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The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Volume 2

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Title: The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Volume 2

Author: Walter Scott


        
Release date: August 20, 2004 [eBook #6943]
                Most recently updated: December 30, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6943

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN, VOLUME 2 ***




Produced by David Widger




[Illustration: Bookcover]


[Illustration: Spines]




THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN, Volume 2

By Walter Scott



TALES OF MY LANDLORD

COLLECTED AND ARRANGED

BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM,

SCHOOLMASTER AND PARISH CLERK

OF GANDERCLEUGH.




SECOND SERIES.


[Illustration: Titlepage]




THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN.





CHAPTER FIRST.

                         Isab.--Alas! what poor ability's in me
                         To do him good?
                         Lucio.--Assay the power you have.
                                              Measure for Measure.

When Mrs. Saddletree entered the apartment in which her guests had
shrouded their misery, she found the window darkened. The feebleness
which followed his long swoon had rendered it necessary to lay the old
man in bed. The curtains were drawn around him, and Jeanie sate
motionless by the side of the bed. Mrs. Saddletree was a woman of
kindness, nay, of feeling, but not of delicacy. She opened the half-shut
window, drew aside the curtain, and, taking her kinsman by the hand,
exhorted him to sit up, and bear his sorrow like a good man, and a
Christian man, as he was. But when she quitted his hand, it fell
powerless by his side, nor did he attempt the least reply.

"Is all over?" asked Jeanie, with lips and cheeks as pale as ashes,--"and
is there nae hope for her?"

"Nane, or next to nane," said Mrs. Saddletree; "I heard the Judge-carle
say it with my ain ears--It was a burning shame to see sae mony o' them
set up yonder in their red gowns and black gowns, and to take the life o'
a bit senseless lassie. I had never muckle broo o' my gudeman's gossips,
and now I like them waur than ever. The only wiselike thing I heard
onybody say, was decent Mr. John Kirk of Kirk-knowe, and he wussed them
just to get the king's mercy, and nae mair about it. But he spake to
unreasonable folk--he might just hae keepit his breath to hae blawn on
his porridge."

"But _can_ the king gie her mercy?" said Jeanie, earnestly. "Some folk
tell me he canna gie mercy in cases of mur in cases like hers."

"_Can_ he gie mercy, hinny?--I weel I wot he can, when he likes. There
was young Singlesword, that stickit the Laird of Ballencleuch, and
Captain Hackum, the Englishman, that killed Lady Colgrain's gudeman, and
the Master of Saint Clair, that shot the twa Shaws,* and mony mair in my
time--to be sure they were gentle blood, and had their, kin to speak for
them--And there was Jock Porteous the other day--I'se warrant there's
mercy, an folk could win at it."

* [In 1828, the Author presented to the Roxburgh Club a curious volume
containing the "Proceedings in the Court-Martial held upon John, Master
of Sinclair, for the murder of Ensign Schaw, and Captain Schaw, 17th
October 1708."]

"Porteous?" said Jeanie; "very true--I forget a' that I suld maist mind.--
Fare ye weel, Mrs. Saddletree; and may ye never want a friend in the
hour of distress!"

"Will ye no stay wi' your father, Jeanie, bairn?--Ye had better," said
Mrs. Saddletree.

"I will be wanted ower yonder," indicating the Tolbooth with her hand,
"and I maun leave him now, or I will never be able to leave him. I fearna
for his life--I ken how strong-hearted he is--I ken it," she said, laying
her hand on her bosom, "by my ain heart at this minute."

"Weel, hinny, if ye think it's for the best, better he stay here and rest
him, than gang back to St. Leonard's."

"Muckle better--muckle better--God bless you!--God bless you!--At no rate
let him gang till ye hear frae me," said Jeanie.

"But ye'll be back belive?" said Mrs. Saddletree, detaining her; "they
winna let ye stay yonder, hinny."

"But I maun gang to St. Leonard's--there's muckle to be dune, and little
time to do it in--And I have friends to speak to--God bless you--take
care of my father."

She had reached the door of the apartment, when, suddenly turning, she
came back, and knelt down by the bedside.--"O father, gie me your
blessing--I dare not go till ye bless me. Say but 'God bless ye, and
prosper ye, Jeanie'--try but to say that!"

Instinctively, rather than by an exertion of intellect, the old man
murmured a prayer, that "purchased and promised blessings might be
multiplied upon her."

"He has blessed mine errand," said his daughter, rising from her knees,
"and it is borne in upon my mind that I shall prosper."

So saying, she left the room.

Mrs. Saddletree looked after her, and shook her head. "I wish she binna
roving, poor thing--There's something queer about a' thae Deanses. I
dinna like folk to be sae muckle better than other folk--seldom comes
gude o't. But if she's gaun to look after the kye at St. Leonard's,
that's another story; to be sure they maun be sorted.--Grizzie, come up
here, and tak tent to the honest auld man, and see he wants naething.--Ye
silly tawpie" (addressing the maid-servant as she entered), "what garr'd
ye busk up your cockemony that gate?--I think there's been enough the day
to gie an awfa' warning about your cockups and your fallal duds--see what
they a' come to," etc. etc. etc.

Leaving the good lady to her lecture upon worldly vanities, we must
transport our reader to the cell in which the unfortunate Effie Deans was
now immured, being restricted of several liberties which she had enjoyed
before the sentence was pronounced.

When she had remained about an hour in the state of stupified horror so
natural in her situation, she was disturbed by the opening of the jarring
bolts of her place of confinement, and Ratcliffe showed himself. "It's
your sister," he said, "wants to speak t'ye, Effie."

"I canna see naebody," said Effie, with the hasty irritability which
misery had rendered more acute--"I canna see naebody, and least of a'
her--Bid her take care o' the auld man--I am naething to ony o' them now,
nor them to me."

"She says she maun see ye, though," said Ratcliffe; and Jeanie, rushing
into the apartment, threw her arms round her sister's neck, who writhed
to extricate herself from her embrace.

"What signifies coming to greet ower me," said poor Effie, "when you have
killed me?--killed me, when a word of your mouth would have saved
me--killed me, when I am an innocent creature--innocent of that guilt at
least--and me that wad hae wared body and soul to save your finger from
being hurt?"

"You shall not die," said Jeanie, with enthusiastic firmness; "say what
you like o' me--think what you like o' me--only promise--for I doubt your
proud heart--that ye wunna harm yourself, and you shall not die this
shameful death."

"A _shameful_ death I will not die, Jeanie, lass. I have that in my
heart--though it has been ower kind a ane--that wunna bide shame. Gae
hame to our father, and think nae mair on me--I have eat my last earthly
meal."

"Oh, this was what I feared!" said Jeanie.

"Hout, tout, hinny," said Ratcliffe; "it's but little ye ken o' thae
things. Ane aye thinks at the first dinnle o' the sentence, they hae
heart eneugh to die rather than bide out the sax weeks; but they aye bide
the sax weeks out for a' that. I ken the gate o't weel; I hae fronted the
doomster three times, and here I stand, Jim Ratcliffe, for a' that. Had I
tied my napkin strait the first time, as I had a great mind till't--and
it was a' about a bit grey cowt, wasna worth ten punds sterling--where
would I have been now?"

"And how _did_ you escape?" said Jeanie, the fates of this man, at first
so odious to her, having acquired a sudden interest in her eyes from
their correspondence with those of her sister.

"_How_ did I escape?" said Ratcliffe, with a knowing wink,--"I tell ye I
'scapit in a way that naebody will escape from this Tolbooth while I keep
the keys."

"My sister shall come out in the face of the sun," said Jeanie; "I will
go to London, and beg her pardon from the king and queen. If they
pardoned Porteous, they may pardon her; if a sister asks a sister's life
on her bended knees, they will pardon her--they _shall_ pardon her--and
they will win a thousand hearts by it."

Effie listened in bewildered astonishment, and so earnest was her
sister's enthusiastic assurance, that she almost involuntarily caught a
gleam of hope; but it instantly faded away.

"Ah, Jeanie! the king and queen live in London, a thousand miles from
this--far ayont the saut sea; I'll be gane before ye win there."

"You are mistaen," said Jeanie; "it is no sae far, and they go to it by
land; I learned something about thae things from Reuben Butler."

"Ah, Jeanie! ye never learned onything but what was gude frae the folk ye
keepit company wi'; but!--but!"--she wrung her hands and wept bitterly.

"Dinna think on that now," said Jeanie; "there will be time for that if
the present space be redeemed. Fare ye weel. Unless I die by the road, I
will see the king's face that gies grace--O, sir" (to Ratcliffe), "be
kind to her--She ne'er ken'd what it was to need a stranger's kindness
till now.--Fareweel--fareweel, Effie!--Dinna speak to me--I maunna greet
now--my head's ower dizzy already!"

She tore herself from her sister's arms, and left the cell. Ratcliffe
followed her, and beckoned her into a small room. She obeyed his signal,
but not without trembling.

"What's the fule thing shaking for?" said he; "I mean nothing but
civility to you. D--n me, I respect you, and I can't help it. You have so
much spunk, that d--n me, but I think there's some chance of your
carrying the day. But you must not go to the king till you have made some
friend; try the duke--try MacCallummore; he's Scotland's friend--I ken
that the great folks dinna muckle like him--but they fear him, and that
will serve your purpose as weel. D'ye ken naebody wad gie ye a letter to
him?"

"Duke of Argyle!" said Jeanie, recollecting herself suddenly, "what was
he to that Argyle that suffered in my father's time--in the persecution?"

"His son or grandson, I'm thinking," said Ratcliffe, "but what o' that?"

"Thank God!" said Jeanie, devoutly clasping her hands.

"You whigs are aye thanking God for something," said the ruffian. "But
hark ye, hinny, I'll tell ye a secret. Ye may meet wi' rough customers on
the Border, or in the Midland, afore ye get to Lunnon. Now, deil ane o'
them will touch an acquaintance o' Daddie Ratton's; for though I am
retired frae public practice, yet they ken I can do a gude or an ill turn
yet--and deil a gude fellow that has been but a twelvemonth on the lay,
be he ruffler or padder, but he knows my gybe* as well as the jark** of
e'er a queer cuffin*** in England--and there's rogue's Latin for you."

* Pass.
** Seal.
*** Justice of Peace.

It was indeed totally unintelligible to Jeanie Deans, who was only
impatient to escape from him. He hastily scrawled a line or two on a
dirty piece of paper, and said to her, as she drew back when he offered
it, "Hey!--what the deil--it wunna bite you, my lass--if it does nae
gude, it can do nae ill. But I wish you to show it, if you have ony
fasherie wi' ony o' St. Nicholas's clerks."

"Alas!" said she, "I do not understand what you mean."

"I mean, if ye fall among thieves, my precious,--that is a Scripture
phrase, if ye will hae ane--the bauldest of them will ken a scart o' my
guse feather. And now awa wi' ye--and stick to Argyle; if onybody can do
the job, it maun be him."

After casting an anxious look at the grated windows and blackened walls
of the old Tolbooth, and another scarce less anxious at the hospitable
lodging of Mrs. Saddletree, Jeanie turned her back on that quarter, and
soon after on the city itself. She reached St. Leonard's Crags without
meeting any one whom she knew, which, in the state of her mind, she
considered as a great blessing. "I must do naething," she thought, as she
went along, "that can soften or weaken my heart--it's ower weak already
for what I hae to do. I will think and act as firmly as I can, and speak
as little."

There was an ancient servant, or rather cottar, of her father's, who had
lived under him for many years, and whose fidelity was worthy of full
confidence. She sent for this woman, and explaining to her that the
circumstances of her family required that she should undertake a journey,
which would detain her for some weeks from home, she gave her full
instructions concerning the management of the domestic concerns in her
absence. With a precision, which, upon reflection, she herself could not
help wondering at, she described and detailed the most minute steps which
were to be taken, and especially such as were necessary for her father's
comfort. "It was probable," she said, "that he would return to St.
Leonard's to-morrow! certain that he would return very soon--all must be
in order for him. He had eneugh to distress him, without being fashed
about warldly matters."

In the meanwhile she toiled busily, along with May Hettly, to leave
nothing unarranged.

It was deep in the night when all these matters were settled; and when
they had partaken of some food, the first which Jeanie had tasted on that
eventful day, May Hettly, whose usual residence was a cottage at a little
distance from Deans's house, asked her young mistress, whether she would
not permit her to remain in the house all night? "Ye hae had an awfu'
day," she said, "and sorrow and fear are but bad companions in the
watches of the night, as I hae heard the gudeman say himself."

"They are ill companions indeed," said Jeanie; "but I maun learn to abide
their presence, and better begin in the house than in the field."

She dismissed her aged assistant accordingly,--for so slight was the
gradation in their rank of life, that we can hardly term May a
servant,--and proceeded to make a few preparations for her journey.

The simplicity of her education and country made these preparations very
brief and easy. Her tartan screen served all the purposes of a
riding-habit and of an umbrella; a small bundle contained such changes of
linen as were absolutely necessary. Barefooted, as Sancho says, she had
come into the world, and barefooted she proposed to perform her
pilgrimage; and her clean shoes and change of snow-white thread stockings
were to be reserved for special occasions of ceremony. She was not aware,
that the English habits of comfort attach an idea of abject misery to the
idea of a barefooted traveller; and if the objection of cleanliness had
been made to the practice, she would have been apt to vindicate herself
upon the very frequent ablutions to which, with Mahometan scrupulosity, a
Scottish damsel of some condition usually subjects herself. Thus far,
therefore, all was well.

From an oaken press, or cabinet, in which her father kept a few old
books, and two or three bundles of papers, besides his ordinary accounts
and receipts, she sought out and extracted from a parcel of notes of
sermons, calculations of interest, records of dying speeches of the
martyrs, and the like, one or two documents which she thought might be of
some use to her upon her mission. But the most important difficulty
remained behind, and it had not occurred to her until that very evening.
It was the want of money; without which it was impossible she could
undertake so distant a journey as she now meditated.

David Deans, as we have said, was easy, and even opulent in his
circumstances. But his wealth, like that of the patriarchs of old,
consisted in his kine and herds, and in two or three sums lent out at
interest to neighbours or relatives, who, far from being in circumstances
to pay anything to account of the principal sums, thought they did all
that was incumbent on them when, with considerable difficulty, they
discharged the "annual rent." To these debtors it would be in vain,
therefore, to apply, even with her father's concurrence; nor could she
hope to obtain such concurrence, or assistance in any mode, without such
a series of explanations and debates as she felt might deprive her
totally of the power of taking the step, which, however daring and
hazardous, she felt was absolutely necessary for trying the last chance
in favour of her sister. Without departing from filial reverence, Jeanie
had an inward conviction that the feelings of her father, however just,
and upright, and honourable, were too little in unison with the spirit of
the time to admit of his being a good judge of the measures to be adopted
in this crisis. Herself more flexible in manner, though no less upright
in principle, she felt that to ask his consent to her pilgrimage would be
to encounter the risk of drawing down his positive prohibition, and under
that she believed her journey could not be blessed in its progress and
event. Accordingly, she had determined upon the means by which she might
communicate to him her undertaking and its purpose, shortly after her
actual departure. But it was impossible to apply to him for money without
altering this arrangement, and discussing fully the propriety of her
journey; pecuniary assistance from that quarter, therefore, was laid out
of the question.

It now occurred to Jeanie that she should have consulted with Mrs.
Saddletree on this subject. But, besides the time that must now
necessarily be lost in recurring to her assistance Jeanie internally
revolted from it. Her heart acknowledged the goodness of Mrs.
Saddletree's general character, and the kind interest she took in their
family misfortunes; but still she felt that Mrs. Saddletree was a woman
of an ordinary and worldly way of thinking, incapable, from habit and
temperament, of taking a keen or enthusiastic view of such a resolution
as she had formed; and to debate the point with her, and to rely upon her
conviction of its propriety, for the means of carrying it into execution,
would have been gall and wormwood.

Butler, whose assistance she might have been assured of, was greatly
poorer than herself. In these circumstances, she formed a singular
resolution for the purpose of surmounting this difficulty, the execution
of which will form the subject of the next chapter.





CHAPTER SECOND


          'Tis the voice of the sluggard, I've heard him complain,
          "You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again;"
             As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed,
           Turns his side, and his shoulders, and his heavy head.
                                           Dr. Watts.

The mansion-house of Dumbiedikes, to which we are now to introduce our
readers, lay three or four miles--no matter for the exact topography--to
the southward of St. Leonard's. It had once borne the appearance of some
little celebrity; for the "auld laird," whose humours and pranks were
often mentioned in the ale-houses for about a mile round it, wore a
sword, kept a good horse, and a brace of greyhounds; brawled, swore, and
betted at cock-fights and horse-matches; followed Somerville of Drum's
hawks, and the Lord Ross's hounds, and called himself _point devise_ a
gentleman. But the line had been veiled of its splendour in the present
proprietor, who cared for no rustic amusements, and was as saying, timid,
and retired, as his father had been at once grasping and selfishly
extravagant--daring, wild, and intrusive.

Dumbiedikes was what is called in Scotland a single house; that is,
having only one room occupying its whole depth from back to front, each
of which single apartments was illuminated by six or eight cross lights,
whose diminutive panes and heavy frames permitted scarce so much light to
enter as shines through one well-constructed modern window. This
inartificial edifice, exactly such as a child would build with cards, had
a steep roof flagged with coarse grey stones instead of slates; a
half-circular turret, battlemented, or, to use the appropriate phrase,
bartizan'd on the top, served as a case for a narrow turnpike stair, by
which an ascent was gained from storey to storey; and at the bottom of
the said turret was a door studded with large-headed nails. There was no
lobby at the bottom of the tower, and scarce a landing-place opposite to
the doors which gave access to the apartments. One or two low and
dilapidated outhouses, connected by a courtyard wall equally ruinous,
surrounded the mansion. The court had been paved, but the flags being
partly displaced and partly renewed, a gallant crop of docks and thistles
sprung up between them, and the small garden, which opened by a postern
through the wall, seemed not to be in a much more orderly condition. Over
the low-arched gateway which led into the yard there was a carved stone,
exhibiting some attempt at armorial bearings; and above the inner
entrance hung, and had hung, for many years, the mouldering hatchment,
which announced that umquhile Laurence Dumbie of Dumbiedikes had been
gathered to his fathers in Newbattle kirkyard. The approach to this
palace of pleasure was by a road formed by the rude fragments of stone
gathered from the fields, and it was surrounded by ploughed, but
unenclosed land. Upon a baulk, that is, an unploughed ridge of land
interposed among the corn, the Laird's trusty palfrey was tethered by the
head, and picking a meal of grass. The whole argued neglect and
discomfort; the consequence, however, of idleness and indifference, not
of poverty.

In this inner court, not without a sense of bashfulness and timidity,
stood Jeanie Deans, at an early hour in a fine spring morning. She was no
heroine of romance, and therefore looked with some curiosity and interest
on the mansion-house and domains, of which, it might at that moment occur
to her, a little encouragement, such as women of all ranks know by
instinct how to apply, might have made her mistress. Moreover, she was no
person of taste beyond her time, rank, and country, and certainly thought
the house of Dumbiedikes, though inferior to Holyrood House, or the
palace at Dalkeith, was still a stately structure in its way, and the
land a "very bonny bit, if it were better seen to and done to." But
Jeanie Deans was a plain, true-hearted, honest girl, who, while she
acknowledged all the splendour of her old admirer's habitation, and the
value of his property, never for a moment harboured a thought of doing
the Laird, Butler, or herself, the injustice, which many ladies of higher
rank would not have hesitated to do to all three on much less temptation.

Her present errand being with the Laird, she looked round the offices to
see if she could find any domestic to announce that she wished to see
him. As all was silence, she ventured to open one door--it was the old
Laird's dog-kennel, now deserted, unless when occupied, as one or two
tubs seemed to testify, as a washing-house. She tried another--it was the
rootless shed where the hawks had been once kept, as appeared from a
perch or two not yet completely rotten, and a lure and jesses which were
mouldering on the wall. A third door led to the coal-house, which was
well stocked. To keep a very good fire was one of the few points of
domestic management in which Dumbiedikes was positively active; in all
other matters of domestic economy he was completely passive, and at the
mercy of his housekeeper--the same buxom dame whom his father had long
since bequeathed to his charge, and who, if fame did her no injustice,
had feathered her nest pretty well at his expense.

Jeanie went on opening doors, like the second Calender wanting an eye, in
the castle of the hundred obliging damsels, until, like the said prince
errant, she came to a stable. The Highland Pegasus, Rory Bean, to which
belonged the single entire stall, was her old acquaintance, whom she had
seen grazing on the baulk, as she failed not to recognise by the
well-known ancient riding furniture and demi-pique saddle, which half
hung on the walls, half trailed on the litter. Beyond the "treviss,"
which formed one side of the stall, stood a cow, who turned her head and
lowed when Jeanie came into the stable, an appeal which her habitual
occupations enabled her perfectly to understand, and with which she could
not refuse complying, by shaking down some fodder to the animal, which
had been neglected like most things else in the castle of the sluggard.

While she was accommodating "the milky mother" with the food which she
should have received two hours sooner, a slipshod wench peeped into the
stable, and perceiving that a stranger was employed in discharging the
task which she, at length, and reluctantly, had quitted her slumbers to
perform, ejaculated,

"Eh, sirs! the Brownie! the Brownie!" and fled, yelling as if she had
seen the devil.

To explain her terror it may be necessary to notice that the old house of
Dumbiedikes had, according to report, been long haunted by a Brownie, one
of those familiar spirits who were believed in ancient times to supply
the deficiencies of the ordinary labourer--


Whirl the long mop, and ply the airy flail.

Certes, the convenience of such a supernatural assistance could have been
nowhere more sensibly felt than in a family where the domestics were so
little disposed to personal activity; yet this serving maiden was so far
from rejoicing in seeing a supposed aerial substitute discharging a task
which she should have long since performed herself, that she proceeded to
raise the family by her screams of horror, uttered as thick as if the
Brownie had been flaying her. Jeanie, who had immediately resigned her
temporary occupation, and followed the yelling damsel into the courtyard,
in order to undeceive and appease her, was there met by Mrs. Janet
Balchristie, the favourite sultana of the last Laird, as scandal
went--the housekeeper of the present. The good-looking buxom woman,
betwixt forty and fifty (for such we described her at the death of the
last Laird), was now a fat, red-faced, old dame of seventy, or
thereabouts, fond of her place, and jealous of her authority. Conscious
that her administration did not rest on so sure a basis as in the time
of the old proprietor, this considerate lady had introduced into the
family the screamer aforesaid, who added good features and bright eyes
to the powers of her lungs. She made no conquest of the Laird, however,
who seemed to live as if there was not another woman in the world but
Jeanie Deans, and to bear no very ardent or overbearing affection even
to her. Mrs. Janet Balchristie, notwithstanding, had her own uneasy
thoughts upon the almost daily visits to St. Leonard's Crags, and often,
when the Laird looked at her wistfully and paused, according to his
custom before utterance, she expected him to say, "Jenny, I am gaun to
change my condition;" but she was relieved by, "Jenny, I am gaun to
change my shoon."

Still, however, Mrs. Balchristie regarded Jeanie Deans with no small
portion of malevolence, the customary feeling of such persons towards
anyone who they think has the means of doing them an injury. But she had
also a general aversion to any female tolerably young, and decently
well-looking, who showed a wish to approach the house of Dumbiedikes and
the proprietor thereof. And as she had raised her mass of mortality out
of bed two hours earlier than usual, to come to the rescue of her
clamorous niece, she was in such extreme bad humour against all and
sundry, that Saddletree would have pronounced that she harboured
_inimicitiam contra omnes mortales._

"Wha the deil are ye?" said the fat dame to poor Jeanie, whom she did not
immediately recognise, "scouping about a decent house at sic an hour in
the morning?"

"It was ane wanting to speak to the Laird," said Jeanie, who felt
something of the intuitive terror which she had formerly entertained for
this termagant, when she was occasionally at Dumbiedikes on business of
her father's.

"Ane!--And what sort of ane are ye!--hae ye nae name?--D'ye think his
honour has naething else to do than to speak wi' ilka idle tramper that
comes about the town, and him in his bed yet, honest man?"

"Dear Mrs. Balchristie," replied Jeanie, in a submissive tone, "d'ye no
mind me?--d'ye no mind Jeanie Deans?"

"Jeanie Deans!" said the termagant, in accents affecting the utmost
astonishment; then, taking two strides nearer to her, she peered into her
face with a stare of curiosity, equally scornful and malignant--"I say
Jeanie Deans indeed--Jeanie Deevil, they had better hae ca'ed ye!--A
bonny spot o' wark your tittie and you hae made out, murdering ae puir
wean, and your light limmer of a sister's to be hanged for't, as weel she
deserves!--And the like o' you to come to ony honest man's house, and
want to be into a decent bachelor gentleman's room at this time in the
morning, and him in his bed!--Gae wa', gae wa'!"

Jeanie was struck mute with shame at the unfeeling brutality of this
accusation, and could not even find words to justify herself from the
vile construction put upon her visit. When Mrs. Balchristie, seeing her
advantage, continued in the same tone, "Come, come, bundle up your pipes
and tramp awa wi' ye!--ye may be seeking a father to another wean for ony
thing I ken. If it warna that your father, auld David Deans, had been a
tenant on our land, I would cry up the men-folk, and hae ye dookit in the
burn for your impudence."

Jeanie had already turned her back, and was walking towards the door of
the court-yard, so that Mrs. Balchristie, to make her last threat
impressively audible to her, had raised her stentorian voice to its
utmost pitch. But, like many a general, she lost the engagement by
pressing her advantage too far.

The Laird had been disturbed in his morning slumbers by the tones of Mrs.
Balchristie's objurgation, sounds in themselves by no means uncommon, but
very remarkable, in respect to the early hour at which they were now
heard. He turned himself on the other side, however, in hopes the squall
would blow by, when, in the course of Mrs. Balchristie's second explosion
of wrath, the name of Deans distinctly struck the tympanum of his ear. As
he was, in some degree, aware of the small portion of benevolence with
which his housekeeper regarded the family at St. Leonard's, he instantly
conceived that some message from thence was the cause of this untimely
ire, and getting out of his bed, he slipt as speedily as possible into an
old brocaded night-gown, and some other necessary garments, clapped on
his head his father's gold-laced hat (for though he was seldom seen
without it, yet it is proper to contradict the popular report that he
slept in it, as Don Quixote did in his helmet), and opening the window of
his bedroom, beheld, to his great astonishment, the well-known figure of
Jeanie Deans herself retreating from his gate; while his housekeeper,
with arms a-kimbo, fist clenched and extended, body erect, and head
shaking with rage, sent after her a volley of Billingsgate oaths. His
choler rose in proportion to the surprise, and, perhaps, to the
disturbance of his repose. "Hark ye," he exclaimed from the window, "ye
auld limb of Satan--wha the deil gies you commission to guide an honest
man's daughter that gate?"

Mrs. Balchristie was completely caught in the manner. She was aware, from
the unusual warmth with which the Laird expressed himself, that he was
quite serious in this matter, and she knew, that with all his indolence
of nature, there were points on which he might be provoked, and that,
being provoked, he had in him something dangerous, which her wisdom
taught her to fear accordingly. She began, therefore, to retract her
false step as fast as she could. "She was but speaking for the house's
credit, and she couldna think of disturbing his honour in the morning sae
early, when the young woman might as weel wait or call again; and to be
sure, she might make a mistake between the twa sisters, for ane o' them
wasna sae creditable an acquaintance."

"Haud your peace, ye auld jade," said Dumbiedikes; "the warst quean e'er
stude in their shoon may ca' you cousin, an a' be true that I have
heard.--Jeanie, my woman, gang into the parlour--but stay, that winna be
redd up yet--wait there a minute till I come down to let ye in--Dinna
mind what Jenny says to ye."

"Na, na," said Jenny, with a laugh of affected heartiness, "never mind
me, lass--a' the warld kens my bark's waur than my bite--if ye had had an
appointment wi' the Laird, ye might hae tauld me--I am nae uncivil
person--gang your ways in by, hinny," and she opened the door of the
house with a master-key.

"But I had no appointment wi' the Laird," said Jeanie, drawing back; "I
want just to speak twa words to him, and I wad rather do it standing
here, Mrs. Balchristie."

"In the open court-yard!--Na, na, that wad never do, lass; we mauna guide
ye that gate neither--And how's that douce honest man, your father?"

Jeanie was saved the pain of answering this hypocritical question by the
appearance of the Laird himself.

"Gang in and get breakfast ready," said he to his housekeeper--"and, d'ye
hear, breakfast wi' us yoursell--ye ken how to manage thae porringers of
tea-water--and, hear ye, see abune a' that there's a gude fire.--Weel,
Jeanie, my woman, gang in by--gang in by, and rest ye."

"Na, Laird," Jeanie replied, endeavouring as much as she could to express
herself with composure, notwithstanding she still trembled, "I canna gang
in--I have a lang day's darg afore me--I maun be twenty mile o' gate the
night yet, if feet will carry me."

"Guide and deliver us!--twenty mile--twenty mile on your feet!"
ejaculated Dumbiedikes, whose walks were of a very circumscribed
diameter,--"Ye maun never think o' that--come in by."

"I canna do that, Laird," replied Jeanie; "the twa words I have to say to
ye I can say here; forby that Mrs. Balchristie"

"The deil flee awa wi' Mrs. Balchristie," said Dumbiedikes, "and he'll
hae a heavy lading o' her! I tell ye, Jeanie Deans, I am a man of few
words, but I am laird at hame, as well as in the field; deil a brute or
body about my house but I can manage when I like, except Rory Bean, my
powny; but I can seldom be at the plague, an it binna when my bluid's
up."

"I was wanting to say to ye, Laird," said Jeanie, who felt the necessity
of entering upon her business, "that I was gaun a lang journey, outby of
my father's knowledge."

"Outby his knowledge, Jeanie!--Is that right? Ye maun think ot
again--it's no right," said Dumbiedikes, with a countenance of great
concern.

"If I were ance at Lunnon," said Jeanie, in exculpation, "I am amaist
sure I could get means to speak to the queen about my sister's life."

"Lunnon--and the queen--and her sister's life!" said Dumbiedikes,
whistling for very amazement--"the lassie's demented."

"I am no out o' my mind," said she, "and sink or swim, I am determined to
gang to Lunnon, if I suld beg my way frae door to door--and so I maun,
unless ye wad lend me a small sum to pay my expenses--little thing will
do it; and ye ken my father's a man of substance, and wad see nae man,
far less you, Laird, come to loss by me."

Dumbiedikes, on comprehending the nature of this application, could
scarce trust his ears--he made no answer whatever, but stood with his
eyes rivetted on the ground.

"I see ye are no for assisting me, Laird," said Jeanie, "sae fare ye
weel--and gang and see my poor father as aften as ye can--he will be
lonely eneugh now."

"Where is the silly bairn gaun?" said Dumbiedikes; and, laying hold of
her hand, he led her into the house. "It's no that I didna think o't
before," he said, "but it stack in my throat."

Thus speaking to himself, he led her into an old-fashioned parlour, shut
the door behind them, and fastened it with a bolt. While Jeanie,
surprised at this manoeuvre, remained as near the door as possible, the
Laird quitted her hand, and pressed upon a spring lock fixed in an oak
panel in the wainscot, which instantly slipped aside. An iron strong-box
was discovered in a recess of the wall; he opened this also, and pulling
out two or three drawers, showed that they were filled with leathern bags
full of gold and silver coin.

"This is my bank, Jeanie lass," he said, looking first at her and then at
the treasure, with an air of great complacency,--"nane o' your
goldsmith's bills for me,--they bring folk to ruin."

Then, suddenly changing his tone, he resolutely said,--"Jeanie, I will
make ye Lady Dumbiedikes afore the sun sets and ye may ride to Lunnon in
your ain coach, if ye like."

"Na, Laird," said Jeanie, "that can never be--my father's grief--my
sister's situation--the discredit to you"

"That's _my_ business," said Dumbiedikes; "ye wad say naething about that
if ye werena a fule--and yet I like ye the better for't--ae wise body's
eneugh in the married state. But if your heart's ower fu', take what
siller will serve ye, and let it be when ye come back again--as gude syne
as sune."

"But, Laird," said Jeanie, who felt the necessity of being explicit with
so extraordinary a lover, "I like another man better than you, and I
canna marry ye."

"Another man better than me, Jeanie!" said Dumbiedikes; "how is that
possible? It's no possible, woman--ye hae ken'd me sae lang."

"Ay but, Laird," said Jeanie, with persevering simplicity, "I hae ken'd
him langer."

"Langer! It's no possible!" exclaimed the poor Laird. "It canna be; ye
were born on the land. O Jeanie woman, ye haena lookit--ye haena seen the
half o' the gear." He drew out another drawer--"A' gowd, Jeanie, and
there's bands for siller lent--And the rental book, Jeanie--clear three
hunder sterling--deil a wadset, heritable band, or burden--Ye haena
lookit at them, woman--And then my mother's wardrobe, and my
grandmother's forby--silk gowns wad stand on their ends, their
pearline-lace as fine as spiders' webs, and rings and ear-rings to the
boot of a' that--they are a' in the chamber of deas--Oh, Jeanie, gang up
the stair and look at them!"


[Illustration: Jeanie and the Laird of Dumbiedykes--Frontispiece]


But Jeanie held fast her integrity, though beset with temptations, which
perhaps the Laird of Dumbiedikes did not greatly err in supposing were
those most affecting to her sex.

"It canna be, Laird--I have said it--and I canna break my word till him,
if ye wad gie me the haill barony of Dalkeith, and Lugton into the
bargain."

"Your word to _him,_" said the Laird, somewhat pettishly; "but wha is he,
Jeanie?--wha is he?--I haena heard his name yet--Come now, Jeanie, ye are
but queering us--I am no trowing that there is sic a ane in the warld--ye
are but making fashion--What is he?--wha is he?"

"Just Reuben Butler, that's schulemaster at Liberton," said Jeanie.

"Reuben Butler! Reuben Butler!" echoed the Laird of Dumbiedikes, pacing
the apartment in high disdain,--"Reuben Butler, the dominie at
Liberton--and a dominie depute too!--Reuben, the son of my cottar!--Very
weel, Jeanie lass, wilfu' woman will hae her way--Reuben Butler! he
hasna in his pouch the value o' the auld black coat he wears--But it
disna signify." And as he spoke, he shut successively and with vehemence
the drawers of his treasury. "A fair offer, Jeanie, is nae cause of
feud--Ae man may bring a horse to the water, but twenty winna gar him
drink--And as for wasting my substance on other folk's joes"

There was something in the last hint that nettled Jeanie's honest pride.--
"I was begging nane frae your honour," she said; "least of a' on sic a
score as ye pit it on.--Gude morning to ye, sir; ye hae been kind to my
father, and it isna in my heart to think otherwise than kindly of you."

So saying, she left the room without listening to a faint "But,
Jeanie--Jeanie--stay, woman!" and traversing the courtyard with a quick
step, she set out on her forward journey, her bosom glowing with that
natural indignation and shame, which an honest mind feels at having
subjected itself to ask a favour, which had been unexpectedly refused.
When out of the Laird's ground, and once more upon the public road, her
pace slackened, her anger cooled, and anxious anticipations of the
consequence of this unexpected disappointment began to influence her
with other feelings. Must she then actually beg her way to London? for
such seemed the alternative; or must she turn back, and solicit her
father for money? and by doing so lose time, which was precious, besides
the risk of encountering his positive prohibition respecting the
journey! Yet she saw no medium between these alternatives; and, while
she walked slowly on, was still meditating whether it were not better to
return.

While she was thus in an uncertainty, she heard the clatter of a horse's
hoofs, and a well-known voice calling her name. She looked round, and saw
advancing towards her on a pony, whose bare back and halter assorted ill
with the nightgown, slippers, and laced cocked-hat of the rider, a
cavalier of no less importance than Dumbiedikes himself. In the energy of
his pursuit, he had overcome even the Highland obstinacy of Rory Bean,
and compelled that self-willed palfrey to canter the way his rider chose;
which Rory, however, performed with all the symptoms of reluctance,
turning his head, and accompanying every bound he made in advance with a
sidelong motion, which indicated his extreme wish to turn round,--a
manoeuvre which nothing but the constant exercise of the Laird's heels
and cudgel could possibly have counteracted.

When the Laird came up with Jeanie, the first words he uttered
were,--"Jeanie, they say ane shouldna aye take a woman at her first
word?"

"Ay, but ye maun take me at mine, Laird," said Jeanie, looking on the
ground, and walking on without a pause.--"I hae but ae word to bestow on
ony body, and that's aye a true ane."

"Then," said Dumbiedikes, "at least ye suldna aye take a man at _his_
first word. Ye maunna gang this wilfu' gate sillerless, come o't what
like."--He put a purse into her hand. "I wad gie you Rory too, but he's
as wilfu' as yoursell, and he's ower weel used to a gate that maybe he
and I hae gaen ower aften, and he'll gang nae road else."

"But, Laird," said Jeanie, "though I ken my father will satisfy every
penny of this siller, whatever there's o't, yet I wadna like to borrow it
frae ane that maybe thinks of something mair than the paying o't back
again."

"There's just twenty-five guineas o't," said Dumbiedikes, with a gentle
sigh, "and whether your father pays or disna pay, I make ye free till't
without another word. Gang where ye like--do what ye like--and marry a'
the Butlers in the country gin ye like--And sae, gude morning to you,
Jeanie."

"And God bless you, Laird, wi' mony a gude morning!" said Jeanie, her
heart more softened by the unwonted generosity of this uncouth character,
than perhaps Butler might have approved, had he known her feelings at
that moment; "and comfort, and the Lord's peace, and the peace of the
world, be with you, if we suld never meet again!"

Dumbiedikes turned and waved his hand; and his pony, much more willing to
return than he had been to set out, hurried him homeward so fast, that,
wanting the aid of a regular bridle, as well as of saddle and stirrups,
he was too much puzzled to keep his seat to permit of his looking behind,
even to give the parting glance of a forlorn swain. I am ashamed to say,
that the sight of a lover, ran away with in nightgown and slippers and a
laced hat, by a bare-backed Highland pony, had something in it of a
sedative, even to a grateful and deserved burst of affectionate esteem.
The figure of Dumbiedikes was too ludicrous not to confirm Jeanie in the
original sentiments she entertained towards him.

"He's a gude creature," said she, "and a kind--it's a pity he has sae
willyard a powny." And she immediately turned her thoughts to the
important journey which she had commenced, reflecting with pleasure,
that, according to her habits of life and of undergoing fatigue, she was
now amply or even superfluously provided with the means of encountering
the expenses of the road, up and down from London, and all other expenses
whatever.






CHAPTER THIRD

                     What strange and wayward thoughts will slide
                         Into a lover's head;
                     "O mercy!" to myself I cried,
                        "If Lucy should be dead!"
                                              Wordsworth.

In pursuing her solitary journey, our heroine, soon after passing the
house of Dumbiedikes, gained a little eminence, from which, on looking to
the eastward down a prattling brook, whose meanders were shaded with
straggling widows and alder trees, she could see the cottages of Woodend
and Beersheba, the haunts and habitation of her early life, and could
distinguish the common on which she had so often herded sheep, and the
recesses of the rivulet where she had pulled rushes with Butler, to plait
crowns and sceptres for her sister Effie, then a beautiful but spoiled
child, of about three years old. The recollections which the scene
brought with them were so bitter, that, had she indulged them, she would
have sate down and relieved her heart with tears.

"But I ken'd," said Jeanie, when she gave an account of her pilgrimage,
"that greeting would do but little good, and that it was mair beseeming
to thank the Lord, that had showed me kindness and countenance by means
of a man, that mony ca'd a Nabal, and churl, but wha was free of his
gudes to me, as ever the fountain was free of the stream. And I minded
the Scripture about the sin of Israel at Meribah, when the people
murmured, although Moses had brought water from the dry rock that the
congregation might drink and live. Sae, I wad not trust mysell with
another look at puir Woodend, for the very blue reek that came out of the
lum-head pat me in mind of the change of market days with us."

In this resigned and Christian temper she pursued her journey until she
was beyond this place of melancholy recollections, and not distant from
the village where Butler dwelt, which, with its old-fashioned church and
steeple, rises among a tuft of trees, occupying the ridge of an eminence
to the south of Edinburgh. At a quarter of a mile's distance is a clumsy
square tower, the residence of the Laird of Liberton, who, in former
times, with the habits of the predatory chivalry of Germany, is said
frequently to have annoyed the city of Edinburgh, by intercepting the
supplies and merchandise which came to the town from the southward.

This village, its tower, and its church, did not lie precisely in
Jeanie's road towards England; but they were not much aside from it, and
the village was the abode of Butler. She had resolved to see him in the
beginning of her journey, because she conceived him the most proper
person to write to her father concerning her resolution and her hopes.
There was probably another reason latent in her affectionate bosom. She
wished once more to see the object of so early and so sincere an
attachment, before commencing a pilgrimage, the perils of which she did
not disguise from herself, although she did not allow them so to press
upon her mind as to diminish the strength and energy of her resolution. A
visit to a lover from a young person in a higher rank of life than
Jeanie's, would have had something forward and improper in its character.
But the simplicity of her rural habits was unacquainted with these
punctilious ideas of decorum, and no notion, therefore, of impropriety
crossed her imagination, as, setting out upon a long journey, she went to
bid adieu to an early friend.

There was still another motive that pressed upon her mind with additional
force as she approached the village. She had looked anxiously for Butler
in the courthouse, and had expected that, certainly, in some part of that
eventful day, he would have appeared to bring such countenance and
support as he could give to his old friend, and the protector of his
youth, even if her own claims were laid aside.

She know, indeed, that he was under a certain degree of restraint; but
she still had hoped that he would have found means to emancipate himself
from it, at least for one day. In short, the wild and wayward thoughts
which Wordsworth has described as rising in an absent lover's
imagination, suggested, as the only explanation of his absence, that
Butler must be very ill. And so much had this wrought on her imagination,
that when she approached the cottage where her lover occupied a small
apartment, and which had been pointed out to her by a maiden with a
milk-pail on her head, she trembled at anticipating the answer she might
receive on inquiring for him.

Her fears in this case had, indeed, only hit upon the truth. Butler,
whose constitution was naturally feeble, did not soon recover the fatigue
of body and distress of mind which he had suffered, in consequence of the
tragical events with which our narrative commenced. The painful idea that
his character was breathed on by suspicion, was an aggravation to his
distress.

But the most cruel addition was the absolute prohibition laid by the
magistrates on his holding any communication with Deans or his family. It
had unfortunately appeared likely to them, that some intercourse might be
again attempted with that family by Robertson, through the medium of
Butler, and this they were anxious to intercept, or prevent if possible.
The measure was not meant as a harsh or injurious severity on the part of
the magistrates; but, in Butler's circumstances, it pressed cruelly hard.
He felt he must be suffering under the bad opinion of the person who was
dearest to him, from an imputation of unkind desertion, the most alien to
his nature.

This painful thought, pressing on a frame already injured, brought on a
succession of slow and lingering feverish attacks, which greatly impaired
his health, and at length rendered him incapable even of the sedentary
duties of the school, on which his bread depended. Fortunately, old Mr.
Whackbairn, who was the principal teacher of the little parochial
establishment, was sincerely attached to Butler. Besides that he was
sensible of his merits and value as an assistant, which had greatly
raised the credit of his little school, the ancient pedagogue, who had
himself been tolerably educated, retained some taste for classical lore,
and would gladly relax, after the drudgery of the school was over, by
conning over a few pages of Horace or Juvenal with his usher. A
similarity of taste begot kindness, and accordingly he saw Butler's
increasing debility with great compassion, roused up his own energies to
teaching the school in the morning hours, insisted upon his assistant's
reposing himself at that period, and, besides, supplied him with such
comforts as the patient's situation required, and his own means were
inadequate to compass.

Such was Butler's situation, scarce able to drag himself to the place
where his daily drudgery must gain his daily bread, and racked with a
thousand fearful anticipations concerning the fate of those who were
dearest to him in the world, when the trial and condemnation of Effie
Deans put the copestone upon his mental misery.

He had a particular account of these events, from a fellow-student who
resided in the same village, and who, having been present on the
melancholy occasion, was able to place it in all its agony of horrors
before his excruciated imagination. That sleep should have visited his
eyes after such a curfew-note, was impossible. A thousand dreadful
visions haunted his imagination all night, and in the morning he was
awaked from a feverish slumber, by the only circumstance which could have
added to his distress,--the visit of an intrusive ass.

This unwelcome visitant was no other than Bartoline Saddletree. The
worthy and sapient burgher had kept his appointment at MacCroskie's with
Plumdamas and some other neighbours, to discuss the Duke of Argyle's
speech, the justice of Effie Deans's condemnation, and the improbability
of her obtaining a reprieve. This sage conclave disputed high and drank
deep, and on the next morning Bartoline felt, as he expressed it, as if
his head was like a "confused progress of writs."

To bring his reflective powers to their usual serenity, Saddle-tree
resolved to take a morning's ride upon a certain hackney, which he,
Plumdamas, and another honest shopkeeper, combined to maintain by joint
subscription, for occasional jaunts for the purpose of business or
exercise. As Saddletree had two children boarded with Whackbairn, and
was, as we have seen, rather fond of Butler's society, he turned his
palfrey's head towards Liberton, and came, as we have already said, to
give the unfortunate usher that additional vexation, of which Imogene
complains so feelingly, when she says,--

                      "I'm sprighted with a fool--
                     Sprighted and anger'd worse."

If anything could have added gall to bitterness, it was the choice which
Saddletree made of a subject for his prosing harangues, being the trial
of Effie Deans, and the probability of her being executed. Every word
fell on Butler's ear like the knell of a death-bell, or the note of a
screech-owl.

Jeanie paused at the door of her lover's humble abode upon hearing the
loud and pompous tones of Saddletree sounding from the inner apartment,
"Credit me, it will be sae, Mr. Butler. Brandy cannot save her. She maun
gang down the Bow wi' the lad in the pioted coat* at her heels.--

* The executioner, in livery of black or dark grey and silver, likened by
low wit to a magpie.

I am sorry for the lassie, but the law, sir, maun hae its course--

                              Vivat Rex,
                              Currat Lex,

as the poet has it, in whilk of Horace's odes I know not."

Here Butler groaned, in utter impatience of the brutality and ignorance
which Bartoline had contrived to amalgamate into one sentence. But
Saddletree, like other prosers, was blessed with a happy obtuseness of
perception concerning the unfavourable impression which he sometimes made
on his auditors. He proceeded to deal forth his scraps of legal knowledge
without mercy, and concluded by asking Butler, with great
self-complacency, "Was it na a pity my father didna send me to Utrecht?
Havena I missed the chance to turn out as _clarissimus_ an _ictus,_ as
auld Grunwiggin himself?--Whatfor dinna ye speak, Mr. Butler? Wad I no
hae been a _clarissimus ictus?_--Eh, man?"

"I really do not understand you, Mr. Saddletree," said Butler, thus
pushed hard for an answer. His faint and exhausted tone of voice was
instantly drowned in the sonorous bray of Bartoline.

"No understand me, man? _Ictus_ is Latin for a lawyer, is it not?"

"Not that ever I heard of," answered Butler in the same dejected tone.

"The deil ye didna!--See, man, I got the word but this morning out of a
memorial of Mr. Crossmyloof's--see, there it is, _ictus clarissimus et
perti--peritissimus_--it's a' Latin, for it's printed in the Italian
types."

"O, you mean _juris-consultus--Ictus_ is an abbreviation for
_juris-consultus._"

"Dinna tell me, man," persevered Saddletree, "there's nae abbreviates
except in adjudications; and this is a' about a servitude of
water-drap--that is to say, _tillicidian_* (maybe ye'll say that's no
Latin neither), in Mary King's Close in the High Street."

* He meant, probably, _stillicidium._

"Very likely," said poor Butler, overwhelmed by the noisy perseverance of
his visitor. "Iam not able to dispute with you."

"Few folk are--few folk are, Mr. Butler, though I say it that shouldna
say it," returned Bartoline with great delight. "Now, it will be twa
hours yet or ye're wanted in the schule, and as ye are no weel, I'll sit
wi' you to divert ye, and explain t'ye the nature of a _tillicidian._ Ye
maun ken, the petitioner, Mrs. Crombie, a very decent woman, is a friend
of mine, and I hae stude her friend in this case, and brought her wi'
credit into the court, and I doubtna that in due time she will win out
o't wi' credit, win she or lose she. Ye see, being an inferior tenement
or laigh house, we grant ourselves to be burdened wi' the _tillicide,_
that is, that we are obligated to receive the natural water-drap of the
superior tenement, sae far as the same fa's frae the heavens, or the roof
of our neighbour's house, and from thence by the gutters or eaves upon
our laigh tenement. But the other night comes a Highland quean of a lass,
and she flashes, God kens what, out at the eastmost window of Mrs.
MacPhail's house, that's the superior tenement. I believe the auld women
wad hae agreed, for Luckie MacPhail sent down the lass to tell my friend
Mrs. Crombie that she had made the gardyloo out of the wrang window, out
of respect for twa Highlandmen that were speaking Gaelic in the close
below the right ane. But luckily for Mrs. Crombie, I just chanced to come
in in time to break aff the communing, for it's a pity the point suldna
be tried. We had Mrs. MacPhail into the Ten-Mark Court--The Hieland
limmer of a lass wanted to swear herself free--but haud ye there,
says I."

The detailed account of this important suit might have lasted until poor
Butler's hour of rest was completely exhausted, had not Saddletree been
interrupted by the noise of voices at the door. The woman of the house
where Butler lodged, on returning with her pitcher from the well, whence
she had been fetching water for the family, found our heroine Jeanie
Deans standing at the door, impatient of the prolix harangue of
Saddletree, yet unwilling to enter until he should have taken his leave.

The good woman abridged the period of hesitation by inquiring, "Was ye
wanting the gudeman or me, lass?"

"I wanted to speak with Mr. Butler, if he's at leisure," replied Jeanie.

"Gang in by then, my woman," answered the goodwife; and opening the door
of a room, she announced the additional visitor with, "Mr. Butler, here's
a lass wants to speak t'ye."

The surprise of Butler was extreme, when Jeanie, who seldom stirred
half-a-mile from home, entered his apartment upon this annunciation.

"Good God!" he said, starting from his chair, while alarm restored to his
cheek the colour of which sickness had deprived it; "some new misfortune
must have happened!"

"None, Mr. Reuben, but what you must hae heard of--but oh, ye are looking
ill yoursell!"--for the "hectic of a moment" had not concealed from her
affectionate eyes the ravages which lingering disease and anxiety of mind
had made in her lover's person.

"No: I am well--quite well," said Butler with eagerness; "if I can do
anything to assist you, Jeanie--or your father."

"Ay, to be sure," said Saddletree; "the family may be considered as
limited to them twa now, just as if Effie had never been in the tailzie,
puir thing. But, Jeanie lass, what brings you out to Liberton sae air in
the morning, and your father lying ill in the Luckenbooths?"

"I had a message frae my father to Mr. Butler," said Jeanie with
embarrassment; but instantly feeling ashamed of the fiction to which she
had resorted, for her love of and veneration for truth was almost
Quaker-like, she corrected herself--"That is to say, I wanted to speak
with Mr. Butler about some business of my father's and puir Effie's."

"Is it law business?" said Bartoline; "because if it be, ye had better
take my opinion on the subject than his."

"It is not just law business," said Jeanie, who saw considerable
inconvenience might arise from letting Mr. Saddletree into the secret
purpose of her journey; "but I want Mr. Butler to write a letter for me."

"Very right," said Mr. Saddletree; "and if ye'll tell me what it is
about, I'll dictate to Mr. Butler as Mr. Crossmyloof does to his
clerk.--Get your pen and ink in initialibus, Mr. Butler."

Jeanie looked at Butler, and wrung her hands with vexation and
impatience.

"I believe, Mr. Saddletree," said Butler, who saw the necessity of
getting rid of him at all events, "that Mr. Whackbairn will be somewhat
affronted if you do not hear your boys called up to their lessons."

"Indeed, Mr. Butler, and that's as true; and I promised to ask a half
play-day to the schule, so that the bairns might gang and see the
hanging, which canna but have a pleasing effect on their young minds,
seeing there is no knowing what they may come to themselves.--Odd so, I
didna mind ye were here, Jeanie Deans; but ye maun use yoursell to hear
the matter spoken o'.--Keep Jeanie here till I come back, Mr. Butler; I
winna bide ten minutes."

And with this unwelcome assurance of an immediate return, he relieved
them of the embarrassment of his presence.

"Reuben," said Jeanie, who saw the necessity of using the interval of his
absence in discussing what had brought her there, "I am bound on a lang
journey--I am gaun to Lunnon to ask Effie's life of the king and of the
queen."

"Jeanie! you are surely not yourself," answered Butler, in the utmost
surprise;--"_you_ go to London--_you_ address the king and queen!"

"And what for no, Reuben?" said Jeanie, with all the composed simplicity
of her character; "it's but speaking to a mortal man and woman when a' is
done. And their hearts maun be made o' flesh and blood like other folk's,
and Effie's story wad melt them were they stane. Forby, I hae heard that
they are no sic bad folk as what the Jacobites ca' them."

"Yes, Jeanie," said Butler; "but their magnificence--their retinue--the
difficulty of getting audience?"

"I have thought of a' that, Reuben, and it shall not break my spirit. Nae
doubt their claiths will be very grand, wi' their crowns on their heads,
and their sceptres in their hands, like the great King Ahasuerus when he
sate upon his royal throne fornent the gate of his house, as we are told
in Scripture. But I have that within me that will keep my heart from
failing, and I am amaist sure that I will be strengthened to speak the
errand I came for."

"Alas! alas!" said Butler, "the kings now-a-days do not sit in the gate
to administer justice, as in patriarchal times. I know as little of
courts as you do, Jeanie, by experience; but by reading and report I
know, that the King of Britain does everything by means of his
ministers."

"And if they be upright, God-fearing ministers," said Jeanie, "it's sae
muckle the better chance for Effie and me."

"But you do not even understand the most ordinary words relating to a
court," said Butler; "by the ministry is meant not clergymen, but the
king's official servants."

"Nae doubt," returned Jeanie, "he maun hae a great number mair, I daur to
say, than the duchess has at Dalkeith, and great folk's servants are aye
mair saucy than themselves. But I'll be decently put on, and I'll offer
them a trifle o' siller, as if I came to see the palace. Or, if they
scruple that, I'll tell them I'm come on a business of life and death,
and then they will surely bring me to speech of the king and queen?"

Butler shook his head. "O Jeanie, this is entirely a wild dream. You can
never see them but through some great lord's intercession, and I think it
is scarce possible even then."

"Weel, but maybe I can get that too," said Jeanie, "with a little helping
from you."

"From me, Jeanie! this is the wildest imagination of all."

"Ay, but it is not, Reuben. Havena I heard you say, that your grandfather
(that my father never likes to hear about) did some gude langsyne to the
forbear of this MacCallummore, when he was Lord of Lorn?"

"He did so," said Butler, eagerly, "and I can prove it.--I will write to
the Duke of Argyle--report speaks him a good kindly man, as he is known
for a brave soldier and true patriot--I will conjure him to stand between
your sister and this cruel fate. There is but a poor chance of success,
but we will try all means."

"We _must_ try all means," replied Jeanie; "but writing winna do it--a
letter canna look, and pray, and beg, and beseech, as the human voice can
do to the human heart. A letter's like the music that the ladies have for
their spinets--naething but black scores, compared to the same tune
played or sung. It's word of mouth maun do it, or naething, Reuben."

"You are right," said Reuben, recollecting his firmness, "and I will hope
that Heaven has suggested to your kind heart and firm courage the only
possible means of saving the life of this unfortunate girl. But, Jeanie,
you must not take this most perilous journey alone; I have an interest in
you, and I will not agree that my Jeanie throws herself away. You must
even, in the present circumstances, give me a husband's right to protect
you, and I will go with you myself on this journey, and assist you to do
your duty by your family."

"Alas, Reuben!" said Jeanie in her turn, "this must not be; a pardon will
not gie my sister her fair fame again, or make me a bride fitting for an
honest man and an usefu' minister. Wha wad mind what he said in the
pu'pit, that had to wife the sister of a woman that was condemned for sic
wickedness?"

"But, Jeanie," pleaded her lover, "I do not believe, and I cannot
believe, that Effie has done this deed."

"Heaven bless ye for saying sae, Reuben," answered Jeanie; "but she maun
bear the blame o't after all."

"But the blame, were it even justly laid on her, does not fall on you."

"Ah, Reuben, Reuben," replied the young woman, "ye ken it is a blot that
spreads to kith and kin.--Ichabod--as my poor father says--the glory is
departed from our house; for the poorest man's house has a glory, where
there are true hands, a divine heart, and an honest fame--And the last
has gane frae us a."

"But, Jeanie, consider your word and plighted faith to me; and would you
undertake such a journey without a man to protect you?--and who should
that protector be but your husband?"

"You are kind and good, Reuben, and wad take me wi' a' my shame, I
doubtna. But ye canna but own that this is no time to marry or be given
in marriage. Na, if that suld ever be, it maun be in another and a better
season.--And, dear Reuben, ye speak of protecting me on my journey--Alas!
who will protect and take care of you?--your very limbs tremble with
standing for ten minutes on the floor; how could you undertake a journey
as far as Lunnon?"

"But I am strong--I am well," continued Butler, sinking in his seat
totally exhausted, "at least I shall be quite well to-morrow."

"Ye see, and ye ken, ye maun just let me depart," said Jeanie, after a
pause; and then taking his extended hand, and gazing kindly in his face,
she added, "It's e'en a grief the mair to me to see you in this way. But
ye maun keep up your heart for Jeanie's sake, for if she isna your wife,
she will never be the wife of living man. And now gie me the paper for
MacCallummore, and bid God speed me on my way."

There was something of romance in Jeanie's venturous resolution; yet, on
consideration, as it seemed impossible to alter it by persuasion, or to
give her assistance but by advice, Butler, after some farther debate, put
into her hands the paper she desired, which, with the muster-roll in
which it was folded up, were the sole memorials of the stout and
enthusiastic Bible Butler, his grandfather. While Butler sought this
document, Jeanie had time to take up his pocket Bible. "I have marked a
scripture," she said, as she again laid it down, "with your kylevine pen,
that will be useful to us baith. And ye maun tak the trouble, Reuben, to
write a' this to my father, for, God help me, I have neither head nor
hand for lang letters at ony time, forby now; and I trust him entirely to
you, and I trust you will soon be permitted to see him. And, Reuben, when
ye do win to the speech o' him, mind a' the auld man's bits o' ways, for
Jeanie's sake; and dinna speak o' Latin or English terms to him, for he's
o' the auld warld, and downa bide to be fashed wi' them, though I daresay
he may be wrang. And dinna ye say muckle to him, but set him on speaking
himself, for he'll bring himsell mair comfort that way. And O, Reuben,
the poor lassie in yon dungeon!--but I needna bid your kind heart--gie
her what comfort ye can as soon as they will let ye see her--tell
her--But I maunna speak mair about her, for I maunna take leave o' ye
wi' the tear in my ee, for that wouldna be canny.--God bless ye, Reuben!"

To avoid so ill an omen she left the room hastily, while her features yet
retained the mournful and affectionate smile which she had compelled them
to wear, in order to support Butler's spirits.

It seemed as if the power of sight, of speech, and of reflection, had
left him as she disappeared from the room, which she had entered and
retired from so like an apparition. Saddletree, who entered immediately
afterwards, overwhelmed him with questions, which he answered without
understanding them, and with legal disquisitions, which conveyed to him
no iota of meaning. At length the learned burgess recollected that there
was a Baron Court to be, held at Loanhead that day, and though it was
hardly worth while, "he might as weel go to see if there was onything
doing, as he was acquainted with the baron bailie, who was a decent man,
and would be glad of a word of legal advice."

So soon as he departed, Butler flew to the Bible, the last book which
Jeanie had touched. To his extreme surprise, a paper, containing two or
three pieces of gold, dropped from the book. With a black-lead pencil,
she had marked the sixteenth and twenty-fifth verses of the
thirty-seventh Psalm,--"A little that a righteous man hath, is better
than the riches of the wicked."--"I have been young and am now old, yet
have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their
bread."

Deeply impressed with the affectionate delicacy which shrouded its own
generosity under the cover of a providential supply to his wants, he
pressed the gold to his lips with more ardour than ever the metal was
greeted with by a miser. To emulate her devout firmness and confidence
seemed now the pitch of his ambition, and his first task was to write an
account to David Deans of his daughter's resolution and journey
southward. He studied every sentiment, and even every phrase, which he
thought could reconcile the old man to her extraordinary resolution. The
effect which this epistle produced will be hereafter adverted to. Butler
committed it to the charge of an honest clown, who had frequent dealings
with Deans in the sale of his dairy produce, and who readily undertook a
journey to Edinburgh to put the letter into his own hands.*

* By dint of assiduous research I am enabled to certiorate the reader,
that the name of this person was Saunders Broadfoot, and that he dealt in
the wholesome commodity called kirn-milk (_Anglice',_ butter-milk).--
J. C.





CHAPTER FOURTH.



                     "My native land, good night."
                                      Lord Byron.

In the present day, a journey from Edinburgh to London is a matter at
once safe, brief, and simple, however inexperienced or unprotected the
traveller. Numerous coaches of different rates of charge, and as many
packets, are perpetually passing and repassing betwixt the capital of
Britain and her northern sister, so that the most timid or indolent may
execute such a journey upon a few hours' notice. But it was different in
1737. So slight and infrequent was the intercourse betwixt London and
Edinburgh, that men still alive remember that upon one occasion the mail
from the former city arrived at the General Post-Office in Scotland with
only one letter in it.*

* The fact is certain. The single epistle was addressed to the principal
director of the British Linen Company.

The usual mode of travelling was by means of post-horses, the traveller
occupying one, and his guide another, in which manner, by relays of
horses from stage to stage, the journey might be accomplished in a
wonderfully short time by those who could endure fatigue. To have the
bones shaken to pieces by a constant change of those hacks was a luxury
for the rich--the poor were under the necessity of using the mode of
conveyance with which nature had provided them.

With a strong heart, and a frame patient of fatigue, Jeanie Deans,
travelling at the rate of twenty miles a-day, and sometimes farther,
traversed the southern part of Scotland, and advanced as far as Durham.

Hitherto she had been either among her own country-folk, or those to whom
her bare feet and tartan screen were objects too familiar to attract much
attention. But as she advanced, she perceived that both circumstances
exposed her to sarcasm and taunts, which she might otherwise have
escaped; and although in her heart she thought it unkind, and
inhospitable, to sneer at a passing stranger on account of the fashion of
her attire, yet she had the good sense to alter those parts of her dress
which attracted ill-natured observation. Her chequed screen was deposited
carefully in her bundle, and she conformed to the national extravagance
of wearing shoes and stockings for the whole day. She confessed
afterwards, that, "besides the wastrife, it was lang or she could walk
sae comfortably with the shoes as without them; but there was often a bit
saft heather by the road-side, and that helped her weel on." The want of
the screen, which was drawn over the head like a veil, she supplied by a
_bon-grace,_ as she called it; a large straw bonnet like those worn by
the English maidens when labouring in the fields. "But I thought unco
shame o' mysell," she said, "the first time I put on a married woman's
_bon-grace,_ and me a single maiden."

With these changes she had little, as she said, to make "her kenspeckle
when she didna speak," but her accent and language drew down on her so
many jests and gibes, couched in a worse _patois_ by far than her own,
that she soon found it was her interest to talk as little and as seldom
as possible. She answered, therefore, civil salutations of chance
passengers with a civil courtesy, and chose, with anxious circumspection,
such places of repose as looked at once most decent and sequestered. She
found the common people of England, although inferior in courtesy to
strangers, such as was then practised in her own more unfrequented
country, yet, upon the whole, by no means deficient in the real duties of
hospitality. She readily obtained food, and shelter, and protection at a
very moderate rate, which sometimes the generosity of mine host
altogether declined, with a blunt apology,--"Thee hast a long way afore
thee, lass; and I'se ne'er take penny out o' a single woman's purse; it's
the best friend thou can have on the road."

It often happened, too, that mine hostess was struck with "the tidy, nice
Scotch body," and procured her an escort, or a cast in a waggon, for some
part of the way, or gave her a useful advice and recommendation
respecting her resting-places.

At York our pilgrim stopped for the best part of a day, partly to recruit
her strength,--partly because she had the good luck to obtain a lodging
in an inn kept by a countrywoman,--partly to indite two letters to her
father and Reuben Butler; an operation of some little difficulty, her
habits being by no means those of literary composition. That to her
father was in the following words.--

"Dearest Father,--I make my present pilgrimage more heavy and burdensome,
through the sad occasion to reflect that it is without your knowledge,
which, God knows, was far contrary to my heart; for Scripture says, that
'the vow of the daughter should not be binding without the consent of the
father,' wherein it may be I have been guilty to tak this wearie journey
without your consent. Nevertheless, it was borne in upon my mind that I
should be an instrument to help my poor sister in this extremity of
needcessity, otherwise I wad not, for wealth or for world's gear, or for
the haill lands of Da'keith and Lugton, have done the like o' this,
without your free will and knowledge. Oh, dear father, as ye wad desire a
blessing on my journey, and upon your household, speak a word or write a
line of comfort to yon poor prisoner. If she has sinned, she has sorrowed
and suffered, and ye ken better than me, that we maun forgie others, as
we pray to be forgien. Dear father, forgive my saying this muckle, for it
doth not become a young head to instruct grey hairs; but I am sae far
frae ye, that my heart yearns to ye a', and fain wad I hear that ye had
forgien her trespass, and sae I nae doubt say mair than may become me.
The folk here are civil, and, like the barbarians unto the holy apostle,
hae shown me much kindness; and there are a sort of chosen people in the
land, for they hae some kirks without organs that are like ours, and are
called meeting-houses, where the minister preaches without a gown. But
most of the country are prelatists, whilk is awfu' to think; and I saw
twa men that were ministers following hunds, as bauld as Roslin or
Driden, the young Laird of Loup-the-dike, or ony wild gallant in Lothian.
A sorrowfa' sight to behold! Oh, dear father, may a blessing be with your
down-lying and up-rising, and remember in your prayers your affectionate
daughter to command,
                                                      "Jean Deans."

A postscript bore, "I learned from a decent woman, a grazier's widow,
that they hae a cure for the muir-ill in Cumberland, whilk is ane pint,
as they ca't, of yill, whilk is a dribble in comparison of our gawsie
Scots pint, and hardly a mutchkin, boiled wi' sope and hartshorn draps,
and toomed doun the creature's throat wi' ane whorn. Ye might try it on
the bauson-faced year-auld quey; an it does nae gude, it can do nae ill.--
She was a kind woman, and seemed skeely about horned beasts. When I
reach Lunnon, I intend to gang to our cousin Mrs. Glass, the tobacconist,
at the sign o' the Thistle, wha is so ceevil as to send you down your
spleuchan-fu' anes a year; and as she must be well kend in Lunnon, I
doubt not easily to find out where she lives."

Being seduced into betraying our heroine's confidence thus far, we will
stretch our communication a step beyond, and impart to the reader her
letter to her lover.

"Mr. Reuben Butler,--Hoping this will find you better, this comes to say,
that I have reached this great town safe, and am not wearied with
walking, but the better for it. And I have seen many things which I trust
to tell you one day, also the muckle kirk of this place; and all around
the city are mills, whilk havena muckle wheels nor mill-dams, but gang by
the wind--strange to behold. Ane miller asked me to gang in and see it
work, but I wad not, for I am not come to the south to make acquaintance
with strangers. I keep the straight road, and just beck if onybody speaks
to me ceevilly, and answers naebody with the tong but women of my ain
sect. I wish, Mr. Butler, I kend onything that wad mak ye weel, for they
hae mair medicines in this town of York than wad cure a' Scotland, and
surely some of them wad be gude for your complaints. If ye had a kindly
motherly body to nurse ye, and no to let ye waste yoursell wi'
reading--whilk ye read mair than eneugh wi' the bairns in the
schule--and to gie ye warm milk in the morning, I wad be mair easy for
ye. Dear Mr. Butler, keep a good heart, for we are in the hands of Ane
that kens better what is gude for us than we ken what is for oursells. I
hae nae doubt to do that for which I am come--I canna doubt it--I winna
think to doubt it--because, if I haena full assurance, how shall I bear
myself with earnest entreaties in the great folk's presence? But to ken
that ane's purpose is right, and to make their heart strong, is the way
to get through the warst day's darg. The bairns' rime says, the warst
blast of the borrowing days* couldna kill the three silly poor hog-lams.

* The last three days of March, old style, are called the Borrowing Days;
for, as they are remarked to be unusually stormy, it is feigned that
March had borrowed them from April, to extend the sphere of his rougher
sway. The rhyme on the subject is quoted in the glossary to Leyden's
edition of the "Complaynt of Scotland"--

               [March said to Aperill,
                   I see three hogs upon a hill,
                A young sheep before it has lost its first fleece.
                   But when the borrowed days were gane
                The three silly hogs came hirplin hame.]

"And if it be God's pleasure, we that are sindered in sorrow may meet
again in joy, even on this hither side of Jordan. I dinna bid ye mind
what I said at our partin' anent my poor father, and that misfortunate
lassie, for I ken you will do sae for the sake of Christian charity,
whilk is mair than the entreaties of her that is your servant to command,

                                                    "Jeanie Deans."

This letter also had a postscript. "Dear Reuben, If ye think that it wad
hae been right for me to have said mair and kinder things to ye, just
think that I hae written sae, since I am sure that I wish a' that is kind
and right to ye and by ye. Ye will think I am turned waster, for I wear
clean hose and shoon every day; but it's the fashion here for decent
bodies and ilka land has it's ain landlaw. Ower and aboon a', if laughing
days were e'er to come back again till us, ye wad laugh weel to see my
round face at the far end of a strae _bon-grace,_ that looks as muckle
and round as the middell aisle in Libberton Kirk. But it sheds the sun
weel aff, and keeps uncivil folk frae staring as if ane were a worrycow.
I sall tell ye by writ how I come on wi' the Duke of Argyle, when I won
up to Lunnon. Direct a line, to say how ye are, to me, to the charge of
Mrs. Margaret Glass, tobacconist, at the sign of the Thistle, Lunnon,
whilk, if it assures me of your health, will make my mind sae muckle
easier. Excuse bad spelling and writing, as I have ane ill pen."

The orthography of these epistles may seem to the southron to require a
better apology than the letter expresses, though a bad pen was the excuse
of a certain Galwegian laird for bad spelling; but, on behalf of the
heroine, I would have them to know, that, thanks to the care of Butler,
Jeanie Deans wrote and spelled fifty times better than half the women of
rank in Scotland at that period, whose strange orthography and singular
diction form the strongest contrast to the good sense which their
correspondence usually intimates.

For the rest, in the tenor of these epistles, Jeanie expressed, perhaps,
more hopes, a firmer courage, and better spirits, than she actually felt.
But this was with the amiable idea of relieving her father and lover from
apprehensions on her account, which she was sensible must greatly add to
their other troubles. "If they think me weel, and like to do weel," said
the poor pilgrim to herself, "my father will be kinder to Effie, and
Butler will be kinder to himself. For I ken weel that they will think
mair o' me than I do o' mysell."

Accordingly, she sealed her letters carefully, and put them into the
post-office with her own hand, after many inquiries concerning the time
in which they were likely to reach Edinburgh. When this duty was
performed, she readily accepted her landlady's pressing invitation to
dine with her, and remain till the next morning. The hostess, as we have
said, was her countrywoman, and the eagerness with which Scottish people
meet, communicate, and, to the extent of their power, assist each other,
although it is often objected to us as a prejudice and narrowness of
sentiment, seems, on the contrary, to arise from a most justifiable and
honourable feeling of patriotism, combined with a conviction, which, if
undeserved, would long since have been confuted by experience, that the
habits and principles of the nation are a sort of guarantee for the
character of the individual. At any rate, if the extensive influence of
this national partiality be considered as an additional tie, binding man
to man, and calling forth the good offices of such as can render them to
the countryman who happens to need them, we think it must be found to
exceed, as an active and efficient motive, to generosity, that more
impartial and wider principle of general benevolence, which we have
sometimes seen pleaded as an excuse for assisting no individual whatever.

Mrs. Bickerton, lady of the ascendant of the Seven Stars, in the
Castle-gate, York, was deeply infected with the unfortunate prejudices of
her country. Indeed, she displayed so much kindness to Jeanie Deans
(because she herself, being a Merse woman, _marched_ with Mid-Lothian, in
which Jeanie was born), showed such motherly regard to her, and such
anxiety for her farther progress, that Jeanie thought herself safe,
though by temper sufficiently cautious, in communicating her whole story
to her.

Mrs. Bickerton raised her hands and eyes at the recital, and exhibited
much wonder and pity. But she also gave some effectual good advice.

She required to know the strength of Jeanie's purse, reduced by her
deposit at Liberton, and the necessary expense of her journey, to about
fifteen pounds. "This," she said, "would do very well, providing she
would carry it a' safe to London."

"Safe!" answered Jeanie; "I'se warrant my carrying it safe, bating the
needful expenses."

"Ay, but highwaymen, lassie," said Mrs. Bickerton; "for ye are come into
a more civilised, that is to say, a more roguish country than the north,
and how ye are to get forward, I do not profess to know. If ye could wait
here eight days, our waggons would go up, and I would recommend you to
Joe Broadwheel, who would see you safe to the Swan and two Necks. And
dinna sneeze at Joe, if he should be for drawing up wi' you" (continued
Mrs. Bickerton, her acquired English mingling with her national or
original dialect), "he's a handy boy, and a wanter, and no lad better
thought o' on the road; and the English make good husbands enough,
witness my poor man, Moses Bickerton, as is i' the kirkyard."

Jeanie hastened to say, that she could not possibly wait for the setting
forth of Joe Broadwheel; being internally by no means gratified with the
idea of becoming the object of his attention during the journey,

"Aweel, lass," answered the good landlady, "then thou must pickle in
thine ain poke-nook, and buckle thy girdle thine ain gate. But take my
advice, and hide thy gold in thy stays, and keep a piece or two and some
silver, in case thou be'st spoke withal; for there's as wud lads haunt
within a day's walk from hence, as on the braes of Doune in Perthshire.
And, lass, thou maunna gang staring through Lunnon, asking wha kens Mrs.
Glass at the sign o' the Thistle; marry, they would laugh thee to scorn.
But gang thou to this honest man," and she put a direction into Jeanie's
hand, "he kens maist part of the sponsible Scottish folk in the city, and
he will find out your friend for thee."

Jeanie took the little introductory letter with sincere thanks; but,
something alarmed on the subject of the highway robbers, her mind
recurred to what Ratcliffe had mentioned to her, and briefly relating the
circumstances which placed a document so extraordinary in her hands, she
put the paper he had given her into the hand of Mrs. Bickerton.

The Lady of the Seven Stars did not indeed ring a bell, because such was
not the fashion of the time, but she whistled on a silver call, which was
hung by her side, and a tight serving-maid entered the room.

"Tell Dick Ostler to come here," said Mrs. Bickerton.

Dick Ostler accordingly made his appearance;--a queer, knowing, shambling
animal, with a hatchet-face, a squint, a game-arm, and a limp.

"Dick Ostler," said Mrs. Bickerton, in a tone of authority that showed
she was (at least by adoption) Yorkshire too, "thou knowest most people
and most things o' the road."

"Eye, eye, God help me, mistress," said Dick, shrugging his shoulders
betwixt a repentant and a knowing expression--"Eye! I ha' know'd a thing
or twa i' ma day, mistress." He looked sharp and laughed--looked grave
and sighed, as one who was prepared to take the matter either way.

"Kenst thou this wee bit paper amang the rest, man?" said Mrs. Bickerton,
handing him the protection which Ratcliffe had given Jeanie Deans.

When Dick had looked at the paper, he winked with one eye, extended his
grotesque mouth from ear to ear, like a navigable canal, scratched his
head powerfully, and then said, "Ken!--ay--maybe we ken summat, an it
werena for harm to him, mistress!"

"None in the world," said Mrs. Bickerton; "only a dram of Hollands to
thyself, man, an thou wilt speak."

"Why, then," said Dick, giving the head-band of his breeches a knowing
hoist with one hand, and kicking out one foot behind him to accommodate
the adjustment of that important habiliment, "I dares to say the pass
will be kend weel eneugh on the road, an that be all."

"But what sort of a lad was he?" said Mrs. Bickerton, winking to Jeanie,
as proud of her knowing Ostler.

"Why, what ken I?--Jim the Rat--why he was Cock o' the North within this
twelmonth--he and Scotch Wilson, Handle Dandie, as they called him--but
he's been out o' this country a while, as I rackon; but ony gentleman, as
keeps the road o' this side Stamford, will respect Jim's pass."

Without asking farther questions, the landlady filled Dick Ostler a
bumper of Hollands. He ducked with his head and shoulders, scraped with
his more advanced hoof, bolted the alcohol, to use the learned phrase,
and withdrew to his own domains.

"I would advise thee, Jeanie," said Mrs. Bickerton, "an thou meetest with
ugly customers o' the road, to show them this bit paper, for it will
serve thee, assure thyself."

A neat little supper concluded the evening. The exported Scotswoman, Mrs.
Bickerton by name, ate heartily of one or two seasoned dishes, drank some
sound old ale, and a glass of stiff negus; while she gave Jeanie a
history of her gout, admiring how it was possible that she, whose fathers
and mothers for many generations had been farmers in Lammermuir, could
have come by a disorder so totally unknown to them. Jeanie did not choose
to offend her friendly landlady, by speaking her mind on the probable
origin of this complaint; but she thought on the flesh-pots of Egypt,
and, in spite of all entreaties to better fare, made her evening meal
upon vegetables, with a glass of fair water.

Mrs. Bickerton assured her, that the acceptance of any reckoning was
entirely out of the question, furnished her with credentials to her
correspondent in London, and to several inns upon the road where she had
some influence or interest, reminded her of the precautions she should
adopt for concealing her money, and as she was to depart early in the
morning, took leave of her very affectionately, taking her word that she
would visit her on her return to Scotland, and tell her how she had
managed, and that summum bonum for a gossip, "all how and about it." This
Jeanie faithfully promised.




CHAPTER FIFTH.

              And Need and Misery, Vice and Danger, bind,
              In sad alliance, each degraded mind.

As our traveller set out early on the ensuing morning to prosecute her
journey, and was in the act of leaving the innyard, Dick Ostler, who
either had risen early or neglected to go to bed, either circumstance
being equally incident to his calling, hollowed out after her,--"The top
of the morning to you, Moggie. Have a care o' Gunderby Hill, young one.
Robin Hood's dead and gwone, but there be takers yet in the vale of
Bever. Jeanie looked at him as if to request a farther explanation, but,
with a leer, a shuffle, and a shrug, inimitable (unless by Emery*), Dick
turned again to the raw-boned steed which he was currying, and sung as he
employed the comb and brush,--

               "Robin Hood was a yeoman right good,
                    And his bow was of trusty yew;
                And if Robin said stand on the king's lea-land,
                    Pray, why should not we say so too?"

* [John Emery, an eminent comedian, played successfully at Covent Garden
Theatre between 1798 and 1820. Among his characters, were those of Dandie
Dinmont in _Guy Mannering,_ Dougal in _Rob Roy,_ and Ratcliffe in the
Heart of _Mid-Lothian._]

Jeanie pursued her journey without farther inquiry, for there was nothing
in Dick's manner that inclined her to prolong their conference. A painful
day's journey brought her to Ferrybridge, the best inn, then and since,
upon the great northern road; and an introduction from Mrs. Bickerton,
added to her own simple and quiet manners, so propitiated the landlady of
the Swan in her favour, that the good dame procured her the convenient
accommodation of a pillion and post-horse then returning to Tuxford, so
that she accomplished, upon the second day after leaving York, the
longest journey she had yet made. She was a good deal fatigued by a mode
of travelling to which she was less accustomed than to walking, and it
was considerably later than usual on the ensuing morning that she felt
herself able to resume her pilgrimage. At noon the hundred-armed Trent,
and the blackened ruins of Newark Castle, demolished in the great civil
war, lay before her. It may easily be supposed, that Jeanie had no
curiosity to make antiquarian researches, but, entering the town, went
straight to the inn to which she had been directed at Ferrybridge. While
she procured some refreshment, she observed the girl who brought it to
her, looked at her several times with fixed and peculiar interest, and at
last, to her infinite surprise, inquired if her name was not Deans, and
if she was not a Scotchwoman, going to London upon justice business.
Jeanie, with all her simplicity of character, had some of the caution of
her country, and, according to Scottish universal custom, she answered
the question by another, requesting the girl would tell her why she asked
these questions?

The Maritornes of the Saracen's Head, Newark, replied, "Two women had
passed that morning, who had made inquiries after one Jeanie Deans,
travelling to London on such an errand, and could scarce be persuaded
that she had not passed on."

Much surprised and somewhat alarmed (for what is inexplicable is usually
alarming), Jeanie questioned the wench about the particular appearance of
these two women, but could only learn that the one was aged, and the
other young; that the latter was the taller, and that the former spoke
most, and seemed to maintain an authority over her companion, and that
both spoke with the Scottish accent.

This conveyed no information whatever, and with an indescribable
presentiment of evil designed towards her, Jeanie adopted the resolution
of taking post-horses for the next stage. In this, however, she could not
be gratified; some accidental circumstances had occasioned what is called
a run upon the road, and the landlord could not accommodate her with a
guide and horses. After waiting some time, in hopes that a pair of horses
that had gone southward would return in time for her use, she at length,
feeling ashamed at her own pusillanimity, resolved to prosecute her
journey in her usual manner.

"It was all plain road," she was assured, "except a high mountain called
Gunnerby Hill, about three miles from Grantham, which was her stage for
the night.

"I'm glad to hear there's a hill," said Jeanie, "for baith my sight and
my very feet are weary o' sic tracts o' level ground--it looks a' the way
between this and York as if a' the land had been trenched and levelled,
whilk is very wearisome to my Scotch een. When I lost sight of a muckle
blue hill they ca' Ingleboro', I thought I hadna a friend left in this
strange land."

"As for the matter of that, young woman," said mine host, "an you be so
fond o' hill, I carena an thou couldst carry Gunnerby away with thee in
thy lap, for it's a murder to post-horses. But here's to thy journey, and
mayst thou win well through it, for thou is a bold and a canny lass."

So saying, he took a powerful pull at a solemn tankard of home-brewed
ale.

"I hope there is nae bad company on the road, sir?" said Jeanie.

"Why, when it's clean without them I'll thatch Groby pool wi' pancakes.
But there arena sae mony now; and since they hae lost Jim the Rat, they
hold together no better than the men of Marsham when they lost their
common. Take a drop ere thou goest," he concluded, offering her the
tankard; "thou wilt get naething at night save Grantham gruel, nine grots
and a gallon of water."

Jeanie courteously declined the tankard, and inquired what was her
"lawing?"

"Thy lawing! Heaven help thee, wench! what ca'st thou that?"

"It is--I was wanting to ken what was to pay," replied Jeanie.

"Pay? Lord help thee!--why nought, woman--we hae drawn no liquor but a
gill o' beer, and the Saracen's Head can spare a mouthful o' meat to a
stranger like o' thee, that cannot speak Christian language. So here's to
thee once more. The same again, quoth Mark of Bellgrave," and he took
another profound pull at the tankard.

The travellers who have visited Newark more lately, will not fail to
remember the remarkably civil and gentlemanly manners of the person who
now keeps the principal inn there, and may find some amusement in
contrasting them with those of his more rough predecessor. But we believe
it will be found that the polish has worn off none of the real worth of
the metal.

Taking leave of her Lincolnshire Gaius, Jeanie resumed her solitary walk,
and was somewhat alarmed when evening and twilight overtook her in the
open ground which extends to the foot of Gunnerby Hill, and is
intersected with patches of copse and with swampy spots. The extensive
commons on the north road, most of which are now enclosed, and in general
a relaxed state of police, exposed the traveller to a highway robbery in
a degree which is now unknown, except in the immediate vicinity of the
metropolis. Aware of this circumstance, Jeanie mended her pace when she
heard the trampling of a horse behind, and instinctively drew to one side
of the road, as if to allow as much room for the rider to pass as might
be possible. When the animal came up, she found that it was bearing two
women, the one placed on a side-saddle, the other on a pillion behind
her, as may still occasionally be seen in England.

"A braw good-night to ye, Jeanie Deans," said the foremost female as the
horse passed our heroine; "What think ye o' yon bonny hill yonder,
lifting its brow to the moon? Trow ye yon's the gate to heaven, that ye
are sae fain of?--maybe we will win there the night yet, God sain us,
though our minny here's rather dreigh in the upgang."

The speaker kept changing her seat in the saddle, and half stopping the
horse as she brought her body round, while the woman that sate behind her
on the pillion seemed to urge her on, in words which Jeanie heard but
imperfectly.

"Hand your tongue, ye moon-raised b----! what is your business with ----,
or with heaven or hell either?"

"Troth, mither, no muckle wi' heaven, I doubt, considering wha I carry
ahint me--and as for hell, it will fight its ain battle at its ain time,
I'se be bound.--Come, naggie, trot awa, man, an as thou wert a
broomstick, for a witch rides thee--

      With my curtch on my foot, and my shoe on my hand,
      I glance like the wildfire through brugh and through land."

The tramp of the horse, and the increasing distance, drowned the rest of
her song, but Jeanie heard for some time the inarticulate sounds ring
along the waste.

Our pilgrim remained stupified with undefined apprehensions. The being
named by her name in so wild a manner, and in a strange country, without
farther explanation or communing, by a person who thus strangely flitted
forward and disappeared before her, came near to the supernatural sounds
in Comus:--

             The airy tongues, which syllable men's names
             On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.

And although widely different in features, deportment, and rank, from the
Lady of that enchanting masque, the continuation of the passage may be
happily applied to Jeanie Deans upon this singular alarm:--

              These thoughts may startle well, but not astound
              The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended
              By a strong siding champion--Conscience.

In fact, it was, with the recollection of the affectionate and dutiful
errand on which she was engaged, her right, if such a word could be
applicable, to expect protection in a task so meritorious. She had not
advanced much farther, with a mind calmed by these reflections, when she
was disturbed by a new and more instant subject of terror. Two men, who
had been lurking among some copse, started up as she advanced, and met
her on the road in a menacing manner. "Stand and deliver," said one of
them, a short stout fellow, in a smock-frock, such as are worn by
waggoners.

"The woman," said the other, a tall thin figure, "does not understand the
words of action.--Your money, my precious, or your life."

"I have but very little money, gentlemen," said poor Jeanie, tendering
that portion which she had separated from her principal stock, and kept
apart for such an emergency; "but if you are resolved to have it, to be
sure you must have it."

"This won't do, my girl. D--n me, if it shall pass!" said the shorter
ruffian; "do ye think gentlemen are to hazard their lives on the road to
be cheated in this way? We'll have every farthing you have got, or we
will strip you to the skin, curse me."

His companion, who seemed to have something like compassion for the
horror which Jeanie's countenance now expressed, said, "No, no, Tom, this
is one of the precious sisters, and we'll take her word, for once,
without putting her to the stripping proof--Hark ye, my lass, if ye look
up to heaven, and say, this is the last penny you have about ye, why,
hang it, we'll let you pass."

"I am not free," answered Jeanie, "to say what I have about me,
gentlemen, for there's life and death depends on my journey; but if you
leave me as much as finds me bread and water, I'll be satisfied, and
thank you, and pray for you."

"D--n your prayers!" said the shorter fellow, "that's a coin that won't
pass with us;" and at the same time made a motion to seize her.

"Stay, gentlemen," Ratcliffe's pass suddenly occurring to her; "perhaps
you know this paper."

"What the devil is she after now, Frank?" said the more savage
ruffian--"Do you look at it, for, d--n me if I could read it if it were
for the benefit of my clergy."

"This is a jark from Jim Ratcliffe," said the taller, having looked at
the bit of paper. "The wench must pass by our cutter's law."

"I say no," answered his companion; "Rat has left the lay, and turned
bloodhound, they say."

"We may need a good turn from him all the same," said the taller ruffian
again.

"But what are we to do then?" said the shorter man--"We promised, you
know, to strip the wench, and send her begging back to her own beggarly
country, and now you are for letting her go on."

"I did not say that," said the other fellow, and whispered to his
companion, who replied, "Be alive about it then, and don't keep
chattering till some travellers come up to nab us."

"You must follow us off the road, young woman," said the taller.

"For the love of God!" exclaimed Jeanie, "as you were born of woman,
dinna ask me to leave the road! rather take all I have in the world."

"What the devil is the wench afraid of?" said the other fellow. "I tell
you you shall come to no harm; but if you will not leave the road and
come with us, d--n me, but I'll beat your brains out where you stand."

"Thou art a rough bear, Tom," said his companion.--"An ye touch her, I'll
give ye a shake by the collar shall make the Leicester beans rattle in
thy guts.--Never mind him, girl; I will not allow him to lay a finger on
you, if you walk quietly on with us; but if you keep jabbering there,
d--n me, but I'll leave him to settle it with you."

This threat conveyed all that is terrible to the imagination of poor
Jeanie, who saw in him that "was of milder mood" her only protection from
the most brutal treatment. She, therefore, not only followed him, but
even held him by the sleeve, lest he should escape from her; and the
fellow, hardened as he was, seemed something touched by these marks of
confidence, and repeatedly assured her, that he would suffer her to
receive no harm.

They conducted their prisoner in a direction leading more and more from
the public road, but she observed that they kept a sort of track or
by-path, which relieved her from part of her apprehensions, which would
have been greatly increased had they not seemed to follow a determined
and ascertained route. After about half-an-hour's walking, all three in
profound silence, they approached an old barn, which stood on the edge of
some cultivated ground, but remote from everything like a habitation. It
was itself, however, tenanted, for there was light in the windows.

One of the footpads scratched at the door, which was opened by a female,
and they entered with their unhappy prisoner. An old woman, who was
preparing food by the assistance of a stifling fire of lighted charcoal,
asked them, in the name of the devil, what they brought the wench there
for, and why they did not strip her and turn her abroad on the common?

"Come, come, Mother Blood," said the tall man, "we'll do what's right to
oblige you, and we'll do no more; we are bad enough, but not such as you
would make us,--devils incarnate."

"She has got a jark from Jim Ratcliffe," said the short fellow, "and
Frank here won't hear of our putting her through the mill."

"No, that I will not, by G--d!" answered Frank; "but if old Mother Blood
could keep her here for a little while, or send her back to Scotland,
without hurting her, why, I see no harm in that--not I."

"I'll tell you what, Frank Levitt," said the old woman, "if you call me
Mother Blood again, I'll paint this gully" (and she held a knife up as if
about to make good her threat) "in the best blood in your body, my bonny
boy."

"The price of ointment must be up in the north," said Frank, "that puts
Mother Blood so much out of humour."

Without a moment's hesitation the fury darted her knife at him with the
vengeful dexterity of a wild Indian. As he was on his guard, he avoided
the missile by a sudden motion of his head, but it whistled past his ear,
and stuck deep in the clay wall of a partition behind.

"Come, come, mother," said the robber, seizing her by both wrists, "I
shall teach you who's master;" and so saying, he forced the hag backwards
by main force, who strove vehemently until she sunk on a bunch of straw,
and then, letting go her hands, he held up his finger towards her in the
menacing posture by which a maniac is intimidated by his keeper. It
appeared to produce the desired effect; for she did not attempt to rise
from the seat on which he had placed her, or to resume any measures of
actual violence, but wrung her withered hands with impotent rage, and
brayed and howled like a demoniac.

"I will keep my promise with you, you old devil," said Frank; "the wench
shall not go forward on the London road, but I will not have you touch a
hair of her head, if it were but for your insolence."

This intimation seemed to compose in some degree the vehement passion of
the old hag; and while her exclamations and howls sunk into a low,
maundering, growling tone of voice, another personage was added to this
singular party.

"Eh, Frank Levitt," said this new-comer, who entered with a hop, step,
and jump, which at once conveyed her from the door into the centre of the
party, "were ye killing our mother? or were ye cutting the grunter's
weasand that Tam brought in this morning? or have ye been reading your
prayers backward, to bring up my auld acquaintance the deil amang ye?"

The tone of the speaker was so particular, that Jeanie immediately
recognised the woman who had rode foremost of the pair which passed her
just before she met the robbers; a circumstance which greatly increased
her terror, as it served to show that the mischief designed against her
was premeditated, though by whom, or for what cause, she was totally at a
loss to conjecture. From the style of her conversation, the reader also
may probably acknowledge in this female an old acquaintance in the
earlier part of our narrative.

"Out, ye mad devil!" said Tom, whom she had disturbed in the middle of a
draught of some liquor with which he had found means of accommodating
himself; "betwixt your Bess of Bedlam pranks, and your dam's frenzies, a
man might live quieter in the devil's ken than here."--And he again
resumed the broken jug out of which he had been drinking.

"And wha's this o't?" said the mad woman, dancing up to Jeanie Deans,
who, although in great terror, yet watched the scene with a resolution to
let nothing pass unnoticed which might be serviceable in assisting her to
escape, or informing her as to the true nature of her situation, and the
danger attending it,--"Wha's this o't?" again exclaimed Madge Wildfire.

"Douce Davie Deans, the auld doited whig body's daughter, in a gipsy's
barn, and the night setting in? This is a sight for sair een!--Eh, sirs,
the falling off o' the godly!--and the t'other sister's in the Tolbooth
of Edinburgh; I am very sorry for her, for my share--it's my mother
wusses ill to her, and no me--though maybe I hae as muckle cause."

"Hark ye, Madge," said the taller ruffian, "you have not such a touch of
the devil's blood as the hag your mother, who may be his dam for what I
know--take this young woman to your kennel, and do not let the devil
enter, though he should ask in God's name."

"Ou ay; that I will, Frank," said Madge, taking hold of Jeanie by the
arm, and pulling her along; "for it's no for decent Christian young
leddies, like her and me, to be keeping the like o' you and Tyburn Tam
company at this time o' night. Sae gude-e'en t'ye, sirs, and mony o'
them; and may ye a' sleep till the hangman wauken ye, and then it will be
weel for the country."

She then, as her wild fancy seemed suddenly to prompt her, walked
demurely towards her mother, who, seated by the charcoal fire, with the
reflection of the red light on her withered and distorted features marked
by every evil passion, seemed the very picture of Hecate at her infernal
rites; and, suddenly dropping on her knees, said, with the manner of a
six years' old child, "Mammie, hear me say my prayers before I go to bed,
and say God bless my bonny face, as ye used to do lang syne."

"The deil flay the hide o' it to sole his brogues wi'!" said the old
lady, aiming a buffet at the supplicant, in answer to her duteous
request.

The blow missed Madge, who, being probably acquainted by experience with
the mode in which her mother was wont to confer her maternal
benedictions, slipt out of arm's length with great dexterity and
quickness. The hag then started up, and, seizing a pair of old
fire-tongs, would have amended her motion, by beating out the brains
either of her daughter or Jeanie (she did not seem greatly to care
which), when her hand was once more arrested by the man whom they called
Frank Levitt, who, seizing her by the shoulder, flung her from him with
great violence, exclaiming, "What, Mother Damnable--again, and in my
sovereign presence!--Hark ye, Madge of Bedlam! get to your hole with your
playfellow, or we shall have the devil to pay here, and nothing to pay
him with."

Madge took Levitt's advice, retreating as fast as she could, and dragging
Jeanie along with her into a sort of recess, partitioned off from the
rest of the barn, and filled with straw, from which it appeared that it
was intended for the purpose of slumber. The moonlight shone, through an
open hole, upon a pillion, a pack-saddle, and one or two wallets, the
travelling furniture of Madge and her amiable mother.--"Now, saw ye e'er
in your life," said Madge, "sae dainty a chamber of deas? see as the moon
shines down sae caller on the fresh strae! There's no a pleasanter cell
in Bedlam, for as braw a place as it is on the outside.--Were ye ever in
Bedlam?"

"No," answered Jeanie faintly, appalled by the question, and the way in
which it was put, yet willing to soothe her insane companion, being in
circumstances so unhappily precarious, that even the society of this
gibbering madwoman seemed a species of protection.

"Never in Bedlam?" said Madge, as if with some surprise.--"But ye'll hae
been in the cells at Edinburgh!"

"Never," repeated Jeanie.

"Weel, I think thae daft carles the magistrates send naebody to Bedlam
but me--thae maun hae an unco respect for me, for whenever I am brought
to them, thae aye hae me back to Bedlam. But troth, Jeanie" (she said
this in a very confidential tone), "to tell ye my private mind about it,
I think ye are at nae great loss; for the keeper's a cross-patch, and he
maun hae it a' his ain gate, to be sure, or he makes the place waur than
hell. I often tell him he's the daftest in a' the house.--But what are
they making sic a skirling for?--Deil ane o' them's get in here--it wadna
be mensfu'! I will sit wi' my back again the door; it winna be that easy
stirring me."

"Madge!"--"Madge!"--"Madge Wildfire!"--"Madge devil! what have ye done
with the horse?" was repeatedly asked by the men without.

"He's e'en at his supper, puir thing," answered Madge; "deil an ye were
at yours, too, an it were scauding brimstone, and then we wad hae less o'
your din."

"His supper!" answered the more sulky ruffian--"What d'ye mean by
that!--Tell me where he is, or I will knock your Bedlam brains out!"

"He's in Gaffer Gablewood's wheat-close, an ye maun ken."

"His wheat-close, you crazed jilt!" answered the other, with an accent of
great indignation.

"O, dear Tyburn Tam, man, what ill will the blades of the young wheat do
to the puir nag?"

"That is not the question," said the other robber; "but what the country
will say to us to-morrow, when they see him in such quarters?--Go, Tom,
and bring him in; and avoid the soft ground, my lad; leave no hoof-track
behind you."

"I think you give me always the fag of it, whatever is to be done,"
grumbled his companion.

"Leap, Laurence, you're long enough," said the other; and the fellow left
the barn accordingly, without farther remonstrance.

In the meanwhile, Madge had arranged herself for repose on the straw; but
still in a half-sitting posture, with her back resting against the door
of the hovel, which, as it opened inwards, was in this manner kept shut
by the weight of the person.

"There's mair shifts by stealing, Jeanie," said Madge Wildfire; "though
whiles I can hardly get our mother to think sae. Wha wad hae thought but
mysell of making a bolt of my ain back-bane? But it's no sae strong as
thae that I hae seen in the Tolbooth at Edinburgh. The hammermen of
Edinburgh are to my mind afore the warld for making stancheons,
ring-bolts, fetter-bolts, bars, and locks. And they arena that bad at
girdles for carcakes neither, though the Cu'ross hammermen have the gree
for that. My mother had ance a bonny Cu'ross girdle, and I thought to
have baked carcakes on it for my puir wean that's dead and gane nae fair
way--But we maun a' dee, ye ken, Jeanie--You Cameronian bodies ken that
brawlies; and ye're for making a hell upon earth that ye may be less
unwillin' to part wi' it. But as touching Bedlam that ye were speaking
about, I'se ne'er recommend it muckle the tae gate or the other, be it
right--be it wrang. But ye ken what the sang says." And, pursuing the
unconnected and floating wanderings of her mind, she sung aloud--

                    "In the bonny cells of Bedlam,
                        Ere I was ane-and-twenty,
                    I had hempen bracelets strong,
                       And merry whips, ding-dong,
                    And prayer and fasting plenty.

"Weel, Jeanie, I am something herse the night, and I canna sing muckle
mair; and troth, I think, I am gaun to sleep."

She drooped her head on her breast, a posture from which Jeanie, who
would have given the world for an opportunity of quiet to consider the
means and the probability of her escape, was very careful not to disturb
her. After nodding, however, for a minute'or two, with her eyes
half-closed, the unquiet and restless spirit of her malady again assailed
Madge. She raised her head, and spoke, but with a lowered tone, which was
again gradually overcome by drowsiness, to which the fatigue of a day's
journey on horseback had probably given unwonted occasion,--"I dinna ken
what makes me sae sleepy--I amaist never sleep till my bonny Lady Moon
gangs till her bed--mair by token, when she's at the full, ye ken, rowing
aboon us yonder in her grand silver coach--I have danced to her my lane
sometimes for very joy--and whiles dead folk came and danced wi' me--the
like o' Jock Porteous, or ony body I had ken'd when I was living--for ye
maun ken I was ance dead mysell." Here the poor maniac sung, in a low and
wild tone,

                 "My banes are buried in yon kirkyard
                        Sae far ayont the sea,
                  And it is but my blithesome ghaist
                        That's speaking now to thee.

"But after a', Jeanie, my woman, naebody kens weel wha's living and wha's
dead--or wha's gone to Fairyland--there's another question. Whiles I
think my puir bairn's dead--ye ken very weel it's buried--but that
signifies naething. I have had it on my knee a hundred times, and a
hundred till that, since it was buried--and how could that be were it
dead, ye ken?--it's merely impossible."--And here, some conviction
half-overcoming the reveries of her imagination, she burst into a fit of
crying and ejaculation, "Wae's me! wae's me! wae's me!" till at length
she moaned and sobbed herself into a deep sleep, which was soon intimated
by her breathing hard, leaving Jeanie to her own melancholy reflections
and observations.





CHAPTER SIXTH.


               Bind her quickly; or, by this steel,
               I'll tell, although I truss for company.
                                       Fletcher.

The imperfect light which shone into the window enabled Jeanie to see
that there was scarcely any chance of making her escape in that
direction; for the aperture was high in the wall, and so narrow, that,
could she have climbed up to it, she might well doubt whether it would
have permitted her to pass her body through it. An unsuccessful attempt
to escape would be sure to draw down worse treatment than she now
received, and she, therefore, resolved to watch her opportunity carefully
ere making such a perilous effort. For this purpose she applied herself
to the ruinous clay partition, which divided the hovel in which she now
was from the rest of the waste barn. It was decayed and full of cracks
and chinks, one of which she enlarged with her fingers, cautiously and
without noise, until she could obtain a plain view of the old hag and the
taller ruffian, whom they called Levitt, seated together beside the
decayed fire of charcoal, and apparently engaged in close conference. She
was at first terrified by the sight; for the features of the old woman
had a hideous cast of hardened and inveterate malice and ill-humour, and
those of the man, though naturally less unfavourable, were such as
corresponded well with licentious habits, and a lawless profession.

"But I remembered," said Jeanie, "my worthy fathers tales of a winter
evening, how he was confined with the blessed martyr, Mr. James Renwick,
who lifted up the fallen standard of the true reformed Kirk of Scotland,
after the worthy and renowned Daniel Cameron, our last blessed
banner-man, had fallen among the swords of the wicked at Airsmoss, and
how the very hearts of the wicked malefactors and murderers, whom they
were confined withal, were melted like wax at the sound of their
doctrine: and I bethought mysell, that the same help that was wi' them in
their strait, wad be wi' me in mine, an I could but watch the Lord's time
and opportunity for delivering my feet from their snare; and I minded the
Scripture of the blessed Psalmist, whilk he insisteth on, as weel in the
forty-second as in the forty-third psalm--'Why art thou cast down, O my
soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet
praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.'"

Strengthened in a mind naturally calm, sedate, and firm, by the influence
of religious confidence, this poor captive was enabled to attend to, and
comprehend, a great part of an interesting conversation which passed
betwixt those into whose hands she had fallen, notwithstanding that their
meaning was partly disguised by the occasional use of cant terms, of
which Jeanie knew not the import, by the low tone in which they spoke,
and by their mode of supplying their broken phrases by shrugs and signs,
as is usual amongst those of their disorderly profession.

The man opened the conversation by saying, "Now, dame, you see I am true
to my friend. I have not forgot that you _planked a chury,_* which helped
me through the bars of the Castle of York, and I came to do your work
without asking questions; for one good turn deserves another.

* Concealed a knife.

But now that Madge, who is as loud as Tom of Lincoln, is somewhat still,
and this same Tyburn Neddie is shaking his heels after the old nag, why,
you must tell me what all this is about, and what's to be done--for d--n
me if I touch the girl, or let her be touched, and she with Jim Rat's
pass, too."

"Thou art an honest lad, Frank," answered the old woman, "but e'en too
good for thy trade; thy tender heart will get thee into trouble. I will
see ye gang up Holborn Hill backward, and a' on the word of some silly
loon that could never hae rapped to ye had ye drawn your knife across his
weasand."

"You may be balked there, old one," answered the robber; "I have known
many a pretty lad cut short in his first summer upon the road, because he
was something hasty with his flats and sharps. Besides, a man would fain
live out his two years with a good conscience. So, tell me what all this
is about, and what's to be done for you that one can do decently?"

"Why, you must know, Frank--but first taste a snap of right Hollands."
She drew a flask from her pocket, and filled the fellow a large bumper,
which he pronounced to be the right thing.--"You must know, then,
Frank--wunna ye mend your hand?" again offering the flask.

"No, no,--when a woman wants mischief from you, she always begins by
filling you drunk. D--n all Dutch courage. What I do I will do
soberly--I'll last the longer for that too."

"Well, then, you must know," resumed the old woman, without any further
attempts at propitiation, "that this girl is going to London."

Here Jeanie could only distinguish the word sister.

The robber answered in a louder tone, "Fair enough that; and what the
devil is your business with it?"

"Business enough, I think. If the b--queers the noose, that silly cull
will marry her."

"And who cares if he does?" said the man.

"Who cares, ye donnard Neddie! I care; and I will strangle her with my
own hands, rather than she should come to Madge's preferment."

"Madge's preferment! Does your old blind eyes see no farther than that?
If he is as you say, dye think he'll ever marry a moon-calf like Madge?
Ecod, that's a good one--Marry Madge Wildfire!--Ha! ha! ha!"

"Hark ye, ye crack-rope padder, born beggar, and bred thief!" replied the
hag, "suppose he never marries the wench, is that a reason he should
marry another, and that other to hold my daughter's place, and she
crazed, and I a beggar, and all along of him? But I know that of him will
hang him--I know that of him will hang him, if he had a thousand lives--I
know that of him will hang--hang--hang him!"

She grinned as she repeated and dwelt upon the fatal monosyllable, with
the emphasis of a vindictive fiend.

"Then why don't you hang--hang--hang him?" said Frank, repeating her
words contemptuously. "There would be more sense in that, than in
wreaking yourself here upon two wenches that have done you and your
daughter no ill."

"No ill?" answered the old woman--"and he to marry this jail-bird, if
ever she gets her foot loose!"

"But as there is no chance of his marrying a bird of your brood, I
cannot, for my soul, see what you have to do with all this," again
replied the robber, shrugging his shoulders. "Where there is aught to be
got, I'll go as far as my neighbours, but I hate mischief for mischiefs
sake."

"And would you go nae length for revenge?" said the hag--"for
revenge--the sweetest morsel to the mouth that over was cooked in hell!"

"The devil may keep it for his own eating, then," said the robber; "for
hang me if I like the sauce he dresses it with."

"Revenge!" continued the old woman; "why, it is the best reward the devil
gives us for our time here and hereafter. I have wrought hard for it--I
have suffered for it--and I have sinned for it--and I will have it,--or
there is neither justice in heaven or in hell!"

Levitt had by this time lighted a pipe, and was listening with great
composure to the frantic and vindictive ravings of the old hag. He was
too much, hardened by his course of life to be shocked with them--too
indifferent, and probably too stupid, to catch any part of their
animation or energy. "But, mother," he said, after a pause, "still I say,
that if revenge is your wish, you should take it on the young fellow
himself."

"I wish I could," she said, drawing in her breath, with the eagerness of
a thirsty person while mimicking the action of drinking--"I wish I
could--but no--I cannot--I cannot."

"And why not?--You would think little of peaching and hanging him for
this Scotch affair.--Rat me, one might have milled the Bank of England,
and less noise about it."

"I have nursed him at this withered breast," answered the old woman,
folding her hands on her bosom, as if pressing an infant to it, "and,
though he has proved an adder to me--though he has been the destruction
of me and mine--though he has made me company for the devil, if there be
a devil, and food for hell, if there be such a place, yet I cannot take
his life.--No, I cannot," she continued, with an appearance of rage
against herself; "I have thought of it--I have tried it--but, Francis
Levitt, I canna gang through wi't--Na, na--he was the first bairn I ever
nurst--ill I had been--and man can never ken what woman feels for the
bairn she has held first to her bosom!"

"To be sure," said Levitt, "we have no experience; but, mother, they say
you ha'n't been so kind to other bairns, as you call them, that have come
in your way.--Nay, d--n me, never lay your hand on the whittle, for I am
captain and leader here, and I will have no rebellion."

The hag, whose first motion had been, upon hearing the question, to grasp
the haft of a large knife, now unclosed her hand, stole it away from the
weapon, and suffered it to fall by her side, while she proceeded with a
sort of smile--"Bairns! ye are joking, lad--wha wad touch bairns? Madge,
puir thing, had a misfortune wi' ane--and the t'other"--Here her voice
sunk so much, that Jeanie, though anxiously upon the watch, could not
catch a word she said, until she raised her tone at the conclusion of the
sentence--"So Madge, in her daffin', threw it into the Nor'-lock, I
trow."

Madge, whose slumbers, like those of most who labour under mental malady,
had been short, and were easily broken, now made herself heard from her
place of repose.

"Indeed, mother, that's a great lie, for I did nae sic thing."

"Hush, thou hellicat devil," said her mother--"By Heaven! the other wench
will be waking too."

"That may be dangerous," said Frank; and he rose, and followed Meg
Murdockson across the floor.

"Rise," said the hag to her daughter, "or I sall drive the knife between
the planks into the Bedlam back of thee!"

Apparently she at the same time seconded her threat by pricking her with
the point of a knife, for Madge, with a faint scream, changed her place,
and the door opened.


[Illustration: Jennie in the Outlaws Hut--80]


The old woman held a candle in one hand, and a knife in the other. Levitt
appeared behind her, whether with a view of preventing, or assisting her
in any violence she might meditate, could not be well guessed. Jeanie's
presence of mind stood her friend in this dreadful crisis. She had
resolution enough to maintain the attitude and manner of one who sleeps
profoundly, and to regulate even her breathing, notwithstanding the
agitation of instant terror, so as to correspond with her attitude.

The old woman passed the light across her eyes; and although Jeanie's
fears were so powerfully awakened by this movement, that she often
declared afterwards, that she thought she saw the figures of her destined
murderers through her closed eyelids, she had still the resolution to
maintain the feint, on which her safety perhaps depended.

Levitt looked at her with fixed attention; he then turned the old woman
out of the place, and followed her himself. Having regained the outward
apartment, and seated themselves, Jeanie heard the highwayman say, to her
no small relief, "She's as fast as if she were in Bedfordshire.--Now, old
Meg, d--n me if I can understand a glim of this story of yours, or what
good it will do you to hang the one wench and torment the other; but, rat
me, I will be true to my friend, and serve ye the way ye like it. I see
it will be a bad job; but I do think I could get her down to Surfleet on
the Wash, and so on board Tom Moonshine's neat lugger, and keep her out
of the way three or four weeks, if that will please ye--But d--n me if
any one shall harm her, unless they have a mind to choke on a brace of
blue plums.--It's a cruel, bad job, and I wish you and it, Meg, were both
at the devil."

"Never mind, hinny Levitt," said the old woman; "you are a ruffler, and
will have a' your ain gate--She shanna gang to heaven an hour sooner for
me; I carena whether she live or die--it's her sister--ay, her sister!"

"Well, we'll say no more about it; I hear Tom coming in. We'll couch a
hogshead,* and so better had you."

* Lay ourselves down to sleep.

They retired to repose accordingly, and all was silent in this asylum of
iniquity.

Jeanie lay for a long time awake. At break of day she heard the two
ruffians leave the barn, after whispering to the old woman for some time.
The sense that she was now guarded by persons of her own sex gave her
some confidence, and irresistible lassitude at length threw her into
slumber.

When the captive awakened, the sun was high in heaven, and the morning
considerably advanced. Madge Wildfire was still in the hovel which had
served them for the night, and immediately bid her good-morning, with her
usual air of insane glee. "And dye ken, lass," said Madge, "there's queer
things chanced since ye hae been in the land of Nod. The constables hae
been here, woman, and they met wi' my minnie at the door, and they
whirl'd her awa to the Justice's about the man's wheat.--Dear! thae
English churls think as muckle about a blade of wheat or grass, as a
Scotch laird does about his maukins and his muir-poots. Now, lass, if ye
like, we'll play them a fine jink; we will awa out and take a walk--they
will mak unco wark when they miss us, but we can easily be back by dinner
time, or before dark night at ony rate, and it will be some frolic and
fresh air.--But maybe ye wad like to take some breakfast, and then lie
down again? I ken by mysell, there's whiles I can sit wi' my head in my
hand the haill day, and havena a word to cast at a dog--and other whiles,
that I canna sit still a moment. That's when the folk think me warst, but
I am aye canny eneugh--ye needna be feared to walk wi' me."

Had Madge Wildfire been the most raging lunatic, instead of possessing a
doubtful, uncertain, and twilight sort of rationality, varying, probably,
from the influence of the most trivial causes, Jeanie would hardly have
objected to leave a place of captivity, where she had so much to
apprehend. She eagerly assured Madge that she had no occasion for further
sleep, no desire whatever for eating; and, hoping internally that she was
not guilty of sin in doing so, she flattered her keeper's crazy humour
for walking in the woods.

"It's no a'thegither for that neither," said poor Madge; "but I am
judging ye will wun the better out o' thae folk's hands; no that they are
a'thegither bad folk neither, but they have queer ways wi' them, and I
whiles dinna think it has ever been weel wi' my mother and me since we
kept sic-like company."

With the haste, the joy, the fear, and the hope of a liberated captive,
Jeanie snatched up her little bundle, followed Madge into the free air,
and eagerly looked round her for a human habitation; but none was to be
seen. The ground was partly cultivated, and partly left in its natural
state, according as the fancy of the slovenly agriculturists had decided.
In its natural state it was waste, in some places covered with dwarf
trees and bushes, in others swamp, and elsewhere firm and dry downs or
pasture grounds.

Jeanie's active mind next led her to conjecture which way the high-road
lay, whence she had been forced. If she regained that public road, she
imagined she must soon meet some person, or arrive at some house, where
she might tell her story, and request protection. But, after a glance
around her, she saw with regret that she had no means whatever of
directing her course with any degree of certainty, and that she was still
in dependence upon her crazy companion. "Shall we not walk upon the
high-road?" said she to Madge, in such a tone as a nurse uses to coax a
child. "It's brawer walking on the road than amang thae wild bushes and
whins."

Madge, who was walking very fast, stopped at this question, and looked at
Jeanie with a sudden and scrutinising glance, that seemed to indicate
complete acquaintance with her purpose. "Aha, lass!" she exclaimed, "are
ye gaun to guide us that gate?--Ye'll be for making your heels save your
head, I am judging."

Jeanie hesitated for a moment, on hearing her companion thus express
herself, whether she had not better take the hint, and try to outstrip
and get rid of her. But she knew not in which direction to fly; she was
by no means sure that she would prove the swiftest, and perfectly
conscious that in the event of her being pursued and overtaken, she would
be inferior to the madwoman in strength. She therefore gave up thoughts
for the present of attempting to escape in that manner, and, saying a few
words to allay Madge's suspicions, she followed in anxious apprehension
the wayward path by which her guide thought proper to lead her. Madge,
infirm of purpose, and easily reconciled to the present scene, whatever
it was, began soon to talk with her usual diffuseness of ideas.

"It's a dainty thing to be in the woods on a fine morning like this! I
like it far better than the town, for there isna a wheen duddie bairns to
be crying after ane, as if ane were a warld's wonder, just because
ane maybe is a thought bonnier and better put-on than their
neighbours--though, Jeanie, ye suld never be proud o' braw claiths,
or beauty neither--wae's me! they're but a snare--I ance thought better
o'them, and what came o't?"

"Are ye sure ye ken the way ye are taking us?" said Jeanie, who began to
imagine that she was getting deeper into the woods and more remote from
the high-road.

"Do I ken the road?--Wasna I mony a day living here, and what for
shouldna I ken the road? I might hae forgotten, too, for it was afore my
accident; but there are some things ane can never forget, let them try it
as muckle as they like."

By this time they had gained the deepest part of a patch of woodland. The
trees were a little separated from each other, and at the foot of one of
them, a beautiful poplar, was a hillock of moss, such as the poet of
Grasmere has described. So soon as she arrived at this spot, Madge
Wildfire, joining her hands above her head with a loud scream that
resembled laughter, flung herself all at once upon the spot, and remained
lying there motionless.

Jeanie's first idea was to take the opportunity of flight; but her desire
to escape yielded for a moment to apprehension for the poor insane being,
who, she thought, might perish for want of relief. With an effort, which
in her circumstances, might be termed heroic, she stooped down, spoke in
a soothing tone, and endeavoured to raise up the forlorn creature. She
effected this with difficulty, and as she placed her against the tree in
a sitting posture, she observed with surprise, that her complexion,
usually florid, was now deadly pale, and that her face was bathed in
tears. Notwithstanding her own extreme danger, Jeanie was affected by the
situation of her companion; and the rather, that, through the whole train
of her wavering and inconsistent state of mind and line of conduct, she
discerned a general colour of kindness towards herself, for which she
felt gratitude.

"Let me alane!--let me alane!" said the poor young woman, as her paroxysm
of sorrow began to abate--"Let me alane--it does me good to weep. I canna
shed tears but maybe ance or twice a year, and I aye come to wet this
turf with them, that the flowers may grow fair, and the grass may be
green."

"But what is the matter with you?" said Jeanie--"Why do you weep so
bitterly?"

"There's matter enow," replied the lunatic,--"mair than ae puir mind can
bear, I trow. Stay a bit, and I'll tell you a' about it; for I like ye,
Jeanie Deans--a'body spoke weel about ye when we lived in the Pleasaunts--
And I mind aye the drink o' milk ye gae me yon day, when I had been on
Arthur's Seat for four-and-twenty hours, looking for the ship that
somebody was sailing in."

These words recalled to Jeanie's recollection, that, in fact, she had
been one morning much frightened by meeting a crazy young woman near her
father's house at an early hour, and that, as she appeared to be
harmless, her apprehension had been changed into pity, and she had
relieved the unhappy wanderer with some food, which she devoured with the
haste of a famished person. The incident, trifling in itself, was at
present of great importance, if it should be found to have made a
favourable and permanent impression in her favour on the mind of the
object of her charity.

"Yes," said Madge, "I'll tell ye a' about it, for ye are a decent man's
daughter--Douce Davie Deans, ye ken--and maybe ye'll can teach me to find
out the narrow way, and the straight path, for I have been burning bricks
in Egypt, and walking through the weary wilderness of Sinai, for lang and
mony a day. But whenever I think about mine errors, I am like to cover my
lips for shame."--Here she looked up and smiled.--"It's a strange thing
now--I hae spoke mair gude words to you in ten minutes, than I wad speak
to my mother in as mony years--it's no that I dinna think on them--and
whiles they are just at my tongue's end, but then comes the devil, and
brushes my lips with his black wing, and lays his broad black loof on my
mouth--for a black loof it is, Jeanie--and sweeps away a' my gude
thoughts, and dits up my gude words, and pits a wheen fule sangs and idle
vanities in their place."

"Try, Madge," said Jeanie,--"try to settle your mind and make your breast
clean, and you'll find your heart easier.--Just resist the devil, and he
will flee from you--and mind that, as my worthy father tells me, there is
nae devil sae deceitfu' as our ain wandering thoughts."

"And that's true too, lass," said Madge, starting up; "and I'll gang a
gate where the devil daurna follow me; and it's a gate that you will like
dearly to gang--but I'll keep a fast haud o' your arm, for fear Apollyon
should stride across the path, as he did in the Pilgrim's Progress."

Accordingly she got up, and, taking Jeanie by the arm, began to walk
forward at a great pace; and soon, to her companion's no small joy, came
into a marked path, with the meanders of which she seemed perfectly
acquainted. Jeanie endeavoured to bring her back to the confessional, but
the fancy was gone by. In fact, the mind of this deranged being resembled
nothing so much as a quantity of dry leaves, which may for a few minutes
remain still, but are instantly discomposed and put in motion by the
first casual breath of air. She had now got John Bunyan's parable into
her head, to the exclusion of everything else, and on she went with great
volubility.

"Did ye never read the Pilgrim's Progress? And you shall be the woman,
Christiana, and I will be the maiden, Mercy--for ye ken Mercy was of the
fairer countenance, and the more alluring than her companion--and if I
had my little messan dog here, it would be Great-heart, their guide, ye
ken, for he was e'en as bauld, that he wad bark at ony thing twenty times
his size; and that was e'en the death of him, for he bit Corporal
MacAlpine's heels ae morning when they were hauling me to the
guard-house, and Corporal MacAlpine killed the bit faithfu' thing wi' his
Lochaber axe--deil pike the Highland banes o' him."

"O fie! Madge," said Jeanie, "ye should not speak such words."

"It's very true," said Madge, shaking her head; "but then I maunna think
o' my puir bit doggie, Snap, when I saw it lying dying in the gutter. But
it's just as weel, for it suffered baith cauld and hunger when it was
living, and in the grave there is rest for a' things--rest for the
doggie, and my puir bairn, and me."

"Your bairn?" said Jeanie, conceiving that by speaking on such a topic,
supposing it to be a real one, she could not fail to bring her companion
to a more composed temper.

She was mistaken, however, for Madge coloured, and replied with some
anger, "_My_ bairn? ay, to be sure, my bairn. Whatfor shouldna I hae a
bairn and lose a bairn too, as weel as your bonnie tittie, the Lily of
St. Leonard's?"

The answer struck Jeanie with some alarm, and she was anxious to soothe
the irritation she had unwittingly given occasion to. "I am very sorry
for your misfortune"

"Sorry! what wad ye be sorry for?" answered Madge. "The bairn was a
blessing--that is, Jeanie, it wad hae been a blessing if it hadna been
for my mother; but my mother's a queer woman.--Ye see, there was an auld
carle wi' a bit land, and a gude clat o' siller besides, just the very
picture of old Mr. Feeblemind or Mr. Ready-to-halt, that Great-heart
delivered from Slaygood the giant, when he was rifling him and about to
pick his bones, for Slaygood was of the nature of the flesh-eaters--and
Great-heart killed Giant Despair too--but I am doubting Giant Despair's
come alive again, for a' the story book--I find him busy at my heart
whiles."

"Weel, and so the auld carle," said Jeanie, for she was painfully
interested in getting to the truth of Madge's history, which she could
not but suspect was in some extraordinary way linked and entwined with
the fate of her sister. She was also desirous, if possible, to engage her
companion in some narrative which might be carried on in a lower tone of
voice, for she was in great apprehension lest the elevated notes of
Madge's conversation should direct her mother or the robbers in search of
them.

"And so the auld carle," said Madge, repeating her words--"I wish ye had
seen him stoiting about, aff ae leg on to the other, wi' a kind o'
dot-and-go-one sort o' motion, as if ilk ane o' his twa legs had belanged
to sindry folk--but Gentle George could take him aff brawly--Eh, as I
used to laugh to see George gang hip-hop like him!--I dinna ken, I think
I laughed heartier then than what I do now, though maybe no just sae
muckle."

"And who was Gentle George?" said Jeanie, endeavouring to bring her back
to her story.

"O, he was Geordie Robertson, ye ken, when he was in Edinburgh; but
that's no his right name neither--His name is--But what is your business
wi' his name?" said she, as if upon sudden recollection, "What have ye to
do asking for folk's names?--Have ye a mind I should scour my knife
between your ribs, as my mother says?"

As this was spoken with a menacing tone and gesture, Jeanie hastened to
protest her total innocence of purpose in the accidental question which
she had asked, and Madge Wildfire went on somewhat pacified.

"Never ask folk's names, Jeanie--it's no civil--I hae seen half-a-dozen
o' folk in my mother's at ance, and ne'er ane a' them ca'd the ither by
his name; and Daddie Ratton says, it is the most uncivil thing may be,
because the bailie bodies are aye asking fashions questions, when ye saw
sic a man, or sic a man; and if ye dinna ken their names, ye ken there
can be nae mair speerd about it."

"In what strange school," thought Jeanie to herself, "has this poor
creature been bred up, where such remote precautions are taken against
the pursuits of justice? What would my father or Reuben Butler think if I
were to tell them there are sic folk in the world? And to abuse the
simplicity of this demented creature! Oh, that I were but safe at hame
amang mine ain leal and true people! and I'll bless God, while I have
breath, that placed me amongst those who live in His fear, and under the
shadow of His wing."

She was interrupted by the insane laugh of Madge Wildfire, as she saw a
magpie hop across the path.

"See there!--that was the gate my auld joe used to cross the country, but
no just sae lightly--he hadna wings to help his auld legs, I trow; but I
behoved to have married him for a' that, Jeanie, or my mother wad hae
been the dead o' me. But then came in the story of my poor bairn, and my
mother thought he wad be deaved wi' it's skirling, and she pat it away in
below the bit bourock of turf yonder, just to be out o' the gate; and I
think she buried my best wits with it, for I have never been just mysell
since. And only think, Jeanie, after my mother had been at a' these
pains, the auld doited body Johnny Drottle turned up his nose, and wadna
hae aught to say to me! But it's little I care for him, for I have led a
merry life ever since, and ne'er a braw gentleman looks at me but ye wad
think he was gaun to drop off his horse for mere love of me. I have ken'd
some o' them put their hand in their pocket, and gie me as muckle as
sixpence at a time, just for my weel-faured face."

This speech gave Jeanie a dark insight into Madge's history. She had been
courted by a wealthy suitor, whose addresses her mother had favoured,
notwithstanding the objection of old age and deformity. She had been
seduced by some profligate, and, to conceal her shame and promote the
advantageous match she had planned, her mother had not hesitated to
destroy the offspring of their intrigue. That the consequence should be
the total derangement of amind which was constitutionally unsettled by
giddiness and vanity, was extremely natural; and such was, in fact, the
history of Madge Wildfire's insanity.




CHAPTER SEVENTH.


             So free from danger, free from fear
             They crossed the court--right glad they were.
                                            Christabel.

Pursuing the path which Madge had chosen, Jeanie Deans observed, to her
no small delight, that marks of more cultivation appeared, and the
thatched roofs of houses, with their blue smoke arising in little
columns, were seen embosomed in a tuft of trees at some distance. The
track led in that direction, and Jeanie, therefore, resolved, while Madge
continued to pursue it, that she would ask her no questions; having had
the penetration to observe, that by doing so she ran the risk of
irritating her guide, or awakening suspicions, to the impressions of
which, persons in Madge's unsettled state of mind are particularly
liable.

Madge, therefore, uninterrupted, went on with the wild disjointed chat
which her rambling imagination suggested; a mood in which she was much
more communicative respecting her own history, and that of others,
than when there was any attempt made, by direct queries, or
cross-examinations, to extract information on these subjects.

"It's a queer thing," she said, "but whiles I can speak about the bit
bairn and the rest of it, just as if it had been another body's, and no
my ain; and whiles I am like to break my heart about it--Had you ever a
bairn, Jeanie?"

Jeanie replied in the negative.

"Ay; but your sister had, though--and I ken what came o't too."

"In the name of heavenly mercy," said Jeanie, forgetting the line of
conduct which she had hitherto adopted, "tell me but what became of that
unfortunate babe, and"

Madge stopped, looked at her gravely and fixedly, and then broke into a
great fit of laughing--"Aha, lass,--catch me if you can--I think it's
easy to gar you trow ony thing.--How suld I ken onything o' your sister's
wean? Lasses suld hae naething to do wi' weans till they are married--and
then a' the gossips and cummers come in and feast as if it were the
blithest day in the warld.--They say maidens' bairns are weel guided. I
wot that wasna true of your tittie's and mine; but these are sad tales to
tell.--I maun just sing a bit to keep up my heart--It's a sang that
Gentle George made on me lang syne, when I went with him to Lockington
wake, to see him act upon a stage, in fine clothes, with the player folk.
He might hae dune waur than married me that night as he promised--better
wed over the mixen* as over the moor, as they say in Yorkshire--

* A homely proverb, signifying better wed a neighbour than one fetched
from a distance.--Mixen signifies dunghill.

he may gang farther and fare waur--but that's a' ane to the sang,


           'I'm Madge of the country, I'm Madge of the town,
            And I'm Madge of the lad I am blithest to own--
               The Lady of Beeve in diamonds may shine,
             But has not a heart half so lightsome as mine.


             'I am Queen of the Wake, and I'm Lady of May,
             And I lead the blithe ring round the May-pole to-day;
            The wildfire that flashes so fair and so free,
               Was never so bright, or so bonny, as me.'

"I like that the best o' a' my sangs," continued the maniac, "because he
made it. I am often singing it, and that's maybe the reason folk ca' me
Madge Wildfire. I aye answer to the name, though it's no my ain, for
what's the use of making a fash?"

"But ye shouldna sing upon the Sabbath at least," said Jeanie, who, amid
all her distress and anxiety, could not help being scandalised at the
deportment of her companion, especially as they now approached near to
the little village.

"Ay! is this Sunday?" said Madge. "My mother leads sic a life, wi'
turning night into day, that ane loses a' count o' the days o' the week,
and disna ken Sunday frae Saturday. Besides, it's a' your whiggery--in
England, folk sings when they like--And then, ye ken, you are Christiana
and I am Mercy--and ye ken, as they went on their way, they sang."--And
she immediately raised one of John Bunyan's ditties:--

                  "He that is down need fear no fall,
                       He that is low no pride,
                   He that is humble ever shall
                       Have God to be his guide.


                  "Fulness to such a burthen is
                       That go on pilgrimage;
                   Here little, and hereafter bliss,
                       Is best from age to age."

"And do ye ken, Jeanie, I think there's much truth in that book, the
Pilgrim's Progress. The boy that sings that song was feeding his father's
sheep in the Valley of Humiliation, and Mr. Great-heart says, that he
lived a merrier life, and had more of the herb called heart's-ease in his
bosom, than they that wear silk and velvet like me, and are as bonny as I
am."

Jeanie Deans had never read the fanciful and delightful parable to which
Madge alluded. Bunyan was, indeed, a rigid Calvinist, but then he was
also a member of a Baptist congregation, so that his works had no place
on David Deans's shelf of divinity. Madge, however, at some time of her
life, had been well acquainted, as it appeared, with the most popular of
his performances, which, indeed, rarely fails to make a deep impression
upon children, and people of the lower rank.

"I am sure," she continued, "I may weel say I am come out of the city of
Destruction, for my mother is Mrs. Bat's-eyes, that dwells at Deadman's
corner; and Frank Levitt, and Tyburn Tam, they may be likened to Mistrust
and Guilt, that came galloping up, and struck the poor pilgrim to the
ground with a great club, and stole a bag of silver, which was most of
his spending money, and so have they done to many, and will do to more.
But now we will gang to the Interpreter's house, for I ken a man that
will play the Interpreter right weel; for he has eyes lifted up to
Heaven, the best of books in his hand, the law of truth written on his
lips, and he stands as if he pleaded wi' men--Oh, if I had minded what he
had said to me, I had never been the cutaway creature that I am!--But it
is all over now.--But we'll knock at the gate, and then the keeper will
admit Christiana, but Mercy will be left out--and then I'll stand at the
door, trembling and crying, and then Christiana--that's you, Jeanie--will
intercede for me; and then Mercy--that's me, ye ken, will faint; and then
the Interpreter--yes, the Interpreter, that's Mr. Staunton himself, will
come out and take me--that's poor, lost, demented me--by the hand, and
give me a pomegranate, and a piece of honeycomb, and a small bottle of
spirits, to stay my fainting--and then the good times will come back
again, and we'll be the happiest folk you ever saw."

In the midst of the confused assemblage of ideas indicated in this
speech, Jeanie thought she saw a serious purpose on the part of Madge, to
endeavour to obtain the pardon and countenance of some one whom she had
offended; an attempt the most likely of all others to bring them once
more into contact with law and legal protection. She, therefore, resolved
to be guided by her while she was in so hopeful a disposition, and act
for her own safety according to circumstances.

They were now close by the village, one of those beautiful scenes which
are so often found in merry England, where the cottages, instead of being
built in two direct lines on each side of a dusty high-road, stand in
detached groups, interspersed not only with large oaks and elms, but with
fruit-trees, so many of which were at this time in flourish, that the
grove seemed enamelled with their crimson and white blossoms. In the
centre of the hamlet stood the parish church, and its little Gothic
tower, from which at present was heard the Sunday chime of bells.

"We will wait here until the folk are a' in the church--they ca' the kirk
a church in England, Jeanie, be sure you mind that--for if I was gaun
forward amang them, a' the gaitts o' boys and lasses wad be crying at
Madge Wildfire's tail, the little hell-rakers! and the beadle would be as
hard upon us as if it was our fault. I like their skirting as ill as he
does, I can tell him; I'm sure I often wish there was a het peat doun
their throats when they set them up that gate."

Conscious of the disorderly appearance of her own dress after the
adventure of the preceding night, and of the grotesque habit and
demeanour of her guide, and sensible how important it was to secure an
attentive and impatient audience to her strange story from some one who
might have the means to protect her, Jeanie readily acquiesced in Madge's
proposal to rest under the trees, by which they were still somewhat
screened, until the commencement of service should give them an
opportunity of entering the hamlet without attracting a crowd around
them. She made the less opposition, that Madge had intimated that this
was not the village where her mother was in custody, and that the two
squires of the pad were absent in a different direction.

She sate herself down, therefore, at the foot of an oak, and by the
assistance of a placid fountain, which had been dammed up for the use of
the villagers, and which served her as a natural mirror, she began--no
uncommon thing with a Scottish maiden of her rank--to arrange her
toilette in the open air, and bring her dress, soiled and disordered as
it was, into such order as the place and circumstances admitted.

She soon perceived reason, however, to regret that she had set about this
task, however decent and necessary, in the present time and society.
Madge Wildfire, who, among other indications of insanity, had a most
overweening opinion of those charms, to which, in fact, she had owed her
misery, and whose mind, like a raft upon a lake, was agitated and driven
about at random by each fresh impulse, no sooner beheld Jeanie begin to
arrange her hair, place her bonnet in order, rub the dust from her shoes
and clothes, adjust her neck-handkerchief and mittans, and so forth, than
with imitative zeal she began to bedizen and trick herself out with
shreds and remnants of beggarly finery, which she took out of a little
bundle, and which, when disposed around her person, made her appearance
ten times more fantastic and apish than it had been before.

Jeanie groaned in spirit, but dared not interfere in a matter so
delicate. Across the man's cap or riding hat which she wore, Madge placed
a broken and soiled white feather, intersected with one which had been
shed from the train of a peacock. To her dress, which was a kind of
riding-habit, she stitched, pinned, and otherwise secured, a large
furbelow of artificial flowers, all crushed, wrinkled and dirty, which
had at first bedecked a lady of quality, then descended to her Abigail,
and dazzled the inmates of the servants' hall. A tawdry scarf of yellow
silk, trimmed with tinsel and spangles, which had seen as hard service,
and boasted as honourable a transmission, was next flung over one
shoulder, and fell across her person in the manner of a shoulder-belt, or
baldrick. Madge then stripped off the coarse ordinary shoes, which she
wore, and replaced them by a pair of dirty satin ones, spangled and
embroidered to match the scarf, and furnished with very high heels. She
had cut a willow switch in her morning's walk, almost as long as a boy's
fishing-rod. This she set herself seriously to peel, and when it was
transformed into such a wand as the Treasurer or High Steward bears on
public occasions, she told Jeanie that she thought they now looked
decent, as young women should do upon the Sunday morning, and that, as
the bells had done ringing, she was willing to conduct her to the
Interpreter's house.

Jeanie sighed heavily, to think it should be her lot on the Lord's day,
and during kirk time too, to parade the street of an inhabited village
with so very grotesque a comrade; but necessity had no law, since,
without a positive quarrel with the madwoman, which, in the
circumstances, would have been very unadvisable, she could see no means
of shaking herself free of her society.

As for poor Madge, she was completely elated with personal vanity, and
the most perfect satisfaction concerning her own dazzling dress, and
superior appearance. They entered the hamlet without being observed,
except by one old woman, who, being nearly "high-gravel blind," was only
conscious that something very fine and glittering was passing by, and
dropped as deep a reverence to Madge as she would have done to a
countess. This filled up the measure of Madge's self-approbation. She
minced, she ambled, she smiled, she simpered, and waved Jeanie Deans
forward with the condescension of a noble _chaperone,_ who has undertaken
the charge of a country miss on her first journey to the capital.

Jeanie followed in patience, and with her eyes fixed on the ground, that
she might save herself the mortification of seeing her companion's
absurdities; but she started when, ascending two or three steps, she
found herself in the churchyard, and saw that Madge was making straight
for the door of the church. As Jeanie had no mind to enter the
congregation in such company, she walked aside from the pathway, and said
in a decided tone, "Madge, I will wait here till the church comes
out--you may go in by yourself if you have a mind."

As she spoke these words, she was about to seat herself upon one of the
grave-stones.

Madge was a little before Jeanie when she turned aside; but, suddenly
changing her course, she followed her with long strides, and, with every
feature inflamed with passion, overtook and seized her by the arm. "Do ye
think, ye ungratefu' wretch, that I am gaun to let you sit doun upon my
father's grave? The deil settle ye doun, if ye dinna rise and come into
the Interpreter's house, that's the house of God, wi' me, but I'll rive
every dud aft your back!"

She adapted the action to the phrase; for with one clutch she stripped
Jeanie of her straw bonnet and a handful of her hair to boot, and threw
it up into an old yew-tree, where it stuck fast. Jeanie's first impulse
was to scream, but conceiving she might receive deadly harm before she
could obtain the assistance of anyone, notwithstanding the vicinity of
the church, she thought it wiser to follow the madwoman into the
congregation, where she might find some means of escape from her, or at
least be secured against her violence. But when she meekly intimated her
consent to follow Madge, her guide's uncertain brain had caught another
train of ideas. She held Jeanie fast with one hand, and with the other
pointed to the inscription on the grave-stone, and commanded her to read
it. Jeanie obeyed, and read these words:--


          "This Monument was erected to the Memory of Donald
             Murdockson of the King's xxvi., or Cameronian
          Regiment, a sincere Christian, a brave Soldier, and
           a faithful Servant, by his grateful and sorrowing
                       master, Robert Staunton."

"It's very weel read, Jeanie; it's just the very words," said Madge,
whose ire had now faded into deep melancholy, and with a step which, to
Jeanie's great joy, was uncommonly quiet and mournful, she led her
companion towards the door of the church.


[Illustration: Madge and Jennie--103]


It was one of those old-fashioned Gothic parish churches which are
frequent in England, the most cleanly, decent, and reverential places of
worship that are, perhaps, anywhere to be found in the Christian world.
Yet, notwithstanding the decent solemnity of its exterior, Jeanie was too
faithful to the directory of the Presbyterian kirk to have entered a
prelatic place of worship, and would, upon any other occasion, have
thought that she beheld in the porch the venerable figure of her father
waving her back from the entrance, and pronouncing in a solemn tone,
"Cease, my child, to hear the instruction which causeth to err from the
words of knowledge." But in her present agitating and alarming situation,
she looked for safety to this forbidden place of assembly, as the hunted
animal will sometimes seek shelter from imminent danger in the human
habitation, or in other places of refuge most alien to its nature and
habits. Not even the sound of the organ, and of one or two flutes which
accompanied the psalmody, prevented her from following her guide into the
chancel of the church.

No sooner had Madge put her foot upon the pavement, and become sensible
that she was the object of attention to the spectators, than she resumed
all the fantastic extravagance of deportment which some transient touch
of melancholy had banished for an instant. She swam rather than walked up
the centre aisle, dragging Jeanie after her, whom she held fast by the
hand. She would, indeed, have fain slipped aside into the pew nearest to
the door, and left Madge to ascend in her own manner and alone to the
high places of the synagogue; but this was impossible, without a degree
of violent resistance, which seemed to her inconsistent with the time and
place, and she was accordingly led in captivity up the whole length of
the church by her grotesque conductress, who, with half-shut eyes, a prim
smile upon her lips, and a mincing motion with her hands, which
corresponded with the delicate and affected pace at which she was pleased
to move, seemed to take the general stare of the congregation, which such
an exhibition necessarily excited, as a high compliment, and which she
returned by nods and half-courtesies to individuals amongst the audience,
whom she seemed to distinguish as acquaintances. Her absurdity was
enhanced in the eyes of the spectators by the strange contrast which she
formed to her companion, who, with dishevelled hair, downcast eyes, and a
face glowing with shame, was dragged, as it were in triumph after her.

Madge's airs were at length fortunately cut short by her encountering in
her progress the looks of the clergyman, who fixed upon her a glance, at
once steady, compassionate, and admonitory. She hastily opened an empty
pew which happened to be near her, and entered, dragging in Jeanie after
her. Kicking Jeanie on the shins, by way of hint that she should follow
her example, she sunk her head upon her hand for the space of a minute.
Jeanie, to whom this posture of mental devotion was entirely new, did not
attempt to do the like, but looked round her with a bewildered stare,
which her neighbours, judging from the company in which they saw her,
very naturally ascribed to insanity. Every person in their immediate
vicinity drew back from this extraordinary couple as far as the limits of
their pew permitted; but one old man could not get beyond Madge's reach,
ere, she had snatched the prayer-book from his hand, and ascertained the
lesson of the day. She then turned up the ritual, and with the most
overstrained enthusiasm of gesture and manner, showed Jeanie the passages
as they were read in the service, making, at the same time, her own
responses so loud as to be heard above those of every other person.

Notwithstanding the shame and vexation which Jeanie felt in being thus
exposed in a place of worship, she could not and durst not omit rallying
her spirits so as to look around her, and consider to whom she ought to
appeal for protection so soon as the service should be concluded. Her
first ideas naturally fixed upon the clergyman, and she was confirmed in
the resolution by observing that he was an aged gentleman, of a dignified
appearance and deportment, who read the service with an undisturbed and
decent gravity, which brought back to becoming attention those younger
members of the congregation who had been disturbed by the extravagant
behaviour of Madge Wildfire. To the clergyman, therefore, Jeanie resolved
to make her appeal when the service was over.

It is true she felt disposed to be shocked at his surplice, of which she
had heard so much, but which she had never seen upon the person of a
preacher of the word. Then she was confused by the change of posture
adopted in different parts of the ritual, the more so as Madge Wildfire,
to whom they seemed familiar, took the opportunity to exercise authority
over her, pulling her up and pushing her down with a bustling assiduity,
which Jeanie felt must make them both the objects of painful attention.
But, notwithstanding these prejudices, it was her prudent resolution, in
this dilemma, to imitate as nearly as she could what was done around her.
The prophet, she thought, permitted Naaman the Syrian to bow even in the
house of Rimmon. Surely if I, in this streight, worship the God of my
fathers in mine own language, although the manner thereof be strange to
me, the Lord will pardon me in this thing.

In this resolution she became so much confirmed, that, withdrawing
herself from Madge as far as the pew permitted, she endeavoured to evince
by serious and composed attention to what was passing, that her mind was
composed to devotion. Her tormentor would not long have permitted her to
remain quiet, but fatigue overpowered her, and she fell fast asleep in
the other corner of the pew.

Jeanie, though her mind in her own despite sometimes reverted to her
situation, compelled herself to give attention to a sensible, energetic,
and well-composed discourse, upon the practical doctrines of
Christianity, which she could not help approving, although it was every
word written down and read by the preacher, and although it was delivered
in a tone and gesture very different from those of Boanerges Stormheaven,
who was her father's favourite preacher. The serious and placid attention
with which Jeanie listened, did not escape the clergyman. Madge
Wildfire's entrance had rendered him apprehensive of some disturbance, to
provide against which, as far as possible, he often turned his eyes to
the part of the church where Jeanie and she were placed, and became soon
aware that, although the loss of her head-gear, and the awkwardness of
her situation, had given an uncommon and anxious air to the features of
the former, yet she was in a state of mind very different from that of
her companion. When he dismissed the congregation, he observed her look
around with a wild and terrified look, as if uncertain what course she
ought to adopt, and noticed that she approached one or two of the most
decent of the congregation, as if to address them, and then shrunk back
timidly, on observing that they seemed to shun and to avoid her. The
clergyman was satisfied there must be something extraordinary in all
this, and as a benevolent man, as well as a good Christian pastor, he
resolved to inquire into the matter more minutely.




CHAPTER EIGHTH.


               There governed in that year
               A stern, stout churl--an angry overseer.
                                             Crabbe.

While Mr. Staunton, for such was this worthy clergyman's name, was laying
aside his gown in the vestry, Jeanie was in the act of coming to an open
rupture with Madge.

"We must return to Mummer's barn directly," said Madge; "we'll be ower
late, and my mother will be angry."

"I am not going back with you, Madge," said Jeanie, taking out a guinea,
and offering it to her; "I am much obliged to you, but I maun gang my ain
road."

"And me coming a' this way out o' my gate to pleasure you, ye ungratefu'
cutty," answered Madge; "and me to be brained by my mother when I gang
hame, and a' for your sake!--But I will gar ye as good"

"For God's sake," said Jeanie to a man who stood beside them, "keep her
off!--she is mad."

"Ey, ey," answered the boor; "I hae some guess of that, and I trow thou
be'st a bird of the same feather.--Howsomever, Madge, I redd thee keep
hand off her, or I'se lend thee a whisterpoop."

Several of the lower class of the parishioners now gathered round the
strangers, and the cry arose among the boys that "there was a-going to be
a fite between mad Madge Murdockson and another Bess of Bedlam." But
while the fry assembled with the humane hope of seeing as much of the fun
as possible, the laced cocked-hat of the beadle was discerned among the
multitude, and all made way for that person of awful authority. His first
address was to Madge.

"What's brought thee back again, thou silly donnot, to plague this
parish? Hast thou brought ony more bastards wi' thee to lay to honest
men's doors? or does thou think to burden us with this goose, that's as
hare-brained as thysell, as if rates were no up enow? Away wi' thee to
thy thief of a mother; she's fast in the stocks at Barkston town-end--
Away wi' ye out o' the parish, or I'se be at ye with the ratan."

Madge stood sulky for a minute; but she had been too often taught
submission to the beadle's authority by ungentle means to feel courage
enough to dispute it.

"And my mother--my puir auld mother, is in the stocks at Barkston!--This
is a' your wyte, Miss Jeanie Deans; but I'll be upsides wi' you, as sure
as my name's Madge Wildfire--I mean Murdockson--God help me, I forget my
very name in this confused waste!"

So saying, she turned upon her heel, and went off, followed by all the
mischievous imps of the village, some crying, "Madge, canst thou tell thy
name yet?" some pulling the skirts of her dress, and all, to the best of
their strength and ingenuity, exercising some new device or other to
exasperate her into frenzy.

Jeanie saw her departure with infinite delight, though she wished that,
in some way or other, she could have requited the service Madge had
conferred upon her.

In the meantime, she applied to the beadle to know whether "there was any
house in the village where she could be civilly entertained for her
money, and whether she could be permitted to speak to the clergyman?"

"Ay, ay, we'se ha' reverend care on thee; and I think," answered the man
of constituted authority, "that, unless thou answer the Rector all the
better, we'se spare thy money, and gie thee lodging at the parish charge,
young woman."

"Where am I to go then?" said Jeanie, in some alarm.

"Why, I am to take thee to his Reverence, in the first place, to gie an
account o' thysell, and to see thou comena to be a burden upon the
parish."

"I do not wish to burden anyone," replied Jeanie; "I have enough for my
own wants, and only wish to get on my journey safely."

"Why, that's another matter," replied the beadle, "and if it be true--and
I think thou dost not look so polrumptious as thy playfellow yonder--Thou
wouldst be a mettle lass enow, an thou wert snog and snod a bid better.
Come thou away, then--the Rector is a good man."

"Is that the minister," said Jeanie, "who preached"

"The minister? Lord help thee! What kind o' Presbyterian art thou?--Why,
'tis the Rector--the Rector's sell, woman, and there isna the like o' him
in the county, nor the four next to it. Come away--away with thee--we
maunna bide here."

"I am sure I am very willing to go to see the minister," said Jeanie;
"for though he read his discourse, and wore that surplice, as they call
it here, I canna but think he must be a very worthy God-fearing man, to
preach the root of the matter in the way he did."

The disappointed rabble, finding that there was like to be no farther
sport, had by this time dispersed, and Jeanie, with her usual patience,
followed her consequential and surly, but not brutal, conductor towards
the rectory.

This clerical mansion was large and commodious, for the living was an
excellent one, and the advowson belonged to a very wealthy family in the
neighbourhood, who had usually bred up a son or nephew to the church for
the sake of inducting him, as opportunity offered, into this very
comfortable provision. In this manner the rectory of Willingham had
always been considered as a direct and immediate appanage of Willingham
Hall; and as the rich baronets to whom the latter belonged had usually a
son, or brother, or nephew, settled in the living, the utmost care had
been taken to render their habitation not merely respectable and
commodious, but even dignified and imposing.

It was situated about four hundred yards from the village, and on a
rising ground which sloped gently upward, covered with small enclosures,
or closes, laid out irregularly, so that the old oaks and elms, which
were planted in hedge-rows, fell into perspective, and were blended
together in beautiful irregularity. When they approached nearer to the
house, a handsome gateway admitted them into a lawn, of narrow dimensions
indeed, but which was interspersed with large sweet chestnut trees and
beeches, and kept in handsome order. The front of the house was
irregular. Part of it seemed very old, and had, in fact, been the
residence of the incumbent in Romish times. Successive occupants had made
considerable additions and improvements, each in the taste of his own
age, and without much regard to symmetry. But these incongruities of
architecture were so graduated and happily mingled, that the eye, far
from being displeased with the combinations of various styles, saw
nothing but what was interesting in the varied and intricate pile which
they displayed. Fruit-trees displayed on the southern wall, outer
staircases, various places of entrance, a combination of roofs and
chimneys of different ages, united to render the front, not indeed
beautiful or grand, but intricate, perplexed, or, to use Mr. Price's
appropriate phrase, picturesque. The most considerable addition was that
of the present Rector, who, "being a bookish man," as the beadle was at
the pains to inform Jeanie, to augment, perhaps, her reverence for the
person before whom she was to appear, had built a handsome library and
parlour, and no less than two additional bedrooms.

"Mony men would hae scrupled such expense," continued the parochial
officer, "seeing as the living mun go as it pleases Sir Edmund to will
it; but his Reverence has a canny bit land of his own, and need not look
on two sides of a penny."

Jeanie could not help comparing the irregular yet extensive and
commodious pile of building before her to the "Manses" in her own
country, where a set of penurious heritors, professing all the while the
devotion of their lives and fortunes to the Presbyterian establishment,
strain their inventions to discover what may be nipped, and clipped, and
pared from a building which forms but a poor accommodation even for the
present incumbent, and, despite the superior advantage of stone-masonry,
must, in the course of forty or fifty years, again burden their
descendants with an expense, which, once liberally and handsomely
employed, ought to have freed their estates from a recurrence of it for
more than a century at least.

Behind the Rector's house the ground sloped down to a small river, which,
without possessing the romantic vivacity and rapidity of a northern
stream, was, nevertheless, by its occasional appearance through the
ranges of willows and poplars that crowned its banks, a very pleasing
accompaniment to the landscape. "It was the best trouting stream," said
the beadle, whom the patience of Jeanie, and especially the assurance
that she was not about to become a burden to the parish, had rendered
rather communicative, "the best trouting stream in all Lincolnshire; for
when you got lower, there was nought to be done wi' fly-fishing."

Turning aside from the principal entrance, he conducted Jeanie towards a
sort of portal connected with the older part of the building, which was
chiefly occupied by servants, and knocking at the door, it was opened by
a servant in grave purple livery, such as befitted a wealthy and
dignified clergyman.

"How dost do, Tummas?" said the beadle--"and how's young Measter
Staunton?"

"Why, but poorly--but poorly, Measter Stubbs.--Are you wanting to see his
Reverence?"

"Ay, ay, Tummas; please to say I ha' brought up the young woman as came
to service to-day with mad Madge Murdockson seems to be a decentish koind
o' body; but I ha' asked her never a question. Only I can tell his
Reverence that she is a Scotchwoman, I judge, and as flat as the fens of
Holland."

Tummas honoured Jeanie Deans with such a stare, as the pampered domestics
of the rich, whether spiritual or temporal, usually esteem it part of
their privilege to bestow upon the poor, and then desired Mr. Stubbs and
his charge to step in till he informed his master of their presence.

The room into which he showed them was a sort of steward's parlour, hung
with a county map or two, and three or four prints of eminent persons
connected with the county, as Sir William Monson, James York the
blacksmith of Lincoln,* and the famous Peregrine, Lord Willoughby, in
complete armour, looking as when he said in the words of the legend below
the engraving,--

* [Author of the _Union of Honour,_ a treatise on English Heraldry.
London, 1641.]

                  "Stand to it, noble pikemen,
                        And face ye well about;
                   And shoot ye sharp, bold bowmen,
                       And we will keep them out.

                 "Ye musquet and calliver-men,
                       Do you prove true to me,
                  I'll be the foremost man in fight,
                       Said brave Lord Willoughbee."


[Illustration: A "Summat" to Eat and Drink--113]


When they had entered this apartment, Tummas as a matter of course
offered, and as a matter of course Mr. Stubbs accepted, a "summat" to eat
and drink, being the respectable relies of a gammon of bacon, and a
_whole whiskin,_ or black pot of sufficient double ale. To these eatables
Mr. Beadle seriously inclined himself, and (for we must do him justice)
not without an invitation to Jeanie, in which Tummas joined, that his
prisoner or charge would follow his good example. But although she might
have stood in need of refreshment, considering she had tasted no food
that day, the anxiety of the moment, her own sparing and abstemious
habits, and a bashful aversion to eat in company of the two strangers,
induced her to decline their courtesy. So she sate in a chair apart,
while Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Tummas, who had chosen to join his friend in
consideration that dinner was to be put back till after the afternoon
service, made a hearty luncheon, which lasted for half-an-hour, and might
not then have concluded, had not his Reverence rung his bell, so that
Tummas was obliged to attend his master. Then, and no sooner, to save
himself the labour of a second journey to the other end of the house, he
announced to his master the arrival of Mr. Stubbs, with the other
madwoman, as he chose to designate Jeanie, as an event which had just
taken place. He returned with an order that Mr. Stubbs and the young
woman should be instantly ushered up to the library. The beadle bolted in
haste his last mouthful of fat bacon, washed down the greasy morsel with
the last rinsings of the pot of ale, and immediately marshalled Jeanie
through one or two intricate passages which led from the ancient to the
more modern buildings, into a handsome little hall, or anteroom,
adjoining to the library, and out of which a glass door opened to the
lawn.

"Stay here," said Stubbs, "till I tell his Reverence you are come."

So saying, he opened a door and entered the library. Without wishing to
hear their conversation, Jeanie, as she was circumstanced, could not
avoid it; for as Stubbs stood by the door, and his Reverence was at the
upper end of a large room, their conversation was necessarily audible in
the anteroom.

"So you have brought the young woman here at last, Mr. Stubbs. I expected
you some time since. You know I do not wish such persons to remain in
custody a moment without some inquiry into their situation."

"Very true, your Reverence," replied the beadle; "but the young woman had
eat nought to-day, and so Measter Tummas did set down a drap of drink and
a morsel, to be sure."

"Thomas was very right, Mr. Stubbs; and what has, become of the other
most unfortunate being?"

"Why," replied Mr. Stubbs, "I did think the sight on her would but vex
your Reverence, and soa I did let her go her ways back to her mother, who
is in trouble in the next parish."

"In trouble!--that signifies in prison, I suppose?" said Mr. Staunton.

"Ay, truly; something like it, an it like your Reverence."

"Wretched, unhappy, incorrigible woman!" said the clergyman. "And what
sort of person is this companion of hers?"

"Why, decent enow, an it like your Reverence," said Stubbs; "for aught I
sees of her, there's no harm of her, and she says she has cash enow to
carry her out of the county."

"Cash! that is always what you think of, Stubbs--But, has she sense?--has
she her wits?--has she the capacity of taking care of herself?"

"Why, your Reverence," replied Stubbs, "I cannot just say--I will be
sworn she was not born at Witt-ham;* for Gaffer Gibbs looked at her all
the time of service, and he says, she could not turn up a single lesson
like a Christian, even though she had Madge Murdockson to help her--but
then, as to fending for herself, why, she's a bit of a Scotchwoman, your
Reverence, and they say the worst donnot of them can look out for their
own turn--and she is decently put on enow, and not bechounched like
t'other."

* A proverbial and punning expression in that county, to intimate that a
person is not very clever.

"Send her in here, then, and do you remain below, Mr. Stubbs."

This colloquy had engaged Jeanie's attention so deeply, that it was not
until it was over that she observed that the sashed door, which, we have
said, led from the anteroom into the garden, was opened, and that there
entered, or rather was borne in by two assistants, a young man, of a very
pale and sickly appearance, whom they lifted to the nearest couch, and
placed there, as if to recover from the fatigue of an unusual exertion.
Just as they were making this arrangement, Stubbs came out of the
library, and summoned Jeanie to enter it. She obeyed him, not without
tremor; for, besides the novelty of the situation, to a girl of her
secluded habits, she felt also as if the successful prosecution of her
journey was to depend upon the impression she should be able to make on
Mr. Staunton.

It is true, it was difficult to suppose on what pretext a person
travelling on her own business, and at her own charge, could be
interrupted upon her route. But the violent detention she had already
undergone, was sufficient to show that there existed persons at no great
distance who had the interest, the inclination, and the audacity,
forcibly to stop her journey, and she felt the necessity of having some
countenance and protection, at least till she should get beyond their
reach. While these things passed through her mind, much faster than our
pen and ink can record, or even the reader's eye collect the meaning of
its traces, Jeanie found herself in a handsome library, and in presence
of the Rector of Willingham. The well-furnished presses and shelves which
surrounded the large and handsome apartment, contained more books than
Jeanie imagined existed in the world, being accustomed to consider as an
extensive collection two fir shelves, each about three feet long, which
contained her father's treasured volumes, the whole pith and marrow, as
he used sometimes to boast, of modern divinity. An orrery, globes, a
telescope, and some other scientific implements, conveyed to Jeanie an
impression of admiration and wonder, not unmixed with fear; for, in her
ignorant apprehension, they seemed rather adapted for magical purposes
than any other; and a few stuffed animals (as the Rector was fond of
natural history) added to the impressive character of the apartment.

Mr. Staunton spoke to her with great mildness. He observed, that,
although her appearance at church had been uncommon, and in strange, and
he must add, discreditable society, and calculated, upon the whole, to
disturb the congregation during divine worship, he wished, nevertheless,
to hear her own account of herself before taking any steps which his duty
might seem to demand. He was a justice of peace, he informed her, as well
as a clergyman.

"His Honour" (for she would not say his Reverence) "was very civil and
kind," was all that poor Jeanie could at first bring out.

"Who are you, young woman?" said the clergyman, more peremptorily--"and
what do you do in this country, and in such company?--We allow no
strollers or vagrants here."

"I am not a vagrant or a stroller, sir," said Jeanie, a little roused by
the supposition. "I am a decent Scots lass, travelling through the land
on my own business and my own expenses and I was so unhappy as to fall in
with bad company, and was stopped a' night on my journey. And this puir
creature, who is something light-headed, let me out in the morning."

"Bad company!" said the clergyman. "I am afraid, young woman, you have
not been sufficiently anxious to avoid them."

"Indeed, sir," returned Jeanie, "I have been brought up to shun evil
communication. But these wicked people were thieves, and stopped me by
violence and mastery."

"Thieves!" said Mr. Staunton; "then you charge them with robbery, I
suppose?"

"No, sir; they did not take so much as a boddle from me," answered
Jeanie; "nor did they use me ill, otherwise than by confining me."

The clergyman inquired into the particulars of her adventure, which she
told him from point to point.

"This is an extraordinary, and not a very probable tale, young woman,"
resumed Mr. Staunton. "Here has been, according to your account, a great
violence committed without any adequate motive. Are you aware of the law
of this country--that if you lodge this charge, you will be bound over to
prosecute this gang?"

Jeanie did not understand him, and he explained, that the English law, in
addition to the inconvenience sustained by persons who have been robbed
or injured, has the goodness to intrust to them the care and the expense
of appearing as prosecutors.

Jeanie said, "that her business at London was express; all she wanted
was, that any gentleman would, out of Christian charity, protect her to
some town where she could hire horses and a guide; and finally," she
thought, "it would be her father's mind that she was not free to give
testimony in an English court of justice, as the land was not under a
direct gospel dispensation."

Mr. Staunton stared a little, and asked if her father was a Quaker.

"God forbid, sir," said Jeanie--"He is nae schismatic nor sectary, nor
ever treated for sic black commodities as theirs, and that's weel kend o'
him."

"And what is his name, pray?" said Mr. Staunton.

"David Deans, sir, the cowfeeder at Saint Leonard's Crags, near
Edinburgh."

A deep groan from the anteroom prevented the Rector from replying, and,
exclaiming, "Good God! that unhappy boy!" he left Jeanie alone, and
hastened into the outer apartment.

Some noise and bustle was heard, but no one entered the library for the
best part of an hour.





CHAPTER NINTH.


                 Fantastic passions' maddening brawl!
                     And shame and terror over all!
                 Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
                 Which, all confused, I could not know
                     Whether I suffer'd or I did,
                 For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or woe;
                     My own, or others, still the same
                 Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
                                         Coleridge.

During the interval while she was thus left alone, Jeanie anxiously
revolved in her mind what course was best for her to pursue. She was
impatient to continue her journey, yet she feared she could not safely
adventure to do so while the old hag and her assistants were in the
neighbourhood, without risking a repetition of their violence. She
thought she could collect from the conversation which she had partly
overheard, and also from the wild confessions of Madge Wildfire, that her
mother had a deep and revengeful motive for obstructing her journey if
possible. And from whom could she hope for assistance if not from Mr.
Staunton? His whole appearance and demeanour seemed to encourage her
hopes. His features were handsome, though marked with a deep cast of
melancholy; his tone and language were gentle and encouraging; and, as he
had served in the army for several years during his youth, his air
retained that easy frankness which is peculiar to the profession of arms.
He was, besides, a minister of the gospel; and, although a worshipper,
according to Jeanie's notions, in the court of the Gentiles, and so
benighted as to wear a surplice; although he read the Common Prayer, and
wrote down every word of his sermon before delivering it; and although he
was, moreover, in strength of lungs, as well as pith and marrow of
doctrine, vastly inferior to Boanerges Stormheaven, Jeanie still thought
he must be a very different person from Curate Kilstoup, and other
prelatical divines of her father's earlier days, who used to get drunk in
their canonical dress, and hound out the dragoons against the wandering
Cameronians. The house seemed to be in some disturbance, but as she could
not suppose she was altogether forgotten, she thought it better to remain
quiet in the apartment where she had been left, till some one should take
notice of her.

The first who entered was, to her no small delight, one of her own sex, a
motherly-looking aged person of a housekeeper. To her Jeanie explained
her situation in a few words, and begged her assistance.

The dignity of a housekeeper did not encourage too much familiarity with
a person who was at the Rectory on justice-business, and whose character
might seem in her eyes somewhat precarious; but she was civil, although
distant.

"Her young master," she said, "had had a bad accident by a fall from his
horse, which made him liable to fainting fits; he had been taken very ill
just now, and it was impossible his Reverence could see Jeanie for some
time; but that she need not fear his doing all that was just and proper
in her behalf the instant he could get her business attended to."--She
concluded by offering to show Jeanie a room, where she might remain till
his Reverence was at leisure.

Our heroine took the opportunity to request the means of adjusting and
changing her dress.

The housekeeper, in whose estimation order and cleanliness ranked high
among personal virtues, gladly complied with a request so reasonable; and
the change of dress which Jeanie's bundle furnished made so important an
improvement in her appearance, that the old lady hardly knew the soiled
and disordered traveller, whose attire showed the violence she had
sustained, in the neat, clean, quiet-looking little Scotch-woman, who now
stood before her. Encouraged by such a favourable alteration in her
appearance, Mrs. Dalton ventured to invite Jeanie to partake of her
dinner, and was equally pleased with the decent propriety of her conduct
during the meal.

"Thou canst read this book, canst thou, young woman?" said the old lady,
when their meal was concluded, laying her hand upon a large Bible.

"I hope sae, madam," said Jeanie, surprised at the question "my father
wad hae wanted mony a thing ere I had wanted _that_ schuling."

"The better sign of him, young woman. There are men here, well to pass in
the world, would not want their share of a Leicester plover, and that's a
bag-pudding, if fasting for three hours would make all their poor
children read the Bible from end to end. Take thou the book, then, for my
eyes are something dazed, and read where thou listest--it's the only book
thou canst not happen wrong in."

Jeanie was at first tempted to turn up the parable of the good Samaritan,
but her conscience checked her, as if it were a use of Scripture, not for
her own edification, but to work upon the mind of others for the relief
of her worldly afflictions; and under this scrupulous sense of duty, she
selected, in preference, a
CHAPTER of the prophet Isaiah, and read it,
notwithstanding her northern' accent and tone, with a devout propriety,
which greatly edified Mrs. Dalton.

"Ah," she said, "an all Scotchwomen were sic as thou but it was our luck
to get born devils of thy country, I think--every one worse than t'other.
If thou knowest of any tidy lass like thysell that wanted a place, and
could bring a good character, and would not go laiking about to wakes and
fairs, and wore shoes and stockings all the day round--why, I'll not say
but we might find room for her at the Rectory. Hast no cousin or sister,
lass, that such an offer would suit?"

This was touching upon a sore point, but Jeanie was spared the pain of
replying by the entrance of the same man-servant she had seen before.

"Measter wishes to see the young woman from Scotland," was Tummas's
address.

"Go to his Reverence, my dear, as fast as you can, and tell him all your
story--his Reverence is a kind man," said Mrs. Dalton. "I will fold down
the leaf, and wake you a cup of tea, with some nice muffin, against you
come down, and that's what you seldom see in Scotland, girl."

"Measter's waiting for the young woman," said Tummas impatiently.

"Well, Mr. Jack-Sauce, and what is your business to put in your oar?--And
how often must I tell you to call Mr. Staunton his Reverence, seeing as
he is a dignified clergyman, and not be meastering, meastering him, as if
he were a little petty squire?"

As Jeanie was now at the door, and ready to accompany Tummas, the footman
said nothing till he got into the passage, when he muttered, "There are
moe masters than one in this house, and I think we shall have a mistress
too, an Dame Dalton carries it thus."

Tummas led the way through a more intricate range of passages than Jeanie
had yet threaded, and ushered her into an apartment which was darkened by
the closing of most of the window-shutters, and in which was a bed with
the curtains partly drawn.

"Here is the young woman, sir," said Tummas.

"Very well," said a voice from the bed, but not that of his Reverence;
"be ready to answer the bell, and leave the room."

"There is some mistake," said Jeanie, confounded at finding herself in
the apartment of an invalid; "the servant told me that the minister"

"Don't trouble yourself," said the invalid, "there is no mistake. I know
more of your affairs than my father, and I can manage them better.--Leave
the room, Tom." The servant obeyed.--"We must not," said the invalid,
"lose time, when we have little to lose. Open the shutters of that
window."

She did so, and as he drew aside the curtain of his bed, the light fell
on his pale countenance, as, turban'd with bandages, and dressed in a
night-gown, he lay, seemingly exhausted, upon the bed.

"Look at me," he said, "Jeanie Deans; can you not recollect me?"

"No, sir," said she, full of surprise. "I was never in this country
before."

"But I may have been in yours. Think--recollect. I should faint did I
name the name you are most dearly bound to loathe and to detest.
Think--remember!"

A terrible recollection flashed on Jeanie, which every tone of the
speaker confirmed, and which his next words rendered certainty.

"Be composed--remember Muschat's Cairn, and the moonlight night!"

Jeanie sunk down on a chair with clasped hands, and gasped in agony.

"Yes, here I lie," he said, "like a crushed snake, writhing with
impatience at my incapacity of motion--here I lie, when I ought to have
been in Edinburgh, trying every means to save a life that is dearer to me
than my own.--How is your sister?--how fares it with her?--condemned to
death, I know it, by this time! O, the horse that carried me safely on a
thousand errands of folly and wickedness, that he should have broke down
with me on the only good mission I have undertaken for years! But I must
rein in my passion--my frame cannot endure it, and I have much to say.
Give me some of the cordial which stands on that table.--Why do you
tremble? But you have too good cause.--Let it stand--I need it not."

Jeanie, however reluctant, approached him with the cup into which she had
poured the draught, and could not forbear saying, "There is a cordial for
the mind, sir, if the wicked will turn from their transgressions, and
seek to the Physician of souls."

"Silence!" he said sternly--"and yet I thank you. But tell me, and lose
no time in doing so, what you are doing in this country? Remember, though
I have been your sister's worst enemy, yet I will serve her with the best
of my blood, and I will serve you for her sake; and no one can serve you
to such purpose, for no one can know the circumstances so well--so speak
without fear."

"I am not afraid, sir," said Jeanie, collecting her spirits. "I trust in
God; and if it pleases Him to redeem my sister's captivity, it is all I
seek, whosoever be the instrument. But, sir, to be plain with you, I dare
not use your counsel

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