University of California • Berkeley 
 
 From the Collection of 
 Joseph Z. Todd 
 
 Gift of 
 Hatherly B. Todd 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
Works by Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 an inland voyage. 
 Edinburgh; picturesque notes, 
 travels with a donkey. 
 
 VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE. 
 
 FAMILIAR STUDIES OF MEN AND BOOKS. 
 
 NCW ARABIAN NIGHTS. 
 
 TREASURE ISLAND. 
 
 THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS. 
 
 A child's GARDEN OF VERSES. 
 
 PRINCE OTTO. 
 
 STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HVDE. 
 
 KIDNAPPED. 
 
 THE MERRY MEN. 
 
 UNDERWOODS. 
 
 MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS. 
 
 THE BLACK ARROW. 
 
 THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE. 
 
 FATHER DAMIEN : AN OPEN LETTER. 
 
 BALLADS. 
 
 ACROSS THE PLAINS. 
 
 ISLAND NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS. 
 
 A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY. 
 
 CATRIONA. 
 
 VAILIMA LETTERS. 
 
 FABLES. 
 
 with Mrs. Stevenson 
 
 THE DYNAMITER. 
 
 with Lloyd Osboume 
 
 THE WRONG BOX. THE WRECKER. THE EBB-TIDE. 
 
WEIR OF 
 HERMISTON 
 
 An Unfinished Romance by 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS 
 
 STEVENSON 
 
 ^ 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHATTO AND WINDUS 
 
 PICCADILLY 
 
 1896 
 
Edinburgh : T. and A. Cokstablb, Printers to Her Majesty 
 
TO MY WIFE 
 
 / saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn 
 On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again 
 In my precipitous city beaten hells 
 Winnow the keen sea tvind. And here ajar. 
 Intent on my own race and place, I wrote. 
 
 Take thou the fvriting : thine it is. For who 
 Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal, 
 Held still the target higher, chary of praise 
 And prodigal of counsel — who hut thou ? 
 So now, in the end, if this the least he good, 
 If any deed he done, if any fire 
 Burn in the imperfect page, the praise be thine. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 DEDICATION 
 INTRODUCTORY . 
 
 CHAP. 
 I. LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 
 
 II. FATHER AND SON 
 
 III. IN THE MATTER OF THE HANGING OF 
 
 JOPP 
 
 IV. OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 V. WINTER ON THE MOORS : 
 
 1. AT HERMISTON 
 
 2. KIRSTIE 
 
 3. A BORDER FAMILY 
 
 VI. A LEAF FROM CHRISTINa's PSALM-BOOK 
 VII. ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 VIII. A NOCTURNAL VISIT . 
 IX. AT THE weaver's STONE 
 
 EDITORIAL NOTE . 
 GLOSSARY OF SCOTS WORDS 
 
 DUNCAN 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V 
 
 4 
 
 34 
 
 47 
 79 
 
 98 
 106 
 113 
 
 148 
 202 
 238 
 254 
 
 267 
 2S5 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 In the wild end of a moorland parish, far 
 out of the sight of any house, there stands 
 a cairn among the heather, and a little by 
 east of it, in the going down of the brae- 
 side, a monument with some verses half 
 defaced. It was here that Claverhouse 
 shot with his own hand the Praying 
 Weaver of Balweary, and the chisel of 
 Old Mortality has clinked on that lonely 
 gravestone. Public and domestic history 
 have thus marked with a bloody finger this 
 hollow among the hills; and since the 
 Cameronian gave his life there, two hun- 
 dred years ago, in a glorious folly, and 
 without comprehension or regret, the 
 silence of the moss has been broken once 
 
 A I 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 again by the report of firearms and the 
 cry of the dying. 
 
 The DeiFs Hags was the old name. But 
 the place is now called Francie's Cairn. 
 For a while it was told that Francie walked. 
 Aggie Hogg met him in the gloaming by 
 the cairnside, and he spoke to her, with 
 chattering teeth, so that his words were 
 lost. He pursued Rob Todd (if any one 
 could have believed Robbie) for the space 
 of half a mile with pitiful entreaties. But 
 the age is one of incredulity ; these super- 
 stitious decorations speedily fell oif ; and 
 the facts of the story itself, like the bones 
 of a giant buried there and half dug up, sur- 
 vived, naked and imperfect, in the memory 
 of the scattered neighbours. To this day, 
 of winter nights, when the sleet is on the 
 window and the cattle are quiet in the byre, 
 there will be told again, amid the silence of 
 the young and the additions and corrections 
 of the old, the tale of the Justice-Clerk and 
 of his son, young Hermiston, that vanished 
 
 2 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 from men's knowledge ; of the two Kirsties 
 and the Four Black Brothers of the Cauld- 
 staneslap ; and of Frank Innes, ' the young 
 fool advocate,' that came into these moor- 
 land parts to find his destiny. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR 
 
 The Lord Justice-Clerk was a stranger in 
 that part of the country; but his lady- 
 wife was known there from a child, as her 
 race had been before her. The old * rid- 
 ing Rutherfords of Hermiston/ of whom 
 she was the last descendant, had been 
 famous men of yore, ill neighbours, ill 
 subjects, and ill husbands to their wives 
 though not their properties. Tales of them 
 were rife for twenty miles about ; and their 
 name was even printed in the page of our 
 Scots histories, not always to their credit. 
 One bit the dust at Flodden; one was 
 hanged at his peel door by James the Fifth; 
 another fell dead in a carouse with Tom 
 
 4 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 Dalyell; while a fourth (and that was 
 Jean's own father) died presiding at a Hell- 
 Fire Club, of which he was the founder. 
 There were many heads shaken in Cross- 
 michael at that judgment ; the more so as 
 the man had a villainous reputation among 
 high and low, and both with the godly and 
 the worldly. At that very hour of his 
 demise, he had ten going pleas before the 
 Session, eight of them oppressive. And the 
 same doom extended even to his agents ; 
 his grieve, that had been his right hand 
 in many a left-hand business, being cast 
 from his horse one night and drowned in a 
 peat-hag on the Kye-skairs; and his very 
 doer (although lawyers have long spoons) 
 surviving him not long, and dying on a 
 sudden in a bloody flux. 
 
 In all these generations, while a male 
 Rutherford was in the saddle with his lads, 
 or brawling in a change-house, there would 
 be always a white-faced wife immured at 
 home in the old peel or the later mansion- 
 
 5 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 house. It seemed this succession of mar- 
 tyrs bided long, but took their vengeance 
 in the end, and that was in the person of 
 the last descendant, Jean. She bore the 
 name of the Rutherfords, but she was the 
 daughter of their trembling wives. At the 
 first she was not wholly without charm. 
 Neighbours recalled in her, as a child, a 
 strain of elfin wilfulness, gentle little mu- 
 tinies, sad little gaieties, even a morning 
 gleam of beauty that was not to be fulfilled. 
 She withered in the growing, and (whether 
 it was the sins of her sires or the sorrows 
 of her mothers) came to her maturity de- 
 pressed, and, as it were, defaced ; no blood 
 of life in her, no grasp or gaiety ; pious, 
 anxious, tender, tearful, and incompetent. 
 
 It was a wonder to many that she had 
 married — seeming so wholly of the stuff 
 that makes old maids. But chance cast 
 her in the path of Adam Weir, then the 
 new Lord- Advocate, a recognised, risen 
 man, the conqueror of many obstacles, and 
 
 6 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 thus late in the day beginning to think 
 upon a wife. He was one who looked 
 rather to obedience than beauty, yet it 
 would seem he was struck with her at the 
 first look. * Wha *s she ? ' he said, turning 
 to his host ; and, when he had been told, 
 *Ay,' says he, 'she looks menseful. She 
 
 minds me '; and then, after a pause 
 
 (which some have been daring enough to 
 set down to sentimental recollections), *Is 
 she releegious ? ' he asked, and was shortly 
 after, at his own request, presented. The 
 acquaintance, which it seems profane to 
 call a courtship, was pursued with Mr. 
 Weir's accustomed industry, and was long 
 a legend, or rather a source of legends, in 
 the Parliament House. He was described 
 coming, rosy with much port, into the 
 drawing-room, walking direct up to the 
 lady, and assailing her with pleasantries, 
 to which the embarrassed fair one re- 
 sponded, in what seemed a kind of agony, 
 *Eh, Mr. Weirl' or *0, Mr. Weir!' or 
 
 7 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 'Keep me, Mr. Weirl' On the very eve 
 of their engagement, it was related that 
 one had drawn near to the tender couple, 
 and had overheard the lady cry out, with 
 the tones of one who talked for the sake of 
 talking, 'Keep me, Mr. Weir, and what 
 became of him ? ' and the profound accents 
 of the suitor reply, 'Haangit, mem, haangit' 
 The motives upon either side were much 
 debated. Mr. Weir must have supposed 
 his bride to be somehow suitable ; perhaps 
 he belonged to that class of men who think 
 a weak head the ornament of women — 
 an opinion invariably punished in this life. 
 Her descent and her estate were beyond 
 question. Her wayfaring ancestors and 
 her litigious father had done well by Jean. 
 There was ready money and there were 
 broad acres, ready to fall wholly to the 
 husband, to lend dignity to his descendants, 
 and to himself a title, when he should be 
 called upon the Bench. On the side of 
 Jean, there was perhaps some fascination 
 
 8 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 of curiosity as to this unknown male animal 
 that approached her with the roughness of 
 a ploughman and the aplomb of an advocate. 
 Being so trenchantly opposed to all she 
 knew, loved, or understood, he may well 
 have seemed to her the extreme, if scarcely 
 the ideal, of his sex. And besides, he was 
 an ill man to refuse. A little over forty at 
 the period of his marriage, he looked already 
 older, and to the force of manhood added 
 the senatorial dignity of years ; it was, per- 
 haps, with an unreverend awe, but he was 
 awful. The Bench, the Bar, and the most 
 experienced and reluctant witness, bowed 
 to his authority — and why not Jeannie 
 Rutherford ? 
 
 The heresy about foolish women is always 
 punished, I have said, and Lord Hermiston 
 began to pay the penalty at once. His 
 house in George Square was wretchedly ill- 
 guided ; nothing answerable to the expense 
 of maintenance but the cellar, which was 
 his own private care. When things went 
 
 9 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 wrong at dinner, as they continually did, 
 my lord would look up the table at his 
 wife : * 1 think these broth would be better 
 to sweem in than to sup.' Or else to the 
 butler: 'Here, M'Killop, awa wi' this 
 Raadical gigot — tak' it to the French, man, 
 and bring me some puddocks ! It seems 
 rather a sore land of a business that I should 
 be all day in Court haanging Raadicals, and 
 get nawthing to my denner.* Of course 
 this was but a manner of speaking, and he 
 had never hanged a man for being a radical 
 in his life ; the law, of which he was the 
 faithful minister, directing otherwise. And 
 of course these growls were in the nature 
 of pleasantry, but it was of a recondite 
 sort; and uttered as they were in his re- 
 sounding voice, and commented on by that 
 expression which they called in the Parlia- 
 ment House ' Hermiston's hanging face ' — 
 they struck mere dismay into the wife. 
 She sat before him speechless and flutter- 
 ing ; at each dish, as at a fresh ordeal, her 
 
 lO 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 eye hovered toward my lord's countenance 
 and fell again ; if he but ate in silence, un- 
 speakable relief was her portion ; if there 
 were complaint, the world was darkened. 
 She would seek out the cook, who was 
 always her sister in the Lord, * O, my 
 dear, this is the most dreidful thing that 
 my lord can never be contented in his own 
 house!' she would begin; and weep and 
 pray with the cook; and then the cook 
 would pray with Mrs. Weir ; and the next 
 day's meal would never be a penny the 
 better — and the next cook (when she came) 
 would be worse, if anything, but just as 
 pious. It was often wondered that Lord 
 Hermiston bore it as he did ; indeed, he 
 was a stoical old voluptuary, contented 
 with sound wine and plenty of it. But 
 there were moments when he overflowed. 
 Perhaps half a dozen times in the history 
 of his married life — 'Here! tak' it awa,' 
 and bring me a piece bread and kebbuck ! ' 
 he had exclaimed, with an appalling explo- 
 II 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 sion of his voice and rare gestures. None 
 thought to dispute or to make excuses ; the 
 service was arrested ; Mrs. Weir sat at the 
 head of the table whimpering without dis- 
 guise ; and his lordship opposite munched 
 his bread and cheese in ostentatious disre- 
 gard. Once only, Mrs. Weir had ventured 
 to appeal. He was passing her chair on 
 his way into the study. 
 
 * O, Edom ! * she wailed, in a voice tragic 
 with tears, and reaching out to him both 
 hands, in one of which she held a sopping 
 pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 He paused and looked upon her with a 
 face of wrath, into which there stole, as he 
 looked, a twinkle of humour. 
 
 *Noansensel' he said. *You and your 
 noan sense 1 What do I want with a Chris- 
 tian faim'ly ? I want Christian broth 1 
 Get me a lass that can plain-boil a potato, 
 if she was a whiire off the streets. '^ And 
 with these words, which echoed in her 
 tender ears like blasphemy, he had passed 
 
 12 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 on to his study and shut the door behind 
 him. 
 
 Such was the housewifery in George 
 Square. It was better at Hermiston, 
 where Kirstie Elliott, the sister of a neigh- 
 bouring bonnet-laird, and an eighteenth 
 cousin of the lady's, bore the charge of all, 
 and kept a trim house and a good country 
 table. Kirstie was a woman in a thousand, 
 clean, capable, notable ; once a moorland 
 Helen, and still comely as a blood horse 
 and healthy as the hill wind. High in 
 flesh and voice and colour, she ran the 
 house with her whole intemperate soul, in 
 a bustle, not without buffets. Scarce more 
 pious than decency in those days required, 
 she was the cause of many an anxious 
 thought and many a tearful prayer to Mrs. 
 Weir. Housekeeper and mistress renewed 
 the parts of Martha and Mary ; and though 
 with a 'pricking conscience, Mary reposed 
 on Martha's strength as on a rock. Even 
 Lord Hermiston held Kirstie in a particular 
 13 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 regard. There were few with whom he 
 unbent so gladly, few whom he favoured 
 with so many pleasantries. *Kirstie and 
 me maun have our joke,' he would de- 
 clare, in high good-humour, as he buttered 
 Kirstie's scones, and she waited at table. 
 A man who had no need either of love or 
 of popularity, a keen reader of men and of 
 events, there was perhaps only one truth 
 for which he was quite unprepared: he 
 would have been quite unprepared to learn 
 that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid 
 and master were well matched ; hard, 
 handy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without 
 a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. 
 And the fact was that she made a goddess 
 and an only child of the effete and tearful 
 lady ; and even as she waited at table her 
 hands would sometimes itch for my lord's 
 ears. 
 
 Thus, at least, when the family were at 
 Hermiston, not only my lord, but Mrs. 
 Weir too, enjoyed a holiday. Free from 
 
 14 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 the dreadful looking-for of the miscarried 
 dinner, she would mind her seam, read her 
 piety books, and take her walk (which was 
 my lord's orders), sometimes by herself, 
 sometimes with Archie, the only child of 
 that scarce natural union. The child was 
 her next bond to life. Her frosted senti- 
 ment bloomed again, she breathed deep of 
 life, she let loose her heart, in that society. 
 The miracle of her motherhood was ever 
 new to her. The sight of the little man at 
 her skirt intoxicated her with the sense of 
 power, and froze her with the consciousness 
 of her responsibility. She looked forward, 
 and, seeing him in fancy grow up and play 
 his diverse part on the world s theatre, 
 caught in her breath and lifted up her 
 courage with a lively effort. It was only 
 with the child that she forgot herself and 
 was at moments natural ; yet it was only 
 with the child that she had conceived and 
 managed to pursue a scheme of conduct. 
 Archie was to be a great man and a good ; 
 15 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 a minister if possible, a saint for certain. 
 She tried to engage his mind upon her 
 favourite books, Rutherford's Letters, Seou- 
 gal's Grace Abounding, and the like. It 
 was a common practice of hers (and strange 
 to remember now) that she would carry 
 the child to the Deil's Hags, sit with him 
 on the Praying Weaver s stone, and talk of 
 the Covenanters till their tears ran down. 
 Her view of history was wholly artless, a 
 design in snow and ink ; upon the one side, 
 tender innocents with psalms upon their 
 lips ; upon the other, the persecutors, 
 booted, bloody-minded, jflushed with wine : 
 a suffering Christ, a raging Beelzebub. 
 Persecutor was a word that knocked upon 
 the woman's heart; it was her highest 
 thought of wickedness, and the mark of it 
 was on her house. Her great-great-grand- 
 father had drawn the sword against the 
 Lord's anointed on the field of RuUion 
 Green, and breathed his last (tradition said) 
 in the arms of the detestable Dalyell. Nor 
 
 i6 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 could she blind herself to this, that had 
 they lived in those old days, Hermiston 
 himself would have been numbered along- 
 side of Bloody MacKenzie and the politic 
 Lauderdale and Rothes, in the band of 
 God's immediate enemies. The sense of 
 this moved her to the more fervour; she 
 had a voice for that name of persecutor 
 that thrilled in the child's marrow; and 
 when one day the mob hooted and hissed 
 them all in my lord's travelling carriage, 
 and cried, ' Down with the persecutor ! 
 down with Hanging Hermiston 1 ' and mam- 
 ma covered her eyes and wept, and papa 
 let down the glass and looked out upon the 
 rabble with his droll formidable face, bitter 
 and smiling, as they said he sometimes 
 looked when he gave sentence, Archie was 
 for the moment too much amazed to be 
 alarmed, but he had scarce got his mother 
 by herself before his shrill voice was raised 
 demanding an explanation : why had they 
 called papa a persecutor ? 
 B 17 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 * Keep me, my precious I ' she exclaimed. 
 ' Keep me, my dear 1 this is poleetical. Ye 
 must never ask me anything poleetical, 
 Erchie. Your faither is a great man, my 
 dear, and it 's no for me or you to be judg- 
 ing him. It would be telling us all, if we 
 behaved ourselves in our several stations 
 the way your faither does in his high office ; 
 and let me hear no more of any such dis- 
 respectful and undutiful questions! No 
 that you meant to be undutiful, my lamb ; 
 your mother kens that — she kens it well, 
 dearie ! ' And so slid off to safer topics, 
 and left on the mind of the child an 
 obscure but ineradicable sense of some- 
 thing wrong. 
 
 Mrs. Weir's philosophy of life was summed 
 in one expression — tenderness. In her view 
 of the universe, which was all lighted up 
 with a glow out of the doors of hell, good 
 people must walk there in a kind of ecstasy 
 of tenderness. The beasts and plants had 
 no souls ; they were here but for a day, and 
 
 i8 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 let their day pass gently 1 And as for the 
 immortal men, on what black, downward 
 path were many of them wending, and to 
 what a horror of an immortality 1 'Are 
 not two sparrows,' * Whosoever shall smite 
 thee,' ' God sendeth His rain,' ' Judge not, 
 that ye be not judged' — these texts made 
 her body of divinity ; she put them on in 
 the morning with her clothes and lay down 
 to sleep with them at night ; they haunted 
 her like a favourite air, they clung about 
 her like a favourite perfume. Their mini- 
 ster was a marrowy expounder of the law, 
 and my lord sat under him with relish ; but 
 Mrs. Weir respected him from far off; 
 heard him (like the cannon of a beleaguered 
 city) usefully booming outside on the dog- 
 matic ramparts; and meanwhile, within 
 and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden 
 which she watered with grateful tears. It 
 seems strange to say of this colourless and 
 ineffectual woman, but she was a true 
 enthusiast, and might have made the sun- 
 
 19 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 shine and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps 
 none but Archie knew she could be elo- 
 quent ; perhaps none but he had seen her 
 — her colour raised, her hands clasped or 
 quivering — glow with gentle ardour. There 
 is a corner of the policy of Hermiston, 
 where you come suddenly in view of the 
 summit of Black Fell, sometimes like the 
 mere grass top of a hill, sometimes (and 
 this is her own expression) like a precious 
 jewel in the heavens. On such days, upon 
 the sudden view of it, her hand would 
 tighten on the child's fingers, her voice rise 
 like a song. '/ to the hills T she would 
 repeat. 'And O, Erchie, are nae these 
 like the hills of Naphtali ? ' and her tears 
 would flow. 
 
 Upon an impressionable child the effect 
 of this continual and pretty accompaniment 
 to life was deep. The woman's quietism 
 and piety passed on to his different nature 
 undiminished ; but whereas in her it was 
 a native sentiment, in him it was only an 
 
 20 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 implanted dogma. Nature and the child's 
 pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from 
 the Potterrow once struck him in the 
 mouth ; he struck back, the pair fought it 
 out in the back stable lane towards the 
 Meadows, and Archie returned with a con- 
 siderable decline in the number of his front 
 teeth, and unregenerately boasting of the 
 losses of the foe. It was a sore day for 
 Mrs. Weir ; she wept and prayed over the 
 infant backslider until my lord was due 
 from Court, and she must resume that air 
 of tremulous composure with which she 
 always greeted him. The judge was that 
 day in an observant mood, and remarked 
 upon the absent teeth. 
 
 ' I am afraid Erchie will have been fecht- 
 ing with some of they blagyard lads,' said 
 Mrs. Weir. 
 
 My lord's voice rang out as it did seldom 
 in the privacy of his own house. * 1 11 
 have nonn of that, sir I ' he cried. * Do 
 you hear me ? — nonn of that 1 No son of 
 
 21 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 mine shall be speldering in the glaur with 
 any dirty raibble.' 
 
 The anxious mother was grateful for so 
 much support ; she had even feared the 
 contrary. And that night when she put 
 the child to bed — ' Now, my dear, ye see ! ' 
 she said, * I told you what your faither 
 would think of it, if he heard ye had fallen 
 into this dreidful sin ; and let you and 
 me pray to God that ye may be keepit 
 from the like temptation or strengthened to 
 resist it 1 ' 
 
 The womanly falsity of this was thrown 
 away. Ice and iron cannot be welded ; 
 and the points of view of the Justice-Clerk 
 and Mrs. Weir were not less unassimilable. 
 The character and position of his father 
 had long been a stumbling-block to Archie, 
 and with every year of his age the difficulty 
 grew more instant. The man was mostly 
 silent; when he spoke at all, it was to 
 speak of the things of the world, always in 
 a worldly spirit, often in language that the 
 
 22 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 child had been schooled to think coarse, 
 and sometimes with words that he knew to 
 be sins in themselves. Tenderness was the 
 first duty, and my lord was invariably 
 harsh. God was love ; the name of my 
 lord (to all who knew him) was fear. In 
 the world, as schematised for Archie by his 
 mother, the place was marked for such a 
 creature. There were some whom it was 
 good to pity and well (though very likely 
 useless) to pray for ; they were named 
 reprobates, goats, God's enemies, brands 
 for the burning ; and Archie tallied every 
 mark of identification, and drew the inevit- 
 able private inference that the Lord Justice- 
 Clerk was the chief of sinners. 
 
 The mother's honesty was scarce com- 
 plete. There was one influence she feared 
 for the child and still secretly combated; 
 that was my lord's ; and half unconsciously, 
 half in a wilful blindness, she continued to 
 undermine her husband with his son. As 
 long as Archie remained silent, she did so 
 23 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 ruthlessly, with a single eye to heaven and 
 the child's salvation ; but the day came 
 when Archie spoke. It was 1801, and 
 Archie was seven, and beyond his years for 
 curiosity and logic, when he brought the 
 case up openly. If judging were sinful and 
 forbidden, how came papa to be a judge? 
 to have that sin for a trade ? to bear the 
 name of it for a distinction ? 
 
 * I can't see it,' said the little Rabbi, and 
 wagged his head. 
 
 Mrs. Weir abounded in commonplace 
 replies. 
 
 ' No, I cannae see it,' reiterated Archie. 
 * And I '11 tell you what, mamma, I don't 
 think you and me's justifeed in staying 
 with him.' 
 
 The woman awoke to remorse ; she saw 
 herself disloyal to her man, her sovereign 
 and bread-winner, in whom (with what she 
 had of worldliness) she took a certain sub- 
 dued pride. She expatiated in reply on 
 my lord's honour and greatness ; his useful 
 
 24 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 services in this world of sorrow and wrong, 
 and the place in which he stood, far above 
 where babes and innocents could hope to 
 see or criticise. But she had builded too 
 well — Archie had his answers pat : Were 
 not babes and innocents the type of the 
 kingdom of heaven ? Were not honour 
 and greatness the badges of the world? 
 And at any rate, how about the mob that 
 had once seethed about the carriage ? 
 
 ' It 's all very fine,' he concluded, * but in 
 my opinion, papa has no right to be it 
 And it seems that 's not the worst yet of it 
 It seems he 's called " the Hanging Judge " 
 — it seems he s crooool. 1 11 tell you what 
 it is, mamma, there 's a tex' borne in upon 
 me : It were better for that man if a mile- 
 stone were bound upon his back and him 
 flung into the deepestmost pairts of the 
 sea.' 
 
 ' O, my lamb, ye must never say the like 
 of that!' she cried. *Ye're to honour 
 faither and mother, dear, that your days 
 25 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 may be long in the land. It's Atheists 
 that cry out against him — French Atheists, 
 Erchie ! Ye would never surely even your- 
 self down to be saying the same thing as 
 French Atheists? It would break my 
 heart to think that of you. And O, Erchie, 
 here are'na you setting up to judge ? And 
 have ye no forgot God's plain command — 
 the First with Promise, dear ? Mind you 
 upon the beam and the mote ! ' 
 
 Having thus carried the war into the 
 enemy's camp, the terrified lady breathed 
 again. And no doubt it is easy thus to cir- 
 cumvent a child with catchwords, but it 
 may be questioned how far it is effectual. 
 An instinct in his breast detects the quibble, 
 and a voice condemns it. He will instantly 
 submit, privately hold the same opinion. 
 For even in this simple and antique relation 
 of the mother and the child, hypocrisies are 
 multiplied. 
 
 When the Court rose that year and the 
 family returned to Hermiston, it was a 
 
 26 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 common remark in all the country that the 
 lady was sore failed. She seemed to loose 
 and seize again her touch with life, now 
 sitting inert in a sort of durable bewilder- 
 ment, anon waking to feverish and weak 
 activity. She dawdled about the lasses at 
 their work, looking stupidly on ; she fell to 
 rummaging in old cabinets and presses, and 
 desisted when half through ; she would 
 begin remarks with an air of animation and 
 drop them without a struggle. Her com- 
 mon appearance was of one who has for- 
 gotten something and is trying to remember; 
 and when she overhauled, one after another, 
 the worthless and touching mementoes of 
 her youth, she might have been seeking the 
 clue to that lost thought. During this 
 period, she gave many gifts to the neigh- 
 bours and house lasses, giving them with 
 a manner of regret that embarrassed the 
 recipients. 
 
 The last night of all she was busy on 
 some female work, and toiled upon it with 
 27 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 so manifest and painful a devotion that my 
 lord (who was not often curious) inquired 
 as to its nature. 
 
 She blushed to the eyes. 'O, Edom, 
 it 's for you 1 ' she said. * It 's slippers. I 
 — I hae never made ye any.' 
 
 * Ye daft auld wife I ' returned his lord- 
 ship. ' A bonny figure I would be, palmer- 
 ing about in bauchles I ' 
 
 The next day, at the hour of her walk, 
 Kirstie interfered. Kirstie took this decay 
 of her mistress very hard; bore her a 
 grudge, quarrelled with and railed upon 
 her, the anxiety of a genuine love wearing 
 the disguise of temper. This day of all 
 days she insisted disrespectfully, with rustic 
 fury, that Mrs. Weir should stay at home. 
 But, *No, no,' she said, *it's my lord's 
 orders,' and set forth as usual. Archie was 
 visible in the acre bog, engaged upon some 
 childish enterprise, the instrument of which 
 was mire ; and she stood and looked at him 
 a while like one about to call ; then thought 
 
 28 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 otherwise, sighed, and shook her head, and 
 proceeded on her rounds alone. The house 
 lasses were at the burnside washing, and 
 saw het pass with her loose, weary, dowdy 
 gait 
 
 * She's a terrible feckless wife, the mis- 
 tress ! ' said the one. 
 
 'Tut,' said the other, *the wumman's 
 seeck.' 
 
 *Weel, I canna see nae differ in her,' 
 returned the first. * A fiishionless quean, a 
 feckless carline.' 
 
 The poor creature thus discussed rambled 
 a while in the grounds without a purpose. 
 Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed, and 
 carried her to and fro like seaweed. She 
 tried a path, paused, returned, and tried 
 another; questing, forgetting her quest; 
 the spirit of choice extinct in her bosom, 
 or devoid of sequency. On a sudden, it 
 appeared as though she had remembered, 
 or had formed a resolution, wheeled about, 
 returned with hurried steps, and appeared 
 29 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 in the dining-room, where Kirstie was at 
 the cleaning, like one charged with an 
 important errand. 
 
 * Kirstie I ' she began, and paused ; and 
 then with conviction, *Mr. Weir isna 
 speeritually minded, but he has been a 
 good man to me.' 
 
 It was perhaps the first time since her 
 husband's elevation that she had forgotten 
 the handle to his name, of which the tender, 
 inconsistent woman was not a little proud. 
 And when Kirstie looked up at the speaker's 
 face, she was aware of a change. 
 
 'Godsake, what's the maitter wi' ye, 
 mem ? ' cried the housekeeper, starting 
 from the rug. 
 
 *I do not ken,' answered her mistress, 
 shaking her head. * But he is not speeritu- 
 ally minded, my dear.' 
 
 *Here, sit down with ye I Godsake, 
 what ails the wife ? ' cried Kirstie, and 
 helped and forced her into my lord's own 
 chair by the cheek of the hearth. 
 30 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 ' Keep me, what 's this ? ' she gasped. 
 ' Kirstie, what 's this ? I 'm frich ened.' 
 
 They were her last words. 
 
 It was the lowering nightfall when my 
 lord returned. He had the sunset in his 
 back, all clouds and glory ; and before him, 
 by the wayside, spied Kirstie Elliott wait- 
 ing. She was dissolved in tears, and 
 addressed him in the high, false note of 
 barbarous mourning, such as still lingers 
 modified among Scots heather. 
 
 *The Lord peety ye, Hermistonl the 
 Lord prepare ye!' she keened out. 'Weary 
 upon me, that I should have to tell it ! ' 
 
 He reined in his horse and looked upon 
 her with the hanging face. 
 
 * Has the French landit ? ' cried he. 
 
 * Man, man,' she said, * is that a' ye can 
 think of? The Lord prepare ye: the Lord 
 comfort and support ye I ' 
 
 *Is onybody deid?* says his lordship. 
 •It'snoErchie?' 
 
 ' Bethankit, no ! ' exclaimed the woman 
 31 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 startled into a more natural tone. 'Na, 
 na, it 's no sae bad as that It 's the mis- 
 tress, my lord; she just fair flittit before 
 my e'en. She just gi'ed a sab and was 
 by wi it Eh> my bonny Miss Jeannie, 
 that I mind sae weel ! * And forth again 
 upon that pouring tide of lamentation in 
 which women of her class excel and over- 
 abound. 
 
 Lord Hermiston sat in the saddle behold- 
 ing her. Then he seemed to recover com- 
 mand upon himself. 
 
 * Weel, it 's something of the suddenest,' 
 said he. 'But she was a dwaibly body 
 from the first' 
 
 And he rode home at a precipitate amble 
 with Kirstie at his horse's heels. 
 
 Dressed as she was for her last walk, 
 they had laid the dead lady on her bed. 
 She was never interesting in life ; in death 
 she was not impressive ; and as her husband 
 stood before her, with his hands crossed 
 behind his powerful back, that which he 
 32 
 
MRS. WEIR 
 
 looked upon was the very image of the 
 insignificant 
 
 ' Her and me were never cut out for one 
 another/ he remarked at last. * It was a 
 daft-like marriage.' And then, with a most 
 unusual gentleness of tone, * Puir bitch,' 
 said he, 'puir bitch!' Then suddenly: 
 * Where 's Erchie ? ' 
 
 Kirstie had decoyed him to her room and 
 given him * a jeely-piece.' 
 
 * Ye have some kind of gumption, too,' 
 observed the judge, and considered his house- 
 keeper grimly. ' When all 's said,' he added, 
 *I micht have done waur — I micht have been 
 marriet upon a skirling Jezebel like you 1 ' 
 
 ' There 's naebody thinking of you, Her- 
 miston 1 ' cried the offended woman. ' We 
 think of her that's out of her sorrows. 
 And could she have done waur ? Tell me 
 that, Hermiston — tell me that before her 
 clay-cauld corp ! ' 
 
 * Weel, there 's some of them gey an' ill 
 to please,' observed his lordship. 
 
 c 33 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 FATHER AND SON 
 
 My Lord Justice- Clerk was known to 
 many; the man Adam Weir perhaps to 
 none. He had nothing to explain or to 
 conceal ; he sufficed wholly and silently 
 to himself; and that part of our nature 
 which goes out (too often with false coin) 
 to acquire glory or love, seemed in him to 
 be omitted. He did not try to be loved, 
 he did not care to be ; it is probable the 
 very thought of it was a stranger to his 
 mind. He was an admired lawyer, a highly 
 unpopular judge ; and he looked down 
 upon those who were his inferiors in either 
 distinction, who were lawyers of less grasp 
 or judges not so much detested. In all 
 34 
 
FATHER AND SON 
 
 the rest of his days and doings, not one 
 trace of vanity appeared ; and he went on 
 through life with a mechanical movement, 
 as of the unconscious, that was almost 
 august. 
 
 He saw little of his son. In the childish 
 maladies with which the boy was troubled, 
 he would make daily inquiries and daily 
 pay him a visit, entering the sick-room with 
 a facetious and appalling countenance, 
 letting off a few perfunctory jests, and 
 going again swiftly, to the patient's relief 
 Once, a court holiday falling opportunely, 
 my lord had his carriage, and drove the 
 child himself to Hermiston, the customary 
 place of convalescence. It is conceivable 
 he had been more than usually anxious, for 
 that journey always remained in Archie s 
 memory as a thing apart, his father having 
 related to him from beginning to end, and 
 with much detail, three authentic murder 
 cases. Archie went the usual round of 
 other Edinburgh boys, the high school and 
 
 35 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 the college ; and Hermiston looked on, or 
 rather looked away, with scarce an affecta- 
 tion of interest in his progress. Daily, 
 indeed, upon a signal after dinner, he was 
 brought in, given nuts and a glass of port, 
 regarded sardonically, sarcastically ques- 
 tioned. ' Well, sir, and what have you 
 donn with your book to-day ? ' my lord 
 might begin, and set him posers in law 
 Latin. To a child just stumbling into 
 Corderius, Papinian and Paul proved quite 
 invincible. But papa had memory of no 
 other. He was not harsh to the little 
 scholar, having a vast fund of patience 
 learned upon the bench, and was at no 
 pains whether to conceal or to express his 
 disappointment. 'Well, ye have a long 
 jaunt before ye yet ! ' he might observe, 
 yawning, and fall back on his own thoughts 
 (as like as not) until the time came for 
 separation, and my lord would take the 
 decanter and the glass, and be off to the 
 back chamber looking on the Meadows, 
 36 
 
FATHER AND SON 
 
 where he toiled on his cases till the hours 
 were small. There was no * fuller man ' 
 on the bench ; his memory was marvellous, 
 though wholly legal ; if he had to * advise ' 
 extempore, none did it better ; yet there 
 was none who more earnestly prepared. 
 As he thus watched in the night, or sat 
 at table and forgot the presence of his 
 son, no doubt but he tasted deeply of re- 
 condite pleasures. To be wholly devoted 
 to some intellectual exercise is to have 
 succeeded in life ; and perhaps only in law 
 and the higher mathematics may this 
 devotion be maintained, suffice to itself 
 without reaction, and find continual re- 
 wards without excitement. This atmo- 
 sphere of his father's sterling industry was 
 the best of Archie's education. Assuredly 
 it did not attract him ; assuredly it rather 
 rebutted and depressed. Yet it was still 
 present, unobserved like the ticking of a 
 clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless stimulant in 
 the boy's life. 
 
 Z1 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 But Hermiston was not all of one piece. 
 He was, besides, a mighty toper ; he could 
 sit at wine until the day dawned, and pass 
 directly from the table to the bench with a 
 steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the 
 third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a 
 larger print ; the low, gross accent, the low, 
 foul mirth, grew broader and commoner ; he 
 became less formidable, and infinitely more 
 disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited 
 from Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, 
 unequally mated with potential violence. 
 In the playing-fields, and amongst his own 
 companions, he repaid a coarse expression 
 with a blow ; at his father's table (when the 
 time came for him to join these revels) he 
 turned pale and sickened in silence. Of 
 all the guests whom he there encountered, 
 he had toleration for only one: David 
 Keith Carnegie, Lord Glenalmond. Lord 
 Glenalmond was tall and emaciated, with 
 long features and long delicate hands. He 
 was often compared with the statue of 
 
 38 
 
FATHER AND SON 
 
 Forbes of Culloden in the Parliament 
 House ; and his blue eye, at more than 
 sixty, preserved some of the fire of youth. 
 His exquisite disparity with any of his 
 fellow-guests, his appearance as of an artist 
 and an aristocrat stranded in rude company, 
 riveted the boy's attention ; and as curiosity 
 and interest are the things in the world 
 that are the most immediately and certainly 
 rewarded. Lord Glenalmond was attracted 
 by the boy. 
 
 *And so this is your son, Hermiston?' 
 he asked, laying his hand on Archie's 
 shoulder. * He 's getting a big lad.' 
 
 *Hout!' said the gracious father, *just 
 his mother over again — daurna say boo to 
 a goose ! ' 
 
 But the stranger retained the boy, talked 
 to him, drew him out, found in him a taste 
 for letters, and a fine, ardent, modest, 
 youthful soul ; and encouraged him to be 
 a visitor on Sunday evenings in his bare, 
 cold, lonely dining-room, where he sat and 
 39 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 read in the isolation of a bachelor grown 
 old in refinement. The beautiful gentle- 
 ness and grace of the old judge, and the 
 delicacy of his person, thoughts, and 
 language, spoke to Archie's heart in its 
 own tongue. He conceived the ambition 
 to be such another ; and, when the day 
 came for him to choose a profession, it was 
 in emulation of Lord Glenalmond, not of 
 Lord Hermiston, that he chose the Ear. 
 Hermiston looked on at this friendship 
 with some secret pride, but openly with 
 the intolerance of scorn. He scarce lost 
 an opportunity to put them down with a 
 rough jape ; and, to say truth, it was not 
 difficult, for they were neither of them 
 quick. He had a word of contempt for 
 the whole crowd of poets, painters, fiddlers, 
 and their admirers, the bastard race of 
 amateurs, which was continually on his 
 lips. * Signor Feedle-eerie 1 ' he would say. 
 * O, for Goad s sake, no more of the 
 Signor 1 ' 
 
 40 
 
FATHER AND SON 
 
 *You and my father are great friends, 
 are you not ? ' asked Archie once. 
 
 * There is no man that I more respect, 
 Archie,' repHed Lord Glen almond. ' He 
 is two things of price. He is a great 
 lawyer, and he is upright as the day.' 
 
 'You and he are so different,' said the 
 boy, his eyes dwelling on those of his old 
 friend, Hke a lover's on his mistress's. 
 
 * Indeed so,' replied the judge ; * very 
 diiFerent. And so I fear are you and he. 
 Yet I would like it very ill if my young 
 friend were to misjudge his father. He 
 has all the Roman virtues : Cato and 
 Brutus were such ; I think a son's heart 
 might well be proud of such an ancestry 
 of one.' 
 
 ' And I would sooner he were a plaided 
 herd,' cried Archie, with sudden bitterness. 
 
 * And that is neither^ very wise, nor I 
 believe entirely true,' returned Glenalmond. 
 * Before you are done you will find some 
 of these expressions rise on you like a 
 
 41 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 remorse. They are merely literary and 
 decorative ; they do not aptly express your 
 thought, nor is your thought clearly appre- 
 hended, and no doubt your father (if he were 
 here) would say, " Signor Feedle-eerie ! " ' 
 
 With the infinitely delicate sense of 
 youth, Archie avoided the subject from 
 that hour. It was perhaps a pity. Had 
 he but talked — talked freely — let himself 
 gush out in words (the way youth loves to 
 do and should), there might have been no 
 tale to write upon the Weirs of Hermiston. 
 But the shadow of a threat of ridicule 
 sufficed ; in the slight tartness of these 
 words he read a prohibition ; and it is likely 
 that Glenalmond meant it so. 
 
 Besides the veteran, the boy was without 
 confidant or friend. Serious and eager, 
 he came through school and college, and 
 moved among a crowd of the indifferent, 
 in the seclusion of his shyness. He grew 
 up handsome, with an open, speaking 
 countenance, with graceful, youthful ways ; 
 42 
 
FATHER AND SON 
 
 he was clever, he took prizes, he shone in 
 the Speculative Society. It should seem he 
 must become the centre of a crowd of 
 friends ; but something that was in part 
 the delicacy of his mother, in part the 
 austerity of his father, held him aloof from 
 all. It is a fact, and a strange one, that 
 among his contemporaries Hermiston's son 
 was thought to be a chip of the old block. 
 * You re a friend of Archie Weir*s ? ' said 
 one to Frank Innes ; and Innes replied, 
 with his usual flippancy and more than his 
 usual insight : ' I know Weir, but I never 
 met Archie.' No one had met Archie, a 
 malady most incident to only sons. He 
 flew his private signal, and none heeded it ; 
 it seemed he was abroad in a world from 
 which the very hope of intimacy was 
 banished ; and he looked round about him 
 on the concourse of his fellow-students, 
 and forward to the trivial days and ac- 
 quaintances that were to come, without 
 hope or interest. 
 
 43 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 As time went on, the tough and rough 
 old sinner felt himself drawn to the son of 
 his loins and sole continuator of his new 
 family, with softnesses of sentiment that he 
 could hardly credit and was wholly im- 
 potent to express. With a face, voice, and 
 manner trained through forty years to 
 terrify and repel, Rhadamanthus may be 
 great, but he will scarce be engaging. It 
 is a fact that he tried to propitiate Archie, 
 but a fact that cannot be too lightly taken ; 
 the attempt was so unconspicuously made, 
 the failure so stoically supported. Sym- 
 pathy is not due to these steadfast iron 
 natures. If he failed to gain his son's 
 friendship, or even his son's toleration, on 
 he went up the great, bare staircase of his 
 duty, uncheered and undepressed. Th^re 
 might have been more pleasure in his 
 relations with Archie, so much he may 
 have recognised at moments ; but pleasure 
 was a by-product of the singular chemistry 
 of life, which only fools expected. 
 44 
 
FATHER AND SON 
 
 An idea of Archie's attitude, since we 
 are all grown up and have forgotten the 
 days of our youth, it is more difficult to 
 convey. He made no attempt whatsoever 
 to understand the man with whom he dined 
 and breakfasted. Parsimony of pain, glut 
 of pleasure, these are the two alternating 
 ends of youth ; and Archie was of the 
 parsimonious. The wind blew cold out of 
 a certain quarter — he turned his back upon 
 it ; stayed as little as was possible in his 
 father's presence ; and when there, averted 
 his eyes as much as was decent from his 
 father's face. The lamp shone for many 
 hundred days upon these two at table — 
 my lord, ruddy, gloomy, and unreverent ; 
 Archie with a potential brightness that was 
 always dimmed and veiled in that society ; 
 and there were not, perhaps, in Christen- 
 dom two men more radically strangers. 
 The father, with a grand simplicity, either 
 spoke of what interested himself, or main- 
 tained an unaffected silence. The son 
 
 45 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 turned in his head for some topic that 
 should be quite safe, that would spare him 
 fresh evidences either of my lord's inherent 
 grossness or of the innocence of his in- 
 humanity ; treading gingerly the ways of 
 intercourse, like a lady gathering up her 
 skirts in a by-path. If he made a mistake, 
 and my lord began to abound in matter of 
 offence, Archie drew himself up, his brow 
 grew dark, his share of the talk expired ; 
 but my lord would faithfully and cheerfully 
 continue to pour out the worst of himself 
 before his silent and offended son. 
 
 ' Well, it's a poor hert that never re- 
 joices ! ' he would say, at the conclusion of 
 such a nightmare interview. ' But I must 
 get to my plew-stilts.' And he would 
 seclude himself as usual in the back room, 
 and Archie go forth into the night and the 
 city quivering with animosity and scorn. 
 
 46 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 IN THE MATTER OF THE HANGING OF 
 DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 It chanced in the year 1813 that Archie 
 strayed one day into the Judiciary Court. 
 The macer made room for the son of the 
 presiding judge. In the dock, the centre 
 of men's eyes, there stood a whey-coloured, 
 misbegotten caitiff, Duncan Jopp, on trial 
 for his life. His story, as it was raked out 
 before him in that pubUc scene, was one of 
 disgrace and vice and cowardice, the very 
 nakedness of crime ; and the creature heard 
 and it seemed at times as though he under- 
 stood — as if at times he forgot the horror 
 of the place he stood in, and remembered 
 the shame of what had brought him there. 
 47 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 He kept his head bowed and his hands 
 clutched upon the rail ; his hair dropped in 
 his eyes and at times he flung it back ; and 
 now he glanced about the audience in a 
 sudden fellness of terror, and now looked 
 in the face of his judge and gulped. There 
 was pinned about his throat a piece of dingy- 
 flannel ; and this it was perhaps that turned 
 the scale in Archie's mind between disgust 
 and pity. The creature stood in a vanish- 
 ing point; yet a little while, and he was 
 still a man, and had eyes and apprehension ; 
 yet a little longer, and with a last sordid 
 piece of pageantry, he would cease to be. 
 And here, in the meantime, with a trait of 
 human nature that caught at the beholder's 
 breath, he was tending a sore throat 
 
 Over against him, my Lord Hermiston 
 occupied the bench in the red robes of 
 criminal jurisdiction, his face framed in the 
 white wig. Honest all through, he did not 
 affect the virtue of impartiality ; this was 
 no case for refinement ; there was a man to 
 
 48 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 be hanged, he would have said, and he was 
 hanging him. Nor was it possible to see 
 his lordship, and acquit him of gusto in the 
 task It was plain he gloried in the exer- 
 cise of his trained faculties, in the clear 
 sight which pierced at once into the joint 
 of fact, in the rude, unvarnished gibes with 
 which he demolished every figment of de- 
 fence. He took his ease and jested, un- 
 bending in that solemn place with some of 
 the freedom of the tavern ; and the rag 
 of man with the flannel round his neck was 
 hunted gallows ward with jeers. 
 
 Duncan had a mistress, scarce less forlorn 
 and greatly older than himself, who came 
 up, whimpering and curtseying, to add the 
 weight of her betrayal. My lord gave her 
 the oath in his most roaring voice, and 
 added an intolerant warning. 
 
 * Mind what ye say now, Janet,' said he. 
 * I have an e'e upon ye, I 'm ill to jest with.' 
 
 Presently, after she was tremblingly em- 
 barked on her story, 'And what made ye 
 D 49 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 do this, ye auld runt?' the Court interposed. 
 * Do ye mean to tell me ye was the panel's 
 mistress ? ' 
 
 *If you please, ma loard,' whined the 
 female. 
 
 * Godsake I ye made a bonny couple,' 
 observed his lordship ; and there was some- 
 thing so formidable and ferocious in his 
 scorn that not even the galleries thought 
 to laugh. 
 
 The summing up contained some jewels. 
 
 'These two peetiable creatures seem to 
 have made up thegither, it 's not for us to 
 explain why.' — 'The panel, who (whatever 
 else he may be) appears to be equally ill 
 set-out in mind and boady.' — 'Neither the 
 panel nor yet the old wife appears to have 
 had so much common sense as even to tell 
 a lie when it was necessary.' And in the 
 course of sentencing, my lord had this 
 obiter dictum : * I have been the means, 
 under God, of haanging a great number, 
 but never just such a disjaskit rascal as 
 
 SO 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 yourself.' The words were strong in them- 
 selves; the light and heat and detonation 
 of their delivery, and the savage pleasure of 
 the speaker in his task, made them tingle 
 in the ears. 
 
 When all was over, Archie came forth 
 again into a changed world. Had there 
 been the least redeeming greatness in the 
 crime, any obscurity, any dubiety, perhaps 
 he might have understood. But the cul- 
 prit stood, with his sore throat, in the 
 sweat of his mortal agony, without defence 
 or excuse : a thing to cover up with blushes : 
 a being so much sunk beneath the zones of 
 sympathy that pity might seem harmless. 
 And the judge had pursued him with a 
 monstrous, relishing gaiety, horrible to be 
 conceived, a trait for nightmares. It is 
 one thing to spear a tiger, another to crush 
 a toad ; there are aesthetics even of the 
 slaughter-house ; and the loathsomeness of 
 Duncan Jopp enveloped and infected the 
 image of his judge. 
 
 51 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 Archie passed by his friends in the High 
 Street with incoherent words and gestures. 
 He saw Holyrood in a dream, remembrance 
 of its romance awoke in him and faded ; he 
 had a vision of the old radiant stories, of 
 Queen Mary and Prince Charlie, of the 
 hooded stag, of the splendour and crime, 
 the velvet and bright iron of the past ; and 
 dismissed them with a cry of pain. He lay 
 and moaned in the Hunter's Bog, and the 
 heavens were dark above him and the grass 
 of the field an offence. ' This is my father,' 
 he said. ' I draw my life from him ; the 
 flesh upon my bones is his, the bread I am 
 fed with is the wages of these horrors.' 
 He recalled his mother, and ground his 
 forehead in the earth. He thought of 
 flight, and where was he to flee to? of 
 other lives, but was there any life worth 
 living in this den of savage and jeering 
 animals ? 
 
 The interval before the execution was 
 like a violent dream. He met his father ; 
 52 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 he would not look at him, he could not 
 speak to him. It seemed there was no 
 living creature but must have been swift 
 to recognise that imminent animosity ; but 
 the hide of the Justice- Clerk remained im- 
 penetrable. Had my lord been talkative, 
 the truce could never have subsisted ; but 
 he was by fortune in one of his humours of 
 sour silence ; and under the very guns of 
 his broadside, Archie nursed the enthusiasm 
 of rebellion. It seemed to him, from the 
 top of his nineteen years' experience, as if 
 he were marked at birth to be the perpe- 
 trator of some signal action, to set back 
 fallen Mercy, to overthrow the usurping 
 devil that sat, horned and hoofed, on her 
 throne. Seductive Jacobin figments, which 
 he had often refuted at the Speculative, 
 swam up in his mind and startled him as 
 with voices : and he seemed to himself to 
 walk accompanied by an almost tangible 
 presence of new beliefs and duties. 
 
 On the named morning he was at the 
 53 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 place of execution. He saw the fleering 
 rabble, the flinching wretch produced. He 
 looked on for a while at a certain parody of 
 devotion, which seemed to strip the wretch 
 of his last claim to manhood. Then fol- 
 lowed the brutal instant of extinction, and 
 the paltry dangling of the remains like a 
 broken jumping-jack. He had been pre- 
 pared for something terrible, not for this 
 tragic meanness. He stood a moment 
 silent, and then — 'I denounce this God- 
 defying murder,' he shouted ; and his 
 father, if he must have disclaimed the 
 sentiment, might have owned the sten- 
 torian voice with which it was uttered. 
 
 Frank Innes dragged him from the spot. 
 The two handsome lads followed the same 
 course of study and recreation, and felt a 
 certain mutual attraction, founded mainly 
 on good looks. It had never gone deep; 
 Frank was by nature a thin, jeering crea- 
 ture, not truly susceptible whether of 
 feeling or inspiring friendship ; and the 
 
 54 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 relation between the pair was altogether 
 on the outside, a thing of common know- 
 ledge and the pleasantries that spring from 
 a common acquaintance. The more credit 
 to Frank that he was appalled by Archie's 
 outburst, and at least conceived the design 
 of keeping him in sight, and, if possible, in 
 hand, for the day. But Archie, who had 
 just defied — was it God or Satan ? — would 
 not listen to the word 6f a college com- 
 panion. 
 
 * I will not go with you,' he said. * I do 
 not desire your company, sir ; I would be 
 alone.' 
 
 * Here, Weir, man, don't be absurd,' said 
 Innes, keeping a tight hold upon his sleeve. 
 * I will not let you go until I know what 
 you mean to do with yourself; it's no 
 use brandishing that staff.' For indeed at 
 that moment Archie had made a sudden — 
 perhaps a warlike — movement *This has 
 been the most insane affair ; you know it 
 has. You know very well that I 'm play- 
 
 55 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 ing the good Samaritan. All I wish is to 
 keep you quiet' 
 
 'If quietness is what you wish, Mr. 
 Innes,' said Archie, ' and you will promise 
 to leave me entirely to myself, I will tell you 
 so much, that I am going to walk in the 
 country and admire the beauties of nature.' 
 
 * Honour bright ? ' asked Frank. 
 
 * I am not in the habit of lying, Mr. 
 Innes,' retorted Archie. ' I have the 
 honour of wishing you good-day.' 
 
 * You won't forget the Spec. ? ' asked 
 Innes. 
 
 *The Spec.?' said Archie. *0 no, I 
 won't forget the Spec* 
 
 And the one young man carried his 
 tortured spirit forth of the city and all the 
 day long, by one road and another, in an 
 endless pilgrimage of misery; while the 
 other hastened smilingly to spread the 
 news of Weir's access of insanity, and to 
 drum up for that night a full attendance 
 at the Speculative, where further eccentric 
 
 56 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 developments might certainly be looked 
 for. I doubt if Innes had the least belief 
 in his prediction ; I think it flowed rather 
 from a wish to make the story as good and 
 the scandal as great as possible ; not from 
 any ill-will to Archie — from the mere 
 pleasure of beholding interested faces. But 
 for all that his words were prophetic. 
 Archie did not forget the Spec. ; he put 
 in an appearance there at the due time, 
 and, before the evening was over, had dealt 
 a memorable shock to his companions. 
 It chanced he was the president of the 
 night He sat in the same room where the 
 Society still meets — only the portraits were 
 not there : the men who afterwards sat for 
 them were then but beginning their career. 
 The same lustre of many tapers shed its 
 light over the meeting; the same chair, 
 perhaps, supported him that so many of us 
 have sat in since. At times he seemed to 
 forget the business of the evening, but 
 even in these periods he sat with a great 
 57 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 air of energy and determination. At times 
 he meddled bitterly, and launched with 
 defiance those fines which are the precious 
 and rarely used artillery of the president 
 He little thought, as he did so, how he 
 resembled his father, but his friends re- 
 marked upon it, chuckling. So far, in his 
 high place above his fellow-students, he 
 seemed set beyond the possibility of any 
 scandal; but his mind was made up — he 
 was determined to fulfil the sphere of his 
 offence. He signed to Innes (whom he 
 had just fined, and who just impeached his 
 ruling) to succeed him in the chair, stepped 
 down from the platform, and took his place 
 by the chimney-piece, the shine of many 
 wax tapers from above illuminating his 
 pale face, the glow of the great red fire 
 relieving from behind his slim figure. He 
 had to propose, as an amendment to the 
 next subject in the case-book, 'Whether 
 capital punishment be consistent with God's 
 will or man's policy ? ' 
 
 58 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 A breath of embarrassment, of some- 
 thing hke alarm, passed round the room, so 
 daring did these words appear upon the 
 hps of Hermiston's only son. But the 
 amendment was not seconded; the pre- 
 vious question was promptly moved and 
 unanimously voted, and the momentary 
 scandal smuggled by. Innes triumphed in 
 the fulfilment of his prophecy. He and 
 Archie were now become the heroes of the 
 night; but whereas every one crowded 
 about Innes, when the meeting broke up, 
 but one of all his companions came to 
 speak to Archie. 
 
 ' Weir, man 1 That was an extraordinary 
 raid of yours 1 ' observed this courageous 
 member, taking him confidentially by the 
 arm as they went out. 
 
 ^I don't think it a raid,' said Archie 
 grimly. 'More like a war. I saw that 
 poor brute hanged this morning, and my 
 gorge rises at it yet.' 
 
 * Hut-tut,' returned his companion, and, 
 59 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 dropping his arm like something hot, he 
 sought the less tense society of others. 
 
 Archie found himself alone. The last of 
 the faithful — or was it only the boldest of 
 the curious? — had fled. He watched the 
 black huddle of his fellow-students draw 
 off down and up the street, in whispering 
 or boisterous gangs. And the isolation of 
 the moment weighed upon him like an 
 omen and an emblem of his destiny in life. 
 Bred up in unbroken fear himself, among 
 trembling servants, and in a house which 
 (at the least ruffle in the master s voice) 
 shuddered into silence, he saw himself on 
 the brink of the red valley of war, and 
 measured the danger and length of it with 
 awe. He made a detour m the glimmer 
 and shadow of the streets, came into the 
 back stable lane, and watched for a long 
 while the light burn steady in the Judge's 
 room. The longer he gazed upon that 
 illuminated window-blind, the more blank 
 became the picture of the man who sat 
 60 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 behind it, endlessly turning over sheets of 
 process, pausing to sip a glass of port, or 
 rising and passing heavily about his book- 
 lined walls to verify some reference. He 
 could not combine the brutal judge and 
 the industrious, dispassionate student ; the 
 connecting link escaped him ; from such a 
 dual nature, it was impossible he should 
 predict behaviour ; and he asked himself if 
 he had done well to plunge into a business 
 of which the end could not be foreseen? 
 and presently after, with a sickening decline 
 of confidence, if he had done loyally to 
 strike his father ? For he had struck him 
 — defied him twice over and before a cloud 
 of witnesses — struck him a public buffet 
 before crowds. Who had called him to 
 judge his father in these precarious and 
 high questions? The ofiice was usurped. 
 It might have become a stranger ; in a son 
 — there was no blinking it — in a son, it was 
 disloyal. And now, between these two 
 natures so antipathetic, so hateful to each 
 6i 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 other, there was depending an unpardon- 
 able affront: and the providence of God 
 alone might foresee the manner in which it 
 would be resented by Lord Hermiston. 
 
 These misgivings tortured him all night 
 and arose with him in the winter s morning ; 
 they followed him from class to class, they 
 made him shrinkingly sensitive to every 
 shade of manner in his companions, they 
 sounded in his ears through the current 
 voice of the professor; and he brought 
 them home with him at night unabated 
 and indeed increased. The cause of this 
 increase lay in a chance encounter with 
 the celebrated Dr. Gregory. Archie stood 
 looking vaguely in the lighted window of 
 a book shop, trying to nerve himself for 
 the approaching ordeal. My lord and he 
 had met and parted in the morning as they 
 had now done for long, with scarcely the 
 ordinary civilities of life ; and it was plain 
 to the son that nothing had yet reached 
 the father's ears. . Indeed, when he recalled 
 62 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 the awful countenance of my lord, a timid 
 hope sprang up in him that perhaps there 
 would be found no one bold enough to 
 carry tales. If this were so, he asked him- 
 self, would he begin again ? and he found 
 no answer. It was at this moment that a 
 hand was laid upon his arm, and a voice 
 said in his ear, * My dear Mr. Archie, you 
 had better come and see me.' 
 
 He started, turned round, and found 
 himself face to face with Dr. Gregory. 
 * And why should I come to see you ? ' he 
 asked, with the defiance of the miserable. 
 
 ' Because you are looking exceeding ill,' 
 said the doctor, 'and you very evidently 
 want looking after, my young friend. Good 
 folk are scarce, you know; and it is not 
 every one that would be quite so much 
 missed as yourself. It is not every one 
 that Hermiston would miss.' 
 
 And with a nod and a smile, the doctor 
 passed on. 
 
 A moment after, Archie was in pursuit, 
 
 63 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 and had in turn, but more roughly, seized 
 him by the arm. 
 
 * What do you. mean ? what did you 
 mean by saying that? What makes you 
 think that Hermis — my father would have 
 missed me ? ' 
 
 The doctor turned about and looked him 
 all over with a clinical eye. A far more 
 stupid man than Dr. Gregory might have 
 guessed the truth ; but ninety-nine out of 
 a hundred, even if they had been equally 
 inclined to kindness, would have blundered 
 by some touch of charitable exaggeration. 
 The doctor was better inspired. He knew 
 the father well ; in that white face of in- 
 telligence and suffering, he divined some- 
 thing of the son; and he told, without 
 apology or adornment, the plain truth. 
 
 * When you had the measles, Mr. Archi- 
 bald, you had them gey and ill ; and I 
 thought you were going to slip between 
 my fingers,' he said. *Well, your father 
 was anxious. How did I know it? says 
 
 64 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 you. Simply because I am a trained ob- 
 server. The sign that I saw him make, ten 
 thousand would have missed ; and perhaps 
 — perhaps, I say, because he's a hard man 
 to judge of — but perhaps he never made 
 another. A strange thing to consider ! It 
 was this. One day I came to him : " Her- 
 miston," said I, "there's a change." He 
 never said a word, just glowered at me (if 
 ye '11 pardon the phrase) like a wild beast. 
 "A change for the better," said I. And 
 I distinctly heard him take his breath.' 
 
 The doctor left no opportunity for anti- 
 climax ; nodding his cocked hat (a piece of 
 antiquity to which he clung) and repeating 
 * Distinctly ' with raised eyebrows, he took 
 his departure, and left Archie speechless in 
 the street. 
 
 The anecdote might be called infinitely 
 little, and yet its meaning for Archie was 
 immense. * I did not know the old man 
 had so much blood in him.' He had never 
 dreamed this sire of his, this aboriginal 
 E 65 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 antique, this adamantine Adam, had even 
 so much of a heart as to be moved in the 
 least degree for another — and that other 
 himself, who had insulted him ! With the 
 generosity of youth, Archie was instantly 
 under arms upon the other side : had 
 instantly created a new image of Lord 
 Hermiston, that of a man who was all iron 
 without and all sensibility within. The 
 mind of the vile jester, the tongue that had 
 pursued Duncan Jopp with unmanly insults, 
 the unbeloved countenance that he had 
 known and feared for so long, were all for- 
 gotten; and he hastened home, impatient 
 to confess his misdeeds, impatient to throw 
 himself on the mercy of this imaginary 
 character. 
 
 He was not to be long without a rude 
 awakening. It was in the gloaming when 
 he drew near the doorstep of the lighted 
 house, and was aware of the figure of his 
 father approaching from the opposite side. 
 Little daylight lingered ; but on the door 
 66 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 being opened, the strong yellow shine of 
 the lamp gushed out upon the landing and 
 shone full on Archie, as he stood, in the 
 old-fashioned observance of respect, to yield 
 precedence. The Judge came without 
 haste, stepping stately and firm ; his chin 
 raised, his face (as he entered the lamplight) 
 strongly illumined, his mouth set hard. 
 There was never a wink of change in his 
 expression ; without looking to the right 
 or left, he mounted the stair, passed close 
 to Archie, and entered the house. In- 
 stinctively, the boy, upon his first coming, 
 had made a movement to meet him ; in- 
 stinctively, he recoiled against the railing, 
 as the old man swept by him in a pomp 
 of indignation. Words were needless ; he 
 knew all — perhaps more than all — and the 
 hour of judgment was at hand. 
 
 It is possible that, in this sudden revulsion 
 of hope, and before these symptoms of im- 
 pending danger, Archie might have fled. 
 But not even that was left to him. My 
 67 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 lord, after hanging up his cloak and hat, 
 turned round in the lighted entry, and 
 made him an imperative and silent gesture 
 with his thumb, and with the strange 
 instinct of obedience, Archie followed him 
 into the house. 
 
 All dinner-time there reigned over the 
 Judge's table a palpable silence, and as soon 
 as the solids were despatched he rose to his 
 feet. 
 
 *M*Killup, tak' the wine into my room,' 
 said he ; and then to his son : ' Archie, you 
 and me has to have a talk.' 
 
 It was at this sickening moment that 
 Archie's courage, for the first and last time, 
 entirely deserted him. * I have an appoint- 
 ment,' said he. 
 
 ' It 'U have to be broken, then,' said 
 Hermiston, and led the way into his 
 study. 
 
 The lamp was shaded, the fire trimmed 
 to a nicety, the table covered deep with 
 orderly documents, the backs of law books 
 68 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 made a frame upon all sides that was only 
 broken by the window and the doors. 
 
 For a moment Hermiston warmed his 
 hands at the fire, presenting his back to 
 Archie ; then suddenly disclosed on him 
 the terrors of the Hanging Face. 
 
 * What 's this I hear of ye ? ' he asked. 
 
 There was no answer possible to Archie. 
 
 ' 1 11 have to tell ye, then,' pursued 
 Hermiston. * It seems ye Ve been skirling 
 against the father that begot ye, and one 
 of his Maijesty's Judges in this land ; and 
 that in the public street, and while an order 
 of the Court was being executit. Forbye 
 which, it would appear that yeVe been 
 airing your opeenions in a Coallege Debatin' 
 Society ' ; he paused a moment : and then, 
 with extraordinary bitterness, added : ' Ye 
 damned eediot.' 
 
 *I had meant to tell you,' stammered 
 Archie. * I see you are well informed.' 
 
 *Muckle obleeged to ye,' said his lord- 
 ship, and took his usual seat. * And so you 
 
 69 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 disapprove of Caapital Punishment ? ' he 
 added. 
 
 * I am sorry, sir, I do,' said Archie. 
 
 *I am sorry, too,' said his lordship. 
 ' And now, if you please, we shall approach 
 this business with a Httle more parteecu- 
 larity. I hear that at the hanging of 
 Duncan Jopp — and, man 1 ye had a fine 
 client there — in the middle of all the rifF- 
 rafF of the ceety, ye thought fit to cry out, 
 " This is a damned murder, and my gorge 
 rises at the man that haangit him." ' 
 
 ' No, sir, these were not my words,' cried 
 Archie. 
 
 *What were yer words, then?' asked 
 the Judge. 
 
 *I believe I said, "I denounce it as 
 a murder!"' said the son. *I beg your 
 pardon — a God-defying murder. I have 
 no wish to conceal the truth,' he added, 
 and looked his father for a moment in the 
 face. 
 
 ' God, it would only need that of it next!' 
 70 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 cried Hermiston. ' There was nothing 
 about your gorge rising, then ? ' 
 
 * That was afterwards, my lord, as I was 
 leaving the Speculative. I said I had been 
 to see the miserable creature hanged, and 
 my gorge rose at it' 
 
 * Did ye, though?' said Hermiston. 'And 
 I suppose ye knew who haangit him ? ' 
 
 *I was present at the trial, I ought to 
 tell you that, I ought to explain. I ask 
 your pardon beforehand for any expression 
 that may seem undutiful. The position in 
 which I stand is wretched,' said the un- 
 happy hero, now fairly face to face with 
 the business he had chosen. * I have been 
 reading some of your cases. I was present 
 while Jopp was tried. It was a hideous 
 business. Father, it was a hideous thing ! 
 Grant he was vile, why should you hunt 
 him with a vileness equal to his own ? It 
 was done with glee — that is the word — you 
 did it with glee ; and I looked on, God 
 help me 1 with horror.' 
 71 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 * You re a young gentleman that does- 
 na approve of Caapital Punishment/ said 
 Hermiston. ' Weel, I 'm an auld man that 
 does. I was glad to get Jopp haangit, 
 and what for would I pretend I wasna? 
 You re all for honesty, it seems ; you 
 couldn't even steik your mouth on the 
 public street What for should I steik 
 mines upon the bench, the King's officer, 
 bearing the sword, a dreid to evil-doers, as 
 I was from the beginning, and as I will 
 be to the end ! Mair than enough of it ! 
 Heedious ! I never gave twa thoughts to 
 heediousness, I have no call to be bonny. 
 I *m a man that gets through with my day's 
 business, and let that suffice.' 
 
 The ring of sarcasm had died out of his 
 voice as he went on ; the plain words 
 became invested with some of the dignity 
 of the Justice-seat. 
 
 * It would be telling you if you could say 
 as much,' the speaker resumed. ' But ye 
 cannot Ye 've been reading some of my 
 
 72 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JORP 
 
 cases, ye say. But it was not for the law 
 in them, it was to spy out your faither's 
 nakedness, a fine employment in a son. 
 You 're splairging ; you 're running at lairge 
 in life like a wild nowt. It's impossible 
 you should think any longer of coming to 
 the Bar. You 're not fit for it ; no splairger 
 is. And another thing: son of mines or 
 no son of mines, you have flung fylement 
 in public on one of the Senators of the 
 Coallege of Justice, and I would make it 
 my business to see that ye were never 
 admitted there yourself There is a kind 
 of a decency to be observit. Then comes 
 the next of it — what am I to do with ye 
 next ? Ye '11 have to find some kind of a 
 trade, for I '11 never support ye in idleset. 
 What do ye fancy ye '11 be fit for ? The 
 pulpit ? Na, they could never get diveenity 
 into that bloackhead. Him that the law 
 of man whammles is no likely to do muckle 
 better by the law of God. What would ye 
 make of hell? Wouldna your gorge rise 
 
 7Z 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 at that ? Na, there *s no room for splairgers 
 under the fower quarters of John Calvin. 
 What else is there ? Speak up. Have ye 
 got nothing of your own ? ' 
 
 'Father, let me go to the Peninsula,' 
 said Archie. 'That's all I'm fit for — to 
 fight.' 
 
 ' All ? quo' he I ' returned the Judge. 
 ' And it would be enough too, if I thought 
 it But I'll never trust ye so near the 
 French, you that 's so Frenchifeed.' 
 
 'You do me injustice there, sir,' said 
 Archie. ' I am loyal ; I will not boast ; 
 but any interest I may have ever felt in the 
 French ' 
 
 ' Have ye been so loyal to me ? ' inter- 
 rupted his father. 
 
 There came no reply. 
 
 ' I think not,' continued Hermiston. 
 * And I would send no man to be a servant 
 to the King, God bless him 1 that has 
 proved such a shauchling son to his own 
 faither. You can splairge here on Edin- 
 74 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 burgh street, and where 's the hairm? It 
 doesna play buff on me ! And if there 
 were twenty thousand eediots like yourself, 
 sorrow a Duncan Jopp would hang the 
 fewer. But there's no splairging possible 
 in a camp ; and if you were to go to it, you 
 would find out for yourself whether Lord 
 Welln'ton approves of caapital punishment 
 or not. You a sodger ! ' he cried, with a 
 sudden burst of scorn. * Ye auld wife, the 
 sodjers would bray at ye like cuddies ! ' 
 
 As at the drawing of a curtain, Archie 
 was aware of some illogicality in his posi- 
 tion, and stood abashed. He had a strong 
 impression, besides, of the essential valour 
 of the old gentleman before him, how con- 
 veyed it would be hard to say. 
 
 * Well, have ye no other proposeetion ? ' 
 said my lord again. 
 
 * You have taken this so calmly, sir, that 
 I cannot but stand ashamed,' began Archie. 
 
 ' I 'm nearer voamiting, though, than you 
 would fancy,' said my lord. 
 75 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 The blood rose to Archie's brow. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon, I should have said 
 that you had accepted my affront. ... I 
 admit it was an affront ; I did not think to 
 apologise, but I do, I ask your pardon ; it 
 will not be so again, I pass you my word of 
 honour. ... I should have said that I 
 admired your magnanimity with — this — 
 offender,' Archie concluded with a gulp. 
 
 * I have no other son, ye see,' said Her- 
 miston. ' A bonny one I have gotten ! 
 But I must just do the best I can wi' him, 
 and what am I to do? If ye had been 
 younger, I would have wheepit ye for this 
 rideeculous exhibeetion. The way it is, I 
 have just to grin and bear. But one thing 
 is to be clearly understood. As a faither, I 
 must grin and bear it ; but if I had been 
 the Lord Advocate instead of the Lord 
 Justice-Clerk, son or no son, Mr. Erchibald 
 Weir would have been in a jyle the night.' 
 
 Archie was now dominated. Lord Her- 
 miston was coarse and cruel ; and yet the 
 1^ 
 
HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP 
 
 son was aware of a bloomless nobility, an 
 ungracious abnegation of the man's self in 
 the man's office. At every word, this sense 
 of the greatness of Lord Hermiston's spirit 
 struck more home ; and along with it that 
 of his own impotence, who had struck— and 
 perhaps basely struck — at his own father, 
 and not reached so far as to have even 
 nettled him. 
 
 *I place myself in your hands without 
 reserve,' he said. 
 
 ' That 's the first sensible word I 've had 
 of ye the night,' said Hermiston. 'I can 
 tell ye, that would have been the end of it, 
 the one way or the other ; but it 's better 
 ye should come there yourself, than what I 
 would have had to hirstle ye. Weel, by 
 my way of it — and my way is the best — 
 there 's just the one thing it 's possible that 
 ye might be with decency, and that's a 
 laird. Ye '11 be out of hairm's way at the 
 least of it. If ye have to rowt, ye can rowt 
 amang the kye ; and the maist feck of the 
 77 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 caapital punishment ye re like to come 
 across 11 be guddling trouts. Now, I 'm for 
 no idle lairdies ; every man has to work, if 
 it 's only at peddling ballants ; to work, or 
 to be wheeped, or to be haangit If I set 
 ye down at Hermiston, 1 11 have to see you 
 work that place the way it has never been 
 workit yet ; ye must ken about the sheep 
 like a herd ; ye must be my grieve there, 
 and 1 11 see that I gain by ye. Is that 
 understood ? ' 
 
 * I will do my best,' said Archie. 
 
 * Well, then, 1 11 send Kirstie word the 
 morn, and ye can go yourself the day after,' 
 said Hermiston. * And just try to be less 
 of an eediot ! ' he concluded, with a freezing 
 smile, and turned immediately to the papers 
 on his desk. 
 
 78 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 
 Late the same night, after a disordered 
 walk, Archie was admitted into Lord Glen- 
 almond's dining-room, where he sat, with a 
 book upon his knee, beside three frugal 
 coals of fire. In his robes upon the bench, 
 Glenalmond had a certain air of burliness : 
 plucked of these, it was a may-pole of a 
 man that rose unsteadily from his chair to 
 give his visitor welcome. Archie had suf- 
 fered much in the last days, he had suffered 
 again that evening ; his face was white and 
 drawn, his eyes wild and dark. But Lord 
 Glenalmond greeted him without the least 
 mark of surprise or curiosity. 
 
 * Come in, come in,* said he. * Come in 
 79 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON. 
 
 and take a seat. Carstairs ' (to his servant) 
 ' make up the fire, and then you can bring 
 a bit of supper,' and again to Archie, with 
 a very trivial accent : * I vras half expecting 
 you,' he added. 
 
 ' No supper,' said Archie. * It is impos- 
 sible that I should eat.' 
 
 'Not impossible,' said the tall old man, 
 laying his hand upon his shoulder, ' and, if 
 you vrill believe me, necessary.' 
 
 * You know what brings me ? ' said 
 Archie, as soon as the servant had left the 
 room. 
 
 * I have a guess, I have a guess,' replied 
 Glen almond. * We will talk of it presently 
 — when Carstairs has come and gone, and 
 you have had a piece of my good Cheddar 
 cheese and a pull at the porter tankard : 
 not before.' 
 
 * It is impossible I should eat,' repeated 
 Archie. 
 
 * Tut, tut I ' said Lord Glenalmond. 
 *You have eaten nothing to-day, and I 
 
 80 
 
OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 
 venture to add, nothing yesterday. There 
 is no case that may not be made worse: 
 this may be a very disagreeable business, 
 but if you were to fall sick and die, it would 
 be still more so, and for all concerned — for 
 all concerned.' 
 
 ' I see you must know all,' said Archie. 
 * Where did you hear it ? ' 
 
 * In the mart of scandal, in the Parliament 
 House,' said Glenalmond. *It runs riot 
 below among the bar and the public, but it 
 sifts up to us upon the bench, and rumour 
 has some of her voices even in the divisions.' 
 
 Carstairs returned at this moment, and 
 rapidly laid out a little supper; during 
 which Lord Glenalmond spoke at large 
 and a little vaguely on indifferent subjects, 
 so that it might be rather said of him that 
 he made a cheerful noise, than that he 
 contributed to human conversation ; and 
 Archie sat upon the other side, not heeding 
 him, brooding over his wrongs and errors. 
 
 But so soon as the servant was gone, he 
 F Si 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 broke forth again at once. ' Who told my 
 father? Who dared to tell him? Could 
 it have been you ? ' 
 
 * No, it was not me,' said the Judge ; 
 * although — to be quite frank with you, and 
 after I had seen and warned you — it might 
 have been me. I believe it was Glenkindie.' 
 
 ' That shrimp ! ' cried Archie. 
 
 *As you say, that shrimp,' returned my 
 lord ; ' although really it is scarce a fitting 
 mode of expression for one of the senators 
 of the College of Justice. We were hear- 
 ing the parties in a long, crucial case, before 
 the fifteen; Creech was moving at some 
 length for an infeftment; when I saw 
 Glenkindie lean forward to Hermiston 
 with his hand over his mouth and make 
 him a secret communication. No one 
 could have guessed its nature from your 
 father; from Glenkindie, yes, his malice 
 sparked out of him a little grossly. But 
 your father, no. A man of granite. The 
 next moment he pounced upon Creech. 
 82 
 
OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 
 " Mr. Creech," says he, " I '11 take a look 
 of that sasine," and for thirty minutes after,' 
 said Glenalmond, with a smile, 'Messrs. 
 Creech and Co. were fighting a pretty 
 uphill battle, which resulted, I need hardly 
 add, in their total rout. The case was dis- 
 missed. No, I doubt if ever I heard Her- 
 miston better inspired. He was literally 
 rejoicing in apicibus juris' 
 
 Archie was able to endure no longer. 
 He thrust his plate away and interrupted 
 the deliberate and insignificant stream of 
 talk. ' Here,' he said, * I have made a fool 
 of myself, if I have not made something 
 worse. Do you judge between us — judge 
 between a father and a son. I can speak 
 to you ; it is not like ... I will tell you 
 what I feel and what I mean to do ; and 
 you shall be the judge,' he repeated. 
 
 ' I decline jurisdiction,' said Glenalmond, 
 with extreme seriousness. * But, my dear 
 boy, if it will do you any good to talk, and 
 if it will interest you at all to hear what I 
 
 83 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 may choose to say when I have heard you, 
 I am quite at your command. Let an old 
 man say it, for once, and not need to blush : 
 I love you like a son.' 
 
 There came a sudden sharp sound in 
 Archie's throat. 'Ay,' he cried, 'and there 
 it is ! Love 1 Like a son ! And how do 
 you think I love my father ? ' 
 
 * Quietly, quietly,' says my lord. 
 
 *I will be very quiet,' replied Archie. 
 'And I will be baldly frank. I do not 
 love my father; I wonder sometimes if I 
 do not hate him. There 's my shame ; 
 perhaps my sin ; at least, and in the sight 
 of God, not my fault. How was I to love 
 him? He has never spoken to me, never 
 smiled upon me ; I do not think he ever 
 touched me. You know the way he talks ? 
 You do not talk so, yet you can sit and 
 hear him without shuddering, and I cannot. 
 My soul is sick when he begins with it ; I 
 could smite him in the mouth. And all 
 that's nothing. I was at the trial of this 
 
 84 
 
OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 
 Jopp. You were not there, but you must 
 have heard him often ; the man 's notorious 
 for it, for being — ^look at my position 1 he 's 
 my father and this is how I have to speak 
 of him — notorious for being a brute and 
 cruel and a coward. Lord Glenalmond, I 
 give you my word, when I came out of 
 that Court, I longed to die — the shame of 
 it was beyond my strength : but I — I — ' 
 he rose from his seat and began to pace the 
 room in a disorder. *Well, who am I? 
 A boy, who have never been tried, have 
 never done anything except this twopenny 
 impotent folly with my father. But I tell 
 you, my lord, and I know myself, I am at 
 least that kind of a man — or that kind of a 
 boy, if you prefer it — that I could die in 
 torments rather than that any one should 
 suffer as that scoundrel suffered. Well, 
 and what have I done ? I see it now. I 
 have made a fool of myself, as I said in the 
 beginning; and I have gone back, and 
 asked my father's pardon, and placed my- 
 
 85 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 self wholly in his hands — and he has sent 
 me to Hermiston,' with a wretched smile, 
 * for life, I suppose — and what can I say ? 
 he strikes me as having done quite right, 
 and let me off better than I had deserved.' 
 
 * My poor, dear boy 1 ' observed Glen- 
 almond. ' My poor dear and, if you will 
 allow me to say so, very foolish boy I You 
 are only discovering where you are ; to one 
 of your temperament, or of mine, a painful 
 discovery. The world was not made for 
 us ; it was made for ten hundred millions 
 of men, all different from each other and 
 from us ; there s no royal road there, we 
 just have to sclamber and tumble. Don't 
 think that I am at all disposed to be sur- 
 prised ; don't suppose that I ever think of 
 blaming you ; indeed I rather admire ! 
 But there fall to be offered one or two 
 observations on the case which occur to 
 me and which (if you will listen to them 
 dispassionately) may be the means of in- 
 ducmg you to view the matter more calmly. 
 86 
 
OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 
 First of all, I cannot acquit you of a good 
 deal of what is called intolerance. You 
 seem to have been very much offended 
 because your father talks a little scul- 
 duddery after dinner, which it is perfectly 
 licit for him to do, and which (although I 
 am not very fond of it myself) appears to 
 be entirely an affair of taste. Your father, 
 I scarcely like to remind you, since it is so 
 trite a commonplace, is older than yourself. 
 At least, he is major and sui juris, and 
 may please himself in the matter of his 
 conversation. And, do you know, I 
 wonder if he might not have as good an 
 answer against you and me ? We say we 
 sometimes find him coarse, but I suspect 
 he might retort that he finds us always 
 duU. Perhaps a relevant exception.' 
 
 He beamed on Archie, but no smile 
 could be elicited. 
 
 * And now,' proceeded the Judge, * for 
 ** Archibald on Capital Punishment" 
 This is a very plausible academic opinion ; 
 
 87 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 of course I do not and I cannot hold it; 
 but that 's not to say that many able and 
 excellent persons have not done so in the 
 past. Possibly, in the past also, I may 
 have a little dipped myself in the same 
 heresy. My third client, or possibly my 
 fourth, was the means of a return in my 
 opinions. I never saw the man I more 
 believed in ; I would have put my hand 
 in the fire, I would have gone to the cross 
 for him ; and when it came to trial he was 
 gradually pictured before me, by undeniable 
 probation, in the light of so gross, so cold- 
 blooded, and so black-hearted a villain, 
 that I had a mind to have cast my brief 
 upon the table. I was then boiling against 
 the man with even a more tropical tem- 
 perature than I had been boiling for him. 
 But I said to myself : " No, you have taken 
 up his case ; and because you have changed 
 your mind it must not be suffered to let 
 drop. All that rich tide of eloquence that 
 you prepared last night with so much 
 88 
 
OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 
 enthusiasm is out of place, and yet you 
 must not desert him, you must say some- 
 thing." So I said something, and I got 
 him off. It made my reputation. But an 
 experience of that kind is formative. A 
 man must not bring his passions to the bar 
 — or to the bench,' he added. 
 
 The story had slightly rekindled Archie's 
 interest ' I could never deny,' he began — 
 * I mean I can conceive that some men 
 would be better dead. But who are we to 
 know all the springs of God's unfortunate 
 creatures ? Who are we to trust ourselves 
 where it seems that God Himself must 
 think twice before He treads, and to do 
 it with delight ? Yes, with delight. Tigris 
 ut aspera. 
 
 * Perhaps not a pleasant spectacle,' said 
 Glenalmond. 'And yet, do you know, I 
 think somehow a great one.' 
 
 * I 've had a long talk with him to-night,' 
 said Archie. 
 
 ' I was supposing so,** said Glenalmond, 
 89 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 * And he struck me — I cannot deny that 
 he struck me as something very big/ pur- 
 sued the son. ' Yes, he is big. He never 
 spoke about himself; only about me. I 
 suppose I admired him. The dreadful 
 part ' 
 
 ' Suppose we did not talk about that,' 
 interrupted Glenalmond. 'You know it 
 very well, it cannot in any way help that 
 you should brood upon it, and I sometimes 
 wonder whether you and I — who are a pair 
 of sentimentalists — are quite good judges 
 of plain men.' 
 
 ' How do you mean ? ' asked Archie. 
 
 'Fair judges, I mean,' replied Glen- 
 almond. ' Can we be just to them ? Do 
 we not ask too much ? There was a word 
 of yours just now that impressed me a little 
 when you asked me who we were to know 
 all the springs of God's unfortunate 
 creatures. You applied that, as I under- 
 stood, to capital cases only. But does it — 
 I ask myself — does it not apply all through ? 
 90 
 
OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 
 Is it any less difficult to judge of a good 
 man or of a half-good man, than of the 
 worst criminal at the bar ? And may not 
 each have relevant excuses ? ' 
 
 * Ah, but we do not talk of punishing the 
 good,' cried Archie. 
 
 ' No, we do not talk of it,' said Glen- 
 almond. * But I think we do it Your 
 father, for instance.' 
 
 * You think I have punished him ? ' cried 
 Archie. 
 
 Lord Glenalmond bowed his head. 
 
 ' I think I have,' said Archie. ^ And the 
 worst is, I think he feels it I How much, 
 who can tell, with such a being? But I 
 think he does.' 
 
 * And I am sure of it,' said Glenalmond. 
 'Has he spoken to you, then?' cried 
 
 Archie. 
 
 ' O no,' replied the judge. 
 
 *I tell you honestly,' said Archie, *I 
 want to make it up to him. I will go, I 
 have already pledged myself to go to Her- 
 91 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 miston. That wiis to him. And now I 
 pledge myself to you, in the sight of God, 
 that I will close my mouth on capital 
 punishment and all other subjects where 
 our views may clash, for — how long shall 
 I say ? when shall I have sense enough ? — 
 ten years. Is that well ? ' 
 
 * It is well,' said my lord. 
 
 ' As far as it goes,' said Archie. * It is 
 enough as regards myself, it is to lay down 
 enough of my conceit. But as regards him, 
 whom I have publicly insulted ? What 
 am I to do to him ? How do you pay 
 attentions to a — an Alp like that ? ' 
 
 * Only in one way,' replied Glenalmond. 
 * Only by obedience, punctual, prompt, and 
 scrupulous.' 
 
 'And I promise that he shall have it,' 
 answered Archie. ' I offer you my hand 
 in pledge of it' 
 
 * And I take your hand as a solemnity,' 
 replied the judge. * God bless you, my 
 dear, and enable you to keep your promise. 
 
 92 
 
OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 
 God guide you in the true way, and spare 
 your days, and preserve to you your honest 
 heart ' At that, he kissed the young man 
 upon the forehead in a gracious, distant, 
 antiquated way ; and instantly launched, 
 with a marked change of voice, into another 
 subject. *And now, let us replenish the 
 tankard ; and I believe, if you will try my 
 Cheddar again, you would find you had a 
 better appetite. The Court has spoken, 
 and the case is dismissed.' 
 
 ' No, there is one thing I must say,' cried 
 Archie. ' I must say it in justice to him- 
 self I know — I believe faithfully, slavishly, 
 after our talk — he will never ask me any- 
 thing unjust. I am proud to feel it, that 
 we have that much in common, I am proud 
 to say it to you.' 
 
 The Judge, with shining eyes, raised his 
 tankard. 'And I think perhaps that we 
 might permit ourselves a toast,' said he. • I 
 should like to propose the health of a man 
 very different from me and very much my 
 93 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 superior — a man from whom I have often 
 differed, who has often (in the trivial ex- 
 pression) rubbed me the wrong way, but 
 whom I have never ceased to respect and, 
 I may add, to be not a Httle afraid of. 
 Shall I give you his name ? ' 
 
 * The Lord Justice- Clerk, Lord Hermis- 
 ton,' said Archie, almost with gaiety ; and 
 the pair drank the toast deeply. 
 
 It was not precisely easy to re-establish, 
 after these emotional passages, the natural 
 flow of conversation. But the Judge eked 
 out what was wanting with kind looks, pro- 
 duced his snuff-box (which was very rarely 
 seen) to fill in a pause, and at last, despair- 
 ing of any further social success, was upon 
 the point of getting down a book to read 
 a favourite passage, when there came a 
 rather startling summons at the front door, 
 and Carstairs ushered in my Lord Glen- 
 kindie, hot from a midnight supper. I am 
 not aware that Glenkindie was ever a 
 beautiful object, being short, and gross- 
 94 
 
OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 
 bodied, and with an expression of sen- 
 suality comparable to a bear's. At that 
 moment, coming in hissing from many 
 potations, with a flushed countenance and 
 blurred eyes, he was strikingly contrasted 
 with the tall, pale, kingly figure of Glen- 
 almond. A rush of confused thought came 
 over Archie — of shame that this was one 
 of his father's elect friends ; of pride, that 
 at the least of it Hermiston could carry his 
 liquor ; and last of all, of rage, that he 
 should have here under his eyes the man 
 that had betrayed him. And then that 
 too passed away ; and he sat quiet, biding 
 his opportunity. 
 
 The tipsy senator plunged at once into 
 an explanation with Glenalmond. There 
 was a point reserved yesterday, he had been 
 able to make neither head nor tail of it, 
 and seeing hghts in the house, he had just 
 dropped in for a glass of porter — and at 
 this point he became aware of the third 
 person. Archie saw the cod's mouth and 
 95 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 the blunt lips of Glenkindie gape at him 
 for a moment, and the recognition twinkle 
 in his eyes. 
 
 ' Who 's this ? ' said he. ' What ? is this 
 possibly you, Don Quickshot? And how 
 are ye? And how's your father? And 
 what 's all this we hear of you ? It seems 
 you re a most extraordinary leveller, by all 
 tales. No king, no parliaments, and your 
 gorge rises at the macers, worthy men 1 
 Hoot, toot! Dear, dear me! Your father's 
 son too I Most rideeculous ! ' 
 
 Archie was on his feet, flushing a little 
 at the reappearance of his unhappy figure 
 of speech, but perfectly self-possessed. 
 *My lord — and you, Lord Glenalmond, 
 my dear friend,' he began, * this is a happy 
 chance for me, that I can make my con- 
 fession and offer my apologies to two of 
 you at once.' 
 
 * Ah, but I don't know about that Con- 
 fession? It'll be judeecial, my young 
 friend,' cried the jocular Glenkindie. * And 
 V 96 
 
OPINIONS OF THE BENCH 
 
 I 'm afraid to listen to ye. Think if ye 
 were to make me a coanvert ! ' 
 
 * If you would allow me, my lord/ re- 
 turned Archie, *what I have to say is 
 very serious to me ; and be pleased to be 
 humorous after I am gone ! ' 
 
 ' Remember, 1 11 hear nothing against the 
 macersi' put in the incorrigible Glenkindie. 
 
 But Archie continued as though he had 
 not spoken. * I have played, both yester- 
 day and to-day, a part for which I can only 
 offer the excuse of youth. I was so unwise 
 as to go to an execution ; it seems I made 
 a scene at the gallows; not content with 
 which, I spoke the same night in a college 
 society against capital punishment. This 
 is the extent of what I have done, and in 
 case you hear more alleged against me, I 
 protest my innocence. I have expressed 
 my regret already to my father, who is so 
 good as to pass my conduct over — in a 
 degree, and upon the condition that I am 
 to leave my law studies.' . . . 
 G 97 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 1, At Hermiston 
 
 The road to Hermiston runs for a great 
 part of the way up the valley of a stream, 
 a favourite with anglers and with midges, 
 full of falls and pools, and shaded by wil- 
 lows and natural woods of birch. Here 
 and there, but at great distances, a byway 
 branches off, and a gaunt farmhouse may 
 be descried above in a fold of the hill ; but 
 the more part of the time, the road would 
 be quite empty of passage and the hills of 
 habitation. Hermiston parish is one of the 
 least populous in Scotland; and, by the 
 time you came that length, you would 
 scarce be surprised at the inimitable small- 
 
 98 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 ness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place 
 seated for fifty, and standing in a green by 
 the burn-side among two-score gravestones. 
 The manse close by, although no more than 
 a cottage, is surrounded by the brightness 
 of a flower-garden and the straw roofs of 
 bees; and the whole colony, kirk and 
 manse, garden and graveyard, finds har- 
 bourage in a grove of rowans, and is all 
 the year round in a great silence broken 
 only by the drone of the bees, the tinkle 
 of the burn, and the bell on Sundays. A 
 mile beyond the kirk the road leaves the 
 valley by a precipitous ascent, and brings 
 you a little after to the place of Hermiston, 
 where it comes to an end in the back-yard 
 before the coach-house. All beyond and 
 about is the great field of the hills; the 
 plover, the curlew, and the lark cry there ; 
 the wind blows as it blows in a ship's rig- 
 ging, hard and cold and pure; and the 
 hill-tops huddle one behind another like a 
 herd of cattle into the sunset. 
 99 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 The house was sixty years old, unsightly, 
 comfortable; a farmyard and a kitchen- 
 garden on the left, with a fruit wall where 
 little hard green pears came to their ma- 
 turity about the end of October. 
 
 The poUcy (as who should say the park) 
 was of some extent, but very ill reclaimed ; 
 heather and moorfowl had crossed the 
 boundary wall and spread and roosted 
 within ; and it would have tasked a land- 
 scape gardener to say where policy ended 
 and unpolicied nature began. My lord 
 had been led by the influence of Mr. 
 Sheriff Scott into a considerable design of 
 planting; many acres were accordingly set 
 out with fir, and the little feathery besoms 
 gave a false scale and lent a strange air of 
 a toy-shop to the moors. A great, rooty 
 sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at all 
 seasons an infinite melancholy piping of 
 hill birds. Standing so high and with so 
 little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, 
 splashed by showers, drenched by con- 
 
 lOO 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 tinuous rains that made the gutters to 
 spout, beaten upon and buffeted by all the 
 winds of heaven ; and the prospect would 
 be often black with tempest, and often 
 white with the snows of winter. But the 
 house was wind and weather proof, the 
 hearths were kept bright, and the rooms 
 pleasant with live fires of peat ; and Archie 
 might sit of an evening and hear the squalls 
 bugle on the moorland, and watch the 
 fire prosper in the earthy fuel, and the 
 smoke winding up the chimney, and drink 
 deep of the pleasures of shelter. 
 
 Solitary as the place was, Archie did not 
 want neighbours. Every night, if he chose, 
 he might go down to the manse and share 
 a 'brewst' of toddy with the minister — a 
 hare-brained ancient gentleman, long and 
 light and still active, though his knees 
 were loosened with age, and his voice broke 
 continually in childish trebles — and his lady 
 wife, a heavy, comely dame, without a word 
 to say for herself beyond good-even and 
 
 lOI 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 good-day. Harum-scarum, clodpole young 
 lairds of the neighbourhood paid him the 
 compliment of a visit. Young Hay of 
 Romanes rode down to call, on his crop- 
 eared pony ; young Pringle of Drumanno 
 came up on his bony grey. Hay remained 
 on the hospitable field, and must be carried 
 to bed ; Pringle got somehow to his saddle 
 about 3 A.M., and (as Archie stood with 
 the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, 
 uttered a senseless view-holloa, and vanished 
 out of the small circle of illumination like 
 a wraith. Yet a minute or two longer the 
 clatter of his break-neck flight was audible, 
 then it was cut off by the intervening 
 steepness of the hill ; and again, a great 
 while after, the renewed beating of phan- 
 tom horse-hoofs, far in the valley of the 
 Hermiston, showed that the horse at least, 
 if not his rider, was still on the homeward 
 way. 
 
 There was a Tuesday club at the * Cross- 
 keys ' in Crossmichael, where the young 
 
 102 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 bloods of the country-side congregated and 
 drank deep on a percentage of the expense, 
 so that he was left gainer who should have 
 drunk the most Archie had no great 
 mind to this diversion, but he took it like 
 a duty laid upon him, went with a decent 
 regularity, did his manfuUest with the 
 liquor, held up his head in the local jests, 
 and got home again and was able to put 
 up his horse, to the admiration of Kirstie 
 and the lass that helped her. He dined at 
 DrifFel, supped at Windielaws. He went 
 to the new year's ball at Huntsfield and 
 was made welcome, and thereafter rode 
 to hounds with my Lord Muirfell, upon 
 whose name, as that of a legitimate Lord 
 of Parliament, in a work so full of Lords of 
 Session, my pen should pause reverently. 
 Yet the same fate attended him here as in 
 Edinburgh. The habit of solitude tends to 
 perpetuate itself, and an austerity of which 
 he was quite unconscious, and a pride which 
 seemed arrogance, and perhaps was chiefly 
 103 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 shyness, discouraged and offended his new 
 companions. Hay did not return more 
 than twice, Pringle never at all, and there 
 came a time when Archie even desisted 
 from the Tuesday Club, and became in 
 all things — what he had had the name 
 of almost from the first — the Recluse of 
 Hermiston. High-nosed Miss Pringle of 
 Drumanno and high-stepping Miss Mar- 
 shall of the Mains were understood to 
 have had a difference of opinion about him 
 the day after the ball — he was none the 
 wiser, he could not suppose himself to be 
 remarked by these entrancing ladies. At 
 the ball itself my Lord Muirfell's daughter, 
 the Lady Flora, spoke to him twice, and 
 the second time with a touch of appeal, so 
 that her colour rose and her voice trembled 
 a little in his ear, like a passing grace in 
 music. He stepped back with a heart on 
 fire, coldly and not ungracefully excused 
 himself, and a little after watched her danc- 
 ing with young Drumanno of the empty 
 104 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 laugh, and was harrowed at the sight, and 
 raged to himself that this was a world in 
 which it was given to Drumanno to please, 
 and to himself only to stand aside and envy. 
 He seemed excluded, as of right, from the 
 favour of such society — seemed to extin- 
 guish mirth wherever he came, and was 
 quick to feel the wound, and desist, and 
 retire into soUtude. If he had but under- 
 stood the figure he presented, and the 
 impression he made on these bright eyes 
 and tender hearts ; if he had but guessed 
 that the Recluse of Hermiston, young, 
 graceful, well spoken, but always cold, 
 stirred the maidens of the county with the 
 charm of Byronism when Byronism was 
 new, it may be questioned whether his 
 destiny might not even yet have been 
 modified. It may be questioned, and I 
 think it should be doubted. It was in his 
 horoscope to be parsimonious of pain to 
 himself, or of the chance of pain, even 
 to the avoidance of any opportunity of 
 105 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 pleasure ; to have a Roman sense of duty, 
 an instinctive aristocracy of manners and 
 taste; to be the son of Adam Weir and 
 Jean Rutherford. 
 
 2. Kirstie 
 
 Kirstie was now over fifty, and might 
 have sat to a sculptor. Long of limb, and 
 still light of foot, deep-breasted, robust- 
 loined, her golden hair not yet mingled 
 with any trace of silver, the years had but 
 caressed and embellished her. By the lines 
 of a rich and vigorous maternity, she seemed 
 destined to be the bride of heroes and the 
 mother of their children ; and behold, by 
 the iniquity of fate, she had passed through 
 her youth alone, and drew near to the 
 confines of age, a childless woman. The 
 tender ambitions that she had received at 
 birth had been, by time and disappointment, 
 diverted into a certain barren zeal of 
 industry and fury of interference. She 
 carried her thwarted ardours into house- 
 io6 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 work, she washed floors with her empty 
 heart. If she could not win the love of 
 one with love, she must dominate all by 
 her temper. Hasty, wordy, and wrathful, 
 she had a drawn quarrel with most of her 
 neighbours, and with the others not much 
 more than armed neutrality. The grieve's 
 wife had been * sneisty ' ; the sister of the 
 gardener who kept house for him had shown 
 herself 'upsitten'; and she wrote to Lord 
 Hermiston about once a year demanding 
 the discharge of the offenders, and justify- 
 ing the demand by much wealth of detail. 
 For it must not be supposed that the 
 quarrel rested with the wife and did not 
 take in the husband also — or with the 
 gardener's sister, and did not speedily in- 
 clude the gardener himself As the upshot 
 of all this petty quarrelling and intemperate 
 speech, she was practically excluded (like a 
 lightkeeper on his tower) from the comforts 
 of human association ; except with her own 
 indoor drudge, who, being but a lassie and 
 107 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 entirely at her mercy, must submit to the 
 shifty weather of *the mistress's' moods 
 without complaint, and be willing to take 
 buffets or caresses according to the temper 
 of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and 
 in the Indian summer of her heart, which 
 was slow to submit to age, the gods sent 
 this equivocal good thing of Archie's pre- 
 sence. She had known him in the cradle 
 and paddled him when he misbehaved ; and 
 yet, as she had not so much as set eyes on 
 him since he was eleven and had his last 
 serious illness, the tall, slender, refined, 
 and rather melancholy young gentleman 
 of twenty came upon her with the shock 
 of a new acquaintance. He was * Young 
 Hermiston,' * the laird himsel' ' : he had an 
 air of distinctive superiority, a cold straight 
 glance of his black eyes, that abashed the 
 woman's tantrums in the beginning, and 
 therefore the possibility of any quarrel was 
 excluded. He was new, and therefore im- 
 mediately aroused her curiosity ; he was 
 1 08 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 reticent, and kept it awake. And lastly 
 he was dark and she fair, and he was male 
 and she female, the everlasting fountains of 
 interest. 
 
 Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a 
 clanswoman, the hero-worship of a maiden 
 aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No 
 matter what he had asked of her, ridiculous 
 or tragic, she would have done it and joyed 
 to do it. Her passion, for it was nothing 
 less, entirely filled her. It was a rich 
 physical pleasure to make his bed or light 
 his lamp for him when he was absent, to 
 pull off his wet boots or wait on him at 
 dinner when he returned. A young man 
 who should have so doted on the idea, 
 moral and physical, of any woman, might 
 be properly described as being in love, 
 head and heels, and would have behaved 
 himself accordingly. But Kirstie — though 
 her heart leaped at his coming footsteps — 
 though, when he patted her shoulder, her 
 face brightened for the day — had not a hope 
 109 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 or thought beyond the present moment 
 and its perpetuation to the end of time. 
 Till the end of time she would have had 
 nothing altered, but still continue delight- 
 edly to serve her idol, and be repaid (say 
 twice in the month) with a clap on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 I have said her heart leaped — it is the 
 accepted phrase. But rather, when she 
 was alone in any chamber of the house, and 
 heard his foot passing on the corridors, 
 something in her bosom rose slowly until 
 her breath was suspended, and as slowly fell 
 again with a deep sigh, when the steps had 
 passed and she was disappointed of her 
 eyes' desire. This perpetual hunger and 
 thirst of his presence kept her all day on 
 the alert When he went forth at morning, 
 she would stand and follow him with ad- 
 miring looks. As it grew late and drew to 
 the time of his return, she would steal forth 
 to a corner of the policy wall and be seen 
 standing there sometimes by the hour to- 
 
 IIO 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 gether, gazing with shaded eyes, waiting 
 the exquisite and barren pleasure of his 
 view a mile off on the mountains. When 
 at night she had trimmed and gathered the 
 fire, turned down his bed, and laid out his 
 night-gear — when there was no more to 
 be done for the king's pleasure, but to re- 
 member him fervently in her usually very 
 tepid prayers, and go to bed brooding upon 
 his perfections, his future career, and what 
 she should give him the next day for dinner 
 — there still remained before her one more 
 opportunity; she was still to take in the 
 tray and say good-night Sometimes Archie 
 would glance up from his book with a 
 preoccupied nod and a perfunctory salu- 
 tation which was in truth a dismissal ; 
 sometimes — and by degrees more often — 
 the volume would be laid aside, he would 
 meet her coming with a look of relief; and 
 the conversation would be engaged, last out 
 the supper, and be prolonged till the small 
 hours by the waning fire. It was no wonder 
 III 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 that Archie was fond of company after his 
 solitary days; and Kirstie, upon her side, 
 exerted all the arts of her vigorous nature 
 to ensnare his attention. She would keep 
 back some piece of news during dinner to 
 be fired off with the entrance of the supper 
 tray, and form as it were the lever de rideau 
 of the evening's entertainment. Once he 
 had heard her tongue wag, she made sure 
 of the result. From one subject to another 
 she moved by insidious transitions, fearing 
 the least silence, fearing almost to give him 
 time for an answer lest it should slip into 
 a hint of separation. Like so many people 
 of her class, she was a brave narrator ; her 
 place was on the hearth-rug and she made 
 it a rostrum, mimeing her stories as she 
 told them, fitting them with vital detail, 
 spinning them out with endless * quo' he's ' 
 and 'quo' she's,' her voice sinking into a 
 whisper over the supernatural or the hor- 
 rific ; until she would suddenly spring up 
 in affected surprise, and pointing to the 
 
 112 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 clock, * Mercy, Mr. Archie I ' she would say, 
 * whatten a time o' night is this of it ! 
 God forgive me for a daft wife I' So it 
 befell, by good management, that she was 
 not only the first to begin these nocturnal 
 conversations, but invariably the first to 
 break them off; so she managed to retire 
 and not to be dismissed. 
 
 3. A Border Family 
 
 Such an unequal intimacy has never been 
 uncommon in Scotland, where the clan 
 spirit survives ; where the servant tends to 
 spend her life in the same service, a help- 
 meet at first, then a tyrant, and at last a 
 pensioner ; where, besides, she is not neces- 
 sarily destitute of the pride of birth, but is, 
 perhaps, like Kirstie, a connection of her 
 master's, and at least knows the legend of 
 her own family, and may count kinship with 
 some illustrious dead. For that is the mark 
 of the Scot of all classes : that he stands in 
 H 113 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 an attitude towards the past unthinkable to 
 Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes 
 the memory of his forebears, good or bad ; 
 and there burns alive in him a sense of 
 identity with the dead even to the twentieth 
 generation. No more characteristic in stance 
 could be found than in the family of Kirstie 
 Elliott. They were all, and Kirstie the 
 first of all, ready and eager to pour forth 
 the particulars of their genealogy, embel- 
 lished with every detail that memory had 
 handed down or fancy fabricated ; and, 
 behold ! from every ramification of that 
 tree there dangled a halter. The Elliotts 
 themselves have had a chequered history; 
 but these Elliotts deduced, besides, from 
 three of the most unfortunate of the border 
 clans — the Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and the 
 Crozers. One ancestor after another might 
 be seen appearing a moment out of the 
 rain and the hill mist upon his furtive 
 business, speeding home, perhaps, with a 
 paltry booty of lame horses and lean kine, 
 114 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 or squealing and dealing death in some 
 moorland feud of the ferrets and the wild 
 cats. One after another closed his obscure 
 adventures in mid-air, triced up to the arm 
 of the royal gibbet or the Baron's dule-tree. 
 For the rusty blunderbuss of Scots criminal 
 justice, which usually hurt nobody but 
 jurymen, became a weapon of precision for 
 the Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and the Crozers. 
 The exhilaration of their exploits seemed 
 to haunt the memories of their descendants 
 alone, and the shame to be forgotten. 
 Pride glowed in their bosoms to publish 
 their relationship to 'Andrew Ellwald of 
 the Laverockstanes, called "Unchancy 
 Dand," who was justifeed wi' seeven mair 
 of the same name at Jeddart in the days of 
 King James the Sax/ In all this tissue 
 of crime and misfortune, the Elliotts of 
 Cauldstaneslap had one boast which must 
 appear legitimate : the males were gallows- 
 birds, born outlaws, petty thieves, and 
 deadly brawlers ; but, according to the 
 115 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 same tradition, the females were all chaste 
 and faithful. The power of ancestry on 
 the character is not limited to the inherit- 
 ance of cells. If I buy ancestors by the 
 gross from the benevolence of Lyon King 
 of Arms, my grandson (if he is Scottish) 
 will feel a quickening emulation of their 
 deeds. The men of the Elliotts were proud, 
 lawless, violent as of right, cherishing and 
 prolonging a tradition. In like manner 
 with the women. And the women, essen- 
 tially passionate and reckless, who crouched 
 on the rug, in the shine of the peat fire, 
 telling these tales, had cherished through 
 life a wild integrity of virtue. 
 
 Her father Gilbert had been deeply pious, 
 a savage disciplinarian in the antique style, 
 and withal a notorious smuggler. * I mind 
 when I was a bairn getting mony a skelp 
 and being shoo'd to bed like poultry,' she 
 would say. * That would be when the lads 
 and their bit kegs were on the road. 
 We Ve liad the riffraff of two-three coun- 
 ii6 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 ties in our kitchen, mony 's the time, betwix' 
 the twelve and the three ; and their lan- 
 terns would be standing in the forecourt, 
 ay, a score o' them at once. But there was 
 nae ungodly talk permitted at Cauldstane- 
 slap ; my faither was a consistent man in 
 walk and conversation ; just let slip an aith, 
 and there was the door to ye 1 He had 
 that zeal for the Lord, it was a fair wonder 
 to hear him pray, but the faimily has aye 
 had a gift that way/ This father was twice 
 married, once to a dark woman of the old 
 EUwald stock, by whom he had Gilbert, 
 presently of Cauldstaneslap ; and, secondly, 
 to the mother of Kirstie. * He was an auld 
 man when he married her, a fell auld man 
 wi' a muckle voice — you could hear him 
 rowting from the top o' the Kye-skairs,' she 
 said; *but for her, it appears she was a 
 perfit wonder. It was gentle blood she 
 had, Mr. Archie, for it was your ain. The 
 country-side gaed gyte about her and her 
 gowden hair. Mines is no to be mentioned 
 117 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 wi' it, and there's few weemen has mair 
 hair than what I have, or yet a bonnier 
 colour. Often would I tell my dear Miss 
 Jeannie — that was your mother, dear, she 
 was cruel ta'en up about her hair, it was 
 unco tender, ye see — "Houts, Miss Jeannie," 
 I would say, "just fling your washes and 
 your French dentifrishes in the back o' the 
 fire, for that 's the place for them ; and awa' 
 down to a burn side, and wash yersel' in 
 cauld hill water, and dry your bonny hair 
 in the caller wind o' the muirs, the way 
 that my mother aye washed hers, and that 
 1 have aye made it a practice to have wishen 
 mines— just you do what I tell ye, my dear, 
 and ye '11 give me news of it ! Ye '11 have 
 hair, and routh of hair, a pigtail as thick 's 
 my arm," I said, " and the bonniest colour 
 like the clear gowden guineas, so as the 
 lads in kirk '11 no can keep their eyes off it !" 
 Weel, it lasted out her time, puir thing ! 
 I cuttit a lock of it upon her corp that was 
 lying there sae cauld. I '11 show it ye some 
 ii8 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 of thir days if ye re good. But, as I was 
 
 sayin', my mither ' 
 
 On the death of the father there remained 
 golden-haired Kirstie, who took service with 
 her distant kinsfolk, the Rutherfords, and 
 black-a-vised Gilbert, twenty years older, 
 who farmed the Cauldstaneslap, married, and 
 begot four sons between 1773 and 1784, and 
 a daughter, like a postscript, in '97, the year 
 of Camperdown and Cape St. Vincent. It 
 seemed it was a tradition in the family to 
 wind up with a belated girl. In 1804, at 
 the age of sixty, Gilbert met an end that 
 might be called heroic. He was due home 
 from market any time from eight at night 
 till five in the morning, and in any condi- 
 tion from the quarrelsome to the speechless, 
 for he maintained to that age the goodly 
 customs of the Scots farmer. It was known 
 on this occasion that he had a good bit of 
 money to bring home ; the word had gone 
 round loosely. The laird had shown his 
 guineas, and if anybody had but noticed it, 
 119 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 there was an ill-looking, vagabond crew, 
 the scum of Edinburgh, that drew out of 
 the market long ere it was dusk and took 
 the hill-road by Hermiston, where it was 
 not to be believed that they had lawful 
 business. One of the country-side, one 
 Dickieson, they took with them to be their 
 guide, and dear he paid for it I Of a sudden, 
 in the ford of the Broken Dykes, this ver- 
 min clan fell on the laird, six to one, and 
 him three parts asleep, having drunk hard. 
 But it is ill to catch an Elliott. For a while, 
 in the night and the black water that was 
 deep as to his saddle-girths, he wrought 
 with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and 
 great was the sound of oaths and blows. 
 With that the ambuscade was burst, and 
 he rode for home with a pistol-ball in him, 
 three knife wounds, the loss of his front 
 teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a dying 
 horse. That was a race with death that 
 the laird rode! In the mirk night, with 
 his broken bridle and his head swimming, 
 1 20 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 he dug his spurs to the rowels in the horse's 
 side, and the horse, that was even worse off 
 than himself, the poor creature ! screamed 
 out loud like a person as he went, so that 
 the hills echoed with it, and the folks at 
 Cauldstaneslap got to their feet about the 
 table and looked at each other with white 
 faces. The horse fell dead at the yard gate, 
 the laird won the length of the house and 
 fell there on the threshold. To the son 
 that raised him he gave the bag of money. 
 * Hae,' said he. All the way up the thieves 
 had seemed to him to be at his heels, but 
 now the hallucination left him — he saw 
 them again in the place of the ambuscade 
 — and the thirst of vengeance seized on his 
 dying mind. Raising himself and pointing 
 with an imperious finger into the black 
 night from which he had come, he uttered 
 the single command, ' Brocken Dykes,' and 
 fainted. He had never been loved, but he 
 had been feared in honour. At that sight, 
 at that word, gasped out at them from a 
 
 121 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 toothless and bleeding mouth, the old 
 Elliott spirit awoke with a shout in the 
 four sons. * Wanting the hat,' continues 
 my author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly 
 follow, for she told this tale like one inspired, 
 * wanting guns, for there wasna twa grains 
 o' pouder in the house, wi' nae mair weepons 
 than their sticks into their hands, the fower 
 o' them took the road. Only Hob, and 
 that was the eldest, hunkered at the door- 
 sill where the blood had rin, fyled his hand 
 wi' it, and haddit it up to Heeven in the 
 way o' the auld Border aith. ** Hell shall 
 have her ain again this nicht ! " he raired, 
 and rode forth upon his earrand.' It was 
 three miles to Broken Dykes, down hill, 
 and a sore road. Kirstie has seen men from 
 Edinburgh dismounting there in plain day 
 to lead their horses. But the four brothers 
 rode it as if Auld Hornie were behind and 
 Heaven in front Come to the ford, and 
 there was Dickieson. By all tales, he was 
 not dead, but breathed and reared upon 
 
 122 
 
 / 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 his elbow, and cried out to them for help. 
 It was at a graceless face that he asked 
 mercy. As soon as Hob saw, by the glint 
 of the lantern, the eyes shining and the 
 whiteness of the teeth in the man's face, 
 * Damn you ! ' says he ; * ye hae your teeth, 
 hae ye ? ' and rode his horse to and fro upon 
 that human remnant Beyond that, Dandie 
 must dismount with the lantern to be their 
 guide; he was the youngest son, scarce 
 twenty at the time. * A' nicht long they 
 gaed in the wet heath and jennipers, and 
 whaur they gaed they neither knew nor 
 cared, but just followed the bluid-stains 
 and the footprints o' their faither's mur- 
 derers. And a' nicht Dandie had his 
 nose to the grund like a tyke, and the 
 ithers followed and spak' naething, neither 
 black nor white. There was nae noise 
 to be heard, but just the sough of the 
 swalled burns, and Hob, the dour yin, 
 risping his teeth as he gaed.' With the 
 first glint of the morning they saw they 
 123 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 were on the drove road, and at that the 
 four stopped and had a dram to their 
 breakfasts, for they knew that Dand must 
 have guided them right, and the rogues 
 could be but little ahead, hot foot for 
 Edinburgh by the way of the Pentland 
 Hills. By eight o'clock they had word of 
 them — a shepherd had seen four men 
 
 * uncoly mishandled ' go by in the last hour. 
 
 * That 's yin a piece,' says Clem, and swung 
 his cudgel. ' Five o' them ! ' says Hob. 
 
 * God's death, but the faither was a man ! 
 And him drunk I ' And then there befell 
 them what my author termed ' a sair mis- 
 begowk,' for they were overtaken by a 
 posse of mounted neighbours come to aid in 
 the pursuit Four sour faces looked on 
 the reinforcement * The Deil 's broughten 
 you 1 ' said Clem, and they rode thence- 
 forward in the rear of the party with hang- 
 ing heads. Before ten they had found and 
 secured the rogues, and by three of the 
 afternoon, as they rode up the Vennel with 
 
 124 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 their prisoners, they were aware of a con- 
 course of people bearing in their midst 
 something that dripped *For the boady 
 of the saxt,' pursued Kirstie, * wi' his head 
 smashed like a hazelnit, had been a' that 
 nicht in the chairge o' Hermiston Water, 
 and it dunting it on the stanes, and grund- 
 ing it on the shallows, and flinging the 
 deid thing heels-ower-hurdie at the Fa's o' 
 Spango ; and in the first o' the day, Tweed 
 had got a hold o' him and carried him off 
 like a wind, for it was uncoly swalled, and 
 raced wi' him, bobbing under brae-sides, 
 and was long playing with the creature in 
 the drumlie lynns under the castle, and at 
 the hinder end of all cuist him up on the 
 starling of Crossmichael brig. Sae there 
 they were a'thegither at last (for Dickieson 
 had been brought in on a cart long syne), 
 and folk could see what mainner o' man 
 my brither had been that had held his head 
 again sax and saved the siller, and him 
 drunk 1 ' Thus died of honourable injuries 
 125 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 and in the savour of fame Gilbert Elliott 
 of the Cauldstaneslap ; but his sons had 
 scarce less glory out of the business. Their 
 savage haste, the skill with which Dand 
 had found and followed the trail, the bar- 
 barity to the wounded Dickieson (which 
 was like an open secret in the county), and 
 the doom which it was currently supposed 
 they had intended for the others, struck 
 and stirred popular imagination. Some 
 century earlier the last of the minstrels 
 might have fashioned the last of the ballads 
 out of that Homeric fight and chase ; but 
 the spirit was dead, or had been reincarnated 
 already in Mr. Sheriff Scott, and the de- 
 generate moorsmen must be content to tell 
 the tale in prose, and to make of the * Four 
 Black Brothers' a unit after the fashion 
 of the ' Twelve Apostles ' or the ' Three 
 Musketeers.' 
 
 Robert, Gilbert, Clement, and Andrew 
 — ^in the proper Border diminutives. Hob, 
 Gib, Clem, and Dand Elliott — these ballad 
 126 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 heroes, had much in common ; in parti- 
 cular, their high sense of the family and 
 the family honour ; but they went diverse 
 ways, and prospered and failed in different 
 businesses. According to Kirstie, 'they 
 had a' bees in their bonnets but Hob.' 
 Hob the laird was, indeed, essentially a 
 decent man. An elder of the Eark, nobody 
 had heard an oath upon his lips, save, per- 
 haps, thrice or so at the sheep-washing, 
 since the chase of his father's murderers. 
 The figure he had shown on that eventful 
 night disappeared as if swallowed by a trap. 
 He who had ecstatically dipped his hand in 
 the red blood, he who had ridden down 
 Dickieson, became, from that moment on, 
 a stiff and rather graceless model of the 
 rustic proprieties ; cannily profiting by the 
 high war prices, and yearly stowing away a 
 little nest-egg in the bank against calamity ; 
 approved of and sometimes consulted by 
 the greater lairds for the massive and placid 
 sense of what he said, when he could be 
 127 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 induced to say anything; and particularly 
 valued by the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a 
 right-hand man in the parish, and a model 
 to parents. The transfiguration had been 
 for the moment only ; some Barbarossa, 
 some old Adam of our ancestors, sleeps in 
 all of us till the fit circumstance shall call 
 it into action ; and, for as sober as he now- 
 seemed. Hob had given once for all the 
 measure of the devil that haunted him. 
 He was married, and, by reason of the 
 effulgence of that legendary night, was 
 adored by his wife. He had a mob of little 
 lusty, barefoot children who marched in a 
 caravan the long miles to school, the stages 
 of whose pilgrimage were marked by acts 
 of spoliation and mischief, and who were 
 qualified in the country-side as *fair pests.' 
 But in the house, if ' faither was in,* they 
 were quiet as mice. In short, Hob moved 
 through life in a great peace — the reward of 
 any one who shall have killed his man, with 
 any formidable and figurative circumstance, 
 128 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 in the midst of a country gagged and 
 swaddled with civilisation. 
 
 It was a current remark that the Elliotts 
 were ' guid and bad, like sanguishes ' ; and 
 certainly there was a curious distinction, 
 the men of business coming alternately 
 with the dreamers. The second brother, 
 Gib, was a weaver by trade, had gone out 
 early into the world to Edinburgh, and 
 come home again with his vsdngs singed. 
 There was an exaltation in his nature which 
 had led him to embrace with enthusiasm 
 the principles of the French Revolution, 
 and had ended by bringing him under the 
 hawse of my Lord Hermiston in that 
 furious onslaught of his upon the Liberals, 
 which sent Muir and Palmer into exile and 
 dashed the party into chaff. It was whis- 
 pered that my lord, in his great scorn for 
 the movement, and prevailed upon a little 
 by a sense of neighbourliness, had given 
 Gib a hint. Meeting him one day in the 
 Potterrow, my lord had stopped in front 
 I 129 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 of him: 'Gib, ye eediot/ he had said, 
 * what's this I hear of you? PoaUties, 
 poaUtics, poalitics, weaver's poalities, is the 
 way of it, I hear. If ye arena a'thegither 
 dozened with eediocy, ye '11 gang your ways 
 back to Cauldstaneslap, and ca' your loom, 
 and ca' your loom, man ! ' And Gilbert 
 had taken him at the word and returned, 
 with an expedition almost to be called 
 flight, to the house of his father. The 
 clearest of his inheritance was that family 
 gift of prayer of which Kirstie had boasted ; 
 and the bafiled politician now turned his 
 attention to religious matters — or, as others 
 said, to heresy and schism. Every Sunday 
 morning he was in Crossmichael, where he 
 had gathered together, one by one, a sect 
 of about a dozen persons, who called 
 themselves * God's Remnant of the True 
 Faithful,' or, for short, * God's Remnant' 
 To the profane, they were known as ' Gib's 
 Deils.' Bailie Sweedie, a noted humorist 
 in the town, vowed that the proceedings 
 
 130 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 always opened to the tune of 'The Deil 
 Fly Away with the Exciseman,' and that 
 the sacrament was dispensed in the form 
 of hot whisky-toddy ; both wicked hits at 
 the evangelist, who had been suspected of 
 smuggling in his youth, and had been over- 
 taken (as the phrase went) on the streets 
 of Crossmichael one Fair day. It was 
 known that every Sunday they prayed for 
 a blessing on the arms of Bonaparte. For 
 this, ' God's Remnant,' as they were ' skail- 
 ing ' from the cottage that did duty for a 
 temple, had been repeatedly stoned by the 
 bairns, and Gib himself hooted by a squad- 
 ron of Border volunteers in which his own 
 brother, Dand, rode in a uniform and with 
 a drawn sword. The 'Remnant' were 
 believed, besides, to be 'antinomian in 
 principle,' which might otherwise have been 
 a serious charge, but the way public opinion 
 then blew it was quite swallowed up and 
 forgotten in the scandal about Bonaparte. 
 For the rest, Gilbert had set up his loom 
 131 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 in an outhouse at Cauldstaneslap, where he 
 laboured assiduously six days of the week. 
 His brothers, appalled by his political 
 opinions, and willing to avoid dissension in 
 the household, spoke but little to him ; he 
 less to them, remaining absorbed in the 
 study of the Bible and almost constant 
 prayer. The gaunt weaver was dry-nurse 
 at Cauldstaneslap, and the bairns loved 
 him dearly. Except when he was carrying 
 an infant in his arms, he was rarely seen 
 to smile — as, indeed, there were few smilers 
 in that family. When his sister-in-law 
 rallied him, and proposed that he should 
 get a wife and bairns of his own, since he 
 was so fond of them, ' I have no clearness 
 of mind upon that point,' he would reply. 
 If nobody called him in to dinner, he 
 stayed out. Mrs. Hob, a hard, unsym- 
 pathetic woman, once tried the experiment. 
 He went without food all day, but at dusk, 
 as the light began to fail him, he came 
 into the house of his own accord, looking 
 132 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 puzzled. * I Ve had a great gale of prayer 
 upon my speerit/ said he. ' I canna mind 
 sae muckle's what I had for denner.' The 
 creed of God's Remnant was justified in 
 the life of its founder. ' And yet I dinna 
 ken,' said Kirstie. * He 's maybe no more 
 stockfish than his neeghboursi He rode 
 wi' the rest o' them, and had a good 
 stamach to the work, by a' that I hear I 
 God's Remnant ! The deil's clavers ! There 
 wasna muckle Christianity in the way 
 Hob guided Johnny Dickieson, at the least 
 of it ; but Guid kens ! Is he a Christian 
 even ? He might be a Mahommedan or a 
 Deevil or a Fire worshipper, for what I ken.' 
 The third brother had his name on a 
 door-plate, no less, in the city of Glasgow, 
 * Mr. Clement Elliott,' as long as your arm. 
 In his case, that spirit of innovation which 
 had shown itself timidly in the case of Hob 
 by the admission of new manures, and 
 which had run to waste with Gilbert in 
 subversive politics and heretical religions, 
 ^33 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 bore useful fruit in many ingenious mechani- 
 cal improvements. In boyhood, from his 
 addiction to strange devices of sticks and 
 string, he had been counted the most 
 eccentric of the family. But that was all 
 by now ; and he was a partner of his firm, 
 and looked to die a bailie. He too had 
 married, and was rearing a plentiful family 
 in the smoke and din of Glasgow ; he was 
 wealthy, and could have bought out his 
 brother, the cock-laird, six times over, it 
 was whispered ; and when he slipped away 
 to Cauldstaneslap for a well-earned holiday, 
 which he did as often as he was able, he 
 astonished the neighbours with his broad- 
 cloth, his beaver hat, and the ample plies 
 of his neckcloth. Though an eminently 
 solid man at bottom, after the pattern of 
 Hob, he had contracted a certain Glasgow 
 briskness and aplomb which set him off. 
 All the other Elliotts were as lean as a 
 rake, but Clement was laying on fat, and 
 he panted sorely when he must get into 
 134 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 his boots. Dand said, chuckling: 'Ay, 
 Clem has the elements of a corporation.' 
 *A provost and corporation,' returned 
 Clem. And his readiness was much 
 admired. 
 
 The fourth brother, Dand, was a shep- 
 herd to his trade, and by starts, when he 
 could bring his mind to it, excelled in the 
 business. Nobody could train a dog like 
 Dandie ; nobody, through the peril of 
 great storms in the winter time, could do 
 more gallantly. But if his dexterity were 
 exquisite, his diligence was but fitful ; and 
 he served his brother for bed and board, 
 and a trifle of pocket-money when he asked 
 for it. He loved money well enough, knew 
 very well how to spend it, and could make 
 a shrewd bargain when he liked. But he 
 preferred a vague knowledge that he was 
 well to windward to any counted coins in 
 the pocket ; he felt himself richer so. Hob 
 would expostulate : * I 'm an amature herd.' 
 Dand would reply, * I '11 keep your sheep 
 ^35 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 to you when I 'm so minded, but 1 11 keep 
 my liberty too. Thir 's no man can coan- 
 descend on what I m worth.' Clem would 
 expound to him the miraculous results of 
 compound interest, and recommend invest- 
 ments. 'Ay, man?' Dand would say; 
 ' and do you think, if I took Hob's siller, 
 that I wouldna drink it or wear it on the 
 lassies ? And, anyway, my kingdom is no 
 of this world. Either I'm a p6et or else 
 I 'm nothing.' Clem would remind him of 
 old age. * I '11 die young, like Robbie 
 Bums,' he would say stoutly. No question 
 but he had a certain accomplishment in 
 minor verse. His 'Hermiston Burn,' with 
 its pretty refrain — 
 
 * I love to gang thinking whaur ye gang linking, 
 Hermiston burn, in the howe ; * 
 
 his ' Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, 
 dour, bauld Elliotts of auld,' and his really 
 fascinating piece aboutthe Praying Weaver's 
 Stone, had gained him in the neighbour- 
 136 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 hood the reputation, still possible in Scot- 
 land, of a local bard ; and, though not 
 printed himself, he was recognised by others 
 who were and who had become famous. 
 Walter Scott owed to Dandie the text of 
 the ' Raid of Wearie ' in the Minstrelsy ; 
 and made him welcome at his house, and 
 appreciated his talents, such as they were, 
 with all his usual generosity. The Ettrick 
 Shepherd was his sworn crony ; they would 
 meet, drink to excess, roar out their lyrics 
 in each other's faces, and quarrel and make 
 it up again till bedtime. And besides these 
 recognitions, almost to be called official, 
 Dandie was made welcome for the sake of 
 his gift through the farmhouses of several 
 contiguous dales, and was thus exposed to 
 manifold temptations which he rather 
 sought than fled. He had figured on the 
 stool of repentance, for once fulfilling to 
 the letter the tradition of his hero and 
 model. His humorous verses to Mr. Tor- 
 rance on that occasion — ' Kenspeckle here 
 137 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 my lane I stand ' — unfortunately too in- 
 delicate for further citation, ran through 
 the country like a fiery cross ; they were 
 recited, quoted, paraphrased, and laughed 
 over as far away as Dumfries on the one 
 hand and Dunbar on the other. 
 
 These four brothers were united by a close 
 bond, the bond of that mutual admiration 
 — or rather mutual hero-worship — which is 
 so strong among the members of secluded 
 families who have much ability and little 
 culture. Even the extremes admired each 
 other. Hob, who had as much poetry as 
 the tongs, professed to find pleasure in 
 Dand's verses ; Clem, who had no more 
 religion than Claverhouse, nourished a 
 heartfelt, at least an open-mouthed, admira- 
 tion of Gib's prayers ; and Dandie followed 
 with relish the rise of Clem's fortunes. 
 Indulgence followed hard on the heels of 
 admiration. The laird, Clem, and Dand, 
 who were Tories and patriots of the hottest 
 quality, excused to themselves, with a 
 138 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 certain bashfulness, the radical and revolu- 
 tionary heresies of Gib. By another 
 division of the family, the laird, Clem, and 
 Gib, who vrere men exactly virtuous, 
 swallowed the dose of Dand's irregularities 
 as a kind of clog or drawback in the 
 mysterious providence of God affixed to 
 bards, and distinctly probative of poetical 
 genius. To appreciate the simplicity of 
 their mutual admiration it was necessary 
 to hear Clem, arrived upon one of his visits, 
 and dealing in a spirit of continuous irony 
 with the affairs and personalities of that 
 great city of Glasgow where he lived and 
 transacted business. The various person- 
 ages, ministers of the church, municipal 
 officers, mercantile big-wigs, whom he had 
 occasion to introduce, were all alike deni- 
 grated, all served but as reflectors to cast 
 back a flattering side-light on the house of 
 Cauldstaneslap. The Provost, for whom 
 Clem by exception entertained a measure 
 of respect, he would liken to Hob. * He 
 139 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 minds me o' the laird there,' he would say. 
 
 * He has some of Hob's grand, whunstane 
 sense, and the same way with him of steik- 
 ing his mouth when he 's no very pleased.' 
 And Hob, all unconscious, would draw 
 down his upper lip and produce, as if for 
 comparison, the formidable grimace referred 
 to. The unsatisfactory incumbent of St. 
 Enoch's Kirk was thus briefly dismissed : 
 
 * If he had but twa fingers o' Gib's, he 
 would waken them up.' And Gib, honest 
 man ! would look down and secretly smile. 
 Clem was a spy whom they had sent out 
 into the world of men. He had come back 
 with the good news that there was nobody 
 to compare with the Four Black Brothers, 
 no position that they would not adorn, no 
 official that it would not be well they 
 should replace, no interest of mankind, 
 secular or spiritual, which would not im- 
 mediately bloom under their supervision. 
 The excuse of their folly is in two words : 
 scarce the breadth of a hair divided them 
 
 140 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 from the peasantry. The measure of their 
 sense is this : that these symposia of rustic 
 vanity were kept entirely within the family, 
 like some secret ancestral practice. To the 
 world their serious faces were never de- 
 formed by the suspicion of any simper of 
 self-contentment. Yet it was known. 
 * They hae a guid pride o' themsel's I ' was 
 the word in the country-side. 
 
 Lastly, in a Border story, there should 
 be added their 'two-names.' Hob was 
 The Laird. * Roy ne puis, prince ne 
 daigne ' ; he was the laird of Cauldstaneslap 
 — say fifty acres — ipsissimus. Clement was 
 Mr. Elliott, as upon his door-plate, the 
 earlier Dafty having been discarded as no 
 longer applicable, and indeed only a re- 
 minder of misjudgment and the imbecility 
 of the public ; and the youngest, in honour 
 of his perpetual wanderings, was known by 
 the sobriquet of Randy Dand. 
 
 It will be understood that not all this in- 
 formation was communicated by the aunt, 
 141 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 who had too much of the family faihng 
 herself to appreciate it thoroughly in others. 
 But as time went on, Archie began to 
 observe an omission in the family chronicle. 
 
 ' Is there not a girl too ? ' he asked. 
 
 *Ay: Kirstie. She was named for me, 
 or my grandmother at least — it 's the same 
 thing,' returned the aunt, and went on 
 again about Dand, whom she secretly pre- 
 ferred by reason of his gallantries. 
 
 * But what is your niece Hke ? ' said 
 Archie at the next opportunity. 
 
 *Her? As black's your hat! But I 
 dinna suppose she would maybe be what 
 you would ca' ill-looked a'thegither. Na, 
 she's a kind of a handsome jaud — a kind 
 o' gipsy,' said the aunt, who had two sets 
 of scales for men and women — or perhaps 
 it would be more fair to say that she had 
 three, and the third and the most loaded 
 was for girls. 
 
 * How comes it that I never see her in 
 church ? ' said Archie. 
 
 142 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 *'Deed, and I believe she's in Glesgie 
 with Clem and his wife. A heap good 
 she 's like to get of it ! I dinna say for 
 men folk, but where weemen folk are bom, 
 there let them bide. Glory to God, I was 
 never far er from here than Crossmichael.' 
 
 In the meanwhile it began to strike 
 Archie as strange, that while she thus 
 sang the praises of her kinsfolk, and mani- 
 festly relished their virtues and (I may say) 
 their vices like a thing creditable to herself, 
 there should appear not the least sign of 
 cordiality between the house of Hermiston 
 and that of Cauldstaneslap. Going to 
 church of a Sunday, as the lady house- 
 keeper stepped with her skirts kilted, three 
 tucks of her white petticoat showing below, 
 and her best India shawl upon her back (if 
 the day were fine) in a pattern of radiant 
 dyes, she would sometimes overtake her 
 relatives preceding her more leisurely in 
 the same direction. Gib of course was 
 absent: by skreigh of day he had been 
 143 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 gone to Crossmichael and his fellow-here- 
 tics; but the rest of the family would be 
 seen marching in open order : Hob and 
 Dand, stiff-necked, straight-backed six- 
 footers, with severe dark faces, and their 
 plaids about their shoulders ; the convoy 
 of children scattering (in a state of high 
 polish) on the wayside, and every now and 
 again collected by the shrill summons of 
 the mother ; and the mother herself, by a 
 suggestive circumstance which might have 
 afforded matter of thought to a more ex- 
 perienced observer than Archie, wrapped 
 in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie's, 
 but a thought more gaudy and conspicu- 
 ously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew 
 more tall — Kirstie showed her classical 
 profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the 
 pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a 
 delicate living pink. 
 
 * A braw day to ye. Mistress Elliott,' said 
 she, and hostility and gentihty were nicely 
 mingled in her tones. * A fine day, mem,' 
 144 
 
WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 the laird's wife would reply with a miracu- 
 lous curtsey, spreading the while her plum- 
 age — setting off, in other words, and with 
 arts unknown to the mere man, the pattern 
 of her India shawl. Behin^i her, the whole 
 Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer 
 order, and with an indescribable air of 
 being in the presence of the foe ; and while 
 Dandie saluted his aunt with a certain 
 familiarity as of one who was well in 
 court. Hob marched on in awful immo- 
 bility. There appeared upon the face of 
 this attitude in the family the consequences 
 of some dreadful feud. Presumably the 
 two women had been principals in the 
 original encounter, and the laird had pro- 
 bably been drawn into the quarrel by the 
 ears, too late to be included in the present 
 skin-deep reconciliation. 
 
 'Kirstie,' said Archie one day, 'what is 
 this you have against your family ? ' 
 
 * I dinna complean,' said Kirstie, with a 
 flush. ' I say naething.' 
 
 K 145 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 *I see you do not — not even good-day 
 to your own nephew/ said he. 
 
 * I hae naething to be ashamed of,' said 
 she. ' I can say the Lord s prayer with a 
 good grace. If^Hob was ill, or in preeson 
 or poverty, I would see to him blithely. 
 But for curtchying and complimenting and 
 colloguing, thank ye kindly I * 
 
 Archie had a bit of a smile : he leaned 
 back in his chair. * I think you and Mrs. 
 Robert are not very good friends,' says he 
 slyly, 'when you have your India shawls 
 on?' 
 
 She looked upon him in silence, with a 
 sparkling eye but an indecipherable expres- 
 sion ; and that was all that Archie was ever 
 destined to learn of the battle of the India 
 shawls. 
 
 * Do none of them ever come here to see 
 you ? ' he inquired. 
 
 ' Mr. Archie,' said she, * I hope that I ken 
 my place better. It would be a queer 
 thing, I think, if I was to clamjamfry up 
 146 
 
I 
 
 WINTER ON THE MOORS 
 
 your faither's house — that I should say it I 
 — wi' a dirty, black-a-vised clan, no ane o' 
 them it was worth while to mar soap upon 
 but just mysel' I Na, they re all damni- 
 feed wi' the black EUwalds. I have nae 
 patience wi' black folk.' Then, with a 
 sudden consciousness of the case of Archie, 
 ' No that it maitters for men sae muckle,' 
 she made haste to add, 'but there's nae- 
 body can deny that it 's unwomanly. Long 
 hair is the ornament o' woman ony way; 
 we 've good warrandise for that — it 's in the 
 Bible — and wha can doubt that the Apostle 
 had some gowden-haired lassie in his mind 
 — Apostle and all, for what was he but just 
 a man like yersel' ? ' 
 
 147 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 A LEAF FROM CHRISTINa's PSALM-BOOK 
 
 Archie was sedulous at church. Sunday 
 after Sunday he sat down and stood up 
 with that small company, heard the voice 
 of Mr. Torrance leaping like an ill-played 
 clarionet from key to key, and had an 
 opportunity to study his moth-eaten gown 
 and the black thread mittens that he joined 
 together in prayer, and lifted up with a 
 reverent solemnity in the act of benedic- 
 tion. Hermiston pew was a little square 
 box, dwarfish in proportion with the kirk 
 itself, and enclosing a table not much 
 bigger than a footstool. There sat Archie, 
 an apparent prince, the only undeniable 
 gentleman and the only great heritor in 
 148 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 the parish, taking his ease in the only pew, 
 for no other in the kirk had doors. Thence 
 he might command an undisturbed view of 
 that congregation of solid plaided men, 
 strapping wives and daughters, oppressed 
 children, and uneasy sheep-dogs. It was 
 strange how Archie missed the look of 
 race; except the dogs, with their refined 
 foxy faces and inimitably curling tails, 
 there was no one present with the least 
 claim to gentility. The Cauldstaneslap 
 party was scarcely an exception ; Dandie 
 perhaps, as he amused himself making 
 verses through the interminable burden of 
 the service, stood out a little by the glow 
 in his eye and a certain superior animation 
 of face and alertness of body ; but even 
 Dandie slouched like a rustic. The rest 
 of the congregation, like so many sheep, 
 oppressed him with a sense of hob-nailed 
 routine, day following day — of physical 
 labour in the open air, oatmeal porridge, 
 peas bannock, the somnolent fireside in the 
 149 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 evening, and the night-long nasal slumbers 
 in a box-bed. Yet he knew many of them 
 to be shrewd and humorous, men of char- 
 acter, notable women, making a bustle in 
 the world and radiating an influence from 
 their low-browed doors. He knew besides 
 they were like other men ; below the crust 
 of custom, rapture found a way ; he had 
 heard them beat the timbrel before Bac- 
 chus — had heard them shout and carouse 
 over their whisky-toddy ; and not the most 
 Dutch-bottomed and severe faces among 
 them all, not even the solemn elders them- 
 selves, but were capable of singular gam- 
 bols at the voice of love. Men drawing 
 near to an end of life's adventurous journey 
 — maids thrilling with fear and curiosity on 
 the threshold of entrance — women who had 
 borne and perhaps buried children, who 
 could remember the clinging of the small 
 dead hands and the patter of the little feet 
 now silent — he marvelled that among all 
 those faces there should be no face of ex- 
 150 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 pectation, none that was mobile, none into 
 which the rhythm and poetry of life had 
 entered. ' O for a live face/ he thought ; 
 and at times he had a memory of Lady 
 Flora; and at times he would study the 
 living gallery before him with despair, and 
 would see himself go on to waste his days 
 in that joyless, pastoral place, and death 
 come to him, and his grave be dug under 
 the rowans, and the Spirit of the Earth 
 laugh out in a thunder-peal at the huge 
 fiasco. 
 
 On this particular Sunday, there was no 
 doubt but that the spring had come at last. 
 It was warm, with a latent shiver in the 
 air that made the warmth only the more 
 welcome. The shallows of the stream 
 glittered and tinkled among bunches of 
 primrose. Vagrant scents of the earth 
 arrested Archie by the way with moments 
 of ethereal intoxication. The grey, Quak- 
 erish dale was still only awakened in places 
 and patches from the sobriety of its winter 
 151 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 colouring ; and he wondered at its beauty ; 
 an essential beauty of the old earth it 
 seemed to him, not resident in particulars 
 but breathing to him from the whole. He 
 surprised himself by a sudden impulse to 
 write poetry — he did so sometimes, loose, 
 galloping octosyllabics in the vein of Scott 
 — and when he had taken his place on a 
 boulder, near some fairy falls and shaded 
 by a whip of a tree that was already radiant 
 with new leaves, it still more surprised him 
 that he should find nothing to write. His 
 heart perhaps beat in time to some vast 
 indwelling rhythm of the universe. By the 
 time he came to a corner of the valley and 
 could see the kirk, he had so lingered by 
 the way that the first psalm was finishing. 
 The nasal psalmody, full of turns and trills 
 and graceless graces, seemed the essential 
 voice of the kirk itself upraised in thanks- 
 giving. * Everything 's alive,' he said ; and 
 again cries it aloud, * thank God, every- 
 thing 's alive ! ' He lingered yet a while in 
 ^52 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 the kirk-yard. A tuft of primroses was 
 blooming hard by the leg of an old, black 
 table tombstone, and he stopped to con- 
 template the random apologue. They stood 
 forth on the cold earth with a trenchancy 
 of contrast ; and he was struck with a sense 
 of incompleteness in the day, the season, 
 and the beauty that surrounded him — the 
 chill there was in the warmth, the gross 
 black clods about the opening primroses, 
 the damp earthy smell that was everywhere 
 p intermingled with the scents. The voice 
 
 of the aged Torrance within rose in an 
 ecstasy. And he wondered if Torrance 
 also felt in his old bones the joyous influ- 
 ence of the spring morning; Torrance, or 
 the shadow of what once was Torrance, 
 that must come so soon to lie outside 
 here in the sun and rain with all his 
 rheumatisms, while a new minister stood 
 in his room and thundered from his own 
 familiar pulpit ? The pity of it, and some- 
 thing of the chill of the grave, shook 
 153 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 him for a moment as he made haste to 
 enter. 
 
 He went up the aisle reverently, and took 
 his place in the pew with lowered eyes, for 
 he feared he had already offended the kind 
 old gentleman in the pulpit, and was sedu- 
 lous to offend no further. He could not 
 follow the prayer, not even the heads of it 
 Brightnesses of azure, clouds of fragrance, 
 a tinkle of falling water and singing birds, 
 rose like exhalations from some deeper, 
 aboriginal memory, that was not his, but 
 belonged to the flesh on his bones. His 
 body remembered; and it seemed to him 
 that his body was in no way gross, but 
 ethereal and perishable like a strain of music; 
 and he felt for it an exquisite tenderness as 
 for a child, an innocent, full of beautiful 
 instincts and destined to an early death. 
 And he felt for old Torrance — of the many 
 supplications, of the few days — a pity that 
 was near to tears. The prayer ended. 
 Right over him was a tablet in the wall, 
 154 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 the only ornament in the roughly masoned 
 chapel — for it was no more ; the tablet 
 commemorated, I was about to say the 
 virtues, but rather the existence of a former 
 Rutherford of Hermiston ; and Archie, 
 under that trophy of his long descent and 
 local greatness, leaned back in the pew and 
 contemplated vacancy with the shadow of 
 a smile between playful and sad, that became 
 him strangely. Dandie's sister, sitting by 
 the side of Clem in her new Glasgow finery, 
 chose that moment to observe the young 
 laird. Aware of the stir of his entrance, 
 the little formalist had kept her eyes 
 fastened and her face prettily composed 
 during the prayer. It was not hypocrisy, 
 there was no one further from a hypocrite. 
 The girl had been taught to behave : to 
 look up, to look down, to look unconscious, 
 to look seriously impressed in church, and 
 in every conjuncture to look her best. 
 That was the game of female life, and she 
 played it frankly. Archie was the one 
 155 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 person in church who was of interest, who 
 was somebody new, reputed eccentric, known 
 to be young, and a laird, and still unseen 
 by Christina. Small wonder that, as she 
 stood there in her attitude of pretty decency, 
 her mind should run upon him ! If he 
 spared a glance in her direction, he should 
 know she was a well-behaved young lady 
 who had been to Glasgow. In reason he 
 must admire her clothes, and it was possible 
 that he should think her pretty. At that 
 her heart beat the least thing in the world ; 
 and she proceeded, by way of a corrective, 
 to call up and dismiss a series of fancied 
 pictures of the young man who should now, 
 by rights, be looking at her. She settled on 
 the plainest of them, — a pink short young 
 man with a dish face and no figure, at whose 
 admiration she could afford to smile; but 
 for all that, the consciousness of his gaze 
 (which was really fixed on Torrance and his 
 mittens) kept her in something of a flutter 
 till the word Amen. Even then, she was 
 156 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 far too well-bred to gratify her curiosity 
 with any impatience. She resumed her 
 seat languidly — this was a Glasgow touch 
 — she composed her dress, rearranged her 
 nosegay of primroses, looked first in front, 
 then behind upon the other side, and at last 
 allowed her eyes to move, without hurry, 
 in the direction of the Hermiston pew. 
 For a moment, they were riveted. Next 
 she had plucked her gaze home again like a 
 tame bird who should have meditated flight. 
 Possibilities crowded on her; she hung 
 over the future and grew dizzy ; the image 
 of this young man, slim, graceful, dark, with 
 the inscrutable half-smile, attracted and 
 repelled her like a chasm. ' I wonder, will 
 I have met my fate ? ' she thought, and 
 her heart swelled. 
 
 Torrance was got some way into his first 
 exposition, positing a deep layer of texts as 
 he went along, laying the foundations of 
 his discourse, which was to deal with a nice 
 point in divinity, before Archie suffered his 
 ^S7 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 eyes to wander. They fell first of all on 
 Clem, looking insupportably prosperous, 
 and patronising Torrance with the favour 
 of a modified attention, as of one who was 
 used to better things in Glasgow. Though 
 he had never before set eyes on him, Archie 
 had no difficulty in identifying him, and no 
 hesitation in pronouncing him vulgar, the 
 worst of the family. Clem was leaning 
 lazily forward when Archie first saw him. 
 Presently he leaned nonchalantly back ; 
 and that deadly instrument, the maiden, 
 was suddenly unmasked in profile. Though 
 not quite in the front of the fashion (had 
 anybody cared !), certain artful Glasgow 
 mantua-makers, and her own inherent taste, 
 had arrayed her to great advantage. Her 
 accoutrement was, indeed, a cause of heart- 
 burning, and almost of scandal, in that 
 infinitesimal kirk company. Mrs. Hob had 
 said her say at Cauldstaneslap. 'Daft- 
 like ! ' she had pronounced it. * A jaiket 
 that '11 no meet I Whaur 's the sense of a 
 
 158 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 jaiket that'll no button upon you, if it 
 should come to be weet ? What do ye ea 
 thir things? Demmy brokens, d'ye say? 
 They '11 be brokens wi' a vengeance or ye 
 can win back I Weel, I have naething to 
 do wi' it — it 's no good taste.' Clem, whose 
 purse had thus metamorphosed his sister, 
 and who was not insensible to the adver- 
 tisement, had come to the rescue with a 
 ' Hoot, woman ! What do you ken of 
 good taste that has never been to the 
 ceety?' And Hob, looking on the girl 
 with pleased smiles, as she timidly displayed 
 her finery in the midst of the dark kitchen, 
 had thus ended the dispute: *The cutty 
 looks weel,* he had said, *and it's no very 
 like rain. Wear them the day, hizzie ; but 
 it's no a thing to make a practice o'.' In 
 the breasts of her rivals, coming to the kirk 
 very conscious of white under-linen, and 
 their faces splendid with much soap, the 
 sight of the toilet had raised a storm of 
 varying emotion, from the mere unenvious 
 159 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 admiration that was expressed in a long- 
 drawn ' Eh ! ' to the angrier feeling that 
 found vent in an emphatic ' Set her up ! ' 
 Her frock was of straw-coloured jaconet 
 muslin, cut low at the bosom and short at 
 the ankle, so as to display her demi-broquins 
 of Regency violet, crossing with many 
 straps upon a yellow cobweb stocking. 
 According to the pretty fashion in which 
 our grandmothers did not hesitate to appear, 
 and our great-aunts went forth armed for 
 the pursuit and capture of our great-uncles, 
 the dress was drawn up so as to mould the 
 contour of both breasts, and in the nook 
 between, a cairngorm brooch maintained it 
 Here, too, surely in a very enviable posi- 
 tion, trembled the nosegay of primroses. 
 She wore on her shoulders — or rather, on 
 her back and not her shoulders, which it 
 scarcely passed — a French coat of sarsenet, 
 tied in front with Margate braces, and of 
 the same colour with her violet shoes. 
 About her face clustered a disorder of dark 
 1 60 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 ringlets, a little garland of yellow French 
 roses surmounted her brow, and the whole 
 was crowned by a village hat of chipped 
 straw. Amongst all the rosy and all the 
 weathered faces that surrounded her in 
 church, she glowed like an open flower — 
 girl and raiment, and the cairngorm that 
 caught the daylight and returned it in a 
 fiery flash, and the threads of bronze and 
 gold that played in her hair. 
 
 Archie was attracted by the bright thing 
 like a child. He looked at her again and 
 yet again, and their looks crossed. The lip 
 was lifted from her little teeth. He saw 
 the red blood work vividly under her tawny 
 skin. Her eye, which was great as a stag's, 
 struck and held his gaze. He knew who 
 she must be — Kirstie, she of the harsh 
 diminutive, his housekeeper's niece, the 
 sister of the rustic prophet, Gib — and he 
 found in her the answer to his wishes. 
 
 Christina felt the shock of their encoun- 
 tering glances, and seemed to rise, clothed 
 L i6i 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 in smiles, into a region of the vague and 
 bright But the gratification was not more 
 exquisite than it was brief. She looked 
 away abruptly, and immediately began to 
 blame herself for that abruptness. She 
 knew what she should have done, too late 
 — turned slowly with her nose in the air. 
 And meantime his look was not removed, 
 but continued to play upon her like a 
 battery of cannon constantly aimed, and 
 now seemed to isolate her alone with him, 
 and now seemed to uplift her, as on a pil- 
 lory, before the congregation. For Archie 
 continued to drink her in with his eyes, 
 even as a wayfarer comes to a well-head on 
 a mountain, and stoops his face, and drinks 
 with thirst unassuageable. In the cleft of 
 her little breasts the fiery eye of the topaz 
 and the pale florets of primrose fascinated 
 him. He saw the breasts heave, and the 
 flowers shake with the heaving, and mar- 
 velled what should so much discompose 
 the girl. And Christina was conscious of 
 162 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 his gaze — saw it, perhaps, with the dainty 
 plaything of an ear that peeped among her 
 ringlets ; she was conscious of changing 
 colour, conscious of her unsteady breath. 
 Like a creature tracked, run down, sur- 
 rounded, she sought in a dozen ways to 
 give herself a countenance. She used her 
 handkerchief — it was a really fine one — 
 then she desisted in a panic: 'He would 
 only think I was too warm.' She took to 
 reading in the metrical psalms, and then 
 remembered it was sermon-time. Last she 
 put a ' sugar-bool ' in her mouth, and the 
 next moment repented of the step. It was 
 such a homely-hke thing ! Mr. Archie 
 would never be eating sweeties in kirk ; 
 and, with a J)alpable effort, she swallowed 
 it whole, and her colour flamed high. At 
 this signal of distress Archie awoke to a 
 sense of his ill-behaviour. What had he 
 been doing ? He had been exquisitely rude 
 in church to the niece of his housekeeper ; 
 he had stared like a lackey and a libertine 
 163 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 at a beautiful and modest girl. It was 
 possible, it was even likely, he would be 
 presented to her after service in the kirk- 
 yard, and then how was he to look ? And 
 there was no excuse. He had marked the 
 tokens of her shame, of her increasing 
 indignation, and he was such a fool that he 
 had not understood them. Shame bowed 
 him down, and he looked resolutely at Mr. 
 Torrance; who little supposed, good, worthy 
 man, as he continued to expound justifica- 
 tion by faith, what was his true business : 
 to play the part of derivative to a pair of 
 children at the old game of falling in love. 
 
 Christina was greatly relieved at first. 
 It seemed to her that she was clothed again. 
 She looked back on what had passed. All 
 would have been right if she had not 
 blushed, a silly fool ! There was nothing 
 to blush at, if she had taken a sugar-bool. 
 Mrs. MacTaggart, the elder's wife in St. 
 Enoch's, took them often. And if he had 
 looked at her, what was more natural than 
 164 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 that a young gentleman should look at the 
 best-dressed girl in church? And at the 
 same time, she knew far otherwise, she 
 knew there was nothing casual or ordinary 
 in the look, and valued herself on its 
 memory like a decoration. Well, it was 
 a blessing he had found something else to 
 look at ! And presently she began to have 
 other thoughts. It was necessary, she 
 fancied, that she should put herself right 
 by a repetition of the incident, better 
 managed. If the wish was father to the 
 thought, she did not know or she would 
 not recognise it. It was simply as a 
 manoeuvre of propriety, as something called 
 for to lessen the significance of what had 
 gone before, that she should a second time 
 meet his eyes, and this time without blush- 
 ing. And at the memory of the blush, she 
 blushed again, and became one general 
 blush burning from head to foot. Was 
 ever anything so indelicate, so forward, 
 done by a girl before ? And here she was, 
 165 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 making an exhibition of herself before the 
 congregation about nothing! She stole a 
 glance upon her neighbours, and behold I 
 they were steadily indifferent, and Clem 
 had gone to sleep. And still the one idea 
 was becoming more and more potent with 
 her, that in common prudence she must 
 look again before the service ended. Some- 
 thing of the same sort was going forward 
 in the mind of Archie, as he struggled with 
 the load of penitence. So it chanced that, 
 in the flutter of the moment when the last 
 psalm was given out, and Torrance was 
 reading the verse, and the leaves of every 
 psalm-book in church were rustling under 
 busy fingers, two stealthy glances were sent 
 out like antennae among the pews and on 
 the indifferent and absorbed occupants, and 
 drew timidly nearer to the straight line 
 between Archie and Christina. They met, 
 they lingered together for the least fraction 
 of time, and that was enough. A charge 
 as of electricity passed through Christina, 
 i66 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 and behold I the leaf of her psalm-book was 
 torn across. 
 
 Archie was outside by the gate of the 
 graveyard, conversing with Hob and the 
 minister and shaking hands all round with 
 the scattering congregation, when Clem 
 and Christina were brought up to be pre- 
 sented. The laird took off his hat and 
 bowed to her with grace and respect. 
 Christina made her Glasgow curtsey to 
 the laird, and went on again up the road 
 for Hermiston and Cauldstaneslap, walking 
 fast, breathing hurriedly with a heightened 
 colour, and in this strange frame of mind, 
 that when she was alone she seemed in 
 high happiness, and when any one addressed 
 her she resented it like a contradiction. 
 A part of the way she had the company of 
 some neighbour girls and a loutish young 
 man ; never had they seemed so insipid, 
 never had she made herself so disagreeable. 
 But these struck aside to their various 
 destinations or were out-walked and left 
 167 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 behind ; and when she had driven off with 
 sharp words the proffered convoy of some 
 of her nephews and nieces, she was free 
 to go on alone up Hermiston brae, walking 
 on air, dwelling intoxicated among clouds 
 of happiness. Near to the summit she 
 heard steps behind her, a man's steps, light 
 and very rapid. She knew the foot at 
 once and walked the faster. 'If it's me 
 he's wanting, he can run for it,' she 
 thought, smiling. 
 
 Archie overtook her like a man whose 
 mind was made up. 
 
 * Miss Kirstie,' he began. 
 
 * Miss Christina, if you please, Mr. Weir,' 
 she interrupted. * I canna bear the con- 
 traction.' 
 
 ' You forget it has a friendly sound for 
 me. Your aunt is an old friend of mine, 
 and a very good one. I hope we shall see 
 much of you at Hermiston ? ' 
 
 'My aunt and my sister-in-law doesna 
 agree very well. Not that I have much 
 i68 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 ado with it. But still when I m stopping 
 in the house, if I was to be visiting my 
 aunt, it would not look considerate-like.' 
 ' I am sorry,' said Archie. 
 
 * I thank you kindly, Mr. Weir,' she 
 said. * I whiles think myself it 's a great 
 peety.' 
 
 ' Ah, I am sure your voice would always 
 be for peace ! ' he cried. 
 
 ' I wouldna be too sure of that,* she 
 said. ' I have my days like other folk, I 
 suppose.' 
 
 * Do you know, in our old kirk, among 
 our good old grey dames, you made an 
 effect like sunshine.' 
 
 * Ah, but that would be my Glasgow 
 clothes ! ' 
 
 ' I did not think I was so much under 
 the influence of pretty frocks.' 
 
 She smiled with a half look at him. 
 
 * There 's more than you I ' she said. ' But 
 
 you see I 'm only Cinderella. I '11 have 
 
 to put aU these things by in my trunk ; 
 
 169 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 next Sunday I'll be as grey as the rest. 
 They're Glasgow clothes, you see, and it 
 would never do to make a practice of it. 
 It would seem terrible conspicuous.' 
 
 By that they were come to the place 
 where their ways severed. The old grey 
 moors were all about them ; in the midst 
 a few sheep wandered ; and they could see 
 on the one hand the straggling caravan 
 scaling the braes in front of them for 
 Cauldstaneslap, and on the other, the con- 
 tingent from Hermiston bending off and 
 beginning to disappear by detachments into 
 the policy gate. It was in these circum- 
 stances that they turned to say farewell, 
 and deliberately exchanged a glance as 
 they shook hands. All passed as it should, 
 genteelly ; and in Christina's mind, as she 
 mounted the first steep ascent for Cauld- 
 staneslap, a gratifying sense of triumph 
 prevailed over the recollection of minor 
 lapses and mistakes. She had kilted her 
 gown, as she did usually at that rugged 
 170 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 pass ; but when she spied Archie still 
 standing and gazing after her, the skirts 
 came down again as if by enchantment. 
 Here was a piece of nicety for that upland 
 parish, where the matrons marched with 
 their coats kilted in the rain, and the lasses 
 walked barefoot to kirk through the dust 
 of summer, and went bravely down by the 
 burn-side, and sat on stones to make a 
 public toilet before entering ! It was 
 perhaps an air wafted from Glasgow ; or 
 perhaps it marked a stage of that dizziness 
 of gratified vanity, in which the instinctive 
 act passed unperceived. He was looking 
 after ! She unloaded her bosom of a pro- 
 digious sigh that was all pleasure, and be- 
 took herself to run. When she had over- 
 taken the stragglers of her family, she 
 caught up the niece whom she had so 
 recently repulsed, and kissed and slapped 
 her, and drove her away again, and ran 
 after her with pretty cries and laughter. 
 Perhaps she thought the laird might still 
 171 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 be looking I But it chanced the little 
 scene came under the view of eyes less 
 favourable ; for she overtook Mrs. Hob 
 marching with Clem and Dand. 
 
 * You 're shiirely fey, lass!' quoth Dandie. 
 
 * Think shame to yersel', miss ! ' said the 
 strident Mrs. Hob. * Is this the gait to 
 guide yersel' on the way hame frae kirk? 
 You 're shiirely no sponsible the day ! And 
 anyway I would mind my guid claes.' 
 
 * Hoot I ' said Christina, and went on 
 before them head in air, treading the rough 
 track with the tread of a wild doe. 
 
 She was in love with herself, her destiny, 
 the air of the hills, the benediction of the 
 sun. All the way home, she continued 
 under the intoxication of these sky-scraping 
 spirits. At table she could talk freely of 
 young Hermiston ; gave her opinion of him 
 off-hand and with a loud voice, that he was 
 a handsome young gentleman, real well 
 mannered and sensible-like, but it was a 
 pity he looked doleful. Only— the moment 
 172 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 after — a memory of his eyes in church em- 
 barrassed her. But for this inconsiderable 
 check, all through meal-time she had a good 
 appetite, and she kept them laughing at 
 table, until Gib (who had returned before 
 them from Crossmichael and his separative 
 w^orship) reproved the whole of them for 
 their levity. 
 
 Singing 'in to herself as she went, her 
 mind still in the turmoil of a glad confusion, 
 she rose and tripped upstairs to a little loft, 
 lighted by four panes in the gable, where 
 she slept with one of her nieces. The 
 niece, who followed her, presuming on 
 * Auntie's ' high spirits, was flounced out of 
 the apartment with small ceremony, and 
 retired, smarting and half tearful, to bury 
 her woes in the byre among the hay. Still 
 humming, Christina divested herself of her 
 finery, and put her treasures one by one in 
 her great green trunk. The last of these 
 was the psalm-book; it was a fine piece, 
 the gift of Mistress Clem, in distinct old- 
 ^7Z 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 faced type, on paper that had begun to 
 grow foxy in the warehouse — not by service 
 — and she was used to wrap it in a hand- 
 kerchief every Sunday after its period of 
 service was over, and bury it end-wise at 
 the head of her trunk. As she now took 
 it in hand the book fell open where the leaf 
 was torn, and she stood and gazed upon 
 that evidence of her bygone discomposure. 
 There returned again the vision of the two 
 brown eyes staring at her, intent and bright, 
 out of that dark corner of the kirk. The 
 whole appearance and attitude, the smile, 
 the suggested gesture of young Hermiston 
 came before her in a flash at the sight of 
 the torn page. ' I was surely fey ! * she 
 said, echoing the words of Dandie, and at 
 the suggested doom her high spirits deserted 
 her. She flung herself prone upon the bed, 
 and lay there, holding the psalm-book in 
 her hands for hours, for the more part in a 
 mere stupor of unconsenting pleasure and 
 unreasoning fear. The fear was super- 
 174 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 stitious ; there came up again and again 
 in her memory Dandie's ill-omened words, 
 and a hundred grisly and black tales out of 
 the immediate neighbourhood read her a 
 commentary on their force. The pleasure 
 was never realised. You might say the 
 joints of her body thought and remembered, 
 and were gladdened, but her essential self, 
 in the immediate theatre of consciousness, 
 talked feverishly of something else, like a 
 nervous person at a fire. The image that 
 she most complacently dwelt on was that 
 of Miss Christina in her character of the 
 Fair Lass of Cauldstaneslap, carrying all 
 before her in the straw-coloured frock, 
 the violet mantle, and the yellow cobweb 
 stockings. Archie's image, on the other 
 hand, when it presented itself was never 
 welcomed — far less welcomed with any 
 ardour, and it was exposed at times to 
 merciless criticism. In the long vague 
 dialogues she held in her mind, often with 
 imaginary, often with unrealised interlocu- 
 175 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 tors, Archie, if he were referred to at 
 all, came in for savage handling. He was 
 described as ' looking like a stork,' ' staring 
 like a caiilf,' 'a face like a ghaist's.' 'Do 
 you call that manners ? ' she said ; or, * I 
 soon put him in his place. ' ' '*3Iiss Christina, 
 if you please, Mr. Weir ! " says I, and just 
 flyped up my skirt tails.' With gabble like 
 this she would entertain herself long whiles 
 together, and then her eye would perhaps 
 fall on the torn leaf, and the eyes of Archie 
 would appear again from the darkness of 
 the wall, and the voluble words deserted 
 her, and she would lie still and stupid, and 
 think upon nothing with devotion, and be 
 sometimes raised by a quiet sigh. Had 
 a doctor of medicine come into that loft, 
 he would have diagnosed a healthy, well- 
 developed, eminently vivacious lass lying 
 on her face in a fit of the sulks ; not one 
 who had just contracted, or was just con- 
 tracting, a mortal sickness of the mind 
 which should yet carry her towards death 
 176 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 and despair. Had it been a doctor of 
 psychology, he might have been pardoned 
 for divining in the girl a passion of childish 
 vanity, self-love in eoccelsis, and no more. 
 It is to be understood that I have been 
 painting chaos and describing the inarticu- 
 late. Every lineament that appears is too 
 precise, almost every word used too strong. 
 Take a finger-post in the mountains on a 
 day of rolling mists ; I have but copied the 
 names that appear upon the pointers, the 
 names of definite and famous cities far 
 distant, and now perhaps basking in sun- 
 shine ; but Christina remained all these 
 hours, as it were, at the foot of the post 
 itself, not moving, and enveloped in mutable 
 and blinding wreaths of haze. 
 
 The day was growing late and the sun- 
 beams long and level, when she sat suddenly 
 up, and wrapped in its handkerchief and 
 put by that psalm-book which had already 
 played a part so decisive in the first chapter 
 of her love-story. In the absence of the 
 
 M 177 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 mesmerist's eye, we are told nowadays that 
 the head of a bright nail may fill his place, 
 if it be steadfastly regarded. So that torn 
 page had riveted her attention on what 
 might else have been but little, and perhaps 
 soon forgotten ; while the ominous words 
 of Dandie — heard, not heeded, and still 
 remembered — had lent to her thoughts, or 
 rather to her mood, a cast of solemnity, 
 and that idea of Fate — a pagan Fate, un- 
 controlled by any Christian deity, obscure, 
 lawless, and august — moving indissuadably 
 in the affairs of Christian men. Thus even 
 that phenomenon of love at first sight, 
 which is so rare and seems so simple and 
 violent, like a disruption of life's tissue, may 
 be decomposed into a sequence of accidents 
 happily concurring. 
 
 She put on a grey frock and a pink 
 kerchief, looked at herself a moment with 
 approval in the small square of glass that 
 served her for a toilet mirror, and went 
 softly downstairs through the sleeping house 
 
 178 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 that resounded with the sound of afternoon 
 snoring. Just outside the door, Dandie 
 was sitting with a book in his hand, not 
 reading, only honouring the Sabbath by a 
 sacred vacancy of mind. She came near 
 him and stood still. 
 
 * I 'm for off up the muirs, Dandie,' she 
 said. 
 
 There was something unusually soft in 
 her tones that made him look up. She was 
 pale, her eyes dark and bright; no trace 
 remained of the levity of the morning. 
 
 * Ay, lass ? Ye '11 have ye're ups and 
 downs like me, I 'm thinkin',' he observed. 
 
 * What for do ye say that ? ' she asked. 
 
 * O, for naething,' says Dand. ' Only I 
 think ye 're mair like me than the lave of 
 them. Ye've mair of the poetic temper, 
 tho' Guid kens little enough of the poetic 
 taalent. ^t 's an ill gift at the best. Look 
 at yoursel'. At denner you were all sun- 
 shine and flowers and laughter, and now 
 you 're like the star of evening on a lake.' 
 
 179 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 She drank in this hackneyed compliment 
 like wine, and it glowed in her veins. 
 
 * But I 'm saying, Dand ' — she came nearer 
 him — ' I 'm for the muirs. I must have a 
 braith of air. If Clem was to be speiring 
 for me, try and quaiet him, will ye no ? ' 
 
 * What way ? ' said Dandie. * I ken but 
 the ae way, and that 's leein'. I '11 say ye 
 had a sair heed, if ye like.' 
 
 ' But I havena,' she objected. 
 
 * I daursay no',' he returned. * I said I 
 would say ye had ; and if ye like to nay-say 
 me when ye come back, it '11 no mateerially 
 maitter, for my chara'ter 's clean gane 
 a'ready past reca'.' 
 
 *0, Dand, are ye a leear?' she asked, 
 lingering. 
 
 * Folks say sae,' replied the bard. 
 
 * Wha says sae ? ' she pursued. 
 
 *Them that should ken the best,' he 
 responded. * The lassies, for ane.' 
 
 * But, Dand, you would never lee to me?' 
 she asked. 
 
 1 80 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 * 1 11 leave that for your pairt of it, ye 
 girzie/ said he. 'Ye '11 lee to me fast 
 eneuch, when ye hae gotten a jo. I 'm 
 tellin' ye and it 's true ; when you have a 
 jo, Miss Kirstie, it'll be for guid and ill. 
 I ken: I was made that way mysel', but 
 the deil was in my luck ! Here, gang awa 
 wi' ye to your muirs, and let me be ; I 'm 
 in an hour of inspiraution, ye upsetting 
 tawpie ! ' 
 
 But she clung to her brother's neigh- 
 bourhood, she knew not why. 
 
 *Will ye no gie's a kiss, Dand?' she 
 said. ' I aye likit ye fine.' 
 
 He kissed her and considered her a 
 moment; he found something strange in 
 her. But he was a libertine through and 
 through, nourished equal contempt and sus- 
 picion of all womankind, and paid his way 
 among them habitually with idle compli- 
 ments. 
 
 'Gae wa' wi' ye!' said he. *Ye're a 
 dentie baby, and be content wi' that ! ' 
 i8i 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 That was Dandie's way ; a kiss and a 
 comfit to Jenny — a bawbee and my blessing 
 to Jill — and good-night to the whole clan 
 of ye, my dears ! When anything ap- 
 proached the serious, it became a matter for 
 men, he both thought and said. Women, 
 when they did not absorb, were only 
 children to be shoo'd away. Merely in his 
 character of connoisseur, however, Dandie 
 glanced carelessly after his sister as she 
 crossed the meadow. ' The brat 's no that 
 bad ! ' he thought with surprise, for though 
 he had just been paying her compliments, 
 he had not really looked at her. ' Hey ! 
 what 's yon ? ' For the grey dress was cut 
 with short sleeves and skirts, and displayed 
 her trim strong legs clad in pink stockings 
 of the same shade as the kerchief she wore 
 round her shoulders, and that shimmered 
 as she went. This was not her way in 
 undress ; he knew her ways and the ways 
 of the whole sex in the country-side, no 
 one better ; when they did not go barefoot, 
 182 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 they wore stout 'rig and furrow' woollen 
 hose of an invisible blue mostly, when they 
 were not black outright; and Dandie, at 
 sight of this daintiness, put two and two 
 together. It was a silk handkerchief, then 
 they would be silken hose; they matched 
 — then the whole outfit was a present of 
 Clem's, a costly present, and not something 
 to be worn through bog and briar, or on a 
 late afternoon of Sunday. He whistled. 
 *My denty May, either your heid's fair 
 turned, or there's some ongoings 1' he 
 observed, and dismissed the subject. 
 
 She went slowly at first, but ever 
 straighter and faster for the Cauldstane- 
 slap, a pass among the hills to which the 
 farm owed its name. The Slap opened 
 like a doorway between two rounded 
 hillocks ; and through this ran the short 
 cut to Hermiston. Immediately on the 
 other side it went down through the DeiFs 
 Hags, a considerable marshy hollow of the 
 hill tops, full of springs, and crouching 
 
 183 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 jumpers, and pools where the black peat- 
 water slumbered. There was no view from 
 here. A man might have sat upon the 
 Praying Weaver's stone a half century, and 
 seen none but the Cauldstaneslap children 
 twice in the twenty-four hours on their 
 way to the school and back again, an 
 occasional shepherd, the irruption of a clan 
 of sheep, or the birds who haunted about 
 the springs, drinking and shrilly piping. 
 So, when she had once passed the Slap, 
 Kirstie was received into seclusion. She 
 looked back a last time at the farm. It 
 still lay deserted except for the figure of 
 Dandie, who was now seen to be scribbling 
 in his lap, the hour of expected inspiration 
 having come to him at last Thence she 
 passed rapidly through the morass, and 
 came to the farther end of it, where a 
 sluggish burn discharges, and the path for 
 Hermiston accompanies it on the beginning 
 of its downward path. From this corner 
 a wide view was opened to her of the 
 184 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 whole stretch of braes upon the other side, 
 still sallow and in places rusty with the 
 winter, with the path marked boldly, here 
 and there by the burn-side a tuft of birches, 
 and — two miles off as the crow flies — from 
 its enclosures and young plantations, the 
 windows of Hermiston glittering in the 
 western sun. 
 
 Here she sat down and waited, and looked 
 for a long time at these far-away bright 
 panes of glass. It amused her to have so 
 extended a view, she thought. It amused 
 her to see the house of Hermiston — to see 
 * folk ' ; and there was an indistinguishable 
 human unit, perhaps the gardener, visibly 
 sauntering on the gravel paths. 
 
 By the time the sun was down and all 
 the easterly braes lay plunged in clear 
 shadow, she was aware of another figure 
 coming up the path at a most unequal rate 
 of approach, now half running, now paus- 
 ing and seeming to hesitate. She watched 
 him at first with a total suspension of 
 
 185 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 thought She held her thought as a person 
 holds his breathing. Then she consented 
 to recognise him. 'He'll no be coming 
 here, he canna be; it's no possible.' And 
 there began to grow upon her a subdued 
 choking suspense. He was coming; his 
 hesitations had quite ceased, his step grew 
 firm and swift; no doubt remained; and 
 the question loomed up before her instant : 
 what was she to do ? It was all very well 
 to say that her brother was a laird himself; 
 it was all very well to speak of casual 
 intermarriages and to count cousinship, like 
 Auntie Kirstie. The difference in their 
 social station was trenchant; propriety, 
 prudence, all that she had ever learned, all 
 that she knew, bade her flee. But on the 
 other hand the cup of life now offered to 
 her was too enchanting. For one moment, 
 she saw the question clearly, and definitely 
 made her choice. She stood up and showed 
 herself an instant in the gap relieved upon 
 the sky line ; and the next, fled trembling 
 i86 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 and sat down glowing with excitement on 
 the Weaver's stone. She shut her eyes, 
 seeking, praying for composure. Her hand 
 shook in her lap, and her mind was full of 
 incongruous and futile speeches. What 
 was there to make a work about? She 
 could take care of herself, she supposed! 
 There was no harm in seeing the laird. It 
 was the best thing that could happen. She 
 would mark a proper distance to him once 
 and for all. Gradually the wheels of her 
 nature ceased to go round so madly, and 
 she sat in passive expectation, a quiet, 
 solitary figure in the midst of the grey 
 moss. I have said she was no hypocrite, 
 but here I am at fault. She never admitted 
 to herself that she had come up the hill 
 to look for Archie. And perhaps after all 
 she did not know, perhaps came as a stone 
 falls. For the steps of love in the young, 
 and especially in girls, are instinctive and 
 unconscious. 
 
 In the meantime Archie was drawing 
 
 187 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 rapidly near, and he at least was consciously 
 seeking her neighbourhood. The afternoon 
 had turned to ashes in his mouth ; the 
 memory of the girl had kept him from 
 reading and drawn him as with cords ; and 
 at last, as the cool of the evening began to 
 come on, he had taken his hat and set 
 forth, with a smothered ejaculation, by the 
 moor path to Cauldstaneslap. He had no 
 hope to find her; he took the off chance 
 without expectation of result and to reheve 
 his uneasiness. The greater was his sur- 
 prise, as he surmounted the slope and came 
 into the hollow of the Deil's Hags, to see 
 there, like an answer to his wishes, the 
 little womanly figure in the grey dress and 
 the pink kerchief sitting little, and low, 
 and lost, and acutely solitary, in these 
 desolate surroundings and on the weather- 
 beaten stone of the dead weaver. Those 
 things that still smacked of winter were 
 all rusty about her, and those things that 
 already relished of the spring had put forth 
 i88 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 the tender and lively colours of the season. 
 Even in the unchanging face of the death- 
 stone, changes were to be remarked; and 
 in the channeled lettering, the moss began 
 to renew itself in jewels of green. By an 
 afterthought that was a stroke of art, she 
 had turned up over her head the back of 
 the kerchief; so that it now framed be- 
 comingly her vivacious and yet pensive 
 face. Her feet were gathered under her 
 on the one side, and she leaned on her bare 
 arm, which showed out strong and round, 
 tapered to a slim wrist, and shimmered in 
 the fading light. 
 
 Young Hermiston was struck with a 
 certain chill. He was reminded that he 
 now dealt in serious matters of life and 
 death. This was a grown woman he was 
 approaching, endowed with her mysterious 
 potencies and attractions, the treasury of 
 the continued race, and he was neither 
 better nor worse than the average of his 
 sex and age. He had a certain delicacy 
 189 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 which had preserved him hitherto unspotted, 
 and which (had either of them guessed it) 
 made him a more dangerous companion 
 when his heart should be really stirred. 
 His throat was dry as he came near; 
 but the appealing sweetness of her smile 
 stood between them like a guardian 
 angel. 
 
 For she turned to him and smiled, though 
 without rising. There was a shade in this 
 cavalier greeting that neither of them per- 
 ceived ; neither he, who simply thought it 
 gracious and charming as herself; nor yet 
 she, who did not observe (quick as she was) 
 the difference between rising to meet the 
 laird, and remaining seated to receive the 
 expected admirer. 
 
 ' Are ye stepping west, Hermiston ? ' said 
 she, giving him his territorial name after 
 the fashion of the country-side. 
 
 * I was,' said he, a little hoarsely, ' but I 
 think I will be about the end of my stroll 
 now. Are you like me, Miss Christina? 
 190 
 
CHRISTINA^S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 The house would not hold me. I came 
 here seeking air.' 
 
 He took his seat at the other end of the 
 tombstone and studied her, wondering what 
 was she. There was infinite import in the 
 question alike for her and him. 
 
 *Ay/ she said. 'I couldna bear the 
 roof either. It 's a habit of mine to come 
 up here about the gloaming when it's 
 quaiet and caller.' 
 
 ' It was a habit of my mother's also/ he 
 said gravely. The recollection half startled 
 him as he expressed it He looked around. 
 * I have scarce been here since. It 's peace- 
 ful,' he said, with a long breath. 
 
 * It 's no like Glasgow,' she replied. ' A 
 weary place, yon Glasgow I But what a 
 day have I had for my hame-coming, and 
 what a bonny evening I ' 
 
 * Indeed, it was a wonderful day,' said 
 Archie. ' I think I will remember it years 
 and years until I come to die. On days 
 like this — I do not know if you feel as I 
 
 191 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 do — but everything appears so brief, and 
 fragile, and exquisite, that I am afraid to 
 touch life. We are here for so short a 
 time; and all the old people before us — 
 Rutherfords of Hermiston, Elliotts of the 
 Cauldstaneslap — that were here but a while 
 since riding about and keeping up a great 
 noise in this quiet corner — making love too, 
 and marrying — why, where are they now? 
 It 's deadly commonplace, but, after all, the 
 commonplaces are the great poetic truths/ 
 He was sounding her, semi-consciously, 
 to see if she could understand him; to learn 
 if she were only an animal the colour of 
 flowers, or had a soul in her to keep her 
 sweet. She, on her part, her means well 
 in hand, watched, womanlike, for any 
 opportunity to shine, to abound in his 
 humour, whatever that might be. The 
 dramatic artist, that lies dormant or only 
 half awake in most human beings, had in 
 her sprung to his feet in a divine fury, and 
 chance had served her well. She looked 
 192 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 upon him with a subdued twilight look 
 that became the hour of the day and the 
 train of thought; earnestness shone through 
 her like stars in the purple west ; and from 
 the great but controlled upheaval of her 
 whole nature there passed into her voice, and 
 rang in her lightest words, a thrill of emotion. 
 
 * Have you mind of Dand's song ? ' she 
 answered. * I think he '11 have been trying 
 to say what you have been thinking.' 
 
 * No, I never heard it,' he said. * Repeat 
 it to me, can you ? ' 
 
 *It's nothing wanting the tune,' said 
 Kirstie. 
 
 ' Then sing it me,' said he. 
 
 ' On the Lord's Day ? That would never 
 do, Mr. Weir ! ' 
 
 * I am afraid I am not so strict a keeper 
 of the Sabbath, and there is no one in this 
 place to hear us, unless the poor old ancient 
 under the stone.' 
 
 *No that I'm thinking that really,' she 
 said. * By my way of thinking, it 's just as 
 N 193 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 serious as a psalm. Will I sooth it to ye, 
 then?' 
 
 * If you please,' said he, and, drawing near 
 to her on the tombstone, prepared to listen. 
 
 She sat up as if to sing. * I '11 only can 
 sooth it to ye,' she explained. ' I wouldna 
 like to sing out loud on the Sabbath. I 
 think the birds would carry news of it 
 to Gilbert,' and she smiled. *It's about 
 the Elliotts,' she continued, *and I think 
 there's few bonnier bits in the book-poets, 
 though Dand has never got printed yet' 
 
 And she began, in the low, clear tones of 
 her half voice, now sinking almost to a 
 whisper, now rising to a particular note 
 which was her best, and which Archie 
 learned to wait for with growing emo- 
 tion : — 
 
 * O they rade in the rain, in the dajrs that are gane, 
 
 In the rain and the wind and the lave, 
 They shoutit in the ha' and they routit on the hill^ 
 But they 're a' quaitit noo in the grave. 
 Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld EUiotts, dour, bauld 
 EUiottsofauld!' 
 
 194 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 AU the time she sang she looked stead- 
 fastly before her, her knees straight, her 
 hands upon her knee, her head east back 
 and up. The expression was admirable 
 throughout, for had she not learned it from 
 the lips and under the criticism of the 
 author? When it was done, she turned 
 upon Archie a face softly bright, and eyes 
 gently suffused and shining in the twilight, 
 and his heart rose and went out to her with 
 boundless pity and sympathy. His ques- 
 tion was answered. She was a human 
 being tuned to a sense of the tragedy of 
 life; there were pathos and music and a 
 great heart in the girl. 
 
 He arose instinctively, she also ; for she 
 saw she had gained a point, and scored the 
 impression deeper, and she had wit enough 
 left to flee upon a victory. They were 
 but commonplaces that remained to be ex- 
 changed, but the low, moved voices in 
 which they passed made them sacred in 
 the memory. In the falling greynes of 
 195 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 the evening he watched her figure winding 
 through the morass, saw it turn a last time 
 and wave a hand, and then pass through 
 the Slap ; and it seemed to him as if some- 
 thing went along with her out of the 
 deepest of his heart. And something 
 surely had come, and come to dwell there. 
 He had retained from childhood a picture, 
 now half obliterated by the passage of 
 time and the multitude of fresh impres- 
 sions, of his mother telling him, with the 
 fluttered earnestness of her voice, and often 
 with dropping tears, the tale of the ' Pray- 
 ing Weaver,' on the very scene of his brief 
 tragedy and long repose. And now there 
 was a companion piece; and he beheld, 
 and he should behold for ever, Christina 
 perched on the same tomb, in the grey 
 colours of the evening, gracious, dainty, 
 perfect as a flower, and she also singing — 
 
 ' Of old, unhappy far off things. 
 And battles long ago/ 
 
 of their common ancestors now dead, of 
 196 
 
CHRISTINA^S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 their rude wars composed, their weapons 
 buried with them, and of these strange 
 changelings, their descendants, who lin- 
 gered a little in their places, and would 
 soon be gone also, and perhaps sung of by 
 others at the gloaming hour. By one of 
 the unconscious arts of tenderness the two 
 women were enshrined together in his 
 memory. Tears, in that hour of sensi- 
 bility, came into his eyes indifferently at 
 the thought of either; and the girl, from 
 being something merely bright and shapely, 
 was caught up into the zone of things 
 serious as life and death and his dead 
 mother. So that in all ways and on either 
 side. Fate played his game artfully with 
 this poor pair of children. The genera- 
 tions were prepared, the pangs were made 
 ready, before the curtain rose on the dark 
 drama. 
 
 In the same moment of time that she 
 disappeared from Archie, there opened be- 
 fore Kirstie's eyes the cup-like hollow in 
 197 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 which the farm lay. She saw, some five 
 hundred feet below her, the house making 
 itself bright with candles, and this was a 
 broad hint to her to hurry. For they were 
 only kindled on a Sabbath night with a 
 view to that family worship which rounded 
 in the incomparable tedium of the day 
 and brought on the relaxation of supper. 
 Already she knew that Robert must be 
 within-sides at the head of the table, * wal- 
 ing the portions ' ; for it was Robert in his 
 quality of family priest and judge, not the 
 gifted Gilbert, who officiated. She made 
 good time accordingly down the steep 
 ascent, and came up to the door panting 
 as the three younger brothers, all roused at 
 last from slumber, stood together in the 
 cool and the dark of the evening with a 
 fry of nephews and nieces about them, 
 chatting and awaiting the expected signal. 
 She stood back ; she had no mind to direct 
 attention to her late arrival or to her 
 labouring breath. 
 
 198 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 • Kirstie, ye have shaved it this time, my 
 lass ? ' said Clem. * Whaur were ye ? ' 
 
 *0, just taking a dander by mysel'/ said 
 Kirstie. 
 
 And the talk continued on the subject 
 of the American War, without further re- 
 ference to the truant who stood by them 
 in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with 
 happiness and the sense of guilt 
 
 The signal was given, and the brothers 
 began to go in one after another, amid the 
 jostle and throng of Hob's children. 
 
 Only Dandie, waiting till the last, caught 
 Kirstie by the arm. * When did ye begin 
 to dander in pink hosen, Mistress Elliott ? ' 
 he whispered slyly. 
 
 She looked down ; she was one blush. 
 *I maun have forgotten to change them,* 
 said she ; and went into prayers in her turn 
 with a troubled mind, between anxiety as 
 to whether Dand should have observed her 
 yellow stockings at church, and should thus 
 detect her in a palpable falsehood, and 
 199 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 shame that she had already made good his 
 prophecy. She remembered the words of 
 it, how it was to be when she had gotten 
 a jo, and that that would be for good and 
 evil. * Will I have gotten my jo now ? ' she 
 thought with a secret rapture. 
 
 And all through prayers, where it was 
 her principal business to conceal the pink 
 stockings from the eyes of the indifferent 
 Mrs. Hob — and all through supper, as she 
 made a feint of eating and sat at the table 
 radiant and constrained — and again when 
 she had left them and come into her 
 chamber, and was alone with her sleeping 
 niece, and could at last lay aside the armour 
 of society — the same words sounded within 
 her, the same profound note of happiness, 
 of a world all changed and renewed, of a 
 day that had been passed in Paradise, and 
 of a night that was to be heaven opened. 
 All night she seemed to be conveyed 
 smoothly upon a shallow stream of sleep 
 and waking, and through the bowers of 
 200 
 
CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK 
 
 Beulah; all night she cherished to her. 
 heart that exquisite hope ; and if, towards 
 morning, she forgot it a while in a more 
 profound unconsciousness, it was to catch 
 again the rainbow thought with her first 
 moment of awaking. 
 
 20I 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Two days later a gig from Crossmichael 
 deposited Frank Innes at the doors of 
 Hermiston. Once in a way, during the 
 past winter, Archie, in some acute phase of 
 boredom, had written him a letter. It had 
 contained something in the nature of an 
 invitation, or a reference to an invitation — 
 precisely what, neither of them now re- 
 membered. When Innes had received it, 
 there had been nothing further from his 
 mind than to bury himself in the moors 
 with Archie ; but not even the most acute 
 political heads are guided through the steps 
 of life with unerring directness. That 
 would require a gift of prophecy which has 
 202 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 been denied to man. For instance, who 
 could have imagined that, not a month 
 after he had received the letter, and turned 
 it into mockery, and put off answering it, 
 and in the end lost it, misfortunes of a 
 gloomy cast should begin to thicken over 
 Frank's career ? His case may be briefly 
 stated. His father, a small Morayshire 
 laird with a large family, became recal- 
 citrant and cut off the supplies ; he had 
 fitted himself out with the beginnings of 
 quite a good law library, which, upon some 
 sudden losses on the turf, he had been 
 obliged to sell before they were paid for ; 
 and his bookseller, hearing some rumour 
 of the event, took out a warrant for his 
 arrest. Innes had early word of it, and 
 was able to take precautions. In this 
 immediate welter of his affairs, with an un- 
 pleasant charge hanging over him, he had 
 judged it the part of prudence to be off 
 instantly, had written a fervid letter to his 
 father at Inverauld, and put himself in the 
 203 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 coach for Crossmichael. Any port in a 
 storm I He was manfully turning his back 
 on the Parliament House and its gay 
 babble, on porter and oysters, the race- 
 course and the ring ; and manfully pre- 
 pared, until these clouds should have blown 
 by, to share a living grave with Archie 
 Weir at Hermiston. 
 
 To do him justice, he was no less sur- 
 prised to be going than Archie was to see 
 him come ; and he carried off his wonder 
 with an infinitely better grace. 
 
 * Well, here I am 1 ' said he, as he 
 alighted. * Pylades has come to Orestes 
 at last. By the way, did you get my 
 answer ? No ? How very provoking ! 
 Well, here I am to answer for myself, and 
 that 's better still.' 
 
 ' I am very glad to see you, of course,' 
 said Archie. * I make you heartily wel- 
 come, of course. But you surely have not 
 come to stay, with the Courts still sitting ; 
 is that not most unwise ? ' 
 204 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 *Damn the Courts!' says Frank. 
 *' What are the Courts to friendship and 
 a Uttle fishing ? ' 
 
 And so it was agreed that he was to 
 stay, with no term to the visit but the term 
 which he had privily set to it himself — the 
 day, namely, when his father should have 
 come down with the dust, and he should 
 be able to pacify the bookseller. On such 
 vague conditions there began for these two 
 young men (who were not even friends) a 
 life of great familiarity and, as the days 
 drew on, less and less intimacy. They 
 were together at meal times, together o' 
 nights when the hour had come for whisky- 
 toddy ; but it might have been noticed 
 (had there been any one to pay heed) that 
 they were rarely so much together by day. 
 Archie had Hermiston to attend to, multi- 
 farious activities in the hills, in which he 
 did not require, and had even refused, 
 Frank's escort. He would be off some- 
 times in the morning and leave only a note 
 205 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 on the breakfast table to announce the 
 fact ; and sometimes, with no notice at all, 
 he would not return for dinner until the 
 hour was long past. Innes groaned under 
 these desertions; it required all his philo- 
 sophy to sit down to a solitary breakfast 
 with composure, and all his unaffected 
 good-nature to be able to greet Archie with 
 friendliness on the more rare occasions 
 when he came home late for dinner. 
 
 ' I wonder what on earth he finds to do, 
 Mrs. Elliott?' said he one morning, after 
 he had just read the hasty billet and sat 
 down to table. 
 
 * I suppose it will be business, sir,' re- 
 plied the housekeeper dryly, measuring his 
 distance off to him by an indicated curtsy. 
 
 ' But I can't imagine what business I ' he 
 reiterated. 
 
 * I suppose it will be his business,' retorted 
 the austere Kirstie. 
 
 He turned to her with that happy bright- 
 ness that made the charm of his disposition, 
 206 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 and broke into a peal of healthy and natural 
 laughter. 
 
 'Well played, Mrs. Elliott 1' he cried; 
 and the housekeeper s face relaxed into the 
 shadow of an iron smile. * Well played 
 indeed 1 ' said he. * But you must not be 
 making a stranger of me like that Why, 
 Archie and I were at the High School 
 together, and we've been to college to- 
 gether, and we were going to the Bar to- 
 gether, when — you know I Dear, dear me I 
 what a pity that was 1 A life spoiled, a 
 fine young fellow as good as buried here 
 in the wilderness with rustics ; and all for 
 what ? A frolic, silly, if you like, but no 
 more. God, how good your scones are, 
 Mrs. EUiott ! ' 
 
 ' They re no mines, it was the lassie 
 made them,' said Kirstie ; * and, saving 
 your presence, there 's little sense in taking 
 the Lord's name in vain about idle vivers 
 that you fiU your kyte wi'.' 
 
 * I daresay you 're perfectly right, ma'am/ 
 207 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 quoth the imperturbable Frank. ' But as I 
 was saying, this is a pitiable business, this 
 about poor Archie ; and you and I might 
 do worse than put our heads together, like 
 a couple of sensible people, and bring it 
 to an end. Let me tell you, ma'am, that 
 Archie is really quite a promising young 
 man, and in my opinion he would do well 
 at the Bar. As for his father, no one can 
 deny his ability, and I don't fancy any one 
 would care to deny that he has the deil's 
 own temper ' 
 
 * If you 11 excuse me, Mr. Innes, I think 
 the lass is crying on me,' said Kirstie, and 
 flounced from the room. 
 
 ' The damned, cross-grained, old broom- 
 stick!' ejaculated Innes. 
 
 In the meantime, Kirstie had escaped 
 into the kitchen, and before her vassal gave 
 vent to her feelings. 
 
 ' Here, ettercap I Ye '11 have to wait 
 on yon Innes I I canna baud myself in. 
 "Puir Erchie I " I 'd " puir Erchie " him, if 
 208 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 I had my way 1 And Hermiston with the 
 deiFs ain temper 1 God, let him take Her- 
 miston's scones out of his mouth first. 
 There 's no a hair on ayther o' the Weirs 
 that hasna mair spunk and dirdum to it 
 than what he has in his hale dwaibly body ! 
 Settin' up his snash to me 1 Let him gang 
 to the black toon where he 's mebbe wantit 
 — Whirling in a curricle — wi' pimatum on 
 his heid — making a mess o' himsel' wi' 
 nesty hizzies — a fair disgrace!' It was 
 impossible to hear without admiration 
 Kirstie's graduated disgust, as she brought 
 forth, one after another, these somewhat 
 baseless charges. Then she remembered 
 her immediate purpose, and turned again 
 on her fascinated auditor. * Do ye no hear 
 me, tawpie ? Do ye no hear what I 'm 
 tellin' ye ? Will I have to shoo ye in to 
 him ? If I come to attend to ye, mistress ! ' 
 And the maid fled the kitchen, which had 
 become practically dangerous, to attend on 
 Innes' wants in the front parlour. 
 o 209 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 Tantaene irae ? Has the reader perceived 
 the reason? Since Frank's coming there 
 were no more hours of gossip over the 
 supper tray ! All his blandishments were 
 in vain ; he had started handicapped on the 
 race for Mrs. Elliott's favour. 
 
 But it was a strange thing how misfor- 
 tune dogged him in his efforts to be genial 
 I must guard the reader against accepting 
 Kirstie's epithets as evidence ; she was more 
 concerned for their vigour than for their 
 accuracy. Dwaibly, for instance; nothing 
 could be more calumnious. Frank was the 
 very picture of good looks, good humour, 
 and manly youth. He had bright eyes 
 mth a sparkle and a dance to them, curly 
 hair, a charming smile, brilliant teeth, an 
 admirable carriage of the head, the look of 
 a gentleman, the address of one accustomed 
 to please at first sight and to improve the 
 impression. And with all these advantages, 
 he failed with every one about Hermiston ; 
 with the silent shepherd, with the obsequious 
 
 2IO 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 grieve, with the groom who was also the 
 ploughman, with the gardener and the 
 gardeners sister — a pious, down-hearted 
 woman with a shawl over her ears — ^he 
 failed equally and flatly. They did not 
 like him, and they showed it The little 
 maid, indeed, was an exception; she ad- 
 mired him devoutly, probably dreamed of 
 him in her private hours; but she was 
 accustomed to play the part of silent audi- 
 tor to Kirstie's tirades and silent recipient 
 of Kirstie's buffets, and she had learned not 
 only to be a very capable girl of her years, 
 but a very secret and prudent one besides. 
 Frank was thus conscious that he had one 
 ally and sympathiser in the midst of that 
 general union of disfavour that surrounded, 
 watched, and waited on him in the house 
 of Hermiston ; but he had little comfort or 
 society from that alliance, and the demure 
 little maid (twelve on her last birthday) 
 preserved her own counsel, and tripped 
 on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, 
 
 211 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 but inexorably unconversational. For the 
 others, they were beyond hope and beyond 
 endurance. Never had a young Apollo 
 been cast among such rustic barbarians. 
 But perhaps the cause of his ill-success lay 
 in one trait which was habitual and uncon- 
 scious with him, yet diagnostic of the man. 
 It was his practice to approach any one 
 person at the expense of some one else. 
 He offered you an alliance against the 
 some one else ; he flattered you by slighting 
 him ; you were drawn into a small intrigue 
 against him before you knew how. Won- 
 derful are the virtues of this process gener- 
 ally ; but Frank's mistake was in the choice 
 of the some one else. He was not politic in 
 that ; he listened to the voice of irritation. 
 Archie had offended him at first by what 
 he had felt to be rather a dry reception, 
 had offended him since by his frequent 
 absences. He was besides the one figure 
 continually present in Frank's eye ; and it 
 was to his immediate dependants that 
 
 212 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 Frank could offer the snare of his sym- 
 pathy. Now the truth is that the Weirs, 
 father and son, were surrounded by a posse 
 of strenuous loyaHsts. Of my lord they 
 were vastly proud. It was a distinction 
 in itself to be one of the vassals of the 
 * Hanging Judge,' and his gross, formidable 
 joviality was far from unpopular in the 
 neighbourhood of his home. For Archie 
 they had, one and all, a sensitive affection 
 and respect which recoiled from a word of 
 belittlement. 
 
 Nor was Frank more successful when he 
 went farther afield. To the Four Black 
 Brothers, for instance, he was antipathetic 
 in the highest degree. Hob thought him 
 too light, Gib too profane. Clem, who 
 saw him but for a day or two before he 
 went to Glasgow, wanted to know what 
 the fule's business was, and whether he 
 meant to stay here all session time 1 * Yon 's 
 a drone,' he pronounced. As for Dand, it 
 will be enough to describe their first meet- 
 213 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 ing, when Frank had been whipping a 
 river and the rustic celebrity chanced to 
 come along the path. 
 
 * I m told you re quite a poet,' Frank 
 had said. 
 
 ' Wha tell 't ye that, mannie ? ' had been 
 the unconciliating answer. 
 
 ' O, everybody 1 ' says Frank. 
 
 ' God 1 Here 's fame I ' said the sardonic 
 poet, and he had passed on his way. 
 
 Come to think of it, we have here per- 
 haps a truer explanation of Frank's failures. 
 Had he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he could 
 have turned a neater compliment, because 
 Mr. Scott would have been a friend worth 
 making. Dand, on the other hand, he did 
 not value sixpence, and he showed it even 
 while he tried to flatter. Condescension is 
 an excellent thing, but it is strange how 
 one-sided the pleasure of it is I He who 
 goes fishing among the Scots peasantry 
 with condescension for a bait will have an 
 empty basket by evening. 
 214 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 In proof of this theory Frank made a 
 great success of it at the Crossmichael 
 Club, to which Archie took him immediately 
 on his arrival ; his own last appearance on 
 that scene of gaiety. Frank was made 
 welcome there at once, continued to go 
 regularly, and had attended a meeting (as 
 the members ever after loved to tell) on 
 the evening before his death. Young Hay 
 and young Pringle appeared again. There 
 was another supper at Windielaws, another 
 dinner at DrifFel ; and it resulted in Frank 
 being taken to the bosom of the county 
 people as unreservedly as he had been 
 repudiated by the country folk. He occu- 
 pied Hermiston after the manner of an 
 invader in a conquered capital. He was 
 perpetually issuing from it, as from a base, 
 to toddy parties, fishing parties, and dinner 
 parties, to which Archie was not invited, 
 or to which Archie would not go. It was 
 now that the name of The Recluse became 
 general for the young man. Some say that 
 
 215 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 Innes invented it ; Innes, at least, spread it 
 abroad. 
 
 ' How 's all with your Recluse to-day ? ' 
 people would ask. 
 
 * O, reclusing away !' Innes would declare, 
 with his bright air of saying something 
 witty; and immediately interrupt the general 
 laughter which he had provoked much more 
 by his air than his words, ' Mind you, it 's 
 all very well laughing, but I'm not very 
 well pleased. Poor Archie is a good fellow, 
 an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked. 
 I think it small of him to take his little dis- 
 grace so hard and shut himself up. " Grant 
 that it is a ridiculous story, painfully ridicu- 
 lous," I keep telling him. "Be a manl Live 
 it down, man I " But not he. Of course 
 it's just solitude, and shame, and all that. 
 But I confess I'm beginning to fear the 
 result. It would be all the pities in the world 
 if a really promising fellow like Weir was 
 to end ill. I 'm seriously tempted to write to 
 Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly to him.' 
 216 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 * I would if I were you,' some of his 
 auditors would say, shaking the head, sit- 
 ting bewildered and confused at this new 
 view of the matter, so deftly indicated by 
 a single word. 'A capital idea!' they 
 would add, and wonder at the aplomb and 
 position of this young man, who talked as 
 a matter of course of writing to Hermis- 
 ton and correcting him upon his private 
 affairs. 
 
 And Frank would proceed, sweetly con- 
 fidential : * I '11 give you an idea, now. 
 He 's actually sore about the way that I 'm 
 received and he 's left out in the county — 
 actually jealous and sore. I 've rallied him 
 and I 've reasoned with him, told him that 
 every one was most kindly inclined towards 
 him, told him even that / was received 
 merely because I was his guest But it 's 
 no use. He will neither accept the in- 
 vitations he gets, nor stop brooding about 
 the ones where he 's left out. What I 'm 
 afraid of is that the wound's ulcerating. 
 217 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 He had always one of those dark, secret, 
 angry natures — a little underhand and 
 plenty of bile — you know the sort. He 
 must have inherited it from the Weirs, 
 whom I suspect to have been a worthy 
 family of weavers somewhere ; what 's the 
 cant phrase? — sedentary occupation. It's 
 precisely the kind of character to go wrong 
 in a false position like what his father's 
 made for him, or he 's making for himself, 
 whichever you Uke to call it And for my 
 part, I think it a disgrace,' Frank would 
 say generously. 
 
 Presently the sorrow and anxiety of this 
 disinterested friend took shape. He began 
 in private, in conversations of two, to talk 
 vaguely of bad habits and low habits. * I 
 must say I 'm afraid he 's going wrong 
 altogether,' he would say. * I '11 tell you 
 plainly, and between ourselves, I scarcely 
 like to stay there any longer ; only, man, 
 I 'm positively afraid to leave him alone. 
 You'll see, I shall be blamed for it later 
 218 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 on. I 'm staying at a great sacrifice. I 'm 
 hindering my chances at the Ear, and I 
 can't blind my eyes to it. And what I 'm 
 afraid of is that I 'm going to get kicked 
 for it all round before all's done. You 
 see, nobody believes in friendship nowa- 
 days.' 
 
 'Well, Innes,' his interlocutor would 
 reply, * it 's very good of you, I must say 
 that If there 's any blame going, you 'U 
 always be sure of my good word, for one 
 thing.' 
 
 * Well,' Frank would continue, * candidly, 
 I don't say it's pleasant. He has a very 
 rough way with him ; his father's son, you 
 know. I don't say he's rude — of course, 
 I couldn't be expected to stand that — but 
 he steers very near the wind. No, it 's not 
 pleasant ; but I tell ye, man, in conscience 
 I don't think it would be fair to leave him. 
 Mind you, I don't say there's anything 
 actually wrong. What I say is that I 
 don't like the looks of it, man ! ' and he 
 219 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 would press the arm of his momentary 
 confidant 
 
 In the early stages I am persuaded there 
 was no malice. He talked but for the 
 pleasure of airing himself. He was essen- 
 tially glib, as becomes the young advocate, 
 and essentially careless of the truth, which 
 is the mark of the young ass ; and so he 
 talked at random. There was no particu- 
 lar bias, but that one which is indigenous 
 and universal, to flatter himself and to 
 please and interest the present friend. 
 And by thus milling air out of his mouth, 
 he had presently built up a presentation of 
 Archie which was known and talked of in 
 all corners of the county. Wherever there 
 was a residential house and a walled garden, 
 wherever there was a dwarfish castle and 
 a park, wherever a quadruple cottage by 
 the ruins of a peel-tower showed an old 
 family going down, and wherever a hand- 
 some villa with a carriage approach and a 
 shrubbery marked the coming up of a new 
 220 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 one — probably on the wheels of machinery 
 — Archie began to be regarded in the light 
 of a dark, perhaps a vicious mystery, and 
 the future developments of his career to 
 be looked for with uneasiness and confi- 
 dential whispering. He had done some- 
 thing disgraceful, my dear. What, was 
 not precisely known, and that good kind 
 young man, Mr. Innes, did his best to 
 make light of it But there it was. And 
 Mr. Innes was very anxious about him 
 now ; he was really uneasy, my dear ; he 
 was positively wrecking his own prospects 
 because he dared not leave him alone. 
 How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a 
 single prater, not needfully with any malign 
 purpose ! And if a man but talks of him- 
 self in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous 
 actions by the way, and never applies to 
 them the name of virtue, how easily his 
 evidence is accepted in the court of public 
 opinion I 
 
 All this while, however, there was a more 
 
 221 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 poisonous ferment at work between the 
 two lads, which came late indeed to the 
 surface, but had modified and magnified 
 theii- dissensions from the first To an 
 idle, shallow, easy-going customer like 
 Frank, the smell of a mystery was attrac- 
 tive. It gave his mind something to play 
 with, like a new toy to a child ; and it 
 took him on the weak side, for like many 
 young men coming to the Bar, and before 
 they have been tried and found wanting, 
 he flattered himself he was a fellow of un- 
 usual quickness and penetration. They 
 knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in those 
 days, but there was a good deal said of 
 Talleyrand. And if you could have caught 
 Frank off his guard, he would have con- 
 fessed with a smirk that, if he resembled 
 any one, it was the Marquis de Talleyrand- 
 P^rigord. It was on the occasion of 
 Archie's first absence that this interest 
 took root. It was vastly deepened when 
 Kirstie resented his curiosity at breakfast. 
 
 222 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 and that same afternoon there occurred 
 another scene which clinched the business. 
 He was fishing Swingleburn, Archie accom- 
 panying him, when the latter looked at his 
 watch. 
 
 * Well, good-bye,' said he. * I have 
 something to do. See you at dinner.' 
 
 * Don't be in such a hurry,' cries Frank. 
 * Hold on till I get my rod up. I '11 go 
 with you ; I 'm sick of flogging this ditch.' 
 
 And he began to reel up his line. 
 
 Archie stood speechless. He took a long 
 while to recover his wits under this direct 
 attack ; but by the time he was ready with 
 his answer, and the angle was almost 
 packed up, he had become completely 
 Weir, and the hanging face gloomed on 
 his young shoulders. He spoke with a 
 laboured composure, a laboured kindness 
 even ; but a child could see that his mind 
 was made up. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon, Innes ; I don't 
 want to be disagreeable, but let us under- 
 223 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 stand one another from the beginning. 
 When I want your company, I '11 let you 
 know.' 
 
 * O I ' cries Frank, * you don't want my 
 company, don't you ? ' 
 
 * Apparently not just now,' replied 
 Archie. 'I even indicated to you when 
 I did, if you 11 remember — and that was 
 at dinner. If we two fellows are to live 
 together pleasantly — and I see no reason 
 why we should not — ^it can only be by 
 respecting each other's privacy. If we 
 begin intruding ' 
 
 ' O, come 1 I '11 take this at no man's 
 hands. Is this the way you treat a guest 
 and an old friend ? ' cried Innes. 
 
 *Just go home and think over what I 
 said by yourself,' continued Archie, whether 
 it's reasonable, or whether it's really 
 offensive or not ; and let 's meet at dinner 
 as though nothing had happened. I '11 put 
 it this way, if you like — that I know my own 
 character, that I 'm looking forward (with 
 224 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 great pleasure, I assure you) to a long visit 
 from you, and that I 'm taking precautions 
 at the first I see the thing that we — that 
 I, if you like — might fall out upon, and I 
 step in and obsto principiis. I wager you 
 five pounds you'll end by seeing that I 
 mean friendliness, and I assure you, Francie, 
 I do,' he added, relenting. 
 
 Bursting with anger, but incapable of 
 speech, Innes shouldered his rod, made a 
 gesture of farewell, and strode off down 
 the burn-side. Archie watched him go 
 without moving. He was sorry, but quite 
 unashamed. He hated to be inhospitable, 
 but in one thing he was his father's son. 
 He had a strong sense that his house was 
 his own and no man else's ; and to lie at 
 a guest's mercy was what he refused. He 
 hated to seem harsh. But that was Frank s 
 look-out. If Frank had been commonly 
 discreet, he would have been decently 
 courteous. And there was anoLher con- 
 sideration. The secret he was protecting 
 p 225 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 was not his own merely ; it was hers : it 
 belonged to that inexpressible she who was 
 fast taking possession of his soul, and whom 
 he would soon have defended at the cost 
 of burning cities. By the time he had 
 watched Frank as far as the Swinglebum- 
 foot, appearing and disappearing in the 
 tarnished heather, still stalking at a fierce 
 gait but already dwindled in the distance 
 into less than the smallness of LilHput, he 
 could afford to smile at the occurrence. 
 Either Frank would go, and that would be 
 a relief — or he would continue to stay, and 
 his host must continue to endure him. 
 And Archie was now free — by devious 
 paths, behind hillocks and in the hollow 
 of bums — to make for the trysting-place 
 where Kirstie, cried about by the curlew 
 and the plover, waited and burned for his 
 coming by the Covenanter's stone. 
 
 Innes went off down-hill in a passion of 
 resentment, easy to be understood, but 
 which yielded progressively to the needs of 
 226 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 his situation. He cursed Archie for a 
 cold-hearted, unfriendly, rude, rude dog; 
 and himself still more passionately for a 
 fool in having come to Hermiston when he 
 might have sought refuge in almost any 
 other house in Scotland. But the step 
 once taken, was practically irretrievable. 
 He had no more ready money to go any- 
 where else ; he would have to borrow from 
 Archie the next club-night ; and ill as he 
 thought of his host's manners, he was sure 
 of his practical generosity. Frank s re- 
 semblance to Talleyrand strikes me as 
 imaginary ; but at least not Talleyrand 
 himself could have more obediently taken 
 his lesson from the facts. He met Archie 
 at dinner without resentment, almost with 
 cordiality. You must take your friends as 
 you find them, he would have saia. Archie 
 couldn't help being his father's son, or his 
 grandfather's, the hypothetical weaver's, 
 grandson. The son of a hunks, he was 
 still a hunks at heart, incapable of true 
 227 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 generosity and consideration ; but he had 
 other qualities with which Frank could 
 divert himself in the meanwhile, and to 
 enjoy which it was necessary that Frank 
 should keep his temper. 
 
 So excellently was it controlled that he 
 awoke next morning with his head full 
 of a different, though a cognate subject. 
 What was Archie's little game ? Why 
 did he shun Frank's company ? What was 
 he keeping secret ? Was he keeping tryst 
 with somebody, and was it a woman ? It 
 would be a good joke and a fair revenge 
 to discover. To that task he set himself 
 with a great deal of patience, which might 
 have surprised his friends, for he had been 
 always credited not with patience so much 
 as brilliancy ; and little by little, from one 
 point to another, he at last succeeded in 
 piecing out the situation. First he re- 
 marked that, although Archie set out in all 
 the directions of the compass, he always 
 came home again from some point between 
 228 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 the south and west. From the study of a 
 map, and in consideration of the great ex- 
 panse of untenanted moorland running in 
 that direction towards the sources of the 
 Clyde, he laid his finger on Cauldstaneslap 
 and two other neighbouring farms, Kings- 
 muirs and Polintarf But it was difficult to 
 advance farther. With his rod for a pre- 
 text, he vainly visited each of them in 
 turn ; nothing was to be seen suspicious 
 about this trinity of moorland settlements. 
 He would have tried to follow Archie, had 
 it been the least possible, but the nature 
 of the land precluded the idea. He did 
 the next best, ensconced himself in a quiet 
 corner, and pursued his movements with a 
 telescope. It was equally in vain, and he 
 soon wearied of his futile vigilance, left the 
 telescope at home, and had almost given 
 the matter up in despair, when, on the 
 twenty-seventh day of his visit, he was 
 suddenly confronted with the person whom 
 he sought The first Sunday Kirstie had 
 229 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 managed to stay away from kirk on some 
 pretext of indisposition, which was more 
 truly modesty ; the pleasure of beholding 
 Archie seeming too sacred, too vivid for that 
 public place. On the two following, Frank 
 had himself been absent on some of his 
 excursions among the neighbouring families. 
 It was not until the fourth, accordingly, 
 that Frank had occasion to set eyes on 
 the enchantress. With the first look, all 
 hesitation was over. She came with the 
 Cauldstaneslap party; then she lived at 
 Cauldstaneslap. Here was Archie's secret, 
 here was the woman, and more than that 
 — though I have need here of every 
 manageable attenuation of language — 
 with the first look, he had already entered 
 himself as rival. It was a good deal in 
 pique, it was a little in revenge, it was 
 much in genuine admiration: the devil 
 may decide the proportions ! I cannot, 
 and it is very likely that Frank could 
 not. 
 
 230 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 * Mighty attractive milkmaid/ he ob- 
 served, on the vray home. 
 
 'Who? 'said Archie. 
 
 *0, the girl you're looking at — aren't 
 you? Forward there on the road. She 
 came attended by the rustic bard; pre- 
 sumably, therefore, belongs to his exalted 
 family. The single objection ! for the four 
 black brothers are awkv^rard customers. If 
 anything w^ere to go w^rong, Gib w^ould 
 gibber, and Clem would prove inclement; 
 and Dand fly in danders, and Hob blow up 
 in gobbets. It would be a Helliott of a 
 business 1 ' 
 
 * Very humorous, I am sure,' said Archie. 
 
 * Well, I am trying to be so,' said Frank. 
 ' It 's none too easy in this place, and vdth 
 your solemn society, my dear fellow. But 
 confess that the milkmaid has found favour 
 in your eyes, or resign all claim to be a 
 man of taste.' 
 
 * It is no matter,' returned Archie. 
 
 But the other continued to look at him, 
 231 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 steadily and quizzically, and his colour 
 slowly rose and deepened under the glance, 
 until not impudence itself could have 
 denied that he was blushing. And at this 
 Archie lost some of his control. He 
 changed his stick from one hand to the 
 other, and — *0, for God's sake, don't be 
 an ass ! ' he cried. 
 
 * Ass ? That 's the retort delicate without 
 doubt,' says Frank. * Beware of the home- 
 spun brothers, dear. If they come into 
 the dance, you '11 see who 's an ass. Think 
 now, if they only applied (say) a quarter 
 as much talent as I have applied to the 
 question of what Mr. Archie does with his 
 evening hours, and why he is so unaffectedly 
 nasty when the subject 's touched on ' 
 
 * You are touching on it now,* interrupted 
 Archie, with a wince. 
 
 ' Thank you. That was all I wanted, an 
 articulate confession,' said Frank. 
 
 * I beg to remind you * began Archie. 
 
 But he was interrupted in turn. *My 
 
 232 
 
ENTEK MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 dear fellow, don't It's quite needless. 
 The subject's dead and buried.' 
 
 And Frank began to talk hastily on 
 other matters, an art in which he was an 
 adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on 
 anything or nothing. But although Archie 
 had the grace or the timidity to suffer him 
 to rattle on, he was by no means done with 
 the subject. When he came home to 
 dinner, he was greeted with a sly demand, 
 how things were looking * Cauldstaneslap 
 ways.' Frank took his first glass of port 
 out after dinner to the toast of Kirstie, 
 and later in the evening he returned to the 
 charge again. 
 
 * I say. Weir, you '11 excuse me for 
 returning again to this affair. I've been 
 thinking it over, and I wish to beg you 
 very seriously to be more careful. It 's not 
 a safe business. Not safe, my boy,' said he. 
 
 * What ? ' said Archie. 
 
 ' WeU, it 's your own fault if I must put 
 a name on the thing ; but really, as a friend, 
 233 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 I cannot stand by and see you rushing 
 head down into these dangers. My dear 
 boy/ said he, holding up a warning cigar, 
 * consider 1 What is to be the end of it ? ' 
 
 *The end of what?' — Archie, helpless 
 with irritation, persisted in this dangerous 
 and ungracious guard. 
 
 * Well, the end of the milkmaid ; or, to 
 speak more by the card, the end of Miss 
 Christina Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap.' 
 
 * I assure you,' Archie broke out, * this is 
 all a figment of your imagination. There 
 is nothing to be said against that young 
 lady; you have no right to introduce her 
 name into the conversation.' 
 
 * 1 11 make a note of it,' said Frank. 
 *She shall henceforth be nameless, name- 
 less, nameless, Grigalach ! I make a note 
 besides of your valuable testimony to her 
 character. I only want to look at this 
 thing as a man of the world. Admitted 
 she 's an angel — but, my good fellow, is she 
 a lady?' 
 
 234 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 This was torture to Archie. * I beg your 
 pardon/ he said, struggling to be composed, 
 *but because you have wormed yoursetf 
 into my confidence ' 
 
 ' O, come ! ' cried Frank. * Your con- 
 fidence? It was rosy but unconsenting. 
 Your confidence, indeed ? Now, look 1 This 
 is what I must say. Weir, for it concerns 
 your safety and good character, and there- 
 fore my honour as your friend. You say 
 I wormed myself into your confidence. 
 Wormed is good. But what have I done ? 
 I have put two and two together, just as 
 the parish will be doing to-morrow, and 
 the whole of Tweeddale in two weeks, and 
 the black brothers — well, I won't put a 
 date on that ; it will be a dark and stormy 
 morning ! Your secret, in other words, is 
 poor Poll's. And I want to ask of you as 
 a friend whether you like the prospect? 
 There are two horns to your dilemma, and 
 I must say for myself I should look mighty 
 ruefully on either. Do you see yourself 
 235 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 explaining to the four Black Brothers ? or 
 do you see yourself presenting the milk- 
 maid to papa as the future lady of Her- 
 miston? Do you? I tell you plainly, I 
 don't!' 
 
 Archie rose. *I will hear no more of 
 this/ he said, in a trembling voice. 
 
 But Frank again held up his cigar. * Tell 
 me one thing first. Tell me if this is not 
 a friend's part that I am playing ? ' 
 
 *I believe you think it so,' replied Archie. 
 * I can go as far as that. I can do so much 
 justice to your motives. But I will hear 
 no more of it. I am going to bed.' 
 
 'That's right. Weir,' said Frank heartily. 
 ' Go to bed and think over it ; and I say, 
 man, don't forget your prayers I I don't 
 often do the moral — don't go in for that 
 sort of thing — but when I do there 's one 
 thing sure, that I mean it' 
 
 So Archie marched off to bed, and Frank 
 sat alone by the table for another hour or 
 so, smiling to himself richly. There was 
 236 
 
ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES 
 
 nothing vindictive in his nature; but, if 
 revenge came in his way, it might as well 
 be good, and the thought of Archie's pillow 
 reflections that night was indescribably 
 sweet to him. He felt a pleasant sense of 
 power. He looked down on Archie as on 
 a very little boy whose strings he pulled — 
 as on a horse whom he had backed and 
 bridled by sheer power of intelligence, and 
 whom he might ride to glory or the grave 
 at pleasura Which was it to be ? He lin- 
 gered long, relishing the details of schemes 
 that he was too idle to pursue. Poor cork 
 upon a torrent, he tasted that night the 
 sweets of omnipotence, and brooded like a 
 deity over the strands of that intrigue 
 which was to shatter him before the summer 
 waned. 
 
 m 
 
CHAPTER VIll 
 
 A NOCTURNAL VISIT 
 
 KiKSTiE had many causes of distress. More 
 and more as we grow old — and yet more 
 and more as we grow old and are women, 
 frozen by the fear of age — we come to rely 
 on the voice as the single outlet of the souL 
 Only thus, in the curtailment of our means, 
 can we relieve the straitened cry of the 
 passion within us ; only thus, in the bitter 
 and sensitive shyness of advancing years, 
 can we maintain relations with those viva- 
 cious figures of the young that still show 
 before us and tend daily to become no more 
 than the moving wall-paper of life. Talk 
 is the last link, the last relation. But with 
 the end of the conversation, when the voice 
 238 
 
A NOCTURNAL VISIT 
 
 stops and the bright face of the listener is 
 turned away, solitude falls again on the 
 bruised heart. Kirstie had lost her * cannie 
 hour at e'en ' ; she could no more wander 
 with Archie, a ghost if you will, but a 
 happy ghost, in fields Elysian. And to 
 her it was as if the whole world had fallen 
 silent ; to him, but an unremarkable change 
 of amusements. And she raged to know 
 it. The effervescency of her passionate and 
 irritable nature rose within her at times to 
 bursting point 
 
 This is the price paid by age for un- 
 seasonable ardours of feeling. It must have 
 been so for Kirstie at any time when the 
 occasion chanced; but it so fell out that 
 she was deprived of this delight in the hour 
 when she had most need of it, when she 
 had most to say, most to ask, and when she 
 trembled to recognise her sovereignty not 
 merely in abeyance but annulled. For, 
 with the clairvoyance of a genuine love, 
 she had pierced the mystery that had so 
 239 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 long embarrassed Frank. She was con- 
 scious, even before it was carried out, even 
 on that Sunday night when it began, of an 
 invasion of her rights ; and a voice told her 
 the invader's name. Since then, by arts, 
 by accident, by small things observed, and 
 by the general drift of Archie's humour, 
 she had passed beyond all possibility of 
 doubt. With a sense of justice that Lord 
 Hermiston might have envied, she had that 
 day in church considered and admitted the 
 attractions of the younger Kirstie ; and 
 with the profound humanity and sentimen- 
 tality of her nature, she had recognised the 
 coming of fate. Not thus would she have 
 chosen. She had seen, in imagination, 
 Archie wedded to some tall, powerful, and 
 rosy heroine of the golden locks, made in 
 her own image, for whom she would have 
 strewed the bride-bed with delight ; and 
 now she could have wept to see the ambition 
 falsified. But the gods had pronounced, 
 and her doom was otherwise 
 240 
 
A NOCTURNAL VISIT 
 
 She lay tossing in bed that night, be- 
 sieged with feverish thoughts. There were 
 dangerous matters pending, a battle was 
 toward, over the fate of which she hung 
 in jealousy, sympathy, fear, and alternate 
 loyalty and disloyalty to either side. Now 
 she was reincarnated in her niece, and now 
 in Archie. Now she saw, through the girl's 
 eyes, the youth on his knees to her, heard 
 his persuasive instances with a deadly 
 weakness, and received his overmastering 
 caresses. Anon, with a revulsion, her 
 temper raged to see such utmost favours 
 of fortune and love squandered on a brat 
 of a girl, one of her own house, using her 
 own name — a deadly ingredient — and that 
 * didna ken her ain mind an' was as black 's 
 your hat.' Now she trembled lest her deity 
 should plead in vain, loving the idea of 
 success for him like a triumph of nature ; 
 anon, with returning loyalty to her own 
 family and sex, she trembled for Kirstie 
 and the credit of the Elliotts. And again 
 Q 241 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 she had a vision of herself, the day over for 
 her old-world tales and local gossip, bidding 
 farewell to her last link with life and bright- 
 ness and love ; and behind and beyond, she 
 saw but the blank butt-end where she must 
 crawl to die. Had she then come to the 
 lees ? she, so great, so beautiful, with a heart 
 as fresh as a girl's and strong as woman- 
 hood ? It could not be, and yet it was so ; 
 and for a moment her bed was horrible to 
 her as the sides of the grave. And she 
 looked forward over a waste of hours, and 
 saw herself go on to rage, and tremble, and 
 be softened, and rage again, until the day 
 came and the labours of the day must be 
 renewed. 
 
 Suddenly she heard feet on the stairs — 
 his feet, and soon after the sound of a 
 window-sash flung open. She sat up with 
 her heart beating. He had gone to his 
 room alone, and he had not gone to bed. 
 She might again have one of her night 
 cracks; and at the entrancing prospect, a 
 242 
 
A NOCTURNAL VISIT 
 
 change came over her mind ; with the 
 approach of this hope of pleasure, all the 
 baser metal became immediately obliterated 
 from her thoughts. She rose, all woman, 
 and all the best of woman, tender, pitiful, 
 hating the wrong, loyal to her own sex — 
 and all the weakest of that dear miscellany, 
 nourishing, cherishing next her soft heart, 
 voicelessly flattering, hopes that she would 
 have died sooner than have acknowledged. 
 She tore off her nightcap, and her hair fell 
 about her shoulders in profusion. Undying 
 coquetry awoke. By the faint light of her 
 nocturnal rush, she stood before the looking- 
 glass, carried her shapely arms above her 
 head, and gathered up the treasures of her 
 tresses. She was never backward to admire 
 herself; that kind of modesty was a stranger 
 to her nature ; and she paused, struck with 
 a pleased wonder at the sight 'Ye daft 
 auld wifel' she said, answering a thought 
 that was not; and she blushed with the 
 innocent consciousness of a child. Hastily 
 243 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 she did up the massive and shining coils, 
 hastily donned a wrapper, and with the 
 rushlight in her hand, stole into the hall. 
 Below stairs she heard the clock ticking 
 the deliberate seconds, and Frank jingling 
 with the decanters in the dining-room. 
 Aversion rose in her, bitter and momentary. 
 ' Nesty, tippling puggy 1 ' she thought ; 
 and the next moment she had knocked 
 guardedly at Archie's door and was bidden 
 enter. 
 
 Archie had been looking out into the 
 ancient blackness, pierced here and there 
 with a rayless star ; taking the sweet air of 
 the moors and the night into his bosom 
 deeply ; seeking, perhaps finding, peace 
 after the manner of the unhappy. He 
 turned round as she came in, and showed 
 her a pale face against the window-frame. 
 
 * Is that you, Kirstie ? ' he asked. * Come 
 inl' 
 
 *It's unco late, my dear,' said Kirstie, 
 affecting unwillingness. 
 244 
 
A NOCTURNAL VISIT 
 
 * No, no/ he answered, ' not at all. Come 
 in, if you want a crack. I am not sleepy, 
 God knows ! * 
 
 She advanced, took a chair by the toilet 
 table and the candle, and set the rushlight 
 at her foot Something — ^it might be in 
 the comparative disorder of her dress, it 
 might be the emotion that now welled in 
 her bosom — had touched her with a wand 
 of transformation, and she seemed young 
 with the youth of goddesses. 
 
 *Mr. Erchie,' she began, * what's this 
 that 's come to ye ? ' 
 
 *I am not aware of anything that has 
 come,' said Archie, and blushed, and re- 
 pented bitterly that he had let her in. 
 
 * O, my dear, that '11 no dae 1 ' said 
 Kirstie. * It 's ill to blend the eyes of love. 
 O, Mr. Erchie, tak a thocht ere it's ower 
 late. Ye shouldna be impatient o' the 
 braws o' life, they '11 a' come in their saison, 
 like the sun and the rain. Ye 're young 
 yet ; ye 've mony cantie years afore ye. 
 
 245 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 See and dinna wreck yersel' at the outset 
 like sae mony ithers 1 Hae patience — they 
 telled me aye that was the owercome o' 
 hfe — hae patience, there 's a braw day 
 coming yet. Gude kens it never cam to 
 me ; and here I am, wi' nayther man nor 
 bairn to ca' my ain, wearying a' folks wi' 
 my ill tongue, and you just the first, Mr. 
 Erchie!' 
 
 ' I have a difficulty in knowing what you 
 mean,' said Archie. 
 
 ' Weel, and I 'U tell ye,' she said. ' It 's 
 just this, that I 'm feared. I 'm feared for 
 ye, my dear. Remember, your faither is a 
 hard man, reaping where he hasna sowed 
 and gaithering where he hasna strawed. 
 It 's easy speakin,' but mind ! Ye '11 have 
 to look in the gurly face o'm, where it 's ill 
 to look, and vain to look for mercy. Ye 
 mind me o' a bonny ship pitten oot into 
 the black and gowsty seas — ye 're a' safe 
 still, sittin' quait and crackin' wi' Kirstie in 
 your lown chalmer ; but whaur will ye be 
 246 
 
A NOCTURNAL VISIT 
 
 the morn, and in whatten horror o' the 
 fearsome tempest, cryin' on the hills to 
 cover ye ? ' 
 
 * Why, Kirstie, you're very enigmatical to- 
 night — and very eloquent,' Archie put in. 
 
 'And, my dear Mr. Erchie,' she con- 
 tinued, with a change of voice, * ye mauna 
 think that I canna sympathise wi' ye. Ye 
 mauna think that I havena been young my- 
 sel'. Lang syne, when I was a bit lassie, 
 
 no twenty yet ' She paused and sighed. 
 
 * Clean and caller, wi' a fit like the hinney 
 bee,' she continued. *I was aye big and 
 buirdly, ye maun understand; a bonny 
 figure o' a woman, though I say it that 
 suldna — built to rear bairns — braw bairns 
 they suld hae been, and grand I would hae 
 likit itl But I was young, dear, wi' the 
 bonny glint o' youth in my e'en, and little 
 I dreamed I'd ever be tellin' ye this, an 
 auld, lanely, rudas wife! Weel, Mr. 
 Erchie, there was a lad cam' courtin' me, 
 as was but naetural. Mony had come 
 247 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 before, and I would nane o' them. But 
 this yin had a tongue to wile the birds 
 frae the lift and the bees frae the foxglove 
 bells. Deary me, but it's lang syne! 
 Folk have dee'd sinsyne and been buried, 
 and are forgotten, and bairns been bom 
 and got merrit and got bairns o* their ain. 
 Sinsyne woods have been plantit, and have 
 grawn up and are bonny trees, and the joes 
 sit in their shadow, and sinsyne auld estates 
 have changed hands, and there have been 
 wars and rumours of wars on the face of 
 the earth. And here I 'm still — ^like an 
 auld droopit craw — lookin' on and craikin' I 
 But, Mr. Erchie, do ye no think that I 
 have mind o* it sl still? I was dwalling 
 then in my faither*s house; and it's a 
 curious thing that we were whiles trysted 
 in the Deil's Hags. And do ye no think 
 that I have mind of the bonny simmer 
 days, the lang miles o' the bluid-red 
 heather, the cryin' o' the whaups, and the 
 lad and the lassie that was trysted? Do 
 248 
 
A NOCTURNAL VISIT 
 
 ye no think that I mind how the hilly 
 sweetness ran about my hairt? Ay, Mr. 
 Erchie, I ken the way o' it — fine do I ken 
 the way — how the grace o' God takes them, 
 like Paul of Tarsus, when they think it 
 least, and drives the pair o' them into a 
 land which is like a dream, and the world 
 and the folks in 't are nae mair than clouds 
 to the puir lassie, and heeven nae mair 
 than windle-straes, if she can but pleesure 
 him! Until Tam dee'd — that was my 
 story,' she broke off to say, ' he dee'd, and I 
 wasna at the buiyin'. But while he was 
 here, I could take care o' mysel'. And can 
 yon puir lassie ? ' 
 
 Kirstie, her eyes shining with unshed 
 tears, stretched out her hand towards him 
 appealingly; the bright and the dull gold 
 of her hair flashed and smouldered in the 
 coils behind her comely head, like the rays 
 of an eternal youth ; the pure colour had 
 risen in her face ; and Archie was abashed 
 alike by her beauty and her story. He 
 249 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 came towards her slowly from the window, 
 took up her hand in his and kissed it. 
 
 ^Kirstie,' he said hoarsely, *you have 
 misjudged me sorely. I have always 
 thought of her, I wouldna harm her for 
 the universe, my woman 1 ' 
 
 *Eh, lad, and that's easy sayin',' cried 
 Kirstie, ' but it 's nane sae easy doin' I 
 Man, do ye no comprehend that it 's God's 
 wull we should be blendit and glamoured, 
 and have nae command over our ain mem- 
 bers at a time like that? My bairn,' she 
 cried, still holding his hand, 'think o' the 
 puir lass 1 have pity upon her, Erchie ! and 
 O, be wise for twa I Think o' the risk she 
 rins ! I have seen ye, and what 's to pre- 
 vent ithers 1 I saw ye once in the Hags, 
 in my ain howl, and I was wae to see ye 
 there — in pairt for the omen, for I think 
 there 's a weird on the place — and in pairt 
 for pure nakit envy and bitterness o' hairt 
 It 's strange ye should forgather there tae I 
 God! but yon puir, thrawn, auld Cove- 
 250 
 
A NOCTURNAL VISIT 
 
 nanter 's seen a heap o' human natur since 
 he lookit his last on the musket barrels, if 
 he never saw nane afore/ she added, with a 
 kind of wonder in her eyes. 
 
 * I swear by my honour I have done her 
 no wrong,' said Archie. * I swear by my 
 honour and the redemption of my soul that 
 there shall none be done her. I have heard 
 of this before. I have been foolish, Kirstie, 
 not unkind and, above all, not base.' 
 
 * There 's my bairn ! ' said Kirstie, rising. 
 * I '11 can trust ye noo, I '11 can gang to my 
 bed wi' an easy hairt' And then she saw 
 in a flash how barren had been her triumph. 
 Archie had promised to spare the girl, and 
 he would keep it ; but who had promised 
 to spare Archie ? What was to be the end 
 of it? Over a maze of difficulties she 
 glanced, and saw, at the end of every 
 passage, the flinty countenance of Her- 
 miston. And a kind of horror fell upon 
 her at what she had done. She wore a 
 tragic mask. *Erchie, the Lord peety 
 
 251 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 you, dear, and peety mel I have buildit 
 on this foundation' — laying her hand 
 heavily on his shoulder — *and buildit hie, 
 and pit my hairt in the buildin' of it. If 
 the hale hypothec were to fa*, I think, 
 laddie, I would dee! Excuse a daft wife 
 that loves ye, and that kenned your mither. 
 And for His name's sake keep yersel' frae 
 inordinate desires; hand your heart in 
 baith your hands, carry it canny and laigh ; 
 dinna send it up like a bairn's kite into 
 the collieshangie o' the wunds I Mind, 
 Maister Erchie dear, that this life's a' 
 disappointment, and a mouthfu' o' mools 
 is the appointed end.' 
 
 *Ay, but Kirstie, my woman, you're 
 asking me ower much at last,' said Archie, 
 profoundly moved, and lapsing into the 
 broad Scots. *Ye're asking what nae 
 man can grant ye, what only the Lord 
 of heaven can grant ye if He see fit. Ay 1 
 And can even He? I can promise ye 
 what I shall do, and you can depend on 
 252 
 
A NOCTURNAL VISIT 
 
 that. But how I shall feel — my woman, 
 that is long past thinking of I ' 
 
 They were both standing by now oppo- 
 site each other. The face of Archie wore 
 the wretched semblance of a smile; hers 
 was convulsed for a moment 
 
 * Promise me ae thing/ she cried, in a 
 sharp voice. 'Promise me ye '11 never do 
 naething without telling me.' 
 
 *No, Kirstie, I canna promise ye that,' 
 he replied. * I have promised enough, God 
 kens I ' 
 
 * May the blessing of God lift and rest 
 upon ye, dear I ' she said. 
 
 * God bless ye, my old friend,' said he. 
 
 253 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 AT THE weaver's STONE 
 
 It was late in the afternoon when Archie 
 drew near by the hill path to the Praying 
 Weaver's stone. The Hags were in 
 shadow. But still, through the gate of 
 the Slap, the sun shot a last arrow, which 
 sped far and straight across the surface of 
 the moss, here and there touching and 
 shining on a tussock, and lighted at length 
 on the gravestone and the small figure 
 awaiting him there. The emptiness and 
 solitude of the great moors seemed to be 
 concentred there, and Kirstie pointed out 
 by that figure of sunshine for the only 
 inhabitant His first sight of her was thus 
 excruciatingly sad, like a glimpse of a 
 254 
 
AT THE WEAVER'S STONE 
 
 world from which all light, comfort, and 
 society were on the point of vanishing. 
 And the next moment, when she had 
 turned her face to him and the quick smile 
 had enlightened it, the whole face of nature 
 smiled upon him in her smile of welcome. 
 Archie's slow pace was quickened ; his 
 legs hasted to her though his heart was 
 hanging back. The girl, upon her side, 
 drew herself together slowly and stood up, 
 expectant ; she was all languor, her face 
 was gone white ; her arms ached for him, her 
 soul was on tip-toes. But he deceived her, 
 pausing a few steps away, not less white 
 than herself, and holding up his hand with 
 a gesture of denial. 
 
 *No, Christina, not to-day,' he said. 
 * To-day I have to talk to you seriously. 
 Sit ye down, please, there where you were. 
 Please I ' he repeated. 
 
 The revulsion of feeling in Christina's 
 heart was violent To have longed and 
 waited these weary hours for him, rehears- 
 255 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 ing her endearments — to have seen him at 
 last come — to have been ready there, breath- 
 less, wholly passive, his to do what he would 
 with — and suddenly to have found herself 
 confronted with a grey-faced, harsh school- 
 master — it was too rude a shock. She 
 could have wept, but pride withheld her. 
 She sat down on the stone, from which she 
 had arisen, part with the instinct of obedi- 
 ence, part as though she had been thrust 
 there. What was this? Why was she 
 rejected ? Had she ceased to please ? She 
 stood here offering her wares, and he would 
 none of them I And yet they were all his ! 
 His to take and keep, not his to refuse 
 though! In her quick petulant nature, a 
 moment ago on fire with hope, thwarted 
 love and wounded vanity wrought. The 
 schoolmaster that there is in all men, to 
 the despair of all girls and most women, 
 was now completely in possession of 
 Archie. He had passed a night of sermons, 
 a day of reflection ; he had come wound 
 
 256 
 
AT THE WEAVER'S STONE 
 
 up to do his duty ; and the set mouth, 
 which in him only betrayed the effort of 
 his will, to her seemed the expression of an 
 averted heart. It was the same with his 
 constrained voice and embarrassed utter- 
 ance ; and if so — if it was all over — the 
 pang of the thought took away from her 
 the power of thinking. 
 
 He stood before her some way off. 
 ' Kirstie, there 's been too much of this. 
 We Ve seen too much of each other.' She 
 looked up quickly and her eyes contracted. 
 ' There 's no good ever comes of these 
 secret meetings. They're not frank, not 
 honest truly, and I ought to have seen it 
 People have begun to talk; and it's not 
 right of me. Do you see ? ' 
 
 * I see somebody will have been talking 
 to ye,' she said sullenly. 
 
 'They have, more than one of them,' 
 replied Archie. 
 
 'And whae were they?' she cried. 
 'And what kind o' love do ye ca' that, 
 R 257 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 that's ready to gang round like a whirli- 
 gig at folk talking? Do ye think they 
 havena talked to me ? ' 
 
 ' Have they indeed ? ' said Archie, with 
 a quick breath. * That is what I feared. 
 Who were they ? Who has dared ? ' 
 
 Archie was on the point of losing his 
 temper. 
 
 As a matter of fact, not any one had 
 talked to Christina on the matter ; and she 
 strenuously repeated her own first question 
 in a panic of self-defence. 
 
 * Ah, well ! what does it matter ? ' he 
 said. 'They were good folk that wished 
 well to us, and the great affair is that there 
 are people talking. My dear girl, we have 
 to be wise. We must not wreck our lives 
 at the outset. They may be long and 
 happy yet, and we must see to it, Kirstie, 
 like God's rational creatures and not like 
 fool children. There is one thing we must 
 see to before all. You're worth waiting 
 for, Kirstie I worth waiting for a generation ; 
 
 258 
 
AT THE WEAVER'S STONE 
 
 it would be enough reward.' — And here he 
 remembered the schoolmaster again, and 
 very unwisely took to following wisdom. 
 * The first thing that we must see to, is 
 that there shall be no scandal about for 
 my father's sake. That would ruin all ; 
 do ye no see that ? ' 
 
 Kirstie was a little pleased, there had 
 been some show of warmth of sentiment 
 in what Archie had said last. But the 
 dull irritation still persisted in her bosom ; 
 with the aboriginal instinct, having suffered 
 herself, she wished to make Archie suffer. 
 
 And besides, there had come out the 
 word she had always feared to hear from 
 his lips, the name of his father. It is not 
 to be supposed that, during so many days 
 with a love avowed between them, some 
 reference had not been made to their con- 
 joint future. It had in fact been often 
 touched upon, and from the first had been 
 the sore point Kirstie had wilfully closed 
 the eye of thought ; she would not argue 
 259 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 even with herself; gallant, desperate little 
 heart, she had accepted the command of 
 that supreme attraction like the call of fate 
 and marched blindfold on her doom. But 
 Archie, with his masculine sense of re- 
 sponsibility, must reason ; he must dwell 
 on some future good, when the present 
 good was all in all to Kirstie ; he must 
 talk — and talk lamely, as necessity drove 
 him — of what was to be. Again and again 
 he had touched on marriage ; again and 
 again been driven back into indistinctness 
 by a memory of Lord Hermiston. And 
 Kirstie had been swift to understand and 
 quick to choke down and smother the 
 understanding; swift to leap up in flame 
 at a mention of that hope, which spoke 
 volumes to her vanity and her love, that she 
 might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston ; 
 swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or 
 throttled utterance the death-knell of these 
 expectations, and constant, poor girl I in 
 her large-minded madness, to go on and 
 260 
 
AT THE WEAVER S STONE 
 
 to reck nothing of the future. But these 
 unfinished references, these blinks in which 
 his heart spoke, and his memory and reason 
 rose up to silence it before the words were 
 well uttered, gave her unqualifiable agony. 
 She was raised up and dashed down again 
 bleeding. The recurrence of the subject 
 forced her, for however short a time, to 
 open her eyes on what she did not wish 
 to see; and it had invariably ended in 
 another disappointment. So now again, 
 at the mere wind of its coming, at the 
 mere mention of his father's name — ^who 
 might seem indeed to have accompanied 
 them in their whole moorland courtship, 
 an awful figure in a wig with an ironical 
 and bitter smile, present to guilty con- 
 sciousness — she fled from it head down. 
 
 * Ye ha vena told me yet,' she said, ' who 
 was it spoke ? ' 
 
 * Your aunt for one,' said Archie. 
 
 * Auntie Kirstie ? ' she cried. * And what 
 do I care for my Auntie Kirstie 1 * 
 
 261 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 * She cares a great deal for her niece/ 
 replied Archie, in kind reproof. 
 
 * Troth, and it 's the first I Ve heard of 
 it,' retorted the girl. 
 
 * The question here is not who it is, but 
 what they say, what they have noticed,' 
 pursued the lucid schoolmaster. ' That is 
 what we have to think of in self-defence.' 
 
 * Auntie Kirstie, indeed! A bitter, 
 thrawn auld maid that 's fomented trouble 
 in the country before I was born, and will 
 be doing it still, I daur say, when I'm 
 deid ! It 's in her nature ; it 's as natural 
 for her as it 's for a sheep to eat.' 
 
 'Pardon me, Kirstie, she was not the 
 only one,* interposed Archie. ' I had two 
 warnings, two sermons, last night, both 
 most kind and considerate. Had you been 
 there, I promise you you would have grat, 
 my dear ! And they opened my eyes. I 
 saw we were going a wrong way.' 
 
 * Who was the other one ? ' Kirstie 
 demanded. 
 
 262 
 
AT THE WEAVER'S STONE 
 
 By this time Archie was in the condition 
 of a hunted beast He had come, braced 
 and resolute; he was to trace out a line 
 of conduct for the pair of them in a few 
 cold, convincing sentences ; he had now 
 been there some time, and he was still 
 staggering round the outworks and under- 
 going what he felt to be a savage cross- 
 examination. 
 
 ' Mr. Frank ! ' she cried. * What nex', I 
 would like to ken ? ' 
 
 * He spoke most kindly and truly.' 
 'What like did he say?' 
 
 * I am not going to tell you ; you have 
 nothing to do with that,' cried Archie, 
 startled to find he had admitted so much. 
 
 ' O, I have naething to do with it I ' she 
 repeated, springing to her feet. 'A'body 
 at Hermiston 's free to pass their opinions 
 upon me, but I have naething to do wi' 
 it ! Was this at prayers like ? Did ye ca' 
 the grieve into the consultation ? Little 
 wonder if a'body 's talking, when ye make 
 263 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 a'body ye're confidants! But as you say, 
 Mr. Weir, — most kindly, most consider- 
 ately, most truly, I 'm sure — I have 
 naething to do with it And I think 1 11 
 better be going. 1 11 be wishing you good 
 evening, Mr. Weir.* And she made him 
 a stately curtsey, shaking as she did so 
 from head to foot, with the barren ecstasy 
 of temper. 
 
 Poor Archie stood dumbfounded. She 
 had moved some steps away from him 
 before he recovered the gift of articulate 
 speech. 
 
 ' Kirstie ! ' he cried. *0, Kirstie woman ! ' 
 
 There was in his voice a ring of appeal, 
 a clang of mere astonishment that showed 
 the schoolmaster was vanquished. 
 
 She turned round on him. * What do 
 ye Kirstie me for ? ' she retorted. ' What 
 have ye to do wi' me ? Gang to your ain 
 freends and deave them ! ' 
 
 He could only repeat the appealing 
 * Kirstie ! ' 
 
 264 
 
AT THE WEAVER'S STONE 
 
 * Kirstie, indeed ! ' cried the girl, her eyes 
 blazing in her white face. *My name is 
 Miss Christina Elliott, I would have ye to 
 ken, and I daur ye to ca' me out of it. If 
 I canna get love, I'll have respect, Mr. 
 Weir. I 'm come of decent people, and 
 1 11 have respect. What have I done that 
 ye should lightly me ? What have I done ? 
 What have I done? O, what have I 
 done ? ' and her voice rose upon the third 
 repetition. * I thocht — I thocht — I thocht 
 I was sae happy I ' and the first sob broke 
 from her like the paroxysm of some mortal 
 sickness. 
 
 Archie ran to her. He took the poor 
 child in his arms, and she nestled to his 
 breast as to a mother's, and clasped him in 
 hands that were strong like vices. He 
 felt her whole body shaken by the throes 
 of distress, and had pity upon her beyond 
 speech. Pity, and at the same time a 
 bewildered fear of this explosive engine in 
 his arms, whose works he did not under- 
 265 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 stand, and yet had been tampering with. 
 There arose from before him the curtains 
 of boyhood, and he saw for the first time 
 the ambiguous face of woman as she is. 
 In vain he looked back over the interview ; 
 he saw not where he had offended. It 
 seemed unprovoked, a wilful convulsion 
 of brute nature. . . . 
 
 266 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 With the words last printed, ' a wilful convulsion 
 of brute nature,' the romance of Weir of Hermiston 
 breaks off. They were dictated, I believe, on the 
 very morning of the writer's sudden seizure and 
 death. Weir of Hermiston thus remains in the 
 work of Stevenson what Edwin Drood is in the 
 work of Dickens or Denis Duval in that of 
 Thackeray: or rather it remains relatively more, 
 for if each of those fragments holds an honour- 
 able place among its author's writings, among 
 Stevenson's the fragment of Weir holds certainly 
 the highest. 
 
 Readers may be divided in opinion on the ques- 
 tion whether they would or they would not wish to 
 hear more of the intended course of the story and 
 destinies of the characters. To some, silence may 
 seem best, and that the mind should be left to its 
 own conjectures as to the sequel, with the help of 
 such indications as the text affords. I confess that 
 267 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 this is the view which has my sympathy. But since 
 others, and those almost certainly a majority, are 
 anxious to be told all they can, and since editors 
 and publishers join in the request, I can scarce do 
 otherwise than comply. The intended argument, 
 then, so far as it was known at the time of the 
 writer's death to his step-daughter and devoted 
 amanuensis, Mrs. Strong, was nearly as follows : — 
 
 Archie persists in his good resolution of avoiding 
 further conduct compromising to young Kirstie's 
 good name. Taking advantage of the situation thus 
 created, and of the girPs unhappiness and wounded 
 vanity, Frank Innes pursues his purpose of se- 
 duction ; and Kirstie, though still caring for Archie 
 in her heart, allows herself to become Frank's 
 victim. Old Kirstie is the first to perceive some- 
 thing amiss with her, and believing Archie to be 
 the culprit, accuses him, thus making him aware for 
 the first time that mischief has happened. He does 
 not at once deny the charge, but seeks out and 
 questions young Kirstie, who confesses the truth to 
 him ; and he, still loving her, promises to protect 
 and defend her in her trouble. He then has an 
 interview with Frank Innes on the moor, which 
 ends in a quarrel, and in Archie killing Frank 
 
 268 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 beside the Weaver's Stone. Meanwhile the Four 
 Black Brothers, having become aware of their 
 sister's betrayal, are bent on vengeance against 
 Archie as her supposed seducer. They are about 
 to close in upon him with this purpose when he is 
 arrested by the officers of the law for the murder of 
 Frank. He is tried before his own father, the 
 Lord Justice-Clerk, found guilty, and condemned 
 to death. Meanwhile the elder Kirstie, having 
 discovered from the girl how matters really stand, 
 informs her nephews of the truth ; and they, in a 
 great revulsion of feeling in Archie's favour, deter- 
 mine on an action after the ancient manner of their 
 house. They gather a following, and after a great 
 fight break the prison where Archie lies confined, 
 and rescue him. He and young Kirstie thereafter 
 escape to America. But the ordeal of taking part 
 in the trial of his own son has been too much for 
 the Lord Justice-Clerk, who dies of the shock. ' I 
 do not know,' adds the amanuensis, ' what becomes 
 of old Kirstie, but that character grew and strength- 
 ened so in the writing that I am sure he had some 
 dramatic destiny for her.' 
 
 The plan of every imaginative work is subject, of 
 course, to change under the artist's hand as he 
 269 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 carries it out ; and not merely the character of 
 the elder Kirstie, but other elements of the design 
 no less, might well have deviated from the lines 
 originally traced. It seems certain, however, that 
 the next stage in the relations of Archie and the 
 younger Kirstie would have been as above fore- 
 shadowed ; and this conception of the lover's 
 unconventional chivalry and unshaken devotion 
 to his mistress after her fault is very characteristic 
 of the writer's mind. The vengeance to be taken 
 on the seducer beside the Weaver's Stone is pre- 
 pared for in the first words of the Introduction ; 
 while the situation and fate of the judge, con- 
 fronting like a Brutus, but unable to survive, 
 the duty of sending his own son to the gallows, 
 seem clearly to have been destined to furnish the 
 climax and essential tragedy of the tale. 
 
 How this last circumstance was to have been 
 brought about, within the limits of legal usage and 
 possibility, seems hard to conjecture; but it was a 
 point to which the author had evidently given 
 careful consideration. Mrs. Strong says simply 
 that the Lord Justice-Clerk, like an old Roman, 
 condemns his son to death ; but I am assured on 
 the best legal authority of Scotland that no judge, 
 however powerful either by character or office, could 
 270 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 have insisted on presiding at the trial of a near 
 kinsman of his own. The Lord Justice-Clerk was 
 head of the criminal justiciary of the country ; he 
 might have insisted on his right of being present on 
 the bench when his son was tried: but he would 
 never have been allowed to preside or to pass 
 sentence. Now in a letter of Stevenson's to Mr. 
 Baxter, of October 1892, I find him asking for 
 materials in terms which seem to indicate that he 
 knew this quite well : — ' I wish Pitcaim's " Criminal 
 Trials," qaam primum. Also an absolutely correct 
 text of the Scots judiciary oath. Also, in case 
 Pitcaim does not come down late enough, I wish 
 as full a report as possible of a Scots murder 
 trial between 1790-1820. Understand the Jullest 
 possible. Is there any book which would guide me 
 to the following facts? The Justice-Clerk tries 
 some people capitally on circuit. Certain evidence 
 cropping up, the charge is transferred to the Justice- 
 Clerk's own son. Of course in the next trial the 
 Justice-Clerk is excluded, and the case is called 
 before the Lord Justice-General. Where would this 
 trial have to be ? I fear in Edinburgh, which would 
 not suit my view. Could it be again at the circuit 
 town ? ' The point was referred to a quondam 
 fellow-member with Stevenson of the Edinburgh 
 271 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 Speculative Society, Mr. Graham Murray, the 
 present Solicitor-General for Scotland ; whose reply 
 was to the effect that there would be no difficulty 
 in making the new trial take place at the circuit 
 town ; that it would have to be held there in spring 
 or autumn, before two Lords of Justiciary ; and that 
 the Lord Justice-General would have nothing to do 
 with it, this title being at the date in question only 
 a nominal one held by a layman (which is no longer 
 the case). On this Stevenson writes, 'Graham 
 Murray's note re the venue was highly satisfactory, 
 and did me all the good in the world.' The terms 
 of his inquiry seem to imply that he intended other 
 persons, before Archie, to have fallen first under 
 suspicion of the murder ; and also — doubtless in 
 order to make the rescue by the Black Brothers 
 possible — that he wanted Archie to be imprisoned 
 not in Edinburgh but in the circuit town. But 
 they do not show how he meant to get over the 
 main difficulty, which at the same time he fully 
 recognises. Can it have been that Lord Hermis- 
 ton's part was to have been limited to presiding at 
 the Jirst trial, where the evidence incriminating 
 Archie was unexpectedly brought forward, and to 
 directing that the law should take its course ? 
 Whether the final escape and union of Archie 
 272 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 and Christina would have proved equally essential to 
 the plot may perhaps to some readers seem question- 
 able. They may rather feel that a tragic destiny 
 is foreshadowed from the beginning for all con- 
 cerned, and is inherent in the very conditions of the 
 tale. But on this point, and other matters of general 
 criticism connected with it, I find an interesting dis- 
 cussion by the author himself in his correspondence. 
 Writing to Mr. J. M. Barrie, under date Novem- 
 ber 1, 1892, and criticising that author's famous 
 story of The Little Minister^ Stevenson says : — 
 
 ' Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord 
 Rintoul are frightfully unconscientious. . . . The 
 Little Minister ought to have ended badly; we 
 all know it did, and we are infinitely grateful to you 
 for the grace and good feeling with which you have 
 lied about it. If you had told the truth, I for one 
 could never have forgiven you. As you had con- 
 ceived and written the earlier parts, the truth about 
 the end, though indisputably true to fact, would 
 have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord, in art. 
 If you are going to make a book end badly, it must 
 end badly from the beginning. Now, your book 
 began to end well. You let yourself fall in love 
 with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets. Once 
 you had done that, your honour was committed — 
 
 s 273 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 at the cost of truth to life you were bound to save 
 them. It is the blot on Richard Feverel for in- 
 stance, that it begins to end well ; and then tricks 
 you and ends ill. But in this case, there is worse 
 behind, for the ill ending does not inherently issue 
 from the plot — the story had, in fact, ended well 
 after the great last interview between Richard and 
 Lucy — and the blind, illogical bullet which smashes 
 all has no more to do between the boards than a 
 fly has to do with a room into whose open window 
 it comes buzzing. It might have so happened ; it 
 needed not ; and unless needs must, we have no 
 right to pain our readers. I have had a heavy case 
 of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield 
 story. Braxfield — only his name is Hermiston — 
 has a son who is condemned to death ; plainly there 
 is a fine tempting fitness about this — and I meant 
 he was to hang. But on considering my minor 
 characters, I saw there were five people who would — 
 in a sense, who must — break prison and attempt his 
 rescue. They are capable hardy folks too, who might 
 very well succeed. Why should they not then ? Why 
 should not young Hermiston escape clear out of the 
 country ? and be happy, if he could, with his — but 
 soft ! I will not betray my secret nor my heroine. . . .'' 
 To pass, now, from the question how the story 
 274 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 would have ended to the question how it originated 
 and grew in the writer''s mind. The character of 
 the hero, Weir of Hermiston, is avowedly suggested 
 by the historical personality of Robert Macqueen, 
 Lord Braxfield. This famous judge has been for 
 generations the subject of a hundred Edinburgh 
 tales and anecdotes. Readers of Stevenson's essay 
 on the Raebum exhibition, in Virginibus Pu€risque, 
 will remember how he is fascinated by Raeburn's 
 portrait of Braxfield, even as Lockhart had been 
 fascinated by a different portrait of the same worthy 
 sixty years before (see Peter's Letters to His Kins- 
 folk) ; nor did his interest in the character diminish 
 in later life. 
 
 Again, the case of a judge involved by the 
 exigencies of his office in a strong conflict between 
 public duty and private interest or aiFection, was one 
 which had always attracted and exercised Stevenson's 
 imagination. In the days when he and Mr. Henley 
 were collaborating with a view to the stage, Mr. 
 Henley once proposed a plot founded on the story of 
 Mr. Justice Harbottle in Sheridan Le Fanu's In 
 a Glass Darkly, in which the wicked judge goes 
 headlong per fas et nefas to his object of getting 
 the husband of his mistress hanged. Some time 
 later Stevenson and his wife together wrote a 
 
 275 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 play called The Hanging Judge. In this, the 
 title character is tempted for the first time in his 
 life to tamper with the course of justice, in order 
 to shield his wife from persecution by a former 
 husband who reappears after being supposed dead. 
 Bulwer's novel of Paul Clifford, with its final situa- 
 tion of the worldly-minded judge. Sir William 
 Brandon, learning that the highwayman whom he 
 is in the act of sentencing is his own son, and dying 
 of the knowledge, was also well known to Steven- 
 son, and no doubt counted for something in the 
 suggestion of the present story. 
 
 Once more, the difficulties often attending the re- 
 lation of father and son in actual life had pressed 
 heavily on Stevenson^s mind and conscience from the 
 days of his youth, when in obeying the law of his 
 own nature he had been constrained to disappoint, 
 distress, and for a time to be much misunderstood by, 
 a father whom he justly loved and admired with all 
 his heart. Difficulties of this kind he had already 
 handled in a lighter vein once or twice in fiction — as 
 for instance in the Story of a Lie and in The Wrecker 
 — before he grappled with them in the acute and 
 tragic phase in which they occur in the present story. 
 
 These three elements, then, the interest of the 
 historical personality of Lord Braxfield, the pro- 
 276 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 blems and emotions arising from a violent conflict 
 between duty and nature in a judge, and the diffi- 
 culties due to incompatibility and misunderstanding 
 between father and son, lie at the foundations of 
 the present story. To touch on minor matters, it 
 is perhaps worth notice, as Mr. Henley reminds me, 
 that the name of Weir had from of old a special 
 significance for Stevenson's imagination, from the 
 traditional fame in Edinburgh of Major Weir, 
 burned as a warlock, together with his sister, under 
 circumstances of peculiar atrocity. Another name, 
 that of the episodical personage of Mr. Torrance 
 the minister, is borrowed direct from life, as indeed 
 are the whole figure and its surroundings — kirkyard, 
 kirk, and manse — down even to the black thread 
 mittens : witness the following passage from a letter 
 of the early seventies : — ' I Ve been to church and 
 am not depressed — a great step. It was at that 
 beautiful church' [of Glencorse in the Pentlands, 
 three miles from his father's country house at 
 Swanston]. ' It is a little cruciform place, with a 
 steep slate roof. The small kirkyard is full of old 
 grave-stones ; one of a Frenchman from Dunkerque, I 
 suppose he died prisoner in the military prison hard 
 by. And one, the most pathetic memorial I ever saw : 
 a poor school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the 
 277 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 inscription cut into it evidently by the father''s own 
 hand. In church, old Mr. Torrance preached, over 
 eighty and a relic of times forgotten, with his black 
 thread gloves and mild old face.' A side hint for 
 a particular trait in the character of Mrs. Weir we 
 can trace in some family traditions concerning the 
 writer's own grandmother, who is reported to have 
 valued piety much more than efficiency in her 
 domestic servants. The other women characters 
 seem, so far at least as I know, to have been pure 
 creation, and especially that new and admirable 
 incarnation of the eternal feminine in the elder 
 Kirstie. The little that he says about her himself 
 is in a letter written a few days before his death 
 to Mr. Gosse. The allusions are to the various 
 moods and attitudes of people in regard to middle 
 age, and are suggested by Mr. Gosse's volume of 
 poems, In Russet and Silver, 'It seems rather 
 funny,' he writes, 'that this matter should come 
 up just now, as I am at present engaged in 
 treating a severe case of middle age in one of my 
 stories. The Justice-Clerk. The case is that of a 
 woman, and I think I am doing her justice. You 
 will be interested, I believe, to see the difference 
 in our treatments. Secreta Vitae [the title of one 
 of Mr. Gosse's poems] comes nearer to the case of 
 278 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 my poor Kirstie.' From the wonderful midnight 
 scene between her and Archie, we may j udge what 
 we have lost in those later scenes where she was to 
 have taxed him with the fault that was not his — to 
 have presently learned his innocence from the lips 
 of his supposed victim — to have then vindicated 
 him to her kinsmen and fired them to the action 
 of his rescue. The scene of the prison-breaking 
 here planned by Stevenson would have gained in- 
 terest (as will already have occurred to readers) 
 from comparison with the two famous precedents 
 in Scott, the Porteous mob and the breaking of 
 Portanferry jail. 
 
 The best account of Stevenson's methods of 
 imaginative work is in the following sentences 
 from a letter of his own to Mr. W. Craibe Angus 
 of Glasgow : — * I am still " a slow study," and sit 
 for a long while silent on my eggs. Unconscious 
 thought, there is the only method : macerate your 
 subject, let it boil slow, then take the lid off and 
 look in — and there your stuff is — good or bad.' 
 The several elements above noted having been left 
 to work for many years in his mind, it was in the 
 autumn of 1892 that he was moved to ' take the lid 
 off and look in,' — under the influence, it would 
 seem, of a special and overmastering wave of that 
 279 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 feeling for the romance of Scottish scenery and 
 character which was at all times so strong in him, 
 and which his exile did so much to intensify. I 
 quote again from his letter to Mr. Barrie on 
 November 1st in that year : — ' It is a singular thing 
 that I should live here in the South Seas under 
 conditions so new and so striking, and yet my 
 imagination so continually inhabit the cold old 
 huddle of grey hills from which we come. I have 
 finished David Balfour^ I have another book on 
 the stocks, The Young Chevalier^ which is to be 
 part in France and part in Scotland, and to deal 
 with Prince Charlie about the year 1749 ; and now 
 what have I done but begun a third, which is to be 
 all moorland together, and is to have for a centre- 
 piece a figure that I think you will appreciate — that 
 of the immortal Braxfield. Braxfield himself is my 
 grand premier — or since you are so much involved 
 in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead.' 
 
 Writing to me at the same date he makes the 
 same announcement more briefly, with a list of the 
 characters and an indication of the scene and date 
 of the story. To Mr. Baxter he writes a month 
 later, ' I have a novel on the stocks to be called 
 The Jmike-Clerk. It is pretty Scotch ; the grand 
 premier is taken from Braxfield (O, by the by, send 
 280 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 me Cockbum's Memorials), and some of the story is, 
 well, queer. The heroine is seduced by one man, 
 and finally disappears with the other man who 
 shot him. . . . Mind you, I expect The Justice-Clerk 
 to be my masterpiece. My Braxfield is already a 
 thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as 
 he has gone far my best character.** From the last 
 extract it appears that he had already at this date 
 drafted some of the earlier chapters of the book. 
 He also about the same time composed the dedi- 
 cation to his wife, who found it pinned to her 
 bed-curtains one morning on awaking. It was 
 always his habit to keep several books in progress 
 at the same time, turning from one to another as 
 the fancy took him, and finding relief in the change 
 of labour ; and for many months after the date of 
 this letter, first illness, — then a voyage to Auck- 
 land, — then work on the Ebb~Tide, on a new tale 
 called St. Ives, which was begun during an attack 
 of influenza, and on his projected book of family 
 history, — prevented his making any continuous pro- 
 gress with Weir. In August 1893 he says he has 
 been recasting the beginning. A year later, still 
 only the first four or five chapters had been drafted. 
 Then, in the last weeks of his life, he attacked the 
 task again, in a sudden heat of inspiration, and 
 281 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 worked at it ardently and without interruption 
 until the end came. No wonder if during these 
 weeks he was sometimes aware of a tension of the 
 spirit difficult to sustain. 'How can I keep this 
 pitch ? ' he is reported to have said after finishing 
 one of the chapters ; and all the world knows how 
 that frail organism in fact betrayed him in mid 
 effort. The greatness of the loss to his country's 
 letters can for the first time be fully measured from 
 the foregoing pages. 
 
 There remains one more point to be mentioned, 
 as to the speech and manners of the Hanging Judge 
 himself. That these are not a whit exaggerated, 
 in comparison with what is recorded of his historic 
 prototype, Lord Braxfield, is certain. The locus 
 classicus in regard to this personage is in Lord 
 Cockburn's Memorials of his Time. ' Strong built 
 and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, 
 threatening lips, and a low growling voice, he was 
 like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and 
 dialect were exaggerated Scotch ; his language, like 
 his thoughts, short, strong, and conclusive. Illiterate 
 and without any taste for any refined enjoyment, 
 strength of understanding, which gave him power 
 without cultivation, only encouraged him to a more 
 contemptuous disdain of all natures less coarse 
 282 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 than his own. It may be doubted if he was ever 
 so much in his element as when tauntingly repelling 
 the last despairing claim of a wretched culprit, 
 and sending him to Botany Bay or the gallows 
 with an insulting jest. Yet this was not from 
 cruelty, for which he was too strong and too jovial, 
 but from cherished coarseness.' Readers, never- 
 theless, who are at all acquainted with the social 
 history of Scotland will hardly have failed to make 
 the observation that Braxfield's is an extreme case 
 of eighteenth-century manners, as he himself was 
 an eighteenth-century personage (he died in 1799, 
 in his seventy-eighth year) ; and that for the date 
 in which the story is cast (1814) such manners are 
 somewhat of an anachronism. During the genera- 
 tion contemporary with the French Revolution and 
 the Napoleonic wars — or to put it another way, the 
 generation that elapsed between the days when 
 Scott roamed the country as a High School and 
 University student and those when he settled in the 
 fulness of fame and prosperity at Abbotsford, — or 
 again (the allusions will appeal to readers of the 
 admirable Gait) during the interval between the 
 first and the last provostry of Bailie Pawkie in the 
 borough of Gudetown, or between the earlier and 
 the final ministrations of Mr. Balwhidder in the 
 283 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 parish of Dalmailing, — during this period a great 
 softening had taken place in Scottish manners 
 generally, and in those of the Bar and Bench not 
 least. ' Since the death of Lord Justice-Clerk Mac- 
 queen of Braxfield,"* says Lockhart, writing about 
 1817, 'the whole exterior of judicial deportment has 
 been quite altered.' A similar criticism may pro- 
 bably hold good on the picture of border life 
 contained in the chapter concerning the Four 
 Black Brothers of Cauldstaneslap, namely, that it 
 rather suggests the ways of an earlier generation ; 
 nor have I any clue to the reasons which led 
 Stevenson to choose this particular date, in the 
 year preceding Waterloo, for a story which, in 
 regard to some of its features at least, might seem 
 more naturally placed some twenty-five or thirty 
 years before. 
 
 If the reader seeks, further, to know whether the 
 scenery of Hermiston can be identified with any 
 one special place familiar to the writer's early 
 experience, the answer, I think, must be in the 
 negative. Rather it is distilled from a number of 
 different haunts and associations among the moor- 
 lands of southern Scotland. In the dedication and 
 in a letter to me he indicates the Lammermuirs as 
 the scene of his tragedy. And Mrs. Stevenson 
 284 
 
EDITORIAL NOTE 
 
 (his mother) tells me that she thinks he was in- 
 spired by recollections of a visit paid in boyhood 
 to an uncle living at a remote farmhouse in that 
 district called Overshiels, in the parish of Stow. 
 But though he may have thought of the Lammer- 
 muirs in the first instance, we have already found 
 him drawing his description of the kirk and manse 
 from another haimt of his youth, namely, Glencorse 
 in the Pentlands ; while passages in chapters v. and 
 viii. point explicitly to a third district, that is, 
 Upper Tweeddale, with the country stretching 
 thence towards the wells of Clyde. With this 
 country also holiday rides and excursions from 
 Peebles had made him familiar as a boy: and 
 this seems certainly the most natural scene of 
 the story, if only from its proximity to the proper 
 home of the Elliotts, which of course is in the 
 heart of the Border, especially Teviotdale and 
 Ettrick. Some of the geographical names men- 
 tioned are clearly not meant to furnish literal 
 indications. The Spango, for instance, is a water 
 running, I believe, not into the Tweed but into the 
 Nith, and Crossmichael as the name of a town is 
 borrowed from Galloway. 
 
 But it is with the general and essential that 
 the artist deals, and questions of strict historical 
 
 285 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 perspective or local definition are beside the mark 
 in considering his work. Nor will any reader 
 expect, or be grateful for, comment in this place 
 on matters which are more properly to the point 
 — on the seizing and penetrating power of the 
 author^s ripened art as exhibited in the foregoing 
 pages, the wide range of character and emotion 
 over which he sweeps with so assured a hand, his 
 vital poetry of vision and magic of presentment. 
 Surely no son of Scotland has died leaving with his 
 last breath a worthier tribute to the land he loved. 
 
 S. C. 
 
 286 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 ae, one. 
 
 antinomian, 07ie of a sect which 
 holds that under the gospel 
 dispensation the moral law is 
 not obligatory. 
 
 Auld Hornie, the Devil. 
 
 ballantj ballad. 
 
 bauchles, brogues, old shoes. 
 
 bauld^ bold. 
 
 bees in their bonnet, eccen- 
 tricities. 
 
 birling, whirling. 
 
 black-a-vised, darh^omplex- 
 ioned. 
 
 bonnet-laird, small landed 
 proprietor J yeoman. 
 
 bool, ball. 
 
 brae, rising ground. 
 
 brig, bridge. 
 
 buff, play buff on, to make a 
 fool ofy to deceive. 
 
 burn, stream. 
 
 butt end, end of a cottage. 
 
 byre, cow-house. 
 J ca', drive. 
 
 caller, fresh. 
 
 canna, cannot. 
 
 canny, careful, shrewd. 
 
 cantie, cheerful. 
 
 2 
 
 carline, old woman. 
 
 cauld, cold. 
 
 chalmer, chamber. 
 
 claes, clothes, 
 
 clamjamfry, crowd. 
 
 clavers, idle talk. 
 
 cock-laird. See bonnet-laird. 
 
 collieshangie, turmoil. 
 
 crack, to converse. 
 
 cuist, cast. 
 
 cuddy, donkey. 
 
 cutty, yarfe, also used playfully 
 =brat. 
 
 daft, mad, frolicsome. 
 
 dander, to saunter. 
 
 danders, cinders. 
 
 daurna, dare not 
 
 deave, to deafen, 
 
 denty, dainty. 
 
 dirdum, vigour. 
 
 disjaskit, worn out, disreput- 
 able-looking, 
 
 doer, law agent. 
 
 dour, hard. 
 
 drumlie, dark. 
 
 dunting, knocking. 
 
 dwaibly, infirm, rickety. 
 
 dule-tree, the tree of lamenta- 
 tation, the hanging tree, 
 
 87 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 earrand_, errand. 
 
 ettercap, vixen. 
 
 fechting, fighting. 
 
 feck, quantity, portion. 
 
 feckless, /ee6/e, powerless. 
 
 fell, strong and fiery. 
 
 fey, unlike yourself, strange, 
 as if urged on by fate, or as 
 persons are observed to be 
 in the hour of approaching 
 death or disaster. 
 
 fit, foot. 
 
 flit, to depart. 
 
 flyped, turned up, turned in- 
 side out. 
 
 forbye, in addition to. 
 
 forgather, to fall in with. 
 
 fower, four. 
 
 fushionless, pithless, weak. 
 
 fyle, to soil, to defile. 
 
 fylement, obloquy, defile- 
 ment. 
 
 gaed, went. 
 
 gang, to go. 
 
 gey an*, very. 
 
 gigot, leg of mutton. 
 
 girzie, lit. diminutive of 
 Grizel, here a playful nick- 
 name. 
 
 glaur, mud. 
 
 glint, glance, sparkle. 
 
 gloaming, twilight. 
 
 glower, to scowl. 
 
 gobbets, small lumps, 
 
 gowden, golden. 
 
 gowsty, gusty. 
 
 grat, wept. 
 
 grieve, land-steward. 
 
 guddle, to catch fish with the 
 hands by groping under the 
 stones or banks, 
 
 gumption, common sense, 
 judgment. 
 
 guid, good, 
 
 gurley, stormy, surly. 
 
 gyte, beside itself. 
 
 hae, Imve, take. 
 
 haddit, held. 
 
 hale, whole. 
 
 heels-ower-hurdie, heels over 
 head. 
 
 hinney, honey. 
 
 hirstle, to bustle. 
 
 hizzie, wench. 
 
 howe, hollow. 
 
 howl, hovel. 
 
 hunkered, crouched. 
 
 hypothec, lit. in Scots law 
 the furnishings of a house^ 
 and formerly the produce 
 and stock of a farm hypo- 
 thecated by law to the land- 
 lord as security for rent; 
 colloquially ' the whole struc- 
 ture,' * tJie whole concern,' 
 
 idleset, idleness. 
 
 infeftment, a term in Scots 
 law originally synonymous 
 with investiture, 
 
 jaud; jade. 
 
 288 
 
GLOSSARY 
 
 jeely- piece, a slice of bread 
 
 and Jelly. 
 jenniperSj Juniper, 
 jo, sweetheart. 
 justifeed, executed, made the 
 
 victim of Justice, 
 jyle, Jail. 
 kebbuck, cheese, 
 ken, to know. 
 kenspeckle, conspicuous, 
 kilted, tucked up. 
 kyte, belly. 
 laigh, low. 
 
 laird, landed proprietor, 
 lane, alone, 
 lave, rest, remainder, 
 linking, tripping. 
 lown, lonely, stilL 
 lynn, cataract. 
 
 panel, in Scots law, the accused 
 
 person in a criminal action, 
 
 the prisoner, 
 peel, fortified watch-tower. 
 plew-stilts, plough-handles. 
 policy, ornamental grounds of 
 
 a country mansion, 
 puddock,/ro5'. 
 quean, wench. 
 rair, to roar. 
 riff-raff, rabble. 
 risping, grating, 
 rout, rowt, to roar, to rant. 
 rowth, abundance, 
 rudas, haggard old woman. 
 runt, an old cow past breeding ; 
 
 opprobriously, an old woman, 
 sab, sob, 
 sanguishes, sandwiches. 
 
 Lyon King of Arms, the chief sasine, in Scots law, the act of 
 
 of the Court of Heraldry in 
 Scotland. 
 
 macers, officers of the supreme 
 court. [Cf. Guy Mannering, 
 last chapter.] 
 
 maun, must, 
 
 menseful, of good manners, 
 
 mirk, dark. 
 
 misbegowk, deception, dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 mools, mould, earth, 
 
 muckle, much, great, big. 
 
 my lane, by myself, 
 
 nowt, black cattle. 
 
 palmering, walking infirmly. 
 T 
 
 giving legal possession of 
 feudal property, or, col- 
 loquially, the deed by which 
 that possession is proved, 
 
 sclamber, to scramble. 
 
 sculduddery, impropriety, 
 grossness. 
 
 session, the Court of Session, 
 the supreme court of Scot- 
 land. 
 
 shauchling, shuffling, slipshod, 
 
 shoo, to chase gently, 
 
 siller, money. 
 
 sinsyne, since then, 
 
 skailing, dispersing. 
 289 
 
WEIR OF HERMISTON 
 
 skelpj slap. 
 
 skirling, screaming. 
 
 skriegh-o'-day, daybreak. 
 
 snash, abuse. 
 
 sneisty, supercilious. 
 
 sooth, to hum. 
 
 sough, soundf murmur. 
 
 Spec, The Speculative Society, 
 a debating Society connected 
 with Edinburgh University. 
 
 speir, to ask. 
 
 speldering, sprawling. 
 
 splairge, to splash. 
 
 spunk, spirit, fire. 
 
 steik, to shut. 
 
 stockfish, hard, savourless. 
 
 sugar-bool, sugar-plum. 
 
 syne, since, then. 
 
 tawpie, a slow foolish slut, also 
 used playfully = monkey. 
 
 telling you, a good thing/or you. 
 
 thir, these. 
 
 thrawn, cross-grained. 
 
 toon, town. 
 
 two-names, local soubriquets in 
 addition to patronymic. 
 
 tyke, dog. 
 
 unchancy, unlucky. 
 
 unco, strange, extraordinary, 
 very. 
 
 upsitten, impertinent. 
 
 vennel, alley, lane. The 
 Vennel, a narrow lane in 
 Edinburgh running out of 
 the Grassmarket. 
 
 vivers, victuals. 
 
 wae, sad, unhappy. 
 
 waling, choosing. 
 
 warrandise, warranty. 
 
 waur, worse. 
 
 weird, destiny. 
 
 whammle, to upset. 
 
 whaup, curlew. 
 
 whiles, sometimes. 
 
 windlestrae, crested dog's-tail 
 grass. 
 
 wund, wind. 
 
 yin, one. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majestj*, 
 at the Edinburgh University Press. 
 
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 Rome. Translated by ERNEST A. ViZETBLLY. \,SH»ri!y. 
 
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 Translated by Sir HENRY ATTWELL. 
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 the Cupboard Papers. By Fin-Bec. 
 W. S. GUberf 8 Plays. Three Series. 
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 Curiosities of Criticism. Ry U.J. Jennings. 
 The Autocrat of the Breakftwt-Tible. By Olivkr 
 
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 PencU and Palette. By R. KEMPT. 
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 Eor«nBlc Anecdotes. By Jacob Larwood. 
 
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 Thoreau : His Life and Aims. By H. A. PaGB. 
 Puniana. By Hon. HUGH ROWLEY. 
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 Tale for a Chimney Comer. By Leigh Hunt. 
 
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 La Mort d'Artbcr : Selections from Mallory. 
 Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal. 
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 Merrie England Inthe Olden Time. By G. Danihl. 
 
 Illustrated by KOHERT CRUIKSHANK. 
 Circus Life. By Thomas Frost. 
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 The Genial Showman. By E. V. Hingston. 
 Story of London Parks. By Jacob Larwood. 
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 Seven Oenerations of Executioners. 
 Bummer Cruising in the South Seai, By C 
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CHATTO & WINDUS, PUBLISHERS, PICCADILLY. 
 
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 Taken from the Enemy. By H. Newbolt. ' Black Spirits and White. By R. A. Cram. 
 
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 Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare. I 
 
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 White's Natural History of Selbome. 
 Gulliver's Travels, &c. By Dean Swift. 
 Plays by Richard brinsley Sheridan. 
 Anecdotes of the Clergy. By Jacob Larwood. 
 Thomson's Seasons. Illustrated. 
 Autocrat oi the Ereakfaat-Table and The Professor 
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 The Essays of Ella. By Charles Lamb. 
 Eobinson-Crusoe. Illustrated by G. CRUIKSHANK. 
 Whims and Oddities. By Thomas Hood. 
 The Barber's Chair, By Douglas J errold. 
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 Library Editions of Novels, many Illustrated, crown Svo, cloth extra, 3.^. 6d. each. 
 
 By F. M. ALLEN. 
 Oreen m Grass. 
 
 By GRANT ALLEN. 
 
 The Great Taboo. 
 Dumaresq's Daughter. 
 
 Duchess of Powysland. 
 Blood Royal. 
 Ivan Greet'i Master- 
 piece. 
 The ScallyTvag. 
 At Market 'Value. 
 Under Scaled Orden. 
 
 PhiUstla. 
 
 Strange Stories. 
 
 Babylon. 
 
 For Maimies Sak*, 
 
 In all Shades. 
 
 The Beckoning Hand. 
 
 The Devil's Die. 
 
 This Mortal CoU. 
 
 The Tents of Bhem. 
 
 By MARY ANDERSON. 
 Othello's Occupation. 
 
 By EDWIN L. ARNOLD. 
 Pbr* the Phoenician. | Constable of St. Nicholas. 
 
 By ROBERT BARR. 
 Id a Steamer Chair. | From Whose Bourn*. 
 
 By FRANK BARRETT. 
 The Woman of the Iron Bracelets. 
 
 By 'BELLE.' 
 
 Tashti and Esther. 
 By Sir W. BESANT and J. RICE. 
 
 By Celia's Arbour. 
 
 By 
 
 Eeady-MoneyMortiboy. 
 My Little Girl. 
 With Harp and Crown. 
 This Son of Vulcan. 
 The Golden Butterfly. 
 The Monks of Thelema. 
 
 Chaplain of the Fleet. 
 The Seamy Side. 
 The Case of Mr. Lucraft. 
 In Trafalgar's Bay. 
 The Ten Years' Tenant. 
 
 All Sorts and Condi- 
 tions of Men. 
 
 The Captains' Room, 
 
 All in a Garden Fair. 
 
 Dorothy Forster. 
 
 Uncle jack. 
 
 The World Went Very 
 Well Then. 
 
 Children of Glbeoa. 
 
 Herr Paulus. 
 
 For Faith and Freedom. 
 
 By PAUL BOURQET 
 
 A Living Lie. 
 
 To Call Her Mine. 
 The BeU of St. Panl'i. 
 The Holy Rose. 
 Anuorel of Lyonesse. 
 8. Katherlne's by Tower 
 Verbena Camellia Ste- 
 
 phanotis. 
 The Ivory Gate. 
 The Rebel Queen. 
 Beyond the Dreams of 
 
 Avarice. 
 
 By ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 C!;Adow of the Sword 
 
 A Child of Nature. 
 
 Gda and the Man. 
 
 ftiartvrdom of Madeline 
 
 LoveMe for Ever. 
 
 Annan Water. 
 
 Foxglove Manor. 
 
 ROB. BUCHANAN & MY. MURRAY. 
 
 The Charlatan. 
 
 By J. MITCHELL CHAPPLB. 
 Tlie Minor Chord. 
 
 The New Abeiard. 
 Matt. I Rachel Dene. 
 Master of the Mine. 
 The Heir of Linne. 
 Woman and the Man. 
 Red and White Heather. 
 
 By HALL CAINE. 
 
 The Shadow of a Crime. 1 The Deemster. 
 A Son of Hagar. I 
 
 By MACLAREN COBBAN. 
 The Red Sultan. | The Burden of Isabel. 
 
 By MORT. & FRANCES COLLINS. 
 Transmigration. 1 From Slidnight to Mid- 
 
 Blacksmith & Scholar. night. 
 
 The Village Comedy. | You Play me Falsa. 
 By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
 The Frozen Deep. 
 
 The Two Destinies. 
 
 The Law and the Lady, 
 
 The Haunted Hotel. 
 
 The Fallen Leaves. 
 
 Jezebel's Daughter. 
 
 The Black Robe. 
 
 Heart and Sciencs. 
 
 ' I Say No.' 
 
 Little Novels. 
 
 The Evil Genius. 
 
 The Legacy of Cala. 
 
 A Rogue's Life. 
 
 Blind Love. 
 
 Armadale. ] AfterD&rk. 
 
 No Name. 
 
 Antonina. 
 
 Basil. 
 
 Hide and Seek. 
 
 The Dead Secret. 
 
 Queen of Hearts. 
 
 My Miscellanies. 
 
 The Woman in Whit*. 
 
 The Moonstone. 
 
 Man and Wife. 
 
 Poor Miss Finch. 
 
 Miss or Mrs. ? 
 
 The New Magdalen. 
 
 By DUTTON COOK. 
 Paul Foster's Daughter. 
 
 By E. H. COOPER. 
 Geoflory Hamilton. 
 
 By V. CECIL COTES. 
 Two Girls on a Barge. 
 
 By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 
 His Vanished Star. 
 
 By H. N. CRELLIN. 
 Romances 01 the Old Seraglio. 
 
 By MATT CRIM. 
 
 The Adventures of a Fair Rebel. 
 
 By S. R. CROCKETT and others. 
 
 Tales of Our Coast. 
 
 By B. M. CROKER, 
 Dlaua Harrington. ' ~ ' ' ' 
 
 Proper Pride. 
 A Family Likeness. 
 Pretty Miss Neville. 
 A Bird of Passage. 
 
 By 
 Hearts of Go 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 The Evangelist ; or, Port Salvation. 
 
 By H. COLEMAN DAVIDSON, 
 Mr. Sadler's Daughters. 
 
 By ERASAIUS DAWSON. 
 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 By JAMES DE MILLB. 
 A Castle in Spain. 
 
 To Let.' 
 Mr. Jcrvls. 
 Village Tales ft Jangl* 
 
 Tr.igedies. 
 The Real Lady Hilda, 
 WILLIAM CYPLES. 
 old. 
 
CHATTO & WINDUS, PUBLISHERS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 38 
 
 The Piccadilly (3/6) Kovki^s— continued. 
 
 By. J. LEITH DERWENT. 
 
 Our Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovers. 
 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 Tracked to Doom. I The Mystery of Jamaica 
 
 Maa from Manchester. 1 Terrace. 
 
 By A. CONAN DOYLE. 
 The Finn of Girdlestone. 
 
 By S. JEANNETTE DUNCAN. 
 A Daughter of To-day. | Vernon's Aunt. 
 By Q. MANVILLE FENN. 
 The New Mistresa. I The Tiger Lily. 
 
 Witness to the Deed. | The White Virgin. 
 
 By PERCY FITZGERALD. 
 Fatal Zero. 
 
 By R. E. FRANCILLON. 
 One by One. I Eopes of Sand. 
 
 A Dog and his Shadow. Jack Doyle's Daughter. 
 A Real Queen. | 
 
 Prefaced by Sir BARTLE FRERE. 
 
 Fandurang Hari. 
 
 BY EDWARD GARRETT. 
 The Capel Girls. 
 
 By PAUL GAULOT. 
 
 The Red Shirts. 
 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 
 Rpbin Gray. I The Golden fchftft. 
 
 Loving a Dream. | 
 
 By E. GLANVILLE. 
 The Lost Heiresa. I The Fossicker, 
 
 A Fair Colonist. | The Golden Rock. 
 
 By E. J. GOODMAN. 
 The Fato of Herbert Wayne. 
 
 By Rev, S. BARING GOULD. 
 Red Spider. i Eve. 
 
 By CECIL GRIFFITH. 
 
 Corlntbia Iilarazion. 
 
 By SYDNEY GRUNDY. 
 The Days of his Vanity. 
 
 By THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 By BRET HARTE. 
 
 A Waif of the Plains. Susv. 
 
 .... . _ Jjy 
 
 A Ward of the Go.den 
 
 Gate. 
 A Sappho of Green 
 
 Springs. 
 Col. Starbottle's Client. 
 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE 
 
 Sally Dows. 
 
 A Protegee of Jack 
 
 Hamlin 3. 
 Bell-Ringer of Angel's. 
 Clarence. 
 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 David Poindexter'B DU- 
 
 appearance. 
 The Spectre of the 
 
 Camera. 
 
 Garth 
 
 Ellice Quentin. 
 
 Sebastian Stroma, 
 
 Dust. 
 
 Fortune's Fool. 
 
 By Sir A. HELPS. 
 Ivan de Biron. 
 
 By I. HENDERSON. 
 Agatha Page. 
 
 By G. A. HENTY. 
 RnJub the Juggler. 1 Dorothy s Donbl*. 
 
 By JOHN HILL. 
 The Common Ancestor. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD. 
 Lady Verner's Flipht. I The Three Grace*. 
 The Red House Mystery. | 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 The Leaden CasUet. I Self Condemned. 
 That Other Person I Mrs. Juliet 
 
 B> C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE. 
 
 Honour of fhieves. 
 
 By R. ASHE KING. 
 
 A Drawn Game. 
 
 'Xh« Wtaiiug of the Greea.' 
 
 By EDMOND LEPELLETIER. 
 
 Bladame Sans Gene. 
 
 By HARRY LINDSAY. 
 
 Bhoda Roberts. 
 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 Patricia Kemball. Sowing the Wind. 
 
 U nder which Lord 7 The Atonement of Lean 
 
 ' My Love I ' Dundas. 
 
 lone. The World Well Lost. 
 
 Paston Carew. The One Too Many. 
 
 By HENRY W. LUCY. 
 Gideon Fleyce. 
 
 By JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 
 
 MisB Misanthrope. 
 Donna Quixote. 
 Red Diamonds. 
 Maid of Athens. 
 The Dictator. 
 The Comet of a Seamm. 
 
 A Fair Saxon. 
 
 Linley Rochford. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain. 
 
 Camiola. 
 
 Waterdale Neighbours. 
 
 My Enemy's Daughter. 
 
 By JUSTIN H. McCARTHY. 
 
 A London Legend. 
 
 By GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 Heather and Snow. | Phantasies. 
 By L. T. MEADE. 
 A Soldier of Fortune. | In an Iron Grip. 
 By BERTRAM MITFORD. 
 The Qun-Runner. I The King's Assegai. 
 
 The Luck of Gerard Renshaw Fanning'* 
 Ridgeley. | Quest. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 Maid Marian and Robin Hood. 
 Basile the Jester. 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 A Life's Atonement. 
 
 Joseph 8 Coat. 
 
 Coals of Fire. 
 
 Old Blazer's Hero. 
 
 Val Stran?e. | Hearts. 
 
 A Model Father. 
 
 By the Gate of the Sea. 
 
 A Bit of Human Nature. 
 
 First Person Singular. 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 The Way of the World. 
 BobMartin's Little GlrL 
 Time's Revenges. 
 A V/asted Crime. 
 In Direst Peril. 
 Mount Despair. 
 
 By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
 
 The Bishops' Bible. | Paul Jones s Alias. 
 One Traveller Returns. | 
 
 By HUME NISBET. 
 ' Bail Up I ' 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS. 
 Saint Ann's. | BiUy Bellew. 
 
 By G. OHNET. 
 A Weird Gift. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Held In Bondaga, 
 
 Strathmore. 
 
 Chandos. 
 
 Under Two Flagi. 
 
 Idalia. 
 
 Cecil Castlemalna'i 
 
 Gage. 
 Tricotrin. 
 Puck. 
 
 FoUe Farlne. 
 A D02 of Fianden. 
 Pascarel. 
 Signa. 
 
 Princess Napraxln*. 
 Ariadne. 
 
 By MARGARET A. PAUL. 
 Gentle and Simple. 
 
 Uy JAMES PAYN. 
 
 WoOdM 
 
 Two Littla 
 
 Shoes. 
 In a Winter City. 
 Friendship. 
 Moths. 
 Rnffino. 
 Pipistrello. 
 A Village Commun*. 
 Blmbi. 
 Wanda. 
 
 Frescoes. | Othmar. 
 In Maremma. 
 Byrlm. | Guilderoy. 
 Santa Barbara. 
 Two Offenders. 
 
 Lost Sir Massngbi^rd. 
 Less Black than We're 
 
 Pajnted. 
 A Confidential Agent 
 A (J! ape from a Thorn. 
 In Penl and Prlvatlow. 
 The Mystery of Mir- 
 By Proxy. [bridge. 
 The Canon's Ward. 
 Walter I Word. 
 
 High Spirits. 
 Under *.•&* Koof. 
 Glow worm X:i es. 
 nie TiUk of thi- Town. 
 Hulidav T.usk.s. 
 For Cash Only. 
 The Burut Million. 
 The Word »na the WIU. 
 Sunny Stori'^s 
 A Trying r<>.Ueat. 
 
CHATTO & WINDUS, PUBLISHERS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 29 
 
 The Piccadilly (3/6) t<ovEi.s— continued. 
 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED. 
 Oatlaw and Lawmaker. | Christina Chard. 
 
 By E. C. PRICE. 
 Valentina. I Mrs. Lancaster'* Rival. 
 
 The Foreigners. I 
 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 Miss Maxwell's Affections. 
 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 It is Never Too Late to i SingleheartandDonWe- 
 
 Mend. 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Love Me Little, Love 
 
 Me Long. 
 The Cloister and the 
 
 Hearth. 
 The Coarse of True 
 
 Love. 
 The Autobiography of 
 
 a Thief. 
 Put Yourself in His 
 
 Place. 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 The Jilt. 
 
 By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELU 
 Weird Stories. 
 
 By AMELIE RIVES. 
 Barbara Derlng. 
 
 By F. W. ROBINSON. 
 The Hands of Justice. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL. 
 A Country sweetheart. 1 The Drift of Fate, 
 By W, CLARK RUSSELL 
 
 face. 
 Good Stories of Men 
 
 and other Animals. 
 Hard Cash. 
 Peg WofBngton. 
 Christie Johnstone. 
 Grifath Gaunt. 
 Foul Play. 
 
 The Wandering Heir. 
 A Woman- Hater. 
 A Simpleton. 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 Beadiana. 
 
 Ocean Tragedy. 
 
 My Shipmate Ionise. 
 
 Alone on Wide Wide Sea 
 
 Is He the Man 7 
 The Good Ship 
 
 hock.' 
 The Convict Ship. 
 
 Mo- 
 
 The Phantom Death. 
 
 By JOHN SAUNDERS. 
 Guy Waterman. I The Two Dreamers. 
 
 Bound to the Wheel. | The Lion in the Path. 
 
 By KATHARINE SAUNDERS. 
 Margaret and Elizabeth I Heart Salvage. 
 Gideon's Rock. Sebastian. 
 
 The High Mills. J 
 
 By ADELINE SERGEANT. 
 Dr. Endicott's Experiment. 
 
 By HAWLEY SMART. 
 Without Love or Licence. 
 
 By T. W. SPEIGHT. 
 
 . Secret of the Sea. | The Grey Monk. 
 
 By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 
 In Face of the World. 
 Orchard Damerel . 
 The Tremlett Diamond*. 
 
 A Fellow of Trinity, 
 The Junior Dean. 
 Master of St.Benedict's. 
 To his Own Master. 
 
 By JOHN STAFFORD. 
 Doris and I. 
 
 By R. A. STERNDALE. 
 The Afghan Knife. 
 
 By BERTHA THOMAS. 
 Proud Maisie. | The Violin-Player, 
 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 
 The Way we Live Now. | Scarborough's Family. 
 Frau Frohmann. | The Land-Leaguers. 
 
 By FRANCES E. TROLLOPE. 
 Like Ships upon the I Anne Furness. 
 Sea. I Mabel's Progress. 
 
 By IVAN TURGENIEFF, &c. 
 Stories from Foreign Novelists. 
 
 By MARK TWAIN. 
 The American Claimant. I Pudd'nhead Wilson. 
 The£l,OCO,OOOBank-note. Tom Sawyer .Detective, 
 Tom Sawyer Abroad. | 
 
 By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER. 
 
 Mistress Judith. 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 Lady Bell. I The Blackball Ghosts. 
 
 Buried Diamonds. | The Macdonald Lass. 
 
 By ALLEN UPWARD. 
 The Queen against Owen. 
 The Prince of Balkistan. 
 
 By E. A. VIZETELLY. 
 The Scorpion : A Romance of Spain. 
 
 By ATHA WESTBURY. 
 The Shadow of Hilton Fembrook. 
 
 By JOHN STRANGE WINTER. 
 A Soldier's Children. 
 
 By MARGARET WYNMAN. 
 My Flirtations. 
 
 By E 
 The Downfall. 
 The Dream. 
 Dr. Pascal. 
 
 ZOLA. 
 
 I Money. | Lonrdei, 
 The Fat and the Thin. 
 Rome. 
 
 CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS. 
 
 Post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2S. each. 
 
 By ARTEMUS WARD. 
 
 Artemns Ward Complete. 
 
 By EDMOND ABOUT. 
 
 The Fellah, 
 
 By HAMILTON AIDE. 
 
 Carr of ".arrlyon. | Confidences, 
 
 By MARY ALBERT. 
 
 Br'^eke Finchley's Daughter. 
 
 By Mrs. ALEXANDER. 
 
 Maid, Wife or Widow 7 | Valerie's Fate. 
 
 By GRANT ALLEN. 
 
 The Great Taboo 
 Dumaresq s Daughter, 
 
 Philistia. 
 
 Strange Stories, 
 
 Babvlon 
 
 For Malmle's Sake. 
 
 In all Shades. 
 
 The Beckoning Hand. 
 
 The Devil's Die. 
 
 The Tents of Shorn. 
 
 Duchess of Powysland, 
 
 Blood Royal. 
 
 Ivan Greet'8 Master. 
 
 piece. 
 The Scallywafif, 
 This Mortal Coil. 
 
 By E. LESTER ARNOLD. 
 
 fhXBk the Fbamician. 
 
 B 
 
 iv SHELSLEY BEAUCHAMP. 
 
 tley Grange. 
 
 BY FRANK BARRETT. 
 
 Fettered for Life. 
 Little Lady Linton. 
 Between Life & Death. 
 The Sin of Olga Zassou- 
 
 lich. 
 Folly Morrison. 
 Lieut. Barnabas. 
 Honest Davie. 
 
 A Prodigal's Progress. 
 Found Guilty. 
 A Recoiling Vengeance. 
 For Love and Honour. 
 John Ford; and His 
 
 Helpmate. 
 The Woman of the Iron 
 
 Bracelets. 
 
 By Sir W. BESANT and J. RICE. 
 
 Ready- Money Mortiboy 
 Mv Little Girl. 
 With Harp and Crown, 
 This Son of Vulcan. 
 The Golden Butterfly, 
 The Monks of Thelema. I 
 
 By Celia's Arbour. 
 Chaplain of the Fleet. 
 The Seamy Side. 
 The Case of Mr. Lucraft. 
 In Trafalgar's Bay. 
 The Ten Years' Tenant. 
 
 By Sir WALTER BESANT. 
 
 All Sorts and Condi- 
 tions of Men. 
 
 The Captains Room. 
 
 All in a Garden Fail'. 
 
 Dorothy Forster. 
 
 Uncle Jack. 
 
 The World Went Very 
 Well Then. 
 
 Children of Gibeon. 
 
 Herrjeaulus. 
 
 For Faith and Freedom. 
 To Call Her Mine. 
 The Bell of St. Paul's. 
 The Holy Rose. 
 Arraorel ot" Lyonesse. 
 S.Katherine's bv Tower, 
 Verbena Camellia Ste- 
 
 phanotis 
 The Ivoi-y Gate. 
 The Rebel Queen. 
 
 By AMBROSE BIERCE. 
 
 Oidst of Life. 
 
30 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PUBLISHERS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 Two-Shilling Hovels— continued. 
 By FREDERICK BOYLE. 
 
 Camp Voz 
 Savage Life. 
 
 BY BRET HARTE. 
 
 Califomlan Stories, 
 
 Gabriel Conroy. 
 
 The Lack oX Roaring 
 
 Camp. 
 An HeireBs of Red Dog. 
 
 By HAROLD BRYDGES 
 Uncle Bam at Home. 
 
 Chronicles of No-man'i 
 Land. 
 
 Flip. I ManU*. 
 
 A Phyllis of the Sierrai. 
 A Waif of the Plains. 
 A Ward of the Ctolden 
 Gate. 
 
 By ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
 The Martyrdom of Ma- 
 deline. 
 The New Abelard. 
 Matt. 
 
 The Heir of Llnne. 
 Woman and the Man. 
 
 Shadow of the Sword, 
 A Child of Nature. 
 God and the Man. 
 Love Me for Ever. 
 Foxglove Manor. 
 The Master oi the Mine. 
 Annan Water. 
 
 By HALL CAINE. 
 
 The Shadow of a Crime. I The Deemster. 
 A Son of Bagar. | 
 
 By Commander CAMERON. 
 The Cruise of the 'Black Prince.' 
 
 By Mrs. LOVETT CAMERON. 
 Deceivers Ever. | Juliet's Guardian. 
 
 By HAYDEN CARRUTH. 
 The Adventures of Jones. 
 
 By AUSTIN CLARE. 
 For the Love of a Lass. 
 
 By Mrs. ARCHER CLIVB. 
 Paul FerroU. 
 Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife. 
 
 By MACLAREN COBBAN. 
 The Cure of Souls. | The Red Sultan. 
 
 By C. ALLSTON COLLINS. 
 The Bar Sinister. 
 By MORT. & FRANCES COLLINS. 
 
 Sweet Anne Page, 
 Tranzmigration. 
 From Midnight to Mid 
 
 night. 
 A Fight with Fortune, 
 
 Sweet and Twenty. 
 The Village Comedy. 
 You Play me False. 
 Blacksmith and Scholar 
 Frances. 
 
 By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
 Armadale. ] AfterDark. 
 
 No Name. 
 
 Antonina. 
 
 Basil. 
 
 Hide and Seek. 
 
 The Dead Secret. 
 
 Queen of Heart*. 
 
 Miss or Mrs. 1 
 
 The New Magdalen. 
 
 The Frozen Deep. 
 
 The L aw and the Lady 
 
 The Two Destinies. 
 
 The Haunted Hotel. 
 
 A Eogne 8 Life. 
 
 By M. J. COLQUHOUN. 
 
 Every Inch a Soldier. 
 
 By BUTTON COOK. 
 Leo. I Paul Foster's Danghtar. 
 
 By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 
 The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain*. 
 
 By MATT CRIM. 
 The Adventures of a Fair Rebel. 
 
 By B. M. CROKER 
 Pretty Miss NevtUe. 
 
 My Miscellanies. 
 The Woman in White. 
 The Moongtone. 
 Man and Wife. 
 Poor Miss Finch. 
 The Fallen Leaves. 
 Jezebel's Daughter. 
 The Black Robe. 
 Heart and Scienca, 
 ' I Say No I" 
 The Evil Genlni, 
 Little Novels. 
 Legacy of Calo, 
 Blind Love. 
 
 Proper Pride. 
 A Family Likeness. 
 Village Tales and Jonf !• 
 Tragedies. 
 
 Diana Barrlngtoa, 
 •To Let.' 
 A Bird of Passage, 
 
 By W. CYPLES. 
 Hearts of Gold. 
 
 By ALPHONSB DAUDBT. 
 
 The Evangelist ; or, Port Salvation. 
 
 By ERASMUS DAWSON. 
 
 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 By JAMES DB MILLB. 
 
 A Qaatle in Spain. 
 
 By J. LEITH DERWENT. 
 
 Our Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovei-s. 
 
 By CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 Sketches by Boz. 
 
 OUver Twist. 
 
 Nicholas Mlckleby. 
 
 By DICK 
 
 The Man-Hunter. 
 Tracked and Taken. 
 Caught at Last I 
 Wanted I 
 Who Poisoned Hetty 
 
 Duncan ? 
 Man from Manchester. 
 A Detective's Triumphs 
 
 By Mrs. ANNIE EDWARDES. 
 A Point of Honour. | Archie Lovell. 
 
 By M. BETHAM-EDWARDS. 
 Felicia. | Kitty. 
 
 By EDWARD EGGLESTON. 
 Roxy. 
 
 By G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 swMis 
 
 DONOVAN. 
 
 In the Grip of the Law. 
 From Information &•> 
 
 ceived. 
 Tracked to Doom. 
 Link by Link 
 Suspicion Aroused. 
 Dark Deeds. 
 Riddles Read. 
 
 The New Mistress. 
 Witness to the Deed. 
 By PERCY 
 Bella Donna. 
 Never Forgotten. 
 Polly. 
 Fatal Zero. 
 
 .The Tiger Lily. 
 
 FITZGERALD. 
 
 Second Mrs. Tillotson. 
 Seventy - five Brooke 
 
 Street. 
 The Lady of Brantomc 
 By P. FITZGERALD and others. 
 strange Secrets. 
 
 By ALBANY DE FONBLANQUB. 
 
 Filthy Lucre. 
 
 By R. B. FRANCILLON. 
 
 King or Knave? 
 Romances of the Lav. 
 Ropes of Sand. 
 A Dog and hli Shadow, 
 
 Olympla. 
 One by One. 
 A Real Queen. 
 Queen CophetiUk 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 Seth's Brother's Wife. | The Lawton Girl. 
 Prefaced by Sir BARTLE FRERB. 
 Pandurang Harl. 
 
 By HAIN FRISWBLL. 
 
 One of Two. 
 
 By EDWARD GARRETT. 
 
 The Capei Girls. 
 
 By GILBERT GAUL. 
 
 A Strange Manuscript. 
 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 
 Robin Gray. 
 
 Fancy Free. 
 
 For Lack of Gold. 
 
 What will World Bay 1 
 
 In Love and War. 
 
 For the King. 
 
 In Pastures Green. 
 
 Queen of the Meadow. 
 
 A Heart's Problem. 
 
 The Dead Heart. 
 
 In Honour Bound. 
 Flower of the Fore«1i, 
 The Braes « Yarrow, 
 The Golden Shaft. 
 Of High Degree. 
 By Mead and Stream. 
 Loving a Dream. 
 A Hard Knot. 
 Hearts Delight. 
 Blood-Money. 
 
 By WILLIAM GILBERT. 
 
 Dr. Austin's Guests. I The Wizard of th 
 James Duke. Mountain. 
 
 By ERNEST GLANVILLE. 
 The Lost Heiress. I The Fosslcker. 
 
 A Fair Colonist. | 
 
 By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. 
 Red Spider. | Eve. 
 
 By HENRY GREVILLB. 
 A Noble Woman. | Nikanor. 
 
 By CECrL GRIFFITH. 
 
 Corinthla Marazion. 
 
 By SYDNEY GRUNDY. 
 The Days of his V.anJ ;y. 
 
 By JOHN HABBERTON. 
 Brneton s Bayou. I Country Luck. 
 
 By ANDREW HALLIDAY. 
 ET«ry-day Papers. 
 
 By Lady DUFFUS HARDY. 
 r»iil Wynter'i S*cnflc«. 
 
CHAtTO & WINDUS, PUBLISHERS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 3i 
 
 ^wo-Shilling i^ovKi^a— continued. 
 
 Bv THOMAS HARDY. 
 Vnder tbe Greenwood Tree. 
 
 By J. BBRWICK HARWOOD. 
 Tbe Tenth Earl. 
 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 Outb. Beatrix Randolph. 
 
 Elllce Qnentln. Love— or a Name. 
 
 Fortone I Fool. David Poindexter's Dii- 
 
 Mlia Cadogna. appearance. 
 
 Sebastian Strom*. The Spectre of the 
 
 Duat. Camera. 
 
 By Sir ARTHUR HELPS. 
 Ivan d« Blron. 
 
 By a. A. HENTY. 
 Bnjub tbe Juggler. 
 
 By HENRY HERMAN. 
 A Leading Lady. 
 
 By HEADON HILU 
 
 Zambra tbe Detective. 
 
 By JOHN HILL. 
 
 TreaaoB Felony. 
 
 By Mrs. CASHBL HOBY. 
 
 Tbe Lover'i Creed. 
 
 By Mrs. QEORaB HOOPER. 
 
 Tb* Hoose of Baby. 
 
 By TIQHB HOPKINS. 
 
 Twlxt Love and Duty. 
 
 By Mra. HUNQERFORD. 
 
 A Maiden all Forlorn. I A Modem Circe. 
 In Doranoe VUe. I Lady Verner'i Flight. 
 
 Marvel. | The Sed.Hooje Myttery 
 
 A Mental Straggle. I 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 Tbomlcroft't Model. I Self-Condemned. 
 That Other Person. | The Leaden Casket. 
 JEAN INQELOW. 
 
 By 
 
 rated to be Fr 
 
 My Dead Se 
 
 SeU. 
 
 WM. JAMESON. 
 
 By HARRIETT JAY. 
 
 Tbe Dark Colleen. | Queen of Connangbt. 
 
 By MARK KERSHAW. 
 Colonial Facts and Fictions. 
 
 By R. ASHE KINO. 
 A Drawn Game. I Passion's Slav*. 
 
 ' Tbe Wearing of tbe Bell Barry. 
 
 By JOHN LEYS. 
 Tbe Lindsays. 
 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 Fatrlda Kemball, 
 The World WeU Lost. 
 Under which Lord 7 
 Paston Carew. 
 • My Love 1 ' 
 
 By HENRY W. LUCY. 
 
 Gideon Fleyce. 
 
 By JUSTIN McCarthy. 
 
 The Atonement of Learn 
 
 Dundas. 
 With a Silken Thread. 
 Rebel of the Family. 
 Sowing the Wind. 
 The One Too Many. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain. 
 Waterdale Neighbours. 
 iiT Enemy's Daughter. 
 A Fair Saxon. 
 Unley Rochford. 
 Miss Misanthrope. 
 
 By HUGH 
 
 Oamiola. 
 Donna Quixote. 
 Maid of Athens. 
 The Comet of a Season. 
 The Dictator. 
 Red Diamonds. 
 MACCOLL. 
 
 Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet. 
 
 By QEORaB MACDONALD. 
 Heather and Snonr. 
 
 By AGNES MACDONELL. 
 Quaker Cousins. 
 
 By KATHARINE S. MACQUOID. 
 The Evil Eye. | Lost Rose. 
 
 By W. H. MALLOCK. 
 A Romance of the Nine- 1 The New Republle. 
 (eenth Century. i 
 
 By FLORENCE MARRYAT. 
 
 Open I Sesame I 
 
 , A Harvest of WUd Oats. 
 Fighting the Air. | Written in Fire. 
 
 By J. MASTERMAN. 
 
 Half-a-dozen Daughters. 
 
 By BRANDBR MATTHEWS. 
 
 A Secret of the Sea. 
 
 By L. T. MEADB. 
 
 A Soldier of Fortune. 
 
 By LEONARD MERRICK. 
 
 The Man who was Good. 
 
 By JEAN MIDDLBMASS. 
 
 Touch and Go. | Mr. DorllUon. 
 
 By Mrs. MOLESWORTH. 
 
 Hathercourt Rectory. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 
 Stories Weird and Won- 1 From the Bosom of tbe 
 
 derfuL I Deep. 
 
 The Dead Man's Secret. | 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 Lei Father. A Life's Atonement. 
 
 By the Gate of the Sea. 
 A Bit of Human Nature. 
 First Person Singular. 
 Bob Martin's Uttle Glr) 
 Time's Revenges. 
 A Wasted Crime. 
 In Direst PerU. 
 
 A Model Father. 
 
 Joseph's Coat. 
 
 Coals of Fire. 
 
 Val Strange. 
 
 Old Blazers Her*. 
 
 Hearts. 
 
 The Way of the World. 
 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 
 By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
 
 One Traveller Reiums. I The Bishops' Bibl*. 
 Paul Jones's Alias. 
 
 By HENRY MURRAY. 
 
 Biuir. 
 
 By 
 
 A Gam* of Blu«. | A Song of Slxpeao*. 
 
 HUME NISBET. 
 ' Ball Up I ' I Dr.BernardSt.'VIncent. 
 
 By ALICE O'HANLON. 
 Tbe Unforeseen. | Chance? or Fat* T 
 
 By QBORQES OHNET. 
 Dr. Rameau. I A Weird Gift 
 
 A Last Love. | 
 
 By Mr5. OLIPHANT. 
 Whlteladles. I The Greatest Heiress la 
 
 The Primrose Path. | England. 
 
 By Mrs. ROBERT O'REILLY. 
 Phoebe's Fortunes. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Held In Bondage. 
 
 Strathmor*. 
 
 Chandos. 
 
 Idalia. 
 
 Under Two Flags. 
 
 Cecil Castlemaiae'sGag* 
 
 Tricotrin. 
 
 Puck. 
 
 Folle Farlne. 
 
 A Dog of Flanders. 
 
 Pascarel. 
 
 Signa. 
 
 Princess Napraxia*. 
 
 In a Winter City. 
 
 Ariadne. 
 
 Friendship. 
 
 Two Lit Wooden Shoe*. 
 
 Moths. 
 
 PiplstreUo. 
 A Village Commoa*. 
 Wanda. 
 Othmar. 
 Frescoes. 
 InMaremma. 
 Guilderoy. 
 Ruffino. 
 Syrlin. 
 
 Santa Barbara. 
 
 Two Offenders. 
 
 Ouida's Wisdom, 
 
 and Pathos. 
 
 Wtt. 
 
 By MARGARET AGNES PAUL 
 
 Gentle and Simple. 
 
 By C. L. PIRKIS. 
 Lady Lovelace. 
 
 By EDGAR A. POE. 
 
 The Mystery of Marie Roget. 
 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRABD 
 The Romance of a Station. 
 The Soul of Countess Adrian. 
 Outlaw and Lawmaker. 
 Christina Chard 
 
 By E. C. PRICE. 
 Valentina. I Mrs. Lancaster s Rival 
 
 The Foreigners. I Gerald. 
 
 By RICHARD PRYCB. 
 Miu MazweU s AflecUoas. 
 
CHATTO & WINDUS. PUBLISHERS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 Two-Shillinq Hovei^s— continued. 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 
 Bentinck'8 Tutor, 
 
 Murphy's Master. 
 
 A County Family. 
 
 At Her Mercy. 
 
 Cecila Tryst. 
 
 The Clyffards of Clyffe. 
 
 The Foster Brothers. 
 
 Found Dead. 
 
 The Best of Husbands. 
 
 Walter's Word. 
 
 Halves. 
 
 Fallen Fortunes. 
 
 Humorous Stories. 
 
 iE200 Reward. 
 
 A Marine Residence. 
 
 Mirk Abbey. 
 
 By Proxy. 
 
 Under One Roof. 
 
 High Spirits. 
 
 Carlyon's Year. 
 
 From Exile. 
 
 For Cash Only. 
 
 Kit. 
 
 The Canon's Ward. 
 
 The Talk of the TomL 
 Holiday Tasks. 
 A Perfect Treasure. 
 What He Cost Her. 
 A Confidential Agent. 
 Glow-worm Tales. 
 The Burnt Million. 
 Sunny Stories. 
 Lost Sir Massmgberd. 
 A Woman's Vengeance. 
 The Family Scapegrace. 
 Gwendoline's Harvest. 
 Like Father, Like Son. 
 Married Beneath Him. 
 Not Wooed, but Won. 
 Less Black than We're 
 
 Painted. 
 Some Private 'Views. 
 A Grape from a Thorn. 
 The Mystery of Mir- 
 
 bridge. 
 The Word and the Will. 
 A Prince of the Blood. 
 A Trying Patient. 
 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 It is Never Too Late to i A TerribleTemptatlon. 
 Mend. Foul Play. 
 
 Christie Johnstone. 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Put Yourself In His 
 
 Place 
 Love Me Little, Love 
 
 Me Long. 
 The Cloister and the 
 
 Hearth. 
 The Course of True 
 
 Love. 
 The JUt. 
 The Autobiography of 
 
 a Thief. 
 
 By Mrs. J. H 
 
 The Wandering Eeir. 
 Hard Cash. 
 Sliiglehear t and Donble- 
 
 face. 
 Good Stories of Men and 
 
 other Aniroala. 
 Peg Woffingtoa. 
 Grifath Gaunt. 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 A Simpleton. 
 Beadiana. 
 A Woman-Hater. 
 
 RIDDELL. 
 
 The Uninhabited House. 
 The Mystery in Palace. 
 
 Gardens. 
 The Nun's Cnrie. 
 Idle Tales. 
 
 Weird Stories 
 Fairy Water. 
 Her Mother's Darling, 
 The Prince of Wales's 
 Garden Party. 
 
 By AMELIE RIVES. 
 Barbara Dering. 
 
 By F. W. ROBINSON. 
 Women are Strange. | The Hands of Justice. 
 
 By JAMES RUNCIMAN. 
 Skippers and Shellbacks. | Schools and Scholan. 
 Giace Balmaigii's Sweetheart. 
 
 W. CLARK RUSSELL. 
 
 The Romance of Jenny 
 
 Harlowe. 
 An Ocean Tragedy. 
 
 My Shipmate Louise. 
 Alone on a Wide Wide 
 Sea. 
 
 By 
 
 Round the Galley Fire. 
 
 On the Fo k'sle Head. 
 
 In ihe Middle Watch. 
 
 A Voyage to the Cape. 
 
 A Book for the Ham- 
 mock. 
 
 The Mystery of the 
 •Ocean SUr.' 
 By GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 
 
 Gaellght and Daylight. 
 
 By JOHN SAUNDERS. 
 
 Guy Waterman. i The Lion in the Path. 
 
 The Two Dreamers. | 
 
 By KATHARINE SAUNDERS. 
 
 Joan Merryweather. I Sebastian. 
 
 The High MiUs. Margaret and Eliza- 
 
 Heart Salvage. | beth. 
 
 By GEORGE R. SIMS. 
 
 Rogues and Vagabonds. Tinkletop's Crime. 
 
 The Ring o' Bells 
 Mary Jane s Memoirs, 
 Mary Jane MiNrried. 
 Tales oi To day. 
 Dramas of Life. 
 
 By ARTHUR SKETCHLEY 
 BUtch in the Dark. 
 
 Zeph. 
 
 My Two Wives. 
 Memoirs of a Landlady. 
 Scenes from the Show. 
 The IC Commandmeata. 
 
 By HAWLBY SMART. 
 
 Wlthoat Lore or Licence. 
 
 By T. W. SPEIGHT. 
 
 The Mysteries of Heron j Back to Life. 
 
 The LoudwaterTragedy 
 Burgos Romance. 
 Quittance in FulL 
 A Husband from the Sea 
 
 Dyke 
 The Golden Hoop. 
 Hoodwinked. 
 By Devious Ways, 
 
 By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 
 A Fellow of Trinity. I To His Own Master. 
 The Junior Dean. Orchard Damerel. 
 
 Master of St.Beuedict's | 
 
 By R. A. STERNDALE. 
 The Afghan Knife. 
 
 By R. LOUIS STEVENSON. 
 New Arabian Nights. | Prince Otto. 
 
 By BERTHA THOMAS. 
 Cressida. I The 'VloUn-Player. 
 
 Prond Maisie. | 
 
 By WALTER THORNBURY. 
 
 Tales for the Marines. | Old Stories Retold. 
 By T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPS. 
 
 Diamond Cut Diamond. 
 
 By P. ELEANOR TROLLOPS 
 
 Like Ships upon the I Anne Furness. 
 Sea. I Mabel's Progress. 
 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 
 Frau Frohmann. The Land Leaguers. 
 
 Marion Fay. The American Senator. 
 
 Kept in the Dark. Mr. Scarborough's 
 
 John Caldlgate. Family. 
 
 The Way We Live Now. OoldenUon of Oranper* 
 
 By J. T. TROWBRIDGE. 
 
 Pamell'fl Folly. 
 
 By IVAN TURGENIEFF, &c. 
 
 Stories ft-om Foreign Novelists. 
 
 By MARK TWAIN. 
 
 C 
 
 A Pleasure Trip on the 
 
 Continent. 
 The OUded Age. 
 
 Finn. 
 
 Life on the Mississippi. 
 The Prince and the 
 
 Pauper. 
 A Yankee at the Coart 
 
 of King Arthur 
 The £1,000,000 
 Note. 
 
 The Huguenot Family. 
 The BlackhaU Ghosts. 
 What SheCameThrou^ 
 Beauty and the Beast 
 Oitoyenne Jaqueline. 
 
 Huckleberry 
 MarkTwain's Sketches. 
 Tom Sawyer. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 Stolen White Elephant. 
 
 By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER 
 
 Mistress Judith. 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 The Bride's Pass. 
 Buried Diamonds, 
 St. Miingo's City. 
 Lady Bell. 
 Noblesse Oblige. 
 Disappeared. 
 
 By ALLEN UPWARD. 
 
 The Queen against Owen. 
 By AARON WATSON and LILLIAS 
 WASSERMANN. 
 
 The Marquis of Caracas. 
 
 By WILLIAM WESTALL. 
 
 Trust-Money. 
 
 By Mrs. F. H. WILLIAMSON. 
 
 A Child Widow. 
 
 By J. S. WINTER. 
 
 Cavalry Life. | Regimental Legeode. 
 
 By H. F. WOOD. 
 The Passenger from Scotland Yard. 
 The Englishman of the Rue Cain. 
 By Lady WOOD. 
 Sablna. 
 
 By CELIA PARKER WOOLLEY. 
 Kacuel Armstrong ; or, I.ove and Theoloiry, 
 
 By EDMUND YATES. 
 The Forlorn Hope. I Castaway. 
 
 Land at Last. 1 
 
 OODBN, SUALE AND CO. UMITBD, PillMTBRS, QKBAT SAFFRON HILL, K.0*