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Stories of Childhood

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Title: Stories of Childhood

Editor: Rossiter Johnson


        
Release date: May 29, 2005 [eBook #15933]
                Most recently updated: May 15, 2015

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15933

Credits: Produced by Ron Swanson


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF CHILDHOOD ***




Produced by Ron Swanson





LITTLE CLASSICS

EDITED BY ROSSITER JOHNSON




STORIES OF CHILDHOOD


BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
_The Riverside Press Cambridge_

1914




COPYRIGHT, 1875, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & Co.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




CONTENTS.


A DOG OF FLANDERS  . . . . . . . . . . _Louisa de la Ramé_ (_Ouida_)

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER . . . . . _John Ruskin_

THE LADY OF SHALOTT  . . . . . . . . . _Elizabeth Stuart Phelps_

MARJORIE FLEMING . . . . . . . . . . . _John Brown, M.D._

LITTLE JAKEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Mrs. S. H. DeKroyft_

THE LOST CHILD . . . . . . . . . . . . _Henry Kingsley_

GOODY GRACIOUS! AND THE FORGET-ME-NOT  _John Neal_

A FADED LEAF OF HISTORY  . . . . . . . _Rebecca Harding Davis_

A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR  . . . . . . _Charles Dickens_




A DOG OF FLANDERS.

BY OUIDA


Nello and Patrasche were left all alone in the world.

They were friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood. Nello was a
little Ardennois,--Patrasche was a big Fleming. They were both of the
same age by length of years, yet one was still young, and the other was
already old. They had dwelt together almost all their days; both were
orphaned and destitute, and owed their lives to the same hand. It had
been the beginning of the tie between them, their first bond of
sympathy; and it had strengthened day by day, and had grown with their
growth, firm and indissoluble, until they loved one another very
greatly.

Their home was a little hut on the edge of a little village,--a Flemish
village a league from Antwerp, set amidst flat breadths of pasture and
corn-lands, with long lines of poplars and of alders bending in the
breeze on the edge of the great canal which ran through it. It had
about a score of houses and homesteads, with shutters of bright green
or sky-blue, and roofs rose-red or black and white, and walls
whitewashed until they shone in the sun like snow. In the centre of the
village stood a windmill, placed on a little moss-grown slope; it was a
landmark to all the level country round. It had once been painted
scarlet, sails and all, but that had been in its infancy, half a
century or more earlier, when it had ground wheat for the soldiers of
Napoleon; and it was now a ruddy brown, tanned by wind and weather. It
went queerly by fits and starts, as though rheumatic and stiff in the
joints from age, but it served the whole neighborhood, which would have
thought it almost as impious to carry grain elsewhere, as to attend any
other religious service than the mass that was performed at the altar
of the little old gray church, with its conical steeple, which stood
opposite to it, and whose single bell rang morning, noon, and night
with that strange, subdued, hollow sadness which every bell that hangs
in the Low Countries seems to gain as an integral part of its melody.

Within sound of the little melancholy clock almost from their birth
upward, they had dwelt together, Nello and Patrasche, in the little hut
on the edge of the village, with the cathedral spire of Antwerp rising
in the northeast, beyond the great green plain of seeding grass and
spreading corn that stretched away from them like a tideless,
changeless sea. It was the hut of a very old man, of a very poor
man,--of old Jehan Daas, who in his time had been a soldier, and who
remembered the wars that had trampled the country as oxen tread down
the furrows, and who had brought from his service nothing except a
wound, which had made him a cripple.

When old Jehan Daas had reached his full eighty, his daughter had died
in the Ardennes, hard by Stavelot, and had left him in legacy her
two-year-old son. The old man could ill contrive to support himself,
but he took up the additional burden uncomplainingly, and it soon
became welcome and precious to him. Little Nello--which was but a pet
diminutive for Nicolas--throve with him, and the old man and the little
child lived in the poor little hut contentedly.

It was a very humble little mud-hut indeed, but it was clean and white
as a sea-shell, and stood in a small plot of garden-ground that yielded
beans and herbs and pumpkins. They were very poor, terribly poor,--many
a day they had nothing at all to eat. They never by any chance had
enough; to have had enough to eat would have been to have reached
paradise at once. But the old man was very gentle and good to the boy,
and the boy was a beautiful, innocent, truthful, tender-natured
creature; and they were happy on a crust and a few leaves of cabbage,
and asked no more of earth or Heaven; save indeed that Patrasche should
be always with them, since without Patrasche where would they have
been?

For Patrasche was their alpha and omega; their treasury and granary;
their store of gold and wand of wealth; their bread-winner and
minister; their only friend and comforter. Patrasche dead or gone from
them, they must have laid themselves down and died likewise. Patrasche
was body, brains, hands, head, and feet to both of them: Patrasche was
their very life, their very soul. For Jehan Daas was old and a cripple,
and Nello was but a child; and Patrasche was their dog.

A dog of Flanders,--yellow of hide, large of head and limb, with
wolf-like ears that stood erect, and legs bowed and feet widened in the
muscular development wrought in his breed by many generations of hard
service. Patrasche came of a race which had toiled hard and cruelly
from sire to son in Flanders many a century,--slaves of slaves, dogs of
the people, beasts of the shafts and the harness, creatures that lived
straining their sinews in the gall of the cart, and died breaking their
hearts on the flints of the streets.

Patrasche had been born of parents who had labored hard all their days
over the sharp-set stones of the various cities and the long,
shadowless, weary roads of the two Flanders and of Brabant. He had been
born to no other heritage than those of pain and of toil. He had been
fed on curses and baptized with blows. Why not? It was a Christian
country, and Patrasche was but a dog. Before he was fully grown he had
known the bitter gall of the cart and the collar. Before he had entered
his thirteenth month he had become the property of a hardware-dealer,
who was accustomed to wander over the land north and south, from the
blue sea to the green mountains. They sold him for a small price,
because he was so young.

This man was a drunkard and a brute. The life of Patrasche was a life
of hell. To deal the tortures of hell on the animal creation is a way
which the Christians have of showing their belief in it. His purchaser
was a sullen, ill-living, brutal Brabantois, who heaped his cart full
with pots and pans and flagons and buckets, and other wares of crockery
and brass and tin, and left Patrasche to draw the load as best he
might, whilst he himself lounged idly by the side in fat and sluggish
ease, smoking his black pipe and stopping at every wineshop or café on
the road.

Happily for Patrasche--or unhappily--he was very strong: he came of an
iron race, long born and bred to such cruel travail; so that he did not
die, but managed to drag on a wretched existence under the brutal
burdens, the scarifying lashes, the hunger, the thirst, the blows, the
curses, and the exhaustion which are the only wages with which the
Flemings repay the most patient and laborious of all their four-footed
victims. One day, after two years of this long and deadly agony,
Patrasche was going on as usual along one of the straight, dusty,
unlovely roads that lead to the city of Rubens. It was full midsummer,
and very warm. His cart was very heavy, piled high with goods in metal
and in earthenware. His owner sauntered on without noticing him
otherwise than by the crack of the whip as it curled round his
quivering loins. The Brabantois had paused to drink beer himself at
every wayside house, but he had forbidden Patrasche to stop a moment
for a draught from the canal. Going along thus, in the full sun, on a
scorching highway, having eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and,
which was far worse to him, not having tasted water for nearly twelve,
being blind with dust, sore with blows, and stupefied with the
merciless weight which dragged upon his loins, Patrasche, for once,
staggered and foamed a little at the mouth, and fell.

He fell in the middle of the white, dusty road, in the full glare of
the sun: he was sick unto death, and motionless. His master gave him
the only medicine in his pharmacy,--kicks and oaths and blows with a
cudgel of oak, which had been often the only food and drink, the only
wage and reward, ever offered to him. But Patrasche was beyond the
reach of any torture or of any curses. Patrasche lay, dead to all
appearances, down in the white powder of the summer dust. After a
while, finding it useless to assail his ribs with punishment and his
ears with maledictions, the Brabantois--deeming life gone in him, or
going so nearly that his carcass was forever useless, unless indeed
some one should strip it of the skin for gloves--cursed him fiercely in
farewell, struck off the leathern bands of the harness, kicked his body
heavily aside into the grass, and, groaning and muttering in savage
wrath, pushed the cart lazily along the road up hill, and left the
dying dog there for the ants to sting and for the crows to pick.

It was the last day before Kermesse away at Louvain, and the Brabantois
was in haste to reach the fair and get a good place for his truck of
brass wares. He was in fierce wrath, because Patrasche had been a
strong and much-enduring animal, and because he himself had now the
hard task of pushing his charette all the way to Louvain. But to stay
to look after Patrasche never entered his thoughts: the beast was dying
and useless, and he would steal, to replace him, the first large dog
that he found wandering alone out of sight of its master. Patrasche had
cost him nothing, or next to nothing, and for two long, cruel years he
had made him toil ceaselessly in his service from sunrise to sunset,
through summer and winter, in fair weather and foul.

He had got a fair use and a good profit out of Patrasche: being human,
he was wise, and left the dog to draw his last breath alone in the
ditch, and have his bloodshot eyes plucked out as they might be by the
birds, whilst he himself went on his way to beg and to steal, to eat
and to drink, to dance and to sing, in the mirth at Louvain. A dying
dog, a dog of the cart,--why should he waste hours over its agonies at
peril of losing a handful of copper coins, at peril of a shout of
laughter?

Patrasche lay there, flung in the grass-green ditch. It was a busy road
that day, and hundreds of people, on foot and on mules, in wagons or in
carts, went by, tramping quickly and joyously on to Louvain. Some saw
him, most did not even look: all passed on. A dead dog more or
less,--it was nothing in Brabant: it would be nothing anywhere in the
world.

After a time, amongst the holiday-makers, there came a little old man
who was bent and lame, and very feeble. He was in no guise for
feasting: he was very poorly and miserably clad, and he dragged his
silent way slowly through the dust amongst the pleasure-seekers. He
looked at Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down
in the rank grass and weeds of the ditch, and surveyed the dog with
kindly eyes of pity. There was with him a little rosy, fair-haired,
dark-eyed child of a few years old, who pattered in amidst the bushes,
that were for him breast-high, and stood gazing with a pretty
seriousness upon the poor great, quiet beast.

Thus it was that these two first met,--the little Nello and the big
Patrasche.

The upshot of that day was, that old Jehan Daas, with much laborious
effort, drew the sufferer homeward to his own little hut, which was a
stone's-throw off amidst the fields, and there tended him with so much
care that the sickness, which had been a brain-seizure, brought on by
heat and thirst and exhaustion, with time and shade and rest passed
away, and health and strength returned, and Patrasche staggered up
again upon his four stout, tawny legs.

Now for many weeks he had been useless, powerless, sore, near to death;
but all this time he had heard no rough word, had felt no harsh touch,
but only the pitying murmurs of the little child's voice and the
soothing caress of the old man's hand.

In his sickness they two had grown to care for him, this lonely old man
and the little happy child. He had a corner of the hut, with a heap of
dry grass for his bed; and they had learned to listen eagerly for his
breathing in the dark night, to tell them that he lived; and when he
first was well enough to essay a loud, hollow, broken bay, they laughed
aloud, and almost wept together for joy at such a sign of his sure
restoration; and little Nello, in delighted glee, hung round his rugged
neck with chains of marguerites, and kissed him with fresh and ruddy
lips.

So then, when Patrasche arose, himself again, strong, big, gaunt,
powerful, his great wistful eyes had a gentle astonishment in them that
there were no curses to rouse him and no blows to drive him; and his
heart awakened to a mighty love, which never wavered once in its
fidelity whilst life abode with him.

But Patrasche, being a dog, was grateful. Patrasche lay pondering long
with grave, tender, musing brown eyes, watching the movements of his
friends.

Now, the old soldier, Jehan Daas, could do nothing for his living but
limp about a little with a small cart, with which he carried daily the
milk-cans of those happier neighbors who owned cattle away into the
town of Antwerp. The villagers gave him the employment a little out of
charity,--more because it suited them well to send their milk into the
town by so honest a carrier, and bide at home themselves to look after
their gardens, their cows, their poultry, or their little fields. But
it was becoming hard work for the old man. He was eighty-three, and
Antwerp was a good league off, or more.

Patrasche watched the milk-cans come and go that one day when he had
got well and was lying in the sun with the wreath of marguerites round
his tawny neck.

The next morning, Patrasche, before the old man had touched the cart,
arose and walked to it and placed himself betwixt its handles, and
testified as plainly as dumb show could do his desire and his ability
to work in return for the bread of charity that he had eaten. Jehan
Daas resisted long, for the old man was one of those who thought it a
foul shame to bind dogs to labor for which Nature never formed them.
But Patrasche would not be gainsayed: finding they did not harness him,
he tried to draw the cart onward with his teeth.

At length Jehan Daas gave way, vanquished by the persistence and the
gratitude of this creature whom he had succored. He fashioned his cart
so that Patrasche could run in it, and this he did every morning of his
life thenceforward.

When the winter came, Jehan Daas thanked the blessed fortune that had
brought him to the dying dog in the ditch that fair-day of Louvain; for
he was very old, and he grew feebler with each year, and he would ill
have known how to pull his load of milk-cans over the snows and through
the deep ruts in the mud if it had not been for the strength and the
industry of the animal he had befriended. As for Patrasche, it seemed
heaven to him. After the frightful burdens that his old master had
compelled him to strain under, at the call of the whip at every step,
it seemed nothing to him but amusement to step out with this little
light green cart, with its bright brass cans, by the side of the gentle
old man who always paid him with a tender caress and with a kindly
word. Besides, his work was over by three or four in the day, and after
that time he was free to do as he would,--to stretch himself, to sleep
in the sun, to wander in the fields, to romp with the young child, or
to play with his fellow-dogs. Patrasche was very happy.

Fortunately for his peace, his former owner was killed in a drunken
brawl at the Kermesse of Mechlin, and so sought not after him nor
disturbed him in his new and well-loved home.

A few years later, old Jehan Daas, who had always been a cripple,
became so paralyzed with rheumatism that it was impossible for him to
go out with the cart any more. Then little Nello, being now grown to
his sixth year of age, and knowing the town well from having
accompanied his grandfather so many times, took his place beside the
cart, and sold the milk and received the coins in exchange, and brought
them back to their respective owners with a pretty grace and
seriousness which charmed all who beheld him.

The little Ardennois was a beautiful child, with dark, grave, tender
eyes, and a lovely bloom upon his face, and fair locks that clustered
to his throat; and many an artist sketched the group as it went by
him,--the green cart with the brass flagons of Teniers and Mieris and
Van Tal, and the great tawny-colored, massive dog, with his belled
harness that chimed cheerily as he went, and the small figure that ran
beside him which had little white feet in great wooden shoes, and a
soft, grave, innocent, happy face like the little fair children of
Rubens.

Nello and Patrasche did the work so well and so joyfully together that
Jehan Daas himself, when the summer came and he was better again, had
no need to stir out, but could sit in the doorway in the sun and see
them go forth through the garden wicket, and then doze and dream and
pray a little, and then awake again as the clock tolled three and watch
for their return. And on their return Patrasche would shake himself
free of his harness with a bay of glee, and Nello would recount with
pride the doings of the day; and they would all go in together to their
meal of rye bread and milk or soup, and would see the shadows lengthen
over the great plain, and see the twilight veil the fair cathedral
spire; and then lie down together to sleep peacefully while the old man
said a prayer.

So the days and the years went on, and the lives of Nello and Patrasche
were happy, innocent, and healthful.

In the spring and summer especially were they glad. Flanders is not a
lovely land, and around the burgh of Rubens it is perhaps least lovely
of all. Corn and colza, pasture and plough, succeed each other on the
characterless plain in wearying repetition, and save by some gaunt gray
tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure coming athwart
the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's
fagot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who
has dwelt upon the mountains or amidst the forests feels oppressed as
by imprisonment with the tedium and the endlessness of that vast and
dreary level. But it is green and very fertile, and it has wide
horizons that have a certain charm of their own even in their dulness
and monotony; and amongst the rushes by the waterside the flowers grow,
and the trees rise tall and fresh where the barges glide with their
great hulks black against the sun, and their little green barrels and
varicolored flags gay against the leaves. Anyway, there is greenery and
breadth of space enough to be as good as beauty to a child and a dog;
and these two asked no better, when their work was done, than to lie
buried in the lush grasses on the side of the canal, and watch the
cumbrous vessels drifting by and bringing the crisp salt smell of the
sea amongst the blossoming scents of the country summer.

True, in the winter it was harder, and they had to rise in the darkness
and the bitter cold, and they had seldom as much as they could have
eaten any day, and the hut was scarce better than a shed when the
nights were cold, although it looked so pretty in warm weather, buried
in a great kindly-clambering vine, that never bore fruit, indeed, but
which covered it with luxuriant green tracery all through the months of
blossom and harvest. In winter the winds found many holes in the walls
of the poor little hut, and the vine was black and leafless, and the
bare lands looked very bleak and drear without, and sometimes within
the floor was flooded and then frozen. In winter it was hard, and the
snow numbed the little white limbs of Nello, and the icicles cut the
brave, untiring feet of Patrasche.

But even then they were never heard to lament, either of them. The
child's wooden shoes and the dog's four legs would trot manfully
together over the frozen fields to the chime of the bells on the
harness; and then sometimes, in the streets of Antwerp, some housewife
would bring them a bowl of soup and a handful of bread, or some kindly
trader would throw some billets of fuel into the little cart as it went
homeward, or some woman in their own village would bid them keep some
share of the milk they carried for their own food; and then they would
run over the white lands, through the early darkness, bright and happy,
and burst with a shout of joy into their home.

So, on the whole, it was well with them, very well; and Patrasche,
meeting on the highway or in the public streets the many dogs who
toiled from daybreak into nightfall, paid only with blows and curses,
and loosened from the shafts with a kick to starve and freeze as best
they might,--Patrasche in his heart was very grateful to his fate, and
thought it the fairest and the kindliest the world could hold. Though
he was often very hungry indeed when he lay down at night; though he
had to work in the heats of summer noons and the rasping chills of
winter dawns; though his feet were often tender with wounds from the
sharp edges of the jagged pavement; though he had to perform tasks
beyond his strength and against his nature,--yet he was grateful and
content: he did his duty with each day, and the eyes that he loved
smiled down on him. It was sufficient for Patrasche.

There was only one thing which caused Patrasche any uneasiness in his
life, and it was this. Antwerp, as all the world knows, is full at
every turn of old piles of stones, dark and ancient and majestic,
standing in crooked courts, jammed against gateways and taverns, rising
by the water's edge, with bells ringing above them in the air, and ever
and again out of their arched doors a swell of music pealing. There
they remain, the grand old sanctuaries of the past, shut in amidst the
squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unloveliness and the commerce of
the modern world, and all day long the clouds drift and the birds
circle and the winds sigh around them, and beneath the earth at their
feet there sleeps--RUBENS.

And the greatness of the mighty Master still rests upon Antwerp, and
wherever we turn in its narrow streets his glory lies therein, so that
all mean things are thereby transfigured; and as we pace slowly through
the winding ways, and by the edge of the stagnant water, and through
the noisome courts, his spirit abides with us, and the heroic beauty of
his visions is about us, and the stones that once felt his footsteps
and bore his shadow seem to arise and speak of him with living voices.
For the city which is the tomb of Rubens still lives to us through him,
and him alone.

It is so quiet there by that great white sepulchre,--so quiet, save
only when the organ peals and the choir cries aloud the Salve Regina or
the Kyrie Eleison. Sure no artist ever had a greater gravestone than
that pure marble sanctuary gives to him in the heart of his birthplace
in the chancel of St. Jacques.

Without Rubens, what were Antwerp? A dirty, dusky, bustling mart, which
no man would ever care to look upon save the traders who do business on
its wharves. With Rubens, to the whole world of men it is a sacred
name, a sacred soil, a Bethlehem where a god of Art saw light, a
Golgotha where a god of Art lies dead.

O nations! closely should you treasure your great men, for by them
alone will the future know of you. Flanders in her generations has been
wise. In his life she glorified this greatest of her sons, and in his
death she magnifies his name. But her wisdom is very rare.

Now, the trouble of Patrasche was this. Into these great, sad piles of
stones, that reared their melancholy majesty above the crowded roofs,
the child Nello would many and many a time enter, and disappear through
their dark, arched portals, whilst Patrasche, left without upon the
pavement, would wearily and vainly ponder on what could be the charm
which thus allured from him his inseparable and beloved companion. Once
or twice he did essay to see for himself, clattering up the steps with
his milk-cart behind him; but thereon he had been always sent back
again summarily by a tall custodian in black clothes and silver chains
of office; and fearful of bringing his little master into trouble, he
desisted, and remained couched patiently before the churches until such
time as the boy reappeared. It was not the fact of his going into them
which disturbed Patrasche: he knew that people went to church: all the
village went to the small, tumble-down, gray pile opposite the red
windmill. What troubled him was that little Nello always looked
strangely when he came out, always very flushed or very pale; and
whenever he returned home after such visitations would sit silent and
dreaming, not caring to play, but gazing out at the evening skies
beyond the line of the canal, very subdued and almost sad.

What was it? wondered Patrasche. He thought it could not be good or
natural for the little lad to be so grave, and in his dumb fashion he
tried all he could to keep Nello by him in the sunny fields or in the
busy market-place. But to the churches Nello would go: most often of
all would he go to the great cathedral; and Patrasche, left without on
the stones by the iron fragments of Quentin Matsys's gate, would
stretch himself and yawn and sigh, and even howl now and then, all in
vain, until the doors closed and the child perforce came forth again,
and winding his arms about the dog's neck would kiss him on his broad,
tawny-colored forehead, and murmur always the same words: "If I could
only see them, Patrasche!--if I could only see them!"

What were they? pondered Patrasche, looking up with large, wistful,
sympathetic eyes.

One day, when the custodian was out of the way and the doors left ajar,
he got in for a moment after his little friend and saw. "They" were two
great covered pictures on either side of the choir.

Nello was kneeling, rapt as in an ecstasy, before the altar-picture of
the Assumption, and when he noticed Patrasche, and rose and drew the
dog gently out into the air, his face was wet with tears, and he looked
up at the veiled places as he passed them, and murmured to his
companion, "It is so terrible not to see them, Patrasche, just because
one is poor and cannot pay! He never meant that the poor should not see
them when he painted them, I am sure. He would have had us see them any
day, every day: that I am sure. And they keep them shrouded
there,--shrouded in the dark, the beautiful things!--and they never
feel the light, and no eyes look on them, unless rich people come and
pay. If I could only see them, I would be content to die."

But he could not see them, and Patrasche could not help him, for to
gain the silver piece that the church exacts as the price for looking
on the glories of the Elevation of the Cross and the Descent of the
Cross was a thing as utterly beyond the powers of either of them as it
would have been to scale the heights of the cathedral spire. They had
never so much as a sou to spare: if they cleared enough to get a little
wood for the stove, a little broth for the pot, it was the utmost they
could do. And yet the heart of the child was set in sore and endless
longing upon beholding the greatness of the two veiled Rubens.

The whole soul of the little Ardennois thrilled and stirred with an
absorbing passion for Art. Going on his ways through the old city in
the early days before the sun or the people had risen, Nello, who
looked only a little peasant-boy, with a great dog drawing milk to sell
from door to door, was in a heaven of dreams whereof Rubens was the
god. Nello, cold and hungry, with stockingless feet in wooden shoes,
and the winter winds blowing amongst his curls and lifting his poor
thin garments, was in a rapture of meditation, wherein all that he saw
was the beautiful fair face of the Mary of the Assumption, with the
waves of her golden hair lying upon her shoulders, and the light of an
eternal sun shining down upon her brow. Nello, reared in poverty, and
buffeted by fortune, and untaught in letters, and unheeded by men, had
the compensation or the curse which is called Genius.

No one knew it. He as little as any. No one knew it. Only indeed
Patrasche, who, being with him always, saw him draw with chalk upon the
stones any and every thing that grew or breathed, heard him on his
little bed of hay murmur all manner of timid, pathetic prayers to the
spirit of the great Master; watched his gaze darken and his face
radiate at the evening glow of sunset or the rosy rising of the dawn;
and felt many and many a time the tears of a strange nameless pain and
joy, mingled together, fall hotly from the bright young eyes upon his
own wrinkled, yellow forehead.

"I should go to my grave quite content if I thought, Nello, that when
thou growest a man thou couldst own this hut and the little plot of
ground, and labor for thyself, and be called Baas by thy neighbors,"
said the old man Jehan many an hour from his bed. For to own a bit of
soil, and to be called Baas--master--by the hamlet round, is to have
achieved the highest ideal of a Flemish peasant; and the old soldier,
who had wandered over all the earth in his youth, and had brought
nothing back, deemed in his old age that to live and die on one spot in
contented humility was the fairest fate he could desire for his
darling. But Nello said nothing.

The same leaven was working in him that in other times begat Rubens and
Jordaens and the Van Eycks, and all their wondrous tribe, and in times
more recent begat in the green country of the Ardennes, where the Meuse
washes the old walls of Dijon, the great artist of the Patroclus, whose
genius is too near us for us aright to measure its divinity.

Nello dreamed of other things in the future than of tilling the little
rood of earth, and living under the wattle roof, and being called Baas
by neighbors a little poorer or a little less poor than himself. The
cathedral spire, where it rose beyond the fields in the ruddy evening
skies or in the dim, gray, misty mornings, said other things to him
than this. But these he told only to Patrasche, whispering, childlike,
his fancies in the dog's ear when they went together at their work
through the fogs of the daybreak, or lay together at their rest amongst
the rustling rushes by the water's side.

For such dreams are not easily shaped into speech to awake the slow
sympathies of human auditors; and they would only have sorely perplexed
and troubled the poor old man bedridden in his corner, who, for his
part, whenever he had trodden the streets of Antwerp, had thought the
daub of blue and red that they called a Madonna, on the walls of the
wine-shop where he drank his sou's worth of black beer, quite as good
as any of the famous altar-pieces for which the stranger folk travelled
far and wide into Flanders from every land on which the good sun shone.

There was only one other beside Patrasche to whom Nello could talk at
all of his daring fantasies. This other was little Alois, who lived at
the old red mill on the grassy mound, and whose father, the miller, was
the best-to-do husbandman in all the village. Little Alois was only a
pretty baby with soft round, rosy features, made lovely by those sweet,
dark eyes that the Spanish rule has left in so many a Flemish face, in
testimony of the Alvan dominion, as Spanish art has left broadsown
throughout the country majestic palaces and stately courts, gilded
house-fronts and sculptured lintels,--histories in blazonry and poems
in stone.

Little Alois was often with Nello and Patrasche. They played in the
fields, they ran in the snow, they gathered the daisies and bilberries,
they went up to the old gray church together, and they often sat
together by the broad wood-fire in the mill-house. Little Alois,
indeed, was the richest child in the hamlet. She had neither brother
nor sister; her blue serge dress had never a hole in it; at Kermesse
she had as many gilded nuts and Agni Dei in sugar as her hands could
hold; and when she went up for her first communion her flaxen curls
were covered with a cap of richest Mechlin lace, which had been her
mother's and her grandmother's before it came to her. Men spoke
already, though she had but twelve years, of the good wife she would be
for their sons to woo and win; but she herself was a little gay, simple
child, in no wise conscious of her heritage, and she loved no
playfellows so well as Jehan Daas's grandson and his dog.

One day her father, Baas Cogez, a good man, but somewhat stern, came on
a pretty group in the long meadow behind the mill, where the aftermath
had that day been cut. It was his little daughter sitting amidst the
hay, with the great tawny head of Patrasche on her lap, and many
wreaths of poppies and blue cornflowers round them both: on a clean
smooth slab of pine wood the boy Nello drew their likeness with a stick
of charcoal.

The miller stood and looked at the portrait with tears in his eyes, it
was so strangely like, and he loved his only child closely and well.
Then he roughly chid the little girl for idling there whilst her mother
needed her within, and sent her indoors crying and afraid; then,
turning, he snatched the wood from Nello's hands. "Dost do much of such
folly?" he asked, but there was a tremble in his voice.

Nello colored and hung his head. "I draw everything I see," he
murmured.

The miller was silent; then he stretched his hand out with a franc in
it. "It is folly, as I say, and evil waste of time; nevertheless, it is
like Alois, and will please the house-mother. Take this silver bit for
it and leave it for me."

The color died out of the face of the young Ardennois: he lifted his
head and put his hands behind his back. "Keep your money and the
portrait both, Baas Cogez," he said simply. "You have been often good
to me." Then he called Patrasche to him, and walked away across the
fields.

"I could have seen them with that franc," he murmured to Patrasche,
"but I could not sell her picture,--not even for them."

Baas Cogez went into his mill-house sore troubled in his mind. "That
lad must not be so much with Alois," he said to his wife that night.
"Trouble may come of it hereafter: he is fifteen now, and she is
twelve; and the boy is comely of face and form."

"And he is a good lad and a loyal," said the housewife, feasting her
eyes on the piece of pine wood where it was throned above the chimney
with a cuckoo clock in oak and a Calvary in wax.

"Yea, I do not gainsay that," said the miller, draining his pewter
flagon.

"Then if what you think of were ever to come to pass," said the wife,
hesitatingly, "would it matter so much? She will have enough for both,
and one cannot be better than happy."

"You are a woman, and therefore a fool," said the miller, harshly,
striking his pipe on the table. "The lad is naught but a beggar, and,
with these painter's fancies, worse than a beggar. Have a care that
they are not together in the future, or I will send the child to the
surer keeping of the nuns of the Sacred Heart."

The poor mother was terrified, and promised humbly to do his will. Not
that she could bring herself altogether to separate the child from her
favorite playmate, nor did the miller even desire that extreme of
cruelty to a young lad who was guilty of nothing except poverty. But
there were many ways in which little Alois was kept away from her
chosen companion: and Nello, being a boy proud and quiet and sensitive,
was quickly wounded, and ceased to turn his own steps and those of
Patrasche, as he had been used to do with every moment of leisure, to
the old red mill upon the slope. What his offence was he did not know:
he supposed he had in some manner angered Baas Cogez by taking the
portrait of Alois in the meadow; and when the child who loved him would
run to him and nestle her hand in his, he would smile at her very sadly
and say with a tender concern for her before himself, "Nay, Alois, do
not anger your father. He thinks that I make you idle, dear, and he is
not pleased that you should be with me. He is a good man and loves you
well: we will not anger him, Alois."

But it was with a sad heart that he said it, and the earth did not look
so bright to him as it had used to do when he went out at sunrise under
the poplars down the straight roads with Patrasche. The old red mill
had been a landmark to him, and he had been used to pause by it, going
and coming, for a cheery greeting with its people as her little flaxen
head rose above the low mill-wicket, and her little rosy hands had held
out a bone or a crust to Patrasche. Now the dog looked wistfully at a
closed door, and the boy went on without pausing, with a pang at his
heart, and the child sat within with tears dropping slowly on the
knitting to which she was set on her little stool by the stove; and
Baas Cogez, working among his sacks and his mill-gear, would harden his
will and say to himself, "It is best so. The lad is all but a beggar,
and full of idle, dreaming fooleries. Who knows what mischief might not
come of it in the future?" So he was wise in his generation, and would
not have the door unbarred, except upon rare and formal occasions,
which seemed to have neither warmth nor mirth in them to the two
children, who had been accustomed so long to a daily gleeful, careless,
happy interchange of greeting, speech, and pastime, with no other
watcher of their sports or auditor of their fancies than Patrasche,
sagely shaking the brazen bells of his collar and responding with all a
dog's swift sympathies to their every change of mood.

All this while the little panel of pine wood remained over the chimney
in the mill-kitchen with the cuckoo clock and the waxen Calvary; and
sometimes it seemed to Nello a little hard that whilst his gift was
accepted he himself should be denied.

But he did not complain: it was his habit to be quiet: old Jehan Daas
had said ever to him, "We are poor: we must take what God sends,--the
ill with the good: the poor cannot choose."

To which the boy had always listened in silence, being reverent of his
old grandfather; but nevertheless a certain vague, sweet hope, such as
beguiles the children of genius, had whispered in his heart, "Yet the
poor do choose sometimes,--choose to be great, so that men cannot say
them nay." And he thought so still in his innocence; and one day, when
the little Alois, finding him by chance alone amongst the cornfields by
the canal, ran to him and held him close, and sobbed piteously because
the morrow would be her saint's day, and for the first time in all her
life her parents had failed to bid him to the little supper and romp in
the great barns with which her feast-day was always celebrated, Nello
had kissed her and murmured to her in firm faith, "It shall be
different one day, Alois. One day that little bit of pine wood that
your father has of mine shall be worth its weight in silver; and he
will not shut the door against me then. Only love me always, dear
little Alois, only love me always, and I will be great."

"And if I do not love you?" the pretty child asked, pouting a little
through her tears, and moved by the instinctive coquetries of her sex.

Nello's eyes left her face and wandered to the distance, where in the
red and gold of the Flemish night the cathedral spire rose. There was a
smile on his face so sweet and yet so sad that little Alois was awed by
it. "I will be great still," he said under his breath,--"great still,
or die, Alois."

"You do not love me," said the little spoilt child, pushing him away;
but the boy shook his head and smiled, and went on his way through the
tall yellow corn, seeing as in a vision some day in a fair future when
he should come into that old familiar land and ask Alois of her people,
and be not refused or denied, but received in honor, whilst the village
folk should throng to look upon him and say in one another's ears,
"Dost see him? He is a king among men, for he is a great artist and the
world speaks his name; and yet he was only our poor little Nello, who
was a beggar, as one may say, and only got his bread by the help of his
dog." And he thought how he would fold his grandsire in furs and
purples, and portray him as the old man is portrayed in the Family in
the chapel of St. Jacques; and of how he would hang the throat of
Patrasche with a collar of gold, and place him on his right hand, and
say to the people, "This was once my only friend"; and of how he would
build himself a great white marble palace, and make to himself
luxuriant gardens of pleasure, on the slope looking outward to where
the cathedral spire rose, and not dwell in it himself, but summon to
it, as to a home, all men young and poor and friendless, but of the
will to do mighty things; and of how he would say to them always, if
they sought to bless his name, "Nay, do not thank me,--thank Rubens.
Without him, what should I have been?" And these dreams, beautiful,
impossible, innocent, free of all selfishness, full of heroical
worship, were so closely about him as he went that he was happy,--happy
even on this sad anniversary of Alois's saint's day, when he and
Patrasche went home by themselves to the little dark hut and the meal
of black bread, whilst in the mill-house all the children of the
village sang and laughed, and ate the big round cakes of Dijon and the
almond gingerbread of Brabant, and danced in the great barn to the
light of the stars and the music of flute and fiddle.

"Never mind, Patrasche," he said, with his arms round the dog's neck as
they both sat in the door of the hut, where the sounds of the mirth at
the mill came down to them on the night-air,--"never mind. It shall all
be changed by and by."

He believed in the future: Patrasche, of more experience and of more
philosophy, thought that the loss of the mill-supper in the present was
ill compensated by dreams of milk and honey in some vague hereafter.
And Patrasche growled whenever he passed by Baas Cogez.

"This is Alois's name-day, is it not?" said the old man Daas that night
from the corner where he was stretched upon his bed of sacking.

The boy gave a gesture of assent: he wished that the old man's memory
had erred a little, instead of keeping such sure account.

"And why not there?" his grandfather pursued. "Thou hast never missed a
year before, Nello."

"Thou art too sick to leave," murmured the lad, bending his handsome
young head over the bed.

"Tut! tut! Mother Nulette would have come and sat with me, as she does
scores of times. What is the cause, Nello?" the old man persisted.
"Thou surely hast not had ill words with the little one?"

"Nay, grandfather,--never," said the boy, quickly, with a hot color in
his bent face. "Simply and truly, Baas Cogez did not have me asked this
year. He has taken some whim against me."

"But thou hast done nothing wrong?"

"That I know--nothing. I took the portrait of Alois on a piece of pine:
that is all."

"Ah!" The old man was silent: the truth suggested itself to him with
the boy's innocent answer. He was tied to a bed of dried leaves in the
corner of a wattle hut, but he had not wholly forgotten what the ways
of the world were like.

He drew Nello's fair head fondly to his breast with a tenderer gesture.
"Thou art very poor, my child," he said with a quiver the more in his
aged, trembling voice,--"so poor! It is very hard for thee."

"Nay, I am rich," murmured Nello; and in his innocence he thought
so,--rich with the imperishable powers that are mightier than the might
of kings. And he went and stood by the door of the hut in the quiet
autumn night, and watched the stars troop by and the tall poplars bend
and shiver in the wind. All the casements of the mill-house were
lighted, and every now and then the notes of the flute came to him. The
tears fell down his cheeks, for he was but a child, yet he smiled, for
he said to himself, "In the future!" He stayed there until all was
quite still and dark, then he and Patrasche went within and slept
together, long and deeply, side by side.

Now he had a secret which only Patrasche knew. There was a little
outhouse to the hut, which no one entered but himself,--a dreary place,
but with abundant clear light from the north. Here he had fashioned
himself rudely an easel in rough lumber, and here on a great gray sea
of stretched paper he had given shape to one of the innumerable fancies
which possessed his brain. No one had ever taught him anything; colors
he had no means to buy; he had gone without bread many a time to
procure even the few rude vehicles that he had here; and it was only in
black or white that he could fashion the things he saw. This great
figure which he had drawn here in chalk was only an old man sitting on
a fallen tree,--only that. He had seen old Michel the woodman sitting
so at evening many a time. He had never had a soul to tell him of
outline or perspective, of anatomy or of shadow, and yet he had given
all the weary, worn-out age, all the sad, quiet patience, all the
rugged, careworn pathos of his original, and given them so that the old
lonely figure was a poem, sitting there, meditative and alone, on the
dead tree, with the darkness of the descending night behind him.

It was rude, of course, in a way, and had many faults, no doubt; and
yet it was real, true in Nature, true in Art, and very mournful, and in
a manner beautiful.

Patrasche had lain quiet countless hours watching its gradual creation
after the labor of each day was done, and he knew that Nello had a
hope--vain and wild perhaps, but strongly cherished--of sending this
great drawing to compete for a prize of two hundred francs a year which
it was announced in Antwerp would be open to every lad of talent,
scholar or peasant, under eighteen, who would attempt to win it with
some unaided work of chalk or pencil. Three of the foremost artists in
the town of Rubens were to be the judges and elect the victor according
to his merits.

All the spring and summer and autumn Nello had been at work upon this
treasure, which, if triumphant, would build him his first step toward
independence and the mysteries of the art which he blindly, ignorantly,
and yet passionately adored.

He said nothing to any one: his grandfather would not have understood,
and little Alois was lost to him. Only to Patrasche he told all, and
whispered, "Rubens would give it me, I think, if he knew."

Patrasche thought so too, for he knew that Rubens had loved dogs or he
had never painted them with such exquisite fidelity; and men who loved
dogs were, as Patrasche knew, always pitiful.

The drawings were to go in on the first day of December, and the
decision be given on the twenty-fourth, so that he who should win might
rejoice with all his people at the Christmas season.

In the twilight of a bitter wintry day, and with a beating heart, now
quick with hope, now faint with fear, Nello placed the great picture on
his little green milk-cart, and took it, with the help of Patrasche,
into the town, and there left it, as enjoined, at the doors of a public
building.

"Perhaps it is worth nothing at all. How can I tell?" he thought, with
the heart-sickness of a great timidity. Now that he had left it there,
it seemed to him so hazardous, so vain, so foolish, to dream that he, a
little lad with bare feet, who barely knew his letters, could do
anything at which great painters, real artists, could ever deign to
look. Yet he took heart as he went by the cathedral: the lordly form of
Rubens seemed to rise from the fog and the darkness, and to loom in its
magnificence before him, whilst the lips with their kindly smile seemed
to him to murmur, "Nay, have courage! It was not by a weak heart and by
faint fears that I wrote my name for all time upon Antwerp."

Nello ran home through the cold night, comforted. He had done his best:
the rest must be as God willed, he thought, in that innocent,
unquestioning faith which had been taught him in the little gray chapel
amongst the willows and the poplar-trees.

The winter was very sharp already. That night, after they had reached
the hut, snow fell; and fell for very many days after that, so that the
paths and the divisions in the fields were all obliterated, and all the
smaller streams were frozen over, and the cold was intense upon the
plains. Then, indeed, it became hard work to go round for the milk
while the world was all dark, and carry it through the darkness to the
silent town. Hard work, especially for Patrasche, for the passage of
the years, that were only bringing Nello a stronger youth, were
bringing him old age, and his joints were stiff and his bones ached
often. But he would never give up his share of the labor. Nello would
fain have spared him and drawn the cart himself, but Patrasche would
not allow it. All he would ever permit or accept was the help of a
thrust from behind to the truck as it lumbered along through the
ice-ruts. Patrasche had lived in harness, and he was proud of it. He
suffered a great deal sometimes from frost, and the terrible roads, and
the rheumatic pains of his limbs, but he only drew his breath hard and
bent his stout neck, and trod onward with steady patience.

"Rest thee at home, Patrasche,--it is time thou didst rest,--and I can
quite well push in the cart by myself," urged Nello many a morning; but
Patrasche, who understood him aright, would no more have consented to
stay at home than a veteran soldier to shirk when the charge was
sounding; and every day he would rise and place himself in his shafts,
and plod along over the snow through the fields that his four round
feet had left their print upon so many, many years.

"One must never rest till one dies," thought Patrasche; and sometimes
it seemed to him that that time of rest for him was not very far off.
His sight was less clear than it had been, and it gave him pain to rise
after the night's sleep, though he would never lie a moment in his
straw when once the bell of the chapel tolling five let him know that
the daybreak of labor had begun.

"My poor Patrasche, we shall soon lie quiet together, you and I," said
old Jehan Daas, stretching out to stroke the head of Patrasche with the
old withered hand which had always shared with him its one poor crust
of bread; and the hearts of the old man and the old dog ached together
with one thought: When they were gone who would care for their darling?

One afternoon, as they came back from Antwerp over the snow, which had
become hard and smooth as marble over all the Flemish plains, they
found dropped in the road a pretty little puppet, a tambourine-player,
all scarlet and gold, about six inches high, and, unlike greater
personages when Fortune lets them drop, quite unspoiled and unhurt by
its fall. It was a pretty toy. Nello tried to find its owner, and,
failing, thought that it was just the thing to please Alois.

It was quite night when he passed the mill-house: he knew the little
window of her room. It could be no harm, he thought, if he gave her his
little piece of treasure-trove, they had been playfellows so long.
There was a shed with a sloping roof beneath her casement: he climbed
it and tapped softly at the lattice: there was a little light within.
The child opened it and looked out, half frightened.

Nello put the tambourine-player into her hands. "Here is a doll I found
in the snow, Alois. Take it," he whispered,--"take it, and God bless
thee, dear!"

He slid down from the shed-roof before she had time to thank him, and
ran off through the darkness.

That night there was a fire at the mill. Out-buildings and much corn
were destroyed, although the mill itself and the dwelling-house were
unharmed. All the village was out in terror, and engines came tearing
through the snow from Antwerp. The miller was insured, and would lose
nothing: nevertheless, he was in furious wrath, and declared aloud that
the fire was due to no accident, but to some foul intent.

Nello, awakened from his sleep, ran to help with the rest: Baas Cogez
thrust him angrily aside. "Thou wert loitering here after dark," he
said roughly. "I believe, on my soul, that thou dost know more of the
fire than any one."

Nello heard him in silence, stupefied, not supposing that any one could
say such things except in jest, and not comprehending how any one could
pass a jest at such a time.

Nevertheless, the miller said the brutal thing openly to many of his
neighbors in the day that followed; and though no serious charge was
ever preferred against the lad, it got bruited about that Nello had
been seen in the mill-yard after dark on some unspoken errand, and that
he bore Baas Cogez a grudge for forbidding his intercourse with little
Alois; and so the hamlet, which followed the sayings of its richest
landowner servilely, and whose families all hoped to secure the riches
of Alois in some future time for their sons, took the hint to give
grave looks and cold words to old Jehan Daas's grandson. No one said
anything to him openly, but all the village agreed together to humor
the miller's prejudice, and at the cottages and farms where Nello and
Patrasche called every morning for the milk for Antwerp, downcast
glances and brief phrases replaced to them the broad smiles and
cheerful greetings to which they had been always used. No one really
credited the miller's absurd suspicions, nor the outrageous accusations
born of them, but the people were all very poor and very ignorant, and
the one rich man of the place had pronounced against him. Nello, in his
innocence and his friendlessness, had no strength to stem the popular
tide.

"Thou art very cruel to the lad," the miller's wife dared to say,
weeping, to her lord. "Sure he is an innocent lad and a faithful, and
would never dream of any such wickedness, however sore his heart might
be."

But Baas Cogez being an obstinate man, having once said a thing, held
to it doggedly, though in his innermost soul he knew well the injustice
that he was committing.

Meanwhile, Nello endured the injury done against him with a certain
proud patience that disdained to complain; he only gave way a little
when he was quite alone with old Patrasche. Besides, he thought, "If it
should win! They will be sorry then, perhaps."

Still, to a boy not quite sixteen, and who had dwelt in one little
world all his short life, and in his childhood had been caressed and
applauded on all sides, it was a hard trial to have the whole of that
little world turn against him for naught. Especially hard in that
bleak, snow-bound, famine-stricken winter-time, when the only light and
warmth there could be found abode beside the village hearths and in the
kindly greetings of neighbors. In the winter-time all drew nearer to
each other, all to all, except to Nello and Patrasche, with whom none
now would have anything to do, and who were left to fare as they might
with the old paralyzed, bedridden man in the little cabin, whose fire
was often low, and whose board was often without bread, for there was a
buyer from Antwerp who had taken to drive his mule in of a day for the
milk of the various dairies, and there were only three or four of the
people who had refused his terms of purchase and remained faithful to
the little green cart. So that the burden which Patrasche drew had
become very light, and the centime-pieces in Nello's pouch had become,
alas! very small likewise.

The dog would stop, as usual, at all the familiar gates which were now
closed to him, and look up at them with wistful, mute appeal; and it
cost the neighbors a pang to shut their doors and their hearts, and let
Patrasche draw his cart on again, empty. Nevertheless, they did it, for
they desired to please Baas Cogez.

Noël was close at hand.

The weather was very wild and cold. The snow was six feet deep, and the
ice was firm enough to bear oxen and men upon it everywhere. At this
season the little village was always gay and cheerful. At the poorest
dwelling there were possets and cakes, joking and dancing, sugared
saints and gilded Jésus. The merry Flemish bells jingled everywhere on
the horses; everywhere within doors some well-filled soup-pot sang and
smoked over the stove; and everywhere over the snow without laughing
maidens pattered in bright kerchiefs and stout kirtles, going to and
from the mass. Only in the little hut it was very dark and very cold.

Nello and Patrasche were left utterly alone, for one night in the week
before the Christmas Day, death entered there, and took away from life
forever old Jehan Daas, who had never known of life aught save its
poverty and its pains. He had long been half dead, incapable of any
movement except a feeble gesture, and powerless for anything beyond a
gentle word; and yet his loss fell on them both with a great horror in
it; they mourned him passionately. He had passed away from them in his
sleep, and when in the gray dawn they learned their bereavement,
unutterable solitude and desolation seemed to close around them. He had
long been only a poor, feeble, paralyzed old man, who could not raise a
hand in their defence, but he had loved them well; his smile had always
welcomed their return. They mourned for him unceasingly, refusing to be
comforted, as in the white winter day they followed the deal shell that
held his body to the nameless grave by the little gray church. They
were his only mourners, these two whom he had left friendless upon
earth,--the young boy and the old dog.

"Surely, he will relent now and let the poor lad come hither?" thought
the miller's wife, glancing at her husband where he smoked by the
hearth.

Baas Cogez knew her thought, but he hardened his heart, and would not
unbar his door as the little, humble funeral went by. "The boy is a
beggar," he said to himself: "he shall not be about Alois."

The woman dared not say anything aloud, but when the grave was closed
and the mourners had gone, she put a wreath of immortelles into Alois's
hands and bade her go and lay it reverently on the dark, unmarked mound
where the snow was displaced.

Nello and Patrasche went home with broken hearts. But even of that
poor, melancholy, cheerless home they were denied the consolation.
There was a month's rent over-due for their little home, and when Nello
had paid the last sad service to the dead he had not a coin left. He
went and begged grace of the owner of the hut, a cobbler who went every
Sunday night to drink his pint of wine and smoke with Baas Cogez. The
cobbler would grant no mercy. He was a harsh, miserly man, and loved
money. He claimed in default of his rent every stick and stone, every
pot and pan, in the hut, and bade Nello and Patrasche be out of it on
the morrow.

Now, the cabin was lowly enough, and in some sense miserable enough,
and yet their hearts clove to it with a great affection. They had been
so happy there, and in the summer, with its clambering vine and its
flowering beans, it was so pretty and bright in the midst of the
sun-lighted fields! Their life in it had been full of labor and
privation, and yet they had been so well content, so gay of heart,
running together to meet the old man's never-failing smile of welcome!

All night long the boy and the dog sat by the fireless hearth in the
darkness, drawn close together for warmth and sorrow. Their bodies were
insensible to the cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in them.

When the morning broke over the white, chill earth it was the morning
of Christmas Eve. With a shudder, Nello clasped close to him his only
friend, while his tears fell hot and fast on the dog's frank forehead.
"Let us go, Patrasche,--dear, dear Patrasche," he murmured. "We will
not wait to be kicked out: let us go."

Patrasche had no will but his, and they went sadly, side by side, out
from the little place which was so dear to them both, and in which
every humble, homely thing was to them precious and beloved. Patrasche
drooped his head wearily as he passed by his own green cart; it was no
longer his,--it had to go with the rest to pay the rent, and his brass
harness lay idle and glittering on the snow. The dog could have lain
down beside it and died for very heart-sickness as he went, but whilst
the lad lived and needed him Patrasche would not yield and give way.

They took the old accustomed road into Antwerp. The day had yet scarce
more than dawned, most of the shutters were still closed, but some of
the villagers were about. They took no notice whilst the dog and the
boy passed by them. At one door Nello paused and looked wistfully
within: his grandfather had done many a kindly turn in neighbor's
service to the people who dwelt there.

"Would you give Patrasche a crust?" he said timidly. "He is old, and he
has had nothing since last forenoon."

The woman shut the door hastily, murmuring some vague saying about
wheat and rye being very dear that season. The boy and the dog went on
again wearily: they asked no more.

By slow and painful ways they reached Antwerp as the chimes tolled ten.

"If I had anything about me I could sell to get him bread!" thought
Nello, but he had nothing except the wisp of linen and serge that
covered him, and his pair of wooden shoes.

Patrasche understood, and nestled his nose into the lad's hand, as
though to pray him not to be disquieted for any woe or want of his.

The winner of the drawing-prize was to be proclaimed at noon, and to
the public building where he had left his treasure Nello made his way.
On the steps and in the entrance-hall was a crowd of youths,--some of
his age, some older, all with parents or relatives or friends. His
heart was sick with fear as he went amongst them, holding Patrasche
close to him. The great bells of the city clashed out the hour of noon
with brazen clamor. The doors of the inner hall were opened; the eager,
panting throng rushed in; it was known that the selected picture would
be raised above the rest upon a wooden dais.

A mist obscured Nello's sight, his head swam, his limbs almost failed
him. When his vision cleared he saw the drawing raised on high: it was
not his own! A slow, sonorous voice was proclaiming aloud that victory
had been adjudged to Stephan Kiesslinger, born in the burgh of Antwerp,
son of a wharfinger in that town.

When Nello recovered his consciousness he was lying on the stones
without, and Patrasche was trying with every art he knew to call him
back to life. In the distance a throng of the youths of Antwerp were
shouting around their successful comrade, and escorting him with
acclamations to his home upon the quay.

The boy staggered to his feet and drew the dog into his embrace. "It is
all over, dear Patrasche," he murmured,--"all over!"

He rallied himself as best he could, for he was weak from fasting, and
retraced his steps to the village. Patrasche paced by his side with his
head drooping and his old limbs feeble from hunger and sorrow.

The snow was falling fast: a keen hurricane blew from the north: it was
bitter as death on the plains. It took them long to traverse the
familiar path, and the bells were sounding four of the clock as they
approached the hamlet. Suddenly Patrasche paused, arrested by a scent
in the snow, scratched, whined, and drew out with his teeth a small
case of brown leather. He held it up to Nello in the darkness. Where
they were there stood a little Calvary, and a lamp burned dully under
the cross: the boy mechanically turned the case to the light: on it was
the name of Baas Cogez, and within it were notes for two thousand
francs.

The sight roused the lad a little from his stupor. He thrust it in his
shirt, and stroked Patrasche and drew him onward. The dog looked up
wistfully in his face.

Nello made straight for the mill-house, and went to the house-door and
struck on its panels. The miller's wife opened it weeping, with little
Alois clinging close to her skirts. "Is it thee, thou poor lad?" she
said kindly through her tears. "Get thee gone ere the Baas see thee. We
are in sore trouble to-night. He is out seeking for a power of money
that he has let fall riding homeward, and in this snow he never will
find it; and God knows it will go nigh to ruin us. It is Heaven's own
judgment for the things we have done to thee."

Nello put the note-case in her hand and called Patrasche within the
house. "Patrasche found the money to-night," he said quickly. "Tell
Baas Cogez so; I think he will not deny the dog shelter and food in his
old age. Keep him from pursuing me, and I pray of you to be good to
him."

Ere either woman or dog knew what he meant he had stooped and kissed
Patrasche, then closed the door hurriedly, and disappeared in the gloom
of the fast-falling night.

The woman and the child stood speechless with joy and fear: Patrasche
vainly spent the fury of his anguish against the iron-bound oak of the
barred house-door. They did not dare unbar the door and let him forth:
they tried all they could to solace him. They brought him sweet cakes
and juicy meats; they tempted him with the best they had; they tried to
lure him to abide by the warmth of the hearth; but it was of no avail.
Patrasche refused to be comforted or to stir from the barred portal.

It was six o'clock when from an opposite entrance the miller at last
came, jaded and broken, into his wife's presence. "It is lost forever,"
he said with an ashen cheek and a quiver in his stern voice. "We have
looked with lanterns everywhere: it is gone,--the little maiden's
portion and all!"

His wife put the money into his hand, and told him how it had come to
her. The strong man sank trembling into a seat and covered his face,
ashamed and almost afraid. "I have been cruel to the lad," he muttered
at length: "I deserved not to have good at his hands."

Little Alois, taking courage, crept close to her father and nestled
against him her fair curly head. "Nello may come here again, father?"
she whispered. "He may come to-morrow as he used to do?"

The miller pressed her in his arms: his hard, sunburned face was very
pale, and his mouth trembled. "Surely, surely," he answered his child.
"He shall bide here on Christmas Day, and any other day he will. God
helping me, I will make amends to the boy,--I will make amends."

Little Alois kissed him in gratitude and joy, then slid from his knees
and ran to where the dog kept watch by the door. "And to-night I may
feast Patrasche?" she cried in a child's thoughtless glee.

Her father bent his head gravely: "Ay, ay! let the dog have the best";
for the stern old man was moved and shaken to his heart's depths.

It was Christmas Eve, and the mill-house was filled with oak logs and
squares of turf, with cream and honey, with meat and bread, and the
rafters were hung with wreaths of evergreen, and the Calvary and the
cuckoo clock looked out from a mass of holly. There were little paper
lanterns too for Alois, and toys of various fashions and sweetmeats in
bright-pictured papers. There were light and warmth and abundance
everywhere, and the child would fain have made the dog a guest honored
and feasted.

But Patrasche would neither lie in the warmth nor share in the cheer.
Famished he was and very cold, but without Nello he would partake
neither of comfort nor food. Against all temptation he was proof, and
close against the door he leaned always, watching only for a means of
escape.

"He wants the lad," said Baas Cogez. "Good dog! good dog! I will go
over to the lad the first thing at day-dawn." For no one but Patrasche
knew that Nello had left the hut, and no one but Patrasche divined that
Nello had gone to face starvation and misery alone.

The mill-kitchen was very warm; great logs crackled and flamed on the
hearth; neighbors came in for a glass of wine and a slice of the fat
goose baking for supper. Alois, gleeful and sure of her playmate back
on the morrow, bounded and sang and tossed back her yellow hair. Baas
Cogez, in the fulness of his heart, smiled on her through moistened
eyes, and spoke of the way in which he would befriend her favorite
companion; the house-mother sat with calm, contented face at the
spinning-wheel; the cuckoo in the clock chirped mirthful hours. Amidst
it all Patrasche was bidden with a thousand words of welcome to tarry
there a cherished guest. But neither peace nor plenty could allure him
where Nello was not.

When the supper smoked on the board, and the voices were loudest and
gladdest, and the Christ-child brought choicest gifts to Alois,
Patrasche, watching always an occasion, glided out when the door was
unlatched by a careless new-comer, and as swiftly as his weak and tired
limbs would bear him sped over the snow in the bitter, black night. He
had only one thought,--to follow Nello. A human friend might have
paused for the pleasant meal, the cheery warmth, the cosey slumber; but
that was not the friendship of Patrasche. He remembered a bygone time,
when an old man and a little child had found him sick unto death in the
wayside ditch.

Snow had fallen freshly all the evening long; it was now nearly ten;
the trail of the boy's footsteps was almost obliterated. It took
Patrasche long to discover any scent. When at last he found it, it was
lost again quickly, and lost and recovered, and again lost and again
recovered, a hundred times or more.

The night was very wild. The lamps under the wayside crosses were blown
out; the roads were sheets of ice; the impenetrable darkness hid every
trace of habitations; there was no living thing abroad. All the cattle
were housed, and in all the huts and homesteads men and women rejoiced
and feasted. There was only Patrasche out in the cruel cold,--old and
famished and full of pain, but with the strength and the patience of a
great love to sustain him in his search.

The trail of Nello's steps, faint and obscure as it was under the new
snow, went straightly along the accustomed tracks into Antwerp. It was
past midnight when Patrasche traced it over the boundaries of the town
and into the narrow, tortuous, gloomy streets. It was all quite dark in
the town, save where some light gleamed ruddily through the crevices of
house-shutters, or some group went homeward with lanterns chanting
drinking-songs. The streets were all white with ice: the high walls and
roofs loomed black against them. There was scarce a sound save the riot
of the winds down the passages as they tossed the creaking signs and
shook the tall lamp-irons.

So many passers-by had trodden through and through the snow, so many
diverse paths had crossed and recrossed each other, that the dog had a
hard task to retain any hold on the track he followed. But he kept on
his way, though the cold pierced him to the bone, and the jagged ice
cut his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's teeth. He
kept on his way, a poor gaunt, shivering thing, and by long patience
traced the steps he loved into the very heart of the burgh and up to
the steps of the great cathedral.

"He is gone to the things that he loved," thought Patrasche: he could
not understand, but he was full of sorrow and of pity for the
art-passion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred.

The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight mass.
Some heedlessness in the custodians, too eager to go home and feast or
sleep, or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys aright, had
left one of the doors unlocked. By that accident the footfalls
Patrasche sought had passed through into the building, leaving the
white marks of snow upon the dark stone floor. By that slender white
thread, frozen as it fell, he was guided through the intense silence,
through the immensity of the vaulted space,--guided straight to the
gates of the chancel, and, stretched there upon the stones, he found
Nello. He crept up and touched the face of the boy. "Didst thou dream
that I should be faithless and forsake thee? I--a dog?" said that mute
caress.

The lad raised himself with a low cry and clasped him close. "Let us
lie down and die together," he murmured. "Men have no need of us, and
we are all alone."

In answer, Patrasche crept closer yet, and laid his head upon the young
boy's breast. The great tears stood in his brown, sad eyes: not for
himself,--for himself he was happy.

They lay close together in the piercing cold. The blasts that blew over
the Flemish dikes from the northern seas were like waves of ice, which
froze every living thing they touched. The interior of the immense
vault of stone in which they were was even more bitterly chill than the
snow-covered plains without. Now and then a bat moved in the
shadows,--now and then a gleam of light came on the ranks of carven
figures. Under the Rubens they lay together quite still, and soothed
almost into a dreaming slumber by the numbing narcotic of the cold.
Together they dreamed of the old glad days when they had chased each
other through the flowering grasses of the summer meadows, or sat
hidden in the tall bulrushes by the water's side, watching the boats go
seaward in the sun.

Suddenly through the darkness a great white radiance streamed through
the vastness of the aisles; the moon, that was at her height, had
broken through the clouds, the snow had ceased to fall, the light
reflected from the snow without was clear as the light of dawn. It fell
through the arches full upon the two pictures above, from which the boy
on his entrance had flung back the veil: the Elevation and the Descent
of the Cross were for one instant visible.

Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to them: the tears of a
passionate ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his face. "I have seen
them at last!" he cried aloud. "O God, it is enough!"

His limbs failed under him, and he sank upon his knees, still gazing
upward at the majesty that he adored. For a few brief moments the light
illumined the divine visions that had been denied to him so
long,--light clear and sweet and strong as though it streamed from the
throne of Heaven. Then suddenly it passed away: once more a great
darkness covered the face of Christ.

The arms of the boy drew close again the body of the dog. "We shall see
His face--_there_," he murmured; "and He will not part us, I think."

On the morrow, by the chancel of the cathedral, the people of Antwerp
found them both. They were both dead: the cold of the night had frozen
into stillness alike the young life and the old. When the Christmas
morning broke and the priests came to the temple, they saw them lying
thus on the stones together. Above, the veils were drawn back from the
great visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of the sunrise touched the
thorn-crowned head of the Christ.

As the day grew on there came an old, hard-featured man who wept as
women weep. "I was cruel to the lad," he muttered, "and now I would
have made amends--yea, to the half of my substance--and he should have
been to me as a son."

There came also, as the day grew apace, a painter who had fame in the
world, and who was liberal of hand and of spirit. "I seek one who
should have had the prize yesterday had worth won," he said to the
people,--"a boy of rare promise and genius. An old wood-cutter on a
fallen tree at eventide,--that was all his theme. But there was
greatness for the future in it. I would fain find him, and take him
with me and teach him Art."

And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing bitterly as she
clung to her father's arm, cried aloud, "O Nello, come! We have all
ready for thee. The Christ-child's hands are full of gifts, and the old
piper will play for us; and the mother says thou shalt stay by the
hearth and burn nuts with us all the Noël week long,--yes, even to the
Feast of the Kings! And Patrasche will be so happy! O Nello, wake and
come!"

But the young pale face, turned upward to the light of the great Rubens
with a smile upon its mouth, answered them all, "It is too late."

For the sweet, sonorous bells went ringing through the frost, and the
sunlight shone upon the plains of snow, and the populace trooped gay
and glad through the streets, but Nello and Patrasche no more asked
charity at their hands. All they needed now Antwerp gave unbidden.

Death had been more pitiful to them than longer life would have been.
It had taken the one in the loyalty of love, and the other in the
innocence of faith, from a world which for love has no recompense and
for faith no fulfilment.

All their lives they had been together, and in their deaths they were
not divided; for when they were found the arms of the boy were folded
too closely around the dog to be severed without violence, and the
people of their little village, contrite and ashamed, implored a
special grace for them, and, making them one grave, laid them to rest
there side by side--forever!




THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER.

BY JOHN RUSKIN.


I.

In a secluded and mountainous part of Styria, there was, in old time, a
valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility. It was
surrounded, on all sides, by steep and rocky mountains, rising into
peaks, which were always covered with snow, and from which a number of
torrents descended in constant cataracts. One of these fell westward,
over the face of a crag so high that, when the sun had set to
everything else, and all below was darkness, his beams still shone full
upon this waterfall, so that it looked like a shower of gold. It was,
therefore, called by the people of the neighborhood the Golden River.
It was strange that none of these streams fell into the valley itself.
They all descended on the other side of the mountains, and wound away
through broad plains and by populous cities. But the clouds were drawn
so constantly to the snowy hills, and rested so softly in the circular
hollow, that, in time of drought and heat, when all the country round
was burnt up, there was still rain in the little valley; and its crops
were so heavy, and its hay so high, and its apples so red, and its
grapes so blue, and its wine so rich, and its honey so sweet, that it
was a marvel to every one who beheld it, and was commonly called the
Treasure Valley.

The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers, called
Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz and Hans, the two elder brothers,
were very ugly men, with overhanging eyebrows and small, dull eyes,
which were always half shut, so that you couldn't see into _them_, and
always fancied they saw very far into _you_. They lived by farming the
Treasure Valley, and very good farmers they were. They killed
everything that did not pay for its eating. They shot the blackbirds,
because they pecked the fruit; and killed the hedgehogs, lest they
should suck the cows; they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs
in the kitchen; and smothered the cicadas, which used to sing all
summer in the lime-trees. They worked their servants without any wages,
till they would not work any more, and then quarrelled with them, and
turned them out of doors without paying them. It would have been very
odd, if, with such a farm, and such a system of farming, they hadn't
got very rich; and very rich they _did_ get. They generally contrived
to keep their corn by them till it was very dear, and then sell it for
twice its value; they had heaps of gold lying about on their floors,
yet it was never known that they had given so much as a penny or a
crust in charity; they never went to mass; grumbled perpetually at
paying tithes; and were, in a word, of so cruel and grinding a temper,
as to receive from all those with whom they had any dealings, the
nickname of the "Black Brothers."

The youngest brother, Gluck, was as completely opposed, in both
appearance and character, to his seniors as could possibly be imagined
or desired. He was not above twelve years old, fair, blue-eyed, and
kind in temper to every living thing. He did not, of course, agree
particularly well with his brothers, or, rather, they did not agree
with _him_. He was usually appointed to the honorable office of
turnspit, when there was anything to roast, which was not often; for,
to do the brothers justice, they were hardly less sparing upon
themselves than upon other people. At other times he used to clean the
shoes, the floors, and sometimes the plates, occasionally getting what
was left on them, by way of encouragement, and a wholesome quantity of
dry blows, by way of education.

Things went on in this manner for a long time. At last came a very wet
summer, and everything went wrong in the country round. The hay had
hardly been got in, when the haystacks were floated bodily down to the
sea by an inundation; the vines were cut to pieces with the hail; the
corn was all killed by a black blight; only in the Treasure Valley, as
usual, all was safe. As it had rain when there was rain nowhere else,
so it had sun when there was sun nowhere else. Everybody came to buy
corn at the farm, and went away pouring maledictions on the Black
Brothers. They asked what they liked, and got it, except from the poor
people, who could only beg, and several of whom were starved at their
very door, without the slightest regard or notice.

It was drawing toward winter, and very cold weather, when one day the
two elder brothers had gone out, with their usual warning to little
Gluck, who was left to mind the roast, that he was to let nobody in,
and give nothing out. Gluck sat down quite close to the fire, for it
was raining very hard, and the kitchen walls were by no means dry or
comfortable looking. He turned and turned, and the roast got nice and
brown. "What a pity," thought Gluck, "my brothers never ask anybody to
dinner. I'm sure, when they've got such a nice piece of mutton as this,
and nobody else has got so much as a piece of dry bread, it would do
their hearts good to have somebody to eat it with them."

Just as he spoke, there came a double knock at the house-door, yet
heavy and dull, as though the knocker had been tied up,--more like a
puff than a knock.

"It must be the wind," said Gluck; "nobody else would venture to knock
double knocks at our door."

No; it wasn't the wind; there it came again very hard, and, what was
particularly astounding, the knocker seemed to be in a hurry, and not
to be in the least afraid of the consequences. Gluck went to the
window, opened it, and put his head out to see who it was.

It was the most extraordinary-looking little gentleman he had ever seen
in his life. He had a very large nose, slightly brass-colored; his
cheeks were very round and very red, and might have warranted a
supposition that he had been blowing a refractory fire for the last
eight-and-forty hours; his eyes twinkled merrily through long silky
eyelashes, his mustaches curled twice round like a corkscrew on each
side of his mouth, and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt
color, descended far over his shoulders. He was about four feet six in
height, and wore a conical pointed cap of nearly the same altitude,
decorated with a black feather some three feet long. His doublet was
prolonged behind into something resembling a violent exaggeration of
what is now termed a "swallow-tail," but was much obscured by the
swelling folds of an enormous black, glossy-looking cloak, which must
have been very much too long in calm weather, as the wind, whistling
round the old house, carried it clear out from the wearer's shoulders
to about four times his own length.

Gluck was so perfectly paralyzed by the singular appearance of his
visitor, that he remained fixed without uttering a word, until the old
gentleman, having performed another and a more energetic concerto on
the knocker, turned round to look after his fly-away cloak. In so doing
he caught sight of Gluck's little yellow head jammed in the window,
with its mouth and eyes very wide open indeed.

"Hollo!" said the little gentleman, "that's not the way to answer the
door; I'm wet, let me in."

To do the little gentleman justice, he _was_ wet. His feather hung down
between his legs like a beaten puppy's tail, dripping like an umbrella;
and from the ends of his mustaches the water was running into his
waistcoat-pockets, and out again like a mill-stream.

"I beg pardon, sir," said Gluck, "I'm very sorry, but I really can't."

"Can't what?" said the old gentleman.

"I can't let you in, sir,--I can't, indeed; my brothers would beat me
to death, sir, if I thought of such a thing. What do you want, sir?"

"Want?" said the old gentleman, petulantly, "I want fire and shelter;
and there's your great fire there blazing, crackling, and dancing on
the walls, with nobody to feel it. Let me in, I say; I only want to
warm myself."

Gluck had had his head, by this time, so long out of the window, that
he began to feel it was really unpleasantly cold, and when he turned,
and saw the beautiful fire rustling and roaring, and throwing long
bright tongues up the chimney, as if it were licking its chops at the
savory smell of the leg of mutton, his heart melted within him that it
should be burning away for nothing. "He does look _very_ wet," said
little Gluck; "I'll just let him in for a quarter of an hour." Round he
went to the door, and opened it; and as the little gentleman walked in,
through the house came a gust of wind that made the old chimneys
totter.

"That's a good boy," said the little gentleman. "Never mind your
brothers. I'll talk to them."

"Pray, sir, don't do any such thing," said Gluck. "I can't let you stay
till they come; they'd be the death of me."

"Dear me," said the old gentleman, "I'm very sorry to hear that. How
long may I stay?"

"Only till the mutton's done, sir," replied Gluck, "and it's very
brown."

Then the old gentleman walked into the kitchen, and sat himself down on
the hob, with the top of his cap accommodated up the chimney, for it
was a great deal too high for the roof.

"You'll soon dry there, sir," said Gluck, and sat down again to turn
the mutton. But the old gentleman did _not_ dry there, but went on
drip, drip, dripping among the cinders, and the fire fizzed and
sputtered, and began to look very black and uncomfortable; never was
such a cloak; every fold in it ran like a gutter.

"I beg pardon, sir," said Gluck at length, after watching the water
spreading in long quicksilver-like streams over the floor for a quarter
of an hour; "mayn't I take your cloak?"

"No, thank you," said the old gentleman.

"Your cap, sir?"

"I'm all right, thank you," said the old gentleman, rather gruffly.

"But--sir--I'm very sorry," said Gluck, hesitatingly; "but--really,
sir--you're putting the fire out."

"It'll take longer to do the mutton then," replied his visitor dryly.

Gluck was very much puzzled by the behavior of his guest; it was such a
strange mixture of coolness and humility. He turned away at the string
meditatively for another five minutes.

"That mutton looks very nice," said the old gentleman, at length.
"Can't you give me a little bit?"

"Impossible, sir," said Gluck.

"I'm very hungry," continued the old gentleman; "I've had nothing to
eat yesterday, nor to-day. They surely couldn't miss a bit from the
knuckle!"

He spoke in so very melancholy a tone, that it quite melted Gluck's
heart. "They promised me one slice to-day, sir," said he; "I can give
you that, but not a bit more."

"That's a good boy," said the old gentleman again.

Then Gluck warmed a plate and sharpened a knife. "I don't care if I do
get beaten for it," thought he. Just as he had cut a large slice out of
the mutton, there came a tremendous rap at the door. The old gentleman
jumped off the hob, as if it had suddenly become inconveniently warm.
Gluck fitted the slice into the mutton again, with desperate efforts at
exactitude, and ran to open the door.

"What did you keep us waiting in the rain for?" said Schwartz, as he
walked in, throwing his umbrella in Gluck's face. "Ay! what for,
indeed, you little vagabond?" said Hans, administering an educational
box on the ear, as he followed his brother into the kitchen.

"Bless my soul!" said Schwartz, when he opened the door.

"Amen," said the little gentleman, who had taken his cap off, and was
standing in the middle of the kitchen, bowing with the utmost possible
velocity.

"Who's that?" said Schwartz, catching up a rolling-pin, and turning to
Gluck with a fierce frown.

"I don't know, indeed, brother," said Gluck, in great terror.

"How did he get in?" roared Schwartz.

"My dear brother," said Gluck, deprecatingly, "he was so _very_ wet!"

The rolling-pin was descending on Gluck's head; but, at the instant,
the old gentleman interposed his conical cap, on which it crashed with
a shock that shook the water out of it all over the room. What was very
odd, the rolling-pin no sooner touched the cap, than it flew out of
Schwartz's hand, spinning like a straw in a high wind, and fell into
the corner at the further end of the room.

"Who are you, sir?" demanded Schwartz, turning upon him.

"What's your business?" snarled Hans.

"I'm a poor old man, sir," the little gentleman began very modestly,
"and I saw your fire through the window, and begged shelter for a
quarter of an hour."

"Have the goodness to walk out again, then," said Schwartz. "We've
quite enough water in our kitchen, without making it a drying-house."

"It is a cold day to turn an old man out in, sir; look at my gray
hairs." They hung down to his shoulders, as I told you before.

"Ay!" said Hans, "there are enough of them to keep you warm. Walk!"

"I'm very, very hungry, sir; couldn't you spare me a bit of bread
before I go?"

"Bread, indeed!" said Schwartz; "do you suppose we've nothing to do
with our bread but to give it to such red-nosed fellows as you?"

"Why don't you sell your feather?" said Hans, sneeringly. "Out with
you."

"A little bit," said the old gentleman.

"Be off!" said Schwartz.

"Pray, gentlemen."

"Off, and be hanged!" cried Hans, seizing him by the collar. But he had
no sooner touched the old gentleman's collar, than away he went after
the rolling-pin, spinning round and round, till he fell into the corner
on the top of it. Then Schwartz was very angry, and ran at the old
gentleman to turn him out; but he also had hardly touched him, when
away he went after Hans and the rolling-pin, and hit his head against
the wall as he tumbled into the corner. And so there they lay, all
three.

Then the old gentleman spun himself round with velocity in the opposite
direction; continued to spin until his long cloak was all wound neatly
about him; clapped his cap on his head, very much on one side (for it
could not stand upright without going through the ceiling), gave an
additional twist to his corkscrew mustaches, and replied with perfect
coolness: "Gentlemen, I wish you a very good morning. At twelve o'clock
to-night, I'll call again; after such a refusal of hospitality as I
have just experienced, you will not be surprised if that visit is the
last I ever pay you."

"If ever I catch you here again," muttered Schwartz, coming, half
frightened, out of the corner,--but, before he could finish his
sentence, the old gentleman had shut the house-door behind him with a
great bang; and past the window, at the same instant, drove a wreath of
ragged cloud, that whirled and rolled away down the valley in all
manner of shapes; turning over and over in the air; and melting away at
last in a gush of rain.

"A very pretty business, indeed, Mr. Gluck!" said Schwartz. "Dish the
mutton, sir. If ever I catch you at such a trick again-- Bless me, why
the mutton's been cut!"

"You promised me one slice, brother, you know," said Gluck.

"Oh! and you were cutting it hot, I suppose, and going to catch all the
gravy. It'll be long before I promise you such a thing again. Leave the
room, sir; and have the kindness to wait in the coal-cellar till I call
you."

Gluck left the room melancholy enough. The brothers ate as much mutton
as they could, locked the rest in the cupboard, and proceeded to get
very drunk after dinner.

Such a night as it was! Howling wind, and rushing rain, without
intermission. The brothers had just sense enough left to put up all the
shutters, and double bar the door, before they went to bed. They
usually slept in the same room. As the clock struck twelve, they were
both awakened by a tremendous crash. Their door burst open with a
violence that shook the house from top to bottom.

"What's that?" cried Schwartz, starting up in his bed.

"Only I," said the little gentleman.

The two brothers sat up on their bolster, and stared into the darkness.
The room was full of water, and by a misty moonbeam, which found its
way through a hole in the shutter, they could see, in the midst of it,
an enormous foam globe, spinning round, and bobbing up and down like a
cork, on which, as on a most luxurious cushion, reclined the little old
gentleman, cap and all. There was plenty of room for it now, for the
roof was off.

"Sorry to incommode you," said their visitor, ironically. "I'm afraid
your beds are dampish; perhaps you had better go to your brother's
room; I've left the ceiling on there."

They required no second admonition, but rushed into Gluck's room, wet
through, and in an agony of terror.

"You'll find my card on the kitchen table," the old gentleman called
after them. "Remember the _last_ visit."

"Pray Heaven it may be!" said Schwartz, shuddering. And the foam globe
disappeared.

Dawn came at last, and the two brothers looked out of Gluck's little
window in the morning. The Treasure Valley was one mass of ruin and
desolation. The inundation had swept away trees, crops, and cattle, and
left, in their stead, a waste of red sand and gray mud. The two
brothers crept, shivering and horror-struck, into the kitchen. The
water had gutted the whole first floor: corn, money, almost every
movable thing had been swept away, and there was left only a small
white card on the kitchen table. On it, in large, breezy, long-legged
letters, were engraved the words:--

SOUTHWEST WIND, ESQUIRE.


II.

Southwest Wind, Esquire, was as good as his word. After the momentous
visit above related, he entered the Treasure Valley no more; and, what
was worse, he had so much influence with his relations, the West Winds
in general, and used it so effectually, that they all adopted a similar
line of conduct. So no rain fell in the valley from one year's end to
another. Though everything remained green and flourishing in the plains
below, the inheritance of the Three Brothers was a desert. What had
once been the richest soil in the kingdom became a shifting heap of red
sand; and the brothers, unable longer to contend with the adverse
skies, abandoned their valueless patrimony in despair, to seek some
means of gaining a livelihood among the cities and people of the
plains. All their money was gone, and they had nothing left but some
curious, old-fashioned pieces of gold plate, the last remnants of their
ill-gotten wealth.

"Suppose we turn goldsmiths?" said Schwartz to Hans, as they entered
the large city. "It is a good knave's trade; we can put a great deal of
copper into the gold, without any one's finding it out."

The thought was agreed to be a very good one; they hired a furnace, and
turned goldsmiths. But two slight circumstances affected their trade:
the first, that people did not approve of the coppered gold; the
second, that the two elder brothers, whenever they had sold anything,
used to leave little Gluck to mind the furnace, and go and drink out
the money in the ale-house next door. So they melted all their gold,
without making money enough to buy more, and were at last reduced to
one large drinking-mug, which an uncle of his had given to little
Gluck, and which he was very fond of, and would not have parted with
for the world; though he never drank anything out of it but milk and
water. The mug was a very odd mug to look at. The handle was formed of
two wreaths of flowing golden hair, so finely spun that it looked more
like silk than like metal, and these wreaths descended into, and mixed
with, a beard and whiskers, of the same exquisite workmanship, which
surrounded and decorated a very fierce little face, of the reddest gold
imaginable, right in the front of the mug, with a pair of eyes in it
which seemed to command its whole circumference. It was impossible to
drink out of the mug without being subjected to an intense gaze out of
the side of these eyes; and Schwartz positively averred that once,
after emptying it full of Rhenish seventeen times, he had seen them
wink! When it came to the mug's turn to be made into spoons, it half
broke poor little Gluck's heart; but the brothers only laughed at him,
tossed the mug into the melting-pot, and staggered out to the
ale-house; leaving him, as usual, to pour the gold into bars, when it
was all ready.

When they were gone, Gluck took a farewell look at his old friend in
the melting-pot. The flowing hair was all gone; nothing remained but
the red nose, and the sparkling eyes, which looked more malicious than
ever. "And no wonder," thought Gluck, "after being treated in that
way." He sauntered disconsolately to the window, and sat himself down
to catch the fresh evening air, and escape the hot breath of the
furnace. Now this window commanded a direct view of the range of
mountains, which, as I told you before, overhung the Treasure Valley,
and more especially of the peak from which fell the Golden River. It
was just at the close of the day, and, when Gluck sat down at the
window, he saw the rocks of the mountain-tops, all crimson and purple
with the sunset; and there were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning
and quivering about them; and the river, brighter than all, fell, in a
waving column of pure gold, from precipice to precipice, with the
double arch of a broad purple rainbow stretched across it, flushing and
fading alternately in the wreaths of spray.

"Ah!" said Gluck aloud, after he had looked at it for a little while,
"if that river were really all gold, what a nice thing it would be!"

"No, it wouldn't, Gluck," said a clear, metallic voice, close at his
ear.

"Bless me, what's that?" exclaimed Gluck, jumping up. There was nobody
there. He looked round the room, and under the table, and a great many
times behind him, but there was certainly nobody there, and he sat down
again at the window. This time he didn't speak, but he couldn't help
thinking again that it would be very convenient if the river were
really all gold.

"Not at all, my boy," said the same voice, louder than before.

"Bless me!" said Gluck again, "what _is_ that?" He looked again into
all the corners and cupboards, and then began turning round and round,
as fast as he could, in the middle of the room, thinking there was
somebody behind him, when the same voice struck again on his ear. It
was singing now very merrily "Lala-lira-la"; no words, only a soft
running effervescent melody, something like that of a kettle on the
boil. Gluck looked out of the window. No, it was certainly in the
house. Up stairs, and down stairs. No, it was certainly in that very
room, coming in quicker time and clearer notes every moment.
"Lala-lira-la." All at once it struck Gluck that it sounded louder near
the furnace. He ran to the opening and looked in; yes, he saw right, it
seemed to be coming, not only out of the furnace, but out of the pot.
He uncovered it, and ran back in a great fright, for the pot was
certainly singing! He stood in the farthest corner of the room, with
his hands up, and his mouth open, for a minute or two, when the singing
stopped, and the voice became clear and pronunciative.

"Hollo!" said the voice.

Gluck made no answer.

"Hollo! Gluck, my boy," said the pot again.

Gluck summoned all his energies, walked straight up to the crucible,
drew it out of the furnace, and looked in. The gold was all melted, and
its surface as smooth and polished as a river; but instead of its
reflecting little Gluck's head, as he looked in, he saw meeting his
glance, from beneath the gold, the red nose and the sharp eyes of his
old friend of the mug, a thousand times redder and sharper than ever he
had seen them in his life.

"Come, Gluck, my boy," said the voice out of the pot again, "I'm all
right; pour me out."

But Gluck was too much astonished to do anything of the kind.

"Pour me out, I say," said the voice, rather gruffly.

Still Gluck couldn't move.

"_Will_ you pour me out?" said the voice, passionately. "I'm too hot."

By a violent effort, Gluck recovered the use of his limbs, took hold of
the crucible, and sloped it so as to pour out the gold. But instead of
a liquid stream, there came out, first, a pair of pretty little yellow
legs, then some coat-tails, then a pair of arms stuck akimbo, and,
finally, the well-known head of his friend the mug; all which articles,
uniting as they rolled out, stood up energetically on the floor, in the
shape of a little golden dwarf, about a foot and a half high.

"That's right!" said the dwarf, stretching out first his legs, and then
his arms, and then shaking his head up and down, and as far round as it
would go, for five minutes, without stopping; apparently with the view
of ascertaining if he were quite correctly put together, while Gluck
stood contemplating him in speechless amazement. He was dressed in a
slashed doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture that the prismatic
colors gleamed over it, as if on a surface of mother-of-pearl; and over
this brilliant doublet his hair and beard fell full half-way to the
ground, in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate, that Gluck could
hardly tell where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The
features of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same
delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in
complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and
intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had
finished his self-examination, he turned his small, sharp eyes full on
Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it
wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," said the little man.

This was certainly rather an abrupt and unconnected mode of commencing
conversation. It might indeed be supposed to refer to the course of
Gluck's thoughts, which had first produced the dwarf's observations out
of the pot; but whatever it referred to, Gluck had no inclination to
dispute the dictum.

"Wouldn't it, sir?" said Gluck, very mildly and submissively indeed.

"No," said the dwarf, conclusively. "No, it wouldn't." And with that,
the dwarf pulled his cap hard over his brows, and took two turns of
three feet long, up and down the room, lifting his legs very high, and
setting them down very hard. This pause gave time for Gluck to collect
his thoughts a little, and, seeing no great reason to view his
diminutive visitor with dread, and feeling his curiosity overcome his
amazement, he ventured on a question of peculiar delicacy.

"Pray, sir," said Gluck rather hesitatingly, "were you my mug?"

On which the little man turned sharp round, walked straight up to
Gluck, and drew himself up to his full height. "I," said the little
man, "am the King of the Golden River." Whereupon he turned about
again, and took two more turns, some six feet long, in order to allow
time for the consternation which this announcement produced in his
auditor to evaporate. After which he again walked up to Gluck and stood
still, as if expecting some comment on his communication.

Gluck determined to say something, at all events. "I hope your Majesty
is very well," said Gluck.

"Listen!" said the little man, deigning no reply to this polite
inquiry. "I am the King of what you mortals call the Golden River. The
shape you saw me in was owing to the malice of a stronger king, from
whose enchantments you have this instant freed me. What I have seen of
you, and your conduct to your wicked brothers, renders me willing to
serve you; therefore attend to what I tell you. Whoever shall climb to
the top of that mountain from which you see the Golden River issue, and
shall cast into the stream at its source three drops of holy water, for
him, and for him only, the river shall turn to gold. But no one failing
in his first, can succeed in a second attempt; and if any one shall
cast unholy water into the river, it will overwhelm him, and he will
become a black stone." So saying, the King of the Golden River turned
away, and deliberately walked into the centre of the hottest flame of
the furnace. His figure became red, white, transparent, dazzling,--a
blaze of intense light,--rose, trembled, and disappeared. The King of
the Golden River had evaporated.

"Oh!" cried poor Gluck, running to look up the chimney after him; "O
dear, dear, dear me! My mug! my mug! my mug!"


III.

The King of the Golden River had hardly made his extraordinary exit
before Hans and Schwartz came roaring into the house, very savagely
drunk. The discovery of the total loss of their last piece of plate had
the effect of sobering them just enough to enable them to stand over
Gluck, beating him very steadily for a quarter of an hour; at the
expiration of which period they dropped into a couple of chairs, and
requested to know what he had got to say for himself. Gluck told them
his story, of which of course they did not believe a word. They beat
him again, till their arms were tired, and staggered to bed. In the
morning, however, the steadiness with which he adhered to his story
obtained him some degree of credence; the immediate consequence of
which was, that the two brothers, after wrangling a long time on the
knotty question which of them should try his fortune first, drew their
swords, and began fighting. The noise of the fray alarmed the
neighbors, who, finding they could not pacify the combatants, sent for
the constable.

Hans, on hearing this, contrived to escape, and hid himself; but
Schwartz was taken before the magistrate, fined for breaking the peace,
and, having drunk out his last penny the evening before, was thrown
into prison till he should pay.

When Hans heard this, he was much delighted, and determined to set out
immediately for the Golden River. How to get the holy water, was the
question. He went to the priest, but the priest could not give any holy
water to so abandoned a character. So Hans went to vespers in the
evening for the first time in his life, and, under pretence of crossing
himself, stole a cupful, and returned home in triumph.

Next morning he got up before the sun rose, put the holy water into a
strong flask, and two bottles of wine and some meat in a basket, slung
them over his back, took his alpine staff in his hand, and set off for
the mountains.

On his way out of the town he had to pass the prison, and as he looked
in at the windows, whom should he see but Schwartz himself peeping out
of the bars, and looking very disconsolate?

"Good morning, brother," said Hans; "have you any message for the King
of the Golden River?"

Schwartz gnashed his teeth with rage, and shook the bars with all his
strength; but Hans only laughed at him, and advising him to make
himself comfortable till he came back again, shouldered his basket,
shook the bottle of holy water in Schwartz's face till it frothed
again, and marched off in the highest spirits in the world.

It was, indeed, a morning that might have made any one happy, even with
no Golden River to seek for. Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched
along the valley, out of which rose the massy mountains,--their lower
cliffs in pale gray shadow, hardly distinguishable from the floating
vapor, but gradually ascending till they caught the sunlight, which ran
in sharp touches of ruddy color along the angular crags, and pierced,
in long level rays, through their fringes of spear-like pine. Far
above, shot up red splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and
shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak
of sunlit snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked
lightning; and, far beyond, and far above all these, fainter than the
morning cloud, but purer and changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the
utmost peaks of the eternal snow.

The Golden River, which sprang from one of the lower and snowless
elevations, was now nearly in shadow; all but the uppermost jets of
spray, which rose like slow smoke above the undulating line of the
cataract, and floated away in feeble wreaths upon the morning wind.

On this object, and on this alone, Hans's eyes and thoughts were fixed;
forgetting the distance he had to traverse, he set off at an imprudent
rate of walking, which greatly exhausted him before he had scaled the
first range of the green and low hills. He was, moreover, surprised, on
surmounting them, to find that a large glacier, of whose existence,
notwithstanding his previous knowledge of the mountains, he had been
absolutely ignorant, lay between him and the source of the Golden
River. He entered on it with the boldness of a practised mountaineer;
yet he thought he had never traversed so strange or so dangerous a
glacier in his life. The ice was excessively slippery, and out of all
its chasms came wild sounds of gushing water; not monotonous or low,
but changeful and loud, rising occasionally into drifting passages of
wild melody, then breaking off into short, melancholy tones, or sudden
shrieks, resembling those of human voices in distress or pain. The ice
was broken into thousands of confused shapes, but none, Hans thought,
like the ordinary forms of splintered ice. There seemed a curious
_expression_ about all their outlines,--a perpetual resemblance to
living features, distorted and scornful. Myriads of deceitful shadows
and lurid lights played and floated about and through the pale blue
pinnacles, dazzling and confusing the sight of the traveller; while his
ears grew dull and his head giddy with the constant gush and roar of
the concealed waters. These painful circumstances increased upon him as
he advanced; the ice crashed and yawned into fresh chasms at his feet,
tottering spires nodded around him, and fell thundering across his
path; and though he had repeatedly faced these dangers on the most
terrific glaciers, and in the wildest weather, it was with a new and
oppressive feeling of panic terror that he leaped the last chasm, and
flung himself, exhausted and shuddering, on the firm turf of the
mountain.

He had been compelled to abandon his basket of food, which became a
perilous incumbrance on the glacier, and had now no means of refreshing
himself but by breaking off and eating some of the pieces of ice. This,
however, relieved his thirst; an hour's repose recruited his hardy
frame, and, with the indomitable spirit of avarice, he resumed his
laborious journey.

His way now lay straight up a ridge of bare, red rocks, without a blade
of grass to ease the foot or a projecting angle to afford an inch of
shade from the south sun. It was past noon, and the rays beat intensely
upon the steep path, while the whole atmosphere was motionless, and
penetrated with heat. Intense thirst was soon added to the bodily
fatigue with which Hans was now afflicted; glance after glance he cast
on the flask of water which hung at his belt. "Three drops are enough,"
at last thought he; "I may, at least, cool my lips with it."

He opened the flask, and was raising it to his lips, when his eye fell
on an object lying on the rock beside him; he thought it moved. It was
a small dog, apparently in the last agony of death from thirst. Its
tongue was out, its jaws dry, its limbs extended lifelessly, and a
swarm of black ants were crawling about its lips and throat. Its eye
moved to the bottle which Hans held in his hand. He raised it, drank,
spurned the animal with his foot, and passed on. And he did not know
how it was, but he thought that a strange shadow had suddenly come
across the blue sky.

The path became steeper and more rugged every moment; and the high hill
air, instead of refreshing him, seemed to throw his blood into a fever.
The noise of the hill cataracts sounded like mockery in his ears; they
were all distant, and his thirst increased every moment. Another hour
passed, and he again looked down to the flask at his side; it was half
empty, but there was much more than three drops in it. He stopped to
open it, and again, as he did so, something moved in the path above
him. It was a fair child, stretched nearly lifeless on the rock, its
breast heaving with thirst, its eyes closed, and its lips parched and
burning. Hans eyed it deliberately, drank, and passed on. And a dark
gray cloud came over the sun, and long snake-like shadows crept up
along the mountain-sides. Hans struggled on. The sun was sinking, but
its descent seemed to bring no coolness; the leaden weight of the dead
air pressed upon his brow and heart, but the goal was near. He saw the
cataract of the Golden River springing from the hillside, scarcely five
hundred feet above him. He paused for a moment to breathe, and sprang
on to complete his task.

At this instant a faint cry fell on his ear. He turned, and saw a
gray-haired old man extended on the rocks. His eyes were sunk, his
features deadly pale, and gathered into an expression of despair.
"Water!" he stretched his arms to Hans, and cried feebly,--"Water! I am
dying."

"I have none," replied Hans; "thou hast had thy share of life." He
strode over the prostrate body, and darted on. And a flash of blue
lightning rose out of the east, shaped like a sword; it shook thrice
over the whole heaven, and left it dark with one heavy, impenetrable
shade. The sun was setting; it plunged toward the horizon like a
red-hot ball.

The roar of the Golden River rose on Hans's ear. He stood at the brink
of the chasm through which it ran. Its waves were filled with the red
glory of the sunset: they shook their crests like tongues of fire, and
flashes of bloody light gleamed along their foam. Their sound came
mightier and mightier on his senses; his brain grew giddy with the
prolonged thunder. Shuddering, he drew the flask from his girdle, and
hurled it into the centre of the torrent. As he did so, an icy chill
shot through his limbs; he staggered, shrieked, and fell. The waters
closed over his cry. And the moaning of the river rose wildly into the
night, as it gushed over

THE BLACK STONE.


IV.

Poor little Gluck waited very anxiously alone in the house for Hans's
return. Finding he did not come back, he was terribly frightened, and
went and told Schwartz in the prison all that had happened. Then
Schwartz was very much pleased, and said that Hans must certainly have
been turned into a black stone, and he should have all the gold to
himself. But Gluck was very sorry, and cried all night. When he got up
in the morning, there was no bread in the house, nor any money; so
Gluck went and hired himself to another goldsmith, and he worked so
hard, and so neatly, and so long every day, that he soon got money
enough together to pay his brother's fine, and he went and gave it all
to Schwartz, and Schwartz got out of prison. Then Schwartz was quite
pleased, and said he should have some of the gold of the river. But
Gluck only begged he would go and see what had become of Hans.

Now when Schwartz had heard that Hans had stolen the holy water, he
thought to himself that such a proceeding might not be considered
altogether correct by the King of the Golden River, and determined to
manage matters better. So he took some more of Gluck's money, and went
to a bad priest, who gave him some holy water very readily for it. Then
Schwartz was sure it was all quite right. So Schwartz got up early in
the morning before the sun rose, and took some bread and wine in a
basket, and put his holy water in a flask, and set off for the
mountains. Like his brother, he was much surprised at the sight of the
glacier, and had great difficulty in crossing it, even after leaving
his basket behind him. The day was cloudless, but not bright: a heavy
purple haze was hanging over the sky, and the hills looked lowering and
gloomy. And as Schwartz climbed the steep rock path, the thirst came
upon him, as it had upon his brother, until he lifted his flask to his
lips to drink. Then he saw the fair child lying near him on the rocks,
and it cried to him, and moaned for water.

"Water, indeed," said Schwartz; "I haven't half enough for myself," and
passed on. And as he went he thought the sunbeams grew more dim, and he
saw a low bank of black cloud rising out of the west; and, when he had
climbed for another hour, the thirst overcame him again, and he would
have drunk. Then he saw the old man lying before him on the path, and
heard him cry out for water. "Water, indeed," said Schwartz; "I haven't
half enough for myself," and on he went.

Then again the light seemed to fade from before his eyes, and he looked
up, and, behold, a mist, of the color of blood, had come over the sun;
and the bank of black cloud had risen very high, and its edges were
tossing and tumbling like the waves of the angry sea. And they cast
long shadows, which flickered over Schwartz's path.

Then Schwartz climbed for another hour, and again his thirst returned;
and as he lifted his flask to his lips, he thought he saw his brother
Hans lying exhausted on the path before him, and, as he gazed, the
figure stretched its arms to him, and cried for water. "Ha, ha,"
laughed Schwartz, "are you there? Remember the prison bars, my boy.
Water, indeed! do you suppose I carried it all the way up here for
_you_?" And he strode over the figure; yet, as he passed, he thought he
saw a strange expression of mockery about its lips. And, when he had
gone a few yards farther, he looked back; but the figure was not there.

And a sudden horror came over Schwartz, he knew not why; but the thirst
for gold prevailed over his fear, and he rushed on. And the bank of
black cloud rose to the zenith, and out of it came bursts of spiry
lightning, and waves of darkness seemed to heave and float between
their flashes, over the whole heavens. And the sky where the sun was
setting was all level, and like a lake of blood; and a strong wind came
out of that sky, tearing its crimson clouds into fragments, and
scattering them far into the darkness. And when Schwartz stood by the
brink of the Golden River, its waves were black like thunderclouds, but
their foam was like fire; and the roar of the waters below and the
thunder above met, as he cast the flask into the stream. And, as he did
so, the lightning glared in his eyes, and the earth gave way beneath
him, and the waters closed over his cry. And the moaning of the river
rose wildly into the night, as it gushed over the

TWO BLACK STONES.


V.

When Gluck found that Schwartz did not come back, he was very sorry,
and did not know what to do. He had no money, and was obliged to go and
hire himself again to the goldsmith, who worked him very hard, and gave
him very little money. So, after a month or two, Gluck grew tired, and
made up his mind to go and try his fortune with the Golden River. "The
little king looked very kind," thought he. "I don't think he will turn
me into a black stone." So he went to the priest, and the priest gave
him some holy water as soon as he asked for it. Then Gluck took some
bread in his basket, and the bottle of water, and set off very early
for the mountains.

If the glacier had occasioned a great deal of fatigue to his brothers,
it was twenty times worse for him, who was neither so strong nor so
practised on the mountains. He had several very bad falls, lost his
basket and bread, and was very much frightened at the strange noises
under the ice. He lay a long time to rest on the grass, after he had
got over, and began to climb the hill just in the hottest part of the
day. When he had climbed for an hour, he got dreadfully thirsty, and
was going to drink like his brothers, when he saw an old man coming
down the path above him, looking very feeble, and leaning on a staff.
"My son," said the old man, "I am faint with thirst; give me some of
that water." Then Gluck looked at him, and when he saw that he was pale
and weary, he gave him the water; "Only pray don't drink it all," said
Gluck. But the old man drank a great deal, and gave him back the bottle
two thirds empty. Then he bade him good speed, and Gluck went on again
merrily. And the path became easier to his feet, and two or three
blades of grass appeared upon it, and some grasshoppers began singing
on the bank beside it; and Gluck thought he had never heard such merry
singing.

Then he went on for another hour, and the thirst increased on him so
that he thought he should be forced to drink. But, as he raised the
flask, he saw a little child lying panting by the roadside, and it
cried out piteously for water. Then Gluck struggled with himself and
determined to bear the thirst a little longer; and he put the bottle to
the child's lips, and it drank it all but a few drops. Then it smiled
on him, and got up, and ran down the hill; and Gluck looked after it,
till it became as small as a little star, and then turned, and began
climbing again. And then there were all kinds of sweet flowers growing
on the rocks, bright green moss, with pale pink starry flowers, and
soft-belled gentians, more blue than the sky at its deepest, and pure
white transparent lilies. And crimson and purple butterflies darted
hither and thither, and the sky sent down such pure light that Gluck
had never felt so happy in his life.

Yet, when he had climbed for another hour, his thirst became
intolerable again; and, when he looked at his bottle, he saw that there
were only five or six drops left in it, and he could not venture to
drink. And as he was hanging the flask to his belt again, he saw a
little dog lying on the rocks, gasping for breath,--just as Hans had
seen it on the day of his ascent. And Gluck stopped and looked at it,
and then at the Golden River, not five hundred yards above him; and he
thought of the dwarf's words, "that no one could succeed, except in his
first attempt"; and he tried to pass the dog, but it whined piteously,
and Gluck stopped again. "Poor beastie," said Gluck, "it'll be dead
when I come down again, if I don't help it." Then he looked closer and
closer at it, and its eye turned on him so mournfully that he could not
stand it. "Confound the King and his gold too," said Gluck; and he
opened the flask, and poured all the water into the dog's mouth.

The dog sprang up and stood on its hind legs. Its tail disappeared, its
ears became long, longer, silky, golden; its nose became very red, its
eyes became very twinkling; in three seconds the dog was gone, and
before Gluck stood his old acquaintance, the King of the Golden River.

"Thank you," said the monarch; "but don't be frightened, it's all
right"; for Gluck showed manifest symptoms of consternation at this
unlooked-for reply to his last observation. "Why didn't you come
before," continued the dwarf, "instead of sending me those rascally
brothers of yours, for me to have the trouble of turning into stones?
Very hard stones they make, too."

"O dear me!" said Gluck, "have you really been so cruel?"

"Cruel," said the dwarf, "they poured unholy water into my stream; do
you suppose I'm going to allow that?"

"Why," said Gluck, "I am sure, sir,--your Majesty, I mean,--they got
the water out of the church font."

"Very probably," replied the dwarf; "but," and his countenance grew
stern as he spoke, "the water which has been refused to the cry of the
weary and dying is unholy, though it had been blessed by every saint in
heaven; and the water which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy,
though it had been defiled with corpses."

So saying, the dwarf stooped and plucked a lily that grew at his feet.
On its white leaves hung three drops of clear dew. And the dwarf shook
them into the flask which Gluck held in his hand. "Cast these into the
river," he said, "and descend on the other side of the mountains into
the Treasure Valley. And so good speed."

As he spoke, the figure of the dwarf became indistinct. The playing
colors of his robe formed themselves into a prismatic mist of dewy
light; he stood for an instant veiled with them as with the belt of a
broad rainbow. The colors grew faint, the mist rose into the air; the
monarch had evaporated.

And Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden River, and its waves were
as clear as crystal and as brilliant as the sun. And when he cast the
three drops of dew into the stream, there opened where they fell, a
small circular whirlpool, into which the waters descended with a
musical noise.

Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disappointed, because
not only the river was not turned into gold, but its waters seemed much
diminished in quantity. Yet he obeyed his friend the dwarf, and
descended the other side of the mountains, toward the Treasure Valley;
and, as he went, he thought he heard the noise of water working its way
under the ground. And when he came in sight of the Treasure Valley,
behold, a river, like the Golden River, was springing from a new cleft
of the rocks above it, and was flowing in innumerable streams among the
dry heaps of red sand.

And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass sprang beside the new streams, and
creeping plants grew, and climbed among the moistening soil. Young
flowers opened suddenly along the river sides, as stars leap out when
twilight is deepening, and thickets of myrtle, and tendrils of vine,
cast lengthening shadows over the valley as they grew. And thus the
Treasure Valley became a garden again, and the inheritance, which had
been lost by cruelty, was regained by love.

And Gluck went and dwelt in the valley, and the poor were never driven
from his door; so that his barns became full of corn, and his house of
treasure. And, for him, the river had, according to the dwarf's
promise, become a River of Gold.

And to this day the inhabitants of the valley point out the place where
the three drops of holy dew were cast into the stream, and trace the
course of the Golden River under the ground, until it emerges in the
Treasure Valley. And, at the top of the cataract of the Golden River,
are still to be seen two BLACK STONES, round which the waters howl
mournfully every day at sunset; and these stones are still called, by
the people of the valley,

THE BLACK BROTHERS.




THE LADY OF SHALOTT.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.


It is not generally known that the Lady of Shalott lived last summer in
an attic, at the east end of South Street.

The wee-est, thinnest, whitest little lady! And yet the brightest,
stillest, and withal such a smiling little lady!

If you had held her up by the window,--for she could not hold up
herself,--she would have hung like a porcelain transparency in your
hands. And if you had said, laying her gently down, and giving the
tears a smart dash, that they should not fall on her lifted face, "Poor
child!" the Lady of Shalott would have said, "O, don't!" and smiled.
And you would have smiled yourself, for very surprise that she should
outdo you; and between the two there would have been so much smiling
done that one would have fairly thought it was a delightful thing to
live last summer in an attic at the east end of South Street.

This perhaps was the more natural in the Lady of Shalott because she
had never lived anywhere else.

When the Lady of Shalott was five years old, her mother threw her down
stairs one day, by mistake, instead of the whiskey-jug.

This is a fact which I think Mr. Tennyson has omitted to mention in his
poem.

They picked up the Lady of Shalott and put her on the bed; and there
she lay from that day until last summer, unless, as I said, somebody
had occasion to use her for a transparency.

The mother and the jug both went down the stairs together a few years
after, and never came up at all,--and that was a great convenience, for
the Lady of Shalott's palace in the attic was not large, and they took
up much unnecessary room.

Since that the Lady of Shalott had lived with her sister, Sary Jane.

Sary Jane made nankeen vests, at sixteen and three quarters cents a
dozen.

Sary Jane had red hair, and crooked shoulders, and a voice so much like
a rat-trap which she sometimes set on the stairs that the Lady of
Shalott could seldom tell which was which until she had thought about
it a little while. When there was a rat caught, she was apt to ask
"What?" and when Sary Jane spoke, she more often than not said,
"There's another!"

Her crooked shoulders Sary Jane had acquired from sitting under the
eaves of the palace to sew. That physiological problem was simple.
There was not room enough under the eaves to sit straight.

Sary Jane's red hair was the result of sitting in the sun on July noons
under those eaves, to see to thread her needle. There was no question
about that. The Lady of Shalott had settled it in her own mind, past
dispute. Sary Jane's hair had been--what was it? brown? once. Sary Jane
was slowly taking fire. Who would not, to sit in the sun in that
palace? The only matter of surprise to the Lady of Shalott was that the
palace itself did not smoke. Sometimes, when Sary Jane hit the rafters,
she was sure that she saw sparks.

As for Sary Jane's voice, when one knew that she made nankeen vests at
sixteen and three quarters cents a dozen, that was a matter of no
surprise. It never surprised the Lady of Shalott.

But Sary Jane was very cross; there was no denying that; very cross.

And the palace. Let me tell you about the palace. It measured just
twelve by nine feet. It would have been seven feet post,--if there had
been a post in the middle of it. From the centre it sloped away to the
windows, where Sary Jane had just room enough to sit crooked under the
eaves at work. There were two windows and a loose scuttle to let in the
snow in winter and the sun in summer, and the rain and wind at all
times. It was quite a diversion to the Lady of Shalott to see how many
different ways of doing a disagreeable thing seemed to be practicable
to that scuttle. Besides the bed on which the Lady of Shalott lay,
there was a stove in the palace, two chairs, a very ragged rag-mat, a
shelf with two notched cups and plates upon it, one pewter teaspoon,
and a looking-glass. On washing-days Sary Jane climbed upon the chair
and hung her clothes out through the scuttle on the roof; or else she
ran a little rope from one of the windows to the other for a
drying-rope. It would have been more exact to have said on
washing-nights; for Sary Jane always did her washing after dark. The
reason was evident. If the rest of us were in the habit of wearing all
the clothes we had, like Sary Jane, I have little doubt that we should
do the same.

I should mention that there was no sink in the Lady of Shalott's
palace; no water. There was a dirty hydrant in the yard, four flights
below, which supplied the Lady of Shalott and all her neighbors. The
Lady of Shalott kept her coal under the bed; her flour, a pound at a
time, in a paper parcel, on the shelf, with the teacups and the pewter
spoon. If she had anything else to keep, it went out through the palace
scuttle and lay on the roof. The Lady of Shalott's palace opened
directly upon a precipice. The lessor of the house called it a flight
of stairs. When Sary Jane went up and down she went sidewise to
preserve her balance. There were no bannisters to the precipice, and
about once a week a baby patronized the rat-trap, instead. Once, when
there was a fire-alarm, the precipice was very serviceable. Four women
and an old man went over. With one exception (she was eighteen, and
could bear a broken collar-bone), they will not, I am informed, go over
again.

The Lady of Shalott paid one dollar a week for the rent of her palace.

But then there was a looking-glass in the palace. I think I noticed it.
It hung on the slope of the rafters, just opposite the Lady of
Shalott's window,--for she considered that her window at which Sary
Jane did not make nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a
dozen.

Now, because the looking-glass was opposite the window at which Sary
Jane did _not_ make vests, and because the rafters sloped, and because
the bed lay almost between the looking-glass and the window, the Lady
of Shalott was happy. And because, to the patient heart that is a
seeker after happiness, "the little more, and how much it is!" (and the
little less, what worlds away!) the Lady of Shalott was proud as well
as happy. The looking-glass measured in inches 10 X 6. I think that the
Lady of Shalott would have experienced rather a touch of mortification
than of envy if she had known that there was a mirror in a house just
round the corner measuring almost as many feet. But that was one of the
advantages of being the Lady of Shalott. She never parsed life in the
comparative degree.

I suppose that one must be the Lady of Shalott to understand what
comfort there may be in a 10 X 6 inch looking-glass. All the world came
for the Lady of Shalott into her looking-glass,--the joy of it, the
anguish of it, the hope and fear of it, the health and hurt,--10 X 6
inches of it exactly.

"It is next best to not having been thrown down stairs yourself!" said
the Lady of Shalott.

To tell the truth, it sometimes occurred to her that there was a
monotony about the world. A garret window like her own, for instance,
would fill her sight if she did not tip the glass a little. Children
sat in it, and did not play. They made lean faces at her. They were
locked in for the day and were hungry. She could not help knowing how
hungry they were, and so tipped the glass. Then there was the trap-door
in the sidewalk. She became occasionally tired of that trap-door. Seven
people lived under the sidewalk; and when they lifted and slammed the
trap, coming in and out, they reminded her of something which Sary Jane
bought her once, when she was a very little child, at Christmas
time,--long ago, when rents were cheaper and flour low. It was a
monkey, with whiskers and a calico jacket, who jumped out of a box when
the cover was lifted; and then you crushed him down and hasped him in.
Sometimes she wished that she had never had that monkey, he was so much
like the people coming in and out of the sidewalk.

In fact, there was a monotony about all the people in the Lady of
Shalott's looking-glass. If their faces were not dirty, their hands
were. If they had hats, they went without shoes. If they did not sit in
the sun with their heads on their knees, they lay in the mud with their
heads on a jug.

"Their faces look blue!" she said to Sary Jane.

"No wonder!" snapped Sary Jane.

"Why?" asked the Lady of Shalott.

"Wonder is we ain't all dead!" barked Sary Jane.

The people in the Lady of Shalott's glass died, however,
sometimes,--often in the summer; more often last summer, when the attic
smoked continually, and she mistook Sary Jane's voice for the rat-trap
every day.

The people were jostled into pine boxes (in the glass), and carried
away (in the glass) by twilight, in a cart. Three of the monkeys from
the spring-box in the sidewalk went, in one week, out into the foul,
purple twilight, away from the looking-glass, in carts.

"I'm glad of that, poor things!" said the Lady of Shalott, for she had
always felt a kind of sorrow for the monkeys. Principally, I think,
because they had no glass.

When the monkeys had gone, the sickly twilight folded itself up, over
the spring-box, into great feathers, like the feathers of a wing. That
was pleasant. The Lady of Shalott could almost put out her fingers and
stroke it, it hung so near, and was so clear, and gathered such a
peacefulness into the looking-glass.

"Sary Jane, dear, it's very pleasant," said the Lady of Shalott. Sary
Jane said it was very dangerous, the Lord knew, and bit her threads
off.

"And, Sary Jane, dear!" added the Lady of Shalott, "I see so many other
pleasant things."

"The more fool you!" said Sary Jane.

But she wondered about it that day over her tenth nankeen vest. What,
for example, _could_ the Lady of Shalott see?

"Waves!" said the Lady of Shalott, suddenly, as if she had been asked
the question. Sary Jane jumped. She said, "Nonsense!" For the Lady of
Shalott had only seen the little wash-tub full of dingy water on Sunday
nights, and the dirty little hydrant (in the glass) spouting dingy
jets. She would not have known a wave if she had seen it.

"But I see waves," said the Lady of Shalott. She felt sure of it. They
ran up and down across the glass. They had green faces and gray hair.
They threw back their hands, like cool people resting, and it seemed
unaccountable, at the east end of South Street last summer, that
anything, anywhere, if only a wave in a looking-glass, could be cool or
at rest. Besides this, they kept their faces clean. Therefore the Lady
of Shalott took pleasure in watching them run up and down across the
glass. That a thing could be clean, and green, and white, was only less
a wonder than cool and rest last summer in South Street.

"Sary Jane, dear," said the Lady of Shalott, one day, "how hot _is_ it
up here?"

"Hot as Hell!" said Sary Jane.

"I thought it was a little warm," said the Lady of Shalott. "Sary Jane,
dear, isn't the yard down there a little--dirty?"

Sary Jane put down her needle, and looked out of the blazing, blindless
window. It had always been a subject of satisfaction to Sary Jane,
somewhere down below her lean shoulders and in the very teeth of the
rat-trap, that the Lady of Shalott could not see out of that window. So
she winked at the window, as if she would caution it to hold its
burning tongue, and said never a word.

"Sary Jane, dear," said the Lady of Shalott, once more, "had you ever
thought that perhaps I was a little--weaker--than I was--once?"

"I guess you can stand it if I can!" said the rat-trap.

"O, yes, dear," said the Lady of Shalott. "I can stand it if you can."

"Well, then!" said Sary Jane. But she sat and winked at the bald
window, and the window held its burning tongue.

It grew hot in South Street. It grew very hot in South Street. The lean
children in the attic opposite fell sick, and sat no longer in the
window making faces, in the Lady of Shalott's glass.

Two more monkeys from the spring-box were carried away one ugly
twilight in a cart. The purple wing that hung over the spring-box
lifted to let them pass; and then fell, as if it had brushed them away.

"It has such a soft color!" said the Lady of Shalott, smiling.

"So has nightshade!" said Sary Jane.

One day a beautiful thing happened. One can scarcely understand how a
beautiful thing _could_ happen at the east end of South Street. The
Lady of Shalott herself did not entirely understand.

"It is all the glass," she said.

She was lying very still when she said it. She had folded her hands,
which were hot, to keep them quiet too. She had closed her eyes, which
ached, to close away the glare of the noon. At once she opened them,
and said:--

"It is the glass."

Sary Jane stood in the glass. Now Sary Jane, she well knew, was not in
the room that noon. She had gone out to see what she could find for
dinner. She had five cents to spend on dinner. Yet Sary Jane stood in
the glass. And in the glass, ah! what a beautiful thing!

"Flowers!" cried the Lady of Shalott aloud. But she had never seen
flowers. But neither had she seen waves. So she said, "They come as the
waves come." And knew them, and lay smiling. Ah! what a beautiful,
beautiful thing!

Sary Jane's hair was fiery and tumbled (in the glass), as if she had
walked fast and far. Sary Jane (in the glass) was winking, as she had
winked at the blazing window; as if she said to what she held in her
arms, Don't tell! And in her arms (in the glass), where the waves
were--oh! beautiful, beautiful! The Lady of Shalott lay whispering:
"Beautiful, beautiful!" She did not know what else to do. She dared not
stir. Sary Jane's lean arms (in the glass) were full of silver bells;
they hung out of a soft green shadow, like a church tower; they nodded
to and fro; when they shook, they shook out sweetness.

"Will they ring?" asked the Lady of Shalott of the little glass.

I doubt, in my own mind, if you or I, being in South Street, and seeing
a lily of the valley (in a 10 X 6 inch looking-glass) for the very
first time, would have asked so sensible a question.

"Try 'em and see," said the looking-glass. Was it the looking-glass? Or
the rat-trap? Or was it--

O, the beautiful thing! That the glass should have nothing to do with
it, after all! That Sary Jane, in flesh and blood, and tumbled hair,
and trembling, lean arms, should stand and shake an armful of church
towers and silver bells down into the Lady of Shalott's little puzzled
face and burning hands!

And that the Lady of Shalott should think that she must have got into
the glass herself, by a blunder,--as the only explanation possible of
such a beautiful thing!

"No, it isn't glass-dreams," said Sary Jane, winking at the church
towers, where they made a solemn, green shadow against the Lady of
Shalott's bent cheek. "Smell 'em and see. You can 'most stand the yard
with them round. Smell 'em and see! It ain't the glass; it's the Flower
Charity."

"The what?" asked the Lady of Shalott slowly.

"The Flower Charity."

"Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott. But she said nothing more.

She laid her cheek over into the shadow of the green church towers.
"And there'll be more," said Sary Jane, hunting for her wax. "There'll
be more, whenever I can call for 'em,--bless it!"

"Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott again.

"But I only got a lemon for dinner," said Sary Jane.

"Heaven bless it!" said the Lady of Shalott, with her face hidden under
the church towers. But I don't think that she meant the lemon, though
Sary Jane did.

"They _do_ ring," said the Lady of Shalott by and by. She drew the tip
of her thin fingers across the tip of the tiny bells. "I thought they
would."

"Humph!" said Sary Jane, squeezing her lemon under her work-box. "I
never see your beat for glass-dreams. What do they say? Come, now!"

Now the Lady of Shalott knew very well what they said. Very well! But
she only drew the tips of her poor fingers over the tips of the silver
bells. Clever mind! It was not necessary to tell Sary Jane.

But it grew hot in South Street. It grew very hot in South Street. Even
the Flower Charity (bless it!) could not sweeten the dreadfulness of
that yard. Even the purple wing above the spring-box fell heavily upon
the Lady of Shalott's strained eyes, across the glass. Even the
gray-haired waves ceased running up and down and throwing back their
hands before her; they sat still, in heaps upon a blistering beach, and
gasped for breath. The Lady of Shalott herself gasped sometimes, in
watching them.

One day she said: "There's a man in them."

"A _what_ in _which_?" buzzed Sary Jane. "Oh! There's a man across the
yard, I suppose you mean. Among them young ones, yonder. I wish he'd
stop 'em throwing stones, plague on 'em! See him, don't you?"

"I don't see the children," said the Lady of Shalott, a little
troubled. Her glass had shown her so many things strangely since the
days grew hot. "But I see a man, and he walks upon the waves. See,
see!"

The Lady of Shalott tried to pull herself up upon the elbow of her
calico night-dress, to see.

"That's one of them Hospital doctors," said Sary Jane, looking out of
the blazing window. "I've seen him round before. Don't know what
business he's got down here; but I've seen him. He's talkin' to them
boys now, about the stones. There! He'd better! If they don't look out,
they'll hit--"

"_O, the glass! the glass!_"

The Hospital doctor stood still; so did Sary Jane, half risen from her
chair; so did the very South Street boys, gaping in the gutter, with
their hands full of stones, such a cry rang out from the palace window.

"_O, the glass! the glass! the glass!_"

In a twinkling the South Street boys were at the mercy of the South
Street police; and the Hospital doctor, bounding over a beachful of
shattered, scattered waves, stood, out of breath, beside the Lady of
Shalott's bed.

"O the little less, and what worlds away!"

The Lady of Shalott lay quite still in her little brown calico
night-gown [I cannot learn, by the way, that Bulfinch's studious and in
general trustworthy researches have put him in possession of this
point. Indeed, I feel justified in asserting that Mr. Bulfinch never so
much as _intimated_ that the Lady of Shalott wore a brown calico
night-dress]--the Lady of Shalott lay quite still, and her lips turned
blue.

"Are you very much hurt? Where were you struck? I heard the cry, and
came. Can you tell me where the blow was?"

But then the doctor saw the glass, broken and blown in a thousand
glittering sparks across the palace floor; and then the Lady of Shalott
gave him a little blue smile.

"It's not me. Never mind. I wish it was. I'd rather it was me than the
glass. O, my glass! my glass! But never mind. I suppose there'll be
some other--pleasant thing."

"Were you so fond of the glass?" asked the doctor, taking one of the
two chairs that Sary Jane brought him, and looking sorrowfully about
the room. What other "pleasant thing" could even the Lady of Shalott
discover in that room last summer, at the east end of South Street?

"How long have you lain here?" asked the sorrowful doctor, suddenly.

"Since I can remember, sir," said the Lady of Shalott, with that blue
smile. "But then I have always had my glass."

"Ah!" said the doctor, "the Lady of Shalott!"

"Sir?" said the Lady of Shalott.

"Where is the pain?" asked the doctor, gently, with his finger on the
Lady of Shalott's pulse.

The Lady of Shalott touched the shoulder of her brown calico
night-dress, smiling.

"And what did you see in your glass?" asked the doctor, once more
stooping to examine "the pain."

The Lady of Shalott tried to tell him, but felt confused; so many
strange things had been in the glass since it grew hot. So she only
said that there were waves and a purple wing, and that they were broken
now, and lay upon the floor.

"Purple wings?" asked the doctor.

"Over the sidewalk," nodded the Lady of Shalott. "It comes up at
night."

"Oh!" said the doctor, "the malaria. No wonder!"

"And what about the waves?" asked the doctor, talking while he touched
and tried the little brown calico shoulders. "I have a little girl of
my own down by the waves this summer. She--I suppose she is no older
than you!"

"I am seventeen, sir," said the Lady of Shalott. "Do they have green
faces and white hair? Does she see them run up and down? I never saw
any waves, sir, but those in my glass. I am very glad to know that your
little girl is by the waves."

"Where you ought to be," said the doctor, half under his breath. "It is
cruel, cruel!"

"What is cruel?" asked the Lady of Shalott, looking up into the
doctor's face.

The little brown calico night-dress swam suddenly before the doctor's
eyes. He got up and walked across the floor. As he walked he stepped
upon the pieces of the broken glass.

"O, don't!" cried the Lady of Shalott. But then she thought that
perhaps she had hurt the doctor's feelings; so she smiled, and said,
"Never mind."

"Her case could be cured," said the doctor, still under his breath, to
Sary Jane. "The case could be cured yet. It is cruel!"

"Sir," said Sary Jane,--she lifted her sharp face sharply out of
billows of nankeen vests,--"it may be because I make vests at sixteen
and three quarters cents a dozen, sir; but I say before God there's
something cruel somewheres. Look at her. Look at me. Look at them
stairs. Just see that scuttle, will you? Just feel the sun in't these
windows. Look at the rent we pay for this 'ere oven. What do you s'pose
the meriky is up here? Look at them pisen fogs arisen' out over the
sidewalk. Look at the dead as have died in the Devil in this street
this week. Then look out here!"

Sary Jane drew the doctor to the blazing, blindless window, out of
which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.

"Now talk of curin' her!" said Sary Jane.

The doctor turned away from the window, with a sudden white face.

"The Board of Health--"

"Don't talk to me about the Board of Health!" said Sary Jane.

"I'll talk to them," said the doctor. "I did not know matters were so
bad. They shall be attended to directly. To-morrow I leave town--" He
stopped, looking down at the Lady of Shalott, thinking of the little
lady by the waves, whom he would see to-morrow, hardly knowing what to
say. "But something shall be done at once. Meantime, there's the
Hospital."

"She tried Horspital long ago," said Sary Jane. "They said they
couldn't do nothing. What's the use? Don't bother her. Let her be."

"Yes, let me be," said the Lady of Shalott, faintly. "The glass is
broken."

"But something must be done!" urged the doctor, hurrying away. "I will
attend to the matter directly."

He spoke in a busy doctor's busy way. Undoubtedly he thought that he
should attend to the matter directly.

"You have flowers here, I see." He lifted, in hurrying away, a spray of
lilies that lay upon the bed, freshly sent to the Lady of Shalott that
morning.

"They ring," said the Lady of Shalott, softly. "Can you hear?
'Bless--it! Bless--it!' Ah, yes, they ring!"

"Bless what?" asked the doctor, half out of the door.

"The Flower Charity," said the Lady of Shalott.

"Amen!" said the doctor. "But I'll attend to it directly." And he was
quite out of the door, and the door was shut.

"Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott, a few minutes after the
door was shut.

"Well!" said Sary Jane.

"The glass is broken," said the Lady of Shalott.

"Should think I might know that!" said Sary Jane, who was down upon her
knees, sweeping shining pieces away into a pasteboard dust-pan.

"Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott again.

"Dear, dear!" echoed Sary Jane, tossing purple feathers out of the
window and seeming, to the eyes of the Lady of Shalott, to have the
spray of green waves upon her hands. "There they go!"

"Yes, there they go," said the Lady of Shalott. But she said no more
till night.

It was a hot night for South Street. It was a very hot night for even
South Street. The lean children in the attic opposite cried savagely,
like lean cubs. The monkeys from the spring-box came out and sat upon
the lid for air. Dirty people lay around the dirty hydrant; and the
purple wing stretched itself a little in a quiet way, to cover them.

"Sary Jane, dear?" said the Lady of Shalott, at night. "The glass is
broken. And, Sary Jane, dear, I am afraid I _can't_ stand it as well as
you can."

Sary Jane gave the Lady of Shalott a sharp look, and put away her
nankeen vests. She came to the bed.

"It isn't time to stop sewing, is it?" asked the Lady of Shalott, in
faint surprise. Sary Jane only gave her sharp looks, and said,--

"Nonsense! That man will be back again yet. He'll look after ye, maybe.
Nonsense!"

"Yes," said the Lady of Shalott, "he will come back again. But my glass
is broken."

"Nonsense!" said Sary Jane. But she did not go back to her sewing. She
sat down on the edge of the bed, by the Lady of Shalott; and it grew
dark.

"Perhaps they'll do something about the yards; who knows?" said Sary
Jane through the growing dark.

"But my glass is broken," said the Lady of Shalott.

"Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott, when it had grown quite,
quite dark. "He is walking on the waves."

"Nonsense!" said Sary Jane. For it was quite, quite dark.

"Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott. "Not that man. But there
_is_ a man, and he is walking on the waves."

The Lady of Shalott raised herself upon her little calico night-dress
sleeve. She looked at the wall where the 10 X 6 inch looking-glass had
hung.

"Sary Jane, dear!" said the Lady of Shalott. "I am glad that girl is
down by the waves. I am very glad. But the glass is broken."

Two days after, the Board of Health at the foot of the precipice, which
the lessor called a flight of stairs, which led into the Lady of
Shalott's palace, were met and stopped by another board.

"_This_ one's got the right of way, gentlemen!" said something at the
brink of the precipice, which sounded so much like a rat-trap that the
Board of Health looked down by instinct at its individual and
collective feet to see if they were in danger, and dared not by
instinct stir a step.

The board which had the right of way was a pine board, and the Lady of
Shalott lay on it, in her little brown calico night-dress, with Sary
Jane's old shawl across her feet. The Flower Charity (Heaven bless it!)
had half covered the old shawl with silver bells, and solemn green
shadows, like the shadows of church towers. And it was a comfort to
know that these were the only bells which tolled for the Lady of
Shalott, and that no other church shadow fell upon her burial.

"Gentlemen," said the Hospital doctor, "we're too late, I see. But
you'd better go on."

The gentlemen of the Board of Health went on; and the Lady of Shalott
went on.

The Lady of Shalott went out into the cart that had carried away the
monkeys from the spring-box, and the purple wing lifted to let her
pass; and fell again, as if it had brushed her away.

The Board of Health went up the precipice, and stood by the window out
of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.

They sent orders to the scavenger, and orders to the Water Board, and
how many other orders nobody knows; and they sprinkled themselves with
camphor, and they went their ways.

And the board that had the right of way went its way, too. And Sary
Jane folded up the shawl, which she could not afford to lose, and came
home, and made nankeen vests at sixteen and three quarters cents a
dozen in the window out of which the Lady of Shalott had never looked.




MARJORIE FLEMING.

BY JOHN BROWN, M.D.


One November afternoon in 1810,--the year in which "Waverley" was
resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes
in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by the
death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in
India,--three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping
like school-boys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm in arm
down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.

The three friends sought the _bield_ of the low wall old Edinburgh boys
remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout
west-wind.

The three were curiously unlike each other. One, "a little man of
feeble make, who would be unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot pace,"
slight, with "small, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel
eyes, the index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the
warm heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her
weaknesses." Another, as unlike a woman as a man can be; homely, almost
common, in look and figure; his hat and his coat, and indeed his entire
covering, worn to the quick, but all of the best material; what
redeemed him from vulgarity and meanness were his eyes, deep set,
heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far in,
as if they could be dangerous; a man to care nothing for at first
glance, but, somehow, to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The
third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all
rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would
say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout,
blunt carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the
eye of a man of the hills,--a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about
him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head
which, with Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all the
world.

He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars of
laughter, and every now and then seizing them, and stopping, that they
might take their fill of the fun; there they stood shaking with
laughter, "not an inch of their body free" from its grip. At George
Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. Andrew's Church, one
to Albany Street, the other, our big and limping friend, to Castle
Street.

We need hardly give their names. The first was William Erskine,
afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of the world by a calumny, killed
by its foul breath,--

  "And at the touch of wrong, without a strife,
   Slipped in a moment out of life."

There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more pathetic than
Scott's love and sorrow for this friend of his youth.

The second was William Clerk,--the _Darsie Latimer_ of "Redgauntlet";
"a man," as Scott says, "of the most acute intellects and powerful
apprehension," but of more powerful indolence, so as to leave the world
with little more than the report of what he might have been,--a
humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely Swiftian as his
brother Lord Eldon, neither of whom had much of that commonest and best
of all the humors, called good.

The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who
else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and
entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say,
not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion,
something higher than pleasure, and yet who would care to split this
hair?

Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what a
change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word,
the man of the Parliament House and of the world, and, next step,
moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were
invisible; his shut mouth, like a child's, so impressionable, so
innocent, so sad: he was now all within, as before he was all without;
hence his brooding look. As the snow blattered in his face, he
muttered, "How it raves and drifts! On-ding o' snaw,--ay, that's the
word,--on-ding--" He was now at his own door, "Castle Street, No. 39."
He opened the door, and went straight to his den; that wondrous
workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote
"Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin Durward," and "St. Ronan's Well,"
besides much else. We once took the foremost of our novelists, the
greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and could not but
mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where the great magician sat so
often and so long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky,
and that back green where faithful Camp lies.[1]

[Footnote 1: This favorite dog "died about January, 1809, and was
buried, in a fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the
house in Castle Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family
in tears about the grave, as her father himself smoothed the turf above
Camp with the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to
dine abroad that day, but apologized on account of the death of 'a dear
old friend.'"--_Lockhart's Life of Scott_.]

He sat down in his large, green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself close
to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, "a
very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and
containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such
order that it might have come from the silversmith's window half an
hour before." He took out his paper, then, starting up angrily, said,
"'Go spin, you jade, go spin.' No, d---- it, it won't do:--

  'My spinnin'-wheel is auld and stiff;
     The rock o't wunna stand, sir;
   To keep the temper-pin in tiff
     Employs ower aft my hand, sir.'

I am off the fang.[2] I can make nothing of 'Waverley' to-day; I'll
awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you thief." The great creature
rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a _maud_ (a plaid)
with him. "White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo!" said he, when he
got to the street. Maida gambolled and whisked among the snow; and her
master strode across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North
Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith
of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said
at her death, eight years after, "Much tradition, and that of the best,
has died with this excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose
spirits and _cleanliness_ and freshness of mind and body made old age
lovely and desirable."

[Footnote 2: Applied to a pump when it is dry and its valve has lost
its "fang."]

Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in he
and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. "Marjorie!
Marjorie!" shouted her friend, "where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin
doo?" In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and
he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. "Come yer ways in,
Wattie." "No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi' me, and you may
come to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in
your lap." "Tak' Marjorie, and it _on-ding o' snaw!_" said Mrs. Keith.
He said to himself, "On-ding--that's odd--that is the very word."
"Hoot, awa'! look here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made
to hold lambs,--the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of two breadths
sewed together, and uncut at one end, making a poke or _cul de sac_.
"Tak' yer lamb," said she, laughing at the contrivance; and so the Pet
was first well happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into the
plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb,--Maida
gambolling through the snow, and running races in her mirth.

Didn't he face "the angry airt," and make her bield his bosom, and into
his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm, rosy
little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There the two
remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their
laughter; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having made
the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and, standing
sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to be,
"Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck
wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock." This done
repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely
and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers,--he saying it after
her,--

  "Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven;
   Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven;
   Pin, pan, musky, dan;
   Tweedle-um, twoddle-um,
   Twenty-wan; eerie, orie, ourie,
   You, are, out."

He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical
gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came to
Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and pin-Pan, Musky-dan, Tweedle-um,
Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said _Musky-Dan_ especially
was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat fresh from
the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite bitter in her
displeasure at his ill behavior and stupidness.

Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two
getting wild with excitement over "Gil Morrice" or the "Baron of
Smailholm"; and he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat
Constance's speeches in "King John," till he swayed to and fro, sobbing
his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one possessed,
repeating,--

  "For I am sick, and capable of fears,--
   Oppressed with wrong, and, therefore, full of fears;
   A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
   A woman, naturally born to fears."

  "If thou, that bidst me be content, wert grim,
   Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb,--
   Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious--"

Or, drawing herself up "to the height of her great argument,"--

  "I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,
   For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout.
   Here I and sorrow sit."

Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to
Mrs. Keith, "She's the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and
her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does."

Thanks to the little book whose title heads this paper, and thanks
still more to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much
of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these
fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals of
Pet Marjorie: before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and
sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the paper, "Cut out in her
last illness," and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, whom
she worshipped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still,
over which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured
themselves; there is the old watermark, "Lingard, 1808." The two
portraits are very like each other, but plainly done at different
times; it is a chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager
to tell what is going on within as to gather in all the glories from
without; quick with the wonder and the pride of life: they are eyes
that would not be soon satisfied with seeing; eyes that would devour
their object, and yet childlike and fearless; and that is a mouth that
will not be soon satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to
Scott's own, which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile,
and speaking feature.

There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him,--fearless, and
full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy's child. One cannot look
at it without thinking of Wordsworth's lines on poor Hartley
Coleridge:--

  "O blessed vision, happy child!
   Thou art so exquisitely wild,
   I thought of thee with many fears,--
   Of what might be thy lot in future years.
   I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
   Lord of thy house and hospitality;
   And Grief, uneasy lover! ne'er at rest
   But when she sat within the touch of thee.
   O too industrious folly!
   O vain and causeless melancholy!
   Nature will either end thee quite,
   Or, lengthening out thy season of delight,
   Preserve for thee, by individual right,
   A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flock."

And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm, plump little
playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately friend's lines:--

  "Loving she is, and tractable, though wild;
   And Innocence hath privilege in her,
   To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes
   And feats of cunning, and the pretty round
   Of trespasses, affected to provoke
   Mock chastisement and partnership in play.
   And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth
   Not less if unattended and alone
   Than when both young and old sit gathered round
   And take delight in its activity,
   Even so this happy creature of herself
   Is all-sufficient; solitude to her
   Is blithe society: she fills the air
   With gladness and involuntary songs."

But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly say that all this
is true, and that these letters are as really Marjorie's as was this
light brown hair; indeed, you could as easily fabricate the one as the
other.

There was an old servant--Jeanie Robertson--who was forty years in her
grandfather's family. Marjorie Fleming, or, as she is called in the
letters and by Sir Walter, Maidie, was the last child she kept.
Jeanie's wages never exceeded £3 a year, and when she left service she
had saved £40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despising
and ill-using her sister Isabella,--a beautiful and gentle child. This
partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. "I
mention this," writes her surviving sister, "for the purpose of telling
you an instance of Maidie's generous justice. When only five years old,
when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and
old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade.
She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, rushed all the
faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister not
pulled her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew
on Isabella to 'give it her' for spoiling her favorite's dress; Maidie
rushed in between, crying out, 'Pay (whip) Maidjie as much as you like,
and I'll not say one word; but touch Isy, and I'll roar like a bull!'
Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my mother used to take me
to the place, and told the story always in the exact same words." This
Jeanie must have been a character. She took great pride in exhibiting
Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic acquirements when nineteen
months old, to the officers of a militia regiment then quartered in
Kirkcaldy. This performance was so amusing that it was often repeated,
and the little theologian was presented by them with a cap and
feathers. Jeanie's glory was "putting him through the carritch"
(catechism) in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with "Wha made
ye, ma bonnie man?" For the correctness of this and the three next
replies, Jeanie had no anxiety, but the tone changed to menace, and the
closed _nieve_ (fist) was shaken in the child's face as she demanded,
"Of what are you made?" "DIRT," was the answer uniformly given. "Wull
ye never learn to say _dust_, ye thrawn deevil?" with a cuff from the
opened hand, was the as inevitable rejoinder.

Here is Maidie's first letter, before she was six. The spelling is
unaltered, and there are no "commoes."

"MY DEAR ISA,--I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved
letters which you was so good as to write to me. This is the first time
I ever wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the
Square, and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull
necessity of putting it to Death. Miss Potune, a Lady of my
acquaintance, praises me dreadfully. I repeated something out of Dean
Swift, and she said I was fit for the stage, and you may think I was
primmed up with majestick Pride, but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a
little birsay,--birsay is a word which is a word that William composed
which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This horrid fat simpliton
says that my Aunt is beautifull, which is intirely impossible, for that
is not her nature."

What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that have been out of
the Sardonic Dean? What other child of that age would have used
"beloved" as she does? This power of affection, this faculty of
_be_loving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She
perilled her all upon it, and it may have been as well--we know,
indeed, that it was far better--for her that this wealth of love was so
soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver and Receiver. This must
have been the law of her earthly life. Love was indeed "her Lord and
King"; and it was perhaps well for her that she found so soon that her
and our only Lord and King Himself is Love.

Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead: "The day of my existence here
has been delightful and enchanting. On Saturday I expected no less than
three well-made Bucks, the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. Geo.
Crakey (Craigie), and Wm. Keith, and Jn. Keith,--the first is the
funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and I walked to Craky-hall
(Craigiehall), hand in hand in Innocence and matitation (meditation)
sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender-hearted mind
which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so polite
to me in the hole state of my existence. Mr. Craky you must know is a
great Buck, and pretty good-looking.

"I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The birds are singing
sweetly, the calf doth frisk, and nature shows her glorious face."

Here is a confession: "I confess I have been very more like a little
young divil than a creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach
me religion and my multiplication and to be good and all my other
lessons I stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she had made
on the ground and was sulky and was dreadfully passionate, but she
never whiped me but said Marjory go into another room and think what a
great crime you are committing letting your temper git the better of
you. But I went so sulkily that the Devil got the better of me but she
never never never whips me so that I think I would be the better of it
and the next time that I behave ill I think she should do it for she
never never does it.... Isabella has given me praise for checking my
temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an hole hour teaching
me to write."

Our poor little wifie,--_she_ has no doubts of the personality of the
Devil! "Yesterday I behave extremely ill in God's most holy church for
I would never attend myself nor let Isabella attend which was a great
crime for she often, often tells me that when to or three are geathered
together God is in the midst of them, and it was the very same Divil
that tempted Job that tempted me I am sure; but he resisted Satan
though he had boils and many many other misfortunes which I have
escaped.... I am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege
(plague) that my multiplication gives me you can't conceive it the most
Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant
endure."

This is delicious; and what harm is there in her "Devilish"? It is
strong language merely; even old Rowland Hill used to say "he grudged
the Devil those rough and ready words." "I walked to that delightful
place Craky-hall with a delightful young man beloved by all his friends
espacially by me his loveress, but I must not talk any more about him
for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalmen but I will
never forget him!... I am very very glad that satan has not given me
boils and many other misfortunes--In the holy bible these words are
written that the Devil goes like a roaring lyon in search of his pray
but the lord lets us escape from him but we" (_pauvre petite!_) "do not
strive with this awfull Spirit.... To-day I pronunced a word which
should never come out of a lady's lips it was that I called John a
Impudent Bitch. I will tell you what I think made me in so bad a humor
is I got one or two of that bad bad sina (senna) tea to-day,"--a better
excuse for bad humor and bad language than most.

She has been reading the Book of Esther: "It was a dreadful thing that
Haman was hanged on the very gallows which he had prepared for Mordeca
to hang him and his ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel to
hang his sons for they did not commit the crime; _but then Jesus was
not then come to teach us to be merciful._" This is wise and
beautiful,--has upon it the very dew of youth and of holiness. Out of
the mouths of babes and sucklings He perfects His praise.

"This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I have play half the
Day and I get money too but alas I owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned
2 pence whenever I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to make simme
colings nots of interrigations peorids commoes, etc.... As this is
Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable and Religious subjects. First I
should be very thankful I am not a begger."

This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to have been all she
was able for.

"I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name,
belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks cocks hens bubblyjocks
2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I think it is shocking to
think that the dog and cat should bear them" (this is a meditation
physiological), "and they are drowned after all. I would rather have a
man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not bear like women-dogs; it
is a hard case--it is shocking. I cam here to enjoy natures delightful
breath it is sweeter than a fial (phial) of rose oil."

Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our
gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the
services of his flail, when the King had the worst of it at Cramond
Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time,
and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher.
Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to
present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having
done this for his unknown king after the _splore_, and when George the
Fourth came to Edinburgh this ceremony was performed in silver at
Holyrood. It is a lovely neuk this Braehead, preserved almost as it was
200 years ago. "Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie,--two quaintly
cropped yew-trees,--still thrive, the burn runs as it did in her time,
and sings the same quiet tune,--as much the same and as different as
_Now_ and _Then_. The house full of old family relics and pictures, the
sun shining on them through the small deep windows with their plate
glass; and there, blinking at the sun, and chattering contentedly, is a
parrot, that might, for its looks of eld, have been in the ark, and
domineered over and _deaved_ the dove. Everything about the place is
old and fresh.

This is beautiful: "I am very sorry to say that I forgot God--that is
to say I forgot to pray to-day and Isabella told me that I should be
thankful that God did not forget me--if he did, O what would become of
me if I was in danger and God not friends with me--I must go to
unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin--how could I resist it O
no I will never do it again--no no--if I can help it!" (Canny wee
wifie!) "My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so
much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my charecter is lost
among the Braehead people. I hope I will be religious again--but as for
regaining my charecter I despare for it." (Poor little "habit and
repute"!)

Her temper, her passion, and her "badness" are almost daily confessed
and deplored: "I will never again trust to my own power, for I see that
I cannot be good without God's assistance,--I will not trust in my own
selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me,--it will indeed."
"Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feal Satan beginning
to tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me." "Remorse is the
worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a marter to it."

Poor dear little sinner! Here comes the world again: "In my travels I
met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esq., and from him I got
ofers of marage--offers of marage, did I say? Nay plenty heard me." A
fine scent for "breach of promise"!

This is abrupt and strong: "The Divil is curced and all his works. 'Tis
a fine work _Newton on the profecies_. I wonder if there is another
book of poems comes near the Bible. The Divil always girns at the sight
of the Bible." "Miss Potune" (her "simpliton" friend) "is very fat; she
pretends to be very learned. She says she saw a stone that dropt from
the skies; but she is a good Christian." Here comes her views on church
government: "An Annibabtist is a thing I am not a member of--I am a
Pisplekan (Episcopalian) just now, and" (O you little Laodicean and
Latitudinarian!) "a Prisbeteran at Kirkcaldy!"--(_Blandula! Vagula!
coelum et animum mutas quæ trans mare_ (i.e. _trans
Bodotriam_)--_curris!_)--"my native town." "Sentiment is not what I am
acquainted with as yet, though I wish it, and should like to practise
it." (!) "I wish I had a great, great deal of gratitude in my heart, in
all my body." "There is a new novel published, named _Self-Control_"
(Mrs. Brunton's)--"a very good maxim forsooth!" This is shocking:
"Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John Balfour, Esq., offered to kiss
me, and offered to marry me, though the man" (a fine directness this!)
"was espused, and his wife was present and said he must ask her
permission; but he did not. I think he was ashamed and confounded
before 3 gentelman--Mr. Jobson and 2 Mr. Kings." "Mr. Banester's"
(Bannister's) "Budjet is to-night; I hope it will be a good one. A
great many authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally." You
are right, Marjorie. "A Mr. Burns writes a beautiful song on Mr.
Cunhaming, whose wife desarted him--truly it is a most beautiful one."
"I like to read the Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin,
Dickey, flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some were good
birds and others bad, but Peccay was the most dutiful and obedient to
her parients." "Thomson is a beautiful author, and Pope, but nothing to
Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. 'Macbeth' is a pretty
composition, but awful one." "The _Newgate Calender_ is very
instructive." (!) "A sailor called here to say farewell; it must be
dreadful to leave his native country when he might get a wife; or
perhaps me, for I love him very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid
me to speak about love." This antiphlogistic regimen and lesson is ill
to learn by our Maidie, for here she sins again: "Love is a very
papithatick thing" (it is almost a pity to correct this into pathetic),
"as well as troublesome and tiresome--but O Isabella forbid me to speak
of it." Here are her reflections on a pineapple: "I think the price of
a pine-apple is very dear: it is a whole bright goulden guinea, that
might have sustained a poor family." Here is a new vernal simile: "The
hedges are sprouting like chicks from the eggs when they are newly
hatched or, as the vulgar say, _clacked_." "Doctor Swift's works are
very funny; I got some of them by heart." "Moreheads sermons are I hear
much praised, but I never read sermons of any kind; but I read
novelettes and my Bible, and I never forget it, or my prayers." Bravo,
Marjorie!

She seems now, when still about six, to have broken out into song:--

"EPHIBOL (EPIGRAM OR EPITAPH,--WHO KNOWS WHICH?) ON MY DEAR LOVE,
ISABELLA.

  "Here lies sweet Isabel in bed,
   With a night-cap on her head;
   Her skin is soft, her face is fair,
   And she has very pretty hair:
   She and I in bed lies nice,
   And undisturbed by rats or mice.
   She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan,
   Though he plays upon the organ.
   Her nails are neat, her teeth are white;
   Her eyes are very, very bright.
   In a conspicuous town she lives,
   And to the poor her money gives.
   Here ends sweet Isabella's story,
   And may it be much to her glory!"

Here are some bits at random:--

  "Of summer I am very fond,
   And love to bathe into a pond:
   The look of sunshine dies away,
   And will not let me out to play.
   I love the morning's sun to spy
   Glittering through the casement's eye;
   The rays of light are very sweet,
   And puts away the taste of meat.
   The balmy breeze comes down from heaven,
   And makes us like for to be living."

"The casawary is an curious bird, and so is the gigantic crane, and the
pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth holds a bucket of fish and
water. Fighting is what ladies is not qualyfied for, they would not
make a good figure in battle or in a duel. Alas! we females are of
little use to our country. The history of all the malcontents as ever
was hanged is amusing." Still harping on the Newgate Calendar!

"Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie of swine, geese,
cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my soul."

"I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of 2 or 3
months old, would you believe it, the father broke its leg, and he
killed another! I think he ought to be transported or hanged."

"Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street, for all the
lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars parade there."

"I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one in all my
life, and don't believe I ever shall; but I hope I can be content
without going to one. I can be quite happy without my desire being
granted."

"Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the toothake, and she
walked with a long night-shift at dead of night like a ghost, and I
thought she was one. She prayed for nature's sweet restorer--balmy
sleep--but did not get it--a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to
make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake from top to toe.
Superstition is a very mean thing and should be despised and shunned."

Here is her weakness and her strength again: "In the love-novels all
the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not allow me to speak
about lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined for my taste." "Miss
Egward's (Edgeworth's) tails are very good, particularly some that are
very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False
Keys, etc. etc."

"Tom Jones and Grey's Elegey in a country churchyard are both
excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men." Are
our Marjories nowadays better or worse because they cannot read Tom
Jones unharmed? More better than worse; but who among them can repeat
Gray's Lines on a distant prospect of Eton College as could our Maidie?

Here is some more of her prattle: "I went into Isabella's bed to make
her smile like the Genius Demedicus" (the Venus de Medicis) "or the
statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at
which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap.
All was now hushed up again, but again my anger burst forth at her
biding me get up."

She begins thus loftily,--

  "Death the righteous love to see,
   But from it doth the wicked flee."

Then suddenly breaks off as if with laughter,--

  "I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them!"

  "There is a thing I love to see,--
   That is, our monkey catch a flee!"

  "I love in Isa's bed to lie,--
   Oh, such a joy and luxury!
   The bottom of the bed I sleep,
   And with great care within I creep;
   Oft I embrace her feet of lillys,
   But she has goton all the pillys.
   Her neck I never can embrace,
   But I do hug her feet in place."

How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of words!--"I lay
at the foot of the bed because Isabella said I disturbed her by
continial fighting and kicking, but I was very dull, and continially at
work reading the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I had
slept at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much
interested in the fate of poor, poor Emily."

Here is one of her swains:--

  "Very soft and white his cheeks;
   His hair is red, and grey his breeks;
   His tooth is like the daisy fair:
   His only fault is in his hair."

This is a higher flight:--

  "DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. F.

  "Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
   And now this world forever leaved;
   Their father, and their mother too,
   They sigh and weep as well as you:
   Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched;
   Into eternity theire laanched.
   A direful death indeed they had,
   As wad put any parent mad;
   But she was more than usual calm:
   She did not give a single dam."

This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to speak of
the want of the _n_. We fear "she" is the abandoned mother, in spite of
her previous sighs and tears.

"Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and not rattel
over a prayer,--for that we are kneeling at the footstool of our Lord
and Creator, who saves us from eternal damnation, and from
unquestionable fire and brimston."

She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots:--

  "Queen Mary was much loved by all,
   Both by the great and by the small;
   But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise,
   And I suppose she has gained a prize;
   For I do think she would not go
   Into the _awful_ place below.
   There is a thing that I must tell,--
   Elizabeth went to fire and hell!
   He who would teach her to be civil,
   It must be her great friend, the divil!"

She hits off Darnley well:--

  "A noble's son,--a handsome lad,--
   By some queer way or other, had
   Got quite the better of her heart;
   With him she always talked apart:
   Silly he was, but very fair;
   A greater buck was not found there."

"By some queer way or other"; is not this the general case and the
mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doctrine of "elective
affinities" discovered by our Pet Maidie.

      SONNET TO A MONKEY.

  "O lively, O most charming pug!
   Thy graceful air and heavenly mug!
   The beauties of his mind do shine,
   And every bit is shaped and fine.
   Your teeth are whiter than the snow;
   Your a great buck, your a great beau;
   Your eyes are of so nice a shape,
   More like a Christian's than an ape;
   Your cheek is like the rose's blume;
   Your hair is like the raven's plume;
   His nose's cast is of the Roman:
   He is a very pretty woman.
   I could not get a rhyme for Roman,
   So was obliged to call him woman."

This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James the Second
being killed at Roxburgh:--

  "He was killed by a cannon splinter,
   Quite in the middle of the winter;
   Perhaps it was not at that time,
   But I can get no other rhyme!"

Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th October, 1811.
You can see how her nature is deepening and enriching:--

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--You will think that I entirely forget you but I
assure you that you are greatly mistaken. I think of you always and
often sigh to think of the distance between us two loving creatures of
nature. We have regular hours for all our occupations first at 7
o'clock we go to the dancing and come home at 8 we then read our Bible
and get our repeating, and then play till ten, then we get our music
till 11 when we get our writing and accounts we sew from 12 till 1
after which I get my gramer, and then work till five. At 7 we come and
knit till 8 when we dont go to the dancing. This is an exact
description. I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love, reverence
and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of

"MARJORY FLEMING.

"_P.S._--An old pack of cards (!) would be very exeptible."

This other is a month earlier:--

"MY DEAR LITTLE MAMA,--I was truly happy to hear that you were all
well. We are surrounded with measles at present on every side, for the
Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was near Death's Door, and one night
her father lifted her out of bed, and she fell down as they thought
lifeless. Mr. Heron said, 'That lassie's deed noo,'--'I'm no deed yet.'
She then threw up a big worm nine inches and a half long. I have begun
dancing, but am not very fond of it, for the boys strikes and mocks
me.--I have been another night at the dancing; I like it better. I will
write to you as often as I can; but I am afraid not every week. _I long
for you with the longings of a child to embrace you,--to fold you in my
arms. I respect you with all the respect due to a mother. You dont know
how I love you. So I shall remain, your loving child,_--M. FLEMING."

What rich involution of love in the words marked! Here are some lines
to her beloved Isabella, in July, 1811:--

  "There is a thing that I do want,--
   With you these beauteous walks to haunt;
   We would be happy if you would
   Try to come over if you could.
   Then I would all quite happy be
  _Now and for all eternity_.
   My mother is so very sweet,
  _And checks my appetite to eat;_
   My father shows us what to do;
   But O I'm sure that I want you.
   I have no more of poetry;
   O Isa do remember me,
   And try to love your Marjory."

In a letter from "Isa" to

       "Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming,
  favored by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming,"

she says: "I long much to see you, and talk over all our old stories
together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for my old
friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear
Multiplication table going on? Are you still as much attached to 9
times 9 as you used to be?"

But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee,--to come "quick to
confusion." The measles she writes of seized her, and she died on the
19th of December, 1811. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in
bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming
world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the following lines by
Burns,--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the
judgment-seat,--the publican's prayer in paraphrase:--

    "Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?
       Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?--
     Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between,
       Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms?
       Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?
     Or Death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode?
       For guilt, for GUILT, my terrors are in arms;
     I tremble to approach an angry God,
   And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod.

    "Fain would I say, Forgive my foul offence,
       Fain promise never more to disobey;
     But should my Author health again dispense,
       Again I might forsake fair virtue's way,
       Again in folly's path might go astray,
     Again exalt the brute and sink the man.
       Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray,
     Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan,
   Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran?

    "O thou great Governor of all below,
       If I might dare a lifted eye to thee,
     Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,
       And still the tumult of the raging sea;
       With that controlling power assist even me
     Those headstrong furious passions to confine,
       For all unfit I feel my powers to be
       To rule their torrent in the allowed line;
   O, aid me with thy help, OMNIPOTENCE DIVINE."

It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother's and
Isabella Keith's letters written immediately after her death. Old and
withered, tattered and pale, they are now: but when you read them, how
quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language of
affection which only women and Shakespeare and Luther can use,--that
power of detaining the soul over the beloved object and its loss!

     "K. PHILIP (_to_ CONSTANCE).

  You are as fond of grief as of your child.

      CONSTANCE.

  Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
  Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
  Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
  Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
  Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.
  Then I have reason to be fond of grief."

What variations cannot love play on this one string!

In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says of her dead
Maidie: "Never did I behold so beautiful an object. It resembled the
finest waxwork. There was in the countenance an expression of sweetness
and serenity which seemed to indicate that the pure spirit had
anticipated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal frame. To tell
you what your Maidie said of you would fill volumes; for you was the
constant theme of her discourse, the subject of her thoughts, and ruler
of her actions. The last time she mentioned you was a few hours before
all sense save that of suffering was suspended, when she said to Dr.
Johnstone, 'If you let me out at the New Year, I will be quite
contented.' I asked her what made her so anxious to get out then. 'I
want to purchase a New Year's gift for Isa Keith with the sixpence you
gave me for being patient in the measles; and I would like to choose it
myself.' I do not remember her speaking afterwards, except to complain
of her head, till just before she expired, when she articulated, 'O
mother! mother!'"

       *       *       *       *       *

Do we make too much of this little child, who has been in her grave in
Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more years? We may of her
cleverness,--not of her affectionateness, her nature. What a picture
the _animosa infans_ gives us of herself,--her vivacity, her
passionateness, her precocious love-making, her passion for nature, for
swine, for all living things, her reading, her turn for expression, her
satire, her frankness, her little sins and rages, her great
repentances! We don't wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk
of his plaid, and played himself with her for hours.

The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was at a Twelfth Night
Supper at Scott's, in Castle Street. The company had all come,--all but
Marjorie. Scott's familiars, whom we all know, were there,--all were
come but Marjorie; and all were dull because Scott was dull. "Where's
that bairn? what can have come over her? I'll go myself and see." And
he was getting up, and would have gone; when the bell rang, and in came
Duncan Roy and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan chair, which was
brought right into the lobby, and its top raised. And there, in its
darkness and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie in white, her eyes gleaming,
and Scott bending over her in ecstasy,--"hung over her enamored." "Sit
ye there, my dautie, till they all see you"; and forthwith he brought
them all. You can fancy the scene. And he lifted her up and marched to
his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and set her down beside him;
and then began the night, and such a night! Those who knew Scott best
said, that night was never equalled; Maidie and he were the stars; and
she gave them _Constance's_ speeches and "Helvellyn," the ballad then
much in vogue, and all her _répertoire_,--Scott showing her off, and
being ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders.

We are indebted for the following to her sister: "Her birth was 15th
January, 1803; her death, 19th December, 1811. I take this from her
Bibles.[3] I believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigor of
body, and beautifully formed arms, and, until her last illness, never
was an hour in bed.

[Footnote 3: "Her Bible is before me; _a pair_, as then called; the
faded marks are just as she placed them. There is one at David's lament
over Jonathan."]

"I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments
of Marjorie's last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all
that pertains to her. You are quite correct in stating that measles
were the cause of her death. My mother was struck by the patient
quietness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her
ardent, impulsive nature; but love and poetic feeling were unquenched.
When Dr. Johnstone rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the
request speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year's day
came. When asked why she was so desirous of getting out, she
immediately rejoined, 'O, I am so anxious to buy something with my
sixpence for my dear Isa Keith.' Again, when lying very still, her
mother asked her if there was anything she wished: 'O yes! if you would
just leave the room-door open a wee bit, and play "The Land o' the
Leal," and I will lie and _think_, and enjoy myself' (this is just as
stated to me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike
to parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the
nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My
father, who idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing
mentioned her n

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