she was _not_ to look for sticking-plaister. Miss Jacky was more composed as she presented a flaming copy of Fordyce's Sermons to Young Women, with a few suitable observations; but Miss Nicky could scarcely find voice to tell that the _housewife_ she now tendered had once been Lady Girnchgowl's, and that it contained Whitechapel needles of every size and number. The younger ladies had clubbed for the purchase of a large locket, in which was enshrined a lock from each subscriber, tastefully arranged by the----- jeweller, in the form of a wheat sheaf upon a blue ground. Even old Donald had his offering, and, as he stood tottering at the chaise door, he contrived to get a "bit snishin mull" laid on Mary's lap, with a "God bless her bonny face, an'may she ne'er want a good sneesh!" The carriage drove off, and for a while Mary's eyes were closed in despair. CHAPTER XXXI. "Farewell to the mountains, high covered with snow; Farewell to the straths, and green valleys below; Farewell to the forests, and wild hanging woods, Farewell to the torrents, and loud roaring floods!" _Scotch Song._ HAPPILY in the moral world as in the material one the warring elements have their prescribed bounds, and "the flood of grief decreaseth when it can swell no higher;" but it is only by retrospection we can bring ourselves to believe in this obvious truth. The young and untried heart hugs itself in the bitterness of its emotions, and takes a pride in believing that its anguish can end but with its existence; and it is not till time hath almost steeped our senses in forgetfulness that we discover the mutability of all human passions. But Mary left it not to the slow hand of time to subdue in some measure the grief that swelled her heart. Had she given way to selfishness, she would have sought the free indulgence of her sorrow as the only mitigation of it; but she felt also for her uncle. He was depressed at parting with his wife and child, and he was taking a long and dreary journey entirely upon her account. Could she therefore be so selfish as to add to his uneasiness by a display of her sufferings? No--she would strive to conceal it from his observation, though to overcome it was impossible. Her feelings must ever remain the same, but, she would confine them to her own breast; and she began to converse with and even strove to amuse, her kindhearted companion. Ever and anon indeed a rush of tender recollections came across her mind, and the soft voice and the bland countenance of her maternal friend seemed for a moment present to her senses; and then the dreariness and desolation that succeeded as the delusion vanished, and all was stillness and vacuity! Even self-reproach shot its piercing sting into her ingenuous heart; levities on which, in her usual gaiety of spirit, she had never bestowed a thought, now appeared to her as crimes of the deepest dye. She thought how often she had slighted the counsels and neglected the wishes of her gentle monitress; how she had wearied of her good old aunts, their cracked voices, and the everlasting _tic-a-tic_ of their knitting needles; how coarse and vulgar she had sometimes deemed the younger ones; how she had mimicked Lady Maclaughlan, and caricatured Sir Sampson, and "even poor dear old Donald," said she, as she summed up the catalogue of her crimes, "could not escape my insolence and ill-nature. How clever I thought it to sing 'Haud awa frae me, Donald,' and how affectedly I shuddered at everything he touched;" and the "sneeshin mull" was bedewed with tears of affectionate contrition. But every painful sentiment was for a while suspended in admiration of the magnificent scenery that was spread around them. Though summer had fled, and few even of autumn's graces remained, yet over the august features of mountain scenery the seasons have little control. Their charms depend not upon richness of verdure, or luxuriance of foliage, or any of the mere prettinesses of nature; but whether wrapped in snow, or veiled in mist, or glowing in sunshine, their lonely grandeur remains the same; and the same feelings fill and elevate the soul in contemplating these mighty works of an Almighty hand. The eye is never weary in watching the thousand varieties of light and shade, as they flit over the mountain and gleam upon the lake; and the ear is satisfied with the awful stillness of nature in her solitude. Others besides Mary seemed to have taken a fanciful pleasure in combining the ideas of the mental and elemental world, for in the dreary dwelling where they were destined to pass the night she found inscribed the following lines:-- "The busy winds war mid the waving bonghs, And darkly rolls the heaving surge to land; Among the flying clouds the moonbeam glows With colours foreign to its softness bland. "Here, one dark shadow melts, in gloom profound, The towering Alps--the guardians of the Lake'; There, one bright gleam sheds silver light around, And shows the threat'ning strife that tempests wake. "Thus o'er my mind a busy memory plays, That shakes the feelings to their inmost core; Thus beams the light of Hope's fallacious ray, When simple confidence can trust no more. "So one dark shadow shrouds each bygone hour, So one bright gleam the coming tempest shows; _That _tells of sorrows, which, though past, still lower, And _this_ reveals th' approach of future woes." While Mary was trying to decipher these somewhat mystic lines, her uncle was carrying on a colloquy in Gaelic with their hostess. The consequendes of the consultation were not of the choicest description, consisting of braxy [1] mutton, raw potatoes, wet bannocks, hard cheese, and whisky. Very differently would the travellers have fared had the good Nicky's intentions been fulfilled. She had prepared with her own hands a moorfowl pie and potted nowt's head, besides a profusion of what she termed "trifles, just for Mary, poor thing, to divert herself with upon the road." But alas! in the anguish of separation, the covered basket had been forgot, and the labour of Miss Nicky's hands fell to be consumed by the family, though Miss Grizzy protested, with tears in her eyes, "that it went to her heart like a knife to eat poor Mary's puffs and snaps." [1] Sheep that have died a natural death and been salted. Change of air and variety of scene failed not to produce the happiest effects upon Mary's languid frame and drooping spirits. Her cheek, already glowed with health, and was sometimes dimpled with smiles. She still wept, indeed, as she thought of those she had left; but often, while the tear trembled in her eye, its course was arrested by wonder, or admiration, or delight; for every object had its charms for her. Her cultivated taste and unsophisticated mind could descry beauty in the form of a hill, and grandeur in the foam of the wave, and elegance in the weeping birch, as it dipped its now almost leafless boughs in the mountain stream. These simple pleasures, unknown alike to the sordid mind and vitiated taste, are ever exquisitely enjoyed by the refined yet unsophisticated child of nature. CHAPTER XXXII "Her native sense improved by reading, Her native sweetness by good breeding." DURING their progress through the Highlands the travellers were hospitably entertained at the mansions of the country gentlemen, where old-fashioned courtesy and modern comfort combined to cheer the stranger guest. But upon _coming out,_ as it is significantly expressed by the natives of these mountain regions, viz. entering the low country, they found they had only made a change of difficulties. In the highlands they were always sure that wherever there was a house that house would be to them a home; but on a fairday in the little town of G----- they found themselves in the midst of houses, and surrounded by people, yet unable to procure rest or shelter. At the only inn the place afforded they were informed "the horses were baith oot, an' the ludgin' a' tane up, an' mair tu;" while the driver asserted, what indeed was apparent, "that his beasts war nae fit to gang the length o' their tae farrer--no for the king himsel'." At this moment a stout, florid, good-humoured-looking man passed, whistling "Roy's Wife" with all his heart and just as Mr. Douglas was stepping out of the carriage to try what could be done, the same person, evidently attracted by curiosity, repassed, changing his tune to "There's cauld kail in Aberdeen." He started at sight of Mr. Douglas; then eagerly grasping his hand, "Ah! Archie Douglas, is this you?" exclaimed he with a loud laugh and hearty shake. "'What! you haven't forgot your old schoolfellow Bob Gawffaw?" A mutual recognition now took place, and much pleasure was manifested on both sides at this unexpected rencontre. No time was allowed to explain their embarrassments, for Mr. Gawffaw had already tipped the post-boy the wink (which he seemed easily to comprehend); and forcing Mr. Douglas to resume his seat in the carriage, he jumped in himself. "Now for Howffend and Mrs. Gawffaw! ha, ha, ha! This will be a surprise upon her. She thinks I'm in my barn all this time--ha, ha, ha!" Mr. Douglas here began to express his astonishment at his friend's precipitation, and his apprehensions as to the trouble they might occasion Mrs. Gawffaw; but bursts of laughter and broken expressions of delight were the only replies he could procure from his friend. After jolting over half a mile of very bad road, the carriage stopped at a mean vulgar-looking mansion, with dirty windows, ruinous thatched offices, and broken fences. Such was the picture of still life. That of animated nature was not less picturesque. Cows bellowed, and cart-horses neighed, and pigs grunted, and geese gabbled, and ducks quacked, and cocks and hens flapped and fluttered promiscuously, as they mingled in a sort of yard divided from the house by a low dyke, possessing the accommodation of a crazy gate, which was bestrode by a parcel of bare-legged boys. "What are you about, you confounded rascals?" called Mr. Gawffaw to them. "Naething," answered one. "We're just takin' a heize on the yett," answered another. "I'll heize ye, ye scoundrels!" exclaimed the incensed Mr. Gawffaw, as he burst from the carriage; and, snatching the driver's whip from his hand, flew after the more nimble-footed culprits. Finding his efforts to overtake them in vain, here turned to the door of his mansion, where stood his guests, waiting to be ushered in. He opened the door himself, and led the way to a parlour which was quite of a piece with the exterior of the dwelling. A dim dusty table stood in the middle of the floor, heaped with a variety of heterogeneous articles of dress; an exceeding dirty volume of a novel lay open amongst them. The floor was littered with shapings of flannel, and shreds of gauzes, ribbons, etc. The fire was almost out, and the hearth was covered with ashes. After insisting upon his guests being seated, Mr. Gawffaw walked to the door of the apartment, and hallooed out, "Mrs. Gawffaw,--ho! May, my dear!--I say, Mrs. Gawffaw!" A low, croaking, querulous voice was now heard in reply, "For heaven's sake, Mr. Gawffaw, make less noise! For God's sake, have mercy on the walls of your house, if you've none on my poor head!" And thereupon entered Mrs. Gawffaw, a cap in one hand, which she appeared to have been tying on--a smelling-bottle in the other. She possessed a considerable share of insipid and somewhat faded beauty, but disguised by a tawdry trumpery style of dress, and rendered almost disgusting by the air of affectation, folly, and peevishness that overspread her whole person and deportment. She testified the utmost surprise and coldness at sight of her guests; and, as she entered, Mr. Gawffaw rushed out, having descried something passing in the yard that called for his interposition. Mr. Douglas was therefore under the necessity of introducing himself and Mary to their ungracious hostess; briefly stating the circumstances that had led them to be her guests, and dwelling, with much warmth, on the kindness and hospitality of her husband in having relieved them from their embarrassment. A gracious smile, or what was intended as such, beamed over Mrs. Gawffaw's face at first mention of their names. "Excuse me, Mr. Douglas," said she, making a profound reverence to him, and another to Mary, while she waved her hand for them to be seated. "Excuse me, Miss Douglas; but situated as I am, I find it necessary to be very distant to Mr. Gawffaw's friends sometimes. He is a thoughtless man, Mr. Douglas--a very thoughtless man. He makes a perfect inn of his house. He never lies out of the town, trying who he can pick up and bring home with him. It is seldom I am so fortunate as to see such guests as Mr. and Miss Douglas of Glenfern Castle in my house," with an elegant bow to each, which of course was duly returned. "But Mr. Gawffaw would have shown more consideration, both for you and me, had he apprised me of the honour of your visit, instead of bringing you here in this ill bred, unceremonious manner. As for me, I am too well accustomed to him to be hurt at these things now. He has kept me in hot water, I may say, since the day I married him." In spite of the conciliatory manner in which this agreeable address was made, Mr. Douglas felt considerably disconcerted, and again renewed his apologies, adding something about hopes of being able to proceed. "Make no apologies, my dear sir," said the lady, with what she deemed a most bewitching manner; "it affords me the greatest pleasure to see any of your family under my roof. I meant no reflection on you; it is entirely Mr. Gawffaw that is to blame, in not having apprised me of the honour of this visit, that I might not have been caught in this déshabille; but I was really so engaged by my studies--" pointing to the dirty novel--"that I was quite unconscious of the lapse of time." The guests felt more and more at a loss what to say; but the lady, was at none. Seeing Mr. Douglas still standing with his hat in his hand, and his eye directed towards the door, she resumed her discourse. "Pray be seated, Mr. Douglas; I beg you will sit off the door. Miss Douglas, I entreat you will walk into the fire; I hope you will consider yourself as quite at home"--another elegant bend to each. "I only regret that Mr. Gawffaw's folly and ill-breeding should have brought you into this disagreeable situation, Mr. Douglas. He is a well-meaning man, Mr. Douglas, and a good-hearted man; but he is very deficient in other respects, Mr. Douglas." Mr. Douglas, happy to find anything to which he could assent, warmly joined in the eulogium on the excellence of his friend's heart. It did not appear, however, to give the satisfaction he expected. The lady resumed with a sigh, "Nobody can know Mr. Gawffaw's heart better than I do, Mr. Douglas. It _is_ a good one, but it is far from being an elegant one; it is one in which I find no congeniality of sentiment with my own. Indeed, Mr. Gawffaw is no companion for me, nor I for him, Mr. Douglas; he is never happy in my society, and I really believe he would rather sit down with the tinklers on the roadside as spend a day in my company." A deep sigh followed; but its pathos was drowned in the obstreperous ha, ha, ha! of her joyous helpmate, as he bounced into the room, wiping his forehead. "'Why, May, my dear, what have you been to-day? Things have been all going to the deuce. Why didn't you hinder these boys from sweein' the gate off its hinges, and--" "Me hinder boys from sweein' gates, Mr. Gawffaw! Do I look like as if I was capable of hindering boys from sweein' gates, Miss Douglas?" "Well, my dear, you ought to look after your pigs a little better. That jade, black Jess, has trod a parcel of them to death, ha, ha, ha! And--" "Me look after pigs, Mr. Gawffaw! I am really astonished at you!" again interrupted the lady, turning pale with vexation. Then, with an affected giggle, appealing to Mary, "I leave you to judge, Miss Douglas, if I look like a person made for running after pigs!" "Indeed," thought Mary, "you don't look like as if you could do anything half so useful." "Well, never mind the pigs, my dear; only don't give us any of them for dinner--ha, ha, ha I--and, May, when will you let us have it?" "Me let you have it, Mr. Gawffaw! I'm sure I don't hinder you from having it when you please, only you know I prefer late hours myself. I was always accustomed to them in my poor father's lifetime. He never dined before four o'clock; and I seldom knew what it was to be in my bed before twelve o'clock at night, Miss Douglas, till I married Mr. Gawffaw!" Mary tried to look sorrowful, to hide the smile that was dimpling her cheek. "Come, let us have something to eat in the meantime, my dear." "I'm sure you may eat the house, if you please, for me, Mr. Gawffaw! What would you take, Miss Douglas? But pull the bell--softly, Mr. Gawffaw! You do everything so violently." A dirty maid-servant, with bare feet, answered the summons. "Where's Tom?" demanded the lady, well knowing that Tom was afar off at some of the farm operations. "I ken nae whar he's. He'll be aether at the patatees, or the horses, I'se warran. Div ye want him?" "Bring some glasses," said her mistress, with an air of great dignity. "Mr. Gawffaw, you must see about the wine yourself since you have sent Tom out of the way." Mr. Gawffaw and his handmaid were soon heard in an adjoining closet; the one wondering where the screw was, the other vociferating for a knife to cut the bread; while the mistress of this well-regulated mansion sought to divert her guests' attention from what was passing by entertaining them with complaints of Mr. Gawffaw's noise and her maid's insolence till the parties appeared to speak for themselves. After being refreshed with some very bad wine and old baked bread, the gentlemen set off on a survey of the farm, and the ladies repaired to their toilets. Mary's simple dress was quickly adjusted; and upon descending she found her uncle alone in what Mrs. Gawffaw had shown to her as the drawing room. He guessed her curiosity to know something of her hosts, and therefore briefly informed her that Mrs. Gawffaw was the daughter of a trader in some manufacturing town, who had lived in opulence and died insolvent. During his life his daughter had eloped with Bob Gawffaw, then a gay lieutenant in a marching regiment, who had been esteemed a very lucky fellow in getting the pretty Miss Croaker, with the prospect of ten thousand pounds. None thought more highly of her husband's good fortune than the lady herself; and though _her_ fortune never was realised, she gave herself all the airs of having been the making of his. At this time Mr. Gawffaw was a reduced lieutenant, living upon a small paternal property, which he pretended to farm; but the habits of a military life, joined to a naturally social disposition, were rather inimical to the pursuits of agriculture, and most of his time was spent in loitering about the village of G-----, where he generally continued either to pick up a guest or procure a dinner. Mrs. Gawffaw despised her husband; had weak nerves and headaches--was above managing her house--read novels--dyed ribbons--and altered her gowns according to every pattern she could see or hear of. Such were Mr. and Mrs. Gawffaw--one of the many ill-assorted couples in this world--joined, not matched. A sensible man would have curbed her folly and peevishness; a good-tempered woman would have made his home comfortable, and rendered him more domestic. The dinner was such as might have been expected from the previous specimens--bad of its kind, cold, ill-dressed, and slovenly set down; but Mrs. Gawtfaw seemed satisfied with herself and it. "This is very fine mutton, Mr. Douglas, and not underdone to most people's tastes; and this fowl, I have no doubt will eat well, Miss Douglas, though it is not so white as some I have seen." "The fowl, my dear, looks as if it had been the great-grandmother of this sheep, ha, ha, ha!" "For heaven's sake, Mr. Gawffaw, make less noise, or my head will split in a thousand pieces!" putting her hands to it, as if to hold the frail tenement together. This was always her refuge when at a loss for a reply. A very ill-concocted pudding next called forth her approbation. "This pudding should be good; for it is the same I used to be so partial to in my poor father's lifetime, when I was used to every delicacy, Miss Douglas, that money could purchase." "But you thought me the greatest delicacy of all, my dear, ha, ha, ha! for you left all your other delicacies for me, ha, ha, ha I--what do you say to that, May? ha, ha, ha!" May's reply consisted in putting her hands to her head, with an air of inexpressible vexation; and finding all her endeavours to be elegant frustrated by the overpowering vulgarity of her husband, she remained silent during the remainder of the repast; solacing herself with complacent glances at her yellow silk gown, and adjusting the gold chains and necklaces that adorned her bosom. Poor Mary was doomed to a _tete-a-tete_ with her during the whole evening; for Mr. Gawffaw was too happy _with_ his friend, and _without_ his wife, to quit the dining-room till a late hour; and then he was so much exhilarated, that she could almost have joined Mrs. Gawffaw in her exclamation of "For heaven's sake, Mr. Gawffaw, have mercy on my head!" The night, however, like all other nights, had a close; and Mrs. Gawffaw, having once more enjoyed the felicity of finding herself in company at twelve o'clock at night, at length withdraw; and having apologised, and hoped, and feared, for another hour in Mary's apartment, she finally left her to the blessings of solitude and repose. As Mr. Douglas was desirous of reaching Edinburgh the following day, he had, in spite of the urgent remonstrances of his friendly host and the elegant importunities of his lady, ordered the carriage at an early hour; and Mary was too eager to quit Howffend to keep it waiting. Mr. Gawffaw was in readiness to hand her in, but fortunately Mrs. Gaffaw's head did not permit of her rising. With much the same hearty laugh that had welcomed their meeting, honest Gawffaw now saluted the departure of his friend; and as he went whistling over his gate, he ruminated sweet and bitter thoughts as to the destinies of the day--whether he should solace himself with a good dinner and the company of Bailie Merry thought at the Cross Keys in G----, or put up with cold mutton, and May, at home. CHAPTER XXXIII. "Edina! Scotia's darling seat! All hail thy palaces and tow'rs, Where once, beneath a monarch's feet, Sat legislation's sov'reign pow'rs!" BURNS. ALL Mary's sensations of admiration were faint compared to those she experienced as she viewed the Scottish metropolis. It was associated in her mind with all the local prepossessions to which youth and enthusiasm love to give "a local habitation and a name;" and visions of older times floated o'er her mind as she gazed on its rocky battlements, and traversed the lonely arcades of its deserted palace. "And this was once a gay court!" thought she, as she listened to the dreary echo of her own footsteps; "and this very ground on which I now stand was trod by the hapless Mary Stuart! Her eye beheld the same objects that mine now rests upon; her hand has touched the draperies I now hold in mine. These frail memorials remain; but what remains of Scotland's Queen but a blighted name!" Even the blood-stained chamber possessed a nameless charm for Mary's vivid imagination. She had not entirely escaped the superstitions of the country in which she had lived; and she readily yielded her assent to the asseverations of her guide as to its being the _bona fide_ blood of _David Rizzio,_ which for nearly three hundred years had resisted all human efforts to efface. "My credulity is so harmless," said she in answer to her uncle's attempt to laugh her out of her belief, "that I surely may be permitted to indulge it especially since I confess I feel a sort of indescribable pleasure in it." "You take a pleasure in the sight of blood!" exclaimed Mr. Douglas in astonishment, "you who turn pale at sight of a cut finger, and shudder at a leg of mutton with the juice in it!" "Oh! mere modern vulgar blood is very shocking," answered Mary, with a smile; "but observe how this is mellowed by time into a tint that could not offend the most fastidious fine lady; besides," added she in a graver tone, "I own I love to believe in things supernatural; it seems to connect us more with another world than when everything is seen to proceed in the mere ordinary course of nature, as it is called. I cannot bear to imagine a dreary chasm betwixt the inhabitants of this world and beings of a higher sphere; I love to fancy myself surrounded by----" "I wish to heaven you would remember you are surrounded by rational beings, and not fall into such rhapsodies," said her uncle, glancing at a party who stood near them, jesting upon all the objects which Mary had been regarding with so much veneration. "But come, you have been long enough here. Let us try whether a breeze on the Calton Hill will not dispel these cobwebs from your brain." The day, though cold, was clear and sunny; and the lovely spectacle before them shone forth in all its gay magnificence. The blue waters lay calm and motionless. The opposite shores glowed in a thousand varied tints of wood and plain, rock and mountain, cultured field and purple moor. Beneath, the old town reared its dark brow, and the new one stretched its golden lines; while all around the varied charms of nature lay scattered in that profusion which nature's hand alone can bestow. "Oh! this is exquisite!" exclaimed Mary after along pause, in which she had been riveted in admiration of the scene before her. "And you are in the right, my dear uncle. The ideas which are inspired by the contemplation of such a spectacle as this are far--oh, how far!--superior to those excited by the mere works of art. There I can, at best, think but of the inferior agents of Providence; here the soul rises from nature up to nature's God." "Upon my soul, you will be taken for a Methodist, Mary, if you talk in this manner," said Mr. Douglas, with some marks of disquiet, as he turned round at the salutation of a fat elderly gentleman, whom he presently recognised as Bailie Broadfoot. The first salutations over, Mr. Douglas's fears of Mary having been overheard recurred, and he felt anxious to remove any unfavourable impression with regard to his own principles, at least, from the mind of the enlightened magistrate. "Your fine views here have set my niece absolutely raving," said he, with a smile; "but I tell her it is only in romantic minds that fine scenery inspires romantic ideas. I daresay many of the worthy inhabitants of Edinburgh walk here with no other idea than that of sharpening their appetites for dinner." "Nae doot," said the Bailie, "it's a most capital place for that. Were it no' for that I ken nae muckle use it would be of." "You speak from experience of its virtues in that respect, I suppose?" said Mr. Douglas gravely. "'Deed, as to that I canna compleen. At times, to be sure, I am troubled with a little kind of a squeamishness after our public interteenments; but three rounds o' the hill sets a' to rights." Then observing Mary's eyes exploring, as he supposed, the town of Leith, "You see that prospeck to nae advantage the day, miss," said he. "If the glasshouses had been workin', it would have looked as weel again. Ye hae nae glass-houses in the Highlands; na, na." The Bailie had a share in the concern; and the volcanic clouds of smoke that issued from thence were far more interesting subjects of speculation to him than all the eruptions of Vesuvius or Etna. But there was nothing to charm the lingering view to-day; and he therefore proposed their taking a look at Bridewell, which, next to the smoke from the glass-houses, he reckoned the object most worthy of notice. It was indeed deserving of the praises bestowed upon it; and Mary was giving her whole attention to the details of it when she was suddenly startled by hearing her own name wailed in piteous accents from one of the lower cells, and, upon turning round, she discovered in the prisoner the son of one of the tenants of Glenfern. Duncan M'Free had been always looked upon as a very honest lad in the Highlands, but he had left home to push his fortune as a pedlar; and the temptations of the low country having proved too much for his virtue, poor Duncan as now expiating his offence in durance vile. "I shall have a pretty account of you to carry to Glenfern," said Mr. Douglas, regarding the culprit with his sternest look. "Oh 'deed, sir, it's no' my faut!" answered Duncan, blubbering bitterly; "but there's nae freedom at a' in this country. Lord, an' I war oot o't! Ane canna ca' their head their ain in't; for ye canna lift the bouk o' a prin but they're a' upon ye." And a fresh burst of sorrow ensued. Finding the _peccadillo_ was of a venial nature, Mr. Douglas besought the Bailie to us his interest to procure the enfranchisement of this his vassal, which Mr. Broadfoot, happy to oblige a good customer, promised should be obtained on the following day; and Duncan's emotions being rather clamorous, the party found it necessary to withdraw. "And noo," said the Bailie, as they emerged from his place of dole and durance, "will ye step up to the monument, and tak a rest and some refreshment?" "Rest and refreshment in a monument!" exclaimed Mr. Douglas. "Excuse me, my good friend, but we are not inclined to bait there yet a while." The Bailie did not comprehend the joke; and he proceeded in his own drawling humdrum accent to assure them that the monument was a most convenient place. "It was erected in honour of Lord Neilson's memory," said he, "and is let aff to a pastrycook and confectioner, where you can always find some trifles to treat the ladies, such as pies and custards, and berries, and these sort of things; but we passed an order in the cooncil that there should be naething of a spirituous nature introduced; for if ance spirits got admittance there's no saying what might happen." This was a fact which none of the party were disposed to dispute; and the Bailie, triumphing in his dominion over the spirits, shuffled on before to do the honours of this place, appropriated at one and the same time to the manes of a hero and the making of minced pies. The regale was admirable, and Mary could not help thinking times were improved, and that it was a better thing to eat tarts in Lord Nelson's Monument than to have been poisoned in Julius Caesar's. CHAPTER XXXIV. "Having a tongue rough as a cat, and biting like an adder, and all their reproofs are direct scoldings, their common intercourse is open contumely."--JEREMY TAYLOR. "THOUGH last, not least of nature's works, I must now introduce you to a friend of mine," said Mr. Douglas, as, the Bailie having made his bow, they bent their steps towards the Castle Hill. "Mrs. Violet Macshake is an aunt of my mother's, whom you must often have heard of, and the last remaining branch of the noble race of Girnachgowl." "I am afraid she is rather a formidable person, then?" said Mary. Her uncle hesitated. "No, not formidable--only rather particular, as all old people are; but she is very good-hearted." "I understand, in other words, she is very disagreeable. All ill-tempered people, I observe, have the character of being good-hearted; or else all good people are ill-tempered, I can't tell which." "It is more than reputation with her," said Mr. Douglas, somewhat angrily: "for she is, in reality, a very good-hearted woman, as I experienced when a boy at college. Many a crown piece and half-guinea I used to get from her. Many a scold, to be sure, went along with them; but that, I daresay, I deserved. Besides, she is very rich, and I am her reputed heir; therefore gratitude and self-interest combine to render her extremely amiable in my estimation." They had now reached the airy dwelling where Mrs. Macshake resided, and having rung, the door was at length most deliberately opened by an ancient, sour-visaged, long-waisted female, who ushered them into an apartment, the _coup d'oeil_ of which struck a chill to Mary's heart. It was a good-sized room, with a bare sufficiency of small-legged dining-tables, and lank haircloth chairs, ranged in high order round the walls. Although the season was advanced, and the air piercing cold, the grate stood smiling in all the charms of polished steel; and the mistress of the mansion was seated by the side of it in an arm-chair, still in its summer position. She appeared to have no other occupation than what her own meditations afforded; for a single glance sufficed to show that not a vestige of book or work was harboured there. She was a tall, large-boned woman, whom even Time's iron hands scarcely bent, as she merely stooped at the shoulders. She had a drooping snuffy nose, a long turned-up chin, small quick gray eyes, and her face projected far beyond her figure, with an expression of shrewd restless curiosity. She wore a mode (not _à-la-mode )_ bonnet, and cardinal of the same, a pair of clogs over her shoes, and black silk mittens on her arms. As soon as she recognised Mr. Douglas she welcomed him with much cordiality, shook him long and heartily by the hand, patted him on the back, looked into his face with much seeming satisfaction; and, in short, gave all the demonstrations of gladness usual with gentlewomen of a certain age. Her pleasure, however, appeared to be rather an _impromptu_ than an habitual feeling; for as the surprise wore off her visage resumed its harsh and sarcastic expression, and she seemed eager to efface any agreeable impression her reception might have excited. "An' wha thought o' seein ye enow?" said she, in a quick gabbling voice. "What brought you to the toon? Are ye come to spend our honest faither's siller ere he's weel cauld in his grave, puir man?" Mr. Douglas explained that it was upon account of his niece's health. "Health!" repeated she, with a sardonic smile; "it wad mak' an ool laugh to hear the wark that's made aboot young fowk's health noo-a-days. I wonder what ye're aw made o' "--grasping Mary's arm in her great bony hand--"a wheen puir feckless windlestraes; ye maun awa' to Ingland for ye're healths. Set ye up! I wonder what cam' o' the lasses i' my time, that bute to bide at hame? And whilk o' ye, I sude like to ken, 'II ere leive to see ninety-sax, like me? Health!--he, he !" Mary, glad of a pretence to in indulge the mirth the old lady's manner and appearance had excited, joined most heartily in the laugh. "Tak. aff ye're bannet, bairn, an' let me see ye're face. Wha can tell what like ye are wi' that snule o' a thing on ye're head?" Then after taking an accurate survey of her face, she pushed aside her pelisse." Weel, it's ae mercy, I see ye hae neither the red heed nor the muckle cuits o' the Douglases. I ken nae whuther ye're faither had them or no. I ne'er set een on him; neither him nor his braw leddie thought it worth their while to speer after me; but I was at nae loss, by aw accounts." "You have not asked after any of your Glenfern friends," said Mr. Douglas, hoping to touch a more sympathetic chord. "Time eneugh. Wull ye let me draw my breath, man? Fowk canna say awthing at ance. An' ye bute to hae an Inglish wife tu; a Scotch lass wad nae serr ye. An' ye're wean, I'se warran', it's ane o' the warld's wonders; it's been unco lang o' cummin--he, he!" "He has begun life under very melancholy auspices, poor fellow!" said Mr. Douglas, in allusion to his father's death. "An' wha's faut was that? I ne'er heard tell the like o't; to hae the bairn kirsened an' its grandfather deein! But fowk are naither born, nor kirsened, nor do they wad or dee as they used to du---awthing's changed." "You must, indeed, have witnessed many changes," observed Mr. Douglas, rather at a loss how to utter anything of a conciliatory nature. "Changes!--weel a wat, I sometimes wonder if it's the same warld, an' if it's my ain heed that's upon my shoothers." "But with these changes you must also have seen many improvements?" said Mary, in a tone of diffidence. "Impruvements!" turning sharply round upon her; "what ken ye about impruvements, bairn? A bony impruvement or ens no, to see tyleyors and sclaters leavin whar I mind jewks an yerls. An' that great glowrin' new toon there"--pointing out of her windows--"whar I used to sit an' luck oot at bonny green parks, and see the coos milket, and the bits o' bairnies rowin' an' tummlin,' an' the lasses trampin i' their tubs--what see I noo, but stane an' lime, an' stoor' an' dirt, an' idle cheels, an' dinket-oot madams prancin'. Impruvements, indeed!" Mary found she was not likely to advance her uncle's fortune by the judiciousness of her remarks, therefore prudently resolved to hazard no more. Mr. Douglas, who was more _au fait_ to the prejudices of old age, and who was always amused with her bitter remarks when they did not touch himself, encouraged her to continue the conversation by some observation on the prevailing manners. "Mainers!" repeated she, with a contemptuous laugh, "what caw ye mainers noo, for I dinna ken? Ilk ane gangs bang in till their neebor's hoose, and bang oot o't as it war a chynge-hoose; an' as for the maister o't, he's no o' sae muckle vaalu as tho flunky ahynt his chyre. I' my grandfather's time, as I hae heard him tell, ilka maister o' a faamily had his ain sate in his ain hoose aye, an' sat wi' his hat on his heed afore the best o' the land, an' had his ain dish, an' was aye helpit first, an' keepit up his owthority as a man sude du. Paurents war paurents then; bairnes dardna set up their gabs afore them than as they du noo. They ne'er presumed to say their heeds war their ain i' thae days--wife an' servants, reteeners an' childer, aw trummelt i' the presence o' their heed." Here a long pinch of snuff caused a pause in the old lady's harangue; but after having duly wiped her nose with her coloured handkerchief, and shook off all the particles that might be presumed to have lodged upon her cardinal, she resumed-- "An' nae word o' ony o' your sisters gaun to get husbands yet? They tell me they're but coorse lasses: an' wha'll tak ill-farred tocherless queans whan there's walth o' bonny faces an' lang purses i' the market--he, he!" Then resuming her scrutiny of Mary--"An' I'se warran' ye'll be lucken for an Inglish sweetheart tu that'll be what's takin' ye awa' to Ingland." "On the contrary," said Mr. Douglas, seeing Mary was too much frightened to answer for herself--"on the contrary, Mary declares she will never marry any but a true Highlander--one who wears the dirk and plaid, and has the second-sight. And the nuptials are to be celebrated with all the pomp of feudal times; with bagpipes, and bonfires, and gatherings of clans, and roasted sheep, and barrels of whisky, and--" "Weel a wat, an' she's i' the right there," interrupted Mrs. Macshake, with more complacency than she had yet shown. "They may caw them what they like, but there's nae waddins noo. Wha's the better o' them but innkeepers and chise-drivers? I wud nae count mysel' married i' the hiddlins way they gang aboot it noo." "I daresay you remember these, things done in a very different style?" said Mr. Douglas. "I dinna mind them whan the war at he best; but I hae heard my mither tell what a bonny ploy was at her waddin. I canna tell ye hoo mony was at it; mair nor the room wad haud, ye may be sure, for every relation an' freend o' baith sides war there, as well they sude; an' aw in full dress: the leddies in their hoops round them, an' some o' them had sutten up aw night till hae their heeds drest; for they hadnae thae pooket-like taps ye hae noo," looking with contempt at Mary's Grecian contour. "An' the bride's goon was aw shewed ow'r wi' favour, frae the tap doon to the tail, an' aw roond the neck, an' aboot the sleeves; and, as soon as the ceremony was ow'r, ilk ane ran till her, an' rugget an' rave at her for the favours till they hardly left the claise upon her back. Than they did nae run awa as they du noo, but sax an't hretty o' them sat doon till a graund denner, and there was a ball at night, an' ilka night till Sabbath cam' roond; an' than the bride an' the bridegroom, drest in their waddin suits, an' aw their freends 'n theirs, wi' their favours on their breests, walkit in procession till the kirk. An' was nae that something like a waddin? It was worth while to be married i' thae days-he, he!" "The wedding seems to have been admirably conducted," said Mr. Douglas, with much solemnity. "The christening, I presume, would be the next distinguished event in the family?" "Troth, Archie-an' ye sude keep your thoomb upon kirsnins as lang's ye leeve; yours was a bonnie kirsnin or ens no! I hae heard o' mony things, but a bairn kirsened whan its grandfaither was i' the deed-thraw, I ne'er heard tell o' before." Then observing the indignation that spread over Mr. Douglas's face, she quickly resumed, "An' so ye think the kirsnin was the neist ploy? He, he! Na; the cryin was a ploy, for the leddies did nae keep themsels up than as they do noo; but the day after the bairn was born, the leddy sat up i' her bed, wi' her fan intill her hand; an' aw her freends earn' an' stud roond her, an' drank her health an' the bairn's. Than at the leddy's recovery there was a graund supper gien that they caw'd the _cummerfealls,_ an' there was a great pyramid o' hens at the tap o' the table, an' anither pyramid o' ducks at the fit, an' a muckle stoup fu' o' posset i' the middle, an' aw kinds o' sweeties doon the sides; an' as sune as ilk ane had eatin their fill they aw flew till the sweeties, an' fought, an' strave, an' wrastled for them, leddies an' gentlemen an' aw; for the brag was wha could pocket maist; an' whiles they wad hae the claith aff the table, an' aw thing i' the middle i' the floor, an' the chyres upside doon. Oo! muckle gude diversion, I'se warran,' was at the _cummerfealls_. Than whan they had drank the stoup dry, that ended the ploy. As for the kirsnin, that was aye whar it sude be--i' the hoose o' God, an' aw the kith an' kin bye in full dress, an' a band o' maiden cimmers aw in white; an' a bonny sight it was, as I've heard my mither tell." Mr. Douglas, who was now rather tired of the old lady's reminiscences, availed himself of the opportunity of a fresh pinch to rise and take leave. "Oo, what's takin' ye awa, Archie, in sic a hurry? Sit doon there," laying her hand upon his arm, "an' rest ye, an' tak a glass o' wine, an' a bit breed; or may be," turning to Mary, "ye wad rather hae a drap broth to warm ye. What gars ye luck sae blae, bairn? I'm sure it's no cauld; but ye're juste like the lave; ye gang aw skiltin aboot the streets half naked, an' than ye maun sit an' birsle yoursels afore the fire at hame." She had now shuffled along to the farther end of the room, and opening a press, took out wine, and a plateful of various-shaped articles of bread, which she handed to Mary. "Hae, bairn--tak a cookie; tak it up--what are you fear'd for? It'll no bite ye. Here's t'ye, Glenfern, an' your wife, an' your wean, puir tead; it's no had a very chancy ootset, weel a wat." The wine being drunk, and the cookies discussed, Mr. Douglas made another attempt to withdraw, but in vain. "Canna ye sit still a wee, man, an' let me spear after my auld freens at Glenfern? Hoo's Grizzy, an' Jacky, and Nicky? Aye workin awa at the pills an' the drogs?---he, he! I ne'er swallowed a pill, nor gied a doit for drogs aw my days, an' see an ony of them'll rin a race wi' me whan they're naur five score." Mr. Douglas here paid her some compliments upon her appearance, which were pretty graciously received; and added that he was the bearer of a letter from his Aunt Grizzy, which he would send along with a roebuck and brace of moor-game. "Gin your roebuck's nae better than your last, at weel it's no worth the sendin'-poor dry fisinless dirt, no worth the chowing; weel a wat I begrudged my teeth on't. Your muirfowl was na that ill, but they're no worth the carryin; they're dong cheap i'the market enoo, so it's nae great compliment. Gin ye had brought me a leg o' gude mutton, or a cauler sawmont, there would hae been some sense in't; but ye're ane o' the fowk that'll ne'er harry yoursel' wi' your presents; it's but the pickle poother they cost you, an' I'se warran' ye're thinkin mail' o' your ain diversion than o' my stamick, when ye're at the shootin' o' them, puir beasts." Mr. Douglas had borne the various indignities levelled against himself and his family with a philosophy that had no parallel in his life before; but to this attack upon his game he was not proof. His colour rose, his eyes flashed fire, and something resembling an oath burst from his lips as he strode indignantly towards the door. His friend, however, was too nimble for him. She stepped before him, and, breaking into a discordant laugh, as she patted him on the back, "So I see ye're just the auld man, Archie,--aye ready to tak the strums, an' ye dinna get a' thing yer ain wye. Mony a time I had to fleech ye oot o' the dorts whan ye was a callant. Div ye mind hoo ye was affronted because I set ye doon to a cauld pigeon-pie, an' a tanker o' tippenny, ae night to ye're fowerhoors, afore some leddies--he, he, he! Weel a wat, yer wife maun hae her ain adoos to manage ye, for ye're a cumstairy chield, Archie." Mr. Douglas still looked as if he was irresolute whether to laugh or be angry. "Come, come, sit ye do on there till I speak to this bairn," said she, as she pulled Mary into an adjoining bedchamber, which wore the same aspect of chilly neatness as the one they had quitted. Then pulling a huge bunch of keys from her pocket she opened a drawer, out of which she took a pair of diamond earrings. "Hae, bairn," said she as she stuffed them into Mary's hand; "they belanged to your father's grandmother. She was a gude woman, an' had fouran'-twenty sons an' dochters, an' I wiss ye nae war fortin than just to hae as mony. But mind ye," with a shake of her bony finger, "they maun a be Scots. Gin I thought ye wad mairry ony pock-puddin', fient haed wad ye hae gotten frae me. Noo, had ye're tongue, and dinna deive me wi' thanks," almost pushing her into the parlour again; "and sin ye're gaun awa the morn, I'll see nae mair o' ye enoo--so fare ye weel. But, Archie, ye maun come an' tak your breakfast wi' me. I hae muckle to say to you; but ye manna be sae hard upon my baps as ye used to be," with a facetious grin to her mollified favourite, as they shook hands and parted. "Well, how do you like Mrs. Macshake, Mary?" asked her uncle as they walked home. "That is a cruel question, uncle," answered she, with a smile. "My gratitude and my taste are at such variance," displaying her splendid gift, "that I know not how to reconcile them." "That is always the case with those whom Mrs. Macshake has obliged," returned Mr. Douglas. "She does many liberal things, but in so ungracious a manner that people are never sure whether they are obliged or insulted by her. But the way in which she receives kindness is still worse. Could anything equal her impertinence about my roebuck? Faith, I've a good mind never to enter her door again!" Mary could scarcely preserve her gravity at her uncle's indignation, which seemed so disproportioned to the cause. But, to turn the current of his ideas, she remarked that he had certainly been at pains to select two admirable specimens of her countrywomen for her. "I don't think I shall soon forget either Mrs. Gawffaw or Mrs Macshake," said she, laughing. "I hope you won't carry away the impression that these two _lusus naturae_ specimens of Scotchwomen," said her uncle. "The former, indeed, is rather a sort of weed that infests every soil; the latter, to be sure, is an indigenous plant. I question if she would have arrived at such perfection in a more cultivated field or genial clime. She was born at a time when Scotland was very different from what it is now. Female education was little attended to, even in families of the highest rank; consequently, the ladies of those days possess a _raciness_ in their manners and ideas that we should vainly seek for in this age of cultivation and refinement. Had your time permitted, you could have seen much good society here; superior, perhaps, to what is to be found anywhere else, as far as mental cultivation is concerned. But you will have leisure for that when you return." Mary acquiesced with a sigh. _Return_ was to her still a melancholy-sounding word. It reminded her of all she had left--of the anguish of separation--the dreariness of absence; and all these painful feelings were renewed in their utmost bitterness when the time approached for her to bid adieu to her uncle. Lord Courtland's carriage and two respectable-looking servants awaited her; and the following morning she commenced her journey in all the agony of a heart that fondly clings to its native home. END OF VOL. I. _Printed _by R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh._ _***_ MARRIAGE (VOL II) A Novel by Susan Ferrier "Life consists not of a series of illustrious actions; the greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities--in the performance of daily duties--in the removal of small inconveniences--in the procurement of petty pleasures; and we are well or ill at ease, as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small and frequent interruption."--JOHNSON. Edinburgh Edition IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME II. LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen 1881 _Printed _by R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_ MARRIAGE. CHAPTER I. "Nor only by the warmth And soothing sunshine of delightful things, Do minds grow up and flourish." AKENSIDE. AFTER parting with the last of her beloved relatives Mary tried to think only of the happiness that awaited her in a reunion with her mother and sister; and she gave herself up to the blissful reveries of a young and ardent imagination. Mrs. Douglas had sought to repress, rather than excite, her sanguine expectations; but vainly is the experience of others employed in moderating the enthusiasm of a glowing heart. Experience _cannot_ be imparted. We may render the youthful mind prematurely cautious, or meanly suspicious; but the experience of a pure and enlightened mind is the result of observation, matured by time. The journey, like most modern journeys, was performed in comfort and safety; and, late one evening, Mary found herself at the goal of her wishes--at the threshold of the house that contained her mother! One idea filled her mind; but that idea called up a thousand emotions. "I am now to meet my mother!" thought she; and, unconscious of everything else, she was assisted from the carriage, and conducted into the house. A door was thrown open; but shrinking from the glare of light and sound of voices that assailed her, he stood dazzled and dismayed, till she beheld a figure approaching that she guessed to be her mother. Her heart beat violently--a film was upon her eyes--she made an effort to reach her mother's arms, and sank lifeless on her bosom! Lady Juliana, for such it was, doubted not but that her daughter was really dead; for though he talked of fainting every hour of the day herself, still what is emphatically called a _dead-faint_ was a spectacle no less strange than shocking to her. She was therefore sufficiently alarmed and overcome to behave in a very interesting manner; and some yearnings of pity even possessed her heart as she beheld her daughter's lifeless form extended before her--her beautiful, though inanimate features, half hid by the profusion of golden ringlets that fell around her. But these kindly feelings were of short duration; for no sooner was the nature of her daughter's insensibility as ascertained, than all her former hostility returned, as she found everyone's attention directed to Mary, and she herself entirely overlooked in the general interest she had excited; and her displeasure was still further increased as Mary, at length slowly unclosing her eyes, stretched out her hands, and faintly articulated, "My mother!" "Mother! What a hideous vulgar appellation!" thought the fashionable parent to herself; and, instead of answering her daughter's appeal, she hastily proposed that she should be conveyed to her own apartment; then, summoning her maid, she consigned her to her care, slightly touching her cheek as she wished her good-night, and returned to the card-table. Adelaide too resumed her station at the harp, as if nothing had happened; but Lady Emily attended her cousin to her room, embraced her again and again, as she assured her she loved her already, she was so like her dear Edward; then, after satisfying herself that everything was comfortable, affectionately kissed her, and withdrew. Bodily fatigue got the better of mental agitation; and Mary slept soundly, and awoke refreshed. "Can it be," thought she, as she tried to collect her bewildered thoughts, "can it be that I have really beheld my mother, that I have been pressed to her heart, that she has shed tears over me while I lay unconscious in her arms? Mother! What a delightful sound; and how beautiful she seemed! Yet I have no distinct idea of her, my head was so confused; but I have a vague recollection of something very fair, and beautiful, and seraph-like, covered with silver drapery, and flowers, and with the sweetest voice in the world. Yet that must be too young for my mother; perhaps it was my sister; and my mother was too much overcome to meet her stranger child. Oh, how happy must I be with such a mother and sister!" In these delightful cogitations Mary remained till Lady Emily entered. "How well you look this morning, my dear cousin," said she, flying to her; "you are much more like my Edward than you were last night. Ah! and you have got his smile too! You must let me see that very often." "I am sure I shall have cause," said Mary, returning her cousin's affectionate embrace; "but at present I feel anxious about my mother and sister. The agitation of our meeting, and my weakness, I fear it has been too much for them;" and she looked earnest in Lady Emily's face for a confirmation of her fears. "Indeed, you need be under no uneasiness on their account," returned her cousin, with her usual bluntness; "their feelings are not so easily disturbed; you will see them both at breakfast, so come along." The room was empty; and again Mary's sensitive heart trembled for the welfare of those already so dear to her; but Lady Emily did not appear to understand the nature of her feelings. "Have a little patience, my dear!" said she, with something of an impatient tone, as she rang for breakfast; "they will be here at their usual time. Nobody in this house is a slave to hours, or _gêné _with each other's society. Liberty is the motto here; everybody breakfasts when and where they please. Lady Juliana, I believe, frequently takes hers in her dressing-room; Papa never is visible till two or three o'clock; and Adelaide is always late." "What a selfish cold-hearted thing is grandeur!" thought Mary, as Lady Emily and she sat like two specks in the splendid saloon, surrounded by all that wealth could purchase or luxury invent; and her thoughts reverted to the pious thanksgiving and affectionate meeting that graced their social meal in the sweet sunny parlour at Lochmarlie. Some of those airy nothings, without a local habitation, who are always to be found flitting about the mansions of the great, now lounged into the room; and soon after Adelaide made her _entrée._ Mary, trembling violently, was ready to fall upon her sister's neck, but Adelaide seemed prepared to repel everything like a _scènce _for, with a cold, but sweet, "I hope you are better this morning?" she seated herself at the opposite side of the table. Mary's blood rushed back to her heart; her eyes filled with tears, she knew not why; for she could not analyse the feelings that swelled in her bosom. She would have shuddered to _think_ her sister unkind, but she _felt_ she was so. "It can only be the difference of our manners," sighed she to herself; "I am sure my sister loves me, though she does not show it in the same way I should have done;" and she gazed with the purest admiration and tenderness on the matchless beauty of her face and form. Never had she beheld anything so exquisitely beautiful; and she longed to throw herself into her sister's arms and tell her how she loved her. But Adelaide seemed to think the present company wholly unworthy of her regard; for, after having received the adulation of the gentlemen, as they severally paid her a profusion of compliments upon her appearance, "Desire Tomkins," said she to a footman, "to ask Lady Juliana for the 'Morning Post,' and the second volume of 'Le----,' of the French novel I am reading; and say she shall have it again when I have finished it." "In what different terms people may express the same meaning," thought Mary; "had I been sending a message to my mother, I should have expressed myself quite differently; but no doubt my sister's meaning is the same, though she may not use the same words." The servant returned with the newspaper, and the novel would be sent when it could be found. "Lady Juliana never reads like anybody else," said her daughter; "she is for ever mislaying books. She has lost the first volumes of the two last novels that came from town before I had even seen then." This was uttered in the softest, sweetest tone imaginable, and as if she had been pronouncing a panegyric. Mary was more and more puzzled. "'What can be my sister's meaning here?" thought she. "The words seemed almost to imply censure; but that voice and smile speak the sweetest praise. How truly Mrs. Douglas warned me never to judge of people by their words." At that moment the door opened, and three or four dogs rushed in, followed by Lady Juliana, with a volume of a novel in her hand. Again Mary found herself assailed by a variety of powerful emotions. She attempted to rise; but, pale and breathless, she sank back in her chair. Her agitation was unmarked by her mother, who did not even appear to be sensible of her presence; for, with a graceful bend of her head to the company in general, she approached Adelaide, and putting her lips to her forehead, "How do you do, love? I'm afraid you are very angry with me about that teazing La---I can't conceive where it can be; but here is the third volume, which is much prettier than the second." "I certainly shall not read the third volume before the second," said Adelaide with her usual serenity. "Then I shall order another copy from town, my love; or I daresay I could tell you the story of the second volume: it is not at all interesting, I assure you. Hermilisde, you know--but I forget where the first volume left off."--Then directing her eyes to Mary, who had summoned strength to rise, and was slowly venturing to approach her, she extended a finger towards her. Mary eagerly seized her mother's hand, and pressed it with fervour to her lips; then hid her face on her shoulder to conceal the tears that burst from her eyes. "Absurd, my dear!" said her Ladyship in a peevish tone, as she disengaged herself from her daughter; "you must really get the better of this foolish weakness; these _scènes_ are too much for me. I was most excessively shocked last night, I assure you, and you ought not to have quitted your room to-day." Poor Mary's tears congealed in her eyes at this tender salutation, and she raised her head, as if to as certain whether it really proceeded from her mother; but instead of the angelic vision she had pictured to herself, she beheld a face which, though once handsome, now conveyed no pleasurable feeling to the heart. Late hours, bad temper, and rouge had done much to impair Lady Juliana's beauty. There still remained enough to dazzle a superficial observer; but not to satisfy the eye used to the expression of all the best affections of the soul. Mary almost shrank from the peevish inanity portrayed on her mother's visage, as a glance of the mind contrasted it with the mild eloquence of Mrs. Douglas's countenance; and, abashed and disappointed, she remained mournfully silent. "Where is Dr. Redgill?" demanded Lady Juliana of the company in general. "He has got scent of a turtle at Admiral Yellowchops," answered Mr. P. "How vastly provoking," rejoined her Ladyship, "that he should be out of the way the only time I have wished to see him since he came to the house!" "Who is this favoured individual whose absence you are so pathetically lamenting, Julia?" asked Lord Courtland, as he indolently sauntered into the room. "That disagreeable Dr. Redgill. He has gone somewhere to eat turtle at the very time I wished to consult him about--" "The propriety of introducing a new niece to your Lordship," said Lady Emily, as, with affected solemnity, she introduced Mary to her uncle. Lady Juliana frowned--the Earl smiled--saluted his niece--hoped she had recovered the fatigue of the journey--remarked it was very cold; and then turned to a parrot, humming "Pretty Poll, say," etc. Such was Mary's first introduction to her family; and those only who have felt what it was to have the genial current of their souls chilled by neglect or changed by unkindness can sympathise in the feelings of wounded affection--when the overflowings of a generous heart are confined within the narrow limits of its own bosom, and the offerings of love are rudely rejected by the hand most dear to us. Mary was too much intimidated by her mother's manner towards her to give way, in her presence, to the emotions that agitated her; but she followed her sister's steps as she quitted the room, and, throwing her arms around her, sobbed in a voice almost choked with the excess of her feelings, "My sister, love me!-oh! love me!" But Adelaide's heart, seared by selfishness and vanity, was incapable of loving anything in which self had no share; and for the first time in her life she felt awkward and embarrassed. Her sister's streaming eyes and supplicating voice spoke a language to which she was a stranger; for art is ever averse to recognise the accents of nature. Still less is it capable of replying to them; and Adelaide could only wonder at her sister's agitation, and think how unpleasant it was; and say something about overcome, and _eau-de-luce,_ and composure; which was all lost upon Mary as she hung upon her neck, every feeling wrought to its highest tone by the complicated nature of those emotions which swelled her heart. At length, making an effort to regain her composure, "Forgive me, my sister!" said she. "This is very foolish--to weep when I ought to rejoice--and I do rejoice--and I know I shall be so happy yet!" but in spite of the faint smile that accompanied her words, tears again burst from her eyes. "I am sure I shall have infinite pleasure in your society," replied Adelaide, with her usual sweetness; and placidity, as she replaced a ringlet in its proper position; "but I have unluckily an engagement at this time. You will, however, be at no loss for amusement; you will find musical instruments there," pointing to an adjacent apartment; "and here are new publications, and _portefeuilles_ of drawings you will perhaps like to look over;" and so saying she disappeared. "Musical instruments and new publications!" repeated Mary mechanically to herself. "What have I to do with them? Oh for one kind word from my mother's lips!--one kind glance from my sister's eye!" And she remained overwhelmed with the weight of those emotions, which, instead of pouring into the hearts of others, she was compelled to concentrate in her own. Her mournful reveries were interrupted by her kind friend Lady Emily; but Mary deemed her sorrow too sacred to be betrayed even to her, and therefore rallying her spirits, she strove to enter into those schemes of amusement suggested by her cousin for passing the day. But she found herself unable for such continued exertion; and, hearing a large party was expected to dinner, she retired, in spite of Lady Emily's remonstrance, to her own apartment, where she sought a refuge from her thoughts in writing to her friends at Glenfern. Lady Juliana looked in upon her as she passed to dinner. She was in a better humour, for she had received a new dress which was particularly becoming, as both her maid and her glass had attested. Again Mary's heart bounded towards the being to whom she owed her birth; yet afraid to give utterance to her feelings, she could only regard her with silent admiration, till a moment's consideration converted that into a less pleasing feeling, as she observed for the first time that her mother wore no mourning. Lady Juliana saw her astonishment, and, little guessing the cause, was flattered by it. "Your style of dress is very obsolete, my dear," said she, as she contrasted the effect of her own figure and her daughter's in a large mirror; "and there's no occasion for you to wear black here. I shall desire my woman to order some things for you; though perhaps there won't be much occasion, as your stay here is to be short; and of course you won't think of going out at all. _Apropos,_ you will find it dull here by yourself, won't you? I shall leave you my darling Blanche for companion," kissing a little French lap-dog as she laid it in Mary's lap; "only you must be very careful of her, and coax her, and be very, very good to her; for I would not have my sweetest Blanche vexed, not for the world!" And, with another long and tender salute to her dog, and a "Good-bye, my dear!" to her daughter, she quitted her to display her charms to a brilliant drawing-room, leaving Mary to solace herself in her solitary chamber with the whines of a discontented lap-dog. CHAPTER II. "C'est un personnage illustre dans son genre, et qui a porté le talent de se bien nourrir jusques ou il pouvoit aller; . . . il ne semble né que pour la digestion."--LA BRUYERE. IN every season of life grief brings its own peculiar antidote along with it. The buoyancy of youth soon repels its deadening weight, the firmness of manhood resists its weakening influence, the torpor of old age is insensible to its most acute pangs. In spite of the disappointment she had experienced the preceding day, Mary arose the following morning with fresh hopes of happiness springing in her heart. "What a fool I was," thought she, "to view so seriously what, after all, must be merely difference of manner; and how illiberal to expect every one's manners should accord exactly with my ideas; but now that I have got over the first impression, I daresay I shall find everybody quite amiable and delightful!" And Mary quickly reasoned herself into the belief that she only could have been to blame. With renovated spirits she therefore joined her cousin, and accompanied her to the breakfasting saloon. The visitors had all departed, but Dr. Redgill had returned and seemed to be at the winding up of a solitary but voluminous meal. He was a very tall corpulent man, with a projecting front, large purple nose, and a profusion of chin. "Good morning, ladies," mumbled he with a full mouth, as he made a feint of half-rising from his chair. "Lady Emily, your servant--Miss Douglas, I presume--hem! allow me to pull the bell for your Ladyship," as he sat without stirring hand or foot; then, after it was done--"'Pon my honour, Lady Emily, this is not using me well Why did you not desire me? And you are so nimble, I defy any man to get the start of you." "I know you have been upon hard service, Doctor, and therefore I humanely wished to spare you any additional fatigue," replied Lady Emily. "Fatigue, phoo! I'm sure I mind fatigue as little as any man; besides it's really nothing to speak of. I have merely rode from my friend Admiral Yellowchops' this morning." "I hope you passed a pleasant day there yesterday?" "So, so--very so, so," returned the Doctor drily. "Only so, so, and a turtle in the case!" exclaimed Lady Emily. "Phoo!--as to that, the turtle was neither here nor there. I value turtle as little as any man. You may be sure it wasn't for that I went to see my old friend Yellowchops. It happened, indeed, that there _was_ a turtle, and a very well dressed one too; but where five and thirty people (one half of them ladies, who, of course, are always helped first) sit down to dinner, there's an end of all rational happiness in my opinion." "But at a turtle feast you have surely something much better. You know you may have rational happiness any day over a beef-steak." "I beg your pardon--that's not such an easy matter. I can assure you it is a work of no small skill to dress a beef-steak handsomely; and, moreover, to eat it in perfection a man must eat it by himself. If once you come to exchange words over it, it is useless. I once saw the finest steak I ever clapped my eyes upon completely ruined by one silly scoundrel asking another if he liked fat. If he liked fat!--what a question for one rational being to ask another! The fact is, a beef-steak is like a woman's reputation, if once it is breathed upon it's good for nothing!" "One of the stories with which my nurse used to amuse my childhood," said Mary, "was that of having seen an itinerant conjuror dress a beef-steak on his tongue." The Doctor suspended the morsel he was carrying to his mouth, and for the first time regarded Mary with looks of unfeigned admiration. "'Pon my honour, and that was as clever a trick as ever I heard of! You are a wonderful people, you Scotch--a very wonderful people--but, pray, was she at any pains to examine the fellow's tongue?" "I imagine not," said Mary; "I suppose the love of science was not strong enough to make her run the risk of burning her fingers." "It's a thousand pities," said the Doctor, as he dropped his chin with an air of disappointment. "I am surprised none of your Scotch _scavans_ got hold of the fellow and squeezed the secret out of him. It might have proved an important discovery--a very important discovery; and your Scotch are not apt to let anything escape them--a very searching, shrewd people as ever I knew--and that's the only way to arrive at knowledge. A man must be of a stirring mind if he expects to do good." "A poor woman below wishes to se you, sir," said a servant. "These poor women are perfect pests to society," said the Doctor, as his nose assumed a still darker hue; "there is no resting upon one's seat for them--always something the matter! The burn, and bruise, and hack themselves and their brats, one would really think, on purpose to give trouble." "I have not the least doubt of it," said Lady Emily; "they must find your sympathy so soothing." "As to that, Lady Emily, if you know as much about poor women as I do, you wouldn't think so much of them as you do. Take my word for it--they are one and all of them a very greedy, ungrateful set, and require to be kept at a distance." "And also to be kept waiting. As poor people's time is their only wealth, I observe you generally make them pay a pretty large fee in that way." "That is really not what I would have expected from you, Lady Emily. I must take the liberty to say your Ladyship does me the greatest injustice. You must be sensible how ready I am to fly," rising as if he had been glued to his chair, "when there is any real danger. I'm sure it was only last week I got up as soon as I had swallowed my dinner to see a man who had fallen down in a fit; and now I am going to this woman, who, I daresay, has nothing the matter with her, before my breakfast is well down my throat." "Who is that gentleman?" asked Mary, as the Doctor at length, with much reluctance, shuffled out of the room. "He is a sort of medical aid-de-camp of papa's," answered Lady Emily; "who, for the sake of good living, has got himself completely domesticated here. He is vulgar, selfish, and _gourmand_, as you must already have discovered; but these are accounted his greatest perfections, as papa, like all indolent people, must be diverted--and _that_ he never is by genteel, sensible people. He requires something more _piquant,_and nothing fatigues him so much as the conversation of a commonplace, sensible man--one who has the skill to keep his foibles out of sight. Now what delights him in Dr. Redgill, there is no _retenu_--any child who runs may read his character at a glance." "It certainly does not require much penetration," said Mary, "to discover the Doctor's master-passion; love of ease and self-indulgence seem to be the pre-dominant features of his mind; and he looks as if, when he sat in an arm-chair, with his toes on the fender and his hands crossed, he would not have an idea beyond 'I wonder what we shall have for dinner to-day.'" "I'm glad to hear you say so, Miss Douglas," said the Doctor, catching the last words as he entered the room, and taking them to be the spontaneous effusions of the speaker's own heart; "I rejoice to hear you say so. Suppose we send for the bill of fare,"--pulling the bell; and then to the servant, who answered the summons, "Desire Grillade to send up his bill--Miss Douglas wishes to see it." "Young ladies are much more house wifely in Scotland than they are in this country," continued the Doctor, seating himself as close as possible to Mary,--"at least they were when I knew Scotland; but that's not yesterday, and it's much changed since then, I daresay. I studied physic in Edinburgh, and went upon a _tower _through the Highlands. 'I was very much pleased with what I saw, I assure you. Fine country in some respects--nature has been very liberal." Mary's heart leapt within her at hearing her dear native land praised even by Dr. Redgill, and her conscience smote her for the harsh and hasty censure she had passed upon him. "One who can admire the scenery of the Highlands," thought she, "must have a mind. It has always been observed that only persons of taste were capable of appreciating the peculiar charms of mountain scenery. A London citizen, or a Lincolnshire grazier, sees nothing but deformity in the sublime works of nature," _ergo,_ reasoned Mary, "Dr. Redgill must be of a more elevated way of thinking than I had supposed." The entrance of Lady Juliana prevented her expressing the feelings that were upon her lips; but she thought what pleasure she would have in resuming the delightful theme at another opportunity. After slightly noticing her daughter, and carefully adjusting her favourites, Lady Juliana began:-- "I am anxious to consult you, Dr. Redgill, upon the state of this young person's health.--You have been excessively ill, my dear, have you not? (My sweetest Blanche, do be quiet!) You had a cough, I think, and everything that was bad.--And as her friends in Scotland have sent her to me for a short time, entirely on account of her health (My charming, Frisk, your spirits are really too much!), I think it quite proper that she should be confined to her own apartment during the winter, that she may get quite well and strong against spring. As to visiting or going into company, that of course must be quite out of the question. You can tell Dr. Redgill, my dear, all about your complaints yourself." Mary tried to articulate, but her feelings rose almost to suffocation, and the words died upon her lips. "Your Ladyship confounds me," said the Doctor, pulling out his spectacles, which, after duly wiping, he adjusted on his nose, and turned their beams full on Mary's face--"I really never should have guessed there was anything the matter with the young lady. She does look a _leettle_ delicate, to be sure-changing colour, too--but hand cool--eye clear--pulse steady, a _leettle_ impetuous, but that's nothing, and the appetite good. I own I was surprised to see you cut so good a figure after the delicious meals you have been accustomed to in the North: you must find it miserable picking here. An English breakfast," glancing with contempt at the eggs, muffins, toast, preserves, etc. etc., he had collected round him, "is really a most insipid meal. If I did not make a rule of rising early and taking regular exercise, I doubt very much if I should be able to swallow a mouthful-there's nothing to whet the appetite here; and it's the same everywhere; as Yellowchops says, our breakfasts are a disgrace to England. One would think the whole nation was upon a regimen of tea and toast--from the Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, nothing but tea and toast. Your Ladyship must really acknowledge the prodigious advantage the Scotch possess over us in that respect." "I thought the breakfasts, like everything else in Scotland, extremely disgusting," replied her Ladyship, with indignation. "Ha! well, that really amazes me. The people I give up--they are dirty and greedy--the country, too, is a perfect mass of rubbish, and the dinners not fit for dogs--the cookery, I mean; as to the materials, they are admirable. But the breakfasts! That's what redeems the land; and every country has its own peculiar excellence. In Argyleshire you have the Lochfine herring, fat, luscious, and delicious, just out of the water, falling to pieces with its own richness--melting away like butter in your mouth. In Aberdeenshire you have the Finnan haddo' with a flavour all its own, vastly relishing--just salt enough to be _piquant,_ without parching you up with thirst. In Perthshire there is the Tay salmon, kippered, crisp, and juicy--a very magnificent morsel--a _leettle_ heavy, but that's easily counteracted by a teaspoonful of the Athole whisky. In other places you have the exquisite mutton of the country made into hams of a most delicate flavour; flour scones, soft and white; oatcake, thin and crisp; marmalade and jams of every description; and--but I beg pardon--your Ladyship was upon the subject of this young lady's health. 'Pon my honour! I can see little the matter. We were just going to look over the bill together when your Ladyship entered. I see it begins with that eternal _soupe_ _santé,_ and that paltry _potage-an-riz._ This is the second day within a week Monsieur Grillade has thought fit to treat us with them; and it's a fortnight yesterday since I have seen either oyster or turtle soup upon the table. 'Pon my honour! such inattention is infamous. I know Lord Courtland detests _soupe_ _santé, _or, what's the same thing, he's quite indifferent to it; for I take indifference and dislike to be much the same. A man's indifference to his dinner-is a serious thing, and so I shall let Monsieur Grillade know." And the Doctor's chin rose and fell like the waves of the sea. "What is the name of the physician at Bristol who is so celebrated for consumptive complaints?" asked Lady Juliana of Adelaide. "I shall send for him; he is the only person I have any reliance upon. I know he always recommends confinement for consumption." Tears dropped from Mary's eyes. Lady Juliana regarded her with surprise and severity. "How very tiresome! I really can't stand these perpetual _scènes._ Adelaide, my love, pull the bell for my _eau-de-luce._ Dr. Redgill, place the screen there. This room is insufferably hot. My dogs will literally be roasted alive;" and her Ladyship fretted about in all the perturbation of ill-humour. "'Pon my honour! I don't think the room hot," said the Doctor, who, from a certain want of tact and capacity of intellect, never comprehended the feelings of others. "I declare I have felt it much hotter when your Ladyship has complained of the cold; but there's no accounting for people's feelings. If you would move your seat a _leettle_ this way, I think you would be cooler; and as to your daughter--" "I have repeatedly desired, Dr. Redgill, that you will not use these familiar appellations when you address me or any of my family," interrupted Lady Juliana with haughty indignation. "I beg pardon," said the Doctor, nowise discomposed at this rebuff. "Well, with regard to Miss--Miss--this young lady, I assure your Ladyship, you need be under no apprehensions on her account. She's a _leettle_ nervous, that's all--take her about by all means--all young ladies love to go about and see sights. Show her the pump-room, and the ball-room, and the shops, and the rope-dancers, and the wild beasts, and there's no fear of her. I never recommend confinement to man, woman, or child. It destroys the appetite--and our appetite is the best part of us. What would we be without appetites? Miserable beings! worse than the beasts of the field!" And away shuffled the Doctor to admonish Monsieur Grillade on the iniquity of neglecting this the noblest attribute of man. "It appears to me excessively extraordinary," said Lady Juliana, addressing Mary, "that Mrs. Douglas should have alarmed me so much about your health, when it seems there's nothing the matter with you. She certainly showed very little regard for my feelings. I can't understand it; and I must say, if you are not ill, I have been most excessively ill-used by your Scotch friends." And, with an air of great indignation, her Ladyship swept out of the room, regardless of the state into which she had thrown her daughter. Poor Mary's feelings were now at their climax, and she gave way to all the repressed agony that swelled her heart. Lady Emily, who had been amusing herself at the other end of the saloon, and had heard nothing of what had passed, flew towards her at sight, of her suffering, and eagerly demanded of Adelaide the cause. "I really don't know," answered Adelaide, lifting her beautiful eyes from her book with the greatest composure; "Lady Juliana is always cross of a morning." "Oh no!" exclaimed Mary, trying to regain her composure, "the fault is mine. I--I have offended my mother, I know not how. Tell me, oh tell me, how I can obtain her forgiveness!" "Obtain her forgiveness!" repeated Lady Emily indignantly, "for what?" "Alas! I know not; but in some way I have displeased my mother; her looks--her words--her manner--all tell me how dissatisfied she is with me; while to my sister, and even to her very dogs-----Here Mary's agitation choked her utterance. "If you expect to be treated like a dog, you will certainly be disappointed," said Lady Emily. "I wonder Mrs. Douglas did not warn you of what you had to expect. She must have known something of Lady Juliana's ways; and it would have been as well had you been better prepared to encounter them." Mary looked hurt, and making an effort to conquer her emotion, she said, "Mrs. Douglas never spoke, of my mother with disrespect; but she did warn me against expecting too much from her affection. She said I had been too long estranged from her to have retained my place in her heart; but still--" "You could not foresee the reception you have me with? Nor I neither. Did you, Adelaide?' "Lady Juliana is sometimes so odd," answered her daughter in her sweetest tone, "that I really am seldom surprised at anything she does; but all this _fracas _appears to me perfectly absurd, as nobody minds anything she says." "Impossible!" exclaimed Mary; "my duty must ever be to reverence my mother. My study should be to please her, if I only knew how; and oh! would she but suffer me to love her!" Adelaide regarded her sister for a moment with a look of surprise; then rose and left the room, humming an Italian air. Lady Emily remained with her cousin, but she was a bad comforter. Her indignation against the oppressor was always much stronger than her sympathy with the oppressed; and she would have been more in her element scolding the mother than soothing the daughter. But Mary had not been taught to trust to mortals weak as herself for support in the hour of trial. She knew her aid must come from a higher source; and in solitude she sought for consolation. "This must be all for my good," sighed she, "else it would not be. I had drawn too bright a picture of happiness; already it is blotted out with my tears. I must set about replacing it with one of soberer colours." Alas! Mary knew not how many a fair picture of human felicity had shared the same fate as hers! CHAPTER III. "They were in sooth a most enchanting train; . . skilful to unite With evil good, and strew with pleasure pain." _Castle of Indolence._ IN writing to her maternal friend Mary did not follow the mode usually adopted by young ladies of the heroic cast, viz. that of giving a minute and circumstantial detail of their own complete wretchedness, and abusing, in terms highly sentimental, every member of the family with whom they are associated. Mary knew that to breathe a hint of her own unhappiness would be to embitter the peace of those she loved; and she therefore strove to conceal from their observation the disappointment she had experienced. Many a sigh was heaved, however, and many a tear was wiped away ere a letter could be composed that would carry pleasure to the dear group at Glenfern. She could say nothing of her mother's tenderness or her sister's affection, but she dwelt upon the elegance of the one and the beauty of the other. She could not boast of the warmth of her uncle's reception, but she praised his good-humour, and enlarged upon Lady Emily's kindness and attention. Even Dr. Redgill's admiration of Scotch breakfasts was given as a _bonne bouche_ for her good old aunts. "I declare," said Miss Grizzy, as she ended her fifth perusal of the letter, "Mary must be a happy creature, everybody must allow; indeed I never heard it disputed that Lady Juliana is a most elegant being; and I daresay she is greatly improved since we saw her, for you know that is a long time ago." "The mind may improve after a certain age," replied Jacky, with one of her wisest looks, "but I doubt very much if the person does." "If the inside had been like the out, there would have been no need for improvement," observed Nicky. "I'm sure you are both perfectly right," resumed the sapient Grizzy, "and I have not the least doubt but that our dear niece is a great deal wiser than when we knew her; nobody can deny but she is a great deal older; and you know people always grow wiser as they grow older, of course." "They _ought_ to do it," said Jacky, with emphasis. "But there's no fool like an old fool," quoth Nicky. "What a delightful creature our charming niece Adelaide must be, from Mary's account," said Grizzy; "only I can't conceive how her eyes come to be black. I'm sure there's not a black eye amongst us. The Kilnacroish family are black, to be sure; and Kilnacroish's great-grandmother was first cousin, once removed, to our grandfather's aunt, by our mother's side. It's wonderful the length that resemblances run in some old families; and I really can't account for our niece Adelaide's black eyes naturally any other way than just through the Kilnacroish family; for I'm quite convinced it's from us she takes them,--children always take their eyes from their father's side; everybody knows that Becky's, and Bella's, and Baby's are all as like their poor father's as they can stare." "There's no accounting for the varieties of the human species," said Jacky. "And like's an ill mark," observed Nicky. "And only think of her being so much taller than Mary, and twins! I declare it's wonderful--I should have thought, indeed I never doubted, that they would have been exactly the same size. And such a beautiful colour too, when we used to think Mary rather pale; it's very unaccountable!" "You forget," said Jacky, who had not forgot the insult offered to her nursing system eighteen years before; "you forget that I always predicted what would happen." "I never knew any good come of change," said Nicky. "I'm sure that's very true," rejoined Grizzy; "and we have great reason to thank our stars that Mary is not a perfect dwarf; which I really thought she would have been for long, till she took a shooting,--summer was a year." "But she'll shoot no more," said Jacky, with a shake of the head that might have vied with Jove's imperial nod; "England's not the place for shooting." "The Englishwomen are all poor droichs," said Nicky, who had seen three in the course of her life. "It's a great matter to us all, however, and to herself too, poor thing, that Mary should be so happy," resumed Grizzy. "I'm sure I don't know what she would have done if Lord Courtland had been an ill-tempered harsh man, which, you know, he might just as easily have been; and it would really have been very hard upon poor Mary--and Lady Emily such a sweet creature too! I'm sure we must all allow we have the greatest reason to be thankful." "I don't know," said Jacky; "Mary was petted enough before, I wish she may have a head to stand any more." "She'll be ten times nicer than ever," quoth Nicky. "There is some reason, to be sure, that can't be denied, to be afraid of that; at the same time, Mary has a great deal of sense of her own when she chooses; and it's a great matter for her, and indeed for all of us, that she is under the eye of such a sensible worthy man as that Dr. Redgill. Of course we may be sure Lord Courtland will keep a most elegant table, and have a great variety of sweet things, which are certainly very tempting for young people; but I have no doubt but Dr. Redgill will look after Mary, and see that she doesn't eat too many of them." "Dr. Redgill must be a very superior man," pronounced Jacky, in her most magisterial manner. "If I could hear of a private opportunity," exclaimed Nicky, in a transport of generosity, "I would send him one of our hams, and a nice little pig [1] of butter--the English are all great people for butter." The proposal was hailed with rapture by both sisters in a breath; and it was finally settled that to those tender pledges of Nicky's, Grizzy should add a box of Lady Maclaughlan's latest invented pills, while Miss Jacky was to compose the epistle that was to accompany them. The younger set of aunts were astonished that Mary had said nothing about lovers and offers of marriage, as they had always considered going to England as synonymous with going to be married. To Mrs. Douglas's more discerning eye, Mary's happiness did not appear in so dazzling a light as to the weaker optics of her aunts. "It is not like my Mary," thought she, "to rest so much on mere external advantages; surely her warm affectionate heart cannot be satisfied with the _grace_ of a mother and the _beauty_ of a sister. These she might admire in a stranger; but where we seek for happiness we better prize more homely attributes. Yet Mary is so open and confiding, I think she could not have concealed from me had she experienced a disappointment." Mrs. Douglas was not aware of the effect of her own practical lessons; and that, while she was almost unconsciously practising the quiet virtues of patience, and fortitude, and self-denial, and unostentatiously sacrificing her own wishes to promote the comfort of others, her example, like a kindly dew, was shedding its silent influence on the embryo blossoms of her pupil's heart. [1] Jar. CHAPTER IV. ". . . So the devil prevails often; _opponit nubem,_ he claps cloud between; some little objection; a stranger is come; or my head aches; or the church is too cold; or I have letters to write; or I am not disposed; or it is not yet time; or the time is past; these, and such as these, are the clouds the devil claps between heaven and us; but these are such impotent objections, that they were as soon confuted, as pretended, by all men that are not fools, or professed enemies of religion." --JEREMY TAYLOR. LADY Juliana had in vain endeavoured to obtain a sick certificate for her daughter, that would have authorised her consigning her to the oblivion of her own apartment. The physicians whom she consulted all agreed, for once, in recommending a totally different system to be pursued; and her displeasure, in consequence, was violently excited against the medical tribe in general, and Dr. Redgill in particular. For that worthy she had indeed always entertained a most thorough contempt and aversion; for he was poor, ugly, and vulgar, and these were the three most deadly sins in her calendar. The object of her detestation was, however, completely insensible to its effects. The Doctor, like Achilles, was vulnerable but in one part, and over that she could exercise no control. She had nothing to do with the _ménage_--possessed no influence over Lord Courtland, nor authority over Monsieur Grillade. She differed from himself as to the dressing of certain dishes; and, in short, he summed up her character in one emphatic sentence, that in his idea conveyed severer censure than all that Pope or Young ever wrote--" I don't think she has the taste of her mouth!" Thus thwarted in her scheme, Lady Juliana's dislike to her daughter rather increased than diminished; and it was well for Mary that lessons of forbearance had been early infused into her mind; for her spirit was naturally high, and would have revolted from the tyranny and injustice with which she was treated had she not been taught the practical duties of Christianity, and that "patience, with all its appendages, is the sum total of all our duty that is proper to the day of sorrow." Not that Mary sought, by a blind compliance with all her mother's follies and caprices, to ingratiate herself into her favour--even the motive she would have deemed insufficient to have sanctified the deed; and the only arts she employed to win a place in her parent's heart were ready obedience, unvarying sweetness, and uncomplaining submission. Although Mary possessed none of the sour bigotry of a narrow mind, she was yet punctual in the discharge of her religious duties; and the Sunday following her arrival, as they sat at breakfast, she inquired of her cousin at what time the church service began. "I really am not certain--I believe it is late," replied her cousin carelessly. "But why do you ask?' "Because I wish to be there in proper time." "But we scarcely ever go--never, indeed, to the parish church--and we are rather distant from any other; so you must say your prayers at home." "I would certainly prefer going to church," said Mary. "Going to church!" exclaimed Dr. Redgill in amazement. "I wonder what makes people so keen of going to church! I'm sure there's little good to be got there. For my part, I declare I would just as soon think of going into my grave. Take my word for it, churches and churchyards are rather too nearly related." "In such a day as this," said Mary, "so dry and sunny, I am sure there can be no danger." "Take your own way, Miss Mary," said the Doctor; "but I think it my duty to let you know my opinion of churches. I look upon them as extremely prejudicial to the health. They are invariably either too hot or too cold; you are either stewed or starved in them; and, till some improvement takes place, I assure you my foot shall never enter one of them. In fact, they are perfect receptacles of human infirmities. I can tell you one of your church-going ladies at a glance; they have all rheumatisms in their shoulders, and colds in their heads, and swelled faces. Besides it's a poor country church--there's nothing to be seen after you do go." "I assure you Lady Juliana will be excessively annoyed if you go," said Lady Emily, as Mary rose to leave the room. "Surely my mother cannot be displeased at my attending church!" said Mary in astonishment. "Yes, she can, and most certainly will. She never goes herself now, since she had a quarrel with Dr. Barlow, the clergyman; and she can't bear any of the family to attend him." "And you have my sanction for staying away, Miss Mary," added the Doctor. "Is he a man of bad character?" asked Mary, as she stood irresolute whether to proceed. "Quite the reverse. He is a very good man; but he was scandalised at Lady Juliana's bringing her dogs to church one day, and wrote her what she conceived a most insolent letter about it. But here come your lady-mamma and the culprits in question." "Your Ladyship is just come in time to settle a dispute here," said the Doctor, anxious to turn her attention from a hot muffin, which had just been brought in, and which he meditated appropriating to himself: "I have said all I can--(Was you looking at the toast, Lady Emily?)--I must now leave it to your Ladyship to convince this young lady of the folly of going to church." The Doctor gained his point. The muffin was upon his own plate, while Lady Juliana directed her angry look towards her daughter. "Who talks of going to church?" demanded she. Mary gently expressed her wish to be permitted to attend divine service. "I won't permit it. I don't approve of girls going about by themselves. It is vastly improper, and I won't hear of it." "It is the only place I shall ask to go to," said Mary timidly; "but I have always been accustomed to attend church, and---" "That is a sufficient reason for my choosing that you should not attend it here. I won't suffer a Methodist in the house." "I assure you the Methodists are gaining ground very fast," said the Doctor, with his mouth full. 'Pon my soul, I think it's very alarming!" "Pray, what is so alarming in the apprehension? asked Lady Emily. "What is so alarming! 'Pon my honour, Lady Emily, I'm astonished to hear you ask such a question!"--muttering to himself, "zealots--fanatics-- enthusiasts--bedlamites! I'm sure everybody knows what Methodists are!" "There has been quite enough said upon the subject," said Lady Juliana. "There are plenty of sermons in the house, Miss Mary," continued the Doctor, who, like many other people, thought he was always doing a meritorious action when he could dissuade anybody from going to church. "I saw a volume somewhere not long ago; and at any rate there's the Spectator, if you want Sunday's reading--some of the papers there are as good as any sermon you'll get from Dr. Barlow." Mary, with fear and hesitation, made another attempt to overcome her mother's prejudice, but in vain. "I desire I may hear no more about it!" cried she, raising her voice. "The clergyman is a most improper person. I won't suffer any of my family to attend his church; and therefore, once for all, I won't hear another syllable on the subject." This was said in a tone and manner not to be disputed, and Mary felt her resolution give way before the displeasure of her mother. A contest of duties was new to her, and she could not all at once resolve upon fulfilling one duty at the expense of another. "Besides," thought she, "my mother thinks she is in the right. Perhaps, by degrees, I may bring her to think otherwise; and it is surely safer to try to conciliate than to determine to oppose." But another Sabbath came, and Mary found she had made no progress in obtaining the desired permission. She therefore began seriously to commune with her own heart as to the course she ought to pursue. The commandment of "Honour thy father and thy mother" had been deeply imprinted on her mind, and few possessed higher notions of filial reverence; but there was another precept which also came to her recollection. "Whosoever loveth father and mother more than me cannot be my disciple." "But I may honour and obey my parent without loving her more than my Saviour," argued she with herself, in hopes of lulling her conscience by this reflection. "But again," thought she, "the Scripture saith, 'He that keepeth my commandments, he it is that loveth me.'" Then she felt the necessity of owning that if she obeyed the commands of her mother, when in opposition to the will of her God, she gave one of the Scripture proofs of either loving or fearing her parent upon earth more than her Father which is in heaven. But Mary, eager to reconcile impossibilities--viz. the will of an ungodly parent with the holy commands of her Maker--thought now of another argument to calm her conscience. "The Scripture," said she, "says nothing positive about attending public worship; and, as Lady Emily says, I may say my prayers just as well at home." But the passages of Scripture were too deeply imprinted on her mind to admit of this subterfuge. "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together." "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there will I be in the midst of them," etc. etc. But alas! two or three never were gathered together at Beech Park, except upon parties of pleasure, games of hazard, or purposes of conviviality. The result of Mary's deliberations was a firm determination to do what she deemed her duty, however painful. And she went in search of Lady Emily, hoping to prevail upon her to use her influence with Lady Juliana to grant the desired permission; or, should she fail in obtaining it, she trusted her resolution would continue strong enough to enable her have her mother's displeasure in this act of conscientious disobedience. She met her cousin, with her bonnet on, prepared to go out. "Dear Lady Emily," said she, "let me entreat of you to use your influence with my mother to persuade her to allow me to go to church." "In the first place," answered her cousin, "you may know that I have no influence;--in the second, that Lady Juliana is never to be persuaded into any thing;--in the third, I really can't suppose you are serious in thinking it a matter of such vast moment whether or not you go to church." "Indeed I do," answered Mary earnestly. "I have been taught to consider it as such; and----" "Pshaw! nonsense! these are some of your stiff-necked Presbyterian notions. I shall really begin to suspect you are a Methodist and yet you are not at all like one." "Pray, tell me," said Mary, with a smile, "what are your ideas of a Methodist?" "Oh! thank heaven, I know little about them!--almost as little as Dr. Redgill, who, I verily believe, could scarcely tell the difference betwixt a Catholic and a Methodist, except that the one dances and t'other prays. But I am rather inclined to believe it is a sort of a scowling, black-browed, hard-favoured creature, with its greasy hair combed straight upon its flat forehead, and that twirls its thumbs, and turns up its eyes, and speaks through its nose and, in short, is everything that you are not, except in this matter--of going to church. So, to avert all these evil signs from falling upon you, I shall make a point of your keeping company with me for the rest of the day." Again Mary became serious, as she renewed her entreaties to her cousin to intercede with Lady Juliana that she might be allowed to attend _any_ church. "Not for kingdoms!" exclaimed she. "Her Ladyship is in one of her most detestable humours to-day; not that I should mind that, if it was anything of real consequence that I had to compass for you. A ball, for instance--I should certainly stand by you there but I am really not so fond of mischief as to enrage her for nothing!" "Then I fear I must go to church without it," said Mary in a melancholy tone. "If you are to go at all, it must certainly be without it. And here is the carriage--get your bonnet, and come along with me. You shall at least have a sight of the church." Mary went to put on her pelisse; and, descending to join her cousin in the drawing-room, she found her engaged in an argument with Dr. Redgill. How it had commenced did not appear; but the Doctor's voice was raised as if to bring it to a decided termination. "The French, madam, in spite of your prejudices, are a very superior nation to us. Their skill and knowledge are both infinitely higher. Every man in France is a first-rate cook--in fact, they are a nation of cooks; and one of our late travellers assures us that they have discovered three hundred methods of dressing eggs, for one thing." "That is just two hundred and ninety-nine ways more than enough," said Lady Emily "give me a plain boiled egg, and I desire no other variety of the produce of a hen till it takes the form of a chicken." Dr. Redgill lowered his eyebrows and drew up his chin, but disdained to waste more arguments upon so tasteless a being. "To talk sense to a woman is like feeding chickens upon turtle soup," thought he to himself. As for Lady Juliana, she exulted in the wise and judicious manner in which she had exercised her authority, and felt her consequence greatly increased by a public display of it--power being an attributes he was very seldom invested with now. Indeed, to do her Ladyship justice, she was most feelingly alive to the duty due to parents, though that such a commandment existed seemed quite unknown to her till she became a mother. But she made ample amends for former deficiencies now; as to hear her expatiate on the subject, one would have deemed it the only duty necessary to be practised, either by Christian or heathen, and that, like charity, it comprehended every virtue, and was a covering for every sin. But there are many more sensible people than her Ladyship who entertain the same sentiments, and, by way of variety, reverse the time and place of their duties. When they are children, they make many judicious reflections on the duties of parents; when they become parents, they then acquire a wonderful insight into the duties of children. In the same manner husbands and wives are completely alive to the duties incumbent upon each other, and the most ignorant servant is fully instructed in the duty of a master. But we shall leave Lady Juliana to pass over the duties of parents, and ponder upon those of children, while we follow Lady Emily and Mary in their airing. The road lay by the side of a river; and though Mary's taste had been formed upon the wild romantic scenery of the Highlands, she yet looked with pleasure on the tamer beauties of an English landscape. And though accustomed to admire even "rocks where the snowflake reposes;" she had also taste, though of a less enthusiastic kind, for the "gay landscapes and gardens of roses," which, in this more genial clime, bloomed even under winter's sway. The carriage drove smoothly along, and the sound of the church bell fell at intervals on the ear, "in cadence sweet, now dying all away;" and, at the holy sound, Mary's heart flew back to the peaceful vale and primitive kirk of Lochmarlie, where all her happy Sabbath had been spent. The view now opened upon the village church, beautifully situated on the slope of a green hill. Parties of straggling villagers in their holiday suits were descried in all directions, some already assembled in the churchyard, others traversing the neat footpaths that led through the meadows. But to Mary's eyes the well-dressed English rustic, trudging along the smooth path, was a far less picturesque object than the barefooted Highland girl, bounding over trackless heath-covered hills; and the well-preserved glossy blue coat seemed a poor substitute for the varied drapery of the graceful plaid. So much do early associations tincture all our future ideas. They had now reached the church, and as Mary adhered to her resolution of attending divine worship, Lady Emily declared her intention of accompanying her, that she might come in for her share of Lady Juliana's displeasure; but in spite of her levity, the reverend aspect, and meek, yet fervent piety of Dr. Barlow, impressed her with better feelings; and she joined in the service with outward decorum if not with inward devotion. The music consisted of an organ, simply but well played; and to Mary, unaccustomed to any sacred sounds save those twanged through the nose of a Highland _precentor,_ it seemed the music of the spheres. Far different sounds than those of peace and praise awaited her return. Lady Juliana, apprised of this open act of rebellion, was in all the paroxysms incident to a little mind on discovering the impotence of its power. She rejected all attempts at reconciliation; raved about ingratitude and disobedience; declared her determination of sending Mary back to her vulgar Scotch relations one moment--the next protested she should never see those odious Methodists again; then she was to take her to France, and shut her up in a convent, etc., till, after uttering all the incoherences usual with ladies in a passion, she at last succeeded in raving herself into a fit of hysterics. Poor Mary was deeply affected at this (to her) tremendous display of passion. She who had always been used to the mild placidity of Mrs. Douglas, and who had seen her face sometimes clouded with sorrow, but never deformed by anger-what a spectacle! To behold a parent subject to the degrading influence of an ungovernable temper! Her very soul sickened at the sight; and while she wept over her mother's weakness, she prayed that the Power which stayed the ocean's wave would mercifully vouchsafe to still the wilder tempests of human passion. CHAPTER V. "Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain." SHAKESPEARE. IN addition to her mother's implacable wrath and unceasing animadversion Mary found she was looked upon as a sort of alarming character by the whole family. Lord Courtland seemed afraid of being drawn into a religious controversy every time he addressed her. Dr. Redgill retreated at her approach and eyed her askance, as much as to say, "'Pon my honour, a young lady that can fly in her mother's face about such a trifle as going to church is not very safe company." And Adelaide shunned her more than ever, as if afraid of coming in contact with a professed Methodist. Lady Emily, however, remained staunch to her; and though she had her own private misgivings as to her cousin's creed, she yet stoutly defended her from the charge of Methodism, and maintained that, in many respects, Mary was no better than her neighbours. "Well, Mary," cried she, as she entered her room one day with an air of exultation, "here is an opportunity for you to redeem your character. There," throwing down a card, "is an invitation for you to a fancy ball." Mary's heart bounded at the mention of a ball. She had never been at one, and it was pictured in her imagination in all the glowing colours with which youth and inexperience deck untried pleasures. "Oh, how charming!" exclaimed she, with sparkling eyes, "how my aunts Becky and Bella will love to hear an account of a ball! And a fancy ball!--what is that?" Lady Emily explained to her the nature of the entertainment, and Mary was in still greater raptures. "It will be a perfect scene of enchantment, I have no doubt," continued her cousin, "for Lady M. understands giving balls, which is what every one does not; for there are dull balls as well as dull every things else in the world. But come, I have left Lady Juliana and Adelaide in grand debate as to their dresses. We must also hold a cabinet council upon ours. Shall I summon the inimitable Slash to preside?" "The mention of her mother recalled Mary's thoughts from the festive scene to which they had already flown. "But are you _quite_ sure," said she, "that I shall have my mother's consent to go?" "Quite the contrary," answered her cousin coolly. "She won't hear of your going. But what signifies that? You could go to church in spite of her, and surely you can't think her consent of much consequence to a ball?" Poor Mary's countenance fell, as the bright vision of her imagination melted into air. "Without my mother's permission," said she, "I shall certainly not think of, or even wish--" with a sigh--"to go to the ball, and if she has already refused it that is enough." Lady Emily regarded her with astonishment. "Pray, is it only on Sundays you make a point of disobeying your mother?" "It is only when I conceive a higher duty is required of me," answered Mary. "Why, I confess I used to think that to honour one's father and mother _was _a duty, till you showed me the contrary. I have to thank you for ridding me of that vulgar prejudice. And now, after setting me such a noble example of independence, you seem to have got a new light on the subject yourself." "My obedience and disobedience both proceed from the same source," answered Mary. "My first duty, I have been taught, is to worship my Maker--my next to obey my mother. My own gratification never can come in competition with either." "Well, I really can't enter into a religious controversy with you; but it seems to me the sin, if it is one, is precisely the same, whether you play the naughty girl in going to one place or another. I can see no difference." "To me it appears very different," said Mary; "and therefore I should be inexcusable were I to choose the evil, believing it to be such." "Say what you will," cried her cousin pettishly, "you never will convince me there can be any harm in disobeying such a mother as yours--so unreasonable--so--" "The Bible makes no exceptions," interrupted Mary gently; "it is not because of the reasonableness of our parents' commands that we are required to obey them, but because it is the will of God." "You certainly are a Methodist--there's no denying it. I have fought some hard battles for you, but I see I must give you up. The thing won't conceal." This was said with such an air of vexation that Mary burst into a fit of laughter. "And yet you are the oddest compound," continued her cousin, "so gay and comical, and so little given to be shocked and scandalised at the wicked ways of others; or to find fault and lecture; or, in short, to do any of the insufferable things that your good people are so addicted to. I really don't know what to think of you." "Think of me as a creature with too many faults of her own to presume to meddle with those of others," replied Mary, smiling at her cousin's perplexity. "Well, if all good people were like you, I do believe I should become a saint myself. If you are right, I must be wrong; but fifty years hence we shall settle that matter with spectacles on nose over our family Bibles. In the meantime the business of the ball-room is much more pressing. We really must decide upon something. Will you choose your own style, or shall I leave it to Madame Trieur to do us up exactly alike?" "You have only to choose for yourself, my dear cousin," answered Mary. "You know I have no interest in it--at least not till I have received my mother's permission." "I have told you already there is no chance of obtaining it. I had a _brouillerie_ with her on the subject before I came to you." "Then I entreat you will not say another word. It is a thing of so little consequence, that I am quite vexed to think that my mother should have been disturbed about it. Dear Lady Emily, if you love me, promise that you will not say another syllable on the subject." "And this is all the thanks I get for my trouble and vexation," exclaimed Lady Emily, angrily; "but the truth is, I believe you think it would be a sin to go to a ball; and as for dancing--oh, shocking! That would be absolute ---. I really can't say the bad word you good people are so fond of using." "I understand your meaning," answered Mary, laughing; "but, indeed, I have no such apprehensions. On the contrary, I am very fond of dancing; so fond, that I have often taken Aunt Nicky for my partner in a Strathspey rather than sit still--and, to confess my weakness, I should like very much to go to a ball." "Then you must and shall go to this one. It is really a pity that you should have enraged Lady Juliana so much by that unfortunate church-going; but for that, I think she might have been managed; and even now, I should not despair, if you would, like a good girl, beg pardon for what is past, and promise never to do so any more." "Impossible!" replied Mary. "You surely cannot be serious in supposing I would barter a positive duty for a trifling amusement?" "Oh, hang duties! they are odious things. And as for your amiable, dutiful, virtuous Goody Two-Shoes characters, I detest them. They never would go down with me, even in the nursery, with all he attractions of a gold watch and coach and six. They were ever my abhorrence, as every species of canting and hypocrisy still is---" Then struck with a sense of her own violence and impetuosity, contrasted with her cousin's meek unreproving manner, Lady Emily threw her arms round her, begging pardon, and assuring her she did not mean her. "If you had," said Mary, returning her embrace, "you would only have told me what I am in some respects. Dull and childish, I know I am; for I am not the same creature I was at Lochmarlie"--and a tear trembled in her eye as she spoke--"and troublesome, I am sure, you have found me." "No, no!" eagerly interrupted Lady Emily; "you are the reverse of all that. You are the picture of my Edward, and everything that is excellent and engaging; and I see by that smile you will go to the ball--there's a darling!" Mary shook her head. "I'll tell you what we can do," cried her persevering patroness; "we can go as masks, and Lady Juliana shall know nothing about it. That will save the scandal of an open revolt or a tiresome dispute. Half the company will be masked; so, if you keep your own secret, nobody will find it out. Come, what characters shall we choose?" "That of Janus, I think, would be the most suitable for me," said Mary. Then, in a serious tone, she added, "I can neither disobey nor deceive my mother. Therefore, once for all, my dear cousin, let me entreat of you to be silent on a subject on which my mind is made up. I am perfectly sensible of your kindness, but any further discussion will be very painful to me." Lady Emily was now too indignant to stoop to remonstrance. She quitted her cousin in great anger, and poor Mary felt as if she had lost her only friend. "Alas!" sighed she, "how difficult it is to do right, when even the virtues of others throw obstacles in our way! And how easy our duties would be could we kindly aid one another in the performance of them!" But such is human nature. The real evils of life, of which we so loudly complain, are few in number, compared to the daily, hourly pangs we inflict on one another. Lady Emily's resentment, though violent, was short-lived; and in the certainty that either the mother would relent or the daughter rebel, she ordered a dress for Mary; but the night of the ball arrived, and both remained unshaken in their resolution. With a few words Adelaide might have obtained the desired permission for her sister; but she chose to remain neuter, coldly declaring she never interfered in quarrels. Mary beheld the splendid dresses and gay countenances of the party for the ball with feelings free from envy, though perhaps not wholly unmixed with regret. She gazed with the purest admiration on the extreme beauty of her sister, heightened as it was by the fantastic elegance of her dress, and contrasted with her own pale visage and mourning habiliments. "Indeed," thought she, as she turned from the mirror, with rather a mournful smile, "my Aunt Nicky was in the right: I certainly am a poor _shilpit_ thing." As she looked again at her sister she observed that her earrings were not so handsome as those she had received from Mrs. Macshake; and she instantly brought them, and requested Adelaide would wear them for that night. Adelaide took them with her usual coolness--remarked how very magnificent they were--wished some old woman would take it into her head to make her such a present; and, as she clasped them in her ears, regarded herself with increased complacency. The hour of departure arrived; Lord Courtland and Lady Juliana were at length ready, and Mary found herself left to a _tete-à-tete_ with Dr. Redgill; and, strange as it may seem, neither in a sullen nor melancholy mood. But after a single sigh, as the carriage drove off, she sat down with a cheerful countenance to play backgammon with the Doctor. The following day she heard of nothing but the ball and its delights; for both her mother and her cousin sought (though from different motives) to heighten her regret at not having been there. But Mary listened to the details of all she had missed with perfect fortitude, and only rejoiced to hear they had all been so happy. CHAPTER VI. "Day follows night. The clouds return again After the falling of the latter rain; But to the aged blind shall ne'er return Grateful vicissitude: She still must mourn The sun, and moon, and every starry light, Eclipsed to her, and lost in everlasting night." PRIOR AMONGST the numerous letters and parcels with which Mary had been entrusted by the whole county of-----, there was one she had received from the hands of Lady Maclaughlan, with a strict injunction to be the bearer of it herself; and, as even Lady Maclaughlan's wishes now wore an almost sacred character in Mary's estimation, she was very desirous of fulfilling this her parting charge. But, in the thraldom in which she was kept, she knew not how that was to be accomplished. She could not venture to wait upon the lady to whom it was addressed without her mother's permission; and she was aware that to ask was upon every occasion only to be refused. In his dilemma she had recourse to Lady Emily; and, showing her the letter, craved her advice and assistance. "Mrs. Lennox, Rose Hall," said her cousin, reading the superscription. "Oh! I don't think Lady Juliana will care a straw about your going there. She is merely an unfortunate blind old lady, whom everybody thinks it a bore to visit--myself, I'm afraid, amongst the number. We ought all to have called upon her ages ago, so I shall go with you now." Permission for Mary to accompany her was easily obtained; for Lady Juliana considered a visit to Mrs. Lennox as an act of penance rather than of pleasure; and Adelaide protested the very mention of her name gave her the vapours. There certainly was nothing that promised much gratification in what Mary had heard; and yet she already felt interested in this unfortunate blind lady whom everybody thought it a bore to visit, and she sought to gain some more information respecting her. But Lady Emily, though possessed of warm feelings and kindly affections, was little given to frequent the house of mourning, or sympathise with the wounded spirit; and she yawned as she declared she was very sorry for poor Mrs. Lennox, and would have made a point of seeing her oftener, could she have done her any good. "But what can I possibly say to her," continued she, "after losing her husband, and having I don't know how many sons killed in battle, and her only daughter dying of a consumption, and herself going blind in consequence of her grief for all these misfortunes--what can I possibly do for her, or say to her? Were I in her situation, I'm sure I should hate the sight and sound of any human being, and should give myself up entirely to despair." "That would be but a pagan sacrifice," said Mary. "What would you do in such desperate circumstances?" demanded Lady Emily. "I would hope," answered Mary, meekly. "But in poor Mrs. Lennox's case that would be to hope though hope were lost; for what can she hope for now? She has still something to fear, however, as I believe she has still one son remaining, who is in the brunt of every battle; of course she has nothing to expect but accounts of his death." "But she may hope that heaven will preserve him, and--" "That you will marry him. That would do excellently well, for he is as brave as a real Highlander, though he has the misfortune to be only half a one. His father, General Lennox, was a true Scot to the very tip of his tongue, and as proud and fiery as any chieftain need be. _His_ death, certainly was an improvement in the family. But there is Rose Hall, with its pretty shrubberies and nice parterres, what do you say to becoming its mistress?" "If I am to lay snares," answered Mary, laughing, "it must be for nobler objects than hedgerow elms and hillocks green." "Oh, it must be for black crags and naked hills! Your country really does vastly well to rave about! Lofty mountains and deep glens, and blue lakes and roaring rivers, are mighty fine-sounding things; but I suspect cornfields and barnyards are quit as comfortable neighbours; so take my advice and marry Charles Lennox." Mary only answered by singing, "My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here," etc., as the carriage drew up. "This is the property of Mrs. Lennox," said Lady Emily, in answer to some remark of her companion's; "she is the last of some ancient stock; and you see the family taste has been treated with all due respect." Rose Hall was indeed perfectly English: it was a description of place of which there are none in Scotland; for it wore the appearance of antiquity, without the too usual accompaniments of devastation or decay; neither did any incongruities betray vicissitude of fortune or change of owner; but the taste of the primitive possessor seemed to have been respected through ages by his descendants; and the ponds remained as round, and the hedges as square, and the grass walks as straight, as the day they had been planned. The same old-fashioned respectability was also apparent in the interior of the mansion. The broad heavy oaken staircase shone in all the lustre of bees' wax; and the spacious sitting-room into which they were ushered had its due allowance of Vandyke portraits, massive chairs, and china jars, standing much in the same positions they had been placed in a hundred years before. To the delicate mind the unfortunate are always objects of respect. As the ancients held sacred those places which had been blasted by lightning, so the feeling heart considers the afflicted as having been touched by the hand of God Himself. Such were the sensations with which Mary found herself in the presence of the venerable Mrs. Lennox--venerable rather through affliction than age; for sorrow, more than time, had dimmed the beauty of former days, though enough still remained to excite interest and engage affection in the mournful yet gentle expression of her countenance, and the speaking silence of her darkened eyes. On hearing the names of her visitors, she arose, and, guided by a little girl, who had been sitting at her feet, advanced to meet them, and welcomed them with a kindness and simplicity of manner that reminded Mary of the home she had left and the maternal tenderness of her beloved aunt. She delivered her credentials, which Mrs. Lennox received with visible surprise; but laid the letter aside without any comments. Lady Emily began some self-accusing apologies for the length of time that had intervened since her last visit, but Mrs Lennox gently interrupted her. "Do not blame yourself, my dear Lady Emily," said she; "for what is so natural at your age. And do not suppose I am so unreasonable as to expect that the young and the gay should seek for pleasure in the company of an old blind Woman. At your time of life I would not have courted distress anymore than you." "At every time of life," said Lady Emily, "I am sure you must have been a very different being from what I am, or ever shall be." "Ah! you little know what changes adversity makes in the character," said Mrs. Lennox mournfully; "and may you never know--unless it is for your good." "I doubt much if I shall ever be good on any terms," answered Lady Emily in a half melancholy tone; "I don't think I have the elements of goodness in my composition, but here is my cousin, who is fit to stand proxy for all the virtues." Mrs. Lennox involuntarily turned her mild but sightless eyes towards Mary, then heaved a sigh and shook her head, as she was reminded of her deprivation. Mary was too much affected to speak; but the hand that was extended to her she pressed with fervour to her lips, while her eyes overflowed with tears. The language of sympathy is soon understood. Mrs. Lennox seemed to feel the tribute of pity and respect that flowed from Mary's warm heart, and from that moment they felt towards each other that indefinite attraction which, however it may be ridiculed, certainly does sometimes influence our affections. "That is a picture of your son, Colonel Lennox, is it not?" asked Lady Emily, "I mean the one that hangs below the lady in the satin gown with the bird on her hand." Mrs. Lennox answered in the affirmative; then added, with a sigh, "And when I _could_ look on that face, I forgot all I had lost; but I was too fond, too proud a mother. Look at it, my dear," taking Mary's hand, and leading her to the well-known spot, while her features brightened with an expression which showed maternal vanity was not yet extinct in the mourner's heart. "He was only eighteen," continued she, "when that was done; and many a hot sun has burned on that fair brow; and many a fearful sight has met these sweet eyes since then; and sadly that face may be changed; but I shall never see it more!" "Indeed," said Lady Emily, affecting to be gay, while a tear stood in her eye, "it is a very dangerous face to look on; and I should be afraid to trust myself with it, were not my heart already pledged. As for my cousin there, there is no fear of her falling a sacrifice to hazel eyes and chestnut hair, her imagination is all on the side of sandy locks and frosty gray eyes; and I should doubt if Cupid himself would have any chance with her, unless he appeared in tartan plaid and Highland bonnet." "Then my Charles would have some," said Mrs. Lennox, with a faint smile; "for he has lately been promoted to the command of a Highland regiment." "Indeed!" said Lady Emily, "that is very gratifying, and you have reason to be proud of Colonel Lennox; he has distinguished himself upon every occasion." "Ah! the days of my pride are now past," replied Mrs. Lennox, with a sigh; "'tis only the more honour, the greater danger, and I am weary of such bloody honours. See there!" pointing to another part of the room, where hung a group of five lovely children, "three of these cherub heads were laid low in battle; the fourth, my Louisa, died of a broken heart for the loss of her brothers. Oh! what can human power or earthly honours do to cheer the mother who has wept o'er her children's graves? But there _is_ a Power," raising her darkened eyes to heaven, "that can sustain even a mother's heart; and here," laying her hand upon an open Bible, "is the balm He has graciously vouchsafed to pour into the wounded spirit. My comfort is not that my boys died nobly, but that they died Christians." Lady Emily and Mary were both silent from different causes. The former was at a loss what to say--the latter felt too much affected to trust her voice with the words of sympathy that hovered on her lips. "I ought to beg your pardon, my dears," said Mrs. Lennox, after a pause, for talking in this serious manner to you who cannot be supposed to enter into sorrows to which you are strangers. But you must excuse me, though my heart does sometimes run over." "Oh, do not suppose," said Mary, making an effort to conquer her feelings, "that we are so heartless as to refuse to take a part in the afflictions of others; surely none can be so selfish; and might I be allowed to come often--very often--" She stopped and blushed; for she felt that her feelings were carrying her farther than she was warranted to go. Mrs. Lennox kindly pressed her hand. "Ah! God hath, indeed, sent some into the world, whose province it is to refresh the afflicted, and lighten the eyes of the disconsolate. Such, I am sure, you would be to me; for I feel my heart revive at the sound of your voice; it reminds me of my heart's darling, my Louisa! and the remembrance of her, though sad, is still sweet. Come to me, then, when you will, and God's blessing, and the blessing of the blind and desolate, will reward you." Lady Emily turned away, and it was not till they had been some time in the carriage that Mary was able to express the interest this visit had excited, and her anxious desire to be permitted to renew it. "It is really an extraordinary kind of delight, Mary, that you take in being made miserable," said her cousin, wiping her eyes; "for my part, it makes me quite wretched to witness suffering that I can't relieve; and how can you or I possibly do poor Mrs. Lennox any good? We can't bring back her sons." "No; but we can bestow our sympathy, and that, I have been taught, is always a consolation to the afflicted." "I don't quite understand the nature of that mysterious feeling called sympathy. When I go to visit Mrs. Lennox, she always sets me a-crying, and I try to set her a-laughing. Is that what you call sympathy?" Mary smiled, and shook her head. "Then I suppose it is sympathy to blow one's nose--and--and read the Bible. Is that it? or what is it?" Mary declared she could not define it; and Lady Emily insisted she could not comprehend it. "You will some day or other," said Mary; "for none, I believe, have ever passed through life without feeling, or at least requiring its support; and it is well, perhaps, that we should know betimes how to receive as well as how to bestow it." "I don't see the necessity at all. I know I should hate mortally to be what you call sympathised with; indeed, it appears to me the height of selfishness in anybody to like it. If I am wretched, it would be no comfort to me to make everybody else wretched; and were I in Mrs. Lennox's place, I would have more spirit than to speak about my misfortunes." "But Mrs. Lennox does not appear to be what you call a spirited creature. She seems all sweetness, and--" "Oh, sweet enough, certainly!--But hers is a sort of Eolian harp, that lulls me to sleep. I tire to death of people who have only two or three notes in their character. By-the-bye, Mary, you have a tolerable compass yourself, when you choose, though I don't think you have science enough for a _bravura; there_ I certainly have the advantage of you, as I flatter myself my mind is a full band in itself. My kettledrums and trumpets I keep for Lady Juliana, and I am quite in the humour for giving her a flourish today. I really require something of an exhilarating nature after Mrs. Lennox's dead march." An unusual bustle seemed to pervade Beech Park as the carriage stopped, and augured well for its mistress's intention of being more than usually vivacious. It was found to be occasioned by the arrival of her brother Lord Lindore's servants and horses, with the interesting intelligence that his Lordship would immediately follow; and Lady Emily, wild with delight, forgot everything in the prospect of embracing her brother. "How does it happen," said Mary, when her cousin's transports had a little subsided, "that you, who are in such ecstasies at the idea of seeing your brother, have scarcely mentioned his name to me?" "Why, to tell you the truth, I fear I was beginning to forget there was such a person in the world. I have not seen him since I was ten years old. At that time he went to college, and from thence to the Continent. So all I remember of him is that he was very handsome and very good-humoured; and all that have heard of him is, that wherever he goes he is the 'glass of fashion and the mould of form'--not that he is much of a Hamlet, I've a notion, in other respects. So pray put off that Ophelia phiz, and don't look as if you were of ladies most deject and wretched, when everybody else is gay and happy. Come, give your last sigh to the Lennox, and your first smile to _Lindore."_ "That is sympathy," said Mary. CHAPTER VII. "Quelle fureur, dit-il, quei aveugle caprice Quand Ie dîner est prêt." BOILEAU. "I HOPE your Lordship has no thoughts of waiting dinner for Lord Lindore?" asked Dr. Redgill, with a face of alarm, as seven o'clock struck, and neither dinner nor Lord Lindore appeared. "I have no thoughts upon the subject," answered Lord Courtland, as he turned over some new caricatures with as much _nonchalance_ as if it had been mid-day. "That's enough, my Lord; but I suspect Mr. Marshall, in his officiousness, takes the liberty of thinking for you, and that we shall have no dinner without orders," rising to pull the bell. "We ought undoubtedly to wait for Frederick," said Lady Juliana; "it is of no consequence when we sit down to table." A violent yell from the sleeping Beauty on the rug sounded like a summary judgment on her mistress. "What is the meaning of this?" cried her Ladyship, flying to the offended fair one, in all the transports of pity and indignation; "how can you, Dr. Redgill, presume to treat my dog in such a manner?" "Me treat your Ladyship's dog!" exclaimed the Doctor in well-feigned astonishment--"Pon my honour!--I'm quite at a loss!--I'm absolutely confounded!" "Yes! I saw you plainly give her a kick, and--" "Me kick Beauty!--after that!--'Pon my soul, I should just as soon have thought of kicking my own grandmother. I did give her a _leettle_--a very _leettle_ shove, just with the point of my toe, as I was going to pull the bell; but it couldn't have hurt a fly. I assure you it would be one of the last action of my life to treat Beauty ill--Beauty!--poor Beauty!"--affecting to pat and soothe, by way of covering his transgression. But neither Beauty nor her mistress were to be taken in by the Doctor's cajolerie. The one felt, and the other saw the indignity he had committed; and his caresses and protestations were all in vain. The fact was, the Doctor's indignation was so raised by Lady Juliana's remark, made in all the plenitude of a late luncheon, that, had it been herself instead of her favourite, he could scarcely have refrained from this testimony of his detestation and contempt. But much as he despised her, he felt the necessity of propitiating her at this moment, when dinner itself depended upon her decision; for Lord Courtland was perfectly neutral, Lady Emily as not present, and a servant waited to receive orders. "I really believe it's hunger that's vexing her poor brute!" continued he, with an air of us feigned sympathy; "she knows the dinner hour as well as any of us. Indeed, the instinct of dogs in that respect is wonderful. Providence has really--ahem!--indeed it's no joke to tamper with dogs, when they've got the notion of dinner in their heads. A friend of mine had a very fine animal--just such another as poor Beauty there--she had always been accustomed, like Beauty, to attend the family to dinner at a particular hour; but one day, by some accident, instead of sitting down at five, she was kept waiting till half-past six; the consequence was, the disappointment, operating upon an empty stomach, brought on an attack of the hydrophobia, and the poor thing was obliged to be shot the following morning. I think your Lordship said--Dinner," in a loud voice to the servant; and Lady Juliana, though still sullen, did not dissent. For an hour the Doctor's soul was in a paradise still more substantial than a Turk's; for it was lapt in the richest of soups and _ragoûts_, and, secure of their existence, it smiled at ladies of quality, and deified their lap-dogs. Dinner passed away, and supper succeeded, and breakfast; dinner and supper revolved, and still no Lord Lindore appeared. But this excited no alarm in the family. It was Lord Courtland's way, and it was Lady Juliana's way, and it was all their ways, not to keep to their appointed time, and they therefore experienced none of the vulgar consternation incident to common minds when the expected guest fails to appear. Lady Emily indeed wondered, and was provoked, and impatient; but she was not alarmed; and Mary amused herself with contrasting in her own mind the difference of her aunts' feelings in similar circumstances. "Dear Aunt Grizzy would certainly have been in tears these two days, fancying the thousand deaths Lord Lindore must have died; and Aunt Jacky would have been inveighing from morning till night against the irregularities of young men. And Aunt Nicky would have been lamenting that the black cock had been roasted yesterday, or that there would be no fish for to-morrow." And the result of Mary's comparison was, that her aunts' feelings, however troublesome, were better than no feelings at all. "They are, to be sure, something like brambles," thought she; "they fasten upon one in every possible way, but still they are better than the faded exotics of fashionable life." At last, on the third day, when dinner was nearly over, and Dr. Redgill was about to remark for the third time, "I think it's as well we didn't wait for Lord Lindore," the door opened, and, without warning or bustle, Lord Lindore walked calmly into the room. Lady Emily, uttering an exclamation of joy, threw herself into his arms. Lord Courtland was roused to something like animation, as he cordially shook hands with his son; Lady Juliana flew into raptures at the beauty of his Italian greyhound; Adelaide, at the first glance, decided that her cousin was worthy of falling in love with her; Mary thought on the happiness of the family reunion; and Dr. Redgill offered up a silent thanksgiving that this _fracas_ had not happened ten minutes sooner, otherwise the woodcocks would have been as cold as death. Chairs were placed by the officious attendants in every possible direction; and the discarded first course was threatening to displace the third. But Lord Lindore seemed quite insensible to all these attentions; he stood surveying the company with a _nonchalance_ that had nothing of rudeness in it, but seemed merely the result of high-bred ease. His eye, for a moment, rested upon Adelaide. He then slightly bowed and smiled, as in recognition of their juvenile acquaintance. "I really can't recommend either the turtle soup or the venison to your Lordship to-day," said Dr. Redgill, who experienced certain uneasy sensations at the idea of beholding them resume their stations, something resembling those which Macbeth testified at sight of Banquo's ghost, or Hamlet on contemplating Yorick's skull--"after travelling, there is nothing like a light dinner; allow me to recommend this _prretty, leettle cuisse de poulet en papillote;_ and here are some fascinating _beignets d'abricots_--quite foreign." "If there is any roast beef or boiled mutton to be had, pray let me have it," said Lord Lindore, waving off the zealous _maître d'hotel,_ as he kept placing dish after dish before him. "Roast beef, or boiled mutton!" ejaculated the Doctor, with a sort of internal convulsion; "he is certainly mad." "How did you contrive to arrive without being heard by me, Frederick?" asked Lady Emily; "my ears have been wide open these two days and three nights watching your approach?" "I walked from Newberry House," answered he, carelessly. "I met Lord Newberry two days ago, as I was coming here, and he persuaded me to alter my course and accompany him home." "Vastly flattering to your friends here," said Lady Emily in a tone of pique. "What! you walked all the way from Newberry," exclaimed the Earl, "and the ground covered with snow. How could you do so foolish a thing?" "Simply because, as the children say, I liked it," replied Lord Lindore, with a smile. "That's just of a piece with his liking to eat boiled mutton," muttered the Doctor to Mary; "and yet, to look at him, one would really not expect such gross stupidity." There certainly was nothing in Lord Lindore's appearance that denoted either coarseness of taste or imbecility of mind. On the contrary, he was an elegant-looking young man, rather slightly formed, and of the middle size, possessing that ease and grace in all his movements which a perfect proportion alone can bestow. There was nothing foreign or _recherché_ either in his dress or deportment; both were plain, even to simplicity; yet an almost imperceptible air of _hauteur_ was mingled with the good-humoured indifference of his manner. He spoke little, and seemed rather to endure than to be gratified by attentions; his own were chiefly directed to his dog, as he was more intent on feeding it than on answering the questions that were put to him. There never was anything to be called conversation at the dinner-table at Beech Park; and the general practice was in no danger of being departed from on the present occasion. The Earl hated to converse--it was a bore; and he now merely exchanged a few desultory sentences with his son, as he ate his olives and drank his claret. Lady Juliana, indeed, spoke even more than her usual quantity of nonsense, but nobody listened to it. Lady Emily was somewhat perplexed in her notions about her brother. He was handsome and elegant, and appeared good-humoured and gentle; yet something was wanting to fill up the measure of her expectations, and a latent feeling of disappointment lurked in her heart. Adelaide was indignant that he had not instantly paid her the most marked attention, and revenged herself by her silence. In short, Lord Lindore's arrival seemed to have added little or nothing to the general stock of pleasure; and the effervescence of joy--the rapture of _sensation_, like some subtle essence, had escaped almost as soon as it was perceived. "How stupid everybody always is at a dinner table!" exclaimed Lady Emily, rising abruptly with an air of chagrin. "I believe it is the fumes of the meat that dulls one's senses, and renders them so detestable. I long to see you in the drawing-room Frederick. I've a notion you are more of a carpet knight than a knight of the round table; so pray," in a whisper as she passed, "leave papa to be snored asleep by Dr. Redgill, and do you follow us--here is metal more attractive," pointing to the sisters, as they quitted the room; and she followed without waiting for her brother's reply. CHAPTER VIII. "Io dubito, Signor M. Pietro che il mio Cortegiano non sarà stato altro che fatica mia, e fastidio degli amici." BALDASSARRE CASTIGLIONE. LORD LINDORE was in no haste to avail himself of his sister's invitation; and when he did, it was evident his was a "mind not to be changed by place;" for he entered more with the air of one who was tired of the company he had left, than expecting pleasure from the society he sought. "Do come and entertain us, Lindore," cried Lady Emily, as he entered, "for we are all heartily sick of one another. A snow-storm and a lack of company are things hard to be borne; it is only the expectancy of your arrival that has kept us alive these two days, and now pray don't let us die away of the reality." "You have certainly taken a most effectual method of sealing my lips," said her brother with a smile. "How so?" "By telling me that I am expected to be vastly entertaining, since every word I utter can only serve to dispel the illusion, and prove that I am gifted with no such miraculous power." "I don't think it requires any miraculous power, either to entertain or be entertained. For my part, I flatter myself I can entertain any man, woman, or child in the kingdom, when I choose; and as for being entertained, that is still an easier matter. I seldom meet with anybody who is not entertaining, either from their folly, or their affectation, or their stupidity, or their vanity; or, in short, something of the ridiculous, that renders them not merely supportable, but positively amusing." "How extremely happy you must be," said Lord Lindore. "Happy! No--I don't know that my feelings precisely amount to happiness neither; for at the very time I'm most diverted I'm sometimes disgusted too, and often provoked. My spirit gets chafed, and---" "You long to box the ears of all your acquaintances," said her brother, laughing. "Well, no matter--there is nothing so enviable as a facility of being amused, and even the excitement of anger is perhaps preferable to the stagnation of indifference." "Oh, thank heaven! I know nothing about indifference; I leave that to Adelaide." Lord Lindore turned his eyes with more animation than he had yet evinced towards his cousin, who sat reading, apparently paying no attention to what was going on. He regarded her for a considerable time with an expression of admiration; but Adelaide, though she was conscious of his gaze, calmly pursued her studies. "Come, you positively must do something to signalise yourself. I assure you it is expected of you that you should be the soul of the company. Here is Adelaide waltzes like an angel, when she can get a partner to her liking." "But I waltz like a mere mortal," said Lord Lindore, seating himself at a table, and turning over the leaves of a book. "And I am engaged to play billiards with my uncle," said Adelaide, rising with a blush of indignation. "Shall we have some music, then? Can you bear to listen to our croakings after the warbling of your Italian nightingales?" asked Lady Emily. "I should like very much to hear you sing," answered her brother, with an air of the most perfect indifference. "Come then, Mary, do you be the one to 'untwist the chains that tie the hidden soul of harmony.' Give us your Scotch Exile, pray? It is tolerably appropriate to the occasion, though an English one would have been still more so; but, as you say, there is nothing in this country to make a song about." Mary would rather have declined, but she saw a refusal would displease her cousin; and she was not accustomed to consult her own inclination in such frivolous matters. She therefore seated herself at the harp, and sang the following verses;-- THE EXILE. The weary wanderer may roam To seek for bliss in change of scene; Yet still the loved idea of home, And of the days he there has seen, Pursue him with a fond regret, Like rays from suns that long have set. "Tis not the sculptor's magic art, "Tis not th' heroic deeds of yore, That fill and gratify the heart. No! 'tis affection's tender lore-- The thought of friends, and love's first sigh, When youth, and hope, and health were nigh. What though on classic ground we tread, What though we breathe a genial air-- Can these restore the bliss that's fled? Is not remembrance ever there? Can any soil protect from grief, Or any air breathe soft relief? No! the sick soul, that wounded flies From all its early thoughts held dear, Will more some gleam of memory prize, That draws the long-lost treasure near; And warmly presses to its breast The very thought that mars its rest. Some mossy stone, some torrent rude, Some moor unknown to worldly ken, Some weeping birches, fragrant wood, Or some wild roebuck's fern-clad glen;-- Yes! these his aching heart delight, These bring his country to his sight. Ere the song was ended Lord Lindore had sauntered away to the billiard-room, singing, "Oh! Jiove Omnipotente!" and seemingly quite unconscious that any attentions were due from him in return. But there, even Adelaide's charms failed to attract, in spite of the variety of graceful movements practised before him--the beauty of the extended arm, the majestic step, and the exclamations of the enchanting voice Lord Lindore kept his station by the fire, in a musing attitude, from which he was only roused occasionally by the caresses of his dog. At supper it was still worse. He placed himself by Mary, and when he spoke, it was only of Scotland. "Well--what do you think of Lindore?" demanded Lady Emily of her aunt and cousins, as they were about to separate for the night. "Is he not divine?" "Perfectly so!" replied Lady Juliana, with all the self-importance of a fool. "I assure you I think very highly of him. He is a vastly charming, clever young man-perfectly beautiful, and excessively amiable; and his attention to his dog is quite delightful--it is so uncommon to see men at all kind to their dogs. I assure you I have known many who were absolutely cruel to them--beat them, and starved them, and did a thousand shocking things; and----" "Pray, Adelaide, what is your opinion of my brother" "Oh! I--I--have no doubt he is extremely amiable," replied Adelaide, with a gentle yawn. "As mamma says, his attentions to his dog prove it." "And you, Mary, are your remarks to be equally judicious and polite?" Mary, in all the sincerity of her heart, said she thought him by much the handsomest and most elegant-looking man she had ever seen. And there she stopped. "Yes; I know all that. But--however, no matter--I only wish he may have sense enough to fall in love with you, Mary. How happy I should be to see you Lady Lindore!--_En attendant_--you must take care of your heart; for I hear he is _un peu volage_--and, moreover, that he admires none but _les dames Mariées._ As for Adelaide, there is no fear of her. She will never cast such a pearl away upon one who is merely, no doubt, extremely amiable," retorting Adelaide's ironical tone. "Then you may feel equally secure upon my account," said Mary, "as I assure you I am still less danger of losing mine, after the warning you have given." This off-hand sketch of her brother's character, which Lady Emily had thoughtlessly given, produced the most opposite effects on the minds of he sisters. With Adelaide it increased his consequence and enhanced his value. It would be no vulgar conquest to fix and reform one who was notorious for his inconstancy and libertine principles; and from that moment she resolved to use all the influence of her charms to captivate and secure the heart of her cousin. In Mary's well-regulated mind other feelings arose. Although she was not one of the outrageous virtuous, who storm and rail at the very mention of vice, and deem it contamination to hold any intercourse with the vicious, she yet possessed proper ideas for the distinction to be drawn; and the hope of finding a friend and brother in her cousin now gave way to the feeling that in future she could only consider him as an common acquaintance. CHAPTER IX "On sera ridicule et je n'oserai rire!" BOILEAU. IN honour of her brother's return Lady Emily resolved to celebrate it with a ball; and always prompt in following up her plans, she fell to work immediately with her visiting list. "Certainly," said she, as she scanned it over, "there never was any family so afflicted in their acquaintances as we are. At least one-half of the names here belong to the most insufferable people on the face of the earth. The Claremonts, and the Edgefields, and the Bouveries, and the Sedleys, and a few more, are very well; but can anything in human form be more insupportable than the rest; for instance, that wretch Lady Placid?" "Does her merit lie only in her name then?" asked Mary. "You shall judge for yourself when I have given you a slight sketch of her character. Lady Placid, in the opinion of all sensible persons in general, and myself in particular, is a vain, weak, conceited, vulgar egotist. In her own eyes she is a clever, well-informed, elegant, amiable woman; and though I have spared no pains to let her know how detestable I think her, it is all in vain; she remains as firmly entrenched in her own good opinion as folly and conceit can make her; and I have the despair of seeing all my buffetings fall blunted to the ground. She reminds me of some odious fairy or genii I have read of, who possessed such a power in their person that every hostile weapon levelled against them was immediately turned into some agreeable present. Stones became balls of silk--arrows, flowers--swords, feathers, etc. Even so it is with Lady Placid. The grossest insult that could be offered she would construe into an elegant compliment; the very crimes of others she seems to consider as so much incense offered up at the shrine of her own immaculate virtue. I'm certain she thinks she deserves to be canonised for having kept out of Doctors' Commons. Never is any affair of that sort alluded to that she does not cast such a triumphant look towards her husband, as much as to say, 'Here am I, the paragon of faithful wives and virtuous matrons!' Were I in his place, I should certainly throw a plate at her head. And here, you may take this passing remark--How much more odious people are who have radical faults, than those who commit, I do not say positive crimes, but occasional weaknesses. Even a noble nature may fall into a great error; but what is that to the ever-enduring pride, envy, malice, and conceit of a little mind? Yes, I would at any time rather be the fallen than the one, so exult over the fall of another. Then, as a mother, she is, if possible, still more meritorious a woman (this is the way she talks): A woman has nobly performed her part to her country, and for posterity, when she has brought a family of fine healthy children into the world. 'I can't agree with you,' I reply 'I think many mothers have brought children into the world who would have been much better out of it. A mother's merit must depend solely upon how she brings up her children (hers are the most spoiled brats in Christendom). 'There I perfectly agree with you, Lady Emily. As you observe, it is not every mother who does her duty by her children. Indeed, I may say to you, it is not everyone that will make the sacrifices for their family I have done; but thank God! I am richly repaid. My children are everything I could wish them to be!' Everything of hers, as a matter of course, must be superior to every other person's, and even what she is obliged to share in common with others acquires some miraculous charm in operating upon her. Thus it is impossible for anyone to imagine the delight she takes in bathing; and as for the sun, no mortal can conceive the effect it has upon her. If she was to have the plague she would assure you it was owing to some peculiar virtue in her blood; and if she was to be put in the pillory she would ascribe it entirely to her great merit. If her coachman were to make her a declaration of love she would impute it to the boundless influence of her charms; that every man who sees her does not declare his passion is entirely owing to the well-known severity of her morals and the dignity of her deportment. If she is amongst the first invited to my ball, that will be my eagerness to secure her: if the very last, it will be a mark of my friendship, and the easy footing we are upon. If not invited at all, then it will be jealousy. In short, the united strength of worlds would not shake that woman's good opinion of herself; and the intolerable part of it is there are so many fools in this one that she actually passes with the multitude for being a charming sweet-tempered woman--always the same--always pleased and contented. Contented! just as like contentment as the light emitted by putridity resembles the divine halo! But too much of her. Let her have a card, however. "Then comes Mrs. Wiseacre, that renowned law-giver, who lavishes her advice on all who will receive it, without hope of fee or reward, except that of being thought wiser than anybody else. But, like many more deserving characters, she meets with nothing but ingratitude in return; and the wise sentences that are for ever hovering around her pursed up mouth have only served to render her insupportable. This is her mode of proceeding--' If I might presume to advise, Lady Emily;' or, 'If my opinion could be supposed to have any weight;' or 'If my experience goes for anything;' or, 'I'm an old woman now, but I think I know something of the world;' or, 'If a friendly hint of mine would be of any service: --then when very desperate, it is, 'However averse I am to obtrude my advice, yet as I consider it my duty, I must for once;' or, 'It certainly is no affair of mine, at the same time I must just observe,' etc. etc. I don't say that she insists, however, upon your swallowing all the advice she crams you with; for, provided she has the luxury of giving it, it can make little difference how it is taken; because whatever befals you, be it good or bad, it is equally a matter of exultation to her. Thus she has the satisfaction of saying, 'If poor Mrs. Dabble had but followed my advice, and not have taken these pills of Dr. Doolittle's, she would have been alive to-day, depend upon it;' or, 'If Sir Thomas Speckle had but taken advantage of a friendly hint I threw out some time ago, about the purchase of the Drawrent estate, he might have been a man worth ten thousand a year at this moment;' or, 'If Lady Dull hadn't been so infatuated as to neglect the caution I gave her about Bob Squander, her daughter might have been married to Nabob Gull.' "But there is a strange contradiction about Mrs. Wiseacre, for though it appears that all her friends' misfortunes proceed from neglecting her advice, it is no less apparent, by her account, that her own are all occasioned by following the advice of others. She is for ever doing foolish things, and laying the blame upon her neighbours. Thus, 'Had it not been for my friend Mrs. Jobbs there, I never would have parted with my house for an old song as I did;' or, 'It was entirely owing to Miss Glue's obstinacy that I was robbed of my diamond necklace, or, 'I have to thank my friend Colonel Crack for getting my carriage smashed to pieces.' In short, she has the most comfortable repository of stupid friends to have recourse to, of anybody I ever knew. Now what I have to warn you against, Mary, is the sin of ever listening to any of her advices. She will preach to you about the pinning of your gown and the curling of your hair till you would think it impossible not to do exactly what she wants you to do. She will inquire with the greatest solicitude what shoemaker you employ, and will shake her head most significantly when she hears it is any other than her own. But if ever I detect you paying the smallest attention to any of her recommendations, positively I shall have done with you." Mary laughingly promised to turn a deaf ear to all Mrs. Wiseacre's wisdom; and her cousin proceeded: "Then here follows a swarm as, thick as idle motes in sunny ray,' and much of the same importance, methinks, in the scale of being. Married ladies only celebrated for their good dinners, or their pretty equipages, or their fine jewels. How I should scorn to be talked of as the appendage to any soups or pearls! Then there are the daughters of these ladies--Misses, who are mere misses, and nothing more. Oh! the insipidity of a mere Miss! a soft simpering thing with pink cheeks, and pretty hair, and fashionable clothes _sans_ eyes for anything but lovers_-sans_ ears for anything but flattery--_sans_ taste for anything but balls_--sans_ brains for anything at all! Then there are ladies who are neither married nor young, and who strive with all their might to talk most delightfully, that the charms of their conversation may efface the marks of the crows' feet; but 'all these I passen by, and nameless numbers moe.' And now comes the Hon. Mrs. Downe Wright, a person of considerable shrewdness and penetration--vulgar, but unaffected. There is no politeness, no gentleness in her heart; but she possesses some warmth, much honesty, and great hospitality. She has acquired the character of being--oh, odious thing!--a clever woman! There are two descriptions of clever women, observe; the one is endowed with corporeal cleverness--the other with mental; and I don't know which of the two is the greater nuisance to society; the one torments you with her management--the other with her smart sayings; the one is for ever rattling her bunch of keys in your ears--the other electrifies you with the shock of her wit; and both talk _so_ much and _so _loud, and are such egotists, that I rather think a clever woman is even a greater term of reproach than a good creature. But to return to that clever woman Mrs. Downe Wright: she is a widow, left with the management of an only son--a commonplace, weak young man. No one, I believe, is more sensible of his mental deficiencies than his mother; but she knows that a man of fortune is, in the eyes of the many, a man of consequence; and she therefore wisely talks of it as his chief characteristic. To keep him in good company, and get him well married, is all her aim; and this, she thinks, will not be difficult, as he is very handsome-possesses an estate of ten thousand a year--and succeeds to some Scotch Lord Something's title--there's for you, Mary! She once had views of Adelaide, but Adelaide met the advances with so much scorn that Mrs. Downe Wright declared she was thankful she had shown the cloven foot in time, for that she never would have done for a wife to her William. Now you are the very thing to suit, for you have no cloven feet to show." "Or at least you are not so quick-sighted as Mrs. Downe Wright. You have not spied them yet, it seems," said Mary, with a smile. "Oh, as to that, if you had them, I should defy you, or anyone, to hide them from me. When I reflect upon the characters of most of my acquaintances, I sometimes think nature has formed my optics only to see disagreeables." "That must be a still more painful faculty of vision than even the second-sight," said Mary; "but I should think it depended very much upon yourself to counteract it." "Impossible! my perceptions are so peculiarly alive to all that is obnoxious to them that I could as soon preach my eyes into blindness, or my ears into deafness, as put down my feelings with chopping logic. If people _will_ be affected and ridiculous, why must I live in a state of warfare with myself on account of the feelings they rouse within me?" "If people _will_ be irritable," said Mary, laughing, "why must others sacrifice their feelings to gratify them?" "Because mine are natural feelings, and theirs are artificial. A very saint must sicken at sight of affectation, you'll allow. Vulgarity, even innate vulgarity, is bearable--stupidity itself is pardonable--but affectation is never to be endured or forgiven." "It admits of palliation, at least," answered Mary. "I dare say there are many people who would have been pleasing and natural in their manners had not their parents and teachers interfered. There are many, I believe, who have not courage to show themselves such as they are--some who are naturally affected and many, very many, who have been taught affectation as a necessary branch of education." "Yes--as my governesses would have taught me; but, thank heaven! I got the better of them. _Fascinating_ was what they wanted to make me; but whenever the word was mentioned, I used to knit my brows, and frown upon them in such a sort. The frown, like now, sticks by me; but no matter--a frowning brow is better than a false heart, and I defy anyone to say that I am fascinating." "There certainly must be some fascination about you, otherwise I should never have sat so long listening to you," said Mary, as she rose from the table at which she had been assisting to dash off the at-homes. "But you must listen to me a little longer," cried her cousin, seizing her hand to detain her. "I have not got half through my detestables yet; but to humour you, I shall let them go for the present. And now, that you mayn't suppose I am utterly insensible to excellence, you must suffer me to show you that I can and do appreciate worth when I can find it. I confess my talent lies fully as much in discovering the ridiculous as the amiable; and I am equally ready to acknowledge it is a fault, and no mark of superior wit or understanding; since it is much easier to hit off the glaring caricature line of deformity than the finer and more exquisite touches of beauty, especially for one who reads as he run---the sign-posts are sure to catch the eye. But now for my favourite--no matter for her name--it would frighten you if were you to hear it. In the first place, she is, as some of your old divines say, _hugely religious;_ 'but then she keeps her piety in its proper place, and where it ought to be--in her very soul. It is never a stumbling-block in other people's way, or interfering with other people's affairs. Her object is to _be,_ not to _seem, _religious; and there is neither hypocrisy nor austerity necessary for that. She is forbearing, without meanness--gentle, without insipidity--sincere, without rudeness. She practises all the virtues herself, and seems quite unconscious that others don't do the same. She is, if I may trust the expression of her eye, almost as much alive to the ridiculous as I am; but she is only diverted where I am provoked. She never bestows false praise even upon her friends; but a simple approval from her is of more value than the finest panegyric from another. She never finds occasion to censure or condemn the conduct of anyone, however flagrant it may be in the eyes of others; because she seems to think virtue is better expressed by her own actions than by her neighbour's vices. She cares not for admiration, but is anxious to do good and give pleasure. To sum up the whole, she could listen with patience to Lady Placid; she could bear to be advised by Mrs. Wiseacre; she could stand the scrutiny of Mrs. Downe Wright; and, hardest task of all" (throwing her arms around Mary's neck), "she can bear with all my ill-humour and impertinence." CHAPTER X. "Have I then no fears for thee, my _mother?_ Can I forget thy cares, from helpless years-- Thy tenderness for me? an eye still beamed With love!" THOMPSON. THE arrival of Lord Lindore brought a influx of visitors to Beech Park; and in the unceasing round of amusement that went on Mary found herself completely overlooked. She therefore gladly took advantage of her insignificance to pay frequent visits to Mrs. Lennox, and easily prevailed with Lady Juliana to allow her to spend a week there occasionally. In this way the acquaintance soon ripened into the warmest affection on both sides. The day seemed doubly dark to Mrs. Lennox that was not brightened by Mary's presence; and Mary felt all the drooping energies of her heart revive in the delight of administering to the happiness of another. Mrs. Lennox was one of those gentle amiable beings, who engage our affections far more powerfully than many possessed of higher attributes. Her understanding was not strong--neither had it been highly cultivated, according to the ideas of the present time; but she had a benevolence of heart and a guileless simplicity of thought that shamed the pride of wit and pomp of learning. Bereft of all external enjoyments, and destitute of great mental resources, it was retrospection and futurity that gilded the dark evening of her days, and shed their light on the dreary realities of life. She loved to recall the remembrance of her children--to tell of their infant beauties, their growing virtues--and to retrace scenes of past felicity which memory loves to treasure in the heart. "Oh! none but a mother can tell," she would exclaim, "the bitterness of those tears which fall from a mother's eyes. All other sorrows seem natural, but--God forgive me!--surely it is not natural that the old should weep for the young. Oh! when I saw myself surrounded by my children, little did I think that death was so soon to seal their eyes! Sorrow mine! and yet me thinks I would rather have suffered all than have stood in the world a lonely being. Yes, my children revered His power and believed in His name, and, thanks to His mercy, I feel assured they are now angels in heaven! Here," taking some papers from a writing-box, "my Louisa speaks to me even from the tomb! These are the words she wrote but a few hours before her death. Read them to me; for it is not every voice I can bear to hear uttering her last thoughts." Mary read as follows:-- FOR EVER GONE. For ever gone! oh, chilling sound! That tolls the knell of hope and joy! Potent with torturing pang to wound, But not in mercy to destroy. For ever gone! what words of grief-- Replete with wild mysterious woe! The Christian kneels to seek relief-- A Saviour died---It is not so. For a brief space we sojourn here, And life's rough path we journey o'er; Thus was it with the friend so dear, That is not lost, but sped before. For ever gone! oh, madness wild Dwells in that drear and Atheist doom! But death of horror is despoiled, When Heaven shines forth beyond the tomb. For ever gone! oh, dreadful fate! Go visit nature--gather thence The symbols of man's happier state, Which speak to every mortal sense. The leafless spray, the withered flower, Alike with man owns death's embrace; But bustling forth, in summer hour, Prepare anew to run life's race. And shall it be, that man alone Dies, never more to rise again? Of all creation, highest one, Created but to live in vain? For ever gone! oh, dire despair!-- Look to the heavens, the earth, the sea-- Go, read a Saviour's promise there-- Go, heir of Immortality! From such communings as these the selfish would have turned with indifference; but Mary's generous heart was ever open to the overflowings of the wounded spirit. She had never been accustomed to lavish the best feelings of her nature on frivolous pursuits or fictitious distresses, but had early been taught to consecrate them to the best, the most ennobling purposes of humanity--even to the comforting of the weary soul, the binding of the bruised heart. Yet Mary was no rigid moralist. She loved amusement as the amusement of an imperfect existence, though her good sense and still better principles taught her to reject it as the _business_ of an immortal being. Several weeks passed away, during which Mary had been an almost constant inmate at Rose Hall; but the day of Lady Emily's _fête _arrived, and with something of hope and expectation fluttering at her heart, she anticipated her _debut_ in the ball-room. She repaired to the breakfast-table of her venerable friend with even more than usual hilarity; but, upon entering the apartment, her gaiety fled; for she was struck with the emotion visible on the countenance of Mrs. Lennox. Her meek but tearful eyes were raised to heaven, and her hands were crossed on her bosom, as if to subdue the agitation of her heart. Her faithful attendant stood by her with an open letter in her hand. Mary flew towards her; and as her light step and soft accents met her ear, she extended her arms towards her. "Mary, my child, where are you?" exclaimed she, as she pressed her with convulsive eagerness to her heart. "My son!--my Charles!--to-morrow I shall see him. See him! oh, God help me! I shall never see him more!" And she wept in all the agony of contending emotions, suddenly and powerful excited. "But you will hear him--you will hold him to your heart--you will be conscious that he is beside you," said Mary. "Yes, thank God! I shall once more hear the voice of a living child! Oh, how often do those voices ring in my heart, that are all hushed in the grave! I am used to it now; but to think of his returning to this wilderness! When last he left it he had father, brothers, sisters--and to find all gone!" "Indeed it will be a sad return," said the old housekeeper, as she wiped her eyes; "for the Colonel doated on his sister, and she on him, and his brothers too! Dearly they all loved one another. How in this very room have I seen them chase each other up and down in their pretty plays, with their papa's cap and sword, and say they would be soldiers!" Mary motioned the good woman to be silent; then turning to Mrs Lennox, she sought to sooth her into composure, and turned, as she always did, he bright side of the picture to view, by dwelling on the joy her son would experience in seeing her. Mrs. Lennox shook her head mournfully. "Alas! he cannot joy in seeing me, such as I am. I have too long concealed from him my dreary doom; he knows not that these poor eyes are sealed in darkness! Oh, he will seek to read a mother's fondness there, and he will find all cold and silent." "But he will also find you resigned--even contented," said Mary, while her tears dropped on the hand she held to her lips. "Yes; God knows I do not repine at His will. It is not for myself these tears fall, but my son. How will he bear to behold the mother he so loved and honoured, now blind, bereft, and helpless?" And the wounds of her heart seemed to bleed afresh at the excitement of even its happiest emotions--the return of a long absent, much-loved son. Mary exerted all the powers of her understanding, all the tenderness of her heart, to dispel the mournful images that pressed on the mind of her friend; but she found it was not so much her _arguments _as her _presence_ that produced that effect; and to leave her in her present situation seemed impossible. In the agitation of her spirits she had wholly forgotten the occasion that called for Mary's absence, and she implored her to remain with her till the arrival of her son with an earnestness that was irresistible. The thoughts of her cousin's displeasure, should she absent herself upon such an occasion, caused Mary to hesitate; yet her feelings would not allow her to name the cause. "How unfeeling it would sound to talk of balls at such a time," thought she; "what a painful contrast must it present! Surely Lady Emily will not blame me, and no one will miss me----" And, in the ardour of her feelings, she promised to remain. Yet she sighed as she sent off her excuse, and thought of the pleasures she had renounced. But the sacrifice made, the regrets were soon past; and she devoted herself entirely to soothing the agitated spirits of her venerable friend. It is perhaps the simplest and most obvious truth, skilfully administered, that, in the season of affliction, produces the most salutary effects upon our mind. Mary was certainly no logician, and all that she could say might have been said by another; but there is something in the voice and manner that carries an irresistible influence along with it--something that tells us our sorrows are felt and understood, not coldly seen and heard. Mary's well-directed exertions were repaid with success; she read, talked, played, and sang, not in her gayest manner, but in that subdued strain which harmonised with the feelings, while it won upon the attention, and she had at length the satisfaction of seeing the object of her solicitude restored to her usual state of calm confiding acquiescence. "God bless you, my dear Mary!" said she, as they were about to separate for the night. "He only can repay you for the good you have done me this day!" "Ah!" thought Mary, as she tenderly embraced her, "such a blessing is worth a dozen balls?" At that moment the sound of a carriage was heard, and an unusual bustle took place below; but scarcely had they time to notice it ere the door flew open, and Mrs. Lennox found herself locked in the arms of her son. For some minutes the tide of feeling was too strong for utterance, and "My mother!" "My son!" were the only words that either could articulate. At length, raising his head, Colonel Lennox fixed his eyes on his mother's face with a gaze of deep and fearful inquiry; but no returning glance spoke there. With that mournful vacuity, peculiar to the blind, which is a thousand times more touching than all the varied expression of the living orb, she continued to regard the vacant space which imagination had filled with the image she sought in vain to behold. At this confirmation of his worst fears a shade of the deepest anguish overspread the visage of her son. He raised his eyes, as in agony, to heaven--then threw himself on his mother's bosom; and as Mary hurried from the apartment she heard the sob which burst from his manly heart, as he exclaimed, "My dear mother! do I indeed find you thus?" CHAPTER Xl "There is more complacency in the negligence of some men, than in what is called the good breeding of others; and the little absences of the heart are often more interesting and engaging than the punctilious attention of a thousand professed sacrificers to the graces."--MACKENZIE. POWERFUL emotions are the certain levellers of ordinary feelings. When Mary met Colonel Lennox in the breakfast-room the following morning, he accosted her not with the ceremony of a stranger but with the frankness of a heart careless of common forms, and spoke of his mother with indications of sensibility which he vainly strove to repress. Mary knew that she had sought to conceal her real situation from him; but it seemed a vague suspicion of the truth had, crossed his mind, and having with difficulty obtained a short leave of absence he had hastened to have either his hopes or fears realised. "And now that I know the worst," said he, "I know it only to deplore it. Far from alleviating, presence seems rather to aggravate my poor mother's misfortune. Oh! it is heartrending to see the strivings of these longing eyes to look upon the face of those she loves!" "Ah!" thought Mary, "were they to behold that face now, how changed would it appear!" as she contrasted it with the portrait that hung immediately over the head of the original. The one in all the brightness of youth--the radiant eyes, the rounded cheek, the fair open brow, spoke only of hope, and health, and joy. Those eyes were now dimmed by sorrow; the cheek was wasted with toil; the brow was clouded by cares. Yet, "as it is the best part of beauty which a picture cannot express," [1] so there is something superior to the mere charms of form and colour; and an air of high-toned feeling, of mingled vivacity and sensibility, gave a grandeur to the form and an expression to the countenance which more than atoned for the want of youth's more brilliant attributes. [1] Lord Bacon. At least, so thought Mary; but her comparisons were interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Lennox. Her son flew towards her, and taking her arm from that of her attendant, led her to her seat, and sought to render her those little offices which her helplessness required. "My dear Charles," said she, with a smile, as he tried to adjust her cushions, "your hands have not been used to this work. Your arm is my best support, but a gentler hand must smooth my pillow. Mary, my love, where are--? Give me your hand." Then placing it in that of her son-- "Many a tear has this hand wiped from your mother's eyes!" Mary, blushing deeply, hastily withdrew it. She felt it as a sort of appeal to Colonel Lennox's feelings; and a sense of wounded delicacy made her shrink from being thus recommended to his gratitude. But Colonel Lennox seemed too much absorbed in his own painful reflections to attach such a meaning to his mother's words; and though they excited him to regard Mary for a moment with peculiar interest, yet, in a little while, he relapsed into the mournful reverie from which he had been roused. Colonel Lennox was evidently not a show-off character. He seemed superior to the mere vulgar aim of making himself agreeable--an aim which has much oftener its source in vanity than in benevolence. Yet the exerted himself to meet his mother's cheerfulness; though as often as he looked at her, or raised his eyes to the youthful group that hung before them, his changing hue and quivering lip betrayed the anguish he strove to hide. Breakfast ended, Mary rose to prepare for her departure, in spite of the solicitations of her friend that she should remain till the following day. "Surely, my dear Mary," said she in an imploring accent, "you will not refuse to bestow one day of happiness upon me?--and it is _such _a happiness to see my Charles and you together. I little thought that ever I should have been so blessed. Ah! I begin to think God has yet some good in store for my last days! Do not then leave me just when I am beginning to taste of joy!"--And she clung to her with that pathetic look which Mary had ever found irresistble. But upon this occasion she steeled her heart against all supplication. It was the first time she had ever turned from the entreaty of old age or infirmity; and those only who have lived in the habitual practice of administering to the happiness of others can conceive how much it costs the generous heart to resist even the weaknesses of those it loves. But Mary felt she had already sacrificed too much to affection, and she feared the reproaches and ridicule that awaited her return to Beech Park. She therefore gently, though steadily, adhered to her resolution, only softening it by a promise of returning soon. "What an angel goes there!" exclaimed Mrs. Lennox to her son, as Mary left the room to prepare for her departure. "Ah! Charles, could I but hope to see her yours!" Colonel Lennox smiled--"That must be when I am an angel myself then. A poor weather-beaten soldier like me must be satisfied with something less." "But is she not a lovely creature?" asked his mother, with some solicitude. "Angels, you know, are always fair," replied Colonel Lennox laughingly, trying to parry this attack upon his heart. "Ah! Charles, that is not being serious. But young people now are different from what they were in my day. There is no such thing as falling in love now, you are all so cautious." And the good old lady's thoughts reverted to the time when the gay and gallant Captain Lennox had fallen desperately in love with her, as she danced a minuet in a blue satin sacque and Bologna hat at a county ball. "You forget, my dear mother, what a knack I had in falling in love ten years ago. Since then, I confess I have got rather out of the way of it; but a little, a very little practice, I am sure, will make me as expert as ever;--and then I promise you shall have no cause to complain of my caution." Mrs. Lennox sighed and shook her head. She had long cherished the hope that if ever her son came home it would be to fall in love with and marry her beloved Mary; and she had dwelt upon this favourite scheme till it had taken entire possession of her mind. In the simplicity of her heart she also imagined that it would greatly help to accelerate the event were she to suggest the idea to her son, as she had no doubt but that the object of her affections must necessarily become the idol of his. So little did she know of human nature that the very means she used to accomplish her purpose were the most effectual she could have contrived to defeat it. Such is man, that his pride revolts from all attempts to influence his affections. The weak and the undiscerning, indeed, are often led to "choose love by another's eyes;" but the lofty and independent spirit loves to create for itself those feelings which lose half their charms when their source is not in the depths of their own heart. It was with no slight mortification that Mrs. Lennox saw Mary depart without having made the desired impression on the heart of her son; or, what was still more to be feared, of his having secured himself a place in her favour. But again and again she made Mary repeat her promise of returning soon, and spending some days with her. "And then," thought she, "things will all come right. When they live together, and see each other constantly, they cannot possibly avoid loving each other, and all will be as it should be. God grant I may live to see it!" And hope softened the pang of disappointment. CHAPTER XII. "Qui vous a pu plonger dans cette humeur chagrine, A-t-on par quelque edit réformé la cuisine?" BOILEAU. MARY'S inexperienced mind expected to find, on her return to Beech Park, some vestige of the pleasures of the preceding night--some shadows, at least, of gaiety, to show what happiness she had sacrificed what delight her friends had enjoyed; but for the first time she beheld the hideous aspect of departed pleasure. Drooping evergreens, dying lamps, dim transparencies, and faded flowers, met her view as she crossed the hall; while the public rooms were covered with dust from the chalked floors, and wax from the droppings of the candles. Everything, in short, looked tawdry and forlorn. Nothing was in its place--nothing looked as it used to do--and she stood amazed at the disagreeable metamorphose an things had undergone. Hearing some one approach, she turned and beheld Dr. Redgill enter. "So--it's only you, Miss Mary!" exclaimed he in a tone of chagrin. "I was in hopes it was some of the women-servants. 'Pon my soul, it's disgraceful to think that in this house there is not a woman stirring yet! I have sent five messages by my man to let Mrs. Brown know that I have been waiting for my breakfast these two hours; but this confounded ball has turned everything upside down! You are come to a pretty scene," continued he, looking round with a mixture of fury and contempt,--"a very pretty scene! 'Pon my honour, I blush to see myself standing here! Just look at these rags!" kicking a festoon of artificial roses that had fallen to the ground. "Can anything be more despicable?--and to think that rational creatures in possession of their senses should take pleasure in the sight of such trumpery! 'Pon my soul, I--I--declare it confounds me! I really used to think Lady Emily (for this is all her doing) had some sense--but such a display of folly as this!" "Pshaw!" said Mary, "it is not fair in us to stand here analysing the dregs of gaiety after the essence is gone. I daresay this was a very brilliant scene last night." "Brilliant scene, indeed!" repeated the Doctor in a most; wrathful accent: "I really am amazed--I--yes--brilliant enough--if you mean that there was a glare of light enough to blind the devil. I thought my eyes would have been put out the short time I stayed; indeed, I don't think this one has recovered it yet," advancing a fierce blood-shot eye almost close to Mary's. "Don't you think it looks a _leettle_ inflamed, Miss Mary?" Mary gave it as her opinion that it did. "Well, that's all I've got by this business; but I never was consulted about it. I thought it my duty, however, to give a _leettle_ hint to the Earl, when the thing was proposed. 'My Lord,' says I, 'your house is your own; you have a right to do what you please with it; burn it; pull it down; make a purgatory of it; but, for God's sake, don't give a ball in it!' The ball was given, and you see the consequences. A ball! and what's a ball, that a whole family should be thrown into disorder for it?" "I daresay, to those who are engaged in it, it is a very delightful amusement at the time." "Delightful fiddlestick! 'Pon my soul, I'm surprised at you, Miss Mary! I thought your staying away was a pretty strong proof of your good sense; but I--hem! Delightful amusement, indeed! to see human creatures twirling one another about all night like so many monkeys--making perfect mountebanks of themselves. Really, I look upon dancing as a most degrading and a most immoral practice. 'Pon my soul, I--_I_ couldn't have the face to waltz, I know; and it's all on account of this delightful amusement--" with a convulsive shake of his chin--"that things are in this state--myself kept waiting for my breakfast two hours and a half beyond my natural time: not that I mind myself at all--that's neither here nor there--and if I was the only sufferer, I'm sure I should be the very last to complain--but I own it vexes--it distresses me. 'Pon my honour, can't stand seeing a whole family going to destruction!" The Doctor's agitation was so great that Mary really pitied him. "It is rather hard that you cannot get any breakfast since you had no enjoyment in the ball," said she. "I daresay, were I to apply to Mrs. Brown, she would trust me with her keys; and I shall be happy too officiate for her in making your tea." "Thank you, Miss Mary," replied the Doctor coldly. "I'm very much obliged to you. It is really a very polite offer on your part; but--hem!--you might have observed that I never take tea to breakfast. I keep that for the evening; most people, I know, do the reverse, but they're in the wrong. Coffee is too nutritive for the evening. The French themselves are in an error there. That woman, that Mrs. Brown knows what I like; in fact, she's the only woman I ever met with who could make coffee--coffee that I thought drinkable. She knows that--and she knows that I like it to a moment--and yet---" Here the Doctor blew his nose, and Mary thought she perceived a tear twinkle in his eye. Finding she was incapable of administering consolation, she was about to quit the room, when the Doctor, recovering himself, called after her. "If you happen to be going the way of Mrs. Brown's room, Miss Mary, I would take it very kind if you could just contrive to let her know what time of day it is; and that I have not tasted a mouthful of anything since last night at twelve o'clock, when I took a _leettle_ morsel of supper in my own room." Mary took advantage of the deep sigh that followed to make her escape; and as she crossed the vestibule she descried the Doctor's man, hurrying along with a coffee pot, which she had no doubt would pour consolation into his master's soul. As Mary was aware of her mother's dislike to introduce her into company, she flattered herself she had for once done something to merit her approbation by having absented herself on this occasion. But Mary was a novice in the ways of temper, and had yet to learn that to study to please, and to succeed, are very different things. Lady Juliana had been decidedly averse to her appearing at the ball, but she was equally disposed to take offence at her having stayed away; besides, she had not been pleased herself, and her glass told her she looked jaded and ill. She was therefore, as her maid expressed it, in a most particular bad temper; and Mary had to endure reproaches, of which she could only make out that although she ought not to have been present she was much to blame in having been absent. Lady Emily's indignation was in a different style. There was a heat and energy in her anger that never failed to overwhelm her victim at once. But it was more tolerable than the tedious, fretful ill humour of the other; and after she had fairly exhausted herself in invectives, and ridicule, and insolence, and drawn tears from her cousin's eyes by the bitterness of her language, she heartily embraced her, vowed she liked her better than anybody in the world, and that she was a fool for minding anything she said to her. "I assure you," said she, "I was only tormenting you a little, and you must own you deserve that; but you can't suppose I meant half what I said; that is a _bêtise_ I can't conceive you guilty of. You see I am much more charitable in my conclusions than you. You have no scruple in thinking me a wretch, though I am too good-natured to set you down for a fool. Come, brighten up, and I'll tell you all about the ball. How I hate it, were it only for having made your nose red! But really the thing in itself was detestable. Job himself must have gone mad at the provocations I met with. In the first place, I had set my heart upon introducing you with éclat, and instead of which you preferred psalm-singing with Mrs. Lennox, or sentiment with her son--I don't know which. In the next place there was a dinner in Bath, that kept away some of the best men; then, after waiting an hour and a half for Frederick to begin the ball with Lady Charlotte M---, I went myself to his room, and found him lounging by the fire with a volume of Rousseau in his hand, not dressed, and quite surprised that I should think his presence at all necessary; and when he did make his entré, conceive my feelings at seeing him single out Lady Placid as his partner! I certainly would rather have seen him waltzing with a hyena! I don't believe he knew or cared whom he danced with--unless, perhaps, it had been Adelaide, but she was engaged; and, by-the-bye, there certainly is some sort of a liaison there; how it will end I don't know; it depends upon on themselves, for I'm sure the course of their love may run smooth if they choose--I know nothing to interrupt it. Perhaps, indeed, it may become stagnate from that very circumstance; for you know, or perhaps you don't know, 'there is no spirit under heaven that works with such delusion.'" Mary would have felt rather uneasy at his intelligence, had she believed it possible for her sister to be in love; but she had ever appeared to her so insensible to every tender emotion and generous affection, that she could not suppose even love itself as capable of making any impression on her heart. When, however, she saw them together, she began to waver in her opinion. Adelaide, silent and disdainful to others, was now gay and enchanting to Lord Lindore, and looked as if she triumphed in the victory she had already won. It was not so easy to ascertain the nature of Lord Lindore's feelings towards his cousin, and time only developed them. CHAPTER XIII. "Les douleurs muettes et stupides sont hors d'usage; on pleure, on récite, on répète, on est si touchée de la mort de son mari, qu'on n'en oublie pas la moindre circonstance." LA BRUYERE. "PRAY put on your Lennox face this morning, Mary," said Lady Emily one day to her cousin, "for I want you to go and pay a funeral visit with me to a distant relation, but unhappily a near neighbour of ours, who has lately lost her husband. Lady Juliana and Adelaide ought to go, but they won't, so you and I must celebrate, as we best can, the obsequies of the Honourable Mr. Sufton." Mary readily assented; and when they were seated in the carriage, her cousin began-- "Since I am going to put you in the way of a trap, I think it but fair to warn you of it. All traps are odious things, and I make it my business to expose them wherever I find them. I own it chafes my spirit to see even sensible people taken in by the clumsy machinery of such a woman as Lady Matilda Sufton. So here she is in her true colours. Lady Matilda is descended from the ancient and illustrious family of Altamont. To have a fair character is, in her eyes, much more important than to deserve it. She has prepared speeches for every occasion, and she expects they are all to be believed--in short, she is a _show_ woman; the world is her theatre, and from it she looks for the plaudits due to her virtue; for with her the reality and the semblance are synonymous. She has a grave and imposing air, which keeps the timid at a distance; and she delivers the most common truths as if they were the most profound aphorisms. To degrade herself is her greatest fear; for, to use her own expression, there is nothing so degrading as associating with our inferiors--that is, our inferiors in rank and wealth--for with her all other gradations are incomprehensible. With the lower orders of society she is totally unacquainted; she knows they are meanly clothed and coarsely fed, consequently they are mean. She is proud, both from nature and principle; for she thinks it is the duty of every woman of family to be proud, and that humility is only a virtue in the _canaille._ Proper pride she calls it, though I rather think it ought to be pride _proper,_ as I imagine it is a distinction that was unknown before the introduction of heraldry. The only true knowledge, according to her creed, is the knowledge of the world, by which she means a knowledge of the most courtly etiquette, the manners and habits of the great, and the newest fashions in dress. Ignoramuses might suppose she entered deeply into things, and was thoroughly acquainted with human nature. No such thing; the only wisdom she possesses, like the owl is the look of wisdom, and that is the very part of it which I detest. Passions or feelings she has none, and to love she is an utter stranger. When somewhat 'in the sear and yellow leaf' she married Mr. Sufton, a silly old man, who had been dead to the world for many years. But after having had him buried alive in his own chamber till his existence was forgot, she had him disinterred for the purpose of giving him a splendid burial in good earnest. That done, her duty is now to mourn, or appear to mourn, for the approbation of the world. And now you shall judge for yourself, for here is Sufton House. Now for the trappings and the weeds of woe." Aware of her cousin's satirical turn, Mary was not disposed to yield conviction to her representation, but entered Lady Matilda's drawing-room with a mind sufficiently unbiassed to allow her to form her own judgment; but a very slight survey satisfied her that the picture was not overcharged. Lady Matilda sat in an attitude of woe--a crape--fan and open prayer-book lay before her--her cambric handkerchief was in her hand--her mourning-ring was upon her finger--and the tear, not unbidden, stood in her eye. On the same sofa, and side by side, sat a tall, awkward, vapid-looking personage, whom she introduced as her brother, the Duke of Altamont. His Grace was flanked by an obsequious-looking gentleman, who was slightly named as General Carver; and at a respectful distance was seated a sort of half-cast gentle-woman, something betwixt the confide humble companion, who was incidentally as "my good Mrs. Finch." Her Ladyship pressed Lady Emily's hand-- "I did not expect, my dearest young friend, after the blow I have experienced--I did not expect I should so soon have been enabled to see my friends; but I have made a great exertion. Had I consulted my own feelings, indeed!--but there is a duty we owe to the world--there is an example we are all bound to show--but such a blow!" Here she had recourse to her handkerchief. "Such a blow!" echoed the Duke. "Such a blow!" re-echoed the General. "Such a blow!" reverberated Mrs. Finch. "The most doating husband! I may say he lived but in my sight. Such a man!" "Such a man!" said the Duke. "Such a man!" exclaimed the General. "Oh! such a man!" sobbed Mrs. Finch, as she complacently dropped a few tears. At hat moment, sacred to tender remembrance, the door opened, and Mrs. Downe Wright was announced. She entered the room as if she had come to profane the ashes of the dead, and insult the feelings of the living. A smile was upon her face; and, in place of the silent pressure, she shook her Ladyship heartily by the hand as she expressed her pleasure at seeing her look so well. "Well!" replied the Lady, "that is wonderful, after whatever have suffered; but grief, it seems, will not kill!" "I never thought it would," said Mrs. Downe Wright; "but I thought your having been confined to the house so long might have affected your looks. However, I'm happy to see that is not the case, as I don't recollect ever to have seen you so fat." Lady Matilda tried to look her into decency, but in vain. She sighed, and even groaned; but Mrs. Downe Wright would not be dolorous, and was not to be taken in, either by sigh or groan, crape-fan or prayer-book. There was nobody her Ladyship stood so much in awe of as Mrs. Downe Wright. She had an instinctive knowledge that she knew her, and she felt her genius repressed by her, as Julius Cresar's was by Cassius. They had been very old acquaintances, but never were cordial friends, though many worthy people are very apt to confound the two. Upon this occasion Mrs. Downe Wright certainly did; for, availing herself of this privilege, she took off her cloak, and said, "'Tis so long since I have seen you, my dear; and since I see you so well, and able to enjoy the society of your friends, I shall delay the rest of my visits, and spend the morning with you." "That is truly kind of you, my dear Mrs. Downe Wright," returned the mourner, with a countenance in which real woe was now plainly depicted; "but I cannot be so selfish as to claim such a sacrifice from you." "There is no sacrifice in the case, I assure you, my dear," returned Mrs. Downe Wright. "This is a most comfortable room; and I could go nowhere that I would meet a pleasanter little circle," looking round. Lady Matilda thought herself undone. Looking well--fat--comfortable room--pleasant circle--rung in her ears, and caused almost as great a whirl in her brain as noses, lips, handkerchiefs, did in Othello's Mrs. Downe Wright, always disagreeable, was now perfectly insupportable. She had disconcerted all her plans--she was a bar to all her studied speeches--even an obstacle to all her sentimental looks; yet to get rid of her was impossible. In fact, Mrs. Downe Wright was far from being an amiable woman. She took a malicious pleasure in tormenting those she did not like; and her skill in this art was so great that she even deprived the tormented of the privilege of complaint. She had a great insight into character, and she might be said to read the very thoughts of his victims. Making a desperate effort to be herself again, Lady Matilda turned to her two young visitors, with whom she had still some hopes of success. "I cannot express how much I feel indebted to the sympathy of my friends upon this trying occasion--an occasion, indeed, that called for sympathy." "A most melancholy occasion!" said the Duke. "A most distressing occasion!" exclaimed the General. "Never was greater occasion!" moaned Mrs_._ Finch. Her Ladyship wiped her eyes, and resumed. "I feel that I act but a melancholy part, in spite of every exertion. But my kind friend Mrs. Downe Wright's spirits will, I trust, support me. She knows what it is to lose--" Again her voice was buried in her handkerchief, and again she recovered and proceeded. "I ought to apologise for being thus overcome; but my friends, I hope, will make due allowance for my situation. It cannot be expected that I should at all times find myself able for company." "Not at all!" said the Duke; and the two satellites uttered their responses. "You are able for a great deal, my dear!" said the provoking Mrs. Downe Wright; "and I have no doubt but, with a very little exertion, you could behave as if nothing had happened." "Your partiality makes you suppose me capable of a great deal more than I am equal to," answered her Ladyship, with a real hysteric sob. "It is not everyone who is blessed with the spirits of Mrs. Downe Wright." "What woman can do, you dare; who dares do more, is none!" said the General, bowing with a delighted air at this brilliant application. Mrs. Downe Wright charitably allowed it to pass, as she thought it might be construed either as a compliment or a banter. Visitors flocked in, and the insufferable Mrs. Downe Wright declared to all that her Ladyship was astonishingly well; but without the appropriate whine, which gives proper pathos, and generally accompanies this hackneyed speech. Mrs. Finch indeed laboured hard _to _counteract the effect of this injudicious cheerfulness by the most orthodox sighs, shakes of the head, and confidential whispers, in which "wonderful woman!"--"prodigious exertion!"--"perfectly overcome!"--"suffer for this afterwards,"--were audibly heard by all present; but even then Mrs. Downe Wright's drawn-up lip and curled nose spoke daggers. At length the tormentor recollected an engagement she had made elsewhere, and took leave, promising to return, if possible, the following day. Her friend, in her own mind, took her measures accordingly. She resolved to order her own carriage to be in waiting, and if Mrs. Downe Wright put her threat in execution she would take an airing. True, she had not intended to have been able for such an exertion for at least a week longer; but, with the blinds down, she thought it might have an interesting effect. The enemy fairly gone, Lady Matilda seemed to feel like a person suddenly relieved from the nightmare; and she was beginning to give a fair specimen of her scenic powers when Lady Emily, seeing the game was up with Mrs. Downe Wright, abruptly rose to depart. "This has been a trying scene for you, my sweet young friends!" said her Ladyship, taking a hand of each. "It has indeed!" replied Lady Emily, in a tone so significant as made Mary start. "I know it would--youth is always so full of sympathy. I own I have a preference for the society of my young friends on that account. My good Mrs. Finch, indeed, is an exception; but worthy Mrs. Downe Wright has been almost too much for me." "She is too much!" said the Duke. "She is a great deal too much!" said the General. "She is a vast deal too much!" said Mrs. Finch. "I own I have been rather overcome by her!" with a deep-drawn sigh, which her visitors hastily availed themselves of to make their retreat. The Duke and the General handed Lady Emily and Mary to their carriage. "You find my poor sister wonderfully composed," said the former. "Charming woman, Lady Matilda!" ejaculated the latter; "her feelings do honour to her head and heart!" Mary sprang into the carriage as quick as possible to be saved the embarrassment of a reply; and it was not till they were fairly out of sight that she ventured to raise her eyes to her cousin's face. There the expression of ill-humour and disgust were so strongly depicted that she could not longer repress her risible emotions, but gave way to a violent fit of laughter. "How!" exclaimed her companion, "is this the only effect 'Matilda's moan' has produced upon you? I expected your taste for grief would have been highly gratified by this affecting representation." "My appetite, you ought rather to say," replied Mary; "taste implies some discrimination, which you seem to deny me." "Why, to tell you the truth, I do look upon you as a sort of intellectual ghoul; you really do remind me of the lady in the Arabian Nights, whose taste or appetite, which you will, led her to scorn everything that did not savour of the churchyard." "The delicacy of your comparison is highly flattering," said Mary; "but I must be duller than the fatweed were I to give my sympathy to such as Lady Matilda Sufton." "Well, I'm glad to hear you say so; for I assure you I was in pain lest you should have been taken in, notwithstanding my warning to say something _larmoyante--or_ join the soft echo--or heave a sigh--or drop a tear--or do something, in short, that would have disgraced you with me for ever. At one time, I must do you the justice to own, I thought I saw you with difficulty repress a smile, and then you blushed so, for fear you had betrayed yourself! The smile I suppose has gained you one conquest--the blush another. How happy you who can hit the various tastes so easily! Mrs. Downe Wright whispered me as she left the room, 'What a charming intelligent countenance your cousin has!' While my Lord Duke of Altamont observed, as he handed me along, 'What a very sweet modest-looking girl Miss Douglas was! 'So take your choice--Mrs. William Downe Wright, or Duchess of Altamont!" "Duchess of Altamont, to be sure," said Mary: "and then such a man! Oh! such a man!" CHAPTER XIV. "For marriage is a matter of more worth Than to be dealt with in attorneyship." SHAKESPEARE. "ALLOW me to introduce to you, ladies, that most high and puissant Princess, her Grace the Duchess of Altamont, Marchioness of Norwood, Countess of Penrose, Baroness of, etc. etc.," cried Lady Emily, as she threw open the drawing-room door, and ushered Mary into the presence of her mother and sister, with all the demonstrations of ceremony and respect. The one frowned-the other coloured. "How vastly absurd!" cried Lady Juliana angrily. "How vastly amusing!" cried Adelaide contemptuously. "How vastly annoying!" cried Lady Emily; "to think that this little Highlander should bear a loft the ducal crown, while you and I, Adelaide, must sneak about in shabby straw bonnets," throwing down her own in pretended indignation. "Then to think, which is almost certain, of her Viceroying it someday; and you and I, and all of us, being presented to her Majesty--having the honour of her hand to kiss--retreating from the royal presence upon our heels. "Oh! ye Sylphs and Gnomes!" and she pretended to sink down overwhelmed with mortification. Lady Emily delighted in tormenting her aunt and cousin, and she saw that she had completely succeeded. Mary was disliked by her mother, and despised by her sister; and any attempt to bring her forward, or raise her to a level with themselves, never failed to excite the indignation of both. The consequences were always felt by her in the increased ill-humour and disdainful indifference with which she was treated; and on the present occasion her injudicious friend was only brewing phials of wrath for her. But Lady Emily never looked to future consequences--present effect was all she cared for; and she went on to relate seriously, as she called it, but in the most exaggerated terms, the admiration which the Duke had expressed for Mary, and her own firm belief that she might be Duchess when she chose; "that is, after the expiry of his mourning for the late Duchess. Everyone knows that he is desirous of having a family, and is determined to marry the moment propriety permits; he is now decidedly on the look-out, for the year must be very near a close; and then, hail Duchess of Altamont!" "I must desire, Lady Emily, you will find some other subject for your wit, and not fill the girl's head with folly and nonsense; there is a great deal too much of both already." "Take care what you say of the future representative of majesty of this may be high treason yet; only I trust your Grace will be as generous as Henry the Fifth was, and that the Duchess of Altamont will not remember the offences committed against Mary Douglas." Lady Juliana, to whom a jest was an outrage, and raillery incomprehensible, now started up, and, as she passionately swept out of the room, threw down a stand of hyacinths, which, for the present, put a stop to Lady Emily's diversion. The following day Mrs. Downe Wright arrived with her son, evidently primed for falling in love at first sight. He was a very handsome young man, gentle, and rather pleasing in his manners; and Mary, to whom his intentions were not so palpable, thought him by no means deserving of the contempt her cousin had expressed for him. "Well!" cried Lady Emily, after they were gone, "the plot begins to thicken; lovers begin to pour in, but all for Mary; how mortifying to you and me, Adelaide! At this rate we shall have nothing to boast of in the way of disinterested attachment nobody refused!--nothing renounced! By-and-bye Edward will be reckoned a very good match for _me,_and _you_ will be thought greatly married if you succeed in securing Lindore--_poor_ Lord Lindore, as it seems that wretch Placid calls him." Adelaide heard all her cousin's taunts in silence and with apparent coolness; but they rankled deep in a heart already festering with pride, envy, and ambition. The thoughts of her sister--and that sister so inferior to herself--attaining a more splendid alliance, was not to be endured. True, she loved Lord Lindore, and imagined herself beloved in return; but even that was not sufficient to satisfy the craving passions of a perverted mind. She did not, indeed, attach implicit belief to all that her cousin said on the subject; but she was provoked and irritated at the mere supposition of such a thing being possible; for it is not merely the jealous whose happiness is the sport of trifles light as air--every evil thought, every unamiable feeling, bears about with it the bane of that enjoyment after which it vainly aspires. Mary felt the increasing ill-humour which this subject drew upon her, without being able to penetrate the cause of it; but she saw that it was displeasing to her mother and sister, and that was sufficient to make her wish to put a stop to it. She therefore earnestly entreated Lady Emily to end the joke. "Excuse me," replied her Ladyship, "I shall do no such thing. In the first place, there happens to be no joke in the matter. I'm certain, seriously certain, or certainly serious, which you like, that you may be Duchess of Altamont, if you please. It could be no common admiration that prompted his Grace to an original and spontaneous effusion of it. I have met with him before, and never suspected that he had an innate idea in his head. I certainly never heard him utter anything half so brilliant before--it seemed quite like the effect of inspiration." "But I cannot conceive, even were it as you say, why my mother should be so displeased about it. She surely cannot suppose me so silly as to be elated by the unmeaning admiration of anyone, or so meanly aspiring as to marry a man I could not love, merely because he is a Duke. She was incapable of such a thing herself, she cannot then suspect me." "It seems as impossible to make you enter into the characters of your mother and sister as it would be to teach them to comprehend yours, and far be it from me to act as interpreter betwixt your understandings. If you can't even imagine such things as prejudice, narrow-mindedness, envy, hatred, and malice, your ignorance is bliss, and you had better remain in it. But you may take my word for one thing, and that is, that 'tis a much wiser thing to resist tyranny than to submit to it. Your patient Grizzles make nothing of it, except in little books: in real life they become perfect pack-horses, saddled with the whole offences of the family. Such will you become unless you pluck up spirit and dash out. Marry the Duke, and drive over the necks of all your relations; that's my advice to you." "And you may rest assured that when I follow your advice it shall be in whole not in part." "Well, situated so detestably as you are, I rather think the best thing you could do would be to make yourself Duchess of Altamont. How disdainful you look! Come, tell me honestly now, would you really refuse to be Your Grace, with ninety thousand a year, and remain simple Mary Douglas, passing rich with perhaps forty?" "Unquestionably," said Mary. "What! you really pretend to say you would not marry the Duke of Altamont?" cried Lady Emily. "Not that I would take him myself; but as you and I, though the best of friends, differ widely in our sentiments on most subjects, I should really like to know how it happens that we coincide in this one. Very different reasons, I daresay, lead to the same conclusion; but I shall generously give you the advantage of hearing mine first. I shall say nothing of being engaged--I shall even banish that idea from my thoughts; but were I free as air--unloving and unloved--I would refuse the Duke of Altamont; first, because he: is old--no, first, because he is stupid; second, because he is formal; third, because he swallows all Lady Matilda's flummery; fourth, because he is more than double my age; fifth, because he is not handsome; and, to sum up the whole in the sixth, he wants that inimitable _Je ne scais quoi_ which I consider as a necessary ingredient in the matrimonial cup. I shall not, in addition to these defects, dwell upon his unmeaning stare, his formal bow, his little senseless simper, etc. etc. etc. All these enormities, and many more of the same stamp, I shall pass by, as I have no doubt they had their due effect upon you as well as me; but then I am not like you, under the torments of Lady Juliana's authority. Were that the case, I should certainly think it a blessing to become Duchess of anybody to-morrow." "And can you really imagine," said Mary, "that for the sake of shaking off a parent's authority I would impose upon myself chains still heavier, and even more binding? Can you suppose I would so far forfeit my honour and truth as that I would swear to love, honour, and obey, where I could feel neither love nor respect, and where cold constrained obedience would be all of my duty I could hope to fulfil?" "Love!" exclaimed Lady Emily; "can I credit my ears? Love! did you say I thought that had only been for naughty ones, such as me; and that saints like you would have married for anything and everything but love! Prudence, I thought, had been the word with you proper ladies--a prudent marriage! Come, confess, is not that the climax of virtue in the creed of your school?" "I never learnt the creed of any school," said Mary, "nor ever heard anyone's sentiments on the subject, except my dear Mrs. Douglas's." "Well, I should like to hear your oracle's opinion, if you can give it in shorthand." "She warned me there was a passion which was very fashionable, and which I should hear a great deal of, both in conversation and books, that was the result of indulged fancy, warm imaginations, and ill-regulated minds; that many had fallen into its snares, deceived by its glowing colours and alluring name; that--" "A very good sermon, indeed!" interrupted Lady Emily; "but, no offence to Mrs. Douglas, I think I could preach a better myself. Love is a passion that has been much talked of, often described, and little understood. Cupid has many counterfeits going about the world, who pass very well with those whose minds are capable of passion, but not of love. These Birmingham Cupids have many votaries amongst boarding-school misses, militia officers, and milliners 'apprentices; who marry upon the mutual faith of blue eyes and scarlet coats; have dirty houses and squalling children, and hate each other most delectably. Then there is another species for more refined souls, which owes its birth to the works of Rousseau, Goethe, Cottin, etc. Its success depends very much upon rocks, woods, and waterfalls; and it generally ends daggers, pistols, or poison. But there, I think, Lindore would be more eloquent than me, so I shall leave it for him to discuss that chapter with you. But, to return to your own immediate concerns. Pray, are you then positively prohibited from falling in love? Did Mrs. Douglas only dress up a scarecrow to frighten you, or had she the candour to show you Love himself in all his majesty?" "She told me," said Mary, "that there was a love which even the wisest and most virtuous need not blush to entertain--the love of a virtuous object, founded upon esteem, and heightened by similarity of tastes and sympathy of feelings, into a pure and devoted attachment: unless I feel all this, I shall never fancy myself in love." "Humph! I can't say much as to the similarity of tastes and sympathy of souls between the Duke and you, but surely you might contrive to feel some love and esteem for a coronet and ninety thousand a year." "Suppose I did," said Mary, with a smile, "the next point is to honour; and surely he is as unlikely to excite that sentiment as the other. Honour---" "I can't have a second sermon upon honour. 'Can honour take away the grief of a wound?' as Falstaff says. Love is the only subject I care to preach about; though, unlike many young ladies, we can talk about other things too; but as to this Duke, _I_ certainly 'had rather live on cheese and garlic, in a windmill far, than feed on cakes, and have him talk to me in any summer-house in Christendom;' and now I have had Mrs. Douglas's second-hand sentiments upon the subject, I should like to hear your own." "I have never thought much upon the subject," said Mary; "my sentiments are therefore all at second-hand, but I shall repeat to you what I think is not love, and what is." And she repeated these pretty and well-known lines:-- CARELESS AND FAITHFUL LOVE. To sigh--yet feel no pain; To weep-yet scarce know why; To sport an hour with beauty's chain, Then throw it idly by; To kneel at many a shrine, Yet lay the heart on none; To think all other charms divine But those we just have won:-- This is love-careless love-- Such as kindleth hearts that rove. To keep one sacred flame Through life, unchill'd, unmov'd; To love in wint'ry age the same That first in youth we loved; To feel that we adore With such refined excess, That though the heart would break with more, We could not love with less:-- This is love--faithful love-- Such as saints might feel above. "And such as I do feel, and will always feel, for my Edward," said Lady Emily. "But there is the dressing-bell!" And she flew off, singing-- "To keep one sacred flame," etc. CHAPTER XV. "Some, when they write to their friends, are all affection; Some are wise and sententious; some strain their powers for efforts of gaiety; some write news, and some write secrets--but to make a letter without affection, without wisdom, without gaiety, without news, and without a secret, is doubtless the great epistolic art. "-DR. JOHNSON. AN unusual length of time had elapsed since Mary had heard from Glenfern, and she was beginning to feel some anxiety on account of her friends there, when her apprehensions were dispelled by the arrival of a large packet, containing letters from Mrs. Douglas and Aunt Jacky. The former, although the one that conveyed the greatest degree of pleasure, was perhaps not the one that would be most acceptable to the reader. Indeed, it is generally admitted that the letters of single ladies are infinitely more lively and entertaining than those of married ones--a fact which can neither be denied nor accounted for. The following is a faithful transcript from the original letter in question;-- "GLENFERN CASTLE, ---SHIRE, N.B. _Feb. 19th,_ 18--. "My DEAR MARY--Yours was _received_ with _much_ pleasure, as it is _always_ a satisfaction to your friends _here_ to know that you are _well_ and doing _well._ We all _take_ the most _sincere_ interest in your _health,_ and also in your _improvements_ in other _respects._ But I am _sorry_ to say they do not quite _keep_ pace with _our_ expectations. I must therefore _take_ this opportunity of _mentioning_ to you a _fault_ of yours, _which,_ though a very great _one _in itself, is one _that_ a very slight _degree_ of attention on your _part,_ will, I have _no_ doubt, enable you to _get_ entirely the _better of._ is fortunate for _you,_ my dear Mary, that you have _friends_ who are always ready to point _out_ your errors to you. For _want_ of that _most_ invaluable _blessing,_ viz. a sincere _friend, _many a _one_ has gone out of the _world,_ no wiser in many _respects,_ than when they _came_ into it. But that, I flatter _myself,_ will not be your _case,_ as you cannot _but_ be sensible of the great _pains_ my sister and I have _taken_ to point out your _faults_ to you from the _hour _of your birth. The _one_ to which I particularly _allude _at present is, the constant omission of _proper_ dates to your _letters,_ by which means we are all of us very often _brought_ into _most_ unpleasant _situations._ As an _instance_ of it, our _worthy_ minister, Mr M'Drone, happened to be _calling_ here the very _day_ we received your last _letter._ After _hearing_ it read, he most _naturally_ inquired the date of it; and I _cannot_ tell you how _awkward_ we all _felt_ when we were _obliged_ to confess it had _none!_ And since I am _upon_ that subject, I think it much _better_ to tell you candidly that I _do_ not think your _hand_ of write by any _means_ improved. It does not _look_ as if you _bestowed_ that pains upon it which you _undoubtedly_ ought to do; for without _pains,_ I can assure you, Mary, you _will_ never do any _thing_ well. As our admirable _grandmother,_ good Lady Girnachgowl, _used_ to say, pains _makes_ gains; and so it was _seen_ upon her; for it was entirely _owing_ to her _pains_ that the Girnachgowl estate was relieved, and _came_ to be what it is now, viz. a most valuable and _highly_ productive _property._ "I know there are _many_ young _people_ who are very _apt _to think it _beneath_ them to take _pains;"_ but I sincerely trust, my dear Mary, you have _more_ sense than to be so very _foolish._ Next to a good distinct _hand_ of write, and _proper_ stops (which I observe you never _put),_ the thing _most_ to be attended to is your style, _which_ we all think might _be_ greatly _improved_ by a _little _reflection on your _part,_ joined to a _few_ judicious _hints_ from your friends. We are _all_ of opinion, that your _periods_ are too short, and also _that_ your expressions are _deficient_ in dignity. _Neither_ are you sufficiently circumstantial in your _intelligence,_ even upon subjects of the highest _importance._ Indeed, upon some _subjects,_ you _communicate_ no information whatever, which is _certainly_ very extraordinary in a _young_ person, who ought to be naturally extremely communicative. Miss M'Pry, who is here upon a _visit_ to us at _present,_ is perfectly _astonished_ at the total _want_ of news in your _letters. _She has a _niece_ residing in the neighbourhood of _Bath, _who sends her regular lists of the company there, and also an _account_ of the most _remarkable_ events that take _place _there. Indeed, had it not _been_ for Patty M'Pry, we never would have _heard_ a _syllable_ of the celebrated _Lady _Travers's elopement with _Sir_ John Conquest; and, indeed, I cannot _conceal_ from you, that we have heard more as to what goes on in Lord Courtland's _family_ through Miss Patty M'Pry, than _ever_ we have heard from you, _Mary._ "In short, I _must_ plainly tell you, _however_ painful you may _feel_ it, that not one of us is ever a _whit_ the wiser after reading your _letters_ than we _were_ before. But I am _sorry_ to say this is not the _most_ serious part of the _complaint_ we have to _make_ against you. We are all _willing_ to find excuses for you, even _upon_ these points, but I must _confess,_ your neglecting to _return_ any answers to certain inquiries of your aunts', _appears_ to me perfectly inexcusable. Of _course,_ you must _understand_ that I allude to that _letter_ of your Aunt Grizzy's, dated the 17th of December, wherein she _expressed_ a strong desire that you should endeavour to make yourself _mistress_ of Dr. Redgill's opinion with _respect_ to lumbago, as she is extremely anxious to _know_ whether he _considers_ the seat of the disorder to be in the bones or the sinews; and undoubtedly it is of the greatest _consequence_ to procure the _opinion_ of a sensible well-informed English _physician,_ upon a subject of such vital _importance._ Your Aunt Nicky, also, in a letter, _dated_ the 22d of December, requested to be _informed_ whether Lord Courtland (like our _great_ landholders) killed his own _mutton_, as Miss P. M'P. insinuates in a _letter_ to her aunt, that the _servants_ there are suspected of being _guilty_ of great _abuses_ on that _score_; but there you also _preserve_ a most unbecoming, and I own I think _somewhat mysterious silence._ "And now, my dear Mary, _having_ said all that _I_ trust is necessary to _recall_ you to a sense of _your_ duty, I _shall_ now communicate to you a _piece_ of intelligence, _which,_ I am certain, will _occasion_ you the _most _unfeigned pleasure, viz. the prospect there is of your soon _beholding_ some of your friends from this _quarter_ in Bath. Our valuable friend and _neighbour,_ Sir Sampson, has been rather (we think) worse than _better_ since you left us. He is now _deprived_ of the entire use of one leg. He _himself _calls his _complaint_ a morbid rheumatism; but Lady Maclaughlan _assures_ us it is a rheumatic palsy, and she has now _formed_ the resolution of _taking_ him _up_ to Bath early in the ensuing _spring._ And not only that, but she has most considerately _invited_ your Aunt Grizzy to accompany them, _which,_ of course, she is to do with the greatest _pleasure._ We are therefore all extremely _occupied_ in getting your aunt's things _put_ in order for such an _occasion;_ and you must _accept_ of that as an apology for none of the girls _being_ at leisure to write _you_ at present, and _likewise_ for the shortness of _this_ letter. But be assured we will all _write_ you fully by Grizzy. Meantime, all _unite_ in kind remembrance to _you._ And I _am,_ my dear Mary, your most affectionate aunt, "JOAN DOUGLAS." "P.S.--Upon _looking_ over your letter, I am much _struck_ with your X's. You surely _cannot_ be so ignorant as _not_ to know that a well _made x_ is neither more nor _less_ than _two c's_ joined together back to back, _instead_ of these senseless crosses you _seem_ so fond of; and as to _your z's, _I defy any _one_ to distinguish them _from_ your _y_'s. _I trust you will _attend_ to this, and show that it _proceeds _rather from want of proper _attention_ than _from_ wilful airs. J. D." "P.S.-Miss P. M'Pry _writes_ her aunt that _there_ is a strong _report _of Lord Lindore's marriage to our _niece_ Adelaide; but _we _think that is _impossible,_ as you certainly _never_ could have omitted to _inform_ us of a circumstance _which_ so deeply concerns _us._ If so, I must _own_ I shall think you quite _unpardonable._ At the _same_ time, it _appears _extremely improbable _that_ Miss M'P. _would_ have mentioned _such_ a thing to her _aunt,_without having good _grounds_ to _go_ upon. J. D." Mary could not entirely repress her mirth while she read this catalogue of her crimes; but she was, at the same time, eager to expiate her offences, real or imaginary, in the sight of her good old aunt; and she immediately sat down to the construction of a letter after the model prescribed;--though with little expectation of being able to cope with the intelligent Miss P. M'P. in the extent of her communications. Her heart warmed at the thoughts of seeing again the dear familiar face of Aunt Grizzy, and of hearing the tones of that voice, which, though sharp and cracked, still sounded sweet in memory's ear. Such is the power that early associations ever retain over the kind and unsophisticated heart. But she was aware how differently her mother would feel on the subject, as she never alluded to her husband's family but with indignation or contempt; and she therefore resolved to be silent with regard to Aunt Grizzy's prospects for the present. CHAPTER XVI. ". . . . As in apothecaries' shops all sorts of drugs are permitted to be, so may all sorts of books be in the library; and as they out of vipers, and scorpions, and poisonous vegetables extract often wholesome medicaments for the life of mankind, so out of whatsoever book good instruction and examples may be acquired."--DRUMMOND _of Hawthornden._ MARY's thoughts had often reverted to Rose Hall since the day she had last quitted it, and she longed to fulfil her promise to her venerable friend; but a feeling of delicacy, unknown to herself, withheld her. "She will not miss me while she has her son with her," said she to herself; but in reality she dreaded her cousin's raillery should she continue to visit there as frequently as before. At length a favourable opportunity occurred. Lady Emily, with great exultation, told her the Duke of Altamont was to dine at Beech Park the following day, but that she was to conceal it from Lady Juliana and Adelaide; "for assuredly," said she, "if they were apprised of it, they would send you up to the nursery as a naughty girl, or perhaps down to the scullery, and make a Cinderella of you. Depend upon it you would not get leave to show your face in the drawing-room." "Do you really think so?" asked Mary. "I know it. I know Lady Juliana would torment you till she had set you a crying; and then she would tell you you had made yourself such a fright that you were not fit to be seen, and so order you to your own room. You know very well it would not be the first time that such a thing has happened." Mary could not deny the fact; but, sick of idle altercation, she resolved to say nothing, but walk over to Rose Hall the following morning. And this she did, leaving a note for her cousin, apologising for her flight. She was received with rapture by Mrs. Lennox. "Ah! my dear Mary," said she, as she tenderly embraced her, "you know not, you cannot conceive, what a blank your absence makes in my life! When you open your eyes in the morning, it is to see the light of day and the faces you love, and all is brightness around you. But when I wake it is still to darkness. My night knows no end. 'Tis only when I listen to your dear voice that I forget I am blind." "I should not have stayed so long from you," said Mary, "but I knew you had Colonel Lennox with you, and I could not flatter myself you would have even a thought to bestow upon me." "My Charles is, indeed, everything that is kind and devoted to me. He walks with me, reads to me, talks to me, sits with me for hours, and bears with all my little weaknesses as a mother would with her sick child; but still there are a thousand little feminine attentions he cannot understand. I would not that he did. And then to have him always with me seems so selfish; for, gentle and tender-hearted as he is, I know he bears the spirit of an eagle within him; and the tame monotony of my life can ill accord with the nobler habits of his. Yet he says he is happy with me, and I try to make myself believe him." "Indeed," said Mary, "I cannot doubt it. It is always a happiness to be with those we love, and whom we know love us, under any circumstances; and it is for that reason I love so much to come to my dear Mrs. Lennox," caressing her as she spoke. "Dearest Mary, who would not love you? Oh! could I but see--could I but hope--" "You must hope everything you desire," said Mary gaily, and little guessing the nature of her good friend's hopes; "I do nothing but hope." And she tried to check a sigh, as she thought how some of her best hopes had been already blighted by the unkindness of those whose love she had vainly striven to win. Mrs. Lennox's hopes were already upon her lips, when the entrance of her son fortunately prevented their being for ever destroyed by a premature disclosure. He welcomed Mary with an appearance of the greatest pleasure, and looked so much happier and more animated than when she last saw him, that she was struck with the change, and began to think he might almost stand a comparison with his picture. "You find me still here, Miss Douglas," said he, "although my mother gives me many hints to be gone, by insinuating what indeed cannot be doubted, how very ill I supply your place; but--" turning to his mother--"you are not likely to be rid of me for sometime, as I have just received an additional leave of absence; but for that, I must have left you tomorrow." "Dear Charles, you never told me so. How could you conceal it from me? How wretched I should have been had I dreamed of such a thing!" "That is the very reason for which I concealed it, and yet you reproach me. Had I told you there was a chance of my going, you would assuredly have set it down for a certainty, and so have been vexed for no purpose." "But your remaining was a chance too," said Mrs. Lennox, who could not all at once reconcile herself even to an _escape_ from danger; "and think, had you been called away from me without any preparation!-- Indeed, Charles, it was very imprudent." "My dearest mother, I meant it in kindness. I could not bear to give you a moment's certain uneasiness for an uncertain evil. I really cannot discover either the use or the virtue of tormenting one's self by anticipation. I should think it quite as rational to case myself in a suit of mail, by way of security to my person, as to keep my mind perpetually on the rack of anticipating evil. I perfectly agree with that philosopher who says, if we confine ourselves to general reflections on the evils of life, _that_ can have no effect in preparing us for them; and if we bring them home to us, _that_ is the certain means of rendering ourselves miserable." "But they will come, Charles," said his mother mournfully, "whether we bring them or not." "True, my dear mother; but when misfortune does come, it comes commissioned from a higher power, and it will ever find a well-regulated mind ready to receive it with reverence, and submit to it with resignation. There is something, too, in real sorrow that tends to enlarge and exalt the soul; but the imaginary evils of our own creating can only serve to contract and depress it." Mrs. Lennox shook her head. "Ah! Charles, you may depend upon it your reasoning is wrong, and you will be convinced of it some day." "I am convinced of it already. I begin to fear this discussion will frighten Miss Douglas away from us. _There_ is an evil anticipated! Now, do you, my dear mother, help me to avert it; where that can be done, it cannot be too soon apprehended." As Colonel Lennox's character unfolded itself, Mary saw much to admire in it; and it is more than probable the admiration would soon have been reciprocal, had it been allowed to take its course. But good Mrs. Lennox would force it into a thousand little channels prepared by herself, and love itself must have been quickly exhausted by the perpetual demands that were made upon it. Mary would have been deeply mortified had she suspected the cause of her friend's solicitude to show her off; but she was a stranger to match-making in all its bearings, had scarcely ever read a novel in her life, and was consequently not at all aware of the necessity there was for her falling in love with all convenient speed. She was therefore sometimes amused, though oftener ashamed, at Mrs. Lennox's panegyrics, and could not but smile as she thought how Aunt Jacky's wrath would have been kindled had she heard the extravagant praises that were bestowed on her most trifling accomplishments. "You must sing my favourite song to Charles, my love--he has never heard you sing. Pray do: you did not use to require any entreaty from me, Mary! Many a time you have gladdened my heart with your songs when, but for you, it would have been filled with mournful thoughts!" Mary, finding whatever she did or did _not,_ she was destined to hear only her own praises, was glad to take refuge at the harp, to which she sang the following ancient ditty:-- "Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky, Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, For thou must die. "Sweet rose! whose hue, angry and brave, Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, Thy root is ever in its grave; And thou must die. "Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie, My music shows you have your closes, And all must die. "Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like season'd timber, never gives; But when the whole world turns to coal, Then chiefly lives." "That," said Colonel Lennox, "is one of the any exquisite little pieces of poetry which are to be found, like jewels in an Ethiop's ear, in my favourite Isaac Walton. The title of the book offers no encouragement to female readers, but I know few works from which I rise with such renovated feelings of benevolence and good-will. Indeed, I know no author who has given with so much _naïveté _so enchanting a picture of a pious and contented mind. Here--" taking the book from a shelf, and turning over the leaves--"is one of the passages which has so often charmed me:--'That very hour which you were absent from me, I sat down under a willow by the water-side, and considered what you had told me of the owner of that pleasant meadow in which you left me--that he has a plentiful estate, and not a heart to think so; that he has at this time many lawsuits depending, and that they both damped his mirth, and took up so much of his time and thoughts that he himself had not leisure to take that sweet comfort I, who pretended no title to them, took in his fields; for I could there sit quietly, and, looking in the water, see some fishes sport themselves in the silver streams, others leaping at flies of several shapes and colours. Looking on the hills, I could behold them spotted with woods and groves; looking down upon the meadows I could see, here a boy gathering lilies and lady-smocks, and there a girl cropping culverkeys and cowslips, all to make garlands suitable to this present month of May. These, and many other field flowers, so perfumed the air, that I thought that very meadow like that field in Sicily, of which Diodorus speaks, where the perfumes arising from the place make all dogs that hunt in it to fall off and lose their scent. I say, as I thus sat joying in my own happy condition, and pitying this poor rich man that owned this and many other pleasant groves and meadows about me, I did then thankfully remember what my Saviour said, that the _meek possess the earth--or,_ rather, they enjoy what the others possess and enjoy not; for anglers and meek-spirited men are free from those high, those restless thoughts,--which corrode the sweets of life; and they, and they only, can say, as the poet has happily expressed it-- 'Hail, blest estate of lowliness! Happy enjoyments of such minds As, rich in self-contentedness, Can, like the reeds in roughest winds, By yielding, make that blow but small, By which proud oaks and cedars fall.'" "There is both poetry and painting in such prose as this," said Mary; "but I should certainly as soon have thought of looking for a pearl necklace in a fishpond as of finding pretty poetry in a treatise upon the art of angling." "That book was a favourite of your father's, Charles," said Mrs. Lennox, "and I remember, in our happiest days, he used to read parts of it to me. One passage in particular made a strong impression upon me, though I little thought then it would ever apply to me. It is upon the blessings of sight. Indulge me by reading it to me once again." Colonel Lennox made an effort to conquer his feelings, while he read as follows:-- "What would a blind man give to see the pleasant rivers, and meadows, and flowers, and fountains, that we have met with! I have been told that if a man that was born blind could attain to have his sight for _but only one hour_ during his whole life, and should, at the first opening of his eyes, fix his sight upon the sun when it was in its full glory, either at the rising or the setting, he would be transported and amazed, and so admire the glory of it that he would not willingly turn his eyes from that first ravishing object to behold all the other various beauties this world could present to them. And this, and many other like objects, we enjoy daily---" A deep sigh from Mrs. Lennox made bier son look up. Her eyes were bathed in tears. He threw his arms around her. "My dearest mother!" cried he in a voice choked with agitation, "how cruel--how unthinking--thus to remind you--" "Do not reproach yourself for my weakness, dear Charles; but I was thinking how much rather, could I have my sight but for one hour, I would look upon the face of my own child than on all the glories of the creation!" Colonel Lennox was too deeply affected to speak. He pressed his mother's hand to his lips--then rose abruptly, and quitted the room. Mary succeeded in soothing her weak and agitated spirits into composure; but the chord of feeling had been jarred, and all her efforts to restore it to its former tone proved abortive for the rest of the day. CHAPTER XVII. "Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself, And trust no agent." Much Ado about Nothing. THERE was something so refreshing in the domestic peacefulness of Rose Hall, when contrasted with the heartless bustle of Beech Park, that Mary felt too happy in the change to be in any hurry to quit it. But an unfortunate discovery soon turned all her enjoyment into bitterness of heart; and Rose Hall, from being to her a place of rest, was suddenly transformed into an abode too hateful to be endured. It happened one day as she entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Lennox was, as usual, assailing the heart of her son in her behalf. A large Indian screen divided the room, and Mary's entrance was neither seen nor heard till she was close by them. "Oh, certainly, Miss Douglas is all that you say--very pretty--very amiable--and very accomplished, said Colonel Lennox, with a sort of half-suppressed yawn, in answer to a eulogium of his mother's. "Then why not love her? Ah! Charles, promise me that you will at least try!" said the good old lady, laying her hand upon his with the greatest earnestness. This was said when Mary was actually standing before her. To hear the words, and to feel their application, was a flash of lightning; and for a moment she felt as if her brain were on fire. She was alive but to one idea, and that the most painful that could be suggested to a delicate mind. She had heard herself recommended to the love of a man who was indifferent to her. Could there be such a humiliation--such a degradation? Colonel Lennox's embarrassment was scarcely less; but his mother saw not the mischief she had done, and she continued to speak without his having the power to interrupt her. But her words fell unheeded on Mary's ear--she could hear nothing but what she had already heard. Colonel Lennox rose and respectfully placed a chair for her, but the action was unnoticed--she saw only herself a suppliant for his love; and, insensible to everything but her own feelings, she turned and hastily quitted the room without uttering a syllable. To fly from Rose Hall, never again to enter it, was her first resolution; yet how was she to do so without coming to an explanation, worse even than the cause itself: for she had that very morning yielded to the solicitations of Mrs. Lennox, and consented to remain till the following day. "Oh!" thought she, as the scalding tears of shame for the first time dropped from her eyes, "what a situation am I placed in! To continue to live under the same roof with the man whom I have heard solicited to love me; and how mean--how despicable must I appear in his eyes--thus offered--rejected! How shall I ever be able to convince him that I care not for his love--that I wished it not--that I would, refuse, scorn it to-morrow were it offered to me. Oh! could I but tell him so; but he must ever remain, stranger to my real sentiments--he might reject--but _I_ cannot disavow! And yet to have him think that I have all this while been laying snares for him--that all this parade of my acquirements was for the purpose of gaining his affections! Oh how blind and stupid I was not to see through the injudicious praises of Mrs. Lennox! I should not then have suffered this degradation in the eyes of her son!" Hours passed away unheeded by Mary, while she was giving way to the wounded sensibility of a naturally high spirit and acute feelings, thus violently excited in all their first ardour. At length she was recalled to herself by hearing the sound of a carriage, as it passed under her window; and immediately after she received a message to repair to the drawing-room to her cousin, Lady Emily. "How fortunate!" thought she; "I shall now get away--no matter how or where, I shall go, never again to return." And, unconscious of the agitation visible in her countenance, she hastily descended, impatient to bid an eternal adieu to her once loved Rose Hall. She found Lady Emily and Colonel Lennox together. Eyes less penetrating than her cousin's would easily have discovered the state of poor Mary's mind as she entered the room; her beating heart--her flushed cheek and averted eye, all declared the perturbation of her spirits; and Lady Emily regarded her for a moment with an expression of surprise that served to heighten her confusion. "I have no doubt I am a very unwelcome visitor here to all parties," said she; "for I come--how shall I declare it?--to carry you home, Mary, by command of Lady Juliana." "No, no!" exclaimed Mary eagerly; "you are quite welcome. I am quite ready. I was wishing--I was waiting." Then, recollecting herself, she blushed still deeper at her own precipitation. "There is no occasion to be so vehemently obedient," said her cousin; _"I_ am not quite ready, neither am I wishing or waiting to be off in such a hurry. Colonel Lennox and I had just set about reviving an old acquaintance; begun, I can't tell when--and broken off when I was a thing in the nursery, with a blue sash and red fingers. I have promised him that when he comes to Beech Park you shall sing him my favourite Scotch song, 'Should auld acquaintance be forgot?' I would sing it myself if I could; but I think every Englishwoman who pretends to sing Scotch songs ought to have the bowstring." Then, turning to the harpsichord, she began to play it with exquisite taste and feeling. "There," said she, rising with equal levity; "is not that worth all the formal bows--and 'recollects to have had the pleasure'--and 'long time since I had the honour'--and such sort of hateful reminiscences, that make one feel nothing but that they area great deal older, and uglier, stupider, and more formal than they were so many years before." "Where the early ties of the heart remain unbroken," said Colonel Lennox, with some emotion, "such remembrances do indeed give it back all its first freshness; but it cannot be to everyone a pleasure to have its feelings awakened even by tones such as these." There was nothing of austerity in this; on the contrary, there was so much sweetness mingled with the melancholy which shaded his countenance, that even Lady Emily was touched, and for a moment silent. The entrance of Mrs. Lennox relieved her from her embarrassment. She flew towards her, and taking her hand, "My dear Mrs. Lennox, I feel very much as if I were come here in the capacity of an executioner;--no, not exactly that, but rather a sort of constable or bailiff;--for I am come, on the part of Lady Juliana Douglas, to summon you to surrender the person of her well-beloved daughter, to be disposed of as she in her wisdom may think fit." "Not to-day, surely," cried Mrs. Lennox, in alarm; "to-morrow----" "My orders are peremptory--the suit is pressing," with a significant smile to Mary; "this day--oh, ye hours!" looking at a timepiece, "this very minute. Come Mary--are you ready--_cap-à-pie_?" At another time Mary would have thought only of the regrets of her venerable friend at parting with her; but now she felt only her own impatience to be gone, and she hastily quitted the room to prepare for her departure. On returning to it Colonel Lennox advanced to meet her, evidently desirous of saying something, yet labouring under great embarrassment. "Were it not too selfish and presumptuous," said he, while his heightened colour spoke his confusion, "I would venture to express a hope that your absence will not be very long from my poor mother." Mary pretended to be very busy collecting her work, drawings, etc., which lay scattered about, and merely bent her head in acknowledgment. Colonel Lennox proceeded-- "I am aware of the sacrifice it must be to such as Miss Douglas to devote her time and talents to the comforting of the blind and desolate; and I cannot express--she cannot conceive--the gratitude--the respect--the admiration, with which my heart is filled at such proofs of noble disinterested benevolence on her part." Had Mary raised her eyes to those that vainly sought to meet hers, she would there have read all, and more than had been expressed; but she could only think, "He has been entreated to love!" and at that humiliating idea she bent her head still lower to the colour that dyed her cheek to an almost painful degree, while a sense of suffocation at her throat prevented her disclaiming, as she wished to do, the merit of any sacrifice. Some sketches of Lochmarlie lay upon a table at which she had been drawing the day before; they had ever been precious in her sight till now; but they only excited feelings of mortification, as she recollected having taken them from her _portefeuille_ at Mrs. Lennox's request to show to her son. "This was part of the parade by which I was to win him," thought she with bitterness; and scarcely conscious of what she did, she crushed them together, and threw them into the fire. Then hastily advancing to Mrs. Lennox, she tried to bid her farewell; but as she thought it was for the last time, tears of tenderness as well as pride stood in her eyes. "God bless you, my dear child!" said the unsuspecting Mrs. Lennox, as she held her: in her arms. "And God _will_ bless you in His way--though His ways are not as our ways. I cannot urge you to return to this dreary abode. But oh, Mary! Think sometimes in your gaiety, that when you do come, you bring gladness to a mournful heart, and lighten eyes that never see the sun!" Mary, too much affected to reply, could only wring the hand of her venerable friend, as she tore herself from her embrace, and followed Lady Emily to the carriage. For some time they proceeded in silence. Mary dreaded to encounter her cousin's eyes, which she was aware were fixed upon her with more than their usual scrutiny. She therefore kept hers steadily employed in surveying the well-known objects the road presented. At length her Ladyship began in a grave tone. "You appear to have had very stormy weather at Rose Hall?" "Very much so," replied Mary, without knowing very well what she said. "And we have had nothing but calms and sunshine at Beech Park. Is not that strange?" "Very singular indeed." "I left the barometer very high--not quite at _settled calm_--that would be too much; but I find it very low indeed--absolutely below nothing." Mary now did look up in some surprise; but she hastily withdrew from the intolerable expression of her cousin's eyes. "Dear Lady Emily!" cried she in a deprecating tone. "Well--what more? You can't suppose I'm to put up with hearing my own name; I've heard that fifty times to-day already from Lady Juliana's parrot--come, your face speaks volumes. I read a declaration of love in the colour of your cheeks--a refusal in the height of your nose--and a sort of general agitation in the quiver of your lip and the _déréglement_ of your hair. Now for your pulse--a _leettle_ hasty, as Dr. Redgill would say; but let your tongue declare the rest." Mary would fain have concealed the cause of her distress from every human being, as she felt as if degraded still lower by repeating it to another; and she remained silent, struggling with her emotions. "'Pon my honour, Mary, you really do use great liberties with my patience and good-nature. I appeal to yourself whether I might not just as well have been reading one of Tully's orations to a mule all this while. Come, you must really make haste to tell your tale, for I am dying to disclose mine. Or shall I begin? No--that would be inverting the order of nature or custom, which is the same thing--beginning with the farce, and ending with the tragedy--so _commencez au commencement, m'amie."_ Thus urged, Mary at length, and with much hesitation, related to her cousin the humiliation she had experienced. "And after all," said she, as she ended, "I am afraid I behaved very like a fool. And yet what could I do in my situation, what would you have done?" "Done! why, I should have taken the old woman by the shoulder, and cried Boh! in her ear. And so this is the mighty matter! You happen to overhear Mrs. Lennox, good old soul! recommending you as a wife to her son. What could be more natural except his refusing to fall head in ears in love before he had time to pull his boots off. And then to have a wife recommended to him! and all your perfections set forth, as if you had been a laundrymaid--an early riser, neat worker, regular attention upon church! Ugh I--I must say I think his conduct quite meritorious. I could almost find in my heart to fall in love with him myself, were it for no other reason than because he is not such a Tommy Goodchild as to be in love at his mamma's bidding--that is, loving his mother as he does--for I see he could cut off a hand, or pluck out an eye, to please her, though he can't or won't give her his heart and soul to dispose of as she thinks proper." "You quite misunderstand me," said Mary, with increasing vexation. "I did not mean to say anything against Colonel Lennox. I did not wish--I never once thought whether he liked me or not." "That says very little for you. You must have a very bad taste if you care more for the mother's liking than the son's. Then what vexes you so much? Is it at having made the discovery that your good old friend is a--a--I beg your pardon--a bit of a goose? Well, never mind--since you don't care for the man, there's no mischief done. You have only to change the _dramatis personae._ Fancy that you overheard mere commending you to Dr. Redgill for your skill in cookery--you'd only have laughed at that--so why should you weep at t'other. However, one thing I must tell you, whether it adds to your grief or not, I did remark that Charles Lennox looked very lover-like towards you; and, indeed, this sentimental passion he has put you in becomes you excessively. I really never saw you look so handsome before--it has given an energy and _esprit_ to your countenance, which is the only thing it wants. You are very much obliged to him, were it only for having kindled such a fire in your eyes, and raised such a carnation in your cheek. It would have been long before good _larmoyante_, Mrs. Lennox would have done as much for you. I shouldn't wonder were he to fall in love with you after all." Lady Emily little thought how near she was the the truth when she talked in this random way. Colonel Lennox saw the wound he had innocently inflicted on Mary's feelings, and a warmer sentiment than any he had hitherto experienced had sprung up in his heart. Formerly he had merely looked upon her as an amiable sweet-tempered girl; but when he saw he roused to a sense of her own dignity, and marked the struggle betwixt tender affection and offended delicacy he, formed a higher estimate of her character, and a spark was kindled that wanted but opportunity to blaze into a flame, pure and bright as the shrine on which it burned. Such is the waywardness and price of even the best affections of the human breast. CHAPTER XVIII "C'est a moi de _choisir_ mon gendre; Toi, tel qu'il est, c'est à it toi de Ie prendre; De vous aimer, si vous pouvez tous deux, Et d'obéir à tout ce que je veux." _L'Enfant Prodigue._ "AND now," said Lady Emily, "that I have listened to your story, which after all is really a very poor affair, do you listen to mine. The heroine in both is the same, but the hero differs by some degrees. Know, then, as the ladies in novels say, that the day which saw you depart from Beech Park was the day destined to decide your fate, and dash your hopes, if ever you had any, of becoming Duchess of Altamont. The Duke arrived, I know, for the express purpose of being enamoured of you; but, alas! you were not. And there was Adelaide so sweet--so gracious--so beautiful--the poor gull was caught, and is now, I really believe, as much in love as it is in the nature of a stupid man to be. I must own she has played her part admirably, and has made more use of her time than I, with all my rapidity, could have thought possible. In fact, the Duke is now all but her declared lover, and that merely stands upon a point of punctilio." "But Lord Lindore!" exclaimed Mary in astonishment. "Why, that part of the story is what I _don't_ quite comprehend. Sometimes I think it is a struggle with Adelaide. Lindore, poor, handsome, captivating, on one hand; his Grace, rich, stupid, magnificent, on the other. As for Lindore, he seems to stand quite aloof. Formerly, you know, he never used to stir from her side, or notice anyone else. Now he scarcely notices her, at least in presence of the Duke, Sometimes he affects to look unhappy, but I believe it is mere affectation. I doubt if he ever thought seriously of Adelaide, or indeed anybody else, that he could have in a straightforward Ally Croker sort of a way--but something too much of this. While all this has been going on in one corner, there comes regularly everyday Mr. William Downe Wright, looking very much as if he had lost his shoestring, or pocket handkerchief, and had come there to look for it. I had some suspicion of the nature of the loss, but was hopeful he would have the sense to keep it to himself. No such thing: he yesterday stumbled upon Lady Juliana all alone, and, in the weakest of his weak moments, informed her that the loss he had sustained was no less than the loss of that precious jewel his heart; and that the object of his search was no other than that of Miss Mary Douglas to replace it! He even carried his _bêtise_ so far as to request her permission, or her influence, or, in short, something that her Ladyship never was asked for by any mortal in their senses before, to aid him in his pursuit. You know how it delights her to be dressed in a little brief authority; so you may conceive her transports at seeing the sceptre of power thus placed in her hands. In the heat of her pride she makes the matter known to the whole household. Redgills, cooks, stable-boys, scullions, all are quite _au_ _fait_ to your marriage with Mr. Downe Wright; so I hope you'll allow that it was about time _you _should be made acquainted with it yourself. But why so pale and frightened-looking?" Poor Mary was indeed shocked at her cousin's intelligence. With the highest feelings of filial reverence, she found herself perpetually called upon either to sacrifice her own principles or to act indirect opposition to her mother's will, and upon this occasion she saw nothing but endless altercation awaiting her; for her heart revolted from the indelicacy of such measures, and she could not for a moment brook the idea of being _bestowed_ in marriage. But she had little time for reflection. They were now at Beech Park; and as she alighted a servant informed her Lady Juliana wished to see her in her dressing-room immediately. Thither she repaired with a beating heart and agitated step. She was received with greater kindness than she had ever yet experienced from her mother. "Come in, my dear," cried she, as she extended two fingers to her, and slightly touched her cheek. "You look very well this morning--much better than usual. Your complexion is much improved. At the same time you must be sensible how few girls are married merely for their looks--that is, married well--unless, to be sure, their beauty is something _à merveilleuse_--such as your sister's, for instance. I assure you, it is an extraordinary piece of good fortune in a merely pretty girl to make what is vulgarly called a good match. I know, at least, twenty really very nice young women at this moment who cannot get themselves established." Mary was silent; and her mother, delighted at her own good sense and judicious observations, went on-- "That being the case, you may judge how very comfortable I must feel at having managed to procure for you a most excessive good establishment--just the very thing I have long wished, as I have felt quite at a loss about you of late, my dear. When your sister marries, I shall, of course, reside with her; and as I consider your _liaison _with those Scotch people as completely at an end, I have really been quite wretched as to what was to become of you. I can't tell you, therefore, how excessively relieved I was when Mr. Downe Wright yesterday asked my permission to address you. Of course I could not hesitate an instant; so you will meet him at dinner as your accepted. By-the-bye, your hair is rather blown. I shall send Fanchon to dress it for you. You have really got very pretty hair; I wonder never remarked it before. Oh! and Mrs. Downe Wright is to wait upon me to-morrow, I think; and then I believe we must return the visit. There is a sort of etiquette, you know, in all these matters--that is the most unpleasant part of it; but when that is over you will have nothing to think of but ordering your things." For a few minutes Mary was too much confounded by her mother's rapidity to reply. She had expected to be urged to accept of Mr. Downe Wright; but to be told that was actually done for her was more than she was prepared for. At length she found voice to say that Mr. Downe Wright was almost a stranger to her, and she must therefore be excused from receiving his addresses at present. "How excessively childish!" exclaimed Lady Juliana angrily. "I won't hear of anything so perfectly foolish. You know (or, at any rate, I do) all that is necessary to know. I know that he is a man of family and fortune, heir to a title, uncommonly handsome, and remarkably sensible and well-informed. I can't conceive what more you would wish to know!" "I would wish to know something of his character, his principles, his habits, temper, talents--in short, all those things on which my happiness would depend." "Character and principles!--one would suppose you were talking of your footman! Mr. Downe Wright's character is perfectly good. I never heard anything against it. As to what you call his principles, I must profess my ignorance. I really can't tell whether he is a Methodist; but 1 know he is a gentleman--has a large fortune--is very good-looking--and is not at all dissipated, I believe. In short, you are most excessively fortunate in meeting with such a man." "But I have not the slightest partiality for him," said Mary, colouring. "It cannot be expected that I should, when I have not been half a dozen time in his company. I must be allowed some time before I can consent even to consider--" "I don't mean that you are to marry to-morrow. It may probably be six weeks or two months before everything can be arranged." Mary saw she must speak boldly. "But I must be allowed much longer time before I can consider myself as sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Downe Wright to think of him at all in that light. And even then--he may be very amiable, and yet"--hesitating-- "I may not be able to love him as I ought." "Love!" exclaimed Lady Juliana, her eyes sparkling with anger; "I desire I may never hear that word again from any daughter of mine. I am determined I shall have no disgraceful love-marriages in the family. No well-educated young woman ever thinks of such a thing now, and I won't hear a syllable on the subject." "I shall never marry anybody, I am sure, that you disapprove of," said Mary timidly. "No; I shall take care of that. I consider it the duty of parents to establish their children properly in the world, without any regard to their ideas on the subject. I think I must be rather a better judge of the matter than you can possibly be, and I shall therefore make a point of your forming what I consider a proper alliance. Your sister, I know, won't hesitate to sacrifice her own affections to please me. She was most excessively attached to Lord Lindore--everybody knew that; but she is convinced of the propriety of preferring the Duke of Altamont, and won't hesitate in sacrificing her own feelings to mine. But indeed she has ever been all that I could wish--so perfectly beautiful, and, at the same time, so excessively affectionate and obedient. She approves entirely of your marriage with Mr. Downe Wright, as, indeed, all your friends do. I don't include _your_ friend Lady Emily in that number. I look upon her as a most improper companion for you; and the sooner you are separated from her the better. So now good-bye for the present. You have only to behave as other young ladies do upon those occasions, which, by-the-bye, is generally to give as much trouble to their friends as they possibly can." There are some people who, furious themselves at opposition, cannot understand the possibility of others being equally firm and decided in a gentle manner. Lady Juliana was one of those who always expect to carry their point by a raised voice and sparkling eyes; and it was with difficulty Mary, with her timid air and gentle accents, could convince her that she was determined to judge for herself in a matter in which her happiness was so deeply involved. When at last brought to comprehend it, her Ladyship's indignation knew no bounds; and Mary was accused in the same breath with having formed some low connection in Scotland, and of seeking to supplant her sister by aspiring to the Duke of Altamont. And at length the conference ended pretty much where it began--Lady Juliana resolved that her daughter should marry to please her, and her daughter equally resolved not to be driven into an engagement from which her heart recoiled. CHAPTER XIX. "Qu'on vante en lui la foi, l'honneur, la probité; Qu'on prise sa candeur et sa civilité; Qu'il soit doux, complaisant, oflicieux, sincere: On Ie veut, j'y souscris, et suis prêt à me taire." BOILEAU. WHEN Mary entered the drawing-room she found herself, without knowing how, by the side of Mr. Downe Wright. At dinner it was the same; and in short it seemed an understood thing that they were to be constantly together. There was something so gentle and unassuming in his manner that, almost provoked as she was by the folly of his proceedings, she found it impossible to resent it by her behaviour towards him; and indeed, without being guilty of actual rudeness, of which she was incapable, it would not have been easy to have made him comprehend the nature of her sentiments. He appeared perfectly satisfied with the toleration he met with; and, compared to Adelaide's disdainful glances, and Lady Emily's biting sarcasms, Mary's gentleness and civility might well be mistaken for encouragement. But even under the exhilarating influence of hope and high spirits his conversation was so insipid and commonplace, that Mary found it a relief to turn even to Dr. Redgill. It was evident the Doctor was aware of what was going on, for he regarded her with that increased respect due to the future mistress of a splendid establishment. Between the courses he made some complimentary allusions to Highland mutton and red deer; and he even carried his attentions so far as to whisper, at the very first mouthful, that _les côtellettes de saumon_ were superb, when he had never been known to commend anything to another until he had fully discussed it himself. On the opposite side of the table sat Adelaide and the Duke of Altamont, the latter looking still more heavy and inanimate than ever. The operation of eating over, he seemed unable to keep himself awake, and every now and then yielded to a gentle slumber, from which, however, he was instantly recalled at the sound of Adelaide's voice, when he exclaimed, "Ah! Charming--very charming, ah!"--Lady Emily looked _from_ them as she hummed some part of Dryden's Ode-- "Aloft in awful state The godlike hero sate, etc. The lovely Thais by his side, Look'd like a blooming Eastern bride." Then, as his Grace closed his eyes, and his head sank on his shoulder-- "With ravish'd ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god, Affects to nod." Lady Juliana, who would have been highly incensed had she suspected the application of the words, was so unconscious of it as to join occasionally in singing them, to Mary's great confusion and Adelaide's manifest displeasure. When they returned to the drawing-room, "Heavens! Adelaide," exclaimed her cousin, in an affected manner, "what are you made of? Semelé herself was but a mere cinder-wench to you! How can you stand such a Jupiter--and not scorched! not even singed, I protest!" pretending to examine her all over. "I vow I trembled at your temerity--your familiarity with the imperial nod was fearful. I every instant expected to see you turned into a live coal." "I did burn," said Adelaide, "with shame, to see the mistress of a house forget what was due to her father's guests." "There's a slap on the cheek for me! Mercy! how it burns! No, I did not forget what was due to my father's guests; on the contrary, I consider it due to them to save them, if I can, from the snares that I see set for them. I have told you that I abhor all traps, whether for the poor simple mouse that comes to steal its bit of cheese, or for the dull elderly gentleman who falls asleep with a star on his breast." "This is one of the many kind and polite allusions for which I am indebted to your Ladyship," said Adelaide haughtily; "but I trust the day will come when I shall be able to discharge what I owe you." And she quitted the room, followed by Lady Juliana, who could only make out that Lady Emily had been insolent, and that Adelaide was offended. A pause followed. "I see you think I am in the wrong, Mary; I can read that in the little reproachful glance you gave me just now. Well, perhaps I am; but I own it chafes my spirit to sit and look on such a scene of iniquity. Yes, iniquity I call it, for a woman to be in love with one man, and at the same time laying snares for another. You may think, perhaps, that Adelaide has no heart to love anything; but she has a heart, such as it is, though it is much too fine for every-day use, and therefore it is kept locked up in marble casket, quite out of reach of you or I. But I'm mistaken if Frederick has not made himself master of it! Not that I should blame her for that, if she would be honestly and downrightly in love with him. But how despicable to see her, with her affections placed upon one man, at the same time lavishing all her attentions on another--and that other, if he had been plain John Altamont, Esq., she would not have been commonly civil to! And, _àpropos_ of civility--I must tell you, if you mean to refuse your hero, you were too civil by half to him. I observed you at dinner, you sat perfectly straight, and answered everything he said to you." "What could I do?" asked Mary, in some surprise. "I'll tell you what I would have done, and have thought the most honourable mode of proceeding; I should have turned my back upon him, and have merely thrown him a monosyllable now and then over my shoulder." "I could not be less than civil to him, and I am sure I was not more." "Civility is too much for a man one means to refuse. You'll never get rid of a stupid man by civility. Whenever I had any reason to apprehend a lover, I thought it my duty to turn short upon him and give him a snarl at the outset, which rid me of him at once. But I really begin to think I manage these matters better than anybody else--'Where I love, I profess it: where I hate, in every circumstance I dare proclaim it.'" Mary tried to defend her sister, in the first place; but though her charity would not allow her to censure, her conscience whispered there was much to condemn; and she was relieved from what she felt a difficult task when the gentlemen began to drop in. In spite of all her manoeuvres Mr. Downe Wright contrived to be next her, and whenever she changed her seat, she was sure of his following her. She had also the mortification of overhearing Lady Juliana tell the Duke that Mr. Downe Wright was the accepted lover of her youngest daughter, that he was a man of large fortune, and heir to his uncle, Lord Glenallan! "Ah! a nephew of my Lord Glenallan's!--Indeed--a pretty young man--like the family!--Poor Lord Glenallan! I knew him very well. He has had the palsy since then, poor man--ah!" The following day Mary was compelled to receive Mrs. Downe Wright's visit; but she as scarcely conscious of what passed, for Colonel Lennox arrived at the same time; and it was equally evident that his visit was also intended for her. She felt that she ought to appear unconcerned in his presence, and he tried to be so; but still the painful idea would recur that he had been solicited to love her, and, unskilled in the arts of even innocent deception, she could only try to hide the agitation under the coldness of her manner. "Come, Mary," cried Lady Emily, as if in answer to something Colonel Lennox had addressed to her in a low voice, "do you remember the promise I made Colonel Lennox, and which it rests with you to perform?" "I never consider myself bound to perform the promises of others," replied Mary gravely. "In some cases that may be a prudent resolution, but in the present it is surely an unfriendly one," said Colonel Lennox. "A most inhuman one!" cried Lady Emily, "since you and I, it seems, cannot commence our friendship without something sentimental to set us agoing. It rests with you, Mary, to be the founder of our friendship; and if you manage the matter well, that is, sing in your best manner, we shall perhap, make it a triple alliance, and admit you as third." "As every man is said to be the artificer of his own fortune, so every one, I think, had best be the artificer of their own friendship," said Mary, trying to smile, as she pulled her embroidery frame towards her, and began to work. "Neither can be the worse of a good friend to help them on," observed Mrs. Downe Wright. "But both may be materially injured by an injudicious one," said Colonel Lennox; "and although, on this occasion, I am the greatest sufferer by it, I must acknowledge the truth of Miss Douglas's observation. Friendship and love, I believe, will always be found to thrive best when left to themselves." "And so ends my novel, elegant, and original plan for striking up a sudden friendship," cried Lady Emily. "Pray, Mr. Downe Wright, can you suggest anything better for the purpose than an old song?" Mr. Downe Wright, who was not at all given to suggesting, looked a little embarrassed. "Pull the bell, William, for the carriage," said his mother; "we must now be moving." And with a general obeisance to the company, and a significant pressure of the hand to Mary, she withdrew her son from his dilemma. Although a shrewd, penetrating woman, she did not possess that tact and delicacy necessary to comprehend the finer feelings of a mind superior to her own; and in Mary's averted looks and constrained manner she saw nothing but what she thought quite proper and natural in her situation. "As for Lady Emily," she observed, "there would be news of her and that fine dashing-looking Colonel yet, and Miss Adelaide would perhaps come down a pin before long." Soon after Colonel Lennox took his leave, in spite of Lady Emily's pressing invitation for him to spend the day there, and meet her brother, who had been absent for some days, but was now expected home. He promised to return again soon, and departed. "How prodigiously handsome Colonel Lennox looked to-day," said she, addressing Mary; "and how perfectly unconscious, at least indifferent, he seems about it. It is quite refreshing to see a handsome man that is neither a fool nor a coxcomb." "Handsome! no, I don't think he is very handsome," said Lady Juliana. "Rather dark, don't you think, my love?" turning to Adelaide, who sat apart at a table writing, and had scarcely deigned to lift her head all the time. "Who do you mean? The man who has just gone out? Is his name Lennox? Yes, he is rather handsome." "I believe. you are right; he certainly is good-looking, but in a peculiar style. I don't quite like the expression of his eye, and he wants that air _distingué,_ which, indeed, belongs exclusively to persons of birth." "He has perfectly the air of a man of fashion," said Adelaide, in a decided tone, as if ashamed to agree with her mother. "Perhaps _un peu militaire,_ but nothing at all professional." "Lennox!--it is a Scotch name," observed Lady Juliana contemptuously. "And, to cut the matter short," said Lady Emily, as she was quitting the room, "the man who has just gone out is Colonel Lennox, and not the Duke of AItamont." After a few more awkward, indefinite sort of visits, in which Mary found it impossible to come to an explanation, she was relieved for the present from the assiduities of her lover. Lady Juliana received a note from Mrs. Downe Wright, apologising for what she termed her son's unfortunate absence at such a critical time; but he had received accounts of the alarming illness of his uncle Lord Glenallan, and had, in consequence, set off instantly for Scotland, where she was preparing to follow; concluding with particular regards to Miss Mary--hopes of being soon able to resume their pleasant footing in the family, etc. etc. "How excessively well arranged it will be that old man's dying at this time!" said her Ladyship, as she tossed the note to her daughter; "Lord Glenallan will sound so much better than Mr. Downe Wright. The name I have always considered as the only objectionable part. You are really most prodigiously fortunate." Mary was now aware of the folly of talking reason to her mother, and remained silent; thankful for the present peace this event would ensure her, and almost tempted to wish that Lord Glenallan's doom might not speedily be decided. CHAPTER XX. "It seems it is as proper to our age To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions, As it is common for the younger sort To lack discretion." _Hamlet._ LORD LINDORE and Colonel Lennox has been boyish acquaintances, and a sort of superficial, intimacy was soon established between them, which served as the ostensible cause of his frequent visits at Beech Park. But to Mary, who was more alive to the difference of their characters and sentiments than any other member of the family, this appeared very improbable, and she could not help suspecting that love for the sister, rather than friendship for the brother, was the real motive by which he was actuated. In half jesting manner she mentioned her suspicions to Lady Emily, who treated the idea with her usual ridicule. "I really could not have supposed you so extremely missy-ish, Mary," said she, "as to imagine that because two people like each other's society, and talk and laugh together a little more than usual, that the must needs be in love! I believe Charles Lennox loves me much the same as he did eleven years ago, when I was a little wretch that used to pull his hair and spoil his watch. And as for me, you know that I consider myself quite as an old woman--at least as a married one; and he is perfectly _au fait_ to my engagement with Edward. I have even shown him his picture and some of his letters." Mary looked incredulous. "You may think as you please, but I tell you it is so. In my situation I should scorn to have Colonel Lennox, or anybody else, in love with me. As to his liking to talk to me, pray who else can he talk to? Adelaide would sometimes _condescend_ indeed; but he won't be condescended to, that's clear, not even by a Duchess. With what mock humility he meets her airs! how I adore him for it! Then you are such a pillar of ice!--so shy and unsociable when he is present!--and, by-the-bye, if I did not despise recrimination as the _pis aller_ of all conscious Misses, I would say you are much more the object of his _attention,_ at least, than I am. Several times I have caught him looking very earnestly at you, when, by the laws of good breeding, his eyes ought to have been fixed exclusively upon me; and--" "Pshaw!" interrupted Mary, colouring, "that is mere absence--nothing to the purpose--or perhaps," forcing a smile, "he may be _trying_ to love me!" Mary thought of her poor old friend, as she said this, with bitterness of heart. It was long since she had seen her; and when she had last inquired for her, her son had said he did not think her well, with a look Mary could not misunderstand. She had heard him make an appointment with Lord Lindore for the following day, and she took the opportunity of his certain absence to visit his mother. Mrs. Lennox, indeed, looked ill, and seemed more than usually depressed. She welcomed Mary with her usual tenderness, but even her presence seemed to fail of inspiring her with gladness. Mary found she was totally unsuspicious of the cause of her estrangement, and imputed it to a very different one. "You have been a great stranger, my dear!" said she, as she affectionately embraced her; "but at such a time I could not expect you to think of me." "Indeed," answered Mary, equally unconscious of her meaning, "I have thought much and often, very often, upon you, and wished I could have come to you; but---" she stopped, for she could not tell the truth, and would not utter a falsehood. "I understand it all," said Mrs. Lennox, with a sigh. "Well--well--God's will be done!" Then trying to be more cheerful, "Had you come little sooner, you would have met Charles. He is just gone out with Lord Lindore. He was unwilling to leave me, as he always is, and when he does, I believe it is as much to please me as himself. Ah! Mary, I once hoped that I might have lived to see you the happy wife of the best of sons. I may speak out now, since that is all over. God has willed otherwise, an may you be rewarded in the choice you have made!" Mary was struck with consternation to find that her supposed engagement with Mr. Downe Wright had spread even to Rose Hall; and in the greatest confusion she attempted to deny it. But after the acknowledgment she had just heard, she acquitted herself awkwardly; for she felt as if an open explanation would only serve to revive hopes that never could be realised, and subject Colonel Lennox and herself to future perplexities. Nothing but the whole truth would have sufficed to undeceive Mrs. Lennox, for she had had the intelligence of Mary's engagement from Mrs. Downe Wright herself, who, for better security of what she already considered her son's property, had taken care to spread the report of his being the accepted lover before she left the country. Mary felt all the unpleasantness of her situation. Although detesting deceit and artifice of every kind, her confused and stammering denials seemed rather to corroborate the fact; but she felt that she could not declare her resolution of never bestowing her hand upon Mr. Downe Wright without seeming at the same time to court the addresss of Colonel Lennox. Then how painful--how unjust to herself, as well as cruel to him, to have it for an instant believed that she was the betrothed of one whose wife she was resolved she never would be! In short, poor Mary's mind was a complete chaos; and for the first time in her life she found it impossible to determine which was the right course for her to pursue. Even in the midst of her distress, however, she could not help smiling at the _naïvete_ of the good old lady's remarks. "He is a handsome young man, I hear," said she, still in allusion to Mr. Downe Wright: "has a fine fortune, and an easy temper. All these things help people's happiness, though they cannot make it; and his choice of you, my dear Mary, shows that he has some sense." "What a eulogium!" said Mary, laughing and blushing. "Were he really to me what you suppose, I must be highly flattered; but I must again assure you it is not using Mr. Downe Wright well to talk of him as anything to me. My mother, indeed--". "Ah! Mary, my dear, let me advise you to beware of being led, even by a mother, in such a matter as this. God forbid that I should ever recommend disobedience towards a parent's will; but I fear you have yielded too much to yours. I said, indeed, when I heard it, that I feared undue influence had been used; for that I could not think William Downe Wright would ever have been the choice of your heart. Surely parents have much to answer for who mislead their children in such an awful step as marriage!" This was the severest censure Mary had ever heard drop from Mrs. Lennox's lips; and she could not but marvel at the self-delusion that led her thus to condemn in another the very error she had committed herself, but under such different circumstances that she would not easily have admitted it to be the same. She sought for the happiness of her son, while Lady Juliana, she was convinced, wished only her own aggrandisement. "Yes, indeed," said Mary, in answer to her friend's observation, "parents ought, if possible, to avoid even forming wishes for their children. Hearts are wayward things, even the best of them." Then more seriously she added, "And, dear Mrs. Lennox, do not either blame my mother nor pity me; for be assured, with my heart only will I give my hand; or rather, I should say, with my hand only will I give my heart: And now good-bye," cried she, starting up and hurrying away, as she heard Colonel Lennox's voice in the hall. She met him on the stair, and would have passed on with a slight remark, but he turned with her, and finding she had dismissed the carriage, intending to walk home, he requested permission to attend her. Mary declined; but snatching up his hat, and whistling his dogs, he set out with her in spite of her remonstrances to the contrary. "If you persist in refusing my attendance," said he, "you will inflict an incurable wound upon my vanity. I shall suspect you are ashamed of being seen in such company. To be sure, myself, with my shabby jacket and my spattered dogs, do form rather a ruffian-like escort; and I should not have dared to have offered my services to a fine lady; but you are not a fine lady, I know;" and he gently drew her arm within his as they began to ascend a hill. This was the first time Mary had found herself alone with Colonel Lennox since that fatal day which seemed to have divided them for ever. At first she felt uneasy and embarrassed, but there was so much good sense and good feeling in the tone of his conversation--it was so far removed either from pedantry or frivolity, that all disagreeable ideas soon gave way to the pleasure she had in conversing with one whose turn of mind seemed so similar to her own; and it was not till she had parted from him at the gate of Beech Park she had time to wonder how she could possibly have walked two miles _tete-à-tete_ with a man whom she had heard solicited to love her! From that day Colonel Lennox's visits insensibly increased in length and number; but Lady Emily seemed to appropriate them entirely to herself; and certainly all the flow of his conversation, the brilliancy of his wit, were directed to her; but Mary could not but be conscious that his looks were much oftener riveted on herself, and if his attentions were not such as to attract general observation, they were such as she could not fail of perceiving and being unconsciously gratified by. "How I admire Charles Lennox's manner to you, Mary," said her cousin, "after the awkward dilemma you were both in. It was no easy matter to know how to proceed; a vulgar-minded man would either have oppressed you with his attentions, or insulted you by his neglect, while he steers so gracefully free from either extreme; and I observe you are the only woman upon whom he designs to bestow _les petits soins._ How I despise a man who is ever on the watch to pick up every silly Miss's fan or glove that she thinks it pretty to drop! No--the woman he loves, whether his mother or his wife, will always be distinguished by him, were she amongst queens and empresses, not by his silly vanity or vulgar fondness, but by his marked and gentlemanlike attentions towards her. In short, the best thing you can do is to make up your quarrel with him--take him for all in all--you won't meet with such another-- certainly not amongst your Highland lairds, by all that I can learn; and, by-the-bye, I do suspect he is now, as you say, trying to love you; and let him--you will be very well repaid if he succeeds." Mary's heart swelled at the thoughts of submitting to such an indignity, especially as she was beginning to feel conscious that Colonel Lennox was not quite the object of indifference to her that he ought to be; but her cousin's remarks only served to render her more distant and reserved to him than ever. CHAPTER XXI. "What dangers ought'st thou not to dread, When Love, that's blind, is by blind Fortune, led?" COWLEY. AT length the long-looked for day arrived. The Duke of Altamont's proposals were made in due form, and in due form accepted. Lady Juliana seemed now touching the pinnacle of earthly joy; for, next to being greatly married herself, her happiness centred in seeing her daughter at the head of a splendid establishment. Again visions of bliss hovered around her, and "Peers and Dukes and all their sweeping train" swam before her eyes, as she anticipated the brilliant results to herself from so noble an alliance; for self was still, as it had ever been, her ruling star, and her affection for her daughter was the mere result of vanity and ambition. The ensuing weeks were passed in all the bustle of preparations necessarily attendant on the nuptials of the great. Every morning brought from Town dresses, jewels, patterns, and packages of all descriptions. Lady Juliana was in ecstasies, even though it was but happiness in the second person. Mary watched her sister's looks with the most painful solicitude; for from her lips she knew she never would learn the sentiments of her heart. But Adelaide was aware she had a part to act, and she went through it with an ease and self-possession that seemed to defy all scrutiny. Once or twice, indeed, her deepening colour and darkening brow betrayed the feelings of her heart, as the Duke of Altamont and Lord Lindore were brought into comparison; and Mary shuddered to think that her sister was even now ashamed of the man whom she was so soon to vow to love, honour, and obey. She had vainly tried to lead Adelaide to the subject. Adelaide would listen to nothing which she had reason to suppose was addressed to herself; but either with cool contempt took up a book, or left the room, or, with insolent affectation, would put her hands to her head, exclaiming, _"Mes oreilles n'etoient pas faites pour les entretiens sérieux."_ All Mary's worst fears were confirmed a few days before that fixed for the marriage. As she entered the music-room she was startled to find Lord Lindore and Adelaide alone. Unwilling to suppose that her presence would be considered as an interruption, she seated herself at a little distance from them, and was soon engrossed by her task. Adelaide, too, had the air of being deeply intent upon some trifling employment; and Lord Lindore, as he sat opposite to her, with his head resting upon his hands, had the appearance of being engaged in reading. All were silent for some time; but as Mary happened to look up, she saw Lord Lindore'seyes fixed earnestly upon her sister, and with _voice_ of repressed feeling he repeated,_"Ah! je le sens, ma Julie! si'l falloit renoncer a vous, il n'y auroit plus pour moi d'autre sejour ni d'autre saison:"_ and throwing down the book, he quitted the room. Adelaide pale and agitated, rose as if to follow him; then, recollecting herself, she rushed from the apartment by an opposite door. Mary followed, vainly hoping that in this moment of excited feeling she might be induced to open her heart to the voice of affection; but Adelaide was a stranger to sympathy, and saw only the degradation of confessing the struggle she endured in choosing betwixt love and ambition. That her heart was Lord Lindore's she could not conceal from herself, though she would not confess it to another--and that other the tenderest of sisters, whose only wish was to serve her. Mary's tears and entreaties were therefore in vain, and at Adelaide's repeated desire she at length quitted her and returned to the room she had left. She found Lady Emily there with a paper in her hand. "Lend me your ears, Mary," cried she, "while I read these lines to you. Don't be afraid, there are no secrets in them, or at least none that you or I will be a whit the wiser for, as they are truly in a most mystic strain. I found them lying upon this table, and they are in Frederick's handwriting, for I see he affects the _soupirant_ at present; and it seems there has been a sort of a sentimental farce acted between Adelaide and him. He pretends that, although distractedly in love with her, he is not so selfish as even to wish her to marry him in preference to the Duke of Altamont; and Adelaide, not to be outdone in heroics, has also made it out that it is the height of virtue in her to espouse the Duke of Altamont, and sacrifice all the tenderest affections of her heart to duty! Duty! yes, the duty of being a Duchess, and of living in state and splendour with the man she secretly despises, to the pleasure of renouncing both for the man she loves; and so they have parted, and here, I suppose, are Lindore's lucubrations upon it, intended as a _souvenir_ for Adelaide, I presume. Now, night visions befriend me! "The time returns when o'er my wilder'd mind, A thraldom came which did each sense enshroud; Not that I bowed in willing chain confined, But that a soften'd atmosphere of cloud Veiled every sense--conceal'd th' impending doom. 'Twas mystic night, and I seem'd borne along By pleasing dread--and in a doubtful gloom, Where fragrant incense and the sound of song, And all fair things we dream of, floated by, Lulling my fancy like a cradled child, Till that the dear and guileless treachery, Made me the wretch I am--so lost, so wild-- A mingled feeling, neither joy or grief, Dwelt in my heart--I knew not whence it came, And--but that woe is me! 'twas passing brief, Even at this hour I fain would feel the same! I track'd a path of flowers--but flowers among Were hissing serpents and drear birds of night, That shot across and scared with boding cries; And yet deep interest lurked in that affright, Something endearing in those mysteries, Which bade me still the desperate joy pursue, Heedless of what might come--when from mine eyes The cloud should pass, or what might then accrue. The cloud _has_ passed--the blissful power is flown, The flowers are wither'd--wither'd all the scene. But ah! the dear delusions I have known Are present still, with loved though altered mien: I tread the selfsame path in heart unchanged; But changed now is all that path to me, For where 'mong flowers and fountains once I ranged Are barren rocks and savage scenery!" Mary felt it was in vain to attempt to win her sister's confidence, and she was too delicate to seek to wrest her secrets from her; she therefore took no notice of this effusion of love and disappointment, which she concluded it to be. Adelaide appeared at dinner as usual. All traces of agitation had vanished; and her manner was a cool and collected as if all had been peace and tranquillity at heart. Lord Lindore's departure was slightly noticed. It was generally understood that he had been rejected by his cousin; and his absence at such a time was thought perfectly natural; the Duke merely remarking, with a vacant simper, "So Lord Lindore is gone--Ah! poor Lord Lindore." Lady Juliana had, in a very early stage of the business, fixed in her own mind that she, as a matter of course, would be invited to accompany her daughter upon her marriage; indeed, she had always looked upon it as a sort of triple alliance, that was to unite her as indissolubly to the fortunes of the Duke of Altamont as though she had been his wedded wife. But the time drew near, and in spite of all her hints and manoeuvres no invitation had yet been extorted from Adelaide. The Duke had proposed to her to invite her sister, and even expressed something like a wish to that effect; for though he felt no positive pleasure in Mary's society, he was yet conscious of a void in her absence. She was always in good humour--always gentle and polite--and, without being able to tell why, his Grace always felt more at ease with her than with anybody else. But his selfish bride seemed to think that the joys of her elevation would be diminished if shared even by her own sister, and she coldly rejected the proposal. Lady Juliana was next suggested--for the Duke had a sort of vague understanding that his safety lay in a multitude. With him, as with all stupid people, company was society, words were conversation--and all the gradations of intellect, from Sir Isaac Newton down to Dr. Redgill, were to him unknown. But although, as with most weak people, obstinacy was his _forte,_ he was here again compelled to yield to the will of his bride, as she also declined the company of her mother for the present. The disappointment was somewhat softened to Lady Juliana by the sort of indefinite hopes that were expressed by her daughter of seeing her in town when they were fairly established; but until she had seen Altamont House, and knew its accommodations, she could fix nothing; and Lady Juliana was fain to solace herself with this dim perspective, instead of the brilliant reality her imagination had placed within her grasp. She felt, too, without comprehending, the imperfectness of all earthly felicity. As she witnessed the magnificent preparations for her daughter's marriage, it recalled the bitter remembrance of her own--and many a sigh burst from her heart as he thought, "Such as Adelaide is, I might have been had I been blest with such a mother, and brought up to know what was for my good!" The die was cast. Amidst pomp and magnificence, elate with pride, and sparkling with jewels, Adelaide Douglas reversed the fate of her mother; and while her affections were bestowed on another, she vowed, in the face of heaven, to belong only to the Duke of Altamont! "Good-bye, my dearest love!" said her mother, as she embraced her with transport, "and I shall be with you very soon; and, above all things, try to secure a good opera-box for the season. I assure you it is of the greatest consequence." The Duchess impatiently hurried from the congratulations of her family, and throwing herself into the splendid equipage that awaited her was soon lost to their view. CHAPTER XXII. "Every white will have its black, And every sweet its sour:" As Lady Juliana experienced. Her daughter was Duchess of Altamont, but Grizzy Douglas had arrived in Bath! The intelligence was communicated to Mary in a letter. It had no date, but was as follows:-- My DEAR MARY--You will See from the Date of this, that we are at last Arrived here, after a very long journey, which, you of Course Know it is from this to our Part of the country; at the same Time, it was uncommonly Pleasant, and we all enjoyed it very Much, only poor Sir Sampson was so ill that we Expected him to Expire every minute, which would have made it Extremely unpleasant for dear Lady M'Laughlan. He is now, I am Happy to say, greatly Better, though still so Poorly that I am much afraid you will see a very Considerable change upon him. I sincerely hope, my dear Mary, that you will make a proper Apology to Lady Juliana for my not going to Beech Park (where I know I would be made most Welcome) directly--but I am Certain she will Agree with me that it would be Highly Improper in me to leave Lady M'Laughlan when she is not at all Sure how long Sir Sampson may Live; and it would Appear very Odd if I was to be out of the way at such a time as That. But you may Assure her, with my Kind love, and indeed all our Loves (as I am sure None of us can ever forget the Pleasant time she spent with us at Glenfern in my Poor brother's lifetime, before you was Born), that I will Take the very first Opportunity of Spending some time at Beech Park before leaving Bath, as we Expect the Waters will set Sir Sampson quite on his Feet again. It will be a happy Meeting, I am certain, with Lady Juliana and all of us, as it is Eighteen years this spring since we have Met. You may be sure I have a great Deal to tell you and Lady Juliana too, about all Friends at Glenfern, whom I left all quite Well. Of course, the Report of Bella's and Betsy's marriages Must have reached Bath by this time, as it will be three Weeks to-day since we left our part of the country; but in case it has not reached you, Lady M'Laughlan is of opinion that the Sooner you are made Acquainted with it the Better, especially as there is no doubt of it. Bella's marriage, which is in a manner fixed by this time, I daresay, though of Course it will not take place for some time, is to Capt. M'Nab of some Regiment, but I'm sure I Forget which, for there are so many Regiments, you know, it is Impossible to remember them All; but he is quite a Hero, I know that, as he has been in Several battles, and had Two of his front teeth Knocked Out at one of them, and was Much complimented about it; and he Says, he is quite Certain of getting Great promotion--at any Rate a pension for it, so there is no Fear of him. "Betsy has, if Possible, been still More fortunate than her Sister, although you know Bella was always reckoned the Beauty of the Family, though some people certainly preferred Betsy's Looks too. She has made a Complete conquest of Major M'Tavish, of the Militia, who, Independent of his rank, which is certainly very High, has also distinguished himself very Much, and showed the Greatest bravery once when there was a Very serious Riot about the raising the Potatoes a penny a peck, when there was no Occasion for it, in the town of Dunoon; and it was very much talked of at the Time, as well as Being in all the Newspapers. This gives us all the Greatest Pleasure, as I am certain it will also Do Lady Juliana and you, my dear Mary. At the same time, we Feel very much for poor Babby, and Beenie, and Becky, as they Naturally, and indeed all of us, Expected they would, of Course, be married first; and it is certainly a great Trial for them to See their younger sisters married before them. At the same Time, they are Wonderfully supported, and Behave with Astonishing firmness; and I Trust, my dear Mary, you will do the Same, as I have no Doubt you will All be married yet, as I am sure you Richly deserve it when it Comes. I hope I will see you Very soon, as Lady M'Laughlan, I am certain, will Make you most Welcome to call. We are living in Most elegant Lodgings--all the Furniture is quite New, and perfectly Good. I do not know the Name of the street yet, as Lady M'Laughlan, which is no wonder, is not fond of being Asked questions when she is Upon a Journey; and, indeed, makes a Point of never Answering any, which, I daresay, is the Best way. But, of Course, anybody will Tell you where Sir Sampson Maclaughlan, Baronet, of Lochmarliie Castle, Perthshire, N. B., lives; and, if You are at any Loss, it has a Green door, and a most Elegant Balcony. I must now bid you adieu, my dear. Mary, as I Am so soon to See yourself. Sir Sampson and Lady M'Laughlan unite with Me in Best compliments to the Family at Beech Park. And, in kind love to Lady Juliana and you, I remain, My dear Mary, your most affectionate Aunt, GRIZZEL DOUGLAS. _"P.S._--I have a long letter for you from Mrs. Douglas, which is in my Trunk, that is Coming by the Perth Carrier, and unless he is stopped by the Snow, I Expect he will be here in ten days." With the idea of Grizzy was associated in Mary's mind all the dear familiar objects of her happiest days, and her eyes sparkled with delight at the thoughts of again beholding her. "Oh! when may I go to Bath to dear Aunt Grizzy?" exclaimed she, as she finished the letter. Lady Juliana looked petrified. Then recollecting that this was the first intimation her mother had received of such an event being even in contemplation, she made haste to exculpate her aunt at her own expense, by informing her of the truth. But nothing could be more unpalatable than the truth; and poor Mary's short-lived joy was soon turned into the bitterest sorrow at the reproaches that were showered upon her by the incensed Lady Juliana. But for her these people never would have thought of coming to Bath; or if they did, she should have had no connection with them. She had been most excessively ill-used by Mr. Douglas's family, and had long since resolved to have no further intercourse with them--they were nothing to her, etc. etc. The whole concluding with a positive prohibition against Mary's taking any notice of her aunt. "From all that has been said, Mary," said Lady Emily gravely, "there can be no doubt but that you are the origin of Lady Juliana's unfortunate connection with the family of Douglas." "Undoubtedly," said her Ladyship. "But for you, it appears that she would not have known--certainly never would have acknowledged that her husband had an aunt?" "Certainly not," said Lady Juliana, warmly. "It is a most admirable plan," continued Lady Emily in the same manner, "and I shall certainly adopt it. When I have children I am determined they shall be answerable for my making a foolish marriage; and it shall be their fault if my husband has a mother. _En attendant,_ I am determined to patronise Edward's relations to the last degree; and therefore, unless Mary is permitted to visit her aunt as often as she pleases, I shall make a point of bringing the dear Aunt Grizzy here. Yes" (Putting her hand to the bell), "I shall order my carriage this instant, and set off. To-morrow, you know, we give a grand dinner in honour of Adelaide's marriage. Aunt Grizzy shall be queen of the feast." Lady Juliana was almost suffocated with passion; but she knew her niece too well to doubt her putting her threat into execution, and there was distraction in the idea of the vulgar obscure Grizzy Douglas being presented to a fashionable party as her aunt. After a violent altercation, in which Mary took no part, an ungracious permission was at length extorted, which Mary eagerly availed herself of; and, charged with kind messages from Lady Emily, set off in quest of Aunt Grizzy and the green door. After much trouble, and many unsuccessful attacks upon green doors and balconies, she was going to give up the search in despair, when her eye was attracted by the figure of Aunt Grizzy herself at full length, stationed at a window, in an old-fashioned riding-habit and spectacles. The carriage was stopped and in an instant Mary was in the arms of her aunt, all agitation, as Lochmarlie flashed on her fancy, at again hearing its native accents uttered by the voice familiar to her from infancy. Yet the truth must be owned, Mary's taste was somewhat startled, even while her heart warmed at the sight of the good old aunt. Association and affection still retained their magical influence over her; but absence had dispelled the blest illusions of habitual intercourse; and for the first time she beheld her aunt freed from its softening spell. Still her heart clung to her, as to one known and loved from infancy; and she Soon rose superior to the weakness she felt was besetting her in the slight sensation of shame, as she contrasted her awkward manner and uncouth accent with the graceful refinement of those with whom she associated. Far different were the sensations with which the good spinster regarded her niece. She could not often enough declare her admiration of the improvements that had taken place. Mary was grown taller, and stouter, and fairer and fatter, and her back was a straight as an arrow, and her carriage would even surprise Miss M'Gowk herself. It was quite astonishing to see her, for she had always understood Scotland was the place for beauty, and that nobody ever came to anything in England. Even Sir Sampson and Lady Maclaughlan were forgot as she stood riveted in admiration, and Mary was the first to recall her recollection to them. Sir Sampson, indeed, might well have been overlooked by a more accurate observer; for, as Grizzy observed, he was worn away to nothing, and the little that remained seemed as if it might have gone too without being any loss. He was now deaf, paralytic, and childish, and the only symptom of life he showed was an increased restlessness and peevishness. His lady sat by him, calmly pursuing her work, and, without relaxing from it, merely held up her face to salute Mary as she approached her. "So I'm glad you are no worse than you was, dear child," surveying her from head to foot; "that's more than _we_ can say. You see these poor creatures," pointing to Sir Sampson and Aunt Grizzy. "They are much about it now. Well, we know what we are, but God knows what we shall be--humph!" Sir Sampson showed no signs of recognising her, but seemed pleased when Grizzy resumed her station beside him; and began for the five hundredth time to tell him why he was not in Lochmarlie Castle, and why he was in Bath. Mary now saw that there are situations in which a weak capacity has its uses, and that the most foolish chat may sometimes impart greater pleasure than all the wisdom of the schools, even when proceeding from a benevolent heart. Sir Sampson and Grizzy were so much upon a pair in intellect, that they were reciprocally happy in each other. This the strong sense of Lady Maclaughlan had long perceived, and was the principal reason of her selecting so weak a woman as her companion; though, at the same time, in justice to her Ladyship's heart as well as head, she had that partiality for her friend for which no other reason can be assigned than that given by Montaigne: "Je l'amais parceque c'étoit _elle,_ parceque c'étoit moi." Mary paid a long visit to her aunt, and then took leave, promising to return the following day to take Miss Grizzy to deliver a letter of introduction she had received, and which had not been left to the chance of the carrier and the snow. CHAPTER XXIII. "This sort of person is skilled to assume the appearance of all virtues and all good qualities; but their favourite mask is universal benevolence. And the reason why they prefer this disguise to all others, is, that it tends to conceal its opposite, which is, indeed, their true character--an universal selfishness." --KNOX'S _Essays._ ALTHOUGH, on her return, Mary read her mother's displeasure in her looks, and was grieved at again having incurred it, she yet felt it a duty towards her father to persevere in her attentions to his aunt. She was old, poor, and unknown, plain in her person, weak in her intellects, vulgar in her manners; but she was related to her by ties more binding than the laws of fashion or the rules of taste. Even these disadvantages, which, to a worldly mind, would have served as excuses for neglecting her, to Mary's generous nature were so many incentives to treat her with kindness and attention. Faithful to her promise, therefore, she repaired to Milsom Street, and found her aunt all impatience for her arrival, with the letter so firmly grasped in both hands, that she seemed almost afraid to trust anyone with a glance at the direction. "This letter, Mary," said she, when they were seated in the carriage, "will be a great thing for me, and especially for you. I got it from Mrs. Menzies, through Mrs. M'Drone, whose friend, Mrs. Campbell's half-sister, Miss Grant, is a great friend of Mrs. Fox's, and she says she is a most charming woman. Of course she is no friend to the great Fox; or you know it would have been very odd in me, with Sir Sampson's principles, and my poor brother's principles, and all our own principles, to have visited her. But she's quite of a different family of Foxes: she's a Fox of Peckwell, it seems--a most amiable woman, very rich, and prodigiously charitable. I am sure we have been most fortunate in getting a letter to such a woman." And with this heartfelt ejaculation they found themselves at Mrs. Fox's. Everything corresponded with the account of this lady's wealth and consequence; the house was spacious and handsomely furnished, with its due proportion of livery servants; and they were ushered into a sitting-room which was filled with all the 'wonders of nature and art,--Indian shells, inlaid cabinets, ivory boxes, stuffed birds, old china, Chinese mandarins, stood disclosed in all their charms. The lady of this mansion was seated at table covered with works of a different description: it exhibited the various arts of woman, in regular gradation, from the painted card-rack and gilded firescreen, to the humble thread-paper and shirt-button. Mrs. Fox was a fine, fashionable-looking woman, with a smooth skin, and still smoother address. She received her visitors with that overstrained complaisance which, to Mary's nicer tact, at once discovered that all was hollow; but poor Miss Grizzy was scarcely seated before she was already transfixed with admiration at Mrs. Fox's politeness, and felt as if her whole life would be too short to repay such kindness. Compliments over--the weather, etc., discussed, Mrs. Fox began: "You must be surprised, ladies, to see me in the midst of such a litter, but you find me busy arranging the works of some poor _protégées_ of mine. A most unfortunate family!--I have given them what little instruction I could in these little female works; and you see," putting a gaudy work-basket into Grizzy's hands, "it is astonishing what progress they have made. My friends have been most liberal in their purchases of these trifles, but I own I am a wretched beggar. They are in bad hands when they are in mine, poor souls! The fact is, I can give, but I cannot beg. I tell them they really must find somebody else to dispose of their little labours--somebody who has more of what I call the gift of begging than I am blest with." Tears of admiration stood in Grizzy's eye; her hand was in her pocket. She looked to Mary, but Mary's hands and eyes betrayed no corresponding emotions; she felt only disgust at the meanness and indelicacy of the mistress of such a mansion levying contributions from the stranger within her door. Mrs. Fox proceeded: "That most benevolent woman Miss Gull was here this morning, and bought no less than seven of these sweet little pincushions. I would fain have dissuaded her from taking so many--it really seemed such a stretch of virtue; but she said, 'My dear Mrs. Fox, how can one possibly spend their money better than in doing a good action, and at the same time enriching themselves?'" Grizzy's purse was in her hand. "I declare that's very true. I never thought of that before; and I'm certain Lady Maclaughlan will say the very same; and I'm sure she will be delighted--I've no doubt of that--to take a pincushion; and each of my sisters I'm certain, will take one, though we have all plenty of pincushions; and I'll take one to myself, though I have three, I'm sure, that I've never used yet." "My dear Miss Douglas, you really are, I could almost say, _too_ good. Two and two's four, and one's five--five half-crowns! My poor _protégées!_ you will really be the making of their fortune!" Grizzy, with trembling hands, and a face flushed with conscious virtue, drew forth the money from her little hoard. But Mrs. Fox did not quit her prey so easily. "If any of your friends are in want of shirt-buttons, Miss Douglas, I would fain recommend those to them. They are made by a poor woman in whom I take some interest, and are far superior to any that are to be had from the shops. They are made from the very best materials. Indeed, I take care of that, as" (in a modest whisper) "I furnish her with the material myself; but the generality of those you get to purchase are made from old materials. I've ascertained that, and it's a fact you may rely upon." Poor Grizzy's hair stood on end, to hear of such depravity in a sphere where she had never even suspected it; but, for the honour of her country, she flattered herself such practices were there unknown; and she was entering upon a warm vindication of the integrity of Scotch shirt-buttons, when Mrs. Fox coolly observed-- "Indeed, our friend Miss Grant was so conscious of the great superiority of these buttons over any others, that she bespoke thirty-six dozen of them to take to Scotland with her. In fact, they are the real good old-fashioned shirt-buttons, such as I have heard my mother talk of; and for all that, I make a point of my poor woman selling them a penny a dozen below the shop price; so that in taking twelve dozen, which is the common quantity, there is a shilling saved at once." Grizzy felt as if she would be the saving of the family by the purchase of these incomparable shirt buttons, and, putting down her five shillings, became the happy possessor of twelve dozen of them. Fresh expressions of gratitude and admiration ensued, till Grizzy's brain began to whirl even more rapidly than usual, at the thought of the deeds she had done. "And now," said Mrs. Fox, observing her eyes in a fine frenzy rolling from her lapful of pincushions and shirt buttons, to a mandarin nearly as large as life, "perhaps, my dear Miss Douglas, you will do me the favour to take a look of my little collection." "Favour!" thought Grizzy; "what politeness!" and she protested there was nothing she liked so much as to look at everything, and that it would be the greatest favour to show her anything. The mandarin was made to shake his head--a musical snuffbox played its part--and a variety of other expensive toys were also exhibited. Mary's disgust increased. "And this woman," thought she, "professes to be charitable amidst all this display of selfish extravagance. Probably the price of one of these costly baubles would have provided for the whole of these poor people for whom she affects so much compassion, without subjecting her to the meanness of turning her house into a beggar's repository." And she walked away to the other end of the room to examine some fine scriptural paintings. "Here," said Mrs. Fox to her victim, as she unlocked a superb cabinet, "is what I value more than my whole collection put together. It is my specimens of Scotch pebbles; and I owe them solely to the generosity and good-will of my Scotch friends. I assure you that is a proud reflection to me. I am a perfect enthusiast in Scotch pebbles, and, I may say, in Scotch people. In fact, I am an enthusiast in whatever I am interested in; and at present, I must own, my heart is set upon making a complete collection of Scotch pebbles." Grizzy began to feel a sort of tightness at her throat, at which was affixed a very fine pebble brooch pertaining to Nicky, but lent to Grizzy, to enable her to make a more distinguished figure in the gay world. "Oh!" thought she, "what a pity this brooch is Nicky's, and not mine; I would have given it to this charming Mrs. Fox. Indeed, I don't see how I can be off giving it to her, even although it is Nicky's." "And, by-the-bye," exclaimed Mrs. Fox, as if suddenly struck with the sight of the brooch, "that seems a very fine stone of yours. I wonder I did not observe it sooner; but, indeed, pebbles are thrown away in dress. May I beg a nearer view of it?" Grizzy's brain was now all on fire. On the one hand there was the glory of presenting the brooch to such a polite, charitable, charming woman; on the other, there was the fear of Nicky's indignation. But then it was quite thrown away upon Nicky--she had no cabinet, and Mrs. Fox had declared that pebbles were quite lost anywhere but in cabinets, and it was a thousand pities that Nicky's brooch should be lost. All these thoughts Grizzy revolved with her usual clearness, as she unclasped the brooch, and gave it into the hand of the collector. "Bless me, my dear Miss Douglas, this is really a very fine stone! I had no conception of it when I saw it sticking in your throat. It looks quite a different thing in the hand; it is a species I am really not acquainted with. I have nothing at all similar to it in my poor collection. Pray, can you tell me the name of it, and where it is found, that I may at least endeavour to procure a piece of it." "I'm sure I wish to goodness my sister Nicky was here--I'm certain she would--though, to be sure, she has a great regard for it; for it was found on the Glenfern estate the very day my grandfather won his plea against Drimsydie; and we always called it the lucky stone from that." "The lucky stone! what a delightful name! I shall never think myself in luck till I can procure a piece of your lucky stone. I protest, I could almost go to Scotland on purpose. Oh, you dear lucky stone!" kissing it with rapture. "I'm sure--I'm almost certain--indeed, I'm convinced, if my sister Nicky was here, she would be delighted to offer-- It would certainly be doing my sister Nicky the greatest favour, since you think it would be seen to so much greater advantage in your cabinet, which, for my own part, I have not the least doubt of, as certainly my sister Nicky very seldom wears it for fear of losing it, and it would be a thousand pities if it was lost; and, to be sure, it will be much safer locked up--nobody can dispute that--so I am sure it's by far the best thing my sister Nicky can do--for certainly a pebble brooch is quite lost as a brooch." "My dear Miss Douglas! I am really quite ashamed! This is a perfect robbery, I protest! But I must insist upon your accepting some little token of my regard for Miss Nicky in return." Going to her charity-table, and returning with a set of painted thread-papers, "I must request the favour of you to present these to Miss Nicky, with my kind regards, and assure her I shall consider her lucky stone as the most precious jewel in my possession." The whole of this scene had been performed with such rapidity that poor Grizzy was not prepared for the sudden metamorphose of Nicky's pebble brooch into a set of painted thread-papers, and some vague alarms began to float through her brain. Mary now advanced, quite unconscious of what had been going on; and having whispered her aunt to take leave, they departed. They returned in silence. Grizzy was so occupied in examining her pincushions and counting her buttons, that she never looked up till the carriage stopped in Milsom Street. Mary accompanied her in. Grizzy was all impatience to display her treasures; and as she hastily unfolded them, began to relate her achievements. Lady Maclaughlan heard her in silence, and a deep groan was all that she uttered; but Grizzy was too well accustomed to be groaned at, to be at all appalled, and went on, "But all that's nothing to the shirt-buttons, made of Mrs. Fox's own linen, and only five shillings the twelve dozen; and considering what tricks are played with shirt-buttons now--I assure you people require to be on their guard with shirt-buttons now." "Pray, my dear, did you ever read the 'Vicar of Wakefield?'" "The 'Vicar of Wakefield?' I--I think always I must have read it:--at any rate, I'm certain I've heard of it." "Moses and his green spectacles was as one of the acts of Solomon compared to you and your shirtbuttons. Pray, which of you is it that wears shirts?" "I declare that's very true--I wonder I did not think of that sooner--to be sure, none us wear shirts since my poor brother died." "And what's become of her brooch?" turning to Mary, who for the first time observed the departure of Nicky's crown jewel. "Oh, as to the brooch," cried Grizzy, "I'm certain you'll all think that well bestowed, and certainly it has been the saving of it." Upon which she commenced a most entangled narrative, from which the truth was at length extracted. "Well," said Lady Maclaughlan, "there are two things God grant I may never become,--an, _amateur_ in charity, and a collector of curiosities. No Christian can be either--both are pickpockets. I wouldn't keep company with my own mother were she either one or other--humph!" Mary was grieved at the loss of the brooch; but Grizzy seemed more than ever satisfied with the exchange, as Sir Sampson had taken a fancy for the thread-papers, and it would amuse him for the rest of the day to be told every two minutes what they were intended for. Mary therefore left her quite happy, and returned to Beech Park. CHAPTER XXIV. "He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch, To gain or lose it all." _Marquis of Montrose._ TIME rolled on, but no event occurred in Grizzy's life worthy of being commemorated. Lady Juliana began to recover from the shock of her arrival, and at length was even prevailed upon to pay her a visit, and actually spent five minutes in the same room with her. All her Ladyship's plans seemed now on the point of being accomplished. Mr. Downe Wright was now Lord Glenallan, with an additional fifteen thousand per annum, and by wiser heads than hers would have been thought an unexceptionable match for any young woman. Leaving his mother to settle his affairs in Scotland, to which she was much more _au fait_ than himself, he hastened to Beech Park to claim Mary's promised hand. But neither wealth nor grandeur possessed any sway over Mary's well-regulated mind, and she turned from that species of happiness which she felt would be insufficient to satisfy the best affections of her heart. "No," thought she, "it is not in splendour and distinction that I shall find happiness; it is in the cultivation of the domestic virtues--the peaceful joys of a happy home and a loved companion, that my felicity must consist. Without these I feel that I should still be poor, were I mistress of millions;" and she took the first opportunity of acquainting Lord Glenallan with the nature of her sentiments. He received the communication with painful surprise; but as he was one of those who do not easily divest themselves of an idea that has once taken possession of their brain, he seemed resolved to persevere in his quiet, though pointed attentions. Lady Juliana's anger at the discovery of her daughter's refusal it is needless to describe--it may easily be imagined; and poor Mary was almost heartbroken by the violence and duration of it. Sometimes she wavered in her ideas as to whether she was doing right in thus resisting her mother's wishes; and in the utmost distress she mentioned her scruples to Lady Emily. "As to Lady Juliana's wishes," said her cousin, "they are mere soap-bubbles; but as to your own views--why, really you are somewhat of a riddle to me. I rather think, were I such a quiet, civil, well-disposed person as you, I could have married Lord Glenallan well enough. He is handsome, good-natured, and rich; and though 'he is but a Lord, and nothing but a Lord,' still there is a dash and bustle in twenty thousand a year that takes off from the ennui of a dull companion. With five hundred a year, I grant you, he would be execrable." "Then I shall never marry a man with twenty thousand a year whom I would not have with five hundred." "In short, you are to marry for love--that's the old story, which, with all your wisdom, you wise, well-educated girls always end in. Where shall I find a hero upon five hundred a year for you? Of course he must be virtuous, noble, dignified, handsome, brave, witty. What would you think of Charles Lennox?" Mary coloured. "After what passed, I would not marry Colonel Lennox; no"--affecting to smile--"not if he were to ask me, which is certainly the most unlikely of all things." "Ah! true, I had forgot that scrape. No, that won't do; it certainly would be most pitiful in you, after what passed. Well, I don't know what's to be done with you. There's nothing for it but that you should take Lord Glenallan, with all his imperfections on his head; and, after all, I really see nothing that he wants but a little more brain, and as you'll have the managing of him you can easily supply that deficiency." "Indeed," answered Mary, "I find I have quite little enough for myself, and I have no genius whatever for managing. I shall therefore never marry, unless I marry a man on whose judgment I could rely for advice and assistance, and for whom I could feel a certain deference that I consider due from a wife to her husband." "I see what you would be at," said Lady Emily; "you mean to model yourself upon the behaviour of Mrs. Tooley, who has such a deference for the judgment of her better half, that she consults him even about the tying of her shoes, and would not presume to give her child a few grains of magnesia without this full and unqualified approbation. Now I flatter myself my husband and I shall have a more equitable division; for, though man is a reasonable being, he shall know and own that woman is so too--sometimes. All things that men ought to know better I shall yield; whatever may belong to either sex, I either seize upon as my prerogative, or scrupulously divide; for which reason I should like the profession of my husband to be something in which I could not possibly interfere. How difficult must it be for a woman in the lower ranks of life to avoid teaching her husband how to sew, if he is a tailor; or how to bake, if he is a baker, etc. "Nature seems to have provided for this tendency of both sexes, by making your sensible men--that is, men who think themselves sensible, and wish everybody else to think the same--incline to foolish women. I can detect one of these sensible husbands at a glance, by the pomp and formality visible in every word, look, or action--men, in short, whose 'visages do cream and mantle like a standing pond;' who are perfect Joves in their own houses--who speak their will by a nod, and lay down the law by the motion of their eyebrow--and who attach prodigious ideas of dignity to frightening their children, and being worshipped by their wives, till you see one of these wiseacres looking as if he thought himself and his obsequious helpmate were exact personifications of Adam and Eve--' he for God only, she for God in him.' Now I am much afraid, Mary, with all your sanctity, you are in some danger of becoming one of these idolatresses." "I hope not," replied Mary, laughing; "but if I should, that seems scarcely so bad as the sect of Independents in the marriage state; for example, there is Mrs. Boston, who by all strangers is taken for a widow, such emphasis does she lay upon the personal pronoun--with her, 'tis always, _I_ do this, or _I_ do that, without the slightest reference to her husband; and she talks of _my_ house, _my_ gardens, _my_ carriage, _my_ children, as if there were no copartnery in the case." "Ah, she is very odious," cried Lady Emily; "she is both master and mistress, and more if possible she makes her husband look like her footman; but she is a fool, as every woman must needs be who thinks she can raise herself by lowering her husband. Then there is the sect of the Wranglers, whose marriage is only one continued dispute. But, in short, I see it is reserved for me to set a perfect example to my sex in the married state. But I'm more reasonable than you, I suspect, for I don't insist upon having a bright genius for my mate." "I confess I should like that my husband's genius was at least as bright as my own," said Mary, "and I can't think there is anything unreasonable in that; or rather, I should say, were I a genius myself, I could better dispense with a certain portion of intellect in my husband; as it has been generally remarked that those who are largely endowed themselves can easier dispense with talents in their companions than others of more moderate endowments can do; but virtue and talents on the one side, virtue and tenderness on the other, I look upon as the principal ingredients in a happy union." "Well, I intend to be excessively happy; and yet, I don't think Edward will ever find the longitude. And, as for my tenderness--humph!--as Lady Maclaughlan says; but as for you--I rather think you're in some danger of turning into an Aunt Grizzy, with a long waist and large pockets, peppermint drops and powdered curls; but, whatever you do, for heaven's sake let us have no more human sacrifices--if you do, I shall certainly appear at your wedding in sackcloth." And this was all of comfort or advice that her Ladyship could bestow. As Lady Emily was not a person who concealed either her own secrets or those of others, Colonel Lennox was not long of hearing from her what had passed, and of being made thoroughly acquainted with Mary's sentiments on love and marriage. "Such a heart must be worth winning," thought he; but he sighed to think that he had less chance for the prize than another. Independent of his narrow fortune, which, he was aware, would be an insuperable bar to obtaining Lady Juliana's consent, Mary's coldness and reserve towards him seemed to increase rather than diminish. Or if she sometimes gave way to the natural frankness and gaiety of her disposition before him, a word or look expressive of admiration on his part instantly recalled to her those painful ideas which had been for a moment forgot, and seemed to throw him at a greater distance than ever. Colonel Lennox was too noble-minded himself to suppose for an instant that Mary actually felt dislike towards him because at the commencement of their acquaintance he had not done justice to her merits; but he was also aware that, until he had explained to her the nature of his sentiments, she must naturally regard his attentions with suspicion, and consider them rather as acts of duty towards his mother than as the spontaneous expression of his own attachment. He therefore, in the most simple and candid manner, laid open to her the secret of his heart, and in all the eloquence of real passion, poured forth those feelings of love and admiration with which she had unconsciously inspired him. For a moment Mary's distrust was overcome by the ardour of his address, and the open manly manner in which he had avowed the rise and progress of his attachment; and she yielded herself up to the delightful conviction of loving and being beloved. But soon that gave way to the mortifying reflection that rushed over her mind, "He _has_ tried to love me!" thought she; "but it is in obedience to his mother's wish, and he thinks he has succeeded. No, no; I cannot be the dupe of his delusion--I will not give myself to one who has been solicited to love me!" And again wounded delicacy and woman's pride resumed their empire over her, and she rejected the idea of _ever_ receiving Colonel Lennox as a lover. He heard her determination with the deepest anguish, and used every argument and entreaty to soften her resolution; but Mary had wrought herself up to a pitch of heroism-she had rejected the man she loved--the only man she ever _could_ love: that done, to persist in the sacrifice seemed easy; and they parted with increased attachment in their hearts, even though those hearts seemed severed for ever. Soon after he set off to join his regiment; and it was only in saying farewell that Mary felt how deeply her happiness was involved in the fate of the man she had for ever renounced. To no one did she impart what had passed; and Lady Emily was too dull herself, for some days after the departure of her friend, to take any notice of Mary's dejection. CHAPTER XXV. "Who taught the parrot to cry, hail? What taught the chattering pie his tale? Hunger; that sharpener of the wits, Which gives e'en fools some thinking fits" DRUMMOND'S _Persius._ MARY found herself bereft of both her lovers nearly at the same time. Lord Glenallan, after formally renewing his suit, at length took a final leave, and returned to Scotland. Lady Juliana's indignation could only be equalled by Dr. Redgill's upon the occasion. He had planned a snug retreat for himself during the game season at Glenallan Castle; where, from the good-nature and easy temper of both master and mistress, he had no doubt but that he should in time come to _rule the roast,_ and be lord paramount over kitchen and larder. His disappointment was therefore great at finding all the solid joys of red deer and moor-game, kippered salmon and mutton hams, "vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision," leaving not a wreck behind. "Refused Lord Glenallan!" exclaimed he to Lady Emily, upon first hearing of it. "The thing's incredible--absolutely impossible--I won't believe it!" "That's right, Doctor; who is it that says 'And still believe the story false that _ought_ not to be true? I admire your candour, and wish I could imitate it." "Then your Ladyship really believes it. 'Pon my soul, I--I--it's really a very vexatious affair. I feel for Lady Juliana, poor woman! No wonder she's hysterical-five and twenty thousand a year refused! What is it she would have? The finest deer park in Scotland! Every sort of game upon the estate! A salmon fishing at the very door!--I should just like to know what _is_ the meaning of it?" "Cannot you guess, Doctor" asked Lady Emily. "Guess! No, 'pon my soul! I defy any man to guess what could tempt a woman to refuse five and twenty thousand a year; unless, indeed, she has something higher in view, and even then she should be pretty sure of her mark. But I suppose, because Miss Adelaide has got a Duke, she thinks she must have one too. I suppose that's the story; but I can tell her Dukes are not so plenty; and she's by no means so fine a woman as her sister, and her market's spoilt, or I'm much mistaken. What man in his senses would ever ask a woman who had been such an idiot as to refuse five and twenty thousand a year?" "I see, Doctor, you are quite a novice in the tender passion. Cannot you make allowance for it: a young lady's not being in love?" "In what?" demanded the Doctor. "In love," repeated Lady Emily. "Love! Bah--nonsense--no mortal in their senses ever thinks of such stuff now." "Then you think love and madness are one and the same thing, it seems?" "I think the man or woman who could let their love stand in the way of five and twenty thousand a year is the next thing to being mad," said the Doctor warmly; "and in this case I can see no difference." "But you'll allow there are some sorts of love that may be indulged without casting any shade upon the understanding?" "I really can't tell what your Ladyship means," said the Doctor impatiently. "I mean, for example, the love one may feel towards a turtle, such as we had lately." "That's quite a different thing," interrupted the Doctor. "Pardon me, but whatever the consequence may be, the effects in both cases were very similar, as exemplified in yourself. Pray, what difference did it make to your friends, who were deprived of your society, whether you spent your time in walking with 'even step, and musing gait,' before your Dulcinea's window or the turtle's cistern?--whether you were engrossed in composing a sonnet to your mistress's eyebrow, or in contriving a new method of heightening the enjoyments of _calipash?_ --whether you expatiated with greater rapture on the charms of a white skin or green fat?--whether you were most devoted to a languishing or a lively beauty?--whether----" "'Pon my honour, Lady Emily, I really--I--I can't conceive what it is you mean. There's a time for everything; and I'm sure nobody but yourself would ever have thought of bringing in a turtle to a conversation upon marriage." "On the contrary, Doctor, I thought it had been upon love; and I was endeavouring to convince you that even the wisest of men may be susceptible of certain tender emotions towards a beloved object." "You'll never convince me that any but a fool can be in love," cried the Doctor, his visage assuming a darker purple as the argument advanced. "Then you must rank Lord Glenallan, with his five and twenty thousand a year, amongst the number, for he is desperately in love, I assure you." "As to that, Lord Glenallan, or any man with his fortune, may be whatever he chooses. He has a right to be in love. He can afford to be in love." "I have heard much of the torments of love," said Lady Emily; "but I never heard it rated as a luxury before. I hope there is no chance of your being made Premier, otherwise I fear we should have a tax upon love-marriages immediately." "It would be greatly for the advantage of the nation, as well as the comfort of individuals, if there was," returned the Doctor. "Many a pleasant fellow has been lost to society by what you call a love-marriage. I speak from experience. I was obliged to drop the oldest friend I had upon his making one of your love-marriages." "What! you were afraid of the effects of evil example?" asked Lady Emily. "No--it was not for that; but he asked me to take a family dinner with him one day, and I, without knowing anything of the character of the woman he had married, was weak enough to go. I found a very so-so tablecloth and a shoulder of mutton, which ended our acquaintance. I never entered his door after it. In fact, no man's happiness is proof against dirty tablecloths and bad dinners; and you may take my word for it, Lady Emily, these are the invariable accompaniments of your love-marriages." "Pshaw! that is only amongst the _bourgeois,"_ said Lady Emily affectedly; "that is not the sort of _ménage_ I mean to have. Here is to be the style of my domestic establishment;" and she repeated Shenstone's beautiful pastoral-- "My banks they are furnished with bees," etc., till she came to-- "I have found out a gift for my fair, I have found where the wood-pigeons breed." "There's some sense in that," cried the Doctor, who had been listening with great weariness." You may have a good pigeon-pie, or _un sauté de pigeons au sang,_ which is still better when well dressed." "Shocking!" exclaimed Lady Emily; "to mention pigeon-pies in the same breath with nightingales and roses!" "I'll tell you what, Lady Emily, it's just these sort of nonsensical descriptions that do all the mischief amongst you young ladies. It's these confounded poets that turn all your heads, and make you think you have nothing to do after you are married but sit beside fountains and grottoes, and divert yourself with birds and flowers, instead of looking after your servants, and paying your butcher's bills; and, after all, what is the substance of that trash you have just been reading, but to say that the man was a substantial farmer and grazier, and had bees; though I never heard of any man in his senses going to sleep amongst his beehives before. 'Pon my soul! if I had my will I would burn every line of poetry that ever was written. A good recipe for a pudding is worth all that your Shenstones and the whole set of them ever wrote; and there's more good sense and useful information in this book"--rapping his knuckles against a volume he held in his hand--"than in all your poets, ancient and modern." Lady Emily took it out of his hand and opened it. "And some very poetical description, too, Doctor; although you affect to despise it so much. Here is an eulogium on the partridge. I doubt much if St. Preux ever made a finer on his adorable Julie;" and she read as follows:-- "La Perdrix tient Ie premier rang apres la Bécasse, dans la cathégorie des gibiers à plumes. C'est, lorsqu'elle est rouge, l'un des plus honorables et desmeilleurs rôtis qui puissent être étalés sur une table gourmande. Sa forme appétissante, sa taille élégante et svelte, quoiqu' arrondie, son embonpoint modéré, ses jambes d'écarlate; enfin, son fumet divin et ses qualités restaurantes, tout concourt à la faire rechercher des vrais amateurs. D'autres gibiers sont plus rares, plus chers, mieux accueillis par la vanité, le prejuge, et la mode; la Perdrix rouge, belle de sa propre beauté, dont les qualités sont indépendantes de la fantaisie, qui réunit en sa personne tout ce qui peut charmer les yeux, delecter Ie palais, stimuler l'appétit, et ranimer les forces, plaira dans-tous les temps, et concourra à l'honneur de tous les festins, sous quelque forme qu'elle y paroisse." [1] [1] "Manuel des Amphitryons." The Doctor sighed: "That's nothing to what he says of the woodcock:" and with trembling hand she turned over the leaves, till he found the place. "Here it is," said he, "page 88, chap. xvi. Just be so good as read that, Lady Emily, and say whether it is not infamous that Monsieur Grillade has never even attempted to make it." With an air of melancholy enthusiasm she read--"Dans les pays oû les Bécasses sont communes, on obtient, de leurs carcasses pilées dans un mortier, une purée sur laquelle on dresse diverses entrées, telles que de petites côtelettes de mouton, etc. Cotte purée est l'une des plus délicieuses choses qui puisse être introduite dans Ie palais d'un gourmand, et l'on peut assurer que quiconque n'en a point mangé n'a point connu les joies du paradis terrestre. Une purée de Bécasse, bien faite, est Ie _ne plus ultrâ_ des jouissances humaines. II faut mourir après l'avoir goutée, car toutes les autres alors ne paroitront plus qu'insipides." "And these _bécasses,_ these woodcocks, perfectly swarm on the Glenallan estate in the season," cried the Doctor; "and to think that such a man should have been refused. But Miss Mary will repent this the longest day she lives. I had a cook in my eye for them, too--one who is quite up to the making of this _purée. _'Pon my soul! she deserve to live upon sheep's head and haggis for the rest of her life; and if I was Lady Juliana I would try the effect of bread and water." "She certainly does not aspire to such joys as are here portrayed in this _your_ book of life," said Lady Emily; "for I suspect she could endure existence even upon roast mutton with the man she loves." "That's nothing to the purpose, unless the man she loves, as you call it, loves to live upon roast mutton too. Take my word for it, unless she gives her husband good dinners he'll not care twopence for her in a week's time. I look upon bad dinners to be the source of much of the misery we hear of in the married life. Women are much mistaken if they think it's by dressing themselves they are to please their husbands." "Pardon me, Doctor, we must be the best judges there, and I have the authority of all ages and sages in my favour: the beauty and the charms of women have been the favourite theme, time immemorial; now no one ever heard of a fair one being celebrated for her skill in cookery." "There I beg leave to differ from you," said the Doctor, with an air of exultation, again referring to his _text-book_--"here is the great Madame Pompadour, celebrated for a single dish: 'Les tendrons d'agneau au soleil et à la Pompadour, sont sortis de l'imagination de cette dame célèbre, pour entrer dans la bouche d'un roi." "But it was Love that inspired her--it was Love that kindled the fire in her imagination. In short, you must acknowledge that "Love rules the court, the camp, the grove." "I'll acknowledge no such thing," cried the Doctor, with indignation. "Love rule the camp, indeed! A very likely story! Don't I know that all our first generals carry off the best cooks--that there's no such living anywhere as in camp--that their aides-de-camp are quite ruined by it--that in time of war they live at the rate of twenty thousand a year, and when they come home they can't get a dinner they can eat? As for the court, I don't pretend to know much about it; but I suspect there's more cooks than Cupids to be seen about it. And for the groves, I shall only say I never heard of any of your _fetes champétre_, or picnics, where all the pleasure didn't seem to consist in the eating and drinking." "Ah, Doctor, I perceive you have taken all your ideas on that subject from Werter, who certainly was a sort of a sentimental _gourmand,_ he seems to have enjoyed so much drinking his coffee under the shade of the lime-trees, and going to the kitchen to take his own pease-soup; and then he breaks out into such raptures at the idea of the illustrious lovers of Penelope killing and dressing their own meat! Butchers and cooks in one! only conceive them with their great knives and blue aprons, or their spits and white nightcaps! Poor Penelope! no wonder she preferred spinning to marrying one of these creatures! Faugh! I must have an ounce of civet to sweeten my imagination." And she flew of, leaving the Doctor to con over the "Manuel des Amphitryons," and sigh at the mention of joys, sweet, yet mournful, to his soul. CHAPTER XXVI. "The ample proposition that hope makes In all designs begun on earth below, Fails in the promised largeness." SHAKESPEARE. THERE is no saying whether the Doctor's system might not have been resorted to had not Lady Juliana's wrath been for the present suspended by an invitation to Altamont House. True, nothing could be colder than the terms in which it was couched; but to that her Ladyship was insensible, and would have been equally indifferent had she known that, such as it was, she owed it more to the obstinacy of her son-in-law than the affection of her daughter. The Duke of Altamont was one of those who attach great ideas of dignity to always carrying their point; and though he might sometimes be obliged to suspend his plans, he never had been known to relinquish them. Had he settled in his own mind to tie his neckcloth in a particular way, not all the eloquence of Cicero or the tears of O'Neil would have induced him to alter it; and Adelaide, the haughty, self-willed Adelaide, soon found that, of all yokes, the most insupportable is the yoke of an obstinate fool. In the thousand trifling occurances of domestic life (for his Grace was interested in all the minutiae of his establishment), where good sense and good humour on either side would have gracefully yielded to the other, there was a perpetual contest for dominion, which invariably ended in Adelaide's defeat. The Duke, indeed, never disputed, or reasoned, or even replied; but the thing was done; till, at the end of six weeks, the Duchess of Altamont most heartily hated and despised the man she had so lately vowed to love and obey. On the present occasion his Grace certainly appeared in the most amiable light in wishing to have Lady Juliana invited to his house; but in fact it proceeded entirely from his besetting sin, obstinacy. He had propose her accompanying her daughter at the time of her marriage, and been overruled; but with all the pertinacity of a little mind he had kept fast hold of the idea, merely because it was his own, and he was now determined to have it put in execution. In a postscript to the letter, and in the same cordial style, the Duchess said something of a hope, that _if_ her mother did come to town, Mary should accompany her; but this her Ladyship, to Mary's great relief, declared should not be, although she certainly was very much at a loss how to dispose of her. Mary timidly expressed her wish to be permitted to return to Lochmarlie, and mentioned that her uncle and aunt had repeatedly offered to come to Bath for her, if she might be allowed to accompany them home; but to this her mother also gave a decided negative, adding that she never should see Lochmarlie again, if she could help it. In short, she must remain where she was till something could be fixed as to her future destination. "It was most excessively tiresome to be clogged with a great unmarried daughter," her Ladyship observed, as she sprang into the carriage with a train of dogs, and drove off to dear delightful London. But, alas! the insecurity of even the best-laid schemes of human foresight! Lady Juliana was in the midst of arrangements for endless pleasures, when she received accounts of the death of her now almost forgotten husband! He had died from the gradual effects of the climate, and that was all that remained to be told of the unfortunate Henry Douglas! If his heartless wife shed some natural tears, she wiped them soon; but the wounds of disappointment and vanity were not so speedily effaced, as she contrasted the brilliant court-dress with the unbecoming widow's cap. Oh, she so detested black things--it was so hateful to wear mourning--she never could feel happy or comfortable in black! and, at such a time, how particularly unfortunate! Poor Douglas! she was very sorry! And so ended the holiest and most indissoluble of human ties! The Duchess did not think it incumbent upon her to be affected by the death of a person she had never seen; but she put on mourning; put off her presentation at Court for a week, and stayed away one night from the opera. On Mary's warm and unpolluted heart the tidings of her father's death produced a very different effect. Though she had never known, in their fullest extent, those feelings of filial affection, whose source begins with our being, and over which memory loves to linger, as at the hallowed fount of the purest of earthly joys, she had _yet_ been taught to cherish a fond remembrance of him to whom she owed her being. She had been brought up in the land of his birth--his image was associated in her mind with many of the scenes most dear to her--his name and his memory were familiar to those amongst whom she dwelt, and thus her feelings of natural affection had been preserved in all their genuine warmth and tenderness. Many a letter, and many a little token of her love, she had, from her earliest years, been accustomed to send him; and she had ever fondly cherished the hope of her father's return, and that she would yet know the happiness of being blest in a parent's love. But now all these hopes were extinguished; and, while she wept over them in bitterness of heart, she yet bowed with pious resignation to the decree of heaven. CHAPTER XXVII "Shall we grieve their hovering shades, Which wait the revolution in our hearts? Shall we disdain their silent, soft address; Their posthumous advice and pious prayer?" YOUNG. FOR some months all was peaceful seclusion in Mary's life, and the only varieties she knew were occasional visits to Aunt Grizzy's, and now and then spending some days with Mrs. Lennox. She saw with sorrow the declining health of her venerable friend, whose wasted form and delicate features had now assumed an almost ethereal aspect. Yet she never complained, and it was only from her languor and weakness that Mary guessed she suffered. When urged to have recourse to medical advice she only smiled and shook her head; yet, ever gentle and complying to the wishes of others, she was at length prevailed upon to receive the visits of a medical attendant, and her own feelings were but too faithfully confirmed by his opinion. Being an old friend of the family, he took upon himself to communicate the intelligence to her son, then abroad with his regiment; and in the meantime Mary took up her residence at Rose Hall, and devoted herself unceasingly to the beloved friend she felt she was so soon to lose. "Ah! Mary," she would sometimes say, "God forgive me! but my heart is not yet weaned from worldly wishes. Even now, when I feel all the vanity of human happiness, I think how it would have soothed my last moments could I have but seen you my son's before I left the world! Yet, alas! our time here is so short that it matters little whether it be spent in joy or grief, provided it be spent in innocence and virtue. Mine has been a long life compared to many; but when I look back upon it, what a span it seems! And it is not the remembrance of its brightest days that are now a solace to my heart. Dearest Mary, if you live long, you will live to think of the sad hours you have given me, as the fairest, of perhaps, of many a happy day that I trust Heaven has yet in store for you. Yes! God has made some whose powers are chiefly ordained to comfort the afflicted, and in fulfilling His will you must surly be blest." Mary listened to the half-breathed wishes of her dear old friend with painful feelings of regret and self-reproach. "Charles Lennox loved me," thought she, "truly, tenderly loved me; and had I but repaid his noble frankness--had I suffered him to read my heart when he laid his open before me, I might now have gladdened the last days of the mother he adores. I might have proudly avowed that affection I must now forever hide." But at the end of some weeks Mrs. Lennox was no longer susceptible of emotions either of joy or sorrow. She gradually sank into a state of almost total insensibility, from which not even the arrival of her son had power to rouse her. His anguish was extreme at finding his mother in a condition so perfectly hopeless; and every other idea seemed, for the present, absorbed in his anxiety for her. As Mary witnessed his watchful cares and tender solicitude, she could almost have envied the unconscious object of such devoted attachment. A few days after his arrival his leave of absence was abruptly recalled, and he was summoned to repair to headquarters with all possible expedition. The army was on the move, and a battle was expected to be fought. At such a time hesitation or delay, under any circumstances, would have been inevitable disgrace; and, dreadful as was the alternative, Colonel Lennox wavered not an instant in his resolution. With a look of fixed agony, but without uttering a syllable, he put the letter into Mary's hand as she sat by his mother's bedside, and then left the room to order preparations to be made for his instant departure. On his return Mary witnessed the painful conflict of his feelings in his extreme agitation as he approached his mother, to look for the last time on those features, already moulded into more than mortal beauty. A bright ray of the setting sun streamed full upon that face, now reposing in the awful but hallowed calm which is sometimes diffused around the bed of death. The sacred stillness was only broken by the evening song of the blackbird and the distant lowing of the cattle--sounds which had often brought pleasure to that heart, now insensible to all human emotion. All nature shone forth in gaiety and splendour, but the eye and the ear were alike closed against all earthly objects. Yet who can tell the brightness of those visions with which the parting soul may be visited? Sounds and sights, alike unheard, unknown to mortal sense, may then hold divine communion with the soaring spirit, and inspire it with bliss inconceivable, ineffable! Colonel Lennox gazed upon the countenance of his mother. Again and again he pressed her inanimate hands to his lips, and bedewed them with his tears, as about to tear himself from her for ever. At that moment she opened her eyes, and regarded him with a look of intelligence, which spoke at once to his heart. He felt that he was seen and known. Her look was long and fondly fixed upon his face; then turned to Mary with an expression so deep and earnest that both felt the instantaneous appeal. The veil seemed to drop from their hearts; one glance sufficed to tell that both were fondly, truly loved; and as Colonel Lennox received Mary's almost fainting form in his arms, he knelt by his mother, and implored her blessing on her children. A smile of angelic brightness beamed upon her face as she extended her hand towards them, and her lips moved as in prayer, though no sound escaped them. One long and lingering look was given to those so dear even in death. She then raised her eyes to heaven, and the spirit sought its native skies! CHAPTER XXVIII. "Cette liaison n'est ni passion ni amitié pure: elle fait une classe à part." --LA BRUYERE IT was long before Mary could believe in the reality of what had passed. It appeared to her as a beautiful yet awful dream. Could it be that she had plighted her faith by the bed of death; that the last look of her departed friend had hallowed the vow now registered in heaven; that Charles Lennox had claimed her as his own, even in the agony of tearing himself from all he loved; and that she had only felt how dear she was to him at the very moment when she had parted from him, perhaps for ever? But Mary strove to banish these overwhelming thoughts from her mind, as she devoted herself to the performance of the last duties to her departed friend. These paid, she again returned to Beech Park. Lady Emily had been a daily visitor at Rose Hall during Mrs. Lennox's illness, and had taken a lively interest in the situation of the family; but, notwithstanding, it was some time before Mary could so far subdue her feelings as to speak with composure of what had passed. She felt, too, how impossible it was by words to convey to her any idea of that excitement of mind, where a whole life of ordinary feeling seems concentrated in one sudden but ineffable emotion. All that had passed might be imagined, but could not be told; and she shrank from the task of portraying those deep and sacred feelings which language never could impart to the breast of another. Yet she felt it was using her cousin unkindly to keep her in ignorance of what she was certain would give her pleasure to hear; and, summoning her resolution, she at length disclosed to her all that had taken place. Her own embarrassment was too great to allow her to remark Lady Emily's changing colour, as she listened to her communication; and after it was ended she remained silent for some minutes, evidently struggling with her emotions. At length she exclaimed indignantly--"And so it seems Colonel Lennox and you have all this time been playing the dying lover and the cruel mistress to each other? How I detest such duplicity! and duplicity with me! My heart was ever open to you, to him, to the whole world; while yours--nay, your very faces--were masked to me!" Mary was too much confounded by her cousin's reproaches to be able to reply to them for some time; and when she did attempt to vindicate herself, she found it was in vain. Lady Emily refused to listen to her; and in haughty displeasure quitted the room, leaving poor Mary overwhelmed with sorrow and amazement. There was a simplicity of heart, a singleness of idea in herself, that prevented her from ever attaching suspicion to others. But a sort of vague, undefined apprehension floated through her brain as she revolved the extraordinary behaviour of her cousin. Yet, it was that sort of feeling to which she could not give either a local habitation or a name; and she continued for some time in that most bewildering state of trying, yet not daring to think. Some time elapsed, and Mary's confusion of ideas was increasing rather than diminishing, when Lady Emily slowly entered the room, and stood some moments before her without speaking. At length, making an effort, she abruptly said--"Pray, Mary, tell me what you think of me?" Mary looked at her with surprise. "I think of you, my dear cousin, as I have always done." "That is no answer to my question. What do you think of my behaviour just now?" "I think," said Mary gently, "that if you have misunderstood me; that, open and candid yourself, almost to a fault, you readily resent the remotest appearance of duplicity in others. But you are too generous not to do me justice--" "Ah, Mary! how little do I appeal in my own eyes at this moment; and how little, with all my boasting, have I known my own heart! No! It was not because I am open and candid that I resented your engagement with Colonel Lennox; it was because I was--because--cannot you guess?" Mary's colour rose, as she cast down her eyes, and exclaimed with agitation, "No-no, indeed!" Lady Emily threw her arms around her:--"Dear Mary, you are perhaps the only person upon earth I would make such a confession to--it was because I, who had plighted my faith to another--I, who piqued myself upon my openness and fidelity--I--how it chokes me to utter it! I was beginning to love him myself!--only beginning, observe, for it is already over--I needed but to be aware of my danger to overcome it. Colonel Lennox is now no more to me than your lover, and Edward is again all that he ever was to me; but I--what am I?--faithless and self-deceived!" and a few tears dropped from her eyes. Mary, too much affected to speak, could only press her in silence to her heart. "These are tears of shame, of penitence, though I must own they look very like those of regret and mortification. What a mercy it is that 'the chemist's magic art' _cannot_ 'crystalise these sacred treasures,'" said she with a smile, as she shook a tear-drop from her hand; "they are gems I am really not at all fond of appearing in." "And yet you never appeared to greater advantage," said Mary, as she regarded her with admiration. "Ah! so you say; but there is, perhaps, a little womanish feeling lurking there. And now you doubtless expect--no, _you_ don't, but another would that I should begin a sentimental description of the rise and progress of this ill-fated attachment, as I suppose it would be styled in the language of romance; but in truth I can tell you nothing at all about it." "Perhaps Colonel Lennox," said Mary, blushing, and hesitating to name her suspicion. "No, no--Colonel Lennox was not to blame. There was no false play on either side; he is as much above the meanness of coquetry, as--I must say it--as I am. His thoughts were all along taken up with you, even while he talked, and laughed, and quarrelled with me. While I, so strong in the belief that worlds could not shake my allegiance to Edward, could have challenged all mankind to win my love; and this wicked, wayward, faithless heart kept silent till you spoke, and then it uttered such a fearful sound! And yet I don't think it was love neither--'l'on n'aime bien qu'une seule fois; c'est la première;'--it was rather a sort of an idle, childish, engrossing sentiment, that _might_ have grown to something stronger; but 'tis past now. I have shown you all the weakness of my heart--despise me if you will." "Dearest Lady Emily, had I the same skill to show the sentiments of mine, you would there see what I cannot express--how I admire this noble candour, this generous self-abasement--" "Oh, as to meanly hiding my faults, that is what I scorn to do. I may be ignorant of them myself, and in ignorance I may cherish them; but, once convinced of them, I give them to the winds, and all who choose may pick them up. Violent and unjust, and self-deceived, I have been, and may be again; but deceitful I never was, and never will be." "My dear cousin, what might you not be if you chose!" "Ah! I know what you mean, and I begin to think you are in the right; by-and-bye, I believe, I shall come to be of your way of thinking (if ever I have a daughter she certainly shall), but not just at present, the reformation would be too sudden. All that I can promise for at present is, that 'henceforth I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults;' and now, from this day, from this moment, I vow--" "No, I shall do it for you," said Mary, with a smile, as she threw her arms around her neck; "henceforth 'The golden laws of love shall be Upon this pillar hung; A simple heart, a single eye, A true and constant tongue. 'Let no man for more love pretend Than he has hearts in store; True love begun shall never end: Love one, and love no more.'" [1] [1] "Marquis of Montrose." But much as Mary loved and admired her cousin, she could not be blind to the defects of her character, and she feared they might yet be productive of great unhappiness to herself. Her mind was open to the reception of every image that brought pleasure along with it; while, in the same spirit, she turned from everything that wore an air of seriousness or self-restraint; and even the best affections of a naturally good heart were borne away by the ardour of her feelings and the impetuosity of her temper. Mary grieved to see the graces of a noble mind thus running wild for want of early culture; and she sought by every means, save those of lecture and admonition to lead her to more fixed habits of reflection and self examination. But it required all her strength of mind to turn her thoughts at this time from herself to another--she, the betrothed of one who was now in the midst of danger, of whose existence she was even uncertain, but on whose fate she felt her own suspended. "Oh!" thought she, with bitterness of heart, "how dangerous it is to yield too much even to our best affections. I, with so many objects to share in mine, have yet pledged my happiness on a being perishable as myself!" And her soul sickened at the ills her fancy drew. But she strove to repress this strength of attachment, which she felt would otherwise become too powerful for her reason to control; and if she did not entirely succeed, at least the efforts she made and the continual exercise of mind enabled her in some degree to counteract the baleful effects of morbid anxiety and overweening attachment. At length her apprehensions were relieved for a time by a letter from Colonel Lennox. An engagement with the enemy had taken place, but he had escaped unhurt. He repeated his vows of unalterable affection; and Mary felt that she was justified in receiving them. She had made Lady Juliana and Mrs. Douglas both acquainted with her situation. The former had taken no notice of the communication, but the latter had expressed her approval in all the warmth and tenderness of gratified affection. CHAPTER XXIX. "Preach as I please, I doubt our curious men Will choose a pheasant still before a hen." HORACE. AMONGST the various occupations to which Mary devoted herself, there was none which merits to be recorded as a greater act of immolation than her unremitting attentions to Aunt Grizzy. It wa not merely the sacrifice of time and talents that was required for carrying on this intercourse; these, it is to be hoped, even the most selfish can occasionally sacrifice to the _bienseances_ of society; but it was, as it were, a total surrender of her whole being. To a mind of any reflection no situation can ever be very irksome in which we can enjoy the privileges of sitting still and keeping silent--but as the companion of Miss Grizzy, quiet and reflection were alike unattainable. When not engaged in _radotage_ with Sir Sampson, her life was spent in losing her scissors, mislaying her spectacles, wondering what had become of her thimble, and speculating on the disappearance of a needle--all of which losses daily and hourly recurring, subjected Mary to an unceasing annoyance, for she could not be five minutes in her aunt's company without out being at least as many times disturbed, with--"Mary, my dear, will you get up?--I think my spectacles must be about you "--or, "Mary, my dear, your eyes are younger than mine, will you look if you can see my needle on the carpet?"--or, "Are you sure, Mary, that's not my thimble you have got? It's very like it; and I'm sure I can't conceive what's become of mine, if that's not it," etc. etc. etc. But her idleness was, if possible, still more irritating than her industry. When she betook herself to the window, it was one incessant cry of "Who's coach is that, Mary, with the green and orange liveries? Come and look at this lady and gentleman, Mary; I'm sure I wonder who they are! Here's something, I declare I'm sure I don't know what you call it--come here, Mary, and see what it is "--and so on _ad infinitum._ Walking was still worse. Grizzy not only stood to examine every article in the shop windows, but actually turned round to observe every striking figure that passed. In short, Mary could not conceal from herself that weak vulgar relations are an evil to those whose taste and ideas are refined by superior intercourse. But even this discovery she did not deem sufficient to authorise her casting off or neglecting poor Miss Grizzy, and she in no degree relaxed in her patient attentions towards her. Even the affection of her aunt, which she possessed in the highest possible degree, far from being an alleviation, was only an additional torment. Every meeting began with, "My dear Mary, how did you sleep last night? Did you make a good breakfast this morning? I declare I think you look a little pale. I'm sure I wish to goodness, you mayn't have got cold--colds are going very much about just now--one of the maids in this house has a very bad cold--I hope you will remember to bathe your feet And take some water gruel to night, and do everything that Dr. Redgill desires you, honest man!" If Mary absented herself for a day, her salutation was, "My dear Mary, what became of you yesterday? I assure you I was quite miserable about you all day, thinking, which was quite natural, that something was the matter with you; and I declare I never closed my eyes all night for thinking about you. I assure you if it had not been that I couldn't leave Sir Sampson, I would have taken a hackney coach, although I know what impositions they are, and have gone to Beech Park to see what had come over you." Yet all this Mary bore with the patience of a martyr, to the admiration of Lady Maclaughlan and the amazement of Lady Emily, who declared she could only submit to be bored as long as she was amused. On going to Milsom Street one morning Mary found her aunt in high delight at two invitations she had just received for herself and her niece. "The one," said she, "is to dinner at Mrs. Pullens's. You can't remember her mother, Mrs. Macfuss, I daresay, Mary--she was a most excellent woman, I assure you, and got all her daughters married. And I remember Mrs. Pullens when she was Flora Macfuss; she was always thought very like her mother and Mr. Pullens is a most worthy man, and very rich and it was thought at the time a great marriage for Flora Macfuss, for she had no money of her own, but her mother was a very clever woman, and a most excellent manager; and I daresay so is Mrs. Pullens, for the Macfusses are all famous for their management--so it will be a great thing for you, you know, Mary, to be acquainted with Mrs. Pullens." Mary was obliged to break in upon the eulogium on Mrs. Pullens by noticing the other card. This was a subject for still greater gratulation. "This," said she, "is from Mrs. Bluemits, and it is for the same day with Mrs. Pullens, only it is to tea, not to dinner. To be sure it will be a great pity to leave Mrs. Pullens so soon; but then it would be a great pity not to go to Mrs. Bluemits's; for I've never seen her, and her aunt, Miss Shaw, would think it very odd if I was to go back to the Highlands without seeing Nancy Shaw, now Mrs. Bluemits; and at any rate I assure you we may think much of being asked, for she is a very clever woman, and makes it a point never to ask any but clever people to her house; so it's a very great honour to be asked." It was an honour Mary would fain have dispensed with. At another time she might have anticipated some amusement from such parties, but at present her heart was not tuned to the ridiculous, and she attempted to decline the invitations, and get her aunt to do the same; but she gave up the point when she saw how deeply Grizzy's happiness for the time being was involved in these invitations, and she even consented to accompany her, conscious, as Lady Maclaughlan said, that the poor creature required a leading string, and was not fit to go alone. The appointed day arrived, and Mary found herself in company with Aunt Grizzy at the mansion of Mr. Pullens, the fortunate husband of the _ci-devant_ Miss Flora Macfuss; but as Grizzy is not the best of biographers, we must take the liberty of introducing this lady to the acquaintance of our reader. The domestic economy of Mrs. Pullens was her own theme, and the theme of all her friends; and such was the zeal in promulgating her doctrines, and her anxiety to see them carried into effect, that she had endeavoured to pass it into a law that no preserves could be eatable but those preserved in her method; no hams could be good but those cured according to her receipt; no liquors drinkable but such as were made from the results of her experience; neither was it possible that any linens could be white, or any flannels soft, or any muslins clear, unless after the manner practised in her laundry. By her own account she was the slave of every servant within her door, for her life seemed to be one unceasing labour to get everything done in her own way, to the very blacking of Mr. Pullens's shoes, and the brushing of Mr. Pullens's coat. But then these heroic acts of duty were more than repaid by the noble consciousness of a life well spent. In her own estimation she was one of the greatest characters that had ever lived; for, to use her own words, she passed nothing over--she saw everything done herself--she trusted nothing to servants, etc. etc. etc. From the contemplation of these her virtues her face had acquired an expression of complacency foreign to her natural temper; for, after having scolded and slaved in the kitchen, she sat down to taste the fruits of her labours with far more elevated feelings of conscious virtue than ever warmed the breast of a Hampden or a Howard; and when she helped Mr. Pullens to pie, made not by the cook, but by herself, it was with an air of self-approbation that might have vied with that of the celebrated Jack Horner upon a similar occasion. In many cases there might have been merit in Mrs. Pullens's doings---a narrow income, the capricious taste of a sick or a cross husband, may exalt the meanest offices which woman can render into acts of virtue, and even diffuse a dignity around them; but Mr. Pullens was rich and good-natured, and would have been happy had his cook been allowed to dress his dinner, and his barber his wig, quietly in their own way. Mrs. Pullens, therefore, only sought the indulgence of her own low inclinations in thus interfering in every menial department; while, at the same time, she expected all the gratitude and admiration that would have been due to the sacrifice of the most refined taste and elegant pursuits. But "envy does merit as its shade pursue," as Mrs Pullens experienced, for she found herself assailed by a host of housekeepers who attempted to throw discredit on her various arts. At the head of this association was Mrs. Jekyll, whose arrangements were on a quite contrary plan. The great branch of science on which Mrs. Pullens mainly relied for fame was her unrivalled art in keeping things long beyond the date assigned by nature; and one of her master-strokes was, in the middle of summer, to surprise a whole company with gooseberry tarts made of gooseberries of the preceding year; and her triumph was complete when any of them were so polite as to assert that they might have passed upon them for the fruits of the present season. Another art in which she flattered herself she was unrivalled was that of making things pass for what they were not; thus, she gave pork for lamb--common fowls for turkey poults--currant wine for champagne--whisky with peach leaves for noyau; but all these deceptions Mrs. Jekyll piqued herself immediately detecting, and never failed to point out the difference, and in the politest manner to hint her preference of the real over the spurious. Many were the wonderful morsels with which poor Mr. Pullens was regaled, but he had now ceased to be surprised at anything that appeared on his own table; and he had so often heard the merit of his wife's housekeeping extolled by herself that, contrary to his natural conviction, he now began to think it must be true; or if he had occasionally any little private misgivings when he thought of the good dinners he used to have in his bachelor days, he comforted himself by thinking that his lot was the lot of all married men who are blest with active, managing, economical wives. Such were Mr. and Mrs. Pullens; and the appearance of the house offered no inadequate idea of the mistress. The furniture was incongruous, and everything was ill-matched--for Mrs. Pullens was a frequenter of sales, and, like many other liberal-minded ladies, never allowed a bargain to pass, whether she required the articles or not. Her dress was the same; there was always something to wonder at; caps that had been bought for nothing, because they were a little soiled, but by being taken down and washed, and new trimmed, turned out to be just as good as new gowns that had been dyed, turned, cleaned, washed, etc.; and the great triumph was when nobody could tell the old breadth from the new. The dinner was of course bad, the company stupid, and the conversation turned solely upon Mrs. Pullens's exploits, with occasional attempts of Mrs. Jekyll to depreciate the merits of some of her discoveries. At length the hour of departure arrived, to Mary's great relief, as she thought any change must be for the better. Not so Grizzy, who was charmed and confounded by all she had seen, and heard, and tasted, and all of whose preconceived ideas on the subjects of washing, preserving, etc., had sustained a total _bouleversement,_ upon hearing of the superior methods practised by Mrs. Pullens. "Well, certainly, Mary, you must allow Mrs. Pullens is an astonishing clever woman! Indeed, I think nobody can dispute it--only think of her never using a bit of soap in her house--everything is washed by steam. To be sure, as Mrs Jekyll said, the table linen was remarkably ill-coloured--but no wonder, considering--it must be a great saving, I'm sure--and she always stands and sees it done herself, for there's no trusting these things to servants. Once when she trusted it to them, they burned a dozen of Mr. Pullens's new shirts, just from carelessness, which I'm sure was very provoking. To be sure, as Mrs. Jekyll said, if she had used soap like other people that wouldn't have happened; and then it is wonderful how well she contrives to keep things. I declare I can't think enough of these green peas that we had at dinner today having been kept since summer was a year. To be sure, as Mrs. Jekyll said, they certainly were hard--nobody can deny that--but then, you know, anything would be hard that had been kept since summer was a year; and I'm sure I thought they ate wonderfully well considering--and these red currants, too--I'm afraid you didn't taste them--I wish to goodness you had tasted them, Mary. They were sour and dry, certainly, as Mrs. Jekyll said; but no wonder, anything would be sour and dry that had been kept in bottles for three years." Grizzy was now obliged to change the current of her ideas, for the carriage had stopped at Mrs. Bluemits's. CHAPTER XXX. "It is certain great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so have I heard, that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason, and ray of knowledge, checks the dissolutions of the tongue."-JEREMY TAYLOR. THEY were received by Mrs. Bluemits with that air of condescension which great souls practise towards ordinary mortals, and which is intended, at one and the same time, to encourage and to repel; to show the extent of their goodness, even while they make, or try to make, their _protege_ feel the immeasurable distance which nature or fortune has placed between them. It was with this air of patronising grandeur that Mrs. Bluemits took her guests by the hand, and introduced them to the circle of females already assembled. Mrs. Bluemits was not an avowed authoress; but she was a professed critic, a well-informed woman, a woman of great conversational powers, etc., and, to use her own phrase, nothing but conversation was spoken in her house. Her guests were therefore, always expected to be distinguished, either for some literary production or for their taste in the _belles lettres._ Two ladies from Scotland, the land of poetry and romance, were consequently hailed as new stars in Mrs. Bluemits's horizon. No sooner were they seated than Mrs. Bluemits began-- "As I am a friend to ease in literary society, we shall, without ceremony, resume our conversation; for, as Seneca observes, the 'comfort of life depends upon conversation.'" "I think," said Miss Graves, "it is Rochefoucault who says, 'The great art of conversation is to hear patiently and answer precisely.'" "A very poor definition for so profound a philosopher," remarked Mrs. Apsley. "The amiable author of what the gigantic Johnson styles the melancholy and angry "Night Thoughts," gives a nobler, a more elevated, and, in my humble opinion, a juster explication of the intercourse of mind," said Miss Parkins; and she repeated the following lines with pompous enthusiasm:-- Speech ventilates our intellectual fire, Speech burnishes our mental magazine, Brightens for ornament, and whets for use. What numbers, sheath'd in erudition, lie, Plung'd to the hilts in venerable tomes, And rusted in, who might have borne an edge, And play'd a sprightly beam, if born to speech--- If born blest heirs of half their mother's tongue!" Mrs. Bluemits proceeded: "'Tis thought's exchange, which, like the alternate push Of waves conflicting, breaks the learned scum, And defecates the student's standing pool." "The sensitive poet of Olney, if I mistake not," said Mrs. Dalton, "steers a middle course, betwixt the somewhat bald maxim of the Parisian philosopher and the mournful pruriency of the Bard of Night, when he says, 'Conversation, in its better part, May be esteem'd a gift, and not an art.'" Mary had been accustomed to read, and to reflect upon what she read, and to apply it to the purpose for which it is valuable, viz. in enlarging her mind and cultivating her taste; but she had never been accustomed to prate, or quote, or sit down for the express purpose of displaying her acquirements; and she began to tremble at hearing authors' names "familiar in their mouths as household words;" but Grizzy, strong in ignorance, was no wise daunted. True, she heard what she could not comprehend, but she thought she would soon make things clear; and she therefore turned to her neighbour on her righthand, and accosted her with--"My niece and I are just come from dining at Mrs. Pullens's--I daresay you have heard of her--she was Miss Flora Macfuss; her father, Dr. Macfuss, was a most excellent preacher, and she is a remarkable clever woman." "Pray, ma'am, has she come out, or is she simply _bel esprit?_" inquired the lady. Grizzy was rather at a loss; and, indeed, to answer a question put in an unknown language, would puzzle wiser brains than hers; but Grizzy was accustomed to converse without being able to comprehend, and she therefore went on. "Her mother, Mrs. Macfuss--but she is dead--was a very clever woman too; I'm sure I declare I don't know whether the Doctor or her was the cleverest; but many people, I know, think Mrs. Pullens beats them both." "Indeed! may I ask in what department she chiefly excels?" "Oh, I really think in everything. For one thing, everything in her house is done by steam; and then she can keep everything, I can't tell how long, just in paper bags and bottles; and she is going to publish a book with all her receipts in it. I'm sure it will be very interesting." "I beg ten thousand pardons for the interruption," cried Mrs. Bluemits from the opposite side of the room; "but my ear was smote with the sounds of _publish,_ and _interesting,--words _which never fail to awaken a responsive chord in my bosom. Pray," addressing Grizzy, and bringing her into the full blaze of observation, "may I ask, was it of _the_ Campbell these electric words were spoken? To you, Madam, I am sure I need not apologise for my enthusiasm--you who claim the proud distinction of being a country woman, need I ask--an acquaintance?" All that poor Grizzy could comprehend of this harangue was that it was reckoned a great honour to be acquainted with a Campbell; and chuckling with delight at the idea of her own consequence, she briskly replied-- "Oh, I know plenty of Campbells; there's the Campbells of Mireside, relations of ours; and there's the Campbells of Blackbrae, married into our family; and there's the Campbells of Windlestrae Glen, are not very distant by my mother's side." Mary felt as if perforated by bullets in all directions, as she encountered the eyes of the company, turned alternately upon her aunt and her; but they were on opposite sides of the room; therefore to interpose betwixt Grizzy and her assailants was impossible. "Possibly," suggested Mrs. Dalton, "Miss Douglas prefers the loftier strains of the mighty Minstrel of the Mountains to the more polished periods of the Poet of the Transatlantic Plain." "Without either a possibility or a perhaps," said Mrs. Apsley, "the probability is, Miss Douglas prefers the author of the 'Giaour' to all the rest of her poetical countrymen. Where, in either Walter Scott or Thomas Campbell, will you find such lines as these;-- 'Wet with their own best blood, shall drip Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip!'" "Pardon me, madam," said Miss Parkin; "but I am of opinion you have scarcely given a fair specimen of the powers of the Noble Bard in question. The image here presented is a familiar one; 'the gnashing tooth' and 'haggard lip' we have all witnessed, perhaps some of us may even have experienced. There is consequently little merit in presenting it to the mind's eye. It is easy, comparatively speaking, to portray the feelings and passions of our own kind. We have only, as Dryden expresses it, to descend into ourselves to find the secret imperfections of our mind. It is therefore in his portraiture of the canine race that the illustrious author has so far excelled all his contemporaries--in fact, he has given quite a dramatic cast to his dogs," and she repeated, with an air of triumph-- "And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall, Hold o'er the dead their carnival; Gorging and growling o'er carcase and limb, They were too busy to bark at him! From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh, As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh; And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull, As it slipped through their jaws when their edge grew dull; As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead, When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed." "Now, to enter into the conception of a dog--to embody one's self, as it were, in the person of a brute--to sympathise in its feelings--to make its propensities our own--to 'lazily mumble the bones of the dead,' with our own individual 'white tusks'! Pardon me, madam, but with all due deference to the genius of a Scott, it is a thing he has not dare to attempt. Only the finest mind in the universe as capable of taking so bold a flight. Scott's dogs, madam, are tame, domestic animals--mere human dogs, if I may say so. Byron's dogs--But let them speak for themselves! 'The scalps were in the wild dog's maw, The hair was tangled round his jaw.' Show me, if you can, such an image in Scott?" "Very fine, certainly!" was here uttered by five novices, who were only there as probationers, consequently not privileged to go beyond a response. "Is it the dancing dogs they are speaking about?" asked Grizzy. But looks of silent contempt were the only replies she received. "I trust I shall not be esteemed presumptuous," said Miss Graves, "or supposed capable of entertaining views of detracting from the merits of the Noble Author at present under discussion, if I humbly but firmly enter my caveat against the word 'crunch,' as constituting an innovation in our language, the purity of which cannot be too strictly preserved or pointedly enforced. I am aware that by some I may be deemed unnecessarily fastidious; and possibly Christina, Queen of Sweden, might have applied to me the celebrated observation, said to have been elicited from her by the famed work of the laborious French Lexicographer, viz. that he was the most troublesome person in the world, for he required of every word to produce its passport, and to declare whence it came and whither it was going. I confess, I too, for the sake of my country, would wish that every word we use might be compelled to show its passport, attested by our great lawgiver, Dr. Samuel Johnson." "Unquestionably," said Mrs. Bluemits, "purity of language ought to be preserved inviolate at any price; and it is more especially incumbent to those who exercise a sway over our minds--those are, as it were, the moulds in which our young imaginations are formed, to be the watchful guardians of our language. But I lament to say that in fact it is not so; and that the aberrations of our vernacular tongue have proceeded solely from the licentious use made of it by those whom we are taught to reverence as the fathers of the Sock and Lyre." "Yet in familiar colloquy, I do not greatly object to the use of a word occasionally, even although unsanctioned by the authority of our mighty Lexicographer," said a new speaker. "For my part," said Miss Parkins, "a genius fettered by rules always reminds me of Gulliver in the hairy bonds of the Lilliputians; and the sentiment of the elegant and enlightened bard of Twickenham is also mine-- 'Great wits sometimes may glorious offend, And rise to faults true critics dare not mend; From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, And match a grace beyond the reach of art.' So it is with the subject of our argument: a tamer genius than the illustrious Byron would not have dared to 'crunch' the bone. But where, in the whole compass of the English language, will you find a word capable of conveying the same idea?" "Pick," modestly suggested one of the novices in a low key, hoping to gain some celebrity by this her first effort; but this dawn of intellect passed unnoticed. The argument was now beginning to run high; parties were evidently forming of crunchers and anticrunchers, and etymology was beginning to be called for, when a thundering knock at the door caused a cessation of hostilities. "That, I flatter myself, is my friend Miss Griffon," said Mrs. Bluemits, with an air of additional importance; and the name was whispered round the circle, coupled with "Celebrated Authoress--'Fevers of the Heart'-- 'Thoughts of the Moment,'" etc. etc. "Is she a _real_ authoress that is coming?" asked Miss Grizzy at the lady next her. And her delight was great at receiving an answer in the affirmative; for Grizzy thought to be in company with an authoress was the next thing to being an authoress herself; and, like some other people, she had a sort of vague mysterious reverence for everyone whose words had been printed in a book. "Ten thousand thousand pardons, dearest Mrs. Bluemits!" exclaimed Miss Griffon, as she entered. "I fear a world of intellect is lost to me by this cruel delay." Then in an audible whisper--"But I was detained by my publisher. He quite persecutes me to write. My 'Fevers of the Heart' has had a prodigious run; and even my 'Thoughts,' which, in fact, cost me no thought, are amazingly _recherché._ And I actually had to force my way to you to-night through a legion of printer's devils, who were lying in wait for me with each a sheet of my 'Billows of Love.'" "The title is most musical, most melancholy," said Mrs. Bluemits, "and conveys a perfect idea of what Dryden terms 'the sweeping deluge of the soul;' but I flatter myself we shall have something more than a name from Miss Griffon's genius. The Aonian graces, 'tis well known, always follow in her train." "They have made a great hole in it then," said Grizzy, officiously displaying a fracture in the train of Miss Griffon's gown, and from thence taking occasion to deliver her sentiments on the propriety of people who tore gowns always being obliged to mend them. After suitable entreaties had been used, Miss Griflon was at last prevailed upon to favour the company, with some specimens of the "Billows of Love" (of which we were unable to procure copies) and the following sonnet, the production of a friend;-- "Hast thou no note for joy, thou weeping lyre? Doth yew and willow ever shade thy string And melancholy sable banners fling, Warring 'midst hosts of elegant desire? How vain the strife--how vain the warlike gloom! Love's arms are grief--his arrows sighs and tears; And every moan thou mak'st, an altar rears, To which his worshippers devoutly come. Then rather, lyre, I pray thee, try thy skill, In varied measure, on a sprightlier key: Perchance thy gayer tones' light minstrelsy May heal the poison that thy plaints distil. But much I fear that joy is danger still; And joy, like woe, love's triumph must fulfil." This called forth unanimous applause--"delicate imagery"--"smooth versification" --"classical ideas"--"Petrarchian sweetness," etc. etc., resounded from all quarters. But even intellectual joys have their termination, and carriages and servants began to be announced in rapid succession. "Fly not yet, 'tis just the hour," said Mrs. Bluemits to the first of her departing guests, as the clock struck ten. "It is gone, with its thorns and its roses," replied er friend with a sigh, and a farewell pressure of the hand. Another now advanced--"Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day." "I have less will to go than care to stay," was the reply. "_Parta ti lascio adio,_" warbled Miss Parkins. "I vanish," said Mrs. Apsley, snatching up her tippet, reticule, etc., "and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind." "Fare-thee-well at once--Adieu, adieu, adieu, remember me!" cried the last of the band, as she slowly retreated. Mrs. Bluemits waved her hand with a look of tender reproach, as she repeated-- "An adieu should in utterance die, Or, if written, should faintly appear-- Should be heard in the sob of a sigh, Or be seen in the blot of a teal." "I'm sure, Mary," said Grizzy, when they were in the carriage, "I expected, when all the ladies were repeating, that you would have repeated something too. You used to have the Hermit and all Watts's Hymns by heart, when you was little. It's a thousand pities, I declare, that you should have forgot them; for I declare I was quite affronted to see you sitting like a stick, and not saying a word, when all the ladies were speaking and turning up their eyes, and moving their hands so prettily; but I'm sure I hope next time you go to Mrs. Bluemits's you will take care to learn something by heart before you go. I'm sure I haven't a very good memory, but I remember some things; and I was very near going to repeat 'Farewell to Lochaber' myself, as we were coming away; and I'm sure I wish to goodness I had done it; but I suppose it wouldn't do to go back now; and at any rate all the ladies are away, and I dare say the candles will be out by this time." Mary felt it a relief to have done with this surfeit of soul, and was of opinion that learning, like religion, ought never to be forced into conversation; and that people who only read to talk of their reading might as well let it alone. Next morning she gave so ludicrous an account of her entertainment that Lady Emily was quite charmed. "Now I begin to have hopes of you," said she, "since I see you can laugh at your friends as well as me." "Not at my friends, I hope," answered Mary; "only at folly." "Call it what you will--I only wish I had been there. I should certainly have started a controversy upon the respective merits of Tom Thumb and Puss in Boots, and so have called them off Lord Byron. Their pretending to measure the genius of a Scott or a Byron must have been something like a fly attempting to take the altitude of Mont Blanc. How I detest those idle disquisitions about the colour of a goat's beard, or the blood of an oyster."' Mary had seen in Mrs. Douglas the effects of a highly cultivated understanding shedding its mild radiance on the path of domestic life, heightening its charms, and softening its asperities, with the benign spirit of Christianity. Her charity was not like that of Mrs. Fox; she did not indulge herself in the purchase of elegant ornaments, and then, seated in the easy chair of her drawing-room, extort from her visitors money to satisfy the wants of those who had claims on her own bounty. No: she gave a large portion of her time, her thoughts, her fortune, to the most sacred of all duties--charity, in its most comprehensive meaning. Neither did her knowledge, like that of Mrs. Bluemits, evaporate in pedantic discussion or idle declamation, but showed itself in the tenor of a well-spent life, and in the graceful discharge of those duties which belonged to her sex and station. Next to goodness Mary most ardently admired talents. She knew there were many of her own sex who were justly entitled to the distinction of literary fame. Her introduction to the circle at Mrs. Bluemits's had disappointed her; but they were mere pretenders to the name. How different from those described by one no less amiable and enlightened herself!--"Let such women as are disposed to be vain of their comparatively petty attainments look up with admiration to those contemporary shining examples, the venerable Elizabeth Carter and the blooming Elizabeth Smith. In them let our young ladies contemplate profound and various learning, chastised by true Christian humility. In them let them venerate acquirements which would have been distinguished in a university, meekly softened, and beautifully shaded by the exertion of every domestic virtue, the unaffected exercise of every feminine employment." [1] [1] "Coelebs." CHAPTER XXXI. "The gods, to curse Pamela with her pray'rs, Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares; The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state, And, to complete her bliss, a fool for mate. She glares in balls, front boxes, and the ring-- A vain, unquiet, glitt'ring, wretched thing! Pride, pomp, and state, but reach her outward part; She sighs, and is no duchess at her heart." POPE FOR many months Mary was doomed to experience all the vicissitudes of hope and fear, as she heard of battles and sieges in which her lover had a part. He omitted no opportunity of writing to her; but scarcely had she received the assurance of his safety from himself when her apprehensions were again excited by rumours of fresh dangers he would have to encounter; and it required all her pious confidence and strength of mind to save her from yielding to the despondency of a naturally sensitive heart. But in administering to the happiness of others she found the surest alleviation to the misfortune that threatened herself; and she often forgot her own cares in her benevolent exertions for the poor, the sick, and the desolate. It was then she felt all the tenderness of that divine precept which enjoins love of the Creator as the engrossing principle of the soul. For, oh! the unutterable anguish that heart must endure which lavishes all its best affections on a creature mutable and perishable as itself, from whom a thousand accidents may separate or estrange it, and from whom death must one day divide it! Yet there is something so amiable, so exalting, in the fervour of a pure and generous attachment, that few have been able to resist its overwhelming influence; and it is only time and suffering that can teach us to comprehend the miseries that wait on the excess, even of our virtuous inclinations, where these virtues aspire not beyond this transitory scene. Mary seldom heard from her mother or sister. Their time was too precious to be wasted on dull country correspondents; but she saw their names frequently mentioned in the newspapers, and she flattered herself, from the éclat with whioh the Duchess seemed to be attended, that she had found happiness in those pleasures where she had been taught to expect it. The Duchess was indeed surrounded with all that rank, wealth, and fashion could bestow. She had the finest house, jewels, and equipages in London, but she was not happy. She felt the draught bitter, even though the goblet that held it was of gold. It is novelty only that can lend charms to things in themselves valueless; and when that wears off, the disenchanted baubles appear in all their native worthlessness. There is even a satiety in the free indulgence of wealth, when that indulgence centres solely in self, and brings no general self-approving reflections along with it. So it was with the Duchess of Altamont. She sought, in the gratification of every expensive whim, to stimulate the languid sense of joy; and, by loading herself with jewels, she strove to still the restless inquietude of a dissatisfied heart. But it is only the vulgar mind which can long find enjoyment in the mere attributes of wealth--in the contemplation of silk hangings, and gilded chairs, and splendid dresses, and showy equipages. Amidst all these the mind of any taste or refinement, "distrusting, asks if this be joy." And Adelaide possessed both taste and refinement, though her ideas had been perverted and her heart corrupted by the false maxims early instilled into her. Yet, selfish and unfeeling as she was, she sickened at the eternal recurrence of self-indulged caprices; and the bauble that had been hailed with delight the one day as a charmed amulet to dispel her ennui, was the next beheld with disgust or indifference. She believed, indeed, that she had real sources of vexation in the self-will and obstinacy of her husband, and that, had he been otherwise than he was, she should then have been completely happy. She would not acknowledge, even to herself, that she had done wrong in marrying a man whose person was disagreeable to her, and whose understanding she despised; while her preference was decidedly in favour of another. Even her style of life was in some respects distasteful to her; yet she was obliged to conform to it. The Duke retained exactly the same notions of things as had taken possession of his brain thirty years before; consequently everything in his establishment was conducted with a regularity and uniformity unknown to those whose habits are formed on the more eccentric models of the present day; or rather, who have no models save those of their own capricious tastes and inclinations. He had an antipathy to balls, concerts, and masquerades; for he did not dance, knew nothing of music, and stil less of _badinage._ But he liked great dull dinners, for there the conversation was generally adapted to his capacity; and it was a pleasure to him to arrange the party--to look over the bill of fare--to see all the family plate displayed--and to read an account of the grand dinner at the Duke of Altamont's in the "Morning Post" of the following day. All this sounds very vulgar for the pastimes of a Duke; but there are vulgar-minded Dukes as there are gifted ploughmen, or any other anomalies. The former Duchess, a woman of high birth, similar years, and kindred spirit of his own in all matters of form and _etiquette,_ was his standard of female propriety; and she would have deemed it highly derogatory to her dignity to have patronised any other species of entertainment than grand dinners and dull assemblies. Adelaide had attempted with a high hand at once to overturn the whole system of Altamont House, and had failed. She had declared her detestation of dinners, and been heard in silence. She had kept her room thrice when they were given, but without success. She had insisted upon giving a ball, but the Duke, with the most perfect composure, had peremptorily declared it must be an assembly. Thus baffled in all her plans of domestic happiness, the Duchess would have sought her pleasures elsewhere. She would have lived anywhere but in her own house associated with everybody but her own husband and done everything but what she had vowed to do. But even in this she was thwarted. The Duke had the same precise formal notions of a lady's conduct abroad, as well as her appearance at home; and the very places she would have most wished to go to were those she was expressly prohibited from ever appearing at. Even all that she could have easily settled to her own satisfaction by the simple apparatus of a separate establishment carried on in the same house; but here too she was foiled, for his Grace had stubborn notions on that score also, and plainly hinted that any separation must be final and decided; and Adelaide could not yet resolve upon taking so formidable a step in the first year of her marriage. She was therefore compelled to drag the chain by which, with her own will, she had bound herself for life to one she already despised and detested. And bound she was, in the strictest sense of the metaphor; for, though the Duke had not the smallest pleasure in the society of his wife, he yet attached great ideas of propriety to their being always seen together, side by side. Like his sister, Lady Matilda, he had a high reverence for appearances, though he had not her _finesse _in giving them effect. He had merely been accustomed to do what he thought looked well, and gave him an air of additional dignity. He had married Aidelaide because he thought she had a fine presence, and would look well as Duchess of Altamont; and, for the same reason, now that she was his wedded wife, he thought it looked well to be seen always together. He therefore made a point of having no separate engagements; and even carried his sense of propriety so far, that as regularly as the Duchess's carriage came to the door the Duke was prepared to hand her in, in due form, and take his station by her side. This alone would have been sufficient to have embittered Adelaide's existence, and she had tried every expedient, but in vain, to rid herself of this public display of conjugal duty. She had opened her landaulet in cold weather, and shut it, even to the glasses, in a scorching sun; but the Duke was insensible to heat and cold. He was most provokingly healthy; and she had not even the respite which an attack of rheumatism or toothache would have afforded. As his Grace was not a person of keen sensation, this continual effort to keep up appearances cost him little or nothing; but to the Duchess's nicer tact it was martyrdom to be compelled to submit to the semblance of affection where there was no reality. Ah, nothing but a sense of duty, early instilled and practically enforced, can reconcile a refined mind to the painful task of bearing with meekness and gentleness the ill-temper, adverse will, and opposite sentiments of those with whom we can acknowledge no feeling in common! But Adelaide possessed no sense of duty, and was a stranger to self-command; and though she boasted refinement of mind, yet it was of that spurious sort which, far from elevating and purifying the heart, tends only to corrupt and debase the soul, while it sheds a false and dazzling lustre upon those perishable graces which captivate the senses. It may easily be imagined the good sense of the mother did not tend to soothe the irritated feelings of the daughter. Lady Juliana was indeed quite as much exasperated as the Duchess at these obstacles thrown in the way of her pleasures, and the more so as she could not quite clearly comprehend them. The good-nature of her husband and the easy indolence of her brother even _her _folly had enabled her, on many occasions, to get the better of; but the obstinacy of her son-in-law was invincible to all her arts. She could therefore only wonder to the Duchess how she could not manage to get the better of the Duke's prejudices against balls and concerts and masquerades. It was so excessively ridiculous, so perfectly foolish, not to do as other people did; and there was the Duchess of Ryston gave Sunday concerts, and Lady Oakham saw masks, and even old ugly Lady Loddon had a ball, and the Prince at it! How vastly provoking! how unreasonable in a man of the Duke's years to expect a girl like Adelaide to conform to all his old-fashioned notions! And then she would wisely appeal to Lord Lindore whether it was not too absurd in the Duke to interfere with the Duchess's arrangements. Lord Lindore was a frequent visitor at Altamont House; for the Duke, satisfied with his having been once refused, was no wise jealous of him; and Lord Lindore was too quiet and refined in his attentions to excite the attention of anyone so stupid and obtuse. It was not the least of the Duchess's mortifications to be constantly contrasting her former lover--elegant, captivating, and _spirituel--_with her husband, awkward, insipid, and dull, as the fat weed that rots on Lethe's shore. Lord Lindore was indeed the most admired man in London, celebrated for his conquests, his horses, his elegance, manner, dress; in short, in everything he gave the tone. But he had too much taste to carry anything to extreme; and in the midst of incense, and adulation, and imitation, he still retained that simple unostentatious elegance that marks the man of real fashion--the man who feels his own consequence, independent of all extraneous modes or fleeting fashions. There is, perhaps, nothing so imposing, nothing that carries a greater sway over a mind of any refinement, than simplicity, when we feel assured that it springs from a genuine contempt of show and ostentation. Lord Lindore was aware of this, and he did not attempt to vie with the Duke of Altamont in the splendour of his equipage, the richness of his liveries, the number of his attendants, or any of those previous attractions attractions; on the contrary, everything belonging to him was of the plainest description; and, except in the beauty of his horses, he seemed to scorn every species of extravagance; but then he rode with so much elegance, he drove his curricle with such graceful ease, as formed a striking contrast to the formal Duke, sitting bolt-upright in his state chariot, _chapeau bras,_ and star; and the Duchess often quitted the Park, where Lord Lindore was the admired of all admirers, mortified and ashamed at being seen in the same carriage with the man she had chosen for her husband. Ambition had led her to marry the Duke, and that same passion now heightened her attachment for Lord Lindore; for, as some one has remarked, ambition is not always the desire for that which is in itself excellent, but for that which is most prized by others; and the handsome Lord Lindore was courted and caressed in circles where the dull, precise Duke of Altamont was wholly overlooked. Months passed in this manner, and every day added something to Adelaide's feelings of chagrin and disappointment. But it was still worse when she found herself settled for a long season at Norwood Abbey a dull, magnificent residence, with a vast unvaried park, a profusion of sombre trees, and a sheet of stillwater, decorated with leaden deities. Within doors everything was in the same style of vapid, tasteless grandeur, and the society was not such as to dispel the ennui these images served to create. Lady Matilda Sufton, her satellite Mrs. Finch, General Carver, and a few stupid elderly lords and their well-bred ladies comprised the family circle; and the Duchess experienced, with bitterness of spirit, that "rest of heart, and pleasure felt at home," are blessings wealth cannot purchase nor greatness command; while she sickened at the stupid, the almost _vulgar_ magnificence of her lot. At this period Lord Lindore arrived on a visit, and the daily, hourly contrast that occurred betwixt the elegant, impassioned lover, and the dull, phlegmatic husband, could not fail of producing the usual effects on an unprincipled mind. Rousseau and Goethe were studied, French and German sentiments were exchanged, till criminal passion was exalted into the purest of all earthly emotions. It were tedious to dwell upon the minute, the almost imperceptible occurrences that tended to heighten the illusion of passion, and throw an air of false dignity around the degrading spells of vice; but so it was, that in something less than a year from the time of her marriage, this victim of self-indulgence again sought her happiness in the gratification of her own headstrong passions, and eloped with Lord Lindore, vainly hoping to find peace and joy amid guilt and infamy. CHAPTER XXXII. "On n'est guères obligé aux gens qui ne nous viennent voir, que pour nous quereller, qui pendant toute une visite, ne nous disent pas une seule parole obligeante, et qui se font un plaisir malin d'attaquer notre conduite, et de nous faire entrevoir nos défauts." -- L' ABBE Dé BELLEGARDE. THE Duke, although not possessed of the most delicate feelings, it may be supposed was not insensible to his dishonour. He immediately set about taking the legal measures for avenging it; and damages were awarded, which would have the effect of rendering Lord Lindore for ever an alien to his country. Lady Juliana raved, and had hysterics, and seemed to consider herself as the only sufferer by her daughter's misconduct. At one time Adelaide's ingratitude was all her theme: at another, it was Lord Lindore's treachery, and poor Adelaide was everything that was amiable and injured: then it was the Duke's obstinacy; for, had Adelaide got leave to do as she liked, this never would have happened; had she only got leave to give balls, and to go to masquerades, she would have made the best wife in the world, etc. etc. etc. All this was warmly resented by Lady Matilda, supported by Mrs. Finch and General Carver, till open hostilities were declared between the ladies, and Lady Juliana was compelled to quit the house she had looked upon as next to her own, and became once more a denizen of Beech Park. Mary's grief and horror at her sister's misconduct were proportioned to the nature of the offence. She considered it not as how it might affect herself, or would be viewed by the world, but as a crime committed against the law of God; yet, while she the more deeply deplored it on that account, no bitter words of condemnation passed her lips. She thought with humility of the superior advantages she had enjoyed in having principles of religion early and deeply engrafted in her soul; and that, but for these, such as her sister's fate was, hers might have been. She felt for her mother, undeserving as she was of commiseration; and strove by every means in her power to promote her comfort and happiness. But that was no easy task. Lady Juliana's notions of comfort and happiness differed as widely from those of her daughter as reason and folly could possibly do. She was indeed "than folly more a fool--a melancholy fool without her bells." She still clung to low earth-born vanities with as much avidity as though she had never experienced their insecurity; still rung the same changes on the joys of wealth and grandeur, as if she had had actual proof of their unfading felicity. Then she recurred to the Duke's obstinacy and Lord Lindore's artifices, till, after having exhausted herself in invective against them, she concluded by comforting herself with the hope that Lord Lindore and Adelaide would marry; and although it would be a prodigious degradation to her, and she could not be received at Court, she might yet get into very good society in town. There were many women of high rank exactly in the same situation, who had been driven to elope from their husbands, and who married the men they liked and made the best wives in the world. Mary heard all this in shame and silence; but Lady Emily, wearied and provoked by her folly and want of principle, was often led to express her indignation and and contempt in terms which drew tears from her cousin's eyes. Mary was indeed the only person in the world who felt her sister's dereliction with the keenest feelings of shame and sorrow. All Adelaide's coldness and unkindness had not been able to eradicate from her heart those deep-rooted sentiments of affection which seem to have been entwined with our existence, and which, with some generous natures, end but with their being. Yes! there are ties that bind together those of one family, stronger than those of taste, or choice, or friendship, or reason; for they enable us to love, even in opposition to them all. It was understood the fugitives had gone to Germany; and after wonder and scandal were exhausted, and a divorce obtained, the Duchess of Altamont, except to her own family, was as though she had never been. Such is the transition from--from guilt to insignificance! Amongst the numerous visitors who flocked to Beech Park, whether from sympathy, curiosity, or exultation, was Mrs. Downe Wright. None of these motives, singly, had brought that lady there, for her purpose was that of giving what she genteelly termed some _good hits_ to the Douglas's pride--a delicate mode of warfare, in which, it must be owned, the female sex greatly excel. Mrs. Downe Wright had not forgiven the indignity of her son having been refused by Mary, which she imputed entirely to Lady Emily's influence, and had from that moment predicted the downfall of the whole pack, as she styled the family; at the same time always expressing her wish that she might be mistaken, as she wished them well--God knows she bore them no ill-will, etc. She entered the drawing-room at Beech Park with a countenance cast to a totally different expression from that with which she had greeted Lady Matilda Sufton's widowhood. Melancholy would there have been appropriate, here it was insulting; and accordingly, with downcast eyes, and silent pressures of the hand, she saluted every member of the family, and inquired after their healths with that air of anxious solicitude which implied that if they were all well it was what they ought not to be. Lady Emily's quick tact was presently aware of her design, and she prepared to take the field against her. "I had some difficulty in getting admittance to you," said Mrs. Downe Wright. "The servant would fain have denied you; but at such a time, I knew the visit of a friend could not fail of being acceptable, so I made good my way in spite of him." "I had given orders to be at home to friends only," returned Lady Emily, "as there is no end to the inroads of acquaintances." "And poor Lady Juliana," said Mrs. Downe Wright in a tone of affected sympathy, "I hope she is able to see her friends?" "Did you not meet her?" asked Lady Emily carelessly. "She is just gone to Bath for the purpose of securing a box during the term of Kean's engagement; she would not trust to _l'éloquence du billet_ upon such an occasion." "I'm vastly happy to hear she is able for anything of the kind," in a tone of vehement and overstrained joy, rather unsuitable to the occasion. A well-feigned look of surprise from Lady Emily made her fear she had overshot her mark; she therefore, as if from delicacy, changed the conversation to her own affairs. She soon contrived to let it be known that her son was going to be married to a Scotch Earl's daughter; that she was to reside with them; and that she had merely come to Bath for the purpose of letting her house--breaking up her establishment--packing up her plate--and, in short, making all those magnificent arrangements which wealthy dowagers usually have to perform on a change of residence. At the end of this triumphant declaration, she added-- "I fain would have the young people live by themselves, and let me just go on in my own way; but neither my son nor Lady Grace would hear of that, although her family are my son's nearest neighbours, and most sensible, agreeable people they are. Indeed, as I said to Lord Glenallan, a man's happiness depends fully as much upon his wife's family as upon herself." Mary was too noble-minded to suspect that Mrs. Downe Wright could intend to level innuendoes; but the allusion struck her; she felt herself blush; and, fearful Mrs. Downe Wright would attribute it to a wrong motive, she hastened to join in the eulogium on the Benmavis family in general, and Lady Grace in particular. "Lady Benmavis is, indeed, a sensible, well-principled woman, and her daughters have been all well brought up." Again Mary coloured at the emphasis which marked the sensible, well-principled mother, and the well brought-up daughters; and in some confusion she said something about Lady Grace's beauty. "She certainly is a very pretty woman," said Mrs. Downe Wright with affected carelessness; "but what is better, she is out of a good nest. For my own part I place little value upon beauty now; commend me to principles. If a woman is without principles the less beauty she has the better." "If a woman has no principles," said Lady Emily, "I don't think it signifies a straw whether she has beauty or not--ugliness can never add to one's virtue." "I beg your pardon, Lady Emily; a plain woman will never make herself so conspicuous in the world as one of your beauties." "Then you are of opinion wickedness lies all in the eye of the world, not in the depths of the heart? Now I think the person who cherishes--no matter how secretly--pride, envy, hatred, malice, or any other besetting sin, must be quite as criminal in the sight of God as those who openly indulge their evil propensity." "I go very much by outward actions," said Mrs. Downe Wright; "they are all we have to judge by." "But I thought we were forbidden to judge one another?" "There's no shutting people's mouths, Lady Emily." "No; all that is required, I believe, is that we should shut our own." Mary thought the conversation was getting rather too _piquante_ to be pleasant, and tried to soften the tone of it by asking that most innocent question, Whether there was any news? "Nothing but about battles and fightings, I suppose," answered Mrs. Downe Wright. "I'm sure they are to be pitied who have friends or relations either in army or navy at present. I have reason to be thankful my son is in neither. He was very much set upon going into one or other; but I was always averse to it; for, independent of the danger, they are professions that spoil a man for domestic life; they lead to such expensive, dissipated habits, as quite ruin them for family men. I never knew a military man but what must have his bottle of port every day. With sailors, indeed, it's still worse; grog and tobacco soon destroy them. I'm sure if I had a daughter it would make me miserable if she was to take fancy to a naval or military man;--but," as if suddenly recollecting herself, "after all, perhaps it's a mere prejudice of mine." "By no means," said Lady Emily "there is no prejudice in the matter; what you say is very true. They are to be envied who can contrive to fall in love with a stupid, idle man: _they_ never can experience any anxiety; _their_ fate is fixed; 'the waveless calm, the slumber of the dead,' is theirs; as long as they can contrive to slumber on, or at least to keep their eyes shut, 'tis very well, they are in no danger of stumbling till they come to open them; and if they are sufficiently stupid themselves there is no danger of their doing even that. The have only to copy the owl, and they are safe." "I quite agree with your Ladyship ," said Mrs. Downe Wright, with a well _got-up,_ good-humoured laugh. "A woman has only not to be a wit or a genius, and there is no fear of her; not that _I_ have that antipathy to a clever woman that many people have, and especially the gentlemen. I almost quarrelled with Mr. Headley, the great author, t'other day, for saying that he would rather encounter a nest of wasps than a clever woman." "I should most cordially have agreed with him," said Lady Emily, with equal _naïveté._ "There is nothing more insupportable than one of your clever women, so called. They are generally under-bred, consequently vulgar. They pique themselves upon saying good things _côitte qu'il coûte._ There is something, in short, quite professional about them; and they wouldn't condescend to chat nonsense as you and I are doing at this moment--oh! not for worlds! Now, I think one of the great charms of life consists in talking nonsense. Good nonsense is an exquisite thing; and 'tis an exquisite thing to be stupid sometimes, and to say nothing at all. Now, these enjoyments the clever woman must forego. Clever she is, and clever she must be. Her life must be a greater drudgery than that of any actress. _She_ merely frets her hour upon the stage; the curtain dropped, she may become as dull as she chooses; but the clever woman must always stage it, even at her own fireside." "Lady Emily Lindore is certainly the last person from whom I should have expected to hear a panegyric on stupidity," said Mrs. Downe Wright, with some bitterness. "Stupidity!--oh, heavens! my blood curdles at the thought of real, genuine, downright stupidity! No! I should always like to have the command of intellect, as well as of money, though my taste, or my indolence, or my whim, perhaps, never would incline me to be always sparkling, whether in wit or in diamonds. 'Twas only when I was in the nursery that I envied the good girl who spoke rubies and pearls. Now it seems to me only just better than not spitting toads and vipers." And she warbled a sprightly French _ariette_ to a tame bullfinch that flew upon her hand. There was an airy, high-bred elegance in Lady Emily's impertinence that seemed to throw Mrs. Downe Wright's coarse sarcasms to an immeasurable distance; and that lady was beginning to despair, but she was determined not to give in while she could possibly stand out. She accordingly rallied her forces, and turned to Mary. "So you have lost your neighbour, Mrs. Lennox, since I was here? I think she was an acquaintance of yours. Poor woman! her death must have been a happy release to herself and her friends. She has left no family, I believe?" quite aware of the report of Mary's engagement with Colonel Lennox." "Only one son," said Mary, with a little emotion. "Oh! very true. He's in the law, I think?" "In the army," answered Mary, faintly. "That's a poor trade," said Mrs. Downe Wright, "and I doubt he'll not have much to mend it. Rose Hall's but a poor property. I've heard they might have had a good estate in Scotland if it hadn't been for the pride of the General, that wouldn't let him change his name for it, He thought it grander to be a poor Lennox than a rich Macnaughton, or some such name, It's to be hoped the son's of the same mind?" "I have no doubt of it," said Lady Emily. "Tis a noble name-quite a legacy in itself." "It's one that, I am afraid, will not be easily turned into bank notes, however," returned Mrs. Downe Wright, with a _real_ hearty laugh. And then, delighted to get off with what she called flying colours, she hastily rose with an exclamation at the lateness of the hour, and a remark how quickly time passed in pleasant company; and, with friendly shakes of the hand, withdrew. "How very insupportable is such a woman," said Lady Emily to Mary, "who, to gratify her own malice, says the most cutting things to her neighbours, and at the same time feels self-approbation, in the belief that she is doing good. And yet, hateful as she is, I blush to say I have sometimes been amused by her ill-nature when it was directed against people I hated still more. Lady Matilda Sufton, for example,--there she certainly shone, for hypocrisy is always fair game; and yet the people who love to hunt it are never amiable. You smile, as much as to say, Here is Satan preaching a sermon on holiness. But however satirical and intolerant you may think me, you must own that I take no delight in the discovery of other people's faults: if I want the meekness of a Christian, at least I don't possess the malice of a Jew. Now Mrs. Downe Wright has a real heartfelt satisfaction in saying malicious things, and in thrusting herself into company where she must know she is unwelcome, for the sole purpose of saying them. Yet many people are blessed with such blunt perceptions that they are not at all aware of her real character, and only wonder, when she has left them, what made them feel so uncomfortable when she was present. But she has put me in such a bad humour that I must go out of door and apostrophise the sun, like Lucifer. Do come, Mary, you will help to dispel my chagrin. I really feel as if my heart had been in a limekiln. All its kingly feelings are so burnt up by the malignant influences of Mrs. Downe Wright; while you," continued she, as they strolled into the gardens, "are as cool, and as sweet, and as sorrowful as these violets," gathering some still wet with an April shower. "How delicious, after such a mental _sirocco,_ to feel the pure air and hear the birds sing, and look upon the flowers and blossoms, and sit here, and bask in the sun from laziness to walk into the shade. You must needs acknowledge, Mary, that spring in England is a much more amiable season than in your ungentle clime." This was the second spring Mary had seen set in, in England. But the first had been wayward and backward as the seasons of her native climate. The present was such a one as poets love to paint. Nature was in all its first freshness and beauty--the ground was covered with flowers, the luxuriant hedgerows were white with blossoms, the air was impregnated with the odours of the gardens and orchards. Still Mary sighed as she thought of Lochmarlie--its wild tangled woods, with here and there a bunch of primroses peeping forth from amidst moss and withered ferns--its gurgling rills, blue lakes, and rocks, and mountains--all rose to view; and she felt that, even amid fairer scenes, and beneath brighter suns, her heart would still turn with fond regret to the land of her birth. CHAPTER XXXIII. "Wondrous it is, to see in diverse mindes How diversly Love doth his pageants play And shows his power in variable kinds." SPENSER. BUT even the charms of spring were overlooked by Lady Emily in the superior delight she experienced at hearing that the ship in which Edward Douglas was had arrived at Portsmouth; and the intelligence was soon followed by his own arrival at Beech Park. He was received by her with rapture, and by Mary with the tenderest emotion. Lord Courtland was always glad of an addition to the family party; and even Lady Juliana experienced something like emotion as she beheld her son, now the exact image of what his father had been twenty years before. Edward Douglas was indeed a perfect model of youthful beauty, and possessed of all the high spirits and happy _insouciance_ which can only charm at that early period. He loved his profession, and had already distinguished himself in it. He was handsome, brave, good-hearted, and good-humoured, but he was not clever; and Mary felt some solicitude as to the permanency of of Lady Emily's attachment to him. But Lady Emily, quick-sighted to the defects of the whole world, seemed happily blind to those of her lover; and when even Mary's spirits were almost exhausted by his noisy rattle, Lady Emily, charmed and exhilarated, entered into all his practical jokes and boyish frolics with the greatest delight. She soon perceived what was passing in Mary's mind. "I see perfectly well what you think of my _penchant_ for Edward," said she one day; "I can tell you exactly what was passing in your thoughts just now. You were thinking how strange, how passing strange it is, that I, who am (false modesty avaunt!) certainly cleverer than Edward, should yet be so partial to him, and that my lynx eyes should have failed to discover in him faults which, with a single glance, I should have detected in others. Now, can't you guess what renders even these very faults so attractive to me?" "The old story, I suppose?" said Mary. "Love." "Not at all. Love might blind me to his faults altogether, and then my case would be indeed hopeless, were I living in the belief that I was loving a piece of perfection--a sort of Apollo Belvidere in mind as well as in person. Now, so far from that, I could reckon you up a whole catalogue of his faults; and nevertheless, I love him with my whole heart, faults and all. In the first place, they are the faults with which I have been familiar from infancy; and therefore they possess a charm (to my shame be it said!) greater than other people's virtues would have to me. They come over my fancy like some snatch of an old nursery song, which one loves to hear in defiance of taste and reason, merely because it is something that carries us back to those days which, whatever they were in reality, always look bright and sunny in retrospection. In the second place, his faults are real, genuine, natural faults; and in this age of affectation how refreshing it is to meet with even a natural fault! I grant you, Edward talks absurdly, and asks questions _à faire dresser les cheveux_ of a Mrs. Bluemits. But that amuses me; for his ignorance is not the ignorance of vulgarity or stupidity, but the ignorance of a light head and a merry heart--of one, in short, whose understanding has been at sea when other people's were at school. His _bonmots_ certainly would not do to be printed; but then they make me laugh a great deal more than if they were better, for he is always _naif_ and original, and I prefer an in indifferent original any day to a good copy. How it shocks me to hear people recommending to their children to copy such a person's manners! A copied manner, how insupportable! The servile imitator of a set pattern, how despicable! No! I would rather have Edward in all the freshness of his own faults rather than in the faded semblance of another persons's proprieties." Mary agreed to the truth of her cousin's observations in some respects, though she could not help thinking that love had as much to say in her case as in most others; for if it did not blind her to her lover's faults, it certainly made her much more tolerant of them. Edward was, in truth, at times almost provokingly boyish and unthinking, and possessed a flow of animal spirits as inexhaustible as they were sometimes overpowering; but she flattered herself time would subdue them to a more rational tone; and she longed for his having the advantages of Colonel Lennox's society--not by way of pattern, as Lady Emily expressed it, but that he might be gradually led to something of more refinement, from holding intercourse with a superior mind. And she obtained her wish sooner than she had dared to hope for it. That battle was fought which decided the fate of Europe, and turned so many swords into ploughshares; and Mary seemed now touching the pinnacle of happiness when she saw her lover restored to her. He had gained additional renown in the bloody field of Waterloo; and, more fortunate than others, his military career had terminated both gloriously and happily. If Mary had ever distrusted the reality of his affection, all her doubts were now at an end. She saw she was beloved with all the truth and ardour of a noble ingenuous mind, too upright to deceive others, too enlightened to deceive itself. All reserve betwixt them was now at an end; and, secure in mutual affection, nothing seemed to oppose itself to their happiness. Colonel Lennox's fortune was small; but such as it was, it seemed sufficient for all the purposes of rational enjoyment. Both were aware that wealth is a relative thing, and that the positively rich are not those who have the largest possessions but those who have the fewest vain or selfish desires to gratify. From these they were happily exempt. Both possessed too many resources in their own minds to require the stimulus of spending money to rouse them into enjoyment, or give them additional importance in the eyes of the world; and, above all, both were too thoroughly Christian in their principles to murmur at any sacrifices or privations they might have to endure in the course of their earthly pilgrimage. But Lady Juliana's weak, worldly mind, saw things in a very different light; and when Colonel Lennox, as a matter of form, applied to her for her consent to their union, he received a positive and angry refusal. She declared she never would consent to any daughter of hers making so foolish, so very unsuitable a marriage. And then, sending for Mary, she charged her, in the most peremptory manner, to break of all intercourse with Colonel Lennox. Poor Mary was overwhelmed with grief and amazement at this new display of her mother's tyranny and injustice, and used all the powers of reasoning and entreaty to alter her sentiments; but in vain. Since Adelaide's elopement Lady Juliana had been much in want of some subject to occupy her mind--something to excite a sensation, and give her something to complain of, and talk about, and put her in a bustle, and make her angry, and alarmed, and ill-used, and, in short, all the things which a fool is fond of being. Although Mary had little hopes of being able to prevail by any efforts of reason, she yet tried to make her mother comprehend the nature of her engagement with Colonel Lennox as of a sacred nature, and too binding ever to be dissolved. But Lady Juliana's wrath blazed forth with redoubled violence at the very mention of an engagement. She had never heard of anything so improper. Colonel Lennox must be a most unprincipled man to lead her daughter into an engagement unsanctioned by her; and she had acted in the most improper manner in allowing herself to form an attachment without the consent of those who had the best title to dispose of her. The person who could act thus was not fit to be trusted, and in future it would be necessary for her to have her constantly under her own eye. Mary found her candour had therefore only reduced her to the alternative of either openly rebelling, or of submitting to be talked at, and watched, and guarded, as if she had been detected in carrying on some improper clandestine intercourse. But she submitted to all the restrictions that were imposed and the torments that were inflicted, if not with the heroism of a martyr, at least with the meekness of one; for no murmur escaped her lips. She was only anxious to conceal from others the extent of her mother's folly and injustice, and took every opportunity of entreating Colonel Lennox's silence and forbearance. It required, indeed, all her influence to induce him to submit patiently to the treatment he experienced. Lady Juliana had so often repeated to Mary that it was the greatest presumption in Colonel Lennox to aspire to a daughter of hers, that she had fairly talked herself into the belief that he was all she asserted him to be--a man of neither birth nor fortune certainly a Scotsman from his name--consequently having thousands of poor cousins and vulgar relations of every description. And she was determined that no daughter of hers should ever marry a man whose family connections she knew nothing about. She had suffered a great deal too much from her (Mary's) father's low relations ever to run the risk of anything of the same kind happening again. In short, she at length made it out clearly, to her own satisfaction, that Colonel Lennox was scarcely a gentleman; and she therefore considered it as her duty to treat him on every occasion with the most marked rudeness. Colonel Lennox pitied her folly too much to be hurt by her ill-breeding and malevolence, but he could scarcely reconcile it to his notions of duty that Mary's superior mind should submit to the thraldom of one who evidently knew not good from evil. Lady Emily was so much engrossed by her own affairs that for some time all this went on unnoticed by her. At length she was struck with Mary's dejection, and observed that Colonel Lennox seemed also dispirited; but, imputing it to a lover's quarrel, she laughingly taxed them with it. Although Mary could, suppress the cause of her uneasiness, she was too ingenuous to deny it; and, being pressed by her cousin, she at length disclosed to her the cause of her sorrow. "Colonel Lennox and you have behaved like two fools," said she, at the end of her cousin's communication. "What could possibly instigate you to so absurd an act as that of asking Lady Juliana's consent? You surely might have known that the person who is never consulted about anything will invariably start difficulties to everything; and that people who are never accustomed to be even listened to get quite unmanageable when appealed to. Lady Juliana gave an immediate assent to Lord Glenallan's proposals because she was the first person consulted about them; and besides, she had a sort of an instinctive knowledge that it would create a sensation and make her of consequence--in short, she was to act in a sort of triple capacity, as parent, lover, and bride. Here, on the contrary, she was aware that her consent would stand as a mere cipher, and, once given, would never be more heard of. Liberty of opinion is an attitude many people quite lose themselves in. When once they attempt to think, it makes confusion worse confounded; so it is much better to take that labour off their hands, and settle the matter for them. It would have been quite time enough to have asked Lady Juliana's consent after the thing was over; or, at any rate, the minute before it was to take place. I would not even have allowed her time for a flood of tears or a fit of hysterics. And now that your duty has brought you to this, even my genius is a a loss how to extricate you. Gretna Green might have been advisable, and that would have accorded with your notions of duty; that would have been following your mamma's own footsteps; but it is become too vulgar an exploit. I read of a hatter's apprentice having carried off a grocer's heiress t'other day. What do you purpose doing yourself?" "To try the effect of patience and submission," said Mary, "rather than openly set at defiance one of the most sacred duties--the obedience of a child to a parent. Besides, I could not possibly be happy were I to marry under such circumstances." "You have much too nice a conscience," said Lady Emily; "and yet I could scarcely wish you otherwise than you are. What an angel you are, to behave as you do to such a mother; with such sweetness, and gentleness, and even respect! Ah! they know little of human nature who think that to perform great actions one must necessarily be a great character. So far from that, I now see there may be much more real greatness of mind displayed in the quiet tenor of a woman's life than in the most brilliant exploits that ever were performed by man. Methinks I myself could help to storm a city; but to rule my own spirit is a task beyond me. What a pity it is you and I cannot change places. Here am I, languishing for a little opposition to my love. My marriage will be quite an insipid, every-day affair; I yawn already to think of it. Can anything be more disheartening to a young couple, anxious to signalise their attachment in the face of the whole world, than to be allowed to take their own way? Conceive my vexation at being told by papa this morning that he had not the least objection to Edward and me marrying whenever we pleased, although he thought we might both have done better; but that was our own affair, not his; that he thought Edward a fine, good humoured fellow--excessively amusing; hoped he would get a ship some day, although he had no interest whatever in the Admiralty; was sorry he could not give us any money, but hoped we should remain at Beech Park as long as we liked. I really feel quite flat with all these dull affirmations." "What! you had rather have been locked up in a tower--wringing your hands at the height of the windows, the thickness of the walls, and so forth," said Mary. "No: I should never have done anything so like a washerwoman as to wring my hands; though I might, like some heroines, have fallen to work in a regular blacksmith-way, by examining the lock of the door, and perhaps have succeeded in picking it; but, alas! I live in degenerate days. Oh that I had been born the persecuted daughter of some ancient baron bold instead of the spoiled child of a good natured modern earl! Heavens! to think that I must tamely, abjectly submit to be married in the presence of all my family, even in the very parish church! Oh, what detractions from the brilliancy of my star!" In spite of her levity Lady Emily was seriously interested in her cousin's affairs, and tried every means of obtaining Lady Juliana's consent; but Lady Juliana was become more unmanageable than ever. Her temper, always bad, was now soured by chagrin and disappointment into something, if possible, still worse, and Lady Emily's authority had no longer any control over her; even the threat of producing Aunt Grizzy to a brilliant assembly had now lost its effect. Dr. Redgill was the only auxiliary she possessed in the family, and he most cordially joined he in condemning Miss Mary's obstinacy and infatuation. What could she see in a man with such an insignificant bit of property, a mere nest for blackbirds and linnets, and such sort of vermin. Not a morsel of any sort of game on his grounds; while at Glenallan, he had been credibly informed, such was the abundance that the deer had been seen stalking and the black-cock flying past the very door! But the Doctor's indignation was suddenly suspended by a fit of apoplexy; from which, however, he rallied, and passed it off for the present as a sort of vertigo, in consequence of the shock he had received at hearing of Miss Mary's misconduct. At length even Colonel Lennox's forbearance was exhausted, and Mary's health and spirits were sinking beneath the conflict she had to maintain, when a sudden revolution in Lady Juliana's plans caused also a revolution in her sentiments. This was occasioned by a letter from Adelaide, now Lady Lindore. It was evidently written under the influence of melancholy and discontent; and, as Lady Emily said, nothing could be a stronger proof of poor Adelaide's wretchedness than her expressing a wish that her mother should join her in the South of France, where she was going on account of her health. Adelaide was indeed one of the many melancholy proofs of the effects of headstrong passions and perverted principles. Lord Lindore had married her from a point of honour; and although he possessed too much refinement to treat her ill, yet his indifference was not the less cutting to a spirit haughty as hers. Like many others, she had vainly imagined that, in renouncing virtue itself for the man she loved, she was for ever ensuring his boundless gratitude and adoration; and she only awoke from her delusive dream to find herself friendless in a foreign land, an outcast from society, an object of indifference even to him for whom she had abandoned all. But Lady Juliana would see nothing of all this. She was charmed at what she termed this proof of her daughter's affection, in wishing to have her with her; and the prospect of going abroad seemed like a vision of paradise to her. Instant preparations were made for her departure, and in the bustle attendant on them, Mary and her affairs sank into utter insignificance. Indeed, she seemed rather anxious to get her disposed of in any way that might prevent her interfering with her own plans; and a consent to her marriage, such as it was, was easily obtained. "Marry whom you please," said she; "only remember I am not responsible for the consequences. I have always told you what a wretched thing a love-marriage is, therefore you are not to blame me for your future misery." Mary readily subscribed to the conditions; but, as she embraced her mother at parting, she timidly whispered a hope that she would ever consider her house as her home. A smile of contempt was the only reply she received, and they parted never more to meet. Lady Juliana found foreign manners and principles too congenial to her tastes ever to return to Britain. CHAPTER XXXIV. "O most gentle Jupiter! what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried, _Have patience, good people!"_ _As You Like it._ THE only obstacle to her union thus removed, Mary thought she might now venture to let her Aunt Grizzy into the secret; and accordingly, with some little embarrassment, she made the disclosure of the mutual attachment subsisting between Colonel Lennox and herself. Grizzy received the communication with all the astonishment which ladies usually experience upon being made acquainted with a marriage which they had not had the prescience to foresee and foretell--or even one which they had; for, common and natural as the event seems to be, it is one which perhaps in no instance ever took place without occasioning the greatest amazement to some one individual or another; and it will also be generally found that either the good or the bad fortune of one or other of the parties is the subject of universal wonder. In short, a marriage which excites no surprise, pity, or indignation, must be something that has never yet been witnessed on the face of this round world. It is greatly to be feared none of my readers will sympathise in the feelings of the good spinster on this occasion, as she poured them forth in the following _extempore_ or _improvisatorial_ strain:- "Well, Mary, I declare I'm perfectly confounded with all you have been telling me! I'm sure I never heard the like of it! It seems but the t'other day since you began your sampler; and it looks just like yesterday since your father and mother were married. And such a work as there was at your nursing! I'm sure your poor grandfather was out of all patience about it. And now to think that you are going to be married! not but what it's a thing we all expected, for there's no doubt England's the place for young women to get husbands--we always said that, you know; not but what I dare say you might have been married, too, if you had stayed in the Highlands, and to a real Highlander, too, which, of course, would have been still better for us all; for it will be a sad thing if you are obliged to stay in England, Mary; but I hope there's no chance of that: you know Colonel Lennox can easily sell his place, and buy an estate in the Highlands. There's a charming property, I know, to be sold just now, that _marches_ with Glenfern. To be sure it's on the wrong side of the hill--there's no denying that; but then, there's I can't tell you how many thousand acres of fine muir for shooting, and I daresay Colonel Lennox is a keen sportsman; and they say a great deal of it might be very much improved. We must really inquire after it, Mary, and you must speak to Colonel Lennox about it, for you know such a property as that may be snapped up in a minute." Mary assented to all that was said; and Grizzy proceeded-- "I wonder you never brought Colonel Lennox to see us, Mary. I'm sure he must think it very odd. To be sure, Sir Sampson's situation is some excuse; but at any rate I wonder you never spoke about him. We all found out your Aunt Bella's attachment from the very first, just from her constantly speaking about Major M'Tavish and the militia; and we had a good guess of Betsy's too, from the day her face turned so red after giving Captain M'Nab for her toast; but you have really kept yours very close, for I declare I never once suspected such a thing. I wonder if that was Colonel Lennox that I saw you part with at the door one day--tall, and with brown hair, and a bluecoat. I asked Lady Maclaughlan if she knew who it was, and she said it was Admiral Benbow; but I think she must have been mistaken, for I daresay now it was just Colonel Lennox. Lennox--I'm sure I should be able to remember something about somebody of that name; but my memory's not so good as it used to be, for I have so many things, you know, to think about, with Sir Sampson, that I declare sometimes my head's quite confused; yet I think always there's something about them. I wish to goodness Lady Maclaughlan was come from the dentist's, that I might consult her about it; for of course, you'll do nothing without consulting all your friends--I know you've too much sense for that. An here's Sir Sampson coming; it will be a fine piece of news to tell him." Sir Sampson having been now wheeled in by the still active Philistine, and properly arranged with the assistance of Miss Grizzy, she took her usual station by the side of his easy chair, and began to shout into his ear. "Here's my niece Mary, Sir Sampson; you remember her when she was little, I daresay--you know you used to call her the fairy of Lochmarlie; and I'm sure we all thought for long she would have been a perfect fairy, she was so little; but she's tall enough now, you see, and she's going to be married to a fine young man. None of us know him yet, but I think I must have seen him; and at any rate I'm to see him to-morrow, and you'll see him too, Sir Sampson, for Mary is to bring him to call here, and he'll tell you all about the battle of Waterloo, and the Highlanders; for he's half a Highlander too, and I'm certain he'll buy the Dhuanbog estate, and then, when my niece Mary marries Colonel Lennox--" "Lennox!" repeated Sir Sampson, his little dim eyes kindling at the name--"Who talks of Lennox I--I--I won't suffer it. Where's my Lady? Lennox!--he's a scoundrel! You shan't marry a Lennox!" Turning to Grizzy, "Call Philistine, and my Lady." And his agitation was so great that even Grizzy, although accustomed for forty years to witness similar ebullitions, became alarmed. "You see it's all for fear of my marrying," whispered she to Mary. "I'm sure such a disinterested attachment, it's impossible for me ever to repay it!" Then turning to Sir Sampson, she sought to soothe his perturbation by oft-repeated assurances that it was not her but her niece Mary that was going to be married to Colonel Lennox. But in vain; Sir Sampson quivered, and panted, and muttered; and the louder Grizzy screamed out the truth the more his irritation increased. Recourse was now had to Philistine; and Mary, thoroughly ashamed of the éclat attending the disclosure of her secret, and finding she could be of no use, stole away in the midst of Miss Grizzy's endless _verbiage_, but as she descended the stairs she still heard the same assurance resounding--"I can assure you, Sir Sampson, it's not me, but my niece Mary that's going to be married to Colonel Lennox," etc. On returning to Beech Park she said nothing of what had passed either to Lady Emily or Colonel Lennox--aware of the amusement it would furnish to both; and she felt that her aunt required all the dignity with which she could invest her before presenting her to her future nephew. The only delay to her marriage now rested with herself; but she was desirous it should take place under the roof which had sheltered her infancy, and sanctioned by the presence of those whom she had ever regarded as her parents. Lady Emily, Colonel Lennox, and her brother had all endeavoured to combat this resolution, but in vain; and it was therefore settled that she should remain to witness the union of her brother and her cousin, and then return to Lochmarlie. But all Mary's preconceived plans were threatened with a downfall by the receipt of the following letter from Miss Jacky:-- GLENFERN CASTLE, ---SHIRIE, _June_ 19, 181--. "It _is_ impossible for _language_ to express to _you_ the _shame,_ grief, amazement, and _indignation,_ with _which_ we are _all_ filled at the distressing, the _ignominious_ disclosure that has _just_ taken _place_ concerning you, _through_ our most _excellent_ friend Miss P. M'Pry. Oh, Mary, _how_ have you _deceived_ us all!!! What a _dagger _have _you_ plunged into _all_ our hearts! Your _poor _Aunt _Grizzy!_ how my _heart_ bleeds _for_ her! What a difficult part _has_ she to act! and at her _time_ of life! with her acute _feelings!_ with her devoted _attachment _to the _house_ of M'Laughlan! What a _blow!_ and a _blow _from your _hand!_ Oh, Mary, I _must_ again repeat, how _have_ you deceived us _all_!!! Yet _do_ not imagine I mean to _reproach_ you! Much, much of the blame is _doubtless _imputable to the errors of _your_ education! At the _same _time, even these _offer_ no justification of your _conduct _upon the present occasion! You are now (I lament to say it!) _come_ to that time of _life_ when _you_ ought to know _what_ is right; or, where you entertain _any_ doubts, you ought _most_ unquestionably to _apply_ to those _who_, you _may_ be certain, _are_ well qualified to direct you. _But,_ instead _of_ that, you have _pursued_ a diametrically opposite _plan:_ a plan which _might_ have _ended_ in your destruction! Oh, Mary, _I_ cannot too _often _repeat, how have _you_ deceived us all!!! From no _lips _but those of Miss M'Pry _would_ I have believed _what_ I have heard, videlicet, that you (oh, Mary!) have, for many, many months _past,_ been carrying on a clandestine _correspondence _with a _young_ man, unknown, unsuspected by _all_ your friends here! and that _young_ man, the very _last_ man on the face of the _earth_ whom you, or any of _us,_ ought to have given our countenance _to!_ The very man, in _short,_ whom we were all _bound,_ by every _principle_ of duty, gratitude, and esteem, to have shunned, and who you are _bound, _from this _moment,_ to renounce for ever. How you ever _came _to be acquainted _with_ Colonel Charles Lennox of Rose Hall is a mystery none of us can fathom; but surely the person, _whoever _it was that _brought_ it about, has much, _much_ to answer for! Mrs. Douglas (to whom I _thought_ it proper to _make _an immediate _communication_ on the subject) pretends to _have_ been well informed of all that has _been_ going on, and even insists that _your_ acquaintance _with_ the Lennox family _took_ place through Lady M'Laughlan! _But_ that we _all_ know to be _morally_ impossible. Lady M'Laughlan is the _very_ last person in the _world_ who would have _introduced_ you, or any _young_ creature for whom she had the _slightest_ regard, to a Lennox, the _mortal enemy of the M'Laughlan race!_ I most _sincerely_ trust she is spared the _shock_ we have all experienced at this painful _disclosure. _With her _high_ principles, and _great_ regard for us, I tremble to think _what_ might be the consequences! And dear Sir Sampson, in his delicate state, how _would_ he ever be able to _stand_ such a blow! and a blow, too, from your _hand,_ Mary! you, who he _was_ always _like_ a father to! _Many_ a time, I am sure, _have_ you sat upon his _knee,_ and you certainly _cannot_ have forgot the _elegant_ Shetland pony he presented you _with_ the day you was five _years_ old! And _what_ a return for such favours! "But I fondly trust it _is_ not yet too late. You have _only_ to give up this unworthy attachment, and all _will_ be forgotten and _forgiven_; and we will all receive you as if _nothing_ had happened. Oh, Mary! I must, for the last _time_ repeat, how have you deceived us _all_! "I am your distressed aunt, "JOAN DOUGLAS. P.S.--I conclude abruptly, in _order_ to leave _room_ for your Aunt Nicky to _state_ her sentiments also on this _most_ afflicting subject." Nicky's appendix was as follows:-- "DEAR MARY--Jacky has read her letter to us. It is most excellent. We are all much affected by it. Not a word but deserves to be printed. I can add nothing. You see, if you marry Colonel L. none of us can be at your marriage. How could we? I hope you will think twice about it. Second thoughts are best. What's done cannot be undone. Yours, "N. D." Mary felt somewhat in the situation of the sleeper awakened, as she perused these mysterious anathemas; and rubbed her eyes more than once in hopes of dispelling the mist that she thought must needs be upon them. But in vain: it seemed only to increase with every effort she made to remove it. Not a single ray of light fell on the palpable obscure of Miss Jacky's composition, that could enable her to penetrate the dark profound that encompassed her. She was aware, indeed, that when her aunt meant to be pathetic or energetic she always had recourse to the longest and the strongest words she could possibly lay her hands upon; and Mary had been well accustomed to hear her childish faults and juvenile indiscretions denounced in the most awful terms as crimes of the deepest dye. Many an exordium she had listened to on the tearing of her frock, or the losing of her glove, that might have served as a preface to the "Newgate Calendar," "Colquhoun on the Police," or any other register of crimes. Still she had always been able to detect some clue to her own misdeeds; but here even conjecture was baffled, and in vain she sought for some resting-place for her imagination, in the probable misdemeanour of her lover. But even allowing all possible latitude for Jacky's pen, she was forced to acknowledge there must be some ground for her aunt to build upon. Superficial as her structures generally were, like children's card-houses, they had always something to rest upon; though (unlike them) her creations were invariably upon a gigantic scale. Mary had often reflected with surprise that, although Lady Maclauglan had been the person to introduce her to Mrs. Lennox, no intercourse had taken place between the families themselves; and when she had mentioned them to each other Mrs. Lennox had only sighed, and Lady Maclaughlan had humphed. She despaired of arriving at the knowledge of the truth from her aunts. Grizzy's brain was a mere wisp of contradictions; and Jacky's mind was of that violent hue that cast its own shade upon every object that came in contact with it. To mention the matter to Colonel Lennox was only to make the relations ridiculous; and, in short, although it was a formidable step, the result of her deliberation was to go to Lady Maclaughlan, and request a solution of her aunt's dark sayings. She therefore departed for Milsom Street, and, upon entering the drawing-room, found Grizzy alone, and evidently in even more than usual perturbation. "Oh, Mary!" cried she, as her niece entered, "I'm sure I'm thankful you're come. I was just wishing for you. You can't think how much mischief your yesterday's visit has done. It's a thousand pities, I declare, that ever you said a word about your marriage to Sir Sampson. But of course I don't mean to blame you, Mary. You know you couldn't help it; so don't vex yourself, for you know that will not make the thing any better now. Only if Sir Sampson should die--to be sure I must always think it was that that killed him; and I'm sure it at will soon kill me too-such a friend--oh, Mary!" Here a burst of grief choked poor Miss Grizzy's utterance. "My dear aunt," said Mary, "you certainly must be mistaken. Sir Sampson seems to retain no recollection of me. It is therefore impossible that I could cause him any pain or agitation." "Oh certainly!" said Grizzy. "There's no doubt Sir Sampson has quite forgot you, Mary--and no wonder-with your being so long away; but I daresay he'll come to know you yet. But I'm sure I hope to goodness he'll never know you as Mrs. Lennox, Mary. That would break his heart altogether; for you know the Lennoxes have always been the greatest enemies of the Maclaughlans,--and of course Sir Sampson can't bear anybody of the name, which is quite natural. And it was very thoughtless in me to have forgot that till Philistine put me in mind of it, and poor Sir Sampson has had a very bad night; so I'm sure I hope, Mary, you'll never think any more about Colonel Lennox; and, take my word for it, you'll get plenty of husbands yet. Now, since there's a peace, there will be plenty of fine young officers coming home. There's young Balquhadan, a captain, I know, in some regiment; and there's Dhalahulish, and Lochgrunason, and--" But Miss Grizzy's ideas here shot out into so many ramifications upon so many different branches of the county tree, that it would be in vain for any but a true Celt to attempt to follow her. Mary again tried to lead her back to the subject of the Lennoxes, in hopes of being able to extract some spark of knowledge from the dark chaos of her brain. "Oh, I'm sure, Mary, if you want to hear about that, I can tell you plenty about the Lennoxes; or at any rate about the Maclaughlans, which is the same thing. But I must first find my huswife." To save Miss Grizzy's reminiscence, a few words will suffice to clear up the mystery. A family feud of remote origin had long subsisted between the families of Lennox and Maclaughlan, which had been carefully transmitted from father to son, till the hereditary brand had been deposited in the breast of Sir Sampson. By the death of many intervening heirs General Lennox, then a youth, was next in succession to the Maclaughlan estate; but the power of alienating it was vested in Sir Sampson, as the last remaining heir of the entail. By the mistaken zeal of their friends both were, at an early period, placed in the same regiment, in the hope that constant as association together would quickly destroy their mutual prejudices, and produce a reconciliation. But the inequalities were too great ever to assimilate. Sir Sampson possessed a large fortune, a deformed person, and a weak, vain, irritable mind. General (then Ensign) Lennox had no other patrimony than his sword--a handsome person, high spirit, and dauntless courage. With these tempers, it may easily be conceived that a thousand trifling events occurred to keep alive the hereditary animosity. Sir Sampson's mind expected from his poor kinsman a degree of deference and respect which the other, so far from rendering, rather sought opportunities of showing his contempt for, and of thwarting and ridiculing him upon every occasion, till Sir Sampson was obliged to quit the regiment. From that time it was understood that all bearing the name of Lennox were for ever excluded from the succession to the Maclaughlan estates; and it was deemed a sort of petty treason even to name the name of a Lennox in presence of this dignified chieftain. Many years had worn away, and Sir Sampson had passed through the various modifications of human nature, from the "mewling infant" to "mere oblivion," without having become either wiser or better. His mind remained the same--irascible and vindictive to the last. Lady Maclaughlan had too much sense to attempt to reason or argue him out of his prejudices, but she contrived to prevent him from ever executing a new entail. She had known and esteemed both General and Mrs. Lennox before her marriage with Sir Sampson, and she was too firm and decided in her predilections ever to abandon them; and while she had the credit of sharing in all her husband's animosity, she was silently protecting the lawful rights of those who had long ceased to consider them as such. General Lennox had always understood that he and his family were under Sir Sampson's _ban_, and he possessed too high a spirit ever to express a regret, or even allude to the circumstances. It had therefore made a very faint impression on the minds of any of his family, and in the long lapse of years had been almost forgot by Mrs. Lennox, till recalled by Lady Maclaughlan's letter. But she had been silent on the subject to Mary; for she could not conceal from herself that her husband had been to blame--that the heat and violence of his temper had often led him to provoke and exasperate where mildness and forbearance would have soothed and conciliated, without detracting from his dignity; but her gentle heart shrank from the task of unnecessarily disclosing the faults of the man she had loved; and then she heard Mary talk with rapture of the wild beauties of Lochmarlie, she had only sighed to think that the pride and prejudice of others had alienated the inheritance of her son. But all this Mary was still in ignorance of, for Miss Grizzy had gone completely astray in the attempt to trace the rise and progress of the Lennox and Maclaughlan feud. Happily Lady Maclauglan's entrance extricated her from her labyrinth, as it as the signal for her to repair to Sir Sampson. Mary, in some little confusion, was beginning to express to her Ladyship regret at hearing that Sir Sampson had been so unwell, when she was stopped. "My dear child, don't learn to tell lies. You don't care two pence for Sir Sampson. I know all. You are going to be married to Charles Lennox. I'm glad of it. I wished you to marry him. Whether you'll thank me for that twenty years hence, _I_ can't tell--you can't tell--he can't tell--God knows--humph! Your aunts will tell you he is Beelzebub, because his father said he could make a Sir Sampson out of a mouldy lemon. Perhaps he could. I don't know but your aunts are fools. You know what fools are, and so do I. There are plenty of fools in the world; but if they had not been sent for some wise purpose they wouldn't have been here; and since they are here they have as good a right to have elbow-room in the world as the wisest. Sir Sampson hated General Lennox because he laughed at him; and if Sir Sampson had lived a hundred years ago, his hatred might have been a fine thing to talk about now. It is the same passion that makes heroes of your De Montforts, and your Manuels, and your Corsairs, and all the rest of them; but they wore cloaks and daggers, and these are the supporters of hatred. Everybody laughs at the hatred of a little old man in a cocked hat. You may laugh too. So now, God bless you! Continue as you are, and marry the man you like, though the world should set its teeth against you. 'Tis not every woman can be trusted to do that--farewell!" And with a cordial salute they parted. Mary was too well accustomed to Lady Maclaughlan's style not to comprehend that her marriage with Colonel Lennox was an event she had long wished for and now most warmly sanctioned; and she hastened home to convey the glad tidings in a letter to her aunts, though doubtful if the truth itself would be able to pierce its way through their prejudices. Another stroke of palsy soon rendered Sir Sampson unconscious even to the charms of Grizzy's conversation, and as she was no longer of use to him, and was evidently at a loss how to employ herself, Mary proposed that she should accompany her back to Lochmarlie, to which she yielded a joyful assent. Once convinced of Lady Maclaughlan's approbation of her niece's marriage she could think and talk of nothing else. Some wise individuals have thought that most people act from the inspiration of either a good or an evil power: to which class Miss Grizzy belonged would have puzzled the most profound metaphysician to determine. She was, in fact, a Maclaughlanite; but to find the _root_ of Maclaughlan is another difficulty--thought is lost. Colonel Lennox, although a little startled at his first introduction to his future aunt, soon came to understand the _naiveté_ of her character; and his enlarged mind and good temper made such ample allowance for her weaknesses, that she protested, with tears in her eyes, she never knew the like of him--she never could think enough of him. She wished to goodness Sir Sampson was himself again, and could only see him; she was sure he would think just as she did, etc. etc. etc. The day of Lady Emily's marriage arrived, and found her in a more serious mood than she had hitherto appeared in; though it seemed doubtful whether it was most occasioned by her own prospects or the thoughts of parting with Mary, who with Aunt Grizzy, was to set off for Lochmarlie immediately after witnessing the ceremony. Edward and his bride would fain have accompanied her; but Lord Courtland was too much accustomed to his daughter and amused by his nephew to bear their absence, and they therefore yielded the point, though with reluctance. "This is all for want of a little opposition to have braced my nerves," said Lady Emily, as she dropped a few tears. "I verily believe I should have wept outright had I not happily descried Dr. Redgill shrugging his shoulders at me; that has given a filip to my spirits. After all, 'tis perhaps a foolish action I've committed. The icy bonds of matrimony are upon me already; I feel myself turning into a fond, faithful, rational, humble, meek-spirited wife! Alas! I must now turn my head into a museum, and hang up all my smart sayings inside my brain, there to petrify, as warnings to all pert misses. Dear Mary! if ever I am good for anything, it will be to you I owe it!" Mary could only embrace her cousin in silence, as she parted from her brother and her with the deepest emotion, and, assisted by Colonel Lennox (who was to follow), took her station by the side of her aunt. "I wish you a pleasant journey, Miss Mary," cried Dr. Redgill. "The game season is coming on, and--" But the carriage drove off; and the rest of the sentence was dispersed by the wind; and all that could be collected was, "grouse always acceptable--friends at a distance--roebuck stuffed with heather carries well at all times," etc. etc. To one less practised in her ways, and less gifted with patience, the eternal babbling of Aunt Grizzy as a travelling companion would have occasioned considerable ennui, if not spleen. There are perhaps few greater trials of temper than that of travelling with a person who thinks it necessary to be actively pleasant, without a moment's intermission, from the rising till the setting sun. Grizzy was upon this fatal plan, the rock of thousands! Silence she thought synonymous with low spirits; and she talked, and wondered, and exclaimed incessantly, and assured Mary she need not be uneasy, she was certain Colonel Lennox would follow very soon; she had not the least doubt of that. She would not be surprised if he Was to be at Lochmarlie almost as soon as themselves; at any rate very soon after them. But even these little torments were forgot by Mary when she found herself again in her native land. The hills, the air, the waters, the people, even the _peat-stacks_, had a charm that touched her heart, and brought tears into her eyes as they pictured home. But her feelings arose to rapture when Lochmarlie burst upon her view in all the grandeur, beauty, and repose of a setting sun, shedding its farewell rays of gold and purple, and tints of such matchless hue, as no pencil ere can imitate--no poet's pen describe. Rocks, woods, hills, and waters, all shone with a radiance that seemed of more than earthly beauty. "Oh, there are moments in life, keen, blissful, never to be forgotten!" and such was the moment to Mary when the carriage stopped, and she again heard the melody of that voice familiar from infancy--and looked on the face known with her being--and was pressed to that heart where glowed a parent's love! When Mary recovered from the first almost _agonising_ transports of joy, she marked with delight the increased animation and cheerfulness visible in Mrs. Douglas. All the livelier feelings of her warm heart had indeed been excited and brought into action by the spirit and playfulness of her little boy, and the increased happiness of her husband; while all her uneasiness respecting her former lover was now at an end. She had heard from himself that he had married, and was happy. Without being guilty of inconstancy, such are the effects of time upon mutable human nature! Colonel Lennox lost no time in arriving to claim his promised bride; and Mary's happiness was complete when she found her own choice so warmly approved of by the friends she loved. The three aunts and their unmarried nieces, now the sole inhabitants of Glenfern Castle, were not quite decided in their opinions at first. Miss Jacky looked with a suspicious eye upon the _mortal enemy of the Maclaughlan race;_ but, upon better acquaintance, his gaiety and good-humour contrived to charm asleep even her good sense and prejudices, and she pronounced him to be a pleasant, well-informed young man, who gave himself no airs, although he certainly had rather a high look. Nicky doubted, from his appearance, that he would be nice, and she had no patience with nice men; but Nicky's fears vanished when she saw, as she expressed it, "how pleasantly he ate the sheep's head, although he had never seen one in his life before." The younger ladies thought Captain M'Nab had a finer complexion, and wondered whether Colonel Lennox (like him) would be dressed in full regimentals at his marriage. But, alas! "all earthly good still blends itself with harm," for on the day of Mary's marriage--a day consecrated to mirth, and bride-cake, and wedding favors, and marriage presents, and good cheer, and reels, and revelry, and bagpipes--on that very day, when the marriage ceremony was scarcely over, arrived the accounts of the death of Sir Sampson Maclaughlan! But on this joyous day even Grizzy's tears did not flow so freely as they would have done at another time; and she declared that although it was impossible anybody could feel more than she did, yet certainly it would not be using Colonel and Mrs. Lennox well to be very distressed upon such an occasion; and there was no doubt but she would have plenty of time to be sorry about it yet, when they were all sitting quietly by themselves, with nothing else in their heads; though, to be sure, they must always think what a blessing it was that Colonel Lennox was to succeed. "I wish he may ever fill Sir Sampson's shoes!" said Miss Nicky, with a sigh. "Colonel Lennox cannot propose a better model to himself than Sir Sampson Maclaughlan," said Miss Jacky. "He has left him a noble example of propriety, frugality, hospitality, and respectability; and, above all, of forgiveness of his mortal enemies." "Oh, Mary!" exclaimed Miss Grizzy, as they were about to part with their niece, "what a lucky creature you are! Never, I am sure, did any young person set out in life with such advantages. To think of your succeeding to Lady Maclaughlan's laboratory, all so nicely fitted up with every kind of thing, and especially plenty of the most charming bark, which, I'm sure, will do Colonel Lennox the greatest good, as you know all officers are much the better of bark. I know it was the saving of young Ballingall's life, when he came home in an ague from some place; and I'm certain Lady Maclaughlan will leave you everything that is there, you was always such a favourite. Not but what I must always think that you had a hand in dear Sir Sampson's death. Indeed, I have no doubt of it. Yet, at the same time, I don't mean to blame you in the least; for I'm certain, if Sir Sampson had been spared, he would have been delighted, as we all are, at your marriage." Colonel and Mrs. Lennox agreed in making choice of Lochmarlie for their future residence; and in a virtuous attachment they found as much happiness as earth's pilgrims ever possess, whose greatest felicity must spring from a higher source. The extensive influence which generally attends upon virtue joined to prosperity was used by them for its best purposes. It was not confined either to rich or poor, to caste or sect; but all shared in their benevolence whom that benevolence could benefit. And the poor, he sick, and the desolate, united in blessing what heaven had already blessed--this happy Marriage. THE END. 
6943	----	[Illustration: Bookcover] [Illustration: Spines] THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN, Volume 2 By Walter Scott TALES OF MY LANDLORD COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM, SCHOOLMASTER AND PARISH CLERK OF GANDERCLEUGH. SECOND SERIES. [Illustration: Titlepage] THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. CHAPTER FIRST. Isab.--Alas! what poor ability's in me To do him good? Lucio.--Assay the power you have. Measure for Measure. When Mrs. Saddletree entered the apartment in which her guests had shrouded their misery, she found the window darkened. The feebleness which followed his long swoon had rendered it necessary to lay the old man in bed. The curtains were drawn around him, and Jeanie sate motionless by the side of the bed. Mrs. Saddletree was a woman of kindness, nay, of feeling, but not of delicacy. She opened the half-shut window, drew aside the curtain, and, taking her kinsman by the hand, exhorted him to sit up, and bear his sorrow like a good man, and a Christian man, as he was. But when she quitted his hand, it fell powerless by his side, nor did he attempt the least reply. "Is all over?" asked Jeanie, with lips and cheeks as pale as ashes,--"and is there nae hope for her?" "Nane, or next to nane," said Mrs. Saddletree; "I heard the Judge-carle say it with my ain ears--It was a burning shame to see sae mony o' them set up yonder in their red gowns and black gowns, and to take the life o' a bit senseless lassie. I had never muckle broo o' my gudeman's gossips, and now I like them waur than ever. The only wiselike thing I heard onybody say, was decent Mr. John Kirk of Kirk-knowe, and he wussed them just to get the king's mercy, and nae mair about it. But he spake to unreasonable folk--he might just hae keepit his breath to hae blawn on his porridge." "But _can_ the king gie her mercy?" said Jeanie, earnestly. "Some folk tell me he canna gie mercy in cases of mur in cases like hers." "_Can_ he gie mercy, hinny?--I weel I wot he can, when he likes. There was young Singlesword, that stickit the Laird of Ballencleuch, and Captain Hackum, the Englishman, that killed Lady Colgrain's gudeman, and the Master of Saint Clair, that shot the twa Shaws,* and mony mair in my time--to be sure they were gentle blood, and had their, kin to speak for them--And there was Jock Porteous the other day--I'se warrant there's mercy, an folk could win at it." * [In 1828, the Author presented to the Roxburgh Club a curious volume containing the "Proceedings in the Court-Martial held upon John, Master of Sinclair, for the murder of Ensign Schaw, and Captain Schaw, 17th October 1708."] "Porteous?" said Jeanie; "very true--I forget a' that I suld maist mind.-- Fare ye weel, Mrs. Saddletree; and may ye never want a friend in the hour of distress!" "Will ye no stay wi' your father, Jeanie, bairn?--Ye had better," said Mrs. Saddletree. "I will be wanted ower yonder," indicating the Tolbooth with her hand, "and I maun leave him now, or I will never be able to leave him. I fearna for his life--I ken how strong-hearted he is--I ken it," she said, laying her hand on her bosom, "by my ain heart at this minute." "Weel, hinny, if ye think it's for the best, better he stay here and rest him, than gang back to St. Leonard's." "Muckle better--muckle better--God bless you!--God bless you!--At no rate let him gang till ye hear frae me," said Jeanie. "But ye'll be back belive?" said Mrs. Saddletree, detaining her; "they winna let ye stay yonder, hinny." "But I maun gang to St. Leonard's--there's muckle to be dune, and little time to do it in--And I have friends to speak to--God bless you--take care of my father." She had reached the door of the apartment, when, suddenly turning, she came back, and knelt down by the bedside.--"O father, gie me your blessing--I dare not go till ye bless me. Say but 'God bless ye, and prosper ye, Jeanie'--try but to say that!" Instinctively, rather than by an exertion of intellect, the old man murmured a prayer, that "purchased and promised blessings might be multiplied upon her." "He has blessed mine errand," said his daughter, rising from her knees, "and it is borne in upon my mind that I shall prosper." So saying, she left the room. Mrs. Saddletree looked after her, and shook her head. "I wish she binna roving, poor thing--There's something queer about a' thae Deanses. I dinna like folk to be sae muckle better than other folk--seldom comes gude o't. But if she's gaun to look after the kye at St. Leonard's, that's another story; to be sure they maun be sorted.--Grizzie, come up here, and tak tent to the honest auld man, and see he wants naething.--Ye silly tawpie" (addressing the maid-servant as she entered), "what garr'd ye busk up your cockemony that gate?--I think there's been enough the day to gie an awfa' warning about your cockups and your fallal duds--see what they a' come to," etc. etc. etc. Leaving the good lady to her lecture upon worldly vanities, we must transport our reader to the cell in which the unfortunate Effie Deans was now immured, being restricted of several liberties which she had enjoyed before the sentence was pronounced. When she had remained about an hour in the state of stupified horror so natural in her situation, she was disturbed by the opening of the jarring bolts of her place of confinement, and Ratcliffe showed himself. "It's your sister," he said, "wants to speak t'ye, Effie." "I canna see naebody," said Effie, with the hasty irritability which misery had rendered more acute--"I canna see naebody, and least of a' her--Bid her take care o' the auld man--I am naething to ony o' them now, nor them to me." "She says she maun see ye, though," said Ratcliffe; and Jeanie, rushing into the apartment, threw her arms round her sister's neck, who writhed to extricate herself from her embrace. "What signifies coming to greet ower me," said poor Effie, "when you have killed me?--killed me, when a word of your mouth would have saved me--killed me, when I am an innocent creature--innocent of that guilt at least--and me that wad hae wared body and soul to save your finger from being hurt?" "You shall not die," said Jeanie, with enthusiastic firmness; "say what you like o' me--think what you like o' me--only promise--for I doubt your proud heart--that ye wunna harm yourself, and you shall not die this shameful death." "A _shameful_ death I will not die, Jeanie, lass. I have that in my heart--though it has been ower kind a ane--that wunna bide shame. Gae hame to our father, and think nae mair on me--I have eat my last earthly meal." "Oh, this was what I feared!" said Jeanie. "Hout, tout, hinny," said Ratcliffe; "it's but little ye ken o' thae things. Ane aye thinks at the first dinnle o' the sentence, they hae heart eneugh to die rather than bide out the sax weeks; but they aye bide the sax weeks out for a' that. I ken the gate o't weel; I hae fronted the doomster three times, and here I stand, Jim Ratcliffe, for a' that. Had I tied my napkin strait the first time, as I had a great mind till't--and it was a' about a bit grey cowt, wasna worth ten punds sterling--where would I have been now?" "And how _did_ you escape?" said Jeanie, the fates of this man, at first so odious to her, having acquired a sudden interest in her eyes from their correspondence with those of her sister. "_How_ did I escape?" said Ratcliffe, with a knowing wink,--"I tell ye I 'scapit in a way that naebody will escape from this Tolbooth while I keep the keys." "My sister shall come out in the face of the sun," said Jeanie; "I will go to London, and beg her pardon from the king and queen. If they pardoned Porteous, they may pardon her; if a sister asks a sister's life on her bended knees, they will pardon her--they _shall_ pardon her--and they will win a thousand hearts by it." Effie listened in bewildered astonishment, and so earnest was her sister's enthusiastic assurance, that she almost involuntarily caught a gleam of hope; but it instantly faded away. "Ah, Jeanie! the king and queen live in London, a thousand miles from this--far ayont the saut sea; I'll be gane before ye win there." "You are mistaen," said Jeanie; "it is no sae far, and they go to it by land; I learned something about thae things from Reuben Butler." "Ah, Jeanie! ye never learned onything but what was gude frae the folk ye keepit company wi'; but!--but!"--she wrung her hands and wept bitterly. "Dinna think on that now," said Jeanie; "there will be time for that if the present space be redeemed. Fare ye weel. Unless I die by the road, I will see the king's face that gies grace--O, sir" (to Ratcliffe), "be kind to her--She ne'er ken'd what it was to need a stranger's kindness till now.--Fareweel--fareweel, Effie!--Dinna speak to me--I maunna greet now--my head's ower dizzy already!" She tore herself from her sister's arms, and left the cell. Ratcliffe followed her, and beckoned her into a small room. She obeyed his signal, but not without trembling. "What's the fule thing shaking for?" said he; "I mean nothing but civility to you. D--n me, I respect you, and I can't help it. You have so much spunk, that d--n me, but I think there's some chance of your carrying the day. But you must not go to the king till you have made some friend; try the duke--try MacCallummore; he's Scotland's friend--I ken that the great folks dinna muckle like him--but they fear him, and that will serve your purpose as weel. D'ye ken naebody wad gie ye a letter to him?" "Duke of Argyle!" said Jeanie, recollecting herself suddenly, "what was he to that Argyle that suffered in my father's time--in the persecution?" "His son or grandson, I'm thinking," said Ratcliffe, "but what o' that?" "Thank God!" said Jeanie, devoutly clasping her hands. "You whigs are aye thanking God for something," said the ruffian. "But hark ye, hinny, I'll tell ye a secret. Ye may meet wi' rough customers on the Border, or in the Midland, afore ye get to Lunnon. Now, deil ane o' them will touch an acquaintance o' Daddie Ratton's; for though I am retired frae public practice, yet they ken I can do a gude or an ill turn yet--and deil a gude fellow that has been but a twelvemonth on the lay, be he ruffler or padder, but he knows my gybe* as well as the jark** of e'er a queer cuffin*** in England--and there's rogue's Latin for you." * Pass. ** Seal. *** Justice of Peace. It was indeed totally unintelligible to Jeanie Deans, who was only impatient to escape from him. He hastily scrawled a line or two on a dirty piece of paper, and said to her, as she drew back when he offered it, "Hey!--what the deil--it wunna bite you, my lass--if it does nae gude, it can do nae ill. But I wish you to show it, if you have ony fasherie wi' ony o' St. Nicholas's clerks." "Alas!" said she, "I do not understand what you mean." "I mean, if ye fall among thieves, my precious,--that is a Scripture phrase, if ye will hae ane--the bauldest of them will ken a scart o' my guse feather. And now awa wi' ye--and stick to Argyle; if onybody can do the job, it maun be him." After casting an anxious look at the grated windows and blackened walls of the old Tolbooth, and another scarce less anxious at the hospitable lodging of Mrs. Saddletree, Jeanie turned her back on that quarter, and soon after on the city itself. She reached St. Leonard's Crags without meeting any one whom she knew, which, in the state of her mind, she considered as a great blessing. "I must do naething," she thought, as she went along, "that can soften or weaken my heart--it's ower weak already for what I hae to do. I will think and act as firmly as I can, and speak as little." There was an ancient servant, or rather cottar, of her father's, who had lived under him for many years, and whose fidelity was worthy of full confidence. She sent for this woman, and explaining to her that the circumstances of her family required that she should undertake a journey, which would detain her for some weeks from home, she gave her full instructions concerning the management of the domestic concerns in her absence. With a precision, which, upon reflection, she herself could not help wondering at, she described and detailed the most minute steps which were to be taken, and especially such as were necessary for her father's comfort. "It was probable," she said, "that he would return to St. Leonard's to-morrow! certain that he would return very soon--all must be in order for him. He had eneugh to distress him, without being fashed about warldly matters." In the meanwhile she toiled busily, along with May Hettly, to leave nothing unarranged. It was deep in the night when all these matters were settled; and when they had partaken of some food, the first which Jeanie had tasted on that eventful day, May Hettly, whose usual residence was a cottage at a little distance from Deans's house, asked her young mistress, whether she would not permit her to remain in the house all night? "Ye hae had an awfu' day," she said, "and sorrow and fear are but bad companions in the watches of the night, as I hae heard the gudeman say himself." "They are ill companions indeed," said Jeanie; "but I maun learn to abide their presence, and better begin in the house than in the field." She dismissed her aged assistant accordingly,--for so slight was the gradation in their rank of life, that we can hardly term May a servant,--and proceeded to make a few preparations for her journey. The simplicity of her education and country made these preparations very brief and easy. Her tartan screen served all the purposes of a riding-habit and of an umbrella; a small bundle contained such changes of linen as were absolutely necessary. Barefooted, as Sancho says, she had come into the world, and barefooted she proposed to perform her pilgrimage; and her clean shoes and change of snow-white thread stockings were to be reserved for special occasions of ceremony. She was not aware, that the English habits of comfort attach an idea of abject misery to the idea of a barefooted traveller; and if the objection of cleanliness had been made to the practice, she would have been apt to vindicate herself upon the very frequent ablutions to which, with Mahometan scrupulosity, a Scottish damsel of some condition usually subjects herself. Thus far, therefore, all was well. From an oaken press, or cabinet, in which her father kept a few old books, and two or three bundles of papers, besides his ordinary accounts and receipts, she sought out and extracted from a parcel of notes of sermons, calculations of interest, records of dying speeches of the martyrs, and the like, one or two documents which she thought might be of some use to her upon her mission. But the most important difficulty remained behind, and it had not occurred to her until that very evening. It was the want of money; without which it was impossible she could undertake so distant a journey as she now meditated. David Deans, as we have said, was easy, and even opulent in his circumstances. But his wealth, like that of the patriarchs of old, consisted in his kine and herds, and in two or three sums lent out at interest to neighbours or relatives, who, far from being in circumstances to pay anything to account of the principal sums, thought they did all that was incumbent on them when, with considerable difficulty, they discharged the "annual rent." To these debtors it would be in vain, therefore, to apply, even with her father's concurrence; nor could she hope to obtain such concurrence, or assistance in any mode, without such a series of explanations and debates as she felt might deprive her totally of the power of taking the step, which, however daring and hazardous, she felt was absolutely necessary for trying the last chance in favour of her sister. Without departing from filial reverence, Jeanie had an inward conviction that the feelings of her father, however just, and upright, and honourable, were too little in unison with the spirit of the time to admit of his being a good judge of the measures to be adopted in this crisis. Herself more flexible in manner, though no less upright in principle, she felt that to ask his consent to her pilgrimage would be to encounter the risk of drawing down his positive prohibition, and under that she believed her journey could not be blessed in its progress and event. Accordingly, she had determined upon the means by which she might communicate to him her undertaking and its purpose, shortly after her actual departure. But it was impossible to apply to him for money without altering this arrangement, and discussing fully the propriety of her journey; pecuniary assistance from that quarter, therefore, was laid out of the question. It now occurred to Jeanie that she should have consulted with Mrs. Saddletree on this subject. But, besides the time that must now necessarily be lost in recurring to her assistance Jeanie internally revolted from it. Her heart acknowledged the goodness of Mrs. Saddletree's general character, and the kind interest she took in their family misfortunes; but still she felt that Mrs. Saddletree was a woman of an ordinary and worldly way of thinking, incapable, from habit and temperament, of taking a keen or enthusiastic view of such a resolution as she had formed; and to debate the point with her, and to rely upon her conviction of its propriety, for the means of carrying it into execution, would have been gall and wormwood. Butler, whose assistance she might have been assured of, was greatly poorer than herself. In these circumstances, she formed a singular resolution for the purpose of surmounting this difficulty, the execution of which will form the subject of the next chapter. CHAPTER SECOND 'Tis the voice of the sluggard, I've heard him complain, "You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again;" As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed, Turns his side, and his shoulders, and his heavy head. Dr. Watts. The mansion-house of Dumbiedikes, to which we are now to introduce our readers, lay three or four miles--no matter for the exact topography--to the southward of St. Leonard's. It had once borne the appearance of some little celebrity; for the "auld laird," whose humours and pranks were often mentioned in the ale-houses for about a mile round it, wore a sword, kept a good horse, and a brace of greyhounds; brawled, swore, and betted at cock-fights and horse-matches; followed Somerville of Drum's hawks, and the Lord Ross's hounds, and called himself _point devise_ a gentleman. But the line had been veiled of its splendour in the present proprietor, who cared for no rustic amusements, and was as saying, timid, and retired, as his father had been at once grasping and selfishly extravagant--daring, wild, and intrusive. Dumbiedikes was what is called in Scotland a single house; that is, having only one room occupying its whole depth from back to front, each of which single apartments was illuminated by six or eight cross lights, whose diminutive panes and heavy frames permitted scarce so much light to enter as shines through one well-constructed modern window. This inartificial edifice, exactly such as a child would build with cards, had a steep roof flagged with coarse grey stones instead of slates; a half-circular turret, battlemented, or, to use the appropriate phrase, bartizan'd on the top, served as a case for a narrow turnpike stair, by which an ascent was gained from storey to storey; and at the bottom of the said turret was a door studded with large-headed nails. There was no lobby at the bottom of the tower, and scarce a landing-place opposite to the doors which gave access to the apartments. One or two low and dilapidated outhouses, connected by a courtyard wall equally ruinous, surrounded the mansion. The court had been paved, but the flags being partly displaced and partly renewed, a gallant crop of docks and thistles sprung up between them, and the small garden, which opened by a postern through the wall, seemed not to be in a much more orderly condition. Over the low-arched gateway which led into the yard there was a carved stone, exhibiting some attempt at armorial bearings; and above the inner entrance hung, and had hung, for many years, the mouldering hatchment, which announced that umquhile Laurence Dumbie of Dumbiedikes had been gathered to his fathers in Newbattle kirkyard. The approach to this palace of pleasure was by a road formed by the rude fragments of stone gathered from the fields, and it was surrounded by ploughed, but unenclosed land. Upon a baulk, that is, an unploughed ridge of land interposed among the corn, the Laird's trusty palfrey was tethered by the head, and picking a meal of grass. The whole argued neglect and discomfort; the consequence, however, of idleness and indifference, not of poverty. In this inner court, not without a sense of bashfulness and timidity, stood Jeanie Deans, at an early hour in a fine spring morning. She was no heroine of romance, and therefore looked with some curiosity and interest on the mansion-house and domains, of which, it might at that moment occur to her, a little encouragement, such as women of all ranks know by instinct how to apply, might have made her mistress. Moreover, she was no person of taste beyond her time, rank, and country, and certainly thought the house of Dumbiedikes, though inferior to Holyrood House, or the palace at Dalkeith, was still a stately structure in its way, and the land a "very bonny bit, if it were better seen to and done to." But Jeanie Deans was a plain, true-hearted, honest girl, who, while she acknowledged all the splendour of her old admirer's habitation, and the value of his property, never for a moment harboured a thought of doing the Laird, Butler, or herself, the injustice, which many ladies of higher rank would not have hesitated to do to all three on much less temptation. Her present errand being with the Laird, she looked round the offices to see if she could find any domestic to announce that she wished to see him. As all was silence, she ventured to open one door--it was the old Laird's dog-kennel, now deserted, unless when occupied, as one or two tubs seemed to testify, as a washing-house. She tried another--it was the rootless shed where the hawks had been once kept, as appeared from a perch or two not yet completely rotten, and a lure and jesses which were mouldering on the wall. A third door led to the coal-house, which was well stocked. To keep a very good fire was one of the few points of domestic management in which Dumbiedikes was positively active; in all other matters of domestic economy he was completely passive, and at the mercy of his housekeeper--the same buxom dame whom his father had long since bequeathed to his charge, and who, if fame did her no injustice, had feathered her nest pretty well at his expense. Jeanie went on opening doors, like the second Calender wanting an eye, in the castle of the hundred obliging damsels, until, like the said prince errant, she came to a stable. The Highland Pegasus, Rory Bean, to which belonged the single entire stall, was her old acquaintance, whom she had seen grazing on the baulk, as she failed not to recognise by the well-known ancient riding furniture and demi-pique saddle, which half hung on the walls, half trailed on the litter. Beyond the "treviss," which formed one side of the stall, stood a cow, who turned her head and lowed when Jeanie came into the stable, an appeal which her habitual occupations enabled her perfectly to understand, and with which she could not refuse complying, by shaking down some fodder to the animal, which had been neglected like most things else in the castle of the sluggard. While she was accommodating "the milky mother" with the food which she should have received two hours sooner, a slipshod wench peeped into the stable, and perceiving that a stranger was employed in discharging the task which she, at length, and reluctantly, had quitted her slumbers to perform, ejaculated, "Eh, sirs! the Brownie! the Brownie!" and fled, yelling as if she had seen the devil. To explain her terror it may be necessary to notice that the old house of Dumbiedikes had, according to report, been long haunted by a Brownie, one of those familiar spirits who were believed in ancient times to supply the deficiencies of the ordinary labourer-- Whirl the long mop, and ply the airy flail. Certes, the convenience of such a supernatural assistance could have been nowhere more sensibly felt than in a family where the domestics were so little disposed to personal activity; yet this serving maiden was so far from rejoicing in seeing a supposed aerial substitute discharging a task which she should have long since performed herself, that she proceeded to raise the family by her screams of horror, uttered as thick as if the Brownie had been flaying her. Jeanie, who had immediately resigned her temporary occupation, and followed the yelling damsel into the courtyard, in order to undeceive and appease her, was there met by Mrs. Janet Balchristie, the favourite sultana of the last Laird, as scandal went--the housekeeper of the present. The good-looking buxom woman, betwixt forty and fifty (for such we described her at the death of the last Laird), was now a fat, red-faced, old dame of seventy, or thereabouts, fond of her place, and jealous of her authority. Conscious that her administration did not rest on so sure a basis as in the time of the old proprietor, this considerate lady had introduced into the family the screamer aforesaid, who added good features and bright eyes to the powers of her lungs. She made no conquest of the Laird, however, who seemed to live as if there was not another woman in the world but Jeanie Deans, and to bear no very ardent or overbearing affection even to her. Mrs. Janet Balchristie, notwithstanding, had her own uneasy thoughts upon the almost daily visits to St. Leonard's Crags, and often, when the Laird looked at her wistfully and paused, according to his custom before utterance, she expected him to say, "Jenny, I am gaun to change my condition;" but she was relieved by, "Jenny, I am gaun to change my shoon." Still, however, Mrs. Balchristie regarded Jeanie Deans with no small portion of malevolence, the customary feeling of such persons towards anyone who they think has the means of doing them an injury. But she had also a general aversion to any female tolerably young, and decently well-looking, who showed a wish to approach the house of Dumbiedikes and the proprietor thereof. And as she had raised her mass of mortality out of bed two hours earlier than usual, to come to the rescue of her clamorous niece, she was in such extreme bad humour against all and sundry, that Saddletree would have pronounced that she harboured _inimicitiam contra omnes mortales._ "Wha the deil are ye?" said the fat dame to poor Jeanie, whom she did not immediately recognise, "scouping about a decent house at sic an hour in the morning?" "It was ane wanting to speak to the Laird," said Jeanie, who felt something of the intuitive terror which she had formerly entertained for this termagant, when she was occasionally at Dumbiedikes on business of her father's. "Ane!--And what sort of ane are ye!--hae ye nae name?--D'ye think his honour has naething else to do than to speak wi' ilka idle tramper that comes about the town, and him in his bed yet, honest man?" "Dear Mrs. Balchristie," replied Jeanie, in a submissive tone, "d'ye no mind me?--d'ye no mind Jeanie Deans?" "Jeanie Deans!" said the termagant, in accents affecting the utmost astonishment; then, taking two strides nearer to her, she peered into her face with a stare of curiosity, equally scornful and malignant--"I say Jeanie Deans indeed--Jeanie Deevil, they had better hae ca'ed ye!--A bonny spot o' wark your tittie and you hae made out, murdering ae puir wean, and your light limmer of a sister's to be hanged for't, as weel she deserves!--And the like o' you to come to ony honest man's house, and want to be into a decent bachelor gentleman's room at this time in the morning, and him in his bed!--Gae wa', gae wa'!" Jeanie was struck mute with shame at the unfeeling brutality of this accusation, and could not even find words to justify herself from the vile construction put upon her visit. When Mrs. Balchristie, seeing her advantage, continued in the same tone, "Come, come, bundle up your pipes and tramp awa wi' ye!--ye may be seeking a father to another wean for ony thing I ken. If it warna that your father, auld David Deans, had been a tenant on our land, I would cry up the men-folk, and hae ye dookit in the burn for your impudence." Jeanie had already turned her back, and was walking towards the door of the court-yard, so that Mrs. Balchristie, to make her last threat impressively audible to her, had raised her stentorian voice to its utmost pitch. But, like many a general, she lost the engagement by pressing her advantage too far. The Laird had been disturbed in his morning slumbers by the tones of Mrs. Balchristie's objurgation, sounds in themselves by no means uncommon, but very remarkable, in respect to the early hour at which they were now heard. He turned himself on the other side, however, in hopes the squall would blow by, when, in the course of Mrs. Balchristie's second explosion of wrath, the name of Deans distinctly struck the tympanum of his ear. As he was, in some degree, aware of the small portion of benevolence with which his housekeeper regarded the family at St. Leonard's, he instantly conceived that some message from thence was the cause of this untimely ire, and getting out of his bed, he slipt as speedily as possible into an old brocaded night-gown, and some other necessary garments, clapped on his head his father's gold-laced hat (for though he was seldom seen without it, yet it is proper to contradict the popular report that he slept in it, as Don Quixote did in his helmet), and opening the window of his bedroom, beheld, to his great astonishment, the well-known figure of Jeanie Deans herself retreating from his gate; while his housekeeper, with arms a-kimbo, fist clenched and extended, body erect, and head shaking with rage, sent after her a volley of Billingsgate oaths. His choler rose in proportion to the surprise, and, perhaps, to the disturbance of his repose. "Hark ye," he exclaimed from the window, "ye auld limb of Satan--wha the deil gies you commission to guide an honest man's daughter that gate?" Mrs. Balchristie was completely caught in the manner. She was aware, from the unusual warmth with which the Laird expressed himself, that he was quite serious in this matter, and she knew, that with all his indolence of nature, there were points on which he might be provoked, and that, being provoked, he had in him something dangerous, which her wisdom taught her to fear accordingly. She began, therefore, to retract her false step as fast as she could. "She was but speaking for the house's credit, and she couldna think of disturbing his honour in the morning sae early, when the young woman might as weel wait or call again; and to be sure, she might make a mistake between the twa sisters, for ane o' them wasna sae creditable an acquaintance." "Haud your peace, ye auld jade," said Dumbiedikes; "the warst quean e'er stude in their shoon may ca' you cousin, an a' be true that I have heard.--Jeanie, my woman, gang into the parlour--but stay, that winna be redd up yet--wait there a minute till I come down to let ye in--Dinna mind what Jenny says to ye." "Na, na," said Jenny, with a laugh of affected heartiness, "never mind me, lass--a' the warld kens my bark's waur than my bite--if ye had had an appointment wi' the Laird, ye might hae tauld me--I am nae uncivil person--gang your ways in by, hinny," and she opened the door of the house with a master-key. "But I had no appointment wi' the Laird," said Jeanie, drawing back; "I want just to speak twa words to him, and I wad rather do it standing here, Mrs. Balchristie." "In the open court-yard!--Na, na, that wad never do, lass; we mauna guide ye that gate neither--And how's that douce honest man, your father?" Jeanie was saved the pain of answering this hypocritical question by the appearance of the Laird himself. "Gang in and get breakfast ready," said he to his housekeeper--"and, d'ye hear, breakfast wi' us yoursell--ye ken how to manage thae porringers of tea-water--and, hear ye, see abune a' that there's a gude fire.--Weel, Jeanie, my woman, gang in by--gang in by, and rest ye." "Na, Laird," Jeanie replied, endeavouring as much as she could to express herself with composure, notwithstanding she still trembled, "I canna gang in--I have a lang day's darg afore me--I maun be twenty mile o' gate the night yet, if feet will carry me." "Guide and deliver us!--twenty mile--twenty mile on your feet!" ejaculated Dumbiedikes, whose walks were of a very circumscribed diameter,--"Ye maun never think o' that--come in by." "I canna do that, Laird," replied Jeanie; "the twa words I have to say to ye I can say here; forby that Mrs. Balchristie" "The deil flee awa wi' Mrs. Balchristie," said Dumbiedikes, "and he'll hae a heavy lading o' her! I tell ye, Jeanie Deans, I am a man of few words, but I am laird at hame, as well as in the field; deil a brute or body about my house but I can manage when I like, except Rory Bean, my powny; but I can seldom be at the plague, an it binna when my bluid's up." "I was wanting to say to ye, Laird," said Jeanie, who felt the necessity of entering upon her business, "that I was gaun a lang journey, outby of my father's knowledge." "Outby his knowledge, Jeanie!--Is that right? Ye maun think ot again--it's no right," said Dumbiedikes, with a countenance of great concern. "If I were ance at Lunnon," said Jeanie, in exculpation, "I am amaist sure I could get means to speak to the queen about my sister's life." "Lunnon--and the queen--and her sister's life!" said Dumbiedikes, whistling for very amazement--"the lassie's demented." "I am no out o' my mind," said she, "and sink or swim, I am determined to gang to Lunnon, if I suld beg my way frae door to door--and so I maun, unless ye wad lend me a small sum to pay my expenses--little thing will do it; and ye ken my father's a man of substance, and wad see nae man, far less you, Laird, come to loss by me." Dumbiedikes, on comprehending the nature of this application, could scarce trust his ears--he made no answer whatever, but stood with his eyes rivetted on the ground. "I see ye are no for assisting me, Laird," said Jeanie, "sae fare ye weel--and gang and see my poor father as aften as ye can--he will be lonely eneugh now." "Where is the silly bairn gaun?" said Dumbiedikes; and, laying hold of her hand, he led her into the house. "It's no that I didna think o't before," he said, "but it stack in my throat." Thus speaking to himself, he led her into an old-fashioned parlour, shut the door behind them, and fastened it with a bolt. While Jeanie, surprised at this manoeuvre, remained as near the door as possible, the Laird quitted her hand, and pressed upon a spring lock fixed in an oak panel in the wainscot, which instantly slipped aside. An iron strong-box was discovered in a recess of the wall; he opened this also, and pulling out two or three drawers, showed that they were filled with leathern bags full of gold and silver coin. "This is my bank, Jeanie lass," he said, looking first at her and then at the treasure, with an air of great complacency,--"nane o' your goldsmith's bills for me,--they bring folk to ruin." Then, suddenly changing his tone, he resolutely said,--"Jeanie, I will make ye Lady Dumbiedikes afore the sun sets and ye may ride to Lunnon in your ain coach, if ye like." "Na, Laird," said Jeanie, "that can never be--my father's grief--my sister's situation--the discredit to you" "That's _my_ business," said Dumbiedikes; "ye wad say naething about that if ye werena a fule--and yet I like ye the better for't--ae wise body's eneugh in the married state. But if your heart's ower fu', take what siller will serve ye, and let it be when ye come back again--as gude syne as sune." "But, Laird," said Jeanie, who felt the necessity of being explicit with so extraordinary a lover, "I like another man better than you, and I canna marry ye." "Another man better than me, Jeanie!" said Dumbiedikes; "how is that possible? It's no possible, woman--ye hae ken'd me sae lang." "Ay but, Laird," said Jeanie, with persevering simplicity, "I hae ken'd him langer." "Langer! It's no possible!" exclaimed the poor Laird. "It canna be; ye were born on the land. O Jeanie woman, ye haena lookit--ye haena seen the half o' the gear." He drew out another drawer--"A' gowd, Jeanie, and there's bands for siller lent--And the rental book, Jeanie--clear three hunder sterling--deil a wadset, heritable band, or burden--Ye haena lookit at them, woman--And then my mother's wardrobe, and my grandmother's forby--silk gowns wad stand on their ends, their pearline-lace as fine as spiders' webs, and rings and ear-rings to the boot of a' that--they are a' in the chamber of deas--Oh, Jeanie, gang up the stair and look at them!" [Illustration: Jeanie and the Laird of Dumbiedykes--Frontispiece] But Jeanie held fast her integrity, though beset with temptations, which perhaps the Laird of Dumbiedikes did not greatly err in supposing were those most affecting to her sex. "It canna be, Laird--I have said it--and I canna break my word till him, if ye wad gie me the haill barony of Dalkeith, and Lugton into the bargain." "Your word to _him,_" said the Laird, somewhat pettishly; "but wha is he, Jeanie?--wha is he?--I haena heard his name yet--Come now, Jeanie, ye are but queering us--I am no trowing that there is sic a ane in the warld--ye are but making fashion--What is he?--wha is he?" "Just Reuben Butler, that's schulemaster at Liberton," said Jeanie. "Reuben Butler! Reuben Butler!" echoed the Laird of Dumbiedikes, pacing the apartment in high disdain,--"Reuben Butler, the dominie at Liberton--and a dominie depute too!--Reuben, the son of my cottar!--Very weel, Jeanie lass, wilfu' woman will hae her way--Reuben Butler! he hasna in his pouch the value o' the auld black coat he wears--But it disna signify." And as he spoke, he shut successively and with vehemence the drawers of his treasury. "A fair offer, Jeanie, is nae cause of feud--Ae man may bring a horse to the water, but twenty winna gar him drink--And as for wasting my substance on other folk's joes" There was something in the last hint that nettled Jeanie's honest pride.-- "I was begging nane frae your honour," she said; "least of a' on sic a score as ye pit it on.--Gude morning to ye, sir; ye hae been kind to my father, and it isna in my heart to think otherwise than kindly of you." So saying, she left the room without listening to a faint "But, Jeanie--Jeanie--stay, woman!" and traversing the courtyard with a quick step, she set out on her forward journey, her bosom glowing with that natural indignation and shame, which an honest mind feels at having subjected itself to ask a favour, which had been unexpectedly refused. When out of the Laird's ground, and once more upon the public road, her pace slackened, her anger cooled, and anxious anticipations of the consequence of this unexpected disappointment began to influence her with other feelings. Must she then actually beg her way to London? for such seemed the alternative; or must she turn back, and solicit her father for money? and by doing so lose time, which was precious, besides the risk of encountering his positive prohibition respecting the journey! Yet she saw no medium between these alternatives; and, while she walked slowly on, was still meditating whether it were not better to return. While she was thus in an uncertainty, she heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs, and a well-known voice calling her name. She looked round, and saw advancing towards her on a pony, whose bare back and halter assorted ill with the nightgown, slippers, and laced cocked-hat of the rider, a cavalier of no less importance than Dumbiedikes himself. In the energy of his pursuit, he had overcome even the Highland obstinacy of Rory Bean, and compelled that self-willed palfrey to canter the way his rider chose; which Rory, however, performed with all the symptoms of reluctance, turning his head, and accompanying every bound he made in advance with a sidelong motion, which indicated his extreme wish to turn round,--a manoeuvre which nothing but the constant exercise of the Laird's heels and cudgel could possibly have counteracted. When the Laird came up with Jeanie, the first words he uttered were,--"Jeanie, they say ane shouldna aye take a woman at her first word?" "Ay, but ye maun take me at mine, Laird," said Jeanie, looking on the ground, and walking on without a pause.--"I hae but ae word to bestow on ony body, and that's aye a true ane." "Then," said Dumbiedikes, "at least ye suldna aye take a man at _his_ first word. Ye maunna gang this wilfu' gate sillerless, come o't what like."--He put a purse into her hand. "I wad gie you Rory too, but he's as wilfu' as yoursell, and he's ower weel used to a gate that maybe he and I hae gaen ower aften, and he'll gang nae road else." "But, Laird," said Jeanie, "though I ken my father will satisfy every penny of this siller, whatever there's o't, yet I wadna like to borrow it frae ane that maybe thinks of something mair than the paying o't back again." "There's just twenty-five guineas o't," said Dumbiedikes, with a gentle sigh, "and whether your father pays or disna pay, I make ye free till't without another word. Gang where ye like--do what ye like--and marry a' the Butlers in the country gin ye like--And sae, gude morning to you, Jeanie." "And God bless you, Laird, wi' mony a gude morning!" said Jeanie, her heart more softened by the unwonted generosity of this uncouth character, than perhaps Butler might have approved, had he known her feelings at that moment; "and comfort, and the Lord's peace, and the peace of the world, be with you, if we suld never meet again!" Dumbiedikes turned and waved his hand; and his pony, much more willing to return than he had been to set out, hurried him homeward so fast, that, wanting the aid of a regular bridle, as well as of saddle and stirrups, he was too much puzzled to keep his seat to permit of his looking behind, even to give the parting glance of a forlorn swain. I am ashamed to say, that the sight of a lover, ran away with in nightgown and slippers and a laced hat, by a bare-backed Highland pony, had something in it of a sedative, even to a grateful and deserved burst of affectionate esteem. The figure of Dumbiedikes was too ludicrous not to confirm Jeanie in the original sentiments she entertained towards him. "He's a gude creature," said she, "and a kind--it's a pity he has sae willyard a powny." And she immediately turned her thoughts to the important journey which she had commenced, reflecting with pleasure, that, according to her habits of life and of undergoing fatigue, she was now amply or even superfluously provided with the means of encountering the expenses of the road, up and down from London, and all other expenses whatever. CHAPTER THIRD What strange and wayward thoughts will slide Into a lover's head; "O mercy!" to myself I cried, "If Lucy should be dead!" Wordsworth. In pursuing her solitary journey, our heroine, soon after passing the house of Dumbiedikes, gained a little eminence, from which, on looking to the eastward down a prattling brook, whose meanders were shaded with straggling widows and alder trees, she could see the cottages of Woodend and Beersheba, the haunts and habitation of her early life, and could distinguish the common on which she had so often herded sheep, and the recesses of the rivulet where she had pulled rushes with Butler, to plait crowns and sceptres for her sister Effie, then a beautiful but spoiled child, of about three years old. The recollections which the scene brought with them were so bitter, that, had she indulged them, she would have sate down and relieved her heart with tears. "But I ken'd," said Jeanie, when she gave an account of her pilgrimage, "that greeting would do but little good, and that it was mair beseeming to thank the Lord, that had showed me kindness and countenance by means of a man, that mony ca'd a Nabal, and churl, but wha was free of his gudes to me, as ever the fountain was free of the stream. And I minded the Scripture about the sin of Israel at Meribah, when the people murmured, although Moses had brought water from the dry rock that the congregation might drink and live. Sae, I wad not trust mysell with another look at puir Woodend, for the very blue reek that came out of the lum-head pat me in mind of the change of market days with us." In this resigned and Christian temper she pursued her journey until she was beyond this place of melancholy recollections, and not distant from the village where Butler dwelt, which, with its old-fashioned church and steeple, rises among a tuft of trees, occupying the ridge of an eminence to the south of Edinburgh. At a quarter of a mile's distance is a clumsy square tower, the residence of the Laird of Liberton, who, in former times, with the habits of the predatory chivalry of Germany, is said frequently to have annoyed the city of Edinburgh, by intercepting the supplies and merchandise which came to the town from the southward. This village, its tower, and its church, did not lie precisely in Jeanie's road towards England; but they were not much aside from it, and the village was the abode of Butler. She had resolved to see him in the beginning of her journey, because she conceived him the most proper person to write to her father concerning her resolution and her hopes. There was probably another reason latent in her affectionate bosom. She wished once more to see the object of so early and so sincere an attachment, before commencing a pilgrimage, the perils of which she did not disguise from herself, although she did not allow them so to press upon her mind as to diminish the strength and energy of her resolution. A visit to a lover from a young person in a higher rank of life than Jeanie's, would have had something forward and improper in its character. But the simplicity of her rural habits was unacquainted with these punctilious ideas of decorum, and no notion, therefore, of impropriety crossed her imagination, as, setting out upon a long journey, she went to bid adieu to an early friend. There was still another motive that pressed upon her mind with additional force as she approached the village. She had looked anxiously for Butler in the courthouse, and had expected that, certainly, in some part of that eventful day, he would have appeared to bring such countenance and support as he could give to his old friend, and the protector of his youth, even if her own claims were laid aside. She know, indeed, that he was under a certain degree of restraint; but she still had hoped that he would have found means to emancipate himself from it, at least for one day. In short, the wild and wayward thoughts which Wordsworth has described as rising in an absent lover's imagination, suggested, as the only explanation of his absence, that Butler must be very ill. And so much had this wrought on her imagination, that when she approached the cottage where her lover occupied a small apartment, and which had been pointed out to her by a maiden with a milk-pail on her head, she trembled at anticipating the answer she might receive on inquiring for him. Her fears in this case had, indeed, only hit upon the truth. Butler, whose constitution was naturally feeble, did not soon recover the fatigue of body and distress of mind which he had suffered, in consequence of the tragical events with which our narrative commenced. The painful idea that his character was breathed on by suspicion, was an aggravation to his distress. But the most cruel addition was the absolute prohibition laid by the magistrates on his holding any communication with Deans or his family. It had unfortunately appeared likely to them, that some intercourse might be again attempted with that family by Robertson, through the medium of Butler, and this they were anxious to intercept, or prevent if possible. The measure was not meant as a harsh or injurious severity on the part of the magistrates; but, in Butler's circumstances, it pressed cruelly hard. He felt he must be suffering under the bad opinion of the person who was dearest to him, from an imputation of unkind desertion, the most alien to his nature. This painful thought, pressing on a frame already injured, brought on a succession of slow and lingering feverish attacks, which greatly impaired his health, and at length rendered him incapable even of the sedentary duties of the school, on which his bread depended. Fortunately, old Mr. Whackbairn, who was the principal teacher of the little parochial establishment, was sincerely attached to Butler. Besides that he was sensible of his merits and value as an assistant, which had greatly raised the credit of his little school, the ancient pedagogue, who had himself been tolerably educated, retained some taste for classical lore, and would gladly relax, after the drudgery of the school was over, by conning over a few pages of Horace or Juvenal with his usher. A similarity of taste begot kindness, and accordingly he saw Butler's increasing debility with great compassion, roused up his own energies to teaching the school in the morning hours, insisted upon his assistant's reposing himself at that period, and, besides, supplied him with such comforts as the patient's situation required, and his own means were inadequate to compass. Such was Butler's situation, scarce able to drag himself to the place where his daily drudgery must gain his daily bread, and racked with a thousand fearful anticipations concerning the fate of those who were dearest to him in the world, when the trial and condemnation of Effie Deans put the copestone upon his mental misery. He had a particular account of these events, from a fellow-student who resided in the same village, and who, having been present on the melancholy occasion, was able to place it in all its agony of horrors before his excruciated imagination. That sleep should have visited his eyes after such a curfew-note, was impossible. A thousand dreadful visions haunted his imagination all night, and in the morning he was awaked from a feverish slumber, by the only circumstance which could have added to his distress,--the visit of an intrusive ass. This unwelcome visitant was no other than Bartoline Saddletree. The worthy and sapient burgher had kept his appointment at MacCroskie's with Plumdamas and some other neighbours, to discuss the Duke of Argyle's speech, the justice of Effie Deans's condemnation, and the improbability of her obtaining a reprieve. This sage conclave disputed high and drank deep, and on the next morning Bartoline felt, as he expressed it, as if his head was like a "confused progress of writs." To bring his reflective powers to their usual serenity, Saddle-tree resolved to take a morning's ride upon a certain hackney, which he, Plumdamas, and another honest shopkeeper, combined to maintain by joint subscription, for occasional jaunts for the purpose of business or exercise. As Saddletree had two children boarded with Whackbairn, and was, as we have seen, rather fond of Butler's society, he turned his palfrey's head towards Liberton, and came, as we have already said, to give the unfortunate usher that additional vexation, of which Imogene complains so feelingly, when she says,-- "I'm sprighted with a fool-- Sprighted and anger'd worse." If anything could have added gall to bitterness, it was the choice which Saddletree made of a subject for his prosing harangues, being the trial of Effie Deans, and the probability of her being executed. Every word fell on Butler's ear like the knell of a death-bell, or the note of a screech-owl. Jeanie paused at the door of her lover's humble abode upon hearing the loud and pompous tones of Saddletree sounding from the inner apartment, "Credit me, it will be sae, Mr. Butler. Brandy cannot save her. She maun gang down the Bow wi' the lad in the pioted coat* at her heels.-- * The executioner, in livery of black or dark grey and silver, likened by low wit to a magpie. I am sorry for the lassie, but the law, sir, maun hae its course-- Vivat Rex, Currat Lex, as the poet has it, in whilk of Horace's odes I know not." Here Butler groaned, in utter impatience of the brutality and ignorance which Bartoline had contrived to amalgamate into one sentence. But Saddletree, like other prosers, was blessed with a happy obtuseness of perception concerning the unfavourable impression which he sometimes made on his auditors. He proceeded to deal forth his scraps of legal knowledge without mercy, and concluded by asking Butler, with great self-complacency, "Was it na a pity my father didna send me to Utrecht? Havena I missed the chance to turn out as _clarissimus_ an _ictus,_ as auld Grunwiggin himself?--Whatfor dinna ye speak, Mr. Butler? Wad I no hae been a _clarissimus ictus?_--Eh, man?" "I really do not understand you, Mr. Saddletree," said Butler, thus pushed hard for an answer. His faint and exhausted tone of voice was instantly drowned in the sonorous bray of Bartoline. "No understand me, man? _Ictus_ is Latin for a lawyer, is it not?" "Not that ever I heard of," answered Butler in the same dejected tone. "The deil ye didna!--See, man, I got the word but this morning out of a memorial of Mr. Crossmyloof's--see, there it is, _ictus clarissimus et perti--peritissimus_--it's a' Latin, for it's printed in the Italian types." "O, you mean _juris-consultus--Ictus_ is an abbreviation for _juris-consultus._" "Dinna tell me, man," persevered Saddletree, "there's nae abbreviates except in adjudications; and this is a' about a servitude of water-drap--that is to say, _tillicidian_* (maybe ye'll say that's no Latin neither), in Mary King's Close in the High Street." * He meant, probably, _stillicidium._ "Very likely," said poor Butler, overwhelmed by the noisy perseverance of his visitor. "Iam not able to dispute with you." "Few folk are--few folk are, Mr. Butler, though I say it that shouldna say it," returned Bartoline with great delight. "Now, it will be twa hours yet or ye're wanted in the schule, and as ye are no weel, I'll sit wi' you to divert ye, and explain t'ye the nature of a _tillicidian._ Ye maun ken, the petitioner, Mrs. Crombie, a very decent woman, is a friend of mine, and I hae stude her friend in this case, and brought her wi' credit into the court, and I doubtna that in due time she will win out o't wi' credit, win she or lose she. Ye see, being an inferior tenement or laigh house, we grant ourselves to be burdened wi' the _tillicide,_ that is, that we are obligated to receive the natural water-drap of the superior tenement, sae far as the same fa's frae the heavens, or the roof of our neighbour's house, and from thence by the gutters or eaves upon our laigh tenement. But the other night comes a Highland quean of a lass, and she flashes, God kens what, out at the eastmost window of Mrs. MacPhail's house, that's the superior tenement. I believe the auld women wad hae agreed, for Luckie MacPhail sent down the lass to tell my friend Mrs. Crombie that she had made the gardyloo out of the wrang window, out of respect for twa Highlandmen that were speaking Gaelic in the close below the right ane. But luckily for Mrs. Crombie, I just chanced to come in in time to break aff the communing, for it's a pity the point suldna be tried. We had Mrs. MacPhail into the Ten-Mark Court--The Hieland limmer of a lass wanted to swear herself free--but haud ye there, says I." The detailed account of this important suit might have lasted until poor Butler's hour of rest was completely exhausted, had not Saddletree been interrupted by the noise of voices at the door. The woman of the house where Butler lodged, on returning with her pitcher from the well, whence she had been fetching water for the family, found our heroine Jeanie Deans standing at the door, impatient of the prolix harangue of Saddletree, yet unwilling to enter until he should have taken his leave. The good woman abridged the period of hesitation by inquiring, "Was ye wanting the gudeman or me, lass?" "I wanted to speak with Mr. Butler, if he's at leisure," replied Jeanie. "Gang in by then, my woman," answered the goodwife; and opening the door of a room, she announced the additional visitor with, "Mr. Butler, here's a lass wants to speak t'ye." The surprise of Butler was extreme, when Jeanie, who seldom stirred half-a-mile from home, entered his apartment upon this annunciation. "Good God!" he said, starting from his chair, while alarm restored to his cheek the colour of which sickness had deprived it; "some new misfortune must have happened!" "None, Mr. Reuben, but what you must hae heard of--but oh, ye are looking ill yoursell!"--for the "hectic of a moment" had not concealed from her affectionate eyes the ravages which lingering disease and anxiety of mind had made in her lover's person. "No: I am well--quite well," said Butler with eagerness; "if I can do anything to assist you, Jeanie--or your father." "Ay, to be sure," said Saddletree; "the family may be considered as limited to them twa now, just as if Effie had never been in the tailzie, puir thing. But, Jeanie lass, what brings you out to Liberton sae air in the morning, and your father lying ill in the Luckenbooths?" "I had a message frae my father to Mr. Butler," said Jeanie with embarrassment; but instantly feeling ashamed of the fiction to which she had resorted, for her love of and veneration for truth was almost Quaker-like, she corrected herself--"That is to say, I wanted to speak with Mr. Butler about some business of my father's and puir Effie's." "Is it law business?" said Bartoline; "because if it be, ye had better take my opinion on the subject than his." "It is not just law business," said Jeanie, who saw considerable inconvenience might arise from letting Mr. Saddletree into the secret purpose of her journey; "but I want Mr. Butler to write a letter for me." "Very right," said Mr. Saddletree; "and if ye'll tell me what it is about, I'll dictate to Mr. Butler as Mr. Crossmyloof does to his clerk.--Get your pen and ink in initialibus, Mr. Butler." Jeanie looked at Butler, and wrung her hands with vexation and impatience. "I believe, Mr. Saddletree," said Butler, who saw the necessity of getting rid of him at all events, "that Mr. Whackbairn will be somewhat affronted if you do not hear your boys called up to their lessons." "Indeed, Mr. Butler, and that's as true; and I promised to ask a half play-day to the schule, so that the bairns might gang and see the hanging, which canna but have a pleasing effect on their young minds, seeing there is no knowing what they may come to themselves.--Odd so, I didna mind ye were here, Jeanie Deans; but ye maun use yoursell to hear the matter spoken o'.--Keep Jeanie here till I come back, Mr. Butler; I winna bide ten minutes." And with this unwelcome assurance of an immediate return, he relieved them of the embarrassment of his presence. "Reuben," said Jeanie, who saw the necessity of using the interval of his absence in discussing what had brought her there, "I am bound on a lang journey--I am gaun to Lunnon to ask Effie's life of the king and of the queen." "Jeanie! you are surely not yourself," answered Butler, in the utmost surprise;--"_you_ go to London--_you_ address the king and queen!" "And what for no, Reuben?" said Jeanie, with all the composed simplicity of her character; "it's but speaking to a mortal man and woman when a' is done. And their hearts maun be made o' flesh and blood like other folk's, and Effie's story wad melt them were they stane. Forby, I hae heard that they are no sic bad folk as what the Jacobites ca' them." "Yes, Jeanie," said Butler; "but their magnificence--their retinue--the difficulty of getting audience?" "I have thought of a' that, Reuben, and it shall not break my spirit. Nae doubt their claiths will be very grand, wi' their crowns on their heads, and their sceptres in their hands, like the great King Ahasuerus when he sate upon his royal throne fornent the gate of his house, as we are told in Scripture. But I have that within me that will keep my heart from failing, and I am amaist sure that I will be strengthened to speak the errand I came for." "Alas! alas!" said Butler, "the kings now-a-days do not sit in the gate to administer justice, as in patriarchal times. I know as little of courts as you do, Jeanie, by experience; but by reading and report I know, that the King of Britain does everything by means of his ministers." "And if they be upright, God-fearing ministers," said Jeanie, "it's sae muckle the better chance for Effie and me." "But you do not even understand the most ordinary words relating to a court," said Butler; "by the ministry is meant not clergymen, but the king's official servants." "Nae doubt," returned Jeanie, "he maun hae a great number mair, I daur to say, than the duchess has at Dalkeith, and great folk's servants are aye mair saucy than themselves. But I'll be decently put on, and I'll offer them a trifle o' siller, as if I came to see the palace. Or, if they scruple that, I'll tell them I'm come on a business of life and death, and then they will surely bring me to speech of the king and queen?" Butler shook his head. "O Jeanie, this is entirely a wild dream. You can never see them but through some great lord's intercession, and I think it is scarce possible even then." "Weel, but maybe I can get that too," said Jeanie, "with a little helping from you." "From me, Jeanie! this is the wildest imagination of all." "Ay, but it is not, Reuben. Havena I heard you say, that your grandfather (that my father never likes to hear about) did some gude langsyne to the forbear of this MacCallummore, when he was Lord of Lorn?" "He did so," said Butler, eagerly, "and I can prove it.--I will write to the Duke of Argyle--report speaks him a good kindly man, as he is known for a brave soldier and true patriot--I will conjure him to stand between your sister and this cruel fate. There is but a poor chance of success, but we will try all means." "We _must_ try all means," replied Jeanie; "but writing winna do it--a letter canna look, and pray, and beg, and beseech, as the human voice can do to the human heart. A letter's like the music that the ladies have for their spinets--naething but black scores, compared to the same tune played or sung. It's word of mouth maun do it, or naething, Reuben." "You are right," said Reuben, recollecting his firmness, "and I will hope that Heaven has suggested to your kind heart and firm courage the only possible means of saving the life of this unfortunate girl. But, Jeanie, you must not take this most perilous journey alone; I have an interest in you, and I will not agree that my Jeanie throws herself away. You must even, in the present circumstances, give me a husband's right to protect you, and I will go with you myself on this journey, and assist you to do your duty by your family." "Alas, Reuben!" said Jeanie in her turn, "this must not be; a pardon will not gie my sister her fair fame again, or make me a bride fitting for an honest man and an usefu' minister. Wha wad mind what he said in the pu'pit, that had to wife the sister of a woman that was condemned for sic wickedness?" "But, Jeanie," pleaded her lover, "I do not believe, and I cannot believe, that Effie has done this deed." "Heaven bless ye for saying sae, Reuben," answered Jeanie; "but she maun bear the blame o't after all." "But the blame, were it even justly laid on her, does not fall on you." "Ah, Reuben, Reuben," replied the young woman, "ye ken it is a blot that spreads to kith and kin.--Ichabod--as my poor father says--the glory is departed from our house; for the poorest man's house has a glory, where there are true hands, a divine heart, and an honest fame--And the last has gane frae us a." "But, Jeanie, consider your word and plighted faith to me; and would you undertake such a journey without a man to protect you?--and who should that protector be but your husband?" "You are kind and good, Reuben, and wad take me wi' a' my shame, I doubtna. But ye canna but own that this is no time to marry or be given in marriage. Na, if that suld ever be, it maun be in another and a better season.--And, dear Reuben, ye speak of protecting me on my journey--Alas! who will protect and take care of you?--your very limbs tremble with standing for ten minutes on the floor; how could you undertake a journey as far as Lunnon?" "But I am strong--I am well," continued Butler, sinking in his seat totally exhausted, "at least I shall be quite well to-morrow." "Ye see, and ye ken, ye maun just let me depart," said Jeanie, after a pause; and then taking his extended hand, and gazing kindly in his face, she added, "It's e'en a grief the mair to me to see you in this way. But ye maun keep up your heart for Jeanie's sake, for if she isna your wife, she will never be the wife of living man. And now gie me the paper for MacCallummore, and bid God speed me on my way." There was something of romance in Jeanie's venturous resolution; yet, on consideration, as it seemed impossible to alter it by persuasion, or to give her assistance but by advice, Butler, after some farther debate, put into her hands the paper she desired, which, with the muster-roll in which it was folded up, were the sole memorials of the stout and enthusiastic Bible Butler, his grandfather. While Butler sought this document, Jeanie had time to take up his pocket Bible. "I have marked a scripture," she said, as she again laid it down, "with your kylevine pen, that will be useful to us baith. And ye maun tak the trouble, Reuben, to write a' this to my father, for, God help me, I have neither head nor hand for lang letters at ony time, forby now; and I trust him entirely to you, and I trust you will soon be permitted to see him. And, Reuben, when ye do win to the speech o' him, mind a' the auld man's bits o' ways, for Jeanie's sake; and dinna speak o' Latin or English terms to him, for he's o' the auld warld, and downa bide to be fashed wi' them, though I daresay he may be wrang. And dinna ye say muckle to him, but set him on speaking himself, for he'll bring himsell mair comfort that way. And O, Reuben, the poor lassie in yon dungeon!--but I needna bid your kind heart--gie her what comfort ye can as soon as they will let ye see her--tell her--But I maunna speak mair about her, for I maunna take leave o' ye wi' the tear in my ee, for that wouldna be canny.--God bless ye, Reuben!" To avoid so ill an omen she left the room hastily, while her features yet retained the mournful and affectionate smile which she had compelled them to wear, in order to support Butler's spirits. It seemed as if the power of sight, of speech, and of reflection, had left him as she disappeared from the room, which she had entered and retired from so like an apparition. Saddletree, who entered immediately afterwards, overwhelmed him with questions, which he answered without understanding them, and with legal disquisitions, which conveyed to him no iota of meaning. At length the learned burgess recollected that there was a Baron Court to be, held at Loanhead that day, and though it was hardly worth while, "he might as weel go to see if there was onything doing, as he was acquainted with the baron bailie, who was a decent man, and would be glad of a word of legal advice." So soon as he departed, Butler flew to the Bible, the last book which Jeanie had touched. To his extreme surprise, a paper, containing two or three pieces of gold, dropped from the book. With a black-lead pencil, she had marked the sixteenth and twenty-fifth verses of the thirty-seventh Psalm,--"A little that a righteous man hath, is better than the riches of the wicked."--"I have been young and am now old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." Deeply impressed with the affectionate delicacy which shrouded its own generosity under the cover of a providential supply to his wants, he pressed the gold to his lips with more ardour than ever the metal was greeted with by a miser. To emulate her devout firmness and confidence seemed now the pitch of his ambition, and his first task was to write an account to David Deans of his daughter's resolution and journey southward. He studied every sentiment, and even every phrase, which he thought could reconcile the old man to her extraordinary resolution. The effect which this epistle produced will be hereafter adverted to. Butler committed it to the charge of an honest clown, who had frequent dealings with Deans in the sale of his dairy produce, and who readily undertook a journey to Edinburgh to put the letter into his own hands.* * By dint of assiduous research I am enabled to certiorate the reader, that the name of this person was Saunders Broadfoot, and that he dealt in the wholesome commodity called kirn-milk (_Anglice',_ butter-milk).-- J. C. CHAPTER FOURTH. "My native land, good night." Lord Byron. In the present day, a journey from Edinburgh to London is a matter at once safe, brief, and simple, however inexperienced or unprotected the traveller. Numerous coaches of different rates of charge, and as many packets, are perpetually passing and repassing betwixt the capital of Britain and her northern sister, so that the most timid or indolent may execute such a journey upon a few hours' notice. But it was different in 1737. So slight and infrequent was the intercourse betwixt London and Edinburgh, that men still alive remember that upon one occasion the mail from the former city arrived at the General Post-Office in Scotland with only one letter in it.* * The fact is certain. The single epistle was addressed to the principal director of the British Linen Company. The usual mode of travelling was by means of post-horses, the traveller occupying one, and his guide another, in which manner, by relays of horses from stage to stage, the journey might be accomplished in a wonderfully short time by those who could endure fatigue. To have the bones shaken to pieces by a constant change of those hacks was a luxury for the rich--the poor were under the necessity of using the mode of conveyance with which nature had provided them. With a strong heart, and a frame patient of fatigue, Jeanie Deans, travelling at the rate of twenty miles a-day, and sometimes farther, traversed the southern part of Scotland, and advanced as far as Durham. Hitherto she had been either among her own country-folk, or those to whom her bare feet and tartan screen were objects too familiar to attract much attention. But as she advanced, she perceived that both circumstances exposed her to sarcasm and taunts, which she might otherwise have escaped; and although in her heart she thought it unkind, and inhospitable, to sneer at a passing stranger on account of the fashion of her attire, yet she had the good sense to alter those parts of her dress which attracted ill-natured observation. Her chequed screen was deposited carefully in her bundle, and she conformed to the national extravagance of wearing shoes and stockings for the whole day. She confessed afterwards, that, "besides the wastrife, it was lang or she could walk sae comfortably with the shoes as without them; but there was often a bit saft heather by the road-side, and that helped her weel on." The want of the screen, which was drawn over the head like a veil, she supplied by a _bon-grace,_ as she called it; a large straw bonnet like those worn by the English maidens when labouring in the fields. "But I thought unco shame o' mysell," she said, "the first time I put on a married woman's _bon-grace,_ and me a single maiden." With these changes she had little, as she said, to make "her kenspeckle when she didna speak," but her accent and language drew down on her so many jests and gibes, couched in a worse _patois_ by far than her own, that she soon found it was her interest to talk as little and as seldom as possible. She answered, therefore, civil salutations of chance passengers with a civil courtesy, and chose, with anxious circumspection, such places of repose as looked at once most decent and sequestered. She found the common people of England, although inferior in courtesy to strangers, such as was then practised in her own more unfrequented country, yet, upon the whole, by no means deficient in the real duties of hospitality. She readily obtained food, and shelter, and protection at a very moderate rate, which sometimes the generosity of mine host altogether declined, with a blunt apology,--"Thee hast a long way afore thee, lass; and I'se ne'er take penny out o' a single woman's purse; it's the best friend thou can have on the road." It often happened, too, that mine hostess was struck with "the tidy, nice Scotch body," and procured her an escort, or a cast in a waggon, for some part of the way, or gave her a useful advice and recommendation respecting her resting-places. At York our pilgrim stopped for the best part of a day, partly to recruit her strength,--partly because she had the good luck to obtain a lodging in an inn kept by a countrywoman,--partly to indite two letters to her father and Reuben Butler; an operation of some little difficulty, her habits being by no means those of literary composition. That to her father was in the following words.-- "Dearest Father,--I make my present pilgrimage more heavy and burdensome, through the sad occasion to reflect that it is without your knowledge, which, God knows, was far contrary to my heart; for Scripture says, that 'the vow of the daughter should not be binding without the consent of the father,' wherein it may be I have been guilty to tak this wearie journey without your consent. Nevertheless, it was borne in upon my mind that I should be an instrument to help my poor sister in this extremity of needcessity, otherwise I wad not, for wealth or for world's gear, or for the haill lands of Da'keith and Lugton, have done the like o' this, without your free will and knowledge. Oh, dear father, as ye wad desire a blessing on my journey, and upon your household, speak a word or write a line of comfort to yon poor prisoner. If she has sinned, she has sorrowed and suffered, and ye ken better than me, that we maun forgie others, as we pray to be forgien. Dear father, forgive my saying this muckle, for it doth not become a young head to instruct grey hairs; but I am sae far frae ye, that my heart yearns to ye a', and fain wad I hear that ye had forgien her trespass, and sae I nae doubt say mair than may become me. The folk here are civil, and, like the barbarians unto the holy apostle, hae shown me much kindness; and there are a sort of chosen people in the land, for they hae some kirks without organs that are like ours, and are called meeting-houses, where the minister preaches without a gown. But most of the country are prelatists, whilk is awfu' to think; and I saw twa men that were ministers following hunds, as bauld as Roslin or Driden, the young Laird of Loup-the-dike, or ony wild gallant in Lothian. A sorrowfa' sight to behold! Oh, dear father, may a blessing be with your down-lying and up-rising, and remember in your prayers your affectionate daughter to command, "Jean Deans." A postscript bore, "I learned from a decent woman, a grazier's widow, that they hae a cure for the muir-ill in Cumberland, whilk is ane pint, as they ca't, of yill, whilk is a dribble in comparison of our gawsie Scots pint, and hardly a mutchkin, boiled wi' sope and hartshorn draps, and toomed doun the creature's throat wi' ane whorn. Ye might try it on the bauson-faced year-auld quey; an it does nae gude, it can do nae ill.-- She was a kind woman, and seemed skeely about horned beasts. When I reach Lunnon, I intend to gang to our cousin Mrs. Glass, the tobacconist, at the sign o' the Thistle, wha is so ceevil as to send you down your spleuchan-fu' anes a year; and as she must be well kend in Lunnon, I doubt not easily to find out where she lives." Being seduced into betraying our heroine's confidence thus far, we will stretch our communication a step beyond, and impart to the reader her letter to her lover. "Mr. Reuben Butler,--Hoping this will find you better, this comes to say, that I have reached this great town safe, and am not wearied with walking, but the better for it. And I have seen many things which I trust to tell you one day, also the muckle kirk of this place; and all around the city are mills, whilk havena muckle wheels nor mill-dams, but gang by the wind--strange to behold. Ane miller asked me to gang in and see it work, but I wad not, for I am not come to the south to make acquaintance with strangers. I keep the straight road, and just beck if onybody speaks to me ceevilly, and answers naebody with the tong but women of my ain sect. I wish, Mr. Butler, I kend onything that wad mak ye weel, for they hae mair medicines in this town of York than wad cure a' Scotland, and surely some of them wad be gude for your complaints. If ye had a kindly motherly body to nurse ye, and no to let ye waste yoursell wi' reading--whilk ye read mair than eneugh wi' the bairns in the schule--and to gie ye warm milk in the morning, I wad be mair easy for ye. Dear Mr. Butler, keep a good heart, for we are in the hands of Ane that kens better what is gude for us than we ken what is for oursells. I hae nae doubt to do that for which I am come--I canna doubt it--I winna think to doubt it--because, if I haena full assurance, how shall I bear myself with earnest entreaties in the great folk's presence? But to ken that ane's purpose is right, and to make their heart strong, is the way to get through the warst day's darg. The bairns' rime says, the warst blast of the borrowing days* couldna kill the three silly poor hog-lams. * The last three days of March, old style, are called the Borrowing Days; for, as they are remarked to be unusually stormy, it is feigned that March had borrowed them from April, to extend the sphere of his rougher sway. The rhyme on the subject is quoted in the glossary to Leyden's edition of the "Complaynt of Scotland"-- [March said to Aperill, I see three hogs upon a hill, A young sheep before it has lost its first fleece. But when the borrowed days were gane The three silly hogs came hirplin hame.] "And if it be God's pleasure, we that are sindered in sorrow may meet again in joy, even on this hither side of Jordan. I dinna bid ye mind what I said at our partin' anent my poor father, and that misfortunate lassie, for I ken you will do sae for the sake of Christian charity, whilk is mair than the entreaties of her that is your servant to command, "Jeanie Deans." This letter also had a postscript. "Dear Reuben, If ye think that it wad hae been right for me to have said mair and kinder things to ye, just think that I hae written sae, since I am sure that I wish a' that is kind and right to ye and by ye. Ye will think I am turned waster, for I wear clean hose and shoon every day; but it's the fashion here for decent bodies and ilka land has it's ain landlaw. Ower and aboon a', if laughing days were e'er to come back again till us, ye wad laugh weel to see my round face at the far end of a strae _bon-grace,_ that looks as muckle and round as the middell aisle in Libberton Kirk. But it sheds the sun weel aff, and keeps uncivil folk frae staring as if ane were a worrycow. I sall tell ye by writ how I come on wi' the Duke of Argyle, when I won up to Lunnon. Direct a line, to say how ye are, to me, to the charge of Mrs. Margaret Glass, tobacconist, at the sign of the Thistle, Lunnon, whilk, if it assures me of your health, will make my mind sae muckle easier. Excuse bad spelling and writing, as I have ane ill pen." The orthography of these epistles may seem to the southron to require a better apology than the letter expresses, though a bad pen was the excuse of a certain Galwegian laird for bad spelling; but, on behalf of the heroine, I would have them to know, that, thanks to the care of Butler, Jeanie Deans wrote and spelled fifty times better than half the women of rank in Scotland at that period, whose strange orthography and singular diction form the strongest contrast to the good sense which their correspondence usually intimates. For the rest, in the tenor of these epistles, Jeanie expressed, perhaps, more hopes, a firmer courage, and better spirits, than she actually felt. But this was with the amiable idea of relieving her father and lover from apprehensions on her account, which she was sensible must greatly add to their other troubles. "If they think me weel, and like to do weel," said the poor pilgrim to herself, "my father will be kinder to Effie, and Butler will be kinder to himself. For I ken weel that they will think mair o' me than I do o' mysell." Accordingly, she sealed her letters carefully, and put them into the post-office with her own hand, after many inquiries concerning the time in which they were likely to reach Edinburgh. When this duty was performed, she readily accepted her landlady's pressing invitation to dine with her, and remain till the next morning. The hostess, as we have said, was her countrywoman, and the eagerness with which Scottish people meet, communicate, and, to the extent of their power, assist each other, although it is often objected to us as a prejudice and narrowness of sentiment, seems, on the contrary, to arise from a most justifiable and honourable feeling of patriotism, combined with a conviction, which, if undeserved, would long since have been confuted by experience, that the habits and principles of the nation are a sort of guarantee for the character of the individual. At any rate, if the extensive influence of this national partiality be considered as an additional tie, binding man to man, and calling forth the good offices of such as can render them to the countryman who happens to need them, we think it must be found to exceed, as an active and efficient motive, to generosity, that more impartial and wider principle of general benevolence, which we have sometimes seen pleaded as an excuse for assisting no individual whatever. Mrs. Bickerton, lady of the ascendant of the Seven Stars, in the Castle-gate, York, was deeply infected with the unfortunate prejudices of her country. Indeed, she displayed so much kindness to Jeanie Deans (because she herself, being a Merse woman, _marched_ with Mid-Lothian, in which Jeanie was born), showed such motherly regard to her, and such anxiety for her farther progress, that Jeanie thought herself safe, though by temper sufficiently cautious, in communicating her whole story to her. Mrs. Bickerton raised her hands and eyes at the recital, and exhibited much wonder and pity. But she also gave some effectual good advice. She required to know the strength of Jeanie's purse, reduced by her deposit at Liberton, and the necessary expense of her journey, to about fifteen pounds. "This," she said, "would do very well, providing she would carry it a' safe to London." "Safe!" answered Jeanie; "I'se warrant my carrying it safe, bating the needful expenses." "Ay, but highwaymen, lassie," said Mrs. Bickerton; "for ye are come into a more civilised, that is to say, a more roguish country than the north, and how ye are to get forward, I do not profess to know. If ye could wait here eight days, our waggons would go up, and I would recommend you to Joe Broadwheel, who would see you safe to the Swan and two Necks. And dinna sneeze at Joe, if he should be for drawing up wi' you" (continued Mrs. Bickerton, her acquired English mingling with her national or original dialect), "he's a handy boy, and a wanter, and no lad better thought o' on the road; and the English make good husbands enough, witness my poor man, Moses Bickerton, as is i' the kirkyard." Jeanie hastened to say, that she could not possibly wait for the setting forth of Joe Broadwheel; being internally by no means gratified with the idea of becoming the object of his attention during the journey, "Aweel, lass," answered the good landlady, "then thou must pickle in thine ain poke-nook, and buckle thy girdle thine ain gate. But take my advice, and hide thy gold in thy stays, and keep a piece or two and some silver, in case thou be'st spoke withal; for there's as wud lads haunt within a day's walk from hence, as on the braes of Doune in Perthshire. And, lass, thou maunna gang staring through Lunnon, asking wha kens Mrs. Glass at the sign o' the Thistle; marry, they would laugh thee to scorn. But gang thou to this honest man," and she put a direction into Jeanie's hand, "he kens maist part of the sponsible Scottish folk in the city, and he will find out your friend for thee." Jeanie took the little introductory letter with sincere thanks; but, something alarmed on the subject of the highway robbers, her mind recurred to what Ratcliffe had mentioned to her, and briefly relating the circumstances which placed a document so extraordinary in her hands, she put the paper he had given her into the hand of Mrs. Bickerton. The Lady of the Seven Stars did not indeed ring a bell, because such was not the fashion of the time, but she whistled on a silver call, which was hung by her side, and a tight serving-maid entered the room. "Tell Dick Ostler to come here," said Mrs. Bickerton. Dick Ostler accordingly made his appearance;--a queer, knowing, shambling animal, with a hatchet-face, a squint, a game-arm, and a limp. "Dick Ostler," said Mrs. Bickerton, in a tone of authority that showed she was (at least by adoption) Yorkshire too, "thou knowest most people and most things o' the road." "Eye, eye, God help me, mistress," said Dick, shrugging his shoulders betwixt a repentant and a knowing expression--"Eye! I ha' know'd a thing or twa i' ma day, mistress." He looked sharp and laughed--looked grave and sighed, as one who was prepared to take the matter either way. "Kenst thou this wee bit paper amang the rest, man?" said Mrs. Bickerton, handing him the protection which Ratcliffe had given Jeanie Deans. When Dick had looked at the paper, he winked with one eye, extended his grotesque mouth from ear to ear, like a navigable canal, scratched his head powerfully, and then said, "Ken!--ay--maybe we ken summat, an it werena for harm to him, mistress!" "None in the world," said Mrs. Bickerton; "only a dram of Hollands to thyself, man, an thou wilt speak." "Why, then," said Dick, giving the head-band of his breeches a knowing hoist with one hand, and kicking out one foot behind him to accommodate the adjustment of that important habiliment, "I dares to say the pass will be kend weel eneugh on the road, an that be all." "But what sort of a lad was he?" said Mrs. Bickerton, winking to Jeanie, as proud of her knowing Ostler. "Why, what ken I?--Jim the Rat--why he was Cock o' the North within this twelmonth--he and Scotch Wilson, Handle Dandie, as they called him--but he's been out o' this country a while, as I rackon; but ony gentleman, as keeps the road o' this side Stamford, will respect Jim's pass." Without asking farther questions, the landlady filled Dick Ostler a bumper of Hollands. He ducked with his head and shoulders, scraped with his more advanced hoof, bolted the alcohol, to use the learned phrase, and withdrew to his own domains. "I would advise thee, Jeanie," said Mrs. Bickerton, "an thou meetest with ugly customers o' the road, to show them this bit paper, for it will serve thee, assure thyself." A neat little supper concluded the evening. The exported Scotswoman, Mrs. Bickerton by name, ate heartily of one or two seasoned dishes, drank some sound old ale, and a glass of stiff negus; while she gave Jeanie a history of her gout, admiring how it was possible that she, whose fathers and mothers for many generations had been farmers in Lammermuir, could have come by a disorder so totally unknown to them. Jeanie did not choose to offend her friendly landlady, by speaking her mind on the probable origin of this complaint; but she thought on the flesh-pots of Egypt, and, in spite of all entreaties to better fare, made her evening meal upon vegetables, with a glass of fair water. Mrs. Bickerton assured her, that the acceptance of any reckoning was entirely out of the question, furnished her with credentials to her correspondent in London, and to several inns upon the road where she had some influence or interest, reminded her of the precautions she should adopt for concealing her money, and as she was to depart early in the morning, took leave of her very affectionately, taking her word that she would visit her on her return to Scotland, and tell her how she had managed, and that summum bonum for a gossip, "all how and about it." This Jeanie faithfully promised. CHAPTER FIFTH. And Need and Misery, Vice and Danger, bind, In sad alliance, each degraded mind. As our traveller set out early on the ensuing morning to prosecute her journey, and was in the act of leaving the innyard, Dick Ostler, who either had risen early or neglected to go to bed, either circumstance being equally incident to his calling, hollowed out after her,--"The top of the morning to you, Moggie. Have a care o' Gunderby Hill, young one. Robin Hood's dead and gwone, but there be takers yet in the vale of Bever. Jeanie looked at him as if to request a farther explanation, but, with a leer, a shuffle, and a shrug, inimitable (unless by Emery*), Dick turned again to the raw-boned steed which he was currying, and sung as he employed the comb and brush,-- "Robin Hood was a yeoman right good, And his bow was of trusty yew; And if Robin said stand on the king's lea-land, Pray, why should not we say so too?" * [John Emery, an eminent comedian, played successfully at Covent Garden Theatre between 1798 and 1820. Among his characters, were those of Dandie Dinmont in _Guy Mannering,_ Dougal in _Rob Roy,_ and Ratcliffe in the Heart of _Mid-Lothian._] Jeanie pursued her journey without farther inquiry, for there was nothing in Dick's manner that inclined her to prolong their conference. A painful day's journey brought her to Ferrybridge, the best inn, then and since, upon the great northern road; and an introduction from Mrs. Bickerton, added to her own simple and quiet manners, so propitiated the landlady of the Swan in her favour, that the good dame procured her the convenient accommodation of a pillion and post-horse then returning to Tuxford, so that she accomplished, upon the second day after leaving York, the longest journey she had yet made. She was a good deal fatigued by a mode of travelling to which she was less accustomed than to walking, and it was considerably later than usual on the ensuing morning that she felt herself able to resume her pilgrimage. At noon the hundred-armed Trent, and the blackened ruins of Newark Castle, demolished in the great civil war, lay before her. It may easily be supposed, that Jeanie had no curiosity to make antiquarian researches, but, entering the town, went straight to the inn to which she had been directed at Ferrybridge. While she procured some refreshment, she observed the girl who brought it to her, looked at her several times with fixed and peculiar interest, and at last, to her infinite surprise, inquired if her name was not Deans, and if she was not a Scotchwoman, going to London upon justice business. Jeanie, with all her simplicity of character, had some of the caution of her country, and, according to Scottish universal custom, she answered the question by another, requesting the girl would tell her why she asked these questions? The Maritornes of the Saracen's Head, Newark, replied, "Two women had passed that morning, who had made inquiries after one Jeanie Deans, travelling to London on such an errand, and could scarce be persuaded that she had not passed on." Much surprised and somewhat alarmed (for what is inexplicable is usually alarming), Jeanie questioned the wench about the particular appearance of these two women, but could only learn that the one was aged, and the other young; that the latter was the taller, and that the former spoke most, and seemed to maintain an authority over her companion, and that both spoke with the Scottish accent. This conveyed no information whatever, and with an indescribable presentiment of evil designed towards her, Jeanie adopted the resolution of taking post-horses for the next stage. In this, however, she could not be gratified; some accidental circumstances had occasioned what is called a run upon the road, and the landlord could not accommodate her with a guide and horses. After waiting some time, in hopes that a pair of horses that had gone southward would return in time for her use, she at length, feeling ashamed at her own pusillanimity, resolved to prosecute her journey in her usual manner. "It was all plain road," she was assured, "except a high mountain called Gunnerby Hill, about three miles from Grantham, which was her stage for the night. "I'm glad to hear there's a hill," said Jeanie, "for baith my sight and my very feet are weary o' sic tracts o' level ground--it looks a' the way between this and York as if a' the land had been trenched and levelled, whilk is very wearisome to my Scotch een. When I lost sight of a muckle blue hill they ca' Ingleboro', I thought I hadna a friend left in this strange land." "As for the matter of that, young woman," said mine host, "an you be so fond o' hill, I carena an thou couldst carry Gunnerby away with thee in thy lap, for it's a murder to post-horses. But here's to thy journey, and mayst thou win well through it, for thou is a bold and a canny lass." So saying, he took a powerful pull at a solemn tankard of home-brewed ale. "I hope there is nae bad company on the road, sir?" said Jeanie. "Why, when it's clean without them I'll thatch Groby pool wi' pancakes. But there arena sae mony now; and since they hae lost Jim the Rat, they hold together no better than the men of Marsham when they lost their common. Take a drop ere thou goest," he concluded, offering her the tankard; "thou wilt get naething at night save Grantham gruel, nine grots and a gallon of water." Jeanie courteously declined the tankard, and inquired what was her "lawing?" "Thy lawing! Heaven help thee, wench! what ca'st thou that?" "It is--I was wanting to ken what was to pay," replied Jeanie. "Pay? Lord help thee!--why nought, woman--we hae drawn no liquor but a gill o' beer, and the Saracen's Head can spare a mouthful o' meat to a stranger like o' thee, that cannot speak Christian language. So here's to thee once more. The same again, quoth Mark of Bellgrave," and he took another profound pull at the tankard. The travellers who have visited Newark more lately, will not fail to remember the remarkably civil and gentlemanly manners of the person who now keeps the principal inn there, and may find some amusement in contrasting them with those of his more rough predecessor. But we believe it will be found that the polish has worn off none of the real worth of the metal. Taking leave of her Lincolnshire Gaius, Jeanie resumed her solitary walk, and was somewhat alarmed when evening and twilight overtook her in the open ground which extends to the foot of Gunnerby Hill, and is intersected with patches of copse and with swampy spots. The extensive commons on the north road, most of which are now enclosed, and in general a relaxed state of police, exposed the traveller to a highway robbery in a degree which is now unknown, except in the immediate vicinity of the metropolis. Aware of this circumstance, Jeanie mended her pace when she heard the trampling of a horse behind, and instinctively drew to one side of the road, as if to allow as much room for the rider to pass as might be possible. When the animal came up, she found that it was bearing two women, the one placed on a side-saddle, the other on a pillion behind her, as may still occasionally be seen in England. "A braw good-night to ye, Jeanie Deans," said the foremost female as the horse passed our heroine; "What think ye o' yon bonny hill yonder, lifting its brow to the moon? Trow ye yon's the gate to heaven, that ye are sae fain of?--maybe we will win there the night yet, God sain us, though our minny here's rather dreigh in the upgang." The speaker kept changing her seat in the saddle, and half stopping the horse as she brought her body round, while the woman that sate behind her on the pillion seemed to urge her on, in words which Jeanie heard but imperfectly. "Hand your tongue, ye moon-raised b----! what is your business with ----, or with heaven or hell either?" "Troth, mither, no muckle wi' heaven, I doubt, considering wha I carry ahint me--and as for hell, it will fight its ain battle at its ain time, I'se be bound.--Come, naggie, trot awa, man, an as thou wert a broomstick, for a witch rides thee-- With my curtch on my foot, and my shoe on my hand, I glance like the wildfire through brugh and through land." The tramp of the horse, and the increasing distance, drowned the rest of her song, but Jeanie heard for some time the inarticulate sounds ring along the waste. Our pilgrim remained stupified with undefined apprehensions. The being named by her name in so wild a manner, and in a strange country, without farther explanation or communing, by a person who thus strangely flitted forward and disappeared before her, came near to the supernatural sounds in Comus:-- The airy tongues, which syllable men's names On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses. And although widely different in features, deportment, and rank, from the Lady of that enchanting masque, the continuation of the passage may be happily applied to Jeanie Deans upon this singular alarm:-- These thoughts may startle well, but not astound The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended By a strong siding champion--Conscience. In fact, it was, with the recollection of the affectionate and dutiful errand on which she was engaged, her right, if such a word could be applicable, to expect protection in a task so meritorious. She had not advanced much farther, with a mind calmed by these reflections, when she was disturbed by a new and more instant subject of terror. Two men, who had been lurking among some copse, started up as she advanced, and met her on the road in a menacing manner. "Stand and deliver," said one of them, a short stout fellow, in a smock-frock, such as are worn by waggoners. "The woman," said the other, a tall thin figure, "does not understand the words of action.--Your money, my precious, or your life." "I have but very little money, gentlemen," said poor Jeanie, tendering that portion which she had separated from her principal stock, and kept apart for such an emergency; "but if you are resolved to have it, to be sure you must have it." "This won't do, my girl. D--n me, if it shall pass!" said the shorter ruffian; "do ye think gentlemen are to hazard their lives on the road to be cheated in this way? We'll have every farthing you have got, or we will strip you to the skin, curse me." His companion, who seemed to have something like compassion for the horror which Jeanie's countenance now expressed, said, "No, no, Tom, this is one of the precious sisters, and we'll take her word, for once, without putting her to the stripping proof--Hark ye, my lass, if ye look up to heaven, and say, this is the last penny you have about ye, why, hang it, we'll let you pass." "I am not free," answered Jeanie, "to say what I have about me, gentlemen, for there's life and death depends on my journey; but if you leave me as much as finds me bread and water, I'll be satisfied, and thank you, and pray for you." "D--n your prayers!" said the shorter fellow, "that's a coin that won't pass with us;" and at the same time made a motion to seize her. "Stay, gentlemen," Ratcliffe's pass suddenly occurring to her; "perhaps you know this paper." "What the devil is she after now, Frank?" said the more savage ruffian--"Do you look at it, for, d--n me if I could read it if it were for the benefit of my clergy." "This is a jark from Jim Ratcliffe," said the taller, having looked at the bit of paper. "The wench must pass by our cutter's law." "I say no," answered his companion; "Rat has left the lay, and turned bloodhound, they say." "We may need a good turn from him all the same," said the taller ruffian again. "But what are we to do then?" said the shorter man--"We promised, you know, to strip the wench, and send her begging back to her own beggarly country, and now you are for letting her go on." "I did not say that," said the other fellow, and whispered to his companion, who replied, "Be alive about it then, and don't keep chattering till some travellers come up to nab us." "You must follow us off the road, young woman," said the taller. "For the love of God!" exclaimed Jeanie, "as you were born of woman, dinna ask me to leave the road! rather take all I have in the world." "What the devil is the wench afraid of?" said the other fellow. "I tell you you shall come to no harm; but if you will not leave the road and come with us, d--n me, but I'll beat your brains out where you stand." "Thou art a rough bear, Tom," said his companion.--"An ye touch her, I'll give ye a shake by the collar shall make the Leicester beans rattle in thy guts.--Never mind him, girl; I will not allow him to lay a finger on you, if you walk quietly on with us; but if you keep jabbering there, d--n me, but I'll leave him to settle it with you." This threat conveyed all that is terrible to the imagination of poor Jeanie, who saw in him that "was of milder mood" her only protection from the most brutal treatment. She, therefore, not only followed him, but even held him by the sleeve, lest he should escape from her; and the fellow, hardened as he was, seemed something touched by these marks of confidence, and repeatedly assured her, that he would suffer her to receive no harm. They conducted their prisoner in a direction leading more and more from the public road, but she observed that they kept a sort of track or by-path, which relieved her from part of her apprehensions, which would have been greatly increased had they not seemed to follow a determined and ascertained route. After about half-an-hour's walking, all three in profound silence, they approached an old barn, which stood on the edge of some cultivated ground, but remote from everything like a habitation. It was itself, however, tenanted, for there was light in the windows. One of the footpads scratched at the door, which was opened by a female, and they entered with their unhappy prisoner. An old woman, who was preparing food by the assistance of a stifling fire of lighted charcoal, asked them, in the name of the devil, what they brought the wench there for, and why they did not strip her and turn her abroad on the common? "Come, come, Mother Blood," said the tall man, "we'll do what's right to oblige you, and we'll do no more; we are bad enough, but not such as you would make us,--devils incarnate." "She has got a jark from Jim Ratcliffe," said the short fellow, "and Frank here won't hear of our putting her through the mill." "No, that I will not, by G--d!" answered Frank; "but if old Mother Blood could keep her here for a little while, or send her back to Scotland, without hurting her, why, I see no harm in that--not I." "I'll tell you what, Frank Levitt," said the old woman, "if you call me Mother Blood again, I'll paint this gully" (and she held a knife up as if about to make good her threat) "in the best blood in your body, my bonny boy." "The price of ointment must be up in the north," said Frank, "that puts Mother Blood so much out of humour." Without a moment's hesitation the fury darted her knife at him with the vengeful dexterity of a wild Indian. As he was on his guard, he avoided the missile by a sudden motion of his head, but it whistled past his ear, and stuck deep in the clay wall of a partition behind. "Come, come, mother," said the robber, seizing her by both wrists, "I shall teach you who's master;" and so saying, he forced the hag backwards by main force, who strove vehemently until she sunk on a bunch of straw, and then, letting go her hands, he held up his finger towards her in the menacing posture by which a maniac is intimidated by his keeper. It appeared to produce the desired effect; for she did not attempt to rise from the seat on which he had placed her, or to resume any measures of actual violence, but wrung her withered hands with impotent rage, and brayed and howled like a demoniac. "I will keep my promise with you, you old devil," said Frank; "the wench shall not go forward on the London road, but I will not have you touch a hair of her head, if it were but for your insolence." This intimation seemed to compose in some degree the vehement passion of the old hag; and while her exclamations and howls sunk into a low, maundering, growling tone of voice, another personage was added to this singular party. "Eh, Frank Levitt," said this new-comer, who entered with a hop, step, and jump, which at once conveyed her from the door into the centre of the party, "were ye killing our mother? or were ye cutting the grunter's weasand that Tam brought in this morning? or have ye been reading your prayers backward, to bring up my auld acquaintance the deil amang ye?" The tone of the speaker was so particular, that Jeanie immediately recognised the woman who had rode foremost of the pair which passed her just before she met the robbers; a circumstance which greatly increased her terror, as it served to show that the mischief designed against her was premeditated, though by whom, or for what cause, she was totally at a loss to conjecture. From the style of her conversation, the reader also may probably acknowledge in this female an old acquaintance in the earlier part of our narrative. "Out, ye mad devil!" said Tom, whom she had disturbed in the middle of a draught of some liquor with which he had found means of accommodating himself; "betwixt your Bess of Bedlam pranks, and your dam's frenzies, a man might live quieter in the devil's ken than here."--And he again resumed the broken jug out of which he had been drinking. "And wha's this o't?" said the mad woman, dancing up to Jeanie Deans, who, although in great terror, yet watched the scene with a resolution to let nothing pass unnoticed which might be serviceable in assisting her to escape, or informing her as to the true nature of her situation, and the danger attending it,--"Wha's this o't?" again exclaimed Madge Wildfire. "Douce Davie Deans, the auld doited whig body's daughter, in a gipsy's barn, and the night setting in? This is a sight for sair een!--Eh, sirs, the falling off o' the godly!--and the t'other sister's in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh; I am very sorry for her, for my share--it's my mother wusses ill to her, and no me--though maybe I hae as muckle cause." "Hark ye, Madge," said the taller ruffian, "you have not such a touch of the devil's blood as the hag your mother, who may be his dam for what I know--take this young woman to your kennel, and do not let the devil enter, though he should ask in God's name." "Ou ay; that I will, Frank," said Madge, taking hold of Jeanie by the arm, and pulling her along; "for it's no for decent Christian young leddies, like her and me, to be keeping the like o' you and Tyburn Tam company at this time o' night. Sae gude-e'en t'ye, sirs, and mony o' them; and may ye a' sleep till the hangman wauken ye, and then it will be weel for the country." She then, as her wild fancy seemed suddenly to prompt her, walked demurely towards her mother, who, seated by the charcoal fire, with the reflection of the red light on her withered and distorted features marked by every evil passion, seemed the very picture of Hecate at her infernal rites; and, suddenly dropping on her knees, said, with the manner of a six years' old child, "Mammie, hear me say my prayers before I go to bed, and say God bless my bonny face, as ye used to do lang syne." "The deil flay the hide o' it to sole his brogues wi'!" said the old lady, aiming a buffet at the supplicant, in answer to her duteous request. The blow missed Madge, who, being probably acquainted by experience with the mode in which her mother was wont to confer her maternal benedictions, slipt out of arm's length with great dexterity and quickness. The hag then started up, and, seizing a pair of old fire-tongs, would have amended her motion, by beating out the brains either of her daughter or Jeanie (she did not seem greatly to care which), when her hand was once more arrested by the man whom they called Frank Levitt, who, seizing her by the shoulder, flung her from him with great violence, exclaiming, "What, Mother Damnable--again, and in my sovereign presence!--Hark ye, Madge of Bedlam! get to your hole with your playfellow, or we shall have the devil to pay here, and nothing to pay him with." Madge took Levitt's advice, retreating as fast as she could, and dragging Jeanie along with her into a sort of recess, partitioned off from the rest of the barn, and filled with straw, from which it appeared that it was intended for the purpose of slumber. The moonlight shone, through an open hole, upon a pillion, a pack-saddle, and one or two wallets, the travelling furniture of Madge and her amiable mother.--"Now, saw ye e'er in your life," said Madge, "sae dainty a chamber of deas? see as the moon shines down sae caller on the fresh strae! There's no a pleasanter cell in Bedlam, for as braw a place as it is on the outside.--Were ye ever in Bedlam?" "No," answered Jeanie faintly, appalled by the question, and the way in which it was put, yet willing to soothe her insane companion, being in circumstances so unhappily precarious, that even the society of this gibbering madwoman seemed a species of protection. "Never in Bedlam?" said Madge, as if with some surprise.--"But ye'll hae been in the cells at Edinburgh!" "Never," repeated Jeanie. "Weel, I think thae daft carles the magistrates send naebody to Bedlam but me--thae maun hae an unco respect for me, for whenever I am brought to them, thae aye hae me back to Bedlam. But troth, Jeanie" (she said this in a very confidential tone), "to tell ye my private mind about it, I think ye are at nae great loss; for the keeper's a cross-patch, and he maun hae it a' his ain gate, to be sure, or he makes the place waur than hell. I often tell him he's the daftest in a' the house.--But what are they making sic a skirling for?--Deil ane o' them's get in here--it wadna be mensfu'! I will sit wi' my back again the door; it winna be that easy stirring me." "Madge!"--"Madge!"--"Madge Wildfire!"--"Madge devil! what have ye done with the horse?" was repeatedly asked by the men without. "He's e'en at his supper, puir thing," answered Madge; "deil an ye were at yours, too, an it were scauding brimstone, and then we wad hae less o' your din." "His supper!" answered the more sulky ruffian--"What d'ye mean by that!--Tell me where he is, or I will knock your Bedlam brains out!" "He's in Gaffer Gablewood's wheat-close, an ye maun ken." "His wheat-close, you crazed jilt!" answered the other, with an accent of great indignation. "O, dear Tyburn Tam, man, what ill will the blades of the young wheat do to the puir nag?" "That is not the question," said the other robber; "but what the country will say to us to-morrow, when they see him in such quarters?--Go, Tom, and bring him in; and avoid the soft ground, my lad; leave no hoof-track behind you." "I think you give me always the fag of it, whatever is to be done," grumbled his companion. "Leap, Laurence, you're long enough," said the other; and the fellow left the barn accordingly, without farther remonstrance. In the meanwhile, Madge had arranged herself for repose on the straw; but still in a half-sitting posture, with her back resting against the door of the hovel, which, as it opened inwards, was in this manner kept shut by the weight of the person. "There's mair shifts by stealing, Jeanie," said Madge Wildfire; "though whiles I can hardly get our mother to think sae. Wha wad hae thought but mysell of making a bolt of my ain back-bane? But it's no sae strong as thae that I hae seen in the Tolbooth at Edinburgh. The hammermen of Edinburgh are to my mind afore the warld for making stancheons, ring-bolts, fetter-bolts, bars, and locks. And they arena that bad at girdles for carcakes neither, though the Cu'ross hammermen have the gree for that. My mother had ance a bonny Cu'ross girdle, and I thought to have baked carcakes on it for my puir wean that's dead and gane nae fair way--But we maun a' dee, ye ken, Jeanie--You Cameronian bodies ken that brawlies; and ye're for making a hell upon earth that ye may be less unwillin' to part wi' it. But as touching Bedlam that ye were speaking about, I'se ne'er recommend it muckle the tae gate or the other, be it right--be it wrang. But ye ken what the sang says." And, pursuing the unconnected and floating wanderings of her mind, she sung aloud-- "In the bonny cells of Bedlam, Ere I was ane-and-twenty, I had hempen bracelets strong, And merry whips, ding-dong, And prayer and fasting plenty. "Weel, Jeanie, I am something herse the night, and I canna sing muckle mair; and troth, I think, I am gaun to sleep." She drooped her head on her breast, a posture from which Jeanie, who would have given the world for an opportunity of quiet to consider the means and the probability of her escape, was very careful not to disturb her. After nodding, however, for a minute'or two, with her eyes half-closed, the unquiet and restless spirit of her malady again assailed Madge. She raised her head, and spoke, but with a lowered tone, which was again gradually overcome by drowsiness, to which the fatigue of a day's journey on horseback had probably given unwonted occasion,--"I dinna ken what makes me sae sleepy--I amaist never sleep till my bonny Lady Moon gangs till her bed--mair by token, when she's at the full, ye ken, rowing aboon us yonder in her grand silver coach--I have danced to her my lane sometimes for very joy--and whiles dead folk came and danced wi' me--the like o' Jock Porteous, or ony body I had ken'd when I was living--for ye maun ken I was ance dead mysell." Here the poor maniac sung, in a low and wild tone, "My banes are buried in yon kirkyard Sae far ayont the sea, And it is but my blithesome ghaist That's speaking now to thee. "But after a', Jeanie, my woman, naebody kens weel wha's living and wha's dead--or wha's gone to Fairyland--there's another question. Whiles I think my puir bairn's dead--ye ken very weel it's buried--but that signifies naething. I have had it on my knee a hundred times, and a hundred till that, since it was buried--and how could that be were it dead, ye ken?--it's merely impossible."--And here, some conviction half-overcoming the reveries of her imagination, she burst into a fit of crying and ejaculation, "Wae's me! wae's me! wae's me!" till at length she moaned and sobbed herself into a deep sleep, which was soon intimated by her breathing hard, leaving Jeanie to her own melancholy reflections and observations. CHAPTER SIXTH. Bind her quickly; or, by this steel, I'll tell, although I truss for company. Fletcher. The imperfect light which shone into the window enabled Jeanie to see that there was scarcely any chance of making her escape in that direction; for the aperture was high in the wall, and so narrow, that, could she have climbed up to it, she might well doubt whether it would have permitted her to pass her body through it. An unsuccessful attempt to escape would be sure to draw down worse treatment than she now received, and she, therefore, resolved to watch her opportunity carefully ere making such a perilous effort. For this purpose she applied herself to the ruinous clay partition, which divided the hovel in which she now was from the rest of the waste barn. It was decayed and full of cracks and chinks, one of which she enlarged with her fingers, cautiously and without noise, until she could obtain a plain view of the old hag and the taller ruffian, whom they called Levitt, seated together beside the decayed fire of charcoal, and apparently engaged in close conference. She was at first terrified by the sight; for the features of the old woman had a hideous cast of hardened and inveterate malice and ill-humour, and those of the man, though naturally less unfavourable, were such as corresponded well with licentious habits, and a lawless profession. "But I remembered," said Jeanie, "my worthy fathers tales of a winter evening, how he was confined with the blessed martyr, Mr. James Renwick, who lifted up the fallen standard of the true reformed Kirk of Scotland, after the worthy and renowned Daniel Cameron, our last blessed banner-man, had fallen among the swords of the wicked at Airsmoss, and how the very hearts of the wicked malefactors and murderers, whom they were confined withal, were melted like wax at the sound of their doctrine: and I bethought mysell, that the same help that was wi' them in their strait, wad be wi' me in mine, an I could but watch the Lord's time and opportunity for delivering my feet from their snare; and I minded the Scripture of the blessed Psalmist, whilk he insisteth on, as weel in the forty-second as in the forty-third psalm--'Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.'" Strengthened in a mind naturally calm, sedate, and firm, by the influence of religious confidence, this poor captive was enabled to attend to, and comprehend, a great part of an interesting conversation which passed betwixt those into whose hands she had fallen, notwithstanding that their meaning was partly disguised by the occasional use of cant terms, of which Jeanie knew not the import, by the low tone in which they spoke, and by their mode of supplying their broken phrases by shrugs and signs, as is usual amongst those of their disorderly profession. The man opened the conversation by saying, "Now, dame, you see I am true to my friend. I have not forgot that you _planked a chury,_* which helped me through the bars of the Castle of York, and I came to do your work without asking questions; for one good turn deserves another. * Concealed a knife. But now that Madge, who is as loud as Tom of Lincoln, is somewhat still, and this same Tyburn Neddie is shaking his heels after the old nag, why, you must tell me what all this is about, and what's to be done--for d--n me if I touch the girl, or let her be touched, and she with Jim Rat's pass, too." "Thou art an honest lad, Frank," answered the old woman, "but e'en too good for thy trade; thy tender heart will get thee into trouble. I will see ye gang up Holborn Hill backward, and a' on the word of some silly loon that could never hae rapped to ye had ye drawn your knife across his weasand." "You may be balked there, old one," answered the robber; "I have known many a pretty lad cut short in his first summer upon the road, because he was something hasty with his flats and sharps. Besides, a man would fain live out his two years with a good conscience. So, tell me what all this is about, and what's to be done for you that one can do decently?" "Why, you must know, Frank--but first taste a snap of right Hollands." She drew a flask from her pocket, and filled the fellow a large bumper, which he pronounced to be the right thing.--"You must know, then, Frank--wunna ye mend your hand?" again offering the flask. "No, no,--when a woman wants mischief from you, she always begins by filling you drunk. D--n all Dutch courage. What I do I will do soberly--I'll last the longer for that too." "Well, then, you must know," resumed the old woman, without any further attempts at propitiation, "that this girl is going to London." Here Jeanie could only distinguish the word sister. The robber answered in a louder tone, "Fair enough that; and what the devil is your business with it?" "Business enough, I think. If the b--queers the noose, that silly cull will marry her." "And who cares if he does?" said the man. "Who cares, ye donnard Neddie! I care; and I will strangle her with my own hands, rather than she should come to Madge's preferment." "Madge's preferment! Does your old blind eyes see no farther than that? If he is as you say, dye think he'll ever marry a moon-calf like Madge? Ecod, that's a good one--Marry Madge Wildfire!--Ha! ha! ha!" "Hark ye, ye crack-rope padder, born beggar, and bred thief!" replied the hag, "suppose he never marries the wench, is that a reason he should marry another, and that other to hold my daughter's place, and she crazed, and I a beggar, and all along of him? But I know that of him will hang him--I know that of him will hang him, if he had a thousand lives--I know that of him will hang--hang--hang him!" She grinned as she repeated and dwelt upon the fatal monosyllable, with the emphasis of a vindictive fiend. "Then why don't you hang--hang--hang him?" said Frank, repeating her words contemptuously. "There would be more sense in that, than in wreaking yourself here upon two wenches that have done you and your daughter no ill." "No ill?" answered the old woman--"and he to marry this jail-bird, if ever she gets her foot loose!" "But as there is no chance of his marrying a bird of your brood, I cannot, for my soul, see what you have to do with all this," again replied the robber, shrugging his shoulders. "Where there is aught to be got, I'll go as far as my neighbours, but I hate mischief for mischiefs sake." "And would you go nae length for revenge?" said the hag--"for revenge--the sweetest morsel to the mouth that over was cooked in hell!" "The devil may keep it for his own eating, then," said the robber; "for hang me if I like the sauce he dresses it with." "Revenge!" continued the old woman; "why, it is the best reward the devil gives us for our time here and hereafter. I have wrought hard for it--I have suffered for it--and I have sinned for it--and I will have it,--or there is neither justice in heaven or in hell!" Levitt had by this time lighted a pipe, and was listening with great composure to the frantic and vindictive ravings of the old hag. He was too much, hardened by his course of life to be shocked with them--too indifferent, and probably too stupid, to catch any part of their animation or energy. "But, mother," he said, after a pause, "still I say, that if revenge is your wish, you should take it on the young fellow himself." "I wish I could," she said, drawing in her breath, with the eagerness of a thirsty person while mimicking the action of drinking--"I wish I could--but no--I cannot--I cannot." "And why not?--You would think little of peaching and hanging him for this Scotch affair.--Rat me, one might have milled the Bank of England, and less noise about it." "I have nursed him at this withered breast," answered the old woman, folding her hands on her bosom, as if pressing an infant to it, "and, though he has proved an adder to me--though he has been the destruction of me and mine--though he has made me company for the devil, if there be a devil, and food for hell, if there be such a place, yet I cannot take his life.--No, I cannot," she continued, with an appearance of rage against herself; "I have thought of it--I have tried it--but, Francis Levitt, I canna gang through wi't--Na, na--he was the first bairn I ever nurst--ill I had been--and man can never ken what woman feels for the bairn she has held first to her bosom!" "To be sure," said Levitt, "we have no experience; but, mother, they say you ha'n't been so kind to other bairns, as you call them, that have come in your way.--Nay, d--n me, never lay your hand on the whittle, for I am captain and leader here, and I will have no rebellion." The hag, whose first motion had been, upon hearing the question, to grasp the haft of a large knife, now unclosed her hand, stole it away from the weapon, and suffered it to fall by her side, while she proceeded with a sort of smile--"Bairns! ye are joking, lad--wha wad touch bairns? Madge, puir thing, had a misfortune wi' ane--and the t'other"--Here her voice sunk so much, that Jeanie, though anxiously upon the watch, could not catch a word she said, until she raised her tone at the conclusion of the sentence--"So Madge, in her daffin', threw it into the Nor'-lock, I trow." Madge, whose slumbers, like those of most who labour under mental malady, had been short, and were easily broken, now made herself heard from her place of repose. "Indeed, mother, that's a great lie, for I did nae sic thing." "Hush, thou hellicat devil," said her mother--"By Heaven! the other wench will be waking too." "That may be dangerous," said Frank; and he rose, and followed Meg Murdockson across the floor. "Rise," said the hag to her daughter, "or I sall drive the knife between the planks into the Bedlam back of thee!" Apparently she at the same time seconded her threat by pricking her with the point of a knife, for Madge, with a faint scream, changed her place, and the door opened. [Illustration: Jennie in the Outlaws Hut--80] The old woman held a candle in one hand, and a knife in the other. Levitt appeared behind her, whether with a view of preventing, or assisting her in any violence she might meditate, could not be well guessed. Jeanie's presence of mind stood her friend in this dreadful crisis. She had resolution enough to maintain the attitude and manner of one who sleeps profoundly, and to regulate even her breathing, notwithstanding the agitation of instant terror, so as to correspond with her attitude. The old woman passed the light across her eyes; and although Jeanie's fears were so powerfully awakened by this movement, that she often declared afterwards, that she thought she saw the figures of her destined murderers through her closed eyelids, she had still the resolution to maintain the feint, on which her safety perhaps depended. Levitt looked at her with fixed attention; he then turned the old woman out of the place, and followed her himself. Having regained the outward apartment, and seated themselves, Jeanie heard the highwayman say, to her no small relief, "She's as fast as if she were in Bedfordshire.--Now, old Meg, d--n me if I can understand a glim of this story of yours, or what good it will do you to hang the one wench and torment the other; but, rat me, I will be true to my friend, and serve ye the way ye like it. I see it will be a bad job; but I do think I could get her down to Surfleet on the Wash, and so on board Tom Moonshine's neat lugger, and keep her out of the way three or four weeks, if that will please ye--But d--n me if any one shall harm her, unless they have a mind to choke on a brace of blue plums.--It's a cruel, bad job, and I wish you and it, Meg, were both at the devil." "Never mind, hinny Levitt," said the old woman; "you are a ruffler, and will have a' your ain gate--She shanna gang to heaven an hour sooner for me; I carena whether she live or die--it's her sister--ay, her sister!" "Well, we'll say no more about it; I hear Tom coming in. We'll couch a hogshead,* and so better had you." * Lay ourselves down to sleep. They retired to repose accordingly, and all was silent in this asylum of iniquity. Jeanie lay for a long time awake. At break of day she heard the two ruffians leave the barn, after whispering to the old woman for some time. The sense that she was now guarded by persons of her own sex gave her some confidence, and irresistible lassitude at length threw her into slumber. When the captive awakened, the sun was high in heaven, and the morning considerably advanced. Madge Wildfire was still in the hovel which had served them for the night, and immediately bid her good-morning, with her usual air of insane glee. "And dye ken, lass," said Madge, "there's queer things chanced since ye hae been in the land of Nod. The constables hae been here, woman, and they met wi' my minnie at the door, and they whirl'd her awa to the Justice's about the man's wheat.--Dear! thae English churls think as muckle about a blade of wheat or grass, as a Scotch laird does about his maukins and his muir-poots. Now, lass, if ye like, we'll play them a fine jink; we will awa out and take a walk--they will mak unco wark when they miss us, but we can easily be back by dinner time, or before dark night at ony rate, and it will be some frolic and fresh air.--But maybe ye wad like to take some breakfast, and then lie down again? I ken by mysell, there's whiles I can sit wi' my head in my hand the haill day, and havena a word to cast at a dog--and other whiles, that I canna sit still a moment. That's when the folk think me warst, but I am aye canny eneugh--ye needna be feared to walk wi' me." Had Madge Wildfire been the most raging lunatic, instead of possessing a doubtful, uncertain, and twilight sort of rationality, varying, probably, from the influence of the most trivial causes, Jeanie would hardly have objected to leave a place of captivity, where she had so much to apprehend. She eagerly assured Madge that she had no occasion for further sleep, no desire whatever for eating; and, hoping internally that she was not guilty of sin in doing so, she flattered her keeper's crazy humour for walking in the woods. "It's no a'thegither for that neither," said poor Madge; "but I am judging ye will wun the better out o' thae folk's hands; no that they are a'thegither bad folk neither, but they have queer ways wi' them, and I whiles dinna think it has ever been weel wi' my mother and me since we kept sic-like company." With the haste, the joy, the fear, and the hope of a liberated captive, Jeanie snatched up her little bundle, followed Madge into the free air, and eagerly looked round her for a human habitation; but none was to be seen. The ground was partly cultivated, and partly left in its natural state, according as the fancy of the slovenly agriculturists had decided. In its natural state it was waste, in some places covered with dwarf trees and bushes, in others swamp, and elsewhere firm and dry downs or pasture grounds. Jeanie's active mind next led her to conjecture which way the high-road lay, whence she had been forced. If she regained that public road, she imagined she must soon meet some person, or arrive at some house, where she might tell her story, and request protection. But, after a glance around her, she saw with regret that she had no means whatever of directing her course with any degree of certainty, and that she was still in dependence upon her crazy companion. "Shall we not walk upon the high-road?" said she to Madge, in such a tone as a nurse uses to coax a child. "It's brawer walking on the road than amang thae wild bushes and whins." Madge, who was walking very fast, stopped at this question, and looked at Jeanie with a sudden and scrutinising glance, that seemed to indicate complete acquaintance with her purpose. "Aha, lass!" she exclaimed, "are ye gaun to guide us that gate?--Ye'll be for making your heels save your head, I am judging." Jeanie hesitated for a moment, on hearing her companion thus express herself, whether she had not better take the hint, and try to outstrip and get rid of her. But she knew not in which direction to fly; she was by no means sure that she would prove the swiftest, and perfectly conscious that in the event of her being pursued and overtaken, she would be inferior to the madwoman in strength. She therefore gave up thoughts for the present of attempting to escape in that manner, and, saying a few words to allay Madge's suspicions, she followed in anxious apprehension the wayward path by which her guide thought proper to lead her. Madge, infirm of purpose, and easily reconciled to the present scene, whatever it was, began soon to talk with her usual diffuseness of ideas. "It's a dainty thing to be in the woods on a fine morning like this! I like it far better than the town, for there isna a wheen duddie bairns to be crying after ane, as if ane were a warld's wonder, just because ane maybe is a thought bonnier and better put-on than their neighbours--though, Jeanie, ye suld never be proud o' braw claiths, or beauty neither--wae's me! they're but a snare--I ance thought better o'them, and what came o't?" "Are ye sure ye ken the way ye are taking us?" said Jeanie, who began to imagine that she was getting deeper into the woods and more remote from the high-road. "Do I ken the road?--Wasna I mony a day living here, and what for shouldna I ken the road? I might hae forgotten, too, for it was afore my accident; but there are some things ane can never forget, let them try it as muckle as they like." By this time they had gained the deepest part of a patch of woodland. The trees were a little separated from each other, and at the foot of one of them, a beautiful poplar, was a hillock of moss, such as the poet of Grasmere has described. So soon as she arrived at this spot, Madge Wildfire, joining her hands above her head with a loud scream that resembled laughter, flung herself all at once upon the spot, and remained lying there motionless. Jeanie's first idea was to take the opportunity of flight; but her desire to escape yielded for a moment to apprehension for the poor insane being, who, she thought, might perish for want of relief. With an effort, which in her circumstances, might be termed heroic, she stooped down, spoke in a soothing tone, and endeavoured to raise up the forlorn creature. She effected this with difficulty, and as she placed her against the tree in a sitting posture, she observed with surprise, that her complexion, usually florid, was now deadly pale, and that her face was bathed in tears. Notwithstanding her own extreme danger, Jeanie was affected by the situation of her companion; and the rather, that, through the whole train of her wavering and inconsistent state of mind and line of conduct, she discerned a general colour of kindness towards herself, for which she felt gratitude. "Let me alane!--let me alane!" said the poor young woman, as her paroxysm of sorrow began to abate--"Let me alane--it does me good to weep. I canna shed tears but maybe ance or twice a year, and I aye come to wet this turf with them, that the flowers may grow fair, and the grass may be green." "But what is the matter with you?" said Jeanie--"Why do you weep so bitterly?" "There's matter enow," replied the lunatic,--"mair than ae puir mind can bear, I trow. Stay a bit, and I'll tell you a' about it; for I like ye, Jeanie Deans--a'body spoke weel about ye when we lived in the Pleasaunts-- And I mind aye the drink o' milk ye gae me yon day, when I had been on Arthur's Seat for four-and-twenty hours, looking for the ship that somebody was sailing in." These words recalled to Jeanie's recollection, that, in fact, she had been one morning much frightened by meeting a crazy young woman near her father's house at an early hour, and that, as she appeared to be harmless, her apprehension had been changed into pity, and she had relieved the unhappy wanderer with some food, which she devoured with the haste of a famished person. The incident, trifling in itself, was at present of great importance, if it should be found to have made a favourable and permanent impression in her favour on the mind of the object of her charity. "Yes," said Madge, "I'll tell ye a' about it, for ye are a decent man's daughter--Douce Davie Deans, ye ken--and maybe ye'll can teach me to find out the narrow way, and the straight path, for I have been burning bricks in Egypt, and walking through the weary wilderness of Sinai, for lang and mony a day. But whenever I think about mine errors, I am like to cover my lips for shame."--Here she looked up and smiled.--"It's a strange thing now--I hae spoke mair gude words to you in ten minutes, than I wad speak to my mother in as mony years--it's no that I dinna think on them--and whiles they are just at my tongue's end, but then comes the devil, and brushes my lips with his black wing, and lays his broad black loof on my mouth--for a black loof it is, Jeanie--and sweeps away a' my gude thoughts, and dits up my gude words, and pits a wheen fule sangs and idle vanities in their place." "Try, Madge," said Jeanie,--"try to settle your mind and make your breast clean, and you'll find your heart easier.--Just resist the devil, and he will flee from you--and mind that, as my worthy father tells me, there is nae devil sae deceitfu' as our ain wandering thoughts." "And that's true too, lass," said Madge, starting up; "and I'll gang a gate where the devil daurna follow me; and it's a gate that you will like dearly to gang--but I'll keep a fast haud o' your arm, for fear Apollyon should stride across the path, as he did in the Pilgrim's Progress." Accordingly she got up, and, taking Jeanie by the arm, began to walk forward at a great pace; and soon, to her companion's no small joy, came into a marked path, with the meanders of which she seemed perfectly acquainted. Jeanie endeavoured to bring her back to the confessional, but the fancy was gone by. In fact, the mind of this deranged being resembled nothing so much as a quantity of dry leaves, which may for a few minutes remain still, but are instantly discomposed and put in motion by the first casual breath of air. She had now got John Bunyan's parable into her head, to the exclusion of everything else, and on she went with great volubility. "Did ye never read the Pilgrim's Progress? And you shall be the woman, Christiana, and I will be the maiden, Mercy--for ye ken Mercy was of the fairer countenance, and the more alluring than her companion--and if I had my little messan dog here, it would be Great-heart, their guide, ye ken, for he was e'en as bauld, that he wad bark at ony thing twenty times his size; and that was e'en the death of him, for he bit Corporal MacAlpine's heels ae morning when they were hauling me to the guard-house, and Corporal MacAlpine killed the bit faithfu' thing wi' his Lochaber axe--deil pike the Highland banes o' him." "O fie! Madge," said Jeanie, "ye should not speak such words." "It's very true," said Madge, shaking her head; "but then I maunna think o' my puir bit doggie, Snap, when I saw it lying dying in the gutter. But it's just as weel, for it suffered baith cauld and hunger when it was living, and in the grave there is rest for a' things--rest for the doggie, and my puir bairn, and me." "Your bairn?" said Jeanie, conceiving that by speaking on such a topic, supposing it to be a real one, she could not fail to bring her companion to a more composed temper. She was mistaken, however, for Madge coloured, and replied with some anger, "_My_ bairn? ay, to be sure, my bairn. Whatfor shouldna I hae a bairn and lose a bairn too, as weel as your bonnie tittie, the Lily of St. Leonard's?" The answer struck Jeanie with some alarm, and she was anxious to soothe the irritation she had unwittingly given occasion to. "I am very sorry for your misfortune" "Sorry! what wad ye be sorry for?" answered Madge. "The bairn was a blessing--that is, Jeanie, it wad hae been a blessing if it hadna been for my mother; but my mother's a queer woman.--Ye see, there was an auld carle wi' a bit land, and a gude clat o' siller besides, just the very picture of old Mr. Feeblemind or Mr. Ready-to-halt, that Great-heart delivered from Slaygood the giant, when he was rifling him and about to pick his bones, for Slaygood was of the nature of the flesh-eaters--and Great-heart killed Giant Despair too--but I am doubting Giant Despair's come alive again, for a' the story book--I find him busy at my heart whiles." "Weel, and so the auld carle," said Jeanie, for she was painfully interested in getting to the truth of Madge's history, which she could not but suspect was in some extraordinary way linked and entwined with the fate of her sister. She was also desirous, if possible, to engage her companion in some narrative which might be carried on in a lower tone of voice, for she was in great apprehension lest the elevated notes of Madge's conversation should direct her mother or the robbers in search of them. "And so the auld carle," said Madge, repeating her words--"I wish ye had seen him stoiting about, aff ae leg on to the other, wi' a kind o' dot-and-go-one sort o' motion, as if ilk ane o' his twa legs had belanged to sindry folk--but Gentle George could take him aff brawly--Eh, as I used to laugh to see George gang hip-hop like him!--I dinna ken, I think I laughed heartier then than what I do now, though maybe no just sae muckle." "And who was Gentle George?" said Jeanie, endeavouring to bring her back to her story. "O, he was Geordie Robertson, ye ken, when he was in Edinburgh; but that's no his right name neither--His name is--But what is your business wi' his name?" said she, as if upon sudden recollection, "What have ye to do asking for folk's names?--Have ye a mind I should scour my knife between your ribs, as my mother says?" As this was spoken with a menacing tone and gesture, Jeanie hastened to protest her total innocence of purpose in the accidental question which she had asked, and Madge Wildfire went on somewhat pacified. "Never ask folk's names, Jeanie--it's no civil--I hae seen half-a-dozen o' folk in my mother's at ance, and ne'er ane a' them ca'd the ither by his name; and Daddie Ratton says, it is the most uncivil thing may be, because the bailie bodies are aye asking fashions questions, when ye saw sic a man, or sic a man; and if ye dinna ken their names, ye ken there can be nae mair speerd about it." "In what strange school," thought Jeanie to herself, "has this poor creature been bred up, where such remote precautions are taken against the pursuits of justice? What would my father or Reuben Butler think if I were to tell them there are sic folk in the world? And to abuse the simplicity of this demented creature! Oh, that I were but safe at hame amang mine ain leal and true people! and I'll bless God, while I have breath, that placed me amongst those who live in His fear, and under the shadow of His wing." She was interrupted by the insane laugh of Madge Wildfire, as she saw a magpie hop across the path. "See there!--that was the gate my auld joe used to cross the country, but no just sae lightly--he hadna wings to help his auld legs, I trow; but I behoved to have married him for a' that, Jeanie, or my mother wad hae been the dead o' me. But then came in the story of my poor bairn, and my mother thought he wad be deaved wi' it's skirling, and she pat it away in below the bit bourock of turf yonder, just to be out o' the gate; and I think she buried my best wits with it, for I have never been just mysell since. And only think, Jeanie, after my mother had been at a' these pains, the auld doited body Johnny Drottle turned up his nose, and wadna hae aught to say to me! But it's little I care for him, for I have led a merry life ever since, and ne'er a braw gentleman looks at me but ye wad think he was gaun to drop off his horse for mere love of me. I have ken'd some o' them put their hand in their pocket, and gie me as muckle as sixpence at a time, just for my weel-faured face." This speech gave Jeanie a dark insight into Madge's history. She had been courted by a wealthy suitor, whose addresses her mother had favoured, notwithstanding the objection of old age and deformity. She had been seduced by some profligate, and, to conceal her shame and promote the advantageous match she had planned, her mother had not hesitated to destroy the offspring of their intrigue. That the consequence should be the total derangement of amind which was constitutionally unsettled by giddiness and vanity, was extremely natural; and such was, in fact, the history of Madge Wildfire's insanity. CHAPTER SEVENTH. So free from danger, free from fear They crossed the court--right glad they were. Christabel. Pursuing the path which Madge had chosen, Jeanie Deans observed, to her no small delight, that marks of more cultivation appeared, and the thatched roofs of houses, with their blue smoke arising in little columns, were seen embosomed in a tuft of trees at some distance. The track led in that direction, and Jeanie, therefore, resolved, while Madge continued to pursue it, that she would ask her no questions; having had the penetration to observe, that by doing so she ran the risk of irritating her guide, or awakening suspicions, to the impressions of which, persons in Madge's unsettled state of mind are particularly liable. Madge, therefore, uninterrupted, went on with the wild disjointed chat which her rambling imagination suggested; a mood in which she was much more communicative respecting her own history, and that of others, than when there was any attempt made, by direct queries, or cross-examinations, to extract information on these subjects. "It's a queer thing," she said, "but whiles I can speak about the bit bairn and the rest of it, just as if it had been another body's, and no my ain; and whiles I am like to break my heart about it--Had you ever a bairn, Jeanie?" Jeanie replied in the negative. "Ay; but your sister had, though--and I ken what came o't too." "In the name of heavenly mercy," said Jeanie, forgetting the line of conduct which she had hitherto adopted, "tell me but what became of that unfortunate babe, and" Madge stopped, looked at her gravely and fixedly, and then broke into a great fit of laughing--"Aha, lass,--catch me if you can--I think it's easy to gar you trow ony thing.--How suld I ken onything o' your sister's wean? Lasses suld hae naething to do wi' weans till they are married--and then a' the gossips and cummers come in and feast as if it were the blithest day in the warld.--They say maidens' bairns are weel guided. I wot that wasna true of your tittie's and mine; but these are sad tales to tell.--I maun just sing a bit to keep up my heart--It's a sang that Gentle George made on me lang syne, when I went with him to Lockington wake, to see him act upon a stage, in fine clothes, with the player folk. He might hae dune waur than married me that night as he promised--better wed over the mixen* as over the moor, as they say in Yorkshire-- * A homely proverb, signifying better wed a neighbour than one fetched from a distance.--Mixen signifies dunghill. he may gang farther and fare waur--but that's a' ane to the sang, 'I'm Madge of the country, I'm Madge of the town, And I'm Madge of the lad I am blithest to own-- The Lady of Beeve in diamonds may shine, But has not a heart half so lightsome as mine. 'I am Queen of the Wake, and I'm Lady of May, And I lead the blithe ring round the May-pole to-day; The wildfire that flashes so fair and so free, Was never so bright, or so bonny, as me.' "I like that the best o' a' my sangs," continued the maniac, "because he made it. I am often singing it, and that's maybe the reason folk ca' me Madge Wildfire. I aye answer to the name, though it's no my ain, for what's the use of making a fash?" "But ye shouldna sing upon the Sabbath at least," said Jeanie, who, amid all her distress and anxiety, could not help being scandalised at the deportment of her companion, especially as they now approached near to the little village. "Ay! is this Sunday?" said Madge. "My mother leads sic a life, wi' turning night into day, that ane loses a' count o' the days o' the week, and disna ken Sunday frae Saturday. Besides, it's a' your whiggery--in England, folk sings when they like--And then, ye ken, you are Christiana and I am Mercy--and ye ken, as they went on their way, they sang."--And she immediately raised one of John Bunyan's ditties:-- "He that is down need fear no fall, He that is low no pride, He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide. "Fulness to such a burthen is That go on pilgrimage; Here little, and hereafter bliss, Is best from age to age." "And do ye ken, Jeanie, I think there's much truth in that book, the Pilgrim's Progress. The boy that sings that song was feeding his father's sheep in the Valley of Humiliation, and Mr. Great-heart says, that he lived a merrier life, and had more of the herb called heart's-ease in his bosom, than they that wear silk and velvet like me, and are as bonny as I am." Jeanie Deans had never read the fanciful and delightful parable to which Madge alluded. Bunyan was, indeed, a rigid Calvinist, but then he was also a member of a Baptist congregation, so that his works had no place on David Deans's shelf of divinity. Madge, however, at some time of her life, had been well acquainted, as it appeared, with the most popular of his performances, which, indeed, rarely fails to make a deep impression upon children, and people of the lower rank. "I am sure," she continued, "I may weel say I am come out of the city of Destruction, for my mother is Mrs. Bat's-eyes, that dwells at Deadman's corner; and Frank Levitt, and Tyburn Tam, they may be likened to Mistrust and Guilt, that came galloping up, and struck the poor pilgrim to the ground with a great club, and stole a bag of silver, which was most of his spending money, and so have they done to many, and will do to more. But now we will gang to the Interpreter's house, for I ken a man that will play the Interpreter right weel; for he has eyes lifted up to Heaven, the best of books in his hand, the law of truth written on his lips, and he stands as if he pleaded wi' men--Oh, if I had minded what he had said to me, I had never been the cutaway creature that I am!--But it is all over now.--But we'll knock at the gate, and then the keeper will admit Christiana, but Mercy will be left out--and then I'll stand at the door, trembling and crying, and then Christiana--that's you, Jeanie--will intercede for me; and then Mercy--that's me, ye ken, will faint; and then the Interpreter--yes, the Interpreter, that's Mr. Staunton himself, will come out and take me--that's poor, lost, demented me--by the hand, and give me a pomegranate, and a piece of honeycomb, and a small bottle of spirits, to stay my fainting--and then the good times will come back again, and we'll be the happiest folk you ever saw." In the midst of the confused assemblage of ideas indicated in this speech, Jeanie thought she saw a serious purpose on the part of Madge, to endeavour to obtain the pardon and countenance of some one whom she had offended; an attempt the most likely of all others to bring them once more into contact with law and legal protection. She, therefore, resolved to be guided by her while she was in so hopeful a disposition, and act for her own safety according to circumstances. They were now close by the village, one of those beautiful scenes which are so often found in merry England, where the cottages, instead of being built in two direct lines on each side of a dusty high-road, stand in detached groups, interspersed not only with large oaks and elms, but with fruit-trees, so many of which were at this time in flourish, that the grove seemed enamelled with their crimson and white blossoms. In the centre of the hamlet stood the parish church, and its little Gothic tower, from which at present was heard the Sunday chime of bells. "We will wait here until the folk are a' in the church--they ca' the kirk a church in England, Jeanie, be sure you mind that--for if I was gaun forward amang them, a' the gaitts o' boys and lasses wad be crying at Madge Wildfire's tail, the little hell-rakers! and the beadle would be as hard upon us as if it was our fault. I like their skirting as ill as he does, I can tell him; I'm sure I often wish there was a het peat doun their throats when they set them up that gate." Conscious of the disorderly appearance of her own dress after the adventure of the preceding night, and of the grotesque habit and demeanour of her guide, and sensible how important it was to secure an attentive and impatient audience to her strange story from some one who might have the means to protect her, Jeanie readily acquiesced in Madge's proposal to rest under the trees, by which they were still somewhat screened, until the commencement of service should give them an opportunity of entering the hamlet without attracting a crowd around them. She made the less opposition, that Madge had intimated that this was not the village where her mother was in custody, and that the two squires of the pad were absent in a different direction. She sate herself down, therefore, at the foot of an oak, and by the assistance of a placid fountain, which had been dammed up for the use of the villagers, and which served her as a natural mirror, she began--no uncommon thing with a Scottish maiden of her rank--to arrange her toilette in the open air, and bring her dress, soiled and disordered as it was, into such order as the place and circumstances admitted. She soon perceived reason, however, to regret that she had set about this task, however decent and necessary, in the present time and society. Madge Wildfire, who, among other indications of insanity, had a most overweening opinion of those charms, to which, in fact, she had owed her misery, and whose mind, like a raft upon a lake, was agitated and driven about at random by each fresh impulse, no sooner beheld Jeanie begin to arrange her hair, place her bonnet in order, rub the dust from her shoes and clothes, adjust her neck-handkerchief and mittans, and so forth, than with imitative zeal she began to bedizen and trick herself out with shreds and remnants of beggarly finery, which she took out of a little bundle, and which, when disposed around her person, made her appearance ten times more fantastic and apish than it had been before. Jeanie groaned in spirit, but dared not interfere in a matter so delicate. Across the man's cap or riding hat which she wore, Madge placed a broken and soiled white feather, intersected with one which had been shed from the train of a peacock. To her dress, which was a kind of riding-habit, she stitched, pinned, and otherwise secured, a large furbelow of artificial flowers, all crushed, wrinkled and dirty, which had at first bedecked a lady of quality, then descended to her Abigail, and dazzled the inmates of the servants' hall. A tawdry scarf of yellow silk, trimmed with tinsel and spangles, which had seen as hard service, and boasted as honourable a transmission, was next flung over one shoulder, and fell across her person in the manner of a shoulder-belt, or baldrick. Madge then stripped off the coarse ordinary shoes, which she wore, and replaced them by a pair of dirty satin ones, spangled and embroidered to match the scarf, and furnished with very high heels. She had cut a willow switch in her morning's walk, almost as long as a boy's fishing-rod. This she set herself seriously to peel, and when it was transformed into such a wand as the Treasurer or High Steward bears on public occasions, she told Jeanie that she thought they now looked decent, as young women should do upon the Sunday morning, and that, as the bells had done ringing, she was willing to conduct her to the Interpreter's house. Jeanie sighed heavily, to think it should be her lot on the Lord's day, and during kirk time too, to parade the street of an inhabited village with so very grotesque a comrade; but necessity had no law, since, without a positive quarrel with the madwoman, which, in the circumstances, would have been very unadvisable, she could see no means of shaking herself free of her society. As for poor Madge, she was completely elated with personal vanity, and the most perfect satisfaction concerning her own dazzling dress, and superior appearance. They entered the hamlet without being observed, except by one old woman, who, being nearly "high-gravel blind," was only conscious that something very fine and glittering was passing by, and dropped as deep a reverence to Madge as she would have done to a countess. This filled up the measure of Madge's self-approbation. She minced, she ambled, she smiled, she simpered, and waved Jeanie Deans forward with the condescension of a noble _chaperone,_ who has undertaken the charge of a country miss on her first journey to the capital. Jeanie followed in patience, and with her eyes fixed on the ground, that she might save herself the mortification of seeing her companion's absurdities; but she started when, ascending two or three steps, she found herself in the churchyard, and saw that Madge was making straight for the door of the church. As Jeanie had no mind to enter the congregation in such company, she walked aside from the pathway, and said in a decided tone, "Madge, I will wait here till the church comes out--you may go in by yourself if you have a mind." As she spoke these words, she was about to seat herself upon one of the grave-stones. Madge was a little before Jeanie when she turned aside; but, suddenly changing her course, she followed her with long strides, and, with every feature inflamed with passion, overtook and seized her by the arm. "Do ye think, ye ungratefu' wretch, that I am gaun to let you sit doun upon my father's grave? The deil settle ye doun, if ye dinna rise and come into the Interpreter's house, that's the house of God, wi' me, but I'll rive every dud aft your back!" She adapted the action to the phrase; for with one clutch she stripped Jeanie of her straw bonnet and a handful of her hair to boot, and threw it up into an old yew-tree, where it stuck fast. Jeanie's first impulse was to scream, but conceiving she might receive deadly harm before she could obtain the assistance of anyone, notwithstanding the vicinity of the church, she thought it wiser to follow the madwoman into the congregation, where she might find some means of escape from her, or at least be secured against her violence. But when she meekly intimated her consent to follow Madge, her guide's uncertain brain had caught another train of ideas. She held Jeanie fast with one hand, and with the other pointed to the inscription on the grave-stone, and commanded her to read it. Jeanie obeyed, and read these words:-- "This Monument was erected to the Memory of Donald Murdockson of the King's xxvi., or Cameronian Regiment, a sincere Christian, a brave Soldier, and a faithful Servant, by his grateful and sorrowing master, Robert Staunton." "It's very weel read, Jeanie; it's just the very words," said Madge, whose ire had now faded into deep melancholy, and with a step which, to Jeanie's great joy, was uncommonly quiet and mournful, she led her companion towards the door of the church. [Illustration: Madge and Jennie--103] It was one of those old-fashioned Gothic parish churches which are frequent in England, the most cleanly, decent, and reverential places of worship that are, perhaps, anywhere to be found in the Christian world. Yet, notwithstanding the decent solemnity of its exterior, Jeanie was too faithful to the directory of the Presbyterian kirk to have entered a prelatic place of worship, and would, upon any other occasion, have thought that she beheld in the porch the venerable figure of her father waving her back from the entrance, and pronouncing in a solemn tone, "Cease, my child, to hear the instruction which causeth to err from the words of knowledge." But in her present agitating and alarming situation, she looked for safety to this forbidden place of assembly, as the hunted animal will sometimes seek shelter from imminent danger in the human habitation, or in other places of refuge most alien to its nature and habits. Not even the sound of the organ, and of one or two flutes which accompanied the psalmody, prevented her from following her guide into the chancel of the church. No sooner had Madge put her foot upon the pavement, and become sensible that she was the object of attention to the spectators, than she resumed all the fantastic extravagance of deportment which some transient touch of melancholy had banished for an instant. She swam rather than walked up the centre aisle, dragging Jeanie after her, whom she held fast by the hand. She would, indeed, have fain slipped aside into the pew nearest to the door, and left Madge to ascend in her own manner and alone to the high places of the synagogue; but this was impossible, without a degree of violent resistance, which seemed to her inconsistent with the time and place, and she was accordingly led in captivity up the whole length of the church by her grotesque conductress, who, with half-shut eyes, a prim smile upon her lips, and a mincing motion with her hands, which corresponded with the delicate and affected pace at which she was pleased to move, seemed to take the general stare of the congregation, which such an exhibition necessarily excited, as a high compliment, and which she returned by nods and half-courtesies to individuals amongst the audience, whom she seemed to distinguish as acquaintances. Her absurdity was enhanced in the eyes of the spectators by the strange contrast which she formed to her companion, who, with dishevelled hair, downcast eyes, and a face glowing with shame, was dragged, as it were in triumph after her. Madge's airs were at length fortunately cut short by her encountering in her progress the looks of the clergyman, who fixed upon her a glance, at once steady, compassionate, and admonitory. She hastily opened an empty pew which happened to be near her, and entered, dragging in Jeanie after her. Kicking Jeanie on the shins, by way of hint that she should follow her example, she sunk her head upon her hand for the space of a minute. Jeanie, to whom this posture of mental devotion was entirely new, did not attempt to do the like, but looked round her with a bewildered stare, which her neighbours, judging from the company in which they saw her, very naturally ascribed to insanity. Every person in their immediate vicinity drew back from this extraordinary couple as far as the limits of their pew permitted; but one old man could not get beyond Madge's reach, ere, she had snatched the prayer-book from his hand, and ascertained the lesson of the day. She then turned up the ritual, and with the most overstrained enthusiasm of gesture and manner, showed Jeanie the passages as they were read in the service, making, at the same time, her own responses so loud as to be heard above those of every other person. Notwithstanding the shame and vexation which Jeanie felt in being thus exposed in a place of worship, she could not and durst not omit rallying her spirits so as to look around her, and consider to whom she ought to appeal for protection so soon as the service should be concluded. Her first ideas naturally fixed upon the clergyman, and she was confirmed in the resolution by observing that he was an aged gentleman, of a dignified appearance and deportment, who read the service with an undisturbed and decent gravity, which brought back to becoming attention those younger members of the congregation who had been disturbed by the extravagant behaviour of Madge Wildfire. To the clergyman, therefore, Jeanie resolved to make her appeal when the service was over. It is true she felt disposed to be shocked at his surplice, of which she had heard so much, but which she had never seen upon the person of a preacher of the word. Then she was confused by the change of posture adopted in different parts of the ritual, the more so as Madge Wildfire, to whom they seemed familiar, took the opportunity to exercise authority over her, pulling her up and pushing her down with a bustling assiduity, which Jeanie felt must make them both the objects of painful attention. But, notwithstanding these prejudices, it was her prudent resolution, in this dilemma, to imitate as nearly as she could what was done around her. The prophet, she thought, permitted Naaman the Syrian to bow even in the house of Rimmon. Surely if I, in this streight, worship the God of my fathers in mine own language, although the manner thereof be strange to me, the Lord will pardon me in this thing. In this resolution she became so much confirmed, that, withdrawing herself from Madge as far as the pew permitted, she endeavoured to evince by serious and composed attention to what was passing, that her mind was composed to devotion. Her tormentor would not long have permitted her to remain quiet, but fatigue overpowered her, and she fell fast asleep in the other corner of the pew. Jeanie, though her mind in her own despite sometimes reverted to her situation, compelled herself to give attention to a sensible, energetic, and well-composed discourse, upon the practical doctrines of Christianity, which she could not help approving, although it was every word written down and read by the preacher, and although it was delivered in a tone and gesture very different from those of Boanerges Stormheaven, who was her father's favourite preacher. The serious and placid attention with which Jeanie listened, did not escape the clergyman. Madge Wildfire's entrance had rendered him apprehensive of some disturbance, to provide against which, as far as possible, he often turned his eyes to the part of the church where Jeanie and she were placed, and became soon aware that, although the loss of her head-gear, and the awkwardness of her situation, had given an uncommon and anxious air to the features of the former, yet she was in a state of mind very different from that of her companion. When he dismissed the congregation, he observed her look around with a wild and terrified look, as if uncertain what course she ought to adopt, and noticed that she approached one or two of the most decent of the congregation, as if to address them, and then shrunk back timidly, on observing that they seemed to shun and to avoid her. The clergyman was satisfied there must be something extraordinary in all this, and as a benevolent man, as well as a good Christian pastor, he resolved to inquire into the matter more minutely. CHAPTER EIGHTH. There governed in that year A stern, stout churl--an angry overseer. Crabbe. While Mr. Staunton, for such was this worthy clergyman's name, was laying aside his gown in the vestry, Jeanie was in the act of coming to an open rupture with Madge. "We must return to Mummer's barn directly," said Madge; "we'll be ower late, and my mother will be angry." "I am not going back with you, Madge," said Jeanie, taking out a guinea, and offering it to her; "I am much obliged to you, but I maun gang my ain road." "And me coming a' this way out o' my gate to pleasure you, ye ungratefu' cutty," answered Madge; "and me to be brained by my mother when I gang hame, and a' for your sake!--But I will gar ye as good" "For God's sake," said Jeanie to a man who stood beside them, "keep her off!--she is mad." "Ey, ey," answered the boor; "I hae some guess of that, and I trow thou be'st a bird of the same feather.--Howsomever, Madge, I redd thee keep hand off her, or I'se lend thee a whisterpoop." Several of the lower class of the parishioners now gathered round the strangers, and the cry arose among the boys that "there was a-going to be a fite between mad Madge Murdockson and another Bess of Bedlam." But while the fry assembled with the humane hope of seeing as much of the fun as possible, the laced cocked-hat of the beadle was discerned among the multitude, and all made way for that person of awful authority. His first address was to Madge. "What's brought thee back again, thou silly donnot, to plague this parish? Hast thou brought ony more bastards wi' thee to lay to honest men's doors? or does thou think to burden us with this goose, that's as hare-brained as thysell, as if rates were no up enow? Away wi' thee to thy thief of a mother; she's fast in the stocks at Barkston town-end-- Away wi' ye out o' the parish, or I'se be at ye with the ratan." Madge stood sulky for a minute; but she had been too often taught submission to the beadle's authority by ungentle means to feel courage enough to dispute it. "And my mother--my puir auld mother, is in the stocks at Barkston!--This is a' your wyte, Miss Jeanie Deans; but I'll be upsides wi' you, as sure as my name's Madge Wildfire--I mean Murdockson--God help me, I forget my very name in this confused waste!" So saying, she turned upon her heel, and went off, followed by all the mischievous imps of the village, some crying, "Madge, canst thou tell thy name yet?" some pulling the skirts of her dress, and all, to the best of their strength and ingenuity, exercising some new device or other to exasperate her into frenzy. Jeanie saw her departure with infinite delight, though she wished that, in some way or other, she could have requited the service Madge had conferred upon her. In the meantime, she applied to the beadle to know whether "there was any house in the village where she could be civilly entertained for her money, and whether she could be permitted to speak to the clergyman?" "Ay, ay, we'se ha' reverend care on thee; and I think," answered the man of constituted authority, "that, unless thou answer the Rector all the better, we'se spare thy money, and gie thee lodging at the parish charge, young woman." "Where am I to go then?" said Jeanie, in some alarm. "Why, I am to take thee to his Reverence, in the first place, to gie an account o' thysell, and to see thou comena to be a burden upon the parish." "I do not wish to burden anyone," replied Jeanie; "I have enough for my own wants, and only wish to get on my journey safely." "Why, that's another matter," replied the beadle, "and if it be true--and I think thou dost not look so polrumptious as thy playfellow yonder--Thou wouldst be a mettle lass enow, an thou wert snog and snod a bid better. Come thou away, then--the Rector is a good man." "Is that the minister," said Jeanie, "who preached" "The minister? Lord help thee! What kind o' Presbyterian art thou?--Why, 'tis the Rector--the Rector's sell, woman, and there isna the like o' him in the county, nor the four next to it. Come away--away with thee--we maunna bide here." "I am sure I am very willing to go to see the minister," said Jeanie; "for though he read his discourse, and wore that surplice, as they call it here, I canna but think he must be a very worthy God-fearing man, to preach the root of the matter in the way he did." The disappointed rabble, finding that there was like to be no farther sport, had by this time dispersed, and Jeanie, with her usual patience, followed her consequential and surly, but not brutal, conductor towards the rectory. This clerical mansion was large and commodious, for the living was an excellent one, and the advowson belonged to a very wealthy family in the neighbourhood, who had usually bred up a son or nephew to the church for the sake of inducting him, as opportunity offered, into this very comfortable provision. In this manner the rectory of Willingham had always been considered as a direct and immediate appanage of Willingham Hall; and as the rich baronets to whom the latter belonged had usually a son, or brother, or nephew, settled in the living, the utmost care had been taken to render their habitation not merely respectable and commodious, but even dignified and imposing. It was situated about four hundred yards from the village, and on a rising ground which sloped gently upward, covered with small enclosures, or closes, laid out irregularly, so that the old oaks and elms, which were planted in hedge-rows, fell into perspective, and were blended together in beautiful irregularity. When they approached nearer to the house, a handsome gateway admitted them into a lawn, of narrow dimensions indeed, but which was interspersed with large sweet chestnut trees and beeches, and kept in handsome order. The front of the house was irregular. Part of it seemed very old, and had, in fact, been the residence of the incumbent in Romish times. Successive occupants had made considerable additions and improvements, each in the taste of his own age, and without much regard to symmetry. But these incongruities of architecture were so graduated and happily mingled, that the eye, far from being displeased with the combinations of various styles, saw nothing but what was interesting in the varied and intricate pile which they displayed. Fruit-trees displayed on the southern wall, outer staircases, various places of entrance, a combination of roofs and chimneys of different ages, united to render the front, not indeed beautiful or grand, but intricate, perplexed, or, to use Mr. Price's appropriate phrase, picturesque. The most considerable addition was that of the present Rector, who, "being a bookish man," as the beadle was at the pains to inform Jeanie, to augment, perhaps, her reverence for the person before whom she was to appear, had built a handsome library and parlour, and no less than two additional bedrooms. "Mony men would hae scrupled such expense," continued the parochial officer, "seeing as the living mun go as it pleases Sir Edmund to will it; but his Reverence has a canny bit land of his own, and need not look on two sides of a penny." Jeanie could not help comparing the irregular yet extensive and commodious pile of building before her to the "Manses" in her own country, where a set of penurious heritors, professing all the while the devotion of their lives and fortunes to the Presbyterian establishment, strain their inventions to discover what may be nipped, and clipped, and pared from a building which forms but a poor accommodation even for the present incumbent, and, despite the superior advantage of stone-masonry, must, in the course of forty or fifty years, again burden their descendants with an expense, which, once liberally and handsomely employed, ought to have freed their estates from a recurrence of it for more than a century at least. Behind the Rector's house the ground sloped down to a small river, which, without possessing the romantic vivacity and rapidity of a northern stream, was, nevertheless, by its occasional appearance through the ranges of willows and poplars that crowned its banks, a very pleasing accompaniment to the landscape. "It was the best trouting stream," said the beadle, whom the patience of Jeanie, and especially the assurance that she was not about to become a burden to the parish, had rendered rather communicative, "the best trouting stream in all Lincolnshire; for when you got lower, there was nought to be done wi' fly-fishing." Turning aside from the principal entrance, he conducted Jeanie towards a sort of portal connected with the older part of the building, which was chiefly occupied by servants, and knocking at the door, it was opened by a servant in grave purple livery, such as befitted a wealthy and dignified clergyman. "How dost do, Tummas?" said the beadle--"and how's young Measter Staunton?" "Why, but poorly--but poorly, Measter Stubbs.--Are you wanting to see his Reverence?" "Ay, ay, Tummas; please to say I ha' brought up the young woman as came to service to-day with mad Madge Murdockson seems to be a decentish koind o' body; but I ha' asked her never a question. Only I can tell his Reverence that she is a Scotchwoman, I judge, and as flat as the fens of Holland." Tummas honoured Jeanie Deans with such a stare, as the pampered domestics of the rich, whether spiritual or temporal, usually esteem it part of their privilege to bestow upon the poor, and then desired Mr. Stubbs and his charge to step in till he informed his master of their presence. The room into which he showed them was a sort of steward's parlour, hung with a county map or two, and three or four prints of eminent persons connected with the county, as Sir William Monson, James York the blacksmith of Lincoln,* and the famous Peregrine, Lord Willoughby, in complete armour, looking as when he said in the words of the legend below the engraving,-- * [Author of the _Union of Honour,_ a treatise on English Heraldry. London, 1641.] "Stand to it, noble pikemen, And face ye well about; And shoot ye sharp, bold bowmen, And we will keep them out. "Ye musquet and calliver-men, Do you prove true to me, I'll be the foremost man in fight, Said brave Lord Willoughbee." [Illustration: A "Summat" to Eat and Drink--113] When they had entered this apartment, Tummas as a matter of course offered, and as a matter of course Mr. Stubbs accepted, a "summat" to eat and drink, being the respectable relies of a gammon of bacon, and a _whole whiskin,_ or black pot of sufficient double ale. To these eatables Mr. Beadle seriously inclined himself, and (for we must do him justice) not without an invitation to Jeanie, in which Tummas joined, that his prisoner or charge would follow his good example. But although she might have stood in need of refreshment, considering she had tasted no food that day, the anxiety of the moment, her own sparing and abstemious habits, and a bashful aversion to eat in company of the two strangers, induced her to decline their courtesy. So she sate in a chair apart, while Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Tummas, who had chosen to join his friend in consideration that dinner was to be put back till after the afternoon service, made a hearty luncheon, which lasted for half-an-hour, and might not then have concluded, had not his Reverence rung his bell, so that Tummas was obliged to attend his master. Then, and no sooner, to save himself the labour of a second journey to the other end of the house, he announced to his master the arrival of Mr. Stubbs, with the other madwoman, as he chose to designate Jeanie, as an event which had just taken place. He returned with an order that Mr. Stubbs and the young woman should be instantly ushered up to the library. The beadle bolted in haste his last mouthful of fat bacon, washed down the greasy morsel with the last rinsings of the pot of ale, and immediately marshalled Jeanie through one or two intricate passages which led from the ancient to the more modern buildings, into a handsome little hall, or anteroom, adjoining to the library, and out of which a glass door opened to the lawn. "Stay here," said Stubbs, "till I tell his Reverence you are come." So saying, he opened a door and entered the library. Without wishing to hear their conversation, Jeanie, as she was circumstanced, could not avoid it; for as Stubbs stood by the door, and his Reverence was at the upper end of a large room, their conversation was necessarily audible in the anteroom. "So you have brought the young woman here at last, Mr. Stubbs. I expected you some time since. You know I do not wish such persons to remain in custody a moment without some inquiry into their situation." "Very true, your Reverence," replied the beadle; "but the young woman had eat nought to-day, and so Measter Tummas did set down a drap of drink and a morsel, to be sure." "Thomas was very right, Mr. Stubbs; and what has, become of the other most unfortunate being?" "Why," replied Mr. Stubbs, "I did think the sight on her would but vex your Reverence, and soa I did let her go her ways back to her mother, who is in trouble in the next parish." "In trouble!--that signifies in prison, I suppose?" said Mr. Staunton. "Ay, truly; something like it, an it like your Reverence." "Wretched, unhappy, incorrigible woman!" said the clergyman. "And what sort of person is this companion of hers?" "Why, decent enow, an it like your Reverence," said Stubbs; "for aught I sees of her, there's no harm of her, and she says she has cash enow to carry her out of the county." "Cash! that is always what you think of, Stubbs--But, has she sense?--has she her wits?--has she the capacity of taking care of herself?" "Why, your Reverence," replied Stubbs, "I cannot just say--I will be sworn she was not born at Witt-ham;* for Gaffer Gibbs looked at her all the time of service, and he says, she could not turn up a single lesson like a Christian, even though she had Madge Murdockson to help her--but then, as to fending for herself, why, she's a bit of a Scotchwoman, your Reverence, and they say the worst donnot of them can look out for their own turn--and she is decently put on enow, and not bechounched like t'other." * A proverbial and punning expression in that county, to intimate that a person is not very clever. "Send her in here, then, and do you remain below, Mr. Stubbs." This colloquy had engaged Jeanie's attention so deeply, that it was not until it was over that she observed that the sashed door, which, we have said, led from the anteroom into the garden, was opened, and that there entered, or rather was borne in by two assistants, a young man, of a very pale and sickly appearance, whom they lifted to the nearest couch, and placed there, as if to recover from the fatigue of an unusual exertion. Just as they were making this arrangement, Stubbs came out of the library, and summoned Jeanie to enter it. She obeyed him, not without tremor; for, besides the novelty of the situation, to a girl of her secluded habits, she felt also as if the successful prosecution of her journey was to depend upon the impression she should be able to make on Mr. Staunton. It is true, it was difficult to suppose on what pretext a person travelling on her own business, and at her own charge, could be interrupted upon her route. But the violent detention she had already undergone, was sufficient to show that there existed persons at no great distance who had the interest, the inclination, and the audacity, forcibly to stop her journey, and she felt the necessity of having some countenance and protection, at least till she should get beyond their reach. While these things passed through her mind, much faster than our pen and ink can record, or even the reader's eye collect the meaning of its traces, Jeanie found herself in a handsome library, and in presence of the Rector of Willingham. The well-furnished presses and shelves which surrounded the large and handsome apartment, contained more books than Jeanie imagined existed in the world, being accustomed to consider as an extensive collection two fir shelves, each about three feet long, which contained her father's treasured volumes, the whole pith and marrow, as he used sometimes to boast, of modern divinity. An orrery, globes, a telescope, and some other scientific implements, conveyed to Jeanie an impression of admiration and wonder, not unmixed with fear; for, in her ignorant apprehension, they seemed rather adapted for magical purposes than any other; and a few stuffed animals (as the Rector was fond of natural history) added to the impressive character of the apartment. Mr. Staunton spoke to her with great mildness. He observed, that, although her appearance at church had been uncommon, and in strange, and he must add, discreditable society, and calculated, upon the whole, to disturb the congregation during divine worship, he wished, nevertheless, to hear her own account of herself before taking any steps which his duty might seem to demand. He was a justice of peace, he informed her, as well as a clergyman. "His Honour" (for she would not say his Reverence) "was very civil and kind," was all that poor Jeanie could at first bring out. "Who are you, young woman?" said the clergyman, more peremptorily--"and what do you do in this country, and in such company?--We allow no strollers or vagrants here." "I am not a vagrant or a stroller, sir," said Jeanie, a little roused by the supposition. "I am a decent Scots lass, travelling through the land on my own business and my own expenses and I was so unhappy as to fall in with bad company, and was stopped a' night on my journey. And this puir creature, who is something light-headed, let me out in the morning." "Bad company!" said the clergyman. "I am afraid, young woman, you have not been sufficiently anxious to avoid them." "Indeed, sir," returned Jeanie, "I have been brought up to shun evil communication. But these wicked people were thieves, and stopped me by violence and mastery." "Thieves!" said Mr. Staunton; "then you charge them with robbery, I suppose?" "No, sir; they did not take so much as a boddle from me," answered Jeanie; "nor did they use me ill, otherwise than by confining me." The clergyman inquired into the particulars of her adventure, which she told him from point to point. "This is an extraordinary, and not a very probable tale, young woman," resumed Mr. Staunton. "Here has been, according to your account, a great violence committed without any adequate motive. Are you aware of the law of this country--that if you lodge this charge, you will be bound over to prosecute this gang?" Jeanie did not understand him, and he explained, that the English law, in addition to the inconvenience sustained by persons who have been robbed or injured, has the goodness to intrust to them the care and the expense of appearing as prosecutors. Jeanie said, "that her business at London was express; all she wanted was, that any gentleman would, out of Christian charity, protect her to some town where she could hire horses and a guide; and finally," she thought, "it would be her father's mind that she was not free to give testimony in an English court of justice, as the land was not under a direct gospel dispensation." Mr. Staunton stared a little, and asked if her father was a Quaker. "God forbid, sir," said Jeanie--"He is nae schismatic nor sectary, nor ever treated for sic black commodities as theirs, and that's weel kend o' him." "And what is his name, pray?" said Mr. Staunton. "David Deans, sir, the cowfeeder at Saint Leonard's Crags, near Edinburgh." A deep groan from the anteroom prevented the Rector from replying, and, exclaiming, "Good God! that unhappy boy!" he left Jeanie alone, and hastened into the outer apartment. Some noise and bustle was heard, but no one entered the library for the best part of an hour. CHAPTER NINTH. Fantastic passions' maddening brawl! And shame and terror over all! Deeds to be hid which were not hid, Which, all confused, I could not know Whether I suffer'd or I did, For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or woe; My own, or others, still the same Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame. Coleridge. During the interval while she was thus left alone, Jeanie anxiously revolved in her mind what course was best for her to pursue. She was impatient to continue her journey, yet she feared she could not safely adventure to do so while the old hag and her assistants were in the neighbourhood, without risking a repetition of their violence. She thought she could collect from the conversation which she had partly overheard, and also from the wild confessions of Madge Wildfire, that her mother had a deep and revengeful motive for obstructing her journey if possible. And from whom could she hope for assistance if not from Mr. Staunton? His whole appearance and demeanour seemed to encourage her hopes. His features were handsome, though marked with a deep cast of melancholy; his tone and language were gentle and encouraging; and, as he had served in the army for several years during his youth, his air retained that easy frankness which is peculiar to the profession of arms. He was, besides, a minister of the gospel; and, although a worshipper, according to Jeanie's notions, in the court of the Gentiles, and so benighted as to wear a surplice; although he read the Common Prayer, and wrote down every word of his sermon before delivering it; and although he was, moreover, in strength of lungs, as well as pith and marrow of doctrine, vastly inferior to Boanerges Stormheaven, Jeanie still thought he must be a very different person from Curate Kilstoup, and other prelatical divines of her father's earlier days, who used to get drunk in their canonical dress, and hound out the dragoons against the wandering Cameronians. The house seemed to be in some disturbance, but as she could not suppose she was altogether forgotten, she thought it better to remain quiet in the apartment where she had been left, till some one should take notice of her. The first who entered was, to her no small delight, one of her own sex, a motherly-looking aged person of a housekeeper. To her Jeanie explained her situation in a few words, and begged her assistance. The dignity of a housekeeper did not encourage too much familiarity with a person who was at the Rectory on justice-business, and whose character might seem in her eyes somewhat precarious; but she was civil, although distant. "Her young master," she said, "had had a bad accident by a fall from his horse, which made him liable to fainting fits; he had been taken very ill just now, and it was impossible his Reverence could see Jeanie for some time; but that she need not fear his doing all that was just and proper in her behalf the instant he could get her business attended to."--She concluded by offering to show Jeanie a room, where she might remain till his Reverence was at leisure. Our heroine took the opportunity to request the means of adjusting and changing her dress. The housekeeper, in whose estimation order and cleanliness ranked high among personal virtues, gladly complied with a request so reasonable; and the change of dress which Jeanie's bundle furnished made so important an improvement in her appearance, that the old lady hardly knew the soiled and disordered traveller, whose attire showed the violence she had sustained, in the neat, clean, quiet-looking little Scotch-woman, who now stood before her. Encouraged by such a favourable alteration in her appearance, Mrs. Dalton ventured to invite Jeanie to partake of her dinner, and was equally pleased with the decent propriety of her conduct during the meal. "Thou canst read this book, canst thou, young woman?" said the old lady, when their meal was concluded, laying her hand upon a large Bible. "I hope sae, madam," said Jeanie, surprised at the question "my father wad hae wanted mony a thing ere I had wanted _that_ schuling." "The better sign of him, young woman. There are men here, well to pass in the world, would not want their share of a Leicester plover, and that's a bag-pudding, if fasting for three hours would make all their poor children read the Bible from end to end. Take thou the book, then, for my eyes are something dazed, and read where thou listest--it's the only book thou canst not happen wrong in." Jeanie was at first tempted to turn up the parable of the good Samaritan, but her conscience checked her, as if it were a use of Scripture, not for her own edification, but to work upon the mind of others for the relief of her worldly afflictions; and under this scrupulous sense of duty, she selected, in preference, a CHAPTER of the prophet Isaiah, and read it, notwithstanding her northern' accent and tone, with a devout propriety, which greatly edified Mrs. Dalton. "Ah," she said, "an all Scotchwomen were sic as thou but it was our luck to get born devils of thy country, I think--every one worse than t'other. If thou knowest of any tidy lass like thysell that wanted a place, and could bring a good character, and would not go laiking about to wakes and fairs, and wore shoes and stockings all the day round--why, I'll not say but we might find room for her at the Rectory. Hast no cousin or sister, lass, that such an offer would suit?" This was touching upon a sore point, but Jeanie was spared the pain of replying by the entrance of the same man-servant she had seen before. "Measter wishes to see the young woman from Scotland," was Tummas's address. "Go to his Reverence, my dear, as fast as you can, and tell him all your story--his Reverence is a kind man," said Mrs. Dalton. "I will fold down the leaf, and wake you a cup of tea, with some nice muffin, against you come down, and that's what you seldom see in Scotland, girl." "Measter's waiting for the young woman," said Tummas impatiently. "Well, Mr. Jack-Sauce, and what is your business to put in your oar?--And how often must I tell you to call Mr. Staunton his Reverence, seeing as he is a dignified clergyman, and not be meastering, meastering him, as if he were a little petty squire?" As Jeanie was now at the door, and ready to accompany Tummas, the footman said nothing till he got into the passage, when he muttered, "There are moe masters than one in this house, and I think we shall have a mistress too, an Dame Dalton carries it thus." Tummas led the way through a more intricate range of passages than Jeanie had yet threaded, and ushered her into an apartment which was darkened by the closing of most of the window-shutters, and in which was a bed with the curtains partly drawn. "Here is the young woman, sir," said Tummas. "Very well," said a voice from the bed, but not that of his Reverence; "be ready to answer the bell, and leave the room." "There is some mistake," said Jeanie, confounded at finding herself in the apartment of an invalid; "the servant told me that the minister" "Don't trouble yourself," said the invalid, "there is no mistake. I know more of your affairs than my father, and I can manage them better.--Leave the room, Tom." The servant obeyed.--"We must not," said the invalid, "lose time, when we have little to lose. Open the shutters of that window." She did so, and as he drew aside the curtain of his bed, the light fell on his pale countenance, as, turban'd with bandages, and dressed in a night-gown, he lay, seemingly exhausted, upon the bed. "Look at me," he said, "Jeanie Deans; can you not recollect me?" "No, sir," said she, full of surprise. "I was never in this country before." "But I may have been in yours. Think--recollect. I should faint did I name the name you are most dearly bound to loathe and to detest. Think--remember!" A terrible recollection flashed on Jeanie, which every tone of the speaker confirmed, and which his next words rendered certainty. "Be composed--remember Muschat's Cairn, and the moonlight night!" Jeanie sunk down on a chair with clasped hands, and gasped in agony. "Yes, here I lie," he said, "like a crushed snake, writhing with impatience at my incapacity of motion--here I lie, when I ought to have been in Edinburgh, trying every means to save a life that is dearer to me than my own.--How is your sister?--how fares it with her?--condemned to death, I know it, by this time! O, the horse that carried me safely on a thousand errands of folly and wickedness, that he should have broke down with me on the only good mission I have undertaken for years! But I must rein in my passion--my frame cannot endure it, and I have much to say. Give me some of the cordial which stands on that table.--Why do you tremble? But you have too good cause.--Let it stand--I need it not." Jeanie, however reluctant, approached him with the cup into which she had poured the draught, and could not forbear saying, "There is a cordial for the mind, sir, if the wicked will turn from their transgressions, and seek to the Physician of souls." "Silence!" he said sternly--"and yet I thank you. But tell me, and lose no time in doing so, what you are doing in this country? Remember, though I have been your sister's worst enemy, yet I will serve her with the best of my blood, and I will serve you for her sake; and no one can serve you to such purpose, for no one can know the circumstances so well--so speak without fear." "I am not afraid, sir," said Jeanie, collecting her spirits. "I trust in God; and if it pleases Him to redeem my sister's captivity, it is all I seek, whosoever be the instrument. But, sir, to be plain with you, I dare not use your counsel, unless I were enabled to see that it accords with the law which I must rely upon." "The devil take the Puritan!" cried George Staunton, for so we must now call him--"I beg your pardon; but I am naturally impatient, and you drive me mad! What harm can it possibly do to tell me in what situation your sister stands, and your own expectations of being able to assist her? It is time enough to refuse my advice when I offer any which you may think improper. I speak calmly to you, though 'tis against my nature; but don't urge me to impatience--it will only render me incapable of serving Effie." There was in the looks and words of this unhappy young man a sort of restrained eagerness and impetuosity which seemed to prey upon itself, as the impatience of a fiery steed fatigues itself with churning upon the bit. After a moment's consideration, it occurred to Jeanie that she was not entitled to withhold from him, whether on her sister's account or her own, the fatal account of the consequences of the crime which he had committed, nor to reject such advice, being in itself lawful and innocent, as he might be able to suggest in the way of remedy. Accordingly, in as few words as she could express it, she told the history of her sister's trial and condemnation, and of her own journey as far as Newark. He appeared to listen in the utmost agony of mind, yet repressed every violent symptom of emotion, whether by gesture or sound, which might have interrupted the speaker, and, stretched on his couch like the Mexican monarch on his bed of live coals, only the contortions of his cheek, and the quivering of his limbs, gave indication of his sufferings. To much of what she said he listened with stifled groans, as if he were only hearing those miseries confirmed, whose fatal reality he had known before; but when she pursued her tale through the circumstances which had interrupted her journey, extreme surprise and earnest attention appeared to succeed to the symptoms of remorse which he had before exhibited. He questioned Jeanie closely concerning the appearance of the two men, and the conversation which she had overheard between the taller of them and the woman. When Jeanie mentioned the old woman having alluded to her foster-son--"It is too true," he said; "and the source from which I derived food, when an infant, must have communicated to me the wretched--the fated--propensity to vices that were strangers in my own family.--But go on." Jeanie passed slightly over her journey in company with Madge, having no inclination to repeat what might be the effect of mere raving on the part of her companion, and therefore her tale was now closed. Young Staunton lay for a moment in profound meditation and at length spoke with more composure than he had yet displayed during their interview.--"You are a sensible, as well as a good young woman, Jeanie Deans, and I will tell you more of my story than I have told to any one.-- Story did I call it?--it is a tissue of folly, guilt, and misery.--But take notice--I do it because I desire your confidence in return--that is, that you will act in this dismal matter by my advice and direction. Therefore do I speak." "I will do what is fitting for a sister, and a daughter, and a Christian woman to do," said Jeanie; "but do not tell me any of your secrets.--It is not good that I should come into your counsel, or listen to the doctrine which causeth to err." "Simple fool!" said the young man. "Look at me. My head is not horned, my foot is not cloven, my hands are not garnished with talons; and, since I am not the very devil himself, what interest can any one else have in destroying the hopes with which you comfort or fool yourself? Listen to me patiently, and you will find that, when you have heard my counsel, you may go to the seventh heaven with it in your pocket, if you have a mind, and not feel yourself an ounce heavier in the ascent." At the risk of being somewhat heavy, as explanations usually prove, we must here endeavour to combine into a distinct narrative, information which the invalid communicated in a manner at once too circumstantial, and too much broken by passion, to admit of our giving his precise words. Part of it indeed he read from a manuscript, which he had perhaps drawn up for the information of his relations after his decease. "To make my tale short--this wretched hag--this Margaret Murdockson, was the wife of a favourite servant of my father--she had been my nurse--her husband was dead--she resided in a cottage near this place--she had a daughter who grew up, and was then a beautiful but very giddy girl; her mother endeavoured to promote her marriage with an old and wealthy churl in the neighbourhood--the girl saw me frequently--She was familiar with me, as our connection seemed to permit--and I--in a word, I wronged her cruelly--It was not so bad as your sister's business, but it was sufficiently villanous--her folly should have been her protection. Soon after this I was sent abroad--To do my father justice, if I have turned out a fiend it is not his fault--he used the best means. When I returned, I found the wretched mother and daughter had fallen into disgrace, and were chased from this country.--My deep share in their shame and misery was discovered--my father used very harsh language--we quarrelled. I left his house, and led a life of strange adventure, resolving never again to see my father or my father's home. "And now comes the story!--Jeanie, I put my life into your hands, and not only my own life, which, God knows, is not worth saving, but the happiness of a respectable old man, and the honour of a family of consideration. My love of low society, as such propensities as I was cursed with are usually termed, was, I think of an uncommon kind, and indicated a nature, which, if not depraved by early debauchery, would have been fit for better things. I did not so much delight in the wild revel, the low humour, the unconfined liberty of those with whom I associated as in the spirit of adventure, presence of mind in peril, and sharpness of intellect which they displayed in prosecuting their maraudings upon the revenue, or similar adventures.--Have you looked round this rectory?--is it not a sweet and pleasant retreat?" Jeanie, alarmed at this sudden change of subject, replied in the affirmative. "Well! I wish it had been ten thousand fathoms under ground, with its church-lands, and tithes, and all that belongs to it. Had it not been for this cursed rectory, I should have been permitted to follow the bent of my own inclinations and the profession of arms, and half the courage and address that I have displayed among smugglers and deer-stealers would have secured me an honourable rank among my contemporaries. Why did I not go abroad when I left this house!--Why did I leave it at all!--why--But it came to that point with me that it is madness to look back, and misery to look forward!" He paused, and then proceeded with more composure. "The chances of a wandering life brought me unhappily to Scotland, to embroil myself in worse and more criminal actions than I had yet been concerned in. It was now I became acquainted with Wilson, a remarkable man in his station of life; quiet, composed, and resolute, firm in mind, and uncommonly strong in person, gifted with a sort of rough eloquence which raised him above his companions. Hitherto I had been As dissolute as desperate, yet through both Were seen some sparkles of a better hope. "But it was this man's misfortune, as well as mine, that, notwithstanding the difference of our rank and education, he acquired an extraordinary and fascinating influence over me, which I can only account for by the calm determination of his character being superior to the less sustained impetuosity of mine. Where he led I felt myself bound to follow; and strange was the courage and address which he displayed in his pursuits. While I was engaged in desperate adventures, under so strange and dangerous a preceptor, I became acquainted with your unfortunate sister at some sports of the young people in the suburbs, which she frequented by stealth--and her ruin proved an interlude to the tragic scenes in which I was now deeply engaged. Yet this let me say--the villany was not premeditated, and I was firmly resolved to do her all the justice which marriage could do, so soon as I should be able to extricate myself from my unhappy course of life, and embrace some one more suited to my birth. I had wild visions--visions of conducting her as if to some poor retreat, and introducing her at once to rank and fortune she never dreamt of. A friend, at my request, attempted a negotiation with my father, which was protracted for some time, and renewed at different intervals. At length, and just when I expected my father's pardon, he learned by some means or other my infamy, painted in even exaggerated colours, which was, God knows, unnecessary. He wrote me a letter--how it found me out I know not--enclosing me a sum of money, and disowning me for ever. I became desperate--I became frantic--I readily joined Wilson in a perilous smuggling adventure in which we miscarried, and was willingly blinded by his logic to consider the robbery of the officer of the customs in Fife as a fair and honourable reprisal. Hitherto I had observed a certain line in my criminality, and stood free of assaults upon personal property, but now I felt a wild pleasure in disgracing myself as much as possible. "The plunder was no object to me. I abandoned that to my comrades, and only asked the post of danger. I remember well that when I stood with my drawn sword guarding the door while they committed the felony, I had not a thought of my own safety. I was only meditating on my sense of supposed wrong from my family, my impotent thirst of vengeance, and how it would sound in the haughty cars of the family of Willingham, that one of their descendants, and the heir apparent of their honours, should perish by the hands of the hangman for robbing a Scottish gauger of a sum not equal to one-fifth part of the money I had in my pocket-book. We were taken--I expected no less. We were condemned--that also I looked for. But death, as he approached nearer, looked grimly; and the recollection of your sister's destitute condition determined me on an effort to save my life.-- I forgot to tell you, that in Edinburgh I again met the woman Murdockson and her daughter. She had followed the camp when young, and had now, under pretence of a trifling traffic, resumed predatory habits, with which she had already been too familiar. Our first meeting was stormy; but I was liberal of what money I had, and she forgot, or seemed to forget, the injury her daughter had received. The unfortunate girl herself seemed hardly even to know her seducer, far less to retain any sense of the injury she had received. Her mind is totally alienated, which, according to her mother's account, is sometimes the consequence of an unfavourable confinement. But it was _my doing._ Here was another stone knitted round my neck to sink me into the pit of perdition. Every look--every word of this poor creature--her false spirits--her imperfect recollections--her allusions to things which she had forgotten, but which were recorded in my conscience, were stabs of a poniard--stabs did I say?--they were tearing with hot pincers, and scalding the raw wound with burning sulphur--they were to be endured however, and they were endured.-- I return to my prison thoughts. "It was not the least miserable of them that your sister's time approached. I knew her dread of you and of her father. She often said she would die a thousand deaths ere you should know her shame--yet her confinement must be provided for. I knew this woman Murdockson was an infernal hag, but I thought she loved me, and that money would make her true. She had procured a file for Wilson, and a spring-saw for me; and she undertook readily to take charge of Effie during her illness, in which she had skill enough to give the necessary assistance. I gave her the money which my father had sent me. It was settled that she should receive Effie into her house in the meantime, and wait for farther directions from me, when I should effect my escape. I communicated this purpose, and recommended the old hag to poor Effie by a letter, in which I recollect that I endeavoured to support the character of Macheath under condemnation-a fine, gay, bold-faced ruffian, who is game to the last. Such, and so wretchedly poor, was my ambition! Yet I had resolved to forsake the courses I had been engaged in, should I be so fortunate as to escape the gibbet. My design was to marry your sister, and go over to the West Indies. I had still a considerable sum of money left, and I trusted to be able, in one way or other, to provide for myself and my wife. "We made the attempt to escape, and by the obstinacy of Wilson, who insisted upon going first, it totally miscarried. The undaunted and self-denied manner in which he sacrificed himself to redeem his error, and accomplish my escape from the Tolbooth Church, you must have heard of--all Scotland rang with it. It was a gallant and extraordinary deed--All men spoke of it--all men, even those who most condemned the habits and crimes of this self-devoted man, praised the heroism of his friendship. I have many vices, but cowardice or want of gratitude, are none of the number. I resolved to requite his generosity, and even your sister's safety became a secondary consideration with me for the time. To effect Wilson's liberation was my principal object, and I doubted not to find the means. "Yet I did not forget Effie neither. The bloodhounds of the law were so close after me, that I dared not trust myself near any of my old haunts, but old Murdockson met me by appointment, and informed me that your sister had happily been delivered of a boy. I charged the hag to keep her patient's mind easy, and let her want for nothing that money could purchase, and I retreated to Fife, where, among my old associates of Wilson's gang, I hid myself in those places of concealment where the men engaged in that desperate trade are used to find security for themselves and their uncustomed goods. Men who are disobedient both to human and divine laws are not always insensible to the claims of courage and generosity. We were assured that the mob of Edinburgh, strongly moved with the hardship of Wilson's situation, and the gallantry of his conduct, would back any bold attempt that might be made to rescue him even from the foot of the gibbet. Desperate as the attempt seemed, upon my declaring myself ready to lead the onset on the guard, I found no want of followers who engaged to stand by me, and returned to Lothian, soon followed by some steady associates, prepared to act whenever the occasion might require. "I have no doubt I should have rescued him from the very noose that dangled over his head," he continued with animation, which seemed a flash of the interest which he had taken in such exploits; "but amongst other precautions, the magistrates had taken one, suggested, as we afterwards learned, by the unhappy wretch Porteous, which effectually disconcerted my measures. They anticipated, by half-an-hour, the ordinary period for execution; and, as it had been resolved amongst us, that, for fear of observation from the officers of justice, we should not show ourselves upon the street until the time of action approached, it followed, that all was over before our attempt at a rescue commenced. It did commence, however, and I gained the scaffold and cut the rope with my own hand. It was too late! The bold, stouthearted, generous criminal was no more--and vengeance was all that remained to us--a vengeance, as I then thought, doubly due from my hand, to whom Wilson had given life and liberty when he could as easily have secured his own." "O sir," said Jeanie, "did the Scripture never come into your mind, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay it?'" "Scripture! Why, I had not opened a Bible for five years," answered Staunton. "Wae's me, sirs," said Jeanie--"and a minister's son too!" "It is natural for you to say so; yet do not interrupt me, but let me finish my most accursed history. The beast, Porteous, who kept firing on the people long after it had ceased to be necessary, became the object of their hatred for having overdone his duty, and of mine for having done it too well. We that is, I and the other determined friends of Wilson, resolved to be avenged--but caution was necessary. I thought I had been marked by one of the officers, and therefore continued to lurk about the vicinity of Edinburgh, but without daring to venture within the walls. At length I visited, at the hazard of my life, the place where I hoped to find my future wife and my son--they were both gone. Dame Murdockson informed me, that so soon as Effie heard of the miscarriage of the attempt to rescue Wilson, and the hot pursuit after me, she fell into a brain fever; and that being one day obliged to go out on some necessary business and leave her alone, she had taken that opportunity to escape, and she had not seen her since. I loaded her with reproaches, to which she listened with the most provoking and callous composure; for it is one of her attributes, that, violent and fierce as she is upon most occasions, there are some in which she shows the most imperturbable calmness. I threatened her with justice; she said I had more reason to fear justice than she had. I felt she was right, and was silenced. I threatened her with vengeance; she replied in nearly the same words, that, to judge by injuries received, I had more reason to fear her vengeance, than she to dread mine. She was again right, and I was left without an answer. I flung myself from her in indignation, and employed a comrade to make inquiry in the neighbourhood of Saint Leonard's concerning your sister; but ere I received his answer, the opening quest of a well-scented terrier of the law drove me from the vicinity of Edinburgh, to a more distant and secluded place of concealment. A secret and trusty emissary at length brought me the account of Porteous's condemnation, and of your sister's imprisonment on a criminal charge; thus astounding one of mine ears, while he gratified the other. "I again ventured to the Pleasance--again charged Murdockson with treachery to the unfortunate Effie and her child, though I could conceive no reason, save that of appropriating the whole of the money I had lodged with her. Your narrative throws light on this, and shows another motive, not less powerful because less evident--the desire of wreaking vengeance on the seducer of her daughter,--the destroyer at once of her reason and reputation. Great God! how I wish that, instead of the revenge she made choice of, she had delivered me up to the cord!" "But what account did the wretched woman give of Effie and the bairn?" said Jeanie, who, during this long and agitating narrative, had firmness and discernment enough to keep her eye on such points as might throw light on her sister's misfortunes. "She would give none," said Staunton; "she said the mother made a moonlight flitting from her house, with the infant in her arms--that she had never seen either of them since--that the lass might have thrown the child into the North Loch or the Quarry Holes for what she knew, and it was like enough she had done so." "And how came you to believe that she did not speak the fatal truth?" said Jeanie, trembling. "Because, on this second occasion, I saw her daughter, and I understood from her, that, in fact, the child had been removed or destroyed during the illness of the mother. But all knowledge to be got from her is so uncertain and indirect, that I could not collect any farther circumstances. Only the diabolical character of old Murdockson makes me augur the worst." "The last account agrees with that given by my poor sister," said Jeanie; "but gang on wi' your ain tale, sir." "Of this I am certain," said Staunton, "that Effie, in her senses, and with her knowledge, never injured living creature.--But what could I do in her exculpation?--Nothing--and, therefore, my whole thoughts were turned toward her safety. I was under the cursed necessity of suppressing my feelings towards Murdockson; my life was in the hag's hand--that I cared not for; but on my life hung that of your sister. I spoke the wretch fair; I appeared to confide in her; and to me, so far as I was personally concerned, she gave proofs of extraordinary fidelity. I was at first uncertain what measures I ought to adopt for your sister's liberation, when the general rage excited among the citizens of Edinburgh on account of the reprieve, of Porteous, suggested to me the daring idea of forcing the jail, and at once carrying off your sister from the clutches of the law, and bringing to condign punishment a miscreant, who had tormented the unfortunate Wilson, even in the hour of death as if he had been a wild Indian taken captive by a hostile tribe. I flung myself among the multitude in the moment of fermentation--so did others among Wilson's mates, who had, like me, been disappointed in the hope of glutting their eyes with Porteous's execution. All was organised, and I was chosen for the captain. I felt not--I do not now feel, compunction for what was to be done, and has since been executed." "O, God forgive ye, sir, and bring ye to a better sense of your ways!" exclaimed Jeanie, in horror at the avowal of such violent sentiments. "Amen," replied Staunton, "if my sentiments are wrong. But I repeat, that, although willing to aid the deed, I could have wished them to have chosen another leader; because I foresaw that the great and general duty of the night would interfere with the assistance which I proposed to render Effie. I gave a commission however, to a trusty friend to protect her to a place of safety, so soon as the fatal procession had left the jail. But for no persuasions which I could use in the hurry of the moment, or which my comrade employed at more length, after the mob had taken a different direction, could the unfortunate girl be prevailed upon to leave the prison. His arguments were all wasted upon the infatuated victim, and he was obliged to leave her in order to attend to his own safety. Such was his account; but, perhaps, he persevered less steadily in his attempts to persuade her than I would have done." "Effie was right to remain," said Jeanie; "and I love her the better for it." "Why will you say so?" said Staunton. "You cannot understand my reasons, sir, if I should render them," answered Jeanie composedly; "they that thirst for the blood of their enemies have no taste for the well-spring of life." "My hopes," said Staunton, "were thus a second time disappointed. My next efforts were to bring her through her trial by means of yourself. How I urged it, and where, you cannot have forgotten. I do not blame you for your refusal; it was founded, I am convinced, on principle, and not on indifference to your sister's fate. For me, judge of me as a man frantic; I knew not what hand to turn to, and all my efforts were unavailing. In this condition, and close beset on all sides, I thought of what might be done by means of my family, and their influence. I fled from Scotland--I reached this place--my miserably wasted and unhappy appearance procured me from my father that pardon, which a parent finds it so hard to refuse, even to the most undeserving son. And here I have awaited in anguish of mind, which the condemned criminal might envy, the event of your sister's trial." "Without taking any steps for her relief?" said Jeanie. "To the last I hoped her ease might terminate more favourably; and it is only two days since that the fatal tidings reached me. My resolution was instantly taken. I mounted my best horse with the purpose of making the utmost haste to London and there compounding with Sir Robert Walpole for your sister's safety, by surrendering to him, in the person of the heir of the family of Willingham, the notorious George Robertson, the accomplice of Wilson, the breaker of the Tolbooth prison, and the well-known leader of the Porteous mob." "But would that save my sister?" said Jeanie, in astonishment. "It would, as I should drive my bargain," said Staunton. "Queens love revenge as well as their subjects--Little as you seem to esteem it, it is a poison which pleases all palates, from the prince to the peasant. Prime ministers love no less the power of gratifying sovereigns by gratifying their passions.--The life of an obscure village girl! Why, I might ask the best of the crown-jewels for laying the head of such an insolent conspiracy at the foot of her majesty, with a certainty of being gratified. All my other plans have failed, but this could not--Heaven is just, however, and would not honour me with making this voluntary atonement for the injury I have done your sister. I had not rode ten miles, when my horse, the best and most sure-footed animal in this country, fell with me on a level piece of road, as if he had been struck by a cannon-shot. I was greatly hurt, and was brought back here in the condition in which you now see me." As young Staunton had come to the conclusion, the servant opened the door, and, with a voice which seemed intended rather for a signal, than merely the announcing of a visit, said, "His Reverence, sir, is coming up stairs to wait upon you." "For God's sake, hide yourself, Jeanie," exclaimed Staunton, "in that dressing closet!" "No, sir," said Jeanie; "as I am here for nae ill, I canna take the shame of hiding mysell frae the master of the house." "But, good Heavens!" exclaimed George Staunton, "do but consider--" Ere he could complete the sentence, his father entered the apartment. CHAPTER TENTH. And now, will pardon, comfort, kindness, draw The youth from vice? will honour, duty, law? Crabbe. Jeanie arose from her seat, and made her quiet reverence, when the elder Mr. Staunton entered the apartment. His astonishment was extreme at finding his son in such company. "I perceive, madam, I have made a mistake respecting you, and ought to have left the task of interrogating you, and of righting your wrongs, to this young man, with whom, doubtless, you have been formerly acquainted." "It's unwitting on my part that I am here;" said Jeanie; "the servant told me his master wished to speak with me." "There goes the purple coat over my ears," murmured Tummas. "D--n her, why must she needs speak the truth, when she could have as well said anything else she had a mind?" "George," said Mr. Staunton, "if you are still, as you have ever been,--lost to all self-respect, you might at least have spared your father and your father's house, such a disgraceful scene as this." "Upon my life--upon my soul, sir!" said George, throwing his feet over the side of the bed, and starting from his recumbent posture. "Your life, sir?" interrupted his father, with melancholy sternness,--"What sort of life has it been?--Your soul! alas! what regard have you ever paid to it? Take care to reform both ere offering either as pledges of your sincerity." "On my honour, sir, you do me wrong," answered George Staunton; "I have been all that you can call me that's bad, but in the present instance you do me injustice. By my honour you do!" "Your honour!" said his father, and turned from him, with a look of the most upbraiding contempt, to Jeanie. "From you, young woman, I neither ask nor expect any explanation; but as a father alike and as a clergyman, I request your departure from this house. If your romantic story has been other than a pretext to find admission into it (which, from the society in which you first appeared, I may be permitted to doubt), you will find a justice of peace within two miles, with whom, more properly than with me, you may lodge your complaint." "This shall not be," said George Staunton, starting up to his feet. "Sir, you are naturally kind and humane--you shall not become cruel and inhospitable on my account. Turn out that eaves-dropping rascal," pointing to Thomas, "and get what hartshorn drops, or what better receipt you have against fainting, and I will explain to you in two words the connection betwixt this young woman and me. She shall not lose her fair character through me. I have done too much mischief to her family already, and I know too well what belongs to the loss of fame." "Leave the room, sir," said the Rector to the servant; and when the man had obeyed, he carefully shut the door behind him. Then, addressing his son, he said sternly, "Now, sir, what new proof of your infamy have you to impart to me?" Young Staunton was about to speak, but it was one of those moments when those, who, like Jeanie Deans, possess the advantage of a steady courage and unruffled temper, can assume the superiority over more ardent but less determined spirits. "Sir," she said to the elder Staunton, "ye have an undoubted right to ask your ain son to render a reason of his conduct. But respecting me, I am but a wayfaring traveller, no ways obligated or indebted to you, unless it be for the meal of meat which, in my ain country, is willingly gien by rich or poor, according to their ability, to those who need it; and for which, forby that, I am willing to make payment, if I didna think it would be an affront to offer siller in a house like this--only I dinna ken the fashions of the country." "This is all very well, young woman," said the Rector, a good deal surprised, and unable to conjecture whether to impute Jeanie's language to simplicity or impertinence; "this may be all very well--but let me bring it to a point. Why do you stop this young man's mouth, and prevent his communicating to his father and his best friend, an explanation (since he says he has one) of circumstances which seem in themselves not a little suspicious?" "He may tell of his ain affairs what he likes," answered Jeanie; "but my family and friends have nae right to hae ony stories told anent them without their express desire; and, as they canna be here to speak for themselves, I entreat ye wadna ask Mr. George Rob--I mean Staunton, or whatever his name is, ony questions anent me or my folk; for I maun be free to tell you, that he will neither have the bearing of a Christian or a gentleman, if he answers you against my express desire." "This is the most extraordinary thing I ever met with," said the Rector, as, after fixing his eyes keenly on the placid, yet modest countenance of Jeanie, he turned them suddenly upon his son. "What have you to say, sir?" "That I feel I have been too hasty in my promise, sir," answered George Staunton; "I have no title to make any communications respecting the affairs of this young person's family without her assent." The elder Mr. Staunton turned his eyes from one to the other with marks of surprise. "This is more, and worse, I fear," he said, addressing his son, "than one of your frequent and disgraceful connections--I insist upon knowing the mystery." "I have already said, sir," replied his son, rather sullenly, "that I have no title to mention the affairs of this young woman's family without her consent." "And I hae nae mysteries to explain, sir," said Jeanie, "but only to pray you, as a preacher of the gospel and a gentleman, to permit me to go safe to the next public-house on the Lunnon road." "I shall take care of your safety," said young Staunton "you need ask that favour from no one." "Do you say so before my face?" said the justly-incensed father. "Perhaps, sir, you intend to fill up the cup of disobedience and profligacy by forming a low and disgraceful marriage? But let me bid you beware." "If you were feared for sic a thing happening wi' me, sir," said Jeanie, "I can only say, that not for all the land that lies between the twa ends of the rainbow wad I be the woman that should wed your son." "There is something very singular in all this," said the elder Staunton; "follow me into the next room, young woman." "Hear me speak first," said the young man. "I have but one word to say. I confide entirely in your prudence; tell my father as much or as little of these matters as you will, he shall know neither more nor less from me." His father darted at him a glance of indignation, which softened into sorrow as he saw him sink down on the couch, exhausted with the scene he had undergone. He left the apartment, and Jeanie followed him, George Staunton raising himself as she passed the door-way, and pronouncing the word, "Remember!" in a tone as monitory as it was uttered by Charles I. upon the scaffold. The elder Staunton led the way into a small parlour, and shut the door. "Young woman," said he, "there is something in your face and appearance that marks both sense and simplicity, and, if I am not deceived, innocence also--Should it be otherwise, I can only say, you are the most accomplished hypocrite I have ever seen.--I ask to know no secret that you have unwillingness to divulge, least of all those which concern my son. His conduct has given me too much unhappiness to permit me to hope comfort or satisfaction from him. If you are such as I suppose you, believe me, that whatever unhappy circumstances may have connected you with George Staunton, the sooner you break them through the better." "I think I understand your meaning, sir," replied Jeanie; "and as ye are sae frank as to speak o' the young gentleman in sic a way, I must needs say that it is but the second time of my speaking wi' him in our lives, and what I hae heard frae him on these twa occasions has been such that I never wish to hear the like again." "Then it is your real intention to leave this part of the country, and proceed to London?" said the Rector. "Certainly, sir; for I may say, in one sense, that the avenger of blood is behind me; and if I were but assured against mischief by the way" "I have made inquiry," said the clergyman, "after the suspicious characters you described. They have left their place of rendezvous; but as they may be lurking in the neighbourhood, and as you say you have special reason to apprehend violence from them, I will put you under the charge of a steady person, who will protect you as far as Stamford, and see you into a light coach, which goes from thence to London." "A coach is not for the like of me, sir," said Jeanie, to whom the idea of a stage-coach was unknown, as, indeed, they were then only used in the neighbourhood of London. Mr. Staunton briefly explained that she would find that mode of conveyance more commodious, cheaper, and more safe, than travelling on horseback. She expressed her gratitude with so much singleness of heart, that he was induced to ask her whether she wanted the pecuniary means of prosecuting her journey. She thanked him, but said she had enough for her purpose; and, indeed, she had husbanded her stock with great care. This reply served also to remove some doubts, which naturally enough still floated in Mr. Staunton's mind, respecting her character and real purpose, and satisfied him, at least, that money did not enter into her scheme of deception, if an impostor she should prove. He next requested to know what part of the city she wished to go to. "To a very decent merchant, a cousin o' my ain, a Mrs. Glass, sir, that sells snuff and tobacco, at the sign o' the Thistle, somegate in the town." Jeanie communicated this intelligence with a feeling that a connection so respectable ought to give her consequence in the eyes of Mr. Staunton; and she was a good deal surprised when he answered-- "And is this woman your only acquaintance in London, my poor girl? and have you really no better knowledge where she is to be found?" "I was gaun to see the Duke of Argyle, forby Mrs. Glass," said Jeanie; "and if your honour thinks it would be best to go there first, and get some of his Grace's folk to show me my cousin's shop" "Are you acquainted with any of the Duke of Argyle's people?" said the Rector. "No, sir." "Her brain must be something touched after all, or it would be impossible for her to rely on such introductions.--Well," said he aloud, "I must not inquire into the cause of your journey, and so I cannot be fit to give you advice how to manage it. But the landlady of the house where the coach stops is a very decent person; and as I use her house sometimes, I will give you a recommendation to her." Jeanie thanked him for his kindness with her best courtesy, and said, "That with his honour's line, and ane from worthy Mrs. Bickerton, that keeps the Seven Stars at York, she did not doubt to be well taken out in Lunnon." "And now," said he, "I presume you will be desirous to set out immediately." "If I had been in an inn, sir, or any suitable resting-place," answered Jeanie, "I wad not have presumed to use the Lord's day for travelling but as I am on a journey of mercy, I trust my doing so will not be imputed." "You may, if you choose, remain with Mrs. Dalton for the evening; but I desire you will have no farther correspondence with my son, who is not a proper counsellor for a person of your age, whatever your difficulties may be." "Your honour speaks ower truly in that," said Jeanie; "it was not with my will that I spoke wi' him just now, and--not to wish the gentleman onything but gude--I never wish to see him between the een again." "If you please," added the Rector, "as you seem to be a seriously disposed young woman, you may attend family worship in the hall this evening." "I thank your honour," said Jeanie; "but I am doubtful if my attendance would be to edification." "How!" said the Rector; "so young, and already unfortunate enough to have doubts upon the duties of religion!" "God forbid, sir," replied Jeanie; "it is not for that; but I have been bred in the faith of the suffering remnant of the Presbyterian doctrine in Scotland, and I am doubtful if I can lawfully attend upon your fashion of worship, seeing it has been testified against by many precious souls of our kirk, and specially by my worthy father." "Well, my good girl," said the Rector, with a good-humoured smile, "far be it from me to put any force upon your conscience; and yet you ought to recollect that the same divine grace dispenses its streams to other kingdoms as well as to Scotland. As it is as essential to our spiritual, as water to our earthly wants, its springs, various in character, yet alike efficacious in virtue, are to be found in abundance throughout the Christian world." "Ah, but," said Jeanie, "though the waters may be alike, yet, with your worship's leave, the blessing upon them may not be equal. It would have been in vain for Naaman the Syrian leper to have bathed in Pharpar and Abana, rivers of Damascus, when it was only the waters of Jordon that were sanctified for the cure." "Well," said the Rector, "we will not enter upon the great debate betwixt our national churches at present. We must endeavour to satisfy you, that, at least, amongst our errors, we preserve Christian charity, and a desire to assist our brethren." He then ordered Mrs. Dalton into his presence, and consigned Jeanie to her particular charge, with directions to be kind to her, and with assurances, that, early in the morning, a trusty guide and a good horse should be ready to conduct her to Stamford. He then took a serious and dignified, yet kind leave of her, wishing her full success in the objects of her journey, which he said he doubted not were laudable, from the soundness of thinking which she had displayed in conversation. Jeanie was again conducted by the housekeeper to her own apartment. But the evening was not destined to pass over without farther torment from young Staunton. A paper was slipped into her hand by the faithful Tummas, which intimated his young master's desire, or rather demand, to see her instantly, and assured her he had provided against interruption. "Tell your young master," said Jeanie, openly, and regardless of all the winks and signs by which Tummas strove to make her comprehend that Mrs. Dalton was not to be admitted into the secret of the correspondence, "that I promised faithfully to his worthy father that I would not see him again." "Tummas," said Mrs. Dalton, "I think you might be much more creditably employed, considering the coat you wear, and the house you live in, than to be carrying messages between your young master and girls that chance to be in this house." "Why, Mrs. Dalton, as to that, I was hired to carry messages, and not to ask any questions about them; and it's not for the like of me to refuse the young gentleman's bidding, if he were a little wildish or so. If there was harm meant, there's no harm done, you see." "However," said Mrs. Dalton, "I gie you fair warning, Tummas Ditton, that an I catch thee at this work again, his Reverence shall make a clear house of you." Thomas retired, abashed and in dismay. The rest of the evening passed away without anything worthy of notice. Jeanie enjoyed the comforts of a good bed and a sound sleep with grateful satisfaction, after the perils and hardships of the preceding day; and such was her fatigue, that she slept soundly until six o'clock, when she was awakened by Mrs. Dalton, who acquainted her that her guide and horse were ready, and in attendance. She hastily rose, and, after her morning devotions, was soon ready to resume her travels. The motherly care of the housekeeper had provided an early breakfast, and, after she had partaken of this refreshment, she found herself safe seated on a pillion behind a stout Lincolnshire peasant, who was, besides, armed with pistols, to protect her against any violence which might be offered. They trudged along in silence for a mile or two along a country road, which conducted them, by hedge and gate-way, into the principal highway, a little beyond Grantham. At length her master of the horse asked her whether her name was not Jean, or Jane, Deans. She answered in the affirmative, with some surprise. "Then here's a bit of a note as concerns you," said the man, handing it over his left shoulder. "It's from young master, as I judge, and every man about Willingham is fain to pleasure him either for love or fear; for he'll come to be landlord at last, let them say what they like." Jeanie broke the seal of the note, which was addressed to her, and read as follows:-- "You refuse to see me. I suppose you are shocked at my character: but, in painting myself such as I am, you should give me credit for my sincerity. I am, at least, no hypocrite. You refuse, however, to see me, and your conduct may be natural--but is it wise? I have expressed my anxiety to repair your sister's misfortunes at the expense of my honour,--my family's honour--my own life, and you think me too debased to be admitted even to sacrifice what I have remaining of honour, fame, and life, in her cause. Well, if the offerer be despised, the victim is still equally at hand; and perhaps there may be justice in the decree of Heaven, that I shall not have the melancholy credit of appearing to make this sacrifice out of my own free good-will. You, as you have declined my concurrence, must take the whole upon yourself. Go, then, to the Duke of Argyle, and, when other arguments fail you, tell him you have it in your power to bring to condign punishment the most active conspirator in the Porteous mob. He will hear you on this topic, should he be deaf to every other. Make your own terms, for they will be at your own making. You know where I am to be found; and you may be assured I will not give you the dark side of the hill, as at Muschat's Cairn; I have no thoughts of stirring from the house I was born in; like the hare, I shall be worried in the seat I started from. I repeat it--make your own terms. I need not remind you to ask your sister's life, for that you will do of course; but make terms of advantage for yourself--ask wealth and reward--office and income for Butler--ask anything--you will get anything--and all for delivering to the hands of the executioner a man most deserving of his office;--one who, though young in years, is old in wickedness, and whose most earnest desire is, after the storms of an unquiet life, to sleep and be at rest." This extraordinary letter was subscribed with the initials G. S. Jeanie read it over once or twice with great attention, which the slow pace of the horse, as he stalked through a deep lane, enabled her to do with facility. When she had perused this billet, her first employment was to tear it into as small pieces as possible, and disperse these pieces in the air by a few at a time, so that a document containing so perilous a secret might not fall into any other person's hand. The question how far, in point of extremity, she was entitled to save her sister's life by sacrificing that of a person who, though guilty towards the state, had done her no injury, formed the next earnest and most painful subject of consideration. In one sense, indeed, it seemed as if denouncing the guilt of Staunton, the cause of her sister's errors and misfortunes, would have been an act of just, and even providential retribution. But Jeanie, in the strict and severe tone of morality in which she was educated, had to consider not only the general aspect of a proposed action, but its justness and fitness in relation to the actor, before she could be, according to her own phrase, free to enter upon it. What right had she to make a barter between the lives of Staunton and of Effie, and to sacrifice the one for the safety of the other? His guilt--that guilt for which he was amenable to the laws--was a crime against the public indeed, but it was not against her. Neither did it seem to her that his share in the death of Porteous, though her mind revolted at the idea of using violence to any one, was in the relation of a common murder, against the perpetrator of which every one is called to aid the public magistrate. That violent action was blended with many circumstances, which, in the eyes of those in Jeanie's rank of life, if they did not altogether deprive it of the character of guilt, softened, at least, its most atrocious features. The anxiety of the government to obtain conviction of some of the offenders, had but served to increase the public feeling which connected the action, though violent and irregular, with the idea of ancient national independence. The rigorous measures adopted or proposed against the city of Edinburgh, the ancient metropolis of Scotland--the extremely unpopular and injudicious measure of compelling the Scottish clergy, contrary to their principles and sense of duty, to promulgate from the pulpit the reward offered for the discovery of the perpetrators of this slaughter, had produced on the public mind the opposite consequences from what were intended; and Jeanie felt conscious, that whoever should lodge information concerning that event, and for whatsoever purpose it might be done, it would be considered as an act of treason against the independence of Scotland. With the fanaticism of the Scottish Presbyterians, there was always mingled a glow of national feeling, and Jeanie, trembled at the idea of her name being handed down to posterity with that of the "fause Monteath," and one or two others, who, having deserted and betrayed the cause of their country, are damned to perpetual remembrance and execration among its peasantry. Yet, to part with Effie's life once more, when a word spoken might save it, pressed severely on the mind of her affectionate sister. "The Lord support and direct me!" said Jeanie, "for it seems to be His will to try me with difficulties far beyond my ain strength." While this thought passed through Jeanie's mind, her guard, tired of silence, began to show some inclination to be communicative. He seemed a sensible, steady peasant, but not having more delicacy or prudence than is common to those in his situation, he, of course, chose the Willingham family as the subject of his conversation. From this man Jeanie learned some particulars of which she had hitherto been ignorant, and which we will briefly recapitulate for the information of the reader. The father of George Staunton had been bred a soldier, and during service in the West Indies, had married the heiress of a wealthy planter. By this lady he had an only child, George Staunton, the unhappy young, man who has been so often mentioned in this narrative. He passed the first part of his early youth under the charge of a doting mother, and in the society of negro slaves, whose study it was to gratify his every caprice. His father was a man of worth and sense; but as he alone retained tolerable health among the officers of the regiment he belonged to, he was much engaged with his duty. Besides, Mrs. Staunton was beautiful and wilful, and enjoyed but delicate health; so that it was difficult for a man of affection, humanity, and a quiet disposition, to struggle with her on the point of her over-indulgence to an only child. Indeed, what Mr. Staunton did do towards counteracting the baneful effects of his wife's system, only tended to render it more pernicious; for every restraint imposed on the boy in his father's presence, was compensated by treble license during his absence. So that George Staunton acquired, even in childhood, the habit of regarding his father as a rigid censor, from whose severity he was desirous of emancipating himself as soon and absolutely as possible. When he was about ten years old, and when his mind had received all the seeds of those evil weeds which afterwards grew apace, his mother died, and his father, half heart-broken, returned to England. To sum up her imprudence and unjustifiable indulgence, she had contrived to place a considerable part of her fortune at her son's exclusive control or disposal, in consequence of which management, George Staunton had not been long in England till he learned his independence, and how to abuse it. His father had endeavoured to rectify the defects of his education by placing him in a well-regulated seminary. But although he showed some capacity for learning, his riotous conduct soon became intolerable to his teachers. He found means (too easily afforded to all youths who have certain expectations) of procuring such a command of money as enabled him to anticipate in boyhood the frolics and follies of a more mature age, and, with these accomplishments, he was returned on his father's hands as a profligate boy, whose example might ruin a hundred. The elder Mr. Staunton, whose mind, since his wife's death, had been tinged with a melancholy, which certainly his son's conduct did not tend to dispel, had taken orders, and was inducted by his brother Sir William Staunton into the family living of Willingham. The revenue was a matter of consequence to him, for he derived little advantage from the estate of his late wife; and his own fortune was that of a younger brother. He took his son to reside with him at the rectory, but he soon found that his disorders rendered him an intolerable inmate. And as the young men of his own rank would not endure the purse-proud insolence of the Creole, he fell into that taste for low society, which is worse than "pressing to death, whipping, or hanging." His father sent him abroad, but he only returned wilder and more desperate than before. It is true, this unhappy youth was not without his good qualities. He had lively wit, good temper, reckless generosity, and manners, which, while he was under restraint, might pass well in society. But all these availed him nothing. He was so well acquainted with the turf, the gaming-table, the cock-pit, and every worse rendezvous of folly and dissipation, that his mother's fortune was spent before he was twenty-one, and he was soon in debt and in distress. His early history may be concluded in the words of our British Juvenal, when describing a similar character:-- Headstrong, determined in his own career, He thought reproof unjust, and truth severe. The soul's disease was to its crisis come, He first abused, and then abjured, his home; And when he chose a vagabond to be, He made his shame his glory, "I'll be free!"* [Crabbe's _Borough,_ Letter xii.] "And yet 'tis pity on Measter George, too," continued the honest boor, "for he has an open hand, and winna let a poor body want an he has it." The virtue of profuse generosity, by which, indeed, they themselves are most directly advantaged, is readily admitted by the vulgar as a cloak for many sins. At Stamford our heroine was deposited in safety by her communicative guide. She obtained a place in the coach, which, although termed a light one, and accommodated with no fewer than six horses, only reached London on the afternoon of the second day. The recommendation of the elder Mr. Staunton procured Jeanie a civil reception at the inn where the carriage stopped, and, by the aid of Mrs. Bickerton's correspondent, she found out her friend and relative Mrs. Glass, by whom she was kindly received and hospitably entertained. CHAPTER ELEVENTH. My name is Argyle, you may well think it strange, To live at the court and never to change. Ballad. Few names deserve more honourable mention in the history of Scotland, during this period, than that of John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. His talents as a statesman and a soldier were generally admitted; he was not without ambition, but "without the illness that attends it"--without that irregularity of thought and aim, which often excites great men, in his peculiar situation, (for it was a very peculiar one), to grasp the means of raising themselves to power, at the risk of throwing a kingdom into confusion. Pope has distinguished him as Argyle, the state's whole thunder born to wield, And shake alike the senate and the field. He was alike free from the ordinary vices of statesmen, falsehood, namely, and dissimulation; and from those of warriors, inordinate and violent thirst after self-aggrandisement. Scotland, his native country, stood at this time in a very precarious and doubtful situation. She was indeed united to England, but the cement had not had time to acquire consistence. The irritation of ancient wrongs still subsisted, and betwixt the fretful jealousy of the Scottish, and the supercilious disdain of the English, quarrels repeatedly occurred, in the course of which the national league, so important to the safety of both, was in the utmost danger of being dissolved. Scotland had, besides, the disadvantage of being divided into intestine factions, which hated each other bitterly, and waited but a signal to break forth into action. In such circumstances, another man, with the talents and rank of Argyle, but without a mind so happily regulated, would have sought to rise from the earth in the whirlwind, and direct its fury. He chose a course more safe and more honourable. Soaring above the petty distinctions of faction, his voice was raised, whether in office or opposition, for those measures which were at once just and lenient. His high military talents enabled him, during the memorable year 1715, to render such services to the House of Hanover, as, perhaps, were too great to be either acknowledged or repaid. He had employed, too, his utmost influence in softening the consequences of that insurrection to the unfortunate gentlemen whom a mistaken sense of loyalty had engaged in the affair, and was rewarded by the esteem and affection of his country in an uncommon degree. This popularity, with a discontented and warlike people, was supposed to be a subject of jealousy at court, where the power to become dangerous is sometimes of itself obnoxious, though the inclination is not united with it. Besides, the Duke of Argyle's independent and somewhat haughty mode of expressing himself in Parliament, and acting in public, were ill calculated to attract royal favour. He was, therefore, always respected, and often employed; but he was not a favourite of George the Second, his consort, or his ministers. At several different periods in his life, the Duke might be considered as in absolute disgrace at court, although he could hardly be said to be a declared member of opposition. This rendered him the dearer to Scotland, because it was usually in her cause that he incurred the displeasure of his sovereign; and upon this very occasion of the Porteous mob, the animated and eloquent opposition which he had offered to the severe measures which were about to be adopted towards the city of Edinburgh, was the more gratefully received in that metropolis, as it was understood that the Duke's interposition had given personal offence to Queen Caroline. His conduct upon this occasion, as, indeed, that of all the Scottish members of the legislature, with one or two unworthy exceptions, had been in the highest degree spirited. The popular tradition, concerning his reply to Queen Caroline, has been given already, and some fragments of his speech against the Porteous Bill are still remembered. He retorted upon the Chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, the insinuation that he had stated himself in this case rather as a party than as a judge:--"I appeal," said Argyle, "to the House--to the nation, if I can be justly branded with the infamy of being a jobber or a partisan. Have I been a briber of votes?--a buyer of boroughs?--the agent of corruption for any purpose, or on behalf of any party?--Consider my life; examine my actions in the field and in the cabinet, and see where there lies a blot that can attach to my honour. I have shown myself the friend of my country--the loyal subject of my king. I am ready to do so again, without an instant's regard to the frowns or smiles of a court. I have experienced both, and am prepared with indifference for either. I have given my reasons for opposing this bill, and have made it appear that it is repugnant to the international treaty of union, to the liberty of Scotland, and, reflectively, to that of England, to common justice, to common sense, and to the public interest. Shall the metropolis of Scotland, the capital of an independent nation, the residence of a long line of monarchs, by whom that noble city was graced and dignified--shall such a city, for the fault of an obscure and unknown body of rioters, be deprived of its honours and its privileges--its gates and its guards?--and shall a native Scotsman tamely behold the havoc? I glory, my Lords, in opposing such unjust rigour, and reckon it my dearest pride and honour to stand up in defence of my native country while thus laid open to undeserved shame, and unjust spoliation." Other statesmen and orators, both Scottish and English, used the same arguments, the bill was gradually stripped of its most oppressive and obnoxious clauses, and at length ended in a fine upon the city of Edinburgh in favour of Porteous's widow. So that, as somebody observed at the time, the whole of these fierce debates ended in making the fortune of an old cook-maid, such having been the good woman's original capacity. The court, however, did not forget the baffle they had received in this affair, and the Duke of Argyle, who had contributed so much to it, was thereafter considered as a person in disgrace. It is necessary to place these circumstances under the reader's observation, both because they are connected with the preceding and subsequent part of our narrative. The Duke was alone in his study, when one of his gentlemen acquainted him, that a country-girl, from Scotland, was desirous of speaking with his Grace. "A country-girl, and from Scotland!" said the Duke; "what can have brought the silly fool to London?--Some lover pressed and sent to sea, or some stock sank in the South-Sea funds, or some such hopeful concern, I suppose, and then nobody to manage the matter but MacCallummore,--Well, this same popularity has its inconveniences.--However, show our countrywoman up, Archibald--it is ill manners to keep her in attendance." A young woman of rather low stature, and whose countenance might be termed very modest and pleasing in expression, though sun-burnt, somewhat freckled, and not possessing regular features, was ushered into the splendid library. She wore the tartan plaid of her country, adjusted so as partly to cover her head, and partly to fall back over her shoulders. A quantity of fair hair, disposed with great simplicity and neatness, appeared in front of her round and good-humoured face, to which the solemnity of her errand, and her sense of the Duke's rank and importance, gave an appearance of deep awe, but not of slavish fear, or fluttered bashfulness. The rest of Jeanie's dress was in the style of Scottish maidens of her own class; but arranged with that scrupulous attention to neatness and cleanliness, which we often find united with that purity of mind, of which it is a natural emblem. She stopped near the entrance of the room, made her deepest reverence, and crossed her hands upon her bosom, without uttering a syllable. The Duke of Argyle advanced towards her; and, if she admired his graceful deportment and rich dress, decorated with the orders which had been deservedly bestowed on him, his courteous manner, and quick and intelligent cast of countenance, he on his part was not less, or less deservedly, struck with the quiet simplicity and modesty expressed in the dress, manners, and countenance of his humble countrywoman. "Did you wish to speak with me, my bonny lass?" said the Duke, using the encouraging epithet which at once acknowledged the connection betwixt them as country-folk; "or did you wish to see the Duchess?" "My business is with your honour, my Lord--I mean your Lordship's Grace." "And what is it, my good girl?" said the Duke, in the same mild and encouraging tone of voice. Jeanie looked at the attendant. "Leave us, Archibald," said the Duke, "and wait in the anteroom." The domestic retired. "And now sit down, my good lass," said the Duke; "take your breath--take your time, and tell me what you have got to say. I guess by your dress, you are just come up from poor Scotland--Did you come through the streets in your tartan plaid?" "No, sir," said Jeanie; "a friend brought me in ane o' their street coaches--a very decent woman," she added, her courage increasing as she became familiar with the sound of her own voice in such a presence; "your Lordship's Grace kens her--it's Mrs. Glass, at the sign o' the Thistle." "O, my worthy snuff-merchant--I have always a chat with Mrs. Glass when I purchase my Scots high-dried. Well, but your business, my bonny woman--time and tide, you know, wait for no one." "Your honour--I beg your Lordship's pardon--I mean your Grace,"--for it must be noticed, that this matter of addressing the Duke by his appropriate title had been anxiously inculcated upon Jeanie by her friend Mrs. Glass, in whose eyes it was a matter of such importance, that her last words, as Jeanie left the coach, were, "Mind to say your Grace;" and Jeanie, who had scarce ever in her life spoke to a person of higher quality than the Laird of Dumbiedikes, found great difficulty in arranging her language according to the rules of ceremony. The Duke, who saw her embarrassment, said, with his usual affability, "Never mind my grace, lassie; just speak out a plain tale, and show you have a Scots tongue in your head." "Sir, I am muckle obliged--Sir, I am the sister of that poor unfortunate criminal, Effie Deans, who is ordered for execution at Edinburgh."' "Ah!" said the Duke, "I have heard of that unhappy story, I think--a case of child-murder, under a special act of parliament--Duncan Forbes mentioned it at dinner the other day." "And I was come up frae the north, sir, to see what could be done for her in the way of getting a reprieve or pardon, sir, or the like of that." "Alas! my poor girl," said the Duke; "you have made a long and a sad journey to very little purpose--Your sister is ordered for execution." "But I am given to understand that there is law for reprieving her, if it is in the king's pleasure," said Jeanie. "Certainly, there is," said the Duke; "but that is purely in the king's breast. The crime has been but too common--the Scots crown-lawyers think it is right there should be an example. Then the late disorders in Edinburgh have excited a prejudice in government against the nation at large, which they think can only be managed by measures of intimidation and severity. What argument have you, my poor girl, except the warmth of your sisterly affection, to offer against all this?--What is your interest?--What friends have you at court?" "None, excepting God and your Grace," said Jeanie, still keeping her ground resolutely, however. "Alas!" said the Duke, "I could almost say with old Ormond, that there could not be any, whose influence was smaller with kings and ministers. It is a cruel part of our situation, young woman--I mean of the situation of men in my circumstances, that the public ascribe to them influence which they do not possess; and that individuals are led to expect from them assistance which we have no means of rendering. But candour and plain dealing is in the power of every one, and I must not let you imagine you have resources in my influence, which do not exist, to make your distress the heavier--I have no means of averting your sister's fate--She must die." "We must a' die, sir," said Jeanie; "it is our common doom for our father's transgression; but we shouldna hasten ilk other out o' the world, that's what your honour kens better than me." "My good young woman," said the Duke, mildly, "we are all apt to blame the law under which we immediately suffer; but you seem to have been well educated in your line of life, and you must know that it is alike the law of God and man, that the murderer shall surely die." "But, sir, Effie--that is, my poor sister, sir--canna be proved to be a murderer; and if she be not, and the law take her life notwithstanding, wha is it that is the murderer then?" "I am no lawyer," said the Duke; "and I own I think the statute a very severe one." "You are a law-maker, sir, with your leave; and, therefore, ye have power over the law," answered Jeanie. "Not in my individual capacity," said the Duke; "though, as one of a large body, I have a voice in the legislation. But that cannot serve you--nor have I at present, I care not who knows it, so much personal influence with the sovereign, as would entitle me to ask from him the most insignificant favour. What could tempt you, young woman, to address yourself to me?" "It was yourself, sir." "Myself?" he replied--"I am sure you have never seen me before." "No, sir; but a' the world kens that the Duke of Argyle is his country's friend; and that ye fight for the right, and speak for the right, and that there's nane like you in our present Israel, and so they that think themselves wranged draw to refuge under your shadow; and if ye wunna stir to save the blood of an innocent countrywoman of your ain, what should we expect frae southerns and strangers? And maybe I had another reason for troubling your honour." "And what is that?" asked the Duke. "I hae understood from my father, that your honour's house, and especially your gudesire and his father, laid down their lives on the scaffold in the persecuting time. And my father was honoured to gie his testimony baith in the cage and in the pillory, as is specially mentioned in the books of Peter Walker the packman, that your honour, I dare say, kens, for he uses maist partly the westland of Scotland. And, sir, there's ane that takes concern in me, that wished me to gang to your Grace's presence, for his gudesire had done your gracious gudesire some good turn, as ye will see frae these papers." With these words, she delivered to the Duke the little parcel which she had received from Butler. He opened it, and, in the envelope, read with some surprise, "'Musterroll of the men serving in the troop of that godly gentleman, Captain Salathiel Bangtext.--Obadiah Muggleton, Sin-Despise Double-knock, Stand-fast-in-faith Gipps, Turn-to-the-right Thwack-away'-- What the deuce is this? A list of Praise-God Barebone's Parliament I think, or of old Noll's evangelical army--that last fellow should understand his wheelings, to judge by his name.--But what does all this mean, my girl?" "It was the other paper, sir," said Jeanie, somewhat abashed at the mistake. "O, this is my unfortunate grandfather's hand sure enough--'To all who may have friendship for the house of Argyle, these are to certify, that Benjamin Butler, of Monk's regiment of dragoons, having been, under God, the means of saving my life from four English troopers who were about, to slay me, I, having no other present means of recompense in my power, do give him this acknowledgment, hoping that it may be useful to him or his during these troublesome times; and do conjure my friends, tenants, kinsmen, and whoever will do aught for me, either in the Highlands or Lowlands, to protect and assist the said Benjamin Butler, and his friends or family, on their lawful occasions, giving them such countenance, maintenance, and supply, as may correspond with the benefit he hath bestowed on me; witness my hand--Lorne.' "This is a strong injunction--This Benjamin Butler was your grandfather, I suppose?--You seem too young to have been his daughter." "He was nae akin to me, sir--he was grandfather to ane--to a neighbour's son--to a sincere weel-wisher of mine, sir," dropping her little courtesy as she spoke. "O, I understand," said the Duke--"a true-love affair. He was the grandsire of one you are engaged to?" "One I _was_ engaged to, sir," said Jeanie, sighing; "but this unhappy business of my poor sister" "What!" said the Duke, hastily--"he has not deserted you on that account, has he?" "No, sir; he wad be the last to leave a friend in difficulties," said Jeanie; "but I maun think for him as weel as for mysell. He is a clergyman, sir, and it would not beseem him to marry the like of me, wi' this disgrace on my kindred." "You are a singular young woman," said the Duke. "You seem to me to think of every one before yourself. And have you really come up from Edinburgh on foot, to attempt this hopeless solicitation for your sister's life?" "It was not a'thegither on foot, sir," answered Jeanie; "for I sometimes got a cast in a waggon, and I had a horse from Ferrybridge, and then the coach" "Well, never mind all that," interrupted the Duke--"What reason have you for thinking your sister innocent?" "Because she has not been proved guilty, as will appear from looking at these papers." She put into his hand a note of the evidence, and copies of her sister's declaration. These papers Butler had procured after her departure, and Saddletree had them forwarded to London, to Mrs. Glass's care, so that Jeanie found the documents, so necessary for supporting her suit, lying in readiness at her arrival. "Sit down in that chair, my good girl," said the Duke,--"until I glance over the papers." She obeyed, and watched with the utmost anxiety each change in his countenance as he cast his eye through the papers briefly, yet with attention, and making memoranda as he went along. After reading them hastily over, he looked up, and seemed about to speak, yet changed his purpose, as if afraid of committing himself by giving too hasty an opinion, and read over again several passages which he had marked as being most important. All this he did in shorter time than can be supposed by men of ordinary talents; for his mind was of that acute and penetrating character which discovers, with the glance of intuition, what facts bear on the particular point that chances to be subjected to consideration. At length he rose, after a few minutes' deep reflection.-- "Young woman," said he, "your sister's case must certainly be termed a hard one." "God bless you, sir, for that very word!" said Jeanie. "It seems contrary to the genius of British law," continued the Duke, "to take that for granted which is not proved, or to punish with death for a crime, which, for aught the prosecutor has been able to show, may not have been committed at all." "God bless you, sir!" again said Jeanie, who had risen from her seat, and, with clasped hands, eyes glittering through tears, and features which trembled with anxiety, drank in every word which the Duke uttered. "But, alas! my poor girl," he continued, "what good will my opinion do you, unless I could impress it upon those in whose hands your sister's life is placed by the law? Besides, I am no lawyer; and I must speak with some of our Scottish gentlemen of the gown about the matter." "O, but, sir, what seems reasonable to your honour, will certainly be the same to them," answered Jeanie. "I do not know that," replied the Duke; "ilka man buckles his belt his ain gate--you know our old Scots proverb?--But you shall not have placed this reliance on me altogether in vain. Leave these papers with me, and you shall hear from me to-morrow or next day. Take care to be at home at Mrs. Glass's, and ready to come to me at a moment's warning. It will be unnecessary for you to give Mrs. Glass the trouble to attend you;--and by the by, you will please to be dressed just as you are at present." "I wad hae putten on a cap, sir," said Jeanie, "but your honour kens it isna the fashion of my country for single women; and I judged that, being sae mony hundred miles frae hame, your Grace's heart wad warm to the tartan," looking at the corner of her plaid. "You judged quite right," said the Duke. "I know the full value of the snood; and MacCallummore's heart will be as cold as death can make it, when it does _not_ warm to the tartan. Now, go away, and don't be out of the way when I send." Jeanie replied,--"There is little fear of that, sir, for I have little heart to go to see sights amang this wilderness of black houses. But if I might say to your gracious honour, that if ye ever condescend to speak to ony ane that is of greater degree than yoursell, though maybe it isna civil in me to say sae, just if you would think there can be nae sic odds between you and them, as between poor Jeanie Deans from St. Leonard's and the Duke of Argyle; and so dinna be chappit back or cast down wi' the first rough answer." "I am not apt," said the Duke, laughing, "to mind rough answers much--Do not you hope too much from what I have promised. I will do my best, but God has the hearts of Kings in his own hand." Jeanie courtesied reverently and withdrew, attended by the Duke's gentleman, to her hackney-coach, with a respect which her appearance did not demand, but which was perhaps paid to the length of the interview with which his master had honoured her. CHAPTER TWELFTH. Ascend While radiant summer opens all its pride, Thy hill, delightful Shene! Here let us sweep The boundless landscape. Thomson. From her kind and officious, but somewhat gossiping friend, Mrs. Glass, Jeanie underwent a very close catechism on their road to the Strand, where the Thistle of the good lady flourished in full glory, and, with its legend of _Nemo me impune,_ distinguished a shop then well known to all Scottish folk of high and low degree. "And were you sure aye to _say your_ Grace to him?" said the good old lady; "for ane should make a distinction between MacCallummore and the bits o' southern bodies that they ca' lords here--there are as mony o' them, Jeanie, as would gar ane think they maun cost but little fash in the making--some of them I wadna trust wi' six pennies-worth of black-rappee--some of them I wadna gie mysell the trouble to put up a hapnyworth in brown paper for--But I hope you showed your breeding to the Duke of Argyle, for what sort of folk would he think your friends in London, if you had been lording him, and him a Duke?" "He didna seem muckle to mind," said Jeanie; "he kend that I was landward bred." "Weel, weel," answered the good lady. "His Grace kens me weel; so I am the less anxious about it. I never fill his snug-box but he says, 'How d'ye do, good Mrs. Glass?--How are all our friends in the North?' or it may be--'Have ye heard from the North lately?' And you may be sure, I make my best courtesy, and answer, 'My Lord Duke, I hope your Grace's noble Duchess, and your Grace's young ladies, are well; and I hope the snuff continues to give your Grace satisfaction.' And then ye will see the people in the shop begin to look about them; and if there's a Scotsman, as there may be three or half-a-dozen, aff go the hats, and mony a look after him, and 'There goes the Prince of Scotland, God bless him!' But ye have not told me yet the very words he said t'ye." Jeanie had no intention to be quite so communicative. She had, as the reader may have observed, some of the caution and shrewdness, as well as of the simplicity of her country. She answered generally, that the Duke had received her very compassionately, and had promised to interest himself in her sister's affair, and to let her hear from him in the course of the next day, or the day after. She did not choose to make any mention of his having desired her to be in readiness to attend him, far less of his hint, that she should not bring her landlady. So that honest Mrs. Glass was obliged to remain satisfied with the general intelligence above mentioned, after having done all she could to extract more. It may easily be conceived, that, on the next day, Jeanie declined all invitations and inducements, whether of exercise or curiosity, to walk abroad, and continued to inhale the close, and somewhat professional atmosphere of Mrs. Glass's small parlour. The latter flavour it owed to a certain cupboard, containing, among other articles, a few canisters of real Havannah, which, whether from respect to the manufacture, or out of a reverend fear of the exciseman, Mrs. Glass did not care to trust in the open shop below, and which communicated to the room a scent, that, however fragrant to the nostrils of the connoisseur, was not very agreeable to those of Jeanie. "Dear sirs," she said to herself, "I wonder how my cousin's silk manty, and her gowd watch, or ony thing in the world, can be worth sitting sneezing all her life in this little stilling room, and might walk on green braes if she liked." Mrs. Glass was equally surprised at her cousin's reluctance to stir abroad, and her indifference to the fine sights of London. "It would always help to pass away the time," she said, "to have something to look at, though ane was in distress." But Jeanie was unpersuadable. The day after her interview with the Duke was spent in that "hope delayed, which maketh the heart sick." Minutes glided after minutes--hours fled after hours--it became too late to have any reasonable expectation of hearing from the Duke that day; yet the hope which she disowned, she could not altogether relinquish, and her heart throbbed, and her ears tingled, with every casual sound in the shop below. It was in vain. The day wore away in the anxiety of protracted and fruitless expectation. The next morning commenced in the same manner. But before noon, a well-dressed gentleman entered Mrs. Glass's shop, and requested to see a young woman from Scotland. "That will be my cousin Jeanie Deans, Mr. Archibald," said Mrs. Glass, with a courtesy of recognisance. "Have you any message for her from his Grace the Duke of Argyle, Mr. Archibald? I will carry it to her in a moment." "I believe I must give her the trouble of stepping down, Mrs. Glass." "Jeanie--Jeanie Deans!" said Mrs. Glass, screaming at the bottom of the little staircase, which ascended from the corner of the shop to the higher regions. "Jeanie--Jeanie Deans, I say! come down stairs instantly; here is the Duke of Argyle's groom of the chambers desires to see you directly." This was announced in a voice so loud, as to make all who chanced to be within hearing aware of the important communication. It may easily be supposed, that Jeanie did not tarry long in adjusting herself to attend the summons, yet her feet almost failed her as she came down stairs. "I must ask the favour of your company a little way," said Archibald, with civility. "I am quite ready, sir," said Jeanie. "Is my cousin going out, Mr. Archibald? then I will hae to go wi' her, no doubt.--James Rasper--Look to the shop, James.--Mr. Archibald," pushing a jar towards him, "you take his Grace's mixture, I think. Please to fill your box, for old acquaintance' sake, while I get on my things." Mr. Archibald transferred a modest parcel of snuff from the jar to his own mull, but said he was obliged to decline the pleasure of Mrs. Glass's company, as his message was particularly to the young person. "Particularly to the young person?" said Mrs. Glass; "is not that uncommon, Mr. Archibald? But his Grace is the best judge; and you are a steady person, Mr. Archibald. It is not every one that comes from a great man's house I would trust my cousin with.--But, Jeanie, you must not go through the streets with Mr. Archibald with your tartan what-d'ye-call-it there upon your shoulders, as if you had come up with a drove of Highland cattle. Wait till I bring down my silk cloak. Why, we'll have the mob after you!" "I have a hackney-coach in waiting, madam," said Mr. Archibald, interrupting the officious old lady, from whom Jeanie might otherwise have found it difficult to escape; "and, I believe, I must not allow her time for any change of dress." So saying, he hurried Jeanie into the coach, while she internally praised and wondered at the easy manner in which he shifted off Mrs. Glass's officious offers and inquiries, without mentioning his master's orders, or entering into any explanation, On entering the coach, Mr. Archibald seated himself in the front seat opposite to our heroine, and they drove on in silence. After they had driven nearly half-an-hour, without a word on either side, it occurred to Jeanie, that the distance and time did not correspond with that which had been occupied by her journey on the former occasion, to and from the residence of the Duke of Argyle. At length she could not help asking her taciturn companion, "Whilk way they were going?" "My Lord Duke will inform you himself, madam," answered Archibald, with the same solemn courtesy which marked his whole demeanour. Almost as he spoke, the hackney-coach drew up, and the coachman dismounted and opened the door. Archibald got out, and assisted Jeanie to get down. She found herself in a large turnpike road, without the bounds of London, upon the other side of which road was drawn up a plain chariot and four horses, the panels without arms, and the servants without liveries. "You have been punctual, I see, Jeanie," said the Duke of Argyle, as Archibald opened the carriage-door. "You must be my companion for the rest of the way. Archibald will remain here with the hackney-coach till your return." Ere Jeanie could make answer, she found herself, to her no small astonishment, seated by the side of a duke, in a carriage which rolled forward at a rapid yet smooth rate, very different in both particulars from the lumbering, jolting vehicle which she had just left; and which, lumbering and jolting as it was, conveyed to one who had seldom been in a coach before a certain feeling of dignity and importance. "Young woman," said the Duke, "after thinking as attentively on your sister's case as is in my power, I continue to be impressed with the belief that great injustice may be done by the execution of her sentence. So are one or two liberal and intelligent lawyers of both countries whom I have spoken with.--Nay, pray hear me out before you thank me.--I have already told you my personal conviction is of little consequence, unless I could impress the same upon others. Now I have done for you what I would certainly not have done to serve any purpose of my own--I have asked an audience of a lady whose interest with the king is deservedly very high. It has been allowed me, and I am desirous that you should see her and speak for yourself. You have no occasion to be abashed; tell your story simply, as you did to me." "I am much obliged to your Grace," said Jeanie, remembering Mrs. Glass's charge, "and I am sure, since I have had the courage to speak to your Grace in poor Effie's cause, I have less reason to be shame-faced in speaking to a leddy. But, sir, I would like to ken what to ca' her, whether your grace or your honour, or your leddyship, as we say to lairds and leddies in Scotland, and I will take care to mind it; for I ken leddies are full mair particular than gentlemen about their titles of honour." "You have no occasion to call her anything but Madam. Just say what you think is likely to make the best impression--look at me from time to time--and if I put my hand to my cravat so--(showing her the motion)--you will stop; but I shall only do this when you say anything that is not likely to please." "But, sir, your Grace," said Jeanie, "if it wasna ower muckle trouble, wad it no be better to tell me what I should say, and I could get it by heart?" "No, Jeanie, that would not have the same effect--that would be like reading a sermon, you know, which we good Presbyterians think has less unction than when spoken without book," replied the Duke. "Just speak as plainly and boldly to this lady, as you did to me the day before yesterday, and if you can gain her consent, I'll wad ye a plack, as we say in the north, that you get the pardon from the king." As he spoke, he took a pamphlet from his pocket, and began to read. Jeanie had good sense and tact, which constitute betwixt them that which is called natural good breeding. She interpreted the Duke's manoeuvre as a hint that she was to ask no more questions, and she remained silent accordingly. The carriage rolled rapidly onwards through fertile meadows, ornamented with splendid old oaks, and catching occasionally a glance of the majestic mirror of a broad and placid river. After passing through a pleasant village, the equipage stopped on a commanding eminence, where the beauty of English landscape was displayed in its utmost luxuriance. Here the Duke alighted, and desired Jeanie to follow him. They paused for a moment on the brow of a hill, to gaze on the unrivalled landscape which it presented. A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves, was tenanted by numberless flocks and herds, which seemed to wander unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The Thames, here turreted with villas, and there garlanded with forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but accessories, and bore on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs, whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the whole. The Duke of Argyle was, of course, familiar with this scene; but to a man of taste it must be always new. Yet, as he paused and looked on this inimitable landscape, with the feeling of delight which it must give to the bosom of every admirer of nature, his thoughts naturally reverted to his own more grand, and scarce less beautiful, domains of Inverary.-- "This is a fine scene," he said to his companion, curious, perhaps, to draw out her sentiments; "we have nothing like it in Scotland." "It's braw rich feeding for the cows, and they have a fine breed o' cattle here," replied Jeanie; "but I like just as weel to look at the craigs of Arthur's Seat, and the sea coming in ayont them as at a' thae muckle trees." The Duke smiled at a reply equally professional and national, and made a signal for the carriage to remain where it was. Then adopting an unfrequented footpath, he conducted Jeanie through several complicated mazes to a postern-door in a high brick wall. It was shut; but as the Duke tapped slightly at it, a person in waiting within, after reconnoitring through a small iron grate, contrived for the purpose, unlocked the door and admitted them. They entered, and it was immediately closed and fastened behind them. This was all done quickly, the door so instantly closing, and the person who opened it so suddenly disappearing, that Jeanie could not even catch a glimpse of his exterior. They found themselves at the extremity of a deep and narrow alley, carpeted with the most verdant and close-shaven turf, which felt like velvet under their feet, and screened from the sun by the branches of the lofty elms which united over the path, and caused it to resemble, in the solemn obscurity of the light which they admitted, as well as from the range of columnar stems, and intricate union of their arched branches, one of the narrow side aisles in an ancient Gothic cathedral. CHAPTER THIRTEETH I beseech you-- These tears beseech you, and these chaste hands woo you That never yet were heaved but to things holy-- Things like yourself--You are a God above us; Be as a God, then, full of saving mercy! The Bloody Brother. Encouraged as she was by the courteous manners of her noble countryman, it was not without a feeling of something like terror that Jeanie felt herself in a place apparently so lonely with a man of such high rank. That she should have been permitted to wait on the Duke in his own house, and have been there received to a private interview, was in itself an uncommon and distinguished event in the annals of a life so simple as hers; but to find herself his travelling companion in a journey, and then suddenly to be left alone with him in so secluded a situation, had something in it of awful mystery. A romantic heroine might have suspected and dreaded the power of her own charms; but Jeanie was too wise to let such a silly thought intrude on her mind. Still, however, she had a most eager desire to know where she now was, and to whom she was to be presented. She remarked that the Duke's dress, though still such as indicated rank and fashion (for it was not the custom of men of quality at that time to dress themselves like their own coachmen or grooms), was nevertheless plainer than that in which she had seen him upon a former occasion, and was divested, in particular, of all those badges of external decoration which intimated superior consequence. In short, he was attired as plainly as any gentleman of fashion could appear in the streets of London in a morning; and this circumstance helped to shake an opinion which Jeanie began to entertain, that, perhaps, he intended she should plead her cause in the presence of royalty itself. "But surely," said she to, herself, "he wad hae putten on his braw star and garter, an he had thought o' coming before the face of majesty--and after a', this is mair like a gentleman's policy than a royal palace." There was some sense in Jeanie's reasoning; yet she was not sufficiently mistress either of the circumstances of etiquette, or the particular relations which existed betwixt the government and the Duke of Argyle, to form an accurate judgment. The Duke, as we have said, was at this time in open opposition to the administration of Sir Robert Walpole, and was understood to be out of favour with the royal family, to whom he had rendered such important services. But it was a maxim of Queen Caroline to bear herself towards her political friends with such caution, as if there was a possibility of their one day being her enemies, and towards political opponents with the same degree of circumspection, as if they might again become friendly to her measures, Since Margaret of Anjou, no queen-consort had exercised such weight in the political affairs of England, and the personal address which she displayed on many occasions, had no small share in reclaiming from their political heresy many of those determined Tories, who, after the reign of the Stuarts had been extinguished in the person of Queen Anne, were disposed rather to transfer their allegiance to her brother the Chevalier de St. George, than to acquiesce in the settlement of the crown on the Hanover family. Her husband, whose most shining quality was courage in the field of battle, and who endured the office of King of England, without ever being able to acquire English habits, or any familiarity with English dispositions, found the utmost assistance from the address of his partner, and while he jealously affected to do everything according to his own will and pleasure, was in secret prudent enough to take and follow the advice of his more adroit consort. He intrusted to her the delicate office of determining the various degrees of favour necessary to attach the wavering, or to confirm such as were already friendly, or to regain those whose good-will had been lost. With all the winning address of an elegant, and, according to the times, an accomplished woman, Queen Caroline possessed the masculine soul of the other sex. She was proud by nature, and even her policy could not always temper her expressions of displeasure, although few were more ready at repairing any false step of this kind, when her prudence came up to the aid of her passions. She loved the real possession of power rather than the show of it, and whatever she did herself that was either wise or popular, she always desired that the King should have the full credit as well as the advantage of the measure, conscious that, by adding to his respectability, she was most likely to maintain her own. And so desirous was she to comply with all his tastes, that, when threatened with the gout, she had repeatedly had recourse to checking the fit, by the use of the cold bath, thereby endangering her life, that she might be able to attend the king in his walks. It was a very consistent part of Queen Caroline's character, to keep up many private correspondences with those to whom in public she seemed unfavourable, or who, for various reasons, stood ill with the court. By this means she kept in her hands the thread of many a political intrigue, and, without pledging herself to anything, could often prevent discontent from becoming hatred, and opposition from exaggerating itself into rebellion. If by any accident her correspondence with such persons chanced to be observed or discovered, which she took all possible pains to prevent, it was represented as a mere intercourse of society, having no reference to politics; an answer with which even the prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, was compelled to remain satisfied, when he discovered that the Queen had given a private audience to Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, his most formidable and most inveterate enemy. In thus maintaining occasional intercourse with several persons who seemed most alienated from the crown, it may readily be supposed that Queen Caroline had taken care not to break entirely with the Duke of Argyle. His high birth, his great talents, the estimation in which he was held in his own country, the great services which he had rendered the house of Brunswick in 1715, placed him high in that rank of persons who were not to be rashly neglected. He had, almost by his single and unassisted talents, stopped the irruption of the banded force of all the Highland chiefs; there was little doubt, that, with the slightest encouragement, he could put them all in motion, and renew the civil war; and it was well known that the most flattering overtures had been transmitted to the Duke from the court of St. Germains. The character and temper of Scotland was still little known, and it was considered as a volcano, which might, indeed, slumber for a series of years, but was still liable, at a moment the least expected, to break out into a wasteful irruption. It was, therefore, of the highest importance to retain come hold over so important a personage as the Duke of Argyle, and Caroline preserved the power of doing so by means of a lady, with whom, as wife of George II., she might have been supposed to be on less intimate terms. It was not the least instance of the Queen's address, that she had contrived that one of her principal attendants, Lady Suffolk, should unite in her own person the two apparently inconsistent characters, of her husband's mistress, and her own very obsequious and complaisant confidant. By this dexterous management the Queen secured her power against the danger which might most have threatened it--the thwarting influence of an ambitious rival; and if she submitted to the mortification of being obliged to connive at her husband's infidelity, she was at least guarded against what she might think its most dangerous effects, and was besides at liberty, now and then, to bestow a few civil insults upon "her good Howard," whom, however, in general, she treated with great decorum.* * See Horace Walpole's Reminiscences. Lady Suffolk lay under strong obligations to the Duke of Argyle, for reasons which may be collected from Horace Walpole's Reminiscences of that reign, and through her means the Duke had some occasional correspondence with Queen Caroline, much interrupted, however, since the part he had taken in the debate concerning the Porteous mob, an affair which the Queen, though somewhat unreasonably, was disposed to resent, rather as an intended and premeditated insolence to her own person and authority, than as a sudden ebullition of popular vengeance. Still, however, the communication remained open betwixt them, though it had been of late disused on both sides. These remarks will be found necessary to understand the scene which is about to be presented to the reader. From the narrow alley which they had traversed, the Duke turned into one of the same character, but broader and still longer. Here, for the first time since they had entered these gardens, Jeanie saw persons approaching them. They were two ladies; one of whom walked a little behind the other, yet not so much as to prevent her from hearing and replying to whatever observation was addressed to her by the lady who walked foremost, and that without her having the trouble to turn her person. As they advanced very slowly, Jeanie had time to study their features and appearance. The Duke also slackened his pace, as if to give her time to collect herself, and repeatedly desired her not to be afraid. The lady who seemed the principal person had remarkably good features, though somewhat injured by the small-pox, that venomous scourge which each village Esculapius (thanks to Jenner) can now tame as easily as their tutelary deity subdued the Python. The lady's eyes were brilliant, her teeth good, and her countenance formed to express at will either majesty or courtesy. Her form, though rather _embonpoint,_ was nevertheless graceful; and the elasticity and firmness of her step gave no room to suspect, what was actually the case, that she suffered occasionally from a disorder the most unfavourable to pedestrian exercise. Her dress was rather rich than gay, and her manner commanding and noble. Her companion was of lower stature, with light brown hair and expressive blue eyes. Her features, without being absolutely regular, were perhaps more pleasing than if they had been critically handsome. A melancholy, or at least a pensive expression, for which her lot gave too much cause, predominated when she was silent, but gave way to a pleasing and good-humoured smile when she spoke to any one. When they were within twelve or fifteen yards of these ladies, the Duke made a sign that Jeanie should stand still, and stepping forward himself, with the grace which was natural to him, made a profound obeisance, which was formally, yet in a dignified manner, returned by the personage whom he approached. "I hope," she said, with an affable and condescending smile, "that I see so great a stranger at court, as the Duke of Argyle has been of late, in as good health as his friends there and elsewhere could wish him to enjoy." The Duke replied, "That he had been perfectly well;" and added, "that the necessity of attending to the public business before the House, as well as the time occupied by a late journey to Scotland, had rendered him less assiduous in paying his duty at the levee and drawing-room than he could have desired." "When your Grace _can_ find time for a duty so frivolous," replied the Queen, "you are aware of your title to be well received. I hope my readiness to comply with the wish which you expressed yesterday to Lady Suffolk, is, a sufficient proof that one of the royal family, at least, has not forgotten ancient and important services, in resenting something which resembles recent neglect." This was said apparently with great good humour, and in a tone which expressed a desire of conciliation. The Duke replied, "That he would account himself the most unfortunate of men, if he could be supposed capable of neglecting his duty, in modes and circumstances when it was expected, and would have been agreeable. He was deeply gratified by the honour which her Majesty was now doing to him personally; and he trusted she would soon perceive that it was in a matter essential to his Majesty's interest that he had the boldness to give her this trouble." "You cannot oblige me more, my Lord Duke," replied the Queen, "than by giving me the advantage of your lights and experience on any point of the King's service. Your Grace is aware, that I can only be the medium through which the matter is subjected to his Majesty's superior wisdom; but if it is a suit which respects your Grace personally, it shall lose no support by being preferred through me." "It is no suit of mine, madam," replied the Duke; "nor have I any to prefer for myself personally, although I feel in full force my obligation to your Majesty. It is a business which concerns his Majesty, as a lover of justice and of mercy, and which, I am convinced, may be highly useful in conciliating the unfortunate irritation which at present subsists among his Majesty's good subjects in Scotland." There were two parts of this speech disagreeable to Caroline. In the first place, it removed the flattering notion she had adopted, that Argyle designed to use her personal intercession in making his peace with the administration, and recovering the employments of which he had been deprived; and next, she was displeased that he should talk of the discontents in Scotland as irritations to be conciliated, rather than suppressed. Under the influence of these feelings, she answered hastily, "That his Majesty has good subjects in England, my Lord Duke, he is bound to thank God and the laws--that he has subjects in Scotland, I think he may thank God and his sword." The Duke, though a courtier, coloured slightly, and the Queen, instantly sensible of her error, added, without displaying the least change of countenance, and as if the words had been an original branch of the sentence--"And the swords of those real Scotchmen who are friends to the House of Brunswick, particularly that of his Grace of Argyle." "My sword, madam," replied the Duke, "like that of my fathers, has been always at the command of my lawful king, and of my native country--I trust it is impossible to separate their real rights and interests. But the present is a matter of more private concern, and respects the person of an obscure individual." "What is the affair, my Lord?" said the Queen. "Let us find out what we are talking about, lest we should misconstrue and misunderstand each other." "The matter, madam," answered the Duke of Argyle, "regards the fate of an unfortunate young woman in Scotland, now lying under sentence of death, for a crime of which I think it highly probable that she is innocent. And my humble petition to your Majesty is, to obtain your powerful intercession with the King for a pardon." It was now the Queen's turn to colour, and she did so over cheek and brow, neck and bosom. She paused a moment as if unwilling to trust her voice with the first expression of her displeasure; and on assuming the air of dignity and an austere regard of control, she at length replied, "My Lord Duke, I will not ask your motives for addressing to me a request, which circumstances have rendered such an extraordinary one. Your road to the King's closet, as a peer and a privy-councillor, entitled to request an audience, was open, without giving me the pain of this discussion. _I,_ at least, have had enough of Scotch pardons." The Duke was prepared for this burst of indignation, and he was not shaken by it. He did not attempt a reply while the Queen was in the first heat of displeasure, but remained in the same firm, yet respectful posture, which he had assumed during the interview. The Queen, trained from her situation to self-command, instantly perceived the advantage she might give against herself by yielding to passion; and added, in the same condescending and affable tone in which she had opened the interview, "You must allow me some of the privileges of the sex, my Lord; and do not judge uncharitably of me, though I am a little moved at the recollection of the gross insult and outrage done in your capital city to the royal authority, at the very time when it was vested in my unworthy person. Your Grace cannot be surprised that I should both have felt it at the time, and recollected it now." "It is certainly a matter not speedily to be forgotten," answered the Duke. "My own poor thoughts of it have been long before your Majesty, and I must have expressed myself very ill if I did not convey my detestation of the murder which was committed under such extraordinary circumstances. I might, indeed, be so unfortunate as to differ with his Majesty's advisers on the degree in which it was either just or politic to punish the innocent instead of the guilty. But I trust your Majesty will permit me to be silent on a topic in which my sentiments have not the good fortune to coincide with those of more able men." "We will not prosecute a topic on which we may probably differ," said the Queen. "One word, however, I may say in private--you know our good Lady Suffolk is a little deaf--the Duke of Argyle, when disposed to renew his acquaintance with his master and mistress, will hardly find many topics on which we should disagree." "Let me hope," said the Duke, bowing profoundly to so flattering an intimation, "that I shall not be so unfortunate as to have found one on the present occasion." "I must first impose on your Grace the duty of confession," said the Queen, "before I grant you absolution. What is your particular interest in this young woman? She does not seem" (and she scanned Jeanie, as she said this, with the eye of a connoisseur) "much qualified to alarm my friend the Duchess's jealousy." "I think your Majesty," replied the Duke, smiling in his turn, "will allow my taste may be a pledge for me on that score." "Then, though she has not much the air _d'une grande dame,_ I suppose she is some thirtieth cousin in the terrible CHAPTER of Scottish genealogy?" "No, madam," said the Duke; "but I wish some of my nearer relations had half her worth, honesty, and affection." "Her name must be Campbell, at least?" said Queen Caroline. "No, madam; her name is not quite so distinguished, if I may be permitted to say so," answered the Duke. "Ah! but she comes from Inverary or Argyleshire?" said the Sovereign. "She has never been farther north in her life than Edinburgh, madam." "Then my conjectures are all ended," said the Queen, "and your Grace must yourself take the trouble to explain the affair of your prote'ge'e." With that precision and easy brevity which is only acquired by habitually conversing in the higher ranks of society, and which is the diametrical opposite of that protracted style of disquisition, Which squires call potter, and which men call prose, the Duke explained the singular law under which Effie Deans had received sentence of death, and detailed the affectionate exertions which Jeanie had made in behalf of a sister, for whose sake she was willing to sacrifice all but truth and conscience. Queen Caroline listened with attention; she was rather fond, it must be remembered, of an argument, and soon found matter in what the Duke told her for raising difficulties to his request. "It appears to me, my Lord," she replied, "that this is a severe law. But still it is adopted upon good grounds, I am bound to suppose, as the law of the country, and the girl has been convicted under it. The very presumptions which the law construes into a positive proof of guilt exist in her case; and all that your Grace has said concerning the possibility of her innocence may be a very good argument for annulling the Act of Parliament, but cannot, while it stands good, be admitted in favour of any individual convicted upon the statute." The Duke saw and avoided the snare, for he was conscious, that, by replying to the argument, he must have been inevitably led to a discussion, in the course of which the Queen was likely to be hardened in her own opinion, until she became obliged, out of mere respect to consistency, to let the criminal suffer. [Illustration: Jeanie and Queen Caroline--194] "If your Majesty," he said, "would condescend to hear my poor countrywoman herself, perhaps she may find an advocate in your own heart, more able than I am, to combat the doubts suggested by your understanding." The Queen seemed to acquiesce, and the Duke made a signal for Jeanie to advance from the spot where she had hitherto remained watching countenances, which were too long accustomed to suppress all apparent signs of emotion, to convey to her any interesting intelligence. Her Majesty could not help smiling at the awe-struck manner in which the quiet demure figure of the little Scotchwoman advanced towards her, and yet more at the first sound of her broad northern accent. But Jeanie had a voice low and sweetly toned, an admirable thing in woman, and eke besought "her Leddyship to have pity on a poor misguided young creature," in tones so affecting, that, like the notes of some of her native songs, provincial vulgarity was lost in pathos. "Stand up, young woman," said the Queen, but in a kind tone, "and tell me what sort of a barbarous people your country-folk are, where child-murder is become so common as to require the restraint of laws like yours?" "If your Leddyship pleases," answered Jeanie, "there are mony places besides Scotland where mothers are unkind to their ain flesh and blood." It must be observed, that the disputes between George the Second and Frederick Prince of Wales were then at the highest, and that the good-natured part of the public laid the blame on the Queen. She coloured highly, and darted a glance of a most penetrating character first at Jeanie, and then at the Duke. Both sustained it unmoved; Jeanie from total unconsciousness of the offence she had given, and the Duke from his habitual composure. But in his heart he thought, My unlucky _protegee_ has with this luckless answer shot dead, by a kind of chance-medley, her only hope of success. Lady Suffolk, good-humouredly and skilfully, interposed in this awkward crisis. "You should tell this lady," she said to Jeanie, "the particular causes which render this crime common in your country." "Some thinks it's the Kirk-session--that is--it's the--it's the cutty-stool, if your Leddyship pleases," said Jeanie, looking down and courtesying. "The what?" said Lady Suffolk, to whom the phrase was new, and who besides was rather deaf. "That's the stool of repentance, madam, if it please your Leddyship," answered Jeanie, "for light life and conversation, and for breaking the seventh command." Here she raised her eyes to the Duke, saw his hand at his chin, and, totally unconscious of what she had said out of joint, gave double effect to the innuendo, by stopping short and looking embarrassed. As for Lady Suffolk, she retired like a covering party, which, having interposed betwixt their retreating friends and the enemy, have suddenly drawn on themselves a fire unexpectedly severe. The deuce take the lass, thought the Duke of Argyle to himself; there goes another shot--and she has hit with both barrels right and left! Indeed the Duke had himself his share of the confusion, for, having acted as master of ceremonies to this innocent offender, he felt much in the circumstances of a country squire, who, having introduced his spaniel into a well-appointed drawing-room, is doomed to witness the disorder and damage which arises to china and to dress-gowns, in consequence of its untimely frolics. Jeanie's last chance-hit, however, obliterated the ill impression which had arisen from the first; for her Majesty had not so lost the feelings of a wife in those of a Queen, but that she could enjoy a jest at the expense of "her good Suffolk." She turned towards the Duke of Argyle with a smile, which marked that she enjoyed the triumph, and observed, "The Scotch are a rigidly moral people." Then, again applying herself to Jeanie, she asked how she travelled up from Scotland. "Upon my foot mostly, madam," was the reply. "What, all that immense way upon foot?--How far can you walk in a day." "Five-and-twenty miles and a bittock." "And a what?" said the Queen, looking towards the Duke of Argyle. "And about five miles more," replied the Duke. "I thought I was a good walker," said the Queen, "but this shames me sadly." "May your Leddyship never hae sae weary a heart, that ye canna be sensible of the weariness of the limbs," said Jeanie. That came better off, thought the Duke; it's the first thing she has said to the purpose. "And I didna just a'thegither walk the haill way neither, for I had whiles the cast of a cart; and I had the cast of a horse from Ferrybridge--and divers other easements," said Jeanie, cutting short her story, for she observed the Duke made the sign he had fixed upon. "With all these accommodations," answered the Queen, "you must have had a very fatiguing journey, and, I fear, to little purpose; since, if the King were to pardon your sister, in all probability it would do her little good, for I suppose your people of Edinburgh would hang her out of spite." She will sink herself now outright, thought the Duke. But he was wrong. The shoals on which Jeanie had touched in this delicate conversation lay under ground, and were unknown to her; this rock was above water, and she avoided it. "She was confident," she said, "that baith town and country wad rejoice to see his Majesty taking compassion on a poor unfriended creature." "His Majesty has not found it so in a late instance," said the Queen; "but I suppose my Lord Duke would advise him to be guided by the votes of the rabble themselves, who should be hanged and who spared?" "No, madam," said the Duke; "but I would advise his Majesty to be guided by his own feelings, and those of his royal consort; and then I am sure punishment will only attach itself to guilt, and even then with cautious reluctance." "Well, my Lord," said her Majesty, "all these fine speeches do not convince me of the propriety of so soon showing any mark of favour to your--I suppose I must not say rebellious?--but, at least, your very disaffected and intractable metropolis. Why, the whole nation is in a league to screen the savage and abominable murderers of that unhappy man; otherwise, how is it possible but that, of so many perpetrators, and engaged in so public an action for such a length of time, one at least must have been recognised? Even this wench, for aught I can tell, may be a depositary of the secret.--Hark you, young woman, had you any friends engaged in the Porteous mob?" "No, madam," answered Jeanie, happy that the question was so framed that she could, with a good conscience, answer it in the negative. "But I suppose," continued the Queen, "if you were possessed of such a secret, you would hold it a matter of conscience to keep it to yourself?" "I would pray to be directed and guided what was the line of duty, madam," answered Jeanie. "Yes, and take that which suited your own inclinations," replied her Majesty. "If it like you, madam," said Jeanie, "I would hae gaen to the end of the earth to save the life of John Porteous, or any other unhappy man in his condition; but I might lawfully doubt how far I am called upon to be the avenger of his blood, though it may become the civil magistrate to do so. He is dead and gane to his place, and they that have slain him must answer for their ain act. But my sister, my puir sister, Effie, still lives, though her days and hours are numbered! She still lives, and a word of the King's mouth might restore her to a brokenhearted auld man, that never in his daily and nightly exercise, forgot to pray that his Majesty might be blessed with a long and a prosperous reign, and that his throne, and the throne of his posterity, might be established in righteousness. O madam, if ever ye kend what it was to sorrow for and with a sinning and a suffering creature, whose mind is sae tossed that she can be neither ca'd fit to live or die, have some compassion on our misery!--Save an honest house from dishonour, and an unhappy girl, not eighteen years of age, from an early and dreadful death! Alas! it is not when we sleep soft and wake merrily ourselves that we think on other people's sufferings. Our hearts are waxed light within us then, and we are for righting our ain wrangs and fighting our ain battles. But when the hour of trouble comes to the mind or to the body--and seldom may it visit your Leddyship--and when the hour of death comes, that comes to high and low--lang and late may it be yours!--Oh, my Leddy, then it isna what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae dune for others, that we think on maist pleasantly. And the thoughts that ye hae intervened to spare the puir thing's life will be sweeter in that hour, come when it may, than if a word of your mouth could hang the haill Porteous mob at the tail of ae tow." Tear followed tear down Jeanie's cheeks, as, her features glowing and quivering with emotion, she pleaded her sister's cause with a pathos which was at once simple and solemn. "This is eloquence," said her Majesty to the Duke of Argyle. "Young woman," she continued, addressing herself to Jeanie, "_I_ cannot grant a pardon to your sister--but you shall not want my warm intercession with his Majesty. Take this house-wife case," she continued, putting a small embroidered needle-case into Jeanie's hands; "do not open it now, but at your leisure--you will find something in it which will remind you that you have had an interview with Queen Caroline." Jeanie, having her suspicions thus confirmed, dropped on her knees, and would have expanded herself in gratitude; but the Duke who was upon thorns lest she should say more or less than just enough, touched his chin once more. "Our business is, I think, ended for the present, my Lord Duke," said the Queen, "and, I trust, to your satisfaction. Hereafter I hope to see your Grace more frequently, both at Richmond and St. James's.--Come Lady Suffolk, we must wish his Grace good-morning." They exchanged their parting reverences, and the Duke, so soon as the ladies had turned their backs, assisted Jeanie to rise from the ground, and conducted her back through the avenue, which she trode with the feeling of one who walks in her sleep. CHAPTER FOURTEENTH. So soon as I can win the offended king, I will be known your advocate. Cymbeline. The Duke of Argyle led the way in silence to the small postern by which they had been admitted into Richmond Park, so long the favourite residence of Queen Caroline. It was opened by the same half-seen janitor, and they found themselves beyond the precincts of the royal demesne. Still not a word was spoken on either side. The Duke probably wished to allow his rustic prote'ge'e time to recruit her faculties, dazzled and sunk with colloquy sublime; and betwixt what she had guessed, had heard, and had seen, Jeanie Deans's mind was too much agitated to permit her to ask any questions. They found the carriage of the Duke in the place where they had left it; and when they resumed their places, soon began to advance rapidly on their return to town. "I think, Jeanie," said the Duke, breaking silence, "you have every reason to congratulate yourself on the issue of your interview with her Majesty." "And that leddy was the Queen herself?" said Jeanie; "I misdoubted it when I saw that your honour didna put on your hat--And yet I can hardly believe it, even when I heard her speak it herself." "It was certainly Queen Caroline," replied the Duke. "Have you no curiosity to see what is in the little pocket-book?" "Do you think the pardon will be in it, sir?" said Jeanie, with the eager animation of hope. "Why, no," replied the Duke; "that is unlikely. They seldom carry these things about them, unless they were likely to be wanted; and, besides, her Majesty told you it was the King, not she, who was to grant it." "That is true, too," said Jeanie; "but I am so confused in my mind--But does your honour think there is a certainty of Effie's pardon then?" continued she, still holding in her hand the unopened pocket-book. "Why, kings are kittle cattle to shoe behind, as we say in the north," replied the Duke; "but his wife knows his trim, and I have not the least doubt that the matter is quite certain." "Oh, God be praised! God be praised!" ejaculated Jeanie; "and may the gude leddy never want the heart's ease she has gien me at this moment!-- And God bless you too, my Lord!--without your help I wad ne'er hae won near her." The Duke let her dwell upon this subject for a considerable time, curious, perhaps, to see how long the feelings of gratitude would continue to supersede those of curiosity. But so feeble was the latter feeling in Jeanie's mind, that his Grace, with whom, perhaps, it was for the time a little stronger, was obliged once more to bring forward the subject of the Queen's present. It was opened accordingly. In the inside of the case was the usual assortment of silk and needles, with scissors, tweezers, etc.; and in the pocket was a bank-bill for fifty pounds. The Duke had no sooner informed Jeanie of the value of this last document, for she was unaccustomed to see notes for such sums, than she expressed her regret at the mistake which had taken place. "For the hussy itsell," she said, "was a very valuable thing for a keepsake, with the Queen's name written in the inside with her ain hand doubtless--_Caroline_--as plain as could be, and a crown drawn aboon it." She therefore tendered the bill to the Duke, requesting him to find some mode of returning it to the royal owner. "No, no, Jeanie," said the Duke, "there is no mistake in the case. Her Majesty knows you have been put to great expense, and she wishes to make it up to you." "I am sure she is even ower gude," said Jeanie, "and it glads me muckle that I can pay back Dumbiedikes his siller, without distressing my father, honest man." "Dumbiedikes! What, a freeholder of Mid-Lothian, is he not?" said his Grace, whose occasional residence in that county made him acquainted with most of the heritors, as landed persons are termed in Scotland.--"He has a house not far from Dalkeith, wears a black wig and a laced hat?" "Yes sir," answered Jeanie, who had her reasons for being brief in her answers upon this topic. "Ah, my old friend Dumbie!" said the Duke; "I have thrice seen him fou, and only once heard the sound of his voice--Is he a cousin of yours, Jeanie?" "No, sir,--my Lord." "Then he must be a well-wisher, I suspect?" "Ye--yes,--my Lord, sir," answered Jeanie, blushing, and with hesitation. "Aha! then, if the Laird starts, I suppose my friend Butler must be in some danger?" "O no, sir," answered Jeanie, much more readily, but at the same time blushing much more deeply. "Well, Jeanie," said the Duke, "you are a girl may be safely trusted with your own matters, and I shall inquire no farther about them. But as to this same pardon, I must see to get it passed through the proper forms; and I have a friend in office who will for auld lang syne, do me so much favour. And then, Jeanie, as I shall have occasion to send an express down to Scotland, who will travel with it safer and more swiftly than you can do, I will take care to have it put into the proper channel; meanwhile you may write to your friends by post of your good success." "And does your Honour think," said Jeanie, "that will do as weel as if I were to take my tap in my lap, and slip my ways hame again on my ain errand?" "Much better, certainly," said the Duke. "You know the roads are not very safe for a single woman to travel." Jeanie internally acquiesced in this observation. "And I have a plan for you besides. One of the Duchess's attendants, and one of mine--your acquaintance Archibald--are going down to Inverary in a light calash, with four horses I have bought, and there is room enough in the carriage for you to go with them as far as Glasgow, where Archibald will find means of sending you safely to Edinburgh.--And in the way I beg you will teach the woman as much as you can of the mystery of cheese-making, for she is to have a charge in the dairy, and I dare swear you are as tidy about your milk-pail as about your dress." "Does your Honour like cheese?" said Jeanie, with a gleam of conscious delight as she asked the question. "Like it?" said the Duke, whose good-nature anticipated what was to follow,--"cakes and cheese are a dinner for an emperor, let alone a Highlandman." "Because," said Jeanie, with modest confidence, and great and evident self-gratulation, "we have been thought so particular in making cheese, that some folk think it as gude as the real Dunlop; and if your honour's Grace wad but accept a stane or twa, blithe, and fain, and proud it wad make us? But maybe ye may like the ewe-milk, that is, the Buckholmside* cheese better; or maybe the gait-milk, as ye come frae the Highlands--and I canna pretend just to the same skeel o' them; but my cousin Jean, that lives at Lockermachus in Lammermuir, I could speak to her, and--" * The hilly pastures of Buckholm, which the Author now surveys,--"Not in the frenzy of a dreamer's eye,"--are famed for producing the best ewe-milk cheese in the south of Scotland. "Quite unnecessary," said the Duke; "the Dunlop is the very cheese of which I am so fond, and I will take it as the greatest favour you can do me to send one to Caroline Park. But remember, be on honour with it, Jeanie, and make it all yourself, for I am a real good judge." "I am not feared," said Jeanie, confidently, "that I may please your Honour; for I am sure you look as if you could hardly find fault wi' onybody that did their best; and weel is it my part, I trow, to do mine." This discourse introduced a topic upon which the two travellers, though so different in rank and education, found each a good deal to say. The Duke, besides his other patriotic qualities, was a distinguished agriculturist, and proud of his knowledge in that department. He entertained Jeanie with his observations on the different breeds of cattle in Scotland, and their capacity for the dairy, and received so much information from her practical experience in return, that he promised her a couple of Devonshire cows in reward for the lesson. In short his mind was so transported back to his rural employments and amusements, that he sighed when his carriage stopped opposite to the old hackney-coach, which Archibald had kept in attendance at the place where they had left it. While the coachman again bridled his lean cattle, which had been indulged with a bite of musty hay, the Duke cautioned Jeanie not to be too communicative to her landlady concerning what had passed. "There is," he said, "no use of speaking of matters till they are actually settled; and you may refer the good lady to Archibald, if she presses you hard with questions. She is his old acquaintance, and he knows how to manage with her." He then took a cordial farewell of Jeanie, and told her to be ready in the ensuing week to return to Scotland--saw her safely established in her hackney-coach, and rolled of in his own carriage, humming a stanza of the ballad which he is said to have composed:-- "At the sight of Dumbarton once again, I'll cock up my bonnet and march amain, With my claymore hanging down to my heel, To whang at the bannocks of barley meal." Perhaps one ought to be actually a Scotsman to conceive how ardently, under all distinctions of rank and situation, they feel their mutual connection with each other as natives of the same country. There are, I believe, more associations common to the inhabitants of a rude and wild, than of a well-cultivated and fertile country; their ancestors have more seldom changed their place of residence; their mutual recollection of remarkable objects is more accurate; the high and the low are more interested in each other's welfare; the feelings of kindred and relationship are more widely extended, and in a word, the bonds of patriotic affection, always honourable even when a little too exclusively strained, have more influence on men's feelings and actions. The rumbling hackney-coach, which tumbled over the (then) execrable London pavement, at a rate very different from that which had conveyed the ducal carriage to Richmond, at length deposited Jeanie Deans and her attendant at the national sign of the Thistle. Mrs. Glass, who had been in long and anxious expectation, now rushed, full of eager curiosity and open-mouthed interrogation, upon our heroine, who was positively unable to sustain the overwhelming cataract of her questions, which burst forth with the sublimity of a grand gardyloo:-- "Had she seen the Duke, God bless him--the Duchess--the young ladies?-- Had she seen the King, God bless him--the Queen--the Prince of Wales--the Princess--or any of the rest of the royal family?--Had she got her sister's pardon?--Was it out and out--or was it only a commutation of punishment?--How far had she gone--where had she driven to--whom had she seen--what had been said--what had kept her so long?" Such were the various questions huddled upon each other by a curiosity so eager, that it could hardly wait for its own gratification. Jeanie would have been more than sufficiently embarrassed by this overbearing tide of interrogations, had not Archibald, who had probably received from his master a hint to that purpose, advanced to her rescue. "Mrs. Glass," said Archibald, "his Grace desired me particularly to say, that he would take it as a great favour if you would ask the young woman no questions, as he wishes to explain to you more distinctly than she can do how her affairs stand, and consult you on some matters which she cannot altogether so well explain. The Duke will call at the Thistle to-morrow or next day for that purpose." "His Grace is very condescending," said Mrs. Glass, her zeal for inquiry slaked for the present by the dexterous administration of this sugar plum--"his Grace is sensible that I am in a manner accountable for the conduct of my young kinswoman, and no doubt his Grace is the best judge how far he should intrust her or me with the management of her affairs." "His Grace is quite sensible of that," answered Archibald, with national gravity, "and will certainly trust what he has to say to the most discreet of the two; and therefore, Mrs. Glass, his Grace relies you will speak nothing to Mrs. Jean Deans, either of her own affairs or her sister's, until he sees you himself. He desired me to assure you, in the meanwhile, that all was going on as well as your kindness could wish, Mrs. Glass." "His Grace is very kind--very considerate, certainly, Mr. Archibald--his Grace's commands shall be obeyed, and--But you have had a far drive, Mr. Archibald, as I guess by the time of your absence, and I guess" (with an engaging smile) "you winna be the waur o' a glass of the right Rosa Solis." "I thank you, Mrs. Glass," said the great man's great man, "but I am under the necessity of returning to my Lord directly." And, making his adieus civilly to both cousins, he left the shop of the Lady of the Thistle. "I am glad your affairs have prospered so well, Jeanie, my love," said Mrs. Glass; "though, indeed, there was little fear of them so soon as the Duke of Argyle was so condescending as to take them into hand. I will ask you no questions about them, because his Grace, who is most considerate and prudent in such matters, intends to tell me all that you ken yourself, dear, and doubtless a great deal more; so that anything that may lie heavily on your mind may be imparted to me in the meantime, as you see it is his Grace's pleasure that I should be made acquainted with the whole matter forthwith, and whether you or he tells it, will make no difference in the world, ye ken. If I ken what he is going to say beforehand, I will be much more ready to give my advice, and whether you or he tell me about it, cannot much signify after all, my dear. So you may just say whatever you like, only mind I ask you no questions about it." Jeanie was a little embarrassed. She thought that the communication she had to make was perhaps the only means she might have in her power to gratify her friendly and hospitable kinswoman. But her prudence instantly suggested that her secret interview with Queen Caroline, which seemed to pass under a certain sort of mystery, was not a proper subject for the gossip of a woman like Mrs. Glass, of whose heart she had a much better opinion than of her prudence. She, therefore, answered in general, that the Duke had had the extraordinary kindness to make very particular inquiries into her sister's bad affair, and that he thought he had found the means of putting it a' straight again, but that he proposed to tell all that he thought about the matter to Mrs. Glass herself. This did not quite satisfy the penetrating mistress of the Thistle. Searching as her own small rappee, she, in spite of her promise, urged Jeanie with still farther questions. "Had she been a' that time at Argyle House? Was the Duke with her the whole time? and had she seen the Duchess? and had she seen the young ladies--and specially Lady Caroline Campbell?"--To these questions Jeanie gave the general reply, that she knew so little of the town that she could not tell exactly where she had been; that she had not seen the Duchess to her knowledge; that she had seen two ladies, one of whom, she understood, bore the name of Caroline; and more, she said, she could not tell about the matter. "It would be the Duke's eldest daughter, Lady Caroline Campbell, there is no doubt of that," said Mrs. Glass; "but doubtless, I shall know more particularly through his Grace.--And so, as the cloth is laid in the little parlour above stairs, and it is past three o'clock, for I have been waiting this hour for you, and I have had a snack myself; and, as they used to say in Scotland in my time--I do not ken if the word be used now--there is ill talking between a full body and a fasting." CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,-- Some banished lover or some captive maid. Pope. By dint of unwonted labour with the pen, Jeanie Deans contrived to indite, and give to the charge of the postman on the ensuing day, no less than three letters, an exertion altogether strange to her habits; insomuch so, that, if milk had been plenty, she would rather have made thrice as many Dunlop cheeses. The first of them was very brief. It was addressed to George Staunton, Esq., at the Rectory, Willingham, by Grantham; the address being part of the information she had extracted from the communicative peasant who rode before her to Stamford. It was in these words:-- "Sir,--To prevent farder mischieves, whereof there hath been enough, comes these: Sir, I have my sister's pardon from the Queen's Majesty, whereof I do not doubt you will be glad, having had to say naut of matters whereof you know the purport. So, Sir, I pray for your better welfare in bodie and soul, and that it will please the fisycian to visit you in His good time. Alwaies, sir, I pray you will never come again to see my sister, whereof there has been too much. And so, wishing you no evil, but even your best good, that you may be turned from your iniquity (for why suld ye die?) I rest your humble servant to command, "_Ye ken wha._" The next letter was to her father. It is too long altogether for insertion, so we only give a few extracts. It commenced-- "Dearest and truly honoured father,--This comes with my duty to inform you, that it has pleased God to redeem that captivitie of my poor sister, in respect the Queen's blessed Majesty, for whom we are ever bound to pray, hath redeemed her soul from the slayer, granting the ransom of her, whilk is ane pardon or reprieve. And I spoke with the Queen face to face and yet live; for she is not muckle differing from other grand leddies, saying that she has a stately presence, and een like a blue huntin' hawk's, whilk gaed throu' and throu' me like a Highland durk--And all this good was, alway under the Great Giver, to whom all are but instruments, wrought forth for us by the Duk of Argile, wha is ane native true-hearted Scotsman, and not pridefu', like other folk we ken of--and likewise skeely enow in bestial, whereof he has promised to gie me twa Devonshire kye, of which he is enamoured, although I do still haud by the real hawlit Airshire breed--and I have promised him a cheese; and I wad wuss ye, if Gowans, the brockit cow, has a quey, that she suld suck her fill of milk, as I am given to understand he has none of that breed, and is not scornfu' but will take a thing frae a puir body, that it may lighten their heart of the loading of debt that they awe him. Also his honour the Duke will accept ane of our Dunlop cheeses, and it sall be my faut if a better was ever yearned in Lowden."--[Here follow some observations respecting the breed of cattle, and the produce of the dairy, which it is our intention to forward to the Board of Agriculture.]--"Nevertheless, these are but matters of the after-harvest, in respect of the great good which Providence hath gifted us with--and, in especial, poor Effie's life. And oh, my dear father, since it hath pleased God to be merciful to her, let her not want your free pardon, whilk will make her meet to be ane vessel of grace, and also a comfort to your ain graie hairs. Dear Father, will ye let the Laird ken that we have had friends strangely raised up to us, and that the talent whilk he lent me will be thankfully repaid. I hae some of it to the fore; and the rest of it is not knotted up in ane purse or napkin, but in ane wee bit paper, as is the fashion heir, whilk I am assured is gude for the siller. And, dear father, through Mr. Butler's means I hae gude friendship with the Duke, for their had been kindness between their forbears in the auld troublesome time bye-past. And Mrs. Glass has been kind like my very mother. She has a braw house here, and lives bien and warm, wi' twa servant lasses, and a man and a callant in the shop. And she is to send you doun a pound of her hie-dried, and some other tobaka, and we maun think of some propine for her, since her kindness hath been great. And the Duk is to send the pardun doun by an express messenger, in respect that I canna travel sae fast; and I am to come doun wi' twa of his Honour's servants--that is, John Archibald, a decent elderly gentleman, that says he has seen you lang syne, when ye were buying beasts in the west frae the Laird of Aughtermuggitie--but maybe ye winna mind him--ony way, he's a civil man--and Mrs. Dolly Dutton, that is to be dairy-maid at Inverara; and they bring me on as far as Glasgo, whilk will make it nae pinch to win hame, whilk I desire of all things. May the Giver of all good things keep ye in your outgauns and incomings, whereof devoutly prayeth your loving dauter, "Jean Deans." The third letter was to Butler, and its tenor as follows:-- "Master Butler.--Sir,--It will be pleasure to you to ken, that all I came for is, thanks be to God, weel dune and to the gude end, and that your forbear's letter was right welcome to the Duke of Argile, and that he wrote your name down with a kylevine pen in a leathern book, whereby it seems like he will do for you either wi' a scule or a kirk; he has enow of baith, as I am assured. And I have seen the queen, which gave me a hussy-case out of her own hand. She had not her crown and skeptre, but they are laid by for her, like the bairns' best claise, to be worn when she needs them. And they are keepit in a tour, whilk is not like the tour of Libberton, nor yet Craigmillar, but mair like to the castell of Edinburgh, if the buildings were taen and set down in the midst of the Nor'-Loch. Also the Queen was very bounteous, giving me a paper worth fiftie pounds, as I am assured, to pay my expenses here and back agen. Sae, Master Butler, as we were aye neebours' bairns, forby onything else that may hae been spoken between us, I trust you winna skrimp yoursell for what is needfu' for your health, since it signifies not muckle whilk o' us has the siller, if the other wants it. And mind this is no meant to haud ye to onything whilk ye wad rather forget, if ye suld get a charge of a kirk or a scule, as above said. Only I hope it will be a scule, and not a kirk, because of these difficulties anent aiths and patronages, whilk might gang ill down wi' my honest father. Only if ye could compass a harmonious call frae the parish of Skreegh-me-dead, as ye anes had hope of, I trow it wad please him weel; since I hae heard him say, that the root of the matter was mair deeply hafted in that wild muirland parish than in the Canongate of Edinburgh. I wish I had whaten books ye wanted, Mr. Butler, for they hae haill houses of them here, and they are obliged to set sum out in the street, whilk are sald cheap, doubtless, to get them out of the weather. It is a muckle place, and I hae seen sae muckle of it, that my poor head turns round. And ye ken langsyne, I am nae great pen-woman, and it is near eleven o'clock o' the night. I am cumming down in good company, and safe--and I had troubles in gaun up whilk makes me blither of travelling wi' kend folk. My cousin, Mrs. Glass, has a braw house here, but a' thing is sae poisoned wi' snuff, that I am like to be scomfished whiles. But what signifies these things, in comparison of the great deliverance whilk has been vouchsafed to my father's house, in whilk you, as our auld and dear well-wisher, will, I dout not, rejoice and be exceedingly glad. And I am, dear Mr. Butler, your sincere well-wisher in temporal and eternal things, "J. D." After these labours of an unwonted kind, Jeanie retired to her bed, yet scarce could sleep a few minutes together, so often was she awakened by the heart-stirring consciousness of her sister's safety, and so powerfully urged to deposit her burden of joy, where she had before laid her doubts and sorrows, in the warm and sincere exercises of devotion. All the next, and all the succeeding day, Mrs. Glass fidgeted about her shop in the agony of expectation, like a pea (to use a vulgar simile which her profession renders appropriate) upon one of her own tobacco pipes. With the third morning came the expected coach, with four servants clustered behind on the footboard, in dark brown and yellow liveries; the Duke in person, with laced coat, gold-headed cane, star and garter, all, as the story-book says, very grand. He inquired for his little countrywoman of Mrs. Glass, but without requesting to see her, probably because he was unwilling to give an appearance of personal intercourse betwixt them, which scandal might have misinterpreted. "The Queen," he said to Mrs. Glass, "had taken the case of her kinswoman into her gracious consideration, and being specially moved by the affectionate and resolute character of the elder sister, had condescended to use her powerful intercession with his Majesty, in consequence of which a pardon had been despatched to Scotland to Effie Deans, on condition of her banishing herself forth of Scotland for fourteen years. The King's Advocate had insisted," he said, "upon this qualification of the pardon, having pointed out to his Majesty's ministers, that, within the course of only seven years, twenty-one instances of child-murder had occurred in Scotland. "Weary on him!" said Mrs. Glass, "what for needed he to have telled that of his ain country, and to the English folk abune a'? I used aye to think the Advocate a douce decent man, but it is an ill bird*--begging your Grace's pardon for speaking of such a coorse by-word. * [It's an ill bird that fouls its own pest.] And then what is the poor lassie to do in a foreign land?--Why, wae's me, it's just sending her to play the same pranks ower again, out of sight or guidance of her friends." "Pooh! pooh!" said the Duke, "that need not be anticipated. Why, she may come up to London, or she may go over to America, and marry well for all that is come and gone." "In troth, and so she may, as your Grace is pleased to intimate," replied Mrs. Glass; "and now I think upon it, there is my old correspondent in Virginia, Ephraim Buckskin, that has supplied the Thistle this forty years with tobacco, and it is not a little that serves our turn, and he has been writing to me this ten years to send him out a wife. The carle is not above sixty, and hale and hearty, and well to pass in the world, and a line from my hand would settle the matter, and Effie Deans's misfortune (forby that there is no special occasion to speak about it) would be thought little of there." "Is she a pretty girl?" said the Duke; "her sister does not get beyond a good comely sonsy lass." "Oh, far prettier is Effie than Jeanie," said Mrs. Glass; "though it is long since I saw her mysell, but I hear of the Deanses by all my Lowden friends when they come--your Grace kens we Scots are clannish bodies." "So much the better for us," said the Duke, "and the worse for those who meddle with us, as your good old-fashioned sign says, Mrs. Glass. And now I hope you will approve of the measures I have taken for restoring your kinswoman to her friends." These he detailed at length, and Mrs. Glass gave her unqualified approbation, with a smile and a courtesy at every sentence. "And now, Mrs. Glass, you must tell Jeanie, I hope, she will not forget my cheese when she gets down to Scotland. Archibald has my orders to arrange all her expenses." "Begging your Grace's humble pardon," said Mrs. Glass, "it is a pity to trouble yourself about them; the Deanses are wealthy people in their way, and the lass has money in her pocket." "That's all very true," said the Duke; "but you know, where MacCallummore travels he pays all; it is our Highland privilege to take from all what _we_ want, and to give to all what _they_ want." "Your Grace is better at giving than taking," said Mrs. Glass. "To show you the contrary," said the Duke, "I will fill my box out of this canister without paying you a bawbee;" and again desiring to be remembered to Jeanie, with his good wishes for her safe journey, he departed, leaving Mrs. Glass uplifted in heart and in countenance, the proudest and happiest of tobacco and snuff dealers. Reflectively, his Grace's good humour and affability had a favourable effect upon Jeanie's situation.--Her kinswoman, though civil and kind to her, had acquired too much of London breeding to be perfectly satisfied with her cousin's rustic and national dress, and was, besides, something scandalised at the cause of her journey to London. Mrs. Glass might, therefore, have been less sedulous in her attentions towards Jeanie, but for the interest which the foremost of the Scottish nobles (for such, in all men's estimation, was the Duke of Argyle) seemed to take in her fate. Now, however, as a kinswoman whose virtues and domestic affections had attracted the notice and approbation of royalty itself, Jeanie stood to her relative in a light very different and much more favourable, and was not only treated with kindness, but with actual observance and respect. It depended on herself alone to have made as many visits, and seen as many sights, as lay within Mrs. Glass's power to compass. But, excepting that she dined abroad with one or two "far away kinsfolk," and that she paid the same respect, on Mrs. Glass's strong urgency, to Mrs. Deputy Dabby, wife of the Worshipful Mr. Deputy Dabby, of Farringdon Without, she did not avail herself of the opportunity. As Mrs. Dabby was the second lady of great rank whom Jeanie had seen in London, she used sometimes afterwards to draw a parallel betwixt her and the Queen, in which she observed, "that Mrs. Dabby was dressed twice as grand, and was twice as big, and spoke twice as loud, and twice as muckle, as the Queen did, but she hadna the same goss-hawk glance that makes the skin creep, and the knee bend; and though she had very kindly gifted her with a loaf of sugar and twa punds of tea, yet she hadna a'thegither the sweet look that the Queen had when she put the needle-book into her hand." Jeanie might have enjoyed the sights and novelties of this great city more, had it not been for the qualification added to her sister's pardon, which greatly grieved her affectionate disposition. On this subject, however, her mind was somewhat relieved by a letter which she received in return of post, in answer to that which she had written to her father. With his affectionate blessing, it brought his full approbation of the step which she had taken, as one inspired by the immediate dictates of Heaven, and which she had been thrust upon in order that she might become the means of safety to a perishing household. "If ever a deliverance was dear and precious, this," said the letter, "is a dear and precious deliverance--and if life saved can be made more sweet and savoury, it is when it cometh by the hands of those whom we hold in the ties of affection. And do not let your heart be disquieted within you, that this victim, who is rescued from the horns of the altar, whereuntil she was fast bound by the chains of human law, is now to be driven beyond the bounds of our land. Scotland is a blessed land to those who love the ordinances of Christianity, and it is a faer land to look upon, and dear to them who have dwelt in it a' their days; and weel said that judicious Christian, worthy John Livingstone, a sailor in Borrowstouness, as the famous Patrick Walker reporteth his words, that howbeit he thought Scotland was a Gehennah of wickedness when he was at home, yet when he was abroad, he accounted it ane paradise; for the evils of Scotland he found everywhere, and the good of Scotland he found nowhere. But we are to hold in remembrance that Scotland, though it be our native land, and the land of our fathers, is not like Goshen, in Egypt, on whilk the sun of the heavens and of the gospel shineth allenarly, and leaveth the rest of the world in utter darkness. Therefore, and also because this increase of profit at Saint Leonard's Crags may be a cauld waff of wind blawing from the frozen land of earthly self, where never plant of grace took root or grew, and because my concerns make me take something ower muckle a grip of the gear of the warld in mine arms, I receive this dispensation anent Effie as a call to depart out of Haran, as righteous Abraham of old, and leave my father's kindred and my mother's house, and the ashes and mould of them who have gone to sleep before me, and which wait to be mingled with these auld crazed bones of mine own. And my heart is lightened to do this, when I call to mind the decay of active and earnest religion in this land, and survey the height and the depth, the length and the breadth, of national defections, and how the love of many is waxing lukewarm and cold; and I am strengthened in this resolution to change my domicile likewise, as I hear that store-farms are to be set at an easy mail in Northumberland, where there are many precious souls that are of our true though suffering persuasion. And sic part of the kye or stock as I judge it fit to keep, may be driven thither without incommodity--say about Wooler, or that gate, keeping aye a shouther to the hills,--and the rest may be sauld to gude profit and advantage, if we had grace weel to use and guide these gifts of the warld. The Laird has been a true friend on our unhappy occasions, and I have paid him back the siller for Effie's misfortune, whereof Mr. Nichil Novit returned him no balance, as the Laird and I did expect he wad hae done. But law licks up a', as the common folk say. I have had the siller to borrow out of sax purses. Mr. Saddletree advised to give the Laird of Lounsbeck a charge on his hand for a thousand merks. But I hae nae broo' of charges, since that awfu' morning that a tout of a horn, at the Cross of Edinburgh, blew half the faithfu' ministers of Scotland out of their pulpits. However, I sall raise an adjudication, whilk Mr. Saddletree says comes instead of the auld apprisings, and will not lose weel-won gear with the like of him, if it may be helped. As for the Queen, and the credit that she hath done to a poor man's daughter, and the mercy and the grace ye found with her, I can only pray for her weel-being here and hereafter, for the establishment of her house now and for ever, upon the throne of these kingdoms. I doubt not but what you told her Majesty, that I was the same David Deans of whom there was a sport at the Revolution, when I noited thegither the heads of twa false prophets, these ungracious Graces the prelates, as they stood on the Hie Street, after being expelled from the Convention-parliament.* * Note P. Expulsion of the Scotch Bishops. The Duke of Argyle is a noble and true-hearted nobleman, who pleads the cause of the poor, and those who have none to help them; verily his reward shall not be lacking unto him.--I have, been writing of many things, but not of that whilk lies nearest mine heart. I have seen the misguided thing, she will be at freedom the morn, on enacted caution that she shall leave Scotland in four weeks. Her mind is in an evil frame,--casting her eye backward on Egypt, I doubt, as if the bitter waters of the wilderness were harder to endure than the brick furnaces, by the side of which there were savoury flesh-pots. I need not bid you make haste down, for you are, excepting always my Great Master, my only comfort in these straits. I charge you to withdraw your feet from the delusion of that Vanity-fair in whilk ye are a sojourner, and not to go to their worship, whilk is an ill-mumbled mass, as it was weel termed by James the Sext, though he afterwards, with his unhappy son, strove to bring it ower back and belly into his native kingdom, wherethrough their race have been cut off as foam upon the water, and shall be as wanderers among the nations-see the prophecies of Hosea, ninth and seventeenth, and the same, tenth and seventh. But us and our house, let us say with the same prophet, 'Let us return to the Lord, for he hath torn, and he will heal us--He hath smitten, and he will bind us up.'" He proceeded to say, that he approved of her proposed mode of returning by Glasgow, and entered into sundry minute particulars not necessary to be quoted. A single line in the letter, but not the least frequently read by the party to whom it was addressed, intimated, that "Reuben Butler had been as a son to him in his sorrows." As David Deans scarce ever mentioned Butler before, without some gibe, more or less direct, either at his carnal gifts and learning, or at his grandfather's heresy, Jeanie drew a good omen from no such qualifying clause being added to this sentence respecting him. A lover's hope resembles the bean in the nursery tale,--let it once take root, and it will grow so rapidly, that in the course of a few hours the giant Imagination builds a castle on the top, and by and by comes Disappointment with the "curtal axe," and hews down both the plant and the superstructure. Jeanie's fancy, though not the most powerful of her faculties, was lively enough to transport her to a wild farm in Northumberland, well stocked with milk-cows, yeald beasts, and sheep; a meeting-house, hard by, frequented by serious Presbyterians, who had united in a harmonious call to Reuben Butler to be their spiritual guide--Effie restored, not to gaiety, but to cheerfulness at least--their father, with his grey hairs smoothed down, and spectacles on his nose--herself, with the maiden snood exchanged for a matron's curch--all arranged in a pew in the said meeting-house, listening to words of devotion, rendered sweeter and more powerful by the affectionate ties which combined them with the preacher. She cherished such visions from day to day, until her residence in London began to become insupportable and tedious to her; and it was with no ordinary satisfaction that she received a summons from Argyle House, requiring her in two days to be prepared to join their northward party. CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. One was a female, who had grievous ill Wrought in revenge, and she enjoy'd it still; Sullen she was, and threatening; in her eye Glared the stern triumph that she dared to die. Crabbe. The summons of preparation arrived after Jeanie Deans had resided in the metropolis about three weeks. On the morning appointed she took a grateful farewell of Mrs. Glass, as that good woman's attention to her particularly required, placed herself and her movable goods, which purchases and presents had greatly increased, in a hackney-coach, and joined her travelling companions in the housekeeper's apartment at Argyle House. While the carriage was getting ready, she was informed that the Duke wished to speak with her; and being ushered into a splendid saloon, she was surprised to find that he wished to present her to his lady and daughters. "I bring you my little countrywoman, Duchess," these were the words of the introduction. "With an army of young fellows, as gallant and steady as she is, and, a good cause, I would not fear two to one." "Ah, papa!" said a lively young lady, about twelve years old, "remember you were full one to two at Sheriffmuir, and yet" (singing the well-known ballad)-- "Some say that we wan, and some say that they wan, And some say that nane wan at a', man But of ae thing I'm sure, that on Sheriff-muir A battle there was that I saw, man." "What, little Mary turned Tory on my hands?--This will be fine news for our countrywoman to carry down to Scotland!" "We may all turn Tories for the thanks we have got for remaining Whigs," said the second young lady. "Well, hold your peace, you discontented monkeys, and go dress your babies; and as for the Bob of Dunblane, 'If it wasna weel bobbit, weel bobbit, weel bobbit, If it wasna weel bobbit, we'll bob it again.'" "Papa's wit is running low," said Lady Mary: "the poor gentleman is repeating himself--he sang that on the field of battle, when he was told the Highlanders had cut his left wing to pieces with their claymores." A pull by the hair was the repartee to this sally. "Ah! brave Highlanders and bright claymores," said the Duke, "well do I wish them, 'for a' the ill they've done me yet,' as the song goes.--But come, madcaps, say a civil word to your countrywoman--I wish ye had half her canny hamely sense; I think you may be as leal and true-hearted." The Duchess advanced, and, in a few words, in which there was as much kindness as civility, assured Jeanie of the respect which she had for a character so affectionate, and yet so firm, and added, "When you get home, you will perhaps hear from me." "And from me." "And from me." "And from me, Jeanie," added the young ladies one after the other, "for you are a credit to the land we love so well." Jeanie, overpowered by these unexpected compliments, and not aware that the Duke's investigation had made him acquainted with her behaviour on her sister's trial, could only answer by blushing, and courtesying round and round, and uttering at intervals, "Mony thanks! mony thanks!" "Jeanie," said the Duke, "you must have _doch an' dorroch,_ or you will be unable to travel." There was a salver with cake and wine on the table. He took up a glass, drank "to all true hearts that lo'ed Scotland," and offered a glass to his guest. Jeanie, however, declined it, saying, "that she had never tasted wine in her life." "How comes that, Jeanie?" said the Duke,--"wine maketh glad the heart, you know." "Ay, sir, but my father is like Jonadab the son of Rechab, who charged his children that they should drink no wine." "I thought your father would have had more sense," said the Duke, "unless indeed he prefers brandy. But, however, Jeanie, if you will not drink, you must eat, to save the character of my house." He thrust upon her a large piece of cake, nor would he permit her to break off a fragment, and lay the rest on a salver. "Put it in your pouch, Jeanie," said he; "you will be glad of it before you see St. Giles's steeple. I wish to Heaven I were to see it as soon as you! and so my best service to all my friends at and about Auld Reekie, and a blithe journey to you." And, mixing the frankness of a soldier with his natural affability, he shook hands with his prote'ge'e, and committed her to the charge of Archibald, satisfied that he had provided sufficiently for her being attended to by his domestics, from the unusual attention with which he had himself treated her. Accordingly, in the course of her journey, she found both her companions disposed to pay her every possible civility, so that her return, in point of comfort and safety, formed a strong contrast to her journey to London. Her heart also was disburdened of the weight of grief, shame, apprehension, and fear, which had loaded her before her interview with the Queen at Richmond. But the human mind is so strangely capricious, that, when freed from the pressure of real misery, it becomes open and sensitive to the apprehension of ideal calamities. She was now much disturbed in mind, that she had heard nothing from Reuben Butler, to whom the operation of writing was so much more familiar than it was to herself. "It would have cost him sae little fash," she said to herself; "for I hae seen his pen gan as fast ower the paper, as ever it did ower the water when it was in the grey goose's wing. Wae's me! maybe he may be badly--but then my father wad likely hae said somethin about it--Or maybe he may hae taen the rue, and kensna how to let me wot of his change of mind. He needna be at muckle fash about it,"--she went on, drawing herself up, though the tear of honest pride and injured affection gathered in her eye, as she entertained the suspicion,-- "Jeanie Deans is no the lass to pu' him by the sleeve, or put him in mind of what he wishes to forget. I shall wish him weel and happy a' the same; and if he has the luck to get a kirk in our country, I sall gang and hear him just the very same, to show that I bear nae malice." And as she imagined the scene, the tear stole over her eye. In these melancholy reveries, Jeanie had full time to indulge herself; for her travelling companions, servants in a distinguished and fashionable family, had, of course, many topics of conversation, in which it was absolutely impossible she could have either pleasure or portion. She had, therefore, abundant leisure for reflection, and even for self-tormenting, during the several days which, indulging the young horses the Duke was sending down to the North with sufficient ease and short stages, they occupied in reaching the neighbourhood of Carlisle. In approaching the vicinity of that ancient city, they discerned a considerable crowd upon an eminence at a little distance from the high road, and learned from some passengers who were gathering towards that busy scene from the southward, that the cause of the concourse was, the laudable public desire "to see a doomed Scotch witch and thief get half of her due upo' Haribeebroo' yonder, for she was only to be hanged; she should hae been boorned aloive, an' cheap on't." "Dear Mr. Archibald," said the dame of the dairy elect, "I never seed a woman hanged in a' my life, and only four men, as made a goodly spectacle." Mr. Archibald, however, was a Scotchman, and promised himself no exuberant pleasure in seeing his countrywoman undergo "the terrible behests of law." Moreover, he was a man of sense and delicacy in his way, and the late circumstances of Jeanie's family, with the cause of her expedition to London, were not unknown to him; so that he answered drily, it was impossible to stop, as he must be early at Carlisle on some business of the Duke's, and he accordingly bid the postilions get on. The road at that time passed at about a quarter of a mile's distance from the eminence, called Haribee or Harabee-brow, which, though it is very moderate in size and height, is nevertheless seen from a great distance around, owing to the flatness of the country through which the Eden flows. Here many an outlaw, and border-rider of both kingdoms, had wavered in the wind during the wars, and scarce less hostile truces, between the two countries. Upon Harabee, in latter days, other executions had taken place with as little ceremony as compassion; for these frontier provinces remained long unsettled, and, even at the time of which we write, were ruder than those in the centre of England. The postilions drove on, wheeling as the Penrith road led them, round the verge of the rising ground. Yet still the eyes of Mrs. Dolly Dutton, which, with the head and substantial person to which they belonged, were all turned towards the scene of action, could discern plainly the outline of the gallows-tree, relieved against the clear sky, the dark shade formed by the persons of the executioner and the criminal upon the light rounds of the tall aerial ladder, until one of the objects, launched into the air, gave unequivocal signs of mortal agony, though appearing in the distance not larger than a spider dependent at the extremity of his invisible thread, while the remaining form descended from its elevated situation, and regained with all speed an undistinguished place among the crowd. This termination of the tragic scene drew forth of course a squall from Mrs. Dutton, and Jeanie, with instinctive curiosity, turned her head in the same direction. The sight of a female culprit in the act of undergoing the fatal punishment from which her beloved sister had been so recently rescued, was too much, not perhaps for her nerves, but for her mind and feelings. She turned her head to the other side of the carriage, with a sensation of sickness, of loathing, and of fainting. Her female companion overwhelmed her with questions, with proffers of assistance, with requests that the carriage might be stopped--that a doctor might be fetched--that drops might be gotten--that burnt feathers and asafoetida, fair water, and hartshorn, might be procured, all at once, and without one instant's delay. Archibald, more calm and considerate, only desired the carriage to push forward; and it was not till they had got beyond sight of the fatal spectacle, that, seeing the deadly paleness of Jeanie's countenance, he stopped the carriage, and jumping out himself, went in search of the most obvious and most easily procured of Mrs. Dutton's pharmacopoeia--a draught, namely, of fair water. While Archibald was absent on this good-natured piece of service, damning the ditches which produced nothing but mud, and thinking upon the thousand bubbling springlets of his own mountains, the attendants on the execution began to pass the stationary vehicle in their way back to Carlisle. From their half-heard and half-understood words, Jeanie, whose attention was involuntarily rivetted by them, as that of children is by ghost stories, though they know the pain with which they will afterwards remember them, Jeanie, I say, could discern that the present victim of the law had died game, as it is termed by those unfortunates; that is, sullen, reckless, and impenitent, neither fearing God nor regarding man. "A sture woife, and a dour," said one Cumbrian peasant, as he clattered by in his wooden brogues, with a noise like the trampling of a dray-horse. "She has gone to ho master, with ho's name in her mouth," said another; "Shame the country should be harried wi' Scotch witches and Scotch bitches this gate--but I say hang and drown." "Ay, ay, Gaffer Tramp, take awa yealdon, take awa low--hang the witch, and there will be less scathe amang us; mine owsen hae been reckan this towmont." "And mine bairns hae been crining too, mon," replied his neighbour. "Silence wi' your fule tongues, ye churls," said an old woman, who hobbled past them, as they stood talking near the carriage; "this was nae witch, but a bluidy-fingered thief and murderess." "Ay? was it e'en sae, Dame Hinchup?" said one in a civil tone, and stepping out of his place to let the old woman pass along the footpath--"Nay, you know best, sure--but at ony rate, we hae but tint a Scot of her, and that's a thing better lost than found." The old woman passed on without making any answer. "Ay, ay, neighbour," said Gaffer Tramp, "seest thou how one witch will speak for t'other--Scots or English, the same to them." His companion shook his head, and replied in the same subdued tone, "Ay, ay, when a Sark-foot wife gets on her broomstick, the dames of Allonby are ready to mount, just as sure as the by-word gangs o' the hills,-- If Skiddaw hath a cap, Criffel, wots full weel of that." "But," continued Gager Tramp, "thinkest thou the daughter o' yon hangit body isna as rank a witch as ho?" "I kenna clearly," returned the fellow, "but the folk are speaking o' swimming her i' the Eden." And they passed on their several roads, after wishing each other good-morning. Just as the clowns left the place, and as Mr. Archibald returned with some fair water, a crowd of boys and girls, and some of the lower rabble of more mature age, came up from the place of execution, grouping themselves with many a yell of delight around a tall female fantastically dressed, who was dancing, leaping, and bounding in the midst of them. A horrible recollection pressed on Jeanie as she looked on this unfortunate creature; and the reminiscence was mutual, for by a sudden exertion of great strength and agility, Madge Wildfire broke out of the noisy circle of tormentors who surrounded her, and clinging fast to the door of the calash, uttered, in a sound betwixt laughter and screaming, "Eh, d'ye ken, Jeanie Deans, they hae hangit our mother?" Then suddenly changing her tone to that of the most piteous entreaty, she added, "O gar them let me gang to cut her down!--let me but cut her down!--she is my mother, if she was waur than the deil, and she'll be nae mair kenspeckle than half-hangit Maggie Dickson,* that cried saut mony a day after she had been hangit; her voice was roupit and hoarse, and her neck was a wee agee, or ye wad hae kend nae odds on her frae ony other saut-wife." * Note Q. Half-hanged Maggie Dickson. Mr. Archibald, embarrassed by the madwoman's clinging to the carriage, and detaining around them her noisy and mischievous attendants, was all this while looking out for a constable or beadle, to whom he might commit the unfortunate creature. But seeing no such person of authority, he endeavoured to loosen her hold from the carriage, that they might escape from her by driving on. This, however, could hardly be achieved without some degree of violence; Madge held fast, and renewed her frantic entreaties to be permitted to cut down her mother. "It was but a tenpenny tow lost," she said, "and what was that to a woman's life?" There came up, however, a parcel of savage-looking fellows, butchers and graziers chiefly, among whose cattle there had been of late a very general and fatal distemper, which their wisdom imputed to witchcraft. They laid violent hands on Madge, and tore her from the carriage, exclaiming-- "What, doest stop folk o' king's high-way? Hast no done mischief enow already, wi' thy murders and thy witcherings?" "Oh, Jeanie Deans--Jeanie Deans!" exclaimed the poor maniac, "save my mother, and I will take ye to the Interpreter's house again,--and I will teach ye a' my bonny sangs,--and I will tell ye what came o' the." The rest of her entreaties were drowned in the shouts of the rabble. "Save her, for God's sake!--save her from those people!" exclaimed Jeanie to Archibald. "She is mad, but quite innocent; she is mad, gentlemen," said Archibald; "do not use her ill, take her before the Mayor." "Ay, ay, we'se hae care enow on her," answered one of the fellows; "gang thou thy gate, man, and mind thine own matters." "He's a Scot by his tongue," said another; "and an he will come out o' his whirligig there, I'se gie him his tartan plaid fu' o' broken banes." It was clear nothing could be done to rescue Madge; and Archibald, who was a man of humanity, could only bid the postilions hurry on to Carlisle, that he might obtain some assistance to the unfortunate woman. As they drove off, they heard the hoarse roar with which the mob preface acts of riot or cruelty, yet even above that deep and dire note, they could discern the screams of the unfortunate victim. They were soon out of hearing of the cries, but had no sooner entered the streets of Carlisle, than Archibald, at Jeanie's earnest and urgent entreaty, went to a magistrate, to state the cruelty which was likely to be exercised on this unhappy creature. In about an hour and a half he returned, and reported to Jeanie, that the magistrate had very readily gone in person, with some assistance, to the rescue of the unfortunate woman, and that he had himself accompanied him; that when they came to the muddy pool, in which the mob were ducking her, according to their favourite mode of punishment, the magistrate succeeded in rescuing her from their hands, but in a state of insensibility, owing to the cruel treatment which she had received. He added, that he had seen her carried to the workhouse, and understood that she had been brought to herself, and was expected to do well. This last averment was a slight alteration in point of fact, for Madge Wildfire was not expected to survive the treatment she had received; but Jeanie seemed so much agitated, that Mr. Archibald did not think it prudent to tell her the worst at once. Indeed, she appeared so fluttered and disordered by this alarming accident, that, although it had been their intention to proceed to Longtown that evening, her companions judged it most advisable to pass the night at Carlisle. This was particularly agreeable to Jeanie, who resolved, if possible, to procure an interview with Madge Wildfire. Connecting some of her wild flights with the narrative of George Staunton, she was unwilling to omit the opportunity of extracting from her, if possible, some information concerning the fate of that unfortunate infant which had cost her sister so dear. Her acquaintance with the disordered state of poor Madge's mind did not permit her to cherish much hope that she could acquire from her any useful intelligence; but then, since Madge's mother had suffered her deserts, and was silent for ever, it was her only chance of obtaining any kind of information, and she was loath to lose the opportunity. She coloured her wish to Mr. Archibald by saying that she had seen Madge formerly, and wished to know, as a matter of humanity, how she was attended to under her present misfortunes. That complaisant person immediately went to the workhouse, or hospital, in which he had seen the sufferer lodged, and brought back for reply, that the medical attendants positively forbade her seeing any one. When the application for admittance was repeated next day, Mr. Archibald was informed that she had been very quiet and composed, insomuch that the clergyman who acted as chaplain to the establishment thought it expedient to read prayers beside her bed, but that her wandering fit of mind had returned soon after his departure; however, her countrywoman might see her if she chose it. She was not expected to live above an hour or two. Jeanie had no sooner received this information than she hastened to the hospital, her companions attending her. They found the dying person in a large ward, where there were ten beds, of which the patient's was the only one occupied. Madge was singing when they entered--singing her own wild snatches of songs and obsolete airs, with a voice no longer overstrained by false spirits, but softened, saddened, and subdued by bodily exhaustion. She was still insane, but was no longer able to express her wandering ideas in the wild notes of her former state of exalted imagination. There was death in the plaintive tones of her voice, which yet, in this moderated and melancholy mood, had something of the lulling sound with which a mother sings her infant asleep. As Jeanie entered she heard first the air, and then a part of the chorus and words, of what had been, perhaps, the song of a jolly harvest-home. "Our work is over--over now, The goodman wipes his weary brow, The last long wain wends slow away, And we are free to sport and play. "The night comes on when sets the sun, And labour ends when day is done. When Autumn's gone and Winter's come, We hold our jovial harvest-home." Jeanie advanced to the bedside when the strain was finished, and addressed Madge by her name. But it produced no symptoms of recollection. On the contrary, the patient, like one provoked by interruption, changed her posture, and called out with an impatient tone, "Nurse--nurse, turn my face to the wa', that I may never answer to that name ony mair, and never see mair of a wicked world." The attendant on the hospital arranged her in her bed as she desired, with her face to the wall and her back to the light. So soon as she was quiet in this new position, she began again to sing in the same low and modulated strains, as if she was recovering the state of abstraction which the interruption of her visitants had disturbed. The strain, however, was different, and rather resembled the music of the Methodist hymns, though the measure of the song was similar to that of the former: "When the fight of grace is fought-- When the marriage vest is wrought-- When Faith hath chased cold Doubt away, And Hope but sickens at delay-- "When Charity, imprisoned here, Longs for a more expanded sphere, Doff thy robes of sin and clay; Christian, rise, and come away." The strain was solemn and affecting, sustained as it was by the pathetic warble of a voice which had naturally been a fine one, and which weakness, if it diminished its power, had improved in softness. Archibald, though a follower of the court, and a pococurante by profession, was confused, if not affected; the dairy-maid blubbered; and Jeanie felt the tears rise spontaneously to her eyes. Even the nurse, accustomed to all modes in which the spirit can pass, seemed considerably moved. The patient was evidently growing weaker, as was intimated by an apparent difficulty of breathing, which seized her from time to time, and by the utterance of low listless moans, intimating that nature was succumbing in the last conflict. But the spirit of melody, which must originally have so strongly possessed this unfortunate young woman, seemed, at every interval of ease, to triumph over her pain and weakness. And it was remarkable that there could always be traced in her songs something appropriate, though perhaps only obliquely or collaterally so, to her present situation. Her next seemed the fragment of some old ballad: "Cauld is my bed, Lord Archibald, And sad my sleep of sorrow; But thine sall be as sad and cauld, My fause true-love! to-morrow. "And weep ye not, my maidens free, Though death your mistress borrow; For he for whom I die to-day Shall die for me to-morrow." Again she changed the tune to one wilder, less monotonous, and less regular. But of the words, only a fragment or two could be collected by those who listened to this singular scene "Proud Maisie is in the wood, Walking so early; Sweet Robin sits on the bush, Singing so rarely. "'Tell me, thou bonny bird. When shall I marry me?' 'When six braw gentlemen Kirkward shall carry ye.' "'Who makes the bridal bed, Birdie, say truly?'-- 'The grey-headed sexton, That delves the grave duly. "The glow-worm o'er grave and stone Shall light thee steady; The owl from the steeple sing, 'Welcome, proud lady.'" Her voice died away with the last notes, and she fell into a slumber, from which the experienced attendant assured them that she never would awake at all, or only in the death agony. The nurse's prophecy proved true. The poor maniac parted with existence, without again uttering a sound of any kind. But our travellers did not witness this catastrophe. They left the hospital as soon as Jeanie had satisfied herself that no elucidation of her sister's misfortunes was to be hoped from the dying person.* * Note R. Madge Wildfire. CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH. Wilt thou go on with me? The moon is bright, the sea is calm, And I know well the ocean paths . . . Thou wilt go on with me! Thalaba. The fatigue and agitation of these various scenes had agitated Jeanie so much, notwithstanding her robust strength of constitution, that Archibald judged it necessary that she should have a day's repose at the village of Longtown. It was in vain that Jeanie protested against any delay. The Duke of Argyle's man of confidence was of course consequential; and as he had been bred to the medical profession in his youth (at least he used this expression to describe his having, thirty years before, pounded for six months in the mortar of old Mungo Mangleman, the surgeon at Greenock), he was obstinate whenever a matter of health was in question. In this case he discovered febrile symptoms, and having once made a happy application of that learned phrase to Jeanie's case, all farther resistance became in vain; and she was glad to acquiesce, and even to go to bed, and drink water-gruel, in order that she might possess her soul in quiet and without interruption. Mr. Archibald was equally attentive in another particular. He observed that the execution of the old woman, and the miserable fate of her daughter, seemed to have had a more powerful effect upon Jeanie's mind, than the usual feelings of humanity might naturally have been expected to occasion. Yet she was obviously a strong-minded, sensible young woman, and in no respect subject to nervous affections; and therefore Archibald, being ignorant of any special connection between his master's prote'ge'e and these unfortunate persons, excepting that she had seen Madge formerly in Scotland, naturally imputed the strong impression these events had made upon her, to her associating them with the unhappy circumstances in which her sister had so lately stood. He became anxious, therefore, to prevent anything occurring which might recall these associations to Jeanie's mind. Archibald had speedily an opportunity of exercising this precaution. A pedlar brought to Longtown that evening, amongst other wares, a large broad-side sheet, giving an account of the "Last Speech and Execution of Margaret Murdockson, and of the barbarous Murder of her Daughter, Magdalene or Madge Murdockson, called Madge Wildfire; and of her pious conversation with his Reverence Archdeacon Fleming;" which authentic publication had apparently taken place on the day they left Carlisle, and being an article of a nature peculiarly acceptable to such country-folk as were within hearing of the transaction, the itinerant bibliopolist had forthwith added them to his stock in trade. He found a merchant sooner than he expected; for Archibald, much applauding his own prudence, purchased the whole lot for two shillings and ninepence; and the pedlar, delighted with the profit of such a wholesale transaction, instantly returned to Carlisle to supply himself with more. The considerate Mr. Archibald was about to commit his whole purchase to the flames, but it was rescued by the yet more considerate dairy-damsel, who said, very prudently, it was a pity to waste so much paper, which might crepe hair, pin up bonnets, and serve many other useful purposes; and who promised to put the parcel into her own trunk, and keep it carefully out of the sight of Mrs. Jeanie Deans: "Though, by-the-bye, she had no great notion of folk being so very nice. Mrs. Deans might have had enough to think about the gallows all this time to endure a sight of it, without all this to-do about it." Archibald reminded the dame of the dairy of the Duke's particular charge, that they should be attentive and civil to Jeanie as also that they were to part company soon, and consequently would not be doomed to observing any one's health or temper during the rest of the journey. With which answer Mrs. Dolly Dutton was obliged to hold herself satisfied. On the morning they resumed their journey, and prosecuted it successfully, travelling through Dumfriesshire and part of Lanarkshire, until they arrived at the small town of Rutherglen, within about four miles of Glasgow. Here an express brought letters to Archibald from the principal agent of the Duke of Argyle in Edinburgh. He said nothing of their contents that evening; but when they were seated in the carriage the next day, the faithful squire informed Jeanie, that he had received directions from the Duke's factor, to whom his Grace had recommended him to carry her, if she had no objection, for a stage or two beyond Glasgow. Some temporary causes of discontent had occasioned tumults in that city and the neighbourhood, which would render it unadvisable for Mrs. Jeanie Deans to travel alone and unprotected betwixt that city and Edinburgh; whereas, by going forward a little farther, they would meet one of his Grace's subfactors, who was coming down from the Highlands to Edinburgh with his wife, and under whose charge she might journey with comfort and in safety. Jeanie remonstrated against this arrangement. "She had been lang," she said, "frae hame--her father and her sister behoved to be very anxious to see her--there were other friends she had that werena weel in health. She was willing to pay for man and horse at Glasgow, and surely naebody wad meddle wi' sae harmless and feckless a creature as she was.--She was muckle obliged by the offer; but never hunted deer langed for its resting-place as I do to find myself at Saint Leonard's." The groom of the chambers exchanged a look with his female companion, which seemed so full of meaning, that Jeanie screamed aloud--"O Mr. Archibald--Mrs. Dutton, if ye ken of onything that has happened at Saint Leonard's, for God's sake--for pity's sake, tell me, and dinna keep me in suspense!" "I really know nothing, Mrs. Deans," said the groom of the chambers. "And I--I--I am sure, I knows as little," said the dame of the dairy, while some communication seemed to tremble on her lips, which, at a glance of Archibald's eye, she appeared to swallow down, and compressed her lips thereafter into a state of extreme and vigilant firmness, as if she had been afraid of its bolting out before she was aware. Jeanie saw there was to be something concealed from her, and it was only the repeated assurances of Archibald that her father--her sister--all her friends were, as far as he knew, well and happy, that at all pacified her alarm. From such respectable people as those with whom she travelled she could apprehend no harm, and yet her distress was so obvious, that Archibald, as a last resource, pulled out, and put into her hand, a slip of paper, on which these words were written:-- "Jeanie Deans--You will do me a favour by going with Archibald and my female domestic a day's journey beyond Glasgow, and asking them no questions, which will greatly oblige your friend, 'Argyle & Greenwich.'" Although this laconic epistle, from a nobleman to whom she was bound by such inestimable obligations, silenced all Jeanie's objections to the proposed route, it rather added to than diminished the eagerness of her curiosity. The proceeding to Glasgow seemed now no longer to be an object with her fellow-travellers. On the contrary, they kept the left-hand side of the river Clyde, and travelled through a thousand beautiful and changing views down the side of that noble stream, till, ceasing to hold its inland character, it began to assume that of a navigable river. "You are not for gaun intill Glasgow then?" said Jeanie, as she observed that the drivers made no motion for inclining their horses' heads towards the ancient bridge, which was then the only mode of access to St. Mungo's capital. "No," replied Archibald; "there is some popular commotion, and as our Duke is in opposition to the court, perhaps we might be too well received; or they might take it in their heads to remember that the Captain of Carrick came down upon them with his Highlandmen in the time of Shawfield's mob in 1725, and then we would be too ill received.* And, at any rate, it is best for us, and for me in particular, who may be supposed to possess his Grace's mind upon many particulars, to leave the good people of the Gorbals to act according to their own imaginations, without either provoking or encouraging them by my presence." * In 1725, there was a great riot in Glasgow on account of the malt-tax. Among the troops brought in to restore order, was one of the independent companies of Highlanders levied in Argyleshire, and distinguished, in a lampoon of the period, as "Campbell of Carrick and his Highland thieves." It was called Shawfield's Mob, because much of the popular violence was directed against Daniel Campbell, Esq. of Shawfield, M. P., Provost of the town. To reasoning of such tone and consequence Jeanie had nothing to reply, although it seemed to her to contain fully as much self-importance as truth. The carriage meantime rolled on; the river expanded itself, and gradually assumed the dignity of an estuary or arm of the sea. The influence of the advancing and retiring tides became more and more evident, and in the beautiful words of him of the laurel wreath, the river waxed-- A broader and yet broader stream. The cormorant stands upon its shoals, His black and dripping wings Half open'd to the wind. [From Southey's _Thalaba,_ Book xi. stanza 36.] "Which way lies Inverary?" said Jeanie, gazing on the dusky ocean of Highland hills, which now, piled above each other, and intersected by many a lake, stretched away on the opposite side of the river to the northward. "Is yon high castle the Duke's hoose?" "That, Mrs. Deans?--Lud help thee," replied Archibald, "that's the old castle of Dumbarton, the strongest place in Europe, be the other what it may. Sir William Wallace was governor of it in the old war with the English, and his Grace is governor just now. It is always entrusted to the best man in Scotland." "And does the Duke live on that high rock, then?" demanded Jeanie. "No, no, he has his deputy-governor, who commands in his absence; he lives in the white house you see at the bottom of the rock--His Grace does not reside there himself." "I think not, indeed," said the dairy-woman, upon whose mind the road, since they had left Dumfries, had made no very favourable impression, "for if he did, he might go whistle for a dairy-woman, an he were the only duke in England. I did not leave my place and my friends to come down to see cows starve to death upon hills as they be at that pig-stye of Elfinfoot, as you call it, Mr. Archibald, or to be perched upon the top of a rock, like a squirrel in his cage, hung out of a three pair of stairs' window." Inwardly chuckling that these symptoms of recalcitration had not taken place until the fair malcontent was, as he mentally termed it, under his thumb, Archibald coolly replied, "That the hills were none of his making, nor did he know how to mend them; but as to lodging, they would soon be in a house of the Duke's in a very pleasant island called Roseneath, where they went to wait for shipping to take them to Inverary, and would meet the company with whom Jeanie was to return to Edinburgh." "An island?" said Jeanie, who, in the course of her various and adventurous travels, had never quitted terra firma, "then I am doubting we maun gang in ane of these boats; they look unco sma', and the waves are something rough, and" "Mr. Archibald," said Mrs. Dutton, "I will not consent to it; I was never engaed to leave the country, and I desire you will bid the boys drive round the other way to the Duke's house." "There is a safe pinnace belonging to his Grace, ma'am, close by," replied Archibald, "and you need be under no apprehensions whatsoever." "But I am under apprehensions," said the damsel; "and I insist upon going round by land, Mr. Archibald, were it ten miles about." "I am sorry I cannot oblige you, madam, as Roseneath happens to be an island." "If it were ten islands," said the incensed dame, "that's no reason why I should be drowned in going over the seas to it." "No reason why you should be drowned certainly, ma'am," answered the unmoved groom of the chambers, "but an admirable good one why you cannot proceed to it by land." And, fixed his master's mandates to perform, he pointed with his hand, and the drivers, turning off the high-road, proceeded towards a small hamlet of fishing huts, where a shallop, somewhat more gaily decorated than any which they had yet seen, having a flag which displayed a boar's head, crested with a ducal coronet, waited with two or three seamen, and as many Highlanders. The carriage stopped, and the men began to unyoke their horses, while Mr. Archibald gravely superintended the removal of the baggage from the carriage to the little vessel. "Has the Caroline been long arrived?" said Archibald to one of the seamen. "She has been here in five days from Liverpool, and she's lying down at Greenock," answered the fellow. "Let the horses and carriage go down to Greenock then," said Archibald, "and be embarked there for Inverary when I send notice--they may stand in my cousin's, Duncan Archibald the stabler's.--Ladies," he added, "I hope you will get yourselves ready; we must not lose the tide." "Mrs. Deans," said the Cowslip of Inverary, "you may do as you please--but I will sit here all night, rather than go into that there painted egg-shell.--Fellow--fellow!" (this was addressed to a Highlander who was lifting a travelling trunk), "that trunk is _mine,_ and that there band-box, and that pillion mail, and those seven bundles, and the paper-bag; and if you venture to touch one of them, it shall be at your peril." The Celt kept his eye fixed on the speaker, then turned his head towards Archibald, and receiving no countervailing signal, he shouldered the portmanteau, and without farther notice of the distressed damsel, or paying any attention to remonstrances, which probably he did not understand, and would certainly have equally disregarded whether he understood them or not, moved off with Mrs. Dutton's wearables, and deposited the trunk containing them safely in the boat. The baggage being stowed in safety, Mr. Archibald handed Jeanie out of the carriage, and, not without some tremor on her part, she was transported through the surf and placed in the boat. He then offered the same civility to his fellow-servant, but she was resolute in her refusal to quit the carriage, in which she now remained in solitary state, threatening all concerned or unconcerned with actions for wages and board-wages, damages and expenses, and numbering on her fingers the gowns and other habiliments, from which she seemed in the act of being separated for ever. Mr. Archibald did not give himself the trouble of making many remonstrances, which, indeed, seemed only to aggravate the damsel's indignation, but spoke two or three words to the Highlanders in Gaelic; and the wily mountaineers, approaching the carriage cautiously, and without giving the slightest intimation of their intention, at once seized the recusant so effectually fast that she could neither resist nor struggle, and hoisting her on their shoulders in nearly a horizontal posture, rushed down with her to the beach, and through the surf, and with no other inconvenience than ruffling her garments a little, deposited her in the boat; but in a state of surprise, mortification, and terror, at her sudden transportation, which rendered her absolutely mute for two or three minutes. The men jumped in themselves; one tall fellow remained till he had pushed off the boat, and then tumbled in upon his companions. They took their oars and began to pull from the shore, then spread their sail, and drove merrily across the firth. "You Scotch villain!" said the infuriated damsel to Archibald, "how dare you use a person like me in this way?" "Madam," said Archibald, with infinite composure, "it's high time you should know you are in the Duke's country, and that there is not one of these fellows but would throw you out of the boat as readily as into it, if such were his Grace's pleasure." "Then the Lord have mercy on me!" said Mrs. Dutton. "If I had had any on myself, I would never have engaged with you." "It's something of the latest to think of that now, Mrs. Dutton," said Archibald; "but I assure you, you will find the Highlands have their pleasures. You will have a dozen of cow-milkers under your own authority at Inverary, and you may throw any of them into the lake, if you have a mind, for the Duke's head people are almost as great as himself." "This is a strange business, to be sure, Mr. Archibald," said the lady; "but I suppose I must make the best on't.--Are you sure the boat will not sink? it leans terribly to one side, in my poor mind." "Fear nothing," said Mr. Archibald, taking a most important pinch of snuff; "this same ferry on Clyde knows us very well, or we know it, which is all the same; no fear of any of our people meeting with any accident. We should have crossed from the opposite shore, but for the disturbances at Glasgow, which made it improper for his Grace's people to pass through the city." "Are you not afeard, Mrs. Deans," said the dairy-vestal, addressing Jeanie, who sat, not in the most comfortable state of mind, by the side of Archibald, who himself managed the helm.--"are you not afeard of these wild men with their naked knees, and of this nut-shell of a thing, that seems bobbing up and down like a skimming-dish in a milk-pail?" "No--no--madam," answered Jeanie with some hesitation, "I am not feared; for I hae seen Hielandmen before, though never was sae near them; and for the danger of the deep waters, I trust there is a Providence by sea as well as by land." "Well," said Mrs. Dutton, "it is a beautiful thing to have learned to write and read, for one can always say such fine words whatever should befall them." Archibald, rejoicing in the impression which his vigorous measures had made upon the intractable dairymaid, now applied himself, as a sensible and good-natured man, to secure by fair means the ascendency which he had obtained by some wholesome violence; and he succeeded so well in representing to her the idle nature of her fears, and the impossibility of leaving her upon the beach enthroned in an empty carriage, that the good understanding of the party was completely revived ere they landed at Roseneath. CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH. Did Fortune guide, Or rather Destiny, our bark, to which We could appoint no port, to this best place? Fletcher. The islands in the Firth of Clyde, which the daily passage of so many smoke-pennoned steamboats now renders so easily accessible, were in our fathers' times secluded spots, frequented by no travellers, and few visitants of any kind. They are of exquisite, yet varied beauty. Arran, a mountainous region, or Alpine island, abounds with the grandest and most romantic scenery. Bute is of a softer and more woodland character. The Cumbrays, as if to exhibit a contrast to both, are green, level, and bare, forming the links of a sort of natural bar which is drawn along the mouth of the firth, leaving large intervals, however, of ocean. Roseneath, a smaller isle, lies much higher up the firth, and towards its western shore, near the opening of the lake called the Gare Loch, and not far from Loch Long and Loch Scant, or the Holy Loch, which wind from the mountains of the Western Highlands to join the estuary of the Clyde. In these isles the severe frost winds which tyrannise over the vegetable creation during a Scottish spring, are comparatively little felt; nor, excepting the gigantic strength of Arran, are they much exposed to the Atlantic storms, lying landlocked and protected to the westward by the shores of Ayrshire. Accordingly, the weeping-willow, the weeping-birch, and other trees of early and pendulous shoots, flourish in these favoured recesses in a degree unknown in our eastern districts; and the air is also said to possess that mildness which is favourable to consumptive cases. The picturesque beauty of the island of Roseneath, in particular, had such recommendations, that the Earls and Dukes of Argyle, from an early period, made it their occasional residence, and had their temporary accommodation in a fishing or hunting-lodge, which succeeding improvements have since transformed into a palace. It was in its original simplicity when the little bark which we left traversing the firth at the end of last CHAPTER approached the shores of the isle. When they touched the landing-place, which was partly shrouded by some old low but wide-spreading oak-trees, intermixed with hazel-bushes, two or three figures were seen as if awaiting their arrival. To these Jeanie paid little attention, so that it was with a shock of surprise almost electrical, that, upon being carried by the rowers out of the boat to the shore, she was received in the arms of her father! It was too wonderful to be believed--too much like a happy dream to have the stable feeling of reality--She extricated herself from his close and affectionate embrace, and held him at arm's length, to satisfy her mind that it was no illusion. But the form was indisputable--Douce David Deans himself, in his best light-blue Sunday's coat, with broad metal buttons, and waistcoat and breeches of the same, his strong gramashes or leggins of thick grey cloth--the very copper buckles--the broad Lowland blue bonnet, thrown back as he lifted his eyes to Heaven in speechless gratitude--the grey locks that straggled from beneath it down his weather-beaten "haffets"--the bald and furrowed forehead--the clear blue eye, that, undimmed by years, gleamed bright and pale from under its shaggy grey pent-house--the features, usually so stern and stoical, now melted into the unwonted expression of rapturous joy, affection, and gratitude--were all those of David Deans; and so happily did they assort together, that, should I ever again see my friends Wilkie or Allan, I will try to borrow or steal from them a sketch of this very scene. "Jeanie--my ain Jeanie--my best--my maist dutiful bairn--the Lord of Israel be thy father, for I am hardly worthy of thee! Thou hast redeemed our captivity--brought back the honour of our house--Bless thee, my bairn, with mercies promised and purchased! But He _has_ blessed thee, in the good of which He has made thee the instrument." These words broke from him not without tears, though David was of no melting mood. Archibald had, with delicate attention, withdrawn the spectators from the interview, so that the wood and setting sun alone were witnesses of the expansion of their feelings. "And Effie?--and Effie, dear father?" was an eager interjectional question which Jeanie repeatedly threw in among her expressions of joyful thankfulness. "Ye will hear--Ye will hear," said David hastily, and over and anon renewed his grateful acknowledgments to Heaven for sending Jeanie safe down from the land of prelatic deadness and schismatic heresy; and had delivered her from the dangers of the way, and the lions that were in the path. "And Effie?" repeated her affectionate sister again and again. "And--and" (fain would she have said Butler, but she modified the direct inquiry)--"and Mr. and Mrs. Saddletree--and Dumbiedikes--and a' friends?" "A' weel--a' weel, praise to His name!" "And--Mr. Butler--he wasna weel when I gaed awa?" "He is quite mended--quite weel," replied her father. "Thank God--but O, dear father, Effie?--Effie?" "You will never see her mair, my bairn," answered Deans in a solemn tone-- "You are the ae and only leaf left now on the auld tree--hale be your portion!" "She is dead!--She is slain!--It has come ower late!" exclaimed Jeanie, wringing her hands. "No, Jeanie," returned Deans, in the same grave melancholy tone. "She lives in the flesh, and is at freedom from earthly restraint, if she were as much alive in faith, and as free from the bonds of Satan." "The Lord protect us!" said Jeanie.--"Can the unhappy bairn hae left you for that villain?" "It is ower truly spoken," said Deans--"She has left her auld father, that has wept and prayed for her--She has left her sister, that travailed and toiled for her like a mother--She has left the bones of her mother, and the land of her people, and she is ower the march wi' that son of Belial--She has made a moonlight flitting of it." He paused, for a feeling betwixt sorrow and strong resentment choked his utterance. "And wi' that man?--that fearfu' man?" said Jeanie. "And she has left us to gang aff wi' him?--O Effie, Effie, wha could hae thought it, after sic a deliverance as you had been gifted wi'!" "She went out from us, my bairn, because she was not of us," replied David. "She is a withered branch will never bear fruit of grace--a scapegoat gone forth into the wilderness of the world, to carry wi' her, as I trust, the sins of our little congregation. The peace of the warld gang wi' her, and a better peace when she has the grace to turn to it! If she is of His elected, His ain hour will come. What would her mother have said, that famous and memorable matron, Rebecca MacNaught, whose memory is like a flower of sweet savour in Newbattle, and a pot of frankincense in Lugton? But be it sae--let her part--let her gang her gate--let her bite on her ain bridle--The Lord kens his time--She was the bairn of prayers, and may not prove an utter castaway. But never, Jeanie, never more let her name be spoken between you and me--She hath passed from us like the brook which vanisheth when the summer waxeth warm, as patient Job saith--let her pass, and be forgotten." There was a melancholy pause which followed these expressions. Jeanie would fain have asked more circumstances relating to her sister's departure, but the tone of her father's prohibition was positive. She was about to mention her interview with Staunton at his father's rectory; but, on hastily running over the particulars in her memory, she thought that, on the whole, they were more likely to aggravate than diminish his distress of mind. She turned, therefore, the discourse from this painful subject, resolving to suspend farther inquiry until she should see Butler, from whom she expected to learn the particulars of her sister's elopement. But when was she to see Butler? was a question she could not forbear asking herself, especially while her father, as if eager to escape from the subject of his youngest daughter, pointed to the opposite shore of Dumbartonshire, and asking Jeanie "if it werena a pleasant abode?" declared to her his intention of removing his earthly tabernacle to that country, "in respect he was solicited by his Grace the Duke of Argyle, as one well skilled in country labour, and a' that appertained to flocks and herds, to superintend a store-farm, whilk his Grace had taen into his ain hand for the improvement of stock." Jeanie's heart sunk within her at this declaration. "She allowed it was a goodly and pleasant land, and sloped bonnily to the western sun; and she doubtedna that the pasture might be very gude, for the grass looked green, for as drouthy as the weather had been. But it was far frae hame, and she thought she wad be often thinking on the bonny spots of turf, sae fu' of gowans and yellow king-cups, amang the Crags at St. Leonard's." "Dinna speak on't, Jeanie," said her father; "I wish never to hear it named mair--that is, after the rouping is ower, and the bills paid. But I brought a' the beasts owerby that I thought ye wad like best. There is Gowans, and there's your ain brockit cow, and the wee hawkit ane, that ye ca'd--I needna tell ye how ye ca'd it--but I couldna bid them sell the petted creature, though the sight o' it may sometimes gie us a sair heart--it's no the poor dumb creature's fault--And ane or twa beasts mair I hae reserved, and I caused them to be driven before the other beasts, that men might say, as when the son of Jesse returned from battle, 'This is David's spoil.'" Upon more particular inquiry, Jeanie found new occasion to admire the active beneficence of her friend the Duke of Argyle. While establishing a sort of experimental farm on the skirts of his immense Highland estates, he had been somewhat at a loss to find a proper person in whom to vest the charge of it. The conversation his Grace had upon country matters with Jeanie Deans during their return from Richmond, had impressed him with a belief that the father, whose experience and success she so frequently quoted, must be exactly the sort of person whom he wanted. When the condition annexed to Effie's pardon rendered it highly probable that David Deans would choose to change his place of residence, this idea again occurred to the Duke more strongly, and as he was an enthusiast equally in agriculture and in benevolence, he imagined he was serving the purposes of both, when he wrote to the gentleman in Edinburgh entrusted with his affairs, to inquire into the character of David Deans, cowfeeder, and so forth, at St. Leonard's Crags; and if he found him such as he had been represented, to engage him without delay, and on the most liberal terms, to superintend his fancy-farm in Dumbartonshire. The proposal was made to old David by the gentleman so commissioned, on the second day after his daughter's pardon had reached Edinburgh. His resolution to leave St. Leonard's had been already formed; the honour of an express invitation from the Duke of Argyle to superintend a department where so much skill and diligence was required, was in itself extremely flattering; and the more so, because honest David, who was not without an exeellent opinion of his own talents, persuaded himself that, by accepting this charge, he would in some sort repay the great favour he had received at the hands of the Argyle family. The appointments, including the right of sufficient grazing for a small stock of his own, were amply liberal; and David's keen eye saw that the situation was convenient for trafficking to advantage in Highland cattle. There was risk of "her'ship"* from the neighbouring mountains, indeed, but the awful name of the Duke of Argyle would be a great security, and a trifle of _black-mail_ would, David was aware, assure his safety. * Her'ship, a Scottish word which may be said to be now obsolete; because, fortunately, the practice of "plundering by armed force," which is its meaning, does not require to be commonly spoken of. Still however, there were two points on which he haggled. The first was the character of the clergyman with whose worship he was to join; and on this delicate point he received, as we will presently show the reader, perfect satisfaction. The next obstacle was the condition of his youngest daughter, obliged as she was to leave Scotland for so many years. The gentleman of the law smiled, and said, "There was no occasion to interpret that clause very strictly--that if the young woman left Scotland for a few months, or even weeks, and came to her father's new residence by sea from the western side of England, nobody would know of her arrival, or at least nobody who had either the right or inclination to give her disturbance. The extensive heritable jurisdictions of his Grace excluded the interference of other magistrates with those living on his estates, and they who were in immediate dependence on him would receive orders to give the young woman no disturbance. Living on the verge of the Highlands, she might, indeed, be said to be out of Scotland, that is, beyond the bounds of ordinary law and civilisation." Old Deans was not quite satisfied with this reasoning; but the elopement of Effie, which took place on the third night after her liberation, rendered his residence at St. Leonard's so detestable to him, that he closed at once with the proposal which had been made him, and entered with pleasure into the idea of surprising Jeanie, as had been proposed by the Duke, to render the change of residence more striking to her. The Duke had apprised Archibald of these circumstances, with orders to act according to the instructions he should receive from Edinburgh, and by which accordingly he was directed to bring Jeanie to Roseneath. The father and daughter communicated these matters to each other, now stopping, now walking slowly towards the Lodge, which showed itself among the trees, at about half-a-mile's distance from the little bay in which they had landed. As they approached the house, David Deans informed his daughter, with somewhat like a grim smile, which was the utmost advance he ever made towards a mirthful expression of visage, that "there was baith a worshipful gentleman, and ane reverend gentleman, residing therein. The worshipful gentleman was his honour the Laird of Knocktarlitie, who was bailie of the lordship under the Duke of Argyle, ane Highland gentleman, tarr'd wi' the same stick," David doubted, "as mony of them, namely, a hasty and choleric temper, and a neglect of the higher things that belong to salvation, and also a gripping unto the things of this world, without muckle distinction of property; but, however, ane gude hospitable gentleman, with whom it would be a part of wisdom to live on a gude understanding (for Hielandmen were hasty, ower hasty). As for the reverend person of whom he had spoken, he was candidate by favour of the Duke of Argyle (for David would not for the universe have called him presentee) for the kirk of the parish in which their farm was situated, and he was likely to be highly acceptable unto the Christian souls of the parish, who were hungering for spiritual manna, having been fed but upon sour Hieland sowens by Mr. Duncan MacDonought, the last minister, who began the morning duly, Sunday and Saturday, with a mutchkin of usquebaugh. But I need say the less about the present lad," said David, again grimly grimacing, "as I think ye may hae seen him afore; and here he is come to meet us." She had indeed seen him before, for it was no other than Reuben Butler himself. CHAPTER NINETEENTH. No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face; Thou hast already had her last embrace. Elegy on Mrs. Anne Killigrew. This second surprise had been accomplished for Jeanie Deans by the rod of the same benevolent enchanter, whose power had transplanted her father from the Crags of St. Leonard's to the banks of the Gare Loch. The Duke of Argyle was not a person to forget the hereditary debt of gratitude, which had been bequeathed to him by his grandfather, in favour of the grandson of old Bible Butler. He had internally resolved to provide for Reuben Butler in this kirk of Knocktarlitie, of which the incumbent had just departed this life. Accordingly, his agent received the necessary instructions for that purpose, under the qualifying condition always, that the learning and character of Mr. Butler should be found proper for the charge. Upon inquiry, these were found as highly satisfactory as had been reported in the case of David Deans himself. By this preferment, the Duke of Argyle more essentially benefited his friend and _protegee_, Jeanie, than he himself was aware of, since he contributed to remove objections in her father's mind to the match, which he had no idea had been in existence. We have already noticed that Deans had something of a prejudice against Butler, which was, perhaps, in some degree owing to his possessing a sort of consciousness that the poor usher looked with eyes of affection upon his eldest daughter. This, in David's eyes, was a sin of presumption, even although it should not be followed by any overt act, or actual proposal. But the lively interest which Butler had displayed in his distresses, since Jeanie set forth on her London expedition, and which, therefore, he ascribed to personal respect for himself individually, had greatly softened the feelings of irritability with which David had sometimes regarded him. And, while he was in this good disposition towards Butler, another incident took place which had great influence on the old man's mind. So soon as the shock of Effie's second elopement was over, it was Deans's early care to collect and refund to the Laird of Dumbiedikes the money which he had lent for Effie's trial, and for Jeanie's travelling expenses. The Laird, the pony, the cocked hat, and the tabacco-pipe, had not been seen at St. Leonard's Crags for many a day; so that, in order to pay this debt, David was under the necessity of repairing in person to the mansion of Dumbiedikes. He found it in a state of unexpected bustle. There were workmen pulling down some of the old hangings, and replacing them with others, altering, repairing, scrubbing, painting, and white-washing. There was no knowing the old house, which had been so long the mansion of sloth and silence. The Laird himself seemed in some confusion, and his reception, though kind, lacked something of the reverential cordiality, with which he used to greet David Deans. There was a change also, David did not very well know of what nature, about the exterior of this landed proprietor--an improvement in the shape of his garments, a spruceness in the air with which they were put on, that were both novelties. Even the old hat looked smarter; the cock had been newly pointed, the lace had been refreshed, and instead of slouching backward or forward on the Laird's head, as it happened to be thrown on, it was adjusted with a knowing inclination over one eye. David Deans opened his business, and told down the cash. Dumbiedikes steadily inclined his ear to the one, and counted the other with great accuracy, interrupting David, while he was talking of the redemption of the captivity of Judah, to ask him whether he did not think one or two of the guineas looked rather light. When he was satisfied on this point, had pocketed his money, and had signed a receipt, he addressed David with some little hesitation,--"Jeanie wad be writing ye something, gudeman?" "About the siller?" replied David--"Nae doubt, she did." "And did she say nae mair about me?" asked the Laird. "Nae mair but kind and Christian wishes--what suld she hae said?" replied David, fully expecting that the Laird's long courtship (if his dangling after Jeanie deserves so active a name) was now coming to a point. And so indeed it was, but not to that point which he wished or expected. "Aweel, she kens her ain mind best, gudeman. I hae made a clean house o' Jenny Balchristie, and her niece. They were a bad pack--steal'd meat and mault, and loot the carters magg the coals--I'm to be married the morn, and kirkit on Sunday." Whatever David felt, he was too proud and too steady-minded to show any unpleasant surprise in his countenance and manner. "I wuss ye happy, sir, through Him that gies happiness--marriage is an honourable state." "And I am wedding into an honourable house, David--the Laird of Lickpelf's youngest daughter--she sits next us in the kirk, and that's the way I came to think on't." There was no more to be said but again to wish the Laird joy, to taste a cup of his liquor, and to walk back again to St. Leonard's, musing on the mutability of human affairs and human resolutions. The expectation that one day or other Jeanie would be Lady Dumbiedikes, had, in spite of himself, kept a more absolute possession of David's mind than he himself was aware of. At least, it had hitherto seemed a union at all times within his daughter's reach, whenever she might choose to give her silent lover any degree of encouragement, and now it was vanished for ever. David returned, therefore, in no very gracious humour for so good a man. He was angry with Jeanie for not having encouraged the Laird--he was angry with the Laird for requiring encouragement--and he was angry with himself for being angry at all on the occasion. On his return he found the gentleman who managed the Duke of Argyle's affairs was desirous of seeing him, with a view to completing the arrangement between them. Thus, after a brief repose, he was obliged to set off anew for Edinburgh, so that old May Hettly declared, "That a' this was to end with the master just walking himself aff his feet." When the business respecting the farm had been talked over and arranged, the professional gentleman acquainted David Deans, in answer to his inquiries concerning the state of public worship, that it was the pleasure of the Duke to put an excellent young clergyman, called Reuben Butler, into the parish, which was to be his future residence. "Reuben Butler!" exclaimed David--"Reuben Butler, the usher at Liberton?" "The very same," said the Duke's commissioner; "his Grace has heard an excellent character of him, and has some hereditary obligations to him besides--few ministers will be so comfortable as I am directed to make Mr. Butler." "Obligations?--The Duke?--Obligations to Reuben Butler--Reuben Butler a placed minister of the Kirk of Scotland?" exclaimed David, in interminable astonishment, for somehow he had been led by the bad success which Butler had hitherto met with in all his undertakings, to consider him as one of those step-sons of Fortune, whom she treats with unceasing rigour, and ends with disinheriting altogether. There is, perhaps, no time at which we are disposed to think so highly of a friend, as when we find him standing higher than we expected in the esteem of others. When assured of the reality of Butler's change of prospects, David expressed his great satisfaction at his success in life, which, he observed, was entirely owing to himself (David). "I advised his puir grand-mother, who was but a silly woman, to breed him up to the ministry; and I prophesied that, with a blessing on his endeavours, he would become a polished shaft in the temple. He may be something ower proud o' his carnal learning, but a gude lad, and has the root of the matter--as ministers gang now, where yell find ane better, ye'll find ten waur, than Reuben Butler." He took leave of the man of business, and walked homeward, forgetting his weariness in the various speculations to which this wonderful piece of intelligence gave rise. Honest David had now, like other great men, to go to work to reconcile his speculative principles with existing circumstances; and, like other great men, when they set seriously about that task, he was tolerably successful. Ought Reuben Butler in conscience to accept of this preferment in the Kirk of Scotland, subject as David at present thought that establishment was to the Erastian encroachments of the civil power? This was the leading question, and he considered it carefully. "The Kirk of Scotland was shorn of its beams, and deprived of its full artillery and banners of authority; but still it contained zealous and fructifying pastors, attentive congregations, and, with all her spots and blemishes, the like of this Kirk was nowhere else to be seen upon earth." David's doubts had been too many and too critical to permit him ever unequivocally to unite himself with any of the dissenters, who upon various accounts absolutely seceded from the national church. He had often joined in communion with such of the established clergy as approached nearest to the old Presbyterian model and principles of 1640. And although there were many things to be amended in that system, yet he remembered that he, David Deans, had himself ever been an humble pleader for the good old cause in a legal way, but without rushing into right-hand excesses, divisions and separations. But, as an enemy to separation, he might join the right-hand of fellowship with a minister of the Kirk of Scotland in its present model. _Ergo,_ Reuben Butler might take possession of the parish of Knocktarlitie, without forfeiting his friendship or favour--Q. E. D. But, secondly, came the trying point of lay-patronage, which David Deans had ever maintained to be a coming in by the window, and over the wall, a cheating and starving the souls of a whole parish, for the purpose of clothing the back and filling the belly of the incumbent. This presentation, therefore, from the Duke of Argyle, whatever was the worth and high character of that nobleman, was a limb of the brazen image, a portion of the evil thing, and with no kind of consistency could David bend his mind to favour such a transaction. But if the parishioners themselves joined in a general call to Reuben Butler to be their pastor, it did not seem quite so evident that the existence of this unhappy presentation was a reason for his refusing them the comforts of his doctrine. If the Presbytery admitted him to the kirk, in virtue rather of that act of patronage than of the general call of the congregation, that might be their error, and David allowed it was a heavy one. But if Reuben Butler accepted of the cure as tendered to him by those whom he was called to teach, and who had expressed themselves desirous to learn, David, after considering and reconsidering the matter, came, through the great virtue of if, to be of opinion that he might safely so act in that matter. There remained a third stumbling-block--the oaths to Government exacted from the established clergymen, in which they acknowledge an Erastian king and parliament, and homologate the incorporating Union between England and Scotland, through which the latter kingdom had become part and portion of the former, wherein Prelacy, the sister of Popery, had made fast her throne, and elevated the horns of her mitre. These were symptoms of defection which had often made David cry out, "My bowels--my bowels!--I am pained at the very heart!" And he remembered that a godly Bow-head matron had been carried out of the Tolbooth church in a swoon, beyond the reach of brandy and burnt feathers, merely on hearing these fearful words, "It is enacted by the Lords _spiritual_ and temporal," pronounced from a Scottish pulpit, in the proem to the Porteous Proclamation. These oaths were, therefore, a deep compliance and dire abomination--a sin and a snare, and a danger and a defection. But this shibboleth was not always exacted. Ministers had respect to their own tender consciences, and those of their brethren; and it was not till a later period that the reins of discipline were taken up tight by the General Assemblies and Presbyteries. The peacemaking particle came again to David's assistance. _If_ an incumbent was not called upon to make such compliances, and _if_ he got a right entry into the church without intrusion, and by orderly appointment, why, upon the whole, David Deans came to be of opinion, that the said incumbent might lawfully enjoy the spirituality and temporality of the cure of souls at Knocktarlitie, with stipend, manse, glebe, and all thereunto appertaining. The best and most upright-minded men are so strongly influenced by existing circumstances, that it would be somewhat cruel to inquire too nearly what weight parental affection gave to these ingenious trains of reasoning. Let David Deans's situation be considered. He was just deprived of one daughter, and his eldest, to whom he owed so much, was cut off, by the sudden resolution of Dumbiedikes, from the high hope which David had entertained, that she might one day be mistress of that fair lordship. Just while this disappointment was bearing heavy on his spirits, Butler comes before his imagination--no longer the half-starved threadbare usher, but fat and sleek and fair, the beneficed minister of Knocktarlitie, beloved by his congregation--exemplary in his life--powerful in his doctrine--doing the duty of the kirk as never Highland minister did before--turning sinners as a colley dog turns sheep--a favourite of the Duke of Argyle, and drawing a stipend of eight hundred punds Scots, and four chalders of victual. Here was a match, making up in David's mind, in a tenfold degree, the disappointment in the case of Dumbiedikes, in so far as the goodman of St. Leonard's held a powerful minister in much greater admiration than a mere landed proprietor. It did not occur to him, as an additional reason in favour of the match, that Jeanie might herself have some choice in the matter; for the idea of consulting her feelings never once entered into the honest man's head, any more than the possibility that her inclination might perhaps differ from his own. The result of his meditations was, that he was called upon to take the management of the whole affair into his own hand, and give, if it should be found possible without sinful compliance, or backsliding, or defection of any kind, a worthy pastor to the kirk of Knocktarlitie. Accordingly, by the intervention of the honest dealer in butter-milk who dwelt in Liberton, David summoned to his presence Reuben Butler. Even from this worthy messenger he was unable to conceal certain swelling emotions of dignity, insomuch, that, when the carter had communicated his message to the usher, he added, that "Certainly the Gudeman of St. Leonard's had some grand news to tell him, for he was as uplifted as a midden-cock upon pattens." Butler, it may readily be conceived, immediately obeyed the summons. He was a plain character, in which worth and good sense and simplicity were the principal ingredients; but love, on this occasion, gave him a certain degree of address. He had received an intimation of the favour designed him by the Duke of Argyle, with what feelings those only can conceive who have experienced a sudden prospect of being raised to independence and respect from penury and toil. He resolved, however, that the old man should retain all the consequence of being, in his own opinion, the first to communicate the important intelligence. At the same time, he also determined that in the expected conference he would permit David Deans to expatiate at length upon the proposal, in all its bearings, without irritating him either by interruption or contradiction. This last was the most prudent plan he could have adopted; because, although there were many doubts which David Deans could himself clear up to his own satisfaction, yet he might have been by no means disposed to accept the solution of any other person; and to engage him in an argument would have been certain to confirm him at once and for ever in the opinion which Butler chanced to impugn. He received his friend with an appearance of important gravity, which real misfortune had long compelled him to lay aside, and which belonged to those days of awful authority in which he predominated over Widow Butler, and dictated the mode of cultivating the crofts of Beersheba. He made known to Reuben, with great prolixity, the prospect of his changing his present residence for the charge of the Duke of Argyle's stock-farm in Dumbartonshire, and enumerated the various advantages of the situation with obvious self-congratulation; but assured the patient hearer, that nothing had so much moved him to acceptance, as the sense that, by his skill in bestial, he could render the most important services to his Grace the Duke of Argyle, to whom, "in the late unhappy circumstance" (here a tear dimmed the sparkle of pride in the old man's eye), "he had been sae muckle obliged." "To put a rude Hielandman into sic a charge," he continued, "what could be expected but that he suld be sic a chiefest herdsman, as wicked Doeg the Edomite? whereas, while this grey head is to the fore, not a clute o' them but sall be as weel cared for as if they were the fatted kine of Pharaoh.--And now, Reuben, lad, seeing we maun remove our tent to a strange country, ye will be casting a dolefu' look after us, and thinking with whom ye are to hold counsel anent your government in thae slippery and backsliding times; and nae doubt remembering, that the auld man, David Deans, was made the instrument to bring you out of the mire of schism and heresy, wherein your father's house delighted to wallow; aften also, nae doubt, when ye are pressed wi' ensnaring trials and tentations and heart-plagues, you, that are like a recruit that is marching for the first time to the touk of drum, will miss the auld, bauld, and experienced veteran soldier that has felt the brunt of mony a foul day, and heard the bullets whistle as aften as he has hairs left on his auld pow." It is very possible that Butler might internally be of opinion, that the reflection on his ancestor's peculiar tenets might have been spared, or that he might be presumptuous enough even to think, that, at his years, and with his own lights, he might be able to hold his course without the pilotage of honest David. But he only replied, by expressing his regret, that anything should separate him from an ancient, tried, and affectionate friend. "But how can it be helped, man?" said David, twisting his features into a sort of smile--"How can we help it?--I trow, ye canna tell me that--Ye maun leave that to ither folk--to the Duke of Argyle and me, Reuben. It's a gude thing to hae friends in this warld--how muckle better to hae an interest beyond it!" And David, whose piety, though not always quite rational, was as sincere as it was habitual and fervent, looked reverentially upward and paused. Mr. Butler intimated the pleasure with which he would receive his friend's advice on a subject so important, and David resumed. "What think ye now, Reuben, of a kirk--a regular kirk under the present establishment?--Were sic offered to ye, wad ye be free to accept it, and under whilk provisions?--I am speaking but by way of query." Butler replied, "That if such a prospect were held out to him, he would probably first consult whether he was likely to be useful to the parish he should be called to; and if there appeared a fair prospect of his proving so, his friend must be aware, that in every other point of view, it would be highly advantageous for him." "Right, Reuben, very right, lad," answered the monitor, "your ain conscience is the first thing to be satisfied--for how sall he teach others that has himself sae ill learned the Scriptures, as to grip for the lucre of foul earthly preferment, sic as gear and manse, money and victual, that which is not his in a spiritual sense--or wha makes his kirk a stalking-horse, from behind which he may tak aim at his stipend? But I look for better things of you--and specially ye maun be minded not to act altogether on your ain judgment, for therethrough comes sair mistakes, backslidings and defections, on the left and on the right. If there were sic a day of trial put to you, Reuben. you, who are a young lad, although it may be ye are gifted wi' the carnal tongues, and those whilk were spoken at Rome, whilk is now the seat of the scarlet abomination, and by the Greeks, to whom the Gospel was as foolishness, yet nae-the-less ye may be entreated by your weel-wisher to take the counsel of those prudent and resolved and weather-withstanding professors, wha hae kend what it was to lurk on banks and in mosses, in bogs and in caverns, and to risk the peril of the head rather than renounce the honesty of the heart." Butler replied, "That certainly, possessing such a friend as he hoped and trusted he had in the goodman himself, who had seen so many changes in the preceding century, he should be much to blame if he did not avail himself of his experience and friendly counsel." "Eneugh said--eneugh said, Reuben," said David Deans, with internal exultation; "and say that ye were in the predicament whereof I hae spoken, of a surety I would deem it my duty to gang to the root o' the matter, and lay bare to you the ulcers and imposthumes, and the sores and the leprosies, of this our time, crying aloud and sparing not." David Deans was now in his element. He commenced his examination of the doctrines and belief of the Christian Church with the very Culdees, from whom he passed to John Knox,--from John Knox to the recusants in James the Sixth's time--Bruce, Black, Blair, Livingstone,--from them to the brief, and at length triumphant period of the Presbyterian Church's splendour, until it was overrun by the English Independents. Then followed the dismal times of prelacy, the indulgences, seven in number, with all their shades and bearings, until he arrived at the reign of King James the Second, in which he himself had been, in his own mind, neither an obscure actor nor an obscure sufferer. Then was Butler doomed to hear the most detailed and annotated edition of what he had so often heard before,--David Deans's confinement, namely, in the iron cage in the Canongate Tolbooth, and the cause thereof. We should be very unjust to our friend David Deans, if we should "pretermit"--to use his own expression--a narrative which he held essential to his fame. A drunken trooper of the Royal Guards, Francis Gordon by name, had chased five or six of the skulking Whigs, among whom was our friend David; and after he had compelled them to stand, and was in the act of brawling with them, one of their number fired a pocket-pistol, and shot him dead. David used to sneer and shake his head when any one asked him whether _he_ had been the instrument of removing this wicked persecutor from the face of the earth. In fact the merit of the deed lay between him and his friend, Patrick Walker, the pedlar, whose words he was so fond of quoting. Neither of them cared directly to claim the merit of silencing Mr. Francis Gordon of the Life-Guards, there being some wild cousins of his about Edinburgh, who might have been even yet addicted to revenge, but yet neither of them chose to disown or yield to the other the merit of this active defence of their religious rights. David said, that if he had fired a pistol then, it was what he never did after or before. And as for Mr. Patrick Walker, he has left it upon record, that his great surprise was, that so small a pistol could kill so big a man. These are the words of that venerable biographer, whose trade had not taught him by experience, that an inch was as good as an ell. "He," (Francis Gordon) "got a shot in his head out of a pocket-pistol, rather fit for diverting a boy than killing such a furious, mad, brisk man, which notwithstanding killed him dead!"* * Note S. Death of Francis Gordon. Upon the extensive foundation which the history of the kirk afforded, during its short-lived triumph and long tribulation, David, with length of breath and of narrative, which would have astounded any one but a lover of his daughter, proceeded to lay down his own rules for guiding the conscience of his friend, as an aspirant to serve in the ministry. Upon this subject, the good man went through such a variety of nice and casuistical problems, supposed so many extreme cases, made the distinctions so critical and nice betwixt the right hand and the left hand--betwixt compliance and defection--holding back and stepping aside--slipping and stumbling--snares and errors--that at length, after having limited the path of truth to a mathematical line, he was brought to the broad admission, that each man's conscience, after he had gained a certain view of the difficult navigation which he was to encounter, would be the best guide for his pilotage. He stated the examples and arguments for and against the acceptance of a kirk on the present revolution model, with much more impartiality to Butler than he had been able to place them before his own view. And he concluded, that his young friend ought to think upon these things, and be guided by the voice of his own conscience, whether he could take such an awful trust as the charge of souls without doing injury to his own internal conviction of what is right or wrong. When David had finished his very long harangue, which was only interrupted by monosyllables, or little more, on the part of Butler, the orator himself was greatly astonished to find that the conclusion, at which he very naturally wished to arrive, seemed much less decisively attained than when he had argued the case in his own mind. In this particular, David's current of thinking and speaking only illustrated the very important and general proposition, concerning the excellence of the publicity of debate. For, under the influence of any partial feeling, it is certain, that most men can more easily reconcile themselves to any favourite measure, when agitating it in their own mind, than when obliged to expose its merits to a third party, when the necessity of seeming impartial procures for the opposite arguments a much more fair statement than that which he affords it in tacit meditation. Having finished what he had to say, David thought himself obliged to be more explicit in point of fact, and to explain that this was no hypothetical case, but one on which (by his own influence and that of the Duke of Argyle) Reuben Butler would soon be called to decide. It was even with something like apprehension that David Deans heard Butler announce, in return to this communication, that he would take that night to consider on what he had said with such kind intentions, and return him an answer the next morning. The feelings of the father mastered David on this occasion. He pressed Butler to spend the evening with him--He produced, most unusual at his meals, one, nay, two bottles of aged strong ale.--He spoke of his daughter--of her merits--her housewifery--her thrift--her affection. He led Butler so decidedly up to a declaration of his feelings towards Jeanie, that, before nightfall, it was distinctly understood she was to be the bride of Reuben Butler; and if they thought it indelicate to abridge the period of deliberation which Reuben had stipulated, it seemed to be sufficiently understood betwixt them, that there was a strong probability of his becoming minister of Knocktarlitie, providing the congregation were as willing to accept of him, as the Duke to grant him the presentation. The matter of the oaths, they agreed, it was time enough to dispute about, whenever the shibboleth should be tendered. Many arrangements were adopted that evening, which were afterwards ripened by correspondence with the Duke of Argyle's man of business, who intrusted Deans and Butler with the benevolent wish of his principal, that they should all meet with Jeanie, on her return from England, at the Duke's hunting-lodge in Roseneath. This retrospect, so far as the placid loves of Jeanie Deans and Reuben Butler are concerned, forms a full explanation of the preceding narrative up to their meeting on the island, as already mentioned. CHAPTER TWENTIETH. "I come," he said, "my love, my life, And--nature's dearest name--my wife: Thy father's house and friends resign, My home, my friends, my sire, are thine." Logan. The meeting of Jeanie and Butler, under circumstances promising to crown an affection so long delayed, was rather affecting, from its simple sincerity than from its uncommon vehemence of feeling. David Deans, whose practice was sometimes a little different from his theory, appalled them at first, by giving them the opinion of sundry of the suffering preachers and champions of his younger days, that marriage, though honourable by the laws of Scripture, was yet a state over-rashly coveted by professors, and specially by young ministers, whose desire, he said, was at whiles too inordinate for kirks, stipends, and wives, which had frequently occasioned over-ready compliance with the general defections of the times. He endeavoured to make them aware also, that hasty wedlock had been the bane of many a savoury professor--that the unbelieving wife had too often reversed the text and perverted the believing husband--that when the famous Donald Cargill, being then hiding in Lee-Wood, in Lanarkshire, it being killing-time, did, upon importunity, marry Robert Marshal of Starry Shaw, he had thus expressed himself: "What hath induced Robert to marry this woman? her ill will overcome his good--he will not keep the way long--his thriving days are done." To the sad accomplishment of which prophecy David said he was himself a living witness, for Robert Marshal, having fallen into foul compliances with the enemy, went home, and heard the curates, declined into other steps of defection, and became lightly esteemed. Indeed, he observed, that the great upholders of the standard, Cargill, Peden, Cameron, and Renwick, had less delight in tying the bonds of matrimony than in any other piece of their ministerial work; and although they would neither dissuade the parties, nor refuse their office, they considered the being called to it as an evidence of indifference, on the part of those between whom it was solemnised, to the many grievous things of the day. Notwithstanding, however, that marriage was a snare unto many, David was of opinion (as, indeed, he had showed in his practice) that it was in itself honourable, especially if times were such that honest men could be secure against being shot, hanged, or banished, and had ane competent livelihood to maintain themselves, and those that might come after them. "And, therefore," as he concluded something abruptly, addressing Jeanie and Butler, who, with faces as high-coloured as crimson, had been listening to his lengthened argument for and against the holy state of matrimony, "I will leave you to your ain cracks." As their private conversation, however interesting to themselves, might probably be very little so to the reader, so far as it respected their present feelings and future prospects, we shall pass it over, and only mention the information which Jeanie received from Butler concerning her sister's elopement, which contained many particulars that she had been unable to extract from her father. Jeanie learned, therefore, that, for three days after her pardon had arrived, Effie had been the inmate of her father's house at St. Leonard's--that the interviews betwixt David and his erring child, which had taken place before she was liberated from prison, had been touching in the extreme; but Butler could not suppress his opinion, that, when he was freed from the apprehension of losing her in a manner so horrible, her father had tightened the bands of discipline, so as, in some degree, to gall the feelings, and aggravate the irritability of a spirit naturally impatient and petulant, and now doubly so from the sense of merited disgrace. On the third night, Effie disappeared from St. Leonard's, leaving no intimation whatever of the route she had taken. Butler, however, set out in pursuit of her, and with much trouble traced her towards a little landing-place, formed by a small brook which enters the sea betwixt Musselburgh and Edinburgh. This place, which has been since made into a small harbour, surrounded by many villas and lodging-houses, is now termed Portobello. At this time it was surrounded by a waste common, covered with furze, and unfrequented, save by fishing-boats, and now and then a smuggling lugger. A vessel of this description had been hovering in the firth at the time of Effie's elopement, and, as Butler ascertained, a boat had come ashore in the evening on which the fugitive had disappeared, and had carried on board a female. As the vessel made sail immediately, and landed no part of their cargo, there seemed little doubt that they were accomplices of the notorious Robertson, and that the vessel had only come into the firth to carry off his paramour. This was made clear by a letter which Butler himself soon afterwards received by post, signed E. D., but without bearing any date of place or time. It was miserably ill written and spelt; sea-sickness having apparently aided the derangement of Effie's very irregular orthography and mode of expression. In this epistle, however, as in all that unfortunate girl said or did, there was something to praise as well as to blame. She said in her letter, "That she could not endure that her father and her sister should go into banishment, or be partakers of her shame,--that if her burden was a heavy one, it was of her own binding, and she had the more right to bear it alone,--that in future they could not be a comfort to her, or she to them, since every look and word of her father put her in mind of her transgression, and was like to drive her mad,--that she had nearly lost her judgment during the three days she was at St. Leonard's--her father meant weel by her, and all men, but he did not know the dreadful pain he gave her in casting up her sins. If Jeanie had been at hame, it might hae dune better--Jeanie was ane, like the angels in heaven, that rather weep for sinners, than reckon their transgressions. But she should never see Jeanie ony mair, and that was the thought that gave her the sairest heart of a' that had come and gane yet. On her bended knees would she pray for Jeanie night and day, baith for what she had done, and what she had scorned to do, in her behalf; for what a thought would it have been to her at that moment o' time, if that upright creature had made a fault to save her! She desired her father would give Jeanie a' the gear--her ain (_i.e._ Effie's) mother's and a'--She had made a deed, giving up her right, and it was in Mr. Novit's hand--Warld's gear was henceforward the least of her care, nor was it likely to be muckle her mister--She hoped this would make it easy for her sister to settle;" and immediately after this expression, she wished Butler himself all good things, in return for his kindness to her. "For herself," she said, "she kend her lot would be a waesome ane, but it was of her own framing, sae she desired the less pity. But, for her friends' satisfaction, she wished them to know that she was gaun nae ill gate--that they who had done her maist wrong were now willing to do her what justice was in their power; and she would, in some warldly respects, be far better off than she deserved. But she desired her family to remain satisfied with this assurance, and give themselves no trouble in making farther inquiries after her." To David Deans and to Butler this letter gave very little comfort; for what was to be expected from this unfortunate girl's uniting her fate to that of a character so notorious as Robertson, who they readily guessed was alluded to in the last sentence, excepting that she should become the partner and victim of his future crimes? Jeanie, who knew George Staunton's character and real rank, saw her sister's situation under a ray of better hope. She augured well of the haste he had shown to reclaim his interest in Effie, and she trusted he had made her his wife. If so, it seemed improbable that, with his expected fortune, and high connections, he should again resume the life of criminal adventure which he had led, especially since, as matters stood, his life depended upon his keeping his own secret, which could only be done by an entire change of his habits, and particularly by avoiding all those who had known the heir of Willingham under the character of the audacious, criminal, and condemned Robertson. She thought it most likely that the couple would go abroad for a few years, and not return to England until the affair of Porteous was totally forgotten. Jeanie, therefore, saw more hopes for her sister than Butler or her father had been able to perceive; but she was not at liberty to impart the comfort which she felt in believing that she would be secure from the pressure of poverty, and in little risk of being seduced into the paths of guilt. She could not have explained this without making public what it was essentially necessary for Effie's chance of comfort to conceal, the identity, namely, of George Staunton and George Robertson. After all, it was dreadful to think that Effie had united herself to a man condemned for felony, and liable to trial for murder, whatever might be his rank in life, and the degree of his repentance. Besides, it was melancholy to reflect, that, she herself being in possession of the whole dreadful secret, it was most probable he would, out of regard to his own feelings, and fear for his safety, never again permit her to see poor Effie. After perusing and re-perusing her sister's valedictory letter, she gave ease to her feelings in a flood of tears, which Butler in vain endeavoured to check by every soothing attention in his power. She was obliged, however, at length to look up and wipe her eyes, for her father, thinking he had allowed the lovers time enough for conference, was now advancing towards them from the Lodge, accompanied by the Captain of Knockdunder, or, as his friends called him for brevity's sake, Duncan Knock, a title which some youthful exploits had rendered peculiarly appropriate. This Duncan of Knockdunder was a person of first-rate importance in the island of Roseneath,* and the continental parishes of Knocktarlitie, Kilmun, and so forth; nay, his influence extended as far as Cowal, where, however, it was obscured by that of another factor. * [This is, more correctly speaking, a peninsula.] The Tower of Knockdunder still occupies, with its remains, a cliff overhanging the Holy Loch. Duncan swore it had been a royal castle; if so, it was one of the smallest, the space within only forming a square of sixteen feet, and bearing therefore a ridiculous proportion to the thickness of the walls, which was ten feet at least. Such as it was, however, it had long given the title of Captain, equivalent to that of Chatellain, to the ancestors of Duncan, who were retainers of the house of Argyle, and held a hereditary jurisdiction under them, of little extent indeed, but which had great consequence in their own eyes, and was usually administered with a vigour somewhat beyond the law. The present representative of that ancient family was a stout short man about fifty, whose pleasure it was to unite in his own person the dress of the Highlands and Lowlands, wearing on his head a black tie-wig, surmounted by a fierce cocked-hat, deeply guarded with gold lace, while the rest of his dress consisted of the plaid and philabeg. Duncan superintended a district which was partly Highland, partly Lowland, and therefore might be supposed to combine their national habits, in order to show his impartiality to Trojan or Tyrian. The incongruity, however, had a whimsical and ludicrous effect, as it made his head and body look as if belonging to different individuals; or, as some one said who had seen the executions of the insurgent prisoners in 1715, it seemed as if some Jacobite enchanter, having recalled the sufferers to life, had clapped, in his haste, an Englishman's head on a Highlander's body. To finish the portrait, the bearing of the gracious Duncan was brief, bluff, and consequential, and the upward turn of his short copper-coloured nose indicated that he was somewhat addicted to wrath and usquebaugh. When this dignitary had advanced up to Butler and to Jeanie, "I take the freedom, Mr. Deans," he said in a very consequential manner, "to salute your daughter, whilk I presume this young lass to be--I kiss every pretty girl that comes to Roseneath, in virtue of my office." Having made this gallant speech, he took out his quid, saluted Jeanie with a hearty smack, and bade her welcome to Argyle's country. Then addressing Butler, he said, "Ye maun gang ower and meet the carle ministers yonder the Morn, for they will want to do your job, and synd it down with usquebaugh doubtless--they seldom make dry wark in this kintra." "And the Laird"--said David Deans, addressing Butler in farther explanation-- "The Captain, man," interrupted Duncan; "folk winna ken wha ye are speaking aboot, unless ye gie shentlemens their proper title." "The Captain, then," said David, "assures me that the call is unanimous on the part of the parishioners--a real harmonious call, Reuben." "I pelieve," said Duncan, "it was as harmonious as could pe expected, when the tae half o' the bodies were clavering Sassenach, and the t'other skirting Gaelic, like sea-maws and clackgeese before a storm. Ane wad hae needed the gift of tongues to ken preceesely what they said--but I pelieve the best end of it was, 'Long live MacCallummore and Knockdunder!'--And as to its being an unanimous call, I wad be glad to ken fat business the carles have to call ony thing or ony body but what the Duke and mysell likes!" "Nevertheless," said Mr. Butler, "if any of the parishioners have any scruples, which sometimes happen in the mind of sincere professors, I should be happy of an opportunity of trying to remove" "Never fash your peard about it, man," interrupted Duncan Knock--"Leave it a' to me.--Scruple! deil ane o' them has been bred up to scruple onything that they're bidden to do. And if sic a thing suld happen as ye speak o', ye sall see the sincere professor, as ye ca' him, towed at the stern of my boat for a few furlongs. I'll try if the water of the Haly Loch winna wash off scruples as weel as fleas--Cot tam!" The rest of Duncan's threat was lost in a growling gargling sort of sound, which he made in his throat, and which menaced recusants with no gentle means of conversion. David Deans would certainly have given battle in defence of the right of the Christian congregation to be consulted in the choice of their own pastor, which, in his estimation, was one of the choicest and most inalienable of their privileges; but he had again engaged in close conversation with Jeanie, and, with more interest than he was in use to take in affairs foreign alike to his occupation and to his religious tenets, was inquiring into the particulars of her London journey. This was, perhaps, fortunate for the newformed friendship betwixt him and the Captain of Knockdunder, which rested, in David's estimation, upon the proofs he had given of his skill in managing stock; but, in reality, upon the special charge transmitted to Duncan from the Duke and his agent, to behave with the utmost attention to Deans and his family. "And now, sirs," said Duncan, in a commanding tone, "I am to pray ye a' to come in to your supper, for yonder is Mr. Archibald half famished, and a Saxon woman, that looks as if her een were fleeing out o' her head wi' fear and wonder, as if she had never seen a shentleman in a philabeg pefore." "And Reuben Butler," said David, "will doubtless desire instantly to retire, that he may prepare his mind for the exercise of to-morrow, that his work may suit the day, and be an offering of a sweet savour in the nostrils of the reverend Presbytery!" "Hout tout, man, it's but little ye ken about them," interrupted the Captain. "Teil a ane o' them wad gie the savour of the hot venison pasty which I smell" (turning his squab nose up in the air) "a' the way frae the Lodge, for a' that Mr. Putler, or you either, can say to them." David groaned; but judging he had to do with a Gallio, as he said, did not think it worth his while to give battle. They followed the Captain to the house, and arranged themselves with great ceremony round a well-loaded supper-table. The only other circumstance of the evening worthy to be recorded is, that Butler pronounced the blessing; that Knockdunder found it too long, and David Deans censured it as too short, from which the charitable reader may conclude it was exactly the proper length. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST. Now turn the Psalms of David ower, And lilt wi' holy clangor; Of double verse come gie us four, And skirl up the Bangor. Burns. The next was the important day, when, according to the forms and ritual of the Scottish Kirk, Reuben Butler was to be ordained minister of Knocktarlitie, by the Presbytery of ------. And so eager were the whole party, that all, excepting Mrs. Dutton, the destined Cowslip of Inverary, were stirring at an early hour. Their host, whose appetite was as quick and keen as his temper, was not long in summoning them to a substantial breakfast, where there were at least a dozen of different preparations of milk, plenty of cold meat, scores boiled and roasted eggs, a huge cag of butter, half-a-firkin herrings boiled and broiled, fresh and salt, and tea and coffee for them that liked it, which, as their landlord assured them, with a nod and a wink, pointing, at the same time, to a little cutter which seemed dodging under the lee of the island, cost them little beside the fetching ashore. "Is the contraband trade permitted here so openly?" said Butler. "I should think it very unfavourable to the people's morals." "The Duke, Mr. Putler, has gien nae orders concerning the putting of it down," said the magistrate, and seemed to think that he had said all that was necessary to justify his connivance. Butler was a man of prudence, and aware that real good can only be obtained by remonstrance when remonstrance is well-timed; so for the present he said nothing more on the subject. When breakfast was half over, in flounced Mrs. Dolly, as fine as a blue sacque and cherry-coloured ribands could make her. "Good morrow to you, madam," said the master of ceremonies; "I trust your early rising will not skaith ye." The dame apologised to Captain Knockunder, as she was pleased to term their entertainer; "but, as we say in Cheshire," she added, "I was like the Mayor of Altringham, who lies in bed while his breeches are mending, for the girl did not bring up the right bundle to my room, till she had brought up all the others by mistake one after t'other--Well, I suppose we are all for church to-day, as I understand--Pray may I be so bold as to ask, if it is the fashion for your North country gentlemen to go to church in your petticoats, Captain Knockunder?" "Captain of Knockdunder, madam, if you please, for I knock under to no man; and in respect of my garb, I shall go to church as I am, at your service, madam; for if I were to lie in bed like your Major What-d'ye-callum, till my preeches were mended, I might be there all my life, seeing I never had a pair of them on my person but twice in my life, which I am pound to remember, it peing when the Duke brought his Duchess here, when her Grace pehoved to be pleasured; so I e'en porrowed the minister's trews for the twa days his Grace was pleased to stay--but I will put myself under sic confinement again for no man on earth, or woman either, but her Grace being always excepted, as in duty pound." The mistress of the milking-pail stared but, making no answer to this round declaration, immediately proceeded to show, that the alarm of the preceding evening had in no degree injured her appetite. When the meal was finished, the Captain proposed to them to take boat, in order that Mrs. Jeanie might see her new place of residence, and that he himself might inquire whether the necessary preparations had been made there, and at the Manse, for receiving the future inmates of these mansions. The morning was delightful, and the huge mountain-shadows slept upon the mirrored wave of the firth, almost as little disturbed as if it had been an inland lake. Even Mrs. Dutton's fears no longer annoyed her. She had been informed by Archibald, that there was to be some sort of junketting after the sermon, and that was what she loved dearly; and as for the water, it was so still that it would look quite like a pleasuring on the Thames. The whole party being embarked, therefore, in a large boat, which the captain called his coach and six, and attended by a smaller one termed his gig, the gallant Duncan steered straight upon the little tower of the old-fashioned church of Knocktarlitie, and the exertions of six stout rowers sped them rapidly on their voyage. As they neared the land, the hills appeared to recede from them, and a little valley, formed by the descent of a small river from the mountains, evolved itself as it were upon their approach. The style of the country on each side was simply pastoral, and resembled, in appearance and character, the description of a forgotten Scottish poet, which runs nearly thus:-- The water gently down a level slid, With little din, but couthy what it made; On ilka side the trees grew thick and lang, And wi' the wild birds' notes were a' in sang; On either side, a full bow-shot and mair, The green was even, gowany, and fair; With easy slope on every hand the braes To the hills' feet with scatter'd bushes raise; With goats and sheep aboon, and kye below, The bonny banks all in a swarm did go.* * Ross's _Fortunate Shepherdess._ Edit. 1778, p. 23. They landed in this Highland Arcadia, at the mouth of the small stream which watered the delightful and peaceable valley. Inhabitants of several descriptions came to pay their respects to the Captain of Knockdunder, a homage which he was very peremptory in exacting, and to see the new settlers. Some of these were men after David Deans's own heart, elders of the kirk-session, zealous professors, from the Lennox, Lanarkshire, and Ayrshire, to whom the preceding Duke of Argyle had given _rooms_ in this corner of his estate, because they had suffered for joining his father, the unfortunate Earl, during his ill-fated attempt in 1686. These were cakes of the right leaven for David regaling himself with; and, had it not been for this circumstance, he has been heard to say, "that the Captain of Knockdunder would have swore him out of the country in twenty-four hours, sae awsome it was to ony thinking soul to hear his imprecations, upon the slightest temptation that crossed his humour." Besides these, there were a wilder set of parishioners, mountaineers from the upper glen and adjacent hill, who spoke Gaelic, went about armed, and wore the Highland dress. But the strict commands of the Duke had established such good order in this part of his territories, that the Gael and Saxons lived upon the best possible terms of good neighbourhood. They first visited the Manse, as the parsonage is termed in Scotland. It was old, but in good repair, and stood snugly embosomed in a grove of sycamore, with a well-stocked garden in front, bounded by the small river, which was partly visible from the windows, partly concealed by the bushes, trees, and bounding hedge. Within, the house looked less comfortable than it might have been, for it had been neglected by the late incumbent; but workmen had been labouring, under the directions of the Captain of Knockdunder, and at the expense of the Duke of Argyle, to put it into some order. The old "plenishing" had been removed, and neat, but plain household furniture had been sent down by the Duke in a brig of his own called the Caroline, and was now ready to be placed in order in the apartments. The gracious Duncan, finding matters were at a stand among the workmen, summoned before him the delinquents, and impressed all who heard him with a sense of his authority, by the penalties with which he threatened them for their delay. Mulcting them in half their charge, he assured them, would be the least of it; for, if they were to neglect his pleasure and the Duke's, "he would be tamn'd if he paid them the t'other half either, and they might seek law for it where they could get it." The work-people humbled themselves before the offended dignitary, and spake him soft and fair; and at length, upon Mr. Butler recalling to his mind that it was the ordination-day, and that the workmen were probably thinking of going to church, Knockdunder agreed to forgive them, out of respect to their new minister. "But an I catch them neglecking my duty again, Mr. Putler, the teil pe in me if the kirk shall be an excuse; for what has the like o' them rapparees to do at the kirk ony day put Sundays, or then either, if the Duke and I has the necessitous uses for them?" It may be guessed with what feelings of quiet satisfaction and delight Butler looked forward to spending his days, honoured and useful as he trusted to be, in this sequestered valley, and how often an intelligent glance was exchanged betwixt him and Jeanie, whose good-humoured face looked positively handsome, from the expression of modesty, and, at the same time, of satisfaction, which she wore when visiting the apartments of which she was soon to call herself mistress. She was left at liberty to give more open indulgence to her feelings of delight and admiration, when, leaving the Manse, the company proceeded to examine the destined habitation of David Deans. Jeanie found with pleasure that it was not above a musket-shot from the Manse; for it had been a bar to her happiness to think she might be obliged to reside at a distance from her father, and she was aware that there were strong objections to his actually living in the same house with Butler. But this brief distance was the very thing which she could have wished. The farmhouse was on the plan of an improved cottage, and contrived with great regard to convenience; an excellent little garden, an orchard, and a set of offices complete, according to the best ideas of the time, combined to render it a most desirable habitation for the practical farmer, and far superior to the hovel at Woodend, and the small house at Saint Leonard's Crags. The situation was considerably higher than that of the Manse, and fronted to the west. The windows commanded an enchanting view of the little vale over which the mansion seemed to preside, the windings of the stream, and the firth, with its associated lakes and romantic islands. The hills of Dumbartonshire, once possessed by the fierce clan of MacFarlanes, formed a crescent behind the valley, and far to the right were seen the dusky and more gigantic mountains of Argyleshire, with a seaward view of the shattered and thunder-splitten peaks of Arran. But to Jeanie, whose taste for the picturesque, if she had any by nature, had never been awakened or cultivated, the sight of the faithful old May Hettly, as she opened the door to receive them in her clean toy, Sunday's russet-gown, and blue apron, nicely smoothed down before her, was worth the whole varied landscape. The raptures of the faithful old creature at seeing Jeanie were equal to her own, as she hastened to assure her, "that baith the gudeman and the beasts had been as weel seen after as she possibly could contrive." Separating her from the rest of the company, May then hurried her young mistress to the offices, that she might receive the compliments she expected for her care of the cows. Jeanie rejoiced, in the simplicity of her heart, to see her charge once more; and the mute favourites of our heroine, Gowans, and the others, acknowledged her presence by lowing, turning round their broad and decent brows when they heard her well-known "Pruh, my leddy--pruh, my woman," and, by various indications, known only to those who have studied the habits of the milky mothers, showing sensible pleasure as she approached to caress them in their turn. "The very brute beasts are glad to see ye again," said May; "but nae wonder, Jeanie, for ye were aye kind to beast and body. And I maun learn to ca' ye _mistress_ now, Jeanie, since ye hae been up to Lunnon, and seen the Duke, and the King, and a' the braw folk. But wha kens," added the old dame slily, "what I'll hae to ca' ye forby mistress, for I am thinking it wunna lang be Deans." "Ca' me your ain Jeanie, May, and then ye can never gang wrang." In the cow-house which they examined, there was one animal which Jeanie looked at till the tears gushed from her eyes. May, who had watched her with a sympathising expression, immediately observed, in an under-tone, "The gudeman aye sorts that beast himself, and is kinder to it than ony beast in the byre; and I noticed he was that way e'en when he was angriest, and had maist cause to be angry.--Eh, sirs! a parent's heart's a queer thing!--Mony a warsle he has had for that puir lassie--I am thinking he petitions mair for her than for yoursell, hinny; for what can he plead for you but just to wish you the blessing ye deserve? And when I sleepit ayont the hallan, when we came first here, he was often earnest a' night, and I could hear him come ower and ower again wi', 'Effie--puir blinded misguided thing!' it was aye 'Effie! Effie!'--If that puir wandering lamb comena into the sheepfauld in the Shepherd's ain time, it will be an unco wonder, for I wot she has been a child of prayers. Oh, if the puir prodigal wad return, sae blithely as the goodman wad kill the fatted calf!--though Brockie's calf will no be fit for killing this three weeks yet." And then, with the discursive talent of persons of her description, she got once more afloat in her account of domestic affairs, and left this delicate and affecting topic. Having looked at every thing in the offices and the dairy, and expressed her satisfaction with the manner in which matters had been managed in her absence, Jeanie rejoined the rest of the party, who were surveying the interior of the house, all excepting David Deans and Butler, who had gone down to the church to meet the kirk-session and the clergymen of the Presbytery, and arrange matters for the duty of the day. In the interior of the cottage all was clean, neat, and suitable to the exterior. It had been originally built and furnished by the Duke, as a retreat for a favourite domestic of the higher class, who did not long enjoy it, and had been dead only a few months, so that every thing was in excellent taste and good order. But in Jeanie's bedroom was a neat trunk, which had greatly excited Mrs. Dutton's curiosity, for she was sure that the direction, "For Mrs. Jean Deans, at Auchingower, parish of Knocktarlitie," was the writing of Mrs. Semple, the Duchess's own woman. May Hettly produced the key in a sealed parcel, which bore the same address, and attached to the key was a label, intimating that the trunk and its contents were "a token of remembrance to Jeanie Deans, from her friends the Duchess of Argyle and the young ladies." The trunk, hastily opened, as the reader will not doubt, was found to be full of wearing apparel of the best quality, suited to Jeanie's rank in life; and to most of the articles the names of the particular donors were attached, as if to make Jeanie sensible not only of the general, but of the individual interest she had excited in the noble family. To name the various articles by their appropriate names, would be to attempt things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme; besides that the old-fashioned terms of manteaus, sacques, kissing-strings, and so forth, would convey but little information even to the milliners of the present day. I shall deposit, however, an accurate inventory of the contents of the trunk with my kind friend, Miss Martha Buskbody, who has promised, should the public curiosity seem interested in the subject, to supply me with a professional glossary and commentary. Suffice it to say, that the gift was such as became the donors, and was suited to the situation of the receiver; that every thing was handsome and appropriate, and nothing forgotten which belonged to the wardrobe of a young person in Jeanie's situation in life, the destined bride of a respectable clergyman. Article after article was displayed, commented upon, and admired, to the wonder of May, who declared, "she didna think the queen had mair or better claise," and somewhat to the envy of the northern Cowslip. This unamiable, but not very unnatural, disposition of mind, broke forth in sundry unfounded criticisms to the disparagement of the articles, as they were severally exhibited. But it assumed a more direct character, when, at the bottom of all, was found a dress of white silk, very plainly made, but still of white silk, and French silk to boot, with a paper pinned to it, bearing that it was a present from the Duke of Argyle to his travelling companion, to be worn on the day when she should change her name. Mrs. Dutton could forbear no longer, but whispered into Mr. Archibald's ear, that it was a clever thing to be a Scotchwoman: "She supposed all _her_ sisters, and she had half-a-dozen, might have been hanged, without any one sending her a present of a pocket handkerchief." "Or without your making any exertion to save them, Mrs. Dolly," answered Archibald drily.--"But I am surprised we do not hear the bell yet," said he, looking at his watch. "Fat ta deil, Mr. Archibald," answered the Captain of Knockdunder, "wad ye hae them ring the bell before I am ready to gang to kirk?--I wad gar the bedral eat the bell-rope, if he took ony sic freedom. But if ye want to hear the bell, I will just show mysell on the knowe-head, and it will begin jowing forthwith." Accordingly, so soon as they sallied out, and that the gold-laced hat of the Captain was seen rising like Hesper above the dewy verge of the rising ground, the clash (for it was rather a clash than a clang) of the bell was heard from the old moss-grown tower, and the clapper continued to thump its cracked sides all the while they advanced towards the kirk, Duncan exhorting them to take their own time, "for teil ony sport wad be till he came."* * Note T. Tolling to service in Scotland. Accordingly, the bell only changed to the final and impatient chime when they crossed the stile; and "rang in," that is, concluded its mistuned summons, when they had entered the Duke's seat, in the little kirk, where the whole party arranged themselves, with Duncan at their head, excepting David Deans, who already occupied a seat among the elders. The business of the day, with a particular detail of which it is unnecessary to trouble the reader, was gone through according to the established form, and the sermon pronounced upon the occasion had the good fortune to please even the critical David Deans, though it was only an hour and a quarter long, which David termed a short allowance of spiritual provender. The preacher, who was a divine that held many of David's opinions, privately apologised for his brevity by saying, "That he observed the Captain was gaunting grievously, and that if he had detained him longer, there was no knowing how long he might be in paying the next term's victual stipend." David groaned to find that such carnal motives could have influence upon the mind of a powerful preacher. He had, indeed, been scandalised by another circumstance during the service. So soon as the congregation were seated after prayers, and the clergyman had read his text, the gracious Duncan, after rummaging the leathern purse which hung in front of his petticoat, produced a short tobacco-pipe made of iron, and observed, almost aloud, "I hae forgotten my spleuchan--Lachlan, gang down to the clachan, and bring me up a pennyworth of twist." Six arms, the nearest within reach, presented, with an obedient start, as many tobacco-pouches to the man of office. He made choice of one with an nod of acknowledgment, filled his pipe, lighted it with the assistance of his pistol-flint, and smoked with infinite composure during the whole time of the sermon. When the discourse was finished, he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, replaced it in his sporran, returned the tobacco-pouch or spleuchan to its owner, and joined in the prayer with decency and attention. [Illustration: The Captain of Knockdunder--303] At the end of the service, when Butler had been admitted minister of the kirk of Knocktarlitie, with all its spiritual immunities and privileges, David, who had frowned, groaned, and murmured at Knockdunder's irreverent demeanour, communicated his plain thoughts of the matter to Isaac Meiklehose, one of the elders, with whom a reverential aspect and huge grizzle wig had especially disposed him to seek fraternisation. "It didna become a wild Indian," David said, "much less a Christian, and a gentleman, to sit in the kirk puffing tobacco-reek, as if he were in a change-house." Meiklehose shook his head, and allowed it was "far frae beseeming--But what will ye say? The Captain's a queer hand, and to speak to him about that or onything else that crosses the maggot, wad be to set the kiln a-low. He keeps a high hand ower the country, and we couldna deal wi' the Hielandmen without his protection, sin' a' the keys o' the kintray hings at his belt; and he's no an ill body in the main, and maistry, ye ken, maws the meadows doun." "That may be very true, neighbour," said David; "but Reuben Butler isna the man I take him to be, if he disna learn the Captain to fuff his pipe some other gate than in God's house, or the quarter be ower." "Fair and softly gangs far," said Meiklehose; "and if a fule may gie a wise man a counsel, I wad hae him think twice or he mells with Knockdunder--He auld hae a lang-shankit spune that wad sup kail wi' the deil. But they are a' away to their dinner to the change-house, and if we dinna mend our pace, we'll come short at meal-time." David accompanied his friend without answer; but began to feel from experience, that the glen of Knocktarlitie, like the rest of the world, was haunted by its own special subjects of regret and discontent. His mind was, so much occupied by considering the best means of converting Duncan of Knock to a sense of reverend decency during public worship, that he altogether forgot to inquire whether Butler was called upon to subscribe the oaths to Government. Some have insinuated, that his neglect on this head was, in some degree, intentional; but I think this explanation inconsistent with the simplicity of my friend David's character. Neither have I ever been able, by the most minute inquiries, to know whether the _formula,_ at which he so much scrupled, had been exacted from Butler, ay or no. The books of the kirk-session might have thrown some light on this matter; but unfortunately they were destroyed in the year 1746, by one Donacha Dhu na Dunaigh, at the instance, it was said, or at least by the connivance, of the gracious Duncan of Knock, who had a desire to obliterate the recorded foibles of a certain Kate Finlayson. CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND. Now butt and ben the change-house fills Wi' yill-caup commentators, Here's crying out for bakes and gills, And there the pint-stoup clatters. Wi' thick and thrang, and loud and lang,-- Wi' logic and wi' scripture, They raise a din that in the end Is like to breed a rupture, O' wrath that day. Burns. A plentiful entertainment, at the Duke of Argyle's cost, regaled the reverend gentlemen who had assisted at the ordination of Reuben Butler, and almost all the respectable part of the parish. The feast was, indeed, such as the country itself furnished; for plenty of all the requisites for "a rough and round dinner" were always at Duncan of Knock's command. There was the beef and mutton on the braes, the fresh and salt-water fish in the lochs, the brooks, and firth; game of every kind, from the deer to the leveret, were to be had for the killing, in the Duke's forests, moors, heaths, and mosses; and for liquor, home-brewed ale flowed as freely as water; brandy and usquebaugh both were had in those happy times without duty; even white wine and claret were got for nothing, since the Duke's extensive rights of admiralty gave him a title to all the wine in cask which is drifted ashore on the western coast and isles of Scotland, when shipping have suffered by severe weather. In short, as Duncan boasted, the entertainment did not cost MacCallummore a plack out of his sporran, and was nevertheless not only liberal, but overflowing. The Duke's health was solemnised in a _bona fide_ bumper, and David Deans himself added perhaps the first huzza that his lungs had ever uttered, to swell the shout with which the pledge was received. Nay, so exalted in heart was he upon this memorable occasion, and so much disposed to be indulgent, that, he expressed no dissatisfaction when three bagpipers struck up, "The Campbells are coming." The health of the reverend minister of Knocktarlitie was received with similar honours; and there was a roar of laughter, when one of his brethren slily subjoined the addition of, "A good wife to our brother, to keep the Manse in order." On this occasion David Deans was delivered of his first-born joke; and apparently the parturition was accompanied with many throes, for sorely did he twist about his physiognomy, and much did he stumble in his speech, before he could express his idea, "That the lad being now wedded to his spiritual bride, it was hard to threaten him with ane temporal spouse in the same day." He then laughed a hoarse and brief laugh, and was suddenly grave and silent, as if abashed at his own vivacious effort. After another toast or two, Jeanie, Mrs. Dolly, and such of the female natives as had honoured the feast with their presence, retired to David's new dwelling at Auchingower, and left the gentlemen to their potations. The feast proceeded with great glee. The conversation, where Duncan had it under his direction, was not indeed always strictly canonical, but David Deans escaped any risk of being scandalised, by engaging with one of his neighbours in a recapitulation of the sufferings of Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, during what was called the invasion of the Highland Host; the prudent Mr. Meiklehose cautioning them from time to time to lower their voices, "for that Duncan Knock's father had been at that onslaught, and brought back muckle gude plenishing, and that Duncan was no unlikely to hae been there himself, for what he kend." Meanwhile, as the mirth grew fast and furious, the graver members of the party began to escape as well as they could. David Deans accomplished his retreat, and Butler anxiously watched an opportunity to follow him. Knockdunder, however, desirous, he said, of knowing what stuff was in the new minister, had no intention to part with him so easily, but kept him pinned to his side, watching him sedulously, and with obliging violence filling his glass to the brim, as often as he could seize an opportunity of doing so. At length, as the evening was wearing late, a venerable brother chanced to ask Mr. Archibald when they might hope to see the Duke, _tam carum caput,_ as he would venture to term him, at the Lodge of Roseneath. Duncan of Knock, whose ideas were somewhat conglomerated, and who, it may be believed, was no great scholar, catching up some imperfect sound of the words, conceived the speaker was drawing a parallel between the Duke and Sir Donald Gorme of Sleat; and being of opinion that such comparison was odious, snorted thrice, and prepared himself to be in a passion. To the explanation of the venerable divine the Captain answered, "I heard the word Gorme myself, sir, with my ain ears. D'ye think I do not know Gaelic from Latin?" "Apparently not, sir;"--so the clergyman, offended in his turn, and taking a pinch of snuff, answered with great coolness. The copper nose of the gracious Duncan now became heated like the Bull of Phalaris, and while Mr. Archibald mediated betwixt the offended parties, and the attention of the company was engaged by their dispute, Butler took an opportunity to effect his retreat. He found the females at Auchingower very anxious for the breaking up of the convivial party; for it was a part of the arrangement, that although David Deans was to remain at Auchingower, and Butler was that night to take possession of the Manse, yet Jeanie, for whom complete accommodations were not yet provided in her father's house, was to return for a day or two to the Lodge at Roseneath, and the boats had been held in readiness accordingly. They waited, therefore, for Knockdunder's return, but twilight came, and they still waited in vain. At length Mr. Archibald, who was a man of decorum, had taken care not to exceed in his conviviality, made his appearance, and advised the females strongly to return to the island under his escort; observing, that, from the humour in which he had left the Captain, it was a great chance whether he budged out of the public-house that night, and it was absolutely certain that he would not be very fit company for ladies. The gig was at their disposal, he said, and there was still pleasant twilight for a party on the water. Jeanie, who had considerable confidence in Archibald's prudence, immediately acquiesced in this proposal; but Mrs. Dolly positively objected to the small boat. If the big boat could be gotten, she agreed to set out, otherwise she would sleep on the floor, rather than stir a step. Reasoning with Dolly was out of the question, and Archibald did not think the difficulty so pressing as to require compulsion. He observed, it was not using the Captain very politely to deprive him of his coach and six; "but as it was in the ladies' service," he gallantly said, "he would use so much freedom--besides the gig would serve the Captain's purpose better, as it could come off at any hour of the tide; the large boat should, therefore, be at Mrs. Dolly's service." They walked to the beach accordingly, accompanied by Butler. It was some time before the boatmen could be assembled, and ere they were well embarked, and ready to depart, the pale moon was come over the hill, and flinging a trembling reflection on the broad and glittering waves. But so soft and pleasant was the night, that Butler, in bidding farewell to Jeanie, had no apprehension for her safety; and what is yet more extraordinary, Mrs. Dolly felt no alarm for her own. The air was soft, and came over the cooling wave with something of summer fragrance. The beautiful scene of headlands, and capes, and bays, around them, with the broad blue chain of mountains, were dimly visible in the moonlight; while every dash of the oars made the waters glance and sparkle with the brilliant phenomenon called the sea fire. This last circumstance filled Jeanie with wonder, and served to amuse the mind of her companion, until they approached the little bay, which seemed to stretch its dark and wooded arms into the sea as if to welcome them. The usual landing-place was at a quarter of a mile's distance from the Lodge, and although the tide did not admit of the large boat coming quite close to the jetty of loose stones which served as a pier, Jeanie, who was both bold and active, easily sprung ashore; but Mrs., Dolly positively refusing to commit herself to the same risk, the complaisant Mr. Archibald ordered the boat round to a more regular landing-place, at a considerable distance along the shore. He then prepared to land himself, that he might, in the meanwhile, accompany Jeanie to the Lodge. But as there was no mistaking the woodland lane, which led from thence to the shore, and as the moonlight showed her one of the white chimneys rising out of the wood which embosomed the building, Jeanie declined this favour with thanks, and requested him to proceed with Mrs. Dolly, who, being "in a country where the ways were so strange to her, had mair need of countenance." This, indeed, was a fortunate circumstance, and might even be said to save poor Cowslip's life, if it was true, as she herself used solemnly to aver, that she must positively have expired for fear, if she had been left alone in the boat with six wild Highlanders in kilts. The night was so exquisitely beautiful, that Jeanie, instead of immediately directing her course towards the Lodge, stood looking after the boat as it again put off from the side, and rowed into the little bay, the dark figures of her companions growing less and less distinct as they diminished in the distance, and the jorram, or melancholy boat-song of the rowers, coming on the ear with softened and sweeter sound, until the boat rounded the headland, and was lost to her observation. Still Jeanie remained in the same posture, looking out upon the sea. It would, she was aware, be some time ere her companions could reach the Lodge, as the distance by the more convenient landing-place was considerably greater than from the point where she stood, and she was not sorry to have an opportunity to spend the interval by herself. The wonderful change which a few weeks had wrought in her situation, from shame and grief, and almost despair, to honour, joy, and a fair prospect of future happiness, passed before her eyes with a sensation which brought the tears into them. Yet they flowed at the same time from another source. As human happiness is never perfect, and as well-constructed minds are never more sensible of the distresses of those whom they love, than when their own situation forms a contrast with them, Jeanie's affectionate regrets turned to the fate of her poor sister--the child of so many hopes--the fondled nursling of so many years--now an exile, and, what was worse, dependent on the will of a man, of whose habits she had every reason to entertain the worst opinion, and who, even in his strongest paroxysms of remorse, had appeared too much a stranger to the feelings of real penitence. While her thoughts were occupied with these melancholy reflections, a shadowy figure seemed to detach itself from the copsewood on her right hand. Jeanie started, and the stories of apparitions and wraiths, seen by solitary travellers in wild situations, at such times, and in such an hour, suddenly came full upon her imagination. The figure glided on, and as it came betwixt her and the moon, she was aware that it had the appearance of a woman. A soft voice twice repeated, "Jeanie--Jeanie!"-- Was it indeed--could it be the voice of her sister?--Was she still among the living, or had the grave given uly its tenant?--Ere she could state these questions to her own mind, Effie, alive, and in the body, had clasped her in her arms and was straining her to her bosom, and devouring her with kisses. "I have wandered here," she said, "like a ghaist, to see you, and nae wonder you take me for ane--I thought but to see you gang by, or to hear the sound of your voice; but to speak to yoursell again, Jeanie, was mair than I deserved, and mair than I durst pray for." "O Effie! how came ye here alone, and at this hour, and on the wild seabeach?--Are you sure it's your ain living sell?" There was something of Effie's former humour in her practically answering the question by a gentle pinch, more beseeming the fingers of a fairy than of a ghost. And again the sisters embraced, and laughed, and wept by turns. "But ye maun gang up wi' me to the Lodge, Effie," said Jeanie, "and tell me a' your story--I hae gude folk there that will make ye welcome for my sake." "Na, na, Jeanie," replied her sister sorrowfully,--"ye hae forgotten what I am--a banished outlawed creature, scarce escaped the gallows by your being the bauldest and the best sister that ever lived--I'll gae near nane o' your grand friends, even if there was nae danger to me." "There is nae danger--there shall be nae danger," said Jeanie eagerly. "O Effie, dinna be wilfu'--be guided for ance--we will be sae happy a' thegither!" "I have a' the happiness I deserve on this side of the grave, now that I hae seen you," answered Effie; "and whether there were danger to mysell or no, naebody shall ever say that I come with my cheat-the-gallows face to shame my sister among her grand friends." "I hae nae grand friends," said Jeanie; "nae friends but what are friends of yours--Reuben Butler and my father.--O unhappy lassie, dinna be dour, and turn your back on your happiness again! We wunna see another acquaintance--Come hame to us, your ain dearest friends--it's better sheltering under an auld hedge than under a new-planted wood." "It's in vain speaking, Jeanie,--I maun drink as I hae brewed--I am married, and I maun follow my husband for better for worse." "Married, Effie!" exclaimed Jeanie--"Misfortunate creature! and to that awfu'" "Hush, hush," said Effie, clapping one hand on her mouth, and pointing to the thicket with the other, "he is yonder." She said this in a tone which showed that her husband had found means to inspire her with awe, as well as affection. At this moment a man issued from the wood. It was young Staunton. Even by the imperfect light of the moon, Jeanie could observe that he was handsomely dressed, and had the air of a person of rank. "Effie," he said, "our time is well-nigh spent--the skiff will be aground in the creek, and I dare not stay longer.--I hope your sister will allow me to salute her?" But Jeanie shrunk back from him with a feeling of internal abhorrence. "Well," he said, "it does not much signify; if you keep up the feeling of ill-will, at least you do not act upon it, and I thank you for your respect to my secret, when a word (which in your place I would have spoken at once) would have cost me my life. People say, you should keep from the wife of your bosom the secret that concerns your neck--my wife and her sister both know mine, and I shall not sleep a wink the less sound." "But are you really married to my sister, sir?" asked Jeanie, in great doubt and anxiety; for the haughty, careless tone in which he spoke seemed to justify her worst apprehensions. "I really am legally married, and by my own name," replied Staunton, more gravely. "And your father--and your friends?" "And my father and my friends must just reconcile themselves to that which is done and cannot be undone," replied Staunton. "However, it is my intention, in order to break off dangerous connections, and to let my friends come to their temper, to conceal my marriage for the present, and stay abroad for some years. So that you will not hear of us for some time, if ever you hear of us again at all. It would be dangerous, you must be aware, to keep up the correspondence; for all would guess that the husband of Effie was the--what shall I call myself?--the slayer of Porteous." Hard-hearted light man! thought Jeanie--to what a character she has intrusted her happiness!--She has sown the wind, and maun reap the whirlwind. "Dinna think ill o' him," said Effie, breaking away from her husband, and leading Jeanie a step or two out of hearing--"dinna think very ill o' him--he's gude to me, Jeanie--as gude as I deserve--And he is determined to gie up his bad courses--Sae, after a', dinna greet for Effie; she is better off than she has wrought for.--But you--oh, you!--how can you be happy eneugh! never till ye get to heaven, where a'body is as gude as yoursell.--Jeanie, if I live and thrive, ye shall hear of me--if not, just forget that sic a creature ever lived to vex ye--fare ye weel--fare--fare ye weel!" She tore herself from her sister's arms--rejoined her husband--they plunged into the copsewood, and she saw them no more. The whole scene had the effect of a vision, and she could almost have believed it such, but that very soon after they quitted her, she heard the sound of oars, and a skiff was seen on the firth, pulling swiftly towards the small smuggling sloop which lay in the offing. It was on board of such a vessel that Effie had embarked at Portobello, and Jeanie had no doubt that the same conveyance was destined, as Staunton had hinted, to transport them to a foreign country. Although it was impossible to determine whether this interview, while it was passing, gave more pain or pleasure to Jeanie Deans, yet the ultimate impression which remained on her mind was decidedly favourable. Effie was married--made, according to the common phrase, an honest woman--that was one main point; it seemed also as if her husband were about to abandon the path of gross vice in which he had run so long and so desperately--that was another. For his final and effectual conversion he did not want understanding, and God knew his own hour. Such were the thoughts with which Jeanie endeavoured to console her anxiety respecting her sister's future fortune. On her arrival at the lodge, she found Archibald in some anxiety at her stay, and about to walk out in quest of her. A headache served as an apology for retiring to rest, in order to conceal her visible agitation of mind from her companions. By this secession also she escaped a scene of a different sort. For, as if there were danger in all gigs, whether by sea or land, that of Knockdunder had been run down by another boat, an accident owing chiefly to the drunkenness of the Captain, his crew, and passengers. Knockdunder, and two or three guests, whom he was bringing along with him to finish the conviviality of the evening at the Lodge, got a sound ducking; but, being rescued by the crew of the boat which endangered them, there was no ultimate loss, excepting that of the Captain's laced hat, which, greatly to the satisfaction of the Highland part of the district, as well as to the improvement of the conformity of his own personal appearance, he replaced by a smart Highland bonnet next day. Many were the vehement threats of vengeance which, on the succeeding morning, the gracious Duncan threw out against the boat which had upset him; but as neither she, nor the small smuggling vessel to which she belonged, was any longer to be seen in the firth, he was compelled to sit down with the affront. This was the more hard, he said, as he was assured the mischief was done on purpose, these scoundrels having lurked about after they had landed every drop of brandy, and every bag of tea they had on board; and he understood the coxswain had been on shore, making particular inquiries concerning the time when his boat was to cross over, and to return, and so forth. "Put the neist time they meet me on the firth," said Duncan, with great majesty, "I will teach the moonlight rapscallions and vagabonds to keep their ain side of the road, and pe tamn'd to them!" CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD. Lord! who would live turmoiled in a court, And may enjoy such quiet walks as these? Shakespeare. Within a reasonable time after Butler was safely and comfortably settled in his living, and Jeanie had taken up her abode at Auchingower with her father,--the precise extent of which interval we request each reader to settle according to his own sense of what is decent and proper upon the occasion,--and after due proclamation of banns, and all other formalities, the long wooing of this worthy pair was ended by their union in the holy bands of matrimony. On this occasion, David Deans stoutly withstood the iniquities of pipes, fiddles, and promiscuous dancing, to the great wrath of the Captain of Knockdunder, who said, if he "had guessed it was to be sic a tamn'd Quakers' meeting, he wad hae seen them peyont the cairn before he wad hae darkened their doors." And so much rancour remained on the spirits of the gracious Duncan upon this occasion, that various "picqueerings," as David called them, took place upon the same and similar topics and it was only in consequence of an accidental visit of the Duke to his Lodge at Roseneath, that they were put a stop to. But upon that occasion his Grace showed such particular respect to Mr. and Mrs. Butler, and such favour even to old David, that Knockdunder held it prudent to change his course towards the latter. He, in future, used to express himself among friends, concerning the minister and his wife, as "very worthy decent folk, just a little over strict in their notions; put it was pest for thae plack cattle to err on the safe side." And respecting David, he allowed that "he was an excellent judge of nowte and sheep, and a sensible eneugh carle, an it werena for his tamn'd Cameronian nonsense, whilk it is not worth while of a shentleman to knock out of an auld silly head, either by force of reason or otherwise." So that, by avoiding topics of dispute, the personages of our tale lived in great good habits with the gracious Duncan, only that he still grieved David's soul, and set a perilous example to the congregation, by sometimes bringing his pipe to the church during a cold winter day, and almost always sleeping during sermon in the summer time. Mrs. Butler, whom we must no longer, if we can help it, term by the familiar name of Jeanie, brought into the married state the same firm mind and affectionate disposition--the same natural and homely good sense, and spirit of useful exertion--in a word, all the domestic good qualities of which she had given proof during her maiden life. She did not indeed rival Butler in learning; but then no woman more devoutly venerated the extent of her husband's erudition. She did not pretend to understand his expositions of divinity; but no minister of the Presbytery had his humble dinner so well arranged, his clothes and linen in equal good order, his fireside so neatly swept, his parlour so clean, and his books so well dusted. If he talked to Jeanie of what she did not understand--and (for the man was mortal, and had been a schoolmaster) he sometimes did harangue more scholarly and wisely than was necessary--she listened in placid silence; and whenever the point referred to common life, and was such as came under the grasp of a strong natural understanding, her views were more forcible, and her observations more acute, than his own. In acquired politeness of manners, when it happened that she mingled a little in society, Mrs. Butler was, of course, judged deficient. But then she had that obvious wish to oblige, and that real and natural good-breeding depending on, good sense and good humour, which, joined to a considerable degree of archness and liveliness of manner, rendered her behaviour acceptable to all with whom she was called upon to associate. Notwithstanding her strict attention to all domestic affairs, she always appeared the clean well-dressed mistress of the house, never the sordid household drudge. When complimented on this occasion by Duncan Knock, who swore "that he thought the fairies must help her, since her house was always clean, and nobody ever saw anybody sweeping it," she modestly replied, "That much might be dune by timing ane's turns." Duncan replied, "He heartily wished she could teach that art to the huzzies at the Lodge, for he could never discover that the house was washed at a', except now and then by breaking his shins over the pail-- Cot tamn the jauds!" Of lesser matters there is not occasion to speak much. It may easily be believed that the Duke's cheese was carefully made, and so graciously accepted, that the offering became annual. Remembrances and acknowledgments of past favours were sent to Mrs. Bickerton and Mrs. Glass, and an amicable intercourse maintained from time to time with these two respectable and benevolent persons. It is especially necessary to mention that, in the course of five years, Mrs. Butler had three children, two boys and a girl, all stout healthy babes of grace, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and strong-limbed. The boys were named David and Reuben, an order of nomenclature which was much to the satisfaction of the old hero of the Covenant, and the girl, by her mother's special desire, was christened Euphemia, rather contrary to the wish both of her father and husband, who nevertheless loved Mrs. Butler too well, and were too much indebted to her for their hours of happiness, to withstand any request which she made with earnestness, and as a gratification to herself. But from some feeling, I know not of what kind, the child was never distinguished by the name of Effie, but by the abbreviation of Femie, which in Scotland is equally commonly applied to persons called Euphemia. In this state of quiet and unostentatious enjoyment, there were, besides the ordinary rubs and ruffles which disturb even the most uniform life, two things which particularly chequered Mrs. Butler's happiness. "Without these," she said to our informer, "her life would have been but too happy; and perhaps," she added, "she had need of some crosses in this world to remind her that there was a better to come behind it." The first of these related to certain polemical skirmishes betwixt her father and her husband, which, notwithstanding the mutual respect and affection they entertained for each other, and their great love for her--notwithstanding, also, their general agreement in strictness, and even severity, of Presbyterian principle--often threatened unpleasant weather between them. David Deans, as our readers must be aware, was sufficiently opinionative and intractable, and having prevailed on himself to become a member of a kirk-session under the Established Church, he felt doubly obliged to evince that, in so doing, he had not compromised any whit of his former professions, either in practice or principle. Now Mr. Butler, doing all credit to his father-in-law's motives, was frequently of opinion that it were better to drop out of memory points of division and separation, and to act in the manner most likely to attract and unite all parties who were serious in religion. Moreover, he was not pleased, as a man and a scholar, to be always dictated to by his unlettered father-in-law; and as a clergyman, he did not think it fit to seem for ever under the thumb of an elder of his own kirk-session. A proud but honest thought carried his opposition now and then a little farther than it would otherwise have gone. "My brethren," he said, "will suppose I am flattering and conciliating the old man for the sake of his succession, if I defer and give way to him on every occasion; and, besides, there are many on which I neither can nor will conscientiously yield to his notions. I cannot be persecuting old women for witches, or ferreting out matter of scandal among the young ones, which might otherwise have remained concealed." From this difference of opinion it happened that, in many cases of nicety, such as in owning certain defections, and failing to testify against certain backslidings of the time, in not always severely tracing forth little matters of scandal and _fama clamosa,_ which David called a loosening of the reins of discipline, and in failing to demand clear testimonies in other points of controversy which had, as it were, drifted to leeward with the change of times, Butler incurred the censure of his father-in-law; and sometimes the disputes betwixt them became eager and almost unfriendly. In all such cases Mrs Butler was a mediating spirit, who endeavoured, by the alkaline smoothness of her own disposition, to neutralise the acidity of theological controversy. To the complaints of both she lent an unprejudiced and attentive ear, and sought always rather to excuse than absolutely to defend the other party. She reminded her father that Butler had not "his experience of the auld and wrastling times, when folk were gifted wi' a far look into eternity, to make up for the oppressions whilk they suffered here below in time. She freely allowed that many devout ministers and professors in times past had enjoyed downright revelation, like the blessed Peden, and Lundie, and Cameron, and Renwick, and John Caird the tinkler, wha entered into the secrets, and Elizabeth Melvil, Lady Culross, wha prayed in her bed, surrounded by a great many Christians in a large room, in whilk it was placed on purpose, and that for three hours' time, with wonderful assistance; and Lady Robertland, whilk got six sure outgates of grace, and mony other in times past; and of a specially, Mr. John Scrimgeour, minister of Kinghorn, who, having a beloved child sick to death of the crewels, was free to expostulate with his Maker with such impatience of displeasure, and complaining so bitterly, that at length it was said unto him, that he was heard for this time, but that he was requested to use no such boldness in time coming; so that when he returned he found the child sitting up in the bed hale and fair, with all its wounds closed, and supping its parritch, whilk babe he had left at the time of death. But though these things might be true in these needful times, she contended that those ministers who had not seen such vouchsafed and especial mercies, were to seek their rule in the records of ancient times; and therefore Reuben was carefu' both to search the Scriptures and the books written by wise and good men of old; and sometimes in this way it wad happen that twa precious saints might pu' sundry wise, like twa cows riving at the same hayband." To this David used to reply, with a sigh, "Ah, hinny, thou kenn'st little o't; but that saam John Scrimgeour, that blew open the gates of heaven as an it had been wi' a sax-pund cannonball, used devoutly to wish that most part of books were burnt, except the Bible. Reuben's a gude lad and a kind--I have aye allowed that; but as to his not allowing inquiry anent the scandal of Marjory Kittlesides and Rory MacRand, under pretence that they have southered sin wi' marriage, it's clear agane the Christian discipline o' the kirk. And then there's Aily MacClure of Deepheugh, that practises her abominations, spacing folks' fortunes wi' egg-shells, and mutton-banes, and dreams and divinations, whilk is a scandal to ony Christian land to suffer sic a wretch to live; and I'll uphaud that, in a' judicatures, civil or ecclesiastical." "I daresay ye are very right, father," was the general style of Jeanie's answer; "but ye maun come down to the Manse to your dinner the day. The bits o' bairns, puir things, are wearying to see their luckie dad; and Reuben never sleeps weel, nor I neither, when you and he hae had ony bit outcast." "Nae outcast, Jeanie; God forbid I suld cast out wi' thee, or aught that is dear to thee!" And he put on his Sundays coat, and came to the Manse accordingly. With her husband, Mrs. Butler had a more direct conciliatory process. Reuben had the utmost respect for the old man's motives, and affection for his person, as well as gratitude for his early friendship. So that, upon any such occasion of accidental irritation, it was only necessary to remind him with delicacy of his father-in-law's age, of his scanty education, strong prejudices, and family distresses. The least of these considerations always inclined Butler to measures of conciliation, in so far as he could accede to them without compromising principle; and thus our simple and unpretending heroine had the merit of those peacemakers, to whom it is pronounced as a benediction, that they shall inherit the earth. The second crook in Mrs. Butler's lot, to use the language of her father, was the distressing circumstance, that she had never heard of her sister's safety, or of the circumstances in which she found herself, though betwixt four and five years had elapsed since they had parted on the beach of the island of Roseneath. Frequent intercourse was not to be expected--not to be desired, perhaps, in their relative situations; but Effie had promised, that, if she lived and prospered, her sister should hear from her. She must then be no more, or sunk into some abyss of misery, since she had never redeemed her pledge. Her silence seemed strange and portentous, and wrung from Jeanie, who could never forget the early years of their intimacy, the most painful anticipation concerning her fate. At length, however, the veil was drawn aside. One day, as the Captain of Knockdunder had called in at the Manse, on his return from some business in the Highland part of the parish, and had been accommodated, according to his special request, with a mixture of milk, brandy, honey, and water, which he said Mrs. Butler compounded "potter than ever a woman in Scotland,"--for, in all innocent matters, she studied the taste of every one around her,--he said to Butler, "Py the py, minister, I have a letter here either for your canny pody of a wife or you, which I got when I was last at Glasco; the postage comes to fourpence, which you may either pay me forthwith, or give me tooble or quits in a hit at packcammon." The playing at backgammon and draughts had been a frequent amusement of Mr. Whackbairn, Butler's principal, when at Liberton school. The minister, therefore, still piqued himself on his skill at both games, and occasionally practised them, as strictly canonical, although David Deans, whose notions of every kind were more rigorous, used to shake his head, and groan grievously, when he espied the tables lying in the parlour, or the children playing with the dice boxes or backgammon men. Indeed, Mrs. Butler was sometimes chidden for removing these implements of pastime into some closet or corner out of sight. "Let them be where they are, Jeanie," would Butler say upon such occasions; "I am not conscious of following this, or any other trifling relaxation, to the interruption of my more serious studies, and still more serious duties. I will not, therefore, have it supposed that I am indulging by stealth, and against my conscience, in an amusement which, using it so little as I do, I may well practise openly, and without any check of mind--_Nil conscire sibi,_ Jeanie, that is my motto; which signifies, my love, the honest and open confidence which a man ought to entertain when he is acting openly, and without any sense of doing wrong." Such being Butler's humour, he accepted the Captain's defiance to a twopenny hit at backgammon, and handed the letter to his wife, observing the post-mark was York, but, if it came from her friend Mrs. Bickerton, she had considerably improved her handwriting, which was uncommon at her years. Leaving the gentlemen to their game, Mrs. Butler went to order something for supper, for Captain Duncan had proposed kindly to stay the night with them, and then carelessly broke open her letter. It was not from Mrs. Bickerton; and, after glancing over the first few lines, she soon found it necessary to retire to her own bedroom, to read the document at leisure. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH. Happy thou art! then happy be, Nor envy me my lot; Thy happy state I envy thee, And peaceful cot. Lady Charlotte Campbell. The letter, which Mrs. Butler, when retired into her own apartment, perused with anxious wonder, was certainly from Effie, although it had no other signature than the letter E.; and although the orthography, style, and penmanship, were very far superior not only to anything which Effie could produce, who, though a lively girl, had been a remarkably careless scholar, but even to her more considerate sister's own powers of composition and expression. The manuscript was a fair Italian hand, though something stiff and constrained--the spelling and the diction that of a person who had been accustomed to read good composition, and mix in good society. The tenor of the letter was as follows:-- "My Dearest Sister,--At many risks I venture to write to you, to inform you that I am still alive, and, as to worldly situation, that I rank higher than I could expect or merit. If wealth, and distinction, and an honourable rank, could make a woman happy, I have them all; but you, Jeanie, whom the world might think placed far beneath me in all these respects, are far happier than I am. I have had means of hearing of your welfare, my dearest Jeanie, from time to time--I think I should have broken my heart otherwise. I have learned with great pleasure of your increasing family. We have not been worthy of such a blessing; two infants have been successively removed, and we are now childless--God's will be done! But, if we had a child, it would perhaps divert him from the gloomy thoughts which make him terrible to himself and others. Yet do not let me frighten you, Jeanie; he continues to be kind, and I am far better off than I deserve. You will wonder at my better scholarship; but when I was abroad, I had the best teachers, and I worked hard, because my progress pleased him. He is kind, Jeanie, only he has much to distress him, especially when he looks backward. When I look backward myself, I have always a ray of comfort: it is in the generous conduct of a sister, who forsook me not when I was forsaken by every one. You have had your reward. You live happy in the esteem and love of all who know you, and I drag on the life of a miserable impostor, indebted for the marks of regard I receive to a tissue of deceit and lies, which the slightest accident may unravel. He has produced me to his friends, since the estate opened to him, as a daughter of a Scotchman of rank, banished on account of the Viscount of Dundee's wars--that is, our Fr's old friend Clavers, you know--and he says I was educated in a Scotch convent; indeed, I lived in such a place long enough to enable me to support the character. But when a countryman approaches me, and begins to talk, as they all do, of the various families engaged in Dundee's affair, and to make inquiries into my connections, and when I see his eye bent on mine with such an expression of agony, my terror brings me to the very risk of detection. Good-nature and politeness have hitherto saved me, as they prevented people from pressing on me with distressing questions. But how long--O how long, will this be the case!--And if I bring this disgrace on him, he will hate me--he will kill me, for as much as he loves me; he is as jealous of his family honour now, as ever he was careless about it. I have been in England four months, and have often thought of writing to you; and yet, such are the dangers that might arise from an intercepted letter, that I have hitherto forborne. But now I am obliged to run the risk. Last week I saw your great friend, the D. of A. He came to my box, and sate by me; and something in the play put him in mind of you--Gracious Heaven! he told over your whole London journey to all who were in the box, but particularly to the wretched creature who was the occasion of it all. If he had known--if he could have conceived, beside whom he was sitting, and to whom the story was told!--I suffered with courage, like an Indian at the stake, while they are rending his fibres and boring his eyes, and while he smiles applause at each well-imagined contrivance of his torturers. It was too much for me at last, Jeanie--I fainted; and my agony was imputed partly to the heat of the place, and partly to my extreme sensibility; and, hypocrite all over, I encouraged both opinions--anything but discovery! Luckily, _he_ was not there. But the incident has more alarms. I am obliged to meet your great man often; and he seldom sees me without talking of E. D. and J. D., and R. B. and D. D., as persons in whom my amiable sensibility is interested. My amiable sensibility!!!--And then the cruel tone of light indifference with which persons in the fashionable world speak together on the most affecting subjects! To hear my guilt, my folly, my agony, the foibles and weaknesses of my friends--even your heroic exertions, Jeanie, spoken of in the drolling style which is the present tone in fashionable life--Scarce all that I formerly endured is equal to this state of irritation--then it was blows and stabs--now it is pricking to death with needles and pins.--He--I mean the D.--goes down next month to spend the shooting-season in Scotland--he says, he makes a point of always dining one day at the Manse--be on your guard, and do not betray yourself, should he mention me--Yourself, alas! _you_ have nothing to betray--nothing to fear; you, the pure, the virtuous, the heroine of unstained faith, unblemished purity, what can you have to fear from the world or its proudest minions? It is E. whose life is once more in your hands--it is E. whom you are to save from being plucked of her borrowed plumes, discovered, branded, and trodden down, first by him, perhaps, who has raised her to this dizzy pinnacle!--The enclosure will reach you twice a-year--do not refuse it--it is out of my own allowance, and may be twice as much when you want it. With you it may do good--with me it never can. "Write to me soon, Jeanie, or I shall remain in the agonising apprehension that this has fallen into wrong hands--Address simply to L. S., under cover, to the Reverend George Whiterose, in the Minster-Close, York. He thinks I correspond with some of my noble Jacobite relations who are in Scotland. How high-church and jacobitical zeal would burn in his checks, if he knew he was the agent, not of Euphemia Setoun, of the honourable house of Winton, but of E. D., daughter of a Cameronian cowfeeder!--Jeanie, I can laugh yet sometimes--but God protect you from such mirth.--My father--I mean your father, would say it was like the idle crackling of thorns; but the thorns keep their poignancy, they remain unconsumed. Farewell, my dearest Jeanie--Do not show this even to Mr. Butler, much less to any one else. I have every respect for him, but his principles are over strict, and my case will not endure severe handling.--I rest your affectionate sister, E." In this long letter there was much to surprise as well as to distress Mrs. Butler. That Effie--her sister Effie, should be mingling freely in society, and apparently on not unequal terms, with the Duke of Argyle, sounded like something so extraordinary, that she even doubted if she read truly. Not was it less marvellous, that, in the space of four years, her education should have made such progress. Jeanie's humility readily allowed that Effie had always, when she chose it, been smarter at her book than she herself was, but then she was very idle, and, upon the whole, had made much less proficiency. Love, or fear, or necessity, however, had proved an able school-mistress, and completely supplied all her deficiencies. What Jeanie least liked in the tone of the letter, was a smothered degree of egotism. "We should have heard little about her," said Jeanie to herself, "but that she was feared the Duke might come to learn wha she was, and a' about her puir friends here; but Effie, puir thing, aye looks her ain way, and folk that do that think mair o' themselves than of their neighbours.--I am no clear about keeping her siller," she added, taking up a L50 note which had fallen out of the paper to the floor. "We hae eneugh, and it looks unco like theftboot, or hushmoney, as they ca' it; she might hae been sure that I wad say naething wad harm her, for a' the gowd in Lunnon. And I maun tell the minister about it. I dinna see that she suld be sae feared for her ain bonny bargain o' a gudeman, and that I shouldna reverence Mr. Butler just as much; and sae I'll e'en tell him, when that tippling body the Captain has ta'en boat in the morning.--But I wonder at my ain state of mind," she added, turning back, after she had made a step or two to the door to join the gentlemen; "surely I am no sic a fule as to be angry that Effie's a braw lady, while I am only a minister's wife?--and yet I am as petted as a bairn, when I should bless God, that has redeemed her from shame, and poverty, and guilt, as ower likely she might hae been plunged into." Sitting down upon a stool at the foot of the bed, she folded her arms upon her bosom, saying within herself, "From this place will I not rise till I am in a better frame of mind;" and so placed, by dint of tearing the veil from the motives of her little temporary spleen against her sister, she compelled herself to be ashamed of them, and to view as blessings the advantages of her sister's lot, while its embarrassments were the necessary consequences of errors long since committed. And thus she fairly vanquished the feeling of pique which she naturally enough entertained, at seeing Effie, so long the object of her care and her pity, soar suddenly so high above her in life, as to reckon amongst the chief objects of her apprehension the risk of their relationship being discovered. When this unwonted burst of _amour propre_ was thoroughly subdued, she walked down to the little parlour where the gentlemen were finishing their game, and heard from the Captain a confirmation of the news intimated in her letter, that the Duke of Argyle was shortly expected at Roseneath. "He'll find plenty of moor-fowls and plack-cock on the moors of Auchingower, and he'll pe nae doubt for taking a late dinner, and a ped at the Manse, as he has done pefore now." "He has a gude right, Captain," said Jeanie. "Teil ane potter to ony ped in the kintra," answered the Captain. "And ye had potter tell your father, puir body, to get his beasts a' in order, and put his tamn'd Cameronian nonsense out o' his head for twa or three days, if he can pe so opliging; for fan I speak to him apout prute pestil, he answers me out o' the Pible, whilk is not using a shentleman weel, unless it be a person of your cloth, Mr. Putler." No one understood better than Jeanie the merit of the soft answer, which turneth away wrath; and she only smiled, and hoped that his Grace would find everything that was under her father's care to his entire satisfaction. But the Captain, who had lost the whole postage of the letter at backgammon, was in the pouting mood not unusual to losers, and which, says the proverb, must be allowed to them. "And, Master Putler, though you know I never meddle with the things of your kirk-sessions, yet I must pe allowed to say that I will not be pleased to allow Ailie MacClure of Deepheugh to be poonished as a witch, in respect she only spaes fortunes, and does not lame, or plind, or pedevil any persons, or coup cadger's carts, or ony sort of mischief; put only tells people good fortunes, as anent our poats killing so many seals and doug-fishes, whilk is very pleasant to hear." "The woman," said Butler, "is, I believe, no witch, but a cheat: and it is only on that head that she is summoned to the kirk-session, to cause her to desist in future from practising her impostures upon ignorant persons." "I do not know," replied the gracious Duncan, "what her practices or postures are, but I pelieve that if the poys take hould on her to duck her in the Clachan purn, it will be a very sorry practice--and I pelieve, moreover, that if I come in thirdsman among you at the kirk-sessions, you will be all in a tamn'd pad posture indeed." Without noticing this threat, Mr. Butler replied, "That he had not attended to the risk of ill-usage which the poor woman might undergo at the hands of the rabble, and that he would give her the necessary admonition in private, instead of bringing her before the assembled session." "This," Duncan said, "was speaking like a reasonable shentleman;" and so the evening passed peaceably off. Next morning, after the Captain had swallowed his morning draught of Athole brose, and departed in his coach and six, Mrs. Butler anew deliberated upon communicating to her husband her sister's letter. But she was deterred by the recollection, that, in doing so, she would unveil to him the whole of a dreadful secret, of which, perhaps, his public character might render him an unfit depositary. Butler already had reason to believe that Effie had eloped with that same Robertson who had been a leader in the Porteous mob, and who lay under sentence of death for the robbery at Kirkcaldy. But he did not know his identity with George Staunton, a man of birth and fortune, who had now apparently reassumed his natural rank in society. Jeanie had respected Staunton's own confession as sacred, and upon reflection she considered the letter of her sisteras equally so, and resolved to mention the contents to no one. On reperusing the letter, she could not help observing the staggering and unsatisfactory condition of those who have risen to distinction by undue paths, and the outworks and bulwarks of fiction and falsehood, by which they are under the necessity of surrounding and defending their precarious advantages. But she was not called upon, she thought, to unveil her sister's original history--it would restore no right to any one, for she was usurping none--it would only destroy her happiness, and degrade her in the public estimation. Had she been wise, Jeanie thought she would have chosen seclusion and privacy, in place of public life and gaiety; but the power of choice might not be hers. The money, she thought, could not be returned without her seeming haughty and unkind. She resolved, therefore, upon reconsidering this point, to employ it as occasion should serve, either in educating her children better than her own means could compass, or for their future portion. Her sister had enough, was strongly bound to assist Jeanie by any means in her power, and the arrangement was so natural and proper, that it ought not to be declined out of fastidious or romantic delicacy. Jeanie accordingly wrote to her sister, acknowledging her letter, and requesting to hear from her as often as she could. In entering into her own little details of news, chiefly respecting domestic affairs, she experienced a singular vacillation of ideas; for sometimes she apologised for mentioning things unworthy the notice of a lady of rank, and then recollected that everything which concerned her should be interesting to Effie. Her letter, under the cover of Mr. Whiterose, she committed to the post-office at Glasgow, by the intervention of a parishioner who had business at that city. The next week brought the Duke to Roseneath, and shortly afterwards he intimated his intention of sporting in their neighbourhood, and taking his bed at the Manse; an honour which he had once or twice done to its inmates on former occasions. Effie proved to be perfectly right in her auticipations. The Duke had hardly set himself down at Mrs. Butler's right hand, and taken upon himself the task of carving the excellent "barn-door chucky," which had been selected as the high dishes upon this honourable occasion, before he began to speak of Lady Staunton of Willingham, in Lincolnshire, and the great noise which her wit and beauty made in London. For much of this Jeanie was, in some measure, prepared--but Effie's wit! that would never have entered into her imagination, being ignorant how exactly raillery in the higher rank resembles flippancy among their inferiors. "She has been the ruling belle--the blazing star--the universal toast of the winter," said the Duke; "and is really the most beautiful creature that was seen at court upon the birth-day." The birthday! and at court!--Jeanie was annihilated, remembering well her own presentation, all its extraordinary circumstances, and particularly the cause of it. "I mention this lady particularly to you, Mrs. Butler," said the Duke, "because she has something in the sound of her voice, and cast of her countenance, that reminded me of you--not when you look so pale though--you have over-fatigued yourself--you must pledge me in a glass of wine." She did so, and Butler observed, "It was dangerous flattery in his Grace to tell a poor minister's wife that she was like a court-beauty." "Oho, Mr. Butler," said the Duke, "I find you are growing jealous; but it's rather too late in the day, for you know how long I have admired your wife. But seriously, there is betwixt them one of those inexplicable likenesses which we see in countenances, that do not otherwise resemble each other." "The perilous part of the compliment has flown off," thought Mr. Butler. His wife, feeling the awkwardness of silence, forced herself to say, "That, perhaps, the lady might be her countrywoman, and the language might have made some resemblance." "You are quite right," replied the Duke. "She is a Scotch-woman, and speaks with a Scotch accent, and now and then a provincial word drops out so prettily, that it is quite Doric, Mr. Butler." "I should have thought," said the clergyman, "that would have sounded vulgar in the great city." "Not at all," replied the Duke; "you must suppose it is not the broad coarse Scotch that is spoken in the Cowgate of Edinburgh, or in the Gorbals. This lady has been very little in Scotland, in fact she was educated in a convent abroad, and speaks that pure court-Scotch, which was common in my younger days; but it is so generally disused now, that it sounds like a different dialect, entirely distinct from our modern _patois._" Notwithstanding her anxiety, Jeanie could not help admiring within herself, how the most correct judges of life and manners can be imposed on by their own preconceptions, while the Duke proceeded thus: "She is of the unfortunate house of Winton, I believe; but, being bred abroad, she had missed the opportunity of learning her own pedigree, and was obliged to me for informing her, that she must certainly come of the Setons of Windygoul. I wish you could have seen how prettily she blushed at her own ignorance. Amidst her noble and elegant manners, there is now and then a little touch of bashfulness and conventual rusticity, if I may call it so, that makes her quite enchanting. You see at once the rose that had bloomed untouched amid the chaste precincts of the cloister, Mr. Butler." True to the hint, Mr. Butler failed not to start with his "Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis," etc., while his wife could hardly persuade herself that all this was spoken of Effie Deans, and by so competent a judge as the Duke of Argyle; and had she been acquainted with Catullus, would have thought the fortunes of her sister had reversed the whole passage. She was, however, determined to obtain some indemnification for the anxious feelings of the moment, by gaining all the intelligence she could; and therefore ventured to make some inquiry about the husband of the lady his Grace admired so much. "He is very rich," replied the Duke; "of an ancient family, and has good manners: but he is far from being such a general favourite as his wife. Some people say he can be very pleasant--I never saw him so; but should rather judge him reserved, and gloomy, and capricious. He was very wild in his youth, they say, and has bad health; yet he is a good-looking man enough--a great friend of your Lord High Commissioner of the Kirk, Mr. Butler." "Then he is the friend of a very worthy and honourable nobleman," said Butler. "Does he admire his lady as much as other people do?" said Jeanie, in a low voice. "Who--Sir George? They say he is very fond of her," said the Duke; "but I observe she trembles a little when he fixes his eye on her, and that is no good sign--But it is strange how I am haunted by this resemblance of yours to Lady Staunton, in look and tone of voice. One would almost swear you were sisters." Jeanie's distress became uncontrollable, and beyond concealment. The Duke of Argyle was much disturbed, good-naturedly ascribing it to his having unwittingly recalled, to her remembrance her family misfortunes. He was too well-bred to attempt to apologise; but hastened to change the subject, and arrange certain points of dispute which had occurred betwixt Duncan of Knock and the minister, acknowledging that his worthy substitute was sometimes a little too obstinate, as well as too energetic, in his executive measures. Mr. Butler admitted his general merits; but said, "He would presume to apply to the worthy gentleman the words of the poet to Marrucinus Asinius, Manu Non belle uteris in joco atque vino." The discourse being thus turned on parish business, nothing farther occurred that can interest the reader. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIFTH. Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd by an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. Macbeth. After this period, but under the most strict precautions against discovery, the sisters corresponded occasionally, exchanging letters about twice every year. Those of Lady Staunton spoke of her husband's health and spirits as being deplorably uncertain; her own seemed also to be sinking, and one of the topics on which she most frequently dwelt was their want of family. Sir George Staunton, always violent, had taken some aversion at the next heir, whom he suspected of having irritated his friends against him during his absence; and he declared, he would bequeath Willingham and all its lands to an hospital, ere that fetch-and-carry tell-tale should inherit an acre of it. "Had he but a child," said the unfortunate wife, "or had that luckless infant survived, it would be some motive for living and for exertion. But Heaven has denied us a blessing which we have not deserved." Such complaints, in varied form, but turning frequently on the same topic, filled the letters which passed from the spacious but melancholy halls of Willingham, to the quiet and happy parsonage at Knocktarlitie. Years meanwhile rolled on amid these fruitless repinings. John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, died in the year 1743, universally lamented, but by none more than by the Butlers, to whom his benevolence had been so distinguished. He was succeeded by his brother Duke Archibald, with whom they had not the same intimacy; but who continued the protection which his brother had extended towards them. This, indeed, became more necessary than ever; for, after the breaking out and suppression of the rebellion in 1745, the peace of the country, adjacent to the Highlands, was considerably disturbed. Marauders, or men that had been driven to that desperate mode of life, quartered themselves in the fastnesses nearest to the Lowlands, which were their scene of plunder; and there is scarce a glen in the romantic and now peaceable Highlands of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbartonshire, where one or more did not take up their residence. The prime pest of the parish of Knocktarlitie was a certain Donacha dhu na Dunaigh, or Black Duncan the Mischievous, whom we have already casually mentioned. This fellow had been originally a tinkler, or _caird,_ many of whom stroll about these districts; but when all police was disorganised by the civil war, he threw up his profession, and from half thief became whole robber; and being generally at the head of three or four active young fellows, and he himself artful, bold, and well acquainted with the passes, he plied his new profession with emolument to himself, and infinite plague to the country. All were convinced that Duncan of Knock could have put down his namesake Donacha any morning he had a mind; for there were in the parish a set of stout young men, who had joined Argyle's banner in the war under his old friend, and behaved very well on several occasions. And as for their leader, as no one doubted his courage, it was generally supposed that Donacha had found out the mode of conciliating his favour, a thing not very uncommon in that age and country. This was the more readily believed, as David Deans's cattle (being the property of the Duke) were left untouched, when the minister's cows were carried off by the thieves. Another attempt was made to renew the same act of rapine, and the cattle were in the act of being driven off, when Butler, laying his profession aside in a case of such necessity, put himself at the head of some of his neighbours, and rescued the creagh, an exploit at which Deans attended in person, notwithstanding his extreme old age, mounted on a Highland pony, and girded with an old broadsword, likening himself (for he failed not to arrogate the whole merit of the expedition) to David, the son of Jesse, when he recovered the spoil of Ziklag from the Amalekites. This spirited behaviour had so far a good effect, that Donacha dhu na Dunaigh kept his distance for some time to come; and, though his distant exploits were frequently spoken of, he did not exercise any depredations in that part of the country. He continued to flourish, and to be heard of occasionally, until the year 1751, when, if the fear of the second David had kept him in check, fate released him from that restraint, for the venerable patriarch of St. Leonard's was that year gathered to his fathers. David Deans died full of years and of honour. He is believed, for the exact time of his birth is not known, to have lived upwards of ninety years; for he used to speak of events as falling under his own knowledge, which happened about the time of the battle of Bothwell Bridge. It was said that he even bore arms there; for once, when a drunken Jacobite laird wished for a Bothwell Brigg whig, that "he might stow the lugs out of his head," David informed him with a peculiar austerity of countenance, that, if he liked to try such a prank, there was one at his elbow; and it required the interference of Butler to preserve the peace. He expired in the arms of his beloved daughter, thankful for all the blessings which Providence had vouchsafed to him while in this valley of strife and toil--and thankful also for the trials he had been visited with; having found them, he said, needful to mortify that spiritual pride and confidence in his own gifts, which was the side on which the wily Enemy did most sorely beset him. He prayed in the most affecting manner for Jeanie, her husband, and her family, and that her affectionate duty to the puir auld man might purchase her length of days here, and happiness hereafter; then, in a pathetic petition, too well understood by those who knew his family circumstances, he besought the Shepherd of souls, while gathering his flock, not to forget the little one that had strayed from the fold, and even then might be in the hands of the ravening wolf.--He prayed for the national Jerusalem, that peace might be in her land, and prosperity in her palaces--for the welfare of the honourable House of Argyle, and for the conversion of Duncan of Knockdunder. After this he was silent, being exhausted, nor did he again utter anything distinctly. He was heard, indeed, to mutter something about national defections, right-hand extremes, and left-hand failings off; but, as May Hettly observed, his head was carried at the time; and it is probable that these expressions occurred to him merely out of general habit, and that he died in the full spirit of charity with all men. About an hour afterwards he slept in the Lord. Notwithstanding her father's advanced age, his death was a severe shock to Mrs. Butler. Much of her time had been dedicated to attending to his health and his wishes, and she felt as if part of her business in the world was ended, when the good old man was no more. His wealth, which came nearly to fifteen hundred pounds, in disposable capital, served to raise the fortunes of the family at the Manse. How to dispose of this sum for the best advantage of his family, was matter of anxious consideration to Butler. "If we put it on heritable bond, we shall maybe lose the interest; for there's that bond over Lounsbeck's land, your father could neither get principal nor interest for it--If we bring it into the funds, we shall maybe lose the principal and all, as many did in the South Sea scheme. The little estate of Craigsture is in the market--it lies within two miles of the Manse, and Knock says his Grace has no thought to buy it. But they ask L2500, and they may, for it is worth the money; and were I to borrow the balance, the creditor might call it up suddenly, or in case of my death my family might be distressed." "And so if we had mair siller, we might buy that bonny pasture-ground, where the grass comes so early?" asked Jeanie. "Certainly, my dear; and Knockdunder, who is a good judge, is strongly advising me to it. To be sure it is his nephew that is selling it." "Aweel, Reuben," said Jeanie, "ye maun just look up a text in Scripture, as ye did when ye wanted siller before--just look up a text in the Bible." "Ah, Jeanie," said Butler, laughing and pressing her hand at the same time, "the best people in these times can only work miracles once." "We will see," said Jeanie composedly; and going to the closet in which she kept her honey, her sugar, her pots of jelly, her vials of the more ordinary medicines, and which served her, in short, as a sort of store-room, she jangled vials and gallipots, till, from out the darkest nook, well flanked by a triple row of bottles and jars, which she was under the necessity of displacing, she brought a cracked brown cann, with a piece of leather tied over the top. Its contents seemed to be written papers, thrust in disorder into this uncommon _secre'taire._ But from among these Jeanie brought an old clasped Bible, which had been David Deans's companion in his earlier wanderings, and which he had given to his daughter when the failure of his eyes had compelled him to use one of a larger print. This she gave to Butler, who had been looking at her motions with some surprise, and desired him to see what that book could do for him. He opened the clasps, and to his astonishment a parcel of L50 bank-notes dropped out from betwixt the leaves, where they had been separately lodged, and fluttered upon the floor. "I didna think to hae tauld you o' my wealth, Reuben," said his wife, smiling at his surprise, "till on my deathbed, or maybe on some family pinch; but it wad be better laid out on yon bonny grass-holms, than lying useless here in this auld pigg." "How on earth came ye by that siller, Jeanie?--Why, here is more than a thousand pounds," said Butler, lifting up and counting the notes. "If it were ten thousand, it's a' honestly come by," said Jeanie; "and troth I kenna how muckle there is o't, but it's a' there that ever I got.--And as for how I came by it, Reuben--it's weel come by, and honestly, as I said before--And it's mair folk's secret than mine, or ye wad hae kend about it lang syne; and as for onything else, I am not free to answer mair questions about it, and ye maun just ask me nane." "Answer me but one," said Butler. "Is it all freely and indisputably your own property, to dispose of it as you think fit?--Is it possible no one has a claim in so large a sum except you?" "It _was_ mine, free to dispose of it as I like," answered Jeanie; "and I have disposed of it already, for now it is yours, Reuben--You are Bible Butler now, as well as your forbear, that my puir father had sic an ill will at. Only, if ye like, I wad wish Femie to get a gude share o't when we are gane." "Certainly, it shall be as you choose--But who on earth ever pitched on such a hiding-place for temporal treasures?" "That is just ane o' my auld-fashioned gates, as you ca' them, Reuben. I thought if Donacha Dhu was to make an outbreak upon us, the Bible was the last thing in the house he wad meddle wi'--but an ony mair siller should drap in, as it is not unlikely, I shall e'en pay it ower to you, and ye may lay it out your ain way." "And I positively must not ask you how you have come by all this money?" said the clergyman. "Indeed, Reuben, you must not; for if you were asking me very sair I wad maybe tell you, and then I am sure I would do wrong." "But tell me," said Butler, "is it anything that distresses your own mind?" "There is baith weal and woe come aye wi' world's gear, Reuben; but ye maun ask me naething mair--This siller binds me to naething, and can never be speered back again." "Surely," said Mr. Butler, when he had again counted over the money, as if to assure himself that the notes were real, "there was never man in the world had a wife like mine--a blessing seems to follow her." "Never," said Jeanie, "since the enchanted princess in the bairn's fairy tale, that kamed gold nobles out o' the tae side of her haffit locks, and Dutch dollars out o' the tother. But gang away now, minister, and put by the siller, and dinna keep the notes wampishing in your hand that gate, or I shall wish them in the brown pigg again, for fear we get a black cast about them--we're ower near the hills in these times to be thought to hae siller in the house. And, besides, ye maun gree wi' Knockdunder, that has the selling o' the lands; and dinna you be simple and let him ken o' this windfa', but keep him to the very lowest penny, as if ye had to borrow siller to make the price up." In the last admonition, Jeanie showed distinctly, that, although she did not understand how to secure the money which came into her hands otherwise than by saving and hoarding it, yet she had some part of her father David's shrewdness, even upon worldly subjects. And Reuben Butler was a prudent man, and went and did even as his wife had advised him. The news quickly went abroad into the parish that the minister had bought Craigsture; and some wished him joy, and some "were sorry it had gane out of the auld name." However, his clerical brethren, understanding that he was under the necessity of going to Edinburgh about the ensuing Whitsunday, to get together David Deans's cash to make up the purchase-money of his new acquisition, took the opportunity to name him their delegate to the General Assembly, or Convocation of the Scottish Church, which takes place usually in the latter end of the month of May. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH. But who is this? what thing of sea or land-- Female of sex it seems-- That so bedeck'd, ornate, and gay, Comes this way sailing? Milton. Not long after the incident of the Bible and the bank-notes, Fortune showed that she could surprise Mrs Butler as well as her husband. The Minister, in order to accomplish the various pieces of business which his unwonted visit to Edinburgh rendered necessary, had been under the necessity of setting out from home in the latter end of the month of February, concluding justly that he would find the space betwixt his departure and the term of Whitsunday (24th May) short enough for the purpose of bringing forward those various debtors of old David Deans, out of whose purses a considerable part of the price of his new purchase was to be made good. Jeanie was thus in the unwonted situation of inhabiting a lonely house, and she felt yet more solitary from the death of the good old man who used to divide her cares with her husband. Her children were her principal resource, and to them she paid constant attention. It happened a day or two after Butler's departure that, while she was engaged in some domestic duties, she heard a dispute among the young folk, which, being maintained with obstinacy, appeared to call for her interference. All came to their natural umpire with their complaints. Femie, not yet ten years old, charged Davie and Reubie with an attempt to take away her book by force; and David and Reuben replied, the elder, "That it was not a book for Femie to read," and Reuben, "That it was about a bad woman." "Where did you get the book, ye little hempie?" said Mrs. Butler. "How dare ye touch papa's books when he is away?" But the little lady, holding fast a sheet of crumpled paper, declared "It was nane o' papa's books, and May Hettly had taken it off the muckle cheese which came from Inverara;" for, as was very natural to suppose, a friendly intercourse, with interchange of mutual civilities, was kept up from time to time between Mrs. Dolly Dutton, now Mrs. MacCorkindale, and her former friends. Jeanie took the subject of contention out of the child's hand, to satisfy herself of the propriety of her studies; but how much was she struck when she read upon the title of the broadside-sheet, "The Last Speech, Confession, and Dying Words of Margaret MacCraw, or Murdockson, executed on Harabee Hill, near Carlisle, the day of 1737." It was, indeed, one of those papers which Archibald had bought at Longtown, when he monopolised the pedlar's stock, which Dolly had thrust into her trunk out of sheer economy. One or two copies, it seems, had remained in her repositories at Inverary, till she chanced to need them in packing a cheese, which, as a very superior production, was sent, in the way of civil challenge, to the dairy at Knocktarlitie. The title of this paper, so strangely fallen into the very hands from which, in well-meant respect to her feelings, it had been so long detained, was of itself sufficiently startling; but the narrative itself was so interesting, that Jeanie, shaking herself loose from the children, ran upstairs to her own apartment, and bolted the door, to peruse it without interruption. The narrative, which appeared to have been drawn up, or at least corrected, by the clergyman who attended this unhappy woman, stated the crime for which she suffered to have been "her active part in that atrocious robbery and murder, committed near two years since near Haltwhistle, for which the notorious Frank Levitt was committed for trial at Lancaster assizes. It was supposed the evidence of the accomplice Thomas Tuck, commonly called Tyburn Tom, upon which the woman had been convicted, would weigh equally heavy against him; although many were inclined to think it was Tuck himself who had struck the fatal blow, according to the dying statement of Meg Murdockson." After a circumstantial account of the crime for which she suffered, there was a brief sketch of Margaret's life. It was stated that she was a Scotchwoman by birth, and married a soldier in the Cameronian regiment--that she long followed the camp, and had doubtless acquired in fields of battle, and similar scenes, that ferocity and love of plunder for which she had been afterwards distinguished--that her husband, having obtained his discharge, became servant to a beneficed clergyman of high situation and character in Lincolnshire, and that she acquired the confidence and esteem of that honourable family. She had lost this many years after her husband's death, it was stated, in consequence of conniving at the irregularities of her daughter with the heir of the family, added to the suspicious circumstances attending the birth of a child, which was strongly suspected to have met with foul play, in order to preserve, if possible, the girl's reputation. After this she had led a wandering life both in England and Scotland, under colour sometimes of telling fortunes, sometimes of driving a trade in smuggled wares, but, in fact, receiving stolen goods, and occasionally actively joining in the exploits by which they were obtained. Many of her crimes she had boasted of after conviction, and there was one circumstance for which she seemed to feel a mixture of joy and occasional compunction. When she was residing in the suburbs of Edinburgh during the preceding summer, a girl, who had been seduced by one of her confederates, was intrusted to her charge, and in her house delivered of a male infant. Her daughter, whose mind was in a state of derangement ever since she had lost her own child, according to the criminal's account, carried off the poor girl's infant, taking it for her own, of the reality of whose death she at times could not be persuaded. Margaret Murdockson stated that she, for some time, believed her daughter had actually destroyed the infant in her mad fits, and that she gave the father to understand so, but afterwards learned that a female stroller had got it from her. She showed some compunction at having separated mother and child, especially as the mother had nearly suffered death, being condemned, on the Scotch law, for the supposed murder of her infant. When it was asked what possible interest she could have had in exposing the unfortunate girl to suffer for a crime she had not committed, she asked, if they thought she was going to put her own daughter into trouble to save another? She did not know what the Scotch law would have done to her for carrying the child away. This answer was by no means satisfactory to the clergyman, and he discovered, by close examination, that she had a deep and revengeful hatred against the young person whom she had thus injured. But the paper intimated, that, whatever besides she had communicated upon this subject was confided by her in private to the worthy and reverend Archdeacon who had bestowed such particular pains in affording her spiritual assistance. The broadside went on to intimate, that, after her execution, of which the particulars were given, her daughter, the insane person mentioned more than once, and who was generally known by the name of Madge Wildfire, had been very ill-used by the populace, under the belief that she was a sorceress, and an accomplice in her mother's crimes, and had been with difficulty rescued by the prompt interference of the police. Such (for we omit moral reflections, and all that may seem unnecessary to the explanation of our story) was the tenor of the broadside. To Mrs. Butler it contained intelligence of the highest importance, since it seemed to afford the most unequivocal proof of her sister's innocence respecting the crime for which she had so nearly suffered. It is true, neither she nor her husband, nor even her father, had ever believed her capable of touching her infant with an unkind hand when in possession of her reason; but there was a darkness on the subject, and what might have happened in a moment of insanity was dreadful to think upon. Besides, whatever was their own conviction, they had no means of establishing Effie's innocence to the world, which, according to the tenor of this fugitive publication, was now at length completely manifested by the dying confession of the person chiefly interested in concealing it. After thanking God for a discovery so dear to her feelings, Mrs. Butler began to consider what use she should make of it. To have shown it to her husband would have been her first impulse; but, besides that he was absent from home, and the matter too delicate to be the subject of correspondence by an indifferent penwoman, Mrs. Butler recollected that he was not possessed of the information necessary to form a judgment upon the occasion; and that, adhering to the rule which she had considered as most advisable, she had best transmit the information immediately to her sister, and leave her to adjust with her husband the mode in which they should avail themselves of it. Accordingly, she despatched a special messenger to Glasgow with a packet, enclosing the Confession of Margaret Murdockson, addressed, as usual, under cover, to Mr. Whiterose of York. She expected, with anxiety, an answer, but none arrived in the usual course of post, and she was left to imagine how many various causes might account for Lady Staunton's silence. She began to be half sorry that she had parted with the printed paper, both for fear of its having fallen into bad hands, and from the desire of regaining the document which might be essential to establish her sister's innocence. She was even doubting whether she had not better commit the whole matter to her husband's consideration, when other incidents occurred to divert her purpose. Jeanie (she is a favourite, and we beg her pardon for still using the familiar title) had walked down to the sea-side with her children one morning after breakfast, when the boys, whose sight was more discriminating than hers, exclaimed, that "the Captain's coach and six was coming right for the shore, with ladies in it." Jeanie instinctively bent her eyes on the approaching boat, and became soon sensible that there were two females in the stern, seated beside the gracious Duncan, who acted as pilot. It was a point of politeness to walk towards the landing-place, in order to receive them, especially as she saw that the Captain of Knockdunder was upon honour and ceremony. His piper was in the bow of the boat, sending forth music, of which one half sounded the better that the other was drowned by the waves and the breeze. Moreover, he himself had his brigadier wig newly frizzed, his bonnet (he had abjured the cocked-hat) decorated with Saint George's red cross, his uniform mounted as a captain of militia, the Duke's flag with the boar's head displayed--all intimated parade and gala. As Mrs. Butler approached the landing-place, she observed the Captain hand the ladies ashore with marks of great attention, and the parties advanced towards her, the Captain a few steps before the two ladies, of whom the taller and elder leaned on the shoulder of the other, who seemed to be an attendant or servant. As they met, Duncan, in his best, most important, and deepest tone of Highland civility, "pegged leave to introduce to Mrs. Putler, Lady--eh--eh--I hae forgotten your leddyship's name!" "Never mind my name, sir," said the lady; "I trust Mrs. Butler will be at no loss. The Duke's letter"--And, as she observed Mrs. Butler look confused, she said again to Duncan somethin sharply, "Did you not send the letter last night, sir?" "In troth and I didna, and I crave your leddyship's pardon; but you see, matam, I thought it would do as weel to-tay, pecause Mrs. Putler is never taen out o'sorts--never--and the coach was out fishing--and the gig was gane to Greenock for a cag of prandy--and--Put here's his Grace's letter." "Give it me, sir," said the lady, taking it out of his hand; "since you have not found it convenient to do me the favour to send it before me, I will deliver it myself." Mrs. Butler looked with great attention, and a certain dubious feeling of deep interest, on the lady, who thus expressed herself with authority over the man of authority, and to whose mandates he seemed to submit, resigning the letter with a "Just as your leddyship is pleased to order it." The lady was rather above the middle size, beautifully made, though something _embonpoint,_ with a hand and arm exquisitely formed. Her manner was easy, dignified, and commanding, and seemed to evince high birth and the habits of elevated society. She wore a travelling dress--a grey beaver hat, and a veil of Flanders lace. Two footmen, in rich liveries, who got out of the barge, and lifted out a trunk and portmanteau, appeared to belong to her suite. "As you did not receive the letter, madam, which should have served for my introduction--for I presume you are Mrs. Butler--I will not present it to you till you are so good as to admit me into your house without it." "To pe sure, matam," said Knockdunder, "ye canna doubt Mrs. Putler will do that.--Mrs. Putler, this is Lady--Lady--these tamned Southern names rin out o' my head like a stane trowling down hill--put I believe she is a Scottish woman porn--the mair our credit--and I presume her leddyship is of the house of" "The Duke of Argyle knows my family very well, sir," said the lady, in a tone which seemed designed to silence Duncan, or, at any rate, which had that effect completely. There was something about the whole of this stranger's address, and tone, and manner, which acted upon Jeanie's feelings like the illusions of a dream, that tease us with a puzzling approach to reality. Something there was of her sister in the gait and manner of the stranger, as well as in the sound of her voice, and something also, when, lifting her veil, she showed features, to which, changed as they were in expression and complexion, she could not but attach many remembrances. The stranger was turned of thirty certainly; but so well were her personal charms assisted by the power of dress, and arrangement of ornament, that she might well have passed for one-and-twenty. And her behaviour was so steady and so composed, that, as often as Mrs. Butler perceived anew some point of resemblance to her unfortunate sister, so often the sustained self-command and absolute composure of the stranger destroyed the ideas which began to arise in her imagination. She led the way silently towards the Manse, lost in a confusion of reflections, and trusting the letter with which she was to be there intrusted, would afford her satisfactory explanation of what was a most puzzling and embarrassing scene. The lady maintained in the meanwhile the manners of a stranger of rank. She admired the various points of view like one who has studied nature, and the best representations of art. At length she took notice of the children. "These are two fine young mountaineers--Yours, madam, I presume?" Jeanie replied in the affirmative. The stranger sighed, and sighed once more as they were presented to her by name. "Come here, Femie," said Mrs. Butler, "and hold your head up." "What is your daughter's name, madam?" said the lady. "Euphemia, madam," answered Mrs. Butler. "I thought the ordinary Scottish contraction of the name had been Effie;" replied the stranger, in a tone which went to Jeanie's heart; for in that single word there was more of her sister--more of _lang syne_ ideas--than in all the reminiscences which her own heart had anticipated, or the features and manner of the stranger had suggested. When they reached the Manse, the lady gave Mrs. Butler the letter which she had taken out of the hands of Knockdunder; and as she gave it she pressed her hand, adding aloud, "Perhaps, madam, you will have the goodness to get me a little milk!" "And me a drap of the grey-peard, if you please, Mrs. Putler," added Duncan. Mrs. Butler withdrew; but, deputing to May Hettly and to David the supply of the strangers' wants, she hastened into her own room to read the letter. The envelope was addressed in the Duke of Argyle's hand, and requested Mrs. Butler's attentions and civility to a lady of rank, a particular friend of his late brother, Lady Staunton of Willingham, who, being recommended to drink goats' whey by the physicians, was to honour the Lodge at Roseneath with her residence, while her husband made a short tour in Scotland. But within the same cover, which had been given to Lady Staunton unsealed, was a letter from that lady, intended to prepare her sister for meeting her, and which, but for the Captain's negligence, she ought to have received on the preceding evening. It stated that the news in Jeanie's last letter had been so interesting to her husband, that he was determined to inquire farther into the confession made at Carlisle, and the fate of that poor innocent, and that, as he had been in some degree successful, she had, by the most earnest entreaties, extorted rather than obtained his permission, under promise of observing the most strict incognito, to spend a week or two with her sister, or in her neighbourhood, while he was prosecuting researches, to which (though it appeared to her very vainly) he seemed to attach some hopes of success. There was a postscript, desiring that Jeanie would trust to Lady S. the management of their intercourse, and be content with assenting to what she should propose. After reading and again reading the letter, Mrs. Butler hurried down stairs, divided betwixt the fear of betraying her secret, and the desire to throw herself upon her sister's neck. Effie received her with a glance at once affectionate and cautionary, and immediately proceeded to speak. "I have been telling Mr. ------, Captain , this gentleman, Mrs. Butler, that if you could accommodate me with an apartment in your house, and a place for Ellis to sleep, and for the two men, it would suit me better than the Lodge, which his Grace has so kindly placed at my disposal. I am advised I should reside as near where the goats feed as possible." "I have peen assuring my leddy, Mrs. Putler," said Duncan, "that though it could not discommode you to receive any of his Grace's visitors or mine, yet she had mooch petter stay at the Lodge; and for the gaits, the creatures can be fetched there, in respect it is mair fitting they suld wait upon her Leddyship, than she upon the like o' them." "By no means derange the goats for me," said Lady Staunton; "I am certain the milk must be much better here." And this she said with languid negligence, as one whose slightest intimation of humour is to bear down all argument. Mrs. Butler hastened to intimate, that her house, such as it was, was heartily at the disposal of Lady Staunton; but the Captain continued to remonstrate.. "The Duke," he said, "had written" "I will settle all that with his Grace" "And there were the things had been sent down frae Glasco" "Anything necessary might be sent over to the Parsonage--She would beg the favour of Mrs. Butler to show her an apartment, and of the Captain to have her trunks, etc., sent over from Roseneath." So she courtesied off poor Duncan, who departed, saying in his secret soul, "Cot tamn her English impudence!--she takes possession of the minister's house as an it were her ain--and speaks to shentlemens as if they were pounden servants, and per tamned to her!--And there's the deer that was shot too--but we will send it ower to the Manse, whilk will pe put civil, seeing I hae prought worthy Mrs. Putler sic a fliskmahoy."-- And with these kind intentions, he went to the shore to give his orders accordingly. In the meantime, the meeting of the sisters was as affectionate as it was extraordinary, and each evinced her feelings in the way proper to her character. Jeanie was so much overcome by wonder, and even by awe, that her feelings were deep, stunning, and almost overpowering. Effie, on the other hand, wept, laughed, sobbed, screamed, and clapped her hands for joy, all in the space of five minutes, giving way at once, and without reserve, to a natural excessive vivacity of temper, which no one, however, knew better how to restrain under the rules of artificial breeding. After an hour had passed like a moment in their expressions of mutual affection, Lady Staunton observed the Captain walking with impatient steps below the window. "That tiresome Highland fool has returned upon our hands," she said. "I will pray him to grace us with his absence." "Hout no! hout no!" said Mrs. Butler, in a tone of entreaty; "ye maunna affront the Captain." "Affront?" said Lady Staunton; "nobody is ever affronted at what I do or say, my dear. However, I will endure him, since you think it proper." The Captain was accordingly graciously requested by Lady Staunton to remain during dinner. During this visit his studious and punctilious complaisance towards the lady of rank was happily contrasted by the cavalier air of civil familiarity in which he indulged towards the minister's wife. "I have not been able to persuade Mrs. Butler," said Lady Staunton to the Captain, during the interval when Jeanie had left the parlour, "to let me talk of making any recompense for storming her house, and garrisoning it in the way I have done." "Doubtless, matam," said the Captain, "it wad ill pecome Mrs. Putler, wha is a very decent pody, to make any such sharge to a lady who comes from my house, or his Grace's, which is the same thing.--And speaking of garrisons, in the year forty-five, I was poot with a garrison of twenty of my lads in the house of Inver-Garry, whilk had near been unhappily, for" "I beg your pardon, sir--But I wish I could think of some way of indemnifying this good lady." "O, no need of intemnifying at all--no trouble for her, nothing at all-- So, peing in the house of Inver-Garry, and the people about it being uncanny, I doubted the warst, and" "Do you happen to know, sir," said Lady Staunton, "if any of these two lads, these young Butlers, I mean, show any turn for the army?" "Could not say, indeed, my leddy," replied Knockdunder--"So, I knowing the people to pe unchancy, and not to lippen to, and hearing a pibroch in the wood, I pegan to pid my lads look to their flints, and then" "For," said Lady Staunton, with the most ruthless disregard to the narrative which she mangled by these interruptions, "if that should be the case, it should cost Sir George but the asking a pair of colours for one of them at the War-Office, since we have always supported Government, and never had occasion to trouble ministers." "And if you please, my leddy," said Duncan, who began to find some savour in this proposal, "as I hae a braw weel-grown lad of a nevoy, ca'd Duncan MacGilligan, that is as pig as paith the Putler pairns putten thegither, Sir George could ask a pair for him at the same time, and it wad pe put ae asking for a'." Lady Staunton only answered this hint with a well-bred stare, which gave no sort of encouragement. Jeanie, who now returned, was lost in amazement at the wonderful difference betwixt the helpless and despairing girl, whom she had seen stretched on a flock-bed in a dungeon, expecting a violent and disgraceful death, and last as a forlorn exile upon the midnight beach, with the elegant, well-bred, beautiful woman before her. The features, now that her sister's veil was laid aside, did not appear so extremely different, as the whole manner, expression, look, and bearing. In outside show, Lady Staunton seemed completely a creature too soft and fair for sorrow to have touched; so much accustomed to have all her whims complied with by those around her, that she seemed to expect she should even be saved the trouble of forming them; and so totally unacquainted with contradiction, that she did not even use the tone of self-will, since to breathe a wish was to have it fulfilled. She made no ceremony of ridding herself of Duncan as soon as the evening approached; but complimented him out of the house under pretext of fatigue, with the utmost _nonchalance._ When they were alone, her sister could not help expressing her wonder at the self-possession with which Lady Staunton sustained her part. "I daresay you are surprised at it," said Lady Staunton composedly; "for you, my dear Jeanie, have been truth itself from your cradle upwards; but you must remember that I am a liar of fifteen years' standing, and therefore must by this time be used to my character." In fact, during the feverish tumult of feelings excited during the two or three first days, Mrs. Butler thought her sister's manner was completely contradictory of the desponding tone which pervaded her correspondence. She was moved to tears, indeed, by the sight of her father's grave, marked by a modest stone recording his piety and integrity; but lighter impressions and associations had also power over her. She amused herself with visiting the dairy, in which she had so long been assistant, and was so near discovering herself to May Hettly, by betraying her acquaintance with the celebrated receipt for Dunlop cheese, that she compared herself to Bedreddin Hassan, whom the vizier, his father-in-law, discovered by his superlative skill in composing cream-tarts with pepper in them. But when the novelty of such avocations ceased to amuse her, she showed to her sister but too plainly, that the gaudy colouring with which she veiled her unhappiness afforded as little real comfort, as the gay uniform of the soldier when it is drawn over his mortal wound. There were moods and moments, in which her despondence seemed to exceed even that which she herself had described in her letters, and which too well convinced Mrs. Butler how little her sister's lot, which in appearance was so brilliant, was in reality to be envied. There was one source, however, from which Lady Staunton derived a pure degree of pleasure. Gifted in every particular with a higher degree of imagination than that of her sister, she was an admirer of the beauties of nature, a taste which compensates many evils to those who happen to enjoy it. Here her character of a fine lady stopped short, where she ought to have Scream'd at ilk cleugh, and screech'd at ilka how, As loud as she had seen the worrie-cow. On the contrary, with the two boys for her guides, she undertook long and fatiguing walks among the neighbouring mountains, to visit glens, lakes, waterfalls, or whatever scenes of natural wonder or beauty lay concealed among their recesses. It is Wordsworth, I think, who, talking of an old man under difficulties, remarks, with a singular attention to nature, Whether it was care that spurr'd him, God only knows; but to the very last, He had the lightest foot in Ennerdale. In the same manner, languid, listless, and unhappy, within doors, at times even indicating something which approached near to contempt of the homely accommodations of her sister's house, although she instantly endeavoured, by a thousand kindnesses, to atone for such ebullitions of spleen, Lady Staunton appeared to feel interest and energy while in the open air, and traversing the mountain landscapes in society with the two boys, whose ears she delighted with stories of what she had seen in other countries, and what she had to show them at Willingham Manor. And they, on the other hand, exerted themselves in doing the honours of Dumbartonshire to the lady who seemed so kind, insomuch that there was scarce a glen in the neighbouring hills to which they did not introduce her. Upon one of these excursions, while Reuben was otherwise employed, David alone acted as Lady Staunton's guide, and promised to show her a cascade in the hills, grander and higher than any they had yet visited. It was a walk of five long miles, and over rough ground, varied, however, and cheered, by mountain views, and peeps now of the firth and its islands, now of distant lakes, now of rocks and precipices. The scene itself, too, when they reached it, amply rewarded the labour of the walk. A single shoot carried a considerable stream over the face of a black rock, which contrasted strongly in colour with the white foam of the cascade, and, at the depth of about twenty feet, another rock intercepted the view of the bottom of the fall. The water, wheeling out far beneath, swept round the crag, which thus bounded their view, and tumbled down the rocky glen in a torrent of foam. Those who love nature always desire to penetrate into its utmost recesses, and Lady Staunton asked David whether there was not some mode of gaining a view of the abyss at the foot of the fall. He said that he knew a station on a shelf on the farther side of the intercepting rock, from which the whole waterfall was visible, but that the road to it was steep and slippery and dangerous. Bent, however, on gratifying her curiosity, she desired him to lead the way; and accordingly he did so over crag and stone, anxiously pointing out to her the resting-places where she ought to step, for their mode of advancing soon ceased to be walking, and became scrambling. In this manner, clinging like sea-birds to the face of the rock, they were enabled at length to turn round it, and came full in front of the fall, which here had a most tremendous aspect, boiling, roaring, and thundering with unceasing din, into a black cauldron, a hundred feet at least below them, which resembled the crater of a volcano. The noise, the dashing of the waters, which gave an unsteady appearance to all around them, the trembling even of the huge crag on which they stood, the precariousness of their footing, for there was scarce room for them to stand on the shelf of rock which they had thus attained, had so powerful an effect on the senses and imagination of Lady Staunton, that she called out to David she was falling, and would in fact have dropped from the crag had he not caught hold of her. The boy was bold and stout of his age--still he was but fourteen years old, and as his assistance gave no confidence to Lady Staunton, she felt her situation become really perilous. The chance was, that, in the appalling novelty of the circumstances, he might have caught the infection of her panic, in which case it is likely that both must have perished. She now screamed with terror, though without hope of calling any one to her assistance. To her amazement, the scream was answered by a whistle from above, of a tone so clear and shrill, that it was heard even amid the noise of the waterfall. In this moment of terror and perplexity, a human face, black, and having grizzled hair hanging down over the forehead and cheeks, and mixing with mustaches and a beard of the same colour, and as much matted and tangled, looked down on them from a broken part of the rock above. "It is the Enemy!" said the boy, who had very nearly become incapable of supporting Lady Staunton. "No, no," she exclaimed, inaccessible to supernatural terrors, and restored to the presence of mind of which she had been deprived by the danger of her situation, "it is a man--For God's sake, my friend, help us!" The face glared at them, but made no answer; in a second or two afterwards, another, that of a young lad, appeared beside the first, equally swart and begrimed, but having tangled black hair, descending in elf-locks, which gave an air of wildness and ferocity to the whole expression of the countenance. Lady Staunton repeated her entreaties, clinging to the rock with more energy, as she found that, from the superstitious terror of her guide, he became incapable of supporting her. Her words were probably drowned in the roar of the falling stream, for, though she observed the lips of the young being whom she supplicated move as he spoke in reply, not a word reached her ear. A moment afterwards it appeared he had not mistaken the nature of her supplication, which, indeed, was easy to be understood from her situation and gestures. The younger apparition disappeared, and immediately after lowered a ladder of twisted osiers, about eight feet in length, and made signs to David to hold it fast while the lady ascended. Despair gives courage, and finding herself in this fearful predicament, Lady Staunton did not hesitate to risk the ascent by the precarious means which this accommodation afforded; and, carefully assisted by the person who had thus providentially come to her aid, she reached the summit in safety. She did not, however, even look around her until she saw her nephew lightly and actively follow her examples although there was now no one to hold the ladder fast. When she saw him safe she looked round, and could not help shuddering at the place and company in which she found herself. They were on a sort of platform of rock, surrounded on every side by precipices, or overhanging cliffs, and which it would have been scarce possible for any research to have discovered, as it did not seem to be commanded by any accessible position. It was partly covered by a huge fragment of stone, which, having fallen from the cliffs above, had been intercepted by others in its descent, and jammed so as to serve for a sloping roof to the farther part of the broad shelf or platform on which they stood. A quantity of withered moss and leaves, strewed beneath this rude and wretched shelter, showed the lairs,--they could not be termed the beds,--of those who dwelt in this eyrie, for it deserved no other name. Of these, two were before Lady Staunton. One, the same who had afforded such timely assistance, stood upright before them, a tall, lathy, young savage; his dress a tattered plaid and philabeg, no shoes, no stockings, no hat or bonnet, the place of the last being supplied by his hair, twisted and matted like the _glibbe_ of the ancient wild Irish, and, like theirs, forming a natural thick-set stout enough to bear off the cut of a sword. Yet the eyes of the lad were keen and sparkling; his gesture free and noble, like that of all savages. He took little notice of David Butler, but gazed with wonder on Lady Staunton, as a being different probably in dress, and superior in beauty, to anything he had ever beheld. The old man, whose face they had first seen, remained recumbent in the same posture as when he had first looked down on them, only his face was turned towards them as he lay and looked up with a lazy and listless apathy, which belied the general expression of his dark and rugged features. He seemed a very tall man, but was scarce better clad than the younger. He had on a loose Lowland greatcoat, and ragged tartan trews or pantaloons. All around looked singularly wild and unpropitious. Beneath the brow of the incumbent rock was a charcoal fire, on which there was a still working, with bellows, pincers, hammers, a movable anvil, and other smith's tools; three guns, with two or three sacks and barrels, were disposed against the wall of rock, under shelter of the superincumbent crag; a dirk and two swords, and a Lochaber axe, lay scattered around the fire, of which the red glare cast a ruddy tinge on the precipitous foam and mist of the cascade. The lad, when he had satisfied his curiosity with staring at Lady Staunton, fetched an earthen jar and a horn-cup, into which he poured some spirits, apparently hot from the still, and offered them successively to the lady and to the boy. Both declined, and the young savage quaffed off the draught, which could not amount to less than three ordinary glasses. He then fetched another ladder from the corner of the cavern, if it could be termed so, adjusted it against the transverse rock, which served as a roof, and made signs for the lady to ascend it, while he held it fast below. She did so, and found herself on the top of a broad rock, near the brink of the chasm into which the brook precipitates itself. She could see the crest of the torrent flung loose down the rock, like the mane of a wild horse, but without having any view of the lower platform from which she had ascended. David was not suffered to mount so easily; the lad, from sport or love of mischief, shook the ladder a good deal as he ascended, and seemed to enjoy the terror of young Butler, so that, when they had both come up, they looked on each other with no friendly eyes. Neither, however, spoke. The young caird, or tinker, or gipsy, with a good deal of attention, assisted Lady Staunton up a very perilous ascent which she had still to encounter, and they were followed by David Butler, until all three stood clear of the ravine on the side of a mountain, whose sides were covered with heather and sheets of loose shingle. So narrow was the chasm out of which they ascended, that, unless when they were on the very verge, the eye passed to the other side without perceiving the existence of a rent so fearful, and nothing was seen of the cataract, though its deep hoarse voice was still heard. Lady Staunton, freed from the danger of rock and river, had now a new subject of anxiety. Her two guides confronted each other with angry countenances; for David, though younger by two years at least, and much shorter, was a stout, well-set, and very bold boy. "You are the black-coat's son of Knocktarlitie," said the young caird; "if you come here again, I'll pitch you down the linn like a foot-ball." "Ay, lad, ye are very short to be sae lang," retorted young Butler undauntedly, and measuring his opponent's height with an undismayed eye; "I am thinking you are a gillie of Black Donacha; if you come down the glen, we'll shoot you like a wild buck." "You may tell your father," said the lad, "that the leaf on the timber is the last he shall see--we will hae amends for the mischief he has done to us." "I hope he will live to see mony simmers, and do ye muckle mair," answered David. More might have passed, but Lady Staunton stepped between them with her purse in her hand, and taking out a guinea, of which it contained several, visible through the net-work, as well as some silver in the opposite end, offered it to the caird. "The white siller, lady--the white siller," said the young savage, to whom the value of gold was probably unknown. Lady Staunton poured what silver she had into his hand, and the juvenile savage snatched it greedily, and made a sort of half inclination of acknowledgment and adieu. "Let us make haste now, Lady Staunton," said David, "for there will be little peace with them since they hae seen your purse." They hurried on as fast as they could; but they had not descended the hill a hundred yards or two before they heard a halloo behind them, and looking back, saw both the old man and the young one pursuing them with great speed, the former with a gun on his shoulder. Very fortunately, at this moment a sportsman, a gamekeeper of the Duke, who was engaged in stalking deer, appeared on the face of the hill. The bandits stopped on seeing him, and Lady Staunton hastened to put herself under his protection. He readily gave them his escort home, and it required his athletic form and loaded rifle to restore to the lady her usual confidence and courage. Donald listened with much gravity to the account of their adventure; and answered with great composure to David's repeated inquiries, whether he could have suspected that the cairds had been lurking there,--"Inteed, Master Tavie, I might hae had some guess that they were there, or thereabout, though maybe I had nane. But I am aften on the hill; and they are like wasps--they stang only them that fashes them; sae, for my part, I make a point not to see them, unless I were ordered out on the preceese errand by MacCallummore or Knockdunder, whilk is a clean different case." They reached the Manse late; and Lady Staunton, who had suffered much both from fright and fatigue, never again permitted her love of the picturesque to carry her so far among the mountains without a stronger escort than David, though she acknowledged he had won the stand of colours by the intrepidity he had displayed, so soon as assured he had to do with an earthly antagonist. "I couldna maybe hae made muckle o' a bargain wi' yon lang callant," said David, when thus complimented on his valour; "but when ye deal wi' thae folk, it's tyne heart tyne a'." CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENTH. What see you there, That hath so cowarded and chased your blood Out of appearance? Henry the Fifth. We are under the necessity of returning to Edinburgh, where the General Assembly was now sitting. It is well known, that some Scottish nobleman is usually deputed as High Commissioner, to represent the person of the King in this convocation; that he has allowances for the purpose of maintaining a certain outward show and solemnity, and supporting the hospitality of the representative of Majesty. Whoever are distinguished by rank, or office, in or near the capital, usually attend the morning levees of the Lord Commissioner, and walk with him in procession to the place where the Assembly meets. The nobleman who held this office chanced to be particularly connected with Sir George Staunton, and it was in his train that he ventured to tread the High Street of Edinburgh for the first time since the fatal night of Porteous's execution. Walking at the right hand of the representative of Sovereignty, covered with lace and embroidery, and with all the paraphernalia of wealth and rank, the handsome though wasted figure of the English stranger attracted all eyes. Who could have recognised in a form so aristocratic the plebeian convict, that, disguised in the rags of Madge Wildfire, had led the formidable rioters to their destined revenge? There was no possibility that this could happen, even if any of his ancient acquaintances, a race of men whose lives are so brief, had happened to survive the span commonly allotted to evil-doers. Besides, the whole affair had long fallen asleep, with the angry passions in which it originated. Nothing is more certain than that persons known to have had a share in that formidable riot, and to have fled from Scotland on that account, had made money abroad, returned to enjoy it in their native country, and lived and died undisturbed by the law.* * See Arnot's _Criminal Trials,_ 4to ed. p. 235. The forbearance of the magistrate was, in these instances, wise, certainly, and just; for what good impression could be made on the public mind by punishment, when the memory of the offence was obliterated, and all that was remembered was the recent inoffensive, or perhaps exemplary conduct of the offender? Sir George Staunton might, therefore, tread the scene of his former audacious exploits, free from the apprehension of the law, or even of discovery or suspicion. But with what feelings his heart that day throbbed, must be left to those of the reader to imagine. It was an object of no common interest which had brought him to encounter so many painful remembrances. In consequence of Jeanie's letter to Lady Staunton, transmitting the confession, he had visited the town of Carlisle, and had found Archdeacon Fleming still alive, by whom that confession had been received. This reverend gentleman, whose character stood deservedly very high, he so far admitted into his confidence, as to own himself the father of the unfortunate infant which had been spirited away by Madge Wildfire, representing the intrigue as a matter of juvenile extravagance on his own part, for which he was now anxious to atone, by tracing, if possible, what had become of the child. After some recollection of the circumstances, the clergyman was able to call to memory, that the unhappy woman had written a letter to George Staunton, Esq., younger, Rectory, Willingham, by Grantham; that he had forwarded it to the address accordingly, and that it had been returned, with a note from the Reverend Mr. Staunton, Rector of Willingham, saying, he knew no such person as him to whom the letter was addressed. As this had happened just at the time when George had, for the last time, absconded from his father's house to carry off Effie, he was at no loss to account for the cause of the resentment, under the influence of which his father had disowned him. This was another instance in which his ungovernable temper had occasioned his misfortune; had he remained at Willingham but a few days longer, he would have received Margaret Murdockson's letter, in which were exactly described the person and haunts of the woman, Annaple Bailzou, to whom she had parted with the infant. It appeared that Meg Murdockson had been induced to make this confession, less from any feelings of contrition, than from the desire of obtaining, through George Staunton or his father's means, protection and support for her daughter Madge. Her letter to George Staunton said, "That while the writer lived, her daughter would have needed nought from any body, and that she would never have meddled in these affairs, except to pay back the ill that George had done to her and hers. But she was to die, and her daughter would be destitute, and without reason to guide her. She had lived in the world long enough to know that people did nothing for nothing;--so she had told George Staunton all he could wish to know about his wean, in hopes he would not see the demented young creature he had ruined perish for want. As for her motives for not telling them sooner, she had a long account to reckon for in the next world, and she would reckon for that too." The clergyman said that Meg had died in the same desperate state of mind, occasionally expressing some regret about the child which was lost, but oftener sorrow that the mother had not been hanged--her mind at once a chaos of guilt, rage, and apprehension for her daughter's future safety; that instinctive feeling of parental anxiety which she had in common with the she-wolf and lioness, being the last shade of kindly affection that occupied a breast equally savage. The melancholy catastrophe of Madge Wildfire was occasioned by her taking the confusion of her mother's execution, as affording an opportunity of leaving the workhouse to which the clergyman had sent her, and presenting herself to the mob in their fury, to perish in the way we have already seen. When Dr. Fleming found the convict's letter was returned from Lincolnshire, he wrote to a friend in Edinburgh, to inquire into the fate of the unfortunate girl whose child had been stolen, and was informed by his correspondent, that she had been pardoned, and that, with all her family, she had retired to some distant part of Scotland, or left the kingdom entirely. And here the matter rested, until, at Sir George Staunton's application, the clergyman looked out, and produced Margaret Murdockson's returned letter, and the other memoranda which he had kept concerning the affair. Whatever might be Sir George Staunton's feelings in ripping up this miserable history, and listening to the tragical fate of the unhappy girl whom he had ruined, he had so much of his ancient wilfulness of disposition left, as to shut his eyes on everything, save the prospect which seemed to open itself of recovering his son. It was true, it would be difficult to produce him, without telling much more of the history of his birth, and the misfortunes of his parents, than it was prudent to make known. But let him once be found, and, being found, let him but prove worthy of his father's protection, and many ways might be fallen upon to avoid such risk. Sir George Staunton was at liberty to adopt him as his heir, if he pleased, without communicating the secret of his birth; or an Act of Parliament might be obtained, declaring him legitimate, and allowing him the name and arms of his father. He was indeed already a legitimate child according to the law of Scotland, by the subsequent marriage of his parents. Wilful in everything, Sir George's sole desire now was to see this son, even should his recovery bring with it a new series of misfortunes, as dreadful as those which followed on his being lost. But where was the youth who might eventually be called to the honours and estates of this ancient family? On what heath was he wandering, and shrouded by what mean disguise? Did he gain his precarious bread by some petty trade, by menial toil, by violence, or by theft? These were questions on which Sir George's anxious investigations could obtain no light. Many remembered that Annaple Bailzou wandered through the country as a beggar and fortune-teller, or spae-wife--some remembered that she had been seen with an infant in 1737 or 1738,--but for more than ten years she had not travelled that district; and that she had been heard to say she was going to a distant part of Scotland, of which country she was a native. To Scotland, therefore, came Sir George Staunton, having parted with his lady at Glasgow; and his arrival at Edinburg happening to coincide with the sitting of the General Assembly of the Kirk, his acquaintance with the nobleman who held the office of Lord High Commissioner forced him more into public than suited either his views or inclinations. At the public table of this nobleman, Sir George Staunton was placed next to a clergyman of respectable appearance, and well-bred, though plain demeanour, whose name he discovered to be Butler. It had been no part of Sir George's plan to take his brother-in-law into his confidence, and he had rejoiced exceedingly in the assurances he received from his wife, that Mrs. Butler, the very soul of integrity and honour, had never suffered the account he had given of himself at Willingham Rectory to transpire, even to her husband. But he was not sorry to have an opportunity to converse with so near a connection without being known to him, and to form a judgment of his character and understanding. He saw much, and heard more, to raise Butler very high in his opinion. He found he was generally respected by those of his own profession, as well as by the laity who had seats in the Assembly. He had made several public appearances in the Assembly, distinguished by good sense, candour, and ability; and he was followed and admired as a sound, and, at the same time, an eloquent preacher. This was all very satisfactory to Sir George Staunton's pride, which had revolted at the idea of his wife's sister being obscurely married. He now began, on the contrary, to think the connection so much better than he expected, that, if it should be necessary to acknowledge it, in consequence of the recovery of his son, it would sound well enough that Lady Staunton had a sister, who, in the decayed state of the family, had married a Scottish clergyman, high in the opinion of his countrymen, and a leader in the church. It was with these feelings, that, when the Lord High Commissioner's company broke up, Sir George Staunton, under pretence of prolonging some inquiries concerning the constitution of the Church of Scotland, requested Butler to go home to his lodgings in the Lawnmarket, and drink a cup of coffee. Butler agreed to wait upon him, providing Sir George would permit him, in passing, to call at a friend's house where he resided, and make his apology for not coming to partake her tea. They proceeded up the High Street, entered the Krames, and passed the begging-box, placed to remind those at liberty of the distresses of the poor prisoners. Sir George paused there one instant, and next day a L20 note was found in that receptacle for public charity. When he came up to Butler again, he found him with his eyes fixed on the entrance of the Tolbooth, and apparently in deep thought. "That seems a very strong door," said Sir George, by way of saying something. "It is so, sir," said Butler, turning off and beginning to walk forward, "but it was my misfortune at one time to see it prove greatly too weak." At this moment, looking at his companion, he asked him whether he felt himself ill? and Sir George Staunton admitted, that he had been so foolish as to eat ice, which sometimes disagreed with him. With kind officiousness, that would not be gainsaid, and ere he could find out where he was going, Butler hurried Sir George into the friend's house, near to the prison, in which he himself had lived since he came to town, being, indeed, no other than that of our old friend Bartoline Saddletree, in which Lady Staunton had served a short noviciate as a shop-maid. This recollection rushed on her husband's mind, and the blush of shame which it excited overpowered the sensation of fear which had produced his former paleness. Good Mrs. Saddletree, however, bustled about to receive the rich English baronet as the friend of Mr. Butler, and requested an elderly female in a black gown to sit still, in a way which seemed to imply a wish, that she would clear the way for her betters. In the meanwhile, understanding the state of the case, she ran to get some cordial waters, sovereign, of course, in all cases of faintishness whatsoever. During her absence, her visitor, the female in black, made some progress out of the room, and might have left it altogether without particular observation, had she not stumbled at the threshold, so near Sir George Staunton, that he, in point of civility, raised her and assisted her to the door. "Mrs. Porteous is turned very doited now, puir body," said Mrs. Saddletree, as she returned with her bottle in her hand--"She is no sae auld, but she got a sair back-cast wi' the slaughter o' her husband--Ye had some trouble about that job, Mr. Butler.--I think, sir," to Sir George, "ye had better drink out the haill glass, for to my een ye look waur than when ye came in." And, indeed, he grew as pale as a corpse, on recollecting who it was that his arm had so lately supported--the widow whom he had so large a share in making such. "It is a prescribed job that case of Porteous now," said old Saddletree, who was confined to his chair by the gout--"clean prescribed and out of date." "I am not clear of that, neighbour," said Plumdamas, "for I have heard them say twenty years should rin, and this is but the fifty-ane-- Porteous's mob was in thretty-seven." "Ye'll no teach me law, I think, neighbour--me that has four gaun pleas, and might hae had fourteen, an it hadna been the gudewife? I tell ye, if the foremost of the Porteous mob were standing there where that gentleman stands, the King's Advocate wadna meddle wi' him--it fa's under the negative prescription." "Haud your din, carles," said Mrs. Saddletree, "and let the gentleman sit down and get a dish of comfortable tea." But Sir George had had quite enough of their conversation; and Butler, at his request, made an apology to Mrs. Saddletree, and accompanied him to his lodgings. Here they found another guest waiting Sir George Staunton's return. This was no other than our reader's old acquaintance, Ratcliffe. This man had exercised the office of turnkey with so much vigilance, acuteness, and fidelity, that he gradually rose to be governor, or captain of the Tolbooth. And it is yet to be remembered in tradition, that young men, who rather sought amusing than select society in their merry-meetings, used sometimes to request Ratcliffe's company, in order that he might regale them with legends of his extraordinary feats in the way of robbery and escape.* * There seems an anachronism in the history of this person. Ratcliffe, among other escapes from justice, was released by the Porteous mob when under sentence of death; and he was again under the same predicament, when the Highlanders made a similar jail-delivery in 1745. He was too sincere a whig to embrace liberation at the hands of the Jacobites, and in reward was made one of the keepers of the Tolbooth. So at least runs constant tradition. But he lived and died without resuming his original vocation, otherwise than in his narratives over a bottle. Under these circumstances, he had been recommended to Sir George Staunton by a man of the law in Edinburgh, as a person likely to answer any questions he might have to ask about Annaple Bailzou, who, according to the colour which Sir George Staunton gave to his cause of inquiry, was supposed to have stolen a child in the west of England, belonging to a family in which he was interested. The gentleman had not mentioned his name, but only his official title; so that Sir George Staunton, when told that the captain of the Tolbooth was waiting for him in his parlour, had no idea of meeting his former acquaintance, Jem Ratcliffe. This, therefore, was another new and most unpleasant surprise, for he had no difficulty in recollecting this man's remarkable features. The change, however, from George Robertson to Sir George Staunton, baffled even the penetration of Ratcliffe, and he bowed very low to the baronet and his guest, hoping Mr. Butler would excuse his recollecting that he was an old acquaintance. "And once rendered my wife a piece of great service," said Mr. Butler, "for which she sent you a token of grateful acknowledgment, which I hope came safe and was welcome." "Deil a doubt on't," said Ratcliffe, with a knowing nod; "but ye are muckle changed for the better since I saw ye, Maister Butler." "So much so, that I wonder you knew me." "Aha, then!--Deil a face I see I ever forget," said Ratcliffe while Sir George Staunton, tied to the stake, and incapable of escaping, internally cursed the accuracy of his memory. "And yet, sometimes," continued Ratcliffe, "the sharpest hand will be ta'en in. There is a face in this very room, if I might presume to be sae bauld, that, if I didna ken the honourable person it belangs to, I might think it had some cut of an auld acquaintance." "I should not be much flattered," answered the Baronet, sternly, and roused by the risk in which he saw himself placed, "if it is to me you mean to apply that compliment." "By no manner of means, sir," said Ratcliffe, bowing very low; "I am come to receive your honour's commands, and no to trouble your honour wi' my poor observations." "Well, sir," said Sir George, "I am told you understand police matters-- So do I.--To convince you of which, here are ten guineas of retaining fee--I make them fifty when you can find me certain notice of a person, living or dead, whom you will find described in that paper. I shall leave town presently--you may send your written answer to me to the care of Mr. " (naming his highly respectable agent), "or of his Grace the Lord High Commissioner." Rateliffe bowed and withdrew. "I have angered the proud peat now," he said to himself, "by finding out a likeness; but if George Robertson's father had lived within a mile of his mother, d--n me if I should not know what to think, for as high as he carries his head." When he was left alone with Butler, Sir George Staunton ordered tea and coffee, which were brought by his valet, and then, after considering with himself for a minute, asked his guest whether he had lately heard from his wife and family. Butler, with some surprise at the question, replied, "that he had received no letter for some time; his wife was a poor penwoman." "Then," said Sir George Staunton, "I am the first to inform you there has been an invasion of your quiet premises since you left home. My wife, whom the Duke of Argyle had the goodness to permit to use Roseneath Lodge, while she was spending some weeks in your country, has sallied across and taken up her quarters in the Manse, as she says, to be nearer the goats, whose milk she is using; but, I believe, in reality, because she prefers Mrs. Butler's company to that of the respectable gentleman who acts as seneschal on the Duke's domains." Mr. Butler said, "He had often heard the late Duke and the present speak with high respect of Lady Staunton, and was happy if his house could accommodate any friend of theirs--it would be but a very slight acknowledgment of the many favours he owed them." "That does not make Lady Staunton and myself the less obliged to your hospitality, sir," said Sir George. "May I inquire if you think of returning home soon?" "In the course of two days," Mr. Butler answered, "his duty in the Assembly would be ended; and the other matters he had in town being all finished, he was desirous of returning to Dumbartonshire as soon as he could; but he was under the necessity of transporting a considerable sum in bills and money with him, and therefore wished to travel in company with one or two of his brethren of the clergy." "My escort will be more safe," said Sir George Staunton, "and I think of setting off to-morrow or next day. If you will give me the pleasure of your company, I will undertake to deliver you and your charge safe at the Manse, provided you will admit me along with you." Mr. Butler gratefully accepted of this proposal; the appointment was made accordingly, and, by despatches with one of Sir George's servants, who was sent forward for the purpose, the inhabitants of the manse of Knocktarlitie were made acquainted with the intended journey; and the news rung through the whole vicinity, "that the minister was coming back wi' a braw English gentleman and a' the siller that was to pay for the estate of Craigsture." This sudden resolution of going to Knocktarlitie had been adopted by Sir George Staunton in consequence of the incidents of the evening. In spite of his present consequence, he felt he had presumed too far in venturing so near the scene of his former audacious acts of violence, and he knew too well, from past experience, the acuteness of a man like Ratcliffe, again to encounter him. The next two days he kept his lodgings, under pretence of indisposition, and took leave by writing of his noble friend the High Commissioner, alleging the opportunity of Mr. Butler's company as a reason for leaving Edinburgh sooner than he had proposed. He had a long conference with his agent on the subject of Annaple Bailzou; and the professional gentleman, who was the agent also of the Argyle family, had directions to collect all the information which Ratcliffe or others might be able to obtain concerning the fate of that woman and the unfortunate child, and so soon as anything transpired which had the least appearance of being important, that he should send an express with it instantly to Knocktarlitie. These instructions were backed with a deposit of money, and a request that no expense might be spared; so that Sir George Staunton had little reason to apprehend negligence on the part of the persons intrusted with the commission. The journey, which the brothers made in company, was attended with more pleasure, even to Sir George Staunton, than he had ventured to expect. His heart lightened in spite of himself when they lost sight of Edinburgh; and the easy, sensible conversation of Butler was well calculated to withdraw his thoughts from painful reflections. He even began to think whether there could be much difficulty in removing his wife's connections to the rectory of Willingham; it was only on his part procuring some still better preferment for the present incumbent, and on Butler's, that he should take orders according to the English Church, to which he could not conceive a possibility of his making objection, and then he had them residing under his wing. No doubt there was pain in seeing Mrs. Butler, acquainted, as he knew her to be, with the full truth of his evil history; but then her silence, though he had no reason to complain of her indiscretion hitherto, was still more absolutely ensured. It would keep his lady, also, both in good temper and in more subjection; for she was sometimes troublesome to him by insisting on remaining in town when he desired to retire to the country, alleging the total want of society at Willingham. "Madam, your sister is there," would, he thought, be a sufficient answer to this ready argument. He sounded Butler on this subject, asking what he would think of an English living of twelve hundred pounds yearly, with the burden of affording his company now and then to a neighbour, whose health was not strong or his spirits equal. "He might meet," he said, "occasionally, a very learned and accomplished gentleman, who was in orders as a Catholic priest, but he hoped that would be no insurmountable objection to a man of his liberality of sentiment. What," he said, "would Mr. Butler think of as an answer, if the offer should be made to him?" "Simply that I could not accept of it," said Mr. Butler. "I have no mind to enter into the various debates between the churches; but I was brought up in mine own, have received her ordination, am satisfied of the truth of her doctrines, and will die under the banner I have enlisted to." "What may be the value of your preferment?" said Sir George Staunton, "unless I am asking an indiscreet question." "Probably one hundred a-year, one year with another, besides my glebe and pasture-ground." "And you scruple to exchange that for twelve hundred a-year, without alleging any damning difference of doctrine betwixt the two churches of England and Scotland?" "On that, sir, I have reserved my judgment; there may be much good, and there are certainly saving means in both; but every man must act according to his own lights. I hope I have done, and am in the course of doing, my Master's work in this Highland parish; and it would ill become me, for the sake of lucre, to leave my sheep in the wilderness. But, even in the temporal view which you have taken of the matter, Sir George, this hundred pounds a-year of stipend hath fed and clothed us, and left us nothing to wish for; my father-in-law's succession, and other circumstances, have added a small estate of about twice as much more, and how we are to dispose of it I do not know--So I leave it to you, sir, to think if I were wise, not having the wish or opportunity of spending three hundred a-year, to covet the possession of four times that sum." "This is philosophy," said Sir George; "I have heard of it, but I never saw it before." "It is common sense," replied Butler, "which accords with philosophy and religion more frequently than pedants or zealots are apt to admit." Sir George turned the subject, and did not again resume it. Although they travelled in Sir George's chariot, he seemed so much fatigued with the motion, that it was necessary for him to remain for a day at a small town called Mid-Calder, which was their first stage from Edinburgh. Glasgow occupied another day, so slow were their motions. They travelled on to Dumbarton, where they had resolved to leave the equipage and to hire a boat to take them to the shores near the manse, as the Gare-Loch lay betwixt them and that point, besides the impossibility of travelling in that district with wheel-carriages. Sir George's valet, a man of trust, accompanied them, as also a footman; the grooms were left with the carriage. Just as this arrangement was completed, which was about four o'clock in the afternoon, an express arrived from Sir George's agent in Edinburgh, with a packet, which he opened and read with great attention, appearing much interested and agitated by the contents. The packet had been despatched very soon after their leaving Edinburgh, but the messenger had missed the travellers by passing through Mid-Calder in the night, and overshot his errand by getting to Roseneath before them. He was now on his return, after having waited more than four-and-twenty hours. Sir George Staunton instantly wrote back an answer, and rewarding the messenger liberally, desired him not to sleep till he placed it in his agent's hands. At length they embarked in the boat, which had waited for them some time. During their voyage, which was slow, for they were obliged to row the whole way, and often against the tide, Sir George Staunton's inquiries ran chiefly on the subject of the Highland banditti who had infested that country since the year 1745. Butler informed him that many of them were not native Highlanders, but gipsies, tinkers, and other men of desperate fortunes, who had taken advantage of the confusion introduced by the civil war, the general discontent of the mountaineers, and the unsettled state of police, to practise their plundering trade with more audacity. Sir George next inquired into their lives, their habits, whether the violences which they committed were not sometimes atoned for by acts of generosity, and whether they did not possess the virtues as well as the vices of savage tribes? Butler answered, that certainly they did sometimes show sparks of generosity, of which even the worst class of malefactors are seldom utterly divested; but that their evil propensities were certain and regular principles of action, while any occasional burst of virtuous feeling was only a transient impulse not to be reckoned upon, and excited probably by some singular and unusual concatenation of circumstances. In discussing these inquiries, which Sir George pursued with an apparent eagerness that rather surprised Butler, the latter chanced to mention the name of Donacha dhu na Dunaigh, with which the reader is already acquainted. Sir George caught the sound up eagerly, and as if it conveyed particular interest to his ear. He made the most minute inquiries concerning the man whom he mentioned, the number of his gang, and even the appearance of those who belonged to it. Upon these points Butler could give little answer. The man had a name among the lower class, but his exploits were considerably exaggerated; he had always one or two fellows with him, but never aspired to the command of above three or four. In short, he knew little about him, and the small acquaintance he had had by no means inclined him to desire more. "Nevertheless, I should like to see him some of these days." "That would be a dangerous meeting, Sir George, unless you mean we are to see him receive his deserts from the law, and then it were a melancholy one." "Use every man according to his deserts, Mr. Butler, and who shall escape whipping? But I am talking riddles to you. I will explain them more fully to you when I have spoken over the subject with Lady Staunton.--Pull away, my lads," he added, addressing himself to the rowers; "the clouds threaten us with a storm." In fact, the dead and heavy closeness of the air, the huge piles of clouds which assembled in the western horizon, and glowed like a furnace under the influence of the setting sun--that awful stillness in which nature seems to expect the thunder-burst, as a condemned soldier waits for the platoon fire which is to stretch him on the earth, all betokened a speedy storm. Large broad drops fell from time to time, and induced the gentlemen to assume the boat-cloaks; but the rain again ceased, and the oppressive heat, so unusual in Scotland in the end of May, inclined them to throw them aside. "There is something solemn in this delay of the storm," said Sir George; "it seems as if it suspended its peal till it solemnised some important event in the world below." "Alas!" replied Butler, "what are we that the laws of nature should correspond in their march with our ephemeral deeds or sufferings! The clouds will burst when surcharged with the electric fluid, whether a goat is falling at that instant from the cliffs of Arran, or a hero expiring on the field of battle he has won." "The mind delights to deem it otherwise," said Sir George Staunton; "and to dwell on the fate of humanity as on that which is the prime central movement of the mighty machine. We love not to think that we shall mix with the ages that have gone before us, as these broad black raindrops mingle with the waste of waters, making a trifling and momentary eddy, and are then lost for ever." "_For ever!_--we are not--we cannot be lost for ever," said Butler, looking upward; "death is to us change, not consummation; and the commencement of a new existence, corresponding in character to the deeds which we have done in the body." While they agitated these grave subjects, to which the solemnity of the approaching storm naturally led them, their voyage threatened to be more tedious than they expected, for gusts of wind, which rose and fell with sudden impetuosity, swept the bosom of the firth, and impeded the efforts of the rowers. They had now only to double a small headland, in order to get to the proper landing-place in the mouth of the little river; but in the state of the weather, and the boat being heavy, this was like to be a work of time, and in the meanwhile they must necessarily be exposed to the storm. "Could we not land on this side of the headland," asked Sir George, "and so gain some shelter?" Butler knew of no landing-place, at least none affording a convenient or even practicable passage up the rocks which surrounded the shore. "Think again," said Sir George Staunton; "the storm will soon be violent." "Hout, ay," said one of the boatmen, "there's the Caird's Cove; but we dinna tell the minister about it, and I am no sure if I can steer the boat to it, the bay is sae fa' o' shoals and sunk rocks." "Try," said Sir George, "and I will give you half-a-guinea." The old fellow took the helm, and observed, "That, if they could get in, there was a steep path up from the beach, and half-an-hour's walk from thence to the Manse." "Are you sure you know the way?" said Butler to the old man. "I maybe kend it a wee better fifteen years syne, when Dandie Wilson was in the firth wi' his clean-ganging lugger. I mind Dandie had a wild young Englisher wi' him, that they ca'd" "If you chatter so much," said Sir George Staunton, "you will have the boat on the Grindstone--bring that white rock in a line with the steeple." "By G--," said the veteran, staring, "I think your honour kens the bay as weel as me.--Your honour's nose has been on the Grindstone ere now, I'm thinking." As they spoke thus, they approached the little cove, which, concealed behind crags, and defended on every point by shallows and sunken rocks, could scarce be discovered or approached, except by those intimate with the navigation. An old shattered boat was already drawn up on the beach within the cove, close beneath the trees, and with precautions for concealment. Upon observing this vessel, Butler remarked to his companion, "It is impossible for you to conceive, Sir George, the difficulty I have had with my poor people, in teaching them the guilt and the danger of this contraband trade--yet they have perpetually before their eyes all its dangerous consequences. I do not know anything that more effectually depraves and ruins their moral and religious principles." Sir George forced himself to say something in a low voice about the spirit of adventure natural to youth, and that unquestionably many would become wiser as they grew older. "Too seldom, sir," replied Butler. "If they have been deeply engaged, and especially if they, have mingled in the scenes of violence and blood to which their occupation naturally leads, I have observed, that, sooner or later, they come to an evil end. Experience, as well as Scripture, teaches us, Sir George, that mischief shall hunt the violent man, and that the bloodthirsty man shall not live half his days--But take my arm to help you ashore." Sir George needed assistance, for he was contrasting in his altered thought the different feelings of mind and frame with which he had formerly frequented the same place. As they landed, a low growl of thunder was heard at a distance. "That is ominous, Mr. Butler," said Sir George. "_Intonuit laevum_--it is ominous of good, then," answered Butler, smiling. The boatmen were ordered to make the best of their way round the headland to the ordinary landing-place; the two gentlemen, followed by their servant, sought their way by a blind and tangled path, through a close copsewood, to the Manse of Knocktarlitie, where their arrival was anxiously expected. The sisters in vain had expected their husbands' return on the preceding day, which was that appointed by Sir George's letter. The delay of the travellers at Calder had occasioned this breach of appointment. The inhabitants of the Manse began even to doubt whether they would arrive on the present day. Lady Staunton felt this hope of delay as a brief reprieve, for she dreaded the pangs which her husband's pride must undergo at meeting with a sister-in-law, to whom the whole of his unhappy and dishonourable history was too well known. She knew, whatever force or constraint he might put upon his feelings in public, that she herself must be doomed to see them display themselves in full vehemence in secret,--consume his health, destroy his temper, and render him at once an object of dread and compassion. Again and again she cautioned Jeanie to display no tokens of recognition, but to receive him as a perfect stranger,--and again and again Jeanie renewed her promise to comply with her wishes. Jeanie herself could not fail to bestow an anxious thought on the awkwardness of the approaching meeting; but her conscience was ungalled--and then she was cumbered with many household cares of an unusual nature, which, joined to the anxious wish once more to see Butler, after an absence of unusual length, made her extremely desirous that the travellers should arrive as soon as possible. And--why should I disguise the truth?--ever and anon a thought stole across her mind that her gala dinner had now been postponed for two days; and how few of the dishes, after every art of her simple cuisine had been exerted to dress them, could with any credit or propriety appear again upon the third; and what was she to do with the rest?--Upon this last subject she was saved the trouble of farther deliberation, by the sudden appearance of the Captain at the head of half-a-dozen stout fellows, dressed and armed in the Highland fashion. "Goot-morrow morning to ye, Leddy Staunton, and I hope I hae the pleasure to see you weel--And goot-morrow to you, goot Mrs. Putler--I do peg you will order some victuals and ale and prandy for the lads, for we hae peen out on firth and moor since afore daylight, and a' to no purpose neither--Cot tam!" So saying, he sate down, pushed back his brigadier wig, and wiped his head with an air of easy importance; totally regardless of the look of well-bred astonishment by which Lady Staunton endeavoured to make him comprehend that he was assuming too great a liberty. "It is some comfort, when one has had a sair tussel," continued the Captain, addressing Lady Staunton, with an air of gallantry, "that it is in a fair leddy's service, or in the service of a gentleman whilk has a fair leddy, whilk is the same thing, since serving the husband is serving the wife, as Mrs. Putler does very weel know." "Really, sir," said Lady Staunton, "as you seem to intend this compliment for me, I am at a loss to know what interest Sir George or I can have in your movements this morning." "O, Cot tam!--this is too cruel, my leddy--as if it was not py special express from his Grace's honourable agent and commissioner at Edinburgh, with a warrant conform, that I was to seek for and apprehend Donacha dhu na Dunaigh, and pring him pefore myself and Sir George Staunton, that he may have his deserts, that is to say, the gallows, whilk he has doubtless deserved, py peing the means of frightening your leddyship, as weel as for something of less importance." "Frightening me!" said her ladyship; "why, I never wrote to Sir George about my alarm at the waterfall." "Then he must have heard it otherwise; for what else can give him sic an earnest tesire to see this rapscallion, that I maun ripe the haill mosses and muirs in the country for him, as if I were to get something for finding him, when the pest o't might pe a pall through my prains?" "Can it be really true, that it is on Sir George's account that you have been attempting to apprehend this fellow?" "Py Cot, it is for no other cause that I know than his honour's pleasure; for the creature might hae gone on in a decent quiet way for me, sae lang as he respectit the Duke's pounds--put reason goot he suld be taen, and hangit to poet, if it may pleasure ony honourable shentleman that is the Duke's friend--Sae I got the express over night, and I caused warn half a score of pretty lads, and was up in the morning pefore the sun, and I garr'd the lads take their kilts and short coats." "I wonder you did that, Captain," said Mrs. Butler, "when you know the act of Parliament against wearing the Highland dress." "Hout, tout, ne'er fash your thumb, Mrs. Putler. The law is put twa-three years auld yet, and is ower young to hae come our length; and pesides, how is the lads to climb the praes wi' thae tamn'd breekens on them? It makes me sick to see them. Put ony how, I thought I kend Donacha's haunt gey and weel, and I was at the place where he had rested yestreen; for I saw the leaves the limmers had lain on, and the ashes of them; by the same token, there was a pit greeshoch purning yet. I am thinking they got some word oat o' the island what was intended--I sought every glen and clench, as if I had been deer-stalking, but teil a want of his coat-tail could I see--Cot tam!" "He'll be away down the Firth to Cowal," said David; and Reuben, who had been out early that morning a-nutting, observed, "That he had seen a boat making for the Caird's Cove;" a place well known to the boys, though their less adventurous father was ignorant of its existence. "Py Cot," said Duncan, "then I will stay here no longer than to trink this very horn of prandy and water, for it's very possible they will pe in the wood. Donacha's a clever fellow, and maype thinks it pest to sit next the chimley when the lum reeks. He thought naebody would look for him sae near hand! I peg your leddyship will excuse my aprupt departure, as I will return forthwith, and I will either pring you Donacha in life, or else his head, whilk I dare to say will be as satisfactory. And I hope to pass a pleasant evening with your leddyship; and I hope to have mine revenges on Mr. Putler at backgammon, for the four pennies whilk he won, for he will pe surely at home soon, or else he will have a wet journey, seeing it is apout to pe a scud." Thus saying, with many scrapes and bows, and apologies for leaving them, which were very readily received, and reiterated assurances of his speedy return (of the sincerity whereof Mrs. Butler entertained no doubt, so long as her best greybeard of brandy was upon duty), Duncan left the Manse, collected his followers, and began to scour the close and entangled wood which lay between the little glen and the Caird's Cove. David, who was a favourite with the Captain, on account of his spirit and courage, took the opportunity of escaping, to attend the investigations of that great man. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTH. I did send for thee, That Talbot's name might be in thee revived, When sapless age and weak, unable limbs, Should bring thy father to his drooping chair. But--O malignant and ill-boding stars!-- First part of Henry the Sixth. Duncan and his party had not proceeded very far in the direction of the Caird's Cove before they heard a shot, which was quickly followed by one or two others. "Some tamn'd villains among the roe-deer," said Duncan; "look sharp out, lads." The clash of swords was next heard, and Duncan and his myrmidons, hastening to the spot, found Butler and Sir George Staunton's servant in the hands of four ruffians. Sir George himself lay stretched on the ground, with his drawn sword in his hand. Duncan, who was as brave as a lion, instantly fired his pistol at the leader of the band, unsheathed his sword, cried out to his men, _Claymore!_ and run his weapon through the body of the fellow whom he had previously wounded, who was no other thau Donacha dhu na Dunaigh himself. The other banditti were speedily overpowered, excepting one young lad, who made wonderful resistance for his years, and was at length secured with difficulty. [Illustration: Death of Sir George Staunton--404] Butler, so soon as he was liberated from the ruffians, ran to raise Sir George Staunton, but life had wholly left him. "A creat misfortune," said Duncan; "I think it will pe pest that I go forward to intimate it to the coot lady.--Tavie, my dear, you hae smelled pouther for the first time this day--take my sword and hack off Donacha's head, whilk will pe coot practice for you against the time you may wish to do the same kindness to a living shentleman--or hould! as your father does not approve, you may leave it alone, as he will pe a greater object of satisfaction to Leddy Staunton to see him entire; and I hope she will do me the credit to pelieve that I can afenge a shentleman's plood fery speedily and well." Such was the observation of a man too much accustomed to the ancient state of manners in the Highlands, to look upon the issue of such a skirmish as anything worthy of wonder or emotion. We will not attempt to describe the very contrary effect which the unexpected disaster produced upon Lady Staunton, when the bloody corpse of her husband was brought to the house, where she expected to meet him alive and well. All was forgotten, but that he was the lover of her youth; and whatever were his faults to the world, that he had towards her exhibited only those that arose from the inequality of spirits and temper, incident to a situation of unparalleled difficulty. In the vivacity of her grief she gave way to all the natural irritability of her temper; shriek followed shriek, and swoon succeeded to swoon. It required all Jeanie's watchful affection to prevent her from making known, in these paroxysms of affliction, much which it was of the highest importance that she should keep secret. At length silence and exhaustion succeeded to frenzy, and Jeanie stole out to take counsel with her husband, and to exhort him to anticipate the Captain's interference, by taking possession, in Lady Staunton's name, of the private papers of her deceased husband. To the utter astonishment of Butler, she now, for the first time, explained the relation betwixt herself and Lady Staunton, which authorised, nay, demanded, that he should prevent any stranger from being unnecessarily made acquainted with her family affairs. It was in such a crisis that Jeanie's active and undaunted habits of virtuous exertion were most conspicuous. While the Captain's attention was still engaged by a prolonged refreshment, and a very tedious examination, in Gaelic and English, of all the prisoners, and every other witness of the fatal transaction, she had the body of her brother-in-law undressed and properly disposed. It then appeared, from the crucifix, the beads, and the shirt of hair which he wore next his person, that his sense of guilt had induced him to receive the dogmata of a religion, which pretends, by the maceration of the body, to expiate the crimes of the soul. In the packet of papers which the express had brought to Sir George Staunton from Edinburgh, and which Butler, authorised by his connection with the deceased, did not scruple to examine, he found new and astonishing intelligence, which gave him reason to thank God he had taken that measure. Ratcliffe, to whom all sorts of misdeeds and misdoers were familiar, instigated by the promised reward, soon found himself in a condition to trace the infant of these unhappy parents. The woman to whom Meg Murdockson had sold that most unfortunate child, had made it the companion of her wanderings and her beggary, until he was about seven or eight years old, when, as Ratcliffe learned from a companion of hers, then in the Correction House of Edinburgh, she sold him in her turn to Donacha dhu na Dunaigh. This man, to whom no act of mischief was unknown, was occasionally an agent in a horrible trade then carried on betwixt Scotland and America, for supplying the plantations with servants, by means of _kidnapping,_ as it was termed, both men and women, but especially children under age. Here Ratcliffe lost sight of the boy, but had no doubt but Donacha Dhu could give an account of him. The gentleman of the law, so often mentioned, despatched therefore an express, with a letter to Sir George Staunton, and another covering a warrant for apprehension of Donacha, with instructions to the Captain of Knockdunder to exert his utmost energy for that purpose. Possessed of this information, and with a mind agitated by the most gloomy apprehensions, Butler now joined the Captain, and obtained from him with some difficulty a sight of the examinations. These, with a few questions to the elder of the prisoners, soon confirmed the most dreadful of Butler's anticipations. We give the heads of the information, without descending into minute details. Donacha Dhu had indeed purchased Effie's unhappy child, with the purpose of selling it to the American traders, whom he had been in the habit of supplying with human flesh. But no opportunity occurred for some time; and the boy, who was known by the name of "The Whistler," made some impression on the heart and affections even of this rude savage, perhaps because he saw in him flashes of a spirit as fierce and vindictive as his own. When Donacha struck or threatened him--a very common occurrence--he did not answer with complaints and entreaties like other children, but with oaths and efforts at revenge--he had all the wild merit, too, by which Woggarwolfe's arrow-bearing page won the hard heart of his master: Like a wild cub, rear'd at the ruffian's feet, He could say biting jests, bold ditties sing, And quaff his foaming bumper at the board, With all the mockery of a little man.* * Ethwald. In short, as Donacha Dhu said, the Whistler was a born imp of Satan, and _therefore_ he should never leave him. Accordingly, from his eleventh year forward, he was one of the band, and often engaged in acts of violence. The last of these was more immediately occasioned by the researches which the Whistler's real father made after him whom he had been taught to consider as such. Donacha Dhu's fears had been for some time excited by the strength of the means which began now to be employed against persons of his description. He was sensible he existed only by the precarious indulgence of his namesake, Duncan of Knockdunder, who was used to boast that he could put him down or string him up when he had a mind. He resolved to leave the kingdom by means of one of those sloops which were engaged in the traffic of his old kidnapping friends, and which was about to sail for America; but he was desirous first to strike a bold stroke. The ruffian's cupidity was excited by the intelligence, that a wealthy Englishman was coming to the Manse--he had neither forgotten the Whistler's report of the gold he had seen in Lady Staunton's purse, nor his old vow of revenge against the minister; and, to bring the whole to a point, he conceived the hope of appropriating the money, which, according to the general report of the country, the minister was to bring from Edinburgh to pay for his pew purchase. While he was considering how he might best accomplish his purpose, he received the intelligence from one quarter, that the vessel in which he proposed to sail was to sail immediately from Greenock; from another, that the minister and a rich English lord, with a great many thousand pounds, were expected the next evening at the Manse; and from a third, that he must consult his safety by leaving his ordinary haunts as soon as possible, for that the Captain had ordered out a party to scour the glens for him at break of day. Donacha laid his plans with promptitude and decision. He embarked with the Whistler and two others of his band (whom, by the by, he meant to sell to the kidnappers), and set sail for the Caird's Cove. He intended to lurk till nightfall in the wood adjoining to this place, which he thought was too near the habitation of men to excite the suspicion of Duncan Knock, then break into Butler's peaceful habitation, and flesh at once his appetite for plunder and revenge. When his villany was accomplished, his boat was to convey him to the vessel, which, according to previous agreement with the master, was instantly to set sail. This desperate design would probably have succeeded, but for the ruffians being discovered in their lurking-place by Sir George Staunton and Butler, in their accidental walk from the Caird's Cove towards the Manse. Finding himself detected, and at the same time observing that the servant carried a casket, or strong-box, Donacha conceived that both his prize and his victims were within his power, and attacked the travellers without hesitation. Shots were fired and swords drawn on both sides; Sir George Staunton offered the bravest resistance till he fell, as there was too much reason to believe, by the hand of a son, so long sought, and now at length so unhappily met. While Butler was half-stunned with this intelligence, the hoarse voice of Knockdunder added to his consternation. "I will take the liperty to take down the pell-ropes, Mr. Putler, as I must pe taking order to hang these idle people up to-morrow morning, to teach them more consideration in their doings in future." Butler entreated him to remember the act abolishing the heritable jurisdictions, and that he ought to send them to Glasgow or Inverary, to be tried by the Circuit. Duncan scorned the proposal. "The Jurisdiction Act," he said, "had nothing to do put with the rebels, and specially not with Argyle's country; and he would hang the men up all three in one row before coot Leddy Staunton's windows, which would be a great comfort to her in the morning to see that the coot gentleman, her husband, had been suitably afenged." And the utmost length that Butler's most earnest entreaties could prevail was, that he would, reserve "the twa pig carles for the Circuit, but as for him they ca'd the Fustler, he should try how he could fustle in a swinging tow, for it suldna be said that a shentleman, friend to the Duke, was killed in his country, and his people didna take at least twa lives for ane." Butler entreated him to spare the victim for his soul's sake. But Knockdunder answered, "that the soul of such a scum had been long the tefil's property, and that, Cot tam! he was determined to gif the tefil his due." All persuasion was in vain, and Duncan issued his mandate for execution on the succeeding morning. The child of guilt and misery was separated from his companions, strongly pinioned, and committed to a separate room, of which the Captain kept the key. In the silence of the night, however, Mrs. Butler arose, resolved, if possible, to avert, at least to delay, the fate which hung over her nephew, especially if, upon conversing with him, she should see any hope of his being brought to better temper. She had a master-key that opened every lock in the house; and at midnight, when all was still, she stood before the eyes of the astonished young savage, as, hard bound with cords, he lay, like a sheep designed for slaughter, upon a quantity of the refuse of flax which filled a corner in the apartment. Amid features sunburnt, tawny, grimed with dirt, and obscured by his shaggy hair of a rusted black colour, Jeanie tried in vain to trace the likeness of either of his very handsome parents. Yet how could she refuse compassion to a creature so young and so wretched,--so much more wretched than even he himself could be aware of, since the murder he had too probably committed with his own hand, but in which he had at any rate participated, was in fact a parricide? She placed food on a table near him, raised him, and slacked the cords on his arms, so as to permit him to feed himself. He stretched out his hands, still smeared with blood perhaps that of his father, and he ate voraciously and in silence. "What is your first name?" said Jeanie, by way of opening the conversation. "The Whistler." "But your Christian name, by which you were baptized?" "I never was baptized that I know of--I have no other name than the Whistler." "Poor unhappy abandoned lad!" said Jeanie. "What would ye do if you could escape from this place, and the death you are to die to-morrow morning?" "Join wi' Rob Roy, or wi' Sergeant More Cameron" (noted freebooters at that time), "and revenge Donacha's death on all and sundry." "O ye unhappy boy," said Jeanie, "do ye ken what will come o' ye when ye die?" "I shall neither feel cauld nor hunger more," said the youth doggedly. "To let him be execute in this dreadful state of mind would be to destroy baith body and soul--and to let him gang I dare not--what will be done?-- But he is my sister's son--my own nephew--our flesh and blood--and his hands and feet are yerked as tight as cords can be drawn.--Whistler, do the cords hurt you?" "Very much." "But, if I were to slacken them, you would harm me?" "No, I would not--you never harmed me or mine." There may be good in him yet, thought Jeanie; I will try fair play with him. She cut his bonds--he stood upright, looked round with a laugh of wild exultation, clapped his hands together, and sprung from the ground, as if in transport on finding himself at liberty. He looked so wild, that Jeanie trembled at what she had done. "Let me out," said the young savage. "I wunna, unless you promise" "Then I'll make you glad to let us both out." He seized the lighted candle and threw it among the flax, which was instantly in a flame. Jeanie screamed, and ran out of the room; the prisoner rushed past her, threw open a window in the passage, jumped into the garden, sprung over its enclosure, bounded through the woods like a deer, and gained the seashore. Meantime, the fire was extinguished, but the prisoner was sought in vain. As Jeanie kept her own secret, the share she had in his escape was not discovered: but they learned his fate some time afterwards--it was as wild as his life had hitherto been. The anxious inquiries of Butler at length learned, that the youth had gained the ship in which his master, Donacha, had designed to embark. But the avaricious shipmaster, inured by his evil trade to every species of treachery, and disappointed of the rich booty which Donacha had proposed to bring aboard, secured the person of the fugitive, and having transported him to America, sold him as a slave, or indented servant, to a Virginian planter, far up the country. When these tidings reached Butler, he sent over to America a sufficient sum to redeem the lad from slavery, with instructions that measures should be taken for improving his mind, restraining his evil propensities, and encouraging whatever good might appear in his character. But this aid came too late. The young man had headed a conspiracy in which his inhuman master was put to death, and had then fled to the next tribe of wild Indians. He was never more heard of; and it may therefore be presumed that he lived and died after the manner of that savage people, with whom his previous habits had well fitted him to associate. All hopes of the young man's reformation being now ended, Mr. and Mrs. Butler thought it could serve no purpose to explain to Lady Staunton a history so full of horror. She remained their guest more than a year, during the greater part of which period her grief was excessive. In the latter months, it assumed the appearance of listlessness and low spirits, which the monotony of her sister's quiet establishment afforded no means of dissipating. Effie, from her earliest youth, was never formed for a quiet low content. Far different from her sister, she required the dissipation of society to divert her sorrow, or enhance her joy. She left the seclusion of Knocktarlitie with tears of sincere affection, and after heaping its inmates with all she could think of that might be valuable in their eyes. But she _did_ leave it; and, when the anguish of the parting was over, her departure was a relief to both sisters. The family at the Manse of Knocktarlitie, in their own quiet happiness, heard of the well-dowered and beautiful Lady Staunton resuming her place in the fashionable world. They learned it by more substantial proofs, for David received a commission; and as the military spirit of Bible Butler seemed to have revived in him, his good behaviour qualified the envy of five hundred young Highland cadets, "come of good houses," who were astonished at the rapidity of his promotion. Reuben followed the law, and rose more slowly, yet surely. Euphemia Butler, whose fortune, augmented by her aunt's generosity, and added to her own beauty, rendered her no small prize, married a Highland laird, who never asked the name of her grand-father, and was loaded on the occasion with presents from Lady Staunton, which made her the envy of all the beauties in Dumbarton and Argyle shires. After blazing nearly ten years in the fashionable world, and hiding, like many of her compeers, an aching heart with a gay demeanour--after declining repeated offers of the most respectable kind for a second matrimonial engagement, Lady Staunton betrayed the inward wound by retiring to the Continent, and taking up her abode in the convent where she had received her education. She never took the veil, but lived and died in severe seclusion, and in the practice of the Roman Catholic religion, in all its formal observances, vigils, and austerities. Jeanie had so much of her father's spirit as to sorrow bitterly for this apostasy, and Butler joined in her regret. "Yet any religion, however imperfect," he said, "was better than cold scepticism, or the hurrying din of dissipation, which fills the ears of worldlings, until they care for none of these things." Meanwhile, happy in each other, in the prosperity of their family, and the love and honour of all who knew them, this simple pair lived beloved, and died lamented. [Illustration: Jeanie Dean's Cottage--414] READER, THIS TALE WILL NOT BE TOLD IN VAIN, IF IT SHALL BE FOUND TO ILLUSTRATE THE GREAT TRUTH, THAT GUILT, THOUGH IT MAY ATTAIN TEMPORAL SPLENDOUR, CAN NEVER CONFER REAL HAPPINESS; THAT THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF OUR CRIMES LONG SURVIVE THEIR COMMISSION, AND, LIKE THE GHOSTS OF THE MURDERED, FOR EVER HAUNT THE STEPS OF THE MALEFACTOR; AND THAT THE PATHS OF VIRTUE, THOUGH SELDOM THOSE OF WORLDLY GREATNESS, ARE ALWAYS THOSE OF PLEASANTNESS AND PEACE. L'ENVOY, BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM. Thus concludeth the Tale of "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," which hath filled more pages than I opined. The Heart of Mid-Lothian is now no more, or rather it is transferred to the extreme side of the city, even as the Sieur Jean Baptiste Poquelin hath it, in his pleasant comedy called _Le Me'decin Malgre' Lui,_ where the simulated doctor wittily replieth to a charge, that he had placed the heart on the right side, instead of the left, "_Cela e'tait autrefois ainsi, mais nous avons change' tout cela._" Of which witty speech if any reader shall demand the purport, I have only to respond, that I teach the French as well as the Classical tongues, at the easy rate of five shillings per quarter, as my advertisements are periodically making known to the public. NOTES TO THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. NOTE A--Author's connection with Quakerism. It is an old proverb, that "many a true word is spoken in jest." The existence of Walter Scott, third son of Sir William Scott of Harden, is instructed, as it is called, by a charter under the great seal, Domino Willielmo Scott de Harden Militi, et Waltero Scott suo filio legitimo tertio genito, terrarum de Roberton.* * See Douglas's _Baronage,_ page 215. The munificent old gentleman left all his four sons considerable estates. and settled those of Eilrig and Raeburn, together with valuable possessions around Lessuden, upon Walter, his third son, who is ancestor of the Scotts of Raeburn, and of the Author of Waverley. He appears to have become a convert to the doctrine of the Quakers, or Friends, and a great assertor of their peculiar tenets. This was probably at the time when George Fox, the celebrated apostle of the sect, made an expedition into the south of Scotland about 1657, on which occasion, he boasts, that "as he first set his horse's feet upon Scottish ground, he felt the seed of grace to sparkle about him like innumerable sparks of fire." Upon the same occasion, probably, Sir Gideon Scott of Highchester, second son of Sir William, immediate elder brother of Walter, and ancestor of the author's friend and kinsman, the present representative of the family of Harden, also embraced the tenets of Quakerism. This last convert, Gideon, entered into a controversy with the Rev. James Kirkton, author of the _Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland,_ which is noticed by my ingenious friend Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in his valuable and curious edition of that work, 4to, 1817. Sir William Scott, eldest of the brothers, remained, amid the defection of his two younger brethren, an orthodox member of the Presbyterian Church, and used such means for reclaiming Walter of Raeburn from his heresy, as savoured far more of persecution than persuasion. In this he was assisted by MacDougal of Makerston, brother to Isabella MacDougal, the wife of the said Walter, and who, like her husband, had conformed to the Quaker tenets. The interest possessed by Sir William Scott and Makerston was powerful enough to procure the two following acts of the Privy Council of Scotland, directed against Walter of Raeburn as an heretic and convert to Quakerism, appointing him to be imprisoned first in Edinburgh jail, and then in that of Jedburgh; and his children to be taken by force from the society and direction of their parents, and educated at a distance from them, besides the assignment of a sum for their maintenance, sufficient in those times to be burdensome to a moderate Scottish estate. "Apud Edin., vigesimo Junii 1665. "The Lords of his Magesty's Privy Council having receaved information that Scott of Raeburn, and Isobel Mackdougall, his wife, being infected with the error of Quakerism, doe endeavour to breid and trains up William, Walter, and Isobel Scotts, their children, in the same profession, doe therefore give order and command to Sir William Scott of Harden, the said Raeburn's brother, to seperat and take away the saids children from the custody and society of the saids parents, and to cause educat and bring them up in his owne house, or any other convenient place, and ordaines letters to be direct at the said Sir William's instance against Raeburn, for a maintenance to the saids children, and that the said Sir Wm. give ane account of his diligence with all conveniency." "Edinburgh, 5th July 1666. "Anent a petition presented be Sir Wm. Scott of Harden, for himself and in name and behalf of the three children of Walter Scott of Raeburn, his brother, showing that the Lords of Councill, by ane act of the 22d day of Junii 1665, did grant power and warrand to the petitioner, to separat and take away Raeburn's children, from his family and education, and to breed them in some convenient place, where they might be free from all infection in their younger years, from the principalls of Quakerism, and, for maintenance of the saids children, did ordain letters to be direct against Raeburn; and, seeing the Petitioner, in obedience to the said order, did take away the saids children, being two sonnes and a daughter, and after some paines taken upon them in his owne family, hes sent them to the city of Glasgow, to be bread at schooles, and there to be principled with the knowledge of the true religion, and that it is necessary the Councill determine what shall be the maintenance for which Raeburn's three children may be charged, as likewise that Raeburn himself, being now in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, where he dayley converses with all the Quakers who are prisoners there, and others who daily resort to them, whereby he is hardened in his pernitious opinions and principles, without all hope of recovery, unlesse he be separat from such pernitious company, humbly therefore, desyring that the Councell might determine upon the soume of money to be payed be Raeburn, for the education of his children, to the petitioner, who will be countable therefor; and that, in order to his conversion, the place of his imprisonment may be changed. The Lords of his Maj. Privy Councell having at length heard and considered the foresaid petition, doe modifie the soume of two thousand pounds Scots, to be payed yearly at the terms of Whitsunday be the said Walter Scott of Raeburn, furth of his estate to the petitioner, for the entertainment and education of the said children, beginning the first termes payment therof at Whitsunday last for the half year preceding, and so furth yearly, at the said terme of Whitsunday in tym comeing till furder orders; and ordaines the said Walter Scott of Raeburn to be transported from the tolbooth of Edinburgh to the prison of Jedburgh, where his friends and others may have occasion to convert him. And to the effect he may be secured from the practice of other Quakers, the said Lords doe hereby discharge the magistrates of Jedburgh to suffer any persons suspect of these principles to have access to him; and in case any contraveen, that they secure ther persons till they be therfore puneist; and ordaines letters to be direct heirupon in form, as effeirs." Both the sons, thus harshly separated from their father, proved good scholars. The eldest, William, who carried on the line of Raeburn, was, like his father, a deep Orientalist; the younger, Walter, became a good classical scholar, a great friend and correspondent of the celebrated Dr. Pitcairn, and a Jacobite so distinguished for zeal, that he made a vow never to shave his beard till the restoration of the exiled family. This last Walter Scott was the author's great-grandfather. There is yet another link betwixt the author and the simple-minded and excellent Society of Friends, through a proselyte of much more importance than Walter Scott of Raeburn. The celebrated John Swinton, of Swinton, nineteenth baron in descent of that ancient and once powerful family, was, with Sir William Lockhart of Lee, the person whom Cromwell chiefly trusted in the management of the Scottish affairs during his usurpation. After the Restoration, Swinton was devoted as a victim to the new order of things, and was brought down in the same vessel which conveyed the Marquis of Argyle to Edinburgh, where that nobleman was tried and executed. Swinton was destined to the same fate. He had assumed the habit, and entered into the Society of the Quakers, and appeared as one of their number before the Parliament of Scotland. He renounced all legal defence, though several pleas were open to him, and answered, in conformity to the principles of his sect, that at the time these crimes were imputed to him, he was in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity; but that God Almighty having since called him to the light, he saw and acknowledged these errors, and did not refuse to pay the forfeit of them, even though, in the judgment of the Parliament, it should extend to life itself. Respect to fallen greatness, and to the patience and calm resignation with which a man once in high power expressed himself under such a change of fortune, found Swinton friends; family connections, and some interested considerations of Middleton the Commissioner, joined to procure his safety, and he was dismissed, but after a long imprisonment, and much dilapidation of his estates. It is said that Swinton's admonitions, while confined in the Castle of Edinburgh, had a considerable share in converting to the tenets of the Friends Colonel David Barclay, then lying there in the garrison. This was the father of Robert Barclay, author of the celebrated _Apology for the Quakers._ It may be observed among the inconsistencies of human nature, that Kirkton, Wodrow, and other Presbyterian authors, who have detailed the sufferings of their own sect for nonconformity with the established church, censure the government of the time for not exerting the civil power against the peaceful enthusiasts we have treated of, and some express particular chagrin at the escape of Swinton. Whatever might be his motives for assuming the tenets of the Friends, the old man retained them faithfully till the close of his life. Jean Swinton, grand-daughter of Sir John Swinton, son of Judge Swinton, as the Quaker was usually termed, was mother of Anne Rutherford, the author's mother. And thus, as in the play of the Anti-Jacobin, the ghost of the author's grandmother having arisen to speak the Epilogue, it is full time to conclude, lest the reader should remonstrate that his desire to know the Author of Waverley never included a wish to be acquainted with his whole ancestry. NOTE B.--TOMBSTONE TO HELEN WALKER. On Helen Walker's tombstone in Irongray churchyard, Dumfriesshire, there is engraved the following epitaph, written by Sir Walter Scott: THIS STONE WAS ERECTED BY THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY TO THE MEMORY OF HELEN WALKER, WHO DIED IN THE YEAR OF GOD 1791. THIS HUMBLE INDIVIDUAL PRACTISED IN REAL LIFE THE VIRTUES WITH WHICH FICTION HAS INVESTED THE IMAGINARY CHARACTER OF JEANIE DEANS; REFUSING THE SLIGHTEST DEPARTURE FROM VERACITY, EVEN TO SAVE THE LIFE OF A SISTER, SHE NEVERTHELESS SHOWED HER KINDNESS AND FORTITUDE, IN RESCUING HER FROM THE SEVERITY OF THE LAW AT THE EXPENSE OF PERSONAL EXERTIONS WHICH THE TIME RENDERED AS DIFFICULT AS THE MOTIVE WAS LAUDABLE. RESPECT THE GRAVE OF POVERTY WHEN COMBINED WITH LOVE OF TRUTH AND DEAR AFFECTION. _Erected October 1831._ NOTE C.--THE OLD TOLBOOTH. The ancient Tolbooth of Edinburgh, Situated as described in this CHAPTER, was built by the citizens in 1561, and destined for the accommodation of Parliament, as well as of the High Courts of Justice;* and at the same time for the confinement of prisoners for debt, or on criminal charges. Since the year 1640, when the present Parliament House was erected, the Tolbooth was occupied as a prison only. * [This is not so certain. Few persons now living are likely to remember the interior of the old Tolbooth, with narrow staircase, thick walls, and small apartments, nor to imagine that it could ever have been used for these purposes. Robert Chambers, in his _Minor Antiquities_ of Edinburgh, has preserved ground-plans or sections, which clearly show this,--the largest hall was on the second floor, and measuring 27 feet by 20, and 12 feet high. It may have been intended for the meetings of Town Council, while the Parliament assembled, after 1560, in what was called the Upper Tolbooth, that is the south-west portion of the Collegiate Church of St. Giles, until the year 1640, when the present Parliament House was completed. Being no longer required for such a purpose, it was set apart by the Town Council on the 24th December 1641 as a distinct church, with the name of the Tolbooth parish, and therefore could not have derived the name from its vicinity to the Tolbooth, as usually stated.] Gloomy and dismal as it was, the situation in the centre of the High Street rendered it so particularly well-aired, that when the plague laid waste the city in 1645, it affected none within these melancholy precincts. The Tolbooth was removed, with the mass of buildings in which it was incorporated, in the autumn of the year 1817. At that time the kindness of his old schoolfellow and friend, Robert Johnstone, Esquire, then Dean of Guild of the city, with the liberal acquiescence of the persons who had contracted for the work, procured for the Author of Waverley the stones which composed the gateway, together with the door, and its ponderous fastenings, which he employed in decorating the entrance of his kitchen-court at Abbotsford. "To such base offices may we return." The application of these relies of the Heart of Mid-Lothian to serve as the postern-gate to a court of modern offices, may be justly ridiculed as whimsical; but yet it is not without interest, that we see the gateway through which so much of the stormy politics of a rude age, and the vice and misery of later times, had found their passage, now occupied in the service of rural economy. Last year, to complete the change, a tomtit was pleased to build her nest within the lock of the Tolbooth,--a strong temptation to have committed a sonnet, had the Author, like Tony Lumpkin, been in a concatenation accordingly. It is worth mentioning, that an act of beneficence celebrated the demolition of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. A subscription, raised and applied by the worthy Magistrate above mentioned, procured the manumission of most of the unfortunate debtors confined in the old jail, so that there were few or none transferred to the new place of confinement. [The figure of a Heart upon the pavement between St. Giles's Church and the Edinburgh County Hall, now marks the site of the Old Tolbooth.] NOTE D--THE PORTEOUS MOB. The following interesting and authentic account of the inquiries made by Crown Counsel into the affair of the Porteous Mob, seems to have been drawn up by the Solicitor-General. The office was held in 1737 by Charles Erskine, Esq. I owe this curious illustration to the kindness of a professional friend. It throws, indeed, little light on the origin of the tumult; but shows how profound the darkness must have been, which so much investigation could not dispel. "Upon the 7th of September last, when the unhappy wicked murder of Captain Porteus was committed, His Majesty's Advocate and Solicitor were out of town; the first beyond Inverness, and the other in Annandale, not far from Carlyle; neither of them knew anything of the reprieve, nor did they in the least suspect that any disorder was to happen. "When the disorder happened, the magistrates and other persons concerned in the management of the town, seemed to be all struck of a heap; and whether, from the great terror that had seized all the inhabitants, they thought ane immediate enquiry would be fruitless, or whether, being a direct insult upon the prerogative of the crown, they did not care rashly to intermeddle; but no proceedings was had by them. Only, soon after, ane express was sent to his Majestie's Solicitor, who came to town as soon as was possible for him; but, in the meantime, the persons who had been most guilty, had either ran off, or, at least, kept themselves upon the wing until they should see what steps were taken by the Government. "When the Solicitor arrived, he perceived the whole inhabitants under a consternation. He had no materials furnished him; nay, the inhabitants were so much afraid of being reputed informers, that very few people had so much as the courage to speak with him on the streets. However, having received her Majestie's orders, by a letter from the Duke of New castle, he resolved to sett about the matter in earnest, and entered upon ane enquiry, gropeing in the dark. He had no assistance from the magistrates worth mentioning, but called witness after witness in the privatest manner, before himself in his own house, and for six weeks time, from morning to evening, went on in the enquiry without taking the least diversion, or turning his thoughts to any other business. "He tried at first what he could do by declarations, by engaging secresy, so that those who told the truth should never be discovered; made use of no clerk, but wrote all the declarations with his own hand, to encourage them to speak out. After all, for some time, he could get nothing but ends of stories which, when pursued, broke off; and those who appeared and knew anything of the matter, were under the utmost terror, lest it should take air that they had mentioned any one man as guilty. "During the course of the enquiry, the run of the town, which was strong for the villanous actors, begun to alter a little, and when they saw the King's servants in earnest to do their best, the generality, who before had spoke very warmly in defence of the wickedness, began to be silent, and at that period more of the criminals began to abscond. "At length the enquiry began to open a little, and the Sollicitor was under some difficulty how to proceed. He very well saw that the first warrand that was issued out would start the whole gang; and as he had not come at any of the most notorious offenders, he was unwilling, upon the slight evidence he had, to begin. However, upon notice given him by Generall Moyle, that one King, a butcher in the Canongate, had boasted, in presence of Bridget Knell, a soldier's wife, the morning after Captain Porteus was hanged, that he had a very active hand in the mob, a warrand was issued out, and King was apprehended, and imprisoned in the Canongate Tolbooth. "This obliged the Sollicitor immediately to take up those against whom he had any information. By a signed declaration, William Stirling, apprentice to James Stirling, merchant in Edinburgh, was charged as haveing been at the Nether-Bow, after the gates were shutt, with a Lochaber-ax or halbert in his hand, and haveing begun a huzza, marched upon the head of the mob towards the Guard. "James Braidwood, son to a candlemaker in town, was, by a signed declaration, charged as haveing been at the Tolbooth door, giveing directions to the mob about setting fire to the door, and that the mob named him by his name, and asked his advice. "By another declaration, one Stoddart, a journeyman smith, was charged of having boasted publickly, in a smith's shop at Leith, that he had assisted in breaking open the Tolbooth door. "Peter Traill, a journeyman wright, (by one of the declarations) was also accused of haveing lockt the Nether-Bow Port, when it was shutt by the mob. "His Majestie's Sollicitor having these informations, implored privately such persons as he could best rely on, and the truth was, there were very few in whom he could repose confidence. But he was, indeed, faithfully served by one Webster, a soldier in the Welsh fuzileers, recommended him by Lieutenant Alshton, who, with very great address, informed himself, and really run some risque in getting his information, concerning the places where the persons informed against used to haunt, and how they might be seized. In consequence of which, a party of the Guard from the Canongate was agreed on to march up at a certain hour, when a message should be sent. The Sollicitor wrote a letter and gave it to one of the town officers, ordered to attend Captain Maitland, one of the town Captains, promoted to that command since the unhappy accident, who, indeed, was extremely diligent and active throughout the whole; and haveing got Stirling and Braidwood apprehended, dispatched the officer with the letter to the military in the Canongate, who immediately begun their march, and by the time the Sollicitor had half examined the said two persons in the Burrow-room, where the Magistrates were present, a party of fifty men, drums beating, marched into the Parliament close, and drew up, which was the first thing that struck a terror, and from that time forward, the insolence was succeeded by fear. "Stirling and Braidwood were immediately sent to the Castle and imprisoned. That same night, Stoddart, the smith, was seized, and he was committed to the Castle also; as was likewise Traill, the journeyman wright, who were all severally examined, and denyed the least accession. "In the meantime, the enquiry was going on, and it haveing cast up in one of the declarations, that a hump'd backed creature marched with a gun as one of the guards to Porteus when he went up to the Lawn Markett, the person who emitted this declaration was employed to walk the streets to see if he could find him out; at last he came to the Sollicitor and told him he had found him, and that he was in a certain house. Whereupon a warrand was issued out against him, and he was apprehended and sent to the Castle, and he proved to be one Birnie, a helper to the Countess of Weemys's coachman. "Thereafter, ane information was given in against William M'Lauchlan, ffootman to the said Countess, he haveing been very active in the mob; ffor sometime he kept himself out of the way, but at last he was apprehended and likewise committed to the Castle. "And these were all the prisoners who were putt under confinement in that place. "There were other persons imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and severalls against whom warrands were issued, but could not be apprehended, whose names and cases shall afterwards be more particularly taken notice of. "The ffriends of Stirling made an application to the Earl of Islay, Lord Justice-Generall, setting furth, that he was seized with a bloody fflux; that his life was in danger; and that upon ane examination of witnesses whose names were given in, it would appear to conviction, that he had not the least access to any of the riotous proceedings of that wicked mob. "This petition was by his Lordship putt in the hands of his Majestie's Sollicitor, who examined the witnesses; and by their testimonies it appeared, that the young man, who was not above eighteen years of age, was that night in company with about half a dozen companions, in a public house in Stephen Law's closs, near the back of the Guard, where they all remained untill the noise came to the house, that the mob had shut the gates and seized the Guard, upon which the company broke up, and he, and one of his companions, went towards his master's house; and, in the course of the after examination, there was a witness who declared, nay, indeed swore (for the Sollicitor, by this time, saw it necessary to put those he examined upon oath), that he met him [Stirling] after he entered into the alley where his master lives, going towards his house; and another witness, fellow-prentice with Stirling, declares, that after the mob had seized the Guard, he went home, where he found Stirling before him; and, that his master lockt the door, and kept them both at home till after twelve at night: upon weighing of which testimonies, and upon consideration had, That he was charged by the declaration only of one person, who really did not appear to be a witness of the greatest weight, and that his life was in danger from the imprisonment, he was admitted to baill by the Lord Justice-Generall, by whose warrand he was committed. "Braidwood's friends applyed in the same manner; but as he stood charged by more than one witness, he was not released--tho', indeed, the witnesses adduced for him say somewhat in his exculpation--that he does not seem to have been upon any original concert; and one of the witnesses says he was along with him at the Tolbooth door, and refuses what is said against him, with regard to his having advised the burning of the Tolbooth door. But he remains still in prison. "As to Traill, the journeyman wright, he is charged by the same witness who declared against Stirling, and there is none concurrs with him and, to say the truth concerning him, he seemed to be the most ingenuous of any of them whom the Solicitor examined, and pointed out a witness by whom one of the first accomplices was discovered, and who escaped when the warrand was to be putt in execution against them. He positively denys his having shutt the gate, and 'tis thought Traill ought to be admitted to baill. "As to Birnie, he is charged only by one witness, who had never seen him before, nor knew his name; so, tho' I dare say the witness honestly mentioned him, 'tis possible he may be mistaken; and in the examination of above 200 witnesses there is no body concurrs with him, and he is ane insignificant little creature. "With regard to M'Lauchlan, the proof is strong against him by one witness, that he acted as a serjeant, or sort of commander, for some time, of a Guard, that stood cross between the upper end of the Luckenbooths and the north side of the street, to stop all but friends from going towards the Tolbooth; and by other witnesses, that he was at the Tolbooth door with a link in his hand, while the operation of beating and burning it was going on; that he went along with the mob with a halbert in his hand, untill he came to the gallows stone in the Grassmarket, and that he stuck the halbert into the hole of the gallows stone: that afterwards he went in amongst the mob when Captain Porteus was carried to the dyer's tree; so that the proof seems very heavy against him. "To sum up this matter with regard to the prisoners in the Castle, 'tis believed there is strong proof against M'Lauchlan; there is also proof against Braidwood. But, as it consists only in emission of words said to have been had by him while at the Tolbooth door, and that he is ane insignificant pitifull creature, and will find people to swear heartily in his favours, 'tis at best doubtfull whether a jury will be got to condemn him. "As to those in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, John Crawford, who had for some time been employed to ring the bells in the steeple of the New Church of Edinburgh, being in company with a soldier accidentally, the discourse falling in concerning the Captain Porteus and his murder, as he appears to be a light-headed fellow, he said, that he knew people that were more guilty than any that were putt in prison. Upon this information, Crawford was seized, and being examined, it appeared, that when the mob begun, as he was comeing down from the steeple, the mob took the keys from him; that he was that night in several corners, and did indeed delate severall persons whom he saw there, and immediately warrands were despatched, and it was found they had absconded and fled. But there was no evidence against him of any kind. Nay, on the contrary, it appeared, that he had been with the Magistrates in Clerk's, the vintner's, relating to them what he had seen in the streets. Therefore, after haveing detained him in prison ffor a very considerable time, his Majestie's Advocate and Sollicitor signed a warrand for his liberation. "There was also one James Wilson incarcerated in the said Tolbooth, upon the declaration of one witness, who said he saw him on the streets with a gun; and there he remained for some time, in order to try if a concurring witness could be found, or that he acted any part in the tragedy and wickedness. But nothing farther appeared against him; and being seized with a severe sickness, he is, by a warrand signed by his Majestie's Advocate and Sollicitor, liberated upon giveing sufficient baill. "As to King, enquiry was made, and the ffact comes out beyond all exception, that he was in the lodge at the Nether-Bow with Lindsay the waiter, and several other people, not at all concerned in the mob. But after the affair was over, he went up towards the guard, and having met with Sandie the Turk and his wife, who escaped out of prison, they returned to his house at the Abbey, and then 'tis very possible he may have thought fitt in his beer to boast of villany, in which he could not possibly have any share for that reason; he was desired to find baill and he should be set at liberty. But he is a stranger and a fellow of very indifferent character, and 'tis believed it won't be easy for him to find baill. Wherefore, it's thought he must be sett at liberty without it. Because he is a burden upon the Government while kept in confinement, not being able to maintain himself. "What is above is all that relates to persons in custody. But there are warrands out against a great many other persons who had fled, particularly against one William White, a journeyman baxter, who, by the evidence, appears to have been at the beginning of the mob, and to have gone along with the drum, from the West-Port to the Nether-Bow, and is said to have been one of those who attacked the guard, and probably was as deep as any one there. "Information was given that he was lurking at Falkirk, where he was born. Whereupon directions were sent to the Sheriff of the County, and a warrand from his Excellency Generall Wade, to the commanding officers at Stirling and Linlithgow, to assist, and all possible endeavours were used to catch hold of him, and 'tis said he escaped very narrowly, having been concealed in some outhouse; and the misfortune was, that those who were employed in the search did not know him personally. Nor, indeed, was it easy to trust any of the acquaintances of so low, obscure a fellow with the secret of the warrand to be putt in execution. "There was also strong evidence found against Robert Taylor, servant to William and Charles Thomsons, periwig-makers, that he acted as ane officer among the mob, and he was traced from the guard to the well at the head of Forester's Wynd, where he stood and had the appellation of Captain from the mob, and from that walking down the Bow before Captain Porteus, with his Lochaber axe; and, by the description given of one who hawl'd the rope by which Captain Porteus was pulled up, 'tis believed Taylor was the person; and 'tis farther probable, that the witness who debated Stirling had mistaken Taylor for him, their stature and age (so far as can be gathered from the description) being the same. "A great deal of pains were taken, and no charge was saved, in order to have catched hold of this Taylor, and warrands were sent to the country where he was born; but it appears he had shipt himself off for Holland, where it is said he now is. "There is strong evidence also against Thomas Burns, butcher, that he was ane active person from the beginning of the mob to the end of it. He lurkt for some time amongst those of his trade; and artfully enough a train was laid to catch him, under pretence of a message that had come from his father in Ireland, so that he came to a blind alehouse in the Flesh-market close, and, a party being ready, was, by Webster the soldier, who was upon this exploit, advertised to come down. However, Burns escaped out at a back-window, and hid himself in some of the houses which are heaped together upon one another in that place, so that it was not possible to catch him. 'Tis now said he is gone to Ireland to his father who lives there. "There is evidence also against one Robert Anderson, journeyman and servant to Colin Alison, wright; and against Thomas Linnen and James Maxwell, both servants also to the said Colin Alison, who all seem to have been deeply concerned in the matter. Anderson is one of those who putt the rope upon Captain Porteus's neck. Linnen seems also to have been very active; and Maxwell (which is pretty remarkable) is proven to have come to a shop upon the Friday before, and charged the journeymen and prentices there to attend in the Parliament close on Tuesday night, to assist to hang Captain Porteus. These three did early abscond, and, though warrands had been issued out against them, and all endeavours used to apprehend them, could not be found. "One Waldie, a servant to George Campbell, wright, has also absconded, and many others, and 'tis informed that numbers of them have shipt themselves off ffor the Plantations; and upon an information that a ship was going off ffrom Glasgow, in which severall of the rogues were to transport themselves beyond seas, proper warrands were obtained, and persons despatched to search the said ship, and seize any that can be found. "The like warrands had been issued with regard to ships from Leith. But whether they had been scard, or whether the information had been groundless, they had no effect. "This is a summary of the enquiry, ffrom which it appears there is no prooff on which one can rely, but against M'Lauchlan. There is a prooff also against Braidwood, but more exceptionable. His Majestie's Advocate, since he came to town, has join'd with the Sollicitor, and has done his utmost to gett at the bottom of this matter, but hitherto it stands as is above represented. They are resolved to have their eyes and their ears open, and to do what they can. But they laboured exceedingly against the stream; and it may truly be said, that nothing was wanting on their part. Nor have they declined any labour to answer the commands laid upon them to search the matter to the bottom." THE PORTEOUS MOB. In the preceding CHAPTERs (I. to VI.) the circumstances of that extraordinary riot and conspiracy, called the Porteous Mob, are given with as much accuracy as the author was able to collect them. The order, regularity, and determined resolution with which such a violent action was devised and executed, were only equalled by the secrecy which was observed concerning the principal actors. Although the fact was performed by torch-light, and in presence of a great multitude, to some of whom, at least, the individual actors must have been known, yet no discovery was ever made concerning any of the perpetrators of the slaughter. Two men only were brought to trial for an offence which the Government were so anxious to detect and punish. William M'Lauchlan, footman to the Countess of Wemyss, who is mentioned in the report of the Solicitor-General, against whom strong evidence had been obtained, was brought to trial in March 1737, charged as having been accessory to the riot, armed with a Lochaber axe. But this man (who was at all times a silly creature) proved, that he was in a state of mortal intoxication during the time he was present with the rabble, incapable of giving them either advice or assistance, or, indeed, of knowing what he or they were doing. He was also able to prove, that he was forced into the riot, and upheld while there by two bakers, who put a Lochaber axe into his hand. The jury, wisely judging this poor creature could be no proper subject of punishment, found the panel Not Guilty. The same verdict was given in the case of Thomas Linning, also mentioned in the Solicitor's memorial, who was tried in 1738. In short, neither then, nor for a long period afterwards, was anything discovered relating to the organisation of the Porteous Plot. The imagination of the people of Edinburgh was long irritated, and their curiosity kept awake, by the mystery attending this extraordinary conspiracy. It was generally reported of such natives of Edinburgh as, having left the city in youth, returned with a fortune amassed in foreign countries, that they had originally fled on account of their share in the Porteous Mob. But little credit can be attached to these surmises, as in most of the cases they are contradicted by dates, and in none supported by anything but vague rumours, grounded on the ordinary wish of the vulgar, to impute the success of prosperous men to some unpleasant source. The secret history of the Porteous Mob has been till this day unravelled; and it has always been quoted as a close, daring, and calculated act of violence, of a nature peculiarly characteristic of the Scottish people. Nevertheless, the author, for a considerable time, nourished hopes to have found himself enabled to throw some light on this mysterious story. An old man, who died about twenty years ago, at the advanced age of ninety-three, was said to have made a communication to the clergyman who attended upon his death-bed, respecting the origin of the Porteous Mob. This person followed the trade of a carpenter, and had been employed as such on the estate of a family of opulence and condition. His character in his line of life and amongst his neighbours, was excellent, and never underwent the slightest suspicion. His confession was said to have been to the following purpose: That he was one of twelve young men belonging to the village of Pathhead, whose animosity against Porteous, on account of the execution of Wilson, was so extreme, that they resolved to execute vengeance on him with their own hands, rather than he should escape punishment. With this resolution they crossed the Forth at different ferries, and rendezvoused at the suburb called Portsburgh, where their appearance in a body soon called numbers around them. The public mind was in such a state of irritation, that it only wanted a single spark to create an explosion; and this was afforded by the exertions of the small and determined band of associates. The appearance of premeditation and order which distinguished the riot, according to his account, had its origin, not in any previous plan or conspiracy, but in the character of those who were engaged in it. The story also serves to show why nothing of the origin of the riot has ever been discovered, since though in itself a great conflagration, its source, according to this account, was from an obscure and apparently inadequate cause. I have been disappointed, however, in obtaining the evidence on which this story rests. The present proprietor of the estate on which the old man died (a particular friend of the author) undertook to question the son of the deceased on the subject. This person follows his father's trade, and holds the employment of carpenter to the same family. He admits that his father's going abroad at the time of the Porteous Mob was popularly attributed to his having been concerned in that affair; but adds that, so far as is known to him, the old man had never made any confession to that effect; and, on the contrary, had uniformly denied being present. My kind friend, therefore, had recourse to a person from whom he had formerly heard the story; but who, either from respect to an old friend's memory, or from failure of his own, happened to have forgotten that ever such a communication was made. So my obliging correspondent (who is a fox-hunter) wrote to me that he was completely _planted;_ and all that can be said with respect to the tradition is, that it certainly once existed, and was generally believed. [_N.B._--The Rev. Dr. Carlyle, minister of Inveresk, in his _Autobiography,_ gives some interesting particulars relating to the Porteous Mob, from personal recollections. He happened to be present in the Tolbooth Church when Robertson made his escape, and also at the execution of Wilson in the Grassmarket, when Captain Porteous fired upon the mob, and several persons were killed. Edinburgh 1860, 8vo, pp. 30-42.] NOTE E.--CARSPHARN JOHN. John Semple, called Carspharn John, because minister of the parish in Galloway so called, was a Presbyterian clergyman of singular piety and great zeal, of whom Patrick Walker records the following passage: "That night after his wife died, he spent the whole ensuing night in prayer and meditation in his garden. The next morning, one of his elders coming to see him, and lamenting his great loss and want of rest, he replied,--'I declare I have not, all night, had one thought of the death of my wife, I have been so taken up in meditating on heavenly things. I have been this night on the banks of Ulai, plucking an apple here and there.'"-- _Walker's Remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Mr. John Semple._ NOTE F.--PETER WALKER. This personage, whom it would be base ingratitude in the author to pass over without some notice, was by far the most zealous and faithful collector and recorder of the actions and opinions of the Cameronians. He resided, while stationary, at the Bristo Port of Edinburgh, but was by trade an itinerant merchant, or pedlar, which profession he seems to have exercised in Ireland as well as Britain. He composed biographical notices of Alexander Peden, John Semple, John Welwood, and Richard Cameron, all ministers of the Cameronian persuasion, to which the last mentioned member gave the name. It is from such tracts as these, written in the sense, feeling, and spirit of the sect, and not from the sophisticated narratives of a later period, that the real character of the persecuted class is to be gathered. Walker writes with a simplicity which sometimes slides into the burlesque, and sometimes attains a tone of simple pathos, but always expressing the most daring confidence in his own correctness of creed and sentiments, sometimes with narrow-minded and disgusting bigotry. His turn for the marvellous was that of his time and sect; but there is little room to doubt his veracity concerning whatever he quotes on his own knowledge. His small tracts now bring a very high price, especially the earlier and authentic editions. The tirade against dancing, pronounced by David Deans, is, as intimated in the text, partly borrowed from Peter Walker. He notices, as a foul reproach upon the name of Richard Cameron, that his memory was vituperated, "by pipers and fiddlers playing the Cameronian march--carnal vain springs, which too many professors of religion dance to; a practice unbecoming the professors of Christianity to dance to any spring, but somewhat more to this. Whatever," he proceeds, "be the many foul blots recorded of the saints in Scripture, none of them is charged with this regular fit of distraction. We find it has been practised by the wicked and profane, as the dancing at that brutish, base action of the calf-making; and it had been good for that unhappy lass, who danced off the head of John the Baptist, that she had been born a cripple, and never drawn a limb to her. Historians say, that her sin was written upon her judgment, who some time thereafter was dancing upon the ice, and it broke, and snapt the head off her; her head danced above, and her feet beneath. There is ground to think and conclude, that when the world's wickedness was great, dancing at their marriages was practised; but when the heavens above, and the earth beneath, were let loose upon them with that overflowing flood, their mirth was soon staid; and when the Lord in holy justice rained fire and brimstone from heaven upon that wicked people and city Sodom, enjoying fulness of bread and idleness, their fiddle-strings and hands went all in a flame; and the whole people in thirty miles of length, and ten of breadth, as historians say, were all made to fry in their skins and at the end, whoever are giving in marriages and dancing when all will go in a flame, they will quickly change their note. "I have often wondered thorow my life, how any that ever knew what it was to bow a knee in earnest to pray, durst crook a hough to fyke and fling at a piper's and fiddler's springs. I bless the Lord that ordered my lot so in my dancing days, that made the fear of the bloody rope and bullets to my neck and head, the pain of boots, thumikens, and irons, cold and hunger, wetness and weariness, to stop the lightness of my head, and the wantonness of my feet. What the never-to-be-forgotten Man of God, John Knox, said to Queen Mary, when she gave him that sharp challenge, which would strike our mean-spirited, tongue-tacked ministers dumb, for his giving public faithful warning of the danger of the church and nation, through her marrying the Dauphine of France, when he left her bubbling and greeting, and came to an outer court, where her Lady Maries were fyking and dancing, he said, 'O brave ladies, a brave world, if it would last, and heaven at the hinder end! But fye upon the knave Death, that will seize upon those bodies of yours; and where will all your fiddling and flinging be then?' Dancing being such a common evil, especially amongst young professors, that all the lovers of the Lord should hate, has caused me to insist the more upon it, especially that foolish spring the Cameronian march!"--_Life and Death of Three Famous Worthies,_ etc., collected and printed for Patrick Walker, Edin. 1727, 12mo, p. 59. It may be here observed, that some of the milder class of Cameronians made a distinction between the two sexes dancing separately, and allowed of it as a healthy and not unlawful exercise; but when men and women mingled in sport, it was then called _promiscuous dancing,_ and considered as a scandalous enormity. NOTE G.--MUSCHAT'S CAIRN. Nichol Muschat, a debauched and profligate wretch, having conceived a hatred against his wife, entered into a conspiracy with another brutal libertine and gambler, named Campbell of Burnbank (repeatedly mentioned in Pennycuick's satirical poems of the time), by which Campbell undertook to destroy the woman's character, so as to enable Muschat, on false pretences to obtain a divorce from her. The brutal devices to which these worthy accomplices resorted for that purpose having failed, they endeavoured to destroy her by administering medicine of a dangerous kind, and in extraordinary quantities. This purpose also failing, Nichol Muschat, or Muschet, did finally, on the 17th October 1720, carry his wife under cloud of night to the King's Park, adjacent to what is called the Duke's Walk, near Holyrood Palace, and there took her life by cutting her throat almost quite through, and inflicting other wounds. He pleaded guilty to the indictment, for which he suffered death. His associate, Campbell, was sentenced to transportation, for his share in the previous conspiracy. See _MacLaurin's Criminal Cases,_pp. 64 and 738. In memory, and at the same time execration, of the deed, a _cairn,_ or pile of stones, long marked the spot. It is now almost totally removed, in consequence of an alteration on the road in that place. NOTE H.--HANGMAN, OR LOCKMAN. _Lockman,_ so called from the small quantity of meal (Scottice, _lock_) which he was entitled to take out of every boll exposed to market in the city. In Edinburgh, the duty has been very long commuted; but in Dumfries, the finisher of the law still exercises, or did lately exercise, his privilege, the quantity taken being regulated by a small iron ladle, which he uses as the measure of his perquisite. The expression _lock,_ for a small quantity of any readily divisible dry substance, as corn, meal, flax, or the like, is still preserved, not only popularly, but in a legal description, as the _lock_ and _gowpen,_ or small quantity and handful, payable in thirlage cases, as in town multure. NOTE I.--THE FAIRY BOY OF LEITH, This legend was in former editions inaccurately said to exist in Baxter's "World of Spirits;" but is, in fact, to be found, in "Pandaemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster; being a further blow to Modern Sadduceism," by Richard Bovet, Gentleman, 12mo, 1684. The work is inscribed to Dr. Henry More. The story is entitled, "A remarkable passage of one named the Fairy Boy of Leith, in Scotland, given me by my worthy friend, Captain George Burton, and attested under his hand;" and is as follows:-- "About fifteen years since, having business that detained me for some time in Leith, which is near Edenborough, in the kingdom of Scotland, I often met some of my acquaintance at a certain house there, where we used to drink a glass of wine for our refection. The woman which kept the house was of honest reputation amongst the neighbours, which made me give the more attention to what she told me one day about a Fairy Boy (as they called him) who lived about that town. She had given me so strange an account of him, that I desired her I might see him the first opportunity, which she promised; and not long after, passing that way, she told me there was the Fairy Boy but a little before I came by; and casting her eye into the street, said, 'Look you, sir, yonder he is at play with those other boys,' and designing him to me. I went, and by smooth words, and a piece of money, got him to come into the house with me; where, in the presence of divers people, I demanded of him several astrological questions, which he answered with great subtility, and through all his discourse carried it with a cunning much beyond his years, which seemed not to exceed ten or eleven. He seemed to make a motion like drumming upon the table with his fingers, upon which I asked him, whether he could beat a drum, to which he replied, 'Yes, sir, as well as any man in Scotland; for every Thursday night I beat all points to a sort of people that use to meet under yon hill" (pointing to the great hill between Edenborough and Leith). 'How, boy,' quoth I; 'what company have you there?'--'There are, sir,' said he, 'a great company both of men and women, and they are entertained with many sorts of music besides my drum; they have, besides, plenty variety of meats and wine; and many times we are carried into France or Holland in a night, and return again; and whilst we are there, we enjoy all the pleasures the country doth afford.' I demanded of him, how they got under that hill? To which he replied, 'that there were a great pair of gates that opened to them, though they were invisible to others, and that within there were brave large rooms, as well accommodated as most in Scotland.' I then asked him, how I should know what he said to be true? upon which he told me he would read my fortune, saying I should have two wives, and that he saw the forms of them sitting on my shoulders; that both would be very handsome women. "As he was thus speaking, a woman of the neighbourhood, coming into the room, demanded of him what her fortune should be? He told her that she had two bastards before she was married; which put her in such a rage, that she desired not to hear the rest. The woman of the house told me that all the people in Scotland could not keep him from the rendezvous on Thursday night; upon which, by promising him some more money, I got a promise of him to meet me at the same place, in the afternoon of the Thursday following, and so dismissed him at that time. The boy came again at the place and time appointed, and I had prevailed with some friends to continue with me, if possible, to prevent his moving that night; he was placed between us, and answered many questions, without offering to go from us, until about eleven of the clock, he was got away unperceived of the company; but I suddenly missing him, hasted to the door, and took hold of him, and so returned him into the same room; we all watched him, and on a sudden he was again out of the doors. I followed him close, and he made a noise in the street as if he had been set upon; but from that time I could never see him. "GEORGE BURTON." [A copy of this rare little volume is in the library at Abbotsford.] NOTE J.--INTERCOURSE OF THE COVENANTERS WITH THE INVISIBLE WORLD. The gloomy, dangerous, and constant wanderings of the persecuted sect of Cameronians, naturally led to their entertaining with peculiar credulity the belief that they were sometimes persecuted, not only by the wrath of men, but by the secret wiles and open terrors of Satan. In fact, a flood could not happen, a horse cast a shoe, or any other the most ordinary interruption thwart a minister's wish to perform service at a particular spot, than the accident was imputed to the immediate agency of fiends. The encounter of Alexander Peden with the Devil in the cave, and that of John Sample with the demon in the ford, are given by Peter Walker almost in the language of the text. NOTE K.--CHILD-MURDER. The Scottish Statute Book, anno 1690, CHAPTER 21, in consequence of the great increase of the crime of child-murder, both from the temptations to commit the offence and the difficulty of discovery enacted a certain set of presumptions, which, in the absence of direct proof, the jury were directed to receive as evidence of the crime having actually been committed. The circumstances selected for this purpose were, that the woman should have concealed her situation during the whole period of pregnancy; that she should not have called for help at her delivery; and that, combined with these grounds of suspicion, the child should be either found dead or be altogether missing. Many persons suffered death during the last century under this severe act. But during the author's memory a more lenient course was followed, and the female accused under the act, and conscious of no competent defence, usually lodged a petition to the Court of Justiciary, denying, for form's sake, the tenor of the indictment, but stating, that as her good name had been destroyed by the charge, she was willing to submit to sentence of banishment, to which the crown counsel usually consented. This lenity in practice, and the comparative infrequency of the crime since the doom of public ecclesiastical penance has been generally dispensed with, have led to the abolition of the Statute of William, and Mary, which is now replaced by another, imposing banishment in those circumstances in which the crime was formerly capital. This alteration took place in 1803. NOTE L.--CALUMNIATOR OF THE FAIR SEX. The journal of Graves, a Bow Street officer, despatched to Holland to obtain the surrender of the unfortunate William Brodie, bears a reflection on the ladies somewhat like that put in the mouth of the police-officer Sharpitlaw. It had been found difficult to identify the unhappy criminal; and when a Scotch gentleman of respectability had seemed disposed to give evidence on the point required, his son-in-law, a clergyman in Amsterdam, and his daughter, were suspected by Graves to have used arguments with the witness to dissuade him from giving his testimony. On which subject the journal of the Bow Street officer proceeds thus:-- "Saw then a manifest reluctance in Mr. -------, and had no doubt the daughter and parson would endeavour to persuade him to decline troubling himself in the matter, but judged he could not go back from what he had said to Mr. Rich.--Nota Bene. _No mischief but a woman or a priest in it_--here both." NOTE M.--Sir William Dick of Braid. This gentleman formed a striking example of the instability of human prosperity. He was once the wealthiest man of his time in Scotland, a merchant in an extensive line of commerce, and a farmer of the public revenue; insomuch that, about 1640, he estimated his fortune at two hundred thousand pounds sterling. Sir William Dick was a zealous Covenanter; and in the memorable year 1641, he lent the Scottish Convention of Estates one hundred thousand merks at once, and thereby enabled them to support and pay their army, which must otherwise have broken to pieces. He afterwards advanced L20,000 for the service of King Charles, during the usurpation; and having, by owning the royal cause, provoked the displeasure of the ruling party, he was fleeced of more money, amounting in all to L65,000 sterling. Being in this manner reduced to indigence, he went to London to try to recover some part of the sums which had been lent on Government security. Instead of receiving any satisfaction, the Scottish Croesus was thrown into prison, in which he died, 19th December 1655. It is said his death was hastened by the want of common necessaries. But this statement is somewhat exaggerated, if it be true, as is commonly said, that though he was not supplied with bread, he had plenty of pie-crust, thence called "Sir William Dick's Necessity." The changes of fortune are commemorated in a folio pamphlet, entitled, "The Lamentable Estate and distressed Case of Sir William Dick" [Lond. 1656]. It contains three copper-plates, one representing Sir William on horseback, and attended with guards as Lord Provost of Edinburgh, superintending the unloading of one of his rich argosies. A second exhibiting him as arrested, and in the hands of the bailiffs. A third presents him dead in prison. The tract is esteemed highly valuable by collectors of prints. The only copy I ever saw upon sale, was rated at L30. (In London sales, copies have varied in price from L15 to L52: 10s.) NOTE N.--Doomster, or Dempster, of Court. The name of this officer is equivalent to the pronouncer of doom or sentence. In this comprehensive sense, the Judges of the Isle of Man were called Dempsters. But in Scotland the word was long restricted to the designation of an official person, whose duty it was to recite the sentence after it had been pronounced by the Court, and recorded by the clerk; on which occasion the Dempster legalised it by the words of form, "_And this I pronounce for doom._" For a length of years, the office, as mentioned in the text, was held in commendam with that of the executioner; for when this odious but necessary officer of justice received his appointment, he petitioned the Court of Justiciary to be received as their Dempster, which was granted as a matter of course. The production of the executioner in open court, and in presence of the wretched criminal, had something in it hideous and disgusting to the more refined feelings of later times. But if an old tradition of the Parliament House of Edinburgh may be trusted, it was the following anecdote which occasioned the disuse of the Dempster's office. It chanced at one time that the office of public executioner was vacant. There was occasion for some one to act as Dempster, and, considering the party who generally held the office, it is not wonderful that a locum tenens was hard to be found. At length, one Hume, who had been sentenced to transportation, for an attempt to burn his own house, was induced to consent that he would pronounce the doom on this occasion. But when brought forth to officiate, instead of repeating the doom to the criminal, Mr. Hume addressed himself to their lordships in a bitter complaint of the injustice of his own sentence. It was in vain that he was interrupted, and reminded of the purpose for which he had come hither; "I ken what ye want of me weel eneugh," said the fellow, "ye want me to be your Dempster; but I am come to be none of your Dempster, I am come to summon you, Lord T, and you, Lord E, to answer at the bar of another world for the injustice you have done me in this." In short, Hume had only made a pretext of complying with the proposal, in order to have an opportunity of reviling the Judges to their faces, or giving them, in the phrase of his country, "a sloan." He was hurried off amid the laughter of the audience, but the indecorous scene which had taken place contributed to the abolition of the office of Dempster. The sentence is now read over by the clerk of court, and the formality of pronouncing doom is altogether omitted. [The usage of calling the Dempster into court by the ringing of a hand-bell, to repeat the sentence on a criminal, is said to have been abrogated in March 1773.] NOTE O.--John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. This nobleman was very dear to his countrymen, who were justly proud of his military and political talents, and grateful for the ready zeal with which he asserted the rights of his native country. This was never more conspicuous than in the matter of the Porteous Mob, when the ministers brought in a violent and vindictive bill, for declaring the Lord Provost of Edinburgh incapable of bearing any public office in future, for not foreseeing a disorder which no one foresaw, or interrupting the course of a riot too formidable to endure opposition. The same bill made provision for pulling down the city gates, and abolishing the city guard,--rather a Hibernian mode of enabling their better to keep the peace within burgh in future. The Duke of Argyle opposed this bill as a cruel, unjust, and fanatical proceeding, and an encroachment upon the privileges of the royal burghs of Scotland, secured to them by the treaty of Union. "In all the proceedings of that time," said his Grace, "the nation of Scotland treated with the English as a free and independent people; and as that treaty, my Lords, had no other guarantee for the due performance of its articles, but the faith and honour of a British Parliament, it would be both unjust and ungenerous, should this House agree to any proceedings that have a tendency to injure it." Lord Hardwicke, in reply to the Duke of Argyle, seemed to insinuate, that his Grace had taken up the affair in a party point of view, to which the nobleman replied in the spirited language quoted in the text. Lord Hardwicke apologised. The bill was much modified, and the clauses concerning the dismantling the city, and disbanding the guard, were departed from. A fine of L2000 was imposed on the city for the benefit of Porteous's widow. She was contented to accept three-fourths of the sum, the payment of which closed the transaction. It is remarkable, that, in our day, the Magistrates of Edinburgh have had recourse to both those measures, hold in such horror by their predecessors, as necessary steps for the improvement of the city. It may be here noticed, in explanation of another circumstance mentioned in the text, that there is a tradition in Scotland, that George II., whose irascible temper is said sometimes to have hurried him into expressing his displeasure _par voie du fait,_ offered to the Duke of Argyle in angry audience, some menace of this nature, on which he left the presence in high disdain, and with little ceremony. Sir Robert Walpole, having met the Duke as he retired, and learning the cause of his resentment and discomposure, endeavoured to reconcile him to what had happened by saying, "Such was his Majesty's way, and that he often took such liberties with himself without meaning any harm." This did not mend matters in MacCallummore's eyes, who replied, in great disdain, "You will please to remember, Sir Robert, the infinite distance there is betwixt you and me." Another frequent expression of passion on the part of the same monarch, is alluded to in the old Jacobite song-- The fire shall get both hat and wig, As oft-times they've got a' that. NOTE P.--Expulsion of the Bishops from the Scottish Convention. For some time after the Scottish Convention had commenced its sittings, the Scottish prelates retained their seats, and said prayers by rotation to the meeting, until the character of the Convention became, through the secession of Dundee, decidedly Presbyterian. Occasion was then taken on the Bishop of Ross mentioning King James in his prayer, as him for whom they watered their couch with tears. On this the Convention exclaimed, they had no occasion for spiritual Lords, and commanded the Bishops to depart and return no more, Montgomery of Skelmorley breaking at the same time a coarse jest upon the scriptural expression used by the prelate. Davie Deans's oracle, Patrick Walker, gives this account of their dismission. "When they came out, some of the Convention said they wished the honest lads knew they were put out, for then they would not get away with haill (whole) gowns. All the fourteen gathered together with pale faces, and stood in a cloud in the Parliament Close; James Wilson, Robert Neilson, Francis Hislop, and myself, were standing close by them; Francis Hislop with force thrust Robert Neilson upon them, their heads went hard on one another. But there being so many enemies in the city fretting and gnashing the teeth, waiting for an occasion to raise a mob, when undoubtedly blood would have been shed, and having laid down conclusions amongst ourselves to avoid giving the least occasion to all mobs, kept us from tearing off their gowns. "Their graceless Graces went quickly off, and there was neither bishop nor curate seen in the street--this was a surprising sudden change not to be forgotten. Some of us would have rejoiced near them in large sums to have seen these Bishops sent legally down the Bow that they might have found the weight of their tails in a tow to dry their tow-soles; that they might know what hanging was, they having been active for themselves and the main instigators to all the mischiefs, cruelties, and bloodshed of that time, wherein the streets of Edinburgh and other places of the land did run with the innocent precious dear blood of the Lord's people."--_Life and Death of three famous Worthies_ (Semple, etc.), by Patrick Walker. Edin. 1727, pp. 72, 73. NOTE Q.--Half-hanged Maggie Dickson. [In the Statistical Account of the Parish of Inveresk (vol. xvi. p. 34), Dr. Carlyle says, "No person has been convicted of a capital felony since the year 1728, when the famous Maggy Dickson was condemned and executed for child-murder in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, and was restored to life in a cart on her way to Musselburgh to be buried . . . . . She kept an ale-house in a neighbouring parish for many years after she came to life again, which was much resorted to from curiosity." After the body was cut down and handed over to her relatives, her revival is attributed to the jolting of the cart, and according to Robert Chambers,--taking a retired road to Musselburgh, "they stopped near Peffer-mill to get a dram; and when they came out from the house to resume their journey, Maggie was sitting up in the cart." Among the poems of Alexander Pennecuick (who died in 1730), is one entitled "The Merry Wives of Musselburgh's Welcome to Meg Dickson;" while another broadside, without any date or author's name, is called "Margaret Dickson's Penitential Confession," containing these lines referring to her conviction:-- "Who found me guilty of that barbarous crime, And did, by law, end this wretched life of mine; But God . . . . did me preserve," etc. In another of these ephemeral productions hawked about the streets, called, "A Ballad by J--n B--s," are the following lines:-- "Please peruse the speech Of ill-hanged Maggy Dickson. Ere she was strung, the wicked wife Was sainted by the Flamen (priest), But now, since she's retum'd to life, Some say she's the old samen." In his reference to Maggie's calling salt after her recovery, the Author would appear to be alluding to another character who went by the name of "saut _Maggie,_" and is represented in one or more old etchings about 1790.] NOTE R.--Madge Wildfire. In taking leave of the poor maniac, the Author may here observe that the first conception of the character, though afterwards greatly altered, was taken from that of a person calling herself, and called by others, Feckless Fannie (weak or feeble Fannie), who always travelled with a small flock of sheep. The following account, furnished by the persevering kindness of Mr. Train, contains, probably, all that can now be known of her history, though many, among whom is the Author, may remember having heard of Feckless Fannie in the days of their youth. "My leisure hours," says Mr. Train, "for some time past have been mostly spent in searching for particulars relating to the maniac called Feckless Fannie, who travelled over all Scotland and England, between the years 1767 and 1775, and whose history is altogether so like a romance, that I have been at all possible pains to collect every particular that can be found relative to her in Galloway, or in Ayrshire. "When Feckless Fannie appeared in Ayrshire, for the first time, in the summer of 1769, she attracted much notice, from being attended by twelve or thirteen sheep, who seemed all endued with faculties so much superior to the ordinary race of animals of the same species, as to excite universal astonishment. She had for each a different name, to which it answered when called by its mistress, and would likewise obey in the most surprising manner any command she thought proper to give. When travelling, she always walked in front of her flock, and they followed her closely behind. When she lay down at night in the fields, for she would never enter into a house, they always disputed who should lie next to her, by which means she was kept warm, while she lay in the midst of them; when she attempted to rise from the ground, an old ram, whose name was Charlie, always claimed the sole right of assisting her; pushing any that stood in his way aside, until he arrived right before his mistress; he then bowed his head nearly to the ground that she might lay her hands on his horns, which were very large; he then lifted her gently from the ground by raising his head. If she chanced to leave her flock feeding, as soon as they discovered she was gone, they all began to bleat most piteously, and would continue to do so till she returned; they would then testify their joy by rubbing their sides against her petticoat and frisking about. "Feckless Fannie was not, like most other demented creatures, fond of fine dress; on her head she wore an old slouched hat, over her shoulders an old plaid, and carried always in her hand a shepherd's crook; with any of these articles she invariably declared she would not part for any consideration whatever. When she was interrogated why she set so much value on things seemingly so insignificant, she would sometimes relate the history of her misfortune, which was briefly as follows:-- "'I am the only daughter of a wealthy squire in the north of England, but I loved my father's shepherd, and that has been my ruin; for my father, fearing his family would be disgraced by such an alliance, in a passion mortally wounded my lover with a shot from a pistol. I arrived just in time to receive the last blessing of the dying man, and to close his eyes in death. He bequeathed me his little all, but I only accepted these sheep, to be my sole companions through life, and this hat, this plaid, and this crook, all of which I will carry until I descend into the grave.' "This is the substance of a ballad, eighty-four lines of which I copied down lately from the recitation of an old woman in this place, who says she has seen it in print, with a plate on the title-page, representing Fannie with her sheep behind her. As this ballad is said to have been written by Lowe, the author of _Mary's Dream,_ I am surprised that it has not been noticed by Cromek in his _Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song;_ but he perhaps thought it unworthy of a place in his collection, as there is very little merit in the composition; which want of room prevents me from transcribing at present. But if I thought you had never seen it, I would take an early opportunity of doing so. "After having made the tour of Galloway in 1769, as Fannie was wandering in the neighbourhood of Moffat, on her way to Edinburgh, where, I am informed, she was likewise well known, Old Charlie, her favourite ram, chanced to break into a kale-yard, which the proprietor observing, let loose a mastiff, that hunted the poor sheep to death. This was a sad misfortune; it seemed to renew all the pangs which she formerly felt on the death of her lover. She would not part from the side of her old friend for several days, and it was with much difficulty she consented to allow him to be buried; but still wishing to pay a tribute to his memory, she covered his grave with moss, and fenced it round with osiers, and annually returned to the same spot, and pulled the weeds from the grave and repaired the fence. This is altogether like a romance; but I believe it is really true that she did so. The grave of Charlie is still held sacred even by the school-boys of the present day in that quarter. It is now, perhaps, the only instance of the law of Kenneth being attended to, which says, 'The grave where anie that is slaine lieth buried, leave untilled for seven years. Repute every grave holie so as thou be well advised, that in no wise with thy feet thou tread upon it.' "Through the storms of winter, as well as in the milder seasons of the year, she continued her wandering course, nor could she be prevented from doing so, either by entreaty or promise of reward. The late Dr. Fullarton of Rosemount, in the neighbourhood of Ayr, being well acquainted with her father when in England, endeavoured, in a severe season, by every means in his power, to detain her at Rosemount for a few days until the weather should become more mild; but when she found herself rested a little, and saw her sheep fed, she raised her crook, which was the signal she always gave for the sheep to follow her, and off they all marched together. "But the hour of poor Fannie's dissolution was now at hand, and she seemed anxious to arrive at the spot where she was to terminate her mortal career. She proceeded to Glasgow, and while passing through that city a crowd of idle boys, attracted by her singular appearance, together with the novelty of seeing so many sheep obeying her command, began to ferment her with their pranks, till she became so irritated that she pelted them with bricks and stones, which they returned in such a manner, that she was actually stoned to death between Glasgow and Anderston. "To the real history of this singular individual credulity has attached several superstitious appendages. It is said that the farmer who was the cause of Charlie's death shortly afterwards drowned himself in a peat-hag; and that the hand with which a butcher in Kilinarnock struck one of the other sheep became powerless, and withered to the very bone. In the summer of 1769, when she was passing by New Cumnock, a young man, whose name was William Forsyth, son of a farmer in the same parish, plagued her so much that she wished he might never see the morn; upon which he went home and hanged himself in his father's barn. And I doubt not that many such stories may yet be remembered in other parts where she had been." So far Mr. Train. The Author can only add to this narrative that Feckless Fannie and her little flock were well known in the pastoral districts. In attempting to introduce such a character into fiction, the Author felt the risk of encountering a comparison with the Maria of Sterne; and, besides, the mechanism of the story would have been as much retarded by Feckless Fannie's flock as the night march of Don Quixote was delayed by Sancho's tale of the sheep that were ferried over the river. The Author has only to add, that notwithstanding the preciseness of his friend Mr. Train's statement, there may be some hopes that the outrage on Feckless Fannie and her little flock was not carried to extremity. There is no mention of any trial on account of it, which, had it occurred in the manner stated, would have certainly taken place; and the Author has understood that it was on the Border she was last seen, about the skirts of the Cheviot hills, but without her little flock. NOTE S.--Death of Francis Gordon. This exploit seems to have been one in which Patrick Walker prided himself not a little; and there is reason to fear, that that excellent person would have highly resented the attempt to associate another with him in the slaughter of a King's Life-Guardsman. Indeed, he would have had the more right to be offended at losing any share of the glory, since the party against Gordon was already three to one, besides having the advantage of firearms. The manner in which he vindicates his claim to the exploit, without committing himself by a direct statement of it, is not a little amusing. It is as follows:-- "I shall give a brief and true account of that man's death, which I did not design to do while I was upon the stage; I resolve, indeed (if it be the Lord's will), to leave a more full account of that and many other remarkable steps of the Lord's dispensations towards me through my life. It was then commonly said, that Francis Gordon was a volunteer out of wickedness of principles, and could not stay with the troop, but was still raging and ranging to catch hiding suffering people. Meldrum and Airly's troops, lying at Lanark upon the first day of March 1682, Mr. Gordon and another wicked comrade, with their two servants and four horses, came to Kilcaigow, two miles from Lanark, searching for William Caigow and others, under hiding. "Mr. Gordon, rambling throw the town, offered to abuse the women. At night, they came a mile further to the Easter-Seat, to Robert Muir's, he being also under hiding. Gordon's comrade and the two servants went to bed, but he could sleep none, roaring all night for women. When day came, he took only his sword in his hand, and came to Moss-platt, and some new men (who had been in the fields all night) seeing him, they fled, and he pursued. James Wilson, Thomas Young, and myself, having been in a meeting all night, were lying down in the morning. We were alarmed, thinking there were many more than one; he pursued hard, and overtook us. Thomas Young said, 'Sir, what do ye pursue us for?' He said, 'he was come to send us to hell.' James Wilson said, 'that shall not be, for we will defend ourselves.' He said, 'that either he or we should go to it now.' He run his sword furiously throw James Wilson's coat. James fired upon him, but missed him. All this time he cried, 'Damn his soul!' He got a shot in his head out of a pocket-pistol, rather fit for diverting a boy than killing such a furious, mad, brisk man, which, notwithstanding, killed him dead. The foresaid William Caigow and Robert Muir came to us. We searched him for papers, and found a long scroll of sufferers' names, either to kill or take. I tore it all in pieces. He had also some Popish books and bonds of money, with one dollar, which a poor man took off the ground; all which we put in his pocket again. Thus, he was four miles from Lanark, and near a mile from his comrade, seeking his own death and got it. And for as much as we have been condemned for this, I could never see how any one could condemn us that allows of self-defence, which the laws both of God and nature allow to every creature. For my own part, my heart never smote me for this. When I saw his blood run, I wished that all the blood of the Lord's stated and avowed enemies in Scotland had been in his veins. Having such a clear call and opportunity, I would have rejoiced to have seen it all gone out with a gush. I have many times wondered at the greater part of the indulged, lukewarm ministers and professors in that time, who made more noise of murder, when one of these enemies had been killed even in our own defence, than of twenty of us being murdered by them. None of these men present was challenged for this but myself. Thomas Young thereafter suffered at Mauchline, but was not challenged for this; Robert Muir was banished; James Wilson outlived the persecution; Williarn Caigow died in the Canongate Tolbooth, in the beginning of 1685. Mr. Wodrow is misinformed, who says that he suffered unto death." NOTE T.--Tolling to Service in Scotland. In the old days of Scotland, when persons of property (unless they happened to be non-jurors) were as regular as their inferiors in attendance on parochial worship, there was a kind of etiquette, in waiting till the patron or acknowledged great man of the parish should make his appearance. This ceremonial was so sacred in the eyes of a parish beadle in the Isle of Bute, that the kirk bell being out of order, he is said to have mounted the steeple every Sunday, to imitate with his voice the successive summonses which its mouth of metal used to send forth. The first part of this imitative harmony was simply the repetition of the words _Bell bell, bell bell,_ two or three times in a manner as much resembling the sound as throat of flesh could imitate throat of iron. _Bellu'm! bellu'm!_ was sounded forth in a more urgent manner; but he never sent forth the third and conclusive peal, the varied tone of which is called in Scotland the ringing-in, until the two principal heritors of the parish approached, when the chime ran thus:-- Bellu'm Belle'llum, Bernera and Knockdow's coming! Bellu'm Belle'llum, Bernera and Knockdow's coming! Thereby intimating that service was instantly to proceed. [Mr. Mackinlay of Borrowstounness, a native of Bute, states that Sir Walter Scott had this story from Sir Adam Ferguson; but that the gallant knight had not given the lairds' titles correctly--the bellman's great men being "Craich, Drumbuie, and Barnernie!"--1842.] 
25879	----	public domain works from the University of Michigan Digital Libraries.) [Illustration: _Painted by Captn. W McKenzie_ BATTLE OF CULLODEN.] An Historical Account OF THE Settlements of Scotch Highlanders IN America PRIOR TO THE PEACE OF 1783 TOGETHER WITH NOTICES OF Highland Regiments AND Biographical Sketches BY J.P. MACLEAN, PH.D. Life Member Gaelic Society of Glasgow, and Clan MacLean Association of Glasgow; Corresponding Member Davenport Academy of Sciences, and Western Reserve Historical Society; Author of History of Clan MacLean, Antiquity of Man, The Mound Builders, Mastodon, Mammoth and Man, Norse Discovery of America, Fingal's Cave, Introduction Study St. John's Gospel, Jewish Nature Worship, etc. _ILLUSTRATED_. THE HELMAN-TAYLOR COMPANY, CLEVELAND. JOHN MACKAY, GLASGOW. 1900. [Illustration: HIGHLAND ARMS.] TO COLONEL SIR FITZROY DONALD MACLEAN, Bart., C.B., President of The Highland Society of London, An hereditary Chief, honored by his Clansmen at home and abroad, on account of the kindly interest he takes in their welfare, as well as everything that relates to the Highlands, and though deprived of an ancient patrimony, his virtues and patriotism have done honor to the Gael, this Volume is Respectfully dedicated by the AUTHOR. "There's sighing and sobbing in yon Highland forest; There's weeping and wailing in yon Highland vale, And fitfully flashes a gleam from the ashes Of the tenantless hearth in the home of the Gael. There's a ship on the sea, and her white sails she's spreadin', A' ready to speed to a far distant shore; She may come hame again wi' the yellow gowd laden, But the sons of Glendarra shall come back no more. The gowan may spring by the clear-rinnin' burnie, The cushat may coo in the green woods again. The deer o' the mountain may drink at the fountain, Unfettered and free as the wave on the main; But the pibroch they played o'er the sweet blooming heather Is hushed in the sound of the ocean's wild roar; The song and the dance they hae vanish'd thegither, For the maids o' Glendarra shall come back no more." PREFACE. An attempt is here made to present a field that has not been preoccupied. The student of American history has noticed allusions to certain Scotch Highland settlements prior to the Revolution, without any attempt at either an account or origin of the same. In a measure the publication of certain state papers and colonial records, as well as an occasional memoir by an historical society have revived what had been overlooked. These settlements form a very important and interesting place in the early history of our country. While they may not have occupied a very prominent or pronounced position, yet their exertions in subduing the wilderness, their activity in the Revolution, and the wide influence exercised by the descendants of these hardy pioneers, should, long since, have brought their history and achievements into notice. The settlement in North Carolina, embracing a wide extent of territory, and the people numbered by the thousands, should, ere this, have found a competent exponent. But it exists more as a tradition than an actual colony. The Highlanders in Georgia more than acted their part against Spanish encroachments, yet survived all the vicissitudes of their exposed position. The stay of the Highlanders on the Mohawk was very brief, yet their flight into Canada and final settlement at Glengarry forms a very strange episode in the history of New York. The heartless treatment of the colony of Lachlan Campbell by the governor of the province of New York, and their long delayed recompense stands without a parallel, and is so strange and fanciful, that long since it should have excited the poet or novelist. The settlements in Nova Scotia and Prince Edwards Island, although scarcely commenced at the breaking out of the Revolution, are more important in later events than those chronicled in this volume. The chapters on the Highlands, the Scotch-Irish, and the Darien scheme, have sufficient connection to warrant their insertion. It is a noticeable fact that notwithstanding the valuable services rendered by the Highland regiments in the French and Indian war, but little account has been taken by writers, except in Scotland, although General David Stewart of Garth, as early as 1822, clearly paved the way. Unfortunately, his works, as well as those who have followed him, are comparatively unknown on this side the Atlantic. I was led to the searching out of this phase of our history, not only by the occasional allusions, but specially from reading works devoted to other nationalities engaged in the Revolution. Their achievements were fully set forth and their praises sung. Why should not the oppressed Gael, who sought the forests of the New World, struggled in the wilderness, and battled against foes, also be placed in his true light? If properly known, the artist would have a subject for his pencil, the poet a picture for his praises, and the novelist a strong background for his romance. Cleveland, O., October, 1898. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE HIGHLANDERS OF SCOTLAND. Division of Scotland--People of the Highlands--Language--Clanship--Chiefs Customs--Special Characteristics--Fiery-Cross--Slogan--Mode of Battle Forays--Feasts--Position of Woman--Marriage--Religious Toleration Superstitions--Poets--Pipers--Cave of Coire-nan-Uriskin--The Harp--Gaelic Music--Costume--Scotland's Wars--War with Romans--Battle of Largs--Bannockburn--Flodden--Pinkie--Wars of Montrose--Bonnie Dundee--Earl of Mar--Prince Charles Stuart--Atrocities in the Wake of Culloden--Uncertainty of Travellers' Observations--Kidnapping Emigration 17 CHAPTER II. THE SCOTCH-IRISH IN AMERICA. Origin of the name of Scotland--Scoto-Irish--Ulster--Clandonald--Protestant Colonies in Ireland--Corruption of Names--Percentage of in Revolution--Characteristics--Persecuted--Emigration from Ulster--First Scotch-Irish Clergyman in America--Struggle for Religious Liberty Settlement at Worcester--History of the Potato--Pelham--Warren and Blandford--Colerain--Londonderry--Settlements in Maine--New York--New Jersey--Pennsylvania--The Revolution--Maryland--Virginia--Patrick Henry--Daniel Morgan--George Rogers Clark--North Carolina--Battle of King's Mountain--South Carolina--Georgia--East Tennessee--Kentucky Canada--Industrial Arts--Distinctive Characteristics 40 CHAPTER III. CAUSES THAT LED TO EMIGRATION. Results of Clanship--Opposed to Emigration--Emigration to Ulster Expatriation of 7000--Changed Condition of Highlanders--Lands Rented Dissatisfaction--Luxurious Landlords--Action of Chiefs in Skye--Deplorable State of Affairs--Sheep-Farming--Improvements--Buchanan's Description--Famine--Class of Emigrants--America--Hardships and Disappointments 60 CHAPTER IV. DARIEN SCHEME. First Highlanders in America--Disastrous Speculation--Ruinous Legislation--Massacre of Glencoe--Darien Scheme Projected--William Paterson--Fabulous Dreams--Company Chartered--Scotland Excited Subscriptions--List of Subscribers--Spanish Sovereignty over Darien--English Jealousy and Opposition--Dutch East India Company--King William's Duplicity--English and Dutch Subscriptions Withdrawn--Great Preparations--Purchase of Ships--Sailing of First Expedition--Settlement of St. Andrews--Great Sufferings--St. Andrews Abandoned--The Caledonia and Unicorn Arrive at New York--Recriminations--The St. Andrews--The Dolphin--King Refuses Supplies--Relief Sent--Spaniards Aggressive--Second Expedition--Highlanders--Disappointed Expectations--Discordant Clergy--How News was Received in Scotland--Give Vent to Rage--King William's Indifference--Campbell of Fonab--Escape--Capitulation of Darien Colony--Ships Destroyed--Final End of Settlers 75 CHAPTER V. HIGHLANDERS IN NORTH CAROLINA. On the Cape Fear--Town Established--Highlanders Patronized--Arrival of Neil McNeill--Action of Legislature--List of Grantees--Wave of Emigration--Represented in Legislature--Colony Prosperous--Stamp Act--Genius of Liberty--Letter to Highlanders--Emigrants from Jura--Lands Allotted--War of Regulators--Campbelton Charter--Public Road--Public Buildings at Campbelton--Petition for Pardon--Highland Costume--Clan Macdonald Emigration--Allan Macdonald of Kingsborough--American Revolution--Sale of Public Offices--Attitude of Patriots--Provincial Congress--Highlanders Objects of Consideration--Reverend John McLeod--Committee to Confer with Highlanders--British Confidence--Governor Martin--Provincial Congress of 1775--Farquhard Campbell--Arrival of the George--Other Arrivals--Oaths Administered--Distressed Condition--Petition to Virginia Convention--War Party in the Ascendant--American Views--Highlanders Fail to Understand Conditions--Reckless Indifference of Leaders--General Donald Macdonald--British Campaign--Governor Martin Manipulates a Revolt--Macdonald's Manifesto--Rutherford's Manifesto--Highlanders in Rebellion--Standard at Cross Creek--March for Wilmington--Country Alarmed--Correspondence--Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge--Overthrow of Highlanders--Prescribed Parole--Prisoners Address Congress--Action of Sir William Howe--Allan Macdonald's Letter--On Parole--Effects His Exchange--Letter to Members of Congress--Cornwallis to Clinton--Military at Cross Creek--Women Protected--Religious Status 102 CHAPTER VI. HIGHLANDERS IN GEORGIA. English Treatment of Poor--Imprisonment for Debt--Oglethorpe's Philanthropy--Asylum Projected--Oglethorpe Sails for Georgia--Selects the Site of Savannah--Fort Argyle--Colonists of Different Nationalities--Towns Established--Why Highlanders were Selected--Oglethorpe Returns to England--Highland Emigrants--Character of--John Macleod--Founding of New Inverness--Oglethorpe Sails for Georgia--Visits the Highlanders--Fort St. Andrews--Spaniards Aggressive--Messengers Imprisoned--Spanish Perfidy--Suffering and Discontent in 1737--Dissension Increases--Removal Agitated--African Slavery Prohibited--Petition and Counter Petition--Highlanders Oppose African Slavery--Insufficient Produce Raised--Murder of Unarmed Highlanders--Florida Invaded--St. Augustine Blockaded--Massacre of Highlanders at Fort Moosa--Failure of Expedition--Conduct of William MacIntosh--Indians and Carolinians Desert--Agent Reprimanded by Parliament--Clansmen at Darien--John MacLeod Abandons His Charge--Georgia Invaded--Highlanders Defeat the Enemy--Battle of Bloody Marsh--Spaniards Retreat--Ensign Stewart--Oglethorpe Again Invades Florida--Growth of Georgia--Record in Revolution--Resolutions Assault on British War Vessels--Capture of--County of Liberty--Settlement Remained Highland 146 CHAPTER VII. CAPTAIN LACHLAN CAMPBELL'S NEW YORK COLONY. Lachlan Campbell--Donald Campbell's Memorial--Motives Controlling Royal Governors--Governor Clarke to Duke of Newcastle--Same to Lords of Trade--Efforts of Captain Campbell--Memorial Rejected--Redress Obtained--Grand Scheme--List of Grantees--A Desperado--Township of Argyle--Records of--Change of Name of County--Highland Soldiers Occupy Lands--How Allotted--Selling Land Warrants--New Hampshire Grants--Ethan Allan--Revolution--An Incident--Indian Raid--Massacre of Jane McCrea--Religious Sentiment 176 CHAPTER VIII. HIGHLAND SETTLEMENT ON THE MOHAWK. Sir William Johnson--Highlanders Preferred--Manner of Life--Changed State of Affairs--Sir John Johnson--Highlanders not Civic Officers--Sir John Johnson's Movements Inimical--Tryon County Committee to Provincial Congress--Action of Continental Congress--Sir John to Governor Tryon--Action of General Schuyler--Sir John's Parole--Highlanders Disarmed--Arms Retained--Highland Hostages--Instructions for Seizing Sir John--Sir John on Removal of Highlanders--Flight of Highlanders to Canada--Great Sufferings--Lady Johnson a Hostage--Highland Settlement a Nest of Treason--Exodus of Highland Women--Some Families Detained--Letter of Helen McDonell--Regiment Organized--Butler's Rangers--Cruel Warfare--Fort Schuyler Besieged--Battle of Oriskany--Heroism of Captain Gardenier--Parole of Angus McDonald--Massacre of Wyoming--Bloodthirsty Character of Alexander McDonald--Indian Country Laid Waste--Battle of Chemung--Sir John Ravages Johnstown--Visits Schoharie with Fire and Sword--Flight from Johnstown--Exploit of Donald McDonald--Shell's Defence--List of Officers of Sir John Johnson's Regiment--Settlement in Glengarry--Allotment of Lands--Story of Donald Grant--Religious Services Established 196 CHAPTER IX. GLENALADALE HIGHLANDERS OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. Highlanders in Canada--John Macdonald--Educated in Germany--Religious Oppression--Religion of the Yellow-Stick--Glenaladale Becomes Protector--Emigration--Company Raised Against Americans--Capture of American Vessel--Estimate of Glenaladale--Offered Governorship of Prince Edward Island 231 CHAPTER X. HIGHLAND SETTLEMENT IN PICTOU, NOVA SCOTIA. Emigration to Nova Scotia--Ship Hector--Sails from Lochbroom--Great Sufferings and Pestilence--Landing of Highlanders--Frightening of Indians--Bitter Disappointment--Danger of Starvation--False Reports--Action of Captain Archibald--Truro Migration--Hardships--Incidents of Suffering--Conditions of Grants of Land--Hector's Passengers--Interesting Facts Relative to Emigrants--Industries--Plague of Mice--American Revolution--Divided Sentiment--Persecution of American Sympathizers Highlanders Loyal to Great Britain--Americans Capture a Vessel--Privateers--Wreck of the Malignant Man-of-War--Indian Alarm--Itinerant Preachers--Arrival of Reverend James McGregor 235 CHAPTER XI. FIRST HIGHLAND REGIMENTS IN AMERICA. Cause of French and Indian War--Highlanders Sent to America--The Black Watch--Montgomery's Highlanders--Fraser's Highlanders--Uniform of--Black Watch at Albany--Lord Loudon at Halifax--Surrender of Fort William Henry--Success of the French--Defeat at Ticonderoga--Gallant Conduct of Highlanders--List of Casualties--Expedition Against Louisburg--Destruction French Fleet--Capture of Louisburg--Expedition Against Fort Du Quesne--Defeat of Major Grant--Washington--Name Fort Changed to Fort Pitt--Battalions of 42nd United--Amherst Possesses Ticonderoga--Army at Crown Point--Fall of Quebec--Journal of Malcolm Fraser--Movements of Fraser's Highlanders--Battle of Heights of Abraham--Galling Fire Sustained by Highlanders--Anecdote of General Murray--Retreat of French--Officers of the Black Watch--Highland Regiments Sail for Barbadoes--Return to New York--Black Watch Sent to Pittsburg--Battle of Bushy Run--Black Watch Sent Against Ohio Indians--Goes to Ireland--Impressions of in America--Table of Losses--Montgomery Highlanders Against the Cherokees--Battle with Indians--Allan Macpherson's Tragic Death--Retreat from Indian Country--Return to New York--Massacre at Fort Loudon--Surrender of St. Johns--Tables of Casualties--Acquisition of French Territory a Source of Danger 252 CHAPTER XII. SCOTCH HOSTILITY TOWARDS AMERICA. Causes of American Revolution--Massacre at Lexington--Insult to Franklin--England Precipitates War--Americans Ridiculed--Pitt's Noble Defence--Attitude of Eminent Men--Action of Cities--No Enthusiasm in Enlistments in England and Ireland--The Press-Gang--Enlistment of Criminals--Sentiment of People of Scotland--Lecky's Estimate--Addresses Upholding the King--Summary of Highland Addresses--Emigration Prohibited--Resentment Against Highlanders--Shown in Original Draft of Declaration of Independence--Petitions of Donald Macleod 292 CHAPTER XIII. HIGHLAND REGIMENTS IN AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Eulogy of Pitt--Organizing in America--Secret Instructions to Governor Tryon--Principal Agents--Royal Highland Emigrants--How Received--Colonel Maclean Saves Quebec--Siege of Quebec--First Battalion in Canada--Burgoyne's Doubts--Second Battalion--Sufferings of--Treatment of--Battle of Eutaw Springs--Royal Highland Emigrants Discharged--List of Officers--Grants of Land--John Bethune--42nd or Royal Highlanders--Embarks for America--Capture of Highlanders--Capture of Oxford Transport--Prisoners from the Crawford--British Fleet Arrives at Staten Island--Battle of Long Island--Ardor of Highlanders--Americans Evacuate New York--Patriotism of Mrs. Murray--Peril of Putnam--Gallant Conduct of Major Murray--Battle of Harlem--Capture of Fort Washington--Royal Highlanders in New Jersey--Attacked at Pisquatiqua--Sergeant McGregor--Battle of Brandywine--Wayne's Army Surprised--Expeditions During Winter of 1779--Skirmishing and Suffering--Infusion of Poor Soldiers--Capture of Charleston--Desertions Regiment Reduced--Sails for Halifax--Table of Casualties--Fraser's Highlanders--Sails for America--Capture of Transports--Reports of Captain Seth Harding and Colonel Archibald Campbell--Confinement of Colonel Campbell--Interest in by Washington--Battle of Brooklin--Diversified Employment--Expedition Against Little Egg Harbor--Capture of Savannah--Retrograde Movement of General Prevost--Battle of Brier Creek--Invasion of South Carolina--Battle of Stono Ferry--Retreat to Savannah--Siege of--Capture of Stony Point--Surrender of Charleston--Battle of Camden--Defeat of General Sumter--Battle of King's Mountain--Battle of Blackstocks--Battle of the Cowpens--Battle of Guilford Court-House--March of British Army to Yorktown--Losses of Fraser's Highlanders--Surrender of Yorktown--Highlanders Prisoners--Regiment Discharged at Perth--Argyle Highlanders--How Constituted--Sails for Halifax--Two Companies at Charleston--At Penobscot--Besieged by Americans--Regiment Returns to England--Macdonald's Highlanders--Sails for New York--Embarks for Virginia--Bravery of the Soldiers--Highlanders on Horseback--Surrender of Yorktown--Cantoned at Winchester--Removed to Lancaster--Disbanded at Stirling Castle--Summary--Estimate of Washington--His Opinion of Highlanders--Not Guilty of Wanton Cruelty 308 CHAPTER XIV. DISTINGUISHED HIGHLANDERS WHO SERVED IN AMERICA IN THE INTERESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. General Sir Alan Cameron--General Sir Archibald Campbell--General John Campbell--Lord William Campbell--General Simon Fraser of Balnain--General Simon Fraser of Lovat--General Simon Fraser--General James Grant of Ballindalloch--General Allan Maclean of Torloisk--Sir Allan Maclean--General Francis Maclean--General John Small--Flora Macdonald 377 CHAPTER XV. DISTINGUISHED HIGHLANDERS IN AMERICAN INTEREST. General Alexander McDougall--General Lachlan McIntosh--General Arthur St. Clair--Serjeant Macdonald 398 APPENDIX. Note A.--First Emigrants to America 417 Note B.--Letter of Donald Macpherson 417 Note C.--Emigration during the Eighteenth Century 419 Note D.--Appeal to the Highlanders lately arrived from Scotland 422 Note E.--Ingratitude of the Highlanders 426 Note F.--Were the Highlanders Faithful to their Oath to the Americans 426 Note G.--Marvellous Escape of Captain McArthur 430 Note H.--Highlanders in South Carolina 442 Note I.--Alexander McNaughton 443 Note J.--Allan McDonald's Complaint to the President of Congress 444 Note K.--The Glengarry Settlers 445 Note to Chapter VIII 448 Note L.--Moravian Indians 448 Note M.--Highlanders Refused Lands in America 450 Note N.--Captain James Stewart commissioned to raise a company of Highlanders 453 List of Subscribers 456 ILLUSTRATIONS. Battle of Culloden Frontispiece Coire-nan-Uriskin 26 House of Henry McWhorter 52 View of Battle-Field of Alamance 55 Scottish India House 90 Barbacue Church, where Flora Macdonald Worshipped 144 Johnson Hall 204 View of the Valley of Wyoming 218 Highland Officer 256 Old Blockhouse Fort Duquesne 281 General Sir Archibald Campbell 397 Brigadier General Simon Fraser 382 General Simon Fraser of Loval 387 Sir Allan Maclean, Bart 391 Flora Macdonald 394 General Alexander McDougall 398 General Lachlan McIntosh 402 General Arthur St. Clair 405 Sergeant Macdonald and Colonel Gainey 413 PARTIAL LIST OF PRINCIPAL AUTHORITIES CONSULTED. American Archives. Answer of Cornwallis to Clinton. London, 1783. Bancroft (George.) History of the United States. London, N.D. Burt (Captain.) Letters from the North of Scotland, London. 1815. Burton (J.H.) Darien Papers, Bannatyne Club. 1849 Burton (J.H.) History of Scotland. Edinburgh, 1853. Celtic Monthly, Inverness, 1876-1888. Georgia Historical Society Collections. Graham (James J.) Memoirs General Graham, Edinburgh, 1862. Hotten (J.C.) List of Emigrants to America, New York, 1874. Johnson (C.) History Washington County, New York, Philadelphia, 1878. Keltie (J.S.). History of the Highland Clans, Edinburgh, 1882. Lecky (W.E.H.) History of England. London, 1892. Lossing (B.J.) Field-Book of the American Revolution. New York, 1855. Macaulay (T.B.) History of England, Boston, N.D. McDonald (H.) Letter-Book, New York Historical Society, 1892. Macdonell (J.A.) Sketches of Glengarry, Montreal. 1893. McLeod (D.) Brief Review of the Settlement of Upper Canada, Cleveland, 1841. Martin (M.) Description Western Isles, Glasgow, 1884. National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, Philadelphia, 1852. New York Documentary and Colonial History. North Carolina Colonial Record. Paterson (J.) History Pictou County. Nova Scotia, Montreal. 1893. Proceedings Scotch-Irish American Congress. 1889-1896. Rogers (H.) Hadden's Journal and Orderly Book, Albany, 1884. Scott (Sir W.) Lady of the Lake, New York, N.D. Scott (Sir W.) Tales of a Grandfather, Boston, 1852. Smith (William) History of New York, New York, 1814. Smith (W.H.) St. Clair Papers, Cincinnati, 1882. Sparks (Jared) Writings of Washington, Boston. 1837. Stephens (W.B.) History of Georgia, New York. 1859. St. Clair (Arthur.) Narrative, Philadelphia, 1812. Stewart (David.) Sketches of the Highlanders, Edinburgh, 1822. Stone (W.L.) Life of Joseph Brant, New York. 1838. Stone (W.L.) Orderly Book of Sir John Johnson, Albany, 1882. Tarleton (Lieut. Col.) Campaigns of, 1780-1781. London, 1787. Washington and his Generals, Philadelphia, 1848. CHAPTER I. THE HIGHLANDERS OF SCOTLAND. A range of mountains forming a lofty and somewhat shattered rampart, commencing in the county of Aberdeen, north of the river Don, and extending in a southwest course across the country, till it terminates beyond Ardmore, in the county of Dumbarton, divides Scotland into two distinct parts. The southern face of these mountains is bold, rocky, dark and precipitous. The land south of this line is called the Lowlands, and that to the north, including the range, the Highlands. The maritime outline of the Highlands is also bold and rocky, and in many places deeply indented by arms of the sea. The northern and western coasts are fringed with groups of islands. The general surface of the country is mountainous, yet capable of supporting innumerable cattle, sheep and deer. The scenery is nowhere excelled for various forms of beauty and sublimity. The lochs and bens have wrought upon the imaginations of historians, poets and novelists. The inhabitants living within these boundaries were as unique as their bens and glens. From the middle of the thirteenth century they have been distinctly marked from those inhabiting the low countries, in consequence of which they exhibit a civilization peculiarly their own. By their Lowland neighbors they were imperfectly known, being generally regarded as a horde of savage thieves, and their country as an impenetrable wilderness. From this judgment they made no effort to free themselves, but rather inclined to confirm it. The language spoken by the two races greatly varied which had a tendency to establish a marked characteristic difference between them. For a period of seven centuries the entrances or passes into the Grampians constituted a boundary between both the people and their language. At the south the Saxon language was universally spoken, while beyond the range the Gaelic formed the mother tongue, accompanied by the plaid, the claymore and other specialties which accompanied Highland characteristics. Their language was one of the oldest and least mongrel types of the great Aryan family of speech. The country in which the Gaelic was in common use among all classes of people may be defined by a line drawn from the western opening of the Pentland Frith, sweeping around St. Kilda, from thence embracing the entire cluster of islands to the east and south, as far as Arran; thence to the Mull of Kintyre, re-entering the mainland at Ardmore, in Dumbartonshire, following the southern face of the Grampians to Aberdeenshire, and ending on the north-east point of Caithness. For a period of nearly two hundred years the Highlander has been an object of study by strangers. Travellers have written concerning them, but dwelt upon such points as struck their fancy. A people cannot be judged by the jottings of those who have not studied the question with candor and sufficient information. Fortunately the Highlands, during the present century, have produced men who have carefully set forth their history, manners and customs. These men have fully weighed the questions of isolation, mode of life, habits of thought, and wild surroundings, which developed in the Highlander firmness of decision, fertility in resource, ardor in friendship, love of country, and a generous enthusiasm, as well as a system of government. The Highlanders were tall, robust, well formed and hardy. Early marriages were unknown among them, and it was rare for a female of puny stature and delicate constitution to be honored with a husband. They were not obliged by art in forming their bodies, for Nature acted her part bountifully to them, and among them there are but few bodily imperfections. The division of the people into clans, tribes or families, under separate chiefs, constituted the most remarkable circumstance in their political condition, which ultimately resulted in many of their peculiar sentiments, customs and institutions. For the most part the monarchs of Scotland had left the people alone, and, therefore, had but little to do in the working out of their destiny. Under little or no restraint from the State, the patriarchal form of government became universal. It is a singular fact that although English ships had navigated the known seas and transplanted colonies, yet the Highlanders were but little known in London, even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. To the people of England it would have been a matter of surprise to learn that in the north of Great Britain, and at a distance of less than five hundred miles from their metropolis, there were many miniature courts, in each of which there was a hereditary ruler, attended by guards, armor-bearers, musicians, an orator, a poet, and who kept a rude state, dispensed justice, exacted tribute, waged war, and contracted treaties. The ruler of each clan was called a chief, who was really the chief man of his family. Each clan was divided into branches who had chieftains over them. The members of the clan claimed consanguinity to the chief. The idea never entered into the mind of a Highlander that the chief was anything more than the head of the clan. The relation he sustained was subordinate to the will of the people. Sometimes his sway was unlimited, but necessarily paternal. The tribesmen were strongly attached to the person of their chief. He stood in the light of a protector, who must defend them and right their wrongs. They rallied to his support, and in defense they had a contempt for danger. The sway of the chief was of such a nature as to cultivate an imperishable love of independence, which was probably strengthened by an exceptional hardiness of character. The chief generally resided among his clansmen, and his castle was the court where rewards were distributed and distinctions conferred. All disputes were settled by his decision. They followed his standard in war, attended him in the chase, supplied his table and harvested the products of his fields. His nearest kinsmen became sub-chiefs, or chieftains, held their lands and properties from him, over which they exercised a subordinate jurisdiction. These became counsellors and assistants in all emergencies. One chief was distinguished from another by having a greater number of attendants, and by the exercise of general hospitality, kindness and condescension. At the castle everyone was made welcome, and treated according to his station, with a degree of courtesy and regard for his feelings. This courtesy not only raised the clansman in his own estimation, but drew the ties closer that bound him to his chief. While the position of chief was hereditary, yet the heir was obliged in honor to give a specimen of his valor, before he was assumed or declared leader of his people. Usually he made an incursion upon some chief with whom his clan had a feud. He gathered around him a retinue of young men who were ambitious to signalize themselves. They were obliged to bring, by open force, the cattle they found in the land they attacked, or else die in the attempt. If successful the youthful chief was ever after reputed valiant and worthy of the government. This custom being reciprocally used among them, was not reputed robbery; for the damage which one tribe sustained would receive compensation at the inauguration of its chief. Living in a climate, severe in winter, the people inured themselves to the frosts and snows, and cared not for the exposure to the severest storms or fiercest blasts. They were content to lie down, for a night's rest, among the heather on the hillside, in snow or rain, covered only by their plaid. It is related that the laird of Keppoch, chieftain of a branch of the MacDonalds, in a winter campaign against a neighboring clan, with whom he was at war, gave orders for a snow-ball to lay under his head in the night; whereupon, his followers objected, saying, "Now we despair of victory, since our leader has become so effeminate he can't sleep without a pillow." The high sense of honor cultivated by the relationship sustained to the chief was reflected by the most obscure inhabitant. Instances of theft from the dwelling houses seldom ever occurred, and highway robbery was never known. In the interior all property was safe without the security of locks, bolts and bars. In summer time the common receptacle for clothes, cheese, and everything that required air, was an open barn or shed. On account of wars, and raids from the neighboring clans, it was found necessary to protect the gates of castles. The Highlanders were a brave and high-spirited people, and living under a turbulent monarchy, and having neighbors, not the most peaceable, a warlike character was either developed or else sustained. Inured to poverty they acquired a hardihood which enabled them to sustain severe privations. In their school of life it was taught to consider courage an honorable virtue and cowardice the most disgraceful failing. Loving their native glen, they were ever ready to defend it to the last extremity. Their own good name and devotion to the clan emulated and held them to deeds of daring. It was hazardous for a chief to engage in war without the consent of his people; nor could deception be practiced successfully. Lord Murray raised a thousand men on his father's and lord Lovat's estates, under the assurance that they were to serve king James, but in reality for the service of king William. This was discovered while Murray was in the act of reviewing them; immediately they broke ranks, ran to an adjoining brook, and, filling their bonnets with water, drank to king James' health, and then marched off with pipes playing to join Dundee. The clan was raised within an incredibly short time. When a sudden or important emergency demanded the clansmen the chief slew a goat, and making a cross of light wood, seared its extremities with fire, and extinguished them in the blood of the animal. This was called the _Fiery Cross_, or Cross of Shame, because disobedience to what the symbol implied inferred infamy. It was delivered to a swift trusty runner, who with the utmost speed carried it to the first hamlet and delivered it to the principal person with the word of rendezvous. The one receiving it sent it with the utmost despatch to the next village; and thus with the utmost celerity it passed through all the district which owed allegiance to the chief, and if the danger was common, also among his neighbors and allies. Every man between the ages of sixteen and sixty, capable of bearing arms, must immediately repair to the place of rendezvous, in his best arms and accoutrements. In extreme cases childhood and old age obeyed it. He who failed to appear suffered the penalties of fire and sword, which were emblematically denounced to the disobedient by the bloody and burnt marks upon this warlike signal. In the camp, on the march, or in battle, the clan was commanded by the chief. If the chief was absent, then some responsible chieftain of the clan took the lead. In both their slogan guided them, for every clan had its own war-cry. Before commencing an attack the warriors generally took off their jackets and shoes. It was long remembered in Lochabar, that at the battle of Killiecrankie, Sir Ewen Cameron, at the head of his clan, just before engaging in the conflict, took from his feet, what was probably the only pair of shoes, among his tribesmen. Thus freed from everything that might impede their movements, they advanced to the assault, on a double-quick, and when within a few yards of the enemy, would pour in a volley of musketry and then rush forward with claymore in hand, reserving the pistol and dirk for close action. When in close quarters the bayonets of the enemy were received on their targets; thrusting them aside, they resorted to the pistol and dirk to complete the confusion made by the musket and claymore. In a close engagement they could not be withstood by regular troops. Another kind of warfare to which the Highlander was prone, is called _Creach_, or foray, but really the lifting of cattle. The _Creach_ received the approbation of the clan, and was planned by some responsible individual. Their predatory raids were not made for the mere pleasure of plundering their neighbors. To them it was legitimate warfare, and generally in retaliation for recent injuries, or in revenge of former wrongs. They were strict in not offending those with whom they were in amity. They had high notions of the duty of observing faith to allies and hospitality to guests. They were warriors receiving the lawful prize of war, and when driving the herds of the Lowland farmers up the pass which led to their native glen considered it just as legitimate as did the Raleighs and Drakes when they divided the spoils of Spanish galleons. They were not always the aggressors. Every evidence proves that they submitted to grievances before resorting to arms. When retaliating it was with the knowledge that their own lands would be exposed to rapine. As an illustration of the view in which the _Creach_ was held, the case of Donald Cameron may be taken, who was tried in 1752, for cattle stealing, and executed at Kinloch Rannoch. At his execution he dwelt with surprise and indignation on his fate. He had never committed murder, nor robbed man or house, nor taken anything but cattle, and only then when on the grass, from one with whom he was at feud; why then should he be punished for doing that which was a common prey to all? After a successful expedition the chief gave a great entertainment, to which all the country around was invited. On such an occasion whole deer and beeves were roasted and laid on boards or hurdles of rods placed on the rough trunks of trees, so arranged as to form an extended table. During the feast spirituous liquors went round in plenteous libations. Meanwhile the pipers played, after which the women danced, and, when they retired, the harpers were introduced. Great feasting accompanied a wedding, and also the burial of a great personage. At the burial of one of the Lords of the Isles, in Iona, nine hundred cows were consumed. The true condition of a people may be known by the regard held for woman. The beauty of their women was extolled in song. Small eye-brows was considered as a mark of beauty, and names were bestowed upon the owners from this feature. No country in Europe held woman in so great esteem as in the Highlands of Scotland. An unfaithful, unkind, or even careless husband was looked upon as a monster. The parents gave dowers according to their means, consisting of cattle, provisions, farm stocking, etc. Where the parents were unable to provide sufficiently, then it was customary for a newly-married couple to collect from their neighbors enough to serve the first year. The marriage vow was sacredly kept. Whoever violated it, whether male or female, which seldom ever occurred, was made to stand in a barrel of cold water at the church door, after which the delinquent, clad in a wet canvas shirt, was made to stand before the congregation, and at the close of service, the minister explained the nature of the offense. A separation of a married couple among the common people was almost unknown. However disagreeable the wife might be, the husband rarely contemplated putting her away. Being his wife, he bore with her failings; as the mother of his children he continued to support her; a separation would have entailed reproach upon his posterity. Young married women never wore any close head-dress. The hair, with a slight ornament was tied with ribbons; but if she lost her virtue then she was obliged to wear a cap, and never appear again with her head uncovered. Honesty and fidelity were sacredly inculcated, and held to be virtues which all should be careful to practice. Honesty and fair dealing were enforced by custom, which had a more powerful influence, in their mutual transactions, than the legal enactments of later periods. Insolvency was considered disgraceful, and _prima facie_ a crime. Bankrupts surrendered their all, and then clad in a party colored clouted garment, with hose of different sets, had their hips dashed against a stone in presence of the people, by four men, each seizing an arm or a leg. Instances of faithfulness and attachment are innumerable. The one most frequently referred to occurred during the battle of Inverkeithing, between the Royalists and the troops of Cromwell, during which seven hundred and fifty of the Mac Leans, led by their chief, Sir Hector, fell upon the field. In the heat of the conflict, eight brothers of the clan sacrificed their lives in defense of their chief. Being hard pressed by the enemy, and stoutly refusing to change his position, he was supported and covered by these intrepid brothers. As each brother fell another rushed forward, covering his chief with his body, crying _Fear eil airson Eachainn_ (Another for Hector). This phrase has continued ever since as a proverb or watch-word when a man encounters any sudden danger that requires instant succor. The Highlands of Scotland is the only country of Europe that has never been distracted by religious controversy, or suffered from religious persecution. This possibly may have been due to their patriarchal form of government. The principles of the Christian religion were warmly accepted by the people, and cherished with a strong feeling. In their religious convictions they were peaceable and unobtrusive, never arming themselves with Scriptural texts in order to carry on offensive operations. Never being perplexed by doubt, they desired no one to corroborate their faith, and no inducement could persuade them to strut about in the garb of piety in order to attract respect. The reverence for the Creator was in the heart, rather than upon the lips. In that land papists and protestants lived together in charity and brotherhood, earnest and devoted in their churches, and in contact with the world, humane and charitable. The pulpit administrations were clear and simple, and blended with an impressive and captivating spirit. All ranks were influenced by the belief that cruelty, oppression, or other misconduct, descended to the children, even to the third and fourth generations. To a certain extent the religion of the Highlander was blended with a belief in ghosts, dreams and visions. The superstitions of the Gael were distinctly marked, and entirely too important to be overlooked. These beliefs may have been largely due to an uncultivated imagination and the narrow sphere in which he moved. His tales were adorned with the miraculous and his poetry contained as many shadowy as substantial personages. Innumerable were the stories of fairies, kelpies, urisks, witches and prophets or seers. Over him watched the Daoine Shi', or men of peace. In the glens and corries were heard the eerie sounds during the watches of the night. Strange emotions were aroused in the hearts of those who heard the raging of the tempest, the roaring of the swollen rivers and dashing of the water-fall, the thunder peals echoing from crag to crag, and the lightning rending rocks and shivering to pieces the trees. When a reasonable cause could not be assigned for a calamity it was ascribed to the operations of evil spirits. The evil one had power to make compacts, but against these was the virtue of the charmed circle. One of the most dangerous and malignant of beings was the Water-kelpie, which allured women and children into its element, where they were drowned, and then became its prey. It could skim along the surface of the water, and browse by its side, or even suddenly swell a river or loch, which it inhabited, until an unwary traveller might be engulfed. The Urisks were half-men, half-spirits, who, by kind treatment, could be induced to do a good turn, even to the drudgeries of a farm. Although scattered over the whole Highlands, they assembled in the celebrated cave--_Coire-nan-Uriskin_--situated near the base of Ben Venue, in Aberfoyle. [Illustration: COIRE-NAN-URISKIN.] "By many a bard, in Celtic tongue, Has Coire-nan-Uriskin been sung; A softer name the Saxons gave, And call'd the grot the Goblin-cave, * * * * * Gray Superstition's whisper dread Debarr'd the spot to vulgar tread; For there, she said, did fays resort, And satyrs hold their sylvan court."-- _Lady of the Lake_. The Daoine Shi' were believed to be a peevish, repining race of beings, who, possessing but a scant portion of happiness, envied mankind their more complete and substantial enjoyments. They had a sort of a shadowy happiness, a tinsel grandeur, in their subterranean abodes. Many persons had been entertained in their secret retreats, where they were received into the most splendid apartments, and regaled with sumptuous banquets and delicious wines. Should a mortal, however, partake of their dainties, then he was forever doomed to the condition of shi'ick, or Man of Peace. These banquets and all the paraphernalia of their homes were but deceptions. They dressed in green, and took offense at any mortal who ventured to assume their favorite color. Hence, in some parts of Scotland, green was held to be unlucky to certain tribes and counties. The men of Caithness alleged that their bands that wore this color were cut off at the battle of Flodden; and for this reason they avoided the crossing of the Ord on a Monday, that being the day of the week on which the ill-omened array set forth. This color was disliked by both those of the name of Ogilvy and Graham. The greatest precautions had to be taken against the Daoine Shi' in order to prevent them from spiriting away mothers and their newly-born children. Witches and prophets or seers, were frequently consulted, especially before going into battle. The warnings were not always received with attention. Indeed, as a rule, the chiefs were seldom deterred from their purpose by the warnings of the oracles they consulted. It has been advocated that the superstitions of the Highlanders, on the whole, were elevating and ennobling, which plea cannot well be sustained. It is admitted that in some of these superstitions there were lessons taught which warned against dishonorable acts, and impressed what to them were attached disgrace both to themselves and also to their kindred; and that oppression, treachery, or any other wickedness would be punished alike in their own persons and in those of their descendants. Still, on the other hand, it must not be forgotten that the doctrines of rewards and punishments had for generations been taught them from the pulpit. How far these teachings had been interwoven with their superstitions would be an impossible problem to solve. The Highlanders were poetical. Their poets, or bards, were legion, and possessed a marked influence over the imaginations of the people. They excited the Gael to deeds of valor. Their compositions were all set to music,--many of them composing the airs to which their verses were adapted. Every chief had his bard. The aged minstrel was in attendance on all important occasions: at birth, marriage and death; at succession, victory, and defeat. He stimulated the warriors in battle by chanting the glorious deeds of their ancestors; exhorted them to emulate those distinguished examples, and, if possible, shed a still greater lustre on the warlike reputation of the clan. These addresses were delivered with great vehemence of manner, and never failed to raise the feelings of the listeners to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. When the voice of the bard was lost in the din of battle then the piper raised the inspiring sound of the pibroch. When the conflict was over the bard and the piper were again called into service--the former to honor the memory of those who had fallen, to celebrate the actions of the survivors, and excite them to further deeds of valor. The piper played the mournful Coronach for the slain, and by his notes reminded the survivors how honorable was the conduct of the dead. The bards were the _senachies_ or historians of the clans, and were recognized as a very important factor in society. They represented the literature of their times. In the absence of books they constituted the library and learning of the tribe. They were the living chronicles of past events, and the depositories of popular poetry. Tales and old poems were known to special reciters. When collected around their evening fires, a favorite pastime was a recital of traditional tales and poetry. The most acceptable guest was the one who could rehearse the longest poem or most interesting tale. Living in the land of Ossian, it was natural to ask a stranger, "Can you speak of the days of Fingal?" If the answer was in the affirmative, then the neighbors were summoned, and poems and old tales would be the order until the hour of midnight. The reciter threw into the recitation all the powers of his soul and gave vent to the sentiment. Both sexes always participated in these meetings. The poetry was not always of the same cast. It varied as greatly as were the moods of the composer. The sublimity of Ossian had its opposite in the biting sarcasm and trenchant ridicule of some of the minor poets. Martin, who travelled in the Western Isles, about 1695, remarks: "They are a very sagacious people, quick of apprehension, and even the vulgar exceed all those of their rank and education I ever yet saw in any other country. They have a great genius for music and mechanics. I have observed several of their children that before they could speak were capable to distinguish and make choice of one tune before another upon a violin; for they appeared always uneasy until the tune which they fancied best was played, and then they expressed their satisfaction by the motions of their head and hands. There are several of them who invent tunes already taking in the South of Scotland and elsewhere. Some musicians have endeavored to pass for first inventors of them by changing their name, but this has been impracticable; for whatever language gives the modern name, the tune still continues to speak its true original. * * *. Some of both sexes have a quick vein of poetry, and in their language--which is very emphatic--they compose rhyme and verse, both which powerfully affect the fancy. And in my judgment (which is not singular in this matter) with as great force as that of any ancient or modern poet I ever read. They have generally very retentive memories; they see things at a great distance. The unhappiness of their education, and their want of converse with foreign nations, deprives them of the opportunity to cultivate and beautify their genius, which seems to have been formed by nature for great attainments."[1] The piper was an important factor in Highland society. From the earliest period the Highlanders were fond of music and dancing, and the notes of the bag-pipe moved them as no other instrument could. The piper performed his duty in peace as well as in war. At harvest homes, Hallowe'en christenings, weddings, and evenings spent in dancing, he was the hero for the occasion. The people took delight in the high-toned warlike notes to which they danced, and were charmed with the solemn and melancholy airs which filled up the pauses. Withal the piper was a humorous fellow and was full of stories. The harp was a very ancient musical instrument, and was called _clarsach_. It had thirty strings, with the peculiarity that the front arm was not perpendicular to the sounding board, but turned considerably towards the left, to afford a greater opening for the voice of the performer, and this construction showed that the accompaniment of the voice was a chief province of the harper. Some harps had but four strings. Great pains were taken to decorate the instrument. One of the last harpers was Roderick Morrison, usually called Rory Dall. He served the chief of Mac Leod. He flourished about 1650. Referring again to Gaelic music it may be stated that its air can easily be detected. It is quaint and pathetic, moving one with intervals singular in their irregularity. When compared with the common airs among the English, the two are found to be quite distinct. The airs to which "Scots wha hae," "Auld Langsyne," "Roy's Wife," "O a' the Airts," and "Ye Banks and Braes" are written, are such that nothing similar can be found in England. They are Scottish. Airs of precisely the same character are, however, found among all Keltic races. No portraiture of a Highlander would be complete without a description of his garb. His costume was as picturesque as his native hills. It was well adapted to his mode of life. By its lightness and freedom he was enabled to use his limbs and handle his arms with ease and dexterity. He moved with great swiftness. Every clan had a plaid of its own, differing in the combination of its colors from all others. Thus a Cameron, a Mac Donald, a Mac Kenzie, etc., was known by his plaid; and in like manner the Athole, Glenorchy, and other colors of different districts were easily discernible. Besides those of tribal designations, industrious housewives had patterns, distinguished by the set, superior quality, and fineness of the cloth, or brightness and variety of the colors. The removal of tenants rarely occurred, and consequently, it was easy to preserve and perpetuate any particular set, or pattern, even among the lower orders. The plaid was made of fine wool, with much ingenuity in sorting the colors. In order to give exact patterns the women had before them a piece of wood with every thread of the stripe upon it. Until quite recently it was believed that the plaid, philibeg and bonnet formed the ancient garb. The philibeg or kilt, as distinct from the plaid, in all probability, is comparatively modern. The truis, consisting of breeches and stockings, is one piece and made to fit closely to the limbs, was an old costume. The belted plaid was a piece of tartan two yards in breadth, and four in length. It surrounded the waist in great folds, being firmly bound round the loins with a leathern belt, and in such manner that the lower side fell down to the middle of the knee joint. The upper part was fastened to the left shoulder with a large brooch or pin, leaving the right arm uncovered and at full liberty. In wet weather the plaid was thrown loose, covering both shoulders and body. When the use of both arms was required, it was fastened across the breast by a large bodkin or circular brooch. The sporan, a large purse of goat or badger's skin, usually ornamented, was hung before. The bonnet completed the garb. The garters were broad and of rich colors, forming a close texture which was not liable to wrinkle. The kilted-plaid was generally double, and when let down enveloped the whole person, thus forming a shelter from the storm. Shoes and stockings are of comparatively recent times. In lieu of the shoe untanned leather was tied with thongs around the feet. Burt, writing about the year 1727, when some innovations had been made, says: "The Highland dress consists of a bonnet made of thrum without a brim, a short coat, a waistcoat longer by five or six inches, short stockings, and brogues or pumps without heels * * * Few besides gentlemen wear the truis, that is, the breeches and stockings all of one piece and drawn on together; over this habit they wear a plaid, which is usually three yards long and two breadths wide, and the whole garb is made of checkered tartan or plaiding; this with the sword and pistol, is called a _full dress_, and to a well proportioned man with any tolerable air, it makes an agreeable figure."[2] The plaid was the undress of the ladies, and to a woman who adjusted it with an important air, it proved to be a becoming veil. It was made of silk or fine worsted, checkered with various lively colors, two breadths wide and three yards in length. It was brought over the head and made to hide or discover the face, according to the occasion, or the wearer's fancy; it reached to the waist behind; one corner dropped as low as the ankle on one side, and the other part, in folds, hung down from the opposite arm. The sleeves were of scarlet cloth, closed at the ends as man's vests, with gold lace round them, having plate buttons set with fine stones. The head-dress was a fine kerchief of linen, straight about the head. The plaid was tied before on the breast, with a buckle of silver or brass, according to the quality of the person. The plaid was tied round the waist with a belt of leather. The Highlanders bore their part in all of Scotland's wars. An appeal, or order, to them never was made in vain. Only a brief notice must here suffice. Almost at the very dawn of Scotland's history we find the inhabitants beyond the Grampians taking a bold stand in behalf of their liberties. The Romans early triumphed over England and the southern limits of Scotland. In the year 78 A.D., Agricola, an able and vigorous commander, was appointed over the forces in Britain. During the years 80, 81, and 82, he subdued that part of Scotland south of the friths of Forth and Clyde. Learning that a confederacy had been formed to resist him at the north, during the summer of 83, he opened the campaign beyond the friths. His movements did not escape the keen eyes of the mountaineers, for in the night time they suddenly fell upon the Ninth Legion at Loch Ore, and were only repulsed after a desperate resistance. The Roman army receiving auxiliaries from the south, Agricola, in the summer of 84, took up his line of march towards the Grampians. The northern tribes, in the meantime, had united under a powerful leader whom the Romans called Galgacus. They fully realized that their liberties were in danger. They sent their wives and children into places of safety, and, thirty thousand strong, waited the advance of the enemy. The two armies came together at _Mons Grampius_. The field presented a dreadful spectacle of carnage and destruction; for ten thousand of the tribesmen fell in the engagement. The Roman army elated by its success passed the night in exultation. The victory was barren of results, for, after three years of persevering warfare, the Romans were forced to relinquish the object of the expedition. In the year 183 the Highlanders broke through the northern Roman wall. In 207 the irrepressible people again broke over their limits, which brought the emperor Severus, although old and in bad health, into the field. Exasperated by their resistance the emperor sought to extirpate them because they had prevented his nation from becoming the conquerors of Europe. Collecting a large body of troops he directed them into the mountains, and marched from the wall of Antoninus even to the very extremity of the island; but this year, 208, was also barren of fruits. Fifty thousand Romans fell a prey to fatigue, the climate, and the desultory assaults of the natives. Soon after the entire country north of the Antonine wall, was given up, for it was found that while it was necessary for one legion to keep the southern parts in subjection two were required to repel the incursions of the Gael. Incursions from the north again broke out during the year 306, when the restless tribes were repelled by Constantius Chlorus. In the year 345 they were again repelled by Constans. During all these years the Highlanders were learning the art of war by their contact with the Romans. They no longer feared the invaders, for about the year 360, they advanced into the Roman territories and committed many depredations. There was another outbreak about the year 398. Finally, about the year 446, the Romans abandoned Britain, and advised the inhabitants, who had suffered from the northern tribes, to protect themselves by retiring behind and keeping in repair the wall of Severus. The people were gradually forming for themselves distinct characteristics, as well as a separate kingdom confined within the Grampian boundaries. This has been known as the kingdom of the Scots; but to the Highlander as that of the Gael, or Albanich. The epithets, Scots and English, are totally unknown in Gaelic. They call the English Sassanachs, the Lowlanders are Gauls, and their own country Gaeldach. Passing over several centuries and paying no attention to the rapines of the Danes and the Norse, we find that the power of the Norwegians, under king Haco, was broken at the battle of the Largs, fought October 2d, 1263. King Alexander III. summoned the Highlanders, who rallied to the defence of their country and rendered such assistance as was required. The right wing of the Scottish army was composed of the men of Argyle, Lennox, Athole, and Galloway, while the left wing was constituted by those from Fife, Stirling, Berwick, and Lothian. The center, commanded by the king in person, was composed of the men of Ross, Perth, Angus, Mar, Mearns, Moray, Inverness, and Caithness. The conquest of Scotland, undertaken by the English Edwards, culminated in the battle of Bannockburn, fought Monday, June 24, 1314, when the invaders met with a crushing defeat, leaving thirty thousand of their number dead upon the field, or two-thirds as many as there were Scots on the field. In this battle the reserve, composed of the men of Argyle, Carrick, Kintyre, and the Isles, formed the fourth line, was commanded by Bruce in person. The following clans, commanded in person by their respective chiefs, had the distinguished honor of fighting nobly: Stewart, Macdonald, Mackay, Mackintosh, Macpherson, Cameron, Sinclair, Drummond, Campbell, Menzies, Maclean, Sutherland, Robertson, Grant, Fraser, Macfarlane, Ross, Macgregor, Munro, Mackenzie, and Macquarrie, or twenty-one in all. In the year 1513, James IV. determined on an invasion of England, and summoned the whole array of his kingdom to meet him on the common moor of Edinburgh. One hundred thousand men assembled in obedience to the command. This great host met the English on the field of Flodden, September 9th. The right divisions of James' army were chiefly composed of Highlanders. The shock of the mountaineers, as they poured upon the English pikemen, was terrible; but the force of the onslaught once sustained became spent with its own violence. The consequence was a total rout of the right wing accompanied by great slaughter. Of this host there perished on the field fifteen lords and chiefs of clans. During the year 1547, the English, under the duke of Somerset, invaded Scotland. The hostile armies came together at Pinkie, September 18th. The right and left wings of the Scottish army were composed of Highlanders. During the conflict the Highlanders could not resist the temptation to plunder, and, while thus engaged, saw the division of Angus falling back, though in good order; mistaking this retrograde movement for a flight, they were suddenly seized with a panic and ran off in all directions. Their terror was communicated to other troops, who immediately threw away their arms and followed the Highlanders. Everything was now lost; the ground over which the fight lay was as thickly strewed with pikes as a floor with rushes; helmets, bucklers, swords, daggers, and steel caps lay scattered on every side; and the chase beginning at one o'clock, continued till six in the evening with extraordinary slaughter. During the reign of Charles I. civil commotions broke out which shook the kingdom with great violence. The Scots were courted by king and parliament alike. The Highlanders were devoted to the royal government. In the year 1644 Montrose made a diversion in the Highlands. With dazzling rapacity, at first only supported by a handful of followers, but gathering numbers with success, he erected the royal standard at Dumfries. The clans obeyed his summons, and on September 1st, at Tippermuir, he defeated the Covenanters, and again on the 12th at the Bridge of Dee. On February 2nd, 1645, at Inverlochy, he crushed the Argyle Campbells, who had taken up the sword on behalf of Cromwell. In rapid succession other victories were won at Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth. All Scotland now appeared to be recovered for Charles, but the fruit of all these victories was lost by the defeat at Philiphaugh, September 13th, 1645. Within the brief space of three years. James II., of England, succeeded in fanning the revolutionary elements both in England and Scotland into a flame which he was powerless to quench. The Highlanders chiefly adhered to the party of James which received the name of Jacobites. Dundee hastened to the Highlands and around him gathered the Highland chiefs at Lochabar. The army of William, under Hugh Mackay, met the forces of Dundee at Killiecrankie, July 29th, 1689, where, under the spirited leadership of the latter, and the irresistible torrent of the Highland charge, the forces of the former were almost annihilated; but at the moment of victory Bonnie Dundee was killed by a bullet. No one was left who was equal to the occasion, or who could hold the clans together, and hence the victory was in reality a defeat. The exiled Stuarts looked with a longing eye to that crown which their stupid folly had forfeited. They seemed fated to bring countless woes upon the loyal hearted, brave, self-sacrificing Highlanders, and were ever eager to take advantage of any circumstance that might lead to their restoration. The accession of George I, in 1714, was an unhappy event for Great Britain. Discontent soon pervaded the kingdom. All he appeared to care about was to secure for himself and his family a high position, which he scarcely knew how to occupy: to fill the pockets of his German attendants and his German mistresses; to get away as often as possible from his uncongenial islanders whose language he did not understand, and to use the strength of Great Britain to obtain petty advantages for his German principality. At once the new king exhibited violent prejudices against some of the chief men of the nation, and irritated without a cause a large part of his subjects. Some believed it was a favorable opportunity to reinstate the Stuart dynasty. John Erskine, eleventh earl of Mar, stung by studied and unprovoked insults, on the part of the king, proceeded to the Highlands and placed himself at the head of the forces of the house of Stuart, or Jacobites, as they were called. On September 6, 1715, Mar assembled at Aboyne the noblemen, chiefs of clans, gentlemen, and others, with such followers as could be brought together, and proclaimed James, king of Great Britain. The insurrection, both in England and Scotland, began to grow in popularity, and would have been a success had there been at the head of affairs a strong military man. Nearly all the principal chiefs of the clans were drawn into the movement. At Sheriffmuir, the contending forces met, Sunday, November 13, 1715. The victory was with the Highlanders, but Mar's military talents were not equal to the occasion. The army was finally disbanded at Aberdeen, in February, 1716. The rebellion of 1745, headed by prince Charles Stuart, was the grandest exhibition of chivalry, on the part of the Highlanders, that the world has ever seen. They were actuated by an exalted sense of devotion to that family, which for generations, they had been taught should reign over them. At first victory crowned their efforts, but all was lost on the disastrous field of Culloden, fought April 16, 1746. Were it possible it would be an unspeakable pleasure to drop a veil over the scene, at the close of the battle of Culloden. Language fails to depict the horrors that ensued. It is scarcely within the bounds of belief that human beings could perpetrate such atrocities upon the helpless, the feeble, and the innocent, without regard to sex or age, as followed in the wake of the victors. Highland historians have made the facts known. It must suffice here to give a moderate statement from an English writer: "Quarter was seldom given to the stragglers and fugitives, except to a few considerately reserved for public execution. No care or compassion was shown to their wounded; nay more, on the following day most of these were put to death in cold blood, with a cruelty such as never perhaps before or since has disgraced a British army. Some were dragged from the thickets or cabins where they had sought refuge, drawn out in line and shot, while others were dispatched by the soldiers with the stocks of their muskets. One farm-building, into which some twenty disabled Highlanders had crawled, was deliberately set on fire the next day, and burnt with them to the ground. The native prisoners were scarcely better treated; and even sufficient water was not vouchsafed to their thirst. **** Every kind of havoc and outrage was not only permitted, but, I fear, we must add, encouraged. Military license usurped the place of law, and a fierce and exasperated soldiery were at once judge--jury--executioner. **** The rebels' country was laid waste, the houses plundered, the cabins burnt, the cattle driven away. The men had fled to the mountains, but such as could be found were frequently shot; nor was mercy always granted even to their helpless families. In many cases the women and children, expelled from their homes and seeking shelter in the clefts of the rocks, miserably perished of cold and hunger: others were reduced to follow the track of the marauders, humbly imploring for the blood and offal of their own cattle which had been slaughtered for the soldiers' food! Such is the avowal which historical justice demands. But let me turn from further details of these painful and irritating scenes, or of the ribald frolics and revelry with which they were intermingled--races of naked women on horseback for the amusement of the camp at Fort Augustus."[3] The author and abettor of these atrocities was the son of the reigning monarch. Not satisfied with the destruction which was carried into the very homes of this gallant, brave and generous race of people, the British parliament, with a refined cruelty, passed an act that, on and after August 1, 1747, any person, man, or boy, in Scotland, who should on any pretense whatever wear any part of the Highland garb, should be imprisoned not less than six months; and on conviction of second offense, transportation abroad for seven years. The soldiers had instructions to shoot upon the spot any one seen wearing the Highland garb, and this as late as September, 1750. This law and other laws made at the same time were unnecessarily severe. However impartial or fair a traveller may be his statements are not to be accepted without due caution. He narrates that which most forcibly attracts his attention, being ever careful to search out that which he desires. Yet, to a certain extent, dependence must be placed in his observations. From certain travellers are gleaned fearful pictures of the Highlanders during the eighteenth century, written without a due consideration of the underlying causes. The power of the chiefs had been weakened, while the law was still impotent, many of them were in exile and their estates forfeited, and landlords, in not a few instances, placed over the clansmen, who were inimical to their best interests. As has been noticed, in 1746 the country was ravaged and pitiless oppression followed. Destruction and misery everywhere abounded. To judge a former condition of a people by their present extremity affords a distorted view of the picture. Fire and sword, war and rapine, desolation and atrocity, perpetrated upon a high-spirited and generous people, cannot conduce to the best moral condition. Left in poverty and galled by outrage, wrongs will be resorted to which otherwise would be foreign to a natural disposition. If the influences of a more refined age had not penetrated the remote glens, then a rougher reprisal must be expected. The coarseness, vice, rapacity, and inhumanity of the oppressor must of necessity have a corresponding influence on their better natures. If to this it be added that some of the chiefs were naturally fierce, the origin of the sad features could readily be determined. Whatever vices practiced or wrongs perpetrated, the example was set before them by their more powerful and better conditioned neighbors. Among the crimes enumerated is that some of the chiefs increased their scanty incomes by kidnapping boys or men, whom they sold as slaves to the American planters. If this be true, and in all probability it was, there must have been confederates engaged in maritime pursuits. But they did not have far to go for this lesson, for this nefarious trade was taught them, at their very doors, by the merchants of Aberdeen, who were "noted for a scandalous system of decoying young boys from the country and selling them as slaves to the planters in Virginia. It was a trade which in the early part of the eighteenth century, was carried on to a considerable extent through the Highlands; and a case which took place about 1742 attracted much notice a few years later, when one of the victims having escaped from servitude, returned to Aberdeen, and published a narrative of his sufferings, seriously implicating some of the magistracy of the town. He was prosecuted and condemned for libel by the local authorities, but the case was afterwards carried to Edinburgh. The iniquitous system of kidnapping was fully exposed, and the judges of the supreme court unanimously reversed the verdict of the Aberdeen authorities and imposed a heavy fine upon the provost, the four bailies, and the dean of guild. *** An atrocious case of this kind, which shows clearly the state of the Highlands, occurred in 1739. Nearly one hundred men, women and children were seized in the dead of night on the islands of Skye and Harris, pinioned, horribly beaten, and stowed away in a ship bound for America, in order to be sold to the planters. Fortunately the ship touched at Donaghadee in Ireland, and the prisoners, after undergoing the most frightful sufferings, succeeded in escaping."[4] Under existing circumstances it was but natural that the more enterprising, and especially that intelligent portion who had lost their heritable jurisdiction, should turn with longing eyes to another country. America offered the most inviting asylum. Although there was some emigration to America during the first half of the eighteenth century, yet it did not fairly set in until about 1760. Between the years 1763 and 1775 over twenty thousand Highlanders left their homes to seek a better retreat in the forests of America. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: "Description of the Western Islands," pp. 199, 200.] [Footnote 2: "Letters from the North," Vol. II., p. 167.] [Footnote 3: Lord Mahon's "History of England," Vol. III, pp. 308-311.] [Footnote 4: Lecky's "History of England," Vol. II, p. 274.] CHAPTER II. THE SCOTCH-IRISH IN AMERICA. The name Scotland was never applied to that country, now so designated, before the tenth century, but was called Alban, Albania, Albion. At an early period Ireland was called Scotia, which name was exclusively so applied before the tenth century. Scotia was then a territorial or geographical term, while Scotus was a race name or generic term, implying people as well as country. "The generic term of _Scoti_ embraced the people of that race whether inhabiting Ireland or Britain. As this term of Scotia was a geographical term derived from the generic name of a people, it was to some extent a fluctuating name, and though applied at first to Ireland, which possessed the more distinctive name of Hibernia, as the principal seat of the race from whom the name was derived, it is obvious that, if the people from whom the name was taken inhabited other countries, the name itself would have a tendency to pass from the one to the other, according to the prominence which the different settlements of the race assumed in the history of the world; and as the race of the Scots in Britain became more extended, and their power more formidable, the territorial name would have a tendency to fix itself where the race had become most conspicuous.... The name in its Latin form of Scotia, was transferred from Ireland to Scotland in the reign of Malcolm the Second, who reigned from 1004 to 1034. The 'Pictish Chronicle,' compiled before 997, knows nothing of the name of Scotia as applied to North Britain; but Marianus Scotus, who lived from 1028 to 1081, calls Malcolm the Second 'rex _Scotiae_,' and Brian, king of Ireland, 'rex _Hiberniae_.' The author of the 'Life of St. Cadroe,' in the eleventh century, likewise applies the name of _Scotia_ to North Britain."[5] A strong immigration early set in from the north of Ireland to the western parts of Scotland. It was under no leadership, but more in the nature of an overflow, or else partaking of the spirit of adventure. This was accelerated in the year 503, when a new colony of Dalriadic Scots, under the leadership of Fergus, son of Eric, left Ireland and settled on the western coast of Argyle and the adjacent isles. From Fergus was derived the line of Scoto-Irish kings, who finally, in 843, ascended the Pictish throne. The inhabitants of Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland were but branches of the same Keltic stock, and their language was substantially the same. There was not only more or less migrations between the two countries, but also, to a greater or less extent, an impinging between the people. Ulster, the northern province of Ireland, is composed of the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Monaghan and Tyrone. Formerly it was the seat of the O'Neills, as well as the lesser septs of O'Donnell, O'Cahan, O'Doherty, Maguire, MacMahon, etc. The settlements made by the earlier migrations of the Highlanders were chiefly on the coast of Antrim. These settlements were connected with and dependent on the Clandonald of Islay and Kintyre. The founder of this branch of that powerful family was John Mor, second son of "the good John of Islay," who, about the year 1400, married Majory Bisset, heiress of the Glens, in Antrim, and thus acquired a permanent footing. The family was not only strengthened by settling cadets of its own house as tenants in the territory of the Glens, but also by intermarriages with the families of O'Neill, O'Donnell, and others. In extending its Irish possessions the Clandonald was brought into frequent conflicts and feuds with the Irish of Ulster. In 1558 the Hebrideans had become so strong in Ulster that the archbishop of Armagh urged on the government the advisability of their expulsion by procuring their Irish neighbors, O'Donnell, O'Neill, O'Cahan, and others, to unite against them. In 1565 the MacDonalds suffered a severe defeat at the hands of Shane O'Neill, earl of Tyrone. The Scottish islanders still continued to exercise considerable power. Sorley Buy MacDonald, a man of great courage, soon extended his influence over the adjacent territories, in so much so that in 1575-1585, the English were forced to turn their attention to the progress of the Scots. The latter having been defeated, an agreement was made in which Sorley Buy was granted four districts. His eldest son, Sir James MacSorley Buy, or MacDonell of Dunluce, became a strenuous supporter of the government of James on his accession to the British throne. In the meantime other forces were at work. Seeds of discontent had been sown by both Henry VIII, and his daughter Elizabeth, who tried to force the people of Ireland to accept the ritual of the Reformed Church. Both reaped abundant fruit of trouble from this ill-advised policy. Being inured to war it did not require much fire to be fanned into a flame of commotion and discord. Soon after his accession to the English throne, James I caused certain estates of Irish nobles, who had engaged in treasonable practices, to be escheated to the crown. By this confiscation James had at his disposal nearly six counties in Ulster, embracing half a million of acres. These lands were allotted to private individuals in sections of one thousand, fifteen hundred, and two thousand acres, each being required to support an adequate number of English or Scottish tenantry. Protestant colonies were transplanted from England and Scotland, but chiefly from the latter, with the intent that the principles of the Reformation should subdue the turbulent natives. The proclamation inviting settlers for Ulster was dated at Edinburgh, March 28, 1609. Great care was taken in selecting the emigrants, to which the king gave his personal attention. Measures were taken that the settlers should be "from the inward parts of Scotland," and that they should be so located that "they may not mix nor intermarry" with "the mere Irish." For the most part the people were received from the shires of Dumbarton, Renfrew, Ayre, Galloway, and Dumfries. On account of religious persecutions, in 1665, a large additional accession was received from Galloway and Ayre. The chief seat of the colonization scheme was in the county of Londonderry. The new settlers did not mix with the native population to any appreciable extent, especially prior to 1741, but mingled freely with the English Puritans and the refugee Huguenots. The native race was forced sullenly to retire before the colonists. Although the king had expressly forbidden any more of the inhabitants of the Western Isles to be taken to Ulster, yet the blood of the Highlander, to a great degree, permeated that of the Ulsterman, and had its due weight in forming the character of the Scotch-Irish. The commotions in the Highlands, during the civil wars, swelled the number to greater proportions. The rebellions of 1715 and 1745 added a large percentage to the increasing population. The names of the people are interesting, both as illustrating their origin, and as showing the extraordinary corruptions which some have undergone. As an illustration, the proscribed clan MacGregor, may be cited, which migrated in great numbers, descendants of whom are still to be found under the names of Grier, Greer, Gregor, etc., the _Mac_ in general being dropped; MacKinnon becomes McKenna, McKean, McCannon; Mac Nish is McNeice, Menees, Munnis, Monies, etc. The Scotch settlers retained the characteristic traits of their native stock and continued to call themselves Scotch, although molded somewhat by surrounding influences. They demanded and exercised the privilege of choosing their own spiritual advisers, in opposition to all efforts of the hierarchy of England to make the choice and support the clergy as a state concern. From the descendants of these people came the Scotch-Irish emigrants to America, who were destined to perform an important part on the theatre of action by organizing a successful revolt and establishing a new government. Among the early emigrants to the New World, although termed Scotch-Irish, and belonging to them we have such names as Campbell, Ferguson, Graham, McFarland, McDonald, McGregor, McIntyre, McKenzie, McLean, McPherson, Morrison, Robertson, Stewart, etc., all of which are distinctly Highlander and suggestive of the clans. On the outbreak of the American Revolution the thirteen colonies numbered among their inhabitants about eight hundred thousand Scotch and Scotch-Irish, or a little more than one-fourth of the entire population. They were among the first to become actively engaged in that struggle, and so continued until the peace, furnishing fourteen major-generals, and thirty brigadier generals, among whom may be mentioned St. Clair, McDougall, Mercer, McIntosh, Wayne, Knox, Montgomery, Sullivan, Stark, Morgan, Davidson, and others. More than any other one element, unless the New England Puritans be excepted, they formed a sentiment for independence, and recruited the continental army. To their valor, enthusiasm and dogged persistence the victory for liberty was largely due. Washington pronounced on them a proud encomium when he declared, during the darkest period of the Revolution, that if his efforts should fail, then he would erect his standard on the Blue Ridge of Virginia. Besides warring against the drilled armies of Britain on the sea coast they formed a protective wall between the settlements and the savages on the west. Among the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, nine were of this lineage, one of whom, McKean, served continuously in Congress from its opening in 1774 till its close in 1783, during a part of which time he was its president, and also serving as chief justice of Pennsylvania. The chairman of the committee that drafted the constitution of the United States, Rutledge, was, by ancestry, Scotch-Irish. When the same instrument was submitted, the three states first to adopt it were the middle states, or Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, so largely settled by the same class of people. Turning again specifically to the Scotch-Irish emigrants it may be remarked that they had received in the old country a splendid physique, having large bones and sound teeth, besides being trained to habits of industry. The mass of them were men of intelligence, resolution, energy, religious and moral in character. They were a God-fearing, liberty-loving, tyrant-hating, Sabbath-keeping, covenant-adhering race, and schooled by a discipline made fresh and impressive by the heroic efforts at Derry and Enniskillin. Their women were fine specimens of the sex, about the medium height, strongly built, with fair complexion, light blue or grey eyes, ruddy cheeks, and faces indicating a warm heart, intelligence and courage; and possessing those virtues which constitute the redeeming qualities of the human race. These people were martyrs for conscience sake. In 1711 a measure was carried through the British parliament that provided that all persons in places of profit or trust, and all common councilmen in corporations, who, while holding office, were proved to have attended any Nonconformist place of worship, should forfeit the place, and should continue incapable of public employment till they should depose that for a whole year they had not attended a conventicle. A fine of £40 was added to be paid to the informer. There were other causes which assisted to help depopulate Ulster, among which was the destruction of the woolen trade about 1700, when twenty thousand left that province. Many more were driven away by the Test Act in 1704, and in 1732. On the failure to repeal that act the protestant emigration recommenced which robbed Ireland of the bravest defenders of English interests and peopled America with fresh blood of Puritanism. The second great wave of emigration from Ulster occurred between 1771 and 1773, growing out of the Antrim evictions. In 1771 the leases on the estate of the marquis of Donegal, in Antrim, expired. The rents were placed at such an exorbitant figure that the demands could not be met. A spirit of resentment to the oppressions of the landed proprietors at once arose, and extensive emigration to America was the result. In the two years that followed the Antrim evictions of 1772, thirty thousand protestants left Ulster for a land where legal robbery could not be permitted, and where those who sowed the seed could reap the harvest. From the ports of the North of Ireland one hundred vessels sailed for the New World, loaded with human beings. It has been computed that in 1773 and during the five preceding years, Ulster, by emigration to the American settlements, was drained of one-quarter of the trading cash, and a like proportion of its manufacturing population. This oppressed people, leaving Ireland in such a temper became a powerful adjunct in the prosecution of the Revolution which followed so closely on the wrongs which they had so cruelly suffered. The advent of the first Scotch-Irish clergyman in America, so far as is now known, was in 1682, signalled by the arrival of Francis Makemie, the father of American Presbyterianism. Almost promptly he was landed in jail in New York, charged with the offense of preaching the gospel in a private house. Assisted by a Scottish lawyer from Philadelphia (who was silenced for his courage), he defended the cause of religious liberty with heroic courage and legal ability, and was ultimately acquitted by a fearless New York jury. Thus was begun the great struggle for religious liberty in America. Among those who afterwards followed were George McNish, from Ulster, in 1705, and John Henry, in 1709. Early in the spring of 1718, Rev. William Boyd arrived in Boston as an agent of some hundreds of people who had expressed a desire to come to New England should suitable encouragement be offered them. With him he brought a brief memorial to which was attached three hundred and nineteen names, all but thirteen of which were in a fair and vigorous hand. Governor Shute gave such general encouragement and promise of welcome, that on August 4, 1718, five small ships came to anchor at the wharf in Boston, having on board one hundred and twenty Scotch-Irish families, numbering in all about seven hundred and fifty individuals. In years they embraced those from the babe in arms to John Young, who had seen the frosts of ninety-five winters. Among the clergy who arrived were James McGregor, Cornwell, and Holmes. In a measure these people were under the charge of Governor Shute. He must find homes for them. He dispatched about fifty of these families to Worcester. That year marked the fifth of its permanent settlement, and was composed of fifty log-houses, inhabited by two hundred souls. The new comers appear to have been of the poorer and more illiterate class of the five ship loads. At first they were welcomed, because needed for both civic and military reasons. In September of 1722 a township organization was effected, and at the first annual town meeting, names of the strangers appear on the list of officers. With these emigrants was brought the Irish potato, and first planted in the spring of 1719. When their English neighbors visited them, on their departure they presented them with a few of the tubers for planting, and the recipients, unwilling to show any discourtesy, accepted the same, but suspecting a poisonous quality, carried them to the first swamp and threw them into the water. The same spring a few potatoes were given to a Mr. Walker, of Andover, by a family who had wintered with him. He planted them in the ground, and in due time the family gathered the "_balls_" which they supposed was the fruit. These were cooked in various ways, but could not be made palatable. The next spring when plowing the garden, potatoes of great size were turned up, when the mistake was discovered. This introduction into New England is the reason why the now indispensable succulent is called "Irish potato." This vegetable was first brought from Virginia to Ireland in 1565 by slave-trader Hawkins, and from there it found its way to New England in 1718, through the Scotch-Irish. The Worcester Scotch-Irish petitioned to be released from paying taxes to support the prevalent form of worship, as they desired to support their own method. Their prayer was contemptuously rejected. Two years later, or in 1738, owing to their church treatment, a company consisting of thirty-eight families, settled the new town of Pelham, thirty miles west of Worcester. The scandalous destruction of their property in Worcester, in 1740, caused a further exodus which resulted in the establishing the towns of Warren and Blandford, both being incorporated in 1741. The Scotch-Irish town of Colerain, located fifty miles northwest of Worcester was settled in 1739. Londonderry, New Hampshire, was settled in April, 1719, forming the second settlement, from the five ships. Most of these pioneers were men in middle life, robust and persevering. Their first dwellings were of logs, covered with bark. It must not be thought that these people, strict in their religious conceptions, were not touched with the common feelings of ordinary humanity. It is related that when John Morrison was building his house his wife came to him and in a persuasive manner said, "Aweel, aweel, dear Joan, an' it maun be a log-house, do make it a log heegher nor the lave;" (than the rest). The first frame house built was for their pastor, James McGregor. The first season they felt it necessary to build two strong stone garrison-houses in order to resist any attack of the Indians. It is remarkable that in neither Lowell's war, when Londonderry was strictly a frontier town, nor in either of the two subsequent French and Indian wars, did any hostile force from the northward ever approach that town. During the twenty-five years preceding the revolution, ten distinct towns of influence, in New Hampshire, were settled by emigrants from Londonderry, besides two in Vermont and two in Nova Scotia; while families, sometimes singly and also in groups, went off in all directions, especially along the Connecticut river and over the ridge of the Green Mountains. To these brave people, neither the crown nor the colonies appealed in vain. Every route to Crown Point and Ticonderoga had been tramped by them time and again. With Colonel Williams they were at the head of Lake George in 1755, and in the battle with Dieskau that followed; they were with Stark and lord Howe, under Abercrombie, in the terrible defeat at Ticonderoga in 1758; others toiled with Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham; and in 1777, fought under Stark at Bennington, and against Burgoyne at Saratoga. A part of the emigrants intended for New Hampshire settled in Maine, in what is now Portland, Topsham, Bath and other places. Unfortunately soon after these settlements were established some of them were broken up by Indian troubles, and some of the colonists sought refuge with their countrymen at Londonderry, but the greater part removed to Pennsylvania,--from 1730 to 1733 about one hundred and fifty families, principally of Scotch descent. In 1735, Warren, Maine, was settled by twenty-seven families, some of whom were of recent emigration and others from the first arrival in Boston in 1718. In 1753 the town received an addition of sixty adults and many children brought from Scotland. The Scotch-Irish settlement at Salem in Washington county, New York, came from Monaghan and Ballibay, Ireland. Under the leadership of their minister, Rev. Thomas Clark, three hundred sailed from Newry, May 10, 1764, and landed in New York in July following. On September 30, 1765, Mr. Clark obtained twelve thousand acres of the "Turner Grant," and upon this land he moved his parishioners, save a few families that had been induced to go to South Carolina, and some others that remained in Stillwater, New York. The great body of these settlers took possession of their lands, which had been previously surveyed into tracts of eighty-eight acres each, in the year 1767. The previous year had been devoted to clearing the lands, building houses, etc. Among the early buildings was a log church, the first religious place of worship erected between Albany and Canada. March 2, 1774, the legislature erected the settlement into a township named New Perth. This name remained until March 7, 1788, when it was changed to Salem. The Scotch-Irish first settled in Somerset county, New Jersey, early in the last century, but not at one time but from time to time. These early settlers repudiated the name of Irish, and took it as an offense to be so called. They claimed, and truly, to be Scotch. The term "Scotch-Irish" is quite recent, but has come into general use. From the three centers, Worcester, Londonderry and Wiscasset, the Scotch-Irish penetrated and permeated all New England; Maine the most of all, next New Hampshire, then Massachusetts, and in lessening order, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island. They were one sort of people, belonging to the same grade and sphere of life. In worldly goods they were poor, but the majority could read and write, and if possessed with but one book that was the Bible, yet greatly esteeming Fox's "Book of Martyrs" and Bunyon's "Pilgrim's Progress." Whatever their views, they were held in common. The three doors that opened to the Scotch-Irish emigrant, in the New World, were the ports of Boston, Charleston and New Castle, in Delaware, the great bulk of whom being received at the last named city, where they did not even stop to rest, but pushed their way to their future homes in Pennsylvania. No other state received so many of them for permanent settlers. Those who landed in New York found the denizens there too submissive to foreign dictation, and so preferred Pennsylvania and Maryland, where the proprietary governors and the people were in immediate contact. Francis Machemie had organized the first Presbyterian church in America along the eastern shore of Maryland and in the adjoining counties of Virginia. The wave of Quaker settlements spent its force on the line of the Conestoga creek, in Lancaster county. The Scotch and Scotch-Irish arriving in great numbers were permitted to locate beyond that line, and thus they not only became the pioneers, but long that race so continued to be. In 1725, so great had been the wave of emigration into Pennsylvania, that James Logan, a native of Armagh, Ireland, but not fond of his own countrymen who were not Quakers, declared, "It looks as if Ireland were to send all her inhabitants hither; if they continue to come they will make themselves proprietors of the province;" and he further condemned the bad taste of the people who were forcing themselves where they were not wanted. The rate of this invasion may be estimated from the rise in population from twenty thousand, in 1701, to two hundred and fifty thousand in 1745, which embraced the entire population of that colony. Between the years 1729 and 1750, there was an annual arrival of twelve thousand, mostly from Ulster. Among the vessels that helped to inaugurate this great tide was the good ship "George and Ann," which set sail from Ireland on May 9th, 1729, and brought over the McDowells, the Irvines, the Campbells, the O'Neills, the McElroys, the Mitchells, and their compatriots. Soon after the emigrants landed at New Castle they found their way along the branches of various rivers to the several settlements on the western frontier. The only ones known to have come through New York was the "Irish settlement" in Allen township, Northampton county, composed principally of families from Londonderry, New Hampshire, where, owing to the rigid climate, they could not be induced to remain. It grew but slowly, and after 1750 most of the descendants passed on towards the Susquehanna and down the Cumberland. As early as 1720 a colony was formed on the Neshaminy, in Bucks County, which finally became one of the greatest landmarks of that race. The settlements that commenced as early as 1710, at Fagg Manor, at Octorara, at New London, and at Brandywine Manor, in Chester County, formed the nucleus for subsequent emigration for a period of forty years, when they also declined by removals to other sections of the State, and to the colonies of the South. Prior to 1730 there were large settlements in the townships of Colerain, Pequea, and Leacock, in Lancaster County. Just when the pioneers arrived in that region has not been accurately ascertained, but some of them earlier than 1720. Within a radius of thirty-five miles of Harrisburgh are the settlements of Donegal, Paxtang, Derry, and Hanover, founded between 1715 and 1724; from whence poured another stream on through the Cumberland Valley, across the Potomac, down through Virginia and into the Carolinas and Georgia. The valley of the Juniata was occupied in 1749. The settlements in the lower part of York County date from 1726. From 1760 to 1770 settlements rapidly sprung up in various places throughout Western Pennsylvania. Soon after 1767 emigrants settled on the Youghiogheny, the Monongahela and its tributaries, and in the years 1770 and 1771, Washington County was colonized. Soon after the wave of population extended to the Ohio River. From this time forward Western Pennsylvania was characteristically Scotch-Irish. These hardy sons were foremost in the French and Indian Wars. The Revolutionary struggle caused them to turn their attention to statesmanship and combat,--every one of whom was loyal to the cause of independence. The patriot army had its full share of Scotch-Irish representation. That thunderbolt of war, Anthony Wayne,[6] hailed from the County of Chester. The ardent manner in which the cause of the patriots was espoused is illustrated, in a notice of a marriage that took place in 1778, in Lancaster County, the contracting parties being of the Ulster race. The couple is denominated "very sincere Whigs." It "was truly a Whig wedding, as there were present many young gentlemen and ladies, and not one of the gentlemen but had been out when called on in the service of his country; and it was well known that the groom, in particular, had proved his heroism, as well as Whigism, in several battles and skirmishes. After the marriage was ended, a motion was made, and heartily agreed to by all present, that the young unmarried ladies should form themselves into an association by the name of the 'Whig Association of Unmarried Young Ladies of America,' in which they should pledge their honor that they would never give their hand in marriage to any gentleman until he had first proved himself a patriot, in readily turning out when called to defend his country from slavery, by a spirited and brave conduct, as they would not wish to be the mothers of a race of slaves and cowards'"[7] Pennsylvania was the gateway and first resting place, and the source of Scotch-Irish adventure and enterprise as they moved west and south. The wave of emigration striking the eastern border of Pennsylvania, in a measure was deflected southward through Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, reaching and crossing the Savannah river, though met at various points by counter streams of the same race, which had entered the continent through Charleston and other southern ports. Leaving Pennsylvania and turning southward, the first colony into which the stream poured, was Maryland, the settlements being principally in the narrow strip which constitutes the western portion, although they never scattered all over the colony. [Illustration: BUILT BY HENRY MCWHORTER IN 1787, AT JANE LEW, WEST VIRGINIA, PHOTOGRAPHED IN 1893] Proceeding southward traces of that race are found in Virginia east of the Blue Ridge, in the latter part of the seventeenth and early in the eighteenth century. They were in Albemarle, Nelson, Campbell, Prince Edward, Charlotte and Orange counties, and even along the great valley west of the Blue Ridge. It was not, however, until the year 1738 that they entered the valley in great numbers, and almost completely possessed it from the Pennsylvania to the North Carolina line. During the French and Indian wars the soldiers of Virginia were mainly drawn from this section, and suffered defeat with Washington at the Great Meadows, and with Braddock at Fort Duquesne, but by their firmness saved the remnant of that rash general's army. In 1774 they won the signal victory at Point Pleasant which struck terror into the Indian tribes across the Ohio. The American Revolution was foreshadowed in 1765, when England began her oppressive measures regardless of the inalienable and chartered rights of the colonists of America. It was then the youthful Scotch-Irishman, Patrick Henry, introduced into the Virginia House of Burgesses, the resolutions denying the validity of the Act of the British parliament, and by Scotch-Irish votes he secured their adoption against the combined efforts of the old leaders. At the first call for troops by congress to defend Boston, Daniel Morgan at once raised a company from among his own people, in the lower Virginia valley, and by a forced march of six hundred miles reached the beleaguered city in three weeks. With his men he trudged through the wilderness of Maine and appeared before Quebec; and later, on the heights of Saratoga, with his riflemen, he poured like a torrent upon the ranks of Burgoyne. Through the foresight of Henry, a commission was given to George Rogers Clark, in 1778, to lead a secret expedition against the northwestern forts. The soldiers were recruited from among the Scotch-Irish settlements west of the Blue Ridge. The untold hardships, sufferings and final success of this expedition, at the Treaty of Peace, in 1783, gave the great west to the United States. The greater number of the colonists of North Carolina was Scotch and Scotch-Irish, in so much so as to have given direction to its history. There were several reasons why they should be so attracted, the most potent being a mild climate, fertile lands, and freedom of religious worship. The greatest accession at any one time was that in 1736, when Henry McCulloch secured sixty-four thousand acres in Duplin county, and settled upon these lands four thousand of his Ulster countrymen. About the same time the Scotch began to occupy the lower Cape Fear. Prior to 1750 they were located in the counties of Granville, Orange, Rowan and Mecklenburg, although it is uncertain when they settled between the Dan and the Catawba. Braddock's defeat, in 1755, rendered border life dangerous, many of the newcomers turning south into North Carolina, where they met the other stream of their countrymen moving upward from Charleston along the banks of the Santee, Wateree, Broad, Pacolet, Ennoree and Saluda, and this continued till checked by the Revolution. These people generally were industrious, sober and intelligent, and with their advent begins the educational history of the state. Near Greensborough, in 1767, was established a classical school, and in 1770, in the town of Charlotte, Mecklenburg county, was chartered Queen's College, but its charter was repealed by George III. However, it continued to flourish, and was incorporated as "Liberty Hall," in 1777. The Revolution closed its doors; Cornwallis quartered his troops within it, and afterwards burned the buildings. Under wrongs the Scotch-Irish of North Carolina were the most restless of all the colonists. They were zealous advocates for freedom of conscience and security against taxation unless imposed by themselves. During the administration of acting Governor Miller, they imprisoned the president and six members of the council, convened the legislature, established courts of justice, and for two years exercised all the functions of government; they derided the authority of Governor Eastchurch; they imprisoned, impeached, and sent into exile Governor Sothel, for his extortions, and successfully resisted the effort of lord Granville to establish the Church of England in that colony. In 1731, Governor Burrington wrote: "The people of North Carolina are neither to be cajoled or outwitted; * * * always behaved insolently to their Governors. Some they imprisoned, others they have drove out of the country, and at other times set up a government of their own choice." In 1765, when a vessel laden with stamp paper arrived, the people overawed the captain, who soon sailed away. The officers then adopted a regular system of oppression and extortion, and plundered the people at every turn of life. The people formed themselves into an association "for regulating public grievances and abuse of powers." The royal governor, Tryon (the same who later originated the infamous plot to poison Washington), raised an army of eleven hundred men, and marched to inflict summary punishment on the defiant sons of liberty. On May 16, 1771, the two forces met on the banks of the Great Alamance. After an engagement of two hours the patriots failed. These men were sturdy, patriotic members of three Presbyterian churches. On the field of battle were their pastors, graduates of Princeton. Tryon used his victory so savagely as to drive an increasing stream of settlers over the mountains into Tennessee, where they made their homes in the valley of the Watauga, and there nurtured their wrongs; but the day of their vengeance was rapidly approaching. [Illustration: VIEW OF BATTLE FIELD OF ALAMANCE.] The stirring times of 1775 found the North Carolinians ready for revolt. They knew from tradition and experience the monstrous wrongs of tyrants. When the people of Mecklenburg county learned in May, 1775, that parliament had declared the colonies in a state of revolt, they did not wait for the action of congress nor for that of their own provincial legislature, but adopted resolutions, which in effect formed a declaration of independence. The power, valor and uncompromising conduct of these men is illustrated in their conduct at the battle of King's Mountain, fought October 7, 1780. It was totally unlike any other in American history, being the voluntary uprising of the people, rushing to arms to aid their distant kinsmen, when their own homes were menaced by savages. They served without pay and without the hope of reward. The defeat of Gates at Camden laid the whole of North Carolina at the feet of the British. Flushed with success, Colonel Furguson, of the 71st Regiment, at the head of eleven hundred men marched into North Carolina and took up his position at Gilbert Town, in order to intercept those retreating in that direction from Camden, and to crush out the spirit of the patriots in that region. Without any concert of action volunteers assembled simultaneously, and placed themselves under tried leaders. They were admirably fitted by their daily pursuits for the privations they were called upon to endure. They had no tents, baggage, bread or salt, but subsisted on potatoes, pumpkins and roasted corn, and such venison as their own rifles could procure. Their army consisted of four hundred men, under Colonel William Campbell, from Washington county, Virginia, two hundred and forty were under Colonel Isaac Shelby, from Sullivan county, North Carolina, and two hundred and forty men, from Washington county, same state, under John Sevier, which assembled at Watauga, September 25, where they were joined by Colonel Charles McDowell, with one hundred and sixty men, from the counties of Burke and Rutherford, who had fled before the enemy to the western waters. While McDowell, Shelby and Sevier were in consultation, two paroled prisoners arrived from Furguson with the message that if they did not "take protection under his standard, he would march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay waste their country with fire and sword." On their march to meet the army of Furguson they were for twenty-four hours in the saddle. They took that officer by surprise, killed him and one hundred and eighty of his men, after an engagement of one hour and five minutes, the greater part of which time a heavy and incessant fire was kept up on both sides, with a loss to themselves of only twenty killed and a few wounded. The remaining force of the enemy surrendered at discretion, giving up their camp equipage and fifteen hundred stand of arms. On the morning after the battle several of the Royalist (Tory) prisoners were found guilty of murder and other high crimes, and hanged. This was the closing scene of the battle of King's Mountain, an event which completely crushed the spirit of the Royalists, and weakened beyond recovery the power of the British in the Carolinas. The intelligence of Furguson's defeat destroyed all Cornwallis's hopes of aid from those who still remained loyal to Britain's interests. The men oppressed by British laws and Tryon's cruelty were not yet avenged, for they were with Morgan at the Cowpens and with Greene at Guildford Court House, and until the close of the war. In the settling of South Carolina, every ship that sailed from Ireland for the port of Charleston, was crowded with men, women and children, which was especially true after the peace of 1763. About the same date, within one year, a thousand families came into the state in that wave that originated in Pennsylvania, bringing with them their cattle, horses and hogs. Lands were allotted to them in the western woods, which soon became the most popular part of the province, the up-country population being overwhelmingly Scotch-Irish. They brought with them and retained, in an eminent degree, the virtues of industry and economy, so peculiarly necessary in a new country. To them the state is indebted for much of its early literature. The settlers in the western part of the colony, long without the aid of laws, were forced to band themselves together for mutual protection. The royal governor, Montague, in 1764, sent an army against them, and with great difficulty a civil war was averted. The division thus created reappeared in 1775, on the breaking out of the Revolution. The state suffered greatly from the ravages of Cornwallis, who rode roughly over it, although her sons toiled heroically in defence of their firesides. The little bands in the east gathered around the standard of Marion, and in the north and west around those of Sumter and Pickens. They kept alive the flame of liberty in the swamps, and when the country appeared to be subdued, it burst forth in electric flashes striking and withering the hand of the oppressor. Through the veins of most of the patriots flowed Scotch-Irish blood; and to the hands of one of this class, John Rutledge, the destinies of the state were committed. Georgia was sparsely settled at the time of the Revolution. In 1753 its population was less than twenty-four hundred. Emigration from the Carolinas set in towards North Georgia, bringing many Scotch-Irish families. The movement towards the mountain and Piedmont regions of the southeast began about 1773. In that year, Governor Wright purchased from the Indians that portion of middle Georgia lying between the Oconee and the Savannah. The inducements he then offered proved very attractive to the enterprising sons of Virginia and the Carolinas, who lived in the highlands of those states. These people who settled in Georgia have thus been described by Governor Gilmer: "The pretty girls were dressed in striped and checked cotton cloth, spun and woven with their own hands, and their sweethearts in sumach and walnut-dyed stuff, made by their mothers. Courting was done when riding to meeting on Sunday, and walking to the spring when there. Newly married couples went to see the old folks on Saturday, and carried home on Sunday evening what they could spare. There was no _ennui_ among the women for something to do. If there had been leisure to read, there were but few books for the indulgence. Hollow trees supplied cradles for babies." A majority of the first settlers of East Tennessee were of Scotch-Irish blood, having sought homes there after the battle of Alamance, and hence that state became the daughter of North Carolina. The first written constitution born of a convention of people on this continent, was that at Watauga, in 1772. A settlement of less than a dozen families was formed in 1778, near Bledsoe, isolated in the heart of the Chickasaw nation, with no other protection than a small stockade enclosure and their own indomitable courage. In the early spring of 1779, a little colony of gallant adventurers, from the parent line of Watauga, crossed the Cumberland mountain, and established themselves near the French Lick, and planted a field of corn where the city of Nashville now stands. The settlement on the Cumberland was made in 1780, after great privations and sufferings on the journey. The settlers at the various stations were so harassed by the Indians, incited thereto by British and Spanish agents, that all were abandoned except Elatons and the Bluffs (Nashville). These people were compelled to go in armed squads to the springs, and plowed while guarded by armed sentinels. The Indians, by a well planned stratagem, attempted to enter the Bluffs, on April 22d, 1781. The men in the fort were drawn into an ambush by a decoy party. When they dismounted to give battle, their horses dashed off toward the fort, and they were pursued by some Indians, which left a gap in their lines, through which some whites were escaping to the fort; but these were intercepted by a large body of the enemy from another ambush. The heroic women in the fort, headed by Mrs. James Robertson, seized the axes and idle guns, and planted themselves in the gate, determined to die rather than give up the fort. Just in time she ordered the sentry to turn loose a pack of dogs which had been selected for their size and courage to encounter bears and panthers. Frantic to join the fray, they dashed off, outyelling the savages, who recoiled before the fury of their onset, thus giving the men time to escape to the fort. So overjoyed was Mrs. Robertson that she patted every dog as he came into the fort. So thoroughly was Kentucky settled by the Scotch-Irish, from the older colonies, that it might be designated as of that race, the first emigrants being from Virginia and North Carolina. It was first explored by Thomas Walker in 1747; followed by John Finley, of North Carolina, 1767; and in 1769, by Daniel Boone, John Stewart, and three others, who penetrated to the Kentucky river. By the year 1773, lands were taken up and afterwards there was a steady stream, almost entirely from the valley and southwest Virginia. No border annals teem with more thrilling incidents or heroic exploits than those of the Kentucky hunters, whose very name finally struck terror into the heart of the strongest savage. The prediction of the Cherokee chief to Boone at the treaty at Watauga, ceding the territory to Henderson and his associates, was fully verified: "Brother," said he, "we have given you a fine land, but I believe you will have much trouble in settling it." The history of the Scotch-Irish race in Canada, prior to the peace of 1783, is largely that of individuals. It has already been noted that two settlements had been made in Nova Scotia by the emigrants that landed from the five ships in Boston harbor. It is recorded that Truro, Nova Scotia, was settled in 1762, and in 1756 three brothers from Ireland settled in Colchester, same province. If the questions were thoroughly investigated it doubtless would lead to interesting results. It must not be lost sight of that one of the important industrial arts brought to America was of untold benefit. Not only did every colony bring with them agricultural implements needful for the culture of flax, but also the small wheels and the loom for spinning and weaving the fibre. Nothing so much excited the interest of Puritan Boston, in 1718, as the small wheels worked by women and propelled by the foot, for turning the straight flax fibre into thread. Public exhibitions of skill in 1719 took place on Boston common, by Scotch-Irish women, at which prizes were offered. The advent of the machine produced a sensation, and societies and schools were formed to teach the art of making linen thread. The distinctive characteristics which the Scotch-Irish transplanted to the new world may be designated as follows: They were Presbyterians in their religion and church government; they were loyal to the conceded authority to the king, but considered him bound as well as themselves to "the Solemn League and Covenant," entered into in 1643, which pledged the support of the Reformation and of the liberties of the kingdom; the right to choose their own ministers, untrammeled by the civil powers; they practiced strict discipline in morals, and gave instruction to their youth in schools and academies, and in teaching the Bible as illustrated by the Westminster Assembly's catechism. To all this they combined in a remarkable degree, acuteness of intellect, firmness of purpose, and conscientious devotion to duty. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: Skene's "Chronicles of the Picts and Scots," p. 77.] [Footnote 6: Stille, Life of Wayne, p. 5, says he was not Scotch-Irish.] [Footnote 7: Dunlap's "Pennsylvania Packet," June 17, 1778.] CHAPTER III. THE CAUSES THAT LED TO EMIGRATION. The social system of the Highlanders that bound the members of the clan together was conducive to the pride of ancestry and the love of home. This pride was so directed as to lead to the most beneficial results on their character and conduct: forming strong attachments, leading to the performance of laudable and heroic actions, and enabling the poorest to endure the severest hardships without a murmur, and never complaining of what they received to eat, or where they lodged, or of any other privation. Instead of complaining of the difference in station or fortune, or considering a ready obedience to the call of the chief as a slavish oppression, they felt convinced that they were supporting their own honor in showing their gratitude and duty to the generous head of the family. In them it was a singular and characteristic feature to contemplate with early familiarity the prospect of death, which was considered as merely a passage from this to another state of existence, enlivened by the assured hope that they should meet their friends and kindred in a fairer and brighter world than this. This statement may be perceived in the anxious care with which they provided the necessary articles for a proper and becoming funeral. Even the poorest and most destitute endeavored to save something for this last solemnity. It was considered to be a sad calamity to be consigned to the grave among strangers, without the attendance and sympathy of friends, and at a distance from the family. If a relative died away from home, the greatest exertions were made to carry the body back for interment among the ashes of the forefathers. A people so nurtured could only contemplate with despair the idea of being forced from the land of their nativity, or emigrating from that beloved country, hallowed by the remains of their kindred. The Highlander, by nature, was opposed to emigration. All his instincts, as well as training, led him to view with delight the permanency of home and the constant companionship of those to whom he was related by ties of consanguinity. Neither was he a creature of conquest, and looked not with a covetous eye upon the lands of other nations. He would do battle in a foreign land, but the Highlands of Scotland was his abiding place. If he left his native glen in order to become a resident elsewhere, there must have been a special or overpowering reason. He never emigrated through choice. Unfortunately the simplicity of his nature, his confiding trust, and love of chief and country, were doomed to receive such a jolt as would shake the very fibres of his being, and that from those to whom he looked for support and protection. Reference here is not made to evictions awful crimes that commenced in 1784, but to the change, desolation and misery growing out of the calamity at Culloden. Notwithstanding the peculiar characteristics of the Highlander, there would of necessity arise certain circumstances which would lead some, and even many, to change their habitation. From the days of the Crusader downwards he was more or less active in foreign wars; and coming in contact with different nationalities his mind would broaden and his sentiment change, so that other lands and other people would be viewed in a more favorable light. While this would not become general, yet it would follow in many instances. Intercourse with another people, racially and linguistically related, would have a tendency to invite a closer affiliation. Hence, the inhabitants of the Western Isles had almost constant communication, sometimes at war, it is true, but generally in terms of amity, with the natives of North Ireland. It is not surprising then that as early as 1584, Sorley Buy MacDonald should lead a thousand Highlanders, called Redshanks, of the clans or families of the MacDonalds, Campbells, and Magalanes, into Ulster, and in time intermarry with the Irish, and finally become the most formidable enemies of England in her designs of settling that country. Some of the leading men were forced to flee on account of being attainted for treason, having fought under Dundee in 1689, or under Mar in 1715, and after Culloden in 1745 quite a hegira took place, many of whom found service in the army of France. Individuals, seeking employment, found their way into England before 1724. Although there was a strong movement for England from the Lowlands, yet many were from the Highlands, to whom was partly due the old proverb, "There never came a fool from Scotland." These emigrants, from the Highlands, were principally those having trades, who sought to better their condition. Seven hundred prisoners taken at Preston were sold as slaves to some West Indian merchants, which was a cruel proceeding, when it is considered that the greater part of these men were Highlanders, who had joined the army in obedience to the commands of their chiefs. Wholly unfitted for such labor as would be required in the West Indies and unacclimated, their fate may be readily assumed. But this was no more heartless than the execution in Lancashire of twenty-two of their companions. The specifications above enumerated have no bearing on the emigration which took place on a large scale, the consequences of which, at the time, arrested the attention of the nation. The causes now to be enumerated grew out of the change of policy following the battle of Culloden. The atrocities following that battle were both for vengeance and to break the military spirit of the Highlanders. The legislative enactments broke the nobler spirit of the people. The rights and welfare of the people at large were totally ignored, and no provisions made for their future welfare. The country was left in a state of commotion and confusion resulting from the changes consequent to the overthrow of the old system, the breaking up of old relationship, and the gradual encroachment of Lowland civilization, and methods of agriculture. While these changes at first were neither great nor extensive, yet they were sufficient to keep the country in a ferment or uproar. The change was largely in the manner of an experiment in order to find out the most profitable way of adaptation to the new regime. These experiments resulted in the unsettling of old manners, customs, and ideas, which caused discontent and misery among the people. The actual change was slow; the innovations, as a rule, began in those districts bordering on the Lowlands, and thence proceeded in a northwesterly direction. In all probability the first shock felt by the clansmen, under the new order of things, was the abolishing the ancient clan system, and the reduction of the chiefs to the condition of landlords. For awhile the people failed to realize this new order of affairs, for the gentlemen and common people still continued to regard their chief in the same light as formerly, not questioning but their obedience to the head of their clan was independent of legislative enactment. They were still ready to make any sacrifice for his sake, and felt it to be their duty to do what they could for his support. They still believed that the chief's duty to his people remained unaltered, and he was bound to see that they did not want, and to succor them in distress. The first effects in the change in tribal relations were felt on those estates that had been forfeited on account of the chiefs and gentlemen having been compelled to leave the country in order to save their lives. These estates were entrusted to the management of commissioners who rudely applied their powers under the new arrangement of affairs. When the chiefs, now reduced to the position of lairds, began to realize their condition, and the advantage of making their lands yield them as large an income as possible, followed the example of demanding a rent. A rental value had never been exacted before, for it was the universal belief that the land belonged to the clan in common. Some of the older chiefs, then living, held to the same opinion, and among such, a change was not perceptible until a new landlord came into possession. The gentlemen of the clan and the tacksmen, or large farmers, firmly believed that they had as much right to a share of the lands as the chief himself. In the beginning the rent was not high nor more than the lands would bear; but it was resented by the tacksmen, deeming it a wanton injury inflicted in the house of their dearest friend. They were hurt at the idea that the chief,--the father of his people--should be controlled by such a mercenary idea, and to exercise that power which gave him the authority to lease the lands to the highest bidder. This policy, which they deemed selfish and unjust, naturally cut them to the quick. They and their ancestors had occupied their farms for many generations; their birth was as good and their genealogy as old as that of the chief himself, to whom they were all blood relations, and whose loyalty was unshaken. True, they had no written document, no "paltry sheep-skin," as they called it, to prove the right to their farms, but such had never been the custom, and these parchments quite a modern innovation, and, in former times, before a chief would have tried to wrest from them that which had been given by a former chief to their fathers, would have bitten out his tongue before he would have asked a bond. There can be no doubt that originally when a chief bestowed a share of his property upon his son or other near relation, he intended that the latter should keep it for himself and his descendants. To these tacksmen it was injury enough that an alien government should interfere in their domestic relations, but for the chief to turn against them was a wound which no balm could heal. Before they would submit to these exactions, they would first give up their holdings; which many of them did and emigrated to America, taking with them servants and sub-tenants, and enticing still others to follow them by the glowing accounts which they sent home of their good fortune in the favored country far to the west. In some cases the farms thus vacated were let to other tacksmen, but in most instances the new system was introduced by letting the land directly to what was formerly sub-tenants, or those who had held the land immediately from the ousted tacksmen. There was a class of lairds who had tasted the sweets of southern luxuries and who vied with the more opulent, increased the rate of rent to such an extent as to deprive the tacksmen of their holdings. This caused an influx of lowland farmers, who with their improved methods could compete successfully against their less favored northern neighbors. The danger of southern luxuries had been foreseen and an attempt had been made to provide against it. As far back as the year 1744, in order to discourage such things, at a meeting of the chiefs of the Isle of Skye, Sir Alexander MacDonald of MacDonald, Norman MacLeod of MacLeod, John MacKinnon of MacKinnon, and Malcolm MacLeod of Raasay, held in Portree, it was agreed to discontinue and discountenance the use of brandy, tobacco and tea. The placing of the land in the hands of aliens was deplored in its results as may be seen from the following portrayal given by Buchanan in his "Travels in the Hebrides," referring to about 1780:--"At present they are obliged to be much more submissive to their tacksmen than ever they were in former times to their lairds or lords. There is a great difference between that mild treatment which is shown to sub-tenants and even scallags, by the old lessees, descended of ancient and honorable families, and the outrageous rapacity of those necessitous strangers who have obtained leases from absent proprietors, who treat the natives as if they were a conquered and inferior race of mortals. In short, they treat them like beasts of burden; and in all respects like slaves attached to the soil, as they cannot obtain new habitations, on account of the combinations already mentioned, and are entirely at the mercy of the laird or tacksman. Formerly, the personal service of the tenant did not usually exceed eight or ten days in the year. There lives at present at Scalpa, in the isle of Harris, a tacksman of a large district, who instead of six days' work paid by the sub-tenants to his predecessor in the lease, has raised the predial service, called in that and in other parts of Scotland, _manerial bondage_, to fifty-two days in the year at once; besides many other services to be performed at different though regular and stated times; as tanning leather for brogans, making heather ropes for thatch, digging and drying peats for fuel; one pannier of peat charcoal to be carried to the smith; so many days for gathering and shearing sheep and lambs: for ferrying cattle from island to island, and other distant places, and several days for going on distant errands: so many pounds of wool to be spun into yarn. And over and above all this, they must lend their aid upon any unforeseen occurrence whenever they are called on. The constant service of two months at once is performed at the proper season in making kelp. On the whole, this gentleman's sub-tenants may be computed to devote to his service full three days in the week. But this is not all: they have to pay besides yearly a certain number of cocks, hen, butter, and cheese, called Caorigh-Ferrin, the Wife's Portion. This, it must be owned, is one of the most severe and rigorous tacksmen descended from the old inhabitants, in all the Western Hebrides; but the situation of his sub-tenants exhibits but too faithful a picture of the sub-tenants of those places in general, and the exact counterpart of such enormous oppression is to be found at Luskintire."[8] The dismissal of retainers kept by the chiefs during feudal times added to the discontent. For the protection of the clan it had been necessary to keep a retinue of trained warriors. These were no longer necessary, and under the changed state of affairs, an expense that could be illy afforded. This class found themselves without a vocation, and they would sow the seeds of discontent, if they remained in the country. They must either enter the army or else go to another country in search of a vocation. Unquestionably the most potent of all causes for emigration was the introduction of sheep-farming. That the country was well adapted for sheep goes without disputation. Sheep had always been kept in the Highlands with the black cattle, but not in large numbers. The lowland lessees introduced sheep on a large scale, involving the junction of many small farms into one, each of which had been hitherto occupied by a number of tenants. This engrossing of farms and consequent depopulation was also a fruitful source of discontent and misery to those who had to vacate their homes and native glens. Many of those displaced by sheep and one or two Lowland shepherds, emigrated like the discontented tacksmen to America, and those who remained looked with an ill-will and an evil eye on the intruders. Some of the more humane landlords invited the oppressed to remove to their estates, while others tried to prevent the ousted tenants from leaving the country by setting apart some particular spot along the sea-shore, or else on waste land that had never been touched by the plow, on which they might build houses and have an acre or two for support. Those removed to the coast were encouraged to prosecute the fishing along with their agricultural labors. It was mainly by a number of such ousted Highlanders that the great and arduous undertaking was accomplished of bringing into a state of cultivation Kincardine Moss, in Perthshire. At that time, 1767, the task to be undertaken was one of stupendous magnitude; but was so successfully carried out that two thousand acres were reclaimed which for centuries had rested under seven feet of heath and vegetable matter. Similarly many other spots were brought into a state of cultivation. But this, and other pursuits then engaged in, did not occupy the time of all who had been despoiled of their homes. The breaking up of old habits and customs and the forcible importation of those that are foreign must not only engender hate but also cause misery. It is the uniform testimony of all travellers, who visited the Highlands during the latter half of the eighteenth century, especially Pennant, Boswell, Johnson, Newte, and Buchanan, that the condition of the country was deplorable. Without quoting from all, let the following lengthy extract suffice, which is from Buchanan: "Upon the whole, the situation of these people, inhabitants of Britain! is such as no language can describe, nor fancy conceive. If, with great labor and fatigue, the farmer raises a slender crop of oats and barley, the autumnal rains often baffle his utmost efforts, and frustrate all his expectations: and instead of being able to pay an exorbitant rent, he sees his family in danger of perishing during the ensuing winter, when he is precluded from any possibility of assistance elsewhere. Nor are his cattle in a better situation; in summer they pick up a scanty support amongst the morasses or heathy mountains: but in winter, when the grounds are covered with snow, and when the naked wilds afford neither shelter nor subsistence, the few cows, small, lean, and ready to drop down through want of pasture, are brought into the hut where the family resides, and frequently share with them the small stock of meal which had been purchased, or raised, for the family only; while the cattle thus sustained, are bled occasionally, to afford nourishment for the children after it hath been boiled or made into cakes. The sheep being left upon the open heaths, seek to shelter themselves from the inclemency of the weather amongst the hollows upon the lee-side of the mountains, and here they are frequently buried under the snow for several weeks together, and in severe seasons during two months and upwards. They eat their own and each other's wool, and hold out wonderfully under cold and hunger; but even in moderate winters, a considerable number are generally found dead after the snow hath disappeared, and in rigorous seasons few or none are left alive. Meanwhile the steward, hard pressed by letters from Almack's or Newmarket, demands the rent in a tone which makes no great allowance for unpropitious seasons, the death of cattle, and other accidental misfortunes: disguising the feelings of his own breast--his Honor's wants must at any rate be supplied, the bills must be duly negotiated. Such is the state of farming, if it may be so called, throughout the interior parts of the Highlands; but as that country has an extensive coast, and many islands, it may be supposed that the inhabitants of those shores enjoy all the benefits of their maritime situation. This, however, is not the case; those gifts of nature, which in any other commercial kingdom would have been rendered subservient to the most valuable purposes, are in Scotland lost, or nearly so, to the poor natives and the public. The only difference, therefore, between the inhabitants of the interior parts and those of the more distant coasts, consists in this, that the latter, with the labors of the field, have to encounter alternately the dangers of the ocean and all the fatigues of navigation. To the distressing circumstances at home, as stated above, new difficulties and toils await the devoted farmer when abroad. He leaves his family in October, accompanied by his sons, brothers, and frequently an aged parent, and embarks on board a small open boat, in quest of the herring fishery, with no other provisions than oatmeal, potatoes, and fresh water; no other bedding than heath, twigs, or straw, the covering, if any, an old sail. Thus provided, he searches from bay to bay, through turbulent seas, frequently for several weeks together, before the shoals of herring are discovered. The glad tidings serve to vary, but not to diminish his fatigues. Unremitting nightly labor (the time when the herrings are taken), pinching cold winds, heavy seas, uninhabited shores covered with snow, or deluged with rain, contribute towards filling up the measure of his distresses; while to men of such exquisite feelings as the Highlanders generally possess, the scene which awaits him at home does it most effectually. Having disposed of his capture to the Busses, he returns in January through a long navigation, frequently amidst unceasing hurricanes, not to a comfortable home and a cheerful family, but to a hut composed of turf, without windows, doors, or chimney, environed with snow, and almost hid from the eye by its astonishing depth. Upon entering this solitary mansion, he generally finds a part of his family, sometimes the whole, lying upon heath or straw, languishing through want or epidemical disease; while the few surviving cows, which possess the other end of the cottage, instead of furnishing further supplies of milk or blood, demand his immediate attention to keep them in existence. The season now approaches when he is again to delve and labor the ground, on the same slender prospect of a plentiful crop or a dry harvest. The cattle which have survived the famine of the winter, are turned out to the mountains; and, having put his domestic affairs into the best situation which a train of accumulated misfortunes admits of, he resumes the oar, either in quest of herring or the white fishery. If successful in the latter, he sets out in his open boat upon a voyage (taking the Hebrides and the opposite coast at a medium distance) of two hundred miles, to vend his cargo of dried cod, ling, etc., at Greenock or Glasgow. The product, which seldom exceeds twelve or fifteen pounds, is laid out, in conjunction with his companions, upon meal and fishing tackle; and he returns through the same tedious navigation. The autumn calls his attention again to the field; the usual round of disappointment, fatigue, and distress awaits him; thus dragging through a wretched existence in the hope of soon arriving in that country where the weary shall be at rest."[9] The writer most pitiably laments that twenty thousand of these wretched people had to leave their homes and famine-struck condition, and the oppression of their lairds, for lands and houses of their own in a fairer and more fertile land, where independence and affluence were at their command. Nothing but misery and degradation at home; happiness, riches and advancement beyond the ocean. Under such a system it would be no special foresight to predict a famine, which came to pass in 1770 and again in 1782-3. Whatever may be the evils under the clan system, and there certainly were such, none caused the oppression and misery which that devoted people have suffered since its abolishment. So far as contentment, happiness, and a wise regard for interest, it would have been better for the masses had the old system continued. As a matter of fact, however, those who emigrated found a greater latitude and brighter prospects for their descendants. From what has been stated it will be noticed that it was a matter of necessity and not a spirit of adventure that drove the mass of Highlanders to America; but those who came, nevertheless, were enterprising and anxious to carve out their own fortunes. Before starting on the long and perilous journey across the Atlantic they were first forced to break the mystic spell that bound them to their native hills and glens, that had a charm and an association bound by a sacred tie. A venerable divine of a Highland parish who had repeatedly witnessed the fond affection of his parishioners in taking their departure, narrated how they approached the sacred edifice, ever dear to them, by the most hallowed associations, and with tears in their eyes kissed its very walls, how they made an emphatic pause in losing sight of the romantic scenes of their childhood, with its kirks and cots, and thousand memories, and as if taking a formal and lasting adieu, uncovered their heads and waived their bonnets three times towards the scene, and then with heavy steps and aching hearts resumed their pilgrimage towards new scenes in distant climes.[10] "Farewell to the land of the mountain and wood, Farewell to the home of the brave and the good, My bark is afloat on the blue-rolling main, And I ne'er shall behold thee, dear Scotland again! Adieu to the scenes of my life's early morn, From the place of my birth I am cruelly torn; The tyrant oppresses the land of the free; And leaves but the name of my sires unto me. Oh! home of my fathers, I bid thee adieu, For soon will thy hill-tops retreat from my view, With sad drooping heart I depart from thy shore, To behold thy fair valleys and mountains no more. 'Twas there that I woo'd thee, young Flora, my wife, When my bosom was warm in the morning of life. I courted thy love 'mong the heather so brown, And heaven did I bless when it made thee my own. The friends of my early years, where are they now? Each kind honest heart, and each brave manly brow; Some sleep in the churchyard from tyranny free, And others are crossing the ocean with me. Lo! now on the boundless Atlantic I stray, To a strange foreign realm I am wafted away, Before me as far as my vision can glance, I see but the wave rolling wat'ry expanse. So farewell my country and all that is dear, The hour is arrived and the bark is asteer, I go and forever, oh! Scotland adieu! The land of my fathers no more I shall view." --_Peter Crerar._ America was the one great inviting field that opened wide her doors to the oppressed of all nations. The Highlanders hastened thither; first in small companies, or singly, and afterwards in sufficient numbers to form distinctive settlements. These belonged to the better class, bringing with them a certain amount of property, intelligent, persevering, religious, and in many instances closely related to the chief. Who was the first Highlander, and in what year he settled in America, has not been determined. It is impossible to judge by the name, because it would not specially signify, for as has been noted, Highlanders had gone to the north of Ireland, and in the very first migrations of the Scotch-Irish, their descendants landed at Boston and Philadelphia. It is, however, positively known that individual members of the clans, born in the Highlands, and brought up under the jurisdiction of the chiefs, settled permanently in America before 1724.[11] The number of these must have been very small, for a greater migration would have attracted attention. In 1729, there arrived at the port of Philadelphia, five thousand six hundred and fifty-five Irish emigrants, and only two hundred and sixty-seven English, forty-three Scotch, and three hundred and forty-three Germans. Of the forty-three Scotch it would be impossible to ascertain how many of them were from the Highlands, because all people from Scotland were designated under the one word. But if the whole number were of the Gaelic race, and the ratio kept up it would be almost insignificant, if scattered from one end of the Colonies to the other. After the wave of emigration had finally set in then the numbers of small companies would rapidly increase and the ratio would be largely augmented.[12] It is not to be presumed that the emigrants found the New World to be all their fancies had pictured. If they had left misery and oppression behind them, they were destined to encounter hardships and disappointments. A new country, however great may be its attractions, necessarily has its disadvantages. It takes time, patience, industry, perseverence and ingenuity to convert a wilderness into an abode of civilization. Innumerable obstacles must be overcome, which eventually give way before the indomitable will of man. Years of hard service must be rendered ere the comforts of home are obtained, the farm properly stocked, and the ways for traffic opened. After the first impressions of the emigrant are over, a longing desire for the old home engrosses his heart, and a self-censure for the step he has taken. Time ameliorates these difficulties, and the wisdom of the undertaking becomes more apparent, while contentment and prosperity rival all other claims. The Highlander in the land of the stranger, no longer an alien, grows stronger in his love for his new surroundings, and gradually becomes just as patriotic for the new as he was for the old country. All its civilization, endearments, and progress, become a part of his being. His memory, however, lingers over the scenes of his early youth, and in his dreams he once more abides in his native glens, and receives the blessings of his kind, tender, loving mother. Were it even thus to all who set forth to seek their fortunes it would be well; but to hundreds who left their homes in fond anticipation, not a single ray of light shone athwart their progress, for all was dark and forbidding. Misrepresentation, treachery, and betrayal were too frequently practiced, and in misery, heart-broken and despondent many dropped to rise no more, welcoming death as a deliverer. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 8: Keltie's "History of the Highland Clans," Vol. II, p. 35.] [Footnote 9: Keltie's "History of the Highland Clans," Vol. II, p. 42.] [Footnote 10: "Celtic Magazine," Vol. I, p. 143.] [Footnote 11: See Appendix, Note A.] [Footnote 12: See Appendix, Note B.] CHAPTER IV. THE DARIEN SCHEME. The first body of Highlanders to arrive in the New World was as much military as civil. Their lines were cast in evil waters, and disaster awaited them. They formed a very essential part of a colony that engaged in what has been termed the Darien Scheme, which originated in 1695, and so mismanaged as to involve thousands in ruin, many of whom had enjoyed comparative opulence. Although this project did not materially affect the Highlands of Scotland, yet as Highland money entered the enterprise, and as quite a body of Highlanders perished in the attempted colonization of the isthmus of Panama, more than a passing notice is here demanded. Scottish people have ever been noted for their caution, frugality, and prudence, and not prone to engage in any speculation unless based on the soundest business principles. Although thus characterized, yet this people engaged in the most disastrous speculation on record; established by act of the Scottish parliament, and begun by unprecedented excitement. The leading cause which impelled the people headlong into this catastrophe was the ruination of the foreign trade of Scotland by the English Navigation Act of 1660, which provided that all trade with the English colonies should be conducted in English ships alone. Any scheme plausibly presented was likely to catch those anxious to regain their commercial interests, as well as those who would be actuated to increase their own interests. The Massacre of Glencoe had no little share in the matter. This massacre, which occurred February 13, 1692, is the foulest blot in the annals of crime. It was deliberately planned by Sir John Dalrymple and others, ordered by king William, and executed by Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, in the most treacherous, brutal, atrocious, and bloodthirsty manner imaginable, and perpetrated without the shadow of a reasonable excuse--infancy and old age, male and female alike perished. The bare recital of it is awful; and the barbarity of the American savage pales before it. In every quarter, even at court, the account of the massacre was received with horror and indignation. The odium of the nation rose to a great pitch, and demanded that an inquiry be made into this atrocious affair. The appointment of a commission was not wrung from the unwilling king until April 29, 1695. The commission, as a whole, acted with great fairness, although they put the best possible construction on the king's order, and threw the whole blame on Secretary Dalrymple. The king was too intimately connected with the crime to make an example of any one, although through public sentiment he was forced to dismiss Secretary Dalrymple. Not one of those actually engaged in the perpetration of the crime were dismissed from the army, or punished for the butchery, otherwise than by the general hatred of the age in which they lived, and the universal execration of posterity. The tide of feeling set in against king William, and before it had time to ebb the Darien Scheme was projected. The friends of William seized the opportunity to persuade him that some freedom and facilities of trade should be granted the Scotch, and that would divert public attention from the Glencoe massacre. Secretary Dalrymple also was not slow to give it the support of his eloquence and interest, in hopes to regain thereby a part of his lost popularity. The originator of the Darien Scheme was William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, a man of comprehensive views and great sagacity, born in Scotland, a missionary in the Indies, and a buccaneer among the West India islands. During his roving course of life he had visited the isthmus of Panama--then called Darien--and brought away only pleasant recollections of that narrow strip of land that unites North and South America. On his return to Europe his first plan was the national establishment of the Bank of England. For a brief period he was admitted as a director in that institution, but it befell to Paterson that others possessed of wealth and influence, interposed and took advantage of his ideas, and then excluded him from the concern. Paterson next turned his thoughts to the plan of settling a colony in America, and handling the trade of the Indies and the South Seas. The trade of Europe with the remote parts of Asia had been carried on by rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Paterson believed that the shorter, cheaper, and more expeditious route was by the isthmus of Panama, and, as he believed, that section of the country had not been occupied by any of the nations of Europe; and as it was specially adapted for his enterprise it should be colonized. He averred that the havens were capacious and secure; the sea swarmed with turtle; the country so mountainous, that though within nine degrees of the equator, the climate was temperate; and yet roads could be easily constructed along which a string of mules, or a wheeled carriage might in the course of a single day pass from sea to sea. Fruits and a profusion of valuable herbs grew spontaneously, on account of the rich black soil, which had a depth of seven feet; and the exuberant fertility of the soil had not tainted the purity of the atmosphere. As a place of residence alone, the isthmus was a paradise; and a colony there could not fail to prosper even if its wealth depended entirely on agriculture. This, however, would be only a secondary matter, for within a few years the entire trade between India and Europe would be drawn to that spot. The merchant was no longer to expose his goods to the capricious gales of the Antarctic Seas, for the easier, safer, cheaper route must be navigated, which was shortly destined to double the amount of trade. Whoever possessed that door which opened both to the Atlantic and Pacific, as the shortest and least expensive route would give law to both hemispheres, and by peaceful arts would establish an empire as splendid as that of Cyrus or Alexander. If Scotland would occupy Darien she would become the one great free port, the one great warehouse for the wealth that the soil of Darien would produce, and the greater wealth which would be poured through Darien, India, China, Siam, Ceylon, and the Moluccas; besides taking her place in the front rank among nations. On all the vast riches that would be poured into Scotland a toll should be paid which would add to her capital; and a fabulous prosperity would be shared by every Scotchman from the peer to the cadie. Along the desolate shores of the Forth Clyde villas and pleasure grounds would spring up; and Edinburgh would vie with London and Paris. These glowing prospects at first were only partially disclosed to the public, and the name of Darien was unpronounced save only to a few of Paterson's most confidential friends. A mystery pervaded the enterprise, and only enough was given out to excite boundless hopes and desires. He succeeded admirably in working up a sentiment and desire on the part of the people to become stockholders in the organization. The hour for action had arrived; so on June 26, 1695, the Scottish parliament granted a statute from the Crown, for creating a corporate body or stock company, by name of the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies, with power to plant colonies and build forts in places not possessed by other European nations, the consent of the inhabitants of the places they settled being obtained. The amount of capital was not fixed by charter, but it was stipulated that at least one-half the stock must be held by Scotchmen resident in Scotland, and that no stock originally so held should ever be transferred to any but Scotchmen resident in Scotland. An entire monopoly of the trade with Asia, Africa, and America was granted for a term of thirty-one years, and all goods imported by the company during twenty-one years, should be admitted duty free, except sugar and tobacco, unless grown on the company's plantations. Every member and servant of the company were privileged against arrest and imprisonment, and if placed in durance, the company was authorized to invoke both the civil and military power. The Great Seal was affixed to the Act; the books were opened; the shares were fixed at £100 sterling each; and every man from the Pentland Firth to the Galway Firth who could command the amount was impatient to put down his name. The whole kingdom apparently had gone mad. The number of shareholders were about fourteen hundred. The books were opened February 26, 1696, and the very first subscriber was Anne, dutchess of Hamilton. On that day there was subscribed £50,400. By the end of March the greater part of the amount had been subscribed. On March 5th, a separate book was opened in Glasgow and on it was entered £56,325. The books were closed August 3rd of the same year, and on the last day of subscriptions there was entered £14,125, reaching the total of £400,000, the amount apportioned to Scotland. The cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, in their corporate capacity, each took £3,000 and Perth £2,000. Of the subscriptions there were eight of £3,000 each; eight of £2,000 each; two of £1,500, and one each of £1,200 and £1,125; ninety-seven of £1,000 each; but the great majority consisted of £100 or £200 each. The whole amount actually paid up was £220,000. This may not seem to be a large amount for such a country as Scotland, but as already noted, the country had been ruined by the English Act of 1660. There were five or six shires which did not altogether contain as many guineas and crowns as were tossed about every day by the shovels of a single goldsmith in Lombard street. Even the nobles had but very little money, for a large part of their rents was taken in kind; and the pecuniary remuneration of the clergy was such as to move the pity of the most needy, of the present; yet some of these had invested their all in hopes that their children might be benefited when the golden harvest should come. Deputies in England received subscriptions to the amount of £300,000; and the Dutch and Hamburgers subscribed £200,000. Those Highland chiefs who had been considered as turbulent, and are so conspicuous in the history of the day have no place in this record of a species of enterprise quite distinct from theirs. The houses of Argyle, Athol, and Montrose appear in the list, as families who, besides their Highland chiefships, had other stakes and interests in the country; but almost the only person with a Highland patronymic was John MacPharlane of that ilk, a retired scholar who followed antiquarian pursuits in the libraries beneath the Parliament House. The Keltic prefix of "Mac" is most frequently attached to merchants in Inverness, who subscribed their hundred. It is probable that a list of Highlanders who subscribed stock may be of interest in this connection. Only such names as are purely Highland are here subjoined with amounts given, and also in the order as they appear on the books: 26 February, 1696: John Drummond of Newtoun £600 Adam Gordon of Dalphollie 500 Master James Campbell, brother-german to the Earle of Argyle 500 John McPharlane of that ilk 200 Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstown 400 Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinlass 500 Mr. Gilbert Campbell, son to Colin Campbell of Soutar houses 400 27 February, 1696: John Robertson, merchant in Edinburgh 300 Matthew St. Clair, Doctor of Medicine 500 Daniel Mackay, Writer in Edinburgh 200 Mr. Francis Grant of Cullen, Advocate 100 Duncan Forbes of Culloden 200 Arthur Forbes, younger of Echt 200 George Southerland, merchant in Edinburgh 200 Kenneth McKenzie of Cromartie 500 Major John Forbes 200 28 February, 1696: William Robertsone of Gladney 1,000 Mungo Graeme of Gorthie 500 Duncan Campbell of Monzie 500 James Mackenzie, son to the Viscount of Tarbat 1,000 2 March, 1696: Jerome Robertson, periwig maker, burgess of Edinburgh 100 3 March 1696: David Robertsone, Vintner in Edinburgh 200 William Drummond, brother to Thomas Drummond of Logie Almond 500 4 March, 1696: Sir Humphrey Colquhoun of Luss 400 5 March, 1696: James Robertson, tylor in Canonget 100 Sir Thomas Murray of Glendoick 1,000 6 March, 1696: Alexander Murray, son to John Murray of Touchadam, and deputed by him 300 7 March 1696: John Gordon, Captain in Lord Stranraer's Regiment 100 Samuell McLelland, merchant in Edinburgh 500 11 March 1696: Aeneas McLeod, Town-Clerk of Edinburgh, in name and behalfe of George Viscount of Tarbat, and as having commission from him £1000 17 March, 1696: John Menzies, Advocate 200 William Menzies, merchant in Edinburgh 1000 19 March, 1696: James Drummond, Writer in Edinburgh, deputed by Mr. John Graham of Aberuthven 100 Gilbert Campbell, merchant in Edinburgh, son to Colline Campbell of Soutar Houses 200 Gilbert Campbell, merchant in Edinburgh, son to Colline Campbell of Soutar Houses 100 Daniel McKay, Writer in Edinburgh, deputed by Captain Hugh McKay, younger of Borley 300 Patrick Campbell, Writer in Edinburgh, deputed by Captain Leonard Robertsone of Straloch 100 20 March, 1696: Alexander Murray, son to George Murray of Touchadam, deputed by him 200 Sir Colin Campbell of Aberuchill, one of the Senators of the Colledge of Justice 500 Andrew Robertson, chyrurgeon in Edinburgh, deputed by George Robertstone, younger, merchant in Glasgow 100 Andrew Robertson, chyrurgeon in Edinburgh 100 James Gregorie, student 100 George Earle of Southerland 1000 21 March, 1696: John McFarlane, Writer to the Signet 200 23 March, 1696: John Forbes, brother-german to Samuell Forbes of Fovrain, deputed by the said Samuell Forbes 1000 John Forbes, brother-german to Samuell Forbes of Fovrain 500 James Gregory, Professor of Mathematiques in the Colledge of Edinburgh 200 24 March 1696: Patrick Murray of Livingstoun 600 Ronald Campbell, Writer to his Majesty's Signet, as having deputation from Alexander Gordoun, son to Alexander Gordoun, minister at Inverary 100 William Graham, merchant in Edinburgh 200 David Drummond, Advocate, deputed by Thomas Graeme of Balgowan 600 David Drummond, Advocate, deputed by John Drummond of Culqupalzie £600 25 March, 1696: John Murray of Deuchar 800 Sir Robert Sinclair of Stevenstoun 400 John Sinclair of Stevenstoun 400 26 March, 1696: Helen Drummond, spouse to Colonel James Ferguson as commissionate by him 200 James Murray of Sundhope 100 John Drummond of Newtoun 400 John Drummond of Newtoun, for John Stewart of Dalguis, conform to deputation 100 March 27: Alexander Johnstoune of Elshieshells 400 John Forbes, brother-german to Samuell Forbes of Fovrain, conform to one deputation by Captain James Stewart, in Sir John Hill's regiment. Governor of Fort William 100 Thomas Forbes of Watertoun 200 William Ross, merchant in Edinburgh 100 Rachell Johnstoun, relict of Mr. Robert Baylie of Jerviswood 200 March 28: John Fraser, servitor to Alexander Innes, merchant 100 Mr. John Murray, Senior Advocate 100 John Stewart, Writer in Clerk Gibsone's chamber 100 Mr. Gilbert Campbell, merchant in Edinburgh, son to Colline Campbell of Soutar Houses 200 Mr. Gilbert Campbell, merchant in Edinburgh, son to Colline Campbell of Soutar Houses, (more) 100 James Gordon, Senior, merchant in Aberdeen 250 Thomas Gordon, skipper in Leith 100 Adam Gordon of Dulpholly 500 Colin Campbell of Lochlan 200 Thomas Graeme of Balgowane, by virtue of a deputation from David Graeme of Kilor 200 Patrick Coutts, merchant in Edinburgh, being deputed by Alexander Robertsone, merchant in Dundie 200 David Drummond, of Cultimalindie 600 John Drummond, brother of David Drummond of Cultimalindie 200 30 March, 1696: James Marquess of Montrose 1000 John Murray, doctor of medicine, for Mr. James Murray, Chirurgeon in Perth, conform to a deputation £200 William Stewart, doctor of medicine at Perth 100 Patrick Campbell, Writer in Edinburgh, being depute by Helen Steuart, relict of Doctor Murray 100 James Drummond, one of the Clerks to the Bills, being deputed by James Meinzies of Shian 100 Robert Stewart, Junior, Advocate 300 Master Donald Robertsone, minister of the Gospel 100 Duncan Campbell of Monzie, by deputation from John Drummond of Culquhalzie 100 John Marquesse of Athole 500 John Haldane of Gleneagles, deputed by James Murray at Orchart Milne 100 Thomas Johnstone, merchant in Edinburgh 100 William Meinzies, merchant in Edinburgh 1000 Alexander Forbes of Tolquhon 500 Robert Murray, merchant in Edinburgh 200 Walter Murray, merchant in Edinburgh 100 Master Arthur Forbes, son of the Laird of Cragivar 100 Robert Fraser, Advocate 100 Barbara Fraser, relict of George Stirling, Chirurgeon apothecary in Edinburgh 200 Alexander Johnston, merchant in Edinburgh 100 Sir Robert Sinclair of Stevenstoun, for Charles Sinclair, Advocate, his son 100 The said Thomas Scott, deputed by Patrick Ogilvie of Balfour 400 The said Thomas Scott, deputed by Thomas Robertson, merchant there (i.e. Dundee) 125 The said Thomas Scott, deputed by David Drummond, merchant in Dundee 100 Mrs. Anne Stewart, daughter to the deceased John Stewart of Kettlestoun 100 31 March, 1696: Sir Archibald Murray of Blackbarrony 500 William Stewart, clerk to his Majesty's Customs at Leith 100 Christian Grierson, daughter to the deceast John Grierson 100 Jesper Johnstoune of Waristoun 500 Alexander Forbes, goldsmith in Edinburgh 200 Master John Campbell, Writer to the Signet 200 Thomas Campbell, flesher in Edinburgh 200 Archibald Earle of Argyll 1500 James Campbell, brother-german to the Earle of Argyll 200 William Johnston, postmaster of Hadingtoun £100 Sir James Murray of Philiphaugh 500 Andrew Murray, brother to Sundhope 100 William McLean, master of the Revelles 100 John Cameron, son to the deceast Donald Cameron, merchant in Edinburgh 100 David Forbes, Advocate 200 Captain John Forbes of Forbestoune 200 Afternoon: Sir Alexander Monro of Bearcrofts 200 James Gregorie, student of medicine 100 Mungo Campbell of Burnbank 400 John Murray, junior, merchant in Edinburgh 400 Robert Murray, burges in Edinburgh 150 Dougall Campbell of Sadell 100 Ronald Campbell, Writer to his Majesty's Signet 200 Alexander Finlayson, Writer in Edinburgh 100 John Steuart, Writer in Edinburgh 100 William Robertson, one of the sub-clerks of the Session 100 Lady Neil Campbell 200 Mary Murray, Lady Enterkin, elder 200 Sir George Campbell of Cesnock 1000 7 April: Thomas Robertson of Lochbank 400 Robert Fraser, Advocate, for Hugh Robertson, Provost of Inverness, conform to deputation 100 Robert Fraser, Advocate, for James McLean, baillie of Invernes, conform to deputation 100 Robert Fraser. Advocate, for John McIntosh, baillie of Invernes, conform to deputation 100 Robert Fraser, Advocate, for Alexander McLeane, merchant of Invernes, conform to deputation 150 Robert Fraser, Advocate, for Robert Rose, late baillie of Invernes, conform to deputation 140 Robert Fraser, Advocate, for Alexander Stewart, skipper at Invernes, conform to deputation 150 Robert Fraser, Advocate, for William Robertson of Inshes, 100 9 April, 1696: James Drummond, one of the Clerks of the Bills, for Robert Menzies, in Aberfadie, conform to deputation 100 John Drummond of Newtoun, depute by John Menzies of Camock, Advocate 200 Archibald Sinclair, Advocate 100 Patrick Campbell, Writer in Edinburgh £100 John Murray, doctor of medicine, for William Murray of Arbony, by virtue of his deputation 200 Colen Campbell of Bogholt 100 William Gordone, Writer in Edinburgh 100 14 Apryle: The said Thomas Halliday, Conform to deputation from William Ogilvie in Todshawhill 100 16 Aprill: Patrick Murray, lawful son to Patrick Murray of Killor 100 Walter Murray, servitor to George Clerk, junior, merchant in Edinburgh, deputed by Robert Murray of Levelands 150 John Campbell, Writer to the Signet, for Alexander Campbell, younger of Calder, conform to deputation 500 Captain James Drummond of Comrie 200 April 21: James Cuming, merchant in Edinburgh 100 James Campbell of Kinpout 100 James Drummond, Under-Clerk to the Bills, depute by Archibald Meinzies of Myln of Kiltney 100 Robert Blackwood, deputed by John Gordon of Collistoun, doctor of medicine 100 Robert Blackwood, merchant in Edinburgh, deputed by Charles Ogilvy, merchant and late baillie of Montrose 200 James Ramsay, writer in Edinburg, commission at by Duncan Campbell of Duneaves 100 Captain Patrick Murray, of Lord Murray's regiment of foot 100 May 5, 1696. John Haldane of Gleneagles, conform to deputation from Thomas Grahame in Auchterarder 100 John Drummond of Newtoun, depute by David Graeme of Jordanstoun 100 Samuel McLellan, merchant in Dundee, conform to deputation from William Stewart of Castle Stewart 100 May 14, 1696. Andrew Robertsone, chirurgeon in Edinburgh, conform to deputation by George Robertsone, Writer in Dunblane 100 May 21, 1696. John Drummond of Newtoun, for Lodovick Drummond, chamberland to my Lord Drummond 100 May 26, 1696. Thomas Drummond of Logie Almond £500 June 2, 1696. Robert Fraser, Advocate, by virtue of a deputation from Robert Cuming of Relugas, merchant of Inverness 100 Robert Fraser, Advocate, in name of William Duff of Dyple, merchant of Inverness 100 Robert Fraser, Advocate, in name of Alexander Duffe of Drumuire, merchant of Inverness 100 June 4, 1696. John Haldane of Gleneagles, depute by John Graham, son to John Graham, clerk to the chancellary 100 Adam Drummond of Meginch 200 18. Agnes Campbell, relict of Andrew Anderson, his Majesty's printer 100 July 10. John Drummond of Newtoun, for Dame Margaret Graham, Lady Kinloch 200 John Drummond of Newtoun 200 James Menzies of Schian 100 Mungo Graeme of Garthie 200 21. Sir Alexander Cumyng of Culter 200 31. Mr. George Murray, doctor of physick 200 Patrick Campbell, brother to Monzie 100 August 1. James Lord Drummond 1000 Friday, 6 March, 1696. John Drummond of Newtoune 1125 Saturday, 7 March, 1696. John Graham, younger of 1000 Daniel Campbell, merchant in Glasgow 1000 George Robinsoune, belt-maker in Glasgow 100 John Robinsoune, hammerman in Glasgow 100 John Robertson, junior, merchant in Glasgow 500 Munday, 9 March, 1696. Mattheu Cuming, junior, merchant in Glasgow 1000 William Buchanan, merchant in Glasgow 100 Marion Davidson, relict of Mr. John Glen, Minister of the Gospel 100 James Johnstoun, merchant in Glasgow 200 Thomas Johnstoun, merchant in Glasgow 200 George Johnston, merchant in Glasgow £200 John Buchanan, merchant in Glasgow 100 John Grahame, younger of Dougaldstoun 1,000 Tuesday, 10 March, 1696. Neill McVicar, tanner in Glasgow 100 George Buchanan, Maltman in Glasgow 100 Saturday, 21 March, 1696. Archibald Cambell, merchant in Glasgow 100 Tuesday, 24 March, 1696. John Robertsone, younger, merchant in Glasgow, for Robert Robertsone, second lawfull sone to Umqll James Robertsone, merchant in Glasgow 100 Tuesday, March 31, 1696. Mungo Campbell of Nether Place 100 Hugh Campbell, merchant, son to deceast Sir Hugh Campbell of Cesnock 100 Matthew Campbell of Waterhaugh 100 Thursday, Agr the 2d of Aprille. Mungo Campbell, merchant in Ayr 100 David Fergursone, merchant in Ayr 100 Wednesday the 15th day, 1696. Captain Charles Forbes, of Sir John Hill's regiment 200 Captain James Menzies, of Sir John Hill's regiment 100 Captain Francis Ferquhar, of Sir John Hill's regiment 100 Thursday, 16 Aprile, 1696. Captain Charles Forbes, of Sir John Hill's regiment 200 Fryday, 17 Aprile. Lieutenant Charles Ross, of Sir John Hill's regiment 100[13] It is more than probable that some names should not be inserted above, as the name Graeme, for it may belong to the clan Graham of the Highlands, or else to the debateable land, near Carlisle, which is more likely. We know that where they had made themselves adverse to both sides, they were forced to emigrate in large numbers. Some of them settled near Bangor, in the county of Down, Ireland. How large a per cent, of the subscribers who lived in the lowlands, and born out of the Highlands, would be impossible to determine. Then names of parties, born in the Highlands and of Gaelic blood have undoubtedly been omitted owing to change of name. By the change in spelling of the name, it would indicate that some had left Ulster where their forefathers had settled, and taken up their residence in Scotland. It will also be noticed that the clans bordering the Grampians were most affected by the excitement while others seemingly did not even feel the breeze. The Darien Scheme at best was but suppositious, for no experiment had been tried in order to forecast a realization of what was expected. There was, it is true, a glitter about it, but there were materials within the reach of all from which correct data might have been obtained. It seems incredible that men of sound judgment should have risked everything, when they only had a vague or general idea of Paterson's plans. It was also a notorious fact that Spain claimed sovereignty over the Isthmus of Panama, and, even if she had not, it was unlikely that she would tolerate such a colony, as was proposed, in the very heart of her transatlantic dominions. Spain owned the Isthmus both by the right of discovery and possession; and the very country which Paterson had described in such radiant colors had been found by the Castilian settlers to be a land of misery and of death; and on account of the poisonous air they had been compelled to remove to the neighboring haven of Panama. All these facts, besides others, might easily have been ascertained by members of the Company. As has already been intimated, the Scots alone were not drawn into this vortex of wild excitement, and are no more to be held responsible for the delusion than some of other nationalities. The English people were seized with the dread of Scottish prosperity resulting from the enterprise, and England's jealousy of trade at once interfered to crush an adventure which seemed so promising. The English East India Company instigated a cry, echoed by the city of London, and taken up by the nation, which induced their parliament, when it met for the first time, after the elections of 1695, to give its unequivocal condemnation to the scheme. One peer declared, "If these Scots are to have their way I shall go and settle in Scotland, and not stay here to be made a beggar." The two Houses of Parliament went up together to Kensington and represented to the king the injustice of requiring England to exert her power in support of an enterprise which, if successful, must be fatal to her commerce and to her finances. William replied in plain terms that he had been illy-treated in Scotland, but that he would try to find a remedy for the evil which had been brought to his attention. At once he dismissed Lord High Commissioner Tweeddale and Secretary Johnston; but the Act which had been passed under their management still continued to be law in Scotland. The Darien Company might have surmounted the opposition of the English parliament and the East India Company, had not the Dutch East India Company--a body remarkable for its monopolizing character--also joined in the outcry against the Scottish enterprise; incited thereto by the king through Sir Paul Rycaut, the British resident at Hamburg, directing him to transmit to the senate of that commercial city a remonstrance on the part of king William, accusing them of having encouraged the commissioners of the Darien Company; requesting them to desist from doing so; intimating that the plan had not the king's support; and a refusal to withdraw their countenance from the scheme would threaten an interruption to his friendship with the good city of Hamburg. The result of this interference was the almost total withdrawal of the Dutch and English subscriptions, which was accelerated by the threatened impeachment, by the English parliament, of such persons who had subscribed to the Company; and, furthermore, were compelled to renounce their connection with the Company, besides misusing some native-born Scotchmen who had offended the House by subscribing their own money to a company formed in their own country, and according to their own laws. The managers of the scheme, supported by the general public of Scotland, entered a strong protest against the king's hostile interference of his Hamburg envoy. In his answer the king evaded what he was resolved not to grant, and yet could not in equity refuse. By the double dealing of the monarch the Company lost the active support of the subscribers in Hamburg and Holland. In spite of the desertion of her English and foreign subscribers the Scots, encouraged in their stubborn resolution, and flattered by hopes that captivated their imaginations, decided to enter the project alone. A stately house in Milne Square, then the most modern and fashionable part of Edinburgh, was purchased and fitted up for an office and warehouse. It was called the Scottish India House. Money poured faster than ever into the coffers of the Company. Operations were actively commenced during the month of May, 1696. Contracts were rapidly let and orders filled--smith and cutlery work at Falkirk; woollen stockings at Aberdeen; gloves and other leather goods at Perth; various metallic works, hats, shoes, tobacco-pipes, serges, linen cloth, bobwigs and periwigs, at Edinburgh; and for home-spun and home-woven woollen checks or tartan, to various parts of the Highlands. [Illustration: SCOTTISH INDIA HOUSE] As the means for building ships in Scotland did not then exist, recourse was had to the dockyards of Amsterdam and Hamburg. At an expense of £50,000 a few inferior ships were purchased, and fitted out as ships of war; for their constitution authorized them to make war both by land and sea. The vessels were finally fitted out at Leith, consisting of the Caledonia, the St. Andrew, the Unicorn, and the Dolphin, each armed with fifty guns and two tenders, the Endeavor and Pink, afterwards sunk at Darien; and among the commodities stored away were axes, iron wedges, knives, smiths', carpenters' and coopers' tools, barrels, guns, pistols, combs, shoes, hats, paper, tobacco-pipes, and, as was supposed, provisions enough to last eight months. The value of the cargo of the St. Andrew was estimated at £4,006. The crew and colonists consisted of twelve hundred picked men, the greater part of whom were veterans who had served in king William's wars, and the remainder of Highlanders and others who had opposed the revolution, and three hundred gentlemen of family, desirous of trying their fortunes. It was on July 26, 1698, that the vessels weighed anchor and put out to sea. A wild insanity seized the entire population of Edinburgh as they came to witness the embarkation. Guards were kept busy holding back the eager crowd who pressed forward, and, stretching out their arms to their departing countrymen, clamored to be taken on board. Stowaways, when ordered on shore, madly clung to rope and mast, pleading in vain to be allowed to serve without pay on board the ships. Women sobbed and gasped for breath; men stood uncovered, and with downcast head and choked utterance invoked the blessing of the Beneficent Being. The banner of St. Andrew was hoisted at the admiral's mast; and as a light wind caught the sails, the roar of the vast multitude was heard far down the waters of the frith. The actual destination of the fleet was still a profound secret, save to a few. The supreme direction of the expedition was entrusted to a council of seven, to whom was entrusted all power, both civil and military. The voyage was long and the adventurers suffered much; the rations proved to be scanty, and of poor quality; and the fleet, after passing the Orkneys and Ireland, touched at Madeira, where those who had fine clothes were glad to exchange them for provisions and wines. Having crossed the Atlantic, they first landed on an uninhabited islet lying between Porto Rico and St. Thomas, which they took possession of in the name of their country, and hoisted the white cross of St. Andrew. Being warned off for trespassing on the territory of the king of Denmark, and having procured the services of an old buccaneer, under whose pilotage they departed, on November 1st they anchored close to the Isthmus of Panama, having lost fifteen of their number during the voyage. On the 4th they landed at Acla; founded there a settlement to which they gave the name of New St. Andrews; marked out the site for another town and called it New Edinburgh. The weather was genial and climate pleasant at the time of their arrival; the vegetation was luxuriant and promising; the natives were kind; and everything presaged a bright future for the fortune-seekers. They cut a canal through the neck of land that divided one side of the harbor from the ocean, and there constructed a fort, whereon they mounted fifty cannon. On a mountain, at the opposite side of the harbor, they built a watchhouse, where the extensive view prevented all danger of a surprise. Lands were purchased from the Indians, and messages of friendship were sent to the governors of the several Spanish provinces. As the amount of funds appropriated for the sustenance of the colony had been largely embezzled by those having the matter in charge, the people were soon out of provisions. Fishing and the chase were now the only sources, and as these were precarious, the colonists were soon on the verge of starvation. As the summer drew near the atmosphere became stifling, and the exhalations from the steaming soil, added to other causes, wrought death among the settlers. The mortality rose gradually to ten a day. Both the clergymen who accompanied the expedition were dead; one of them, Rev. Thomas James, died at sea before the colonists landed, and soon after the arrival Rev. Adam Scot succumbed. Paterson buried his wife in that soil, which, as he had assured his too credulous countrymen, exhaled health and vigor. Men passed to the hospital, and from thence to the grave, and the survivors were only kept alive through the friendly offices of the Indians. Affairs continued daily to grow worse. The Spaniards on the isthmus looked with complacency on the distress of the Scotchmen. No relief, and no tidings coming from Scotland, the survivors on June 22, 1699, less than eight months after their arrival, resolved to abandon the settlement. They re-embarked in three vessels, a weak and hopeless company, to sail whithersoever Providence might direct. Paterson, the first to embark at Leith, was the last to re-embark at Darien. He begged hard to be left behind with twenty or more companions to keep up a show of possession, and to await the next arrival from Scotland. His importunities were disregarded, and, utterly helpless, he was carried on board the St. Andrew, and soon after the vessels stood out to sea. The voyage was horrible. It might be compared to the horrors of a slave ship. The ocean kept secret the sufferings on board these pestilential ships until August 8th, when the Caledonia, commanded by Captain Robert Drummond, drifted into Sandy Hook, New York, having lost one hundred and three men since leaving Darien, and twelve more within four days after arrival, leaving but sixty-five men on board fit for handling ropes. The three ships, on leaving Darien, had three hundred each, including officers, crew and colonists. On August 13th, the Unicorn, commanded by Captain John Anderson, came into New York in a distressed condition, having lost her foremast, fore topmast, and mizzen mast. She lost one hundred and fifty men on the way. It appears that Captain Robert Pennicuik of the St. Andrew knew of the helpless condition of the Unicorn, and accorded no assistance.[14] As might be expected, passion was engendered amidst this scene of misery. The squalid survivors, in the depths of their misery, raged fiercely against one another. Charges of incapacity, cruelty, brutal insolence, were hurled backward and forward. The rigid Presbyterians attributed the calamities to the wickedness of Jacobites, Prelatists, Sabbath-breakers and Atheists, as they denominated some of their fellow-sufferers. The accused parties, on the other hand, complained bitterly of the impertinence of meddling fanatics and hypocrites. Paterson was cruelly reviled, and was unable to defend himself. He sunk into a stupor, and became temporarily insane. The arrival of the two ships in New York awakened different emotions. There certainly was no danger of these miserable people doing any harm, and yet their appearance awakened apprehension, on account of orders received from the king. After the proclamations which had been issued against these miserable fugitives, it became a question of difficulty, since the governor of New York was absent in Boston, whether it was safe to provide the dying men with harborage and necessary food. Natural feelings overcame the difficulty; the more selfish and timid would have stood aloof and let fate take its course: there being a sufficient number of them to make the more generous feel that their efforts to save life were not made without risks. Even putting the most favorable construction on the act of the earl of Bellomont, governor of Rhode Island, who was appealed to for advice, by the lieutenant governor of New York, the colonists were provoked by the actions of those in authority. Bellomont, in his report to the Lords of Trade, under date of October 20, 1699, states that the sufferers drew up a memorial to the lieutenant governor for permission to buy provisions; would not act until Bellomont gave his instructions; latter thinks the colonists became insolent after being refreshed; and "your Lordships will see that I have been cautious enough in my orders to the lieutenant governor of New York, not to suffer the Scotch to buy more provisions, than would serve to carry them home to Scotland."[15] On October 12th the Caledonia set sail from Sandy Hook, made the west coast of Ireland, November 11th, and on the 20th of same month anchored in the Sound of Islay, Scotland. The story of the Unicorn is soon told. "John Anderson, a Scotch Presbyterian, who commanded a ship to Darien in the Scottish expedition thither and on his return in at Amboy, N. Jersey, & let his ship rot & plundered her & with ye plunder bought land."[16] The St. Andrew parted company with the Caledonia the second day after leaving the settlement, and two nights later saw the Unicorn almost wholly dismasted, and on the following day was pursued by the Baslavento fleet. They put into Jamaica, but were denied assistance, in obedience to king William's orders; and a British admiral, Bembo, refused to give them some men to assist in bringing the ship to the isle of Port Royal. During the voyage to Port Royal, they lost the commander, Captain Pennicuik, most of the officers and one hundred and thirty of the men, before landing, on August 9, 1699.[17] The Dolphin, Captain Robert Pincarton, commander, used as a supply and trading ship, of fourteen guns, on February 5, 1699, struck a rock and ran ashore at Carthagena, the crew seized by the Spaniards, and in irons were put in dungeons as pirates. The Spaniards congratulated themselves on having captured a few of "the ruffians" who had been the terror and curse of their settlements for a century. They were formally condemned to death, but British interference succeeded in preventing the sentence on the crew from being executed. On the week following the departure of the expedition from Leith, the Scottish parliament met and unanimously adopted an address to the king, asking his support and countenance to the Darien colony. Notwithstanding this memorial the British monarch ordered the governors of Jamaica, Barbadoes and New York to refuse all supplies to the settlers. Up to this time the king had partly concealed his policy. No time was lost by the East India Companies in bringing every measure to bear in order to ruin the colony. To such length did rancor go that the Scotch commanders who should presume to enter English ports, even for repairs after a storm, were threatened with arrest. In obedience to the king's orders the governors issued proclamations, which they attempted strictly to enforce; and every species of relief, not only that which countrymen can claim of their fellow-subjects, and Christians of their fellow-Christians, and such as the veriest criminal has a right to demand, was denied the colonists of Darien. On May 12, 1699, there sailed from Leith the Olive Branch, Captain William Johnson, commander, and the Hopeful, under Captain Alexander Stark, with ample stores of provisions, and three hundred recruits, but did not arrive at Darien until eight weeks after the departure of the colonists. Finding that the settlement had been abandoned, and leaving six of their number, who preferred to remain, but were afterwards brought away, the Hopeful sailed for Jamaica, where she was seized and condemned as a prize. "The Olive Branch was unfortunately blown up at Caledonia" (Darien).[18] The Spaniards had not only become aggressive by seizing the Dolphin and incarcerating the officers and crew, but their government made no remonstrance against the invasion of its territory until May 3, 1699, when a memorial was presented to William by the Spanish ambassador stating that his sovereign looked on the proceedings as a rupture of the alliance between the two countries, and as a hostile invasion, and would take such measures as he thought best against the intruders. It is possible that at this time Spain would not have taken any action whatever, if William had pursued a different course; and seeing that the colonists had been abandoned and disowned by their own king, as if they had been vagabonds or outlaws, the Spaniards, in a manner, felt themselves invited to precipitate a crisis, which they accomplished. In the meantime the directors of the Darien Company were actively organizing another expedition and hastily sent out four more vessels--the Rising Sun, Captain James Gibson; the Hope, Captain James Miller; the Hope of Barrowstouness, Captain Richard Daling; and the Duke of Hamilton, Captain Walter Duncan; with thirteen hundred "good men well appointed," besides materials of war. This fleet left Greenock August 18, 1699, but having been delayed by contrary winds, did not leave the Bay of Rothsay, Isle of Bute, until Sunday, September 24th. On Thursday, November 30, the fleet reached its destination, after considerable suffering and some deaths on board. These vessels contained engineers, fire-workers, bombardiers, battery guns of twenty-four pounds, mortars and bombs. The number of men mentioned included over three hundred Highlanders, chiefly from the estate of Captain Alexander Campbell of Fonab, most of whom had served under him, in Flanders, in Lorn's regiment. During the voyage the Hope was cast away. Captain Miller loaded the long boat very deep with provisions, goods and arms, and proceeded towards Havana. He arrived safely at Darien. A large proportion of the second expedition belonged to the military, and were organized. Among the Highland officers are noticed the following names: Captains Colin Campbell, Thomas McIntosh, James Urquhart, Alexander Stewart, ---- Ferquhar, and ---- Grant; Lieutenants Charles Stewart, Samuel Johnston, John Campbell and Walter Graham; Ensigns Hugh Campbell and Robert Colquhon, and Sergeant Campbell. The members of this expedition were greatly disappointed on their arrival. They fully expected to find a secure fortification, a flourishing town, cultivated fields, and a warm reception. Instead they found a wilderness; the castle in ruins; the huts burned, and grass growing over the ruins. Their hearts sank within them; for this fleet had not been fitted out to found a colony, but to recruit and protect one already in a flourishing condition. They were worse provided with the necessaries of life than their predecessors had been. They made feeble attempts to restore the ruins. They constructed a fort on the old grounds; and within the ramparts built a hamlet consisting of about eighty-five cabins, generally of twelve feet by ten. The work went slowly on, without hope or encouragement. Despondency and discontent pervaded all ranks. The provisions became scanty, and unfair dealing resorted to. There were plots and factions formed, and one malcontent hanged. Nor was the ecclesiastical part happily arranged. The provision made by the General Assembly was as defective as the provision for the temporal wants had been made by the directors of the company. Of the four divines, one of them, Alexander Dalgleish, died at sea, on board of Captain Duncan's vessel. They were all of the established church of Scotland, who had the strongest sympathy with the Cameronians. They were at war with almost all the colonists. The antagonisms between priest and people were extravagant and fatal. They described their flocks as the most profligate of mankind, and declared it was most impossible to constitute a presbytery, for it was impossible to find persons fit to be ruling elders of a Christian church. This part of the trouble can easily be accounted for. One-third of the people were Highlanders, who did not understand a word of English, and not one of the pastors knew a word of Gaelic; and only through interpreters could they converse with this large body of men. It is also more than probable that many of these men, trained to war, had more or less of a tendency to fling off every corrective band. Both Rev. John Borland and Rev. Alexander Shiels, author of the "Hynd let Loose," were stern fanatics who would tolerate nothing diverging a shade from their own code of principles. They treated the people as persons under their spiritual authority, and required of them fastings, humiliations, and long attendance on sermons and exhortations. Such pastors were treated with contempt and ignominy by men scarcely inclined to bear ecclesiastical authority, even in its lightest form. They mistook their mission, which was to give Christian counsel, and to lead gently and with dignity from error into rectitude. Instead of this they fell upon the flock like irritated schoolmasters who find their pupils in mutiny. They became angry and dominative; and the more they thus exhibited themselves, the more scorn and contumely they encountered. Meanwhile two trading sloops arrived in the harbor with a small stock of provisions; but the supply was inadequate; so five hundred of the party were ordered to embark for Scotland. The news of the abandonment of the settlement by the first expedition was first rumored in London during the middle of September, 1699. Letters giving such accounts had been received from Jamaica. The report reached Edinburgh on the 19th, but was received with scornful incredulity. It was declared to be an impudent lie devised by some Englishmen who could not endure the sight of Scotland waxing great and opulent. On October 4th the whole truth was known, for letters had been received from New York announcing that a few miserable men, the remains of the colony, had arrived in the Hudson. Grief, dismay, and rage seized the nation. The directors in their rage called the colonists white-livered deserters. Accurate accounts brought the realization of the truth that hundreds of families, once in comparative opulence, were now reduced almost to beggary, and the flower of the nation had either succumbed to hardships, or else were languishing in prisons in the Spanish settlements, or else starving in English colonies. The bitterness of disappointment was succeeded by an implacable hostility to the king, who was denounced in pamphlets of the most violent and inflammatory character, calling him a hypocrite, and a deceiver of those who had shed their best blood in his cause, and the author of the misfortunes of Scotland. Indemnification, redress, and revenge were demanded by every mouth, and each hand was ready to vouch for the claim. Never had just such a feeling existed in Scotland. It became a useless possession to the king, for he could not wring one penny from that kingdom for the public service, and, what was more important to him, he could not induce one recruit for his continental wars. William continued to remain indifferent to all complaints of hardships and petitions of redress, unless when he showed himself irritated by the importunity of the suppliants, and hurt at being obliged to evade what it was impossible for him, with the least semblance of justice to refuse. The feeling against William long continued in Scotland. As late as November 5, 1788, when it was proposed that a monument should be erected in Edinburgh to his memory, there appeared in one of the papers an anonymous communication ironically applauding the undertaking, and proposing as two subjects of the entablature, for the base of the projected column, the massacre of Glencoe and the distresses of the Scottish colonists in Darien. On the appearance of this article the project was very properly and righteously abandoned. The result of the Darien Scheme and the cold-blooded policy of William made the Scottish nation ripe for rebellion. Had there been even one member of the exiled house of Stuart equal to the occasion, that family could then have returned to Scotland amid the joys and acclamations of the nation. Amidst the disasters of the first expedition the directors of the company were not unmindful of the fate of those who had sailed in the last fleet. These people must be promptly succored. The company hired the ship Margaret, commanded by Captain Leonard Robertson, which sailed from Dundee, March 9, 1700; but what was of greater importance was the commission given to Captain Alexander Campbell of Fonab, under date of October 10, 1699, making him a councillor of the company and investing him with "the chief and supreme command, both by sea and by land, of all ships, men, forts, settlements, lands, possessions, and others whatsoever belonging to the said company in any part or parts of America,"[19] with instructions to lose no time in taking passage for Jamaica, or the Leeward Islands and there secure a vessel, with three or four months' provisions for the colony. Arriving at the Barbadoes, he then purchased a vessel with a cargo of provisions, and on January 24, 1700, sailed for Darien, which he reached February 5th, and just in time to be of active service; for intelligence had reached the colony that fifteen hundred Spaniards lay encamped on the Rio Santa Maria, waiting the arrival of an armament of eleven ships, with troops on board, destined to attack Ft. St. Andrew. Captain Campbell of Fonab, who had gained for himself great reputation in Flanders as an approved warrior, resolved to anticipate the enemy, and at once mustering two hundred of his veteran troops, accompanied by sixty Indians, marched over the mountains, and fell on the Spanish camp by night, and dispersed them with great slaughter, with a loss to the colony of nine killed and fourteen wounded, among the latter being their gallant commander. The Spaniards could not withstand the tumultuous rush of the Highlanders, and in precipitate flight left a large number of their dead upon the field. The little band, among the spoils, brought back the Spanish commander's decoration of the "Golden Fleece." When they recrossed the mountains it was to find their poor countrymen blockaded by five Spanish men-of-war. Campbell, and others, believing that no inequalities justified submission to such an enemy, determined on resistance, but soon discovered that resistance was in vain, when they could only depend on diseased, starving and broken-hearted men. As the Spaniards would not include Captain Campbell in the terms of capitulation, he managed, with several companions, dexterously to escape in a small vessel, sailed for New York, and from thence to Scotland. The defence of the colony under Fonab's genius had been heroic. When ammunition had given out, their pewter dishes were fashioned into cannon balls. On March 18, 1700, the colonists capitulated on honorable terms. It was a received popular opinion in Scotland that none of those who were concerned in the surrender ever returned to their native country. So weak were the survivors, and so few in numbers, that they were unable to weigh the anchor of their largest ship until the Spaniards came to their assistance. What became of them? Their melancholy tale is soon told. The Earl of Bellomont, writing to the Lords of the Admiralty, under date, New York, October 15, 1700, says:[20] "Some Scotchmen are newly come hither from Carolina that belonged to the ship Rising Sun (the biggest ship they set out for their Caledonia expedition) who tell me that on the third of last month a hurricane happened on that coast, as that ship lay at anchor, within less than three leagues of Charles Town in Carolina with another Scotch ship called the Duke of Hamilton, and three or four others; that the ships were all shattered in pieces and all the people lost, and not a man saved. The Rising Sun had 112 men on board. The Scotch men that are come hither say that 15 of 'em went on shore before the storm to buy fresh provisions at Charles Town by which means they were saved. Two other of their ships they suppose were lost in the Gulph of Florida in the same storm. They came all from Jamaica and were bound hither to take in provisions on their way to Scotland. The Rising Sun had 60 guns mounted and could have carryed many more, as they tell me." The colonists found a watery grave. No friendly hand nor sympathizing tear soothed their dying moments; no clergyman eulogized their heroism, self-sacrifice and virtues; no orator has pronounced a panegyric; no poet has embalmed their memory in song, and no novelist has taken their record for a fanciful story. Since their mission was a failure their memory is doomed to rest without marble monument or graven image. To the merciful and the just they will be honored as heroes and pioneers. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 13: The Darien Papers, pp. 371-417.] [Footnote 14: "Darien Papers," pp 195, 275.] [Footnote 15: "Documentary and Colonial History of New York," Vol. IV, p. 591.] [Footnote 16: _Ibid_, Vol. V, p. 335.] [Footnote 17: "Darien Papers," p. 150.] [Footnote 18: "Darien Papers," p. 160.] [Footnote 19: "Darien Papers," p. 176.] [Footnote 20: "Documents Relating to Colonial History of New York," Vol. IV, p. 711.] CHAPTER V. THE HIGHLANDERS IN NORTH CAROLINA. The earliest, largest and most important settlement of Highlanders in America, prior to the Peace of 1783, was in North Carolina, along Cape Fear River, about one hundred miles from its mouth, and in what was then Bladen, but now Cumberland County. The time when the Highlanders began to occupy this territory is not definitely known; but some were located there in 1729, at the time of the separation of the province into North and South Carolina. It is not known what motive caused the first settlers to select that region. There was no leading clan in this movement, for various ones were well represented. At the headwaters of navigation these pioneers literally pitched their tent in the wilderness, for there were but few human abodes to offer them shelter. The chief occupants of the soil were the wild deer, turkeys, wolves, raccoons, opossums, with huge rattlesnakes to contest the intrusion. Fortunately for the homeless immigrant the climate was genial, and the stately tree would afford him shelter while he constructed a house out of logs proffered by the forest. Soon they began to fell the primeval forest, grub, drain, and clear the rich alluvial lands bordering on the river, and plant such vegetables as were to give them subsistence. In course of time a town was formed, called Campbellton, then Cross Creek, and after the Revolution, in honor of the great Frenchman, who was so truly loyal to Washington, it was permanently changed to Fayetteville. The immigration to North Carolina was accelerated, not only by the accounts sent back to the Highlanders of Scotland by the first settlers, but particularly under the patronage of Gabriel Johnston, governor of the province from 1734 until his death in 1752. He was born in Scotland, educated at the University of St. Andrews, where he became professor of Oriental languages, and still later a political writer in London. He bears the reputation of having done more to promote the prosperity of North Carolina than all its other colonial governors combined. However, he was often arbitrary and unwise with his power, besides having the usual misfortune of colonial governors of being at variance with the legislature. He was very partial to the people of his native country, and sought to better their condition by inducing them to emigrate to North Carolina. Among the charges brought against him, in 1748, was his inordinate fondness for Scotchmen, and even Scotch rebels. So great, it was alleged, was his partiality for the latter that he showed no joy over the king's "glorious victory of Culloden;" and "that he had appointed one William McGregor, who had been in the Rebellion in the year 1715, a Justice of the Peace during the late Rebellion (1745) and was not himself without suspicion of disaffection to His Majesty's Government."[21] The "Colonial Records of North Carolina" contain many distinctively Highland names, most of which refer to persons whose nativity was in the Scottish Highlands; but these furnish no certain criterion, for doubtless some of the parties, though of Highland parents, were born in the older provinces, while in later colonial history others belong to the Scotch-Irish, who came in that great wave of migration from Ulster, and found a lodgment upon the headwaters of the Cape Fear, Pee Dee and Neuse. Many of the early Highland emigrants were very prominent in the annals of the colony, among whom none were more so than Colonel James Innes, who was born about the year 1700 at Cannisbay, a town on the extreme northern point of the coast of Scotland. He was a personal friend of Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, who in 1754 appointed him commander-in-chief of all the forces in the expedition to the Ohio,--George Washington being the colonel commanding the Virginia regiment. He had previously seen some service as a captain in the unsuccessful expedition against Carthagenia. The real impetus of the Highland emigration to North Carolina was the arrival, in 1739, of a "shipload," under the guidance of Neil McNeill, of Kintyre, Scotland, who settled also on the Cape Fear, amongst those who had preceded him. Here he found Hector McNeill, called "Bluff Hector," from his residence near the bluffs above Cross Creek. Neil McNeill, with his countrymen, landed on the Cape Fear during the month of September. They numbered three hundred and fifty souls, principally from Argyleshire. At the ensuing session of the legislature they made application for substantial encouragement, that they might thereby be able to induce the rest of their friends and acquaintances to settle in the country. While this petition was pending, in order to encourage them and others and also to show his good will, the governor appointed, by the council of the province, a certain number of them justices of the peace, the commissions bearing date of February 28, 1740. The proceedings show that it was "ordered that a new commission of peace for Bladen directed to the following persons: Mathew Rowan, Wm. Forbes, Hugh Blaning, John Clayton, Robert Hamilton, Griffeth Jones, James Lyon, Duncan Campbel, Dugold McNeil, Dan McNeil, Wm. Bartram and Samuel Baker hereby constituting and appointing them Justices of the Peace for the said county."[22] These were the first so appointed. The petition was first heard in the upper house of the legislature, at Newbern, and on January 26, 1740, the following action was taken: "Resolved, that the Persons mentioned in said Petition, shall be free from payment of any Publick or County tax for Ten years next ensuing their Arrival. "Resolved, that towards their subsistence the sum of one thousand pounds be paid out of the Publick money, by His Excellency's warrant to be lodged with Duncan Campbell, Dugald McNeal, Daniel McNeal. Coll. McAlister and Neal McNeal Esqrs., to be by them distributed among the several families in the said Petition mentioned. "Resolved, that as an encouragement for Protestants to remove from Europe into this Province, to settle themselves in bodys or Townships, That all such as shall so remove into this Province. Provided they exceed forty persons in one body or Company, they shall be exempted from payment of any Publick or County tax for the space of Ten years, next ensuing their Arrival. "Resolved, that an address be presented to his Excellency the Governor to desire him to use his Interest, in such manner, as he shall think most proper to obtain an Instruction for giveing encouragement to Protestants from foreign parts, to settle in Townships within this Province, to be set apart for that purpose after the manner, and with such priviledges and advantages, as is practised in South Carolina."[23] The petition was concurred in by the lower house on February 21st, and on the 26th, after reciting the action of the upper house in relation to the petition, passed the following: "Resolved, That this House concurs with the several Resolves of the Upper House in the abovesd Message Except that relateing to the thousand pounds which this House refers till next Session of Assembly for Consideration."[24] At a meeting of the council held at Wilmington, June 4, 1740, there were presented petitions for patents of lands, by the following persons, giving acres and location, as granted: Name. Acres. County. Thos Clarks 320 N. Hanover James McLachlan 160 Bladen Hector McNeil 300 " Duncan Campbell 150 " James McAlister 640 " James McDugald 640 " Duncan Campbell 75 " Hugh McCraine 500 " Duncan Campbell 320 " Gilbert Pattison 640 " Rich Lovett 855 Tyrrel Rd Earl 108 N. Hanover Jno McFerson 320 Bladen Duncan Campbell 300 " Neil McNeil 150 " Duncan Campbell 140 " Jno Clark 320 " Malcolm McNeil 320 " Neil McNeil 400 " Arch Bug 320 " Name. Acres. County. Duncan Campbel 640 Bladen Jas McLachlen 320 " Murdock McBraine 320 " Jas Campbel 640 " Patric Stewart 320 " Arch Campley 320 " Dan McNeil 105 (400) 400 " Neil McNeil 400 " Duncan Campbel 320 " Jno Martileer 160 " Daniel McNeil 320 " Wm Stevens 300 " Dan McNeil 400 " Jas McLachlen 320 " Wm Speir 160 Edgecombe Jno Clayton 100 Bladen Sam Portevint 640 N. Hanover Charles Harrison 320 " Robt Walker 640 " Jas Smalwood 640 " Wm Faris 400 640 640 " Richd Carlton 180 Craven Duncan Campbel 150 Bladen Neil McNeil 321 " Alex McKey 320 " Henry Skibley 320 " Jno Owen 200 " Duncan Campbel 400 " Dougal Stewart 640 " Arch Douglass 200 N. Hanover James Murray 320 " Robt Clark 200 " Duncan Campbel 148 Bladen James McLachlen 320 " Arch McGill 500 " Jno Speir 100 Edgecombe James Fergus 640 " Rufus Marsden 640 " Hugh Blaning 320 (surplus land) Bladen Robt Hardy 400 Beaufort Wm Jones 354 350 [25] All the above names, by no means are Highland; but as they occur in the same list, in all probability, came on the same ship, and were probably connected by kindred ties with the Gaels. The colony was destined soon to receive a great influx from the Highlands of Scotland, due to the frightful oppression and persecution which immediately followed the battle of Culloden. Not satisfied with the merciless harrying of the Highlands, the English army on its return into England carried with it a large number of prisoners, and after a hasty military trial many were publicly executed. Twenty-two suffered death in Yorkshire; seventeen were put to death in Cumberland; and seventeen at Kennington Common, near London. When the king's vengeance had been fully glutted, he pardoned a large number, on condition of their leaving the British Isles and emigrating to the plantations, after having first taken the oath of allegiance. The collapsing of the romantic scheme to re-establish the Stuart dynasty, in which so many brave and generous mountaineers were enlisted, also brought an indiscriminate national punishment upon the Scottish Gaels, for a blow was struck not only at those "who were out" with prince Charles, but also those who fought for the reigning dynasty. Left without chief, or protector, clanship broken up, homes destroyed and kindred murdered, dispirited, outlawed, insulted and without hope of palliation or redress, the only ray of light pointed across the Atlantic where peace and rest were to be found in the unbroken forests of North Carolina. Hence, during the years 1746 and 1747, great numbers of Highlanders, with their families and the families of their friends, removed to North Carolina and settled along the Cape Fear river, covering a great space of country, of which Cross Creek, or Campbelton, now Fayetteville, was the common center. This region received shipload after shipload of the harrassed, down-trodden and maligned people. The emigration, forced by royal persecution and authority, was carried on by those who desired to improve their condition, by owning the land they tilled. In a few years large companies of Highlanders joined their countrymen in Bladen County, which has since been subdivided into the counties of Anson, Bladen, Cumberland, Moore, Richmond, Robeson and Sampson, but the greater portion established themselves within the present limits of Cumberland, with Fayetteville the seat of justice. There was in fact a Carolina mania which was not broken until the beginning of the Revolution.[26] The flame of enthusiasm passed like wildfire through the Highland glens and Western Isles. It pervaded all classes, from the poorest crofter to the well-to-do farmer, and even men of easy competence, who were according to the appropriate song of the day, "Dol a dh'iarruidh an fhortain do North Carolina." Large ocean crafts, from several of the Western Lochs, laden with hundreds of passengers sailed direct for the far west. In that day this was a great undertaking, fraught with perils of the sea, and a long, comfortless voyage. Yet all this was preferable than the homes they loved so well; but no longer homes to them! They carried with them their language, their religion, their manners, their customs and costumes. In short, it was a Highland community transplanted to more hospitable shores. The numbers of Highlanders at any given period can only relatively be known. In 1753 it was estimated that in Cumberland County there were one thousand Highlanders capable of bearing arms, which would make the whole number between four and five thousand,--to say nothing of those in the adjoining districts, besides those scattered in the other counties of the province. The people at once settled quietly and devoted their energies to improving their lands. The country rapidly developed and wealth began to drop into the lap of the industrious. The social claims were not forgotten, and the political demands were attended to. It is recorded that in 1758 Hector McNeil was sheriff of Cumberland County, and as his salary was but £10, it indicates his services were not in demand, and there was a healthy condition of affairs. Hector McNeil and Alexander McCollister represented Cumberland County in the legislature that assembled at Wilmington April 13, 1762. In 1764 the members were Farquhar Campbell and Walter Gibson,--the former being also a member in 1769, 1770, 1771, and 1775, and during this period one of the leading men, not only of the county, but also of the legislature. Had he, during the Revolution, taken a consistent position in harmony with his former acts, he would have been one of the foremost patriots of his adopted state; but owing to his vacillating character, his course of conduct inured to his discomfiture and reputation. The legislative body was clothed with sufficient powers to ameliorate individual distress, and was frequently appealed to for relief. In quite a list of names, seeking relief from "Public duties and Taxes," April 16, 1762, is that of Hugh McClean, of Cumberland county. The relief was granted. This would indicate that there was more or less of a struggle in attaining an independent home, which the legislative body desired to assist in as much as possible, in justice to the commonwealth. The Peace of 1763 not only saw the American Colonies prosperous, but they so continued, making great strides in development and growth. England began to look towards them as a source for additional revenue towards filling her depleted exchequer; and, in order to realize this, in March, 1765, her parliament passed, by great majorities, the celebrated act for imposing stamp duties in America. All America was soon in a foment. The people of North Carolina had always asserted their liberties on the subject of taxation. As early as 1716, when the province, all told, contained only eight thousand inhabitants, they entered upon the journal of their assembly the formal declaration "that the impressing of the inhabitants or their property under pretence of its being for the public service without authority of the Assembly, was unwarrantable and a great infringement upon the liberty of the subject." In 1760 the Assembly declared its indubitable right to frame and model every bill whereby an aid was granted to the king. In 1764 it entered upon its journal a peremptory order that the treasurer should not pay out any money by order of the governor and council without the concurrence of the assembly. William Tryon assumed the duties of governor March 28, 1765, and immediately after he took charge of affairs the assembly was called, but within two weeks he prorogued it; said to have been done in consequence of an interview with the speaker of the assembly, Mr. Ashe, who, in answer to a question by the governor on the Stamp Act, replied, "We will fight it to the death." The North Carolina records show it was fought even to "the death." The prevalent excitement seized the Highlanders along the Cape Fear. A letter appeared in "The North Carolina Gazette," dated at Cross Creek, January 30, 1766, in which the writer urges the people by every consideration, in the name of "dear Liberty" to rise in their might and put a stop to the seizures then in progress. He asks the people if they have "lost their senses and their souls, and are they determined tamely to submit to slavery." Nor did the matter end here; for, the people of Cross Creek gave vent to their resentment by burning lord Bute in effigy. Just how far statistics represent the wealth of a people may not be wholly determined. At this period of the history, referring to a return of the counties, in 1767, it is stated that Anson county, called also parish of St. George, had six hundred and ninety-six white taxables, that the people were in general poor and unable to, support a minister. Bladen county, or St. Martin's parish, had seven hundred and ninety-one taxable whites, and the inhabitants in middling circumstances. Cumberland, or St. David's parish, had eight hundred and ninety-nine taxable whites, "mostly Scotch--Support a Presbyterian Minister." The Colonial Records of North Carolina do not exhibit a list of the emigrants, and seldom refer to the ship by name. Occasionally, however, a list has been preserved in the minutes of the official proceedings. Hence it may be read that on November 4, 1767, there landed at Brunswick, from the Isle of Jura, Argyleshire, Scotland, the following names of families and persons, to whom were allotted vacant lands, clear of all fees, to be taken up in Cumberland or Mecklenburgh counties, at their option: +-------------------------------+-------------+-------+----------+ | | CHILDREN | | Acres to | | NAMES OF FAMILIES +------+------+ TOTAL | Each | | | Male |Female| | Family | +-------------------------------+------+------+-------+----------+ |Alexander McDougald and wife | | 1 | 3 | 300 | |Malcolm McDougald " " | | 1 | 3 | 300 | |Neill McLean " " | 1 | | 3 | 300 | |Duncan McLean " " | | | 2 | 200 | |Duncan Buea " " | 1 | | 3 | 300 | |Angus McDougald " " | | | 2 | 200 | |Dougald McDougald " " | 3 | 1 | 6 | 640 | |Dougald McDougald " " | 2 | | 4 | 400 | |John Campbell " " | 1 | | 3 | 300 | |Archibald Buea " " | 1 | | 3 | 300 | |Neill Buea | | | 1 | 100 | |Neill Clark | | | 1 | 100 | |John McLean | | | 1 | 100 | |Angus McDougald | | | 1 | 100 | |John McDougald | | | 1 | 100 | |Donald McDougald | | | 1 | 100 | |Donald McDougald | | | 1 | 100 | |Alexander McDougald | | | 1 | 100 | |John McLean | | | 1 | 100 | |Peter McLean | | | 1 | 100 | |Malcolm Buea | | | 1 | 100 | |Duncan Buea | | | 1 | 100 | |Mary Buea | | | 1 | 100 | |Nancy McLean | | | 1 | 100 | |Peggy Sinclair | | | 1 | 100 | |Peggy McDougald | | | 1 | 100 | |Jenny Darach | | | 1 | 100 | |Donald McLean | | | 1 | 100 | +-------------------------------+------+------+-------+----------+ These names show they were from Argyleshire, and probably from the Isle of Mull, and the immediate vicinity of the present city of Oban. The year 1771 witnessed civil strife in North Carolina. The War of the Regulators was caused by oppression in disproportionate taxation; no method for payment of taxes in produce, as in other counties; unfairness in transactions of business by officials; the privilege exercised by lawyers to commence suits in any court they pleased, and unlawful fees extorted. The assembly was petitioned in vain on these points, and on account of these wrongs the people of the western districts attempted to gain by force what was denied them by peaceable means. One of the most surprising things about this war is that it was ruthlessly stamped out by the very people of the eastern part of the province who themselves had been foremost in rebellion against the Stamp Act. And, furthermore, to be leaders against Great Britain in less than five years from the battle of the Alamance. Nor did they appear in the least to be willing to concede justice to their western brethren, until the formation of the state constitution, in 1776, when thirteen, out of the forty-seven sections, of that instrument embodied the reforms sought for by the Regulators. On March 10, 1771, Governor Tryon apportioned the number of troops for each county which were to march against the insurgents. In this allotment fifty each fell to Cumberland, Bladen, and Anson counties. Farquhar Campbell was given a captain's commission, and two commissions in blank for lieutenant and ensign, besides a draft for £150, to be used as bounty money to the enlisted men, and other expenses. As soon as his company was raised, he was ordered to join, as he thought expedient, either the westward or eastward detachment. The date of his orders is April 18, 1771. Captain Campbell had expressed himself as being able to raise the complement.[27] The records do not show whether or not Captain Campbell and his company took an active part. It cannot be affirmed that the expedition against the Regulators was a popular one. When the militia was called out, there arose trouble in Craven, Dobbs, Johnston, Pitt and Edgecombe counties, with no troops from the Albemarle section. In Bute county where there was a regiment eight hundred strong, when called upon for fifty volunteers, all broke rank, without orders, declaring that they were in sympathy with the Regulators. The freeholders living near Campbelton on March 13, 1772, petitioned Governor Martin for a change in the charter of their town, alleging that as Campbelton was a trading town persons temporarily residing there voted, and thus the power of election was thrown into their hands, because the property owners were fewer in numbers. They desired "a new Charter impowering all persons, being Freeholders within two miles of the Courthouse of Campbelton or seized of an Estate for their own, or the life of any other person in any dwelling-house (such house having a stone or brick Chimney thereunto belonging and appendent) to elect a Member to represent them in General Assembly. Whereby we humbly conceive that the right of election will be lodged with those who only have right to Claim it and the purposes for which the Charter was granted to encourage Merchants of property to settle there fully answered."[28] Among the names signed to this petition are those of Neill MacArther, Alexr. MacArther, James McDonald, Benja. McNatt, Ferqd. Campbell, and A. Maclaine. The charter was granted. The people of Cumberland county had a care for their own interests, and fully appreciated the value of public buildings. Partly by their efforts, the upper legislative house, on February 24, 1773, passed a bill for laying out a public road from the Dan through the counties of Guilford, Chatham and Cumberland to Campbelton. On the 26th same month, the same house passed a bill for regulating the borough of Campbelton, and erecting public buildings therein, consisting of court house, gaol, pillory and stocks, naming the following persons to be commissioners: Alexander McAlister, Farquhard Campbell, Richard Lyon, Robert Nelson, and Robert Cochran.[29] The same year Cumberland county paid in quit-rents, fines and forfeitures the sum of £206. In September, 1773, a boy named Reynold McDugal was condemned for murder. His youthful appearance, looking to be but thirteen, though really eighteen years of age, enlisted the sympathy of a great many, who petitioned for clemency, which was granted. To this petition were attached such Highland names as, Angus Camel, Alexr. McKlarty, James McKlarty, Malcolm McBride, Neil McCoulskey, Donald McKeithen, Duncan McKeithen, Gilbert McKeithen, Archibald McKeithen, Daniel McFarther, John McFarther, Daniel Graham, Malcolm Graham, Malcolm McFarland, Murdock Graham, Michael Graham, John McKown, Robert McKown, William McKown, Daniel Campbell, John Campbell. Iver McKay, John McLeod, Alexr. Graham, Evin McMullan, John McDuffie, William McNeil. Andw. McCleland. John McCleland, Wm. McRei, Archd. McCoulsky, James McCoulsky, Chas. McNaughton, Jno. McLason. The Highland clans were fairly represented, with a preponderance in favor of the McNeils. They still wore their distinctive costume, the plaid, the kilt, and the sporan,--and mingled together, as though they constituted but one family. A change now began to take place and rapidly took on mammoth proportions. The MacDonalds of Raasay and Skye became impatient under coercion and set out in great numbers for North Carolina. Among them was Allan MacDonald of Kingsborough, and his famous wife, the heroine Flora, who arrived in 1774. Allan MacDonald succeeded to the estate of Kingsburgh in 1772, on the death of his father, but finding it incumbered with debt, and embarrassed in his affairs, he resolved in 1773 to go to North Carolina, and there hoped to mend his fortunes. He settled in Anson county. Although somewhat aged, he had the graceful mien and manly looks of a gallant Highlander. He had jet black hair tied behind, and was a large, stately man, with a steady, sensible countenance. He wore his tartan thrown about him, a large blue bonnet with a knot of black ribbon like a cockade, a brown short coat, a tartan waistcoat with gold buttons and gold button holes, a bluish philabeg, and tartan hose. At once he took precedence among his countrymen, becoming their leader and adviser. The Macdonalds, by 1775, were so numerous in Cumberland county as to be called the "Clan Donald," and the insurrection of February, 1776, is still known as the "Insurrection of the Clan MacDonald." Little did the late comers know or realize the gathering storm. The people of the West Highlands, so remote from the outside world, could not apprehend the spirit of liberty that was being awakened in the Thirteen Colonies. Or, if they heard of it, the report found no special lodgement. In short, there were but few capable of realizing what the outcome would be. Up to the very breaking out of hostilities the clans poured forth emigrants into North Carolina. Matters long brewing now began to culminate and evil days grew apace. The ruling powers of England refused to understand the rights of America, and their king rushed headlong into war. The colonists had suffered long and patiently, but when the overt act came they appealed to arms. Long they bore misrule. An English king, of his own whim, or the favoritism of a minister, or the caprice of a woman good or bad, or for money in hand paid, selected the governor, chief justice, secretary, receiver-general, and attorney-general for the province. The governor selected the members of the council, the associate judges, the magistrates, and the sheriffs. The clerks of the county courts and the register of deeds were selected by the clerk of pleas, who having bought his office in England came to North Carolina and peddled out "county rights" at prices ranging from £4 to £40 annual rent per county. Scandalous abuses accumulated, especially under such governors as were usually chosen. The people were still loyal to England, even after the first clash of arms, but the open rupture rapidly prepared them for independence. The open revolt needed only the match. When that was applied, a continent was soon ablaze, controlled by a lofty patriotism. The steps taken by the leaders of public sentiment in America were prudent and statesmanlike. Continental and Provincial Congresses were created. The first in North Carolina convened at Newbern, August 25, 1774. Cumberland county was represented by Farquhard Campbell and Thomas Rutherford. The Second Congress convened at the same place April 30, 1775. Again the same parties represented Cumberland county, with an additional one for Campbelton in the person of Robert Rowan. At this time the Highlanders were in sympathy with the people of their adopted country. But not all, for on July 3rd, Allan MacDonald of Kingsborough went to Fort Johnson, and concerted with Governor Martin the raising of a battalion of "the good and faithful Highlanders." He fully calculated on the recently settled MacDonalds and MacLeods. All who took part in the Second Congress were not prepared to take or realize the logic of their position, and what would be the final result. The Highlanders soon became an object of consideration to the leaders on both sides of the controversy. They were numerically strong, increasing in numbers, and their military qualities beyond question. Active efforts were put forth in order to induce them to throw the weight of their decision both to the patriot cause and also to that of the king. Consequently emissaries were sent amongst them. The prevalent impression was that they had a strong inclination towards the royalist cause, and that party took every precaution to cement their loyalty. Even the religious side of their natures was wrought upon. The Americans early saw the advantage of decisive steps. In a letter from Joseph Hewes, John Penn, and William Hooper, the North Carolina delegates to the Continental Congress, to the members of the Provincial Congress, under date of December 1, 1775, occurs the admission that "in our attention to military preparations we have not lost sight of a means of safety to be effected by the power of the pulpit, reasoning and persuasion. We know the respect which the Regulators and Highlanders entertain for the clergy; they still feel the impressions of a religious education, and truths to them come with irresistible influence from the mouths of their spiritual pastors. * * * The Continental Congress have thought proper to direct us to employ two pious clergymen to make a tour through North Carolina in order to remove the prejudices which the minds of the Regulators and Highlanders may labor under with respect to the justice of the American controversy, and to obviate the religious scruples which Governor Tryon's heartrending oath has implanted in their tender consciences. We are employed at present in quest of some persons who may be equal to this undertaking."[30] The Regulators were divided in their sympathies, and it was impossible to find a Gaelic-speaking minister, clothed with authority, to go among the Highlanders. Even if such a personage could have been found, the effort would have been counteracted by the influence of John McLeod, their own minister. His sympathies, though not boldly expressed, were against the interests of the Thirteen Colonies, and on account of his suspicious actions was placed under arrest, but discharged May 11, 1776, by the Provincial Congress, in the following order: "That the Rev. John McLeod, who was brought to this Congress on suspicion of his having acted inimical to the rights of America, be discharged from his further attendance."[31] August 23, 1775, the Provincial Congress appointed, from among its members, Archibald Maclaine, Alexander McAlister, Farquhard Campbell, Robert Rowan, Thomas Wade, Alexander McKay, John Ashe, Samuel Spencer, Walter Gibson, William Kennon, and James Hepburn, "a committee to confer with the Gentlemen who have lately arrived from the Highlands in Scotland to settle in this Province, and to explain to them the Nature of our Unhappy Controversy with Great Britain, and to advise and urge them to unite with the other Inhabitants of America in defence of those rights which they derive from God and the Constitution."[32][33] No steps appear to have been taken by the Americans to organize the Highlanders into military companies, but rather their efforts were to enlist their sympathies. On the other hand, the royal governor, Josiah Martin, took steps towards enrolling them into active British service. In a letter to the earl of Dartmouth, under date of June 30, 1775, Martin declares he "could collect immediately among the emigrants from the Highlands of Scotland, who were settled here, and immoveably attached to His Majesty and His Government, that I am assured by the best authority I may compute at 3000 effective men," and begs permission "to raise a Battalion of a Thousand Highlanders here," and "I would most humbly beg leave to recommend Mr. Allen McDonald of Kingsborough to be Major, and Captain Alexd. McLeod of the Marines now on half pay to be first Captain, who besides being men of great worth, and good character, have most extensive influence over the Highlanders here, great part of which are of their own names and familys, and I should flatter myself that His Majesty would be graciously pleased to permit me to nominate some of the Subalterns of such a Battalion, not for pecuniary consideration, but for encouragement to some active and deserving young Highland Gentlemen who might be usefully employed in the speedy raising the proposed Battalion. Indeed I cannot help observing My Lord, that there are three of four Gentlemen of consideration here, of the name of McDonald, and a Lieutenant Alexd. McLean late of the Regiment now on half pay, whom I should be happy to see appointed Captains in such a Battalion, being persuaded they would heartily promote and do credit to His Majesty's Service."[34] November 12, 1775, the governor farther reports to the same that he can assure "your Lordship that the Scotch Highlanders here are generally and almost without exception staunch to Government," and that "Captain Alexr. McLeod, a Gentleman from the Highlands of Scotland and late an Officer in the Marines who has been settled in this Province about a year and is one of the Gentlemen I had the honor to recommend to your Lordship to be appointed a Captain in the Battalion of Highlanders, I proposed with his Majesty's permission to raise here found his way down to me at this place about three weeks ago and I learn from him that he is as well as his father in law, Mr. Allan McDonald, proposed by me for Major of the intended Corps moved by my encouragements have each raised a company of Highlanders since which a Major McDonald who came here some time ago from Boston under the orders from General Gage to raise Highlanders to form a Battalion to be commanded by Lieut. Coll. Allan McLean has made them proposals of being appointed Captains in that Corps, which they have accepted on the Condition that his Majesty does not approve my proposal of raising a Battallion of Highlanders and reserving to themselves the choice of appointments therein in case it shall meet with his Majesty's approbation in support of that measure. I shall now only presume to add that the taking away those Gentlemen from this Province will in a great measure if not totally dissolve the union of the Highlanders in it now held together by their influence, that those people in their absence may fall under the guidance of some person not attached like them to Government in this Colony at present but it will ever be maintained by such a regular military force as this established in it that will constantly reunite itself with the utmost facility and consequently may be always maintained upon the most respectable footing."[35] The year 1775 witnessed the North Carolina patriots very alert. There were committees of safety in the various counties; and the Provincial Congress began its session at Hillsborough August 21st. Cumberland County was represented by Farquhard Campbell, Thomas Rutherford, Alexander McKay, Alexander McAlister and David Smith, Campbelton sent Joseph Hepburn. Among the members of this Congress having distinctly Highland names, the majority of whom doubtless were born in the Highlands, if not all, besides those already mentioned, were John Campbell and John Johnston from Bertie, Samuel Johnston of Chowan, Duncan Lamon of Edgecombe. John McNitt Alexander of Mecklenburg, Kenneth McKinzie of Martin, Jeremiah Frazier or Tyrell, William Graham of Tryon, and Archibald Maclaine of Wilmington. One of the acts of this Congress was to divide the state into military districts and the appointment of field officers of the Minute Men. For Cumberland county Thomas Rutherford was appointed colonel; Alexander McAlister, lieutenant colonel; Duncan McNeill, first major; Alexander McDonald, second major. One company of Minute Men was to be raised. This Act was passed on September 9th. As the name of Farquhard Campbell often occurs in connection with the early stages of the Revolution, and quite frequently in the Colonial Records from 1771 to 1776, a brief notice of him may be of some interest. He was a gentleman of wealth, education and influence, and, at first, appeared to be warmly attached to the cause of liberty. As has been noticed he was a member of the Provincial Congress, and evinced much zeal in promoting the popular movement, and, as a visiting member from Cumberland county attended the meeting of the Safety Committee at Wilmington, on July 20, 1776. When Governor Martin abandoned his palace and retreated to Fort Johnston, and thence to an armed ship, it was ascertained that he visited Campbell at his residence. Not long afterwards the governor's secretary asked the Provincial Congress "to give Sanction and Safe Conduct to the removal of the most valuable Effects of Governor Martin on Board the Man of War and his Coach and Horses to Mr. Farquard Campbell's." When the request was submitted to that body, Mr. Campbell "expressed a sincere desire that the Coach and Horses should not be sent to his House in Cumberland and is amazed that such a proposal should have been made without his approbation or privity." On account of his positive disclaimer the Congress, by resolution exonerated him from any improper conduct, and that he had "conducted himself as an honest member of Society and a friend to the American Cause."[36] He dealt treacherously with the governor as well as with Congress. The former, in a letter to the earl of Dartmouth, October 16, 1775, says: "I have heard too My Lord with infinitely greater surprise and concern that the Scotch Highlanders on whom I had such firm reliance have declared themselves for neutrality, which I am informed is to be attributed to the influence of a certain Mr. Farquhard Campbell an ignorant man who has been settled from childhood in this Country, is an old Member of the Assembly and has imbibed all the American popular principles and prejudices. By the advice of some of his Countrymen I was induced after the receipt of your Lordship's letter No. 16 to communicate with this man on the alarming state of the Country and to sound his disposition in case of matters coming to extremity here, and he expressed to me such abhorence of the violences that had been done at Fort Johnston and in other instances and discovered so much jealousy and apprehension of the ill designs of the Leaders in Sedition here, giving me at the same time so strong assurances of his own loyalty and the good dispositions of his Countrymen that I unsuspecting his dissimulation and treachery was led to impart to him the encouragements I was authorized to hold out to his Majesty's loyal Subjects in this Colony who should stand forth in support of Government which he received with much seeming approbation and repeatedly assured me he would consult with the principles among his Countrymen without whose concurrence he could promise nothing of himself, and would acquaint me with their determinations. From the time of this conversation between us in July I heard nothing of Mr. Campbell until since the late Convention at Hillsborough, where he appeared in the character of a delegate from the County of Cumberland and there, according to my information, unasked and unsolicited and without provocation of any sort was guilty of the base Treachery of promulgating all I had said to him in confidential secrecy, which he had promised sacredly and inviolably to observe, and of the aggravating crime of falsehood in making additions of his own invention and declaring that he had rejected all my propositions."[37] The governor again refers to him in his letter to the same, dated November 12, 1775: "From Capt. McLeod, who seems to be a man of observation and intelligence, I gather that the inconsistency of Farquhard Campbell's conduct * * * has proceeded as much from jealousy of the Superior consequence of this Gentleman and his father in law with the Highlanders here as from any other motive. This schism is to be lamented from whatsoever cause arising, but I have no doubt that I shall be able to reconcile the interests of the parties whenever I have power to act and can meet them together."[38] Finally he threw off the mask, or else had changed his views, and openly espoused the cause of his country's enemies. He was seized at his own house, while entertaining a party of royalists, and thrown into Halifax gaol. A committee of the Provincial Congress, on April 20, 1776; reported "that Farquhard Campbell disregarding the sacred Obligations he had voluntarily entered into to support the Liberty of America against all usurpations has Traitorously and insidiously endeavored to excite the Inhabitants of this Colony to take arms and levy war in order to assist the avowed enemies thereof. That when a prisoner on his parole of honor he gave intelligence of the force and intention of the American Army under Col. Caswell to the Enemy and advised them in what manner they might elude them."[39] He was sent, with other prisoners, to Baltimore, and thence, on parole, to Fredericktown, where he behaved "with much resentment and haughtiness." On March 3, 1777, he appealed to Governor Caswell to be permitted to return home, offering to mortgage his estate for his good behavior.[40] Several years after the Revolution he was a member of the Senate of North Carolina. The stormy days of discussion, excitement, and extensive preparations for war, in 1775, did not deter the Highlanders in Scotland from seeking a home in America. On October 21st, a body of one hundred and seventy-two Highlanders, including men, women and children arrived in the Cape Fear river, on board the George, and made application for lands near those already located by their relatives. The governor took his usual precautions with them, for in a letter to the earl of Dartmouth, dated November 12th, he says: "On the most solemn assurances of their firm and unalterable loyalty and attachment to the King, and their readiness to lay down their lives in the support and defence of his Majesty's Government, I was induced to Grant their request on the Terms of their taking such lands in the proportions allowed by his Majesty's Royal Instructions, and subject to all the conditions prescribed by them whenever grants may be passed in due form, thinking it were advisable to attach these people to Government by granting as matter of favor and courtesy to them what I had not power to prevent than to leave them to possess themselves by violence of the King's lands, without owing or acknowledging any obligation for them, as it was only the means of securing these People against the seditions of the Rebels, but gaining so much strength to Government that is equally important at this time, without making any concessions injurious to the rights and interests of the Crown, or that it has effectual power to withhold."[41] In the same letter is the further information that "a ship is this moment arrived from Scotland with upwards of one hundred and thirty Emigrants Men, Women and Children to whom I shall think it proper (after administering the Oath of Allegiance to the Men) to give permission to settle on the vacant lands of the Crown here on the same principles and conditions that I granted that indulgence to the Emigrants lately imported in the ship George." Many of the emigrants appear to have been seized with the idea that all that was necessary was to land in America, and the avenues of affluence would be opened to them. Hence there were those who landed in a distressed condition. Such was the state of the last party that arrived before the Peace of 1783. There was "a Petition from sundry distressed Highlanders, lately arrived from Scotland, praying that they might be permitted to go to Cape Fear, in North Carolina, the place where they intended to settle," laid before the Virginia convention then being held at Williamsburgh, December 14, 1775. On the same day the convention gave orders to Colonel Woodford to "take the distressed Highlanders, with their families, under his protection, permit them to pass by land unmolested to Carolina, and supply them with such provisions as they may be in immediate want of."[42] The early days of 1776 saw the culmination of the intrigues with the Scotch-Highlanders. The Americans realized that the war party was in the ascendant, and consequently every movement was carefully watched. That the Americans felt bitterly towards them came from the fact that they were not only precipitating themselves into a quarrel of which they were not interested parties, but also exhibited ingratitude to their benefactors. Many of them came to the country not only poor and needy, but in actual distress.[43] They were helped with an open hand, and cared for with kindness and brotherly aid. Then they had not been long in the land, and the trouble so far had been to seek redress. Hence the Americans felt keenly the position taken by the Highlanders. On the other hand the Highlanders had viewed the matter from a different standpoint. They did not realize the craftiness of Governor Martin in compelling them to take the oath of allegiance, and they felt bound by what they considered was a voluntary act, and binding with all the sacredness of religion. They had ever been taught to keep their promises, and a liar was a greater criminal than a thief. Still they had every opportunity afforded them to learn the true status of affairs; independence had not yet been proclaimed; Washington was still besieging Boston, and the Americans continued to petition the British throne for a redress of grievances. That the action of the Highlanders was ill-advised, at that time, admits of no discussion. They failed to realize the condition of the country and the insuperable difficulties to overcome before making a junction with Sir Henry Clinton. What they expected to gain by their conduct is uncertain, and why they should march away a distance of one hundred miles, and then be transported by ships to a place they knew not where, thus leaving their wives and children to the mercies of those whom they had offended and driven to arms, made bitter enemies of, must ever remain unfathomable. It shows they were blinded and exhibited the want of even ordinary foresight. It also exhibited the reckless indifference of the responsible parties to the welfare of those they so successfully duped. It is no wonder that although nearly a century and a quarter have elapsed since the Highlanders unsheathed the claymore in the pine forests of North Carolina, not a single person has shown the hardihood to applaud their action. On the other hand, although treated with the utmost charity, their bravery applauded, they have been condemned for their rude precipitancy, besides failing to see the changed condition of affairs, and resenting the injuries they had received from the House of Hanover that had harried their country and hanged their relatives on the murderous gallows-tree. Their course, however, in the end proved advantageous to them; for, after their disastrous defeat, they took an oath to remain peaceable, which the majority kept, and thus prevented them from being harassed by the Americans, and, as loyal subjects of king George, the English army must respect their rights. Agents were busily at work among the people preparing them for war. The most important of all was Allan MacDonald of Kingsborough. Early he came under the suspicion of the Committee of Safety at Wilmington. On the very day, July 3, 1775, he was in consultation with Governor Martin, its chairman was directed to write to him "to know from himself respecting the reports that circulate of his having an intention to raise Troops to support the arbitrary measures of the ministry against the Americans in this Colony, and whether he had not made an offer of his services to Governor Martin for that purpose."[44] The influence of Kingsborough was supplemented by that of Major Donald MacDonald, who was sent direct from the army in Boston. He was then in his sixty-fifth year, had an extended experience in the army. He was in the Rising of 1745, and headed many of his own name. He now found many of these former companions who readily listened to his persuasions. All the emissaries sent represented they were only visiting their friends and relatives. They were all British officers, in the active service. Partially in confirmation of the above may be cited a letter from Samuel Johnston of Edenton, dated July 21, 1775, written to the Committee at Wilmington: "A vessel from New York to this place brought over two officers who left at the Bar to go to New Bern, they are both Highlanders, one named McDonnel the other McCloud. They pretend they are on a visit to some of their countrymen on your river, but I think there is reason to suspect their errand of a base nature. The Committee of this town have wrote to New Bern to have them secured. Should they escape there I hope you will keep a good lookout for them."[45] The vigorous campaign for 1776, in the Carolinas was determined upon in the fall of 1775, in deference to the oft repeated and urgent solicitations of the royal governors, and on account of the appeals made by Martin, the brunt of it fell upon North Carolina. He assured the home government that large numbers of the Highlanders and Regulators were ready to take up arms for the king. The program, as arranged, was for Sir Henry Clinton, with a fleet of ships and seven corps of Irish Regulars, to be at the mouth of the Cape Fear early in the year 1776, and there form a junction with the Highlanders and other disaffected persons from the interior. Believing that Sir Henry Clinton's armament would arrive in January or early in February Martin made preparations for the revolt; for his "unwearied, persevering agent," Alexander MacLean brought written assurances from the principal persons to whom he had been directed, that between two and three thousand men would take the field at the governor's summons. Under this encouragement MacLean was sent again into the back country, with a commission dated January 10, 1776, authorizing Allan McDonald, Donald McDonald, Alexander McLeod, Donald McLeod, Alexander McLean, Allen Stewart, William Campbell, Alexander McDonald and Neal McArthur, of Cumberland and Anson counties, and seventeen other persons who resided in a belt of counties in middle Carolina, to raise and array all the king's loyal subjects, and to march them in a body to Brunswick by February 15th.[46] Donald MacDonald was placed in command of this array and of all other forces in North Carolina with the rank of brigadier general, with Donald MacLeod next in rank. Upon receiving his orders, General MacDonald issued the following: "_By His Excellency Brigadier-General Donald McDonald, Commander of His Majesty's Forces for the time being, in North Carolina:_ A MANIFESTO. Whereas, I have received information that many of His Majesty's faithful subjects have been so far overcome by apprehension of danger, as to fly before His Majesty's Army as from the most inveterate enemy; to remove which, as far as lies in my power, I have thought it proper to publish this Manifesto, declaring that I shall take the proper steps to prevent any injury being done, either to the person or properties of His Majesty's subjects; and I do further declare it to be my determined resolution, that no violence shall be used to women and children, as viewing such outrages to be inconsistent with humanity, and as tending, in their consequences, to sully the arms of Britons and of Soldiers. I, therefore, in His Majesty's name, generally invite every well-wisher to that form of Government under which they have so happily lived, and which, if justly considered, ought to be esteemed the best birth-right of Britons and Americans, to repair to His Majesty's Royal Standard, erected at Cross Creek, where they will meet with every possible civility, and be ranked in the list of friends and fellow-Soldiers, engaged in the best and most glorious of all causes, supporting the rights and Constitution of their country. Those, therefore, who have been under the unhappy necessity of submitting to the mandates of Congress and Committees--those lawless, usurped, and arbitrary tribunals--will have an opportunity, (by joining the King's Army) to restore peace and tranquility to this distracted land--to open again the glorious streams of commerce--to partake of the blessings of inseparable from a regular administration of justice, and be again reinstated in the favorable opinion of their Sovereign. Donald McDonald. By His Excellency's command: Kenn. McDonald, P.S."[47] On February 5th General MacDonald issued another manifesto in which he declares it to be his "intention that no violation whatever shall be offered to women, children, or private property, to sully the arms of Britons or freemen, employed in the glorious and righteous cause of rescuing and delivering this country from the usurpation of rebellion, and that no cruelty whatever be offered against the laws of humanity, but what resistance shall make necessary; and that whatever provisions and other necessaries be taken for the troops, shall be paid for immediately; and in case any person, or persons, shall offer the least violence to the families of such as will join the Royal Standard, such persons or persons, may depend that retaliation will be made; the horrors of such proceedings, it is hoped, will be avoided by all true Christians."[48] Manifestos being the order of the day, Thomas Rutherford, erstwhile patriot, deriving his commission from the Provincial Congress, though having alienated himself, but signing himself colonel, also issues one in which he declares that this is "to command, enjoin, beseech, and require all His Majesty's faithful subjects within the County of Cumberland to repair to the King's Royal standard, at Cross Creek, on or before the 16th present, in order to join the King's army; otherwise, they must expect to fall under the melancholy consequences of a declared rebellion, and expose themselves to the just resentment of an injured, though gracious Sovereign."[49] On February 1st General MacDonald set up the Royal Standard at Cross Creek, in the Public Square, and in order to cause the Highlanders all to respond with alacrity manifestos were issued and other means resorted to in order that the "loyal subjects of His Majesty" might take up arms, among which nightly balls were given, and the military spirit freely inculcated. When the day came the Highlanders were seen coming from near and from far, from the wide plantations on the river bottoms, and from the rude cabins in the depths of the lonely pine forests, with broadswords at their side, in tartan garments and feathered bonnet, and keeping step to the shrill music of the bag-pipe. There came, first of all, Clan MacDonald with Clan MacLeod near at hand, with lesser numbers of Clan MacKenzie, Clan MacRae, Clan MacLean, Clan MacKay, Clan MacLachlan, and still others,--variously estimated at from fifteen hundred to three thousand, including about two hundred others, principally Regulators. However, all who were capable of bearing arms did not respond to the summons, for some would not engage in a cause where their traditions and affections had no part. Many of them hid in the swamps and in the forests. On February 18th the Highland army took up its line of march for Wilmington and at evening encamped on the Cape Fear, four miles below Cross Creek. The assembling of the Highland army aroused the entire country. The patriots, fully cognizant of what was transpiring, flew to arms, determined to crush the insurrection, and in less than a fortnight nearly nine thousand men had risen against the enemy, and almost all the rest were ready to turn out at a moment's notice. At the very first menace of danger, Brigadier General James Moore took the field at the head of his regiment, and on the 15th secured possession of Rockfish bridge, seven miles from Cross Creek, where he was joined by a recruit of sixty from the latter place. On the 19th the royalists were paraded with a view to assail Moore on the following night; but he was thoroughly entrenched, and the bare suspicion of such a project was contemplated caused two companions of Cotton's corps to run off with their arms. On that day General MacDonald sent the following letter to General Moore: "Sir: I herewith send the bearer, Donald Morrison, by advice of the Commissioners appointed by his Excellency Josiah Martin, and in behalf of the army now under my command, to propose terms to you as friends and countrymen. I must suppose you unacquainted with the Governor's proclamation, commanding all his Majesty's loyal subject to repair to the King's royal standard, else I should have imagined you would ere this have joined the King's army now engaged in his Majesty's service. I have therefore thought it proper to intimate to you, that in case you do not, by 12 o'clock to-morrow, join the royal standard, I must consider you as enemies, and take the necessary steps for the support of legal authority. I beg leave to remind you of his Majesty's speech to his Parliament, wherein he offers to receive the misled with tenderness and mercy, from motives of humanity. I again beg of you to accept the proffered clemency. I make no doubt, but you will show the gentleman sent on this message every possible civilty; and you may depend in return, that all your officers and men, which may fall into our hands shall be treated with an equal degree of respect. I have the honor to be, in behalf of the army, Sir, Your most obedient humble servant, Don. McDonald. Head Quarters, Feb. 19, 1776. His Excellency's Proclamation is herewith enclosed." Brigadier General Moore's answer: "Sir: Yours of this day I have received, in answer to which, I must inform you that the terms which you are pleased to say, in behalf of the army under your command, are offered to us as friends and countrymen, are such as neither my duty or inclination will permit me to accept, and which I must presume you too much of an officer to accept of me. You were very right when you supposed me unacquainted with the Governor's proclamation, but as the terms therein proposed are such as I hold incompatible with the freedom of Americans, it can be no rule of conduct for me. However, should I not hear farther from you before twelve o'clock to-morrow by which time I shall have an opportunity of consulting my officers here, and perhaps Col. Martin, who is in the neighborhood of Cross Creek, you may expect a more particular answer; meantime you may be assured that the feelings of humanity will induce me to shew that civility to such of your people as may fall into our hands, as I am desirous should be observed towards those of ours, who may be unfortunate enough to fall into yours. I am, Sir, your most obedient and very humble servant, James Moore. Camp at Rockfish, Feb. 19, 1776." General Moore, on the succeeding day sent the following to General MacDonald: "Sir: Agreeable to my promise of yesterday, I have consulted the officers under my command respecting your letter, and am happy in finding them unanimous in opinion with me. We consider ourselves engaged in a cause the most glorious and honourable in the world, the defense of the liberties of mankind, in support of which we are determined to hazard everything dear and valuable and in tenderness to the deluded people under your command, permit me, Sir, through you to inform them, before it is too late, of the dangerous and destructive precipice on which they stand, and to remind them of the ungrateful return they are about to make for their favorable reception in this country. If this is not sufficient to recall them to the duty which they owe themselves and their posterity inform them that they are engaged in a cause in which they cannot succeed as not only the whole force of this country, but that of our neighboring provinces, is exerting and now actually in motion to suppress them, and which much end in their utter destruction. Desirous, however, of avoiding the effusion of human blood, I have thought proper to send you a test recommended by the Continental Congress, which if they will yet subscribe we are willing to receive them as friends and countrymen. Should this offer be rejected, I shall consider them as enemies to the constitutional liberties of America, and treat them accordingly. I cannot conclude without reminding you, Sir, of the oath which you and some of your officers took at Newbern on your arrival to this country, which I imagine you will find is difficult to reconcile to your present conduct. I have no doubt that the bearer, Capt. James Walker, will be treated with proper civilty and respect in your camp. I am, Sir, your most obedient and very humble servant, James Moore. Camp at Rockfish, Feb. 20, 1776." General MacDonald returned the following reply: "Sir: I received your favor by Captain James Walker, and observed your declared sentiments of revolt, hostility and rebellion to the King, and to what I understand to be the constitution of the country. If I am mistaken future consequences must determine; but while I continue in my present sentiment, I shall consider myself embarked in a cause which must, in its consequences, extricate this country from anarchy and licentiousness. I cannot conceive that the Scottish emigrants, to whom I imagine you allude, can be under greater obligations to this country than to the King, under whose gracious and merciful government they alone could have been enabled to visit this western region: And I trust, Sir, it is in the womb of time to say, that they are not that deluded and ungrateful people which you would represent them to be. As a soldier in his Majesty's service, I must inform you, if you are to learn, that it is my duty to conquer, if I cannot reclaim, all those who may be hardy enough to take up arms against the best of masters, as of Kings. I have the honor to be, in behalf of the army under my command, Sir, your most obedient servant, Don. McDonald. To the Commanding Officer at Rockfish."[50] MacDonald realized that he was unable to put his threat into execution, for he was informed that the minute-men were gathering in swarms all around him; that Colonel Caswell, at the head of the minute men of Newbern, nearly eight hundred strong, was marching through Duplin county, to effect a junction with Moore, and that his communication with the war ships had been cut off. Realizing the extremity of his danger, he resolved to avoid an engagement, and leave the army at Rockfish in his rear, and by celerity of movement, and crossing rivers at unsuspected places, to disengage himself from the larger bodies and fall upon the command of Caswell. Before marching he exhorted his men to fidelity, expressed bitter scorn for the "base cravens who had deserted the night before," and continued by saying: "If any amongst you is so faint-hearted as not to serve with the resolution of conquering or dying, this is the time for such to declare themselves." The speech was answered by a general huzza for the king; but from Cotton's corps about twenty laid down their arms. He decamped, with his army at midnight, crossed the Cape Fear, sunk his boats, and sent a party fifteen miles in advance to secure the bridge over South river, from Bladen into Hanover, pushing with rapid pace over swollen streams, rough hills, and deep morasses, hotly pursued by General Moore. Perceiving the purpose of the enemy General Moore detached Colonels Lillington and Ashe to reinforce Colonel Caswell, or if that could not be effected, then they were to occupy Widow Moore's Creek bridge. Colonel Caswell designing the purpose of MacDonald changed his own course in order to intercept his march. On the 23rd the Highlanders thought to overtake him, and arrayed themselves in the order of battle, with eighty able-bodied men, armed with broadswords, forming the center of the army; but Colonel Caswell being posted at Corbett's Ferry could not be reached for want of boats. The royalists were again in extreme danger; but at a point six miles higher up the Black river they succeeded in crossing in a broad shallow boat while MacLean and Fraser, left with a few men and a drum and a pipe, amused the corps of Caswell. Colonel Lillington, on the 25th took post on the east side of Moore's Creek bridge; and on the next day Colonel Caswell reached the west side, threw up a slight embankment, and destroyed a part of the bridge. A royalist, who had been sent into his camp under pretext of summoning him to return to his allegiance, brought back the information that he had halted on the same side of the river as themselves, and could be assaulted with advantage. Colonel Caswell was not only a good woodman, but also a man of superior ability, and believing he had misled the enemy, marched his column to the east side of the stream, removed the planks from the bridge, and placed his men behind trees and such embankments as could be thrown up during the night. His force now amounted to a thousand men, consisting of the Newbern minute-men, the militia of Craven, Dobbs, Johnston, and Wake counties, and the detachment under Colonel Lillington. The men of the Neuse region, their officers wearing silver crescents upon their hats, inscribed with the words, "Liberty or Death," were in front. The situation of General MacDonald was again perilous, for while facing this army, General Moore, with his regulars was close upon his rear. The royalists, expecting an easy victory, decided upon an immediate attack. General MacDonald was confined to his tent by sickness, and the command devolved upon Major Donald MacLeod, who began the march at one o'clock on the morning of the 27th; but owing to the time lost in passing an intervening morass, it was within an hour of daylight when they reached the west bank of the creek. They entered the ground without resistance. Seeing Colonel Caswell was on the opposite side they reduced their columns and formed their line of battle in the woods. Their rallying cry was, "King George and broadswords," and the signal for attack was three cheers, the drum to beat and the pipes to play. While it was still dark Major MacLeod, with a party of about forty advanced, and at the bridge was challenged by the sentinel, asking, "Who goes there?" He answered, "A friend." "A friend to whom?" "To the king." Upon this the sentinels bent their faces down to the ground. Major MacLeod thinking they might be some of his own command who had crossed the bridge, challenged them in Gaelic; but receiving no reply, fired his own piece, and ordered his party to fire also. All that remained of the bridge were the two logs, which had served for sleepers, permitting only two persons to pass at a time. Donald MacLeod and Captain John Campbell rushed forward and succeeded in getting over. The Highlanders who followed were shot down on the logs and fell into the muddy stream below. Major MacLeod was mortally wounded, but was seen to rise repeatedly from the ground, waving his sword and encouraging his men to come on, till twenty-six balls penetrated his body. Captain Campbell also was shot dead, and at that moment a party of militia, under Lieutenant Slocum, who had forded the creek and penetrated a swamp on its western bank, fell suddenly upon the rear of the royalists. The loss of their leader and the unexpected attack upon their rear threw them into confusion, when they broke and fled. The battle lasted but ten minutes. The royalists lost seventy killed and wounded, while the patriots had but two wounded, one of whom recovered. The victory was lasting and complete. The Highland power was thoroughly broken. There fell into the hands of the Americans besides eight hundred and fifty prisoners, fifteen hundred rifles, all of them excellent pieces, three hundred and fifty guns and short bags, one hundred and fifty swords and dirks, two medicine chests, immediately from England, one valued at £300 sterling, thirteen wagons with horses, a box of Johannes and English guineas, amounting to about $75,000. Some of the Highlanders escaped from the battlefield by breaking down their wagons and riding away, three upon a horse. Many who were taken confessed that they were forced and persuaded contrary to their inclinations into the service.[51] The soldiers taken were disarmed, and dismissed to their homes. On the following day General MacDonald and nearly all the chief men were taken prisoners, amongst whom was MacDonald of Kingsborough and his son Alexander. A partial list of those apprehended is given in a report of the Committee of the Provincial Congress, reported April 20th and May 10th on the guilt of the Highland and Regulator officers then confined in Halifax gaol, finding the prisoners were of four different classes, viz.: First, Prisoners who had served in Congress. Second, Prisoners who had signed Tests or Associations. Third, Prisoners who had been in arms without such circumstances. Fourth, Prisoners under suspicious circumstances. The Highlanders coming under the one or the other of these classes are given in the following order: Farquhard Campbell, Cumberland county. Alexander McKay, Capt. of 38 men. Cumberland county. Alexander McDonald (Condrach), Major of a regiment. Alexander Morrison. Captain of a company of 35 men. Alexander MacDonald, son of Kingsborough, a volunteer, Anson county. James MacDonald, Captain of a company of 25 men. Alexander McLeod, Captain of a company of 32 men. John MacDonald, Captain of a company of 40 men. Alexander McLeod, Captain of a company of 16 men. Murdoch McAskell, Captain of a company of 34 men. Alexander McLeod, Captain of a company of 16 men. Angus McDonald, Captain of a company of 30 men. Neill McArthur, Freeholder of Cross Creek, Captain of a company of 55 men. Francis Frazier, Adjutant to General MacDonald's Army. John McLeod, of Cumberland county, Captain of company of 35 men. John McKinzie, of Cumberland county, Captain of company of 43 men. Kennith Macdonald, Aide-de-camp to General Macdonald. Murdoch McLeod, of Anson county, Surgeon to General Macdonald's Army. Donald McLeod, of Anson county, Lieutenant in Captain Morrison's Company. Norman McLeod, of Anson county, Ensign in James McDonald's company. John McLeod, of Anson county, Lieutenant in James McDonald's company. Laughlin McKinnon, freeholder in Cumberland county, Lieutenant in Col. Rutherford's corps. James Munroe, freeholder in Cumberland county, Lieutenant in Capt. McKay's company. Donald Morrison, Ensign to Capt. Morrison's company. John McLeod, Ensign to Capt. Morrison's company. Archibald McEachern, Bladen county, Lieutenant to Capt. McArthur's company. Rory McKinnen, freeholder Anson county, volunteer. Donald McLeod, freeholder Cumberland county, Master to two Regiments, General McDonald's Army. Donald Stuart, Quarter Master to Col. Rutherford's Regiment. Allen Macdonald of Kingsborough, freeholder of Anson county, Col. Regiment. Duncan St. Clair. Daniel McDaniel, Lieutenant in Seymore York's company. Alexander McRaw, freeholder Anson county, Capt. company 47 men. Kenneth Stuart, Lieutenant Capt Stuart's company. Collin McIver, Lieutenant Capt. Leggate's company. Alexander Maclaine, Commissary to General Macdonald's Army. Angus Campbell, Captain company 30 men. Alexander Stuart, Captain company 30 men. Hugh McDonald, Anson county, volunteer. John McDonald, common soldier. Daniel Cameron, common soldier. Daniel McLean, freeholder, Cumberland county, Lieutenant to Angus Campbell's company. Malcolm McNeill, recruiting agent for General Macdonald's Army, accused of using compulsion.[52] The following is a list of the prisoners sent from North Carolina to Philadelphia, enclosed in a letter of April 22, 1776: "1 His Excellency Donald McDonald Esqr Brigadier General of the Tory Army and Commander in Chief in North Carolina. 2 Colonel Allen McDonald (of Kingsborough) first in Commission of Array and second in Command 3 Alexander McDonald son of Kingsborough 4 Major Alexander McDonald (Condrack) 5 Capt Alexander McRay 6 Capt John Leggate 7 Capt James McDonald 8 Capt Alexr. McLeod 9 Capt Alexr. Morrison 10 Capt John McDonald 11 Capt Alexr. McLeod 12 Capt Murdoch McAskell 13 Capt Alexander McLeod 14 Capt Angus McDonald 15 Capt Neil McArthur[53] 16 Capt James Mens of the light horse. 17 Capt John McLeod 18 Capt Thos. Wier 19 Capt John McKenzie 20 Lieut John Murchison 21 Kennith McDonald, Aid de Camp to Genl McDonald 22 Murdock McLeod, Surgeon 23 Adjutant General John Smith 24 Donald McLeod Quarter Master 25 John Bethune Chaplain 26 Farquhard Campbell late a delegate in the provincial Congress--Spy and Confidential Emissary of Governor Martin."[54] Some of the prisoners were discharged soon after their arrest, by making and signing the proper oath, of which the following is taken from the Records: "Oath of Malcolm McNeill and Joseph Smith. We Malcolm McNeil and Joseph Smith do Solemnly Swear on the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God that we will not on any pretence whatsoever take up or bear Arms against the Inhabitants of the United States of America and that we will not disclose or make known any matters within our knowledge now carrying on within the United States and that we will not carry out more than fifty pounds of Gold & Silver in value to fifty pounds Carolina Currency. So help us God. Malcolm McNeill, Halifax, 13th Augt, 1776. Joseph Smith."[55] The North Carolina Provincial Congress on March 5, 1776, "Resolved, That Colonel Richard Caswell send, under a sufficient guard, Brigadier General Donald McDonald, taken at the battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, to the Town of Halifax, and there to have him committed a close prisoner in the jail of the said Town, until further orders."[56] The same Congress, held in Halifax April 5th, "Resolved, That General McDonald be admitted to his parole upon the following conditions: That he does not go without the limits of the Town of Halifax; that he does not directly or indirectly, while a prisoner, correspond with any person or persons who are or may be in opposition to American measures, or by any manner or means convey to them intelligence of any sort; that he take no draft, nor procure them to be taken by any one else, of any place or places in which he may be, while upon his parole, that shall now, or may hereafter give information to our enemies which can be injurious to us, or the common cause of America; but that without equivocation, mental evasion, or secret reservation, he pay the most exact and faithful attention to the intent and meaning of these conditions, according to the rules and regulations of war; and that he every day appear between the hours of ten and twelve o'clock to the Officer of the Guard."[57] On April 11th, the same parole was offered to Allan MacDonald of Kingsborough.[58] The Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, at its session in Philadelphia, held May 25, 1776, ordered the Highland prisoners, mentioned on page 219, naming each one separately to be "safely kept in close confinement until discharged by the honorable Congress or this Committee."[59] Four days later, General MacDonald addressed a letter to the Continental Congress, in which he said, "That he was, by a party of horsemen, upon the 28th day of February last, taken prisoner from sick quarters, eight miles from Widow Moor's Creek, where he lay dangerously ill, and carried to Colonel Caswell's camp, where General Moore then commanded, to whom he delivered his sword as prisoner of war, which General Moore was pleased to deliver back in a genteel manner before all his officers then present, according to the rules and customs of war practised in all nations; assuring him at the same time that he would be well treated, and his baggage and property delivered to him, &c. Having taken leave of General Moore and Colonel Caswell, Lieutenant-Colonel Bryant took him under his care; and after rummaging his baggage for papers, &c., conducted him to Newbern, from thence with his baggage to Halifax, where the Committee of Safety there thought proper to commit him to the common jail; his horses, saddles, and pistols, &c., taken from him, and never having committed any act of violence against the person or property of any man; that he remained in this jail near a month, until General Howe arrived there, who did him the honour to call upon him in jail; and he has reason to think that General Howe thought this treatment erroneous and without a precedent; that upon this representation to the Convention, General McDonald was, by order of the Convention, permitted, upon parole, to the limits of the town of Halifax, until the 25th of April last, when he was appointed to march, with the other gentlemen prisoners, escorted from the jail there to this place. General McDonald would wish to know what crime he has since been guilty of, deserving his being recommitted to the jail of Philadelphia, without his bedding or baggage, and his sword and his servant detained from him. The other gentlemen prisoners are in great want for their blankets and other necessaries. Donald McDonald."[60] The Continental Congress, on September 4th, "Resolved, That the proposal made by General Howe, as delivered by General Sullivan, of exchanging General Sullivan for General Prescot, and Lord Stirling for Brigadier-General, be complied with."[61] This being communicated to General McDonald he addressed, to the Secretary of War the following: "Philadelphia Gaol, September 6, 1776. To the Secretary of War: General McDonald's compliments to the Secretary of War. He is obliged to him for his polite information, that the Congress have been pleased to agree that Generals Prescott and McDonald shall be exchanged for the Generals Sullivan and Stirling. General McDonald is obliged to the Congress for the reference to the Board of War for his departure: The indulgence of eight or ten days will, he hopes, be sufficient to prepare him for his journey. His baggage will require a cart to carry it. He is not provided with horses--submits it to the Congress and Board how he may be conducted with safety to his place of destination, not doubting his servant will be permitted to go along with him, and that his sword may be returned to him, which he is informed the Commissary received from his servant on the 25th of May last. General McDonald begs leave to acquaint the Secretary and the Board of War, for the information of Congress, that when he was brought prisoner from sick quarters to General Moore's camp, at Moore's Creek, upon the 28th of February last, General Moore treated him with respect to his rank and commission in the King of Great Britain's service. He would have given him a parole to return to his sick quarters, as his low state of health required it much at that time, but Colonel Caswell objected thereto, and had him conducted prisoner to Newbern, but gently treated all the way by Colonel Caswell and his officers. From Newbern he was conducted by a guard of Horse to Halifax, and committed on his arrival, after forty-five miles journey the last day, in a sickly state of health, and immediately ushered into a common gaol, without bed or bedding, fire or candles, in a cold, long night, by Colonel Long, who did not appear to me to behave like a gentleman. That notwithstanding the promised protection for person and property he had from General Moore, a man called Longfield Cox, a wagonmaster to Colonel Caswell's army, seized upon his horse, saddle, pistols, and other arms, and violently detained the same by refusing to deliver them up to Colonel Bryan, who conducted him to Newbern. Colonel Long was pleased to detain his mare at Halifax when sent prisoner from thence to here. Sorry to dwell so long upon so disagreeable a subject."[62] This letter was submitted to the Continental Congress on September 7th, when it "Resolved, That he be allowed four days to prepare for his journey; That a copy of that part of his Letter respecting his treatment in North Carolina, be sent to the Convention of that State."[63] Notwithstanding General Sir William Howe had agreed to make the specified exchange of prisoners, yet in a letter addressed to Washington, September 21, 1776, he states: "The exchange you propose of Brigadier-General Alexander, commonly called Lord Stirling, for Mr. McDonald, cannot take place, as he has only the rank of Major by my commission; but I shall readily send any Major in the enclosed list of prisoners that you will be pleased to name in exchange for him."[64] As Sir William Howe refused to recognize the rank conferred on General McDonald, by the governor of North Carolina, Washington was forced, September 23, to order his return, with the escort, to Philadelphia.[65] But on the same day addressed Sir William Howe, in which he said: "I had no doubt but Mr. McDonald's title would have been acknowledged, having understood that he received his commission from the hands of Governor Martin; nor can I consent to rank him as a Major till I have proper authority from Congress, to whom I shall state the matter upon your representation."[65] That body, on September 30th, declared "That Mr. McDonald, having a commission of Brigadier-General from Governor Martin, be not exchanged for any officer under the rank of Brigadier-General in the service either of the United States or any of them."[66] On the way from North Carolina to Philadelphia, while resting at Petersburg, May 2, 1776, Kingsborough indited the following letter: "Sir: Your kind favor I had by Mr. Ugin (?) with the Virginia money enclosed, which shall be paid if ever I retourn with thanks, if not I shall take to order payment. Colonel Eliot who came here to receive the prisoners Confined the General and me under a guard and sentries to a Roome; this he imputes to the Congress of North Carolina not getting Brigadier Lewes (who commands at Williamsburg) know of our being on parole by your permission when at Halifax. If any opportunity afford, it would add to our happiness to write something to the above purpose to some of the Congress here with directions (if such can be done) to forward said orders after us. I have also been depressed of the horse I held, and hath little chance of getting another. To walk on foot is what I never can do the length of Philadelphia. What you can do in the above different affairs will be adding to your former favors. Hoping you will pardon freedom wrote in a hurry. I am with real Esteem and respect Honble Sir, Your very obedt. Servt. Allen MacDonald."[67] June 28, 1776, Allen MacDonald of Kingsborough, was permitted, after signing a parole and word of honor to go to Reading, in Berks county.[68] At the same time the Committee of Safety "Resolved, That such Prisoners from North Carolina as choose, may be permitted to write to their friends there; such letters to be inspected by this Committee; and the Jailer is to take care that all the paper delivered in to the Prisoners, be used in such Letters, or returned him."[68] The action of the Committee of Safety was approved by the Continental Congress on July 9th, by directing Kingsborough to be released on parole;[69] and on the 15th, his son Alexander was released on parole and allowed to reside with him. Every attempt to exchange the prisoners was made on the part of the Americans, and as they appear to have been so unfortunate as to have no one to intercede for them among British officers, Kingsborough was permitted to go to New York and effect his own exchange, which he succeeded in doing during the month of November, 1777, and then proceeded to Halifax, Nova Scotia.[70] The Highland officers confined in prison became restive, and on October 31, 1776, presented a memorial, addressed to the North Carolina members of the Continental Congress, which at once met with the approval of William Hooper: "Gentlemen: After a long separation of eight months from our Families & Friends, We the undersubscribers, Prisoners of war from North Carolina now in Philadelphia Prison, think ourselves justifiable at this period in applying to your Honours for permission to return to our Families; which indulgence we will promise on the Faith & honour of gentlemen not to abuse, by interfering in the present disputes, or aiding or assisting your enemies by word, writing, or action. This request we have already laid before Congress who are willing to grant it, provided they shall have your approbation. Hoping therefore, that you have no particular intention to distress us more than others whom you have treated with Indulgence, we flatter ourselves that your determinations will prove no obstruction to our Enlargement on the above terms; and have transmitted to you the enclosed Copy of the Resolve of Congress in our favor, which if you countenance; it will meet with the warmest acknowledgement of Gentn. Your most obedt. humble Servts., Alexander Morison, Ferqd. Campbell, Alexr. Macleod, Alexr. McKay, James Macdonald, John McDonald, Murdoch Macleod, John Murchison, John Bethune, Neill McArthur, John Smith, Murdo MacCaskill, John McLeod, Alexr. McDonald, Angus McDonald, John Ligett."[71] It was fully apparent to the Americans that so long as the leaders were prisoners there was no danger of another uprising among the Highlanders. This was fully tested by earl Cornwallis, who, after the battle of Guilford Courthouse, retreated towards the seaboard, stopping on the way at Cross Creek[72] hoping then to gain recruits from the Highlanders, but very few of whom responded to his call. In a letter addressed to Sir Henry Clinton, dated from his camp near Wilmington, April 10, 1781, he says: "On my arrival there (Cross Creek), I found, to my great mortification, and contrary to all former accounts, that it was impossible to procure any considerable quantity of provisions, and that there was not four days' forage within twenty miles. The navigation of Cape Fear, with the hopes of which I had been flattered was totally impracticable, the distance from Wilmington by water being one hundred and fifty miles, the breadth of the river seldom exceeding one hundred yards, the banks generally high, and the inhabitants on each side almost universally hostile. Under these circumstances I determined to move immediately to Wilmington. By this measure the Highlanders have not had so much time as the people of the upper country, to prove the sincerity of their former professions of friendship. But, though appearances are rather more favorable among them, I confess they are not equal to my expectations."[73] The Americans did not rest matters simply by confining the officers, but every precaution was taken to overawe them, not only by their parole, which nearly all implicitly obeyed, but also by armed force, for some militia was at once stationed at Cross Creek, which remained there until the Provincial Congress, on November 21, 1776, ordered it discharged.[74] General Charles Lee, who had taken charge of the Southern Department, on June 6, 1776, ordered Brigadier-General Lewis to take "as large a body of the regulars as can possibly be spared to march to Cross Creek, in North Carolina."[75] Notwithstanding the fact that many of the Highlanders who had been in the battle of Moore's Creek Bridge afterwards engaged in the service with the Americans, the community was regarded with suspicion, and that not without some cause. On July 28, 1777, it was reported that there were movements among the royalists that caused the patriots to be in arms and watch the Highlanders at Cross Creek. On August 3rd it was again reported that there were a hundred in arms with others coming.[76] As might be anticipated the poor Highlanders also were subjected to fear and oppression. They remained at heart, true to their first love. In June, 1776, a report was circulated among them that a company of light horse was coming into the settlement, and every one thought he was the man wanted, and hence all hurried to the swamps and other fastnesses in the forest.[77] From the poor Highland women, who had lost father, husband, brother in battle, or whose menfolk were imprisoned in the gaol at Halifax, there arose such a wail of distress as to call forth the attention of the Provincial Congress, which at once put forth a proclamation, and ordered it translated into the "Erse tongue," in which it was declared that they "warred not with those helpless females, but sympathized with them in their sorrow," and recommended them to the compassion of all, and to the "bounty of those who had aught to spare from their necessities." One of the remarkable things, and one which cannot be accounted for, is, that although the North Carolina Highland emigrants were deeply religious, yet no clergyman accompanied them to the shores of America, until 1770, when Reverend John McLeod came direct from Scotland and ministered to them for some time; and they were entirely without a minister prior to 1757, when Reverend James Campbell commenced to preach for them, and continued in active work until 1770. He was the first ordained minister who took up his abode among the Presbyterian settlements in North Carolina. He pursued his labors among the outspreading neighborhoods in what are now Cumberland and Robeson counties. This worthy man was born in Campbelton, on the peninsula of Kintyre, in Argyleshire, Scotland. Of his early history but little is known, and by far too little of his pioneer labors has been preserved. About the year 1730 he emigrated to America, landing at Philadelphia. His attention having been turned to his countrymen on the Cape Fear, he removed to North Carolina, and took up his residence on the left bank of the above river, a few miles north of Cross Creek. He died in 1781. His preaching was in harmony with the tenets of his people, being presbyterian. He had three regular congregations on the Sabbath, besides irregular preaching, as occasion demanded. For some ten years he preached on the southwest side of the river at a place called "Roger's meeting-house." Here Hector McNeill ("Bluff Hector") and Alexander McAlister acted as elders. About 1758 he began to preach at the "Barbacue Church,"--the building not erected until about the year 1765. It was at this church where Flora MacDonald worshipped. The first elders of this church were Gilbert Clark, Duncan Buie, Archibald Buie, and Donald Cameron. [Illustration: BARBACUE CHURCH, WHERE FLORA MACDONALD WORSHIPPED.] Another of the preaching stations was at a place now known as "Long Street." The building was erected about 1766. The first elders were Malcolm Smith, Archibald McKay and Archibald Ray. There came, in the same ship, from Scotland, with Reverend John McLeod, a large number of Highland families, all of whom settled upon the upper and lower Little Rivers, in Cumberland county. After several years' labor, proving himself a man of genuine piety, great worth, and popular eloquence, he left America, with a view of returning to his native land; having never been heard of afterwards, it was thought that he found a watery grave. With the exception of the Reverend John McLeod, it is not known that Reverend James Campbell had any ministerial brother residing in Cumberland or the adjoining counties, who could assist him in preaching to the Gaels. Although McAden preached in Duplin county, he was unable to render assistance because he was unfamiliar with the language of the Highlanders. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 21: North Carolina Colonial Records, Vol. IV, p. 931.] [Footnote 22: _Ibid_, p. 447.] [Footnote 23: _Ibid_, p. 490.] [Footnote 24: _Ibid_, p. 533.] [Footnote 25: _Ibid_, p.453.] [Footnote 26: See Appendix, Note C.] [Footnote 27: _Ibid_, Vol. VIII. p. 708.] [Footnote 28: _Ibid_, Vol. IX. p. 79.] [Footnote 29: _Ibid_, p. 544.] [Footnote 30: _Ibid_, Vol. VIII, p. XXIII.] [Footnote 31: _Ibid_, Vol. X. p. 577.] [Footnote 32: _Ibid_, p. 173.] [Footnote 33: See Appendix, Note D.] [Footnote 34: _Ibid_, p. 45.] [Footnote 35: _Ibid_, p. 325.] [Footnote 36: _Ibid_, p. 190.] [Footnote 37: _Ibid_, p. 266.] [Footnote 38: _Ibid_, p. 326.] [Footnote 39: _Ibid_, p. 595.] [Footnote 40: _Ibid_, Vol. XI. p. 403.] [Footnote 41: _Ibid_, p. 324.] [Footnote 42: American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. IV, p. 84.] [Footnote 43: See Appendix, Note E.] [Footnote 44: North Carolina Colonial Records, Vol. X, p. 65.] [Footnote 45: _Ibid_, p, 117.] [Footnote 46: American Archives, 4th Series, Vol. IV. p, 981] [Footnote 47: _Ibid_, p, 982.] [Footnote 48: _Ibid_, p. 983.] [Footnote 49: _Ibid_, p. 1129.] [Footnote 50: N.C. Colonial Records, Vol. XI, pp. 276-279.] [Footnote 51: _Ibid_, Vol. X, p. 485.] [Footnote 52: _Ibid_, pp. 594-603.] [Footnote 53: See Appendix, Note H.] [Footnote 54: _Ibid_, Vol. XI. p. 294.] [Footnote 55: _Ibid_, Vol. X. p. 743.] [Footnote 56: American Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. V, p. 69.] [Footnote 57: _Ibid_, Vol. V, p. 1317.] [Footnote 58: _Ibid_, p. 1320.] [Footnote 59: _Ibid_, Vol. VI, p. 663.] [Footnote 60: _Ibid_, p. 613.] [Footnote 61: _Ibid_, Fifth Series, Vol. II. p. 1330.] [Footnote 62: _Ibid_, p. 191.] [Footnote 63: _Ibid_, p. 1333.] [Footnote 64: _Ibid_, p. 437.] [Footnote 65: _Ibid_, p. 464.] [Footnote 66: _Ibid_, p. 1383] [Footnote 67: North Carolina Colonial Records, Vol. XI. p. 295.] [Footnote 68: Am. Archives, 5th Series, Vol. I. p. 1291.] [Footnote 69: _Ibid_, p. 1570.] [Footnote 70: "Letter Book of Captain A. MacDonald," p. 387.] [Footnote 71: N.C. Colonial Records, Vol. X. p. 888.] [Footnote 72: See Appendix Note F.] [Footnote 73: "Earl Cornwallis' Answer to Sir Henry Clinton," p. 10.] [Footnote 74: N.C. Colonial Records, Vol. XI. p. 927.] [Footnote 75: Am. Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. VI, p. 721.] [Footnote 76: N.C. Colonial Records, Vol. XI. pp 546, 555.] [Footnote 77: _Ibid_, p. 829.] CHAPTER VI. HIGHLANDERS IN GEORGIA. The second distinctive and permanent settlement of Highland Scotch in the territory now constituting the United States of America was that in what was first called New Inverness on the Alatamaha river in Georgia, but now known as Darien, in McIntosh County. It was established under the genius of James Oglethorpe, an English general and philanthropist, who, in the year 1728, began to take active legislative support in behalf of the debtor classes, which culminated in the erection of the colony of Georgia, and incidentally to the formation of a settlement of Highlanders. There was a yearly average in Great Britain of four thousand unhappy men immured in prison for the misfortune of being poor. A small debt exposed a person to a perpetuity of imprisonment; and one indiscreet contract often resulted in imprisonment for life. The sorrows hidden within the prison walls of Fleet and Marshalsea touched the heart of Oglethorpe--a man of merciful disposition and heroic mind--who was then in the full activity of middle life. His benevolent zeal persevered until he restored multitudes, who had long been in confinement for debt, and were now helpless and strangers in the land of their birth. Nor was this all: for them and the persecuted Protestants he planned an asylum in America, where former poverty would be no reproach, and where the simplicity of piety could indulge in the spirit of devotion without fear of persecution or rebuke. The first active step taken by Oglethorpe, in his benevolent designs was to move, in the British House of Commons, that a committee be appointed "to inquire into the state of the gaols of the kingdom, and to report the same and their opinion thereupon to the House." Of this committee consisting of ninety-six persons, embracing some of the first men in England, Oglethorpe was made chairman. They were eulogized by Thompson, in his poem on Winter, as "The generous band, Who, touched with human woe, redressive searched Into the horrors of the gloomy gaol." In the abodes of crime, and of misfortune, the committee beheld all that the poet depicted: "The freeborn Briton to the dungeon chained," and "Lives crushed out by secret, barbarous ways, that for their country would have toiled and bled." One of Britain's authors was moved to indite: "No modern nation has ever enacted or inflicted greater legal severities upon insolvent debtors than England."[78] While the report of the committee did honor to their humanity, yet it was the moving spirit of Oglethorpe that prompted efforts to combine present relief with permanent benefits, by which honest but unfortunate industry could be protected, and the poor enabled to reap the fruit of their toils, which now wrung out their lives with bitter and unrequited labor. On June 9, 1732, a charter was procured from the king, incorporating a body by name and style of the Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia in America. Among its many provisions was the declaration that "all and every person born within the said province shall have and enjoy all liberties, franchises and immunities of free denizens, as if abiding and born within Great Britain." It further ordained that there should be liberty of conscience, and free exercise of religion to all, except Papists. The patrons, by their own request, were restrained from receiving any grant of lands, or any emoluments whatever. The charter had in view the settling of poor but unfortunate people on lands now waste and desolate, and also the interposing of the colony as a barrier between the French, Spanish and Indians on the south and west and the other English colonies on the north. Oglethorpe expressed the purpose of the colonizing scheme, in the following language: "These trustees not only give land to the unhappy who go thither; but are also empowered to receive the voluntary contributions of charitable persons to enable them to furnish the poor adventurers with all necessaries for the expense of the voyage, occupying the land, and supporting them till they find themselves comfortably settled. So that now the unfortunate will not be obliged to bind themselves to a long servitude to pay for their passage; for they may be carried gratis into a land of liberty and plenty, where they immediately find themselves in possession of a competent estate, in a happier climate than they knew before; and they are unfortunate, indeed, if here they cannot forget their sorrow."[79] Subsidiary to this it was designed to make Georgia a silk, wine, oil and drug-growing colony. It was calculated that the mother country would be relieved of a large body of indigent people and unfortunate debtors, and, at the same time, assist the commerce of Great Britain, increase home industries, and relieve, to an appreciative extent, the impost on foreign productions. Extravagant expectations were formed of the capabilities of Georgia by the enthusiastic friends of the movement. It was to rival Virginia and South Carolina, and at once to take the first rank in the list of provinces depending on the British crown. Its beauties and greatness were lauded by poets, statesmen and divines. It attracted attention throughout Europe, and to that promised land there pressed forward Swiss, German, Scotch and English alike. The benevolence of England was aroused, and the charities of an opulent nation began to flow towards the new plantation. The House of Parliament granted £10,000, which was augmented, by private subscription, to £36,000. Oglethorpe had implicit faith in the enterprise, and with the first shipload, on board the Ann, he sailed from Gravesend November 17, 1732, and arrived at the bar, outside of the port of Charleston, South Carolina, January 13, 1733. Having accepted of a hearty welcome, he weighed anchor, and sailed directly for Port Royal; and while his colony was landing at Beaufort, he ascended the boundary river of Georgia, and selected the site for his chief town on the high bluff, where now is the city of Savannah. Having established his town, he then selected a commanding height on the Ogeechee river, where he built a fortification and named it Fort Argyle, in honor of the friend and patron of his early years. Within a period of five years over a thousand persons had been sent over on the Trustee's account; several freeholders, with their servants, had also taken up lands; and to them and to others also, settling in the province, over fifty-seven thousand acres had been granted. Besides forts and minor villages there had been laid out and settled the principal towns of Augusta, Ebenezer, Savannah, New Inverness, and Frederica. The colonists were of different nationalities, widely variant in character, religion and government. There were to be seen the depressed Briton from London; the hardy Gael from the Highlands of Scotland; the solemn Moravian from Herrnhut; the phlegmatic German from Salzburg in Bavaria; the reflecting Swiss from the mountainous and pastoral Grisons; the mercurial peasant from sunny Italy, and the Jew from Portugal. The settlements were made deliberately and with a view of resisting any possible encroachments of Spain. It was a matter of protection that the Highlanders were induced to emigrate, and their assignment to the dangerous and outlying district, exposed to Spanish forays or invasions, is sufficient proof that their warlike qualities were greatly desired. Experience also taught Oglethorpe that the useless poor in England did not change their characters by emigration. In company with a retinue of Indian chiefs, Oglethorpe returned to England on board the Aldborough man-of-war, where he arrived on June 16, 1734, after a passage of a little more than a month. His return created quite a sensation; complimentary verses were bestowed upon him, and his name was established among men of large views and energetic action as a distinguished benefactor of mankind. Among many things that engrossed his attention was to provide a bulwark against inroads that might be made by savages and dangers from the Spanish settlements; so he turned his eyes, as already noted, to the Highlands of Scotland. In order to secure a sufficient number of Highlanders a commission was granted to Lieutenant Hugh Mackay and George Dunbar to proceed to the Highlands and "raise 100 Men free or servants and for that purpose allowed to them the free passage of ten servants over and above the 100. They farther allowed them to take 50 Head of Women and Children and agreed with Mr. Simmonds to send a ship about, which he w'd not do unless they agreed for 130 Men Heads certain. This may have led the trust into the mistake That they were to raise only 130."[80] The enterprising commissioners, using such methods as were customary to the country, soon collected the required number within the immediate vicinity of Inverness. They first enlisted the interest and consent of some of the chief gentlemen, and as they were unused to labor, they were not only permitted but required also to bring each a servant capable of supporting him. These gentlemen were not reckless adventurers, or reduced emigrants forced by necessity, or exiled by insolvency and want; but men of pronounced character, and especially selected for their approved military qualities, many of whom came from the glen of Stralbdean, about nine miles distant from Inverness. They were commanded by officers most highly connected in the Highlands. Their political sympathies were with the exiled house of Stuart, and having been more or less implicated in the rising of 1715, they found themselves objects of jealousy and suspicion, and thus circumstanced seized the opportunity to seek an asylum in America and obtain that unmolested quietude which was denied them in their native glens. These people being deeply religious selected for their pastor, Reverend John MacLeod, a native of Skye, who belonged to the Dunvegan family of MacLeods. He was well recommended by his clerical brethren, and sustained a good examination before the presbytery of Edinburgh, previous to his ordination and commission, October 13, 1735. He was appointed by the directors of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (from whom he was to receive his annual stipend of £50) "not only to officiate as minister of the Gospel to the Highland families going hither," and others who might be inclined to the Presbyterian form of worship, but "also to use his utmost endeavors for propagating Christian knowledge among natives in the colony." The Trustees were greatly rejoiced to find that they had secured so valuable an acquisition to their colony, and that they could settle such a bold and hardy race on the banks of their southern boundary, and thus establish a new town on the Florida frontier. The town council of Inverness, in order to express their regard for Oglethorpe, on account of his kind offers to the Highlanders, conferred on him the honor of a burgess of the town, through his proxy, Captain George Dunbar. Besides the military band, others, among whom were MacKays, Bailies, Dunbars, and Cuthberts, applied for large tracts of land to people with their own servants; most of them going over themselves to Georgia, and finally settling there for life. Of the Highlanders, some of them paid their passage and that of one out of two servants, while others paid passage for their servants and took the benefit of the trust passage for themselves. Some, having large families, wanted farther assistance for servants, which was acceded to by Captain Dunbar, who gave them the passage of four servants, which was his right, for having raised forty of the one hundred men. Of the whole number the Trustees paid for one hundred and forty-six, some of whom became indentured servants to the Trust. On October 20, 1735, one hundred and sixty-three were mustered before Provost Hassock at Inverness. One of the number ran away before the ship sailed, and two others were set on shore because they would neither pay their passage nor indent as servants to the Trust. These pioneers, who were to carve their own fortunes and become a defense for the colony of Georgia, sailed from Inverness, October 18, 1735, on board the Prince of Wales, commanded by Captain George Dunbar, one of their own countrymen. They made a remarkably quick trip, attended by no accidents, and in January, 1736, sailed into Tybee Road, and at once the officer in charge set about sending the emigrants to their destination. All who so desired, at their own expense, were permitted to go up to Savannah and Joseph's Town. On account of a deficiency in boats, all could not be removed at once. Seven days after their arrival sixty-one were sent away, and on February 4th forty-six more proceeded to their settlement on the Alatamaha,--all of whom being under the charge of Hugh MacKay. Thus the advanced station, the post of danger, was guarded by a bold and hardy race; brave and robust by nature, virtuous by inclination, inured to fatigue and willing to labor: "To distant climes, a dreary scene, they go, Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe, Far different these from all that charmed before, The various terrors of that distant shore; Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling; Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crown'd, Where the dark scorpion gathers death around, Where at each step the stranger fears to wake The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake, Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey, And savage men, more murderous still than they. Far different these from every former scene." --Goldsmith. On their first landing at Savannah, some of the people from South Carolina endeavored to discourage them by saying that the Spaniards would shoot them as they stood upon the ground where they contemplated erecting their homes. "Why then," said the Highlanders in reply, "we will beat them out of their fort and shall have houses ready built to live in." The spot designated for their town is located twenty miles northwest from St. Simons and ten above Frederica, and situated on the mainland, close to a branch of the Alatamaha river, on a bluff twenty feet high, then surrounded on all sides with woods. The soil is a brackish sand. Formerly Fort King George, garrisoned by an independent company, stood within a mile and a half of the new town, but had been abandoned and destroyed on account of a want of supplies and communication with Carolina. The village was called New Inverness, in honor of the city they had left in Scotland; while the surrounding district was named Darien, on account of the settlement attempted on the Isthmus of Darien, in 1698-1701. Under the direction of Hugh MacKay, who proved himself to be an excellent officer and a man of executive ability, by the middle of February they had constructed a fort consisting of two bastions and two half bastions, which was so strong that forty men could maintain it against three hundred, and on it placed four pieces, which, afterwards was so enlarged as to demand twelve cannon; built a guardhouse, storehouse, a chapel, and huts for the people. One of the men dying, the rest joined and built a house for the widow. In the meantime Oglethorpe had sailed from London on board the Symonds, accompanied by the London Merchant, with additional emigrants, and arrived in the Tybee Road a short time after the Highlanders had left. He had never met them, and desiring to understand their ways and to make as favorable an impression on them as possible, he retained Captain Dunbar to go with him to the Highlanders and to instruct him fully in their customs. On February 22d he left St. Simons and rowing up the Alatamaha after three hours, reached the Highland settlement. Upon seeing the boat approaching, the Highlanders marched out to meet him, and made a most manly appearance in their plaids, with claymores, targets and fire-arms. Captain MacKay invited Oglethorpe to lie in his tent, where there was a bed with sheets--a rarity as yet in that part of the world. He excused himself, choosing to lie at the guard-fire, wrapped in his plaid, for he had on the Highland garb. Captain MacKay and the other gentlemen did the same, though the night was cold. Oglethorpe had previously taken the precaution, lest the Highlanders might be apprehensive of an attack by the Spaniards, Indians, or other enemies, while their houses were in process of construction, to send Captain James McPherson, who commanded the rangers upon the Savannah, overland to support them. This troop arrived while Oglethorpe was yet present. Soon after they were visited by the Indians, who were attracted by their costume, and ever after retained an admiration for them, which was enhanced by the Highlanders entering into their wild sports, and joining them in the chase. In order to connect the new settlement with direct land communication with the other colonists, Oglethorpe, in March, directed Hugh MacKay, with a detachment of twelve rangers, to conduct Walter Augustin, who ran a traverse line from Savannah by Fort Argyle to Darien, in order to locate a roadway. It was during Oglethorpe's first trip to the Highland settlement that he encamped on Cumberland island, and on the extreme western point, which commands the passage of boats from the southward, marked out a fort to be called St. Andrews, and gave Captain Hugh MacKay orders to build it. The work commenced immediately, thirty Highlanders being employed in the labor. On March 26th Oglethorpe, visiting the place, was astonished to find the fort in such an advanced stage of completion; the ditch was dug, the parapet was raised with wood and earth on the land side, and the small wood was cleared fifty yards round the fort. This seemed to be the more extraordinary because MacKay had no engineer, nor any other assistance in that way, except the directions originally given. Besides it was very difficult to raise the works, the ground being a loose sand. They were forced to lay the trees and sand alternately,--the trees preventing the sand from falling, and the sand the wood from fire. He returned thanks to the Highlanders and offered to take any of them back to their settlement, but all refused so long as there was any danger from the Spaniards, in whose vicinity they were now stationed. But two of them, having families at Darien, he ordered along with him. The Highlanders were not wholly engaged in military pursuits, for, to a great extent, they were engaged in making their settlement permanent. They engaged in the cultivation of Indian corn and potatoes; learned to cut and saw timber, and laid out farms upon which they lived. For a frontier settlement, constantly menaced, all was accomplished that could be reasonably expected. In the woods they found ripe oranges and game, such as the wild turkey, buffalo and deer, in abundance. But peace and prosperity were not their allotted portion, for their lines were now cast in troubled waters. The first year witnessed an appeal to arms and a struggle with the Spaniards, which eventually resulted in a disaster to the Highlanders. Deeds of heroism were now enacted, fully in keeping with the tenor of the race. The Spaniards, who had their main force at St. Augustine, were more or less aggressive, which kept the advanced posts in a state of alarm. John Mohr Macintosh, who had seen service in Scotland, was directed by Oglethorpe to instruct the Highlanders in their military duty, and under his direction they were daily exercised. Hugh MacKay, with a company, had been directed to the immediate command of Oglethorpe. Disputes early arose between the English colonists and the Spaniards regarding the frontier line between the two nationalities, and loud complaints were made by the latter on account of being harrassed by Indians. Oglethorpe took steps to restrain the Indians, and to the Spaniards sent friendly messengers, who were immediately seized and confined and at once took measures against the colonists. A Spanish warship sailed by St. Simon's island and passed Fort St. Andrews, but was not fired upon by the Highlanders because she answered their signals. She made her way back to St. Augustine when the report gained currency that the whole coast was covered with war boats armed with cannon. On June 8th the colonists were again threatened by a Spanish vessel which came close to Fort St. Andrews before she was discovered; but when challenged rowed away with the utmost precipitation. On board this boat was Don Ignatio with a detachment of the Spanish garrison, and as many boatmen and Indians as the launch could hold. It was at this time that a Highland lad named Fraser distinguished himself. Oglethorpe in endeavoring to meet the Spaniards by a flag of truce, or else obtain a conference with them, but unable to accomplish either, and being about to withdraw, saw the boy, whom he had sent forward, returning through the woods, driving before him a tall man with a musket on his shoulder, two pistols stuck in his girdle, and further armed with both a long and short sword. Coming up to Oglethorpe the lad said: "Here, sir; I have caught a Spaniard for you." The man was found to have in his possession a letter from Oglethorpe's imprisoned messengers which imparted certain information that proved to be of great value. The imprisoned messengers were ultimately released and sent back in a launch with commissioners to treat with Oglethorpe. In order to make a favorable impression on the Spaniards, the Highlanders, under Ensign MacKay, were ordered out. June 19th, Ensign MacKay arrived on board the man-of-war Hawk, then just off from Amelia island, with the Highlanders, and a detachment of the independent company, in their regimentals, who lined one side of the ship, while the Highlanders, with their claymores, targets, plaids, etc., did the same on the other side. The commissioners were very handsomely entertained on board the war vessel, and after dinner messages in writing were exchanged. While this hilarity and peace protestations were being indulged, an Indian brought the news that forty Spaniards and some Indians had fallen upon a party of the Creek nation who, then depending upon the general peace between the Indians, Spanish and English, without suspicion, and consequently without guard, were surrounded and surprised, several killed and others taken, two of whom, being boys, were murdered by dashing out their brains. To the people of New Iverness the year 1737 does not appear to have been a propitious one. Pioneers were compelled to endure hardships of which they had little dreamed, and the Highland settlement was no exception to the rule. The record preserved for this year is exceedingly meagre and consists almost wholly in the sworn statement of Alexander Monroe, who deserted the colony in 1740. In the latter year he deposed that at Darien, where he arrived in 1736 with his wife and child, he had cleared, fenced in and planted five acres of land, built a good house in the town, and made other improvements, such as gardening, etc.; that he was never able to support his family by cultivation, though he planted the said five acres three years and had good crops, and that he never heard of any white man being able to gain a living by planting; that in 1737 the people were reduced to such distress for want of provisions, having neither corn, peas, rice, potatoes, nor bread-kind of any sort, nor fish, nor flesh of any kind in store; that they were forced to go in a body, with John Mohr Macintosh at the head, to Frederica and there make a demand on the Trust's agent for a supply; that they were relieved by Captain Gascoigne of the Hawk, who spared them two barrels of flour, and one barrel of beef; and further, he launches an indictment against John Mohr Macintosh, who had charge of the Trust's store at Darien, for giving the better class of food to his own hogs while the people were forced to take that which was rotten.[81] While this statement of Monroe may possibly be true in the main, and that there was actual suffering, yet it must be borne in mind that the Highlanders were there living in a changed condition. The labor, climate, soil, products, etc., were all new to them, and to the changed circumstances the time had been too short for them to adapt themselves; nor is it probable that five acres were enough for their subsistence. The feeding of cattle, which was soon after adopted, would give them a larger field of industry. Nor was this all. Inevitable war fell upon the people; for we learn that the troop of Highland rangers, under Captain MacKay, held Fort St. Andrews "with thirty men, when the Spaniards attempted the invasion of this Province with a great number of men in the year 1737."[82] Drawing the men away from the settlement would necessarily cause more or less suffering and disarrangement of affairs. The record for the year 1738 is more extensive, although somewhat contradictory, and exhibits a strong element of dissention. Oglethorpe admitted the difficulties under which the people labored, ascribing them to the Spanish alarms, but reports that John Mohr Macintosh, pursuant to orders from the Trust, had disposed of a part of the servants to the freeholders of Darien, which encouragement had enabled the settlement to continue. "The women were a dead charge to the Trust, excepting a few who mended the Cloaths, dressed the Victuals and washed the Linnen of the Trustees Men Servants. Some of the Soldiers who were Highlanders desiring to marry Women, I gave them leave upon their discharging the Trustees from all future Charges arising from them."[83] The difficulties appear also to have arisen from the fact that the freeholders were either unable or else unwilling--which is the more likely--to perform manual labor. They labored under the want of a sufficient number of servants until they had procured some who had been indentured to the Trust for passage from Scotland. The Reverend John MacLeod, who abandoned the colony in 1741, made oath that in the year 1738 they found by experience that the produce from the land did not answer the expense of time and labor, and the voice of the people of Darien was to abandon their improvements, and settle to the northward, where they could be free from the restraints which rendered incapable of subsisting themselves and families.[84] The declaration of Alexander Monroe is still more explicit: "That in December, 1738, the said inhabitants of Darien finding that from their first settling in Georgia, their labors turned to no account, that their wants were daily growing on them, and being weary of apprehension, they came to a resolution to depute two men, chosen from amongst them, to go to Charleston, in South Carolina, and there to make application to the government, in order to obtain a grant of lands to which the whole settlement of Darien to a man were to remove altogether, the said John McIntosh More excepted; but that it being agreed among them, first to acquaint the said Colonel with their intentions, and their reasons for such resolutions, John McIntosh L. (Lynvilge) was employed by the said freeholders to lay the same before him, who returned them an answer 'that they should have credit for provisions, with two cows and three calves, and a breeding mare if they would continue on their plantations.' That the people with the view of these helps, and hoping for the further favor and countenance of the said Colonel, and being loth to leave their little all behind them, and begin the world in a strange place, were willing to make out a livelihood in the colony; but whilst they were in expectation of these things, this deponent being at his plantation, two miles from the town, in Dec., 1738, he received a letter from Ronald McDonald, which was sent by order of the said McIntosh More, and brought to this deponent by William, son of the said McIntosh, ordering him, the said deponent, immediately to come himself, and bring William Monro along with him to town, and advising him that, 'if he did so, he would be made a man of, but, that if he did not, he would be ruined forever.' That this deponent coming away without loss of time, he got to the said McIntosh More's house about nine of the clock that night, where he found several of the inhabitants together, and where the said McIntosh More did tell this deponent, 'that if he would sign a paper, which he then offered him, that the said Colonel would give him cattle and servants from time to time, and that he would be a good friend to as many as would sign the said paper, but that they would see what would become of those that would not sign it, for that the people of Savannah would be all ruined, who opposed the said Colonel in it.' That this deponent did not know the contents of the said paper, but seeing that some before him had signed it, his hopes on one side, and fears on the other, made him sign it also. That upon his conversing with some of the people, after leaving the house, he was acquainted with the contents and design of said paper, which this deponent believes to be the petition from the eighteen, which the trustees have printed, and that very night he became sensible of the wrong he had done; and that his conscience did thereupon accuse him, and does yet."[85] The phrase "being weary of oppression" has reference to the accusation against Captain Hugh MacKay, who was alleged to have "exercised an illegal power there, such as judging in all causes, directing and ordering all things according to his will, as did the said McIntosh More, by which many unjust and illegal things were done. That not only the servants of the said freeholders of Darien were ordered to be tied up and whipt; but also this deponent, and Donald Clark, who themselves were freeholders, were taken into custody, and bound with ropes, and threatened to be sent to Frederica to Mr. Horton, and there punished by him; this deponent, once for refusing to cry 'All's well,' when he was an out-sentry, he having before advised them of the danger of so doing, lest the voice should direct the Indians to fire upon the sentry, as they had done the night before, and again for drumming with his fingers on the side of his house, it being pretended that he had alarmed the town. That upon account of these, and many other oppressions, the freeholders applied to Mr. Oglethorpe for a court of justice to be erected, and proper magistrates in Darien, as in other towns in Georgia, that they might have justice done among themselves, when he gave them for answer, 'that he would acquaint the trustees with it'; but that this deponent heard no more of it."[86] One of the fundamental regulations of the Trustees was the prohibition of African slavery in Georgia. However, they had instituted a system of servitude which indentured both male and female to individuals, or the Trustees, for a period of from four to fourteen years. On arriving in Georgia, their services were sold for the term of indenture, or apportioned to the inhabitants by the magistrates, as their necessities required. The sum which they brought when thus bid off varied from £2 to £6, besides an annual tax of £1 for five years to defray the expense of their voyage. Negro slavery was agitated in Savannah, and on December 9, 1738, a petition was addressed to the Trustees, signed by one hundred and sixteen, and among other things asked was the introduction of Negro slavery. On January 3, 1739, a counter petition was drawn up and signed by the Highlanders at Darien. On March 13th the Saltzburghers of Ebenezer signed a similar petition in which they strongly disapproved of the introduction of slave labor into the colony. Likewise the people of Frederica prepared a petition, but desisted from sending it, upon an assurance that their apprehensions of the introduction of Negroes were entirely needless. Many artifices were resorted to in order to gain over the Highlanders and have them petition for Negro slaves. Failing in this letters were written to them from England endeavoring to intimidate them into a compliance. These counter petitions strengthened the Trustees in their resolution. It is a noticeable fact, and worthy of record, that at the outbreak of the American Revolution the Highlanders of Darien again protested against African slavery. Those persons dissatisfied with the state of affairs increased in numbers and gradually grew more rancorous. It is not supposable that they could have bettered the condition under the circumstances. Historians have been universal in their praise of Oglethorpe, and in all probability no one could have given a better administration. His word has been taken without question. He declared that "Darien hath been one of the Settlements where the People have been most industrious as those of Savannah have been most idle. The Trustees have had several Servants there who under the direction of Mr. Moore McIntosh have not only earned their bread but have provided the Trust with such Quantities of sawed stuff as hath saved them a great sum of money. Those Servants cannot be put under the direction of anybody at Frederica nor any one that does not understand the Highland language. The Woods fit for sawing are near Darien and the Trustees engaged not to separate the Highlanders. They are very useful under their own Chiefs and no where else. It is very necessary therefore to allow Mr. Mackintosh for the overseeing the Trust's Servants at Darien."[87] That such was the actual condition of affairs in 1739 there is no doubt. However, a partial truth may change the appearance. George Philp, who at Savannah in 1740, declared that for the same year the people "are as incapable of improving their lands and raising produces as the people in the northern division, as appears from the very small quantity of Indian corn which hitherto had been the chief and almost only produce of the province, some few potatoes excepted; and as a proof of which, that he was in the south in May last, when the season for planting was over, and much less was done at Frederica than in former years; and that the people in Darien did inform him, that they had not of their own produce to carry to market, even in the year 1739, which was the most plentiful year they ever saw there, nor indeed any preceding year; nor had they (the people of Darien) bread-kind of their own raising, sufficient for the use of their families, from one crop to another, as themselves, or some of them, did tell this deponent; and further, the said people of Darien were, in May last, repining at their servants being near out of their time, because the little stock of money they carried over with them was exhausted in cultivation which did not bring them a return; and they were thereby rendered quite unable to plant their lands, or help themselves any way."[88] It was one of the agreements made by the Trust that assistance should be given the colonists. Hence Oglethorpe speaks of "the £58 delivered to Mr. McIntosh at Darien, it was to support the Inhabitants of Darien with cloathing and delivered to the Trustees' Store there, for which the Individuals are indebted to the Trust. Part of it was paid in discharge of service done to the Trustees in building. Part is still due and some do pay and are ready to pay."[89] The active war with Spain commenced by the murder of two unarmed Highlanders on Amelia Island, who had gone into the woods for fuel. It was November 14, 1739, that a party of Spaniards landed on the island and skulked in the woods. Francis Brooks, who commanded a scout boat, heard reports of musketry, and at once signaled the fort, when a lieutenant's squad marched out and found the murdered Highlanders with their heads cut off and cruelly mangled. The Spaniards fled with so much precipitation that the squad could not overtake them, though they pursued rapidly. Immediately Oglethorpe began to collect around him his inadequate forces for the invasion of Florida. In January, 1740, he received orders to make hostile movements against Florida, with the assurance that Admiral Vernon should co-operate with him. Oglethorpe took immediate action, drove in the Spanish outposts and invaded Florida, having learned from a deserter that St. Augustine was in want of provisions. South Carolina rendered assistance; and its regiment reached Darien the first of May, where it was joined by Oglethorpe's favorite corps, the Highlanders, ninety strong, commanded by Captain John Mohr McIntosh and Lieutenant MacKay. They were ordered, accompanied by an Indian force, to proceed by land, at once, to Cow-ford (afterwards Jacksonville), upon the St. Johns. With four hundred of his regiment, Oglethorpe, on May 3d, left Frederica, in boats, and on the 9th reached the Cow-ford. The Carolina regiment and the Highlanders having failed to make the expected junction at that point, Oglethorpe, who would brook no delay, immediately proceeded against Fort Diego, which surrendered on the 10th, and garrisoned it with sixty men under Lieutenant Dunbar. With the remainder he returned to the Cow-ford, and there met the Carolina regiment and McIntosh's Highlanders. Here Oglethorpe massed nine hundred soldiers and eleven hundred Indians, and marched the whole force against Fort Moosa, which was built of stone, and situated less than two miles from St. Augustine, which the Spaniards evacuated without offering resistance. Having burned the gates, and made three breaches in the walls, Oglethorpe then proceeded to reconnoitre the town and castle. Assisted by some ships of war lying at anchor off St. Augustine bar, he determined to blockade the town. For this purpose he left Colonel Palmer, with ninety-five Highlanders and fifty-two Indians, at Fort Moosa, with instructions to scour the woods and intercept all supplies for the enemy; and, for safety, encamp every night at different places. This was the only party left to guard the land side. The Carolina regiment was sent to occupy a point of land called Point Quartel, about a mile distant from the castle; while he himself with his regiment and the greater part of the Indians embarked in boats, and landed on the Island of Anastatia, where he erected batteries and commenced a bombardment of the town. The operations of the beseigers beginning to relax, the Spanish commander sent a party of six hundred to surprise Colonel Palmer at Fort Moosa. The Spaniards had noted that for five nights Colonel Palmer had made Fort Moosa his resting place. They came in boats with muffled oars at the dead of night, and landed unheard and undiscovered. The Indians, who were relied on by Palmer, were watching the land side, but never looked towards the water. Captain Macintosh had remonstrated with Colonel Palmer for remaining at Fort Moosa more than one night, until it produced an alienation between them. The only thing then left for MacIntosh was to make his company sleep on their arms. At the first alarm they were in rank, and as the Spanish infantry approached in three columns they were met with a Highland shout. The contest was unequal, and although the Highlanders rallied to the support of MacIntosh, their leader, and fought with desperation, yet thirty-six of them fell dead or wounded at the first charge. When Colonel Palmer saw the overwhelming force that assaulted his command, he directed the rangers without the wall to fly; but, refusing to follow them, he paid the debt of his obstinacy with his blood. The surprise at Fort Moosa led to the failure of Oglethorpe's expedition. John Mohr MacIntosh was a prisoner, and as Oglethorpe had no officer to exchange for him, he was sent to Spain, where he was detained several years--his fate unknown to his family--and when he did return to his family it was with a broken constitution and soon to die, leaving his children to such destiny as might await them, without friends, in the wilds of America, for the one who could assist them--General Oglethorpe--was to be recalled, in preparation to meet the Highland Rising of 1745, when he, too, was doomed to suffer degradation from the duke of Cumberland, and injury to his military reputation. It was the same regiment of Spaniards that two years later was brought from Cuba to lead in all enterprises that again was destined to meet the remnant of those Highlanders, but both the scene and the result were different. It was in the light of day, and blood and slaughter, but not victory awaited them. The conduct of the eldest son of John Mohr MacIntosh is worthy of mention. He was named after his grand uncle, the celebrated Old Borlum (General William MacIntosh), who commanded a division of the Highlanders in the Rising of 1715. William was not quite fourteen years of age when his father left Darien for Florida. He wished to accompany the army, but his father refused. Determined not to be thwarted in his purpose, he overtook the army at Barrington. He was sent back the next day under an armed guard. Taking a small boat, he ferried up to Clarke's Bluff, on the south side of the Alatamaha, intending to keep in the rear until the troops had crossed the St. Mary's river. He soon fell in with seven Indians, who knew him, for Darien had become a great rendezvous for them, and were greatly attached to the Highlanders, partly on account of their wild manners, their manly sports and their costume, somewhat resembling their own. They caressed the boy, and heartily entered into his views. They followed the advancing troops and informed him of all that transpired in his father's camp, yet carefully concealing his presence among them until after the passage of the St. Mary's, where, with much triumph, led him to his father and said "that he was a young warrior and would fight; that the Great Spirit would watch over his life, for he loved young warriors." He followed his father until he saw him fall at Fort Moosa, covered with wounds, which so transfixed him with horror, that he was not aroused to action until a Spanish officer laid hold of his plaid. Light and as elastic as a steel bow, he slipped from under his grasp, and made his escape with the wreck of the corps. Those who escaped the massacre went over in a boat to Point Quartel. Some of the Chickasaw Indians, who also had escaped, met a Spaniard, cut off his head and presented it to Oglethorpe. With abhorence he rejected it, calling them barbarian dogs and bidding them begone. As might be expected, the Chickasaws were offended and deserted him. A party of Creeks brought four Spanish prisoners to Oglethorpe, who informed him that St. Augustine had been reinforced by seven hundred men and a large supply of provisions. The second day after the Fort Moosa affair, the Carolina[90] regiment deserted, the colonel leading the rout; nor did he arrest his flight until darkness overtook him, thirty miles from St. Augustine. Other circumstances operating against him, Oglethorpe commenced his retreat from Florida and reached Frederica July 10, 1740. The inhabitants of Darien continued to live in huts that were tight and warm. Prior to 1740 they had been very industrious in planting, besides being largely engaged in driving cattle for the regiment; but having engaged in the invasion of Florida, little could be done at home, where their families remained. One writer[91] declared that "the people live very comfortably, with great unanimity. I know of no other settlement in this colony more desirable, except Ebenezer." The settlement was greatly decimated on account of the number killed and taken prisoners at Fort Moosa. This gave great discontent on the part of those who already felt aggrieved against the Trust. The discontent among many of the colonists, some of whom were influential, again broke out in 1741, some of whom went to Savannah, October 7th, to consider the best method of presenting their grievances. They resolved to send an agent to England to represent their case to the proper authorities, "in order to the effectual settling and establishing of the said province, and to remove all those grievances and hardships we now labor under." The person selected as agent was Thomas Stevens, the son of the president of Georgia, who had resided there about four years, and who, it was thought, from his connection with the president, would give great weight to the proceedings. Mr. Stevens sailed for England on March 26, 1742, presented his petition to parliament, which was considered together with the answer of the Trustees; which resulted in Mr. Stevens being brought to the bar of the House of Commons, and upon his knees, before the assembled counsellors of Great Britain, was reprimanded for his conduct, and then discharged, on paying his fees. A list of the people who signed the petition and counter petitions affords a good criterion of the class represented at Darien, living there before and after the battle of Moosa. Among the complainants may be found the names of: James Campbell, Thomas Fraser, Patrick Grahame, John Grahame, John McDonald, Peter McKay, Benjamin McIntosh, John McIntosh, Daniel McKay, Farquhar McGuilvery, Daniel McDonald, Rev. John McLeod, Alexander Monro, John McIntire, Owen McLeod, Alexander Rose, Donald Stewart. It is not certain that all the above were residents of Darien. Among those who signed the petition in favor of the Trust, and denominated the body of the people, and distinctly stated to be living at Darien, are the names of: John Mackintosh Moore, John Mackintosh Lynvilge, Ronald McDonald, Hugh Morrison, John McDonald, John Maclean, John Mackintosh, son of L., John Mackintosh Bain, John McKay, Daniel Clark, first, Alexander Clarke, Donald Clark, third, Joseph Burges, Donald Clark, second, Archibald McBain, Alexander Munro, William Munro, John Cuthbert. During the autumn of 1741, Reverend John McLeod abandoned his Highland charge at Darien, went to South Carolina and settled at Edisto. In an oath taken November 12, 1741, he represents the people of Darien to be in a deplorable condition. Oglethorpe, in his letter to the Trustees,[92] evidently did not think Mr. McLeod was the man really fit for his position, for he says: "We want here some men fit for schoolmasters, one at Frederica and one at Darien, also a sedate and sober minister, one of some experience in the world and whose first heat of youth is over." The long-threatened invasion of Carolina and Georgia by the Spaniards sailed from Havana, consisting of a great fleet, among which were two half galleys, carrying one hundred and twenty men each and an eighteen-pound gun. A part of the fleet, on June 20th, was seen off the harbor of St. Simons, and the next day in Cumberland Sound. Oglethorpe dispatched two companies in three boats to the relief of Fort William, on Cumberland island, which were forced to fight their way through the fire from the Spanish galleys. Soon after thirty-two sail came to anchor off the bar, with the Spanish colors flying, and there remained five days. They landed five hundred men at Gascoin's bluff, on July 5th. Oglethorpe blew up Fort William, spiked the guns and signalled his ships to run up to Frederica, and with his land forces retired to the same place, where he arrived July 6th. The day following the enemy were within a mile of Frederica. When this news was brought to Oglethorpe he took the first horse he found and with the Highland company, having ordered sixty men of the regiment to follow, he set off on a gallop to meet the Spaniards, whom he found to be one hundred and seventy strong, including forty-five Indians. With his Indian Rangers and ten Highlanders, who outran the rest of the company, he immediately attacked and defeated the Spaniards. After pursuing them a mile, he halted his troops and posted them to advantage in the woods, leaving two companies of his regiment with the Highlanders and Indians to guard the way, and then returned to Frederica to await further movements of the enemy. Finding no immediate movement on the part of his foes, Oglethorpe, with the whole force then at Frederica, except such as were absolutely necessary to man the batteries, returned to the late field of action, and when about half way met two platoons of his troops, with the great body of his Indians, who declared they had been broken by the whole Spanish force, which assailed them in the woods; and the enemy were now in pursuit, and would soon be upon them. Notwithstanding this disheartening report, Oglethorpe continued his march, and to his great satisfaction, found that Lieutenants Southerland and MacKay, with the Highlanders alone, had defeated the enemy, consisting of six hundred men, and killed more of them than their own force numbered. At first the Spanish forces overwhelmed the colonists by their superior numbers, when the veteran troops became seized with a panic. They made a precipitate retreat, the Highlanders following reluctantly in the rear. After passing through a defile, Lieutenant MacKay communicated to his friend, Lieutenant Southerland, who commanded the rear guard, composed also of Highlanders, the feelings of his corps, and agreeing to drop behind as soon as the whole had passed the defile. They returned through the brush and took post at the two points of the crescent in the road. Four Indians remained with them. Scarcely had they concealed themselves in the woods, when the Spanish grenadier regiment, the _elite_ of their troops, advanced into the defile, where, seeing the footprints of the rapid retreat of the broken troops, and observing their right was covered by an open morass, and their left, as they supposed, by an impracticable wall of brushwood, and a border of dry white sand, they stacked their arms and sat down to partake of refreshments, believing that the contest for the day was over. Southerland and MacKay, who, from their hiding places, had anxiously watched their movements, now from either end of the line raised the Highland cap upon a sword, the signal for the work of death to begin. Immediately the Highlanders poured in upon the unsuspecting enemy a well delivered and most deadly fire. Volley succeeded volley, and the sand was soon strewed with the dead and the dying. Terror and dismay seized the Spaniards, and making no resistance attempted to fly along the marsh. A few of their officers attempted, though in vain, to re-form their broken ranks; discipline was gone; orders were unheeded; safety alone was sought; and, when, with a Highland shout of triumph, the hidden foe burst among them with levelled musket and flashing claymore, the panic stricken Spaniards fled in every direction; some to the marsh, where they mired and were taken; others along the defile, where they were met by the claymore, and still others into the thicket, where they became entangled and perished; and a few succeeded in escaping to their camp. Barba was taken, though mortally wounded. Among the killed were a captain, lieutenant, two sergeants, two drummers and one hundred and sixty privates, and a captain and nineteen men taken prisoners. This feat of arms was as brilliant as it was successful. Oglethorpe, with the two platoons, did not reach the scene of action, since called the "Bloody Marsh," until the victory was won. To show his sense of the services rendered, he promoted the brave young officers who had gained it on the very field of their valor. But he rested only for a few minutes, waiting for the marines and the reserve of the regiment to come up; and then pursued the retreating enemy to within a mile and a half of their camp. During the night the foe retreated within the ruins of the fort, and under the protection of their cannon. A few days later the Spaniards became so alarmed on the appearance of three vessels off the bar that they immediately set fire to the fort and precipitately embarked their troops, abandoning in their hurry and confusion, several cannon, a quantity of military stores, and even leaving unburied some of the men who had just died of their wounds. The massacre of Fort Moosa was more than doubly avenged, and that on the same Spanish regiment that was then victorious. On the present occasion they had set out from their camp with the determination to show no quarter. In the action William MacIntosh, now sixteen years of age, was conspicuous. No shout rose higher, and no sword waved quicker than his on that day. The tract of land which surrounded the field of action was afterwards granted to him. A brief sketch of Ensign John Stuart will not be out of place in this record and connection. During the Spanish invasion he was stationed at Fort William, and there gained an honorable reputation in holding it against the enemy. Afterwards he became the celebrated Captain Stuart and father of Sir John Stuart, the victor over General Ranier, at the battle of Maida, in Calabria. In 1757 Captain Stuart was taken prisoner at Fort Loudon, in the Cherokee country, and whose life was saved by his friend, Attakullakulla. This ancient chief had remembered Captain Stuart when he was a young Highland officer under General Oglethorpe, although years had rolled away. The Indians were now filled with revenge at the treachery of Governor Littleton, of Carolina, on account of the imprisonment and death of the chiefs of twenty towns; yet no actions of others could extinguish, in this generous and high-minded man, the friendship of other years. The dangers of that day, the thousand wiles and accidents Captain Stuart escaped from, made him renowned among the Indians, and centered on him the affections and confidence of the southern tribes. It was the same Colonel John Stuart, of the Revolutionary War, who, from Pensacola, directed at will the movements of the Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws and Choctaws, against all, save Georgia. That state suffered but little from Indian aggression during the War for Independence. Nor was that feeling extinct among the Creeks for a period of fifty years, or until they believed that the people of Oglethorpe had passed away. The year 1743 opened with fresh alarms of a new invasion, jointly of the French and Spanish. The Governor of Cuba offered to invade Georgia and Carolina, with ten thousand men, most of whom were then in Havanna. Oglethorpe, with his greatly reduced force, was left alone to bear the burden of defending Georgia. Believing that a sudden blow would enhance his prospects, he took his measures, and accordingly, on Saturday, February 26, 1743, the detachment destined for Florida, consisting of a portion of the Highlanders, rangers and regulars, appeared under arms at Frederica, and on March 9th, landed in Florida. He advanced upon St. Augustine, and used every device to decoy them into an ambush; but even failed to provoke the garrison. Having no cannon with him, he returned to Frederica, without the loss of a man. This expedition was attended with great toil, fatigue and privation, but borne cheerfully. A few slight eruptive efforts were made, but each party kept its own borders, and the slight conflicts in America were lost in the universal conflagration in Europe. The Highlanders had borne more than their share of the burdens of war, and had lost heavily. Their families had shared in their privations. The majority had remained loyal to Oglethorpe, and proved that in every emergency they could be depended on. In later years the losses were partially supplied by accessions from their countrymen. With all the advantages that Georgia offered and the inducements held out to emigrants, the growth was very slow. In 1761 the whole number of white inhabitants amounted to but sixty-one hundred. However, in 1773, or twelve years later, it had leaped to eighteen thousand white and fifteen thousand black. The reasons assigned for this increase were the great inducements held out to people to come and settle where they could get new and good lands at a moderate cost, with plenty of good range for cattle, horses and hogs, and where they would not be so pent up and confined as in the more thickly settled provinces. The Macintoshes had ever been foremost, and in the attempt to consolidate Georgia with Carolina they were prominent in their opposition to the scheme. Forty years in America had endeared the Highlanders of Darien to the fortunes of their adopted country. The children knew of none other, save as they heard it from the lips of their parents. Free in their inclinations, and with their environments it is not surprising that they should become imbued with the principles of the American Revolution. Their foremost leader, who gained imperishable renown, was Lachlan Macintosh, son of John Mor. His brother, William, also took a very active part, and made great sacrifices. At one time he was pursued beyond the Alatamaha and his negroes taken from him. To what extent the Darien Highlanders espoused the cause of Great Britain would be difficult to fathom, but in all probability to no appreciable extent. The records exhibit that there were some royalists there, although when under British sway may have been such as a matter of protection, which was not uncommon throughout the Southern States. The record is exceedingly brief. On May 20, 1780, Charles McDonald, justice of peace for St. Andrew's parish (embracing Darien), signed the address to the King. Sir James Wright, royal governor of Georgia, writing to lord George Germain, dated February 16, 1782, says: "Yesterday my Lord I Received Intelligence that two Partys of about 140 in the whole were gone over the Ogechee Ferry towards the Alatamaha River & had been in St. Andrews Parish (a Scotch settlement) & there Murdered 12 or 13 Loyal Subjects."[93] The Highlanders were among the first to take action, and had no fears of the calamities of war. The military spirit of their ancestors showed no deterioration in their constitutions. During the second week in January, 1775, a district congress was held by the inhabitants of St. Andrew's Parish (now Darien), at which a series of resolutions were passed, embodying, with great force and earnestness, the views of the freeholders of that large and flourishing district. These resolutions, six in number, expressed first, their approbation of "the unparalleled moderation, the decent, but firm and manly, conduct of the loyal and brave people of Boston and Massachusetts Bay, to preserve their liberty;" their approval of "all the resolutions of the Grand American Congress," and their hearty and "cheerful accession to the association entered into by them, as the wisest and most moderate measure that could be adopted." The second resolution condemned the closing of the land offices, to the great detriment of Colonial growth, and to the injury of the industrious poor, declaring "that all encouragement should be given to the poor of every nation by every generous American." The third, animadverted upon the ministerial mandates which prevented colonial assemblies from passing such laws as the general exigencies of the provinces required, an especial grievance, as they affirmed, "in this young colony, where our internal police is not yet well settled." The fourth condemned the practice of making colonial officers dependent for salaries on Great Britain, "thus making them independent of the people, who should support them according to their usefulness and behavior." The fifth resolution declares "our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of slavery in America," and their purpose to urge "the manumission of our slaves in this colony, upon the most safe and equitable footing for the masters and themselves." And, lastly, they thereby chose delegates to represent the parish in a provincial congress, and instruct them to urge the appointment of two delegates to the Continental Congress, to be held in Philadelphia, in May. Appended to these resolutions were the following articles of agreement or association: "Being persuaded that the salvation of the rights and liberties of America depend, under God, on the firm union of the inhabitants in its vigorous prosecution of the measures necessary for its safety, and convinced of the necessity of preventing the anarchy and confusion which attend the dissolution of the powers of government, we, the freemen, freeholders, and inhabitants of the province of Georgia, being greatly alarmed at the avowed design of the Ministry to raise a revenue in America, and shocked by the bloody scene now acting in the Massachusetts Bay, do, in the most solemn manner, resolve never to become slaves; and do associate, under all the ties of religion, honor and love of country, to adopt and endeavor to carry into execution, whatever may be recommended by the Continental Congress, or resolved upon by our Provincial Convention that shall be appointed, for the purpose of preserving our Constitution, and opposing the execution of the several arbitrary and oppressive acts of the British Parliament, until a reconciliation between Great Britain and America, on constitutional principles, which we most ardently desire, can be obtained; and that we will in all things follow the advice of our general committee, to be appointed, respecting the purposes, aforesaid, the preservation of peace and good order, and the safety of individuals and private property." Among the names appended to these resolutions there may be selected such as: Lach. McIntosh, Charles McDonald, John McIntosh, Samuel McClelland, Jno. McCulloch, William McCullough, John McClelland, Seth McCullough. On July 4, 1775, the Provincial Congress met at Tondee's Long Room, Savannah. Every parish and district was represented. St. Andrew's parish sent: Jonathan Cochran, William Jones, Peter Tarlin, Lachlan McIntosh, William McIntosh, George Threadcroft, John Wesent, Roderick McIntosh, John Witherspoon, George McIntosh, Allen Stuart, John McIntosh, Raymond Demere. The resolutions adopted by these hardy patriots were sacredly kept. Their deeds, however, partake more of personal narration, and only their heroic defense need be mentioned. The following narration should not escape special notice: "On the last of February, 1776, the Scarborough, Hinchinbroke, St. John, and two large transports, with soldiers, then lying at Tybee, came up the river and anchored at five fathoms. On March 2nd, two of the vessels sailed up the channel of Back river, The Hinchinbroke, in attempting to go round Hutchinson's island, and so come down upon the shipping from above, grounded at the west end of the island, opposite Brampton. During the night there landed from the first vessel, between two and three hundred troops, under the command of Majors Grant and Maitland, and silently marched across Hutchinson's island, and through collusion with the captains were embarked by four A.M., in the merchant vessels which lay near the store on that island. The morning of the 3rd revealing the close proximity of the enemy caused great indignation among the people. Two companies of riflemen, under Major Habersham, immediately attacked the grounded vessel and drove every man from its deck. By nine o'clock it became known that troops had been secreted on board the merchantmen, which news created intense excitement, and three hundred men, under Colonel McIntosh, were marched to Yamacraw Bluff, opposite the shipping, and there threw up a hasty breastwork, through which they trained three four-pounders to bear upon the vessels. Anxious, however, to avoid bloodshed, Lieutenant Daniel Roberts, of the St. John's Rangers, and Mr. Raymond Demere, of St. Andrew's Parish, solicited, and were permitted by the commanding officer, to go on board and demand a surrender of Rice and his people, who, with his boat's crew, had been forcibly detained. Although, on a mission of peace, no sooner had they reached the vessel, on board of which was Captain Barclay and Major Grant, than they were seized and detained as prisoners. The people on shore, after waiting a sufficient length of time, hailed the vessel, through a speaking-trumpet, and demanded the return of all who were detained on board; but receiving only insulting replies, they discharged two four-pounders at the vessel; whereupon they solicited that the people should send on board two men in whom they most confided, and with them they agreed to negotiate. Twelve of the Rangers, led by Captain Screven, of the St. John's Rangers, and Captain Baker, were immediately rowed under the stern of the vessel and there peremptorily demanded the deputies. Incensed by insulting language, Captain Baker fired a shot, which immediately drew on his boat a discharge of swivels and small arms. The batteries then opened, which was briskly answered for the space of four hours. The next step was to set fire to the vessels, the first being the Inverness, which drifted upon the brig Nelly, which was soon in flames. The officers and soldiers fled from the vessels, in the utmost precipitation across the low marshes and half-drained rice-fields, several being killed by the grape shot played upon them. As the deputies were still held prisoners, the Council of Safety, on March 6th, put under arrest all the members of the Royal Council then in Savannah, besides menacing the ships at Tybee. An exchange was not effected until the 27th." As already stated, Darien experienced some of the vicissitudes of war. On April 18, 1778, a small army, under Colonel Elbert, embarked on the galleys Washington, Lee and Bullock, and by 10 o'clock next morning, near Frederica, had captured the brigantine Hinchinbroke, the sloop Rebecca and a prize brig, which had spread terror on the coast. In 1779 the parishes of St. John, St. Andrew and St. James were erected into one county, under the name of Liberty. In March, 1780, the royal governor, Sir James Wright, attempted to re-establish the old government, and issued writs returnable May 5. Robert Baillie and James Spalding were returned from St. Andrew's parish. The settlement of Darien practically remained a pure Highland one until the close of the Revolution. The people proved themselves faithful and loyal to the best interests of the commonwealth, and equal to such exigencies as befell them. While disasters awaited them and fierce ordeals were passed through, yet fortune eventually smiled upon them. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 78: Graham's "History of United States," Vol. II, p. 179.] [Footnote 79: "Georgia Historical Collections," Vol. I, p. 58.] [Footnote 80: Oglethorpe's letter to the Trustees, Feb. 13, 1786, in "Georgia Hist. Coll.," Vol. III, p. 10.] [Footnote 81: Georgia Hist. Society, Vol. II, p. 115] [Footnote 82: _Ibid_, Vol. III, p. 114 Oglethorpe to H. Verelst, May 6, 1741.] [Footnote 83: Oglethorpe to H. Verelst, Dec. 21, 1738, Georgia Hist. Society, Vol. III p. 67.] [Footnote 84: Georgia Hist. Society, Vol. II, p. 113.] [Footnote 85: Georgia Hist. Coll. Vol. II, p. 116.] [Footnote 86: _Ibid._] [Footnote 87: Oglethorpe to the Trustees, Oct. 20, 1739. Georgia Hist. Coll., Vol. III, p. 90.] [Footnote 88: Georgia Hist. Coll., Vol. II, p. 119.] [Footnote 89: Oglethorpe to H. Verelst, Dec. 29, 1739. Georgia Hist. Coll., Vol. III, p. 96.] [Footnote 90: See Appendix, Note H.] [Footnote 91: Thomas Jones, dated Savannah, Sept. 18, 1740 Georgia Hist. Coll., Vol. I, p. 200.] [Footnote 92: Dated April 28, 1741. Georgia Hist. Coll., Vol. III, p. 113.] [Footnote 93: Georgia Hist. Coll., Vol. III, p. 370.] CHAPTER VII. CAPTAIN LAUCHLAN CAMPBELL'S NEW YORK COLONY. The fruitful soil of America, together with the prospects of a home and an independent living, was peculiarly adapted to awaken noble aspirations in the breasts of those who were interested in the welfare of that class whose condition needed a radical enlargement. Among this class of Nature's noblemen there is no name deserving of more praise than that of Lauchlan Campbell. Although his name, as well as the migration of his infant colony, has gone out of Islay ken, where he was born, yet his story has been fairly well preserved in the annals of the province of New York. It was first publicly made known by William Smith, in his "History of New York." Lauchlan Campbell was possessed of a high sense of honor and a good understanding; was active, loyal, of a military disposition, and, withal, strong philanthropic inclinations. By placing implicit confidence in the royal governors of New York, he fell a victim to their roguery, deception and heartlessness, which ultimately crushed him and left him almost penniless. The story has been set forth in the following memorial, prepared by his son: "Memorial of Lieutenant Campbell to the Lords of Trade. To the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of Trade, &c. Memorial of Lieut. Donald Campbell of the Province of New York Plantation. Humbly Showeth, That in the year 1734 Colonel Cosby being then Governor of the Province of New York by and with the advice and assent of his Council published a printed Advertisement for encouraging the Resort of Protestants from Europe to settle upon the Northern Frontier of the said Province (in the route from Fort Edward to Crown Point) promising to each family two hundred acres of unimproved land out of 100,000 acres purchased from the Indians, without any fee or expences whatsoever, except a very moderate charge for surveying & liable only to the King's Quit Rent of one shilling and nine pence farthing per hundred acres, which settlement would at that time have been of the utmost utility to the Province & these proposals were looked upon as so advantageous, that they could not fail of having a proper effect. That these Proposals in 1737, falling into the hands of Captain Lauchlin Campbell of the Island of Isla, he the same year went over to North America, and passing through the Province of Pennsilvania where he rejected many considerable offers that were made him, he proceeded to New York, where, tho' Governor Cosby was deceased, George Clarke Esqr. then Governor, assured him no part of the lands were as yet granted; importuned him & two or three persons that went over with him to go up and visit the lands, which they did, and were very kindly received and greatly caressed by the Indians. On his return to New York he received the most solemn promises that he should have a thousand acres for every family that he brought over, and that each family should have according to their number from five hundred to one hundred and fifty acres, but declined making any Grant till the Families arrived, because, according to the Constitution of that Government, the names of the settlers were to be inserted in that Grant. Captain Campbell accordingly returned to Isla, and brought from thence at a very large expense, his own Family and Thirty other Families, making in all, one hundred and fifty-three Souls. He went again to visit the lands, received all possible respect and kindness from the Government, who proposed an old Fort Anna to be repaired, to cover the new settlers from the French Indians. At the same time, the People of New York proposed to maintain the people already brought, till Captain Campbell could return and bring more, alledging that it would be for the interest of the Infant Colony to settle upon the lands in a large Body; that, covered by the Fort, and assisted by the Indians, they might be less liable to the Incursions of Enemies. That to keep up the spirit of the undertaking, Governor Clarke, by a writing bearing date the 4th day of December, 1738, declared his having promised Captain Campbell thirty thousand acres of land at Wood Creek, free of charges, except the expence of surveying & the King's Quit Rent in consideration of his having already brought over thirty families who according to their respective numbers in each family, were to have from one hundred and fifty to five hundred acres. Encouraged by this declaration, he departed in the same month for Isla, and in August, 1739, brought over Forty Families more, and under the Faith of the said promises made a third voyage, from which he returned in November, 1740, bringing with him thirteen Families the whole making eighty-three Families, composed of Four Hundred and Twenty Three Persons, all sincere and loyal Protestants, and very capable of forming a respectable Frontier for the security of the Province. But after all these perilous and expensive voyages, and tho' there wanted but Seventeen Families to complete the number for which he had undertaken, he found no longer the same countenance or protection but on the contrary it was insinuated to him that he could have no land either for himself or the people, but upon conditions in direct violation of the Faith of Government, and detrimental to the interests of those who upon his assurances had accompanied him into America. The people also were reduced to demand separate Grants for themselves, which upon large promises some of them did, yet more of them never had so much as a foot of land, and many listed themselves to join the Expedition to Cuba. That Captain Campbell having disposed of his whole Fortune in the Island of Isla, expended the far greatest part of it from his confidence in these fallacious promises found himself at length constrained to employ the little he had left in the purchase of a small farm seventy miles north of New York for the subsistence of himself and his Family consisting of three sons and three daughters. He went over again into Scotland in 1745, and having the command of a Company of the Argyleshire men, served with Reputation under his Royal Highness the Duke, against the Rebels. He went back to America in 1747 and not longer after died of a broken heart, leaving behind him the six children before mentioned of whom your Memoralist is the eldest, in very narrow and distressed circumstances." All these facts are briefly commemorated by Mr. Smith in his History of the Colony of New York, page 179, where are some severe, though just strictures on the behavior of those in power towards him and the families he brought with him, and the loss the Province sustained by such behavior towards them. "That at the Commencement of the present War, your Memoralist and both his brothers following their Father's principles in hopes of better Fortune entered into the Army & served in the Forty Second, Forty Eighth and Sixtieth Regiments of Foot during the whole War, at the close of which your Memoralist and his brother George were reduced as Lieutenants upon half pay, and their youngest Brother still continues in the service; the small Farm purchased by their father being the sole support of themselves and three sisters till they were able to provide for themselves in the manner before mentioned, and their sisters are now married & settled in the Province of New York. That after the conclusion of the Peace, your Memoralist considering the number of Families dispersed through the Province which came over with his Father, and finding in them a general disposition to settle with him on the lands originally promised them, if they could be obtained, in the month of February, 1763, petitioned Governor Monckton for the said lands but was able only to procure a Grant of ten thousand acres, (for obtaining which, he disbursed in Patent and other fees, the sum of two hundred Guineas), the people in Power alledging that land was now at a far greater value than at the time of your Memoralist's Father's coming into the Province, and even this upon the common condition of settling ten Families upon the said lands and paying a Quit Rent to the Crown. Part however of the People who had promised to settle with your Memoralist in case he had prevailed, were drawn to petition for lands to themselves, which they obtained, tho' they never could get one foot of land before, which provision of lands as your Memoralist apprehends, ought in Equity to be considered as an obligation on the Province to perform, so far as the number of those Families goes, the Conditions stipulated with his Father, as those Families never had come into & consequently could not now be remaining in the Province, if he had not persuaded them to accompany him, & been at a very large expence in transporting them thither. That there are still very many of these Families who have no land and would willingly settle with your Memoralist. That there are numbers of non commissioned Officers and Soldiers of the Regiments disbanded in North America who notwithstanding His Majesty's gracious Intentions are from many causes too long to trouble your Lordship with at present without any settlement provided for them, and that there are also many Families of loyal Protestants in the Islands and other parts of North Britain which might be induced by reasonable proposals and a certainty of their being fulfilled, to remove into the said Province, which would add greatly to the strength, security and opulence thereof, and be in all respects faithful and serviceable subjects to His Majesty. That the premisses considered, particularly the long scene of hardships to which your Memoralist's Family has been exposed, for Twenty Six years, in consideration of his own and his Brothers' services, & the perils to which they have been exposed during the long and fatiguing War, and the Prospect he still has of contributing to the settlement of His Majesty's unimproved country, your Memoralist humbly prays that Your Lordships would direct the Government of New York to grant to him the said One Hundred thousand Acres, upon his undertaking to settle One Hundred or One Hundred and Fifty Families upon the same within the space of Three years or such other Recompence or Relief as upon mature Deliberation on the Hardships and Sufferings which his Father and his Family have for so many years endured, & their merits, in respect to the Province of New York which might be incontestably proved, if it was not universally acknowledged, may in your great Wisdom be thought to deserve. And your Memoralist: &c., &c., &c.[94] May, 1764." It was the policy of the home government to settle as rapidly as possible the wild lands; not so much for the purpose of benefiting the emigrant as it was to enhance the king's exchequer. The royal governors apparently held out great inducements to the settlers, but the sequel always showed that a species of blackmail or tribute must be paid by the purchasers before the lands were granted. The governor was one thing to the higher authorities, but far different to those from whom he could reap advantage. The seeming disinterested motives may be thus illustrated: Under date of New York, July 26, 1736, George Clarke, lieutenant governor of New York, writes to the duke of Newcastle, in which he says, it was principally "To augment his Majesty's Quit rents that I projected a Scheme to settle the Mohacks Country in this Province, which I have the pleasure to hear from Ireland and Holland is like to succeed. The scheme is to give grants gratis of an hundred thousand acres of land to the first five hundred protestant familys that come from Europe in two hundred acres to a family, these being settled will draw thousands after them, for both the situation and quantity of the Land are much preferable to any in Pensilvania, the only Northern Colony to which the Europeans resort, and the Quit rents less. Governor Cosby sent home the proposals last Summer under the Seal of the Province, and under his and the Council's hands, but it did not reach Dublin till the last day of March; had it come there two months sooner I am assured by a letter which I lately received, directed to Governor Cosby, that we should have had two ships belonging to this place (then lying there) loaded with people but next year we hope to have many both from thence and Germany. When the Mohocks Country is settled we shall have nothing to fear from Canada."[95] The same, writing to the Lords of Trade, under date of New York, June 15, 1739, says: "The lands whereon the French propose to settle were purchased from Indian proprietors (who have all along been subject to and under the protection of the Crown of England) by one Godfrey Dellius and granted to him by patent under the seal of this province in the year 1696, which grant was afterwards resumed by act of Assembly whereby they became vested in the Crown; on part of these lands I proposed to settle some Scotch Highland familys who came hither last year, and they would have been now actually settled there, if the Assembly would have assisted them, for they are poor and want help; however as I have promised them lands gratis, some of them about three weeks ago went to view that part of the Country, and if they like the lands I hope they will accept my offer (if the report of the French designs do not discourage them:) depending upon the voluntary assistance of the people of Albany whose more immediate interest it is to encourage their settlement in that part of the country."[96] That Captain Campbell would have secured the lands there can be no question had he complied with Governor Clarke's demands, although said demands were contrary to the agreement. Private faith and public honor demanded the fair execution of the project, which had been so expensive to the undertaker, and would have added greatly to the benefit of the colony. The governor would not make the grant unless he should have his fees and a share of the land. The quit rent in the province of New York was fixed at two shillings six pence for every one hundred acres. The fees for a grant of a thousand acres were as follows: To the governor, $31.25; secretary of state, $10; clerk of the council, $10 to $15; receiver general, $14.37; attorney general, $7.50; making a total of about $75, besides the cost of survey. This amount does not appear to be large for the number of acres, yet it must be considered that land was plenty, but money very scarce. There were thousands of substantial men who would have found it exceedingly difficult to raise the amount in question. It is possible that Captain Campbell could not have paid this extortion even if he had been so disposed; but being high-spirited, he resolutely refused his consent. The governor, still pretending to be very anxious to aid the emigrants, recommended the legislature of the province to grant them assistance; but, as usual, the latter was at war with the governor, and refused to vote money to the Highlanders, which they suspected, with good reason, the latter would be required to pay to the colonial officers for fees. Not yet discouraged, Captain Campbell determined to exhaust every resource that justice might be done to him. His next step was to appeal to the legislature for redress, but it was in vain; then he made an application to the Board of Trade, in England, which had the power to rectify the wrong. Here he had so many difficulties to contend with that he was forced to leave the colonists to themselves, who soon after separated. But all his efforts proved abortive. The petition of Lieutenant Donald Campbell, though courteously expressed, and eminently just, was rejected. It was claimed that the orders of the English government positively forbade the granting of over a thousand acres to any one person; yet that thousand acres was denied him. The injustice accorded to Captain Campbell was more or less notorious throughout the province. It was generally felt there had been bad treatment, and there was now a disposition on the part of the colonial authorities to give some relief to his sons and daughters. Accordingly, on November 11, 1763, a grant of ten thousand acres, in the present township of Greenwich, Washington county, New York, was made to the three brothers, Donald, George and James, their three sisters and four other persons, three of whom were also named Campbell. The final success of the Campbell family in obtaining redress inspired others who had belonged to the colony to petition for a similar recompense for their hardships and losses. They succeeded in obtaining a grant of forty-seven thousand, four hundred and fifty acres, located in the present township of Argyle, and a small part of Fort Edward and Greenwich, in the same county. On March 2, 1764, Alexander McNaughton and one hundred and six others of the original Campbell emigrants and their descendants, petitioned for one thousand acres to be granted to each of them "To be laid out in a single tract between the head of South bay and Kingsbury, and reaching east towards New Hampshire and westwardly to the mountains in Warren county. The committee of the council to whom this petition was referred reported May 21, 1764, that the tract proposed be granted, which was adopted, the council specifying the amount of land each individual of the petitioners should receive, making two hundred acres the least and six hundred the most that anyone should obtain. Five men were appointed as trustees, to divide and distribute the land as directed. The same instrument incorporated the tract into a township, to be called Argyle, and should have a supervisor, treasurer, collector, two assessors, two overseers of highways, two overseers of the poor and six constables, to be elected annually by the inhabitants on the first day of May. The patent, similar to all others of that period, was subject to the following conditions: An annual quit rent of two shillings and six pence sterling on every one hundred acres, and all mines of gold and silver, and all pine trees suitable for masts for the royal navy, namely, all which were twenty-four inches from the ground, reserved to the crown."[97] The land thus granted lies in the central part of Washington county, with a broken surface in the west and great elevations and ridges in the east. The soil is rich and the whole well watered. The trustees were vested with the power to execute title deeds to such of the grantees, should they claim the lands, the first of which were issued during the winter and spring of 1764-5 by Duncan Reid, of the city of New York, _gentleman_; Peter Middleton, of same city, _physician_; Archibald Campbell, of same city, _merchant_; Alexander McNaughton,[98] of Orange county, _farmer_; and Neil Gillaspie, of Ulster county, _farmer_, of the one part, and the grantees of the other part. While the application for the grant was yet pending, the petitioners greatly exalted over their future prospects, evolved a grand scheme for the survey of the prospective lands, which should include a stately street from the banks of the Hudson river on the east through the tract, upon which each family should have a town lot, where he might not only enjoy the protection of near neighbors, but also have that companionship of which the Highlander is so particularly fond. In the rear of these town lots were to be the farms, which in time were to be occupied by tenants. The surveyors, Archibald Campbell, of Raritan, New Jersey, and Christopher Yates, of Schenectady, who began their labors June 19, 1764, were instructed to lay off the land as planned, the street to extend from east to west, twenty-four rods wide and extending through the width of the grant as near the center as practicable, and to set aside a glebe lot for the benefit of the school master and the minister. North and south of the street, and bordering on it, the surveyors laid off lots running back one hundred and eighty rods, varying in width so as to contain from twenty to sixty acres. These lots were numbered, making in all one hundred and forty-one, seventy-two being on the south side of the street, and the remainder on the north. The farms were also numbered, also making one hundred and forty-one. In the plan no allowance had been made for the rugged nature of the country, and consequently the magnificent street was located over hills whose proportions prevented its use as a public highway, while some of the lots were uninhabitable. The following is a list of the grantees, the number of the lot and its contents being set opposite the name: Lot. Name. Acres. 1. Catharine Campbell 250 2. Elizabeth Cargill 250 3. Allan McDonald 300 4. Neil Gillaspie 450 5. Mary Campbell 350 6. Duncan McKerwan 350 7. Ann McAnthony 250 8. Mary McGowne 300 9. Catherine McLean 300 10. Mary Anderson 300 11. Archibald McNeil 300 12. Dougall McAlpine 300 13. David Lindsey 250 14. Elizabeth Campbell 300 15. Ann McDuffie 350 16. Donald McDougall 300 17. Archibald McGowne 300 18. Eleanor Thompson 300 Lot. Name. Acres. 19. Duncan McDuffie 350 20. Duncan Reid 600 21. John McDuffie 250 22. Dougall McKallor 550 23. Daniel Johnson 350 24. Archibald Campbell 250 25. William Hunter 300 26. Duncan Campbell 300 27. Elizabeth Fraser 200 28. Alexander Campbell 350 Glebe lot 500 29. Daniel Clark 350 43. Elizabeth Campbell 300 44. Duncan McArthur 450 45. John Torrey 300 46. Malcolm Campbell 300 47. Florence McKenzie 200 48. John McKenzie 300 49. Jane Cargill 250 50. John McGowan 300 59. John McEwen 500 60. John McDonald 300 61. James McDonald 400 62. Mary Belton 300 72. Rachael Nevin 300 73. James Cargill 400 Lots 29, 43, 44, 50, and 62 are partly in the present limits of the township of Greenwich, and the other lots, from 29 to 73, not above enumerated, are wholly in that township and in Salem. The following lots are located north of the street: Lot. Name. Acres. 74. John Cargill 300 75. Duncan McDougall 300 76. Alexander Christie 350 77. Alex. Montgomery 600 78. Marian Campbell 250 79. John Gilchrist 300 80. Agnes McDougall 300 81. Duncan McGuire 500 82. Edward McKallor 500 83. Alexander Gilchrist 300 84. Archibald McCullom 350 85. Archibald McCore 300 86. John McCarter 350 87. Neil Shaw 600 88. Duncan Campbell 300 89. Roger McNeil 300 90. Elizabeth Ray 200 91. James Nutt 300 92. Donald McDuffie 350 93. George Campbell 300 94. Jane Widrow 300 95. John McDougall 400 96. Archibald McCarter 300 97. Charles McAllister 300 98. William Graham 300 99. Hugh McDougall 300 100. James Campbell 300 101. George McKenzie 400 102. John McCarter 400 103. Morgan McNeil 250 104. Malcolm McDuffie 550 105. Florence McVarick 300 106. Archibald McEwen 300 107. Neil McDonald 500 108. James Gillis 500 109. Archibald McDougall 450 110. Marian McEwen 200 111. Patrick McArthur 350 112. John McGowne, Jr 250 113. John Shaw, Sr 300 114. Angus Graham 300 115. Edward McCoy 300 116. Duncan Campbell, Jr. 300 117. Jenette Ferguson 250 118. Hugh McEloroy 200 119. Dougall Thompson 400 Lot. Name. Acres 120. Mary Graham 300 121. Robert McAlpine 300 122. Duncan Taylor 600 123. Elizabeth Caldwell 250 124. William Clark 350 124. William Clark 350 125. Barbara McAllister 300 126. Mary Anderson 300 127. Donald McMullin 450 130. John Shaw, Sr 300 131. Duncan Lindsey 300 132. Donald Shaw 133. John Campbell 300 Each of the foregoing had a "street lot," with a corresponding number, as before mentioned, which contained one-tenth of the area of the farm lots; that is, a lot of two hundred acres had a "street lot" of twenty acres, and so on. Ten lots comprehended between Nos. 127 and 146 are now within the township of Fort Edward. The number of these lots and the persons to whom granted were as follows, varying in area from 250 to 500 acres: Lot 128, Duncan Shaw; 129, Alex. McDougall; 134, John McArthur; 135, John McIntyre; 136, Catharine McIlfender; 137, Mary Hammel; 138, Duncan Gilchrist; 139, John McIntyre; 140, Mary McLeod; 141, David Torrey. The lots originally belonging to Argyle township, but now forming a part of Greenwich, were numbered and allotted as follows: Lot. Name. Acres. 30. Angus McDougall 300 31. Donald McIntyre 350 32. Alexander McNachten 600 33. John McCore 300 34. William Fraser 350 35. Mary Campbell 250 36. Duncan Campbell, Sr. 450 37. Neil McFadden 300 38. Mary Torry 250 39. Margaret McAllister 250 40. Robert Campbell, Jr 450 41. Catharine Shaw 250 51. Charles McArthur 350 52. Duncan McFadden 300 53. Roger Reed 300 54. John McCarter 300 65. Hugh Montgomery 300 66. Isabella Livingston 250 67. Catharine McCarter 250 68. Margaret Gilchrist 250 42. John McGuire 400 43. Elizabeth McNeil 200 44. Duncan McArthur 450 29. Daniel Clark 250 50. John McGowan, Sr 300 55. Ann Campbell 300 56. Archibald McCullom 350 57. Alexander McArthur 250 58. Alex McDonald 250 59. John McEwen 500 62. Mary Baine 300 63. Margaret Cargyle 300 64. Neil McEachern 450 69 Hannah McEwen 400 70. John Reid 450 71. Archibald Nevin 350 Many of the grantees immediately took possession of the lands alloted to them; but others never took advantage of their claims, which, for a time, were left unoccupied, and then passed into the hands of others, who generally were left in undisputed possession. This state of affairs, in connection with the large size of the lots, had the effect of retarding the growth of that district. Before the arrival of the settlers, a desperado, named Rogers, had taken possession of a part of the lands on the Batten Kill. He warned the people off, making various threats; but the Highlanders knowing their titles were perfect, disregarded the menace, and set about industriously clearing up their lands and erecting their houses. One day, when Archibald Livingston was away, his wife was forcibly carried off by Rogers, and set down outside the limits of the claim, who also proceeded to remove the furniture from the premises. He was arrested by Roger Reid, the constable, and brought before Alexander McNaughton, the justice, which constituted the first civil process ever served in that county. Rogers did not submit peaceably to be taken, but defended himself with a gun, which Joseph McCracken seized, and in his endeavor to wrest it from the hands of the ruffian, he burst the buttons from off the waist-bands of his pantaloons, which, as he did not wear suspenders, slipped over his feet. The little son of Rogers, fully taking in the situation, ran up and bit McCracken, which, however, did not cause him to desist from his purpose. Rogers was conveyed to Albany, after which all trace of him has been lost. The township of Argyle, embracing what is now both Argyle and Fort Edward, was organized in 1771. The record of the first meeting bears date April 2, 1771, and was called for the purpose of regulating laws and choosing officers. It was called by virtue of the grant in the Argyle patent. The officers elected were: supervisor, Duncan Campbell, who continued until 1781, and was then succeeded by Roger Reid; town clerk, Archibald Brown, succeeded in 1775 by Edward Patterson, who, in turn, was succeeded in 1778 by John McNeil, and he by Duncan Gilchrist, in 1780; collector, Roger Reid, succeeded in 1778 by Duncan McArthur, and the latter in 1781 by Alexander Gilchrist; assessors, Archibald Campbell and Neal Shaw; constables, John Offery, John McNiel; poor-masters, James Gilles, Archibald McNiel; road-masters, Duncan Lindsey, Archibald Campbell; fence viewers, Duncan McArthur, John Gilchrist. The following extracts from township records are not without interest: 1772.--"All men from sixteen to sixty years old to work on the roads this year. Fences must be four feet and a half high." 1776.--"Duncan Reid is to be constable for the south part of the patent and Alexander Gillis for the north part; George Kilmore and James Beatty for masters. John Johnson was chosen a justice of the peace." 1781.--"Alexander McDougall and Duncan Lindsey were elected tithing men." In order to make the laws more efficient, on March 12, 1772, the county of Charlotte was struck off from Albany, which was the actual beginning of the present county of Washington. As Charlotte county had been named for the consort of George III. and as his troops had devastated it during the Revolution, the title was not an agreeable one, so the state legislature on April 2, 1784, changed it to Washington, thus giving it the most honored appellation known in the annals of American history. For several years after 1764 the colony on the east, and in what is now Hebron township, was augmented by a number of discharged Highland soldiers, mostly of the 77th Regiment, who settled on both sides of the line of the township. It is a noticeable fact that in every case these settlers were Scotch Highlanders. They had in all probability been attracted to this spot partly by the settlement of the colony of Captain Lachlan Campbell, and partly by that of the Scotch-Irish at New Perth (Salem), which has been noted already in its proper connection. These additional settlers took up their claims, owing to a proclamation made by the king, in October, 1763, offering land in America, without fees, to all such officers and soldiers who had served on that continent, and who desired to establish their homes there. Nothing shows more clearly than this proclamation the lofty position of an officer in the British service at that time as compared with a private. A field officer received four thousand acres; a captain three thousand; a lieutenant, or other subaltern commissioned officer, two thousand; a non-commissioned officer, whether sergeant or corporal, dropped to two hundred acres, while the poor private was put off with fifty acres. Fifty acres of wild land, on the hill-sides of Washington County, was not an extravagant reward for seven years' service amidst all the dangers and horrors of French and Indian warfare. Many of these grants were sold by the soldiers to their countrymen. Their method of exchange was very simple. The corporal and private would meet by the roadside, or at a neighboring ale-house, and after greeting each other, the American land would immediately be the subject for barter. The private, who may be called Sandy, knew his fifty acres was not worth the sea-voyage, while Corporal Donald, having already two hundred, might find it profitable to emigrate, provided he could add other tracts. After the preliminaries and the haggling had been gone through with, Donald would draw out his long leather purse and count down the amount, saying: "There, mon; there's your siller." The worthy Sandy would then dive into some hidden recess of his garments and bring forth his parchment, signed in the name of the king by "Henry Moore, baronet, our captain-general and governor-in-chief, in and over our province of New York, and the lands depending thereon, in America, chancellor and vice-admiral of the same." This document would be promptly handed to the purchaser, with the declaration, "An' there's your land, corporal." Many of the soldiers never claimed their lands, which were eventually settled by squatters, some of whom remained thereon so long that they or their heirs became the lawful owners. The famous controversy concerning the "New Hampshire grants," affected the Highland settlers; but the more exciting events of the wrangle took place outside the limits of Washington county, and consequently the Highland settlement. This controversy, which was carried on with acrimonious and warlike contention, arose over New York's officials' claim to the possession of all the land north of the Massachusetts line lying west of the Connecticut river. In 1751 both the governors of New York and New Hampshire presented their respective claims to the territory in dispute to the Lords of Trade in London. The matter was finally adjusted in 1782, by New York yielding her claim. In 1771 there were riots near the southern boundary of Hebron township, which commenced by the forcible expulsion of Donald McIntire and others from their lands, perpetrated by Robert Cochran and his associates. On October 29th, same year, another serious riot took place. A warrant was issued for the offenders by Alexander McNaughton, justice of the peace, residing in Argyle. Charles Hutchison, formerly a corporal in Montgomery's Highlanders, testified that Ethan Allen (afterwards famous), and eight others, on the above date, came to his residence, situated four miles north of New Perth, and began to demolish it. Hutchison requested them to stop, but they declared that they would make a burnt offering to the gods of this world by burning the logs of that house. Allen and another man held clubs over Hutchison's head, ordered him to leave the locality, and declared that, in case he returned, he should be worse treated. Eight or nine other families were driven from their homes, in that locality, at the same time, all of whom fled to New Perth, where they were hospitably received. The lands held by these exiled families had been wholly improved by themselves. They were driven out by Allen and his associates because they were determined that no one should build under a New York title east of the line they had established as the western boundary. Bold Ethan Allen was neither to be arrested nor intimidated by a constable's warrant. Governor Tryon of New York offered twenty pounds reward for the arrest of the rioters, which was as inefficient as esquire McNaughton's warrant. The county of Washington was largely settled by people from the New England states. The breaking out of the Revolutionary War found these people loyal to the cause of the patriots. The Highland settlements were somewhat divided, but the greater part allied themselves with the cause of their adopted country. Those who espoused the cause of the king, on account of the atrocities committed by the Indians, were forced to flee, and never returned save in marauding bands. There were a few, however, who kept very quiet, and were allowed to remain unmolested. There were no distinctive Highland companies either in the British or Continental service from this settlement. A company of royalists was secretly formed at Fort Edwards, under David Jones (remembered only as being the betrothed of the lovely but unfortunate Jane McCrea), and these joined the British forces. There were five companies from the county that formed the regiment under Colonel Williams, one of which was commanded by Captain Charles Hutchison, the Highland corporal whom Ethan Allen had mobbed in 1771. In this company of fifty-two men it may be reasonably supposed that the greater number were the sons of the emigrants of Captain Lauchlan Campbell. The committee of Charlotte county, in September 21, 1775, recommended to the Provincial Congress, that the following named persons, living in Argyle, should be thus commissioned: Alexander Campbell, captain; Samuel Pain, first lieutenant; Peter Gilchrist, second lieutenant; and John McDougall, ensign. Captain Joseph McCracken, on the arrival of Burgoyne, built a fort at New Perth, which was finished on July 26th, and called Salem Fort. Donald, son of Captain Lauchlan Campbell, espoused the cause of the people, but his two brothers sided with the British. Soon after all these passed out of the district, and their whereabouts became unknown. The bitter feelings engendered by the war was also felt in the Highland settlement, as may be instanced in the following circumstance preserved by S.D.W. Bloodgood:[99] "When Burgoyne found that his boats were not safe, and were in fact much nearer the main body of our army than his own, it became necessary to land his provisions, of which he had already been short for many weeks, in order to prevent his being actually starved into submission. This was done under a heavy fire from our troops. On one of these occasions a person by name of Mr.----, well known at Salem, and a foreigner by birth, and who had at the very time a son in the British army, crossed the river at De Ruyter's, with a person by name of McNeil; they went in a canoe, and arriving opposite to the place intended, crossed over to the western bank, on which a redoubt called Fort Lawrence had been placed. They crawled up the bank with their arms in their hands, and peeping over the upper edge, they saw a man in a blanket coat loading a cart. They instantly raised their guns to fire, an action more savage than commendable. At the moment the man turned so as to be more plainly seen, when old M---- said to his companion, 'Now that's my own son Hughy; but I'm dom'd for a' that if I sill not gie him a shot,' He then actually fired at his own son, as the person really proved to be, but happily without effect. Having heard the noise made by their conversation and the cocking of the pieces, which the nearness of his position rendered perfectly practicable, he ran round the cart, and the ball lodged in the felly of the wheel. The report drew the attention of the neighboring guards, and the two marauders were driven from their lurking place. While retreating with all possible speed, McNeil was wounded in the shoulder, and, if alive, carries the wound about with him to this day. Had the ball struck the old Scotchman, it is questionable whether any one would have considered it more than even handed justice commending the chalice to his own lips." A map of Washington County would show that it was on the war path that led to some terrible conflicts related in American history. Occupying a part of the territory between the Hudson and the northern lakes, it had borne the feet of warlike Hurons, Iroquois, Canadians, New Yorkers, New Englanders, French, English, Continentals and Hessians, who proceeded in their mission of destruction and vengeance. As the district occupied by the Highlanders was close to the line of Burgoyne's march, it experienced the realities of war and the tomahawk of the merciless savage. How terrible was the work of the ruthless savage, and how shocking the fate of those in his pathway, has been graphically related by Arthur Reid, a native of the township of Argyle, who received the account from an aunt, who was fully cognizant of all the facts. The following is a condensed account: During the latter part of the summer of 1777, a scouting party of Indians, consisting of eight, received either a real or supposed injury from some white persons at New Perth (now Salem), for which they sought revenge. While prowling around the temporary fort, they were observed and fired upon, and one of their number killed. In the presence of a prisoner, a white man,[100] the remaining seven declared their purpose to sacrifice the first white family that should come in their way. This party belonged to a large body of Indians which had been assembled by General Burgoyne, the British commander, then encamped not far distant in a northerly direction from Crown Point. In order to inspire the Indians with courage General Burgoyne considered it expedient, in compliance with their custom, to give them a war-feast, at which they indulged in the most extravagant manoeuvres, gesticulations, and exulting vociferations, such as lying in ambush, and displaying their rude armored devices, and dancing, and whooping, and screaming, and brandishing their tomahawks and scalping knives. The particular band, above mentioned, was in command of an Iroquois chief, who, from his bloodthirsty nature, was called Le Loup, the wolf,--bold, fiercely revengeful, and well adapted to lead a party bent on committing atrocities. Le Loup and his band left New Perth _en route_ to the place where the van of Burgoyne's army was encamped. The family of Duncan McArthur, consisting of himself, wife and four children, lived on the direct route. Approaching the clearing upon which the dwelling stood, the Indians halted in order to make preparations for their fiendish design. Every precaution was taken, even to enhancing their naturally ferocious appearance by painting their faces, necks and shoulders with a thick coat of vermilion. The party next moved forward with stealthy steps to the very edge of the forest, where again they halted in order to mature the final plan of attack. Fortunately for the McArthur family, on that day, two neighbors had come for the purpose of assisting in the breaking of a horse, and, when the Indians saw them, and also the three buildings, which they mistook for residences, they became disconcerted. They decided as there were three men present, and the same number of houses, there must also be three families. The Indians withdrew exasperated, but none the less determined to seek vengeance. With elastic step, and in single file they pressed forward, and an hour later came to another clearing, in the midst of which stood a dwelling, occupied by the family of John Allen, consisting of five persons, viz., himself and wife and three children. Temporarily with them at the time were Mrs. Allen's sister, two negroes and a negress. John Allen was notoriously in sympathy with the purposes of the British king. When the Indians stealthily crept to the edge of the clearing they observed the white men busily engaged reaping the wheat harvest. They decided to wait until the reapers retired for dinner. Their white prisoner begged to be spared from witnessing the scene about to be enacted. This request was finally granted, and one of the Indians remained with him as a guard, while the others went forward to execute their purpose. When the family had become seated at the table the Indians burst upon them with a fearful yell. When the neighbors came they found the body of John Allen a few rods from the house. Apparently he had escaped through a back door, but had been overtaken and shot down. Nearer the house, but in the same direction, were the bodies of Mrs. Allen, her sister, and the youngest child, all tomahawked and scalped. The other two children were found hidden in a bed, but also tomahawked and scalped. One of the negroes was found in the doorway, his body gashed and mutilated in a horrible manner. From the wounds inflicted on his body it was thought he had made a desperate resistance. The position of the remaining two has not been distinctly recollected. George Kilmore, father of Mrs. Allen and owner of the negroes, who lived three miles distant, becoming anxious on account of the prolonged absence of his daughter and servants, on the Sunday following, sent a negro boy on an errand of inquiry. As the boy approached the house, the keen-scented horse, which he was riding, stopped and refused to go farther. After much difficulty he was urged forward until his rider got a view of the awful scene. The news brought by the boy spread rapidly, and the terror-stricken families fled to various points for protection, many of whom went to Fort Edward. After Burgoyne had been hemmed in, the families cautiously returned to their former homes. From Friday afternoon, July 25th, until Sunday morning following, the whereabouts of Le Loup and his band cannot be determined. But on that morning they made their appearance on the brow of the hill north of Fort Edward, and then and there a shocking tragedy was enacted, which thoroughly aroused the people, and formed quite an element in the overthrow and surrender of Burgoyne's army. It was the massacre of Miss Jane McCrea, a lovely, amiable and intelligent lady. This tragedy at once drew the attention of all America. She fell under the blow of the savage Le Loup, and the next instant he flung down his gun, seized her long, luxuriant hair with one hand, with the other passed the scalping knife around nearly the whole head, and, with a yell of triumph, tore the beautiful but ghastly trophy from his victim's head. It is a work of superogation to say that the Highland settlers of Argyle were strongly imbued with religious sentiments. That question has already been fully commented on. The colony early manifested its disposition to build churches where they might worship. The first of these houses were humble in their pretensions, but fully in keeping with a pioneer settlement in the wilderness. Their faith was the same as that promulgated by the Scotch-Irish in the adjoining neighborhood, and were visited by the pastor of the older settlement. They do not appear to have sustained a regular pastor until after the Peace of 1783. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 94: "Documentary and Colonial History of New York," Vol. VII, p.630. Should 1763 be read for 1764?] [Footnote 95: _Ibid_, p.72.] [Footnote 96: _Ibid_, Vol. VI, p.145.] [Footnote 97: On record in library at Albany in "Patents," Vol. IV, pp. 8-17.] [Footnote 98: See Appendix, Note I.] [Footnote 99: The Sexagenary, p. 110.] [Footnote 100: Samuel Standish, who was present at the time of the murder of Jane McCrea, and afterwards gave the account to Jared Sparks, who records it in his "Life of Arnold." See "Library of American Biography," Vol. III, Chap. VII.] CHAPTER VIII. HIGHLAND SETTLEMENT ON THE MOHAWK. Sir William Johnson thoroughly gained the good graces of the Iroquois Indians, and by the part he took against the French at Crown Point and Lake George, in 1755, added to his reputation at home and abroad. For his services to the Crown he was made a baronet and voted £5000 by the British parliament, besides being paid £600 per annum as Indian agent, which he retained until his death in 1774. He also received a grant of one hundred thousand acres of land north of the Mohawk. In 1743 he built Fort Johnson, a stone dwelling, on the same side of the river, in what is now Montgomery county. A few miles farther north, in 1764, he built Johnson Hall, a wooden structure, and there entertained his Indian bands and white tenants, with rude magnificence, surrounded by his mistresses, both white and red. He had dreams of feudal power, and set about to realize it. The land granted to him by the king, he had previously secured from the Mohawks, over whom he had gained an influence greater than that ever possessed heretofore or since by a white man over an Indian tribe. The tract of land thus gained was long known as "Kingsland," or the "Royal Grant." The king had bound Sir William to him by a feudal tenure of a yearly rental of two shillings and six pence for each and every one hundred acres. In the same manner Sir William bound to himself his tenants to whom he granted leases. In order to secure the greatest obedience he deemed it necessary to secure such tenants as differed from the people near him in manners, language, and religion, and that class trained to whom the strictest personal dependence was perfectly familiar. In all this he was highly favored. He turned his eyes to the Highlands of Scotland, and without trouble, owing to the dissatisfied condition of the people and their desire to emigrate, he secured as many colonists as he desired, all of whom were of the Roman Catholic faith. The agents having secured the requisite number, embarked, during the month of August, 1773, for America. A journal of the period states that "three gentlemen of the name of Macdonell, with their families, and 400 Highlanders from the counties (!) of Glengarry, Glenmorison, Urquhart, and Strathglass lately embarked for America, having obtained a grant of land in Albany,"[101] This extract appears to have been copied from the _Courant_ of August 28th, which stated they had "lately embarked for America." This would place their arrival on the Mohawk some time during the latter part of the following September, or first of October. The three gentlemen above referred to were Macdonell of Aberchalder, Leek, and Collachie, and also another, Macdonell of Scotas. Their fortunes had been shattered in "the 45," and in order to mend them were willing to settle in America. They made their homes in what was then Tryon county, about thirty miles from Albany, then called Kingsborough, where now is the thriving town of Gloversville. To certain families tracts were allotted varying from one hundred to five hundred acres, all subjected to the feudal system. Having reached the places assigned them the Highlanders first felled the trees and made their rude huts of logs. Then the forest was cleared and the crops planted amid the stumps. The country was rough, but the people did not murmur. Their wants were few and simple. The grain they reaped was carried on horseback along Indian trails to the landlord's mills. Their women became accustomed to severe outdoor employment, but they possessed an indomitable spirit, and bore their hardships bravely, as became their race. The quiet life of the people promised to become permanent. They became deeply attached to the interests of Sir William Johnson, who, by consummate tact soon gained a mastery over them. He would have them assemble at Johnson Hall that they might make merry; encourage them in Highland games, and invite them to Indian councils. Their methods of farming were improved under his supervision; superior breeds of stock sought for, and fruit trees planted. But Sir William, in reality, was not with them long; for, in the autumn of 1773, he visited England, returning in the succeeding spring, and dying suddenly at Johnson Hall on June 24th, following. Troubles were rising beneath all the peaceful circumstances enjoyed by the Highlanders, destined to become severe and oppressive under the attitude of Johnson's son and son-in-law who were men of far less ability and tact than their father. The spirit of democracy penetrated the valley of the Mohawk, and open threats of opposition began to be heard. The Acts of the Albany Congress of 1774 opened the eyes of the people to the possibilities of strength by united efforts. Just as the spirit of independence reached bold utterance Sir William died. He was succeeded in his title, and a part of his estates by his son John. The dreams of Sir William vanished, and his plans failed in the hands of his weak, arrogant, degenerate son. Sir John hesitated, temporized, broke his parole, fled to Canada, returned to ravage the lands of his countrymen, and ended by being driven across the border. The death of Sir William made Sir John commandant of the militia of the Province of New York. Colonel Guy Johnson became superintendent of Indian affairs, with Colonel Daniel Claus, Sir William's son-in-law, for assistant. The notorious Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant) became secretary to Guy Johnson. Nothing but evil could be predicated of such a combination; and Sir John was not slow to take advantage of his position, when the war cloud was ready to burst. As early as March 16, 1775, decisive action was taken, when the grand jury, judges, justices, and others of Tryon county, to the number of thirty-three, among whom was Sir John, signed a document, expressive of their disapprobation of the act of the people of Boston for the "outrageous and unjustifiable act on the private property of the India Company," and of their resolution "to bear faith and true allegiance to their lawful Sovereign King George the Third."[102] It is a noticeable feature that not one of the names of Highlanders appears on the paper. This would indicate that they were not a factor in the civil government of the county. On May 18, 1775, the Committee of Palatine District, Tryon county, addressed the Albany Committee of Safety, in which they affirm: "This County has, for a series of years, been ruled by one family, the different branches of which are still strenuous in dissuading people from coming into Congressional measures, and even have, last week, at a numerous meeting of the Mohawk District, appeared with all their dependants armed to oppose the people considering of their grievances; their number being so large, and the people unarmed, struck terror into most of them, and they dispersed. We are informed that Johnson-Hall is fortifying by placing a parcel of swivel-guns round the same, and that Colonel Johnson has had parts of his regiment of Militia under arms yesterday, no doubt with a design to prevent the friends of liberty from publishing their attachment to the cause to the world. Besides which we are told that about one hundred and fifty Highlanders, (Roman Catholicks) in and about Johnstown, are armed and ready to march upon the like occasion."[103] In order to allay the feelings engendered against them Guy Johnson, on May 18th, wrote to the Committee of Schenectady declaring "my duty is to promote peace,"[104] and on the 20th to the Magistrates of Palatine, making the covert threat "that if the Indians find their council fire disturbed, and their superintendent insulted, they will take a dreadful revenge."[105] The last letter thoroughly aroused the Committee of Tryon county, and on the 21st stated, among other things: "That Colonel Johnson's conduct in raising fortifications round his house, keeping a number of Indians and armed men constantly about him, and stopping and searching travellers upon the King's highway, and stopping our communication with Albany, is very alarming to this County, and is highly arbitrary, illegal, oppressive, and unwarrantable; and confirms us in our fears, that his design is to keep us in awe, and oblige us to submit to a state of Slavery."[106] On the 23rd the Albany Committee warned Guy Johnson that his interference with the rights of travellers would no longer be tolerated.[107] So flagrant had been the conduct of the Johnsons that a sub-committee of the city and county of Albany addressed a communication on the subject to the Provincial Congress of New York.[108] On June 2nd the Tryon County Committee addressed Guy Johnson, in which they affirm "it is no more our duty than inclination to protect you in the discharge of your province," but will not "pass over in silence the interruption which the people of the Mohawk District met in their meeting," "and the inhuman treatment of a man whose only crime was being faithful to his employers."[109] The tension became still more strained between the Johnsons and patriots during the summer. The Dutch and German population was chiefly in sympathy with the cause of America, as were the people generally, in that region, who did not come under the direct influence of the Johnsons. The inhabitants deposed Alexander White, the Sheriff of Tryon county, who had, from the first, made himself obnoxious. The first shot, in the war west of the Hudson, was fired by Alexander White. On some trifling pretext he arrested a patriot by the name of John Fonda, and committed him to prison. His friends, to the number of fifty, went to the jail and released him; and from the prison they proceeded to the sheriff's lodgings and demanded his surrender. He discharged a pistol at the leader, but without effect. Immediately some forty muskets were discharged at the sheriff, with the effect only to cause a slight wound in the breast. The doors of the house were broken open, and just then Sir John Johnson fired a gun at the hall, which was the signal for his retainers and Highland partisans to rally in arms. As they could muster a force of five hundred men in a short time, the party deemed it prudent to disperse.[110] The royalists became more open and bolder in their course, throwing every impediment in the way of the Safety Committee of Tryon county, and causing embarrassments in every way their ingenuity could devise. They called public meetings themselves, as well as to interfere with those of their neighbors; all of which caused mutual exasperation, and the engendering of hostile feelings between friends, who now ranged themselves with the opposing parties. On October 26th the Tryon County Committee submitted a series of questions for Sir John Johnson to answer.[111] These questions, with Sir John's answers, were embodied by the Committee in a letter to the Provincial Congress of New York, under date of October 28th, as follows: "As we found our duty and particular reasons to inquire or rather desire Sir John Johnson's absolute opinion and intention of the three following articles, viz: 1. Whether he would allow that his tenants may form themselves into Companies, according to the regulations of our Continental Congress, to the defence of our Country's cause; 2. Whether he would be willing himself also to assist personally in the same purpose; 3. Whether he pretendeth a prerogative to our County Court-House and Jail, and would hinder or interrupt the Committee of our County to make use of the said publick houses for our want and service in our common cause; We have, therefore, from our meeting held yesterday, sent three members of our Committee with the aforementioned questions contained in a letter to him directed, and received of Sir John, thereupon, the following answer: 1. That he thinks our requests very unreasonable, as he never had denied the use of either Court-House or Jail to anybody, nor would yet deny it for the use which these houses have been built for; but he looks upon the Court-House and Jail at Johnstown to be his property till he is paid seven hundred Pounds--which being out of his pocket for the building of the same. 2. In regard of embodying his tenants into Companies, he never did forbid them, neither should do it, as they may use their pleasure; but we might save ourselves that trouble, he being sure they would not. 3. Concerning himself he declared, that before he would sign any association, or would lift his hand up against his King, he would rather suffer that his head shall be cut off. Further, he replied, that if we would make any unlawful use of the Jail, he would oppose it; and also mentions that there have many unfair means been used for signing the Association, and uniting the people; for he was informed by credible gentlemen in New-York, that they were obliged to unite, otherwise they could not live there. And that he was also informed, by good authority, that likewise two-thirds of the Canajoharie and German Flatts people have been forced to sign; and, by his opinion, the Boston people are open rebels, and the other Colonies have joined them. Our Deputies replied to his expressions of forcing the people to sign in our County; that his authority spared the truth, and it appears by itself rediculous that one-third should have forced two-thirds to sign. On the contrary, they would prove that it was offered to any one, after signing, that the regretters could any time have their names crossed, upon their requests. We thought proper to refer these particular inimical declarations to your House, and would be very glad to get your opinion and advice, for our further directions. Please, also, to remember what we mentioned to you in our former letters, of the inimical and provoking behaviour of the tenants of said Sir John, which they still continue, under the authority of said Sir John."[112] The attitude of Sir John had become such that the Continental Congress deemed it best, on December 30th to order General Schuyler "to take the most speedy and effective measures for securing the said Arms and Military Stores, and for disarming the said Tories, and apprehending their chiefs."[113] The action of Congress was none too hasty; for in a letter from Governor William Tryon of New York to the earl of Dartmouth, under date of January 5, 1776, he encloses the following addressed to himself: "Sir: I hope the occasion and intention of this letter will plead my excuse for the liberty I take in introducing to your Excellency the bearer hereof Captain Allen McDonell who will inform you of many particulars that cannot at this time with safety be committed to writing. The distracted & convulsed State this unhappy country is now worked up to, and the situation that I am in here, together with the many Obligations our family owe to the best of Sovereigns induces me to fall upon a plan that may I hope be of service to my country, the propriety of which I entirely submit to Your Excellency's better judgment, depending on that friendship which you have been pleased to honour me with for your advice on and Representation to his Majesty of what we propose. Having consulted with all my friends in this quarter, among whom are many old and good Officers, most of whom have a good deal of interests in their respective neighborhoods, and have now a great number of men ready to compleat the plan--We must however not think of stirring till we have a support, & supply of money, necessaries to enable us to carry our design into execution, all of which Mr. McDonell who will inform you of everything that has been done in Canada that has come to our knowledge. As I find by the papers you are soon to sail for England I despair of having the pleasure to pay my respect to you but most sincerely wish you an Agreeable Voyage and a happy sight of Your family & friends. I am. Your Excellency's most obedient humble Servant, John Johnson."[114] General Schuyler immediately took active steps to carry out the orders of Congress, and on January 23, 1776, made a very lengthy and detailed report to that body.[115] Although he had no troops to carry into execution the orders of Congress, he asked for seven hundred militia, yet by the time he reached Caughnawaga, there were nearly three thousand men, including the Tryon county militia. Arriving at Schenectady, he addressed, on January 16th, a letter to Sir John Johnson, requesting him to meet him on the next day, promising safe conduct for him and such person as might attend him. They met at the time appointed sixteen miles beyond Schenectady, Sir John being accompanied by some of the leading Highlanders and two or three others, to whom General Schuyler delivered his terms. After some difficulty, in which the Mohawk Indians figured as peacemakers, Sir John Johnson and Allan McDonell (Collachie) signed a paper agreeing "upon his word and honor immediately deliver up all cannon, arms, and other military stores, of what kind soever, which may be in his own possession," or that he may have delivered to others, or that he knows to be concealed; that "having given his parole of honour not to take up arms against America," "he consents not to go to the westward of the German-Flats and Kingsland (Highlanders') District," but to every other part to the southward he expects the privilege of going; agreed that the Highlanders shall, "without any kind of exception, immediately deliver up all arms in their possession, of what kind soever," and from among them any six prisoners may be taken, but the same must be maintained agreeable to their respective rank. [Illustration: Johnson Hall.] On Friday the 19th General Schulyer marched to Johnstown, and in the afternoon the arms and military stores in Sir John's possession were delivered up. On the next day, at noon, General Schuyler drew his men up in the street, "and the Highlanders, between two and three hundred, marched to the front, where they grounded their arms;" when they were dismissed "with an exhortation, pointing out the only conduct which could insure them protection." On the 21st, at Cagnuage, General Schuyler wrote to Sir John as follows: "Although it is a well known fact that all the Scotch (Highlanders) people that yesterday surrendered arms, had not broadswords when they came to the country, yet many of them had, and most of them were possessed of dirks; and as none have been given up of either, I will charitably believe that it was rather inattention than a wilful omission. Whether it was the former or the latter must be ascertained by their immediate compliance with that part of the treaty which requires that all arms, of what kind soever, shall be delivered up. After having been informed by you, at our first interview, that the Scotch people meant to defend themselves, I was not a little surprised that no ammunition was delivered up, and that you had none to furnish them with. These observations were immediately made by others as well as me. I was too apprehensive of the consequences which might have been fatal to those people, to take notice of it on the spot. I shall, however, expect an eclaircissement on this subject, and beg that you and Mr. McDonell will give it me as soon as may be." Governor Tryon reported to the earl of Dartmouth, February 7th, that General Schuyler "marched to Johnson Hall the 24th of last month, where Sr John had mustered near Six hundred men, from his Tenants and neighbours, the majority highlanders, after disarming them and taking four pieces of artillery, ammunition and many Prisoners, with 360 Guineas from Sr John's Desk, they compelled him to enter into a Bond in 1600 pound Sterling not to aid the King's Service, or to remove within a limited district from his house."[116] The six of the chiefs of the Highland clan of the McDonells made prisoners were, Allan McDonell, sen. (Collachie), Allan McDonell, Jur., Alexander McDonell, Ronald McDonell, Archibald McDonell, and John McDonell, all of whom were sent to Reading, Pennsylvania, with their three servants, and later to Lancaster.[117] Had Sir John obeyed his parole, it would have saved him his vast estates, the Highlanders their homes, the effusion of blood, and the savage cruelty which his leadership engendered. Being incapable of forecasting the future, he broke his parole of honor, plunged headlong into the conflict, and dragged his followers into the horrors of war. General Schuyler wrote him, March 12, 1776, stating that the evidence had been placed in his hands that he had been exciting the Indians to hostility, and promising to defer taking steps until a more minute inquiry could be made he begged Sir John "to be present when it was made," which would be on the following Monday. Sir John's actions were such that it became necessary to use stringent measures. General Schuyler, on May 14th, issued his instructions to Colonel Elias Dayton, who was to proceed to Johnstown, "and give notice to the Highlanders, who live in the vicinity of the town, to repair to it; and when any number are collected there, you will send off their baggage, infirm women and children, in wagons." Sir John was to be taken prisoner, carefully guarded and brought to Albany, but "he is by no means to experience the least ill-treatment in his own person, or those of his family."[118] General Schuyler had previously written (May 10th) to Sir John intimating that he had "acted contrary to the sacred engagements you lay under to me, and through me to the publick," and have "ordered you a close prisoner, and sent down to Albany."[119] The reason assigned for the removal of the Highlanders as stated by General Schuyler to Sir John was that "the elder Mr. McDonald (Allan of Collachie), a chief of that part of the clan of his name now in Tryon County, has applied to Congress that those people with their families may be moved from thence and subsisted."[120] To this Sir John replied as follows: "Johnson Hall, May 18, 1776. Sir: On my return from Fort Hunter yesterday, I received your letter by express acquainting me that the elder Mr. McDonald had desired to have all the clan of his name in the County of Tryon, removed and subsisted. I know none of that clan but such as are my tenants, and have been, for near two years supported by me with every necessary, by which means they have contracted a debt of near two thousand pounds, which they are in a likely way to discharge, if left in peace. As they are under no obligations to Mr. McDonald, they refuse to comply with his extraordinary request; therefore beg there may be no troops sent to conduct them to Albany, otherwise they will look upon it as a total breach of the treaty agreed to at Johnstown. Mrs. McDonald showed me a letter from her husband, written since he applied to the Congress for leave to return to their families, in which he mentions that he was told by the Congress that it depended entirely upon you; he then desired that their families might be brought down to them, but never mentioned anything with regard to moving my tenants from hence, as matters he had no right to treat of. Mrs. McDonald requested that I would inform you that neither herself nor any of the other families would choose to go down. I am, sir, your very humble servant, John Johnson."[121] Colonel Dayton arrived at Johnstown May 19th, and as he says, in his report to General John Sullivan, he immediately sent "a letter to Sir John Johnson, informing him that I had arrived with a body of troops to guard the Highlanders to Albany, and desired that he would fix a time for their assembling. When these gentlemen came to Johnson Hall they were informed by Lady Johnson that Sir John Johnson had received General Schuyler's letter by the express; that he had consulted the Highlanders upon the contents, and that they had unanimously resolved not to deliver themselves as prisoners, but to go another way, and that Sir John Johnson had determined to go with them. She added that, that if they were pursued they were determined to make an opposition, and had it in their power, in some measure."[122] The approach of Colonel Dayton's command caused great commotion among the inhabitants of Johnstown and vicinity. Sir John determined to decamp, take with him as many followers as possible, and travel through the woods to Canada. Lieutenant James Gray, of the 42nd Highlanders, helped to raise the faithful bodyguard, and all having assembled at the house of Allen McDonell of Collachie started through the woods. The party consisted of three Indians from an adjacent village to serve as guides, one hundred and thirty Highlanders, and one hundred and twenty others.[123] The appearance of Colonel Dayton was more sudden than Sir John anticipated. Having but a brief period for their preparation, the party was but illy prepared for their flight. He did not know whether or not the royalists were in possession of Lake Champlain, therefore the fugitives did not dare to venture on that route to Montreal; so they were obliged to strike deeper into the forests between the headwaters of the Hudson and the St. Lawrence. Their provisions soon were exhausted; their feet soon became sore from the rough travelling; and several were left in the wilderness to be picked up and brought in by the Indians who were afterwards sent out for that purpose. After nineteen days of great hardships the party arrived in Montreal in a pitiable condition, having endured as much suffering as seemed possible for human nature to undergo. Sir John Johnson and his Highlanders, unwittingly, paid the Highest possible compliment to the kindness and good intentions of the patriots, when they deserted their families and left them to face the foe. When the flight was brought to the attention of General Schuyler, he wrote to Colonel Dayton, May 27, in which he says: "I am favored with a letter from Mr. Caldwell, in which he suggests the propriety of suffering such Highlanders to remain at their habitations as have not fled. I enter fully into his idea; but prudence dictates that this should be done under certain restrictions. These people have been taught to consider us in politicks in the same light that Papists consider Protestants in a religious relation, viz: that no faith is to be kept with either. I do not, therefore, think it prudent to suffer any of the men to remain, unless a competent number of hostages are given, at least five out of a hundred, on condition of being put to death if those that remain should take up arms, or in any wise assist the enemies of our country. A small body of troops * * may keep them in awe; but if an equal body of the enemy should appear, the balance as to numbers, by the junction of those left, would be against us. I am, however, so well aware of the absurdity of judging with precision in these matters at the distance we are from one another, that prudence obliges me to leave these matters to your judgment, to act as circumstances may occur."[124] Lady Johnson, wife of Sir John, was taken to Albany and there held as a hostage until the following December when she was permitted to go to New York, then in the hands of the British. Nothing is related of any of the Highlanders being taken at that time to Albany, but appear to have been left in peaceable possession of their lands. As might have been, and perhaps was, anticipated, the Highland settlement became the source of information and the base of supplies for the enemy. Spies and messengers came and went, finding there a welcome reception. The trail leading from there and along the Sacandaga and through the Adirondack woods, soon became a beaten path from its constant use. The Highland women gave unstintingly of their supplies, and opened their houses as places of retreat. Here were planned the swift attacks upon the unwary settlers farther to the south and west. Agents of the king were active everywhere, and the Highland homes became one of the resting places for refugees on their way to Canada. This state of affairs could not be concealed from the Americans, who, none too soon, came to view the whole neighborhood as a nest of treason. Military force could not be employed against women and children (for from time to time nearly all the men had left), but they could be removed where they would do but little harm. General Schuyler discussed the matter with General Herkimer and the Tryon County Committee, when it was decided to remove of those who remained "to the number of four hundred." A movement of this description could not be kept a secret, especially when the troops were put in motion. In March, 1777, General Schuyler had permitted both Alexander and John MacDonald to visit their families. Taking the alarm, on the approach of the troops, in May, they ran off to Canada, taking with them the residue of the Highlanders, together with a few of the German neighbors. The journey was a very long and tedious one, and very painful for the aged, the women, and the children. They were used to hardships and bore their sufferings without complaint. It was an exodus of a people, whose very existence was almost forgotten, and on the very lands they cleared and cultivated there is not a single tradition concerning them. From papers still in existence, preserved in Series B, Vol. 158, p. 351, of the Haldeman Papers, it would appear that some of the families, previous to the exodus, had been secured, as noted in the two following petitions, both written in either 1779 or 1780, date not given although first is simply dated "27th July," and second endorsed "27th July": "To His Excellency General Haldimand, General and Commander in Chief of all His Majesty's Forces in Canada and the Frontiers thereof, The memorial of John and Alexander Macdonell, Captains in the King's Royal Regiment of New York, humbly sheweth, That your Memorialist, John Macdonell's, family are at present detained by the rebels in the County of Tryon, within the Province of New York, destitute of every support but such as they may receive from the few friends to Government in said quarters, in which situation they have been since 1777. And your Memorialist, Alexander Macdonell, on behalf of his brother, Captain Allan Macdonell, of the Eighty-Fourth Regiment: that the family of his said brother have been detained by the Rebels in and about Albany since the year 1775, and that unless it was for the assistance they have met with from Mr. James Ellice, of Schenectady, merchant, they must have perished. Your Memorialists therefore humbly pray Your Excellency will be graciously pleased to take the distressed situation of said families into consideration, and to grant that a flag be sent to demand them in exchange, or otherwise direct towards obtaining their releasement, as Your Excellency in your wisdom shall see fit, and your Memorialists will ever pray as in duty bound. John Macdonell, Alexander Macdonell." "To the Honourable Sir John Johnson, Lieutenant-Colonel Commander of the King's Royal Regiment of New York. The humbel petition of sundry soldiers of said Regiment sheweth,-- That your humble petitioners, whose names are hereunto subscribed, have families in different places of the Counties of Albany and Tryon, who have been and are daily ill-treated by the enemies of Government. Therefore we do humbly pray that Your Honour would be pleased to procure permission for them to come to Canada, And your petitioners will ever pray. John McGlenny, Thomas Ross. Alexander Cameron, Frederick Goose, Wm. Urchad (Urquhart?), Duncan McIntire, Andrew Mileross, Donald McCarter, Allen Grant, Hugh Chisholm, Angus Grant, John McDonald, Alex. Ferguson, Thomas Taylor, William Cameron, George Murdoff, William Chession (Chisholm), John Christy, Daniel Campbell, Donald Ross, Donald Chissem, Roderick McDonald, Alexander Grant." The names and number of each family intended in the written petition:-- Name of Family Consisting of No 1, Duncan McIntyre's Wife, Sister and Child 3 2, John Christy's Wife and 3 Children 4 3, George Mordoffs " and 6 " 7 4, Daniel Campbell's " and 5 " 6 5, Andrew Milross' Wife 1 6, William Urghad's Wife and 3 " 4 7, Donald McCarter's " and 3 " 4 8, Donald Ross' " and 1 Child 2 9, Allan Grant's " and 1 Child 2 10, William Chissim's " and 1 " 2 11, Donald Chissim's " and 2 Children 3 12, Hugh Chissim's " and 5 " 6 13, Roderick McDonald's " and 4 " 5 14, Angus Grant's " and 5 " 6 15, Alexander Grant's " and 4 " 5 16, Donald Grant's " and 4 " 5 17, John McDonald's Wife 1 18, John McGlenny's " and 2 " 3 19, Alexander Ferguson's " and 5 " 6 20, Thomas Ross' " and 4 " 5 21, Thomas Taylor's " and 1 Child 2 22, Alexander Cameron's " and 3 Children 4 23, William Cameron's " and 3 " 4 24, Frederick Goose's " and 4 " 5 Mrs. Helen MacDonell, wife of Allan, the chief, was apprehended and sent to Schenectady, and in 1780 managed to escape, and made her way to New York. Before she was taken, and while her husband was still a prisoner of war, she appears to have been the chief person who had charge of the settlement, after the men had fled with Sir John Johnson. A letter of hers has been preserved, which is not only interesting, but throws some light on the action of the Highlanders. It is addressed to Major Jellis Fonda, at Caughnawaga. "Sir: Some time ago I wrote you a letter, much to this purpose, concerning the Inhabitants of this Bush being made prisoners. There was no such thing then in agitation as you was pleased to observe in your letter to me this morning. Mr. Billie Laird came amongst the people to give them warning to go in to sign, and swear. To this they will never consent, being already prisoners of General Schuyler. His Excellency was pleased by your proclamation, directing every one of them to return to their farms, and that they should be no more troubled nor molested during the war. To this they agreed, and have not done anything against the country, nor intend to, if let alone. If not, they will lose their lives before being taken prisoners again. They begged the favour of me to write to Major Fonda and the gentlemen of the committee to this purpose. They blame neither the one nor the other of you gentlemen, but those ill-natured fellows amongst them that get up an excitement about nothing, in order to ingratiate themselves in your favour. They were of very great hurt to your cause since May last, through violence and ignorance. I do not know what the consequences would have been to them long ago, if not prevented. Only think what daily provocation does. Jenny joins me in compliments to Mrs. Fonda. I am, Sir, Your humble servant, Callachie, 15th March, 1777. Helen McDonell."[125] Immediately on the arrival of Sir John Johnson in Montreal, with his party who fled from Johnstown, he was commissioned a Colonel in the British service. At once he set about to organize a regiment composed of those who had accompanied him, and other refugees who had followed their example. This regiment was called the "King's Royal Regiment of New York," but by Americans was known as "The Royal Greens," probably because the facings of their uniforms were of that color. In the formation of the regiment he was instructed that the officers of the corps were to be divided in such a manner as to assist those who were distressed by the war; but there were to be no pluralities of officers,--a practice then common in the British army. In this regiment, Butler's Rangers, and the Eighty-Fourth, or Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment also then raised, the Highland gentlemen who had, in 1773, emigrated to Tryon county, received commissions, as well as those who had previously had joined the ranks. After the war proper returns of the officers were made, and from these the following tables have been extracted. The number of private soldiers of the same name are in proportion. "FIRST BATTALION KING'S ROYAL REGIMENT OF NEW YORK. -------|-------------------|--------|-------|----------------------------- Rank | NAME |Place of|Service| REMARKS | |Nativity| | ------------------------------------|-------|----------------------------- Captain|Alexander Macdonell|Scotland| 8 yrs.|200 acres of land in fee | (Aberchalder) | | | simple, under Sir John | | | | Johnson, at yearly annual | | | | rent of £6 per 100. Captain|Angus Macdonell |Scotland|25 yrs.|Ensign in 60th Regt., 8th | | | | July, 1760; Lieut. in | | | | do. Dec 27, 1770; sold | | | | out on account of bad | | | | health, May 22, 1775. | | | | Had no lands. Captain|John Macdonell |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Had landed property, 500 | (Scotas) | | | acres, purchased and | | | | began to improve in | | | | April, 1774. Captain|Archibald Macdonell|Scotland| 8 yrs.|Merchant; had no lands. | (Leek) | | | Captain|Allen Macdonell |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Had 200 acres in fee Lieut | (Leek) | | | simple, under Sir John, | | | | at £6 per 100 acres. Lieut |Hugh Macdonell |Scotland| 7 yrs.|Son of Captain Macdonell | (Aberchalder) | | | Ensign |Miles Macdonell |Scotland| 3 yrs.|Son of Captain John | (Scotas) | | | Macdonell. ========================================================================== SECOND BATTALION KING'S ROYAL REGIMENT OF NEW YORK -------|-------------------|--------|-------|----------------------------- Rank | NAME |Place of|Service| REMARKS | |Nativity| | -------|-------------------|--------|-------|----------------------------- Captain|James Macdonell |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Held ---- acres in fee simple, | | | | under Sir John, at | | | | £6 per 100 acres. Lieut |Ronald Macdonell |Scotland| 3 yrs.|Farmer. | (Leek) | | | ========================================================================== CORPS OF BUTLER'S RANGERS, COMMANDED BY LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOHN BUTLER -------|-------------------|---------|-------|---------------------------- Rank | NAME |Place of |Service| REMARKS | |Nativity | | -------|-------------------|----------|------|---------------------------- Captain|John Macdonell |Inverness-|9 yrs.|Came to America with | (Aberchalder) |shire | | his father and other | |Scotland | | Highlanders in 1773, | | | | settled in Tryon County, | | | | near Johnstown, in | | | | the Province of New | | | | York; entered His | | | | Majesty's Service as a | | | | Subaltern Officer, June | | | | 14, 1775, in the 84th | | | | or Royal Highland | | | | Emigrants. First | | | | Lieut. |Alexander Macdonell|Inverness-|7 yrs.|Came to America with | (Collachie) |shire | | his father and other | |Scotland | | Highland Emigrants in | | | | 1773, settled in Tryon | | | | County, near Johnstown, | | | | in the Province | | | | of New York; entered | | | | His Majesty's Service | | | | as a Volunteer in the | | | | 84th or Royal Highland | | | | Emigrants. Second | | | | Lieut. |Chichester |Inverness-|6 yrs.|Came to America with | Macdonell |shire | | his father and other | (Aberchalder) |Scotland | | Highland Emigrants in | | | | 1773, and settled near | | | | Johnstown; entered | | | | His Majesty's Service | | | | as a Volunteer in the | | | | King's Royal Regiment | | | | of New York in | | | | the year 1778. =======|===================|==========|======|============================ EIGHTY-FOURTH OR ROYAL HIGHLAND EMIGRANT REGIMENT =======|===================|==========|=======|=========================== Rank | NAME | Place of |Service| REMARKS | | Nativity | | -------|-------------------|----------|-------|--------------------------- Captain|Allan Macdonell | | |Prisoner at Lancaster in | (Collachie) | | | Pennsylvania. Lieut. |Ronald Macdonell | |40 yrs.| Lieut. |Arch'd Macdonell | | 8 yrs.| =======|===================|==========|=======|=========================== SEVENTY-FIRST REGIMENT -------|-------------------|----------|-------|--------------------------- Rank | NAME |Place of |Service| REMARKS | |Nativity | | -------|-------------------|----------|-------|--------------------------- Lieut |Angus Macdonell | | | "[126] =======|===================|==========|=======|=========================== In the month of January, following his flight into Canada, Sir John Johnson found his way into the city of New York. From that time he became one of the most bitter and virulent foes of his countrymen engaged in the contest, and repeatedly became the scourge of his former neighbors--in all of which his Highland retainers bore a prominent part. In savage cruelty, together with Butler's Rangers, they outrivalled their Indian allies. The aged, the infirm, helpless women, and the innocent babe in the cradle, alike perished before them. In all this the MacDonells were among the foremost. Such warfare met the approval of the British Cabinet, and officers felt no compunction in relating their achievements. Colonel Guy Johnson writing to lord George Germain, November 11, 1779, not only speaks of the result of his conference with Sir John Johnson, but further remarks that "there appeared little prospect of effecting anything beyond harrassing the frontiers with detached partys."[127] In all probability none of the official reports related the atrocities perpetrated under the direction of the minor officers. Although "The Royal Greens" were largely composed of the Mohawk Highlanders, and especially all who decamped from Johnstown with Sir John Johnson, and Butler's Rangers had a fair percentage of the same, it is not necessary to enter into a detailed account of their achievements, because neither was essentially Highlanders. Their movements were not always in a body, and the essential share borne by the Highlanders have not been recorded in the papers that have been preserved. Individual deeds have been narrated, some of which are here given. The Royal Greens and Butler's Rangers formed a part of the expedition under Colonel Barry St. Leger that was sent against Fort Schuyler in order to create a diversion in favor of General Burgoyne's army then on its march towards Albany. In order to relieve Fort Schuyler (Stanwix) General Herkimer with a force of eight hundred was dispatched and, on the way, met the army of St. Leger near Oriskany, August 6, 1777. On the 3rd St. Leger encamped before Fort Stanwix, his force numbering sixteen hundred, eight hundred of whom were Indians. Proper precautions were not taken by General Herkimer, while every advantage was enforced by his wary enemy. He fell into an ambuscade, and a desperate conflict ensued. During the conflict Colonel Butler attempted a _ruse-de guerre_, by sending, from the direction of the fort, a detachment of The Royal Greens, disguised as American troops, in expectation that they might be received as reenforcements from the garrison. They were first noticed by Lieutenant Jacob Sammons, who at once notified Captain Jacob Gardenier; but the quick eye of the latter had detected the ruse. The Greens continued to advance until hailed by Gardenier, at which moment one of his own men observing an acquaintance in the opposing ranks, and supposing them to be friends, ran to meet him, and presented his hand. The credulous fellow was dragged into their lines and notified that he was a prisoner. "He did not yield without a struggle; during which Gardenier, watching the action and the result, sprang forward, and with a blow from his spear levelled the captor to the dust and liberated his man. Others of the foe instantly set upon him, of whom he slew the second and wounded the third. Three of the disguised Greens now sprang upon him, and one of his spurs becoming entangled in their clothes, he was thrown to the ground. Still, contending, however, with almost super-human strength, both of his thighs were transfixed to the earth by the bayonets of two of his assailants, while the third presented a bayonet to his breast, as if to thrust him through. Seizing the bayonet with his left hand, by a sudden wrench he brought its owner down upon himself, where he held him as a shield against the arms of the others, until one of his own men, Adam Miller, observing the struggle, flew to the rescue. As the assailants turned upon their new adversary, Gardenier rose upon his seat; and although his hand was severely lacerated by grasping the bayonet which had been drawn through it, he seized his spear lying by his side, and quick as lightning planted it to the barb in the side of the assailant with whom he had been clenched. The man fell and expired--proving to be Lieutenant McDonald, one of the loyalist officers from Tryon county."[128] This was John McDonald, who had been held as a hostage by General Schuyler, and when permitted to return home, helped run off the remainder of the Highlanders to Canada, as previously noticed. June 19, 1777, he was appointed captain Lieutenant in The Royal Greens.[129] During the engagement thirty of The Royal Greens fell near the body of McDonald. The loss of Herkimer was two hundred killed, exclusive of the wounded and prisoners. The royalist loss was never given, but known to be heavy. The Indians lost nearly a hundred warriors among whom were sachems held in great favor. The Americans retained possession of the field owing to the sortie made by the garrison of Fort Schuyler on the camp of St. Leger. On the 22nd St. Leger receiving alarming reports of the advance of General Arnold suddenly decamped from before Fort Schuyler, leaving his baggage behind him. Indians, belonging to the expedition followed in the rear, tomahawking and scalping the stragglers; and when the army did not run fast enough, they accelerated the speed by giving their war cries and fresh alarms, thus adding increased terror to the demoralized troops. Of all the men that Butler took with him, when he arrived in Quebec he could muster but fifty. The Royal Greens also showed their numbers greatly decimated. Among the prisoners taken by the Americans was Captain Angus McDonell of The Royal Greens.[130] For greater security he was transferred to the southern portion of the State. On October 12th following, at Kingston, he gave the following parole to the authorities: "I, Angus McDonell, lieutenant in the 60th or Royal American regiment, now a prisoner to the United States of America and enlarged on my parole, do promise upon my word of honor that I will continue within one mile of the house of Jacobus Hardenburgh, and in the town of Hurley, in the county of Ulster; and that I will not do any act, matter or thing whatsoever against the interests of America; and further, that I will remove hereafter to such place as the governor of the state of New York or the president of the Council of Safety of the said state shall direct, and that I will observe this my parole until released, exchanged or otherwise ordered. Angus McDonell." [Illustration: The Valley of the Wyoming.] The following year Captain Angus McDonald and Allen McDonald, ensign in the same company were transferred to Reading, Pennsylvania. The former was probably released or exchanged for he was with the regiment when it was disbanded at the close of the War. What became of the latter is unknown. Probably neither of them were Sir John Johnson's tenants. The next movement of special importance relates to the melancholy story of Wyoming, immortalized in verse by Thomas Campbell in his "Gertrude of Wyoming." Towards the close of June 1778 the British officers at Niagara determined to strike a blow at Wyoming, in Pennsylvania. For this purpose an expedition of about three hundred white men under Colonel John Butler, together with about five hundred Indians, marched for the scene of action. Just what part the McDonells took in the Massacre of Wyoming is not known, nor is it positive any were present; but belonging to Butler's Rangers it is fair to assume that all such participated in those heartrending scenes which have been so often related. It was a terrible day and night for that lovely valley, and its beauty was suddenly changed into horror and desolation. The Massacre of Wyoming stands out in bold relief as one of the darkest pictures in the whole panorama of the Revolution. While this scene was being enacted, active preparations were pushed by Alexander McDonald for a descent on the New York frontiers. It was the same Alexander who has been previously mentioned as having been permitted to return to the Johnstown settlement, and then assisted in helping the remaining Highland families escape to Canada. He was a man of enterprise and activity, and by his energy he collected three hundred royalists and Indians and fell with great fury upon the frontiers. Houses were burned, and such of the people as fell into his hands were either killed or made prisoners. One example of the blood thirsty character of this man is given by Sims, in his "Trappers of New York," as follows: "On the morning of October 25, 1781, a large body of the enemy under Maj. Ross, entered Johnstown with several prisoners, and not a little plunder; among which was a number of human scalps taken the afternoon and night previous, in settlements in and adjoining the Mohawk valley; to which was added the scalp of Hugh McMonts, a constable, who was surprised and killed as they entered Johnstown. In the course of the day the troops from the garrisons near and militia from the surrounding country, rallied under the active and daring Willett, and gave the enemy battle on the Hall farm, in which the latter were finally defeated with loss, and made good their retreat into Canada. Young Scarsborough was then in the nine months' service, and while the action was going on, himself and one Crosset left the Johnstown fort, where they were on garrison duty, to join in the fight, less than two miles distant. Between the Hall and woods they soon found themselves engaged. Crosset after shooting down one or two, received a bullet through one hand, but winding a handkerchief around it he continued the fight under cover of a hemlock stump. He was shot down and killed there, and his companion surrounded and made prisoner by a party of Scotch (Highlanders) troops commanded by Captain McDonald. When Scarsborough was captured, Capt. McDonald was not present, but the moment he saw him he ordered his men to shoot him down. Several refused; but three, shall I call them men? obeyed the dastardly order, and yet he possibly would have survived his wounds, had not the miscreant in authority cut him down with his own broadsword. The sword was caught in its first descent, and the valiant captain drew it out, cutting the hand nearly in two."[131] This was the same McDonald who, in 1779, figured in the battle of the Chemung, together with Sir John and Guy Johnson and Walter N. Butler. Just what part the Mohawk Highlanders, if any, had in the Massacre of Cherry Valley on October 11, 1778, may not be known. The leaders were Walter N. Butler, son of Colonel John Butler, who was captain of a company of Rangers, and the monster Brant. Owing to the frequent depredations made by the Indians, the Royal Greens, Butler's Rangers, and the independent company of Alexander McDonald, upon the frontiers, destroying the innocent and helpless as well as those who might be found in arms, Congress voted that an expedition should be sent into the Indian country. Washington detached a division from the army under General John Sullivan to lay waste that country. The instructions were obeyed, and Sullivan did not cease until he found no more to lay waste. The only resistance he met with that was of any moment was on August 29, 1779, when the enemy hoping to ambuscade the army of Sullivan, brought on the battle of Chemung, near the present site of Elmira. There were about three hundred royalists under Colonel John Butler and Captain Alexander McDonald, assisting Joseph Brant who commanded the Indians. The defeat was so overwhelming that the royalists and Indians, in a demoralized condition sought shelter under the walls of Fort Niagara. The lower Mohawk Valley having experienced the calamities of border wars was yet to feel the full measures of suffering. On Sunday, May 21, 1780, Sir John Johnson with some British troops, a detachment of Royal Greens, and about two hundred Indians and Tories, at dead of night fell unexpectedly on Johnstown, the home of his youth. Families were killed and scalped, the houses pillaged and then burned. Instances of daring and heroism in withstanding the invaders have been recorded. Sir John's next achievement was in the fall of the same year, when he descended with fire and sword into the rich settlements along the Schoharie. He was overtaken by the American force at Klock's Field and put to flight. Sir John Johnson with the Royal Greens, principally his former tenants and retainers, appear to have been especially stimulated with hate against the people of their former homes who did not sympathize with their views. In the summer of 1781 another expedition was secretly planned against Johnstown, and executed with silent celerity. The expedition consisted of four companies of the Second battalion of Sir John's regiment of Royal Greens, Butler's Rangers and two hundred Indians, numbering in all about one thousand men, under the command of Major Ross. He was defeated at the battle of Johnstown on October 25th. The army of Major Ross, for four days in the wilderness, on their advance had been living on only a half pound of horse flesh per man per day; yet they were so hotly pursued by the Americans that they were forced to trot off a distance of thirty miles before they stopped,--during a part of the distance they were compelled to sustain a running fight. They crossed Canada Creek late in the afternoon, where Walter N. Butler attempted to rally the men. He was shot through the head by an Oneida Indian, who was with the Americans. When Captain Butler fell his troops fled in the utmost confusion, and continued their flight through the night. Without food and even without blankets they had eighty miles to traverse through the dreary and pathless wilderness. On August 6, 1781, Donald McDonald, one of the Highlanders who had fled from Johnstown, made an attempt upon Shell's Bush, about four miles north of the present village of Herkimer, at the head of sixty-six Indians and Tories. John Christian Shell had built a block-house of his own, which was large and substantial, and well calculated to withstand a seige. The first story had no windows, but furnished with loopholes which could be used to shoot through by muskets. The second story projected over the first, so that the garrison could fire upon an advancing enemy, or cast missiles upon their heads. The owner had a family of six sons, the youngest two were twins, and only eight years old. Most of his neighbors had taken refuge in Fort Dayton; but this settler refused to leave his home. When Donald McDonald and his party arrived at Shell's Bush his brother with his sons were at work in the field; and the children, unfortunately were so widely separated from their father, as to fall into the hands of the enemy. "Shell and his other boys succeeded in reaching their castle, and barricading the ponderous door. And then commenced the battle. The besieged were well armed, and all behaved with admirable bravery; but none more bravely than Shell's wife, who loaded the pieces as her husband and sons discharged them. The battle commenced at two o'clock, and continued until dark. Several attempts were made by McDonald to set fire to the castle, but without success, and his forces were repeatedly driven back by the galling fire they received. McDonald at length procured a crow-bar and attempted to force the door; but while thus engaged he received a shot in the leg from Shell's Blunderbuss, which put him _hors du combat_. None of his men being sufficiently near at the moment to rescue him, Shell, quick as lightning, opened the door, and drew him within the walls a prisoner. The misfortune of Shell and his garrison was, that their ammunition began to run low; but McDonald was very amply provided, and to save his own life, he surrendered his cartridges to the garrison to fire upon his comrades. Several of the enemy having been killed and others wounded, they now drew off for a respite. Shell and his troops, moreover, needed a little breathing time; and feeling assured that, so long as he had the commanding officer of the beseigers in his possession, the enemy would hardly attempt to burn the citadel, he ceased firing. He then went up stairs, and sang the hymn which was a favorite of Luther during the perils and afflictions of the Great Reformer in his controversies with the Pope. While thus engaged the enemy likewise ceased firing. But they soon after rallied again to the fight, and made a desperate effort to carry the fortress by assault. Rushing up to the walls, five of them thrust the muzzles of their guns through the loopholes, but had no sooner done so, than Mrs. Shell, seizing an axe, by quick and well directed blows ruined every musket thus thrust through the walls, by bending the barrels. A few more well-directed shots by Shell and his sons once more drove the assailants back. Shell thereupon ran up to the second story, just in the twilight, and calling out to his wife with a loud voice, informed her that Captain Small was approaching from Fort Dayton with succors. In yet louder notes he then exclaimed--'Captain Small march your company round upon this side of the house. Captain Getman, you had better wheel your men off to the left, and come up upon that side.' There were of course no troops approaching; but the directions of Shell were given with such precision, and such apparent earnestness and sincerity, that the stratagem succeeded, and the enemy immediately fled to the woods, taking away the twin-lads as prisoners. Setting the best provisions they had before their reluctant guest. Shell and his family lost no time in repairing to Fort Dayton, which they reached in safety--leaving McDonald in the quiet possession of the castle he had been striving to capture in vain. Some two or three of McDonald's Indians lingered about the premises to ascertain the fate of their leader; and finding that Shell and his family had evacuated the post, ventured in to visit him. Not being able to remove him, however, on taking themselves off, they charged their wounded leader to inform Shell, that if he would be kind to him, (McDonald,) they would take good care of his (Shell's) captive boys. McDonald was the next day removed to the fort by Captain Small, where his leg was amputated; but the blood could not be stanched, and he died within a few hours. The lads were carried away into Canada. The loss of the enemy on the ground was eleven killed and six wounded. The boys, who were rescued after the war, reported that they took twelve of their wounded away with them, nine of whom died before they arrived in Canada. McDonald wore a silver-mounted tomahawk, which was taken from him by Shell. It was marked by thirty scalp-notches, showing that few Indians could have been more industrious than himself in gathering that description of military trophies."[132] The close of the Revolution found the First Battalion of the King's Regiment of New York stationed at Isle aux Noix and Carleton Island with their wives and children to the number of one thousand four hundred and sixty-two. The following is a list of the officers of both Battalions at the close of the War: "RETURN OF THE OFFICERS OF THE LATE FIRST BATTALION, KING'S ROYAL REGIMENT OF NEW YORK." -------|-------------------|--------|-------|------------------------------ | | |Length | FORMER SITUATIONS AND Rank | NAMES |Place of| of | REMARKS | |Nativity|Service| -------|-------------------|--------|-------|------------------------------ Lt |Sir John Johnson |America | 8 yrs.|Succeeded his father, the late Col | Bart | | | Sir Wm. Johnson, as a Com | | | | Maj. Gen. of the Northern Lt | | | | Dis. of the Prov. of New | | | | York; was in possession | | | | of nearly 200,000 acres of | | | | valuable land, lost in | | | consequence | | | | of the rebellion. Maj |James Gray |Scotland|26 yrs.|Ensign in Lord London's | | | | Regt., 1745; Lieut, and | | | | Capt. in ye 42nd till after | | | | taking the Havannah, at | | | | which time he sold out. | | | | Had some landed property, | | | | part of which is secured | | | | to his son, ye remnant | | | | lost in consequence | | | | of the rebellion. Capt |Angus McDonell |Scotland|25 yrs.|Ensign in 60th Regt. July | | | | 8th, 1760; Lieut, in same | | | | regt., 27th Dec., 1770. | | | | Sold out on account of bad | | | | state of health, 22nd May, | | | | 1775. Had no lands. Capt |John Munro |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Had considerable landed | | | | property, lost in | | | | consequence of ye Rebellion, | | | | and served in last war in | | | | America. Capt |Patrick Daly |Ireland | 9 yrs.|Lieut, in the 84th Regt. at | | | | the Siege of Quebec, | | | | 1775-76. Capt |Richard Duncan |Scotland|13 yrs.|Five years Ensign in the | | | | 56th Regiment. Capt |Sam'l. Anderson |America | 8 yrs.|Had landed property, and | | | | served in last war in | | | | America. Capt |John McDonell |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Had landed property, 500 | | | | acres, purchased and began | | | | to improve in April | | | | 1774. Capt |Alex McDonell |Scotland| 8 yrs.|200 acres of land in fee | | | | simple under Sir John | | | | Johnson. Bart., ye annual | | | | rent of £6 per 100 -------+-------------------+--------+-------+------------------------------ "RETURN OF THE OFFICERS OF THE LATE FIRST BATTALION, KING'S ROYAL REGIMENT OF NEW YORK." -------|-------------------|--------+-------+------------------------------ | | |Length | FORMER SITUATIONS AND Rank | NAMES |Place of| of | REMARKS | |Nativity|Service| -------|-------------------|--------|-------|------------------------------ Capt |Arch. McDonell |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Merchant. No lands. Capt |Allan McDonell |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Held 200 acres of land under Lt | | | | Sir John Johnson, at £6 | | | | per 100. Lt |Mal. McMartin |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Held 100 acres of land under | | | | Sir John Johnson, at £6. Lt |Peter Everett |America | 7 yrs.|Had some landed property. Lt |John Prentiss |America | 9 yrs.|A volunteer at the Siege of | | | | Quebec, 1775-76. Lt |Hugh McDonell |Scotland| 7 yrs.|Son of Capt. McDonell. Lt |John F. Holland |America | 5 yrs.|Son of Major Holland, | | | | Surveyor-General, | | | | Province of Quebec. Lt |William Coffin |America | 3 yrs.|Son of Mr. Coffin, merchant, | | | | late of Boston. Lt |Jacob Farrand |America | 7 yrs.|Nephew to Major Gray. Lt |William Claus |America | 7 yrs.|Son of Col. Claus, deputy | | | | agent Indian Affairs. Lt |Hugh Munro |America | 6 yrs.|Son of Capt. John Munro. Lt |Joseph Anderson |America | 6 yrs.|Son of Capt. Sam'l Anderson. Lt |Thomas Smith |Ireland | 4 yrs.|Son of Dr. Smith. Ens |John Connolly |Ireland | 2 yrs.|Private Gentleman. Ens |Jacob Glen |America | 3 yrs.|Son of John Glen, Esq., of | | | | Schenectady. Had | | | | considerable landed | | | | property. Ens |Miles McDonell |Scotland| 3 yrs.|Son of Capt. John McDonell. Ens |Eben'r Anderson |America | 6 yrs.|Son of Capt. Sam'l. Anderson. Ens |Duncan Cameron |Scotland|14 yrs.|In service last war preceding | | | | this one. Ens |John Mann |America | 8 yrs.|Private Gentleman. Ens |Francis McCarthy |Ireland |28 yrs.|Formerly Sergeant in the | | | | 34th Regiment. Ens |John Valentine |America |24 yrs.|18 years in 55th and 62nd | | | | Regiments. Ch'p |John Doty |America | 8 yrs.|Formerly minister of the | | | | Gospel at Schenectady. Adjt |James Valentine |Ireland | 4 yrs.|Son of Ens John Valentine. Q.M. |Isaac Mann |America | 8 yrs.|Merchant. Surg. |Charles Austin |England |22 yrs.|14 years in hospital work. M'te |James Stewart |Scotland|14 yrs.|Surgeon's mate in the 42nd | | | | Regt. the war before last. -------+-------------------+--------+-------+------------------------------ "RETURN OF THE OFFICERS OF THE LATE SECOND BATTALION, KING'S ROYAL REGIMENT OF NEW YORK." -------|-------------------|--------+-------+------------------------------ | | |Length | FORMER SITUATIONS AND Rank | NAMES |Place of| of | REMARKS | |Nativity|Service| -------|-------------------|--------|-------|------------------------------ Maj. |Robert Leake |England | 7 yrs.|Had some landed property, | | | | etc., lost in consequence | | | | of the rebellion. Capt. |Thos. Gummesell |England | 8 yrs.|Formerly Merchant in New | | | | York. Capt. |Jacob Maurer |Foreign'r|28 yrs|Served in ye army in the | | | | 60th Regt., from 1756 to | | | | 1763, afterwards in the | | | | Quarter-Master General's | | | | Dept. Capt. | Wm. Morrison |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Was lieut., 19th June, 1776, | | | | in 1st Batt.; Capt., 15th | | | | Nov., 1781, in the 2nd | | | | Batt. Capt. |James McDonell |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Held 200 acres of land in fee | | | | simple, under Sir John | | | | Johnson, at £6 per 100. Capt. |Geo. Singleton |Ireland | 8 yrs.|Formerly merchant. Capt. |Wm. Redf'd Crawford|America | 8 yrs.|Held lands under Sir John | | | | Johnson. Capt. |---- Byrns |Ireland | 8 yrs.|Held lands under Sir John | | | | Johnson. Capt. |---- Lepscomb |England | 7 yrs.|Midshipman Royal Navy. Capt. |---- McKenzie |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Held lands under Sir John | | | | Johnson. Lt. |Patrick Langan |Ireland | 7 yrs.|Private Gentleman. Lt. |Walter Sutherland |Scotland|10 yrs.|Soldier and non-commissioned | | | | officer in 26th Regt; | | | | ensign, 17th Oct., 1779, in | | | | 1st Batt., lieut., Nov., | | | | 1781, in 2nd Batt. Lt. |William McKay |Scotland|15 yrs.|7 years volunteer and | | | | sergeant in 21st Regt. Lt. |Neal Robertson |Scotland| 8 yrs.|Merchant. Lt. |Henry Young |America | 8 yrs.|Farmer. Lt. |John Howard |Ireland |18 yrs.|Farmer; served 6 years last | | | | war, from 1755 to 1761, as | | | | soldier and | | | | non-commissioned officer | | | | in 28th Regt. -------+-------------------+--------+-------+------------------------------ "RETURN OF THE OFFICERS OF THE LATE SECOND BATTALION, KING'S ROYAL REGIMENT OF NEW YORK."--Continued. -------|-------------------|---------+-------+----------------------------- | | |Length | FORMER SITUATIONS AND Rank | NAMES |Place of | of | REMARKS | |Nativity |Service| -------|-------------------|---------|-------|----------------------------- Lt. |Jeremiah French |America | 7 yrs.| Farmer. Lt. |Phil. P. Lansingh |America | 4 yrs.|High Sheriff, Chariot County. Lt. |Hazelt'n Spencer |America | 7 yrs.|Farmer. Lt. |Oliver Church |America | 7 yrs.|Farmer. Lt. |William Fraser |Scotland | 7 yrs.|Farmer. Lt. |Christian Wher |Foreign'r| 7 yrs.|Farmer. Ens. |Alex. McKenzie |N.Britain| 4 yrs.|Farmer. Ens. |Ron. McDonell |N.Britain| 3 yrs.|Farmer. Ens. |---- Hay |America | 3 yrs.|Son of Gov. Hay at Detroit. Ens. |Samuel McKay |America | 3 yrs.|Son of the late Capt. McKay. Ens. |Timothy Thompson |America | 3 yrs.|Private Gentleman. Ens. |John McKay |America | 3 yrs.|Son of the late Capt. McKay. Ens. |---- Johnson |Ireland | 2 yrs.|Nephew of the late Sir Wm. | | | | Johnson, Bart. Ens. |---- Crawford |America | 4 yrs.|Son of Capt. Crawford. Ch'p |John Stuart |America | 3 yrs.|Missionary for the Mohawk | | | | Indians at Fort Hunter. Adjt. |---- Fraser |Scotland |10 yrs.|7 years soldier and | | | | non-commissioned officer in | | | | 34th Regiment. Q.M. |---- Dies |America | 7 yrs.|Farmer. Surg. |R. Kerr |Scotland | 8 yrs.|Assistant Surgeon.[133] =======+===================+=========+=======+============================= The officers and men of the First Battalion, with their families, settled in a body in the first five townships west of the boundary line of the Province of Quebec, being the present townships of Lancaster, Charlottenburgh, Cornwall, Osnabruck and Williamsburgh; while those of the Second Battalion went farther west to the Bay of Quinte, in the counties of Lennox and Prince Edward. Each soldier received a certificate entitling him to land; of which the following is a copy: "His Majesty's Provincial Regiment, called the King's Royal Regiment of New York, whereof Sir John Johnson, Knight and Baronet is Lieutenant-Colonel, Commandant. These are to certify that the Bearer hereof, Donald McDonell, soldier in Capt. Angus McDonell's Company, of the aforesaid Regiment, born in the Parish of Killmoneneoack, in the County of Inverness, aged thirty-five years, has served honestly and faithfully in the said regiment Seven Years; and in consequence of His Majesty's Order for Disbanding the said Regiment, he is hereby discharged, is entitled, by His Majesty's late Order, to the Portion of Land allotted to each soldier of His Provincial Corps, who wishes to become a Settler in this Province. He having first received all just demands of Pay, Cloathing, &c., from his entry into the said Regiment, to the Date of his Discharge, as appears from his Receipt on the back hereof. Given under my Hand and Seal at Arms, at Montreal, this twenty-fourth Day of December, 1783. John Johnson." "I, Donald McDonell, private soldier, do acknowledge that I have received all my Cloathing, Pay, Arrears of Pay, and all Demands whatsoever, from the time of my Inlisting in the Regiment and Company mentioned on the other Side to this present Day of my Discharge, as witness my Hand this 24th day of December, 1783. Donald McDonell."[134] There appears to have been some difficulty in according to the men the amount of land each should possess, as may be inferred from the petition of Colonel John Butler on behalf of The Royal Greens and his corps of Rangers. The Order in Council, October 22 1788 allowed them the same as that allotted to the members of the Royal Highland Emigrants.[135] Ultimately each soldier received one hundred acres on the river front, besides two hundred at a remote distance. If married he was entitled to fifty acres more, an additional fifty for every child. Each child, on coming of age, was entitled to a further grant of two hundred acres. It is not the purpose to follow these people into their future homes, for this would be later than the Peace of 1783. Let it suffice to say that their lands were divided by lot, and into the wilderness they went, and there cleared the forests, erected their shanties out of round logs, to a height of eight feet, with a room not exceeding twenty by fifteen feet. These people were pre-eminently social and attached to the manners and customs of their fathers. In Scotland the people would gather in one of their huts during the long winter nights and listen to the tales of Ossian and Fingal. So also they would gather in their huts and listen to the best reciter of tales. Often the long nights would be turned into a recital of the sufferings they endured during their flight into Canada from Johnstown; and also of their privations during the long course of the war. It required no imagination to picture their hardships, nor was it necessary to indulge in exaggeration. Many of the women, through the wilderness, carried their children on their backs, the greater part of the distance, while the men were burdened with their arms and such goods as were deemed necessary. They endured perils by land and by water; and their food often consisted of the flesh of dogs and horses, and the roots of trees. Gradually some of these story tellers varied their tale, and, perhaps, believed in the glosses. A good story has gained extensive currency, and has been variously told, on Donald Grant. He was born at Crasky, Glenmoriston, Scotland, and was one of the heroes who sheltered prince Charles in the cave of Corombian, when wandering about, life in hand, after the battle of Culloden, before he succeeded in effecting his escape to the Outer Hebrides. Donald, with others, settled in Glengarry, a thousand acres having been allotted to him. This old warrior, having seen much service, knew well the country between Johnstown and Canada. He took charge of one of the parties of refugees in their journey from Schenectady to Canada. Donald lived to a good old age and was treated with much consideration by all, especially those whom he had led to their new homes. It was well known that he could spin a good story equal to the best. As years went on, the number of Donald's party rapidly increased, as he told it to open-mouthed listeners, constantly enlarging on the perils and hardships of the journey. A Highland officer, who had served in Canada for some years, was returning home, and, passing through Glengarry, spent a few days with Alexander Macdonell, priest at St. Raphael's. Having expressed his desire to meet some of the veterans of the war, so that he might hear their tales and rehearse them in Scotland, that they might know how their kinsmen in Canada had fought and suffered for the Crown, the priest, amongst others, took him to see old Donald Grant. The opportunity was too good to be lost, and Donald told the general in Gaelic the whole story, omitting no details; giving an account of the number of men, women and children he had brought with him, their perils and their escapes, their hardships borne with heroic devotion; how, when on the verge of starvation, they had boiled their moccasins and eaten them; how they had encountered the enemy, the wild beasts and Indians, beaten all off and landed the multitude safely in Glengarry. The General listened with respectful attention, and at the termination of the narrative, wishing to say something pleasant, observed: "Why, dear me, Donald, your exploits seem almost to have equalled even those of Moses himself when leading the children of Israel through the Wilderness from Egypt to the Land of Promise." Up jumped old Donald. "Moses," exclaimed the veteran with an unmistakable air of contempt, and adding a double expletive that need not here be repeated, "Compare ME to Moses! Why, Moses took forty years in his vain attempts to lead his men over a much shorter distance, and through a mere trifling wilderness in comparison with mine, and he never did reach his destination, and lost half his army in the Red Sea. I brought my people here without the loss of a single man." It has been noted that the Highlanders who settled on the Mohawk, on the lands of Sir William Johnson, were Roman Catholics. Sir William, nor his son and successor, Sir John Johnson, took any steps to procure them a religious teacher in the principles of their faith. They were not so provided until after the Revolution, and then only when they were settled on the lands that had been allotted to them. In 1785, the people themselves took the proper steps to secure such an one,--and one who was able to speak the Gaelic, for many of them were ignorant of the English language. In the month of September, 1786, the ship "McDonald," from Greenock, brought Reverend Alexander McDonell, Scotus, with five hundred emigrants from Knoydart, who settled with their kinsfolk in Glengarry, Canada. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 101: Gentleman's Magazine, Sept. 30, 1773.] [Footnote 102: Am. Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. II. p. 151.] [Footnote 103: _Ibid_, p. 637.] [Footnote 104: _Ibid_, p. 638.] [Footnote 105: _Ibid_, p. 661.] [Footnote 106: _Ibid_, p. 665.] [Footnote 107: _Ibid_, p. 672.] [Footnote 108: _Ibid_, p. 712.] [Footnote 109: _Ibid_, p. 880.] [Footnote 110: Stone's Life of Brant, Vol. I, p. 106.] [Footnote 111: Am. Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. III. p. 1194.] [Footnote 112: _Ibid_, p. 1245.] [Footnote 113: _Ibid_, p. 1963.] [Footnote 114: Documentary and Colonial History of New York, Vol. VIII, p. 651.] [Footnote 115: Am. Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. IV, pp. 818-829.] [Footnote 116: Documentary and Colonial History of New York, Vol. VIII, p. 668.] [Footnote 117: See Appendix, Note J.] [Footnote 118: Am. Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. VI, p. 447.] [Footnote 119: _Ibid_, p. 643.] [Footnote 120: _Ibid_, p. 642.] [Footnote 121: _Ibid_, p. 644.] [Footnote 122: _Ibid_, p. 511.] [Footnote 123: Documentary and Colonial History of New York, Vol. VIII, p. 683.] [Footnote 124: Am. Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. VI. p. 647.] [Footnote 125: Sir John Johnson's Orderly Book, p. LXXXII.] [Footnote 126: Macdonell's Sketches of Glengarry in Canada, p. 22.] [Footnote 127: Documentary and Colonial History of New York, Vol. VIII, p. 779.] [Footnote 128: Stone's Life of Joseph Brant, Vol. I, p. 238.] [Footnote 129: Johnson's Orderly Book, p. 57.] [Footnote 130: _Ibid_, p. 59.] [Footnote 131: _Ibid_, p. 56.] [Footnote 132: Stone's Life of Joseph Brant, Vol. II, p. 164.] [Footnote 133: Macdonell's Sketches of Glengarry, p. 47.] [Footnote 134: _Ibid_, p. 51.] [Footnote 135: See Appendix, Note K.] CHAPTER IX. THE GLENALADALE HIGHLANDERS OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. Highlanders had penetrated into the wilds of Ontario, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island before they had formed any distinctive settlements of their own. Some of these belonged to the disbanded regiments, but the bulk had come into the country, either through the spirit of adventure, or else to better their condition, and establish homes that would be free from usurpation, oppression, and persecution. It cannot be said that any portion of Canada, at that period, was an inviting field. The Highland settlement that bears the honor of being the first in British North America is that on Prince Edward Island, on the north coast at the head of Tracadie Bay, almost due north of Charlottetown. This settlement was due to John Macdonald, Eighth of Glenaladale, of the family of Clanranald. John Macdonald was but a child at the date of the battle of Culloden. When of sufficient age he was sent to Ratisbon, Germany, to be educated, where he went through a complete course in the branches of learning as taught in the seminary. Returning to his country he was considered to be one of the most finished and accomplished gentlemen of his generation. But events led him to change his prospects in life. In 1770 a violent persecution against the Roman Catholics broke out in the island of South Uist. Alexander Macdonald, First of Boisdale, also of the house of Clanranald, abandoned the religion of his forbears, and like all new converts was over zealous for his new found faith, and at once attempted to compel all his tenants to follow his example. After many acts of oppression, he summoned all his tenants to hear a paper read to them in their native tongue, containing a renunciation of their religion, and a promise, under oath, never more to hold communication with a catholic priest. The alternative was to sign the paper or lose their lands and homes. At once the people unanimously decided to starve rather than submit. The next step of Boisdale was to take his gold headed cane and drive his tenants before him, like a flock of sheep, to the protestant church. Boisdale failed to realize that conditions had changed in the Highlands; but, even if his methods had smacked of originality, he would have been placed in a far better light. To attempt to imitate the example of another may win applause, but if defeated contempt is the lot. The history of _Creideamh a bhata bhuidhe_, or the religion of the yellow stick, is such an interesting episode in West Highland story as not to be out of place in this connection. Hector MacLean, Fifth of Coll, who held the estates from 1559 to 1593, became convinced of the truths of the principles of the Reformation, and decided that his tenants should think likewise. He passed over to the island of Rum, and as his tenants came out of the Catholic church he held his cane straight out and said in Gaelic,--"Those who pass the stick to the Kirk are very good tenants, and those who go on the other side may go out of my island." This stick remained in the family until 1868, when it mysteriously disappeared. Mrs. Hamilton Dundas, daughter of Hugh, Fifteenth of Coll, in a letter dated March 26, 1898, describing the stick says, "There was the crest on the top and initials either H. McL. or L. McL. in very flourishing writing engraved on a band or oval below the top. It was a polished, yellow brown malacca stick, much taller than an ordinary walking stick. I seem to recollect that it had two gold rimmed eyelet holes for a cord and tassle." John Macdonald of Glenaladale, having heard of the proceedings, went to visit the people, and was so touched by their pitiable condition, that he formed the resolution of expatriating himself, and going off at their head to America. He sold out his estates to his cousin Alexander Macdonald of Borrodale, and before the close of 1771, he purchased a tract of forty thousand acres on St. John's Island (now Prince Edward Island), to which he took out about two hundred of his persecuted fellow catholics from South Uist, in the year 1772. Whatever may have been the trials endured by these people, what ship they sailed in, how the land was allotted, if at all given to the public, has not come under the author's observation. Certain facts concerning Glenaladale have been advertised. His first wife was Miss Gordon of Baldornie, and his second, Marjory Macdonald of Ghernish, and had issue, Donald who emigrated with him, William, drowned on the coast of Ireland, John, Roderick and Flora. He died in 1811, and was buried on the Island at the Scotch Fort. Glenaladale early took up arms against the colonists, and having raised a company from among his people, he became a Captain in the Royal Highland Emigrants, or 84th. That he was a man of energy and pluck will appear from the following daring enterprise. During the Revolution, an American man-of-war came to the coast of Nova Scotia, near a port where Glenaladale was on detachment duty, with a small portion of his men. A part of the crew of the warship having landed for the purpose of plundering the people, Glenaladale, with his handful of men, boarded the vessel, cut down those who had been left in charge, hoisted sail, and brought her as a prize triumphantly into the harbor of Halifax. He there got a reinforcement, marched back to his former post, and took the whole crew, composed of Americans and French. As regards his military virtues and abilities Major John Small, of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Highland Emigrants, to which he was attached, writing to the English government, said of him,-- "The activity and unabating zeal of Captain John Macdonald of Glenaladale in bringing an excellent company into the field is his least recommendation, being acknowledged by all who know his rank in his Majesty's service." Slight information may be gained of his connection with the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment from the "Letter-Book" of Captain Alexander McDonald, of the same regiment. In embodying that regiment he was among the very earliest and readiest. Just why he should have exhibited so much feeling against the Americans whose country he had never seen and who had never harmed him in the least, does not appear. Captain McDonald, writing from Halifax, September 1, 1775, to Colonel Allan MacLean, says,-- "What Men that are on the Island of St. Johns (Prince Edward's) are already Engaged with Glenaladall who is now here with me, also young Mcdonald, with whom he came, he will Write to you by this opportunity and from the Contents of his Letter I will Leave you to Judge what sort of a Man he is." By the same letter, "young Mcdonald" had been sent "to ye Island of St. John," unquestionably for the purpose of raising the Highlanders. His great zeal is revealed in a letter from Captain Alexander McDonald to Major Small, dated at Halifax, November 15, 1775: "Mr. McDonald of Glenaladale staid behind at Newfoundland and by the Last accounts from him he and one Lt Fizgerald had Six and thirty men. I dont doubt by this time his having as many more, he is determined to make out his Number Cost what it will, and I hope you will make out a Commission in his brother Donald's name, * * * poor Glenaladall I am afraid is Lost as there is no account of him since a small Schooner Arrived which brought an account of his having Six & thirty men then and if he should Not be Lost He is unavoidably ruined in his Means." The last reference is in a letter to Colonel Allan MacLean, dated at Halifax June 5, 1776: "Glen a la Del is an Ornament to any Corps that he goes into and if the Regiment is not established it had been telling him 300 Guineas that he had never heard of it. On Account of his Affairs upon the Island of St. John's and in Scotland where he was preparing to go to settle his Business when he received the Proposals." The British government offered Glenaladale the governorship of Prince Edward Island, but owing to the oath of allegiance necessary at the time, he, being a catholic, was obliged to decline the office. CHAPTER X. HIGHLAND SETTLEMENT IN PICTOU, NOVA SCOTIA. "What noble courage must their hearts have fired, How great the ardor which their souls inspired, Who leaving far beyond their native plain Have sought a home beyond the western main; And braved the perils of thestormy seas In search of wealth, of freedom, and of ease. Oh, none can tell, but those who sadly share, The bosom's anguish, and its wild despair, What dire distress awaits the hardy bands, That venture first on bleak and desert lands; How great the pain, the danger and the toil Which mark the first rude culture of the soil. When looking round, the lonely settler sees His home amid a wilderness of trees; How sinks his heart in those deep solitudes, Where not a voice upon his ear intrudes; Where solemn silence all the waste pervades, Heightening the horror of its gloomy shades; Save where the sturdy woodman's strokes resound That strew the fallen forest on the ground." --_H. Goldsmith_. The second settlement of Highlanders in British America was at Pictou, Nova Scotia. The stream of Scottish emigration which flowed in after years, not only over the county of Pictou, but also over the greater portion of eastern Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and even the upper provinces of Canada, was largely due to this settlement; for these emigrants, in after years, communicated with their friends and induced them to take up their abode in the new country. The stream once started did not take long to deepen and widen. A company of gentlemen, the majority of whom lived in Philadelphia, received a grant of land in Nova Scotia. Some of the shares passed into the hands of the celebrated Dr. John Witherspoon and John Pagan, a merchant of Greenock, Scotland. These two men appear to have jointly been engaged in promoting emigration to the older colonies. Pagan owned a ship called _Hector_, which was engaged in carrying passengers across the Atlantic. In 1770 she landed Scottish emigrants in Boston. In order to carry out the original obligations of the grant, the proprietors offered liberal inducements for the settlement of it. An agent, named John Ross, was employed, with whom it was agreed that each settler should have a free passage from Scotland, a farm, and a year's free provisions. Ross sailed for Scotland on board the Hector, and on his arrival proceeded to the Highlands, where he painted in glowing colors a picture of the land and the advantages offered. The Highlanders knew nothing of the difficulties awaiting them in a land covered over with a dense unbroken forest, and, tempted by the prospect of owning splendid farms, they were imposed upon, and many agreed to cast their lot on the western side of the Atlantic. The Hector was the vessel that should convey them, with John Spears as master, James Orr being first mate, and John Anderson second. The vessel called first at Greenock, where three families and five young men were taken on board. From there she sailed for Lochbroom, in Rossshire, where she received thirty-three families and twenty-five single men, having all told about two hundred souls. On July 1, 1773, this band bade adieu to friends, home, and country and started for a land they knew naught of. But few had ever crossed the ocean. Just as the ship was starting a piper named John McKay came on board who had not paid his passage; the captain ordered him ashore, but the strains of the national instrument so affected those on board that they interceded to have him allowed to accompany them, and offered to share their own rations with him, in exchange for his music, during the passage. Their request was granted, and his performance aided in no small degree to cheer the pilgrims in their long voyage of eleven weeks, in a miserable hulk, across the Atlantic. The band of emigrants kept up their spirits, as best they could, by song, pipe music, dancing, wrestling, and other amusements, during the long and painful voyage. The Hector was an old Dutch ship, and a slow sailer. It was so rotten that the passengers could pick the wood out of the sides with their fingers. They met with a severe gale off the Newfoundland coast, and were driven back so far that it required two weeks to recover the lost distance. The accommodations on board were wretched and the provisions of inferior quality. Small-pox and dysentery broke out among the passengers. Eighteen, most of whom were children, died and were committed to the deep. The former disease was brought on board by a mother and child, both of whom lived to an advanced age. Owing to the voyage being prolonged, the stock of provisions and water became low; the remnant of food left consisted mostly of salt meat, which, with the scarcity of water, added greatly to their sufferings. The oatcake, carried by them, became mouldy, so that much of it was thrown away before they thought such a long passage was before them; but, fortunately for them, Hugh Macleod, more prudent than the rest, gathered into a bag these despised scraps, and during the last few days of the voyage, all were glad to avail themselves of this refuse food. At last, all the troubles and dangers of the voyage having been surmounted, on September 15th, the Hector dropped anchor, opposite where the town of Pictou now stands. Previous to the arrival of the vessel, the sparsely inhabited country had been somewhat disturbed by the Indians. Word had been received that the Hector was on the way to that region with Highland emigrants. The whites warned the Indians that the Highlanders were coming--the same men they had seen at the taking of Quebec. When the Hector appeared, according to the fashion of that time, her sides were painted in imitation of gunports, which induced the impression that she was a man-of-war. Though the Highland dress was then proscribed at home, this emigrant band, carefully preserving and fondly cherishing the national costume, carried it along with them, and, in celebration of their arrival, many of the younger men donned themselves in their kilts, with _Sgian Dubh_ and the claymore. Just as the vessel dropped anchor, the piper blew up his pipes with might and main, and its thrilling sounds then first startling the denizens of the endless forest, caused the Indians to fly in terror, and were not again seen there for quite an interval. After the terror of the Indians had subsided, they returned to cultivate the friendship of the Highlanders, and proved to be of great assistance. From them they learned to make and use snowshoes, to call moose, and acquired the art of woodcraft. Often too from them they received provisions. They never gave them any trouble, and generally showed real kindness. The first care of the emigrants was to provide for the sick. The wife of Hugh Macleod had just died of smallpox, and the body was sent ashore and buried. Several were sick, and others dying. The resident settlers did all within their power to alleviate the sufferers; and with the supply of fresh provisions most of the sick rapidly recovered, but some died on board the vessel. However great may have been the expectation of these poor creatures on the eve of their leaving Scotland, their hopes almost deserted them by the sight that met their view as they crowded on the deck of the vessel to see their future homes. The primeval forest before them was unbroken, save a few patches on the shore between Brown's Point and the head of the harbor, which had been cleared by the few people who had preceded them. They were landed without the provisions promised them, and without shelter of any kind, and were only able, with the help of the earlier settlers, to erect camps of the rudest and most primitive description, to shelter their sick, their wives and children from the elements. Their feelings of disappointment were most bitter, when they compared the actual facts with the free farms and the comfort promised them by the emigration agent. Although glad to be freed from the pest-house of the ship, yet they were so overcome by their disappointment that many of them sat down and wept bitterly. The previous settlers could not promise food for one-third of those who had arrived on board the Hector, and what provisions were there soon became exhausted, and the season was too late to raise another crop. To make matters still worse, they were sent three miles into the forest, so that they could not even take advantage, with the same ease, of any fish that might be caught in the harbor. These men were unskilled, and the work of cutting down the gigantic trees, and clearing up the land appeared to them to be a hopeless task. They were naturally afraid of the Indians and the wild beasts; and without roads or paths through the forest, they were frightened to move, doubtful about being lost in the wilderness. Under circumstances, such as above narrated, it is not surprising that the people refused to settle on the company's land. In consequence of this, when the supplies did arrive, the agents refused to give them any. To add still further to the difficulties, there arose a jealously between them and the older settlers; Ross quarrelled with the company, and ultimately he left the newcomers to their fate. The few who had a little money with them bought food of the agents, while others, less fortunate, exchanged clothing for provisions; but the majority had absolutely nothing to buy with; and what little the others could purchase was soon devoured. Driven to extremity they insisted on having the supplies that had been sent to them. They were positively refused, and now determined on force in order to save the colony from starvation. Donald McDonald and Colin Douglass went to the store seized the agents, tied them, took their guns from them, which they hid at a distance. Then they carefully measured the articles, took account of what each man received, that the same might be paid for, in case they should ever become able. They then left, leaving behind them Roderick McKay, a man of great energy and determination, a leader among them, who was to liberate the agents--Robert Patterson and Dr. Harris--as soon as the others could get to a safe distance, when he released them and informed them where their guns might be found, and then got out of the way himself. Intelligence was at once dispatched to Halifax that the Highlanders were in rebellion, from whence orders were sent to Captain Thomas Archibald of Truro, to march his company of militia to Pictou to suppress and pacify the rebels; but to his honor, be it said, he pointedly refused, and made reply, "I will do no such thing; I know the Highlanders, and if they are fairly treated there will be no trouble with them." Correct representations of the case were sent to Halifax, and as lord William Campbell, whose term as governor had just expired, was still there, and interesting himself on behalf of the colony as his countrymen, he secured orders for the provisions. Robert Patterson, in after years, admitted that the Highlanders, who had arrived in poverty, paid him every farthing with which he had trusted them, notwithstanding the fact that they had been so badly treated. Difficulties hemming them in on every hand, with rigorous winter approaching, the majority removed to Truro, and places adjacent, to obtain by their labor food for their families. A few settled at Londonderry, some went to Halifax, and still others to Windsor and Cornwallis. In, these settlements, the fathers, mothers, and even the children were forced to bind themselves, virtually as slaves, that they might have subsistence. Those who remained,--seventy in number--lived in small huts, covered over only with the bark and branches of trees to shelter them from the bitter cold of winter, enduring incredible hardships. To procure food for their families, they must trudge eighty miles to Truro, through cold and snow and a trackless forest, and there obtaining a bushel or two of potatoes, and a little flour, in exchange for their labor, they had to return, carrying the supply either on their backs, or else dragging it behind them on handsleds. The way was beset with dangers such as the climbing of steep hills, the descending of high banks, crossing of brooks on the trunk of a single tree, the sinking in wet or boggy ground, and the camping out at night without shelter. Even the potatoes with which they were supplied were of an inferior grade, being soft, and such as is usually fed to cattle. Sometimes the cold was so piercing that the potatoes froze to their backs. Many instances have been related of the privations of this period, some of which are here subjoined. Hugh Fraser, after having exhausted every means of procuring food for his family, resorted to the expedient of cutting down a birch tree and boiling the buds, which he gave them to eat. He then went to a heap, where one of the first settlers had buried some potatoes, and took out some, intending to inform the owner. Before he did so, some of the neighbors maliciously reported him, but the proprietor simply remarked that he thanked God he had them there for the poor old man's family. On another occasion when the father and eldest son had gone to Truro for provisions, everything in the shape of food being exhausted, except an old hen, which the mother finally killed, for the younger children. She boiled it in salt water for the benefit of the salt, with a quantity of herbs, the nature of which she was totally ignorant. A few days later the hen's nest was found with ten eggs in it. Two young men set off for Halifax, so weak from want of food, that they could scarcely travel, and when they reached Gay's River, were nearly ready to give up. However they saw there a fine lot of trout, hanging by a rod, on a bush. They hesitated to take them, thinking they might belong to the Indians who would overtake and kill them. They therefore left them, but returned, when the pains of hunger prevailed. Afterwards they discovered that they had been caught by two sportsmen, neither of whom would carry them. Alexander Fraser, then only sixteen, carried his sister on his back to Truro, while the only food he had for the whole journey was the tale of an eel. On another occasion the supply of potatoes, which had been brought a long distance for seed and planted, were dug up by the family and some of the splits eaten. The remembrance of these days sank deep into the minds of that generation, and long after, the narration of the scenes and cruel hardships through which they had to pass, beguiled the winter's night as they sat by their comfortable firesides. During the first winter, the first death among the emigrants was a child of Donald McDonald, and the first birth was a son of Alexander Fraser, named David, afterwards Captain Fraser. When the following spring opened they set to work to improve their condition. They sought out suitable spots on which to settle, judging the land by the kind and variety of trees produced. They explored the different rivers, and finding the soil near their banks to be the most fertile, and capable of being more easily improved than the higher lands, they settled upon it. Difficulties were thrown in the way of getting their grant. The first grant obtained was to Donald Cameron, who had been a soldier in the Fraser Highlanders at the taking of Quebec. His lot was situated at the Albion Mines. This grant is dated February 8, 1775, and besides the condition of the king's quit rent, contains the following: "That the grantee, his heirs or assigns, shall clear and work, within three years, three acres for every fifty granted, in that part of the land which he shall judge most convenient and advantageous, or clear and drain three acres of swampy or sunken ground, or drain three acres of marsh, if any such be within the bounds of this grant, or put and keep on his lands, within three years from the date hereof, three neat cattle, to be continued upon the land until three acres for every fifty be fully cleared and improved. But if no part of the said tract be fit for present cultivation, without manuring and improving the same, then this grantee, his heirs and assigns shall be obliged, within three years from the date hereof, to erect on some part of said land a dwelling house, to contain twenty feet in length by sixteen feet in breadth, and to put on said land three neat cattle for every fifty acres, or if the said grantee, his heirs or assigns, shall, within three years, after the passing of this grant, begin to employ thereon, and so continue to work for three years then next ensuing, in digging any stone quarry or any other mine, one good and able hand for every one hundred acres of such tract, it shall be accounted a sufficient seeding, planting, cultivation and improvement, and every three acres which shall be cleared and worked as aforesaid; and every three acres which shall be cleared and drained as aforesaid, shall be accounted a sufficient seeding, planting cultivation and improvement, to save for ever from forfeiture fifty acres in every part of the tract hereby granted." All were not so fortunate as to secure their grants early. As late as January 22, 1781, in a petition to the government, they complained that a grant had been often promised but never received; but finally, on August 26, 1783, the promise was fulfilled. It contains the names of forty-four persons, some of whom were not passengers on board the Hector; conveying the lands on which they were located, the size of the lots being regulated by the number in the family. The following is a list of grantees, with the number of acres received and notices of situation of their lots: ON WEST RIVER: David Stewart, 300 acres; John McKenzie, 500; Hugh Fraser, 400; William McLellan,--; James McDonald, 200; James McLellan, 100; Charles Blaikie, 300, and in another division 250 acres, 550 in all; Robert Patterson, 300, and in an after division 500 in all; James McCabe, 300; Alex. Cameron,--. ON MIDDLE RIVER, EAST SIDE: Alex. Fraser, 100 acres; Alex. Ross, Jr., 100; John Smith, 350; Robert Marshall, 350; James McCulloch, 240; Alex. Ross, 300; Alex. Fraser, Jr., 100; John Crockett, 500; Simon Fraser, 500; Donald McDonald, 350; David Urquhart, 250; Kenneth Fraser, 450; James McLeod, 150. ON EAST RIVER, EAST SIDE: Walter Murray, 280 acres, and 70 acres in after division; James McKay, 70; Donald McKay, Jr., 80; John Sutherland, 180, and 70 in after division; Rod. McKay, Sr., 300, and in after division, 50; James Hays,--; Hugh McKay, 100; Alex. McKay, 100; Heirs of Donald McLellan, 260; Hugh Fraser, 400, and in after division, 100; Wm. McLeod, 80; John McLellan, 200; Thomas Turnbull, 220, in after division, 180; Wm. McLeod, 210, and in after division, 60; Alex. McLean,--; Colin McKenzie, 370. ON EAST RIVER, WEST SIDE: Donald Cameron, 100 acres; James Grant, 400; Colin McKay, 400; Wm. McKay, 550; Donald Cameron, 100; Donald McKay, Sr., 450; Donald Cameron, a gore lot; Anthony Culton, 500. The following is a list of passengers that arrived on board the Hector, originally drawn up, about 1837, by William McKenzie, Loch Broom, Nova Scotia: SHIPPED AT GLASGOW: a Mr. Scott and family; George Morrison and family, from Banff, settled on west side of Barnys River; John Patterson, prominent in the settlement; George McConnell, settled on West River; Andrew Main and family, settled at Noel; Andrew Wesley; Charles Fraser, settled at Cornwallis; John Stewart. FROM INVERNESSHIRE: Wiliam McKay, wife and four children, settled on East River; Roderick McKay, wife and daughter, settled on East River; Colin McKay and family, on East River; Hugh Fraser, wife and three children, on McLellans Brook; Donald Cameron and family, on East River; Donald McDonald, wife and two children, on Middle River; Colin Douglass, wife and three children, two of the latter lost on the Hector, on Middle River; Hugh Fraser and family, on West River; Alex. Fraser, wife and five children; James Grant and family, East River; Donald Munroe, settled in Halifax, and Donald Mc----. FROM LOCH BROOM: John Ross, Agent, history unknown; Alexander Cameron, wife and two children, settled at Loch Broom; Alex. Ross and wife, advanced in life; Alex Ross and Family, on Middle River; Colin McKenzie and Family, on East River; John Munroe and family; Kenneth McRitchie and family; William McKenzie, at Loch Broom; John McGregor; John McLellan, on McLellans Brook; William McLellan, on West River; Alexander McLean, East River; Alexander Falconer, Hopewell; Donald McKay, East River; Archibald Chisholm, East River; Charles Matheson; Robert Sim, removed to New Brunswick; Alexander McKenzie and Thomas Fraser, From Sutherlandshire; Kenneth Fraser and family, Middle River; William Fraser and family; James Murray and family, Londonderry; David Urquhart and family, Londonderry; Walter Murray and family, Merigomish; James McLeod and wife, Middle River; Hugh McLeod, wife, and three daughters, the wife died as the vessel arrived, West River; Alexander McLeod, wife, and three sons, one of the last died in the harbor, and the father drowned in the Shubenacadie; John McKay and family, Shubenacadie; Philip McLeod and family; Donald McKenzie and family, Shubenacadie(?); Alexander McKenzie and family; John Sutherland and family; William Matheson, wife and son, first settled at Londonderry, then at Rogers Hill; Donald Grant; Donald Graham; John McKay, piper; William McKay, worked for an old settler named McCabe, and took his name; John Sutherland, first at Windsor, and then on Sutherland river; Angus McKenzie, first at Windsor, and finally on Green Hill. Some interesting facts have been gathered concerning the history of these emigrants, Roderick McKay, who took up land on the East River, was born in Beauly, and before leaving his native country gained a local admiration by rescuing some whiskey from the officers who had seized it, and for the offence was lodged in jail in Inverness. He soon ingratiated himself into the good graces of the jailer, and had no difficulty in sending him for some ale and whiskey. The jailer returning, advanced into the cell with both hands full. Roderick stepped behind him, passed out the door, locked it, and brought off the key. In Halifax he added to his reputation. An officer was paying some attention to a female inmate of his house which did not meet the approbation of Roderick, and meeting them together upbraided him for his conduct, when the latter drew his sword and struck him a cruel blow on the head. Telling the officer he would meet him within an hour, he had his wound dressed, and securing a stick stood before his antagonist. The officer again drew his sword and in the melee, Roderick disarmed him and well repaid him for his cowardly assault. Alexander Fraser, who settled on Middle River, although too young to serve in the Rising of the Forty Five had three brothers at Culloden, of whom two were killed. He was in comfortable circumstances, when he left what he thought was a Saxon oppression, which determined him to seek freedom in America. His horses and cart were seized by gaugers, with some whiskey which they were carrying, and taken to Inverness. During the night, the stable boy, a relative of Fraser, took out the horses and cart, and driving across country delivered them to the owner, who lost no time in taking them to another part of the country and disposed of them. He was the last to engage a passage in the Hector. Alexander Cameron who gave the name to Loch Broom, after that of his native parish was not quite eighteen at the Rising of the Forty Five. His brothers followed prince Charles, and he was drawn by the crowd that followed the prince to Culloden. When he returned to his charge, it was to meet an angry master who attempted to chastize him. Cameron ran with his master in pursuit. The latter finding him too nimble, stooped down to pick up a stone to throw at him, and in doing so wounded himself with his dirk in the leg, so that he was obliged to remain some time in hiding, lest he should be taken as having been at Culloden, by the soldiers who were scouring the country, killing any wounded stragglers from the field. The eldest son of James Grant who settled on East River, did not emigrate with the family, but is believed to have emigrated afterwards, and was the grandfather of General U.S. Grant. As has already been intimated, amidst all the discouragements and disappointments, the Highlanders used every means in their power to supply the wants of their families. They rapidly learned from the Indians and their neighbors. The former taught them the secrets of the forests and they soon became skilled in hunting the moose, and from the latter they became adepts in making staves, which were sent in small vessels to the older colonies, and in exchange were supplied with necessaries. But the population rather decreased, for a return made January 1, 1775, showed the entire population to be but seventy-eight, consisting of twenty-three men, fourteen women, twenty-one boys and twenty-girls. The produce raised in 1775, was two hundred and sixty-nine bushels of wheat, thirteen of rye, fifty-six of peas, thirty-six of barley, one hundred of oats, and three hundred and forty pounds of flax. The farm stock consisted of thirteen oxen, thirteen cows, fifteen young neat cattle, twenty-five sheep and one swine. They manufactured seventeen thousand feet of boards. While the improvement was somewhat marked, the supply was not sufficient; and the same weary journeys must be taken to Truro for necessaries. The moose, and the fish in the rivers, gave them a supply of meat, and they soon learned to make sugar from the sap of the maple tree. They learned to dig a large supply of clams in the autumn, heap the same on the shore, and cover with sand. Scarcely had these people become able to supply themselves, when they were again tried by the arrival of a class poorer than themselves. Inducements having been held out by the proprietors of Prince Edward Island to parties in Scotland, to settle their land, John Smith and Wellwood Waugh, living at Lockerbie, in Dumfriesshire, sold out their property and chartered a small vessel to carry thither their families, and all others that would accompany them. They arrived at Three Rivers, in the year 1774, followed by others a few months later. They commenced operations on the Island with fair prospects of success, when they were almost overwhelmed by a plague of mice. These animals swarmed everywhere, consuming everything eatable, even to the potatoes in the ground; and for eighteen months the settlers experienced all the miseries of a famine, having for several months only what lobsters or shell-fish they could gather on the sea-shore. The winter brought them to such a state of weakness that they were unable to convey food a reasonable distance, even when they had means to buy it. In this pitiable condition they heard that the Pictou people were beginning to prosper and had provisions to spare. They sent one of their number David Stewart to make inquiry. One of the settlers, who had come from one of the older colonies, brought with him some negro slaves, and when the messenger arrived had just returned from Truro to sell one of them, and brought home with him some provisions, the proceeds of the sale of the negro. The agent was cheerful in spite of his troubles; and withal was something of a wag. On his return to the Island the people gathered around him to hear the news. "What kind of a place is Pictou?" inquired one. "Oh, an awful place. Why, I was staying with a man who was just eating the last of his nigger;" and as the people were reduced themselves they did not hesitate to believe the tale. Receiving correct information, fifteen of the families went to Pictou, where, for a time, they fared little better, but afterwards became prosperous and happy. Had it not been for a French settlement a few miles distant the people of Lockerbie would have perished during the winter. For supplies, principally of potatoes, they exchanged the clothing they had brought from Scotland, until they barely had enough for themselves. John Smith who was one of the leaders removed to Truro, and Waugh left the Island for Pictou, having only a bucket of clams to support his family on the way. The American Revolution effected that distant colony. The people had received most of the supplies from the States, which was paid for in fish, fur, and lumber. This trade was at once cut off and the people, at first, felt it severely. Even salt could only be obtained by boiling down sea water. The selection of Halifax as the chief depot for the British navy promoted the business interests for that region of country. As large sums of money were expended there, the district shared in the prosperity. While prices for various kinds of lumber rapidly increased, and the Pictou colony was greatly advantaged thereby, still they found it difficult to obtain British goods, of which they were in need until 1779, when John Patterson went to Scotland and purchased a supply. The War had the effect to divide the colony of Pictou. Not only the Highlanders but all others from Scotland were loyally attached to the British government; while the earlier settlers, who were from the States, were loyally attached to the American cause, with the exception of Robert Patterson. Although the Americans were so situated as to be unable to take up arms, yet they manifested their sympathy in harmless ways, as in the refusal of tea, and the more permanent method of naming their sons after those who were prominent in the theatre of war. At times the feeling became quite violent, in so much so that the circular addressed to the magistrates in the Province was sent to Pictou, requiring these officers "to be watchful and attentive to the behaviour of the people in your county, and that you will apprehend any person or persons who shall be guilty of any opposition to the King's authority and Government, and send them properly guarded to Halifax." The inhabitants were not only required to take the oath of allegiance, but the magistrates were compelled to send a list of all who so complied as well as those who refused. Robert Patterson, who had been made a magistrate in 1774, was very zealous in carrying out this order. He even started for Halifax, intending to get copies of the oath required, for the purpose of imposing it on the inhabitants. When he reached Truro one of the Archibalds discovered his mission and presenting a pistol, used its persuasive influence to induce him immediately to return home. So officious did Patterson become that his sons several times were obliged to hide him in the woods, taking him to Fraser's Point for that purpose. Many occurrences relating to the War effected the Province, the County of Pictou, and indirectly the Highlanders, though not in a marked degree. The first special occurrence, was probably during the spring of 1776, when an American privateer captured a vessel at Merigomish, loaded with a valuable cargo of West India produce. The vessel was immediately got to sea. The news of the capture was immediately circulated, and presuming the privateer would enter the harbor of Pictou, the inhabitants collected with every old musket and fowling piece to resist the enemy.--The next incident was the capture of Captain Lowden's vessel in the harbor in 1777, variously reported to have been the work of Americans from Machias, Maine, and also by Americans from Pictou and Truro. In all probability the latter were in the plot. The vessel had been loading with timber for the British market. The captain was invited to the house of Wellwood Waugh, and went without suspicion, leaving the vessel in charge of the mate. During the visit he was surrounded and informed that he was a prisoner, and commanded to deliver up his arms. In the meantime an armed party proceeded to the vessel, which was easily secured. As the crew came on deck they were made prisoners and confined in the forecastle. Some of the captors took a boat belonging to the ship and went to the shop of Roderick McKay some distance up East River, and plundered it of tools, iron, &c. In the meantime Roderick and his brother Donald had boarded the vessel and were also made prisoners. When night came the captors celebrated the event by a carousal. When well under the influence of liquor, Roderick proposed to his brother to take the ship, the plan being to make a sudden rush up the cabin stairs to the deck; that he would seize the sentry and pitch him overboard, while Donald should stand with an axe over the companionway and not allow any of them to come up. Donald was a quiet, peaceable man, and opposed to the effusion of blood and refused to take part in the scheme. The McKays were released and the vessel sailed for Bay Verte, not knowing that the Americans had retired from the place. The vessel fell into the hands of a man-of-war, and the captors took to the woods, where, it is supposed, many of them perished. All of Waugh's goods were seized, by the officers of the war-vessel, and sold, and he was forced to leave. This affair caused the American sympathizers to leave the settlement moving eastward, and without selling their farms. American privateers were frequently off the coast, but had little effect on Pictou. One of the passengers of the Hector who had removed to Halifax and there married, came to Pictou by land, but sent his baggage on a vessel. She was captured and he lost all. A privateer came into the harbor, the alarm was given, and the people assembled to repel the invader. An American living in the settlement, went on board the vessel and urged the commander to leave because there were only a few Scotch settlers commencing in the woods, and not yet possessing anything worth taking away. In consequence of his representations the vessel put out to sea.--The wreck of the Malignant excited some attention at Pictou, near the close of the war. She was a man-of-war bound to Quebec, and late in the fall was wrecked at a place since known as Malignant Cove. The crew came to Pictou and staid through the winter, being provided for through the efforts of Robert Patterson. The cause of the greatest alarm during the War was a large gathering of Indians at Fraser's Point in 1779. In that year some Indians, in the interest of the Americans, having plundered the inhabitants at Miramichi, a British man-of-war seized sixteen of them of whom twelve were carried to Quebec as hostages, and from there, afterwards, brought to Halifax. Several hundred Indians, for quite a number of days were in council, the design of which was believed to join in the war against the English. The settlers were greatly alarmed, but the Indians quietly dispersed. Most of the Highlanders that emigrated on board the Hector were very ignorant. Only a few could read and books among them were unknown. The Lockerbie settlers were much more intelligent in religion and in everything else. They brought with them from Scotland a few religious books, some of which were lost on Prince Edward Island, but those preserved were carefully read. In 1779 John Patterson brought a supply of books from Scotland, among which was a lot of the New England Primer, which was distributed among the young. The people were all religiously inclined, and some very devout. All were desirous of religious ordinances. They would meet at the regular hour on the Sabbath, Robert Marshall holding what was called a religious teaching for the English, and Colin Douglass doing the same in Gaelic. The exercises consisted of praise, prayer and the reading of the Scriptures and religious books. They were visited once or twice by Reverend David Smith of Londonderry, and Reverend Daniel Cock of Truro came among them several times. As the people considered themselves under the ministry of the latter, they went on foot to Truro to be present at his communions, and carried their children thither on their backs to be baptized by him. These people had so little English that they could scarcely understand any sermon in that language. This may be judged from an incident that occurred some years later. A Highlander, living in Truro, attended Mr. Cock's service. The latter one day took for his text the words, "Fools make a mock of sin." The former bore the sermon patiently, but said afterward, "Mr. Cock's needn't have talked so about moccasins; Mr. McGregor wore them many a time." The people were also visited by itinerant preachers, the most important of whom was Henry Alline. In his journal, under date of July 25, 1782, he says: "Got to a place called Picto, where I had no thought of making any stay, but finding the spirit to attend my preaching, I staid there thirteen days and preached in all the different parts of the settlement, I found four Christians in this place, who were greatly revived and rejoiced that the Gospel was sent among them."--Reverend James Bennet, missionary of the Church of England, in 1775, visited the eastern borders of the Province, and in 1780 visited Pictou and Tatamagouche, and on his return lost his way in the woods. The Peace of 1783 brought in an influx of settlers mostly from the Highlands, with some who had served in the Revolution against the Americans. This added strength gave more solidity to the settlement. Although considerable prosperity had been attained the added numbers brought increased wealth. Among the fresh arrivals came Reverend James McGregor, in 1786, and under his administration the religious tone was developed, and the state of society enhanced. CHAPTER XI. FIRST HIGHLAND REGIMENTS IN AMERICA. The conflict known as THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR, which began in 1754, forced the English colonies to join in a common cause. The time had come for the final struggle between France and England for colonial supremacy in America. The principal cause for the war was brought on by the conflicting territorial claims of the two nations. Mutual encroachments were made by both parties on the other's territory, in consequence of which both nations prepared for war. The English ministry decided to make their chief efforts against the French in that quarter where the aggressions took place, and for this purpose dispatched thither two bodies of troops. The first division, of which the 42nd Highlanders formed a part, under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir James Abercromby, set sail in March, 1756, and landed in June following. The Highland regiments that landed in America and took part in the conflict were the 42nd or Royal Highland Regiment, but better known as "The Black Watch" (_Am Freiceadan Dubh_), the 77th or Montgomery's Highlanders, and the Old 78th, or Fraser's Highlanders. The Black Watch, so called from the sombre appearance of their dress was embodied, as the 43rd Regiment, May, 1740, having been composed largely of the independent companies raised in 1729. When Oglethorpe's regiment, the 42nd was reduced in 1749, the Black Watch received its number, which ever since, it has retained. From 1749 to 1756 the regiment was stationed in Ireland, and between them and the inhabitants of the districts, where quartered, the utmost cordiality existed. Previous to the departure of the regiment from Ireland to America, officers with parties had been sent to Scotland for recruits. So successful were they, that in the month of June, seven hundred embarked at Greenock for America. The officers of the regiment were as follows: =================================================================================== Rank | NAME | Commission | Rank | NAME |Commission -------+-------------------+-------------+--------+------------------+------------- Colonel|Lord John Murray |Apr. 25, 1745|Lieut. |John Graham |Jan. 25, 1756 Lieut. | | |Lieut. |Hugh McPherson | " 26, 1756 Colonel|Francis Grant |Dec. 17, 1755|Lieut. |Alexander Turnbull| " 27, 1756 Major |Duncan Campbell, |Dec. 17, 1755|Lieut. |Alexander Campbell| " 28, 1756 | Inveraw | |Lieut. |Alexander McIntosh| " 29, 1756 Capt |Gordon Graham |June 3, 1752 |Lieut. |James Gray | " 30, 1756 Capt |John Read | do. |Lieut. |William Baillie | " 31, 1756 Capt |John McNeile |Dec. 16, 1752|Lieut. |Hugh Arnott |Apr. 9, 1756 Capt |Alan Campbell |Mar. 15, 1755|Lieut. |John Sutherland | " 10, 1756 Capt |Thomas Graeme |Feb. 16, 1756|Lieut. |John Small | " 11, 1756 | Duchray | |Ensign |Archibald Campbell|May 5, 1756 Capt |James Abercromby | do. |Ensign |James Campbell |Jan. 24, 1756 | Son of Glassa | |Ensign |Archibald Lamont | " 25, 1756 Capt |John Campbell |Apr. 9, 1756 |Ensign |Duncan Campbell | " 26, 1756 Capt. | Strachur | |Ensign |George McLagan | " 27, 1756 Lieut. |John Campbell, sr |Feb. 16, 1756|Ensign |Patrick Balneaves | " 28, 1756 Lieut. |William Grant |May 22, 1746 |Ensign |Patrick Stuart | " 29, 1756 Lieut. |Robert Gray |Aug. 7, 1747 |Ensign |Norman McLeod | " 30, 1756 Lieut. |John Campbell |May 16, 1748 |Ensign |George Campbell | " 31, 1756 Lieut. |George Farquharson |Mar. 29, 1750|Ensign |Donald Campbell | May 5, 1756 Lieut. |Colin Campbell |Feb. 9, 1751 |Chaplain|Adam Ferguson |Apr. 30, 1746 Lieut. |James Campbell |June 3, 1752 |Adjutant|James Grant |June 26, 1751 Lieut. |Sir James Cockburn,|Mar. 15, 1755|Q.M. |John Graham |Feb. 19, 1756 | B't. | |Surgeon |David Hepburn |June 26, 1751 Lieut. |Kenneth Tolme |Jan. 23, 1756| | | Lieut. |James Grant | " 24, 1756| | | =================================================================================== The regiment known as Montgomery's Highlanders (77th) took its name from its commander, Archibald Montgomery, son of the earl of Eglinton. Being very popular among the Highlanders, Montgomery very soon raised the requisite body of men, who were formed into thirteen companies of one hundred and five rank and file each; making in all fourteen hundred and sixty effective men, including sixty-five sergeants and thirty pipers and drummers. The Colonel's commission was dated January 4, 1757, and those of the other officers one day later than his senior in rank. They are thus recorded: Lieut.-Colonel commanding, Archibald Montgomery; majors, James Grant of Ballindalloch and Alexander Campbell; captains, John Sinclair, Hugh Mackenzie, John Gordon, Alexander Mackenzie, William Macdonald, George Munro, Robert Mackenzie, Allan Maclean, James Robertson, Allan Cameron; captain-lieut., Alexander Mackintosh; lieutenants, Charles Farquharson, Nichol Sutherland, Donald Macdonald, William Mackenzie, Robert Mackenzie, Henry Munro, Archibald Robertson, Duncan Bayne, James Duff, Colin Campbell, James Grant, Alexander Macdonald, Joseph Grant, Robert Grant, Cosmo Martin, John Macnab, Hugh Gordon, Alexander Macdonald, Donald Campbell, Hugh Montgomery, James Maclean, Alexander Campbell, John Campbell, James Macpherson, Archibald Macvicar; ensigns: Alexander Grant, William Haggart, Lewis Houston, Ronald Mackinnon, George Munro, Alexander Mackenzie, John Maclachlane, William Maclean, James Grant, John Macdonald, Archibald Crawford, James Bain, Allan Stewart; chaplain: Henry Munro; adjutant: Donald Stewart; quarter-master: Alexander Montgomery; surgeon: Allan Stewart. The regiment embarked at Greenock for Halifax immediately on its organization. Fraser's Highlanders, or the 78th Regiment was organized by Simon Fraser, son of the notorious lord Lovat who was executed by the English government for the part he acted in the Rising of the Forty-five. Although his estates had been seized by the Crown, and not possessing a foot of land, so great was the influence of clanship, that in a few weeks he raised eight hundred men, to whom were added upwards of six hundred more by the gentlemen of the country and those who had obtained commissions. In point of the number of companies and men, the battalion was precisely the same as Montgomery's Highlanders. The list of officers, whose commissions are dated January 5, 1757, is as follows: Lieut.-col. commandant: Simon Fraser; majors: James Clephane and John Campbell of Dunoon; captains: John Macpherson, brother of Cluny, John Campbell of Ballimore; Simon Fraser of Inverallochy, Donald Macdonald, brother of Clanranald, John Macdonell of Lochgarry, Alexander Cameron of Dungallon, Thomas Ross of Culrossie, Thomas Fraser of Strui, Alexander Fraser of Culduthel, Sir Henry Seton of Abercorn and Culbeg, James Fraser of Belladrum; capt.-Lieut.: Simon Fraser; lieutenants: Alexander Macleod, Hugh Cameron, Ronald Macdonell, son of Keppoch, Charles Macdonell, from Glengarry, Roderick Macneil of Barra, William Macdonell, Archibald Campbell, son of Glenlyon, John Fraser of Balnain, Hector Macdonald, brother of Boisdale, Allan Stewart, son of Innernaheil, John Fraser, Alexander Macdonald, son of Boisdale, Alexander Fraser, Alexander Campbell of Aross, John Douglas, John Nairn, Arthur Rose, Alexander Fraser, John Macdonell of Leeks, Cosmo Gordon, David Baillie, Charles Stewart, Ewen Cameron, Allan Cameron, John Cuthbert, Simon Fraser, Archibald Macallister, James Murray, Alexander Fraser, Donald Cameron, son of Fassifern; ensigns: John Chisolm, Simon Fraser, Malcolm Fraser, Hugh Fraser, Robert Menzies, John Fraser of Errogie, James Mackenzie, Donald Macneil, Henry Munro, Alexander Gregorson, Ardtornish, James Henderson, John Campbell; chaplain: Robert Macpherson; adjutant: Hugh Fraser; quarter-master: John Fraser; surgeon: John Maclean. "The uniform of the regiment was the full Highland dress with musket and broadsword, to which many of the soldiers added the dirk at their own expense, and a purse of badger's or otter's skin. The bonnet was raised or cocked on one side, with a slight bend inclining down to the right ear, over which were suspended two or more black feathers. Eagle's or hawk's feathers were usually worn by the gentlemen, in the Highlands, while the bonnets of the common people were ornamented with a bunch of the distinguishing mark of the clan or district. The ostrich feathers in the bonnets of the soldiers were a modern addition of that period."[136] The regiment was quickly marched to Greenock, where it embarked, in company with Montgomery's Highlanders, and landed at Halifax in June 1757, where it remained till it formed a junction with the expedition against Louisbourg. The regiment was quartered between Canada and Nova Scotia till the conclusion of the war. On all occasions they sustained a uniform character for unshaken firmness, incorruptible probity and a strict regard to their duties. The men were always anxious to conceal their misdemeanors from the _Caipal Mohr_, as they called the chaplain, from his large size. When The Black Watch landed in New York they attracted much notice, particularly on the part of the Indians, who, on the march of the regiment to Albany, flocked from all quarters to see strangers, whom, from the somewhat similarity of dress, they believed to be of the same extraction with themselves, and therefore considered them to be brothers. During the whole of 1756 the regiment remained inactive in Albany. The winter and spring of 1757 they were drilled and disciplined for bush-fighting and sharpshooting, a species of warfare then necessary and for which they were well fitted, being in general good marksmen, and expert in the management of their arms. [Illustration: HIGHLAND OFFICER] In the month of June, 1757, lord Loudon, who had been appointed commander-in-chief of the army in North America, with the 22d, 42d, 44th, 48th, 2d and 4th battalions of the 60th, together with six hundred Rangers, making in all five thousand and three hundred men, embarked for Halifax, where his force was increased to ten thousand and five hundred men by the addition of five regiments lately arrived from England, which included Fraser's and Montgomery's Highlanders. When on the eve of his departure for an attack on Louisburg, information was received that the Brest fleet, consisting of seventeen sail of the line, besides frigates, had arrived in the harbor of that fortress. Letters, which had been captured in a vessel bound from Louisburg to France, revealed that the force was too great to be encountered. Lord Loudon abandoned the enterprise and soon after returned to New York taking with him the Highlanders and four other regiments. By the addition of three new companies and the junction of seven hundred recruits "The Black Watch" or 42nd, was now augmented to upwards of thirteen hundred men, all Highlanders, for at that period, none others were admitted. During the absence of lord Loudon, Montcalm, the French commander, was very active, and collecting all his disposable forces, including Indians, and a large train of artillery, amounting in all to more than eight thousand men, laid siege to Fort William Henry, under the command of Colonel Munro. Some six miles distant was Fort Edward, garrisoned by four thousand men under General Webb. The siege was conducted with great vigor and within six days Colonel Munro surrendered, conditioned on not serving again for eighteen months, and allowed to march out of the fort with their arms and two field pieces. As soon as they were without the gate the Indians fell upon them and committed all sorts of outrages and barbarities,--the French being unable to restrain them. Thus terminated the campaign of 1757 in America, undistinguished by any act which might compensate for the loss of territory or the sacrifice of lives. With an inferior force the French had been successful at every point, and besides having obtained complete control of Lakes George and Champlain, the destruction of Oswego gave the dominion of those lakes, which are connected with the St. Lawrence, to the Mississippi, thus opening a direct communication between Canada and the southwest. Lord Loudon having been recalled, the command of the army again devolved on General James Abercromby. Determined to wipe off the disgrace of former campaigns, the new ministry, which had just come into power, fitted out, in 1758, a great naval and military force consisting of fifty-two thousand men. To the military staff were added Major-General Amherst, and Brigadier-General's Wolfe, Townsend and Murray. Three expeditions were proposed: the first to renew the attempt on Louisburg; the second directed against Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and the third against Fort du Quesne. General Abercromby took command, in person, of the expedition against Ticonderoga, with a force of fifteen thousand three hundred and ninety men, of whom over six thousand were regulars, the rest being provincials, besides a train of artillery. Among the regulars must be reckoned the 42 Highlanders. Ticonderoga, situated on a point of land between Lake George and Lake Champlain is surrounded on three sides by water, and on one-half of the fourth by a morass. The remaining part of the fort was protected by high entrenchments, supported and flanked by three batteries, and the whole front of that which was accessible intersected by deep traverses, and blocked up with felled trees, with their branches turned outwards, and their points sharpened. On July 5th the army struck their tents at daybreak, and in nine hundred small boats and one hundred and thirty-five whale-boats, with artillery mounted on rafts, embarked on Lake George. The fleet in stately procession, bright with banners and cheered by martial music, moved down the beautiful lake, beaming with hope and pride. The solemn forests were broken by the echoes of the happy soldiery. There was no one to molest them, and victory was their one desire. Over the broader expanse they passed to the first narrows, witnessing the mountains rising from the water's edge, the dark forest, and the picturesque loveliness of the scene. Long afterwards General John Stark recounted that when they had halted at Sabbathday Point at twilight, lord Howe, reclining in his tent on a bearskin, and bent on winning a hero's name, questioned him closely as to the position of Ticonderoga and the fittest modes of attack. After remaining five hours at their resting place, the army, an hour before midnight, moved once more down the lake, and by nine the next morning, disembarked on the west side, in a cove sheltered by a point which still keeps the name of Lord Howe. The troops were formed into two parallel columns and marched on the enemy's advanced posts, which were abandoned without a shot. The march was continued in the same order, but the guides proving ignorant, the columns came in contact, and were thrown into confusion. A detachment of the enemy which had also become bewildered in the woods, fell in with the right column, at the head of which was lord Howe, and during the skirmish which ensued, Howe was killed. Abercromby ordered the army to march back to the landing place. Montcalm, ever alert, was ready to receive the English army. On July 6th he called in all his parties, and when united amounted to two thousand eight hundred French and four hundred and fifty Canadians. On the 7th the whole army toiled incredibly in strengthening their defenses. On the same evening De Levi returned from the projected expedition against the Mohawks, bringing with him four hundred chosen men. On the morning of the 8th, the drums of the French beat to arms, that the troops, now thirty-six hundred and fifty in number, might know their stations and resume their work. The strongest regiment in the army of Abercrombie was the 42nd Highlanders, fully equipped, in their native dress. The officers wore a narrow gold braiding round their tunics, all other lace being laid aside to make them less conspicuous to the French and Canadian riflemen. The sergeants wore silver lace on their coats, and carried the Lochaber axe, the head of which was fitted for hewing, hooking or spearing an enemy, or such other work as might be found before the ramparts of Ticonderoga. Many of the men had been out in the Rising of the Forty-five. When Abercrombie received information from some prisoners that De Levi was about to reinforce Montcalm, he determined, if possible to strike a blow before a junction could be effected. Report also having reached him that the entrenchments were still unfinished, and might be assaulted with prospects of success, he immediately made the necessary dispositions for attack. The British commander, remaining far behind during the action, put the army in motion, on the 8th, the regulars advancing through the openings of the provincials, and taking the lead. The pickets were followed by the grenadiers, supported by the battalions and reserve, which last consisted of the Highlanders and 55th regiment, advanced with great alacrity towards the entrenchments, which they found much more formidable than they expected. As the British advanced, Montcalm, who stood just within the trenches, threw off his coat for the sunny work of the July afternoon, and forbade a musket to be fired until he had given the order. When the British drew very near, in three principal columns, to attack simultaneously the left, the center, and the right, they became entangled among the rubbish and broken into disorder by clambering over logs and projecting limbs. The quick eye of Montcalm saw the most effective moment had come, and giving the word of command, a sudden and incessant fire of swivels and small arms mowed down brave officers and men by hundreds. The intrepidity of the English made the carnage terrible. With the greatest vivacity the attacks were continued all the afternoon. Wherever the French appeared to be weak, Montcalm immediately strengthened them. Regiment after regiment was hurled against the besieged, only to be hurled back with the loss of half their number. The Scottish Highlanders, held in the reserve, from the very first were impatient of the restraint; but when they saw the column fall back, unable longer to control themselves, and emulous of sharing the danger, broke away and pushed forward to the front, and with their broadswords and Lochaber axes endeavored to cut through the abattis and chevaux-de-frize. For three hours the Highlanders struggled without the least appearance of discouragement. After a long and deadly struggle they penetrated the exterior defences and reached the breastwork; having no scaling ladders, they attempted to gain the summit by mounting on each others shoulders and partly by fixing their feet in holes they made with their swords, axes and bayonets in the face of the work, but no sooner did a man appear on top than he was hurled down by the defending troops. Captain John Campbell, with a few men, at length forced their way over the breastwork, but were immediately dispatched with the bayonet. While the Highlanders and grenadiers were fighting without faltering and without confusion on the French left, the columns which had attacked the center and right, at about five o'clock, concentrated themselves at a point between the two; but De Levi advanced from the right and Montcalm brought up the reserve. At six the two parties nearest the water turned desperately against the center, and being repulsed, made a last effort on the left, where, becoming bewildered, the English fired on an advanced party of their own, producing hopeless dejection. The British general, during the confusion of battle cowered safely at the saw-mills, and when his presence was needed to rally the fugitives, was nowhere to be found. The second in command, unable to seize the opportunity, gave no commands. The Highlanders persevered in their undertaking and did not relinquish their labors until they received the third order to retreat, when they withdrew, unmolested, and carrying with them the whole of their wounded. The loss sustained by the 42nd was as follows: eight officers, nine sergeants and two hundred and ninety-seven men killed; and seventeen officers, ten sergeants and three hundred and six soldiers wounded. The officers killed were Major Duncan Campbell of Inveraw, Captain John Campbell, Lieutenants George Farquharson, Hugh MacPherson, William Baillie, and John Sutherland; Ensigns Patrick Stewart of Bonskied and George Rattray. The wounded were Captains Gordon Graham, Thomas Graham of Duchray, John Campbell of Strachur, James Stewart of Urrad, James Murray; Lieutenants James Grant, Robert Gray, John Campbell of Melford, William Grant, John Graham, brother of Duchray, Alexander Campbell, Alexander Mackintosh, Archibald Campbell, David Miller, Patrick Balneaves; and Ensigns John Smith and Peter Grant. The intrepid conduct of the Highlanders, in the storming of Ticonderoga, was made the topic of universal panegyric throughout the whole of Great Britain, the public prints teeming with honorable mention of, and testimonies to their bravery. Among these General Stewart copies[137] the two following: "With a mixture of esteem, grief and envy (says an officer of the 55th, lord Howe's regiment), I consider the great loss and immortal glory acquired by the Scots Highlanders in the late bloody affair. Impatient for orders, they rushed forward to the entrenchments, which many of them actually mounted. They appeared like lions, breaking from their chains. Their intrepidity was rather animated than damped by seeing their comrades fall on every side. I have only to say of them, that they seemed more anxious to revenge the cause of their deceased friends, than careful to avoid the same fate. By their assistance, we expect soon to give a good account of the enemy and of ourselves. There is much harmony and friendship between us." "The attack (says Lieutenant William Grant of the 42nd) began a little past one in the afternoon, and, about two, the fire became general on both sides, which was exceedingly heavy, and without any intermission, insomuch that the oldest soldier present never saw so furious and incessant a fire. The affair at Fontenoy was nothing to it. I saw both. We labored under insurmountable difficulties. The enemy's breastwork was about nine or ten feet high, upon the top of which they had plenty of wall pieces fixed, and which was well lined in the inside with small arms. But the difficult access to their lines was what gave them the fatal advantage over us. They took care to cut down monstrous large oak trees, which covered all the ground from the foot of their breastwork about the distance of a cannon shot every way in their front. This not only broke our ranks, and made it impossible for us to keep our order, but put it entirely out of our power to advance till we cut our way through. I have seen men behave with courage and resolution before now, but so much determined bravery can hardly be equalled in any part of the history of ancient Rome. Even those that were mortally wounded cried aloud to their companions, not to mind or lose a thought upon them, but to follow their officers, and to mind the honor of their country. Nay, their ardor was such, that it was difficult to bring them off. They paid dearly for their intrepidity. The remains of the regiment had the honor to cover the retreat of the army, and brought off the wounded, as we did at Fontenoy. When shall we have so fine a regiment again? I hope we shall be allowed to recruit." The English outnumbered the French four-fold, and with their artillery, which was near at hand, could have forced a passage. "Had I to besiege Ticonderoga," said Montcalm, "I would ask for but six mortars and two pieces of artillery." But Abercrombie, that evening, hurried the army to the landing place, with such precipitancy, that but for the alertness of Colonel Bradstreet, it would at once have rushed in a mass into the boats. On the morning of the 9th the army embarked and Abercrombie did not rest until he had placed the lake between himself and Montcalm, and even then he sent the artillery and ammunition to Albany for safety. The expedition against Louisburg, under Major-General Jeffrey Amherst, set sail from Halifax on May 28, 1758. It was joined by the fleet under Admiral Boscawen. The formidable armament consisted of twenty-five sail of the line, eighteen frigates, and a number of bomb and fire ships, with the Royals, 15th, 17th, 22nd, 28th, 35th, 40th, 45th, 47th, 48th, 58th, the 2d and 3d battalions of the 60th, 78th Highlanders, and New England Rangers,--in all, thirteen thousand and nine men. On June 2nd the vessels anchored in Garbarus Bay, seven miles from Louisburg. The garrison, under the Chevalier Ducour, consisted of twenty-five hundred regulars, six hundred militia, and four hundred Canadians and Indians. The harbor was protected by six ships of the line and five frigates, three of the latter being sunk at its mouth. The English ships were six days on the coast before a landing could be attempted, on account of a heavy surf continually rolling with such violence, that no boat could approach the shore. The violence of the surf having somewhat abated, a landing was effected on June 8th. The troops were disposed for landing in three divisions. That on the left, which was destined for the real attack, commanded by Brigadier General Wolfe, was composed of the grenadiers and light infantry, and the 78th, or Fraser's Highlanders. While the boats containing this division were being rowed ashore, the other two divisions on the right and center, commanded by Brigadier Generals Whitmore and Lawrence, made a show of landing, in order to divide and distract the enemy. The landing place was occupied by two thousand men entrenched behind a battery of eight pieces of cannon and swivels. The enemy wisely reserved their fire till the boats were close to the shore, and then directed their discharge of cannon and musketry with considerable execution. The surf aided the fire. Many of the boats were upset or dashed to pieces on the rocks, and numbers of the men were killed or drowned before land was reached. Captain Baillie and Lieutenant Cuthbert of the Highlanders, Lieutenant Nicholson of Amherts, and thirty-eight men were killed. Notwithstanding the great disadvantages, nothing could stop the troops when led by such a general as Wolfe. Some of the light infantry and Highlanders were first ashore, and drove all before them. The rest followed, and soon pursued the enemy to a distance of two miles, when they were checked by the cannonading from the town. In this engagement the French lost seventeen pieces of cannon, two mortars, and fourteen swivels, besides seventy-three prisoners. The cannonading from the town enabled Wolfe to prove the range of the enemy's guns, and to judge of the exact distance at which he might make his camp for investing the town. The regiments then took post at the positions assigned them. For some days operations went on slowly. The sea was so rough that the landing of stores from the fleet was much retarded; and it was not until the 11th that the six pounder field pieces were landed. Six days later a squadron was fairly blown out to sea by the tempest. By the 24th the chief engineer had thirteen twenty-four pounders in position against the place. The first operation was to secure a point called Lighthouse Battery, the guns from which could play upon the ships and on the batteries on the opposite side of the harbor. On the 12th this point was captured by Wolfe at the head of his gallant Fraser's and flank companies, with but little loss. On the 25th, the fire from this post silenced the island battery immediately opposite. An incessant fire, however, was kept up from the other batteries and shipping of the enemy. On July 9th the enemy made a sortie on General Lawrence's brigade, but were quickly repulsed. In this affair, the earl of Dundonald was killed. There were twenty other casualities. The French captain who led the attack, with seventeen of his men, was also killed. On the 16th, Wolfe pushed forward some grenadiers and Highlanders, and took possession of the hills in front of the Lighthouse battery, where a lodgement was made under a fire from the town and the ships. On the 21st one of the French ships was set on fire by a bombshell and blew up, and the fire being communicated to two others, they were burned to the water's edge. The fate of the town was now almost decided, the enemy's fire nearly silenced and the fortifications shattered to the ground. All that now remained in the reduction was to get possession of the harbor, by taking or burning the two ships of the line which remained. For this purpose the admiral, on the night of July 25th sent six hundred seamen in boats, with orders to take, or burn, the two ships of the line that remained in the harbor, resolving if they succeeded to send in some of his larger vessels to bombard the town. This enterprise was successfully executed by the seamen under Captains Laforey and Balfour, in the face of a terrible fire of cannon and musketry. One of the ships was set on fire and the other towed off. On the 26th the town surrendered; the garrison and seamen amounted to five thousand six hundred and thirty-seven, besides one hundred and twenty pieces of cannon, eighteen mortars, seven thousand five hundred stand of arms, eleven colors, and eleven ships of war. The total loss of the English army and fleet, during the siege amounted to five hundred and twenty-five. Besides Captain Baillie and Lieutenant Cuthbert the Highlanders lost Lieutenant J. Alexander Fraser and James Murray, killed; Captain Donald MacDonald, Lieutenant Alexander Campbell (Barcaldine) and John MacDonald, wounded; and sixty-seven rank and file killed and wounded. The third expedition was against Fort du Quesne, undertaken by Brigadier General John Forbes. Although the point of attack was less formidable and the enemy inferior in numbers to those at either Ticonderoga or Louisburg, yet the difficulties were greater, owing to the great extent of country to be traversed, through woods without roads, over mountains and through almost impassable morasses. The army consisted of six thousand two hundred and thirty-eight men, composed of Montgomery's Highlanders, twelve hundred and eighty-four strong, five hundred and fifty-five of the Royal Americans, and four thousand four hundred provincials. Among the latter were the two Virginia regiments, nineteen hundred strong, under the command of Washington. Yet vast as were the preparations of the army, Forbes never would have seen the Ohio had it not been for the genius of Washington, although then but twenty-six years of age. The army took up its line of march from Philadelphia in July, and did not reach Raystown until the month of September, when they were still ninety miles distant from Fort du Quesne. It was Washington's earnest advice that the army should advance with celerity along Braddock's road; but other advice prevailed, and the army commemorated its march by moving slowly and constructing a new route to the Ohio. Thus the summer was frittered away. While Washington's forces joined the main army, Boquet was detached with two thousand men to take post at Loyal Hanna, fifty miles in advance. Here intelligence was received that the French garrison consisted of but eight hundred men, of whom three hundred were Indians. The vainglory of Boquet, without the consent or knowledge of his superior officer urged him to send forward a party of four hundred Highlanders and a company of Virginians, under Major James Grant to reconnoitre. Major Grant divided his troops, and when near the fort, advanced with pipes playing and drums beating, as if he was on a visit to a friendly town. The enemy did not wait to be attacked, but instantly marched out of their works and invited the conflict. The Highlanders threw off their coats and charged sword in hand. At first the French gave way, but rallied and surrounded the detachment on all sides. Being concealed in the thick foliage, their heavy and destructive fire could not be returned with any effect. Major Grant was taken in an attempt to force into the woods, where he observed the thickest of the fire. On losing their commander, and so many officers killed and wounded, the Highlanders dispersed, and were only saved from utter ruin by the provincials. Only one hundred and fifty of the Highlanders succeeded in making their way back to Loyal Hanna. In this battle, fought September 14, 1758, two hundred and thirty-one Highlander's were killed and wounded. The officers killed were Captain William Macdonald and George Munro; Lieutenants Alexander Mackenzie, William Mackenzie; Robert Mackenzie, Colin Campbell, and Alexander Macdonald; and the wounded were Captain Hugh Mackenzie, Lieutenants Alexander Macdonald, Archibald Robertson, Henry Munro, and Ensigns John Macdonald and Alexander Grant. General Forbes did not reach Loyal Hanna until November 5th, and there a council of war determined that no farther advance should be made for that season. But Washington had plead that owing to his long intimacy with these woods, and his familiarity with the difficulties and all the passes should be allowed the responsibility of commanding the first party. This having been denied him, he prevailed on the commander to be allowed to make a second advance. His brigade was of provincials, and they toiled cheerfully by his side, infusing his own spirit into the men he commanded. Over the hills white with snow, his troops poorly fed and poorly clothed toiled onward. His movements were rapid: on November 15th he was at Chestnut Ridge; and the 17th at Bushy Run. As he drew near Fort du Quesne, the disheartened garrison, about five hundred in number, set fire to the fort, and by the light of the conflagration, descended the Ohio. On the 25th Washington could point out to the army the junction of the rivers, and entering the fortress, they planted the British colors on the deserted ruins. As the banner of England floated over the Ohio, the place was with one voice named Pittsburg, in honor of the great English premier William Pitt. The troops under Washington were accompanied by a body of Highlanders. On the morning of November 25th, the army advanced with the provincials in the front. They entered upon an Indian path. "Upon each side of which a number of stakes, with the bark peeled off, were stuck into the earth, and upon each stake was fixed the head and kilt of a Highlander who had been killed or taken prisoner at Grant's defeat. The provincials, being front, obtained the first view of these horrible spectacles, which it may readily be believed, excited no kindly feelings in their breasts. They passed along, however, without any manifestation of their violent wrath. But as soon as the Highlanders came in sight of the remains of their countrymen, a slight buzz was heard in their ranks, which rapidly swelled and grew louder and louder. Exasperated not only by the barbarous outrages upon the persons of their unfortunate fellow soldiers who had fallen only a few days before, but maddened by the insult which was conveyed by the exhibition of their kilts, and which they well understood, as they had long been nicknamed the 'petticoat warriors' by the Indians, their wrath knew no bounds. Directly a rapid and violent tramping was heard, and immediately the whole corps of the Highlanders, with their muskets abandoned, and broad swords drawn, rushed by the provincials, foaming with rage, and resembling, as Captain Craighead coarsely expressed it, 'mad boars engaged in battle,' swearing vengeance and extermination upon the French troops who had permitted such outrages. Their march was now hastened--the whole army moved forward after the Highlanders, and when they arrived somewhere about where the canal now passes, the Fort was discovered to be in flames, and the last of the boats, with the flying Frenchmen, were seen passing down the Ohio by Smoky Island. Great was the disappointment of the exasperated Highlanders at the escape of the French, and their wrath subsided into a sullen and relentless desire for vengeance."[138] The Highlanders passed the winter of 1758 in Pittsburg, and in May following marched to the assistance of General Amherst in his proceedings at Ticonderoga, Crown Point and the Lakes. Before the heroic action of The Black Watch at Ticonderoga was known in England, a warrant was issued conferring upon the regiment the title of Royal, so that it became known also by the name of 42d Royal Highland Regiment, and letters were issued to raise a second battalion. So successful were the recruiting officers that within three months, seven companies, each one hundred and twenty men strong were embodied at Perth in October 1758. Although Highlanders only were admitted, yet two officers, anxious to obtain commissions, enlisted eighteen Irishmen, several of whom were O'Donnels, O'Lachlans, O'Briens, &c. The O was changed to Mac, and the Milesians passed muster as true Macdonels, Maclachlans, and Macbriars, without being questioned. The second battalion immediately embarked at Greenock for the West Indies, under the convoy of the Ludlow Castle; and after the reduction of Guadaloupe, it was transferred to New York, and in July, 1759, was combined with the first battalion, in order to engage in the operations then projected against the French settlements in Canada. General Wolfe was to proceed up the St. Lawrence and besiege Quebec. General Amherst, who had succeeded Abercromby as commander-in-chief, was to attempt the reduction of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and then effect a junction with General Wolfe before Quebec. Brigadier General John Prideaux was to proceed against the French fort near the falls of Niagara, the most important post of all French America. The army first put in motion was that under Amherst, which assembled at Fort Edward on June 19th. It included the 42nd and Montgomery's Highlanders, and when afterwards joined by the second battalion of the 42nd, numbered fourteen thousand five hundred men. On the 21st, preceded by The Black Watch the army moved forward and encamped on Lake George, where, during the previous year, the army rested prior to the attack on Ticonderoga. Considerable time was spent in preparations for assaulting this formidable post, but on seeing the preparations made by the English generals for a siege, the French set fire to the magazines and buildings, and retired to Crown Point. The plan of campaign on the part of the French appeared to have been to embarrass Amherst by retarding the advance of his army, but not to hazard any considerable engagement, nor to allow themselves to be so completely invested as to cut off all retreat. The main object of their tactics was so to delay the advance of the English that the season for action on the Lakes would pass away without showing any decisive advantage on the part of the invaders, whilst their own forces could be gradually concentrated, and thus arrest the progress of Amherst down the St. Lawrence. On taking possession of Ticonderoga, which effectually covered the frontiers of New York, General Amherst proceeded to repair the fortifications; and, while superintending this work, was indefatigable in preparing batteaux and other vessels for conveying his troops, and obtaining the superiority on the Lakes. Meanwhile the French abandoned Crown Point and retired to Isle aux Noix, on the northern extremity of Lake Champlain. General Amherst moved forward and took possession of the fort which the French had abandoned, and the second battalion of the 42nd was ordered up. Having gained a naval superiority on Lake Champlain the army went into winter quarters at Crown Point. The main undertaking of the campaign was the reduction of Quebec, by far the most difficult operation, where General Wolfe was expected to perform an important part with not more than seven thousand effective men. The movement commenced at Sandy Hook, Tuesday May 8, 1759 when the expedition set sail for Louisburg, under convoy of the Nightingale, the fleet consisting of about twenty-eight sail, the greater part of which was to take in the troops from Nova Scotia, and the rest having on board Fraser's Highlanders. They arrived at Louisburg on the 17th. and there remained until June 4th, when the fleet again set sail, consisting of one hundred and fifty vessels, twenty-two of which were ships of the line. They entered the St. Lawrence on the 13th, and on the 23rd anchored near Isle aux Coudres. On the 26th, the whole armament arrived off the Isle of Orleans, and the next day disembarked. Montcalm depended largely on the natural position of the city of Quebec for defence, although he neglected nothing for his security. Every landing-place was intrenched and protected. At midnight on the 28th a fleet of fireships came down the tide, but was grappled by the British soldiers and towed them free of the shipping. Point Levi, on the night of the 29th was occupied, and batteries constructed, from which red-hot balls were discharged, demolishing the lower town of Quebec and injuring the upper. But the citadel and every avenue from the river to the cliff were too strongly entrenched for an assault. General Wolfe, enterprising, daring, was eager for battle. Perceiving that the eastern bank of the Montmorenci was higher than the position of Montcalm, on July 9th he crossed the north channel and encamped there; but not a spot on the line of the Montmorenci was left unprotected by the vigilant Montcalm. General Wolfe planned that two brigades should ford the Montmorenci at the proper time of the tide, while Monckton's regiments should cross the St. Lawrence in boats from Point Levi. The signal was given and the advance made in the face of shot and shell. Those who got first on shore, not waiting for support, ran hastily towards the entrenchments, and were repulsed in such disorder that they could not again come into line. Wolfe was compelled to order a retreat. Intrepidity and discipline could not overcome the heavy fire of a well protected enemy. In that assault, which occurred on July 31st, Wolfe lost four hundred in killed. General Murray was next sent with twelve hundred men, above the town, to destroy the French ships and open communication with General Amherst. They learned that Niagara had surrendered and that Ticonderoga and Crown Point had been abandoned. But General Wolfe looked in vain for General Amherst. The commander-in-chief, opposed by no more than three thousand men, was loitering at Crown Point; nor was even a messenger received from him. The heroic Wolfe was left to struggle alone against odds and difficulties which every hour made more appalling. Everyone able to bear arms was in the field fighting for their homes, their language, and their religion. Old men of seventy and boys of fifteen fired at the English detachments from the edges of the woods. The feeble frame of General Wolfe, disabled by fever, began to sink under the fearful strain. He laid before his chief officers three desperate methods of attacking Montcalm, all of which they opposed, but proposed to convey five thousand men above the town, and thus draw Montcalm from his intrenchments. General Wolfe acquiesced and prepared to carry it into effect. On the 5th and 6th of September he marched the army from Point Levi, and embarked in transports, resolving to land at the point that ever since has borne his name, and take the enemy by surprise. Every officer knew his appointed duty, when at one o'clock on the morning of the 13th, about half the army glided down with the tide. When the cove was reached, General Wolfe and the troops with him leaped ashore, and clambered up the steep hill, holding by the roots and boughs of the maple, spruce and ash trees, that covered the declivity, and with but little difficulty dispersed the picket which guarded the height. At daybreak General Wolfe, with his battalions, stood on the plains of Abraham. When the news was carried to Montcalm, he said, "They have at last got to the weak side of this miserable garrison; we must give battle, and crush them before mid-day." Before ten o'clock the two opposing armies were ranged in each other's presence. The English, five thousand strong, were all regulars, perfect in discipline, terrible in their fearless enthusiasm, and commanded by a man whom they obeyed with confidence and admiration. Montcalm had but five weak battalions of two thousand men, mingled with disorderly peasantry. The French with three and the English with two small pieces of artillery cannonaded each other for nearly an hour. Montcalm led the French army impetuously to the attack. The ill-disciplined companies broke by their precipitation and the unevenness of the ground, fired by platoons without unity. The English received the shock with calmness, reserving their fire until the enemy were within forty yards, when they began a regular, rapid firing. Montcalm was everywhere, braving dangers, though wounded, cheered others by his example. The Canadians flinching from the hot fire, gave way when General Wolfe placing himself at the head of two regiments, charged with bayonets. General Wolfe was wounded three times, the third time mortally. "Support me," he cried to an officer near him; "let not my brave fellows see me drop." He was carried to the rear. "They run, they run," cried the officer on whom he leaned. "Who run?" asked Wolfe, as his life was fast ebbing. "The French," replied the officer, "give way everywhere." "What," cried the dying hero, "do they run already? Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton; bid him march Webb's regiment with all speed to Charles River to cut off the fugitives." "Now, God be praised, I die happy," were the last words he uttered. The heroic Montcalm, struck by a musket ball, continued in the engagement, till attempting to rally a body of fugitive Canadians, was mortally wounded. On September 17th, the city surrendered. The rapid sketch thus given does not represent the part taken by Fraser's Highlanders. Fortunately Lieutenant Malcolm Fraser kept a journal, and from it the following is gleaned: June 30th, the Highlanders with Kennedy's or the 43rd, crossed the river and joined the 15th, or Amhersts', with some Rangers, marched to Point Levi, having numerous skirmishes on the way. Captain Campbell posted his company in St. Joseph's church, and there fired a volley upon an assaulting party. On Sunday, July 1st, the regiment was cannonaded by some floating batteries, losing four killed and eight wounded. On the 9th, before daylight, the Highlanders struck tents at Point Levi, and marched out of sight of the town. On the 11th three men were wounded by the fire of the great guns from the city. On the 21st, it was reported that fourteen privates of Fraser's Highlanders were wounded by the Royal Americans, having, in the dark, mistaken them for the enemy. On the night of July 24th, Colonel Fraser, with a detachment of about three hundred and fifty men of his regiment, marched down the river, in order to take up such prisoners and cattle as might be found. Lieutenant Alexander Fraser, Jr., returned to the camp with the information that Colonel Fraser had been wounded by a shot from some Canadians in ambush; and the same shot wounded Captain MacPherson; both of whom returned that day to camp. On the 27th the detachment returned bringing three women and one man prisoners, and almost two hundred cattle. July 31st Fraser's and Amherst's regiments embarked in boats at Point Levi and landed on the Montmorenci, where, on that day, General Wolfe fought the battle of Beauport Flats, in which he lost seven hundred killed and wounded. His retreat was covered by the Highlanders, without receiving any hurt, although exposed to a battery of two cannons which kept a very brisk fire upon them. The regiment went to the island of Orleans, and on August 1st to Point Levi. On Wednesday, August 15th, Captain John MacDonell, seven subalterns, eight sergeants, eight corporals and one hundred and forty-four men of Fraser's regiment, crossed from Point Levi to the Island of Orleans and lodged in the church of St. Peter's, and the next day marched to the east end of the island, and on the 17th crossed to St. Joachim, where they met with slight resistance. They fortified the Priest's house, and were not reinforced until the 23rd, and then all marched to attack the village, which was captured, with "a few prisoners taken, all of whom the barbarous Captain Montgomery, who commanded us, ordered to be butchered in a most inhuman and cruel manner.... After this skirmish we set about burning the houses with great success, setting all in flames till we came to the church of St. Anne's, where we put up for this night, and were joined by Captain Ross, with about one hundred and twenty men of his company." The work of devastation continued the following day, until the forces reached Ange Gardien. August 28, Captain MacDonell with Captain Ross took post at Chateau Richer. September 1st, Chateau Richer was burned, and the force marched to Montmorenci, burning all the houses on the way. On the 2nd the Highlanders returned to their camp at Point Levi. Captain Alexander Cameron of Dungallon died on the 3rd. On the 4th Captain Alexander Fraser of Culduthell arrived with a fourteenth company to the regiment. On the 6th a detachment of six hundred Highlanders with the 15th and 43rd regiments, marched five miles above Point Levi and then crossed the river in crowded vessels, but for several days remained mostly on board the ships. On September 17th, the Highlanders landed at Wolfe's Cove, with the rest of the army, and were soon on the plains of Abraham. When the main body of the French commenced to retreat "our regiment were then ordered by Brigadier General Murray to draw their swords and pursue them; which I dare say increased their panic but saved many of their lives. * * * In advancing we passed over a great many dead and wounded (French regulars mostly) lying in the front of our regiment, who,--I mean the Highlanders--to do them justice behaved extremely well all day, as did the whole of the army. After pursuing the French to the very gates of the town, our regiment was ordered to form fronting the town, on the ground whereon the French formed first. At this time the rest of the army came up in good order. General Murray having then put himself at the head of our regiment ordered them to face to the left and march thro' the bush of wood, towards the General Hospital, when they got a great gun or two to play upon us from the town, which however did no damage, but we had a few men killed and officers wounded by some skulking fellows, with small arms, from the bushes and behind the houses in the suburbs of St. Louis and St. John's. After marching a short way through the bush, Brigadier Murray thought proper to order us to return again to the high road leading from Porte St. Louis, to the heights of Abraham, where the battle was fought, and after marching till we got clear of the bushes, we were ordered to turn to the right, and go along the edge of them towards the bank at the descent between us and the General Hospital, under which we understood there was a body of the enemy who, no sooner saw us, than they began firing on us from the bushes and from the bank; we soon dispossessed them from the bushes, and from thence kept firing for about a quarter of an hour on those under cover of the bank; but, as they exceeded us greatly in numbers, they killed and wounded a great many of our men, and killed two officers, which obliged us to retire a little, and form again, when the 58th Regiment with the 2nd Battalion of Royal Americans having come up to our assistance, all three making about five hundred men, advanced against the enemy and drove them first down to the great meadow between the hospital and town and afterwards over the river St. Charles. It was at this time and while in the bushes that our regiment suffered most; Lieutenant Roderick, McNeill of Barra, and Alexander McDonell, and John McDonell, and John McPherson, volunteer, with many of our men, were killed before we were reinforced; and Captain Thomas Ross having gone down with about one hundred men of the 3rd Regiment to the meadow, after the enemy, when they were out of reach, ordered me up to desire those on the height would wait till he would come up and join them, which I did, but before Mr. Ross could get up, he unfortunately was mortally wounded. * * * We had of our regiment three officers killed and ten wounded, one of whom Captain Simon Fraser, afterwards died. Lieutenant Archibald Campbell was thought to have been mortally wounded, but to the surprise of most people recovered, Captain John McDonell thro' both thighs; Lieut. Ronald McDonell thro' the knee; Lieutenant Alexander Campbell thro' the leg; Lieutenant Douglas thro' the arm, who died of this wound soon afterwards; Ensign Gregorson, Ensign McKenzie and Lieutenant Alexander Fraser, all slightly, I received a contusion in the right shoulder or rather breast, before the action become general, which pained me a good deal, but it did not disable me from my duty then, or afterwards. The detachment of our regiment consisted, at our marching from Point Levi, of six hundred men, besides commissioned and non commissioned officers; but of these, two officers and about sixty men were left on board for want of boats, and an officer and about thirty men left at the landing place; besides a few left sick on board, so that we had about five hundred men in the action. We suffered in men and officers more than any three regiments in the field. We were commanded by Captain John Campbell; the Colonel and Captain McPherson having been unfortunately wounded on the 25th July, of which they were not yet fully recovered. We lay on our arms all the night of the 13th September." On the 14th the Highlanders pitched their tents on the battlefield, within reach of the guns of the town. On the following; day they were ordered to camp near the wood, at a greater distance from the town. Here, within five hundred yards of the town, they commenced to make redoubts. After the surrender of Quebec the Highlanders marched into the city and there took up their quarters. On February 13, 1760, in an engagement with the French at Point Levi, Lieutenant McNeil was killed, and some of the soldiers wounded. March 18th Captain Donald McDonald, with some detachments, in all five hundred men, attacked the French posts at St. Augustin, and without loss took eighty prisoners, and that night returned to Quebec. Scurvy, occasioned by salt provisions and cold, made fierce work in the garrison, and in the army scarce a man was free from it. On April 30th a return of Fraser's Highlanders, in the garrison at Quebec, showed three hundred and fourteen fit for duty, five hundred and eighty sick, and one hundred and six dead since September 18, 1759. April 27th, the French under De Levi, in strong force advanced against the English, the latter being forced to withdraw within the walls of Quebec. Fraser's Highlanders was one of the detachments sent to cover the retreat of the army, which was effected without loss. At half-past six, the next morning General Murray marched out and formed his army on the heights of Abraham. The left wing was under Colonel Simon Fraser composed of the Highlanders, the 43rd, and the 23rd Welsh Fusiliers. The Highlanders were exposed to a galling fire from the bushes in front and flank and were forced to fall back; and every regiment made the best of its way into the city. The British loss was two hundred and fifty-seven killed and seven hundred and sixty-one wounded. The Highlanders had about four hundred men in the field, nearly one-half of whom had that day, of their own accord, come out of the hospital. Among the killed were Captain Donald Macdonald, Lieutenant Cosmo Gordon and fifty-five non-commissioned officers, pipers and privates; their wounded were Colonel Fraser, Captains John Campbell of Dunoon, Alexander Fraser, Alexander MacLeod, Charles Macdonell; Lieutenants Archibald Campbell, son of Glenlyon, Charles Stewart, Hector Macdonald, John Macbean, Alexander Fraser, senior, Alexander Campbell, John Nairn, Arthur Rose, Alexander Fraser, junior, Simon Fraser, senior, Archibald McAlister, Alexander Fraser, John Chisholm, Simon Fraser, junior, Malcolm Fraser, and Donald McNeil; Ensigns Henry Munro, Robert Menzies, Duncan Cameron, of Fassifern, William Robertson, Alexander Gregorson and Malcolm Fraser, and one hundred and twenty-nine non-commissioned officers and privates. Lieutenant Charles Stewart, engaged in the Rising of the Forty-Five, in Stewart of Appin's regiment, was severely wounded at Culloden. As he lay in his quarters after the battle on the heights of Abraham, speaking to some brother officers on the recent actions, he exclaimed, "From April battles, and Murray generals, good Lord deliver me!" alluding to his wound at Culloden, where the vanquished blamed lord George Murray for fighting on the best field in the country for regular troops, cavalry and artillery; and likewise alluding to his present wound, and to General Murray's conduct in marching out of a garrison to attack an enemy, more than treble his numbers, in an open field, where their whole strength could be brought to act. No time was lost in repeating to the general what the wounded officer had said; but Murray, who was a man of humor and of a generous mind, on the following morning called on his subordinate, and heartily wished him better deliverance in the next battle, when he hoped to give him occasion to pray in a different manner. On the night of the battle De Levi opened trenches within six hundred yards of the walls of the city, and proceeded to besiege the city, while General Murray made preparations for defence. On May 1st the largest of the English blockhouses accidentally blew up, injuring Captain Cameron. On the 17th the French suddenly abandoned their entrenchments. Lord Murray pursued but was unable to overtake them. He formed a junction, in September with General Amherst. General Amherst had been notified of the intended siege of Quebec by De Levi; but only persevered in the tardy plans which he had formed. Canada now presented no difficulties only such as General Amherst might create. The country was suffering from four years of scarcity, a disheartened, starving peasantry, and the feeble remains of five or six battalions wasted by incredible hardships. Colonel Haviland proceeded from Crown Point and took the deserted fort at Isle aux Noix. Colonel Haldimand, with the grenadiers, light infantry and a battalion of The Black Watch, took post at the bottom of the lake. General Amherst led the main body of ten thousand men by way of Oswego; why, no one can tell. The labor of going there was much greater than going direct to Montreal. After toiling to Oswego, he proceeded cautiously down the St. Lawrence, treating the people humanely, and without the loss of life, save while passing the rapids, he met, on September 7th, the army of lord Murray before Montreal, the latter on his way up from Quebec, intimidated the people and amused himself by burning villages and harrying Canadians. On the 8th Colonel Haviland joined the forces. Thus the three armies came together in overwhelming strength, to take an open town of a few hundred inhabitants who were ready to surrender on the first appearance of the English. The Black Watch, or Royal Highlanders remained in America until the close of the year 1761. The officers were Lieutenant Colonel Francis Grant; Majors, Gordon Graham and John Reid; Captains, John McNeil, Allan Campbell, Thomas Graeme, James Stewart, James Murray, Thomas Stirling, William Murray, John Stuart, Alexander Reid, William Grant, David Haldane, Archibald Campbell, John Campbell, Kenneth Tolmie, William Cockburne; Captain-Lieutenant, James Grant; Lieutenants, John Graham, Alexander Turnbull, Alexander McIntosh, James Gray, John Small, Archibald Campbell, James Campbell, Archibald Lamont, David Mills, Simon Blair, David Barclay, Alexander Mackay, Robert Menzies, Patrick Balneaves, John Campbell, senior, John Robertson, John Grant, George Leslie, Duncan Campbell, Adam Stuart, George Grant, James McIntosh, John Smith, Peter Grant, Simon Fraser, Alexander Farquharson, John Campbell, junior, William Brown, Thomas Fletcher, Elbert Herring, John Leith, Archibald Campbell, Alexander Donaldson, Archibald Campbell, Patrick Sinclair, John Gregor, Lewis Grant, Archibald Campbell, John Graham, Allan Grant, Archibald McNab; Ensigns, Charles Menzies, John Charles St. Clair, Neil McLean, Thomas Cunison, Alexander Gregor, William Grant, George Campbell, Nathaniel McCulloch, Daniel Robertson, John Sutherland, Charles Grant, Samuel Stull, James Douglass, Thomas Scott, Charles Graham, James Robertson, Patrick Murray, Lewis Grant; Chaplain, Lauchlan Johnston; Adjutants, Alexander Donaldson, John Gregor; Quarter-Masters, John Graham, Adam Stewart; Surgeons, David Hepburn, Robert Drummond. At the close of the year 1761 The Black Watch, with ten other regiments, among which was Montgomery's Highlanders, embarked for Barbadoes, there to join an armament against Martinique and Havanna. After the surrender of Havanna, the first battalion of the 42nd, and Montgomery's Highlanders embarked for New York, which they reached in the end of October, 1762. Before leaving Cuba, all the men of the second battalion of the 42nd, fit for service were consolidated with the first, and the remainder shipped to Scotland, where they were reduced the following year. The 42nd, or The Black Watch was stationed at Albany till the summer of 1763 when they, with a detachment of Montgomery's Highlanders and another of the 60th, under command of Colonel Henry Boquet, were sent to the relief of Fort Pitt, then besieged by the Indians. This expedition consisting of nine hundred and fifty-six men, with its convoy, reached Fort Bedford, July 25, 1763. The whole country in that region was aroused by the depredations of the Indians. On the 28th Boquet moved his army out of Fort Bedford and marched to Fort Ligonier, where he left his train, and proceeded with pack-horses. Before them lay a dangerous defile, several miles in length, commanded the whole distance by high and craggy hills. On August 5th, when within half a mile of Bushy-Run, about one o'clock in the afternoon, after a harrassing march of seventeen miles, they were suddenly attacked by the Indians; but two companies of the 42nd Highlanders drove them from their ambuscade. When the pursuit ceased, the savages returned. These savages fought like men contending for their homes, and their hunting grounds. To them it was a crisis which they were forced to meet. Again the Highlanders charged them with fixed bayonets; but as soon as they were driven from one post they appeared at another, and at last entirely surrounded the English, and would have entirely cut them off had it not been for the cool behavior of the troops and the good manoeuvering of the commander. Night came on, and the English remained on a ridge of land, commodious for a camp, except for the total want of water. The next morning the army found itself still in a critical position. If they advanced to give battle, then their convoy and wounded would fall a prey to the enemy; if they remained quiet, they would be picked off one by one, and thus miserably perish. Boquet took advantage of the resolute intrepidity of the savages by feigning a retreat. The red men hurried to the charge, when two companies concealed for the purpose fell upon their flank; others turned and met them in front; and the Indians yielding to the irresistible shock, were utterly routed. The victory was dearly bought, for Colonel Boquet, in killed and wounded, in the two days action, lost about one-fourth of his men, and almost all his horses. He was obliged to destroy his stores, and was hardly able to carry his wounded. That night the English encamped at Bushy Run, and four days later were at Fort Pitt. In the skirmishing and fighting, during the march, the 42nd, or The Black Watch, lost Lieutenants John Graham and James Mackintosh, one sergeant and twenty-six rank and file killed; and Captain John Graham of Duchray, Lieutenant Duncan Campbell, two serjeants, two drummers, and thirty rank and file, wounded. Of Montgomery's Highlanders one drummer and five privates were killed; and Lieutenant Donald Campbell and volunteer John Peebles, three serjeants and seven privates wounded. [Illustration: OLD BLOCK HOUSE, FORT DUQUESNE.] The 42nd regiment passed the winter at Fort Pitt, and during the summer of 1764, eight companies were sent with the army of Boquet against the Ohio Indians. After a harrassing warfare the Indians sued for peace. Notwithstanding the labors of a march of many hundred miles among dense forests, during which they experienced the extremes of heat and cold, the Highlanders did not lose a single man from fatigue or exhaustion. The army returned to Fort Pitt in January, 1765, during very severe weather. Three men died of sickness, and on their arrival at Fort Pitt only nineteen men were under the surgeon's charge. The regiment was now in better quarters than it had been for years. It was greatly reduced in numbers, from its long service, the nature and variety of its hardships, amidst the torrid heat of the West Indies, the rigorous winters of New York and Ohio, and the fatalities on the field of battle. The regiment remained in Pennsylvania until the month of July, 1767, when it embarked at Philadelphia for Ireland. Such of the men who preferred to remain in America were permitted to join other regiments. These volunteers were so numerous, that, along with those who had been previously sent home disabled, and others discharged and settled in America, the regiment that returned was very small in proportion of that which had left Scotland. The 42nd Royal Highlanders, or The Black Watch, made a very favorable impression in America. The _Virginia Gazette_, July 30, 1767, published an article from which the following extracts have been taken: "Last Sunday evening, the Royal Highland Regiment embarked for Ireland, which regiment, since its arrival in America, has been distinguished for having undergone most amazing fatigues, made long and frequent marches through an unhospitable country, bearing excessive heat and severe cold with alacrity and cheerfulness, frequently encamping in deep snow, such as those that inhabit the interior parts of this province do not see, and which only those who inhabit the most northern parts of Europe can have any idea of, continually exposed in camp and on their marches to the alarms of a savage enemy, who, in all their attempts, were forced to fly. * * * And, in a particular manner, the freemen of this and the neighboring provinces have most sincerely to thank them for that resolution and bravery with which they, under Colonel Boquet, and a small number of Royal Americans, defeated the enemy, and ensured to us peace and security from a savage foe; and, along with our blessings for these benefits, they have our thanks for that decorum in behavior which they maintained during their stay in this city, giving an example that the most amiable behavior in civil life is no way inconsistent with the character of the good soldier; and for their loyalty, fidelity, and orderly behavior, they have every wish of the people for health, honor, and a pleasant voyage." The loss sustained by the regiment during the seven years it was employed in America and the West Indies was as follows: | KILLED || WOUNDED |-------------------------------------------------- | F | C | S | S | D | P || F | C | S | S | D | P | e | a | u | e | r | r || e | a | u | e | r | r | d.| p | b | r | u | i || d.| p | b | r | u | i | O | t | a | j | m | v || O | t | a | j | m | v | f | a | l | e | m | a || f | a | l | e | m | a | f | i | t | a | e | t || f | i | t | a | e | t | i | n | e | n | r | e || i | n | e | n | r | e | c | s | r | t | s | s || c | s | r | t | s | s | e | | n | s | | || e | | n | s | | | r | | s | | | || r | | s | | | | s | | | | | || s | | | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Ticonderoga, | | | | | | || | | | | | July 7, 1758 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 9 | |267|| | 5 | 12| 10| |306 Martinique, | | | | | | || | | | | | January, 1759 | | | | | | 8 || | | 1 | 2 | | 22 Guadeloupe, | | | | | | || | | | | | February and | | | | | | || | | | | | March, 1759 | | | 1 | 1 | | 25|| | | 4 | 3 | |57 General Amherst's | | | | | | || | | | | | Expedition to | | | | | | || | | | | | the Lakes, July | | | | | | || | | | | | and August, 1759 | | | | | | 3 || | | | 1 | | 4 Martinique, | | | | | | || | | | | | January and | | | | | | || | | | | | February, 1762 | | 1 | 1 | 1 | | 12|| 1 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 1 |72 Havanna, June | | | | | | || | | | | | and July, 1762, | | | | | | || | | | | | both battalions. | | | | | 1 | 3 || | | | | 1 | 4 Expedition under | | | | | | || | | | | | Colonel Boquet, | | | | | | || | | | | | August, 1763 | | 1 | 1 | 1 | | 26|| | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 30 Second Expedition | | | | | | || | | | | | under Boquet, | | | | | | || | | | | | in 1764 and 1765 | | | | | | 7|| | | | 1 | | 9 Total in the Seven| | | | | | || | | | | | Years War | 1 | 3 | 9 | 12| 1 |381|| 1 | 7 | 25| 22| 4 |504 Comparing the loss sustained by the 42nd in the field with that of other corps, it has generally been less than theirs, except at the defeat at Ticonderoga. The officers who served in the corps attributed the comparative loss to the celerity of their attack and the use of the broadsword, which the enemy could never withstand. Of the officers who were in the regiment in 1759 seven rose to be general officers, viz., Francis Grant of Grant, John Reid of Strathloch, Allan Campbell of Glenure, James Murray, son of lord George Murray, John Campbell of Strachur, Thomas Stirling of Ardoch, and John Small. Those who became field officers were, Gordon Graham, Duncan Campbell of Inneraw, Thomas Graham of Duchray, John Graham his brother, William Murray of Lintrose, William Grant, James Abercromby of Glassa, James Abercromby junior, Robert Grant, James Grant, Alexander Turnbull of Strathcathro, Alexander Donaldson, Thomas Fletcher of Landertis, Donald Robertson, Duncan Campbell, Alexander Maclean and James Eddington. A corp of officers, respectable in their persons, character and rank in private society, was of itself sufficient to secure esteem and lead a regiment where every man was a soldier. It has already been noticed that in the spring of 1760, the thought of General Amherst was wholly engrossed on the conquest of Canada. He was appealed to for protection against the Cherokees who were committing cruelties, in their renewed warfare against the settlements. In April he detached, from the central army, that had conquered Ohio, Colonel Montgomery with six hundred Highlanders of his own regiment and six hundred Royal Americans to strike a blow at the Cherokees and then return. The force embarked at New York, and by the end of April was in Carolina. At Ninety-six, near the end of May, the army was joined by many gentlemen of distinction, as volunteers, besides seven hundred Carolina rangers, which constituted the principal strength of the country. On June 1st, the army crossed Twelve-mile River; and leaving their tents standing on advantageous ground, at eight in the evening moved onward through the woods to surprise Estatoe, about twenty miles from the camp. On the way Montgomery surprised Little Keowee and put every man to the sword, sparing only women and children. Early the next morning they reached Estatoe only to find it abandoned, except by a few who could not escape. The place was reduced to ashes, as was Sugar Town, and every other settlement in the lower nation destroyed. For years, the half-charred rafters of their houses might be seen on the desolate hill-sides. "I could not help pitying them a little," wrote Major Grant; "their villages were agreeably situated; their houses neatly built; there were everywhere astonishing magazines of corn, which were all consumed." The surprise in every town was almost equal, for the whole was the work of only a few hours; the Indians had no time to save what they valued most; but left for the pillagers money and watches, wampum and furs. About sixty Cherokees were killed; forty, chiefly women and children, were made prisoners; but the warriors had generally escaped to the mountains. Meanwhile Fort Prince George had been closely invested, and Montgomery marched to its relief. From this place he dispatched two friendly chiefs to the middle settlements, to offer terms of peace, and orders were sent to Fort London to bring about accommodations for the upper towns. The Indians would not listen to any overtures, so Montgomery was constrained to march against them. The most difficult part of the service was now to be performed; for the country to be passed through was covered by dark thickets, numerous deep ravines, and high river banks; where a small number of men might distress and even wear out the best appointed army. Colonel Montgomery began his march June 24, 1760, and at night encamped at the old town of Oconnee. The next evening he arrived at the War-Woman's Creek; and on the 20th, crossed the Blue Mountains, and made his encampment at the deserted town of Stecoe. The army trod the rugged defiles, which were as dangerous as men had ever penetrated, with fearless alacrity, and the Highlanders were refreshed by coming into the presence of the mountains. "What may be Montgomery's fate in the Cherokee country," wrote Washington, "I cannot so readily determine. It seems he has made a prosperous beginning, having penetrated into the heart of the country, and he is now advancing his troops in high health and spirits to the relief of Fort Loudon. But let him be wary. He has a crafty, subtle enemy to deal with, that may give him most trouble when he least expects it."[139] The morning of the 27th found the whole army early on the march to the town of Etchowee, the nearest of the Cherokee settlements, and eighteen miles distant. When within five miles of the town, the army was attacked in a most advantageous position for the Indians. It was a low valley, in which the bushes were so thick that the soldiers could see scarcely three yards before them; and through this valley flowed a muddy river, with steep clay banks. Captain Morrison, in command of a company of rangers, was in the advance. When he entered the ravine, the Indians emerged from their ambush, and, raising the war-whoop, darted from covert to covert, at the same time firing at the whites. Captain Morrison was immediately shot down, and his men closely engaged. The Highlanders and provincials drove the enemy from their lurking-places, and, returning to their yells three huzzas and three waves of their bonnets and hats, they chased them from height and hollow. The army passed the river at the ford; and, protected by it on their right, and by a flanking party on the left, treading a path, at times so narrow as to be obliged to march in Indian file, fired upon from both front and rear, they were not collected at Etchowee until midnight; after a loss of twenty killed and seventy-six wounded. Of these, the Highlanders had one Serjeant, and six privates killed, and Captain Sutherland, Lieutenants Macmaster and Mackinnon, and Assistant-Surgeon Munro, and one Serjeant, one piper, and twenty-four rank and file wounded. "Several soldiers of this (Montgomery's) and other regiments fell into the hands of the Indians, being taken in an ambush. Allan Macpherson, one of these soldiers, witnessing the miserable fate of several of his fellow-prisoners, who had been tortured to death by the Indians, and seeing them preparing to commence the same operations upon himself, made signs that he had something to communicate. An interpreter was brought. Macpherson told them, that, provided his life was spared for a few minutes, he would communicate the secret of an extraordinary medicine, which, if applied to the skin, would cause it to resist the strongest blow of a tomahawk, or sword, and that, if they would allow him to go to the woods with a guard, to collect the plants proper for this medicine, he would prepare it, and allow the experiment to be tried on his own neck by the strongest and most expert warrior among them. This story easily gained upon the superstitious credulity of the Indians, and the request of the Highlander was instantly complied with. Being sent into the woods, he soon returned with such plants as he chose to pick up. Having boiled these herbs, he rubbed his neck with their juice, and laying his head upon a log of wood, desired the strongest man among them to strike at his neck with his tomahawk, when he would find he could not make the smallest impression. An Indian, levelling a blow with all his might, cut with such force, that the head flew off to a distance of several yards. The Indians were fixed in amazement at their own credulity, and the address with which the prisoner had escaped the lingering death prepared for him; but, instead of being enraged at this escape of their victim, they were so pleased with his ingenuity that they refrained from inflicting farther cruelties on the remaining prisoners."[140] Only for one day did Colonel Montgomery rest in the heart of the Alleghanies. On the following night, deceiving the Indians by kindling lights at Etchowee, the army retreated, and, marching twenty-five miles, never halted, till it came to War-Woman's Creek. On the 30th, it crossed the Oconnee Mountain, and on July 1st reached Fort Prince George, and soon after returned to New York. The retreat of Colonel Montgomery was the knell of the famished Fort London, situated on the borders of the Cherokee country. The garrison was forced to capitulate to the Indians, who agreed to escort the men in safety to another fort. They were, however, made the victims of treachery; for the day after their departure a body of savages waylaid them, killed some, and captured others, whom they took back to Fort Loudon. The expedition of Montgomery but served to inflame the Indians. July 11th the General Assembly represented their inability to prevent the ravages made by the savages on the back settlements, and by unanimous vote entreated the lieutenant governor "to use the most pressing instances with Colonel Montgomery not to depart with the king's troops, as it might be attended with the most pernicious consequences." Montgomery, warned that he was but giving the Cherokees room to boast among the other tribes, of their having obliged the English army to retreat, not only from the mountains, but also from the province, shunned the path of duty, and leaving four companies of the Royal Scots, sailed for Halifax by way of New York, coldly writing "I cannot help the people's fears." Afterwards, in the House of Commons, he acted as one who thought the Americans factious in peace and feeble in war. In 1761 the Montgomery Highlanders were in the expedition against Dominique, and the following year against Martinique and Havanna. At the end of October were again in New York. Before the return of the six companies to New York, the two companies that had been sent against the Indians in 1761, were sent, with a small force, to retake St. John's, New Foundland, which was occupied by a French force. The English army consisted of the flank companies of the Royals, a detachment of the 45th, two companies of Fraser's Highlanders, a small party of provincials, besides Montgomery's. The army landed on September 12, 1762, seven miles northward of St. John's. On the 17th the French surrendered. Of Montgomery's Highlanders, Captain Mackenzie and four privates were killed, and two privates wounded. After this service the two companies joined the regiment at New York and there passed the winter. As already noticed a detachment was with Colonel Boquet to the relief of Fort Pitt in 1763. After the termination of hostilities an offer was made to the officers and men either to settle in America, or return to their own country. Those who remained obtained a grant of land in accordance to their rank.[141] The following table shows the number of killed and wounded of Montgomery's Highlanders during the war:-- ====================================================================== | KILLED || WOUNDED |------------------------------------- | O | S |D &| R || O | S |D &| R | f | e |r | a || f | e |r | a | f | r |u P| n || f | r |u P| n | i | j |m i| k || i | j |m i| k | c | e |m p| & || c | e |m p| & | e | a |e e| F || e | a |e e| F | r | n |r r| i || r | n |r r| i | s | t |s s| l || s | t |s s| l | | s | | e || | s | | e ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Fort du Quesne, Sept. 11, 1758 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 92|| 9 | 7 | 3 | 201 Little Keowe, June 1, 1760 | | | | 2|| | | | Etchowee, June 27, 1760 | | 2 | | 6|| 4 | 1 | 1 | 24 Martinique, 1761 | 1 | | | 4|| 1 | 1 | | 26 Havanna, 1762 | 1 | | | 2|| | | | 6 St. John's, September, 1762 | 1 | | | 4|| | | | 2 On Passage to West Indies | 1 | | | || | | | -------------------------------------- Total during the war |11 | 5 | 2 |110|| 14| 9 | 4 |259 ====================================================================== After the surrender of Montreal, Fraser's Highlanders were not called into action, until the fall of 1762, when the two companies were with the expedition under Colonel William Amherst, against St. John's, Newfoundland. In this service Captain Macdonell was mortally wounded, three rank and file killed, and seven wounded. At the conclusion of the war, a number of the officers and men having expressed a desire to remain in America, had their wishes granted, and an allowance of land granted them. The rest returned to Scotland and were discharged. The following is a return of the killed and wounded of Fraser's Highlanders during the war from 1756 to 1763:-- ====================================================================== | KILLED || WOUNDED |-------------------------------------------------- | F | C | S | S | D | R || F | C | S | S | D | R | d | a | u | e | r | a || d | a | u | e | r | a | . | p | b | r | u | n || . | p | b | r | u | n | O | t | a | j | m | k || O | t | a | j | m | k | f | a | l | e | m | || f | a | l | e | m | | f | i | t | a | e | & || f | i | t | a | e | & | i | n | e | n | r | || i | n | e | n | r | | c | s | r | t | s | F || c | s | r | t | s | F | e | | n | s | | i || e | | n | s | | i | r | | s | | | l || r | | s | | | l | s | | | | | e || s | | | | | e --------------------------------------------------------------------- Louisburg, | | | | | | || | | | | | July 1758 | | 1 | 3 | | | 17|| | 1 | 2| | | 41 Montmorency, | | | | | | || | | | | | Sept. 2, 1759 | | | 2 | | 1 | 18|| 1 | 2 | 3 | | | 85 Heights of Abraham,| | | | | | || | | | | | Sept 13, 1769 | | 1 | 2 | 1 | | 14|| | 2 | 8 | 7 | |131 Quebec, April, 1760| | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 51|| 1 | 4 |22 |10 | |119 St. John's, Sept. | | | | | | || | | | | | 1762 | | 1 | | | | 3|| | | | | | 7 --------------------------------------------------- Total during the war | | 4 |10 | 4| 2 |103|| 2 | 9 | 35| 17| |383 Whatever may be said of the 42nd, or The Black Watch, concerning its soldierly bearing may also be applied to both Montgomery's and Fraser's regiments. Both officers and men were from the same people, having the same manners, customs, language and aspirations. The officers were from among the best families, and the soldiers respected and loved those who commanded them. For three years after the fall of Montreal the war between France and England lingered on the ocean. The Treaty of Paris was signed February 10, 1763, which gave to England all the French possessions in America eastward of the Mississippi from its source to the river Iberville, and thence through Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the Gulf of Mexico. Spain, with whom England had been at war, at the same time ceded East and West Florida to the English Crown. France was obliged to cede to Spain all that vast territory west of the Mississippi, known as the province of Louisiana. The Treaty deprived France of all her possessions in North America. To the genius of William Pitt must be ascribed the conquest of Canada and the deprivation of France of her possessions in the New World. The acquisition of Canada, by keen sighted observers, was regarded as a source of danger to England. As early as the year 1748, the Swedish traveller Kalm, having described in vivid language the commercial oppression under which the colonists were suffering, added these remarkable words: "I have been told, not only by native Americans, but by English emigrants publicly, that within thirty or fifty years the English colonies in North America may constitute a separate state entirely independent of England. But as this whole country towards the sea is unguarded, and on the frontier is kept uneasy by the French, these dangerous neighbors are the reason why the love of these colonies for their metropolis does not utterly decline. The English government has, therefore, reason to regard the French in North America as the chief power which urges their colonies to submission."[142] On the definite surrender of Canada, Choiseul said to those around him, "We have caught them at last"; his eager hopes anticipating an early struggle of America for independence. The French ministers consoled themselves for the Peace of Paris by the reflection that the loss of Canada was a sure prelude to the independence of the colonies. Vergennes, the sagacious and experienced ambassador, then at Constantinople, a grave, laborious man, remarkable for a calm temper and moderation of character, predicted to an English traveller, with striking accuracy, the events that would occur. "England," he said, "will soon repent of having removed the only check that could keep her colonies in awe. They stand no longer in need of her protection. She will call on them to contribute towards supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her, and they will answer by striking off all dependence." It is not to be presumed that Englishmen were wholly blind to this danger. There were advocates who maintained that it would be wiser to restore Canada and retain Guadaloupe, with perhaps Martinico and St. Lucia. This view was supported with distinguished ability in an anonymous paper, said to have been written by William Burke, the friend and kinsman of the great orator. The views therein set forth were said to have been countenanced by lord Hardwicke. The tide of English opinion was, however, very strongly in the opposite direction. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 136: Stewart's Sketches of the Highlanders, Vol. II, p. 66.] [Footnote 137: Sketches of the Highlanders, Vol. I, p. 289.] [Footnote 138: The Olden Time, Vol. I, p. 181.] [Footnote 139: Spark's Writings of Washington, Vol. II, p. 332.] [Footnote 140: Stewart's Sketches of the Highlanders, Vol. II, p. 61.] [Footnote 141: See Appendix, Note L.] [Footnote 142: Pinkerton's Travels, Vol. XIII.] CHAPTER XII. SCOTCH HOSTILITY TO AMERICA. The causes which led to the American Revolution have been set forth in works pertaining to that event, and fully amplified by those desiring to give a special treatise on the subject. Briefly to rehearse them, the following may be pointed out: The general cause was the right of arbitrary government over the colonies claimed by the British parliament. So far as the claim was concerned as a theory, but little was said, but when it was put in force an opposition at once arose. The people had long been taught to act and think upon the principle of eternal right, which had a tendency to mould them in a channel that looked towards independence. The character of George III. was such as to irritate the people. He was stubborn and without the least conception of human rights; nor could he conceive of a magnanimous project, or appreciate the value of civil liberty. His notions of government were despotic, and around him, for advisers, he preferred those as incompetent and as illiberal as himself. Such a king could not deal with a people who had learned freedom, and had the highest conceptions of human rights. The British parliament, composed almost entirely of the ruling class, shared the views of their master, and servilely did his bidding, by passing a number of acts destructive of colonial liberty. The first of these was a strenuous attempt to enforce in 1761 THE IMPORTATION ACT, which gave to petty constables the authority to enter any and every place where they might suspect goods upon which a duty had not been levied. In 1763 and 1764 the English ministers attempted to enforce the law requiring the payment of duties on sugar and molasses. In vain did the people try to show that under the British constitution taxation and representation were inseparable. Nevertheless English vessels were sent to hover around American ports, and soon succeeded in paralyzing the trade with the West Indies. The close of the French and Indian war gave to England a renewed opportunity to tax America. The national debt had increased from £52,092,238 in 1727 to £138,865,430 in 1763. The ministers began to urge that the expenses of the war ought to be borne by the colonies. The Americans contended, that they had aided England as much as she had aided them; that the cession of Canada had amply remunerated England for all her losses; and, further, the colonies did not dread the payment of money, but feared that their liberties might be subverted. Early in March 1765, the English parliament, passed the celebrated STAMP ACT, which provided that every note, bond, deed, mortgage, lease, licence, all legal documents of every description, every colonial pamphlet, almanac, and newspaper, after the first day of the following November, should be on paper furnished by the British government, the stamp cost being from one cent to thirty dollars. When the news of the passage of this act was brought to America the excitement was intense, and action was resolved on by the colonies. The act was not formally repealed until March 18, 1766. On June 29, 1767, another act was passed to tax America. On October 1, 1768, seven hundred troops, sent from Halifax, marched with fixed bayonets into Boston, and quartered themselves in the State House. In February 1769 parliament declared the people of Massachusetts rebels, and the governor was directed to arrest those deemed guilty of treason, and send them to England for trial. In the city of New York, in 1770, the soldiers wantonly cut down a liberty pole, which had for several years stood in the park. The most serious affray occurred on March 5th, in Boston between a party of citizens and some soldiers, in which three citizens were shot down and several wounded. This massacre inflamed the city with a blaze of excitement. On that day lord North succeeded in having all the duties repealed except that on tea; and that tax, in 1773, was attempted to be enforced by a stratagem. On the evening of December 16th, the tea, in the three tea-ships, then in Boston harbor, was thrown overboard, by fifty men disguised as Indians. Parliament, instead of using legal means, hastened to find revenge. On March 31, 1774, it was enacted that Boston port should be closed. The final act which brought on the Revolution was the firing upon the seventy minute men, who were standing still at Lexington, by the English soldiers under Major Pitcairn, on April 19, 1775, sixteen of the patriots fell dead or wounded. The first gun of the Revolution fired the entire country, and in a few days Boston was besieged by the militia twenty thousand strong. Events passed rapidly, wrongs upon wrongs were perpetrated, until, finally, on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was published to the world. By this act all hope of reconciliation was at an end. Whatever concessions might be made by England, her own acts had caused an impassable gulf. America had done all within her power to avert the impending storm. Her petitions had been spurned from the foot of the English throne. Even the illustrious Dr. Franklin, venerable in years, was forced to listen to a vile diatribe against him delivered by the coarse and brutal Wedderburn, while members of the Privy Council who were present, with the single exception of lord North, "lost all dignity and all self-respect. They laughed aloud at each sarcastic sally of Wedderburn. 'The indecency of their behaviour,' in the words of Shelburne, 'exceeded, as is agreed on all hands, that of any committee of elections;' and Fox, in a speech which he made as late as 1803, reminded the House how on that memorable occasion 'all men tossed up their hats and clapped their hands in boundless delight at Mr. Wedderburn's speech.'"[143] George III., his ministers and his parliament hurled the country headlong into war, and that against the judgment of her wisest men, and her best interests. To say the least the war was not popular in England. The wisest statesmen in both Houses of Parliament plead for reconciliation, but their efforts fell on callous ears. The ruling class was seized with the one idea of humbling America. They preferred to listen to such men as Major James Grant,--the same who allowed his men, (as has been already narrated) to be scandalously slaughtered before Fort du Quesne, and had made himself offensive in South Carolina under Colonel Montgomery. This braggart asserted, in the House of Commons, "amidst the loudest cheering, that he knew the Americans very well, and was certain they would not fight; 'that they were not soldiers and never could be made so, being naturally pusillanimous and incapable of discipline; that a very slight force would be more than sufficient for their complete reduction'; and he fortified his statement by repeating their peculiar expressions, and ridiculing their religious enthusiasm, manners and ways of living, greatly to the entertainment of the house."[144] The great Pitt, then earl of Chatham, in his famous speech in January 1775, declared: "The spirit which resists your taxation in America is the same that formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England. * * * This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who will die in defence of their rights as freemen. * * * For myself, I must declare that in all my reading and observation--and history has been my favorite study; I have read Thucydides, and have studied and admired the master states of the world--that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the General Congress at Philadelphia. * * * All attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retreat. Let us retreat while we can, not when we must." In accordance with these sentiments Chatham withdrew his eldest son from the army rather than suffer him to be engaged in the war. Lord Effingham, finding his regiment was to serve against the Americans, threw up his commission and renounced the profession for which he had been trained and loved, as the only means of escaping the obligation of fighting against the cause of freedom. Admiral Keppel, one of the most gallant officers in the British navy, expressed his readiness to serve against the ancient enemies of England, but asked to be released from employment against the Americans. It is said that Amherst refused to command the army against the Americans. In 1776 it was openly debated in parliament whether British officers ought to serve their sovereign against the Americans, and no less a person then General Conway leaned decidedly to the negative, and compared the case to that of French officers who were employed in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Just after the battle of Bunker Hill, the duke of Richmond declared in parliament that he "did not think that the Americans were in rebellion, but that they were resisting acts of the most unexampled cruelty and oppression." The Corporation of London, in 1775, drew up an address strongly approving of the resistance of the Americans, and similar addresses were expressed by other towns. A great meeting in London, and also the guild of merchants in Dublin, returned thanks to lord Effingham for his recent conduct. When Montgomery fell at the head of the American troops before Quebec, he was eulogized in the British parliament. The merchants of Bristol, September 27, 1775, held a meeting and passed resolutions deprecating the war, and calling upon the king to put a stop to it. The Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery of London, September 29th, issued an address to the Electors of Great Britain, against carrying on the war. A meeting of the merchants and traders of London was held October 5th, and moved an address to the king "relative to the unhappy dispute between Great Britain and her American Colonies," and that he should "cause hostilities to cease." The principal citizens, manufacturers and traders of the city of Coventry, October 10th, addressed the sovereign beseeching him "to stop the effusion of blood, to recommend to your Parliament to consider, with all due attention, the petition from America lately offered to be presented to the throne." The mayor and burgesses of Nottingham, October 20th, petitioned the king in which they declared that "the first object of our desires and wishes is the return of peace and cordial union with our American fellow-subjects," and humbly requested him to "suspend those hostilities, which, we fear, can have no other than a fatal issue." This was followed by an address of the inhabitants of the same city, in which the king was asked to "stay the hand of war, and recall into the bosom of peace and grateful subjection your American subjects, by a restoration of those measures which long experience has shown to be productive of the greatest advantages to this late united and flourishing Empire." The petition of the free burgesses, traders and inhabitants of Newcastle-upon-Tyne declared that "in the present unnatural war with our American brethren, we have seen neither provocation nor object; nor is it, in our humble apprehension, consonant with the rights of humanity, sound policy, or the Constitution of our Country." A very great majority of the gentlemen, clergy and freeholders of the county of Berks signed an address, November 7th, to the king in which it was declared that "the disorders have arisen from a complaint (plausible at least) of one right violated; and we can never be brought to imagine that the true remedy for such disorders consists in an attack on all other rights, and an attempt to drive the people either to unconstitutional submission or absolute despair." The gentlemen, merchants, freemen and inhabitants of the city of Worcester also addressed the king and besought him to adopt such measures as shall "seem most expedient for putting a stop to the further effusion of blood, for reconciling Great Britain and her Colonies, for reuniting the affections of your now divided people, and for establishing, on a permanent foundation, the peace, commerce, and prosperity of all your Majesty's Dominions." It is a fact, worthy of special notice, that in both England and Ireland there was a complete absence of alacrity and enthusiasm in enlisting for the army and navy. This was the chief reason why George III. turned to the petty German princes who trafficked in human chattels. There people were seized in their homes, or while working the field, and sold to England at so much per head. On account of the great difficulty in England in obtaining voluntary recruits for the American war, the press-gang was resorted to, and in 1776, was especially fierce. In less than a month eight hundred men were seized in London alone, and several lives were lost in the scuffles that took place. The press-gang would hang about the prison-gates, and seize criminals whose sentences had expired and force them into the army. "It soon occurred to the government that able-bodied criminals might be more usefully employed in the coercion of the revolted colonists, and there is reason to believe that large numbers of criminals of all but the worst category, passed at this time into the English army and navy. In estimating the light in which British soldiers were regarded in America, and in estimating the violence and misconduct of which British soldiers were sometimes guilty, this fact must not be forgotten." In Ireland criminals were released from their prisons on condition of enlisting in the army or navy.[145] The regular press-gang was not confined to England, and it formed one of the grievances of the American colonists. One of the most terrible riots ever known in New England, was caused, in 1747, by this nefarious practice, under the sanction of Admiral Knowles. An English vessel was burnt, and English officers were seized and imprisoned by the crowd; the governor was obliged to flee to the castle; the sub-sheriffs were impounded in the stocks; the militia refused to act against the people; and the admiral was compelled to release his captives. Resistance, in America, was shown in many subsequent attempts to impress the people. The king and his ministers felt it was necessary to sustain the acts of parliament in the American war by having addresses sent to the king upholding him in the course he was pursuing. Hence emissaries were sent throughout the kingdom who cajoled the ignorant into signing such papers. The general sentiment of the people cannot be estimated by the number of addresses for they were obtained by the influence of the ministers of state. Every magistrate depending upon the favor of the crown could and would exert his influence as directed. Hence there were numerous addresses sent to the king approving the course he was bent upon. When it is considered that the government had the advantage of more than fifty thousand places and pensions at its disposal, the immense lever for securing addresses is readily seen. From no section of the country, however, were these addresses so numerous as from Scotland. It is one of the most singular things in history that the people of Scotland should have been so hostile to the Americans, and so forward in expressing their approbation of the attitude of George III. and his ministers. The Americans had in no wise ever harmed them or crossed their path. The emigrants from Scotland had been received with open arms by the people. If any had been mistreated, it was by the appointees of the crown. With scarcely an exception the whole political representation in both Houses of Parliament supported lord North, and were bitterly opposed to the Americans. Lecky has tried to soften the matter by throwing the blame on the servile leaders who did not represent the real sentiment of the people: "Scotland, however, is one of the very few instances in history, of a nation whose political representation was so grossly defective as not merely to distort but absolutely to conceal its opinions. It was habitually looked upon as the most servile and corrupt portion of the British Empire; and the eminent liberalism and the very superior political qualities of its people seem to have been scarcely suspected to the very eve of the Reform Bill of 1832. That something of that liberalism existed at the outbreak of the American war, may, I think, be inferred from the very significant fact that the Government were unable to obtain addresses in their favor either from Edinburgh or Glasgow. The country, however, was judged mainly by its representatives, and it was regarded as far more hostile to the American cause than either England or Ireland."[146] A very able editor writing at the time has observed: "It must however be acknowledge, that an unusual apathy with respect to public affairs, seemed to prevail with the people, in general, of this country; of which a stronger proof needs not to be given, that than which will probably recur to every body's memory, that the accounts of many of the late military actions, as well as of political procedings of no less importance, were received with as much indifference, and canvassed with as much coolness and unconcern, as if they had happened between two nations with whom they were scarcely connected. We must except from all these observations, the people of North Britain (Scotland), who, almost to a man, so far as they could be described or distinguished under any particular denomination, not only applauded, but proffered life and fortune in support of the present measures."[147] The list of addresses sent from Scotland to the king against the Colonies is a long one,--unbroken by any remonstrance or correction. It embraces those sent by the provost, magistrates, and common (or town) council of Aberbrothock, Aberdeen, Annan, Ayr, Burnt-Island, Dundee, Edinburgh, Forfar, Forres, Inverness, Irvine, Kirkaldy, Linlithgow, Lochmaben, Montrose, Nairn, Peebles, Perth, Renfrew, Rutherglen, and Stirling; by the magistrates and town council of Brechine, Inverary, St. Andrews, Selkirk, Jedburgh, Kirkcudbright, Kirkwall, and Paisley; by the magistrates, town council and all the principal inhabitants of Fortrose; by the provost, magistrates, council, burgesses and inhabitants of Elgin; by the chief magistrates of Dunfermline, Inverkeithing and Culross; by the magistrates, common council, burgesses, and inhabitants of Dumfries; by the lord provost, magistrates, town council and deacons of craft of Lanark; by the magistrates, incorporated societies, and principal inhabitants of the town and port of Leith; by the principal inhabitants of Perth; by the gentlemen, clergy, merchants, manufacturers, incorporated trades and principal inhabitants of Dundee; by the deacon convenier, deacons of fourteen incorporated trades and other members of trades houses of Glasgow; by the magistrates, council and incorporations of Cupar in Fife, and Dumbarton; by the freeholders of the county of Argyle and Berwick; by the noblemen, gentlemen and freeholders of the counties of Aberdeen and Fife; by the noblemen, gentlemen, freeholders and others of the county of Linlithgow; by the noblemen and gentlemen of the county of Roxburgh; by the noblemen, justices of the peace, freeholders, and commissioners of supply of the counties of Perth and Caithness; by the noblemen, freeholders, justices of the peace, and commissioners of the land-tax of the counties of Banff and Elgin; by the freeholders and justices of the peace of the county of Dumbarton; by the gentlemen, justices of the peace, clergy, freeholders and committee of supply of the county of Clackmanan; by the gentlemen, justices of the peace and commissioners of land tax of the counties of Kincardine, Lanark and Renfrew; by the freeholders, justices of the peace and commissioners of supply of the counties of Kinross and Orkney; by the justices of the peace, freeholders and commissioners of land tax of the county of Peebles; by the gentlemen, freeholders, justices of the peace and commissioners of supply of the county of Nairn; by the gentlemen, heretors, freeholders and clergy of the counties of Ross and Cromarty; by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; by the ministers and elders of the provincial synod of Angus and Mearns; also of the synod of Glasgow and Ayr; by the provincial synod of Dumfries, and by the ministers of the presbytery of Irvine. The list ascribes but eight of the addresses to the Highlands. This does not signify that they were any the less loyal to the pretensions of George III. The probability is that the people generally stood ready to follow their leaders, and these latter exerted themselves against the colonists. The addresses that were proffered, emanating from the Highlands, in chronological order, may be thus summarized: The freeholders of Argyleshire, on October 17, 1775, met at Inverary with Robert Campbell presiding, and through their representative in Parliament, Colonel Livingston, presented their "humble Address" to the king, in which they refer to their predecessors who had "suffered early and greatly in the cause of liberty" and now judge it incumbent upon themselves "to express our sense of the blessings we enjoy under your Majesty's mild and constitutional Government; and, at the same time, to declare our abhorrence of the unnatural rebellion of our deluded fellow-subjects in America, which, we apprehend, is encouraged and fomented by several discontented and turbulent persons at home." They earnestly desire that the measures adopted by parliament may be "vigorously prosecuted;" "and we beg leave to assure your Majesty, that, in support of such measures, we are ready to risk our lives and fortunes." The address of the magistrates, town council, and all the principal inhabitants of Fortrose, is without date, but probably during the month of October of the same year. They met with Colonel Hector Munro, their representative in parliament, presiding, and addressing the king declared their "loyal affection" to his person; are "filled with a just sense of the many blessings" they enjoy, and "beg leave to approach the throne, and express our indignation at, and abhorrence of, the measures adopted by our unhappy and deluded fellow-subjects in America, in direct opposition to law and justice, and to every rational idea of civilization;" "with still greater indignation, if possible, we behold this rebellious disposition, which so fatally obtains on the other side of the Atlantic, fomented and cherished by a set of men in Great Britain;" that the "deluded children may quickly return to their duty," and if not, "we hope your Majesty will direct such vigorous, speedy, and effectual measures to be pursued, as may bring them to a due sense of their error." The provost, magistrates and town council of Nairn met November 6, 1775, and addressed their "Most Gracious Sovereign" as his "most faithful subjects" and it was their "indispensable duty" to testify their "loyalty and attachment;" they were "deeply sensible of the many blessings" they enjoyed; they viewed with "horror and detestation" the "audacious attempts that have been made to alienate the affections of your subjects." "Weak as our utmost efforts may be deemed, and limited our powers, each heart and hand devoted to your service will, with the most ardent zeal, contribute in promoting such measures as may be now thought necessary for re-establishing the violated rights of the British Legislature, and bringing back to order and allegiance your Majesty's deluded and unhappy subjects in America." On the same day, the same class of men at Inverness made their address as "dutiful and loyal subjects," and declared "the many blessings" they enjoyed; and expressed their "utmost detestation and abhorrence of that spirit of rebellion which has unhappily broke forth among your Majesty's subjects in America," and "the greatest sorrow we behold the seditious designs of discontented and factious men so far attended with success as to seduce your infatuated and deluded subjects in the colonies from their allegiance and duty," and they declared their "determined resolution of supporting your Majesty's Government, to the utmost of our power, against all attempts that may be made to disturb it, either at home or abroad." The following day, or November 7th, the gentlemen, freeholders, justices of the peace, and commissioners of supply of the county of Nairn, met in the city of Nairn, and addressed their "Most Gracious Sovereign," declaring themselves the "most dutiful and loyal subjects," and it was their "indispensable duty" "to declare our abhorrence of the present unnatural rebellion carried on by many of your infatuated subjects in America." "With profound humility we profess our unalterable attachment to your Majesty's person and family, and our most cordial approbation of the early measures adopted for giving a check to the first dawnings of disobedience. This county, in the late war, sent out many of its sons to defend your Majesty's ungrateful colonies against the invasion of foreign enemies, and they will now, when called upon, be equally ready to repel all the attempts of the traitorous and disaffected, against the dignity of your crown, and the just rights of the supreme Legislature of Great Britain." The gentlemen, heretors, freeholders, and clergy of the Counties of Ross and Cromarty assembled at Dingwall, November 23, 1775, and also addressed their "Most Gracious Sovereign" as the "most faithful and loyal subjects," acknowledging "the protection we are blessed with in the enjoyment of our liberties," it is "with an inexpressible concern we behold many of our fellow-subjects in America, incited and supported by factions and designing men at home," and that "we shall have no hesitation in convincing your rebellious and deluded subjects in America, that with the same cheerfulness we so profusely spilled our blood in the last war, in defending them against their and our natural enemies, we are now ready to shed it, if necessary, in bringing them back to a just sense of their duty and allegiance to your Majesty, and their subordination to the Mother Country." The magistrates and town council of Inverary met on November 28, 1775, and to their "Most Gracious Sovereign" they were also the "most dutiful and loyal subjects," and further "enjoyed all the blessings of the best Government the wisdom of man ever devised, we have seen with indignation, the malignant breath of disappointed faction, by prostituting the sacred sounds of liberty, too successful in blowing the sparks of a temporary discontent into the flames of a rebellion in your Majesty's Colonies, that we from our souls abhor;" and they desired to be applied "such forcive remedies to the affected parts, as shall be necessary to restore that union and dependency of the whole on the legislative power." At Thurso, December 6, 1775, there met the noblemen, gentlemen, freeholders, justices of the peace and commissioners of supply of the county of Caithness, and in an address to their "Most Gracious Sovereign" declared themselves also to be the "most dutiful and loyal subjects;" they approved the "lenient measures" which had hitherto been taken in America by parliament, "and that they will support with their lives and fortunes, the vigorous exertions which they forsee may soon be necessary to subdue a rebellion premeditated, unprovoked, and that is every day becoming more general, untainted by the vices that too often accompany affluence, our people have been inured to industry, sobriety, and, when engaged in your Majesty's service, have been distinguished for an exact obedience to discipline, and a faithful discharge of duty; and we hope, if called forth to action in one combined corps, it will be their highest ambition to merit a favorable report to your Majesty from their superior officers. At the same time, it is our most ardent prayer to Almighty God, that the eyes of our deluded fellow-subjects in America may soon be opened, to see whether it is safe to trust in a Congress unconstitutionally assembled, in a band of officers unconstitutionally appointed, or in a British King and Parliament whose combined powers have indeed often restrained the licentiousness, but never invaded the rational liberties of mankind." A survey of the addresses indicates that they were composed by one person, or else modelled from the same formula. All had the same source of inspiration. This, however, does not militate against the moral effect of those uttering them. So far as Scotland is concerned, it must be regarded as a fair representation of the sentiment of the people. While only an insignificant part of the Highlands gave their humble petitions, yet the subsequent acts must be the criterion from which a judgment must be formed. It is possible that some of the loyal addresses were accelerated by the prohibition placed on Scotch emigration to America. Early in September, 1775, Henry Dundas, lord-advocate for Scotland, urged the board of customs to issue orders to all inferior custom houses enjoining them to grant no clearances for America of any ship which had more than the common complement of hands on board. On September 23, 1775, Archibald Cockburn, sheriff deputy of Edinburgh, issued the following order: "Whereas a letter[148] was received by me some time ago, from His Majesty's Advocate for Scotland, intimating that, on account of the present rebellion in America, it was proper a stop should be put for the present to emigrations to that Country, and that the necessary directions were left at the different sea-ports in Scotland to that purpose; I think it my duty, in obedience to his Lordship's requisition contained in that letter, to take this publick method of notifying to such of the inhabitants within my jurisdiction, if any such there be, who have formed resolutions to themselves of leaving this Country, and going in quest of settlements in America, that they aught not to put themselves to the unnecessary trouble and expense of preparing for a removal of their habitations, which they will not, so far as it lies in my power to prevent, be permitted to effectuate." The British government had every assurance of the undivided support of all Scotland in its attempt to subjugate America. It also put a strong dependence in enlisting in the army such Highlanders as had emigrated, and especially those who had belonged to the 42nd, Fraser's, and Montgomery's regiments, but remained in the country after the peace of 1763. This alone would make a very unfavorable impression on the minds of Americans. But when to this is added the efforts of British officers to organize the emigrants from the Highlands into a special regiment, as early as November, 1775, the rising of the Highlanders both in North Carolina and on the Mohawk, the enlisting of emigrants on board vessels before landing and sailing by Boston to join their regiments at Halifax, and on the passage listening to the booming of the cannon at Bunker Hill; and the further fact that both the 42nd and Fraser's Highlanders were ordered to embark at Greenock for America, five days before the battle of Lexington, it is not a matter of surprise that a strong resentment should be aroused in the breasts of many of the most devoted to the cause of the Revolution. The feeling engendered by the acts of Scotland towards those engaged in the struggle for human liberty crops out in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence as laid before Congress July 1, 1776. In the memorable paper appeared the following sentence: "At this very time, too, they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over, not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade and destroy us." The word "Scotch" was struck out, on motion of Dr. John Witherspoon, himself a native of Scotland; and subsequently the whole sentence was deleted. The sentence was not strictly true, for there were thousands of Americans of Scotch ancestry, but principally Lowland. There were also thousands of Americans, true to the principles of the Revolution, of Highland extraction. If the sentence had been strictly true, it would have served no purpose, even if none were alienated thereby. But, the records show that in the American army there were men who rendered distinguished services who were born in the Highlands; and others, from the Lowlands, rendered services of the highest value in their civil capacities. The armies of the Colonies had no regiments or companies composed of Highland Scotch, or even of that extraction, although their names abound scattered through a very large percentage of the organized forces. The only effort[149] which appears to have been made in that direction rests on two petitions by Donald McLeod. The first was directed to the Committee for the City and County of New York, dated at New York, June 7, 1775: "That your petitioner, from a deep sense of the favors conferred on himself, as well as those shown to many of his countrymen when in great distress after their arrival into this once happy city, is moved by a voluntary spirit of liberty to offer himself in the manner and form following, viz: That your said petitioner understands that a great many Companies are now on foot to be raised for the defence of our liberties in this once happy land, which he thinks to be a very proper maxim for the furtherance of our rights and liberty; that your said petitioner (although he has nothing to recommend himself but the variety of calling himself a Highlander, from North-Britain) flatters himself that if this honorable Committee were to grant him a commission, under their hand and seal, that he could, without difficulty, raise one hundred Scotch Highlanders in this City and the neighboring Provinces, provided they were to be put in the Highland dress, and under pay during their service in defence of our liberties. Therefore, may it please your Honors to take this petition under your serious consideration; and should your Honors think proper to confer the honor upon him as to have the command of a Highland Company, under the circumstances proposed, your petitioner assures you that no person shall or will be more willing to accept of the offer than your humble petitioner." On the following day Donald McLeod sent a petition, couched in the following language to the Congress for the Colony of New York: "That yesterday your said petitioner presented a petition before this honorable body, and as to the contents of which he begs leave to give reference. That since, a ship arrived from Scotland, with a number of Highlanders passengers. That your petitioner talked to them this morning, and after informing them of the present state of this as well as the neighboring Colonies, they all seemed to be very desirous to form themselves into companies, with the proviso of having liberty to wear their own country dress, commonly called the Highland habit, and moreover to be under pay for the time they are in the service for the protection of the liberties of this once happy country, but by all means to be under the command of Highland officers, as some of them cannot speak the English language. That the said Highlanders are already furnished with guns, swords, pistols, and Highland dirks, which, in case of occasion, is very necessary, as all the above articles are at this time very difficult to be had. Therefore may it please your Honors to take all and singular the premises under your serious and immediate consideration; and as your petitioner wants an answer as soon as possible, he further prays that as soon as they think it meet, he may be advised. And your petitioner, is in duty bound, shall ever pray." This petition was presented during the formative state of the army, and when the colonies were in a state of anarchy. Congress had not yet assumed control of the army, although on the very eve of it. With an empire to found and defend, the continental Congress had not at its disposal a single penny. When Washington was offered the command of the army there was little to bring out the unorganized resources of the country. At the very time of Donald McLeod's petition, the provincial congress of New York was engaged with the distracted state of its own commonwealth. Order was not brought out of chaos until the strong hand and great energy of Washington had been felt. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 143: Lecky's History of England, Vol. IV. p. 151.] [Footnote 144: Bancroft's History United States, Vol. VI, p. 136; American Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. I, p. 1543.] [Footnote 145: Leeky's History of England, Vol. IV. p. 346] [Footnote 146: History of England, Vol. IV, p. 338.] [Footnote 147: Annual Register, 1776, p. 39.] [Footnote 148: See Appendix, Note M.] [Footnote 149: See Appendix, Note N.] CHAPTER XIII. HIGHLAND REGIMENTS IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. The great Pitt, in his famous eulogy on the Highland regiments, delivered in 1766, in Parliament, said: "I sought for merit wherever it could be found. It is my boast that I was the first minister who looked for it, and found it, in the mountains of the north. I called it forth, and drew into your service a hardy and intrepid race of men; men who, when left by your jealousy, became a prey to the artifices of your enemies, and had gone nigh to have overturned the State, in the war before the last. These men, in the last war, were brought to combat on your side; they served with fidelity, as they fought with valor, and conquered for you in every quarter of the world." ROYAL HIGHLAND EMIGRANT REGIMENT. These same men were destined to be brought from their homes and help swell the ranks of the oppressors of America. The first attempt made was to organize the Highland regiments in America. The MacDonald fiasco in North Carolina and the Highlanders of Sir John Johnson have already been noticed. But there were other Highlanders throughout the inhabited districts of America, who had emigrated, or else had belonged to the 42nd, Fraser's or Montgomery's Highlanders. It was desired to collect these, in so far as it was possible, and organize them into a distinct regiment. The supervision of this work was given to Colonel Allan MacLean of Torloisk, Mull, an experienced officer who had seen hard service in previous wars. The secret instructions given by George III. to William Tryon, governor of New York, is dated April 3, 1775: "Whereas an humble application hath been made to us by Allen McLean Eqre late Major to our 114th Regiment, and Lieut Col: in our Army setting forth, that a considerable number of our subjects, who have, at different times, emigrated from the North West parts of North Britain, and have transported themselves, with their families, to New York, have expressed a desire, to take up Lands within our said Province, to be held of us, our heirs and successors, in fee simple; and whereas it may be of public advantage to grant lands in manner aforesaid to such of the said Emigrants now residing within our said province as may be desirous of settling together upon some convenient spot within the same. It is therefore our Will and pleasure, that upon application to you by the said Allen McLean, and upon his producing to you an Association of the said Emigrants to the effect of the form hereunto annexed, subscribed by the heads of the several families of which such Emigrants shall consist, you do cause a proper spot to be located and surveyed in one contiguous Tract within our said Province of New York, sufficient in quantity for the accommodation of such Emigrants, allowing 100 acres to each head of a family, and 500 acres for every other person of which the said family shall consist; and it is our further will and pleasure that when the said Lands shall have been located as aforesaid, you do grant the same by letters patent under the seal of our said Province unto the said Allen Maclean, in trust, and upon the conditions, to make allotments thereof in Fee Simple to the heads of Families, whose names, together with the number of persons in each family, shall have been delivered in by him as aforesaid, accompanied with the said association, and it is Our further will and pleasure that it be expressed in the said letters patent, that the lands so to be granted shall be exempt from the payment of quit-rents for 20 years from the date thereof, with a proviso however that all such parts of the said Tracts as shall not be settled in manner aforesaid within two years from the date of the grant shall revert to us, and be disposed of in such manner as we shall think fit; and it is our further will and pleasure, that neither yourself, nor any other of our Officers, within our said Province, to whose duty it may appertain to carry these our orders into execution do take any Fee or reward for the same, and that the expense of surveying and locating any Tract of Land in the manner and for the purpose above mentioned be defrayed out of our Revenue of Quit rents and charged to the account thereof. And we do hereby, declare it to be our further will and pleasure, that in case the whole or any part of the said Colonists, fit to bear Arms, shall be hereafter embodied and employed in Our service in America, either as Commission or non Commissioned Officers or private Men, they shall respectively receive further grants of Land from us within our said province, free of all charges, and exempt from the payment of quit rents for 20 years, in the same proportion to their respective Ranks, as is directed and prescribed by our Royal Proclamation of the 7th of October 1763 in regard to such officers and soldiers as were employed in our service during the last War." This paltry scheme concocted to raise men for the royal cause could have but very little effect. The Highlanders, it proposed to reach, were scattered, and the work proposed must be done secretly and with expedition. To raise the Highlanders required address, a number of agents, and necessary hardships. Armed with the warrant Colonel Maclean and some followers preceded to New York and from there to Boston, where the object of the visit became known through a sergeant by name of McDonald who was trying to enlist "men to join the King's Troops; they seized him, and on his examination found that he had been employed by Major Small for this Purpose; they sent him a Prisoner into Connecticut. This has raised a violent suspicion against the Scots and Highlanders and will make the execution of Coll Maclean's Plan more difficult."[150] The principal agents engaged with Colonel Maclean in raising the new regiment were Major John Small and Captain Alexander McDonald. The latter met with much discouragement and several escapes. His "Letter-Book" is a mine of information pertaining to the regiment. As early as November 15, 1775, he draws a gloomy picture of the straits of the Macdonalds on whom so much was relied by the English government. "As for all the McDonalds in America they may Curse the day that was born as being the means of Leading them to ruin from my Zeal and attachment for government poor Glanaldall I am afraid is Lost as there is no account of him since a small Schooner Arrived which brought an account of his having Six & thirty men then and if he should Not be Lost he is unavoidably ruined in his Means all those up the Mohawk river will be tore to pieces and those in North Carolina the same so that if Government will Not Consider them when Matters are Settled I think they are ill treated."[151] The commissions of Colonel Maclean, Major John Small and Captain William Dunbar bear date of June 13, 1775, and all the other captains one day later. The regiment raised was known as the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment and was composed of two battalions, the first of which was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Allan Maclean, and was composed of Highland emigrants in Canada, and the discharged men of the 42nd, of Fraser's and Montgomery's Highlanders who had settled in North America after the peace of 1763. Great difficulty was experienced in conveying the troops who had been raised in the back settlements to their respective destinations. This battalion made the following return of its officers: Isle Aux Noix, 15th April, 1778. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Rank | NAMES |Former Rank in the Army -------------+------------------------------+------------------------- Lieut.-Col |Allan McLean |Lieutenant-Colonel Major |Donald McDonald | Captain |William Dunbar |Capt. late 78th Regt |John Nairne | |Alexander Fraser |Lieut. late 78th Regt |George McDougall |Lieut. 60th Regt |Malcolm Fraser |Lieut. late 8th Regt |Daniel Robertson |Lieut. 42nd Regt |George Laws | Lieutenant |Neil McLean, (prisoner) |Lieut. 7th Regt |John McLean |Ensign late 114th Regt |Alexander Firtelier | |Lachlan McLean | |Fran. Damburgess, (prisoner) |Ensign, 21 Nov. 1775 |David Cairns |Ensign, 1st June 1775 |Don. McKinnon |Ensign, 20th Nov. 1775 |Ronald McDonald |Ensign, 14th June 1775 |John McDonell |Ensign, 14th June 1775 |Alexander Stratton, (prisoner)| |Hector McLean | Ensign |Ronald McDonald | |Archibald Grant | |David Smith | |George Darne | |Archibald McDonald | |William Wood | -------------+------------------------------+------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Rank | NAMES | Former Rank in the Army --------------------------------------------+------------------------- Ensign | John Pringle | " | Hector McLean, (prisoner) | Chaplain | John Bethune | Adjutant | Ronald McDonald | Qr. Master | Lachlan McLean | Surgeon | James Davidson | Surg's Mate | James Walker | --------------------------------------------+------------------------- The second battalion was commanded by Major John Small, formerly of the 42nd, and then of the 21st regiment, which was raised from emigrants arriving in the colonies and discharged Highland soldiers who had settled in Nova Scotia. Each battalion was to consist of seven hundred and fifty men, with officers in proportion. In speaking of the raising of the men Captain Alexander McDonald, in a letter to General Sir William Howe, under date of Halifax, November 30, 1775, says: "Last October was a year when I found the people of America were determind on Rebellion, I wrote to Major Small desiring he would acquaint General Gage that I was ready to join the Army with a hundred as good men as any in America, the General was pleased to order the Major to write and return his Excellency's thanks to me for my Loyalty and spirited offers of Service, but that he had not power at that time to grant Commissions or raise any troops; however the hint was improved and A proposal was Sent home to Government to raise five Companies and I was in the meantime ordered to ingeage as many men as I possibly Could, Accordingly I Left my own house on Staten Island this same day year and travelled through frost snow & Ice all the way to the Mohawk river, where there was two hundred Men of my own Name, who had fled from the Severity of their Landlords in the Highlands of Scotland, the Leading men of whom most Cheerfully agreed to be ready at a Call, but the affair was obliged to be kept a profound Secret till it was Known whether the government approved of the Scheme and otherwise I could have inlisted five hundred men in a months time, from thence I proceeded straight to Boston to know for Certain what was done in the affair when General Gage asur'd me that he had recommended it to the Ministry and did not doubt of its Meeting with approbation. I Left Boston and went home to my own house and was ingeaging as Many men as I Could of those that I thought I could intrust but it was not possible to keep the thing Long a Secret when we had to make proposals to five hundred men; in the Mean time Coll McLean arrived with full power from Government to Collect all the Highlanders who had Emigrated to America Into one place and to give Every man the hundred Acres of Land and if need required to give Arms to as many men as were Capable of bearing them for His Majesty's Service. Coll McLean and I Came from New York to Boston to know how Matters would be Settled by Genl Gage: it was then proposed and Agreed upon to raise twenty Companies or two Battalions Consisting of one Lt Colonl Commandant two Majors and Seventeen Captains, of which I was to be the first or oldest Captain and was confirmed by Coll McLean under his hand Writeing."[152] At the time of the beginning of hostilities a large number of Highlanders were on their way from Scotland to settle in the colonies. In some instances the vessels on which were the emigrants, were boarded from a man-of-war before their arrival. In some families there is a tradition that they were captured by a war vessel. Those who did arrive were induced partly by threats and partly by persuasion to enlist for the war, which they were assured would be of short duration. These people were not only in poverty, but many were in debt for their passage, and they were now promised that by enlisting their debts should be paid, they should have plenty of food as well as full pay for their services, besides receiving for each head of a family two hundred acres of land and fifty more for each child, while, in the event of refusal, there was presented the alternative of going to jail to pay their debts. The result of the artifices used can be no mystery. Under such conditions most of the able-bodied men enlisted, in some instances father and son serving together. Their wives and children were sent to Halifax, hearing the cannon of Bunker Hill on their passage. These enlistments formed a part of the Battalion under Major Small,--five companies of which remained in Nova Scotia during the war, and the remaining five joining Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis to the southward. That portion of which remained in Nova Scotia, was stationed at Halifax, Windsor, and Cumberland, and were distinguished by their uniform good behavior. The men belonging to the first battalion were assembled at Quebec. On the approach of the American army by Lake Champlain, Colonel Maclean was ordered to St. Johns with a party of militia, but got only as far as St. Denis, where he was deserted by his men. When Quebec was threatened by the American army under Colonel Arnold, Colonel Maclean with his regiment consisting of three hundred and fifty men, was at Sorel, and being forced to decamp from that place, by great celerity of movement, evaded the army of Colonel Arnold and passed into Quebec with one hundred of his regiment. He arrived just in time, for the citizens were about to surrender the city to the Americans. On Colonel Maclean's arrival, November 13, 1775, the garrison consisted only of fifty men of the Fusiliers and seven hundred militia and seamen. There had also just landed one hundred recruits of Colonel Maclean's corps from Newfoundland, which had been raised by Malcolm Fraser and Captain Campbell. Also, at the same time, there arrived the frigate Lizard, with £20,000 cash, all of which put new spirits into the garrison. The arrival of the veteran Maclean greatly diminished the chances of Colonel Arnold. Colonel Maclean now bent his energies towards saving the town; strengthened every point; enthused the lukewarm, and by emulation kept up a good spirit among them all. When General Carleton, leaving his army behind him, arrived in Quebec he found that Colonel Maclean had not only withstood the assaults of the Americans but had brought order and system out of chaos. In the final assault on the last day of the year, when the brave General Montgomery fell, the Highlanders were in the midst of the fray. Many of the Americans were captured at this storming of Quebec. One of them narrates that "January 4th, on the next day, we were visited by Colonel Maclean, an old man, attended by other officers, for a peculiar purpose, that is, to ascertain who among us were born in Europe. We had many Irishmen and some Englishmen. The question was put to each; those who admitted a British birth, were told they must serve his majesty in Colonel Maclean's regiment, a new corps, called the emigrants. Our poor fellows, under the fearful penalty of being carried to Britain, there to be tried for treason, were compelled by necessity, and many of them did enlist."[153] Such men could hardly prove to be reliable, and it can be no astonishment to read what Major Henry Caldwell, one of the defenders of Quebec says of it: "Of the prisoners we took, about 100 of them were Europeans, chiefly from Ireland; the greatest part of them engaged voluntarily in Col. McLean's corps, but about a dozen of them deserting in the course of a month, the rest were again confined, and not released till the arrival of the Isis, when they were again taken into the corps."[154] Colonel Arnold despairing of capturing the town by assault, established himself on the Heights of Abraham, with the intention of cutting off supplies and blockading the town. In this situation he reduced the garrison to great straits, all communication with the country being cut off. He erected batteries and made several attempts to get possession of the lower town, but was foiled at every point by the vigilance of Colonel Maclean. On the approach of spring, Colonel Arnold, despairing of success, raised the siege. The battalion remained in the province of Canada during the war, and was principally employed in small, but harrassing enterprises. In one of these, Captain Daniel Robertson, Lieutenant Hector Maclean, and Ensign Archibald Grant, with the grenadier company, marched twenty days through the woods with no other direction than the compass, and an Indian guide. The object being to surprise a small post in the interior, which was successful and attained without loss. By long practice in the woods the men had become very intelligent and expert in this kind of warfare. The reason why this regiment was not with the army of General Burgoyne, and thus escaped the humiliation of the surrender at Saratoga, has been stated by that officer in the following language: that he proposed to leave in Canada "Maclean's Corps, because I very much apprehend desertions from such parts of it as are composed of Americans, should they come near the enemy. In Canada, whatsoever may be their disposition, it is not so easy to effect it."[155] Notwithstanding the conduct of Colonel Allan Maclean at the siege of Quebec and his great zeal in behalf of Britain his corps was not yet recognized, though he had at the outset been promised establishment and rank for it. He therefore returned to England where he arrived on September 1, 1776, to seek justice for himself and men. They were not received until the close of 1778, when the regiment was numbered the 84th, at which time Sir Henry Clinton was appointed its Colonel, and the battalions ordered to be augmented to one thousand men each. The uniform was the full Highland garb, with purses made of raccoons' instead of badger's skins. The officers wore the broad sword and dirk, and the men a half basket sword. "On a St. Andrew's day a ball was given by the officers of the garrison in which they were quartered to the ladies in the vicinity. When one of the ladies entered the ball-room, and saw officers in the Highland dress, her sensitive delicacy revolted at what she though an indecency, declaring she would quit the room if these were to be her company. This occasioned some little embarrassment. An Indian lady, sister of the Chief Joseph Brant, who was present with her daughters, observing the bustle, inquired what was the matter, and being informed, she cried out, 'This must be a very indelicate lady to think of such a thing; she shows her own arms and elbows to all the men, and she pretends she cannot look at these officers' bare legs, although she will look at my husband's bare thighs for hours together; she must think of other things, or she would see no more shame in a man showing his legs, than she does in showing her neck and breast.' These remarks turned the laugh against the lady's squeamish delicacy, and the ball was permitted to proceed without the officers being obliged to retire."[156] With every opportunity offered the first battalion to desert, in consequence of offers of land and other inducements held out by the Americans, not one native Highlander deserted; and only one Highlander was brought to the halberts during the time they were embodied. The history of the formation of the two battalions is dissimilar; that of the second was not attended with so great difficulties. In the formation of the first all manner of devices were entered into, and various disguises were resorted to in order to escape detection. Even this did not always protect them. "It is beyond the power of Expression to give an Idea of the expence & trouble our Officers have Undergone in these expeditions into the Rebellious provinces. Some of them have been fortunate enough to get off Undiscovered--But Many have been taken abused by Mobs in an Outragious manner & cast into prisons with felons, where they have Suffered all the Evils that revengeful Rage ignorance Bigotry & Inhumanity could inflict--There has been even Skirmishes on such Occasions.***** It was an uncommon Exertion in one of our Offrs. to make his Escape with forty highlanders from the Mohawk river to Montreal havg. had nothing to eat for ten days but their Dogs & herbs & in another to have on his private Credit & indeed ruin, Victualled a Considerable Number of Soldiers he had engaged in hopes of getting off with them to Canada, but being at last taken & kept in hard imprisonmt for near a year by the Rebels to have effected his escape & Collecting his hundred men to have brot them thro' the Woods lately from near Abany to Canada."[157] Difficulties in the formation of the regiment and placing it on the establishment grew out of the opposition of Governor Legge, and from him, through General Gage transmitted to the ministry, when all enlistments, for the time being were prohibited. The officers, from the start had been assured that the regiment should be placed on the establishment, and each should be entitled to his rank and in case of reduction should go on half pay. The officers should consist of those on half pay who had served in the last war, and had settled in America. When the regiment had been established and numbered, through the exertions of Colonel Maclean the ranks were rapidly filled, and the previous difficulties overcome. The winter of 1775-1776, was very severe on the second battalion. Although stationed in Halifax they were without sufficient clothing or proper food, or pay, and the officer in charge--Captain Alexander McDonald--without authority to draw money, or a regular warrant to receive it. In January "the men were almost stark naked for want of clothing," and even bare-footed. The plaids and Kilmarnocks could not be had. As late as March 1st there was "not a shoe nor a bit of leather to be had in Halifax for either love or money," and men were suffering from their frosted feet. "The men made a horrid and scandalous appearance on duty, insulted and despised by the soldiers of the other corps." In April 1778, clothing that was designed for the first battalion, having been consigned to Halifax, was taken by Captain McDonald and distributed to the men of the second. Out of this grew an acrimonious correspondence. Of the food, Captain McDonald writes: "We are served Served Since prior to September last with Flower that is Rank poison at lest Bread made of Such flower--The Men of our Regiment that are in Command at the East Battery brought me a Sample of the fflower they received for a Months provision, it was exactly like Chalk & as Sower as Vinegarr I asked the Doctors opinion of it who told me it was Sufficient to Destroy all the Regiment to eatt Bread made of Such fflower; it is hard when Mens Lives are So precious and so much wanted for the Service of their King and country, that they Should thus wantonly be Sported with to put money in the pocket of any individuall."[158] It appears to have been the policy to break up the second battalion and have it serve on detached duty. Hence a detachment was sent to Newfoundland, another to Annapolis, at Cumberland, Fort Howe, Fort Edward, Fort Sackville and Windsor, but rallying at Halifax as the headquarters--to say nothing of those sent to the Southern States. No wonder Captain McDonald complains, "We have absolutely been worse used than any one Regiment in America and has done more duty and Drudgery of all kinds than any other Bn. in America these thre Years past and it is but reasonable Just and Equitable that we should now be Suffered to Join together at least as early as possible in the Spring and let some Other Regimt relieve the difft. posts we at present Occupy."[159] But it was not all garrison duty. Writing from Halifax, under date of July 13th, 1777, Captain McDonald says: "Another Attempt has been made from New England to invade this province wch. is also defeated by a detachmt from our Regt & the Marines on board of Captn Hawker. Our Detachmt went on board of him here & he having a Quick passage to the River St John's wch. divides Nova Scotia from New England & where the Rebells were going to take post & Rebuild the old fort that was there the last War. Immediately on Captn Hawker's Arrival there Our men under the Commd. of Ensn. Jno McDonald & the Marines under that of a Lieut were landed & Engaged the Enemy who were abt. a hundred Strong & after a Smart firing & some killed & wounded on both Sides the Rebells ran with the greatest precipitation & Confusion to their boats. Some of our light Armed vessells pursued them & I hope before this time they are either taken or starving in the Woods."[160] Whatever may be said of the good behavior of the men of the second battalion, there were three at least whom Captain McDonald describes as "rascales." He also gives the following severe rebuke to one of the officers: "Halifax 16th Febry 1777 Mr. Jas. McDonald. I am sorry to inform you that every Accot I receive from Windsor is very unfavorable in regard to you. Your Cursed Carelessness & slovenlyness about your own Body and your dress Nothing going on but drinking Calybogus Schewing Tobacco & playing Cards in place of that decentness & Cleanliness that all Gentlemen who has the least Regard for themselves & Character must & does observe. I am afraid from your Conduct that you will be no Credit or honor to the Memories of those Worthies from whom you are descended & if you have no regard for them or your self I need not expect you'll be at any pains to be of Any Credit to me for anything I can do for you. I am about Giving you Rank agreeable to Col. McLean's plan & on Accot. of your having bro't more men to the Regimt. than either Mr. Fitz Gerd. or Campbell You are to be the Second in Command at that post Lt. Fitz Ger'd. the third & Campbell the fourth. And I hope I shall never have Occasion to write to you in this Manner again. I beg you will begin now to mend your hand to write & learn to keep Accots. that you may be able to do Some thing like an officer if ever you expect to make a figure in the Army You must Change your plan & lay yr. money out to Acquire such Accomplishm'ts befitting an officer rather than Tobacco, Calybogus and the Devil knows what. I am tired of Scolding of you, so will say no more."[161] But little has been recorded of the five companies of the second battalion that joined Sir Henry Clinton and lord Cornwallis. The company called grenadiers was in the battle of Eutaw Springs, South Carolina, fought September 8, 1781. This was one of the most closely contested battles of the Revolution, in which the grenadier company was in the thickest and severest of the fight. The British army, under Colonel Alexander Stuart, of the 3rd regiment was drawn up in a line extending from Eutaw creek to an eighth of a mile southward. The Irish Buffs (third regiment) formed the right; Lieutenant Colonel Cruger's Loyalists the center; and the 63rd and 64th regiments the left. Near the creek was a flank battalion of infantry and the grenadiers, under Major Majoribanks, partially covered and concealed by a thicket on the bank of the stream. The Americans, under General Greene, having routed two advanced detachments, fell with great spirit on the main body. After the battle had been stubbornly contested for some time, Major Majoribank's command was ordered up, and terribly galled the American flanks. In attempting to dislodge them, the Americans received a terrible volley from behind the thicket. Soon the entire British line fell back, Major Majoribanks covering the movement. They abandoned their camp, destroyed their stores and many fled precipitately towards Charleston, while Major Majoribanks halted behind the palisades of a brick house. The American soldiers, in spite of the orders of General Greene and the efforts of their officers began to pillage the camp, instead of attempting to dislodge Major Majoribanks. A heavy fire was poured upon the Americans who were in the British camp, from the force that had taken refuge in the brick house, while Major Majoribanks moved from his covert on the right. The light horse or legion of Colonel Henry Lee, remaining under the control of that officer, followed so closely upon those who had fled to the house that the fugitives in closing the doors shut out two or three of their own officers. Those of the legion who had followed to the door seized each a prisoner, and interposing him as a shield retreated beyond the fire from the windows. Among those captured was Captain Barre, a brother of the celebrated Colonel Barre of the British parliament, having been seized by Captain Manning. In the terror of the moment Barre began to recite solemnly his titles: "I am Sir Henry Barre deputy adjutant general of the British army, captain of the 52nd regiment, secretary of the commandant at Charleston--" "Are you indeed?" interrupted Captain Manning; "you are my prisoner now, and the very man I was looking for; come along with me." He then placed his titled prisoner between him and the fire of the enemy, and retreated. The arrest of the Americans by Major Majoribanks and the party that had fled into the brick house, gave Colonel Stuart an opportunity to rally his forces, and while advancing, Major Majoribanks poured a murderous fire into the legion of Colonel Lee, which threw them into confusion. Perceiving this, he sallied out seized the two field pieces and ran them under the windows of the house. Owing to the crippled condition of his army, and the shattering of his cavalry by the force of Major Majoribanks, General Greene ordered a retreat, after a conflict of four hours. The British repossessed the camp, but on the following day decamped, abandoning seventy-two of their wounded. Considering the numbers engaged, both parties lost heavily. The Americans had one hundred and thirty rank and file killed, three hundred and eighty-five wounded, and forty missing. The loss of the British, according to their own report, was six hundred and ninety-three men, of whom eighty-five were killed. At the conclusion of the war the transports bearing the companies were ordered to Halifax, where the men were discharged; but, owing to the violence of the weather, and a consequent loss of reckoning, they made the island of Nevis and St. Kitt's instead of Halifax. This delayed the final reduction till 1784. In the distant quarters of the first battalion, they were forgotten. By their agreement they should have been discharged in April 1783, but orders were not sent until July 1784. It is possible that a roll of the officers of the second battalion may be in existence. The following names of the officers are preserved in McDonald's "Letter-Book": Major John Small, commandant; Captains Alexander McDonald, Duncan Campbell, Ronald McKinnon, Murdoch McLean, Alexander Campbell, John McDonald and Allan McDonald; Lieutenants Gerald Fitzgerald, Robert Campbell, James McDonald and Lachlan McLean; Ensign John Day; chaplain, Doctor Boynton. The uniform of the Royal Highland Emigrant regiment was the full Highland garb, with purses made of raccoon's instead of badger's skins. The officers wore the broad sword and dirk, and the men a half basket sword, as previously stated. At the conclusion of the war grants of land were given to the officers and men, in the proportion of five thousand acres to a field officer, three thousand to a captain, five hundred to a subaltern, two hundred to a serjeant and one hundred to each soldier. All those who had settled in America previous to the war, remained, and took possession of their lands, but many of the others returned to Scotland. The men of Major Small's battalion went to Nova Scotia, where they settled a township, and gave it the name of Douglas, in Hants County; but a number settled on East River. The first to come to East River, of the 84th, was big James Fraser, in company with Donald McKay and fifteen of his comrades, and took up a tract of three thousand four hundred acres extending along both sides of the river. Their discharges are dated April 10, 1784, but the grant November 3, 1785. About the same time of the occupation of the East River, in Pictou County, the West Branch was occupied by men of the same regiment; the first of whom were David McLean and John Fraser. The settlers of East Branch, or River, of the 84th, on the East side were Donald Cameron, a native of Urquhart, Scotland; served eight years; possessed one hundred and fifty acres; his son Duncan served two years as a drummer boy in the regiment. Alexander Cameron, one hundred acres. Robert Clark, one hundred acres. Finlay Cameron, four hundred. Samuel Cameron, one hundred acres. James Fraser, a native of Strathglass, three hundred and fifty acres. Peter Grant, James McDonald, Hugh McDonald, one hundred acres. On the west side of same river: James Fraser, one hundred acres. Duncan McDonald, one hundred acres. John McDonald, two hundred and fifty acres. Samuel Cameron, three hundred acres. John Chisholm, sen., three hundred acres. John Chisholm, jun., two hundred acres. John McDonald, two hundred and fifty acres. Those who settled at West Branch and other places on East River were, William Fraser, from Inverness, three hundred and fifty acres. John McKay, three hundred acres. John Robertson, four hundred and fifty. William Robertson, two hundred acres. John Fraser, from Inverness, three hundred acres. Thomas Fraser, from Inverness, two hundred acres. Thomas McKinzie, one hundred acres. David McLean, a sergeant in the army, five hundred acres. Alexander Cameron, three hundred acres. Hector McLean, four hundred acres. John Forbes, from Inverness, four hundred acres. Alexander McLean, five hundred acres. Thomas Fraser, Jun., one hundred acres. James McLellan, from Inverness, five hundred acres. Donald Chisholm, from Strathglass, three hundred and fifty acres. Robert Dundas (four hundred and fifty acres), Alexander Dunbar (two hundred acres), and William Dunbar, (three hundred acres), all three brothers, from Inverness, and of the 84th regiment. James Cameron, 84th regiment, three hundred acres. John McDougall, two hundred and fifty acres. John Chisholm, three hundred acres. Donald Chisholm, Jun., from Inverness, four hundred acres. Robert Clark, 84th, one hundred acres. Donald Shaw, from Inverness, three hundred acres. Alexander McIntosh, from Inverness, five hundred acres, and John McLellan, from Inverness, one hundred acres. Of the grantees of the West Branch, those designated from Inverness, were from the parish of Urquhart and served in the 84th, as did also those so specified. It is more than probable that all the others were not in the Royal Highland Emigrant regiment, or even served in the war. The members of the first, or Colonel MacLean's battalion settled in Canada, many of whom at Montreal, where they rallied around their chaplain, John Bethune. This gentleman acted as chaplain of the Highlanders in North Carolina, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Moore's Creek Bridge. After remaining a prisoner for about a year, he was released, and made his way to Nova Scotia and for some time resided at Halifax. He received the appointment of chaplain in the Royal Highland Emigrant regiment. He received a grant of three thousand acres, located in Glengarry, and having a growing family to provide for, each of whom was entitled to two hundred acres, he removed to Williamstown, then the principal settlement in Glengarry. Besides his allotment of land, he retired from the army on half pay. In his new home he ever maintained an honorable life. FORTY-SECOND OR ROYAL HIGHLAND REGIMENT. The 42nd, or Black Watch, or Royal Highlanders, left America in 1767, and sailed direct for Cork, Ireland. In 1775 the regiment embarked at Donaghadee, and landed at Port Patrick, after an absence of thirty-two years from Scotland. From Port Patrick it marched to Glasgow. Shortly after its arrival in Glasgow two companies were added, and all the companies were augmented to one hundred rank and file, and when completed numbered one thousand and seventy-five men, including serjeants and drummers. Hitherto the officers had been entirely Highlanders and Scotch. Contrary to the remonstrances of lord John Murray, the lord lieutenant of Ireland succeeded in admitting three English officers into the regiment, Lieutenants Crammond, Littleton, and Franklin, thus cancelling the commissions of Lieutenants Grant and Mackenzie. Of the soldiers nine hundred and thirty-one were Highlanders, seventy-four Lowland Scotch, five English, one Welsh and two Irish. On account of the breaking out of hostilities the regiment was ordered to embark for America. The recruits were instructed in the use of the firelock, and, from the shortness of the time allowed, were even drilled by candle-light. New arms and accoutrements were supplied to the men, and the Colonel, at his own expense, furnished them with broad swords and pistols. April 14, 1776, the Royal Highlanders, in conjunction with Fraser's Highlanders, embarked at Greenock to join an expedition under General Howe against the Americans. After some delay, both regiments sailed on May 1st under the convoy of the Flora, of thirty-two guns, and a fleet of thirty-two ships, the Royal Highlanders being commanded by Colonel Thomas Stirling of Ardoch. Four days after they had sailed, the transports separated in a gale of wind. Some of the scattered transports of both regiments fell in with General Howe's army on their voyage from Halifax; and others, having received information of this movement, followed the main body and joined the army at Staten Island. When Washington took possession of Dorchester heights, on the night of March 4, 1776, the situation of General Howe, in Boston, became critical, and he was forced to evacuate the city with precipitation. He left no cruisers in Boston bay to warn expected ships from England that the city was no longer in his possession. This was very fortunate for the Americans, for a few days later several store-ships sailed into the harbor and were captured. The Scotch fleet also headed that way, and some of the transports, not having received warning, were also taken in the harbor, but principally of Fraser's Highlanders. By the last of June, about seven hundred and fifty Highlanders belonging to the Scotch fleet, were prisoners in the hands of the Americans. The Royal Highlanders lost but one of their transports, the Oxford, and at the same time another transport in company with her, having on board recruits for Fraser's Highlanders, in all two hundred and twenty men. They were made prizes of by the Congress privateer, and all the officers, arms and ammunition were taken from the Oxford, and all the soldiers were placed on board that vessel with a prize crew of ten men to carry her into port. In a gale of wind the vessels became separated, and then the carpenter of the Oxford formed a party and retook her, and sailed for the Chesapeake. On June 20th, they sighted Commodore James Barron's vessel, and dispatched a boat with a sergeant, one private and one of the men who were put on board by the Congress to make inquiry. The latter finding a convenient opportunity, informed Commodore Barren of their situation, upon which he boarded and took possession of the Oxford, and brought her to Jamestown. The men were marched to Williamsburgh, Virginia, where every inducement was held out to them to join the American cause. When the promise of military promotion failed to have an effect, they were then informed that they would have grants of fertile land, upon which they could live in happiness and freedom. They declared they would take no land save what they deserved by supporting the king. They were then separated into small parties and sent into the back settlements; and were not exchanged until 1778, when they rejoined their regiments. Before General Sir William Howe's army arrived, or even any vessels of his fleet, the transport Crawford touched at Long Island. Under date of June 24, 1776, General Greene notified Washington that "the Scotch prisoners, with their baggage, have arrived at my Quarters." The list of prisoners are thus given: "Forty second or Royal Highland Regiment: Captain John Smith and Lieutenant Robert Franklin. Seventy-first Regiment: Captain Norman McLeod and lady and maid; Lieutenant Roderick McLeod; Ensign Colin Campbell and lady; Surgeon's Mate, Robert Boyce; John McAlister, Master of the Crawford transport; Norman McCullock, a passenger: two boys, servants; McDonald, servant to Robert Boyce; Shaw, servant to Captain McLeod. Three boys, servants, came over in the evening."[162] General Howe, on board the frigate Greyhound, arrived in the Narrows, from Halifax, on June 25th, accompanied by two other ships-of-war. He came in advance of the fleet that bore his army, in order to consult with Governor Tryon and ascertain the position of affairs at New York. For three or four days after his arrival armed vessels kept coming, and on the twenty-ninth the main body of the fleet arrived, and the troops were immediately landed on Staten Island. General Howe was soon after reinforced by English regulars and German mercenaries, and at about the same time Sir Henry Clinton and Admiral Parker, with their broken forces came from the south and joined them. Before the middle of August all the British reinforcements had arrived at Staten Island and General Howe's army was raised to a force of thirty thousand men. On August 22nd, a large body of troops, under cover of the guns of the Rainbow, landed upon Long Island. Soon after five thousand British and Hessian troops poured over the sides of the English ships and transports and in small boats and galleys were rowed to the Long Island shore, covered by the guns of the Phoenix, Rose and Greyhound. The invading force on Long Island numbered fifteen thousand, well armed and equipped, and having forty heavy cannon. The three Highland battalions were first landed on Staten Island, and immediately a grenadier battalion was formed by Major Charles Stuart. The staff appointments were taken from the Royal Highlanders. The three light companies also formed a battalion in the brigade under Lieutenant-Colonel Abercromby. The grenadiers were remarkable for strength and height, and considered equal to any company in the army. The eight battalion companies were formed into two temporary battalions, the command of one was given to Major William Murray, and that of the other to Major William Grant. These small battalions were brigaded under Sir William Erskine, and placed in the reserve, with the grenadiers and light infantry of the army, under command of lord Cornwallis. Lieutenant-Colonel Stirling, from the moment of landing, was active in drilling the 42d in the methods of fighting practiced in the French and Indian war, in which he was well versed. The Highlanders made rapid progress in this discipline, being, in general, excellent marksmen. It was about this time that the broadswords and pistols received at Glasgow were laid aside. The pistols were considered unnecessary, except in the field. The broadswords retarded the men when marching by getting entangled in the brushwood. The reserve of Howe's army was landed first at Gravesend Bay, and being moved immediately forward to Flat Bush, the Highlanders and a corps of Hessians were detached to a little distance, where they encamped. The whole army encamped in front of the villages of Gravesend and Utrecht. A woody range of hills, which intersected the country from east to west, divided the opposing armies. General Howe resolved to bring on a general action and make the attack in three divisions. The right wing under General Clinton seized, on the night of August 26th, a pass on the heights, about three miles from Bedford. The main body pushed into the level country which lay between the hills and the lines of General Israel Putnam. Whilst these movements were in process, Major-General Grant of Ballindalloch, with his brigade, supported by the Royal Highlanders from the reserve, was directed to march from the left along the coast to the Narrows, and make an attack in that quarter. At nine o'clock, on the morning of the 22nd, the right wing having reached Bedford, attacked the left of the American army, which, after a short resistance, quitted the woody grounds, and in confusion retired to their lines, pursued by the British troops, Colonel Stuart leading with his battalion of Highland grenadiers. When the firing at Bedford was heard at Flat Bush, the Hessians advanced, and, attacking the center of the American army, drove them through the woods, capturing three cannon. Previously, General Grant, with the left of the army, commenced the attack with a cannonade against the Americans under lord Stirling. The object of lord Stirling was to defend the pass and keep General Grant in check. He was in the British parliament when Grant made his speech against the Americans, and addressing his soldiers said, in allusion to the boasting Grant that he would "undertake to march from one end of the continent to the other, with five thousand men." "He may have his five thousand men with him now--we are not so many--but I think we are enough to prevent his advancing further on his march over the continent, than that mill-pond," pointing to the head of Gowanus bay. This little speech had a powerful effect, and in the action showed how keenly they felt the insult. General Grant had been instructed not to press an attack until informed by signal-guns from the right wing. These signals were not given until eleven o'clock, at which time lord Stirling was hemmed in. When the truth flashed upon him he hurled a few of his men against lord Cornwallis, in order to keep him at bay while a part of his army might escape. Lord Cornwallis yielded, and when on the point or retreating received large reinforcements which turned the fortunes of the day against the Americans. General Grant drove the remains of lord Stirling's army before him, which escaped across Gowanus creek, by wading and swimming. The victorious troops, made hot and sanguinary by the fatigues and triumphs of the morning, rushed upon the American lines, eager to carry them by storm. But the day was not wholly lost. Behind the entrenchments were three thousand determined men who met the advancing British army by a severe cannonade and volleys of musketry. Preferring to win the remainder of the conquest with less bloodshed, General Howe called back his troops to a secure place in front of the American lines, beyond musket shot, and encamped for the night. During the action Washington hastened over from New York to Brooklyn and galloped up to the works. He arrived there in time to witness the catastrophe. All night he was engaged in strengthening his position; and troops were ordered from New York. When the morning dawned heavy masses of vapor rolled in from the sea. At ten o'clock the British opened a cannonade on the American works, with frequent skirmishes throughout the day. Rain fell copiously all the afternoon and the main body of the British kept their tents, but when the storm abated towards evening, they commenced regular approaches within five hundred yards of the American works. That night Washington drew off his army of nine thousand men, with their munitions of war, transported them over a broad ferry to New York, using such consummate skill that the British were not aware of his intention until next morning, when the last boats of the rear guard were seen out of danger. The American loss in the battle of Long Island did not exceed sixteen hundred and fifty, of whom eleven hundred were prisoners. General Howe stated his own loss to have been, in killed, wounded, and prisoners, three hundred and sixty-seven. The loss of the Highlanders was, Lieutenant Crammond and nine rank and file wounded, of the 42d; and three rank and filed killed, and two sergeants and nine rank and file wounded, of the 71st regiment. In a letter to lord George Germaine, under date of September 4, 1776, lord Dunmore says: "I was with the Highlanders and Hessians the whole day, and it is with the utmost pleasure I can assure your lordship that the ardour of both these corps on that day must have exceeded his Majesty's most sanguine wish."[163] Active operations were not resumed until September 15th, when the British reserve, which the Royal Highlanders had rejoined after the action at Brooklyn, crossed the river in flat boats from Newtown creek, and landed at Kip's bay covered by a severe cannonade from the ships-of-war, whose guns played briskly upon the American batteries. Washington, hearing the firing, rode with speed towards the scene of action. To him a most alarming spectacle was presented. The militia had fled, and the Connecticut troops had caught the panic, and ran without firing a gun, when only fifty of the British had landed. Meeting the fugitives he used every endeavor to stop their flight. In vain their generals tried to rally them; but they continued to flee in the greatest confusion, leaving Washington alone within eighty yards of the foe. So incensed was he at their conduct that he cast his chapeau to the ground, snapped his pistols at several of the fugitives, and threatened others with his sword. So utterly unconscious was he of danger, that he probably would have fallen had not his attendants seized the bridle of his horse and hurried him away to a place of safety. Immediately he took measures to protect his imperilled army. He retreated to Harlem heights, and sent an order to General Putnam to evacuate the city instantly. This was fortunately accomplished, through the connivance of Mrs. Robert Murray. General Sir William Howe, instead of pushing forward and capturing the four thousand troops under General Putnam, immediately took up his quarters with his general officers at the mansion of Robert Murray, and sat down for refreshments and rest. Mrs. Murray knowing the value of time to the veteran Putnam, now in jeopardy, used all her art to detain her uninvited guests. With smiles and pleasant conversation, and a profusion of cakes and wine, she regaled them for almost two hours. General Putnam meanwhile receiving his orders, immediately obeyed, and a greater portion of his troops, concealed by the woods, escaped along the Bloomingdale road, and before being discovered had passed the encampment upon the Ineleberg. The rear-guard was attacked by the Highlanders and Hessians, just as a heavy rain began to fall; and the drenched army, after losing fifteen men killed, and three hundred made prisoners, reached Harlem heights. "This night Major Murray was nearly carried off by the enemy, but saved himself by his strength of arm and presence of mind. As he was crossing to his regiment from the battalion which he commanded, he was attacked by an American officer and two soldiers, against whom he defended himself for some time with his fusil, keeping them at a respectful distance. At last, however, they closed upon him, when unluckily his dirk slipped behind, and he could not, owing to his corpulence, reach it. Observing that the rebel (American) officer had a sword in his hand, he snatched it from him, and made so good use of it, that he compelled them to fly, before some men of the regiment, who had heard the noise, could come up to his assistance. He wore the sword as a trophy during the campaign."[164] On the 16th the light infantry was sent out to dislodge a party of Americans who had taken possession of a wood facing the left of the British. Adjutant-General Reed brought information to Washington that the British General Leslie was pushing forward and had attacked Colonel Knowlton and his rangers. Colonel Knowlton retreated, and the British appeared in full view and sounded their bugles. Washington ordered three companies of Colonel Weedon's Virginia regiment, under Major Leitch, to join Knowlton's rangers, and gain the British rear, while a feigned attack should be made in front. The vigilant General Leslie perceived this, and made a rapid movement to gain an advantageous position upon Harlem plains, where he was attacked upon the flank by Knowlton and Leitch. A part of Leslie's force, consisting of Highlanders, that had been concealed upon the wooded hills, now came down, and the entire British body changing front, fell upon the Americans with vigor. A short but severe conflict ensued. Major Leitch, pierced by three balls, was borne from the field, and soon after Colonel Knowlton was brought to the ground by a musket ball. Their men fought on bravely, contesting every foot of the ground, as they fell back towards the American camp. Being reinforced by a part of the Maryland regiments of Griffiths and Richardson, the tide of battle changed. The British were driven back across the plain, hotly pursued by the Americans, till Washington, fearing an ambush, ordered a retreat. In the battle of Harlem the British loss was fourteen killed, and fifty officers and seventy men wounded. The 42nd, or Royal Highlanders lost one sergeant and three privates killed, and Captains Duncan Macpherson and John Mackintosh, Ensign Alexander Mackenzie (who died of his wounds), and three sergeants, one piper, two drummers, and forty-seven privates wounded. This engagement caused a temporary pause in the movements of the British, which gave Washington an opportunity to strengthen both his camp and army. The respite was not of long duration for on October 12th, General Howe embarked his army in flat-bottomed boats, and on the evening of the same day landed at Frogsneck, near Westchester; but on the next day he re-embarked his troops and landed at Pell's Point, at the mouth of the Hudson. On the 14th he reached the White Plains in front of Washington's position. General Howe's next determination was to capture Fort Washington, which cut off the communication between New York and the continent, to the eastward and northward of Hudson river, and prevented supplies being sent him by way of Kingsbridge. The garrison consisted of over two thousand men under Colonel Magaw. A deserter informed General Howe of the real condition of the garrison and the works on Harlem Heights. General Howe was agreeably surprised by the information, and immediately summoned Colonel Magaw to surrender within an hour, intimating that a refusal might subject the garrison to massacre. Promptly refusing compliance, he further added: "I rather think it a mistake than a settled resolution in General Howe, to act a part so unworthy of himself and the British nation." On November 16th the Hessians, under General Knyphausen, supported by the whole of the reserve under earl Percy, with the exception of the 42nd, who were to make a feint on the east side of the fort, were to make the principal attack. Before daylight the Royal Highlanders embarked in boats, and landed in a small creek at the foot of the rock, in the face of a severe fire. Although the Highlanders had discharged the duties which had been assigned them, still determined to have a full share in the honors of the day, resolved upon an assault, and assisted by each other, and by the brushwood and shrubs which grew out of the crevices of the rocks, scrambled up the precipice. On gaining the summit, they rushed forward, and drove back the Americans with such rapidity, that upwards of two hundred, who had no time to escape, threw down their arms. Pursuing their advantage, the Highlanders penetrated across the table of the hill, and met lord Percy as he was coming up on the other side. By turning their feint into an assault, the Highlanders facilitated the success of the day. The result was that the Americans surrendered at discretion. They lost in killed and wounded one hundred and about twenty-seven hundred prisoners. The loss of the British was twenty killed and one hundred and one wounded; that of the Royal Highlanders being one sergeant and ten privates killed, and Lieutenants Patrick Graeme, Norman Macleod, and Alexander Grant, and for sergeants and sixty-six rank and file, wounded. The hill, up which the Highlanders charged, was so steep, that the ball which wounded Lieutenant Macleod, entering the posterior part of his neck, ran down on the outside of his ribs, and lodged in the lower part of his back. One of the pipers, who began to play when he reached the point of a rock on the summit of the hill, was immediately shot, and tumbled from one piece of rock to another till he reached the bottom. Major Murray, being a large and corpulent man, could not attempt the steep assent without assistance. The soldiers eager to get to the point of duty, scrambled up, forgetting the position of Major Murray, when he, in a supplicating tone cried, "Oh soldiers, will you leave me!" A party leaped down instantly and brought him up, supporting him from one ledge of rocks to another till they got him to the top. The next object of General Howe was to possess Fort Lee. Lord Cornwallis, with the grenadiers, light infantry, 33rd regiment and Royal Highlanders, was ordered to attack this post. But on their approach the fort was hastily abandoned. Lord Cornwallis, re-enforced by the two battalions of Fraser's Highlanders, pursued the retreating Americans, into the Jerseys, through Elizabethtown, Neward and Brunswick. In the latter town he was ordered to halt, where he remained for eight days, when General Howe, with the army, moved forward, and reached Princeton in the afternoon of November 17th. The army now went into winter quarters. The Royal Highlanders were stationed at Brunswick, and Fraser's Highlanders quartered at Amboy. Afterwards the Royal Highlanders were ordered to the advanced posts, being the only British regiment in the front, and forming the line of defence at Mt. Holly. After the disaster to the Hessians at Trenton, the Royal Highlanders were ordered to fall back on the light infantry at Princeton. Lord Cornwallis, who was in New York at the time of the defeat of the Hessians, returned to the army and moved forward with a force consisting of the grenadiers, two brigades of the line, and the two Highland regiments. After much skirmishing in advance he found Washington posted on some high ground beyond Trenton. Lord Cornwallis declaring "the fox cannot escape me," planned to assault Washington on the following morning. But while he slept the American commander, marched to his rear and fell upon that part of the army left at Princeton. Owing to the suddenness of Washington's attacks upon Trenton and Princeton and the vigilance he manifested the British outposts were withdrawn and concentrated at Brunswick where lord Cornwallis established his headquarters. The Royal Highlanders, on January 6, 1777 were sent to the village of Pisquatua on the line of communication between New York and Brunswick by Amboy. This was a post of great importance, for it kept open the route by which provisions were sent for the forces at Brunswick. The duty was severe and the winter rigorous. As the homes could not accommodate half the men, officers and soldiers sought shelter in barns and sheds, always sleeping in their body-clothes, for the Americans gave them but little quietude. The Americans, however, did not make any regular attack on the post till May 10th, when, at four in the morning, the divisions of Generals Maxwell and Stephens, attempted to surprise the Highlanders. Advancing with great caution they were not preceived until they rushed upon the pickets. Although the Highlanders were surprised, they held their position until the reserve pickets came to their assistance, when they retired disputing every foot, to afford the regiment time to form, and come to their relief. Then the Americans were driven back with precipitation, leaving upwards of two hundred men, in killed and wounded. The Highlanders, pursuing with eagerness, were recalled with great difficulty. On this occasion the Royal Highlanders had three sergeants and nine privates killed; and Captain Duncan Macpherson, Lieutenant William Stewart, three sergeants, and thirty-five privates wounded. "On this occasion, Sergeant Macgregor, whose company was immediately in the rear of the picquet, rushed forward to their support, with a few men who happened to have their arms in their hands, when the enemy commenced the attack. Being severely wounded, he was left insensible on the ground. When the picquet was overpowered, and the few survivors forced to retire, Macgregor, who had that day put on a new jacket with silver lace, having besides, large silver buckles in his shoes, and a watch, attracted the notice of an American soldier, who deemed him a good prize. The retreat of his friends not allowing him time to strip the sergeant on the spot, he thought the shortest way was to take him on his back to a more convenient distance. By this time Macgregor began to recover; and, perceiving whither the man was carrying him, drew his dirk, and, grasping him by the throat, swore that he would run him through the breast, if he did not turn back and carry him to the camp. The American, finding this argument irresistible, complied with the request, and, meeting Lord Cornwallis (who had come up to the support of the regiment when he heard the firing) and Colonel Stirling, was thanked for his care of the sergeant; but he honestly told him, that he only conveyed him thither to save his own life. Lord Cornwallis gave him liberty to go whithersoever he chose."[165] Summer being well advanced, Sir William Howe made preparations for taking the field. The Royal Highlanders, along with the 13th, 17th, and 44th regiments were put under the command of General Charles Gray. Failing to draw Washington from his secure position at Middlebrook, General Howe resolved to change the seat of war, and accordingly embarked thirty-six battalions of British and Hessians, and sailed for the Chesapeake. Before the embarkation, the Royal Highlanders received one hundred and seventy recruits from Scotland, who, as they were all of the best description, more than supplied the loss that had been sustained. After a tedious voyage the army, on August 24th, landed at Elk Ferry. It did not begin the march until September 3rd, for Philadelphia. In the meantime Washington marched across the country and took up a position at Red Clay Creek, but having his headquarters at Wilmington. His effective force was about eleven thousand men while that of General Howe was eighteen thousand strong. The two armies met on September 11th, and fought the battle of Brandywine. During the battle, lord Cornwallis, with four battalions of British grenadiers and light infantry, the Hessian grenadiers, a party of the 71st Highlanders, and the third and fourth brigades, made a circuit of some miles, crossed Jefferis' Ford without opposition, and turned short down the river to attack the American right. Washington, being apprised of this movement, detached General Sullivan, with all the force he could spare, to thwart the design. General Sullivan, having advantageously posted his men, lord Cornwallis was obliged to consume some time in forming a line of battle. An action then took place, when the Americans were driven through the woods towards the main army. Meanwhile General Knyphausen, with his division, made demonstrations for crossing at Chad's Ford, and as soon as he knew from the firing of cannon that lord Cornwallis had succeeded, he crossed the river and carried the works of the Americans. The approach of night ended the conflict. The Americans rendezvoused at Chester, and the next day retreated towards Philadelphia, and encamped near Germantown. The British had fifty officers killed and wounded and four hundred and thirty-eight rank and file. The battalion companies of the 42nd being in the reserve, sustained no loss, as they were not brought into action; but of the light company, which formed part of the light brigade, six privates were killed, and one sergeant and fifteen privates wounded. On the night of September 20th, General Gray was detached with the 2nd light infantry and the 42nd and 44th regiments to cut off and destroy the corps of General Wayne. They marched with great secrecy and came upon the camp at midnight, when all were asleep save the pickets and guards, who were overpowered without causing an alarm. The troops then rushed forward, bayoneted three hundred and took one hundred Americans prisoners. The British loss was three killed and several wounded. On the 26th the British army took peaceable possession of Philadelphia. In the battle of Germantown, fought on the morning of October 4, 1777, the Highlanders did not participate. The next enterprise in which the 42nd was engaged was under General Gray, who embarked with that regiment, the grenadiers and the light infantry brigade, for the purpose of destroying a number of privateers, with their prizes at New Plymouth. On September 5, 1778, the troops landed on the banks of the Acushnet river, and having destroyed seventy vessels, with all the cargoes, stores, wharfs, and buildings, along the whole extent of the river, the whole were re-embarked the following day and returned to New York. The British army during the Revolutionary struggle took the winter season for a period of rest, although engaging more or less in marauding expeditions. On February 25, 1779, Colonel Stirling, with a detachment consisting of the light infantry of the Guards and the 42nd, was ordered to attack a post at Elizabethtown, in New Jersey, which was taken without opposition. In April following the Highland regiment was employed on an expedition to the Chesapeake, to destroy the stores and merchandise at Portsmouth, in Virginia. They were again employed with the Guards and a corps of Hessians in another expedition under General Mathews, which sailed on the 30th, under the convoy of Sir George Collier, in the Reasonable, and several ships of war, and reached their destination on May 10th, when the troops landed on the glebe on the western bank of Elizabeth. After fulfilling the object of the expedition they returned to New York in good time for the opening of the campaign, which commenced by the capture, on the part of the British, of Verplanks and Stony Point. A garrison of six hundred men, among whom were two companies of Fraser's Highlanders, took possession of Stony Point. Washington planned its capture which was executed by General Wayne. Soon after General Wayne moved against Verplanks, which held out till the approach of the light infantry and the 42nd, then withdrew his forces and evacuated Stony Point. Shortly after, Colonel Stirling was appointed aide-de-camp to the king, when the command of the 42nd devolved on Major Charles Graham, to whom was entrusted the command of the posts of Stony Point and Verplanks, together with his own regiment, and a detachment of Fraser's Highlanders, under Major Ferguson. This duty was the more important, as the Americans surrounded the posts in great numbers, and desertion had become so frequent among a corps of provincials, sent as a reinforcement, that they could not be trusted on any military duty, particularly on those duties which were most harassing. In the month of October these posts were withdrawn and the regiment sent to Greenwich, near New York. The winter of 1779 was the coldest that had been known for forty years; and the troops, although in quarters, suffered more from that circumstance than in the preceding winter when in huts. But the Highlanders met with a misfortune that greatly grieved them, and which tended to deteriorate, for several years, the heretofore irreproachable character of the Royal Highland Regiment. In the autumn of this year a draft of one hundred and fifty men, recruits raised principally from the refuse of the streets of London and Dublin, was embarked for the regiment by orders from the inspector-general at Chatham. These men were of the most depraved character, and of such dissolute habits, that one-half of them were unfit for service; fifteen died in the passage, and seventy-five were sent to the hospital from the transport as soon as they disembarked. The infusion of such immoral ingredients must necessarily have a deleterious effect. General Stirling made a strong remonstrance to the commander-in-chief, in consequence of which these men were removed to the 26th regiment, in exchange for the same number of Scotchmen. The introduction of these men into the regiment dissolved the charm which, for nearly forty years, had preserved the Highlanders from contamination. During that long period there were but few courts-martial, and, for many years, no instance of corporal punishment occurred. With the intention of pushing the war with vigor, the new commander-in-chief, Sir Henry Clinton, who had succeeded Sir William Howe, in May, 1778, resolved to attack Charleston, the capital of South Carolina. Having left General Knyphausen in command at New York, General Clinton with his army set sail December 26, 1779. Such was the severity of the weather, however, that, although the voyage might have been accomplished in ten days, it was February 11, 1780, before the troops disembarked on John's Island, thirty miles from Charleston. So great were the impediments to be overcome, and so cautious was the advance of the general, that it was March 29th before they crossed the Ashley river. The following day they encamped opposite the American lines. Ground was broken in front of Charleston on April 1st. General Lincoln, who commanded the American forces, had strengthened the place in all its defences, both by land and water, in such a manner as to threaten a siege that would be both tedious and difficult. When General Clinton, anticipating the nature of the works he desired to capture, sent for the Royal Highlanders and Queen's Rangers to join him, which they did on April 18th, having sailed from New York on March 31st. The siege proceeded in the usual way until May 12th, when the garrison surrendered prisoners of war. The loss of the British forces on this occasion consisted of seventy-six killed and one hundred and eighty-nine wounded; and that of the 42nd, Lieutenant Macleod and nine privates killed, and Lieutenant Alexander Grant and fourteen privates wounded. After Sir Henry Clinton had taken possession of Charleston, the 42nd and light infantry were ordered to Monck's Corner as a foraging party, and, returning on the 2nd, they embarked June 4th for New York, along with the Grenadiers and Hessians. After being stationed for a time on Staten Island, Valentine's Hill, and other stations in New York, went into winter quarters in the city. About this time one hundred recruits were received from Scotland, all young men, in the full vigor of health, and ready for immediate service. From this period, as the regiment was not engaged in any active service during the war, the changes in encampments are too trifling to require notice. On April 28, 1782, Major Graham succeeded to the lieutenant-colonelcy of the Royal Highland Regiment, and Captain Walter Home of the fusileers became major. While the regiment was stationed at Paulus Hook several of the men deserted to the Americans. This unprecedented and unlooked for event occasioned much surprise and various causes were ascribed for it; but the prevalent opinion was that the men had received from the 26th regiment, and who had been made prisoners at Saratoga, had been promised lands and other indulgences while prisoners to the Americans. One of these deserters, a man named Anderson, was soon afterwards taken, tried by court-martial, and shot. This was the first instance of an execution in the regiment since the mutiny of 1743. The regiment remained at Paulus Hook till the conclusion of the war, when the establishment was reduced to eight companies of fifty men each. The officers of the ninth and tenth companies were not put on half-pay, but kept as supernumeraries to fill up vacancies as they occurred in the regiment. A number of the men were discharged at their own request, and their places supplied by those who wished to remain in the country, instead of going home with their regiments. These were taken from Fraser's and Macdonald's Highlanders, and from the Edinburgh and duke of Hamilton's regiments. The 42nd left New York for Halifax, Nova Scotia, on October 22, 1783, where they remained till the year 1786, when the battalion embarked and sailed for Cape Breton, two companies being detached to the island of St. John. In the month of August, 1789, the regiment embarked for England, and landed in Portsmouth in October. In May, 1790, they arrived in Glasgow. During the American Revolutionary War the loss of the Royal Highlanders was as follows: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |Killed ||Wounded |--------||--------- |O |S |DR||O |S |DR |f |e |ra||f |e |ra |f |r |un||f |r |un |i |j |mk||i |j |mk |c |e |m ||c |e |m |e |a |ea||e |a |ea |r |n |rn||r |n |rn |s |t |sd||s |t |sd | |s | || |s | | | |aF|| | |aF | | |ni|| | |ni | | |dl|| | |dl | | | e|| | | e ---------------------------------------------------+--+--+--++--+--+--- 1776, August 22nd and 27th, Long Island, including | | | || | | the battle of Brooklyn | | | 5|| 1| 1|19 September 16th, York Island Supporting | | | || | | Light Infantry | 1| 1| 3|| 3| 3|47 November 16th, Attack on Fort Washington | | 1|10|| 3| 4|66 December 22nd, At Black Horse, on the | | | || | | Delaware | | | 1|| | 1| 6 1777, February 13th, At Amboy, Grenadier | | | || | | Company | | | 3|| | 3|17 May 10th, Piscataqua, Jerseys | | 3| 9|| 2| 3|30 September 11th, Battle of Brandywine | | | 6|| | 1|15 October 5th, Battle of Germantown, the | | | || | | light company | | 1| || | | 4 1778, March 22nd, Foraging parties, Jerseys | | | || | | 4 June 28th, Battle of Monmouth, Jerseys | | 2|20|| 1| 1|17 1779, February 26th, Elizabethtown, Jerseys | | | || | | 9 1780, April and May to 12th, Siege of Charleston | 1| |12|| 1| |14 March 16th, Detachment sent to forage from | | | || | | New York to the Jerseys | | | || 1| | 3 1781, September and October. Yorktown, in | | | || | | Virginia, light company | | 1| 5|| | | 6 |__|__|__||__|__|__ TOTAL | 2| 9|74||12|17|257 ======================================================================= FRASER'S HIGHLANDERS. The breaking out of hostilities in America in 1775 determined the English government to revive Fraser's Highlanders. Although disinherited of his estates Colonel Fraser, through the influence of clan feeling, was enabled to raise twelve hundred and fifty men in 1757, it was believed, since his estates had been restored in 1772, he could readily raise a strong regiment. So, in 1775, Colonel Fraser received letters for raising a Highland regiment of two battalions. With ease he raised two thousand three hundred and forty Highlanders, who were marched up to Stirling, and thence to Glasgow in April, 1776. This corps had in it six chiefs of clans besides himself. The regiment consisted of the following nominal list of officers: FIRST BATTALION. Colonel: Simon Fraser of Lovat; Lieutenant-Colonel: Sir William Erskine of Torry; Majors: John Macdonell of Lochgarry and Duncan Macpherson of Cluny; Captains: Simon Fraser, Duncan Chisholm of Chisholm, Colin Mackenzie, Francis Skelly, Hamilton Maxwell, John Campbell, Norman Macleod of Macleod, Sir James Baird of Saughtonhall and Charles Cameron of Lochiel; Lieutenants: Charles Campbell, John Macdougall, Colin Mackenzie, John Nairne, William Nairne, Charles Gordon, David Kinloch, Thomas Tause, William Sinclair, Hugh Fraser, Alexander Fraser, Thomas Fraser, Dougald Campbell, Robert Macdonald, Alexander Fraser, Roderick Macleod, John Ross, Patrick Cumming, and Thomas Hamilton; Ensigns: Archibald Campbell, Henry Macpherson, John Grant, Robert Campbell, Allan Malcolm, John Murchison, Angus Macdonell, Peter Fraser; Chaplain: Hugh Blair, D.D.; Adjutant: Donald Cameron; Quarter-Master: David Campbell; Surgeon: William Fraser. SECOND BATTALION. Colonel: Simon Fraser of Lovat; Lieutenant-Colonel: Archibald Campbell; Majors: Norman Lamont and Robert Menzies; Captains: Angus Mackintosh of Kellachy, Patrick Campbell, Andrew Lawrie, Aeneas Mackintosh of Mackintosh, Charles Cameron, George Munro, Boyd Porterfield and Law Robert Campbell; Lieutenants: Robert Hutchison, Alexander Sutherland, Archibald Campbell, Hugh Lamont, Robert Duncanson, George Stewart, Charles Barrington Mackenzie, James Christie, James Fraser, Thomas Fraser, Archibald Balnevis, Dougald Campbell, Lodovick Colquhoun, John Mackenzie, Hugh Campbell, John Campbell, Arthur Forbes, Patrick Campbell, Archibald Maclean, David Ross, Robert Grant and Thomas Fraser; Ensigns: William Gordon, Charles Main, Archibald Campbell, Donald Cameron, Smollet Campbell, Gilbert Waugh, William Bain, and John Grant; Chaplain: Malcolm Nicholson; Adjutant: Archibald Campbell; Quarter-Master: J. Ogilvie; Surgeon: Colin Chisholm. At the time Fraser's Regiment, or the 71st, was mustered in Glasgow, there were nearly six thousand Highlanders in that city, of whom three thousand, belonging to the 42nd, and 71st, were raised and brought from the North in ten weeks. More men had come up than were required. When the corps marched for Greenock, these were left behind. So eager were they to engage against the Americans that many were stowed away, who had not enlisted. On none of the soldiers was there the appearance of displeasure at going. Sometime after the sailing of the fleet it was scattered by a violent gale, and several of the single ships fell in with, and were scattered by, American privateers. A transport having Captain, afterward Sir Aeneas Mackintosh, and his company on board, with two six pounders, made a resolute defence against a privateer with eight guns, till all the ammunition was expended, when they bore down with the intention of boarding; but, the privateer not waiting to receive the shock, set sail, the transport being unable to follow. As has been previously noticed, General Howe, on evacuating Boston, did not leave a vessel off the harbor to warn incoming British ships. Owing to this neglect, the transport with Colonel Archibald Campbell and Major Menzies on board sailed into Boston Harbor. The account of the capture of this transport and others is here subjoined by the participants. Captain Seth Harding, commander of the Defence, in his report to Governor Trumbull, under date of June 19, 1776, said: "I sailed on Sunday last from Plymouth. Soon after we came to sail, I heard a considerable firing to the northward. In the evening fell in with four armed schooners near the entrance of Boston harbor, who informed me they had been engaged with a ship and brig, and were obliged to quit them. Soon after I came up into Nantasket Roads, where I found the ship and brig at anchor. I immediately fell in between the two, and came to anchor about eleven o'clock at night. I hailed the ship, who answered, from Great Britain. I ordered her to strike her colors to America. They answered me by asking, What brig is that? I told them the Defence. I then hailed him again, and told him I did not want to kill their men; but have the ship I would at all events, and again desired them to strike; upon which the Major (since dead) said, Yes, I'll strike, and fired a broadside upon me, which I immediately returned, upon which an engagement begun, which continued three glasses, when the ship and brig both struck. In this engagement I had nine wounded, but none killed. The enemy had eighteen killed, and a number wounded. My officers and men behaved with great bravery; no man could have outdone them. We took out of the above vessels two hundred and ten prisoners, among whom is Colonel Campbell, of General Frazer's Regiment of Highlanders. The Major was killed. Yesterday a ship was seen in the bay, which came towards the entrance of the harbor, upon which I came to sail, with four schooners in company. We came up with her, and took her without any engagement. There were on board about one hundred and twelve Highlanders. As there are a number more of the same fleet expected every day, and the General here urges my stay, I shall tarry a few days, and then proceed for New London. My brig is much damaged in her sails and rigging." Colonel Campbell made the following report to Sir William Howe, dated at Boston, June 19, 1776: "Sir: I am sorry to inform you that it has been my unfortunate lot to have fallen into the hands of the Americans in the middle of Boston harbor; but when the circumstances which have occasioned this disaster are understood, I flatter myself no reflection will arise to myself or my officers on account of it. On the 16th of June the George and Annabella transports, with two companies of the Seventy-First Regiment of Highlanders, made the land off Cape Ann, after a passage of seven weeks from Scotland, during the course of which we had not the opportunity of speaking to a single vessel that could give us the smallest information of the British troops having evacuated Boston. On the 17th, at daylight, we found ourselves opposite to the harbor's mouth at Boston; but, from contrary winds, it was necessary to make several tacks to reach it. Four schooners (which we took to be pilots, or armed vessels in the service of his Majesty, but which were afterwards found to be four American privateers, of eight carriage-guns, twelve swivels, and forty men each) were bearing down upon us at four o'clock in the morning. At half an hour thereafter two of them engaged us, and about eleven o'clock the other two were close alongside. The George transport (on board of which were Major Menzies and myself, with one hundred and eight of the Second Battalion, the Adjutant, the Quartermaster, two Lieutenants, and five volunteers, were passengers) had only six pieces of cannon to oppose them; and the Annabella (on board of which was Captain McKenzie, together with two subalterns, two volunteers, and eighty-two private men of the First Battalion) had only two swivels for her defence. Under such circumstances, I thought it expedient for the Annabella to keep ahead of the George, that our artillery might be used with more effect and less obstruction. Two of the privateers having stationed themselves upon our larboard quarter and two upon our starboard quarter, a tolerable cannonade ensued, which, with very few intermissions, lasted till four o'clock in the evening, when the enemy bore away, and anchored in Plymouth harbor. Our loss upon this occasion was only three men mortally wounded on board the George, one killed and one man slightly wounded on board the Annabella. As my orders were for the port of Boston, I thought it my duty, at this happy crisis, to push forward into the harbor, not doubting I should receive protection either from a fort or some ship of force stationed there for the security of our fleet. Towards the close of the evening we perceived the four schooners that were engaged with us in the morning, joined by the brig Defence, of sixteen carriage-guns, twenty swivels, and one hundred and seventeen men, and a schooner of eight carriage-guns, twelve swivels, and forty men, got under way and made towards us. As we stood up for Nantasket Road, an American battery opened upon us, which was the first serious proof we had that there could scarcely be many friends of ours at Boston; and we were too far embayed to retreat, especially as the wind had died away, and the tide of flood not half expended. After each of the vessels had twice run aground, we anchored at George's Island, and prepared for action; but the Annabella by some misfortune, got aground so far astern of the George we could expect but a feeble support from her musketry. About eleven o'clock four of the schooners anchored right upon our bow, and one right astern of us. The armed brig took her station on our starboard side, at the distance of two hundred yards, and hailed us to strike the British flag. Although the mate of our ship and every sailor on board (the Captain only excepted) refused positively to fight any longer, I have the pleasure to inform you that there was not an officer, non-commissioned officer, or private man of the Seventy-First but what stood to their quarters with a ready and cheerful obedience. On our refusing to strike the British flag, the action was renewed with a good deal of warmth on both sides, and it was our misfortune, after the sharp combat of an hour and a half, to have expended every shot that we had for our artillery. Under such circumstances, hemmed in as we were with six privateers, in the middle of an enemy's harbor, beset with a dead calm, without the power of escaping, or even the most distant hope of relief, I thought it became my duty not to sacrifice the lives of gallant men wantonly in the arduous attempt of an evident impossibility. In this unfortunate affair Major Menzies and seven private soldiers were killed, the Quartermaster and twelve private soldiers wounded. The Major was buried with the honors of war at Boston. Since our captivity, I have the honor to acquaint you that we have experienced the utmost civility and good treatment from the people of power at Boston, insomuch, sir, that I should do injustice to the feelings of generosity did I not make this particular information with pleasure and satisfaction. I have now to request of you that, so soon as the distracted state of this unfortunate controversy will admit, you will be pleased to take an early opportunity of settling a cartel for myself and officers. I have the honor to be, with great respect, sir, your most obedient and most humble servant, Archibald Campbell, Lieut. Col. 2d Bat. 71st Regiment. P.S. On my arrival at Boston I found that Captain Maxwell, with the Light-Infantry of the first battalion of the Seventy-First Regiment, had the misfortune to fall into the hands of some other privateers, and were carried into Marblehead the 10th instant. Captain Campbell, with the Grenadiers of the second battalion, who was ignorant, as we were, of the evacuation of Boston, stood into the mouth of this harbor, and was surrounded and taken by eight privateers this forenoon. In case of a cartel is established, the following return is, as near as I can effect, the number of officers, non-commissioned officers, and private men of the Seventy-First Regiment who are prisoners-of-war at and in the neighborhood of Boston: The George transport: Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell; Lieutenant and Adjutant Archibald Campbell; Lieutenant Archibald Balneaves; Lieutenant Hugh Campbell; Quartermaster William Ogilvie; Surgeon's Mate, David Burns; Patrick McDougal, private, and acting Sergeant-Major; James Flint, volunteer; Dugald Campbell, ditto; Donald McBane, John Wilson, three Sergeants, four corporals, two Drummers, ninety private men. The Annabella transport: Captain George McKinzie; Lieutenant Colin McKinzie; Ensign Peter Fraser; Mr. McKinzie and Alexander McTavish, volunteers; four Sergeants, four Corporals, two Drummers, eighty-one private men. Lord Howe transport: Captain Lawrence Campbell; Lieutenant Robert Duncanson; Lieutenant Archibald McLean; Lieutenant Lewis Colhoun; Duncan Campbell, volunteer; four Sergeants, four Corporals, two Drummers, ninety-six private men. Ann transport: Captain Hamilton Maxwell; Lieutenant Charles Campbell; Lieutenant Fraser; Lieutenant----; four Sergeants, four Corporals, two Drummers, ninety-six private men. Archibald Campbell, Lieut. Col. 2d Bat. 71st Regiment."[166] On account of the treatment received by General Charles Lee, a prisoner in the hands of Sir William Howe, and the covert threat of condign punishment on the accusation of treason, Congress resolved, January 6, 1777, that "should the proffered exchange of General Lee, for six Hessian field-officers, not be accepted, and the treatment of him as aforementioned be continued, then the principles of retaliation shall occasion first of the said Hessian field-officers, together with Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell, or any other officers that are or may be in our possession, equivalent in number or quality, to be detained, in order that the same treatment, which general Lee shall receive, may be exactly inflicted upon their persons." In consequence of this act Colonel Campbell was thrown into Concord gaol. On February 4th he addressed a letter to Washington giving a highly colored account of his severe treatment, making it equal to that inflicted upon the most atrocious criminals; and for the reasons he was so treated declaring that "the first of this month, I was carried and lodged in the common gaol of Concord, by an order of Congress, through the Council of Boston, intimating for a reason, that a refusal of General Howe to give up General Lee for six field-officers, of whom I was one, and the placing of that gentleman under the charge of the Provost at New York, were the motives of their particular ill treatment of me." Washington, on February 28, 1777, wrote to the Council of Massachusetts remonstrating with them and directing Colonel Campbell's enlargement, as his treatment was not according to the resolve of Congress. The following day he wrote Colonel Campbell stating that he imagined there would be a mitigation of what he now suffered. At the same time Washington wrote to the Congress on the impolicy of so treating Colonel Campbell, declaring that he feared that the resolutions, if adhered to, might "produce consequences of an extensive and melancholy nature." On March 6th he wrote to the president of Congress reaffirming his position on the impolicy of their attitude towards Colonel Campbell. To the same he wrote May 28th stating that "notwithstanding my recommendation, agreeably to what I conceived to be the sense of Congress, Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell's treatment continues to be such as cannot be justified either on the principles of generosity or strict retaliation; as I have authentic information, and I doubt not you will have the same, that General Lee's situation is far from being rigorous or uncomfortable." To Sir William Howe, he wrote June 10th, that "Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell and the Hessian field-officers, will be detained till you recognise General Lee as a prisoner of war, and put him on the footing of claim. * * * The situation of Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, as represented by you, is such as I neither wished nor approve. Upon the first intimation of his complaints, I wrote upon the subject, and hoped there would have been no further cause of uneasiness. That, gentleman, I am persuaded, will do me the justice to say, he has received no ill treatment at my instance. Unnecessary severity and every species of insult I despise, and, I trust, none will ever have just reason to censure me in this respect." At this time Colonel Campbell was not in the gaol but in the jailer's house. On June 2d Congress ordered that Colonel Campbell and the five Hessian officers should be treated "with kindness, generosity, and tenderness, consistent with the safe custody of their persons." Congress finally decided that General Prescott, who had been recently captured, should be held as a hostage for the good treatment of General Lee, and Washington was authorized to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. March 10, 1778, in a letter addressed to Washington by Sir William Howe, he concludes as follows: "When the agreement was concluded upon to appoint commissioners to settle a general exchange, I expected there would have been as much expedition used in returning Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, and the Hessian field-officers, as in returning Major-General Prescott, and that the cartel might have been finished by the time of the arrival of General Lee. If, however, there should be any objection to General Prescott's remaining at New York, until the aforementioned officers are sent in, he shall, to avoid altercation, be returned upon requisition." To this Washington replied: "Valley Forge, 12 March, 1778. Sir:--Your letter of the 10th came to hand last night. The meeting of our commissioners cannot take place till the time appointed in my last. I am not able to conceive on what principle it should be imagined, that any distinction, injurious to Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell and the Hessian field officers, still exists. That they have not yet been returned on parole is to be ascribed solely to the remoteness of their situation. Mr. Boudinot informs me, that he momentarily expects their arrival, in prosecution of our engagement. You are well aware, that the distinction originally made, with respect to them, was in consequence of your discrimination to the prejudice of General Lee. On your receding from that discrimination, and agreeing to a mutual releasement of officers on parole, the difficulty ceased, and General Prescott was sent into New York, in full expectation, that General Lee would come out in return. So far from adhering to any former exception, I had particularly directed my commissary of prisoners to release Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, in lieu of Lieutenant Colonel Ethan Allen." It was not, however, until May 5, 1778 that Washington succeeded in exchanging Colonel Campbell for Colonel Ethan Allen.[167] His imprisonment did not have any effect on his treatment of those who afterwards fell into his hands. The death of Major Menzies was an irreparable loss to the corps, for he was a man of judgment and experience, and many of the officers and all the sergeants and soldiers totally inexperienced. Colonel Campbell was experienced as an engineer, but was a stranger to the minor and interior discipline of the line. But when it is considered that the force opposed to Fraser's regiment was also undisciplined, the duty and responsibility became less arduous. The greater part of the 71st safely landed towards the end of July, 1776 on Staten Island and were immediately brought to the front. The grenadiers were placed in the battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Stuart, and the light infantry in Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Abercromby's brigade; the other companies were formed into three small battalions in brigades, under Sir William Erskine, then appointed Brigadier-General. In this manner, and, as has been noticed, without training, these men were brought into action at Brooklin. Nine hundred men of the 42nd, engaged on this occasion, were as inexperienced as those of the 71st, but they had the advantage of the example of three hundred old soldiers, on which to form their habits, together with officers of long experience. The first proof of their capacity, energy and steadfastness was at the battle of Brooklin, where they fully met the expectations of their commander. They displayed great eagerness to push the Americans to extremities, and to compel them to abandon their strong position. General Howe, desiring to spare their lives, called them back. The loss sustained by this regiment, in the engagement was three rank and file killed, and two sergeants and nine rank and file wounded. The regiment passed the winter at Amboy, and in the skirmishing warfare of the next campaign was in constant employment, particularly so in the expeditions against Willsborough and Westfield, with which the operations for 1777 commenced. Immediately afterwards the army embarked for the Chesapeake. In the battle of Brandywine, a part of the 71st was actively engaged, and the regiment remained in Pennsylvania until November, when they embarked for New York. Here they were joined by two hundred recruits who had arrived from Scotland in September. These men along with one hundred more recovered from the hospital, formed a small corps under Captain Colin Mackenzie and acted as light infantry in an expedition up the North river to create a diversion in favor of General Burgoyne's movements. This corps led a successful assault on Fort Montgomery on October 6th, in which they displayed great courage. Captain Mackenzie's troops led the assault, and although so many were recruits, it was said that they exhibited conduct worthy of veterans. In the year 1778, the 71st regiment accompanied lord Cornwallis on an expedition into the Jerseys, distinguished by a series of movements and countermovements. Stewart says that on the excursion into the Jerseys "a corps of cavalry, commanded by the Polish count Pulaski, were surprised and nearly cut to pieces by the light infantry under Sir James Baird."[168] This must refer to the expedition against Little Egg Harbor, on the eastern coast of New Jersey, which was a noted place of rendezvous for American privateers. The expedition was commanded by Captain Patrick Ferguson, many of whose troops were American royalists. They failed in their design, but made extensive depredations on both public and private property. A deserter from count Pulaski's command informed Captain Ferguson that a force had been sent to check these ravages and was now encamped twelve miles up the river. Captain Ferguson proceeded to surprise the force, and succeeded. He surrounded the houses at night in which the unsuspecting infantry were sleeping, and in his report of the affair said: "It being a night-attack, little quarter, of course, could be given; so there were only five prisoners!" He had butchered fifty of the infantry on the spot, when the approach of count Pulaski's horse caused him to make a rapid retreat to his boats, and a flight down the river.[169] Such expeditions only tended to arouse the Americans and express the most determined hatred towards their oppressors. They uttered vows of vengeance which they sought in every way to execute. An expedition consisting of the Highlanders, two regiments of Hessians, a corps of provincials, and a detachment of artillery, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell, sailed from Sandy Hook, November 29, 1778, and after a stormy passage reached the Savannah river by the end of December. The 1st battalion of the 71st, and the light infantry, under the immediate command of Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland, landed, without opposition a short distance below the town of Savannah. Captain Cameron, without delay, advanced to attack the American advanced posts, when he and three of his men were killed by a volley. The rest instantly charged and drove the Americans back on the main body, drawn up in a line on an open plain in the rear of the town. The disembarkation, with the necessary arrangements for an attack was soon completed. At that time Savannah was an open town, without any natural strength, save that of the woods which covered both sides. Colonel Campbell formed his troops in line, and detached Sir James Baird with the light infantry through a narrow path, to get round the right flank of the Americans, while the corps, which had been Captain Cameron's, was sent round the left. The main army in front made demonstrations to attack. The Americans were so occupied with the main body that they did not perceive the flanking movements, and were thus easily surrounded. When they realized the situation they fled in great confusion. The light infantry closing in upon both flanks of the retreating Americans, they greatly suffered, losing upwards of one hundred killed and five hundred wounded and prisoners, with a British loss of but four soldiers killed and five wounded. The town then surrendered and the British took possession of all the shipping, stores, and forty-five cannon. Flushed with success Colonel Campbell made immediate preparations to advance against Augusta, situated in the interior about one hundred and fifty miles distant. No opposition was manifested, and the whole province of Georgia, apparently submitted. Colonel Campbell established himself in Augusta, and detached Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton, with two hundred men to the frontiers of Georgia. Meanwhile General Prevost, having arrived at Savannah from Florida, assumed command. Judging the ground occupied to be too extensive, he ordered Augusta evacuated and the lines narrowed. This retrograde movement emboldened the Americans and they began to collect in great numbers, and hung on the rear of the British, cutting off stragglers, and frequently skirmishing with the rear guard. Although uniformly maintaining themselves, this retreat dispirited the royalists (commonly called tories), and left them unprotected and unwilling to render assistance. It appears that the policy of General Prevost was not to encourage the establishing of a provincial militia, so that the royalists were left behind without arms or employment, and the patriots formed bands and traversed the country without control. To keep these in check, inroads were made into the interior, and in this manner the winter months passed. Colonel Campbell, who had acted on a different system, obtained leave of absence and embarked for England, leaving Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland in command of the 71st regiment. The regiment remained inactive till the month of February 1779, when it was employed in an enterprise against Brier Creek, forty miles below Augusta, a strong position defended by upwards of two thousand men, besides one thousand occupied in detached stations. In front was a deep swamp, rendered passable only by a narrow causeway, and on each flank thick woods nearly impenetrable, but the position was open to the rear. In order to dislodge the Americans from this position Lieutenant-Colonel Duncan Macpherson, with the first battalion of the Highlanders, was directed to march upon the front of the position; whilst Colonel Prevost and Lieutenant Colonels Maitland and Macdonald, with the 2d battalion of the Highlanders, the light infantry, and a detachment of provincials, were ordered to attempt the rear by a circuitous route of forty-nine miles. Notwithstanding the length of the march through a difficult country, the movements were so well regulated, that in ten minutes after Colonel Macpherson appeared at the head of the causeway in front, Colonel Maitland's fire was heard in the rear, and Sir James Baird, with the light infantry rushed through the openings in the swamp on the left flank. The attack was made on March 3rd. The Americans under General Ashe were completely surprised. The entire army was lost by death, captivity and dispersion. On this occasion one fourth of General Lincoln's army was destroyed. The loss of the Highlanders being five soldiers killed, and one officer and twelve rank and file wounded. General Prevost was active and next determined to invade South Carolina. Towards the close of April he crossed the Savannah river, with the troops engaged at Brier's Creek, and a large body of royalists and Creek Indians, and made slow marches towards Charleston. In the meantime General Lincoln had been active and recruited vigorously, and now mustered five thousand men under his command. Whilst General Prevost marched against General Lincoln's front, the former ordered the 71st to make a circuitous march of several miles and attack the rear. Guided by a party of Creek Indians the Highlanders entered a woody swamp at eleven o'clock at night, in traversing which they were frequently up to the shoulders in the swamp. They emerged from the woods the next morning at eight o'clock with their ammunition destroyed. They were now within a half mile of General Lincoln's rear guard which they attacked and drove from their position without sustaining loss. Reaching Charleston on May 11th General Prevost demanded instantly its surrender, but a dispatch from General Lincoln notified the people that he was coming to their relief. General Prevost, fearing that General Lincoln would cut off his communication with Savannah, commenced his retreat towards that city, at midnight, along the coast. This route exposed his troops to much suffering, having to march through unfrequented woods, salt water marshes and swamps. Lieutenant-Colonel Prevost, the Quartermaster-General, and a man of the name of Macgirt, and a person under his orders, had gone on a foraging expedition, and were not returned from their operations; and in order to protect them Colonel Maitland, with a battalion of Highlanders and some Hessians, was placed in a hastily constructed redoubt at Stono Ferry, ten miles below Charleston. On June 20th these men were attacked by a part of General Lincoln's force. When their advance was reported, Captain Colin Campbell, with four officers and fifty-six men, was sent out to reconnoitre. A thick wood covered the approach of the Americans till they reached a clear field on which Captain Campbell's party stood. Immediately he attacked the Americans and a desperate resistance ensued; all the officers and non-commissioned officers of the Highlanders fell, seven soldiers alone remaining on their feet. It was not intended that the resistance should be of such a nature, but most of the men had been captured in Boston Harbor, and had only been recently exchanged, and this being their first appearance before an enemy, and thought it was disgraceful to retreat when under fire. When Captain Campbell fell he directed his men to make the best of their way to the redoubt; but they refused to obey, and leave their officers on the field. The Americans, at this juncture ceased firing, and the seven soldiers carried their officers along with them, followed by such as were able to walk. The Americans advanced on the redoubts with partial success. The Hessians having got into confusion in the redoubt, which they occupied, the Americans forced an entrance, but the 71st having driven back those who attacked their redoubt, Colonel Maitland was enabled to detach two companies of Highlanders to the support of the Hessians. The Americans were instantly driven out of the redoubt at the point of the bayonet, and while preparing for another attempt, the 2d battalion of Highlanders came up, when despairing of success they retreated at all points, leaving many killed and wounded. The resistance offered by Captain Campbell afforded their friends in the redoubts time to prepare, and likewise to the 2d battalion in the island to march by the difficult and circuitous route left open for them. The delay in the 2d battalion was also caused by a want of boats. Two temporary ferry-boats had been established, but the men in charge ran away as soon as the firing began. The Americans opened a galling fire on the men as they stood on the banks of the river. Lieutenant Robert Campbell plunged into the water and swam across, followed by a few soldiers, returned with the boats, and thus enabled the battalion to cross over to the support of their friends. Five hundred and twenty Highlanders and two hundred Hessians successfully resisted all the efforts of the Americans twelve hundred strong, and this with a trifling loss in comparison to the service rendered. When the Americans fell back, the whole garrison sallied out, but the light troops covered the retreat so successfully, that all the wounded were brought off. In killed and wounded the Americans lost one hundred and forty-six and one hundred and fifty missing. The British loss was three officers and thirty-two soldiers killed and wounded. Three days afterwards, the foraging party having returned, the British evacuated Stono Ferry, and retreated from island to island, until they reached Beaufort, on Port Royal, where Colonel Maitland was left with seven hundred men, while General Prevost, with the main body of the army, continued his difficult and harrassing march to Savannah. In the month of September 1779, the count D'Estaing arrived on the coast of Georgia with a fleet of twenty sail of the line, two fifty gun ships, seven frigates, and transports, with a body of troops on board for the avowed purpose of retaking Savannah. The garrison consisted of two companies of the 16th regiment, two of the 60th, one battalion of Highlanders, and one weak battalion of Hessians; in all about eleven hundred effective men. The combined force of French and Americans was four thousand nine hundred and fifty men. While General Lincoln and his force were approaching the French effected a landing at Beuley and Thunderbolt, without opposition. General McIntosh urged count D'Estaing to make an immediate assault upon the British works. This advice was rejected, and count D'Estaing advanced within three miles of Savannah and demanded an unconditional surrender to the king of France. General Prevost asked for a truce until next day which was granted, and in the meanwhile twelve hundred white men and negroes were employed in strengthening the fortifications and mounting additional ordnance. This truce General Lincoln at once perceived was fatal to the success of the beseigers, for he had ascertained that Colonel Maitland, with his troops, was on his way from Beaufort, to reinforce General Prevost, and that his arrival within twenty-four hours, was the object which was designed by the truce. Colonel Maitland, conducted by a negro fisherman, passed through a creek with his boats, at high water, and concealed by a fog, eluded the French, and entered the town on the afternoon of September 17th. His arrival gave General Prevost courage, and towards evening he sent a note to count D'Estaing, bearing a positive refusal to capitulate. All energies were now bent towards taking the town by regular approaches. Ground was broken on the morning of September 23rd, and night and day the besiegers plied the spade, and so vigorously was the work prosecuted, that in the course of twelve days fifty-three cannon and fourteen mortars were mounted. During these days two sorties were made. The morning of September 24th, Major Colin Graham, with the light company of the 16th regiment, and the two Highland battalions, dashed out, attacked the besiegers, drove them from their works, and then retired with the loss of Lieutenant Henry Macpherson of the 71st, and three privates killed, and fifteen wounded. On September 27th, Major Macarthur, with the pickets of the Highlanders advanced with such caution and address, that, after firing a few rounds, the French and Americans, mistaking their object, commenced a fire on each other, by which they lost fifty men; and, in the meantime Major Macarthur retired. These sorties had no effect on the general operations. On the morning of October 4th, the batteries having been all completed and manned, a terrible bombardment was opened upon the British works and the town. The French frigate Truite also opened a cannonade. Houses were shattered, men, women and children were killed or maimed, and terror reigned. Day and night the cannonade was continued until the 9th. Victory was within the grasp of the besiegers, when count D'Estaing became impatient and determined on an assault. Just before dawn on the morning of the 9th four thousand five hundred men of the combined armies moved to the assault, in the midst of a dense fog and under cover of a heavy fire from the batteries. They advanced in three columns, the principal one commanded by count D'Estaing in person, assisted by General Lincoln; another column by count Dillon. The left column taking a great circuit got entangled in a swamp, and, being exposed to the guns of the garrison, was unable to advance. The others made the advance in the best manner, but owing to the fire of the batteries suffered severely. Many entered the ditch, and even ascended and planted the colors on the parapet, where several were killed. Captain Tawse, of the 71st, who commanded the redoubt, plunged his sword into the first man who mounted, and was himself shot dead by the man who followed. Captain Archibald Campbell then assumed the command, and maintained his post till supported by the grenadiers of the 60th, when the assaulting column being attacked on both sides, was completely broken, and driven back with such expedition, that a detachment of the 71st, ordered by Colonel Maitland to hasten and assist those who were so hard pressed by superior numbers, could not overtake them. The other columns, seeing the discomfiture of the principal attack, retired without any further attempt. It is the uniform testimony of those who have studied this siege that if count D'Estaing had immediately on landing made the attack, the garrison must have succumbed. General Lincoln, although his force was greatly diminished by the action just closed, wished to continue the siege; but count D'Estaing resolved on immediate departure. General Lincoln was indignant, but concealed his wrath; and being too weak to carry on the siege alone, he at last consented to abandon it. The French loss, in killed and wounded, was six hundred and thirty-seven men, and the American four hundred and fifty-seven. The British lost one captain, two subalterns, four sergeants, and thirty-two soldiers, killed; and two captains, two sergeants, two drummers, and fifty-six soldiers, wounded. Colonel Maitland was attacked with a bilious disease during the siege and soon after died. The British troops had been sickly before Savannah was attacked; but the soldiers were reanimated, and sickness, in a manner, was suspended, during active operations. But when the Americans withdrew, and all excitement had ceased, sickness returned with aggravated violence, and fully one fourth the men were sent to the hospital. While these operations were going on in Georgia and South Carolina a disaster overtook the grenadiers of the 71st who were posted at Stony Point and Verplanks, in the state of New York. Washington planned the attack on Stony Point and deputed General Wayne to execute it. So secretly was the whole movement conducted, that the British garrison was unsuspicious of danger. At eight o'clock, on the evening of July 15, 1779, General Wayne took post in a hollow, within two miles of the fort on Stony Point, and there remained unperceived until midnight, when he formed his men into two columns, Lieutenant-Colonel Fleury leading one division and Major Stewart the other. At the head of each was a forlorn hope of twenty men. Both parties were close upon the works before they were discovered. A skirmish with the pickets at once ensued, the Americans using the bayonet only. In a few moments the entire works were manned, and the Americans were compelled to press forward in the face of a terrible storm of grape shot and musket balls. Over the ramparts and into the fort both columns pushed their way. At two o'clock the morning of the 16th, General Wayne wrote to Washington: "The fort and garrison, with Colonel Johnson, are ours. The officers and men behaved like men who were determined to be free." The British lost nineteen soldiers killed, and one captain, two subalterns, and seventy two soldiers, wounded; and, in all, including prisoners, six hundred. The principal part of this loss fell upon the picket, commanded by Lieutenant Cumming of the 71st, which resisted one of the columns till almost all of the men of the picket, were either killed or wounded, Lieutenant Cumming being among the latter. The Americans lost fifteen killed and eighty-three wounded. The force which had so ably defended Savannah remained there in quarters during the winter of 1779 and 1780. In the month of March 1780, Sir Henry Clinton arrived before Charleston with a force from New York, which he immediately invested and rigorously pushed the siege. The chief engineer, Captain Moncrieff was indefatigable, and being fearless of danger, was careless of the lives of others. Having served two years with the 71st, and believing it would gratify the Highlanders to select them for dangerous service, he generally applied for a party of that corps for all exposed duties. After the surrender of Charleston, on May 12, 1780, to the army under Sir Henry Clinton, the British forces in the southern states were placed under the command of lord Cornwallis. The 71st composed a part of this army, and with it advanced into the interior. In the beginning of June, the army amounting to twenty-five hundred, reached Camden, a central place fixed upon for headquarters. The American general, Horatio Gates, having, in July, assembled a force marched towards Camden. The people generally were in arms and the British officers perplexed. Major Macarthur who was at Cheraw to encourage the royalists, was ordered to fall back towards Camden. Lord Cornwallis, seeing the gathering storm hastily left Charleston and joined lord Rawdon at Camden, arriving there on August 13th. Both generals of the opposing forces on the night of August 15th moved towards each other with the design of making an attack. The British troops consisted of the 23d and 33d regiments, under Lieutenant-Colonel Webster; Tarleton's legion; Irish volunteers; a part of Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton's North Carolina Regiment; Bryan's corps of royalists, under lord Rawdon, with two six and two three pounders commanded by Lieutenant McLeod; and the 71st regiment. Camden was left in the care of Major Macarthur, with the sick and convalescents. Both armies were surprised, and each fired at the same moment, which occurred at three o'clock on the morning of August 16th. Both generals, ignorant of each other's force, declined general action, and lay on their arms till morning. When the British army formed in line of battle, the light infantry of the Highlanders, and the Welsh fusileers were on the right; the 33d regiment and the Irish volunteers occupied the center; the provincials were on the left, with the marshy ground in their front. While the army was thus forming, Captain Charles Campbell, who commanded the Highland light companies on the right, placed himself on the stump of an old tree to reconnoitre, and observing the Americans moving as with the intention of turning his flank, leaped down, and giving vent to an oath, called to his men, "Remember you are light infantry; remember you are Highlanders: Charge!" The attack was rapid and irresistible, and being made before the Americans had completed their movement by which they were to surround the British right, they were broken and driven from the field, prior to the beginning of the battle in other parts of the line. When the battle did commence the American center gained ground. Lord Cornwallis opened his center to the right and left, till a considerable space intervened, and then directed the Highlanders to move forward and occupy the vacant space. When this was done, he cried out, "My brave Highlanders, now is your time." They instantly rushed forward accompanied by the Irish volunteers and the 33d, and penetrated and completely overthrew the American column. However the American right continued to advance and gained the ground on which the Highlanders had been placed originally as a reserve. They gave three cheers for victory; but the smoke clearing up they saw their mistake. A party of Highlanders turning upon them, the greater part threw down their arms, while the remainder fled in all directions. The victory was complete. The loss of the British was one captain, one subaltern, two sergeants, and sixty-four soldiers killed; and two field officers, three captains, twelve subalterns, thirteen sergeants, and two hundred and thirteen soldiers wounded. The Highlanders lost Lieutenant Archibald Campbell and eight soldiers killed; and Captain Hugh Campbell, Lieutenant John Grant, two sergeants, and thirty privates wounded. The loss of the Americans was never ascertained, but estimated at seven hundred and thirty two. General Sumter, with a strong corps, occupied positions on the Catawba river, which commanded the road to Charleston, and from which lord Cornwallis found it necessary to dislodge him. For this purpose Colonel Tarleton was sent with the cavalry and a corps of light infantry, under Captain Charles Campbell of the 71st regiment. The heat was excessive; many of the horses failed on the march, and not more than forty of the infantry were together in front, when, on the morning of the 18th, they came in sight of Fishing Creek, and on their right saw the smoke at a short distance. The sergeant of the advanced guard halted his party and then proceeded to ascertain the cause of the smoke. He saw the encampment, with arms piled, but a few sentinels and no pickets. He returned and reported the same to Captain Campbell who commanded in front. With his usual promptness Captain Campbell formed as many of the cavalry as had come up, and with the party of Highland infantry, rushed forward, and directing their route to the piled arms, quickly secured them and surprised the camp. The success was complete; a few were killed; nearly five hundred taken prisoners, and the rest dispersed. But the victory was dampened by the loss of the gallant Captain Campbell, who was killed by a random shot. These partial successes were soon counterbalanced by defeats of greater importance. From what had been of great discouragement, the Americans soon rallied, and threatened the frontiers of South Carolina, and on October 7th overthrew Major Ferguson at King's Mountain, who sustained a total loss of eleven hundred and five men, out of eleven hundred and twenty-five. At the plantation of Blackstocks, November 20th, Colonel Tarleton, with four hundred of his command, engaged General Sumter, when the former was driven off with a loss of ninety killed, and about one hundred wounded. The culminating point of these reverses was the battle of the Cowpens. A new commander for the southern department took charge of the American forces, in the person of Major-General Nathaniel Greene, who stood, in military genius, second only to Washington, and who was thoroughly imbued with the principles practiced by that great man. Lord Cornwallis, the ablest of the British tacticians engaged in the American Revolution, found more than his equal in General Greene. He had been appointed to the command of the Southern Department, by Washington, on October 30, 1780, and immediately proceeded to the field of labor, and on December 3rd, took formal command of the army, and was exceedingly active in the arrangement of the army, and in wisely directing its movements. His first arrangement was to divide his army into two detachments, the larger of which, under himself was to be stationed opposite Cheraw Hill, on the east side of the Pedee river, about seventy miles to the right of the British army, then at Winnsborough. The other, composed of about one thousand troops, under General Daniel Morgan, was placed some fifty miles to the left, near the junction of Broad and Parcolet rivers. Colonel Tarleton was detached to disperse the little army of General Morgan, having with him, the 7th or Fusileers, the 1st battalion of Fraser's Highlanders, or 71st, two hundred in number, a detachment of the British Legion, and three hundred cavalry. Intelligence was received, on the morning of January 17, 1781, that General Morgan was drawn up in front on rising ground. The British were hastily formed, with the Fusileers, the Legion, and the light infantry in front, and the Highlanders and cavalry forming the reserve. As soon as formed the line was ordered to advance rapidly. Exhausted by running, it received the American fire at the distance of thirty or forty paces. The effect was so great as to produce something of a recoil. The fire was returned; and the light infantry made two attempts to charge, but were repulsed with loss. The Highlanders next were ordered up, and rapidly advancing in charge, the American front line gave way and retreated through an open space in the second line. This manoeuvre was made without interfering with the ranks of those who were now to oppose the Highlanders, who ran in to take advantage of what appeared to them to be a confusion of the Americans. The second line threw in a fire upon the 71st, when within forty yards which was so destructive that nearly one half their number fell; and those who remained were so scattered, having run a space of five hundred yards at full speed, that they could not be united to form a charge with the bayonet. They did not immediately fall back, but engaged in some irregular firing, when the American line pushed forward to the right flank of the Highlanders, who now realized that there was no prospect of support, and while their number was diminishing that of their foe was increasing. They first wavered, then began to retire, and finally to run. This is said to have been the first instance of a Highland regiment running from an enemy.[170] This repulse struck a panic into those whom they left in the rear, and who fled in the greatest confusion. Order and command were lost, and the rout became general. Few of the infantry escaped, and the cavalry saved itself by putting their horses to full speed. The Highlanders reformed in the rear, and might have made a soldier-like retreat if they had been supported. The battle of the Cowpens was disastrous in its consequences to the British interests, as it inspired the Americans with confidence. Colonel Tarleton had been connected with frequent victories, and his name was associated with that of terror. He was able on a quick dash, but by no means competent to cope with the solid judgment and long experience of General Morgan. The disposition of the men under General Morgan was judicious; and the conduct of Colonels Washington and Howard, in wheeling and manoeuvering their corps, and throwing in such destructive volleys on the Highlanders, would have done credit to any commander. To the Highlanders the defeat was particularly unfortunate. Their officers were perfectly satisfied with the conduct of their men, and imputing the disaster altogether to the bad dispositions of Colonel Tarleton, made representations to lord Cornwallis, not to be employed again under the same officer, a request with which compliance was made. This may be the reason that Colonel Tarleton gives them no credit in his "History of the Campaigns," published in 1787. He admits his loss to have been three hundred killed and wounded and near four hundred prisoners.[171] After the battle of the Cowpens lord Cornwallis with increased exertions followed the main body of the Americans under General Greene, who retreated northward. The army was stripped of all superfluous baggage. The two battalions of the 71st now greatly reduced, were consolidated into one, and formed in a brigade with the 33d and Welsh Fusileers. Much skirmishing took place on the march, when, on March 16th, General Greene believing his army sufficiently strong to withstand the shock of battle drew up his force at Guilford Court House, in three lines. The British line was formed of the German regiment of De Bos, the Highlanders, and guards, under General Leslie, on the right; and the Welsh Fusileers, 33d regiment, and second battalion of guards, under General Charles O'Hara, on the left; the cavalry was in the rear supported by the light infantry of the guards and the German Yagers. At one o'clock the battle opened. The Americans, covered by a fence in their front, maintained their position with confidence, and withheld their fire till the British line was within forty paces, when a destructive fire was poured into Colonel Webster's brigade, killing and wounding nearly one-third. The brigade returned the fire, and rushed forward, when the Americans retreated on the second line. The regiment of De Bos and the 33d met with a more determined resistance, having retreated and advanced repeatedly before they succeeded in driving the Americans from the field. In the meantime, a party of the guards pressed on with eagerness, but were charged on their right flank by a body of cavalry which broke their line. The retreating Americans seeing the effect of this charge, turned and recommenced firing. The Highlanders, who had now pushed round the flank, appeared on a rising ground in rear of the left of the enemy, and, rushing forward with shouts, made such an impression on the Americans, that they immediately fled, abandoning their guns and ammunition. This battle, although nominally a victory for the British commander, was highly beneficial to the patriots. Both armies displayed consummate skill. Lord Cornwallis on the 19th decamped, leaving behind him between seventy and eighty of his wounded soldiers, and all the American prisoners who were wounded, and left the country to the mercy of his enemy. The total loss of the British was ninety-three killed, and four hundred and eleven wounded. The Highlanders lost Ensign Grant, and eleven soldiers killed, and four sergeants and forty-six soldiers wounded. It was long a tradition, in the neighborhood, that many of the Highlanders, who were in the van, fell near the fence, from behind which the North Carolinians rose and fired. The British army retreated in the direction of Cross Creek, the Americans following closely in the rear. At Cross Creek, the heart of the Highland settlement in North Carolina, lord Cornwallis had hoped to rest his wearied army, a third of whom was sick and wounded and was obliged to carry them in wagons, or on horseback. The remainder were without shoes and worn down with fatigue. Owing to the surrounding conditions, the army took up its weary march to Wilmington, where it was expected there would be supplies, of which they were in great need. Here the army halted from April 17th to the 26th, when it proceeded on the route to Petersburg, in Virginia, and to form a junction with General Phillips, who had recently arrived there with three thousand men. The march was a difficult one. Before them was several hundred miles of country, which did not afford an active friend. No intelligence could be obtained, and no communication could be established. On May 25th the army reached Petersburg, where the united force amounted to six thousand men. The army then proceeded to Portsmouth, and when preparing to cross the river at St. James' Island, the Marquis de Lafayette, ignorant of their number, with two thousand men, made a gallant attack. After a sharp resistance he was repulsed, and the night approaching favored his retreat. After this skirmish the British army marched to Portsmouth, and thence to Yorktown, where a position was taken on the York river on August 22nd. From the tables given by lord Cornwallis, in his "Answer to the Narrative of Sir Henry Clinton"[172] the following condition of the 71st at different periods on the northward march, is extracted: January 15, 1781, 1st Battalion 249 2nd Battalion 237 Light Company 69 February 1, 1781, " --- " 234 ---- March 1, 1781, " --- " 212 ---- April 1, 1781, " --- " 161 ---- May 1, 1781, Two Battalions 175 June 1, 1781, Second Battalion 164 July 1, 1781, " " 161 August 1, 1781, " " 167 Sept. 1, 1781, " " 162 Oct. 1, 1781, " " 160 The encampment at Yorktown was formed on an elevated platform, nearly level, on the bank of the river, and of a sandy soil. On the right of the position, extended from the river, a ravine of about forty feet in depth, and more than one hundred yards in breadth; the center was formed by a horn-work of entrenchments; and an extensive redoubt beyond the ravine on the right, and two smaller redoubts on the left, also advanced beyond the entrenchments, constituted the principal defences of the camp. On the morning of September 28, 1781, the combined French and American armies, twelve thousand strong, left Williamsburg by different roads, and marched towards Yorktown, and on the 30th the allied armies had completely invested the British works. Batteries were erected, and approaches made in the usual manner. During the first four days the fire was directed against the redoubt on the right, which was reduced to a heap of sand. On the left the redoubts were taken by storm and the guns turned on the other parts of the entrenchments. One of these redoubts had been manned by some soldiers of the 71st. Although the defence of this redoubt was as good and well contested as that of the others, the regiment thought its honor so much implicated, that a petition was drawn up by the men, and carried by the commanding officer to lord Cornwallis, to be permitted to retake it. The proposition was not acceded to, for the siege had reached such a stage that it was not deemed necessary. Among the incidents related of the Highlanders during the siege, is that of a soliloquy, overheard by two captains, of an old Highland gentleman, a lieutenant, who, drawing his sword, said to himself, "Come, on, Maister Washington, I'm unco glad to see you; I've been offered money for my commission, but I could na think of gangin' hame without a sight of you. Come on."[173] The situation of the besieged daily grew more critical, the whole encampment was open to assault, and exposed to a constant and enfilading fire. In this dilemma lord Cornwallis resolved to decamp with the elite of his army, by crossing the river and leaving a small force to capitulate. The first division embarked and some had reached the opposite shore at Gloucester Point, when a violent storm of wind rendered the passage dangerous, and the attempt was consequently abandoned. The British army then surrendered to Washington, and the troops marched out of their works on October 20th. The loss of the garrison was six officers, thirteen sergeants, four drummers and one hundred and thirty-three rank and file killed; six officers, twenty-four sergeants, eleven drummers, and two hundred and eighty-four wounded. Of these the 71st lost Lieutenant Thomas Fraser and nine soldiers killed; three drummers and nineteen soldiers wounded. The whole number surrendered by capitulation was a little more than seven thousand making a total loss of about seven thousand eight hundred. Of the arms and stores there were seventy-five brass, and one hundred and sixty iron cannon; seven thousand seven hundred and ninety-four muskets; twenty-eight regimental standards; a large quantity of cannon and musket-balls, bombs, carriages, &c., &c. The military chest contained nearly eleven thousand dollars in specie. Thus ended the military service of an army, proud and haughty, that had, within a year marched and counter-marched nearly two thousand miles, had forded streams, some of them in the face of an enemy, had fought two pitched battles and engaged in numerous skirmishes. With all their labors and achievements, they accomplished nothing of real value to the cause they represented. Fraser's Highlanders remained prisoners until the conclusion of hostilities. During their service their character was equal to their courage. Among them disgraceful punishments were unknown. When prisoners and solicited by the Americans to join their standard and settle among them, not one of them broke the oath he had taken, a virtue not generally observed on that occasion, for many soldiers joined the Americans. On the conclusion of hostilities the 71st was released, ordered to Scotland, and discharged at Perth in 1783. SEVENTY-FOURTH OR ARGYLE HIGHLANDERS. The particulars of the 74th or Argyle Highlanders, and the 76th, or Macdonald's Highlanders, are but slightly touched upon by Colonel David Stewart of Garth, in his "Sketches of the Highlanders," by Dr. James Browne, in his "History of the Highlands," and by John S. Keltie, in his "History of the Scottish Highlands." Even Lieutenant-General Samuel Graham, who was a captain in the 76th, in his "Memoirs," gives but a slight account of his regiment. So a very imperfect view can only be expected in this narration. The 74th or Argyle Highlanders was raised by Colonel John Campbell of Barbreck, who had served as captain and major of Fraser's Highlanders in the Seven Years' War. In the month of December 1777 letters of service were granted to him, and the regiment was completed in May 1778. In this regiment were more Lowlanders, than in any other of the same description raised during that period. All the officers, except four, were Highlanders, while of the soldiers only five hundred and ninety were of the same country, the others being from Glasgow, and the western districts of Scotland. The name of Campbell mustered strong; the three field-officers, six captains, and fourteen subalterns, being of that name. Among the officers was the chief of the Macquarries, being sixty-two years of age when he entered the army in 1778. The regiment mustering nine hundred and sixty, rank and file, embarked at Greenock in August, and landed at Halifax in Nova Scotia, where it remained garrisoned with the 80th and the 82d regiments; the whole being under the command of Brigadier-General Francis Maclean. In the spring of 1779, the grenadier company, commanded by Captain Ludovick Colquhoun of Luss, and the light company by Captain Campbell of Bulnabie, were sent to New York, and joined the army immediately before the siege of Charleston. In June of the same year, the battalion companies, with a detachment of the 82d regiment, under the command of Brigadier-General Maclean, embarked from Halifax, and took possession of Penobscot, with the intention of establishing a post there. Before the defences were completed, a hostile fleet from Boston, with two thousand troops on board, under Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell, appeared in the bay, and on July 28th effected a landing on a peninsula, where the British were erecting a fort, and immediately began to construct batteries for a regular siege. These operations were frequently interrupted by sallies of parties from the fort. General Maclean exerted himself to the utmost to strengthen his position, and not only kept the Americans in check, but preserved communication with the shipping, which they endeavored to cut off. Both parties kept skirmishing till August 13th, when Sir George Collier appeared in the bay, with a fleet intended for relief of the post. This accession of strength disconcerted the Americans, and completely destroyed their hopes, so that they quickly decamped and retired to their boats. Being unable to re-embark all the troops, those who remained, along with the sailors of several vessels which had run aground in the hurry of escaping, formed themselves into a body, and endeavored to penetrate through the woods. In the course of this attempt they ran short of provisions, quarrelled among themselves, and, coming to blows, fired on each other till their ammunition was expended. Upwards of sixty men were killed and wounded; the rest dispersed through the woods, numbers perishing before they could reach an inhabited country. The conduct of General Maclean and his troops met with approbation. In his dispatch, giving an account of the attack and defeat of his foes, he particularly noticed the exertions and zeal of Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Campbell of the 74th. The loss of this regiment was two sergeants, and fourteen privates killed, and seventeen rank and file wounded. General Maclean returned to Halifax with the detachment of the 82d, leaving Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Campbell of Monzie with the 74th at Penobscot, where they remained till the termination of hostilities, when they embarked for England. They landed at Portsmouth whence they marched for Stirling, and, after being joined by the flank companies, were reduced in the autumn of 1783. SEVENTY-SIXTH OR MACDONALD'S HIGHLANDERS. In the month of December 1777, letters of service were granted to lord Macdonald to raise a regiment in the Highlands and Isles. On his recommendation Major John Macdonell of Lochgarry was appointed lieutenant-colonel commandant of the regiment. The regiment was numbered the 76th, but called Macdonald's Highlanders. Lord Macdonald exerted himself in the formation of the regiment, and selected the officers from the families of the Macdonalds of Glencoe, Morar, Boisdale, and others of his own clan, and likewise from those of others, as Mackinnon, Fraser of Culduthel, Cameron of Callart, &c. A body of seven hundred and fifty Highlanders was raised. The company of Captain Bruce was principally raised in Ireland; and Captains Cunningham of Craigend, and Montgomery Cunningham, as well as Lieutenant Samuel Graham, raised their men in the low country. These amounted to nearly two hundred men, and were kept together in two companies; while Bruce's company formed a third. In this manner each race was kept distinct. The whole number, including non-commissioned officers and men, amounted to one thousand and eighty-six. The recruits assembled at Inverness, and in March 1778 the regiment was reported complete. The men on their arrival were attested by a justice of the peace, and received the king's bounty of five guineas. As Major John Macdonell, who had been serving in America in the 71st or Fraser's Highlanders, was taken prisoner, on his passage home from that country, the command devolved on Captain Donaldson, of the 42d or Royal Highland Regiment. Under this officer the regiment was formed, and a code of regulations established for the conduct of both officers and men. Soon after its formation the 76th was sent to Fort George where it remained a year. It so happened that few of the non-commissioned officers who understood the drill were acquainted with the Gaelic language, and as all words of command were given in English, the commander directed that neither officers nor non-commissioned officers ignorant of the former language should endeavor to learn it. The consequence was that the Highlanders were behind-hand in being drilled, as they had, besides other duties, to acquire a new language. But the Highlanders took uncommon pains to learn their duties, and so exact were they in the discharge of them that upon one occasion, Colonel Campbell, the lieutenant-governor, was seized and made prisoner by the sentry posted at his own door, because the man conceived a trespass had been committed on his post, nor would the sentinel release the colonel until the arrival of the corporal of the guard. In March 1779 the regiment was removed to Perth, and from there marched to Burnt Island, where they embarked on the 17th. Major Donaldson's health not permitting him to go abroad, the command devolved on lord Berridale, second major, who accompanied them to New York, where they landed in August. The fleet sailed from the Firth of Forth for Portsmouth, and in a short time anchored at Spithead. While waiting there for the assembling of a fleet with reinforcements of men and stores for the army in America, an order was received to set sail for the island of Jersey, as the French had made an attempt there. But the French having been repulsed before the 70th reached Jersey, the regiment returned to Portsmouth, and proceeded on the voyage to America, and arrived in New York on August 27th. On the arrival of the regiment in New York the flank companies were attached to the battalion of that description. The battalion companies remained between New York and Staten Island till February 1781, when they embarked with a detachment of the army, commanded by General Phillips, for Virginia. The light company, being in the 2d battalion of light infantry, also formed a part of the expedition. The grenadiers remained at New York. This year, lord Berridale, on the death of his father, became earl of Caithness, and being severely wounded at the siege of Charleston, soon after returned to Scotland. The command of the 70th regiment devolved on Major Needham, who had purchased Major Donaldson's commission. General Phillips landed at Portsmouth, in Virginia, in March. A number of boats had been constructed under the superintendence of General Benedict Arnold, for the navigation of the rivers, most of them calculated to hold one hundred men. Each boat was manned by a few sailors, and was fitted with a sail as well as oars. Some of them carried a piece of ordnance in their bows. In these boats the light infantry, and detachments of the 76th and 80th regiments, with the Queen's Rangers, embarked, leaving the remainder of the 76th, with other troops, to garrison Portsmouth. The detachment of the 76th which embarked consisted of one major, three captains, twelve subalterns, and three hundred men, under Major Needham. The troops proceeded up the James river destroying warlike stores, shipping, barracks, foundaries and private property. After making many excursions the troops marched to Bermuda Hundreds, opposite City Point, where they embarked, on May 2d; but receiving orders from lord Cornwallis, returned and entered Petersburg on May 10th. When the 76th regiment found themselves with an army which had been engaged in the most incessant and fatiguing marches through difficult and hostile countries, they considered themselves as inferiors and as having done nothing which could enable them to return to their own country. They were often heard murmuring among themselves, lamenting their lot, and expressing the strongest desire to signalize themselves. This was greatly heightened when visited by men of Fraser's Highlanders. The opportunity presented itself, and their behavior proved they were good soldiers. On the evening of July 6th, the Marquis de Lafayette pushed forward a strong corps, forced the pickets, and drew up in front of the British lines. The pickets in front of the army that morning consisted of twenty men of the 70th and ten of the 80th. When the attack on the pickets commenced, they were reinforced by fifteen Highlanders. The pickets defended the post till every man was either killed or wounded. A severe engagement took place between the contending armies, the weight of which was sustained on the part of the British by the left of Colonel Dundas's brigade, consisting of the 76th and 80th, and it so happened that while the right of the line was covered with woods they were drawn up in an open field, and exposed to the attack of the Americans with a chosen body of troops. The 76th being on the left, and lord Cornwallis, coming up in rear of the regiment, gave the word to charge, which was immediately repeated by the Highlanders, who rushed forward with impetuosity, and instantly decided the contest. The Americans retired, leaving their cannon and three hundred men killed and wounded behind them. Soon after this affair lord Cornwallis ordered a detachment of four hundred chosen men of the 76th to be mounted on such horses as could be procured and act with the cavalry. Although four-fifths of the men had never before been on horseback, they were mounted and marched with Tarleton's Legion. After several forced marches, far more fatiguing to the men than they had ever performed on foot, they returned heartily tired of their new mode of travelling. No other service was performed by the 76th until the siege and surrender of Yorktown. During the siege, while the officers of this regiment were sitting at dinner, the Americans opened a new battery, the first shot from which entered the mess-room, killed Lieutenant Robertson on the spot, and wounded Lieutenant Shaw and Quartermaster Barclay. It also struck Assistant Commissary General Perkins, who happened to dine there that day. The day following the surrender of lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown (October 20th), the British prisoners moved out in two divisions, escorted by regiments of militia; one to the direction of Maryland, the other, to which the 76th belonged, moved to the westward in Virginia for Winchester. On arriving at their cantonment, the officers were lodged in the town on parole, and the soldiers were marched several miles off to a cleared spot in the woods, on which stood a few log huts, some of them occupied by prisoners taken at the Cowpens. From Winchester the regiment was removed to Lancaster in Pennsylvania. After peace was declared they embarked for New York, sailed thence for Scotland, and were disbanded in March 1784 at Stirling Castle. This regiment maintained a very high standard for their behavior. Thefts and other crimes, implying moral turpitude, were totally unknown. There were only four instances of corporal punishment inflicted on the Highlanders of the regiment, and these were for military offences. Moral suasion and such coercion as a father might use towards his children were deemed sufficient to keep them in discipline or self-restraint. In the year 1775, George III. resolved to humble the thirteen colonies. In the effort put forth he created a debt of £121,267,993, with an annual charge of £5,088,336, besides sacrificing thousands of human lives, and causing untold misery; and, at last, weary of the war, on July 25, 1782, he issued a warrant to Richard Oswald, commissioning him to negotiate a peace. The definite articles of peace were signed at Paris, September 3, 1783. Then the United States of America took her position among the nations of the earth. George III. and his ministers had exerted themselves to the utmost to subjugate America. Besides the troops raised in the British Isles there were of the German mercenaries twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven. The mercenaries and British troops were well armed, clothed and fed. But the task undertaken was a gigantic one. It would have required a greater force than that sent to America to hold and garrison the cities alone. The fault was not with the army, the navy, or the commanding officers. The impartial student of that war will admit that the army fought well, likewise the navy, and the generals and admirals were skilled and able in the art of war. The British foreign office was weak. Nor was this all. The Americans had counted the cost. They were singularly fortunate in their leader. Thirty-nine years after his death, lord Brougham wrote of Washington that he was "the greatest man of our own or of any age. * * * This eminent person is presented to our observation clothed in attributes as modest, as unpretending, as little calculated to strike or to astonish, as if he had passed unknown through some secluded region of private life. But he had a judgment sure and sound; a steadiness of mind which never suffered any passion or even any feeling to ruffle its calm; a strength of understanding which worked rather than forced its way through all obstacles,--removing or avoiding rather than over-leaping them. His courage, whether in battle or in council, was as perfect as might be expected from this pure and steady temper of soul. A perfectly just man, with a thoroughly firm resolution never to be misled by others any more than by others over-awed; never to be seduced or betrayed, or hurried away by his own weaknesses or self-delusions, and more than by other men's arts, nor ever to be disheartened by the most complicated difficulties any more than to be spoilt on the giddy heights of fortune--such was this great man,--whether we regard him sustaining alone the whole weight of campaigns, all but desperate, or gloriously terminating a just warfare by his resources and his courage."[174] The British generals proved themselves unable to cope with this great and good man. More than six thousand five hundred Highlanders left their homes amidst the beautiful scenery of their native land, crossed a barrier of water three thousand miles in width, that they might fight against such a man and the cause he represented. Their toils, sacrifices and sufferings were in vain. Towards them Washington bore good will. Forgetting the wrongs they had done, he could write of them: "Your idea of bringing over Highlanders appears to be a good one. They are a hardy, industrious people, well calculated to form new settlements, and will, in time, become valuable citizens."[175] War is necessarily cruel and barbarous; and yet there were innumerable instances of wanton cruelty during the American Revolution. No instances of this kind have been recorded against the soldiers belonging to the Highland regiments. There were cruelties perpetrated by those born in the Highlands of Scotland, but they were among those settled by Sir William Johnson on the Mohawk and afterwards joined either Butler's Rangers or else Sir John Johnson's regiment. Even this class was few in numbers. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 150: Governor Golden to Earl of Dartmouth. New York Docs. Relating to Colonial History, Vol. VIII, p. 588.] [Footnote 151: Letter Book, p. 221.] [Footnote 152: _Ibid_, p. 223.] [Footnote 153: Henry's Campaign Against Quebec, 1775, p. 136.] [Footnote 154: Invasion of Canada 1775, p. 14.] [Footnote 155: State of the Expedition, p. VI.] [Footnote 156: Stewart's Sketches of the Highlanders, Vol. II, p. 186.] [Footnote 157: Letter-Book, p. 856.] [Footnote 158: _Ibid_, p. 303.] [Footnote 159: _Ibid_, p. 472.] [Footnote 160: _ibid_, p. 350.] [Footnote 161: _Ibid_, p. 330.] [Footnote 162: Am. Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. VI, p. 1055.] [Footnote 163: _Ibid_, Series V. Vol. II, p. 159.] [Footnote 164: Stewart's Sketches, Vol. I, p. 360.] [Footnote 165: _Ibid_, p. 867] [Footnote 166: Am. Archives, Series 4, Vol. VI, p. 982.] [Footnote 167: For Correspondence see Spark's Washington's Writings, Vols. IV, V.] [Footnote 168: Sketches, Vol. II, p. 97.] [Footnote 169: Lossing's Washington and American Republic, Vol. II, p. 643.] [Footnote 170: Stewart's Sketches, Vol. II, p. 116.] [Footnote 171: History of Campaigns, p. 218.] [Footnote 172: Pages 53, 77, 137.] [Footnote 173: Memoir of General Graham, p. 59.] [Footnote 174: Edinburg Review, October, 1838; Collected Contributions, Vol. I, p. 344.] [Footnote 175: Letter to Robert Sinclair, May 6,1792. Spark's Writings of Washington, Vol. XII, p. 304.] CHAPTER XIV. DISTINGUISHED HIGHLANDERS WHO SERVED IN AMERICA IN THE INTERESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. If the list of distinguished Highlanders who served in America in the interests of Great Britain was confined to those who rose to eminence while engaged in said service, it certainly would be a short one. If amplified to those who performed feats of valor or rendered valuable service, then the list would be long. The measure of distinction is too largely given to those who have held prominent positions, or else advanced in military rank. In all probability the names of some have been overlooked, although care has been taken in finding out even those who became distinguished after the American Revolution. The following biographical sketches are limited to those who were born in the Highlands of Scotland: GENERAL SIR ALAN CAMERON, K.C.B. Sir Alan Cameron of the Camerons of Fassifern, known in the Highlands as Ailean an Earrachd, almost a veritable giant, was born in Glen Loy, Lochaber, about the year 1745. In early manhood, having fought a duel with a fellow clansman, he fled to the residence of his mother's brother, Maclean of Drimnim, who, in order to elude his pursuers, turned him over to Maclean of Pennycross. Having oscillated between Morvern and Mull for a period of two years, he learned that another relative of his mother's, Colonel Allan Maclean of Torloisk, was about to raise a regiment for the American war. He embarked for America, and was kindly received by his relative who made him an officer in the 84th or Highland Emigrant regiment. During the siege of Quebec, he was taken prisoner and sent to Philadelphia, where he was kept for two years, but finally effected his escape, and returned to his regiment. Being unfit for service, in 1780, he returned to England on sick leave. In London he courted the only heir of Nathaniel Philips, and eloping with her they were married at Gretna Green. Soon after he received an appointment on the militia staff of one of the English counties. In 1782 he was elected a member of the Highland Society of London. In August 1793 Alan was appointed major-commandant, and preceded to Lochaber to raise a regiment, which afterwards was embodied as the 79th, or Cameron Highlanders. Not unmindful of his brother-officers of the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment, he named two of his own, and five officers of the Clan Maclean. The regiment in January 1794 numbered one thousand, which advanced Alan to the lieutenant-colonelcy. The regiment was then embarked for Flanders to reinforce the British and Austrians against the French. It was in the disastrous retreat to Westphalia, and lost two hundred men. From thence it was sent to the Isle of Wight, and Colonel Cameron was ordered to recruit his regiment to the extent of its losses in Flanders. The regiment was sent to the island of Martinique, and in less than two years, from the unhealthy location, it was reduced to less than three hundred men. But few of the men ever returned to Scotland. Colonel Cameron having been ordered to recruit for eight hundred men, fixed his headquarters at Inverness. Within less than nine months after his return from Martinique he produced a fresh body of seven hundred and eighty men. In 1798 he was ordered with his regiment to occupy the Channel Islands. He was severely wounded at Alkmaar. Colonel Cameron was sent to help drive the French out of Egypt. From Egypt he was transferred to Minorca and from there to England. He took part in the capture of the Danish fleet--a neutral power--and entered Copenhagen. Soon after the battle of Vimiera, Alan was made a brigadier and commandant of Lisbon. He was in command of a brigade at Oporto when that city was besieged. He was twice wounded at the battle of Talavera. After a military career covering a period of thirty-six years, on account of ill-health, he resigned his position in the army, and for several years was not able to meet his friends. He died at Fulham, April 9, 1828. GENERAL SIR ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, K.B. [Illustration: GENERAL SIR ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL.] Sir Archibald Campbell second son of James Campbell of Inverneil was born at Inverneil on August 21, 1739. By special recommendation of Mr. Pitt he received, in 1757, a captain's commission in Fraser's Highlanders, and served throughout the campaign in North America, and was wounded at the taking of Quebec in 1758. On the conclusion of the war he was transferred to the 29th regiment, and afterwards major and lieutenant-colonel in the 42nd or Royal Highlanders, with which he served in India until 1773, when he returned to Scotland, and was elected to Parliament for the Stirling burgs in 1774. In 1775 he was selected as lieutenant-colonel of the 2nd battalion of Fraser's Highlanders. He was captured on board the George transport, in Boston Harbor June 17, 1776, and remained a prisoner until May 5, 1778, when he was exchanged for Colonel Ethan Allen. He was then placed in command of an expedition against the State of Georgia, which was successful. He was superseded the following year by General Augustine Prevost. Disagreeing with the policy adopted by that officer in regard to the royalist militia, Colonel Campbell returned to England, on leave. In 1779 he married Amelia, daughter of Allan Ramsay, the artist. November 20, 1782, he was promoted major-general, and the following month commissioned governor of Jamaica. His vigilance warded off attacks from the French, besides doing all in his power in sending information, supplies and reinforcements to the British forces in America. For his services, on his return to England, he was invested a knight of the Bath, on September 30, 1785. The same year he was appointed governor and commander-in-chief at Madras. On October 12, 1787, he was appointed colonel of the 74th Highlanders, which had been raised especially for service in India. In 1789 General Campbell returned to England, and at once was re-elected to Parliament for the Stirling burghs. He died March 31, 1791, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. JOHN CAMPBELL OF STRACHUR. John Campbell was appointed lieutenant in Loudon's Highlanders in June 1745; served throughout the Rising of 1745-6; made the campaign in Flanders in 1747, in which year he became a captain; and at the peace of 1748 went on half pay. In 1756 he was called into active service and joined the 42nd. He was wounded at Ticonderoga, and on his recovery was appointed major of the 17th foot. February 1762, he became a lieutenant-colonel in the army, and commanded his regiment in the expedition against Martinico and Havanna. He became lieutenant-colonel of the 57th foot, May 1, 1773, and returned to America on the breaking out of the Revolution. On February 19, 1779 he was appointed major-general; colonel of his regiment November 2, 1780, and commanded the British forces in West Florida, where he surrendered Pensacola to the Spaniards, May 10, 1781; became lieutenant-general in 1787, and general January 26, 1797. General Campbell died August 28, 1806. LORD WILLIAM CAMPBELL. Lord William Campbell was the youngest son of the 4th duke of Argyle. He entered the navy, and became a captain August 20, 1762, when he was put in command of the Nightingale, of twenty guns. In May 1763, he married Sarah, daughter of Ralph Izard, of Charleston, South Carolina, and in 1764, was elected to represent Argyleshire in parliament. On November 27, 1766 he became governor of Nova Scotia, whose affairs he administered until 1773, when he was transferred to the government of South Carolina, in which province he arrived in June 1775, during the sitting of the first Provincial Congress, which presented him a congratulatory address, but he refused to acknowledge that body. For three months after his arrival he was undisturbed, though indefatigable in fomenting opposition to the popular measures; but in September, distrustful of his personal safety, and leaving his family behind, he retired on board the Tamar sloop-of-war, where he remained, although invited to return to Charleston. Lady Campbell was treated with great respect, but finally went on board the vessel, and was landed at Jamaica. In the attack on the city of Charleston, in June 1776, under Sir Henry Clinton, lord Campbell served as a volunteer on board the Bristol, on which occasion he received a wound that ultimately proved mortal. Presumably he returned with the fleet and died September 5, 1778. GENERAL SIMON FRASER Brigadier Simon Fraser was the tenth son of Alexander Fraser, second of Balnain. The lands of Balnain had been acquired from Hugh, tenth lord of Lovat, by Big Hugh, grandfather of Simon. Alexander was in possession of the lands as early as 1730, and for his first wife had Jane, daughter of William Fraser, eighth of Foyers, by whom he had issue six sons and one daughter. In 1716 he married Jean, daughter of Angus, tenth Mackintosh of Kyllachy, by whom he had issue five sons and three daughters, Simon being the fourth son, and born May 26th, 1729. [Illustration: GENL FRASER.] In all probability it would be a difficult task to determine the date of General Fraser's first commission in the British army owing to the fact that no less than eight Simon Frasers appear in the Army List of 1757, six of whom belonged to Fraser's Highlanders. The subsequent commissions may positively be traced as follows: In the 78th Foot, lieutenant January 5, 1757, captain-lieutenant September 27, 1758, captain April 22, 1759; major in the army March 15, 1761; in the 24th Foot, major February 8, 1762, and lieutenant-colonel July 14, 1768. January 10, 1776, General Carleton appointed him to act as a brigadier till the king's pleasure could be known, which in due time was confirmed. His last commission was that of colonel in the army, being gazetted July 22, 1777. He served in the Scots Regiment in the Dutch service and was wounded at Bergen ap-Zoon in 1747. He was with his regiment in the expedition against Louisburg in 1758 and accompanied General Wolfe to Quebec in 1759, and was the officer who answered the hail of the enemy's sentry in French and made him believe that the troops who surprised the Heights of Abraham were the Regiment de la Rhine. After the fall of Quebec, for a few years he did garrison duty at Gibraltar. Through the interest of the marquis of Townshend, who appointed him his aide-de-camp in Ireland, he was selected as quartermaster-general to the troops then stationed in that country. While in Ireland he was selected by General Burgoyne as one of his commanders for his expedition against the Americans. On April 5, 1776, he embarked with the 24th Foot, and arrived in Quebec on the 28th of the following May. He commanded the light brigade on General Burgoyne's campaign, and was thus ever in advance, rendering throughout the most efficient services, and had the singular good fortune to increase his reputation. He assisted in driving the Americans out of Canada, and defeated them in the battle of Three Rivers, followed by that of Hubbardton, July 7, 1777. Had his views prevailed, the blunder of sending heavy German dismounted dragoons to Bennington, and the consequent disaster would never have been committed. The career of this dauntless hero now rapidly drew near to its close. Up to the battle of Bennington almost unexampled success had attended the expedition of Burgoyne. The turning point had come. The battle of Bennington infused the Americans with a new and indomitable spirit; the murder, by savages, of the beautiful Miss Jane MacRae aroused the passions of war; the failure of Sir Henry Clinton to co-operate with General Burgoyne; the rush of the militia to the aid of General Gates, and the detachment of Colonel Morgan's riflemen by Washington from his own army to the assistance of the imperiled north, all conspired to turn the tide of success, and invite the victorious army to a disaster, rendered famous in the annals of history. On September 13, the British army crossed the Hudson, by a bridge of rafts with the design of forming a junction with Sir Henry Clinton at Albany. The army was in excellent order and in the highest spirits, and the perils of the expedition seemed practically over. The army marched a short distance along the western bank of the Hudson, and on the 14th encamped on the heights of Saratoga, distant about sixteen miles from Albany. On the 19th a battle was fought between the British right wing and a strong body of Americans. In this action the right column was led by General Fraser, who, on the first onset, wheeled his troops and forced Colonel Morgan to give way. Colonel Morgan was speedily re-enforced, when the action became general. When the battle appeared to be in the grasp of the British, and just as General Fraser and Colonel Breymann were preparing to follow up the advantage, they were recalled by General Burgoyne and reluctantly forced to retreat. Both Generals Fraser and Riedesel (commander of the Brunswick contingent) bitterly criticised the order, and in plain terms informed General Burgoyne that he did not know how to avail himself of his advantage. The next day General Burgoyne devoted himself to the laying out of a fortified camp. The right wing was placed under the command of General Fraser. The situation now began to grow critical. Provisions became scarce. October 5th a council of war was held, and the advice of both Generals Fraser and Riedesel was to fall back immediately to their old position beyond the Batten Kil. General Burgoyne finally determined on a reconnaissance in force. So, on the morning of October 7th, with fifteen hundred men, accompanied by Generals Fraser, Riedesel and Phillips, the division advanced in three columns towards the left wing of the American position. In advance of the right wing, General Fraser had command of five hundred picked men. The Americans fell upon the British advance with fury, and soon a general battle was engaged in. Colonel Morgan poured down like a torrent from the ridge that skirted the flanking party of General Fraser, and forced the latter back; and then by a rapid movement to the left fell upon the flank of the British right with such impetuosity that it wavered. General Fraser noticing the critical situation of the center hurried to its succor the 24th Regiment. Dressed in full uniform, General Fraser was conspicuously mounted on an iron grey horse. He was all activity and vigilance, riding from one part of the division to another, and animated the troops by his example. At a critical point, Colonel Morgan, who, with his riflemen was immediately opposite to General Fraser's corps, perceiving that the fate of the day rested upon that officer, called a few of his sharpshooters aside, among whom was the famous marksman, Timothy Murphy, men on whose precision of aim he could rely, and said to them, "That gallant officer yonder is General Fraser; I admire and respect him, but it is necessary for our good that he should die. Take you station in that cluster of bushes and do your duty." A few moments later, a rifle ball cut the crouper of General Fraser's horse, and another passed through the horse's mane. General Fraser's aid, calling attention to this, said: "It is evident that you are marked out for particular aim; would it not be prudent for you to retire from this place?" General Fraser replied, "My duty forbids me to fly from danger." The next moment he fell wounded by a ball from the rifle of Timothy Murphy, and was carried off the field by two grenadiers. After he was wounded General Fraser told his friends "that he saw the man who shot him, and that he was a rifleman posted in a tree." From this it would appear that after Colonel Morgan had given his orders Timothy Murphy climbed into the forks of a neighboring tree. General Burgoyne's surgeons were reported to have said had not General Fraser's stomach been distended by a hearty breakfast he had eaten just before going into action he would doubtless have recovered from his wound. Upon the fall of General Fraser, dismay seized the British. A retreat took place exactly fifty-two minutes after the first shot was fired. General Burgoyne left the cannon on the field, except two howitzers, besides sustaining a loss of more than four hundred men, and among them the flower of his officers. Contemporary military writers affirmed that had General Fraser lived the British would have made good their retreat into Canada. It is claimed that he would have given such advice as would have caused General Burgoyne to have avoided the blunders which finally resulted in his surrender. The closing scene of General Fraser's life has been graphically described by Madame Riedesel, wife of the German general. It has been oft quoted, and need not be here repeated. General Burgoyne has described the burial scene with his usual felicity of expression and eloquence. Burgoyne was not unmindful of the wounded general. He was directing the progress of the battle, and it was not until late in the evening that he came to visit the dying man. A tender scene took place between him and General Fraser. The latter was the idol of the army and upon him General Burgoyne placed most reliance. The spot where General Fraser lies buried is on an elevated piece of ground commanding an extensive view of the Hudson, and a great length of the interval on either side. The grave is marked by a tablet placed there by an American lady. The American reader has a very pleasant regard for the character of General Fraser. His kindly disposition attracted men towards him. As an illustration of the humane disposition the following incident, taken from a rare work, may be cited: "Two American officers taken at Hubbardstown, relate the following anecdote of him. He saw that they were in distress, as their continental paper would not pass with the English; and offered to loan them as much as they wished for their present convenience. They took three guineas each. He remarked to them--Gentlemen take what you wish--give me your due bills and when we reach Albany, I trust to your honor to take them up; for we shall doubtless overrun the country, and I shall, probably, have an opportunity of seeing you again.'" As General Fraser fell in battle, "the notes were consequently never paid; but the signers of them could not refrain from shedding tears at the fate of this gallant and generous enemy."[176] GENERAL SIMON FRASER OF LOVAT. General Simon Fraser, thirteenth of Lovat, born October 19, 1726, was the son of the notorious Simon, twelfth lord Lovat, who was executed in 1747. With six hundred of his father's vassals he joined prince Charles before the battle of Falkirk, January 17, 1746, and was one of the forty-three persons included in the act of attainder of June 4, 1746. Having surrendered to the government he was confined in Edinburgh Castle from November, [Illustration: GENERAL SIMON FRASER OF LOVAT.] 1746, to August 15, 1747, when he was allowed to reside in Glasgow during the king's pleasure. He received a full pardon in 1750, and two years later entered as an advocate. At the commencement of the seven years' war, by his influence with his clan, without the aid of land or money he raised eight hundred recruits in a few weeks, in which as many more were shortly added. His commission as colonel was dated January 5, 1757. Under his command Fraser's Highlanders went to America, where he was at the siege of Louisburg in 1758, and in the expedition under General Wolfe against Quebec, where he was wounded at Montmorenci. He was again wounded at Sillery, April 28, 1760. In 1762 he was a brigadier-general in the British force sent to Portugal; in the Portuguese army he held the temporary rank of major-general, and in 1768 a lieutenant-general. In 1771 he was a major-general in the British army. By an act of parliament, on the payment of £20,983, all his forfeited lands, lordships, &c., were restored to him, on account of the military services he had rendered the country. On the outbreak of the American Revolution General Fraser raised another regiment of two battalions, known as Fraser's Highlanders or 71st, but did not accompany the regiment. When, in Canada, in 1761, he was returned to parliament, and thrice re-elected, representing the constituency of the county of Inverness until his death, which occurred in Downing Street, London, February 8, 1782. GENERAL SIMON FRASER. Lieutenant-General Simon Fraser, son of a tacksman, born in 1738, was senior of the Simon Frasers serving as subalterns in Fraser's Highlanders in the campaign in Canada in 1759-1761. He was wounded at the battle of Sillery, April 28, 1760, and three years later was placed on half-pay as a lieutenant. In 1775 he raised a company for the 71st or Fraser's Highlanders; became senior captain and afterwards major of the regiment, with which he served in America in the campaigns of 1778-1781. In 1793 he raised a Highland regiment which was numbered 133rd foot or Fraser's Highlanders, which after a brief existence, was broken up and drafted into other corps. He became a major-general in 1795, commanded a British force in Portugal in 1797-1800. In 1802 he became lieutenant-general, and for several years second in command in Scotland, in which country he died March 21, 1813. GENERAL JAMES GRANT OF BALLINDALLOCH. General James Grant was born in 1720, and after studying law obtained a commission in the army in 1741, and became captain in the Royal Scots, October 24, 1744. General Grant served with his regiment in Flanders and in Ireland, and became major in Montgomery's Highlanders, with which he went to America in 1757. In the following year he was surprised before Fort Duquesne, and lost a third of his command in killed, wounded and missing, besides being captured himself with nineteen of his officers. He became lieutenant-colonel of the 40th foot in 1760, and governor of East Florida. In May, 1761, he led an expedition against the Cherokee Indians, and defeated them in the battle of Etchoe. On the death of his nephew he succeeded to the family estate; became brevet-colonel in 1772; in 1773 was returned to parliament for Wick burghs, and the year after for Sutherlandshire; and in 1775 was appointed colonel of the 55th foot. As a brigadier, in 1776, he went to America with the reinforcement under Sir William Howe; commanded two brigades at the battle of Long Island, Brandywine and Germantown. In May, 1778, was unsuccessful in his attempt to cut off the marquis de Lafayette on the Schuylkill. In December, 1778, he captured St. Lucia, in the West Indies. In 1777, he became major-general, in 1782 lieutenant-general, and in 1796 general; and, in succession became governor of Dumbarton and Stirling Castles. In 1787, 1790, 1796, and 1801, he was again returned to parliament for Sutherlandshire. He was noted for his love of good living, and in his latter years was immensely corpulent. He died at Ballindalloch April 13, 1806. GENERAL ALLAN MACLEAN OF TORLOISK. General Allan Maclean, son of Torloisk, Island of Mull, was born there in 1725, and began his military career in the service of Holland, in the Scots brigade. At the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, in 1747, a portion of the brigade cut its way with great loss through the French. Lieutenants Allan and Francis Maclean, having been taken prisoners, were carried before General Lowendahl, who thus addressed them: "Gentlemen, consider yourselves on parole. If all had conducted themselves as your brave corps have done, I should not now be master of Bergen-op-Zoom." January 8, 1756, Allan became lieutenant in the 62nd regiment, and on July 8, 1758, was severely wounded at Ticonderoga. He became captain of an independent company, January 16, 1759, and was present at the surrender of Niagara, where he was again dangerously wounded. Returning to Great Britain, he raised the 114th foot or Royal Highland Volunteers, of which he was appointed major commandant October 18, 1761. The regiment being reduced in 1763, Major Maclean went on half-pay. He became lieutenant-colonel May 25, 1772, and early in 1775 devised a colonization scheme which brought him to America, landing in New York of that year. At the outbreak of the Revolution he identified himself with the British king; was arrested in New York; was released by denying he was taking a part in the dispute; thence went to the Mohawk, and on to Canada, where he began to set about organizing a corps, which became the nucleus of the Royal Highland Emigrants. Of this regiment Major Allan was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the first battalion which he had raised. On the evidence of American prisoners taken at Quebec, Colonel Maclean resorted to questionable means to recruit his regiment. All those of British birth who had been captured were given permission to join the regiment or else be carried to England and tried for treason. But these enforced enlistments proved of no value. Quebec unquestionably would have fallen into the hands of General Arnold had not Colonel Maclean suddenly precipitated himself with a part of his corps into the beleaguered city. Had Quebec fallen, Canada would have become a part of the United States. To Colonel Allan Maclean Great Britain owes the possession of Canada. During the prolonged siege Colonel Maclean suffered an injury to his leg, whereby he partially lost the use of it during the remainder of his life. On May 11, 1776, Colonel Maclean was appointed adjutant-general of the army, which he held until June 6, 1777, when he became brigadier-general, and placed in command at Montreal. As dangers thickened around General Burgoyne, General Maclean was ordered, October 20th, with the 31st and his battalion of the Royal Highland Emigrants, to Chimney Point, but the following month was ordered to Quebec. He left Quebec July 27, 1776, for England, in order to obtain rank and establishment for his regiment which had been promised. He returned to Canada, arriving in Quebec May 28, 1777. In 1778 he again went to England and made a personal appeal to the king in behalf of his regiment, which proved successful. May 1, 1779, he sailed from Spithead and arrived at Quebec on August 16th. He became colonel in the army November 17, 1780, and in the winter of 1782 had command from the ports at Oswegatchie to Michilimackinac. Soon after the peace of 1783, General Maclean retired from the service. He married Janet, daughter of Donald Maclean of Brolass, and died without issue, in London, in March, 1797. From the contents of many letters directed to John Maclean of Lochbuie, it is to be inferred that he died in comparative poverty. His correspondence during his command of the Highland Emigrants is among the Haldimand MSS, in the British Museum. [Illustration: SIR ALLAN MACLEAN, BART.] General Allan Maclean of Torloisk has been confused by some writers--notably by General Stewart in his "Sketches of the Highlands" and Dr. James Brown in his "History of the Highlands and Highland Clans"--with Sir Allan Maclean, twenty-second chief of his clan. Sir Allan served in different parts of the globe. The first notice of his military career is as a captain under the earl of Drumlanrig in the service of Holland. July 16, 1757, he became a captain in Montgomery's Highlanders, and June 25, 1762, major in the 119th foot or the Prince's Own. He obtained the rank of lieutenant-colonel May 25, 1772, and died on Inch Kenneth, December 10, 1783. He married Anna, daughter of Hector Maclean of Coll. Dr. Samuel Johnson visited him during his tour of the Hebrides, and was so delighted with the baronet and his amiable daughters that he broke out into a Latin sonnet. GENERAL FRANCIS MACLEAN. General Francis Maclean, of the family of Blaich, as soon as he was able to bear arms, obtained a commission in the same regiment with his father; was at the defence of Bergen-op Zoom in 1747, and was detained prisoner in France for some time; was appointed captain in the 2nd battalion of the 42nd Highlanders on its being raised in October, 1758. At the capture of the island of Guadaloupe, he was severely wounded, but owing to his gallant conduct was promoted to the rank of major, and appointed governor of the island of Marie Galante. In January, 1761, he exchanged into the 97th regiment, and April 13, 1762, was appointed lieutenant-colonel in the army. In the war in Canada, he commanded a body of troops under General Wolfe, and participated in the capture of Montreal. He was sent, in 1762, to aid the Portuguese against the combined attack of France and Spain, and was made commander of Almeida, a fortified town on the Spanish frontier, which he held for several years; and on being promoted to the rank of major-general, was nominated to the government of Estremadura and the city of Lisbon. On leaving Portugal in 1778, the king presented him with a handsomely mounted sword, and the queen gave him a valuable diamond ring. On his return to England--having been gazetted colonel of the 82nd foot, December 16, 1777--he was immediately dispatched with a corps of the army for America, and appointed to the government of Halifax in Nova Scotia, where he held the rank of brigadier-general. During the month of June, 1779, with a part of his army, General Maclean repaired to the Penobscot, and there proceeded to erect defenses. The American army under General Lovell, from Boston, appeared in the bay on July 28th, and began to erect batteries for a siege. Commodore Sir George Collier, August 13th, entered the bay with a fleet and raised the siege. General Maclean returned to Halifax, where he died, May 4, 1781, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and unmarried. GENERAL JOHN SMALL. General John Small was born in Strathardale in Athole, in the year 1726, and entered the army early in life, his first commission being in the Scotch Brigade. He obtained an ensigncy in 1747, and was on half-pay in 1756, when appointed lieutenant in the 42nd Highlanders on the eve of its departure for America. He accompanied the regiment in 1759 in the expedition to northern New York, and in 1760 went down from Oswego to Montreal. In 1762 he served in the expedition to the West Indies, and on August 6th of the same year was promoted to a company. On the reduction of the regiment in 1763, Captain Small went on half-pay until April, 1765, when he was appointed to a company in the 21st or Royal North British Fusileers, which soon after was sent to America. With this regiment he continued until 1775, when he received a commission to raise a corps of Highlanders in Nova Scotia. Having raised the 2nd battalion of the Royal Highland Emigrants, he was appointed major commandant, with a portion of which he joined the army with Sir Henry Clinton at New York in 1779, and in 1780, became lieutenant-colonel of the regiment. In 1782 he was quartered on Long Island. November 18, 1790, he was appointed colonel in the army, and in 1794, lieutenant-governor of the island of Guernsey; he was promoted to the rank of major-general October 3, 1794, and died at Guernsey on March 17, 1796, in the seventieth year of his age. FLORA MACDONALD. No name in the Scottish Highlands bears such a charm as that of Flora Macdonald. Her praise is frequently sung, sketches of her life published, and her portrait adorns thousands of homes. While her distinction mainly rests on her efforts in behalf of the luckless prince Charles, after the disastrous battle of Culloden; yet, in reality, her character was strong, and she was a noble type of womanhood in her native isle. [Illustration: FLORA MACDONALD.] Flora Macdonald--or "Flory," as she always wrote her name, even in her marriage contract--born in 1722, was a daughter of Ranald Macdonald, tacksman of Milton, in South Uist, an island of the Hebrides. Her father died when she was about two years old, and when six years old she was deprived of the care of her mother, who was abducted and married by Hugh Macdonald of Armadale in Skye. Flora remained in Milton with her brother Angus till her thirteenth year, when she was taken into the mansion of the Clanranalds, where she became an accomplished player on the spinet. In 1739 she went to Edinburgh to complete her studies where, until 1745, she resided in the family of Sir Alexander Macdonald of the Isles. While on a visit to the Clanranalds in Benbecula, prince Charles Edward arrived there after the battle of Culloden in 1746. She enabled the prince to escape to Skye. For this she was arrested and thrown into the Tower of London. On receiving her liberty, in 1747, she stayed for a time in the house of Lady Primrose, where she was visited by many persons of distinction. Before leaving London she was presented with £1500. On her return to Scotland she was entertained at Monkstadt in Skye, at a banquet, to which the principal families were invited. November 6, 1750, she married Allan Macdonald, younger of Kingsburgh. At first they resided at Flodigarry; but on the death of her father-in-law they went in 1772 to Kingsburgh. Here she was visited, in 1773, by the celebrated Samuel Johnson. Her husband, oppressed by debts, was caught in that great wave of emigration from the Highlands to America. In the month of August, 1774, leaving her two youngest children with friends at home, Flora, her husband and older children, sailed in the ship Baliol, from Campbelton, Kintyre, for North Carolina. Flora's fame had preceded her to that distant country, and her departure from Scotland having become known to her countrymen in Carolina, she was anxiously expected and joyfully received on her arrival. Demonstrations on a large scale were made to welcome her to America. Soon after her landing, a largely attended ball was given in her honor at Wilmington. On her arrival at Cross Creek she received a truly Highland welcome from her old neighbors and kinsfolk, who had crossed the Atlantic years before her. The strains of the Piobaireachd, and the martial airs of her native land, greeted her on her approach to the capital of the Scottish settlement. Many families of distinction pressed upon her to make their dwellings her home, but she respectfully declined, preferring a settled place of her own. As the laird of Kingsburgh intended to become a planter, he left his family in Cross Creek until he could decide upon a location. The house in which they lived during this period was built immediately on the brink of the creek, and for many years afterwards was known as "Flora Macdonald's house." Northwest of Cross Creek, a distance of twenty miles, is a hill about six hundred feet in height, now called Cameron's hill, but then named Mount Pleasant. Around and about this hill, in 1775, many members of the Clan Macdonald had settled, all of whom were of near kin to the laird and lady of Kingsburgh. Hard by are the sources of Barbeque Creek, and not many miles down that stream stood the old kirk, where the clansmen worshipped, and where Flora inscribed her name on the membership roll. Mount Pleasant stands in the very midst of the pinery region, and from it in every direction stretches the great pine forest. Near this center Allan Macdonald of Kingsburgh purchased of Caleb Touchstone a plantation embracing five hundred and fifty acres on which were a dwelling house and outhouses which were more pretentious than was then customary among Highland settlers. The sum paid, as set forth in the deed, was four hundred and sixty pounds. Here Flora established herself, that with her family she might spend the rest of her days in peace and quiet. But the times were not propitious. There was commotion which soon ended in a long and bitter war. Even this need not have materially disturbed the family had not Kingsburgh precipitated himself into the conflict, needlessly and recklessly. With blind fatuity he took the wrong side in the controversy; and even then by the exercise of patience might have overcome the effects of his folly. Before Flora and her family were settled in America the storm gave its ominous rumble. When Governor Martin, who had deserted his post and fled to an armed cruiser in the mouth of the Cape Fear river, issued his proclamation, Allan Macdonald was among the first to respond. The war spirit of Flora was stirred within her, and she partook of the enthusiasm of her husband. According to tradition, when the Highlanders gathered around the standard Flora made them an address in their own Gaelic tongue that excited them to the highest pitch of warlike enthusiasm. With the due devotion of an affectionate wife, Flora followed her husband for several days, and encamped one night with him in a dangerous place, on the brow of Haymount, near the American forces. For a time she refused to listen to her husband's entreaties to return home, for he thought his life was enough to be in jeopardy. Finally when the army took up its march with banners flying and martial music, she deemed it time to retrace her steps, and affectionately embraced her husband, her eyes dimmed with tears as she breathed an earnest prayer to heaven for his safe and speedy return to his family and home. But alas! she never saw him again in America. The rebellion of the Highlanders in North Carolina, which ended in a fiasco, has already been narrated. Flora was soon aroused to the fact that the battle was against them, and her husband and one son were confined in Halifax jail. It appears that even she was brought before the Committee of Safety, where she exhibited a "spirited behavior."[177] Sorrows, indeed, had accumulated rapidly upon her: a severe typhus fever attacked the younger members of the family and two of her children died, a boy and a girl aged respectively eleven and thirteen, and her daughter, Fanny, was still in precarious health, from the dregs of a recent fever. By the advice of her imprisoned husband she resolved to return to her native country. Fortunately for her she secured the favor and good offices of Captain Ingram, an American officer, who promised to assist her. He furnished her with a passport to Wilmington, and from thence she found her way to Charleston, from which port she sailed to her native land, in 1779. In this step she was partly governed by the state of health of her daughter Fanny. Crossing the Atlantic with none of her family but Fanny--her five sons and son-in-law actively engaged in the war--the Scottish heroine met with the last of her adventures. The vessel in which she sailed engaged a French privateer, and during the conflict her left arm was broken. So, in after years, she truthfully said that she had served both the House of Stuart and the House of Hanover, but had been worsted in the cause of each. For some time she resided at Milton, where her brother built her a cottage: but on the return of her husband they again settled at Kingsburgh, where she died March 5, 1790. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 176: Memoir General Stark, 1831, p. 252.] [Footnote 177: Captain Alexander McDonald's Letter-Book, p. 387.] CHAPTER XV. DISTINGUISHED HIGHLANDERS IN AMERICAN INTERESTS The attitude of the Highlanders during the Revolutionary War was not of such a nature as to bring them prominently into view in the cause of freedom. Nor was it the policy of the American statesmen to cater to race distinctions and prejudices. They did not regard their cause to be a race war. They fought for freedom without regard to their origin, believing that a just Providence would smile upon their efforts. Many nationalities were represented in the American army. Men left their homes in the Old World, purposely to engage in the cause of Independence, some of whom gained immortal renown, and will be remembered with honor by generations yet unborn. As has been already noted, there were natives of the Highlands of Scotland, who had made America their home and imbibed the principles of political liberty, and early identified themselves with the cause of their adopted country. The lives of some of these patriots are herewith imperfectly sketched. GENERAL ALEXANDER McDOUGALL. [Illustration: GEN. ALEXANDER MCDOUGALL.] There are few names in the annals of the American Revolution upon which one can linger with more satisfaction than that of the gallant and true-hearted Alexander McDougall. As early as August 20, 1775, Washington wrote to General Schuyler concerning him: his "zeal is unquestionable."[178] Writing to General McDougall, May 23, 1777, Washington says: "I wish every officer in the army could appeal to His own heart and find the same principles of conduct, that I am persuaded actuate you."[179] The same writing to Thomas Jefferson, August 1, 1786, lamented the brave "soldier and disinterested patriot," and exclaimed, "Thus some of the pillars of the revolution fall."[180] Alexander McDougall was born in the island of Islay in Scotland, in 1731, being the son of Ranald McDougall, who emigrated to the province of New York in 1735. The father purchased a small farm near the city of New York, and there peddled milk, in which avocation he was assisted by his son, who never was ashamed of the employment of his youth. Alexander was a keen observer of passing events and took great interest in the game of politics. With vigilance he watched the aggressive steps of the royal government; and when the Assembly, in the winter of 1769, faltered in its opposition to the usurpations of the crown and insulted the people by rejecting a proposition authorizing the vote by ballot, and by entering on the favorable consideration of a bill of supplies for troops quartered in the city to overawe the inhabitants, he issued an address, under the title of "A Son of Liberty to the Betrayed Inhabitants of the Colony," in which he contrasted the Assembly with the legislative bodies in other parts of the country, and held up their conduct to unmitigated and just indignation. The bold and deserved rebuke was laid before the house by its speaker, and, with the exception of Philip Schuyler, every member voted that it was "an infamous and seditious libel." A proclamation for the discovery of the author was issued by the governor, and it being traced to Alexander McDougall, he was arrested in February, 1770, and refusing to give bail was committed to prison by order of chief justice Horsmanden. As he was being carried to prison, clearly reading in the signs about him the future of the country, he exclaimed, "I rejoice that I am the first sufferer for liberty since the commencement of our glorious struggle." During the two months of his confinement he was overrun with visitors. He poured forth continued appeals to the people, and boldly avowed his revolutionary opinions. In every circle his case was the subject of impassioned conversation, and in an especial manner he became the idol of the masses. A packed jury found an indictment against him, and on December 20th he was arraigned at the bar of the Assembly on the same charge, on which occasion he was defended by George Clinton, afterwards the first governor of the State of New York. In the course of the following month a writ of habeas corpus was sued out, but without result, and he was not liberated until March 4, 1771, when the assembly was prorogued. When the Assembly attempted to extort from him a humiliating recantation, he undauntingly answered their threat, that "rather than resign my rights and privileges as a British subject, I would suffer my right hand to be cut off at the bar of the house." When set at liberty he entered into correspondence with the master-spirits in all parts of the country; and when the celebrated meetings in the fields were held, on July 6, 1774, preparatory to the election of the New York delegates to the First General Congress, he was called to preside, and resolutions prepared by him were adopted, pointing out the mode of choosing deputies, inveighing against the Boston Port Bill, and urging upon the proposed congress the prohibition of all commercial intercourse with Great Britain. In March 1775, he was a member of the Provincial Convention, and was nominated as one of the candidates for the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, but was not elected. In the same year he received a commission as colonel of the 1st New York regiment, and on August 9, 1776, was created brigadier-general. On the evening of the 29th of the same month he was selected by Washington to superintend the embarkation of the troops from Brooklyn; was actively engaged on Chatterton's Hill and in various places in New Jersey; and when General William Heath, in the spring of 1777, left Peekskill to assume the command of the eastern department, he succeeded that officer, but was compelled, by a superior force under Sir William Howe, to retreat from the town, after destroying a considerable supply of stores, on March 23rd. After the battle of Germantown, in which he participated, Washington, writing to the president of Congress, under date of October 7, 1777, says: "I cannot however omit this opportunity of recommending General McDougall to their notice. This gentleman, from the time of his appointment as brigadier, from his abilities, military knowledge, and approved bravery, has every claim to promotion."[181] On the 20th of the same month he was commissioned major-general. On March 16, 1778, he was directed to assume the command of the different posts on the Hudson, and, with activity, pursued the construction of the fortifications in the Highlands, and, after the flight of General Arnold, was put in command of West Point, October 5, 1780. Near the close of that year he was called upon by New York to repair to Congress as one of their representatives. It was a critical moment, and Washington urged his acceptance of the post; accordingly he took his seat in the Congress the next January. Congress having organized an executive department, in 1781, General McDougall was appointed Minister of Marine. He did not remain long in Philadelphia, for his habits, friendships, associations and convictions of duty recalled him to the camp. The confidence felt in his integrity and good judgment by all classes in the service, was such, that when the army went into winter quarters at Newburgh, in 1783, he was chosen at the head of the delegation to Congress to represent their grievances. The same year, after the close of the war, he was elected to represent the Southern District in the senate of New York and continued a member of that body until his death, which occurred in the city of New York June 8, 1786. At the time of his decease, General McDougall was president of the Bank of New York. In politics he adhered to the Hamilton party. GENERAL LACHLAN M'INTOSH. The history of the emigration of John Mohr McIntosh to Georgia, and the settlement upon the Alatamaha, where now stands the city of Darien, has already been recorded. The second son of John Mohr was Lachlan, born near Raits in Badenoch, Scotland, March 17, 1725, and consequently was eleven years old at the time he emigrated to America. As has been already noted John Mohr McIntosh was captured by the Spaniards at Fort Moosa, carried to Spain, and after several years, returned in broken health. Both Lachlan and his elder brother William were placed as cadets in the regiment by General Oglethorpe. When General Oglethorpe made his final preparations for his return to England, the two young brothers were found hid away in the hold of another vessel, for they had heard of the attempts then being made by prince Charles to regain the throne of his ancestors, and they hoped to regain something that the family of Borlam had lost, of which they were members. General Oglethorpe had the two boys brought to his cabin; he spoke to them of the friendship he had entertained for their father, of the kindness he had shown to themselves, of the hopelessness of every attempt of the house of Stuart, of their own folly in engaging in this wild and desperate struggle, of his own duty as an officer of the house of Brunswick; but if they would go ashore, their secret should be his. He received their pledge and they never saw him again. [Illustration: GENERAL LACHLAN MCINTOSH.] At that time the means of education in Georgia were limited, yet under his mother's care Lachlan McIntosh was well instructed in English, mathematics and other branches necessary for future military use. Lachlan sought the promising field of enterprise in Charleston, South Carolina, where the fame of his father's gallantry and misfortunes secured to him a kind reception from Henry Laurens, afterwards president of Congress, and the first minister of the United States to Holland. In the house of that patriot he remained several years, and contracted friendships that lasted while he lived, with some of the leading citizens of the southern colonies. Having adopted the profession of surveyor, and married, he returned to Georgia, where he acquired a wide and honorable reputation. On account of his views concerning certain lands between the Alatamaha and St. Mary's rivers which did not coincide with those of Governor Wright of Georgia, it afforded the latter a pretence, for a long and deliberate opposition to the interests of Lachlan McIntosh, which gradually schooled him for the approaching conflict between England and her American colonies. When that event began to dawn upon the people every eye in Georgia was turned to General McIntosh as the leader of whatever force that province might bring into the struggle. When, therefore, the revolutionary government was organized and an order was made for raising a regiment was adopted, Lachlan McIntosh was made colonel commandant; and when the order was issued for raising three other regiments, in September, 1776, he was immediately appointed brigadier-general commandant. About this time Button Gwinnett was elected governor, who had been an unsuccessful competitor for the command of the troops. He was a man unrestrained by any honorable principles, and used his official authority in petty persecutions of General McIntosh and his family. The general bore all this patiently until his opponent ceased to be governor, when he communicated to him the opinion he entertained of his conduct. He received a challenge, and in a duel wounded him mortally. General McIntosh now applied, through his friend Colonel Henry Laurens, for a place in the Continental army, which was granted, and with his staff was invited to join the commander-in-chief. He soon won the confidence of Washington, and for a long time was placed in his front, while watching the superior forces of Sir William Howe in Philadelphia. While the army was in winter quarters at Valley Forge, the attention of the government was called to the exposed condition of the western frontier, upon which the British was constantly exciting the Indians to the most terrible atrocities. It was determined that General McIntosh should command an expedition against the Indians on the Ohio. In a letter to the President of Congress, dated May 12, 1778, Washington says: "After much consideration upon the subject, I have appointed General McIntosh to command at Fort Pitt, and in the western country, for which he will set out as soon as he can accommodate his affairs. I part with this gentleman with much reluctance, as I esteem him an officer of great worth and merit, and as I know his services here are and will be materially wanted. His firm disposition and equal justice, his assiduity and good understanding, added to his being a stranger to all parties in that quarter, pointed him out as a proper person."[182] With a reinforcement of five hundred men General McIntosh marched to Fort Pitt, of which he assumed the command, and in a short time he gave repose to all western Pennsylvania and Virginia. In the spring of 1779, he completed arrangements for an expedition against Detroit, but in April was recalled by Washington to take part in the operations proposed for the south, where his knowledge of the country, added to his stirling qualities, promised him a useful field. He joined General Lincoln in Charleston, and every preparation in their power was made for the invasion of Georgia, then in possession of the British, as soon as the French fleet under count D'Estaing should arrive on the coast. General McIntosh marched to Augusta, took command of the advance of the troops, and proceeding down to Savannah, drove in all the British outposts. Expecting to be joined by the French, he marched to Beauly, where count D'Estaing effected a landing on September 12th, 13th, and 14th, and on the 15th was joined by General Lincoln. General McIntosh pressed for an immediate attack, but the French admiral refused. In the very midst of the siege the French fleet put to sea, leaving Generals Lincoln and McIntosh to retreat to Charleston, where they were besieged by an overwhelming force under Sir Henry Clinton, to whom the city was surrendered on May 12, 1780. With this event the military life of General McIntosh closed. He was long detained a prisoner of war, and when finally released, retired with his family to Virginia, where he remained until the British troops were driven from Savannah. Upon his return to Georgia, he found his personal property wasted and his real estate much diminished in value. From that time to the close of his life, in a great measure, he lived in retirement and comparative poverty until his death, which took place at Savannah, February 20, 1806. GENERAL ARTHUR ST. CLAIR. [Illustration: GENERAL ARTHUR ST. CLAIR.] The life of Major General Arthur St. Clair was a stormy one, full of disappointments, shattered hopes, and yet honored and revered for the distinguished and disinterested services he performed. He was a near relative of the then earl of Roslin, and was born in 1734, in the town of Thurso, Caithness in Scotland. He inherited the fine personal appearance and manly traits of the St. Clairs. After graduating at the University of Edinburgh, he entered upon the study of medicine under the celebrated Doctor William Hunter of London; but receiving a large sum of money from his mother's estate in 1757, he changed his purpose and sought adventures in a military life, and the same year entered the service of the king of Great Britain, as ensign in the 60th or Royal American Regiment of Foot. In May of the succeeding year he was with General Amherst before Louisburg. Gathered there were men soon to become famous among whom were Wolfe, Montcalm, Murray and Lawrence. For gallant conduct Arthur St. Clair received a lieutenant's commission, April 17, 1759, and was with General Wolfe in that brilliant struggle before Quebec, in September of the same year, and soon after was made a captain. In 1760 he married at Boston, Miss Phoebe Bayard, with a fortune of £40,000, which added to his own made him a man of wealth. On April 16. 1762 he resigned his commission in the army, and soon after led a colony of Scotch settlers to the Ligonier Valley, in Pennsylvania, where he purchased for himself one thousand acres of land. Improvements everywhere sprang up under his guiding genius. He held various offices, among which was member of the Proprietory Council of Pennsylvania, and colonel of militia. The mutterings which preceded the American Revolution were early heard in the beautiful valley of the Ligonier. Colonel St. Clair was not slow to take action, and espoused the cause of the patriots with all the intensity of his character, and never, even for a moment, swerved in the cause. He was destined to receive the enduring friendship of Washington, La Fayette, Hamilton, Schuyler, Wilson, Reed, and others of the most distinguished patriots of the Revolution. Early in the year 1776, he resigned his civil offices, and led the 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment in the invasion of Canada, and on account of the remarkable skill there displayed in saving from capture the army of General Sullivan, he received the rank of brigadier-general, August 6, 1776. He claimed to have pointed out the Quaker road to Washington on the night before the battle of Princeton. On account of his meritorious services in that battle, he was made a major-general, February 19, 1777. On the advance of General Burgoyne, who now threatened the great avenue from the north, General St. Clair was placed in command of Ticonderoga. Discovering that he could not hold the position, with great reluctance he ordered the fort evacuated. A great clamor was raised against him, especially in the New England States, and on account of this he was suspended, and a court-martial ordered. Retaining the confidence of Washington he was a volunteer aid to that commander at the battle of Brandywine. In September 1778, the court-martial acquitted him of all the charges. He was on the court-martial that condemned Major John Andre, adjutant-general of the British army, as a spy, who had been actively implicated in the treason of Benedict Arnold, and soon after was placed in command of West Point. He assisted in quelling the mutiny of the Pennsylvania line, and shared in the crowning glory of the Revolution, the capture of the British army under lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. Soon afterwards General St. Clair retired to private life, but his fellow-citizens soon determined otherwise. In 1783 he was on the board of censors for Pennsylvania, and afterwards chosen vendue-master of Philadelphia; in 1786 was elected a member of Congress, and in 1787 was president of that body, which at that time, was the highest office in America. In 1788 he was elected governor of the North West Territory, which imposed upon him the duty of governing, organizing, and bringing order out of chaos, over that region of country. In 1791, Washington made him commander-in-chief of the army, and in the autumn, with an ill-appointed force, set out, under the direct orders from Henry Knox, then Secretary of War, on an expedition against the Indians, but met with an overwhelming defeat on November 4th. The disaster was investigated by Congress, and the general was justly exonerated from all blame. He resigned his commission as general in 1792, but continued in office as governor until 1802, when he was summarily dismissed by Thomas Jefferson, then president. In poverty he retired to a log-house which overlooked the valley he had once owned. In vain he pressed his claims against the government for the expenditures he had made during the Revolution, in aid of the cause. In 1812 he published his "Narrative." In 1813 the legislature of Pennsylvania granted him an annuity of $400, and finally the general government gave him a pension of $60 per month. He died at Laural Hill, Pennsylvania, August 31, 1818, from injuries received by being thrown from a wagon. Years afterwards Judge Burnet wrote, declaring him to have been "unquestionably a man of superior talents, of extensive information, and of great uprightness of purpose, as well as suavity of manners. * * * He had been accustomed from infancy to mingle in the circles of taste and refinement, and had acquired a polish of manners, and a habitual respect for the feelings of others, which might be cited as a specimen of genuine politeness."[183] In 1870 the State of Ohio purchased the papers of General St. Clair, and in 1882 these were published in two volumes, containing twelve hundred and seventy pages. SERGEANT DONALD M'DONALD The lives of men who have won a great name on the field of battle throw a glamor over themselves which is both interesting and fascinating; and those treading the same path but cut off in their career are forgotten. However, the American Revolution affords many acts of heroism performed by those who did not command armies, some of whom performed many acts worthy of record. Perhaps, among the minor officers none had such a successful run of brilliant exploits as Sergeant Macdonald, many of which are sufficiently well authenticated. Unfortunately the essential particulars relating to him have not been preserved. The warlike deeds which he exhibited are recorded in the "Life of General Francis Marion" by General Horry, of Marion's brigade, and Weems. Just how far Weems romanced may never be known, but in all probability what is related concerning Sergeant Macdonald is practically true, save the shaping up of the story. Sergeant Macdonald is represented to have been a son of General Donald Macdonald, who headed the Highlanders in North Carolina, and met with an overwhelming defeat at Moore's Creek Bridge. The son was a remarkably stout, red-haired young Scotsman, cool under the most trying difficulties, and brave without a fault. Soon after the defeat and capture of his father he joined the American troops and served under General Horry. One day General Horry asked him why he had entered the service of the patriots. In substance he made the following reply: "Immediately on the misfortune of my father and his friends at the Great Bridge, I fell to thinking what could be the cause; and then it struck me that it must have been owing to their own monstrous ingratitude. 'Here now,' said I to myself, 'is a parcel of people, meaning my poor father and his friends, who fled from the murderous swords of the English after the massacre at Culloden. Well, they came to America, with hardly anything but their poverty and mournful looks. But among this friendly people that was enough. Every eye that saw us, had pity; and every hand was reached out to assist. They received us in their houses as though we had been their own unfortunate brothers. They kindled high their hospitable fires for us, and spread their feasts, and bid us eat and drink and banish our sorrows, for that we were in a land of friends. And so indeed, we found it; for whenever we told of the woeful battle of Culloden, and how the English gave no quarter to our unfortunate countrymen, but butchered all they could overtake, these generous people often gave us their tears, and said, O! that we had been there to aid with our rifles, then should many of these monsters have bit the ground.' They received us into the bosoms of their peaceful forests, and gave us their lands and their beauteous daughters in marriage, and we became rich. And yet, after all, soon as the English came to America, to murder this innocent people, merely for refusing to be their slaves, then my father and friends, forgetting all that the Americans had done for them, went and joined the British, to assist them to cut the throats of their best friends! Now,' said I to myself, 'if ever there was a time for God to stand up to punish ingratitude, this was the time.' And God did stand up; for he enabled the Americans to defeat my father and his friends most completely. But, instead of murdering the prisoners as the English had done at Culloden, they treated us with their usual generosity. And now these are the people I love and will fight for as long as I live." The first notice given of the sergeant was the trick which he played on a royalist. As soon as he heard that Colonel Tarleton was encamped at Monk's Corner, he went the next morning to a wealthy old royalist of that neighborhood, and passing himself for a sergeant in the British corps, presented Colonel Tarleton's compliments with the request that he would send him one of his best horses for a charger, and that he should not lose by the gift. "Send him one of my finest horses!" cried the old traitor with eyes sparkling with joy. "Yes, Mr. Sergeant, that I will, by gad! and would send him one of my finest daughters too, had he but said the word. A good friend of the king, did he call me, Mr. Sergeant? yes, God save his sacred majesty, a good friend I am indeed, and a true. And, faith, I am glad too, Mr. Sergeant, that colonel knows it. Send him a charger to drive the rebels, hey? Yes, egad will I send him one, and as proper a one too as ever a soldier straddled. Dick! Dick! I say you Dick!" "Here, massa, here! here Dick!" "Oh, you plaguey dog! so I must always split my throat with bawling, before I can get you to answer hey?" "High, massa, sure Dick always answer when he hear massa hallo!" "You do, you villain, do you? Well then run! jump, fly, you rascal, fly to the stable, and bring me out Selim, my young Selim! do you hear? you villain, do you hear?" "Yes, massa, be sure!" Then turning to the sergeant he went on: "Well, Mr. Sergeant, you have made me confounded glad this morning, you may depend. And now suppose you take a glass of peach; of good old peach, Mr. Sergeant? do you think it would do you any harm?" "Why, they say it is good of a rainy morning, sir," replied the sergeant. "O yes, famous of a rainy morning, Mr. Sergeant! a mighty antifogmatic. It prevents you the ague, Mr. Sergeant; and clears a man's throat of the cobwebs, sir." "God bless your honor!" said the sergeant as he turned off a bumper. Scarcely had this conversation passed when Dick paraded Selim; a proud, full-blooded, stately steed, that stepped as though he were too lofty to walk upon the earth. Here the old man brightening up, broke out again: "Aye! there, Mr. Sergeant, there is a horse for you! isn't he, my boy?" "Faith, a noble animal, sir," replied the sergeant. "Yes, egad! a noble animal indeed; a charger for a king, Mr. Sergeant! Well, my compliments to Colonel Tarleton; tell him I've sent him a horse, my young Selim, my grand Turk, do you hear, my son of thunder? And say to the colonel that I don't grudge him either, for egad! he's too noble for me, Mr. Sergeant. I've no work that's fit for him, sir; no sir, if there's any work in all this country that's good enough for him but just that which he is now going on; the driving the rebels out of the land." He had Selim caparisoned with his elegant new saddle and holsters, with his silver-mounted pistols. Then giving Sergeant Macdonald a warm breakfast, and loaning him his great coat, he sent him off, with the promise that he would, the next morning, come and see how Colonel Tarleton was pleased with Selim. Accordingly he waited on the English colonel, told him his name with a smiling countenance; but, to his mortification received no special notice. After partially recovering from his embarrassment he asked Colonel Tarleton how he liked his charger. "Charger, sir?" said the colonel. "Yes, sir, the elegant horse I sent you yesterday." "The elegant horse you sent me, sir?" "Yes, sir, and by your sergeant, sir, as he called himself." "An elegant horse! and by my sergeant? Why really, sir, I-I-I don't understand all this." "Why, my dear, good sir, did you not send a sergeant yesterday with your compliments to me, and a request that I would send you my very best horse for a charger, which I did?" "No, sir, never!" replied the colonel; "I never sent a sergeant on any such errand. Nor till this moment did I ever know that there existed on earth such a being as you." The old man turned black in the face; he shook throughout; and as soon as he could recover breath and power of speech, he broke out into a torrent of curses, enough to make one shudder at his blasphemy. Nor was Colonel Tarleton much behind him when he learned what a valuable animal had slipped through his hands. When Sergeant Macdonald was asked how he could reconcile the taking of the horse he replied: "Why, sir, as to that matter, people will think differently; but for my part I hold that all is fair in war; and besides, sir, if I had not taken him Colonel Tarleton, no doubt, would have got him. And then, with such a swift strong charger as this he might do us as much harm as I hope to do to them." Harm he did with a vengeance; for he had no sense of fear; and for strength he could easily drive his sword through cap and skull of an enemy with irresistible force. He was fond of Selim, and kept him to the top of his metal; Selim was not much his debtor; for, at the first glimpse of a red-coat, he would paw, and champ his iron bit with rage; and the moment of command, he was off among them like a thunderbolt. The gallant Highlander never stopped to count the number, but would dash into the thickest of the fight, and fall to hewing and cutting down like an uncontrollable giant. General Horry, when lamenting the death of his favorite sergeant said that the first time he saw him fight was when the British held Georgetown; and with the sergeant the two set out alone to reconnoitre. The two concealed themselves in a clump of pines near the road, with the enemy's lines in full view. About sunrise five dragoons left the town and dashed up the road towards the place where the heroes were concealed. The face of Sergeant Macdonald kindled up with the joy of battle. "Zounds, Macdonald," said General Horry, "here's an odds against us, five to two." "By my soul now captain," he replied, "and let 'em come on. Three are welcome to the sword of Macdonald." When the dragoons were fairly opposite, the two, with drawn sabres broke in upon them like a tornado. The panic was complete; two were immediately overthrown, and the remaining three wheeled about and dashed for the town, applying the whip and spur to their steeds. The sergeant mounted upon the swift-footed Selim out-distanced his companion, and single-handed cut down two of the foe. The remaining one would have met a like fate had not the guns of the fort protected him. Although quickly pursued by the relief, the sergeant had the address to bring off an elegant horse of one of the dragoons whom he had killed. A day or two after the victory of General Marion over Colonel Tynes, near the Black river, General Horry took Captain Baxter, Lieutenant Postell and Sergeant Macdonald, with thirty privates, to see if some advantage could not be gained over the enemy near the lines of Georgetown. While partaking of a meal at the house of a planter, a British troop attempted to surprise them. The party leaped to their saddles and were soon in hot pursuit of the foe. While all were excellently mounted, yet no horse could keep pace with Selim. He was the hindmost when the race began, but with widespread nostrils, long extended neck, and glaring eyeballs, he seemed to fly over the course. Coming up with the enemy Sergeant Macdonald drew his claymore, and rising on his stirrups, with high-uplifted arm, he waved it three times in circles over his head, and then with terrific force brought it down upon the fleeing dragoon. One of the British officers snapped his pistol at him, but before he could try another the sergeant cut him down. Immediately after, at a blow apiece, three more dragoons were brought to the earth by the resistless claymore. Of the twenty-five, not a man escaped, save one officer, who struck off at right angles, for a swamp, which he gained, and so cleared himself. So frightened was Captain Meriot, the British officer, that his hair, from a bright auburn, before night, had turned gray. [Illustration: SERGEANT MACDONALD AND COLONEL GAINEY.] On the following day General Horry encountered one third of Colonel Gainey's men, and in the encounter the latter lost one half his men who were in the action. In the conflict, as usual the sergeant performed prodigies of valor. Later in the day Colonel Gainey's regiment again commenced the attack, when Sergeant Macdonald made a dash for the leader, in full confidence of getting a gallant charger. Colonel Gainey proved to have been well mounted; but the sergeant, regarding but the one enemy passed all others. He afterwards said he could have slain several in the charge, but wished for no meaner object than their leader. Only one, who threw himself in the way, became his victim, whom he shot down as they went at full speed along the Black river road. When they reached the corner of Richmond fence, the sergeant had gained so far upon his enemy, as to be able to plunge his bayonet into his back. The steel parted from the gun, and, with no time to extricate it, Colonel Gainey rushed into Georgetown, with the weapon still conspicuously showing how close and eager had been the charge, and how narrow the escape. The wound was not fatal. On another occasion General Marion ordered Captain Withers to take Sergeant Macdonald, with four volunteers, and search out the intentions of the enemy in Georgetown. On the way they stopped at a wayside house and drank too much brandy. Sergeant Macdonald, feeling the effects of the potion, with a red face, reined up Selim, and drawing his claymore, began to pitch and prance about, cutting and slashing the empty air, and cried out, "Huzza, boys! let's charge!" Then clapping spurs to their steeds these six men, huzzaing and flourishing their swords, charged at full tilt into a town garrisoned by three hundred British. The enemy supposing this was the advance guard of General Marion, fled to their redoubts; but all were not fortunate enough to reach that haven, for several were overtaken and cut down in the streets, among whom was a sergeant-major, who fell from a back-handed stroke of a claymore dealt by Sergeant Macdonald. Out of the town the young men galloped without receiving any injury. Not long after the above incident, the sergeant, as usual employing himself in watching the movements of the British, climbed up into a bushy tree, and thence, with a musket loaded with pistol bullets, fired at the guard as they passed by; of whom he killed one man and badly wounded Lieutenant Torquano; then sliding down the tree, mounted Selim, and was soon out of harm's was. Repassing the Black river he left his clothes behind him, which were seized by the enemy. He sent word to Colonel Watson if he did not immediately send back his clothes, he would kill eight of his men to compensate for them. He felt it was a point of honor that he should recover his clothes. Colonel Watson greatly irritated by a late defeat, was furious at the audacious message. He contemptuously ordered the messenger to return; but some of his officers, aware of the character of the sergeant, urged that the clothes might be returned to the partisan, as he would positively keep his word. Colonel Watson yielded, and when the messenger returned to the sergeant, he said, "You may now tell Colonel Watson that I will kill but four of his men." The last relation of Sergeant Macdonald, as given by General Peter Horry, is in reference to Captains Snipes and McCauley, with the sergeant and forty men, having surprised and cut to pieces a large party of the enemy near Charleston. Sergeant Macdonald did not live to reap the fruit of his labors, or even to see his country free. He was killed at the siege of Fort Motte, May 12, 1781. In this fort was stationed a British garrison of one hundred and fifty men under Captain McPherson, which had been reinforced by a small force of dragoons sent from Charleston with dispatches for lord Rawdon. General Marion, with the assistance of Colonel Henry Lee, laid siege to the fortress, which was compelled to surrender, owing to the burning of the mansion in the center of the works. Mrs. Rebecca Motte, the lady that owned the mansion, furnished the bow and arrows used to carry the fire to the roof of the building. Nathan Savage, a private in the ranks of General Marion's men, winged the arrow with the lighted torch. The British did not lose a man, and General Marion lost two of his bravest,--Lieutenant Cruger and Sergeant Macdonald. His resting place is unknown. No monument has been erected to his memory; but his name will endure so long as men shall pay respect to heroism and devotion to country. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 178: Spark's Washington's Writings, Vol. III, p. 62.] [Footnote 179: _Ibid_, Vol. IV, p. 430.] [Footnote 180: _Ibid_, Vol. IX, p. 186.] [Footnote 181: _Ibid_, Vol. V, p. 85.] [Footnote 182: _Ibid_, Vol. V, p. 361.] [Footnote 183: Notes on the North-Western Territory, p. 378] APPENDIX. Since the publication of "Scotch Highlanders in America," I have secured the following complete list of the officers of the 2nd Battalion of the 84th or Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment, from hon. Aeneas A. MacDonald, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. He also has a complete list of the enlisted men. The original document is in private hands in St. John, N.B. LIST OF OFFICERS OF 2ND BATTALION OF ROYAL HIGHLAND EMIGRANTS. Muster of January 21st, 1778, at Halifax 2nd Battalion of His Majesty's Young Royal Highland Regiment of Foot whereof the Honble Lieut. Genl. Thomas Gage is Colonel in Chief. _1st Company_, Major Commandant, John Small, Commissioned June 13th, 1715, and April 8th, 1777; Captain Lieutenant, John MacLean, Commissioned April 9th, 1776; Ensign, Lauchlan McQuarrie, Commissioned April 9th, 1776; Chaplain, Revd Alexr McKenzie, Commissioned July 12th, 1776, Absent by leave, Revd Doctr Brinston officiating; Adjutant, Hector MacLean, Commissioned April 25th, 1776; Quarter Master, Angus Macdonald, Commissioned June 14th, 1775; Surgeon, George Fr. Boyd, Commissioned May 8th, 1776; Surgeon's Mate, Donald Cameron, Commissioned Oct 25th, 1776. 3 Sergeants 3 Corporals 2 Drummers and 46 Privates. _2nd Company_, Captain, Alexr Macdonald, Commissioned June 14th, 1775: Lieutenant, Gerald Fitzgerald, Commissioned June 14th, 1775; On recruiting service in Newfoundland; Ensign, Kenneth Macdonald, Commissioned June 14th, 1775. 8 non-commissioned officers and 38 Privates. _3rd Company_, Captain, Duncan Campbell, Commissioned June 14th, 1775; Lieutenant, Thomas Lunden, Commissioned June 14th, 1775; Ensign, Christr Seaton, Commissioned April 9th, 1777. 8 non-commissioned officers and 48 Privates. _4th Company_, Captain, Ronald McKinnon, Commissioned June 14th, 1775; Lieutenants, Robert Campbell, Commissioned June 14th, 1775, and James McDonald, Commissioned June 14th, 1775. 8 non-commissioned officers and 50 Privates. _5th Company_, Captain, Alexr Campbell, Commissioned June 14th, 1775, Absent on Comr in Chief's leave; Lieutenant, Samuel Bliss, Commissioned June 14th, 1775; Ensign, Joseph Hawkins, Commissioned Decr 25th, 1775. 8 non-commissioned officers and 50 Privates. _6th or Grenadier Company_, Captain, Murdoch McLaine, Commissioned June 14th, 1775, Recruiting; Lieutenants, Lauchlin McLaine, Commissioned June 14th, 1775, Charles McDonald, Commissioned May 18th, 1776. 8 non-commissioned officers and 50 Privates. _7th Company_, Captain, Neil McLean, Commissioned June 14th, 1775, Serving with the Army in Canada and under orders to join; Lieutenant, Hugh Frazier, Commissioned Feby 27th, 1776, Prisoner with the Rebels; Ensign, John Macdonald, Commissioned Octr 7th, 1776. 8 non-commissioned officers and 32 Privates. _8th Company_, Captain, Allen Macdonald, Commissioned June 14th, 1775, Prisoner with Rebels; Lieutenant, Alexr Macdonald, Commissioned June 14th, 1775, Prisoner with Rebels; Ensign, Alexr Maclean, Commissioned Decr 25th, 1776. 8 non-commissioned officers and 34 Privates. _9th Company_, Captain, John Macdonald, Commissioned June 14th, 1775; Lieutenant, Alexr McDonell, Commissioned June 14th, 1775, Prisoner with the Rebels; Ensign, James Robertson, Commissioned Oct 30th, 1776. 8 non-commissioned officers and 34 Privates. _10th Company_, Captain, Allan Macdonnell, Commissioned June 14th, 1775, Prisoner with the Rebels; Lieutenant, John Macdonnell, Major Genl Massey's leave; Ensign, Hector Maclean, Commissioned June 14th, 1775. 8 non-commissioned officers and 40 Privates. At this Muster the 3rd or Captain Duncan Campbell's Company and the 5th or Captain Alexr Campbell's Company could not have been present as the Muster Rolls of these Companies, while containing the list of Officers and Men, are not completed and not signed by the officers or by the Deputy Officer taking the Muster. The 5th Company was in Newfoundland at the time and the 3rd probably there also. At a Muster of the Regiment held at Halifax on 2nd of September 1778 the Regiment appears as His Majesty's Royal Highland Regiment of Emigrants. APPENDIX. NOTE A. FIRST EMIGRANTS TO AMERICA. Parties bearing Highland names were in America and the West Indies during the seventeenth century, none of whom may have been born north of the Grampians. The records fail to give us the details. It has been noted that on May 15, 1635, Henri Donaldson left London for Virginia on the Plaine Joan, the master of which was Richard Buckam. On May 28, 1635, Melaskus McKay was transported from the same port and to the same place, on board the Speedwell, Jo. Chappell, master. Dowgall Campbell and his wife Mary were living in Barbadoes, September 1678, as was also Patric Campel, in August 1679. Malcum Fraser was physician on board the Betty, that carried seventy-five "convicted rebells," one of whom was a woman, in 1685, sailed from Port Weymouth for the Barbadoes, and there sold into slavery. Many persons by name of Morgan also left various English ports during that century, but as they occur in conjunction with that of Welsh names it is probable they were from the same country. NOTE B. LETTER OF DONALD MACPHERSON. Communication between the two countries was difficult and uncertain, which would inevitably, in a short time, stop friendly correspondence. More or less effort was made to keep up old friendships. The friends in the New World did not leave behind them their love for the Highlands, for home, for father and mother. The following curious letter has been preserved from Donald MacPherson, a young Highland lad, who had been sent to Virginia with Captain Toline, and was born near the house of Culloden where his father lived, and addressed to him. It was written about 1727: "Portobago in Marilante, 2 June, 17--. Teer Lofen Kynt Fater: Dis is te lat ye ken, dat I am in quid healt, plessed be Got for dat, houpin te here de lyk frae yu, as I am yer nane sin, I wad a bine ill leart gin I had na latten yu ken tis, be kaptin Rogirs skep dat geangs te Innernes, per cunnan I dinna ket sika anither apertunti dis towmen agen. De skep dat I kam in was a lang tym o de see cumin oure heir, but plissis pi Got for a'ting wi a kepit our heels unco weel, pat Shonie Magwillivray dat hat ay sair heet. Dere was saxty o's a'kame inte te quintry hel a lit an lim an nane o's a'dyit pat Shonie Magwillivray an an otter Ross lad dat kam oure wi's an mai pi dem twa wad a dyit gintey hed bitten at hame. Pi mi fait I kanna kamplin for kumin te dis quintry, for mestir Nicols, Lort pliss hem, pat mi till a pra mestir, dey ca him Shon Bayne, an hi lifes in Marylant in te rifer Potomak, he nifer gart mi wark ony ting pat fat I lykit mi sel: de meast o a' mi wark is waterin a pra stennt hors, and pringin wyn an pread ut o de seller te mi mestir's tebil. Sin efer I kam til him I nefer wantit a pottle o petter ele nor isi m a' Shon Glass hous, for I ay set toun wi de pairns te dennir. Mi mestir seys til mi, fan I kon speek lyk de fouk hier dat I sanna pe pidden di nating pat gar his plackimors wurk, for de fyt fouk dinna ise te wurk pat te first yeer aftir dey kum in te de quintry. Tey speek a' lyk de sogers in Inerness. Lofen fater, fan de sarvants hier he deen wi der mestirs, dey grou unco rich, an its ne wonter for day mak a hantil o tombako; and des sivites anahels and de sheries an de pires grou in de wuds wantin tyks apout dem, De Swynes te ducks and durkies geangs en de wuds wantin mestirs. De tombako grous shust lyk de dockins en de bak o de lairts yart an de skeps dey kum fra ilka place an bys dem an gies a hantel o silder an gier for dem. Mi nane mestir kam til de quintry a sarfant an weil I wot hi's nou wort mony a susan punt. Fait ye mey pelive mi de pirest plantir hire lifes amost as weil as de lairt o Collottin. Mai pi fan mi tim is ut I wel kom hem an sie yu pat not for de fust nor de neest yeir til I gater somtig o mi nane, for I fan I ha dun wi mi mestir, hi maun gi mi a plantashon te set mi up, its de quistium hier in dis quintry; an syn I houp te gar yu trink wyn insteat o tippeni in Innerness. I wis I hat kum our hier twa or tri yiers seener nor I dit, syn I wad ha kum de seener hame, pat Got bi tanket dat I kam sa seen as I dit. Gin yu koud sen mi owr be ony o yur Innesness skeps, ony ting te mi, an it war as muckle clays as mak a quelt it wad, mey pi, gar mi meistir tink te mere o mi. It's tru I ket clays eneu fe him bat out ting fe yu wad luck weel an pony, an ant plese Got gin I life, I sal pey yu pack agen. Lofen fater, de man dat wryts dis letir for mi is van Shames Macheyne, hi lifes shust a myl fe mi, hi hes pin unko kyn te mi sin efer I kam te de quintrie. Hi wes porn en Petic an kom our a sarfant fe Klesgou an hes peen hes nane man twa yeirs, an has sax plockimors wurkin til hem alrety makin tombako ilka tay. Heil win hem, shortly an a' te geir dat he hes wun hier an py a lerts kip at hem. Luck dat yu duina forket te vryt til mi ay, fan yu ket ony occashion: Got Almichte plis yu Fater an a de leve o de hous, for I hana forkoten nane o yu, nor dinna yu forket mi, for plise Got I sal kum hem wi gier eneuch te di yu a' an mi nane sel guid. I weit yu will be veri vokie, fan yu sii yur nane sins fesh agen, for I heive leirt a hautle hevens sin I sau yu an I am unco buick leirt. A tis fe yur lofen an Opetient Sin, Tonal Mackaferson. Directed--For Shames Mackaferson neir te Lairt o Collottin's hous, neir Innerness en de Nort o Skotlan."[184] NOTE C. EMIGRATION DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. The emigration from the Highlands to America was so pronounced that the Scottish papers, notably the "Edinburgh Evening Courant," the "Caledonian Mercury," and the "Scots Magazine," made frequent reference and bemoan its prevalence. It was even felt in London, for the "Gentleman's Magazine" was also forced to record it. While all these details may not be of great interest, yet to obtain a fair idea of this movement, some record will be of service. The "Scots Magazine," for September 1769, records that the ship Molly sailed from Islay on August 21st of that year full of passengers to settle in North Carolina; which was the third emigration from Argyle "since the close of the late war." A subsequent issue of the same paper states that fifty-four vessels full of emigrants from the Western Islands and other parts of the Highlands sailed for North Carolina, between April and July 1770, conveying twelve hundred emigrants. Early in 1771, according to the "Scots Magazine," there were five hundred emigrants from Islay, and the adjacent Islands, preparing to sail in the following summer for America "under the conduct of a gentleman of wealth and merit whose predecessors resided in Islay for many centuries past." The paper farther notes that "there is a large colony of the most wealthy and substantial people in Skye making ready to follow the example of the Argathelians in going to the fertile and cheap lands on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. It is to be dreaded that these migrations will prove hurtful to the mother country; and therefore its friends ought to use every proper method to prevent them." These Skye men to the number of three hundred and seventy, in due time left for America. The September issue states that "several of them are people of property who intend making purchases of land in America. The late great rise of the rents in the Western Islands of Scotland is said to be the reason of this emigration." The "Scots Magazine" states that the ship Adventure sailed from Loch Erribol, Sunday August 17, 1772, with upwards of two hundred emigrants from Sutherlandshire for North Carolina. There were several emigrations from Sutherlandshire that year. In June eight families arrived in Greenock, and two other contingents--one of one hundred and the other of ninety souls--were making their way to the same place en route to America. The cause of this emigration they assign to be want of the means of livelihood at home, through the opulent graziers engrossing the farms, and turning them into pasture. Several contributions have been made for these poor people in towns through which they passed. During the year 1773, emigrants from all parts of the Highlands sailed for America. The "Courant" of April 3, 1773, reports that "the unlucky spirit of emigration" had not diminished, and that several of the inhabitants of Skye, Lewis, and other places were preparing to emigrate to America during the coming summer "and seek for the sustenance abroad which they allege they cannot find at home." In its issue for July 3, 1773, the same paper states that eight hundred people from Skye were then preparing to go to North Carolina and that they had engaged a vessel at Greenock to carry them across the Atlantic. In the issue of the same paper for September 15th, same year, appears the gloomy statement that the people of Badenoch and Lochaber were in "a most pitiful situation for want of meal. They were reduced to live on blood which they draw from their cattle by repeated bleedings. Need we wonder to hear of emigrations from such a country." On September 1, 1773, according to the "Courant," a ship sailed from Fort William for America with four hundred and twenty-five men, women, and children, all from Knoydart, Lochaber, Appin, Mamore, and Fort William. "They were the finest set of fellows in the Highlands. It is allowed they carried at least £6000 sterling in ready cash with them; so that by this emigration the country is not only deprived of its men, but likewise of its wealth. The extravagant rents started by the landlords is the sole cause given for this spirit of emigration which seems to be only in its infancy." On September 29, 1773, the "Courant," after stating that there were from eight to ten vessels chartered to convey Highland emigrants during that season across the Atlantic, adds: "Eight hundred and forty people sailed from Lewis in July. Alarmed with this Lord Fortrose, their master, came down from London about five weeks ago to treat with the remainder of his tenants. What are the terms they asked of him, think you? 'The land at the old rents; the augmentation paid for three years backward to be refunded; and his factor to be immediately dismissed.'" The "Courant" added that unless these terms were conceded the island of Lewis would soon be an uninhabited waste. Notwithstanding the visit of lord Fortrose, emigration went on. The ship Neptune with one hundred and fifty emigrants from Lewis arrived in New York on August 23, 1773; and, according to the "Scots Magazine," between seven hundred and eight hundred emigrants sailed from Stornoway for America on June 23rd, of the same year. The "Courant" for September 25, 1773, in a communication from Dornoch, states that on the 10th of that month there sailed from Dornoch Firth, the ship Nancy, with two hundred and fifty emigrants from Sutherlandshire for New York. The freight exceeded 650 guineas. In the previous year a ship from Sutherlandshire paid a freight of 650 guineas. In October 1773, three vessels with seven hundred and seventy-five emigrants from Moray, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, sailed from Stromness for America. The "Courant" for November 10, 1773, records that fifteen hundred people had left the county of Sutherland for America within the two preceding years. The passage money cost £3 10s each, and it was computed that on an average every emigrant brought £4 with him. "This amounts to £7500, which exceeds a year's rent of the whole county." The "Gentleman's Magazine" for June 30, 1775, states that "four vessels, containing about seven hundred emigrants, have sailed for America from Port Glasgow and Greenock, in the course of the present month, most of them from the north Highlands." The same journal for September 23rd, same year, says, "The ship Jupiter from Dunstaffnage Bay, with two hundred emigrants on board, chiefly from Argyleshire, set sail for North Carolina. They declare the oppressions of their landlords are such that they can no longer submit to them." The perils of the sea did not deter them. Tales of suffering must have been heard in the glens. Some idea of these sufferings and what the emigrants were sometimes called upon to endure may be inferred from the following: "In December (1773), a brig from Dornock, in Scotland, arrived at New York, with about 200 passengers, and lost about 100 on the passage."[185] NOTE D. APPEAL TO THE HIGHLANDERS LATELY ARRIVED FROM SCOTLAND. Williamsburgh, November 23, 1775. "FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN:--A native of the same island, and on the same side of the Tweed with yourselves, begs, for a few moments, your serious attention. A regard for your happiness, and the security of your posterity, are the only motives that could have induced me to occupy your time by an epistolary exhortation. How far I may fall short of the object I have thus in view, becomes me not to surmise. The same claim, however, has he to praise (though, perhaps, never equally rewarded) who endeavors to do good, as he who has the happiness to effect his purpose. I hope, therefore, no views of acquiring popular fame, no partial or circumstantial motives, will be attributed to me for this attempt. If this, however, should be the case, I have the consolation to know that I am not the first, of many thousands, who have been censured unjustly. I have been lately told that our Provincial Congress have appointed a Committee to confer with you, respecting the differences which at present subsist between Great Britain and her American Colonies; that they wish to make you their friends, and treat with you for that purpose; to convince you, by facts and argumentation, that it is necessary that every inhabitant of this Colony should concur in such measures as may, through the aid of a superintending Providence, remove those evils under which this Continent is at present depressed. The substance of the present contest, as far as my abilities serve me to comprehend it, is, simply, whether the Parliament of Great Britain shall have the liberty to take away your property without your consent. It seems clear and obvious to me that it is wrong and dangerous they should have such a power; and that if they are able to carry this into execution, no man in this Country has any property which he may safely call his own. Adding to the absurdity of a people's being taxed by a body of men at least three thousand miles distant, we need only observe that their views and sentiments are opposite to ours, their manners of living so different that nothing but confusion, injustice, and oppression could possibly attend it. If ever we are justly and righteously taxed, it must be by a set of men who, living amongst us, have an interest in the soil, and who are amenable to us for all their transactions. It was not to become slaves you forsook your native shores. Nothing could have buoyed you up against the prepossessions of nature and of custom, but a desire to fly from tyranny and oppression. Here you found a Country with open arms ready to receive you; no persecuting landlord to torment you; none of your property exacted from you to support court favorites and dependants. Under these circumstances, your virtue and your interest were equally securities for the uprightness of your conduct; yet, independent of these motives, inducements are not wanting to attach you to the cause of liberty. No people are better qualified than you, to ascertain the value of freedom. They only can know its intrinsick worth who have had the misery of being deprived of it. From the clemency of the English Nation you have little to expect; from the King and his Ministers still less. You and your forefathers have fatally experienced the malignant barbarity of a despotick court. You cannot have forgot the wanton acts of unparalleled cruelty committed during the reign of Charles II. Mercy and justice were then strangers to your land, and your countrymen found but in the dust a sanctuary from their distresses. The cries of age, and the concessions of youth, were uttered but to be disregarded; and equally with and without the formalities of law, were thousands of the innocent and deserving ushered to an untimely grave. The cruel and unmerited usage given to the Duke of Argyle, in that reign, cannot be justified or excused. No language can paint the horrors of this transaction; description falters on her way, and, lost in the labyrinth of sympathy and wo, is unable to perform the duties of her function. This unhappy nobleman had always professed himself an advocate for the Government under which he lived, and a friend to the reigning monarch. Whenever he deviated from these principles, it must have been owing to the strong impulses of honor, and the regard he bore to the rights of his fellow-creatures. 'It were endless, as well as shocking, (says an elegant writer,) to enumerate all the instances of persecution, or, in other words, of absurd tyranny, which at this time prevailed in Scotland. Even women were thought proper objects on whom they might exercise their ferocious and wanton dispositions; and three of that sex, for refusing to sign some test drawn up by tools of Administration, were devoted, without the solemnity of a trial, to a lingering and painful death.' I wish, for the sake of humanity in general and the royal family in particular, that I could throw a veil over the conduct of the Duke of Cumberland after the last rebellion. The indiscriminate punishments which he held out equally to the innocent and the guilty, are facts of notoriety much to be lamented. The intention may possibly, in some measure, excuse, though nothing can justify the barbarity of the measure. Let us, then, my countrymen, place our chief dependence on our virtue, and, by opposing the standard of despotism on its first appearance, secure ourselves against those acts in which a contrary conduct will undoubtedly plunge us. I will venture to say, that there is no American so unreasonable as even to wish you to take the field against your friends from the other side of the Atlantick. All they expect or desire from you is, to remain neutral, and to contribute your proportion of the expenses of the war. This will be sufficient testimony of your attachment to the cause they espouse. As you participate of the blessings of the soil, it is but reasonable that you should bear a proportionate part of the disadvantages attending it. To the virtuous and deserving among the Americans, nothing can be more disagreeable than national reflections; they are, and must be, in the eyes of every judicious man, odious and contemptible, and bespeak a narrowness of soul which the virtuous are strangers to. Let not, then, any disrespectful epithets which the vulgar and illiterate may throw out, prejudice you against them; and endeavor to observe this general rule, dictated at least by humanity, 'that he is a good man who is engaged in a good cause.' Your enemies have said you are friends to absolute monarchy and despotism, and that you have offered yourselves as tools in the hands of Administration, to rivet the chains forging for your brethren in America. I hope and think my knowledge of you authorizes the assertion that you are friends to liberty, and the natural and avowed enemies of tyranny and usurpation. All of you, I doubt not, came into the Country with a determined resolution of finishing here your days; nor dare I doubt but that, fired with the best and noblest species of human emulation, you would wish to transmit to the rising generation that best of all patrimonies, the legacy of freedom. Private views, and offers of immediate reward, can only operate on base and unmanly minds. That soul in which the love of liberty ever dwelt must reject, with honest indignation, every idea of preferment, founded on the ruins of a virtuous and deserving people. I would have you look up to the Constitution of Britain as the best and surest safeguard to your liberties. Whenever an attempt is made to violate its fundamental principles, every effort becomes laudable which may tend to preserve its natural purity and perfection. The warmest advocates for Administration have candor sufficient to admit that the people of Great Britain have no right to tax America. If they have not, for what are they contending? It will, perhaps, be answered, for the dignity of Government. Happy would it be for those who advance this doctrine to consider, that there is more real greatness and genuine magnanimity in acknowledging an error, than in persisting in it. Miserable must that state be, whose rulers, rather than give up a little punctilio, would endanger the lives of thousands of its subjects in a quarrel, the injustice and impropriety of which is universally acknowledged. If the Americans wish for anything more than is set forth in the address of the last Congress to the King and people of Great Britain--if independence is their aim--by removing their real grievances, their artificial ones (if any they should avow) will soon appear, and with them will their cause be deserted by every friend to limited monarchy, and by every well-wisher to the interests of America. I have endeavored, in this uncultivated home-spun essay, to avoid prolixity as much as possibly I could. I have aimed at no flowers of speech, no touches of rhetorick, which are too often made use of to amuse, and not to instruct or persuade the understanding. I have no views but your good, and the credit of the Country from whence you came. In case Government should prevail, and be able to tax America without the least show of representation, it would be to me a painful reflection to think, that the children of the land to which I owe my existence, should have been the cause of plunging millions into perpetual bondage. If we cannot be of service to the cause, let us not be an injury to it. Let us view this Continent as a country marked out by the great God of nature as a receptacle for distress, and where the industrious and virtuous may range in the fields of freedom, happy under their own fig trees, freed from a swarm of petty tyrants, who disgrace countries the most polished and civilized, and who more particularly infest that region from whence you Scotius Americanus."[186] NOTE E. INGRATITUDE OF THE HIGHLANDERS. "Brigadier-General Donald McDonald was in rebellion in the year 1745, against his lawful sovereign, and headed many of the same clan and name, who are now his followers. These emigrants, from the charity and benevolence of the Assembly of North-Carolina, received large pecuniary contributions, and, to encourage them in making their settlements, were exempted from the payment of taxes for several years. It is a fact, that numbers of that ungrateful people, who have been lately in arms, when they arrived in Carolina, were without the necessaries of life--their passage even paid by the charitable contributions of the inhabitants. They have since, under every encouragement that the Province of North-Carolina could afford them, acquired fortunes very rapidly, and thus they requite their benefactor.--Virginia Gazette."[187] NOTE F. WERE THE HIGHLANDERS FAITHFUL TO THEIR OATH TAKEN BY THE AMERICANS? General David Stewart, the faithful and admiring historian of the Highlanders, makes the following strange statements that need correction, especially in the view that the Highlander had a very high regard for his oath: After the battle of Guilford Court House "the British retired southward in the direction of Cross Creek, the Americans following close in the rear; but nothing of consequence occurred. Cross Creek, a settlement of emigrant Highlanders, had been remarkable for its loyalty from the commencement of the war, and they now offered to bring 1,500 men into the field, to be commanded by officers from the line, to find clothing and subsistence for themselves, and to perform all duties whether in front, flanks, or rear; and they required nothing but arms and ammunition. This very reasonable offer was not received, but a proposition was made to form them into what was called a provincial corps of the line. This was declined by the emigrant Highlanders, and after a negotiation of twelve days, they retired to their settlements, and the army marched for Wilmington, where they expected to find supplies, of which they now stood in great need. There was among these settlers a gentleman of the name of Macneil, who had been an officer in the Seven Years' War. He joined the army with several followers, but soon took his leave, having been rather sharply reprimanded for his treatment of a republican family. He was a man of tall stature, and commanding aspect, and moved, when he walked among his followers, with all the dignity of a chieftain of old. Retaining his loyalty, although offended with the reprimand, he offered to surprise the republican garrison, the governor, and council, assembled at Willisborough. He had three hundred followers, one-half of them old country Highlanders, the other half born in America, and the off-spring of Highlanders. The enterprise was conducted with address, and the governor, council, and garrison, were secured without bloodshed, and immediately marched off for Wilmington, Macneil and his party travelling by night, and concealing themselves in swamps and woods by day. However, the country was alarmed, and a hostile force collected. He proceeded in zig-zag directions, for he had a perfect knowledge of the country, but without any provisions except what chance threw in his way. When he had advanced two-thirds of the route, he found the enemy occupying a pass which he must open by the sword, or perish in the swamps for want of food. At this time he had more prisoners to guard than followers. 'He did not secure his prisoners by putting them to death;' but, leaving them under a guard of half his force on whom he could least depend, he charged with the others sword in hand through the pass, and cleared it of the enemy, but was unfortunately killed from too great ardor in the pursuit. The enemy being dispersed, the party continued their march disconsolate for the loss of their leader; but their opponents again assembled in force, and the party were obliged to take refuge in the swamps, still retaining their prisoners. The British commander at Wilmington, hearing of Macneil's enterprise, marched out to his support, and kept firing cannon, in expectation the report would reach them in the swamps. The party heard the reports, and knowing that the Americans had no artillery, they ventured out of the swamps towards the quarter whence they heard the guns, and meeting with Major (afterwards Sir James) Craig, sent out to support them, they delivered over their prisoners half famished with hunger, and lodged them safely in Wilmington. Such partizans as these are invaluable in active warfare."[188] Dr. James Browne, who follows Stewart very closely, gives[189] the first paragraph of the above quotation, but makes no reference to the exploit of Macneil. Keltie who copies almost literally from Dr. Browne, also gives[190] the first paragraph, but no reference to the second. General Stewart gives no clue as to the source of his information. If the number of Highlanders reported to have offered their services under such favorable conditions was true, lord Cornwallis was not in a position to refuse. He had been and still was on a very fatiguing campaign. His army was not only worn down but was greatly decimated by the fatigues of a long and harrassing march, and the results of two pitched battles. In his letter to Sir Henry Clinton,[191] already quoted, not a word of this splendid relief is intimated. From lord Cornwallis' statement he must have made scarcely a stop at Cross Creek, in his flight from Guilford Court House to Wilmington. He says that at Cross Creek "there was not four days' forage within twenty miles"; that he "determined to move immediately to Wilmington," and that "the Highlanders have not had so much time as the people of the upper country, to prove the sincerity of their friendship."[192] This would amount to positive proof that the Highlanders did not offer their services. The language of lord Cornwallis to lord George Germain, under date of Wilmington, North Carolina, April 18th, 1781, is even stronger: "The principal reasons for undertaking the Winter's Campaign were, the difficulty of a defensive War in South Carolina, & the hopes that our friends in North Carolina, who were said to be very numerous, would make good their promises of assembling & taking an Active part with us, in endeavouring to re-establish His Majesty's Government. Our experience has shown that their numbers are not so great as had been represented and that their friendship was only passive; For we have received little assistance from them since our arrival in the province, and altho' I gave the _strongest & most pulick assurances_ that after refitting & depositing our Sick and Wounded, I _should return to the upper Country_, not above two hundred have been prevailed upon to follow us either as Provincials or Militia." Colonel Tarleton, the principal officer under lord Cornwallis, observes: "Notwithstanding the cruel persecution the inhabitants of Cross creek had constantly endured for their partiality to the British, they yet retained great zeal for the interest of the royal army. All the flour and spirits in the neighborhood were collected and conveyed to camp, and the wounded officers and soldiers were supplied with many conveniences highly agreeable and refreshing to men in their situation. After some expresses were dispatched to lord Rawdon, to advertise him of the movements of the British and Americans, and some wagons were loaded with provisions, earl Cornwallis resumed his march for Wilmington."[193] Not a word is said of the proposed reinforcement by the Highlanders. Stedman, who was an officer under lord Cornwallis, and was with him in the expedition, says:[194] "Upon the arrival of the British commander at Cross Creek, he found himself disappointed in all his expectations: Provisions were scarce: Four days' forage not to be procured within twenty miles; and the communication expected to be opened between Cross Creek and Wilmington, by means of the river, was found to be impracticable, the river itself being narrow, its banks high, and the inhabitants, on both sides, for a considerable distance, inveterately hostile. Nothing therefore now remained to be done but to proceed with the army to Wilmington, in the vicinity of which it arrived on the seventh of April. The settlers upon Cross Creek, although they had undergone a variety of persecutions in consequence of their previous unfortunate insurrections, still retained a warm attachment to their mother-country, and during the short stay of the army amongst them, all the provisions and spirits that could be collected within a convenient distance, were readily brought in, and the sick and wounded plentifully supplied with useful and comfortable refreshments." Again he says (page 348): "Lord Cornwallis was greatly disappointed in his expectations of being joined by the loyalists. Some of them indeed came within the lines, but they only remained a few days." Nothing however occurs concerning Highland enlistments or their desire so to engage with the army. General Samuel Graham, then an officer in Fraser's Highlanders, in his "Memoirs," though speaking of the march to Cross Creek, is silent about Highlanders offering their services. Nor is it at all likely, that, in the sorry plight the British army reached Cross Creek in, the Highlanders would unite, especially when the outlook was gloomy, and the Americans were pressing on the rear. As to the exploit of Macneil, beyond all doubt, that is a confused statement of the capture of Governor Burke, at Hillsboro, by the notorious Colonel David Fanning. This was in September 1781. His report states, "We killed 15 of the rebels, and wounded 20; and took upwards of 200 prisoners; amongst them was the Governor, his Council, and part of the Continental Colonels, several captains and subalterns, and 71 continental soldiers out of a church." Colonel Fanning was a native of Wake County, North Carolina, and had no special connection with the Highlanders; but among his followers were some bearing Highland names. The majority of his followers, who were little better than highway robbers, had gathered to his standard as the best representative of the king in North Carolina, after the defeat at Moore's Creek. There is not and never has been a Willisborough in North Carolina. There is a Williamsboro in Granville county, but has never been the seat of government even for a few days. Hillsboro, practically, was the capital in 1781. The nearest to an organization of Highlanders, after Moore's Creek, was Hamilton's Loyal North Carolina regiment; but this was made up of refugees from over all the state. It is a fact, according to both history and tradition, that after the battle of Moore's Creek, the Highlanders as a race were quiet. The blow at Moore's Creek taught them a needed lesson, and as an organization gave no more trouble. Whatever numbers, afterwards entered the British service, must have been small, and of little consequence. NOTE G. MARVELLOUS ESCAPE OF CAPTAIN MCARTHUR. The following narration I find in the "Celtic Magazine," vol. I. 1875-76, pp. 209-213 and 241-245. How much of it is true I am unable to discover. Undoubtedly the writer, in some parts, draws on his imagination. Unfortunately no particulars are given concerning either the previous or subsequent life of Captain McArthur. We are even deprived of the knowledge of his Christian name, and hence cannot identify him with the same individual mentioned in the text. Upon the defeat of the Highlanders at Moore's Creek, "Captain McArthur of the Highland Regiment of Volunteers, was apprehended and committed to the county jail in the town of Cross-Creek. But the gallant officer determined to make a death grasp for effecting his escape, and happily for him the walls of his confinement were not of stone and mortar. In his lonely prison, awaiting his fate, and with horrid visions of death haunting him, he summons up his muscular strength and courage, and with incredible exertion he broke through the jail by night, and once more enjoyed the sweets of liberty. Having thus made his escape he soon found his way to the fair partner of his joys and sorrows. It needs hardly be said that her astonishment was only equalled by her raptures of joy. She, in fact, became so overpowered with the unexpected sight that she was for the moment quite overcome, and unable to comply with the proposal of taking an immediate flight from the enemy's country. She soon, however, regains her sober senses, and is able to grasp the reality of the situation, and fully prepared with mental nerve and courage to face the scenes of hardship and fatigue which lay before them. The thought of flight was, indeed, a hazardous one. The journey to the sea board was far and dangerous; roads were miserably constructed, and these, for the most part, had to be avoided; unbroken forests, immense swamps, and muddy creeks were almost impassable barriers; human habitations were few and far between, and these few could scarcely be looked to as hospitable asylums; enemies would be on the lookout for the capture of the 'Old Tory,' for whose head a tempting reward had been offered; and withal, the care of a tender infant lay heavy upon the parental hearts, and tended to impede their flight. Having this sea of troubles looming before them, the imminent dangers besetting their path, you can estimate the heroism of a woman who was prepared to brave them all. But when you further bear in mind that she had been bred in the ease and delicate refinements of a lairdly circle at home, you can at once conceive the hardships to be encountered vastly augmented, and the moral heroism necessary for such an undertaking to be almost incredible, finding its parallel only in the life of her famous countrywoman, the immortal 'Flora.' Still, life is dear, and a desperate attempt must be made to preserve it--she is ready for any proposal. So off they start at the dead hour of midnight, taking nothing but the scantiest supply of provisions, of which our heroine must be the bearer, while the hardy sire took his infant charge in his folded plaid over one shoulder, with the indispensable musket slung over the other. Thus equipped for the march, they trudge over the heavy sand, leaving the scattered town of Cross-Creek behind in the distance, and soon find themselves lost to all human vision in the midst of the dense forest. There is not a moment to lose; and onward they speed under cover of night for miles and miles, and for a time keeping the main road to the coast. Daylight at length lightened their path, and bright sunrays are pouring through the forest. But that which had lightened the path of the weary fugitives had, at the same time, made wonderful disclosures behind. The morning light had revealed to the astonished gaze of the keeper of the prison the flight of his captive. The consternation among the officials is easily imagined. A detachment of cavalry was speedily dispatched in pursuit; a handsome reward was offered for the absconded rebel, and a most barbarous punishment was in reserve for him in the event of his being captured. With a knowledge of these facts, it will not be matter of surprise that the straits and perplexities of a released captive had already commenced. Who can fancy their terror when the noise of cavalry in the distance admonished them that the enemy was already in hot pursuit, and had taken the right scent. What could they do! Whither could they fly? They dart off the road in an instant and began a race. But alas, of what use, for the tall pines of the forest could afford no shelter or concealment before the pursuers could reach the spot. In their extremity they change their course, running almost in the face of the foe. They rush into the under brush covert of a gum pond which crossed the road close by, and there, in terrible suspense, awaited their fate, up to the knees in water. In a few moments the equestrians, in full gallop, are within a gunshot of them. But on reaching the pond they slacken their speed, and all at once came to a dead halt! Had they already discovered their prey? In an instant their fears were relieved on this score. From their marshy lair they were able, imperfectly, to espy the foe, and they saw that the cause of halting was simply to water their panting steeds. They could also make out to hear the enemy's voice, and so far as they could gather, the subject was enough to inspire them with terror, for the escaped prisoner was evidently the exciting topic. Who could mistake the meaning of such detached phrases and epithets as these--'Daring fellow,' 'Scotch dog,' 'British slup,' and 'Steel fix him.' And who can realize the internal emotion of him whom they immediately and unmistakably concerned? But the fates being propitious, the posse of cavalry resumed their course, first in a slow pace, and afterwards in a lively canter, until they were out of sight and out of hearing. This hair-breadth escape admonished our hero that he must shift his course and avoid the usual route of communication with the coast. The thought struck him, that he would direct his course towards the Cape Fear river, which lay some ten miles to the right; feeling confident, at the same time, that his knowledge of the water in early days could now be made available, if he could only find something in the shape of a boat. And, besides, he saw to his dismay that his fair partner in travel, however ardent in spirit, could not possibly hold out under the hardships incident to the long journey at first meditated. For the Cape Fear river then they set off; and after a wearisome march, through swamp and marsh, brush and brier, to the great detriment of their scanty wardrobe and danger of life and limb, they reached the banks of that sluggish stream before the sun had set, foot sore and dispirited, exhausted and downcast. But what is their chance of a boat now? Alas, not even the tiniest craft could be seen. There is nothing for it but to camp in the open air all night and try to refresh their weary limbs and await to see what luck the following morn had in store. Fortunately for them the climate was warm, too much so indeed, as they had found, to their great discomfort, during the day that was now past. In their present homeless situation, however, it was rather opportune; and there was nothing to fear, unless from the effects of heavy dew, or the expected invasion of snakes and mosquitoes. But for these there was a counteracting remedy. The thick foliage of a stately tree afforded ample protection from dew, while a blazing fire, struck from the musket flint, defied the approach of any infesting vermin or crawling reptiles, and also answered the needed purpose of setting to rights their hosiery department which had suffered so much during the day. Here they are snug and cozy, under the arching canopy, which nature had provided, and prepared to do fair justice to the scanty viands and refreshments in their possession, before betaking themselves to their nocturnal slumbers which nature so much craved. But can we take leave of our pilgrims for the night without taking a glance at the innocent babe as it lay upon the folded plaid in blissful ignorance of the cares and anxieties which racked the parental breast. The very thought of its sweet face and throbbing little heart as it breathed in unconscious repose under the open canopy of heaven, was enough to entwine a thousand new chords of affection around the heart of its keepers, like the clasping ivy around the tree which gave them shelter, and to nerve them anew, for its sake, for the rough and perilous journey upon which they had entered. The fond mother imprints a kiss upon its cheek, and moistens it with tears of mingled joy and grief, and clasping it to her bosom is instantly absorbed in the sweet embrace of Morpheus. The hardy sire, it was agreed, would keep the first watch and take his rest in turn, the latter part of the night. He is now virtually alone, in deep and pensive meditation. He surveys with tender solicitude his precious charge, which was dearer to him than his own life, and for whose sake he would risk ten lives. He paces the sward during the night watches. He meditates his plans for the following day. He deliberates and schemes how he can take advantage of the flowing sheet of water before him, for the more easy conveyance of his precious belongings. The mode of travel hitherto adopted, he saw, to be simply impossible. The delay involved might be ruinous to his hopes. With these cogitations he sat down, without bringing any plan to maturity. He gazed at the burning embers as if in a reverie, and as he gazed he thought he had seen, either by actual vision or by the 'second sight,' in which he was a firm believer, the form of a canoe with a single sable steersman coming to his rescue. He felt tempted to communicate the vision to his sleeping partner; but, thinking it unkind to disturb her slumbers, he desists from his resolution, reclines on the ground, and without intending it, he falls fast asleep. But imagine his astonishment and alarm when he came to consciousness, to find that he had slept for three full hours without interruption. He could hardly realize it, the interval seemed like an instant. However, all was well; his wife and babe were still enjoying unbroken rest, and no foe had discovered their retreat; and withal, the gladsome light of day is now breaking in around them and eclipsing the glare of the smouldering embers. Up starts our hero much refreshed and invigorated, and exulting in surprising buoyancy of spirit for running the race of the new day now ushering in. He withdraws a gunshot from the camp: and what does he descry in the grey dawn but, apparently, a small skiff with a single rower crossing the river towards them, but a short distance down the stream. The advancing light of day soon confirmed his hopes. He at once started in the direction of the skiff, having armed himself with his loaded musket, and resolved to get possession of it by fair means or by foul. A few minutes brought him to the spot, and to his great astonishment he found himself in the undisputed possession of the object of his wishes, a tiny little canoe drawn up on the beach. In connection with the night's vision he would have positively declared that there was something supernatural in the affair, but having marked the bare footprints of its late occupant on the muddy soil, and heard the rustling of leaves in the distance, calling attention to the woolly head of its owner getting out of sight through the bush, and making his way for a neighboring plantation. He could explain the event upon strict natural principles. The happy coincidence, however, filled him with emotions of joy, in so readily securing the means of an earlier and more expeditious transit. He retraces his steps and joins his little circle, and in joyous ecstacy relates to his sympathetic spouse, just aroused from her long slumbers, the tenor of his lucky adventure. There is now no time to lose. The crimson rays of the rising sun peering through a dense morning atmosphere and a dense forest, are reflected upon the surface of the stream to which they are about to commit their fortune, and admonish them to be off. They break their fast upon the remnants of the dry morsels with which they last appeased their hunger. This dispatched, they hasten to the beach, and speedily embark, seating themselves with the utmost caution in the narrow hull, which good luck and Sambo had placed at their disposal, and with less apprehension of danger from winds and waves than from the angry billows of human passion. A push from the shore and the voyage is fairly and auspiciously begun, the good lady seated in the prow in charge of the tender object of her unremitting care, and giving it the shelter of her parasol from the advancing rays of the sun, and the skilful Palinurus himself squatted in the stern, with a small paddle in his hand, giving alternate strokes, first to the right and then to the left, and thus, with the aid of the slow current propelling his diminutive barque at the rate of about six knots an hour, and enjoying the simultaneous pleasure of 'paddling his own canoe.' Onward they glide, smoothly and pleasantly, over the unruffled water, the steersman taking occasional rests from his monotonous strokes, while having the satisfaction of noting some progress by the flow of the current. Thus, hours passed away without the occurrence of anything worth noting, except the happy reflection that their memorable encampment was left several leagues in the distance. But lo! here is the first interruption to their navigation! About the hour of noon a mastless hull is seen in the distance. Their first impulse was fear, but this was soon dispelled on discovering it to be a flat or 'pole boat,' without sail or rigging, used for the conveyance of merchandise to the head of navigation, and propelled by long poles which the hardy craftsmen handled with great dexterity. It was, in fact, the steamer of the day, creating upon its arrival the same stir and bustle that is now caused by its more agreeable and efficient substitute, the 'Flora Macdonald.' The sight of this advancing craft, however, suggested the necessity of extreme caution, and of getting out of its way for a time. The Highland royalist felt greatly tempted to wait and hail the crew, whom he felt pretty sure to be his own friendly countrymen, and who, like their sires, in the case of prince Charlie, thirty years before, would scorn to betray their brother Celt, even for the gold of Carolina. Still, like the royal outlaw in his wanderings, he also deemed it more prudent to conceal his whereabouts even from his most confidential friends. He at once quits the river, and thus for a good while suspends his navigation. He takes special precaution to secure his little transport by drawing it a considerable distance from the water, a feat which required no great effort. The party stroll out of the way, and up the rising beach, watching for a time the tardy movement of the 'flat.' Tired of this they continue their slow ramble further into the interior, in hopes, at the same time, of making some accidental discovery by which to replenish their commissariat, which was quite empty, and made their steps faint and feeble, for it was now considerably past noon. As 'fortune favors the brave' they did succeed in making a discovery. They saw 'the opening' of a small plantation in the forest, an event which, in Carolina, is hailed with immense satisfaction by those who chance to lose their way in the woods, as suggestive of kindness and hospitality. Nothing short of such a treatment would be expected by our adventurers as a matter of course, if they could only afford to throw themselves upon the hospitality of settlers. In their situation, however, they must take their bearings with anxious circumspection, and weigh the consequences of the possibility of their falling into the hands of foes. But here, all of a sudden, their path is intercepted by the actual presence of a formidable foe. One of the pursuers? No, but one equally defiant. It is a huge serpent of the 'Whip snake' species, which never gives way, but always takes a bold and defiant stand. It took its stand about fifty yards ahead, ready for battle, its head, and about a yard of its length, in semi-erect posture, and displaying every sign of its proverbial enmity to Adam's race. It has no poison, but its mode of attack is still more horrible, by throwing itself with electric speed in coils around its antagonist, tight as the strongest cord, and lashing with a yard of its tail, till it puts its combatant to death. Knowing its nature, the assailed levels his piece, and in an instant leaves the assailant turning a thousand somersaults until its strength is spent, and, is at last, wriggling on the ground. The discharge of the musket was the signal to those within hearing that somebody was about. It awakened to his senses an old negro, the honest 'Uncle Ned,' and brought him to the edge of the 'clearing,' in order to satisfy his curiosity, and to see if it was 'old Massa' making an unceremonious visit to the farm of which Ned was virtually overseer. Our disconsolate party could not avoid an interview even if they would. They summoned their courage and affected to feel at ease. And truly they might, for Ned, like the class to which he belonged, would never dream of asking impertinent questions of any respectable white man, his known duty being to answer, not to ask, questions. Our weary party invited themselves to 'Uncle Ned's' cabin, which stood in the edge of the clearing close by, and turned out to be a tidy log cottage. The presiding divinity, of its single apartment was our kind hostess, 'Aunt Lucy,' Ned's better half, who felt so highly charmed and flattered by the visit of such distinguished guests that she scarcely knew what she was saying or doing. She dropt her lighted pipe on the floor, hustled and scraped and curtsied to the gentle lady over and over, and caressed the beautiful little 'Missie' with emotions which bordered on questionable kindness. This ovation over, our hungry guests began to think of the chief object of their visit--getting something in the shape of warm luncheon--and with this in view they eyed with covetous interest the large flock of fine plump pullets about the door. There was fine material for a feast to begin with. The hint was given to 'Aunt Lucy,' and when that aged dame became conscious of the great honor thus to be conferred upon her, she at once set to work in the culinary department with a dexterity and skill of art which is incredible to those who are ignorant of the great speciality of negresses. There was sudden havoc among the poultry, and fruit and vegetables found their way from the corn field in abundant variety to the large chimney place. Meanwhile the captain shouldered his piece and brought, from an adjacent thicket, two large fox squirrels to add to the variety of the feast, extorting from the faithful Ned the flattering compliment 'b' gollies, Boss, you is the best shot I ever see'd.' Preparation is rapidly advancing, and so is the appetite of the longing expectants. But such preparation was not the work of a moment, especially, from the scantiness of Lucy's cooking utensils. So the guests thought they would withdraw for a time in order to relieve the busy cook of all ceremony, and at the same time relieve themselves of the uncomfortable reflection of three blazing fires in the chimney place. After partaking of a few slices of a delicious water-melon, they retired to the shade of a tree in the yard, and there enjoyed a most refreshing nap. In due course the sumptuous meal is ready; the small table is loaded with a most substantial repast, the over plus finding a receptacle upon the board floor of the apartment, which was covered with white sand. It is needless to say that the guests discharged their duty with great gusto, notwithstanding the absence of any condiments, save pepper and salt, in their case hunger being the best sauce. Who but an epicure could grumble at the repast before them? What better than stewed fowls and squirrels, boiled rice, Indian hoe cake and yams smoking hot from the ashes, squashes, pumpkin pies and apple dumpling, and all this followed by a course of fruit, peaches and apples, musk and water-melons, all of a flavor and size inconceivable by any but the inhabitants of the sunny climes which brought them to maturity. Her ladyship could not help making the contrast with a service of fruit upon an extra occasion in her home circle, which cost several golden guineas, and yet was not to be compared with that furnished for the merest trifle by these sable purveyors--so much for the sun rays of the latitude. There was, however, the absence of any beverage stronger than water, not even tea, a name which the humble hostess scarcely comprehended. But a good substitute was readily presented, in the form of strong coffee, without cream or sugar. It was now drawing late in the afternoon, and our party refreshed and delighted with their adventure, must begin to retrace their steps towards the canoe. The reckoning was soon settled. A few shillings, the idex of the late regime of George in the colony, more than satisfied all demands, and surpassed all expectations. But the fair visitor was not content, without leaving an additional, and more pleasant memento. She took a beautiful gold ring, bearing the initials B.J.C., and placed it upon the swarthy finger of 'Aunt Lucy,' with many thanks and blessings for her kindness, on that eventful occasion. This kindly expression was heartily reciprocated by the negress, and responded by a flood of tears from her eyes, and a volley of blessings from her lips. The party bade a final adieu to their entertainers, and they had to veto their pressing offer of escorting them to the river. Off they went, leaving the aged couple gazing after them, and lost in amazement as to who they could be, or whither they were going, and all the more astonished that the mysterious visitors had supplied themselves with such a load of the leavings of the repast. The navigation was at length resumed, and onward they glide as before, without the sight of anything to obstruct their course. Their prosperous voyaging continued till about midnight, for they resolved to continue their course during the whole night, unless necessity compelled them to do otherwise. Long before this hour, the mother and child resigned themselves to sleep, which was only interrupted by occasional starts, while the indefatigable steersman watched his charge, and plied his vocation with improving expertness. At this hour again, in the dim light of the crescent moon, a second 'pole boat' was discovered making towards them, but which they easily avoided by rowing to the opposite side of the river, thus continuing their course, and escaping observation. In passing the 'flat' an animated conversation was overheard among the hands, from which it was easily gathered that the escape of the rebel was the engrossing topic in the town of Wilmington, the place of their departure, and towards which the rebel himself was now finding his way as fast as the tide and paddle could carry him. At present, however, he felt no cause of alarm. One of the hands speaking in vulgar English accent was heard to depone, 'By George if I could only get that prize I'd be a happy man, and would go back to old h-England.' To this base insinuation a threatening proof was administered by other parties, who replied in genuine Gaelic idiom and said, 'It's yourself that would need to have the face and the conscience, the day you would do that;' and they further signified their readiness to render any assistance to their brave countryman should opportunity offer. Those parties were readily recognized from their accent to be no other than Captain McArthur's intimate acquaintances, Sandie McDougall and Angus Ray, and who were so well qualified from their known strength and courage to render most valuable assistance in any cause in which their bravery might be enlisted. If he only gave them the signal of his presence they would instantly fly into his service and share his fate. However, it was deemed the wisest course to pass on, and not put their prowess to the test. Hours had now passed in successful progress without notice or interruption; and they are at long last approaching Wilmington, their seaport, but a considerable distance from the mouth of the river. The question is how are they to pass it, whether by land or water, for it is now approaching towards day. What is to be done must be done without a moment's delay. It is at length resolved to hazard the chance of passing it by canoe rather than encountering the untried perils of a dismal swamp. The daring leader puts his utmost strength to the test, striking the water right and left with excited vigor. His feeling is 'now or never'; for he knew this to be the most critical position of his whole route; unless he could get past it before break of day his case was hopeless. The dreaded town is at length in view, engendering fear and terror, but not despair. Several large crafts are seen lying at the wharf, and lights are reflected from adjacent shipping offices. Two small boats are observed crossing the river, and in rather uncomfortable proximity. With these exceptions the inhabitants are evidently in the enjoyment of undisturbed repose, and quite unconscious of the phenomenon of such a notorious personage passing their doors with triumphant success. Scarcely a word was heard, it was like a city of the dead. Who can imagine the internal raptures of our lucky hero, on leaving behind him, in the distance, that spot upon which his fate was suspended, and in having the consciousness that he is now not far from the goal of safety. Even now there are signals which cheer his heart. He begins already to inhale the ocean breeze, and from that he derives an exhilirating sensation such as he had not experienced for many years. He gets the benefit of the ocean tide, fortunately, in his favor, and carrying his little hull upon its bosom at such a rate as to supersede the use of the paddle except in guiding the course. The ocean wave, however, is scarcely so favorable. It rocks and rolls their frail abode in such a way as to threaten to put a sad finish to the successful labors of the past. There is no help for it but to abandon the canoe a few miles sooner than intended. There is, however, little cause for complaint, for they can now see their way clear to their final terminus, if no untoward circumstance arises. They leave the canoe on the beach, parting with it forever, but not without a sigh of emotion, as if bidding farewell to a good friend. But the paddle they cling to as a memento of its achievements, the operator remarking--'It did me better service than any sword ever put into my hand.' A few miles walk from the landing, which is on the southern shore of the estuary, and they are in sight of a small hamlet, which lies upon the shore. And what is more inspiring of hope and courage, they are in sight of a vessel of considerable tonnage, lying at anchor off the shore, and displaying the British flag, floating in the morning breeze, evidently preparing to hoist sail. Now is their chance. This must be their ark of safety if they are ever to escape such billows of adversity as they have been struggling with for some days past. To get on board is that upon which their hearts are set, and all that is required in order to defy all enemies and pursuers. Not thinking that there is anything in the wind, in this pretty hamlet, they make straight for the vessel, but they go but a few paces in that direction before another crisis turns up. Enemies are still in pursuit. A small body of men, apparently under commission, are observed a short distance beyond the hamlet as if anticipating the possibility of the escaped prisoner making his way to the British ship. Nor is the surmise groundless, as the signal proves. In their perplexity the objects of pursuit have to lie in ambush and await the course of events. Their military pursuers are now wending their way in the opposite direction until they are almost lost to view. Now is the time for a last desperate effort. They rush for the shore, and there accost a sallow lank-looking boatman followed by a negro, on the lookout for custom, in their marine calling. A request is made for their boat and services, for conveyance to the ship. At first the man looks suspicious and sceptical, but on expostulation that there was the utmost necessity for an interview with the captain before sailing, and important dispatches to be sent home, and a hint given that a fee for services in such a case was of no object, he at once consents; the ferry boat is launched, and in a few minutes the party are off from the shore. But the military party observing these movements begin to retrace their steps in order to ascertain what all this means, and who the party are. They put to their heels and race towards the shore as fast as their feet can carry them. They feel tantalised to find that they have been sleeping at their post, and that the very object of their search is now halfway to the goal of safety. They signal and halloo with all their might, but getting no answer they fire a volley of shot in the direction of the boat. This has no effect, except for an instant, to put a stop to the rowing. The boatman gets alarmed as he now more than guesses who the noted passenger is, and he signifies his determination to put back and avoid the consequences that may be fatal to himself. The hero puts a sudden stop to further parley. He flings a gold sovereign to the swarthy rower, commands him simply to fulfil his promise, but to refund the balance of change upon their return from the ship--'he must see the captain before sailing.' To enforce his command the sturdy Highlander, who was more than a match for the two, took up his loaded musket and intimated what the consequences would be if they refused to obey orders. This had the desired effect. The rowers pulled with might and main, and in a few minutes the passengers were left safe and sound on board the gallant ship, and surrounded by a sympathising and hospitable crew. The fugitives were at last safe, despite rewards and sanguine pursuers. But their situation they could scarcely realize, their past life seemed more like a dream than a reality. Our brave heroine was again quite overcome. The reaction was too much for her nerves. In being led to the cabin she would have fallen prostrate on the deck had she not been supported. And who can wonder, in view of her fatigues and privations, her hair-breadth escapes and mental anxieties. But she survived it all. Sails are now hoisted to the favoring breeze, anchor weighed, and our now rejoicing pilgrims bade a lasting farewell to the ever memorable shores of Carolina. In care of the courteous commander they, in due time, reached their island home in the Scottish Highlands, and there lived to a good old age in peace and contentment. They had the pleasure of seeing the tender object of their solicitude grow up to womanhood, and afterwards enjoying the blessings of married life. And the veteran officer himself found no greater pleasure in whiling away the hours of his repose than in rehearsing to an entranced auditory, among the stirring scenes of the American Revolution, the marvellous story of his own fate: the principal events of which are here hurriedly and imperfectly sketched from a current tradition among his admiring countrymen in the two hemispheres."--_John Darroch._ NOTE H. HIGHLANDERS IN SOUTH CAROLINA. There was no distinctively Highland settlement in South Carolina, although there was quite an influx of emigrants of this class into the province. Efforts were made to divert the Highlanders into the new settlements. As early as 1716 Governor Daniel informed the Assembly that he had bought thirty of the Highland Scots rebels at £30 per head, for whom the London agent had petitioned, and requested power to purchase more. This purchase was sanctioned by the Assembly, but wished no more "till we see how these behave themselves." On August 4th another issue of £15000 in bills was authorized to be stamped to pay for these Scots, who were to be employed as soldiers in defending the province. Inducements were held out to the Highlanders, who had left their homes after the battle of Culloden, to settle in South Carolina. The "High Hills of Santee," which lie between Lynche's creek and the Wateree, in what is now Sumter County, were designed for them. The exiles, however, baffled by contrary winds, were driven into the Cape Fear, and from thence a part of them crossed and settled higher up, in what is now Darlington County, the rest having taken up their abode in North Carolina. The war fever engendered by the Revolution was exhibited by these people, some of whom, at least, took up arms against their adopted country. October 31, 1776, at Charleston, South Carolina, the following, who had been taken prisoners by the navy, signed their parole, which also stipulated that they should go to Salisbury, North Carolina: Dun McNicol, Cap. R.H.E., Hugh Fraser, Lieut. R.H.E., Dun MacDougall, Walter Cunningham, Angus Cameron, Laughlin McDonald, Hector McQuary, Alexr. Chisholm. "We also undertake for Neal McNicol, James Fraser, Alexr. McDonald & David Donaldson, that they shall be on the same footing with ourselves."[195] "Jany 28. 177. These are to certify that Duncan Nicol, Hugh Fraser, Alex. Chisholm, Angs. Cameron, Lach. MacDonald, Hector McQuarrie, Walter Cunningham. Duncan MacDougall. Alen. McDonald, David Donaldson, Jas. Fraser. Niel McNicol--prisoners of war from the neighboring state of South Carolina have been on Parole in this town and within ten miles Y. of for upwards of ten weeks--during which time they have behaved themselves agreeable to their Parole and that they are now removed to Halifax by order of the commanding officer of the District, in order to be forwarded to the northward agreeable to order of Congress. (Signed) Duncan McNicol, Capt., Hugh Fraser, Lieut. R.H.E., Alex. McDonald, James Fraser, David Donaldson, Niel McNicol, Alex Chisholm, Angus Cameron, Lach McDonald, Hector McQuarrie, Walter Cunningham, Privates, Dun, McDougall, Ensign. N.B. The Parole of the prisoners of war above mentd was sent to the Congress at Halifax, at their last sitting. They are now sent under the direction of Capt. Martin Fifer--Certified by orders of Committee at Salisbury this 28 Jan'y, 1777. (Signed) May Chambers, Chr. Com."[196] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 184: Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland, Vol. I, p. 198.] [Footnote 185: Holmes' Annals of America, Vol. II, p. 183.] [Footnote 186: American Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. III, p. 1649.] [Footnote 187: _Ibid_, Vol. IV, p. 983.] [Footnote 188: Sketches of the Highlanders, Vol. II, p. 119.] [Footnote 189: History of the Highland Clans, Vol. IV, p. 274.] [Footnote 190: History of the Highland Clans, Vol. II, p. 473.] [Footnote 191: See page 141.] [Footnote 192: Cornwallis' Letter to Sir Henry Clinton, April 10, 1781.] [Footnote 193: Campaigns of 1780-1781, p. 281.] [Footnote 194: History of the American War, Vol. II, p. 352.] [Footnote 195: North Carolina Colonial Records, Vol. X, p. 830.] NOTE I. ALEXANDER MCNAUGHTON. Miss Jennie M. Patten of Brush, Colorado, a descendant of Alexander McNaughton, in a letter dated Feb. 20th, 1900, gives some very interesting facts, among which may be related that at the close of the Revolution all of the Highland settlers of Washington county would have been sent to Canada, had it not been for Hon. Edward Savage, son-in-law of Alexander McNaughton, who had been an officer in the Revolutionary army, and had sufficient influence to prevent his wife's relatives and friends being sent out of the country on account of their tory proclivities. They considered that they had sworn allegiance to the king, and considered themselves perjured persons if they violated their oath. This idea appeared to be due from the fact that the land given to them was in "the name of the king." From this the colonists thought the land was given to them by the king. The colonists did not all come to Washington county to occupy the land allotted to them, for some remained where they had settled after the collapse of Captain Campbell's scheme, but those who did settle in Argyle were related either by blood, or else by marriage. Alexander McNaughton came to America in 1738, accompanied by his wife, Mary McDonald, and his children, John, Moses, Eleanor and Jeannette. They first settled at a place called Kaket, where they lived several years, when they removed up the river to Tappan, and there continued until the grant was made in Argyle. Alexander McNaughton died at the home of his son-in-law, Edward Savage, near Salem, and was buried on the land that had been granted him. The first to be interred in the old Argyle cemetery was the daughter Jeannette. The wife. Mary, died on the way home from Burgoyne's camp. The children of the colonists were loyal Americans, although many of the colonists had been carried to the British camp for protection. NOTE J. ALLAN MCDONALD'S COMPLAINT TO THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS. "Philadelphia, March 25, 1776. Sir: It is now several weeks since the Scotch inhabitants in and about Johnstown, Tryon County, have been required by General Schuyler to deliver up their arms; and that each and all of them should parade in the above place, that he might take from this small body six prisoners of his own nomination. The request was accordingly complied with, and five other gentlemen with myself were made prisoners of. As we are not conscious of having acted upon any principle that merits such severe proceedings from Congress, we cannot help being a good deal surprised at such treatment; but are willing to attribute this rather to malicious, ill-designing people, than to gentlemen of so much humanity and known character as the Congress consists of. The many difficulties we met with since our landing on this Continent, (which is but very lately,) burdened with women and children, we hope merit a share in their feeling; and that they would obtain the surest conviction, before we were removed from our families; as, by a separation of the kind, they are rendered destitute, and without access to either money or credit. This is the reason why you will observe, in the article of capitulation respecting the Scotch, that they made such a struggle for having their respective families provided for in their absence. The General declared he had no discretionary power to grant such, but that he would represent it, as he hoped with success, to Congress; and in this opinion two other gentlemen present supported him. The request is so just in itself that it is but what you daily grant to the meanest of your prisoners. As we cannot, we do not claim it by any agreement. Though, by a little attention to that part of the capitulation, you will observe that we were put in the hope and expectation of having them supported in their different situations. As to ourselves, we are put into a tavern, with the proper allowance of bed and board. This is all that is necessary so far. But what becomes of the external part of the body? This requires its necessaries, and without the decent part of such, a gentleman must be very intolerable to himself and others. I know I need not enter so minutely in representing those difficulties to Congress or you, as your established character and feelings will induce you to treat us as gentlemen and prisoners, removed from all means of relief for ourselves or families, but that of application to Congress. I arrived here last night in order to have the honor of laying those matters personally, or in writing, before you and them. Shall accordingly expect to be honored with an answer. I am, most respectfully, sir, your most obedient humble servant, Allan McDonald."[197] NOTE K. THE GLENGARRY SETTLERS. Major General D. McLeod, of the Patriot Army, Upper Canada, in his "Brief Review of the Settlement of Upper Canada," published in 1841, adds the following interesting statements: "Gen. Howe, the then commander in chief of the British forces in North America, on hearing that the Scots in Virginia had joined the continentals, and were among the most active of the opposers of British domination, despatched Sir John Johnstone to the Scots settlement on the Mohawk--Captain James Craig, afterwards Governor of Lower Canada, and Lieut. Donald Cameron of the Regulars, to other parts, to induce the Highlanders to join the Royal Standard, and to convince them, that their interest and safety depended on their doing so. They persuaded the uninstructed Highlanders, that the rebels had neither money, means, nor allies; that it was impossible they could for any length of time, withstand the mighty power and means of Great Britain; that their property would be confiscated, and apportioned to the royalists who should volunteer to reduce them to subjection. The Highlanders having duly weighed these circumstances, came to the conclusion, that the Americans would, like the Scots, in 1746 be ultimately overpowered;--that it was therefore to their interest, as they would not be permitted to remain neutral, to join the British standard. The greater part of them volunteered under the command of Sir. J. Johnstone, and served faithfully with him until the peace of 1783. On the exchange of the ratification of peace, these unfortunate Highlanders, saw themselves once more bereft of house and home. The reward of their loyalty, and attachment to British supremacy, after fighting the battles of England for seven long and doubtful years, and sacrificing their all, was finally, an ungenerous abandonment by the British government of their interests, in not securing their property and personal safety in the treaty of peace. The object for which their services were required, not being accomplished, they were unceremoniously left to shift for themselves in the lower Province, among a race of people, whose language they did not understand, and whose manners and habits of life were quite dissimilar to their own. Col. McDonald, a near kinsman of the chief of that name, and who had, also, taken an active part in the royal army, during the revolution, commiserating their unfortunate condition, collected them together, and in a friendly manner, in their own native language, informed them, that if it were agreeable to their wishes, he would forthwith apply to the governor for a tract of land in the upper Province, where they might settle down in a body; and where, as they spoke a language different to that of the natives, they might enjoy their own society, and be better able to assist each other. This, above all things, was what they wished for, and they therefore received the proposal with gratitude. Without much further delay, the Colonel proceeded to the Upper Province, pitched upon the eastern part of the eastern District; and after choosing a location for himself, directed his course to head quarters--informed the Governor of his plans and intentions, praying him to confirm the request of his countrymen, and prevent their return to the United States. The governor approved of his design, and promised every assistance. Satisfied that all was done, that could be reasonably expected, the Colonel lost no time, in communicating the result of his mission to his expectant countrymen; and they, in a short time afterwards, removed with him to their new location. The Highlanders, not long after, proposed to the Colonel as a mark of their approbation for his services, to call the settlement Glengarry, in honor of the chief of his clan, by which name it is distinguished to this day. It may be proper, to remember, in this place, that many of these were the immediate descendants of the proscribed Highlanders of 1715, and not a few the descendants of the relatives of the treacherously murdered clans of Glencoe (for their faithful and incorruptible adherence to the royal family of Stuart,) by king William the 3d, of Bloody memory, the Dutch defender of the English christian tory faith. But by far the major part, were the patriots of 1745,--the gallant supporters of the deeply lamented prince Charles Edward, and who, as before stated, had sought refuge in the colonies, from the British dungeons and bloody scaffolds. It was not, therefore, their attachment to the British crown, nor their love of British institutions, that induced them to take up arms against the Americans; but their fears that the insurrection, would prove as disastrous to the sons of Liberty, as the Rebellion and the fatal field of Culloden had been to themselves; and that if any of them were found in the ranks of the discontented, they would be more severely dealt with in consequence of their former rebellion. Their chagrin was great indeed, especially, when they compared their former comfortable circumstances, in the state of New York, with their present miserable condition; and particularly, when they reflected how foolishly they had permitted themselves to be duped, out of their once happy homes by the promises of a government, which they knew from former experience, to be as false and treacherous, as it was cruel and over-bearing. They settled down, but with no very friendly feelings towards a government which had allured them to their ruin, and which at last, left them to their own resources, after fighting their battles for eight sanguinary years. Nor are their descendants, at this day, remarkable for either their loyalty, or attachment, to the reigning family. These were the first settlers of Glengarry. It is a singular circumstance, that, nearly all the Highlanders, who fought for liberty and independence, and who remained in the U.S., afterwards became rich and independent, while on the other hand, with a very few exceptions, every individual, whether American or European, who took up arms against the revolution, became blighted in his prospects," (pp. 33-36). Having mentioned in particular Butler's Rangers the following from Lossing's "Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812," may be of some interest: "Some of Butler's Rangers, those bitter Tory marauders in Central New York during the Revolution, who in cruelty often shamed Brant and his braves, settled in Toronto, and were mostly men of savage character, who met death by violence. Mr. John Ross knew a Mr. D----, one of these Rangers, who, when intoxicated, once told him that 'the sweetest steak he ever ate was the breast of a woman, which he cut off and broiled,'" (p. 592). NOTE TO CHAPTER VIII. The method of warfare carried on by Sir John Johnson and his adherents did not sway the lofty mind of Washington, as may be illustrated in the following narration furnished the author by Rev. Dr. R. Cameron, grandson of Alexander Cameron, who was a direct descendant of Donald Dubh of Lochiel. This Alexander Cameron came to America in 1773, and on the outbreak of the Revolution enlisted as a private under Sir John Johnson. Three times he was taken prisoner and condemned to be executed as a spy. How he escaped the first time is unknown. The second time, the wife of the presiding officer at the court-martial, informed him in Gaelic that he would be condemned, and assisted him in dressing him in her own clothes, and thus escaped to the woods. The third time, his mother, Mary Cameron of Glennevis, rode all the way from Albany to Valley Forge on horseback and personally plead her cause before Washington. Having listened to her patiently, the mighty chief replied: "Mrs. Cameron, I will pardon your son for your sake, but you must promise me that you will take him to Canada at once, or he will be shot." The whole family left for Canada. NOTE L. MORAVIAN INDIANS. It is now scarcely known that one company of Montgomery's Highlanders took part in the attempted expatriation of the Christian Indians--better known as Moravian Indians--in Pennsylvania. Owing to an attack made by savages, in 1763, against a Scotch-Irish settlement, those of that nationality at Paxton became bitterly inflamed against the Moravian Indians and determined upon their extermination. As these Indians were harmless and never engaged in strife, they appealed to the governor of Pennsylvania for protection. These people, then living at Nazareth, Nain and Bethlehem, under the decree of the Council and the Assembly, were ordered by Governor Penn to be disarmed and taken to Philadelphia. Although their arms were the insignia of their freedom, yet these they surrendered to Sheriff Jennings, and on the eighth of November the procession moved towards Philadelphia. On their arrival in Philadelphia they were ordered to the "British Barracks," which had been erected soon after Braddock's defeat. At this time several companies of Montgomery's Highlanders were there quartered. On the morning of the eleventh, the first three wagons, filled with women and children, passed in at the gate. This movement aroused the Highlanders, and seizing their muskets, they rushed tumultuously together, stopped the rest of the wagons, and threatened to fire among the cowering women and children in the yard if they did not instantly leave. Meanwhile a dreadful mob gathered around, the Indians, deriding, reviling, and charging them with all the outrages committed by the savages, threatening to kill them on the spot. From ten o'clock until three these Indians, with the missionaries, endured every abuse which wild frenzy and ribald vulgarity could clothe in words. In the midst of this persecution some Quakers braved the danger of the mob and taking the Indians by the hand gave them words of encouragement. During all this tumult the Indians remained silent, but considered "what insult and mockery our Savior had suffered on their account." The soldiers persisting in their refusal to allow the Moravian Indians admission, after five hours, the latter were marched through the city, thousands following them with great clamor, to the outskirts, where the mob dispersed. The Indians were from thence conveyed to Province Island. The Scotch-Irish of Paxton next turned their attention to a party of peaceable Indians who had long lived quietly among white people in the small village of Canestoga, near Lancaster, and on the fourteenth of December attacked and murdered fourteen of them in their huts. The rest fled to Lancaster and for protection were lodged in the work-house, a strong building and well secured. They were followed by the miscreants who broke into the building, and though the Indians begged their lives on their knees, yet all were cruelly murdered and their mangled remains thrown into the court-yard. The assassins became emboldened by many hundreds from Paxton and other parts of the county of Lancaster joining their number, and planned to set out for Philadelphia, and not rest until all the Indians were massacred. While these troubles were brewing the Moravian Indians celebrated the Lord's Supper at the commencement of the year 1764, and renewed their covenant to show forth his death in his walk and conversation. In order to protect them the government determined to send them out of the colony and place them under the care of Sir William Johnson, in New York, as the Indians had expressed their desire to be no longer detained from their families.[198] On January 4, 1764, the Moravian Indians numbering about one hundred and forty persons,[199] were placed under the convoy of Captain James Robertson, of Montgomery's Highlanders, and seventy Highlanders, for New York City. The Highlanders "behaved at first very wild and unfriendly, being particularly troublesome to the young women by their profane conversation, but were persuaded by degrees to conduct themselves with more order and decency." On arriving at Amboy, one of the soldiers exclaimed: "Would to God, all the white people were as good Christians, as these Indians." The Indians were not allowed to enter New York, but were returned to Philadelphia under a guard of one hundred and seventy men from General Gage's army, commanded by Captain Schloffer, one party leading the van, and the other bringing up the rear. Captain Robertson and his Highlanders passed over to New York.[200] NOTE M. HIGHLANDERS REFUSED LANDS IN AMERICA. "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty in Council, The Humble Petition of James Macdonald, Merchant in Porterie in the Isle of Sky and Normand Macdonald of Slate in the said Island for themselves and on behalf of Hugh Macdonald Edmund Macqueen John Betton and Alexander Macqueen of Slate. The Reverend Mr. William Macqueen and Alexander Macdonald of the said Island of Sky and county of Inverness Most Humbly Sheweth That your petitioners having had in view to form a settlement to themselves and Families in your Majesty's Province in North Carolina have for some time been making Dispositions for that purpose by engaging Servants and disposing of their effects in this country. And being now ready to embark and carry their intentions into Execution. They most humbly pray your Majesty will be graciously pleased to Grant unto your petitioners Forty thousand Acres of Land in the said province of North Carolina upon the Terms and Conditions it has been usual to give such Grants or as to your Majesty shall seem proper, "And your petitioners shall ever pray, Jas Macdonald, Normand Macdonald."[201] "To the Right Honble the Lords of the Committee of his Majesty's most Honble Privy Council for Plantation Affairs. Whitehall 21st of June 1771. My Lords, In obedience to His Majesty's Order in Council, dated June 14th, 1771, we have taken into consideration, the humble Petition of James Macdonald, Merchant in Porterie in the Isle of Sky and Normand Macdonald of Slate in the said Island for themselves and on behalf of Hugh Macdonald, Edmund Macqueen, John Belton and Alexander Macqueen of Slate the Reverend Mr William Macqueen and Alexander Macdonald of the said Isle of Sky and County of Inverness, setting forth that the Petitioners having had in view to form a Settlement to themselves and their Families in His Majesty's province of North Carolina, have for some time been making dispositions for that purpose by engaging servants and disposing of their effects in this Country and being now ready to embark and carry their said intention into execution, the Petitioners humbly pray, that His Majesty will be pleased to grant them forty thousand Acres of Land in the said Province upon the terms and conditions it hath been usual to grant such Lands. Whereupon We beg leave to report to your Lordships, That the emigration of inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland to the American Colonies is a circumstance which in our opinion cannot fail to lessen the strength and security and to prejudice the landed Interest and Manufactures of these Kingdoms and the great extent to which this emigration hath of late years prevailed renders it an object well deserving the serious attention of government. Upon the ground of this opinion We have thought it necessary in Cases where we have recommended Grants of Land in America, to be made to persons of substance and ability in this Kingdom, to propose amongst other conditions, that they should be settled by foreign Protestants; and therefore We can on no account recommend to your Lordships to advise His Majesty to comply with the prayer of a Petition, founded on a resolution taken by a number of considerable persons to abandon their settlements in this Kingdom and to pass over into America, with their Families and Dependants in a large Body and which therefore holds out a Plan that we think, instead of meriting the Encouragement, ought rather to receive the discountenance of government. We are My Lords &c. Hillsborough Ed: Eliot John Roberts Wm Fitzherbert."[202] "At the Court of St James's the 19th day of June 1772. Present The King's most Excellent Majesty in Council. Whereas there was this day read at the Board a Report from the Right Honourable the Lords of the Committee of Council for plantation affairs Dated the 17th of this Instant in the words following viz, Your Majesty having been pleased by your order in council of the 14th June 1771, to refer to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations the humble petition of James Macdonald Merchant of Portrie in the Isle of Sky and Norman Macdonald of Slate in the said Island for themselves and on behalf of Hugh Macdonald Edmund Macqueen John Betton and Alexander Macqueen of Slate and Reverend Mr Wm Macqueen and Alexander Macdonald of the said Isle of Sky and County of Inverness setting forth that the petitioners have had in view to form a settlement to themselves and their families in your Majesty's Province of North Carolina have for sometime been making Dispositions for that purpose by engaging servants and disposing of their Effects in this Country and being now ready to embark and carry their said intention into execution the petitioners humbly pray that your Majesty will be pleased to grant them Forty thousand acres of Land in the said Province upon the terms and conditions it hath been usual to grant such Lands. The said Lords Commissioners have reported to this Committee "that the emigration of the Inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland to the American Colonies is a circumstance which in their opinion cannot fail to lessen the strength and security and to prejudice the landed Interest and manufactures of these Kingdoms and the great extent to which this emigration has of late years prevailed renders it an object well deserving the serious attention of Government that upon the Ground of this opinion they have thought it necessary in cases where they have recommended Grants of Land in America to be made to persons of substance and ability in this Kingdom to propose amongst other conditions that they should be settled by foreign protestants and therefore the said Lords Commissioners can on no account recommend to this committee to advise your Majesty to comply with the prayer of a petition founded on a resolution taken by a number of considerable persons to abandon their settlements in this Kingdom and to pass over to America with their Families and Dependants in a large body and which therefore holds out a plan that they think instead of meeting the encouragement ought rather to receive the discouragement of Government. The Lords of the Committee this day took the said Representation and petition into consideration and concurring in opinion with the said Lord Commissioners for Trade and Plantations do agree humbly to report as their opinion to your Majesty that the said Petition of the said James and Norman Macdonald ought to be dismissed. His Majesty taking the said Report into consideration was pleased with the advise of his Privy Council to approve thereof and to order as it is hereby ordered that the said Petition of the said James and Norman Macdonald be and it is hereby dismissed this board."[203] NOTE N. CAPTAIN JAMES STEWART COMMISSIONED TO RAISE A COMPANY OF HIGHLANDERS. The Records of the New York Convention of July 25, 1775, contain the following: "The Committee appointed to take into consideration and report the most proper mode for employing in the service of this State Mr. James Stewart, late Lieutenant in Colonel Livingston's Regiment, delivered in their Report, which was read; and the same being read, paragraph by paragraph, and amended, was agreed to, and is in the words following, to wit: _Resolved_, That the said James Stewart is desiring a Captain's Commission in the service of this State, and that a Warrant be immediately given to him to raise a Company with all possible despatch. That the said Company ought to consist of Scotch Highlanders, or as many of them as possible, and that they serve during the war, unless sooner discharged by this Convention, or a future Legislature of this State. That the said Company shall consist of one Captain, one Lieutenant, one Ensign, four Sergeants, four Corporals, one Drum, one Fife, and not less than sixty-two Privates. That a Bounty of fifteen dollars be allowed to each Non-Commissioned Officer and Private. That they be entitled to Continental Pay and Rations, and subject to the Continental Articles of War, till further orders from this Convention or a future Legislature of this State. That the said James Stewart shall not receive pay as a Captain until he shall have returned to this Convention, or a future Legislature of this State, a regular muster roll, upon oath, of thirty able-bodied men, duly inlisted. That the Treasurer of this Convention be ordered to advance to the said James Stewart £144, in order to enable him to advance the bounty to those he may inlist taking his receipt to account for the same to the Treasurer of this State. That as soon as the said James Stewart shall have returned to this Convention, or a future Legislature of this State, a regular muster-roll of thirty able-bodied men, duly inlisted, certifying that the said men have been mustered, in the presence of a person to be appointed by the Chairman of the Committee of the City and County of Albany, or of a person to be appointed by the Chairman of the Committee of the City and County of New York, that then, and not before, the said James Stewart shall be authorized to draw upon the Chairman of the Committee of the City and County of Albany for the further sum of £100 in order that he may be enabled to proceed in his inlistment, giving his receipt to account for the same to the Treasurer of this State; and that when the said James Stewart shall have been duly inlisted and mustered, in the presence of a person to be appointed by the Chairman of the Committee of the City and County of Albany, the whole of his Company, or as many as he can inlist, and then he shall be entitled to receive of the said Chairman of the County Committee the remaining proportion of bounty due to the non-commissioned officers and privates which he shall have inlisted. That if the said James Stewart shall not be able to complete the inlistment of this Company, that he shall make a report of the same, with all dispatch, to the President of this Convention, or to a future Legislature, who will either order his Commission to issue, or make such further provision for his trouble in recruiting as the equity of the case shall require. That the Treasurer of this Convention be ordered to remit into the hands of John Barclay, Esquire, of the City of Albany, the sum of £288, on or before the last day of December next, in order to enable him to make unto the said James Stewart the disbursements aforesaid. That the said James Stewart shall be authorized to engage to each man the sum of 7s. per week, billeting money, till such time as further provision is made for the subsistence of his recruits. That the said Company, when raised, shall be either employed as an independent Company, or incorporated into any Battallion as to this Convention, or to a future proper authority of this State, shall appear advisable."[204] There is no evidence that this action of the Convention terminated in any thing tangible. There was a James Stewart, captain of the third company, in the Fifth regiment of the New York Line, and while there was a large percentage in that regiment bearing Highland names, yet Captain Stewart's company had but five. It is not to be assumed that the two names represented the same person. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 196: _Ibid_, Vol. XI, p. 370.] [Footnote 197: American Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. V, p. 495.] [Footnote 198: Colonial Records of Penna., Vol. IX, p. 111.] [Footnote 199: _Ibid._] [Footnote 200: See Loskiel's Hist. Indian Mission, Book II, Chapter XVI. Schweinitz's Life of Zeisberger, Chap, XV.] [Footnote 201: North Carolina Colonial Records, Vol. VIII, p. 620.] [Footnote 202: _Ibid_, p. 621.] [Footnote 203: N.C. Colonial Records, Vol. IX, p. 303.] [Footnote 204: American Archives, Fifth Series, Vol. I, p. 1441.] LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. * * * * * Adams, Comfort A., 46 Streator ave. Cleveland, O. Alabama Polytechnic Institute Library. Auburn, Ala. Alexander, M. J, Lilac St, E.E. Pittsburg, Pa. Alexander, William H., 302 South 31st St. Omaha, Neb. Allread, Hon. J.I., Attorney-at-Law, Greenville, O. Ammons, Mrs. Harriet McL., Franklin, O. Bain, James, Jr., Public Library, Toronto, Ont. Bedford, Miss Florence E., Springboro, O. Boston Athenæum, Boston, Mass. Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Me. Brown, William, Bookseller, Edinburgh. Scot. (4 copies). Buchanan, Charles J., 79 Chapel St., Albany, N.Y. Butte Free Public Library, Butte, Mont. Cameron, Mrs. Angus, La Crosse, Wis. Cameron, Rev. Robert, D.D., 487 Hope St., Providence, R.I. Camp, Mrs. B.H., Brookfield, Conn. Campbell, A.A., Pharmacist, 235 Rondo St., St Paul, Minn. Campbell, E.K., Attorney-at-Law, Birmingham, Ala. Campbell, J.D., General Solicitor, P. & R. Railway, Wyncote, Pa. Campbell, Mrs. Mary C., 2 Congress St., Hartford. Conn. Campbell, Rev. Clement C., Hartford, Wis. Carnegie Free Library, Braddock, Pa. Carnegie Library, Allegheny, Pa. Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh, Pa. Carruthers, David, New York City. Casselman, Prof. A.C., 36 St. James ave., Toronto, Ont. Chisholm, W.P., M.D., Brockton, Mass. Colquhoun, Sir James of Luss, Bart., (2 copies) Colwell, Irving S., Bookseller, Auburn, N.Y. Cornell University Library, Ithaca, N.Y. Cowan, George, Edinburgh, Scot. Cowles, Dr. Edward, Supt. McLean Hospital, Waverly, Mass. Craig, Allen, Mauch Chunk, Pa. Cumming, J. McGregor, 1 East 39th St., New York City. Cushing & Co., Booksellers, Baltimore, Md. Day, Prof. Alfred, Day's School of Shorthand, Cleveland, O. Deacon, Edward, Bridgeport, Conn. Davenport, Benjamin Rush, 83 Halsey, Cleveland, O. Drake, R. Ingalton, Bookseller, Eton. Douglas, Percy, 1002 Walnut St., Kansas City, Mo. (2 copies). Drummond, Josiah H., Attorney-at-Law, Portland, Me. Duncan, Rev. Herman C., S.T.D., Alexandria, La. Fairbanks, Rev. Edward T., St Johnsbury. Vt. Ferguson, Henry, 123 Vernon St., Hartford, Conn. Ferguson, S.P., Blue Hill Observatory, Hyde Park, Mass. Fiske, Prof. John, LL. D., 22 Berkeley St., Cambridge, Mass. Forbes Library, Northampton, Mass. Fraser-Mackintosh, Charles of Drummond, LL. D., F.S.A. Scot. Free Public Library, Newark, N.J. Free Public Library, Paterson, N.J. Free Public Library, Salt Lake City, Utah Free Public Library, St. Joseph, Mo. Free Public Library, Worcester, Mass. Goulden & Curry, Booksellers, Tunbridge Wells. Graham, Geo. S., 509 Crozer Building, Philadelphia, Pa. G.P. Putnam's Sons, Publishers & Booksellers, New York City. Grosvenor Public Library, Buffalo, N.Y. Harris, Joseph S., 168 School Lane, Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa. Herrick, L.C., M.D., 106 E. Broad St., Columbus, O. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. Howard, A. McLean, Toronto, Ont. Humphrey, Geo. P., Bookseller, Rochester, N.Y. Huntington, Geo., Librarian Carleton College, Northfield, Minn. Indianapolis Public Library, Indianapolis, Ind. Indiana University Library, Bloomington, Ind. James Prendergast Free Library, Jamestown, N.Y. Johnston, John., Banker, Milwaukee, Wis. Kenan, Spalding, M.D., Darien, Ga. Leggat Brothers, Booksellers. New York City. Little, Brown & Co., Booksellers, Boston, Mass. (2 copies). Macdonald, Aeneas A., Barrister-at-Law, Charlottetown, P.E.I. Macdonald, Alexander, Town Clerk, Govan, Glasgow, Scot. Macdonald, John Archibald, Traccadie Cross, P.E.I. MacInnis, Rev. J.M., Hallock, Minn. Mackay, John, C.E., J.P., Hereford. Scot. (2 copies). Maclean, Alex. C., M.D., 346 S.W. Temple St., Salt Lake City, Utah. MacLean, Archibald, M.D., Sarnia, Ont. Maclean, Arthur A., 712 People's Bank Bldg., Denver, Colo. MacLean, Daniel., P.O. Box 65, Durango, Colo. MacLean, Donald, M.D., LL. D., 821 Woodward ave., Detroit, Mich. Maclean, K.T., Thomasville, Ga. Maclean, Malcolm, P.M., Walkerton, Ont. MacLean, R.E., Wells Delta Co., Mich. MacLean, Rev. James T., Oakryn, Pa. Macleod, Norman, Bookseller, Edinburgh. MacRae, Capt. Donald, Wilmington. N.C. MacRae, Prof. Jas. C., Dean of Law School, Chapel Hill, N.C. McAdam, Judge David, New York City. McCarrell, Hon. Sam'l J.M., Attorney-at-Law, Harrisburg, Pa. McClain, E.L., Greenfield, O. McClain, Robert A., No. 9 Central Square, Youngstown, O. McClean, Miss Abby M., 208 Melrose St., Melrose Highlands, Mass. McClellan, Prof. H.B., Prin. Sayre Female Inst. Lexington, Ky. McCook, Colonel John J., 120 Broadway, New York City. McCook, J.J., New York City. McCook, Rev. Henry C., D.D., The Manse, 3700 Chestnut St., Phila., Pa. McCorvey, Prof. Thomas Chalmers, Tuscaloosa, Ala. McCowan, Prof. J.S., 12 N. 2nd St., Marshalltown, Iowa. McCulloch, H.M., Presho, N.Y. McDonald, M.G., Rome, Ga. McDonald, Wm., 51 Lancaster St., Albany, N.Y. McGee, Prof. W.J., Bureau Am. Ethnology, Washington, D.C. McGlauflin, Rev. W.H., D.D., 243 Baker St., Atlanta, Ga. McGrew, Hon. J.C., Kingwood, West Va. McIlhenny, John, 1339 Cherry St., Philadelphia. Pa. McIntosh, William Swinton, Darien, Ga. McIver, Mrs. G.W., 1611 Larkin St., San Francisco, Calif. McKeithen, N.A., Aberdeen, N.C. McKenzie, Alexander A., Hanover, N.H. McLane, James, Franklin, O. McLaughlin, Rev. D.N., Chester, S.C. McLaren, Rt. Rev. W.E., D.D., D.C.L., Chicago, Ill. McLean, Angus W., Attorney-at-Law, Lumberton, N.C. McLean, Col. Hugh H., Barrister, St. John, N.B. McLean, David, Danbury, Conn. McLean, Harry D., Souris, P.E.I. McLean, Hon. Donald, Counselor-at-Law, 27 William St., New York City. McLean, John, Danbury, Conn. McLean, John, M.D., 3 111th St., Pullman, Chicago, Ill. McLean, Mrs. C.B., Winebiddle Ave., & Harriet St., Pittsburgh, Pa. McLean, Prof. Andrew C., Oneida St., Pittsburgh, Pa. McLean, Rev. J.C., St. Georges, P.E.I. McLean, Rev. J.K., D.D. Pres't Pacific Theol. Seminary, Oakland, Calif. McLean, Wm., Albion, Neb. McLeod, Hugh M., Attorney-at-Law, Wausa, Neb. McMillan, Rev. D.J., D.D., New York City. McNeill, John, New York City. McNeill, Malcolm, Lake Forest, Ill. McQueen, Joseph P., Attorney-at-Law, Eutaw, Ala. Mercantile Library, Astor Place, New York City. Mercantile Library, St. Louis, Mo. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minn. Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Scot. Monroe, Prof. Will S., State Normal School, Westfield, Mass. Montgomery, D.B., Owensville. Ind. Montgomery, H.P., Attorney-at-Law, Georgetown, Ky. Morey, Hon. H.L., Attorney-at-Law, Hamilton, O. Munro, David A., New York City. Munro, Rev. G.A., Milford, Neb. Munro, Rev. John J., 894 Forest ave., New York City. Munro, Robert F., New York City. New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, N.H. New Harmony Working Men's Institute, New Harmony, Ind. New York Historical Society, New York City. New York Public Library, New York City. Nickerson, Sereno D., Masonic Temple, Boston. Mass. Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society, Columbus, O. Osterhout Free Library, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Pardoe, Avern, Legislative Librarian, Toronto, Ont. Patten, Miss Jennie M., Brush, Colo. Patten, James A., 51-53 Board of Trade, Chicago. Ill. (3 copies). Peoria Public Library, Peoria, Ill. Preston & Rounds Co., Booksellers, Providence, R.I. Public Library and Reading Room, Bridgeport, Conn. Public Library, Cincinnati, O. Public Library, Chicago, Ill. Public Library, Detroit, Mich. Public Library, Milwaukee, Wis. Reid, Wm. M., Kansas City, Mo. Robertson, Major G.C., of Widmerpool. Robertson, R.S., Attorney-at-Law, Fort Wayne, Ind. Ross, A.W., Columbia, B.C. Selby, Prof. J.L., Greenville, O. Slocum, Chas. E., M.D., Ph. D., Defiance, O. Smith, Mrs. J. Morgan, Birmingham, Ala. State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. State Library, Columbus, O. State Library, Harrisburg, Pa. Stewart, John A., New York City. St. Paul Book and Stationary Co., St. Paul, Minn. Stuart, Henry C., Custom House, New York City. Syracuse Central Library, Syracuse. N.Y. The Bowen-Merrill Co., Booksellers, Indianapolis, Ind. (2 copies). The John Crerar Library, Chicago, Ill. The Robert Clarke Co., Booksellers, Cincinnati, O. Thomson, Hon. Wm., Judge Judicial District, Burlingame, Kan. Thomson, William, New York City. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C. Vaughn, Wm. J., Nashville, Tenn. War Department Library, Washington, D.C. W.B. Clarke Co., Booksellers, Boston, Mass. Welsh, R.G., New York City. Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, O. Westfield Athanæum, Westfield, Mass. Wheeling Public Library, Wheeling, W. Va. Wilkinson, Mrs. Henry W., 168 Bowen St., Providence, R.I. Williams College Library, Williamstown, Mass. Wilson, Mrs. Obed J., 378 Lafayette ave., Clifton, Cincinnati, O. Wright, Prof. G. Frederick, D.D., LL. D., Oberlin, O.