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Malcolm

by George MacDonald · English · Gutenberg #7127 · 1,067,606 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Malcolm

Author: George MacDonald


        
Release date: December 1, 2004 [eBook #7127]
                Most recently updated: February 9, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7127

Credits: Martin Robb; table of contents, smart quotes, italics, etc., added by Lisa Wadsworth


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MALCOLM ***




                                MALCOLM
                          by George MacDonald




                               CONTENTS.


       I. MISS HORN
      II. BARBARA CATANACH
     III. THE MAD LAIRD
      IV. PHEMY MAIR
       V. LADY FLORIMEL
      VI. DUNCAN MACPHAIL
     VII. ALEXANDER GRAHAM
    VIII. THE SWIVEL
      IX. THE SALMON-TROUT
       X. THE FUNERAL
      XI. THE OLD CHURCH
     XII. THE CHURCHYARD
    XIII. THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE
     XIV. MEG PARTAN’S LAMP
      XV. SLOPE OF THE DUNE
     XVI. THE STORM
    XVII. THE ACCUSATION
   XVIII. THE QUARREL
     XIX. DUNCAN’S PIPES
      XX. ADVANCES
     XXI. MEDIATION
    XXII. WHENCE AND WHITHER?
   XXIII. ARMAGEDDON
    XXIV. THE FEAST
     XXV. THE NIGHT WATCH
    XXVI. NOT AT CHURCH
   XXVII. LORD GERNON
  XXVIII. A FISHER-WEDDING
    XXIX. FLORIMEL AND DUNCAN
     XXX. THE REVIVAL
    XXXI. WANDERING STARS
   XXXII. THE SKIPPER’S CHAMBER
  XXXIII. THE LIBRARY
   XXXIV. MILTON AND THE BAY MARE
    XXXV. KIRKBYRES
   XXXVI. THE BLOW
  XXXVII. THE CUTTER
 XXXVIII. THE TWO DOGS
   XXXIX. COLONSAY CASTLE
      XL. THE DEIL’S WINNOCK
     XLI. THE CLOUDED SAPPHIRES
    XLII. DUNCAN’S DISCLOSURE
   XLIII. THE WIZARD’S CHAMBER
    XLIV. THE HERMIT
     XLV. MR CAIRNS AND THE MARQUIS
    XLVI. THE BALLIES’ BARN
   XLVII. MRS STEWART’S CLAIM
  XLVIII. THE BALLIES’ BARN AGAIN
    XLIX. MOUNT PISGAH
       L. LIZZY FINDLAY
      LI. THE LAIRD’S BURROW
     LII. CREAM OR SCUM
    LIII. THE SCHOOLMASTER’S COTTAGE
     LIV. ONE DAY
      LV. THE SAME NIGHT
     LVI. SOMETHING FORGOTTEN
    LVII. THE LAIRD’S QUEST
   LVIII. MALCOLM AND MRS STEWART
     LIX. AN HONEST PLOT
      LX. THE SACRAMENT
     LXI. MISS HORN AND THE PIPER
    LXII. THE CUTTLE-FISH AND THE CRAB
   LXIII. MISS HORN AND LORD LOSSIE
    LXIV. THE LAIRD AND HIS MOTHER
     LXV. THE LAIRD’S VISION
    LXVI. THE CRY FROM THE CHAMBER
   LXVII. FEET OF WOOL
  LXVIII. HANDS OF IRON
    LXIX. THE MARQUIS AND THE SCHOOLMASTER
     LXX. END OR BEGINNING




                               MALCOLM.




                              CHAPTER I.

                              MISS HORN.


“Na, na; I hae nae feelin’s, I’m thankfu’ to say. I never kent ony
guid come o’ _them_. They’re a terrible sicht i’ the gait.”

“Naebody ever thoucht o’ layin’ ’t to yer chairge, mem.”

“’Deed, I aye had eneuch adu to du the thing I had to du, no to
say the thing ’at naebody wad du but mysel’. I hae had nae leisur’
for feelin’s an’ that,” insisted Miss Horn.

But here a heavy step descending the stair just outside the
room attracted her attention, and checking the flow of her speech
perforce, with three ungainly strides she reached the landing.

“Watty Witherspail! Watty!” she called after the footsteps down
the stair.

“Yes, mem,” answered a gruff voice from below.

“Watty, whan ye fess the bit boxie, jist pit a hemmer an’ a puckle
nails i’ your pooch to men’ the hen-hoose-door. The tane maun be
atten’t till as weel ’s the tither.”

“The bit boxie” was the coffin of her third cousin Griselda Campbell,
whose body lay in the room on her left hand as she called down the
stair. Into that on her right Miss Horn now re-entered, to rejoin
Mrs Mellis, the wife of the principal draper in the town, who had
called ostensibly to condole with her, but really to see the corpse.

“Aih! she was taen yoong!” sighed the visitor, with long-drawn
tones and a shake of the head, implying that therein lay ground of
complaint, at which poor mortals dared but hint.

“No that yoong,” returned Miss Horn. “She was upo’ the edge o’
aucht an’ thirty.”

“Weel, she had a sair time o’ ’t.”

“No that sair, sae far as I see--an’ wha sud ken better? She’s
had a bien doon-sittin’ (_sheltered quarters_), and sud hae had as
lang ’s I was to the fore. Na, na; it was nowther sae yoong nor yet
sae sair.”

“Aih! but she was a patient cratur wi’ a’ flesh,” persisted Mrs
Mellis, as if she would not willingly be foiled in the attempt to
extort for the dead some syllable of acknowledgment from the lips
of her late companion.

“’Deed she was that!--a wheen ower patient wi’ some. But that
cam’ o’ haein mair hert nor brains. _She_ had feelin’s gien ye like--
and to spare. But I never took ower ony o’ the stock. It’s a pity
she hadna the jeedgment to match, for she never misdoobted onybody
eneuch. But I wat it disna maitter noo, for she’s gane whaur it’s
less wantit. For ane ’at has the hairmlessness o’ the doo ’n this
ill-wulled warl’, there’s a feck[1] o’ them ’at has the wisdom o’ the
serpent. An’ the serpents mak sair wark wi’ the doos--lat alane
them ’at flees into the verra mouws o’ them.”

[1] _large amount_.

“Weel, ye’re jist richt there,” said Mrs Mellis. “An’ as ye say,
she was aye some easy to perswaud. I hae nae doobt she believed to
the ver’ last he wad come back and mairry her.”

“Come back and mairry her! Wha or what div ye mean? I jist tell ye
Mistress Mellis--an’ it’s weel ye’re named--gien ye daur to
hint at ae word o’ sic clavers, it’s this side o’ this door o’ mine
ye s’ be less acquant wi’.”

As she spoke, the hawk-eyes of Miss Horn glowed on each side of
her hawk nose, which grew more and more hooked as she glared, while
her neck went craning forward as if she were on the point of making
a swoop on the offender. Mrs Mellis’s voice trembled with something
like fear as she replied:

“Gude guide ’s, Miss Horn! What hae I said to gar ye look at me
sae by ordinar ’s that?”

“Said!” repeated Miss Horn, in a tone that revealed both annoyance
with herself and contempt for her visitor. “There’s no a claver in
a’ the countryside but ye maun fess ’t hame aneth yer oxter, as
gin ’t were the prodigal afore he repentit. Ye s’ get sma thanks for
sic like here. An’ her lyin’ there as she’ll lie till the
jeedgment-day, puir thing!”

“I’m sure I meant no offence, Miss Horn,” said her visitor. “I
thocht a’ body kent ’at she was ill aboot him.”

“Aboot wha, i’ the name o’ the father o’ lees?”

“Ow, aboot that lang-leggit doctor ’at set oot for the Ingies, an’
dee’d afore he wan across the equautor. Only fouk said he was nae
mair deid nor a halvert worm, an’ wad be hame whan she was merried.”

“It’s a’ lees frae heid to fut, an’ frae hert to skin.”

“Weel, it was plain to see she dwyned awa efter he gaed, an’ never
was hersel’ again--ye dinna deny that?”

“It’s a’ havers,” persisted Miss Horn, but in accents considerably
softened. “She cared na mair aboot the chield nor I did mysel’.
She dwyned, I grant ye, an’ he gaed awa, I grant ye; but the win’
blaws an’ the water rins, an the tane has little to du wi’ the
tither.”

“Weel, weel; I’m sorry I said onything to offen’ ye, an’ I canna
say mair. Wi’ yer leave, Miss Horn, I’ll jist gang an’ tak’ a last
leuk at her, puir thing!”

“’Deed, ye s’ du naething o’ the kin’! I s’ lat naebody glower at her
’at wad gang an spairge sic havers aboot her, Mistress Mellis. To
say ’at sic a doo as my Grizel--puir, saft-hertit, winsome thing--
wad hae lookit twise at ony sic a serpent as him! Na, na, mem! Gang
yer wa’s hame, an’ come back straucht frae yer prayers the morn’s
mornin’. By that time she’ll be quaiet in her coffin, an’ I’ll be
quaiet i’ my temper. Syne I’ll lat ye see her--maybe.--I wuss
I was weel rid o’ the sicht o’ her, for I canna bide it. Lord, I
canna bide it.”

These last words were uttered in a murmured aside, inaudible to
Mrs Mellis, to whom, however, they did not apply, but to the dead
body. She rose notwithstanding in considerable displeasure, and with
a formal farewell walked from the room, casting a curious glance
as she left it in the direction of that where the body lay, and
descended the stairs as slowly as if on every step she deliberated
whether the next would bear her weight. Miss Horn, who had followed
her to the head of the stair, watched her out of sight below the
landing, when she turned and walked back once more into the parlour,
but with a lingering look towards the opposite room, as if she saw
through the closed door what lay white on the white bed.

“It’s a God’s mercy I hae no feelin’s,” she said to herself. “To
even (_equal_) my bonny Grizel to sic a lang kyte-clung chiel as
yon! Aih, puir Grizel! She’s gane frae me like a knotless threid.”




                              CHAPTER II.

                           BARBARA CATANACH.


Miss Horn was interrupted by the sound of the latch of the street
door, and sprung from her chair in anger.

“Canna they lat her sleep for five meenutes?” she cried aloud,
forgetting that there was no fear of rousing her any more.--“It’ll
be Jean come in frae the pump,” she reflected, after a moment’s
pause; but, hearing no footstep along the passage to the kitchen,
concluded--“It’s no her, for _she_ gangs aboot the hoose like the
fore half o’ a new-shod cowt;” and went down the stair to see who
might have thus presumed to enter unbidden.

In the kitchen, the floor of which was as white as scrubbing could
make it, and sprinkled with sea-sand--under the gaily-painted
Dutch clock, which went on ticking as loud as ever, though just
below the dead--sat a woman about sixty years of age, whose plump
face to the first glance looked kindly, to the second, cunning,
and to the third, evil. To the last look the plumpness appeared
unhealthy, suggesting a doughy indentation to the finger, and its
colour also was pasty. Her deep-set, black-bright eyes, glowing
from under the darkest of eye-brows, which met over her nose, had
something of a fascinating influence--so much of it that at a
first interview one was not likely for a time to notice any other
of her features. She rose as Miss Horn entered, buried a fat fist
in a soft side, and stood silent.

“Weel?” said Miss Horn interrogatively, and was silent also.

“I thocht ye micht want a cast o’ my callin’,” said the woman.

“Na, na; there’s no a han’ ’at s’ lay finger upo’ the bairn but mine
ain,” said Miss Horn. “I had it a’ ower, my lee lane, afore the skreigh
o’ day. She’s lyin’ quaiet noo--verra quaiet--waitin’ upo’ Watty
Witherspail. Whan he fesses hame her bit boxie, we s’ hae her laid
canny intill ’t, an’ hae dune wi’ ’t.”

“Weel, mem, for a leddy-born, like yersel’, I maun say, ye tak it
unco composed!”

“I’m no awaur, Mistress Catanach, o’ ony necessity laid upo’ ye
to say yer min’ i’ this hoose. It’s no expeckit. But what for sud
I no tak’ it wi’ composur’? We’ll hae to tak’ oor ain turn er lang,
as composed as we hae the skiel o’, and gang oot like a lang-nibbit
can’le--ay, an lea’ jist sic a memory ahin’ some o’ ’s, Bawby.”

“I kenna gien ye mean me, Miss Horn,” said the woman; “but it’s no
that muckle o’ a memory I expec’ to lea’ ahin’ me.”

“The less the better,” muttered Miss Horn; but her unwelcome visitor
went on:

“Them ’at’s maist i’ _my_ debt kens least aboot it; and their mithers
canna be said to hae muckle to be thankfu’ for. It’s God’s trowth,
I _ken_ waur nor ever I _did_, mem. A body in my trade canna help fa’in’
amo’ ill company whiles, for we’re a’ born in sin, an’ brocht furth
in ineequity, as the Buik says; in fac’, it’s a’ sin thegither: we
come o’ sin an’ we gang for sin; but ye ken the likes o’ me maunna
clype (_tell tales_). A’ the same, gien ye dinna tak the help o’ my
han’, ye winna refuse me the sicht o’ my een, puir thing!”

“There’s nane sall luik upon her deid ’at wasna a pleesur’ till
her livin’; an’ ye ken weel eneuch, Bawby, she cudna thole (_bear_)
the sicht o’ _you_.”

“An’ guid rizzon had she for that, gien a’ ’at gangs throu’ my
heid er I fa’ asleep i’ the lang mirk nichts be a hair better nor
ane o’ the auld wives’ fables ’at fowk says the holy buik maks sae
licht o’.”

“What mean ye?” demanded Miss Horn, sternly and curtly.

“I ken what I mean mysel’, an’ ane that’s no content wi’ that,
bude (_behoved_) ill be a howdie (_midwife_). I wad fain hae gotten a
fancy oot o’ my heid that’s been there this mony a lang day; but
please yersel’, mem, gien ye winna be neebourly.”

“Ye s’ no gang near her--no to save ye frae a’ the ill dreams
that ever gethered aboot a sin-stappit (_stuffed_) bowster!” cried
Miss Horn, and drew down her long upper lip in a strong arch.

“Ca cannie! ca cannie! (_drive gently_),” said Bawby. “Dinna anger
me ower sair, for I _am_ but mortal. Fowk tak a heap frae you, Miss
Horn, ’at they’ll tak frae nane ither, for your temper’s weel kent,
an’ little made o’; but it’s an ill-faured thing to anger the howdie
--sae muckle lies upo’ _her_; an’ I’m no i’ the tune to put up wi’
muckle the nicht. I wonner at ye bein’ sae oonneebour-like--at
sic a time tu, wi’ a corp i’ the hoose!”

“Gang awa--gang oot o ’t: it’s _my_ hoose,” said Miss Horn, in a low,
hoarse voice, restrained from rising to tempest pitch only by the
consciousness of what lay on the other side of the ceiling above
her head. “I wad as sune lat a cat intill the deid-chaumer to gang
loupin’ ower the corp, or may be waur, as I wad lat yersel’ intill
’t Bawby Catanach; an’ there’s till ye!”

At this moment the opportune entrance of Jean afforded fitting
occasion to her mistress for leaving the room without encountering
the dilemma of either turning the woman out--a proceeding which
the latter, from the way in which she set her short, stout figure
square on the floor, appeared ready to resist--or of herself
abandoning the field in discomfiture: she turned and marched from
the kitchen with her head in the air, and the gait of one who had
been insulted on her own premises.

She was sitting in the parlour, still red-faced and wrathful, when
Jean entered, and, closing the door behind her, drew near to her
mistress, bearing a narrative, commenced at the door, of all she
had seen, heard, and done, while “oot an’ aboot i’ the toon.” But
Miss Horn interrupted her the moment she began to speak.

“Is that wuman furth the hoose, Jean?” she asked, in the tone
of one who waited her answer in the affirmative as a preliminary
condition of all further conversation.

“She’s gane, mem,” answered Jean--adding to herself in a wordless
thought, “I’m no sayin’ _whaur_.”

“She’s a wuman I wadna hae ye throng wi’, Jean.”

“I ken no ill o’ her, mem,” returned Jean.

“She’s eneuch to corrup’ a kirkyaird!” said her mistress, with more
force than fitness.

Jean, however, was on the shady side of fifty, more likely to have
already yielded than to be liable to a first assault of corruption;
and little did Miss Horn think how useless was her warning, or
where Barbara Catanach was at that very moment. Trusting to Jean’s
cunning, as well she might, she was in the dead-chamber, and
standing over the dead. She had folded back the sheet--not from
the face, but from the feet--and raised the night dress of fine
linen in which the love of her cousin had robed the dead for the
repose of the tomb.

“It wad hae been tellin’ her,” she muttered, “to hae spoken Bawby
fair! I’m no used to be fa’en foul o’ that gait. I s’ be even
wi’ her yet, I’m thinkin’--the auld speldin’! Losh! and Praise
be thankit! there it ’s! It’s there!--a wee darker, but the same
--jist whaur I could ha’ laid the pint o’ my finger upo’ ’t i’ the
mirk!--Noo lat the worms eat it,” she concluded, as she folded
down the linen of shroud and sheet--“an’ no mortal ken o’ ’t but
mysel’ an’ him ’at bude till hae seen ’t, gien he was a hair better
nor Glenkindie’s man i’ the auld ballant!”

The instant she had re-arranged the garments of the dead, she
turned and made for the door with a softness of step that strangely
contrasted with the ponderousness of her figure, and indicated great
muscular strength, opened it with noiseless circumspection to the
width of an inch, peeped out from the crack, and seeing the opposite
door still shut, stepped out with a swift, noiseless swing of
person and door simultaneously, closed the door behind her, stole
down the stairs, and left the house. Not a board creaked, not a
latch clicked as she went. She stepped into the street as sedately
as if she had come from paying to the dead the last offices of
her composite calling, the projected front of her person appearing
itself aware of its dignity as the visible sign and symbol of a
good conscience and kindly heart.




                             CHAPTER III.

                            THE MAD LAIRD.


When Mistress Catanach arrived at the opening of a street which
was just opposite her own door, and led steep toward the sea-town,
she stood, and shading her eyes with her hooded hand, although the
sun was far behind her, looked out to sea. It was the forenoon of
a day of early summer. The larks were many and loud in the skies
above her--for, although she stood in a street, she was only a
few yards from the green fields--but she could hardly have heard
them, for their music was not for her. To the northward, whither
her gaze--if gaze it could be called--was directed, all but
cloudless blue heavens stretched over an all but shadowless blue
sea; two bold, jagged promontories, one on each side of her, formed
a wide bay; between that on the west and the sea-town at her feet,
lay a great curve of yellow sand, upon which the long breakers,
born of last night’s wind, were still roaring from the north-east,
although the gale had now sunk to a breeze--cold and of doubtful
influence. From the chimneys of the fishermen’s houses below,
ascended a yellowish smoke, which, against the blue of the sea,
assumed a dull green colour as it drifted vanishing towards the
south-west. But Mrs Catanach was looking neither at nor for anything:
she had no fisherman husband, or any other relative at sea; she
was but revolving something in her unwholesome mind, and this was
her mode of concealing an operation which naturally would have been
performed with down-bent head and eyes on the ground.

While she thus stood, a strange figure drew near, approaching her
with step almost as noiseless as that with which she had herself
made her escape from Miss Horn’s house. At a few yards’ distance
from her it stood, and gazed up at her countenance as intently as
she seemed to be gazing on the sea. It was a man of dwarfish height
and uncertain age, with a huge hump upon his back, features of great
refinement, a long thin beard, and a forehead unnaturally large,
over eyes which, although of a pale blue, mingled with a certain
mottled milky gleam, had a pathetic, dog-like expression. Decently
dressed in black, he stood with his hands in the pockets of his
trowsers, gazing immovably in Mrs Catanach’s face.

Becoming suddenly aware of his presence, she glanced downward, gave
a great start and a half scream, and exclaimed in no gentle tones:

“Preserve ’s! Whaur come _ye_ frae?”

It was neither that she did not know the man, nor that she meant
any offence: her words were the mere embodiment of the annoyance
of startled surprise; but their effect was peculiar.

Without a single other motion he turned abruptly on one heel, gazed
seaward with quick-flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, but, apparently
too polite to refuse an answer to the evidently unpleasant question,
replied in low, almost sullen tones:

“I dinna ken whaur I come frae. Ye _ken_ ’at I dinna ken whaur I come
frae. I dinna ken whaur _ye_ come frae. I dinna ken whaur onybody
comes frae.”

“Hoot, laird! nae offence!” returned Mrs Catanach. “It was yer ain
wyte (_blame_). What gart ye stan’ glowerin’ at a body that gait,
ohn telled (_without telling_) them ’at ye was there?”

“I thocht ye was luikin’ whaur ye cam frae,” returned the man in
tones apologetic and hesitating.

“’Deed I fash wi’ nae sic freits,” said Mrs Catanach.

“Sae lang ’s ye ken whaur ye’re gaein’ till,” suggested the man.

“Toots! I fash as little wi’ that either, and ken jist as muckle
aboot the tane as the tither,” she answered with a low oily guttural
laugh of contemptuous pity.

“I ken mair nor that mysel’, but no muckle,” said the man. “I dinna
ken whaur I cam frae, and I dinna ken whaur I’m gaun till; but I
ken ’at I’m gaun _whaur_ I cam frae. That stan’s to rizzon, ye see;
but they telled me ’at _ye_ kenned a’ aboot whaur we a’ cam frae.”

“Deil a bit o’ ’t!” persisted Mrs Catanach, in tones of repudiation.
“What care I whaur I cam frae, sae lang ’s--”

“Sae lang ’s what, gien ye please?” pleaded the man, with a childlike
entreaty in his voice.

“Weel----gien ye _wull_ hae ’t--sae lang ’s I cam frae my mither,”
said the woman, looking down on the inquirer with a vulgar laugh.

The hunchback uttered a shriek of dismay, and turned and fled; and
as he turned, long, thin, white hands flashed out of his pockets,
pressed against his ears, and intertwined their fingers at the back
of his neck. With a marvellous swiftness he shot down the steep
descent towards the shore.

“The deil’s in ’t ’at I bude to anger him!” said the woman, and
walked away, with a short laugh of small satisfaction.

The style she had given the hunchback was no nickname. Stephen Stewart
was laird of the small property and ancient house of Kirkbyres, of
which his mother managed the affairs--hardly _for_ her son, seeing
that, beyond his clothes, and five pounds a year of pocket-money,
he derived no personal advantage from his possessions. He never
went near his own house, for, from some unknown reason, plentifully
aimed at in the dark by the neighbours, he had such a dislike to
his mother that he could not bear to hear the name of mother, or
even the slightest allusion to the relationship.

Some said he was a fool; others a madman; some both; none, however,
said he was a rogue; and all would have been willing to allow that
whatever it might be that caused the difference between him and
other men, throughout the disturbing element blew ever and anon
the air of a sweet humanity.

Along the shore, in the direction of the great rocky promontory
that closed in the bay on the west, with his hands still clasped
over his ears, as if the awful word were following him, he flew
rather than fled. It was nearly low water, and the wet sand afforded
an easy road to his flying feet. Betwixt sea and shore, a sail in
the offing the sole other moving thing in the solitary landscape,
like a hunted creature he sped, his footsteps melting and vanishing
behind him in the half-quick sand.

Where the curve of the water-line turned northward at the root of
the promontory, six or eight fishing boats were drawn up on the
beach in various stages of existence. One was little more than
half built, the fresh wood shining against the background of dark
rock. Another was newly tarred; its sides glistened with the rich
shadowy brown, and filled the air with a comfortable odour. Another
wore age-long neglect on every plank and seam; half its props
had sunk or decayed, and the huge hollow leaned low on one side,
disclosing the squalid desolation of its lean-ribbed and naked
interior, producing all the phantasmic effect of a great swampy
desert; old pools of water overgrown with a green scum, lay in
the hollows between its rotting timbers, and the upper planks were
baking and cracking in the sun. Near where they lay a steep path
ascended the cliff, whence through grass and ploughed land, it led
across the promontory to the fishing village of Scaurnose, which
lay on the other side of it. There the mad laird, or Mad Humpy, as
he was called by the baser sort, often received shelter, chiefly
from the family of a certain Joseph Mair, one of the most respectable
inhabitants of the place.

But the way he now pursued lay close under the cliffs of the
headland, and was rocky and difficult. He passed the boats, going
between them and the cliffs, at a footpace, with his eyes on the
ground, and not even a glance at the two men who were at work on
the unfinished boat. One of them was his friend, Joseph Mair. They
ceased their work for a moment to look after him.

“That’s the puir laird again,” said Joseph, the instant he was
beyond hearing. “Something’s wrang wi’ him. I wonder what’s come
ower him!”

“I haena seen him for a while noo,” returned the other. “They tell
me ’at his mither made him ower to the deil afore he cam to the
licht; and sae, aye as his birthday comes roun’, Sawtan gets the
pooer ower him. Eh, but he’s a fearsome sicht whan he’s ta’en that
gait!” continued the speaker. “I met him ance i’ the gloamin’,
jist ower by the toon, wi’ his een glowerin’ like uily lamps, an’
the slaver rinnin’ doon his lang baird. I jist laup as gien I had
seen the muckle Sawtan himsel’.”

“Ye nott na (_needed not_) hae dune that,” was the reply. “He’s jist
as hairmless, e’en at the warst, as ony lamb. He’s but a puir cratur
wha’s tribble’s ower strang for him--that’s a’. Sawtan has as
little to du wi’ him as wi’ ony man I ken.”




                              CHAPTER IV.

                              PHEMY MAIR.


With eyes that stared as if they and not her ears were the organs
of hearing, this talk was heard by a child of about ten years of
age, who sat in the bottom of the ruined boat, like a pearl in a
decaying oyster-shell, one hand arrested in the act of dabbling in
a green pool, the other on its way to her lips with a mouthful of
the sea-weed called _dulse_. She was the daughter of Joseph Mair just
mentioned--a fisherman who had been to sea in a man-of-war (in
consequence of which his to-name or nick-name was Blue Peter), where
having been found capable, he was employed as carpenter’s mate,
and came to be very handy with his tools: having saved a little
money by serving in another man’s boat, he was now building one
for himself.

He was a dark-complexioned, foreign-looking man, with gold rings in
his ears, which he said enabled him to look through the wind “ohn
his een watered.” Unlike most of his fellows, he was a sober and
indeed thoughtful man, ready to listen to the voice of reason from
any quarter; they were, in general, men of hardihood and courage,
encountering as a mere matter of course such perilous weather as
the fishers on a great part of our coasts would have declined to
meet, and during the fishing season were diligent in their calling,
and made a good deal of money; but when the weather was such that
they could not go to sea, when their nets were in order, and nothing
special requiring to be done, they would have bouts of hard drinking,
and spend a great portion of what ought to have been their provision
for the winter.

Their women were in general coarse in manners and rude in speech;
often of great strength and courage, and of strongly-marked
character. They were almost invariably the daughters of fishermen,
for a wife taken from among the rural population would have been
all but useless in regard of the peculiar duties required of her.
If these were less dangerous than those of their husbands, they
were quite as laborious, and less interesting. The most severe
consisted in carrying the fish into the country for sale, in
a huge creel or basket, which when full was sometimes more than a
man could lift to place on the woman’s back. With this burden, kept
in its place by a band across her chest, she would walk as many as
twenty miles, arriving at some inland town early in the forenoon,
in time to dispose of her fish for the requirements of the day. I
may add that, although her eldest child was probably born within a
few weeks after her marriage, infidelity was almost unknown amongst
them.

In some respects, although in none of its good qualities, Mrs Mair
was an exception from her class. Her mother had been the daughter
of a small farmer, and she had well-to-do relations in an inland
parish; but how much these facts were concerned in the result, it
would be hard to say: certainly she was one of those elect whom
Nature sends into the world for the softening and elevation of her
other children. She was still slight and graceful, with a clear
complexion, and the prettiest teeth possible; the former two at
least of which advantages she must have lost long before, had it
not been that, while her husband’s prudence had rendered hard work
less imperative, he had a singular care over her good looks; and
that a rough, honest, elder sister of his lived with them, whom it
would have been no kindness to keep from the hardest work, seeing
it was only through such that she could have found a sufficiency
of healthy interest in life. While Janet Mair carried the creel,
Annie only assisted in making the nets, and in cleaning and drying
the fish, of which they cured considerable quantities; these, with
her household and maternal duties, afforded her ample occupation.
Their children were well-trained, and being of necessity, from the
narrowness of their house accommodation, a great deal with their
parents, heard enough to make them think after their faculty.

The mad laird was, as I have said, a visitor at their house oftener
than anywhere else. On such occasions he slept in a garret accessible
by a ladder from the ground floor, which consisted only of a kitchen
and a closet. Little Phemy Mair was therefore familiar with his
appearance, his ways, and his speech; and she was a favourite with
him, although hitherto his shyness had been sufficient to prevent
any approach to intimacy with even a child of ten.

When the poor fellow had got some little distance beyond the
boats, he stopped and withdrew his hands from his ears: in rushed
the sound of the sea, the louder that the caverns of his brain had
been so long closed to its entrance. With a moan of dismay he once
more pressed his palms against them, and thus deafened, shouted
with a voice of agony into the noise of the rising tide: “I dinna
ken whaur I come frae!” after which cry, wrung from the grief of
human ignorance, he once more took to his heels, though with far
less swiftness than before, and fled stumbling and scrambling over
the rocks.

Scarcely had he vanished from view of the boats, when Phemy scrambled
out of her big mussell-shell. Its upheaved side being toward the
boat at which her father was at work, she escaped unperceived, and
so ran along the base of the promontory, where the rough way was
perhaps easier to the feet of a child content to take smaller steps
and climb or descend by the help of more insignificant inequalities.
She came within sight of the laird just as he turned into the mouth
of a well-known cave and vanished.

Phemy was one of those rare and blessed natures which have endless
courage because they have no distrust, and she ran straight into
the cave after him, without even first stopping to look in.

It was not a very interesting cave to look into. The strata of
which it was composed, upheaved almost to the perpendicular, shaped
an opening like the half of a Gothic arch divided vertically and
leaning over a little to one side, which opening rose to the full
height of the cave, and seemed to lay bare every corner of it to
a single glance. In length it was only about four or five times
its width. The floor was smooth and dry, consisting of hard rock.
The walls and roof were jagged with projections and shadowed with
recesses, but there was little to rouse any frightful fancies.

When Phemy entered, the laird was nowhere to be seen. But she went
straight to the back of the cave, to its farthest visible point.
There she rounded a projection and began an ascent which only
familiarity with rocky ways could have enabled such a child to
accomplish. At the top she passed through another opening, and by
a longer and more gently sloping descent reached the floor of a
second cave, as level and nearly as smooth as a table. On her left
hand, what light managed to creep through the tortuous entrance was
caught and reflected in a dull glimmer from the undefined surface
of a well of fresh water which lay in a sort of basin in the rock:
on a bedded stone beside it sat the laird, with his head in his
hands, his elbows on his knees, and his hump upheaved above his
head, like Mount Sinai over the head of Christian in the Pilgrim’s
Progress.

As his hands were still pressed on his ears, he heard nothing of
Phemy’s approach, and she stood for a while staring at him in the
vague glimmer, apparently with no anxiety as to what was to come
next.

Weary at length--for the forlorn man continued movelessly sunk
in his own thoughts, or what he had for such--the eyes of the
child began to wander about the darkness, to which they had already
got so far accustomed as to make the most of the scanty light.
Presently she fancied she saw something glitter, away in the
darkness--two things: they must be eyes!--the eyes of an otter
or of a pole-cat, in which creatures the caves along the shore
abounded. Seized with sudden fright, she ran to the laird and laid
her hand on his shoulder, crying,

“Leuk, laird, leuk!”

He started to his feet and gazed bewildered at the child, rubbing
his eyes once and again. She stood between the well and the entrance,
so that all the light there was, gathered upon her pale face.

“Whaur do ye come frae?” he cried.

“I cam frae the auld boat,” she answered.

“What do ye want wi’ me?”

“Naething, sir; I only cam to see hoo ye was gettin’ on. I wadna
hae disturbit ye, sir, but I saw the twa een o’ a wullcat, or sic
like, glowerin’ awa yonner i’ the mirk, an’ they fleyt me ’at I
grippit ye.”

“Weel, weel; sit ye doon, bairnie,” said the mad laird in a soothing
voice; “the wullcat sanna touch ye. Ye’re no fleyt at _me_, are ye?”

“Na!” answered the child. “What for sud I be fleyt at you, sir?
I’m Phemy Mair.”

“Eh, bairnie! it’s you, is ’t?” he returned in tones of satisfaction,
for he had not hitherto recognised her. “Sit ye doon, sit ye doon,
an’ we’ll see aboot it a’.”

Phemy obeyed, and seated herself on the nearest projection.

The laird placed himself beside her, and once more buried his face,
but not his ears, in his hands. Nothing entered them, however, but
the sound of the rising tide, for Phemy sat by him in the faintly
glimmering dusk, as without fear felt, so without word spoken.

The evening crept on, and the night came down, but all the effect
of the growing darkness was that the child drew gradually nearer
to her uncouth companion, until at length her hand stole into his,
her head sank upon his shoulder, his arm went round her to hold
her safe, and thus she fell fast asleep. After a while, the laird
gently roused her and took her home, on their way warning her,
in strange yet to her comprehensible utterance, to say nothing of
where she had found him, for if she exposed his place of refuge,
wicked people would take him, and he should never see her again.




                              CHAPTER V.

                            LADY FLORIMEL.


All the coast to the east of the little harbour was rock, bold and
high, of a grey and brown hard stone, which after a mighty sweep,
shot out northward, and closed in the bay on that side with a
second great promontory. The long curved strip of sand on the west,
reaching to the promontory of Scaurnose, was the only open portion
of the coast for miles. Here the coasting vessel gliding past gained a
pleasant peep of open fields, belts of wood and farm-houses, with
now and then a glimpse of a great house amidst its trees. In the
distance one or two bare solitary hills, imposing in aspect only
from their desolation, for their form gave no effect to their
altitude, rose to the height of over a thousand feet.

On this comparatively level part of the shore, parallel with its
line, and at some distance beyond the usual high-water-mark, the
waves of ten thousand northern storms had cast up a long dune or
bank of sand, terminating towards the west within a few yards of
a huge solitary rock of the ugly kind called conglomerate, which
must have been separated from the roots of the promontory by the
rush of waters at unusually high tides, for in winter they still
sometimes rounded the rock, and running down behind the dune,
turned it into a long island. The sand on the inland side of the
dune, covered with short sweet grass, browsed on by sheep, and with
the largest and reddest of daisies, was thus occasionally swept by
wild salt waves, and at times, when the northern wind blew straight
as an arrow and keen as a sword from the regions of endless snow,
lay under a sheet of gleaming ice.

The sun had been up for some time in a cloudless sky. The wind had
changed to the south, and wafted soft country odours to the shore,
in place of sweeping to inland farms the scents of sea-weed and broken
salt waters, mingled with a suspicion of icebergs. From what was
called the _Seaton_, or seatown, of Portlossie, a crowd of cottages
occupied entirely by fisher-folk, a solitary figure was walking
westward along this grass at the back of the dune, singing. On his
left hand the ground rose to the high road; on his right was the
dune, interlaced and bound together by the long clasping roots of
the coarse bent, without which its sands would have been but the
sport of every wind that blew. It shut out from him all sight of
the sea, but the moan and rush of the rising tide sounded close
behind it. At his back rose the town of Portlossie, high above the
harbour and the Seaton, with its houses of grey and brown stone,
roofed with blue slates and red tiles. It was no highland town
--scarce one within it could speak the highland tongue, yet down
from its high streets on the fitful air of the morning now floated
intermittently the sound of bagpipes--borne winding from street
to street, and loud blown to wake the sleeping inhabitants and let
them know that it was now six of the clock.

He was a youth of about twenty, with a long, swinging, heavy-footed
stride, which took in the ground rapidly--a movement unlike that
of the other men of the place, who always walked slowly, and never
but on dire compulsion ran. He was rather tall, and large limbed.
His dress was like that of a fisherman, consisting of blue serge
trowsers, a shirt striped blue and white, and a Guernsey frock,
which he carried flung across his shoulder. On his head he wore a
round blue bonnet, with a tuft of scarlet in the centre.

His face was more than handsome--with large features, not finely
cut, and a look of mingled nobility and ingenuousness--the latter
amounting to simplicity, or even innocence; while the clear outlook
from his full and well-opened hazel eyes indicated both courage
and promptitude. His dark brown hair came in large curling masses
from under his bonnet. It was such a form and face as would have
drawn every eye in a crowded thoroughfare.

About the middle of the long sand-hill, a sort of wide embrasure was
cut in its top, in which stood an old-fashioned brass swivel-gun:
when the lad reached the place, he sprang up the sloping side of
the dune, seated himself on the gun, drew from his trowsers a large
silver watch, regarded it steadily for a few minutes, replaced it,
and took from his pocket a flint and steel, wherewith he kindled
a bit of touch-paper, which, rising, he applied to the vent of the
swivel. Followed a great roar.

Its echoes had nearly died away, when a startled little cry reached
his keen ear, and looking along the shore to discover whence it
came, he spied a woman on a low rock that ran a little way out into
the water. She had half risen from a sitting posture, and apparently
her cry was the result of the discovery that the rising tide
had overreached and surrounded her. There was no danger whatever,
but the girl might well shrink from plunging into the clear beryl
depth in which swayed the sea-weed clothing the slippery slopes of
the rock. He rushed from the sand-hill, crying, as he approached
her, “Dinna be in a hurry, mem; bide till I come to ye,” and running
straight into the water struggled through the deepening tide, the
distance being short and the depth almost too shallow for swimming.
In a moment he was by her side, scarcely saw the bare feet she had
been bathing in the water, heeded as little the motion of the hand
which waved him back, caught her in his arms like a baby, and had
her safe on the shore ere she could utter a word; nor did he stop
until he had carried her to the slope of the sand-hill, where he
set her gently down, and without a suspicion of the liberty he was
taking, and filled only with a passion of service, was proceeding
to dry her feet with the frock which he had dropped there as he
ran to her assistance.

“Let me alone, pray,” cried the girl with a half-amused indignation,
drawing back her feet and throwing down a book she carried that she
might the better hide them with her skirt. But although she shrank
from his devotion, she could neither mistake it nor help being pleased
with his kindness. Probably she had never before been immediately
indebted to such an ill-clad individual of the human race, but even
in such a costume she could not fail to see he was a fine fellow.
Nor was the impression disturbed when he opened his mouth and spoke
in the broad dialect of the country, for she had no associations
to cause her to misinterpret its homeliness as vulgarity.

“Whaur’s yer stockin’s, mem?” he said.

“You gave me no time to bring them away, you caught me up so--
rudely,” answered the girl half querulously, but in such lovely
speech as had never before greeted his Scottish ears.

Before the words were well beyond her lips he was already on his way
back to the rock, running, as he walked, with great, heavy-footed
strides. The abandoned shoes and stockings were in imminent danger
of being floated off by the rising water, but he dashed in, swam a
few strokes, caught them up, waded back to the shore, and, leaving
a wet track all the way behind him but carrying the rescued clothing
at arm’s length before him, rejoined their owner. Spreading his
frock out before her, he laid the shoes and stockings upon it,
and, observing that she continued to keep her feet hidden under
the skirts of her dress, turned his back and stood.

“Why don’t you go away?” said the girl, venturing one set of toes
from under their tent, but hesitating to proceed further in the
business.

Without word or turn of head he walked away.

Either flattered by his absolute obedience, and persuaded that he
was a true squire, or unwilling to forego what amusement she might
gain from him, she drew in her half-issuing foot, and, certainly
urged in part by an inherent disposition to tease, spoke again.

“You’re not going away without thanking me?” she said.

“What for, mem?” he returned simply, standing stock-still again
with his back towards her.

“You needn’t stand so. You don’t think I would go on dressing while
you remained in sight?”

“I was as guid ’s awa’, mem,” he said, and turning a glowing face,
looked at her for a moment, then cast his eyes on the ground.

“Tell me what you mean by not thanking me,” she insisted.

“They wad be dull thanks, mem, that war thankit afore I kenned what
for.”

“For allowing you to carry me ashore, of course.”

“Be thankit, mem, wi’ a’ my hert. Will I gang doon o’ my knees?”

“No. Why should you go on your knees?”

“’Cause ye’re ’maist ower bonny to luik at stan’in’, mem, an’ I’m
feared for angerin’ ye.”

“Don’t say ma’am to me.”

“What am I to say, than, mem?--I ask yer pardon, mem.”

“Say _my lady_. That’s how people speak to me.”

“I thocht ye bude (_behoved_) to be somebody by ordinar’, my leddy!
That’ll be hoo ye’re so terrible bonny,” he returned, with some
tremulousness in his tone. “But ye maun put on yer hose, my leddy,
or ye’ll get yer feet cauld, and that’s no guid for the likes o’
you.”

The form of address she prescribed, conveyed to him no definite
idea of rank. It but added intensity to the notion of her being a
lady, as distinguished from one of the women of his own condition
in life.

“And pray what is to become of you,” she returned, “with your
clothes as wet as water can make them?”

“The saut water kens me ower weel to do me ony ill,” returned the
lad. “I gang weet to the skin mony a day frae mornin’ till nicht,
and mony a nicht frae nicht till mornin’--at the heerin’ fishin’,
ye ken, my leddy.”

One might well be inclined to ask what could have tempted her to
talk in such a familiar way to a creature like him--human indeed,
but separated from her by a gulf more impassable far than that
which divided her from the thrones, principalities, and powers of
the upper regions? And how is the fact to be accounted for, that here
she put out a dainty foot, and reaching for one of her stockings,
began to draw it gently over the said foot? Either her sense of his
inferiority was such that she regarded his presence no more than
that of a dog, or, possibly, she was tempted to put his behaviour
to the test. He, on his part, stood quietly regarding the operation,
either that, with the instinct of an inborn refinement, he was
aware he ought not to manifest more shamefacedness than the lady
herself, or that he was hardly more accustomed to the sight of
gleaming fish than the bare feet of maidens.

“I’m thinkin’, my leddy,” he went on, in absolute simplicity, “that
sma’ fut o’ yer ain has danced mony a braw dance on mony a braw
flure.”

“How old do you take me for then?” she rejoined, and went on drawing
the garment over her foot by the shortest possible stages.

“Ye’ll no be muckle ower twenty,” he said.

“I’m only sixteen,” she returned, laughing merrily.

“What _will_ ye be or ye behaud!” he exclaimed, after a brief pause
of astonishment.

“Do you ever dance in this part of the country?” she asked, heedless
of his surprise.

“No that muckle, at least amo’ the fisher-fowks, excep’ it be at a
weddin’. I was at ane last nicht.”

“And did you dance?”

“’Deed did I, my leddy. I danced the maist o’ the lasses clean aff
o’ their legs.”

“What made you so cruel?”

“Weel, ye see, mem,--I mean my leddy,--fowk said I was ill
aboot the bride; an’ sae I bude to dance ’t oot o’ their heids.”

“And how much truth was there in what they said?” she asked, with
a sly glance up in the handsome, now glowing face.

“Gien there was ony, there was unco little,” he replied. “The
chield’s walcome till her for me. But she was the bonniest lassie
we had.--It was what we ca’ a penny weddin’,” he went on, as if
willing to change the side of the subject.

“And what’s a penny wedding?”

“It’s a’ kin’ o’ a custom amo’ the fishers. There’s some gey puir
fowk amon’ ’s, ye see, an’ whan a twa o’ them merries, the lave o’
’s wants to gie them a bit o’ a start like. Sae we a’ gang to the
weddin’ an’ eats an’ drinks plenty, an’ pays for a’ ’at we hae;
and they mak’ a guid profit oot o’ ’t, for the things doesna cost
them nearhan’ sae muckle as we pay. So they hae a guid han’fu’ ower
for the plenishin’.”

“And what do they give you to eat and drink?” asked the girl, making
talk.

“Ow, skate an’ mustard to eat, an’ whusky to drink,” answered the
lad, laughing. “But it’s mair for the fun. I dinna care muckle
aboot whusky an’ that kin’ o’ thing mysel’. It’s the fiddles an
the dancin’ ’at I like.”

“You have music, then?”

“Ay; jist the fiddles an’ the pipes.”

“The bagpipes, do you mean?”

“Ay; my gran’father plays _them_.”

“But you’re not in the Highlands here: how come you to have bagpipes?”

“It’s a stray bag, an’ no more. But the fowk here likes the cry
o’ ’t weel eneuch, an’ hae ’t to wauk them ilka mornin’. Yon was
my gran’father ye heard afore I fired the gun. Yon was his pipes
waukin’ them, honest fowk.”

“And what made you fire the gun in that reckless way? Don’t you
know it is very dangerous?”

“Dangerous, mem--my leddy, I mean! There was naething intill ’t
but a pennyworth o’ blastin’ pooder. It wadna blaw the froth aff
o’ the tap o’ a jaw (_billow_).”

“It nearly blew me out of my small wits, though.”

“I’m verra sorry it frichtit ye. But, gien I _had_ seen ye, I bude
to fire the gun.”

“I don’t understand you quite; but I suppose you mean it was your
business to fire the gun.”

“Jist that, my leddy.”

“Why?”

“’Cause it’s been decreet i’ the toon cooncil that at sax o’ the
clock ilka mornin’ that gun’s to be fired--at least sae lang ’s
my lord, the marquis, is at Portlossie Hoose. Ye see it’s a royal
brugh, this, an’ it costs but aboot a penny, an’ it’s gran’ like
to hae a sma’ cannon to fire. An’ gien I was to neglec’ it, my
gran’father wad gang on skirlin’--what’s the English for _skirlin’_,
my leddy--skirlin’ o’ the pipes?”

“I don’t know. But from the sound of the word I should suppose it
stands for _screaming_.”

“Aye, that’s it; only _screamin’s_ no sae guid as _skirlin’_.
My gran’father’s an auld man, as I was gaein’ on to say, an’ has
hardly breath eneuch to fill the bag; but he wad be efter dirkin’
onybody ’at said sic a thing, and till he heard that gun he wad
gang on blawin’ though he sud burst himsel’. There’s naebody kens
the smeddum in an auld hielan’ man!”

By the time the conversation had reached this point, the lady had
got her shoes on, had taken up her book from the sand, and was now
sitting with it in her lap. No sound reached them but that of the
tide, for the scream of the bagpipes had ceased the moment the
swivel was fired. The sun was growing hot, and the sea, although so
far in the cold north, was gorgeous in purple and green, suffused
as with the overpowering pomp of a peacock’s plumage in the sun.
Away to the left the solid promontory trembled against the horizon,
as if ready to dissolve and vanish between the bright air and the
lucid sea that fringed its base with white. The glow of a young
summer morning pervaded earth and sea and sky, and swelled the
heart of the youth as he stood in unconscious bewilderment before
the self-possession of the girl. She was younger than he, and knew
far less that was worth knowing, yet had a world of advantage over
him--not merely from the effect of her presence on one who had
never seen anything half so beautiful, but from a certain readiness
of surface thought, combined with the sweet polish of her speech,
and an assurance of superiority which appeared to them both to lift
her, like one of the old immortals, far above the level of the man
whom she favoured with her passing converse. What in her words,
as here presented only to the eye, may seem _brusqueness_ or even
forwardness, was so tempered, so toned, so fashioned by the _naïveté_
with which she spoke, that it sounded in his ears as the utterance
of absolute condescension. As to her personal appearance, the lad
might well have taken her for twenty, for she looked more of a
woman than, tall and strongly built as he was, he looked of a man.
She was rather tall, rather slender, finely formed, with small hands
and feet, and full throat. Her hair was of a dark brown; her eyes
of such a blue that no one could have suggested grey; her complexion
fair--a little freckled, which gave it the warmest tint it had;
her nose nearly straight, her mouth rather large but well formed;
and her forehead, as much of it as was to be seen under a garden-hat,
rose with promise above a pair of dark and finely-pencilled
eyebrows.

The description I have here given may be regarded as occupying the
space of a brief silence, during which the lad stood motionless,
like one awaiting further command.

“Why don’t you go?” said the lady. “I want to read my book.”

He gave a great sigh, as if waking from a pleasant dream, took
off his bonnet with a clumsy movement which yet had in it a grace
worthy of a Stuart court, and descending the dune walked away along
the sands towards the sea-town.

When he had gone about a couple of hundred yards, he looked back
involuntarily. The lady had vanished. He concluded that she had
crossed to the other side of the dune; but when he had gone so far
on his way to the village as to clear the eastern end of the sand-hill,
and there turned and looked up its southern slope, she was still
nowhere to be seen. The old highland stories of his grandfather
came crowding to mind, and, altogether human as she had appeared,
he almost doubted whether the sea, from which he had thought he
rescued her, were not her native element. The book, however, not
to mention the shoes and stockings, was against the supposition.
Anyhow, he had seen a vision of some order or other, as certainly
as if an angel from heaven had appeared to him, for the waters of
his mind had been troubled with a new sense of grace and beauty,
giving an altogether fresh glory to existence.

Of course no one would dream of falling in love with an unearthly
creature, even an angel; at least, something homely must mingle
with the glory ere that become possible; and as to this girl, the
youth could scarcely have regarded her with a greater sense of
_far-off-ness_ had he known her for the daughter of a king of the sea
--one whose very element was essentially death to him as life to
her. Still he walked home as if the heavy boots he wore were wings
at his heels, like those of the little Eurus or Boreas that stood
blowing his trumpet for ever in the round open temple which from
the top of a grassy hill in the park overlooked the Seaton.

“Sic een!” he kept saying to himself; “an’ sic sma’ white han’s!
an’ sic a bonny fut! Eh hoo she wad glitter throu’ the water in
a bag net! Faith! gien she war to sing ‘come doon’ to me, I wad
gang. Wad that be to lowse baith sowl an’ body, I wonner? I’ll see
what Maister Graham says to that. It’s a fine queston to put till
’im: ‘Gien a body was to gang wi’ a mermaid, wha they say has nae
sowl to be saved, wad that be the loss o’ his sowl, as weel ’s o’
the bodily life o’ ’m?’”




                              CHAPTER VI.

                           DUNCAN MACPHAIL.


The sea-town of Portlossie was as irregular a gathering of small
cottages as could be found on the surface of the globe. They faced
every way, turned their backs and gables every way--only of the
roofs could you predict the position; were divided from each other
by every sort of small, irregular space and passage, and looked
like a national assembly debating a constitution. Close behind the
Seaton, as it was called, ran a highway, climbing far above the
chimneys of the village to the level of the town above. Behind this
road, and separated from it by a high wall of stone, lay a succession
of heights and hollows covered with grass. In front of the cottages
lay sand and sea. The place was cleaner than most fishing-villages,
but so closely built, so thickly inhabited, and so pervaded with
“a very ancient and fish-like smell,” that but for the besom of the
salt north wind it must have been unhealthy. Eastward the houses
could extend no further for the harbour, and westward no further for
a small river that crossed the sands to find the sea--discursively
and merrily at low water, but with sullen, submissive mingling when
banked back by the tide.

Avoiding the many nets extended long and wide on the grassy sands,
the youth walked through the tide-swollen mouth of the river, and
passed along the front of the village until he arrived at a house,
the small window in the seaward gable of which was filled with a
curious collection of things for sale--dusty-looking sweets in
a glass bottle; ginger-bread cakes in the shape of large hearts,
thickly studded with sugar-plums of rainbow colours, invitingly
poisonous; strings of tin covers for tobacco-pipes, overlapping each
other like fish-scales; toys, and tapes, and needles, and twenty
other kinds of things, all huddled together.

Turning the corner of this house, he went down the narrow passage
between it and the next, and in at its open door. But the moment
it was entered it lost all appearance of a shop, and the room with
the tempting window showed itself only as a poor kitchen with an
earthen floor.

“Weel, hoo did the pipes behave themsels the day, daddy?” said the
youth as he strode in.

“Och, she’ll pe peing a coot poy to-day,” returned the tremulous
voice of a grey-headed old man, who was leaning over a small peat-fire
on the hearth, sifting oatmeal through the fingers of his left
hand into a pot, while he stirred the boiling mess with a short
stick held in his right.

It had grown to be understood between them that the pulmonary
conditions of the old piper should be attributed not to his internal,
but his external lungs--namely, the bag of his pipes. Both sets
had of late years manifested strong symptoms of decay, and decided
measures had had to be again and again resorted to in the case of
the latter to put off its evil day, and keep within it the breath
of its musical existence. The youth’s question, then, as to
the behaviour of the pipes, was in reality an inquiry after the
condition of his grandfather’s lungs, which, for their part, grew
yearly more and more asthmatic: notwithstanding which Duncan MacPhail
would not hear of resigning the dignity of town-piper.

“That’s fine, daddy,” returned the youth. “Wull I mak oot the
parritch? I’m thinkin ye’ve had eneuch o’ hingin’ ower the fire
this het mornin’.”

“No, sir,” answered Duncan. “She’ll pe perfectly able to make ta
parritch herself, my poy Malcolm. Ta tay will tawn when her poy
must make his own parritch, an’ she’ll be wantin’ no more parritch,
but haf to trink ta rainwater, and no trop of ta uisgebeatha[2] to
put into it, my poy Malcolm.”

[2] Gaelic for “water of life” (whisky); pronounced “ish-guh-BAY-huh”.

His grandson was quite accustomed to the old man’s heathenish
mode of regarding his immediate existence after death as a long
confinement in the grave, and generally had a word or two ready
wherewith to combat the frightful notion; but, as he spoke, Duncan
lifted the pot from the fire, and set it on its three legs on the
deal table in the middle of the room, adding:

“Tere, my man--tere’s ta parritch! And was it ta putter, or ta
traicle, or ta pottle o’ peer, she would be havin’ for kitchie tis
fine mornin’?”

This point settled, the two sat down to eat their breakfast; and
no one would have discovered, from the manner in which the old
man helped himself, nor yet from the look of his eyes, that he was
stone blind. It came neither of old age nor disease--he had been
born blind. His eyes, although large and wide, looked like those
of a sleep-walker--open with shut sense; the shine in them was
all reflected light--glitter, no glow; and their colour was so
pale that they suggested some horrible sight as having driven from
them hue and vision together.

“Haf you eated enough, my son?” he said, when he heard Malcolm lay
down his spoon.

“Ay, plenty, thank ye, daddy, and they were richt weel made,”
replied the lad, whose mode of speech was entirely different from
his grandfather’s: the latter had learned English as a foreign
language, but could not speak Scotch, his mother-tongue being
Gaelic.

As they rose from the table, a small girl, with hair wildly
suggestive of insurrection and conflagration, entered, and said,
in a loud screetch--“Maister MacPhail, my mither wants a pot o’
bleckin’, an’ ye’re to be sure an’ gie her ’t gweed, she says.”

“Fery coot, my chilt, Jeannie; but young Malcolm and old Tuncan
hasn’t made teir prayers yet, and you know fery well tat she won’t
sell pefore she’s made her prayers. Tell your mother tat she’ll pe
bringin’ ta blackin’ when she comes to look to ta lamp.”

The child ran off without response. Malcolm lifted the pot from
the table and set it on the hearth; put the plates together and the
spoons, and set them on a chair, for there was no dresser; tilted
the table, and wiped it hearthward--then from a shelf took down
and laid upon it a Bible, before which he seated himself with an air
of reverence. The old man sat down on a low chair by the chimney
corner, took off his bonnet, closed his eyes and murmured some
almost inaudible words; then repeated in Gaelic the first line of
the hundred and third psalm--

      O m’ anam, beannuich thus’ a nis--

and raised a tune of marvellous wail. Arrived at the end of the
line, he repeated the process with the next, and so went on, giving
every line first in the voice of speech and then in the voice
of song, through three stanzas of eight lines each. And no less
strange was the singing than the tune--wild and wailful as the
wind of his native desolations, or as the sound of his own pipes
borne thereon; and apparently all but lawless, for the multitude
of so called grace-notes, hovering and fluttering endlessly around
the centre tone like the comments on a text, rendered it nearly
impossible to unravel from them the air even of a known tune.
It had in its kind the same liquid uncertainty of confluent sound
which had hitherto rendered it impossible for Malcolm to learn more
than a few of the common phrases of his grandfather’s mother-tongue.

The psalm over, during which the sightless eye-balls of the singer
had been turned up towards the rafters of the cottage--a sign
surely that the germ of light, “the sunny seed,” as Henry Vaughan
calls it, must be in him, else why should he lift his _eyes_ when
he thought upward?--Malcolm read a chapter of the Bible, plainly
the next in an ordered succession, for it could never have been
chosen or culled; after which they kneeled together, and the old
man poured out a prayer, beginning in a low, scarcely audible voice,
which rose at length to a loud, modulated chant. Not a sentence,
hardly a phrase, of the utterance, did his grandson lay hold
of; but there were a few inhabitants of the place who could have
interpreted it, and it was commonly believed that one part of his
devotions was invariably a prolonged petition for vengeance on
Campbell of Glenlyon, the main instrument in the massacre of Glenco.

He _could_ have prayed in English, and then his grandson might have
joined in his petitions, but the thought of such a thing would
never have presented itself to him. Nay, although, understanding
both languages, he used that which was unintelligible to the lad,
he yet regarded himself as the party who had the right to resent
the consequent schism. Such a conversation as now followed was no
new thing after prayers.

“I could fery well wish, Malcolm, my son,” said the old man, “tat
you would be learnin’ to speak your own lancuach. It is all fery
well for ta Sassenach (_Saxon, i.e., non-Celtic_) podies to read ta
Piple in English, for it will be pleasing ta Maker not to make tem
cawpable of ta Gaelic, no more tan monkeys; but for all tat it’s
not ta vord of God. Ta Gaelic is ta lancuach of ta carden of Aiden,
and no doubt but it pe ta lancuach in which ta Shepherd calls his
sheep on ta everlastin’ hills. You see, Malcolm, it must be so,
for how can a mortal man speak to his God in _anything put_ Gaelic?
When Mr Craham--no, not Mr Craham, ta coot man; it was ta new
Minister--he speak an’ say to her: ‘Mr MacPhail, you ought to
make your prayers in Enclish,’ I was fery wrathful, and I answered
and said: ‘Mr Downey, do you tare to suppose tat God doesn’t prefer ta
Gaelic to ta Sassenach tongue!’--‘Mr MacPhail,’ says he, ‘it’ll
pe for your poy I mean it. How’s ta lad to learn ta way of salvation
if you speak to your God in his presence in a strange tongue?’ So I
was opedient to his vord, and ta next efening I tid kneel town in
Sassenach and I tid make begin. But, ochone! she wouldn’t go; her
tongue would be cleafing to ta roof of her mouth; ta claymore would
be sticking rusty in ta scappard; for her heart she was ashamed to
speak to ta Hielan’man’s Maker in ta Sassenach tongue. You must pe
learning ta Gaelic, or you’ll not pe peing worthy to pe her nain
son, Malcolm.”

“But daddy, wha’s to learn me?” asked his grandson, gayly.

“Learn you, Malcolm! Ta Gaelic is ta lancuach of Nature, and wants
no learning. _I_ nefer did pe learning it, yat I nefer haf to say to
myself, ‘What is it she would be saying?’ when I speak ta Gaelic;
put she always has to set ta tead men--that is ta vords--on
their feet, and put tem in pattle-array, when she would pe speaking
ta dull mechanic English. When she opens her mouth to it, ta Gaelic
comes like a spring of pure water, Malcolm. Ta plenty of it _must_
run out. Try it now, Malcolm. Shust oppen your mouth in ta Gaelic
shape, and see if ta Gaelic will not pe falling from it.”

Seized with a merry fit, Malcolm did open his mouth in the Gaelic
shape, and sent from it a strange gabble, imitative of the most
frequently recurring sounds of his grandfather’s speech.

“Hoo will that du, daddy?” he asked, after jabbering gibberish for
the space of a minute.

“It will not be paad for a peginning, Malcolm. She cannot say
it shust pe vorts, or tat tere pe much of ta sense in it; but it
pe fery like what ta pabes will say pefore tey pekin to speak it
properly. So it’s all fery well, and if you will only pe putting
your mouth in ta Gaelic shape often enough, ta sounds will soon
pe taking ta shape of it, and ta vorts will be coming trough ta
mists, and pefore you know, you’ll pe peing a creat credit to your
cranfather, my boy, Malcolm.”

A silence followed, for Malcolm’s attempt had not had the result
he anticipated: he had thought only to make his grandfather laugh.
Presently the old man resumed, in the kindest voice:

“And tere’s another thing, Malcolm, tat’s much wanting to you: you’ll
never pe a man--not to speak of a pard like your cranfather--
if you’ll not pe learning to play on ta bagpipes.”

Malcolm, who had been leaning against the _chimney-lug_ while his
grandfather spoke, moved gently round behind his chair, reached
out for the pipes where they lay in a corner at the old man’s side,
and catching them up softly, put the mouthpiece to his lips. With
a few vigorous blasts he filled the bag, and out burst the double
droning bass, while the youth’s fingers, clutching the chanter
as by the throat, at once compelled its screeches into shape far
better, at least, than his lips had been able to give to the crude
material of Gaelic. He played the only reel he knew, but that with
vigour and effect.

At the first sound of its notes the old man sprung to his feet and
began capering to the reel--partly in delight with the music, but
far more in delight with the musician, while, ever and anon, with
feeble yell, he uttered the unspellable _Hoogh_ of the Highlander, and
jumped, as he thought, high in the air, though his failing limbs,
alas! lifted his feet scarce an inch from the floor.

“Aigh! aigh!” he sighed at length, yielding the contest between
his legs and the lungs of the lad--“aigh! aigh! she’ll die happy!
she’ll die happy! Hear till her poy, how he makes ta pipes speak
ta true Gaelic! Ta pest o’ Gaelic, tat! Old Tuncan’s pipes’ll not
know how to be talking Sassenach. See to it! see to it! He had put
to blow in at ta one end, and out came ta reel at the other. Hoogh!
hoogh! Play us ta Righil Thulachan, Malcolm, my chief!”

“I kenna reel, strathspey, nor lilt, but jist that burd alane,
daddy.”

“Give tem to me, my poy!” cried the old piper, reaching out a hand
as eager to clutch the uncouth instrument as the miser’s to finger
his gold; “hear well to me as I play, and you’ll soon be able to
play pibroch or coronach with the best piper between Cape Wrath
and ta Mull o’ Cantyre.”

He played tune after tune until his breath failed him, and an exhausted
grunt of the drone--in the middle of a coronach, followed by an
abrupt pause, revealed the emptiness of both lungs and bag. Then
first he remembered his object, forgotten the moment he had filled
his bag.

“Now, Malcolm,” he said, offering the pipes to his grandson; “you
play tat after.”

He had himself of course, learned all by the ear, but could hardly
have been serious in requesting Malcolm to follow him through such
a succession of tortuous mazes.

“I haena a memory up to that, daddy; but I s’ get a haud o’ Mr
Graham’s flute-music, and maybe that’ll help me a bit.--Wadna ye
be takin’ hame Meg Partan’s blackin’ ’at ye promised her?”

“Surely, my son. She should always be keeping her promises.”

He rose, and getting a small stone bottle and his stick from the corner
between the projecting _inglecheek_ and the window, left the house,
to walk with unerring steps through the labyrinth of the village,
threading his way from passage to passage, and avoiding pools and
projecting stones, not to say houses, and human beings. His eyes,
or indeed perhaps rather his whole face, appeared to possess an
ethereal sense as of touch, for, without the slightest contact in
the ordinary sense of the word, he was aware of the neighbourhood
of material objects, as if through the pulsations of some medium
to others imperceptible. He could, with perfect accuracy, tell the
height of any wall or fence within a few feet of him; could perceive
at once whether it was high or low or half tide, and that merely
by going out in front of the houses and turning his face with its
sightless eye-balls towards the sea; knew whether a woman who spoke
to him had a child in her arms or not; and, indeed, was believed
to know sooner than ordinary mortals that one was about to become
a mother.

He was a strange figure to look upon in that lowland village,
for he invariably wore the highland dress: in truth, he had never
had a pair of trowsers on his legs, and was far from pleased that
his grandson clothed himself in such contemptible garments. But,
contrasted with the showy style of his costume, there was something
most pathetic in the blended pallor of hue into which the originally
gorgeous colours of his kilt had faded--noticeable chiefly on
week-days, when he wore no sporran; for the kilt, encountering, from
its loose construction, comparatively little strain or friction,
may reach an antiquity unknown to the garments of the low country,
and, while perfectly decent, yet look ancient exceedingly. On
Sundays, however, he made the best of himself, and came out like
a belated and aged butterfly--with his father’s sporran, or
tasselled goatskin purse, in front of him, his grandfather’s dirk
at his side, his great-grandfather’s _skene-dhu_, or little
black-hafted knife, stuck in the stocking of his right leg, and a huge
round brooch of brass--nearly half a foot in diameter, and, Mr
Graham said, as old as the battle of Harlaw--on his left shoulder.
In these adornments he would walk proudly to church, leaning on
the arm of his grandson.

“The piper’s gey (_considerably_) brokken-like the day,” said one of
the fishermen’s wives to a neighbour as he passed them--the fact
being that he had not yet recovered from his second revel in the
pipes so soon after the exhaustion of his morning’s duty, and was,
in consequence, more asthmatic than usual.

“I doobt he’ll be slippin’ awa some cauld nicht,” said the other:
“his leevin’ breath’s ill to get.”

“Ay; he has to warstle for ’t, puir man! Weel, he’ll be missed, the
blin’ body! It’s exterordinar hoo he’s managed to live, and bring
up sic a fine laad as that Malcolm o’ his.”

“Weel, ye see, Providence has been kin’ till _him_ as weel ’s ither
blin’ craturs. The toon’s pipin’ ’s no to be despised; an’ there’s
the cryin’, an’ the chop, an’ the lamps. ’Deed he’s been an eident
(_diligent_) cratur--an’ for a blin’ man, as ye say, it’s jist
exterordinar.”

“Div ye min’ whan first he cam’ to the toon, lass?”

“Ay; what wad hinner me min’in’ that? It’s nae sae lang. Ma’colm
’at’s sic a fine laad noo, they tell me wasna muckle bigger
nor a gey haddie (_tolerable haddock_).”

“But the auld man was an auld man than, though nae doobt he’s unco’
failed sin syne.”

“A dochter’s bairn, they say, the laad.”

“Ay, they say, but wha kens? Duncan could never be gotten to open
his mou’ as to the father or mither o’ ’im, an’ sae it weel may be
as they say. It’s nigh twenty year noo, I’m thinkin’ sin he made ’s
appearance. Ye wasna come frae Scaurnose er than.”

“Some fowk says the auld man’s name’s no MacPhail, an’ he maun
hae come here in hidin’ for some rouch job or ither ’at he’s been
mixed up wi’.”

“I s’ believe nae ill o’ sic a puir, hairmless body. Fowk ’at maks
their ain livin’, wantin’ the een to guide them, canna be that far
aff the straucht. Guid guide ’s! we hae eneuch to answer for, oor
ainsels, ohn passed (_without passing_) jeedgment upo ane anither.”

“I was but tellin’ ye what fowk telled me,” returned the younger
woman.

“Ay, ay, lass; I ken that, for I ken there was fowk to tell ye.”




                             CHAPTER VII.

                           ALEXANDER GRAHAM.


As soon as his grandfather left the house, Malcolm went out also,
closing the door behind him, and turning the key, but leaving it
in the lock. He ascended to the upper town, only, however, to pass
through its main street, at the top of which he turned and looked
back for a few moments, apparently in contemplation. The descent to
the shore was so sudden that he could see nothing of the harbour
or of the village he had left--nothing but the blue bay and
the filmy mountains of Sutherlandshire, molten by distance into
cloudy questions, and looking, betwixt blue sea and blue sky, less
substantial than either. After gazing for a moment, he turned again,
and held on his way, through fields which no fence parted from the
road. The morning was still glorious, the larks right jubilant,
and the air filled with the sweet scents of cottage flowers. Across
the fields came the occasional low of an ox, and the distant sounds
of children at play. But Malcolm saw without noting, and heard
without heeding, for his mind was full of speculation concerning
the lovely girl, whose vision appeared already far off:--who might
she be? whence had she come? whither could she have vanished? That
she did not belong to the neighbourhood was certain, he thought; but
there was a farm house near the sea-town where they let lodgings;
and, although it was early in the season, she might belong to some
family which had come to spend a few of the summer weeks there;
possibly his appearance had prevented her from having her bath
that morning. If he should have the good fortune to see her again,
he would show her a place far fitter for the purpose--a perfect
arbour of rocks, utterly secluded, with a floor of deep sand, and
without a hole for crab or lobster.

His road led him in the direction of a few cottages lying in
a hollow. Beside them rose a vision of trees, bordered by an ivy-grown
wall, from amidst whose summits shot the spire of the church;
and from beyond the spire, through the trees, came golden glimmers
as of vane and crescent and pinnacled ball, that hinted at some
shadowy abode of enchantment within; but as he descended the slope
towards the cottages the trees gradually rose and shut in everything.

These cottages were far more ancient than the houses of the town,
were covered with green thatch, were buried in ivy, and would
soon be radiant with roses and honey-suckles. They were gathered
irregularly about a gate of curious old iron-work, opening on the
churchyard, but more like an entrance to the grounds behind the
church, for it told of ancient state, bearing on each of its pillars
a great stone heron with a fish in its beak.

This was the quarter whence had come the noises of children, but
they had now ceased, or rather sunk into a gentle murmur, which
oozed, like the sound of bees from a straw-covered bee-hive, out
of a cottage rather larger than the rest, which stood close by the
churchyard gate. It was the parish school, and these cottages were
all that remained of the old town of Portlossie, which had at one
time stretched in a long irregular street almost to the shore.
The town cross yet stood, but away solitary on a green hill that
overlooked the sands.

During the summer the long walk from the new town to the school
and to the church was anything but a hardship: in winter it was
otherwise, for then there were days in which few would venture the
single mile that separated them.

The door of the school, bisected longitudinally, had one of its
halves open, and by it outflowed the gentle hum of the honey-bees
of learning. Malcolm walked in, and had the whole of the busy scene
at once before him. The place was like a barn, open from wall to
wall, and from floor to rafters and thatch, browned with the peat
smoke of vanished winters. Two thirds of the space were filled
with long desks and forms; the other had only the master’s desk,
and thus afforded room for standing classes. At the present moment
it was vacant, for the prayer was but just over, and the Bible class
had not been called up: there Alexander Graham, the schoolmaster,
descending from his desk, met and welcomed Malcolm with a kind
shake of the hand. He was a man of middle height, but very thin;
and about five and forty years of age, but looked older, because
of his thin grey hair and a stoop in the shoulders. He was dressed
in a shabby black tail-coat, and clean white neckcloth; the rest of
his clothes were of parson grey, noticeably shabby also. The quiet
sweetness of his smile, and a composed look of submission were
suggestive of the purification of sorrow, but were attributed by the
townsfolk to disappointment; for he was still but a schoolmaster,
whose aim they thought must be a pulpit and a parish. But Mr Graham
had been early released from such an ambition, if it had ever
possessed him, and had for many years been more than content to
give himself to the hopefuller work of training children for the
true ends of life: he lived the quietest of studious lives, with
an old housekeeper.

Malcolm had been a favourite pupil, and the relation of master
and scholar did not cease when the latter saw that he ought to do
something to lighten the burden of his grandfather, and so left
the school and betook himself to the life of a fisherman--with
the slow leave of Duncan, who had set his heart on making a scholar
of him, and would never, indeed, had Gaelic been amongst his studies,
have been won by the most laboursome petition. He asserted himself
perfectly able to provide for both for ten years to come at least,
in proof of which he roused the inhabitants of Portlossie, during
the space of a whole month, a full hour earlier than usual, with
the most terrific blasts of the bagpipes, and this notwithstanding
complaint and expostulation on all sides, so that at length the
provost had to interfere; after which outburst of defiance to time,
however, his energy had begun to decay so visibly that Malcolm gave
himself to the pipes in secret, that he might be ready, in case
of sudden emergency, to take his grandfather’s place; for Duncan
lived in constant dread of the hour when his office might be taken
from him and conferred on a mere drummer, or, still worse, on a
certain ne’er-do-weel cousin of the provost, so devoid of music as
to be capable only of ringing a bell.

“I’ve had an invitation to Miss Campbell’s funeral--Miss Horn’s
cousin, you know,” said Mr Graham, in a hesitating and subdued
voice: “could you manage to take the school for me, Malcolm?”

“Yes, sir. There’s naething to hinner me. What day is ’t upo’?”

“Saturday.”

“Verra weel, sir. I s’ be here in guid time.”

This matter settled, the business of the school, in which, as he
did often, Malcolm had come to assist, began. Only a pupil of his
own could have worked with Mr Graham, for his mode was very peculiar.
But the strangest fact in it would have been the last to reveal
itself to an ordinary observer. This was, that he rarely contradicted
anything: he would call up the opposing truth, set it face to face
with the error, and leave the two to fight it out. The human mind
and conscience were, he said, the plains of Armageddon, where the
battle of good and evil was for ever raging; and the one business
of a teacher was to rouse and urge this battle by leading fresh
forces of the truth into the field--forces composed as little
as might be of the hireling troops of the intellect, and as much
as possible of the native energies of the heart, imagination, and
conscience. In a word, he would oppose error only by teaching the
truth.

In early life he had come under the influence of the writings of
William Law, which he read as one who pondered every doctrine in
that light which only obedience to the truth can open upon it. With
a keen eye for the discovery of universal law in the individual
fact, he read even the marvels of the New Testament practically.
Hence, in training his soldiers, every lesson he gave them was a
missile; every admonishment of youth or maiden was as the mounting
of an armed champion, and the launching of him with a _God-speed_ into
the thick of the fight.

He now called up the Bible class, and Malcolm sat beside and
listened. That morning they had to read one of the chapters in the
history of Jacob.

“Was Jacob a good man?” he asked, as soon as the reading, each of
the scholars in turn taking a verse, was over.

An apparently universal expression of assent followed; halting its
wake, however, came the voice of a boy near the bottom of the class:

“Wasna he some dooble, sir?”

“You are right, Sheltie,” said the master; “he _was_ double. I must,
I find, put the question in another shape:--Was Jacob a bad man?”

Again came such a burst of yesses that it might have been taken
for a general hiss. But limping in the rear came again the
half-dissentient voice of Jamie Joss, whom the master had just addressed
as Sheltie:

“Pairtly, sir.”

“You think, then, Sheltie, that a man may be both bad and good?”

“I dinna ken, sir. I think he may be whiles ane an’ whiles the
ither, an’ whiles maybe it wad be ill to say whilk. Oor collie’s
whiles in twa min’s whether he’ll du what he’s telled or no.”

“That’s the battle of Armageddon, Sheltie, my man. It’s aye ragin’,
ohn gun roared or bayonet clashed. Ye maun up an’ do yer best in ’t,
my man. Gien ye dee fechtin’ like a man, ye’ll flee up wi’ a quaiet
face an’ wide open een; an’ there’s a great Ane ’at’ll say to ye,
‘Weel dune, laddie!’ But gien ye gie in to the enemy, he’ll turn ye
intill a creepin’ thing ’at eats dirt; an’ there’ll no be a hole
in a’ the crystal wa’ o’ the New Jerusalem near eneuch to the grun’
to lat ye creep throu’.”

As soon as ever Alexander Graham, the polished thinker and
sweet-mannered gentleman, opened his mouth concerning the things he
loved best, that moment the most poetic forms came pouring out in
the most rugged speech.

“I reckon, sir,” said Sheltie, “Jacob hadna fouchten oot his battle.”

“That’s jist it, my boy. And because he wouldna get up and fecht
manfully, God had to tak him in han’. Ye’ve heard tell o’ generals,
whan their troops war rinnin’ awa’, haein’ to cut this man doon,
shute that ane, and lick anither, till he turned them a’ richt face
aboot and drave them on to the foe like a spate! And the trouble
God took wi’ Jacob wasna lost upon him at last.”

“An’ what cam o’ Esau, sir?” asked a pale-faced maiden with blue
eyes. “He wasna an ill kin’ o’ a chield--was he, sir?”

“No, Mappy,” answered the master; “he was a fine chield, as you
say; but he nott (_needed_) mair time and gentler treatment to mak
onything o’ him. Ye see he had a guid hert, but was a duller kin’
o’ cratur a’thegither, and cared for naething he could na see or
hanle. He never thoucht muckle aboot God at a’. Jacob was anither
sort--a poet kin’ o’ a man, but a sneck-drawin’ cratur for a’
that. It was easier, hooever, to get the slyness oot o’ Jacob, than
the dulness oot o’ Esau. Punishment tellt upo’ Jacob like upon a
thin-skinned horse, whauras Esau was mair like the minister’s powny,
that can hardly be made to unnerstan’ that ye want him to gang on.
But o’ the ither han’, dullness is a thing that can be borne wi’:
there’s nay hurry aboot that; but the deceitfu’ tricks o’ Jacob war
na to be endured, and sae the tawse (_leather-strap_) cam doon upo’
_him_.”

“An’ what for didna God mak Esau as clever as Jacob?” asked a
wizened-faced boy near the top of the class.

“Ah, my Peery!” said Mr Graham, “I canna tell ye that. A’ that I can
tell is, that God hadna dune makin’ at him, an’ some kin’ o’ fowk
tak langer to mak oot than ithers. An’ ye canna tell what they’re
to be till they’re made oot. But whether what I tell ye be richt
or no, God maun hae the verra best o’ rizzons for ’t, ower guid
maybe for us to unnerstan’---the best o’ rizzons for Esau himsel’, I
mean, for the Creator luiks efter his cratur first ava’ (_of all_).
--And now,” concluded Mr Graham, resuming his English, “go to your
lessons; and be diligent, that God may think it worth while to get
on faster with the making of you.”

In a moment the class was dispersed and all were seated. In another,
the sound of scuffling arose, and fists were seen storming across
a desk.

“Andrew Jamieson and Poochy, come up here,” said the master in a
loud voice.

“_He_ hittit me first,” cried Andrew, the moment they were within a
respectful distance of the master, whereupon Mr Graham turned to
the other with inquiry in his eyes.

“He had nae business to ca’ me Poochy.”

“No more he had; but you had just as little right to punish him
for it. The offence was against me: he had no right to use my name
for you, and the quarrel was mine. For the present you are Poochy
no more: go to your place, William Wilson.”

The boy burst out sobbing, and crept back to his seat with his
knuckles in his eyes.

“Andrew Jamieson,” the master went on, “I had almost got a name
for you, but you have sent it away. You are not ready for it yet,
I see. Go to your place.”

With downcast looks Andrew followed William, and the watchful eyes
of the master saw that, instead of quarrelling any more during
the day, they seemed to catch at every opportunity of showing each
other a kindness.

Mr Graham never used bodily punishment: he ruled chiefly by the
aid of a system of individual titles, of the mingled characters of
pet-name and nickname. As soon as the individuality of a boy had
attained to signs of blossoming--that is, had become such that
he could predict not only an upright but a characteristic behaviour
in given circumstances, he would take him aside and whisper in his
ear that henceforth, so long as he deserved it, he would call him
by a certain name--one generally derived from some object in the
animal or vegetable world, and pointing to a resemblance which was
not often patent to any eye but the master’s own. He had given the
name of _Poochy_, for instance to William Wilson, because, like the
kangaroo, he sought his object in a succession of awkward, yet not
the less availing leaps--gulping his knowledge and pocketing his
conquered marble after a like fashion. _Mappy_, the name which thus
belonged to a certain flaxen haired, soft-eyed girl, corresponds
to the English _bunny_. _Sheltie_ is the small Scotch mountain-pony,
active and strong. _Peery_ means _pegtop_. But not above a quarter of
the children had pet names. To gain one was to reach the highest
honour of the school; the withdrawal of it was the severest of
punishments, and the restoring of it the sign of perfect reconciliation.
The master permitted no one else to use it, and was seldom known
to forget himself so far as to utter it while its owner was in
disgrace. The hope of gaining such a name, or the fear of losing
it, was in the pupil the strongest ally of the master, the most
powerful enforcement of his influences. It was a scheme of government
by aspiration. But it owed all its operative power to the character
of the man who had adopted rather than invented it--for the scheme
had been suggested by a certain passage in the book of the Revelation.

Without having read a word of Swedenborg, he was a believer in the
absolute correspondence of the inward and outward; and, thus long
before the younger Darwin arose, had suspected a close relationship
--remote identity, indeed, in nature and history--between the
animal and human worlds. But photographs from a good many different
points would be necessary to afford anything like a complete notion
of the character of this country schoolmaster.

Towards noon, while he was busy with an astronomical class,
explaining, by means partly of the blackboard, partly of two boys
representing the relation of the earth and the moon, how it comes
that we see but one half of the latter, the door gently opened
and the troubled face of the mad laird peeped slowly in. His body
followed as gently, and at last--sad symbol of his weight of care
--his hump appeared, with a slow half-revolution as he turned to
shut the door behind him. Taking off his hat, he walked up to Mr
Graham, who, busy with his astronomy, had not perceived his entrance,
touched him on the arm, and, standing on tip-toe, whispered softly
in his ear, as if it were a painful secret that must be respected,--

“I dinna ken whaur I cam frae. I want to come to the school.”

Mr Graham turned and shook hands with him, respectfully addressing
him as Mr Stewart, and got down for him the armchair which stood
behind his desk. But, with the politest bow, the laird declined
it, and mournfully repeating the words, “I dinna ken whaur I cam
frae,” took a place readily yielded him in the astronomical circle
surrounding the symbolic boys.

This was not by any means his first appearance there; for every
now and then he was seized with a desire to go to school, plainly
with the object of finding out where he came from. This always
fell in his quieter times, and for days together he would attend
regularly; in one instance he was not absent an hour for a whole
month. He spoke so little, however, that it was impossible to tell
how much he understood, although he seemed to enjoy all that went
on. He was so quiet, so sadly gentle, that he gave no trouble of
any sort, and after the first few minutes of a fresh appearance,
the attention of the scholars was rarely distracted by his presence.

The way in which the master treated him awoke like respect in his
pupils. Boys and girls were equally ready to make room for him on
their forms, and any one of the latter who had by some kind attention
awakened the watery glint of a smile on the melancholy features of
the troubled man, would boast of her success. Hence it came that
the neighbourhood of Portlossie was the one spot in the county
where a person of weak intellect or peculiar appearance might go
about free of insult.

The peculiar sentence the laird so often uttered was the only one
he invariably spoke with definite clearness. In every other attempt
at speech he was liable to be assailed by an often recurring
impediment, during the continuance of which he could compass
but a word here and there, often betaking himself in the agony of
suppressed utterance, to the most extravagant gestures, with which
he would sometimes succeed in so supplementing his words as to
render his meaning intelligible.

The two boys representing the earth and the moon, had returned
to their places in the class, and Mr Graham had gone on to give
a description of the moon, in which he had necessarily mentioned
the enormous height of her mountains as compared with those of
the earth. But in the course of asking some questions, he found a
need of further explanation, and therefore once more required the
services of the boy-sun and boy-moon. The moment the latter, however,
began to describe his circle around the former, Mr Stewart stepped
gravely up to him, and, laying hold of his hand, led him back to
his station in the class: then, turning first one shoulder, then
the other to the company, so as to attract attention to his hump,
uttered the single word _Mountain_, and took on himself the part of
the moon, proceeding to revolve in the circle which represented her
orbit. Several of the boys and girls smiled, but no one laughed,
for Mr Graham’s gravity maintained theirs. Without remark, he used
the mad laird for a moon to the end of his explanation.

Mr Stewart remained in the school all the morning, stood up with
every class Mr Graham taught, and in the intervals sat, with book
or slate before him, still as a Brahmin on the fancied verge of
his re-absorption, save that he murmured to himself now and then,--

“I dinna ken whaur I cam frae.”

When his pupils dispersed for dinner, Mr Graham invited him to go
to his house and share his homely meal, but with polished gesture
and broken speech, Mr Stewart declined, walked away towards the
town, and was seen no more that afternoon.




                             CHAPTER VIII.

                              THE SWIVEL.


Mrs Courthope, the housekeeper at Lossie House, was a good woman,
who did not stand upon her dignities, as small rulers are apt to
do, but cultivated friendly relations with the people of the Sea
Town. Some of the rougher of the women despised the sweet outlandish
speech she had brought with her from her native England, and accused
her of _mim-mou’dness_, or an affected modesty in the use of words;
but not the less was she in their eyes a great lady,--whence
indeed came the special pleasure in finding flaws in her--for to
them she was the representative of the noble family on whose skirts
they and their ancestors had been settled for ages, the last marquis
not having visited the place for many years, and the present having
but lately succeeded.

Duncan MacPhail was a favourite with her; for the English woman
will generally prefer the highland to the lowland Scotsman; and
she seldom visited the Seaton without looking in upon him; so that
when Malcolm returned from the Alton, or Old Town, where the school
was, it did not in the least surprise him to find her seated with
his grandfather.

Apparently, however, there had been some dissension between them;
for the old man sat in his corner strangely wrathful, his face in
a glow, his head thrown back, his nostrils distended, and his eyelids
working, as if his eyes were “poor dumb mouths,” like Caesar’s
wounds, trying to speak.

“We are told in the New Testament to forgive our enemies, you know,”
said Mrs Courthope, heedless of his entrance, but in a voice that
seemed rather to plead than oppose.

“Inteet she will not be false to her shief and her clan,” retorted
Duncan persistently. “She will _not_ forgife Cawmil of Glenlyon.”

“But he’s dead long since, and we may at least hope he repented
and was forgiven.”

“She’ll be hoping nothing of the kind, Mistress Kertope,” replied
Duncan. “But if, as you say, God will be forgifing him,--which I do
not belief,--let that pe enough for ta greedy blackguard. Sure,
it matters but small whether poor Tuncan MacPhail will be forgifing
him or not. Anyhow, he must do without it, for he shall not haf
it. He is a tamn fillain and scounrel, and so she says,--with her
respecs to _you_, Mistress Kertope.”

His sightless eyes flashed with indignation; and perceiving it was
time to change the subject, the housekeeper turned to Malcolm.

“Could you bring me a nice mackerel or whiting for my lord’s
breakfast to-morrow morning, Malcolm?” she said.

“Certaintly, mem. I s’ be wi ye in guid time wi’ the best the sea’ll
gie me,” he answered.

“If I have the fish by nine o’clock, that will be early enough,”
she returned.

“I wadna like to wait sae lang for _my_ brakfast,” remarked Malcolm.

“You wouldn’t mind it much, if you waited asleep,” said Mrs Courthope.

“Can onybody sleep till sic a time o’ day as that?” exclaimed the
youth.

“You must remember my lord doesn’t go to bed for hours after you,
Malcolm.”

“An’ what can keep him up a’ that time? It’s no as gien he war
efter the herrin’, an’ had the win’ an’ the watter an’ the netfu’s
o’ waumlin craturs to haud him waukin’.”

“Oh! he reads and writes, and sometimes goes walking about the
grounds after everybody else is in bed,” said Mrs Courthope, “he
and his dog.”

“Well, I wad raither be up ear’,” said Malcolm; “a heap raither. I
like fine to be oot i’ the quaiet o’ the mornin’ afore the sun’s
up to set the din gaun; whan it’s a’ clear but no bricht--like
the back o’ a bonny sawmon; an’ air an’ watter an’ a’ luiks as
gien they war waitin’ for somethin’--quaiet, verra quaiet, but
no content.”

Malcolm uttered this long speech, and went on with more like it,
in the hope of affording time for the stormy waters of Duncan’s
spirit to assuage. Nor was he disappointed; for, if there was a
sound on the earth Duncan loved to hear, it was the voice of his
boy; and by degrees the tempest sank to repose, the gathered glooms
melted from his countenance, and the sunlight of a smile broke out.

“Hear to him!” he cried. “Her poy will be a creat pard some tay,
and sing pefore ta Stuart kings, when they come pack to Holyrood!”

Mrs Courthope had enough of poetry in her to be pleased with
Malcolm’s quiet enthusiasm, and spoke a kind word of sympathy with
the old man’s delight as she rose to take her leave. Duncan rose
also, and followed her to the door, making her a courtly bow, and
that just as she turned away.

“It’ll pe a coot ’oman, Mistress Kertope,” he said as he came back;
“and it’ll no pe to plame her for forgifing Glenlyon, for he did
not kill _her_ creat-crandmother. Put it’ll pe fery paad preeding to
request her nainsel, Tuncan MacPhail, to be forgifing ta rascal.
Only she’ll pe put a voman, and it’ll not pe knowing no petter to
her.--You’ll be minding you’ll be firing ta cun at six o’clock
exackly, Malcolm, for all she says; for my lord peing put shust
come home to his property, it might be a fex to him if tere was
any mistake so soon. Put inteed, I vonder he hasn’t been sending
for old Tuncan to be gifing him a song or two on ta peeps; for he’ll
pe hafing ta oceans of fery coot highland plood in his own feins;
and his friend, ta Prince of Wales, who has no more rights to it
than a maackerel fish, will pe wearing ta kilts at Holyrood. So
mind you pe firing ta cun at sax, my son.”

For some years, young as he was, Malcolm had hired himself to one
or other of the boat-proprietors of the Seaton or of Scaurnose, for
the herring-fishing--only, however, in the immediate neighbourhood,
refusing to go to the western islands, or any station whence
he could not return to sleep at his grandfather’s cottage. He had
thus on every occasion earned enough to provide for the following
winter, so that his grandfather’s little income as piper, and other
small returns, were accumulating in various concealments about the
cottage; for, in his care for the future, Duncan dreaded lest Malcolm
should buy things for him, without which, in his own sightless
judgment, he could do well enough.

Until the herring-season should arrive, however, Malcolm made a little
money by line-fishing; for he had bargained, the year before, with
the captain of a schooner for an old ship’s-boat, and had patched
and caulked it into a sufficiently serviceable condition. He sold
his fish in the town and immediate neighbourhood, where a good many
housekeepers favoured the handsome and cheery young fisherman.

He would now be often out in the bay long before it was time to call
his grandfather, in his turn to rouse the sleepers of Portlossie.
But the old man had as yet always waked about the right time, and
the inhabitants had never had any ground of complaint--a few
minutes one way or the other being of little consequence. He was
the cock which woke the whole yard: morning after morning his pipes
went crowing through the streets of the upper region, his music
ending always with his round. But after the institution of the
gun-signal, his custom was to go on playing where he stood until
he heard it, or to stop short in the midst of his round and his
liveliest _rêveillê_ the moment it reached his ear. Loath as he might
be to give over, that sense of good manners which was supreme in
every highlander of the old time, interdicted the fingering of a
note after the marquis’s gun had called aloud.

When Malcolm meant to go fishing, he always loaded the swivel the
night before, and about sunset the same evening he set out for that
purpose. Not a creature was visible on the border of the curving
bay except a few boys far off on the gleaming sands whence the tide
had just receded: they were digging for sand-eels--lovely little
silvery fishes--which, as every now and then the spade turned one
or two up, they threw into a tin pail for bait. But on the summit
of the long sand-hill, the lonely figure of a man was walking to
and fro in the level light of the rosy west; and as Malcolm climbed
the near end of the dune, it was turning far off at the other:
half-way between them was the embrasure with the brass swivel, and
there they met. Although he had never seen him before, Malcolm
perceived at once it must be Lord Lossie, and lifted his bonnet.
The marquis nodded and passed on, but the next moment, hearing the
noise of Malcolm’s proceedings with the swivel, turned and said--
“What are you about there with that gun, my lad?”

“I’m jist gauin’ to dicht her oot an’ lod her, my lord,” answered
Malcolm.

“And what next? You’re not going to fire the thing?”

“Ay--the morn’s mornin’, my lord.”

“What will that be for?”

“Ow, jist to wauk yer lordship.”

“Hm!” said his lordship, with more expression than articulation.

“Will I no lod her?” asked Malcolm, throwing down the ramrod, and
approaching the swivel, as if to turn the muzzle of it again into
the embrasure.

“Oh, yes! load her by all means. I don’t want to interfere with
any of your customs. But if that is your object, the means, I fear,
are inadequate.”

“It’s a comfort to hear that, my lord; for I canna aye be sure o’
my auld watch, an’ may weel be oot a five minutes or twa whiles.
Sae, in future, seem’ it’s o’ sic sma’ consequence to yer lordship,
I s’ jist let her aff whan it’s convenient. A feow minutes winna
maitter muckle to the bailie-bodies.”

There was something in Malcolm’s address that pleased Lord Lossie
--the mingling of respect and humour, probably--the frankness
and composure, perhaps. He was not self-conscious enough to be shy,
and was so free from design of any sort that he doubted the good
will of no one.

“What’s your name?” asked the marquis abruptly.

“Malcolm MacPhail, my lord.”

“MacPhail? I heard the name this very day! Let me see.”

“My gran’father’s the blin’ piper, my lord.”

“Yes, yes. Tell him I shall want him at the House. I left my own
piper at Ceanglas.”

“I’ll fess him wi’ me the morn, gien ye like, my lord, for I’ll
be ower wi’ some fine troot or ither, gien I haena the waur luck,
the morn’s mornin’: Mistress Courthope says she’ll be aye ready for
ane to fry to yer lordship’s brakfast. But I’m thinkin’ that’ll be
ower ear’ for ye to see him.”

“I’ll send for him when I want him. Go on with your brazen serpent
there, only mind you don’t give her too much supper.”

“Jist look at her ribs, my lord! _She_ winna rive!” was the youth’s
response; and the marquis was moving off with a smile, when Malcolm
called after him.

“Gien yer lordship likes to see yer ain ferlies, I ken whaur some
o’ them lie,” he said.

“What do you mean by _ferlies_?” asked the marquis.

“Ow! keeriosities, ye ken. For enstance, there’s some queer
caves alang the cost--twa or three o’ them afore ye come to the
Scaurnose. They say the water bude till ha’ howkit them ance upon
a time, an’ they maun hae been fu’ o’ partans, an’ lobsters, an’
their frien’s an’ neebours; but they’re heigh an’ dreigh noo, as the
fule said o’ his minister, an’ naething intill them but foumarts,
an’ otters, an’ sic like.”

“Well, well, my lad, we’ll see,” said his lordship kindly, and
turning once more, he resumed his walk.

“At yer lordship’s wull,” answered Malcolm in a low voice as he
lifted his bonnet and again bent to the swivel.

The next morning, he was rowing slowly along in the bay, when he
was startled by the sound of his grandfather’s pipes, wafted clear
and shrill on a breath of southern wind, from the top of the town.
He looked at his watch: it was not yet five o’clock. The expectation
of a summons to play at Lossie House, had so excited the old man’s
brain that he had waked long before his usual time, and Portlossie
must wake also. The worst of it was, that he had already, as Malcolm
knew from the direction of the sound, almost reached the end of
his beat, and must even now be expecting the report of the swivel,
until he heard which he would not cease playing, so long as there
was a breath in his body. Pulling, therefore, with all his might,
Malcolm soon ran his boat ashore, and in another instant the sharp
yell of the swivel rang among the rocks of the promontory. He was
still standing, lapped in a light reverie as he watched the smoke
flying seaward, when a voice, already well known to him, said,
close at his side:

“What _are_ you about with that horrid cannon?”

Malcolm started.

“Ye garred me loup, my leddy!” he returned with a smile and an
obeisance.

“You told me,” the girl went on emphatically, and as she spoke she
disengaged her watch from her girdle, “that you fired it at six
o’clock. It is not nearly six.”

“Didna ye hear the pipes, my leddy?” he rejoined.

“Yes, well enough; but a whole regiment of pipes can’t make it six
o’clock when my watch says ten minutes past five.”

“Eh, sic a braw watch!” exclaimed Malcolm. “What’s a’ thae bonny
white k-nots aboot the face o’ ’t?”

“Pearls,” she answered, in a tone that implied pity of his ignorance.

“Jist look at it aside mine!” he exclaimed in admiration, pulling
out his great old turnip.

“There!” cried the girl; “your own watch says only a quarter past
five.”

“Ow, ay! my leddy; I set it by the toon clock ’at hings i’ the window
o’ the Lossie Airms last nicht. But I maun awa’ an’ luik efter my
lines, or atween the deil an’ the dogfish my lord’ll fare ill.”

“You haven’t told me why you fired the gun,” she persisted.

Thus compelled, Malcolm had to explain that the motive lay in his
anxiety lest his grandfather should over-exert himself, seeing he
was subject to severe attacks of asthma.

“He could stop when he was tired,” she objected.

“Ay, gien his pride wad lat him,” answered Malcolm, and turned away
again, eager to draw his line.

“Have you a boat of your own?” asked the lady.

“Ay; yon’s her, doon on the shore yonner. Wad ye like a row? She’s
fine an’ quaiet.”

“Who? The boat?”

“The sea, my leddy.”

“Is your boat clean?”

“O’ a’ thing but fish. But na, it’s no fit for sic a bonny goon as
that. I winna lat ye gang the day, my leddy; but gien ye like to
be here the morn’s mornin’, I s’ be here at this same hoor, an’
hae my boat as clean ’s a Sunday sark.”

“You think more of my gown than of myself,” she returned.

“There’s no fear o’ yersel’, my leddy. Ye’re ower weel made to blaud
(_spoil_). But wae’s me for the goon or (_before_) it had been an hoor
i’ the boat the day!--no to mention the fish comin’ walopin’ ower
the gunnel ane efter the ither. But ’deed I _maun_ say good mornin’,
mem!”

“By all means. I don’t want to keep you a moment from your precious
fish.”

Feeling rebuked, without well knowing why, Malcolm accepted the
dismissal, and ran to his boat. By the time he had taken his oars,
the girl had vanished.

His line was a short one; but twice the number of fish he wanted
were already hanging from the hooks. It was still very early when
he reached the harbour. At home he found his grandfather waiting
for him, and his breakfast ready.

It was hard to convince Duncan that he had waked the royal burgh
a whole hour too soon. He insisted that, as he had never made such
a blunder before, he could not have made it now.

“It’s ta watch ’at’ll pe telling ta lies, Malcolm, my poy,” he said
thoughtfully. “She was once pefore.”

“But the sun says the same ’s the watch, daddy,” persisted Malcolm.

Duncan understood the position of the sun and what it signified,
as well as the clearest-eyed man in Port Lossie, but he could not
afford to yield.

“It was peing some conspeeracy of ta cursit Cawmills, to make her
loss her poor pension,” he said. “Put nefer you mind, Malcolm;
I’ll pe making up for ta plunder ta morrow mornin’. Ta coot peoples
shall haf teir sleeps a whole hour after tey ought to be at teir
works.”




                              CHAPTER IX.

                           THE SALMON-TROUT.


Malcolm walked up through the town with his fish, hoping to part
with some of the less desirable of them, and so lighten his basket,
before entering the grounds of Lossie House. But he had met with
little success, and was now approaching the town-gate, as they called
it, which closed a short street at right angles to the principal
one, when he came upon Mrs Catanach--on her knees, cleaning her
doorstep.

“Weel, Malcolm, what fish hae ye?” she said, without looking up.

“Hoo kent ye it was me, Mistress Catanach?” asked the lad.

“Kent it was you!” she repeated. “Gien there be but twa feet at
ance in ony street o’ Portlossie, I’ll tell ye whase heid’s abune
them, an’ my een steekit (_closed_).”

“Hoot! ye’re a witch, Mistress Catanach!” said Malcolm merrily.

“That’s as may be,” she returned, rising, and nodding mysteriously;
“I hae tauld ye nae mair nor the trowth. But what garred ye whup ’s
a’ oot o’ oor nakit beds by five o’clock i’ the mornin’, this
mornin’, man! That’s no what ye’re paid for.”

“Deed, mem, it was jist a mistak’ o’ my puir daddy’s. He had been
feart o’ sleepin’ ower lang, ye see, an’ sae had waukit ower sune.
I was oot efter the fish mysel’.”

“But ye fired the gun ’gen the chap (_before the stroke_) o’ five.”

“Ow, ay! I fired the gun. The puir man wod hae bursten himsel’ gien
I hadna.”

“Deil gien he _had_ bursten himsel’--the auld heelan’ sholt!”
exclaimed Mrs Catanach spitefully.

“Ye sanna even sic words to my gran’father, Mrs Catanach,” said
Malcolm with rebuke.

She laughed a strange laugh.

“_Sanna!_” she repeated contemptuously. “An’ wha’s _your_ gran’father,
that I sud tak tent (_heed_) hoo I wag my tongue ower _his_
richteousness?”

Then, with a sudden change of her tone to one of would-be friendliness--

“But what’ll ye be seekin’ for that bit sawmon-trooty, man?” she said.

As she spoke she approached his basket, and would have taken the
fish in her hands, but Malcolm involuntarily drew back.

“It’s gauin’ to the Hoose to my lord’s brakfast,” he said.

“Hoots! ye’ll jist lea’ the troot wi’ me.--Ye’ll be seekin’ a
saxpence for ’t, I reckon,” she persisted, again approaching the
basket.

“I tell ye, Mistress Catanach,” said Malcolm, drawing back now
in the fear that if she once had it she would not yield it again,
“it’s gauin’ up to the Hoose!”

“Hoots! there’s naebody there seen ’t yet. It’s new oot o’ the
watter.”

“But Mistress Courthope was doon last nicht, an’ wantit the best
I cud heuk.”

“Mistress Courthope! Wha cares for her? A mim, cantin’ auld body!
Gie _me_ the trootie, Ma’colm. Ye’re a bonny laad, an it s’ be the
better for ye.”

“Deed I cudna du ’t, Mistress Catanach--though I’m sorry to
disobleege ye. It’s bespoken, ye see. But there’s a fine haddie,
an’ a bonny sma’ coddie, an’ a goukmey (_gray gurnard_).”

“Gae ’wa’ wi’ yer haddies, an’ yer goukmeys! Ye sanna gowk _me_ wi’
them.”

“Weel, I wadna wonner,” said Malcolm, “gien Mrs Courthope wad like
the haddie tu, an’ maybe the lave o’ them as weel. Hers is a muckle
faimily to haud eatin’. I’ll jist gang to the Hoose first afore I
mak ony mair offers frae my creel.”

“Ye’ll lea’ the troot wi’ _me_,” said Mrs Catanach imperiously.

“Na; I canna du that. Ye maun see yersel’ ’at I canna.”

The woman’s face grew dark with anger.

“It s’ be the _waur_ for ye,” she cried.

“I’m no gauin’ to be fleyt (_frightened_) at ye. Ye’re no sic a witch
as that comes till, though ye _div_ ken a body’s fit upo’ the flags!
My blin’ luckie-deddy can du mair nor that!” said Malcolm, irritated
by her persistency, threats and evil looks.

“Daur ye _me_?” she returned, her pasty cheeks now red as fire, and
her wicked eyes flashing as she shook her clenched fist at him.

“What for no?” he answered coolly, turning his head back over his
shoulder, for he was already on his way to the gate.

“Ye s’ ken that, ye misbegotten funlin’!” shrieked the woman, and
waddled hastily into the house.

“What ails her?” said Malcolm to himself. “She micht ha’ seen ’at
I bude to gie Mrs Courthope the first offer.”

By a winding carriage-drive, through trees whose growth was stunted
by the sea-winds, which had cut off their tops as with a keen razor,
Malcolm made a slow descent, yet was soon shadowed by timber of
a more prosperous growth, rising as from a lake of the loveliest
green, spangled with starry daisies. The air was full of sweet
odours uplifted with the ascending dew, and trembled with a hundred
songs at once, for here was a very paradise for birds. At length
he came in sight of a long low wing of the house, and went to the
door that led to the kitchen. There a maid informed him that Mrs
Courthope was in the hall, and he had better take his basket there,
for she wanted to see him. He obeyed, and sought the main entrance.

The house was an ancient pile, mainly of two sides at right angles,
but with many gables, mostly having corbel steps--a genuine old
Scottish dwelling, small-windowed and gray, with steep slated roofs,
and many turrets, each with a conical top. Some of these turrets
rose from the ground, encasing spiral stone stairs; others were
but bartizans, their interiors forming recesses in rooms. They gave
the house something of the air of a French chateau, only it looked
stronger and far grimmer. Carved around some of the windows,
in ancient characters, were Scripture texts and antique proverbs.
Two time-worn specimens of heraldic zoology, in a state of fearful
and everlasting excitement, stood rampant and gaping, one on each
side of the hall-door, contrasting strangely with the repose of
the ancient house, which looked very like what the oldest part of
it was said to have been--a monastery. It had at the same time,
however, a somewhat warlike expression, wherein consisting it would
have been difficult to say; nor could it ever have been capable of
much defence, although its position in that regard was splendid. In
front was a great gravel-space, in the centre of which lay a huge
block of serpentine, from a quarry on the estate, filling the office
of goal, being the pivot, as it were, around which all carriages
turned.

On one side of the house was a great stone bridge, of lofty span,
stretching across a little glen, in which ran a brown stream spotted
with foam--the same that entered the frith beside the Seaton; not
muddy, however, for though dark it was clear--its brown being a
rich transparent hue, almost red, gathered from the peat-bogs of
the great moorland hill behind. Only a very narrow terrace-walk,
with battlemented parapet, lay between the back of the house, and
a precipitous descent of a hundred feet to this rivulet. Up its
banks, lovely with flowers and rich with shrubs and trees below,
you might ascend until by slow gradations you left the woods and
all culture behind, and found yourself, though still within the
precincts of Lossie House, on the lonely side of the waste hill,
a thousand feet above the sea.

The hall-door stood open, and just within hovered Mrs Courthope,
dusting certain precious things not to be handled by a housemaid.
This portion of the building was so narrow that the hall occupied
its entire width, and on the opposite side of it another door,
standing also open, gave a glimpse of the glen.

“Good morning, Malcolm,” said Mrs Courthope, when she turned and
saw whose shadow fell on the marble floor. “What have you brought
me?”

“A fine sawmon-troot, mem. But gien ye had hard hoo Mistress
Catanach flytit (_scolded_) at me ’cause I wadna gie ’t to her! You
wad hae thocht, mem, she was somethin’ no canny--the w’y ’at she
first beggit, an’ syne fleecht (_flattered_), an’ syne a’ but banned
an’ swore.”

“She’s a peculiar person, that, Malcolm. Those are nice whitings.
I don’t care about the trout. Just take it to her as you go back.”

“I doobt gien she’ll take it, mem. She’s an awfu’ vengefu’ cratur,
fowk says.”

“You remind me, Malcolm,” returned Mrs Courthope, “that I’m not at
ease about your grandfather. He is not in a Christian frame of mind
at all--and he is an old man too. If we don’t forgive our enemies,
you know, the Bible plainly tells us we shall not be forgiven
ourselves.”

“I’m thinkin’ it was a greater nor the Bible said that, mem,”
returned Malcolm, who was an apt pupil of Mr Graham. “But ye’ll be
meanin’ Cawmill o’ Glenlyon,” he went on with a smile. “It canna
maitter muckle to him whether my gran’father forgie him or no,
seein’ he’s been deid this hunner year.”

“It’s not Campbell of Glenlyon, it’s your grandfather I am anxious
about,” said Mrs Courthope. “Nor is it only Campbell of Glenlyon
he’s so fierce against, but all his posterity as well.”

“They dinna exist, mem. There’s no sic a bein’ o’ the face o’ the
yearth, as a descendant o’ _that_ Glenlyon.”

“It makes little difference, I fear,” said Mrs Courthope, who was
no bad logician. “The question isn’t whether or not there’s anybody
to forgive, but whether Duncan MacPhail is _willing_ to forgive.”

“That I do believe he is, mem; though he wad be as sair astonished
to hear ’t as ye are yersel’.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that, Malcolm.”

“I mean, mem, ’at a blin’ man, like my gran’father, canna ken himsel’
richt, seein’ he canna ken ither fowk richt. It’s by kennin’ ither
fowk ’at ye come to ken yersel’, mem--isna ’t noo?”

“Blindness surely doesn’t prevent a man from knowing other people.
He hears them, and he feels them, and indeed has generally more
kindness from them because of his affliction.”

“Frae some o’ them, mem; but it’s little kin’ness my gran’father
has expairienced frae Cawmill o’ Glenlyon, mem.”

“And just as little injury, I should suppose,” said Mrs Courthope.

“Ye’re wrang there, mem: a murdered mither maun be an unco skaith
to oye’s oye (_grandson’s grandson_). But supposin’ ye to be richt,
what I say’s to the pint for a’ that. I maun jist explain a wee.--
When I was a laddie at the schule, I was ance tell’t that ane o’
the loons was i’ the wye o’ mockin’ my gran’father. Whan I hard it,
I thocht I cud jist rive the hert o’ ’im, an’ set my teeth in ’t,
as the Dutch sodger did to the Spainiard. But whan I got a grip o’
’im, an’ the rascal turned up a frichtit kin’ o’ a dog-like face
to me, I jist could _not_ drive my steikit neive (_clenched fist_)
intill ’t. Mem, a face is an awfu’ thing! There’s aye something luikin’
oot o’ ’t ’at ye canna do as ye like wi’. But my gran’father never
saw a face in ’s life--lat alane Glenlyon’s ’at’s been dirt for
sae mony a year. Gien he war luikin’ intill the face o’ that Glenlyon
even, I do believe he wad no more drive his durk intill him----”

“Drive his dirk into him!” echoed Mrs Courthope, in horror at the
very disclaimer.

“No, I’m sure he wad _not_,” persisted Malcolm, innocently. “He micht
_not_ tak him oot o’ a pot (_hole in a river-bed_), but he wad neither
durk him nor fling him in. I’m no that sure he wadna even ran
(_reach_) him a han’. Ae thing I _am_ certain o’,--that by the time
he meets Glenlyon in haven, he’ll be no that far frae lattin’
by-ganes be by-ganes.”

“Meets Glenlyon in heaven!” again echoed Mrs Courthope, who knew
enough of the story to be startled at the taken-for-granted way
in which Malcolm spoke. “Is it probable that a wretch such as your
legends describe him should ever get there?”

“Ye dinna think God’s forgien him, than, mem?”

“I have no right to judge Glenlyon, or any other man; but, as you
ask me, I must say I see no likelihood of it.”

“Hoo can ye compleen o’ my puir blin’ gran’father for no forgiein’
him, than?--I hae ye there, mem!”

“He _may_ have repented, you know,” said Mrs Courthope feebly, finding
herself in less room than was comfortable.

“In sic case,” returned Malcolm, “the auld man ’ill hear a’ aboot
it the meenit he wins there; an’ I mak nae doobt he’ll du his best
to perswaud himsel’.”

“But what if he shouldn’t get there?” persisted Mrs Courthope, in
pure benevolence.

“Hoot toot, mem! I wonner to hear ye! A Cawmill latten in, an’ my
gran’father hauden oot! That wad be jist yallow-faced Willie ower
again![3]--Na, na; things gang anither gait up there. My gran’father’s
a rale guid man, for a’ ’at he has a wye o’ luikin’ at things ’at’s
mair efter the law nor the gospel.”

[3] Lord Stair, the prime mover in the Massacre of Glenco.

Apparently Mrs Courthope had come at length to the conclusion that
Malcolm was as much of a heathen as his grandfather, for in silence
she chose her fish, in silence paid him his price, and then with
only a sad _Good-day_, turned and left him.

He would have gone back by the river-side to the sea-gate, but
Mrs Courthope having waived her right to the fish in favour of Mrs
Catanach, he felt bound to give her another chance, and so returned
the way he had come.

“Here’s yer troot, Mistress Cat’nach,” he called aloud at her door,
which generally stood a little ajar. “Ye s’ hae ’t for the saxpence
--an’ a guid bargain tu, for ane o’ sic dimensions!”

As he spoke, he held the fish in at the door, but his eyes were
turned to the main street, whence the factor’s gig was at the moment
rounding the corner into that in which he stood; when suddenly the
salmon-trout was snatched from his hand, and flung so violently in
his face, that he staggered back into the road: the factor had to
pull sharply up to avoid driving over him. His rout rather than
retreat was followed by a burst of insulting laughter, and at the
same moment, out of the house rushed a large vile-looking mongrel,
with hair like an ill-used door-mat and an abbreviated nose, fresh
from the ashpit, caught up the trout, and rushed with it towards
the gate.

“That’s richt, my bairn!” shouted Mrs Catanach to the brute as he
ran: “tak it to Mrs Courthope. Tak it back wi’ my compliments.”

Amidst a burst of malign laughter she slammed her door, and from
a window sideways watched the young fisherman.

As he stood looking after the dog in wrath and bewilderment, the
factor, having recovered from the fit of merriment into which the
sudden explosion of events had cast him, and succeeded in quieting
his scared horse, said, slackening his reins to move on,

“You sell your fish too cheap, Malcolm.”

“The deil’s i’ the tyke,” rejoined Malcolm, and, seized at last by a
sense of the ludicrousness of the whole affair, burst out laughing, and
turned for the High Street.

“Na, na, laddie; the deil’s no awa’ in sic a hurry: he bed
(_remained_),” said a voice behind him.

Malcolm turned again and lifted his bonnet. It was Miss Horn, who
had come up from the Seaton.

“Did ye see yon, mem?” he asked.

“Ay, weel that, as I cam up the brae. Dinna stan’ there, laddie.
The jaud’ll be watchin’ ye like a cat watchin’ a mouse. I ken her!
She’s a cat-wuman, an’ I canna bide her. She’s no mowse (_safe to
touch_). _She’s_ in secrets mair nor guid, I s’ wad (_wager_). Come awa’
wi’ me; I want a bit fish. I can ill eat an’ her lyin’ deid I’ the
hoose--it winna gang ower; but I maun get some strength pitten
intill me afore the berial. It’s a God’s-mercy I wasna made wi’
feelin’s, or what wad hae come o’ me! Whaur’s the gude o’ greetin?
It’s no worth the saut i’ the watter o’ ’t, Ma’colm. It’s an ill
wardle, an micht be a bonny ane--gien ’t warna for ill men.”

“’Deed, mem! I’m thinkin’ mair aboot ill women, at this prasent,”
said Malcolm. “Maybe there’s no sic a thing, but yon’s unco like ane.
As bonny a sawmon-troot ’s ever ye saw, mem! It’s a’ I’m cawpable
o’ to haud ohn cursed that foul tyke o’ hers.”

“Hoot, laddie! haud yer tongue.”

“Ay will I. I’m na gaun to du ’t, ye ken. But sic a fine troot ’s
that--the verra ane ye wad hae likit, mem!”

“Never ye min’ the troot. There’s mair whaur that cam frae. What
anger’t her at ye?”

“Naething mair nor that I bude to gie Mistress Courthope the first
wale (_choice_) o’ my fish.”

“The wuman’s no worth yer notice, ’cep to haud oot o’ her gait,
laddie; an’ that ye had better luik till, for she’s no canny. Dinna
ye anger her again gien ye can help it. She has an ill luik, an’ I
canna bide her.--Hae, there’s yer siller. Jean, tak in this fish.”

During the latter part of the conversation they had been standing
at the door, while Miss Horn ferreted the needful pence from a
pocket under her gown. She now entered, but as Malcolm waited for
Jean to take the fish, she turned on the threshold, and said:

“Wad ye no like to see her, Ma’colm?--A guid frien’ she was to
you, sae lang ’s she was here,” she added after a short pause.

The youth hesitated.

“I never saw a corp i’ my life, mem, an’ I’m jist some feared,” he
said, after another brief silence.

“Hoot, laddie!” returned Miss Horn, in a somewhat offended tone.
--“That’ll be what comes o’ haein’ feelin’s. A bonny corp ’s the
bonniest thing in creation,--an’ that quaiet!--Eh! sic a heap
o’ them as there _has_ been sin’ Awbel,” she went on--“an ilk ane o’
them luikin, as gien there never had been anither but itsel’! Ye
_oucht_ to see a corp, Ma’colm. Ye’ll hae ’t to du afore ye’re ane
yersel’, an’ ye’ll never see a bonnier nor my Grizel.”

“Be ’t to yer wull, mem,” said Malcolm resignedly.

At once she led the way, and he followed her in silence up the
stair and into the dead-chamber.

There on the white bed lay the long, black, mis-shapen thing she had
called “the bit boxie:” and with a strange sinking at the heart,
Malcolm approached it.

Miss Horn’s hand came from behind him, and withdrew a covering;
there lay a vision lovely indeed to behold!--a fixed evanescence
--a listening stillness,--awful, yet with a look of entreaty,
at once resigned and unyielding, that strangely drew the heart
of Malcolm. He saw a low white forehead, large eye-balls upheaving
closed lids, finely modelled features of which the tightened skin
showed all the delicacy, and a mouth of suffering whereon the
vanishing Psyche had left the shadow of the smile with which she
awoke. The tears gathered in his eyes, and Miss Horn saw them.

“Ye maun lay yer han’ upo’ her, Ma’colm,” she said. “Ye sud aye
touch the deid, to haud ye ohn dreamed aboot them.”

“I wad be laith,” answered Malcolm; “she wad be ower bonny a dream
to miss.--Are they a’ like that?” he added, speaking under his
breath.

“Na, ’deed no!” replied Miss Horn, with mild indignation. “Wad ye
expec’ Bawby Cat’nach to luik like that, no?--I beg yer pardon for
mentionin’ the wuman, my dear,” she added with sudden divergence,
bending towards the still face, and speaking in a tenderly apologetic
tone; “I ken weel ye canna bide the verra name o’ her; but it s’ be
the last time ye s’ hear ’t to a’ eternity, my doo.” Then turning
again to Malcolm.--“Lay yer han’ upon her broo, I tell ye,” she
said.

“I daurna,” replied the youth, still under his breath; “my han’s
are no clean. I wadna for the warl’ touch her wi’ fishy han’s.”

The same moment, moved by a sudden impulse, whose irresistibleness
was veiled in his unconsciousness, he bent down, and put his lips
to the forehead.

As suddenly he started back erect with dismay on every feature.

“Eh, mem!” he cried in an agonised whisper, “she’s dooms cauld!”

“What sud she be?” retorted Miss Horn. “Wad ye hae her beeried
warm?”

He followed her from the room in silence, with the sense of a faint
sting on his lips. She led him into her parlour, and gave him a
glass of wine.

“Ye’ll come to the beerial upo’ Setterday?” she asked, half inviting,
half enquiring.

“I’m sorry to say, mem, ’at I canna,” he answered. “I promised
Maister Graham to tak the schule for him, an’ lat him gang.”

“Weel, weel! Mr Graham’s obleeged to ye, nae doobt, an’ we canna
help it. Gie my compliments to yer gran’father.”

“I’ll du that, mem. He’ll be sair pleased, for he’s unco gratefu’
for ony sic attention,” said Malcolm, and with the words took his
leave.




                              CHAPTER X.

                             THE FUNERAL.


That night the weather changed, and grew cloudy and cold. Saturday
morning broke drizzly and dismal. A north-east wind tore off the
tops of the drearily tossing billows. All was gray--enduring,
hopeless gray. Along the coast the waves kept roaring on the sands,
persistent and fateful; the Scaurnose was one mass of foaming white;
and in the caves still haunted by the tide, the bellowing was like
that of thunder.

Through the drizzle-shot wind and the fog blown in shreds from the
sea, a large number of the most respectable of the male population
of the burgh, clothed in Sunday gloom deepened by the crape on
their hats, made their way to Miss Horn’s, for, despite her rough
manners, she was held in high repute. It was only such as had reason
to dread the secret communication between closet and house-top that
feared her tongue; if she spoke loud, she never spoke false, or
backbit in the dark. What chiefly conduced however to the respect
in which she was held, was that she was one of their own people,
her father having died minister of the parish some twenty years
before.

Comparatively little was known of her deceased cousin, who had been
much of an invalid, and had mostly kept to the house, but all had
understood that Miss Horn was greatly attached to her; and it was
for the sake of the living mainly that the dead was thus honoured.

As the prayer drew to a close, the sounds of trampling and scuffling
feet bore witness that Watty Witherspail and his assistants were
carrying the coffin down the stair. Soon the company rose to follow
it, and trooping out, arranged themselves behind the hearse, which,
horrid with nodding plumes and gold and black panelling, drew away
from the door to make room for them.

Just as they were about to move off, to the amazement of the company
and the few onlookers who, notwithstanding the weather, stood
around to represent the commonalty, Miss Horn herself, solitary,
in a long black cloak and somewhat awful bonnet, issued, and made
her way through the mourners until she stood immediately behind
the hearse, by the side of Mr Cairns, the parish minister. The next
moment, Watty Witherspail, who had his station at the further side
of the hearse, arriving somehow at a knowledge of the apparition,
came round by the horses’ heads, and with a look of positive alarm
at the glaring infringement of time-honoured customs, addressed
her in half whispered tones expostulatory:

“Ye’ll never be thinkin’ o’ gauin’ yersel’, mem!” he said.

“What for no, Watty, I wad like to ken,” growled Miss Horn from
the vaulted depths of her bonnet.

“The like was never hard tell o’!” returned Watty, with the dismay
of an orthodox undertaker, righteously jealous of all innovation.

“It’ll _be_ to tell o’ hencefurth,” rejoined Miss Horn, who in her
risen anger spoke aloud, caring nothing who heard her. “Daur _ye_
preshume, Watty Witherspail,” she went on, “for no rizzon but that
I gae you the job, an’ unnertook to pay ye for ’t--an’ that far
abune its market value,--daur ye preshume, I say, to dictate to
_me_ what I’m to du an’ what I’m no to du anent the maitter in han’?
Think ye I hae been a mither to the puir yoong thing for sae mony
a year to lat her gang awa’ her lane at the last wi’ the likes o’
_you_ for company!”

“Hoot, mem! there’s the minister at yer elbuck.”

“I tell ye, ye’re but a wheen rouch men-fowk! There’s no a wuman
amon’ ye to haud things dacent, ’cep I gang mysel’. I’m no beggin’
the minister’s pardon aither. _I’ll gang._ I _maun_ see my puir Grizel
till her last bed.”

“I dread it may be too much for your feelings, Miss Horn,” said
the minister, who being an ambitious young man of lowly origin, and
very shy of the ridiculous, did not in the least wish her company.

“Feelin’s!” exclaimed Miss Horn, in a tone of indignant repudiation;
“I’m gauin’ to du what’s richt. I s’ _gang_, and gien ye dinna like
my company, Mr Cairns, ye can gang hame, an’ I s’ gang withoot ye.
Gien she sud happen to be luikin doon, she sanna see me wantin’
at the last o’ her. But I s’ mak’ no wark aboot it. I s’ no putt
mysel’ ower forret.”

And ere the minister could utter another syllable, she had left
her place to go to the rear. The same instant the procession began
to move, corpse-marshalled, towards the grave; and stepping aside,
she stood erect, sternly eyeing the irregular ranks of two and
three and four as they passed her, intending to bring up the rear
alone. But already there was one in that solitary position: with
bowed head, Alexander Graham walked last and single. The moment he
caught sight of Miss Horn, he perceived her design, and, lifting
his hat, offered his arm. She took it almost eagerly, and together
they followed in silence, through the gusty wind and monotonous
drizzle.

The school-house was close to the churchyard. An instant hush fell upon
the scholars when the hearse darkened the windows, lasting while the
horrible thing slowly turned to enter the iron gates,-- a deep hush,
as if a wave of the eternal silence which rounds all our noises had
broken across its barriers. The mad laird, who had been present all the
morning, trembled from head to foot; yet rose and went to the door with
a look of strange, subdued eagerness. When Miss Horn and Mr Graham had
passed into the churchyard, he followed.

With the bending of uncovered heads, in a final gaze of leave-taking,
over the coffin at rest in the bottom of the grave, all that belonged
to the ceremony of burial was fulfilled; but the two facts that no one
left the churchyard, although the wind blew and the rain fell, until
the mound of sheltering earth was heaped high over the dead, and that
the hands of many friends assisted with spade and shovel, did much to
compensate for the lack of a service.

As soon as this labour was ended, Mr Graham again offered his arm to
Miss Horn, who had stood in perfect calmness watching the whole with
her eagle’s-eyes. But although she accepted his offer, instead of
moving towards the gate, she kept her position in the attitude of a
hostess who will follow her friends. They were the last to go from the
churchyard. When they reached the school-house she would have had Mr
Graham leave her, but he insisted on seeing her home. Contrary to her
habit she yielded, and they slowly followed the retiring company.

“Safe at last!” half-sighed Miss Horn, as they entered the town--
her sole remark on the way.

Rounding a corner, they came upon Mrs Catanach standing at a
neighbour’s door, gazing out upon nothing, as was her wont at times,
but talking to some one in the house behind her. Miss Horn turned
her head aside as she passed. A look of low, malicious, half-triumphant
cunning lightened across the puffy face of the _howdy_. She cocked
one bushy eyebrow, setting one eye wide open, drew down the other
eyebrow, nearly closing the eye under it, and stood looking after
them until they were out of sight. Then turning her head over her
shoulder, she burst into a laugh, softly husky with the general
flabbiness of her corporeal conditions.

“What ails ye, Mistress Catanach?” cried a voice from within.

“Sic a couple ’s yon twasum wad mak!” she replied, again bursting
into gelatinous laughter.

“Wha, than? I canna lea’ my milk parritch to come an’ luik.”

“Ow! jist Meg Horn, the auld kail-runt, an’ Sanny Graham, the
stickit minister. I wad like weel to be at the beddin’ o’ them.
Eh! the twa heids o’ them upon ae bowster!”

And chuckling a low chuckle, Mrs Catanach moved for her own door.

As soon as the churchyard was clear of the funeral-train, the mad
laird peeped from behind a tall stone, gazed cautiously around him,
and then with slow steps came and stood over the new-made grave,
where the sexton was now laying the turf, “to mak a’ snod (_trim_)
for the Sawbath.”

“Whaur is she gane till?” he murmured to himself.--He could generally
speak better when merely uttering his thoughts without attempt at
communication.--“I dinna ken whaur I cam frae, an’ I dinna ken
whaur she’s gane till; but whan I gang mysel’, maybe I’ll ken baith.
--I dinna ken, I dinna ken, I dinna ken whaur I cam frae.”

Thus muttering, so lost in the thoughts that originated them
that he spoke the words mechanically, he left the churchyard and
returned to the school, where, under the superintendence of Malcolm,
everything had been going on in the usual Saturday fashion--the
work of the day which closed the week’s labours, being to repeat a
certain number of _questions_ of the Shorter Catechism (which term,
alas! included the answers), and next to buttress them with a number
of suffering caryatids, as it were--texts of Scripture, I mean,
first petrified and then dragged into the service. Before Mr
Graham returned, every one had done his part except Sheltie, who,
excellent at asking questions for himself, had a very poor memory
for the answers to those of other people, and was in consequence
often a _keepie-in_. He did not generally heed it much, however, for
the master was not angry with him on such occasions, and they gave
him an opportunity of asking in his turn a multitude of questions
of his own.

When he entered, he found Malcolm reading _The Tempest_ and Sheltie
sitting in the middle of the waste schoolroom, with his elbows on
the desk before him, and his head and the Shorter Catechism between
them; while in the farthest corner sat Mr Stewart, with his eyes
fixed on the ground, murmuring his answerless questions to himself.

“Come up, Sheltie,” said Mr Graham, anxious to let the boy go.
“Which of the questions did you break down in to-day?”

“Please, sir, I cudna rest i’ my grave till the resurrection,”
answered Sheltie, with but a dim sense of the humour involved in
the reply.

“‘What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?’” said
Mr Graham, putting the question with a smile.

“‘The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness,
and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still
united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection,’”
replied Sheltie, now with perfect accuracy; whereupon the master,
fearing the outbreak of a torrent of counter-questions, made haste
to dismiss him.

“That’ll do, Sheltie,” he said. “Run home to your dinner.”

Sheltie shot from the room like a shell from a mortar.

He had barely vanished when Mr Stewart rose and came slowly from
his corner, his legs appearing to tremble under the weight of his
hump, which moved fitfully up and down in his futile attempts to
utter the word _resurrection_. As he advanced, he kept heaving one
shoulder forward, as if he would fain bring his huge burden to
the front, and hold it out in mute appeal to his instructor; but
before reaching him he suddenly stopped, lay down on the floor on
his back, and commenced rolling from side to side, with moans and
complaints. Mr Graham interpreted the action into the question--
How was such a body as his to rest in its grave till the resurrection
--perched thus on its own back in the coffin? All the answer he
could think of was to lay hold of his hand, lift him, and point
upwards. The poor fellow shook his head, glanced over his shoulder
at his hump, and murmured “Heavy, heavy!” seeming to imply that it
would be hard for him to rise and ascend at the last day.

He had doubtless a dim notion that all his trouble had to do with
his hump.




                              CHAPTER XI.

                            THE OLD CHURCH.


The next day, the day of the Resurrection, rose glorious from its
sepulchre of sea-fog and drizzle. It had poured all night long,
but at sunrise the clouds had broken and scattered, and the air was
the purer for the cleansing rain, while the earth shone with that
peculiar lustre which follows the weeping which has endured its
appointed night. The larks were at it again, singing as if their
hearts would break for joy as they hovered in brooding exultation
over the song of the future; for their nests beneath hoarded a wealth
of larks for summers to come. Especially about the old church--
half-buried in the ancient trees of Lossie House,--the birds that
day were jubilant; their throats seemed too narrow to let out the
joyful air that filled all their hollow bones and quills: they sang
as if they must sing, or choke with too much gladness. Beyond the
short spire and its shining cock, rose the balls and stars and
arrowy vanes of the House, glittering in gold and sunshine.

The inward hush of the Resurrection, broken only by the prophetic
birds, the poets of the groaning and travailing creation, held time
and space as in a trance; and the centre from which radiated both
the hush and the carolling expectation seemed to Alexander Graham
to be the churchyard in which he was now walking in the cool of the
morning. It was more carefully kept than most Scottish church-yards,
and yet was not too trim. Nature had a word in the affair--
was allowed her part of mourning, in long grass and moss and the
crumbling away of stone. The wholesomeness of decay, which both
in nature and humanity is but the miry road back to life, was not
unrecognized here; there was nothing of the hideous attempt to hide
death in the garments of life. The master walked about gently, now
stopping to read some well-known inscription and ponder for a moment
over the words; and now wandering across the stoneless mounds,
content to be forgotten by all but those who loved the departed. At
length he seated himself on a slab by the side of the mound that
rose but yesterday: it was sculptured with symbols of decay--
needless surely where the originals lay about the mouth of every
newly opened grave, and as surely ill-befitting the precincts of
a church whose indwelling gospel is of life victorious over death!

“What are these stones,” he said to himself, “but monuments to
oblivion? They are not memorials of the dead, but memorials of the
forgetfulness of the living. How vain it is to send a poor forsaken
name, like the title page of a lost book, down the careless stream
of time! Let me serve my generation, and let God remember me!”

The morning wore on; the sun rose higher and higher. He drew from
his pocket the _Nosce Teipsum_ of Sir John Davies, and was still
reading, in quiet enjoyment of the fine logic of the lawyer-poet,
when he heard the church key, in the trembling hand of Jonathan Auld,
the sexton, jar feebly battling with the reluctant lock. Soon the
people began to gather, mostly in groups and couples. At length
came solitary Miss Horn, whom the neighbours, from respect to her
sorrow, had left to walk alone. But Mr Graham went to meet her,
and accompanied her into the church.

It was a cruciform building, as old as the vanished monastery, and
the burial place of generations of noble blood; the dust of royalty
even lay under its floor. A knight of stone reclined cross-legged
in a niche with an arched Norman canopy in one of the walls, the
rest of which was nearly encased in large tablets of white marble,
for at his foot lay the ashes of barons and earls whose title was
extinct, and whose lands had been inherited by the family of Lossie.
Inside as well as outside of the church the ground had risen with
the dust of generations, so that the walls were low; and heavy
galleries having been erected in parts, the place was filled with
shadowy recesses and haunted with glooms. From a window in the
square pew where he sat, so small and low that he had to bend his
head to look out of it, the schoolmaster could see a rivulet of
sunshine, streaming through between two upright grave-stones, and
glorifying the long grass of a neglected mound that lay close to
the wall under the wintry drip from the eaves: when he raised his
head, the church looked very dark. The best way there to preach
the Resurrection, he thought, would be to contrast the sepulchral
gloom of the church, its dreary psalms and drearier sermons, with
the sunlight on the graves, the lark-filled sky, and the wind blowing
where it listed. But although the minister was a young man of the
commonest order, educated to the church that he might eat bread,
hence a mere willing slave to the beck of his lord and master, the
patron, and but a parrot in the pulpit, the schoolmaster not only
endeavoured to pour his feelings and desires into the mould of his
prayers, but listened to the sermon with a countenance that revealed
no distaste for the weak and unsavoury broth ladled out to him to
nourish his soul withal. When however the _service_--though whose
purposes the affair could be supposed to _serve_ except those of Mr
Cairns himself, would have been a curious question--was over,
he did breathe a sigh of relief; and when he stepped out into the
sun and wind which had been shining and blowing all the time of
the dreary ceremony, he wondered whether the larks might not have
had the best of it in the God-praising that had been going on for
two slow-paced hours. Yet, having been so long used to the sort of
thing, he did not mind it half so much as his friend Malcolm, who
found the Sunday observances an unspeakable weariness to both flesh
and spirit.

On the present occasion, however, Malcolm did not find the said
observances dreary, for he observed nothing but the vision which
radiated from the dusk of the small gallery forming Lossie pew,
directly opposite the Norman canopy and stone crusader. Unconventional,
careless girl as Lady Florimel had hitherto shown herself to him,
he saw her sit that morning like the proudest of her race, alone,
and, to all appearance, unaware of a single other person’s being
in the church besides herself. She manifested no interest in what
was going on, nor indeed felt any--how could she?--never parted
her lips to sing; sat during the prayer; and throughout the
sermon seemed to Malcolm not once to move her eyes from the carved
crusader. When all was over, she still sat motionless--sat until
the last old woman had hobbled out. Then she rose, walked slowly from
the gloom of the church, flashed into the glow of the churchyard,
gleamed across it to a private door in the wall, which a servant
held for her, and vanished. If a moment after, the notes of a merry
song invaded the ears of those who yet lingered, who could dare
suspect that proudly sedate damsel thus suddenly breaking the ice
of her public behaviour?

For a mere school-girl she had certainly done the lady’s part well.
What she wore I do not exactly know; nor would it perhaps be well
to describe what might seem grotesque to such prejudiced readers
as have no judgment beyond the fashions of the day. But I will not
let pass the opportunity of reminding them how sadly old-fashioned
we of the present hour also look in the eyes of those equally
infallible judges who have been in dread procession towards us ever
since we began to be--our posterity--judges who perhaps will
doubt with a smile whether we even knew what love was, or ever had
a dream of the grandeur they are on the point of grasping. But at
least bethink yourselves, dear posterity: we have not ceased because
you have begun.

Out of the church the blind Duncan strode with long, confident
strides. He had no staff to aid him, for he never carried one when
in his best clothes; but he leaned proudly on Malcolm’s arm, if
one who walked so erect could be said to lean. He had adorned his
bonnet the autumn before with a sprig of the large purple heather,
but every bell had fallen from it, leaving only the naked spray,
pitiful analogue of the whole withered exterior of which it formed
part. His sporran, however, hid the stained front of his kilt,
and his Sunday coat had been new within ten years--the gift of
certain ladies of Portlossie, some of whom, to whose lowland eyes
the kilt was obnoxious, would have added a pair of trowsers, had
not Miss Horn stoutly opposed them, confident that Duncan would
regard the present as an insult. And she was right; for rather than
wear anything instead of the philibeg, Duncan would have plaited
himself one with his own blind fingers out of an old sack. Indeed,
although the _trews_ were never at any time unknown in the Highlands,
Duncan had always regarded them as effeminate, and especially in
his lowland exile would have looked upon the wearing of them as a
disgrace to his highland birth.

“Tat wass a fery coot sairmon to-day, Malcolm,” he said, as they
stepped from the churchyard upon the road.

Malcolm, knowing well whither conversation on the subject would lead,
made no reply. His grandfather, finding him silent, iterated his
remark, with the addition--

“Put how could it pe a paad one, you’ll pe thinking, my poy, when he’d
pe hafing such a text to keep him straight.”

Malcolm continued silent, for a good many people were within hearing,
whom he did not wish to see amused with the remarks certain to follow
any he could make. But Mr Graham, who happened to be walking near
the old man on the other side, out of pure politeness made a partial
response.

“Yes, Mr MacPhail,” he said, “it was a grand text.”

“Yes, and it wass’ll pe a cran’ sairmon,” persisted Duncan. “‘Fenchence
is mine--I will repay.’ Ta Lord loves fenchence. It’s a fine thing,
fenchence. To make ta wicked know tat tey’ll pe peing put men! Yes; ta
Lord will slay ta wicked. Ta Lord will gif ta honest man fenchence upon
his enemies. It wass a cran’ sairmon!”

“Don’t you think vengeance a very dreadful thing, Mr MacPhail?”
said the schoolmaster.

“Yes, for ta von tat’ll pe in ta wrong--I wish ta fenchence was
mine!” he added with a loud sigh.

“But the Lord doesn’t think any of _us_ fit to be trusted with it,
and so keeps it to himself, you see.”

“Yes, and tat’ll pe pecause it’ll pe too coot to be gifing to another.
And some people would be waik of heart, and be letting teir enemies co.”

“I suspect it’s for the opposite reason, Mr MacPhail:--we would go much
too far, making no allowances, causing the innocent to suffer along
with the guilty, neither giving fair play nor avoiding cruelty,--and
indeed----”

“No fear!” interrupted Duncan eagerly,--“no fear, when ta wrong wass as
larch as Morven!”

In the sermon there had not been one word as to St Paul’s design in
quoting the text. It had been but a theatrical setting forth of the
vengeance of God upon sin, illustrated with several common tales of
the discovery of murder by strange means--a sermon after Duncan’s own
heart; and nothing but the way in which he now snuffed the wind with
head thrown back and nostrils dilated, could have given an adequate
idea of how much he enjoyed the recollection of it.

Mr Graham had for many years believed that he must have some personal
wrongs to brood over,--wrongs, probably, to which were to be attributed
his loneliness and exile; but of such Duncan had never spoken, uttering
no maledictions except against the real or imagined foes of his
family.[4]

[4] What added to the likelihood of Mr Graham’s conjecture was the
fact, well enough known to him, though to few lowlanders besides,
that revenge is not a characteristic of the Gael. Whatever instances
of it may have appeared, and however strikingly they may have been
worked up in fiction, such belong to the individual and not to the
race. A remarkable proof of this occurs in the history of the family
of Glenco itself. What remained of it after the massacre in 1689, rose
in 1745, and joined the forces of Prince Charles Edward. Arriving in
the neighbourhood of the residence of Lord Stair, whose grandfather
had been one of the chief instigators of the massacre, the prince took
special precautions lest the people of Glenco should wreak inherited
vengeance on the earl. But they were so indignant at being supposed
capable of visiting on the innocent the guilt of their ancestors, that
it was with much difficulty they were prevented from forsaking the
standard of the prince, and returning at once to their homes. Perhaps
a yet stronger proof is the fact, fully asserted by one Gaelic scholar
at least, that their literature contains nothing to foster feelings of
revenge.

The master placed so little value on any possible results of mere
argument, and had indeed so little faith in any words except such as
came hot from the heart, that he said no more, but, with an invitation
to Malcolm to visit him in the evening, wished them good day, and
turned in at his own door.

The two went slowly on towards the sea-town. The road was speckled
with home-goers, single and in groups, holding a quiet Sunday pace to
their dinners. Suddenly Duncan grasped Malcolm’s arm with the energy of
perturbation, almost of fright, and said in a loud whisper:

“Tere’ll be something efil not far from her, Malcolm, my son! Look
apout, look apout, and take care how you’ll pe leading her.”

Malcolm looked about, and replied, pressing Duncan’s arm, and speaking
in a low voice, far less audible than his whisper,

“There’s naebody near, daddy--naebody but the howdie-wife.”

“What howdie-wife do you mean, Malcolm?”

“Hoot! Mistress Catanach, ye ken. Dinna lat her hear ye.”

“I had a feeshion, Malcolm--one moment, and no more; ta darkness closed
arount it: I saw a ped, Malcolm, and----”

“Wheesht, wheesht; daddy!” pleaded Malcolm importunately. “She hears
ilka word ye’re sayin’. She’s awfu’ gleg, and she’s as poozhonous as an
edder. Haud yer tongue, daddy; for guid-sake haud yer tongue.”

The old man yielded, grasping Malcolm’s arm, and quickening his pace,
though his breath came hard, as through the gathering folds of asthma.
Mrs Catanach also quickened her pace, and came gliding along the grass
by the side of the road, noiseless as the adder to which Malcolm had
likened her, and going much faster than she seemed. Her great round
body looked a persistent type of her calling, and her arms seemed to
rest in front of her as upon a ledge. In one hand she carried a small
Bible, round which was folded her pocket-handkerchief, and in the other
a bunch of southern-wood and rosemary. She wore a black silk gown, a
white shawl, and a great straw bonnet with yellow ribbons in huge bows,
and looked the very pattern of Sunday respectability; but her black
eyebrows gloomed ominous, and an evil smile shadowed about the corners
of her mouth as she passed without turning her head or taking the least
notice of them. Duncan shuddered, and breathed yet harder, but seemed
to recover as she increased the distance between them. They walked the
rest of the way in silence, however; and even after they reached home,
Duncan made no allusion to his late discomposure.

“What was ’t ye thocht ye saw, as we cam frae the kirk, daddy?” asked
Malcolm when they were seated at their dinner of broiled mackerel and
boiled potatoes.

“In other times she’ll pe hafing such feeshions often, Malcolm, my
son,” he returned, avoiding an answer. “Like other pards of her race
she would pe seeing--in the speerit, where old Tuncan _can_ see. And
she’ll pe telling you, Malcolm--peware of tat voman; for ta voman was
thinking pad thoughts; and tat will pe what make her shutter and shake,
my son, as she’ll pe coing py.”




                             CHAPTER XII.

                            THE CHURCHYARD.


On Sundays, Malcolm was always more or less annoyed by the obtrusive
presence of his arms and legs, accompanied by a vague feeling that,
at any moment, and no warning given, they might, with some insane
and irrepressible flourish, break the Sabbath on their own account,
and degrade him in the eyes of his fellow-townsmen, who seemed all
silently watching how he bore the restraints of the holy day. It
must be conceded, however, that the discomfort had quite as much
to do with his Sunday clothes as with the Sabbath-day, and that
it interfered but little with an altogether peculiar calm which
appeared to him to belong in its own right to the Sunday, whether
its light flowed in the sunny cataracts of June, or oozed through
the spongy clouds of November. As he walked again to the Alton,
or Old Town in the evening, the filmy floats of white in the lofty
blue, the droop of the long dark grass by the side of the
short-brown corn, the shadows pointing like all lengthening shadows
towards the quarter of hope, the yellow glory filling the air and
paling the green below, the unseen larks hanging aloft--like
air-pitcher-plants that over-flowed in song--like electric jars
emptying themselves of the sweet thunder of bliss in the flashing
of wings and the trembling of melodious throats; these were indeed
of the summer but the cup of rest had been poured out upon them;
the Sabbath brooded like an embodied peace over the earth, and
under its wings they grew sevenfold peaceful--with a peace that
might be felt, like the hand of a mother pressed upon the half-sleeping
child. The rusted iron cross on the eastern gable of the
old church stood glowing lustreless in the westering sun; while the
gilded vane, whose business was the wind, creaked radiantly this
way and that, in the flaws from the region of the sunset: its shadow
flickered soft on the new grave, where the grass of the wounded
sod was drooping. Again seated on a neighbour stone, Malcolm found
his friend.

“See,” said the schoolmaster as the fisherman sat down beside him,
“how the shadow from one grave stretches like an arm to embrace
another! In this light the churchyard seems the very birthplace of
shadows: see them flowing out of the tombs as from fountains, to
overflow the world! Does the morning or the evening light suit such
a place best, Malcolm?”

The pupil thought for a while.

“The evenin’ licht, sir,” he answered at length; “for ye see the
sun’s deein’ like, an’ deith’s like a fa’in asleep, an’ the grave’s
the bed, an’ the sod’s the bed-claes, an’ there’s a lang nicht to
the fore.”

“Are ye sure o’ that, Malcolm?”

“It’s the wye folk thinks an’ says aboot it, sir.”

“Or maybe doesna think, an’ only says?”

“Maybe, sir; I dinna ken.”

“Come here, Malcolm,” said Mr Graham, and took him by the arm, and
led him towards the east end of the church, where a few tombstones
were crowded against the wall, as if they would press close to a
place they might not enter.

“Read that,” he said, pointing to a flat stone, where every hollow
letter was shown in high relief by the growth in it of a lovely
moss. The rest of the stone was rich in gray and green and brown
lichens, but only in the letters grew the bright moss; the inscription
stood as it were in the hand of nature herself--“_He is not here;
he is risen._”

While Malcolm gazed, trying to think what his master would have
him think, the latter resumed.

“If he is risen--if the sun is up, Malcolm--then the morning and
not the evening is the season for the place of tombs; the morning
when the shadows are shortening and separating, not the evening
when they are growing all into one. I used to love the churchyard
best in the evening, when the past was more to me than the future;
now I visit it almost every bright summer morning, and only
occasionally at night.”

“But, sir, isna deith a dreidfu’ thing?” said Malcolm.

“That depends on whether a man regards it as his fate, or as the
will of a perfect God. Its obscurity is its dread; but if God be
light, then death itself must be full of splendour--a splendour
probably too keen for our eyes to receive.”

“But there’s the deein’ itsel’: isna that fearsome? It’s _that_ I
wad be fleyed at.”

“I don’t see why it should be. It’s the want of a God that makes
it dreadful, and _you_ will be greatly to blame, Malcolm, if you
haven’t found your God by the time you have to die.”

They were startled by a gruff voice near them. The speaker was
hidden by a corner of the church.

“Ay, she’s weel happit (_covered_),” it said. “But a grave never
luiks richt wantin’ a stane, an’ her auld cousin wad hear o’ nane
bein’ laid ower _her_. I said it micht be set up at her heid, whaur
she wad never fin’ the weicht o’ ’t; but na, na! nane o’ ’t for
_her_! She’s ane ’at maun tak her ain gait, say the ither thing wha
likes.”

It was Watty Witherspail who spoke--a thin shaving of a man,
with a deep, harsh, indeed startling voice.

“An’ what ailed her at a stane?” returned the voice of Jonathan
Auldbuird, the sexton. “--Nae doobt it wad be the expense?”

“Amna I tellin’ ye what it was? Deil a bit o’ the expense cam intill
the calcalation! The auld maiden’s nane sae close as fowk ’at disna
ken her wad mak her oot. _I_ ken her weel. She wadna hae a stane
laid upon her as gien she wanted to haud her doon, puir thing! She
said, says she, ‘The yerd’s eneuch upo’ the tap o’ her, wantin’
that!’”

“It micht be some sair, she wad be thinkin’ doobtless, for sic a
waik worn cratur to lift whan the trump was blawn,” said the sexton,
with the feeble laugh of one who doubts the reception of his wit.

“Weel, I div whiles think,” responded Watty,--but it was impossible
from his tone to tell whether or not he spoke in earnest,--“’at
maybe my boxies _is_ a wheen ower weel made for the use they’re
pitten till. They sudna be that ill to rive--gien a’ be true ’at
the minister says. Ye see, we dinna ken whan that day may come,
an’ there may na be time for the wat an’ the worm to ca (_drive_)
the boords apairt.”

“Hoots, man! it’s no _your_ lang nails nor yet yer heidit screws
’ll haud doon the redeemt, gien the jeedgement war the morn’s mornin’,”
said the sexton; “an’ for the lave, they wad be glaid eneuch to
bide whaur they are; but they’ll a’ be howkit oot,--fear na ye
that.”

“The Lord grant a blessed uprisin’ to you an’ me, Jonathan, at that
day!” said Watty, in the tone of one who felt himself uttering a
more than ordinarily religious sentiment; and on the word followed
the sound of their retreating footsteps.

“How closely together may come the solemn and the grotesque! the
ludicrous and the majestic!” said the schoolmaster. “Here, to us
lingering in awe about the doors beyond which lie the gulfs of the
unknown--to our very side come the wright and the grave-digger
with their talk of the strength of coffins and the judgment of the
living God!”

“I hae whiles thoucht mysel’, sir,” said Malcolm, “it was gey
strange-like to hae a wuman o’ the mak o’ Mistress Catanach sittin’ at
the receipt o’ bairns, like the gate-keeper o’ the ither warl’, wi’ the
hasp o’ ’t in her han’: it doesna promise ower weel for them ’at she
lats in. An’ noo ye hae pitten ’t intill my heid that there’s Watty
Witherspail an’ Jonathan Auldbuird for the porters to open an’ lat a’
that’s left o’ ’s oot again! Think o’ sic like haein’ sic a han’ in sic
solemn maitters!”

“Indeed some of us have strange porters,” said Mr Graham, with a smile,
“both to open to us and to close behind us! yet even in them lies the
human nature, which, itself the embodiment of the unknown, wanders out
through the gates of mystery, to wander back, it may be, in a manner
not altogether unlike that by which it came.”

In contemplative moods, the schoolmaster spoke in a calm and loftily
sustained style of book-English--quite another language from that
he used when he sought to rouse the consciences of his pupils, and
strangely contrasted with that in which Malcolm kept up his side of the
dialogue.

“I houp, sir,” said the latter, “it’ll be nae sort o’ a celestial
Mistress Catanach ’at’ll be waitin’ for me o’ the ither side; nor
yet for my puir daddy, wha cud ill bide bein’ wamled aboot upo’
_her_ knee.”

Mr Graham laughed outright.

“If there be one to act the nurse,” he answered, “I presume there
will be one to take the mother’s part too.”

“But speakin’ o’ the grave, sir,” pursued Malcolm, “I wuss ye cud
drop a word ’at micht be o’ some comfort to my daddy. It’s plain to
me, frae words he lats fa’ noo an’ than, that, instead o’ lea’in’
the warl’ ahint him whan he dees, he thinks to lie smorin’ an’
smocherin’ i’ the mools, clammy an’ weet, but a’ there, an’ trimlin’
at the thocht o’ the suddent awfu’ roar an’ din o’ the brazen
trumpet o’ the archangel. I wuss ye wad luik in an’ say something
till him some nicht. It’s nae guid mentionin’ ’t to the minister;
he wad only gie a lauch an’ gang awa’. An’ gien ye cud jist slide
in a word aboot forgiein’ his enemies, sir! I made licht o’ the
maitter to Mistress Courthope, ’cause she only maks him waur. She
does weel wi’ what the minister pits intill her, but she has little
o’ her ain to mix ’t up wi’, an’ sae has but sma’ weicht wi’ the
likes o’ my gran’father. Only ye winna lat him think ye called on
purpose.”

They walked about the churchyard until the sun went down in what Mr
Graham called the grave of his endless resurrection--the clouds
on the one side bearing all the pomp of his funeral, the clouds on
the other all the glory of his uprising; and when now the twilight
trembled filmy on the borders of the dark, the master once more
seated himself beside the new grave, and motioned to Malcolm to
take his place beside him: there they talked and dreamed together
of the life to come, with many wanderings and returns; and little
as the boy knew of the ocean-depths of sorrowful experience in the
bosom of his companion whence floated up the breaking bubbles of
rainbow-hued thought, his words fell upon his heart--not to be
provender for the birds of flitting fancy and airy speculation,
but the seed--it might be decades ere it ripened--of a coming
harvest of hope. At length the master rose and said,--

“Malcolm, I’m going in: I should like you to stay here half an hour
alone, and then go straight home to bed.”

For the master believed in solitude and silence. Say rather, he
believed in God. What the youth might think, feel, or judge, he could
not tell; but he believed that when the Human is still, the Divine
speaks to it, because it is its own.

Malcolm consented willingly. The darkness had deepened, the graves
all but vanished; an old setting moon appeared, boatlike over
a great cloudy chasm, into which it slowly sank; blocks of cloud,
with stars between, possessed the sky; all nature seemed thinking
about death; a listless wind began to blow, and Malcolm began to
feel as if he were awake too long, and _ought_ to be asleep--as
if he were out in a dream--a dead man that had risen too soon or
lingered too late--so lonely, so forsaken! The wind, soft as it
was, seemed to blow through his very soul. Yet something held him,
and his half hour was long over when he left the churchyard.

As he walked home, the words of a German poem, a version of which
Mr Graham had often repeated to him, and once more that same night,
kept ringing in his heart:


  Uplifted is the stone,
    And all mankind arisen!
  We men remain thine own,
    And vanished is our prison!
  What bitterest grief can stay
    Before thy golden cup,
  When earth and life give way,
    And with our Lord we sup!

  To the marriage Death doth call.
    The maidens are not slack;
  The lamps are burning all--
    Of oil there is no lack.
  Afar I hear the walking
    Of thy great marriage throng!
  And hark! the stars are talking
    With human tone and tongue!

  Courage! for life is hasting
    To endless life away;
  The inner fire, unwasting,
    Transfigures our dull clay!
  See the stars melting, sinking,
    In life wine, golden bright!
  We, of the splendour drinking,
    Shall grow to stars of light.

  Lost, lost are all our losses;
    Love set for ever free;
  The full life heaves and tosses
    Like an eternal sea!
  One endless living story!
    One poem spread abroad!
  And the sun of all our glory
    Is the countenance of God.




                             CHAPTER XIII.

                        THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE.


The next morning rose as lovely as if the mantle of the departing
Resurrection-day had fallen upon it. Malcolm rose with it, hastened
to his boat, and pulled out into the bay for an hour or two’s
fishing. Nearly opposite the great conglomerate rock at the western
end of the dune, called the Bored Craig (_Perforated Crag_) because
of a large hole that went right through it, he began to draw in his
line. Glancing shoreward as he leaned over the gunwale, he spied
at the foot of the rock, near the opening, a figure in white,
seated, with bowed head. It was of course the mysterious lady,
whom he had twice before seen thereabout at this unlikely if not
untimely hour; but with yesterday fresh in his mind, how could
he fail to see in her an angel of the resurrection waiting at the
sepulchre to tell the glad news that the Lord was risen?

Many were the glances he cast shoreward as he re-baited his line,
and, having thrown it again into the water, sat waiting until it
should be time to fire the swivel. Still the lady sat on, in her
whiteness a creature of the dawn, without even lifting her head.
At length, having added a few more fishes to the little heap in
the bottom of his boat, and finding his watch bear witness that
the hour was at hand, he seated himself on his thwart, and rowed
lustily to the shore, his bosom filled with the hope of yet another
sight of the lovely face, and another hearing of the sweet English
voice and speech. But the very first time he turned his head to
look, he saw but the sloping foot of the rock sink bare into the
shore. No white-robed angel sat at the gate of the resurrection; no
moving thing was visible on the far-vacant sands. When he reached
the top of the dune, there was no living creature beyond but a few
sheep feeding on the thin grass. He fired the gun, rowed back to
the Seaton, ate his breakfast, and set out to carry the best of
his fish to the House.

The moment he turned the corner of her street, he saw Mrs Catanach
standing on her threshold with her arms akimbo; although she was
always tidy, and her house spotlessly trim, she yet seemed forever
about the door, on the outlook at least, if not on the watch.

“What hae ye in yer bit basket the day, Ma’colm?” she said, with
a peculiar smile, which was not sweet enough to restore vanished
confidence.

“Naething guid for dogs,” answered Malcolm, and was walking past.

But she made a step forward, and, with a laugh meant to indicate
friendly amusement, said,

“Let’s see what’s intill ’t, ony gait (_anyhow_).--The doggie’s awa
on ’s traivels the day.”

“’Deed, Mistress Catanach,” persisted Malcolm, “I canna say I like
to hae my ain fish flung i’ my face, nor yet to see ill-faured
tykes rin awa’ wi’ ’t afore my verra een.”

After the warning given him by Miss Horn, and the strange influence
her presence had had on his grandfather, Malcolm preferred keeping
up a negative quarrel with the woman.

“Dinna ca’ ill names,” she returned: “my dog wad tak it waur to be
ca’d an ill-faured tyke, nor to hae fish flung in _his_ face. Lat’s
see what’s i’ yer basket, I say.”

As she spoke, she laid her hand on the basket, but Malcolm drew
back, and turned away towards the gate.

“Lord safe us!” she cried, with a yelling laugh; “ye’re no feared
at an auld wife like me?”

“I dinna ken; maybe ay an’ maybe no--I wadna say. But I dinna
want to hae onything to du wi’ ye, mem.”

“Ma’colm MacPhail,” said Mrs Catanach, lowering her voice to
a hoarse whisper, while every trace of laughter vanished from her
countenance, “ye hae had mair to du wi’ me nor ye ken, an’ aiblins
ye’ll hae mair yet nor ye can weel help. Sae caw canny, my man.”

“Ye may hae the layin’ o’ me oot,” said Malcolm, “but it sanna be
wi’ my wull; an’ gien I hae ony life left i’ me, I s’ gie ye a fleg
(_fright_).”

“Ye may get a war yersel’: I hae frichtit the deid afore noo. Sae
gang yer wa’s to Mistress Coorthoup, wi’ a flech (_flea_) i’ yer lug
(_ear_). I wuss ye luck--sic luck as I wad wuss ye!--”

Her last words sounded so like a curse, that to overcome a _cauld
creep_, Malcolm had to force a laugh.

The cook at the House bought all his fish, for they had had none
for the last few days, because of the storm; and he was turning
to go home by the river side, when he heard a tap on a window, and
saw Mrs Courthope beckoning him to another door.

“His lordship desired me to send you to him, Malcolm, the next time
you called,” she said.

“Weel, mem, here I am,” answered the youth.

“You’ll find him in the flower-garden,” she said. “He’s up early
to-day for a wonder.”

He left his basket at the top of the stairs that led down the rock
to the level of the burn, and walked up the valley of the stream.

The garden was a curious old-fashioned place, with high hedges, and
close alleys of trees, where two might have wandered long without
meeting, and it was some time before he found any hint of the
presence of the marquis. At length, however, he heard voices, and
following the sound, walked along one of the alleys till he came
to a little arbour, where he discovered the marquis seated, and,
to his surprise, the white-robed lady of the sands beside him. A
great deer-hound at his master’s feet was bristling his mane, and
baring his eye-teeth with a growl, but the girl had a hold of his
collar.

“Who are _you_?” asked the marquis rather gruffly, as if he had never
seen him before.

“I beg yer lordship’s pardon,” said Malcolm, “but they telled me
yer lordship wantit to see me, and sent me to the flooer-garden.
Will I gang, or will I bide?”

The marquis looked at him for a moment, frowningly, and made
no reply. But the frown gradually relaxed before Malcolm’s modest
but unflinching gaze, and the shadow of a smile slowly usurped its
place. He still kept silent, however.

“Am I to gang or bide, my lord?” repeated Malcolm.

“Can’t you wait for an answer?”

“As lang ’s yer lordship likes--Will I gang an’ walk aboot, mem
--my leddy--till his lordship’s made up his min’? Wad that please
him, duv ye think?” he said, in the tone of one who seeks advice.

But the girl only smiled, and the marquis said, “Go to the devil.”

“I maun luik to yer lordship for the necessar’ directions,” rejoined
Malcolm.

“Your tongue’s long enough to inquire as you go,” said the marquis.

A reply in the same strain rushed to Malcolm’s lips, but he checked
himself in time, and stood silent, with his bonnet in his hand,
fronting the two. The marquis sat gazing as if he had nothing to say
to him, but after a few moments the lady spoke--not to Malcolm,
however.

“Is there any danger in boating here, papa?” she said.

“Not more, I daresay, than there ought to be,” replied the marquis
listlessly. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I should so like a row! I want to see how the shore looks
to the mermaids.”

“Well, I will take you some day, if we can find a proper boat.”

“Is yours a proper boat?” she asked, turning to Malcolm with a
sparkle of fun in her eyes.

“That depen’s on my lord’s definition o’ _proper_.”

“Definition!” repeated the marquis.

“Is ’t ower lang a word, my lord?” asked Malcolm.

The marquis only smiled.

“I ken what ye mean. It’s a strange word in a fisher-lad’s mou’,
ye think. But what for sudna a fisher-lad hae a smatterin’ o’
loagic, my lord? For Greek or Laitin there’s but sma’ opportunity
o’ exerceese in oor pairts; but for loagic, a fisher-body may aye
haud his han’ in that. He can aye be tryin’ ’t upo’ ’s wife, or
’s guid-mither, or upo’ ’s boat, or upo’ the fish whan they winna
tak. Loagic wad save a heap o’ cursin’ an’ ill words--amo’ the
fisher-fowk, I mean, my lord.”

“Have you been to college?”

“Na, my lord--the mair’s the pity! But I’ve been to the school
sin’ ever I can min’.”

“Do they teach logic there?”

“A kin’ o’ ’t. Mr Graham sets us to try oor han’ whiles--jist to
mak ’s a bit gleg (_quick and keen_), ye ken.”

“You don’t mean you go to school still?”

“I dinna gang reg’lar; but I gang as aften as Mr Graham wants me
to help him, an’ I aye gether somethin’.”

“So it’s schoolmaster you are as well as fisherman? Two strings to
your bow!--Who pays you for teaching?”

“Ow! naebody. Wha wad pay me for that?”

“Why, the schoolmaster.”

“Na, but that wad be an affront, my lord!”

“How can you afford the time for nothing?”

“The time comes to little, compairt wi’ what Mr Graham gies me i’
the lang forenichts--i’ the winter time, ye ken, my lord,--whan
the sea’s whiles ower contumahcious to be meddlet muckle wi’.”

“But you have to support your grandfather.”

“My gran’father wad be ill-pleased to hear ye say ’t, my lord.
He’s terrible independent; an’ what wi’ his pipes, an’ his lamps,
an’ his shop, he could keep ’s baith. It’s no muckle the likes o’
us wants. He winna lat me gang far to the fishin’, so that I hae
the mair time to read an’ gang to Mr Graham.”

As the youth spoke, the marquis eyed him with apparently growing
interest.

“But you haven’t told me whether your boat is a proper one,” said
the lady.

“Proper eneuch, mem, for what’s required o’ her. She taks guid
fish.”

“But is it a proper boat for me to have a row in?”

“No wi’ that goon on, mem, as I telled ye afore.”

“The water won’t get in, will it?”

“No more than’s easy gotten oot again.”

“Do you ever put up a sail?”

“Whiles--a wee bit o’ a lug-sail.”

“Nonsense, Flory!” said the marquis. “I’ll see about it.” Then
turning to Malcolm,--

“You may go,” he said. “When I want you I will send for you.”

Malcolm thought with himself that he had sent for him this time
before he wanted him; but he made his bow, and departed--not
without disappointment, for he had expected the marquis to say
something about his grandfather going to the House with his pipes,
a request he would fain have carried to the old man to gladden his
heart withal.

Lord Lossie had been one of the boon companions of the Prince of
Wales--considerably higher in type, it is true, yet low enough
to accept usage for law, and measure his obligation by the custom
of his peers: duty merely amounted to what was expected of him, and
honour, the flitting shadow of the garment of truth, was his sole
divinity. Still he had a heart, and it would speak,--so long at
least, as the object affecting it was present. But, alas! it had no
memory. Like the unjust judge, he might redress a wrong that cried
to him, but out of sight and hearing it had for him no existence.
To a man he would not have told a deliberate lie--except, indeed,
a woman was in the case; but to women he had lied enough to sink the
whole ship of fools. Nevertheless, had the accusing angel himself
called him a liar, he would have instantly offered him his choice
of weapons.

There was in him by nature, however, a certain generosity which
all the vice he had shared in had not quenched. Overbearing, he
was not yet too over-bearing to appreciate a manly carriage, and had
been pleased with what some would have considered the boorishness
of Malcolm’s behaviour--such not perceiving that it had the
same source as the true aristocratic bearing--namely, a certain
unselfish confidence which is the mother of dignity.

He had, of course, been a spendthrift--and so much the better,
being otherwise what he was; for a cautious and frugal voluptuary
is about the lowest style of man. Hence he had never been out of
difficulties, and when, a year or so agone, he succeeded to his
brother’s marquisate, he was, notwithstanding his enlarged income,
far too much involved to hope any immediate rescue from them. His
new property, however, would afford him a refuge from troublesome
creditors; there he might also avoid expenditure for a season, and
perhaps rally the forces of a dissolute life; the place was not
new to him, having, some twenty years before, spent nearly twelve
months there, of which time the recollections were not altogether
unpleasant: weighing all these things he had made up his mind, and
here he was at Lossie House.

The marquis was about fifty years of age, more worn than his years
would account for, yet younger than his years in expression, for
his conscience had never bitten him very deep. He was middle-sized,
broad-shouldered but rather thin, with fine features of the aquiline
Greek type, light-blue hazy eyes, and fair hair, slightly curling
and streaked with gray. His manners were those of one polite for
his own sake. To his remote inferiors he was kind--would even
encourage them to liberties, but might in turn take greater with
them than they might find agreeable. He was fond of animals--
would sit for an hour stroking the head of Demon, his great Irish
deer-hound; but at other times would tease him to a wrath which
touched the verge of dangerous. He was fond of practical jokes,
and would not hesitate to indulge himself even in such as were
incompatible with any genuine refinement: the sort had been in vogue
in his merrier days, and Lord Lossie had ever been one of the most
fertile in inventing, and loudest in enjoying them. For the rest,
if he was easily enraged, he was readily appeased; could drink a
great deal, but was no drunkard; and held as his creed that a God
had probably made the world and set it going, but that he did not
care a brass farthing, as he phrased it, how it went on, or what
such an insignificant being as a man did or left undone in it.
Perhaps he might amuse himself with it, he said, but he doubted
it. As to men, he believed every man loved himself supremely, and
therefore was in natural warfare with every other man. Concerning
women he professed himself unable to give a definite utterance of
any sort--and yet, he would add, he had had opportunities.

The mother of Florimel had died when she was a mere child, and from
that time she had been at school until her father brought her away
to share his fresh honours. She knew little, that little was not
correct, and had it been, would have yet been of small value. At
school she had been under many laws, and had felt their slavery:
she was now in the third heaven of delight with her liberty. But
the worst of foolish laws is, that when the insurgent spirit casts
them off, it is but too ready to cast away with them the genial
self-restraint which these fretting trammels have smothered beneath
them.

Her father regarded her as a child, of whom it was enough to require
that she should keep out of mischief. He said to himself now and
then that he must find a governess for her; but as yet he had not
begun to look for one. Meantime he neither exercised the needful
authority over her, nor treated her as a companion. His was a
shallow nature, never very pleasantly conscious of itself except in
the whirl of excitement, and the glitter of crossing lights: with
a lovely daughter by his side, he neither sought to search into
her being, nor to aid its unfolding, but sat brooding over past
pleasures, or fancying others yet in store for him--lost in
the dull flow of life along the lazy reach to whose mire its once
tumultuous torrent had now descended. But, indeed, what could such
a man have done for the education of a young girl? How many of the
qualities he understood and enjoyed in women could he desire to
see developed in his daughter? There was yet enough of the father
in him to expect those qualities in her to which in other women he
had been an insidious foe; but had he not done what in him lay to
destroy his right of claiming such from her?

So Lady Florimel was running wild, and enjoying it. As long as she
made her appearance at meals, and looked happy, her father would
give himself no trouble about her. How he himself managed to live
in those first days without company--what he thought about or
speculated upon, it were hard to say. All he could be said to do
was to ride here and there over the estate with his steward, Mr
Crathie, knowing little and caring less about farming, or crops,
or cattle. He had by this time, however, invited a few friends to
visit him, and expected their arrival before long.

“How do you like this dull life, Flory?” he said, as they walked
up the garden to breakfast.

“Dull, papa!” she returned. “You never were at a girls’ school, or
you wouldn’t call this dull. It is the merriest life in the world.
To go where you like, and have miles of room! And such room! It’s
the loveliest place in the world, papa!”

He smiled a small, satisfied smile, and stooping stroked his Demon.




                             CHAPTER XIV.

                          MEG PARTAN’S LAMP.


Malcolm went down the river-side, not over pleased with the marquis;
for, although unconscious of it as such, he had a strong feeling
of personal dignity.

As he threaded the tortuous ways of the Seaton towards his own
door, he met sounds of mingled abuse and apology. Such were not
infrequent in that quarter, for one of the women who lived there
was a termagant, and the door of her cottage was generally open. She
was known as Meg Partan. Her husband’s real name was of as little
consequence in life as it is in my history, for almost everybody
in the fishing villages of that coast was and is known by his
_to-name_, or nickname, a device for distinction rendered absolutely
necessary by the paucity of surnames occasioned by the persistent
intermarriage of the fisher-folk. _Partan_ is the Scotch for _crab_,
but the immediate recipient of the name was one of the gentlest
creatures in the place, and hence it had been surmised by some that,
the grey mare being the better horse, the man was thus designated
from the crabbedness of his wife; but the probability is he brought
the agnomen with him from school, where many such apparently
misfitting names are unaccountably generated.

In the present case, however, the apologies were not issuing as
usual from the mouth of Davy Partan, but from that of the blind
piper. Malcolm stood for a moment at the door to understand the
matter of contention, and prepare him to interfere judiciously.

“Gien ye suppose, piper, ’at ye’re peyed to drive fowk oot o’ their
beds at sic hoors as yon, it’s time the toon-cooncil was informed
o’ yer mistak,” said Meg Partan, with emphasis on the last syllable.

“Ta coot peoples up in ta town are not half so hart upon her as you,
Mistress Partan,” insinuated poor Duncan, who, knowing himself in
fault, was humble; “and it’s tere tat she’s paid,” he added, with
a bridling motion, “and not town here pelow.”

“Dinna ye glorifee yersel’ to suppose there’s a fisher, lat alane
a fisher’s wife, in a’ the haill Seaton ’at wad lippen (_trust_) till
an auld haiveril like you to hae them up i’ the mornin’! Haith! I
was oot o’ my bed hoors or I hard the skirlin’ o’ _your_ pipes. Troth
I ken weel hoo muckle ower ear’ ye was! But what fowk taks in han’,
fowk sud put oot o’ han’ in a proper mainner, and no misguggle ’t
a’thegither like yon. An’ for what they say i’ the toon, there’s
Mistress Catanach----”

“Mistress Catanach is a paad ’oman,” said Duncan.

“I wad advise _you_, piper, to haud a quaiet sough aboot _her_. _She’s_
no to be meddlet wi’, Mistress Catanach, I can tell ye. Gien ye
anger her, it’ll be the waur for ye. The neist time ye hae a lyin’
in, she’ll be raxin’ (_reaching_) ye a hairless pup, or, deed, maybe
a stan’ o’ bagpipes, as the produck.”

“Her nainsel will not pe requiring her sairvices, Mistress Partan;
she’ll pe leafing tat to you, if you’ll excuse me,” said Duncan.

“Deed, ye’re richt there! An auld speldin’ (_dried haddock_) like
you! Ha! ha! ha!”

Malcolm judged it time to interfere, and stepped into the cottage.
Duncan was seated in the darkest corner of the room, with an apron
over his knees, occupied with a tin lamp. He had taken out the wick
and laid its flat tube on the hearth, had emptied the oil into a
saucer, and was now rubbing the lamp vigorously: cleanliness rather
than brightness must have been what he sought to produce.

Malcolm’s instinct taught him to side so far with the dame concerning
Mrs Catanach, and thereby turn the torrent away from his grandfather.

“’Deed ye’re richt there, Mistress Findlay!” he said. “_She’s_ no to
be meddlet wi’. She’s no mowse (_safe_).”

Malcolm was a favourite with Meg, as with all the women of the
place; hence she did not even start in resentment at his sudden
appearance, but, turning to Duncan, exclaimed victoriously,--
“Hear till her ain oye! He’s a laad o’ sense!”

“Ay, hear to him!” rejoined the old man with pride. “My Malcolm
will always pe speaking tat which will pe worth ta hearing with
ta ears. Poth of you and me will be knowing ta Mistress Catanach
pretty well--eh, Malcolm, my son? We’ll not be trusting her fery
too much--will we, my son?”

“No a hair, daddy,” returned Malcolm.

“She’s a dooms clever wife, though; an’ ane ’at ye may lippen
till i’ the w’y o’ her ain callin’,” said Meg Partan, whose temper
had improved a little under the influence of the handsome youth’s
presence and cheery speech.

“She’ll not pe toubting it,” responded Duncan; “put, ach! ta voman
’ll be hafing a crim feesage and a fearsome eye!”

Like all the blind, he spoke as if he saw perfectly.

“Weel, I hae hard fowk say ’at ye bude (_behoved_) to hae the second
sicht,” said Mrs Findlay, laughing rudely; “but wow! it stan’s ye
in sma’ service gien that be a’ it comes till. She’s a guid-natur’d,
sonsy-luikin’ wife as ye wad see; an’ for her een, they’re jist
sic likes mine ain.--Haena ye near dune wi’ that lamp yet?”

“The week of it’ll pe shust a lettle out of orter,” answered the
old man. “Ta pairns has been’ pulling it up with a peen from ta
top, and not putting it in at ta hole for ta purpose. And she’ll pe
thinking you’ll be cleaning off ta purnt part with a peen yourself,
ma’am, and not with ta pair of scissors she tolt you of, Mistress
Partan.”

“Gae ’wa’ wi’ yer nonsense!” cried Meg. “Daur ye say I dinna ken
hoo to trim an uilyie lamp wi’ the best blin’ piper that ever cam
frae the bare-leggit Heelans?”

“A choke’s a choke, ma’am,” said Duncan, rising with dignity; “put
for a laty to make a choke of a man’s pare leks is not ta propriety!”

“Oot o’ my hoose wi’ ye!” screamed the she-Partan. “Wad ye threep
(_insist_) upo’ me onything I said was less nor proaper. ’At _I_ sud
say what wadna stan’ the licht as weels the bare houghs o’ ony
heelan’ rascal ’at ever lap a lawlan’ dyke!”

“Hoot toot, Mistress Findlay,” interposed Malcolm, as his grandfather
strode from the door; “ye maunna forget ’at he’s auld an’ blin’;
an’ a’ heelan’ fowk’s some kittle (_touchy_) aboot their legs.”

“Deil shochle them!” exclaimed the Partaness; “what care I for ’s
legs!”

Duncan had brought the germ of this ministry of light from his
native Highlands, where he had practised it in his own house, no
one but himself being permitted to clean, or fill, or, indeed, trim
the lamp. How first this came about, I do not believe the old man
himself knew. But he must have had some feeling of a call to the
work; for he had not been a month in Portlossie, before he had
installed himself in several families as the genius of their lamps,
and he gradually extended the relation until it comprehended almost
all the houses in the village.

It was strange and touching to see the sightless man thus busy about
light for others. A marvellous symbol of faith he was--not only
believing in sight, but in the mysterious, and to him altogether
unintelligible means by which others saw! In thus lending his aid
to a faculty in which he had no share, he himself followed the trail
of the garments of Light, stooping ever and anon to lift and bear
her skirts. He haunted the steps of the unknown Power, and flitted
about the walls of her temple as we mortals haunt the borders of
the immortal land, knowing nothing of what lies behind the unseen
veil, yet believing in an unrevealed grandeur. Or shall we say he
stood like the forsaken merman, who, having no soul to be saved,
yet lingered and listened outside the prayer-echoing church? Only
old Duncan had got farther: though he saw not a glimmer of the
glory, he yet asserted his part and lot in it, by the aiding of his
fellows to that of which he lacked the very conception himself. He
was a doorkeeper in the house, yea, by faith the blind man became
even a priest in the temple of Light.

Even when his grandchild was the merest baby, he would never allow
the gloaming to deepen into night without kindling for his behoof
the brightest and cleanest of train-oil-lamps. The women who at
first looked in to offer their services, would marvel at the trio
of blind man, babe, and burning lamp, and some would expostulate
with him on the needless waste. But neither would he listen to
their words, nor accept their offered assistance in dressing or
undressing the child. The sole manner in which he would consent to
avail himself of their willingness to help him, was to leave the
baby in charge of this or that neighbour while he went his rounds
with the bagpipes: when he went lamp-cleaning he always took him
along with him.

By this change of guardians Malcolm was a great gainer, for thus
he came to be surreptitiously nursed by a baker’s dozen of mothers,
who had a fund of not very wicked amusement in the lamentations of
the old man over his baby’s refusal of nourishment, and his fears
that he was pining away. But while they honestly declared that
a healthier child had never been seen in Portlossie, they were
compelled to conceal the too satisfactory reasons of the child’s
fastidiousness; for they were persuaded that the truth would only
make Duncan terribly jealous, and set him on contriving how at once
to play his pipes and carry his baby.

He had certain days for visiting certain houses, and cleaning the
lamps in them. The housewives had at first granted him as a privilege
the indulgence of his whim, and as such alone had Duncan regarded
it; but by and by, when they found their lamps burn so much better
from being properly attended to, they began to make him some small
return; and at length it became the custom with every housewife
who accepted his services, to pay him a halfpenny a week during
the winter months for cleaning her lamp. He never asked for it;
if payment was omitted, never even hinted at it; received what was
given him thankfully; and was regarded with kindness, and, indeed,
respect, by all. Even Mrs Partan, as he alone called her, was his
true friend: no intensity of friendship could have kept her from
scolding. I believe if we could thoroughly dissect the natures
of scolding women, we should find them in general not at all so
unfriendly as they are unpleasant.

A small trade in oil arose from his connection with the lamps, and
was added to the list of his general dealings. The fisher-folk made
their own oil, but sometimes it would run short, and then recourse
was had to Duncan’s little store, prepared by himself of the best;
chiefly, now, from the livers of fish caught by his grandson. With
so many sources of income, no one wondered at his getting on. Indeed
no one would have been surprised to hear, long before Malcolm had
begun to earn anything, that the old man had already laid by a
trifle.




                              CHAPTER XV.

                        THE SLOPE OF THE DUNE.


Looking at Malcolm’s life from the point of his own consciousness,
and not from that of the so-called world, it was surely pleasant
enough. Innocence, devotion to another, health, pleasant labour
with an occasional shadow of danger to arouse the energies, leisure,
love of reading, a lofty-minded friend, and, above all, a supreme
presence, visible to his heart in the meeting of vaulted sky and
outspread sea, and felt at moments in any waking wind that cooled
his glowing cheek and breathed into him anew of the breath of life,
--lapped in such conditions, bathed in such influences, the youth’s
heart was swelling like a rose-bud ready to burst into blossom.

But he had never yet felt the immediate presence of woman in any
of her closer relations. He had never known mother or sister; and,
although his voice always assumed a different tone and his manner
grew more gentle in the presence of a woman, old or young, he
had found little individually attractive amongst the fisher-girls.
There was not much in their circumstances to bring out the finer
influences of womankind in them: they had rough usage, hard work
at the curing and carrying of fish and the drying of nets, little
education, and but poor religious instruction. At the same time
any failure in what has come to be specially called _virtue_, was
all but unknown amongst them; and the profound faith in women, and
corresponding worship of everything essential to womanhood which
essentially belonged to a nature touched to fine issues, had as yet
met with no check. It had never come into Malcolm’s thoughts that
there were live women capable of impurity. Mrs Catanach was the
only woman he had ever looked upon with dislike--and that dislike
had generated no more than the vaguest suspicion. Let a woman’s
faults be all that he had ever known in woman; he yet could look
on her with reverence--and the very heart of reverence is love,
whence it may be plainly seen that Malcolm’s nature was at once
prepared for much delight, and exposed to much suffering. It followed
that all the women of his class loved and trusted him; and hence
in part it came that, absolutely free of arrogance, he was yet
confident in the presence of women. The tradesmen’s daughters in
the upper town took pains to show him how high above him they were,
and women of better position spoke to him with a kind condescension
that made him feel the gulf that separated them; but to one and
all he spoke with the frankness of manly freedom.

But he had now arrived at that season when, in the order of things,
a man is compelled to have at least a glimmer of the life which
consists in sharing life with another. When once, through the thousand
unknown paths of creation, the human being is so far divided from
God that his individuality is secured, it has become yet more
needful that the crust gathered around him in the process should be
broken; and the love between man and woman arising from a difference
deep in the heart of God, and essential to the very being of each
--for by no words can I express my scorn of the evil fancy that
the distinction between them is solely or even primarily physical
--is one of his most powerful forces for blasting the wall of
separation, and first step towards the universal harmony of twain
making one. That love should be capable of ending in such vermiculate
results as too often appear, is no more against the loveliness of
the divine idea, than that the forms of man and woman, the spirit
gone from them, should degenerate to such things as may not be
looked upon. There is no plainer sign of the need of a God, than
the possible fate of love. The celestial Cupido may soar aloft on
seraph wings that assert his origin, or fall down on the belly of
a snake and creep to hell.

But Malcolm was not of the stuff of which coxcombs are made, and had
not begun to think even of the abyss that separated Lady Florimel
and himself--an abyss like that between star and star, across
which stretches no mediating air--a blank and blind space. He
felt her presence only as that of a being to be worshipped, to be
heard with rapture, and yet addressed without fear.

Though not greatly prejudiced in favour of books, Lady Florimel
had burrowed a little in the old library at Lossie House, and had
chanced on the Faerie Queene. She had often come upon the name of
the author in books of extracts, and now, turning over its leaves,
she found her own. Indeed, where else could her mother have found
the name _Florimel_? Her curiosity was roused, and she resolved--
no light undertaking--to read the poem through, and see who and
what the lady, Florimel, was. Notwithstanding the difficulty she met
with at first, she had persevered, and by this time it had become
easy enough. The copy she had found was in small volumes, of which
she now carried one about with her wherever she wandered; and
making her first acquaintance with the sea and the poem together,
she soon came to fancy that she could not fix her attention on the
book without the sound of the waves for an accompaniment to the
verse--alth

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