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Guy Mannering, Or, the Astrologer — Complete

by Walter Scott · English · Gutenberg #5355 · 1,027,687 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Guy Mannering, Or, the Astrologer — Complete

Author: Walter Scott


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #5355]
                Most recently updated: May 29, 2019

Language: English

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GUY MANNERING

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT


VOLUME I




GUY MANNERING

OR

THE ASTROLOGER


VOLUME I


     'Tis said that words and signs have power
     O'er sprites in planetary hour;
     But scarce I praise their venturous part
     Who tamper with such dangerous art.

          Lay of the Last Minstrel.



INTRODUCTION

The Novel or Romance of Waverley made its way to the public slowly, of
course, at first, but afterwards with such accumulating popularity as
to encourage the Author to a second attempt. He looked about for a name
and a subject; and the manner in which the novels were composed cannot
be better illustrated than by reciting the simple narrative on which
Guy Mannering was originally founded; but to which, in the progress of
the work, the production ceased to bear any, even the most distant
resemblance. The tale was originally told me by an old servant of my
father's, an excellent old Highlander, without a fault, unless a
preference to mountain dew over less potent liquors be accounted one.
He believed as firmly in the story as in any part of his creed.

A grave and elderly person, according to old John MacKinlay's account,
while travelling in the wilder parts of Galloway, was benighted. With
difficulty he found his way to a country seat, where, with the
hospitality of the time and country, he was readily admitted. The owner
of the house, a gentleman of good fortune, was much struck by the
reverend appearance of his guest, and apologised to him for a certain
degree of confusion which must unavoidably attend his reception, and
could not escape his eye. The lady of the house was, he said, confined
to her apartment, and on the point of making her husband a father for
the first time, though they had been ten years married. At such an
emergency, the laird said, he feared his guest might meet with some
apparent neglect.

'Not so, sir,' said the stranger; 'my wants are few, and easily
supplied, and I trust the present circumstances may even afford an
opportunity of showing my gratitude for your hospitality. Let me only
request that I may be informed of the exact minute of the birth; and I
hope to be able to put you in possession of some particulars which may
influence in an important manner the future prospects of the child now
about to come into this busy and changeful world. I will not conceal
from you that I am skilful in understanding and interpreting the
movements of those planetary bodies which exert their influences on the
destiny of mortals. It is a science which I do not practise, like
others who call themselves astrologers, for hire or reward; for I have
a competent estate, and only use the knowledge I possess for the
benefit of those in whom I feel an interest.' The laird bowed in
respect and gratitude, and the stranger was accommodated with an
apartment which commanded an ample view of the astral regions.

The guest spent a part of the night in ascertaining the position of the
heavenly bodies, and calculating their probable influence; until at
length the result of his observations induced him to send for the
father and conjure him in the most solemn manner to cause the
assistants to retard the birth if practicable, were it but for five
minutes. The answer declared this to be impossible; and almost in the
instant that the message was returned the father and his guest were
made acquainted with the birth of a boy.

The Astrologer on the morrow met the party who gathered around the
breakfast table with looks so grave and ominous as to alarm the fears
of the father, who had hitherto exulted in the prospects held out by
the birth of an heir to his ancient property, failing which event it
must have passed to a distant branch of the family. He hastened to draw
the stranger into a private room.

'I fear from your looks,' said the father, 'that you have bad tidings
to tell me of my young stranger; perhaps God will resume the blessing
He has bestowed ere he attains the age of manhood, or perhaps he is
destined to be unworthy of the affection which we are naturally
disposed to devote to our offspring?'

'Neither the one nor the other,' answered the stranger; 'unless my
judgment greatly err, the infant will survive the years of minority,
and in temper and disposition will prove all that his parents can wish.
But with much in his horoscope which promises many blessings, there is
one evil influence strongly predominant, which threatens to subject him
to an unhallowed and unhappy temptation about the time when he shall
attain the age of twenty-one, which period, the constellations
intimate, will be the crisis of his fate. In what shape, or with what
peculiar urgency, this temptation may beset him, my art cannot
discover.'

'Your knowledge, then, can afford us no defence,' said the anxious
father, 'against the threatened evil?'

'Pardon me,' answered the stranger, 'it can. The influence of the
constellations is powerful; but He who made the heavens is more
powerful than all, if His aid be invoked in sincerity and truth. You
ought to dedicate this boy to the immediate service of his Maker, with
as much sincerity as Samuel was devoted to the worship in the Temple by
his parents. You must regard him as a being separated from the rest of
the world. In childhood, in boyhood, you must surround him with the
pious and virtuous, and protect him to the utmost of your power from
the sight or hearing of any crime, in word or action. He must be
educated in religious and moral principles of the strictest
description. Let him not enter the world, lest he learn to partake of
its follies, or perhaps of its vices. In short, preserve him as far as
possible from all sin, save that of which too great a portion belongs
to all the fallen race of Adam. With the approach of his twenty-first
birthday comes the crisis of his fate. If he survive it, he will be
happy and prosperous on earth, and a chosen vessel among those elected
for heaven. But if it be otherwise--' The Astrologer stopped, and
sighed deeply.

'Sir,' replied the parent, still more alarmed than before, 'your words
are so kind, your advice so serious, that I will pay the deepest
attention to your behests; but can you not aid me farther in this most
important concern? Believe me, I will not be ungrateful.'

'I require and deserve no gratitude for doing a good action,' said the
stranger, 'in especial for contributing all that lies in my power to
save from an abhorred fate the harmless infant to whom, under a
singular conjunction of planets, last night gave life. There is my
address; you may write to me from time to time concerning the progress
of the boy in religious knowledge. If he be bred up as I advise, I
think it will be best that he come to my house at the time when the
fatal and decisive period approaches, that is, before he has attained
his twenty-first year complete. If you send him such as I desire, I
humbly trust that God will protect His own through whatever strong
temptation his fate may subject him to.' He then gave his host his
address, which was a country seat near a post town in the south of
England, and bid him an affectionate farewell.

The mysterious stranger departed, but his words remained impressed upon
the mind of the anxious parent. He lost his lady while his boy was
still in infancy. This calamity, I think, had been predicted by the
Astrologer; and thus his confidence, which, like most people of the
period, he had freely given to the science, was riveted and confirmed.
The utmost care, therefore, was taken to carry into effect the severe
and almost ascetic plan of education which the sage had enjoined. A
tutor of the strictest principles was employed to superintend the
youth's education; he was surrounded by domestics of the most
established character, and closely watched and looked after by the
anxious father himself.

The years of infancy, childhood, and boyhood passed as the father could
have wished. A young Nazarene could not have been bred up with more
rigour. All that was evil was withheld from his observation: he only
heard what was pure in precept, he only witnessed what was worthy in
practice.

But when the boy began to be lost in the youth, the attentive father
saw cause for alarm. Shades of sadness, which gradually assumed a
darker character, began to over-cloud the young man's temper. Tears,
which seemed involuntary, broken sleep, moonlight wanderings, and a
melancholy for which he could assign no reason, seemed to threaten at
once his bodily health and the stability of his mind. The Astrologer
was consulted by letter, and returned for answer that this fitful state
of mind was but the commencement of his trial, and that the poor youth
must undergo more and more desperate struggles with the evil that
assailed him. There was no hope of remedy, save that he showed
steadiness of mind in the study of the Scriptures. 'He suffers,
continued the letter of the sage,' from the awakening of those harpies
the passions, which have slept with him, as with others, till the
period of life which he has now attained. Better, far better, that they
torment him by ungrateful cravings than that he should have to repent
having satiated them by criminal indulgence.'

The dispositions of the young man were so excellent that he combated,
by reason and religion, the fits of gloom which at times overcast his
mind, and it was not till he attained the commencement of his
twenty-first year that they assumed a character which made his father
tremble for the consequences. It seemed as if the gloomiest and most
hideous of mental maladies was taking the form of religious despair.
Still the youth was gentle, courteous, affectionate, and submissive to
his father's will, and resisted with all his power the dark suggestions
which were breathed into his mind, as it seemed by some emanation of
the Evil Principle, exhorting him, like the wicked wife of Job, to
curse God and die.

The time at length arrived when he was to perform what was then thought
a long and somewhat perilous journey, to the mansion of the early
friend who had calculated his nativity. His road lay through several
places of interest, and he enjoyed the amusement of travelling more
than he himself thought would have been possible. Thus he did not reach
the place of his destination till noon on the day preceding his
birthday. It seemed as if he had been carried away with an unwonted
tide of pleasurable sensation, so as to forget in some degree what his
father had communicated concerning the purpose of his journey. He
halted at length before a respectable but solitary old mansion, to
which he was directed as the abode of his father's friend.

The servants who came to take his horse told him he had been expected
for two days. He was led into a study, where the stranger, now a
venerable old man, who had been his father's guest, met him with a
shade of displeasure, as well as gravity, on his brow. 'Young man,' he
said, 'wherefore so slow on a journey of such importance?' 'I thought,'
replied the guest, blushing and looking downward,' that there was no
harm in travelling slowly and satisfying my curiosity, providing I
could reach your residence by this day; for such was my father's
charge.' 'You were to blame,' replied the sage, 'in lingering,
considering that the avenger of blood was pressing on your footsteps.
But you are come at last, and we will hope for the best, though the
conflict in which you are to be engaged will be found more dreadful the
longer it is postponed. But first accept of such refreshments as nature
requires to satisfy, but not to pamper, the appetite.'

The old man led the way into a summer parlour, where a frugal meal was
placed on the table. As they sat down to the board they were joined by
a young lady about eighteen years of age, and so lovely that the sight
of her carried off the feelings of the young stranger from the
peculiarity and mystery of his own lot, and riveted his attention to
everything she did or said. She spoke little and it was on the most
serious subjects. She played on the harpsichord at her father's
command, but it was hymns with which she accompanied the instrument. At
length, on a sign from the sage, she left the room, turning on the
young stranger as she departed a look of inexpressible anxiety and
interest.

The old man then conducted the youth to his study, and conversed with
him upon the most important points of religion, to satisfy himself that
he could render a reason for the faith that was in him. During the
examination the youth, in spite of himself, felt his mind occasionally
wander, and his recollections go in quest of the beautiful vision who
had shared their meal at noon. On such occasions the Astrologer looked
grave, and shook his head at this relaxation of attention; yet, on the
whole, he was pleased with the youth's replies.

At sunset the young man was made to take the bath; and, having done so,
he was directed to attire himself in a robe somewhat like that worn by
Armenians, having his long hair combed down on his shoulders, and his
neck, hands, and feet bare. In this guise he was conducted into a
remote chamber totally devoid of furniture, excepting a lamp, a chair,
and a table, on which lay a Bible. 'Here,' said the Astrologer, 'I must
leave you alone to pass the most critical period of your life. If you
can, by recollection of the great truths of which we have spoken, repel
the attacks which will be made on your courage and your principles, you
have nothing to apprehend. But the trial will be severe and arduous.'
His features then assumed a pathetic solemnity, the tears stood in his
eyes, and his voice faltered with emotion as he said, 'Dear child, at
whose coming into the world I foresaw this fatal trial, may God give
thee grace to support it with firmness!'

The young man was left alone; and hardly did he find himself so, when,
like a swarm of demons, the recollection of all his sins of omission
and commission, rendered even more terrible by the scrupulousness with
which he had been educated, rushed on his mind, and, like furies armed
with fiery scourges, seemed determined to drive him to despair. As he
combated these horrible recollections with distracted feelings, but
with a resolved mind, he became aware that his arguments were answered
by the sophistry of another, and that the dispute was no longer
confined to his own thoughts. The Author of Evil was present in the
room with him in bodily shape, and, potent with spirits of a melancholy
cast, was impressing upon him the desperation of his state, and urging
suicide as the readiest mode to put an end to his sinful career. Amid
his errors, the pleasure he had taken in prolonging his journey
unnecessarily, and the attention which he had bestowed on the beauty of
the fair female when his thoughts ought to have been dedicated to the
religious discourse of her father, were set before him in the darkest
colours; and he was treated as one who, having sinned against light,
was therefore deservedly left a prey to the Prince of Darkness.

As the fated and influential hour rolled on, the terrors of the hateful
Presence grew more confounding to the mortal senses of the victim, and
the knot of the accursed sophistry became more inextricable in
appearance, at least to the prey whom its meshes surrounded. He had not
power to explain the assurance of pardon which he continued to assert,
or to name the victorious name in which he trusted. But his faith did
not abandon him, though he lacked for a time the power of expressing
it. 'Say what you will,' was his answer to the Tempter; 'I know there
is as much betwixt the two boards of this Book as can ensure me
forgiveness for my transgressions and safety for my soul.' As he spoke,
the clock, which announced the lapse of the fatal hour, was heard to
strike. The speech and intellectual powers of the youth were instantly
and fully restored; he burst forth into prayer, and expressed in the
most glowing terms his reliance on the truth and on the Author of the
Gospel. The Demon retired, yelling and discomfited, and the old man,
entering the apartment, with tears congratulated his guest on his
victory in the fated struggle.

The young man was afterwards married to the beautiful maiden, the first
sight of whom had made such an impression on him, and they were
consigned over at the close of the story to domestic happiness. So
ended John MacKinlay's legend.

The Author of Waverley had imagined a possibility of framing an
interesting, and perhaps not an unedifying, tale out of the incidents
of the life of a doomed individual, whose efforts at good and virtuous
conduct were to be for ever disappointed by the intervention, as it
were, of some malevolent being, and who was at last to come off
victorious from the fearful struggle. In short, something was meditated
upon a plan resembling the imaginative tale of Sintram and his
Companions, by Mons. le Baron de la Motte Fouque, although, if it then
existed, the author had not seen it.

The scheme projected may be traced in the three or four first chapters
of the work; but farther consideration induced the author to lay his
purpose aside. It appeared, on mature consideration, that astrology,
though its influence was once received and admitted by Bacon himself,
does not now retain influence over the general mind sufficient even to
constitute the mainspring of a romance. Besides, it occurred that to do
justice to such a subject would have required not only more talent than
the Author could be conscious of possessing, but also involved
doctrines and discussions of a nature too serious for his purpose and
for the character of the narrative. In changing his plan, however,
which was done in the course of printing, the early sheets retained the
vestiges of the original tenor of the story, although they now hang
upon it as an unnecessary and unnatural incumbrance. The cause of such
vestiges occurring is now explained and apologised for.

It is here worthy of observation that, while the astrological doctrines
have fallen into general contempt, and been supplanted by superstitions
of a more gross and far less beautiful character, they have, even in
modern days, retained some votaries.

One of the most remarkable believers in that forgotten and despised
science was a late eminent professor of the art of legerdemain. One
would have thought that a person of this description ought, from his
knowledge of the thousand ways in which human eyes could be deceived,
to have been less than others subject to the fantasies of superstition.
Perhaps the habitual use of those abstruse calculations by which, in a
manner surprising to the artist himself, many tricks upon cards, etc.,
are performed, induced this gentleman to study the combination of the
stars and planets, with the expectation of obtaining prophetic
communications.

He constructed a scheme of his own nativity, calculated according to
such rules of art as he could collect from the best astrological
authors. The result of the past he found agreeable to what had hitherto
befallen him, but in the important prospect of the future a singular
difficulty occurred. There were two years during the course of which he
could by no means obtain any exact knowledge whether the subject of the
scheme would be dead or alive. Anxious concerning so remarkable a
circumstance, he gave the scheme to a brother astrologer, who was also
baffled in the same manner. At one period he found the native, or
subject, was certainly alive; at another that he was unquestionably
dead; but a space of two years extended between these two terms, during
which he could find no certainty as to his death or existence.

The astrologer marked the remarkable circumstance in his diary, and
continued his exhibitions in various parts of the empire until the
period was about to expire during which his existence had been
warranted as actually ascertained. At last, while he was exhibiting to
a numerous audience his usual tricks of legerdemain, the hands whose
activity had so often baffled the closest observer suddenly lost their
power, the cards dropped from them, and he sunk down a disabled
paralytic. In this state the artist languished for two years, when he
was at length removed by death. It is said that the diary of this
modern astrologer will soon be given to the public.

The fact, if truly reported, is one of those singular coincidences
which occasionally appear, differing so widely from ordinary
calculation, yet without which irregularities human life would not
present to mortals, looking into futurity, the abyss of impenetrable
darkness which it is the pleasure of the Creator it should offer to
them. Were everything to happen in the ordinary train of events, the
future would be subject to the rules of arithmetic, like the chances of
gaming. But extraordinary events and wonderful runs of luck defy the
calculations of mankind and throw impenetrable darkness on future
contingencies.

To the above anecdote, another, still more recent, may be here added.
The author was lately honoured with a letter from a gentleman deeply
skilled in these mysteries, who kindly undertook to calculate the
nativity of the writer of Guy Mannering, who might be supposed to be
friendly to the divine art which he professed. But it was impossible to
supply data for the construction of a horoscope, had the native been
otherwise desirous of it, since all those who could supply the minutiae
of day, hour, and minute have been long removed from the mortal sphere.

Having thus given some account of the first idea, or rude sketch, of
the story, which was soon departed from, the Author, in following out
the plan of the present edition, has to mention the prototypes of the
principal characters in Guy Mannering.

Some circumstances of local situation gave the Author in his youth an
opportunity of seeing a little, and hearing a great deal, about that
degraded class who are called gipsies; who are in most cases a mixed
race between the ancient Egyptians who arrived in Europe about the
beginning of the fifteenth century and vagrants of European descent.

The individual gipsy upon whom the character of Meg Merrilies was
founded was well known about the middle of the last century by the name
of Jean Gordon, an inhabitant of the village of Kirk Yetholm, in the
Cheviot Hills, adjoining to the English Border. The Author gave the
public some account of this remarkable person in one of the early
numbers of Blackwood's Magazine, to the following purpose:--

'My father remembered old Jean Gordon of Yetholm, who had great sway
among her tribe. She was quite a Meg Merrilies, and possessed the
savage virtue of fidelity in the same perfection. Having been often
hospitably received at the farmhouse of Lochside, near Yetholm, she had
carefully abstained from committing any depredations on the farmer's
property. But her sons (nine in number) had not, it seems, the same
delicacy, and stole a brood-sow from their kind entertainer. Jean was
mortified at this ungrateful conduct, and so much ashamed of it that
she absented herself from Lochside for several years.

'It happened in course of time that, in consequence of some temporary
pecuniary necessity, the goodman of Lochside was obliged to go to
Newcastle to raise some money to pay his rent. He succeeded in his
purpose, but, returning through the mountains of Cheviot, he was
benighted and lost his way.

'A light glimmering through the window of a large waste barn, which had
survived the farm-house to which it had once belonged, guided him to a
place of shelter; and when he knocked at the door it was opened by Jean
Gordon. Her very remarkable figure, for she was nearly six feet high,
and her equally remarkable features and dress, rendered it impossible
to mistake her for a moment, though he had not seen her for years; and
to meet with such a character in so solitary a place, and probably at
no great distance from her clan, was a grievous surprise to the poor
man, whose rent (to lose which would have been ruin) was about his
person.

'Jean set up a loud shout of joyful recognition--

"Eh, sirs! the winsome gudeman of Lochside! Light down, light down; for
ye maunna gang farther the night, and a friend's house sae near." The
farmer was obliged to dismount and accept of the gipsy's offer of
supper and a bed. There was plenty of meat in the barn, however it
might be come by, and preparations were going on for a plentiful
repast, which the farmer, to the great increase of his anxiety,
observed was calculated for ten or twelve guests, of the same
description, probably, with his landlady.

'Jean left him in no doubt on the subject. She brought to his
recollection the story of the stolen sow, and mentioned how much pain
and vexation it had given her. Like other philosophers, she remarked
that the world grew worse daily; and, like other parents, that the
bairns got out of her guiding, and neglected the old gipsy regulations,
which commanded them to respect in their depredations the property of
their benefactors. The end of all this was an inquiry what money the
farmer had about him; and an urgent request, or command, that he would
make her his purse-keeper, since the bairns, as she called her sons,
would be soon home. The poor farmer made a virtue of necessity, told
his story, and surrendered his gold to Jean's custody. She made him put
a few shillings in his pocket, observing, it would excite suspicion
should he be found travelling altogether penniless.

'This arrangement being made, the farmer lay down on a sort of
shake-down, as the Scotch call it, or bed-clothes disposed upon some
straw, but, as will easily be believed, slept not.

'About midnight the gang returned, with various articles of plunder,
and talked over their exploits in language which made the farmer
tremble. They were not long in discovering they had a guest, and
demanded of Jean whom she had got there.

'"E'en the winsome gudeman of Lochside, poor body," replied Jean; "he's
been at Newcastle seeking for siller to pay his rent, honest man, but
deil-be-lickit he's been able to gather in, and sae he's gaun e'en hame
wi' a toom purse and a sair heart."

"'That may be, Jean," replied one of the banditti, "but we maun ripe
his pouches a bit, and see if the tale be true or no." Jean set up her
throat in exclamations against this breach of hospitality, but without
producing any change in their determination. The farmer soon heard
their stifled whispers and light steps by his bedside, and understood
they were rummaging his clothes. When they found the money which the
providence of Jean Gordon had made him retain, they held a consultation
if they should take it or no; but the smallness of the booty, and the
vehemence of Jean's remonstrances, determined them in the negative.
They caroused and went to rest. As soon as day dawned Jean roused her
guest, produced his horse, which she had accommodated behind the
hallan, and guided him for some miles, till he was on the highroad to
Lochside. She then restored his whole property; nor could his earnest
entreaties prevail on her to accept so much as a single guinea.

'I have heard the old people at Jedburgh say, that all Jean's sons were
condemned to die there on the same day. It is said the jury were
equally divided, but that a friend to justice, who had slept during the
whole discussion, waked suddenly and gave his vote for condemnation in
the emphatic words, "Hang them a'!" Unanimity is not required in a
Scottish jury, so the verdict of guilty was returned. Jean was present,
and only said, "The Lord help the innocent in a day like this!" Her own
death was accompanied with circumstances of brutal outrage, of which
poor Jean was in many respects wholly undeserving. She had, among other
demerits, or merits, as the reader may choose to rank it, that of being
a stanch Jacobite. She chanced to be at Carlisle upon a fair or
market-day, soon after the year 1746, where she gave vent to her
political partiality, to the great offence of the rabble of that city.
Being zealous in their loyalty when there was no danger, in proportion
to the tameness with which they had surrendered to the Highlanders in
1745, the mob inflicted upon poor Jean Gordon no slighter penalty than
that of ducking her to death in the Eden. It was an operation of some
time, for Jean was a stout woman, and, struggling with her murderers,
often got her head above water; and, while she had voice left,
continued to exclaim at such intervals, "Charlie yet! Charlie yet!"
When a child, and among the scenes which she frequented, I have often
heard these stories, and cried piteously for poor Jean Gordon.

'Before quitting the Border gipsies, I may mention that my grandfather,
while riding over Charterhouse Moor, then a very extensive common, fell
suddenly among a large band of them, who were carousing in a hollow of
the moor, surrounded by bushes. They instantly seized on his horse's
bridle with many shouts of welcome, exclaiming (for he was well known
to most of them) that they had often dined at his expense, and he must
now stay and share their good cheer. My ancestor was, a little alarmed,
for, like the goodman of Lochside, he had more money about his person
than he cared to risk in such society. However, being naturally a bold,
lively-spirited man, he entered into the humour of the thing and sate
down to the feast, which consisted of all the varieties of game,
poultry, pigs, and so forth that could be collected by a wide and
indiscriminate system of plunder. The dinner was a very merry one; but
my relative got a hint from some of the older gipsies to retire just
when--
     The mirth and fun grew fast and furious,

and, mounting his horse accordingly, he took a French leave of his
entertainers, but without experiencing the least breach of hospitality.
I believe Jean Gordon was at this festival.'[Footnote: Blackwood's
Magazine, vol. I, p. 54]

Notwithstanding the failure of Jean's issue, for which

     Weary fa' the waefu' wuddie,

a granddaughter survived her, whom I remember to have seen. That is, as
Dr. Johnson had a shadowy recollection of Queen Anne as a stately lady
in black, adorned with diamonds, so my memory is haunted by a solemn
remembrance of a woman of more than female height, dressed in a long
red cloak, who commenced acquaintance by giving me an apple, but whom,
nevertheless, I looked on with as much awe as the future Doctor, High
Church and Tory as he was doomed to be, could look upon the Queen. I
conceive this woman to have been Madge Gordon, of whom an impressive
account is given in the same article in which her mother Jean is
mentioned, but not by the present writer:--

'The late Madge Gordon was at this time accounted the Queen of the
Yetholm clans. She was, we believe, a granddaughter of the celebrated
Jean Gordon, and was said to have much resembled her in appearance. The
following account of her is extracted from the letter of a friend, who
for many years enjoyed frequent and favourable opportunities of
observing the characteristic peculiarities of the Yetholm
tribes:--"Madge Gordon was descended from the Faas by the mother's
side, and was married to a Young. She was a remarkable personage--of a
very commanding presence and high stature, being nearly six feet high.
She had a large aquiline nose, penetrating eyes, even in her old age,
bushy hair, that hung around her shoulders from beneath a gipsy bonnet
of straw, a short cloak of a peculiar fashion, and a long staff nearly
as tall as herself. I remember her well; every week she paid my father
a visit for her awmous when I was a little boy, and I looked upon Madge
with no common degree of awe and terror. When she spoke vehemently (for
she made loud complaints) she used to strike her staff upon the floor
and throw herself into an attitude which it was impossible to regard
with indifference. She used to say that she could bring from the
remotest parts of the island friends to revenge her quarrel while she
sat motionless in her cottage; and she frequently boasted that there
was a time when she was of still more considerable importance, for
there were at her wedding fifty saddled asses, and unsaddled asses
without number. If Jean Gordon was the prototype of the CHARACTER of
Meg Merrilies, I imagine Madge must have sat to the unknown author as
the representative of her PERSON."'[Footnote: Blackwood's Magazine,
vol. I, p. 56.]

How far Blackwood's ingenious correspondent was right, how far
mistaken, in his conjecture the reader has been informed.

To pass to a character of a very different description, Dominie
Sampson,--the reader may easily suppose that a poor modest humble
scholar who has won his way through the classics, yet has fallen to
leeward in the voyage of life, is no uncommon personage in a country
where a certain portion of learning is easily attained by those who are
willing to suffer hunger and thirst in exchange for acquiring Greek and
Latin. But there is a far more exact prototype of the worthy Dominie,
upon which is founded the part which he performs in the romance, and
which, for certain particular reasons, must be expressed very generally.

Such a preceptor as Mr. Sampson is supposed to have been was actually
tutor in the family of a gentleman of considerable property. The young
lads, his pupils, grew up and went out in the world, but the tutor
continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in Scotland
in former days, where food and shelter were readily afforded to humble
friends and dependents. The laird's predecessors had been imprudent, he
himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away his sons, whose
success in life might have balanced his own bad luck and incapacity.
Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came. The estate was
sold; and the old man was about to remove from the house of his fathers
to go he knew not whither, when, like an old piece of furniture, which,
left alone in its wonted corner, may hold together for a long while,
but breaks to pieces on an attempt to move it, he fell down on his own
threshold under a paralytic affection.

The tutor awakened as from a dream. He saw his patron dead, and that
his patron's only remaining child, an elderly woman, now neither
graceful nor beautiful, if she ever had been either the one or the
other, had by this calamity become a homeless and penniless orphan. He
addressed her nearly in the words which Dominie Sampson uses to Miss
Bertram, and professed his determination not to leave her. Accordingly,
roused to the exercise of talents which had long slumbered, he opened a
little school and supported his patron's child for the rest of her
life, treating her with the same humble observance and devoted
attention which he had used towards her in the days of her prosperity.

Such is the outline of Dominie Sampson's real story, in which there is
neither romantic incident nor sentimental passion; but which, perhaps,
from the rectitude and simplicity of character which it displays, may
interest the heart and fill the eye of the reader as irresistibly as if
it respected distresses of a more dignified or refined character.

These preliminary notices concerning the tale of Guy Mannering and some
of the characters introduced may save the author and reader in the
present instance the trouble of writing and perusing a long string of
detached notes.

I may add that the motto of this novel was taken from the Lay of the
Last Minstrel, to evade the conclusions of those who began to think
that, as the author of Waverley never quoted the works of Sir Walter
Scott, he must have reason for doing so, and that the circumstances
might argue an identity between them.

ABBOTSFORD, August 1, 1829.




ADDITIONAL NOTE

GALWEGIAN LOCALITIES AND PERSONAGES WHICH HAVE BEEN SUPPOSED TO BE
ALLUDED TO IN THE NOVEL

An old English proverb says, that more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool
knows; and the influence of the adage seems to extend to works composed
under the influence of an idle or foolish planet. Many corresponding
circumstances are detected by readers of which the Author did not
suspect the existence. He must, however, regard it as a great
compliment that, in detailing incidents purely imaginary, he has been
so fortunate in approximating reality as to remind his readers of
actual occurrences. It is therefore with pleasure he notices some
pieces of local history and tradition which have been supposed to
coincide with the fictitious persons, incidents, and scenery of Guy
Mannering.

The prototype of Dirk Hatteraick is considered as having been a Dutch
skipper called Yawkins. This man was well known on the coast of
Galloway and Dumfriesshire, as sole proprietor and master of a buckkar,
or smuggling lugger, called the 'Black Prince.' Being distinguished by
his nautical skill and intrepidity, his vessel was frequently
freighted, and his own services employed, by French, Dutch, Manx, and
Scottish smuggling companies.

A person well known by the name of Buckkar-tea, from having been a
noted smuggler of that article, and also by that of Bogle Bush, the
place of his residence, assured my kind informant Mr. Train, that he
had frequently seen upwards of two hundred Lingtow men assemble at one
time, and go off into the interior of the country, fully laden with
contraband goods.

In those halcyon days of the free trade, the fixed price for carrying a
box of tea or bale of tobacco from the coast of Galloway to Edinburgh
was fifteen shillings, and a man with two horses carried four such
packages. The trade was entirely destroyed by Mr. Pitt's celebrated
commutation law, which, by reducing the duties upon excisable articles,
enabled the lawful dealer to compete with the smuggler. The statute was
called in Galloway and Dumfries-shire, by those who had thriven upon
the contraband trade, 'the burning and starving act.'

Sure of such active assistance on shore, Yawkins demeaned himself so
boldly that his mere name was a terror to the officers of the revenue.
He availed himself of the fears which his presence inspired on one
particular night, when, happening to be ashore with a considerable
quantity of goods in his sole custody, a strong party of excisemen came
down on him. Far from shunning the attack, Yawkins sprung forward,
shouting, 'Come on, my lads; Yawkins is before you.' The revenue
officers were intimidated and relinquished their prize, though defended
only by the courage and address of a single man. On his proper element
Yawkins was equally successful. On one occasion he was landing his
cargo at the Manxman's Lake near Kirkcudbright, when two revenue
cutters (the 'Pigmy' and the 'Dwarf') hove in sight at once on
different tacks, the one coming round by the Isles of Fleet, the other
between the point of Rueberry and the Muckle Ron. The dauntless
freetrader instantly weighed anchor and bore down right between the
luggers, so close that he tossed his hat on the deck of the one and his
wig on that of the other, hoisted a cask to his maintop, to show his
occupation, and bore away under an extraordinary pressure of canvass,
without receiving injury. To account for these and other hairbreadth
escapes, popular superstition alleged that Yawkins insured his
celebrated buckkar by compounding with the devil for one-tenth of his
crew every voyage. How they arranged the separation of the stock and
tithes is left to our conjecture. The buckkar was perhaps called the
'Black Prince' in honour of the formidable insurer.

The 'Black Prince' used to discharge her cargo at Luce, Balcarry, and
elsewhere on the coast; but her owner's favourite landing-places were
at the entrance of the Dee and the Cree, near the old Castle of
Rueberry, about six miles below Kirkcudbright. There is a cave of large
dimensions in the vicinity of Rueberry, which, from its being
frequently used by Yawkins and his supposed connexion with the
smugglers on the shore, is now called Dirk Hatteraick's Cave. Strangers
who visit this place, the scenery of which is highly romantic, are also
shown, under the name of the Gauger's Loup, a tremendous precipice,
being the same, it is asserted, from which Kennedy was precipitated.

Meg Merrilies is in Galloway considered as having had her origin in the
traditions concerning the celebrated Flora Marshal, one of the royal
consorts of Willie Marshal, more commonly called the Caird of
Barullion, King of the Gipsies of the Western Lowlands. That potentate
was himself deserving of notice from the following peculiarities:--He
was born in the parish of Kirkmichael about the year 1671; and, as he
died at Kirkcudbright 23d November 1792, he must then have been in the
one hundred and twentieth year of his age. It cannot be said that this
unusually long lease of existence was noted by any peculiar excellence
of conduct or habits of life. Willie had been pressed or enlisted in
the army seven times, and had deserted as often; besides three times
running away from the naval service. He had been seventeen times
lawfully married; and, besides, such a reasonably large share of
matrimonial comforts, was, after his hundredth year, the avowed father
of four children by less legitimate affections. He subsisted in his
extreme old age by a pension from the present Earl of Selkirk's
grandfather. Will Marshal is buried in Kirkcudbright church, where his
monument is still shown, decorated with a scutcheon suitably blazoned
with two tups' horns and two cutty spoons.

In his youth he occasionally took an evening walk on the highway, with
the purpose of assisting travellers by relieving them of the weight of
their purses. On one occasion the Caird of Barullion robbed the Laird
of Bargally at a place between Carsphairn and Dalmellington. His
purpose was not achieved without a severe struggle, in which the gipsy
lost his bonnet, and was obliged to escape, leaving it on the road. A
respectable farmer happened to be the next passenger, and, seeing the
bonnet, alighted, took it up, and rather imprudently put it on his own
head. At this instant Bargally came up with some assistants, and,
recognising the bonnet, charged the farmer of Bantoberick with having
robbed him, and took him into custody. There being some likeness
between the parties, Bargally persisted in his charge, and, though the
respectability of the farmer's character was proved or admitted, his
trial before the Circuit Court came on accordingly. The fatal bonnet
lay on the table of the court. Bargally swore that it was the identical
article worn by the man who robbed him; and he and others likewise
deponed that they had found the accused on the spot where the crime was
committed, with the bonnet on his head. The case looked gloomily for
the prisoner, and the opinion of the judge seemed unfavourable. But
there was a person in court who knew well both who did and who did not
commit the crime. This was the Caird of Barullion, who, thrusting
himself up to the bar near the place where Bargally was standing,
suddenly seized on the bonnet, put it on his head, and, looking the
Laird full in the face, asked him, with a voice which attracted the
attention of the court and crowded audience--'Look at me, sir, and tell
me, by the oath you have sworn--Am not _I_ the man who robbed you
between Carsphairn and Dalmellington?' Bargally replied, in great
astonishment, 'By Heaven! you are the very man.' 'You see what sort of
memory this gentleman has,' said the volunteer pleader; 'he swears to
the bonnet whatever features are under it. If you yourself, my Lord,
will put it on your head, he will be willing to swear that your
Lordship was the party who robbed him between Carsphairn and
Dalmellington.' The tenant of Bantoberick was unanimously acquitted;
and thus Willie Marshal ingeniously contrived to save an innocent man
from danger, without incurring any himself, since Bargally's evidence
must have seemed to every one too fluctuating to be relied upon.

While the King of the Gipsies was thus laudably occupied, his royal
consort, Flora, contrived, it is said, to steal the hood from the
judge's gown; for which offence, combined with her presumptive guilt as
a gipsy, she was banished to New England, whence she never returned.

Now, I cannot grant that the idea of Meg Merrilies was, in the first
concoction of the character, derived from Flora Marshal, seeing I have
already said she was identified with Jean Gordon, and as I have not the
Laird of Bargally's apology for charging the same fact on two several
individuals. Yet I am quite content that Meg should be considered as a
representative of her sect and class in general, Flora as well as
others.

The other instances in which my Gallovidian readers have obliged me by
assigning to

     Airy nothing
     A local habitation and a name,

shall also be sanctioned so far as the Author may be entitled to do so.
I think the facetious Joe Miller records a case pretty much in point;
where the keeper of a museum, while showing, as he said, the very sword
with which Balaam was about to kill his ass, was interrupted by one of
the visitors, who reminded him that Balaam was not possessed of a
sword, but only wished for one. 'True, sir,' replied the ready-witted
cicerone; 'but this is the very sword he wished for.' The Author, in
application of this story, has only to add that, though ignorant of the
coincidence between the fictions of the tale and some real
circumstances, he is contented to believe he must unconsciously have
thought or dreamed of the last while engaged in the composition of Guy
Mannering.






GUY MANNERING

OR

THE ASTROLOGER




CHAPTER I

     He could not deny that, looking round upon the dreary region,
     and seeing nothing but bleak fields and naked trees, hills
     obscured by fogs, and flats covered with inundations, he did
     for some time suffer melancholy to prevail upon him, and
     wished himself again safe at home.

          --'Travels of Will. Marvel,' IDLER, No. 49.


It was in the beginning of the month of November 17--when a young
English gentleman, who had just left the university of Oxford, made use
of the liberty afforded him to visit some parts of the north of
England; and curiosity extended his tour into the adjacent frontier of
the sister country. He had visited, on the day that opens our history,
some monastic ruins in the county of Dumfries, and spent much of the
day in making drawings of them from different points, so that, on
mounting his horse to resume his journey, the brief and gloomy twilight
of the season had already commenced. His way lay through a wide tract
of black moss, extending for miles on each side and before him. Little
eminences arose like islands on its surface, bearing here and there
patches of corn, which even at this season was green, and sometimes a
hut or farm-house, shaded by a willow or two and surrounded by large
elder-bushes. These insulated dwellings communicated with each other by
winding passages through the moss, impassable by any but the natives
themselves. The public road, however, was tolerably well made and safe,
so that the prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger.
Still it is uncomfortable to travel alone and in the dark through an
unknown country; and there are few ordinary occasions upon which Fancy
frets herself so much as in a situation like that of Mannering.

As the light grew faint and more faint, and the morass appeared blacker
and blacker, our traveller questioned more closely each chance
passenger on his distance from the village of Kippletringan, where he
proposed to quarter for the night. His queries were usually answered by
a counter-challenge respecting the place from whence he came. While
sufficient daylight remained to show the dress and appearance of a
gentleman, these cross interrogatories were usually put in the form of
a case supposed, as, 'Ye'll hae been at the auld abbey o' Halycross,
sir? there's mony English gentlemen gang to see that.'--Or, 'Your
honour will be come frae the house o' Pouderloupat?' But when the voice
of the querist alone was distinguishable, the response usually was,
'Where are ye coming frae at sic a time o' night as the like o'
this?'--or, 'Ye'll no be o' this country, freend?' The answers, when
obtained, were neither very reconcilable to each other nor accurate in
the information which they afforded. Kippletringan was distant at first
'a gey bit'; then the 'gey bit' was more accurately described as
'ablins three mile'; then the 'three mile' diminished into 'like a mile
and a bittock'; then extended themselves into 'four mile or thereawa';
and, lastly, a female voice, having hushed a wailing infant which the
spokeswoman carried in her arms, assured Guy Mannering, 'It was a weary
lang gate yet to Kippletringan, and unco heavy road for foot
passengers.' The poor hack upon which Mannering was mounted was
probably of opinion that it suited him as ill as the female respondent;
for he began to flag very much, answered each application of the spur
with a groan, and stumbled at every stone (and they were not few) which
lay in his road.

Mannering now grew impatient. He was occasionally betrayed into a
deceitful hope that the end of his journey was near by the apparition
of a twinkling light or two; but, as he came up, he was disappointed to
find that the gleams proceeded from some of those farm-houses which
occasionally ornamented the surface of the extensive bog. At length, to
complete his perplexity, he arrived at a place where the road divided
into two. If there had been light to consult the relics of a
finger-post which stood there, it would have been of little avail, as,
according to the good custom of North Britain, the inscription had been
defaced shortly after its erection. Our adventurer was therefore
compelled, like a knight-errant of old, to trust to the sagacity of his
horse, which, without any demur, chose the left-hand path, and seemed
to proceed at a somewhat livelier pace than before, affording thereby a
hope that he knew he was drawing near to his quarters for the evening.
This hope, however, was not speedily accomplished, and Mannering, whose
impatience made every furlong seem three, began to think that
Kippletringan was actually retreating before him in proportion to his
advance.

It was now very cloudy, although the stars from time to time shed a
twinkling and uncertain light. Hitherto nothing had broken the silence
around him but the deep cry of the bog-blitter, or bull-of-the-bog, a
large species of bittern, and the sighs of the wind as it passed along
the dreary morass. To these was now joined the distant roar of the
ocean, towards which the traveller seemed to be fast approaching. This
was no circumstance to make his mind easy. Many of the roads in that
country lay along the sea-beach, and were liable to be flooded by the
tides, which rise with great height, and advance with extreme rapidity.
Others were intersected with creeks and small inlets, which it was only
safe to pass at particular times of the tide. Neither circumstance
would have suited a dark night, a fatigued horse, and a traveller
ignorant of his road. Mannering resolved, therefore, definitively to
halt for the night at the first inhabited place, however poor, he might
chance to reach, unless he could procure a guide to this unlucky
village of Kippletringan.

A miserable hut gave him an opportunity to execute his purpose. He
found out the door with no small difficulty, and for some time knocked
without producing any other answer than a duet between a female and a
cur-dog, the latter yelping as if he would have barked his heart out,
the other screaming in chorus. By degrees the human tones predominated;
but the angry bark of the cur being at the instant changed into a howl,
it is probable something more than fair strength of lungs had
contributed to the ascendency.

'Sorrow be in your thrapple then!' these were the first articulate
words, 'will ye no let me hear what the man wants, wi' your yaffing?'

'Am I far from Kippletringan, good dame?'

'Frae Kippletringan!!!' in an exalted tone of wonder, which we can but
faintly express by three points of admiration. 'Ow, man! ye should hae
hadden eassel to Kippletringan; ye maun gae back as far as the whaap,
and baud the whaap till ye come to Ballenloan, and then--'

'This will never do, good dame! my horse is almost quite knocked up;
can you not give me a night's lodgings?'

'Troth can I no; I am a lone woman, for James he's awa to Drumshourloch
Fair with the year-aulds, and I daurna for my life open the door to ony
o' your gang-there-out sort o' bodies.'

'But what must I do then, good dame? for I can't sleep here upon the
road all night.'

'Troth, I kenna, unless ye like to gae down and speer for quarters at
the Place. I'se warrant they'll tak ye in, whether ye be gentle or
semple.'

'Simple enough, to be wandering here at such a time of night,' thought
Mannering, who was ignorant of the meaning of the phrase; 'but how
shall I get to the PLACE, as you call it?'

'Ye maun baud wessel by the end o' the loan, and take tent o' the
jaw-hole.'

'O, if ye get to eassel and wessel again, I am undone! Is there nobody
that could guide me to this Place? I will pay him handsomely.'

The word pay operated like magic. 'Jock, ye villain,' exclaimed the
voice from the interior, 'are ye lying routing there, and a young
gentleman seeking the way to the Place? Get up, ye fause loon, and show
him the way down the muckle loaning. He'll show you the way, sir. and
I'se warrant ye'll be weel put up; for they never turn awa naebody frae
the door; and ye 'll be come in the canny moment, I'm thinking, for the
laird's servant--that's no to say his body-servant, but the helper
like--rade express by this e'en to fetch the houdie, and he just staid
the drinking o' twa pints o' tippenny to tell us how my leddy was ta'en
wi' her pains.'

'Perhaps,' said Mannering, 'at such a time a stranger's arrival might
be inconvenient?'

'Hout, na, ye needna be blate about that; their house is muckle eneugh,
and decking time's aye canty time.'

By this time Jock had found his way into all the intricacies of a
tattered doublet and more tattered pair of breeches, and sallied forth,
a great white-headed, bare-legged, lubberly boy of twelve years old, so
exhibited by the glimpse of a rush-light which his half-naked mother
held in such a manner as to get a peep at the stranger without greatly
exposing herself to view in return. Jock moved on westward by the end
of the house, leading Mannering's horse by the bridle, and piloting
with some dexterity along the little path which bordered the formidable
jaw-hole, whose vicinity the stranger was made sensible of by means of
more organs than one. His guide then dragged the weary hack along a
broken and stony cart-track, next over a ploughed field, then broke
down a slap, as he called it, in a drystone fence, and lugged the
unresisting animal through the breach, about a rood of the simple
masonry giving way in the splutter with which he passed. Finally, he
led the way through a wicket into something which had still the air of
an avenue, though many of the trees were felled. The roar of the ocean
was now near and full, and the moon, which began to make her
appearance, gleamed on a turreted and apparently a ruined mansion of
considerable extent. Mannering fixed his eyes upon it with a
disconsolate sensation.

'Why, my little fellow,' he said, 'this is a ruin, not a house?'

'Ah, but the lairds lived there langsyne; that's Ellangowan Auld Place.
There's a hantle bogles about it; but ye needna be feared, I never saw
ony mysell, and we're just at the door o' the New Place.'

Accordingly, leaving the ruins on the right, a few steps brought the
traveller in front of a modern house of moderate size, at which his
guide rapped with great importance. Mannering told his circumstances to
the servant; and the gentleman of the house, who heard his tale from
the parlour, stepped forward and welcomed the stranger hospitably to
Ellangowan. The boy, made happy with half-a-crown, was dismissed to his
cottage, the weary horse was conducted to a stall, and Mannering found
himself in a few minutes seated by a comfortable supper, for which his
cold ride gave him a hearty appetite.




CHAPTER II

     Comes me cranking in,
     And cuts me from the best of all my land
     A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle, out

          Henry IV, Part 1.


The company in the parlour at Ellangowan consisted of the Laird and a
sort of person who might be the village schoolmaster, or perhaps the
minister's assistant; his appearance was too shabby to indicate the
minister, considering he was on a visit to the Laird.

The Laird himself was one of those second-rate sort of persons that are
to be found frequently in rural situations. Fielding has described one
class as feras consumere nati; but the love of field-sports indicates a
certain activity of mind, which had forsaken Mr. Bertram, if ever he
possessed it. A good-humoured listlessness of countenance formed the
only remarkable expression of his features, although they were rather
handsome than otherwise. In fact, his physiognomy indicated the inanity
of character which pervaded his life. I will give the reader some
insight into his state and conversation before he has finished a long
lecture to Mannering upon the propriety and comfort of wrapping his
stirrup-irons round with a wisp of straw when he had occasion to ride
in a chill evening.

Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan succeeded to a long pedigree and a short
rent-roll, like many lairds of that period. His list of forefathers
ascended so high that they were lost in the barbarous ages of Galwegian
independence, so that his genealogical tree, besides the Christian and
crusading names of Godfreys, and Gilberts, and Dennises, and Rolands
without end, bore heathen fruit of yet darker ages--Arths, and Knarths,
and Donagilds, and Hanlons. In truth, they had been formerly the stormy
chiefs of a desert but extensive domain, and the heads of a numerous
tribe called Mac-Dingawaie, though they afterwards adopted the Norman
surname of Bertram. They had made war, raised rebellions, been
defeated, beheaded, and hanged, as became a family of importance, for
many centuries. But they had gradually lost ground in the world, and,
from being themselves the heads of treason and traitorous conspiracies,
the Bertrams, or Mac-Dingawaies, of Ellangowan had sunk into
subordinate accomplices. Their most fatal exhibitions in this capacity
took place in the seventeenth century, when the foul fiend possessed
them with a spirit of contradiction, which uniformly involved them in
controversy with the ruling powers. They reversed the conduct of the
celebrated Vicar of Bray, and adhered as tenaciously to the weaker side
as that worthy divine to the stronger. And truly, like him, they had
their reward.

Allan Bertram of Ellangowan, who flourished tempore Caroli primi, was,
says my authority, Sir Robert Douglas, in his Scottish Baronage (see
the title 'Ellangowan'), 'a steady loyalist, and full of zeal for the
cause of His Sacred Majesty, in which he united with the great Marquis
of Montrose and other truly zealous and honourable patriots, and
sustained great losses in that behalf. He had the honour of knighthood
conferred upon him by His Most Sacred Majesty, and was sequestrated as
a malignant by the parliament, 1642, and afterwards as a resolutioner
in the year 1648.' These two cross-grained epithets of malignant and
resolutioner cost poor Sir Allan one half of the family estate. His son
Dennis Bertram married a daughter of an eminent fanatic who had a seat
in the council of state, and saved by that union the remainder of the
family property. But, as ill chance would have it, he became enamoured
of the lady's principles as well as of her charms, and my author gives
him this character: 'He was a man of eminent parts and resolution, for
which reason he was chosen by the western counties one of the committee
of noblemen and gentlemen to report their griefs to the privy council
of Charles II. anent the coming in of the Highland host in 1678.' For
undertaking this patriotic task he underwent a fine, to pay which he
was obliged to mortgage half of the remaining moiety of his paternal
property. This loss he might have recovered by dint of severe economy,
but on the breaking out of Argyle's rebellion Dennis Bertram was again
suspected by government, apprehended, sent to Dunnotar Castle on the
coast of the Mearns, and there broke his neck in an attempt to escape
from a subterranean habitation called the Whigs' Vault, in which he was
confined with some eighty of the same persuasion. The apprizer
therefore (as the holder of a mortgage was then called) entered upon
possession, and, in the language of Hotspur, 'came me cranking in,' and
cut the family out of another monstrous cantle of their remaining
property.

Donohoe Bertram, with somewhat of an Irish name and somewhat of an
Irish temper, succeeded to the diminished property of Ellangowan. He
turned out of doors the Reverend Aaron Macbriar, his mother's chaplain
(it is said they quarrelled about the good graces of a milkmaid); drank
himself daily drunk with brimming healths to the king, council, and
bishops; held orgies with the Laird of Lagg, Theophilus Oglethorpe, and
Sir James Turner; and lastly, took his grey gelding and joined Clavers
at Killiecrankie. At the skirmish of Dunkeld, 1689, he was shot dead by
a Cameronian with a silver button (being supposed to have proof from
the Evil One against lead and steel), and his grave is still called the
Wicked Laird's Lair.

His son Lewis had more prudence than seems usually to have belonged to
the family. He nursed what property was yet left to him; for Donohoe's
excesses, as well as fines and forfeitures, had made another inroad
upon the estate. And although even he did not escape the fatality which
induced the Lairds of Ellangowan to interfere with politics, he had yet
the prudence, ere he went out with Lord Kenmore in 1715, to convey his
estate to trustees, in order to parry pains and penalties in case the
Earl of Mar could not put down the Protestant succession. But Scylla
and Charybdis--a word to the wise--he only saved his estate at expense
of a lawsuit, which again subdivided the family property. He was,
however, a man of resolution. He sold part of the lands, evacuated the
old cattle, where the family lived in their decadence as a mouse (said
an old farmer) lives under a firlot. Pulling down part of these
venerable ruins, he built with the stones a narrow house of three
stories high, with a front like a grenadier's cap, having in the very
centre a round window like the single eye of a Cyclops, two windows on
each side, and a door in the middle, leading to a parlour and
withdrawing-room full of all manner of cross lights.

This was the New Place of Ellangowan, in which we left our hero, better
amused perhaps than our readers, and to this Lewis Bertram retreated,
full of projects for re-establishing the prosperity of his family. He
took some land into his own hand, rented some from neighbouring
proprietors, bought and sold Highland cattle and Cheviot sheep, rode to
fairs and trysts, fought hard bargains, and held necessity at the
staff's end as well as he might. But what he gained in purse he lost in
honour, for such agricultural and commercial negotiations were very ill
looked upon by his brother lairds, who minded nothing but
cock-fighting, hunting, coursing, and horse-racing, with now and then
the alternative of a desperate duel. The occupations which he followed
encroached, in their opinion, upon the article of Ellangowan's gentry,
and he found it necessary gradually to estrange himself from their
society, and sink into what was then a very ambiguous character, a
gentleman farmer. In the midst of his schemes death claimed his
tribute, and the scanty remains of a large property descended upon
Godfrey Bertram, the present possessor, his only son.

The danger of the father's speculations was soon seen. Deprived of
Laird Lewis's personal and active superintendence, all his undertakings
miscarried, and became either abortive or perilous. Without a single
spark of energy to meet or repel these misfortunes, Godfrey put his
faith in the activity of another. He kept neither hunters nor hounds,
nor any other southern preliminaries to ruin; but, as has been observed
of his countrymen, he kept a man of business, who answered the purpose
equally well. Under this gentleman's supervision small debts grew into
large, interests were accumulated upon capitals, movable bonds became
heritable, and law charges were heaped upon all; though Ellangowan
possessed so little the spirit of a litigant that he was on two
occasions charged to make payment of the expenses of a long lawsuit,
although he had never before heard that he had such cases in court.
Meanwhile his neighbours predicted his final ruin. Those of the higher
rank, with some malignity, accounted him already a degraded brother.
The lower classes, seeing nothing enviable in his situation, marked his
embarrassments with more compassion. He was even a kind of favourite
with them, and upon the division of a common, or the holding of a
black-fishing or poaching court, or any similar occasion when they
conceived themselves oppressed by the gentry, they were in the habit of
saying to each other, 'Ah, if Ellangowan, honest man, had his ain that
his forbears had afore him, he wadna see the puir folk trodden down
this gait.' Meanwhile, this general good opinion never prevented their
taking advantage of him on all possible occasions, turning their cattle
into his parks, stealing his wood, shooting his game, and so forth,
'for the Laird, honest man, he'll never find it; he never minds what a
puir body does.' Pedlars, gipsies, tinkers, vagrants of all
descriptions, roosted about his outhouses, or harboured in his kitchen;
and the Laird, who was 'nae nice body,' but a thorough gossip, like
most weak men, found recompense for his hospitality in the pleasure of
questioning them on the news of the country side.

A circumstance arrested Ellangowan's progress on the highroad to ruin.
This was his marriage with a lady who had a portion of about four
thousand pounds. Nobody in the neighbourhood could conceive why she
married him and endowed him with her wealth, unless because he had a
tall, handsome figure, a good set of features, a genteel address, and
the most perfect good-humour. It might be some additional
consideration, that she was herself at the reflecting age of
twenty-eight, and had no near relations to control her actions or
choice.

It was in this lady's behalf (confined for the first time after her
marriage) that the speedy and active express, mentioned by the old dame
of the cottage, had been despatched to Kippletringan on the night of
Mannering's arrival.

Though we have said so much of the Laird himself, it still remains that
we make the reader in some degree acquainted with his companion. This
was Abel Sampson, commonly called, from his occupation as a pedagogue,
Dominie Sampson. He was of low birth, but having evinced, even from his
cradle, an uncommon seriousness of disposition, the poor parents were
encouraged to hope that their bairn, as they expressed it, 'might wag
his pow in a pulpit yet.' With an ambitious view to such a
consummation, they pinched and pared, rose early and lay down late, ate
dry bread and drank cold water, to secure to Abel the means of
learning. Meantime, his tall, ungainly figure, his taciturn and grave
manners, and some grotesque habits of swinging his limbs and screwing
his visage while reciting his task, made poor Sampson the ridicule of
all his school-companions. The same qualities secured him at Glasgow
College a plentiful share of the same sort of notice. Half the youthful
mob of 'the yards' used to assemble regularly to see Dominie Sampson
(for he had already attained that honourable title) descend the stairs
from the Greek class, with his lexicon under his arm, his long
misshapen legs sprawling abroad, and keeping awkward time to the play
of his immense shoulder-blades, as they raised and depressed the loose
and threadbare black coat which was his constant and only wear. When he
spoke, the efforts of the professor (professor of divinity though he
was) were totally inadequate to restrain the inextinguishable laughter
of the students, and sometimes even to repress his own. The long,
sallow visage, the goggle eyes, the huge under-jaw, which appeared not
to open and shut by an act of volition, but to be dropped and hoisted
up again by some complicated machinery within the inner man, the harsh
and dissonant voice, and the screech-owl notes to which it was exalted
when he was exhorted to pronounce more distinctly,--all added fresh
subject for mirth to the torn cloak and shattered shoe, which have
afforded legitimate subjects of raillery against the poor scholar from
Juvenal's time downward. It was never known that Sampson either
exhibited irritability at this ill usage, or made the least attempt to
retort upon his tormentors. He slunk from college by the most secret
paths he could discover, and plunged himself into his miserable
lodging, where, for eighteenpence a week, he was allowed the benefit of
a straw mattress, and, if his landlady was in good humour, permission
to study his task by her fire. Under all these disadvantages, he
obtained a competent knowledge of Greek and Latin, and some
acquaintance with the sciences.

In progress of time, Abel Sampson, probationer of divinity, was
admitted to the privileges of a preacher. But, alas! partly from his
own bashfulness, partly owing to a strong and obvious disposition to
risibility which pervaded the congregation upon his first attempt, he
became totally incapable of proceeding in his intended discourse,
gasped, grinned, hideously rolled his eyes till the congregation
thought them flying out of his head, shut the Bible, stumbled down the
pulpit-stairs, trampling upon the old women who generally take their
station there, and was ever after designated as a 'stickit minister.'
And thus he wandered back to his own country, with blighted hopes and
prospects, to share the poverty of his parents. As he had neither
friend nor confidant, hardly even an acquaintance, no one had the means
of observing closely how Dominie Sampson bore a disappointment which
supplied the whole town with a week's sport. It would be endless even
to mention the numerous jokes to which it gave birth, from a ballad
called 'Sampson's Riddle,' written upon the subject by a smart young
student of humanity, to the sly hope of the Principal that the fugitive
had not, in imitation of his mighty namesake, taken the college gates
along with him in his retreat.

To all appearance, the equanimity of Sampson was unshaken. He sought to
assist his parents by teaching a school, and soon had plenty of
scholars, but very few fees. In fact, he taught the sons of farmers for
what they chose to give him, and the poor for nothing; and, to the
shame of the former be it spoken, the pedagogue's gains never equalled
those of a skilful ploughman. He wrote, however, a good hand, and added
something to his pittance by copying accounts and writing letters for
Ellangowan. By degrees, the Laird, who was much estranged from general
society, became partial to that of Dominie Sampson. Conversation, it is
true, was out of the question, but the Dominie was a good listener, and
stirred the fire with some address. He attempted even to snuff the
candles, but was unsuccessful, and relinquished that ambitious post of
courtesy after having twice reduced the parlour to total darkness. So
his civilities, thereafter, were confined to taking off his glass of
ale in exactly the same time and measure with the Laird, and in
uttering certain indistinct murmurs of acquiescence at the conclusion
of the long and winding stories of Ellangowan.

On one of these occasions, he presented for the first time to Mannering
his tall, gaunt, awkward, bony figure, attired in a threadbare suit of
black, with a coloured handkerchief, not over clean, about his sinewy,
scraggy neck, and his nether person arrayed in grey breeches, dark-blue
stockings, clouted shoes, and small copper buckles.

Such is a brief outline of the lives and fortunes of those two persons
in whose society Mannering now found himself comfortably seated.




CHAPTER III

     Do not the hist'ries of all ages
     Relate miraculous presages
     Of strange turns m the world's affairs,
     Foreseen by astrologers, soothsayers,
     Chaldeans, learned genethliacs,
     And some that have writ almanacks?

          Hudibras.

The circumstances of the landlady were pleaded to Mannering, first, as
an apology for her not appearing to welcome her guest, and for those
deficiencies in his entertainment which her attention might have
supplied, and then as an excuse for pressing an extra bottle of good
wine. 'I cannot weel sleep,' said the Laird, with the anxious feelings
of a father in such a predicament, 'till I hear she's gotten ower with
it; and if you, sir, are not very sleepery, and would do me and the
Dominie the honour to sit up wi' us, I am sure we shall not detain you
very late. Luckie Howatson is very expeditious. There was ance a lass
that was in that way; she did not live far from hereabouts--ye needna
shake your head and groan, Dominie; I am sure the kirk dues were a'
weel paid, and what can man do mair?--it was laid till her ere she had
a sark ower her head; and the man that she since wadded does not think
her a pin the waur for the misfortune. They live, Mr. Mannering, by the
shoreside at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine
bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a saltwater dub; and little
curlie Godfrey--that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say--he's
on board an excise yacht. I hae a cousin at the board of excise; that's
Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest
for the county, that ye must have heard of, for it was appealed to the
House of Commons. Now I should have voted there for the Laird of
Balruddery; but ye see my father was a Jacobite, and out with Kenmore,
so he never took the oaths; and I ken not weel how it was, but all that
I could do and say, they keepit me off the roll, though my agent, that
had a vote upon my estate, ranked as a good vote for auld Sir Thomas
Kittlecourt. But, to return to what I was saying, Luckie Howatson is
very expeditious, for this lass--'

Here the desultory and long-winded narrative of the Laird was
interrupted by the voice of some one ascending the stairs from the
kitchen story, and singing at full pitch of voice. The high notes were
too shrill for a man, the low seemed too deep for a woman. The words,
as far as Mannering could distinguish them, seemed to run thus:--

    Canny moment, lucky fit!
    Is the lady lighter yet?
    Be it lad, or be it lass,
    Sign wi' cross and sain wi' mass.

'It's Meg Merrilies, the gipsy, as sure as I am a sinner,' said Mr.
Bertram. The Dominie groaned deeply, uncrossed his legs, drew in the
huge splay foot which his former posture had extended, placed it
perpendicularly, and stretched the other limb over it instead, puffing
out between whiles huge volumes of tobacco smoke. 'What needs ye groan,
Dominie? I am sure Meg's sangs do nae ill.'

'Nor good neither,' answered Dominie Sampson, in a voice whose
untuneable harshness corresponded with the awkwardness of his figure.
They were the first words which Mannering had heard him speak; and as
he had been watching with some curiosity when this eating, drinking,
moving, and smoking automaton would perform the part of speaking, he
was a good deal diverted with the harsh timber tones which issued from
him. But at this moment the door opened, and Meg Merrilies entered.

Her appearance made Mannering start. She was full six feet high, wore a
man's great-coat over the rest of her dress, had in her hand a goodly
sloethorn cudgel, and in all points of equipment, except her
petticoats, seemed rather masculine than feminine. Her dark elf-locks
shot out like the snakes of the gorgon between an old-fashioned bonnet
called a bongrace, heightening the singular effect of her strong and
weather-beaten features, which they partly shadowed, while her eye had
a wild roll that indicated something like real or affected insanity.

'Aweel, Ellangowan,' she said, 'wad it no hae been a bonnie thing, an
the leddy had been brought to bed, and me at the fair o' Drumshourloch,
no kenning, nor dreaming a word about it? Wha was to hae keepit awa the
worriecows, I trow? Ay, and the elves and gyre-carlings frae the bonnie
bairn, grace be wi' it? Ay, or said Saint Colme's charm for its sake,
the dear?' And without waiting an answer she began to sing--

     Trefoil, vervain, John's-wort, dill,
     Hinders witches of their
     will, Weel is them, that weel may
     Fast upon Saint Andrew's day.

     Saint Bride and her brat,
     Saint Colme and his cat,
     Saint Michael and his spear,
     Keep the house frae reif and wear.

This charm she sung to a wild tune, in a high and shrill voice, and,
cutting three capers with such strength and agility as almost to touch
the roof of the room, concluded, 'And now, Laird, will ye no order me a
tass o' brandy?'

'That you shall have, Meg. Sit down yont there at the door and tell us
what news ye have heard at the fair o' Drumshourloch.'

'Troth, Laird, and there was muckle want o' you, and the like o' you;
for there was a whin bonnie lasses there, forbye mysell, and deil ane
to gie them hansels.'

'Weel, Meg, and how mony gipsies were sent to the tolbooth?'

'Troth, but three, Laird, for there were nae mair in the fair, bye
mysell, as I said before, and I e'en gae them leg-bail, for there's nae
ease in dealing wi' quarrelsome fowk. And there's Dunbog has warned the
Red Rotten and John Young aff his grunds--black be his cast! he's nae
gentleman, nor drap's bluid o' gentleman, wad grudge twa gangrel puir
bodies the shelter o' a waste house, and the thristles by the roadside
for a bit cuddy, and the bits o' rotten birk to boil their drap
parritch wi'. Weel, there's Ane abune a'; but we'll see if the red cock
craw not in his bonnie barn-yard ae morning before day-dawing.'

'Hush! Meg, hush! hush! that's not safe talk.'

'What does she mean?' said Mannering to Sampson, in an undertone.

'Fire-raising,' answered the laconic Dominie.

'Who, or what is she, in the name of wonder?'

'Harlot, thief, witch, and gipsy,' answered Sampson again.

'O troth, Laird,' continued Meg, during this by-talk, 'it's but to the
like o' you ane can open their heart; ye see, they say Dunbog is nae
mair a gentleman than the blunker that's biggit the bonnie house down
in the howm. But the like o' you, Laird, that's a real gentleman for
sae mony hundred years, and never hunds puir fowk aff your grund as if
they were mad tykes, nane o' our fowk wad stir your gear if ye had as
mony capons as there's leaves on the trysting-tree. And now some o' ye
maun lay down your watch, and tell me the very minute o' the hour the
wean's born, an I'll spae its fortune.'

'Ay, but, Meg, we shall not want your assistance, for here's a student
from Oxford that kens much better than you how to spae its fortune; he
does it by the stars.'

'Certainly, sir,' said Mannering, entering into the simple humour of
his landlord, 'I will calculate his nativity according to the rule of
the "triplicities," as recommended by Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Diocles,
and Avicenna. Or I will begin ab hora questionis, as Haly, Messahala,
Ganwehis, and Guido Bonatus have recommended.'

One of Sampson's great recommendations to the favour of Mr. Bertram
was, that he never detected the most gross attempt at imposition, so
that the Laird, whose humble efforts at jocularity were chiefly
confined to what were then called bites and bams, since denominated
hoaxes and quizzes, had the fairest possible subject of wit in the
unsuspecting Dominie. It is true, he never laughed, or joined in the
laugh which his own simplicity afforded--nay, it is said, he never
laughed but once in his life, and on that memorable occasion his
landlady miscarried, partly through surprise at the event itself, and
partly from terror at the hideous grimaces which attended this unusual
cachinnation. The only effect which the discovery of such impositions
produced upon this saturnine personage was, to extort an ejaculation of
'Prodigious!' or 'Very facetious!' pronounced syllabically, but without
moving a muscle of his own countenance.

On the present occasion, he turned a gaunt and ghastly stare upon the
youthful astrologer, and seemed to doubt if he had rightly understood
his answer to his patron.

'I am afraid, sir,' said Mannering, turning towards him, 'you may be
one of those unhappy persons who, their dim eyes being unable to
penetrate the starry spheres, and to discern therein the decrees of
heaven at a distance, have their hearts barred against conviction by
prejudice and misprision.'

'Truly,' said Sampson, 'I opine with Sir Isaac Newton, Knight, and
umwhile master of his Majesty's mint, that the (pretended) science of
astrology is altogether vain, frivolous, and unsatisfactory.' And here
he reposed his oracular jaws.

'Really,' resumed the traveller, 'I am sorry to see a gentleman of your
learning and gravity labouring under such strange blindness and
delusion. Will you place the brief, the modern, and, as I may say, the
vernacular name of Isaac Newton in opposition to the grave and sonorous
authorities of Dariot, Bonatus, Ptolemy, Haly, Eztler, Dieterick,
Naibob, Harfurt, Zael, Taustettor, Agrippa, Duretus, Maginus, Origen,
and Argol? Do not Christians and Heathens, and Jews and Gentiles, and
poets and philosophers, unite in allowing the starry influences?'

'Communis error--it is a general mistake,' answered the inflexible
Dominie Sampson.

'Not so,' replied the young Englishman; 'it is a general and
well-grounded belief.'

'It is the resource of cheaters, knaves, and cozeners,' said Sampson.

'Abusus non tollit usum.--The abuse of anything doth not abrogate the
lawful use thereof.'

During this discussion Ellangowan was somewhat like a woodcock caught
in his own springe. He turned his face alternately from the one
spokesman to the other, and began, from the gravity with which
Mannering plied his adversary, and the learning which he displayed in
the controversy, to give him credit for being half serious. As for Meg,
she fixed her bewildered eyes upon the astrologer, overpowered by a
jargon more mysterious than her own.

Mannering pressed his advantage, and ran over all the hard terms of art
which a tenacious memory supplied, and which, from circumstances
hereafter to be noticed, had been familiar to him in early youth.

Signs and planets, in aspects sextile, quartile, trine, conjoined, or
opposite; houses of heaven, with their cusps, hours, and minutes;
almuten, almochoden, anabibazon, catabibazon; a thousand terms of equal
sound and significance, poured thick and threefold upon the unshrinking
Dominie, whose stubborn incredulity bore him out against the pelting of
this pitiless storm.

At length the joyful annunciation that the lady had presented her
husband with a fine boy, and was (of course) as well as could be
expected, broke off this intercourse. Mr. Bertram hastened to the
lady's apartment, Meg Merrilies descended to the kitchen to secure her
share of the groaning malt and the 'ken-no,' [Footnote: See Note i.]
and Mannering, after looking at his watch, and noting with great
exactness the hour and minute of the birth, requested, with becoming
gravity, that the Dominie would conduct him to some place where he
might have a view of the heavenly bodies.

The schoolmaster, without further answer, rose and threw open a door
half sashed with glass, which led to an old-fashioned terrace-walk
behind the modern house, communicating with the platform on which the
ruins of the ancient castle were situated. The wind had arisen, and
swept before it the clouds which had formerly obscured the sky. The
moon was high, and at the full, and all the lesser satellites of heaven
shone forth in cloudless effulgence. The scene which their light
presented to Mannering was in the highest degree unexpected and
striking.

We have observed, that in the latter part of his journey our traveller
approached the sea-shore, without being aware how nearly. He now
perceived that the ruins of Ellangowan Castle were situated upon a
promontory, or projection of rock, which formed one side of a small and
placid bay on the sea-shore. The modern mansion was placed lower,
though closely adjoining, and the ground behind it descended to the sea
by a small swelling green bank, divided into levels by natural
terraces, on which grew some old trees, and terminating upon the white
sand. The other side of the bay, opposite to the old castle, was a
sloping and varied promontory, covered chiefly with copsewood, which on
that favoured coast grows almost within water-mark. A fisherman's
cottage peeped from among the trees. Even at this dead hour of night
there were lights moving upon the shore, probably occasioned by the
unloading a smuggling lugger from the Isle of Man which was lying in
the bay. On the light from the sashed door of the house being observed,
a halloo from the vessel of 'Ware hawk! Douse the glim!' alarmed those
who were on shore, and the lights instantly disappeared.

It was one hour after midnight, and the prospect around was lovely. The
grey old towers of the ruin, partly entire, partly broken, here bearing
the rusty weather-stains of ages, and there partially mantled with ivy,
stretched along the verge of the dark rock which rose on Mannering's
right hand. In his front was the quiet bay, whose little waves,
crisping and sparkling to the moonbeams, rolled successively along its
surface, and dashed with a soft and murmuring ripple against the
silvery beach. To the left the woods advanced far into the ocean,
waving in the moonlight along ground of an undulating and varied form,
and presenting those varieties of light and shade, and that interesting
combination of glade and thicket, upon which the eye delights to rest,
charmed with what it sees, yet curious to pierce still deeper into the
intricacies of the woodland scenery. Above rolled the planets, each, by
its own liquid orbit of light, distinguished from the inferior or more
distant stars. So strangely can imagination deceive even those by whose
volition it has been excited, that Mannering, while gazing upon these
brilliant bodies, was half inclined to believe in the influence
ascribed to them by superstition over human events. But Mannering was a
youthful lover, and might perhaps be influenced by the feelings so
exquisitely expressed by a modern poet:--

     For fable is Love's world, his home, his birthplace:
     Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays, and talismans,
     And spirits, and delightedly believes
     Divinities, being himself divine
     The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
     The fair humanities of old religion,
     The power,the beauty, and the majesty,
     That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
     Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
     Or chasms and wat'ry depths--all these have vanish'd;
     They live no longer in the faith of reason!
     But still the heart doth need a language, still
     Doth the old instinct bring back the old names.
     And to yon starry world they now are gone,
     Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth
     With man as with their friend, and to the lover
     Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
     Shoot influence down; and even at this day
     'T is Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,
     And Venus who brings everything that's fair.

Such musings soon gave way to others. 'Alas!' he muttered, 'my good old
tutor, who used to enter so deep into the controversy between Heydon
and Chambers on the subject of astrology, he would have looked upon the
scene with other eyes, and would have seriously endeavoured to discover
from the respective positions of these luminaries their probable
effects on the destiny of the new-born infant, as if the courses or
emanations of the stars superseded, or at least were co-ordinate with,
Divine Providence. Well, rest be with him! he instilled into me enough
of knowledge for erecting a scheme of nativity, and therefore will I
presently go about it.' So saying, and having noted the position of the
principal planetary bodies, Guy Mannering returned to the house. The
Laird met him in the parlour, and, acquainting him with great glee that
the boy was a fine healthy little fellow, seemed rather disposed to
press further conviviality. He admitted, however, Mannering's plea of
weariness, and, conducting him to his sleeping apartment, left him to
repose for the evening.




CHAPTER IV

    Come and see' trust thine own eyes
    A fearful sign stands in the house of life,
    An enemy a fiend lurks close behind
    The radiance of thy planet O be warned!

         COLERIDGE, from SCHILLER


The belief in astrology was almost universal in the middle of the
seventeenth century; it began to waver and become doubtful towards the
close of that period, and in the beginning of the eighteenth the art
fell into general disrepute, and even under general ridicule. Yet it
still retained many partizans even in the seats of learning. Grave and
studious men were both to relinquish the calculations which had early
become the principal objects of their studies, and felt reluctant to
descend from the predominating height to which a supposed insight into
futurity, by the power of consulting abstract influences and
conjunctions, had exalted them over the rest of mankind.

Among those who cherished this imaginary privilege with undoubting
faith was an old clergyman with whom Mannering was placed during his
youth. He wasted his eyes in observing the stars, and his brains in
calculations upon their various combinations. His pupil, in early
youth, naturally caught some portion of his enthusiasm, and laboured
for a time to make himself master of the technical process of
astrological research; so that, before he became convinced of its
absurdity, William Lilly himself would have allowed him 'a curious
fancy and piercing judgment in resolving a question of nativity.'

On the present occasion he arose as early in the morning as the
shortness of the day permitted, and proceeded to calculate the nativity
of the young heir of Ellangowan. He undertook the task secundum artem,
as well to keep up appearances as from a sort of curiosity to know
whether he yet remembered, and could practise, the imaginary science.
He accordingly erected his scheme, or figure of heaven, divided into
its twelve houses, placed the planets therein according to the
ephemeris, and rectified their position to the hour and moment of the
nativity. Without troubling our readers with the general
prognostications which judicial astrology would have inferred from
these circumstances, in this diagram there was one significator which
pressed remarkably upon our astrologer's attention. Mars, having
dignity in the cusp of the twelfth house, threatened captivity or
sudden and violent death to the native; and Mannering, having recourse
to those further rules by which diviners pretend to ascertain the
vehemency of this evil direction, observed from the result that three
periods would be particularly hazardous--his fifth, his tenth, his
twenty-first year.

It was somewhat remarkable that Mannering had once before tried a
similar piece of foolery at the instance of Sophia Wellwood, the young
lady to whom he was attached, and that a similar conjunction of
planetary influence threatened her with death or imprisonment in her
thirty-ninth year. She was at this time eighteen; so that, according to
the result of the scheme in both cases, the same year threatened her
with the same misfortune that was presaged to the native or infant whom
that night had introduced into the world. Struck with this coincidence,
Mannering repeated his calculations; and the result approximated the
events predicted, until at length the same month, and day of the month,
seemed assigned as the period of peril to both.

It will be readily believed that, in mentioning this circumstance, we
lay no weight whatever upon the pretended information thus conveyed.
But it often happens, such is our natural love for the marvellous, that
we willingly contribute our own efforts to beguile our better
judgments. Whether the coincidence which I have mentioned was really
one of those singular chances which sometimes happen against all
ordinary calculations; or whether Mannering, bewildered amid the
arithmetical labyrinth and technical jargon of astrology, had
insensibly twice followed the same clue to guide him out of the maze;
or whether his imagination, seduced by some point of apparent
resemblance, lent its aid to make the similitude between the two
operations more exactly accurate than it might otherwise have been, it
is impossible to guess; but the impression upon his mind that the
results exactly corresponded was vividly and indelibly strong.

He could not help feeling surprise at a coincidence so singular and
unexpected. 'Does the devil mingle in the dance, to avenge himself for
our trifling with an art said to be of magical origin? Or is it
possible, as Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne admit, that there is some
truth in a sober and regulated astrology, and that the influence of the
stars is not to be denied, though the due application of it by the
knaves who pretend to practise the art is greatly to be suspected?' A
moment's consideration of the subject induced him to dismiss this
opinion as fantastical, and only sanctioned by those learned men either
because they durst not at once shock the universal prejudices of their
age, or because they themselves were not altogether freed from the
contagious influence of a prevailing superstition. Yet the result of
his calculations in these two instances left so unpleasing an
impression on his mind that, like Prospero, he mentally relinquished
his art, and resolved, neither in jest nor earnest, ever again to
practise judicial astrology.

He hesitated a good deal what he should say to the Laird of Ellangowan
concerning the horoscope of his first-born; and at length resolved
plainly to tell him the judgment which he had formed, at the same time
acquainting him with the futility of the rules of art on which he had
proceeded. With this resolution he walked out upon the terrace.

If the view of the scene around Ellangowan had been pleasing by
moonlight, it lost none of its beauty by the light of the morning sun.
The land, even in the month of November, smiled under its influence. A
steep but regular ascent led from the terrace to the neighbouring
eminence, and conducted Mannering to the front of the old castle. It
consisted of two massive round towers projecting deeply and darkly at
the extreme angles of a curtain, or flat wall, which united them, and
thus protecting the main entrance, that opened through a lofty arch in
the centre of the curtain into the inner court of the castle. The arms
of the family, carved in freestone, frowned over the gateway, and the
portal showed the spaces arranged by the architect for lowering the
portcullis and raising the drawbridge. A rude farm-gate, made of young
fir-trees nailed together, now formed the only safeguard of this once
formidable entrance. The esplanade in front of the castle commanded a
noble prospect.

The dreary scene of desolation through which Mannering's road had lain
on the preceding evening was excluded from the view by some rising
ground, and the landscape showed a pleasing alternation of hill and
dale, intersected by a river, which was in some places visible, and
hidden in others, where it rolled betwixt deep and wooded banks. The
spire of a church and the appearance of some houses indicated the
situation of a village at the place where the stream had its junction
with the ocean. The vales seemed well cultivated, the little inclosures
into which they were divided skirting the bottom of the hills, and
sometimes carrying their lines of straggling hedgerows a little way up
the ascent. Above these were green pastures, tenanted chiefly by herds
of black cattle, then the staple commodity of the country, whose
distant low gave no unpleasing animation to the landscape. The remoter
hills were of a sterner character, and, at still greater distance,
swelled into mountains of dark heath, bordering the horizon with a
screen which gave a defined and limited boundary to the cultivated
country, and added at the same time the pleasing idea that it was
sequestered and solitary. The sea-coast, which Mannering now saw in its
extent, corresponded in variety and beauty with the inland view. In
some places it rose into tall rocks, frequently crowned with the ruins
of old buildings, towers, or beacons, which, according to tradition,
were placed within sight of each other, that, in times of invasion or
civil war, they might communicate by signal for mutual defence and
protection. Ellangowan Castle was by far the most extensive and
important of these ruins, and asserted from size and situation the
superiority which its founders were said once to have possessed among
the chiefs and nobles of the district. In other places the shore was of
a more gentle description, indented with small bays, where the land
sloped smoothly down, or sent into the sea promontories covered with
wood.

A scene so different from what last night's journey had presaged
produced a proportional effect upon Mannering. Beneath his eye lay the
modern house--an awkward mansion, indeed, in point of architecture, but
well situated, and with a warm, pleasant exposure. 'How happily,'
thought our hero, 'would life glide on in such a retirement! On the one
hand, the striking remnants of ancient grandeur, with the secret
consciousness of family pride which they inspire; on the other, enough
of modern elegance and comfort to satisfy every moderate wish. Here
then, and with thee, Sophia!'

We shall not pursue a lover's day-dream any farther. Mannering stood a
minute with his arms folded, and then turned to the ruined castle.

On entering the gateway, he found that the rude magnificence of the
inner court amply corresponded with the grandeur of the exterior. On
the one side ran a range of windows lofty and large, divided by carved
mullions of stone, which had once lighted the great hall of the castle;
on the other were various buildings of different heights and dates, yet
so united as to present to the eye a certain general effect of
uniformity of front. The doors and windows were ornamented with
projections exhibiting rude specimens of sculpture and tracery, partly
entire and partly broken down, partly covered by ivy and trailing
plants, which grew luxuriantly among the ruins. That end of the court
which faced the entrance had also been formerly closed by a range of
buildings; but owing, it was said, to its having been battered by the
ships of the Parliament under Deane, during the long civil war, this
part of the castle was much more ruinous than the rest, and exhibited a
great chasm, through which Mannering could observe the sea, and the
little vessel (an armed lugger), which retained her station in the
centre of the bay. [Footnote: The outline of the above description, as
far as the supposed ruins are concerned, will be found somewhat to
resemble the noble remains of Carlaverock Castle, six or seven miles
from Dumfries, and near to Lochar Moss.] While Mannering was gazing
round the ruins, he heard from the interior of an apartment on the left
hand the voice of the gipsy he had seen on the preceding evening. He
soon found an aperture through which he could observe her without being
himself visible; and could not help feeling that her figure, her
employment, and her situation conveyed the exact impression of an
ancient sibyl.

She sate upon a broken corner-stone in the angle of a paved apartment,
part of which she had swept clean to afford a smooth space for the
evolutions of her spindle. A strong sunbeam through a lofty and narrow
window fell upon her wild dress and features, and afforded her light
for her occupation; the rest of the apartment was very gloomy. Equipt
in a habit which mingled the national dress of the Scottish common
people with something of an Eastern costume, she spun a thread drawn
from wool of three different colours, black, white, and grey, by
assistance of those ancient implements of housewifery now almost
banished from the land, the distaff and spindle. As she spun, she sung
what seemed to be a charm. Mannering, after in vain attempting to make
himself master of the exact words of her song, afterwards attempted the
following paraphrase of what, from a few intelligible phrases, he
concluded to be its purport:--

     Twist ye, twine ye! even so
     Mingle shades of joy and woe,
     Hope, and fear, and peace, and strife,
     In the thread of human life.

     While the mystic twist is spinning,
     And the infant's life beginning,
     Dimly seen through twilight bending,
     Lo, what varied shapes attending!

     Passions wild, and Follies vain,
     Pleasures soon exchanged for pain,
     Doubt, and Jealousy, and Fear
     In the magic dance appear.

     Now they wax, and now they dwindle,
     Whirling with the whirling spindle.
     Twist ye, twine ye! even so
     Mingle human bliss and woe.

Ere our translator, or rather our free imitator, had arranged these
stanzas in his head, and while he was yet hammering out a rhyme for
DWINDLE, the task of the sibyl was accomplished, or her wool was
expended. She took the spindle, now charged with her labours, and,
undoing the thread gradually, measured it by casting it over her elbow
and bringing each loop round between her forefinger and thumb. When she
had measured it out, she muttered to herself--'A hank, but not a haill
ane--the full years o' three score and ten, but thrice broken, and
thrice to OOP (i.e. to unite); he'll be a lucky lad an he win through
wi't.'

Our hero was about to speak to the prophetess, when a voice, hoarse as
the waves with which it mingled, hallooed twice, and with increasing
impatience--'Meg, Meg Merrilies! Gipsy--hag--tausend deyvils!'

'I am coming, I am coming, Captain,' answered Meg; and in a moment or
two the impatient commander whom she addressed made his appearance from
the broken part of the ruins.

He was apparently a seafaring man, rather under the middle size, and
with a countenance bronzed by a thousand conflicts with the north-east
wind. His frame was prodigiously muscular, strong, and thick-set; so
that it seemed as if a man of much greater height would have been an
inadequate match in any close personal conflict. He was hard-favoured,
and, which was worse, his face bore nothing of the insouciance, the
careless, frolicsome jollity and vacant curiosity, of a sailor on
shore. These qualities, perhaps, as much as any others, contribute to
the high popularity of our seamen, and the general good inclination
which our society expresses towards them. Their gallantry, courage, and
hardihood are qualities which excite reverence, and perhaps rather
humble pacific landsmen in their presence; and neither respect nor a
sense of humiliation are feelings easily combined with a familiar
fondness towards those who inspire them. But the boyish frolics, the
exulting high spirits, the unreflecting mirth of a sailor when enjoying
himself on shore, temper the more formidable points of his character.
There was nothing like these in this man's face; on the contrary, a
surly and even savage scowl appeared to darken features which would
have been harsh and unpleasant under any expression or modification.
'Where are you, Mother Deyvilson?' he said, with somewhat of a foreign
accent, though speaking perfectly good English. 'Donner and blitzen! we
have been staying this half-hour. Come, bless the good ship and the
voyage, and be cursed to ye for a hag of Satan!'

At this moment he noticed Mannering, who, from the position which he
had taken to watch Meg Merrilies's incantations, had the appearance of
some one who was concealing himself, being half hidden by the buttress
behind which he stood. The Captain, for such he styled himself, made a
sudden and startled pause, and thrust his right hand into his bosom
between his jacket and waistcoat as if to draw some weapon. 'What
cheer, brother? you seem on the outlook, eh?' Ere Mannering, somewhat
struck by the man's gesture and insolent tone of voice, had made any
answer, the gipsy emerged from her vault and joined the stranger. He
questioned her in an undertone, looking at Mannering--'A shark
alongside, eh?'

She answered in the same tone of under-dialogue, using the cant
language of her tribe--'Cut ben whids, and stow them; a gentry cove of
the ken.' [Footnote: Meaning--Stop your uncivil language; that is a
gentleman from the house below.]

The fellow's cloudy visage cleared up. 'The top of the morning to you,
sir; I find you are a visitor of my friend Mr. Bertram. I beg pardon,
but I took you for another sort of a person.'

Mannering replied, 'And you, sir, I presume, are the master of that
vessel in the bay?'

'Ay, ay, sir; I am Captain Dirk Hatteraick, of the Yungfrauw
Hagenslaapen, well known on this coast; I am not ashamed of my name,
nor of my vessel--no, nor of my cargo neither for that matter.'

'I daresay you have no reason, sir.'

'Tausend donner, no; I'm all in the way of fair trade. Just loaded
yonder at Douglas, in the Isle of Man--neat cogniac--real hyson and
souchong--Mechlin lace, if you want any--right cogniac--we bumped
ashore a hundred kegs last night.'

'Really, sir, I am only a traveller, and have no sort of occasion for
anything of the kind at present.'

'Why, then, good-morning to you, for business must be minded--unless
ye'll go aboard and take schnaps; you shall have a pouch-full of tea
ashore. Dirk Hatteraick knows how to be civil.'

There was a mixture of impudence, hardihood, and suspicious fear about
this man which was inexpressibly disgusting. His manners were those of
a ruffian, conscious of the suspicion attending his character, yet
aiming to bear it down by the affectation of a careless and hardy
familiarity. Mannering briefly rejected his proffered civilities; and,
after a surly good-morning, Hatteraick retired with the gipsy to that
part of the ruins from which he had first made his appearance. A very
narrow staircase here went down to the beach, intended probably for the
convenience of the garrison during a siege. By this stair the couple,
equally amiable in appearance and respectable by profession, descended
to the sea-side. The soi-disant captain embarked in a small boat with
two men, who appeared to wait for him, and the gipsy remained on the
shore, reciting or singing, and gesticulating with great vehemence.




CHAPTER V

     You have fed upon my seignories,
     Dispark'd my parks, and fell'd my forest woods,
     From mine own windows torn my household coat,
     Razed out my impress, leaving me no sign,
     Save men's opinions and my living blood,
     To show the world I am a gentleman.

          Richard II.


When the boat which carried the worthy captain on board his vessel had
accomplished that task, the sails began to ascend, and the ship was got
under way. She fired three guns as a salute to the house of Ellangowan,
and then shot away rapidly before the wind, which blew off shore, under
all the sail she could crowd.

'Ay, ay,' said the Laird, who had sought Mannering for some time, and
now joined him, 'there they go--there go the free-traders--there go
Captain Dirk Hatteraick and the Yungfrauw Hagenslaapen, half Manks,
half Dutchman, half devil! run out the boltsprit, up mainsail, top and
top-gallant sails, royals, and skyscrapers, and away--follow who can!
That fellow, Mr. Mannering, is the terror of all the excise and
custom-house cruisers; they can make nothing of him; he drubs them, or
he distances them;--and, speaking of excise, I come to bring you to
breakfast; and you shall have some tea, that--'

Mannering by this time was aware that one thought linked strangely on
to another in the concatenation of worthy Mr. Bertram's ideas,

     Like orient pearls at random strung;

and therefore, before the current of his associations had drifted
farther from the point he had left, he brought him back by some inquiry
about Dirk Hatteraick.

'O he's a--a--gude sort of blackguard fellow eneugh; naebody cares to
trouble him--smuggler, when his guns are in ballast--privateer, or
pirate, faith, when he gets them mounted. He has done more mischief to
the revenue folk than ony rogue that ever came out of Ramsay.'

'But, my good sir, such being his character, I wonder he has any
protection and encouragement on this coast.'

'Why, Mr. Mannering, people must have brandy and tea, and there's none
in the country but what comes this way; and then there's short
accounts, and maybe a keg or two, or a dozen pounds, left at your
stable-door, instead of a d--d lang account at Christmas from Duncan
Robb, the grocer at Kippletringan, who has aye a sum to make up, and
either wants ready money or a short-dated bill. Now, Hatteraick will
take wood, or he'll take bark, or he'll take barley, or he'll take just
what's convenient at the time. I'll tell you a gude story about that.
There was ance a laird--that's Macfie of Gudgeonford,--he had a great
number of kain hens--that's hens that the tenant pays to the landlord,
like a sort of rent in kind. They aye feed mine very ill; Luckie
Finniston sent up three that were a shame to be seen only last week,
and yet she has twelve bows sowing of victual; indeed her goodman,
Duncan Finniston--that's him that's gone--(we must all die, Mr.
Mannering, that's ower true)--and, speaking of that, let us live in the
meanwhile, for here's breakfast on the table, and the Dominie ready to
say the grace.'

The Dominie did accordingly pronounce a benediction, that exceeded in
length any speech which Mannering had yet heard him utter. The tea,
which of course belonged to the noble Captain Hatteraick's trade, was
pronounced excellent. Still Mannering hinted, though with due delicacy,
at the risk of encouraging such desperate characters. 'Were it but in
justice to the revenue, I should have supposed--'

'Ah, the revenue lads'--for Mr. Bertram never embraced a general or
abstract idea, and his notion of the revenue was personified in the
commissioners, surveyors, comptrollers, and riding officers whom he
happened to know--'the revenue lads can look sharp eneugh out for
themselves, no ane needs to help them; and they have a' the soldiers to
assist them besides; and as to justice--you 'll be surprised to hear
it, Mr. Mannering, but I am not a justice of peace!'

Mannering assumed the expected look of surprise, but thought within
himself that the worshipful bench suffered no great deprivation from
wanting the assistance of his good-humoured landlord. Mr. Bertram had
now hit upon one of the few subjects on which he felt sore, and went on
with some energy.

'No, sir, the name of Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan is not in the last
commission, though there's scarce a carle in the country that has a
plough-gate of land, but what he must ride to quarter-sessions and
write J.P. after his name. I ken fu' weel whom I am obliged to--Sir
Thomas Kittlecourt as good as tell'd me he would sit in my skirts if he
had not my interest at the last election; and because I chose to go
with my own blood and third cousin, the Laird of Balruddery, they
keepit me off the roll of freeholders; and now there comes a new
nomination of justices, and I am left out! And whereas they pretend it
was because I let David Mac-Guffog, the constable, draw the warrants,
and manage the business his ain gate, as if I had been a nose o' wax,
it's a main untruth; for I granted but seven warrants in my life, and
the Dominie wrote every one of them--and if it had not been that
unlucky business of Sandy Mac-Gruthar's, that the constables should
have keepit twa or three days up yonder at the auld castle, just till
they could get conveniency to send him to the county jail--and that
cost me eneugh o' siller. But I ken what Sir Thomas wants very weel--it
was just sic and siclike about the seat in the kirk o' Kilmagirdle--was
I not entitled to have the front gallery facing the minister, rather
than Mac-Crosskie of Creochstone, the son of Deacon Mac-Crosskie, the
Dumfries weaver?'

Mannering expressed his acquiescence in the justice of these various
complaints.

'And then, Mr. Mannering, there was the story about the road and the
fauld-dike. I ken Sir Thomas was behind there, and I said plainly to
the clerk to the trustees that I saw the cloven foot, let them take
that as they like. Would any gentleman, or set of gentlemen, go and
drive a road right through the corner of a fauld-dike and take away, as
my agent observed to them, like twa roods of gude moorland pasture? And
there was the story about choosing the collector of the cess--'

'Certainly, sir, it is hard you should meet with any neglect in a
country where, to judge from the extent of their residence, your
ancestors must have made a very important figure.'

'Very true, Mr. Mannering; I am a plain man and do not dwell on these
things, and I must needs say I have little memory for them; but I wish
ye could have heard my father's stories about the auld fights of the
Mac-Dingawaies--that's the Bertrams that now is--wi' the Irish and wi'
the Highlanders that came here in their berlings from Ilay and Cantire;
and how they went to the Holy Land--that is, to Jerusalem and Jericho,
wi' a' their clan at their heels--they had better have gaen to Jamaica,
like Sir Thomas Kittlecourt's uncle--and how they brought hame relics
like those that Catholics have, and a flag that's up yonder in the
garret. If they had been casks of muscavado and puncheons of rum it
would have been better for the estate at this day; but there's little
comparison between the auld keep at Kittlecourt and the castle o'
Ellangowan; I doubt if the keep's forty feet of front. But ye make no
breakfast, Mr. Mannering; ye're no eating your meat; allow me to
recommend some of the kipper. It was John Hay that catcht it, Saturday
was three weeks, down at the stream below Hempseed ford,' etc. etc. etc.

The Laird, whose indignation had for some time kept him pretty steady
to one topic, now launched forth into his usual roving style of
conversation, which gave Mannering ample time to reflect upon the
disadvantages attending the situation which an hour before he had
thought worthy of so much envy. Here was a country gentleman, whose
most estimable quality seemed his perfect good-nature, secretly
fretting himself and murmuring against others for causes which,
compared with any real evil in life, must weigh like dust in the
balance. But such is the equal distribution of Providence. To those who
lie out of the road of great afflictions are assigned petty vexations
which answer all the purpose of disturbing their serenity; and every
reader must have observed that neither natural apathy nor acquired
philosophy can render country gentlemen insensible to the grievances
which occur at elections, quarter-sessions, and meetings of trustees.

Curious to investigate the manners of the country, Mannering took the
advantage of a pause in good Mr. Bertram's string of stories to inquire
what Captain Hatteraick so earnestly wanted with the gipsy woman.

'O, to bless his ship, I suppose. You must know, Mr. Mannering, that
these free-traders, whom the law calls smugglers, having no religion,
make it all up in superstition; and they have as many spells and charms
and nonsense--'

' Vanity and waur!' said the Dominie;' it is a trafficking with the
Evil One. Spells, periapts, and charms are of his device--choice arrows
out of Apollyon's quiver.'

'Hold your peace, Dominie; ye're speaking for ever'--by the way, they
were the first words the poor man had uttered that morning, excepting
that he said grace and returned thanks--'Mr. Mannering cannot get in a
word for ye! And so, Mr. Mannering, talking of astronomy and spells and
these matters, have ye been so kind as to consider what we were
speaking about last night?'

'I begin to think, Mr. Bertram, with your worthy friend here, that I
have been rather jesting with edge-tools; and although neither you nor
I, nor any sensible man, can put faith in the predictions of astrology,
yet, as it has sometimes happened that inquiries into futurity,
undertaken in jest, have in their results produced serious and
unpleasant effects both upon actions and characters, I really wish you
would dispense with my replying to your question.'

It was easy to see that this evasive answer only rendered the Laird's
curiosity more uncontrollable. Mannering, however, was determined in
his own mind not to expose the infant to the inconveniences which might
have arisen from his being supposed the object of evil prediction. He
therefore delivered the paper into Mr. Bertram's hand, and requested
him to keep it for five years with the seal unbroken, until the month
of November was expired. After that date had intervened he left him at
liberty to examine the writing, trusting that, the first fatal period
being then safely overpassed, no credit would be paid to its farther
contents. This Mr. Bertram was content to promise, and Mannering, to
ensure his fidelity, hinted at misfortunes which would certainly take
place if his injunctions were neglected. The rest of the day, which
Mannering, by Mr. Bertram's invitation, spent at Ellangowan, passed
over without anything remarkable; and on the morning of that which
followed the traveller mounted his palfrey, bade a courteous adieu to
his hospitable landlord and to his clerical attendant, repeated his
good wishes for the prosperity of the family, and then, turning his
horse's head towards England, disappeared from the sight of the inmates
of Ellangowan. He must also disappear from that of our readers, for it
is to another and later period of his life that the present narrative
relates.




CHAPTER VI

     Next, the Justice,
     In fair round belly with good capon lined,
     With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
     Full of wise saws and modern instances--
     And so he plays his part

         --As You Like It


When Mrs. Bertram of Ellangowan was able to hear the news of what had
passed during her confinement, her apartment rung with all manner of
gossiping respecting the handsome young student from Oxford who had
told such a fortune by the stars to the young Laird, 'blessings on his
dainty face.' The form, accent, and manners of the stranger were
expatiated upon. His horse, bridle, saddle, and stirrups did not remain
unnoticed. All this made a great impression upon the mind of Mrs.
Bertram, for the good lady had no small store of superstition.

Her first employment, when she became capable of a little work, was to
make a small velvet bag for the scheme of nativity which she had
obtained from her husband. Her fingers itched to break the seal, but
credulity proved stronger than curiosity; and she had the firmness to
inclose it, in all its integrity, within two slips of parchment, which
she sewed round it to prevent its being chafed. The whole was then put
into the velvet bag aforesaid, and hung as a charm round the neck of
the infant, where his mother resolved it should remain until the period
for the legitimate satisfaction of her curiosity should arrive.

The father also resolved to do his part by the child in securing him a
good education; and, with the view that it should commence with the
first dawnings of reason, Dominie Sampson was easily induced to
renounce his public profession of parish schoolmaster, make his
constant residence at the Place, and, in consideration of a sum not
quite equal to the wages of a footman even at that time, to undertake
to communicate to the future Laird of Ellangowan all the erudition
which he had, and all the graces and accomplishments which--he had not
indeed, but which he had never discovered that he wanted. In this
arrangement the Laird found also his private advantage, securing the
constant benefit of a patient auditor, to whom he told his stories when
they were alone, and at whose expense he could break a sly jest when he
had company.

About four years after this time a great commotion took place in the
county where Ellangowan is situated.

Those who watched the signs of the times had long been of opinion that
a change of ministry was about to take place; and at length, after a
due proportion of hopes, fears, and delays, rumours from good authority
and bad authority, and no authority at all; after some clubs had drank
Up with this statesman and others Down with him; after riding, and
running, and posting, and addressing, and counter-addressing, and
proffers of lives and fortunes, the blow was at length struck, the
administration of the day was dissolved, and parliament, as a natural
consequence, was dissolved also.

Sir Thomas Kittlecourt, like other members in the same situation,
posted down to his county, and met but an indifferent reception. He was
a partizan of the old administration; and the friends of the new had
already set about an active canvass in behalf of John Featherhead,
Esq., who kept the best hounds and hunters in the shire. Among others
who joined the standard of revolt was Gilbert Glossin, writer in--,
agent for the Laird of Ellangowan. This honest gentleman had either
been refused some favour by the old member, or, what is as probable, he
had got all that he had the most distant pretension to ask, and could
only look to the other side for fresh advancement. Mr. Glossin had a
vote upon Ellangowan's property; and he was now determined that his
patron should have one also, there being no doubt which side Mr.
Bertram would embrace in the contest. He easily persuaded Ellangowan
that it would be creditable to him to take the field at the head of as
strong a party as possible; and immediately went to work, making votes,
as every Scotch lawyer knows how, by splitting and subdividing the
superiorities upon this ancient and once powerful barony. These were so
extensive that, by dint of clipping and paring here, adding and eking
there, and creating over-lords upon all the estate which Bertram held
of the crown, they advanced at the day of contest at the head of ten as
good men of parchment as ever took the oath of trust and possession.
This strong reinforcement turned the dubious day of battle. The
principal and his agent divided the honour; the reward fell to the
latter exclusively. Mr. Gilbert Glossin was made clerk of the peace,
and Godfrey Bertram had his name inserted in a new commission of
justices, issued immediately upon the sitting of the parliament.

This had been the summit of Mr. Bertram's ambition; not that he liked
either the trouble or the responsibility of the office, but he thought
it was a dignity to which he was well entitled, and that it had been
withheld from him by malice prepense. But there is an old and true
Scotch proverb, 'Fools should not have chapping sticks'; that is,
weapons of offence. Mr. Bertram was no sooner possessed of the judicial
authority which he had so much longed for than he began to exercise it
with more severity than mercy, and totally belied all the opinions
which had hitherto been formed of his inert good-nature. We have read
somewhere of a justice of peace who, on being nominated in the
commission, wrote a letter to a bookseller for the statutes respecting
his official duty in the following orthography--'Please send the ax
relating to a gustus pease.' No doubt, when this learned gentleman had
possessed himself of the axe, he hewed the laws with it to some
purpose. Mr. Bertram was not quite so ignorant of English grammar as
his worshipful predecessor; but Augustus Pease himself could not have
used more indiscriminately the weapon unwarily put into his hand.

In good earnest, he considered the commission with which he had been
entrusted as a personal mark of favour from his sovereign; forgetting
that he had formerly thought his being deprived of a privilege, or
honour, common to those of his rank was the result of mere party cabal.
He commanded his trusty aid-de-camp, Dominie Sampson, to read aloud the
commission; and at the first words, 'The King has been pleased to
appoint'--'Pleased!' he exclaimed in a transport of gratitude; 'honest
gentleman! I'm sure he cannot be better pleased than I am.'

Accordingly, unwilling to confine his gratitude to mere feelings or
verbal expressions, he gave full current to the new-born zeal of
office, and endeavoured to express his sense of the honour conferred
upon him by an unmitigated activity in the discharge of his duty. New
brooms, it is said, sweep clean; and I myself can bear witness that, on
the arrival of a new housemaid, the ancient, hereditary, and domestic
spiders who have spun their webs over the lower division of my
bookshelves (consisting chiefly of law and divinity) during the
peaceful reign of her predecessor, fly at full speed before the
probationary inroads of the new mercenary. Even so the Laird of
Ellangowan ruthlessly commenced his magisterial reform, at the expense
of various established and superannuated pickers and stealers who had
been his neighbours for half a century. He wrought his miracles like a
second Duke Humphrey; and by the influence of the beadle's rod caused
the lame to walk, the blind to see, and the palsied to labour. He
detected poachers, black-fishers, orchard-breakers, and
pigeon-shooters; had the applause of the bench for his reward, and the
public credit of an active magistrate.

All this good had its rateable proportion of evil. Even an admitted
nuisance of ancient standing should not be abated without some caution.
The zeal of our worthy friend now involved in great distress sundry
personages whose idle and mendicant habits his own lachesse had
contributed to foster, until these habits had become irreclaimable, or
whose real incapacity for exertion rendered them fit objects, in their
own phrase, for the charity of all well-disposed Christians. The
'long-remembered beggar,' who for twenty years had made his regular
rounds within the neighbourhood, received rather as an humble friend
than as an object of charity, was sent to the neighbouring workhouse.
The decrepit dame, who travelled round the parish upon a hand-barrow,
circulating from house to house like a bad shilling, which every one is
in haste to pass to his neighbour,--she, who used to call for her
bearers as loud, or louder, than a traveller demands post-horses,--even
she shared the same disastrous fate. The 'daft Jock,' who, half knave,
half idiot, had been the sport of each succeeding race of village
children for a good part of a century, was remitted to the county
bridewell, where, secluded from free air and sunshine, the only
advantages he was capable of enjoying, he pined and died in the course
of six months. The old sailor, who had so long rejoiced the smoky
rafters of every kitchen in the country by singing 'Captain Ward' and
'Bold Admiral Benbow,' was banished from the county for no better
reason than that he was supposed to speak with a strong Irish accent.
Even the annual rounds of the pedlar were abolished by the Justice, in
his hasty zeal for the administration of rural police.

These things did not pass without notice and censure. We are not made
of wood or stone, and the things which connect themselves with our
hearts and habits cannot, like bark or lichen, be rent away without our
missing them. The farmer's dame lacked her usual share of intelligence,
perhaps also the self-applause which she had felt while distributing
the awmous (alms), in shape of a gowpen (handful) of oatmeal, to the
mendicant who brought the news. The cottage felt inconvenience from
interruption of the petty trade carried on by the itinerant dealers.
The children lacked their supply of sugarplums and toys; the young
women wanted pins, ribbons, combs, and ballads; and the old could no
longer barter their eggs for salt, snuff, and tobacco. All these
circumstances brought the busy Laird of Ellangowan into discredit,
which was the more general on account of his former popularity. Even
his lineage was brought up in judgment against him. They thought
'naething of what the like of Greenside, or Burnville, or Viewforth
might do, that were strangers in the country; but Ellangowan! that had
been a name amang them since the Mirk Monanday, and lang before--HIM to
be grinding the puir at that rate! They ca'd his grandfather the Wicked
Laird; but, though he was whiles fractious aneuch, when he got into
roving company and had ta'en the drap drink, he would have scorned to
gang on at this gate. Na, na, the muckle chumlay in the Auld Place
reeked like a killogie in his time, and there were as mony puir folk
riving at the banes in the court, and about the door, as there were
gentles in the ha'. And the leddy, on ilka Christmas night as it came
round, gae twelve siller pennies to ilka puir body about, in honour of
the twelve apostles like. They were fond to ca' it papistrie; but I
think our great folk might take a lesson frae the papists whiles. They
gie another sort o' help to puir folk than just dinging down a saxpence
in the brod on the Sabbath, and kilting, and scourging, and drumming
them a' the sax days o' the week besides.'

Such was the gossip over the good twopenny in every ale-house within
three or four miles of Ellangowan, that being about the diameter of the
orbit in which our friend Godfrey Bertram, Esq., J. P., must be
considered as the principal luminary. Still greater scope was given to
evil tongues by the removal of a colony of gipsies, with one of whom
our reader is somewhat acquainted, and who had for a great many years
enjoyed their chief settlement upon the estate of Ellangowan.




CHAPTER VII

     Come, princes of the ragged regiment,
     You of the blood! PRIGS, my most upright lord,
     And these, what name or title e'er they bear,
     JARKMAN, or PATRICO, CRANKE or CLAPPER-DUDGEON,
     PRATER or ABRAM-MAN--I speak of all.

          Beggar's Bush.


Although the character of those gipsy tribes which formerly inundated
most of the nations of Europe, and which in some degree still subsist
among them as a distinct people, is generally understood, the reader
will pardon my saying a few words respecting their situation in
Scotland.

It is well known that the gipsies were at an early period acknowledged
as a separate and independent race by one of the Scottish monarchs, and
that they were less favourably distinguished by a subsequent law, which
rendered the character of gipsy equal in the judicial balance to that
of common and habitual thief, and prescribed his punishment
accordingly. Notwithstanding the severity of this and other statutes,
the fraternity prospered amid the distresses of the country, and
received large accessions from among those whom famine, oppression, or
the sword of war had deprived of the ordinary means of subsistence.
They lost in a great measure by this intermixture the national
character of Egyptians, and became a mingled race, having all the
idleness and predatory habits of their Eastern ancestors, with a
ferocity which they probably borrowed from the men of the north who
joined their society. They travelled in different bands, and had rules
among themselves, by which each tribe was confined to its own district.
The slightest invasion of the precincts which had been assigned to
another tribe produced desperate skirmishes, in which there was often
much blood shed.

The patriotic Fletcher of Saltoun drew a picture of these banditti
about a century ago, which my readers will peruse with astonishment:--

'There are at this day in Scotland (besides a great many poor families
very meanly provided for by the church boxes, with others who, by
living on bad food, fall into various diseases) two hundred thousand
people begging from door to door. These are not only no way
advantageous, but a very grievous burden to so poor a country. And
though the number of them be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by
reason of this present great distress, yet in all times there have been
about one hundred thousand of those vagabonds, who have lived without
any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land or even those
of God and nature ... No magistrate could ever discover, or be
informed, which way one in a hundred of these wretches died, or that
ever they were baptized. Many murders have been discovered among them;
and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants
(who, if they give not bread or some kind of provision to perhaps forty
such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them), but they
rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood.
In years of plenty, many thousands of them meet together in the
mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country
weddings, markets, burials, and other the like public occasions, they
are to be seen, both man and woman, perpetually drunk, cursing,
blaspheming, and fighting together.'

Notwithstanding the deplorable picture presented in this extract, and
which Fletcher himself, though the energetic and eloquent friend of
freedom, saw no better mode of correcting than by introducing a system
of domestic slavery, the progress of time, and increase both of the
means of life and of the power of the laws, gradually reduced this
dreadful evil within more narrow bounds. The tribes of gipsies,
jockies, or cairds--for by all these denominations such banditti were
known--became few in number, and many were entirely rooted out. Still,
however, a sufficient number remained to give, occasional alarm and
constant vexation. Some rude handicrafts were entirely resigned to
these itinerants, particularly the art of trencher-making, of
manufacturing horn-spoons, and the whole mystery of the tinker. To
these they added a petty trade in the coarse sorts of earthenware. Such
were their ostensible means of livelihood. Each tribe had usually some
fixed place of rendezvous, which they occasionally occupied and
considered as their standing camp, and in the vicinity of which they
generally abstained from depredation. They had even talents and
accomplishments, which made them occasionally useful and entertaining.
Many cultivated music with success; and the favourite fiddler or piper
of a district was often to be found in a gipsy town. They understood
all out-of-door sports, especially otter-hunting, fishing, or finding
game. They bred the best and boldest terriers, and sometimes had good
pointers for sale. In winter the women told fortunes, the men showed
tricks of legerdemain; and these accomplishments often helped to while
away a weary or stormy evening in the circle of the 'farmer's ha'.' The
wildness of their character, and the indomitable pride with which they
despised all regular labour, commanded a certain awe, which was not
diminished by the consideration that these strollers were a vindictive
race, and were restrained by no check, either of fear or conscience,
from taking desperate vengeance upon those who had offended them. These
tribes were, in short, the pariahs of Scotland, living like wild
Indians among European settlers, and, like them, judged of rather by
their own customs, habits, and opinions, than as if they had been
members of the civilised part of the community. Some hordes of them yet
remain, chiefly in such situations as afford a ready escape either into
a waste country or into another Jurisdiction. Nor are the features of
their character much softened. Their numbers, however, are so greatly
diminished that, instead of one hundred thousand, as calculated by
Fletcher, it would now perhaps be impossible to collect above five
hundred throughout all Scotland.

A tribe of these itinerants, to whom Meg Merrilies appertained, had
long been as stationary as their habits permitted in a glen upon the
estate of Ellangowan. They had there erected a few huts, which they
denominated their 'city of refuge,' and where, when not absent on
excursions, they harboured unmolested, as the crows that roosted in the
old ash-trees around them. They had been such long occupants that they
were considered in some degree as proprietors of the wretched shealings
which they inhabited. This protection they were said anciently to have
repaid by service to the Laird in war, or more frequently, by infesting
or plundering the lands of those neighbouring barons with whom he
chanced to be at feud. Latterly their services were of a more pacific
nature. The women spun mittens for the lady, and knitted boot-hose for
the Laird, which were annually presented at Christmas with great form.
The aged sibyls blessed the bridal bed of the Laird when he married,
and the cradle of the heir when born. The men repaired her ladyship's
cracked china, and assisted the Laird in his sporting parties, wormed
his dogs, and cut the ears of his terrier puppies. The children
gathered nuts in the woods, and cranberries in the moss, and mushrooms
on the pastures, for tribute to the Place. These acts of voluntary
service, and acknowledgments of dependence, were rewarded by protection
on some occasions, connivance on others, and broken victuals, ale, and
brandy when circumstances called for a display of generosity; and this
mutual intercourse of good offices, which had been carried on for at
least two centuries, rendered the inhabitants of Derncleugh a kind of
privileged retainers upon the estate of Ellangowan. 'The knaves' were
the Laird's 'exceeding good friends'; and he would have deemed himself
very ill used if his countenance could not now and then have borne them
out against the law of the country and the local magistrate. But this
friendly union was soon to be dissolved.

The community of Derncleugh, who cared for no rogues but their own,
were wholly without alarm at the severity of the Justice's proceedings
towards other itinerants. They had no doubt that he determined to
suffer no mendicants or strollers in the country but what resided on
his own property, and practised their trade by his immediate
permission, implied or expressed. Nor was Mr. Bertram in a hurry to
exert his newly-acquired authority at the expense of these old
settlers. But he was driven on by circumstances.

At the quarter-sessions our new Justice was publicly upbraided by a
gentleman of the opposite party in county politics, that, while he
affected a great zeal for the public police, and seemed ambitious of
the fame of an active magistrate, he fostered a tribe of the greatest
rogues in the country, and permitted them to harbour within a mile of
the house of Ellangowan. To this there was no reply, for the fact was
too evident and well known. The Laird digested the taunt as he best
could, and in his way home amused himself with speculations on the
easiest method of ridding himself of these vagrants, who brought a
stain upon his fair fame as a magistrate. Just as he had resolved to
take the first opportunity of quarrelling with the pariahs of
Derncleugh, a cause of provocation presented itself.

Since our friend's advancement to be a conservator of the peace, he had
caused the gate at the head of his avenue, which formerly, having only
one hinge, remained at all times hospitably open--he had caused this
gate, I say, to be newly hung and handsomely painted. He had also shut
up with paling, curiously twisted with furze, certain holes in the
fences adjoining, through which the gipsy boys used to scramble into
the plantations to gather birds' nests, the seniors of the village to
make a short cut from one point to another, and the lads and lasses for
evening rendezvous--all without offence taken or leave asked. But these
halcyon days were now to have an end, and a minatory inscription on one
side of the gate intimated 'prosecution according to law' (the painter
had spelt it 'persecution'--l'un vaut bien l'autre) to all who should
be found trespassing on these inclosures. On the other side, for
uniformity's sake, was a precautionary annunciation of spring-guns and
man-traps of such formidable powers that, said the rubrick, with an
emphatic nota bene--'if a man goes in they will break a horse's leg.'

In defiance of these threats, six well-grown gipsy boys and girls were
riding cock-horse upon the new gate, and plaiting may-flowers, which it
was but too evident had been gathered within the forbidden precincts.
With as much anger as he was capable of feeling, or perhaps of
assuming, the Laird commanded them to descend;--they paid no attention
to his mandate: he then began to pull them down one after
another;--they resisted, passively at least, each sturdy bronzed varlet
making himself as heavy as he could, or climbing up as fast as he was
dismounted.

The Laird then called in the assistance of his servant, a surly fellow,
who had immediate recourse to his horsewhip. A few lashes sent the
party a-scampering; and thus commenced the first breach of the peace
between the house of Ellangowan and the gipsies of Derncleugh.

The latter could not for some time imagine that the war was real; until
they found that their children were horsewhipped by the grieve when
found trespassing; that their asses were poinded by the ground-officer
when left in the plantations, or even when turned to graze by the
roadside, against the provision of the turnpike acts; that the
constable began to make curious inquiries into their mode of gaining a
livelihood, and expressed his surprise that the men should sleep in the
hovels all day, and be abroad the greater part of the night.

When matters came to this point, the gipsies, without scruple, entered
upon measures of retaliation. Ellangowan's hen-roosts were plundered,
his linen stolen from the lines or bleaching-ground, his fishings
poached, his dogs kidnapped, his growing trees cut or barked. Much
petty mischief was done, and some evidently for the mischief's sake. On
the other hand, warrants went forth, without mercy, to pursue, search
for, take, and apprehend; and, notwithstanding their dexterity, one or
two of the depredators were unable to avoid conviction. One, a stout
young fellow, who sometimes had gone to sea a-fishing, was handed over
to the captain of the impress service at D--; two children were soundly
flogged, and one Egyptian matron sent to the house of correction.

Still, however, the gipsies made no motion to leave the spot which they
had so long inhabited, and Mr. Bertram felt an unwillingness to deprive
them of their ancient 'city of refuge'; so that the petty warfare we
have noticed continued for several months, without increase or
abatement of hostilities on either side.




CHAPTER VIII

     So the red Indian, by Ontario's side,
     Nursed hardy on the brindled panther's hide,
     As fades his swarthy race, with anguish sees
     The white man's cottage rise beneath the trees;
     He leaves the shelter of his native wood,
     He leaves the murmur of Ohio's flood,
     And forward rushing in indignant grief,
     Where never foot has trod the fallen leaf,
     He bends his course where twilight reigns sublime.
     O'er forests silent since the birth of time.

          SCENES OF INFANCY.


In tracing the rise and progress of the Scottish Maroon war, we must
not omit to mention that years had rolled on, and that little Harry
Bertram, one of the hardiest and most lively children that ever made a
sword and grenadier's cap of rushes, now approached his fifth revolving
birthday. A hardihood of disposition, which early developed itself,
made him already a little wanderer; he was well acquainted with every
patch of lea ground and dingle around Ellangowan, and could tell in his
broken language upon what baulks grew the bonniest flowers, and what
copse had the ripest nuts. He repeatedly terrified his attendants by
clambering about the ruins of the old castle, and had more than once
made a stolen excursion as far as the gipsy hamlet.

On these occasions he was generally brought back by Meg Merrilies, who,
though she could not be prevailed upon to enter the Place of Ellangowan
after her nephew had been given up to the press-gang, did not
apparently extend her resentment to the child. On the contrary, she
often contrived to waylay him in his walks, sing him a gipsy song, give
him a ride upon her jackass, and thrust into his pocket a piece of
gingerbread or a red-cheeked apple. This woman's ancient attachment to
the family, repelled and checked in every other direction, seemed to
rejoice in having some object on which it could yet repose and expand
itself. She prophesied a hundred times, 'that young Mr. Harry would be
the pride o' the family, and there hadna been sic a sprout frae the
auld aik since the death of Arthur Mac-Dingawaie, that was killed in
the battle o' the Bloody Bay; as for the present stick, it was good for
nothing but fire-wood.' On one occasion, when the child was ill, she
lay all night below the window, chanting a rhyme which she believed
sovereign as a febrifuge, and could neither be prevailed upon to enter
the house nor to leave the station she had chosen till she was informed
that the crisis was over.

The affection of this woman became matter of suspicion, not indeed to
the Laird, who was never hasty in suspecting evil, but to his wife, who
had indifferent health and poor spirits. She was now far advanced in a
second pregnancy, and, as she could not walk abroad herself, and the
woman who attended upon Harry was young and thoughtless, she prayed
Dominie Sampson to undertake the task of watching the boy in his
rambles, when he should not be otherwise accompanied. The Dominie loved
his young charge, and was enraptured with his own success in having
already brought him so far in his learning as to spell words of three
syllables. The idea of this early prodigy of erudition being carried
off by the gipsies, like a second Adam Smith,[Footnote: The father of
Economical Philosophy was, when a child, actually carried off by
gipsies, and remained some hours in their possession.] was not to be
tolerated; and accordingly, though the charge was contrary to all his
habits of life, he readily undertook it, and might be seen stalking
about with a mathematical problem in his head, and his eye upon a child
of five years old, whose rambles led him into a hundred awkward
situations. Twice was the Dominie chased by a cross-grained cow, once
he fell into the brook crossing at the stepping-stones, and another
time was bogged up to the middle in the slough of Lochend, in
attempting to gather a water-lily for the young Laird. It was the
opinion of the village matrons who relieved Sampson on the latter
occasion, 'that the Laird might as weel trust the care o' his bairn to
a potatoe bogle'; but the good Dominie bore all his disasters with
gravity and serenity equally imperturbable. 'Pro-di-gi-ous!' was the
only ejaculation they ever extorted from the much-enduring man.

The Laird had by this time determined to make root-and-branch work with
the Maroons of Derncleugh. The old servants shook their heads at his
proposal, and even Dominie Sampson ventured upon an indirect
remonstrance. As, however, it was couched in the oracular phrase, 'Ne
moveas Camerinam,' neither the allusion, nor the language in which it
was expressed, were calculated for Mr. Bertram's edification, and
matters proceeded against the gipsies in form of law. Every door in the
hamlet was chalked by the ground-officer, in token of a formal warning
to remove at next term. Still, however, they showed no symptoms either
of submission or of compliance. At length the term-day, the fatal
Martinmas, arrived, and violent measures of ejection were resorted to.
A strong posse of peace-officers, sufficient to render all resistance
vain, charged the inhabitants to depart by noon; and, as they did not
obey, the officers, in terms of their warrant, proceeded to unroof the
cottages, and pull down the wretched doors and windows--a summary and
effectual mode of ejection still practised in some remote parts of
Scotland when a tenant proves refractory. The gipsies for a time beheld
the work of destruction in sullen silence and inactivity; then set
about saddling and loading their asses, and making preparations for
their departure. These were soon accomplished, where all had the habits
of wandering Tartars; and they set forth on their journey to seek new
settlements, where their patrons should neither be of the quorum nor
custos rotulorum.

Certain qualms of feeling had deterred Ellangowan from attending in
person to see his tenants expelled. He left the executive part of the
business to the officers of the law, under the immediate direction of
Frank Kennedy, a supervisor, or riding-officer, belonging to the
excise, who had of late become intimate at the Place, and of whom we
shall have more to say in the next chapter. Mr. Bertram himself chose
that day to make a visit to a friend at some distance. But it so
happened, notwithstanding his precautions, that he could not avoid
meeting his late tenants during their retreat from his property.

It was in a hollow way, near the top of a steep ascent, upon the verge
of the Ellangowan estate, that Mr. Bertram met the gipsy procession.
Four or five men formed the advanced guard, wrapped in long loose
great-coats that hid their tall slender figures, as the large slouched
hats, drawn over their brows, concealed their wild features, dark eyes,
and swarthy faces. Two of them carried long fowling-pieces, one wore a
broadsword without a sheath, and all had the Highland dirk, though they
did not wear that weapon openly or ostentatiously. Behind them followed
the train of laden asses, and small carts or TUMBLERS, as they were
called in that country, on which were laid the decrepit and the
helpless, the aged and infant part of the exiled community. The women
in their red cloaks and straw hats, the elder children with bare heads
and bare feet, and almost naked bodies, had the immediate care of the
little caravan. The road was narrow, running between two broken banks
of sand, and Mr. Bertram's servant rode forward, smacking his whip with
an air of authority, and motioning to the drivers to allow free passage
to their betters. His signal was unattended to. He then called to the
men who lounged idly on before, 'Stand to your beasts' heads, and make
room for the Laird to pass.'

'He shall have his share of the road,' answered a male gipsy from under
his slouched and large-brimmed hat, and without raising his face, 'and
he shall have nae mair; the highway is as free to our cuddies as to his
gelding.'

The tone of the man being sulky, and even menacing, Mr. Bertram thought
it best to put his dignity in his pocket, and pass by the procession
quietly, on such space as they chose to leave for his accommodation,
which was narrow enough. To cover with an appearance of indifference
his feeling of the want of respect with which he was treated, he
addressed one of the men, as he passed him without any show of
greeting, salute, or recognition--'Giles Baillie,' he said, 'have you
heard that your son Gabriel is well?' (The question respected the young
man who had been pressed.)

'If I had heard otherwise,' said the old man, looking up with a stern
and menacing countenance, 'you should have heard of it too.' And he
plodded on his way, tarrying no further question. [Footnote: This
anecdote is a literal fact.] When the Laird had pressed on with
difficulty among a crowd of familiar faces, which had on all former
occasions marked his approach with the reverence due to that of a
superior being, but in which he now only read hatred and contempt, and
had got clear of the throng, he could not help turning his horse, and
looking back to mark the progress of their march. The group would have
been an excellent subject for the pencil of Calotte. The van had
already reached a small and stunted thicket, which was at the bottom of
the hill, and which gradually hid the line of march until the last
stragglers disappeared.

His sensations were bitter enough. The race, it is true, which he had
thus summarily dismissed from their ancient place of refuge, was idle
and vicious; but had he endeavoured to render them otherwise? They were
not more irregular characters now than they had been while they were
admitted to consider themselves as a sort of subordinate dependents of
his family; and ought the mere circumstance of his becoming a
magistrate to have made at once such a change in his conduct towards
them? Some means of reformation ought at least to have been tried
before sending seven families at once upon the wide world, and
depriving them of a degree of countenance which withheld them at least
from atrocious guilt. There was also a natural yearning of heart on
parting with so many known and familiar faces; and to this feeling
Godfrey Bertram was peculiarly accessible, from the limited qualities
of his mind, which sought its principal amusements among the petty
objects around him. As he was about to turn his horse's head to pursue
his journey, Meg Merrilies, who had lagged behind the troop,
unexpectedly presented herself.

She was standing upon one of those high precipitous banks which, as we
before noticed, overhung the road, so that she was placed considerably
higher than Ellangowan, even though he was on horseback; and her tall
figure, relieved against the clear blue sky, seemed almost of
supernatural stature. We have noticed that there was in her general
attire, or rather in her mode of adjusting it, somewhat of a foreign
costume, artfully adopted perhaps for the purpose of adding to the
effect of her spells and predictions, or perhaps from some traditional
notions respecting the dress of her ancestors. On this occasion she had
a large piece of red cotton cloth rolled about her head in the form of
a turban, from beneath which her dark eyes flashed with uncommon
lustre. Her long and tangled black hair fell in elf-locks from the
folds of this singular head-gear. Her attitude was that of a sibyl in
frenzy, and she stretched out in her right hand a sapling bough which
seemed just pulled.

'I'll be d--d,' said the groom, 'if she has not been cutting the young
ashes in the dukit park!' The Laird made no answer, but continued to
look at the figure which was thus perched above his path.

'Ride your ways,' said the gipsy, 'ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan;
ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram! This day have ye quenched seven
smoking hearths; see if the fire in your ain parlour burn the blyther
for that. Ye have riven the thack off seven cottar houses; look if your
ain roof-tree stand the faster. Ye may stable your stirks in the
shealings at Derncleugh; see that the hare does not couch on the
hearthstane at Ellangowan. Ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram; what do ye
glower after our folk for? There's thirty hearts there that wad hae
wanted bread ere ye had wanted sunkets, and spent their life-blood ere
ye had scratched your finger. Yes; there's thirty yonder, from the auld
wife of an hundred to the babe that was born last week, that ye have
turned out o' their bits o' bields, to sleep with the tod and the
blackcock in the muirs! Ride your ways, Ellangowan. Our bairns are
hinging at our weary backs; look that your braw cradle at hame be the
fairer spread up; not that I am wishing ill to little Harry, or to the
babe that's yet to be born--God forbid--and make them kind to the poor,
and better folk than their father! And now, ride e'en your ways; for
these are the last words ye'll ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this
is the last reise that I'll ever cut in the bonny woods of Ellangowan.'

So saying, she broke the sapling she held in her hand, and flung it
into the road. Margaret of Anjou, bestowing on her triumphant foes her
keen-edged malediction, could not have turned from them with a gesture
more proudly contemptuous. The Laird was clearing his voice to speak,
and thrusting his hand in his pocket to find a half-crown; the gipsy
waited neither for his reply nor his donation, but strode down the hill
to overtake the caravan.

Ellangowan rode pensively home; and it was remarkable that he did not
mention this interview to any of his family. The groom was not so
reserved; he told the story at great length to a full audience in the
kitchen, and concluded by swearing, that 'if ever the devil spoke by
the mouth of a woman, he had spoken by that of Meg Merrilies that
blessed day.'




CHAPTER IX

     Paint Scotland greeting ower her thrissle,
     Her mutchkin stoup as toom's a whistle,
     And d--n'd excisemen in a bustle,
     Seizing a stell,
     Triumphant crushin't like a mussel,
     Or lampit shell

          BURNS.


During the period of Mr. Bertram's active magistracy, he did not forget
the affairs of the revenue. Smuggling, for which the Isle of Man then
afforded peculiar facilities, was general, or rather universal, all
along the southwestern coast of Scotland. Almost all the common people
were engaged in these practices; the gentry connived at them, and the
officers of the revenue were frequently discountenanced in the exercise
of their duty by those who should have protected them.

There was at this period, employed as a riding-officer or supervisor,
in that part of the country a certain Francis Kennedy, already named in
our narrative--a stout, resolute, and active man, who had made seizures
to a great amount, and was proportionally hated by those who had an
interest in the fair trade, as they called the pursuit of these
contraband adventurers. This person was natural son to a gentleman of
good family, owing to which circumstance, and to his being of a jolly,
convivial disposition, and singing a good song, he was admitted to the
occasional society of the gentlemen of the country, and was a member of
several of their clubs for practising athletic games, at which he was
particularly expert.

At Ellangowan Kennedy was a frequent and always an acceptable guest.
His vivacity relieved Mr. Bertram of the trouble of thought, and the
labour which it cost him to support a detailed communication of ideas;
while the daring and dangerous exploits which he had undertaken in the
discharge of his office formed excellent conversation. To all these
revenue adventures did the Laird of Ellangowan seriously incline, and
the amusement which he derived from Kennedy's society formed an
excellent reason for countenancing and assisting the narrator in the
execution of his invidious and hazardous duty.

'Frank Kennedy,' he said, 'was a gentleman, though on the wrang side of
the blanket; he was connected with the family of Ellangowan through the
house of Glengubble. The last Laird of Glengubble would have brought
the estate into the Ellangowan line; but, happening to go to Harrigate,
he there met with Miss Jean Hadaway--by the by, the Green Dragon at
Harrigate is the best house of the twa--but for Frank Kennedy, he's in
one sense a gentleman born, and it's a shame not to support him against
these blackguard smugglers.'

After this league had taken place between judgment and execution, it
chanced that Captain Dirk Hatteraick had landed a cargo of spirits and
other contraband goods upon the beach not far from Ellangowan, and,
confiding in the indifference with which the Laird had formerly
regarded similar infractions of the law, he was neither very anxious to
conceal nor to expedite the transaction. The consequence was that Mr.
Frank Kennedy, armed with a warrant from Ellangowan, and supported by
some of the Laird's people who knew the country, and by a party of
military, poured down upon the kegs, bales, and bags, and after a
desperate affray, in which severe wounds were given and received,
succeeded in clapping the broad arrow upon the articles, and bearing
them off in triumph to the next custom-house. Dirk Hatteraick vowed, in
Dutch, German, and English, a deep and full revenge, both against the
gauger and his abettors; and all who knew him thought it likely he
would keep his word.

A few days after the departure of the gipsy tribe, Mr. Bertram asked
his lady one morning at breakfast whether this was not little Harry's
birthday.

'Five years auld exactly, this blessed day,' answered the lady; 'so we
may look into the English gentleman's paper.'

Mr. Bertram liked to show his authority in trifles. 'No, my dear, not
till to-morrow. The last time I was at quarter-sessions the sheriff
told us that DIES--that dies inceptus--in short, you don't understand
Latin, but it means that a term-day is not begun till it's ended.'

'That sounds like nonsense, my dear.'

'May be so, my dear; but it may be very good law for all that. I am
sure, speaking of term-days, I wish, as Frank Kennedy says, that
Whitsunday would kill Martinmas and be hanged for the murder; for there
I have got a letter about that interest of Jenny Cairns's, and deil a
tenant's been at the Place yet wi' a boddle of rent, nor will not till
Candlemas. But, speaking of Frank Kennedy, I daresay he'll be here the
day, for he was away round to Wigton to warn a king's ship that's lying
in the bay about Dirk Hatteraick's lugger being on the coast again, and
he'll be back this day; so we'll have a bottle of claret and drink
little Harry's health.'

'I wish,' replied the lady, 'Frank Kennedy would let Dirk Hatteraick
alane. What needs he make himself mair busy than other folk? Cannot he
sing his sang, and take his drink, and draw his salary, like Collector
Snail, honest man, that never fashes ony body? And I wonder at you,
Laird, for meddling and making. Did we ever want to send for tea or
brandy frae the borough-town when Dirk Hatteraick used to come quietly
into the bay?'

'Mrs. Bertram, you know nothing of these matters. Do you think it
becomes a magistrate to let his own house be made a receptacle for
smuggled goods? Frank Kennedy will show you the penalties in the act,
and ye ken yoursell they used to put their run goods into the Auld
Place of Ellangowan up by there.'

'Oh dear, Mr. Bertram, and what the waur were the wa's and the vault o'
the auld castle for having a whin kegs o' brandy in them at an orra
time? I am sure ye were not obliged to ken ony thing about it; and what
the waur was the King that the lairds here got a soup o' drink and the
ladies their drap o' tea at a reasonable rate?--it's a shame to them to
pit such taxes on them!--and was na I much the better of these Flanders
head and pinners that Dirk Hatteraick sent me a' the way from Antwerp?
It will be lang or the King sends me ony thing, or Frank Kennedy
either. And then ye would quarrel with these gipsies too! I expect
every day to hear the barnyard's in a low.'

'I tell you once more, my dear, you don't understand these things--and
there's Frank Kennedy coming galloping up the avenue.'

'Aweel! aweel! Ellangowan,' said the lady, raising her voice as the
Laird left the room, 'I wish ye may understand them yoursell, that's
a'!'

From this nuptial dialogue the Laird joyfully escaped to meet his
faithful friend, Mr. Kennedy, who arrived in high spirits. 'For the
love of life, Ellangowan,' he said, 'get up to the castle! you'll see
that old fox Dirk Hatteraick, and his Majesty's hounds in full cry
after him.' So saying, he flung his horse's bridle to a boy, and ran up
the ascent to the old castle, followed by the Laird, and indeed by
several others of the family, alarmed by the sound of guns from the
sea, now distinctly heard.

On gaining that part of the ruins which commanded the most extensive
outlook, they saw a lugger, with all her canvass crowded, standing
across the bay, closely pursued by a sloop of war, that kept firing
upon the chase from her bows, which the lugger returned with her
stern-chasers. 'They're but at long bowls yet,' cried Kennedy, in great
exultation, 'but they will be closer by and by. D--n him, he's starting
his cargo! I see the good Nantz pitching overboard, keg after keg!
That's a d--d ungenteel thing of Mr. Hatteraick, as I shall let him
know by and by. Now, now! they've got the wind of him! that's it,
that's it! Hark to him! hark to him! Now, my dogs! now, my dogs! Hark
to Ranger, hark!'

'I think,' said the old gardener to one of the maids, 'the ganger's
fie,' by which word the common people express those violent spirits
which they think a presage of death.

Meantime the chase continued. The lugger, being piloted with great
ability, and using every nautical shift to make her escape, had now
reached, and was about to double, the headland which formed the extreme
point of land on the left side of the bay, when a ball having hit the
yard in the slings, the mainsail fell upon the deck. The consequence of
this accident appeared inevitable, but could not be seen by the
spectators; for the vessel, which had just doubled the headland, lost
steerage, and fell out of their sight behind the promontory. The sloop
of war crowded all sail to pursue, but she had stood too close upon the
cape, so that they were obliged to wear the vessel for fear of going
ashore, and to make a large tack back into the bay, in order to recover
sea-room enough to double the headland.

'They 'll lose her, by--, cargo and lugger, one or both,' said Kennedy;
'I must gallop away to the Point of Warroch (this was the headland so
often mentioned), and make them a signal where she has drifted to on
the other side. Good-bye for an hour, Ellangowan; get out the gallon
punch-bowl and plenty of lemons. I'll stand for the French article by
the time I come back, and we'll drink the young Laird's health in a
bowl that would swim the collector's yawl.' So saying, he mounted his
horse and galloped off.

About a mile from the house, and upon the verge of the woods, which, as
we have said, covered a promontory terminating in the cape called the
Point of Warroch, Kennedy met young Harry Bertram, attended by his
tutor, Dominie Sampson. He had often promised the child a ride upon his
galloway; and, from singing, dancing, and playing Punch for his
amusement, was a particular favourite. He no sooner came scampering up
the path, than the boy loudly claimed his promise; and Kennedy, who saw
no risk, in indulging him, and wished to tease the Dominie, in whose
visage he read a remonstrance, caught up Harry from the ground, placed
him before him, and continued his route; Sampson's 'Peradventure,
Master Kennedy-' being lost in the clatter of his horse's feet. The
pedagogue hesitated a moment whether he should go after them; but
Kennedy being a person in full confidence of the family, and with whom
he himself had no delight in associating, 'being that he was addicted
unto profane and scurrilous jests,' he continued his own walk at his
own pace, till he reached the Place of Ellangowan.

The spectators from the ruined walls of the castle were still watching
the sloop of war, which at length, but not without the loss of
considerable time, recovered sea-room enough to weather the Point of
Warroch, and was lost to their sight behind that wooded promontory.
Some time afterwards the discharges of several cannon were heard at a
distance, and, after an interval, a still louder explosion, as of a
vessel blown up, and a cloud of smoke rose above the trees and mingled
with the blue sky. All then separated on their different occasions,
auguring variously upon the fate of the smuggler, but the majority
insisting that her capture was inevitable, if she had not already gone
to the bottom.

'It is near our dinner-time, my dear,' said Mrs. Bertram to her
husband; 'will it be lang before Mr. Kennedy comes back?'

'I expect him every moment, my dear,' said the Laird; 'perhaps he is
bringing some of the officers of the sloop with him.'

'My stars, Mr. Bertram! why did not ye tell me this before, that we
might have had the large round table? And then, they're a' tired o'
saut meat, and, to tell you the plain truth, a rump o' beef is the best
part of your dinner. And then I wad have put on another gown, and ye
wadna have been the waur o' a clean neck-cloth yoursell. But ye delight
in surprising and hurrying one. I am sure I am no to baud out for ever
against this sort of going on; but when folk's missed, then they are
moaned.'

'Pshaw, pshaw! deuce take the beef, and the gown, and table, and the
neck-cloth! we shall do all very well. Where's the Dominie, John? (to a
servant who was busy about the table) where's the Dominie and little
Harry?'

'Mr. Sampson's been at hame these twa hours and mair, but I dinna think
Mr. Harry cam hame wi' him.'

'Not come hame wi' him?' said the lady; 'desire Mr. Sampson to step
this way directly.'

'Mr. Sampson,' said she, upon his entrance, 'is it not the most
extraordinary thing in this world wide, that you, that have free
up-putting--bed, board, and washing--and twelve pounds sterling a year,
just to look after that boy, should let him out of your sight for twa
or three hours?'

Sampson made a bow of humble acknowledgment at each pause which the
angry lady made in her enumeration of the advantages of his situation,
in order to give more weight to her remonstrance, and then, in words
which we will not do him the injustice to imitate, told how Mr. Francis
Kennedy 'had assumed spontaneously the charge of Master Harry, in
despite of his remonstrances in the contrary.'

'I am very little obliged to Mr. Francis Kennedy for his pains,' said
the lady, peevishly; 'suppose he lets the boy drop from his horse, and
lames him? or suppose one of the cannons comes ashore and kills him? or
suppose--'

'Or suppose, my dear,' said Ellangowan, 'what is much more likely than
anything else, that they have gone aboard the sloop or the prize, and
are to come round the Point with the tide?'

'And then they may be drowned,' said the lady.

'Verily,' said Sampson, 'I thought Mr. Kennedy had returned an hour
since. Of a surety I deemed I heard his horse's feet.'

'That,' said John, with a broad grin, 'was Grizzel chasing the
humble-cow out of the close.'

Sampson coloured up to the eyes, not at the implied taunt, which he
would never have discovered, or resented if he had, but at some idea
which crossed his own mind. 'I have been in an error,' he said; 'of a
surety I should have tarried for the babe.' So saying, he snatched his
bone-headed cane and hat, and hurried away towards Warroch wood faster
than he was ever known to walk before or after.

The Laird lingered some time, debating the point with the lady. At
length he saw the sloop of war again make her appearance; but, without
approaching the shore, she stood away to the westward with all her
sails set, and was soon out of sight. The lady's state of timorous and
fretful apprehension was so habitual that her fears went for nothing
with her lord and master; but an appearance of disturbance and anxiety
among the servants now excited his alarm, especially when he was called
out of the room, and told in private that Mr. Kennedy's horse had come
to the stable door alone, with the saddle turned round below its belly
and the reins of the bridle broken; and that a farmer had informed them
in passing that there was a smuggling lugger burning like a furnace on
the other side of the Point of Warroch, and that, though he had come
through the wood, he had seen or heard nothing of Kennedy or the young
Laird, 'only there was Dominie Sampson gaun rampauging about like mad,
seeking for them.'

All was now bustle at Ellangowan. The Laird and his servants, male and
female, hastened to the wood of Warroch. The tenants and cottagers in
the neighbourhood lent their assistance, partly out of zeal, partly
from curiosity. Boats were manned to search the sea-shore, which, on
the other side of the Point, rose into high and indented rocks. A vague
suspicion was entertained, though too horrible to be expressed, that
the child might have fallen from one of these cliffs.

The evening had begun to close when the parties entered the wood, and
dispersed different ways in quest of the boy and his companion. The
darkening of the atmosphere, and the hoarse sighs of the November wind
through the naked trees, the rustling of the withered leaves which
strewed the glades, the repeated halloos of the different parties,
which often drew them together in expectation of meeting the objects of
their search, gave a cast of dismal sublimity to the scene.

At length, after a minute and fruitless investigation through the wood,
the searchers began to draw together into one body, and to compare
notes. The agony of the father grew beyond concealment, yet it scarcely
equalled the anguish of the tutor. 'Would to God I had died for him!'
the affectionate creature repeated, in notes of the deepest distress.
Those who were less interested rushed into a tumultuary discussion of
chances and possibilities. Each gave his opinion, and each was
alternately swayed by that of the others. Some thought the objects of
their search had gone aboard the sloop; some that they had gone to a
village at three miles' distance; some whispered they might have been
on board the lugger, a few planks and beams of which the tide now
drifted ashore.

At this instant a shout was heard from the beach, so loud, so shrill,
so piercing, so different from every sound which the woods that day had
rung to, that nobody hesitated a moment to believe that it conveyed
tidings, and tidings of dreadful import. All hurried to the place, and,
venturing without scruple upon paths which at another time they would
have shuddered to look at, descended towards a cleft of the rock, where
one boat's crew was already landed. 'Here, sirs, here! this way, for
God's sake! this way! this way!' was the reiterated cry. Ellangowan
broke through the throng which had already assembled at the fatal spot,
and beheld the object of their terror. It was the dead body of Kennedy.
At first sight he seemed to have perished by a fall from the rocks,
which rose above the spot on which he lay in a perpendicular precipice
of a hundred feet above the beach. The corpse was lying half in, half
out of the water; the advancing tide, raising the arm and stirring the
clothes, had given it at some distance the appearance of motion, so
that those who first discovered the body thought that life remained.
But every spark had been long extinguished.

'My bairn! my bairn!' cried the distracted father, 'where can he be?' A
dozen mouths were opened to communicate hopes which no one felt. Some
one at length mentioned--the gipsies! In a moment Ellangowan had
reascended the cliffs, flung himself upon the first horse he met, and
rode furiously to the huts at Derncleugh. All was there dark and
desolate; and, as he dismounted to make more minute search, he stumbled
over fragments of furniture which had been thrown out of the cottages,
and the broken wood and thatch which had been pulled down by his
orders. At that moment the prophecy, or anathema, of Meg Merrilies fell
heavy on his mind. 'You have stripped the thatch from seven cottages;
see that the roof-tree of your own house stand the surer!'

'Restore,' he cried, 'restore my bairn! bring me back my son, and all
shall be forgot and forgiven!' As he uttered these words in a sort of
frenzy, his eye caught a glimmering of light in one of the dismantled
cottages; it was that in which Meg Merrilies formerly resided. The
light, which seemed to proceed from fire, glimmered not only through
the window, but also through the rafters of the hut where the roofing
had been torn off.

He flew to the place; the entrance was bolted. Despair gave the
miserable father the strength of ten men; he rushed against the door
with such violence that it gave way before the momentum of his weight
and force. The cottage was empty, but bore marks of recent habitation:
there was fire on the hearth, a kettle, and some preparation for food.
As he eagerly gazed around for something that might confirm his hope
that his child yet lived, although in the power of those strange
people, a man entered the hut.

It was his old gardener. 'O sir!' said the old man, 'such a night as
this I trusted never to live to see! ye maun come to the Place
directly!'

'Is my boy found? is he alive? have ye found Harry Bertram? Andrew,
have ye found Harry Bertram?'

'No, sir; but-'

'Then he is kidnapped! I am sure of it, Andrew! as sure as that I tread
upon earth! She has stolen him; and I will never stir from this place
till I have tidings of my bairn!'

'O, but ye maun come hame, sir! ye maun come hame! We have sent for the
Sheriff, and we'll seta watch here a' night, in case the gipsies
return; but YOU--ye maun come hame, sir, for my lady's in the
dead-thraw.'

Bertram turned a stupefied and unmeaning eye on the messenger who
uttered this calamitous news; and, repeating the words 'in the
dead-thraw!' as if he could not comprehend their meaning, suffered the
old man to drag him towards his horse. During the ride home he only
said, 'Wife and bairn baith--mother and son baith,--sair, sair to
abide!'

It is needless to dwell upon the new scene of agony which awaited him.
The news of Kennedy's fate had been eagerly and incautiously
communicated at Ellangowan, with the gratuitous addition, that,
doubtless, 'he had drawn the young Laird over the craig with him,
though the tide had swept away the child's body; he was light, puir
thing, and would flee farther into the surf.'

Mrs. Bertram heard the tidings; she was far advanced in her pregnancy;
she fell into the pains of premature labour, and, ere Ellangowan had
recovered his agitated faculties, so as to comprehend the full distress
of his situation, he was the father of a female infant, and a widower.




CHAPTER X

     But see, his face is black and full of blood;
     His eye-balls farther out than when he lived,
     Staring full ghastly like a strangled man,
     His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch d with struggling,
     His hands abroad display'd, as one that grasp'd
     And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdued

          Henry VI, Part II


The Sheriff-depute of the county arrived at Ellangowan next morning by
daybreak. To this provincial magistrate the law of Scotland assigns
judicial powers of considerable extent, and the task of inquiring into
all crimes committed within his jurisdiction, the apprehension and
commitment of suspected persons, and so forth. [Footnote: The Scottish
sheriff discharges, on such occasions as that now mentioned, pretty
much the same duty as a coroner.]

The gentleman who held the office in the shire of---at the time of this
catastrophe was well born and well educated; and, though somewhat
pedantic and professional in his habits, he enjoyed general respect as
an active and intelligent magistrate. His first employment was to
examine all witnesses whose evidence could throw light upon this
mysterious event, and make up the written report, proces verbal, or
precognition, as it is technically called, which the practice of
Scotland has substituted for a coroner's inquest. Under the Sheriff's
minute and skilful inquiry, many circumstances appeared which seemed
incompatible with the original opinion that Kennedy had accidentally
fallen from the cliffs. We shall briefly detail some of these.

The body had been deposited in a neighbouring fisher-hut, but without
altering the condition in which it was found. This was the first object
of the Sheriff's examination. Though fearfully crushed and mangled by
the fall from such a height, the corpse was found to exhibit a deep cut
in the head, which, in the opinion of a skilful surgeon, must have been
inflicted by a broadsword or cutlass. The experience of this gentleman
discovered other suspicious indications. The face was much blackened,
the eyes distorted, and the veins of the neck swelled. A coloured
handkerchief, which the unfortunate man had worn round his neck, did
not present the usual appearance, but was much loosened, and the knot
displaced and dragged extremely tight; the folds were also compressed,
as if it had been used as a means of grappling the deceased, and
dragging him perhaps to the precipice.

On the other hand, poor Kennedy's purse was found untouched; and, what
seemed yet more extraordinary, the pistols which he usually carried
when about to encounter any hazardous adventure were found in his
pockets loaded. This appeared particularly strange, for he was known
and dreaded by the contraband traders as a man equally fearless and
dexterous in the use of his weapons, of which he had given many signal
proofs. The Sheriff inquired whether Kennedy was not in the practice of
carrying any other arms? Most of Mr. Bertram's servants recollected
that he generally had a couteau de chasse, or short hanger, but none
such was found upon the dead body; nor could those who had seen him on
the morning of the fatal day take it upon them to assert whether he
then carried that weapon or not.

The corpse afforded no other indicia respecting the fate of Kennedy;
for, though the clothes were much displaced and the limbs dreadfully
fractured, the one seemed the probable, the other the certain,
consequences of such a fall. The hands of the deceased were clenched
fast, and full of turf and earth; but this also seemed equivocal.

The magistrate then proceeded to the place where the corpse was first
discovered, and made those who had found it give, upon the spot, a
particular and detailed account of the manner in which it was lying. A
large fragment of the rock appeared to have accompanied, or followed,
the fall of the victim from the cliff above. It was of so solid and
compact a substance that it had fallen without any great diminution by
splintering; so that the Sheriff was enabled, first, to estimate the
weight by measurement, and then to calculate, from the appearance of
the fragment, what portion of it had been bedded into the cliff from
which it had descended. This was easily detected by the raw appearance
of the stone where it had not been exposed to the atmosphere. They then
ascended the cliff, and surveyed the place from whence the stony
fragment had fallen. It seemed plain, from the appearance of the bed,
that the mere weight of one man standing upon the projecting part of
the fragment, supposing it in its original situation, could not have
destroyed its balance and precipitated it, with himself, from the
cliff. At the same time, it appeared to have lain so loose that the use
of a lever, or the combined strength of three or four men, might easily
have hurled it from its position. The short turf about the brink of the
precipice was much trampled, as if stamped by the heels of men in a
mortal struggle, or in the act of some violent exertion. Traces of the
same kind, less visibly marked, guided the sagacious investigator to
the verge of the copsewood, which in that place crept high up the bank
towards the top of the precipice.

With patience and perseverance they traced these marks into the
thickest part of the copse, a route which no person would have
voluntarily adopted, unless for the purpose of concealment. Here they
found plain vestiges of violence and struggling, from space to space.
Small boughs were torn down, as if grasped by some resisting wretch who
was dragged forcibly along; the ground, where in the least degree soft
or marshy, showed the print of many feet; there were vestiges also
which might be those of human blood. At any rate it was certain that
several persons must have forced their passage among the oaks, hazels,
and underwood with which they were mingled; and in some places appeared
traces as if a sack full of grain, a dead body, or something of that
heavy and solid description, had been dragged along the ground. In one
part of the thicket there was a small swamp, the clay of which was
whitish, being probably mixed with marl. The back of Kennedy's coat
appeared besmeared with stains of the same colour.

At length, about a quarter of a mile from the brink of the fatal
precipice, the traces conducted them to a small open space of ground,
very much trampled, and plainly stained with blood, although withered
leaves had been strewed upon the spot, and other means hastily taken to
efface the marks, which seemed obviously to have been derived from a
desperate affray. On one side of this patch of open ground was found
the sufferer's naked hanger, which seemed to have been thrown into the
thicket; on the other, the belt and sheath, which appeared to have been
hidden with more leisurely care and precaution.

The magistrate caused the footprints which marked this spot to be
carefully measured and examined. Some corresponded to the foot of the
unhappy victim; some were larger, some less; indicating that at least
four or five men had been busy around him. Above all, here, and here
only, were observed the vestiges of a child's foot; and as it could be
seen nowhere else, and the hard horse-track which traversed the wood of
Warroch was contiguous to the spot, it was natural to think that the
boy might have escaped in that direction during the confusion. But, as
he was never heard of, the Sheriff, who made a careful entry of all
these memoranda, did not suppress his opinion, that the deceased had
met with foul play, and that the murderers, whoever they were, had
possessed themselves of the person of the child Harry Bertram.

Every exertion was now made to discover the criminals. Suspicion
hesitated between the smugglers and the gipsies. The fate of Dirk
Hatteraick's vessel was certain. Two men from the opposite side of
Warroch Bay (so the inlet on the southern side of the Point of Warroch
is called) had seen, though at a great distance, the lugger drive
eastward, after doubling the headland, and, as they judged from her
manoeuvres, in a disabled state. Shortly after, they perceived that she
grounded, smoked, and finally took fire. She was, as one of them
expressed himself, 'in a light low' (bright flame) when they observed a
king's ship, with her colours up, heave in sight from behind the cape.
The guns of the burning vessel discharged themselves as the fire
reached them; and they saw her at length blow up with a great
explosion. The sloop of war kept aloof for her own safety; and, after
hovering till the other exploded, stood away southward under a press of
sail. The Sheriff anxiously interrogated these men whether any boats
had left the vessel. They could not say, they had seen none; but they
might have put off in such a direction as placed the burning vessel,
and the thick smoke which floated landward from it, between their
course and the witnesses' observation.

That the ship destroyed was Dirk Hatteraick's no one doubted. His
lugger was well known on the coast, and had been expected just at this
time. A letter from the commander of the king's sloop, to whom the
Sheriff made application, put the matter beyond doubt; he sent also an
extract from his log-book of the transactions of the day, which
intimated their being on the outlook for a smuggling lugger, Dirk
Hatteraick master, upon the information and requisition of Francis
Kennedy, of his Majesty's excise service; and that Kennedy was to be
upon the outlook on the shore, in case Hatteraick, who was known to be
a desperate fellow, and had been repeatedly outlawed, should attempt to
run his sloop aground. About nine o'clock A.M. they discovered a sail
which answered the description of Hatteraick's vessel, chased her, and,
after repeated signals to her to show colours and bring-to, fired upon
her. The chase then showed Hamburgh colours and returned the fire; and
a running fight was maintained for three hours, when, just as the
lugger was doubling the Point of Warroch, they observed that the
main-yard was shot in the slings, and that the vessel was disabled. It
was not in the power of the man-of-war's men for some time to profit by
this circumstance, owing to their having kept too much in shore for
doubling the headland. After two tacks, they accomplished this, and
observed the chase on fire and apparently deserted. The fire having
reached some casks of spirits, which were placed on the deck, with
other combustibles, probably on purpose, burnt with such fury that no
boats durst approach the vessel, especially as her shotted guns were
discharging one after another by the heat. The captain had no doubt
whatever that the crew had set the vessel on fire and escaped in their
boats. After watching the conflagration till the ship blew up, his
Majesty's sloop, the Shark, stood towards the Isle of Man, with the
purpose of intercepting the retreat of the smugglers, who, though they
might conceal themselves in the woods for a day or two, would probably
take the first opportunity of endeavouring to make for this asylum. But
they never saw more of them than is above narrated.

Such was the account given by William Pritchard, master and commander
of his Majesty's sloop of war, Shark, who concluded by regretting
deeply that he had not had the happiness to fall in with the scoundrels
who had had the impudence to fire on his Majesty's flag, and with an
assurance that, should he meet Mr. Dirk Hatteraick in any future
cruise, he would not fail to bring him into port under his stern, to
answer whatever might be alleged against him.

As, therefore, it seemed tolerably certain that the men on board the
lugger had escaped, the death of Kennedy, if he fell in with them in
the woods, when irritated by the loss of their vessel and by the share
he had in it, was easily to be accounted for. And it was not improbable
that to such brutal tempers, rendered desperate by their own
circumstances, even the murder of the child, against whose father, as
having become suddenly active in the prosecution of smugglers,
Hatteraick was known to have uttered deep threats, would not appear a
very heinous crime.

Against this hypothesis it was urged that a crew of fifteen or twenty
men could not have lain hidden upon the coast, when so close a search
took place immediately after the destruction of their vessel; or, at
least, that if they had hid themselves in the woods, their boats must
have been seen on the beach; that in such precarious circumstances, and
when all retreat must have seemed difficult if not impossible, it was
not to be thought that they would have all united to commit a useless
murder for the mere sake of revenge. Those who held this opinion
supposed either that the boats of the lugger had stood out to sea
without being observed by those who were intent upon gazing at the
burning vessel, and so gained safe distance before the sloop got round
the headland; or else that, the boats being staved or destroyed by the
fire of the Shark during the chase, the crew had obstinately determined
to perish with the vessel. What gave some countenance to this supposed
act of desperation was, that neither Dirk Hatteraick nor any of his
sailors, all well-known men in the fair trade, were again seen upon
that coast, or heard of in the Isle of Man, where strict inquiry was
made. On the other hand, only one dead body, apparently that of a
seaman killed by a cannon-shot, drifted ashore. So all that could be
done was to register the names, description, and appearance of the
individuals belonging to the ship's company, and offer a reward for the
apprehension of them, or any one of them, extending also to any person,
not the actual murderer, who should give evidence tending to convict
those who had murdered Francis Kennedy.

Another opinion, which was also plausibly supported, went to charge
this horrid crime upon the late tenants of Derncleugh. They were known
to have resented highly the conduct of the Laird of Ellangowan towards
them, and to have used threatening expressions, which every one
supposed them capable of carrying into effect. The kidnapping the child
was a crime much more consistent with their habits than with those of
smugglers, and his temporary guardian might have fallen in an attempt
to protect him. Besides, it was remembered that Kennedy had been an
active agent, two or three days before, in the forcible expulsion of
these people from Derncleugh, and that harsh and menacing language had
been exchanged between him and some of the Egyptian patriarchs on that
memorable occasion.

The Sheriff received also the depositions of the unfortunate father and
his servant, concerning what had passed at their meeting the caravan of
gipsies as they left the estate of Ellangowan. The speech of Meg
Merrilies seemed particularly suspicious. There was, as the magistrate
observed in his law language, damnum minatum--a damage, or evil turn,
threatened--and malum secutum--an evil of the very kind predicted
shortly afterwards following. A young woman, who had been gathering
nuts in Warroch wood upon the fatal day, was also strongly of opinion,
though she declined to make positive oath, that she had seen Meg
Merrilies--at least a woman of her remarkable size and
appearance--start suddenly out of a thicket; she said she had called to
her by name, but, as the figure turned from her and made no answer, she
was uncertain if it were the gipsy or her wraith, and was afraid to go
nearer to one who was always reckoned, in the vulgar phrase, 'no
canny.' This vague story received some corroboration from the
circumstance of a fire being that evening found in the gipsy's deserted
cottage. To this fact Ellangowan and his gardener bore evidence. Yet it
seemed extravagant to suppose that, had this woman been accessory to
such a dreadful crime, she would have returned, that very evening on
which it was committed, to the place of all others where she was most
likely to be sought after.

Meg Merrilies was, however, apprehended and examined. She denied
strongly having been either at Derncleugh or in the wood of Warroch
upon the day of Kennedy's death; and several of her tribe made oath in
her behalf, that she had never quitted their encampment, which was in a
glen about ten miles distant from Ellangowan. Their oaths were indeed
little to be trusted to; but what other evidence could be had in the
circumstances? There was one remarkable fact, and only one, which arose
from her examination. Her arm appeared to be slightly wounded by the
cut of a sharp weapon, and was tied up with a handkerchief of Harry
Bertram's. But the chief of the horde acknowledged he had 'corrected
her' that day with his whinger; she herself, and others, gave the same
account of her hurt; and for the handkerchief, the quantity of linen
stolen from Ellangowan during the last months of their residence on the
estate easily accounted for it, without charging Meg with a more
heinous crime.

It was observed upon her examination that she treated the questions
respecting the death of Kennedy, or 'the gauger,' as she called him,
with indifference; but expressed great and emphatic scorn and
indignation at being supposed capable of injuring little Harry Bertram.
She was long confined in jail, under the hope that something might yet
be discovered to throw light upon this dark and bloody transaction.
Nothing, however, occurred; and Meg was at length liberated, but under
sentence of banishment from the county as a vagrant, common thief, and
disorderly person. No traces of the boy could ever be discovered; and
at length the story, after making much noise, was gradually given up as
altogether inexplicable, and only perpetuated by the name of 'The
Gauger's Loup,' which was generally bestowed on the cliff from which
the unfortunate man had fallen or been precipitated.




CHAPTER XI

    ENTER TIME, AS CHORUS
    I, that please some, try ail, both joy and terror
    Of good and bad; that make and unfold error,
    Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
    To use my wings Impute it not a crime
    To me, or my swift passage, that I slide
    O'er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried
    Of that wide gap.

         Winter's Tale.


Our narration is now about to make a large stride, and omit a space of
nearly seventeen years; during which nothing occurred of any particular
consequence with respect to the story we have undertaken to tell. The
gap is a wide one; yet if the reader's experience in life enables him
to look back on so many years, the space will scarce appear longer in
his recollection than the time consumed in turning these pages.

It was, then, in the month of November, about seventeen years after the
catastrophe related in the last chapter, that, during a cold and stormy
night, a social group had closed around the kitchen-fire of the Gordon
Arms at Kippletringan, a small but comfortable inn kept by Mrs.
Mac-Candlish in that village. The conversation which passed among them
will save me the trouble of telling the few events occurring during
this chasm in our history, with which it is necessary that the reader
should be acquainted.

Mrs. Mac-Candlish, throned in a comfortable easychair lined with black
leather, was regaling herself and a neighbouring gossip or two with a
cup of genuine tea, and at the same time keeping a sharp eye upon her
domestics, as they went and came in prosecution of their various duties
and commissions. The clerk and precentor of the parish enjoyed at a
little distance his Saturday night's pipe, and aided its bland
fumigation by an occasional sip of brandy and water. Deacon Bearcliff,
a man of great importance in the village, combined the indulgence of
both parties: he had his pipe and his tea-cup, the latter being laced
with a little spirits. One or two clowns sat at some distance, drinking
their twopenny ale.

'Are ye sure the parlour's ready for them, and the fire burning clear,
and the chimney no smoking?' said the hostess to a chambermaid.

She was answered in the affirmative. 'Ane wadna be uncivil to them,
especially in their distress,' said she, turning to the Deacon.

'Assuredly not, Mrs. Mac-Candlish; assuredly not. I am sure ony sma'
thing they might want frae my shop, under seven, or eight, or ten
pounds, I would book them as readily for it as the first in the
country. Do they come in the auld chaise?'

'I daresay no,' said the precentor; 'for Miss Bertram comes on the
white powny ilka day to the kirk--and a constant kirk-keeper she
is--and it's a pleasure to hear her singing the psalms, winsome young
thing.'

'Ay, and the young Laird of Hazlewood rides hame half the road wi' her
after sermon,' said one of the gossips in company. 'I wonder how auld
Hazlewood likes that.

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