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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 l"
 
 ROMANCES OF the OLD TOWN 
 
 OF 
 
 EDINBURGH. 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER LEIGHTON, 
 
 ■STERIOUS LEGENDS OF EDINBURGH," " 
 TRADITIONS OF SCOTTISH LIFE," ETC. 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 WILLIAM P. NIMMO. 
 
 1867.
 
 ?R 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 HE stories in this volume owe their pub- 
 lication to the favour extended to my 
 Book of Legends. If I had any apology 
 to make it could only — independently of what is 
 due for demerits which the cultivators of " the gay 
 science " will not fail to notice — consist in an an- 
 swer to the charge that books of this kind feed a too 
 natural appetite for images and stimulants which 
 tends to voracity, and which again tends to that 
 attenuation of the mental constitution deserving 
 of the name of marasmus. I may be saved the 
 necessity of such an apology by reminding the 
 reader that, although I plead guilty to the charge 
 
 8:j3Si«
 
 vi PREFA CE. 
 
 of invention, I have generally so much of a 
 foundation for these stories as to entitle them to 
 be withdrawn from the category of fiction. On 
 this subject the reader may be inclined to be 
 more particular in his inquiry than suits the pos- 
 sibility of an answer which may at once be safe 
 and satisfactory. I would prefer to repose upon 
 the generous example of that philanthropic show- 
 man, who leaves to those who look through his 
 small windows the choice of selecting his great 
 duke out of two personages, both worthy of the 
 honour. The reader may believe, or not believe, 
 but it is not imperative that he should do either; 
 for even at the best — begging pardon of my fair 
 readers for the Latin — fides semper est inevidens m 
 
 re testificata. 
 
 A. L. 
 
 York Lodge, Trinity, 
 yanuarj/ 1867.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE TWO RED SLIPPERS, 
 
 THE STORY OF THE DEAD SEAL, 
 
 THE STORY OF MRS HALLIDAY, . 
 
 THE STORY OF MARY BROWN, . 
 
 THE STORY OF THE MERRILLYGOES, 
 
 THE STORY OF THE SIX TOES, . 
 
 THE STORY OF MYSIE CRAIG, 
 
 THE STORY OF PINCHED TOM, . 
 
 THE STORY OF THE IRON PRESS, 
 
 THE STORY OF THE GIRL FORGER, . 
 
 THE STORY OF MARY MOCHRIE AND THE MIRACLE OF THE 
 
 COD, 
 
 THE STORY OF THE PELICAN, 
 THE STORY OF DAVIE DEMPSTER'S GHAIST 
 THE STORY OF THE GORTHLEY TWINS, 
 THE STORY OF THE CHALK LINE, 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 35 
 
 60 
 
 88 
 
 115 
 
 137 
 
 160 
 
 177 
 190 
 
 214 
 238 
 
 255 
 277 
 299
 
 ROMANCES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 OLD TOWN OF EDINBURGH, 
 
 ^Ije »)toi:p or tlje '<Itoci Eeti »)lipperg» 
 
 p^si^^^ 
 
 V/Ot 
 
 w 
 
 *t 
 
 HE taking down of the old house of four 
 or five flats, called Gowanlock's Land, in 
 that part of the High Street which used 
 to be called the Luckenbooths, has given rise to 
 various stories connected with the building. Out 
 of these I have selected a very strange legend — so 
 strange, indeed, that, if not true, it must have been 
 the production, quod est in arte sitmnia, of a capital 
 inventor ; nor need I say that it is of much import- 
 ance to talk of the authenticity of these things, for 
 the most authentic are embellished by invention, 
 and it is certainly the best embellished that live the 
 longest ; for all which we have very good reasons 
 
 in human nature. 
 
 A
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 Gowanlock's Land, it would seem, merely occu- 
 pied the site of an older house, which belonged, at 
 the time of Prince Charlie's occupation of the city, 
 to an old town councillor of the name of Yellowlees. 
 This older house was also one of many stories, an old 
 form in Edinburgh, supposed to have been adopted 
 from the French ; but it had, which was not un- 
 common, an entry from the street running under 
 an arch, and leading to the back of the premises to 
 the lower part of the tenement, that part occupied 
 by the councillor. There was a lower flat, and one 
 above, which thus constituted an entire house ; and 
 which, moreover, rejoiced in the privilege of having 
 an extensive garden, running down as far as the 
 sheet of water called the North Loch, that secret 
 " domestic witness," as the ancients used to say, of 
 many of the dark crimes of the old city. These 
 gardens were the pride of the rich burghers of the 
 time, decorated by Dutch-clipped hollies and trim 
 boxwood walks ; and in our special instance of 
 Councillor Yellowlees's retreat, there was in addi- 
 tion a summer-house, or rustic bower, standing at 
 the bottom ; that is, towards the north, and close 
 upon the loch. I may mention also, that in conse- 
 quence of the damp, this little bower was strewed 
 with rushes for the very special comfort of Miss 
 Annie Yellov/lees, the only and much-petted child 
 of the good councillor.
 
 THE TWO RED SLIPPERS. 3 
 
 All which you must take as introductory to the 
 important fact that the said Miss Annie, who, as a 
 matter of course, was " very bonnie," as well as 
 passing rich to be, had been, somewhat previous to 
 the prince's entry to the town, pledged to be 
 married to no less considerable a personage than 
 Maister John Menelaws, a son of him of the very 
 same name who dealt in pelts in a shop of the 
 Canongate, and a student of medicine in the Edin- 
 burgh University ; but as the councillor had in his 
 secret soul hankerings after the prince, and the said 
 student, John, was a red-hot royalist, the marriage 
 was suspended, all to the inexpressible grief of our 
 " bonnie Annie," who would not have given her 
 John for all the Charlies and Geordies to be found 
 from Berwick to Lerwick. On the other hand — 
 while Annie was depressed, and forced to seek re- 
 lief in solitary musings in her bower by the loch — 
 it is just as true that " it is an ill wind that blaws 
 naebody gude ; " nay, the truth of the saying was 
 verified in Richard Templeton, a fellow-student of 
 Menelaws, and a rival, too, in the affections of 
 Annie ; who, being a Charlieite as well as an An- 
 nieite, rejoiced that his companion was in the 
 meantime foiled and disappointed. 
 
 Meanwhile, and, I may say, while the domestic 
 affairs of the councillor's house were still in this 
 unfortunate position, the prince's bubble burst in
 
 THE ST OR Y OF 
 
 the way which history tells us of, and thereupon 
 
 out came proscriptions of terrible import, and, as 
 
 fate would have it, young Templeton's name was 
 
 in the bloody register ; the more by reason that he 
 
 had been as noisy as Edinburgh students generally 
 are in the proclamation of his partisanship. He 
 
 must fly or secrete himself, or perhaps lose a head 
 
 in which there was concealed a considerable amount 
 of Scotch cunning. He at once thought of the 
 councillor's house, with that secluded back garden 
 and summer-house, all so convenient for secrecy, 
 and the envied Annie there, too, whom he might 
 by soft wooings detach from the hated Menelaws, 
 and make his own through the medium of the 
 pity that is akin to love. And so, to be sure, he 
 straightway, under the shade of night, repaired to 
 the house of the councillor, who, being a tender- 
 hearted man, could not see a sympathiser with the 
 glorious cause in danger of losing his head. Tem- 
 pleton was received, a report set abroad that he 
 had gone to France, and all proper measures were 
 taken within the house to prevent any domestic 
 from letting out the secret. 
 
 In this scheme Annie, we need hardly say, was 
 a favouring party ; not that she had any love for 
 the young man, for her heart was still true to Me- 
 nelaws, (who, however, for safety's sake, was now 
 excluded from the house,) but that, with a filial
 
 THE TWO RED SLIPPERS. 5 
 
 obedience to a beloved father, she felt, with a 
 woman's heart, sympathy for one who was in dis- 
 tress, and a martyr to the cause which her father 
 loved. Need we wonder at an issue which may 
 already be looming on the vision of those who 
 know anything of human nature ? The two young 
 folks were thrown together. They were seldom 
 out of each other's company. Suffering is love's 
 opportunity, and Templeton had to plead for him 
 not only his misfortune, but a tongue rendered 
 subtle and winning by love's action in the heart. 
 As the days passed, Annie saw some new qualities 
 in the martyr-prisoner which she had not seen be- 
 fore ; nay, the pretty little domestic attentions had 
 the usual reflex effect upon the heart which ad- 
 ministered them, and all that the recurrinef imaee 
 of Menelaws could do to fight against these rising 
 predilections was so far unavailing, that that very 
 image waxed dimmer and dimmer, while the pre- 
 sent object was always working through the magic 
 of sensation. Yes, Annie Yellowlees grew day by 
 day fonder of her protege, until at length she got, 
 as the saying goes, " over head and ears." Nay, 
 was she not, in the long nights, busy working a 
 pair of red slippers for the object of her new affec- 
 tions, and were not these so very suitable to one 
 who, like Hercules, was reduced almost to the 
 distaff, and who, unlike that woman-tamed hero,
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 did not need them to be applied anywhere but to 
 the. feet? 
 
 In the midst of all this secluded domesticity, 
 there was all that comfort which is said to come 
 from stolen waters. Then, was there not the pros- 
 pect of the proscription being taken off, and the 
 two would be made happy ? Even in the mean- 
 time they made small escapades into free space. 
 When the moon was just so far up as not to be a 
 tell-tale, Templeton would, either with or without 
 Annie, step out into the garden with these very 
 red slippers on his feet. That bower by the loch, 
 too, was favourable to the fondlings of a secret 
 love ; nor was it sometimes less to the prisoner a 
 refuge from the eerieness which comes of ennui — if 
 it is not the same thing — under the pressure of 
 which strange feeling he would creep out at times 
 when Annie could not be with him ; nay, some- 
 times when the family had gone to bed. 
 
 And now we come to a very wonderful turn in 
 our strange story. One morning Templeton did 
 not make his appearance in the breakfast-parlour, 
 but of course he would when he got up and got his 
 red slippers on. Yet he was so punctual, and 
 Annie, who knew that her father had to go to the 
 council-chamber, would see what was the cause of 
 the young man's delay. She went to his bed-room 
 door. It was open, but where was Templeton }
 
 THE TWO RED SLIPPERS. 7 
 
 He was not there. He could not be out in the 
 city ; he could not be even in the garden with the 
 full light of a bright morning sun shining on it. He 
 was not in the house ; he was not in the garden, as 
 they could see from the windows. He was no- 
 where to be found, and what added to the wonder, 
 he had taken with him his red slippers, wherever 
 he had gone. The inmates were in wonderment 
 and consternation, and, conduplicated evil ! they 
 could make no inquiry for one who lay under the 
 ban of a bloody proscription. 
 
 But wonders, as we all know, generally ensconce 
 themselves in some snug theory, and die by a kind 
 of pleasant euthanasia ; and so it was with this 
 wonder of ours. The councillor came, as the days 
 passed, to the conclusion that Templeton, wearied 
 out by his long confinement, had become desperate, 
 and had gone abroad. As good a theory as could 
 be got, seeing that he had not trusted himself in 
 going near his friends ; and Annie, whose grief was 
 sharp and poignant, came also to settle down with 
 a belief which still promised her her lover, though 
 perhaps at a long date. But, somehow or another, 
 Annie could not explain, why, even with all the 
 fondness he had to the work of her hands, he should 
 have elected to expose himself to damp feet by 
 making the love-token slippers do the duty of the 
 pair of good shoes he had left in the bed-room.
 
 8 THE STORY OF 
 
 Even this latter wonder wore away, and months 
 and months passed on the revolving wheel which 
 casts months, not less than moments, into that gulf 
 we call eternity. The rigour of the Government 
 prosecutions was relaxed, and timid sympathisers 
 began to show their heads out of doors, but Rich- 
 ard Templeton never returned to claim either im- 
 munity or the woman of his affections. Nor within 
 all this time did John Menelaws enter the house of 
 the councillor ; so that Annie's days were renounced 
 to sadness and her nights to reveries. But at last 
 comes the eventful " one day" of the greatest of 
 all storytellers. Time, whereon happen his startling 
 discoveries. Verily one day Annie had wandered 
 disconsolately into the garden, and seated herself 
 on the wooden form in the summer-house, where 
 in the moonlight she had often nestled in the arms 
 of her proscribed lover, who was now gone, it might 
 be, for ever. Objective thought cast her into a 
 reverie, and the reverie brought up again the images 
 of these objects, till her heart beat with an affec- 
 tion renewed through a dream. At length she 
 started up, and wishing to hurry from a place 
 which seemed filled with images at once lovable 
 and terrible, she felt her foot caught by an impedi- 
 ment whereby she stumbled. On looking down 
 she observed some object of a reddish-brown 
 colour, and becoming alarmed lest it might be one
 
 THE TWO RED SLIPPERS. 9 
 
 of the toads with which the place was sometimes 
 invaded, she started back. Yet curiosity forced 
 her to a closer inspection. She applied her hand 
 to the object, and brought away one of those very 
 slippers which she had made for Templeton. All 
 very strange ; but what may be conceived to have 
 been her feelings when she saw, sticking up from 
 beneath the rushes, the white skeleton of a foot 
 Avhich had filled that very slipper ! A terrible sus- 
 picion shot through her mind. She flew to her 
 father, and, hurrying him to the spot, pointed out 
 to him the grim object, and showed him the slipper 
 which had covered it. Mr Yellowlees was a shrewd 
 man, and soon saw that, the foot being there, the 
 rest of the body was not far away. He saw, too, 
 that his safety might be compromised either as 
 having been concerned in a murder or the harbour- 
 age of a rebel ; and so, making caution the better 
 part of his policy, he repaired to a sympathiser, 
 and, having told him the story, claimed his assist- 
 ance. Nor was this refused. That same night, by 
 the light of a lamp, they exhumed the body of 
 Templeton, much reduced, but enveloped with his 
 clothes ; only they observed that the other red 
 slipper was wanting. On examining the body, 
 they could trace the evidence of a sword-stab 
 through the heart. All this they kept to them- 
 selves, and that same night they contrived to get
 
 lo THE STORY OF 
 
 the sexton of the Canongate to inter the body as 
 that of a rebel who had been killed and left where 
 it was found. 
 
 This wonder also passed away, and, as time sped, 
 old things began to get again into their natural 
 order. Menelaws began to come again about the 
 house, and, as an old love, when the impediments 
 are removed, is soon rekindled again, he and Annie 
 became even all that which they had once been to 
 each other. The old vows were repeated without 
 the slightest reference being made by either party 
 to the cause which had interfered to prevent them 
 from having been fulfilled. It was not for Annie 
 to proffer a reason, and it did not seem to be the 
 wish of Menelaws to ask one. In a short time 
 afterwards they w^ere married. 
 
 The new-married couple, apparently happy in 
 the enjoyment of an affection which had continued 
 so long, and had survived the crossing of a new 
 love, at least on one side, removed to a separate 
 house farther up in the Lawnmarket. Menelaws 
 had previously graduated as a doctor, and he com- 
 menced to practise as such, not without an amount 
 of success. Meanwhile, the councillor died, leav- 
 ing Annie a considerable fortune. In the course of 
 somewhere about ten years they had five children. 
 They at length resolved on occupying the old
 
 THE TWO RED SLIPPERS. ii 
 
 house with the garden, for Annie's reluctance be- 
 came weakened by time. It was on the occasion 
 of the flitting that Annie had to rummage an old 
 trunk which Menelaws, long after the marriage, 
 had brought from the house of his father, the dealer 
 in pelts. There, at the bottom, covered over by a 
 piece of brown paper, she found — what ? The very 
 slipper which matched the one she still secretly 
 retained in her possession. Verbum sapienti. You 
 may now see where the strange land lies ; nor was 
 Annie blind. She concluded in an instant, and 
 with a horror that thrilled through her whole body, 
 that Menelaws had murdered his rival. She had 
 lain for ten years in the arms of a murderer. She 
 had borne to him five children. Nay, she loved 
 him with all the force of an ardent temperament. 
 The thought was terrible, and she recoiled from 
 the very possibility of living with him a moment 
 longer. She took the fatal memorial and secreted 
 it along with its neighbour, and having a friend at a 
 little distance from Edinburgh, she hurried thither, 
 taking with her her children. Her father had left 
 in her own power a sufficiency for her support, and 
 she afterwards returned to town. All the requests 
 of her husband for an explanation she resisted, 
 and indeed they were not long persisted in, for 
 Menelaws no doubt gauged the reason of her ob-
 
 12 
 
 THE TWO RED SLIPPERS. 
 
 duracy — a conclusion the more likely that he sub- 
 sequently left Scotland. I have reason to believe 
 that some of the existing Menelaws are descended 
 from this strange union.
 
 Cljc ^tov^ of tlje 2Dcati »)enL 
 
 MONG Lord Karnes's session papers there 
 are two informations or written pleadings 
 upon the competency of an action of 
 damages. The law point was strange enough, but 
 the facts set forth in explanation were much more 
 so, amounting indeed to a story so unprecedented, 
 that I cannot help being surprised how they have 
 escaped the curiosity of those who love " to chro- 
 nicle the strong beer" of human life and action. 
 Mr John Dairy mple, merchant, had passed his 
 honeymoon with his wife (whose maiden name was 
 Jean Bisset) in his house in Warrender's Close, 
 and was about to proceed next morning to Glas- 
 gow, to execute some commission business. They 
 had a cheerful supper ; they were both young, both 
 healthy, and both hopeful, and surely if under these 
 conditions they could not extract some sweets out 
 of the orange of life, they might have little chance 
 afterwards, when the pulp would diminish to the
 
 14 THE STORY OF 
 
 bitter skin which is inevitable. But the truth is, 
 they had both very good powers of suction, and 
 will enough to use them ; and if it were not that 
 death and life play upon the same string, one 
 might have said that the new-married couple stood 
 no apparent risk of any fatal interruption to their 
 happiness. 
 
 It was accordingly in very good spirits that Mr 
 Dalrymple set forth in the morning on his journey. 
 We might perhaps say, that the inspiration of her 
 love lent force to his mercantile enterprise, for 
 somehow it would seem that all the actions of 
 man beyond the purely selfish play round the 
 great passion, just as the gaudy petals of the 
 flowers are a kind of acted marriage-song round 
 what is going on in the core of the plants ; and so 
 having arrived in Glasgow, he would be thinking 
 about his Jean, to whom, when he got home again, 
 he would recount the wonderful triumphs he had 
 achieved over his competing worshippers in the 
 Temple of Mammon. He was to be eight days 
 away, and no doubt, according to a moderate cal- 
 culation, they would appear as so many months, 
 were it not that his business engagements would 
 keep these days to their normal length. He was 
 to write her every day, but as he did not know 
 at what inn he might put up, she was not to write 
 to him until she knew where to address him. On
 
 THE DEAD SEAL. 15 
 
 the day after his arrival he accordingly sent her 
 a very loving letter, containing, we presume, as 
 many of those kisses a la distance as is usual in 
 such cases, and which in our day would make some 
 noise in the post-ofifice receiving-box, if they were 
 endowed with sound. Having performed this lov- 
 ing duty, he continued his exertions re-inspired with 
 the hope of receiving an answer on the morning of 
 the day following. Then — as happy people, like 
 the other animals, are playful — he amused himself 
 at intervals, by conjecturing as to what kind of a 
 letter he would get, how endearingly expressed it 
 would be, how many " dears" there would be in it, 
 what warmth of feeling the words would convey, 
 and how many sighs had already been wasted for 
 his return. We might smile at such frivolities if 
 we were not called to remember that the most of 
 our pleasures, if looked at through the spectacle- 
 glass of Reason, would appear to be ridiculous. 
 
 The morning came ; and, according to the state- 
 ment of the waiter, the letter would arrive about 
 breakfast time. He would thus have two or three 
 pleasures rolled up in the same hour ; he would 
 sip coffee and nectar at the same time ; his ham 
 and e.gg would be sweetened by ambrosia ; the 
 pleasures of sense would be heightened by those 
 of the fancy. All which were promises made by 
 himself, and to himself, while he was dressing, and
 
 i6 THE STORY OF 
 
 we cannot be sure that he did not make himself 
 more sprightly, that he had to appear before the 
 letter of his dear Jean. Did not Rousseau blush 
 in presence of the great lady's dog ? Do what we 
 may, we cannot get quit of the moral influence 
 exercised over us by even inanimate things having 
 the power of suggesting associations. But the 
 breakfast was set, all the eatables and drinkables 
 were on the table, and the last thing served by the 
 waiter was the communication that the postman 
 had passed and had left no letter. 
 
 The circumstance was rendered more than awk- 
 ward by his prior hopes and anticipations, and it 
 had the effect, moreover, which it surely ought not 
 to have had upon a sensible man, of taking away 
 his appetite. That it was strange there could be 
 no doubt, for where is the loving wife who at the 
 end of the honeymoon would allow a post to pass 
 without replying to a loving husband's letter J' — 
 but then he contrived to make it more strange by 
 his efforts to satisfy himself that it was not strange 
 at all. His reasons did not satisfy him ; the hum- 
 ming of a Scotch air carried no conviction and pro- 
 duced no appetite ; and the result was increased 
 anxiety, evidenced by the hanging head and heavy 
 eye. Again the main argument was that his or 
 her letter had miscarried, — how could there be any 
 other mode of accounting for it.-* — and then he
 
 THE DEAD SEAL. 17 
 
 hummed the air again — the breakfast standing all 
 the time. All to be again counter-argued by the 
 fact that during all the period he had corresponded 
 with Glasgow, there had been no miscarriage of a 
 letter, either to or from him. This was the doc- 
 trine of chances in the form of a stern logic, and 
 the effect was apparent in another relapse into fear 
 and anxiety. But Mr Dalrymple, though made 
 a moral coward by the intensity of his affection, 
 was withal a sensible man — a fact which he gave 
 a good proof of, by placing more faith in brandy 
 than logic, for having called for a little of that cor- 
 dial, he put a glassful into his coffee, and thereupon 
 felt, almost as soon as the liquor had got into his 
 stomach, that there was really a great deal less to 
 fear than he had thought, if the whole affair was 
 not a mere bugbear; and what was not less re- 
 markable, if not fortunate, the brandy, by dis- 
 missing his fears, brought back his appetite, and 
 although he required a little longer time, he con- 
 trived to make nearly as good a breakfast as if he 
 had been favoured with the ambrosial accompani- 
 ment which he had so hopefully promised himself 
 Nor was this a small matter, for the meal served 
 as ballast to enable him to encounter something 
 very different from the slight adverse wind he had 
 experienced for the last hour. He was still sitting 
 
 at the table, rather pleased that he had triumphed 
 
 B
 
 1 8 THE STORY OF 
 
 over morbid fears, and laying out his scheme for 
 the day, when the words, coming from behind, " A 
 letter, sir," struck his ear as if by a slap. His hand 
 nervously seized the proffered gift, his eyes ''flew" 
 as it were to meet the superscription. He did not 
 know the handwriting. It was directed to the care 
 of Messrs Robert Fleming & Co., one of the houses 
 with which he had been doing business. So far he 
 was relieved, even when disappointed by the ab- 
 sence of his wife's hand on the address. He turned 
 it with the view to break it open, and then stopped 
 and trembled as his eye fixed itself on a large 
 black seal, exhibiting the death's head and cross- 
 bones of a funeral letter. Even this he soon got 
 over, under the supposition that it was an invita- 
 tion to some acquaintance's funeral sent through 
 to him, likely, by the recommendation of his wife 
 before she had received his true address. At 
 length he broke it open, and read the following 
 words : — 
 
 " Dear Sir, — I am sorry to be under the neces- 
 sity of informing you that your wife died this after- 
 noon, between three and four, from the bursting of 
 a blood-vessel in the lungs. You will see the pro- 
 priety of starting for home as soon as you receive 
 this melancholy intelligence. — Yours, 
 
 "A. Morgan, F.R.C.S."
 
 THE DEAD SEAL. 19 
 
 No sooner had he read this terrible communi- 
 cation than he was rendered as rigid as a statue. 
 The only movement that could have been observed 
 in him was in the fingers of the right hand, as it 
 crumpled up the paper by the spasm of the muscles 
 acting involuntarily. His eye was fixed without an 
 object to claim it, and his teeth were clenched as if 
 he had been seized by lockjaw. Conditions which 
 we use strong words to describe, as we toil in vain 
 after an expression which must always be inade- 
 quate, even though the words are furnished by the 
 unhappy victim himself. We try a climax by using 
 such expressions as "palsied brain" and so forth, all 
 the while forgetting that we are essaying to convey 
 a condition of inward feeling by external signs, 
 the thing and the sign being in different categories. 
 As he still sat under the stunning effect of the 
 letter, the waiter entered to clear the table, but 
 when he saw the letter in the clenched hand he 
 retreated from the scene of a private grief, which 
 a foreign interference would only have tended to 
 irritate ; but probably the noise of the closing door 
 helped the reaction which comes sooner or later to 
 all victims of moral assaults, and by and by he 
 began to think — to see the whole details of the 
 tragedy — to be conscious of the full extent of his 
 misery. It was not yet time for the beginning of 
 relief, for these conditions are subject to the law of
 
 20 THE STOR Y OF 
 
 recurrence. Like the attacks of an ague they ex- 
 haust themselves by repetition, and Nature's way 
 is at best but a cruel process of wearing out the 
 sensibility of the palpitating nerve. 
 
 How long these oscillations lasted before the 
 unhappy victim was able to leave his seat, Ave 
 cannot tell. But as all thought is motion, so is 
 all motion action. He could not retreat from the 
 inevitable destiny. He must move on in the maze 
 of the puppets. He must face the dead body of 
 his wife. He must bury her, if he should never 
 be able to lay the haunting spirit of memory. All 
 business must be suspended, to leave the soul to 
 the energies necessary for encountering the ordeal. 
 A certain hardness, which belongs to the last feel- 
 ings of despair, enabled him, even with something 
 like deliberation, to go through the preparations 
 of departure ; but in this he exhibited merely the 
 regularity of a machine, which obeys the imposed 
 power behind. At eleven o'clock he was seated 
 in the coach, as one placed there to be moved on 
 and on, mile by mile, to see the dead body of a 
 wife, whose smiling face, as he had seen it last, 
 was still busy with his fancy, and whose voice, as 
 he had heard her sing at the parting supper, still 
 rang in his ears. 
 
 Nor were his feelings ameliorated by the jour- 
 ney, to remove the tediousness of which, at that
 
 THE DEAD SEAL. 21 
 
 t 
 
 slow time, the passengers were obliged to talk 
 even against sheer Scotch taciturnity. He sat 
 and heard, whether he would or not, the account 
 of one who was going to bring home a wife ; of 
 another who had been away for ten years, and 
 who was to be met at the coach-door by one who 
 was dying to clasp him in her arms. All which 
 were to him as sounds in another world wide apart 
 from that one occupied by him, where he was, as 
 he could not but think, the one solitary inhabitant, 
 with one dead companion by his side. By and by, 
 as the conversation flagged, he fell into that species 
 of monomania where the brooding spirit, doomed 
 to bear a shock, conjures up and holds before its 
 view the principal feature of a tragedy. That 
 feature was the image of his Jean's face. It was 
 paler than the palest of corpses, to suit the condi- 
 tion of the disease of which she had died. The 
 lips were tinged with the blood of the fatal hemor- 
 rhage. The eyes were blank and staring, as if 
 filled with the surprise and terror of the sudden 
 attack. Over all, the fixedness of the muscles, — 
 the contrast of death to the versatile movements, 
 which were obedient to the laugh of pleasure when 
 he last drew indescribable joy from the changes of 
 her humour. No effort could relieve him from 
 that one haunting image. The conversation of 
 the party seemed to render it more steadfast —
 
 22 THE STORY OF 
 
 more bright — more harrowing. Nor when he tried 
 to reahse his feehngs, in the personal encounter of 
 facing the reality, could he find in himself any 
 promise of a power to enable him to bear up 
 against the terrible sight. It seemed to him, as 
 the coach moved slowly on, as if he were being 
 dragged towards a scaffold draped in black, where 
 he was to suffer death. 
 
 When the coach at length stopped in the High 
 Street, he was roused as from a dream, but the 
 consciousness was even worse than the mono- 
 maniac condition in which he had been for hours. 
 It was twelve at night ; the bell of St Giles's 
 sounded solemnly in the stillness of the sleep- 
 ing city. Every one of the passengers hurried off 
 each to his home or inn, all glad of the release. 
 To him it was no release ; he would have ridden 
 on and on, for days and weeks, if for nothing 
 else than to prolong the interval, at the end of 
 which the ordeal he feared so much awaited him. 
 Whither now .^ He stood in the middle of the 
 dark and silent street with his pormanteau in his 
 hand, for he was really uncertain whether to pro- 
 ceed to his sister's house in Galloway's Close, and 
 get her to go with him to his own house, as a kind 
 of medium, to break the effect of the vision — or 
 to proceed homewards alone. He turned his 
 steps towards Galloway's Close, and soon found
 
 THE DEAD SEAL. 23 
 
 that the family had gone to bed ; at least, all 
 was dark yet. Might not his sister be at his 
 house " sitting up " with the corpse ? It was not 
 unlikely, and so he turned and proceeded towards 
 home, his steps being forced, as if his will had no 
 part in his ambulation. Arriving at Warrender's 
 Close, he stood at the foot of his own stair, and, 
 looking up to the windows, he found here, too, 
 all dark ; nor were there any neighbours astir 
 who might address to him some human speech, 
 if not sympathy. The silence was as complete 
 as the darkness, and both seemed to derive the 
 dull charm of their power from the chamber of 
 death. At length he forced himself, step by step, 
 up the stairs, every moment pausing, as well from 
 the exhaustion produced by his moral cowardice, 
 as to listen for a stray sound of the human voice. 
 He had now got to the landing, and, entering the 
 dark passage leading to the door of his own flat, 
 he groped his way along by applying his un- 
 occupied hand to the wall. ' He now felt his 
 nerves fast giving way, his heart beat audibly, 
 his limbs shook, and though he tried to correct 
 this fear, he felt he had no power, though naturally 
 a man of great physical courage. 
 
 He must persevere, and a step or two more 
 brought him to the door, which he found partially 
 open, — a circumstance he thought strange, but
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 could account for by supposing that there were 
 neighbours inside — gossips who meet round death- 
 beds to utter wise saws with dry eyes. Yet, though 
 he Hstened, he heard no sounds. He now pushed 
 open the door, and so quietly, as if he feared that 
 a grating hinge would break the silence. The 
 lobby was still darker than outside, and his first 
 step was towards the kitchen, the door of which 
 he pushed back. There was no one there, — a 
 cruse which hung upon the wall was giving forth 
 the smallest glimmer of a dying light. There was 
 a red peat in the grate, smouldering into white 
 ashes. Turning to the servant's bed, he found it 
 unoccupied, with the clothes neatly folded down, 
 no doubt by Peggy's careful hands, and no doubt, 
 too, Peggy had solemn work to do " ben the 
 house." He next crossed the lobby, partly by 
 groping, and reached a parlour, the door of which 
 he opened gently. Dark too, and no one within. 
 The same process was gone through with the 
 dining-room, and with the same negative result. 
 The last door was that of the bed-room, where 
 he was to encounter what he feared. It was par- 
 tially open. He placed his ear to the chink and 
 listened, but he heard nothing. There was no 
 living voice there, and death speaks none. He 
 pushed the door open, and looked fearfully in, 
 A small rushlight on the side-table opposite the
 
 THE DEAD SEAL. 25 
 
 bed threw some flickering beams around the room, 
 bringing out indistinctly the white curtains of the 
 bed. He approached a little, and could discover 
 vaguely the form of his wife lying there. Would 
 he take up the rushlight, and, with the necessary 
 courage, go forward and examine the features ? 
 He had arrived at the spot, and at the moment, 
 portrayed prospectively in his waking dream dur- 
 ing his journey, and a few steps, with the rush- 
 light in his hand, would realise the image he had 
 brooded over so long. He struggled with him- 
 self, but without avail. Any little courage he had 
 been for the last few minutes trying to summon 
 up utterly gave way. There rushed into his mind 
 vague fancies and fears, — creatures of the darkness 
 and the death-like stillness around him, which he 
 could neither analyse nor stay. He even thought 
 he heard some sound from the bed where the 
 corpse lay, — the consequence of all which was 
 total loss of self-possession, approaching to some- 
 thing like a panic, and the effect of this, again, 
 was a retreat. He sought the door, groped his 
 way again through the inside lobby, got to the 
 outer door, along the outer passage, down the stair 
 to the street. 
 
 Nor when he got there did he pull up and begin 
 to think of the extreme pusillanimity, if not folly, 
 of his conduct. Even if he had tried, he could
 
 26 THE ST OR Y OF 
 
 only have wound up his self-crimination by the 
 ordinary excuse — that he could not help it. The 
 house, with its stretched corpse, deserted rooms, 
 its darkness and silence, was frightful to him. He 
 could not return until he found some one to ac- 
 company him ; and he satisfied himself of the 
 reasonableness of this condition by the fact that 
 the servant herself had fled in fear from the dis- 
 mal scene. He began to move, though almost 
 involuntarily, down the Canongate, his step quick 
 and hurried, after the manner of those who are 
 pursued by some danger, the precise nature of 
 which they do not stop to examine. He even 
 found a slight relief in the muscular exertion, and 
 thus hurrying on, he reached the Duke's Walk, 
 and came to the heap of stones called Muschet's 
 Cairn, from Nichol Muschet of Boghall, who there 
 murdered his wife. With no object but move- 
 ment to dispel his misery, it was indifferent to 
 him whither he should go ; and hurrying to Ar- 
 thur's Seat, he began to climb the hill, regardless 
 of the dangerous characters often encountered 
 there at night, any one of whom he had courage 
 enough to have throttled at the moment he was 
 flying from what was little more than a mere 
 phantom. 
 
 Meanwhile the moon had risen, and was illumi- 
 nating at intervals the north-east side of the hill,
 
 THE DEAD SEAL. 27 
 
 leaving all in comparative darkness again as she 
 got behind the thick clouds which hung heavily 
 in the sky ; but the light was of no value to one 
 who was moved only by the impulse of a distrac- 
 tion. Yet, as he stood for a moment, and looked 
 back upon the city, with that Warrender's Close 
 in the heart of it, and that house in the close, and 
 that room with the rushlight within the house, and 
 that bed in the room, and that figure so still and 
 silent in the bed, he became conscious of a circum- 
 stance which had escaped him. He found that 
 in his wild wandering, apparently without any 
 other aim than to allay unbearable feelings by 
 exertion, he had been unconsciously following, 
 step by step, the very track which he and his 
 now lost Jean had taken in a walk of the after- 
 noon of the Sunday preceding his departure for 
 Glasgow. The thought thus coming as a dis- 
 covery was in itself a mystery, and he felt it to 
 be a kind of duty — though with what sanction 
 of a higher power he knew not — to continue that 
 same track of the Sunday walk which had been 
 consecrated by the sweet intercourse of two loving 
 hearts. In execution of which purpose he kept 
 moving towards the east shoulder of the hill, and 
 such hold had this religious fancy taken of him, 
 that he looked about for places in the track where 
 some part of their conversation had occurred,
 
 28 THE STORY OF 
 
 which, from some peculiarity in it, had remained 
 upon his memory. Nay, so weak did he become 
 in his devotion, that he threw himself down on 
 the cold grass at spots where Jean had required 
 a rest, and had leant her head upon his shoulder, 
 and had been repaid by some note of endearment. 
 But in these reclining postures, which assumed the 
 form of a species of worship, he remained only till 
 the terrible thought of his privation again rose 
 uppermost in his mind, forcing him to start to his 
 feet by a sudden spring, and to go on again, and 
 brush through the whins that grew on the hill-side, 
 as if he courted their obstruction as a relief 
 
 It is said that our ideas produce time, and our 
 feelings devour it ; and this is true at least where 
 the feelings are of apprehension and fear of some 
 inevitable event to occur in the future. He had 
 still the ordeal to pass through. The sun Avould 
 rise, in the light of which he would be forced to 
 look on the dead face, and in place of considering 
 the time occupied by these wanderings to and fro 
 long and weary, the moments, minutes, hours, 
 passed with such rapidity that the moon had gone 
 far on in her journey, and the gray streaks of dawn 
 were opening up a view to the east, before he could 
 realise the passage of the time which had been, as 
 it were, swallowed up by his desire to postpone 
 what, by the laws of nature and society, he was
 
 THE DEAD SEAL. 29 
 
 bound to endure. How many times he had gone 
 round the hill and up to the top, and down to 
 Duddingstone, and along by the village road, and 
 in through the bog, to begin his rounds again, he 
 could not have told. But at length the sun glared 
 threateningly in his face. Time defied him, and 
 at length he saw the smoke of the chimneys begin 
 to rise from the city. The red peat he had seen 
 in the grate of his own kitchen would at least 
 yield none. The household gods had deserted his 
 hearth. Death and silence now reigned there. He 
 heard eight o'clock sound from St Giles's. The 
 people were beginning to move in all directions — 
 all in search of pleasure, the ultimate end of all 
 man's exertions — and he could no longer find a 
 refuge in darkness or distance ; so he began to 
 move in the direction of the town with the weari- 
 ness and lassitude of exhaustion rendering his legs 
 rigid and his feet heavy, in addition to the hope- 
 lessness of a stricken heart. When he got to the 
 Watergate, he began to see faces of people whom 
 he knew, and who knew him ; but he felt no de- 
 sire to speak, and they doubtless from delicacy 
 passed, without showing any desire to stop him. 
 At length he arrived at the head of Warrender's 
 Close, and now he felt as if he were more submis- 
 sive to the necessity of what seemed to be fate, 
 moving his limbs with more will — even with soi^ie-
 
 30 THE STORY OF 
 
 thing like a wish on his mind to put an end to a 
 long agony. Down and down step by step, the 
 drooping head responsive in its nods to the move- 
 ment of his body ; up the stair step after step de- 
 liberately, resolutely ; along the outer passage ; 
 now opposite his own door. That door was now 
 closed, giving indication that the servant, or some 
 friend or neighbour, had been in the house since 
 he left. He tapped gently. The door was opened 
 almost upon the instant, and Mr John Dalrymple 
 was imm_ediately encompassed by the arms of a 
 woman screaming in the exultation of immoderate 
 joy. 
 
 " John, dear John, how delighted I am to see 
 you, — for oh, we have been in such dreadful fear 
 about you since Peggy found your portmanteau 
 in the lobby ; but, thank God, you are come at 
 last, and just in time for a fine warm breakfast." 
 
 The ejaculation, or rather screaming of which 
 words was very easy, because very natural, to Mrs 
 Jean Dalrymple, in the happy circumstances in 
 which she found herself after so much apprehen- 
 sion produced by the mystery connected with the 
 portmanteau, but as for Mr John Dalrymple speak- 
 ing even to the extent of a single syllable was out 
 of the question, unless some angel other than she 
 of the house had touched his lips with the fire of 
 inspiration, in place of his receiving the kisses of
 
 THE DEAD SEAL. 31 
 
 his wife. And this was so far well, for he certainly 
 would have made a bungle of any attempt at the 
 moment to express his feelings, besides laying 
 himself open to a heavier charge of folly than that 
 which already stood at the wrong side of his ac- 
 count of wisdom, or even common sense. So 
 quietly taking off his hat he led the way into the 
 breakfast -parlour, where he saw the breakfast 
 things all neatly laid, beside a glowing fire, before 
 which lay his brindled cat, not the least happy of 
 the three ; whilst Peggy, who had some forgotten 
 thing to put on the table, had a pleasant smile on 
 her face, just modified in a slight degree with a 
 little apprehension which probably neither the mas- 
 ter nor mistress could comprehend. 
 
 " I will tell you, Jeannie, all about the portman- 
 teau, and perhaps something more, when we sit 
 down to breakfast/' words which in the meantime 
 were satisfactory to Mrs Jean ; and the event they 
 conditioned for soon arrived, for the wife was all 
 curiosity and despatch, and Peggy all duty and 
 attention. 
 
 The story was very soon told, nor did Mrs Jean 
 interrupt the narrative by a single word as she sat 
 with staring eyes and open mouth listening to the 
 strange tale. 
 
 " There is the letter with the dead seal," said he, 
 as he handed it over to her.
 
 32 THE STOR V OF 
 
 Mrs Jean read it, and then began to examine it 
 as if she was scrutinising the form of the written 
 words. 
 
 "That is the handwriting of Bob Balfour, my 
 old admirer," said she, at length, with animation. 
 " I know his hand as well as I know yours, and he 
 has done this in revenge for your having taken me 
 from him. I will show you proof." 
 
 And o-oincr to a cabinet she took therefrom some 
 letters, which she handed to her husband. These 
 proved two things : first, that the letter with the 
 black seal, purporting to be signed by Surgeon 
 Morgan, was in the handwriting of Balfour, though 
 considerably disguised ; and secondly, that he had 
 been an ardent lover of Jean, and, perhaps, on that 
 account an enemy to the man who had been for- 
 tunate enough to secure her affections and her 
 hand. 
 
 " All clear enough ; but I shall have my revenge, 
 too !" cried the husband. " In the meantime there 
 are some things to be explained. Why did you 
 not write .-*" 
 
 "I wrote to you last night," said Jean. "You 
 had posted your letter too late." 
 
 "And why was not Peggy in the house last 
 nieht at twelve, when I came home.-*" 
 
 " Peggy must answer that herself," answered 
 Mrs Jean, smiling, and looking from her husband
 
 THE DEAD SEAL. 33 
 
 to Peggy, and from Peggy to her husband, as she 
 spoke ; " but I think I know what her answer will 
 be." 
 
 And that answer was indeed very simple, 
 amounting to no more than the very natural fact 
 that Peggy, after her mistress had retired to rest, 
 had gone up the common stair to Widow Hender- 
 son's, whose son Jock was courting Peggy at the 
 time with all commendable assiduity, and con- 
 siderable chance of success. 
 
 But our story, though thus so satisfactorily ex- 
 plained, is not yet done. Nay, as we have said, 
 its termination was in the court, where Mr Dal- 
 rymple sued Balfour for damages and solathmi for 
 his cowardly and cruel act. Nor was this action 
 itself, an ordinary matter, for it interested the law- 
 yers of the day, not by the romantic facts which 
 led to it, but the legal principles which flowed out 
 of it. Balfour's counsel objected to the relevancy, 
 that is, denied there was in a lie or practical joke 
 any cause of action. This defence gave rise to 
 the informations we have mentioned, for the point 
 raised was new and difficult. It was argued by 
 Balfour that lies in the form of hoaxes are told 
 every day, some good and some bad. Men know 
 this, and ought to be upon their guard, which can 
 be their only security, — for if such lies were action- 
 able, one-half of society would be at law with the 
 
 C
 
 34 THE DEAD SEAL. 
 
 other. And as for any injury inflicted on Mr 
 Dalrymple, it was doubtful whether the pleasure 
 he experienced that morning when enclosed in the 
 arms of his wife, did not more than compensate 
 for his prior sufferings. On the other hand the 
 pursuer argued, that by the law of Scotland there 
 is no wrong without a legal remedy, and that 
 having suffered by the cruel deceit both in his 
 feelings and in his purse, (for he left his business 
 unfinished,) he was entitled to recover. We have 
 been unable to find the judgment.
 
 ^Ije fetor^ of Sl^rjj lallitia^ 
 
 jHERE are little bits of romance spread 
 here and there in the routine of ordi- 
 nary life, but for which we should be like 
 the fairy Aline, somewhat weary of always the 
 same flowers blooming, and the same birds sing- 
 ing, and the same play of human motives and 
 passions. They are something of the nature of 
 episodes which, as in the case of epic poems, are 
 often the most touching and beautiful in the whole 
 work. Yet the beauty is seldom felt by the actors 
 themselves, who are frequently unfortunate ; and 
 so it is that they suffer that we may enjoy the 
 pathos of their suffering, after it has gone through 
 the hands of art. We are led to say this as a 
 kind of prelude to one of those episodical dramas 
 which occurred some eighty years ago, and for 
 twenty of them formed a household story, as well 
 from the singularity of the principal circumstances 
 as from the devotion of the personages. But we
 
 36 THE STORY OF 
 
 must go back a little from the main incidents to 
 introduce to the reader a certain Patrick Halliday, 
 a general agent for the sale of English broadcloth, 
 whose place of business was in the Lawnmarket, 
 and dwelling-house in a tenement long called Ped- 
 die's Land, situated near the Old Assembly Close. 
 It belongs not much to our story to say that Mr 
 Halliday was pretty well-to-do in the world, 
 though probably even with youth and fair looks, 
 if he had been a poor man, he would not have 
 secured as he did the hand of a certain young 
 lady, at that time more remarkable than he. Her 
 name was Juha Vallance. We know no more of 
 her except one particular, which many people 
 would rather be known by than by wealth, or even 
 family honours, and that was personal beauty — not 
 of that kind which catches the eye of the common 
 people, and which is of ordinary occurrence, but of 
 that superior order which, addressing itself to a 
 cultivated taste, secures an admiration which can 
 be justified by principles. And so it came to pass 
 that Julia had before her marriage attained to the 
 reputation — probably not a matter of great ambition 
 to herself, certainly not at all times very enviable 
 — of being the belle of the old city. Nor is this 
 saying little, when we claim it in the face of the 
 world as a truth that Edinburgh, in spite of its 
 smoke, has at all times been remarkable for many
 
 MRS HALLIDA Y. 37 
 
 varieties, dark and fair, of fine women. A result 
 this which, perhaps, we owe to a more equal mix- 
 ture of the two fine races, the Celt and Saxon, 
 than ever took place in England. But Julia had 
 brought her price, and her market having been 
 made, she could afford to renounce the admiration 
 of a gaping public in consideration of the love of a 
 husband who was as kind to her as he was true. 
 As regards their happiness as man and wife, we 
 will take that in the meantime as admitted, the 
 more by reason that in due time after the marriage 
 they had a child ; and, no doubt, they would have 
 had many in succession had it not been for the 
 strange occurrence which forms the fulcrum of our 
 tale. 
 
 Apart from the family in Peddie's Land, and in 
 no manner connected with it, either by blood or 
 favour, was that of Mr Archibald. Blair, a young 
 man living in Writers' Court, of whom we can say 
 little more than that he was connected \yth the 
 Borgue family in the Stewartry, an advocate, and 
 also married. We are not informed of either the 
 name or lineage of his young wife, and far less can 
 we say aught of the perfections or imperfections 
 she derived from nature. We are only left to 
 presume that if there had been no love, there 
 would probably have been no marriage, and in 
 this case, also, we have the fact of a child having
 
 38 THE STORY OF 
 
 been born to help the presumption of that which, 
 naturally enough, may be taken as granted. 
 
 The two families, far asunder in point of grade, 
 and equally far from any chance of acquaintance- 
 ship, went on in their several walks ; nor are we 
 entitled to say, from anything previously known 
 of them, that they even knew of each other's 
 existence — unless, to be sure, the reputation of 
 Julia for her personal perfections might have come 
 to Blair's ears as it did to many who had perhaps 
 never seen her ; but, then, the marriage of a beauty 
 is generally the end of her fame, as it is of her 
 maiden career ; and those who, before that event, 
 are entitled to look and admire, and, perhaps, wish 
 to whisper their aspirations, not less than to gaze 
 on her beauty, leave the fair one to the happy man 
 to whom the gods have assigned her. 
 
 We must now allow four years to have passed, 
 during all which time Patrick Halliday and his 
 wife — still, we presume, retaining her beauty, at 
 least in the matronly form — were happy as the 
 day is long, or, rather we should say, as the day is 
 short, for night is more propitious to love than day. 
 Nothing was known to have occurred to break the 
 harmony which had begun in love, and surely 
 when we have, as there appeared to be here, the 
 three requisites of happiness mentioned by the 
 ancients — health, beauty, and wealth, there was no
 
 MRS HALLWAY. 39 
 
 room for any suspicion that the good deities re- 
 pented of their gifts. But all this only tended to 
 deepen the shadows of a mystery which we are 
 about to revive at this late period. 
 
 One day, when Patrick Halliday returned from 
 a journey to Carlisle, he was thunderstruck by the 
 intelligence communicated to him by his servant, 
 that his wife had disappeared two days before, and 
 no one could tell whither she had gone. The ser- 
 vant, by her own report, had been sent to Leith 
 on a message, and had taken the daughter, little 
 Julia, with her; and when she came back, she 
 found the door unlocked, and her mistress gone. 
 She had made inquiries among the neighbours, she 
 had gone to the acquaintances of the family, she 
 had had recourse to every one and every place 
 where it was likely she would get intelligence of 
 her — all to no effect. Not a single individual 
 could even say so much as that he or she had 
 seen her that day, and at length, wearied out by 
 her inquiries, she had had recourse to the supposi- 
 tion that she had followed her husband to Carlisle. 
 
 The effect of this strange intelligence was simply 
 stupifying. Halliday dropt into a chair, and, com- 
 pressing his temples with his trembling hands, 
 seemed to try to retain his consciousness against 
 the echoes of words which threatened to take it 
 away. For a time he had no power of thought,
 
 40 THE STORY OF 
 
 and even when the ideas began again to resume 
 their train, their efforts were broken and wild, tend- 
 ing to nothing but confusion. 
 
 He put question after question to the servant, 
 every answer throwing him back upon new suppo- 
 sitions, all equally fruitless. The only notion that 
 seemed to give him any relief was, that she had gone 
 to a distance, to some of her friends — wild enough, 
 yet better than blank despair ; and as for infidelity, 
 the thought never once occurred to him, where there 
 was no ground on which to rear even a doubt. 
 
 At length, on regaining something like com- 
 posure, he rose from his seat, and began to walk 
 drearily through the house. He opened his desk 
 and found that a considerable sum of money he 
 had left there was untouched. He next opened 
 the press in the wall, where she kept her clothes. 
 He could not see anything Vv^anting — the gown 
 was there which latterly she had been in the habit 
 of putting on when she went out to walk with little 
 Julia ; her two bonnets, the good and the better — 
 the one for everyday and the one for Sunday — 
 hung upon their pegs. Her jewels, too, which were 
 in a drawer of her cabinet, were all there, with the 
 exception of the marriage-ring she was in the habit 
 of wearing every day. There was nothing want- 
 ing, save her ordinary body clothes, including the 
 fringed yellow wrapper in which, during the fore-
 
 MRS HALLIDA Y. 41 
 
 noon, she used to perform her domestic duties, and 
 which he had often thought became her better 
 than even her silks. Wherever she had gone, she 
 must have departed in her undress and bareheaded 
 — nay, her slippers must have been on her feet, 
 for not only were they away, but the high-heeled 
 shoes by which she replaced them when she went 
 to walk were in the place where they usually lay. 
 
 In the midst of all this mystery, the relations 
 and others, who had been quickened into a high- 
 wrought curiosity by the inquiries made by the 
 servant, dropt in one after another in the expecta- 
 tion that the missing wife would have returned with 
 her husband, but they went away more astonished 
 than before, and leaving the almost frantic husband 
 to an increase of his apprehension and fears. 
 
 The dark night came on, and he retired to bed, 
 there to have the horrors of a roused fancy added to 
 the deductions of a hapless and demented reason. 
 
 In the morning he rose after a sleepless and 
 miserable night, tried to eat a little breakfast with 
 the playful little Julia, the image of her mother, 
 by his side, asking him every now and then, in the 
 midst of her prattle, what had become of mammy, 
 rose and went forth, scarcely knowing whither to 
 go. Directing his steps almost mechanically to- 
 wards his place of business, he ascertained that his 
 clerk knew no more of the missing wife than the
 
 42 THE STORY OF 
 
 others. On emerging again from his office, he was 
 doomed to run the ordinary gauntlet of inquiries, 
 and not less of strange looks where the inquirers 
 seemed afraid to put the question. Others tried to 
 read him by a furtive glance, and went away with 
 their construction. No one could give him a word 
 of comfort, if, indeed, he had not sometimes reason 
 to suspect that there were of his anxious friends 
 some who were not ill pleased that he had lost, no 
 doubt by elopement, a wife who outshone theirs. 
 
 At length he found his way to the bailie's office, 
 Avhere he got some of the town constables to insti- 
 tute a secret search among the closes, and thus the 
 day passed resultless and weary, leaving him to 
 another night of misery. 
 
 Next day brought scarcely any change, except 
 in the wider spread throughout the city of the 
 news, which, in the circumstances, degenerated 
 into the ordinary scandal. Nor did the husband 
 make any endeavour to check this, by stating to 
 any one the part of the mystery connected with 
 the clothes — a secret which he kept to himself, 
 and brooded over with a morbid feeling he per- 
 haps could not have explained to himself And 
 that day passed also, leaving at its close an in- 
 creased curiosity on the part of the pubhc, but 
 with no change in the conviction that the lady had 
 merely played her husband false.
 
 MRS HALLIDA Y. 43 
 
 The next day was not so barren — nay, it was 
 pregnant with a fact calculated to increase the 
 excitement without ameliorating the scandal. On 
 going up the High Street, Halliday met one of the 
 officers who had been engaged in the search, and 
 who told him that another citizen had disappeared 
 in a not less mysterious way. The question, " Who 
 is it V was put, but not answered, except by 
 another question. 
 
 " Was Mrs Halliday acquainted with Mr Archi- 
 bald Blair, advocate, in Writers' Court V 
 
 " No," was the answer of the husband ; " and 
 why do you put the question .? " 
 
 " Because Mrs Blair requested me," replied the 
 officer. " She is in great distress about her hus- 
 band, and I think you had better see her." 
 
 And so thought Patrick Halliday, as he hurried 
 away to Writers' Court, much in the condition of 
 one who would rush into the flames to avoid the 
 waves ; for, dreadful as the death of his beloved 
 wife would be to him, more dreadful still was the 
 thought that she had eloped with another man, 
 and that man might be Archibald Blair. On reach- 
 ing the house, where he was admitted upon the in- 
 stant, he found a counterpart of his own domestic 
 tragedy — everything telling the tale of weariness, 
 anxiety, and fear ; comers and goers with lugubri- 
 ous countenances ; and Mrs Blair herself in a chair
 
 44 THE ST OR V OF 
 
 the picture of that very misery he had himself en- 
 dured, and was at that very moment enduring. 
 
 " Who are you ? " she cried, as he approached 
 her. " Are you come with good news or bad ? " 
 
 " My name is HalHday, madam," rephed he. 
 " I understand you wish to see me." 
 
 " As much as you may perhaps wish to see me," 
 answered the lady. " The town has been ringing 
 for days with the news of the sudden disappearance 
 of your wife, who is said to be ," and she fal- 
 tered at the word, " very beautiful. Is it true, and 
 on what day did she disappear.''" 
 
 " Too true, madam," groaned the unhappy man. 
 " Tuesday was the day on which she was found 
 amissing." 
 
 " Tuesday ! Oh, unfortunate day !" rejoined she. 
 " The very one, sir, when my Archibald left me, 
 perhaps never to return. Can you tell me," she 
 continued, as she sobbed hysterically, " whether 
 your wife and my husband were ever at any time 
 acquainted ? Oh, I fear your answer, but I must 
 hear it." 
 
 " I don't think," replied he, " that my wife ever 
 knew of the existence of your husband. Even / 
 never heard of his name, though I now understand 
 he was a promising advocate. I can, therefore, 
 give you small satisfaction ; and, I presume, I can 
 get as little from you when I ask you, what I pre-
 
 MRS HALL ID A Y. 45 
 
 sume is unnecessary, whether you ever heard that 
 my wife was in any way acquainted with Mr 
 Blair?" 
 
 " No," replied she ; " neither he nor I ever men- 
 tioned her name, nor did it once come to my ears 
 that Archibald was ever seen in the company of 
 any woman answering to the description of your 
 wife." 
 
 " Most wonderful circumstance, madam," replied 
 Halliday, into whose mind a thought at the mo- 
 ment came, suggested by the mystery of the left 
 clothes. " Pray, madam," he continued, " can you 
 draw no conclusion from Mr Blair's desk or ward- 
 robe whether or not he had provided himself for 
 the necessities of a journey .^" 
 
 " That is the very wonder of all the wonders 
 about this strange case, sir," she answered. " I 
 have made a careful search, knowing the money 
 that was in the house, and having sent and in- 
 quired whether he had drawn any from the bank, 
 I am satisfied that he had not a penny of money 
 upon him. As for his wardrobe, every article is 
 there, with the exception of what he used when he 
 went to take 4. walk in the morning — a light dress, 
 with a round felt hat in place of the square one. 
 Even his cane stands there in the lobby. Where 
 could he have gone in such an undress, and with- 
 out money ? "
 
 46 THE STORY OF 
 
 A pertinent question, which was just the counter- 
 part of that which Patrick Halhday had put to 
 himself. The resemblance between the two cases 
 struck him as wonderful, and no doubt if he had 
 stated to Mrs Blair the analagous facts connected 
 with his wife's wardrobe, the untouched money, and 
 the missing slippers, that lady would have shared 
 in his wonder; but he felt disinclined to add to 
 her apprehensions by acquainting her with facts 
 which could lead to no practical use. There was 
 sufficient community of feeling between them with- 
 out going into further minutiae, and the conversa- 
 tion ended with looks of fearful foreboding. 
 
 Patrick Halliday left the house of the advocate 
 only to saunter like one broke loose from Bedlam, 
 going hither and thither without aim ; learning, as 
 he went, that the absence of Mr Blair had got 
 abroad abreast of his own evil, and that the public 
 had adopted the theory that his wife and the advo- 
 cate had gone off together. The conclusion was 
 only too natural, nor would it in all likelihood have 
 been much modified even though all the facts in- 
 ferring some other solution had come to be known. 
 Even he himself was coming gradually to see that 
 the disappearance of the two occurring at the same 
 time, almost at the same hour, could not be coun- 
 tervailed by the other facts. But behind all this 
 there was the apparent difficulty to be overcome
 
 MRS HALLIDA V. 47 
 
 that two individuals so well known in a news-loving 
 city should have been in the habit of meeting, 
 wherever the place might be, without any one hav- 
 ing ever seen them — nay, the almost impossible 
 thing that a woman without a bonnet, arrayed in 
 a yellow wrapper, and with coloured slippers on 
 her feet, could have passed through any of the 
 streets without being recognised, and that the 
 same immunity from all observation should have 
 been enjoyed by a public man so well known — 
 dressed, too, in a manner calculated to attract 
 notice. There was certainly another theory, and 
 some people entertained the possibility, if not the 
 reasonableness of it, that the two clandestine lovers 
 might have concealed themselves for an obvious 
 purpose in some of those houses whose keepers 
 have an interest in the concealment of their guilty 
 lodgers. But this theory must have appeared a 
 very dubious one, for it involved a degree of impru- 
 dence, if not recklessness, amounting to voluntary 
 ruin, where a little foresight might have secured 
 their object without further sacrifice than the care 
 required in the preservation of their guilty secret. 
 But, unlikely as this theory was, it was not left un- 
 tested, for special visits and inquiries were made in 
 all places known as likely to offer refuge to persons 
 in their circumstances and condition. 
 
 All was still in vain ; another day passed, and
 
 48 THE STORY OF 
 
 another, till the entire week proved the inutility of 
 both search and inquiry. The ordinary age of a 
 wonder was attained, with the usual consequence 
 of the beginning of that decay which is inherent 
 in all things. Yet it is with these moral organisms 
 as with the physical — they cast their seeds to come 
 up again as memories. A month elapsed, and then 
 another, and another, till these periods carried the 
 mere diluted interest of the early days. So it is 
 that the big animal, the world, on which man is 
 one of the small parasites, supplies the sap as the 
 desires require, and changes it as the appetite 
 changes, with that variety which is the law of 
 nature. Even as regarded Patrick Halliday and 
 Mrs Blair, the moral granulation began gradually 
 and silently to fill up the excavated sores in their 
 hearts, and by and by it ought by rule to have 
 come about that the cicatrices would follow, and 
 then the smoothing of the covering, even to the 
 pellucid skin. And as for the public, new wonders, 
 from the ever-discharging womb of events, were 
 rising up every day, so that the story of the once 
 famed Julia Halliday and the advocate Blair was 
 at length assuming the sombre colours of one of 
 the acted romances of life. But it takes long to 
 make a complete romance. There is a vitality in 
 moral events as in some physical ones which re- 
 vives in overt symptoms, and so it was in the case
 
 MRS HALLWAY. 49 
 
 we are concerned with. A whole year had at length 
 passed, and brooding silence had waxed thick over 
 the now comparatively-old event ; but the silence 
 was to be broken by the speaking of an inanimate 
 thing as strange in itself as the old mystery. 
 
 One day, when Patrick Halliday had returned 
 from his office in the upper part of the city to 
 Peddie's Land for the purpose of getting a letter 
 which he had by mistake left on the table in the 
 morning, he found that the servant had gone out 
 as usual for the purpose of taking little Julia for an 
 airing; but, getting entrance by* his own key, he 
 proceeded along the lobby to the parlour, on open- 
 ing the door of which, and entering, his eye was 
 attracted to something on the floor. The room 
 was at the time shaded by the hangings drawn 
 together to keep out the rays of the sun, and, not 
 distinguishing the object very well, he thought it 
 was some plaything of Julia's. On taking it up he 
 found, to his amazement, that it was one of the 
 slippers of his wife. It had a damp musty smell, 
 which he found so unpleasant that he threw it 
 down on the floor again, and then began to think 
 where in the world it had come from, or how it 
 came to be there. The servant might explain it 
 when she came in ; but why she should have gone 
 out with that remaining to be explained he could 
 
 not understand. Meanwhile his only conclusion 
 
 D
 
 50 THE STORY OF 
 
 was, that sufficient search had not been made for 
 the sHppers, and that the dog, which was out with 
 the maid, had dragged the article from some nook 
 or corner which had escaped observation. Under 
 this impression he felt inclined to seek for the 
 neighbour of that which had been so strangely- 
 found, altogether oblivious of the fact that, if the 
 slipper had been left by the runaway, she must 
 have departed either bare-footed or in her stock- 
 ing-soles ; for her shoes, so far as he could know, 
 had been accounted for. 
 
 But he was not to be called upon to make this 
 search ; something else awaited him ; for, as he sat 
 enveloped in the darkness of this new mystery, his 
 eye, wandering about in the shaded room, was 
 attracted by another object. Rising, as if by a 
 start, he proceeded to the spot, and took up, to his 
 further amazement, a man's shoe. He at first sup- 
 posed that it was one of his own ; but on looking- 
 at the silver buckle, on which were engraved — not 
 an uncommon thing at the time — two initial let- 
 ters, (these were " A. B.,") he was at no loss for the 
 name. It was that of the missing advocate. This 
 shoe, like the slipper, was covered with white 
 mould, and smelt of an odour different from and 
 more disagreeable than mere must. He was now 
 in more perplexity than ever, nor could he bring 
 his mind to a supposition of how these things came
 
 MRS HALLWAY. 51 
 
 to be there. It was the time of popular supersti- 
 tions, when intelHgences in the shape of ghosts and 
 hobgobhns, and all forms of good and devilish 
 beings, seemed to have nothing else to do than to 
 entertain themselves with the fancies, feelings, and 
 passions of men, and we might not be surprised to 
 find that Patrick Halliday was brought under the 
 feeling of an indescribable awe — nay, it is doubtful 
 if even the veritable spirits of his wife and her 
 paramour, if they had then and there appeared in 
 that shaded room before him, would have produced 
 a stronger impression upon him than did those 
 speechless yet eloquent things. A moral vertigo 
 was on him ; he threw himself again into a chair, 
 and felt his knees knocking against each other, as 
 if the nerves, paralysed by the deep impression 
 upon the brain, were no longer under the influence 
 of the will. 
 
 After sitting for a time in this state of perplexity 
 and awe, from which he could not extricate him- 
 self, the servant, with his daughter, returned. He 
 called her to his presence, and asked her, pointing 
 to the shoe and the slipper, "how those things 
 came to be there .''" 
 
 The girl was seized with as great wonder as he 
 himself had been, and there was even a greater 
 cause for astonishment on her part, insomuch as, 
 according to her declaration, she had cleaned out
 
 52 THE STORY OF 
 
 and dusted the parlour within half an hour of going 
 forth, and these articles were certainly not in the 
 room then. As for the outer door, she had left it 
 fastened in the usual way, and the windows were 
 carefully drawn down before her departure. Where 
 could they have come from, she questioned both 
 her master and herself, with an equal chance of a 
 satisfactory answer from either. Then she would 
 not have been a woman if she could have resisted 
 the claims of superstition in a case so inexplicable, 
 so extraordinary, so unparalleled even in winter 
 fireside stories. And so she looked at her master, 
 and he looked at her, in blank wonder, without 
 either of them having the power of venturing even 
 a surmise as to how or by what earthly or unearthly 
 means those ominous things, so terrible in the asso- 
 ciations by which they were linked to their owners, 
 came to be where they were. 
 
 After some longer time uselessly occupied, 
 Patrick Halliday bethought himself of going to 
 Writers' Court, so taking up the silver-buckled 
 shoe, and putting it into his large coat pocket, he 
 proceeded to Mrs Blair's. He found her in that 
 state of reconciled despondency to which she had 
 been reduced for more than two months ; but the 
 moment she saw Patrick Halliday enter, she sprang 
 up as if she had been quickened by the impulse of 
 a new-born hope rising amidst the clouds of a long-
 
 MRS HALLIDA V. 53 
 
 settled despair. The movement was soon stayed 
 when her keenness scanned the face of the man ; 
 but a new feeling took possession of her when she 
 saw him draw out of his pocket the silver-buckled 
 shoe with which she had been as familiar as with 
 her own. 
 
 " Where, in the Lord's name ! — " she cried, with- 
 out being able to say more, while she seized spas- 
 modically the strange object, still covered as it was 
 with the mould, and with the silver obscured by 
 the passage of time. And, gazing at it, she heard 
 Halliday's account of how he came to be in pos- 
 session of it, along with the slipper. 
 
 "Have you the neighbour in the house.''" he 
 inquired. 
 
 " No, no," said she ; " but I am certain that that 
 is one of the shoes Archibald had on the day he 
 disappeared. Oh, sir, I can scarcely look at these 
 initials ; and there is such a death-like odour about 
 it that it sickens me." 
 
 " It is the same with the slipper," said he. " It 
 would seem that both of them had been taken off 
 the feet of corpses." 
 
 " Strange mystery altogether," added she, with 
 a deep sigh. " Oh, I could have wished I had not 
 seen these — it only serves to renew my care, with- 
 out satisfying my natural desire to know the fate 
 of one I loved so dearly."
 
 54 THE STORY OF 
 
 " It is so with me as well, madam," rejoined Mr 
 Patrick ; " but the finding of this shoe and slipper 
 may satisfy us of the connexion between your hus- 
 band and my wife." 
 
 " Yes, yes," ejaculated she ; " but oh, merciful 
 God ! what a wretched satisfaction to the bereaved 
 wife and the deserted child. You are a man, and 
 can bear up. A poor woman must sit in solitude 
 and mourn, while the flesh wastes day by day 
 under the weary spirit." 
 
 " And you can suggest nothing to help me to an 
 explanation of this new mystery.?" said he. 
 
 " Nothing ; all is darker than ever," replied she. 
 " But, sir, you have got the only trace that for a 
 long year has been found of this most unfortunate 
 — I fear, unhappy pair, and it will be for you to 
 improve it in some way. Something more will fol- 
 low. I will go over with you myself to your house. 
 A woman's eyes are sharper than a man's. I 
 would like to examine the house, and judge for 
 myself" 
 
 And the lady, rising, went and dressed herself 
 In a few minutes more they were on the way to 
 Peddie's Land ; probably, as they went along, ob- 
 jects of speculation to those who knew the strange 
 link by which their fortunes were joined. Nor was 
 it unlikely that evil tongues might suggest that as 
 their partners had played them false, they intended
 
 MRS HALLWAY. 55 
 
 to make amends by a kind of poetical retribution. 
 Alas ! how different from their thoughts, how 
 unlike their feelings, how far distant from their 
 object ! 
 
 On arriving at the house, a new wonder was to 
 meet them, almost upon the threshold. The ser- 
 vant ran forward to Halliday, holding in her hand 
 the partner of the silver-buckled shoe which her 
 master had in his pocket. She was utterly unable 
 to say a word, her eyes were strained not less in 
 width than in intensity, her mouth was open like 
 that of an idiot, and motioning and muttering, 
 " Come, come," she led her master and Mrs Blair 
 on through two or three rooms till she came to a 
 small closet, at the back of which there was a door, 
 now for the first time in Patrick Halliday's experi- 
 ence found open. In explanation of which pecu- 
 liarity we require to suspend our narrative for a 
 minute or two, to enable us to inform the reader, 
 that the house then occupied by Halliday had, five 
 years before, and immediately preceding his mar- 
 riage, been in possession of George Morgan, a 
 wool-dealer, 
 
 Morgan's warehouse, where he stored his wool, 
 entered from a close to the west, through a pend, 
 between Peddie's Land and the large tenement 
 adjoining. The run of the warehouse was thus at 
 right angles to that of the dwelling-house, and
 
 56 THE STORY OF 
 
 Morgan was thereby enabled to knock out a small 
 door at the back of a press, through which he could 
 conveniently pass to his place of business without 
 being at the trouble of going down the close to the 
 main entry. After Morgan's death, the house and 
 warehouse went to his heirs, from whom Halliday_ 
 rented the former, the other having been let to 
 some other person for three years, after which it 
 had been without a tenant. We may state also 
 that Halliday was at first quite aware of the exist- 
 ence of the door at the back of the press, and had 
 even taken the precaution of getting it locked ; but 
 as no requisition had been made by the tenant of 
 the warehouse to have the communication more 
 securely barred, the door had been left in the con- 
 dition we have described. 
 
 Resuming our story : the servant, when she came 
 to the point where we left her, stopped and trem- 
 bled ; but by this time Halliday had begun to see 
 whither these pointings tended, and pushing the 
 girl aside with a view to examine the door, he was 
 astonished to find that it opened to his touch — a 
 fact better known by Nettle, his dog, who had, as 
 the shoes testified, been there before. 
 
 On entering the warehouse, all the windows of 
 which were shut except one, through which a ray 
 of light struggled to illuminate merely a part of 
 the room, the party beheld a sight which in all
 
 MRS HALLIDA V. S7 
 
 likelihood would retain a vividness in their memo- 
 ries after all other images of earthly things had 
 passed away. Right in the middle of the partial 
 light admitted by the solitary window lay the 
 bodies of two persons — a man and a woman. The 
 latter had on her a yellow morning gown trimmed 
 with green. One slipper was on, the other off; her 
 head, which was uncovered, was surmounted by 
 the high toupee of the times, which consisted of the 
 collected hair brushed up and supported by a con- 
 cealed cushion. The man had on a morning dress, 
 with a round felt hat, which still retained its place 
 on his head. There was no corruption in the bodies 
 of that kind called moist. They were nearly 
 shrivelled, but that to an extent which reduced 
 them to little other than skeletons covered with a 
 brown skin — a state of the bodies which probably 
 resulted from the dry air of the wareroom, heated 
 as it was by a smithy being immediately below it, 
 the smoke of which was conveyed by a flue up the 
 side of the tenement. The two bodies lay clasped 
 in each other's arms, the faces were so close that 
 the noses almost met ; the eyes were open, and 
 though the balls w^ere shrunk so much that they 
 could not be seen, the lids, which had shrunk also, 
 were considerably apart. These were the bodies 
 of Julia Halliday and Archibald Blair. 
 
 There was not a word spoken by the searchers.
 
 58 THE STORY OF 
 
 Their eyes told them all that was necessary to 
 convince them of the identity of those who lay 
 before them. Nor, when Halliday took up a 
 paper which lay at the head of Blair, did he think 
 it necessary to make any observation of surprise 
 at what was in keeping with what they saw. 
 
 " Oh, read," said Mrs Blair, as she gasped in the 
 midst of her agony. 
 
 Halliday, holding up the paper so as to receive 
 the light, read as follows : — 
 
 " Whoever you may be, man or woman, who 
 first discovers the bodies of me and her who lies 
 by my side will please, as he or she hopes for 
 mercy, deliver this paper either to Mr Patrick 
 Halliday of Peddie's Land, or Mrs Archibald Blair 
 in Writers' Court, that they may take the means 
 of getting us decently interred. Julia Halliday 
 and I, Archibald Blair, met and looked and loved. 
 These few words contain the secret of our misfor- 
 tune, and must be the excuse of our crime in tak- 
 ing away our lives. Our love was too strong to 
 be quelled by resolution, too sacred to be cor- 
 rupted by coarse enjoyment of the senses, too 
 hopeless to be borne amidst the impediments of 
 our mutual obligations to our spouses. We felt 
 and believed that it was only our mortal bodies 
 that belonged to our partners, our spirits were ours
 
 MRS HALLIDA Y. 59 
 
 and ours alone by that decree which made the 
 soul, with its sympathies and its elections, before 
 ever the world was, or marriage, which is only a 
 convention of man's making. We loved, we 
 sinned not, yet we were unhappy, because we 
 could not fulfil the obligations of affection to those 
 we had sworn at the altar to love and honour. 
 Often have we torn ourselves from each other 
 with vows on our lips of mutual avoidance, but 
 these efforts were vain. We could not live 
 estranged, and we flew again to each other's arms, 
 again to vow, again to meet, again to be blessed, 
 again to be tortured. This life was unendurable ; 
 and, left to the alternative of parting or dying, we 
 selected the latter. The poison was bought by me 
 in two separate vials. As I v/rite, Julia holds hers 
 in her hands, and smiles as she is about to swallow 
 the drug. We have resolved to lie down face to 
 face, so as to be able to look into each other's eyes 
 and watch jealously Death as he drags us slowly 
 from each other. I have now swallowed my draft, 
 smiling the while in Julia's face. She does the 
 same. The pen trembles in my hand. Farewell, 
 my wife : Julia mutters, ' Farewell, my husband.' 
 Against neither have we ever sinned. 
 
 " Archibald Blair."
 
 ^Ije ^torp oC Q^arp BroVoii* 
 
 F the reader of what I am going to relate 
 for his or her edification, or for perhaps 
 a greater luxury, viz., wonder, should be 
 so unreasonable as to ask for my authority, I shall 
 be tempted, because a little piqued, to say that no 
 one should be too particular about the source of 
 pleasure, inasmuch as, if you will enjoy nothing 
 but what you can prove to be a reality, you will, 
 under good philosophical leadership, have no great 
 faith in the sun — a thing which you never saw, the 
 existence of which you are only assured of by a 
 round figure of light on the back of your eye, and 
 which may be likened to tradition ; so all you have 
 to do is to believe like a good Catholic, and be con- 
 tented, even though I begin so poorly as to try to 
 interest you in two very humble beings who have 
 been dead for many years, and whose lives were 
 like a steeple without a bell in it, the intention of 
 which you cannot understand till your eye reaches
 
 THE ST OR V OF MAR Y BRO WN 6i 
 
 the weathercock upon the top, and then you won- 
 der at so great an erection for so small an object. 
 The one bore the name of William Halket, a young 
 man, who, eight or nine years before he became of 
 much interest either to himself or any other body, 
 was what in our day is called an Arab of the City 
 — a poor street boy, who didn't know who his 
 father was, though, as for his mother, he knew her 
 by a pretty sharp experience, insomuch as she 
 took from him every penny he made by holding 
 horses, and gave him more cuffs than cakes in re- 
 turn. But Bill got out of this bondage by the 
 mere chance of having been taken a fancy to by 
 Mr Peter Ramsay, innkeeper and stabler, in St 
 Mary's Wynd, (an ancestor, we suspect, of the 
 Ram says of Barnton,) who thought he saw in the 
 City Arab that love of horse-flesh which belongs 
 to the Bedouin, and who accordingly elevated him 
 to the position of a stable-boy, with board and as 
 many shillings a week as there are days in that 
 subdivision of time. 
 
 Nor did William Halket — to whom for his 
 merits we accord the full Christian name — do any 
 discredit to the perspicacity of his master, if it 
 was not that he rather exceeded the hopes of his 
 benefactor, for he was attentive to the horses, civil 
 to the farmers, and handy at anything that came 
 in his way. Then, to render the connexion recip-
 
 62 THE STOR Y OF 
 
 rocal, William was gratefully alive to the convic- 
 tion that if he had not been, as it were, taken from 
 the street, the street might have been taken from 
 him, by his being locked up some day in the Heart 
 of Midlothian. So things went on in St Mary's 
 Wynd for five or six years, and might have gone 
 on for twice that period, had it not been that at a 
 certain hour of a certain day William fell in love 
 with a certain Mary Brown, who had come on that 
 very day to be an under-housemaid in the inn ; 
 and strange enough, it was a case of " love at first 
 sight," the more by token that it took effect the 
 moment that Mary entered the stable with a glass 
 of whisky in her hand sent to him by Mrs Ramsay. 
 No doubt it is seldom that a fine blooming young 
 girl, with very pretty brown hair and very blue 
 eyes, appears to a young man with such a recom- 
 mendation in her hand, but we are free to say that 
 the whisky had nothing to do with an effect which 
 is well-known to be the pure result of the physical 
 attributes of the individual. Nay, our statement 
 might have been proved by the counterpart effect 
 produced upon Mary herself, for she was struck by 
 William at the same moment when she handed 
 him the glass ; and we are not to assume that the 
 giving of a pleasant boon is always attended with 
 the same effect as the receiving of it. 
 
 But, as our story requires, it is the love itself
 
 MARY BROWN. 63 
 
 between these two young persons whose fates were 
 so remarkable we have to do with — not the causes, 
 which are a mystery in all cases. Sure it is, 
 humble in position as they were, they could love 
 as strongly, as fervently, perhaps as ecstatically, as 
 great people — nay, probably more so, for educa- 
 tion has a greater chance of moderating the pas- 
 sion than increasing it ; and so, notwithstanding 
 of what Plutarch says of the awfully consuming 
 love between Phrygius and Picrea, and also what 
 Shakespeare has sung or said about a certain 
 Romeo and a lady called Juliet, we are certain 
 that the affection between these grand person- 
 ages was not more genuine, tender, and true than 
 that which bound the simple and unsophisti- 
 cated hearts of Will Halket and Mary Brown. 
 But at best we merely play on the surface of a 
 deep subject when we try with a pen to describe 
 feelings, and especially the feelings of love. We 
 doubt, if even the said pen were plucked from 
 Cupid's wing, it would help us much. We are at 
 best only left to a choice of expressions, and per- 
 haps the strongest we could use are those which 
 have already been used a thousand times — the two 
 were all the world to each other, the world outside 
 nothing at all to them ; so that they could have 
 been as happy on the top of Mount Ararat, or on 
 the island of Juan Fernandez, provided they should
 
 64 THE STORY OF 
 
 be always in each other's company, as they were 
 in St Mary's Wynd. And as for whispered pro- 
 testations and chaste kisses — for really their love 
 had a touch of romance about it you could hardly 
 have expected, but which yet kept it pure, if not in 
 some degree elevated above the loves of common 
 people — these were repeated so often about the 
 quiet parts of Arthur's Seat and the Queen's Park, 
 and the fields about the Dumbiedykes and Dud- 
 dingstone Loch, that they were the very moral 
 aliments on which they lived. In short, to Mary 
 Brown the great Duke of Buccleuch was as no- 
 thing compared to Wijiie Halket, and to Willie 
 Halket the beautiful Duchess of Grammont would 
 have been as nothing compared to simple Mary 
 Brown. All which is very amiable and very ne- 
 cessary, for if it had been so ordained that people 
 should feel the exquisite sensations of love in pro- 
 portion as they were beautiful, or rich, or endowed 
 with talent, (according to a standard,) our world 
 would have been even more queer than that king- 
 dom described by Gulliver, where the ugliest indi- 
 vidual is made king or queen. 
 
 Things continued in this very comfortable state 
 at the old inn in St Mary's Wynd for about a year, 
 and it had come to enter into the contemplation of 
 Will that upon getting an increase of his wages he 
 would marry Mary and send her to live with her
 
 MARY BROWN. 65 
 
 mother, a poor hard-working washerwoman, in Big 
 Lochend Close ; whereunto Mary was so much in- 
 chned, that she looked forward to the day as the 
 one that promised to be the happiest that she had 
 yet seen, or would ever see. But, as an ancient 
 saying runs, the good hour is in no man's choice ; 
 and about this time it so happened that Mr Peter 
 Ramsay, having had a commission from an old 
 city man, a Mr Dreghorn, located as a planter in 
 Virginia, to send him out a number of Scottish 
 horses, suggested to William that he would do well 
 to act as supercargo and groom. Mr Dreghorn 
 had offered to pay a good sum to the man who 
 should bring them out safe, besides paying his 
 passage over and home. And Mr Ramsay would 
 be ready to receive Will into his old place again 
 on his return. As for Mary, with regard to whom 
 the master knew his man's intentions, she would 
 remain where she was, safe from all temptation, 
 and true to the choice of her heart. This offer 
 pleased William, because he saw that he could 
 make some money out of the adventure, whereby 
 he would be the better able to marry, and make a 
 home for the object of his affections; but he was 
 by no means sure that Mary would consent ; for 
 women, by some natural divining of the heart, look 
 upon delays in affairs of love as ominous and dan- 
 gerous. And so it turned out that one Sabbath 
 
 E
 
 66 THE STORY OF 
 
 evening, when they were seated beneath a tree in 
 the King's Park, and William had cautiously intro- 
 duced the subject to her, she was like other women. 
 
 " The bird that gets into the bush," she said, as 
 the tears fell upon her cheeks, " sometimes forgets 
 to come back to the cage again. I would rather 
 hae the lean lintie in the hand than the fat finch 
 on the wand." 
 
 " But you forget, Mary, love," was the answer of 
 Will, " that you can feed the lean bird, but you 
 can't feed me. It is I who must support you. It 
 is to enable me to do that which induces me to go. 
 I will come with guineas in my pocket where there 
 are now only pennies and placks, and you know, 
 Mary, the Scotch saying, ' A heavy purse makes a 
 light heart.' " 
 
 " And an unsteady one," rejoined Mary. " And 
 you may bring something else wi' you besides the 
 guineas ; may be, a wife." 
 
 " One of Mr Dreghorn's black beauties," said 
 Will, laughing. " No, no, Mary, I am too fond of 
 the flaxen ringlets, the rosy cheeks, and the blue 
 eyes, and you know, Mary, you have all these, so 
 you have me in your power. But to calm your 
 fears and stop your tears I '11 tell you what I '11 
 do." 
 
 " Stay at hame, Will, and we '11 live and dee the- 
 gither."
 
 MARY BROWN. 67 
 
 " No," replied Will, " but, like the genteel lover 
 I have read of, I will swear on your Bible that I 
 will return to you within the year, and marry you 
 at the Tron Kirk, and throw my guineas into the 
 lap of your marriage-gown, and live with you until 
 I die." 
 
 For all which and some more we may draw upon 
 our fancy, but certain it is, as the strange story 
 goes, that Will did actually then and there — for 
 Mary had been at the Tron Kirk and had her Bible 
 in her pocket, (an article the want of which is not 
 well supplied by the scent-bottle of our modern 
 Marys,) — swear to do all he had said, whereupon 
 Mary was so far satisfied that she gave up mur- 
 muring — perhaps no more than that. Certain also 
 it is that before the month was done. Will, with his 
 living kicking charges, and after more of these said 
 tears from Mary than either of them had arith- 
 metic enough to enable them to count, embarked 
 at Leith for Richmond, at which place the sugar- 
 planter had undertaken to meet him. 
 
 We need say nothing of the voyage across the 
 Atlantic — somewhat arduous at that period — nor 
 need we pick up Will again till we find him in 
 Richmond with his horses all safe, and as fat and 
 sleek as if they had been fed by Neptune's wife, 
 and had drawn her across in place of her own steeds. 
 There he found directions waiting from Mr Dreg-
 
 68 THE STORY OF 
 
 horn to the effect that he was to proceed with the 
 horses to Peach Grove, his plantation, a place far 
 into the heart of the country ; but Will was con- 
 tent, for had he not time and to spare within the 
 year, and he would see some more of the new * 
 world, which, so far as his experience yet went, 
 seemed to him to be a good place for a freeman 
 to live in. So off he went, putting up at inns by 
 the way as well supplied with food and fodder as 
 Mr Peter Ramsay's, in St Mary's Wynd, and 
 showing off his nags to the planters, who won- 
 dered at their bone and muscle, the more by 
 reason they had never seen Scotch horses before. 
 As he progressed, the country seemed to Will 
 more and more beautiful, and by the time he 
 reached Peach Grove he had come to the un- 
 patriotic conclusion that all it needed was Mary 
 Brown, with her roses, and ringlets, and eyes, 
 passing like an angel — lovers will be poets — 
 among these ebon beauties, to make it the finest 
 country in the world. 
 
 Nor when the Scotsman reached Peach Grove 
 did the rosy side of matters recede into the shady, 
 for he was received in a great house by Mr Dreg- 
 horn with so much kindness, that, if the horses 
 rejoiced in maize and oats, Will found himself, as 
 the saying goes, in five-bladed clover. But more 
 awaited him, even thus much more, that the planter.
 
 MARY BROWN. 69 
 
 and his fine lady of a wife as well, urged him to 
 remain on the plantation, where he would be well 
 paid and well fed ; and when Will pleaded his en- 
 gagement to return to Scotland within the year, 
 the answer was ready that he might spend eight 
 months in Virginia at least, which would enable 
 him to take home more money — an answer that 
 seemed so very reasonable, if not prudent, that 
 " Sawny " saw the advantage thereof and agreed. 
 But we need hardly say that this was conceded 
 upon the condition made with himself, that he 
 would write to Mary all the particulars, and also 
 upon the condition acceded to by Mr Dreghorn, 
 that he would take the charge of getting the letter 
 sent to Scotland. 
 
 All which having been arranged, Mr Halket — 
 for we cannot now continue to take the liberty of 
 calling him Will — was forthwith elevated to the 
 position of driving negroes in place of horses, an 
 occupation which he did not much relish, insomuch 
 that he was expected to use the lash, an instrument 
 of which he had been very chary in his treatment 
 of four-legged chattels, and which he could not 
 bring himself to apply with anything but a sham 
 force in reference to the two-legged species. But 
 this objection he thought to get over by using the 
 sharp crack of his Jehu-voice, as a substitute for 
 that of the whip ; and in this he persevered, in
 
 70 THE STORY OF 
 
 spite of the jeers of the other drivers, who told 
 him the thing had been tried often, but that the 
 self-conceit of the negro met the stimulant and 
 choked it at the very entrance to the ear ; and this 
 he soon found to be true. So he began to do as 
 others did, and he was the sooner reconciled to the 
 strange life into which he had been precipitated by 
 the happy condition of the slaves themselves, who, 
 when their work was over, and at all holiday hours, 
 dressed themselves in the brightest colours of red 
 and blue and white, danced, sang, ate corn-cakes 
 and bacon, and drank coffee with a zest which 
 would have done a Scotch mechanic, with his 
 liberty to produce a lock-out, much good to see. 
 True, indeed, the white element of the population 
 was at a discount at Peach Grove. But in addition 
 to the above source of reconciliation, Halket became 
 day by day more captivated by the beauty of the 
 country, with its undulating surface, its wooded 
 clumps, its magnolias, tulip-trees, camellias, lau- 
 rels, passion-flowers, and palms, its bright-coloured 
 birds, and all the rest of the beauties for which it 
 is famous all over the world. But nature might 
 charm as it might — Mary Brown was three thou- 
 sand miles away. 
 
 Meanwhile the time passed pleasantly, for he 
 was accumulating money, Mary's letter would be 
 on the way, and the hope of seeing her within the
 
 MARY BROWN. 71 
 
 appointed time was dominant over all the fascina- 
 tions which charmed the senses. But when the 
 month came in which he ought to have received a 
 letter, no letter came — not much this to be thought 
 of, though Mr Dreghorn tried to impress him with 
 the idea that there must be some change of senti- 
 ment in the person from whom he expected the 
 much-desired answer. So Halket wrote again, 
 giving the letter, as before, to his master, who as- 
 sured him it was sent carefully away, and while it 
 was crossing the Atlantic he was busy in improv- 
 ing his penmanship and arithmetic, under the hope 
 held out to him by his master that he would, if he 
 remained, be raised to a book-keeper's desk ; for 
 the planter had seen early that he had got hold 
 of a long-headed, honest, sagacious " Sawny," who 
 would be of use to him. On with still lighter wing 
 the intermediate time sped again, but with no 
 better result in the shape of an answer from her 
 who was still the object of his day fancies and his 
 midnight dreams. Nor did all this kill his hope. 
 A third letter was despatched, but the returning 
 period was equally a blank. We have been count- 
 ing by months, which, as they sped, soon brought 
 round the termination of his year, and with grow- 
 ing changes too in himself, for as the notion began 
 to worm itself into his mind that his beloved Mary 
 was either dead or faithless, another power was
 
 72 THE STORY OF 
 
 quietly assailing him from within, no other than 
 ambition in the most captivating of all shapes, 
 Mammon. We all know the manner in which the 
 golden deity acquires his authority, nor do we 
 need to have recourse to the conceit of the old 
 writer who tells us that the reason why gold has 
 such an influence upon man lies in the fact that it 
 is of the colour of the sun, which is the fountain of 
 light, and life, and joy. Certain it is, at least, that 
 Halket having been taken into the counting-house 
 on a raised salary, began " to lay by," as the 
 Scotch call it, and by and by, with the help of a 
 little money lent to him by his master, he began 
 by purchasing produce from the neighbouring plan- 
 tations, and selling it where he might, all which he 
 did w^ith advantage, yet with the ordinary result 
 to a Scotsman, that while he turned to so good 
 account the king's head, the king's head began to 
 turn his own. 
 
 And nov\^ in place of months we must begin to 
 count by lustrums, and the first five years, even 
 with all the thoughts of his dead, or, at least, lost 
 Mary, proved in Halket's case the truth of the 
 book written by a Frenchman, to prove that a 
 man is a plant, for he had already thrown out 
 from his head or heart so many roots in the Vir- 
 ginian soil that he was bidding fair to be as firmly 
 fixed in his new sphere as a magnolia, and if that
 
 MARY BROWN. 73 
 
 bore golden blossoms, so did he ; yet, true to his 
 first love, there was not among all these flowers 
 one so fair as the fair-haired Mary. Nay, with all 
 hope not yet extinguished, he had even at the end 
 of the period resolved upon a visit to Scotland, 
 when strangely enough, and sadly too, he was told 
 by Mr Dreghorn that having had occasion to hear 
 from Mr Peter Ramsay on the subject of some 
 more horse dealings, that person had reported to 
 him that Mary Brown, the lover of his old stable- 
 boy, was dead. A communication this which, if it 
 had been made at an earlier period, would have 
 prostrated Halket altogether, but it was softened 
 by his long foreign anticipations, and he was there- 
 by the more easily inclined to resign his saddened 
 soul to the further dominion of the said god. Mam- 
 mon, for as to the notion of putting any of those 
 beautiful half-castes he sometimes saw about the 
 planter's house at Peach Grove, in the place of her 
 of the golden ringlets, it was nothing better than 
 the desecration of a holy temple. Then the power 
 of the god increased with the offerings, one of which 
 was his large salary as manager, a station to which 
 he was elevated shortly after he had received the 
 doleful tidings' of Mary's death. Another lustrum 
 is added, and we arrive at ten years, and yet 
 another, and we come to fifteen ; at the end of 
 which time Mr Dreghorn died, leaving Halket as
 
 74 THE STORY OF 
 
 one of his trustees, for behoof of his wife, in whom 
 the great plantation vested. If we add yet another 
 lustrum, we find the Scot — fortunate, save for one 
 misfortune that made him a joyless worshipper of 
 gold — purchasing from the widow, who wished to 
 return to England, the entire plantation under the 
 condition of an annuity. 
 
 And Halket was now rich, even beyond what he 
 had ever wished, but the chariot-wheels of Time 
 would not go any slower — nay, they moved faster, 
 and every year more silently, as if the old Father 
 had intended to cheat the votary of Mammon into 
 a belief that he would live for ever. The lustrums 
 still passed : another five, another, and another, till 
 there was scope for all the world being changed, 
 and a new generation taking the place of that with 
 which William Halket and Mary Brown began ; 
 and he was changed too, for he began to take 
 on those signs of age which make the old man a 
 painted character ; but in one thing he was not 
 changed, and that was the worshipful steadfast- 
 ness, the sacred fidelity, with which he still trea- 
 sured in his mind the form and face, the words and 
 the smiles, the nice and refined peculiarities that feed 
 love as with nectared sweets, which once belonged 
 to Mary Brown, the first creature that had moved 
 his affections, and the last to hold them, as the 
 object of a cherished memory for ever. Nor with
 
 MARY BROWN. 75 
 
 time so deceptive, need we be so sparing in deal- 
 ing out those periods of five years, but say at once 
 that at last William Halket could count twelve of 
 them since first he set his foot on Virginian soil : 
 yea, he had been there for sixty summers, and he 
 had now been a denizen of the world for seventy- 
 eight years. In all which our narrative has been 
 strange, but we have still the stranger fact to set 
 forth, that at this late period he was seized with 
 that moral disease (becoming physical in time) 
 which the French call vial du pays, the love of the 
 country where one was born and first enjoyed the 
 fresh springs that gush from the young heart. Nor 
 was it the mere love of country, as such, for he was 
 seized with a particular wish to be where Mary lay 
 in the churchyard of the Canongate, to erect a 
 tombstone over her, to seek out her relations and 
 enrich them, to make a worship out of a disap- 
 pointed love, to dedicate the last of his thoughts 
 to the small souvenirs of her humble life. Within 
 a month this old man was on his way to Scotland, 
 having sold the plantation, and taken bills with 
 him to an amount of little less than a hundred 
 thousand pounds. 
 
 In the course of five weeks William Halket 
 put his foot on the old pier of Leith, on which 
 some very old men were standing, who had been 
 urchins when he went away. The look of the old
 
 ^6 THE STOR V OF 
 
 harbour revived the image which had been im- 
 printed on his mind when he sailed, and the run- 
 ning of the one image into the other produced the 
 ordinary illusion of all that long interval appearing 
 as a day ; but there was no illusion in the change, 
 that Mary Brown was there when he departed, and 
 there was no Mary Brown there now. Having 
 called a coach he told the driver to proceed up 
 Leith Walk, and take him to Peter Ramsay's Inn, 
 in St Mary's Wynd ; but the man told him there 
 was no inn there, nor had been in his memory. 
 The man added that he would take him to the 
 White Horse in the Canongate, and thither ac- 
 cordingly he drove him. On arriving at the inn 
 he required the assistance of the waiter to enable 
 him to get out of the coach, nor probably did the 
 latter think this any marvel, after looking into a 
 face so furrowed with years, so pale with the weak- 
 ness of a languid circulation, so saddened with 
 care. The rich man had only an inn for a home, 
 nor in all his native country was there one friend 
 whom he hoped to find alive. Neither would a 
 search help him, as he found on the succeeding 
 day, when, by the help of his staff, he essayed an 
 infirm walk in the great thoroughfare of the old 
 city. The houses were not much altered, but the 
 signboards had got new names and figures, and as 
 for the faces, they were to him even as those in
 
 MARY BROWN. 77 
 
 Crete to the Cretan, after he awoke from a sleep 
 of forty-seven years — a simihtude only true in this 
 change, for Epimenidas was still as young when 
 he awoke as when he went to sleep, but William 
 Halket was old among the young and the grown, 
 who were unknown to him as he was indeed 
 strange to them. True, too, as the coachman said, 
 Peter Ramsay's Inn, where he had heard Mary 
 singing at her work, and the stable where he had 
 whistled blithely among his favourite horses, were 
 no longer to be seen — etiam cineres perierunt — their 
 very sites were occupied by modern dwellings. 
 What of that small half-sunk lodging in Big Loch- 
 end Close, where Mary's mother lived, and where 
 Mary had been brought up, where perhaps Mary 
 had died. Would it not be a kind of pilgrimage to 
 hobble down the Canongate to that little lodging, 
 and might there not be for him a sad pleasure even 
 to enter and sit down by the same fireplace where 
 he had seen the dearly-beloved face, and listened 
 to her voice, to him more musical than the melody 
 of angels ? 
 
 And so after he had walked about till he was 
 wearied, and his steps became more unsteady and 
 slow, and as yet without having seen a face which 
 he knew, he proceeded in the direction of the Big 
 Close. There was, as regards stone and lime, little 
 change here ; he soon recognised the half-sunk
 
 7^ THE STORY OF 
 
 window where, on the Sunday evenings, he had 
 sometimes tapped as a humorous sign that he was 
 about to enter, which had often been responded to 
 by Mary's finger on the glass, as a token that he 
 would be welcome. It was sixty years since then. 
 A small corb would now hold all that remained of 
 both mother and daughter. He turned away his 
 head as if sick, and was about to retrace his steps. 
 Yet the wish to enter that house rose again like a 
 yearning, and what more in the world than some 
 souvenir of the only being on earth he ever loved 
 was there for him to yearn for .'' All his hundred 
 thousand pounds were now, dear as money had 
 been to him, nothing in comparison of the gratifi- 
 cation of seeing the room where she was born — yea, 
 where probably she had died. In as short a time 
 as his trembling limbs would carry him down the 
 stair, which, in the ardour of his young blood he 
 had often taken at a bound, he was at the foot of 
 it ; there was there the old familiar dark passage, 
 with doors on either side, but it was the farthest 
 door that was of any interest to him. Arrived at 
 it he stood in doubt. He would knock, and he 
 would not ; the mystery of an undefined fear was 
 over him, and yet, what had he to fear, for half a 
 century the inmates had been changed, no doubt, 
 over and over again, and he would be as unknow- 
 ing as unknown 1 At length the trembling finger
 
 MARY BROWN. 79 
 
 achieves the furtive tap, and the door was opened 
 by a woman, whose figure could only be seen by 
 him in coming between him and the obscure light 
 that came in by the half-sunk window in front ; nor 
 could she, even if she had had the power of vision, 
 see more of him, for the lobby was still darker. 
 
 "Who may live here?" said he, in the expecta- 
 tion of hearing some name unknown to him. 
 
 The answer, in a broken cracked voice, was not 
 slow — 
 
 " Mary Brown ; and what may you want of 
 her.?" 
 
 " Mary Brown !" but not a word more could he 
 say, and he stood as still as a post, not a move- 
 ment of any kind did he show for so long a time 
 that the woman might have been justified in her 
 fear of a very spirit. 
 
 "And can ye say nae mair, sir.?" rejoined she. 
 " Is my name a bogle to terrify human beings?" 
 
 But still he was silent, for the reason that he 
 could not think — far less speak, nor even for some 
 minutes could he achieve more than the repetition 
 of the words, " Mary Brown." 
 
 "But hadna ye better come in, good sir?" said 
 she. " Ye may ken our auld saying : ' They that 
 speak in the dark may miss their mark ;' for words 
 carry nae light in their een ony mair than me, for, 
 to say the truth, I am old and blind."
 
 8o THE STORY OF 
 
 And, moving more as an automaton than as one 
 under a will, Halket was seated on a chair with 
 this said old and blind woman by his side, who sat 
 silent and with blank eyes waiting for the stranger 
 to explain what he wanted. Nor was the opportu- 
 nity lost by Halket, who, unable to understand 
 how she should have called herself Mary Brown, 
 began, in the obscure light of the room, to scrutinise 
 her form and features, and in doing this he went 
 upon the presumption that this second Mary Brown 
 only carried the name of the first ; but as he looked 
 he began to detect features which riveted his eyes ; 
 where the re-agent was so sharp and penetrating, 
 the analysis was rapid — it was also hopeful — it was 
 also fearful. Yes, it was true that that woman was 
 kis Mary Brown. The light-brown ringlets were 
 reduced to a white stratum of thin hair ; the blue 
 eyes were gray, without light and without specula- 
 tion ; the roses on the cheeks were replaced by a 
 pallor, the forerunner of the colour of death ; the 
 lithe and sprightly form was a thin spectral body, 
 where the sinews appeared as strong cords, and the 
 skin seemed only to cover a skeleton. Yet withal 
 he saw in her that identical Mary Brown. That 
 wreck was dear to him ; it was a relic of the idol 
 he had worshipped through life ; it was the only 
 remnant in the world which had any interest for 
 him ; and he could on the instant have clasped her
 
 MARY BROWN. 8i 
 
 to his breast, and covered her pale face with his 
 tears. But how was he to act ? A sudden an- 
 nouncement might startle and distress her. 
 
 " There was a Mary Brown," said he, " who was 
 once a housemaid in Mr Peter Ramsay's Inn in St 
 Mary's Wynd." 
 
 "And w^io can it be that can recollect that.''" 
 was the answer, as she turned the sightless orbs on 
 the speaker. " Ye maun be full o' years. Yes, 
 that was my happy time, even the only happy time 
 I ever had in this world." 
 
 "And there was one William Halket there at 
 that time also," he continued. 
 
 Words which, as they fell upon the ear, seemed 
 to be a stimulant so powerful as to produce a jerk 
 in the organ ; the dulness of the eyes seemed pene- 
 trated with something like light, and a tremor 
 passed over her entire frame. 
 
 " That name is no to be mentioned, sir," she said, 
 nervously, " except aince, and nae mair ; he was my 
 ruin ; for he pledged his troth to me, and promised 
 to come back and marry me, but he never came." 
 
 " Nor wrote you V said Halket. 
 
 " No, never," replied she ; " I would hae gien the 
 world for a scrape o' the pen o' Will Halket ; but 
 it 's a' past now, and I fancy he is dead and gone 
 to whaur there is neither plighted troth, nor mar- 
 
 F
 
 82 THE STORY OF 
 
 riage, nor giving in marriage ; and my time, too, 
 will be short." 
 
 A light broke in upon the mind of Halket, car- 
 rying the suspicion that Mr Dreghorn had, for the 
 sake of keeping him at Peach Grove, never for- 
 warded the letters, whereto many circumstances 
 tended. 
 
 " And what did you do when you found Will 
 had proved false ^ " inquired Halket. " Why 
 should that have been your ruin ? " 
 
 " Because my puir heart was bound up in him," 
 said she, " and I never could look upon another 
 man. Then what could a puir woman do .-' My 
 mother died, and I came here to work as she 
 wrought : ay, fifty years ago, and my reward has 
 been the puir boon o' the parish bread ; ay, and, 
 waur than a' the rest, blindness." 
 
 " Mary," said Halket, as he took her emaciated 
 hand into his, scarcely less emaciated, and divested 
 of the genial warmth of life. 
 
 The words carried the old sound, and she started 
 and shook. 
 
 " Mary ! " he continued, " Will Halket still lives. 
 He was betrayed, as you have been betrayed. He 
 wrote three letters to you, all of which were kept 
 back by his master, for fear of losing one who he 
 saw would be useful to him ; and, to complete the 
 conspiracy, he reported you dead upon the autho-
 
 MARY BROWN. 83 
 
 rity of Peter Ramsay. Whereupon Will betook 
 himself to the making of money, but he never 
 forgot his Mary, whose name has been heard as 
 often as the song of the birds in the groves of 
 Virginia." 
 
 "Ah, you are Will himself!" cried she. " I ken 
 now the sound o' your voice in the word * Mary,' 
 even as you used to whisper it in my ear in the 
 fields at St Leonard's. Let me put my hand upon 
 your head, and move my fingers ower your face. 
 Yes, yes ; oh, mercy, merciful God, how can my 
 poor worn heart bear a' this !" 
 
 "Mary, my dear Mary!" ejaculated the moved 
 man, " come to my bosom and let me press you to 
 my heart ; for this is the only blissful moment I 
 have enjoyed for sixty years." 
 
 Nor was Mary deaf to his entreaties, for she re- 
 signed herself as in a swoon to an embrace, which 
 an excess of emotion, working on the shrivelled 
 heart and the wasted form, probably prevented her 
 from feeling. 
 
 "But, O Willie!" she cried, "a life's love lost; 
 a lost life on both our sides." 
 
 " Not altogether," rejoined he, in the midst of 
 their mutual sobs. " It may be — nay, it is — that 
 our sands are nearly run. Yea, a rude shake 
 would empty the glass, so weak and wasted are 
 both of us ; but still there are a few grains to pass,
 
 84 THE STORY OF 
 
 and they shall be made golden. You are the only- 
 living creature in all this world I have any care 
 for. More thousands of pounds than you ever 
 dreamt of are mine, and will be yours. We will 
 be married even yet, not as the young marry, but 
 as those marry who may look to their knowing 
 each other as husband and wife in heaven, where 
 there are no cruel interested men to keep them 
 asunder ; and for the short time we are here you 
 shall ride in your carriage as a lady, and be at- 
 tended by servants ; nor shall a rude breath of 
 wind blow upon you which it is in the power of 
 man to save you from." 
 
 " Ower late, Willie ; ower late," sighed the ex- 
 hausted woman, as she still lay in his arms. " But 
 if all this should please my Will — I canna use 
 another name, though you are now a gentleman — 
 I will do even as you list, and that which has been 
 by a cruel fate denied us here we may share in 
 heaven." 
 
 " And who shall witness this strange marriage ? " 
 said he. " There is no one in Edinburgh now that 
 I know or knows me. Has any one ever been 
 kind to you V 
 
 " Few, few indeed," answered she. " I can count 
 only three." 
 
 . " I must know these wonderful exceptions," said 
 he, as he made an attempt at a grim smile ; " for
 
 MARY BROWN. 85 
 
 those who have done a service to Mary Brown have 
 done a double service to me. I will make every 
 shilling they have given you a hundred pounds. 
 Tell me their names." 
 
 "There is John Gilmour, my landlord," con- 
 tinued she, "who, though he needed a' his rents 
 for a big family, passed me many a term, and for- 
 bye brought me often, when I was ill and couldna 
 work, many a bottle o' wine ; there is Mrs Paterson 
 o' the Watergate, too, who aince when I gaed to 
 her in sair need gave me a shilling out o' three that 
 she needed for her bairns ; and Mrs Galloway o' 
 Little Lochend, slipt in to me a peck o' meal ae 
 morning when I had naething for breakfast." 
 
 " And these shall be at our marriage, Mary," 
 said he.' " They shall be dressed to make their 
 eyes doubtful if they are themselves. John Gil- 
 mour will wonder how these pounds of his rent he 
 passed you from have grown to hundreds. Mrs 
 Paterson's shilling will have grown as the widow's 
 mite never grew, even in heaven ; and Mrs Gal- 
 loway's peck of meal will be made like the widow's 
 cruse of oil — it will never be finished while she is 
 on earth." 
 
 Whereupon Mary raised her head. The blank 
 eyes were turned upon him, and something like a 
 smile played over the thin and wasted face. At 
 the same moment a fair-haired girl of twelve years
 
 86 THE STORY OF 
 
 came jumping into the room, and only stopped 
 when she saw a stranger. 
 
 " That is Helen Kemp," said Mary, who knew 
 her movements. " I forgot Helen ; she lights my 
 fire, and when I was able to gae out used to lead 
 me to the park." 
 
 " And she shall be one of the favoured ones of 
 the earth," said he, as he took by the hand the 
 girl, whom the few words from Mary had made 
 sacred to him, adding, " Helen, dear, you are to be 
 kinder to Mary than you have ever been ;" and, 
 slipping into the girl's hand a guinea, he whispered, 
 " You shall have as many of these as will be a 
 bigger tocher to you than you ever dreamed of, 
 for what you have done for Mary Brown." 
 
 And thus progressed to a termination a scene 
 perhaps more extraordinary than ever entered into 
 the head of a writer of natural things and events 
 not beyond the sphere of the probable. Nor did 
 what afterwards took place fall short of the inten- 
 tions of a man whose intense yearnings to make 
 up for what had been lost led him into the extra- 
 vagance of a vain fancy. He next day took a 
 great house and forthwith furnished it in propor- 
 tion to his wealth. He hired servants in accord- 
 ance, and made all the necessary arrangements for 
 the marriage. Time which had been so cruel to 
 him and his sacred Mary was put under the obli-
 
 MARY BROWiV. 87 
 
 gation of retribution. John Gilmour, Mrs Pater- 
 son, Mrs Galloway, and Helen Kemp were those, 
 and those alone, privileged to witness the cere- 
 mony. We would not like to describe how they 
 were decked out, nor shall we try to describe the 
 ceremony itself. But vain are the aspirations of 
 man when he tries to cope with the Fates ! The 
 changed fortune was too much for the frail and 
 wasted bride to bear. She swooned at the con- 
 clusion of the ceremony, and was put into a silk- 
 curtained bed. Even the first glimpse of grandeur 
 was too much for the spirit whose sigh was vanity, 
 all is vanity, and, with the words on her lips, "A 
 life's love lost," she died.
 
 ^Ije ^tor^ or tlje 9^tmllvQoz^. 
 
 )HE world has been compared to many 
 things, — a playhouse, a madhouse, a peni- 
 tentiary, a caravanserai, and so forth ; 
 but I think a show-box wherein all, including man, 
 is turned by machinery, is better than any of them. 
 And every one looks through his own little round 
 hole at all the rest, he being both object and sub- 
 ject. How the scenes shift too ! the belief of one 
 age being the laughing-stock of the next. Witches 
 and brownies and fairies and ghosts and bogles 
 have lost their quiddity, and given birth to quips 
 and laughs; but I have here, as a simple story- 
 teller, to do with one example of these vanished 
 beliefs, what was in folk-lore called the " Merrilly- 
 goes," sometimes in the old Scotch dictionaries 
 spelled " Mirrligoes." It was a supposed affection 
 of the eyes, in which the victim or patient, as you 
 suppose the visitation brought on by natural or 
 supernatural powers, fancied he saw men and 
 women and inanimate things which were not at
 
 THE MERRILL YGOES. 89 
 
 the time before him. I think the affection was 
 different from the " glamour " which was generally- 
 attributed to the wrath of fairies ; and both in- 
 deed might, after all, be resolved into the pseudo- 
 blepsy of the old, and the monomania of the new 
 nosologies. But dismissing all learning — which, 
 however potent to puff up man's pride, and then 
 prick the bladder of his conceit, has no concern 
 with a story — I at once introduce to you Mr 
 David Tweedie. He was one of those Davids 
 who, for some Scotch reason, are called Dauvit ; 
 and, like other simple men, he had a wife, whose 
 name, I think, was Semple, Robina Semple, cer- 
 tainly not Simple. These worthies -figured in 
 Berenger's Close of Edinburgh some time about 
 the provostship of the unfortunate Alexander Wil- 
 son ; and were not only man and wife by holy 
 Kirk, but a copartnership, insomuch as, Dauvit 
 being a tailor, she after marriage, and having no 
 children to "fash her," became a tailor also, sitting 
 on the same board with him, using the same goose, 
 yea, pricking the same flea with emulous needle. 
 
 Yet our couple were in some respects the most 
 unlike each other in the world ; Robina being a 
 sharp, clear-witted, nay, ingenious woman — Dauvit 
 a mere big boy. I do not know if I could give 
 the reader a better explanation of the expression 
 I have used than by referring him to the notion he
 
 90 THE STORY OF 
 
 might form of Holbein's picture of his son, whom 
 he quaintly and humorously painted as a man, but 
 retaining all the features, except size, of a boy : 
 the chubby cheeks, small snub nose, pinking eyes, 
 and delicate colours. Nor was Dauvit a big chubby 
 man merely as respected the body, for he was 
 also little better than chubby in mind ; at least in 
 so far as regards credulity, passiveness, and soft- 
 ness. He had a marvellous appetite for worldly 
 wonders, the belief being in the direct ratio of the 
 wonderfulness, and he gave credit to the last thing 
 he heard, for no other reason than that it was the 
 last thing ; one impression thus effacing another, 
 so that the soft round lump remained always much 
 the same. All which peculiarities were, it may 
 easily be supposed, not only known to, but very 
 well appreciated by, his loving, but perhaps not 
 over-faithful, Binny. 
 
 If you keep these things in your mind, you will 
 be able the better to estimate the value of the 
 facts as I proceed to tell you that one morning 
 Dauvit was a little later in getting out of bed 
 than was usual with him, by reason that he had 
 on the previous night been occupied with a suit of 
 those sacredly-imperative things called in Scotland 
 " blacks," that is, mourning. But then the time 
 was not lost ; for Robina was up and active, very 
 busily engaged in preparing breakfast. Not that
 
 THE MERRILL YGOES. 91 
 
 Dauvit condescended to take much notice of these 
 domestic duties of Binny, because he had ample 
 faith not only in her housewifery, but the wonder- 
 ful extent of her understanding; only it just hap- 
 pened, as indeed anything may happen in a world 
 where we do not know why anything does happen, 
 that as he lay very comfortably under the welcome 
 pressure of the soft blankets, with his eyes looking 
 as it were out of a hole, he heard a tap at the door, 
 which tap was just as like that of the letter-carrier 
 as any two blunts of exactly the same length could 
 possibly be. Nor did his observation stop here ; 
 for he saw with these same eyes, as if confirming 
 his ears, Binny go to the door and open it ; then 
 came the words of doubtless the said letter-carrier, 
 "That's for Dauvit;" and at the same instant a 
 letter was put into his wife's hands, and thereafter 
 disappeared at the hole of her pocket, where there 
 were many things that David knew nothing about. 
 Strange as this seemed to Mr Tweedie, even the 
 last act of pocketing would not have appeared to 
 him so very curious if at the moment of secreting 
 the letter she had not very boldly, and even with a 
 kind of smile upon her face, looked fully into the 
 open eyes of her husband. But more still, this 
 sagacious and honest woman immediately there- 
 after retired into the inner room, where, no doubt, 
 she made herself acquainted with the contents of
 
 92 THE ST OR V OF 
 
 the communication, whatever it might be, and 
 from which she came again to resume, as she did 
 resume, her preparations for breakfast just as if 
 nothing had happened beyond what was common. 
 Of course I need not say that Dauvit was aston- 
 ished ; but his astonishment was an increasing 
 quantity in proportion to the time that now passed 
 without her going forward to the bedside and read- 
 ing the letter to him, as she had often done before ; 
 and if we might be entitled to wonder why he 
 didn't at once put the question, " What letter was 
 that, Binny ? " perhaps the answer which would 
 have been given by David himself might have 
 been that his very wonder prevented him from 
 asking for an explanation of the wonder — ^just as 
 miracles shut people's mouths at the same moment 
 that they make them open their eyes. 
 
 However this might be — and who knows but that 
 David might have a pawky curiosity to try Binny ? 
 — the never a word did he say ; but, rising slowly 
 and quietly, he dressed himself, in that loose way 
 in which of all tradesmen the tailors most excel, 
 for a reason of which I am entirely ignorant. He 
 then sat down by the fire ; and Binny having 
 seated herself on the other side, the operation of 
 breakfast began without a word being said on 
 either part, but with mutual looks, which on the 
 one side, viz., Robina's, were very well understood,
 
 THE MERRILL YGOES. 93 
 
 but on the other not at all. A piece of panto- 
 mime all this which could not last very long, for 
 the good reason that impatience is the handmaiden 
 of curiosity ; and David at length, in spite of a bit 
 of bread which almost closed up his mouth, got 
 out the words — 
 
 "What letter was that, Binny, which the letter- 
 carrier handed in this mornin' ?" 
 
 " Letter ! there was nae letter, man," was the 
 answer of Binny, accompanied with a look of sur- 
 prise, which might in vain compete with the won- 
 der immediately called up in the eyes of her simple 
 husband. 
 
 "Did I no see it with my ain een.?" was the 
 very natural ejaculation. 
 
 " No, you didn't ; you only thought ye saw it," 
 said the wife ; " and thae twa things have a g&y 
 difference between them." 
 
 " What do ye mean, Robina, woman V 
 " The merrillygoes !" 
 
 " The merrillygoes," rejoined the wondering 
 David ; " my een niver were in that condition." 
 
 " Yo7i may think -sae, Dauvit," rejoined Binny ; 
 " but I happen to ken better. On Wednesday 
 nio-ht, when we were in bed, and the moon shin- 
 ing in at the window, did I no hear you say, 
 * Binny, woman, what are ye doing up at this 
 eery hour .^' It was just about twelve; and upon
 
 94 THE STORY OF 
 
 lifting my head and looking ower at ye, I saw 
 your een staring out as gleg as a hawk's after a 
 sparrow. It had begun then." 
 
 " Ou, I had been dreaming," said David. 
 
 " Dreaming with your een open !" 
 
 " That is indeed strange enough," rejoined 
 David. " Did ye really see my een open .-' " 
 
 " Did ye ever hear me tell ye a lee, man .'' Am 
 I no as true as the Bible } and think ye I dinna 
 ken the strange light o' the merrillygoes, when I 
 have seen it in the een o' my ain father .'*" 
 
 " Is that really true, Binny } I 'm beginnin' to 
 get fear'd. But what o' your father, lass .-'" 
 
 " Ye may weel ask," said the wife. " He had 
 been awa' at Falkirk Tryst with his ewes, and it 
 was about seven o'clock when he cam' hame. We 
 were then in the farm o' Kimmergame. Weel, he 
 was coming up the lang loan, and it was gloam- 
 ing ; and just when he was about twenty yards 
 from his ain door, he saw twa men hurrying along 
 with a coffin a' studded with white nails. They 
 were only a yard or twa before him, and the mo- 
 ment he saw them he stopped till he saw where 
 they were going ; and yet where could they be 
 going but to his ain house ; and nae doubt his 
 wife would be dead, for the lang coffin couldna 
 have fitted any other person in the house ; but he 
 was soon made sure enough, for he saw the men
 
 THE MERRILL YGOES. 95 
 
 with the coffin enter into his ain door, and there 
 he stood in a swither o' fear ; but he was a brave 
 man, and in he went, never stopping till he got 
 into his ain parlour, where my mother was sitting 
 at her tea, and nae sooner did she see him than 
 she broke out in a laugh o' perfect joy at his 
 hamecome. But the never a word he ever said 
 about the coffin, because he didn't wish to terrify 
 his wife with evil omens ; and besides, he under- 
 stood the vision perfectly. And, Dauvit, if ye 're 
 a wise man ye will submit to the hand o' God, 
 wha sees fit to bring thae visitations upon us for 
 some wise end." 
 
 " Very true," said David, to whom the affair of 
 the letter was rather much even for his credulity ; 
 "but still, Binny, lass, I canna just come to it that 
 I was deceived." 
 
 " Weel, weel, stick to it, my man, and mak me, 
 your ain wife, a leear." 
 
 " That canna be either," rejoined David ; " and 
 by my faith, I 'm at a loss what to think or what 
 to do ; for if it really be that the infliction 's upon 
 me, how, in the Lord's name, am I to ken the real 
 thing from the fause .-' My head rins right round 
 at the very thought o 't. And then I fancy there 's 
 nae remedy in the power o' man." 
 
 " I fear no," replied Binny. " Ye maun just 
 pray ; but I have heard my father say that it
 
 96 THE STORY OF 
 
 came on him after he had been confined with an 
 ill-working stomach to the house, and exercise 
 drove it aAvay. Ye've been sitting ower close. 
 Take scouth for a day. Awa' ower to Burntisland, 
 and get payment from John Sprunt o' the three 
 pounds he owes for his last suit. Stay ower the 
 night. I say nothing about the jolly boose ye '11 
 have thegither, but it may drive thae fumes and 
 fancies out o' your head. Come ower with the 
 first boat in the morning, and I will have your 
 breakfast ready for you." 
 
 The prudence of this advice David was not slow 
 to see, though he had, maugre his simplicity, con- 
 siderable misgivings about the affair of the letter ; 
 nor did he altogether feel the absolute conviction 
 that he was under the influence of the foresaid 
 mysterious power. But independently of the pru- 
 dence of her counsel, he felt it as a comrnand, and 
 therefore behoved to obey. For we may as well 
 admit that David might doubt of the eternal ob- 
 ligation of a certain decalogue by reason of its 
 being abrogated ; but as for the commands of Mrs 
 Robina, they were subject to no abrogation, and 
 certainly no denial whatever. So David went and 
 dressed himself in his " second-best " — a particular 
 mentioned here with an after-view — and having 
 got from the hands of her, who was thus both wife 
 and medical adviser, a drop of spirits to help him
 
 THE MERRILL YGOES. 97 
 
 on, and the merrillygoes off, he set forth on his 
 journey. 
 
 Proceeding down Leith Wynd, he found himself 
 in Leith Walk ; but however active his limbs, thus 
 relieved on so short a warning from " the board/ 
 and however keen and far-sighted his eyes, as they 
 scanned all the people he met, he could not shake 
 off certain doubts whether the individuals he met 
 were in reality creatures of flesh and blood, or 
 mere visions. The sacred words of Mrs Robina 
 were a kind of winged beliefs, which, by merely 
 striking on the ear, performed for him what many 
 a man has much trouble in doing for himself — 
 that is, thinking ; so that upon the whole the ten- 
 dency of his thoughts was in a great degree favour- 
 able to sadness and terror. The sigh was heaved 
 again and again ; being sometimes for a longer 
 period delayed, as the hope of a jolly boose with 
 his friend Sprunt held a partial sway in his troubled 
 mind. But by and by the activity required by his 
 search for a boat, the getting on board, the novelty 
 of the sail, the undulating movements, and all the 
 interests which belong to a " traveller by sea and 
 land," drove away the cobwebs that hung about 
 the brain ; and by the time he got to Burntisland 
 he was much as he used to be. But, alas, he little 
 knew that this journey, propitious as it appeared, 
 
 G
 
 98 THE ST OR V OF 
 
 was not calculated to produce the wonderful efifects 
 expected from it. 
 
 No sooner had he landed on the pier than he 
 made straight for the house of his friend, which 
 stood by the roadside, a little removed from the 
 village. He saw it in the distance ; and quicken- 
 ing his steps, came to an angle which enabled him 
 to see into Mr Sprunt's garden ; and we may, con- 
 sidering how much the three pounds, the boose, 
 the fun, the cure was associated with the figure of 
 that individual, imagine the satisfaction felt by Mr 
 Tweedie when he saw the true body of John 
 Sprunt in that very garden, busily engaged, too, 
 in the delightful occupation of garden-work, and 
 animated, we may add of our own supposition, 
 with a mind totally oblivious of the three pounds 
 he owed to the Edinburgh tailor. But well and 
 truly may we speak of the uncertainty of mun- 
 dane things. David had only turned away his 
 eyes for an instant, and yet in that short period, 
 as he found when he again turned his head, the 
 well-known figure of his old friend, pot -com- 
 panion, and debtor in three pounds, had totally 
 disappeared. The thing looked like what learned 
 people call a phenomenon. How could Sprunt 
 have disappeared so soon ? Where could he have 
 gone to be invisible, where there was no summer- 
 house to receive him, and where the time did not
 
 THE MERRILL YGOES. 99 
 
 permit of a retreat into his own dwelling ? David 
 stood, and began to think of the words of Robina. 
 There could be no doubt that his eyes had been at 
 fault again ; it was not John Sprunt he had seen — 
 merely a lying image. And so even on the in- 
 stant the old sadness came over him again, with 
 more than one long sigh ; nor in his depression 
 and simplicity was he able to bring up any such 
 recondite thing as a thought suggesting the con- 
 nexion between John's disappearance and the fact 
 that he owed Mr David Tweedie — whom he 
 could have seen in the road — the sum of three 
 pounds. 
 
 In which depressed and surely uncomfortable 
 condition our traveller proceeded towards the 
 house, more anxious, indeed, to disprove his ter- 
 rors than to get his money. He knocked at the 
 door, which, by the by, was at the end of the 
 house ; and his knock was answered by Mrs 
 Sprunt herself, a woman who could have acted 
 Bellona in an old Greek piece. 
 
 " I am glad John is at hame," were David's first 
 words. 
 
 " And I would be glad if that were true, Mr 
 Dauvit," replied she ; " but it just happens no to 
 be true. John went off to Kirkaldy at six o'clock 
 this morning to try and get some siller that 's due 
 him there."
 
 100 THE STORY OF 
 
 " Let me in to sit down," muttered David, with 
 a kind of choking in his voice. 
 
 And following the good dame into the parlour, 
 Mr Tweedie threw himself into the arm-chair in a 
 condition of great fear and perturbation. Having 
 sat mute for a minute or two, probably to the 
 wonderment of the dame, he began to rub his 
 brow with his handkerchief, as if taking off a little 
 perspiration could help him in his distress. 
 
 " Mrs Sprunt," said he, " I could have SAvorn 
 that I saw John working in the yard." 
 
 Whereat Mrs Sprunt broke out into a loud laugh, 
 which somehow or another seemed to David as 
 ghostly as his visions ; and when she had finished 
 she added, " Something wrong, Dauvit, with your 
 een." 
 
 " Gudeness gracious and ungracious!" said 
 David. " Is this possible .'' Can it really be .'' 
 Whaur, in the name o' Heeven, am I to look for 
 a real flesh-and-blood certainty .'' " 
 
 " And yet ye seem to be sober, Dauvit." 
 
 "As a judge," replied he. But, after a pause, 
 "Can I be sure even o' you?" he cried, as he 
 started up ; the while his eyes rolled in a manner 
 altogether very unlike the douce quiet character 
 he bore. " Let me satisfy mysel that you are 
 really Mrs Janet Sprunt in the real body." 
 
 And making a sudden movement, with his arms
 
 THE MERRILL YGOES. lor 
 
 extended towards the woman, he tried to grip her ; 
 but it was a mere futile effort. Mrs Sprunt was 
 gone through the open door in an instant, and 
 David was left alone with another confirmation of 
 his dreaded suspicion, muttering to himself, " There 
 too, there too, — a' alike ; may the Lord have mercy 
 upon His afflicted servant ! Robina Tweedie, ye 
 were right after a', and that letter was a delusion like 
 the rest — a mere eemage — a' eemages thegither." 
 
 After which soliloquy he again sat down in the 
 easy-chair, held his hands to his face, and groaned 
 in the pain of a wounded spirit. But even in the 
 midst of this solemn conviction that the Lord had 
 laid His hand upon him, he could see that sitting 
 there could do him no good ; and, rising up, he 
 made for the kitchen. There was no one there ; 
 he tried another room, which he also found empty ; 
 and issuing forth from the unlucky house, he en- 
 countered an old witch-looking woman who was 
 turning the corner, as if going in the direction of 
 another dwelling. 
 
 " Did you see Mrs Sprunt even now V said he. 
 
 " No likely," answered the woman ; " when she 
 tauld me this mornin' she was going to Petticur. 
 She has a daughter there, ye ken." 
 
 Melancholy intelligence which seemed to have a 
 logical consistency with the other parts of that 
 day's remarkable experiences ; nor did David
 
 102 THE STORY OF 
 
 seem to think that anything more was necessary 
 for the entire satisfaction of even a man consider- 
 ably sceptical, and then who in those days doubted 
 the merrillygoes ? 
 
 *' What poor creatures we are ! " said he. " I 
 came here for a perfect cure, and I gae hame with 
 a heavy care." 
 
 And with these words, which were in reality an 
 articulated groan, Mr David Tweedie made his 
 way back towards the pier, under an apprehension 
 that as he went along he would meet with some 
 verification of a suspicion which, having already 
 become a conviction, not only required no more 
 proof, but was strong enough to battle all opposing 
 facts and arguments ; so he went along with his 
 chin upon his breast, and his eyes fixed upon the 
 ground, as if he were afraid to trust them with 
 a survey of living beings, lest they might cheat 
 him as they had already done. It was about half- 
 past twelve when he got to the boat ; and he was 
 further disconcerted by finding that the wind, 
 which had brought him so cleverly over, would 
 repay itself, like over - generous givers, who 
 take back by one hand what they give by the 
 other. And so it turned out ; for he was fully 
 two hours on the passage, all of which time was 
 occupied by a reverie as to the extraordinary cala- 
 mity that had befallen him. And how much more
 
 THE MERRILL YGOES. 103 
 
 dreary his cogitations as he thought of the in- 
 creased unhappiness of Robina, when she ascer- 
 tained not only the failure of getting payment of 
 his debt, but the total wreck of her means of cure ! 
 At length he got to Leith pier ; but his landing 
 gave him no pleasure : he was still haunted with 
 the notion that he would encounter more mis- 
 chances ; and he hurried up Leith Walk, passing 
 old friends whom he was afraid to speak to. Ar- 
 rived at the foot of Leith Wynd, he made a detour 
 which brought him to the foot of Halkerston's 
 Wynd, up which he ascended, debouching into the 
 High Street. And here our story becomes so in- 
 credible, that we are almost afraid to trust our 
 faithful pen to write what David Tweedie saw on 
 his emerging from the entry. There, coming up 
 the High Street, was Mrs Robina Tweedie herself, 
 marching along steadily, dressed in David's best 
 suit. He stood and stared with goggle eyes, as if 
 he felt some strange pleasure in the fascination. 
 The vision was so concrete, that he could identify 
 his own green coat made by his own artistic fingers. 
 There were the white metal buttons, the broadest 
 he could get in the whole city — nay, one of them 
 on the back had been scarcely a match, and he 
 recognised the defect ; his knee-breeches too, so 
 easily detected by their having been made out of 
 a large remnant of a colour (purple) whereof there
 
 104 THE STOR Y OF 
 
 was not another bit either to be bought or " cab- 
 baged/' — nay, the very brass knee-buckles of which 
 he was so proud ; the " rig-and-fur " stockings of 
 dark brown; the shoe -buckles furbished up the 
 last Sunday ; the square hat he had bought from 
 Pringle ; and, to crown all, his walking-stick with 
 the ivory top. So perfect indeed was the "get- 
 up " of his lying eyes, that, if he had not been 
 under the saddening impression of his great visi- 
 tation, he would have been well amused by the 
 wonderful delusion. Even as it was, he could not 
 help following the phantom, as it went so proudly 
 and jantily along. the street. And what was still 
 more extraordinary, he saw Mucklewham, the 
 city guardsman, meet her and speak to her in a 
 private kind of way, and then go away with her. 
 But David had a trace of sense in his soft nature. 
 He saw that it was vain as well as hurtful to gratify 
 what was so clearly a delusion ; it would only 
 deepen the false images in eyes already sufficiently 
 " glamoured ; " and so he stopped suddenly short 
 and let them go — that is, he would cease to look,^- 
 and they, the visions, would cease to be. In all 
 which how little did he know that he was pre- 
 figuring a philosophy which was some time after- 
 wards to become so famous ! Nay, are we not 
 all under the merrillygoes in this world of phan- 
 toms .''
 
 THE MERRILLYGOES. 105 
 
 ' ' You say you see the things that be : 
 I say you only think you see. 
 Not even that. It seems to me 
 You only think you think you see. 
 Then thinking weaves so many a lie, 
 Methinks this world is ' all my eye.' " 
 
 But even in his grief and sacred fear he could not 
 help saying to himself, " Gude Lord ! if that eemage 
 werena frightfu', would it no be funny .'' And what 
 will Robina say .'' Nae doubt she is at this very 
 moment sitting at her tea in Berenger's Close, 
 thinking upon my calamity. What zvill she say 
 when I tell her that I saw her in the High Street 
 dressed in my Sunday suit, walking just as if she 
 were Provost Wilson himsel .'' I wouldna wonder 
 if she should get into ane o' her laughing fits, even 
 in very spite o' her grief for the awful condition of 
 her loving husband. At any rate, it 's time I were 
 hame, when I canna tell what I am to see next, 
 nor can even say which end o' me is uppermost." 
 
 Nor scarcely had he finished his characteristic 
 soliloquy, when a hand was laid on his shoulder. 
 It was that of the corporal ; but how was David 
 to know that } Why, he felt Bill's hand ; and to 
 make things more certain, he even laid his own 
 hand upon the solid shoulder of the sturdy city 
 guardsman ; adding, for still greater proof — 
 
 " Did you meet and speak to any one up the 
 street there .'"'
 
 io6 THE STORY OF 
 
 " The niver a living soul," said the corporal, " as 
 I 'm a sinner ; but come along, man, to the Prophet 
 Amos's," (a well-known tavern in the Canongate,) 
 " and let us have a jolly jug, for I'm to be on duty 
 to-night, and need something to cheer me up ; and 
 the colour of ale will sit better on your cheeks 
 when you go home to Robina than that saffron. 
 Are you well enough, David ? I think I might as 
 well ask the question of a half-hanged dog." 
 
 " Half or hale hanged," repHed David, as he 
 eyed his friend suspiciously, " I canna be the waur 
 o' a jug o' ale." 
 
 An answer which was perhaps the result of sheer 
 despair, for the conviction of the " real unreality" 
 of what he had seen was now so much beyond 
 doubt that he began to submit to it as a doom ; 
 and what is irremediable becomes, like death, to 
 be bearable, nay, even accommodating to the 
 routine of life ; and so the two jogged along till 
 they came to the Prophet's, where they sat down 
 to their liquor and, we may add, loquacity, of 
 which latter Mucklewham was so profuse, that any 
 other less simple person than David might have 
 thought that the guardsman wanted to speak 
 against time. But David suspected nothing, and 
 he was the more inclined to be patient that his 
 friend had promised to pay the score. 
 
 " And when saw ye Robina ? " said David,
 
 THE MERRILL YGOES. 107 
 
 " Not for a good round year, my bairn," said 
 the big corporal. 
 
 " Gude Lord, did ye no see her and speak to 
 her even this day ?" 
 
 Whereupon the big guardsman laughed a horse 
 (guardsman's) laugh ; and pointing his finger to 
 his eye he twirled the same, that is the finger, 
 merrily round. A movement which David too 
 well understood ; and after heaving a deep sigh, he 
 took a deep pull at the ale, as if in a paroxysm of 
 despair. 
 
 And so they drank on, till David having risen 
 and left the room for a breath of fresh air, found 
 on his return that his generous friend had vanished. 
 Very wonderful, no doubt. But, then, had he not 
 taken his jug with himi* — no doubt to get it re- 
 plenished — and he would return with a filled 
 tankard. Vain expectation ! Mucklewham was 
 only another Sprunt, another lie of the visual 
 sense. Did David Tweedie really need this new 
 proof .'' David knew he didn't ; neither did he 
 require the additional certainty of his calamity by 
 having to pay only for his own " shot." The Pro- 
 phet did not ask for more, nor did he think it 
 necessary to say why ; perhaps he would make 
 the corporal pay his own share afterwards. The 
 whole thing was as clear as noon : David had been 
 drinking with one who had no stomach wherein to
 
 io8 THE STORY OF 
 
 put his liquor, and for the good reason that he had 
 no body to hold that stomach. 
 
 " Waur than the case o' the letter, or Sprunt, 
 (hiccup,) or Robina dressed in my claes," said he 
 lugubriously, " for I only saw them, but I handled 
 the corporal, sat with him, drank with him, heard 
 him speak ; yet baith he and the pewter jug were 
 off in a moment, and I hae paid (hie) only for ae 
 man's drink. But is it no a' a dream thegither.-* 
 I wouldna wonder I am at this very moment in 
 my bed wi' Robina lying at my back." 
 
 And rising up, he discovered that he was not 
 very well able to keep his legs, the more by reason 
 that he had poured the ale into an empty stomach ; 
 there was, besides, a new confusion in his brain, as 
 if that organ had not already enough to do with 
 any small powers of maintaining itself in equili- 
 brium which it possessed. But he behoved to get 
 home ; and to Berenger's Close he accordingly 
 went, making sure as he progressed of at least one 
 truth in nature, amidst all the dubieties and delu- 
 sions of that most eventful day : that the shortest 
 way between two points is the deflecting one. And 
 what was Binny about when he entered his own 
 house } Working the button-holes of a vest which 
 had been left by David unfinished. No sooner did 
 she see David staggering in than she threw the 
 work aside.
 
 THE MERRILLYGOES. 109 
 
 " Hame already? and in that state too!" she 
 cried. " You must have been seeing strange ferhes 
 in the High Street, while I was sitting here busy 
 at my wark." 
 
 " Strange enough, lass ; but if you can tell me 
 whether or no I am Dauvit Tweedie, your lawfu' 
 husband or the Prophet Moses, or the Apostle 
 Aaron, or (hie) the disciple Deuteronomy, or the 
 deevil, it's mair than I can." 
 
 Whereupon David dropt his uncertain body in a 
 chair, doubting perhaps if even the chair was really 
 a chair. 
 
 " And it was na just enough," rejoined she, " that 
 you had an attack of the merrillygoes, but you 
 must add pints o' ale to make your poor wits mair 
 confounded." 
 
 A remark which Robina thought herself entitled 
 to make, irrespective of the question which for a 
 hundred years has been disputed, viz., whether she 
 had sent the corporal to take David to Prophet 
 Amos's and fill him drunk with ale, and then shirk 
 the score } 
 
 " But haste ye to bed, my man," she added, 
 " that 's the place for you, where you may snore 
 awa' the fumes o' Prophet Amos's ale, and the 
 whimwhams o' your addled brain." 
 
 An advice which David took kindly, though he 
 did not need it ; for, educated as he may be said
 
 no THE STORY OF 
 
 to have been by the clever Robiiia, he was fortu- 
 nately one of those favoured beings pointed at in 
 the wise saying that the power of education is 
 seldom effectual except in those happy cases where 
 it is superfluous. So it was the ale that sent him 
 to bed and to sleep as well — a condition into which 
 he sunk very soon, And it was kindly granted to 
 him, insomuch as it was a kind of recompense for 
 what he had suffered during that day of wonders : 
 it saved him from the possibility of hearing a con- 
 versation in the other room between Robina and 
 the corporal, in the course of which it was asked 
 and answered whether David had recognised Ro- 
 bina in her male decorations ; and whether he had 
 any suspicions as to the true character of the deep 
 plot they were engaged in working out. 
 
 What further took place in the house of Mr 
 Tweedie that night we have not been able, not- 
 withstanding adequate inquiry, to ascertain ; but 
 of this important fact we are well assured, that 
 next morning David awoke in a much improved 
 condition. To account for this we must remember 
 his peculiar nature, for to him "the yesterday," 
 whatever yesterday it might be, was always a dies 
 non; it had done its duty and was gone, and it 
 had no business here any more than an impudent 
 fellow who tries to live too long after the world is 
 sick of him. Indeed, we know that he ate such a
 
 THE MERRILL YGOES. 1 1 1 
 
 breakfast, and with such satisfaction, tliat no ideas 
 of a yesterday had any chance of resisting the feel- 
 ings of the moment ; and once gone, they had too 
 much difficulty to get into the dark chamber again 
 to think of trying it. He was " on the board " by 
 ten o'clock. For he had work to do, and as Ro- 
 bina's purpose was in the meantime served, she 
 said no more of the merrillygoes. She had per- 
 haps something else to do ; for shortly after eleven 
 she went out, perhaps to report to the corporal the 
 sequel to that which he already knew. But what- 
 ever her object, her absence was not destined to 
 be so fruitful of good to her as her presence wher- 
 ever she might go ; for it so happened that as 
 David was sitting working, and sometimes with 
 his face overcast with a passing terror of a return 
 of his calamity, he found he required a piece of 
 cloth of a size and colour whereof there were some 
 specimens in an old trunk. To that repository of 
 cabbage, as it is vulgarly called, he went ; and in 
 rummaging through the piebald contents he came 
 upon a parcel in a corner. On opening it, he found 
 to his great wonderment no fewer than a hundred 
 guineas of pure gold. The rays from the shiny 
 pieces seemed to enter his eyes like spikes, and fix 
 the balls in the sockets ; if he felt a kind of fasci- 
 nation yesterday as he looked at his wife in male 
 attire, though a mere vision, he experienced the
 
 112 THE STORY OF 
 
 influence now even more, however doubtful he was 
 of the reality of the glittering objects. He seized, 
 he clutched them, he shut his eyes, and opened 
 them again as he opened his hands ; they did not 
 disappear ; but then Robina herself might appear, 
 and under this apprehension, which put to flight 
 his doubts, he carried them off, and secreted them 
 in a private drawer of which he had the key ; 
 whereupon he betook himself again to the board. 
 By and by Robina returned ; but the never a word 
 David said of the guineas, because he had still 
 doubts of the veracity of his eyes. 
 
 And so the day passed without anything occur- 
 ring to suggest either inquiry or answer. During 
 the night David slept so soundly that he was even 
 oblivious of his prize ; and it was not till eleven 
 next forenoon, when his wife went out, that he 
 ventured to look into the drawer ; but now the 
 terrible truth was revealed to him : the guineas 
 were gone, and he had been again under delusion. 
 The merrillygoes once more ! and how was he to 
 admit the fact to Robina, after his attempted ap- 
 propriation ! 
 
 But, happily, there was no necessity for admit- 
 ting his own shame, for about four o'clock John 
 Jardine the letter-carrier called and told him that 
 his wife had eloped with the corporal. The in- 
 telligence was no doubt very dreadful to David,
 
 THE MERRILLYGOES. 113 
 
 who loved his wife so dearly that he could have 
 subscribed to the saying "that the husband will 
 always be deceived when the wife condescends to 
 dissemble ;" but Mrs Robina Tweedie did not so 
 condescend ; and David now began to see certain 
 things and to recollect certain circumstances which, 
 when put together, appeared even to his mind 
 more strange than the merrillygoes. And his eyes 
 were opened still further by a letter from Kirkcud- 
 bright from a Mr Gordon, wishing to be informed 
 why he had not acknowledged the receipt of the 
 hundred guineas left him by his uncle, and which 
 had been sent in a prior letter in the form of a 
 draft on the Bank of Scotland. Mr David Tweedie 
 now went to the bank, and was told that the 
 money had been paid to a man in a green coat 
 and white metal buttons, square hat, and walking- 
 stick, who represented himself as David Tweedie. 
 
 Our story, it will be seen, has pretty nearly ex- 
 plained itself; yet something remains to be told. 
 A whole year elapsed, when one morning Mrs 
 Robina Tweedie appeared before honest David, 
 with a lugubrious face and a lugubrious tale, to 
 the effect that although she had been tempted to 
 run away with the corporal, she had almost imme- 
 diately left him — a pure, bright, unsullied wife ; 
 but during all this intermediate time she had felt 
 so ashamed and conscience-stricken, that she could 
 
 H
 
 1 14 THE MERRILL YGOES. 
 
 not return and ask forgiveness. All which David 
 heard, and to all which he answered — 
 
 " Robina — nae mair Tweedie, lass — ye ken I 
 was afBicted with a strange calamity when ye left 
 me. I thought I saw what wasna to be seen. It 
 comes aye back upon me now and then ; and I 
 ken it's on me this mornin'. I may think I see 
 you there standin' before me, even as I saw you in 
 my broad-tailed coat that day in the High Street ; 
 but I ken it 's a' a delusion. In fact, my dear Ro- 
 bina, / diniia see yoii, I diniia even feel your body," 
 (pushing her out by the cuff of the neck;) "the 
 merrillygoes, lass ! the merrillygoes \" 
 
 And David shut the door on the ejected Robina 
 — thereafter living a very quiet and comparatively 
 happy life, free from all glamour or any other 
 affection of the eyes, and seeing just as other 
 people see. Yea, with his old friend Sprunt and 
 his wife he had many a joke on the subject, for- 
 giving John for running away that morning to 
 shirk his creditor, as well as Mrs Janet for being 
 terrified out of the house by the wild rolling eyes 
 of the unhappy David.
 
 '(Ilje ^tor? of tlje ^i;i; ^ot^. 
 
 MAN who makes a will generally knows 
 pretty well the person to whom he leaves 
 a legacy, but it does not follow that other 
 people are to have the same enlightenment as to 
 the identity of the legatee. I make the remark in 
 reference to a common story connected with the 
 will of honest Andrew Gebbie, who officiated once 
 as a ruling elder in the Church of Trinity College, 
 Edinburgh, and was supposed to have done so 
 much good to the people by his prayers, exhorta- 
 tions and psalm-singing, that it was utterly un- 
 necessary for his getting to heaven, where he had 
 sent so many others, that he should bequeath a 
 single plack or bawbee to the poor when he died. 
 Yet whether it was that the good man Andrew 
 determined to make sure work of his salvation, or 
 that he had any less ambitious object in view, cer- 
 tain it is that some time before he died he made a 
 will by his own hand, and without the help of a 
 man of the law, in spite of the Scotch adage —
 
 ii6 THE STORY OF 
 
 " Who saves a fee and writes his will 
 Is friendly to the lawyers still ; 
 For these take all the' will contains, 
 And give the heir all that remains." 
 
 And by this said will honest Andrew bequeathed 
 the sum of three hundred pounds sterling money 
 to " Mistress Helen Grey, residing in that street of 
 the old town called Leith Wynd," without any 
 further identification or particularisation whatso- 
 ever, nor did he say a single word about the cause 
 of making this somewhat generous bequest, or 
 anything about the merits or services of the lega- 
 tee. A strange circumstance, seeing that the in- 
 dividual being a " Nelly Grey " had long been a 
 favourite of the poets, (and, therefore, rather in- 
 definite,) as she indeed still figures in more than 
 one very popular song, wherein she is even called 
 bonny Nelly Grey. 
 
 Then, to keep all matters in harmony, he ap- 
 pointed three clergymen — the minister of his own 
 church, the minister of the Tolbooth, and the min- 
 ister of the Tron — as his executors for carjrying 
 his said will into execution, probably thinking that 
 Nelly Grey's three hundred, and her soul to boot, 
 could not be in better hands than those of such 
 godly men. So, after living three weeks longer in 
 a very bad world, the worthy testator was gathered 
 to his fathers, and it might perhaps have been as 
 well that his said will had been gathered along
 
 THE SIX rOES. 117 
 
 with him, — as indeed happened in a recent case, 
 where a sensible man, probably in fear of the law- 
 yers, got his will placed in the same coffin with 
 him, — though no doubt he forgot that worms, if 
 not moths, do corrupt there also, and sometimes 
 thieves, in the shape of body-snatchers, do break 
 through and steal. Passing all which we proceed 
 to say that the executors entered upon their duties. 
 As regards the other legatees they found no dif- 
 ficulty whatever, most probably because legatees 
 are a kind of persons who are seldom out of the 
 way when they are wanted. They accordingly 
 made their appearance, and without a smile, which 
 would have been unbecoming, got payment of their 
 legacies. But as for this Helen Grey, with so large 
 a sum standing at her credit, she made no token 
 of any kind, nor did any of the relations know 
 aught concerning her, though they wondered ex- 
 ceedingly who she could be, and how she came to 
 be in so strange a place as their kinsman's testa- 
 ment. Not that the three executors, the ministers, 
 shared very deeply in this wondering, because they 
 knew that their elder, honest Andrew, was a good 
 and godly man, and had had good and godly, and 
 therefore sufficient reasons, (probably in the poverty 
 and piety of Helen,) for doing what he had done. 
 
 If indeed these gentlemen wondered at all, it was 
 simply that any poor person living in such a place
 
 ii8 THE STORY OF 
 
 as Leith Wynd should be so regardless of money, 
 as to fail to make her appearance among the grave 
 and happy legatees. The question, who can she 
 be, passed from the one to the other like a bad 
 shilling. Not one of them could answer. Father 
 Tron, and Father Tolbooth, and Father Trinity, 
 were all at fault ; the noses of their ingenuity 
 could not smell out the object of their wish. But 
 then they had been trusting so far as yet to the 
 relatives, and had not made personal inquiry in 
 Leith Wynd, which, if they had been men of busi- 
 ness, they would have done at once. 
 
 " Oh," said Father Trinity at length, " I think I 
 have it now when I recollect there was an honest 
 woman of that name who was a member of my 
 congregation some years ago, and, if I am not 
 mistaken, she was in honest Andrew Gebbie's 
 visiting district, and he took an interest in her 
 soul." 
 
 " The thing is patent," rejoined Father Tron. 
 " Our lamented elder hath done this good thing 
 out of the holy charity that cometh of piety." 
 
 " And a most beautiful example of the fruits of 
 godliness," added Father Tolbooth. 
 
 " Beautiful indeed ! " said Trinity. " For we 
 have here to keep in view that Elder Andrew had 
 many poor friends, but he hath chosen to prefer 
 the relationship of the spirit to that of mere earthly
 
 THE SIX TOES. 119 
 
 connexion. And his reward will verily be reaped 
 in heaven." 
 
 " We must give the good man a paragraph in 
 the Mercury^' resumed Father Tolbooth. " And 
 now, brother of Trinity, it will be for you to 
 find Helen Grey out, and carry to her the glad 
 tidings." 
 
 " A pleasant commission," rejoined Father 
 Trinity, as he rose to depart. 
 
 And taking his way to Leith Wynd, he soon 
 reached that celebrated street, nor was it long till 
 he passed " The Happy Land," that dreaded den 
 of burglars, thieves, and profligate women, which 
 the Scotch, according to their peculiar humour, 
 had so named. That large building he behoved 
 to pass with a sigh as the great forlorn hope of the 
 city, and coming to some of the brokers whose 
 shops were farther down, he procured some infor- 
 mation which sent him up a dark close, to the end 
 of which having got, he ascended to a garret in a 
 back tenement, and, knocking at the door, was an- 
 swered by an aged woman. 
 
 " Does Helen Grey live here ? " 
 
 "Ay, sir!" replied she. "If ye ca' living the' 
 breathing awa o' the breath o' life. It 's a sad 
 thing when auld age and poverty come the- 
 gither." 
 
 " An old saying, Helen," replied the father.
 
 120 • THE STORY OF 
 
 " Yet there is a third one which sanctifieth the 
 other two, and bringeth all into harmony, peace, 
 and love, and that is religion. But do you not 
 know your old minister?" 
 
 " Brawly, brawly, sir," replied she ; " but the 
 truth is, I didna like to speak first ; and now, sir, 
 I 'm as proud as if I had got a fortune." 
 
 " And so perhaps you have," added the father. 
 " But come, sit down. I 've got something to 
 say ; " and having seated himself he continued. 
 " Was Maister Andrew Gebbie, our worthy elder, 
 in the habit of visiting you 1 " 
 
 " Indeed, and he did aince or twice come and 
 see me ; but never mair," replied she. " Yet he 
 was sae kind as to bring me the last time this 
 book o' psalms and paraphrases, and there 's some 
 writing in 't which I couldna read." 
 
 " Let me see it," he said. 
 
 And the woman having handed him the book — 
 
 " To Mrs Janet Grey," said the minister, as he 
 read the inscription. 
 
 " A mistake, for my name is Helen," said she. 
 " But it was weel meant in Mr Gebbie, and it's a' 
 the same." 
 
 " A staff to help her on to the happy land," con- 
 tinued the reverend doctor, reading. 
 
 " No ' The Happy Land ' near bye } " interjected 
 Helen.
 
 THE SIX TOES, 121 
 
 " Not likely," continued the doctor with a smile. 
 " Rut I have good news for you, Helen." 
 
 " Good news for me !" said the woman. " That 
 must come frae an airth no within the four quarters 
 o' the earthly compass. I thought a' gude news for 
 me had ta'en wings, and floun awa to the young 
 and the happy." 
 
 " It seems not, ' said he ; " for Elder Andrew 
 has left you a legacy of three hundred pounds." 
 
 " Stop, stop, sir !" ejaculated the frightened 
 legatee. " It canna be, and though it was sae, I 
 couldna bear the grandeur. It would put out the 
 sma' spark o' life that 's left in my auld heart." 
 
 " No, no ! " said he. " It is only an earthly in- 
 heritance, Helen, to keep you in ease and comfort 
 in your declining years, till you succeed to that 
 inheritance which knoweth no decay, and fadeth 
 not away." 
 
 " But is it really possible, good sir .'' " she con- 
 tinued, a little reconciled to that whereunto there 
 is a pretty natural predisposition in human nature. 
 " But I havena blessed Elder Andrew yet. May 
 the Lord receive Andrew Gebbie's soul into end- 
 less glory !" 
 
 " Amen ! " said the reverend doctor. " I will 
 speak of this again to you, Helen." 
 
 And with these words he left the still confused 
 woman, who would very likely still feel a difficulty
 
 123 THE STORY OF 
 
 in comprehending the length and breadth of the 
 goodness of a man who had seen her only a few 
 times, and given her a psalm-book, and called her 
 Janet in place of Helen — a mistake he must have 
 rectified before he made his will. 
 
 Next day the reverend doctor of Trinity had 
 another meeting in the ofiice of the law-agent to 
 the trust, Mr George Crawford, whereat he re- 
 counted how he had found out the legatee ; how 
 strange it was that the poor woman was entirely 
 ignorant of her good fortune ; how grateful she 
 was ; and, above all, how strange that the saintly 
 elder had only seen her a few times, and knew so 
 little of her that he had made the foresaid mistake 
 in her name. All which did seem strange to the 
 brethren, not any one of whom would even have 
 thought of giving more than perhaps a pound to 
 such a person. But as the motives of men are 
 hidden from the eyes of their fellows, and are in- 
 deed like the skins of onions, placed one above 
 another, so they considered that all they had to do 
 was to walk by the will. 
 
 " We have no alternative," said Father Tron ; 
 " nor should we wish any, seeing that the money 
 could not be better applied ; for has not the son 
 of Sirach said, ' Give unto a godly man, and not 
 unto a sinner.' " 
 
 "■ And," added Tolbooth, " we are also com-
 
 THE SIX TOES. 123 
 
 manded to give of our substance to the poor, and 
 * do well unto those that are lowly.' " 
 
 " Yes/' said Father Trinity. " Mr Gebbie's 
 object was clear enough ; it was sufficient for him 
 that the woman was poor ; therein lay his reward ; 
 and I presume we have nothing to do but to 
 authorise Mr Crawford to pay the money." 
 
 " Which I will do, gentlemen," said the writer, 
 " if you authorise me ; but I frankly confess to you 
 that I am not altogether satisfied, because I knew 
 Mr Andrew Gebbie intimately, and, godly as he 
 was, I can hardly think he was the man to make a 
 comparative stranger the medium of the accumu- 
 lation of compound interest to be got back in 
 heaven. Besides, Helen Grey is so common a 
 name, that I believe I could get several in Edin- 
 burgh ; and if we were to pay to the wrong woman, 
 you might be bound to refund out of your own 
 stipends, which would not be a very pleasant 
 thing." 
 
 A speech which, touching the word stipend, 
 brought a very grave look into the faces of the 
 brethren. 
 
 " A most serious, yea, a momentous considera- 
 tion," said Tron, followed by the two others. 
 
 Nor had the groan got time to die away when 
 the door opened, and there stood before them a 
 woman of somewhere about forty, a little shabby
 
 124 THE STORY OF 
 
 in her apparel, though with a decayed flush of 
 gaudy colour in it here and there ; somewhat 
 blowsy too — the tendeiicy to the tint of the peony 
 being more evident about the region of the nose, 
 where there Avas a spot or two very clearly predis- 
 posed to the sending forth, under favourable cir- 
 cumstances, of a pimple ; rather bold-looking in 
 addition, even in presence of holy men who wielded 
 the Calvinistic thunders of the day, and followed 
 them up with the refreshing showers of grace and 
 love. 
 
 " I understand," said she, " that Elder Andrew 
 Gebbie has left me a legacy o' three hundred 
 pounds, and I will thank you for the siller." 
 
 On hearing which the three fathers looked at 
 each other in amazement, and it was clear they 
 did not like the appearance of the new claimant. 
 
 " Who are you .'' " said Trinity. 
 
 " Helen Grey ! " replied she. " I live in Leith 
 Wynd. Mr Andrew Gebbie and me were man and 
 wife." 
 
 " Where are your marriage lines ? " asked 
 Tron. 
 
 " I hae nane," replied she. " It was a marriage 
 by giving and taking between ourselves — a gude 
 marriage by the law." 
 
 *' And no witnesses .'' " said Tron. 
 
 "The deil ane but the Lord."
 
 THE SIX TOES. 125 
 
 " Wh-e-w ! " whistled Father Tron, not audibly, 
 only as it were within the mouth. 
 
 " It is very true," said Father Trinity, as he 
 looked askance at the claimant, and contrasted her 
 in his mind with the other Nelly, who he was satis- 
 fied was the real Nelly Pure, " that Mr Andrew 
 Gebbie left that sum of money to a certain Helen 
 Grey, but we have no evidence to show that you 
 are the right woman." 
 
 " The right woman !" ejaculated she, with a bold 
 laugh ; " and how could I be the wrong ane, when 
 I cut Andrew Gebbie's corns for ten years .? " 
 
 " Oh, a chiropodist ! " said Father Tron. 
 
 " I 'm nae corn-doctor, sir," replied she, with 
 something like offended pride : " I never cut 
 another man's corns in my life." 
 
 " We are nearly getting into that lightness of 
 speech which betokeneth vanity," said another of 
 the brethren. " It is a serious matter ; and we 
 must require of you, Mrs Grey — seeing that the 
 marriage cannot, even by your own statement, be 
 taken into account, for want of evidence — to prove 
 that you were upon such terms of friendship with 
 Mr Gebbie as to make it probable that he would 
 leave you this large sum of money." 
 
 " Friendship \" cried the woman again. " Ay, 
 for ten years, and wha can tell where the flee 
 may stang .-' It was nae mair than he should have
 
 126 THE STORY OF 
 
 dune. I am Helen Grey, and I insist upon my 
 rights." 
 
 "But," said Father Trinity, "there is another 
 Helen Grey in Leith Wynd, with whom Mr Gebbie 
 was acquainted, and to whom he made a present 
 of a psalm-book." 
 
 "And did he no gie me a psalm-book too!" 
 quoth the woman. " I have it at hame, and you 
 are welcome to see my name on't written by the 
 elder's ain hand. But did this second Helen Grey 
 cut the good elder's corns for ten lang years, I 
 wonder .? Tell me that, gentlemen, and I '11 tell 
 you something mair that will make your ears ring 
 as they never did at a psalm." 
 
 " Still this irreverend nonsense about corns : 
 woman, are you mad .''" said Tron. " Give us the 
 names of respectable people who knew of this 
 asserted friendship between you and the deceased 
 elder." 
 
 "The deil ane kent o't, sir, but ourselves!" was 
 the sharp answer of the woman. "And if it comes 
 to that, I can prove naething; but I tell you there's 
 mair in the corns than ye wot." 
 
 " Oh ! she wants to prove the footing she was on 
 with Mr Gebbie," punned Mr Crawford with a 
 laugh, and the grave brethren could not help join- 
 ing in what Tron called a fine example of the 
 figure called paronomasia.
 
 THE SIX TOES, 127 
 
 "That's just it/' said the woman. " I will prove 
 that I knew the length o' his big tae, and may be 
 mair." 
 
 "And what more ?" asked Father Tron. 
 
 " That Mr Gebbie had six toes on his left foot ! " 
 answered she. 
 
 "And what of that.?" inquired the agent, as he 
 pricked up his ears at what might turn out a more 
 special means of knowledge than they were dream- 
 ing of. 
 
 " A great deal," continued the woman. " Sae 
 muckle that I need nae mair, for be it kenned to 
 ye that Mr Gebbie was aye ashamed o' what he 
 thought a deformity, and concealed it from a' 
 hving mortals except me. If ye '11 prove that 
 there's anither person in a' Edinburgh, in Scot- 
 land, or in the hail world, wha kens that Elder 
 Andrew had six toes on his left foot, I '11 give up 
 a' right to the three hundred pounds ! " 
 
 " So there is something in the corns after all," 
 whispered Mr Crawford to Trinity, and the others 
 hearing the remark began to think, and think, and 
 look at each other, as if they felt that the woman 
 had fairly shut them up to a test of her truthfulness 
 easily applied. So telling her to call back next 
 day at the same hour, they requested her to leave 
 them. And after she was gone, the four gentle- 
 men began gradually to relax from their gravity
 
 128 THE STORY OF 
 
 as they saw the ingenuity of the woman, for it was 
 quite apparent that if it should tiu'n out that no 
 one — servant, relative, or doctor — could tell this 
 wonderful fact about the six toes of their own 
 knowledge, however derived, and that this Helen 
 Grey was the sole confidential custodier thereof — 
 the conclusion was all but certain that she knew 
 it by being intrusted with the cutting of the holy 
 man's corns, as she had asserted. And a confi- 
 dence of this kind, (setting aside the irregular 
 marriage,) implied a friendship so close as to justify 
 the legacy. What in the meantime remained to be 
 done was for the agent to see any persons con- 
 nected with the elder's household who were Hkely 
 to know the fact, and being an honourable man he 
 behoved to do this without what is called a lead- 
 ing question. 
 
 Accordingly, that same afternoon Mr Crawford 
 busied himself to the effect of having seen the 
 good elder's housekeeper, as well as the doctor 
 Avho had attended him upon his last illness, with 
 perhaps a dozen of other likely people, such as the 
 other legatees and relations, all of whom were en- 
 tirely ignorant of the fact set forth by the woman, 
 viz., that Mr Gebbie had six toes on his left foot. 
 And next day the trustees met again, when Mr 
 Crawford told them, before touching on the corns, 
 that an agent had called upon him from the other
 
 THE SIX TOES. 
 
 129 
 
 Helen first seen, demanding payment to her. He 
 then told the trustees the result of his inquiries — 
 that not a single person of all he had seen knew 
 anything of the abnormal foot. At this the clergy- 
 men wondered more and more, and how long they 
 might have sat there and wondered it might have 
 been difficult to say, had it not been for an ingeni- 
 ous idea started by Tron, and suggested by the 
 old story about King Charles and the fish in the 
 bucket of water. 
 
 " The woman is laughing at us," said he, " and 
 we are inquiring whether certain people knew a 
 fact without making ourselves acquainted with the 
 prior fact, whether that prior fact had ever any 
 existence except in the brain of this bad woman, 
 whose evidence goes to traduce the character of a 
 holy elder of the Church of Scotland." 
 
 The brethren again laughed at this ingenious 
 discovery of Father Tron's, and thereupon began 
 to veer round in favour of good '^tWy prhna. In 
 a few minutes more entered Blowsabel again, hold- 
 ing in her hand a psalm-book with some words of 
 an inscription on it in the handwriting of the elder, 
 but subscribed " a friend," whereas, as the reader 
 may recollect, the inscription in the book given to 
 the first Helen, (with the misnomer of Janet,) was 
 in the name of Andrew Gebbie — a fact rather in 
 
 favour of Nelly secimda, insomuch as it harmonised 
 
 I
 
 I30 THE STORY OF 
 
 with her statement that the friendship between the 
 elder and her had been kept a secret known only 
 to themselves. 
 
 " That goes for what it 's worth," said she, as she 
 received back the book. " And now," she con- 
 tinued, addressing Mr Crawford, " you can tell me 
 whether you were able to find, within the hail o' 
 Edinburgh, a single person who knew that Elder 
 Andrew had six taes on his left foot." 
 
 " I have found no one," was the answer, " for 
 the good reason that Andrew Gebbie had no more 
 toes on his left foot than you yourself have on 
 yours." 
 
 Whereupon Helen sectinda burst out into a laugh. 
 After which, said she, " I will prove it, as sure as I 
 am a living woman !" 
 
 *' The man is dead and buried ! " replied Mr 
 Crawford, with a voice of triumph. 
 
 *' That makes nae difference," said she ; " unless 
 it be that the worms have eaten awa the sixth tae ; 
 and, by my faith, I '11 see to it ! " 
 
 And with these words she went away, leaving 
 the trustees in as great a difficulty as ever. Nor 
 had she been long gone when a man of the name 
 of Marshall, the procurator who had taken up the 
 case of the first Helen, entered and said, " he had 
 got evidence to show that a neighbour, who had 
 been present at the last interview between the
 
 THE SIX TOES. 131 
 
 elder and his client, had heard the worthy man 
 declare, that he had been moved to pity by her 
 age and poverty, and had promised to do some- 
 thing for her, to enable her to pass her remaining 
 years in comfort." 
 
 " But," said the agent, " there is, I am sorry to 
 say, another Helen in the field ; and you must 
 drive her off before we can pay your client the 
 money." 
 
 " And I know who she is," was the answer. 
 " That woman's word is not to be relied upon ; for 
 she is what she is." And then he added, " I am 
 determined to see justice done to my client — who, 
 at least, is an honest woman." 
 
 '* Now you see, gentlemen," said Mr Crawford, 
 after the first Helen's agent had departed — " you 
 see how this extraordinary affair stands. The two 
 claimants are determined to fight it out : so that, 
 if you pay the money to the good woman, you 
 will, as I said before, run a risk of being obliged 
 to pay the other one afterwards out of your 
 stipends." 
 
 " Our stipends are the holy tenths, set apart to 
 the work of the Lord from the beginning of the 
 world," answered the brethren, " and cannot be 
 touched, except by sacrilegious hands ! " 
 
 " Then," continued the agent, " there is only 
 one thing we can do ; and that is, to throw the
 
 132 THE STORY OF 
 
 case into court by what we call a multiplepoind- 
 ing, and let the claimants fight against each other." 
 
 A proposition this to which the trustees felt 
 themselves bound to agree, though with very much 
 reluctance ; for they saw that the case would be- 
 come public, and there would be ill-disposed people 
 that would be inclined to put a false construction 
 upon the motives of the worthy elder of Trinity. 
 But then, to comfort them, they felt assured that 
 the story of the toes was a pure invention ; and 
 the elder being buried, there was no possibility of 
 proving the same. 
 
 Whereupon the meeting separated. Next day 
 Mr Crawford commenced his law proceedings ; 
 and in due time, a record having been prepared, 
 the advocates behoved to plead the causes of their 
 respective clients. 
 
 Then stood up Mr Anderson, the advocate of 
 the first Helen, and said : — 
 
 " Your lordships must see that — if you lay out 
 of view as a mere invention, which it is, the story 
 of the six toes — the preponderance of the evidence 
 lies with my client. There is a psalm-book in each 
 case ; but mine has the name of the testator to the 
 inscription : and you have, in addition, the testi- 
 mony of one respectable person who heard Mr 
 Gebbie declare his intention to enable this poor 
 old woman to live. On the other side you have
 
 THE SIX TOES. 133 
 
 no evidence whatever that the elder ever set his 
 foot — corns or no corns — on the floor of the Helen 
 secunda. There was no such footing of intimacy 
 as that contended for on the other side ; and that 
 I am justified in calling the story of the six toes 
 an invention will appear when I say that, accord- 
 ing to the authority of learned men, a liisiis natiircB 
 of this kind does not occur once in ten thousand 
 births : so that it is ten thousand to one against 
 the assumption. In addition, there is the charac- 
 ter of the deceased, whose whole life and conversa- 
 tion are against the presumption that he would 
 go to Leith Wynd, and get a woman of doubtful 
 character to operate upon a foot of which he is 
 said to have been ashamed. For all which reasons 
 I claim the three hundred pounds for my client." 
 
 Then stood up Mr Sharp, the advocate of the 
 second Helen, and said : — 
 
 " It is no wonder at all why my learned friend 
 has a difficulty about his locus standi, seeing he is 
 so delicate about the feet. I feel no delicacy on 
 that fundamental point. And it is because my 
 corns of legal right and justice are pared that I 
 stand here with so much ease, and assert that Mr 
 Gebbie having imparted to my client a secret which 
 he never communicated to living mortal besides, 
 that secret could only have been the result of an 
 intimacy and confidence sufficient to justify this
 
 134 THE STORY OF 
 
 legacy in her favour of three hundred pounds. 
 My friend says, that there are many chances 
 against such a freak of nature as six toes. That 
 is true. But he confounds the thing with the as- 
 sertion of the thing. And were there not a pre- 
 sumption in favour of a person speaking the truth 
 rather than falsehood, what would become of that 
 testimony which is the foundation of our holy re- 
 ligion, not less than of the decisions of our courts of 
 justice ? But it is in the power of this court to 
 ascertain the truth of my assertion. The body of 
 the worthy elder can be exhumed ; and if it shall 
 appear that it has six toes on the left foot, the pre- 
 sumption of the intimacy of friendship which will 
 justify the legacy is complete. On the other side 
 there is no such presumption. The elder only 
 visited the first Helen once'or twice, and what was 
 to induce him to leave her so large a sum to the 
 deprivation of his poor relations ^ " 
 
 Then the President spoke as follows : — 
 " It appears to the Court that, in this very ex- 
 traordinary case, we never can get at the truth 
 without testing, by proof, the statement made by 
 the second Helen in regard to the six toes, because 
 if it is really a fact that the testator carried this 
 number on his left foot, and by parity that that 
 number carried him, it is impossible to get quit of
 
 THE SIX TOES. 135 
 
 the presumption that the fact was communicated 
 confidentially when the operation of paring was 
 resort^ed to ; and as confidence implies friendship, 
 and friendship intimacy, we must assume that 
 there must have been such an amount of mutual 
 liking on the part of these individuals as would 
 justify the legacy which is the subject-matter of 
 this multipleoinding. The Court will therefore 
 issue an order for the exhumation of the body of 
 Andrew Gebbie, for the purpose of ascertaining 
 whether the testator's foot was formed in the man- 
 ner asserted by the claimant." 
 
 The commission was accordingly issued. The 
 body of the elder was examined as it lay in the 
 coffin, and the result of the examination, as stated 
 in the report, was : " That the left foot was fur- 
 nished with six toes, the sixth or supernumerary 
 one being much smaller than the one next to it. It 
 also appeared that the toes of this foot were sup- 
 plied with a number of very hard corns, which bore 
 the marks of having been often pared by some very 
 careful hand." 
 
 Whereupon the case was again taken up, when 
 judgment was given for the second Helen, who 
 was thus remarkably well paid for her attention 
 to the corns of the worthy elder. When the deci- 
 sion was reported to the reverend executors. Father
 
 136 
 
 THE SIX TOES. 
 
 Tron shook his head with great gravity, Tolbooth 
 did the same, and so did Trinity : nay, they all 
 shook their heads at the same time: but what 
 they intended to signify thereby was never known, 
 for the reason that it was never declared.
 
 'Elje ^tarp of Q^ppiic Craig* 
 
 UN detailing the curious circumstances of 
 the following story, I am again only- 
 reporting a real law case to be found 
 in the Court of Session Records, the turning-point 
 of which was as invisible to the judges as to the 
 parties themselves — that is, until the end came ; 
 a circumstance again which made the case a kind 
 of developed romance. But as an end implies a 
 beginning, and the one is certainly as necessary 
 as the other, we request you to accompany us — 
 taking care of your feet — up the narrow spiral 
 staircase of a tenement called Corbet's Land, in 
 the same old town where so many wonderful 
 things in the complicated drama — or dream, if 
 you are a Marphurius — of human life have oc- 
 curred. Up which spiral stair having got by the 
 help of our hands, almost as indispensable as that 
 of the feet — we find ourselves in a little human 
 dovecot of two small rooms, occupied by two 
 persons not unlike, in many respects, two doves
 
 138 THE STORY OF 
 
 — Widow Craig and her daughter, called May, 
 euphuised by the Scotch into Mysie. The chief 
 respects in which they might be likened, without 
 much stress, to the harmless creatures we have 
 mentioned, were their love for each other, together 
 with their total inoffensiveness as regarded the 
 outside world ; and we are delighted to say this, 
 for we see so many of the multitudinous sides of 
 human nature dark and depraved, that we are apt 
 to think there is no bright side at all. Nor shall 
 we let slip the opportunity of saying, at the risk of 
 being considered very simple, that of all the gifts 
 of felicity bestowed, as the Pagan Hom.er tells, 
 upon mankind by the gods, no one is so perfect 
 and beautiful as the love that exists between a 
 good mother and a good daughter. 
 
 For so much we may be safe by having recourse 
 to instinct, which is deeper than any secondary 
 causes we poor mortals can see. But beyond this, 
 there were special reasons tending to this same 
 result of mutual affection, which come more within 
 the scope of our observation. In explanation of 
 which we may say that the mother, having some- 
 thing in her power during her husband's life, had 
 foreseen the advantages of using it in the instruc- 
 tion of her quick and intelligent daughter in an 
 art of far more importance then than now — that 
 of artistic needlework. Nay, of so much import-
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 139 
 
 ance was this beautiful art, and to such perfection 
 was it brought at a time when a lady's petticoat, 
 embroidered by the hand, with its profuse imita- 
 tions of natural objects, flowers, and birds, and 
 strange devices, would often cost twenty pounds 
 Scots, that a sight of one of those operose achieve- 
 ments of genius would make us blush for our time 
 and the labours of our women. Nor was the per- 
 fection in this ornamental industry a new thing, 
 for the daughters of the Pictish kings confined in 
 the castle were adepts in it ; neither was it left 
 altogether to paid sempstresses, for great ladies 
 spent their time in it, and emulation quickened 
 both the genius and the diligence. So we need 
 hardly say it became to the mother a thing to be 
 proud of, that her daughter Mysie proved herself 
 so apt a scholar that she became an adept, and 
 was soon known as one of the finest embroideresses 
 in the great city. So, too, as a consequence, it 
 came to pass that great ladies employed her, and 
 often the narrow spiral staircase of Corbet's Land 
 was brushed on either side by the huge masses of 
 quilted and emblazoned silk that, enveloping the 
 belles of the day, were with difficulty forced up to, 
 and down from, the small room of the industrious 
 Mysie. 
 
 But we are now speaking of art, while we should 
 have more to say (for it concerns us more) of the
 
 140 THE STORY OF 
 
 character of the young woman who was destined to 
 figure in a stranger way than in making beautiful 
 figures on silk. Mysie was one of a class ; few in 
 number they are indeed, but on that account more 
 to be prized. Her taste and fine manipulations 
 were but counterparts of qualities of the heart — 
 an organ to which the pale face, with its delicate 
 lines, and the clear liquid eyes, was a suitable index. 
 The refinement which enabled her to make her 
 imitation of beautiful objects on the delicate ma- 
 terial of her work was only another form of a 
 sensibility which pervaded her whole nature — that 
 gift which is only conceded to peculiar organisa- 
 tions, and is such a doubtful one, too, if we go, as 
 we cannot help doing, with the poet, when he sings 
 that " chords that vibrate sweetest pleasures," 
 often also " thrill the deepest notes of woe." Nay, 
 we might say that the creatures themselves seem 
 to fear the gift, for they shrink from the touch of 
 the rough world, and retire within themselves as if 
 to avoid it, while they are only courting its effects 
 in the play of an imagination much too ardent for 
 the duties of life. And, as a consequence, how 
 they seek secretly the support of stronger natures, 
 clinging to them as do those strange plants called 
 parasites, which, with their tender arms and some- 
 thing so like fingers, cling to the nearest stem of a " 
 stouter neighbour, and embracing it, even though
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 141 
 
 hollow and rotten, cover it, and choke it with a 
 flood of flowers. So true is it that woman, like 
 the generous vine, lives by being supported and 
 held up ; yet equally true that the strength she 
 gains is from the embrace she gives, and so it is 
 also that goodness, as our Scottish poet Home 
 says, often wounds itself, and affection proves the 
 spring of sorrow. 
 
 All which might truly be applied to Mysie Craig; 
 but as yet the stronger stem to which she clung 
 was her mother, and it was not likely, nor was it 
 in reality, that that affection would prove to her 
 anything but the spring of happiness, for it was 
 ripened by love, and the earnings of the nimble 
 fingers, moving often into the still hours of the 
 night, not only kept the wolf from the dqor, but 
 let in the lambs of domestic harmony and peace. 
 Would that these things had so continued ; but 
 there are other wolves than those of poverty, and 
 the "ae lamb o' the fauld" cannot be always under 
 the protection of the ewe ; and so it happened on 
 a certain night, not particularised in the calendar, 
 that our Mysie, having finished one of these floral 
 petticoats on which she had been engaged for 
 many weeks, went forth with her precious burden 
 to deliver the same to its impatient owner — no 
 other than the then famous Anabella Gilroy, who 
 resided in Advocate's Close. Of which fine lady,
 
 142 THE STORY OF 
 
 by the way, we may say that of all the gay crea- 
 tures who paraded between "the twa Bows," no 
 one displayed such ample folds of brocaded silk, 
 nodded her pon-pons more jantily, or napped 
 with a sharper crack her high-heeled shoes, all to 
 approve herself to "the bucks" of the time, with 
 their square coats brocaded with lace, their three- 
 cornered hats on the top of their bob-wigs, their 
 knee-buckles and shoe-buckles. And certainly not 
 the least important of those, both in his own esti- 
 mation and that of the sprightly Anabella, was 
 George Balgarnie, a young man who had only a 
 year before succeeded to the property of Bal- 
 gruddery, somewhere in the north, and of whom 
 we might say that in forming him Nature had 
 taken so much pains with the building up of the 
 body, that she had forgotten the mind, so that he 
 had no more spiritual matter in him than sufficed 
 to keep his blood hot, and enable his sensual organs 
 to work out their own selfish gratifications ; or, to 
 perpetrate a metaphor, he was all the polished 
 mahogany of a piano, without any more musical 
 springs than might respond to one keynote of 
 selfishness. And surely Anabella had approved 
 herself to the fop to some purpose, for when our 
 sempstress with her bundle had got into the par- 
 lour of the fine lady, she encountered no other 
 than Balgarnie — a circumstance apparently of very
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 143 
 
 small importance, but we know that a moment of 
 time is sometimes like a small seed, which con- 
 tains the nucleus of a great tree, perhaps a poison- 
 ous one. And so it turned out that while Anabella 
 was gloating over the beautiful work of the timid 
 embroideress, Balgarnie was busy admiring the 
 artist, but not merely, perhaps not at all, as an 
 artist — only as an object over whom he wished to 
 exercise power. 
 
 This circumstance was not unobserved by the 
 little embroideress, but it was only observed to be 
 shrunk from in her own timid way, and probably 
 it would soon have passed from her mind, if it had 
 not been followed up by something more direct 
 and dangerous. And it was ; for no sooner had 
 Mysie got to the foot of the stairs than she en- 
 countered Balgarnie, who had gone out before her; 
 and now began one of those romances in daily life 
 of which the world is full, and of which the world 
 is sick. Balgarnie, in short, commenced that kind 
 of suit which is nearly as old as the serpent, and, 
 therefore, not to be wondered at ; neither are we to 
 wonder that Mysie listened to it, because we have 
 heard so much about " lovely woman stooping to 
 folly," that we are content to put it to the large 
 account of natural miracles. And not very mira- 
 culous either, when we remember, that if the low- 
 breathed accents of tenderness awaken the germ
 
 144 THE STORY OF 
 
 of love, they awaken at the same time faith and 
 trust ; and such was the beginning of the romance 
 which was to go through the normal stages — the 
 appointment to meet again — the meeting itself — 
 the others that followed — the extension of the 
 moonlight walks, sometimes to the Hunter's Bog 
 between Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags, and 
 sometimes to the song-famed " Wells o' Weary," 
 All which were just as sun and shower to the germ 
 of the plant : the love grew and grew, and the faith 
 grew and grew also which saw in him that which it 
 felt in itself Nay, if any of those moonlight-loving 
 elves that have left their foot-marks in the fairy 
 rings to be seen near St Anthony's Well had whis- 
 pered in Mysie's ear, " Balgarnie will never make 
 you his wife," she would have believed the words 
 as readily as if they had impugned the sincerity of 
 her own heart. In short, we have again the ana- 
 logue of the parasitic plant : the very fragility and 
 timidity of Mysie were at once the cause and con- 
 sequence of her confidence. She would cling to 
 him and cover him with the blossoms of her affec- 
 tion ; nay, if there were unsoundness in the stem, 
 these very blossoms would cover the rottenness. 
 
 This change in the life of the little sempstress 
 could not fail to produce some corresponding 
 change at home. We read smoothly the play we 
 have acted ourselves — and so the mother read love
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 145 
 
 in the daughter's eyes, and heard it, too, in her 
 
 long sighs ; nor did she fail to read the sign that 
 
 the song which used to lighten her beautiful work 
 
 was no longer heard ; for love to creatures so 
 
 formed as Mysie Craig is too serious an affair for 
 
 poetical warbling. But she said nothing — for while 
 
 she had faith in the good sense and virtue of her 
 
 daughter, she knew also that there was forbearance 
 
 due to one who was her support. Nor, as yet, had 
 
 she reason to fear, for Mysie still plied her needle, 
 
 and the roses and the lilies sprang up in all their 
 
 varied colours out of the ground of the silk or satin 
 
 as quickly and as beautifully as they were wont, 
 
 though the lilies of her cheeks waxed paler as the 
 
 days flitted. And why the latter should have been 
 
 we must leave to the reader ; for ourselves only 
 
 hazarding the supposition that, perhaps, she already 
 
 thought that Balgarnie should be setting about to 
 
 make her his wife — an issue which behoved to be 
 
 the result of their intimacy sooner or later, for that 
 
 in her simple mind there should be any other issue 
 
 was just about as impossible as that, in the event of 
 
 the world lasting as long, the next moon would not, 
 
 at her proper time, again shine in that green hollow, 
 
 between the Lion's Head and Samson's Ribs, which 
 
 had so often been the scene of their happiness. 
 
 Nay, we might say that though a doubt on the 
 
 subject had by any means got into her mind, it 
 
 K
 
 146 THE STORY OF 
 
 would not have remained there longer than it took 
 a shudder to scare the wild thing away. 
 
 Of course, all this was only a question of time ; 
 but certain it is that by and by the mother could 
 see some connexion between Mysie's being more 
 seldom out on those moonlight nights than for- 
 merly, and a greater paleness in her thin face, as 
 if the one had been the cause of the other ; but 
 still she said nothing, for she daily expected that 
 M3^sie would herself break the subject to her, and 
 so she was left only to increasing fears that her 
 daughter's heart and affections had been tampered 
 with, and perhaps she had fears that went farther. 
 Still, so far as yet had gone, there was no remis- 
 sion in the labours of Mysie's fingers, as if in the 
 midst of all — whatever that all might be — she re- 
 cognised the paramount necessity of bringing in 
 by those fingers the required and usual amount of 
 the means of their livelihood. Nay, somehow or 
 other, there was at that very time when her cheek 
 was at the palest, and her sighs were at their 
 longest, and her disinclination to speak was at the 
 strongest, that the work increased upon her ; for 
 was not there a grand tunic to embroider for Miss 
 Anabella, which was wanted on a given day — and 
 were there not other things for Miss Anabella's 
 friend, Miss Allardice, which were not to be de- 
 layed beyond that same day. And so she stitched
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 147 
 
 and stitched on and on, till sometimes the little 
 lamp seemed to go out for want of oil, while the 
 true cause of her diminished light was really the 
 intrusion of the morning sun, against which it had 
 no chance. It might be, too, that her very anxiety 
 to get these grand dresses finished helped to keep 
 out of her mind ideas which could have done her 
 small good, even if they had got in. 
 
 But at length the eventful hour came when the 
 gentle sempstress withdrew the shining needle, 
 made clear by long use, from the last touch of the 
 last rose; and, doubtless, if Mysie had not been 
 under the cloud of sorrow we have mentioned, she 
 would have been happier at the termination of so 
 long a labour-, than she had ever been, for the 
 finishing evening had always been a great occa- 
 sion to both the inmates ; nay, it had been always 
 celebrated by a glass of strong Edinburgh ale — 
 a drink which, as both a liquor and a liqueur, was 
 as famous then as it is at this day. But of what 
 avail was this work-termination to her now ? Was 
 it not certain that she had not seen Balgarnie for 
 two moons, and though the impossibility of his not 
 marrying her was just as impossible as ever, why 
 were these two moons left to shine in the green 
 hollow and on the rising hill without the privilege 
 of throwing the shadows of Mysie Craig and George 
 Balgarnie on the grass, where the fairies had left
 
 148 THE STORY OF 
 
 the traces of their dances ? Questions these which 
 she was unable to answer, if it were not even that 
 she was afraid to put them to herself. Then, w^hen 
 was it that she felt herself unable to tie up her 
 work in order to take it home, and that her mother, 
 seeing the reacting effect of the prior sleepless 
 nights in her languid frame, did this little duty 
 for her, even as while she was doing it she looked 
 through her tears at her changed daughter ? But 
 Mysie would do so much. While the mother should 
 go to Miss Allardice, Mysie would proceed to Miss 
 Anabella — and so it was arranged. They went 
 forth together, parting at the Netherbow ; and 
 Mysie, in spite of a weakness which threatened to 
 bring her with her burden to the ground, struggled 
 on to her destination. At the top of Advocate's 
 Close she saw a man hurry out and increase his 
 step even as her eye rested on him ; and if it had 
 not appeared to her to be among the ultimate im- 
 possibilities of things, natural as well as unnatural, 
 she would have sworn that that man was George 
 Balgarnie; but then, it just so happened that Mysie 
 came to the conclusion that such a circumstance 
 was among these ultimate impossibilities. 
 
 This resolution was an effort which cost her 
 more than the conviction would have done, though 
 doubtless she did not feel this at the time, and so 
 with a kind of forced step she mounted the stair,
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 149 
 
 but when she got into the presence of Miss Gilroy 
 she could scarcely pronounce the words — 
 " I have brought you the dress, ma'am." 
 " And I am so delighted, Miss Craig, that I 
 could almost take you into my arms," said the 
 lady ; " but what ails ye, dear ? You are as white 
 as any snow I ever saw, whereas you ought to have 
 been as blithe as a bridesmaid, for don't you know 
 that you have brought me home one of my mar- 
 riage dresses ? Come now, smile when I tell you 
 that to-morrow is my wedding-day." 
 
 " Wedding-day," muttered Mysie, as she thought 
 of the aforesaid utter impossibility of herself not 
 being soon married to George Balgarnie, an impos- 
 sibility not rendered less impossible by the resolu- 
 tion she had formed not to believe that within five 
 minutes he had flown away from her. 
 
 " Yes, Miss Craig, and surely you must have 
 heard who the gentleman is, for does not the town 
 ring of it from the castle to the palace, from Kirk- 
 o'-Field to the Calton.?" 
 
 " I have not been out," said Mysie. 
 "■ That accounts for it," continued the lady ; 
 "and I am delighted at the reason, for wouldn't 
 it have been terrible to think that my marriage 
 with George Balgarnie of Balgruddery was a thing 
 of so small a note as not to be known every- 
 where ? "
 
 I50 THE STORY OF 
 
 If Mysie Craig had appeared shortly before to 
 Miss Gilroy paler than any snow her ladyship had 
 ever seen, she must now have been as pale as some 
 other kind of snow that nobody ever saw. The 
 dreadful words had, indeed, produced the adequate 
 effect — but not in the most common way, for we 
 are to keep in view that it is not the most shrink- 
 ing and sensitive natures that are always the 
 readiest to faint ; and there was, besides, the afore- 
 said conviction of impossibility which, grasping 
 the mind by a certain force, deadened the ear to 
 words implying the contrary. Mysie stood fixed 
 to the spot, as if she were trying to realise some 
 certainty she dared not think was possible, her 
 lips apart, her eyes riveted on the face of the lady 
 — mute as that kind of picture which a certain 
 ancient calls a silent poem, and motionless as a 
 figure of marble. 
 
 An attitude and appearance still more inexplic- 
 able to Anabella, perhaps irritating as an un- 
 lucky omen, and, therefore, not possessing any 
 claim for sympathy — at least, it got none. 
 
 " Are you the Mysie Craig," she cried, as she 
 looked at the girl, " who used to chat to me about 
 the dresses you brought, and the flowers on them .-* 
 Ah, jealous and envious, is that it } But, you for- 
 get, George Balgarnie never could have made you 
 his wife — a working needlewoman ; he only fancied
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 151 
 
 you as the plaything of an hour. He told me so 
 himself when I charged him with having been 
 seen in your company. So, Mysie, you may as 
 well look cheerful. Your turn will come next, 
 with some one in your own station." 
 
 There are words which stimulate and confirm — 
 there are others that seem to kill the nerve and 
 take away the sense, nor can we ever tell the effect 
 till we see it produced ; and so we could not have 
 told beforehand — nay, we would have looked for 
 something quite opposite — that Mysie, shrinking 
 and irritable as she was by nature, was saved from 
 a faint, (which had for some moments been threat- 
 ening her,) by the cruel insult which thus had been 
 added to her misfortune. She had even power to 
 have recourse to that strange device of some na- 
 tures, that of " affecting to be not affected ; " and, 
 casting a glance at the fine lady, she turned and 
 went away without uttering a single word. But 
 who knows the pain of the conventional conceal- 
 ment of pain, except those who have experienced 
 the agony of the trial .'' Even at the moment when 
 she heard that George Balgarnie was to be married, 
 and that she came to know that she had been for 
 weeks sewing the marriage dress of his bride, she 
 was carrying under her heart the living burden 
 which was the fruit of her love for that man. Yet 
 not the burden of shame and dishonour, as our
 
 152 THE STORY OF 
 
 story will show, for she was justified by the law of 
 her country — yea, by certain words once written 
 by an apostle to the Corinthians, all which may as 
 yet appear a great mystery ; but, as regards Mysie 
 Craig's agony, as she staggered down Miss Gilroy's 
 stairs on her way home, there could be no doubt 
 or mystery whatever. 
 
 Nor, when she got home, was there any comfort 
 there for the daughter who had been so undutiful 
 as to depart from her mother's precepts, and con- 
 ceal from her not only her unfortunate connexion 
 with a villain, but the condition into which that 
 connexion had brought her. But she was, at least, 
 saved from the pain of a part of the confession, for 
 her mother had learned enough from Miss Allar- 
 dice to satisfy her as to the cause of her daughter's 
 change from the happy creature she once was, 
 singing in the long nights as she wrought unre- 
 mittingly at her beautiful work, and the poor, 
 sighing, pale, heart-broken thing she had been for 
 months. Nor did she fail to see, with the quick 
 eye of a mother, that as Mysie immediately on 
 entering the house laid herself quietly on the bed, 
 and sobbed in her great agony, that she had 
 learned the terrible truth from Miss Gilroy that 
 the robe she had embroidered was to deck the 
 bride of her destroyer. Moreover, her discretion 
 enabled her to perceive that this was not the time
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 153 
 
 for explanation, for the hours of grief are sacred, 
 and the heart must be left to do its work by open- 
 ing the issues of Nature's assuagement, or ceasing 
 to beat. So the night passed, without question or 
 answer ; and the following day, that of the mar- 
 riaere. was one of silence, even as if death had 
 touched the tongue that used to be the medium of 
 cheerful words and tender sympathies — a strange 
 contrast to the joy, if not revelry, in Advocate's 
 Close. 
 
 It was not till after several days had passed that 
 Mysie was able, as she still lay in bed, to whisper, 
 amidst the recurring sobs, in the ear of her mother, 
 as the latter bent over her, the real circumstances 
 of her condition ; and still, amidst the trembling 
 words, came the vindication that she considered 
 herself to be as much the wife of George Balgarnie 
 as if they had been joined by " Holy Kirk ; " a 
 statement which the mother could not understand, 
 if it was not to her a mystery, rendered even more 
 mysterious by a reference which Mysie made to 
 the law of the country, as she had heard the same 
 from her cousin George Davidson, a writer's clerk 
 in the Lawnmarket. Much of which, as it came 
 in broken syllables from the lips of the disconso- 
 late daughter, the mother put to the account of 
 the fond dreams of a mind put out of joint by the 
 worst form of misery incident to young women.
 
 154 THE STORY OF 
 
 But what availed explanations, mysteries or no 
 mysteries, where the fact was patent that Mysie 
 Craig lay there, the poor heart-broken victim of 
 man's perfidy — her powers of industry broken and 
 useless — the fine weaving genius of her fancy, 
 whereby she wrought her embroidered devices to 
 deck and adorn beauty, only engaged now on por- 
 traying all the evils of her future life ; and, above 
 all, was she not soon to become a mother ? 
 
 Meanwhile, and in the midst of all this misery, 
 the laid-up earnings of Mysie's industry wore away, 
 where there was no work by those cunning fingers 
 — now thin and emaciated ; and before the days 
 passed, and the critical day came whereon another 
 burden would be imposed on the household, there 
 was need for the sympathy of neighbours in that 
 form which soon wears out — pecuniary help. That 
 critical day at length came. Mysie Craig gave 
 birth to a boy, and their necessities from that hour 
 grew in quicker and greater proportion than the 
 generosity of friends. There behoved something 
 to be done, and that without delay. So when 
 Mysie lay asleep, with the innocent evidence of 
 her misfortune by her side, Mrs Craig put on her 
 red plaid and went forth on a mother's duty, and 
 was soon in the presence of George Balgarnie and 
 his young wife. She was under an impulse which 
 made light of delicate conventionalities, and did
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 155 
 
 not think it necessary to give the lady an oppor- 
 tunity of being- absent'; nay, she rather would have 
 her to be present — for was she, who had been so 
 far privy to the intercourse between her husband 
 and Mysie, to be exempt from the consequences 
 which she, in a sense, might have been said to 
 have brought about ? 
 
 " Ye have ruined Mysie Craig, sir ! " cried at 
 once the roused mother, " Ye have ta'en awa her 
 honour. Ye have ta'en awa her health. Ye have 
 ta'en awa her bread. Ay, and ye have reduced 
 three human creatures to want, it may be starva- 
 tion ; and I have come here in sair sorrow and 
 necessity to ask when and whaur is to be the 
 remeid 1 " 
 
 " When and where you may find it, woman ! " 
 said the lady, as she cast a side-glance to her hus- 
 band, probably by way of appeal for the truth of 
 what she thought it right to say. " Mr Balgarnie 
 never injured your daughter. Let him who did 
 the deed yield the remeid ! " 
 
 " And do you stand by this ? " said Mrs 
 Craig. 
 
 But the husband had been already claimed as 
 free from blame by his wife, who kept her eye fixed 
 upon him ; and the obligation to conscience, said 
 by sceptics to be an offspring of society, is some- 
 times weaker than what is due to a wife, in the
 
 156 THE STORY OF 
 
 estimation of whom a man may wish to stand in 
 a certain degree of elevation. 
 
 " You must seek another father to the child of 
 your daughter," said he, lightly. And, not content 
 with the denial, he supplemented it by a laugh, as 
 he added, " When birds go to the greenwood, they 
 must take the chance of meeting the goshawk." 
 
 " And that is your answer } " said she. 
 
 " It is ; and you need never trouble either my 
 wife or me more on this subject," was the reply. 
 
 "Then may the vengeance o' the God of justice 
 light on the heads o' baith o' ye!" added Mrs Craig, 
 as she went hurriedly away. 
 
 Nor was her threat intended as an empty one, 
 for she held on her way direct to the Lawnmarket, 
 where she found George Davidson, to whom she 
 related as much as she had been able to get out of 
 Mysie, and also what had passed at the interview 
 with Balgarnie and his lady. After hearing which, 
 the young writer shook his head. 
 
 " You will get a trifle of ahment," said he ; " per- 
 haps half-a-crown a week, but no more ; and Mysie 
 could have made that in a day by her beautiful 
 work." 
 
 " And she will never work mair," said the mother, 
 with a sigh. 
 
 " For a hundred years," rejoined he, more to 
 himself than to her, and probably in congratula-
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 157 
 
 tion of himself for his perspicacity, " and since ever 
 there was a college of justice, there never was a 
 case where a man pulled up on oath for a promise 
 of marriage admitted the fact. It is a good Scotch 
 law — only we want a people to obey it. But what," 
 he added again, " if we were to try it, though it 
 were only as a grim joke and a revenge in so sad 
 and terrible a case as that of poor Mysie Craig ! " 
 
 Words which the mother understood no more 
 than she did law Latin ; and so she was sent away 
 as sorrowful as she had come, for Davidson did not 
 want to raise hopes which there was no chance of 
 being fulfilled ; but he knew as a Scotchman that 
 a man who trusts himself to " a strae rape " in the 
 hope of its breaking, may possibly hang himself, 
 and so it happened that the very next day a sum- 
 mons was served upon George Balgarnie, to have 
 it found and declared by the Lords of Session that 
 he had promised to marry Mysie Craig, whereupon 
 a child had been born by her ; or, in fault of that, 
 he was bound to sustain the said child. There- 
 upon, without the ordinary law's delay, certain pro- 
 ceedings went on, in the course of which Mysie 
 herself was examined as the mother to afford 
 what the lawyers call a scmiplcna probatio, or half 
 proof, to be supplemented otherwise, and there- 
 after George Balgarnie stood before the august 
 fifteen. He denied stoutly all intercourse with
 
 158 THE STORY OF 
 
 Mysie, except an occasional walk in the Hunter's 
 Bog ; and this he would have denied also, but he 
 knew that he had been seen, and that it would be 
 sworn to by others ; and then came the last ques- 
 tion, v^^hich Mr Greerson, Mysie's advocate, put in 
 utter hopelessness. Nay, so futile did it seem to 
 try to catch a Scotchman by advising him to put 
 his head in a noose on the pretence of seeing how 
 it fitted his neck, that he smiled even as the words 
 came out of his mouth — 
 
 " Did you ever promise to marry Mysie Craig V 
 Was prudence, the chief of the four cardinal 
 virtues, ever yet consistent with vice ? Balgarnie 
 waxed clever — a dangerous trick in a witness. He 
 stroked his beard with a smile on his face, and 
 answered — 
 
 " Yes, once — when I was drunk ! " 
 Words which were immediately followed by the 
 crack of a single word in the dry mouth of one of 
 the advocates — the word " NiCKED." 
 
 And nicked he was ; for the presiding judge, ad- 
 dressing the witness, said — 
 
 " The drunkenness may be good enough in its 
 own wa3% sir ; but it does not take away the effect 
 of your promise — nay, it is even an aggravation, in- 
 somuch as having enjoyed the drink, you wanted 
 to enjoy with impunity what you could make of 
 the promise also."
 
 MYSIE CRAIG. 159 
 
 If Balgarnie had been a reader he might have 
 remembered Waller's verse — 
 
 " That eagle's fate and mine are one, 
 
 Which on the shaft that made him die 
 Espied a feather of his own, 
 
 Wherewith he wont to soar so high." 
 
 So Mysie gained her plea, and the marriage with 
 Anabella, for whom she had embroidered the mar- 
 riage gown, was dissolved. How matters pro- 
 gressed afterwards for a time we know not ; but 
 the Scotch know that there is wisdom in makincr 
 the best of a bad bargain, and in this case it was 
 a good one ; for, as the Lady of Balgruddery, 
 Mysie Craig did no dishonour to George Bal- 
 garnie, who, moreover, found her a faithful wife, 
 and a good mother to the children that came of 
 this strange marriage.
 
 '(Elje »)tDr^ of iSiitdjcti ^onu 
 
 N searching again Lord Kilkerran's Ses- 
 sion Papers in the Advocates' Library, 
 I observed a strange remark written on 
 the margin of one of them — '* Beware of pinched 
 Tom " — the meaning of which I was at a loss to 
 find. His lordship was known to be a very grave 
 man, as well as an excellent lawyer, and all so un 
 like the Newtons and Harmands, who made the 
 blind Lady Justice laugh by the antics of that 
 other lady sung by Beranger — Dame Folly — that 
 I was put to my wit's end, although I admit that, 
 by a reference to a part of the printed Session 
 Papers opposite to which the remark was made, 
 I thought I could catch a glimmering of his lord- 
 ship's intention. The law case occupying the 
 papers comprehended a question of disputed suc- 
 cession, and that question involved the application 
 of a curious law in Scotland, which still remains. 
 I believe we borrowed it from that great repertory 
 from which our forefathers took so much wisdom
 
 PINCHED TOM. i6i 
 
 — the Roman code ; but be that as it may, (and 
 it's no great matter in so far as regards my story,) 
 certain it is that it is a part of our jurisprudence, 
 that where a marriage is dissolved by the death of 
 the wife within a year and, a day of the celebration 
 thereof, without leaving a living child, the tocher 
 goes back to the wife's friends. Of course no- 
 thing is more untrue than that bit of connu- 
 bial wit : that while we hold, according to the 
 Bible, that a man and his wife are one, we also 
 very sensibly hold that the husband is that 
 one. Then the child behoves to be a living 
 child ; but what constituted a living child often 
 turned out to be as difficult a question as what 
 constitutes a new birth of a living Christian, ac- 
 cording to our good old sturdy Calvinism ; for 
 as all doctors know that a child will, on coming 
 into the world, give a breath or two with a shiver, 
 and then go off like a candle not properly lighted, 
 it became a question whether, in such a case, the 
 child could be said to have lived. Sometimes, too, 
 the living symptom is less doubtful, as in the case, 
 also very common, where the little stranger gives 
 a tiny scream, the consequence of the filling of the 
 lungs by the rushing in of the air, and having ex- 
 perienced a touch of the evils of life, makes up its 
 mind to be off as quickly as possible from a wicked 
 world. Now this last symptom our Scotch law
 
 i62 THE STORY OF 
 
 accepts as the only evidence which can be received 
 that the child had within it a living spirit, or, as 
 we call it, an immortal soul. It would be of no 
 importance that it opened and shut its eyes, moved 
 its -hands, or kicked or sprawled in any way you 
 please ; all this is nothing but infantine panto- 
 mime, and the worst pantomime, too, that it has 
 no possible meaning that any rational person could 
 understand, and so, therefore, it goes for nothing. 
 In short, our law holds that, unless " baby squeak," 
 there is no evidence that baby ever lived. Nor is 
 any distinction made between the male and the 
 female, although we know so well that the latter 
 is much more inclined to make a noise than the 
 other, were it for nothing else than to exhibit a 
 first attempt to do that at which the sex are so 
 good when they grow up and get husbands. 
 
 To bring back the reader to Lord Kilkerran's 
 remark — " Beware of Pinched Tom " — the case to 
 which the note applied comprehended the ques- 
 tion whether the child had been heard to cry, and 
 though the connexion might be merely imaginary 
 on my part, I recollected in the instant having 
 heard the story I now relate of Mr Thomas White- 
 law, a merchant burgess of Edinburgh, who figured 
 somewhere between the middle and the end of last 
 century, and took for wife a certain Janet Mony- 
 penny. In which union " the sufficient reason "
 
 PINCHED TOM. 163 
 
 which always exists, though we do not always 
 know it, was on the part of the said Thomas the 
 certainty that Janet's name (defying Shakespeare's 
 question) was a real designative of a quality, that 
 being that she possessed, in her own right, not 
 merely many a penny, but so many thousand 
 pennies, that they amounted to somewhere about 
 two thousand merks, a large sum in those olden 
 days. And this money was perhaps the more 
 valuable, that the heiress had an unfortunate right 
 by inheritance to consumption, whereby she ran a 
 risk of being taken away, leaving her money un- 
 consumed in the hands of her husband ; an event, 
 this latter, which our merchant burgess could cer- 
 tainly have turned to more certain account if he 
 had provided against the law we have mentioned 
 by entering into an antenuptial contract of mar- 
 riage, wherein it might have been set forth that, 
 though the marriage should be dissolved by the 
 death of the wife before " year and day," without 
 a living child being born thereof, yet the husband's 
 right to the tocher would remain. But then Bur- 
 gess Thomas did not know of any such law, while 
 Mr George Monypenny, the brother of Mrs Janet, 
 knew it perfectly, the more by token that he was 
 a writer, that is, a legal practitioner, at the Lucken- 
 booths. And though Mr George might have made 
 a few pennies by writing out the contract, he never
 
 i64 THE STORY OF 
 
 hinted to his intended brother-in-law of the pro- 
 priety of any such act, because he knew that he 
 had a chance of coming to more pennies, by the 
 death of his sister, within the year and the day. 
 
 So the marriage was entered into without more 
 use of written paper than what we call the mar- 
 riage lines, and Writer George was satisfied until 
 he began to see that Mrs Whitelaw was likely to 
 be a mother before the expiry of the year and the 
 day ; but then he had the consolation — for, alas ! 
 human nature was the same in those olden times 
 that it is now — of seeing that, while poor Janet 
 Avas increasing in one way, she was decreasing in 
 another, so that it was not unlikely that there 
 would be not only a dead child, but a dead 
 mother ; and then he would come in as nearest 
 of kin for the tocher of two thousand merks, of all 
 which speculations on the part of the unnatural 
 brother, Burgess Thomas knew nothing. But it 
 so happened that Mrs Euphan Lythgow, the most 
 skilly howdie or midwife in Edinburgh at that 
 time, was the woman who was to bring the child 
 into the world, and she had seen indications enough 
 to satisfy her that there was a probability that 
 things would go on in the very way so cruelly 
 hoped for by the man of the law ; nay, she had 
 her eyes — open enough at all times — more opened 
 still by some questions put to her by the wily ex-
 
 PINCHED TOM, 165 
 
 pectant, and so she held it to be her duty to go 
 straight to Burgess Thomas. 
 
 " I fear," said she, " baith for the mother and 
 the bairn, for she is worn awa to skin and bane, 
 and if she bear the heir she will only get lighter, 
 as we ca' it, to tak on a heavier burden, even 
 thaj; o' death. The bairn may live, but it 's only a 
 chance." 
 
 Whereat Burgess Thomas looked sad, for he 
 really loved his wife, but it might just happen 
 that a thought came into his head that death had 
 no power over the two thousand merks. 
 
 " If baith the mother and the bairn dee," con- 
 tinued Euphan, " the money you got by her 
 will tak wing and flee awa to Mr George, her 
 brother." 
 
 " What mean you, woman .' " asked Mr White- 
 law, as he looked wistfully and fearfully into the 
 face of the howdie. 
 
 " Had ye no' a contract o' marriage V continued 
 she. 
 
 " No," was the answer. 
 
 "Aweel, ye 're in danger, for ken ye na it is our 
 auld Scotch law that when there's nae contract, 
 and the year and the day hasna passed, and when 
 the mither dees and the bairn dees without a cry, 
 the tocher flees back again } Heard ye never the 
 auld rhyme —
 
 1 66 THE STORY OF 
 
 ' Mither dead and bairn gane, 
 Pay the tocher to her kin ; 
 But an ye hear the bairn squeal, 
 Gudeman, grip tlie tocher weel. ' " 
 
 " God bless me, Mrs Lythgow ! is that the law ? " 
 cried the husband, in a fright. 
 
 " Indeed, and it is," was the rejoinder. " You 
 are muckle obliged to Writer George. If the bairn 
 lives to be baptized, George is no the name it will 
 bear." 
 
 " No," replied he ; " if a boy, it will be baptized 
 Thomas." 
 
 " Tam ! " ejaculated the howdie in a screechy 
 voice, the reason of which might be that her son 
 carrying that name had died during the year, and 
 she was affected. 
 
 But no sooner had the word Tam passed from 
 her lips, than a large red cat came from the rug, 
 and looking up in her face, mewed in so very ex- 
 pressive a way that the sadness which the recol- 
 lection of her boy had inspired passed suddenly 
 away, and was succeeded by a comical look ; and 
 rubbing Bawdrons " along of the hair," as Mr 
 Dickens would express it, the true way of treat- 
 ing either cats or cat-witted people, she continued 
 addressing the favourite — 
 
 " And you, Tam, and I will be better acquainted 
 before the twa thousand merks are paid to Writer 
 George,"
 
 PINCHED TOM, 167 
 
 " What does the woman mean ? " said the bur- 
 gess. " What connexion is there between that 
 animal and my wife's fortune ? " 
 
 " Ye '11 ken that when the time comes," was the 
 answer ; " but coming nearer to the subject in hand, 
 ye '11 take care to hae twa witnesses in the blue- 
 painted parlour, next to your bedroom, when I 'm 
 untwining the mistress o' her burden, whether it 
 be a dead bairn or a living ane." 
 
 " And what good will that do me if both the 
 mother and child should die ? " inquired he. 
 
 " Ye '11 ken that when Writer George comes and 
 asks ye for the tocher," was the answer. 
 
 Nor did Mrs Euphan Lythgow wait to throw 
 any further light upon a subject which appeared 
 to the burgess to require more than the candle of 
 his own mind could supply if he should snuff it 
 again and again, and arn't we, every one of us, 
 always snuffing the candle so often that we can 
 see nothing } But Mrs Lythgow was what the 
 Scotch people call " a skilly woman." She could 
 see — to use an old and very common expression — 
 as far into a millstone as any one, and it was 
 especially clear to her that she would deliver Mrs 
 Whitelaw of a dead child, that death would de- 
 liver the mother of her life, and Writer George 
 would dehver Maister Whitelaw of two thousand 
 good merks of Scotch money, unless, as a poor
 
 i68 THE STORY OF 
 
 salvage out of all this loss, she could deliver the 
 bursress out of the hands of the writer. And so 
 the time passed till the eventful evening came, 
 when the wasted invalid was seized with those 
 premonitory pains which have come right down 
 from old mother Eve to the fair daughters of men, 
 as a consequence of her eating the too sweet para- 
 dise pippin. The indispensable Mrs Euphan Lyth- 
 gow was sent for express and came on the instant, 
 for she knew she had unusual duties to perform, 
 nor did she forget as one of the chief of those to 
 get Mrs Jean Gilchrist, a neighbouring gossip, and 
 Robina Proudfoot, the servant, ensconsed in the 
 said blue-painted parlour, for the sole end that 
 they should hear what they could hear, but as for 
 seeing anything that passed within the veil of the 
 secret temple of Lucina, they were not to be per- 
 mitted to get a glimpse until such time as might 
 please the priestess of the mysteries herself. 
 
 All which secrecy has been followed by the un- 
 fortunate consequence that history nowhere records 
 what took place in that secret room for an hour or 
 two after the two women took up their station in 
 the said blue-painted chamber. But this much 
 we know, that the house was so silent that our 
 favourite Tom could not have chosen a more 
 auspicious evening for mousing for prey in place 
 of mewing for play,- even if he had had all the
 
 • PINCHED TOM. 169 
 
 sagacity of the famous cats of Tartesia. As for Mrs 
 Gilchrist and Robina, they could not have listened 
 more zealously, we might even say effectually, if 
 they had been gifted with ears as long as those of 
 certain animals in Trophonia ; and surely we can- 
 not be wrong in saying they were successful listen- 
 ers, when we are able to report that Mrs Gilchrist 
 nipped the bare fleshy arm of Robina, as a sign 
 that she heard what she wanted to hear. 
 
 " That 's the scream o' the wean ! " said she. 
 
 "Ay, and may the Lord be praised !" was the 
 answer of Robina, in spite of the nip. 
 
 But neither the one nor the other knew that 
 that cry was verily worth two thousand merks to 
 Maister Burgess Whitelaw, the father, who in a 
 back-room sat in the deep pit of anxiety and heard 
 nothing, and perhaps it was better that he didn't, 
 for that cry might have raised hopes — never to be 
 realised — of the birth of a living son or daughter, 
 who would by and by lisp in his ear the charmed 
 word " Father " — of a dead wife's recovery, after so 
 terrible a trial to one so much wasted — of the sav- 
 ing- of his fortune from the ruthless hands of his 
 brother-in-law. But there is always some conso- 
 lation for the miserable, and didn't Mrs Janet's 
 favourite, even Tom himself, with his bright scar- 
 let collar, come to him and sit upon his knee and 
 look up in his face and purr so audibly, that one
 
 170 THE STORY OF 
 
 might have thought he was expressing sympathy 
 and hope ? So it is : nature is always laughing at 
 her own work. Even as this pantomine was act- 
 ing, Mrs Lythgow opened the door of the blue- 
 painted chamber, and presenting a bundle to Mrs 
 Gilchrist — 
 
 " The bairn is dead," she whispered ; " lay it on 
 the table there out o' the sight o' its mother, who 
 will not live lang enough even to see its dead face." 
 
 " And yet we heard it cry," said Robina. " Poor 
 dear innocent," she added, as she peered among 
 the folds of the flannel, " ye have had a short life." 
 
 " And no' a merry ane," added the gossip. 
 
 " Did ye expect the bairn to laugh, ye fule 
 woman that ye are } " was the reply of the howdie. 
 " Come and help me wi' the deeing mither." 
 
 And" straightway the three women were by the 
 bedside of the patient, in whose throat Death was 
 already sounding his rattle, after the last effort of 
 exhausted nature to give to the world a life in ex- 
 change for her own ; and Mr Whitelaw was there 
 too to vi^itness the dying throes of his wife, with 
 perhaps the thought in his mind that the gods are 
 pitiless as well as foolish, for what was the use of 
 giving him a dead child in recompense for a dead 
 mother, and taking away from him, at the very 
 same moment, the said two thousand merks of 
 good Scotch money. Wherein, so far, Mr White-
 
 PINCHED TOM. 171 
 
 law was himself unjust to these much abused 
 gods ; but he did not know as yet that the child 
 had cried, and who knows what consoling effect 
 that circumstance might have had upon one who 
 was what Pindar calls " a man of money." At 
 least, we will give to any man more than one of 
 these merks who will show us out of the great 
 " Treasury of Evils," mentioned by the Greek 
 poets, any one which cannot be ameliorated by 
 money. And so Mr Whitelaw heard, in the last 
 expiring breath of Mrs Janet Monypenny the de- 
 parting sign of the loss of the three greatest good 
 things of this world — a wife, a child, and a tocher. 
 But the moral oscillation comes round as sure 
 as that of the pendulum, and in accordance with 
 that law Mr Whitelaw was, within a short time 
 after the death of his wife, told by Mrs Gilchrist 
 that the child had made the much-wished-for sign 
 of life. A communication, this, very easily ac- 
 counted for, but we do not undertake to explain 
 why, when Mr Whitelaw heard it, he was scarcely 
 equal to the task of preventing an expression upon 
 his sorrowful countenance which an ill-natured per- 
 son would call a smile. Nor, indeed, is there any 
 way of explaining so inexplicable a phenomenon, 
 except by having recourse to the fact mentioned 
 by Burns, that " man is a riddle." A solution 
 which will also serve us when we further narrate
 
 172 THE STORY OF 
 
 that this small wail of the child lightened wonder- 
 fully Mr Whitelaw's duty in getting all things ar- 
 ranged for the funeral, including the melancholy 
 peculiarity of getting the coffin made that was to 
 contain a mother and her first-born. Nay, it en- 
 abled him even at the funeral to meet the trium- 
 phant look of his brother-in-law. Writer George, 
 as it clearly said, even in the midst of his tears, 
 " You owe me two thousand merks ; " for we arc 
 to remember that Mr Whitelaw, in exchange for 
 the writer's perfidy in not mentioning to him the 
 necessity of a contract of marriage, had with a 
 spice of malice concealed from him the fact of the 
 child having been heard to cry, and then it was 
 natural for the writer to suppose that the child 
 had been born dead. 
 
 As money ameliorates grief, business prevents 
 grief from taking possession of the mind ; and so 
 we need not be surprised that within a week Mr 
 Monypenny served Mr Whitelaw with a summons 
 to appear before the fifteen Scotch lords who sat 
 round a table in the form of a horse-shoe in the 
 Parliament House of Edinburgh, or Court of Ses- 
 sion, and there be ordered to pay to the pursuer 
 or plaintiff the said two thousand merks, which 
 devolved upon him, as the heir of his sister, in con- 
 sequence of the dissolution of the marriage within 
 a year and a day, without a living child being
 
 PINCHED TOM. 173 
 
 born thereof. Nor was Mr Whitelaw, angry as 
 he was and withal confident of success, slow to 
 give in his defence to the effect that the child had 
 been born alive, and had been heard to sCream — a 
 defence which startled Writer George mightily; 
 for it was the first intimation he had got of the 
 important fact, and his experience told him how 
 supple Scotch witnesses are — even to the extent 
 that it took no fewer than fifteen learned Judges 
 to get the subtle thing called truth out of the 
 subtle minds of " the canny people ; " but he had 
 no alternative than to consent to the commission 
 to Maister Wylie, advocate, to take a proof of the 
 defender's averment and report. And so accord- 
 ingly the proceedings went on. Mr Advocate 
 Wylie sat in one of the rooms adjoining the court 
 to take the depositions of the witnesses, and Mr 
 Williamson was there for Mr Whitelaw, and Mr 
 Hamilton for Mr Monypenny. The first wit- 
 ness called was Mrs Jean Gilchrist, who swore 
 very honestly that she heard the child scream ; 
 and Robina Proudfoot swore as honestly to the 
 same thing ; nor could all the efforts of Mr Advo- 
 cate Hamilton shake those sturdy witnesses, if it 
 was not that, as so often happens with Scotch 
 witnesses, the more the advocate wrestled with 
 them, the more firm they waxed. Nor need we 
 say that the philosophical axiom, that the intensity
 
 174 THE STORY OF 
 
 of belief is always inversely as the reason for it, 
 never had weight with our Scotch judges. But 
 then came the difficulty about the causa scientice ; 
 for neither of the two witnesses could swear that 
 she sazu the child alive 'and after the scream, 
 inasmuch as the child was certainly dead before 
 they saw the body ; so it was only at best a 
 strong presumption that the cry actually did 
 come from that child. The witnesses dispersed 
 these quibbles, and insisted that, as there was no 
 other child in that room, the cry could come from 
 no other source than Mrs Whitelaw's baby. But 
 the crowning witness was to come — Mrs Euphan 
 Lythgow herself, who would put an end to all 
 doubts ; and come she did. Asked whether she 
 delivered Mrs Whitelaw of a child on the night in 
 question, her answer was in the affirmative. 
 
 " Was it a boy or a girl .-•" 
 
 "A callant, sir," was the answer; for Scotch wit- 
 nesses will use their own terms, let counsel do what 
 they please. " And," added Mrs Lythgow, " he 
 was to be baptized after his father when the time 
 came. He was to be called Tammas." 
 
 "Just so," continued Mr Hamilton; "and was 
 he dead or alive when he was born V 
 
 " Indeed, sir, little Tam was as life-like as you 
 are when I handled him wi' thae hands."
 
 PINCHED TOM. 175 
 
 " How do you know that ?" was the next ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "Ken whether a bairn is dead or hving?" re- 
 sponded the midwife, with an ironical laugh. " Do 
 dead bairns scream, think ye, Maister Hamilton ? 
 Ay, sir, I heard little Tam cry just as plainly as I 
 hear you speak. It 's God's way wi' mony a wean. 
 They seem to ken it 's an ill warld they 're born 
 into, wi' so mony lawyers in 't, and they just gie a 
 cry and gae awa back again." 
 
 And thus the evidence was concluded ; nor did 
 it ever occur to these hair-wigged and ear-wigged 
 cfentlemen to ask the astute howdie whether there 
 
 o 
 
 was any other creature in the house (except Mr 
 Thomas Whitelaw himself, who was out of the 
 question) that bore the name of Tam ; and Mrs 
 Lythgow's conscience, like many others, sat as easy 
 on the equivocation as a hen does on an addled 
 effCf with a shell like the rest, which contain little 
 chickens all alive. And the case was virtually 
 saved, as subsequently appeared, when the fifteen, 
 all ear-wigged too, pronounced sentence in favour 
 of the defender, Mr Whitelaw. But it was not till 
 some time afterwards the real truth came out. 
 " The labourer is worthy of his hire," and when 
 Mrs Euphan called for fee, on Mr Whitelaw asking 
 how much, the cunning howdie replied —
 
 176 PINCHED TOM. 
 
 " Just a hundred merks, Maister Whitelaw," 
 
 " A hundred merks for bringing a child into the 
 world, which lived no longer than to give a 
 scream ?" 
 
 "Ay, but you iorget pinched Tain," replied she. 
 
 Whereupon Mr Whitelaw began to meditate, 
 and thereupon ejaculated — " Oh ! I see. Yes, yes ; 
 I did forget pinched Tarn ; and now I remember, 
 he came into me that evening after you had ejected 
 him from the bedroom." 
 
 "Surely, sir," rejoined the woman; "think ye I 
 was fule enough to keep him in the room to be 
 seen by the women, after I had got out o' him a' 
 that I wanted ? " 
 
 And Mrs Lythgow got her hundred merks. How 
 the incident came to the ears of Lord Kilkerran, 
 history saith not ; but if you are curious, you may 
 see upon the margin of the said Session Paper the 
 words — " Beware of pinched Tom !"
 
 ^I)c »)torp oC tlje 3|ron ^vt^^. 
 
 \M?l 
 
 m 
 
 HE story of the Iron Press hung about tny 
 memory for years before I got it local- 
 ised ; nor do I know very well how it 
 came to me, whether from the page of an old 
 broad-sheet, or the tougher tongue of an old dame 
 — the real vellum for the inscription of wonderful 
 legends. However this may be, it is of small im- 
 portance, inasmuch as I was subsequently so for- 
 tunate — and the word will be properly estimated 
 by the real story-hunter — as to find myself in the 
 very room where the recess of the press was still to 
 be seen. How I did look at it, to be sure ! nay, if 
 it had been of gold — all my own, too — I question 
 if I could have gazed into the dark recess with 
 more interest ; for gold, to people of my bias, is 
 nothing in comparison with the enchantment that 
 hangs about the real concrete souvenir of an old 
 wonder. But before going further, I must apprise 
 the English reader that the word " press" — a Scotch 
 
 word of somewhat doubtful derivation {inaiigre 
 
 M
 
 178 THE STORY OF 
 
 Jamieson) — is convertible into the more modern 
 designation " cupboard," or rather " pantry ;" with 
 the quahfication that our Scotch term more gene- 
 rally implies the adjunct of a door with lock and 
 key. 
 
 With which help you may be induced to repre- 
 sent to yourself, as vividly as the fervour of your 
 imagination may enable you, the house in Hynd- 
 ford's Close, which, at the time wherein we are 
 concerned, was occupied by a retired advocate 
 called Mr George Plenderleith. You may see in 
 it yet the signs of its old gentility. There are the 
 panellings on the walls, the hooks whereon were 
 suspended the flowered and figured draperies, the 
 painted roofs, the peculiar enamelled sides of the 
 chimneys having the appearance of china — all so 
 very unlike our modern house fashions. It may 
 not be that the iron press which was in the back 
 bed-room, and the recess of which still remains, 
 had anything to do with the fashion of the time ; 
 nor would it be easy to divine its use in a private 
 gentleman's house, who had no ledgers, journals, 
 or cash-books to preserve from fire, lest certain 
 creditors might say they were burnt to help con- 
 cealment. Perhaps it was for the conservation of 
 some great property rights, or title-deeds as we 
 call them ; perhaps state papers — anything you 
 like, but not the least unlikely, it may have been
 
 THE IRON PRESS. ijc^ 
 
 for the purpose of concealing some unfortunate 
 Covenanter, who could still boast, in his pathetic 
 way, that he had verily nowhere to lay his head ; 
 for the cell was too small for a reclining posture — 
 nay, he could scarcely have got upon his knees to 
 offer his Ebenezer for the preservation of the solemn 
 league and covenant, and give thanks that he had 
 got out of " the bishop's drag-net" and into an iron 
 
 cage. 
 
 Most certainly, at least, this iron cage was not 
 intended to immure the delicate person of the 
 beautiful Ailsie Plenderleith, the only daughter of 
 the advocate — nay, the greatest belle you could 
 have met, displaying her gown of mazerine and 
 her petticoat of cramosie, from " the castle on the 
 knowe to the palace in the howe;" or, as the say- 
 ing went, from " the castle gate to the palace yett." 
 We don't doubt that our Miss Ailsie deserved all 
 this high-flown praise ; only we are to keep in 
 mind that no young lady that ever figured in a 
 legend, from the time of the Fair Maid of Troy to 
 her of Perth, was ever anything less than an angel 
 without wings. And in the case of our Ailsie, she 
 might well have passed for possessing these ap- 
 pendages too, when we consider that she would 
 not be behind her sister-belles in the size of those 
 heavy folds of braided silk they drew through their 
 pocket-holes, and seemed to fly with. We need
 
 i8o THE STORY OF 
 
 not say that such a creature, if amiable in her,; 
 mind and affections, would be doated on by such 
 a father as Mr Plenderleith, who had now no wife 
 to console him, and who would expect from his 
 child at least as much love as he was willing to 
 bestow on her. And so, to be sure, it was ; he 
 loved his dear Ailsie to what may be called pater- 
 nal distraction, but as for how much dutiful affec- 
 tion Ailsie bestowed on him, we cannot say. 
 
 On another point we can be more sure, and that 
 is, that although her father had many nice beaux 
 in his eye who had a power to dot, and doubtless 
 on so fine a subject no disinclination at all to doat, 
 the never a one of them would the saucy Ailsie 
 look upon except with that haughty disdain which, 
 when it appears in a beautiful woman, is so apt 
 to pique young admirers into greater adoration, 
 mixed, it may be, sometimes with a little choler — 
 a thing that is not so alien to love as you would 
 imagine. Nor was the reason of all this cold hau- 
 teur any wonder at all when we are given to know 
 that Miss Plenderleith had one day, by the merest 
 chance, taken into her eye, and even to the back 
 or innermost recesses thereof, the figure of a young 
 student of " old Embro' College," called Frederick 
 Lind, a poor bursar of no family, but blessed with 
 what was ten thousand times of more importance 
 in the estimation of the tasteful Ailsie — a handsome
 
 THE IRON PRESS. i8i 
 
 person, and a fine ruddy, intelligent face, which was 
 lighted up with an eye as likely to drink up the 
 form of Ailsie as hers had been to receive his. And 
 no doubt it may appear very wonderful that Cupid, 
 who is, as they say, as blind as a bat, and so hits 
 by chance, should have the power of imparting to 
 the eyes of his victims the faculty not only of 
 seeing each other more clearly than before, but 
 also of reading each other's eyes so plainly, that 
 by a glance they know^ that they are mutually 
 thinking of each other. But such, we all know 
 very well, is the fact, and so Frederick Lind and 
 Ailsie Plenderleith came to this state of know- 
 ledge, and not only so, they came to means of 
 ascertaining, by actual conversation, whether such 
 was really the 'case or not — the consequence of 
 which was just the natural one, that the sympathy 
 of this knowledge became the sympathy of love ; 
 and we suspect that if any one was to blame for 
 this, it was Old Mother Nature herself, who is 
 considerably stronger and more dogmatic in her 
 opinions than either mother or father of earthly 
 mould. 
 
 The connexion thus formed — we are compelled, 
 though sorry," to say, clandestinely — might not 
 have entailed upon the young devotees any very 
 formidable consequences, had they been prudent, 
 and confined their meetings to St Leonard's
 
 i82 THE STORY OF 
 
 Double -dykes, St Anthony's Well, the Giant's 
 Ribs, the Hunter's Bog, or the Friar's Walk. Nay, 
 they might have adventured even less recondite 
 walks ; but they had some notions of comfort 
 wtj-'ch would be gratified with nothing short of a 
 roof over their very irrational heads, and probably 
 a fire burning by their sides, as if love could not 
 have kept itself in fuel without the assistance of 
 so coarse and earthy a thing as Midlothian coal. 
 
 While all this was going forward, and generating 
 confidence in the ordinary ratio of successful im- 
 munity, our good and loving old Mr Advocate 
 Plenderleith was just as busy with his eyes in en- 
 deavouring to find out among the said beaux of 
 Edinburgh, with their braided broad-tailed coats 
 and ruffled wristbands, of which Mr Frederick 
 Lind had nothing to boast, such a one as would 
 be likely to form a suitable husband to his pretty 
 but scornful, (to all save one,) daughter, and a pro- 
 mising son-in-law to himself; that is, one who 
 would bring a sum to the mutual exchequer, and 
 take care not only of Ailsie, but that fine property 
 of his in Lanarkshire, called Threemarks, from its 
 valuation in the land-roll being of that very con- 
 siderable extent. And so he did his best to invite 
 one or two of them to his house in Hyndford's 
 Close to drink a bottle of claret, and see Miss 
 Ailsie through the charmed medium of the same.
 
 THE IRON PRESS. 183 
 
 being satisfied that a young woman is seen to more 
 
 advantage through that medium than through the 
 
 roses of the Paphian groves where Venus dalhes 
 
 with her son. But all this paternal black-footing 
 
 would not do, because the step went only in one 
 
 direction, without a return. Our Ailsie scorned 
 
 'them all — a very unwise policy in the little rebel, 
 
 for she might have seen that her father, who was 
 
 a shrewd man, would be likely to suspect that the 
 
 ship which rides at an anchor, however little seen, 
 
 is just that very one which seems to defy most 
 
 the blustering winds and the rolling waves. And 
 
 accordingly Mr Plenderleith began to think that 
 
 his daughter's heart must be anchored somewhere 
 
 — not so likely on golden sands as on some tough 
 
 clay — and that " where " he would have given his 
 
 old Parliament-House wig, with all the meal in it 
 
 to boot, to find out. Nay, he began to be angry 
 
 before he could assure himself of the fact ; and 
 
 being as determined under a restrainer as he ever 
 
 had been under a retainer, he was a dangerous 
 
 man for even a loving daughter to tamper with. 
 
 But old fathers, probably with spectacles, are 
 not good watchers of their love-stricken daugh- 
 ters ; and Mr Plenderleith, knowing this, placed 
 confidence in his old servant or servitor, (as these 
 domestic Balderstones were then called,) Andrew 
 Crabbin, and got him to keep an eye upon the
 
 i84 THE STORY OF 
 
 outgoings and incomings, and companionship and 
 letters of the unsuspecting Ailsie. On the other 
 hand, she was incHned to place faith in Andrew — 
 not that she let him know the name or degree of 
 her beloved Frederick, but that she bespoke his 
 secrecy in the event of his seeing her with a highly 
 respectable young man, of genteel connexions, 
 whom her father would be delighted to receive 
 as a son-in-law, but who was not just yet in a 
 position to present himself in the drawing-room. 
 Which two confidences Andrew received together, 
 and found means in his canny Scotch head to 
 entertain both kindly, but with a foregone con- 
 clusion that he would make more money out of 
 the rents and fees of his master than the pin- 
 money of poor Ailsie. 
 
 Yet Miss Plenderleith was so dexterous in 
 managing her intrigue, that Andrew had for a 
 time nothing to reveal ; but opportunity comes at 
 the end to patience, and this was the case one 
 night when Andrew was busy cleaning his mas- 
 ter's long boots in an outhouse at the back of the 
 dwelling-house ; for as he was straining to get the 
 article in his hand as bright as the " Day and 
 Martin " of the time would make it, his attention 
 was directed to a sound from the red-tiled roof 
 Whereupon, pricking up his ears, Andrew put his 
 head out at the door, and what in all this wide
 
 THE IR ON PRESS. 1 8 5 
 
 earth does he see but two boots disappearing at 
 Ailsie's bed-room window ! He had never seen 
 any of the two or three pairs his master possessed 
 going into the house in that way, and probably 
 he did not need that fact to explain to him the 
 wonderful apparition. Nor was it any question 
 with him what to do. The hour was late, but his 
 master was not gone to bed, if he was not yet en- 
 gaged over his mulled claret, with a bit of toast 
 done pretty brown in it. 
 
 Having accordingly got, unobserved from above, 
 into the back door — the more by reason that he 
 waited till the window-sash came down with all 
 prudential softness of sound — Andrew made his 
 way up-stairs to the room where Mr Plenderleith 
 was regaling himself, and probably thinking of the 
 scornful Ailsie, who would not accord to his matri- 
 monial wishes. " There 's a young man gone in 
 this minute at Miss Ailsie's bed-room window," 
 said he, in a mysterious way, to his master ; 
 whereupon Mr Plenderleith started up in a great 
 rage, and rushing to a closet brought forth a long 
 rapier of formidable sharpness. " I will slay him 
 on the spot," said he, " for it is hamesucken and a 
 deuced deal more, and I have law on my side. 
 Come with me, Andrew Crabbin." But Andrew's 
 intermediate views did not accord with the slaugh- 
 ter of Ailsie's lover. " Wait," says he, " till I lis-
 
 1 86 THE STORY OF 
 
 ten;" and hastening to Miss Plenderleith's room, 
 he tirled at the door, so that it might be heard 
 inside, but not by his enraged master, whose spirit 
 was more in his fiery eye than his ear ; and com- 
 ing back more slowly than comported with his 
 master's fury — "Now's your time," said he, " for 
 I heard him inside." Nor was there now any time 
 lost, for the infuriated father rushed along the 
 lobby to his daughter's chamber door, which, to 
 his surprise, he found unfastened ; and, having 
 entered, he found Ailsie all very much at her 
 ease, nor was there anything to rouse his suspi- 
 cions at ail except the condition of the blind, which 
 was drawn up. No more was needed — that was 
 enough ; the angry father accused his daughter 
 with having had a man in her bed-room. Ailsie 
 denied the charge, but it was of no avail. Orders 
 were upon the instant issued to get the carriage 
 ready, and in the course of an hour afterwards Mr 
 Plenderleith and his daughter, with Andrew and 
 the two female servants in a hired carriage, were 
 on their way to his house at Threemarks. The 
 house in Hyndford's Close was shut up. Mr Plen- 
 derleith had in so short a period made up his 
 mind, and executed a purpose which he considered 
 necessary to his own honour and his daughter's 
 preservation. 
 
 Time passed on, and in the meantime Andrew
 
 THE IRON PRESS. 187 
 
 kept his secret, delighted in his own mind that he had 
 saved the hfe of the young man. About a month 
 afterwards Mr Plenderleith came to tow^n alone, 
 and having entered the house found everything 
 precisely as he left it. But he had an object — no 
 other than to discover whether Ailsie had left any 
 letters whereby he might discover the name of 
 the clandestine lover. So far he succeeded, and 
 having returned to Threemarks, he some time 
 afterwards despatched Andrew to Edinburgh to 
 make inquiries as to a student of the name of 
 Frederick Lind. This commission Andrew exe- 
 cuted with fidelity, but all his efforts were vain ; 
 no tidings could be heard of the youth. The land- 
 lady with whom he had lodged said that he had 
 gone out one night and had never returned ; and 
 the opinion of his relations, to whom she had com- 
 municated the fact of his absence, was, that he 
 had gone to England, where he also had relations. 
 With this account Mr Plenderleith was so far 
 pleased, but he continued from time to time to 
 repeat his inquiries with no better, or rather to 
 him worse, success. Yet such was his apprehen- 
 sion lest his daughter should again have it in her 
 power to deceive him, that he remained at Three- 
 marks for the full space of three years and more. 
 
 Meanwhile Ailsie, having come to the conclu- 
 sion that she would not see her lover again, re-
 
 1 88 THE STORY OF 
 
 nounced all thoughts of him except what perhaps 
 at night would rise up to her fancy, when the in- 
 ternal lights play false with the reason. The 
 young heart requires only time to renounce the 
 strongest passion, though a cherished memory will 
 still hang suspended over the sacred tomb of its 
 affections. And so it was. More time passed, till 
 at length Ailsie Plenderleith agreed to give her 
 hand to a young advocate of the name of George 
 Graham, who had good prospects at the bar. The 
 couple were to be married in Hyndford's Close, 
 and the house was put in order to receive them. 
 Ailsie came in a bride. The ceremony was per- 
 formed with great eclai and rejoicings. And now 
 comes that part of the legend which always fits so 
 well to some great occasion, such as a marriage ; 
 but we must take these things as we find them. 
 The new-married couple were to sleep in the room 
 which had been the scene of so strange a play 
 three or four years ago. On returning to take off 
 her bride's dress, her eye became fixed upon the 
 door of the iron press. A wild thought. seized her 
 brain : she applied her finger to the well-known 
 spring. The door opened, and the skeleton of 
 Frederick Lind fell out against her, rattling in 
 the clothes that hung about it, and striking her as 
 it fell with a loud crash on the floor. 
 
 The explanation of our legend is not difficult.
 
 THE IRON PRESS. 189 
 
 Lind had been pushed into the press on previous 
 occasions, without the door being closed entirely 
 upon him. Ailsie, on the fatal evening, had no 
 doubt thought that she had left the door as she 
 used to do ; but in the hurry consequent on the 
 coming of her father, she had committed the ter- 
 rible mistake of imparting to it too much impulse, 
 whereby the lock had caught ; and as the spring 
 was not available inside, the prisoner was immured 
 beyond the chance of escape. So narrow, too, was 
 the recess, that the skeleton form had stood up- 
 right in the clothes, and it thus fell out when 
 relieved of the support of the door.
 
 ^1)0 ^tor^ or tijc (Bid jforffcr. 
 
 T is a common thing for writers of a cer- 
 tain class, when they want to produce 
 the feehng of wonder in their readers, to 
 introduce some frantic action, and then to account 
 for it by letting out the secret that the actor was 
 mad. The trick is not so necessary as it seems, 
 for the strength of human passions is a potenti- 
 ality only limited by experience ; and so it is that 
 a sane person may under certain stimulants do 
 the maddest thing in the world. The passion 
 itself is always true, it is only the motive that may 
 be false ; and therefore it is that in narrating for 
 your amusement, perhaps I may add instruction, 
 the following singular story — traces of the main- 
 parts of which I got in the old books of a former 
 procurator-fiscal — I assume that there was no more 
 insanity in the principal actor, Euphemia, or, as 
 she was called, Effie, Carr, when she brought her- 
 self within the arms of the law, than there is in 
 you, when now you are reading the story of her
 
 ^ 
 
 THE GIRL FORGER, 191 
 
 strange life. She was the only daughter of John 
 Carr, a grain merchant, who lived in Bristo Street. 
 It would be easy to ascribe to her all the ordinary 
 and extraordinary charms that are thought so 
 necessary to embellish heroines ; but as we are 
 not told what these were in her case, we must be 
 contented with the assurance that nature had been 
 kind enough to her to give her power over the 
 hearts of men. We shall be nearer our purpose 
 when we state, what is necessary to explain a pe- 
 culiar part of our story, that her father, in conse- 
 quence of his own insufficient education, had got 
 her trained to help him in keeping his accounts 
 with the farmers, and in writing up his books ; 
 nay, she enjoyed the privilege of writing his drafts 
 upon the Bank of Scotland, which the father con- 
 trived to sign, though in his own ilhterate way, 
 and with a peculiarity which it would not have 
 been easy to imitate. 
 
 But our gentle clerk did not consider these 
 duties imposed upon her by her father as exclud- 
 ing her either from gratifying her love of domestic 
 habits by assisting her mother in what at that time 
 was denominated hussyskep or housekeeping, or 
 from a certain other gratification, which might 
 without a hint from us be anticipated — no other 
 than the luxury of falling head and ears, and heart 
 too we fancy, in love with a certain dashing young
 
 192 THE STOR V OF 
 
 student of the name of Robert Stormonth, then 
 attending the University more for the sake of 
 polish than of mere study ; for he was the son of 
 the proprietor of Kelton, and required to follow no 
 profession. How Effie got entangled with this 
 youth we have no means of knowing, so we must 
 be contented with the Scotch proverb — 
 
 "Tell me where the flea may bite, 
 And I will tell where love may light." 
 
 The probability is that, from the difference of their 
 stations and the retiring nature of our gentle clerk, 
 we shall be safe in assuming that he had, as the 
 saying goes, been smitten by her charms in some 
 of those street encounters, where there is more of 
 Love's work done than in " black-footed " tea co- 
 teries expressly held for the accommodation of 
 Cupid. And that the smitting was a genuine feeling 
 we are not left to doubt, for, in addition to the rea- 
 sons we shall afterwards have too good occasion 
 to know, he treated Effie, not as those wild stu- 
 dents who are great men's sons do " the light o' 
 loves" they meet in their escapades; for he in- 
 trusted his secrets to her, he took such small 
 counsel from her poor head as a " learned clerk " 
 might be supposed able to give ; nay, he told her 
 of his mother, and how one day he hoped to be 
 able to introduce her at Kelton as his wife. All
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 193 
 
 which Effie repaid with the devotedness of that 
 most wonderful affection called the first or virgin 
 love — the purest, the deepest, the most thorough- 
 going of all the emotions of the human heart. 
 But as yet he had not conceded to her wish that 
 he should consent to their love being made known 
 to Efifie's father and mother : love is only a leveller 
 to itself and its object ; the high-born youth, in- 
 ured to refined manners, shrunk from a family 
 intercourse, which put him too mucli in mind of 
 the revolt he had made against the presumed 
 wishes and intentions of his proud parents. 
 Wherein, after all, he was only true to the in- 
 stincts of that institution, apparently so inhumane 
 as well as unchristian in its exclusiveness, called 
 aristocracy ; and yet with the excuse that its roots 
 are pretty deeply set in human nature. 
 
 But, proud as he was, Bob Stormonth the 
 younger, of Kelton, was amenable to the obliga- 
 tions of a necessity, forged by his own imprudent 
 hands. He had, by afast mode of living, got into 
 debt — a condition from which his father, a stern 
 man, had relieved him twice before, but with a 
 threat on the last occasion that if he persevered 
 in his prodigality he would withdraw from him his 
 yearly allowance, and throw him upon his own 
 resources. The threat proved ineffectual, and this 
 
 young heir of entail, with all his pride, was once 
 
 N
 
 194 THE STORY OF 
 
 in the grasp of low-born creditors : nay, things in 
 this evil direction had gone so far that writs were 
 out against him, and one in the form of a caption 
 was already in the hands of a messenger-at-arms. 
 That the debts were comparatively small in 
 amount was no amelioration where the purse was 
 all but empty ; and he had exhausted the limited 
 exchequers of his chums, which with college youths 
 was, and is, not difficult to do. So the gay Bob 
 was driven to his last shift, and that, as is gene- 
 rally the case, was a mean one ; for necessity, as 
 the mother of inventions, does not think it proper 
 to limit her births to genteel or noble devices to 
 please her proud consort. He even had recourse 
 to poor Effie to help him ; and, however ridiculous 
 this may seem, there were reasons that made the 
 application appear not so desperate as some of his 
 other schemes. It Vv^as only the caption that as 
 yet quickened his fears ; and as the sum for which 
 the writ was issued was only twenty pounds, it 
 was not, after all, so much beyond the power of a 
 clerk. 
 
 It was during one of their ordinary walks in the 
 Meadows that the pressing necessity was opened 
 by Stormonth to the vexed and terrified girl. He 
 told her that, but for the small help he required in 
 the meantime, all would be ruined. The wrath of 
 his father would be excited once more, and prob-
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 195 
 
 ably to the exclusion of all reconciliation ; and he 
 himself compelled to flee, but whither he knew 
 not. He had his plan prepared, and proposed to 
 Effie, who had no means of her own, to take a loan 
 of the sum out of her father's cash-box — words 
 very properly chosen according to the euphemistic 
 policy of the devil, but Effie's genuine spirit was 
 roused and alarmed. 
 
 " Dreadful ! " she whispered, as if afraid that 
 the night-wind would carry her words to honest 
 ears. " Besides," she continued, " my father, who 
 is a hard man, keeps his desk lockit." 
 
 Words which took Stormonth aback, for even 
 he saw there was here a necessity as strong as his 
 own ; yet the power of invention went to work 
 again. 
 
 " Listen, Effie," said he. " If you cannot help 
 me, it is not likely we shall meet again. I am 
 desperate, and will go into the army." 
 
 The ear of Effie was chained to a force which 
 was direct upon the heart. She trembled and 
 looked wistfully into his face, even as if by that 
 look she could extract from him some other de- 
 vice less fearful by which she might have the 
 power of retaining him for so short a period as a 
 day. 
 
 " You draw out your father's drafts on the bank, 
 Effie," he continued. " Write one out for me, and
 
 196 THE STORY OF 
 
 I will put your father's name to it. You can draw 
 the money. I will be saved from ruin ; and your 
 father will never know." 
 
 A proposal which again brought a shudder over 
 the girl. 
 
 " Is it Robert Stormonth who asks me to do this 
 thing .-* " she whispered again. 
 
 " No," said he ; " for I am not myself Yester- 
 day, and before the messenger was after me, I 
 would have shrunk from the suggestion. I am 
 not myself, I say, Effie. Ay or no ; keep me or 
 lose me, — that is the alternative." 
 
 " Oh, I cannot," was the language of her inno- 
 cence, and for which he was prepared; for the 
 stimulant was again applied in the most powerful 
 of all forms — the word farewell was sounded in her 
 ear. 
 
 " Stop, Robert ; let me think." But there was 
 no thought, only the heart beating wildly. •' I 
 will do it ; and may the penalty be mine, and 
 mine only." 
 
 So it was : " even virtue's self turns vice when 
 misapplied." What her mind shrank from was 
 embraced by the heart as a kind of sacred duty 
 of a love making a sacrifice for the object of its 
 first worship. It was arranged ; and as the firm- 
 ness of a purpose is often in proportion to the 
 prior disinclination, so Effie's determination to
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 
 
 197 
 
 save her lover from rain was forthwith put in exe- 
 cution ; nay, there was even a touch of the heroine 
 in her, so wonderfully does the heart, acting under 
 its primary instincts, sanctify the device which 
 favours its affection. That same evening Effie 
 Carr wrote out the draft for twenty pounds on the 
 Bank of Scotland, gave it to Stormonth, who from 
 a signature of the father's, also furnished by her, 
 perpetrated the forgery — a crime at that time 
 punishable by death. The draft so signed was 
 returned to Effie. Next forenoon she went to the 
 bank, as she had often done for her father before ; 
 and the document being in her handwriting, as 
 prior ones of the same kind had also been, no 
 scrutinising eye was turned to the signature. The 
 money was handed over, but not cowited by the 
 recipient, as before had been her careful habit — a 
 circumstance with its effect to follow in due time. 
 Meanwhile Stormonth was at a place of appoint- 
 ment out of the reach of the executor of the law, 
 and was soon found out by Effie, who gave him 
 the money with trembling hands. For this surely 
 a kiss was due. We do not know ; but she re- 
 turned with the satisfaction, overcoming all the 
 impulses of fear and remorse, that she had saved 
 the object of her first and only love from ruin and 
 flight. 
 
 But even then the reaction was on the spring ;
 
 198 THE STORY OF 
 
 the rebound was to be fearful and fatal. The 
 teller at the bank had been struck with Effie's 
 manner ; and the non-counting of the notes had 
 roused a suspicion, which fought its way even 
 against the improbability of a mere girl perpetrat- 
 ing a crime from which females are generally free. 
 He examined the draft, and soon saw that the 
 signature was a bad imitation. Thereupon a mes- 
 senger was despatched to Bristo Street for inquiry. 
 John Carr, taken by surprise, declared that the 
 draft, though written by the daughter, was forged 
 — the forgery being in his own mind attributed 
 to George Lindsay, his young salesman. Enough 
 this for the bank, who had in the first place only 
 to do with the utterer, against whom their evidence 
 as yet only lay. Within a few hours afterwards 
 Effie Carr was in the Tolbooth, charged with the 
 crime of forging a cheque on her father's account- 
 current. 
 
 The news soon spread over Edinburgh — at that 
 time only an overgrown village, in so far as re- 
 garded local facilities for the spread of wonders. 
 It had begun there, where the mother was in re- 
 curring faints, the father in distraction and not less 
 mystery, George Lindsay in terror and pity. And 
 here comes in the next strange turn of our story. 
 Lindsay all of a sudden declared he was the per- 
 son who imitated the name — a device of the yearn-
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 199 
 
 ing heart to save the girl of his affection from the 
 gallows, and clutched at by the mother and father 
 as a means of their daughter's redemption. One 
 of those thinly-sown beings who are cold-blooded 
 by nature, who take on love slowly but surely, and 
 seem fitted to be martyrs, Lindsay defied all con- 
 sequences, so that it might be that Effie Carr 
 should escape an ignominious death. Nor did he 
 take time for further deliberation ; in less than 
 half an hour he was in the procurator-fiscal's office ; 
 the willing self-criminator ; the man who did the 
 deed ; the man who was ready to die for his young 
 mistress and his love. His story, too, was as ready 
 as it was truth-seeming. He declared that he had 
 got Effie to write out the draft as if commissioned 
 by John Carr ; that he took it away, and with his 
 own hands added the name ; that he had returned 
 the cheque to Effie to go with it to the bank, and 
 had received the money from her on her return. 
 The consequence was his wish, and it was inevit- 
 able. That same day George Lindsay was lodged 
 also in the Tolbooth, satisfied that he had made a 
 sacrifice of his life for one whom he had loved for 
 years, and who yet had never shown him even a 
 symptom of hope that his love would be returned. 
 All which proceedings soon came on the wings 
 of rumour to the ears of Robert Stormonth, who 
 was not formed to be a martyr even for a love
 
 200 THE STORY OF 
 
 which was to him as true as his nature would per- 
 mit. He saw his danger, because he did not see 
 the character of a faithful girl who would die 
 rather than compromise her lover. He fled — 
 aided probably by that very money he had wrung 
 out of the hands of the devoted girl ; nor was his 
 disappearance connected with the tragic transac- 
 tion ; for, as we have said, the connexion between 
 him and Effie had been kept a secret, and his 
 flight could be sufficiently accounted for by his 
 debt. 
 
 Meanwhile the precognitions or examination of 
 the parties went on, and with a result as strange 
 as it was puzzling to the officials. Effie was firm 
 to her declaration that she not only wrote the 
 body of the cheque, but attached to it the name 
 of her father, and had appropriated the money in 
 a way which she declined to state. On the other 
 hand, Lindsay was equally stanch to his state- 
 ment made to the procurator-fiscal, that he had 
 got Effie to write the draft, had forged the name 
 to it, and got the money from her. The authori- 
 ties very soon saw that they had got more than 
 the law bargained for or wanted; nor was the diffi- 
 culty likely soon to be solved. The two parties 
 could not both be guilty, according to the evi- 
 dence, nor could one of them be guilty to the 
 exclusion of the other ; neither, when the balance
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 201 
 
 was cast, was there much difference in the weight 
 of the scales, because while it was in one view more 
 hkely that Lindsay signed the false name, it was 
 beyond doubt that Effie wrote the body of the 
 document, and she had moreover presented it. But 
 was it for the honour of the law that people should 
 be hanged on a likelihood ? It was a new case 
 without new heads to decide it, and it made no 
 difference that the body of the people, who soon 
 became inflamed on the subject, took the part of 
 the girl and declared against the man. It was easy 
 to be seen that the tracing of the money would 
 go far to solve the mystery ; and accordingly there 
 was a strict search made in Lindsay's lodgings, as 
 well as in Effie's private repositories at home. We 
 need not say with what effect, where the money 
 was over the Border and away. It was thus in all 
 views more a case for Astraea than common heads ; 
 but then she had gone to heaven. The Lord Ad- 
 vocate soon saw that the law was likely to be 
 caught in its own meshes. The first glimpse was 
 got of the danger of hanging so versatile, so in- 
 consistent, so unsearchable a creature as a human 
 being on a mere confession of guilt. That that had 
 been the law of Scotland in all time, nay, that it 
 had been the law of the world from the beginning, 
 there was no doubt. Who could know the mur- 
 derer or the forger better than the murderer or the
 
 202 THE STORY OF 
 
 forger themselves ? and would any one throw away 
 his life on a false plea ? The reasoning does not 
 exhaust the deep subject ; there remains the pre- 
 sumption that the criminal will, in ninety-nine cases 
 out of a hundred, deny, and deny boldly. But our 
 case threw a new light on the old law, and the 
 Lord Advocate was slow to indict where he saw 
 not only reasons for failure, but also rising difficul- 
 ties which might strike at the respect upon which 
 the law was founded. 
 
 The affair hung loose for a time ; and Lindsay's 
 friends, anxious to save him, got him induced to 
 run his letters, — the effect of which is to give the 
 prosecutor a period wherein to try the culprit, on 
 failure of which the person charged is free. The 
 same was done by Effie's father ; but quickened as 
 the Lord Advocate was, the difficulty still met him 
 like a ghost that would not be laid, — that if he put 
 Effie at the bar, Lindsay would appear in the wit- 
 ness-box ; and if he put Lindsay on his trial, Effie 
 would swear he was innocent ; and as for two 
 people forging the same name, the thing had never 
 been heard of And so it came to pass that the 
 authorities at last, feeling they were in a cleft stick, 
 where if they relieved one hand the other would be' 
 caught, were inclined to liberate both panels. But 
 the bank was at that time preyed upon by forgeries, 
 and were determined to make an example now
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 203 
 
 when they had a culprit, or perhaps two. The 
 consequence was, that the authorities were forced 
 to give way, vindicating their right of choice as to 
 the party they should arraign. That party was 
 Effie Carr; and the choice justified itself by two 
 considerations : that she, by writing and uttering 
 the cheque, was so far committed by evidence ex- 
 terior to her self-inculpation ; and secondly, that 
 Lindsay might break down in the witness-box un- 
 der a searching examination. Effie was therefore 
 indicted and placed at the bar. She pleaded guilty, 
 but the prosecutor notwithstanding led evidence ; 
 and at length Lindsay appeared as a witness for the 
 defence. The people who crowded the court had 
 been aware from report of the condition in which 
 Lindsay stood ; but the deep silence which reigned 
 throughout the hall when he was called to answer 
 evinced the doubt whether he would stand true to 
 his self-impeachment. The doubt was soon solved. 
 With a face on which no trace of fear could be per- 
 ceived, with a voice in which there was no quaver, 
 he swore that it was he who signed the draft and 
 sent Effie for the money. The oscillation of sym- 
 pathy, which had for a time been suspended, came 
 round again to the thin pale girl, who sat there 
 looking wistfully and wonderingly into the face of 
 the witness ; and the murmuring approbation that 
 broke out, in spite of the shrill "Silence" of the
 
 204 THE STORY OF 
 
 crier, expressed at once admiration of the man — 
 criminal as he swore himself to be — and pity for 
 the accused. What could the issue be ? Efifie was 
 acquitted, and Lindsay sent back to gaol. Was 
 he not to be tried } The officials felt that the 
 game was dangerous. If Lindsay had stood firm 
 in the box, had not Effie sat firm at the bar, with 
 the very gallows in her eye ; and would not she, in 
 her turn, be as firm in the box.'' All which was too 
 evident ; and the consequence in the end came to 
 be, that Lindsay was in the course of a few days 
 set at liberty. 
 
 And now there occurred proceedings not less 
 strange in the house of John Carr. Lindsay was 
 turned off, because, though he had made a sacrifice 
 of himself to save the life of Effie, the sacrifice was 
 only that due to the justice he had offended. The 
 dismissal was against the protestations of Effie, 
 who alone knew he was innocent ; and she had to 
 bear the further grief of learning that Stormonth 
 had left the city on the very day whereon she was 
 apprehended — a discovery this too much for a 
 frame always weak, and latterly so wasted by her 
 confinement in prison, and the anguish of mind 
 consequent upon her strange position. And so it 
 came to pass, in a few more days, that she took to 
 her bed, a wan, wasted, heart-broken creature ; but 
 stung as she had been by the conduct of the man
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 205 
 
 she had offered to die to save, she felt even more 
 the sting of ingratitude in herself for not divulging 
 to her mother as much of her secret as would have 
 saved Lindsay from dismissal ; for she was now 
 more and more satisfied that it was the strength of 
 his love for her that had driven him to his great 
 and perilous sacrifice. Nor could her mother, as 
 she bent over her daughter, understand why her 
 liberation should have been followed by so much 
 of sorrow ; nay, loving her as she did, she even 
 reproached her as being ungrateful to God. 
 
 " Mother," said the girl, " I have a secret that 
 lies like a stane upon my heart. George Lindsay 
 had nae mair to do with that forgery than you." 
 " And who had to do with it then, Effie, dear V 
 " Myself," continued the daughter ; " I filled up 
 the cheque at the bidding o' Robert Stormonth, 
 whom I had lang loved. It was he wha put my 
 faither's name to it. It was to him I gave the 
 money, to relieve him from debt, and he has fled." 
 " Effie, Effie !" cried the mother ; " and we have 
 done this thing to George Lindsay — ta'en from 
 him his basket and his store, yea, the bread o' his 
 mouth, in recompense for trying to save your life 
 by offering his ain." 
 
 " Yes, mother," added Effie ; " but we must make 
 that wrang richt." 
 
 " And mair, lass," rejoined the mother, as she
 
 2o6 THE STORY OF 
 
 rose abruptly and nervously, and hurried to her 
 husband, to whom she told the strange intelligence. 
 Then John Carr was a just man as well as a lov- 
 ing parent ; and while he forgave his unfortunate 
 daughter, he went and brought back George Lind- 
 say to his old place that very night ; nor did he or 
 Mrs Carr know the joy they had poured into the 
 heart of the young man, for the reason that they 
 did not know the love he bore to their daughter. 
 But if this was a satisfaction to Effie, in so far as it 
 relieved her heart of a burden, it brought to her a 
 burden of another kind. The mother soon saw 
 how matters stood with the heart of Lindsay, and 
 she moreover saw that her or her daughter's erati- 
 tude could not be complete so long as he was de- 
 nied the boon of being allowed to marry the girl 
 he had saved from the gallows ; and she waited her 
 opportunity of breaking the delicate subject to 
 Effie. It was not time yet, when Effie was an in- 
 valid ; and even so far wasted and worn as to cause 
 apprehensions of her ultimate fate, even death ; nor 
 perhaps would that time ever come when she could 
 bear to hear the appeal without pain ; for though 
 Stormonth had ruined her character and her peace 
 of mind — nay, had left her in circumstances almost 
 unprecedented for treachery, baseness, and cruelty 
 — he retained still the niche where the offerings of 
 a first love had been made : his image had been
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 207 
 
 indeed burned into the virgin heart, and no other 
 form of man's face, though representing the pos- 
 sessor of beauty, wealth, and worldly honours, 
 would ever take away that treasured symbol. It 
 haunted her even as a shadow of herself, which, 
 disappearing at sundown, comes again at the rise 
 of the moon ; nay, she would have been contented 
 to make other sacrifices equally great as that which 
 she had made ; nor wild moors, nor streams, nor 
 rugged hills, would have stopped her in an effort 
 to look upon him once more, and replace that in- 
 evitable image by the real vision, which had first 
 taken captive her young heart. 
 
 But time passed, bringing the usual ameliora- 
 tions to the miserable. Effie got so far better in 
 health that she became able to resume, in a languid 
 way, her former duties, with the exception of those 
 of " the gentle clerk" — for of these she had had 
 enough ; even the very look of a bank-draft brought 
 a shudder over her ; nor would she have entered 
 the Bank of Scotland again, even with a good 
 cheque for a thousand pounds to have been all her 
 own. Meanwhile the patient George had plied a 
 suit which he could only express by his eyes, or 
 the attentions of one who worships ; but he never 
 alluded, even in their conversations, to the old 
 sacrifice. The mother too, and not less the father, 
 saw the advantages that might result as well to the
 
 2o8 THE STORY OF 
 
 health of her mind as that of her body. They had 
 waited — a vain waiting — for the wearing out of the 
 traces of the obdurate image : and when they 
 thought they might take placidity as the sign of 
 what they waited for, they first hinted, and then 
 expressed in plain terms, the wishes of their hearts. 
 For a time all their efforts were fruitless; but John 
 Carr, getting old and weak, wished to be succeeded 
 in his business by George ; and the wife, when she 
 became a widow, would require to be maintained, 
 — reasons which had more weight with Efifie than 
 any others, excepting always the act of George's 
 self-immolation at the shrine in which his fancy 
 had placed her. The importunities at length wore 
 out her resistings, without effiacing the lines of the 
 old and still endeared image ; and she gave a cold, 
 we may say reluctant, consent. The bride's " ay " 
 was a sigh, the rapture a tear of sadness. But 
 George was pleased even with this : Effie, the long- 
 cherished Effie, was at length his. 
 
 In her new situation Effie Carr — now Mrs Lind- 
 say — performed all the duties of a good and faith- 
 ful wife ; by an effort of the will no doubt, though 
 in another sense only a sad obedience to necessity, 
 of which we are all, as the creatures of motives, the 
 very slaves. But the old image resisted the ap- 
 peals of her reason, as well as the blandishments 
 of a husband's love. She was only true, faithful,
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 209 
 
 and kind, till the birth of a child lent its reconcil- 
 ing power to the efforts of duty. Some time after- 
 wards John Carr died — an event which carried in 
 its train the subsequent death of his wile. There 
 was left to the son-in-law a dwindling busmess, and 
 a very small sum of money ; for the father had met 
 with misfortunes in his declining years, which im- 
 paired health prevented him from resisting. Time 
 wore on, and showed that the power of the martyr- 
 spirit is not always that of the champion of worldly 
 success ; for it was now but a struggle between 
 George Lindsay, with a stained name, and the 
 stern demon of misfortune. He was at length 
 overtaken by poverty, which, as affecting Effie, 
 preyed so relentlessly upon his spirits, that within 
 two years he followed John Carr to the grave. 
 Effie was now left with two children to the work 
 of her fingers, a poor weapon wherewith to beat 
 off the wolf of want ; and even this was curtailed 
 by the effects of the old crime, which the public 
 still kept in green remembrance. 
 
 Throughout, our story has been the sensation- 
 alism of angry Fate, and even less likely to be 
 believed than the work of fiction. Nor was the 
 vulture face of the Nemesis yet smoothed down. 
 The grief of her bereavement had only partially 
 diverted Effie's mind from the recollections of him 
 
 who had ruined her, and yet could not be hated 
 
 O
 
 2TO 777^ STORY OF 
 
 by her, nay, could not be but loved by her. The 
 sensitised nerve, which had received the old image, 
 gave it out fresh again to the reviving power of 
 memory, and this was only a continuation of what 
 had been a corroding custom of years and years. 
 But as the saying goes, it is a long road that does 
 not offer by its side the spreading bough of shade to 
 the way-worn traveller. One day, when Efifie was 
 engaged with her work, of which she was as weary 
 as of the dreaming which accompanied it, there 
 appeared before her, without premonition or fore- 
 shadowing sign, Robert Stormonth, of Kelton, 
 dressed as a country gentleman, booted, and with 
 a whip in his hand. 
 
 " Are you Effie Carr .'' " 
 
 The question was useless to one who was already 
 lying back in her chair in a state of unconscious- 
 ness, from which she recovered only to open her 
 eyes and avert them, and shut them and open them 
 again, like the victim of epilepsy. 
 
 " And do you fear me .? " said the excited man, 
 as he took her in his strong arms and stared wildly 
 into her face ; " I have more reason to fear you, 
 whom I ruined," he continued. " Ay, brought 
 within the verge of the gallows. I know it all, 
 Efifie. Open your eyes, dear soul, and smile once 
 more upon me. Nay, I have known it for years, 
 during which remorse has scourged me through the
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 211 
 
 world. Look up, dear Effie, while I tell you I 
 could bear the agony no longer ; and now oppor- 
 tunity favours the wretched penitent, for my father 
 is dead, and I am not only my own master, but 
 master of Kelton, of which you once heard me 
 speak. Will you not look up yet, dear Efhe .'' I 
 come to make amends to you, not by wealth merely, 
 but to offer you again that love I once bore to you, 
 and still bear. Another such look, dear ; it is oil 
 to my parched spirit. You are to consent to be 
 my wife — the very smallest boon I dare offer." 
 
 During which strange rambling speech Effie was 
 partly insensible ; yet she heard enough to afford 
 her clouded mind a glimpse of her condition, and 
 of the meaning of what was said to her. For a 
 time she kept staring into his face as if she had 
 doubts of his real personality ; nor could she find 
 words to express even those more collected thoughts 
 that began to gather into form. 
 
 " Robert Stormonth," at length she said, calmly, 
 " and have you suffered too } Oh, this is more 
 wonderful to me than a' the rest o' these wonder- 
 ful things." 
 
 " As no man ever suffered, dear Effie," he an- 
 swered. " I was on the eve of coming to you, 
 when a friend I retained here wrote me to London 
 of your marriage with the man who saved you from 
 the fate into which I precipitated you. How I
 
 212 THE STORY OF 
 
 envied that man who offered to die for you ! He 
 seemed to take from me my only means of repara- 
 tion ; nay, my only chance of happiness. But he 
 is dead. Heaven give peace to so noble a spirit ! 
 And now you are mine. It is mercy I come to 
 seek in the first instance ; the love — if that, after 
 all that is past, is indeed possible — I will take my 
 chance of that." 
 
 " Robert," cried the now weeping woman, " if 
 that love had been aince less, what misery I would 
 have been spared ! Ay, and my father, and mo- 
 ther, and poor George Lindsay ; a' helped awa to 
 the grave by my crime, for it stuck to us to the 
 end." And she buried her head in his bosom, sob- 
 bing piteously. 
 
 " My crime, dear Effie, not yours," said he. " It 
 was you who saved my life ; and if Heaven has a 
 kindlier part than another for those who err by the 
 fault of others, it will be reserved for one who made 
 a sacrifice to love. But we have, I hope, some- 
 thing to enjoy before you go there, and as yet I 
 have not got your forgiveness." 
 
 " It is yours — it is yours, Robert," was the sob- 
 bing answer. " Ay, and with it a' the love I ever 
 had for you." 
 
 " Enough for this time, dear Effie," said he. " My 
 horse waits for me. Expect me to-morrow at this 
 hour with a better-arranged purpose." And fold-
 
 THE GIRL FORGER. 213 
 
 ing her in his arms, and kissing her fervently, even 
 as his remorse were thereby assuaged as well as his 
 love gratified, he departed, leaving Effie to thoughts 
 we should be sorry to think ourselves capable of 
 putting into words. Nor need we say more than 
 that Stormonth kept his word. Efifie Carr was in 
 a few days Mrs Stormonth, and in not many more 
 the presiding female power in the fine residence of 
 Kelton.
 
 ^\)z »)torj^ of 9^acp Sl^otljrie anl! tlje 
 Sl^iracle of tlje Cod. 
 
 T was said that David Hume's barber, who 
 had the honour of shaving the philoso- 
 pher every morning, w^as so scandaHsed 
 by David's Essay on Miracles, that he told him to 
 his face — which he was smoothing at the time — 
 that Mary Mochrie's miracle shut his mouth. And 
 no doubt this was so far true, for the shaver took 
 care while he was telling the story to hold David's 
 lips close with his left hand, while he was plying 
 his razor with the other. David, we are informed, 
 used to tell this anecdote himself along with the 
 story of the modern miracle appended to it ; and 
 as the latter is a good example of the easy way by 
 which the blind sentiment of wonder groping for 
 light comes to refer strange things to Divine inter- 
 position, and consequently the facility of belief in 
 those darker times, we may include among our
 
 MA R V 310 CURIE. 2 1 5 
 
 stories for the amusement of our readers that of 
 the miracle, which goes in this wise : — 
 
 On a fine day in the montli of June a certain 
 Miss Isabella Warrender, the daughter of a respect- 
 able burgess, bethought herself of the luxury of a 
 plunge in the Forth, on the sands to the west of 
 Newhaven, and with a view to safety, as well as 
 companionship, she behoved to take with her her 
 father's trusty servant, Mary Mochrie. The blue 
 bathing-gowns were accordingly put into the bas- 
 ket, and away they went on their journey of two 
 miles with heads " as light as lavrocks," and think- 
 ins" of no other miracle in the world than that of 
 
 o 
 
 enjoyment — a veritable miracle to many, insomuch 
 as it is to them in this world of doubtful happiness 
 and real misery miraculously scarce. Nor was it 
 long, with their light feet, ere they reached their 
 destination ; all things, too, being otherwise pro- 
 pitious, for the sun was shining in a clear sky, the 
 surface of the sea was as smooth as glass, and like 
 a mirror reflected the rays of the sun ; so that, to 
 speak figuratively, Apollo and Neptune were on 
 the best of terms, as if they had resolved to favour 
 specially on that day so fair a specimen of an 
 earthly maid, who, for a time, was to become a 
 water nymph. So, after looking out from beneath 
 her curls for Peeping Toms, — of whom, by the 
 way, to the honour of Scotland, our Godivas in
 
 2i6 THE STORY OF 
 
 these parts have little to complain, — Isabella got 
 herself made as like Musidora as possible, in which 
 condition she remained only for that single moment 
 occupied by Mary in investing her with the said 
 blue gown. Whereupon, Mary having also divested 
 herself of her clothes, was as quickly reclaimed from 
 the searching eyes of the upper of the two propi- 
 tious gods by her young mistress helping her on 
 with her sea dress. 
 
 All which sacrifices to Bona Dea are pretty uni- 
 form, if we may not say that, although young 
 women have as good a right to outrage modesty 
 by splashing about perfectly nude in the sea as 
 the men have, they know better than do any such 
 naughty thing. Nor, perhaps, was it any exception, 
 that as they went into the sea they took each other 
 by the hand, just as Adam and Eve did when they 
 walked hand in hand into a flood of sin, as en- 
 ticing to them, too, as the shining water was to our 
 virgins — a comparison more true than you may be 
 at present thinking. Then having got up to the 
 middle — that is, in a sense, half seas over, they got 
 into that sportive mood which belongs to bathers, 
 as if an infection from the playful element; and, 
 of course, they could not avoid the usual ducking, 
 which is performed by the two taking hold of both 
 hands, and alternately or simultaneously dipping 
 themselves over head, and as they emerge shaking
 
 MAR Y MOCHRIE. 217 
 
 their locks as the ducks do their wings when they 
 come out of the water. All which was very plea- 
 sant, as might have been apparent from the laugh- 
 ing and screighing which terrified the Tom Norries 
 there and then flying over their heads ; but it so 
 happened that in one of these see-saws Isabella's 
 foot slipped, and the consequence was that her 
 hands slipped also out of those of Mary, so that 
 she fell back into the water, more afraid, of course, 
 than hurt ; nor was this all, for no sooner had Isa- 
 bella got on her feet again than holding out her 
 left hand she cried in rather a wild way that she 
 had lost her ruby ring — nay, that very ring which 
 a certain George Ballennie had given her as a 
 pledge of his love, and the loss of which was so 
 like an augury of evil. And then as it was Mary's 
 hand which pulled it off, or rather Isabella's that 
 left it in Mary's, it was natural she should ask at 
 the same time whether Mary had it or had felt it. 
 but Mary asserted that she had it not, neither had 
 she felt it when coming off So if Mary was honest 
 if behoved to be in the sea, and in all likelihood 
 would never be found again. 
 
 And thus the pleasant act of bathing was inter- 
 rupted in the very middle, for how could there be 
 any more splashing and tumbling and mermaiding 
 with this terrible loss weighing upon Isabella's 
 heart ? She would not know how to face her
 
 2i8 THE STORY OF 
 
 mother ; and as for Ballennie, might he not think 
 that she who would not take better care of a love- 
 token had no great love on her part to be be- 
 tokened by a ring or anything else. The very sea 
 which a moment before was as beautiful as a blush- 
 ing bride holding out her arms for the embrace of 
 the bridegroom, became as hateful to her as a 
 Fury, and, hastening to the bank with tears in her 
 eyes, which, of course, could not be seen, she be- 
 gan to dress, Mary, who seemed to participate in 
 her young mistress's sorrow, commenced the same 
 operation ; but when the clothes were on what was 
 to be done ? The tide was ebbing, and an hour, 
 or at most two, would discover the channel at the 
 spot where the unlucky slip was made, but to re- 
 main all that time would produce uneasiness at 
 home, and . there appeared to be nothing for it but 
 for the young lady to go to Edinburgh, and le'ave 
 Mary to wait for the ebbing of the tide, and make a 
 search among the shingle for the valuable article. 
 
 A plan accordingly carried out. Mary certainly 
 awaited the ebb, and did make a search among the 
 gravel, but whether that search was conducted in 
 that assiduous way followed by those who are 
 lighted in their travel by the Lamp of Hope, it is 
 not for us at present to say. Certain at least it is 
 that Mary did not seem very greatly disappointed 
 at her failure in not finding Isabella's precious love-
 
 MA R V MOCHRIE. 2 1 9 
 
 token, for which want of feeling we do not require 
 to go very deep into Mary's breast, or any other 
 body's breast, seeing she was a woman, and had a 
 lover of her own, even George Gallie, as good as 
 Ballennie any day. True, he had never given her 
 a ruby ring ; though, as for that, he would if he 
 could, and if he couldn't how could he ? So Mary 
 was on a par with Isabella in that matter ; still, 
 we confess, she might have searched more carefully, 
 unless, indeed, we are to be so ungallant as to be- 
 lieve that she had in her mind some foregone secret 
 conclusion that the ring was not there to be found. 
 Nor, what is almost as strange, did Mary take 
 up her basket and commence her journey home- 
 ward in that saddened way which belongs to deep 
 disappointment. Nay, we are not sure but that 
 the words of the old song of her whose ring had 
 been stolen by a mermaid, were conned by Mary 
 to herself as she trudged homewards, — 
 
 " And sair she moiled, and sair she toiled. 
 To find the ring lost in the sea, 
 And still the thought within her wrought 
 That she would never married be." 
 
 But there was something else in her head when 
 she reached the house, where she met some very 
 suspicious looks not only from Isabella, but also 
 from Mrs Warrender, for we may as well confess 
 that the daughter had told her mother that when
 
 220 THE STORY OF 
 
 the slip of the hand took place she felt as if the 
 ring had been taken off by the hand of Mary. And 
 then when Mary appeared with a lugubrious face, 
 and reported that she had not found the ring in 
 the shingle, the foresaid suspicion was so much 
 confirmed, that very little more would be required 
 to induce Mr Warrender to make some judicial 
 investigation into the strange circumstance. An 
 inauspicious afternoon and night for Mary, and 
 not less the next day, when she was called into 
 the dining-room, and so sharply interrogated by 
 Mr Warrender, that she cried very bitterly, all the 
 time asserting that she never felt her hand touch 
 the ring, and that it had most certainly fallen into 
 the water and been lost. But Mr Warrender was 
 not a man who believed in tears, at least women's ; 
 for he was ungallant enough to think, that as we 
 cannot distinguish ex parte rei between those of 
 anger and those of sorrow, and as there is a kind 
 called crocodile, as limpid as the others, and just 
 as like a pretty dewdrop, so they never can or 
 ought to be received as evidence either of guilt or 
 innocence. And so it came about, that as the 
 hours passed the conviction grew stronger and 
 stronger in the minds of the family that the meek, 
 and church-going, and psalm-singing Mary Moch- 
 rie was a thief. 
 
 Of this latter fact, in the peculiar circumstances
 
 MARY MO CURIE. 22 1 
 
 of the case, there could be no evidence beyond the 
 finding of the missing article, either on Mary's 
 person or in some place under her power, for Isa- 
 bella's word could not go for much ; and so it was 
 resolved that Mary's person and trunk should be 
 searched. A very strong step in the case of a girl 
 who had hitherto held a very good character, and 
 probably altogether unjustifiable, where so power- 
 ful an abstractor of earthly things as Neptune was 
 apparently as much in the scrape as Mary. Yet 
 this strong thing was done illotis manibus, and, as 
 might have been expected, with no effect beyond 
 scandalising Mary, who went so far as to say that 
 Heaven took care of its own, and that God would 
 in His own time and way show her persecutors that 
 she was as innocent as that babe unborn, who takes 
 away and places, nobody knows where, so many 
 of the wickednesses of the world. But then an 
 assertion of innocence in the grand style of an ap- 
 peal to the Deity sometimes piques a prosecutor, 
 because it conveys an imputation that the accused 
 one is better taken care of by Heaven than he is ; 
 and so it turned out here, for Mr Warrender felt 
 as if he had been challenged to the ultimate trial 
 by ordeal, and he straightway proceeded to take 
 measures for having Mary apprehended upon the 
 charge of having robbed his daughter of the much- 
 prized ring.
 
 222 THE STORY OF 
 
 These measures were taken as they had been 
 resolved upon, and here it behoves us, for a reason 
 which may appear by and by, to be so particular 
 as to say, that the officer was to come in the morn- 
 ing after breakfast to convey the alleged culprit to 
 the office of the public prosecutor, for the purpose, 
 in the first place, of examination. Nor was Mary 
 unprepared, nay, she was not even to all appear- 
 ance very much put about, for she had gone about 
 her work as usual, and having finished what she 
 had to do as maid-of-all-work — cook, scullery- 
 maid, and scrub — she began to make preparations 
 for cutting-up and gutting, and scraping, and wash- 
 ing the large cod, which lay upon the dresser ready 
 for these operations, and which, by the way, Mrs 
 Warrender had that morning, an hour before, 
 bought for the sum of one and sixpence, from a 
 Jenny Mucklebacket, of the village of Newhaven 
 — another particular fact which we are bound to 
 apologise for on the foresaid plea of necessity, lest 
 we might incur the charge of wishing to produce 
 an effect by Dutch painting. But Mary's services 
 as to the cod were dispensed with by Mrs War- 
 render, if they were not actually resented as either 
 a bribe to forego the prosecution, or a cold-blooded 
 indifference assumed for the purpose of showing 
 her innocence. And so when the officer came 
 Mary was hurried away to undergo this terrible
 
 MAR V MOCHRIE. 223 
 
 ordeal, which, whatever other effect it might have, 
 could not fail to leave her marked with the very 
 burning irons that might not inflict the punishment 
 due to robbery. 
 
 Leaving Mrs Warrender with the cod, which is 
 as indispensable to our legend as a frying-pan to 
 a Dutch interior, or the bone of a pig to a saint's 
 legend, w^e follow the prisoner- to the office of the 
 man who is a terror to evil-doers. Mr Warrender 
 was there as the private prosecutor, and Isabella 
 as a witness, or rather iJie witness. On being 
 seated, the fiscal asked Mary, whether, on the day 
 of the bathing, she had not seen the said ring on 
 the finger of her young mistress ; whereto Mary 
 answered in the affirmative. Then came the appli- 
 cation of the Lydian stone, in the form of the ques- 
 tion, whether she did not, at the foresaid time and 
 place, abstract the said ring from the finger of 
 Isabella when she held her hand in the process of 
 dipping ; but Mary was here negative and firm, 
 asserting that she did not, and giving emphasis to 
 her denial by adding, that God knew she was as 
 innocent as the foresaid babe. In spite of all which, 
 Isabella insisted that she had been robbed in the 
 manner set forth. The fiscal saw at once that the 
 whole case lay between the two young women, and 
 recommended Mr Warrender to let go the prosecu- 
 tion as one which must fail for defect of evidence ;
 
 224 THE STORY OF 
 
 but that gentleman, for the reason that he had so 
 far committed himself, and also for that he was 
 annoyed at what he called the impudence of a ser- 
 vant disputing the word of his daughter, and call- 
 ing her, in effect, a liar, insisted upon his right, as 
 the protector and curator of his daughter, of having 
 the culprit committed to jail, in the expectation 
 that, through some medium of the three magic 
 balls, or otherwise, he would get more evidence of 
 the crime. The fiscal had no alternative ; and so 
 Mary Mochrie was taken to the Tolbooth, with the 
 ordinary result, in the first place, of the news going 
 up and down the long street which then formed the 
 city, that Mrs Warrender's servant was imprisoned 
 for the strange crime of abstracting from Miss 
 Warrender's finger, while bathing, the love-token 
 given to her by her intended. There was, doubt- 
 less, about the tale just so much of romance that 
 would serve it as wings to carry it wherever gossip 
 was acceptable — and we would like to know where 
 in that city it was not acceptable then, and where 
 it is not acceptable now. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs Warrender had been very busy 
 with the mute person of our drama — the cod — in 
 which, like the devil in the story who had bargained 
 for a sinner and having got a saint instead, had half 
 resolved to follow the advice of Burns and " take a 
 thought and mend," she had got so much more
 
 MARY MOCHRIE. 225 
 
 than she bargained for with the fishwife that she was, 
 when Mr Warrender and Isabella entered, ready 
 to faint. They found her sitting in a chair scarcely 
 able to move, under no less an agency than the fear 
 of God. Her breath came and went with difficulty 
 through lips with that degree of paleness which lips 
 have a special tendency to take on, an expression 
 of awe was over her face, and in her hand she held 
 that identical ruby ring for the supposed theft of 
 which the unfortunate Mary had been hurried to 
 jail, and as for being able to speak she was as mute 
 as the flounder in the proverb that never spoke but 
 once ; all she could do was to hold up the ring and 
 point to the cod upon the dresser. But all in vain, 
 for Mr "Warrender could not see through the ter- 
 rible mystery, nay, surely the most wonderful thing 
 that had ever happened in this lower world since 
 the time when the whale cast up Jonah just where 
 and when he was wanted, till at length Mrs War- 
 render was enabled to utter a few broken words 
 to the effect that the ring had been found in the 
 stomach of the fish. Then, to be sure, all was plain 
 enough — the cod was a chosen instrument in the 
 hands of the great Author of Justice sent by a spe- 
 cial message to save Mary Mochrle from the ruin 
 which awaited her under a false charge. The con- 
 viction was easy in proportion to the charm which 
 supernaturalism always holds over man —
 
 226 THE STORY OF 
 
 " True miracles are more believed 
 The more they cannot be conceived ;" 
 
 and we are to remember that the last witch had 
 not been burnt at the time of our story. But what 
 made this Divine interposition the more serious to 
 the house of the Warrenders, the message from 
 above was sent as direct as a letter by post, only 
 not prepaid, for Mrs Warrender had paid for the 
 fish ; and so it was equally plain that a duty was 
 thus put upon Mr Warrender of no ordinary kind. 
 Nor was he long in obeying the command. 
 Taking the wonderful ring along with him he hur- 
 ried away to the office he had so lately left, and 
 told the miraculous tale to the man of prosecutions. 
 And what although that astute personage smiled 
 at the story, just as if he would have said, if he had 
 thought it worth his while, " Was there any oppor- 
 tunity for Mary Mochrie handling the cod.-*" — it 
 was only the small whipcord of scepticism applied 
 to the posteriors of the rhinoceros of superstition, 
 even that instinct in poor man to be eternally look- 
 ing up into the blank sky for special providences. 
 So Mr Warrender, now himself a holy instrument, 
 got what he wanted — an order to the jailer for 
 Mary's liberation. So away he went ; and as he 
 went to the Tolbooth he told every acquaintance 
 he met the exciting story — among others his own 
 clergyman of the Greyfriars, who held up his hands
 
 MARY MOCHRIE. 227 
 
 and said, " Wonderful are the ways of God ! Yea, 
 this very thing hath a purpose in it, even that of 
 utterly demolishing'that arch sceptic David Hume's 
 soul-destroying Essay on Miracles. I will verily 
 take up the subject the next Sabbath." And thus, 
 dropping the germs as he went, which formed a 
 revolving radius line from the centre of the mys- 
 tery — his own house — the consequence was that 
 the miracle of the cod went like wildfire wherever 
 there was the fuel of a predisposing superstition ; 
 and where, we repeat, was that not then t where is 
 not now, despite of David with all his genius — the 
 first and best of the anti-Positivists, because he was 
 a true Pyrrhonean, Having got to the jail, Mr 
 Warrender informed Mary of this wonderful turn 
 of providence in her favour, whereat Mary, as a 
 matter of course, held up her hands in great won- 
 der and admiration. 
 
 But Mr Warrender was not, by this act of justice, 
 yet done with Mary. It behoved him to take her 
 home and restore her to her place, with a character 
 not only cleared of all imputation, but illustrated 
 by the shining light of the favour of Heaven ; and 
 so he accompanied her down the thronged High 
 Street, — an act which partook somewhat of the 
 procession of a saint, whereat people stared ; nay, 
 many who had heard of the miracle went up and 
 shook hands with one who was the favourite of the
 
 228 THE STORY OF 
 
 Great Disposer of events. Nor did her honours 
 end with this display ; for when they reached the 
 house they found it filled with acquaintances, and 
 even strangers, all anxious to see the wonderful 
 fish, and the ring, and the maid. In the midst of 
 all which honours Mary looked as simple as a 
 Madonna ; and if she winked it was only with one 
 eye, and the winking was to herself. Even here 
 her honours that day did not terminate, for she 
 behoved for once to dine with the family — not on 
 the cod, which was reserved as something sacred, 
 like the small fishes offered by the Phaselites to 
 their gods — but on a jolly leg of lamb, as a recom- 
 pense for the breakfast of which she had that 
 morning been deprived. Nay, as for the cod, in 
 place of being eaten, it stood a risk of being pickled, 
 and carried off to help the exchequer of some poor 
 Catholic community in the land of miracles. 
 
 But probably the most wonderful part of our 
 history consists in this fact, that no one ever hinted 
 at the propriety of having recourse to the easiest 
 and most natural way of solving a knot so easily 
 tied ; but we have only to remember another mys- 
 stery — that of the gullibility of man when under 
 the hunger of superstition. Nor need we say that 
 the maw of a cod, big and omnivorous as it is, 
 never equalled that of the miracle-devourer's, pos- 
 sessing, as it does, too, the peculiarity of keeping
 
 MARY MOCHRIE. 229 
 
 so long that which is accepted. Wherein it re- 
 sembles the purse of the miser, the click of the 
 spring of which is the sign of perpetual imprison- 
 ment. We only hear the subsequent jingle of the 
 coin, and the jingle in our present instance might 
 have lasted for twenty years, during all which 
 time Mary Mochrie's miracle might have served as 
 the best answer to the Essay of the renowned 
 sceptic. 
 
 And thus we are brought back to the anecdote 
 with which we set out. The story we have told is, 
 in all its essentials, that which Donald Gorm, 
 David Hume's barber, treated him to on that 
 morning when he wanted to close up for ever the 
 mouth of the arch sceptic. It is not easy to smile 
 while under the hands of a story-telling barber, for 
 the reason that the contracted muscle runs a risk of 
 being still more contracted by a slice being taken 
 off it by a resolute razor moving in straight lines, 
 so that probably it was not till Donald had finished 
 both the story and the shaving, that David dared 
 to indulge in that good-natured smile with which 
 he used to meet his opponents, even in the teeth 
 of the Gael's oath, "'Tis a miracle, py Cot," — a 
 word this latter which, in Donald's humour, might 
 stand for the word cod, as well as for another too 
 sacred to be here mentioned. 
 
 Yet the philosopher had further occasion for his
 
 230 THE STORY OF 
 
 good-humoured reticence, with which, as is well 
 known, he declared he would alone meet the 
 censors of his Essay, for it was really on the oc- 
 casion of this great religious sensation in the city 
 that the washer-women at the " Nor' Loch " 
 threatened to " dook him," for the reason that, as 
 they had heard, he had not only written that de- 
 testable Essay to prove that no miracles (for they 
 were ungenerous enough to pay no attention to 
 his ve7y grave exception of the real Bible ones) 
 could ever be, but he had actually gone the ex- 
 treme length of disbelieving the intervention of 
 God to save the innocent Mary Mochrie from the 
 Moloch of the criminal law. We need not be un- 
 assured that this additional bit of gossip, as it 
 spread though the city, would only tend to the 
 inflammation that already prevailed. Nor need 
 we wonder at all this, when we remember the play 
 of metaphysical wit, which was received as very 
 serious by the vulgar, — that David believed in 
 nothing, except that there was no God. 
 
 But the mind of the Edinburgh public was not 
 destined to cool down before it underwent further 
 combustion. It happened that a certain person of 
 the name of Gallic, a common working jeweller in 
 World's End Close, was possessed of knowledge 
 which he had picked up on the road to Newhaven, 
 whither he had been going to bathe, on that very
 
 MA R Y MOCHRIE. 23 1 
 
 morning when the miraculous ring was lost, and 
 which knowledge, he thought, being a knowing fel- 
 low, he could turn to account in the midst of the heat 
 of collision between the miracle-mongers and the 
 sceptics, even as he might have transmuted by the 
 fire of the furnace a piece of base metal into gold ; 
 and he took a strange way to effect his purpose. 
 Having first called on Mr Warrender and got a 
 sight of the magic ring, he next wrote an adver- 
 tisement, which he got printed in the form of the 
 small posters of that day of Lilliputian bills. It 
 ran in these terms : — " Mary Mochrie's Miracle. — 
 If any one is anxious to learne the trew secret 
 of this reputyd miracle, let him or her, mann or 
 woman, hye to the closs of ye Warld's End, where 
 Michael Gallic resideth, and on ye payement of 
 one shilling they will hear somethyng that will 
 astonie them ; but not one to tell ye other upon his 
 aith." 
 
 Copies of this bill Gallic posted on several walls 
 in the most crowded parts of the city, and the con- 
 sequence was such a crowd at World's End Close 
 as might have been looked for if the close had really 
 been the last refuge from a conflagration of another 
 kind. The applicants got their turn of entry ; 
 every one came out with a face expressive of won- 
 der, yet so true were they to their oath, that no 
 one would tell a word he had heard behind the veil
 
 232 THE STOR Y OF 
 
 of Gallie's mystery, so that the curiosity of the 
 outsiders, who wanted to save their shiUings, be- 
 came inflamed by pique in addition to curiosity. 
 The secret took on the sacred and cabahstic char- 
 acter of a mystery, and the mystery feeding, as it 
 always does, upon whispers and ominous looks, 
 increased as the hours passed. Nor can we won- 
 der at an excitement which had religion at the 
 bottom of it, and the vanquishment of the soul- 
 destroying David for the fruitful and ultimate issue. 
 It was only the high price of admission which 
 limited the number of Gallie's shillings, for during 
 the entire day the stern obligation of an oath 
 proved the stern honesty of a religious people. It 
 was said — and I see no reason to doubt the truth 
 of the report — that Dr Robertson and many others 
 of the educated classes caught the infection and 
 paid their shilling ; but we may doubt if the im- 
 perturbable David would risk his body or trouble 
 his spirit by looking into the mysterious close of 
 the World's End. 
 
 As to what took place within Gallie's room, it 
 would seem that the ingenious fellow, when he saw 
 the heather on fire, set his gins for the hares and 
 conies in such a way as to catch them by dozens. 
 He allowed the room to fill, and having adminis- 
 tered the oath to two or three dozen at a time, he 
 contrived during the course of the day to bag more
 
 MAR V MOCHRIE. 233 
 
 shillings than there might have been supposed to 
 be fools or religious enthusiasts even in supersti- 
 tious Edinburgh. Afterwards, when rumour be- 
 came busy with his gains, it was said that he was 
 thereby enabled to set up the famous silversmith's 
 shop that so long, under the name of " Gallie and 
 Son," occupied a prominent front in the High 
 Street, between Halkerston's Wynd and Milne's 
 Entry. 
 
 But as all things that depend upon mere human 
 testimony must ultimately be left insoluble, except 
 as belief makes an election and decision, so even 
 the revelation of the prophet Gallie did not settle 
 the great question of Mochrie versus Hume, for 
 Gallie could offer no corroboration of the testimony 
 of which he contrived to make a little fortune. 
 That revelation came to be known very well the 
 next day, probably from the softening and tongue- 
 loosening influence of Edinburgh ale exercised 
 upon even gnarled and cross-grained Presbyte- 
 rians ; and we need be under no doubt that Donald 
 Gorm, when he shaved the philosopher next morn- 
 ing, was in full possession of the secret, though we 
 might be entitled to hold pretty fast by the suspi- 
 cion that he would not court another smile from 
 David by recounting to him the destruction of his, 
 Donald's, theory of the miracle. 
 
 With an apology for having kept the reader too
 
 234 THE STORY OF 
 
 long from a knowledge of Gallia's revelation, we 
 now proceed to give it as it was currently reported. 
 It seemed that on that morning when the two girls 
 went to bathe, Gallic had left Edinburgh for the 
 same purpose about an hour later — a statement 
 probable enough, although not attempted to be 
 supported by any evidence. When about halfway 
 on his journey, he met Mary Mochrie, who, strangely 
 enough, though perfectly true, was his sweetheart. 
 After some talk about the kind of bathe she had 
 had, Mary showed him a ring, which she said she 
 had bought from an old Jew broker on the previ- 
 ous day, and which she regretted was too wide for 
 her finger. She then asked him to take it home 
 with him and reduce it. Gallic having taken the 
 ring into his hand started the moment he fixed his 
 eye upon it. 
 
 "That ring," said he, for, notwithstanding his 
 scheme to make capital out of superstition, of 
 which he was an enemy, he was an honest fellow, 
 — " that ring belongs to your young mistress ; and 
 the reason I know this is that I fixed the ruby in 
 it for her not yet a fortnight since." 
 
 Taken thus aback, Mary began to prevaricate, 
 saying that Miss Isabella Warrender had given it 
 to her, 
 
 " That cannot be," said Gallic, " because she told
 
 MARY MOCHRIE. 235 
 
 me it was a present from her lover, George Bal- 
 lennie, to whom she is to be married." 
 
 Words which GaUie uttered in a solemn if not 
 sorrowful tone, and a look indicating displeasure 
 and disappointment at thus detecting in the woman 
 whom he had intended to marry, both theft and 
 falsehood. Nor were these words left unrequited, 
 for the fiery girl, snatching the ring out of his hand, 
 called him a liar, besides taunting him with a 
 certain pendulous attitude which his father, old 
 Gallic, had assumed somewhere about the pre- 
 cincts of the Tolbooth immediately before dying. 
 The cruel remark was one of those combinations 
 of sharp words which have a tendency to stick, 
 especially where the brain to which they adhere 
 has been previously occupied by love, and so Gal- 
 lie, muttering to himself a determination to be 
 revenged, parted from her for ever, and proceeded 
 on his way to Newhaven. 
 
 Things in this world being so arranged that one 
 person's misfortune or wretchedness becomes an- 
 other person's opportunity, we may see how Gallic 
 came to his purpose. Perhaps he might not have 
 thought it worth his pains to expose his own sweet- 
 heart from a mere feeling of revenge, but when he 
 came to find that the woman who had cast up to 
 him his father's misfortune, had taken or been put
 
 236 THE STORY OF 
 
 into the position of an instrument of God's grace, 
 that the pubhc had been by her precipitated into 
 a superstitious enthusiasm — a species of feeling 
 which he hated, (for who knows but that he might 
 have been descended from that older Gallio who 
 deserved to have been hanged ?) and that he saw 
 by the clear vision of ingenuity that he could re- 
 venge himself as to Mary, and make himself rich 
 at the expense of the fools whom he despised, he 
 fell upon the adroit scheme which we have so faith- 
 fully recorded. 
 
 We have already also said that the oath of secrecy 
 which Gallic had imposed on his dupes was dis- 
 pensed with by some of the " loose-fish" who could 
 2iot be so easily caught as the devout cod. But 
 this did not end the controversy, for it immediately 
 took the form of a contest between the Gallieites 
 and the Mochrieites, and the fury of the contest 
 having drawn the attention of the officials of the 
 law, Mary was again apprehended, with the view 
 to be indicted for the theft of the ring, provided 
 any corroborative testimony could be got in sup- 
 port of the statement of Gallic, who was forced to 
 make his revelation to the fiscal, this one time 
 without a shilling. The Scotch people are blessed 
 or cursed with a metaphysical tendency, and this 
 may be the reason of their peculiar faith, as well as 
 of their_old suspicion of human testimony in the
 
 MA R V MO CUR IE. 237 
 
 courts of law. One witness has never been received 
 in Scotland as good for anything, if standing alone ; 
 and when we look to the samples of humanity that 
 meet us every day, so nicely poised between truth 
 and falsehood, that the weight of a Queen Anne's 
 farthing would decide the inclination to the one 
 side or the other, we are apt to think our judges 
 rather sagacious. Perhaps they thought of them- 
 selves in these palmy days when they took bribes, 
 and considered them very good and gracious things, 
 too, in their own way. But be all that as it may, 
 the evidence of Gallic was not corroborated in any 
 way ; the ring might have been put into the cod's 
 mouth by Isabella Warrender herself to ruin Mary. 
 Woman can do such things ; and Gallie's accusa- 
 tion might have been the consequence of Mary's 
 allusion to the fate of his father. The reSult, ac- 
 cordingly, was, that Mary Mochrie was dismissed. 
 Yet even here the affair did not end, for some 
 people received her with open arms, as being a 
 vessel of mercy.
 
 %^z »)tocj? ot tlje pelicam 
 
 (HOUGH not so much a tradition as a 
 memory still fresh probably in the minds 
 of some of the good old Edinburgh folks, 
 we here offer, chiefly for the benefit of our young 
 female readers who are fond of a story wherein 
 little heroines figure, as in Beranger's " Sylphide," 
 an account of a very famous adventure of a cer- 
 tain little Jeannie Deans in our city — the more 
 like the elder Jeannie, inasmuch as they both 
 were concerned in a loving effort to save the life 
 of a sister. Whereunto, as a very necessary in- 
 troduction, it behoves us to set forth that there 
 was, some sixty years ago, more or less, a cer- 
 tain Mr William Maconie, who was a mer- 
 chant on the South Bridge of Edinburgh, but 
 who, for the sake of exercise and fresh air, — a 
 commodity this last he need not have gone so far 
 from the Calton Hill to seek — resided at Juniper 
 Green, a little village three or four miles from St 
 Giles's. Nor did this distance incommode him
 
 THE PELICAN. 239 
 
 much, seeing that he had the attraction to quicken 
 his steps homewards of a pretty young wife and 
 two httle twin daughters, Mary and Annie, as hke 
 each other as two rosebuds partially opened, and 
 as like their mother, too, as the objects of our 
 simile are to themselves when full blown. 
 
 Peculiar in this respect of having twins at the 
 outset, and sisters too — a good beginning of a 
 contract to perpetuate the species — Mr Maconie 
 was destined to be even more so, inasmuch as 
 there came no more of these pleasant delicice 
 domi, at least up to the time of our curious 
 story — a circumstance the more to be regretted 
 by the father in consequence of a strange fancy 
 (never told to his wife) that possessed him of 
 wishing to insure the lives of his children as they 
 came into the world, or at least after they had 
 got through the rather uninsurable period of mere 
 infant life. And in execution of this fancy — a very 
 fair and reasonable one, and not uncommon at 
 that time, whatever it may be now, when people 
 are not so provident — he had got an insurance to 
 the extent of five hundred pounds effected in the 
 Pelican Office — perhaps the most famous at that 
 time — on the lives of the said twins, Mary and 
 Annie, who were, no doubt, altogether unconscious 
 of the importance they were thus made to hold in 
 the world.
 
 240 THE STORY OF 
 
 Yet, unfortunately for the far-seeing and pro- 
 vident father, this scheme threatened to fructify- 
 sooner than he wished, if indeed it could ever have 
 fructified to his satisfaction ; for the grisly spectre 
 of Typhus laid his relentless hand upon Mary when 
 she — and of a consequence Annie — was somewhere 
 about eight years old. And surely, being as we 
 are very hopeful optimists in the cause of human 
 nature, we need not say that the father, as he and 
 his wife watched the suffering invalid on through 
 the weary days and nights of the progress towards 
 the crisis of that dangerous ailment, never once 
 thought of the Pelican, except as a bird that feeds 
 its young with the warm blood of its breast. But, 
 sorrowful as they were, their grief was nothing in 
 comparison with the distress of little Annie, who 
 slipped about listening and making all manner of 
 anxious inquiries about her sick sister, whom she 
 was prohibited from seeing for fear of her being 
 touched by the said spectre ; nor was her heart the 
 less troubled with fears for her life, that all things 
 seemed so quiet and mysterious about the house — 
 the doctor coming and going, and the father and 
 mother whispering to each other, but never to her, 
 and their faces so sad-like and mournful, in place 
 of being, as was their wont, so cheerful and happy. 
 
 And surely all this solicitude on the part of 
 Annie Maconie need not excite our wonder, when
 
 THE PELICAN. 241 
 
 we consider that, from the time of their birth, the 
 twin sisters had never been separated ; but that, 
 from the moment they had made their entrance 
 on this world's stage, they had been always each 
 where the other was, and had run each where 
 the other ran, wished each what the other wished, 
 and wept and laughed each when the other 
 wept or laughed. Nature, indeed, before it came 
 into her fickle head to make two of them, had, in 
 all probabihty, intended these little sisters — " little 
 cherries on one stalk " — to be but one ; and they 
 could only be said not to be one, because of their 
 bodies being two — a circumstance of no great im- 
 portance, for, in spite of the duality of body, the 
 spirit that animated them was a unity, and as we 
 know from an old philosopher called Plato, the 
 spirit is really the human creature, the flesh and 
 bones constituting the body being nothing more 
 than a mere husk intended at the end to feed 
 worms. And then the mother helped this same- 
 ness by dressing them so like each other, as if she 
 wanted to make a " Comedy of Errors " out of the 
 two little female Dromios. 
 
 But in the middle of this mystery and solicitude, 
 it happened that Annie was to get some light ; for 
 at breakfast one morning — not yet that of the ex- 
 pected crisis — when her father and mother were 
 talking earnestly in an undertone to each other, 
 
 Q
 
 242 THE ST OR V OF 
 
 all unaware that the child, as she was moving 
 about, was watching their words and looks, much 
 as an older victim of credulity may be supposed to 
 hang on the cabalistic movements and incantations 
 of a sibyl, the attentive little listener eagerly drank 
 in every word of the following conversation : — 
 
 " The doctor is so doubtful," said the anxious 
 mother, with a tear in her eye, " that I have 
 scarcely any hope ; and if she is taken away, the 
 very look of Annie, left alone 'bleating for her 
 sister lamb,' will break my heart altogether." 
 
 " Yes," rejoined Mr Maconie, " it would be hard 
 to bear ; but," — and it was the first time since 
 Mary's illness he had ever remembered the insur- 
 ance, — " it was wise that I insured poor Mary's 
 life in the Pelican." 
 
 " Insured her life in the Pehcan ! " echoed the 
 wife, in a higher tone. " That was at least lucky ; 
 but, oh ! I hope we will not need to have our grief 
 solaced by that comfort in affliction for many a 
 day." 
 
 And this colloquy had scarcely been finished 
 when the doctor entered, having gone previously 
 into the invalid's room, with a very mournful ex- 
 pression upon his face ; nor did his words make 
 that expression any more bearable, as he said — 
 
 " I am sorry to say I do not like Mary's ap- 
 pearance so well to-day. I fear it is to be one
 
 THE PELICAN. 243 
 
 of those cases where we cannot discover anything 
 like a crisis at all ; indeed, I have doubts about 
 this old theory being applicable to this kind of 
 fever, where the virus goes on gradually working 
 to the end." 
 
 "The end!" echoed Mrs Maconie ; "then, doc- 
 tor, I fear you see what that will be." 
 
 " I would not like to say," added he ; " but I fear 
 you must make up your mind for the worst." 
 
 Now, all this was overheard by Annie, who, we 
 may here seize the opportunity of saying, was, in 
 addition to being a sensitive creature, one of those 
 precocious little philosophers thinly spread in the 
 female world, and made what they are often by 
 delicate health, which reduces them to a habit of 
 thinking much before their time. Not that she 
 wanted the vivacity of her age, but that it was 
 tempered by periods of serious musing, when all 
 kinds of what the Scotch call " auld farrent " (far 
 yont) thoughts come to be where they should not 
 be, the consequence being a weird-like kind of 
 wisdom, very like that of the aged ; so the effect 
 on a creature so constituted was just equal to the 
 cause. Annie ran out of the room with her face 
 concealed in her hands, and got into a small bed- 
 room darkened by the window-blind, and there, in 
 an obscurity and solitude suited to her mind and 
 feelings, she resigned herself to the grief of the
 
 244 THE STORY OF 
 
 young heart. It was now clear to her that her 
 dear Mary was to be taken from her ; had not the 
 doctor said as much ? And then she had never 
 seen death, of which she had read and heard and 
 thought so much, that she looked upon it as a 
 thing altogether mysterious and terrible. But had 
 she not overheard her father say that he had in- 
 sured poor dear Mary's life with the Pelican } and 
 had she not heard of the pelican — yea, the pelican 
 of the wilderness — as a creature of a most mythi- 
 cal kind, though she knew not aught of its nature, 
 whether bird or beast, or man or woman, or angel. 
 But whatever it might be, certain it was that her 
 father would never have got this wonderful creature 
 to insure Mary's life if it was not possessed of the 
 power to bring about so great a result ; so she cogi- 
 tated, and mused, and philosophised in her small 
 way, till she came to the conclusion that the peli- 
 can not only had the destiny of Mary in its hands, 
 but was under an obligation to save her from that 
 death which was so terrible to her. Nor had she 
 done yet with the all-important subject ; for all at 
 once it came into her head as a faint memory, that 
 one day, when her father was taking her along 
 with her mother through the city, he pointed to a 
 gilded sign, with a large bird represented thereon 
 tearing its breast with its long beak and letting 
 out the blood to its young, who were holding their
 
 THE PELICAN. 245 
 
 mouths open to drink it in. • There," said he, " is 
 the Pelican ; " words she remembered even to that 
 hour, for they were imprinted upon her mind by 
 the formidable appearance of the wonderful-look- 
 ing creature feeding its young with the very blood 
 of its bosom. But withal she had sense enough to 
 know — being, as we have said, a small philosopher 
 — that a mere bird, however endowed with the 
 power of sustaining the lives of its offspring, could 
 not save that of her sister, and therefore it behoved 
 to be only the symbol of some power within the 
 office over the door of which the said sign was 
 suspended. Nor in all this was Annie Maconie 
 more extravagant than are nineteen-twentieths of 
 the thousand millions in the world who still cling 
 to occult causes. 
 
 And with those there came other equally strange 
 thoughts ; but beyond all she could not for the 
 very life of her comprehend that most inexcusable 
 apathy of her father, who, though he had heard 
 with his own ears, from good authority, that her 
 beloved Mary was lying in the next bed-room 
 dying, never seemed to think of hurrying away to 
 town — even to that very pelican who had so gener- 
 ously undertaken to insure Mary's life. It was 
 an apathy unbecoming a father ; and the blood of 
 her little heart warmed with indignation at the 
 very time that the said heart was down in sorrow
 
 246   THE STORY OF 
 
 as far as its loose strings would enable it to go. 
 But was there no remedy ? To be sure there was, 
 and Annie knew, moreover, what it was ; but then 
 it was to be got only by a sacrifice, and that sacri- 
 fice she also knew, though it must of necessity be 
 kept in the meantime as secret as the wonderful 
 doings in the death-chamber of the palace of a 
 certain Bluebeard. 
 
 Great thoughts these for so little a woman as 
 Annie Maconie ; and no doubt the greatness and 
 the weight of them were the cause why, for all that 
 day — every hour of which her father was allowing 
 to pass — she was more melancholy and thoughtful 
 than she had ever been since Mary began to be ill. 
 But, somehow, there was a peculiar change which 
 even her mother could observe in her ; for while 
 she had been in the habit of weeping for her sister, 
 yea, and sobbing very piteously, she was all this 
 day apparently in a reverie. Nor even up to the 
 time of her going to bed was she less thoughtful 
 and abstracted, even as if she had been engaged 
 in solving some problem great to her, however 
 small it might seem to grown-up infants. As for 
 sleeping under the weight of so much responsi- 
 bility, it might seem to be out of the question, and 
 so verily it was ; for her little body, acted on by 
 the big thoughts, was moved from one side to 
 another all night, so that she never slept a wink
 
 THE PELICAN. 247 
 
 still thinking and thinking, in her unutterable grief, 
 of poor Mary, her father's criminal passiveness, 
 and that most occult remedy which so completely 
 engrossed her mind. 
 
 But certainly it was the light of morning for 
 which sister Annie sighed ; and when it came 
 glinting in at the small window, she was up and 
 beginning to dress, all the while listening lest the 
 servant or any other one in the house should know 
 she was up at that hour. Having completed her 
 toilet, she slipped downstairs, and having got to 
 the lobby, she was provident enough to lay hold 
 of an umbrella, for she suspected the elements as 
 being in league against her. Thus equipped, she 
 crept out by the back-door, and having got thus 
 free, she hurried along, never looking behind her 
 till she came to the main road to Edinburgh, when 
 she mounted the umbrella — one used by her father, 
 and so large that it was more like a main-sheet 
 than a covering suitable to so small a personage ; 
 so it behoved, that if she met any other " travellers 
 on purpose bent," the moving body must have ap- 
 peared to be some small tent on its way to a fair, 
 carried by the proprietor thereof, of whom no more 
 could be seen but the two short toddling legs, and 
 the hem of the black riding-hood. But what cared 
 Annie ? She toiled along ; the miles were long in 
 comparison of the short legs, but then there was a
 
 248 THE STORY OF 
 
 large purpose in that little body, in the view of 
 which miles were of small account, however long a 
 time it might take those steps to go over them. 
 Nor was it any drawback to all this energy, con- 
 centrated in so small a bulk, that she had had no 
 breakfast. Was the dying sister Mary able to take 
 any breakfast ? and why should Annie eat when 
 Mary, who did all she did — -and she always did 
 everything that sister Mary did — could not ? The 
 argument was enough for our little logician. 
 
 By the time she reached, by those short steps of 
 hers, the great city, it was half-past eleven, and 
 she had before her still a great deal to accomplish. 
 She made out, after considerable wanderings, the 
 street signalised above all streets by that wonder- 
 ful bird ; but after she got into it, the greater 
 difficulty remained of finding the figure itself, 
 whereto there was this untoward obstacle, that it 
 was still drizzling in the thick Scotch way of con- 
 crete drops of mist, and the umbrella which she 
 held over her head was so large that no turning it 
 aside would enable her to see under the rim at 
 such an angle as would permit her scanning so 
 elevated a position, and so there was nothing for 
 it but to draw it down. But even this was a task 
 — heavy as the main-sheet was with rain, and 
 rattling in a considerable wind — almost beyond 
 her strength ; and if it hadn't been that a kindly
 
 THE PELICAN. 249 
 
 personage who saw the little maid's difficulty gave 
 her assistance, she might not have been able to 
 accomplish it. And now, with the heavy article 
 in her hand, she peered about for another half- 
 hour, till at length her gladdened eye fell upon 
 the mystic symbol. 
 
 And no sooner had she made sure of the object, 
 than she found her way into the office, asking the 
 porter as well as a clerk where the pelican was to 
 be found — questions that produced a smile ; but 
 smile here or smile there, Annie was not to be 
 beat, nor did she stop in her progress until at last 
 she was shown into a room where she saw perched 
 on a high stool with three (of course) long legs, a 
 strange-looking personage with a curled wig and 
 a pair of green spectacles, who no doubt must be 
 the pelican himself. As she appeared in the room, 
 with the umbrella, not much shorter or less in 
 circumference than herself, the gentleman looked 
 curiously at her, wondering no doubt what the 
 errand of so strange a little customer could be. 
 
 " Well, my little lady," said he, " what may be 
 your pleasure?" 
 
 " I want the pelican," said Annie. 
 
 The gentleman was still more astonished, even 
 to the extent that he laid down his pen and looked 
 at her again. 
 
 " The pelican, dear }"
 
 250 THE STORY OF 
 
 " Ay ; just the pelican," answered she, deliber- 
 ately, and even a little indignantly. " Are you the 
 pelican ?" 
 
 " Why, yes, dear ; all that is for it below the 
 figure," said he, smiling, and wondering what the 
 next question would be. 
 
 " I am so glad I have found you," said she ; 
 " because sister Mary is dying." 
 
 " And who is sister Mary .''" 
 
 " My sister, Mary Maconie, at Juniper Green." 
 
 Whereupon the gentleman began to remember 
 that the name of William Maconie was in his books 
 as holder of a policy. 
 
 " And what more ?" 
 
 " My father says the pelican insured Mary's life, 
 and I want you to come direct and do it, because 
 I couldn't live if Mary were to die. And there 's 
 no time to be lost." 
 
 " Oh ! I see, dear ; and who sent you ?" 
 
 " Nobody," answered Annie. " My father 
 wouldn't come to you, and I have come from 
 Juniper Green myself, without telling my father 
 or mother." 
 
 " Oh yes, dear ; I understand you." 
 
 " But you must do it quick," continued she, " be- 
 cause the doctor says she 's in great danger ; so you 
 must come with me, and save her immediately." 
 
 " I am sorry, my dear little lady," rejoined he,
 
 THE PELICAN. 251 
 
 " that I cannot go with you ; but I will set about 
 it immediately, and I have no doubt, being able 
 to go faster than you, that I will get there be- 
 fore you, so that all will be right before you 
 arrive," 
 
 " See that you do it, then," said she, " because 
 I can't live if Mary dies. Are you quite sure you 
 will do it?" 
 
 " Perfectly sure, my little dear," added he ; " go 
 away home, and all will be right. The pelican 
 will do his duty." 
 
 And Annie being thus satisfied, went away, 
 dragging the main -sheet after her, and having 
 upon her face a look of contentment, if not abso- 
 lute happiness, in place of the sorrow which had 
 occupied it during all the time of her toilsome 
 journey. The same road is to be retraced ; and if 
 she had an object before which nerved her little 
 limbs, she had now the delightful consciousness of 
 that object having been effected — a feeling of in- 
 spiration which enabled her, hungry as she was, to 
 overcome all the toil of the return. Another two 
 hours, with that heavy umbrella overhead as well 
 as body, brought her at length home, where she 
 found that people had been sent out in various 
 directions to find the missing Annie. The mother 
 was in tears, and the father in great anxiety ; and 
 no sooner had she entered and laid down her bur-
 
 252 THE STORY OF 
 
 den, than she was clasped to the bosom, first of 
 one parent, and then of the other. 
 
 "But where is the pehcan?" said the anxious 
 little maid. 
 
 " The pelican ! my darling," cried the mother ; 
 " what do you mean .-'" 
 
 " Oh ! I have been to him at his own office at 
 Edinburgh, to get him to come and save Mary's 
 life, and he said he would be here before me." 
 
 " And what in the world put it in your head to 
 go there ?" again asked the mother. 
 
 " Because I heard my father say yesterday that 
 the pelican had insured dear sister Mary's life, and 
 I went to tell him to come and do it immediately ; 
 because, if Mary were to die, I couldn't live, you 
 know — that 's the reason, dear mother." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the father, scarcely able to 
 repress a smile which rose in spite of his grief. 
 " I see it all ; you did a very right thing, my love. 
 The pelican has been here, and Mary is better." 
 
 " Oh ! I am so glad," rejoined Annie, " for I 
 wasn't sure whether he had come or not ; because, 
 though I looked for him on the road, I couldn't 
 see him." 
 
 At the same moment the doctor came in, with a 
 blithe face. 
 
 " Mary is safe now," said he. " There has been 
 a crisis, after all. The sweat has broken out upon
 
 THE PELICAN. 253 
 
 her dry skin, and she will be well in a very short 
 time." 
 
 " And there 's no thanks to you," said Annie, 
 " because it was I who went for the pelican." 
 
 Whereupon the doctor looked to the father, who, 
 taking him aside, narrated to him the story, at 
 which the doctor was so pleased that he laughed 
 right out. 
 
 " You 're the noblest little heroine I ever heard 
 of," said he. 
 
 " But have you had anything to eat, dear, in 
 this long journey .''" said the mother. 
 
 " No, I didn't want," was the answer ; " all I 
 wanted was to save Mary's life, and I am glad I 
 have done it." . 
 
 And glad would we be if, by the laws of historical 
 truth, our stranger story could have ended here ; 
 but, alas ! we are obliged to pain the good reader's 
 heart by saying that the demon who had left the 
 troubled little breast of Mary Maconie took pos- 
 session of Annie's. The very next day she lay ex- 
 tended on the bed, panting under the fell embrace 
 of the relentless foe. As Maiy got better, Annie 
 grew worse ; and her case was so far unlike 
 Mary's, that there was more a tendency to a 
 fevered state of the brain. The little sufferer 
 watched with curious eyes the anxious faces of 
 her parents, and seemed conscious that she was
 
 254 THE PELICAN. 
 
 in a dangerous condition. Nor did it fail to occur 
 to her as a great mystery as well as wonder, why 
 they did not send for the wonderful being who 
 had so promptly saved the life of her sister. The 
 thought haunted her, yet she was afraid to men- 
 tion it to her mother, because it implied a sense 
 of danger — a fear which one evening she overcame. 
 Fixing her eyes, now every moment waxing less 
 clear, on the face of her mother — 
 
 " Oh ! mother, dear," she whispered, " why do you 
 not send for the pelican .''" 
 
 In other circumstances the mother would have 
 smiled ; but, alas, no smile could be seen on that 
 pale face. Whether the pelican was sent for we 
 know not, but certain it is, that he had no power 
 to save poor Annie, and she died within the week. 
 But she did not die in vain, for the large sum in- 
 sured upon her life eventually came to Mary, 
 whom she loved so dearly.
 
 %^z 3tDr^ of 2Dat3i0 SDemp^ter'^ (Bljat^r* 
 
 HERE was once an old saying very com- 
 mon in the mouths of the Edinburgh 
 people — " As dead as Davie Dempster." 
 It has long since passed away ; but whether it was 
 preferable to the one to which it has given place, 
 viz., — " As dead as a door-nail," we must leave to 
 those wise people who can measure degrees of non- 
 vitality in objects which are without life. Be all 
 which as it may, the imputed deadness of David 
 Dempster may appear to have some interest to us 
 when we know the story from which the old popu- 
 lar saying took its rise ; and the more, that the 
 story cannot be said to want a moral vitality, if it 
 has not even a spice of humour in it. Certain, to 
 begin with, David Dempster was at least once alive, 
 for we can vouch for his having been a very respect- 
 able denizen of the old city. We can even impart the 
 nature of his calling, that of a trafficker in the stuff 
 of man's wearing apparel, which he sold to those 
 who were willing to buy, and even to some who
 
 256 THE STORY OF 
 
 were unwilling to buy ; for David's tongue, if not 
 so long as his ell-wand, was a deuced deal more 
 supple. Nor does our information end here, for we 
 can, we are happy to say, tell the name of his wife, 
 which was Dorothy ; nay, we know even the inte- 
 resting particular, that when David had more Edin- 
 burgh ale in his stomach than humility in his head, 
 he got so far into the heroics as to call her Doro- 
 thea ; but as for the maiden name of this woman, 
 who was the wife of a man so famous as to have 
 been the source and origin of a proverb, we regret 
 to say that it has gone into the limbo of things that 
 are lost. To make amends, we can, however, add 
 that Mrs Dempster was, at the time of our story, 
 as plump and well coloured as Florabel ; but as 
 for David, who was ten years older than his wife, 
 he was just as plain as any man needs be without 
 pretension to being disagreeable. 
 
 We have said that David Dempster and his wife 
 were respectable, and we do not intend to offer a 
 jot more evidence on the point, than the fact that 
 they went to " the kirk " on Sundays, and that, too, 
 with faces of the normal Calvinistic elongation, 
 and in good clothes ; Dorothy being covered, head 
 and all, with her red silk plaid, and David immersed 
 in the long square coat of the times, with cuffs as 
 big as four-pound tea-bags, buttons as broad as 
 crown-pieces, and pockets able to have held Dr
 
 DAVIE DEMPSTER'S GHAIST. 257 
 
 Webster's — their ministers — pulpit Bible in the one, 
 and as many bottles of wine as the worthy gentle- 
 man could carry away at a sitting, in the other ; an 
 allusion this last by no means ill-natured, as we 
 may show by making the admission that, if David 
 and Dorothy had had heads big enough to carry 
 away all that their excellent preacher told them, 
 they required no more for unction and function for 
 a whole week. But, however fair things looked in 
 the sanctuary, it was otherwise at home in Lady 
 Stair s Close, where they resided, for it so happened 
 that our worthy clothes-merchant had got into 
 debt ; nay, there were hornings and captions out 
 against him, and he stood a chance any day in all 
 the year round of being shut up in " The Heart of 
 Mid-Lothian," not nearly so soft a one as Dorothy's. 
 Not that all David's creditors were equally hard 
 upon him, for the laird of Rubbledykes — a small 
 property on the left-hand side of the road to Cra- 
 mond — Mr Thomas Snoddy, who had lent him 
 two hundred pounds Scots, never asked him for a 
 farthing ; the reason of which requires a little ex- 
 planation. 
 
 In real secret truth the laird had been a lover of 
 Dorothy's before she was married to David, and 
 there is no doubt that if he had declared himself, 
 with Rubbledykes to back him, he would have car- 
 ried off the adorable Dorothy in triumph ; but then 
 
 R
 
 258 THE STORY OF 
 
 it was the laird's misfortune to be what the Scotch 
 call " a blate lover ;" which is just to say, a belated 
 one ; and Dorothy was married to the spruce and 
 ardent David before she knew that a real laird of 
 an estate was dying in secret for her. Nor could 
 she have had any doubt of the fact, for Mr Snoddy 
 summoned up courage to tell her so himself — a 
 circumstance which cost him something, insomuch 
 as no sooner did David know the fact than he asked 
 him for the loan of the said two hundred pounds 
 Scots money. Of course, David being, as we have 
 said, a man with a supple tongue, and brains at the 
 end of it, knew what he was about, and so sure 
 enough he succeeded ; for Rubbledykes, who would 
 not have lent two hundred pound Scots to the 
 treasurer of the Virgin Mary on a note-of-hand, 
 payable in Heaven, was even delighted to advance 
 that sum to the husband of his once loved, and for 
 ever lost, Dorothy. And in this act the laird was 
 wonderfully liberal ; for in his secret heart he con- 
 ditioned for no more than the liberty of being 
 allowed to visit the house in Lady Stair's Close on 
 market days, and sit beside Dorothy, and look at 
 her, and wonder at her still red cheeks — albeit, 
 more of the pickling cabbage than the rose — and 
 sigh at the loss of such a treasure. Neither in suf- 
 fering all this adoration did Mrs Dempster commit 
 any very heinous sin ; nay, being, as a good Cal-
 
 DA VIE DEM PS TER ' 5 GHA 1ST. 259 
 
 vinist, a believer in the excellent doctrine (if acted 
 up to) of " total depravity," she was necessarily in 
 the highway of salvation. 
 
 Neither did Mrs Dempster think it necessary to 
 conceal any of these doings from David. Nay, on one 
 particular Wednesday, after the laird had had his 
 fill of this will-worship, she brought the subject up 
 in so particular a way to her husband, that we are 
 thereby led to believe that they understood each 
 other, and could act in concert. The occasion was 
 the complaint of David that some of his other cre- 
 ditors were likely to be down upon him. 
 
 " Ah, Dorothy, if they were a like Snoddy." 
 
 Not a very respectful way of alluding to no less 
 a personage than the laird of Rubbledykes, let 
 alone his kindness ; but then David, being a debtor, 
 did not respect himself, and nothing was ever more 
 true than the saying, " That our own self-respect is 
 the foundation of that respect which we pay to 
 others." 
 
 " But they 're no' a' like the laird," replied Doro- 
 thy ; " and what 's mair, David, my man, the laird 
 winna be ane o' your creditors lang either." 
 
 " What mean you, lass .''" inquired David. 
 
 " I just mean neither mair nor less than that 
 Thomas Snoddy o' Rubbledykes, wha should hae 
 been my gudeman, is deein' as fast as he can bicker; 
 and that by and by I might have been my Leddy
 
 26o THE STORY OF 
 
 Rubbledykes wi' three hundred a year, and nae 
 husband to trouble me." 
 
 " That 's ill news," continued David ; " for if he 
 dees, the debt will gae to his brother, a man who 
 would raze the skin frae the mother's face that bore 
 him, if he could mak a leather purse out o't. But 
 what maks ye think he is deein', lass ?" 
 
 *' Deein' !" rejoined Dorothy, with an ill-timed, if 
 not cruel laugh. " That cough o' his would kill 
 baith you and me in a year, even if we should only 
 cough time about." 
 
 " Ower true, I fear," groaned David ; " and then 
 there's a' thae ither debts upon me. Hark, Doro- 
 thy, ye 're a clever dame; could ye no' get the 
 laird to discharge the debt V 
 
 " Maybe I might, were I to kiss, him, David," 
 was the answer, with another smile. 
 
 " And what for no'?" asked this honest man, w-ho 
 raised his voice in the Tron every Sunday. 
 
 " Because I am neither a Judith nor a Judas," 
 replied she. 
 
 " But ye 're a Christian," was the ready rejoinder; 
 "and what's mair, a Calvinist." 
 
 " As if a body could be a Christian without be- 
 ing a Calvinist," said she. " But what do ye mean, 
 David — are ye crazy ? Why should I kiss another 
 man because I 'm a Calvinist.''" 
 
 " Nae sin, nae salvation," said he.
 
 DAVIE DEMPSTER'S GHAIST. 261 
 
 Whereupon the worthy couple laughed at a tenet 
 which, being liable to a double construction, has 
 always been dangerous to the common people of 
 Scotland. And what was worse, this laugh was 
 only the prelude to a further conversation so deep 
 and mysterious, and withal conducted in so low a 
 train 'of whispers and re-whispers, that even our 
 familiar, endowed as he is with the power of go- 
 ing through stone walls, could carry off no more 
 than smiles and nods and winks, and more and 
 more of the same kind of laughs. But as the son 
 of Sirach says, " There is an exquisite subtlety, and 
 the same is unjust ;" and " Wrath will surely search 
 it." Nor was there in this case much time required 
 for the retribution, for the very next day a man 
 rushed into the house of Mrs Dempster with the 
 intelligence on his tongue that David Dempster 
 was drowned at Granton. The dreadful story was 
 indeed corroborated into a certainty by a bundle of 
 clothes which the messenger of evil tidings laid on 
 the table, no other than the suit which David had 
 put on that morning, including the linen shirt 
 which Dorothy's own fingers had adorned with the 
 breast-ruffle, and identified with the beloved ini- 
 tials, D. D., more precious to her than the symbols 
 of ecclesiastical honours. All were there as he had 
 left them on the beach before the plunge which was 
 to be unto death — yea, something after death, and
 
 262 THE STORY OF 
 
 more terrible, for had not David been a scoffer? 
 If Mrs Dempster had at first been able to collect 
 her scattered senses, she would have been satisfied 
 even with the look of the clothes, for she had heard 
 her husband say, with a blithe look, that he was to 
 go to Granton to bathe, and she would, moreoveri, 
 have had some minutes sooner the melancholy 
 satisfaction that one so dear to her had not com- 
 mitted suicide. 
 
 But the sudden impression left no room for con- 
 solations of any kind. Struggling nature could 
 do no more than work itself out of one swoon to 
 fall into another, and how long it was before she 
 could listen to the inrushing neighbours with their 
 news that he had been boated for, and dived for, 
 and hooked for, and searched for, no record re- 
 mains to tell. But that all these efforts had been 
 made there was no doubt, and as the hours passed 
 bringing as yet no assuagement of a grief which is 
 only amenable to time, it came to be known that 
 the coast had been examined all about the fatal 
 spot with no return but the inevitable noji inven- 
 tus ; nor did it require many days to satisfy the 
 unfortunate widow that the catastrophe was of 
 that complete kind where the remaining victim is 
 not only deprived of a husband, but denied the 
 poor consolation of seeing his dead body. 
 
 Yet how true it is that the kingdom of Death is
 
 DA VIE DEMPS TER 'S GUA IS T. 263 
 
 in the land of forgetfulness, not only to the ghostly 
 denizens who there dwell, but also to those who 
 are left in this region of quick memories. Where- 
 in surely there is a kindness in the cruelty ; for 
 assuredly there is no one who could suffer for a 
 protracted period the intensity of the first onset of 
 a grief of a privation which is to be for ever in this 
 world and be able to live. And this kindliness of 
 the fates was experienced by Mrs Dorothy Demp- 
 ster, who, after a decent period, and amidst the con- 
 solations of friends, felt herself in a condition to 
 be able to wait upon the creditors of her husband 
 and get them to be contented with the small stock 
 left by him, and give her acquittances of their 
 debts ; nay, so heartrending were her appeals, and 
 so miserable she appeared in her weeds, that these 
 good men even voted her a small sum out of the 
 wreck as a beautiful tribute to pity and humanity. 
 All which went for its value, so creditable as it 
 is to human nature, and we need hardly add that 
 the frequent reading of the encomium in the Mer- 
 cury on the merits of the deceased — which, of 
 course, proceeded on the inevitable rule that a 
 man is only good provided he is dead — heaped 
 up the consolation even to a species of melan- 
 choly pleasure. 
 
 And, surely, if on this occasion there was any 
 one ipsis charitibiis Jmmanior, it was Mr Thomas
 
 264 THE ST OR V OF 
 
 Snoddy, the good laird of Rubbledykes. Nor 
 were his attentions merely empty-handed visits to 
 the house of the widow, for he brought her money, 
 often, after all, the chief of consolations. Of the 
 manner in which that might be accepted he prob- 
 ably suspected there was nothing to be feared ; 
 but there was another gift he had in store, in re- 
 gard to the acceptability of which he was not quite 
 so sure — and that was his old love kindled up into 
 a new flame — probably enough he had never heard 
 or read the lines to the effect that — 
 
 " Cupid can his wings apply, 
 To other uses than to fly; 
 Serving as a handkerchief 
 To dry the tears of widows' grief." 
 
 But, whether so or not, he resolved upon trying 
 what he himself could do in that remedial way ; 
 and, accordingly, he began with a small dose, the 
 success of which urged him to a repetition; and on 
 he went from small quantities to greater, till he 
 was overjoyed to find that the patient could bear 
 any amount he was able to administer. Nor could 
 it be said that the aforesaid cough made any 
 abatement from the success of these efforts, if we 
 might not rather surmise that it entered as an ele- 
 ment in their recommendation — at least it indi- 
 cated no hollowness in Rubbledykes. 
 
 We all know that "the question" once meant
 
 DA VIE DEM PS TER ' 5 GHA IS T. 265 
 
 torture. At the period of our story, and we hope 
 not less in our day, it meant rapture ; and it is 
 not unhkely that Mrs Dempster on that market- 
 day, when the laird sat by the side of the parlour 
 fire in Lady Stair's Close, enjoyed something of 
 that kind when the words fell on her ear. 
 
 " Now, my dear Dorothy — to come to the point 
 in the lang-run — will ye hae me for your second 
 husband, wha should hae been your first ? " 
 
 "I hae no objection," replied Dorothy, as she 
 held away her head and covered her eyes with her 
 handkerchief ; " but " 
 
 And Mrs Dempster stopped short, with an efiect 
 almost as great on the astonished suitor as that of 
 the memorable answer given by a certain Mrs Jean 
 of Clavershalee to another laird, whose property 
 lay not far distant from Rubbledykes. 
 
 " But ! " ejaculated the laird, with an effort that 
 brought an attack of his cough upon him. " You 
 maun ' but ' me nae ' buts,' Dorothy, unless ye 
 want to kill me. I aye thought I had a better 
 claim to you than David. Heaven rest his body 
 in the deep waters o' the Forth, and his soul in 
 heaven ! " 
 
 " Ay," continued she, as she applied the hand- 
 kerchief again, as if this time to receive some tears 
 which ought to have come and didn't ; " but that 
 just puts me in mind o' what I was going to say.
 
 266 THE STOR V OF 
 
 You have seen how David was ta'en awa. What 
 if onything should happen to you ? What would 
 become o' me ? Rubbledykes would gae to your 
 brother." 
 
 " The de'il a stane o't, Dorothy," cried the laird. 
 " It will be a' yours. I will mak it ower to you ; 
 tofts and crofts, outhouses and inhouses, muirs and 
 mosses, pairts and pertinents. Will that please 
 you i^ 
 
 " Ay, will 't," answered Dorothy from behind the 
 handkerchief. 
 
 Whereupon the laird took her in his arms with a 
 view to kiss her ; but there is many a slip not only 
 between the cup and the lip, but between one lip 
 and another ; for no sooner had Thomas so pre- 
 pared himself for, perhaps, the greatest occasion of 
 his life — even that of kissing a woman, and that 
 woman the very idol of his heart — than that dread- 
 ful cough came again upon him, and Dorothy 
 could not help thinking that it was now more hol- 
 low, or, as the Scotch call it, toom, than ever she 
 had heard it. 
 
 " I will awa to Mr Ainslie and get the contract 
 written out at length," he said, to cover his dis- 
 grace. 
 
 Nor was it sooner said than done. Away he 
 went, leaving Dorothy virtually a bride, and the 
 lady t7i esse of an estate, albeit a small one, yet
 
 DAVIE DEMPSTER'S GHAIST. 267 
 
 great to her. At all which she laughed a most 
 enigmatical laugh, as if some secret thoughts had 
 risen in her mind with the effect of a ridiculous 
 incongruity ; but what these thoughts were no one 
 ever knew. Nor shall we try to imagine them, 
 considering ourselves to be better employed in 
 setting forth that shortly afterwards Mrs Dorothy 
 Dempster was joined in the silken bands of holy 
 wedlock with Thomas Snoddy, Esquire, of Rub- 
 bledykes, and that by the hands of Dr Webster 
 of the Tron, who accompanied the happy couple in 
 the evening to the gray - slated mansion - house, 
 where he made another celebration of the event 
 by draining a couple of bottles of good old claret. 
 Strange enough all these things ; but the real 
 wonders of our story would seem only to begin 
 with the settlement of Mr David Dempster's 
 widow in the mansion-house of the veritable laird ; 
 even though, consistently with the manners of the 
 time, there was a duck-pond at the door, a peat- 
 stack on the gable, and a midden gracing the byre 
 not five yards from the parlour window ; spite of 
 all which Mrs Dorothy was a lady, while David 
 lay with glazed eyes in the Forth among the fishes 
 scarcely a mile distant from his enchanted widow. 
 We think it a strange thing that mortals should 
 laugh and weep by turns, yet we think sunshine 
 and showers a very natural alternation ; and surely
 
 268 THE STOR V OF 
 
 it is far more wonderful that we often weep when 
 we should laugh, and laugh when we should weep 
 — of which hypocrisy, notwithstanding, there is a 
 hundred times more in the world than man or 
 woman wots of. And we are sorry to be obliged 
 to doubt the extent of the new-made lady's grief 
 when she saw the laird's cough increasing as his 
 love waxed stronger and his lungs grew less. Nay, 
 we are not sure that when she saw that he was 
 dying, and hailed the signs with grief in her eyes 
 and joy in her heart, she was under the impression 
 that she was acting up to the amiable tenet of her 
 religious creed — total depravity. Be all which as 
 it may, it is certain that though Dorothy's tears 
 had been of that real kind of which Tully says 
 they are — " the easiest dried of all things," they 
 would not have retarded the progress of the laird's 
 disease. It was not yet three months, and he was 
 confined to bed, with Dorothy hanging over him, 
 watching him with all the care of a seeker for 
 favourable symptoms. But one evening there was 
 a symptom which she was unprepared for — nay, 
 she was this time serious in her alarm. 
 
 " I have done that which is evil in the sight o' 
 God." 
 
 The words came as from a far-away place, they 
 were so hollow, 
 
 " What is it, Tammas ? " asked she.
 
 BA VIE DEMPSTER'S GHAIST. 269 
 
 " I have seen David Dempster's ghaist," said he. 
 " It looked in at that window, and disappeared in 
 an instant ; but no' before I kent what the een 
 said. Yea, Dorothy, they said as plainly as een 
 can speak — * Tammas Snoddy, ye made love to 
 Dorothy Dempster when I was alive in the body, 
 and her lawful husband.' " 
 
 And the laird shook all over so violently that 
 Dorothy could see the clothes move. 
 
 " Just your conscience, Tammas," said she. " Ye 
 maun fley thae visions awa in the auld way. It is 
 the deevil tempting ye. We maun flap the leaves 
 o' the Bible at him, and ye '11 see nae mair o' him 
 in this warld at any rate." 
 
 And Dorothy, taking up the holy book and 
 opening it at the middle, flapt it with such energy 
 that more dust came out of it than should have 
 been found in a Calvinist's Bible. 
 
 " Ye '11 see nor hilt, nor hair, nor hoop, nor horn 
 mair o' him," she added, with, we almost fear to 
 surmise, a laugh. 
 
 And Mrs Snoddy's prophecy was of that kind — 
 the safest of all — which comes after knowledge. 
 
 " Then I will dee in peace," said the relieved 
 laird ; " for I hae nae ither sin on my conscience." 
 
 " Nae sin, nae salvation," added Dorothy. 
 
 " A maist comfortable doctrine," sighed the 
 laird.
 
 270 THE STORY OF 
 
 And comfortable, surely, it must have been to 
 him, for two days afterwards the good laird slipt 
 away out of this bad world as lightly and easily as 
 if he had felt the burden of his sins as imponder- 
 ous as the flying dove does the white feathers on 
 its back. Nor did many more days elapse before 
 the mortal remains of the good man were deposited 
 in the churchyard of Cramond, leaving the double 
 widow with her contract of marriage and her tears 
 for a second husband lying in the earth so near 
 the first, deep in the bosom of the Forth. But, 
 sooner or later, there comes comfort of some kind 
 to these amiable creatures in distress, especially if 
 they are possessed of those cabalistic things called 
 marriage contracts. We do not say that that com- 
 fort comes always from the grave in the shape of a 
 veritable ghost, but sure it is that if we could in 
 any case fancy a spirit visiting the earth for any 
 rational purpose, it would be where a comely 
 widow was ready to receive it, and warm its cold 
 hands, and wrap the winding-sheet well round it, 
 and treat it kindly. All which we may leave for 
 suggestion and meditation, but we demand con- 
 viction, and assent, as we proceed, to set forth that 
 the very next evening after the funeral of Laird 
 Tammas, the ghaist of David Dempster, despising 
 all secret openings, and even giving up the privi- 
 lege of keyholes, went straight into the house of
 
 DA VIE DEM PS TER 'S GHA 1ST. 271 
 
 Rubbledykes, and entered the room where Doro- 
 thy was sitting. Extraordinary enough, no doubt ; 
 but not even so much so as the fact we are about 
 to relate — viz., that Mrs Dorothy was no more 
 astonished at its appearance before her than she 
 had been when she heard the laird say that he saw 
 the face of that same spirit at the window ; nor did 
 she on this occasion have recourse to the Bible as 
 an exorcist, by flapping the leaves of the same, to 
 terrify it away, in the supposition that it was the 
 devil in disguise. It is very true that she held up 
 her hands, but then that was only a prelude to the 
 arms being employed in clasping the appearance 
 to her breast ; an embrace which was responded 
 to with a fervour little to be expected from one of 
 these flimsy creatures. Nay, things waxed even 
 more enigmatical and ridiculous, for the two actu- 
 ally kissed each other — a fact which ought to be 
 treasured up as a psychological curiosity of some 
 use, insomuch as it may diminish the fear we so 
 irrationally feel at the expected visit of super- 
 natural beings. But worse and more ridiculous 
 still— 
 
 " When had you anything to eat Davie ? Ye '11 
 be hungry." 
 
 " No' unlikely, Dorothy lass," answered the 
 wraith ; " for I didna like the cauld fish, and 
 there's nae cooking apparatus in the Forth."
 
 2/2 THE STORY OF 
 
 " Ye would maybe tak a whang o' the round o' 
 beef we had at the laird's funeral yesterday ? " 
 
 " The very thing, woman," answered the ghaist ; 
 " and if ye have a bottle o' brandy to wash it 
 down, it will tak awa the cauld o' the saut water." 
 
 " Twa, an ye like, lad," responded the appar- 
 ently delighted widow, as she ran away to set 
 before the visitor the edible and drinkable com- 
 forts which had been declared so acceptable. 
 
 And you may believe or reject the whisperings 
 of our familiar just as you please, but we have all 
 the justification of absolute veritability for the fact 
 that this extraordinary guest, or ghaist, if you so 
 please, sat down before the said round of beef, 
 brandishing a knife in the one hand and a fork in 
 the other, and looking so heartily purposed to at- 
 tack the same, that you might have augured it 
 had not had a chop since that forenoon when in 
 the embodied state it went down to cool and wash 
 itself in the sea at Granton. Nor need we be more 
 squeamish than we have been in declaring at once 
 that it did so much justice to the meat and the 
 drink, that you might have thought it had been 
 fed for months on Hecate's short - commons in 
 Hades. And then a text so ample and substan- 
 tial could surely bear a running commentary. 
 
 " It would have been o' nae use, Dorothy. If 
 ye hadna been as gude a prophetess as Deborah,
 
 DA VIE DEMPSTER'S GHAIST, 273 
 
 I might hae been obliged to conceal myself in 
 England lang enough." 
 
 " It didna need a Deborah, David," answered she, 
 " to see that nae human body could stand that 
 cough mair than a month or two. Ye hadna lang 
 to wait, man ; and though ye had had langer, t/iere, 
 see, was your comfort at the end." 
 
 And Dorothy put into the ghaist's hand the 
 marriage contract — a worldly thing which seemed 
 to vie with the junket of beef in its influence over 
 mere spirit, insomuch as he perused the same by 
 snatches between the bites and draughts, both pro- 
 cesses going on almost simultaneously — the eye 
 fixed on the paper, while a protruding lump in the 
 cheek was in the act of being diminished. 
 
 " A' right, lass," was at length the exclamation. 
 
 " Ay ; but ye maun be gude to me now, Davie," 
 said she ; " for ye see it 's a' in my ain power : 
 Rubbledykes is mine, and I hae wrought for't." 
 
 " And so hae I," ejaculated the other. " You 
 forget my banishment and difficulty of living, for 
 I took scarcely any siller wi' me ; and, mairower, 
 how am I to face the people o' E'nbro' } " 
 
 "And the gude Calvinists o' the Tron .? " added 
 the wife. 
 
 Notwithstanding which difficulties the visitor 
 contrived to make a hearty meal ; nor was he 
 contented with the brandy taken during the time
 
 274 THE ST OR Y OF 
 
 of eating, for with all their spiritual tenderness, 
 there was a crave for toddy — a request which 
 was complied with by the introduction of warm 
 water and sugar. How often the tumbler was 
 tumbled up to pour the last drops, which defied 
 the silver toddy-ladle in the glass, we are not 
 authorised to say ; but we have authority for the 
 assertion that any man of flesh and blood could 
 not have perpetrated that number of tumblings 
 without changing almost his nature — that is, being 
 so far spiritualised as to be entitled to say, in the 
 words of the old song by Pinkerton — 
 
 " Death, begone — here 's none but souls." 
 
 And therefore the spiritual nature of David Demp- 
 ster, in his new part, was not so wonderful after all. 
 But the doubt recurs again, as we proceed to say 
 that Mrs Dorothy Snoddy helped her visitor to 
 bed, nay, she actually went very blithely into that 
 same bed herself, where they both slumbered very 
 comfortably till next morning. 
 
 We may add that these same doubts were liable 
 to be dispelled by another fact we have to relate. 
 The visitor, it will be remembered, put the question 
 to Dorothy, " How was he to meet the people of 
 Edinburgh ? " a question which implied a mortal 
 presence, besides no prescience. We say this last 
 deliberately, because in place of the fear of meet- 
 ing being on his side, it was altogether on theirs.
 
 DAVIE DEMPSTER'S GHAIST. 275 
 
 It happened that, two days after the occurrences 
 we have described, an object bearing the figure 
 of David Dempster was seen on the Cramond 
 road by a carrier called Samuel Finlayson, who 
 had had transactions with the dealer in corduroys 
 — an occasion which had the inevitable effect of 
 raising Samuel's bonnet along with the standing 
 hair, besides that of inducing him to whip his horse 
 to force the animal on, just in the way of another 
 animal of cognate species under similar circum- 
 stances. He, of course, took the story of a ghaist, 
 all cut and dry, into the city. On the same day, 
 Andrew Gilfillan saw the same figure on Corstor- 
 phine Hill, and flew past the seat marked " Rest 
 and be thankful," without even looking at it. He, 
 too, carried the same tidings. George Plenderleith 
 encountered the identical object in the village of 
 Corstorphine busy eating Corstorphine cream — 
 that is, cream mixed with oatmeal, (a finer kind of 
 crowdy,) and he hastened to Edinburgh with a 
 speed only to be accounted for by terror. He, too, 
 told his tale ; the effect of all which, added to and 
 inflamed by other reports, was, that Edinburgh 
 was stirred from the Castle gate to the Palace yett, 
 by the conviction that David Dempster had re- 
 turned from the kingdom of death to this world of 
 life for some purpose which would most certainly 
 come out ; but, in due time, whether with or with-
 
 2/6 DA VIE DEMPSTER'S GHAIST. 
 
 out a purpose, here it was proved that ghosts were 
 no dream, and David Hume no philosoper. Many 
 people sought the Cramond road, and hung about 
 Rubbledykes to get their scepticism or dogmat- 
 ism confirmed. The end of these things is pretty 
 uniform — 7'es loaita est ; the people began to see 
 where the truth lay, and the laughter came in due 
 course, to revive the hearts that had been chilled 
 by fear. 
 
 We would be sorry if we were necessitated to 
 end our story at the very nick of the triumph of 
 vice. Happily, we have something more to say — 
 nothing less, indeed, than that James Snoddy, the 
 brother of the laird, raised a process — that is, in- 
 stituted a suit before the Court of Session, to have 
 his brother's contract of marriage with Mrs Doro- 
 thy Dempster annulled and set aside, upon the 
 grounds of deception, circumvention, and prava 
 causa ; nor had he any trouble in getting a decree, 
 for David and his wife made no appearance, neither 
 could they make any appearance in Edinburgh. 
 Their only resource was to take advantage of that 
 kind of bail called " leg ; " an easy affair, insomuch 
 as there is no bond required for appearance any- 
 where. It was at the time supposed that they had 
 gone to America, that asylum of unfortunates, 
 where one half of the people cut the throats of the 
 other in the name of liberty.
 
 'E^e ^torp of tlje (15octljlep ^toin^, 
 
 T was the custom at one time in Edinburgh 
 for the proprietors of large self-contained 
 houses to give them the names of the 
 properties they had in the country — hence our 
 Panmure House, Tweeddale Court, and so forth 
 — and among them there was Gorthley House, of 
 which no vestige now remains ; nay, we are by no 
 means sure where it was situated, beyond the fact 
 that it was somewhere in the Canongate, but gone 
 as it is according to the law of change, its name 
 will always be associated with the law-plea Bruce 
 versus Bruce, which contained the germ of the little 
 romance we are now to relate in our way. And to 
 begin in order, we take the state of matters at the 
 time when the plea began. John Bruce of Gorthley 
 had died, and left a widow and three daughters, 
 two of whom were twins, and the third was the 
 youngest. The names of the twins were Sarah 
 and Martha, who at this time were two fine girls 
 verging upon majority, and as like each other as
 
 278 THE ST OR Y OF 
 
 two white peas ; and surely if we might expect, 
 in this world of strife and contention, that there 
 should be found real love and friendship anywhere, 
 it might be in the case of two sisters who had lain 
 so close together for nine months, and who had 
 drunk their milk at the same kindly fountain of a 
 doating mother's breast. But so full is the moral 
 atmosphere of our fallen world of the spores of 
 hatred, that you may as well try to keep a cheese 
 from the seeds of green mould as the human heart 
 from the germs of ill-will. And so it was that 
 these two young ladies hated each other very 
 heartily, for a reason which we will by and by 
 reveal, to the astonishment of the reader ; and this 
 hatred was the counterpart of a contention that 
 had embittered the lives of the father and mother, 
 even up to the time of the former's death. 
 
 All which will be better explained by following 
 the course of events after the death of Mr Bruce, 
 beginning with a visit on the part of Lady Gorthley 
 — as she was called according to the custom of the 
 time, when titles were held in such regard that the 
 common people even forged them for the great — 
 along with her favourite daughter, Martha, to the 
 office of Mr James Pollock, the agent for the 
 family. That her ladyship was bent upon some 
 enterprise of considerable moment might have 
 been guessed from the look of her face, which had
 
 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 279 
 
 that mysterious air about it belonging to secrecy, 
 nor less from that of the daughter ; and no one 
 could have doubted that, whatever they were bent 
 upon, the other twin, Sarah, was not to be let up 
 to the secret. Perhaps the time of the visit to the 
 writer was opportune, insomuch as Sarah had gone, 
 as she had said, with her cousin, George Walkin- 
 shaw, advocate, to take a stroll by the back of St 
 Leonard's as far as "the Cat Nick," and come 
 home by the Hunter's Bog ; which couple, we may 
 also say, had their secret too, in addition to their 
 love affair, if that secret was not connected with 
 the very same subject we have referred to as that 
 which divided the family. Be all that as it might, 
 we are going right along with the facts of the plea 
 when we set forth that in a very short time Lady 
 Gorthley and Martha were seated each on a chair 
 in the writing office of the said agent, Mr Pollock, 
 and the very first words that came out of her lady- 
 ship's mouth were these — 
 
 " Has Sarah or her cousin called upon you since 
 the death of Gorthley?" by which she meant, 
 according to the custom of the time, her own hus- 
 band. 
 
 " They are even at this moment in the other 
 room, madam," said he, with a lawyer's smile on 
 his face. 
 
 " Indeed," said her ladyship, with an expression
 
 28o THE STORY OF 
 
 of both surprise and anger. " Why, she told me 
 an hour ago that she was going to take a walk by 
 the ' Cat Nick.' " 
 
 " And so she has," added the writer, still smil- 
 ing, "for my door may not be inappropriately so 
 called in the circumstances.-'" 
 
 " Only, I presume," said the lady, " I am not, I 
 hope, to be included among the cats. I will wait 
 until you have learned what the impertinent girl 
 has got to say, and then you will have time to hear 
 me and Martha." 
 
 " I already know that," said he ; " but, as I be- 
 lieve our conversation is about finished, I will 
 despatch them in a few seconds, and then return 
 to hear your ladyship's commands." 
 
 " But you will say nothing of our being here." 
 
 " The never a word, madam," said he, adding to 
 himself as he went away, " I don't want a battle of 
 the cats in my office at least ; they do best when 
 
 they put the cheese into the hands of the ," 
 
 and he did not add the word monkey, insomuch as 
 it looked personal. 
 
 "There, you see, Martha, the gipsy is determined 
 to stand by her rights," was the remark of her 
 ladyship after Mr Pollock had left the room. 
 
 " But we '11 beat her off, mother," rejoined 
 Martha, with a spirit which Mr Pollock or any 
 other lawyer might have admired ; " and," con-
 
 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 281 
 
 tinued Martha, with a smile, " we will say nothing 
 about the straivberryy 
 
 " Nothing, dear," rejoined the mother ; " that 
 strawberry is worth all the lands of Gorthley." 
 
 Of which enigmatical strawberry they said no 
 more ; but that is no reason why we should not 
 say something of it when the proper time comes, 
 of which, by the rules of our art, we are the best 
 judges. Meanwhile Mr Pollock, having despatched 
 the other feline, returned. 
 
 " And now, madam," said he, as he took his 
 seat, " I am ready to hear you." 
 
 " You know, Mr Pollock," resumed her ladyship, 
 " that the entail of Gorthley provides that the pro- 
 perty shall go to the eldest heir female in the event 
 of there being no heir male." 
 
 " We all know that, madam," said the writer ; 
 " and if we had any doubt of it a certain paper 
 in that green box there would very soon clear up 
 our vision. But the question is, which of the two 
 young ladies, Sarah or Martha, first saw the light 
 of day.?" 
 
 " No question at all," rejoined the lady. " Martha 
 was the first born." 
 
 •' Yes, madam, I know, and knew before, that 
 that is your opinion ; but you are perhaps not 
 aware that Gorthley himself told me, some time 
 before he died, that Sarah was the first born ; and
 
 282 THE STORY OF 
 
 so we have here, so far as the testimony goes, one 
 witness against another." 
 
 "And what knew he about it?" retorted she, 
 sharply. " He was not present at the birth to see; 
 while I fancy you won't deny I was." 
 
 Whereupon Mr Pollock, getting into the mistake 
 that her ladyship was drolling, and being a droll 
 himself, said, laughing, " Why, madam, no man 
 could deny the necessity of your being present 
 any more than in the case of Girzel Jamphrey, 
 who said to the people who were pressing on to 
 see her burnt as a witch on the sands at Dundee, 
 * You needna be in sic a hurry ; there will be nae 
 sport till I come.' " 
 
 Whereat Lady Gorthley tightened the strings 
 she had allowed to get loose. 
 
 " It 's not a matter to joke about, sir," she said. 
 " Though I am not a witch, I say, and will main- 
 tain, that I am a better witness to the fact of which 
 of the twins was born first than Gorthley could 
 possibly be." 
 
 " Still, madam," continued the writer, " I fear it 
 is only a comparison between the value of two 
 ciphers ; the one may look bigger than the other, 
 but each is equal to nothing. It is true that we 
 men don't know much of these things, yet — I beg 
 pardon, the subject is a littie delicate — we know 
 that when a lady bears twins she doesn't take the
 
 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 283 
 
 first and mark it before she bears the second ; and 
 then if she doesn't mark it in the very nick of time, 
 it 's of no use, because the two babies get mixed in 
 the bath, as an Irishman would say, and their 
 being so hke as one strawberry to another, no one 
 can say that the one is not the other, or the other 
 not the one." 
 
 At which mention of the word strawberry, Lady 
 Gorthley looked to Martha, and Martha looked to 
 her, and they seemed puzzled. 
 
 " But however all that may be," continued the 
 lady, " what can you say to the evidence of Peggy 
 Macintosh, the nurse, who will swear that Martha 
 came first into the world .''" 
 
 " I cannot answer that question," said he, with 
 the caution of his profession, " until I see Mrs 
 Macintosh and examine her. There is also Jean 
 Gilchrist, one of the servants, who was present, I 
 have her to examine also, and then we will see 
 where the truth lies. Oh ! but I forgot there is 
 Mrs Glennie, the midwife, the woman whose word 
 will go farthest, because she had a better causa 
 scieniice." 
 
 " I know nothing about Latin," rejoined her 
 ladyship angrily ; " but as for Mrs Glennie, she 's 
 dead years ago." 
 
 " Ah, indeed," said Mr Pollock, " if that is true 
 we will have only the nurse and the servant for
 
 284 'THE STORY OF 
 
 witnesses, and if they oppose each other, the one 
 for Sarah and the other for Martha, and as it is 
 true that you always treated Martha as the eldest, 
 and Gorthley always insisted on Sarah as being 
 the first-born, we will have an undecidable case, a 
 thing that never occurred in Scotland before, per- 
 haps not in the world, for you know Solomon 
 would not allow any impossibility in deciding the 
 case of the baby with the two mothers. But, 
 madam, allow me to say, that as your husband, 
 Mr Bruce, left directions that I, as agent for the 
 family, should get Sarah served heir, and as you 
 insist upon that being done for Martha, it will be 
 necessary that you employ a man of business of 
 your own, so that we may fight the battle fair out" 
 
 " Well," said the lady with an expression of 
 bitterness in her face not much in harmony with 
 her words, " since Gorthley has left the continuance 
 of the strife as a legacy to his widow and children, 
 I shall go to Mr Bayne as my agent, and authorise 
 him to protect the rights of Martha, and fight it to 
 the bitter end — bitter, I mean, for Sarah Bruce, 
 who will never be Lady Gorthley." 
 
 And with these words she left, accompanied by 
 Martha, directing their steps to the office of Mr 
 Bayne, who, as her ladyship's private agent, knew 
 very well of this most strange contention which 
 had so long been maintained in Gorthley House.
 
 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 285 
 
 Nor, probably, was he displeased at it, any more 
 than Mr Pollock had been. Gorthley estate was a 
 large cheese, the cats were fierce, and there was 
 plenty for even two monkeys, so he listened atten- 
 tively to her ladyship's statement that the nurse, 
 Mrs Macintosh, would swear in favour of Martha, 
 but she said never a word about Jean Gilchrist. 
 
 " The nurse's evidence will go a great way, 
 madam," said he, "seeing the midwife is dead; but 
 it will be satisfactory if Mrs Macintosh could con- 
 descend upon some mark which she noticed imme- 
 diately at the time of the birth, for the two young 
 ladies are really so like each other now I often 
 confound them, nay, they confound me so that we 
 cannot very well imagine how they could be dis- 
 tinguished when brought together soon after birth." 
 " Look here, Mr Bayne," said the lady in a 
 whispering way, as if she were to reveal something 
 wonderously mysterious, " look here, sir," — 
 
 And taking off Martha's cloak and turning up 
 the kerchief that covered her neck and the top of 
 her shoulders, she said, " Do you see that V 
 
 The writer complied by a pretty narrow inspec- 
 tion of a very pretty neck of (a strawberry being 
 in question) the appropriate colour of cream. 
 
 "A very decided mark of a strawberry," said he ; 
 " and, really if it were a proof that Martha has the 
 right to succeed to Gorthley, it might be said to be
 
 286 THE STORY OF 
 
 the most beautiful beauty spot that a young lady 
 could bear. How comes that mark to be there ? " 
 
 " Why," replied the lady, " Gorthley threw a 
 strawberry at me when I was in the way, you 
 know, and thus made a mother's mark, as they call 
 it, just as if he had intended to point out the true 
 heir ; and you know the Scotch say that these 
 marks are lucky." 
 
 "But you forget, madam," replied the man of 
 the law, who did not believe in special providences, 
 except in special cases, when he received payment 
 of his accounts. " You forget that Gorthley was 
 against Martha, so that if he had had any inten- 
 tion in the matter, it must rather have been to 
 make a blot ; besides, our judges might probably 
 say that the mark, for aught they knew, was in- 
 tended to show that Martha was not the heir ; in 
 short, unless we can identify the mark as having 
 been seen on the first-born, I fear, though it is very 
 pretty, it will do us no good." 
 
 " But Mrs Macintosh can do that," replied the 
 lady. 
 
 " Ah ! you have hit the mark now," said he ; 
 " and I will see Mrs Macintosh, and any other 
 witnesses who can speak to the point." 
 
 And so having, after some more conversation, 
 despatched his two clients, Mr Bayne proceeded 
 that same evening to the residence of Mrs Peggy
 
 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 287 
 
 Macintosh, whom he found very busy spinning, 
 little prepared for a visit from a man of the law, 
 with a powdered wig on his head, and a gold- 
 headed cane in his hand, — an apparition which 
 even the wheel could not resist, for it stopt its birr 
 instantly, as if through fear. 
 
 "Mrs Macintosh," said Mr Bayne, as he took 
 a seat alongside of Peggy, " do you remember 
 having been present at the birth of Mrs Bruce's 
 twins ? " 
 
 "Indeed, sir, and I was," answered she, "and a 
 gO-Y birth it was." 
 
 "And could you tell which was which when the 
 infants were born .-' " 
 
 " Weel, sir," answered Peggy, " if you will tell 
 me which is the which you mean, I '11 try to satisfy 
 ye if I can .'' " 
 
 " Why, I mean, which was Sarah and which 
 Martha .^ " continued the writer. 
 
 " How could I tell ye that, sir," answered Peggy, 
 with a look of true Scotch complacency, "when 
 the bairns werena christened ? " 
 
 The writer, acute as he was, was a little put out, 
 but he rallied. 
 
 "Why, Peggy, you surely understand what I 
 mean ; did you not know the child which was 
 afterwards called Sarah from that which was after- 
 wards called Martha ? "
 
 288 THE STORY OF 
 
 " I would have liked to have seen you try that, 
 sir," was again the answer. " How the deil — I beg 
 pardon, sir — was I to ken what they were to be 
 ca'ed when their names werena even fixed by the 
 father and mother themselves ? " 
 
 " I see you don't understand me, Mrs Macin- 
 tosh," continued Mr Bayne, who had got a Scotch 
 witness on his line. 
 
 " I think it 's you that doesna understand me," 
 retorted Peggy. 
 
 " Look here," continued Mr Bayne, smiling, 
 "you know Sarah Bruce and Martha Bruce .-*" 
 
 " Ay, when they 're thegither," replied Peggy, 
 " and they tell me their names ; but just put them 
 an ell or twa asinder, and I '11 defy the horned 
 Clootie himsel to say which is which." 
 
 "Worse and worse," muttered the writer. "Look 
 you, Peggy, was there no mark on either of the 
 children by which you could know it .'' " 
 
 " Ay was there," replied the woman ; " but we 're 
 just where we were ; for, whether the strawberry 
 was upon the ane or the ither, or the ither or the 
 ane, is just what I want you, since you're a man o' 
 the law, and weel skilled in kittle points, to tell 
 me." 
 
 " Worse even yet," muttered the discomfited 
 precognoscer. 
 
 " But I can mak the thing as plain as the Shorter
 
 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 289 
 
 Catechism," continued she, with a sharp look, 
 which revived the sinking hopes of Mr Bayne. 
 " Mrs Glennie that night was in a terrible fluster, 
 for she began to see that there was likely to be 
 mair bairns than she bargained for — twins, if no 
 may be trins ; so Jean Gilchrist was brought up to 
 help in addition to mysel. Then the first ane 
 cam' in a hurry, the mair by token it kenned nae- 
 thing o' the warld it was coming into, and Mrs 
 Glennie pushed it into my hands. ' There will be 
 anither, Peggy,' said she, ' and look gleg ; ' but 
 there was only flannel for ane ; and I gave the 
 wean to Jean to wash, while I ran to get happins. 
 I was back in less than five minutes ; and, just as 
 I was entering, ' Here 's the other ane,' said Mrs 
 Glennie. I took it frae her, and gave it to Jean, 
 and took frae her the ane she had washed, in order 
 to wrap it, and so I did ; but before I was dune I 
 saw Jean wasna doing the thing as she ought ; so 
 I gave her the ane I had, and I took hers to wash 
 it better; but before it was dune Mrs Glennie cried 
 to me to come to help her with the lady ; so I put 
 my bairn into Jean's arms alang side o' the ither ; 
 and when I had finished with the lady I took the 
 last ane frae Jean again ; but before I had com- 
 pleted the dressing o't Jean cried out, ' This bairn 
 is deein'.' 'You're a fule,' said I, 'give it to me;' 
 and so she did. Then I ran and got some cordial,
 
 290 THE STORY OF 
 
 and poured it down the throat o' the creature. By 
 this time Jean had hers upon the settee, and I laid 
 mine alang side o't ; but in a httle time the mither 
 was crying to see the weans ; and Mrs Glennie 
 took the ane, and I took the ither, and showed her 
 them. Then Mrs Glennie took mine away to lay 
 it down on the settee again ; and I took hers and 
 laid it down by the side o' its sister. That 's how 
 it was, sir, and sure I am naething can be plainer." 
 
 " But what about the strawberry ? " said Mr 
 Bayne. 
 
 " Nane o' us saw that till the bairns began to 
 be mixed," was the answer ; " and then they were 
 changed, and changed again sae aften that my 
 head ran round, and I lost a' count." 
 
 " But haven't you said to Lady Gorthley that 
 the mark was on the first - born ? " asked Mr 
 Bayne. 
 
 " Indeed, and I did that same," was the ready 
 answer. " My lady gave me five gowden guineas 
 to tell her ; and, as I couldna be sure, I thought I 
 couldna do better than to make safe and sure wark 
 o't ; so I took five shillings out o' the five guineas 
 and gave it to the Carlin o' the Cowgate, a wise 
 woman, frae the very native place o' thae far-see- 
 ing creatures, Auldearn, Auld Eppie, as they ca' 
 her, (they were all Eppies,) and she settled the 
 thing in the trice o' a cantrup ; so you see the fact
 
 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 291 
 
 is sure that the strawberry belanged to the first- 
 born." 
 
 " And did you tell Lady Gorthley you went to 
 Eppie ? " inquired the discomfited writer. 
 
 " Gude faith na, she might hae asked back the 
 five guineas," answered Peggy ; " and besides, if 
 she got the truth, it was a' ane to her, ye ken, 
 where it cam' frae ; and you '11 be discreet and say 
 naething." 
 
 " Did you ask from the old woman the name of 
 her who bore the mark ? " rejoined Mr Bayne. 
 
 " Ay, but she said she didna like to spier that at 
 the auld ane — Nick, ye ken — because he might 
 have got angry and told her a lee, and that might 
 hae brought me into a scrape wi' her ladyship, 
 who knew hersel which o' her daughters bore the 
 mark." 
 
 " Very prudent," muttered again the writer, as 
 he rose, " this is a most satisfactory witness." 
 
 And carrying this satisfaction along with him, 
 he proceeded to the small garret occupied by Jean 
 Gilchrist, the direction to which he had got from 
 Mrs Macintosh. Believing as he did the statement 
 made to him by the latter, he had very little hope 
 of getting anything satisfactory out of his present 
 witness, and wishing to keep her more to the point 
 than he had been able to effect in the prior case, 
 he assumed her presence at the birth, and came
 
 292 THE STORY OF 
 
 straight out with the question, whether she knew 
 if there had been noticed on one of the children 
 the mark of the strawberry. 
 
 " The strawberry ? " said she, " ay, wi' a' won- 
 dered at that, but then it 's no uncommon things 
 in weans to be marked in that way, so we sune got 
 ower t. 
 
 " And was this mark on the child which was 
 first born ?" inquired he. 
 
 " I '11 tell you that, sir," replied she, " if ye 11 tell 
 me first which o' the twa cam' first into the world." 
 
 Whereby Mr Bayne found himself where he was, 
 in the hands of a Scotch metaphysician, for, was 
 there not here an example of the a priori 2irgnn\ent, 
 to use the old jargon, wherein the cause is assumed 
 to prove the effect, and the effect is then brought 
 forward to prove the cause — a trick of wisdom we 
 are yet in the nineteenth- century playing every 
 day .'' 
 
 " That is just what I want to know, Jean," said 
 he. 
 
 " And it 's just what I want to ken, too," rejoined 
 Jean, " for to tell you God's truth, sir," she con- 
 tinued in a lower tone, " I hae something on my 
 conscience, and yet it's no muckle either." 
 
 " And what is that .■' " said he, expecting to get 
 at something on which he could rely, whatever it 
 might be.
 
 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 293 
 
 " Just this," answered Jean. " Years agane, 
 Gorthley came to me, and said, ' Jean Gilchrist, 
 here is something for you,' and I took it — it was a 
 purse o' gowd, — and then he said, * I would die 
 happy, Jean, if I could think that Martha Bruce, 
 who bears the mark, was the second born of my 
 daughters ; ' and, looking at the purse, said I, 
 ' Weel, sir, if that will mak ye happy, ye may be 
 happy, for it was even so.' Then said he, ' Will 
 you stand to that, Jean } ' And I said, ' Ay, will 
 I, through thick and thin ; ' and when he went 
 away, I -began to consider if I had dune wrang, 
 but I couldna see it, for doesna the Bible say, that 
 man and wife are ane flesh t and if that be true, 
 how could their children be separate flesh .-' Weel 
 then, whichever o' the twa, the first or the second 
 born, carried the mark, they baith being ane flesh, 
 behoved to bear it, and so, if the ane bore it the 
 other bore it, and if the other bore it the ane bore 
 it. Besides, wha doesna ken that twins are just ae 
 bairn cut in twa .'' They 're aye less than the single 
 bairns, and isna a double-yokit &^g^ just twa eggs 
 joined thegither into ane." 
 
 A kind of logic common at the time, and which, 
 indeed, touched upon the most obscure question 
 of metaphysics, and not very satisfactory to Mr 
 Bayne, who, however, knew the subtle character 
 of the Scotch mind too well to try a fall with so
 
 294 THE STORY OF 
 
 acute a dialectician. So, altogether disappointed 
 with his precognition he left and came away, meet- 
 ing in the passage Mr Pollock, who had been with 
 Mrs Macintosh, and was now on his way to Jean 
 Gilchrist. They were very intimate, and did not 
 hesitate to compare notes, the result of which was 
 that the case was to realise once more the truth of 
 the toast generally drunk by Edinburgh practi- 
 tioners at the end of the session, " The glorious un- 
 certainty ;" and if Mr Pollock thought so before he 
 examined Jean Gilchrist, his opinion must have 
 been pretty well confirmed by what she said. The 
 case, in short, was not one in which there is con- 
 flicting evidence, and where the judges can make 
 out the weight by a hair of prejudice ; it was a 
 case in which there was no evidence at all as to 
 which of the girls was the heir ; but, then, it was 
 just on account of this equipoise that the two 
 claimants, Martha, helped by her mother on the 
 one side, and Sarah, supported by her lover, 
 Walkinshaw, on the other, waxed the more bitter ; 
 and the contention which had so long raged in 
 Gorthley House became hotter and hotter. Nor 
 need we fancy that the writers would try to get 
 the right compromised in some way, where they 
 had so good a chance of making a money certainty 
 out of a moral uncertainty ; and so the case went 
 into court under two competing briefs, that is
 
 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 295 
 
 just two claims by the daughters, each insisting to 
 be served heir. The witnesses, whose precogni- 
 tions we have given, were examined ; and a great 
 number of servants who had been in the family, 
 who swore that Gorthley himself always called 
 Sarah Miss Bruce, and Mrs Bruce always called 
 Martha by that dignified title, so that the servants 
 tried to please both master and mistress by calling 
 the one daughter or the other miss, just according 
 to the chance of being overheard by the heads of 
 the house. When before the sheriff, and when 
 the claims were equally suspended, a strange plea 
 was set up by Sarah's counsel, Mr Fotheringham, to 
 the effect that, taking the question of priority of 
 birth to be doubtful, the doubt could be resolved 
 by a kind of nobile officmm on the part of the father 
 as the head of the house, and that as Gorthley had 
 declared for Sarah this should be held as sufficient ; 
 but Mr Maitland answered this by saying that the 
 question being one of fact, and that fact coming 
 more within the presumed knowledge of the mother, 
 ought to be settled by the voice of the mother, who 
 declared for Martha ; and here again the argument 
 being nearly equal, the judge on the inquest was 
 nonplussed. And thus it came to pass that the 
 old irony of the ancients, directed against a sow 
 coming in place of Minerva as a judge of some 
 very fine matter of truth, turned out to be in this
 
 296 THE STORY OF 
 
 case no irony at all, for the sow was here as good 
 a judge as Minerva. The scales were so nearly 
 balanced that the mere breath which conveyed the 
 doubt might disperse the doubt by moving one of 
 the scales — a very fine irony in itself, in so much 
 as all truth may be resolved, in the far end, into 
 the mere breath of man's opinion. At length the 
 sheriff gave the cast of the scale to the side of the 
 mother, as the " domestic witness." 
 
 But Sarah was, of course, dissatisfied ; or, rather, 
 Fotheringham, who advised her to take the case be- 
 fore the Fifteen, by what is called an Advocation, 
 and so to be sure these lords got a burden thrown 
 upon them which cost them no little trouble. They 
 got the case argued and argued, and were in the 
 end so mystified, that if they could have decided 
 that the question was undecidable, they would 
 have been very glad to have hung it up among the 
 eternal dubieties as an everlasting proof of " the 
 glorious uncertainty ; " but they could not agree 
 even to do that, for the entail could not be com- 
 promised or set aside, and so they behoved to 
 decide one way or another. Meanwhile, the case 
 having made a noise, a great number of people 
 were collected in court on the day when the judg- 
 ment was to be finally given. And given it was 
 so far, for seven judges were for Sarah, and seven 
 for Martha, so it came to the president, who said,
 
 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 297 
 
 " I have read of a case somewhere in which the 
 judges drew cuts, and decided by the Goddess 
 Chance in place of justice,; and, indeed, if the lat- 
 ter is blind, as they say she is, we may take the 
 one as well as the other as the umpire of the right 
 or the wrong. But there is one consideration 
 which moves me in this case, and that is, that as 
 it is the wife's duty to bear the children of the 
 family, so it is her privilege to know more about 
 that interesting affair than the husband, who is, as 
 I understand, never present at the mysteries of 
 Lucina, and, therefore, I would be inclined to de- 
 clare that Martha was the first-born." 
 
 " It 's a lee, my lord," cried a shrill screaming 
 voice from the court. Whereat the judges directed 
 their eyes with much amazement to the place 
 whence the scream came. 
 
 " And who are you," said the president, " who 
 dare to speak in a court of justice .''" 
 
 " I deny it's a court o' justice," cried the voice 
 again. " My name is Janet Glennie, and it was 
 me that had the first handlin' o' the bairns, and I 
 tell your lordship to your face, that you 're clean 
 wrang, and ken nae mair about the case than 
 Jenkins did about the colour o' the great grand- 
 mother o' his hen. I tell ye it was Sarah wha 
 came first, and Martha wi' her strawberry came 
 second, for I saw the mark wi' my ain een."
 
 298 THE GORTHLEY TWINS. 
 
 A speech followed by the inevitable laugh of a 
 curious audience, and the better received that the 
 people had always a satirical feeling against the 
 fifteen wise wigs. Nor was this late testimony too 
 late : Mrs Glennie was subsequently sworn, and the 
 judgment went for Sarah. It turned out that Mrs 
 Glennie had been absent for a time from Scotland, 
 and, having, upon visiting Edinburgh, heard of the 
 famous trial, made it a point to be present. Nay, 
 there was a little retribution in the affair, for Lady 
 Gorthley knew she was alive, and had reported her 
 death to serve her own ends.
 
 %\)Z ^torp oC tlje C^aUi Hint. 
 
 IjOR the truth of the story I am now to re- 
 late I have the word of a godly minister 
 of the Church of Scotland, whose father 
 had been in the house in Burnet's Close, and had 
 seen the two females and examined "the chalk 
 line " in the middle of the floor. I do not say this 
 to conciliate your belief; for perhaps if this were 
 my object, I should be nearer the attainment of it 
 by asserting, as Mr Thackeray used to do when he 
 wanted his readers to believe him, that there is not 
 a word of truth in the whole affair. There is a 
 certain species of fish in the Ganges Avhich is 
 never happy but when it is pushing up against the 
 stream ; and people, as civilisation goes on, find 
 themselves so often cheated, that they go by con- 
 traries, just as the old sorcerers divined by reading 
 backwards. But surely in this age of subtleties it 
 is a pleasant thing to think that you are so much 
 the object of an author's care as that he would not
 
 300 THE STORY OF 
 
 only save you from thinking, but think for you ; 
 and so I proceed to tell you of the personages in 
 Burnet's Close, leading from the High Street to 
 the Cowgate. 
 
 In a room of the second flat of the third tall 
 tenement on your left hand as you descend lived 
 Martha and Mary Jopp. They were, so far as I 
 have been able to discover, the daughters of a 
 writer of the name of Peter Jopp. You cannot 
 be wrong in supposing that they had been once 
 young, though, in regard to the aged, this is not 
 always conceded by those who are buoyant with 
 the spirit of youth. Yes, these aged maidens had 
 not only been once young, they had been very fair 
 and very comely. They had passed through the 
 spring and summer flowers without treading upon 
 the speckled serpent of the same colour. They 
 had heard the song of love where there was no risk 
 of the deceptions of the siren. They had been 
 tempted ; but they had resisted the temptation of 
 some who could well have returned their affection. 
 Nor was this the result of any want of natural 
 sensibility ; if it was not that they had too much 
 of that quality, which, if it is the source of pleasure, 
 is also that of pain — perhaps more of the latter 
 than the former, though we dare not say so in this 
 our time of angelic perfection. 
 
 To be a little more particular upon a peculiarity
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 301 
 
 of our two ladies, which enters as rather a " loud 
 colour " in the web of our story, there was a suffi- 
 cient reason for their celibacy. They had a mother 
 w^ho, as the saying goes, was " a woman of price " 
 — such a one as Solomon excepts from so many, 
 that I am afraid to mention the number. She was 
 a good Calvinist, without insisting too much for 
 election and predestination. She was affectionate, 
 without the weakness which so often belongs to 
 doating mothers ; and she possessed, along with 
 the charm of universal kindness, a strength of mind 
 which demanded respect without diminishing love. 
 No wonder that her daughters loved her even to 
 that extent that neither of the two could think of 
 leaving her so long as she lived. An inclination 
 this, or rather a resolution, which had been con- 
 firmed in them by certain experiences they had 
 had of what their mother had suffered from having 
 been deprived by death of an elder daughter, and 
 by marriage of a younger ; the latter of whom had 
 gone with her husband, a Mr Darling, to Calcutta, 
 under the patronage of Major Scott, the friend of 
 Warren Hastings. 
 
 But there was another reason which kept the 
 sisters from marrying — one which will, I suspect, 
 be very slow to be believed ; and that was, their 
 love for each other. But I am resolute in urging 
 it, because, in the first place, it is not absolutely
 
 302 THE STORY OF 
 
 against the experience of mankind ; and, secondly, 
 because, while it forms a part of the story as 
 narrated to me, it is necessary as one of the two 
 sides of a contrast, without which I could not an- 
 swer for a certain effect in my picture. Certain, 
 at least, it was that more than one external revolv- 
 ing body in the shape of lovers came within the 
 sphere of their attraction for each other, and could 
 produce no deflection in the lines of their mutual 
 attachment. It was said that one of them had 
 been jilted. I do not know; but the circumstance 
 would explain a fact more certain that the sisters, 
 in their then lively humour of young blood, used 
 to sing a love-defiance song, which might have 
 been both sport and earnest. My informant gave 
 me the words. It is a kind of rough mosaic, with 
 borrowed verses, yet worth recording : — 
 
 A farmer's daughter fair am I, 
 
 As blithe as May-day morning, 
 And when my lover passes by, 
 I laugh at him \vi' scorning. 
 
 Ha ! ha ! ha ! fal lal la ! 
 Ha! ha! fallal laldy! 
 
 There came a cock to our father's flock, 
 
 And he wore a double kaim, O ; 
 He flapt his wings, and fain would craw. 
 
 But craw he could craw nane, O. 
 
 A braw young man came courting me, 
 And swore his wife he 'd make me ; 
 
 But when he knew my pounds were few, 
 The rogue he did forsake me.
 
 THE CHALK LWE. 303 
 
 Gae whistle on your thumb, young man, 
 
 You left me wae and weary ; 
 But, now I 've got my heart again, 
 
 Gude faith, I '11 keep it cheery. 
 
 There's world's room for you to pass, 
 
 And room enough for Nan, O ; 
 The deil may tak her on his back 
 
 Who dies for faithless man, O. 
 
 There 's still as good fish in the sea 
 
 As ever yet were taken ; 
 I '11 spread my net and catch again, 
 
 Though I have been forsaken. 
 Ha! ha! ha! &c. 
 
 A better medicine, I suspect, than an action of 
 damages. But to continue. The sisters read the 
 same books, took the same walks, wrought at the 
 same work as steadfastly and lovingly as they wor- 
 shipped the same mother, and revered the memory of 
 the same father — a remark this last which helps us on 
 to a point of our story ; for the father had been dead 
 for some years, leaving the mother a competent an- 
 nuity, besides a residue, which would afford at least 
 so much to the daughters as would tocher them 
 to a kind of independence, though not to a hus- 
 band with much hope of being benefited in a 
 money point of view by marriage. But the time 
 came — as what time does not come, even to those 
 who think in the heyday of their happiness it will 
 never come — when there would be a change, when 
 the charm of this threefold relation should cease.
 
 304 THE ST OR V OF 
 
 The mother died, and with her the annuity ; and 
 the attraction she had exercised over the daughters 
 had just drawn them so far past the point of the 
 shaking of the blossoms of youth and beauty and 
 hope, that their affection for each other stood now 
 no chance of being broken by even one of those 
 moral comets that burn up more incombustible 
 bodies than old spinsters with very small com- 
 petences. 
 
 And so, with bleared eyes of uncontrollable 
 grief, and no hope, and a trifle of twenty pounds 
 a-year each to be paid them by Mr David Ross, 
 writer, their father's agent, our two spinsters took 
 up their solitary residence in the foresaid room in 
 the second flat of the big tenement in Burnet's 
 Close to which I have alluded. Even at the first 
 moment of their retreat they seem to have shaken 
 off with the blossoms, which, in the human plant 
 no less than in the vegetable one, alone contain 
 the beauties and sweets of life — the stem being, 
 alas, only at best the custodier of an acid — much 
 of their interest in the busy, gossipping, scandalis- 
 ing, hating, and loving Edinburgh ; but so far this 
 resistance to the charms of the outer world only 
 served to make them live even more and more to 
 each other. And then, had they not the sweet 
 though melancholy solace of that Calvinistic tenet 
 which imparted such mildness and equanimity to
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 305 
 
 the face of their beloved mother — even that mys- 
 terious scroll which contains the ordination and 
 predestination of all things which shall ever come 
 to pass ? Yes ; but even this solace was modified 
 by the regret that the portrait of that mother, 
 painted by no unskilful hand — a pupil of George 
 Jameson's — was not, as it ought to have been, in 
 that room hanging over the mantelpiece; the more 
 by reason that that picture had been surreptitiously 
 taken away by their sister Margaret when she sailed 
 with her husband, Mr Darling, to India. And 
 would they not have it back ? Mr Ross might tell 
 them when he was there on a certain evening. 
 
 " You have as good a right to it," said the man 
 of the law, " as your sister ; for I believe it was 
 never given to her by your mother." 
 
 " No more it ever was," said Martha ; " for did 
 not our mother write herself for it, but it never 
 came ; and she was to have got herself painted 
 again, but death came at the predestinated hour, 
 and took away her life, and with it all our happi- 
 ness in this world." 
 
 " Not all your happiness, Miss Martha," rejoined 
 the agent ; " for have you not your mutual affec- 
 tion left i* — ay, and even your love for her who is 
 only removed to a distance — even among blessed 
 spirits .'* — from whence she is at this moment look- 
 ing down upon you to bless that love which you 
 
 U
 
 3o6 THE STOR Y OF 
 
 bear to each other, and which, I trust, will never 
 decay." 
 
 " I hope not," said Mary, calmly ; " but I re- 
 member how, when the evil spirit took hold of us, 
 and made us fretful and discontented with each 
 other, she calmed our rebellious spirits by a look 
 so justly reproving, and yet so mild and heavenly- 
 like, that for very love of her we would dote on 
 each other the more. And now I think if we had 
 that picture, with the same eye as if still fixed on 
 us, we would be secured against all fretfulness ; for 
 O sir, we are all weak and wilful. Will you write 
 for it, Mr Ross } It would hang so well up there 
 over the fire, where, you see, there is an old nail, 
 which seems to have been left by the former 
 tenant for the very purpose." 
 
 " I will," replied Mr Ross ; " but I may as well 
 tell you I have little chance of success, for Mar- 
 garet, I suspect, would nearly as soon part with 
 her life. Nor do I wonder at it ; for the counte- 
 nance of your mother as there represented seems 
 so far above that of ordinary mortals, both in 
 beauty and benignity, that methinks," — and here 
 Mr Ross smiled in his own grave way, — " if I ever 
 felt inclined to put down six-and-eightpence against 
 a client in place of three-and-fourpence, that look 
 of hers would bring back my sense of honesty. 
 You know I have Mrs Ross over the mantelpiece
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 307 
 
 of my business room ; and though she never ap- 
 proached your mother in that pecuHar expression, 
 which your father used to say to me, in a half- 
 jocular way, humanised him into that wonderful 
 being, a conscientious writer, yet I have been 
 benefited in the same way by the mild light of 
 my Agnes's eyes." 
 
 And Mr Ross stopped, in consequence of feeling 
 a small tendency to a thickening in the throat, 
 which he seldom felt except when he had a cold. 
 
 " And you will write Margaret, then .''" resumed 
 Martha. 
 
 " That I will," said he ; " but I do not say may 
 Heaven bless my effort, because you know Heaven 
 has made up its mind on that and all other subjects 
 long ago." 
 
 " Even from the foundations of the earth," sighed 
 Mary. 
 
 " Even so," rejoined Mr Ross as he departed, 
 leaving the sisters to their small supper of a New- 
 haven haddock, each half of which was sweetened 
 to the receiver by the consciousness that the other 
 was being partaken of by her sister. And there- 
 after, having said their prayers, they retired to the 
 same bed, to fall asleep in each other's arms, with- 
 out a regret that said arms were not a little more 
 sinewy, or that their faces did not wear beards, 
 and to dream of their mother.
 
 3o8 THE STORY OF 
 
 And it would have been well if affairs in Burnet's 
 Close had continued to go on as smoothly as we 
 have here indicated. Nor did there seem any 
 reason why they should not. The sisters had a 
 sufficiency to live on ; they had no evil passions 
 to disturb the equanimity of their thoughts ; they 
 were religious, and resigned to the predestinated ; 
 they were among "the elect," that is, orthodoxi- 
 cally, they elected to think so, which is the same 
 thing. They had their house in order, and could 
 afford to have Peggy Fergusson to clean out the 
 room occasionally, and to go the few messages that 
 their few Avants required. But Time is a sower as 
 well as a reaper ; and he casts about with an 
 equally ready hand the seeds of opinions and ima- 
 ginations, the germs of feelings and the spores of 
 mildewed hopes : some for the young, some for the 
 old, but all inferring change from what was yester- 
 day to what is to-day ; from what is to-day to what 
 will be to-morrow. As the days passed into years, 
 they appeared to get shorter and shorter — a pro- 
 cess with all of us, which no theory can explain, 
 if it is not against all theory ; for if time is gene- 
 rated by ideas, it should appear to go more slowly 
 the more slowly those ideas arise and pass, and yet 
 the practical effect of the working is the very re- 
 verse. But whatever were the changes that were 
 taking place in the habits and feelings of the two
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 309 
 
 sisters, they were altogether unconscious of them. 
 The indisposition to go out and mix with their 
 friends was gradually increasing, as they felt, with- 
 out being aware of the feeling, that they had less and 
 less in common with the ways of the world ; and the 
 seldomer they went out, the seldomer their friends 
 came to see them, nor when they did come, did 
 they receive any encouragement to repeat the 
 visit. 
 
 In all this I do not consider that I am describ- 
 ing human nature in the aspect in which we gene- 
 rally see it ; for we more often fmd in those who 
 are advancing into age a felt necessity for enliven- 
 ment, were it for nothing else than to relieve them 
 from solitary musings and the perilous stuff of old 
 memories ; but here, as it w^l by and by be seen, 
 I have not to do with ordinary human nature. 
 These sisters were fated to be strange, and to do 
 strange things. The indisposition to go out de- 
 generated in the course of some years into a love 
 of total seclusion. They never passed the threshold 
 of their room ; and as time went on, their friends 
 gradually renounced their efforts to get either of 
 them to change a purpose to which they seemed 
 to have attained by the sympathy of two natures 
 exactly similar. They probably knew nothing of 
 the words of the poet, nor would they have cared 
 for them : —
 
 3IO THE STORY OF 
 
 " The world careth not a whit 
 For him who careth not for it : 
 One only duty and one right, 
 That he be buried out of sight." 
 
 But amidst this strange asceticism the one still 
 remained to the other as a dear, loving, and be- 
 loved sister ; and if all the world should be nothing 
 to them, they would still be all the world to each 
 other. The seclusion had lasted five years since 
 the death of the mother, and still no decay of their 
 mutual attachment could be observed. 
 
 It is here that commences the wonderful part of 
 my story, — so wonderful, indeed, that if I had not 
 had at second-hand the testimony of an eye-wit- 
 ness, confirmed by the traditions of the Close, I 
 could scarcely have ventured the recital I here 
 offer ; not that I consider the facts as unnatural, 
 but that the causes which change love into hatred, 
 and superinduce the latter often in a direct ratio 
 to the former, lie so deep, and are altogether so 
 mysterious, that we cannot understand the mean- 
 ing of their being there, and far less how they came 
 to be there. Some strange and unaccountable 
 change came over these hitherto loving sisters, not 
 only at the same time, but without its having ever 
 been ascertained that there was any physical or 
 moral reason for it. It began to show itself in 
 small catches and sharper rejoinders; minim points
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 311 
 
 not discernible by their former love became sub- 
 jects of difference. Then the number of these in- 
 creased where the points of contact were, as one 
 might say, infinite. They assert that nature re- 
 sents too close an affinity of affection ; nor is this 
 altogether theory, for we see every day friendships 
 which are so close as to merge identities flare 
 up into terrible hatreds ; and we have scriptural 
 authority for the wrath of brothers. A plain man 
 would get out of the difficulty in a plain way. 
 Those sisters had become discontented because 
 they had rejected that natural food of the mind 
 which is derived from an intercourse with the 
 world ; and who does not know that discontent 
 always finds a peg somewhere whereon to hang a 
 grievance. Where you have many people about 
 you, you have a greater choice of these pegs ; if 
 you are cooped up in a room with only one human 
 being within your vision, you are limited ; but the 
 pegs must be got, and are got, till the whole of the 
 one object, a miserable scapegoat, is covered with 
 them. 
 
 Probably the plain man is right. I leave him 
 to the philosopher, and keep to my safe duty as a 
 narrator. 
 
 The spirit of fault-finding once begun, waxed 
 stronger and stronger upon the food it generated 
 by its own powers of production. Almost every-
 
 312 THE STORY OF 
 
 thing either of them did appeared to be wrong in 
 the eyes of the other ; and though for a time they 
 tried to repress the sharp feehngs, which were 
 wonders even to themselves, yet the check would 
 come, the taunt would follow, and the flash of the 
 eye — an organ once so expressive of love — suc- 
 ceeded within the passing minute. People who 
 merely meet may be supposed to seek for objects 
 of disagreement. In the room in Burnet's Close 
 the occasions were the very actions of natural life ; 
 the movements of the body, the words of the mouth, 
 the glances of the eye, the thoughts of the mind, 
 the misconstrued feelings of the heart. Nor could 
 they, as in most cases people who disagree may, 
 get away from each other. The repulsion which 
 they felt towards a world which ofiered them only 
 reminiscences of past joys, was as a wall enclosing 
 the arena where these gladiatorial displays of feel- 
 ing went on from day to day, scarcely even inter- 
 rupted by the holy Sabbath any more than if they 
 had come within the excepted category of neces- 
 sity and mercy. 
 
 According to my information, which descended 
 to the minutest particulars, this domestic disease 
 went on for years, without any other alteration than 
 changes consistent with the laws of bodily ailment. 
 There were exasperations which, expending them- 
 selves in gratuitous vituperations, receded into
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 313 
 
 silent sullennesses, which lasted for days. If it 
 happened that no grievance could be discovered by 
 the microscopic vision, there was recourse to the 
 grievance of yesterday, which was called up to 
 occupy the greedy vacuum ; and then the changes 
 of aspect, of which, to the jaundiced eye, it was 
 capable, were rung upon it till they were physi- 
 cally wearied of the strife : while the weariness 
 only lasted till a renewed energy became ripe 
 for another onset. But however high the exas- 
 peration ever reached, they never came to any 
 violence. All the energy expended lay in the 
 tongue, and the eye, and the contorted muscles of 
 irrascible expression. It might have been doubted 
 whether, if any third party interfered, the one would 
 not have defended the other; but only to retain 
 her as valuable property for the onset of her pecu- 
 liar privilege. And what is not less strange, their 
 religion, which was still maintained with the old 
 Calvinistic dogmatism, in place of overcoming the 
 domestic demon, became subjected to it, and 
 changed its aspect according to the wish. Though 
 incapable of inflicting any bodily pain upon each 
 other, they felt no compunction in fostering the 
 opinion that, while each was among the elect and 
 predestinated to everlasting glory, the other was 
 in the scroll of the reprobate, and ordained to 
 eternal punishment in the brimstone fires, and the
 
 314 THE STORY OF 
 
 howling horrors of the pit which is so pecuharly 
 constituted as to have no bottom. Each would 
 read her Bible in her own chair, and shoot against 
 the other glances of triumph as she figured herself 
 in heaven looking down upon the torments of her 
 sister in hell. And all this while neither could have 
 withher own hands inflicted the scratch of a pin upon 
 the body of the other. It was enough that each could 
 lacerate the feelings of the other as a vent to the ex- 
 asperation which embittered her own heart. 
 
 Still more remarkable, there were none of these 
 reconciliations that among relations often make 
 amends for strife, and maintain the equipoise so 
 insisted upon by nature. We all know how these 
 ameliorations work in the married life and among 
 lovers. In these cases the anger seems to become 
 the fuel of love. Not so with our sisters. The 
 worm was a never-dying one. But even in this 
 desperate case there was not wanting evidence of 
 nature's efforts towards an amelioration. It was 
 true they could not separate ; they were objects 
 necessary to each other ; nay, even if Mr Ross, 
 who witnessed the working of the domestic evdl, 
 had contrived to get them into separate rooms — a 
 proposal which was indeed made, and morbidly 
 resisted — they would have pursued each other in 
 imagination with perhaps even more misery than 
 that which they inflicted on each other.
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 315 
 
 At length they came to a scheme of their own, 
 so pecuhar that it has formed the incident of that 
 story which has made it hve in Edinburgh through 
 many years, and even to this day. The plan was, 
 that they should draw in the middle of the floor a 
 distinct line of chalk, which should be a boundary 
 between them, over which neither the one nor the 
 other would ever set her foot. To make this plan 
 workable, it was necessary that the two ends of 
 the room should be each self-contained as regarded 
 the necessary articles of household plenishing ; and 
 this, by the aid of Mr Ross and Peggy Fergusson, 
 was duly accomplished. One of these articles was 
 a big ha' Bible for Martha, to stand against that 
 retained by Mary — in explanation of which I may 
 inform the English reader that the old Calvinists 
 had nearly as much faith in the size of their Bibles 
 as in their contents. Nor was the strength of their 
 faith altogether irrespective of the kind of cover, 
 and the manner in which it was clasped. There 
 was a great virtue in good strong calfskin — some- 
 times with the rough hair upon it ; and if the clasps 
 were of silver or gold, the volume had a peculiar 
 merit. It was necessary, therefore, that Martha's 
 Bible should be as big as Mary's ; and tlie latter 
 having been adorned by old Peter Jopp with silver 
 clasps, so the former was equally orthodox in this 
 respect.
 
 3i6 THE STORY OF 
 
 And so the chalk line was drawn. The only 
 difficulty regarded the fire ; but this was got over 
 by some ingenuity on the part of Peggy and a 
 workman, whereby the grate was altered so as to 
 hold two cranes ; and so minute were the en- 
 gineers, that the end of the chalk line came up to 
 the hearth, dividing it exactly into two. halves ; so 
 that each crane could be got at without overstep- 
 ping the mark. This arrangement lasted through 
 eleven years ; and if to that period we add the five 
 years of prior strife, this domestic war endured for 
 sixteen years ; nor, according to the report of Mr 
 Ross and Peggy, with that of the good many curi- 
 ous visitors who contrived through various excuses 
 to get a view of the domestic arrangement, was 
 that magic line which thus separated two hearts 
 once so loving ever transgressed ; nay, it seemed 
 to become a point of honour in the two maidens. 
 They might read their Bibles on either side of it, 
 and send their mute anathemas across it, so as to 
 reach the unhappy non-elect ; but not a foot of 
 either ever trod upon the mark. The foot of time 
 might dull it, but the ready hand of either revived 
 the line of demarcation, even as the feelings were 
 kept alive in undying vividness ; all which may 
 easily enough be conceived ; it contravenes no law 
 of nature ; but I fairly admit that I must draw a 
 strong bill on the credulity of poor modern haters
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 317 
 
 of the Armenian kind, when I state what was on 
 all hands acknowledged, that after the chalk truce 
 — ^that is, for eleven years — the residents of this 
 room, divided so against itself, never interchanged 
 a word with each other. I freely admit that all 
 traditions become incrusted by the marvellous. 
 We do not reject port wine because it has under- 
 gone a certain process. Yes ; but we do not swal- 
 low the crust, which is only deposited sugar. So 
 be it ; and you are welcome to your advantage, 
 provided you admit that the raciness you admire 
 is the consequence of the deposit ; and so, in my 
 case, you may reject the eleven years' silence of 
 Martha and Mary Jopp, yet you cannot get quit 
 of the tang of the reported marvel. For my own 
 part, I am a little sceptical myself; but then I 
 cannot prove the negative of a popular statement ; 
 and I rather doubt if there are many religions in 
 the world which are founded on anything better 
 than this defiance. 
 
 Towards the end of the eleventh year a new in- 
 cident arose to change perhaps the tenor of this 
 strange drama. Martha Darling, a daughter of 
 the sister Margaret who went to India, was sent 
 home to Mr Ross to be educated in Scotland, 
 where she was to remain till the homecoming of 
 her parents, who had become rich on the spoils of 
 Cheyte Sing, or the Begums of Oude, or some
 
 3i8 THE STORY OF 
 
 other unfortunate Indian victim. The girl was 
 generous, and full of young life ; and Mr Ross be- 
 came hopeful that by introducing her to her aunts 
 some instinctive feelings might be called up in the 
 breasts of the sisters which would break up the 
 old congelation. He told her the story of the 
 chalk line, and got a scream of a laugh for an 
 answer, with the threat that she would force her 
 aunts to embrace, and weep, and be friends. Next 
 day the visit was made, and, designedly, without 
 any intimation that the niece had arrived in Scot- 
 land. On opening the door, Mr Ross found the 
 two ladies in that position in which he had so often 
 before found them, each sitting stiffly on her own 
 side of the chalk line, and looking out of her win- 
 dow into the close — for, as I should have stated be- 
 fore, the room was supplied by two windows. 
 
 "Your niece from India — only arrived yesterday." 
 No more time for prologue, for the girl flew for- 
 ward, and taking her elder aunt round the neck, 
 hugged her very lovingly after the Anglo-Indian 
 fashion, and thereafter, making a spring over the 
 line of chalk, she ran to Aunt Mary, and performed 
 the same operation upon her, but with no emolli- 
 ating result ; the old petrefactions, which had be- 
 come harder by the passage of every wave of time, 
 were not to be dissolved or softened by the spark- 
 ling rill from the green sunny mountains. They
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 319 
 
 looked strangely only because they looked un- 
 naturally ; but that was no reason why Martha the 
 younger should change her nature, and so she 
 rattled away, every now and then casting her eye, 
 with a laugh, at the line of chalk. 
 
 " If I had you only in India," she went on, 
 " where the natives, when they drink bang, dance 
 such strange dances, you would laugh so. Shall I 
 show you ? " 
 
 And without waiting for an answer, she began 
 to make very pretty but somewhat irregular re- 
 volving movements on the floor, whereby in a 
 short time, by the rapid motion of her small feet, 
 she contrived to efface the line of chalk. 
 
 " Now you can hardly see it," she proceeded 
 with shortened breath ; " and now, the nasty thing 
 being gone, you are to cross and shake hands, and 
 kiss each other." 
 
 But the good-natured girl's efforts were use- 
 less. The sisters sat as stiff in their chairs as if 
 they had been the figures in a pagoda irresponsive 
 to the dance of the worshippers. Even the confi- 
 dent will-power of youth, which under-estimates all 
 difficulties, was staggered by the resistance offered 
 to its efforts, and the young Martha was obliged 
 to leave without attaining an object over which 
 she had been dreaming the preceding night. Next 
 morning the chalk line was renewed, the still air
 
 320 THE STORY OF 
 
 of the room in Burnet's Close had recovered its 
 quietude from the oscillation produced by the 
 young girl's laugh, and the demon of obstinacy 
 sat enshrined in its niche which it had occupied 
 for so many years ; nor had the after visits of the 
 younger Martha had any better effect towards the 
 object that lay nearest to her generous heart. 
 And now a month had passed ; a particular morn- 
 ing rose — not marked by an asterisk in the calen- 
 dar, and yet remarkable for opening with the 
 thickest gray dawn that had been observed for a 
 time. And here you may already see I am getting 
 among the mists, where old Dame Mystery, with 
 her undefined lines, is ready to assume the forms 
 forecast by brooding fancy. The gloom in the old 
 room still hung thick, as the two maiden ladies 
 moved slowly about, so like automatons, each pre- 
 paring her cup of tea. So sternly had custom oc- 
 cupied the place of primary nature, that it would 
 now have appeared more strange and out of joint 
 for them to speak than to be silent. And so, as 
 the minutes passed, the gray mist of the morning 
 gave way to the struggling rays of the sun, and 
 now there was something to be seen — nay, some- 
 thing that could not be unseen. Nor this the less 
 by token that the eyes of both our Martha and 
 Mary were fixed as if by a spell upon that part of 
 the wall over the mantelpiece. There was hang-
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 321 
 
 ing bodily, in the old frame, and radiant with the 
 old light, the real picture of their mother, for the 
 possession of which they had sighed for sixteen 
 years. We may easily conceive that it could not 
 fail of an effect, even as free from the connexion 
 of any mystery as to how it came to be there. 
 But the question, if put by either to herself or her 
 neighbour, could not be answered in any way con- 
 sistently with natural causes, for neither of them 
 had been out of the room — nay, neither had been 
 in a condition which could have been taken advan- 
 tage of by any one who wished by a trick to take 
 them by surprise Then how catching the super- 
 stitious when it plays into the hand of our fears ! 
 As they looked with spell-bound eyes on that ap- 
 parition, and read once more the expression in that 
 blessed countenance that spoke peace and love, — 
 reproof enough to those who for so many long 
 years had disobeyed her injunctions to treat each 
 other as sisters, and love each other even as she 
 loved them and they her, — they never doubted but 
 that some unseen hand placed that picture there 
 for the end of chastening their rebellious hearts, 
 and bringing them back to that love which was 
 enjoined even by Him whom they worshipped as 
 the very God of Love. It seemed as if they 
 shook as they gazed, and each one at intervals 
 
 sought with a furtive glance the face of the other. 
 
 X
 
 322 THE STORY OF 
 
 A charm was working among the old half-dead 
 nerves that for years had quivered with the pas- 
 sions of the devil. The revived feelings of that 
 olden time, when that mild loving mother was the 
 centre of their affections and bond of love between 
 themselves, were in a tumult below the hard crust 
 of mutual hatred, that was breaking under the 
 touch of the finger of God ; they were both of the 
 elect, since God took the trouble to chide them 
 and recall them to their duty and their obedience. 
 The relentings in the hard faces, the rising tears in 
 the eyes of both, the tremors in the hands, all 
 spoke eloquently to each other ; nor did they 
 speak in vain ; they rose as if by sympathy. " O 
 Martha ! " " O Mary ! " No more ; the words 
 were enough, and the two sisters were locked in 
 the arms of each other, drawing long sighs, and 
 sobbing convulsively. 
 
 A scene all this which, being apt to precipitate 
 one of my disposition into the gushing vein, I 
 must leave. I shall be on somewhat safer ground 
 as I proceed to say what truth and probability 
 equally require, that the paroxysm being over, and 
 the two having begun, even as they had done of 
 old, to make and sugar each other's tea, to butter 
 each other's bread, and even to break each other's 
 Qgg, or bone each other's small haddock — most 
 delightful tricks of love, which selfishness knows
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 323 
 
 nothing of, and cannot compensate by any means 
 within its power, — they gradually began to doubt 
 whether some kindly hand of flesh was not con- 
 cerned in producing the phenomenon of the pic- 
 ture. They had both been sound asleep till nine 
 o'clock, and Peggy Fergusson had in the gray 
 dawn been in the room doing her duty to the fire. 
 But what although the Indian elf, who had likely 
 brought the picture home with her from India, had 
 been put up by Mr Ross to a little deception, and 
 had slipt in in the wake of Peggy, and hung it on 
 the nail which had been so generously left by the 
 old tenant } nay, these spinsters, apart from the 
 delusion produced by the demon of obstinacy, 
 were sensible women ; and in the pleasant talk 
 that "now flowed like limpid water down a very 
 pretty valley with flowers on either side they came 
 to the conclusion, with — Oh, wonder ! — a laugh 
 fighting for utterance among the dry muscles, that 
 the fact was just so as we have stated it. What 
 then. Was not the effect admirable — yea, delect- 
 able.? 
 
 A conclusion this which derived no little confir- 
 mation from the fact that the young Anglo-Indian 
 came bouncing into the room about eleven o'clock, 
 crying, in her spirited way, " Ah, I see it is all 
 right," and yet never saying a word of the said 
 picture ; but, indeed, the fairy had some work to
 
 324 THE STORY OF 
 
 do other than of reveahng the secrets of Titania to 
 her victims, for she straightway set to work with a 
 wet cloth to eradicate every trace of that devil- 
 invented line of chalk which had so long kept 
 asunder good amiable spirits. Nor was she con- 
 tented with even this, for to satisfy her impish 
 whims, she got her now changed aunts, nothing 
 loth, to cross and recross the place of the now de- 
 faced line, till all notion of the division was taken 
 out of their minds. 
 
 It is a pleasant thing for me to have authority 
 to say that this miraculous change was not des- 
 tined to be merely temporary. The flow from the 
 once secluded fountains of feeling continued its 
 stream — nay, it seemed as if the two old maidens 
 could not love each other enough, and they had 
 been often heard to confess that one hour of pure 
 nature was worth all the sixteen years of factitious 
 opposition to her dictates. So true it is that, let 
 us deplore as we may the many ills of life, we 
 shall never diminish them by damming up the 
 fountains of feeling and driving the emotions back 
 upon the heart. Then fortune favours those who 
 are true to nature, who is the mother of fortune, 
 and all other occult agencies. The nabob and his 
 wife came home the next year, and set up a great 
 establishment in our old city. The spinsters were 
 gradually drawn out again into that world which
 
 THE CHALK LINE. 325 
 
 they had so foohshly left — we use the word deli- 
 berately, for hermits carry with them into their 
 cells a worse world than they leave behind, how- 
 ever unsteady, however cruel, and however vain, 
 that may at times seem to be ; — nay, we can say 
 with a good conscience that our two sisters became 
 the very darlings of a flock of young nephews and 
 nieces ; sometimes danced in a reel of ancient 
 maidens ; gadded gaily about ; sipt their scandal, 
 and helped like good citizens to spread the sweet 
 poison ; and passed many years as happily as can 
 be the fortune of those who are contented to live 
 according to the laws of nature. 
 
 Ballantyne dr= Company, Printers, Edinburgh.
 
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