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Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 23

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Title: Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 23

Compiler: John Mackay Wilson

Editor: Alexander Leighton


        
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #11032]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS AND OF SCOTLAND, VOLUME 23 ***

Wilson's

TALES OF THE BORDERS

AND OF SCOTLAND.

  HISTORICAL, TRADITIONARY, & IMAGINATIVE.


  REVISED BY
  ALEXANDER LEIGHTON,
  _One of the Original Editors and Contributors_.

VOL. XXIII.




CONTENTS.


  THE LAWYER'S TALES (_Alexander Leighton_)--LORD KAMES'S PUZZLE.

  THE ORPHAN (_John Mackay Wilson_).

  THE BURGHER'S TALES (_Alexander Leighton_)--THE
  BROWNIE OF THE WEST BOW.

  GLEANINGS OF THE COVENANT (_Professor Thomas
  Gillespie_)--THE LAST SCRAP.

  THE STORY OF MARY BROWN (_Alexander Leighton_).

  TIBBY FOWLER (_John Mackay Wilson_).

  THE CRADLE OF LOGIE (_Alexander Leighton_).

  THE DEATH OF THE CHEVALIER DE LA BEAUTÉ (_John Mackay Wilson_).

  THE STORY OF THE PELICAN (_Alexander Leighton_).

  THE WIDOW'S AE SON (_John Mackay Wilson_).

  THE LAWYER'S TALES (_Alexander Leighton_)--THE
  STORY OF MYSIE CRAIG.

  THE TWIN BROTHERS (_John Mackay Wilson_).

  THE GIRL FORGER (_Alexander Leighton_).

  THE TWO RED SLIPPERS (_Alexander Leighton_).

  THE FAITHFUL WIFE (_Alexander Leighton_).


  WILSON'S
  TALES OF THE BORDERS,
  AND OF SCOTLAND.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE LAWYER'S TALES.

LORD KAMES'S PUZZLE.


On looking over some Session papers which had belonged to Lord Kames,
with the object, I confess, of getting hold of some facts--those
entities called by Quintilian the bones of truth, the more by token, I
fancy, that they so often stick in the throat--which might contribute to
my legends, I came to some sheets whereon his lordship had written some
hasty remarks, to the effect that the case Napier _versus_ Napier was
the most curious puzzle that ever he had witnessed since he had taken
his seat on the bench. The papers were fragmentary, consisting of parts
of a Reclaiming Petition and some portion of a Proof that had been led
in support of a brieve of service; but I got enough to enable me to give
the story, which I shall do in such a connected manner as to take the
reader along with me, I hope pleasantly, and without any inclination to
choke upon the foresaid bones.

Without being very particular about the year, which really I do not know
with further precision than that it was within the first five years of
Lord Kames's senator-ship, I request the reader to fancy himself in a
small domicile in Toddrick's Wynd, in the old city of Edinburgh; and I
request this the more readily that, as we all know, Nature does not
exclude very humble places from the regions of romance, neither does she
deny to very humble personages the characters of heroes and heroines.
Not that I have much to say in the first instance either of the place or
the persons; the former being no more than a solitary room and a
bed-closet, where yet the throb of life was as strong and quick as in
the mansions of the great, and the latter composed of two persons--one,
a decent, hard-working woman called Mrs. Hislop, whose duty in this
world was to keep her employers clean in their clothes, wherein she
stood next to the minister, insomuch as cleanliness is next to
godliness--in other words, she was a washerwoman; the other being a
young girl, verging upon sixteen, called Henrietta, whose qualities,
both of mind and body, might be comprised in the homely eulogy, "as
blithe as bonnie." So it may be, that if you are alarmed at the humility
of the occupation of the one--even with your remembrance that Sir Isaac
Newton experimented upon soap-bubbles--as being so intractable in the
plastic-work of romance, you may be appeased by the qualities of the
other; for has it not been our delight to sing for a thousand years,
yea, in a thousand songs, too, the praises of young damsels, whether
under the names of Jenny or Peggy, or those of Clarinda or Florabella,
or whether engaged in herding flocks by Logan Waters, or dispensing
knights' favours under the peacock? But we cannot afford to dispose of
our young heroine in this curt way, for her looks formed parts of the
lines of a strange history; and so we must be permitted the privilege of
narrating that, while Mrs. Hislop's _protegée_ did not come within that
charmed circle which contains, according to the poets, so many angels
without wings, she was probably as fair every whit as Dowsabell. Yet,
after all, we are not here concerned with beauty, which, as a specialty
in one to one, and as a universality in all to all, is beyond the power
of written description. We have here to do simply with some traits
which, being hereditary, not derived from Mrs. Hislop, have a bearing
upon our strange legend: the very slightest cast in the eyes, which in
its piquancy belied a fine genial nature in the said Henney; and a
classic nose, which, partaking of the old Roman type, and indicating
pride, was equally untrue to a generosity of feeling which made friends
of all who saw her--_except one_. A strange exception this _one_; for
who, even in this bad world, could be an enemy to a creature who
conciliated sympathy as a love, and defied antipathy as an
impossibility? Who could _he_ be? or rather, who could _she_ be? for man
seems to be excluded by the very instincts of his nature. The question
may be answered by the evolution of facts; than which what other have we
even amidst the dark gropings into the mystery of our wonderful being?

Mrs. Hislop's head was over the skeil, wherein lay one of the linen
sheets of Mr. Dallas, the writer to the signet, which, with her broad
hands, she was busy twisting into the form of a serpent; and no doubt
there were indications of her efforts in the drops of perspiration which
stood upon her good-humoured, gaucy face, so suggestive of dewdrops
('bating the poetry) on the leaves of a big blush peony. In this work
she was interrupted by the entrance of Henney, who came rushing in as if
under the influence of some emotion which had taken her young heart by
surprise.

"What think ye, minny?" she cried, as she held up her hands.

"The deil has risen again from the grave where he was buried in
Kirkcaldy," was the reply, with a laugh.

"No, that's no it," continued the girl.

"Then what is it?" was the question.

"He's dead," replied Henney.

"Who is dead?" again asked Mrs. Hislop.

"The strange man," replied the girl.

And a reply, too, which brought the busy worker to a pause in her work,
for she understood who the _he_ was, and the information went direct
through the ear to the heart; but Henney, supposing that she was not
understood, added--

"The man who used to look at me with yon terrible eyes."

"Yes, yes, dear, I understand you," said the woman, as she let the coil
fall, and sat down upon a chair, under the influence of strong emotion.
"But who told you?"

"Jean Graham," replied the girl.

An answer which seemed, for certain reasons known to herself, to satisfy
the woman, for the never another word she said, any more than if her
tongue had been paralyzed by the increased action of her heart; but as
we usually find that when that organ in woman is quiet more useful
powers come into action, so the sensible dame began to exercise her
judgment. A few minutes sufficed for forming a resolution; nor was it
sooner formed than that it was begun to be put into action, yet not
before the excited girl was away, no doubt to tell some of her
companions of her relief from the bugbear of the man with the terrible
eyes. The formation of a purpose might have been observed in her
puckered lips and the speculation in her grey eyes. The spirit of
romance had visited the small house in Toddrick's Wynd, where for
fifteen years the domestic _lares_ had sat quietly surveying the economy
of poverty. She rose composedly from the chair into which the effect of
Henney's exclamation had thrown her, went to the blue chest which
contained her holiday suit, took out, one after another, the chintz
gown, the mankie petticoat, the curch, the red plaid; and, after washing
from her face the perspiration drops, she began to put on her humble
finery--all the operation having been gone through with that quiet
action which belongs to strong minds where resolution has settled the
quivering chords of doubt.

Following the dressed dame up the High Street, we next find her in the
writing-booth of Mr. James Dallas, writer to his Majesty's Signet. The
gentleman was, after the manner of his tribe, minutely scanning some
papers--that is, he was looking into them so sharply that you would have
inferred that he was engaged in hunting for "flaws;" a species of game
that is both a prey and a reward--_et praeda et premium_, as an old
proverb says. Nor shall we say he was altogether pleased when he found
his inquiry, whatever it might be, interrupted by the entrance of Mrs.
Margaret Hislop of Toddrick's Wynd; notwithstanding that to this
personage he and Mrs. Dallas, and all the Dallases, were indebted for
the whiteness of their linen. No doubt she would be wanting payment of
her account; yet why apply to him, and not to Mrs. Dallas? And, besides,
it needed only one glance of the writer's eye to show that his visitor
had something more of the look of a client than a cleaner of linen; a
conclusion which was destined to be confirmed, when the woman, taking up
one of the high-backed chairs in the room, placed it right opposite to
the man of law, and, hitching her round body into something like stiff
dignity, seated herself. Nor was this change from her usual deportment
the only one she underwent; for, as soon appeared, her style of speech
was to pass from broad Scotch, not altogether into the "Inglis" of the
upper ranks, but into a mixture of the two tongues; a feat which she
performed very well, and for which she had been qualified by having
lived in the service of the great.

"And so Mr. Napier of Eastleys is dead?" she began.

"Yes," answered the writer, perhaps with a portion of cheerfulness,
seeing he was that gentleman's agent, or "doer," as it was then called;
a word far more expressive, as many clients can testify, at least after
they are "done;" and seeing also that a dead client is not finally
"done" until his affairs are wound up and consigned to the green box.

"And wha is his heir, think ye?" continued his questioner.

"Why, Charles Napier, his nephew," answered the writer, somewhat
carelessly.

"I'm no just a'thegither sure of that, Mr. Dallas," said she, with
another effort at dignity, which was unfortunately qualified by a
knowing wink.

"The deil's in the woman," was the sharp retort, as the writer opened
his eyes wider than he had done since he laid down his parchments.

"The deil's in me or no in me," said she; "but this I'm sure of, that
Henrietta Hislop--that's our Henney, ye ken--the brawest and bonniest
lass in Toddrick's Wynd (and that's no saying little), is the lawful
heiress of Mr. John Napier of Eastleys, and was called Henrietta after
her mother."

"The honest woman's red wud," said the writer, laughing. "Why, Mrs.
Hislop, I always took you for a shrewd, sensible woman. Do you really
think that, because you bore a child to Mr. John Napier, therefore
Henney Hislop is the heiress of her reputed father?"

"_Me_ bear a bairn to Mr. Napier!" cried the offended client. "Wha ever
said I was the mother of Henney Hislop?"

"Everybody," replied he. "We never doubted it, though I admit she has
none of your features."

"Everybody is a leear, then," rejoined the woman tartly. "There's no a
drap of blood in the lassie's body can claim kindred with me or mine;
though, if it were so, it would be no dishonour, for the Hislops were
lairds of Highslaps in Ayrshire at the time of Malcolm Mucklehead."

"And whose daughter, by the mother's side, is she, then?" asked he, as
his curiosity began to wax stronger.

"Ay, you have now your hand on the cocked egg," replied she, with a look
of mystery. "The other was a wind ane, and you've just to sit a little
and you'll see the chick."

The writer settled himself into attention, and the good dame thought it
proper, like some preachers who pause two or three minutes (the best
part of their discourse) after they have given out the text, to raise a
wonder how long they intend to hold their tongue, and thereby produce
attention, to retain her speech until she had attained the due
solemnity.

"It is now," she began, in a low mysterious voice, "just sixteen years
come June,--and if ye want the day, it will be the 15th,--and if ye want
the hour, we may say eleven o'clock at night, when I was making ready
for my bed,--I heard a knock at my door, and the words of a woman, 'Oh,
Mrs. Hislop, Mrs. Hislop!' So I ran and opened the door; and wha think
ye I saw but Jean Graham, Mr. Napier's cook, with een like twa candles,
and her mouth as wide as if she had been to swallow the biggest sup of
porridge that ever crossed ploughman's craig?"

"'What's ado, woman?' said I, for I thought something fearful had
happened.

"'Oh,' cried she, 'my lady's lighter, and ye're to come to Meggat's
Land, even noo, this minute, and bide nae man's hindrance.'

"'And so I will,' said I, as I threw my red plaid ower my head; then I
blew out my cruse, and out we came, jolting each other in the dark
passage through sheer hurry and confusion--down the Canongate, t'll we
came to Meggat's Land, in at the kitchen door, ben a dark passage, up a
stair, then ben another passage, till we came to a back room, the door
of which was opened by somebody inside. I was bewildered--the light in
the room made my een reel; but I soon came to myself, when I saw a man
and Mrs. Kemp the howdie busy rowing something in flannel.

"'Get along,' said the man to Jean; 'you're not wanted here.'

"And as Jean made off, Mrs. Kemp turned to me--

"'Come here, Mrs. Hislop,' said she.

"So I slipt forward; but the never a word more was said for ten minutes,
they were so intent on getting the bairn all right--for ye ken, sir, it
was a new-born babe they were busy with: they were as silent as the
grave; and indeed everything was so still, that I heard their breathing
like a rushing of wind, though they breathed just as they were wont to
do. And when they had finished--

"'Mrs. Hislop,' said the man, as he turned to me, 'you're to take this
child and bring it up as your own, or anybody else's you like, except
Mr. Napier's, and you're never to say when or how you got it, for it's a
banned creature, with the curse upon it of a malison for the sins of him
who begot it and of her who bore it. Swear to it;' and he held up his
hand.

"And I swore; but I thought I would just take the advice of the Lord how
far my words would bind me to do evil, or leave me to do gude, when the
time came. So I took the bairn into my arms.

"'And wha will pay for the wet-nurse?' said I; 'for ye ken I am as dry
as a yeld crummie. But there is a woman in Toddrick's Wynd wha lost her
bairn yestreen: she is threatened wi' a milk-fever, and by my troth this
little stranger will cure her; but, besides the nourice-fee, there is my
trouble.'

"'I was coming to that,' said he, 'if your supple tongue had left you
power to hear mine. In this leathern purse there are twenty gowden
guineas--a goodly sum; but whether goodly or no, you must be content;
yea, the never a penny more you may expect, for all connection between
this child and this house or its master is to be from this moment
finished for ever.'

"And a gude quittance it was, I thought, with a bonny bairn and twenty
guineas on my side, and nothing on the other but maybe a father's anger
and salt tears, besides the wrath of God against those who forsake their
children. So with thankfulness enough I carried away my bundle; and
ye'll guess that Henney Hislop is now the young woman of fifteen who was
then that child of a day."

"And is this all the evidence," said the writer, "you have to prove that
Henrietta Hislop is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Napier?"

"Maybe no," replied she; "if ye weren't so like the English stranger wha
curst the Scotch kail because he did not see on the table the beef that
was coming from the kitchen, besides the haggis and the bread-pudding.
You've only as yet got the broth, and, for the rest, I will give you Mrs.
Kemp, wha told me, as a secret, that the child was brought into the
world by her own hands from the living body of Mrs. Napier. Will that
satisfy you?"

"No," replied Mr. Dallas, who had got deeper and deeper into a study.
"Mr. Napier, I know, was at home that evening when his wife bore a
child: that child never could have been given away without his consent;
and as for the consent itself, it is a still greater improbability,
seeing that he was always anxious for an heir to Eastleys."

"And so maybe he was," replied she; "but I see you are only at the beef
yet, and you may be better pleased when you have got the haggis, let
alone the pudding. Yea, it is even likely Mr. Napier wanted an heir,
and, what is more, he got one, at least an heiress; but sometimes God
gives and the devil misgives. And so it was here; for Mr. Napier took it
into his head that the child was not his, and, in place of being pleased
with an heir, he thought himself cursed with a bastard, begotten on his
wife by no other than Captain Preston, his lady's cousin. And where did
the devil find that poison growing but in the heart of Isabel Napier,
the sister of that very Charles who is now thinking he will heir
Eastleys by pushing aside poor Henney? And then the poison, like the old
apple, was so fair and tempting; for Mr. Napier had been married ten
years, and enjoyed the love that is so bonnie a 'little while when it is
new,' and yet had no children, till this one came so exactly nine months
after the captain's visit to Scotland, that Satan had little more to do
than hold up the temptation. You see, sir, how things come round; but
still, according to the old fashion, after a long, weary, dreary turn.
Mrs. Napier died next day after the birth; Mr. Napier lived a miserable
man; Henney was brought up in poverty, and sometimes distress, but now I
hope she has come to her kingdom."

Here Mrs. Hislop stopped; and as there could be no better winding-up of
a romance than by bringing her heroine to her kingdom at last, she felt
so well pleased with her conclusion, that she could afford to wait
longer for her expected applause than the fair story-tellers in the
_brigata_ under Queen Pampinea; and it was as well that she was thus
fortified, for the writer, in place of declaring his satisfaction, with
her proofs, seemed, as he lay back in his chair in a deep reverie, to be
occupied once more in hunting for flaws. At length, raising himself on
his chair, and fixing his eyes upon her with that look of scepticism
which a writer assumes when he addresses a would-be new client who wants
to push out an old one with a better right--

"Mrs. Hislop," said he, "if it had not been that I have always taken you
for an honest woman, I would say that you are art and part in
fabricating a story without a particle of foundation. There may possibly
be some mystery about the birth and parentage of the young girl. You may
have got her out of the house of Meggat's Land in the Canongate from a
man--not Mr. Napier, you admit--who may have been the father of it by
some mother residing in the house; and Mrs. Kemp may have been actuated,
by some unknown means, to remove the paternity from the right to the
wrong person. All this is possible; but that the child could be that one
which Mrs. Napier bore is impossible, for this reason--and I beg of you
to listen to it--that Mrs. Napier's child _was dead-born, and was,
according to good evidence, buried in the same coffin with the mother_."

A statement this, which, delivered in the solemn manner of an attorney
who was really honest, and who knew much of this history, appeared to
Mrs. Hislop so strange that her tongue was paralyzed; an effect which
had never before been produced by any one of all the five causes of the
metaphysicians. Even her eyes seemed to have lost their power of
movement; and as for her wits, they had, like those of the renowned
Astolpho, surely left, and taken refuge in the moon.

"If you are not satisfied with my words," continued the writer (no doubt
ironically, for where could he have found better evidence of the effect
of his statement?), "I will give you writing for the truth of what I
have said to you."

And rising and going towards a green tin box, he opened the same, and
taking therefrom a piece of paper, he resumed his seat.

"Now listen," said he, as he unfolded an old yellow-coloured sheet of
paper, and then he read these words: "'Your presence is requested at the
funeral of Henrietta Preston, my wife, and of a child still-born, from
my house, Meggat's Land, Canongate, to the burying-ground at St.
Cuthberts, on Friday the 19th of this month June, at one o'clock;' and
the name at this letter," continued Mr. Dallas, "is that of 'John Napier
of Eastleys.' Will that satisfy you?"

And the "doer" for Mr. Charles Napier, conceiving that he had at last
effectually "done" his client's opponent, seemed well pleased to sit and
witness the further effect of his evidence on the bewildered woman; but
we are to remember that a second stroke sometimes only takes away the
pain of the former, and a repetition of blows will quicken the reaction
which slumbered under the first. Whether this was so or not in our
present instance, or whether Mrs. Hislop had recovered her wits by a
process far shorter than that followed by the foresaid Astolpho, we know
not; but certain it is, that she recovered the powers of both her eyes
and her tongue in much less time than the writer expected, and in a
manner, too, very different from that for which he was probably
prepared.

"Weel," replied she, smiling, "it would just seem that even the haggis
has not pleased you, Mr. Dallas;" and, putting her hand into a big
side-pocket, that might have served a gaberlunzie for a wallet, she
extracted a small piece of paper. She continued: "But ye see a guid,
honest Scotchwoman's no to be suspected of being shabby at her own
table; so read ye that, which you may take for the bread-pudding."

And the writer, having taken the paper, and held it before his face for
so long a time that it might have suggested the suspicion that the words
therein written stuck in his eyes, and would not submit to that strange
process whereby, unknown to ourselves, we transfer written vocables to
the ear before we can understand them, turned a look upon the woman of
dark suspicion--

"Where, in God's name, got you this?" he said.

"Just read it out first," replied she. "Ye read yer ain paper, and why
no mine?"

And the writer read, perhaps more easily than he could understand, the
strange words:

"This child, born of my wife, and yet neither of my blood nor my
lineage, I repudiate, and, unable to push it back into the dark world of
nothing from which it came, I leave it with a scowl to the mercy which
countervaileth the terrible decree whereby the sins of the parent shall
be visited on the child. This I do on the 15th of June 17--. JOHN NAPIER
of Eastleys, in the county of Mid-Lothian."

After reading this extraordinary denunciation, Mr. Dallas sat and
considered, as if at a loss what to say; but whether it was that
scepticism was at the root of his thoughts, or that he assumed it as a
mask to conceal misgivings to which he did not like to confess, he put a
question:

"Where got you this notable piece of evidence?"

"Ay," replied Mrs. Hislop, "you are getting reasonable on the last dish.
That bit of paper, which to me and my dear Henney is werth the haill
estate of Eastleys, was found by me carefully pinned to the flannel in
which the child was wrapt."

"Wonderful enough surely," repeated he, "_if true_"--the latter words
being pronounced with emphasis which made the rough liquid letter sound
like a hurling stone; "but," he continued, "the whole document, in its
terms of crimination and exposure, and not less the wild manner of its
application, is so unlike the act of a man not absolutely frantic, that
I cannot believe it to be genuine."

"But you know, Mr. Dallas," replied she, "that Mr. John Napier was a man
who, if he threw a stone, cared little whether it struck the kirk window
or the mill door."

"That is so far true; but, passionate and unforgiving as he was, he was
not so reckless as to be regardless whether the stone did not come back
on his own head."

"And it's no genuine!" she resumed, as, disregarding his latter words,
she relapsed into her more familiar dialect. "The Lord help ye! canna ye
look at first the ae paper and then the ither? and if they're no alike,
mustna the ither be the forgery?"

An example of the conditional syllogism which might have amused even a
writer to the signet, if he had not been at the very moment busy in the
examination of the handwriting of the funeral letter and that of the
paper of repudiation and malison--the resemblance, or rather the
identity of which was so striking, as to reduce all his theories to
confusion.

"By all that's good in heaven, the same," he muttered to himself; and
then addressing his visitor, "I confess, Mrs. Hislop," said he, "that
this paper has driven me somewhat off my point of confidence; but I
suppose you will see that, if the child was actually, as the letter
indicates, buried with its mother, Henrietta's rights are at an end. It
is just possible, however, I fairly admit, that Mr. Napier, who was a
very eccentric man, may have so worded the letter as to induce the world
to believe that the so-considered illegitimate child had been dead-born,
while he gratified--privately he might verily think--his vengeance by
writing this terrible curse. Still I think you are wrong; but as this
wonderful paper gives you a plausible plea, I would recommend you to Mr.
White, in Mill's Court, who will see to the young woman's rights. He
will be the flint, and I the steel; and between our friendly opposition
we will produce a spark which will light up the candle of truth."

"Ay," replied she; "only as the spark of fire comes from the steel,
we'll just suppose you are the flint--and by my troth you're hard
enough; but, come as it may, it will light the lantern that will show
Henney Napier to the bonnie haughs of Eastleys."

Mrs. Hislop having got back her paper from Mr. Dallas, left the writer's
chambers, and directed her steps to Mill's Court, where she found Mr.
White, even as she had Mr. Dallas, busy poring over law papers. She was,
as we have seen, one of those people who can make their own introduction
acceptable, and, moreover, one of those women, few as they are, who can
tell a story with the continuity and fitting emphasis necessary to
secure the attention of a busy listener. So Mr. White heard her
narrative, not only with interest, but even a touch of the pervading
sympathy of the spirit of romance. And so he might; for who doesn't see
that the charm of mystery can be enhanced by the hope of turning it to
account of money? Then he was so much of a practical man as to know that
while every string has two ends, the true way to get hold of both is to
make sure in the first place of one. Wherefore he began to interrogate
his client as to who could speak to the doings in the house in Meggat's
Land on that eventful night when the child was born; and having taken
notes of the answers to his questions, he paused a little, as if to
consider what was the first step he ought to take into the region of
doubt, and perhaps of intrigue, where at least there must be lies
floating about like films in the clear atmosphere of truth. Nor had he
meditated many minutes till he rose, and taking up his square hat and
his gold-headed cane, he said--

"Come, we will try what we can discover in a quarter where an end of the
ravelled string ought to be found, whether complicated into a knot by
the twisting power of self-interest or no."

And leading the way, he proceeded with his client down the High Street,
where, along under the glimmering lamps, were the usual crowds of
loungers, composed of canny Saxon and fiery Celt, which have always made
this picturesque thoroughfare so remarkable. Not one of all these had
any interest for our two searchers; but it was otherwise when they came
toward the Canongate Tolbooth, where, out from a dark entry sprang a
young woman, and bounding forward, seized our good dame round the neck.
This was no other than Henney Hislop herself, who, having been alarmed
at the long absence of her "mother," as she called her, and of course
believed her to be, was so delighted to find her, that she sobbed out
her joy in such an artless way, that even the writer owned it was
interesting to behold. Nor was the picture without other traits
calculated to engage attention; for the girl whose fortunes had been so
strange, and were perhaps destined to be still more strange, was dressed
in the humblest garb--the short gown and the skirt peculiar to the time;
but then every tint was so bright with pure cleanliness, the earrings
set off so fine a skin, the indispensable strip of purple round the head
imparted so much of the grace of the old classic wreath; and beyond all
this, which might be said to be extraneous, her features--if you abated
the foresaid cast or slight squint in the eyes, which imparted a
piquancy--were so regular, if not handsome, that you could not have
denied that she deserved to be a Napier, if she was not a very Napier in
reality. A few words whispered in Mrs. Hislop's ear, and the girl was
off, leaving our couple to proceed on their way. Even this incident had
its use; for Mr. White, who had known Mr. Napier, and had faith (as who
has not?) in the hereditary descent of bodily aspects, could not
restrain himself from the remark, however much it might inflame the
hopes of his client--"The curse has left no blight there," said he.
"That is the very face of Mr. Napier--the high nose especially; and as
for the eyes, with that unmistakeable cast, why, I have seen their
foretypes in the head of John Napier a hundred times."

An observation so congenial to Mrs. Hislop, that she could not help
being a little humorous, even in the depth of an anxiety which had kept
her silent for the full space of ten minutes.

"Nose, sir! there wasn't a man frae the castle yett to Holyrood wha
could have produced that nose except John Napier."

And without further interruption than her own laugh, they proceeded till
they came to the entry called Big Lochend Close, up which they went some
forty or fifty steps till they came to an outer door, which led by a
short dark passage to two or three inner doors in succession, all
leading to separate rooms occupied by separate people. No sooner had
they turned into this passage than they encountered a woman in a plaid
and with a lantern in her hand, who had just left the third or innermost
room, and whose face, as it peered through the thick folds of her
head-covering, was illuminated by a gleam from the light she carried.
She gave them little opportunity for examination, having hurried away as
if she had been afraid of being searched for stolen property.

"Isbel Napier," whispered Mrs. Hislop; "she wha first brought evil into
the house of the Napiers, with all its woe."

"And who bodes us small hope here," said he, "if she has been with the
nurse."

And entering the room from which the ill-omening woman had issued, they
found another, even her of whom they were in search, sitting by the
fire, torpid and corpulent, to a degree which indicated that as it had
been her trade to nurse others, she had not forgotten herself in her
ministrations.

"Mrs. Temple," said Mr. White, who saw the policy of speaking fair the
woman who had been so recently in the company of an evil genius; "I am
glad to find you so stout and hearty."

"Neither o' the twa, sir," replied she; "for I am rather weak and
heartless. Many a ane I hae nursed into health and strength, but a'
nursing comes hame in the end."

"And some, no doubt, have died under your care," continued the writer,
with a view to introduce his subject; "and therefore you should be
grateful for the life that is still spared to you. You could not save
the life of Mrs. Napier."

"That's an auld story, and a waefu' ane," she replied, with a side-look
at Mrs. Hislop; "and I hae nae heart to mind it. Some said the lady
wasna innocent; and doubtless Mr. Napier thought sae, for he took high
dealings wi' her, and looked at her wi' a scorn that would have scathed
whinstanes. Sae it was better she was ta'en awa--ay, and her baby wi'
her; for if it had lived, it would have dree'd the revenge o' that stern
man."

"The child!" said Mr. White, "did it die too?"

"Dee! ye may rather ask if it ever lived; for it never drew breath, in
this world at least."

A statement so strange, that it brought the eyes of the two visitors to
each other; and no doubt both of them recurred in memory to the
statement in the funeral letter, which, whatever may have been the case
with the assertion now made by the nurse, never could have been dictated
by her they had met in the passage; and no doubt, also, they both
remembered the statement made by Mr. Dallas, to the effect that both the
mother and child were buried together.

"Never drew breath, you say, nurse!" resumed Mr. White, with an air of
astonishment; "why, I have been given to understand, not only that the
child was born alive, but that it is actually living now."

"Weel," replied the nurse, "maybe St. Cuthbert has wrought a miracle,
and brought the child out o' the grave by the West Church; but he has
wrought nae miracle on me, to mak' me forget what my een saw, and my
hands did, that day when I helped to place the dead body o' the innocent
on the breast o' its dead mother; ay, and bent her stiff arms sae as to
bring them ower her bairn, just as if she had been faulding it to her
bosom. And sae in this fashion were they buried."

"And you would swear to that, Mrs. Temple?" said the writer.

"Ay, upon fifty Bibles, ane after anither," was the reply, in something
like a tone of triumph.

Nor could the woman be induced to swerve from these assertions,
notwithstanding repeated interrogations; and the writer was left to the
conclusion--which he preferred, rather than place any confidence in the
funeral letter--that the nurse's statement was in some mysterious way
connected with the visit of Isabel Napier; and yet, not so very
mysterious, after all, when we are to consider that her brother was
preparing to claim Eastleys, as well as the valuable furniture of the
house in Meggat's Land, as the nearest lawful heir of his deceased
uncle. The salvo was at least comfortable to both Mr. White and his
client, and no doubt it helped to lighten their steps, as, bidding adieu
to the "hard witness," they left her to the nursing which comes "aye
hame in the end."

But their inquiries were not finished; and retracing their steps up the
Canongate, they landed in the Fountain Close, where, under the leading
of Mrs. Hislop, the writer was procured another witness, with a name
already familiar to him through the communication of his client; and
this was no other than that same Jean Graham, who was sent to Toddrick's
Wynd on that eventful night, fifteen years before, to bring Mrs. Hislop
to the house in Meggat's Land;--one of those simple souls--we wish there
were more of them in the world--who look upon a lie as rather an operose
affair, and who seem to be truthful from sheer laziness. There was,
accordingly, no difficulty here; for the woman rolled off her story just
as if it had been coiled up in her mind for all that length of time.

"There was a terrible stir in the house that night," she began. "The
nurse, wha is yet living in Lochend Close, and Mrs. Kemp the howdie, wha
is dead, were wi' my lady; and John Cowie, the butler, was busy
attending our master, who had been the haill day in ane o' his dark
fits, for we heard him calling for Cowie in a fierce voice ever and
again; and his step sounded ower our heads upon the floor as he walked
back and fore in his wrath. Then I was sent for you, and brought you,
and you'll mind how Cowie bade me go along; but I had mair sense, for I
listened at the door, and heard what the butler said to ye when he gied
ye the bairn; and think ye I didna see ye carry it along the passage as
ye left? Sae far I could understand; but when I heard nurse say the
bairn was dead, Mrs. Kemp say the bairn was still-born, and Cowie
declare it was better it was dead and awa, I couldna comprehend this
ava; nor do I weel yet; but we just thought that as there was something
wrang between master and my lady, he wanted us to believe that the bairn
was dead, for very shame o' being thought the father, when maybe he
wasna. And then he was so guid to me and my neighbour Anne Dickson,--ye
mind o' her--puir soul, she's dead too,--that we couldna, for the very
heart o' us, say a word o' what we knew. But now when Mr. Napier is
dead, and the brother o' that wicked Jezebel, Isbel Napier, may try to
take the property frae Henney, wha I aye kenned as a Napier, with the
very nose and een o' the father, I have spoken out; and may the Lord gie
the right to whom the right is due!"

"It's all right," said the writer, after he had jotted with a pencil the
evidence of Jean, as well as that of the nurse; "and if we could find
this John Cowie, we might so fortify the orphan's rights, as to defy
Miss Napier and her brother, and Mr. Dallas, and all the witnesses they
can bring."

"Ay," continued the woman, "but I doubt if you'll catch him. He left Mr.
Napier's service about ten years ago, and I never heard mair o' him."

"Nor I either," said Mrs. Hislop.

"Well, we must search for him," added Mr. White; "for that man alone, so
far as I can see, is he who will unravel this strange business."

And thus the day's work finished. The writer parted for Mill's Court,
and Mrs. Hislop, filled with doubts, hopes, and anxieties, sought her
humble dwelling in Toddrick's Wynd, where Henney waited for her with all
the solicitude of a daughter; but a word did not escape her lips that
might carry to the girl's mind a suspicion that the golden cord of their
supposed relationship ran a risk of being severed, even with the
eventual condition that one, if not both of the divisions, would be
transmuted into a string of diamonds.

Meanwhile the agent was in his own house, revolving all the points of a
puzzle more curious than any that had yet come within the scope of his
experience. Sometimes he felt confidence, and at other times despair;
and of course he had the consolation, which belongs to all litigants,
that the opposite party was undergoing the same process of oscillation.
It was clear enough that Cowie was the required Oedipus; and if it
should turn out that he was dead, or could not be found, the advantage
was, with a slight declination, on the part of Charles Napier; insomuch
as, while he was indisputably the nephew of the deceased, the orphan,
Henrietta, was under the necessity of proving her birth and pedigree.
And so, as it appeared, Mr. Dallas was of that opinion, for the very
next day he applied to Chancery for a brieve to get Charles Napier
served nearest and lawful heir to his uncle; and as in legal warfare,
where the judges are cognisant only of patent claims, there is small
room for retiring tactics, Mr. White felt himself obliged, however
anxious he was to gain time, to follow his opponent's example by taking
out a competing brieve in favour of Henrietta.

The parties were now face to face in court, and the battle behoved to be
fought out; but as in all legal cases, where the circumstances are
strange or peculiar, the story soon gets wind, so here the Meggat's Land
romance was by-and-by all over the city. Nor did it take less fantastic
forms than usual, where sympathies and antipathies are strong in
proportion to the paucity of the facts on which they are fed. It was a
favourite opinion of some, that the case could only be cleared by
supposing that a dead stranger child had been surreptitiously passed
off, and even coffined, as the true one; while others, equally skilled
in the art of divining, maintained that the child given to Mrs. Hislop
by Cowie was a bastard of his own, by the terrible woman Isabel Napier,
who was thus, according to the ordinary working of public prejudice,
raised to a height of crime sufficient to justify the hatred of the
people: on which presumption, it behoved to be assumed that the paper
containing the curse was a forgery by Cowie and his associate in crime,
and that the money paid to Mrs. Hislop was furnished by the lady; all
which suppositions, and others not less incredible, were greedily
accepted, for the very reason that it required something prodigious to
explain an enigma which exhausted the ordinary sources of man's
ingenuity; just as we find in many religions, where miracles--the more
absurd, the more acceptable--are resorted to to explain the mystery of
man's relation to God, a secret which no natural light can illuminate.

But all these suppositions were destined to undergo refractions through
the medium of a new fact. The case, by technical processes, came before
the Court of Session, where the diversity of opinion was, proportionably
to the number of judges, as great as among the quidnuncs outside. The
only clear idea in the heads of the robed and wigged wiseacres was, that
the case, Napier _versus_ Napier, was a puzzle which no man could read
or solve. It seemed fated to be as famous as the old Sphinx, the
insoluble Moenander, or the tortuous labyrinth, or the intricate key of
Hercules--_ne Apollo quidem intelligat_; and if it had not happened that
Lord Kames suggested the possibility of getting an additional piece of
evidence through the examination of the coffin wherein Mrs. Napier was
buried, the court might have been sitting over the famous case even in
this year of the nineteenth century. The notion was worthy of his
lordship's ingenuity; and accordingly a commission was issued to one of
the Faculty to proceed to the West Church burying-ground, and there
cause to be laid open and examined the coffin of the said Mrs. Henrietta
Preston or Napier, with the view to ascertain whether or not the body of
a child had been placed therein along with the corpse of the mother.

This commission was accordingly executed, and the report bore, that "he,
the commissioner, had proceeded to the burying-ground of the parish of
St. Cuthberts, and there caused David Scott, the sexton, to lay open the
grave of the said Henrietta Preston or Napier, and to open the coffin
therein contained; which having accordingly been done by the said David
Scott and his assistants, the commissioner, upon a faithful examination,
aided by the experience of the said David Scott, did find the skeletons
of two bodies in the said coffin identified as that of the said lady,
one whereof was that of a woman apparently of middle age, and the other
that of a babe, which lay upon the chest of the larger skeleton in such
a way or manner as to be retained or held in that position by the arms
of the same being laid across it; that having satisfied himself of these
facts, the commissioner caused the coffin to be again closed and the
grave covered with all decency and care. And he accordingly made this
report to their lordships."

The fact thus ascertained, in opposition to the expectation of those who
favoured the orphan, was viewed by the court as depriving, to a great
extent, the case of that aspect of a riddle by which it had been so
unfortunately distinguished; and as the case had been hung up even
beyond the time generally occupied by cases at that period, when, as it
was sometimes remarked, law-suits were as often settled by the old rule,
_Romanus sedendo vincit_--by the death of one or other of the
parties--as by a judgment, the case was again put to the Roll for a
hearing on the effect of the new evidence. It was contended for the
nephew by Mr. Wight, that the question was now virtually settled,
insomuch that the court was not bound to solve riddles, but to find to
whom pertained a certain right of inheritance. The birth of the child
had been sworn to by the nurse, as well as its death, and the final
placing of it in the coffin; and now the court had, as it were, ocular
demonstration of these facts by the body having been seen by their own
commissioner, placed on the breast of the mother in that very peculiar
way described by Mrs. Temple. All claim on the part of the girl was thus
virtually excluded, for the proceedings which took place that evening in
another room, under circumstances of suspicion, were sworn to only by
Mrs. Hislop herself, an interested witness, and were only partially
confirmed by an eavesdropper, who, as eavesdroppers generally do (except
when their own characters are concerned), perhaps heard according as
foregone prejudices induced her to wish. These suspicious proceedings
might be explained by as many hypotheses as had been devised by the wise
judges of the taverns, among which was the theory of the living child
being Cowie's own by Isabel Napier, and palmed off as Mrs. Napier's to
hide the shame of the true mother,--all unlikely enough, no doubt, but
not so impossible as that the coffined child should now be alive and
awaiting the issue of this case, in the expectation of being Lady of
Eastleys.

On the other side, Mr. Andrews, counsel for Henrietta, maintained that
while his learned brother assumed the one half of the case as proved,
and repudiated the other as a lie or a myth, he had a right to embrace
the other half, and pronounce the first a stratagem or trick. The
proceedings in the back-room into which Jean Graham introduced Mrs.
Hislop were more completely substantiated than those in the bedroom
where Mrs. Napier lay; for while the one were sworn to by Mrs. Hislop
herself, a soothfast witness, and confirmed in all points by the woman
Graham, the other were attempted to be proven by the solitary testimony
of the nurse Temple. The paper containing the curse was as indisputably
in the handwriting of Mr. Napier as was the funeral letter. The money
paid was proved by the fact that the orphan had been kept and educated
for fifteen years. The name Henrietta was not likely to have been a mere
coincidence, and it was still more unlikely that a respectable woman
such as Mrs. Hislop would invent a story of affiliation so strangely in
harmony with the secrets of the house in Meggat's Land, and fortify it
by a forged document. Then Mrs. Hislop was unable to write, and no
attempt had been made on the other side to prove that Henrietta had a
father other than he who was pointed out by the paper of the curse. So
he (the counsel) might follow the example of his brother, and hold the
other half of the case to be unexplainable by hypotheses, however
ridiculous. The child having been disposed of to Mrs. Hislop,--a fact
thus proved,--what was to prevent him (the counsel) from going also to
the haunts of the _tabernian_ Solons, or anywhere else in the regions of
fancy, for the theory that Mr. Napier, or some plotter for him in the
shape of Mrs. Kemp or John Cowie, substituted the dead child of a
stranger for the living one of his wife, and bribed the nurse Temple to
tell the tale she had told? to which she would be the more ready by the
golden promptings of the woman Isabel Napier, the niece, whose brother
would, in the event of the stratagem being concealed, succeed to the
estate of Eastleys.

At the conclusion of these pleadings, the judges were inclined to be
even more humorous than they had been previous to the issuing of the
commission, for they had thought they saw their way to a judgment
against the orphan. The president (Braxfield), it is said, indulged in a
joke, to the effect that he had read _somewhere_--it was not for so
religious a man to say where--of a child having been claimed by two
mothers; he would like to see two fathers at that work, at least he
would not be one; but here the claim was set up by Death on the one
side, and Life (if a personification could be allowed) on the other, and
they could not follow the old precedent, because he suspected none of
their lordships would like to see the grim claimant at the bar to
receive his half. And so they chuckled, as judges sometimes do, at their
own jokes--generally very bad--altogether oblivious of the fable of the
frogs who could see no fun in a game which was death to them; for, as we
have indicated, the opinion of a great majority was against the claim of
the young woman: nor would the decision have been suspended that day,
had not Mr. Andrews risen and made a statement--perhaps _as_ fictitious
as a counsel's conscience would permit--to the effect that the agent
(Mr. White) had procured some trace of the butler Cowie, who could throw
more light on the case than Death had done, and that if some time were
accorded to complete the inquiry, something might turn up which would
alter the complexion even of this Protean mystery. The request was
granted.

But, in truth, Mr. Andrews' suggestion was simply a bit of ingenuity,
intended to ward off an unfavourable judgment, and allow a development
of the chapter of accidents;--a wise policy; for as the womb of Time is
never empty, so Fate writes in the morning a chapter of every man's life
of a day, at which in the evening he is sometimes a little surprised. No
trace had yet been got of Cowie; it was not even known whether he was
alive. But if we throw some fourteen days into the wallet-bag of Saturn,
we may come to a day whereupon a certain person, in an inn far down in a
valley of Westmoreland, and in the little town called Kirby Lonsdale,
was busy reading the _Caledonian Mercury_--for it was not more easy to
say where the winged _Mercury_ of that time would not go, than it is to
tell where a certain insect without wings, "which aye travels south,"
might not be found in England as an immigrant. It was at least no wonder
that the paper should contain an account of the romance wrapped up in
the case Napier _versus_ Napier; and certainty, if we could have judged
from the face of the individual, we would have set him down as one given
to the reading of riddles; for, after he had perused the paragraph, he
looked as if he knew more about that case than all the fifteen, with the
macers to boot. Nor was he contented with an indication of a mere look
of wisdom: he actually burst out into a laugh--an expression wondrously
unsuited to the gravity of the subject. You who read this will no doubt
suspect that we are merely shading this man for the sake of effect: and
this is true; but you are to remember that, while we are chroniclers of
things mysterious, we work for the advantage to you of putting into your
power to venture a shrewd guess; in making which, you are only working
in the destined vocation of man, for the world is only guesswork all
over, and you yourself are only guesswork as a part of it. The reader of
the _Mercury_ was verily Mr. John Cowie, whilom butler to Mr. John
Napier, and now waiter in the Lonsdale Arms of the obscure Kirby--a
place like Peebles, where, if you wanted to deposit a secret, you could
do so by crying it out at the market-cross; and, moreover, he was verily
in possession of the key to the Napier mystery.

Accordingly, Mr. White of Mill's Court in two days afterwards received a
letter, informing him that John Cowie was the writer of the same, and
that, if a reasonable consideration were held out to him, he would
proceed to the northern metropolis, and there settle for ever a case
which apparently had kept the newsmongers of Edinburgh in aliment for a
length of time much exceeding the normal nine days. Opportune and
happily come in the very nick of time as the latter was--for the delay
allowed by the court had all but expired--Mr. White saw the danger of
promising anything which could be construed into a reward; but he could
use other means of decoying the shy bird into his meshes; and these he
used in his answer with such effect, that the man who could solve the
mystery was in Edinburgh at the end of a week. Nor was Mr. White
unprepared to receive him, for he had previously got a commission to
examine him and take his deposition: but then an agent likes to know
what a witness will say before he cites him; and the canny Scotchman, of
all men in the world, is the most uncanny if brought to swear without
some hope of being benefited by his oath. There was, therefore, need of
tact as well as delicacy; and Mr. White contrived in the first place to
get his man to take up his quarters in the house in Mill's Court. A good
supper and chambers formed the first demulcent--we do not say bribe,
because, by a legal fiction, all eating and drinking is set down to the
score of hospitality. A Scotch breakfast followed in the morning, at
which were present Mrs. White and Mrs. Hislop, and our favourite
Henney--the last of whom, spite of all the efforts of her putative
mother to keep from her the secret of her birth and prospects, had
caught the infection of the general topic of the city, and wondered at
her strange fortune, much as the paladin in the "Orlando" did when he
got into the moon. No man can precognosce like a woman, and here were
three; but perhaps they might have all failed, had it not been for the
natural art of Henney, who, out of pure goodness and gratitude, was so
delighted with the man who had rolled her in a blanket and sent her to
her beloved mother, as she still called her, that she promised to make
him butler at Eastleys, and keep him comfortable all his days.

"Now," said the cautious agent, "this promise of Henney's is not made in
consideration of your giving evidence for her before the commissioner."

"I'm thinking of nothing but her face," said John. "I could swear to it
out of a thousand; and Heaven bless her! for I think I am again in the
once happy house in Meggat's Land."

And John pretended he was wiping a morsel of egg from his mouth, while
the handkerchief was extended as far as the eye.

"A terrible night that was," he continued. "Mrs. Napier had been in
labour all day; and when Mrs. Kemp told me to tell my master that my
lady had been delivered of TWINS--"

"_Twins_!" cried they all, as if moved by some sympathetic chord which
ran from heart to heart.

"Ay, twins," he repeated; "one dead, and another living--even you
yourself, Henney, who are as like your father as if there never had been
a Captain Preston in the world."

And thus was John Cowie precognosced. We need not say that he was that
very day examined before the commissioner. He gave an account of all the
proceedings of the house in Meggat's Land on the eventful night to which
we have referred. The case was no longer a puzzle; and accordingly a
decision was given in favour of Henrietta, whereby we have one other
example of truth and right emerging from darkness into light. Some time
afterwards, the heiress, with Mrs. Hislop alongside, and John Cowie on
the driver's box, proceeded to Eastleys and took possession; where
Henrietta acted the part of a generous lady, Mrs. Hislop that of a kind
of a dowager, and John was once more butler in the house of the Napiers.
We stop here. Those who feel interest enough in the fortunes of Henney
to inquire when and whom she married, and what were the subsequent
fortunes of a life so strangely begun, will do well to go to Eastleys.




THE ORPHAN.


About forty years ago, a post-chaise was a sight more novel in the
little hamlet of Thorndean, than silk gowns in country churches during
the maidenhood of our great-grandmothers; and, as one drew up at the
only public-house in the village, the inhabitants, old and young,
startled by the unusual and merry sound of its wheels, hurried to the
street. The landlady, on the first notice of its approach, had hastily
bestowed upon her goodly person the additional recommendation of a clean
cap and apron; and, still tying the apron-strings, ran bustling to the
door, smiling, colouring, and courtesying, and courtesying and colouring
again, to the yet unopened chaise. Poor soul! she knew not well how to
behave--it was an epoch in her annals of innkeeping. At length the
coachman, opening the door, handed out a lady in widow's weeds. A
beautiful, golden-haired child, apparently not exceeding five years of
age, sprang to the ground without assistance, and grasped her extended
hand. "What an image o' beauty!" exclaimed some half-dozen bystanders,
as the fair child lifted her lovely face of smiles to the eyes of her
mother. The lady stepped feebly towards the inn, and though the
landlady's heart continued to practise a sort of fluttering motion,
which communicated a portion of its agitation to her hands, she waited
upon her unexpected and unusual guests with a kindliness and humility
that fully recompensed for the expertness of a practised waiter. About
half an hour after the arrival of her visitors, she was seen bustling
from the door, her face, as the villagers said, bursting with
importance. They were still in groups about their doors, and in the
middle of the little street, discussing the mysterious arrival; and, as
she hastened on her mission, she was assailed with a dozen such
questions as these--"Wat ye wha she is?" "Is she ony great body?" "Hae
ye ony guess what brought her here?" and, "Is yon bonny creature her ain
bairn?" But to these and sundry other interrogatories, the important
hostess gave for answer, "Hoot, I hae nae time to haver the noo." She
stopped at a small, but certainly the most genteel house in the village,
occupied by a Mrs. Douglas, who, in the country phrase, was a very
douce, decent sort of an old body, and the widow of a Cameronian
minister. In the summer season Mrs. Douglas let out her little parlour
to lodgers, who visited the village to seek health, or for a few weeks'
retirement. She was compelled to do this from the narrowness of her
circumstances; for, though she was a "clever-handed woman," as her
neighbours said, "she had a sair fecht to keep up an appearance onyway
like the thing ava." In a few minutes Mrs. Douglas, in a clean cap, a
muslin kerchief round her neck, a quilted black bombazine gown, and
snow-white apron, followed the landlady up to the inn. In a short time
she returned, the stranger lady leaning upon her arm, and the lovely
child leaping like a young lamb before them. Days and weeks passed away,
and the good people of Thorndean, notwithstanding all their surmises and
inquiries, were no wiser regarding their new visitor; all they could
learn was, that she was the widow of a young officer, who was one of the
first that fell when Britain interfered with the French Revolution; and
the mother and her child became known in the village by the designation
of "Mrs. Douglas's twa pictures!"--an appellation bestowed on them in
reference to their beauty.

The beautiful destroyer, however, lay in the mother's heart, now paling
her cheeks like the early lily, and again scattering over them the rose
and the rainbow. Still dreaming of recovery, about eight months after
her arrival in Thorndean, death stole over her like a sweet sleep. It
was only a few moments before the angel hurled the fatal shaft, that the
truth fell upon her soul. She was stretching forth her hand to her
work-basket, her lovely child was prattling by her knee, and Mrs.
Douglas smiling like a parent upon both, striving to conceal a tear
while she smiled, when the breathing of her fair guest became difficult,
and the rose, which a moment before bloomed upon her countenance,
vanished in a fitful streak. She flung her feeble arms around the neck
of her child, who now wept upon her bosom, and exclaimed, "Oh! my
Elizabeth, who will protect you now, my poor, poor orphan?" Mrs. Douglas
sprang to her assistance. She said she had much to tell, and endeavoured
to speak; but a gurgling sound only was heard in her throat; she panted
for breath; the rosy streaks, deepening into blue, came and went upon
her cheeks like the midnight dances of the northern lights; her eyes
flashed with a momentary brightness more than mortal, and the spirit
fled. The fair orphan still clung to the neck, and kissed the yet warm
lips of her dead mother.

As yet she was too young to see all the dreariness of the desolation
around her; but she was indeed an orphan in the most cruel meaning of
the word. Her mother had preserved a mystery over her sorrows and the
circumstances of her life, which Mrs. Douglas had never endeavoured to
penetrate. And now she was left to be as a mother to the helpless child,
for she knew not if she had another friend; and all that she had heard
of the mother's history was recorded on the humble stone which she
placed over her grave: "_Here resteth the body of Isabella Morton, widow
of Captain Morton; she died amongst us a stranger, but beloved_." The
whole property to which the fair orphan became heir by the death of her
mother did not amount to fifty pounds, and amongst the property no
document was found which could throw any light upon who were her
relatives, or if she had any. But the heart of Mrs. Douglas had already
adopted her as a daughter; and, circumscribed as her circumstances were,
she trusted that He who provided food for the very birds of heaven,
would provide the orphan's morsel.

Years rolled on, and Elizabeth Morton grew in stature and in beauty, the
pride of her protector, and the joy of her age. But the infirmities of
years grew upon her foster-mother, and, disabling her from following her
habits of industry, stern want entered her happy cottage. Still
Elizabeth appeared only as a thing of joy, contentment, and gratitude;
and often did her evening song beguile her aged friend's sigh into a
smile. And to better their hard lot, she hired herself to watch a few
sheep upon the neighbouring hills, to the steward of a gentleman named
Sommerville, who, about the time of her mother's death, had purchased
the estate of Thorndean. He was but little beloved, for he was a hard
master, and a bad husband; and more than once he had been seen at the
hour of midnight, in the silent churchyard, standing over the grave of
Mrs. Morton. This gave rise to not a few whisperings respecting the
birth of poor Elizabeth. He had no children; and a nephew, who resided
in his house, was understood to be his heir. William Sommerville was
about a year older than our fair orphan; and ever, as he could escape
the eye of his uncle, he would fly to the village to seek out Elizabeth
as a playmate. And now, while she tended the few sheep, he would steal
round the hills, and placing himself by her side, teach her the lessons
he had that day been taught, while his arm in innocence rested on her
neck, their glowing cheeks touched each other, and her golden curls
played around them. Often were their peaceful lessons broken by the
harsh voice and the blows of his uncle. But still William stole to the
presence of his playmate and pupil, until he had completed his
fourteenth year; when he was to leave Thorndean, preparatory to entering
the army. He was permitted to take a hasty farewell of the villagers,
for they all loved the boy; but he went only to the cottage of Mrs.
Douglas. As he entered, Elizabeth wept, and he also burst into tears.
Their aged friend beheld the yearnings of a young passion that might
terminate in sorrow; and taking his hand, she prayed God to prosper him,
and bade him farewell. She was leading him to the door, when Elizabeth
raised her tearful eyes; he beheld them, and read their meaning, and,
leaping forward, threw his arms round her neck, and printed the first
kiss on her forehead! "Do not forget me, Elizabeth," he cried, and
hurried from the house.

Seven years from this period passed away. The lovely girl was now
transformed into the elegant woman, in the summer majesty of her beauty.
For four years Elizabeth had kept a school in the village, to which her
gentleness and winning manners drew prosperity; and her grey-haired
benefactress enjoyed the reward of her benevolence. Preparations were
making at Thorndean Hall for the reception of William, who was now
returning as Lieutenant Sommerville. A post-chaise in the village had
then become a sight less rare; but several cottagers were assembled
before the inn to welcome the young laird. He arrived, and with him a
gentleman between forty and fifty years of age. They had merely become
acquainted as travelling companions; and the stranger being on his way
northward, had accepted his invitation to rest at his uncle's for a few
days. The footpath to the Hall lay through the churchyard, about a
quarter of a mile from the village. It was a secluded path, and
Elizabeth was wont to retire to it between school hours, and frequently
to spend a few moments in silent meditation over her mother's grave. She
was gazing upon it, when a voice arrested her attention, saying,
"Elizabeth--Miss Morton!" The speaker was Lieutenant Sommerville,
accompanied by his friend. To the meeting of the young lovers we shall
add nothing. But the elder stranger gazed on her face and trembled, and
looked on her mother's grave and wept. "Morton!" he repeated, and read
the inscription on the humble stone, and again gazed on her face, and
again wept. "Lady!" he exclaimed, "pardon a miserable man--what was the
name of your mother?--who the family of your father? Answer me, I
implore you!" "Alas! I know neither," said the wondering and now unhappy
Elizabeth. "My name is Morton," cried the stranger; "I had a wife; I had
a daughter once, and my Isabella's face was thy face!" While he yet
spoke, the elder Sommerville drew near to meet his nephew. His eyes and
the stranger's met. "Sommerville!" exclaimed the stranger, starting.
"The same," replied the other, his brow blackening like thunder, while a
trembling passed over his body. He rudely grasped the arm of his nephew,
and dragged him away. The interesting stranger accompanied Elizabeth to
the house of Mrs. Douglas. Painful were his inquiries; for, while they
kindled hope and assurance, they left all in cruel uncertainty. "Oh,
sir!" said Mrs. Douglas, "if ye be the faither o' my blessed bairn, I
dinna wonder at auld Sommerville growing black in the face when he saw
ye; for, when want came hard upon our heels, and my dear motherless and
faitherless bairn was driven to herd his sheep by the brae-sides--there
wad the poor, dear, delicate bairn (for she was as delicate then as she
is bonnie now) been lying--the sheep a' feeding round about her, and her
readin' at her Bible, just like a little angel, her lee lane, when the
brute wad come sleekin' down ahint her, an' giein' her a drive wi' his
foot, cursed her for a little lazy something I'm no gaun to name, an'
rugged her bonnie yellow hair, till he had the half o' it torn out o'
her head; or the monster wad riven the blessed book out o' her hand, an'
thrown it wi' an oath as far as he could drive. But the nephew was aye a
bit fine callant; only, ye ken, wi' my bairn's prospects, it wasna my
part to encourage onything."

Eagerly did the stranger, who gave his name as Colonel Morton, hang over
the fair being who had conjured up the sunshine of his youth. One by
one, he was weeping and tracing every remembered feature of his wife
upon her face, when doubt again entered his mind, and he exclaimed in
bitterness, "Merciful Heaven! convince me! Oh, convince me that I have
found my child!" The few trinkets that belonged to Mrs. Morton had been
parted with in the depth of her poverty. At that moment Lieutenant
Sommerville hastily entered the cottage. He stated that his uncle had
left the Hall, and delivered a letter from him to Colonel Morton. It was
of few words, and as follows:

"Morton,--We were rivals for Isabella's love; you were made happy, and I
miserable. But I have not been unrevenged. It was I who betrayed you
into the hands of the enemy. It was I who reported you dead--who caused
the tidings to be hastened to your widowed wife, and followed them to
England. It was I who poisoned the ear of her friends, until they cast
her off; I dogged her to her obscurity, that I might enjoy my triumph;
but death thwarted me as you had done. Yet I will do one act of
mercy--she sleeps beneath the grave where we met yesterday; and the lady
before whom you wept--is your own daughter."

He cast down the letter, and exclaimed, "My child! my long lost child!"
And, in speechless joy, the father and the daughter rushed to each
other's arms. Shall we add more? The elder Sommerville left his native
land, which he never again disgraced with his presence. William and
Elizabeth wandered by the hill-side in bliss, catching love and
recollections from the scene. In a few months her father bestowed on him
her hand, and Mrs. Douglas, in joy and in pride, bestowed upon both her
blessing.




THE BURGHER'S TALES.

THE BROWNIE OF THE WEST BOW.


I cannot say so much for the authenticity of the legend I am now to
relate, as I have been able to do for some of the others in this
collection; but that is no reason, I hope, for its failing to interest
the reader, who makes it a necessary condition of his acceptance, that a
legend shall keep within the bounds of human nature: not that any one of
us can say what these bounds are, for every day of our experience is
extending them in both the inner and outer worlds; and we never can be
very sure whether the things which rise upon the distant horizon of our
nocturnal visions are less unstable and uncertain than those that exist
under our noses. True it is, at any rate, that the legend was narrated
to me in a meagre form by a lady, sufficiently ancient to be supposed to
be a lover of strange stories, and not imaginative or wicked enough to
concoct them.

That part of Edinburgh called the West Bow was, at the date of our
legend, the tinsmiths' quarter; a fact which no one who chanced to walk
down that way could have doubted, unless indeed he was deaf. Among the
fraternity there was one destined to live in annals even with more
posthumous notoriety than he of the same place and craft, who long got
the credit of being the author of the "Land o' the Leal." His name was
Thomas, or, according to the Scottish way of pronouncing it, Tammas
Dodds; who, with a wife going under the domestic euphuism of Jenny,
occupied as a dwelling-house a small flat of three rooms, in the near
neighbourhood of his workshop. This couple had lived together five
years, without having any children procreated of their bodies, or any
quarrel born of their spirits; and thus they might have lived to the end
of their lives, if a malign influence, born of the devil, had not got
possession of the husband's heart.

This influence, which we may be permitted by good Calvinists to call
diabolical, was, as a consequence, not only in its origin, but also in
its medium, altogether extraneous to our couple. For so far as regards
Mrs. Jenny Dodds, she was, as much as a good wife could be, free from
any great defects of conduct; and as for the tinsmith himself, he had
hitherto lived so sober and douce a life, that we cannot avoid the
notion, that if he had not been subject to "aiblins a great temptation,"
he would not have become the victim of the arch-enemy. Thus much we say
of the dispositions of the two parties; and were it not that certain
peculiarities belonged to Jenny, which, as reappearing in an after-part
of our story, it is necessary to know, we would not have gone further
into mere character--an element which has little to do generally with
legends, except in so far as it either produces the incidents, or may be
developed through them. The first of these peculiarities was a settled
conviction that she had as good a right to rule Tammas Dodds, as being
her property, as if she had drunk of the waters of St. Kevin. Nor was
this conviction merely natural to her; for she could lay her finger on
that particular part of Sacred Writ which is the foundation of the
generally-received maxim, "One may do what one likes with one's own." No
doubt, she knew another passage in the same volume with a very different
meaning; but then Mrs. Dodds did not _wish_ to remember that, or to obey
it when she did remember it; and we are to consider, without going back
to that crazy school of which a certain Aristippus was the dominie, that
wishing or not wishing has a considerable influence upon the aspects of
moral truth, if it does not exercise over them a kind of legerdemain of
which we are unconscious, whereby it changes one of these aspects into
another, even when these are respectively to each other as white is to
black. This "claim of right" does not generally look peaceful. No more
it should; for it is clearly enough against nature; and one seldom kicks
at her without getting sore toes. True enough, there do appear cases
where it seems to work pretty well; but when they are inquired into, it
is generally found either that the husband is a simpleton, submitting by
mere inanity, or a man who has resisted to the uttermost, and is at last
crumpled up by pure "Caudlish" iteration and perseverance. How Tammas
took it may yet appear.

Proceeding with the peculiarities: another of these was, that Mrs.
Dodds, like her of Auchtermuchty, or Mrs. Grumlie, carried domesticity
to devotion, scarcely anything in the world having any interest to her
soul save what was contained in the house--from Tammas, the chief
article of furniture, down, through the mahogany table, to the
porridge-pot; clouting, mending, darning, cleaning, scouring, washing,
scraping, wringing, drying, roasting, boiling, stewing, being all of
them done with such duty, love, and intensity of purpose, that they were
veritable sacrifices to the _lares_. This was doubtless a virtue; and as
doubtless it was a vice, insomuch as, if we believe another old Greek
pedagogue of the name of Aristotle, "all virtues are medial vices, and
all vices extreme virtues." How Tammas viewed this question may also
appear. But we may proceed to state, that Mrs. Janet Dodds was not
content with doing all those things with such severity of love or duty.
She was always telling herself what she intended to do, either at the
moment or afterwards. "This pan needs to be scoured." "Thae stockings
maun be darned." "This sark is as black as the lum, and maun be
plotted." "The floor needs scrubbing." "Tammas's coat is crying, 'A
steek in time saves nine,' and by my faith it says true;" and so on. Nor
did it signify much whether Thomas or any other person was in the house
at the time--the words were not intended for anybody but herself; and to
herself she persisted in telling them with a stedfastness which only the
ears of a whitesmith could tolerate; even with the consideration that he
was not, as so many are, deaved with scandal--a delectation which Janet
despised, if she did not care as little for what was going on
domestically within the house on the top of the same stair, as she did
for the in-door affairs of Japan or Tobolsk. We may mention, also, that
she persevered in reading the same chapter of the Bible, and in singing
the same psalm, every Sunday morning. In addition to these
characteristics, Janet made it a point never to change the form or
colour of her dress; so that if all the women in Edinburgh had been of
her taste and mode of thinking, all the colours by which they are
diversified and made interesting would have been reduced to the dead
level of hodden-grey; the occupation of the imp Fashion would have been
gone; nay, the angels, for fear of offending mortals, would have
eschewed the nymph Iris, from whom the poets say they steal tints, and
dipt their wings in a grey cloud before appearing in the presence of the
douce daughters of men.

With all these imperfections--and how many husbands would term some of
them perfections!--the married life of Thomas and Janet Dodds might have
gone on for another five years, and five to that, if it had not been
that Thomas, in a weary hour, cast a glance with a scarlet ray in it on
a certain Mary Blyth, who lived in the Grassmarket--a woman of whom our
legend says no more than that she was a widow, besides being fair to the
eye, and pleasant to the ear. We could wish that we had it not to say;
but as truth is more valuable than gold, yea, refined gold, we are under
the necessity of admitting that that red ray betokened love, if an
affection of that kind could be called by a name so hallowed by the
benedictions of poets and the songs of angels. You must take it in your
own way, and with your own construction; but however that may be, we
must all mourn for the fearful capabilities within us, and the not less
awful potentialities in the powers without--the one hidden from us up to
the moment when the others appear, and all wrestling with the enemy
prevented by what is often nothing less than a fatal charm. From that
moment, Thomas Dodds was changed after the manner of action of moral
poisons; for we are to remember that while the physical kill, the other
only transmute, and the transmutation _may be_ from any good below grace
to any evil above the devil.

This change in the mind of the husband included his manner of viewing
those peculiarities in the mental constitution of Janet to which we have
alluded. Her desire to rule him was now rebellion; her devotion to
"hussyskep" was nothing better than mercenary grubbing; her adhesion to
her hodden-grey was vulgar affectation; and as to her monologues, they
were evidence of insanity. Such changes in reference to other objects
happen to every one of us every day in the year, only we don't look at
and examine them; nor, if we did, could we reconcile them to any theory
of the mind--all that we can say being, that if we love a certain
object, we hate any other which comes between us and our gratification;
and thus, just as Mr. Thomas Dodds loved Mrs. Mary Blyth, so in an equal
ratio he hated his good helpmate Jenny. And then began that other
wonderful process called reconciliation, whereby the wish gradually
overcomes scruples through the cunning mean of falsifying their aspects.
Whereunto, again, the new mistress contributed in the adroit way of all
such wretches--instilling into his ear the moral poison which deadened
the apperception of these scruples at the same time that it brought out
the advantages of disregarding them. The result of all which was, that
Jenny's husband, of whom she had made a slave, for his own good and
benefit, as she thought, and not without reason, arrived, by small
degrees, and by relays of new motives, one after another, at the
conclusion of actually removing her from this big world, and of course
also from that little one to her so dear, even that of her household
empire.

A resolution this, which, terrible and revolting as it may appear to
those who are happily beyond the influence of "the wish," was far more
easily formed than executed; for Nature--although improvident herself of
her children, swallowing them up in thousands by earthquakes, tearing
them by machinery, and drowning them in the sea by shiploads--is very
careful to defend one of them against another. Every scheme the husband
could think of was surrounded with difficulties, and one by one was laid
aside, till he came to that of precipitating his faithful Jenny, as if
by accident, into a deep pool in the North Loch, that sheet of water
which contained as many secrets in its bosom as that more romantic one
in Italy, not far removed from a certain pious nunnery. Even here there
was the difficulty of getting Jenny out at night, and down Cranstoun's
Close, and to west of the foot thereof, where the said deep pool was,
for no other ostensible purpose in the world than to see the moon
shedding her beams on the surface of the water--an object not half so
beautiful to her as the clear tin pan made by her own Tammas, and in
which she made her porridge every morning. But the adage about the will
and the way is of such wondrous universality, that one successful effort
seems as nothing in the diversity of man's inventions; and so it turned
out to be comparatively easy to get Janet out one evening for the reason
that her husband did not feel very well, and would like his supper the
better for a walk along the edge of the loch, in which, if it was her
pleasure, she would not refuse to accompany him. So pleasant a way of
putting the thing harmonized with Janet's love of rule, and she agreed
upon the condition she made with herself, by means of the eternal
soliloquy, that she would put on the stew to be progressing towards
unctuousness and tenderness before they went. Was that to be Janet's
last act of her darling hussyskep? It would not be consistent with our
art were we to tell you; but this much is certain, that Janet Dodds went
down Cranstoun's Close along with her beloved Tammas, that shortly after
she was plunged by him into the said deep hole of the loch, and cruelly
left there to sink or swim, while he hastened back to tell his new love,
Mrs. Blyth, how desperately he had done her bidding. But sometimes
running away has a bad look; and it happened that as Thomas was hurrying
up the dark close, he met a neighbour brother of the craft, who cried to
him, "What, ho! Tammas Dodds; whaur frae and whaur tae, man?" To which,
seeing how the act of running away would look in the Justiciary Court,
he replied with wonderful invention for the moment, that Janet had
fallen into the deep pool of the loch, and that though he had
endeavoured to get her out, he had failed, by reason of his not being
able to swim, and that he was running to get some one to help to save
her, whereupon he entreated his brother craftsman to go with him to the
spot, and help him to rescue his beloved wife, if she weren't yet dead.
So away they went, in a great hurry, but to no purpose; for when they
came to the said pool, no vestige of a creature being therein they could
see, except some air-bubbles reflecting the moonbeams, and containing,
no doubt, the living breath of the drowned woman.

Nor when the terrible news was spread through the city, and a boat and
drags were made to do their uttermost, under the most willing hands,
could the body be found. It was known that the bank there was pretty
steep in declivity, and the presumption was, that the body had rolled
down into the middle of the loch, where, in consequence of the muddiness
of the waters, it would be difficult to find it. The efforts were
continued next morning, and day by day, for a week, with no better
success, till at last it was resolved to wait for "the bursting of the
gall-bladder," when, no doubt, Mrs. Janet Dodds's body would rise and
swim on the top of the waters. An event this which did not occur till
about three weeks had passed; at the end of which time a crowd of people
appeared at Mr. Dodds's door, bearing a corpse in a white sheet. It was
received by the disconsolate Thomas with becoming resignation, and laid
on the bed, even the marriage-bed, realizing that strange meeting of two
ends which equalizes pain and pleasure, and reduces the product to
_nil_. Nor were many hours allowed to pass when, decayed and defaced as
it was, it was consigned to a coffin without Mr. Dodds being able to
bring his resolution to the sticking point of trying to recognise in the
confused mass of muscle and bone, forming what was once a face, the
lineaments of her who had been once his pride, and now, by his own act,
had become his shame and condemnation in the sight of Heaven. Next day
she was consigned to the tomb, in so solemn a manner, that if man were
not man, one would have had a difficulty in recognising in that gentle
hand that held the head-cord, and dropped it so softly on the coffin,
the same member which drove the innocent victim into the deep waters.

There is a continuous progress in all things; a fact which we know only
after we get hold of the clue. And so, when Mrs. Mary Blyth appeared as
Mrs. Mary Dodds, in room of the domesticated Jenny, it was in perfect
accordance with the law of cause and effect. No doubt they did their
best to be happy, as all creatures do, even the devil's children, only
in a wrong shaft; but they had made that fearful miscalculation, which
is the wages of sin, when they counted upon conscience as a pimp to
their pleasures, in place of a king's-evidence against them, that king
being the Lord of heaven and earth. And so it turned out in the course
of several years, that, as their love lost its fervour, their respective
monitors acquired greater power in pleading the cause of her who was
dead, and convincing them, against their will (for the all-powerful wish
has no virtue here), that they had done a cruel thing, for which they
were amenable to an avenging guardian of the everlasting element of good
in nature's dualism. Yet, strange enough, each of the two kept his and
her own secret. Their hearts burned, even as the fire which consumes the
wicked, under the smother of a forced silence--itself a torment and an
agony; yea, neither of the two would mention the name of Jenny Dodds for
the entire world. And there was more than a mutual fear that one should
know what the other thought. Each was under a process of exculpation and
inculpation--a mutual blaming of each other in their hearts, without
ever yet a word said to indicate their thoughts. It was the quarrel of
devils, who make the lesser crime a foil to show the greater, and call
it a virtue for the reason that they would rather be the counterfeits of
good than the base metal of evil; yet with no advantage, for hypocrisy
is only the glow which conceals the worm in its retreat within it. The
plea of the wife was, that she was courted by the man, and that although
she might have wished Jenny out of the way, and hinted as much, she
never meant actual murder; while his, again, was the old Barnwell
charge, that his better nature had been corrupted by the woman, and that
he did it at her suggestion, and under the influence of her siren power.
They thus got gradually into that state of feeling by which the runaway
convicts from a penal settlement were actuated, when, toiling away
through endless brakes and swamps where neither meat nor drink could be
procured, they were so maddened by hunger, that each, with a concealed
knife under his sleeve, watched his neighbour for an opportunity to
strike; nor could one dare to fall behind, without the suspicion being
raised in the minds of his companions, that he was to execute his
purpose when they were off their guard. So like, in other respects too;
for these men, afraid to speak their thoughts of each other, journeyed
on in deep silence, and each was ready to immolate his friend at the
altar of selfishness, changed into a bloodthirsty Dagon by the fiends
Hunger and Thirst.

The years were now to be counted as seven since Janet Dodds was plunged
into the deep pool of the North Loch, and the state of mind of the
married criminals, which we have tried to describe, had been growing and
growing, for two of these years, as if it threatened to get stronger the
older they grew, and the nearer the period of judgment. One morning when
they were in bed--for even yet, while they concealed their thoughts from
each other, and the name of Jenny Dodds was a condemned word in their
vocabulary, even as the sacred name among the Romans, they had evinced
no spoken enmity to each other--they heard a tirl at the door. The hour
was early, and the douce genius of the grey dawn was deliberating with
herself whether it was time to give place to her advancing sister, the
morning. Mrs. Mary Dodds rose to answer the knock, and Thomas listened
with natural curiosity to know who the early visitor was, and what was
wanted. He heard a suppressed scream of fear from his wife, and the next
moment she came rushing into the room; yet the never a word she uttered,
and her lips were so white and dry that you might have supposed that her
silence was the result of organic inability. Nor even when she got into
bed again, and tried to hide her head with the bed-clothes, did her
terror diminish, or her lips become more obedient to the feeling within;
so that Thomas knew not what to think, except it was that she had seen a
ghost--not an unnatural supposition at a time when occult causes and
spiritual appearances were as undoubted as the phenomena of the electric
telegraph are in our day. But he was not destined to be left many
minutes more in ignorance of the cause of Mrs. Mary Dodds's terror, for,
upon listening, he heard some one come into the kitchen, and bolt the
door on the inside--so much for his ears; then he turned his eyes to the
kitchen, into which he could, as well as the light of the grey dawn
would permit, see from where he lay; and what did he see?

  "How comes it? whence this mimic shape?
  In look and lineament so like our kind.
  You might accost the spectral thing, and say,
  'Good e'en t'ye.'"

No other than the figure of Mrs. Janet Dodds herself. Yes, there she was
in her old grey dress, busy taking off that plaid which Thomas knew so
well, and hanging the same upon the peg, where she had hung it so often
for five long years. Thomas was now as completely deprived of the power
of speech as she who lay, equally criminal as himself, alongside of him;
but able at least to look, or rather, unable to shut their eyes, they
watched the doings of the strange morning visitor. They saw that she was
moving about as if she were intent upon domestic work; and, by-and-by,
there she was busy with coals and sticks brought from their respective
places, putting on the fire, which she lighted with the indispensable
spunk applied to the spark in the tinder-box. Next she undertook the
sweeping of the floor, saying to herself--and they heard the words--"It
looks as if it hadna been swept for seven years." Next she washed the
dishes, which had been left on the table, indulging in the appropriate
monologue implying the necessity of the work. Thereafter it appeared as
if she was dissatisfied with the progress of the fire, for she was
presently engaged in using the bellows, every blast of which was heard
by the quaking couple in bed, and between the blasts the words came,
"Ower late for Tammas's breakfast." So the blowing continued, till it
was apparent enough, from the reflection of the flame on the wall, that
she was succeeding in her efforts. Then, having made herself sure of the
fire, she went to the proper place for the porridge goblet, took the
same and put a sufficient quantity of water therein, placed it on the
fire, and began to blow again with the same assiduity as before, with
still interjected sentences expressive of her confidence that she would
overcome the obstinacy of the coals. And overcome it she did, as
appeared from the entire lighting up of the kitchen. Was ever Border
Brownie so industrious! Some time now elapsed, as if she were sitting
with due patience till the water should boil. Thereafter she rose, and
they saw her cross the kitchen to the lobby, where the meal was kept,
then return with a bowl containing what she no doubt considered a
sufficient quantity. The stirring utensil called a "theedle" had also
got into its proper place, and by-and-by they heard the sound of the
same as it beat upon the bottom and sides, guided by an experienced
hand, and, every now and then, the sweltering and totling of the pot.
This process was now interrupted by the getting of the grey basin into
which the porridge behoved to be poured; and poured it was, the process
being followed by the sound of "the clauting o' the laggan," so familiar
to Scotch ears. "Now it's ready for him," said the figure, as it moved
across the kitchen again, to get the spoon and the bowl of milk, both of
which they saw her place beside the basin.

All things being thus completed according to the intention of the
industrious worker, a period of silence intervened, as if she had been
taking a rest in the chair which stood by the fire. A most ominous
interlude, for every moment the couple in bed expected that she would
enter the bedroom, were it for nothing else than to "intimate
breakfast;" an intimation which, if one could have judged by their erect
hair and the sweat that stood in big drops on their brows, they were by
no means prepared for. They were not to be subjected to this fearful
trial, for the figure (so we must persist in calling it) was seen again
to cross the kitchen, take down the plaid, and adjust it over the head
according to the manner of the times. They then heard her draw the bolt,
open the door, and shut the same again after her as she departed. She
was gone.

Mr. Thomas Dodds and his wife now began to be able to breathe more
freely. The hair resumed its flexibility, and the sweat disappeared;
but, strange as it may seem, they never exchanged a word with each other
as to who the visitor was, nor as to the morning's work she had so
industriously and silently (with the exception of her monologues)
executed. Too certain in their convictions as to the identity, whether
in spirit or body, of the figure with that of her they had so cruelly
put out of the way, they seemed to think it needless to question each
other; and, independently of this, the old terror of the conscience was
sufficient to seal their lips now, as it had done for a period before.
Each of them supposed that the visitor was sent for the special purpose
of some particular avengement of the crime upon the other; the
appearance in so peaceful a way, in the meantime, being merely a
premonition to show them that their consciences were not working in
vain; and if Thomas was the greater sinner, which he no doubt suspected,
in spite of himself, he might place against that conviction the fact
that the inscrutable visitor had shown him the kindness at least of
preparing his breakfast, and entirely overlooking the morning
requirements of his spouse. Under these thoughts they rose and repaired
with faltering step and fearful eyes to the kitchen. There everything
was in the order they had anticipated from what they had seen and heard.
Each looked with a shudder at the basin of porridge as if it had been
invested with some terrible charm--nay, might it not have been
poisoned?--a thought which rushed instantaneously into the head of
Thomas, and entirely put to flight the prior hypothesis that he had been
favoured by this special gift of cookery. The basin was accordingly laid
aside by hands that trembled to touch it, and fear was a sufficient
breakfast for both of them on that most eventful morning.

This occurrence, as may readily be supposed, was kept a profound secret.
They both saw that it might be the forerunner of divine means to bring
their evil deeds to light; and, under this apprehension, their
taciturnity and mutual discontent, if not growing hatred, continued,
broken only by occasional growls and curses, and the ejaculations forced
out by the inevitable circumstances of their connection. The effect of
the morning visit was meanwhile most apparent upon the man who committed
the terrible act. He could not remain in the house, which, even in their
happiest condition, was slovenly kept, showing everywhere the want of
the skilled hands of that queen of housewives, Mrs. Janet Dodds--so
ill-requited for her devotion to her husband. Nay, he felt all this as a
reproof to him, and sorely and bitterly lamented the fatal act whereby
he had deprived of life the best of wives, and the most honest and
peaceful of womankind. Then the awe of divine vengeance deepened these
shadows of the soul till he became moody and melancholy, walking hither
and thither without an object, and in secluded places, looking fearfully
around him as if he expected every moment the spectre visitor of the
morning to appear before him. Nor was he less miserable at home, where
the growing hatred made matters worse and worse every hour, and where,
when the grey dawn came, he expected another visit and another scene of
the same description as the last.

Nearly a week had thus passed, and it was Sabbath morning. The
tinsmiths' hammers were silent, the noisy games of the urchins were
hushed, the street of the Bow resounded only occasionally to the sound
of a foot--all Edinburgh was, in short, under the solemnity enjoined by
the Calvinism so much beloved by the people; and surely the day might
have been supposed to be held in such veneration by ministering spirits,
sent down to earth to execute the purposes of Heaven, that no visit of
the feared shadow would disturb even the broken rest of the wicked. So
perhaps thought our couple; but their thoughts belied them, for just
again, as the dawn broke over the tops of the high houses, the
well-known tirl was heard at the door. Who was to open it? For days the
mind of the wife had been made up. She would not face that figure again;
no, if all the powers of the world were there to compel her; and as for
Thomas, conscience had reduced the firmness of a man who once upon a
time could kill to a condition of fear and trembling. Yet terrified as
he was, he considered that he was here under the obligation to obey
powers even higher than his conscience, and disobedience might bring
upon him some evil greater than that under which he groaned. So up he
got, trembling in every limb, and proceeding to the door, opened the
same. What he saw may be surmised, but what he felt no one ever knew,
for the one reason that he had never the courage to tell it, and for the
other that no man or woman was ever placed in circumstances from which
they could draw any conclusion which could impart even a distant
analogy. This much, however, was known: Thomas retreated instantly to
bed, and the visitor, in the same suit of hodden-grey, again entered,
passed the bolt, took off her plaid, hung it up, and began the duties
which she thought were suited to the day and the hour. So much being
thus alike, the couple in the bedroom no doubt augured a repetition of
the old process. They were right, and they were wrong. Their eyes were
fixed upon her, and watched her movements; but the watch was that of the
charmed eye, which is said to be without motive. They saw her once more
go deliberately and tentily through the old process of putting on the
fire, and they heard again the application of the bellows, every blast
succeeding another with the regularity of a clock, until the kitchen was
illuminated by the rising flame. This was all that could be called a
repetition; for in place of going for the porridge goblet, she went
direct for the tea-kettle, into which she poured a sufficient quantity
of water, saying the while to herself, "Tammas maun hae his tea
breakfast on Sabbath morning"--words which Thomas, as he now lay quaking
in bed, knew very well he had heard before many a time and oft. Nor were
the subsequent acts less in accordance with the old custom of the
dwelling. There was no sweeping of the floor or scouring of pans on the
sacred morning; in place of all which she had something else to do, for
surely we must suppose that this gentle visitor was a good Calvinist,
and would perform only the acts of necessity and mercy. These she had
done in so far as regarded necessity, and now they saw her go to the
shelf on which the Bible was deposited--a book which, alas! for seven
years had not been opened by either of the guilty pair. Having got what
she wanted, she sat down by the table, opened the volume at a place well
thumbed, and began to read aloud a chapter in the Corinthians, which
Thomas Dodds, the more by reason that he had heard it read two hundred
and fifty times, knew by heart. This being finished, she turned up a
psalm, yea, that very psalm which Janet Dodds had sung every Sunday
morning, and, presently, the kitchen was resonant with the rising notes
of the Bangor, as they came from a throat trembling with devotion--

  "I waited on the Lord my God,
    And patiently did bear;
  At length to me He did incline
    My voice and cry to hear.

  "He took me from a fearful pit,
    And from the miry clay,
  And on a rock He set my feet,
    Establishing my way."

The service finished, they saw her replace the book where she had found
it; and by this time the kettle was spewing from the mouth thereof a
volume of steam, as if it were calling to its old mistress to relieve it
from the heat of the fire; nor was she long in paying due obedience. The
tea-pot was got where she seemed to know it would be found, so also the
tea-canister. The quantity to be put in was a foregone conclusion, and
steadily measured with the spoon. The water was poured in, and the
utensil placed on the cheek of the chimney in order to the indispensable
infusion. Next the cup and saucer were placed on the table, then
followed the bread and butter, and the sugar and the milk; all being
finished by the words to herself, "There's nae egg in the house." Having
thus finished her work, she took down her plaid, adjusted it carefully,
opened the door, and departed.

The effect produced by this second spectral appearance could scarcely be
exaggerated, yet we suspect you will not find it of that kind which is
most in harmony with human nature, except in the case of Mrs. Dodds the
second, who lay, as on the former occasion, sweating and trembling. It
was now different with the husband, on whom apparently had fallen some
of the seeds of the word, as they were scattered by the lips of the
strange visitor, and conscience had prepared the soil. The
constitutional strength of character which had enabled him to perpetrate
a terrible deed of evil, was ready as a power to achieve his
emancipation, and work in the direction of good. So, without saying a
word of all that had been acted that morning, he rose and dressed
himself, and, going into the kitchen, he sat down without the fear of
poison, and partook of the breakfast which had been so strangely
prepared for him, nor was he satisfied till he read the chapter and
psalm with which he had been so long familiar. He then returned to the
bedroom, and addressing his wife--

"You now see," said he, "that Heaven has found us out. That visitor is
nae ither than Mrs. Janet Dodds returned frae the grave, and sure it is
that nane are permitted to leave that place o' rest except for a
purpose. No, it's no for naething that Janet Dodds comes back to her
auld hame. What the purpose may be, the Lord only knows; but this seems
to me to be clear enough--that you and I maun pairt. You see that nae
breakfast has been laid for you. I have taen mine, and nae harm has come
o't; a clear sign that though we are baith great criminals, you are
considered to be the warst o' the twa. It was you wha put poison into my
ear and cast glamour ower my een; it was you wha egged me on, for 'the
lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her words are smoother
than oil; but her feet take hold of hell.' That I am guilty, I know; and
'though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished.' I will
dree my doom whatever it may be, and so maun you yours; but there may be
a difference, and so far as mortal can yet see, yours will be waur to
bear than mine. But, however a' that may be, the time is come when you
maun leave this house. 'Cast out the strange woman, and contention shall
go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease;' but 'go not forth hastily
to strive, lest thou know not what to do in the end, when thy neighbour
hath put thee to shame.' Keep your secret frae a' save the Lord; and may
He hae mercy on your soul!"

With which words, savouring as they did of the objurgations of the black
pot to the kettle, Mr. Thomas Dodds left his house, no doubt in the
expectation that Mrs. Dodds _secunda_ would move her camp, and betake
herself once more to her old place of residence in the Grassmarket.
Where he went that day no man ever knew, further than that he was seen
in the afternoon in St. Giles's Church, where, no doubt, he did his best
to make a cheap purchase of immunity to his soul and body, in
consideration of a repentance brought on by pure fear, produced by a
spectre; and who knows but that that was a final cause of the spectre's
appearance? We have seen that it was a kindly spirit, preparing porridge
and tea for him at the same time that it made his hair stand on end, and
big drops of sweat settle upon his brow or roll down therefrom--a
conjunction this of the tawse and the jelly-pot, whereby kind and loving
parents try to redeem naughty boys. Nor let it be said that this kindly
dealing with a murderer is contrary to the ways of Heaven; for, amidst a
thousand other examples, did not Joshua, after the wall of Jericho lay
flat at the blast of a trumpet, save that vile woman Rahab at the same
time that he slew the young and the old, nay, the very infants, with the
edge of the sword? All which, though we are not, by token of our sins,
able to see the reason thereof, is doubtless consonant to a higher
justice--altogether unlike our goddess, who is represented as blind,
merely because she is supposed not to see a bribe when offered to her by
a litigant. So the penitence of Mr. Thomas Dodds might be a very dear
affair after all, in so much as terror is a condition of the soul which,
of all we are doomed to experience, is the most difficult to bear,
especially if it is a terror of divine wrath. On his return to his house
in the evening, he found that Mrs. Mary had taken him at his word and
decamped, but not without providing herself with as good a share of the
"goods in communion" as she could, perhaps, at two or three returns,
carry off. So was she like Zebulun in all save her righteousness, for
she "rejoiced in her going out;" nay, she had some reason, for she had
discovered that in a secret drawer of an old cabinet there was a pose of
gold collected by the industrious hands of Mrs. Janet, and unknown to
her husband, every piece of which she carried off in spite of all fear
of the spectre, which, if a sensible one, might have been supposed to be
more irritated at this heedless spoliation than at all the Jezebel had
yet done, with the exception of the counselling her death in the deep
hole of the North Loch. On seeing all this robbery, Mr. Dodds became
more and more aware of the bad exchange he had made by killing his good
spouse to enable him to take another, who had merely found more favour
in his eyes by reason of her good looks; and we may augur how much
deeper his feeling of regret would have been, had he known the secret
pose, so frugally and prudently laid up, perhaps for his sake, at least
for the sake of both, when disease or old age might overtake them, in a
world where good and evil, pleasure and pain, appear to be fixed
quantities, only shoved from one to another by wisdom and prudence, yet
sometimes refusing to be moved even by these means.

After satisfying himself of the full extent of the robbery, which, after
all, he had brought upon himself, and very richly deserved, he sat down
upon a chair and began to moralize, after the manner of those late
penitents who have found themselves out to be either rogues or
fools--the number of whom comprehends, perhaps, all mankind. He had
certainly good reason to be contrite. The angel in the house had become
a spectre, and she who was no angel, either in the house or out of it,
had carried off almost everything of any value he possessed. Nor did he
stop at mere unspoken contrition, he bewailed in solemn tones his
destiny, and then began to cast up all the perfections of good Janet,
the more perfect and beautiful these seeming in proportion as he felt
the fear of her reappearance, perhaps next time, in place of making his
breakfast, to run away with him to the dire place of four letters. All
her peculiarities were now virtues--nay, the very things which had
appeared to him the most indefensible took on the aspect of angelic
endowments. While her careful housewifery was all intended for his
bodily health and comfort, her perseverance in adhering to the one
chapter and the one psalm was due to that love of iteration which
inspires those who are never weary of well-doing. And what was more
extraordinary, one verse of the psalm--that which we have quoted--had
special reference to the manner of her death, and her deliverance from
condemnation in the world to come. No doubt the man who meditates upon
his own crime or folly at the very moment when he is suffering from its
sharp recalcitrations, is just about as miserable a wretch as the
reformatory of the world can present; but when, to the effects upon
himself, he is compelled to think of the cruelty he has exercised
towards others--and those perhaps found out to be his best friends--we
doubt if there are any words beyond the vocabulary of the condemned that
are sufficient to express his anguish. Even this did not comprehend all
the suffering of Mr. Dodds, for, was he not under doom without knowing
what form it was to assume, whether the spectre (whose cookery might be
a sham) would choke him, burn him, or run away with him?

Deeply steeped in this remorseful contemplation, during which the figure
of his ill-used wife flitted before the eye of his fancy with scarcely
less of substantial reality than she had shown in her spectral form, he
found that he had lost all regard to time. The night was fast setting
in, the shadows of the tall houses were falling deeper and deeper on the
room, and the Sabbath stillness was a solemn contrast to the
perturbations inside the chamber of his soul, where "the serpents and
the cockatrices would not be charmed." Still, everything within and
without was dreary, and the spoliation of his means did not tend to
enliven the outer scene, or impart a charm to the owner. While in this
state of depression, Tammas heard a knock at the door. It was not, as on
the former occasions, what is called a tirl. It might be a neighbour, or
it might be an old crony, and he stood in need of some one to raise his
spirits, so he went to the door and opened it. But what was his horror
when he saw enter a female figure, in all respects so like his feared
visitor that he concluded in the instant that she was the same! nor
could all his penitence afford him resolution enough to make a proper
examination; besides, it was grey dark, and even a pair of better eyes
than he could boast of, might, under the circumstances soon to appear,
have been deceived. Retreating into the kitchen, he was followed by this
dubious, and yet not dubious visitor, who, as he threw himself upon a
chair, took a seat right opposite to him.

"Ye'll no ken me, Tammas Dodds?" said she.

Whereupon Tammas looked and looked again, and still the likeness he
dreaded was so impressive, that, in place of moving his tongue, he
moved, that is, he shuddered, all over.

"What--eh?" at length he stuttered; "ken ye? wha in God's name are ye?
No surely Mrs. Janet Dodds in the likeness of the flesh!"

"No, but her sister, Mrs. Paterson," replied the other. "And is it
possible ye can hae forgotten the only woman who was present at your
first marriage?"

"Ay, ay," replied Tammas, as he began to come to a proper condition of
perceiving and thinking; "and it was you, then, wha was here this
morning?"

"No, no," replied she; "I have not been here for seven long years, even
since that terrible night when you pushed Janet into the North Loch."

"And may Heaven and its angels hae mercy upon me!" ejaculated he.

"Aiblins they may," said she, "for your purpose was defeated; yea, even
by that Heaven and thae angels."

"What mean you, woman?" cried the astonished man. "What, in the name o'
a' that's gude on earth and holy in heaven, do ye mean?"

"Just that Janet Dodds is at this hour a leevin' woman," was the reply.

"The Lord be thanked!" cried Tammas again, "for 'He preserveth all them
that love Him.'"

"'But all the wicked He will destroy,'" returned she; "and surely it was
wicked to try to drown sae faithful a wife and sae gude a Christian."

"Wicked!" rejoined he, in rising agony. "'Let the righteous smite me, it
shall be a kindness; and let them reprove me, it shall,' as Solomon
says, 'be an excellent oil.'"

"I am glad," continued the woman, "to find you with a turned heart; but
whaur is the Jezebel ye took in her place?"

"Awa this day," replied he. "I have found her out, and never mair is she
wife o' mine."

"Sae far weel and better," said she.

"Ay, but speak to me o' Janet," cried he, earnestly. "Come, tell me how
she escaped, whaur she is, and how she is; for now I think there is
light breaking through the fearfu' cloud."

"Light indeed," continued Mrs. Paterson; "and now, listen to a strange
tale, mair wonderfu' than man's brain ever conceived. When ye thought ye
had drowned her, and cared naething doubtless--for ye see I maun speak
plain--whether her spirit went to the ae place or the ither, ay, and ran
awa to add to murder a lee, she struggled out o' the deep, yea--

  'He took her from the fearfu' pit,
    And from the miry clay.'

And when she got to the bank she ran as for the little life was in her,
until she came to the foot of Halkerstone's Wynd, where she crossed to
the other side of the loch. When she thought hersel' safe, she took the
road to Glasgow, where I was then living wi' my husband, wha is since
dead. The night was dark, but self-preservation maks nae gobs at
dangers; so on she went, till in the grey morning she made up to the
Glasgow carrier, wha agreed to gie her a cast even to the end o' his
journey. It was the next night when she arrived at my door, cold and
hungry, and, what was waur, sair and sick at heart. She told me the hail
story as weel as she could for sobs and greeting; for the thought aye
rugged at her heart that the man she had liked sae weel, and had toiled
for night and day, should hae turned out to be the murderer o' his ain
wife."

"And weel it might hae rugged and rugged," ejaculated Tammas.

"I got aff her wet clothes," continued she, "and gave her some strong
drink to warm her, and then we considered what was to be dune. My
husband was for off to Edinburgh to inform on ye, even if there should
hae been a drawing o' the neck on't; but Janet cried, and entreated
baith him and me to keep the thing quiet. She said she couldna gae back
to you; and as for getting you punished, she couldna bear the thought
o't. And then we a' thought what a disgrace it would be to our family if
it were thought that my sister had been attempted to be murdered by her
husband. We knew weel enough ye would say she had fallen in by accident;
and when afterwards we heard that ye had buried a body that had been
found in the loch, we made up our minds as to what we would do. We just
agreed to keep Janet under her maiden name. Nane in Glasgow had ever
seen her before, and her ain sorrows kept her within doors, so that the
secret wasna ill to keep. Years afterwards, my husband was ta'en from
me, and Janet and I came, about twa months syne, to live at Juniper
Green, wi' John Paterson, my husband's brother, wha had offered us a
hame."

"And is Janet there now?" cried Tammas, impatiently.

"Ay," continued Mrs. Paterson; "but, alas! she's no what she was. She
gets at times out o' her reason, and will be that way for days
thegether. The doctor has a name for it ower lang for my tongue, but it
tells naething but what we ken ower weel. When in thae fits she thinks
she is here in the Bow, and living with you, and working and moiling in
the house just as she used to do langsyne. Mairower, and that troubles
us maist ava, she will be out when the reason's no in, so that we are
obliged to watch her. Five days syne she was aff in the morning before
daylight, and even so late as this morning she played us the same trick;
whaur she gaed we couldna tell, but I had some suspicion she was here."

"Ay," replied Mr. Dodds, as he opened his eyes very wide; "she was here
wi' a vengeance."

Thus Mrs. Paterson's story was finished; and our legend of the Brownie,
more veritable, we opine, than that of Bodsbeck, is also drawing to a
conclusion. Tammas, after a period of meditation, more like one of
Janet's hallucinations than a fit of rational thinking, asked his
sister-in-law whether she thought that Janet, in the event of her
getting quit of her day-dreams, would consent to live with him again. To
which question she answered that she was not certain; for that Janet,
when in her usual state of mind, was still wroth against him for the
attempt to take away her life; but she added that she had no objection,
seeing he was penitent, to give him an opportunity to plead for himself.
She even went further, and agreed to use her influence to bring about a
reconciliation. It was therefore agreed between them that the sister
should call again when Janet had got quit of her temporary derangement,
and Thomas might follow up this intimation with a visit. About four days
thereafter, accordingly, Mrs. Paterson kept her word, and next day Mr.
Dodds repaired to Juniper Green. At first Janet refused to see him; but
upon Mrs. Paterson's representations of his penitence and suffering, she
became reconciled to an interview. We may venture to say, without
attempting a description of a meeting unparalleled in history, that if
Janet Dodds had not been a veritable Calvinist, no good could have come
of all Mr. Dodds's professions; but she knew that the Master cast out
the dumb spirit which tore the possessed, and that that spirit attempted
murder not less than Tammas. Wherefore might not _his_ dumb spirit be
cast out as well by that grace which aboundeth in the bosom of the
Saviour? We do not say that a return of her old love helped this
deduction, because we do not wish to mix up profane with sacred things.
Enough if we can certify that a very happy conclusion was the result.
The doctor did his duty, and Janet having been declared _compos mentis_,
returned to her old home. Her first duty was to look for "the pose." It
was gone in the manner we have set forth; but Janet could collect
another, and no doubt in due time did; nor did she fail of any of her
old peculiarities, all of which became endeared to Thomas by reason of
their being veritable sacrifices to his domestic comfort.




GLEANINGS OF THE COVENANT.

THE LAST SCRAP.


It is a fact well known to Dr. Lee, and to many besides, that
notwithstanding the extensive researches of Wodrow and others, there
have died away in the silent lapse of time, or are still hovering over
our cleuchs and glens, in the aspect of a dim and misty tradition, many
instances of extreme cruelty and wanton oppression, exercised (during
the reign of Charles II.) over the poor Covenanters, or rather
Nonconformists, of the south and west counties of Scotland. In
particular, although the whole district suffered, it was in the vale of
the Nith, and in the hilly portion of the parish of Closeburn, that the
fury of Grierson, Dalzell, and Johnstone--not to mention an occasional
simoom, felt on the withering approach of Clavers _with his lambs_--was
felt to the full amount of merciless persecution and relentless cruelty.
The following anecdote I had from a sister of my grandmother, who lived
till a great age, and who was lineally descended from one of the
parties. I have never seen any notice whatever taken of the
circumstances; but am as much convinced of its truth, in all its leading
features, as I am of that of any other similar statements which are made
in Wodrow, "Naphtali," or the "Cloud of Witnesses."

The family of Harkness has been upwards of four hundred years tenants on
the farm of Queensberry, occupying the farm-house and steading situated
upon the banks of the Caple, and known by the name of Mitchelslacks. The
district is wild and mountainous, and, at the period to which I refer,
in particular, almost inaccessible through any regularly constructed
road. The hearts, however, of these mountain residents were deeply
attuned to religious and civil liberty, and revolted with loathing from
the cold doctrines and compulsory ministrations of the curate of
Closeburn. They were, therefore, marked birds for the myrmidons of
oppression, led on by Claverhouse, and "Red Rob," the scarlet-cloaked
leader of his band.

It was about five o'clock of the afternoon, in the month of August, that
a troop of horse was seen crossing the Glassrig--a flat and heathy
muir--and bearing down with great speed upon Mitchelslacks. Mrs.
Harkness had been very recently delivered of a child, and still occupied
her bed, in what was denominated the chamber, or cha'mer--an apartment
separated from the rest of the house, and set apart for more particular
occasions. Her husband, the object of pursuit, having had previous
intimation, by the singing or whistling of a bird (as was generally
reported on such occasions), had betaken himself, some hours before, to
the mountain and the cave--his wonted retreat on similar visits. From
this position, on the brow of a precipice, inaccessible by any save a
practised foot, he could see his own dwelling, and mark the movements
which were going on outside. The troop, having immediately surrounded
the houses, and set a guard upon every door and window, as well as an
outpost, or spy, upon an adjoining eminence, immediately proceeded with
the search--a search conducted with the most brutal incivility, and even
indelicacy; subjecting every child and servant to apprehensions of the
most horrid and revolting character. It would be every way improper to
mention even a tithe of the oaths and blasphemy which were not only
permitted, but sanctioned and encouraged, by their impious and
regardless leader. Suffice it to say, that after every other corner and
crevice was searched in vain, the cha'mer was invaded, and the privacy
of a female, in very interesting and delicate circumstances, rudely and
suddenly entered.

"The old fox is here," said Clavers, passing his sword up to the hilt
betwixt the mother and her infant, sleeping unconsciously on her arm,
and thrusting it home with such violence that the point perforated the
bed, and even penetrated the floor beneath.

"Toss out the whelp," vociferated Red Rob--always forward on such
occasions; "and the b--ch will follow." And, suiting the action to the
word, he rolled the sleeping, and happily well-wrapped, infant on the
floor.

"The Lord preserve my puir bairn!" was the instantaneous and instinctive
exclamation of the agonized and now demented mother, springing at the
same time from her couch, and catching up her child with a look of the
most despairing alarm. A cloud of darkened feeling seemed to pass over
the face and features of the infant,[*] and a cry of helpless suffering
succeeded, at once to comfort and to madden the mother. "A murderous and
monstrous herd are ye all," said she, again resuming her position, and
pressing the affrighted, rather than injured child to her breast. "Limbs
of Satan and enemies of God, begone! He whom ye seek is not here; nor
will the God _he_ serves and _you_ defy, ever suffer him, I fervently
hope and trust, to fall into your merciless and unhallowed hands."

  [note *: "In the light of heaven its face
  Grew dark as they were speaking."]

At this instant a boy about twelve years of age was dragged into the
room, and questioned respecting the place of his father's retreat,
sometimes in a coaxing, and at others in a threatening manner. The boy
presented, to every inquiry, the aspect of dogged resistance and
determined silence.

"Have the bear's cub to the croft," said Clavers, "and shoot him on the
spot."

The boy was immediately removed; and the distracted mother left, happily
for herself, in a state of complete insensibility. There grew, and there
still grows, a rowan-tree in the corner of the garden or kailyard of
Mitchelslacks; to this tree or bush the poor boy was fastened with
cords, having his eyes bandaged, and being made to understand, that, if
he did not reveal his father's retreat, a ball would immediately pass
through his brain. The boy shivered, attempted to speak, then seemed to
recover strength and resolution, and continued silent.

"Do you wish to smell gunpowder?" ejaculated Rob, firing a pistol
immediately under his nose, whilst the ball perforated the earth a few
paces off.

The boy uttered a loud and unearthly scream, and his head sunk upon his
breast. At this instant, the aroused and horrified mother was seen on
her bended knees, with clasped hands, and eyes in which distraction
rioted, at the feet of the destroyers. But nature, which had given her
strength for the effort, now deserted her, and she fell lifeless at the
feet of her apparently murdered son. Even the heart of Clavers was
somewhat moved at this scene; and he was in the act of giving orders for
an immediate retreat, when there rushed into the circle, in all the
frantic wildness of a maniac, at once the father and the husband. He had
observed from his retreat the doings of that fearful hour: and, having
every reason to conclude that he was purchasing his own safety at the
expense of the lives of his whole family, he had issued from the cave,
and hurled himself from the steep, and was now in the presence of those
whom he deemed the murderers of his family.

"Fiends--bloody, brutal, heartless fiends--are ye all! And is this your
work, ye sons of the wicked and the accursed one? What! could not _one_
content ye? Was not the boy enough to sacrifice on your accursed temple
to Moloch, but ye must imbrue your hands in the blood of a weak, an
infirm, a helpless woman! Oh, may the God of the Covenant," added he,
bending reverently down upon his knees, and looking towards heaven, "may
the God of Jacob forgive me for cursing ye! And, thou man of blood"
(addressing Clavers personally), "think ye not that the blood of Brown,
and of my darling child, and my beloved wife--think ye not, wot ye not,
that their blood, and the blood of the thousand saints which ye have
shed, will yet be required, ay, fearfully required, even to the last
drop, by an avenging God, at your hands?"

Having uttered these words with great and awful energy, he was on the
point of drawing his sword, concealed under the flap of his coat, and of
selling his life as dearly as possible, when Mrs. Harkness, who had now
recovered her senses, rushed into his arms, exclaiming--

"Oh Thomas, Thomas, what is this ye hae done? Oh, beware, beware!--I am
yet alive and unskaithed. God has shut the mouths of the lions; they
have not been permitted to hurt _me_. And our puir boy, too, moves his
head, and gives token of life. But you, you, my dear, dear, infatuated
husband--oh, into what hands have ye fallen, and to what a death are ye
now reserved!"

"Unloose the band," vociferated Clavers; "make fast your prisoner's
hands, and, in the devil's name, let us have done with this drivelling!"

There was a small public-house at this time at Closeburn mill, and into
this Clavers and his party went for refreshment; whilst an adjoining
barn, upon which a guard was set, served to secure the prisoner. No
sooner was Mr. Harkness left alone, and in the dark--for it was now
nightfall--than he began to think of some means or other of effecting
his escape. The barn was happily known to him; and he recollected that,
though the greater proportion of the gable was built of stone and lime,
yet that a small part towards the top, as was sometimes the case in
these days, was constructed of turf, and that, should he effect an
opening through the soft material, he might drop with safety upon the
top of a peat-stack, and thus effect his escape to Creechope Linn, with
every pass and cave of which he was intimately acquainted. In a word,
his escape was effected in this manner; and though the alarm was
immediately given, and large stones rolled over the precipices of the
adjoining linn, he was safely ensconced in darkness, and under the
covert of a projecting rock; and ultimately (for, in the course of a few
days, King William and liberty were the order of the day) he returned to
his wife and his family, there to enjoy for many years that happiness
which the possession of a conscience void of offence towards God and
towards man is sure to impart. The brother, however, of this more
favoured individual was not so fortunate, as may be gathered from
Wodrow, and the "Cloud of Witnesses;" for he was executed ere the day of
deliverance, at the Gallowlee, and his most pathetic and eloquent
address is still extant.

Let us rejoice with trembling that we live in an age and under a
government so widely different from those now referred to; and whilst on
our knees we pour forth the tribute of thankfulness to God, let us teach
our children to prize the precious inheritance so dearly purchased by
our forefathers.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE STORY OF MARY BROWN.


If 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 contented, 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 weathercock upon the top, and then you wonder 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 return. 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 Ramsays 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 connection reciprocal, William
was gratefully alive to the conviction 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 recommendation 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 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
education has a greater chance of moderating the passion 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 personages was not _more_
genuine, tender, and true, than that which bound the simple and
unsophisticated 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, whether it would help
us much. We are at best only left to a choice of expressions, and
perhaps 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 be always in each other's company, as they were in
St. Mary's Wynd. And as for whispered protestations 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 King's Park, and the
fields about the Dumbiedykes and Duddingstone Loch, that they were the
very moral aliments on which they lived. In short, to Mary Brown the
great Duke of Buccleuch was as nothing compared to Willie 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 necessary; for if it had been so ordained that people should feel
the exquisite sensations of love in proportion as they were beautiful,
or rich, or endowed with talent (according to a standard), our world
would have been even more queer than that kingdom described by Gulliver,
where the ugliest individual 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 mother, a poor,
hard-working washerwoman, in Big Lochend Close; whereunto Mary was so
much inclined, 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 dangerous. And so it turned out that one Sabbath evening,
when they were seated beneath a tree in the King's Park, and William had
cautiously introduced 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; maybe 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'll tell you
what I'll do."

"Stay at hame, Will, and we'll live and dee thegither."

"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 Maries)--swear to do all he had said,
whereupon Mary was so far satisfied that she gave up murmuring--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 arithmetic 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. Dreghorn, 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
content; 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 wondered 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 unpatriotic 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.
Dreghorn 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, 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
engagement 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 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, laurels, 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 thousand 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
appointed time was dominant over all the fascinations 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 sentiment in the person from whom he expected the much-desired
answer. So Halket wrote again, giving the letter, as before, to his
master, who assured him it was sent carefully away; and while it was
crossing the Atlantic he was busy in improving 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
counting by months, which, as they sped, soon brought round the
termination of his year, and with growing 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 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 plantations, and selling it
where he might,--all which he did with 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 now 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 man is a plant; for he had already thrown out
from his head or heart so many roots in the Virginian soil that he was
bidding fair to be as firmly fixed in his new sphere as a magnolia, and
if that 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 thereby the more
easily inclined to resign his saddened soul to the further dominion of
the said god, Mammon; 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 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 stedfastness, the sacred fidelity, with
which he still treasured 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 time, so deceptive, need we be
so sparing in dealing 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 _mal 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 disappointed 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 harbour revived the image which
had been imprinted on his mind when he sailed, and the running 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 accordingly 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 weakness 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 Crete to the Cretan, after
he awoke from a sleep of forty-seven years--a similitude 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 Lochend 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 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 gratification 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 unknowing as unknown. At
length the trembling finger 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 expectation 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 movement 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."

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 opportunity lost by Halket, who, unable to
understand how she should have called herself Mary Brown, began, in the
obscure light of the room, to scrutinize 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 reagent 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 _his_ Mary Brown. The
light-brown ringlets were reduced to a white stratum of thin hair; the
blue eyes were grey, without light and without speculation; 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 to his
breast, and covered her pale face with his tears. But how was he to act?
A sudden announcement might startle and distress her.

"There was once a Mary Brown," said he, "who was once a housemaid in Mr.
Peter Ramsay's inn in St. Mary's Wynd."

"And who 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 penetrated 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?" 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 marriage, nor giving
in marriage; and my time, too, will be short."

A light broke in upon the mind of Halket, carrying the suspicion that
Mr. Dreghorn had, for the sake of keeping him at Peach Grove, never
forwarded 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.

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 authority 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 resigned 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, oh, 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, 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 attended 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 exhausted 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?"

"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 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," continued she, "who, though he
needed a' his rents for a big family, passed me many a term, and forbye
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 Gilmour
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. Galloway'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 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 intentions of a man whose intense yearnings to
make up for what had been lost led him into the extravagance of a vain
fancy. He next day took a great house, and forthwith furnished it in
proportion to his wealth. He hired servants in accordance, 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 obligation of
retribution. John Gilmour, Mrs. Paterson, Mrs. Galloway, and Helen Kemp
were those, and those alone, privileged to witness the ceremony. 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 conclusion 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.




TIBBY FOWLER.


  "Tibby Fowler o' the glen,
  A' the lads are wooin' at her."--_Old Song_.

All our readers have heard and sung of "Tibby Fowler o' the glen;" but
they may not all be aware that the glen referred to lies within about
four miles of Berwick. No one has seen and not admired the romantic
amphitheatre below Edrington Castle, through which the Whitadder coils
like a beautiful serpent glittering in the sun, and sports in fantastic
curves beneath the pasture-clad hills, the grey ruin, the mossy and
precipitous crag, and the pyramid of woods, whose branches, meeting from
either side, bend down and kiss the glittering river, till its waters
seem lost in their leafy bosom. Now, gentle reader, if you have looked
upon the scene we have described, we shall make plain to you the
situation of Tibby Fowler's cottage, by a homely map, which is generally
_at hand_. You have only to bend your arm, and suppose your shoulder to
represent Edrington Castle, your hand Clarabad, and near the elbow you
will have the spot where "ten cam' rowing owre the water;" a little
nearer to Clarabad is the "lang dyke side," and immediately at the foot
of it is the site of Tibby's cottage, which stood upon the Edrington
side of the river; and a little to the west of the cottage, you will
find a shadowy row of palm-trees, planted, as tradition testifieth, by
the hands of Tibby's father, old Ned Fowler, of whom many speak until
this day. The locality of the song was known to many; and if any should
be inclined to inquire how we became acquainted with the other
particulars of our story, we have only to reply, that that belongs to a
class of questions to which we do not return an answer. There is no
necessity for a writer of tales taking for his motto--_vitam impendere
vero_. Tibby's parents had the character of being "bien bodies;" and,
together with their own savings, and a legacy that had been left them by
a relative, they were enabled at their death to leave their daughter in
possession of five hundred pounds. This was esteemed a fortune in those
days, and would afford a very respectable foundation for the rearing of
one yet. Tibby, however, was left an orphan, as well as the sole
mistress of five hundred pounds, and the proprietor of a neat and
well-furnished cottage, with a piece of land adjoining, before she had
completed her nineteenth year; and when we add that she had hair like
the raven's wings when the sun glances upon them, cheeks where the lily
and the rose seemed to have lent their most delicate hues, and eyes like
twin dew-drops glistening beneath a summer moonbeam, with a waist and an
arm rounded like a model for a sculptor, it is not to be wondered at
that "a' the lads cam' wooin' at her." But she had a woman's heart as
well as woman's beauty and the portion of an heiress. She found her
cottage surrounded, and her path beset, by a herd of grovelling
pounds-shillings-and-pence hunters, whom her very soul loathed. The
sneaking wretches, who profaned the name of lovers, seemed to have
_money_ written on their very eyeballs, and the sighs they professed to
heave in her presence sounded to her like stifled groans of--_your
gold_--_your gold_! She did not hate them, but she despised their
meanness; and as they one by one gave up persecuting her with their
addresses, they consoled themselves with retorting upon her the words of
the adage, that "her _pride_ would have a fall!" But it was not from
pride that she rejected them, but because her heart was capable of love
--of love, pure, devoted, unchangeable, springing from being beloved,
and because her feelings were sensitive as the quivering aspen, which
trembles at the rustling of an insect's wing. Amongst her suitors there
might have been some who were disinterested; but the meanness and sordid
objects of many caused her to regard all with suspicion, and there was
none among the number to whose voice her bosom responded as the needle
turns to the magnet, and frequently from a cause as inexplicable. She
had resolved that the man to whom she gave her hand should wed her for
herself--and for herself only. Her parents had died in the same month;
and about a year after their death she sold the cottage and the piece of
ground, and took her journey towards Edinburgh, where the report of her
being a "great fortune," as her neighbours term her, might be unknown.
But Tibby, although a sensitive girl, was also, in many respects, a
prudent one. Frequently she had heard her mother, when she had to take
but a shilling from the legacy, quote the proverb, that it was

  "Like a cow in a clout,
  That soon wears out."

Proverbs we know are in bad taste, but we quote it, because by its
repetition the mother produced a deeper impression on her daughter's
mind than could have been effected by a volume of sentiment. Bearing
therefore in her memory the maxim of her frugal parent, Tibby deposited
her money in the only bank, we believe, that was at that period in the
Scottish capital, and hired herself as a child's maid in the family of a
gentleman who occupied a house in the neighbourhood of Restalrig. Here
the story of her fortune was unknown, and Tibby was distinguished only
for a kind heart and a lovely countenance. It was during the summer
months, and Leith Links became her daily resort; and there she was wont
to walk with a child in her arms and another leading by the hand, for
there she could wander by the side of the sounding sea; and her heart
still glowed for her father's cottage and its fairy glen, where she had
often heard the voice of its deep waters, and she felt the sensation
which we believe may have been experienced by many who have been born
within hearing of old Ocean's roar, that wherever they may be, they hear
the murmur of its billows as the voice of a youthful friend, and she
almost fancied, as she approached the sea, that she drew nearer the home
which sheltered her infancy. She had been but a few weeks in the family
we have alluded to, when, returning from her accustomed walk, her eyes
met those of a young man habited as a seaman. He appeared to be about
five-and-twenty, and his features were rather manly than handsome. There
was a dash of boldness and confidence in his countenance; but as the
eyes of the maiden met his, he turned aside as if abashed and passed on.
Tibby blushed at her foolishness, but she could not help it, she felt
interested in the stranger. There was an expression, a language, an
inquiry in his gaze, she had never witnessed before. She would have
turned round to cast a look after him, but she blushed deeper at the
thought, and modesty forbade it. She walked on for a few minutes,
upbraiding herself for entertaining the silly wish, when the child who
walked by her side fell a few yards behind. She turned round to call him
by his name--Tibby was certain that she had no motive but to call the
child, and though she did steal a sidelong glance towards the spot where
she had passed the stranger, it was a mere accident, it could not be
avoided--at least so the maiden wished to persuade her conscience
against her conviction; but that glance revealed to her the young
sailor, not pursuing the path on which she had met him, but following
her within the distance of a few yards, and until she reached her
master's door, she heard the sound of his footsteps behind her. She
experienced an emotion between being pleased and offended at his
conduct, though we suspect the former eventually predominated, for the
next day she was upon the Links as usual, and there also was the young
seaman, and again he followed her to within sight of her master's house.
How long this sort of dumb love-making, or the pleasures of diffidence
continued, we cannot tell. Certain it is that at length he spoke, wooed,
and conquered; and about a twelvemonth after their first meeting, Tibby
Fowler became the wife of William Gordon, the mate of a foreign trader.
On the second week after their marriage William was to sail upon a long,
long voyage, and might not be expected to return for more than twelve
months. This was a severe trial for poor Tibby, and she felt as if she
would not be able to stand up against it. As yet her husband knew
nothing of her dowry, and for this hour she had reserved its discovery.
A few days before their marriage she had lifted her money from the bank
and deposited it in her chest.

"No, Willie, my ain Willie," she cried, "ye maunna, ye winna leave me
already: I have neither faither, mother, brother, nor kindred; naebody
but you, Willie; only you in the wide world; and I am a stranger here,
and ye winna leave your Tibby. Say that ye winna, Willie." And she wrung
his hand, gazed in his face, and wept.

"I maun gang, dearest; I maun gang," said Willie, and pressed her to his
breast; "but the thocht o' my ain wifie will mak the months chase ane
anither like the moon driving shadows owre the sea. There's nae danger
in the voyage, hinny, no a grain o' danger; sae dinna greet; but come,
kiss me, Tibby, and when I come hame I'll mak ye leddy o' them a'."

"Oh no, no, Willie!" she replied; "I want to be nae leddy; I want
naething but my Willie. Only say that ye'll no gang, and here's
something here, something for ye to look at." And she hurried to her
chest, and took from it a large leathern pocket-book that had been her
father's, and which contained her treasure, now amounting to somewhat
more than six hundred pounds. In a moment she returned to her husband;
she threw her arms around his neck; she thrust the pocket-book into his
bosom. "There, Willie, there," she exclaimed; "that is yours--my faither
placed it in my hand wi' a blessing, and wi' the same blessing I
transfer it to you--but dinna, dinna leave me." Thus saying, she hurried
out of the room. We will not attempt to describe the astonishment, we
may say the joy, of the fond husband, on opening the pocket-book and
finding the unlooked-for dowry. However intensely a man may love a
woman, there is little chance that her putting an unexpected portion of
six hundred pounds into his hands will diminish his attachment; nor did
it diminish that of William Gordon. He relinquished his intention of
proceeding on the foreign voyage, and purchased a small coasting vessel,
of which he was both owner and commander. Five years of unclouded
prosperity passed over them, and Tibby had become the mother of three
fair children. William sold his small vessel and purchased a larger one,
and in fitting it up all the gains of his five successful years were
swallowed up. But trade was good. She was a beautiful brig, and he had
her called the _Tibby Fowler_. He now took a fond farewell of his wife
and little ones upon a foreign voyage which was not calculated to exceed
four months, and which held out high promise of advantage. But four,
eight, twelve months passed away, and there were no tidings of the
_Tibby Fowler_. Britain was then at war; there were enemies' ships and
pirates upon the sea, and there had been fierce storms and hurricanes
since her husband left; and Tibby thought of all these things and wept;
and her lisping children asked her when their father would return, for
he had promised presents to all, and she answered, to-morrow, and
to-morrow, and turned from them and wept again. She began to be in want,
and at first she received assistance from some of the friends of their
prosperity; but all hope of her husband's return was now abandoned; the
ship was not insured, and the mother and her family were reduced to
beggary. In order to support them, she sold one article of furniture
after another, until what remained was seized by the landlord in
security for his rent. It was then that Tibby and her children, with
scarce a blanket to cover them, were cast friendless upon the streets,
to die or to beg. To the last resource she could not yet stoop, and from
the remnants of former friendship she was furnished with a basket and a
few trifling wares, with which, with her children by her side, she set
out, with a broken and a sorrowful heart, wandering from village to
village. She had travelled in this manner for some months, when she drew
near her native glen, and the cottage that had been her father's, that
had been her own, stood before her. She had travelled all the day and
sold nothing. Her children were pulling by her tattered gown, weeping
and crying, "Bread, mother, give us bread!" and her own heart was sick
with hunger.

"Oh, wheesht, my darlings, wheesht!" she exclaimed, and she fell upon
her knees and threw her arms round the necks of all the three, "you will
get bread soon; the Almighty will not permit my bairns to perish; no,
no; ye shall have bread."

In despair she hurried to the cottage of her birth. The door was opened
by one who had been a rejected suitor. He gazed upon her intently for a
few seconds; and she was still young, being scarce more than
six-and-twenty, and in the midst of her wretchedness, yet lovely.

"Gude gracious, Tibby Fowler!" he exclaimed, "is that you? Poor
creature! are ye seeking charity? Weel, I think ye'll mind what I said
to you now, that your pride would have a fa'!"

While the heartless owner of the cottage yet spoke, a voice behind her
was heard exclaiming, "It is her! it is her! my ain Tibby and her
bairns!"

At the well-known voice, Tibby uttered a wild scream of joy, and fell
senseless on the earth; but the next moment her husband, William Gordon,
raised her to his breast. Three weeks before he had returned to Britain,
and traced her from village to village, till he found her in the midst
of their children, on the threshold of the place of her nativity. His
story we need not here tell. He had fallen into the hands of the enemy;
he had been retained for months on board of their vessel; and when a
storm had arisen, and hope was gone, he had saved her from being lost
and her crew from perishing. In reward for his services, his own vessel
had been restored to him, and he was returned to his country, after an
absence of eighteen months, richer than when he left, and laden with
honours. The rest is soon told. After Tibby and her husband had wept
upon each other's neck, and he had kissed his children, and again their
mother, with his youngest child on one arm, and his wife resting on the
other, he hastened from the spot that had been the scene of such
bitterness and transport. In a few years more, William Gordon having
obtained a competency, they re-purchased the cottage in the glen, where
Tibby Fowler lived to see her children's children, and died at a good
old age in the house in which she had been born--the remains of which,
we have only to add, for the edification of the curious, may be seen
until this day.




THE CRADLE OF LOGIE.


It is not very easy, when we consider the great desire manifested by
authors and editors to serve up piquant dishes of fiction on the broad
table of literature, to account for the fact that the undoubtedly true
story of the Cradle of Logie and the Indian Princess, as she is often
called, should never have appeared in print. It has apparently escaped
the sharpest eyes of our chroniclers. Sir Walter Scott did not appear to
have much fancy for Angus; but it would seem that the facts of this
strange occurrence in a civilised country, and not very far back, had
never reached him. Even the histories of Forfarshire are silent; and the
pictures of Scotland for tourists, which generally seize on any romantic
trait connected with a locality or an old ruin, have also overlooked
them. Yet the principal personage in the drama was one whose name was
for years in the mouths of the people, not only for peculiarities of
character, but retribution of fate; and this local fame has died away
only within a comparatively recent period. It was in my very early years
that I saw the Cradle, and heard, imperfectly, its tale from my mother;
but her account was comparatively meagre. I sought long for details; nor
was I by any means successful till I fell in with a man named Aminadab
Fairweather, a resident at the Scouring Burn, in Dundee, who was in the
habit of frequenting Logie House, and who, though very old, remembered
many of the circumstances.

The truth is, there were rich flesh-pots in Logie House--richer than
those which supplied the muscles of the Theban mummies, so enduring
through long ages, no doubt, from being so well fed; for Mr. Fletcher of
Lindertes,[*] who was proprietor of the mansion, was the greatest
epicurean and glossogaster that ever lived since Leontine
times. Then a woman called Jenny McPherson, who had in early
life, like "a good Scotch louse," who "aye travels south," found her way
from Lochaber to London, where she had got into George's kitchen, and
learned something better than to make sour kraut, was the individual who
administered to her master's epicureanism, if not gulosity. Nay, it was
said she had a hand in the tragedy of the Cradle; but, however that may
be, it is certain she was deep in the confidences of Fletcher. But then
Mrs. McPherson, as she chose to call herself--though the never a
McPherson was connected with her except by the ties of blood, which,
like those of all Celts, had their loose terminations dangling into
infinity at the beginning of the world's history--was given to
administering the contents of her savoury flesh-pots to others than the
family of Logie; yea, like a true Highlander, she delighted in having
henchmen--or haunchmen truly, in this instance--who gave her love in
return for her edible luxuries. It happened that our said Aminadab was
one of those favoured individuals; and it is lucky for this generation
that he was, for if he had not been, there would assuredly have been no
records of the Cradle and the black lady.

  [note *: Mr. Fletcher had also the property of Balinsloe as well
  as Logie. They've all passed into other hands.]

It was in a little parlour off the big kitchen that Janet received her
henchmen. And was there ever man so happy as our good Aminadab?--and
that for several human reasons, whereof the first was certainly the
Logie flesh-pots; the second, the stories about the romantic place
wherewith she contrived to garnish and spice these savoury mouthfuls;
and last, Janet herself, who was always under the feminine delusion that
she was the corporate representative of the first of these reasons, if,
indeed, the others were not mere _adjecta_, not to be taken into
account; whereas there were doubts if she was for herself ever counted
at all, except as the mere "old-pot" which contained the realities. And
their happiness would certainly have been complete if it had not
been--at least in the case of Aminadab--that it could be enjoyed only by
passing through that grim medium, a churchyard. But then, is not all
celestial bliss burdened by this condition; nay, is not even our earthly
bliss, which is a foretaste of heaven, only a flower raised upon the
rottenness of other flowers--a type of the soul as it issues from
corruption? Yes, Aminadab could not get to the holy of holies except by
passing through Logie kirkyard, a small and most romantic Golgotha, on
the left of the road leading to Lochee, whose inhabitants it contained,
and which was so limited and crowded, that one might prefigure it as one
of those holes or dungeons in Michael Angelo's pictures, belching forth
spirits in the shape of inverted tadpoles, the tail uppermost, and yet
representing ascending sparks. The wickets that surrounded Logie
House--lying as it does upon the south side of Balgay Hill, and flanked
on the east by a deep gully, wherethrough runs a small stream, which, so
far as I know, has no name--were locked at night. The terrors of this
place, at the late hours when these said henchmen behoved to seek their
savoury rewards, were the only drawback to Aminadab's supreme bliss.

And if the time of these symposial meetings had been somewhat later in
the century, how much more formidable would have been a passage through
this contracted valley of tumuli and bones! No churchyard, except those
of Judea, was ever invested with such terrors--not the mystical fears of
a divine fate seen in the descending cloud, with Justice gleaming with
fiery eyes on Sin, and holding those scales, the decision of which would
destine to eternal bliss or eternal woe, and that Justice personified in
Him "whose glory is a burning like the burning of a fire,"--no, but the
revolting fears produced by the profanity of that poor worm of very
common mud, which has been since the beginning of time acting the God.
Ay, the aurelia-born image of grace sees a difference when it looks from
the sun to the epigenetic thing which He raises out of corruption. There
was, in that small place of skulls, a rehearsal of the great day. We
hear little of these freaks now-a-days; but it was different then, when
men made themselves demons by drink. One night William Maule of Panmure,
then in his days of graceless frolic; Fletcher Read, the nephew of the
laird, and subsequently the laird himself, of Logie; Rob Thornton, the
merchant, Dudhope, and other kindred spirits, who used to sing in the
inn of Sandy Morren, the hotel-keeper, "Death begone, here's none but
souls," sallied drunk from the inn. The story goes that the night was
dark, and there stood at the door a hearse, which had that day conveyed
to the "howf," now about to be shut up because of its offence against
the nostrils of men who are not destined to need a grave, the wife of an
inconsolable husband and the mother of children; and thereupon came from
Maule's mouth--for wickedness will seek its playful function in a
pun--the proposition that the bacchanals should have a rehearsal in the
kirkyard of Logie. Well, it signified, of course, nothing that the Black
Princess had been buried there, so far away from the land of "the balmy
East,"

  "Where the roses blow and the oranges grow,
  And all is divine but man below."

Fletcher Read might have recollected this, but what though? Was not the
pun a good one--worthy of Hood? They all mounted the hearse, Panmure
being driver; nor could Sandy Morren give to these white-robed spirits,
who were so soon to rise in glory from the envious earth, more than a
sour-milk horn and half a dozen of snow-white table-cloths for the
theatrical property of the great players. So it has been since the time
when the shepherd who killed the son of Aebolus, for that he gave them
wine which they thought was poison, because they found their heads out
of order--wine still generates on folly the afflatus of madness. The
story goes on. The night was as dark as those places they were to
illumine with their white robes, alas! not of innocence. But the
darkness was not of the moon's absence in another hemisphere; only that
darkness which is cloud-born, and must cede in twinkling yet glorious
intervening moments to the moon, when she will salute the graves and the
marriage-guests; and the hearse, as it slowly wended its way up the road
to Lochee, every now and then pouring forth from its dark inside peals
of laughter. The travellers on the road look with wide eyes at the grim
apparition, and flee. They arrive at the rough five-bar stile; it is
thrown back, and the hearse is driven into the place of the dead. The
story goes on. There is silence everywhere, and appropriately there,
where the four brick corners of the smoke-coloured Cradle rise from the
hollow of Balgay Hill. They waited till the moon shone out again in her
calm, breathless repose; and then resounded from the clanging black
boards of the hearse a terrible din resembling thunder, and already each
man, with his table-cover rolled round him, was snug behind the solemn
head-stones, storied with domestic loves severed by the dark angel.

Now was the time for the trumpet-call, which behoved to be sounded by
the cycloborean lungs of the broad-chested Panmure. The story has no
reason to flag where the stake of the _grimelinage_ is the upraising of
white-robed spirits. The sour-milk horn is sounded as it never was
sounded before on the earth which had passed away; every spirit comes
forth from below the head-stones; and there rose a wail of misery which
nothing but wine could have produced.

"Mercy on our poor souls!"

"Justice," cried Maule. "Stand out there, Bob Thornton, and answer for
the sins done in the body." The story goes on, and it intercalates "fie,
fie, on man." Thornton stands forth shrieking for the said mercy.

"Was not you, sir, last night, of the time of the past world, in the inn
kept by Sandy Morren, in the town called Bonnie Dundee--bonnie in all
save its sin, and its magistracy gone a-begging, and its
hemp-spinners,[*] and the effect of Sandy Riddoch's reign--drinking and
swearing?"

  [note *: There is some prevision here which I cannot explain.]

"I was."

"Then down with you to the pit which has no bottom whatsomever."

And Thornton disappears in the hollow not far from where the brick
Cradle stands.

"Stand forth, Fletcher Read."

"Weren't you, sir, art and part in confining in yonder dungeon the poor
unfortunate black lady, whereby she was murdered by that villain of an
uncle of yours, Fletcher of Lindertes?"

"I was."

"Down with you to the pit and the lake of brimstone."

And down he went into the same valley.

"Stand forth, Dudhope."

"Were not you, sir, seen, on the 21st of December of the late dynasty of
time, in the company of one of these denizens of Rougedom in the
Overgate, that disgrace of the last world, for which it has very
properly been burnt up like a scroll of Sandy Riddoch's peculations?"

"I was."

"Then down to the pit."

And Dudhope--even he the representative of Graham of opprobrious
memory--disappeared.

"You're all (cried Maule) like the Lady of Luss's kain eggs, every one
of which fell through the ring into the tub, and didn't count."

And so on with the rest, till there were no more to go down. Yet the
horn sounded again, for Maule was not so drunk that he did not remember
there were any more to come; but then, had he not been singing in Sandy
Morren's, "Death begone, here's none but souls?" The story goes on. The
horn having sounded, there stood forth a figure that did not belong to
this crowd of sinners. It was a woman dressed in dark clothes, with a
black bonnet, and an umbrella in her hand. How the great God can show
his power over the little god, man! The woman was no other than a Mrs.
Geddes of Lochee, who, having got a little too much at the Scouring
Burn, had, on her way home, slipped into the resting-place of her
husband, who had been buried only a week before, and having got drowsy,
had fallen asleep on the flat stone which covered him. In a half dreamy
state she had seen all this terrible mummery--no mummery to her; for she
thought it real: and as every one stood forward by name, she often said
to herself, "When will it be Johnnie's turn, poor man? for he was an
awfu' sinner; I fear the pit's owre guid for him." But Johnnie was not
called. And then she expected her own summons--fell agony of a moment of
the expectation of scorching flames to envelope her body, the flesh of
which, as she pinched herself, had feeling and sensibility. Then if
these great men, whose names she had often heard of, and who, as having
white robes, and riches, and honours, might have expected to get to
heaven, and yet didn't, what was to become of her, who had only dark
garments, and who had been drinking that night at the Scouring Burn?
There was no great wonder that Mrs. Geddes was distressed, yea
miserable; and when she heard the horn sounded and no one went
forward--Johnnie was of course afraid, and was concealing himself--she
stood up with her umbrella in her hand. And Maule, now getting terrified
through the haze of his drunkenness, cried out, "Who are you?"

"Mrs. Geddes, Johnnie Geddes's wife, o' the village o' Lochee, just twa
miles frae that sink o' sin, Bonnie Dundee. I hae been a great sinner. I
kept company wi' Sandy Simpson when Johnnie was living, and came here to
greet owre his grave."

"A woman!" cried Maule; "then to heaven as fast as your wings will carry
you."

And this man, who braved God, shook with terror before a weak woman; and
so did all these brave bacchanals, who, on hearing the horn when no more
remained to be condemned, thought their false God had called them, and
had returned to witness the object of their new-born fear. Hurrying into
the hearse, the party were in a few minutes posting to Dundee in solemn
silence, where they arrived about two o'clock, not to resume their
orgies, but to separate each for his home, with the elements in him of a
sense of retribution, not forgotten for many a day. At the long run the
story finishes, and the chronicler, lifting up his hands to heaven,
cries, "Is there no end, Lord, is there no end to the profanity of man?
Lord, why stayeth the hand of vengeance?"

If guidman Aminadab had known these things--which he couldn't do,
because, like Sir James Colquhoun's last day (of the session), which he
wanted the judges to abolish, this last day (of the world) happened
after the said Aminadab was in the habit of seeking Mrs. M'Pherson's
parlour--he would have had greater deductions from his pleasure; for
Aminadab read his Bible, and belonged to the first Secession. And so it
was better he didn't, especially on that night when Mrs. M'Pherson had
been so extraordinarily condescending to her henchman as to set before
him a fine piece of pork, in recognition of his adherence to the
resolution of leaving the flesh-pots of Egypt--the old Church. It was a
dark night in January. There was a cheerful fire in the neat parlour,
and Janet was communicative, if not chatty, in good English, got in
George's kitchen at Kew.

"I would like all this better," said Aminadab, "if I had not that
churchyard to come through; and then there's that fearful-looking Cradle
in the hollow, with four lums like the stumpt posts of a child's
rocking-bed. What is it, Janet?--it's not a cow-house, nor a henhouse,
but a pure dungeon, fearful to free men, who might shudder to be
confined in it."

"What more?" said Janet. "Do you know anything more, Aminadab?"

"Yes; but I am eating Logie's pork, and don't like to say much."

"Never mind the pork, man; speak out. Do the folks down in the town say
anything, or shake their heads, or point their fingers?"

"Well, they say there's a human being confined in it," replied Aminadab.
"And so they may, for sounds have been heard coming from the dark
hole--ay, and I have heard them myself--deep moans and weeping. I would
like to know if there's a secret."

"Hush, hush, Aminadab. There is a secret, and you're the only man I
would speak of it to."

And Mrs. McPherson rose solemnly and locked the door upon herself and
her henchman.

"You know, Aminadab, that my master came from Bombay some years ago, and
brought home with him a black wife. Dear, good soul--so kind, so timid,
so cheerful too; but, Heaven help me, what could I do?--for you know Mr.
Fletcher is a terrible man. He does not fear the face of clay; and the
scowl upon his face when he is in his moods is terrible. I am bound to
obey."

"But what of her?" said Aminadab. "It's no surely she who is in the
horrid hole?"

"Never you mind that, but eat your bacon, you fool for stopping me. When
I'm stopped, I seldom begin again for a day and night at least."

"Something like your master, Janet."

"No, Aminadab; I have _a heart_, lad."

"That I know, Janet," said Aminadab, with a lump of pork in his mouth;
"and--and--it--is--fat--lass."

"And the easier swallowed," said she

"I meant your heart, Mrs. McPherson.

"And I must swallow that too, as it seems to come up my throat and choke
me, even as the pork seems to do you. Take time, Aminadab. There's no
hurry, man. Ah well, then, we have it all among the servants how Mr.
Fletcher got my lady. He was a great man in Bombay--governor, I think,
or something near that--and my lady was the only daughter of the Nawab
or Nabob of some kingdom near Bombay--I forget the strange Indian name.
She was the very petted child of her father; and when Mr. Fletcher saw
her, she was running about the palace like a wild, playful creature--I
may say, our bonny little roes of the Highland hills, or maybe another
creature she used to speak about, I think they call it gazelle, with
such wonderful eyes for shining, that you cannot look into them no more
you could at the sun. For, oh, Aminadab! they have strange things in
these places, which are much nearer the sun than we are here in this old
country. But the mighty Nabob was unwilling to give her to the
white-faced lover, even though he was the governor of Bombay, forbye
having Balinsloe and Lindertes in Scotland too. Maybe he thought a
Scotsman could not like a black Indian princess, though she was with her
grand shawls about her, and her jewelled turban, and diamonds and
pearls, and all that; and maybe, Aminadab, he thought"--and here Janet
lowered her husky voice--"that it was just for these fine things he
wanted her, rich though he was himself. Yet, strange enough too, the
Nabob had promised the man who should marry his daughter the weight of
herself in fine Indian gold, weighed in a balance, as her tocher. Heard
ye ever the like of a tocher, man?"

"That would depend upon her size and weight, Janet, lass. Now, had you a
tocher like that, it would be a gey business, I think,--fourteen
potato-stones at the very least, I would say, eh?"--and he must get quit
of the mouthful before he could finish--"Eh, Janet?"

"And if you go on at that rate with my pork, you will not, by-and-by, be
much behind me. But, guid faith, Aminadab, I'm not ashamed, lad, of my
size. A poor, smoke-dried, shrivelled cook shames her guid savoury
dishes, intended to fatten mankind and make them jolly. But you are
right about the offer of the Nabob. The creature was small, and light,
and lithe, and could not weigh much. But then, think of the jewels!
These did not depend upon her weight, but upon their own light. Oh, what
diamonds, and rubies, and pearls as big as marbles! I have looked at
them till my eyes reeled with the light of them; and no wonder, when I
have heard them valued at a hundred thousand guineas--and to think of
all that being held in a little box! There is one necklace worth fifteen
thousand itself."

"And yet a small neck, too, maybe?--'And thou shalt make a necklace to
fit her neck,' said the Lord. It would not be half the girth of yours,
Mrs. M'Pherson?"

"Ay, Aminadab; not a half, nor anything like it. But don't stop me
again, lad, or I'll stop the pork. (A pause.) Ah, well, I fear it was
the shining jewels, and not the black face, did the business on my
master's side. And, of cours

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