CHAPTER II.

“Weel, doctor, is it a’ richt wi’ the Laird?” inquired Mr Barlas when I returned to the Cross-Keys.

“Yes,” I rejoined, “it’s all right. Laird Ramsay is now my warmest and staunchest supporter, and a most companionable old gentleman he is.”

“I never heard the like o’ that,” said the landlord, lifting up his eyebrows in astonishment. “’Od, doctor, ye’re jist like that auld Roman reiver, Cæsar, wha gaed aboot seein’ and conquerin’. Ye hae a clear coast noo, when ye hae gotten the gudewill o’ the Laird and the minister. An’ what think ye o’ the dochter? Isna she a comely lass, Miss Ramsay?”

“She is, indeed, Mr Barlas,” I replied. “The young lady seems to do her best to make her father feel happy and comfortable, and I have no doubt that many ‘braw wooers’ will frequently find their way to the Haugh.”

“Na, doctor, na. As I tell’t ye afore, the Laird is unco fond o’ Miss Jessie, an’ I dinna believe he would pairt wi’ her to the best man i’ the kintra-side. But ye hae sic an uncommon power o’ comin’ roond folk that I wouldna wonner to see ye tryin’t yersel.”

“Stranger things have happened, Mr Barlas,” I rejoined. “Meantime, my mind is made up to settle down in St Dunstan. I like the place and the people, the Eildon Hills, the Tweed, and Laird Ramsay.”

“No to speak o’ his dochter,” interjected mine host with a knowing look.

“But where,” I continued, “am I to take up my quarters?”

“Ye needna put yersel in a peck o’ troubles aboot that, doctor. There’s Dr Sommerville’s cottage just waitin’ for ye alang the road a bit. It’s a commodious hoose, wi’ trees roond it an’ a bonny garden at the back, slopin’ to the south. Dr Sommerville was fond o’ flowers, an’ I never saw a pleasanter place than it was in simmer. But the fac’ is, ye’ll hae to tak it, doctor, because there’s no anither hoose to let in the hale toun.”

“Such being the case, Mr Barlas, there is no choice, and the matter is settled.”

“Just that—just that,” responded the worthy landlord, and then added, with an eye to business, “Ye can mak the Cross-Keys yer hame till ye get the cottage a’ painted an’ furnished to your mind.”

“So be it, Mr Barlas; and now that the house is settled, what about a housekeeper? Was Dr Sommerville married?”

“Married? of course, he was married, an’ had lots o’ weans to the bargain. But just try yer hand wi’ Miss Ramsay. I would like grand to see ye at that game, doctor.”

“Nonsense,” I rejoined. “I do not want to steal the Laird’s ewe-lamb, and break with him at the very commencement of my course. Is there no quiet, decent, honest body about St Dunstan who would make a good and active housekeeper?”

“They’re a’ honest an’ decent thegither, except it be twa or three o’ the canglin’ mugger folk wha mend auld pans and break ane anither’s heads. Let me see—stop a wee—ou, ay—I have ye noo, doctor; there’s Mrs Johnston—a clean, thrifty, tidy woman o’ forty or thereabouts; she’ll fit ye to a T, an’ keep yer hoose like a new leek. Her gudeman was an elder; but he took an inward trouble aboot a year syne, an’ a’ the skill o’ Doctor Sommerville couldna keep his life in when his time was come. I’ll speak to Mrs Johnston the morn, so ye can keep yer mind easy aboot a housekeeper.”

“We’re getting on famously, Mr Barlas. The house and housekeeper are both disposed of. What next?”

“What next, doctor? The next thing, I’m thinkin’, ’ill be a horse. Folk will be sendin’ for ye post-haste to gang sax or seven miles awa, an’ ye canna get on without a beast. Are ye onything skeely in horseflesh?”

“No,” I replied, “not particularly. I would require to purchase a horse by proxy.”

This reply appeared to give mine host considerable satisfaction. After a brief pause he said, “Weel, doctor, what think ye o’ the beastie that took ye to the Haugh the day? It’s fine an’ canny, an’ free frae a’ kind o’ pranks. It would never fling ye aff an’ break your banes when ye were gaun to mend ither folk’s bodies. It’ll no cost ye muckle siller, and ye’ll get a capital bargain wi’ the beast.”

I could not help smiling when the landlord detailed the excellent qualities of the Rosinante of the Cross-Keys—the superb steed which excited the compassion of Laird Ramsay.

“It is an admirable animal, Mr Barlas,” I replied, always careful to avoid giving offence; “but the truth is, there is a friend of mine in Edinburgh who is great in horses, and who would never forgive me if I did not permit him to make the selection and the purchase.”

“Vera weel, doctor—vera well,” rejoined the landlord, professing contentment, although apparently somewhat chagrined. “Ye may get a stronger and mair speerity beast; but, tak my word for’t, ye’ll no get ane to answer yer purpose better. It’s an extraordinar’ sensible animal, an’ kens a’ the roads aboot the kintra-side. In the darkest winter nicht ye micht fling the bridle on its neck, and it would bring ye hame to St Dunstan safe an’ soond. Ye can tak anither thocht about it, doctor, an’ I mun awa an’ gie the beast its supper.”

A few weeks after the above confab with the sagacious landlord of the Cross-Keys, I was quietly domiciled in Oakbank Cottage, on the outskirts of St Dunstan, and had commenced the routine work of a medical practitioner. Mrs Johnston was duly installed as housekeeper; and a capital riding-horse, which Mr Barlas was compelled to allow “micht do,” arrived from the metropolis. I liked my cottage very much. It stood apart from the public road, and was quiet and secluded. Rows of poplar trees surrounded the green, and flower pots in front, and a tall beechen-hedge girdled on all sides the sloping garden in the rear. The high banks of the Tweed, adorned with many-tinted foliage, swept along close at hand, and the strong deep gush of that noble river was borne abroad on every swell of wind. Oakbank Cottage was, in my estimation, the sweetest residence in and around St Dunstan; and as I, like my predecessor, was fond of floriculture, I resolved to make the place look like a little paradise when the spring and summer months came round again. I was not long in getting into a good practice. There was not much opposition from other gentlemen in the district, and many miles I rode both by night and by day. It always vexed the heart of my worthy housekeeper, Mrs Johnston, when a special messenger called me away to a distance after nightfall, and there was no end to the instructions she gave me—M.D. though I was—about the best means of preventing sore throats and rheumatisms. Mrs Johnston had never listened to the learned prelections of medical professors at any of our universities; nevertheless, like many other sensible and sedate women, in her own sphere of life, she had managed to pick up no inconsiderable amount of sound medical knowledge.

I was soon on the best of terms with all the people of the village, for it will generally be found that while a clergyman has admirers and detractors among his own hearers, a doctor who is gifted with a modicum of amiability can easily make himself a favourite with all classes. Of course, when any person dies, the friends of the deceased will not unfrequently declaim against the imperfection of the medical treatment; but grumblings such as these are natural and pardonable, and fail to shake the general esteem in which the practitioner is held. The minister of the parish was a frequent visitor at Oakbank, and in order to strengthen our good fellowship, I became a member of his congregation. He was an upright and honest-hearted man, although somewhat too polemical for my taste. I used to think that he was in the habit of airing his argumentative speeches in my presence before he delivered himself of them at Presbytery meetings.

None of the people in the district seemed better satisfied than Laird Ramsay o’ the Haugh that I had located myself in St Dunstan. He called one day at Oakbank, soon after my settlement, just as I was preparing to set out on a rural ride. The Laird was attired in the ordinary dress which he wore at the Haugh. The brown hat, the blue antique coat, the knee-breeches, the long gaiters, and the yellow-striped vest, seemed to form a part of his eccentric character.

“Gude day t’ye, Dr Wilson—gude day,” said the Laird, as he shook me by the hand. “What way hae ye been sae lang in comin’ ower my way? I’m wearyin’ sair to get anither firlot o’ yon queer humoursome stories oot o’ ye. Can ye come ower to the Haugh the morn, and tak a bit check o’ dinner wi’ some freends that I’m just on the road to inveet to meet you, doctor?”

“It will afford me much pleasure, Mr Ramsay.”

“That’s richt—that’s richt. Gie a’ yer patients a double dram o’ medicine the day, an’ that’ll save ye trouble the morn. I’ll no deteen ye langer i’ the noo, since I see ye’re for takin’ the road. Man, doctor, that’s a capital horse ye’ve gotten. I’ll try ye a steeplechase some day, auld as I am.”

Next day I did not forget to mount my horse, which I had christened Prince Charlie, and ride over to the Haugh. It was more the desire to meet again the handsome and black-haired Jessie, than the expectation of a good dinner,—in which the laird was said to excel,—that made me keep my appointment with scrupulous care, although two or three of my distant patients thereby missed an expected visit. I found a goodly company assembled in the Laird’s old-fashioned mansion. Several neighbouring lairds with their wives were present, my excellent friend the minister of the parish, and some of the “chief men” of St Dunstan. A few young ladies graced the company; but it struck me as something singular that I was the only young gentleman who had been honoured with an invitation. Does the Laird really think, I asked myself, that he will keep away the dangerous disease of love from his charming daughter’s heart by excluding chivalrous youths from his dinner-table? What intense selfishness there may be in the warmest paternal affection! Nor was selfishness altogether absent from my own heart. I began to feel a kind of secret satisfaction that the coast was clear, and that undivided attentions could be given and received. Jessie was all smiles, grace, and beauty; and before dinner was finished, I was more than charmed—I was bewitched with her manners and conversation. When the ladies retired from table I endeavoured, as on the former occasion, to keep the Laird o’ the Haugh in good humour, being now determined, for a particular reason, to rise rather than fall in his estimation. When the minister introduced polemics I flung out a shower of puns; when oxen became the topic I spiced the talk with some racy stories. The ruse succeeded. Between the strong waters and the stories, Laird Ramsay was elevated into a hilarious region, and he would have forgiven his worst enemy on the spot. He was not aware that I was playing with him and upon him for a purpose. When my stock was getting exhausted I started the minister on his everlasting expedition to Rome, and managed, at the commencement of his narrative, to escape from table unperceived. I was not particularly anxious to “join the ladies;” but I was excessively desirous to have, if possible, some private conversation with Jessie Ramsay. There could be no denying the fact that I—the young medical practitioner of St Dunstan—had fallen in love, how or why it boots not to inquire, with the beautiful daughter of the Laird o’ the Haugh. I felt it through every vein of my body, and every fibre of my heart, and I fondly imagined from sundry stealthy glances and sweet suggestive smiles that the dear creature had perceived and reciprocated my attachment. The golden silence of love is the highest eloquence, and the most entrancing song. As good luck and favouring fortune would have it, I had no sooner left the dining-hall than the object of my adoration came tripping down stairs alone. In looking over the drawing-room window a rich flower from her lustrous hair had fallen to the ground, and the lovely creature was now hastening to secure the lost treasure. Here was an opportunity little anticipated, but long remembered. It was impossible that I could be so ungallant as allow her to search for the fallen flower by herself, and we therefore went out into the open air together. There was no moon, but the stars were shining full and brilliant in the firmament. Tall holly bushes and other shrubs surrounded the house within the outer circle of trees. The only two sounds I distinctly heard were the beating of my heart, and the humming sound of the minister’s voice as he narrated the incidents of his pilgrimage to the Eternal City. I blessed the good man for his unconscious kindness in granting me this opportunity. Jessie and I proceeded to the place where the flower was supposed to be. I saw it at once, and she saw it at once; but both of us pretended that we had not seen it, and so the sweet search continued. Need I describe, O amiable reader! how in searching and stooping I felt the touch of her ringleted hair, the warmth of her breath, the delicate softness of her cheek, and imbibed the honey-balm of her lips? At last the flower was found,—I blessed it unaware,—and, under the starlight, replaced it on that lovely head from which it had not been untimely plucked, but had most opportunely fallen.

We returned to the house undiscovered. The Laird, I knew, was in that pleased and placid state when he could have listened for many hours to the Man of the Moon describing the incidents of his celestial travels and the wonders he had seen from his specular tower. I parted with Jessie at the foot of the staircase, pressed her soft warm hand, and re-entered the room which I had rather unceremoniously left. The minister had got upon the Pope, and all the symptoms of “tired nature” were apparent on the faces of most of the listeners. They had the look of a congregation when the thirteenth “head” is being propounded with due deliberation from the pulpit. The Laird had not seen me depart, but he saw me enter. He evidently placed in me the most implicit reliance, and there was no suspicion in his look.

“Hae ye been snuffin’ the caller air, doctor?” he inquired.

I answered in the affirmative with a look of perfect innocence, and then the Laird added, wishing apparently to cut short the minister’s harangue, “Ay, weel, let’s join the leddies noo.”

After that evening I was a frequent and welcome visitor at the Haugh. Prince Charlie soon knew the way to his own stall in the Laird’s stables. Some golden opportunities occurred when the Laird was absent for interviews and conversations with Jessie. We plighted our mutual troth, and were devoted to each other heart and soul. The one grand difficulty in the way of our happiness was the removal of the Laird’s scruples with regard to the marriage of his daughter. At last, when jogging leisurely homeward to Oakbank one evening, I hit upon a scheme which ultimately resulted in complete success, and gave me possession of the being whom I loved dearer than life.

A wealthy and winsome widow lady resided in the neighbourhood of St Dunstan, and the project entered my brain to make her believe that Laird Ramsay had some notions of her, and also to make him believe that she had a warm side of her heart to him. If I could only get the Laird to marry the widow, I knew that Jessie would soon thereafter be mine. The Laird was open to flattery; he was fond of what Mr Barlas called “butter;” and I did not despair of being able to make him renew his youth. Tact was required in such a delicate undertaking, and I resolved to do my spiriting gently. I began with the Laird first one evening when he was in his mellow after-dinner state. I praised the graces and winsome ways of Mrs Mackinlay, and drew from the Laird the confession that he thought her a “very gude and sociable-like leddy.” I then tried a few dexterous passes before hinting that she had a warm side to the Laird o’ the Haugh.

“Ye dinna mean to say that Mrs Mackinlay is castin’ a sheep’s e’e at me, do ye, doctor?”

“I can assure you, Mr Ramsay,” I rejoined, “that she speaks of you always with great respect, and seems to wonder why you do not honour her with a visit occasionally.”

“Ay, doctor, it’s queer what way I never thocht o’ that. She’s a sensible leddy after a’, Mrs Mackinlay. I think I could do worse than look ower at her hoose some o’ these days.”

“It’s the very thing you ought to do, Mr Ramsay,” I replied. “You will find her company highly entertaining. She has an accumulated fund of stories and anecdotes.”

“Has she, doctor?—has she? Weel, I’ll gang; but what would Jessie say, I wunner?”

I had now put the Laird on the right scent, and I tried my best also with Mrs Mackinlay. I made her aware of the Laird’s intended visit, and hinted tenderly its probable object. After a lengthened conversation, in which I exercised all the ingenuity I possessed, I left her with the impression on my mind that Laird Ramsay’s addresses when he called would be met half-way. The meeting did take place—it was followed by another and another—and the upshot of the matter was that the eccentric Laird and the wealthy widow were duly wedded, to the astonishment of the whole district. I allowed six months of their wedded bliss to slip past before I asked the Laird’s consent to have Jessie removed from the Haugh to Oakbank. A sort of dim suspicion of the whole affair seemed to cross the Laird’s mind when I addressed him. A pawky twinkle lit up his eye as he replied, “Ah, ye rogue!—tak her, an’ my blessin’ alang wi’ her. Ye ken whaur to look for a gude wife, an’ I daursay ye’ll no mak the warst o’ gudemen.” Thus I won the Laird’s daughter, and the paradise of Oakbank, in the village of St Dunstan, was complete in happiness.

MOSS-SIDE.

BY PROFESSOR WILSON.

Gilbert Ainslie was a poor man; and he had been a poor man all the days of his life, which were not few, for his thin hair was now waxing gray. He had been born and bred on the small moorland farm which he now occupied; and he hoped to die there, as his father and grandfather had done before him, leaving a family just above the more bitter wants of this world. Labour, hard and unremitting, had been his lot in life; but, although sometimes severely tried, he had never repined; and through all the mist and gloom, and even the storms that had assailed him, he had lived on from year to year in that calm and resigned contentment which unconsciously cheers the hearthstone of the blameless poor. With his own hands he had ploughed, sowed, and reaped his often scanty harvest, assisted, as they grew up, by three sons, who, even in boyhood, were happy to work along with their father in the fields. Out of doors or in, Gilbert Ainslie was never idle. The spade, the shears, the ploughshaft, the sickle, and the flail, all came readily to hands that grasped them well; and not a morsel of food was eaten under his roof, or a garment worn there, that was not honestly, severely, nobly earned. Gilbert Ainslie was a slave, but it was for them he loved with a sober and deep affection. The thraldom under which he lived God had imposed, and it only served to give his character a shade of silent gravity, but not austere; to make his smiles fewer, but more heartfelt; to calm his soul at grace before and after meals, and to kindle it in morning and evening prayer.

There is no need to tell the character of the wife of such a man. Meek and thoughtful, yet gladsome and gay withal, her heaven was in her house; and her gentler and weaker hands helped to bar the door against want. Of ten children that had been born to them, they had lost three; and as they had fed, clothed, and educated them respectably, so did they give them who died a respectable funeral. The living did not grudge to give up, for a while, some of their daily comforts for the sake of the dead; and bought, with the little sums which their industry had saved, decent mournings, worn on Sabbath, and then carefully laid by. Of the seven that survived, two sons and a daughter were farm-servants in the neighbourhood, while two daughters and two sons remained at home, growing, or grown up, a small, happy, hard-working household.

Many cottages are there in Scotland like Moss-side, and many such humble and virtuous cottagers as were now beneath its roof of straw. The eye of the passing traveller may mark them, or mark them not, but they stand peacefully in thousands over all the land; and most beautiful do they make it, through all its wide valleys and narrow glens—its low holms, encircled by the rocky walls of some bonny burn—its green mounts, elated with their little crowning groves of plane-trees—its yellow corn-fields—its bare pastoral hill-sides, and all its heathy moors, on whose black bosom lie shining or concealed glades of excessive verdure, inhabited by flowers, and visited only by the farflying bees. Moss-side was not beautiful to a careless or hasty eye; but, when looked on and surveyed, it seemed a pleasant dwelling. Its roof, overgrown with grass and moss, was almost as green as the ground out of which its weather-stained walls appeared to grow. The moss behind it was separated from a little garden, by a narrow slip of arable land, the dark colour of which showed that it had been won from the wild by patient industry, and by patient industry retained. It required a bright sunny day to make Moss-side fair, but then it was fair indeed; and when the little brown moorland birds were singing their short songs among the rushes and the heather, or a lark, perhaps lured thither by some green barley-field for its undisturbed nest, rose ringing all over the enlivened solitude, the little bleak farm smiled like the paradise of poverty, sad and affecting in its lone and extreme simplicity. The boys and girls had made some plots of flowers among the vegetables that the little garden supplied for their homely meals; pinks and carnations, brought from walled gardens of rich men farther down in the cultivated strath, grew here with somewhat diminished lustre; a bright show of tulips had a strange beauty in the midst of that moorland; and the smell of roses mixed well with that of the clover, the beautiful fair clover that loves the soil and the air of Scotland, and gives the rich and balmy milk to the poor man’s lips.

In this cottage, Gilbert’s youngest child, a girl about nine years of age, had been lying for a week in a fever. It was now Saturday evening, and the ninth day of the disease. Was she to live or die? It seemed as if a very few hours were between the innocent creature and heaven. All the symptoms were those of approaching death. The parents knew well the change that comes over the human face, whether it be in infancy, youth, or prime, just before the departure of the spirit; and as they stood together by Margaret’s bed, it seemed to them that the fatal shadow had fallen upon her features. The surgeon of the parish lived some miles distant, but they expected him now every moment, and many a wistful look was directed by tearful eyes along the moor. The daughter who was out at service came anxiously home on this night, the only one that could be allowed her; for the poor must work in their grief, and servants must do their duty to those whose bread they eat, even when nature is sick—sick at heart. Another of the daughters came in from the potato-field beyond the brae, with what was to be their frugal supper. The calm, noiseless spirit of life was in and around the house, while death seemed dealing with one who, a few days ago, was like light upon the floor, and the sound of music, that always breathed up when most wanted; glad and joyous in common talk—sweet, silvery, and mournful, when it joined in hymn or psalm. One after the other, they all continued going up to the bedside, and then coming away sobbing or silent, to see their merry little sister, who used to keep dancing all day like a butterfly in a meadowfield, or, like a butterfly with shut wings on a flower, trifling for a while in the silence of her joy, now tossing restlessly on her bed, and scarcely sensible to the words of endearment whispered around her, or the kisses dropped with tears, in spite of themselves, on her burning forehead.

Utter poverty often kills the affections; but a deep, constant, and common feeling of this world’s hardships, and an equal participation in all those struggles by which they may be softened, unite husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, in thoughtful and subdued tenderness, making them happy indeed, while the circle round the fire is unbroken, and yet preparing them every day to bear the separation, when some one or other is taken slowly or suddenly away. Their souls are not moved by fits and starts, although, indeed, nature sometimes will wrestle with necessity; and there is a wise moderation both in the joy and the grief of the intelligent poor, which keeps lasting trouble away from their earthly lot, and prepares them silently and unconsciously for heaven.

“Do you think the child is dying?” said Gilbert, with a calm voice, to the surgeon, who, on his wearied horse, had just arrived from another sick-bed, over the misty range of hills, and had been looking steadfastly for some minutes on the little patient. The humane man knew the family well, in the midst of whom he was standing, and replied, “While there is life there is hope; but my pretty little Margaret is, I fear, in the last extremity.” There was no loud lamentation at these words; all had before known, though they would not confess it to themselves, what they now were told; and though the certainty that was in the words of the skilful man made their hearts beat for a little with sicker throbbings, made their pale faces paler, and brought out from some eyes a greater gush of tears, yet death had been before in this house, and in this case he came, as he always does, in awe, but not in terror. There were wandering and wavering and dreamy delirious fantasies in the brain of the innocent child; but the few words she indistinctly uttered were affecting, not rending to the heart, for it was plain that she thought herself herding her sheep in the green silent pastures, and sitting wrapped in her plaid upon the lown and sunny side of the Birk-knowe. She was too much exhausted—there was too little life, too little breath in her heart—to frame a tune; but some of her words seemed to be from favourite old songs; and at last her mother wept, and turned aside her face, when the child, whose blue eyes were shut, and her lips almost still, breathed out these lines of the beautiful twenty-third Psalm:—

The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want. He makes me down to lie In pastures green: He leadeth me The quiet waters by.

The child was now left with none but her mother by the bedside, for it was said to be best so; and Gilbert and his family sat down round the kitchen fire, for a while, in silence. In about a quarter of an hour, they began to rise calmly, and to go each to his allotted work. One of the daughters went forth with the pail to milk the cow, and another began to set out the table in the middle of the floor for supper, covering it with a white cloth. Gilbert viewed the usual household arrangements with a solemn and untroubled eye; and there was almost the faint light of a grateful smile on his cheek, as he said to the worthy surgeon, “You will partake of our fare, after your day’s travel and toil of humanity?” In a short silent half-hour, the potatoes and oat-cakes, butter and milk, were on the board; and Gilbert, lifting up his toil-hardened but manly hand, with a slow motion, at which the room was as hushed as if it had been empty, closed his eyes in reverence, and asked a blessing. There was a little stool, on which no one sat, by the old man’s side. It had been put there unwittingly, when the other seats were all placed in their usual order; but the golden head that was wont to rise at that part of the table was now wanting. There was silence—not a word was said—their meal was before them—God had been thanked, and they began to eat.

While they were at their silent meal a horseman came galloping to the door, and, with a loud voice, called out that he had been sent express with a letter to Gilbert Ainslie; at the same time rudely, and with an oath, demanding a dram for his trouble. The eldest son, a lad of eighteen, fiercely seized the bridle of his horse, and turned its head away from the door. The rider, somewhat alarmed at the flushed face of the powerful stripling, threw down the letter and rode off. Gilbert took the letter from his son’s hand, casting, at the same time, a half-upbraiding look on his face, that was returning to its former colour. “I feared,”—said the youth, with a tear in his eye,—“I feared that the brute’s voice, and the trampling of the horse’s feet, would have disturbed her.” Gilbert held the letter hesitatingly in his hand, as if afraid at that moment to read it; at length he said aloud to the surgeon:—“You know that I am a poor man, and debt, if justly incurred, and punctually paid when due, is no dishonour.” Both his hand and his voice shook slightly as he spoke; but he opened the letter from the lawyer, and read it in silence. At this moment his wife came from her child’s bedside, and, looking anxiously at her husband, told him “not to mind about the money, that no man who knew him would arrest his goods, or put him into prison. Though, dear me, it is cruel to be put to thus, when our bairn is dying, and when, if so it be the Lord’s will, she should have a decent burial, poor innocent, like them that went before her.” Gilbert continued reading the letter with a face on which no emotion could be discovered; and then, folding it up, he gave it to his wife, told her she might read it if she chose, and then put it into his desk in the room, beside the poor dear bairn. She took it from him, without reading it, and crushed it into her bosom: for she turned her ear towards her child, and thinking she heard it stir, ran out hastily to its bedside.

Another hour of trial passed, and the child was still swimming for its life. The very dogs knew there was grief in the house, and lay without stirring, as if hiding themselves, below the long table at the window. One sister sat with an unfinished gown on her knees, that she had been sewing for the dear child, and still continued at the hopeless work, she scarcely knew why; and often, often putting up her hand to wipe away a tear. “What is that?” said the old man to his eldest daughter. “What is that you are laying on the shelf?” She could scarcely reply that it was a riband and an ivory comb that she had brought for little Margaret, against the night of the dancing-school ball. And at these words the father could not restrain a long, deep, and bitter groan; at which the boy, nearest in age to his dying sister, looked up weeping in his face; and, letting the tattered book of old ballads, which he had been poring on, but not reading, fall out of his hands, he rose from his seat, and, going into his father’s bosom, kissed him, and asked God to bless him: for the holy heart of the boy was moved within him; and the old man, as he embraced him, felt that, in his innocence and simplicity, he was indeed a comforter. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” said the old man; “blessed be the name of the Lord!”

The outer door gently opened, and he whose presence had in former years brought peace and resignation hither, when their hearts had been tried even as they now were tried, stood before them. On the night before the Sabbath, the minister of Auchindown never left his manse, except, as now, to visit the sick or dying bed. Scarcely could Gilbert reply to his first question about his child, when the surgeon came from the bedroom, and said—“Margaret seems lifted up by God’s hand above death and the grave: I think she will recover. She has fallen asleep; and, when she wakes, I hope—I—believe—that the danger will be past, and that your child will live.”

They were all prepared for death; but now they were found unprepared for life. One wept that had till then locked up all her tears within her heart; another gave a short palpitating shriek; and the tender-hearted Isobel, who had nursed the child when it was a baby, fainted away. The youngest brother gave way to gladsome smiles; and calling out his dog Hector, who used to sport with him and his little sister on the moor, he told the tidings to the dumb irrational creature, whose eyes, it is certain, sparkled with a sort of joy. The clock for some days had been prevented from striking the hours; but the silent fingers pointed to the hour of nine; and that, in the cottage of Gilbert Ainslie, was the stated hour of family worship. His own honoured minister took the Book,—

He waled a portion with judicious care, And, “Let us worship God,” he said, with solemn air.

A chapter was read—a prayer said; and so, too, was sung a psalm; but it was sung low, and with suppressed voices, lest the child’s saving sleep might be broken; and now and then the female voices trembled, or some one of them ceased altogether; for there had been tribulation and anguish, and now hope and faith were tried in the joy of thanksgiving.

The child still slept; and its sleep seemed more sound and deep. It appeared almost certain that the crisis was over, and that the flower was not to fade. “Children,” said Gilbert, “our happiness is in the love we bear to one another; and our duty is in submitting to and serving God. Gracious, indeed, has He been unto us. Is not the recovery of our little darling, dancing, singing Margaret, worth all the gold that ever was mined? If we had had thousands of thousands, would we not have filled up her grave with the worthless dross of gold, rather than that she should have gone down there with her sweet face and all her rosy smiles?” There was no reply, but a joyful sobbing all over the room.

“Never mind the letter, nor the debt, father,” said the eldest daughter. “We have all some little thing of our own,—a few pounds,—and we shall be able to raise as much as will keep arrest and prison at a distance. Or if they do take our furniture out of the house, all except Margaret’s bed, who cares? We will sleep on the floor; and there are potatoes in the field, and clear water in the spring. We need fear nothing, want nothing; blessed be God for all His mercies!”

Gilbert went into the sick-room, and got the letter from his wife, who was sitting at the head of the bed, watching, with a heart blessed beyond all bliss, the calm and regular breathings of her child. “This letter,” said he, mildly, “is not from a hard creditor. Come with me while I read it aloud to our children.” The letter was read aloud, and it was well fitted to diffuse pleasure and satisfaction through the dwelling of poverty. It was from an executor to the will of a distant relative, who had left Gilbert Ainslie £1500.

“The sum,” said Gilbert, “is a large one to folks like us, but not, I hope, large enough to turn our heads, or make us think ourselves all lords and ladies. It will do more, far more, than put me fairly above the world at last. I believe that, with it, I may buy this very farm, on which my forefathers have toiled. But God, whose providence has sent this temporal blessing, may He send us wisdom and prudence how to use it, and humble and grateful hearts to us all.”

“You will be able to send me to school all the year round now, father,” said the youngest boy. “And you may leave the flail to your sons, now, father,” said the eldest. “You may hold the plough still, for you draw a straighter furrow than any of us; but hard work for young sinews; and you may sit now oftener in your arm-chair by the ingle. You will not need to rise now in the dark, cold, and snowy winter mornings, and keep threshing corn in the barn for hours by candlelight, before the late dawning.”

There was silence, gladness, and sorrow, and but little sleep in Moss-side, between the rising and the setting of the stars, that were now out in thousands, clear, bright, and sparkling over the unclouded sky. Those who had lain down for an hour or two in bed could scarcely be said to have slept; and when about morning little Margaret awoke, an altered creature, pale, languid, and unable to turn herself on her lowly bed, but with meaning in her eyes, memory in her mind, affection in her heart, and coolness in all her veins, a happy group were watching the first faint smile that broke over her features; and never did one who stood there forget that Sabbath morning on which she seemed to look round upon them all with a gaze of fair and sweet bewilderment, like one half conscious of having been rescued from the power of the grave.

MY FIRST FEE.

A CHAPTER FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ADVOCATE.

“Fee him, father, fee him.”

Seven long yearning years had elapsed since, with the budding anticipation of youthful hope, I had assumed the lugubrious insignia of the bar. During that dreadful time, each morn, as old St Giles told the hour of nine, might I be seen insinuating my emaciated figure within the penetralia of the Parliament House, where, begowned and bewigged, and with the zeal of a Powell or a Barclay, I paced about till two. These peripatetic practices had well-nigh ruined me in Wellingtons, and latterly in shoes. My little Erskine was in pawn; while my tailor and my landlady threw out unmistakable and ominous hints regarding their long bills and longer credit. I dared not understand them, but consoled myself with the thought, that the day would come when my tailor would cease his dunning, and my landlady her clamour.

I had gone the different circuits, worn and torn my gown, seated myself in awful contemplation on the side benches, maintained angry argument on legal points with some more favoured brother, within earshot of a wily writer. In fine, I had resorted to every means that fancy could suggest, or experience dictate; but as yet my eyes had not seen, nor my pocket felt—a Fee. Alas! this was denied. I might be said to be, as yet, no barrister: for what is a lawyer without a fee? A nonentity! a shadow! To my grief, I seemed to be fast verging to the latter; and I doubt much whether the “Anatomie vivant” could have stood the comparison—so much had my feeless fast fed on my flesh!

I cannot divine the reason for this neglect of my legal services. In my own heart, I had vainly imagined the sufficiency of my tact and subtlety in unravelling a nice point; neither had I been wanting in attention to my studies; for Heaven and my landlady can bear witness, that my consumption of coal and candle would have sufficed any two ordinary readers. There was not a book or treatise on law which I had not dived into. I was insatiable in literature; but the world and the writers seemed ignorant of my brain be-labouring system, and sedulously determined that my _fee-ling_ propensities should not be gratified.

Never did I meet an agent either in or out of Court, but my heart and hand felt a pleasing glow of hope and of joy at the prospect of pocketing a fee; but how often have they turned their backs without even the mortifying allusion to such a catastrophe! How often have I turned round in whirling ecstacy as I felt some seemingly patronising palm tap gently on my shoulders with such a tap as writers’ clerks are wont to use; but oh, ye gods! a grinning wretch merely asked me how I did, and passed on!

Nor were my non-legal friends more kind. There was an old gentleman, who, I knew (for I made it my business to enquire), had some thoughts of a law-plea. From him I received an invitation to dinner. Joyfully, as at all times, but more so on this occasion, was the summons obeyed. I had laid a train to introduce the subject of his wrongs at a time which might _suit_ best, and with this plan I commenced my machinations. The old fox was too cunning even for me; he too had his plot, and had hit upon the expedient of obtaining my opinion without a fee—the skinflint! Long and doubtful was the contest; hint succeeded hint, question after question was put, till at last my entertainer was victorious, and I retired crestfallen and feeless from the field! By the soul of Erskine, had it not been for his dinners, I should have cut him for ever! Still I grubbed with this one, cultivated an acquaintance with that, but all to no purpose; no one pitied my position. My torments were those of the lost! Hope (not the President) alone buoyed me up; visions of future sovereigns, numerous as those which appeared to Banquo of old, but of a better and more useful kind, flitted before my charmed imagination. Pride, poverty, and starvation pushed me on. What! said I, shall it be hinted that I am likely neither to have a fee nor a feed? Tell it not in the First Division; publish it not in the Outer House! All my thoughts were riveted to one object—to one object all my endeavours were bent, and to accomplish this seemed the ultimatum of bliss.

Often have I looked with envy upon the more favoured candidates for judicial fame—those who never return to their domicile or their dinner, but to find their tables groaning with briefs! How different from my case! My case? What case? I have no case! Not one fee to work its own desolateness! Months and months passed on, still success came not! The hoped-for event came not; resolution died within me; I formed serious intentions of being even with the profession. As the profession had cut me, I intended to have cut the profession. In my wants, I would have robbed, but my hand was withheld by the thought that the jesters of the stove might taunt me thus: “He could not live, so he died, by the law.” I have often thought that there is a great similarity between the hangman and the want of a fee; the one is the finisher of the law, the other of lawyers!

Pondering on my griefs, with my feet on the expiring embers of a seacoal fire, the chair in that swinging position so much practised and approved in Yankee-land,—the seat destined for a clerk occupied by my cat, for I love everything of the _fe-line_ species,—my cogitations were disturbed by an application for admittance at the outer door. It was not the rat-tat of the postman, nor the rising and falling attack of the man of fashion, but a compound of both, which evidently bespoke the knockee unaccustomed to town. I am somewhat curious in knocks; I admire the true principles of the art, by which one may distinguish the peer from the postman—the dun from the dilettante—the footman from the furnisher. But there was something in this knock which baffled all my skill; yet sweet withal, thrilling through my heart with a joy unfelt before. Some spirit must have presided in the sound, for it seemed to me the music of the spheres.

A short time elapsed, and my landlady “opened wide the infernal doors.” Now hope cut capers—(Lazenby, thou wert not to blame, for of thy delicacies I dared not even dream!)—now hope cut capers within me! Heavy footsteps were heard in the passage, and one of the lords of the creation marched his calves into the apartment. With alacrity, I conveyed my _corpus juris_ to meet him, and, with all civility, I requested him to be seated. My landlady with her apron dusted the arm-chair (I purchased it at a sale of Lord M——’s _effects_, not _causes_,—expecting to catch inspiration). In this said chair my man ensconced his clay.

I had commenced my survey of his person, when my eyes were attracted by a basilisk-like bunch of papers which the good soul held in his hand. In ecstasy I gazed—characters were marked on them which could not be mistaken; a less keen glance than mine might have discovered their import. My joy was now beyond all bounds, testifying itself by sundry kickings and contortions of the body. I began to fear the worthy man might think me mad, and repent him of his errand; I calmed myself, and sat down. My guest thrust into my hands the papers, and then proceeded to issue letters of open doors against his dexter pocket. His intentions were evident; with difficulty could I restrain myself. For some minutes he “groped about the vast abyss,” during which time my agitation increased so much that I could not have answered one question, even out of that favourite chapter of one of our institutional writers, “On the Institution of Fees.” But let me describe the man to whom I owe so much.

He was a short, squat, farmer-looking being, who might have rented some fifty acres or so. Though stinted in his growth upwards, Dame Nature seemed determined to make him amends by an increase of dimension in every other direction. His nose and face spoke volumes—ay, libraries—of punch and ale; these potations had also made themselves manifested lower down, by the magnitude of the _belli-gerent_ powers. There was in his face a cunning leer, in his figure a knowing _tournure_, which was still further heightened by his dress; this consisted of a green coat, which gave evident signs of its utter incapability of ever being identified with Stultz; cords and continuations encased the lower parts of his carcase; a belcher his throat; while the whole was surmounted by a castor of the most preposterous breadth of brim, and shallow capacity. But in this man’s appearance there was something that pleased me; something of a nature superior to other mortals. I might have been prejudiced, but his face and figure seemed to me more beautiful than morning.

Never did I gaze with a more complacent benevolence on a breeches-pocket. At last he succeeded in dragging from its depths a huge old stocking, through which “the yellow-lettered Geordie’s keeked.” With what raptures did I look on that old stocking, the produce, I presumed, of the stocking of his farm. It seemed to possess the power of fascination, for my eyes could not quit it. Even when my client (for now I calculated upon him) began to speak, my attention still wandered to the stocking. He told me of a dispute with his landlord about some matters relating to his farm, that he was wronged, and would have the law of the laird, though he should spend his last shilling (here I looked with increased raptures at the stocking). On the recommendation of the minister (good man!), he had sought me for advice. He then opened wide the jaws of his homely purse—he inserted his paw—now my heart beat—he made a jingling noise—my heart beat quicker still—he pulled forth his two interesting fingers—oh, ecstasy! he pressed five guineas into my extended hand—they touched the virgin palm, and oh, ye gods! I was FEE’D!!!—_Edinburgh Literary Journal._

THE KIRK OF TULLIBODY.

The parish of Tullibody, in Clackmannanshire, now united with Alloa, was, before the Reformation, an independent ecclesiastical district. The manner in which it lost its separate character is curious. In the year 1559, when Monsieur D’Oysel commanded the French troops on the coast of Fife, they were alarmed by the arrival of the English fleet, and thought of nothing but a hasty retreat. It was in the month of January, and at the breaking of a great storm. William Kirkaldy of Grange, commander of the congregational forces, attentive to the circumstances in which his enemies were caught, took advantage of this situation, and marched with great expedition towards Stirling, and cut the bridge of Tullibody, which was over the Devon, to prevent their retreat. By this manœuvre, the French found themselves completely enclosed. They were driven to an extremity which obliged them to resort to an extraordinary expedient to effect their escape. They lifted the roof off the church of Tullibody, and laid it along the broken part of the bridge, by which means they effected a safe retreat to Stirling.

Such a dilapidation of the church caused the Tullibodians to proceed to the adjacent kirk of Alloa, and in a short time the parish ceased to be independent. The burying-ground round the ancient place of worship, now repaired, still remains; and on the north side of it, where there had been formerly an entry, there is a stone coffin, with a niche for the head, and two for the arms, covered with a thick hollowed lid like a tureen. The lid is a good deal broken, but a curious tradition is preserved of the coffin. It is related that in early times a young lady of the neighbourhood had declared her affection for the minister, who, either from his station or want of inclination, made no returns. So vexed was the lady on perceiving his indifference, that, in a short while, she sickened, and at last died of grief. While on her deathbed, she left it as her last request, that she should not be buried in the earth, but that her body should be placed in a stone coffin, and laid at the entry to the church; which was done, and to this day, the stone retains the name of the “Maiden’s Stone.”—_Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal_, 1832.

THE PROGRESS OF INCONSTANCY; _OR_, _THE SCOTS TUTOR_.

“Sweet, tender sex! with snares encompassed round, On others hang thy comforts and thy rest.”—HOGG.

Nature has made woman weak, that she might receive with gratitude the protection of man. Yet how often is this appointment perverted! How often does her protector become her oppressor! Even custom seems leagued against her. Born with the tenderest feelings, her whole life is commonly a struggle to suppress them. Placed in the most favourable circumstances, her choice is confined to a few objects; and unless where singularly fortunate, her fondest partialities are only a modification of gratitude. She may reject, but cannot invite: may tell what would make her wretched, but dare not even whisper what would make her happy; and, in a word, exercises merely a negative influence upon the most important event of her life. Man has leisure to look around him, and may marry at any age, with almost equal advantage; but woman must improve the fleeting moment, and determine quickly, at the hazard of determining rashly. The spring-time of her beauty will not last; its wane will be the signal for the flight of her lovers; and if the present opportunity is neglected, she may be left to experience the only species of misfortune for which the world evinces no sympathy. How cruel, then, to increase the misery of her natural dependence! How ungenerous to add treachery to strength, and deceive or disappoint those whose highest ambition is our favour, and whose only safety is our honesty!

William Arbuthnot was born in a remote county of Scotland, where his father rented a few acres of land, which his own industry had reclaimed from the greatest wildness to a state of considerable fertility. Having given, even in his first attempts at learning, those indications of a retentive memory, which the partiality of a parent easily construes into a proof of genius, he was early destined for the Scottish Church, and regarded as a philosopher before he had emerged from the nursery. While his father pleased himself with the prospect of seeing his name associated with the future greatness of his son, his mother, whose ambition took a narrower range, thought she could die contented if she should see him seated in the pulpit of his native church; and perhaps, from a pardonable piece of vanity, speculated as frequently upon the effect his appearance would have upon the hearts of the neighbouring daughters, as his discourses upon the minds of their mothers. This practice, so common among the poorer classes in Scotland, of making one of their children a scholar, to the prejudice, as is alleged, of the rest, has been often remarked, and sometimes severely censured. But probably the objections that have been urged against it, derive their chief force from the exaggerations upon which they are commonly founded. It is not in general true that parents, by bestowing the rudiments of a liberal education upon one of the family, materially injure the condition or prospects of the rest. For it must be remembered that the plebeian student is soon left to trust to his own exertions for support, and, like the monitor of a Lancastrian seminary, unites the characters of pupil and master, and teaches and is taught by turns.

But to proceed with our little narrative. The parish schoolmaster having intimated to the parents of his pupil, that the period was at hand when he should be sent to prosecute his studies at the university, the usual preparations were made for his journey, and his departure was fixed for the following day, when he was to proceed to Edinburgh under escort of the village carrier and his black dog Cæsar, two of the eldest and most intimate of his acquaintance. Goldsmith’s poetical maxim, that little things are great to little men, is universally true; and this was an eventful day for the family of Belhervie, for that was the name of the residence of Mr Arbuthnot. The father was as profuse of his admonitions as the mother was of her tears, and had a stranger beheld the afflicted group, he would have naturally imagined that they were bewailing some signal calamity, in place of welcoming an event to which they had long looked forward with pleasure. But the feelings of affectionate regret, occasioned by this separation, were most seasonably suspended by the receipt of a letter from Mr Coventry, a respectable farmer in the neighbourhood, in which that gentleman offered to engage their son for a few years, as a companion and tutor to his children. This was an offer which his parents were too prudent to reject, particularly as it might prove the means of future patronage as well as of present emolument. It was therefore immediately agreed upon, that William should himself be the bearer of their letter of acceptance, and proceed forthwith to his new residence. On this occasion he was admonished anew; but the advices were different from those formerly given, and were delivered by a different person. His mother was now the principal speaker; and, instead of warning him against the snares that are laid for youth in a great city, she furnished him with some rude lessons on the principles of good-breeding, descending to a number of particulars too minute to be enumerated here. William listened to her harangue with becoming reverence and attention, and on the following morning, for the first time, bade farewell to his affectionate parents.

On the afternoon of the same day, he arrived at Daisybank, where he was welcomed with the greatest cordiality. His appearance was genteel and prepossessing, and it was not long before his new friends discovered, that the slight degree of awkwardness which at first clung to his manners, proceeded more from bashfulness and embarrassment than natural rusticity. But as he began to feel himself at home, this embarrassment of manner gradually gave place to an easy but unobtrusive politeness. Indeed it would not have been easy for a youth of similar views, at his first outset in life, to have fallen into more desirable company. Mr and Mrs Coventry were proverbial among their neighbours for the simplicity and purity of their manners, and they had laboured, not unsuccessfully, to stamp a similar character upon the minds of their children. Their family consisted of two sons and two daughters, the former of whom were confided to the care of William.

Mary, the eldest of the four, now in her sixteenth or seventeenth year, was in every respect the most interesting object at Daisybank. To a mind highly cultivated for her years, she united many of those personal graces and attractions which command little homage in the crowd, but open upon us in the shade of retirement, and lend to the domestic circle its most irresistible charms. In stature she scarcely reached the middle size. To the beauty derived from form and colour she had few pretensions; yet when her fine blue eyes moistened with a tear at a tale of distress, or beamed an unaffected welcome to the stranger or the friend, he must have been more or less than man who felt not for her a sentiment superior to admiration. Hers, in a word, was the beauty of expression—the beauty of a mind reflected, in which the dullest disciple of Lavater could not for a moment have mistaken her real character. Her education had been principally conducted under the eye of her parents, and might be termed domestic rather than fashionable. Not that she was entirely a stranger to those acquirements which are deemed indispensable in modern education. She had visited occasionally the great metropolis, though, owing to the prudent solicitude of her parents, her residence there had been comparatively short, yet probably long enough to acquire all its useful or elegant accomplishments, without any admixture of its fashionable frivolities.

From this hasty portraiture of Miss Coventry, it will be easily believed that it was next to impossible for a youth nearly of the same age, and not dissimilar in his dispositions, to remain long insensible to charms that were gradually maturing before his eyes, and becoming every day more remarkable. Fortunately, however, the idea of dependence attached to his situation, and a temper naturally diffident determined him to renounce for ever a hope which he feared in his present circumstances would be deemed ungrateful and even presumptuous. But this was waging war with nature, a task which he soon found to be above his strength. He had now, therefore, to abandon the hope of victory for the safety of retreat, and content himself with concealing those sentiments he found it impossible to subdue. Yet so deceitful is love, that even this modest hope was followed with disappointment. One fine evening in June, when he was about to unbend from the duties of the day, and retire to muse on the amiable Mary, he encountered the fair wanderer herself, who was probably returning from a similar errand. He accosted her in evident confusion; and, without being conscious of what he said, invited her to join him in a walk to a neighbouring height. His request was complied with in the same spirit it had been made in, for embarrassment is often contagious, particularly the embarrassment arising from love. On this occasion he intended to summon up all his powers of conversation, and yet his companion had never found him so silent. Some commonplace compliments to the beauty of the evening were almost the only observations which escaped his lips, and these he uttered more in the manner of a sleep-walker than a lover. They soon reached the limit of their walk, and rested upon an eminence that commanded the prospect of an extensive valley below. Day was fast declining to that point which is termed twilight, when the whole irrational creation seem preparing for rest, and only man dares to intrude upon the silence of nature. Miss Coventry beheld the approach of night with some uneasiness, and dreading to be seen with William alone, she began to rally him upon his apparent absence and confusion, and proposed that they should immediately return to the house. At mention of this, William started as from a dream, and being unable longer to command his feelings, he candidly confessed to her the cause of his absence and dejection. He dwelt with much emotion upon his own demerit, and voluntarily accused himself for the presumption of a hope which he never meant to have revealed until the nearer accomplishment of his views had rendered it less imprudent and romantic. He declared that he would sooner submit to any hardship that incur the displeasure of her excellent parents, and entreated that, whatever were her sentiments with regard to the suit he was so presumptuous as to prefer, she might assist him in concealing from them a circumstance which he feared would be attended with that consequence. To this tender and affectionate appeal, the gentle Mary could only answer with her sighs and blushes. She often indeed attempted to speak, but the words as often died upon her lips, and they had nearly reached home before she could even whisper an answer to the reiterated question of her lover. But she did answer at last; and never was a monarch more proud of his conquest, or the homage of tributary princes, than William was of the simple fealty of the heart of Mary.

In the bosom of this happy family William now found his hours glide away so agreeably that he looked forward with real regret to the termination of his engagement. His condition was perhaps one of those in which the nearest approach is made to perfect happiness; when the youthful mind, unseduced by the blandishments of ambition, confines its regards to a few favourite objects, and dreads a separation from them as the greatest of evils. The contrast between the patriarchal simplicity of his father’s fireside, and the comparative elegance of Mr Coventry’s parlour, for a season dazzled him with its novelty; while the ripening graces of Mary threw around him a fascination which older and more unsusceptible minds than his might have found it difficult to resist. In his domestic establishment Mr Coventry aimed at nothing beyond comfort and gentility. William was therefore treated in every respect as an equal, and was never banished from his patron’s table to make room for a more important guest, or condemned to hold Lent over a solitary meal, while the family were celebrating a holiday.

All our ideas are relative, and we estimate every thing by comparison. Upon this principle, William thought no female so lovely or amiable as Miss Coventry, and no residence so delightful as Daisybank. And he would not have exchanged his feelings, while seated on a winter evening amidst his favourite circle, scanning, for their amusement, a page of history, or the columns of a newspaper, while the snugness and comfort that reigned within made him forget the storm that pelted without, for the most delicious paradise an eastern imagination ever painted.

It will thus readily be imagined, that the saddest day of our tutor’s life was that on which he parted from this amiable family. He had here, he believed, spent the happiest moments of his existence, and instead of rejoicing that he had passed through one stage of his apprenticeship, he dwelt upon the past with pleasure, and looked forward to the future with pain.

Fortune, however, presented an insuperable obstacle to his spending his days in the inaction of private study; and he knew that he could neither gain, nor deserved to gain, the object of his affection, without establishing himself in life, by pursuing the course which had been originally chalked out to him. After, therefore, “pledging oft to meet again,” he bade adieu to Daisybank, loaded with the blessings of the best of parents, and followed with the prayers of the best of daughters. He now paid a farewell visit to his own parents; and, after remaining with them a few days, he proceeded to Edinburgh, and for a short period felt his melancholy relieved, by the thousand novelties that attract the notice of a stranger in a great city. But this was only a temporary relief, and as he had no friend in whom he could confide, he soon felt himself solitary in the midst of thousands. Often, when the Professor was expatiating upon the force of the Greek particles, his imagination was hovering over the abodes he had forsaken; and frequently it would have been more difficult for him to have given an account of the lectures he had been attending, than to have calculated the probability of what was passing at a hundred miles’ distance. But this absence and dejection at last wore off; and as he possessed good natural talents, and had been an industrious student formerly, he soon distinguished himself in his classes, and before the usual period was engaged as a tutor in one of the best families in Scotland.

This event formed another important era in his life. His prospects were now flattering; and as vanity did not fail to exaggerate them, he soon dropped a considerable portion of his humility, and began to regard himself as a young man of merit, to whom fortune was lavish of her favours. In his leisure hours he was disposed to mingle much in society, and, as his manners and address were easy and engaging, scarcely a week elapsed that that did not add to the number of his friends. The affections, when divided into many channels, cannot run deep in any, and, probably, for every new acquaintance whom William honoured with his esteem, it required a sacrifice of friendship at the expense of love, and produced some abatement of that devotion of soul which accompanies every true and permanent attachment. At Daisybank he had seen a simple favourite of the graces, but here he beheld the daughters of wealth and of fashion, surrounded with all the gloss of art, and soon began to waver in his attachment, and even to regard his engagement as little more than a youthful frolic. Still this temper of mind was not attained without many struggles between love and ambition, honour and interest; nor could he ever for a moment commune with himself, without feeling remorse for his inconstancy and ingratitude. He could not annihilate the conviction, that Miss Coventry was as faithful and worthy as ever, and had she been present to appeal to his senses, it is probable he might have been preserved from the crime of apostasy. But these were fits of reflection and repentance which repetition soon deprived of their poignancy. The world, the seductive world, returned with all its opiates and charms, to stifle in his bosom the feelings of honour, and obliterate every trace of returning tenderness. After this he became less punctual in his correspondence with Miss Coventry, and in place of anticipating the arrival of her letters, as he was wont to do, he allowed them to be sent slowly to his lodgings, opened them without anxiety, and read them without interest. Of all this inconstancy, ingratitude, and neglect, the simple Mary remained a silent, though not unconcerned spectator. Kind and generous by nature, and judging of others by herself, she framed a thousand excuses for his negligence; and when he did condescend to write to her, answered him as though she had been unconscious of any abatement in his attentions.

Matters remained in this uncertain state for the space of three long years—at least they seemed long to Miss Coventry—when William received his licence as a preacher. He now therefore thought of redeeming a pledge he had given to the minister of his native parish, to make his first public appearance in his pulpit; and after giving due intimation, he departed for the parish of ——, with his best sermon in the pocket of his best coat. The account of his visit spread with telegraphic despatch, long before telegraphs were invented, and was known over half the county many days before his arrival. This was another great and eventful day for his mother. She blessed Providence that she had lived to see the near fulfilment of her most anxious wish, and rising a little in her ambition, thought she could now die contented, if she should see him settled in a living of his own, and be greeted by her neighbours with the envied name of grandmother.—As William was expected to dine with his parents on his way to the parsonage, or, as it is called in Scotland, the manse, of ——, great preparations were made for his reception, and for the appearance of the whole family at church on the following Sunday. Mrs Arbuthnot drew from the family-chest her wedding-gown, which had only seen the sun twice during thirty summers; and her husband, for the first time, reluctantly applied a brush to his holiday suit, which appeared, from the antiquity of its fashion, to have descended, like the garments of the Swiss, through many successive generations of the Arbuthnots.

The little church of H—— was crowded to the door, perhaps for the first time, long before the bellman had given the usual signal. Mr Coventry, though residing in a different parish, had made a journey thither with several of his family, for the purpose of witnessing the first public appearance of his friend. In this party was the amiable Mary, who took a greater interest in the event than any one, save the preacher, was aware of.

William, on this occasion, recited a well written discourse with ease and fluency, and impressed his audience with a high opinion of his talents and piety. Some of the elder of them, indeed, objected to his gestures and pronunciation, which they thought “new fangled” and theatrical; but they all agreed in thinking him a clever lad, and a great honour to his parents. His mother was now overwhelmed with compliments and congratulations from all quarters, which she received with visible marks of pride and emotion. Mr Coventry waited in the churchyard till the congregation had retired, to salute his friend, and invite him to spend a few days at Daisybank. Mary, who hung on her father’s arm, curtsied, blushed, and looked down. She had no well-turned compliment to offer on the occasion, but her eyes expressed something at parting, which once would have been sweeter to his soul than the applause of all the world beside.

Ambition, from the beginning, has been the bane of love. War and peace are not more opposite in their nature and effects than those rival passions, and the bosom that is agitated with the cares of the one has little relish for the gentle joys of the other. William beheld in the person of Miss Coventry all he had been taught to regard as amiable or estimable in woman; but the recollection of the respect that had been shown him by females of distinction, mixed with exaggerated notions of his own merit, made him undervalue those simple unobtrusive graces he once valued so highly, and think almost any conquest easy after he had been settled in the rich living of B——, which had been promised him by his patron.

On the following day he paid a visit to Daisybank, and received the most cordial welcome from a family who sympathised almost equally with his parents in his prospects and advancement. During his stay there, he had frequent opportunities of seeing Miss Coventry alone, but he neglected, or rather avoided them all; and when rallied on the subject of marriage, declaimed on the pleasures of celibacy, and hinted, with a good deal of insincerity, his intention of living single. Although these speeches were like daggers to the mind of her who regretted she could not rival him in inconstancy and indifference, they produced no visible alteration in her behaviour. Hers was not one of those minds in which vanity predominates over every other feeling, and where disappointment is commonly relieved by the hatred or resentment which it excites. Her soul was soft as the passion that enslaved it, and the traces of early affection are not easily effaced from a mind into which the darker passions have never entered.

William bade adieu to Miss Coventry without dropping one word upon which she could rear the superstructure of hope, and carried with him her peace of mind, as he had formerly carried with him her affections. From that hour she became pensive and melancholy, in spite of all her efforts to appear cheerful and happy. She had rejected many lovers for the inconstant’s sake, but that gave her no concern. Her union with him had been long the favourite object of her life, and she could have patiently resigned existence, now that its object was lost. But she shuddered at the thought of the shock it would give her affectionate parents, for the softer feelings of our nature are all of one family, and the tenderest wives have ever been the most dutiful daughters.

It was impossible for Mary long to conceal the sorrow which consumed her. Her fading cheeks and heavy eyes gave daily indications of what her lips refused to utter. Her parents became deeply alarmed at these symptoms of indisposition, and anxiously and unceasingly inquired into the cause of her illness; but her only answer was, that she felt no pain. The best physicians were immediately consulted upon her case, who recommended change of air and company; but all these remedies were tried without effect. The poison of disappointment had taken deep root in her heart, and defied the power of medicine.

Her attendants, when they found all their prescriptions ineffectual, began to ascribe her malady to its real cause, and hinted to her parents their apprehensions that she had been crossed in love. The good people, though greatly surprised at the suggestion, had too much prudence to treat it with indifference, and they left no means untried, consistent with a regard for the feelings of their child, to wile from her the important secret. At first she endeavoured to evade their inquiries; but finding it impossible to allay their apprehensions without having recourse to dissimulation, she confessed to her mother her attachment to William, concealing only the promises he had made to her, and every circumstance that imputed to him the slightest degree of blame. At the same time she entreated them, with the greatest earnestness, that no use might be made of a secret which she wished to have carried with her to the grave. This was a hard task imposed upon her parents. They felt equally with herself the extreme delicacy of making the disclosure; but, on the other hand, they contemplated nothing but the probable loss of their child; an event, the bare apprehension of which filled their minds with the bitterest anguish. After many anxious consultations, Mr Coventry determined, unknown to any but his wife, to pay a visit to William, and ascertain his sentiments with regard to his daughter.

Upon his arrival at Edinburgh, he found that his friend had departed for the manse of B——, with which he had been recently presented. This event, which in other circumstances would have given him the liveliest pleasure, awakened on this occasion emotions of a contrary nature, as he feared it would make his now reverend friend more elevated in his notions, and consequently more averse to a union with his daughter. He did not, however, on that account conceal the real object of his journey, or endeavour to accomplish his purpose by stratagem or deceit. He candidly disclosed his daughter’s situation and sentiments, requesting of his friend that he would open to him his mind with equal candour; and added, that although he held wealth to be an improper motive in marriage, and hoped that his daughter did not require such a recommendation, in the event of this union, whatever he possessed would be liberally shared with him.

On hearing of the situation of Miss Coventry, William became penetrated with the deepest remorse; and being aware that his affection for her was rather stifled than estranged, he declared his willingness to make her his wife. These words operated like a charm upon the drooping spirits of the father, who embraced his friend with ardour, and besought him immediately to accompany him home, that they might lose no time in making a communication, which he fondly hoped would have a similar effect upon the spirits of his daughter.

They departed accordingly together, indulging in the pleasing hope that all would yet be well; but on their arrival at Daisybank, they were seriously alarmed to hear that Miss Coventry had been considerably worse since her father left home. She was now entirely confined to her chamber, and seemed to care for nothing so much as solitude, and an exemption from the trouble of talking. As soon as she was informed of the arrival of their visitor, she suspected he had been sent for, and therefore refused to see him; but upon being assured by her mother, who found deceit in this instance indispensable, that his visit was voluntary and accidental, she at last consented to give him an interview.

On entering the room, which had formerly been the family parlour, William was forcibly struck with the contrast it exhibited. Every object seemed to swim before his sight, and it was some moments before he discovered Miss Coventry, who reclined upon a sofa at the farther end of the room. He advanced with a beating heart, and grasped the burning hand that was extended to meet him. He pressed it to his lips and wept, and muttered something incoherent of forgiveness and love. He looked doubtingly on Mary’s face for an answer,—but her eye darted no reproach, and her lips uttered no reflection. A faint blush, that at this moment overspread her cheek, seemed a token of returning strength, and inspired him with confidence and hope. It was the last effort of nature,—and ere the blood could return to its fountain, that fountain had closed for ever. Death approached his victim under the disguise of sleep, and appeared divested of his usual pains and terrors.

William retired from this scene of unutterable anguish, and for a long period was overwhelmed with the deepest melancholy and remorse. But time gradually softened and subdued his sorrow, and I trust perfected his repentance. He is since married and wealthy, and is regarded by the world as an individual eminently respectable and happy. But, amidst all his comforts, there are moments when he would exchange his identity with the meanest slave that breathes, and regards himself as the murderer of Mary Coventry.—_J. M‘D., in Blackwood’s Magazine_, 1817.

ADAM BELL.

BY JAMES HOGG, THE “ETTRICK SHEPHERD.”

This tale, which may be depended on as in every part true, is singular, from the circumstance of its being insolvable, either from the facts that have been discovered relating to it, or by reason; for though events sometimes occur among mankind, which at the time seem inexplicable, yet there being always some individuals acquainted with the primary causes of these events, they seldom fail of being brought to light before all the actors in them, or their confidants, are removed from this state of existence. But the causes which produced the events here related have never been accounted for in this world; even conjecture is left to wander in a labyrinth, unable to get hold of the thread that leads to the catastrophe.

Mr Bell was a gentleman of Annandale, in Dumfriesshire, in the south of Scotland, and proprietor of a considerable estate in that district, part of which he occupied himself. He lost his father when he was an infant, and his mother dying when he was about 20 years of age, left him the sole proprietor of the estate, besides a large sum of money at interest, for which he was indebted, in a great measure, to his mother’s parsimony during his minority. His person was tall, comely, and athletic, and his whole delight was in warlike and violent exercises. He was the best horseman and marksman in the county, and valued himself particularly upon his skill in the broad sword. Of this he often boasted aloud, and regretted that there was not one in the county whose skill was in some degree equal to his own.

In the autumn of 1745, after being for several days busily and silently employed in preparing for his journey, he left his own house, and went to Edinburgh, giving at the same time such directions to his servants as indicated his intention of being absent for some time.

A few days after he had left his home, one morning, while his housekeeper was putting the house in order for the day, her master, as she thought, entered by the kitchen door, the other being bolted, and passed her in the middle of the floor. He was buttoned in his greatcoat, which was the same he had on when he went from home; he likewise had the same hat on his head, and the same whip in his hand which he took with him. At sight of him she uttered a shriek, but recovering her surprise, instantly said to him, “You have not stayed so long from us, Sir.” He made no reply, but went sullenly into his own room, without throwing off his greatcoat. After a pause of about five minutes, she followed him into the room. He was standing at his desk with his back towards her. She asked him if he wished to have a fire kindled, and afterwards if he was well enough; but he still made no reply to any of these questions. She was astonished, and returned into the kitchen. After tarrying about other five minutes, he went out at the front door, it being then open, and walked deliberately towards the bank of the river Kinnel, which was deep and wooded, and in that he vanished from her sight. The woman ran out in the utmost consternation to acquaint the men who were servants belonging to the house; and coming to one of the ploughmen, she told him that their master was come home, and had certainly lost his reason, for that he was wandering about the house and would not speak. The man loosed his horses from the plough and came home, listened to the woman’s relation, made her repeat it again and again, and then assured her that she was raving, for their master’s horse was not in the stable, and of course he could not be come home. However, as she persisted in her asseveration with every appearance of sincerity, he went into the linn to see what was become of his mysterious master. He was neither to be seen nor heard of in all the country. It was then concluded that the housekeeper had seen an apparition, and that something had befallen their master; but on consulting with some old people, skilled in those matters, they learned that when a “wraith,” or apparition of a living person, appeared while the sun was up, instead of being a prelude of instant death, it prognosticated very long life; and, moreover, that it could not possibly be a ghost that she had seen, for they always chose the night season for making their visits. In short, though it was the general topic of conversation among the servants and the people in the vicinity, no reasonable conclusion could be formed on the subject.

The most probable conjecture was, that as Mr Bell was known to be so fond of arms, and had left his home on the very day that Prince Charles Stuart and his Highlanders defeated General Hawley on Falkirk Muir, he had gone either with him or the Duke of Cumberland to the north. It was, however, afterwards ascertained, that he had never joined any of the armies. Week passed after week, and month after month, but no word of Mr Bell. A female cousin was his nearest living relation; her husband took the management of his affairs; and concluding that he had either joined the army, or drowned himself in the Kinnel, when he was seen go into the linn, made no more inquiries after him.

About this very time, a respectable farmer, whose surname was M‘Millan, and who resided in the neighbourhood of Musselburgh, happened to be in Edinburgh about some business. In the evening he called upon a friend who lived near Holyrood-house; and being seized with an indisposition, they persuaded him to tarry with them all night. About the middle of the night he grew exceedingly ill, and not being able to find any rest or ease in his bed, imagined he would be the better of a walk. He put on his clothes, and, that he might not disturb the family, slipped quietly out at the back door, and walked in St Anthony’s garden behind the house. The moon shone so bright, that it was almost as light as noonday, and he had scarcely taken a single turn, when he saw a tall man enter from the other side, buttoned in a drab-coloured greatcoat. It so happened, that at that time M‘Millan stood in the shadow of the wall, and perceiving that the stranger did not observe him, a thought struck him that it would not be amiss to keep himself concealed, that he might see what the man was going to be about. He walked backwards and forwards for some time in apparent impatience, looking at his watch every minute, until at length another man came in by the same way, buttoned likewise in a greatcoat, and having a bonnet on his head. He was remarkably stout made, but considerably lower in stature than the other. They exchanged only a single word; then turning both about, they threw off their coats, drew their swords, and began a most desperate and well-contested combat.

The tall gentleman appeared to have the advantage. He constantly gained ground on the other, and drove him half round the division of the garden in which they fought. Each of them strove to fight with his back towards the moon, so that it might shine full in the face of his opponent; and many rapid wheels were made for the purpose of gaining this position. The engagement was long and obstinate, and by the desperate thrusts that were frequently aimed on both sides, it was evident that they meant one another’s destruction. They came at length within a few yards of the place where M‘Millan still stood concealed. They were both out of breath, and at that instant a small cloud chancing to overshadow the moon, one of them called out, “Hold, we cannot see.” They uncovered their heads, wiped their faces, and as soon as the moon emerged from the cloud, each resumed his guard. Surely that was an awful pause! And short, indeed, was the stage between it and eternity with the one! The tall gentleman made a lounge at the other, who parried and returned it; and as the former sprung back to avoid the thrust, his foot slipped, and he stumbled forward towards his antagonist, who dexterously met his breast in the fall with the point of his sword, and ran him through the body. He made only one feeble convulsive struggle, as if attempting to rise, and expired almost instantaneously.

M‘Millan was petrified with horror; but conceiving himself to be in a perilous situation, having stolen out of the house at that dead hour of the night, he had so much presence of mind as to hold his peace, and to keep from interfering in the smallest degree.

The surviving combatant wiped his sword with great composure;—put on his bonnet, covered the body with one of the greatcoats, took up the other, and departed. M‘Millan returned quietly to his chamber without awakening any of the family. His pains were gone, but his mind was shocked and exceedingly perturbed; and after deliberating until morning, he determined to say nothing of the matter, and to make no living creature acquainted with what he had seen, thinking that suspicion would infallibly rest on him. Accordingly, he kept his bed next morning, until his friend brought him the tidings that a gentleman had been murdered at the back of the house during the night. He then arose and examined the body, which was that of a young man, seemingly from the country, having brown hair, and fine manly features. He had neither letter, book, nor signature of any kind about him that could in the least lead to a discovery of who he was; only a common silver watch was found in his pocket, and an elegant sword was clasped in his cold bloody hand, which had an A. and B. engraved on the hilt. The sword had entered at his breast, and gone out at his back a little below the left shoulder. He had likewise received a slight wound on the sword arm.

The body was carried to the dead-room, where it lay for eight days, and though great numbers inspected it, yet none knew who or whence the deceased was, and he was at length buried among the strangers in Grayfriars churchyard.

Sixteen years elapsed before M‘Millan mentioned to any person the circumstance of his having seen the duel, but at that period, being in Annandale receiving some sheep that he had bought, and chancing to hear of the astonishing circumstances of Bell’s disappearance, he divulged the whole. The time, the description of his person, his clothes, and above all, the sword with the initials of his name engraved upon it, confirmed the fact beyond the smallest shadow of doubt that it was Mr Bell whom he had seen killed in the duel behind the Abbey. But who the person was that slew him, how the quarrel commenced, or who it was that appeared to his housekeeper, remains to this day a profound secret, and is likely to remain so, until that day when every deed of darkness shall be brought to light.

Some have even ventured to blame McMillan for the whole, on account of his long concealment of facts, and likewise in consideration of his uncommon bodily strength and daring disposition, he being one of the boldest and most enterprising men of the age in which he lived; but all who knew him despised such insinuations, and declared them to be entirely inconsistent with his character, which was most honourable and disinterested; and besides, his tale has every appearance of truth. “Pluris est oculatus testis unus quam auriti decem.”

MAUNS’ STANE; OR, MINE HOST’S TALE.

In the latter end of the autumn of ——, I set out by myself on an excursion over the northern part of Scotland; and, during that time, my chief amusement was to observe the little changes of manners, language, &c., in the different districts. After having viewed, on my return, the principal curiosities in Buchan, I made a little alehouse, or “public,” my head-quarters for the night. Having discussed my supper in solitude, I called up mine host to enable me to discuss my bottle, and to give me a statistical account of the country around me. Seated in the “blue” end, and well supplied with the homely but satisfying luxuries which the place afforded, I was in an excellent mood for enjoying the communicativeness of my landlord; and, after speaking about the cave at Slaines, the state of the crop, and the neighbouring franklins, edged him, by degrees, to speak about the Abbey of Deer, an interesting ruin which I had examined in the course of the day, formerly the stronghold of the once powerful family of Cummin.

“It’s dootless a bonny place about the Abbey,” said he, “but naething like what it was when the great Sir James the Rose cam to hide i’ the Buchan woods, wi’ a’ the Grahames rampagin’ at his tail, whilk you that’s a beuk learned man ’ill hae read o’; an’ maybe ye’ll hae heard o’ the saughen bush where he forgathered wi’ his joe; or aiblins ye may have seen’t, for it’s standing yet just at the corner o’ gaukit Jamie Jamieson’s peat-stack. Ay, ay, the abbey was a brave place ance; but a’ thing, ye ken, comes till an end.” So saying, he nodded to me, and brought his glass to an end.

“This place, then, must have been famed in days of yore, my friend?”

“Ye may tak my word for that,” said he. “’Od, it _was_ a place! Sic a sight o’ fechtin’ as they had about it! But gin ye’ll gang up the trap-stair to the laft, an’ open Jenny’s kist, ye’ll see sic a story about it, prented by ane o’ your learned Aberdeen’s fouk, Maister Keith, I think; she coft it in Aberdeen for twal pennies, lang ago, an’ battered it to the lid o’ her kist. But gang up the stair canny, for fear that you should wauken her, puir thing;—or, bide, I’ll just wauken Jamie Fleep, an’ gar him help me down wi’t, for our stair’s no just that canny for them ‘t’s no acquaint wi’t, let alane a frail man wi’ your infirmity.”

I assured him that I would neither disturb the young lady’s slumber, nor Jamie Fleep’s, and begged him to give me as much information as he could about this castle.

“Weel, wishin’ your gude health again.—Our minister ance said, that Soloman’s Temple was a’ in ruins, wi’ whin bushes, an’ broom an’ thristles growin’ ower the bonny carved wark an’ the cedar wa’s, just like our ain Abbey. Noo, I judge that the Abbey o’ Deer was just the marrow o’t, or the minister wadna hae said that. But when it was biggit, Lord kens, for I dinna. It was just as you see it, lang afore your honour was born; an’ aiblins, as the by-word says, may be sae after ye’re hanged. But that’s neither here nor there. The Cummins o’ Buchan were a dour and surly race; and, for a fearfu’ time, nane near han’ nor far awa could ding them, an’ yet mony a ane tried it. The fouk on their ain lan’ likit them weel enough; but the Crawfords, an’ the Grahames, an’ the Mars, an’ the Lovats, were aye trying to comb them against the hair, an’ mony a weary kempin’ had they wi’ them; but, some way or ither, they could never ding them; an’ fouk said that they gaed and learned the black art frae the Pope o’ Room, wha, I mysel heard the minister say, had aye a colleague wi’ the Auld Chiel. I dinna ken fou it was; in the tail o’ the day, the hale country rase up against them, an’ besieged them in the Abbey o’ Deer. Ye’ll see, my frien’ [by this time mine host considered me as one of his cronies], tho’ we ca’ it the Abbey, it had naething to do wi’ Papistry; na, na, no sae bad as a’ that either, but just a noble’s castle, where they keepit sodgers gaun about in airn an’ scarlet, wi’ their swords an’ guns, an’ begnets, an’ sentry-boxes, like the local militia in the barracks o’ Aberdeen.

“Weel, ye see, they surrounded the castle, an’ lang did they besiege it; but there was a vast o’ meat in the castle, an’ the Buchan fouk fought like the vera deil. They took their horse through a miscellaneous passage, half a mile long, aneath the hill o’ Saplinbrae, an’ watered them in the burn o’ Pulmer. But a’ wadna do; they took the castle at last, and a terrible slaughter they made amo’ them; but they were sair disappointed in ae partic’ler, for Cummin’s fouk sank a’ their goud an’ siller in a draw-wall, an’ syne filled it up wi’ stanes. They gat naething in the way of spulzie to speak o’; sae out o’ spite they dang doon the castle, an’ it’s never been biggit to this day. But the Cummins were no sae bad as the Lairds o’ Federat, after a’.”

“And who were these Federats?” I inquired.

“The Lairds o’ Federat?” said he, moistening his mouth again as a preamble to his oration. “Troth, frae their deeds, ane would maist think that they had a drap o’ the deil’s blude, like the pyets. Gin a’ tales be true, they hae the warmest place at his bink this vera minute. I dinna ken vera muckle about them, though, but the auldest fouk said they were just byous wi’ cruelty. Mony a gude man did they hing up i’ their ha’, just for their ain sport; ye’ll see the ring to the fore yet in the roof o’t. Did ye ever hear o’ Mauns’ Stane, neebour?”

“Mauns’ what?” said I.

“Ou, Mauns’ Stane. But it’s no likely. Ye see it was just a queer clump o’ a roun’-about heathen, waghtin’ maybe twa tons or thereby. It wasna like ony o’ the stanes in our countra, an’ it was as roun’ as a fit-ba’; I’m sure it wad ding Professor Couplan himsel to tell what way it cam there. Noo, fouk aye thought there was something uncanny about it, an’ some gaed the length o’ saying, that the deil used to bake ginshbread upon’t; and, as sure as ye’re sitting there, frien’, there was knuckle-marks upon’t, for my ain father has seen them as aften as I have taes an’ fingers. Aweel, ye see, Mauns Crawford, the last o’ the Lairds o’ Federat, an’ the deil had coost out (maybe because the Laird was just as wicked an’ as clever as he was himsel), an’ ye perceive the evil ane wantit to play him a trick. Noo, Mauns Crawford was ae day lookin’ ower his castle wa’, and he saw a stalwart carl, in black claes, ridin’ up the loanin’. He stopped at this chuckie o’ a stane, an’, loutin’ himsel, he took it up in his arms, and lifted it three times to his saddle-bow, an’ syne he rade awa out o’ sight, never comin’ near the castle, as Mauns thought he would hae done. ‘Noo,’ says the baron till himsel, says he, ‘I didna think that there was ony ane in a’ the land that could hae played sic a ploy; but deil fetch me if I dinna lift it as weel as he did.’ Sae aff he gaed, for there was na sic a man for birr in a’ the countra, an’ he kent it as weel, for he never met wi’ his match. Weel, he tried, and tugged, and better than tugged at the stane, but he coudna mudge it ava; an’, when he looked about, he saw a man at his elbuck, a’ smeared wi’ smiddy-coom, snightern’ an’ laughin’ at him. The Laird d——d him, an’ bade him lift it, whilk he did as gin’t had been a little pinnin. The Laird was like to burst wi’ rage at being fickled by sic a hag-ma-hush carle, and he took to the stane in a fury, and lifted it till his knee; but the weight o’t amaist ground his banes to smash. He held the stane till his een-strings crackit, when he was as blin’ as a moudiwort. He was blin’ till the day o’ his death,—that’s to say, if ever he died, for there were queer sayings about it—vera queer! vera queer! The stane was ca’d Mauns’ Stane ever after; an’ it was no thought that canny to be near it after gloaming; for what says the psalm—hem!—I mean the sang—

’Tween Ennetbutts an’ Mauns’ Stane Ilka night there walks ane.

“There never was a chief of the family after; the men were scattered, an’ the castle demolished. The doo and the hoodie craw nestle i’ their towers, and the hare maks her form on their grassy hearthstane.”

“Is this stone still to be seen?”

“Ou na. Ye see, it was just upon Johnie Forbes’s craft, an’ fouk cam far an’ near to leuk at it, an’ trampit down a’ the puir cottar body’s corn; sae he houkit a hole just aside it, an’ tumbled it intil’t: by that means naebody sees’t noo, but its weel kent that it’s there, for they’re livin’ yet wha’ve seen it.”

“But the well at the Abbey—did no one feel a desire to enrich himself with the gold and silver buried there?”

“Hoot, ay; mony a ane tried to find out whaur it was, and, for that matter, I’ve maybe done as foolish a thing mysel; but nane ever made it out. There was a scholar, like yoursel, that gaed ae night down to the Abbey, an’, ye see, he summoned up the deil.”

“The deuce he did!” said I.

“Weel, weel, the _deuce_, gin ye like it better,” said he. “An’ he was gaun to question him where the treasure was, but he had eneugh to do to get him laid without deaving him wi’ questions, for a’ the deils cam about him, like bees bizzin’ out o’ a byke. He never coured the fright he gat, but cried out, ‘Help! help!’ till his very enemy wad hae been wae to see him; and sae he cried till he died, which was no that lang after. Fouk sudna meddle wi’ sic ploys!”

“Most wonderful! And do you believe that Beelzebub actually appeared to him?”

“Believe it! What for no?” said he, consequentially tapping the lid of his snuff-horn. “Didna my ain father see the evil ane i’ the schule o’ Auld Deer?”

“Indeed!”

“Weel I wot he did that. A wheen idle callants, when the dominie was out at his twal-hours, read the Lord’s Prayer backlans, an’ raised him, but coudna lay him again; for he threepit ower them that he wadna gang awa unless he gat ane o’ them wi’ him. Ye may be sure this put them in an awfu’ swither. They were a’ squallin’, an’ crawlin’, and sprawlin’ amo’ the couples to get out o’ his grips. Ane o’ them gat out an’ tauld the maister about it; an’ when he cam down, the melted lead was rinnin’ aff the roof o’ the house wi’ the heat; sae, flingin’ to the Black Thief a young bit kittlen o’ the schule-mistress’s, he sank through the floor wi’ an awsome roar. I mysel have heard the mistress misca’in’ her man about offering up the puir thing, baith saul and body, to Baal. But, troth, I’m no clear to speak o’ the like o’ this at sic a time o’ night; sae, if your honour be na for anither jug, I’ll e’en wus you a gude night, for its wearin’ late, an’ I maun awa’ to Skippyfair i’ the mornin’.”

I assented to this, and quickly lost in sleep the remembrance of all these tales of the olden time.—_Aberdeen Censor_, 1825.

THE FREEBOOTER OF LOCHABER.

BY SIR THOMAS DICK LAUDER.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, there lived a certain notorious freebooter, in the county of Moray, a native of Lochaber, of the name of Cameron, but who was better known by his cognomen of _Padrig Mac-an-Ts’agairt_, which signifies, “Peter, the Priest’s Son.” Numerous were the “creachs,” or robberies of cattle on a great scale, driven by him from Strathspey. But he did not confine his depredations to that country; for, some time between the years 1690 and 1695, he made a clean sweep of the cattle from the rich pastures of the Aird, the territory of the Frasers. That he might put his pursuers on a wrong scent, he did not go directly towards Lochaber, but, crossing the river Ness at Lochend, he struck over the mountains of Strathnairn and Strathdearn, and ultimately encamped behind a hill above Duthel, called, from a copious spring on its summit, _Cairn-an-Sh’uaran_, or the Well Hill. But, notwithstanding all his precautions, the celebrated Simon Lord Lovat, then chief of the Frasers, discovered his track, and despatched a special messenger to his father-in-law, Sir Ludovick Grant of Grant, begging his aid in apprehending Mac-an-Ts’agairt, and recovering the cattle.

It so happened that there lived at this time, on the laird of Grant’s ground, a man also called Cameron, surnamed Mugach More, of great strength and undaunted courage; he had six sons and a stepson, whom his wife, formerly a woman of light character, had before her marriage with Mugach, and, as they were all brave, Sir Ludovick applied to them to undertake the recapture of the cattle. Sir Ludovic was not mistaken in the man. The Mugach no sooner received his orders, than he armed himself and his little band, and went in quest of the freebooter, whom he found in the act of cooking a dinner from part of the spoil. The Mugach called on Padrig and his men to surrender, and they, though numerous, dreading the well-known prowess of their adversary, fled to the opposite hills, their chief threatening bloody vengeance as he went. The Mugach drove the cattle to a place of safety, and watched them till their owners came to recover them.

Padrig did not utter his threats without the fullest intention of carrying them into effect. In the latter end of the following spring, he visited Strathspey with a strong party, and waylaid the Mugach, as he and his sons were returning from working at a small patch of land he had on the brow of a hill, about half-a-mile above his house. Padrig and his party concealed themselves in a thick covert of underwood, through which they knew that the Mugach and his sons must pass; but seeing their intended victims well-armed, the cowardly assassins lay still in their hiding-place, and allowed them to pass, with the intention of taking a more favourable opportunity for their purpose. That very night they surprised and murdered two of the sons, who, being married, lived in separate houses, at some distance from their father’s; and, having thus executed so much of their diabolical purpose, they surrounded the Mugach’s cottage.

No sooner was his dwelling attacked, than the brave Mugach, immediately guessing who the assailants were, made the best arrangements for defence that time and circumstances permitted. The door was the first point attempted; but it was strong, and he and his four sons placed themselves behind it, determined to do bloody execution the moment it should be forced. Whilst thus engaged, the Mugach was startled by a noise above the rafters, and, looking up, he perceived, in the obscurity, the figure of a man half through a hole in the wattled roof. Eager to despatch his foe as he entered, he sprang upon a table, plunged his sword into his body, and down fell—his stepson, whom he had ever loved and cherished as one of his own children! The youth had been cutting his way through the roof, with the intention of attacking Padrig from above, and so creating a diversion in favour of those who were defending the door. The brave young man lived no longer than to say, “Dear father, I fear you have killed me!”

For a moment the Mugach stood petrified with horror and grief, but rage soon usurped the place of both. “Let me open the door!” he cried, “and revenge his death, by drenching my sword in the blood of the villain!” His sons clung around him, to prevent what they conceived to be madness, and a strong struggle ensued between desperate bravery and filial duty; whilst the Mugach’s wife stood gazing on the corpse of her first-born son, in an agony of contending passions, being ignorant from all she had witnessed but that the young man’s death had been wilfully wrought by her husband. “Hast thou forgotten our former days?” cried the wily Padrig, who saw the whole scene through a crevice in the door. “How often hast thou undone thy door to me, and wilt thou not open it now, to give me way to punish him who has, but this moment, so foully slain thy beloved son?” Ancient recollections, and present affliction, conspired to twist her to his purpose. The struggle and altercation between the Mugach and his sons still continued. A frenzy seized on the unhappy woman; she flew to the door, undid the bolt, and Padrig and his assassins rushed in.

The infuriated Mugach no sooner beheld his enemy enter, than he sprang at him like a tiger, grasped him by the throat, and dashed him to the ground. Already was his vigorous sword-arm drawn back, and his broad claymore was about to find a passage to the traitor’s heart, when his faithless wife, coming behind him, threw over it a large canvas winnowing-sheet, and, before he could extricate the blade from the numerous folds, Padrig’s weapon was reeking in the best heart’s-blood of the bravest Highlander that Strathspey could boast of. His four sons, who had witnessed their mother’s treachery, were paralyzed. The unfortunate woman herself, too, stood stupified and appalled. But she was quickly recalled to her senses by the active clash of the swords of Padrig and his men. “Oh, my sons, my sons!” she cried; “spare my boys!” But the tempter needed her services no longer,—she had done his work. She was spurned to the ground and trampled under foot by those who soon strewed the bloody floor around her with the lifeless corpses of her brave sons.

Exulting in the full success of this expedition of vengeance, Mac-an-Ts’agairt beheaded the bodies, and piled the heads in a heap on an oblong hill that runs parallel to the road on the east side of Carr Bridge, from which it is called _Tom-nan-Cean_, the Hill of the Heads. Scarcely was he beyond the reach of danger, than his butchery was known at the Castle Grant, and Sir Ludovick immediately offered a great reward for his apprehension; but Padrig, who had anticipated some such thing, fled to Ireland, where he remained for seven years. But the restlessness of the murderer is well known, and Padrig felt it in all its horrors. Leaving his Irish retreat, he returned to Lochaber. By a strange accident, a certain Mungo Grant, of Muckrach, having had his cattle and horses carried away by some thieves from that quarter, pursued them hot foot, recovered them, and was on his way returning with them, when, to his astonishment, he met Padrig Mac-an-Ts’agairt, quite alone in a narrow pass, on the borders of his native country. Mungo instantly seized and made a prisoner of him. But his progress with his beasts was tedious; and as he was entering Strathspey at _Lag-na-caillich_, about a mile to the westward of Aviemore, he espied twelve desperate men, who, taking advantage of his slow march, had crossed the hills to gain the pass before him, for the purpose of rescuing Padrig. But Mungo was not to be daunted. Seeing them occupying the road in his front, he grasped his prisoner with one hand, and brandishing his dirk with the other, he advanced in the midst of his people and animals, swearing potently that the first motion at an attempt at rescue by any one of them should be the signal for his dirk to drink the life’s-blood of Padrig Mac-an-Ts’agairt. They were so intimidated by his boldness that they allowed him to pass without assault, and left their friend to his fate. Padrig was forthwith carried to Castle Grant. But the remembrance of the Mugach’s murder had been by this time much obliterated by many events little less strange, and the laird, unwilling to be troubled with the matter, ordered Mungo and his prisoner away.

Disappointed and mortified, Mungo and his party were returning with their captive, discussing, as they went, what they had best do with him. “A fine reward we have had for all our trouble!” said one. “The laird may catch the next thief her nainsel, for Donald!” said another. “Let’s turn him loose!” said a third. “Ay, ay,” said a fourth; “what for wud we be plaguing oursels more wi’ him?” “Yes, yes! brave, generous men!” said Padrig, roused by a sudden hope of life from the moody dream of the gallows-tree in which he had been plunged, whilst he was courting his mournful muse to compose his own lament, that he might die with an effect striking, as all the events of his life had been. “Yes, brave men, free me from these bonds! It is unworthy of Strathspey men,—it is unworthy of Grants to triumph over a fallen foe! Those whom I killed were no clansmen of yours, but recreant Camerons, who betrayed a Cameron! Let me go free, and that reward of which you have been disappointed shall be quadrupled for sparing my life.” Such words as these, operating on minds so much prepared to receive them favourably, had well-nigh worked their purpose. But “No!” said Muckrach sternly, “it shall never be said that a murderer escaped from my hands. Besides, it was just so that he fairly spake the Mugach’s false wife. But did he spare her sons on that account? If ye let him go, my men, the fate of the Mugach may be ours; for what bravery can stand against treachery and assassination?” This opened an entirely new view of the question to Padrig’s rude guards, and the result of the conference was that they resolved to take him to Inverness, and to deliver him up to the sheriff.

As they were pursuing their way up the south side of the river Dulnan, the hill of _Tom-nan-Cean_ appeared on that opposite to them. At sight of it the whole circumstances of Padrig’s atrocious deed came fresh in to their minds. It seemed to cry on them for justice, and with one impulse they shouted out, “Let him die on the spot where he did the bloody act!” Without a moment’s farther delay, they determined to execute their new resolution. But on their way across the plain, they happened to observe a large fir tree, with a thick horizontal branch growing at right angles from the trunk, and of a sufficient height from the ground to suit their purpose; and doubting if they might find so convenient a gallows where they were going, they at once determined that here Padrig should finish his mortal career. The neighbouring birch thicket supplied them with materials for making a withe; and whilst they were twisting it, Padrig burst forth in a flood of Gaelic verse, which his mind had been accumulating by the way. His song and the twig rope that was to terminate his existence were spun out and finished at the same moment, and he was instantly elevated to a height equally beyond his ambition and his hopes.

AN HOUR IN THE MANSE.

BY PROFESSOR WILSON.

In a few weeks the annual sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was to be administered in the parish of Deanside; and the minister, venerable in old age, of authority by the power of his talents and learning, almost feared for his sanctity, yet withal beloved for gentleness and compassion that had never been found wanting, when required either by the misfortunes or errors of any of his flock, had delivered for several successive Sabbaths, to full congregations, sermons on the proper preparation of communicants in that awful ordinance. The old man was a follower of Calvin; and many, who had listened to him with a resolution in their hearts to approach the table of the Redeemer, felt so awe-stricken and awakened at the conclusion of his exhortations, that they gave their souls another year to meditate on what they had heard, and by a pure and humble course of life, to render themselves less unworthy to partake the mysterious and holy bread and wine.

The good old man received in the manse, for a couple of hours every evening, such of his parishioners as came to signify their wish to partake of the sacrament; and it was then noted, that, though he in nowise departed, in his conversation with them at such times, from the spirit of those doctrines which he had delivered from the pulpit, yet his manner was milder, and more soothing, and full of encouragement; so that many who went to him almost with quaking hearts, departed in tranquillity and peace, and looked forward to that most impressive and solemn act of the Christian faith with calm and glad anticipation. The old man thought, truly and justly, that few, if any, would come to the manse, after having heard him in the kirk, without due and deep reflection; and therefore, though he allowed none to pass through his hands without strict examination, he spoke to them all benignly, and with that sort of paternal pity which a religious man, about to leave this life, feels towards all his brethren of mankind, who are entering upon, or engaged in, its scenes of agitation, trouble, and danger.

On one of those evenings, the servant showed into the minister’s study a tall, bold-looking, dark-visaged man, in the prime of life, who, with little of the usual courtesy, advanced into the middle of the room, and somewhat abruptly declared the sacred purpose of his visit. But before he could receive a reply, he looked around and before him; and there was something so solemn in the old minister’s appearance, as he sat like a spirit, with his unclouded eyes fixed upon the intruder, that that person’s countenance fell, and his heart was involuntarily knocking against his side. An old large Bible, the same that he read from in the pulpit, was lying open before him. One glimmering candle showed his beautiful and silvery locks falling over his temples, as his head half stooped over the sacred page; a dead silence was in the room dedicated to meditation and prayer; the old man, it was known, had for some time felt himself to be dying, and had spoken of the sacrament of this summer as the last he could ever hope to administer; so that altogether, in the silence, the dimness, the sanctity, the unworldliness of the time, the place, and the being before him, the visitor stood like one abashed and appalled; and bowing more reverently, or at least respectfully, he said, with a quivering voice, “Sir, I come for your sanction to be admitted to the table of our Lord.”

The minister motioned to him with his hand to sit down; and it was a relief to the trembling man to do so, for he was in the presence of one who, he felt, saw into his heart. A sudden change from hardihood to terror took place within his dark nature; he wished himself out of the insupportable sanctity of that breathless room; and a remorse, that had hitherto slept, or been drowned within him, now clutched his heartstrings, as if with an alternate grasp of frost and fire, and made his knees knock against each other where he sat, and his face pale as ashes.

“Norman Adams, saidst thou that thou wilt take into that hand, and put into those lips, the symbol of the blood that was shed for sinners, and of the body that bowed on the cross, and then gave up the ghost? If so, let us speak together, even as if thou wert communing with thine own heart. Never again may I join in that sacrament, for the hour of my departure is at hand. Say, wilt thou eat and drink death to thine immortal soul?”

The terrified man found strength to rise from his seat, and, staggering towards the door, said, “Pardon, forgive me!—I am not worthy.”

“It is not I who can pardon, Norman. That power lies not with man; but sit down—you are deadly pale—and though, I fear, an ill-living and a dissolute man, greater sinners have repented and been saved. Approach not now the table of the Lord, but confess all your sins before Him in the silence of your own house, and upon your naked knees on the stone-floor every morning and every night; and if this you do faithfully, humbly, and with a contrite heart, come to me again when the sacrament is over, and I will speak words of comfort to you (if then I am able to speak)—if, Norman, it should be on my deathbed. This will I do for the sake of thy soul, and for the sake of thy father, Norman, whom my soul loved, and who was a support to me in my ministry for many long, long years, even for two score and ten, for we were at school together; and had your father been living now, he would, like myself, have this very day finished his eighty-fifth year. I send you not from me in anger, but in pity and love. Go, my son, and this very night begin your repentance, for if that face speak the truth, your heart must be sorely charged.”

Just as the old man ceased speaking, and before the humble, or at least affrighted culprit had risen to go, another visitor of a very different kind was shown into the room—a young, beautiful girl, almost shrouded in her cloak, with a sweet pale face, on which sadness seemed in vain to strive with the natural expression of the happiness of youth.

“Mary Simpson,” said the kind old man, as she stood with a timid courtesy near the door, “Mary Simpson, approach, and receive from my hands the token for which thou comest. Well dost thou know the history of thy Saviour’s life, and rejoicest in the life and immortality brought to light by the gospel. Young and guileless, Mary, art thou; and dim as my memory now is of many things, yet do I well remember the evening, when first beside my knee, thou heardst read how the Divine Infant was laid in a manger, how the wise men from the East came to the place of His nativity, and how the angels were heard singing in the fields of Bethlehem all the night long.”

Alas! every word that had thus been uttered sent a pang into the poor creature’s heart, and, without lifting her eyes from the floor, and in a voice more faint and hollow than belonged to one so young, she said, “O sir! I come not as an intending communicant; yet the Lord my God knows that I am rather miserable than guilty, and He will not suffer my soul to perish, though a baby is now within me, the child of guilt, and sin, and horror. This, my shame, come I to tell you; but for the father of my babe unborn, cruel though he has been to me,—oh! cruel, cruel, indeed,—yet shall his name go down with me in silence to the grave. I must not, must not breathe his name in mortal ears; but I have looked round me in the wide moor, and when nothing that could understand was by, nothing living but birds, and bees, and the sheep I was herding, often have I whispered his name in my prayers, and beseeched God and Jesus to forgive him all his sins.”

At these words, of which the passionate utterance seemed to relieve her heart, and before the pitying and bewildered old man could reply, Mary Simpson raised her eyes from the floor, and fearing to meet the face of the minister, which had heretofore never shone upon her but with smiles, and of which the expected frown was to her altogether insupportable, she turned them wildly round the room, as if for a dark resting-place, and beheld Norman Adams rooted to his seat, leaning towards her with his white, ghastly countenance, and his eyes starting from their sockets, seemingly in wrath, agony, fear, and remorse. That terrible face struck poor Mary to the heart, and she sank against the wall, and slipped down, shuddering, upon a chair.

“Norman Adams, I am old and weak, but do you put your arm round that poor lost creature, and keep her from falling down on the hard floor. I hear it is a stormy night, and she has walked some miles hither; no wonder she is overcome. You have heard her confession, but it was not meant for your ear; so, till I see you again, say nothing of what you have now heard.”

“O sir! a cup of water, for my blood is either leaving my heart altogether, or it is drowning it. Your voice, sir, is going far, far away from me, and I am sinking down. Oh, hold me!—hold me up! Is it a pit into which I am falling?—Saw I not Norman Adams?—Where is he now?”

The poor maiden did not fall off the chair, although Norman Adams supported her not; but her head lay back against the wall, and a sigh, long and dismal, burst from her bosom, that deeply affected the old man’s heart, but struck that of the speechless and motionless sinner, like the first toll of the prison bell that warns the felon to leave his cell and come forth to execution.

The minister fixed a stern eye upon Norman, for, from the poor girl’s unconscious words, it was plain that he was the guilty wretch who had wrought all this misery. “You knew, did you not, that she had neither father nor mother, sister nor brother, scarcely one relation on earth to care for or watch over her; and yet you have used her so? If her beauty was a temptation unto you, did not the sweet child’s innocence touch your hard and selfish heart with pity? or her guilt and grief must surely now wring it with remorse. Look on her—white, cold, breathless, still as a corpse; and yet, thou bold bad man, thy footsteps would have approached the table of thy Lord!”

The child now partly awoke from her swoon, and her dim opening eyes met those of Norman Adams. She shut them with a shudder, and said, sickly and with a quivering voice, “Oh spare, spare me, Norman! Are we again in that dark, fearful wood? Tremble not for your life on earth, Norman, for never, never will I tell to mortal ears that terrible secret; but spare me, spare me, else our Saviour, with all His mercy, will never pardon your unrelenting soul. These are cruel-looking eyes; you will not surely murder poor Mary Simpson, unhappy as she is, and must for ever be—yet life is sweet! She beseeches you on her knees to spare her life!”—and, in the intense fear of phantasy, the poor creature struggled off the chair, and fell down indeed in a heap at his feet.

“Canst thou indeed be the son of old Norman Adams, the industrious, the temperate, the mild, and the pious—who so often sat in this very room which thy presence has now polluted, and spake with me on the mysteries of life and of death? Foul ravisher, what stayed thy hand from the murder of that child, when there were none near to hear her shrieks in the dark solitude of the great pine-wood?”

Norman Adams smote his heart and fell down too on his knees beside the poor ruined orphan. He put his arm round her, and, raising her from the floor, said, “No, no, my sin is great, too great for Heaven’s forgiveness; but, oh sir! say not—say not that I would have murdered her; for, savage as my crime was, yet may God judge me less terribly than if I had taken her life.”

In a little while they were both seated with some composure, and silence was in the room. No one spoke, and the old grayhaired man sat with his eyes fixed, without reading, on the open Bible. At last he broke silence with these words out of Isaiah, that seemed to have forced themselves on his heedless eyes:—“Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow: though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

Mary Simpson wept aloud at these words, and seemed to forget her own wrongs and grief in commiseration of the agonies of remorse and fear that were now plainly preying on the soul of the guilty man. “I forgive you, Norman, and will soon be out of the way, no longer to anger you with the sight of me.” Then, fixing her streaming eyes on the minister, she besought him not to be the means of bringing him to punishment and a shameful death, for that he might repent, and live to be a good man and respected in the parish; but that she was a poor orphan for whom few cared, and who, when dead, would have but a small funeral.

“I will deliver myself up into the hands of justice,” said the offender, “for I do not deserve to live. Mine was an inhuman crime, and let a violent and shameful death be my doom.”

The orphan girl now stood up as if her strength had been restored, and stretching out her hands passionately, with a flow of most affecting and beautiful language, inspired by a meek, single, and sinless heart that could not bear the thought of utter degradation and wretchedness befalling any one of the rational children of God, implored and beseeched the old man to comfort the sinner before them, and promise that the dark transaction of guilt should never leave the concealment of their own three hearts. “Did he not save the lives of two brothers once who were drowning in that black mossy loch, when their own kindred, at work among the hay, feared the deep sullen water, and all stood aloof shuddering and shaking, till Norman Adams leapt in to their rescue, and drew them by the dripping hair to the shore, and then lay down beside them on the heather as like to death as themselves? I myself saw it done; I myself heard their mother call down the blessing of God on Norman’s head, and then all the haymakers knelt down and prayed. When you, on the Sabbath, returned thanks to God for that they were saved, oh! kind sir, did you not name, in the full kirk, him who, under Providence, did deliver them from death, and who, you said, had thus showed himself to be a Christian indeed? May his sin against me be forgotten, for the sake of those two drowning boys, and their mother, who blesses his name unto this day.”

From a few questions solemnly asked, and solemnly answered, the minister found that Norman Adams had been won by the beauty and loveliness of this poor orphan shepherdess, as he had sometimes spoken to her when sitting on the hill-side with her flock, but that pride had prevented him from ever thinking of her in marriage. It appeared that he had also been falsely informed, by a youth whom Mary disliked for his brutal and gross manners, that she was not the innocent girl that her seeming simplicity denoted. On returning from a festive meeting, where this abject person had made many mean insinuations against her virtue, Norman Adams met her returning to her master’s house, in the dusk of the evening, on the footpath leading through a lonely wood; and, though his crime was of the deepest dye, it seemed to the minister of the religion of mercy, that by repentance, and belief in the atonement that had once been made for sinners, he, too, might perhaps hope for forgiveness at the throne of God.

“I warned you, miserable man, of the fatal nature of sin, when first it brought a trouble over your countenance, and broke in upon the peaceful integrity of your life. Was not the silence of the night often terrible to you, when you were alone in the moors, and the whisper of your own conscience told you, that every wicked thought was sacrilege to your father’s dust? Step by step, and almost imperceptibly, perhaps, did you advance upon the road that leadeth to destruction; but look back now, and what a long dark journey have you taken, standing, as you are, on the brink of everlasting death! Once you were kind, gentle, generous, manly, and free; but you trusted to the deceitfulness of your own heart; you estranged yourself from the house of the God of your fathers; and what has your nature done for you at last, but sunk you into a wretch—savage, selfish, cruel, cowardly, and in good truth a slave? A felon are you, and forfeited to the hangman’s hands. Look on that poor innocent child, and think what is man without God. What would you give now, if the last three years of your reckless life had been passed in a dungeon dug deep into the earth, with hunger and thirst gnawing at your heart, and bent down under a cartload of chains? Yet look not so ghastly, for I condemn you not utterly; nor, though I know your guilt, can I know what good may yet be left uncorrupted and unextinguished in your soul. Kneel not to me, Norman; fasten not so your eyes upon me; lift them upwards, and then turn them in upon your own heart, for the dreadful reckoning is between it and God.”

Mary Simpson had now recovered all her strength, and she knelt down by the side of the groaner. Deep was the pity she now felt for him, who to her had shown no pity; she did not refuse to lay her light arm tenderly upon his neck. Often had she prayed to God to save his soul, even among her rueful sobs of shame in the solitary glens; and now that she beheld his sin punished with a remorse more than he could bear, the orphan would have willingly died to avert from his prostrate head the wrath of the Almighty.

The old man wept at the sight of so much innocence, and so much guilt, kneeling together before God, in strange union and fellowship of a common being. With his own fatherly arms he lifted up the orphan from her knees, and said, “Mary Simpson, my sweet and innocent Mary Simpson, for innocent thou art, the elders will give thee a token, that will, on Sabbath-day, admit thee (not for the first time, though so young) to the communion-table. Fear not to approach it; look at me, and on my face, when I bless the elements, and be thou strong in the strength of the Lord. Norman Adams, return to your home. Go into the chamber where your father died. Let your knees wear out the part of the floor on which he kneeled. It is somewhat worn already; you have seen the mark of your father’s knees. Who knows, but that pardon and peace may descend from Heaven upon such a sinner as thou? On none such as thou have mine eyes ever looked, in knowledge, among all those who have lived and died under my care, for three generations. But great is the unknown guilt that may be hidden even in the churchyard of a small quiet parish like this. Dost thou feel as if God-forsaken? Or, oh! say it unto me, canst thou, my poor son, dare to hope for repentance?”

The pitiful tone of the old man’s trembling voice, and the motion of his shaking and withered hands, as he lifted them up almost in an attitude of benediction, completed the prostration of that sinner’s spirit. All his better nature, which had too long been oppressed under scorn of holy ordinances, and the coldness of infidelity, and the selfishness of lawless desires that insensibly harden the heart they do not dissolve, now struggled to rise up and respect its rights. “When I remember what I once was, I can hope—when I think what I now am, I only, only fear.”

A storm of rain and wind had come on, and Mary Simpson slept in the manse that night. On the ensuing Sabbath she partook of the sacrament. A woeful illness fell upon Norman Adams; and then for a long time no one saw him, or knew where he had gone. It was said that he was in a distant city, and that he was a miserable creature, that never again could look upon the sun. But it was otherwise ordered. He returned to his farm, greatly changed in face and person, but even yet more changed in spirit.

The old minister had more days allotted to him than he had thought, and was not taken away for some summers. Before he died, he had reason to know that Norman Adams had repented in tears of blood, in thoughts of faith, and in deeds of charity; and he did not fear to admit him, too, in good time, to the holy ordinance, along with Mary Simpson, then his wife, and the mother of his children.

THE WARDEN OF THE MARCHES: _A TRADITIONARY STORY OF ANNANDALE_.

The predatory incursions of the Scots and English borderers, on each other’s territories, are known to every one in the least acquainted with either the written or traditional history of his country. These were sometimes made by armed and numerous bodies, and it was not uncommon for a band of marauders to take advantage of a thick fog or a dark night for plundering or driving away the cattle, with which they soon escaped over the border, where they were generally secure. Such incursions were so frequent and distressing to the peaceable and well-disposed inhabitants that they complained loudly to their respective governments; in consequence of which some one of the powerful nobles residing on the borders was invested with authority to suppress these depredations, under the title of Warden of the Marches. His duty was to protect the frontier, and alarm the country by firing the beacons which were placed on the heights, where they could be seen at a great distance, as a warning to the people to drive away their cattle, and, collecting in a body, either to repel or pursue the invaders, as circumstances might require. The wardens also possessed a discretionary power in such matters as came under their jurisdiction. The proper discharge of this important trust required vigilance, courage, and fidelity, but it was sometimes committed to improper hands, and consequently the duty was very improperly performed.

In the reign of James V. one of these wardens was Sir John Charteris of Amisfield, near Dumfries, a brave but haughty man, who sometimes forgot his important trust so far as to sacrifice his public duties to his private interests.

George Maxwell was a young and respectable farmer in Annandale, who had frequently been active in repressing the petty incursions to which that quarter of the country was exposed. Having thereby rendered himself particularly obnoxious to the English borderers, a strong party was formed, which succeeded in despoiling him, by plundering his house and driving away his whole live stock. At the head of a large party he pursued and overtook the “spoil-encumbered foe;” a fierce and bloody contest ensued, in which George fell the victim of a former feud, leaving his widow, Marion, in poverty, with her son Wallace, an only child in the tenth year of his age. By the liberality of her neighbours, the widow was replaced in a small farm; but by subsequent incursions she was reduced to such poverty that she occupied a small cottage, with a cow, which the kindness of a neighbouring farmer permitted to pasture on his fields. This, with the industry and filial affection of her son, now in his twentieth year, enabled her to live with a degree of comfort and contented resignation.

With a manly and athletic form, Wallace Maxwell inherited the courage of his father, and the patriotic ardour of the chieftain after whom he had been named; and Wallace had been heard to declare, that although he could not expect to free his country from the incursions of the English borderers, he trusted he should yet be able to take ample vengeance for the untimely death of his father.

But although his own private wrongs and those of his country had a powerful influence on the mind of Wallace Maxwell, yet his heart was susceptible of a far loftier passion.

His fine manly form and graceful bearing had attractions for many a rural fair; and he would have found no difficulty in matching with youthful beauty considerably above his own humble station. But his affections were fixed on Mary Morrison, a maiden as poor in worldly wealth as himself; but nature had been more than usually indulgent to her in a handsome person and fine features; and, what was of infinitely more value, her heart was imbued with virtuous principles, and her mind better cultivated than could have been expected from her station in life. To these accomplishments were superadded a native dignity, tempered with modesty, and a most winning sweetness of manner. Mary was the daughter of a man who had seen better days; but he was ruined by the incursions of the English borderers; and both he and her mother dying soon after, Mary was left a helpless orphan in the twentieth year of her age. Her beauty procured her many admirers; and her unprotected state (for she had no relations in Annandale) left her exposed to the insidious temptations of unprincipled villainy; but they soon discovered that neither flattery, bribes, nor the fairest promises, had the slightest influence on her spotless mind. There were many, however, who sincerely loved her, and made most honourable proposals; among whom was Wallace Maxwell, perhaps the poorest of her admirers, but who succeeded in gaining her esteem and affection. Mary and he were fellow-servants to the farmer from whom his mother had her cottage; and, on account of the troublesome state of the country, Wallace slept every night in his mother’s house as her guardian and protector. Mary and he were about the same age, both in the bloom of youthful beauty; but both had discrimination to look beyond external attractions; and, although they might be said to live in the light of each other’s eyes, reason convinced them that the time was yet distant when it would be prudent to consummate that union which was the dearest object of their wishes.

A foray had been made by the English, in which their leader, the son of a rich borderer, had been made prisoner, and a heavy ransom paid to Sir John, the warden, for his release. This the avaricious warden considered a perquisite of his office; and it accordingly went into his private pocket. Soon after this, the party who had resolved on ruining Wallace Maxwell for his threats of vengeance, took advantage of a thick fog during the day, succeeded by a dark night, in making an incursion on Annandale, principally for the purpose of capturing the young man. By stratagem they effected their purpose; and the widow’s cow, and Wallace her son, were both carried off as part of the spoil. The youth’s life might have been in considerable danger, had his capture not been discovered by the man who had recently paid a high ransom for his own son, and he now took instant possession of Wallace, resolving that he should be kept a close prisoner till ransomed by a sum equal to that paid to the warden.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to say whether the grief of Widow Maxwell for her son, or that of Mary Morrison for her lover, was greatest. But early in the ensuing morning the widow repaired to Amisfield, related the circumstance to Sir John, with tears beseeching him, as the plunderers were not yet far distant, to despatch his forces after them, and rescue her son, with the property of which she had been despoiled, for they had carried off everything, even to her bed-clothes.

Wallace Maxwell had some time before incurred the warden’s displeasure, whose mind was not generous enough either to forget or forgive. He treated Marion with an indifference approaching almost to contempt, by telling her that it would be exceedingly improper to alarm the country about such a trivial incident, to which every person in that quarter was exposed; and although she kneeled to him, he refused to comply with her request, and proudly turned away.

With a heavy and an aching heart, the widow called on Mary Morrison on her way home to her desolate dwelling, relating the failure of her application, and uttering direful lamentations for the loss of her son; all of which were echoed by the no less desponding maiden.

In the anguish of her distress, Mary formed the resolution of waiting on the warden, and again urging the petition which had already been so rudely rejected. Almost frantic, she hastened to the castle, demanding to see Sir John. Her person was known to the porter, and he was also now acquainted with the cause of her present distress; she therefore found a ready admission. Always beautiful, the wildness of her air, the liquid fire which beamed in her eyes, from which tears streamed over her glowing cheeks, and the perturbation which heaved her swelling bosom, rendered her an object of more than ordinary interest in the sight of the warden. She fell at his feet and attempted to tell her melancholy tale; but convulsive sobs stifled her utterance. He then took her unresisting hand, raised her up, led her to a seat, and bade her compose herself before she attempted to speak.

With a faltering tongue, and eyes which, like the lightning of heaven, seemed capable of penetrating a heart of adamant, and in all the energy and pathos of impassioned grief, she told her tale,—imploring the warden, if he ever regarded his mother, or if capable of feeling for the anguish of a woman, to have pity on them, and instantly exert himself to restore the most dutiful of sons, and the most faithful of lovers, to his humble petitioners, whose gratitude should cease only with their lives.

“You are probably not aware,” said he, in a kindly tone, “of the difficulty of gratifying your wishes. Wallace Maxwell has rendered himself the object of vengeance to the English borderers; and, before now, he must be in captivity so secure, that any measure to rescue him by force of arms would be unavailing. But, for your sake, I will adopt the only means which can restore him, namely, to purchase his ransom by gold. But you are aware that it must be high, and I trust your gratitude will be in proportion.”

“Everything in our power shall be done to evince our gratitude,” replied the delighted Mary, a more animated glow suffusing her cheek, and her eyes beaming with a brighter lustre,—“Heaven reward you.”

“To wait for my reward from heaven, would be to give credit to one who can make ready payment,” replied the warden. “You, lovely Mary, have it in your power to make me a return, which will render me your debtor, without in any degree impoverishing yourself;”—and he paused, afraid or ashamed to speak the purpose of his heart. Such is the power which virgin beauty and innocence can exert on the most depraved inclinations.

Although alarmed, and suspecting his base design, such was the rectitude of Mary’s guileless heart, that she could not believe the warden in earnest; and starting from his proffered embrace, she with crimson blushes replied, “I am sure, sir, your heart could never permit you so far to insult a hapless maiden. You have spoken to try my affection for Wallace Maxwell; let me therefore again implore you to take such measures as you may think best for obtaining his release;” and a fresh flood of tears flowed in torrents from her eyes, while she gazed wistfully in his face, with a look so imploringly tender, that it might have moved the heart of a demon.

With many flattering blandishments, and much artful sophistry, he endeavoured to win her to his purpose; but perceiving that his attempts were unavailing, he concluded thus:—“All that I have promised I am ready to perform; but I swear by Heaven, that unless you grant me the favour which I have so humbly solicited, Wallace Maxwell may perish in a dungeon, or by the hand of his enemies; for he shall never be rescued by me. Think, then, in time, before you leave me, and for his sake, and your own future happiness, do not foolishly destroy it for ever.”

With her eyes flashing indignant fire, and her bosom throbbing with the anguish of insulted virtue, she flung herself from his hateful embrace, and, rushing from his presence, with a sorrowful and almost bursting heart, left the castle.

Widow Maxwell had a mind not easily depressed, and although in great affliction for her son, did not despair of his release. She was ignorant of Mary’s application to the warden, and had been revolving in her mind the propriety of seeking an audience of the king, and detailing her wrongs, both at the hands of the English marauders and Sir John. She was brooding on this when Mary entered her cottage, and, in the agony of despairing love and insulted honour, related the reception she had met from the warden. The relation confirmed the widow’s half formed resolution, and steeled her heart to its purpose. After they had responded each other’s sighs, and mingled tears together, the old woman proposed waiting on her friend the farmer, declaring her intentions, and, if he approved of them, soliciting his permission for Mary to accompany her.

The warden’s indolent neglect of duty was a subject of general complaint; the farmer, therefore, highly approved of the widow’s proposal, believing that it would not only procure her redress, but might be of advantage to the country. He urged their speedy and secret departure, requesting that whatever answer they received might not be divulged till the final result was seen; and next morning, at early dawn, the widow and Mary took their departure for Stirling. King James was easy of access to the humblest of his subjects; and the two had little difficulty in obtaining admission to the royal presence. Widow Maxwell had in youth been a beautiful woman, and, although her early bloom had passed, might still have been termed a comely and attractive matron, albeit in the autumn of life. In a word, her face was still such as would have recommended her suit to the king, whose heart was at all times feelingly alive to the attraction of female beauty. But, on the present occasion, although she was the petitioner, the auxiliary whom she had brought, though silent, was infinitely the more powerful pleader; for Mary might be said to resemble the half-blown rose in the early summer, when its glowing leaves are wet with the dews of morning. James was so struck with their appearance, that, before they had spoken, he secretly wished that their petitions might be such as he could with justice and honour grant, for he already felt that it would be impossible to refuse them.

Although struck with awe on coming into the presence of their sovereign, the easy condescension and affability of James soon restored them to comparative tranquillity; and the widow told her “plain, unvarnished tale” with such artless simplicity, and moving pathos, as would have made an impression on a less partial auditor than his Majesty. When she came to state the result of Mary’s application to Sir John, she paused, blushed, and still remained silent. James instantly conjectured the cause, which was confirmed when he saw Mary’s face crimsoned all over.

Suppressing his indignation, “Well, I shall be soon in Annandale,” said he, “and will endeavour to do you justice. Look at this nobleman,” pointing to one in the chamber; “when I send him for you, come to me where he shall guide. In the meantime, he will find you safe lodgings for the night, and give you sufficient to bear your expenses home, whither I wish you to return as soon as possible, and be assured that your case shall not be forgotten.”

It is generally known that James, with a love of justice, had a considerable share of eccentricity in his character, and that he frequently went over the country in various disguises—such as that of a pedlar, an itinerant musician, or even a wandering beggar. These disguises were sometimes assumed for the purpose of discovering the abuses practised by his servants, and not unfrequently from the love of frolic, and, like the Caliph in the “Arabian Nights,” in quest of amusement. On these occasions, when he chose to discover himself, it was always by the designation of the “Gudeman of Ballengeich”. He had a private passage by which he could leave the palace, unseen by any one, and he could make his retreat alone, or accompanied by a disguised attendant, according to his inclination.

On the present occasion, he determined to visit the warden of the March _incog._; and, making the necessary arrangements, he soon arrived in Annandale. His inquiries concerning the widow and Mary corroborated the opinion he had previously formed, and learning where Mary resided, he resolved to repair thither in person, disguised as a mendicant. On approaching the farmer’s, he had to pass a rivulet, at which there was a girl washing linen, and a little observation convinced him it was Mary Morrison. When near, he pretended to be taken suddenly ill, and sat down on a knoll, groaning piteously. Mary came instantly to him, tenderly enquiring what ailed him, and whether she could render him any assistance. James replied, it was a painful distemper, by which he was frequently attacked; but if she could procure him a draught of warm milk, that, and an hour’s rest, would relieve him. Mary answered, that if he could, with her assistance, walk to the farm, which she pointed out near by, he would be kindly cared for. She assisted him to rise, and, taking his arm, permitted him to lean upon her shoulder, as they crept slowly along. He met much sympathy in the family, and there he heard the history of Mary and Wallace Maxwell (not without execrations on the warden for his indolence), and their affirmations that they were sure, if the king knew how he neglected his duty, he would either be dismissed or severely punished; although the former had spoken plainer than others whom James had conversed with, he found that Sir John was generally disliked, and he became impatient for the hour of retribution.

Marching back towards Dumfries, James rendezvoused for the night in a small village called Duncow, in the parish of Kirkmahoe, and next morning he set out for Amisfield, which lay in the neighbourhood, disguised as a beggar. Part of his retinue he left in Duncow, and part he ordered to lie in wait in a ravine near Amisfield till he should require their attendance. Having cast away his beggar’s cloak, he appeared at the gate of the warden’s castle in the dress of a plain countryman, and requested the porter to procure him an immediate audience of Sir John. But he was answered that the warden had just sat down to dinner, during which it was a standing order that he should never be disturbed on any pretence whatever.

“And how long will he sit?” said James.

“Two hours, perhaps three; he must not be intruded on till his bell ring,” replied the porter.

“I am a stranger, and cannot wait so long; take this silver groat, and go to your master, and say that I wish to see him on business of importance, and will detain him only a few minutes.”

The porter delivered the message, and soon returned, saying—“Sir John says, that however important your business may be, you must wait his time, or go the way you came.”

“That is very hard. Here are two groats; go again, and say that I have come from the Border, where I saw the English preparing for an incursion, and have posted thither with the information; and that I think he will be neglecting his duty if he do not immediately fire the beacons and alarm the country.”

This message was also carried, and the porter returned with a sorrowful look, and shaking head.

“Well, does the warden consent to see me?” said the anxious stranger, who had gained the porter’s goodwill by his liberality.

“I beg your pardon, friend,” replied the menial; “but I must give Sir John’s answer in his own words. He says if you choose to wait two hours he will then see whether you are a knave or a fool; but if you send another such impertinent message to him, both you and I shall have cause to repent it. However, for your civility, come with me, and I will find you something to eat and a horn of good ale, to put off the time till Sir John can be seen.”

“I give you hearty thanks, my good fellow, but, as I said, I cannot wait. Here, take these three groats; go again to the warden, and say that the Gudeman of Ballengeich insists upon seeing him immediately.”

No sooner was the porter’s back turned, than James winded his buglehorn so loudly that its echoes seemed to shake the castle walls; and the porter found his master in consternation, which his message changed into fear and trembling.

By the time the warden had reached the gate, James had thrown off his coat, and stood arrayed in the garb and insignia of royalty, while his train of nobles were galloping up in great haste. When they were collected around him, the king, for the first time, condescended to address the terrified warden, who had prostrated himself at the feet of his sovereign.

“Rise, Sir John,” said he, with a stern and commanding air. “You bade your porter tell me that I was either knave or fool, and you were right, for I have erred in delegating my power to a knave like you.”

In tremulous accents the warden attempted to excuse himself by stammering out that he did not know he was wanted by his Majesty.

“But I sent you a message that I wished to speak with you on business of importance, and you refused to be disturbed. The meanest of my subjects has access to me at all times. I hear before I condemn, and shall do so with you, against whom I have many and heavy charges.”

“Will it please your Majesty to honour my humble dwelling with your presence, and afford me an opportunity of speaking in my own defence?” said the justly alarmed warden.

“No, Sir John, I will not enter beneath that roof as a judge, where I was refused admission as a petitioner. I hold my court at Hoddam Castle, where I command your immediate attendance; where I will hear your answer to the charges I have against you. In the meantime, before our departure, you will give orders for the entertainment of my retinue, men and horses, at your castle, during my stay in Annandale.”

The king then appointed several of the lords in attendance to accompany him to Hoddam Castle, whither he commanded the warden to follow him with all possible despatch.

Sir John was conscious of negligence, and even something worse, in the discharge of his duty, although ignorant of the particular charges to be brought against him; but when ushered into the presence of his sovereign, he endeavoured to assume the easy confidence of innocence.

James proceeded to business, by inquiring if there was not a recent incursion of a small marauding party, in which a poor widow’s cow was carried off, her house plundered, and her son taken prisoner; and if she did not early next morning state this to him, requesting him to recover her property.

“Did you, Sir John, do your utmost in the case?”

“I acknowledge I did not; but the widow shall have the best cow in my possession, and her house furnished anew. I hope that will satisfy your Majesty.”

“And her son, how is he to be restored?”

“When we have the good fortune to make an English prisoner, he can be exchanged.”

“Mark me! Sir John. If Wallace Maxwell is not brought before me in good health within a week from this date, you shall hang by the neck from that tree waving before the window. I have no more to say at present. Be ready to wait on me in one hour when your presence is required.”

The warden knew the determined resolution of the king, and instantly despatched a confidential servant, vested with full powers to procure the liberation of Wallace Maxwell, at whatever price, and to bring him safely back without a moment’s delay. In the meantime, the retinue of men and horses, amounting to several hundreds, were living at free quarters, in Sir John’s castle, and the visits of the king diffusing gladness and joy over the whole country.

Next morning James sent the young nobleman, whom he had pointed out to the widow at Stirling, to bring her and Mary Morrison to Hoddam Castle. He received both with easy condescension; when the widow, with much grateful humility, endeavoured to express her thanks, saying that Sir John had last evening sent her a cow worth double that she had lost; also blankets, and other articles of higher value than all that had been carried away; but, with tears in her eyes, she said, all these were as nothing without her dear son. Assuring them that their request had not been neglected, James dismissed them, with the joyful hope of soon seeing Wallace, as he would send for them immediately on his arrival.

The distress of the warden increased every hour, for he was a prisoner in his own castle; and his feelings may be conjectured, when he received a message from the king, commanding him to come to Hoddam Castle next day by noon, and either bring Wallace Maxwell along with him, or prepare for a speedy exit into the next world. He had just seen the sun rise, of which it seemed probable he should never see the setting, when his servant arrived with Wallace, whose liberty had been purchased at an exorbitant ransom. Without allowing the young man to rest, Sir John hurried him off to Hoddam Castle, and sent in a message that he waited an audience of his Majesty.

To make sure of the youth’s identity, the king sent instantly for his mother, and the meeting called forth all the best feelings of his heart, for maternal affection triumphed over every other emotion, and it was only after the first ebullition of it had subsided, that she bade him kneel to his sovereign, to whom he owed his liberty, and most probably his life. Wallace gracefully bent his knee, and took Heaven to witness that both should be devoted to his Majesty’s service.

James was delighted with the manly appearance and gallant behaviour of Wallace; and, after having satisfied himself of the sincerity of his attachment to Mary, he ordered him to withdraw.

He next despatched a messenger for Mary, who, the moment she came, was ushered into the presence of Sir John; James marking the countenance of both,—that of Mary flushed with resentment, while her eye flashed with indignant fire. The pale and deadly hue which overspread the warden’s cheek was a tacit acknowledgment of his guilt.

“Do you know that young woman, Sir John? Reply to my questions truly; and be assured that your life depends upon the sincerity of your answers,” said the king, in a determined and stern voice.

“Yes, my liege, I have seen her,” said Sir John, his lip quivering, and his tongue faltering.

“Where?”

“At Amisfield.”

“On what occasion?”

“She came to me for the release of Wallace Maxwell.”

“And you refused her, except upon conditions which were an insult to her, and a disgrace to yourself. Speak; is it not so?”

“To my shame, my sovereign, I confess my guilt; but I am willing to make all the reparation in my power; and I leave it to be named by your Majesty.”

“You deserve to be hanged, Sir John; but when I look on that face, I acknowledge your temptation, and it pleads a mitigation of punishment. You know that Mary loves and is beloved by Wallace Maxwell, whom you have already ransomed; you shall give him a farm of not less than fifty acres of good land, rent-free, during his life, or that of the woman he marries; and, further, you shall stock it with cattle, and every article necessary, with a comfortable dwelling;—all this you shall perform within three months from this date. If you think these conditions hard, I give you the alternative of swinging from that tree before sunset. Take your choice.”

“My sovereign, I submit to the conditions, and promise that I shall do my best to make the couple happy.”

Wallace was now called in, when Mary clasped him in her arms, both falling on their knees before their sovereign. He raised them up and said, “I have tried both your loves, and found them faithful. Your Mary is all that you believed her, and brings you a dowry which she will explain. I shall see your hands united before I leave Annandale, and preside at the feast. Let your care of the widow be a remuneration for what she has done for both, and I trust all of you will long remember the Gudeman of Ballengeich’s visit to Annandale.”—_Edinburgh Literary Gazette._

THE ALEHOUSE PARTY: _A CHAPTER FROM AN UNPUBLISHED NOVEL_.

BY THE AUTHORS OF “THE ODD VOLUME.”

The night drave on wi’ sangs and clatter, And aye the ale was growing better.—BURNS.

On the evening of that day which saw Mrs Wallace enter Park a bride, Robin Kinniburgh and a number of his cronies met at the village alehouse to celebrate the happy event. Every chair, stool, and bench being occupied, Robin and his chum, Tammy Tacket, took possession of the top of the meal girnel; and as they were elevated somewhat above the company, they appeared like two rival provosts, looking down on their surrounding bailies.

“It’s a gude thing,” said Tammy, “that the wives and weans are keepit out the night; folk get enough o’ them at hame.”

“I wonder,” said Jamie Wilson, “what’s become o’ Andrew Gilmour.”

“Hae ye no heard,” said Robin, “that his wife died yesterday?”

“Is she dead?” exclaimed Tammy Tacket. “Faith,” continued he, giving Robin a jog with his elbow, “I think a man might hae waur furniture in his house than a dead wife.”

“That’s a truth,” replied Jamie Wilson, “as mony an honest man kens to his cost.—But send round the pint stoup, and let us hae a health to the laird and the leddy, and mony happy years to them and theirs.”

When the applause attending this toast had subsided, Robin was universally called on for a song.

“I hae the hoast,” answered Robin; “that’s aye what the leddies say when they are asked to sing.”

“Deil a hoast is about you,” cried Wattie Shuttle; “come awa wi’ a sang without mair ado.”

“Weel,” replied Robin, “what maun be, maun be; so I’ll gie ye a sang that was made by a laddie that lived east-awa; he was aye daundering, poor chiel, amang the broomie knowes, and mony’s the time I hae seen him lying at the side o’ the wimpling burn, writing on ony bit paper he could get haud o’. After he was dead, this bit sang was found in his pocket, and his puir mother gied it to me, as a kind o’ keepsake; and now I’ll let you hear it,—I sing it to the tune o’ ‘I hae laid a herrin’ in saut.’”

SONG.

It’s I’m a sweet lassie, without e’er a faut; Sae ilka ane tells me,—sae it maun be true; To his kail my auld faither has plenty o’ saut, And that brings the lads in gowpens to woo. There’s Saunders M‘Latchie, wha bides at the Mill, He wants a wee wifie, to bake and to brew; But Saunders, for me, at the Mill may stay still, For his first wife was pushioned, if what they say’s true.

The next is Tam Watt, who is grieve to the Laird,— Last Sabbath, at puir me a sheep’s e’e he threw; But Tam’s like the picters I’ve seen o’ Blue Beard, And sic folk’s no that chancie, if what they say’s true. Then there’s Grierson the cobbler, he’ll fleech an’ he’ll beg, That I’d be his awl in awl, darlin’ and doo; But Grierson the cobbler’s a happity leg, And nae man that hobbles need come here to woo.

And there’s Murdoch the gauger, wha rides a blind horse, And nae man can mak a mair beautifu’ boo; But I shall ne’er tak him, for better, for worse, For, sax days a week, gauger Murdoch is fou. I wonder when Willie Waught’s faither ’ll dee; (I wonder hoo that brings the blude to my brow;) I wonder if Willie will then be for me;— I wonder if then he’ll be coming to woo?

“It’s your turn now to sing, Tammy,” said Robin, “although I dinna ken that ye are very gude at it.”

“Me sing!” cried Tammy, “I canna even sing a psalm, far less a sang; but if ye like, I’ll tell you a story.”

“Come awa then, a story is next best; but haud a’ your tongues there, you chiels,” cried Robin, giving the wink to his cronies; “we a’ ken Tammy is unco gude at telling a story, mair especially if it be about himsel.”

“Aweel,” said Tammy, clearing his throat, “I’ll tell you what happened to me when I was ance in Embro’. I fancy ye a’ ken the Calton hill?”

“Whatna daftlike question is that, when ye ken very weel we hae a’ been in Embro’ as weel as yoursel?”

“Weel then,” began Tammy, “I was coming ower the hill—”

“What hill?” asked Jamie Wilson. “Corstorphine hill?”

“Corstorphine fiddlestick!” exclaimed Tammy. “Did ye no hear me say the Calton hill at the first, which, ye ken, is thought there the principal hill?”

“What’s that ye’re saying about Principal Hill?” asked Robin. “I kent him weel ance in a day.”

“Now, Tammy,” cried Willie Walkinshaw, “can ye no gang on wi’ your story, without a’ this balwavering and nonsense about coming ower ane o’ our Professors; my faith, it’s no an easy matter to come ower some o’ them.”

“Very weel,” said Tammy, a little angrily, “I’ll say nae mair about it, but just drap the hill.”

“Whaur, whaur?” cried several voices at once.

“I’m thinkin’,” said Robin, drily, “some o’ the Embro’ folk would be muckle obliged to ye if ye would drap it in the Nor’ Loch.”

“Ye’re a set o’ gomerals!” exclaimed Tammy, in great wrath. “I meant naething o’ the sort; but only that I would gie ower speaking about it.”

“So we’re no to hae the story after a’?” said Matthew Henderson.

“Yes,” said Tammy; “I’m quite agreeable to tell’t, if ye will only sit still and haud your tongues. Aweel, I was coming ower the hill ae night.”

“’Odsake, Tammy,” cried Robin, “will ye ne’er get ower that hill? Ye hae tell’t us that ten times already; gang on, man, wi’ the story.”

“Then, to mak a lang story short, as I was coming ower the hill ae night about ten o’clock I fell in—”

“Fell in!” cried Matthew Henderson, “Whaur? Was’t a hole, or a well?”

“I fell in,” replied Tammy, “wi’ a man.”

“Fell in wi’ a man!” said Willie Walkinshaw. “Weel, as there were twa o’ ye, ye could help ane anither out.”

“Na, na,” roared Tammy, “I dinna mean that at a’; I just cam up wi’ him.”

“I doubt, Tammy,” cried Robin, giving a sly wink to his cronies, “if ye gaed up the Calton hill wi’ a man at ten o’clock at night, I’m thinking ye’ll hae been boozing some gate or ither wi’ him afore that.”

“Me boozing?” cried Tammy. “I ne’er saw the man’s face afore or since; unless it was in the police office the next day.”

“Now, Tammy Tacket,” said Robin, gravely, “just tak a’ frien’s advice, and gie ower sic splores; they’re no creditable to a decent married man like you; and dinna be bleezing and bragging about being in the police office; for it stands to reason ye wouldna be there for ony gude.”

“Deil tak me,” cried Tammy, jumping up on the meal girnel, and brandishing the pint stoup, “if I dinna fling this at the head of the first man who says a word afore I be done wi’ my story:—And, as I said before, I fell in—”

Poor Tammy was not at all prepared for his words being so soon verified, for, in his eagerness to enforce attention, he stamped violently with his hobnailed shoe on the girnel, which giving way with a loud crash, Tammy suddenly disappeared from the view of the astonished party. Robin, who had barely time to save himself from the falling ruins, was still laughing with all his might, when Mrs Scoreup burst in upon them, saying, “What the sorrow is a’ this stramash about?”—but seeing a pale and ghastly figure rearing itself from the very heart of her meal girnel, she ejaculated, “Gude preserve us!” and, retreating a few steps, seized the broth ladle, and prepared to stand on the defensive.

At this moment Grizzy Tacket made her appearance at the open door, saying, “Is blethering Tam here?”

“Help me out, Robin, man,” cried Tammy.

“Help ye out!” said Grizzy; “What the sorrow took you in there, ye drucken ne’er-do-weel?”

“Dinna abuse your gudeman, wife,” said Jamie Wilson.

“Gudeman!” retorted Grizzy; “troth, there’s few o’ ye deserve the name; and as for that idle loon, I ken he’ll no work a stroke the morn, though wife and weans should want baith milk and meal.”

“’Odsake, wife,” cried Robin, “if ye shake Tammy weel, he’ll keep ye a’ in parritch for a week.”

“_She’ll_ shake him,” cried the angry Mrs Scoreup; “cocks are free o’ horses’ corn; _I’ll_ shake him,” making, as she spoke, towards the unfortunate half-choked Tammy.

“Will ye, faith?” screamed Grizzy, putting her arms akimbo. “Will ye offer to lay a hand on my gudeman, and me standing here? Come out this minute, ye Jonadub, and come hame to your ain house.”

“No ae fit shall he steer frae this,” cried Mrs Scoreup, slapping-to the door, “till I see wha is to pay me for the spoiling o’ my gude new girnel, forby the meal that’s wasted.”

“New girnel!” exclaimed Grizzy, with a provoking sneer, “it’s about as auld as yoursel, and as little worth.”

“Ye ill-tongued randy!” cried Mrs Scoreup, giving the ladle a most portentous flourish.

“Whisht, whisht, gudewife,” said Robin; “say nae mair about it, we’ll mak it up amang us; and now, Grizzy, tak Tammy awa hame.”

“It’s no right in you, Robin,” said Grizzy, “to be filling Tammy fou, and keeping decent folks out o’ their beds till this time o’ night.”

“It’s a’ Tammy’s faut,” replied Robin; “for ye ken as well as me, that when ance he begins to tell a story, there’s nae such thing as stopping him; he has been blethering about the Calton hill at nae allowance.”

The last words seemed to strike on Tammy’s ear; who hiccuped out, “As I cam ower the Calton hill—”

“Will naebody stap a peat in that man’s hause?” exclaimed Matthew Henderson. “For ony sake, honest woman, tak him awa, or we’ll be keepit on the Calton hill the whole night.”

“Tak haud o’ me, Tammy,” said Robin; “I’ll gang hame wi’ ye.”

“I can gang mysel,” said Tammy, giving Robin a shove, and staggering towards the door.

“Gang yoursel!” cried Grizzy, as she followed her helpmate; “ye dinna look very like it:” and thus the party broke up—

And each went aff their separate way, Resolved to meet anither day.

AUCHINDRANE; OR, THE AYRSHIRE TRAGEDY.

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

John Muir, or Mure, of Auchindrane, was a gentleman of an ancient family and good estate, in the west of Scotland, bold, ambitious, treacherous to the last degree, and utterly unconscientious,—a Richard the Third in private life, inaccessible alike to pity and remorse. His view was to raise the power and extend the grandeur of his own family. This gentleman had married the daughter of Thomas Kennedy of Barganie, who was, excepting the Earl of Cassilis, the most important person in all Carrick, the district of Ayrshire which he inhabited, and where the name of Kennedy held so great a sway as to give rise to the popular rhyme,—

’Twixt Wigton and the town of Ayr, Portpatrick and the Cruives of Cree, No man need think for to bide there, Unless he court the Kennedie.

Now, Muir of Auchindrane, who had promised himself high advancement by means of his father-in-law, saw, with envy and resentment, that his influence remained second and inferior to the house of Cassilis, chief of all the Kennedies. The Earl was indeed a minor, but his authority was maintained and his affairs well managed by his uncle, Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culleyne, the brother to the deceased earl, and tutor and guardian to the present. This worthy gentleman supported his nephew’s dignity and the credit of the house so effectually that Barganie’s consequence was much thrown into the shade, and the ambitious Auchindrane, his son-in-law, saw no better remedy than to remove so formidable a rival as Culleyne by violent means.

For this purpose, in the year 1597, he came with a party of followers to the town of Maybole (where Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culleyne resided), and lay in ambush in an orchard through which he knew that his destined victim was to pass, in returning homewards from a house where he was engaged to sup. Sir Thomas Kennedy came alone and unattended, when he was suddenly seized and fired upon by Auchindrane and his accomplices, who, having missed their aim, drew their swords and rushed upon him to slay him. But the party thus assailed at disadvantage had the good fortune to hide himself for that time in a ruinous house, where he lay concealed till the inhabitants of the place came to his assistance.

Sir Thomas Kennedy prosecuted Muir for this assault, who, finding himself in danger from the law, made a sort of apology and agreement with the Lord of Culleyne, to whose daughter he united his eldest son, in testimony of the closest friendship in future. This agreement was sincere on the part of Kennedy, who, after it had been entered into, showed himself Auchindrane’s friend and assistant on all occasions. But it was most false and treacherous on that of Muir, who continued the purpose of murdering his new friend and ally on the first opportunity.

Auchindrane’s first attempt to effect this was by means of the young Gilbert Kennedy of Barganie (for old Barganie, Auchindrane’s father-in-law, was dead), whom he persuaded to brave Cassilis, as one who usurped an undue influence over the rest of the name. Accordingly, this hot-headed youth, at the instigation of Auchindrane, rode past the gate of the Earl of Cassilis without waiting on his chief, or sending him any message of civility. This led to mutual defiance, being regarded by the earl, according to the ideas of the time, as a personal insult. Both parties took the field with their followers, at the head of about two hundred and fifty men on each side. The action which ensued was shorter and less bloody than might have been expected. Young Barganie, with the rashness of headlong courage, and Auchindrane, fired by deadly enmity to the house of Cassilis, made a precipitate attack on the earl, whose men were strongly posted and under cover. They were received by a heavy fire. Barganie was slain. Muir of Auchindrane, severely wounded in the thigh, became unable to sit on his horse, and the leaders thus slain or disabled, their party drew off without continuing the action. It must be particularly observed that Sir Thomas Kennedy remained neuter in this quarrel, considering his connection with Auchindrane as too intimate to be broken even by his desire to assist his nephew.

For this temperate and honourable conduct he met a vile reward; for Auchindrane, in resentment of the loss of his relative Barganie, and the downfall of his ambitious hopes, continued his practices against the life of Sir Thomas of Culleyne, and chance favoured his wicked purpose.

The knight of Culleyne, finding himself obliged to go to Edinburgh on a particular day, sent a message by a servant to Muir, in which he told him, in the most unsuspecting confidence, the purpose of his journey, and named the road which he proposed to take, inviting Muir to meet him at Duppill, to the west of the town of Ayr, a place appointed for the purpose of giving him any commissions which he might have for Edinburgh, and assuring his treacherous ally he would attend to any business which he might have in the Scottish metropolis as anxiously as to his own. Sir Thomas Kennedy’s message was carried to the town of Maybole, where his messenger, for some trivial reason, had the import committed to writing by a schoolmaster in that town, and despatched it to its destination by means of a poor student, named Dalrymple, instead of carrying it to the house of Auchindrane in person.

This suggested to Muir a diabolical plot. Having thus received tidings of Sir Thomas Kennedy’s motions, he conceived the infernal purpose of having the confiding friend who sent the information waylaid and murdered at the place appointed to meet with him, not only in friendship, but for the purpose of rendering him service. He dismissed the messenger Dalrymple, cautioning the lad to carry back the letter to Maybole, and to say that he had not found him, Auchindrane, in his house. Having taken this precaution, he proceeded to instigate the brother of the slain Gilbert of Barganie, Thomas Kennedy of Drumurghie by name, and Walter Muir of Cloncaird, a kinsman of his own, to take this opportunity of revenging Barganie’s death. The fiery young men were easily induced to undertake the crime. They waylaid the unsuspecting Sir Thomas of Culleyne at the place appointed to meet the traitor Auchindrane, and the murderers having in company five or six servants well mounted and armed, assaulted and cruelly murdered him with many wounds.

The revenge due for his uncle’s murder was keenly pursued by the Earl of Cassilis. As the murderers fled from trial, they were declared outlaws; which doom being pronounced by three blasts of a horn, was called “being put to the horn, and declared the king’s rebel.” Muir of Auchindrane was strongly suspected of having been the instigator of the crime. But he conceived there could be no evidence to prove his guilt if he could keep the boy Dalrymple out of the way, who delivered the letter which made him acquainted with Culleyne’s journey, and the place at which he meant to halt. Muir brought Dalrymple to his house, but the youth tiring of this confinement, Muir sent him to reside with a friend, Montgomery of Skelmorley, who maintained him under a borrowed name amid the desert regions of the then almost savage island of Arran. Being confident in the absence of this material witness, Auchindrane, instead of flying like his agents Drumurghie and Cloncaird, presented himself boldly at the bar, demanded a fair trial, and offered his person in combat to the death against any of Lord Cassilis’ friends who might impugn his innocence. This audacity was successful, and he was dismissed without trial.

Still, however, Muir did not consider himself safe so long as Dalrymple was within the realm of Scotland; and the danger grew more pressing, when he learned that the lad had become impatient of the restraint which he sustained in the island of Arran, and returned to some of his friends in Ayrshire. Muir no sooner heard of this than he again obtained possession of the boy’s person, and a second time concealed him in Auchindrane, until he found an opportunity to transport him to the Low Countries, where he contrived to have him enlisted in Buccleuch’s regiment; trusting, doubtless, that some one of the numerous chances of war might destroy the poor young man whose life was so dangerous to him.

But after five or six years’ uncertain safety, bought at the expense of so much violence and cunning, Auchindrane’s fears were exasperated with frenzy, when he found this dangerous witness, having escaped from all the perils of climate and battle, had left, or been discharged from, the Legion of Borderers, and had again accomplished his return to Ayrshire. There is ground to suspect that Dalrymple knew the nature of the hold which he possessed over Auchindrane, and was desirous of extorting from his fears some better provision than he had found either in Arran or the Netherlands. But, if so, it was a fatal experiment to tamper with the fears of such a man as Auchindrane, who determined to rid himself effectually of this unhappy young man.

Muir now lodged him in a house of his own, called Chapeldonan, tenanted by a vassal and connection of his, named James Bannatyne. This man he commissioned to meet him at ten o’clock at night, on the sea-sands, near Girvan, and bring with him the unfortunate Dalrymple, the object of his fear and dread. The victim seems to have come with Bannatyne without the least suspicion. When Bannatyne and Dalrymple came to the appointed spot, Auchindrane met them, accompanied by his eldest son James. Old Auchindrane, having taken Bannatyne aside, imparted his bloody purpose of ridding himself of Dalrymple for ever, by murdering him on the spot. His own life and honour were, he said, endangered by the manner in which this inconvenient witness repeatedly thrust himself back into Ayrshire, and nothing could secure his safety but taking the lad’s life, in which action he requested James Bannatyne’s assistance. Bannatyne felt some compunction, and remonstrated against the cruel expedient, saying it would be better to transport Dalrymple to Ireland, and take precautions against his return. While old Auchindrane seemed disposed to listen to this proposal, his son concluded that the time was come for accomplishing the purpose of their meeting, and without waiting the termination of his father’s conference with Bannatyne, he rushed suddenly on Dalrymple, beat him to the ground, and kneeling down upon him, with his father’s assistance accomplished the crime, by strangling the unhappy object of their fear and jealousy. Bannatyne, the witness, and partly the accomplice, of the murder, assisted them in their attempt to make a hole in the sand with a spade which they had brought on purpose, in order to conceal the dead body. But as the tide was coming in, the hole which they made filled with water before they could get the body buried; and the ground seemed, to their terrified consciences, to refuse to be accessory to concealing their crime. Despairing of hiding the corpse in the manner they proposed, the murderers carried it out into the sea as deep as they dared wade, and there abandoned it to the billows, trusting that the wind, which was blowing off the shore, would drive these remains of their crime out to sea, where they would never more be heard of. But the sea, as well as the land, seemed unwilling to conceal their cruelty. After floating for some hours, or days, the body was, by the wind and tide, again driven on shore, near the very spot where the murder had been committed.

This attracted general attention; and when the corpse was known to be that of the same William Dalrymple whom Auchindrane had so often spirited out of the country, or concealed when he was in it, a strong and general suspicion arose that this young person had met with foul play from the bold bad man, who had shown himself so much interested in his absence. Auchindrane, indeed, found himself so much the object of suspicion from this new crime that he resolved to fly from justice, and suffer himself to be declared a rebel and an outlaw rather than face a trial. He accordingly sought to provide himself with some ostensible cause for avoiding the law, with which the feelings of his kindred and friends might sympathise; and none occurred to him as so natural as an assault upon some friend and adherent of the Earl of Cassilis. Should he kill such a one, it would be indeed an unlawful action, but so far from being infamous, would be accounted the natural consequence of the avowed quarrel between the families. With this purpose, Muir, with the assistance of a relative, of whom he seems always to have had some ready to execute his worst purposes, beset Hugh Kennedy of Garriehorne, a follower of the earl, against whom they had especial ill-will, fired their pistols at him, and used other means to put him to death. But Garriehorne, a stout-hearted man and well-armed, defended himself in a very different manner from the unfortunate knight of Culleyne, and beat off the assailants, wounding young Auchindrane in the right hand, so that he wellnigh lost the use of it.

But though Auchindrane’s purpose did not entirely succeed, he availed himself of it to circulate a report that if he could obtain a pardon for firing upon his feudal enemy with pistols, weapons declared unlawful by Act of Parliament, he would willingly stand his trial for the death of Dalrymple, respecting which he protested his total innocence. The king, however, was decidedly of opinion that the Muirs, both father and son, were alike guilty of both crimes, and used intercession with the Earl of Abercorn, as a person of power in these western counties, as well as in Ireland, to arrest and transmit them prisoners to Edinburgh. In consequence of the Earl’s exertions, old Auchindrane was made prisoner, and lodged in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh.

Young Auchindrane no sooner heard that his father was in custody, than he became as apprehensive of Bannatyne, the accomplice in Dalrymple’s murder, telling tales, as ever his father had been of Dalrymple. He therefore hastened to him, and prevailed on him to pass over for a while to the neighbouring coast of Ireland, finding him money and means to accomplish the voyage, and engaging in the meantime to take care of his affairs in Scotland. Secure, as they thought, in this precaution, old Auchindrane persisted in his innocence, and his son found security to stand his trial. Both appeared with the same confidence at the day appointed. The trial was, however, postponed, and Muir the elder dismissed, under high security to return when called for.

But King James, being convinced of the guilt of the accused, ordered young Auchindrane, instead of being sent to trial, to be examined under the force of torture, in order to compel him to tell whatever he knew of the things charged against him. He was accordingly severely tortured; but the result only served to show that such examinations are as useless as they are cruel.

Young Auchindrane, a strong and determined ruffian, endured the torture with the utmost firmness, and by the constant audacity with which, in spite of the intolerable pain, he continued to assert his innocence, he spread so favourable an opinion of his case, that the detaining him in prison, instead of bringing him to open trial, was censured as severe and oppressive. James, however, remained firmly persuaded of his guilt, and by an exertion of authority quite inconsistent with our present laws, commanded young Auchindrane to be still detained in close custody till further light could be thrown on these dark proceedings.

In the meanwhile, old Auchindrane being, as we have seen, at liberty on pledges, skulked about in the west, feeling how little security he had gained by Dalrymple’s murder, and that he had placed himself by that crime in the power of Bannatyne, whose evidence concerning the death of Dalrympie could not be less fatal than what Dalrymple might have told concerning Auchindrane’s accession to the conspiracy against Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culleyne. But though the event had shown the error of his wicked policy, Auchindrane could think of no better mode in this case than that which had failed in relation to Dalrymple. When any man’s life became inconsistent with his own safety, no idea seems to have occurred to this inveterate ruffian save to murder the person by whom he might himself be any way endangered. Bannatyne, knowing with what sort of men he had to deal, kept on his guard, and by this caution disconcerted more than one attempt to take his life. At length Bannatyne, tiring of this state of insecurity, and in despair of escaping such repeated plots, and also feeling remorse for the crime to which he had been accessory, resolved rather to submit himself to the severity of the law than remain the object of the principal criminal’s practices. He surrendered himself to the Earl of Abercorn, and was conveyed to Edinburgh, where he confessed before the king and council all the particulars of the murder of Dalrymple, and the attempt to hide his body by committing it to the sea.

When Bannatyne was confronted with the two Muirs before the Privy Council, they denied with vehemence every part of the evidence he had given, and affirmed that the witness had been bribed to destroy them by a false tale. Bannatyne’s behaviour seemed sincere and simple, that of Auchindrane more resolute and crafty. The wretched accomplice fell upon his knees, invoking God to witness that all the land in Scotland could not have bribed him to bring a false accusation against a master whom he had served, loved, and followed in so many dangers, and calling upon Auchindrane to honour God by confessing the crime he had committed. Muir the elder, on the other hand, boldly replied, that he hoped God would not so far forsake him as to permit him to confess a crime of which he was innocent, and exhorted Bannatyne in his turn to confess the practices by which he had been induced to devise such falsehoods against him.

The two Muirs, father and son, were therefore put upon their solemn trial, along with Bannatyne, in 1611, and after a great deal of evidence had been brought in support of Bannatyne’s confession, all three were found guilty. The elder Auchindrane was convicted of counselling and directing the murder of Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culleyne, and also of the actual murder of the lad Dalrymple. Bannatyne and the younger Muir were found guilty of the latter crime, and all three were sentenced to be beheaded. Bannatyne, however, the accomplice, received the king’s pardon, in consequence of his voluntary surrender and confession. The two Muirs were both executed. The younger was affected by the remonstrances of the clergy who attended him, and he confessed the guilt of which he was accused. The father also was at length brought to avow the fact, but in other respects died as impenitent as he had lived; and so ended this dark and extraordinary tragedy.

A TALE OF THE PLAGUE IN EDINBURGH.

BY ROBERT CHAMBERS, LL.D.

In several parts of Scotland, such things are to be found as “tales” of the Plague. Amidst so much human suffering as the events of a pestilence necessarily involved, it is of course to be supposed that, occasionally, circumstances would occur of a peculiarly disastrous and affecting description,—that many loving hearts would be torn asunder, or laid side by side in the grave, many orphans left desolate, and patriarchs bereft of all their descendants, and that cases of so painful a sort as called forth greater compassion at the time, would be remembered, after much of the ordinary details was generally forgotten. The celebrated story of Bessy Bell and Mary Gray is a case in point. So romantic, so mournful a tale, appealing as it does to every bosom, could not fail to be commemorated, even though it had been destitute of the great charm of locality. Neither could such a tale of suffering and horror as that of the Teviotdale shepherd’s family ever be forgotten in the district where it occurred,—interesting at it is, has been, and will be, to every successive generation of mothers, and duly listened to and shuddered at by so many infantine audiences. In the course of our researches, we have likewise picked up a few extraordinary circumstances connected with the last visit paid by the plague to Edinburgh; which, improbable as they may perhaps appear, we believe to be, to a certain extent, allied to truth, and shall now submit them to our readers.

When Edinburgh was afflicted, for the last time, with the pestilence, such was its effect upon the energies of the citizens, and so long was its continuance, that the grass grew on the principal street, and even at the Cross, though that Scottish Rialto was then perhaps the most crowded thoroughfare in Britain. Silence, more than that of the stillest midnight, pervaded the streets during the day. The sunlight fell upon the quiet houses as it falls on a line of sombre and neglected tombstones in some sequestered churchyard—gilding, but not altering, their desolate features. The area of the High Street, on being entered by a stranger, might have been contemplated with feelings similar to those with which Christian, in the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” viewed the awful courtyard of Giant Despair; for, as in that well-imagined scene, the very ground bore the marks of wildness and desolation; every window around, like the loopholes of the dungeons in Doubting Castle, seemed to tell its tale of misery within, and the whole seemed to lie prostrate and powerless under the dominion of an unseen demon, which fancy might have conceived as stalking around in a bodily form, leisurely dooming its subjects to successive execution.

When the pestilence was at its greatest height, a strange perplexity began, and not without reason, to take possession of the few physicians and nurses who attended the sick. It was customary for the distempered to die, or, as the rare case happened, to recover, on a particular day after having first exhibited symptoms of illness. This was an understood rule of the plague, which had never been known to fail. All at once, it began to appear that a good many people, especially those who were left alone in their houses by the death or desertion of friends, died before the arrival of the critical day. In some of these cases, not only was the rule of the disease broken, but, what vexed the physicians more, the powers of medicine seemed to have been set at defiance; for several patients of distinction, who had been able to purchase good attendance and were therefore considered as in less than ordinary danger, were found to have expired after taking salutary drugs, and being left with good hopes by their physicians. It almost seemed as if some new disease were beginning to engraft itself upon the pestilence—a new feature rising upon its horrid aspect. Subtle and fatal as it formerly was, it was now inconceivably more so. It could formerly be calculated upon; but it was now quite arbitrary and precarious. Medicine had lost its power over it. God, who created it in its first monstrous form, appeared to have endowed it with an additional sting, against which feeble mortality could present no competent shield. Physicians beheld its new ravages with surprise and despair; and a deeper shade of horror was spread, in consequence, over the public mind.

As an air of more than natural mystery seemed to accompany this truly calamitous turn of affairs, it was, of course, to be expected, in that superstitious age, that many would attribute it to a more than natural cause. By the ministers, it was taken for an additional manifestation of God’s wrath, and as such held forth in not a few pulpits, accompanied with all the due exhortations to a better life, which it was not unlikely would be attended with good effect among the thin congregations of haggard and terrified scarecrows, who persisted in meeting regularly at places of worship. The learned puzzled themselves with conjectures as to its probable causes and cures; while the common people gave way to the most wild and fanciful surmises, almost all of which were as far from the truth. The only popular observation worthy of any attention, was that the greater part of those who suffered from this new disease died during the night, and all of them while unattended.

Not many days after the alarm first arose, a poor woman arrested a physician in the street, and desired to confer with him a brief space. He at first shook her off, saying he was at present completely engaged, and could take no new patients. But when she informed him that she did not desire his attendance, and only wished to communicate something which might help to clear up the mystery of the late premature deaths, he stopped and lent a patient ear. She told him that on the previous night, having occasion to leave her house, in order to visit a sick neighbour, who lay upon a lonely death-bed in the second flat below her own garret, she took a lamp in her hand, that she might the better find her way down. As she descended the stair, which she described as a “turnpike,” or spiral one, she heard a low and inexpressibly doleful moan, as if proceeding from the house of her neighbour,—such a moan, she said, as she had ever heard proceed from any of the numerous death-beds it had been her lot to attend. She hastened faster down the stair than her limbs were well able to carry her, under the idea that her friend was undergoing some severe suffering, which she might be able to alleviate. Before, however, she had reached the first landing-place, a noise, as of footsteps, arose from the house of pain, and caused her to apprehend that all was not right in a house which she knew no one ever visited, in that time of desolation, but herself. She quickened her pace still more than before, and soon reached the landing-place at her neighbour’s door. Something, as she expressed it, seeming to “swoof” down the stair, like the noise of a full garment brushing the walls of a narrow passage, she drew in the lamp, and looking down beyond it, saw what she conceived to be the dark drapery of the back of a tall human figure, loosely clad, moving, or rather gliding, out of sight, and in a moment gone. So uncertain was she at first of the reality of what she saw, that she believed it to be the shadow of the central pile of the stair gliding downwards as she brought round the light; but the state of matters in the inside of the house soon convinced her, to her horror, that it must have been something more dreadful and real—the unfortunate woman being dead; though as yet it was three days till the time when, according to the old rules of the disease, she might have lived or died. The physician heard this story with astonishment; but as it only informed his mind, which was not free from superstition, that the whole matter was becoming more and more mysterious, he drew no conclusions from it; but simply observing, with a professional shake of the head, that all was not right in the town, went upon his way.

The old woman, who, of course, could not be expected to let so good a subject of gossip and wonderment lie idle in her mind, like the guinea kept by the Vicar of Wakefield’s daughters, forthwith proceeded to dissipate it abroad among her neighbours, who soon (to follow out the idea of the coin) reduced it into still larger and coarser pieces, and paid it away, in that exaggerated form, to a wider circle of neighbours, by whom it was speedily dispersed in various shapes over the whole town. The popular mind, like the ear of a sick man, being then peculiarly sensitive, received the intelligence with a degree of alarm, such as the news of a lost battle has not always occasioned amongst a people; and, as the atmosphere is best calculated for the conveyance of sound during the time of frost, so did the air of the plague seem peculiarly well fitted for the propagation of this fearful report. The whole of the people were impressed, on hearing the story, with a feeling of undefined awe, mixed with horror. The back of a tall figure, in dark long clothes, seen but for a moment! There was a picturesque indistinctness in the description, which left room for the imagination; taken in conjunction, too, with the moan heard at first by the old woman on the stair, and the demise of the sick woman at the very time, it was truly startling. To add to the panic, a report arose next day, that the figure had been seen on the preceding evening, by different persons, flitting about various stairs and alleys, always in the shade, and disappearing immediately after being first perceived. An idea began to prevail that it was the image of Death—Death, who had thus come in his personated form, to a city which seemed to have been placed so peculiarly under his dominion, in order to execute his office with the greater promptitude. It was thought, if so fantastic a dream may be assigned to the thinking faculty, that the grand destroyer, who, in ordinary times is invisible, might, perhaps, have the power of rendering himself palpable to the sight in cases where he approached his victims under circumstances of peculiar horror; and this wild imagination was the more fearful, inasmuch as it was supposed that, with the increase of the mortality, he would become more and more distinctly visible, till, perhaps, after having despatched all, he would burst forth in open triumph, and roam at large throughout a city of desolation.

It happened on the second day after the rise of this popular fancy, that an armed ship, of a very singular construction, and manned by a crew of strangely foreign-looking men, entered Leith harbour. It was a Barbary rover; but the crew showed no intention of hostility to the town of Leith, though at the present pass it would have fallen an easy prey to their arms, being quite as much afflicted with the pestilence as its metropolitan neighbour. A detachment of the crew, comprising one who appeared to be the commander, immediately landed, and proceeded to Edinburgh, which they did not scruple to enter. They inquired for the provost, and, on being conducted to the presence of that dignitary, their chief disclosed their purpose in thus visiting Edinburgh, which was the useful one of supplying it in its present distress with a cargo of drugs, approved in the East for their efficacy against the plague, and a few men who could undertake to administer them properly to the sick. The provost heard this intelligence with overflowing eyes; for, besides the anxiety he felt about the welfare of the city, he was especially interested in the health of his daughter, an only child, who happened to be involved in the common calamity. The terms proposed by the Africans were somewhat exorbitant. They demanded to have the half of the wealth of those whom they restored to health. But the provost told them that he believed many of the most wealthy citizens would be glad to employ them on these terms; and, for his own part, he was willing to sacrifice anything he had, short of his salvation, for the benefit of his daughter. Assured of at least the safety of their persons and goods, the strangers drew from the ship a large quantity of medicines, and began that very evening to attend as physicians those who chose to call them in. The captain—a man in the prime of life, and remarkable amongst the rest for his superior dress and bearing—engaged himself to attend the provost’s daughter, who had now nearly reached the crisis of the distemper, and hitherto had not been expected to survive.

The house of Sir John Smith, the provost of Edinburgh, in the year 1645, was situated in the Cap-and-Feather close, an alley occupying the site of the present North Bridge. The bottom of this alley being closed, there was no thoroughfare or egress towards the North Loch; but the provost’s house possessed this convenience, being the tenement which closed the lower extremity, and having a back-door that opened upon an alley to the eastward, namely, Halkerston’s Wynd. This house was, at the time we speak of, crammed full of valuable goods, plate, &c., which had been deposited in the provost’s hands by many of his afflicted fellow-citizens, under the impression that, if they survived, he was honest enough to restore them unimpaired, and, if otherwise, he was worthy to inherit them. His daughter, who had been seized before it was found possible to remove her from the town, lay in a little room at the back of the house, which, besides one door opening from the large staircase in the front, had also a more private entry communicating with the narrower and obsolete “turnpike” behind. At that time, little precaution was taken anywhere in Scotland about the locking of doors. To have the door simply closed, so that the fairies could not enter, was in general considered sufficient, as it is at the present day in many remote parts. In Edinburgh, during the time of the plague, the greatest indifference to security of this sort prevailed. In general, the doors were left unlocked from within, in order to admit the cleansers, or any charitable neighbour who might come to minister to the bed-rid sick. This was not exactly the case in Sir John Smith’s house; for the main-door was scrupulously locked, with a view to the safety of the goods committed to his charge. Nevertheless, from neglect, or from want of apprehension, the posterior entrance was afterwards found to have been not so well secured.

The Barbary physician had administered a potion to his patient soon after his admission into the house. He knew that symptoms either favourable or unfavourable would speedily appear, and he therefore resolved to remain in the room in order to watch the result. About midnight, as he sat in a remote corner of the room, looking towards the bed upon which his charge was extended, while a small lamp burned upon a low table between, he was suddenly surprised to observe something like a dark cloud, unaccompanied by any noise, interpose itself slowly and gradually between his eyes and the bed. He at first thought that he was deceived,—that he was beginning to fall asleep,—or that the strange appearance was occasioned by some peculiarity of the light, which, being placed almost directly between him and the bed, caused him to see the latter object very indistinctly. He was soon undeceived by hearing a noise,—the slightest possible,—and perceiving something like motion in the ill-defined lineaments of the apparition. “Gracious Heaven!” thought he, “can this be the angel of death hovering over his victim, preparing to strike the mortal blow, and ready to receive the departing soul into the inconceivable recesses of its awful form?” It almost appeared as if the cloud stooped over the bed for the performance of this task. Presently, the patient uttered a half-suppressed sigh, and then altogether ceased the regular respirations, which had hitherto been monotonous and audible throughout the room. The awe-struck attendant could contain himself no longer, but permitted a sort of cry to escape him, and started to his feet. The cloud instantly, as it were, rose from its inclined posture over the bed, turned hastily round, and, in a moment contracting itself into a human shape, glided softly, but hastily, from the apartment. “Ha!” thought the African, “I have known such personages as this in Aleppo. These angels of death are sometimes found to be mortal themselves—I shall pursue and try.” He, therefore, quickly followed the phantom through the private door by which it had escaped, not forgetting to seize his semicircular sword in passing the table where it lay. The stair was dark and steep; but he kept his feet till he reached the bottom. Casting, then, a hasty glance around him, he perceived a shadow vanish from the moon-lit ground, at an angle of the house, and instantly started forward in the pursuit. He soon found himself in the open wynd above-mentioned, along which he supposed the mysterious object to have gone. All here was dark; but being certain of the course adopted by the pursued party, he did not hesitate a moment in plunging headlong down its steep profundity. He was confirmed in his purpose by immediately afterwards observing, at some distance in advance, a small jet of moonlight, proceeding from a side alley, obscured for a second by what he conceived to be the transit of a large dark object. This he soon also reached, and finding that his own person caused a similar obscurity, he was confirmed in his conjecture that the apparition bore a substantial form. Still forward and downward he boldly rushed, till, reaching an open area at the bottom, part of which was lighted by the moon, he plainly saw, at the distance of about thirty yards before him, the figure as of a tall man, loosely enveloped in a prodigious cloak, gliding along the ground, and apparently making for a small bridge, which at this particular place crossed the drain of the North Loch, and served as a communication with the village called the Mutries Hill. He made directly for the fugitive, thinking to overtake him almost before he could reach the bridge. But what was his surprise, when in a moment the flying object vanished from his sight, as if it had sunk into the ground, and left him alone and objectless in his headlong pursuit. It was possible that it had fallen into some concealed well or pit, but this he was never able to discover.

Bewildered and confused, he at length returned to the provost’s house, and re-entered the apartment of the sick maiden. To his delight and astonishment he found her already in a state of visible convalescence, with a gradually deepening glow of health diffusing itself over her cheek. Whether his courage and fidelity had been the means of scaring away the evil demon it is impossible to say; but certain it is, that the ravages of the plague began soon afterwards to decline in Edinburgh, and at length died away altogether.

The conclusion of this singular traditionary story bears that the provost’s daughter, being completely restored to health, was married to the foreigner who had saved her life. This seems to have been the result of an affection which they had conceived for each other during the period of her convalescence. The African, becoming joint-heir with his wife of the provost’s vast property, abandoned his former piratical life, became, it is said, a douce Presbyterian, and settled down for the remainder of his days in Edinburgh. The match turned out exceedingly well; and it is even said that the foreigner became so assimilated with the people of Edinburgh, to whom he had proved so memorable a benefactor, that he held at one time an office of considerable civic dignity and importance. Certain it is, that he built for his residence a magnificent “land” near the head of the Canongate, upon the front of which he caused to be erected a statue of the emperor of Barbary, in testimony of the respect he still cherished for his native country; and this memorial yet remains in its original niche, as a subsidiary proof of the verity of the above relation.

THE PROBATIONER’S FIRST SERMON.

BY DANIEL GORRIE.

On a cold March evening, and in the metropolis of Scotland, I received licence as a probationer. The reverend fathers of the Presbytery were so satisfied with my orthodoxy that they gave me most cordially the right hand of fellowship, and warmly wished me success. I had half-anticipated a reprimand for heretical tendencies; but as no censure was uttered, I was at once overcome by their kindness, and charmed with their unexpected liberality. I hastened home to receive the congratulations of my friends, and then I repaired to a clothier’s for a suit of canonical blacks. My mother had already provided a boxful of white cravats sufficient to supply the whole bench of bishops. To err is human, and it is also human for a humble man to feel considerably elated in certain circumstances, and at certain times.

I need not be ashamed to confess that a new dignity seemed to rest upon me, like the mantle of the prophet, on that eventful evening. I saw the reflection of my face on the bowl of a silver spoon, and wondered at the resemblance it bore to the bold, heroic countenance of Edward Irving. High were my hopes, and few were my fears, for I only expected to speak and conquer. The responsibilities of the profession were great, I knew, but they only cast their shadow before. The kind of life on which I was about to enter possessed all the attractions of novelty. I was to exchange passivity for action—the quiet of the cloister for the stir of the field. Yet, while thus I thought of the battle, and made my vows, the still picture of a rural manse, girdled with incense-breathing flowerplots, and shaded with murmuring trees, stole upon my slumbers ere I awoke at the dawn of the next day—a vision, alas! too often resembling the unreal beauty of the mirage in the desert.

It may be pardoned in a novitiate, standing on the threshold, if I saw only the sunny side of preacher-life. Spring was coming, like Miriam and her maidens, with timbrels and with dances, and the golden summer-tide was following in her wake, and I knew that I would look on many lovely scenes, receive kindness from strangers, enjoy the hospitality of the humble, and haply sow some seeds of goodness and truth in receptive hearts.

I had frequently heard strange stories about preachers, and several times I had met some curious specimens of the class. One, it was said, travelled over the country with a sermon and a-half and a tobacco-pipe. Another, it was averred, carried neither parchments nor portmanteau, went gadding abroad, and was in fact the generalissimo of gossips. A third poked his nose into presses, supped jelly and jam, pocketed lumps of sugar, and performed other absurdities not at all creditable to his cloth. I had also learned from ministers’ wives in the country, that some were as unsocial and morose as turnkeys, and others quite the reverse—lively young fellows, who could rock the cradle, and keep all the children in high glee. It was necessary for me, then, I felt, to be circumspect, to abstain from all eccentricities, to be sociable among social people, and dignified when occasion required. Experience soon taught me that a joke from clerical lips sounds like profanity in the ears of the rigidly righteous. A kind friend told me to beware of elders who wished to discuss the doctrine of reprobation, and to avoid walking arm-in-arm with any rural beauty.

“Were you, in your unsuspecting innocence,” he said, “to commit this last enormity, the village gossips would tell it to the beadle, the beadle to the managers, the managers to the elders, and your glory would depart.”

The advice was a wise one, as I afterwards found; but gallantry is more a characteristic of youth than prudence.

I had prepared a considerable supply of discourses. They were elaborately written, and I looked with paternal affection upon the companions of my future wanderings. I shunned those dry doctrinal discussions which shed so sweet an opiate over the eyes of old, young, and middle-aged. The topics selected were such as I believed would interest and instruct all classes of people. I had enlarged upon the zeal and self-sacrifice of the sainted men of old, pictured the Holy One silent in the death chamber, and weeping at the tomb, and drawn illustrations from the heavens above, and the earth beneath. Something fresh was needed, I thought—a Christianity rich in blossoms as in fruit.

I received an appointment for the first Sabbath after licence, and on Saturday afternoon I was rattling along Princes’ Street in the Queensferry omnibus. A small town across the Firth, in the kingdom of Fife, not far from the coast, was my destination. Although the sermon I was to deliver on the morrow had been well committed to memory, and frequently declaimed during the week, yet I found myself conning it over again ere we had crossed the Dean Bridge, and certain passages became mysteriously blended in my mind with the images of Craigcrook and Corstorphine. Then I began to wonder if the other passengers suspected I was a preacher on my maiden expedition. One woman was occupied in gazing very fondly upon the face of a dozing child three months old; a red-faced, purple-nosed old gentleman was sucking the round head of a walking-stick; a stout elderly lady seemed to find the leathern cushion very uncomfortable, since of her down-sitting and up-rising there was no end; a young gentleman of the Tittlebat Titmouse tribe breathed heavily, and at intervals snored; and a young lady, my _vis-a-vis_ in the opposite corner, was the only one who seemed really to be aware of my presence, and the only one who appeared willing to break the unsocial silence. I remembered my friend’s advice, and was somewhat afraid to speak. Besides, heads, and particulars, and practical applications, were making such a thoroughfare of my mind, that there was considerable danger of committing absurd mistakes in conversation. I became really sorry for the young lady, she looked at me so inquiringly, and seemed so anxious that I should speak. There was a keen frost in the air, and one or two outsiders were flapping their hands across their shoulders—might I not say that the afternoon was cold? Gray-white clouds were gathering from horizon to horizon and dimming the day—might I not suggest the possibility of snow? Suddenly the light wavering crystals slid down the window-glass, and with uplifted eyebrows and look of innocent surprise, the fair young traveller exclaimed, “Oh! it snows.”

“So it does, ma’am,” I rejoined, and spoke no more.

She might think of me that evening as very silent or very surly; but she no doubt changed her opinion next day, for I saw her sitting in the front gallery of the church when I rose to give out the first psalm.

In crossing the ferry, I thought not of the royal dames and princely pageants that so often in the days of other years passed to and from the shores of Fife. The waters of the Forth were dreary enough. Inchcolm and the opposite coast were shrouded from view in the streaming skirts of the snow-clouds. I rolled myself up in a corner of the boat where no deacon’s eye could intrude, and warmed my heart with a cigar. Then some limping fiend whispered in my ears the awful words, “What if you should _stick_?” Once I had witnessed an unfortunate being in that painful predicament in the pulpit. I had marked, with sickening apprehensions, the string of unconnected sentences, the hesitation, the pallor overspreading his face, the terrible stammer, the convulsive clutch, the pause, the sudden gulp, the dead stop, and portentous silence. A “stickit minister,” like Dominie Sampson, is nothing to a preacher who “sticks.” It was a horrid idea. I resisted the fiend, knit my brow, clenched my fist, and determined to speak or die. “Always keep your mouth open,” was the charge of a learned divine to his son, and the words afforded me much consolation.

The night was falling fast, and the snow was falling faster when I reached the outskirts of the little inland town where I had been appointed to officiate. Here my rapid march was arrested by an elderly man who inquired if I was the expected preacher, and receiving an answer in the affirmative, he relieved me of my portmanteau, which contained my precious parchment, and led the way to my lodgings. He gave me to understand that he was the beadle, and that I was to lodge with Mrs M‘Bain, who kept a small grocery shop, and had a room to spare in her house. The congregation, with much saving grace, had let the manse until a new minister was obtained. Old John, like the great proportion of country beadles, was a simple, decent man, and a sort of character in his way. He was particularly inquisitive, and asked me some very plain questions as we trudged along the narrow street, getting gradually whitened by the falling snow. He told me that my predecessor on the previous Sabbath was a very clever young man, but only a “wee thocht new-fangled.” From further inquiry I found that the learned Theban had been astonishing John and several members of the congregation by describing the revolution of the earth on its axis.

“Noo, sir,” said the worthy beadle, “can ye tell me, if the world is aye whirlin’ round aboot, what’s the reason we never come to the warm countries?”

I endeavoured to make the matter plain to his apprehension by supposing a rotatory motion of the human head, and the nose always maintaining its dignified position in the centre between the right ear and the left—an illustration which honest John did not seem to regard as satisfactory in the slightest degree.

Mrs M‘Bain’s house was of a very humble description; but she appeared to be a tidy woman, and the room allotted to me, though small, was clean and comfortable. John put down my portmanteau on a chair, with the mien and manner of one who has done his duty, and informed me that one of the elders and the precentor would likely call in a short time. For the precentor I was perfectly prepared, knowing well the psalms that would best suit my discourse; but I was not so sure what motive an elder could have for visiting me on a Saturday night. I inwardly hoped, at least, that if he did make his appearance, he would have the good sense not to trouble me long with his presence or his conversation, as I was again anxious to rehearse my discourse to silent chairs and an attentive table.

When Mrs M‘Bain was placing the tea-dishes on the table, she seemed disposed for a little talk, while I, on the contrary, was not at all in a communicative mood. However, she persevered, and drew me on by degrees, until at last she brought a series of queries to a climax by asking if I had been long a preacher. Now, this was a most absurd question for me to answer in my peculiar circumstances. If the people knew that I had never “wagged my head in a poupit” before, they would be sure to listen to me with the most dreadful silence, so that the slightest stammer would be multiplied and magnified by a hundred echoes. What was to be done? The question must be answered, and the truth must be told, despite the consequences. Mustering up courage, I told my landlady how the matter stood. Astonished she was, as might naturally have been expected. She uplifted her eyebrows, opened wide her eyes, drew a long breath, and said—“Dearie me, sir, ye’ll be awfu’ feared!” With this ejaculation, which afforded me little consolation indeed, Mrs M‘Bain left the apartment, and I knew that the tidings would be over the town, and talked about at every fireside in less than twenty minutes. It could not be helped; courage and resignation alone were required.

I had just finished swallowing in haste three cups of very hot tea, when the precentor entered. He was a man past middle age, with a countenance somewhat grim and gaunt, and a very unmusical mouth. His hair was sandy-coloured, and he was Sawney all over. I saw at once, from his steady stare, and the peculiar expression of his face, that Mrs M‘Bain had communicated to him the very pleasant intelligence that the new arrival was a “green hand.” He was not long in making me know that he was aware of the fact, although he did so in a very cautious, provoking kind of style. When the ice was fairly broken, he said, “It’s a kittle thing standin’ up afore an audience the first time. I mind fine yet what an awfu’ state I was in when I first sang i’ the desk. I kent the Auld Hunderd as weel as I kent my mither; but I wasna lang begun when I ran awa’ wi’ the harrows.” This kind of talk was rapidly becoming unendurable, and I entertained anything but a Christian sentiment of brotherly love towards the conductor of the psalmody.

“How long have you acted as precentor,” I enquired, anxious to change the current of conversation.

“I’ve precented in oor kirk,” he replied, “for twunty years, and, barrin’ three days last simmer, I’ve never missed a Sabbath.”

“That is very extraordinary,” I rejoined; “and what was wrong with you last summer?”

“Weel, sir, ye see I was howkin’ tatties for the denner in oor yaird ae day, when I coupit ower a skep by mistake, and I was awfu’ stung by bees.”

“Dear me,” I rejoined (for I could not resist such a favourable opportunity of stinging him again), “it was curious how the bees should have taken you for a drone!”

This remark had the desired effect. The precentor soon took himself off, and I was left in undisputed possession of the room. I had offended the beadle, and insulted the precentor—how was it possible that I could preach with acceptation to the people? I became nervous lest the elder also should enter, for I was perfectly persuaded that I could not escape incurring his reprobation by some unfortunate reply.

As the night wore on, my trepidation increased. I paced up and down the room, repeating and re-repeating my discourse from beginning to end, and from the end to the beginning. Every period, colon, hyphen, point of exclamation, point of interrogation, and comma was engraved upon my mind, and yet I was not satisfied. Something might escape me—some sounding sentence might take wings and flee away. I heard Mrs M‘Bain listening at times behind the door when I went humming and thrumming across the room; and I felt a strong inclination to call her in, and punish her by making her act the part of a popular audience. I cooled down somewhat before bedtime, and, at my landlady’s request, retired early to bed.

“A gude sleep,” she said, “is the forerunner of a good sermon.”

“Yes,” I rejoined, “and a good sleep is the ordinary accompaniment of a bad one.”

Mrs M‘Bain chuckled, and looked as if she thought there was something promising in the young man after all.

To bed I went, but not to slumber, knowing well that sleep, like some eccentric daughters of Eve, must be won without being wooed. I did not try to “fall over.” None but the rankest fool ever thinks of perpetrating such absurdity. I commenced for the five hundredth time—what else could I do?—to con over my discourse. I had just finished the introduction, without missing a syllable, when—horror of horrors!—the first head had vanished—evaporated—gone to some outrageous limbo and could not, would not be recalled. What was to be done? I sat up in bed—a villanous crib it was—and the perspiration stood beaded on my brow. The tingling darkness filled the room; the snow-flakes fussled on the window panes. Mrs M‘Bain was in bed; the candle was out; there were no lucifers; my precious manuscript was under my pillow; the missing head was there, but I could neither see nor seize it. It was a _caput mortuum_. I cannot describe the agony that I endured, the feeling of despair that I experienced. My heart beat loudly, and the inexorable clock tick-ticked, as if everything in the world were going on with the utmost smoothness and regularity. I must have sat for an hour groping about in my benighted brain for my lost head. But sleep at length came, and fantastic dreams, born of fear and excitement, took possession of me. I thought that I stood on Mars Hill, and that around me was gathered a great crowd of Stoics, Epicureans, Methodists, Mormons, and Mahommedans. They listened attentively for a time, but as soon as I had finished the introduction to my discourse, they immediately commenced to grin and make grimaces, shouting, howling, roaring like legions of demons. In the twinkling of an eye, the scene changed, and I stood in the centre of a vast camp-meeting in the backwoods of America. Negroes and Red Indians were there as well as stalwart planters with their wives and families. A hymn, pealed with a sea-like sound from a thousand voices, had just died away, and I was preparing to address the mighty multitude, when a sudden storm came crashing down among the woods, and the assemblage was scattered abroad like the leaves of autumn. I was tossed throughout the night from one wildered dream to another, and finally awoke in the morning rather jaded than refreshed. With the return of consciousness, however, returned the lost head, and I was delighted to discover before rising that my memory was master of my discourse.

The morning wore on, stiller for the snow that lay one or two inches deep on the ground. The hour of service approached, the bells began to sound; I never heard them pealing so loudly before, even in the largest cities. My heart beat to the beating of the bells. At last the beadle came, cool, calm, imperturbable, hoisted the pulpit Bible under his arm, and signified to me, with an easy inclination of his head, that all was now ready. Mrs M‘Bain was standing in the passage as we came out of the room, holding the door-key in one hand, and her Bible wrapped in a white pocket handkerchief in the other. I walked along the street as steadily and sedately as my perturbation would permit, and all the little boys and girls, I thought, knew that I was to preach my first sermon that day. There was a death-like stillness in the church when I entered. My look was concentrated on the pulpit, but I knew that every eye in the church was fixed upon the untried preacher. I managed to get through the introductory services with more fluency and calmness than I anticipated, only I invariably found myself conning over the first head of my discourse while the assembled worshippers were singing the psalms. The precentor _was_ a drone. Even that afforded me some satisfaction, although the unmelodious tones agitated still more my excited nervous system. At the close of the second psalm, the time of my great trial came. I rose and announced the text with great deliberation. Then every eye was fixed upon me; the moment was awful; the silence was dreadful. The ready manner in which the first dozen of sentences came to my recollection made me feel somewhat calm, comfortable, and composed; but a sudden sense of the peculiar nature of my situation, the consciousness that all the people knew it was my first appearance in public, disturbed my equanimity and shook my self-possession. A dizziness came over me; the congregation revolved around the pulpit. I grasped the Bible, and declaimed vehemently in order if possible to recover myself; but from the beginning of the first head to the last application, although I must have adhered to my manuscript, I was speaking like one in a dream, not master of myself, the will passive, and memory alone awake. When I concluded the last period, I could scarcely believe that I had preached my discourse. The weakness of my limbs told me of the struggle. On leaving the church I overheard some remarks concerning myself pass between two of the officials.

“He’s a brisk bit birkie that,” quoth the beadle.

“’Od ay,” responded the precentor, but “he has a bee in his bannet.”

Sweet reader, if you are studying for the Church, do not be deterred by vain fears from prosecuting your labours. It is a glorious thing to succeed, even when you are unconscious of your success, and thus it happened with “My First Sermon.”

THE CRIMES OF RICHARD HAWKINS.

BY THOMAS AIRD.

When a young man, Richard Hawkins was guilty of the heinous crime of betraying the daughter of a respectable farmer in the west of Galloway, of the name of Emily Robson. As he yet loved the injured maiden, he would have married her, but in this he was determinedly opposed by her relatives, and particularly by her only brother, betwixt whom and himself an inveterate hostility had, from various causes, been growing up since their earliest boyhood. From remorse partly, and shame and disappointment, and partly from other causes, Hawkins hereupon left his home and went abroad; but after making a considerable sum of money he returned to Scotland, determined to use every remonstrance to win over Emily’s friends to allow him yet by marriage to make reparation to the gentle maiden, the remembrance of whose beauty and faithful confiding spirit had unceasingly haunted him in a foreign land. He arrived first at Glasgow, and proceeded thence to Edinburgh, where he purposed to stay a week or a fortnight before going southward to his native county, in which also Emily Robson resided.

During his stay in the metropolis, having been one evening invited to sup at the house of a gentleman, originally from the same county with himself, scarcely had he taken his seat in his host’s parlour, when Emily’s brother entered, and, instantly recognizing him, advanced with a face of grim wrath, denounced him as a villain, declared he would not sit a moment in his company, and to make good his declaration, instantly turned on his heel and left the house. The violent spirit of Hawkins was in a moment stung to madness by this rash and unseasonable insolence, which was offered him, moreover, before a number of gentlemen; he rose, craved their leave for a moment, that he might follow, and show Mr Robson his mistake; and sallying out of the house, without his hat, he overtook his aggressor on the street, tapped him on the shoulder, and thus bespoke him, with a grim smile:—“Why, sir, give me leave to propound to you that this same word and exit of yours are most preciously insolent. With your leave, now, I must have you back, gently to unsay me a word or two; or, by heaven! this night your blood shall wash out the imputation!”

“This hour—this hour!” replied Robson, in a hoarse compressed whisper; “my soul craves to grapple with you, and put our mutual affair to a mortal arbitrament. Hark ye, Hawkins, you are a stranger in this city, I presume, and cannot reasonably be expected easily to provide yourself with a second; moreover, no one would back such a villain;—now, will you follow me this moment to my lodgings, accept from my hand one of a pair of pistols, and let us, without farther formality, retire to a convenient place, and do ourselves a pleasure and a justice. I am weary of living under the same sun with you, and if I can shed your foul blood beneath yon chaste stars of God, I would willingly die for it. Dare you follow me?—and, quickly, before those fellows think of looking after us?”

To Hawkins’ boiling heart of indignation ’twas no hard task so to follow, and the above proposal of Robson was strictly and instantly followed up. We must notice here particularly, that, as the parties were about to leave the house, a letter was put into Robson’s hand, who, seeing that it was from his mother, and bore the outward notification of mourning, craved Hawkins’ permission to read it, which he did with a twinkling in his eye, and a working, as of deep grief, in the muscles of his face; but in a minute he violently crushed the letter, put it into his pocket, and, turning anew to his foe with glaring eyes of anger, told him that all was ready. And now we shall only state generally, that within an hour from the first provocation of the evening, this mortal and irregular duel was settled, and left Robson shot through the body by his antagonist.

No sooner did Hawkins see him fall, than horror and remorse for his deed rushed upon him; he ran to the prostrate youth, attempted to raise him up, but dared not offer pity or ask forgiveness, for which his soul yet panted. The wounded man rejected his assistance—waved him off, and thus faintly but fearfully spoke:—“Now, mine enemy! I will tell you, that you may sooner know the curse of God, which shall for ever cling and warp itself round all the red cords of your heart. That letter from my mother, which you saw me read, told me of the death of that sister Emily whom I so loved; whom you—oh, God!—who never recovered from your villany. And my father, too!—Off, fiend, nor mock me! You shall not so triumph—you shall not see me die!” So saying, the wounded youth, who was lying on his back, with his pale writhen features upturned, and dimly seen in the twilight, with a convulsive effort now threw himself round, with his face upon the grass.

In a fearful agony stood Hawkins, twisting his hands, not knowing whether again to attempt raising his victim, or to run to the city for a surgeon. The former he at length did, and found no resistance; for, alas! the unhappy youth was dead. The appearance of two or three individuals now making towards the bloody spot, which was near the suburbs of the town, and to which, in all probability, they had been drawn by the report of the pistols, roused Hawkins, for the first time, to a sense of his own danger. He quickly left the ground, dashed through the fields, and, without distinctly calculating his route, instinctively turned towards his native district.

As he proceeded onwards, he began to consider the bearings of his difficult situation, and at last resolved to hasten on through the country, to lay his case before his excellent friend Frank Dillon, who was the only son of a gentleman in the western parts of Galloway, and who, he knew, was at present residing with his father. Full of the most riotous glee, and nimble-witted as Mercutio, Frank, he was aware, could be no less gravely wise as an adviser in a difficult emergency, and he determined, in the present case, to be wholly ruled by his opinion. Invigorated from thus having settled for himself a definite course, he walked swiftly forward through the night, which shone with the finest beauty of the moon. Yet what peace to the murderer, whose red title not the fairest duellist, who has slain a human being, can to his own conscience reduce? The cold glittering leaves on the trees, struck with a quick, momentary gust, made him start as he passed; and the shadowy foot and figure of the lover, coming round from the back window of the lone cottage, was to his startled apprehension the avenger of blood at hand. As he looked afar along the glittering road, the black fir trees upon the edge of the moor seemed men coming running down to meet him; and the long howl of some houseless cur, and the distant hoof of the traveller, which struck his listening ear with two or three beatings, seemed all in the track of pursuit and vengeance.

Morning came, and to the weary fugitive was agreeably cloudy; but the sun rose upon him in the forenoon, shining from between the glassy, glistering clouds with far greater heat than it does from a pure blue sky. Hawkins had now crossed many a broad acre of the weary moorlands, fatigued and thirsty, his heart beating in his ears, and not a drop of water that he could see to sprinkle the dry pulses of his bosom, when he came to a long morass, which barred his straightforward path. His first business was to quench his thirst from a dull stank, overgrown with paddowpipe, and black with myriads of tadpoles. There, finding himself so faint from fatigue that he could not brook the idea of going round by the end of the moss, and being far less able to make his way through the middle of it, by leaping from _hagg_ to _hagg_, he threw himself down on the sunny side of some long reeds, and fell fast asleep.

He was waked by the screaming of lapwings, and the noise of a neighbouring bittern, to a feeling of violent throbbing, headache, and nausea, which were probably owing to the sun’s having beat upon him whilst he lay asleep, aggravated by the reflection from the reeds. He arose, but finding himself quite unable to pursue his journey, again threw himself down on a small airy brow of land, to get what breeze might be stirring abroad. There were several companies of people at work digging peats in the moss, and one party now sat down very near him to their dinner. One of them, a young woman, had passed so near him, as to be able to guess, from his countenance, that he was unwell; and in a few minutes, with the fine charity of womanhood, she came to him with some food, of which, to satisfy her kindness, rather than his own hunger, he ate a little. The air changed in the afternoon, and streaming clouds of hail crossed over that wild country, yet he lay still. Party after party left the moss, and yet he was there. He made, indeed, a show of leaving the place at a quick rate, to disappoint the fears of the people who had seen him at noon, and who, as they again came near to gather up their supernumerary clothes, were evidently perplexed on his account, which they showed by looking first towards him and then at each other. It was all he could do to get quite out of their sight beyond a little eminence; and there, once more, he lay down in utter prostration of mind and body.

Twilight began to darken upon the pools of that desolate place. The wild birds were gone to their heathy nests, all save the curlew, whose bravura was still sung over the fells, and borne far away into the dim and silent night. At length a tall, powerful-looking man came stepping through the moss, and as he passed near the poor youth, asked, in slow speech, who he was. In the reaction of nature, Hawkins was, in a moment, anxious about his situation, and replied to him that he had fallen sick on his way, and was unable to go in quest of a resting-place for the night. Approaching and turning himself round to the youth as he arose, the genius of the place had him on his back in a moment, and went off with him carelessly and in silence over the heath. In about half an hour they came to a lonely cottage, which the kind creature entered; and, setting the young man down, without the least appearance of fatigue on his part, “Here, gudewife,” said he, “is a bairn t’ye, that I hae foun’ i’ the moss: now, let us see ye be gude to him.” Either this injunction was very effective, or it was not at all necessary; for, had the youth been her own son, come from a far country to see her, this hostess of the cottage could not have treated him more kindly. From his little conversation during the evening, her husband, like most very bulky men, appeared to be of dull intellect; but there was a third personage in the composition of his household, a younger brother, a very little man,—the flower of the flock,—who made ample amends for his senior brother’s deficiencies as a talker. A smattering of Church-history had filled his soul with a thousand stories of persecution and martyrdom, and, from some old history of America, he had gained a little knowledge of Upper Canada, for which, Hawkins was during the night repeatedly given to understand, he was once on the very point of setting out, an abiding embryo of bold travel, which, in his own eye, seemed to invest him with all the honours and privileges of _bona fide_ voyagers. His guest had a thousand questions put to him on these interesting topics, less for his answers, it was evident, than for an opportunity to the little man of setting forth his own information. All this was tolerably fair; but it was truly disgusting when the little oracle took the Bible after supper, and, in place of his elder brother, who was otherwise also the head of the family, performed the religious services of the evening, presuming to add a comment to the chapter which he read; to enforce which, his elbow was drawn back to the sharpest angle of edification, from which, ever and anon unslinging itself like a shifting rhomboid, it forced forward the stiff information in many a pompous instalment. The pertinacious forefinger was at work too; and before it trembled the mystic Babylon, which, in a side argument, that digit was uplifted to denounce. Moreover, the whole lecture was given in a squeaking, pragmatic voice, which sounded like the sharping of thatchers’ knives.

Next morning the duellist renewed his journey, hoping against eveningtide to reach Dillon’s house, which he guessed could not now be more than forty miles distant. About mid-afternoon, as he was going through a small hamlet of five or six cottages, he stepped into one of them, and requested a little water to drink. There was a hushed solemnity, he could see in a moment, throughout the little apartment into which, rather too unceremoniously, he had entered; and a kind-looking matron, in a dark robe, whispered in his ear, as she gave him a porringer of sweet water, with a little oatmeal sprinkled upon it, that an only daughter of the house, a fine young woman, was lying “a corpse.” Without noticing his presence, and indeed with her face hid, sat the mother doubtless of the maiden, heedless of the whispered consolations of two or three officious matrons, and racking in that full and intense sorrow with which strangers cannot intermeddle. The sloping beams of the declining sun shone beautifully in through a small lattice, illumining a half-decayed nosegay of flowers which stood on the sunny whitewashed sill—emblem of a more sorrowful decay!—and after traversing the middle of the apartment, with a thin deep bar of light, peopled by a maze of dancing motes, struck into the white bed, where lay something covered up and awfully indistinct, like sanctified thing not to be gazed at, which the fugitive’s fascinated eye yet tried to shape into the elegant body of the maiden, as she lay before her virgin sheets purer than they, with the salt above her still and unvexed bosom. The restricted din of boys at play—for that buoyant age is yet truly reverential, and feels most deeply the solemn occasion of death—was heard faint and aloof from the house of mourning. This, and the lonely chirrup of a single sparrow from the thatch; the soft purring of the cat at the sunny pane; the muffled tread of the mourners over the threshold; and the audible grief of that poor mother, seemed, instead of interruption, rather parts of the solemn stillness.

As Hawkins was going out, after lingering a minute in this sacred interior, he met, in the narrow passage which led to the door, a man with the coffin, on the lid of which he read, as it was pushed up to his very face, “Emily Robson, aged 22.” The heart of the murderer—the seducer—was in a moment as if steeped in the benumbing waters of petrifaction; he was horrified; he would fain have passed, but could not for want of room; and as the coffin was not to be withdrawn in accommodation to him, he was pushed again into the interior of the cottage to encounter a look of piercing recognition from Emily’s afflicted mother, who had started up on hearing the hollow grating of the coffin as it struck occasionally on the walls of the narrow entrance. “Take him away—take him away—take him away!” she screamed, when she saw Hawkins, and pressed her face down on the white bed of death. As for the youth, who was fearfully conscious of another bloody woe which had not yet reached her heart, and of which he was still the author, and who saw, moreover, that this poor mother was now come to poverty, probably from his own first injury against the peace of her family, he needed not to be told to depart. With conscience, that truest conducting-rod, flashing its moral electricities of shame and fear, and with knees knocking against each other, he stumbled out of the house, and making his way by chance to an idle quarry, overgrown with weeds, he there threw himself down, with his face on the ground. In this situation he lay the whole night and all next forenoon; and in the afternoon—for he had occasionally risen to look for the assembling of the funeral train—he joined the small group who carried his Emily to the churchyard, and saw her young body laid in the grave. Oh! who can cast away carelessly, like a useless thing, the finely-moulded clay, perfumed with the lingering beauty of warm motions, sweet graces, and young charities! But had not the young man, think ye, tenfold reason to weep for her whom he now saw laid down within the dark shadow of the grave?

In the evening, he found his way to Frank Dillon’s; met his friend by chance at a little distance from his father’s house, and told him at once his unhappy situation. “My father,” replied Frank, “cannot be an adviser here, because he is a Justice of the Peace. But he has been at London for some time, and I do not expect him home till to-morrow; so you can go with me to our house for this night, where we shall deliberate what next must be done in this truly sad affair of yours. Come on.”

It is unnecessary for us to explain at length the circumstances which frustrated the friendly intentions of Dillon, and which enabled the officers of justice to trace Hawkins to his place of concealment. They arrived that very evening; and, notwithstanding the efforts of Frank to save his friend, secured the unhappy duellist, who, within two days afterwards, found himself in Edinburgh, securely lodged in jail.

The issue of Hawkins’ trial was that he was condemned to death as a murderer. This severe sentence of the law was, however, commuted into that of banishment for seven years. But he never again returned to his native country. And it must be told of him also, that no happiness ever shone upon this after-life of his. Independent of his first crime, which brought a beautiful young woman prematurely to the grave, he had broken rashly “into the bloody house of life,” and, in the language of Holy Writ, “slain a young man to his hurt.”

Oh! for that still and quiet conscience—those third heavens within a man—wherein he can soar within himself and be at peace, where the image of God shines down, never dislimned nor long hid by those wild racks and deep continents of gloom which come over the soul of the blood-guilty man!

THE HEADSTONE.

BY PROFESSOR WILSON.

The coffin was let down to the bottom of the grave, the planks were removed from the heaped-up brink, the first rattling clods had struck their knell, the quick shovelling was over, and the long, broad, skilfully cut pieces of turf were aptly joined together, and trimly laid by the beating spade, so that the newest mound in the churchyard was scarcely distinguishable from those that were grown over by the undisturbed grass and daisies of a luxuriant spring. The burial was soon over; and the party, with one consenting motion, having uncovered their heads in decent reverence of the place and occasion, were beginning to separate, and about to leave the churchyard. Here some acquaintances, from distant parts of the parish, who had not had an opportunity of addressing each other in the house that had belonged to the deceased, nor in the course of the few hundred yards that the little procession had to move over from his bed to his grave, were shaking hands, quietly but cheerfully, and inquiring after the welfare of each other’s families. There, a small knot of neighbours were speaking, without exaggeration, of the respectable character which the deceased had borne, and mentioning to one another little incidents of his life, some of them so remote as to be known only to the grayheaded persons of the group; while a few yards farther removed from the spot, were standing together parties who discussed ordinary concerns, altogether unconnected with the funeral, such as the state of the markets, the promise of the season, or change of tenants; but still with a sobriety of manner and voice that was insensibly produced by the influence of the simple ceremony now closed, by the quiet graves around, and the shadow of the spire and gray walls of the house of God.

Two men yet stood together at the head of the grave, with countenances of sincere but unimpassioned grief. They were brothers, the only sons of him who had been buried. And there was something in their situation that naturally kept the eyes of many directed upon them for a longer time, and more intently, than would have been the case had there been nothing more observable about them than the common symptoms of a common sorrow. But these two brothers, who were now standing at the head of their father’s grave, had for some years been totally estranged from each other, and the only words that had passed between them, during all that time, had been uttered within a few days past, during the necessary preparations for the old man’s funeral.

No deep and deadly quarrel was between these brothers, and neither of them could distinctly tell the cause of this unnatural estrangement. Perhaps dim jealousies of their father’s favour—selfish thoughts that will sometimes force themselves into poor men’s hearts respecting temporal expectations—unaccommodating manners on both sides—taunting words that mean little when uttered, but which rankle and fester in remembrance—imagined opposition of interests, that, duly considered, would have been found one and the same—these, and many other causes, slight when single, but strong when rising up together in one baneful band, had gradually but fatally infected their hearts, till at last they who in youth had been seldom separate, and truly attached, now met at market, and, miserable to say, at church, with dark and averted faces, like different clansmen during a feud.

Surely if anything could have softened their hearts towards each other, it must have been to stand silently, side by side, while the earth, stones, and clods, were falling down upon their father’s coffin. And, doubtless, their hearts were so softened. But pride, though it cannot prevent the holy affections of nature from being felt, may prevent them from being shown; and these two brothers stood there together, determined not to let each other know the mutual tenderness that, in spite of them, was gushing up in their hearts, and teaching them the unconfessed folly and wickedness of their causeless quarrel.

A headstone had been prepared, and a person came forward to plant it. The elder brother directed him how to place it—a plain stone, with a sand-glass, skull, and cross-bones, chiselled not rudely, and a few words inscribed. The younger brother regarded the operation with a troubled eye, and said, loudly enough to be heard by several of the bystanders, “William, this was not kind in you;—you should have told me of this. I loved my father as well as you could love him. You were the elder, and, it may be, the favourite son; but I had a right in nature to have joined you in ordering this headstone, had I not?”

During these words, the stone was sinking into the earth, and many persons who were on their way from the grave returned. For a while the elder brother said nothing, for he had a consciousness in his heart that he ought to have consulted his father’s son in designing this last becoming mark of affection and respect to his memory; so the stone was planted in silence, and now stood erect, decently and simply among the other unostentatious memorials of the humble dead.

The inscription merely gave the name and age of the deceased, and told that the stone had been erected “by his affectionate sons.” The sight of these words seemed to soften the displeasure of the angry man, and he said, somewhat more mildly, “Yes, we were his affectionate sons, and since my name is on the stone, I am satisfied, brother. We have not drawn together kindly of late years, and perhaps never may; but I acknowledge and respect your worth; and here, before our own friends, and before the friends of our father, with my foot above his head, I express my willingness to be on better and other terms with you, and if we cannot command love in our hearts, let us, at least, brother, bar out all unkindness.”

The minister, who had attended the funeral, and had something intrusted to him to say publicly before he left the churchyard, now came forward, and asked the elder brother why he spake not regarding this matter. He saw that there was something of a cold and sullen pride rising up in his heart—for not easily may any man hope to dismiss from the chamber of his heart even the vilest guest, if once cherished there. With a solemn and almost severe air, he looked upon the relenting man, and then, changing his countenance into serenity, said gently,—

Behold how good a thing it is, And how becoming well, Together such as brethren are In unity to dwell.

The time, the place, and this beautiful expression of a natural sentiment, quite overcame a heart in which many kind, if not warm, affections dwelt; and the man thus appealed to bowed down his head and wept.

“Give me your hand, brother;” and it was given, while a murmur of satisfaction arose from all present, and all hearts felt kindlier and more humanely towards each other.

As the brothers stood fervently, but composedly, grasping each other’s hands, in the little hollow that lay between the grave of their mother, long since dead, and that of their father, whose shroud was haply not yet still from the fall of dust to dust, the minister stood beside them with a pleasant countenance, and said, “I must fulfil the promise I made to your father on his deathbed. I must read to you a few words which his hand wrote at an hour when his tongue denied its office. I must not say that you did your duty to your old father; for did he not often beseech you, apart from one another, to be reconciled, for your own sakes as Christians, for his sake, and for the sake of the mother who bare you, and, Stephen, who died that you might be born? When the palsy struck him for the last time, you were both absent, nor was it your fault that you were not beside the old man when he died. As long as sense continued with him here, did he think of you two, and of you two alone. Tears were in his eyes; I saw them there, and on his cheek too, when no breath came from his lips. But of this no more. He died with this paper in his hand; and he made me know that I was to read it to you over his grave. I now obey him:

“‘My sons, if you will let my bones lie quiet in the grave, near the dust of your mother, depart not from my burial till, in the name of God and Christ, you promise to love one another as you used to do. Dear boys, receive my blessing.’”

Some turned their heads away to hide the tears that needed not to be hidden; and when the brothers had released each other from a long and sobbing embrace, many went up to them, and in a single word or two expressed their joy at this perfect reconcilement. The brothers themselves walked away from the churchyard, arm in arm with the minister, to the manse. On the following Sabbath they were seen sitting with their families in the same pew; and it was observed that they read together off the same Bible when the minister gave out the text, and that they sang together, taking hold of the same psalm-book. The same psalm was sung (given out at their own request), of which one verse had been repeated at their father’s grave; and a larger sum than usual was on that Sabbath found in the plate for the poor, for Love and Charity are sisters. And ever after, both during the peace and the troubles of this life, the hearts of the brothers were as one, and in nothing were they divided.

THE WIDOW’S PREDICTION: _A TALE OF THE SIEGE OF NAMUR_.

On the morning of the 30th August 1695, just as the sun began to tinge the dark and blood-stained battlements of Namur, a detachment of Mackay’s Scottish regiment made their rounds, relieving the last night-sentinels, and placing those of the morning. As soon as the party returned to their quarters, and relaxed from the formalities of military discipline, their leader, a tall, muscular man, of about middle age, with a keen eye and manly features, though swarthy and embrowned with toil, and wearing an expression but little akin to the gentle or the amiable, moved to an angle of the bastion, and, leaning on his spontoon, fixed an anxious gaze on the rising sun. While he remained in this position, he was approached by another officer, who, slapping him roughly on the shoulder, accosted him in these words—

“What, Monteith! are you in a musing mood? Pray, let me have the benefit of your morning meditations.”

“Sir!” said Monteith, turning hastily round. “Oh! ’tis you, Keppel. What think you of this morning?”

“Why, that it will be a glorious day for some; and for you and me, I hope, among others. Do you know that the Elector of Bavaria purposes a general assault to-day?”

“I might guess as much, from the preparations going on. Well, would it were to-morrow!”

“Sure you are not afraid, Monteith?”

“Afraid! It is not worth while to quarrel at present; but methinks you, Keppel, might have spared that word. There are not many men who might utter it and live.”

“Nay, I meant no offence; yet permit me to say, that your words and manner are strangely at variance with your usual bearing on a battle-morn.”

“Perhaps so,” replied Monteith; “and, but that your English prejudices will refuse assent, it might be accounted for. That sun will rise to-morrow with equal power and splendour, gilding this earth’s murky vapours, but I shall not behold his glory.”

“Now, do tell me some soothful narrative of a second-sighted seer,” said Keppel. “I promise to do my best to believe it. At any rate, I will not laugh outright, I assure you.”

“I fear not that. It is no matter to excite mirth; and, in truth, I feel at present strangely inclined to be communicative. Besides, I have a request to make; and I may as well do something to induce you to grant it.”

“That I readily will, if in my power,” replied Keppel. “So, proceed with your story, if you please.”

“Listen attentively, then—and be at once my first and my last confidant.

“Shortly after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, I joined the troop commanded by Irvine of Bonshaw; and gloriously did we scour the country, hunting the rebel Covenanters, and acting our pleasure upon man, woman, and child, person and property. I was then but young, and, for a time, rather witnessed than acted in the wild and exciting commission which we so amply discharged. But use is all in all. Ere half-a-dozen years had sped their round, I was one of the prettiest men in the troop at everything. It was in the autumn of 1684, as I too well remember, that we were engaged in beating up the haunts of the Covenanters on the skirts of Galloway and Ayrshire. A deep mist, which covered the moors thick as a shroud—friendly at times to the Whigs, but, in the present instance, their foe—concealed our approach, till we were close upon a numerous conventicle. We hailed, and bade them stand; but, trusting to their mosses and glens, they scattered and fled. We pursued in various directions, pressing hard upon the fugitives. In spite of several morasses which I had to skirt, and difficult glens to thread, being well mounted, I gained rapidly on a young mountaineer, who, finding escape by flight impossible, bent his course to a house at a short distance, as hoping for shelter there, like a hare to her form. I shouted to him to stand; he ran on. Again I hailed him; but he heeded not; when, dreading to lose all trace of him, should he gain the house, I fired. The bullet took effect. He fell, and his heart’s blood gushed on his father’s threshold. Just at that instant an aged woman, alarmed by the gallop of my horse, and the report of the pistol, rushed to the door, and stumbling, fell upon the body of her dying son. She raised his drooping head upon her knee, kissed his bloody brow, and screamed aloud, ‘Oh, God of the widow and the fatherless, have mercy on me!’ One ghastly convulsive shudder shook all her nerves, and the next moment they were calm as the steel of my sword; then raising her pale and shrivelled countenance, every feature of which was fixed in the calm, unearthly earnestness of utter despair, or perfect resignation, she addressed me, every word falling distinct and piercing on my ear like dropping musketry.

“‘And hast thou this day made me a widowed, childless mother? Hast thou shed the precious blood of this young servant of Jehovah? And canst thou hope that thy lot will be one of unmingled happiness? Go, red-handed persecutor! Follow thine evil way! But hear one message of truth from a feeble and unworthy tongue. Remorse, like a bloodhound, shall dog thy steps; and the serpent of an evil conscience shall coil around thy heart. From this hour thou shalt never know peace. Thou shalt seek death, and long to meet it as a friend; but it shall flee thee. And when thou shalt begin to love life, and dread death, then shall thine enemy come upon thee; and thou shalt not escape. Hence to thy bloody comrades, thou second Cain! Thou accursed and banished from the face of Heaven and of mercy!—

“‘Foul hag!’ I exclaimed, it would take little to make me send thee to join thy psalm-singing offspring!’

“‘Well do I know that thou wouldst if thou wert permitted!’ replied she. ‘But go thy way, and bethink thee how thou wilt answer to thy Creator for this morning’s work!’

“And, ceasing to regard me, she stooped her head over the dead body of her son. I could endure no more, but wheeled around, and galloped off to join my companions.

“From that hour, I felt myself a doomed and miserable man. In vain did I attempt to banish from my mind the deed I had done, and the words I had heard. In the midst of mirth and revelry, the dying groan of the youth, and the words of doom spoken by his mother, rung for ever in my ears, converting the festal board to a scene of carnage and horror, till the very wine-cup seemed to foam over with hot bubbling gore. Once I tried—laugh, if you will—I tried to pray; but the clotted locks of the dying man, and the earnest gaze of the soul-stricken mother, came betwixt me and Heaven,—my lip faltered—my breath stopped—my very soul stood still, for I knew that my victims were in Paradise, and how could I think of happiness—_I_, their murderer—in one common home with them? Despair took possession of my whole being. I rushed voluntarily to the centre of every deadly peril, in hopes to find an end to my misery. Yourself can bear me witness that I have ever been the first to meet, the last to retire from, danger. Often, when I heard the battle-signal given, and when I passed the trench, or stormed the breach, in front of my troop, it was less to gain applause and promotion than to provoke the encounter of death. ’Twas all in vain. I was doomed not to die, while I longed for death. And now—”

“Well, by your own account, you run no manner of risk, and at the same time are proceeding on a rapid career of military success,” said Keppel; “and, for my life, I cannot see why that should affect you, supposing it all perfectly true.”

“Because you have not yet heard the whole. But listen a few minutes longer. During last winter, our division, as you know, was quartered in Brussels, and was very kindly entertained by the wealthy and good-natured Flemings. Utterly tired of the heartless dissipation of life in a camp, I endeavoured to make myself agreeable to my landlord, that I might obtain a more intimate admission into his family circle. To this I was the more incited, that I expected some pleasure in the society of his daughter. In all I succeeded to my wish. I became quite a favourite with the old man, and procured ready access to the company of his child. But I was sufficiently piqued to find, that in spite of all my gallantry, I could not learn whether I had made any impression upon the heart of the laughing Fanchon. What peace and playful toying could not accomplish, war and sorrow did. We were called out of winter quarters, to commence what was anticipated to be a bloody campaign. I obtained an interview to take a long and doubtful farewell. In my arms the weeping girl owned her love, and pledged her hand, should I survive to return once more to Brussels. Keppel, I am a doomed man; and my doom is about to be accomplished! Formerly I wished to die; but death fled me. Now I wish to live; and death will come upon me! I know I shall never more see Brussels, nor my lovely little Fleming. Wilt thou carry her my last farewell; and tell her to forget a man who was unworthy of her love—whose destiny drove him to love, and be beloved, that he might experience the worst of human wretchedness? You’ll do this for me, Keppel?”

“If I myself survive, I will. But this is some delusion—some strong dream. I trust it will not unnerve your arm in the moment of the storm.”

“No! I may die—_must_ die; but it shall be in front of my troop, or in the middle of the breach. Yet how I long to escape this doom! I have won enough of glory; I despise pillage and wealth; but I feel my very heartstrings shrink from the now terrible idea of final dissolution. Oh! that the fatal hour were past, or that I had still my former eagerness to die! Keppel, if I dared, I would to-day own myself a coward.”

“Come with me,” said Keppel, “to my quarters. The night air has made you aguish. The cold fit will yield to a cup of as generous Rhine wine as ever was drunk on the banks of the Sambre.” Monteith consented, and the two moved off to partake of the stimulating and substantial comforts of a soldier’s breakfast in the Netherlands.

It was between one and two in the afternoon. An unusual stillness reigned in the lines of the besiegers. The garrison remained equally silent, as watching in deep suspense on what point the storm portended by this terrible calm would burst. A single piece of artillery was discharged. Instantly a body of grenadiers rushed from the intrenchments, struggled over masses of ruins, and mounted the breach. The shock was dreadful. Man strove with man, and blow succeeded to blow, with fierce and breathless energy. The English reached the summit, but were almost immediately beaten back, leaving numbers of their bravest grovelling among the blackened fragments. Their leader, Lord Cutts, had himself received a dangerous wound in the head; but disregarding it, he selected two hundred men from Mackay’s regiment, and putting them under the command of Lieutenants Cockle and Monteith, sent them to restore the fortunes of the assault. Their charge was irresistible. Led on by Monteith, who displayed a wild and frantic desperation, rather than bravery, they broke through all impediments, drove the French from the covered way, seized on one of the batteries, and turned the cannon against the enemy. To enable them to maintain this advantage, they were reinforced by parties from other divisions. Keppel, advancing in one of those parties, discovered the mangled form of his friend Monteith, lying on heaps of the enemy on the very summit of the captured battery. He attempted to raise the seemingly lifeless body. Monteith opened his eyes,—“Save me!” he cried; “save me! I will not die! I dare not—I must not die!”

It were too horrid to specify the ghastly nature of the mortal wounds which had torn and disfigured his frame. To live was impossible. Yet Keppel strove to render him some assistance, were it but to soothe his parting spirit. Again he opened his glazing eyes,—“I will resist thee to the last!” he cried, in a raving delirium. “I killed him but in the discharge of my duty. What worse was I than others? Poor consolation now! The doom—the doom! I cannot—dare not—must not—_will not_ die!” And while the vain words were gurgling in his throat, his head sunk back on the body of a slaughtered foe, and his unwilling spirit forsook his shattered body.—_Edinburgh Literary Journal._

THE LADY OF WARISTOUN.

The estate of Waristoun, near Edinburgh, now partly covered by the extended streets of the metropolis on its northern side, is remarkable in local history for having belonged to a gentleman, who in the year 1600, was cruelly murdered at the instigation of his wife. This unfortunate lady, whose name was Jean Livingstone, was descended from a respectable ancestry, being the daughter of Livingstone, the laird of Dunipace, in Stirlingshire, and at an early age was married to John Kincaid, the laird of Waristoun, who, it is believed, was considerably more advanced in years than herself. It is probable that this disparity of age laid the foundation of much domestic strife, and led to the tragical event now to be noticed. The ill-fated marriage and its results form the subject of an old Scottish ballad, in which the proximate cause of the murder is said to have been a quarrel at the dinner-table:

It was at dinner as they sat, And when they drank the wine, How happy were the laird and lady Of bonny Waristoun!

But he has spoken a word in jest; Her answer was not good; And he has thrown a plate at her, Made her mouth gush with blude.

Whether owing to such a circumstance as is here alluded to, or a bite which the laird is said to have inflicted upon her arm, is immaterial; the lady, who appeared to have been unable to restrain her malignant passions, conceived the diabolical design of having her husband assassinated. There was something extraordinary in the deliberation with which this wretched woman approached the awful gulf of crime. Having resolved on the means to be employed in the murder, she sent for a quondam servant of her father, Robert Weir, who lived in the neighbouring city. He came to the place of Waristoun, to see her; but it appeares her resolution failed, and he was not admitted. She again sent for him, and he again went. Again he was not admitted. At length, on his being called a third time, he was introduced to her presence. Before this time she had found an accomplice in the nurse of her child. It was then arranged that Weir should be concealed in a cellar till the dead of night, when he should come forth, and proceed to destroy the laird as he lay in his chamber. The bloody tragedy was acted precisely in accordance with this plan. Weir was brought up at midnight from the cellar to the hall by the lady herself, and afterwards went forward alone to the laird’s bedroom. As he proceeded to his bloody work, she retired to her bed, to wait the intelligence of her husband’s murder. When Weir entered the chamber, Waristoun awoke with the noise, and leant inquiringly over the bed. The murderer then leapt upon him. The unhappy man uttered a great cry. Weir gave him some severe blows on vital parts, particularly one on the flank vein. But as the laird was still able to cry out, he at length saw fit to take more effective measures. He seized him by the throat with both hands, and, compressing that part with all his force, succeeded, after a few minutes, in depriving him of life.

When the lady heard her husband’s first death-shout, she leapt out of bed, in an agony of mingled horror and repentance, and descended to the hall; but she made no effort to countermand her mission of destruction. She waited patiently till Weir came down to inform her that all was over. Weir made an immediate escape from justice, but Lady Waristoun and the nurse were apprehended before the deed was half-a-day old. Being caught, as the Scottish law terms it, “red-hand,”—that is, while still bearing unequivocal marks of guilt,—they were immediately tried by the magistrates of Edinburgh, and sentenced to be strangled and burnt at the stake.

The lady’s father, the Laird of Dunipace, who was a favourite of King James VI., made all the interest he could with his Majesty to procure a pardon; but all that could be obtained from the king was an order that the unhappy lady should be executed by decapitation, and that at such an early hour in the morning as to make the affair as little of a spectacle as possible. The space intervening between her sentence and her execution was only thirty-seven hours, yet in that little time Lady Waristoun contrived to become converted from a blood-stained and unrelenting murderess into a perfect saint on earth. One of the then ministers of Edinburgh has left an account of her conversion, which was lately published, and would be extremely amusing, were it not for the loathing which seizes the mind on beholding such an instance of perverted religion. She went to the scaffold with a demeanour which would have graced a martyr. Her lips were incessant in the utterance of pious exclamations. She professed herself confident of everlasting happiness. She even grudged every moment which she spent in this world as so much taken from that sum of eternal felicity which she was to enjoy in the next. The people who came to witness the last scene, instead of having their minds inspired with a salutary horror for her crime, were engrossed in admiration of her saintly behaviour, and greedily gathered up every devout word which fell from her tongue. It would almost appear, from the narrative of the clergyman, that her fate was rather a matter of envy than of any other feeling. Her execution took place at four in the morning of the 5th of July, at the Watergate, near Holyrood-house; and at the same hour her nurse was burned on the Castlehill. It is some gratification to know that the actual murderer, Weir, was eventually seized and executed, though not till four years afterwards.—_Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal_, 1832.

A TALE OF PENTLAND.

BY JAMES HOGG, THE “ETTRICK SHEPHERD.”

Mr John Haliday having been in hiding on the hills, after the battle of Pentland, became impatient to hear news concerning the sufferings of his brethren who had been in arms; and in particular, if there were any troops scouring the district in which he had found shelter. Accordingly, he left his hiding-place in the evening, and travelled towards the valley until about midnight, when, coming to the house of Gabriel Johnstone, and perceiving a light, he determined on entering, as he knew him to be a devout man, and one much concerned about the sufferings of the Church of Scotland.

Mr Haliday, however, approached the house with great caution, for he rather wondered why there should be a light there at midnight, while at the same time he neither heard psalms singing nor the accents of prayer. So, casting off his heavy shoes, for fear of making a noise, he stole softly up to the little window from whence the light beamed, and peeped in, where he saw, not Johnstone, but another man, whom he did not know, in the very act of cutting a soldier’s throat, while Johnstone’s daughter, a comely girl, about twenty years of age, was standing deliberately by, and holding the candle to him.

Haliday was seized with an inexpressible terror; for the floor was all blood, and the man was struggling in the agonies of death, and from his dress he appeared to have been a cavalier of some distinction. So completely was the Covenanter overcome with horror, that he turned and fled from the house with all his might. So much had Haliday been confounded that he even forgot to lift his shoes, but fled without them; and he had not run above half a bowshot before he came upon two men hastening to the house of Gabriel Johnstone. As soon as they perceived him running towards them they fled, and he pursued them; for when he saw them so ready to take alarm, he was sure they were some of the persecuted race, and tried eagerly to overtake them, exerting his utmost speed, and calling on them to stop. All this only made them run faster; and when they came to a feal-dyke they separated, and ran different ways, and he soon thereafter lost sight of them both.

This house, where Johnstone lived, is said to have been in a lonely concealed dell, not far from West Linton, in what direction I do not know, but it was towards that village that Haliday fled, not knowing whether he went, till he came to the houses. Having no acquaintances here whom he durst venture to call up, and the morning having set in frosty, he began to conceive that it was absolutely necessary for him to return to the house of Gabriel Johnstone, and try to regain his shoes, as he little knew when or where it might be in his power to get another pair. Accordingly, he hasted back by a nearer path, and coming to the place before it was day, found his shoes. At the same time he heard a fierce contention within the house, but as there seemed to be a watch he durst not approach it, but again made his escape.

Having brought some victuals along with him, he did not return to his hiding-place that day, which was in a wild height, south of Biggar, but remained in the moss of Craigengaur; and as soon as it drew dark, descended again into the valley. Again he perceived a light in the distance, where he thought no light should have been. But he went towards it, and as he approached he heard the melody of psalm-singing issuing from the place, and floating far on the still breeze of the night. He hurried to the spot, and found the reverend and devout Mr Livingston, in the act of divine worship, in an old void barn on the lands of Slipperfield, with a great number of serious and pious people, who were all much affected both by his prayers and discourse.

After the worship was ended, Haliday made up to the minister, among many others, to congratulate him on the splendour of his discourse, and implore “a further supply of the same milk of redeeming grace, with which they found their souls nourished, cherished, and exalted.” The good man complied with the request, and appointed another meeting at the same place on a future night.

Haliday having been formerly well acquainted with the preacher, convoyed him on his way home, where they condoled with one another on the hardness of their lots; and Haliday told him of the scene he had witnessed at the house of Gabriel Johnstone. The heart of the good minister was wrung with grief, and he deplored the madness and malice of the people who had committed an act that would bring down tenfold vengeance on the heads of the whole persecuted race. At length it was resolved between them that, as soon as it was day, they would go and reconnoitre, and if they found the case of the aggravated nature they suspected, they would themselves be the first to expose it, and give the perpetrators up to justice.

Accordingly, next morning they took another man into the secret, a William Rankin, one of Mr Livingston’s elders, and the three went away to Johnstone’s house, to investigate the case of the cavalier’s murder; but there was a guard of three armed men opposed them, and neither promises nor threatenings, nor all the minister’s eloquence, could induce them to give way one inch. The men advised the intruders to take themselves off, lest a worse thing should befall them; and as they continued to motion them away, with the most impatient gestures, the kind divine and his associates thought meet to retire, and leave the matter as it was; and thus was this mysterious affair hushed up in silence and darkness for that time, no tongue having been heard to mention it further than as above recited. The three armed men were all unknown to the others, but Haliday observed that one of them was the very youth whom he saw cutting off the soldier’s head with a knife.

The rage and cruelty of the Popish party seemed to gather new virulence every day, influencing all the counsels of the king; and the persecution of the Nonconformists was proportionably severe. One new act of council was issued after another, all tending to root the Covenanters out of Scotland, but it had only the effect of making their tenets still dearer to them. The longed-for night of the meeting in the old hay-barn at length arrived, and it was attended by a still greater number than on the night preceding. A more motley group can hardly be conceived than appeared in the barn that night, and the lamps being weak and dim rendered the appearance of the assembly still more striking. It was, however, observed that about the middle of the service a number of fellows came in with broad slouch bonnets, and watch-coats or cloaks about them, who placed themselves in equal divisions at the two doors, and remained without uncovering their heads, two of them being busily engaged taking notes. Before Mr Livingston began the last prayer, however, he desired the men to uncover, which they did, and the service went on to the end; but no sooner had the minister pronounced the word _Amen_, than the group of late comers threw off their cloaks, and drawing out swords and pistols, their commander, one General Drummond, charged the whole congregation in the king’s name to surrender.

A scene of the utmost confusion ensued. The lights being extinguished, many of the young men burst through the roof of the old barn in every direction, and though many shots were fired at them in the dark, great numbers escaped; but Mr Livingston and other eleven were retained prisoners, and conveyed to Edinburgh, where they were examined before the council and cast into prison. Among the prisoners were Mr Haliday and the identical young man whom he had seen in the act of murdering the cavalier, and who turned out to be a Mr John Lindsay, from Edinburgh, who had been at the battle of Pentland, and in hiding afterwards.

Great was the lamentation for the loss of Mr Livingston, who was so highly esteemed by his hearers. The short extracts from his sermons in the barn, that were produced against him on his trial, prove him to have been a man endowed with talents somewhat above the greater part of his contemporaries. His text that night it appears had been taken from Genesis:—“And God saw the wickedness of man that it was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” One of the quoted passages concludes thus:—

“Let us join together in breaking the bands of the oppressors, and casting their cords from us. As for myself, as a member of this poor persecuted Church of Scotland, and an unworthy minister of it, I hereby call upon you all, in the name of God, to set your faces, your hearts, and your hands against all such acts, which are or shall be passed against the covenanted work of reformation in this kingdom; that we here declare ourselves free of the guilt of them, and pray that God may put this in record in heaven.”

These words having been sworn to, and Mr Livingston not denying them, a sharp debate arose in the council what punishment to award. The king’s advocate urged the utility of sending him forthwith to the gallows; but some friends in the council got his sentence commuted to banishment; and he was accordingly banished the kingdom. Six more, against whom nothing could be proven farther than their having been present at a conventicle, were sentenced to imprisonment for two months; among this number, Haliday was one. The other five were condemned to be executed at the cross of Edinburgh, on the 14th of December following; and among this last unhappy number was Mr John Lindsay.

Haliday now tried all the means he could devise to gain an interview with Lindsay, to have some explanation of the extraordinary scene he had witnessed in the cottage at midnight, for it had made a fearful impression upon his mind, and he never could get rid of it for a moment; having still in his mind’s eye a beautiful country maiden standing with a pleased face, holding a candle, and Lindsay in the meantime at his horrid task. His endeavours, however, were all in vain, for they were in different prisons, and the jailer paid no attention to his requests. But there was a gentleman in the privy council that year, whose name, I think, was Gilmour, to whose candour Haliday conceived that both he and some of his associates owed their lives. To this gentleman, therefore, he applied by letter, requesting a private interview with him, as he had a singular instance of barbarity to communicate, which it would be well to inquire into while the possibility of doing so remained, for the access to it would soon be sealed for ever. The gentleman attended immediately, and Haliday revealed to him the circumstances previously mentioned, stating that the murderer now lay in the Tolbooth jail, under sentence of death.

Gilmour appeared much interested, as well as astonished at the narrative, and taking out a note-book, he looked over some dates, and then observed—“This date of yours tallies exactly with one of my own, relating to an incident of the same sort; but the circumstances narrated are so different, that I must conceive either that you are mistaken, or that you are trumping up this story to screen some other guilty person or persons.”

Haliday disclaimed all such motives, and persevered in his attestations. Gilmour then took him along with him to the Tolbooth prison, where the two were admitted to a private interview with the prisoner, and there charged him with the crime of murder in such a place and on such a night; but he denied the whole with disdain. Haliday told him that it was in vain for him to deny it, for he beheld him in the very act of perpetrating the murder with his own eyes, while Gabriel Johnstone’s daughter stood deliberately and held the candle to him.

“Hold your tongue, fellow!” said Lindsay, disdainfully, “for you know not what you are saying. What a cowardly dog you must be by your own account! If you saw me murdering a gentleman cavalier, why did you not rush in to his assistance?”

“I could not have saved the gentleman then,” said Haliday, “and I thought it not meet to intermeddle in such a scene of blood.”

“It was as well for you that you did not,” said Lindsay.

“Then you acknowledge being in the cottage of the dell that night?” said Gilmour.

“And if I was, what is that to you? Or what is it now to me or any person? I _was_ there on the night specified; but I am ashamed of the