CHAPTER II.

The case of Katherine Nairne, in 1766, excited, in no small degree, the attention of the Scottish public. This lady was allied, both by blood and marriage, to some highly respectable families. Her crime was the double one of poisoning her husband, and having an intrigue with his brother, who was her associate in the murder. She was brought from the north country into Leith harbour in an open boat, and as fame had preceded her, thousands of people flocked to the shore to see her. She has been described to us as standing erect in the boat, dressed in a riding-habit, and having a switch in her hand, with which she amused herself. Her whole bearing betrayed so much levity, or was so different from what had been expected, that the mob raised a general howl of indignation, and were on the point of stoning her to death, when she was with some difficulty rescued from their hands by the public authorities. In this case the Old Tolbooth found itself, as usual, incapable of retaining a culprit of condition. Sentence had been delayed by the judges, on account of her pregnancy. The midwife employed at her accouchement (who, by-the-by, continued to practise in Edinburgh so lately as the year 1805) had the address to achieve a jail-delivery also. For three or four days previous to that concerted for the escape, she pretended to be afflicted with a prodigious toothache; went out and in with her head enveloped in shawls and flannels; and groaned as it she had been about to give up the ghost. At length, when all the janitory officials were become so habituated to her appearance, as not to heed her “exits and her entrances” very much, Katherine Nairne one evening came down in her stead, with her head wrapped all round with the shawls, uttering the usual groans, and holding down her face upon her hands, as with agony, in the precise way customary with the midwife. The inner door-keeper, not quite unconscious, it is supposed, of the trick, gave her a hearty thump upon the back as she passed out, calling her at the same time a howling old Jezebel and wishing she would never come back to annoy his ears, and those of the other inmates, in such an intolerable way. There are two reports of the proceedings of Katherine Nairne after leaving the prison. One bears that she immediately left the town in a coach, to which she was handed by a friend stationed on purpose. The coachman, it is said, had orders from her relations, in the event of a pursuit, to drive into the sea and drown her—a fate which, however dreadful, was considered preferable to the ignominy of a public execution. The other story runs, that she went up the Lawnmarket to the Castlehill, where lived a respectable advocate, from whom, as he was her cousin, she expected to receive protection. Being ignorant of the town, she mistook the proper house, and, what was certainly remarkable, applied at that of the crown agent, who was assuredly the last man in the world that could have done her any service. As good luck would have it, she was not recognised by the servant, who civilly directed her to her cousin’s house, where it is said she remained concealed many weeks. In addition to these reports, we may mention that we have seen an attic pointed out in St Mary’s Wynd, as the place where Katherine Nairne found concealment between the period of her leaving the jail and that of her going abroad. Her future life, it has been reported, was virtuous and fortunate. She was married to a French gentleman, was the mother of a large and respectable family, and died at a good old age. Meanwhile, Patrick Ogilvie, her associate in the dark crime which threw a shade over her younger years, suffered in the Grassmarket. This gentleman, who had been a lieutenant in the —— regiment, was so much beloved by his fellow-soldiers, who happened to be stationed at that time in Edinburgh Castle, that the public authorities judged it necessary to shut them up in that fortress till the execution was over, lest they might have attempted, what they had been heard to threaten, a rescue.

The Old Tolbooth was the scene of the suicide of Mungo Campbell, while under sentence of death for shooting the Earl of Eglintoune. In the country where this memorable event took place, it is somewhat remarkable that the fate of the murderer was more generally lamented than that of the murdered person. Campbell, as we have heard, though what was called “a graceless man,” and therefore not much esteemed by the Auld Light people, who there abound, was rather popular in his profession of exciseman, on account of his rough, honourable spirit, and his lenity in the matter of smuggling. Lord Eglintoune, on the contrary, was not liked, on account of the inconvenience which he occasioned to many of his tenants by newfangled improvements, and his introduction into the country of a generally abhorred article, denominated rye-grass, which, for some reason we are not farmer enough to explain, was fully as unpopular a measure as the bringing in of Prelacy had been a century before. Lord Eglintoune was in the habit of taking strange crotchets about his farms—crotchets quite at variance with the old-established prejudices of his tenantry. He sometimes tried to rouse the old stupid farmers of Kyle from their negligence and supineness, by removing them to other farms, or causing two to exchange their possessions, in order, as he jocularly alleged, to prevent their furniture from getting mouldy, by long standing in particular damp corners. Though his lordship’s projects were all undertaken in the spirit of improvement, and though these emigrations were doubtless salutary in a place where the people were then involved in much sloth and nastiness, still they were premature, and carried on with rather a harsh spirit. They therefore excited feelings in the country people not at all favourable to his character. These, joined to the natural eagerness of the common people to exult over the fall of tyranny, and the puritanical spirit of the district, which disposed them to regard his lordship’s peccadilloes as downright libertinism, altogether conspired against him, and tended to throw the glory and the pity of the occasion upon his lordship’s slayer. Even Mungo’s poaching was excused, as a more amiable failing than the excessive love of preserving game, which had always been the unpopular mania of the Eglintoune family. Mungo Campbell was a man respectably connected, the son of a provost of Ayr; had been a dragoon in his youth, was eccentric in his manner, a bachelor, and was considered at Newmills, where he resided, as an austere and unsocial, but honourable, and not immoral man. There can be no doubt that he rose on his elbows and fired at his lordship, who had additionally provoked him by bursting into a laugh at his awkward fall. The Old Tolbooth was supposed by many, at the time, to have had her usual failing in Mungo’s case. The Argyll interest was said to have been employed in his favour, and the body, which was found suspended over the door, instead of being his, was thought to be that of a dead soldier from the castle, substituted in his place. His relations, however, who are very respectable people in Ayrshire, all acknowledge that he died by his own hand; and this was the general idea of the mob of Edinburgh, who, getting the body into their hands, trailed it down the street to the King’s Park, and inspired by different sentiments from those of the Ayrshire people, were not satisfied till they got it up to the top of Salisbury Crags, from which they precipitated it down the “Cat Nick.” Aged people in Ayrshire still remember the unwonted brilliancy of the aurora borealis on the midnight of Lord Eglintoune’s death. Strange and awful whispers then went through the country, in correspondence, as it were, with the streamers in the sky, which were considered by the superstitious as expressions on the face of heaven of satisfied wrath in the event.

One of the most remarkable criminals ever confined in the Old Tolbooth was the celebrated William Brodie. As may be generally known, this was a man of respectable connexions, and who had moved in good society all his life, unsuspected of any criminal pursuits. It is said that a habit of frequenting cock-pits was the first symptom he exhibited of a defalcation from virtue. His ingenuity as a joiner gave him a fatal facility in the burglarious pursuits to which he afterwards addicted himself. It was then customary for the shopkeepers of Edinburgh to hang their keys upon a nail at the back of their doors, or at least to take no pains in concealing them during the day. Brodie used to take impressions of them in putty or clay, a piece of which he would carry in the palm of his hand. He kept a blacksmith in his pay, of the name of Smith, who forged exact copies of the keys he wanted, and with these it was his custom to open the shops of his fellow-tradesmen during the night. He thus found opportunities of securely stealing whatsoever he wished to possess. He carried on his malpractices for many years. Upon one shop in particular he made many severe exactions. This was the shop of a company of jewellers, in the North Bridge Street, namely, that at the south-east corner, where it joins the High Street. The unfortunate tradesmen from time to time missed many articles, and paid off one or two faithful shopmen, under the impression of their being guilty of the theft. They were at length ruined. Brodie remained unsuspected, till having committed a daring robbery upon the Excise-office in Chessel’s Court, Canongate, some circumstances transpired, which induced him to disappear from Edinburgh. Suspicion then becoming strong, he was pursued to Holland, and taken at Amsterdam, standing upright in a press or cupboard. At his trial, Henry Erskine, his counsel, spoke very eloquently in his behalf, representing in particular, to the jury, how strange and improbable a circumstance it was, that a man whom they had themselves known from infancy as a person of good repute, should have been guilty of such practices as those with which he was charged. He was, however, found guilty, and sentenced to death, along with his accomplice Smith. At the trial he had appeared in a fine full-dress suit of black clothes, the greater part of which was of silk, and his deportment throughout the whole affair was completely that of a gentleman. He continued during the period which intervened between his sentence and execution to dress himself well and to keep up his spirits. A gentleman of our acquaintance, calling upon him in the condemned room, was astonished to find him singing the song from the Beggar’s Opera, “’Tis woman seduces all mankind.” Having contrived to cut out the figure of a draught-board on the stone floor of his dungeon, he amused himself by playing with any one who would join him, and, in default of such, with his right hand against his left. This diagram remained in the room where it was so strangely out of place, till the destruction of the jail. His dress and deportment at the gallows were equally gay with those which he assumed at his trial. As the Earl of Morton was the first man executed by the “Maiden,” so was Brodie the first who proved the excellence of an improvement he had formerly made on the apparatus of the gibbet. This was the substitution of what was called the “drop,” for the ancient practice of the double ladder. He inspected the thing with a professional air, and seemed to view the result of his ingenuity with a smile of satisfaction. When placed on that terrible and insecure pedestal, and while the rope was adjusted round his neck by the executioner, his courage did not forsake him. On the contrary, even there, he exhibited a sort of joyful levity, which, though not exactly composure, seemed to the spectators as more indicative of indifference; he shuffled about, looked gaily around, and finally went out of the world with his hand stuck carelessly into the open front of his vest.

The Tolbooth, in its old days, as its infirmities increased, showed itself now and then incapable of retaining prisoners of very ordinary rank. Within the recollection of many people yet alive, a youth named Reid, the son of an innkeeper in the Grassmarket, while under sentence of death for some felonious act, had the address to make his escape. Every means was resorted to for recovering him, by search throughout the town, vigilance at all the ports, and the offer of a reward for his apprehension, yet he contrived fairly to cheat the gallows. The whole story of his escape is exceedingly curious. He took refuge in the great cylindrical mausoleum of Sir George Mackenzie, in the Greyfriars churchyard of Edinburgh. This place, besides its discomfort, was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of the persecutor—a circumstance of which Reid, an Edinburgh boy, must have been well aware. But he braved all these horrors for the sake of his life. He had been brought up in the Hospital of George Heriot, in the immediate neighbourhood of the churchyard, and had many boyish acquaintances still residing in that munificent establishment. Some of these he contrived to inform of his situation, enjoining them to be secret, and beseeching them to assist him in his distress. The Herioters of those days had a very clannish spirit, insomuch, that to have neglected the interests or safety of any individual of the community, however unworthy he might be of their friendship, would have been looked upon by them as a sin of the deepest dye. Reid’s confidants, therefore, considered themselves bound to assist him by all means in their power against that general foe, the public. They kept his secret most faithfully, spared from their own meals as much food as supported him, and ran the risk of severe punishment, as well as of seeing ghosts, by visiting him every night in his horrible abode. They were his only confidants, his very parents, who lived not far off, being ignorant of his place of concealment. About six weeks after his escape from jail, when the hue and cry had in a great measure subsided, he ventured to leave the tomb, and it was afterwards known that he escaped abroad.

The subsequent history of the Old Tolbooth contains little that is very remarkable. It has passed away with many other venerable relics of the olden time, and we now look in vain for the many antique associations which crowded round the spot it once occupied.

THE LOVER’S LAST VISIT.

BY PROFESSOR WILSON.

The window of the lonely cottage of Hilltop was beaming far above the highest birchwood, seeming to travellers at a distance in the long valley below, who knew it not, to be a star in the sky. A bright fire was in the kitchen of that small tenement; the floor was washed, swept and sanded, and not a footstep had marked its perfect neatness; a small table was covered, near the ingle, with a snow-white cloth, on which was placed a frugal evening meal; and in happy but pensive mood sat there all alone the woodcutter’s only daughter, a comely and gentle creature, if not beautiful—such a one as diffuses pleasure round her hay-field, and serenity over the seat in which she sits attentively on the Sabbath, listening to the word of God, or joining with mellow voice in His praise and worship. On this night she expected a visit from her lover, that they might fix their marriage-day; and her parents, satisfied and happy that their child was about to be wedded to a respectable shepherd, had gone to pay a visit to their nearest neighbour in the glen.

A feeble and hesitating knock was at the door, not like the glad and joyful touch of a lover’s hand; and cautiously opening it, Mary Robinson beheld a female figure wrapped up in a cloak, with her face concealed in a black bonnet. The stranger, whoever she might be, seemed wearied and worn out, and her feet bore witness to a long day’s travel across the marshy mountains. Although she could scarcely help considering her an unwelcome visitor at such an hour, yet Mary had too much disposition—too much humanity,—not to request her to step forward into the hut; for it seemed as if the wearied woman had lost her way, and had come towards the shining window to be put right upon her journey to the low country.

The stranger took off her bonnet on reaching the fire; and Mary Robinson beheld the face of one whom, in youth, she had tenderly loved; although for some years past, the distance at which they lived from each other had kept them from meeting, and only a letter or two, written in their simple way, had given them a few notices of each other’s existence. And now Mary had opportunity, in the first speechless gaze of recognition, to mark the altered face of her friend,—and her heart was touched with an ignorant compassion. “For mercy’s sake! sit down Sarah, and tell me what evil has befallen you; for you are as white as a ghost. Fear not to confide anything to my bosom: we have herded sheep together on the lonesome braes;—we have stripped the bark together in the more lonesome woods;—we have played, laughed, sung, danced together;—we have talked merrily and gaily, but innocently enough surely, of sweethearts together; and, Sarah, graver thoughts, too, have we shared, for when your poor brother died away like a frosted flower, I wept as if I had been his sister; nor can I ever be so happy in this world as to forget him. Tell me, my friend, why are you here? and why is your sweet face so ghastly?”

The heart of this unexpected visitor died within her at these kind and affectionate inquiries; for she had come on an errand that was likely to dash the joy from that happy countenance. Her heart upbraided her with the meanness of the purpose for which she had paid this visit; but that was only a passing thought; for was she, innocent and free from sin, to submit, not only to desertion, but to disgrace, and not trust herself and her wrongs, and her hopes of redress, to her whom she loved as a sister, and whose generous nature, she well knew, not even love, the changer of so many things, could change utterly, though, indeed, it might render it colder than of old to the anguish of a female friend?

“Oh! Mary, I must speak—yet must my words make you grieve, far less for me than for yourself. Wretch that I am, I bring evil tidings into the dwelling of my dearest friend! These ribbons, they are worn for his sake—they become well, as he thinks, the auburn of your bonny hair;—that blue gown is worn to-night because he likes it;—but, Mary, will you curse me to my face, when I declare before the God that made us, that that man is pledged unto me by all that is sacred between mortal creatures; and that I have here in my bosom written promises and oaths of love from him, who, I was this morning told, is in a few days to be thy husband? Turn me out of the hut now, if you choose, and let me, if you choose, die of hunger and fatigue in the woods where we have so often walked together; for such death would be mercy to me, in comparison with your marriage with him who is mine for ever, if there be a God who heeds the oaths of the creatures He has made.”

Mary Robinson had led a happy life, but a life of quiet thoughts, tranquil hopes, and meek desires. Tenderly and truly did she love the man to whom she was now betrothed; but it was because she had thought him gentle, manly, upright, sincere, and one that feared God. His character was unimpeached—to her his behaviour had always been fond, affectionate, and respectful; that he was a fine-looking man, and could show himself among the best of the country round at church, and market, and fair-day, she saw and felt with pleasure and with pride. But in the heart of this poor, humble, contented, and pious girl, love was not a violent passion, but an affection sweet and profound. She looked forward to her marriage with a joyful sedateness, knowing that she would have to toil for her family, if blest with children; but happy in the thought of keeping her husband’s house clean, of preparing his frugal meals, and welcoming him when wearied at night to her faithful, and affectionate, and grateful bosom.

At first, perhaps, a slight flush of anger towards Sarah tinged her cheek; then followed in quick succession, or all blended together in one sickening pang, fear, disappointment, the sense of wrong, and the cruel pain of disesteeming and despising one on whom her heart had rested with all its best and purest affections. But though there was a keen struggle between many feelings in her heart, her resolution was formed during that very conflict, and she said within herself, “If it be even so, neither will I be so unjust as to deprive poor Sarah of the man who ought to marry her, nor will I be so mean and low-spirited, poor as I am, and dear as he has been unto me, as to become his wife.”

While these thoughts were calmly passing in the soul of this magnanimous girl, all her former affection for Sarah revived; and, as she sighed for herself, she wept aloud for her friend. “Be quiet, be quiet, Sarah, and sob not so as if your heart were breaking. It need not be thus with you. Oh, sob not so sair! You surely have not walked in this one day from the heart of the parish of Montrath?”—“I have indeed done so, and I am as weak as the wreathed snaw. God knows, little matter if I should die away; for, after all, I fear he will never think of me for his wife, and you, Mary, will lose a husband with whom you would have been happy, I feel, after all, that I must appear a mean wretch in your eyes.”

There was silence between them; and Mary Robinson, looking at the clock, saw that it wanted only about a quarter of an hour from the time of tryst. “Give me the oaths and promises you mentioned, out of your bosom, Sarah, that I may show them to Gabriel when he comes. And once more I promise, by all the sunny and all the snowy days we have sat together in the same plaid on the hillside, or in the lonesome charcoal plots and nests o’ green in the woods, that if my Gabriel—did I say my Gabriel?—has forsaken you and deceived me thus, never shall his lips touch mine again—never shall he put ring on my finger—never shall this head lie in his bosom—no, never, never; notwithstanding all the happy, too happy, hours and days I have been with him, near or at a distance—on the corn-rig—among the meadow hay, in the singing-school—at harvest-home—in this room, and in God’s own house. So help me God, but I will keep this vow!”

Poor Sarah told, in a few hurried words, the story of her love and desertion—how Gabriel, whose business as a shepherd often took him into Montrath parish, had wooed her, and fixed everything about their marriage, nearly a year ago. But that he had become causelessly jealous of a young man whom she scarcely knew; had accused her of want of virtue, and for many months had never once come to see her. “This morning, for the first time, I heard for a certainty, from one who knew Gabriel well and all his concerns, that the banns had been proclaimed in the church between him and you; and that in a day or two you were to be married. And though I felt drowning, I determined to make a struggle for my life—for oh! Mary, Mary, my heart is not like your heart; it wants your wisdom, your meekness, your piety; and if I am to lose Gabriel, will I destroy my miserable life, and face the wrath of God sitting in judgment upon sinners.”

At this burst of passion Sarah hid her face with her hands, as if sensible that she had committed blasphemy. Mary, seeing her wearied, hungry, thirsty, and feverish, spoke to her in the most soothing manner, led her into the little parlour called the spence, then removed into it the table, with the oaten cakes, butter, and milk; and telling her to take some refreshment, and then lie down in the bed, but on no account to leave the room till called for, gave her a sisterly kiss, and left her. In a few minutes the outer door opened, and Gabriel entered.

The lover said, “How is my sweet Mary?” with a beaming countenance; and gently drawing her to his bosom, he kissed her cheek. Mary did not—could not—wished not—at once to release herself from his enfolding arms. Gabriel had always treated her as the woman who was to be his wife; and though, at this time, her heart knew its own bitterness, yet she repelled not endearments that were so lately delightful, and suffered him to take her almost in his arms to their accustomed seat. He held her hand in his, and began to speak in his usual kind and affectionate language. Kind and affectionate it was, for though he ought not to have done so, he loved her, as he thought, better than his life. Her heart could not, in one small short hour, forget a whole year of bliss. She could not yet fling away with her own hand what, only a few minutes ago, seemed to her the hope of paradise. Her soul sickened within her, and she wished that she were dead, or never had been born.

“O Gabriel! Gabriel! well indeed have I loved you; nor will I say, after all that has passed between us, that you are not deserving, after all, of a better love than mine. Vain were it to deny my love, either to you or to my own soul. But look me in the face—be not wrathful—think not to hide the truth either from yourself or me, for that now is impossible—but tell me solemnly, as you shall answer to God at the judgment-day, if you know any reason why I must not be your wedded wife.” She kept her mild moist eyes fixed upon him; but he hung down his head and uttered not a word, for he was guilty before her, before his own soul, and before God.

“Gabriel, never could we have been happy; for you often, often told me, that all the secrets of your heart were known unto me, yet never did you tell me this. How could you desert the poor innocent creature that loved you; and how could you use me so, who loved you perhaps as well as she, but whose heart God will teach, not to forget you, for that may I never do, but to think on you with that friendship and affection which innocently I can bestow upon you, when you are Sarah’s husband. For, Gabriel, I have this night sworn, not in anger or passion—no, no—but in sorrow and pity for another’s wrongs—in sorrow also, deny it will I not, for my own—to look on you from this hour, as on one whose life is to be led apart from my life, and whose love must never more meet with my love. Speak not unto me—look not on me with beseeching eyes. Duty and religion forbid us ever to be man and wife. But you know there is one, besides me, whom you loved before you loved me, and, therefore, it may be better too; and that she loves you, and is faithful, as if God had made you one, I say without fear—I who have known her since she was a child, although, fatally for the peace of us both, we have long lived apart. Sarah is in the house; I will bring her unto you in tears, but not tears of penitence, for she is as innocent of that sin as I am, who now speak.”

Mary went into the little parlour, and led Sarah forward in her hand. Despairing as she had been, yet when she had heard from poor Mary’s voice speaking so fervently, that Gabriel had come, and that her friend was interceding in her behalf, the poor girl had arranged her hair in a small looking-glass—tied it up with a ribbon which Gabriel had given her, and put into the breast of her gown a little gilt brooch, that contained locks of their blended hair. Pale but beautiful—for Sarah Pringle was the fairest girl in all the country—she advanced with a flush on that paleness of reviving hope, injured pride, and love that was ready to forgive all and forget all, so that once again she could be restored to the place in his heart that she had lost. “What have I ever done, Gabriel, that you should fling me from you? May my soul never live by the atonement of my Saviour, if I am not innocent of that sin, yea, of all distant thought of that sin, with which you, even you, have in your hard-heartedness charged me. Look me in the face, Gabriel, and think of all I have been unto you, and if you say that before God, and in your own soul, you believe me guilty, then will I go away out into the dark night, and, long before morning, my troubles will be at an end.”

Truth was not only in her fervent and simple words, but in the tone of her voice, the colour of her face, and the light of her eyes. Gabriel had long shut up his heart against her. At first, he had doubted her virtue, and that doubt gradually weakened his affection. At last he tried to believe her guilty, or to forget her altogether, when his heart turned to Mary Robinson, and he thought of making her his wife. His injustice—his wickedness—his baseness—which he had so long concealed, in some measure, from himself, by a dim feeling of wrong done him, and afterwards by the pleasure of a new love, now appeared to him as they were, and without disguise. Mary took Sarah’s hand and placed it within that of her contrite lover; for had the tumult of conflicting passions allowed him to know his own soul, such at that moment he surely was, saying with a voice as composed as the eyes with which she looked upon them, “I restore you to each other; and I already feel the comfort of being able to do my duty. I will be bride’s-maid. And I now implore the blessing of God upon your marriage. Gabriel, your betrothed will sleep this night in my bosom. We will think of you, better, perhaps, than you deserve. It is not for me to tell you what you have to repent of. Let us all three pray for each other this night, and evermore, when we are on our knees before our Maker. The old people will soon be at home. Goodnight, Gabriel.” He kissed Sarah; and, giving Mary a look of shame, humility, and reverence, he went home to meditation and repentance.

It was now midsummer; and before the harvest had been gathered in throughout the higher valleys, or the sheep brought from the mountain-fold, Gabriel and Sarah were man and wife. Time passed on, and a blooming family cheered their board and fireside. Nor did Mary Robinson, the Flower of the Forest (for so the woodcutter’s daughter was often called), pass her life in single blessedness. She, too, became a wife and mother; and the two families, who lived at last on adjacent farms, were remarkable for mutual affection throughout all the parish, and more than one intermarriage took place between them, at a time when the worthy parents had almost forgotten the trying incident of their youth.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND CHATELAR; _OR, TWILIGHT MUSINGS IN HOLYROOD_.

There are no mysteries into which we are so fond of prying as the mysteries of the heart. The hero of the best novel in the world, if he could not condescend to fall in love, might march through his three volumes and excite no more sensation than his grandmother; and a newspaper without a breach of promise of marriage is a thing not to be endured.

It is not my intention to affect any singular exception from this natural propensity, and I am ready to confess that the next best thing to being in love oneself, is to speculate on the hopes, and fears, and fates of others. How truly interesting are the little schemes and subterfuges, the romancing and story-telling of our dove-eyed and gentle-hearted playfellows! I have listened to a lame excuse for a stolen ride in a tilbury, or a duet in the woods, with wonderful sensibility; and have witnessed the ceremony of cross-questioning with as much trepidation as I could have felt had I been the culprit myself. It is not, however, to be maintained that the love adventures of the present age can, in any way, compete with the enchantment of days agone; when tender souls were won by tough exploits, and Cupid’s dart was a twenty-foot lance, ordained only to reach the lady’s heart through the ribs of the rival. This was the golden age of love, albeit I am not one to lament it, thinking, as I do, that it is far more sensible to aid and abet my neighbour in toasting the beauty of his mistress, than to caper about with him in the lists, for contradiction’s sake, to the imminent danger and discomfort of us both. After this came the middle or dark ages of love, when it had ceased to be a glory, but had lost nothing of its fervour as a passion. If there is here less of romance than in the tilting days, there is considerably more of interest, because there is more of mystery. In the one, the test of true love was to make boast, in the other it was to keep secret. Accordingly, for an immense space of time, we have nothing but such fragments of adventures as could be gathered by eavesdroppers, who leave us to put head and tail to them as best suits our fancy; and the loves of Queen Elizabeth, who lived, as it were, only yesterday, are less known than the loves of queen Genevra, who perhaps never lived at all.

These amatory reflections occurred to me some little time ago, during a twilight reverie in the long, gloomy banqueting-room of Holyrood. It was the very land of love and mystery, for there was scarcely one of the grim visages which glared upon the walls, but had obtained his share of celebrity in lady’s bower, as well as in tented field; and of scarcely one of whom any certain and defined adventures have been handed down. I continued speculating through this line of kings, blessing the mark and confounding the painter, who has given us so little of their history in their faces, till I grew quite warm upon the subject, and found myself uniting and reasoning upon the few facts of which we are in possession, till I fancied I could penetrate through two or three centuries at least, and had a pretty shrewd idea as to who and who had been together.

Scotland has, I think, in spite of its sober, money-making character, always excited a more romantic curiosity than England. This, perhaps, is more owing to its peculiar misfortunes than to any particular difference of disposition. English heroes have been as brave, and no doubt as loving, but they do not walk under such a halo of pity; and whilst we pry with eagerness into the secrets of the gallant Jameses, we suffer those of their English contemporaries to be “interred with their bones.” I have always felt this strongly, and at the time of which I speak, I felt it stronger than ever. I was treading upon the very boards which had bounded to their manly steps, and was surrounded by the very walls which possessed the secret whisperings of their hearts. From that identical window, perhaps, had the first James gazed upon the moon, which I saw rising, and fancied that he almost held commune with the eyes of his English beauty. There, perhaps, had the royal poet entwined her name with the choicest hopes of his bosom, and woven a tale of happiness which concealed but too securely the assassin and the dagger behind it. There, too, might the courteous and courageous victims of Flodden Field and Solway Moss have planned the loves which characterised their lives, and the wars which concluded them, almost at the same moment. And there might the hapless Mary have first listened to the poisonous passion of a Darnley, or a Bothwell, and afterwards shed the tears of bitterness and self-reproach.

I paced this sad-looking room of rejoicing quite unconscious of the hours that were passing; for I was alone, and in a train of thought which nothing but a hearty shake could have interrupted. Mary, and all her beauty, and talents, and acquirements, continued floating before me. Her world of lovers and admirers, who, for the most part, were sleeping in a bloody bed, seemed rising one by one to my view, and I wandered with them through their hopes, and their fears, and their sorrows, even to the scaffold, as though I had been the ghost of one of them myself, and were possessed of secrets of which there is no living record.

Many of these ill-fated hearts have, by their nobility, or their exploits, or by the caprice of historians, received full meed of applause and pity; many, no doubt, have sunk into oblivion; and some, in addition to their misfortunes, have left their memories to combat with the censure which has been thought due to their presumption;—of these last I have always considered the unfortunate Chatelar to have been the most hardly used, and in the course of my musings I endeavoured to puzzle out something satisfactory to myself upon his dark and distorted history.

The birth of Chatelar, if not noble, was in no common degree honourable, for he was great-nephew to the celebrated Bayard, _le Chevalier sans peur et sans tache_. It is said that he likewise bore a strong resemblance to him in person, possessing a handsome face and graceful figure; and equally in manly and elegant acquirements, being an expert soldier and an accomplished courtier. In addition to this, says Brantome, who knew him personally, he possessed a most elegant mind, and spoke and wrote, both in prose and poetry, as well as any man in France.

Dangerous indeed are these advantages; and Chatelar’s first meeting with Mary was under circumstances calculated to render them doubly dangerous. Alone, as she conceived herself, cast off from the dearest ties of her heart, the land which she had learnt to consider her native land fading fast from her eyes, and the billows bearing her to the banishment of one with which, as it contained none that she loved, she could feel no sympathy;—in this scene of wailing and tears, the first tones of the poet were stealing upon her ear with the spirit of kindred feelings and kindred pursuits. We are to consider that Mary at this time had obtained but little experience, and was probably not overstocked with prudence, having scarcely attained the age of nineteen years. Not only, are we told, did she listen with complacency and pleasure to Chatelar’s warm and romantic praises of her beauty, but employed her poetic talent in approving and replying to them; putting herself upon a level with her gifted companion, a course which was morally certain to convert his veneration into feelings more nearly allied to his nature. Had he not been blamed for his presumption, it is probable that he would have been condemned for his stoicism; and his luckless passion is by no means a singular proof that where hearts are cast in kindred moulds, it is difficult to recognise extrinsic disparities. Chatelar saw the woman, and forgot the queen; Mary felt the satisfaction, and was blind to the consequences.

It is much to be lamented by the lovers of truth, that none of the poetical pieces which are said to have passed between Mary and Chatelar have been handed down to us. One song would have been a more valuable document in the elucidation of their history than all the annals we possess, and would have taught us at once the degree of encouragement and intimacy which was permitted. Whatever it was, it was such as to rivet the chains which had been so readily and unadvisedly put on; and from the period of their first meeting, we may consider him the most enthusiastic of her lovers.

How long he continued the admiration and the favourite of Holyrood does not, I believe, appear. It could not, however, be any considerable time ere he was compelled to return with his friend and patron, Damville, to France, with full reason to lament his voyage to Scotland, and with, probably, a firm determination to revisit it whenever opportunity should permit. This opportunity his evil stars were not long in bringing about. The projected war of faith between Damville’s party and the Huguenots afforded him a fair pretext for soliciting a dispensation of his services. Of the first he was a servant, of the last he was a disciple. It was therefore contrary to his honour and inclinations to fight against either of them, and, accordingly, in about fifteen months, we find him again at Holyrood.

Mary, it may reasonably be inferred, from her extreme love of France, and unwillingness to leave it, was not very speedily to be reconciled to her change of scene and society; a face, therefore, from the adopted land of her affections, and a tongue capable of gratifying them with the minutest accounts of the beloved objects it contained, must, at this time, have been acquisitions of no small interest. Chatelar, too, had already worked a welcome on his own account.

Few of my readers need be reminded how insensibly and certainly the tongue which speaks of that which is dear to our hearts is stored up with it in the same treasury. The tale and the teller of it,—the leaf and the wave it falls upon,—arrive at the same time at the same destination. Histories, for the most part, insinuate that Mary’s carriage towards Chatelar was merely that of kindness and courtesy; but this, I think, is an inference not warranted by the various facts which they have been unable to repress, and not even the silence of the inveterate John Knox upon this head can convince me that Chatelar had not reason to believe himself beloved.

Let us then imagine, if we can, what was likely to be the intoxication produced in the brain as well as the bosom of a man of an enthusiastic temperament by a free and daily intercourse, during three months, with the fascinations of a creature like Mary. What tales could that old misshapen boudoir—famous only, in common estimation, for the murder of Rizzio and the boot of Darnley—tell of smiles and tears over the fortunes of dear and distant companions of childhood, as narrated by the voice of one to whom, perhaps, they were equally dear! What tales could it tell of mingling music, and mingling poetry, and mingling looks, and vain regrets, and fearful anticipations! Here had the day been passed in listening to the praises of each other, from lips in which praise was a talent and a profession; and here had the twilight stolen upon them when none were by, and none could know how deeply the truth of those praises was acknowledged. Let us imagine all this, and, likewise, how Chatelar was likely to be wrought upon by the utter hopelessness of his case.

Had the object of his passion been upon anything like a level with him,—had there been the most remote possibility of a chance of its attainment,—his subsequent conduct would, most likely, not have been such as to render it a subject for investigation. But Mary must have been as inaccessible to him as the being of another world. The devotion which he felt for her was looked upon by the heads of her court as a species of sacrilege; and he was given to believe, that each had a plan for undermining his happiness and removing him from her favour. If this could not be effected, it was a moral certainty that Mary, in the bloom of her youth and the plentitude of her power, must become to some one of her numerous suitors all which it was impossible that she could ever become to him. Of these two cases, perhaps, the one was as bad as the other, and Chatelar was impelled to an act of desperation, which, in these matter-of-fact days, can scarcely be conceived. On the night of the 12th of February, 1563, he was found concealed in the young queen’s bed-chamber.

It would, I fear, be a difficult undertaking, in the eyes of dispassionate and reasoning persons, to throw a charitable doubt upon the motives of this unseasonable intrusion. The fair and obvious inference is, that he depended upon the impression he had made upon Mary’s heart, and the impossibility of their lawful union. In some degree, too, he might have been influenced by the perilous consequences of a discovery, to which he possibly thought her love would not permit her to expose him. The propriety of this argument, if he made use of it, was not put to the test, for his discovery fell to the lot of Mary’s female attendants before she retired.

There is, however, another class of readers who will give him credit for other thoughts. I mean those best of all possible judges of love-affairs, in whom the commonplaces of life have not entirely destroyed that kindly feeling of romance which Nature thought it necessary to implant in them, and which the usage of modern days renders it necessary for them to be ashamed of. The readers of whom I speak will decide more from the heart than the head; and then what an interminable field of defence is laid open! What strange feelings and unaccountable exploits might be furnished from the catalogue of love vagaries! Were Chatelar to be judged by other examples, the simple circumstance of his secreting himself for the mere purpose of being in the hallowed neighbourhood of his mistress, and without the most distant idea of making her acquainted with it, would appear a very commonplace and very pardonable occurrence. And if we keep in mind his poetical character and chivalrous education, this belief is materially strengthened.

On the following morning the affair was made known to the Queen by her ladies. Had they been wise enough to hold their peace, it is odds but the lover’s taste for adventure would have been satisfied by the first essay. Instead of this, being forbidden all future access to her presence, he became more desperate than ever. His motives had been misconstrued; his actions, he thought, had been misrepresented; he was bent on explanation, and he hoped for pardon. Thus it was that when Mary, on the same day, quitted Edinburgh, her disgraced admirer executed his determination of following her, and, on the night of the 14th, seized the only opportunity of an interview by committing the very same offence for which he was then suffering: Mary had no sooner entered her chamber than Chatelar stood before her.

Whatever her feelings may have been towards him, it is not surprising that this sudden apparition should have proved somewhat startling, and have produced an agitation not very favourable to his cause. It may be presumed that she was not mistress of her actions, for certain it is, that she did that which, if she possessed one half of the womanly tenderness for which she has credit, must have been a blight and a bitterness upon her after life. Chatelar comes, wounded to the quick, to supplicate a hearing, and the Queen, it is said, “was fain to cry for help,” and desire Murray, who came at her call, to “put his dagger into him.”

Thus, by dint of unnecessary terrors and unmeaning words, was Chatelar given over to an enemy who had always kept a jealous eye upon him, and to justice, which seemed determined to strain a point for his sake, and give him something more than his due. In a few days he was tried, and experienced the usual fate of favourites by being condemned to death.

Alas! how bitter is the recollection of even trifling injuries towards those who loved and are lost to us! Yet what had this been in counterpoise to the reflections of Mary? She had given over a fond and a fervent heart to death for no fault but too much love, and any attempt to recall the deed might have afforded a colour to the aspersions which malignant persons were ever ready to cast upon her character, but could have availed no further.

For Chatelar there was little leisure for reflection. The fever of the first surprise,—the strange, the appalling conviction as to the hand which hurled him to his fate,—the shame, the humiliation, the indignation, had scarce time to cool in his forfeit blood, before he was brought out to die the death of a culprit upon the scaffold.

It has been the fashion for writers upon this subject, in the quiet and safety of their firesides, to exclaim against his want of preparation for his transit; but, under such circumstances, I cannot much wonder that he should rather rebel against the usual ceremonies of psalm-singing and last speeches. If he chose to nerve himself for death by reading Ronsard’s hymn upon it, it is no proof that he looked with irreverence upon what was to follow it. His last words are extremely touching; for they prove that, though he considered that Mary had remorselessly sacrificed his life, his sorrow was greater than his resentment, and his love went with him to the grave. “Adieu,” he said, turning to the quarter in which he supposed her to be, “adieu, most beautiful and most cruel princess in the world!” and then submitting himself to the executioner, he met the last stroke with a courage consistent with his character.

Of Mary’s behaviour on this event, history, I believe, gives no account.

My ponderings upon this singular story had detained me long. The old pictures on the walls glistened and glimmered in the moonshine like a band of spectres; and, at last, I fairly fancied that I saw one grisly gentleman pointing at me with his truncheon, in the act of directing his Furies to “seize on me and take me to their torments.” It was almost time to be gone, but the thought of Chatelar seemed holding me by the skirts. I could not depart without taking another look at the scene of his happiest hours, and I stole, shadow-like, with as little noise as I could, through the narrow passages and staircases, till I stood in Mary’s little private apartment. As I passed the antechamber, the light was shining only on the stain of blood; the black shadows here and elsewhere made the walls appear as though they had been hung with mourning. I do not know that ever I felt so melancholy; and had not the owl just then given a most dismal whoop, there is no telling but that I might have had courage and sentiment enough to have stayed until I had been locked up for the night. I passed by the low bed, under which Chatelar is said to have hidden himself. It must have cost him some trouble to get there! I glanced hastily at the faded tambour work, which, it is possible, he might have witnessed in its progress; and I shook my head with much satisfaction to think that I had a head to shake. “If,” said I, “there is more interest attached to the old times of love, it is, after all, in some degree, counterbalanced by the safety of the present; and I know not whether it is not better to be born in the age when racks and torments are used metaphorically, than in those in which it is an even chance that I might have encountered the reality.”—_Literary Souvenir_, 1825.

A NIGHT IN DUNCAN M‘GOWAN’S.

After traversing a bleak and barren track of moorland country, I unexpectedly arrived at the village of Warlockheugh, a few hours before the sun had set upon the cheerless and level horizon of that desolate region. A scene so bleak and solitary had engendered a vague and melancholy feeling of individual helplessness and desertion; the morning buoyancy of my spirits had settled down into dull and dejected sympathy with the exhausted members of my body; the sharp, clear air that blew across the moor had whetted my appetite to an exquisite degree of keenness, so that I was not a little disposed to mingle once more with human society, to invigorate my limbs with another night’s repose, and to satisfy the cravings of hunger with some necessary refreshment. I therefore entered the village at a quicker pace than I had exerted for the last ten or twelve miles of my journey.

It is situated in a narrow valley, which slopes away from the moorland side, and is surrounded by a ridge of rocks that rise around it like an iron barrier, and frown defiance to the threatened encroachments of the ocean. A dark brown stream floats along the moor with a lazy and silent current, bursts with a single leap over a precipice at the upper end of the village, thunders along a broken, rocky channel, and spouts a roaring cataract, sheer down through the rifted chasm that opens towards the coast, and affords the villagers a view of ocean, which, environed on all sides by tumultuous ranges of rugged mountains, expands its sheet of blue waters like an inland lake.

Having entered the village of Warlockheugh, I was attracted by the Red Lion that blazes on the sign of Duncan M‘Gowan, who kept then, and, as I understand, still keeps, “excellent entertainment for men and horses.” I was shown into Duncan’s best apartment, but had little leisure and no inclination to make an inventory of its contents. Hunger is an urgent creditor, and not to be reasoned with, so I ordered the landlord to fetch me some refreshment. My order was immediately succeeded by a most delightful concert of culinary implements, whose risp and clank, and clatter, and jingle, mingling harmoniously with the squirt and buzz of a frying-pan, engendered a hearty and haggis-like hodge-podge of substantial and delectable associations. The table was soon covered with that plain and solid sort of food which is generally to be found in the temporary halting places of such wayfaring men as coach-drivers and carriers, who are no mean connoisseurs in the more rational part of good living. Having done ample justice to the landlord’s good cheer, I laid myself back in my chair, in that state of agreeable languor which generally succeeds sudden rest after violent exertion, and abundant refreshment after long fasting. My imagination, struggling between the benumbing influence of sated appetite, and the exhilarating novelty of my present situation, floated dimly and drowsily over the various occurrences of life, till the iris-coloured texture of existence saddened into a gray heaviness of eye, whose twilight vision grew darker and darker, till the ill-defined line of connexion, with which consciousness divided the waking from the slumbering world, was swallowed up in the blackness of a profound sleep. And there, as we may suppose, I sat twanging, through the trumpet of my nose, my own lullaby, and rivalling the sonorous drone of M‘Glashan the piper’s bagpipe, who, when I came in, was sitting on a stone at the door, piping his diabolical music to the happy villagers.

I had not long remained in this “pleasing land of drowsyhead,” when my slumbers were violently broken by a tumultuous uproar coming down from the upper end of the village. I started from my seat in that state of giddiness and stupor which one generally feels when roused from sleep by violent and alarming sounds. My whole frame was benumbed by the uneasiness of my dozing position, and it was with the utmost pain and difficulty I could prevail upon my limbs to carry me to the window, to ascertain the cause of the uproarious din, which every moment grew louder and louder. The first objects that caught my attention were some straggling villagers, sweeping down the lane with desperate speed of foot, and dismal looks of consternation. I made towards the door, but the passage was choked full of alarmed and breathless fugitives, whose apprehensions had driven them to the first asylum which opportunity presented. Ejaculations and exclamations of all sorts were gasped forth by the multitude in the passage. Some swore in wrath, some laughed in self-congratulation, while others clamorously bewailed those of their kindred who might yet be exposed to the approaching danger. I inquired at a composed-looking middle-aged personage who stood beside me, the cause of this uncommon and alarming occurrence. “Ou,” said he, coolly, “M‘Harrigle’s bull’s run wud, and he’s gaun to take the command o’ the town till we get a new magistrate; for, as ye maun understand, sir, Bailie Brodie died yesterday.” The inhabitants rushed by in greater numbers, the sounds grew numerous, louder and more intelligible, as the huddling multitude approached; and I distinctly heard several voices bawling out, “Rin, ye deevil, or ye’ll be torn to ’coupins!—Lord preserve us! he’ll be ower the brae face—there he goes—confound ye! rin—mercy on us! sic a race!” The uproar and clamour, already run into utter confusion, turned fiercer and more riotous as a knot of people flew suddenly past the window, and left a space behind them that was immediately occupied by the bull, tumbling his huge unwieldy carcass down the lane, followed by an immense crowd of men, women, and children, and curs of every denomination. The hoarse bawling of the men, the screams of the women, and the clear treble of the children, the barking of curs, from the gruff big bow-wow of the mastiff down to the nyiff-nyaff and yelp-yelp of the terrier, along with the boo-baloo and bellow of the bull, formed a wild and savage uproar that was truly deafening. I dashed up the window and looked out. The enraged animal lumbered along, and heaved his ponderous bulk into fantastical attitudes, with his posterior appendage projecting straight out like a pole and tassel, his back raised, and his head ploughing on between his fore-feet. He hobbled, and hurled, and tumbled along with as blind an impulse as if he had been a mass of destructive machinery driven headlong by the mad impetus of some terrible and ungovernable energy. Away he went. The last sight I saw of him was as he entangled his horns in a thick stunted bush that grew on the top of a bank at some distance. The bush withstood the violence of his shock, and he tumbled with his feet uppermost. He struggled for a few moments; at length succeeded in tearing it out by the roots, vanished over the precipice, and went bellowing down the waterfall, amidst the shouts of the multitude who pursued him.

A group of people, very closely wedged together, moved slowly up the village. They were carrying some individual who had suffered from the fury of the enraged animal. They shouldered on towards M‘Gowan’s in mournful procession. All seemed extremely anxious to obtain a look of the unhappy sufferer. Those who were near pressed more closely towards the centre of the crowd, while those on the outside, excited by sympathetic curiosity, were leaping up round about, asking all the while the name of the person, and inquiring what injury he had sustained. “He’s no sair hurt, I hope,” said one. “Is he dead?” said another of livelier apprehensions and quicker sensibility. “It’s auld Simon Gray,” said a young man, who came running up out of breath to M‘Gowan’s door. “Simon Gray’s dead!” “Simon Gray dead!” cried M‘Gowan; “God forbid!” So saying, out at the door he rushed to ascertain the truth of the mournful intelligence. “Wae’s me,” said Dame M‘Gowan, “but this is a sair heart to us a’,” as she sank down in a chair, and cried for water to her only daughter, who stood sorrowfully beside her mother, alternately wringing her hands and plaiting the hem of her white muslin apron over her finger in mute affliction.

Simon Gray the dominie was brought into M‘Gowan’s. He was bleeding at the nose and mouth, but did not appear to have received any very serious injury. Cold water was dashed on his face, his temples were bathed with vinegar, and the occasional opening and shutting of the eye, accompanied with a laboured heaving of the breast, gave evidence that the dominie was not yet destined to be gathered to his fathers. The inquiries of the multitude round the door were numerous, frequent, and affectionate. The children were loud and clamorous in their grief, all except one little white-headed, heavy-browed, sun-burned vagabond, who, looking over the shoulder of a neighbour urchin, asked if there would be “ony schulin’ the morn;” and upon an answer being sobbed out in the negative, the roguish truant sought the nearest passage out of the crowd, and ran up the lane whistling “Ower the water to Charlie,” till his career of unseasonable mirth was checked by a stout lad, an old student of Simon’s, who was running without hat and coat to inquire the fate of his beloved preceptor, and who, when he witnessed the boy’s heartlessness, could not help lending him a box on the ear, which effectually converted his shrill whistle of delight into a monotonous grumble, accompanied by the common exclamation of wonderment, “What’s that for, ye muckle brute?” and a half hesitating stooping for a stone, which the lad who bowled on towards M‘Gowan’s took no notice of till the messenger of the boy’s indignation lighted at his heels, and bounded on the road before him.

By the affectionate attention of his friends Simon was soon able to speak to those around him, but still felt so weak that he requested to be put to bed. His revival was no sooner announced at the door of the inn than a loud and tumultuous burst of enthusiastic feeling ran through the crowd, which immediately dispersed amidst clapping of hands, loud laughs, and hearty jokes.

The landlord, after ministering to the necessities of the dominie, came into the apartment where I was sitting. “Surely, landlord,” said I, “this old man Simon Gray is a great favourite among you.”

“Troth, sir, it’s nae wonder,” was the reply to my observation. “He has gien the villagers of Warlockheugh their lear, and keepit them lauchin’, for five-and-twenty years back. He’s a gude-hearted carle too; he downa see a puir body in want, and rather than let the bairns grow up in idleness and ignorance, he’ll gie them their lear for naething. A’body’s fond o’ Simon, and the lasses especially, though he ne’er maks love to ane o’ them. They say some flirt o’ a lady disappointed him when he was at the college, and he vowed ne’er to mak love to anither. But I daur say there’s some o’ our lasses vain eneugh to think they’ll be able to gar him brak his promise. It’ll no do,—he’s ower auld a cat to draw a strae afore.

“He’s a real auld bachelor in his way of leevin’. He maks and mends his ain claes too, clouts his ain shoon, darns his ain stockings, and keeps a lot o’ tools for a’ crafts. His kitchen’s a no-that-ill-red-up place; but if ye saw his study, sir, as he ca’s’t, it’s the queerest, higgledy-piggledy, odds-and-ends sort o’ place ye ever saw in your life. It’s eneugh to turn your brain just to look intil’t. His pianoforte and his tables a’ covered wi’ a confused heap o’ books, writings, musical instruments, colours, oil-paintings, and loose fragments o’ rough designs, made wi’ black and white caulk on a nankeen-coloured kind o’ paper. The wa’ is stuck fu’ o’ brass-headed nails that he hings his follies and his nonsense on. He has a muckle ill-faured image yonder, that he ca’s an Indian god, standing on his mantelpiece, wi’ lang teeth made o’ fish-banes, and twa round bits o’ white airn, with big black-headed tackets driven through the middle o’ them for een, and a queer crown on its head, made o’ split quills, plait strae, and peacocks’ feathers. It’s eneugh to gar a body a’ grue just to look at it. He has bears’ and teegers’ heads girnin’ on the wa’, and slouched hats, swords, dirks, and rusty rapiers o’ every kind. He has twa or three things yonder that he ca’s Roman helmets (though the maist o’ folk would reckon them nae ither than barbers’ basins), forby some imitations o’ auld coats o’ mail, made o’ painted pasteboard. Na, faith, the deil hae me,” continued Duncan, laughing at the whimsical character of the place he was describing, “if I dinna whiles think the body’s out o’ his wits. But he canna be that, either, for they’re great folks ca’ing upon him, baith far and near, and he cracks to them whiles in strange tongues, that nane in the kintra-side kens but himsel and the minister. Na, troth, sir, they say that our Mess John, wha’s no a lame hand himsel, is just a bairn to him. ’Od he’s a droll, ready-handed body. He maks a’thing himsel. He has some orra time on his hand, ye see; and he’s either crooning ower some auld Scotch songs, or fiddling some outlandish tunes; and, my faith! he can twine them out frae the grist o’ a common strae-rape to the fineness o’ a windle-strae. He shakes and dirls sae wonderfully too, that ye wad think his fiddle’s no a thing o’ timmer and catgut at a’, but some droll musical creature o’ flesh and blood. Eh, my certie! it gars a body’s bowels a’ tremble wi’ gladness whiles to hear him. He’ll come in here at an antrin time, ca’ for his gill o’ gin, and no a living creature wi’ him, and sit ower’t for twa or three hours, crackin’ to himsel, and laughin’ as loudly and heartily at his ain queer stories, as if he had a dizzen o’ merry cronies at his elbow. He ne’er forgets when he’s takin’ his drams to wish himsel weel; for at every sip, he says, ‘Here’s to ye, Simon—thanks to ye, Mr Gray;’ and so on he goes the whole night, as if he were a kind of a twafauld body. Ae night when he sat in my back-room and loosed his budget of jokes, and laughed and roared wi’ himsel for twa hours, I laid my lug to the key-hole o’ the door, and owerheard the following dialogue.”

At this part of mine host’s narrative the rattling of a wheeled vehicle was heard, and ceased immediately upon reaching the door of the inn. Mr Cleekum, the village lawyer, had come in a few minutes before, and was sitting beside us, laughing at M‘Gowan’s narrative, of the latter part of which he also had been an auditory witness. M‘Gowan’s loquacity ceased when he heard the vehicle at the door; he looked out at the window, turned round to me, and said hastily, “Maister Cleekum ’ll tell ye a’ about it, sir,—he heard it as weel as me.—Excuse me, there’s a gig at the door. We maun mind our ain shop, ye ken, and a rider’s penny’s worth a gangrel’s groat ony day.”

So saying, he hurried out, leaving the lawyer to gratify my curiosity by the sequel of the dominie’s solitary dialogue.

“M‘Gowan’s description, sir, of this eccentric being is by no means exaggerated,” said Mr Cleekum; “and if it can afford you any amusement, I shall relate the remainder of Mr Gray’s dialogue, which I am the better enabled to do, from having put myself to the trouble of noting down the particulars, at the recital of which old Simon and myself have since laughed very heartily. You need not be surprised at his broad Scotch accent; he has such a decided partiality for it, that he is commonly averse to using any other tongue, though no man speaks more politely than himself when he is so disposed, and when the persons he converses with render it necessary.—After having finished his first measure of indulgence, Mr Gray proceeded thus:—

“‘Come now, Sir Simon, and I’ll help ye hame, ye auld rogue.—I am much obliged to you, Mr Gray, but I’ll try to gar my ain shanks serve my ain turn, and ye may e’en put your ain hand to your ain hasp, my friend.—If ye like, we’ll have anither gill, and then toddle thegither.—Beware o’ dram-drinking, Sir Simon; ye’ll get an evil name in the clachan.—I beg your pardon, Mr Gray; I have been a riddle to the folks ower lang already, and as I ne’er do aucht in a corner, but what I may do on the causey, everybody kens he’ll no mak onything mair or less o’ me by being inquisitive. Na, na, Mr Gray, ye’re a’ out there; there is no ane in the parish would hear an ill word o’ Simon.—But ye’re an auld man, sir, and set an evil example to others.—Ne’er a ane do I set an evil example to but yoursel, Mr Gray; and for a’ your cant about sobriety, ye take your drams as regularly as I do; and I defy you—I defy you or ony other man to say ye e’er saw me the waur o’ liquor in your life. Besides, Mr Gray, the progress of human life is like a journey from the equator to the north pole. We commence our career with the heat of passion and the light of hope, and travel on, till passion is quenched by indulgence, and hope, flying round the ball of life which is blackening before us, seems to come up behind us, mingled with dim and regretted reminiscences of things hoped for, obtained, enjoyed, and lost for ever but to memory:

Oh! age has weary days, And nights of sleepless pain.

Youth needs no stimulus, it is too hot already; but when a man is shuffling forward into the Arctic circle of old age, he requires a warm potation to thaw the icicles that crust around his heart, and freeze up the streams of his affections. There’s for you, Mr Gray; what do you think of that?—Why, I think, Sir Simon, we’ll tell Duncan to fill’t again.—That now, that now, is friendly;’ and so saying, he rung for the landlord to fetch him the means of prolonging his solitary conviviality.

“This is that portion of Mr Gray’s dialogue with himself which M‘Gowan and myself, perhaps officiously, listened to; but as we are upon the subject of our venerable friend’s peculiarities, it may not be out of place to recite a little poetical work, which he composed some time ago.” Having signified the pleasure I should derive from being favoured with the recital of a work from the pen of so eccentric a humorist as the dominie, Mr Cleekum proceeded to draw forth from his pocket and to read:—

THE MINISTER’S MARE.

The minister’s mare was as gude a gray mare As ever was saddled, or bridled, or shod; Be’t foul or be’t fair, be’t late or be’t air, She nichered aye gladly when takin’ the road.

The minister late in the e’ening cam hame, And stabled his marie, and heapit her heck, And gae her a forpit o’ oats to her wame, And theekit her cozily wi’ an auld sack.

And the minister’s wife wi’ a bowet cam out, For a tenty and mensefu’ wife was she; Glowered round her for gangrels that might be about, And syne in the stable-door thrawed round the key.

And she oxtered the minister up the stair To his room, where his supper and slippers were het, Whaur a wee creepie-stool and an elbow chair At the blithe ingle-neuk were right cozily set.

As the reverend carle gaed ben the house laughin’, And clappin’ his wife, an’ rubbin’ his hands, She helpit him aff wi’ his green tartan raughen, And frae ’neath his round chin loosed his lily-white bands.

When supper was ower, the minister birsled His shins on the creepie upon the hearth-stane; Worn out wi’ fatigue, to his roostin-place hirsled, And laid himsel down wi’ a wearied-man’s grane.

His canny wee wife saw him cozily happit, Syne drew back the chairs frae the warm ingle-side; Put creesh in the ee o’ the candle, and clappit Right kindly and couthily down by his side.

The cracks o’ the twasome were kindly but few: The minister wi’ a “hech-ho,” turned him roun’, O’er his cauld shouther-head the warm blanket he drew, Syne pu’d down his night-cap and snored snug and soun’.

The morning’s bright bonfire, that bleezed in the east, Had meltit in heaven ilk wee siller stern, When the cock crawed reveillè to man, bird, and beast, As he sat on an auld knotty rung in the barn.

The dog in the watch-house yowled eerie and lang, And struggled right fiercely to break frae his chain; The auld chapel bell like a burial knell rang, And groanings were heard as frae bodies in pain.

A loud rap cam rap to the minister’s yett, The minister’s wife wondered wha might be there; While the reverend carle, glammering, graipit to get His drawers and bauchels, to slip down the stair.

But he warily first frae the stair-winnock keekit, To ken wha this early disturber might be; When he saw the dog loose, and the barn-door unsteekit, And his mare at the yett, cap’ring wild to be free

Frae a blackavised rider, wha spurred her and banned her, Wi’ mony wild curses to tak to the road: And he stuck like a burr, though campsterie he fand her, While the minister cried, “There’s been thieves here, gude ——!”

“Fie, Tibby rise,” roared Mess John, loud as thunder, “The mischief’s come o’er us, we’re herriet, undone; The barn’s broke, the dog’s loose, the mare’s aff, and yonder She’s rinnin’—fie! bring me my hat, coat, and shoon!”

His claes huddled on, wi’ his staff in his han’, He out at the yett wi’ a belly-flaught flew; While the stour that his mare raised in clouds o’er the lan’, Turned into a glaur-drop ilk clear blob o’ dew.

The stour, borne alang wi’ the wind strong and gusty, Gar’d the minister look like a miller sae gray; And the sweat on his face, mixed wi’ dust, grew as crusty As if he were modelled in common brick-clay.

And sometimes he haltit, and sometimes he ran, And sometime he sat himsel down in despair; And sometimes he grew angry, and sometimes began To lighten his sair-burdened heart wi’ a prayer.

But madly the rider o’er hill and o’er dale, Wi’ the minister’s mare like a fire-flaught he flew; Whiles seen on a hill-top, whiles lost in a vale, Till they baith looked like motes on the welkin sae blue.

The minister by the road-side sat him down, As vexed and as wearied as man weel could be; Syne pu’d aff his wig, rubbed the sweat frae his crown, And puffed, steghed, and graned like a man gaun to dee.

When an auld farmer carle, on his yaud trotting by, Accosted Mess John as he sat in despair; Made a bow like a corn-sack, and as he drew nigh, Raised his twa waukit loofs, cryin’ “What brought ye there?

“I’m sure it’s nae mair than an hour since I saw ye At Bourtree Brae-head, and that’s eight miles awa!” And he rubbit his een as he cried out, “Foul fa’ me! For glammery’s come o’er me, or else you’re grown twa.

“And where is your mare, for she stood at the door, Wi’ her bridle-reins drawn through a ring in the wa’, At Dawson’s door-cheek, where I saw her before I had drunk _deoch-an-dorus_ wi’ Donald M‘Craw.”

“Ye saw me!” said the minister; “how could that be, When I’ve only proceeded thus far on my road? And that this is mysel, by a glance ye may see.” “Why, then,” cried the farmer, “the thing’s vastly odd.

“But twa hours ago, sir, your double was sitting At Dawson’s fire-side,—faith! as I thoucht, half fou,— And ilk ane at hand thoucht it time to be flitting, When ye cursed and blasphemed till the candle burned blue.”

“Why, Saunders, it’s surely been Sawtan ye’ve seen, The foul thief himsel, I could wad a gray groat; He staw my gray mare;—just turn back, my auld friend, Till I strip the foul thief of his sanctified coat.

“I’ve warsled wi’ Sawtan for many a year; I’ve cloured him and loundered him aft times right sair; But the foul fiend has played me a pliskie, I fear; Lord save’s, man, I ne’er heard the like, I declare.

“Fie, Saunders, let’s mount, and to Dawson’s let’s hurry, And chase the loon back to his ain lowin’ hame; The tod’s in the fauld, God’s ain lambs he may worry; Come, Saunders, let’s hunt him, Auld Clootie’s fair game.”

And they rode till they came to John Dawson’s fore-door, Whaur the minister lighted, but wadna step in, When he heard how the deil in his ain likeness swore, As he dirled at the door, for the third tappit hen.

And the folk were confounded,—amazed,—when they saw The auld carle himsel they had aft seen before; Some darted into corners, and some ran awa, And ithers ran out, and glowered in at the door.

But the minister beckoned them a’ to come back To the room aff-and-on where the devil sat fou; In the wooden partition there gaped a wide crack, That ilk ane, by turns, wi’ amazement looked through.

And there they heard Cloots, in a big elbow-chair, Snore like thunder far-aff, and now sleeping right sound, And some thought his feet didna look like a pair, For the tae o’ the ae boot to the heel was turned round.

And they saw, when the ither foot once or twice moved, That the boot on that foot just turned round the same way; Which, to the onlookers, sufficiently proved, They were baith cloven feet,—ay, as clear as the day.

They saw a bit kitlin, that friskit and pattit A muckle black tossel below the big chair; And it swung like a pend’lum, as wee baudrons clawtit The end that hung down like a bunch o’ horse-hair.

When Dawson’s bull-terrier, streeked on the hearth-stane, Saw Clootie’s tail wagging, he barkit like mad: Sprung till’t like a fury, and tugged might and main, And the deevil himsel couldna lowsen his haud.

But the deil started up wi’ big chair, dog, an’ a’, And staggered, and stampit, and ance or twice fell; Mess John cried, “Lord save us!”—Like lightning, awa Flew deevil, and big chair, and terrier, to——!

“There’s a strange production for you,” said Mr Cleekum, as he folded the paper and replaced it in his pocket.

“A strange production, indeed,” said I; “what could be Mr Gray’s object in writing such a poem?”

“Merely to please himself, sir, I suppose,” was the lawyer’s answer.

“But,” continued I, “has it any reference to any particular character or occurrence; or is it merely an extravagant fiction of the dominie’s own brain?”

“It refers to an old popular tradition,” answered Mr Cleekum, “concerning a pious predecessor of our worthy minister, Mr Singleheart; and, though the currency of its belief is now somewhat crossed and obstructed by an adverse current of growing intelligence, it still floats in the memories and imaginations of those venerable annalists, the old women of the village, with whom the idle story was likely to perish for ever, if the dominie’s metrical version had not contributed to prolong it.”

Various remarks were made upon the merits of the production; but as they were all blended with statements and allusions relative to local characters and incidents not connected with my present object, I resume my interrupted narrative.

The children still continued round the door, shouting, halooing, and acting a thousand extravagances, nor could they be prevailed upon to depart till they saw the “maister.” Simon, who had so far collected his scattered senses, and renewed his exhausted strength, as to be able to give them that gratification, had no sooner opened the door for the purpose of receiving the congratulations of his scholars, than those who were nearest leaped up and embraced him with unfeigned affection. They pulled and lugged him, crying, “Maister, maister!” while the beloved instructor stood hugging his chubby associates, and embracing them with all the warmth of an affectionate parent. These kind-hearted little beings, after receiving another token of the old man’s goodness, in the shape of pieces of biscuit and gingerbread, ran off, huzzaing, to inform their parents of the marvellous escape of their venerable preceptor.

Simon, being disengaged from the warm embraces of his pupils, came into the room where the landlord, Cleekum the lawyer, and myself were sitting. I had now full leisure and opportunity to examine the appearance of this singular and eccentric character. It was completely at variance with every characteristic of modern gentility. His dress betokened the hand of the cunning craftsman of the last century, or his own whimsical taste had dictated to some modern son of the goose and thimble the antique shape of his habiliments; but, as we were before informed by the landlord, they were entirely the fabrication of his own taste and ingenuity. His single-breasted, rusty-black coat tapered away from the shoulders towards his lower extremities in the pyramidal shape, and when unbuttoned, or unclasped, rather, swung its copious folds round his jolly form with cumbrous and fantastical elegance. Two mother-of-pearl buttons, of uncommon circumference, and encircled with brass rings, were stuck as ornaments upon the haunches, and the breast was decorated with grotesque circles of the same fantastical description, with the addition of a handsome row of bright silver clasps. The vest, with its massy superfluity of cloth, parted in the middle, and its ample pockets descended half-way down his thigh, leaving a space between their separation and the head of his breeches for his bright linen shirt to shine through, in the shape of an isosceles triangle. His blue plush breeches had three chequered or diced brass buttons to preserve their connexion, and terminated at the knee with the genuine old Cameronian cut. His stockings were light blue, sprinkled with little oblong dots of white; and his shoes, cut square across the toes to save his corns, were held upon his feet by two antiquated silver buckles of uncommon magnitude and curious workmanship. His personal appearance was that of a substantial old bachelor, on whom nature had generously bestowed a sound constitution, and it was evident from his looks that he by no means despised that invaluable inheritance. His face inclined to the square, but the features were all curvilinear, rather prominent, and flushed with that rosy hue of health which so often beams from the countenances of the sons and daughters of rustic labour. His forehead was highly expressive of intellect, but the nether part of the face indicated that lubberly sort of feeling which glories in a life of good humoured ease and fat contentment. His eyes were small, of a bright blue, but not a pair, for the one squinted outward through the interstices of his gray, bristly eyebrows; which, along with a nether lip somewhat pendulous, a mouth turned up at the corners, and a long flat chin, gave the whole face a comical and risible expression.

During the time that Cleekum was reading his notes of the dominie’s solitary dialogue, Mr Singleheart, the village minister, M‘Glashan the piper, and some others belonging to the village, came into the room, which seemed to be as much public property as the village smithy. On the dominie’s entrance all rose to salute and congratulate him upon his fortunate escape; and I could see, from the cordial manner in which each in his turn grasped the old man’s hand, that each had his heart at his finger-ends. It was not that puppyish forefinger-and-thumb sort of salutation which clips another frosty forefinger-and-thumb as if dreading contagion, but a hearty, honest grappling of fist with fist, which drew the blood from its fountain with a thrilling impulse, and sent its current warm and glowing into the clenched extremities, which were shaken so violently, and for such a length of time, that an imaginative and hasty person might suppose, in the rapidity of his decision, that each individual was disposed to graft himself upon the dominie, whose right arm, at length, seemed as feeble as that of a poor gut-scraper, who has jigged at a country wedding for a whole night.

When Simon entered, I was introduced to him by Cleekum, whom I had by this time discovered to be an old school-fellow of my own. He saluted me with a frank and pleasant smile, and squeezed my hand so cordially, that I immediately felt that spontaneous and indefinable feeling of attachment towards him which, though the electric emotion of a moment, is often the forerunner of a long course of friendly intimacy. Upon my father’s name being mentioned, Simon recognised him as a playmate of his earlier days, and gave me a kindly invitation to spend a few days with him, which circumstances obliged me to refuse. Simon then took the opportunity of introducing me more particularly to the rest of the company, on account of “the old man,” as he said, meaning my father, for whom he seemed to entertain a deep sentiment of regard. He last of all recommended me with an air of serious solemnity to the notice of M‘Gowan.

“This gentleman,” said he, pointing to the last-mentioned individual, who appeared to be a singular compound of officiousness, selfishness, and benevolence, and who seemed to be at all times a standing joke with my venerable friend, “has some pretensions to honesty. He’ll do ye a good turn sometimes when ye’re no thinking o’t; and, unlike the most of other men, he likes his friends the better the longer they sit beside him. Familiarity does not breed contempt with him, but poverty does; and yet he’s no the hindmost to help misery to an awmous when he’s in a right mood for being goodhearted, and that happens aye ance or twice in a twalmonth.”

“Come, come, now,” said M‘Gowan, gravely, “we’ll hae nae mair o’ that, Mr Gray. Ye’re an unco wag. It was only yestreen ye got me into a foul scrape wi’ our friend Cleekum there, and he flang out o’ the house, swearing like a very heathen that he wad tak the law o’ me for defamation o’ character.”

“For the sake of peace and good fellowship,” said Mr Singleheart, “it will be meet and advisable for us to refrain, as much as in us lies, from profane joking and oonseasonable raillery; because joking has small yedification in it, and raillery is a sort of salt-and-pepper compound, whilk burneth up the inward man with a fervent heat, and profiteth not, neither is meet for bodily nourishment.”

“I would be o’ your thocht, Mr Sinklart,” said Donald M‘Glashlan the piper; “I would be making peace wi’ peast and pody”—

The piper was thus proceeding with his Highland exhortations to harmony, when Cleekum, who was sitting looking out at the window, started suddenly from his seat and hurried out of the house. M‘Gowan’s curiosity being roused by Cleekum’s abrupt departure, he followed him to the door, and beheld him and M‘Harrigle the cattle-dealer at some distance, earnestly engaged in conversation. All that M‘Gowan’s ear could catch of their discourse was concerning the mad bull, M‘Harrigle’s property, and the occasional mention of the dominie’s name.

“There’s mischief a-brewing down the lane there,” said M‘Gowan, when he came in. “Cleekum and that foolish passionate body M‘Harrigle are standing yonder, an’ I could hear they were sayin’ something o’ you, Mr Gray, but what it was I couldna weel mak out. He’s a doited, credulous body, that M‘Harrigle; an’ I could wager a saxpence Cleekum’s makin’ a deevil o’ him some way or anither.”

M‘Gowan’s surmises were suddenly interrupted by vociferous and clamorous exclamations at the door, and their cause did not remain long unexplained. The door of the apartment flew open, and, rattling against the wall with violence, admitted the author of this fresh disturbance. It was M‘Harrigle. He was a short, square-shouldered man, of fierce aspect, whose naturally harsh features were much exaggerated by a powerful and alarming expression of rage and resentment. The face was, indeed, at first sight indescribable, and the tumultuous feelings and passions that deepened and darkened every line of it wrought such fearful and sudden changes upon its muscular expression that the whole seemed at first a wizard compound of different identities.

Upon entering, his first salutation was a deafening and broken torrent of cursing, poured forth upon the dominie, as the fancied author of the flight and death of the mad animal, whose career had spread such consternation through the village. It was in vain that the whole company remonstrated against the rudeness, absurdity, and brutality of his conduct. He stood on the middle of the floor with his fist doubled, menaced each of us in our turn, as we interposed between him and the object of his resentment, or smiled at his folly and extravagance, and once or twice grappled the large oaken cudgel with which he impelled his horned property, as if he intended to commit the like beastly violence on those around him. Cleekum had retired to a corner to enjoy the sport his wicked waggery had created. The dominie sat composedly, and squinted at the cattle-dealer with a sly and jocular leer, which showed his soul delighted even in a very serious joke, from an inveterate habit of extracting fun from all the petty and frivolous incidents of common life. At times he seemed lost in a careless, musing mood, and at other times burst out into immoderate fits of laughter, which seemed to me perfectly unaccountable. He then, in the true spirit and feeling of an enthusiastic elocutionist, recited from Shakspeare some favourite passage, warbled out a fragment of some ancient ditty, every now and then interspersing it with shrill and fitful passages of a new sonnata, which he had been practising on the violin, whose shrill treble fell in between the intervals of M‘Harrigle’s bass notes, like loose sand or gravel strewed over a rude foundation of ruble work. “D—— ye,” said M‘Harrigle, rising in his wrath at every fresh interruption of the dominie, and maddened at his really provoking coolness and indifference, “d—— ye, ye think it a’ a joke to hunt a man’s cattle to destruction, and then mak a fool o’ himsel wi’ your blackguard and unknown tongues! Confound your hide, you glee’d, fiddling vagabond, an it werna for your coat, I would harle your hide ower your lugs like a sark! Pay me my siller—pay me my siller for the beast, or I’ll turn the nose on your face like the pin o’ a hand-screw. Down wi’ the dust—I’ll no leave the room till I hae satisfaction o’ ye ae way or ither, that’s for certain.”

“Let there be peace,” said Mr Singleheart, “for out of strife cometh a multitude of evils; and he who in vain taketh the name of his Maker shall not be held guiltless. You are an evil person, M‘Harrigle; and if you refrain not from that profane and heathenish habit of cursing, we will, by the advice and council of our Kirk-Session, be obligated to debar you from all kirk preevileges, and leave you to be devoured and swallowed up by the evil one.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the credulous and superstitious cattle-dealer; “I didna mean offence to you or ony man in the room; but I’ll hae my ain. But it’s you, sir—it’s you, sir,” continued he, addressing the dominie repeatedly, and extending the tone of his voice at every repetition, till he had strained it to the most astounding pitch of vociferation; “it’s you, sir, that set ane o’ your mischievous vagabonds to hunt the poor dumb animal, till he ran red wud wi’ rage, and flew ower the craig head. And now he’s at the bottom o’ the linn, and fient be licket’s to be seen o’ him, but an ill-faured hash o’ hide, an’ banes, and harrigles, sooming an’ walloping at the bottom o’ the pool.”

“Somebody’s blawn an ill sough in your lug, friend,” said the dominie, as he caught M‘Harrigle gently by the sleeve, and invited him to sit down.

“Aff haun’s,” cried M‘Harrigle, rudely repelling the dominie’s invitation,—“aff haun’s, I say; no man shall handle me like a brute beast. I ken what’s right as weel’s ony man, and I’ll allow no man to straik me wi’ the hair, to wyse me his ain gate, and syne row my tail to gar me rin by my ain byre door. I want no favours of ony man, but I’ll hae my ain, if there’s law and justice in the land.”

M‘Harrigle proceeded at great length to insist upon his right of restitution, bespattering his slaughter-house observations with abominable oaths, like dirty shreds of dunghill rags sewed on a beggar’s doublet; while the dominie sat musing, swinging backward and forward in his chair, making mental and sometimes audible quotations from the liquid Latin, and, at other times, reciting Greek professorially, _ore rotundo_. At length, awakening from his learned reverie, and looking over his shoulder to M‘Harrigle, he said, in a tone most provokingly cool and indifferent,—

“Were ye cursing, M‘Harrigle? Ye shouldna curse, ye sinfu’ body; for an ill life maks an ill hinder-end, and Sawtan’s but a rough nurse to spread the sheets and draw the curtains o’ ane’s death-bed.”

The enraged cattle-dealer, finding all further threats and remonstrances unavailing, sat down in sullen and silent indignation, and, with his arms folded across his breast, his eyebrows knit, and his upper teeth firmly compressed against his nether lip, he scowled upon the supposed author of his wrongs, with an expression of face unutterably horrible. He had just sat down when Grierson the messenger brought in a tall, yellow, raw-boned thing of a boy, about fourteen years of age. He had been seized in Sir Robert’s poultry-yard, and although he had nothing in his possession to convict him as a criminal, his manner was so embarrassed, and his appearance altogether so suspicious, that the servants laid hold on him, and committed him to the charge of the officer above mentioned, to be carried before a Justice of the Peace and interrogated. He was accordingly conveyed to M‘Gowan’s, where the officer expected to find Christopher Ramsay of Wrendykeside, who, he was informed, had just alighted at the inn from his gig. He had gone, however, and the officer was about to depart with his charge, when the dominie called him back, and looking pleasantly at the boy, exclaimed, “Ah, Geordie, are ye there, ye wild loon?” The boy started at the voice of his old preceptor, whom he had not before observed. He indeed had heard and believed that his venerable instructor had been torn to pieces by the fury of the mad animal, whose destruction had roused M‘Harrigle’s wrath to such a pitch of frenzy. He gazed upon the dominie with open mouth, and with a pair of large round eyes, much dilated beyond their usual circumference by an overpowering feeling of astonishment; grew pale, and trembled so fearfully that his gruff guardian was compelled by humanity to let him have a seat beside his old master, who rose for his accommodation. The afflicted youth made an effort to speak, but in vain. He stretched out his two hands, grasped that of his master which was extended towards him, looked up in his face, and sobbed as if his heart would burst. The tears ran in floods down his cheeks, and he at length cried out in a choked undertone of bitter agony,—

“Maister, will ye forgie me? Will ye forgie me? Will they hang me for’t?”

“Blessings on’s man, Geordie,” cried the dominie, “what’s wrang wi’ ye?”

“Oh!” cried the afflicted boy, “my father, and mother, and brothers, and as sisters, and a’ will get a sair heart for me yet. Oh!” and he continued to cry distractedly.

“The deil tak the laddie,” said M‘Harrigle, “it maks a man’s heart as saft as ill-fed veal to look at him. What’s come ower ye, ye blubbering stirk?”

Mr Singleheart spoke not a word to him, but continued clapping him on the shoulder, while M‘Glashan, every now and then, cried out, “Hout, laddie, you’ll be makin’ a fool o’ us a’ noo,” and so saying, he drew the back of his brawny fist across his eyes several times, began to finger his bagpipe in silence, as if he would soothe his sympathy by the imagination of playing some merry spring, but his fingers, after two or three rapid dumb-show flourishes, stood as stationary upon the holes as if the piper and his instrument of sound had been both chiselled out of the same stone. The boy still vented his grief as clamorously and bitterly as ever, clung to his master with the agony of a conscience-stricken penitent, and cried,—

“Will ye forgie me? It was me that hunted the bull that I thocht had killed ye.”

“You, ye vagabond!” said M‘Harrigle, collaring the unhappy youth. Cleekum seized the opportunity of running off, rightly considering that he had carried the joke far beyond the bounds of discretion, and really apprehensive that the evil spirit he had conjured up would turn upon himself and rend him in its fury. “You!” continued the irascible cattle-dealer; “what do ye think that ye deserve, you ill-gi’en neer-do-weel? But I’ll mak your father pay.”

This last consideration loosened his grasp, and he seized the dominie’s hands with both his own, begged a thousand pardons with a rueful countenance, and in accents very different from his former imprecatory addresses. During the time that he was making this sincere and penitent apology for his rudeness and misconduct, he several times glanced round the apartment for Cleekum, crying out, “Where is that blackguard scribe? It was him that did it a’.” He was safe, however.

“There’s nae harm done where there’s nae ill meant,” said the dominie, in reply to M‘Harrigle’s confession of repentance; “only ye shouldna flee on a body like an ill-bred tyke, when an ill-disposed neebour cries ‘shoo’ to ye. Dinna ye be ower ready in telling your mind to anybody, but let your thoughts cool as weel as your parritch.”

“’Od, Simon,” rejoined the cattle-dealer, “I am sure ye can hardly forgie me for the ill-faured words I hae said to ye the night; I wish I could forget and forgie them mysel. I’m a wild brier o’ a body; I’m aye into some confounded hobbleshow or anither. But I’m glad, man, I didna lay hands on ye, for if I had I wad ne’er hae forgi’en mysel for’t as lang as I live. Can I do naething to mak amends to ye for what I’ve done?”

“Naething at a’,” replied the dominie, “but to settle as easily as ye can wi’ the laddie’s father.”

“Peradventure,” Mr Singleheart suggested, “the youth may be released from his captivity, and sent to the habitation of his father.”

“There’ll be twa ways o’ that faith!” exclaimed Grierson. “Na, na, though the hangman has lost a job, I’ll be paid for my trouble. I dinna gang about beating bushes for linties, for deil-belickit but the pleasure o’ seeing them fleein’ back again. I’ll cage him. Ye’re a’ ready enough to wind a hank aff a neebour’s reel, or tak a nievefu’ out o’ his pock neuk, but ne’er a ane o’ ye’ll gie a duddy loon ae thread to mend his breeks, or a hungry beggar a handfu’ o’ meal to haud his wame frae stickin’ to his back bane.”

“There,” said M‘Harrigle, tossing down a small sum of money as a bribe to stop the mouth of this snarling terrier of the law, “tak that, and save the parish the expense o’ buying you a tether.”

Grierson picked up the money and departed, leaving behind him as tokens of his displeasure, some muttered and unintelligible growlings; and the boy was set at liberty, and sent home to his father.

“Come, come,” said M‘Harrigle, “this affair ’ll no be weel ended till we hae sowthered our hearts again wi’ a half mutchkin o’ M‘Gowan’s best. Come, Duncan, draw the tow, and tell the gudewife to fetch the mutchkin stoup, and het water to kirsten’t. I’m sure I’m a fule o’ a body, for my lang tongue, my short temper, and my short wit, hae keepit me in a fry a’ the days o’ me.”

“Ye’re vera right, M‘Harrigle,” said the landlord, rubbing his hand briskly at the blithe proposal. “I’ll ring for Tibbie; she’ll bring us something worth preein’ out o’ her ain bole. She’s a bit eident body, and aye keeps a drap heart’s comfort in an orra neuk.”

M‘Gowan pulled a hare’s foot at the end of a rope, which was suspended from an unhewn piece of knotted wood, of a three-legs-of-man shape, fastened by a strong screw nail into the wall, and a solemn bell, most unlike the merry tinkle of an alehouse warning, was heard jowin’ and croorin’ in a distant apartment, from which our hostess presently made her appearance.

Her aspect and demeanour at first sight bespoke your affection. There was in her face a look of blithe contentment with her condition; in her dress a neat attention to cleanliness and simplicity, and in her whole manner and behaviour a hearty and honest desire, not only to be happy herself, but to make all around her equally comfortable. She curtseyed respectfully and smilingly when she entered the room; but it was not that cut-and-dried sort of politeness which publicans in general indiscriminately pay to all their customers;—it was a kind of friendly greeting, mingled with no small portion of gratitude towards those on whom she was conscious she depended for subsistence. It was that warm and kindly expression of affection which brought one who was removed from his family fireside in mind of his mother, and which made imagination point out her habitation as a quiet resting place, where the unsettled sojourner might stop and glean from the barren field of earthly enjoyment some few ripe ears of happiness.

“My gude will to ye a’, gentlemen; I’m thinkin’ ye were ca’in’.”

“That we were,” said M‘Harrigle. “Fetch us a mutchkin o’ your best, gudewife, and some het water.”

“Ye’se no want that,” replied our hostess; “but ye’ll aiblins aforehand be pleased to tak a tasting o’ supper; I hae’t ready for ye yonder, as I guessed some o’ ye might stand in need o’ some sma refreshment. I’ll send it ben to ye in twa or three minutes, and syne get ye onything else ye want. Ay will ye,” said the motherly, sonsy, little woman, as she shut the door behind her with a gentleness of hand which showed that her affections had some regard even for things inanimate.

A beautiful tall girl immediately made her appearance, and prepared the round oaken table before us for the reception of the landlady’s hospitality, by spreading over it a table-cloth of snowy whiteness, and in arranging the shining implements, which, from their brilliant cleanliness, seemed to be kept as much for ornaments to the kitchen shelf, as for the more vulgar purpose of preparing food for the process of mastication. She was evidently the daughter of the hostess. Her countenance indicated all the amiable qualities of her mother, but her manners were more polished,—at least they seemed so, perhaps from the circumstance of her language being pure English, unmixed with any of the Doric dialect of her parent. By the mutual assistance of the landlady and her daughter, the table soon groaned beneath a load of savoury substantialities, most provokingly pleasant to all but myself. Our chairs being drawn forward towards the attractive influence of the supper, and grace being said by the reverend Mr Singleheart, they all proceeded lustily and cheerfully to the work of repletion.

“Oogh!” says M‘Glashan the piper, as he opened his Celtic jaws, and disclosed two formidable rows of white stakes, which stood as a sort of turnpike gate to the entrance of his stomach, and demanded toll of all that passed that way,—“oogh! this’ll pe tooin’ her good, for her fu’ bag maks a loot trone.”

“Verily, it is both savoury and refreshing,” said Mr Singleheart, as he sawed away with a suppleness of elbow by no means consistent with the staid solemnity of his usual motions.

“My faith!” said M‘Harrigle to the dominie, “your mill gangs glibly.”

“Ay,” says the dominie, “the still sow licks up the draff, and a heapit plate maks hungry men scant o’ cracks.”

“And scant o’ havins too, I think,” said M‘Gowan; “for the stranger gentleman’s sittin’ there before us wi’ a toom plate.”

“Let him alane,” said the dominie; “it’s time he were learning that a man that’s hamely’s aye welcome, and that frank looks mak kind hearts.”

Cleekum had secreted himself in the kitchen, and, though indebted to Mrs M‘Gowan’s fidelity for his preservation from M‘Harrigle’s indignation, he was by no means satisfied with the amount of the night’s amusement. It was at all times a source of delight to him to observe men acting extravagantly and foolishly under misconception and false impressions of one another; and he at no time hesitated to invent and circulate fabrications, generally innocent, indeed, as to intention, but sometimes productive of serious consequences. He was commonly the most taciturn individual in company, and notwithstanding his frolicsome and mischievous disposition, enjoyed the reputation among his neighbours of being a skilful lawyer, and what is still more creditable, a man of unimpeached integrity. This last quality, in some measure, atoned for his love of mischief, and enabled him to perform with impunity wild pranks, which might have seriously injured almost any other man.

When he saw Dame M‘Gowan preparing supper, his whimsical imagination suggested to him the very ridiculous and extravagant trick of making M‘Glashan believe that his favourite bagpipes formed a part of the entertainment. This he accomplished by giving a little urchin a penny to steal unperceived into the room and fetch them away, and an old pair that lay on a shelf in the kitchen furnished him with the ready materials for carrying his whimsical conceit into execution. Ribbons of the same breadth and colour with those which garnished M‘Glashan’s pipes were purchased, and tied upon the drone, which was then attached to the “chieftain o’ the pudding race,” which had never before perhaps been dignified with such notable marks of distinction. Mrs M‘Gowan whispered to her husband a hint of the rarity preparing for them in the kitchen, and he gave a sly intimation of the same to the dominie.

Part of the dishes being removed, the whole company sat in silent expectation of this new specimen of culinary skill, for the whispered hint had by this time been communicated to all except M‘Glashan himself. The dominie squinted at M‘Gowan, with that sly and jocular expression of face for which he was so remarkable. The landlord himself could with difficulty restrain his risibility within the compass of a well-bred smile. It was evident, from the various workings of his features, that it required no small exertion to master down his inward emotion, and keep it from leaping forth and divulging the secret of the coming joke.

After a delay of a few minutes our good hostess entered with a pair of bagpipes on a large plate. She placed them on the table and hurried out of the room, evidently for the purpose of enjoying a prudential and private laugh. There stood the piper’s instrument on the middle of the table, “warm, reeking, rich,” steaming forth its appetising fragrance, regaling every nose, delighting every eye, and provoking instantaneous peals of laughter from all but the supposed proprietor of this fantastical but seemingly substantial piece of good cheer.

“Cod mak a mercy on us a’! An’ I will teclare, a poiled pagpipe! Who’ll be toing that, noo? Oogh! oogh!” said the enraged musician, snuffing himself into an ungovernable fit of rage, raising his brawny and ponderous form into a threatening attitude and doubling his knotty, iron fists, with the design of hammering the offender, whose wicked temerity had dared to brave the indignation of this half-reclaimed mountaineer. “An you’ll offer to jag him, and let out his win’ too, oogh! you’ll petter be a’ looking ower a house-rigging o’ twa storey. You’ll poil your tam haggis in my pag, and sotter my trone too, and the vera ribbons I had at the competeetion. Shust mine!” cried the enraged Highlander, looking more intently at the Scotch haggis with its whimsical appendages. “An you’ll no tell me the man wha would be toing that, I will mak the room my ain in five minutes. I taur you all to touch him. I’ll mak a tead man o’ her—oogh! oogh!”

I was the only individual in the company who seemed to feel any apprehensions about the consequence of this absurd piece of waggery. All the rest enjoyed it rarely, not even excepting the Rev. Mr Singleheart, who, though possessing none of the elements of jocularity himself, was yet at times singularly well pleased to second a piece of innocent fun with his individual portion of jocose laughter.

“Sit down, ye muckle Highland stirk,” said M‘Harrigle, “and no mak a sough there about a boiled bagpipe. I’se warrant it’s a bit of gude eatin’; and we’ll see what can be made o’t when we hae pu’d awa thae whigmaleeries that are stickin’ round about it. Faith! I wadna gie a mouthfu’ o’ your bagpipe, M‘Glashan, for a’ the music that ever came out o’ its drone.”

“It’s quite a musical feast,” quoth the dominie; “only I fear we’ll be troubled wi’ wind in our stomachs after making a meal o’t. Sit down, M‘Glashan,” he continued, “for, as you were sayin’ before, a fu’ bag maks a loud drone.”

“Sit town! sit town! and see six Sassenach teevils tefour the bagpipes that hae pelanged to a M‘Glashan for twa hunder year! Oogh! won the competeetion too!”

The gaunt descendant of the Gael stood grinding his teeth, opening and clenching his big bony fists, as if he fancied himself about to grapple with some sturdy antagonist. His large blue eyes flaming from beneath the fringe of his knitted eyebrow, the big muscles encircling the corner of either eye, and curving round the mouth in deep hard folds, and the outward shelving upper-lip, puckered with a thousand wrinkles, were rendered more picturesque and fearful from being hedged round by an uncommon mass of bristly gray hair, two large portions of which hung on his broad, flat cheeks, like two large bunches of burned furse, while the whole rugged exterior was rendered still more imposing by the association of his favourite guttural interjection, “oogh!” His aspect lowered so grim and threatening, his “ooghs” became so loud and numerous, that all began to think it time to soothe the spirit of this Highland storm, lest its rising wrath should descend with deadly vengeance on those around him.

The landlord stepped out, and returned with M‘Glashan’s instrument. The mountaineer looked astonished, snatched it from him with eagerness, eyed it round and round, hugged and kissed the darling object of his affection, and poured into its capacious bag a stream of wind which immediately issued in a wild and stormy pibroch. Delighted with his own performance, “he hotched and blew with might and main,” mingling, every now and then, with his unearthly music, the half-recitative bass of a broad rumbling laugh, while M‘Harrigle’s rugged terrier, with his two fore paws upon the piper’s knees, spun out long and eerie howls of canine sympathy. It was in vain that we praised the savoury Scotch haggis, and recommended it to the palate of M‘Glashan. His heart, as well as his wind, was in his bagpipe, and he never once deigned to return an answer to our reiterated invitations; but having exhausted his scanty musical budget, the contents of which amounted to no more than a few Highland reels and strathspeys, he droned away in voluntaries so utterly horrible and dissonant, that Simon Gray, after swallowing a few morsels with as rueful contortions of visage as if every mouthful had been dipped in sand, ran out of the room holding his ears, and giving vent to a harsh German _ach!_ which was powerfully expressive of his crucified sense of hearing. The piper piped on, and seemed to enjoy a sort of triumph over the wounded feelings of the departed dominie. None of the rest of the company followed his example, but each individual sat still with as much coolness and composure as if his ears had been hermetically sealed against the grunting, groaning, and yelling of this infernal musical-engine.

M‘Glashan’s tempestuous hostility at length ceased, and the dominie returned as the large punch-bowl was shedding its fragrant effluvia through the apartment, giving to every eye a livelier lustre, to every heart a warmer glow, and to every tongue a more joyous and voluble expression. No more than two or three glasses had circulated when Mr Singleheart and the dominie left the generous beverage to the enjoyment of the more profane and less responsible members of this assemblage of convivial spirits.

“He is an ill-hearted tyke who can’t both give and take a joke,” said Cleekum, as he burst abruptly into the apartment. “You would not certainly quarrel with an old friend, M‘Harrigle?”

“No, I’ll be hanged if I do,” was the reply of the cattle-dealer; “but Lord, man, if I had cloured Simon, I might hae run the kintra. Faith! if ye gang delvin’ about this gate for fun, ye’ll set your fit on a wasp’s byke some day. If I had but gotten my hands ower ye twa hours syne, there would hae been a job for the doctor. Let there be nae mair about it;—there’s a glass to ye.”

“The night drave on wi’ sangs and clatter.”

One merry story suggested another, till the potent spirit of the bowl covered some all over with slumber “as with a cloak,” laid others prostrate beneath the table, and to the maudlin eyes of the unconquered survivors presented every object as if of the dual number. The bustle and hurry of preparation in the kitchen had died away, orders for an additional supply of liquor were more tardily executed, and the kitchen-maid came in half undressed, holding a short gown together at the breast, rubbing her eyes, and staggering under the influence of a stolen nap at the fireside, from which she had been hastily and reluctantly roused. Cleekum, M‘Harrigle, M‘Glashan, and myself were the only individuals who had any pretentions to sobriety. The landlord had prudently retired to rest an hour before. Silence reigned in the whole house, except in one apartment, and silence would have put down her velvet footstep there also, but for the occasional roars of M‘Harrigle, who bellowed as if he had been holding conversational communion with his own nowt; and the engine-without-oil sort of noise that M‘Glashan made as he twanged, sputtered, and grunted his native tongue to M‘Harrigle, who was turning round to the piper every now and then, crying “D——n your Gaelic, you’ve spewed enough o’t the night; put a bung in your throat, you beast!”

A few flies that buzzed and murmured round the room were the only joyous and sleepless creatures that seemed disposed to prolong the revelry. The cold toddy having lost its delicious relish, produced loathing, and its former exhilarating effluvia was now sickening to the nose. The candle-wick stood in the middle of the flickering flame like a long nail with a large round head, and sending the light in fitful flashes against the walls. The cock had sounded his clarion, the morning seamed the openings of the window-shutters with lines of light, and the ploughman, roused to labour, went whistling past the door. I opened the window-shutter. A glare of light rushed in and condensed the flame of our little luminary into a single bud of pale light, whose sickliness seemed to evince a kindred sympathy with the disorderly remains of the night’s revelry, and with the stupified senses and exhausted bodies of the revellers themselves.

I looked out of the window. All was silent, save the far-off whistle of the ploughman who had passed, and the continual roar of the cataract; and all was motionless, except the blue feathery smoke which puffed from a single-chimney, and floated down the glen in a long wavering stream. How chill and piercing the morning air feels to the nervous and debilitated reveller, and how reproachfully does the light of another day steal in upon the unseemly disorder of his privacy! Almost every man feels himself to be somewhat of a blackguard who is thus surprised.

Going home drunk in a summer morning! What a beast! Feebleness of knees, that would gladly lie down by the wayside,—headache, that makes the brain a mere puddle of dirty recollections, and dismal anticipations,—dimness of eyes, that makes every visible object caricaturish and monstrous,—filthiness of apparel enough to shame a very scavenger,—and a heart sick almost to the commission of _felo de se_. Zig-zag, thump, thump, down again, howling, swearing, praying. It is a libel on the brute creation to call it beastliness. Brutes do no such thing. And the morning, how fresh, clear, green, and glittering! Hang that fellow,—going to work, I imagine. What on earth roused him at such an unseasonable hour? To be a spy upon me, I suppose. Who are you, sir?—A poor man, please your honour, sir.—A poor man! go and be hanged then.—These birds yelping from that thicket are more unmusical than hurdy-gurdy, marrowbone and cleaver. I wish each of them had a pipe-stopple in its windpipe. I never heard such abominable discord. The whole world is astir. Who told them I was going home at this time in the morning? Who is that singing the “Flower o’ Dunblane” at the other side of the hedge? A milkmaid—“and the milkmaid singeth blithe.” Ah, John Milton, thy notions of rural felicity were formed in a closet. You may have a peep of her through this “slap.” Rural innocence!—a mere humbug,—a dirty, tawdry, pudding-legged, blowsy-faced, sun-burnt drab. What a thing for a shepherdess in a pastoral! Confound these road trustees; they have been drawing the road through a bore, and have made it ten times its common length, and a hundred times narrower than its common breadth. Horribly rough; no man can walk steadily on it. Have the blockheads not heard of M‘Adam? In the words of the Lawrencekirk album epigrammatist,—

“The people here ought to be hanged, Unless they mend their ways.”

Hast thou, gentle reader, ever gone home drunk in a summer morning, when thy shame, that is day-light, was rising in the east? Sulky—a question not to be answered. So much for thy credit, for there be in this sinful and wicked world men who boast of such things. I am glad thou art not one of them. Neither do I boast of such doings; for, gentle reader, I went to bed. My bedroom was one of M‘Gowan’s garret-rooms. Cleekum and M‘Harrigle, who lived at some distance, thought proper to retire to rest before visiting their own firesides; and M‘Glashan, being a sort of vagrant musician, who had no legal domicile in any particular place, had always a bed assigned him in M‘Gowan’s when he visited the village.

Stretched in bed after a day’s travelling and a night’s carousing—exquisite pleasure! It is worth a man’s while to travel thirty or forty miles to enjoy such a blessed luxury. After a few yawnings, pokings out and drawings up of the legs, the whole body begins to feel a genial glow of heat, and he is worse than an infidel who in such a pleasurable mood does not feel disposed to bless his Maker. Everything being properly arranged, the curtains carefully drawn around, the night-cap pulled down over the ears and folded upward on the brow, the pillow shifted, shuffled, and nicely adjusted to the head, the clothes pulled and lugged about, till there is not a single air-hole left to pinch the body, the downy bed itself, by sundry tossings and turnings, converted into an exact mould for the particular part of the body that has sunk into it, then does the joyous spirit sing to itself inwardly, with the mute melody of gratitude,—“I’m wearin’ awa, Jean!”—_Blackwood’s Magazine_, 1826.

THE MILLER AND THE FREEBOOTER.

BY SIR THOMAS DICK LAUDER.

In Glenquoich, in Aberdeenshire, in the early part of last century, there was a corn-mill erected for the use of the neighbourhood, and as the construction and management of such machines were ill understood in that part of Scotland at the time, a miller was brought from the low country to superintend it. In this neighbourhood there lived at that time a certain Donald Mackenzie, a hero remarkable for his haughty and imperious manner, and known by the appellation of “Donald Unasach,” or Donald the Proud. Being a native of Glenquoich, he knew as little of the English language as the miller did of Gaelic. He was an outlaw, addicted to freebooting, and of so fierce and unruly a temper, that the whole country stood in awe of him. One circumstance regarding him struck everyone with superstitious awe, and created much conjecture and speculation among those around him: he was never known to be without abundance of meal, and yet he was never known to carry any corn to the mill.

But the sagacious miller of Glenquoich soon discovered that, in order to bilk him of his proper mill-dues, the caitiff was in the habit of bringing his grain to the mill in the night, and grinding it, and carrying it off before morning. To charge him directly with this fraud, was too dangerous an attempt. But the miller ventured to ask him now and then, quietly, how he did for meal, as he never brought any corn to the mill; to which the freebooter never returned any other answer than one in Gaelic, signifying that “strong is the hand of God!”

Provoked at last, the miller determined to take his own way of curing the evil; and, having some previous notion of the next nocturnal visit of his unwelcome customer, he took care, before leaving the mill in the evening, to remove the bush, or that piece of wood which is driven into the eye of the nether millstone, for the purpose of keeping the spindle steady in passing through the upper stone. He also stopped up the spout through which the meal discharged itself; and as the mill was one of those old-fashioned machines, where the water-wheel moved horizontally, and directly under the stones, it follows that, by this arrangement of things, the corn would fall into the stream. Having made these preparations, the miller locked his house door, and went to bed.

About midnight, Donald arrived with his people, and some sacks of dry corn, and finding everything, as he thought, in good order in the mill, he filled the hopper, and let on the water. The machinery revolved with more than ordinary rapidity; the grain sank fast in the hopper; but not a particle of it came out at the place where he was wont to receive it into his bag as meal. Donald the Proud and his “gillies” were all aghast. Frantic with rage, he and they ran up and down; and, in their hurry to do everything, they succeeded in doing nothing. At length Donald perceived, what even the obscurity of the night could not hide, a long white line of fair provender flowing down the middle of the stream, that left not a doubt as to where his corn was discharging itself. But he could neither guess how this strange phenomenon was produced, nor how the evil was to be cured. After much perplexity, he thought of turning off the water. But here the wily miller had also been prepared for him, having so contrived matters, that the pole, or handle connecting the sluice with the inside of the mill, had fallen off as soon as the water was let on the wheel. Baffled at all points, Donald was compelled at last to run to the miller’s house. Finding the door locked, he knocked and bawled loudly at the window; and, on the miller demanding to know who was there, he did his best to explain, in broken English, the whole circumstances of the case. The miller heard him to an end; and turning himself in his bed, he coolly replied, “strong is the hand of God!” Donald Unasach gnashed his teeth, tried the door again, returned to the window, and, humbled by the circumstances, repeated his explanation and entreaties for help. “_Te meal town te purn to te teil! hoigh, hoigh!_” “I thought ye had been ower weel practeesed in the business to let ony sic mischanter come ower ye, Donald,” replied the imperturbable lowlander; “but, you know, ‘strong is the hand of God!’” The mountaineer now lost all patience. Drawing his dirk, and driving it through the window, he began to strike it so violently against the stones on the outside of the wall, that he illuminated the house with a shower of fire, that showed the terrified inmates the ferocious countenance of him who wielded the weapon. “_Te meal to te mill, te mutter to te mailler_,” sputtered out Donald, in the midst of his wrath, meaning to imply, that if the miller would only come and help him, he should have all his dues in future. Partly moved by this promise, but still more by his well-grounded fears, the miller arose at last, put the mill to rights, and ground the rest of the corn. And tradition tells us that after this the mill-dues were regularly paid, and the greatest harmony subsisted between Donald Unasach and the miller of Glenquoich.

BENJIE’S CHRISTENING.

BY D. M. MOIR.

We’ll hap and row, hap and row, We’ll hap and row the feetie o’t; It is a wee bit weary thing, I dinnie bide the greetie o’t.—PROVOST CREECH.

An honest man, close button’d to the chin, Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within.—COWPER.

This great globe and all that it inherits shall dissolve, And, like the baseless fabric of a vision, Leave not a rack behind!—SHAKSPEARE.

At the christening of our only bairn, Benjie, two or three remarkable circumstances occurred, which it behoves me to relate. It was on a cold November afternoon; and really when the bit room was all redd up, the fire bleezing away, and the candles lighted, every thing looked full tosh and comfortable. It was a real pleasure, after looking out into the drift that was fleeing like mad from the east, to turn one’s neb inwards, and think that we had a civilised home to comfort us in the dreary season. So, one after another, the bit party we had invited to the ceremony came papping in; and the crack began to get loud and hearty; for, to speak the truth, we were blessed with canny friends and a good neighbourhood. Notwithstanding, it was very curious that I had no mind of asking down James Batter, the weaver, honest man, though he was one of our own elders; and in papped James, just when the company had hafflins met, with his stocking-sleeves on his arms, his nightcap on his head, and his blue-stained apron hanging down before him, to light his pipe at our fire.

James, when he saw his mistake, was fain to retreat; but we would not hear tell of it, till he came in, and took a dram out of the bottle, as we told him the not doing so would spoil the wean’s beauty, which is an old freak (the smallpox, however, afterwards did that); so, with much persuasion, he took a chair for a gliff, and began with some of his drolls—for he is a clever, humoursome man, as ye ever met with. But he had not got far on with his jests, when lo! a rap came to the door, and Mysie whipped away the bottle under her apron, saying, “Wheesht, wheesht, for the sake of gudeness—there’s the minister!”

This room had only one door, and James mistook it, running his head, for lack of knowledge, into the open closet, just as the minister lifted the outer-door sneck. We were all now sitting on nettles, for we were frightened that James would be seized with a cough, for he was a wee asthmatic; or that some, knowing there was a thief in the pantry, might hurt good manners by breaking out into a giggle. However, all for a considerable time was quiet, and the ceremony was performed; little Nancy, our niece, handing the bairn upon my arm to receive its name. So we thought, as the minister seldom made a long stay on similar occasions, that all would pass off well enough. But wait a wee.

There was but one of our company that had not cast up, to wit, Deacon Paunch, the flesher, a most worthy man, but tremendously big, and grown to the very heels; as was once seen on a wager, that his ankle was greater than my brans. It was really a pain to all feeling Christians, to see the worthy man waighling about, being, when weighed in his own scales, two-and-twenty stone ten ounces, Dutch weight. Honest man, he had had a sore fecht with the wind and sleet, and he came in with a shawl roppined round his neck, peching like a broken-winded horse; so fain was he to find a rest for his weary carcass in our stuffed chintz pattern elbow-chair by the fire-cheek.

From the soughing of wind at the window, and the rattling in the lum, it was clear to all manner of comprehension, that the night was a dismal one; so the minister, seeing so many of his own douce folk about him, thought he might do worse than volunteer to sit still and try our toddy; indeed, we would have pressed him before this to do so, but what was to come of James Batter, who was shut up in the closet, like the spies in the house of Rahab the harlot, in the city of Jericho?

James began to find it was a bad business; and having been driving the shuttle about from before daylight, he was fain to crook his hough, and felt round about him quietly in the dark for a chair to sit down upon, since better might not be. But, wae’s me! the cat was soon out of the pock.

Me and the minister were just argle-bargling some few words on the doctrine of the camel and the eye of the needle, when, in the midst of our discourse, as all was wheesht and attentive, an awful thud was heard in the closet, which gave the minister, who thought the house had fallen down, such a start, that his very wig louped for a full three-eights off his crown. I say we were necessitated to let the cat out of the pock for two reasons: firstly, because we did not know what had happened; and, secondly, to quiet the minister’s fears, decent man, for he was a wee nervous. So we made a hearty laugh of it, as well as we could, and opened the door to bid James Batter come out, as we confessed all. Easier said than done, howsoever. When we pulled open the door, and took forward one of the candles, there was James doubled up, sticking twofold, like a rotten in a sneck-trap, in an old chair, the bottom of which had gone down before him, and which, for some craze about it, had been put out of the way by Nanse, that no accident might happen. Save us! if the deacon had sate down upon it, pity on our brick-floor!

Well, after some ado, we got James, who was more frightened than hurt, hauled out of his hidy-hole; and after lifting off his cowl, and sleeking down his front hair, he took a seat beside us, apologeezing for not being in his Sunday’s garb, the which the minister, who was a free and easy man, declared there was no occasion for, and begged him to make himself comfortable.

Well, passing over that business, Mr Wiggie and me entered into our humours, for the drappikie was beginning to tell on my noddle, and made me somewhat venturesome—not to say that I was not a little proud to have the minister in my bit housie; so, says I to him in a cosh way, “Ye may believe me or no, Mr Wiggie, but mair than me think ye out of sight the best preacher in the parish; nane of them, Mr Wiggie, can hold the candle to ye, man.”

“Wheesht, wheesht,” said the body, in rather a cold way that I did not expect, knowing him to be as proud as a peacock—“I daresay I am just like my neighbours.”

This was not quite so kind—so says I to him, “Maybe sae, for many a one thinks ye could not hold a candle to Mr Blowster the Cameronian, that whiles preaches at Lugton.”

This was a stramp on his corny toe. “Na, na,” answered Mr Wiggie, rather nettled; “let us drop that subject. I preach like my neighbours. Some of them may be worse, and others better; just as some of your own trade may make clothes worse, and some better, than yourself.”

My corruption was raised. “I deny that,” said I, in a brisk manner, which I was sorry for after—“I deny that, Mr Wiggie,” says I to him; “I’ll make a pair of breeches with the face of clay.”

But this was only a passing breeze, during the which, howsoever, I happened to swallow my thimble, which accidentally slipped off my middle finger, causing both me and the company general alarm, as there were great fears that it might mortify in the stomach; but it did not; and neither word nor wittens of it have been seen or heard tell of from that to this day. So, in two or three minutes, we had some few good songs, and a round of Scotch proverbs, when the clock chapped eleven. We were all getting, I must confess, a thought noisy; Johnny Soutter having broken a dram-glass, and Willie Fegs couped a bottle on the bit table-cloth: all noisy, I say, except Deacon Paunch, douce man, who had fallen into a pleasant slumber; so, when the minister rose to take his hat, they all rose except the deacon, whom we shook by the arms for some time, but in vain, to waken him. His round, oily face, good creature, was just as if it had been cut out of a big turnip, it was so fat, fozey, and soft; but at last, after some ado, we succeeded, and he looked about him with a wild stare, opening his two red eyes, like Pandore oysters, asking what had happened; and we got him hoized up on his legs, tying the blue shawl round his bull-neck again.

Our company had not got well out of the door, and I was priding myself in my heart about being landlord to such a goodly turn out, when Nanse took me by the arm, and said, “Come, and see such an unearthly sight.” This startled me, and I hesitated; but at long and last I went in with her, a thought alarmed at what had happened, and—my gracious! there, on the easy-chair, was our bonny tortoise-shell cat, Tommy, with the red morocco collar about its neck, bruised as flat as a flounder, and as dead as a mawk!

The deacon had sat down upon it without thinking; and the poor animal, that our neighbours’ bairns used to play with, and be so fond of, was crushed out of life without a cheep. The thing, doubtless, was not intended, but it gave Nanse and me a very sore heart.

THE MINISTER’S WIDOW.

BY PROFESSOR WILSON.

The dwelling of the minister’s widow stood within a few miles of the beautiful village of Castle-Holm, about a hundred low-roofed houses that had taken the name of the parish of which they were the little romantic capital. Two small regular rows of cottages faced each other, on the gentle acclivity of a hill, separated by a broomy common of rich pasturage, through which hurried a translucent loch-born rivulet, with here and there its shelves and waterfalls overhung by the alder or weeping birch. Each straw-roofed abode, snug and merry as a beehive, had behind it a few roods of garden ground; so that, in spring, the village was covered with a fragrant cloud of blossoms on the pear, apple, and plum trees; and in autumn was brightened with golden fruitage. In the heart of the village stood the manse, and in it had she who was now a widow passed twenty years of privacy and peace. On the death of her husband, she had retired with her family—three boys—to the pleasant cottage which they now inhabited. It belonged to the old lady of the castle, who was patroness of the parish, and who accepted from the minister’s widow of a mere trifle as a nominal rent. On approaching the village, strangers always fixed upon Sunnyside for the manse itself, for an air of serenity and retirement brooded over it, as it looked out from below its sheltering elms, and the farmyard with its corn-stack, marking the homestead of the agricultural tenant, was there wanting. A neat gravel-walk winded away, without a weed, from the white gate by the roadside, through lilacs and laburnums; and the unruffled and unbroken order of all the breathing things that grew around, told that a quiet and probably small family lived within those beautiful boundaries.

The change from the manse to Sunnyside had been with the widow a change from happiness to resignation. Her husband had died of a consumption; and for nearly a year she had known that his death was inevitable. Both of them had lived in the spirit of that Christianity which he had preached; and therefore the last year they passed together, in spite of the many bitter tears which she who was to be the survivor shed when none were by to see, was perhaps on the whole the best deserving of the name of happiness of the twenty that had passed over their earthly union. To the dying man Death had lost all his terrors. He sat beside his wife, with his bright hollow eyes and emaciated frame, among the balmy shades of his garden, and spoke with fervour of the many tender mercies God had vouchsafed to them here, and of the promises made to all who believed in the Gospel. They did not sit together to persuade, to convince, or to uphold each other’s faith, for they believed in the things that were unseen, just as they believed in the beautiful blossomed arbour that then contained them in its shading silence. Accordingly, when the hour was at hand in which he was to render up his spirit into the hand of God, he was like a grateful and wearied man falling into a sleep. His widow closed his eyes with her own hands, nor was her soul then disquieted within her. In a few days she heard the bell tolling, and from her sheltered window looked out, and followed the funeral with streaming eyes, but an unweeping heart. With a calm countenance and humble voice she left and bade farewell to the sweet manse, where she had so long been happy; and as her three beautiful boys, with faces dimmed by natural grief, but brightened by natural gladness, glided before her steps, she shut the gate of her new dwelling with an undisturbed soul, and moved her lips in silent thanksgiving to the God of the fatherless and the widow.

Her three boys, each one year older than the other, grew in strength and beauty, the pride and flower of the parish. In school they were quiet and composed; but in play-hours they bounded in their glee together like young deer, and led the sportful flock in all their excursions through wood or over moor. They resembled, in features and in voice, both of their gentle parents; but nature had moulded to quite another character their joyful and impetuous souls. When sitting or walking with their mother, they subdued their spirits down to suit her equable and gentle contentment, and behaved towards her with a delicacy and thoughtfulness which made her heart to sing for joy. So, too, did they sit in the kirk on Sabbath, and during all that day the fountain of their joy seemed to subside and to lie still. They knew to stand solemnly with their mother, now and then on the calm summer evenings, beside their father’s grave. They remembered well his pale kind face—his feeble walk—his bending frame—his hand laid in blessing on their young heads—and the last time they ever heard him speak. The glad boys had not forgotten their father; and that they proved by their piety unto her whom most on earth had their father loved. But their veins were filled with youth, health, and the electricity of joy; and they carried without and within the house such countenances as at any time coming upon their mother’s eyes on a sudden, were like a torch held up in the dim melancholy of a mist, diffusing cheerfulness and elevation.

Years passed on. Although the youngest was but a boy, the eldest stood on the verge of manhood, for he had entered his seventeenth year, and was bold, straight, and tall, with a voice deepening in its tone, a graver expression round the gladness of his eyes, and a sullen mass of coal-black hair hanging over the smooth whiteness of his open forehead. But why describe the three beautiful brothers? They knew that there was a world lying at a distance that called upon them to leave the fields, and woods, and streams, and lochs of Castle-Holm; and, born and bred in peace as they had been, their restless hearts were yet all on fire, and they burned to join a life of danger, strife, and tumult. No doubt it gave their mother a sad heart to think that all her three boys, who she knew loved her so tenderly, could leave her alone, and rush into the far-off world. But who shall curb nature? Who ought to try to curb it when its bent is strong? She reasoned a while, and tried to dissuade; but it was in vain. Then she applied to her friends; and the widow of the minister of Castle-Holm, retired as his life had been, was not without friends of rank and power. In one year her three boys had their wish;—in one year they left Sunnyside, one after the other; William to India, Edward to Spain, and Harry to a man-of-war.

Still was the widow happy. The house that so often used to be ringing with joy, was now indeed too, too silent; and that utter noiselessness sometimes made her heart sick, when sitting by herself in the solitary room. But by nature she was a gentle, meek, resigned, and happy being; and had she even been otherwise, the sorrow she had suffered, and the spirit of religion which her whole life had instilled, must have reconciled her to what was now her lot. Great cause had she to be glad. Far away as India was, and seemingly more remote in her imagination, loving letters came from her son there in almost every ship that sailed for Britain; and if at times something delayed them, she came to believe in the necessity of such delays, and, without quaking, waited till the blessed letter did in truth appear. Of Edward, in Spain, she often heard—though for him she suffered more than for the others. Not that she loved him better, for, like three stars, each possessed alike the calm heaven of her heart; but he was with Wellington, and the regiment in which he served seemed to be conspicuous in all skirmishes, and in every battle. Henry, her youngest boy, who left her before he had finished his fourteenth year, she often heard from; his ship sometimes put into port; and once, to the terror and consternation of her loving and yearning heart, the young midshipman stood before her, with a laughing voice, on the floor of the parlour, and rushed into her arms. He had got leave of absence for a fortnight; and proudly, although sadly too, did she look on her dear boy when he was sitting in the kirk with his uniform on, and his war-weapons by his side—a fearless and beautiful stripling, on whom many an eye was insensibly turned even during service. And, to be sure, when the congregation were dismissed, and the young sailor came smiling out into the churchyard, never was there such a shaking of hands seen before. The old men blessed the gallant boy; many of the mothers looked at him not without tears; and the young maidens, who had heard that he had been in a bloody engagement, and once nearly shipwrecked, gazed upon him with unconscious blushes, and bosoms that beat with innocent emotion. A blessed week it was indeed that he was then with his mother; and never before had Sunnyside seemed so well to deserve its name.

To love, to fear, and to obey God, was the rule of this widow’s life; and the time was near at hand when she was to be called upon to practise it in every silent, secret, darkest corner and recess of her afflicted spirit. Her eldest son, William, fell in storming a fort in India, as he led the forlorn-hope. He was killed dead in a moment, and fell into the trench with all his lofty plumes. Edward was found dead at Talavera, with the colours of his regiment tied round his body. And the ship in which Henry was on board, that never would have struck her flag to any human power sailing on the sea, was driven by a storm on a reef of rocks, went to pieces during the night, and of eight hundred men, not fifty were saved. Of that number Henry was not; but his body was found next day on the sand, along with those of many of the crew, and buried, as it deserved, with all honours, and in a place where few but sailors slept.

In one month—one little month—did the tidings of the three deaths reach Sunnyside. A government letter informed her of William’s death in India, and added, that, on account of the distinguished character of the young soldier, a small pension would be settled on his mother. Had she been starving of want instead of blessed with competence, that word would have had then no meaning to her ear. Yet true it is, that a human—an earthly—pride cannot be utterly extinguished, even by severest anguish, in a mother’s heart, yea, even although her best hopes are garnered up in heaven; and the weeping widow could not help feeling it now, when, with the black wax below her eyes, she read how her dead boy had not fallen in the service of an ungrateful state. A few days afterwards a letter came from himself, written in the highest spirits and tenderest affection. His mother looked at every word—every letter—every dash of the pen;—and still one thought—one thought only, was in her soul;—“the living hand that traced these lines—where, what is it now?” But this was the first blow only; ere the new moon was visible, the widow knew that she was altogether childless.

It was in a winter hurricane that her youngest boy had perished; and the names of those whose health had hitherto been remembered at every festal Christmas, throughout all the parish, from the castle to the humblest hut, were now either suppressed within the heart, or pronounced with a low voice and a sigh. During three months, Sunnyside looked almost as if uninhabited. Yet the smoke from one chimney told that the childless widow was sitting alone at her fireside; and when her only servant was spoken to at church, or on the village-green, and asked how her mistress was bearing these dispensations, the answer was, that her health seemed little, if at all impaired, and that she talked of coming to divine service in a few weeks, if her strength would permit. She had been seen through the leafless hedge standing at the parlour window, and had motioned with her hand to a neighbour, who in passing, had uncovered his head. Her weekly bounty to several poor and bedridden persons had never suffered but one week’s intermission. It was always sent to them on Saturday night; and it was on a Saturday night that all the parish had been thrown into tears, with the news that Henry’s ship had been wrecked, and the brave boy drowned. On that evening she had forgotten the poor.

But now the Spring had put forth her tender buds and blossoms—had strewn the black ground under the shrubs with flowers, and was bringing up the soft, tender, and beautiful green over the awakening face of the earth. There was a revival of the spirit of life and gladness over the garden, and the one encircling field of Sunnyside; and so likewise, under the grace of God, was there a revival of the soul that had been sorrowing within its concealment. On the first sweet dewy Sabbath of May, the widow was seen closing behind her the little white gate, which for some months her hand had not touched. She gave a gracious, but mournful smile, to all her friends, as she passed on through the midst of them along with the minister who had joined her on entering the churchyard; and although it was observed that she turned pale as she sat down in her pew, with the Bibles and Psalm-books that had belonged to her sons lying before her, as they themselves had enjoined when they went away, yet her face brightened even as her heart began to burn within her at the simple music of the psalm. The prayers of the congregation had some months before been requested for her, as a person in great distress; and, during service, the young minister, according to her desire, now said a few simple words, that intimated to the congregation that the childless widow was, through his lips, returning thanks to Almighty God, for that He had not forsaken her in her trouble, but sent resignation and peace.

From that day she was seen, as before, in her house, in her garden, along the many pleasant walks all about the village; and in the summer evenings, though not so often as formerly, in the dwellings of her friends, both high and low. From her presence a more gentle manner seemed to be breathed over the rude, and a more heartfelt delicacy over the refined. Few had suffered as she had suffered; all her losses were such as could be understood, felt, and wept over by all hearts; and all boisterousness or levity of joy would have seemed an outrage on her, who, sad and melancholy herself, yet wished all around her happy, and often lighted up her countenance with a grateful smile at the sight of that pleasure which she could not but observe to be softened, sobered, and subdued for her sake.

Such was the account of her, her sorrow, and her resignation, which I received on the first visit I paid to a family near Castle-Holm, after the final consummation of her grief. Well-known to me had all the dear boys been; their father and mine had been labourers in the same vineyard; and as I had always been a welcome visitor, when a boy, at the manse of Castle-Holm, so had I been, when a man, at Sunnyside. Last time I had been there, it was during the holidays, and I had accompanied the three boys on their fishing excursions to the lochs in the moor; and in the evenings pursued with them their humble and useful studies. So I could not leave Castle-Holm without visiting Sunnyside, although my heart misgave me, and I wished I could have delayed it till another summer.

I sent word that I was coming to see her, and I found her sitting in that well-known little parlour where I had partaken the pleasure of so many merry evenings with those whose laughter was now extinguished. We sat for awhile together speaking of ordinary topics, and then utterly silent. But the restraint she had imposed upon herself she either thought unnecessary any longer, or felt it to be impossible; and rising up, went to a little desk, from which she brought forth three miniatures, and laid them down upon the table before us, saying, “Behold the faces of my three dead boys!”

So bright, breathing, and alive did they appear, that for a moment I felt impelled to speak to them, and to whisper their names. She beheld my emotion, and said unto me, “Oh! could you believe that they are all dead? Does not that smile on Willie’s face seem as if it were immortal? do not Edward’s sparkling eyes look so bright as if the mists of death could never have overshadowed them? and think—oh! think, that ever Henry’s golden hair should have been dragged in the brine, and filled full—full, I doubt not, of the soiling sand!”

I put the senseless images one by one to my lips, and kissed their foreheads—for dearly had I loved these three brothers; and then I shut them up and removed them to another part of the room. I wished to speak, but I could not; and, looking on the face of her who was before me, I knew that her grief would find utterance, and that not until she had unburdened her heart could it be restored to repose.

“They would tell you, sir, that I bear my trials well; but it is not so. Many, many unresigned and ungrateful tears has my God to forgive in me, a poor, weak, and repining worm. Almost every day, almost every night, do I weep before these silent and beautiful phantoms; and when I wipe away the breath and mist of tears from their faces, there are they, smiling continually upon me! Oh! death is a shocking thought, when it is linked in love with creatures so young as these! More insupportable is gushing tenderness, than even dry despair; and, methinks, I could bear to live without them, and never to see them more, if I could only cease to pity them! But that can never be. It is for them I weep, not for myself. If they were to be restored to life, would I not lie down with thankfulness into the grave? William and Edward were struck down, and died, as they thought, in glory and triumph. Death to them was merciful. But who can know, although they may try to dream of it in horror, what the youngest of them, my sweet Harry, suffered, through that long dark howling night of snow, when the ship was going to pieces on the rocks!”

That last dismal thought held her for a while silent; and some tears stood in drops on her eyelashes, but seemed again to be absorbed. Her heart appeared unable to cling to the horrors of the shipwreck, although it coveted them; and her thoughts reverted to other objects. “I walk often into the rooms where they used to sleep, and look on their beds till I think I see their faces lying with shut eyes on their pillows. Early in the morning do I often think I hear them singing; I awaken from troubled unrest, as if the knock of their sportive hands were at my door summoning me to rise. All their stated hours of study and of play, when they went to school and returned from it, when they came into meals, when they said their prayers, when they went leaping at night to bed as lightsomely, after all the day’s fatigue, as if they had just risen—oh! Sir, at all these times, and many, and many a time besides these, do I think of them whom you loved.”

While thus she kept indulging the passion of her grief, she observed the tears I could no longer conceal; and the sight of my sorrow seemed to give, for a time, a loftier character to hers, as if my weakness made her aware of her own, and she had become conscious of the character of her vain lamentations. “Yet, why should I so bitterly weep? Pain had not troubled them—passion had not disturbed them—vice had not polluted them. May I not say, ‘My children are in heaven with their father?’—and ought I not, therefore, to dry up all these foolish tears now and for evermore?”

Composure was suddenly shed over her countenance, like gentle sunlight over a cheerless day, and she looked around the room as if searching for some pleasant objects that eluded her sight. “See,” said she, “yonder are all their books, arranged just as Henry arranged them on his unexpected visit. Alas! too many of them are about the troubles and battles of the sea! But it matters not now. You are looking at that drawing. It was done by himself—that is the ship he was so proud of, sailing in sunshine and a pleasant breeze. Another ship, indeed, was she soon after, when she lay upon the reef! But as for the books, I take them out of their places, and dust them, and return them to their places, every week. I used to read to my boys, sitting round my knees, out of many of these books, before they could read themselves; but now I never peruse them, for their cheerful stories are not for me. But there is one Book I do read, and without it I should long ago have been dead. The more the heart suffers, the more does it understand that Book. Never do I read a single chapter, without feeling assured of something more awful in our nature than I felt before. My own heart misgives me; my own soul betrays me; all my comforts desert me in a panic; but never yet once did I read one whole page of the New Testament that I did not know that the eye of God is on all His creatures, and on me like the rest, though my husband and all my sons are dead, and I may have many years yet to live alone on the earth.”

After this we walked out into the little avenue, now dark with the deep rich shadows of summer beauty. We looked at that beauty, and spoke of the surpassing brightness of the weather during all June, and advancing July. It is not in nature always to be sad; and the remembrance of all her melancholy and even miserable confessions was now like an uncertain echo, as I beheld a placid smile on her face, a smile of such perfect resignation, that it might not falsely be called a smile of joy. We stood at the little white gate; and, with a gentle voice, that perfectly accorded with that expression, she bade God bless me; and then with composed steps, and now and then turning up, as she walked along, the massy flower-branches of the laburnum, as, bent with their load of beauty, they trailed upon the ground, she disappeared into that retirement which, notwithstanding all I had seen and heard, I could not but think deserved almost to be called happy, in a world which even the most thoughtless know is a world of sorrow.

THE BATTLE OF THE BREEKS: _A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF WILLIAM M‘GEE, WEAVER IN HAMILTON_.

BY ROBERT MACNISH, LL.D.

I often wonder when I think of the tribulations that men bring upon themsels, through a want of gumption and common independence of speerit. There now was I, for nae less than eighteen years, as henpeckit a man as ever wrocht at the loom. Maggie and me, after the first week of our marriage, never forgathered weel thegither. There was something unco dour and imperious about her temper, although, I maun say, barring this drawback, she was nae that ill in her way either,—that is to say, she had a sort of kindness about her, and behaved in a truly mitherly way to the bairns, giein them a’ things needfu’ in the way of feeding and claithing, so far as our means admitted. But, oh, man, for a’ that, she was a dour wife. There was nae pleasing her ae way or anither; and whenever I heard the bell ringing for the kirk, it put me in mind of her tongue—aye wag, wagging, and abusing me beyond bounds. In ae word, I was a puir, broken-hearted man, and often wished myself in Abraham’s bosom, awa frae the cares and miseries of this sinfu’ world.

I was just saying that folk often rin their heads into scrapes for want of a pickle natural spunk. Let nae man tell me that gude nature and simpleecity will get on best in this world; na—faith na. I hae had ower muckle experience that way; and the langer I live has proved to me that my auld maister, James Currie (him in the Quarry Loan), wasna sae far wrang when he alleged, in his droll, gude-humoured way, that a man should hae enough o’ the deil about him to keep the deil frae him. That was, after a’, ane of the wisest observes I hae heard of for a lang time. Little did I opine that I would ever be obligated to mak use o’t in my ain particular case:—but, bide a wee, and ye shall see how it was brocht about between me and Maggie.

It was on a wintry night when she set out to pick a quarrel wi’ Mrs Todd, the huckster’s wife, anent the price of a pickle flour which I had bought some days before, for making batter of, but which didna turn out sae weel as I expeckit, considering what was paid for’t. Had I been consulted, I would hae tell’t her to bide at hame, and no fash her thumb about the matter, which after a’ was only an affair of three-ha’pence farthing, and neither here nor there. But, na; Maggie was nane o’ the kind to let sic an object stan’ by; so out she sets, wi’ her red cloak about her, and her black velvet bonnet—that she had just that day got hame frae Miss Lorimer, the milliner—upon her head. But I maun first tell what passed between her and me on this wonderful occasion.

“And now, my dear,” quo’ I, looking as couthy and humble as I could, and pu’ing my Kilmarnock nicht-cap a wee grain aff my brow in a kind of half respectfu’ fashion, “what’s this ye’re ganging to be about? Odds, woman, I wadna gie a pirn for a’ that has happened. What signifies a pickle flour, scrimp worth half a groat?”

Faith, I would better hae held my tongue, for nae sooner was the word uttered, than takin’ haud of a can, half fu’ o’ ready-made dressing, which I was preparing to lay on a wab of blue check I was working for Mr Andrew Treddles, the Glasgow manufacturer—I say, taking haud of this, she let flee at my head like a cannon-ball. But Providence was kind, and instead of knocking out my brains, as I had every reason to expeck, it gaed bang against our ain looking-glass, and shattered it into five hunder pieces. But I didna a’thegither escape scaith—the dressing having flown out as the can gaed by me, and plaistered a’ my face ower in a manner maist extraordinar to behold. By jingo! my spirit was roused at this deadly attempt, and gin she hadna been my wife, I wad hae thrawn about her neck, like a tappit-hen’s. But, na—I was henpeckit, and she had sic a mastery ower me as nae persuasions of my ain judgment could owercome. Sae I could do naething but stan’ glowering at her like a moudiewart, while she poured out as muckle abuse as if I had been her flunkey, instead of her natural lord and master. Ance or twice I fand my nieves yeuking to gie her a clour by way of balancing accounts, but such was the power of influence she had obtained, that I durstna cheep for my very heart’s blude. So awa she gaed on her errand, leaving me sittin’ by the fire to mak the best of my desperate condition.

“O, Nancy,” said I to my dochter, as she sat mending her brither’s sark, opposite to me, “is na your mither an awfu’ woman?”

“I see naething awfu’ about her,” quo’ the cratur; “I think she servit ye richt; and had I a man, I would just treat him in the same way, if he daured to set his nose against onything I wanted.”

I declare to ye, when I heard this frae my ain flesh and blude, I was perfectly dumfoundered. The bairn I had brought up on my knee—that used, when a wee thing, to come and sit beside me at the loom, and who was in the custom of wheeling my pirns wi’ her ain hand—odds, man, it was desperate. I couldna say anither word, but I faund a big tear come hap-happing ower my runkled cheeks, the first that had wet them sin’ I was a bit laddie rinnin’ about before the schule door. What was her mither’s abusiveness to this? A man may thole muckle frae his wife, but, oh, the harsh words of an undutifu’ bairn gang like arrows to his heart, and he weeps tears of real bitterness. I wasna angry at the lassie—I was ower grieved to be angered; and for the first time I fand that my former sufferings were only as a single thread to a hale hank of yarn, compared to them I suffered at this moment.

A’thegither, the thing was mair than I could stand, so rising up, I betaks mysel to my but-an-ben neighbour, Andrew Brand. Andrew was an uncommon sagacious chiel, and, like mysel, a weaver to his trade. He was beuk-learned, and had read a hantle on different subjects, so that he was naturally looked up to by the folks round about, on account of his great lear. When onything gaed wrang about the Leechlee Street, where we lived, we were a’ glad to consult him; and his advice was reckoned no greatly behint that of Mr Meek, the minister. He was a great counter, or ’rithmetishian, as he ca’d it; and it was thocht by mony gude judges that he could handle a pen as weel as Mr Dick, the writing-master, himsel. So, as I was saying, I stappit ben to Andrew’s, to ask his advice, but, odds! if ye ever saw a man in sic a desperate passion as he was in when I tauld him how I had been used by my wife and dochter.

“William M‘Gee,” said he, raising his voice,—it was a geyan strong ane,—“ye’re an absolute gomeril. Oh, man, but ye’re a henpeckit sumph! I tell ye, ye’re a gawpus and a lauching-stock, and no worth the name of a man. Do ye hear that?”

“O ay, I hear’t very weel,” quo’ I, no that pleased at being sae spoken to, even by Andrew Brand, who was a man I could stamach a gude deal frae, in the way of reproof—“I hear’t a’ weel eneuch, and am muckle obleeged to ye, nae doubt, for your consolation.”

“Hooly and fairly, William,” said he in a kinder tone, for he saw I was a degree hurt by his speech. “Come, I was only joking ye, man, and ye maunna tak onything amiss I hae said. But, really, William, I speak to ye as a frien’, and tell ye that ye are submitting to a tyranny which no man of common understanding ought to submit to. Is this no the land of liberty? Are we no just as free as the Duke in his grand palace down by; and has onybody a richt—tell me that, William M‘Gee—to tyranneeze ower anither as your wife does ower you! I’ll no tell ye what to do, but I’ll just tell ye what I would do if my wife and dochter treated me as yours have treated you: losh, man, I would ding their harns about, and knock their heads thegither like twa curling-stanes. I would aye be master in my ain house.”

This was Andrew’s advice, and I thocht it sounded geyan rational, only no very easy to be put in practice. Hoosomever, thinks I to mysel, I’ll consider about it, and gin I could only bring mysel to mak the experiment, wha kens but I micht succeed to a miracle? On stapping back to my ain house, the first thing I did was to tak a thimblefu’ of whisky, by way of gieing me a pickle spunk, in case of ony fresh rumpus wi’ the wife, and also to clear up my ideas; for I hae fand, that after a lang spell at the loom, the thochts, as weel as the body, are like to get stupid and dozey. So I taks a drappie, and sits down quietly by the fireside, waiting for the return of Maggie frae scolding Mrs Todd about the flour.

In she comes, a’ in a flurry. Her face was as red as a peony rose, her breathing cam fast, and she lookit a’thegither like ane that has had a sair warsle wi’ the tongue. But she was far frae being downcast. On the contrair, she lookit as proud as a Turkey cock; and I saw wi’ the tail o’ my ee that she had gained a gran’ victory ower puir Mrs Todd, who was a douce, quiet woman, and nae match for the like of her in randying. So she began to stump and mak a great phrase about the way she had outcrawed the puir body; and was a’thegither as upset about it as if Duke Hamilton had made her keeper of his palace. Losh! I was mad to hear’t, and twa or three times had a gude mind to put in a word, to sic a degree was my courage raised by the drap speerits; but aye as the words were rising to my mouth, the thocht of the can and the dressing sent them back again, till they stuck like a bane in my throat. Very likely I micht hae said ne’er a word, and Andrew Brand’s advice micht hae gane for naething, had it no been for the cratur Nancy, who was sae lifted up about her mither’s dispute, that naething would sair her but to hae the hale affair mentioned cut and dry.

“And did ye cast up to Mrs Todd, mither,” quo’ the little cutty, “that she was fat?”

“Ay, that I did,” said Maggie. “I tell’t her she was like a barn-door. I tell’t her she was like the side of a house. ‘Ye’re a sow,’ quo’ I; ‘ye get fou every hour of the day, wi’ your lump of a gudeman!’”

But this wasna a’—for nae sooner had Maggie answered her dochter’s first question, than the cratur was ready wi’ anither: “And, mither, did ye cast up to her that her faither was a meeser?”

“Atweel did I, Nancy,” answered the gudewife. “I tell’t her a’ that. I coost up to her that her faither was a meeser, and would ride to Lunnon on a louse, and mak breeks of its skin, and candles of its tallow.”

I could thole this nae langer. I fand the hale man working within me, and was moved to a pitch of daring, mair like madness than onything else. Faith, the whisky was of gude service now, and so was Andrew Brand’s advice. I accordingly steekit my nieves wi’ desperation, threw awa my cowl, tucked up my sark sleeves,—for my coat happened to be aff at the time,—and got up frae the three-footed stool I had been sitting upon in the twinkling of an ee. I trumbled a’ ower, but whether it was wi’ fear, or wi’ anger, or wi’ baith put thegither, it would be difficult to say. I was in an awfu’ passion, and as fairce as a papist.

“And so,” said I, “ye coost up sic things to the honest woman, Mrs Todd! O, Maggie M‘Gee, Maggie M‘Gee, are ye no ashamed of yoursel?”

’Od it would hae dune your heart gude to see how she glowered at me. She was bewildered, and lookit as if to see whether I was mysel, and no some ither body. But her evil speerit didna lie lang asleep; it soon broke out like a squib on the king’s birthday, and I saw that I maun now stand firm, or be a dead man for ever.

“Has your faither been at the whisky bottle?” said she to her dochter. “He looks as if he was the waur of drink.”

“He had a glass just before ye cam in,” answered the wicked jimpey; and scarcely had she spoken the word, when Maggie flew upon me like a teeger, and gied me a skelp on the cheek wi’ her open loof, that made me turn round tapwise on the middle of the floor. Seeing that affairs were come to this pass, I saw plainly that I maun go on, no forgetting in sae doing my frien’ Andrew’s advice, as also my auld master Tammas Currie’s observe, anent a man ha’eing aneuch of the deil in his temper to keep the deil awa frae him. So I picked up a’ the spunk I had in me, besides what I had frae the drap whisky; and fa’ing to, I gied her sic a leathering as never woman got in her born days. In ae word, she met wi’ her match, and roared aloud for mercy; but this I would on nae account grant, till she promised faithfully that, in a’ time coming, she would acknowledge me as her lord and maister, and obey me in everything as a dutiful wife should her husband.

As soon as this was settled, in stappit Andrew Brand. At the sight of my wife greeting, and me sae fairce, he held up his hands wi’ astonishment.

“William M‘Gee,” quo’ he, “it’s no possible that ye’re maister in this house!”

“It’s no only possible, but it’s true, Andrew,” was my answer; and, taking me by the hand, he wished me joy for my speerit and success.

Sae far, sae weel; the first grand stroke was made, but there was something yet to do. I had discharged a’ outstanding debts wi’ my wife, and had brocht her to terms; but I had yet to reduce my bairns to their senses, and show them that I was _their_ lord and maister, as weel as their mither’s. Puir things! my heart was wae for them, for they were sairly miseducated, and held me in nae mair estimation, than if I had been ane of my ain wabster lads. So, just wi’ a view to their gude, I took down a pair of teuch ben-leather taws, weel burnt at the finger-ends, and gied Nancy as mony cracks ower the bare neck, as set her squeeling beyond a’ bounds. It was pitifu’ to see the cratur, how she skipped about the room, and ran awa to her mither, to escape my faitherly rage. But a’ assistance frae that quarter was at an end now; and she was fain to fa’ down on her knees, and beg my forgiveness, and promise to conduct hersel as became my dochter, in a’ time coming.

Just at this moment, in comes wee Geordie, greeting for his parritch. He kent naething of what had taken place in the house; and, doubtless, expeckit to mak an idiot of me, his faither, as he had been accustomed to do, almost frae his very cradle. I saw that now was the time to thresh the corruption out of him; and brandishing the taws ower my head, I made a stap forrit to lay hand upon him, and treat him like the lave. He looked as if he had an inkling of what was forthcoming, and ran whinging and craiking to his mither, who stood wiping her een wi’ her striped apron in a corner of the room. The terrified laddie clang to her knees, but she never offered to lend a helping hand, sae great was the salutary terror wi’ which I had inspired her. So I pu’d him awa frae her coats, to which he was clinging; and, laying him ower my knee, I gied him hipsie-dipsie in the presence of his mither, his sister, and Andrew Brand, who were looking on.

And thus hae I, who for eighteen years was ruled by my wife, got the upper hand; and ony man who is henpeckit as I hae been, should just tak the same plan, and his success will be as sure as mine. Andrew Brand aye said to me that a man should wear his ain breeks; and I can maintain, frae present experience, that a wiser saying is no to be found in the Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David. No that Maggie hasna tried nows and thans to recover her lost power, but I hae on thae occasions conduckit mysel wi’ sic firmness, that she has at last gien it up as a bad job, and is now as obedient a wife as ye’ll meet wi’ between this and Bothwell. The twa bairns, too, are just wonderfully changed, and are as raisonable as can be expeckit, a’ things considered. Let men, therefore, whether gentle or simple, follow my plan, and the word “henpeckit,” as Andrew Brand says, will soon slip out of the dictionair.

MY SISTER KATE.

BY ANDREW PICKEN.

There is a low road (but it is not much frequented, for it is terribly round about) that passes at the foot of the range of hills that skirt the long and beautiful gut or firth of the Clyde, in the west of Scotland; and as you go along this road, either up or down, the sea or firth is almost at your very side, the hills rising above you; and you are just opposite to the great black and blue mountains on the other side of the gut, that sweep in heavy masses, or jut out in bold capes, at the mouth of the deep lochs that run up the firth into the picturesque highlands of Argyleshire.

You may think of the scene what you please, because steam-boating has, of late years, profaned it somewhat into commonness, and defiled its pure air with filthy puffs of coal smoke; and because the Comet and all her unfortunate passengers were sunk to the bottom of this very part of the firth; and because, a little time previous, a whole boatful of poor Highland reaper girls were all run down in the night-time, while they were asleep, and drowned near the Clough lighthouse hard by; but if you were to walk this road by the seaside any summer afternoon, going towards the bathing village of Gourock, you would say, as you looked across to the Highlands, and up the Clyde towards the rocks of Dumbarton Castle, that there are few scenes more truly magnificent and interesting.

There is a little village exactly opposite to you, looking across the firth, which is called Dunoon, and contains the burying-place of the great house of Argyle; and which, surrounded by a patch of green cultivated land, sloping pleasantly from the sea, and cowering snugly by itself, with its picturesque cemetery, under the great blue hills frowning behind, looks, from across the firth, absolutely like a tasteful little haunt of the capricious spirit of romance.

Well, between this road on the lowland side of the firth, and the water’s-edge, and before it winds off round by the romantic seat of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, farther up, there stand, or stood, two or three small fishing cottages which, from the hills nearly over them, looked just like white shells, of a large size, dropped fancifully down upon the green common between the hills and the road. In these cottages, it was observed, the fishermen had numerous families, who, while young, assisted them in their healthful employment; and that the girls, of which there were a number, were so wild in their contented seclusion, that if any passenger on the road stopped to observe them, as they sat in groups on the green mending their father’s nets, they would take alarm, and rise and run off like fawns, and hide among the rocks by the sea, or trip back into the cottages. Now it happened, once on a time, that a great event took place to one of the cottager’s daughters, which, for a long period, deranged and almost destroyed the happy equality in which they had hitherto lived; and becoming the theme of discourse and inquiry concerning things beyond the sphere of the fisher people and all their neighbours as far as Gourock, introduced among them no small degree of ambition and discontent.

There was one of the fishermen, a remarkably decent, well disposed Highlandman, from the opposite shore of Argyleshire, named Martin M‘Leod, and he had two daughters, the youngest of which, as was no uncommon case, turned out to be remarkably and even delicately beautiful.

But nobody ever saw or thought anything about the beauty of Catherine M‘Leod, except it might be some of the growing young men in the neighbouring cottages, several of whom began, at times, to look at her with a sort of wonder, and seemed to feel a degree of awe in her company; while her family took an involuntary pride in her beyond all the others; and her eldest sister somehow imitated her in every thing, and continually quoted her talk, and trumpeted about among the neighbours what was said and done by “my sister Kate.”

Things continued in this way as Kate grew to womankind; and she was the liveliest little body about the place, and used to sing so divertingly at the house-end, as she busied herself about her father’s fishing gear, and ran up and down “among the brekans on the brae,” behind the cottages, or took her wanderings off all the way to the Clough lighthouse at the point. I say things continued in this way until a gentleman, who, it turned out, was all the way from London, came to lodge in Greenock, or Gourock, or Inverkip, or somewhere not very far distant; and, being a gentleman, and, of course, at liberty to do every sort of out-of-the-way thing that he pleased, he got a manner of coming down and wandering about among the cottages, and asking questions concerning whatever he chose of the fishermen; and then it was not long until he got his eyes upon Kate.

“The gentleman,” as her sister used to tell afterwards, “was perfectly ill, and smitten at once about our Kate. He was not able,” she said, “to take the least rest, but was down constantly about us for weeks; and then he got to talking to and walking with Kate, she linking her arm in his beneath the hill, just as it had been Sir Michael Stewart and my lady; and then such presents as he used to bring for her, bought in the grand shop of Bailie Macnicol, at Greenock; gowns, and shawls, and veils, and fine chip hats, never speaking of ribbons, and lace edging, and mob caps—perfectly beautiful.”

The whole of the fishermen’s daughters became mad with envy of poor Kate, and admiration of her new dress, which some said was mostly bought by her father after all, who wanted to have his daughter made a lady of; and now nothing was heard in the hamlet but murmurings and discontented complaints; every girl looking at herself in the little cracked glass that her father used to shave by, to see if she were pretty, and wishing and longing, not only for a lover of her own, but even for a gentleman. So, as matters grew serious, and the gentleman was fairly in love, old Martin M‘Leod, who looked sharply after Kate, behoved to have sundry conversations with the gentleman about her; and masters being appointed to teach her right things, which the fisher folks never heard of, but which were to turn her into a lady, Kate and the gentleman, after a time, were actually married in Greenock new church, and set off for London.

During all this time, there were various opinions among the fisher people, how that Kate never was particularly in love with the gentleman; and some even said that she was in love with somebody else (for pretty maidens must always be in love), or, at least, that some of the youths of the neighbourhood were in love with her; but then the old folks said, that love was only for gentle people who could afford to pay for it; and that when a gentleman was pleased to fall in love, no one had a right to say him nay, or pretend to set up against him. Some of the young women, to be sure, ventured to contest this doctrine, and cited various cases from the authority of printed ballads bought at the Greenock fair, at a halfpenny each; and also from the traditionary literature of Argyleshire, which was couched in the mellifluous numbers of the Gaelic language; but, however this might be, the fame of Catherine M‘Leod’s happy marriage and great fortune was noised abroad exceedingly, among the fisher people throughout these coasts, as well as about Gourock and all the parts adjacent.

As to the gentleman, it was found out that his name was Mr Pounteney, and that little Kate M‘Leod was now Mrs Pounteney, and a great London lady, but what quality of a gentleman Mr Pounteney really was, was a matter of much controversy and discussion. Some said that he was a great gentleman, and others thought that, from various symptoms, he was not a very great gentleman; some went so far as to say he was a lord or a prince, while others maintained that he was only a simple esquire.

Nothing, therefore, could be talked of wherever Flora M‘Leod went, but about “my sister Kate;” and she was quite in request everywhere, because she could talk of the romantic history and happy fortune of her lucky sister. Mrs Pounteney’s house in London, therefore, Mrs Pounteney’s grand husband, and Mrs Pounteney’s coach, excited the admiration and the discontent of all the fishermen’s daughters, for many miles round this romantic seacoast, and these quiet cottages under the hills, where the simple people live upon their fish, and did not know that they were happy. Many a long summer’s day, as the girls sat working their nets on a knoll towards the sea, the sun that shone warm upon their indolent limbs on the grass, and the breeze that blew from the firth, or swept round from the flowery woods of Ardgowan, seemed less grateful and delicious, from their discontented imaginings about the fortune of Mrs Pounteney; and many a sweet and wholesome supper of fresh boiled fish was made to lose its former relish, or was even embittered by obtrusive discourse about the fine wines and the gilded grandeur of “my sister Kate.” Even the fisher lads in the neighbourhood—fine fearless youths—found a total alteration in their sweethearts; their discourse was not relished, their persons were almost despised; and there was now no happiness found for a fisherman’s daughter, but what was at least to approach to the state of grandeur and felicity so fortunately obtained by “my sister Kate.”

The minds of Kate’s family were so carried by her great fortune, that vague wishes and discontented repinings followed their constant meditations upon her lucky lot. Flora had found herself above marrying a fisherman; and a young fellow called Bryce Cameron, who had long waited for her, and whose brother, Allan, was once a sweetheart of Kate’s herself, being long ago discarded; and she, not perceiving any chances of a gentleman making his appearance to take Bryce’s place, became melancholy and thoughtful; she began to fear that she was to have nobody, and her thoughts ran constantly after London and Mrs Pounteney. With these anxious wishes, vague hopes began to mix of some lucky turn to her own fortune, if she were only in the way of getting to be a lady; and at length she formed the high wish, and even the adventurous resolve, of going all the way to London, just to get one peep at her sister’s happiness.

When this ambition seized Flora M‘Leod, she let the old people have no rest, nor did she spare any exertion to get the means of making her proposed pilgrimage to London. In the course of a fortnight from its first serious suggestion, she, with a gold guinea in her pocket, and two one-pound notes of the Greenock Bank, besides other coins and valuables, and even a little old-fashioned Highland brooch, with which the quondam lover of her sister, Allan Cameron, had the temerity to intrust to her, to be specially returned into the hand of the great lady when she should see her, besides a hundred other charges and remembrances from the neighbours, she set off one dewy morning in summer, carrying her shoes and stockings in her hand, to make her way to London, to get a sight of everything great, and particularly of her happy sister Kate.

Many a weary mile did Flora M‘Leod walk, and ride, and sail, through unknown places, and in what she called foreign parts; for strange things and people met her eye, and long dull regions of country passed her like a rapid vision, as she was wheeled towards the great capital, and proper centre of England. After travelling to a distance that was to her perfectly amazing, she was set down in London, and inquired her way, in the best English she could command, into one of those long brick streets, of dark and dull gentility, to which she was directed; and after much trouble and some expense, at length found the door of her sister’s house. She stood awhile considering, on the steps of the mansion, and felt a sort of fear of lifting the big iron knocker that seemed to grin down upon her; for she was not in the habit of knocking at great folk’s doors, and almost trembled lest somebody from within would frown her into nothing, even by their high and lofty looks.

And yet she thought the house was not so dreadfully grand after all;—not at all such as she had imagined, for she had passed houses much bigger and grander than this great gentleman’s; it was not even the largest in its own street, and looked dull and dingy, and shut up with blinds and rails, having a sort of melancholy appearance.

But she must not linger, but see what was inside. She lifted up the iron knocker, and as it fell the very clang of it, and its echo inside, smote upon her heart with a sensation of strange apprehension. A powdered man opened it, and stared at her with an inquisitive and impertinent look, then saucily asked what she wanted. Flora courtesied low to the servant from perfect terror, saying she wanted to see Mrs Pounteney.

“And what can _you_ want with Mrs Pounteney, young woman, I should like to know?” said the fellow; for Flora neither looked like a milliner’s woman nor any other sort of useful person likely to be wanted by a lady.

Flora had laid various pretty plans in her own mind, about taking her sister by surprise, and seeing how she would look at her before she spoke, and so forth; at least she had resolved not to affront her by making herself known as her sister before the servants; but the man looked at her with such suspicion, and spoke so insolently, that she absolutely began to fear, from the interrogations of this fellow, that she would be refused admittance to her own sister, and was forced to explain and reveal herself before the outer door was fully opened to her. At length she was conducted, on tiptoe, along a passage, and then upstairs, until she was placed in a little back dressing-room. The servant then went into the drawing-room, where sat two ladies at opposite sides of the apartment, there to announce Flora’s message.

On a sofa, near the window, sat a neat youthful figure, extremely elegantly formed, but _petite_, with a face that need not be described, further than that the features were small and pretty, and that, as a whole, it was rich in the nameless expression of simple beauty. Her dress could not have been plainer, to be of silk of the best sort; but the languid discontent, if not melancholy, with which the female, yet quite in youth, gazed towards the window, or bent over a little silk netting with which she carelessly employed herself, seemed to any observer strange and unnatural at her time of life. At a table near the fire was seated a woman, almost the perfect contrast to this interesting figure, in the person of Mr Pounteney’s eldest sister, a hard-faced, business-like person, who, with pen and ink before her, seemed busy among a parcel of household accounts, and the characteristic accompaniment of a bunch of keys occasionally rattling at her elbow.

The servant approached, as if fearful of being noticed by “the old one,” as he was accustomed to call Miss Pounteney, and in a half whisper intimated to the little figure that a female wanted to see her.

“Eh! what!—what is it you say, John?” cried the lady among the papers, noticing this manœuvre of the servant.

“Nothing, Madam; it is a person that wants my lady.”

“Your lady, sirrah; it must be me!—Eh! what!”

“No, Madam; she wants to see Mrs Pounteney particularly.”

“Ah, John!” said the little lady on the sofa; “just refer her to Miss Pounteney. There is nobody can want me.”

“Wants to see Mrs Pounteney particularly!” resumed the sister-in-law: “how dare you bring in such a message, sirrah? Mrs Pounteney particularly, indeed! Who is she, sirrah! Who comes here with such a message while I am in the house?”

“You must be mistaken, John,” said the little lady sighing, who was once the lively Kate M‘Leod of the fishing cottage in Scotland; “just let Miss Pounteney speak to her, you need not come to me.”

“No, madam,” said the servant, addressing Miss Pounteney, the natural pertness of his situation now returning to overcome his dread of “the old one.” “This young person wants to see my mistress directly, and I have put her into her dressing-room; pray, ma’am, go,” he added, respectfully, to the listless Kate.

“Do you come here to give _your_ orders, sirrah?” exclaimed Miss Pounteney, rising like a fury, and kicking the footstool half way across the room, “and to put strange people of your own accord into any dressing-room in this house! and to talk of _your mistress_, and wanting to speak to her directly, and privately, while _I_ am here! I wonder what sister Becky would say, or Mr Pounteney, if he were at home!”

“Who is it, John? Do just bring her here, and put an end to this!” said Kate, imploringly, to the man.

“Madam,” said John at last to his trembling mistress, “it is your sister!”

“Who, John?” cried Kate, starting to her feet; “my sister Flora—my own sister, from Clyde side! Speak, John, are you sure?”

“Yes, Madam, your sister from Scotland.”

“Oh, where is she, where is she? Let me go!”

“No, no; you must be mistaken, John,” said the lady with the keys, stepping forward to interrupt the anxious Kate. “John, this is all a mistake,” she added, smoothly; “Mrs Pounteney has no sister! John, you may leave the room;” and she gave a determined look to the other sister, who stood astonished.

The moment the servant left the room, Miss Pounteney came forward, and stood in renewed rage over the fragile, melancholy Kate, and burst out with “What is this, Kate? Is it really possible, after what you know of my mind, and all our minds, that you have dared to bring your poor relations into my brother’s house? That it is not enough that we are to have the disgrace of your mean connections, but we are to have your sisters and brothers to no end coming into the very house, and sending up their beggarly names and designations by the very servants! Kate, I must not permit this. I will not—I shall not;” and she stamped with rage.

“Oh, Miss Pounteney,” said Kate, with clasped hands, “will you not let me go and see my sister? Will you just let me go and weep on the neck of my poor Flora? I will go to a private place—I will go to another house, if you please; I will do anything when I return to you, if I ever return, for I care not if I never come into this unhappy house more!” and, uttering this, almost with a shriek, she burst past the two women, and ran through the rooms to seek her sister.

Meantime, Flora had sat so long waiting, without seeing her sister, that she began to feel intense anxiety; and, fancying her little Kate wished to forget her, because she was poor, had worked herself up into a resolution of assumed coldness, when she heard a hurried step, and the door was instantly opened. Kate paused for a moment after her entrance, and stood gazing upon the companion of her youth, with a look of such passionate joy, that Flora’s intended coldness was entirely subdued; and the two sisters rushed into each other’s arms in all the ecstacy of sisterly love.

“Oh, Flora, Flora! my dear happy Flora!” cried Kate, when she could get words, after the first burst of weeping; “have you really come all the way to London to see me?—poor me!” and her tears and sobs were again like to choke her. “Kate—my dear little Kate!” said Flora, “this is not the way I expected to find you. Do not greet so dreadfully; surely you are not happy, Kate?”

“But _you_ are happy,” said Kate, weeping. “And how is my good Highland father, and mother, and my brother Daniel? Ah! I think, Flora, your clothes have the very smell of the seashore, and of the bark of the nets, and of the heather hills of Argyleshire. Alas the happy days you remind me of, Flora!”

“And so, Kate, you are not so _very_ happy, after all,” said Flora, looking incredulously in her face; “and you are so thin, and pale, and your eyes are so red; and yet you have such a grand house, Kate! Tell me if you are really not happy.”

“I have no house, Flora,” said Kate, after a little, “and, I may say, no husband. They are both completely ruled by his two vixen sisters, who kept house for him before he married me, and still have the entire ascendancy over him. My husband, too, is not naturally good tempered; yet he once loved me, and I might enjoy some little happiness in this new life, if he had the feeling, or the spirit, to treat me as his wife, and free himself and the house from the dominion of his sisters, especially the eldest. But I believe he is rather disappointed in his ambitious career, and in the hopes he entertained of matches for his sisters, and he is somewhat sour and unhappy; and I have to bear it all, for he is afraid of these women; and I, the youngest in the family, and the only one who has a chance of being good tempered, am, on account of my low origin, forced to bear the spleen of all in this unhappy house.”

“But, Kate, surely your husband would not behave so bad as to cast up to you that your father was a fisherman, when he took you from the bonnie seaside himself, and when he thought himself once so happy to get you?”

“Alas! he does indeed!—too often—too often—when he is crossed abroad, and when his sisters set him on; and it so humbles me, Flora, when I am sitting at his table, that I cannot lift my head; and I am so sad, and so heart-broken among them all!”

“Bless me! and can people be really so miserable,” said Flora, simply, “who have plenty of money, and silk dresses to wear every day they rise?”

“It is little you know, my happy Flora, of artificial life here in London,” said Kate, mournfully. “As for dress, I cannot even order one but as my sister-in-law chooses; and as for happiness, I have left it behind me on the beautiful banks of the Clyde. O that I were there again!”

“Poor little Kate!” said Flora, wistfully looking again in her sister’s face; “and is that the end of all your grand marriage, that has set a’ the lasses crazy, from the Fairlie Roads to Gourock Point? I think I’ll gang back and marry Bryce Cameron after a’.”

“Is Allan Cameron married yet?” said Kate, sadly. “When did you see blithe and bonnie Allan Cameron?—Alas the day!”

“He gave me this brooch to return to you, Kate,” said Flora, taking the brooch out of her bosom. “I wish he had not gien it to me for you, for you’re vexed enough already.”

“Ah! well you may say I am vexed enough,” said she, weeping and contemplating the brooch. “Tell Allan Cameron that I am sensible I did not use him well—that my vain heart was lifted up; but I have suffered for it; many a sad and sleepless night I have lain in my bed, and thought of the delightful days I spent near my father’s happy cottage in Scotland, and about you, and about Allan. Alas! just tell him not to think more of me; for I am a sad and sorry married woman, out of my own sphere, and afraid to speak to my own people, panting my heart out and dying by inches, like the pretty silver fish that floundered on the hard stones, after my father had taken them out of their own clear water.”

“God help you, Kate!” said Flora, rising; “you will break my heart with grief about you. Let me out of this miserable house! Let me leave you and all your grandeur, since I cannot help you; and I will pray for you, my poor Kate, every night at my bedside, when I get back to the bonnie shore of Argyleshire.”

Sad was the parting of the two weeping sisters, and many a kiss of fraternal affection embittered, yet sweetened, the hour; and anxious was Flora M‘Leod to turn her back upon the great city of London, and to journey northwards to her own home in Scotland.

It was a little before sundown, on a Saturday evening, shortly after this, that a buzz of steam let off at the Mid Quay of Greenock, indicated that a steamboat had come in; and it proved to be from the fair seaport of Liverpool, having on board Flora M‘Leod, just down from London. The boat as it passed had been watched by the cottagers where she lived up the Firth; and several of them, their day’s work being over, set out towards the Clough to see if there was any chance of meeting Flora.

Many were the congratulations, and more the inquiries, when they met Flora, lumbering homewards with her bundle and her umbrella, weary and looking anxiously out for her own sweet cottage by Clyde side. “Ah, Flora! is this you!” cried the whole at once; “and are you really here again! And how is your sister, and all the great people in London? And, indeed, it is very good of you not to look the least proud, after coming from such a grand place!”

With such congratulations was Flora welcomed again among the light-hearted fisher people in the West of Scotland. But it was observed that her tone was now quite altered, and her own humble contentment had completely returned. In short, to bring our story to a close, she was shortly after married to Bryce Cameron, and various other marriages soon followed; for she gave such an account of what she had seen with her eyes, that a complete revolution took place in the sentiments of the whole young people of the neighbourhood.

It was observed in the hamlet that the unhappy Mrs Pounteney was never named after this by any but with a melancholy shake of the head; the ambition of the girls to get gentlemen seemed quite extinguished, and Flora in time began to nurse children of her own in humble and pious contentment.—_The Dominie’s Legacy._

WAT THE PROPHET.

BY JAMES HOGG, “THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.”

About sixty years ago[4] there departed this life an old man, who, for sixty years previous to that, was known only by the name of Wat the Prophet. I am even uncertain what his real surname was, though he was familiarly known to the most of my relatives of that day, and I was intimately acquainted with his nephew and heir, whose name was Paterson,—yet I hardly think that was the prophet’s surname, but that the man I knew was a maternal nephew. So far, I am shortcoming at the very outset of my tale, for in truth I never heard him distinguished by any other name than Wat the Prophet.[5]

Footnote 4:

This interesting account of a very extraordinary character was contributed to the _Edinburgh Literary Journal_ in 1829.

Footnote 5:

The old prophet’s surname was Laidlaw, being of a race that has produced more singular characters than any of our country.

He must have been a very singular person in every respect. In his youth he was so much more clever and acute than his fellows, that he was viewed as a sort of phenomenon, or rather “a kind of being that had mair airt than his ain.” It was no matter what Wat tried, for either at mental or manual exertion he excelled; and his gifts were so miscellaneous, that it was no wonder his most intimate acquaintances rather stood in awe of him. At the sports of the field, at the exposition of any part of Scripture, at prayer, and at mathematics, he was altogether unequalled. By this, I mean in the sphere of his acquaintance in the circle in which he moved, for he was the son of a respectable farmer who had a small property. In the last-mentioned art his comprehension is said to have been truly wonderful. He seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of the science of figures from beginning to end, and needed but a glance at the rules to outgo his masters.

But this was not all. In all the labours of the field his progress was equally unaccountable. He could with perfect ease have mown as much hay as two of the best men, sown as much, reaped as much, shorn as many sheep, and smeared as many, and with a little extra exertion could have equalled the efforts of three ordinary men at any time. As for ploughing, or any work with horses, he would never put a hand to it, for he then said he had not the power of the labour himself. However unaccountable all this may be, it is no fabrication; I have myself heard several men tell, who were wont to shear and smear sheep with him, when he was a much older man than they, that even though he would have been engaged in some fervent demonstration, in spite of all they could do, “he was aye popping off twa sheep, or maybe three, for their ane.”

I could multiply anecdotes of this kind without number, but these were mere atoms of the prophet’s character—a sort of excrescences, which were nevertheless in keeping with the rest, being matchless of their kind. He was intended by his parents for the Church—that is the Church of the Covenant, to which they belonged. I know not if Wat had consented thereto, but his education tended that way. However, as he said himself, he was born for a higher destiny, which was to reveal the future will of God to mankind for ever and ever. I have been told that he committed many of his prophecies to writing; and I believe it, for he was a scholar, and a man of rather supernatural abilities; but I have never been able to find any of them. I have often heard fragments of them, but they were recited by ignorant country people, who, never having understood them themselves, could not make them comprehensible to others. But the history of his call to the prophecy I have so often heard, that I think I can state the particulars, although a little confused in my recollection of them.

This event occurred about this time one hundred years ago, on an evening in spring, as Wat was going down a wild glen, which I know full well. “I was in a contemplative mood,” he said (for he told it to any that asked him), “and was meditating on the mysteries of redemption, and doubting, grievously doubting, the merits of an atonement by blood; when, to my astonishment in such a place, there was one spoke to me close behind, saying, in the Greek language, ‘Is it indeed so? Is thy faith no better rooted?’

“I looked behind me, but, perceiving no one, my hair stood all on end, for I thought it was a voice from heaven; and, after gazing into the firmament, and all around me, I said fearfully, in the same language, ‘Who art thou that speakest?’ And the voice answered me again, ‘I am one who laid down my life, witnessing for the glorious salvation which thou art about to deny; turn, and behold me!’

“And I turned about, for the voice seemed still behind me, turn as I would, and at length I perceived dimly the figure of an old man, of singular aspect and dimensions, close by me. His form was exceedingly large and broad, and his face shone with benignity; his beard hung down to his girdle, and he had sandals on his feet, which covered his ankles. His right arm and his breast were bare, but he had a crimson mantle over his right shoulder, part of which covered his head, and came round his waist. Having never seen such a figure or dress, or countenance before, I took him for an angel, sent from above to rebuke me; so I fell at his feet to worship him, or rather to entreat forgiveness for a sin which I had not power to withstand. But he answered me in these words: ‘Rise up, and bow not to me, for I am thy fellow-servant, and a messenger from Him whom thou hast in thy heart denied. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. Come, I am commissioned to take thee into the presence of thy Maker and Redeemer.’

“And I said, ‘Sir, how speakest thou in this wise? God is in heaven, and we are upon the earth; and it is not given to mortal man to scale the heavenly regions, or come into the presence of the Almighty.’ And he said, ‘Have thy learning and thy knowledge carried thee no higher than this? Knowest thou not that God is present in this wild glen, the same as in the palaces of light and glory—that His presence surrounds us at this moment—and that He sees all our actions, hears our words, and knows the inmost thoughts of our hearts?’

“And I said, ‘Yes, I know it.’

“‘Then, are you ready and willing at this moment,’ said he, ‘to step into His presence, and avow the sentiments which you have of late been cherishing?’

“And I said, ‘I would rather have time to think the matter over again.’

“‘Alack! poor man!’ said he, ‘so you have never been considering that you have all this while been in His immediate presence, and have even been uttering thy blasphemous sentiments aloud to His face, when there was none to hear but He and thyself.’

“And I said, ‘Sir, a man cannot force his belief.’

“And he said, ‘Thou sayest truly; but I will endeavour to convince thee.’”

Here a long colloquy ensued about the external and internal evidences of the Christian religion, which took Wat nearly half a day to relate; but he still maintained his point. He asked his visitant twice who he was, but he declined telling him, saying he wanted his reason convinced, and not to take his word for anything.

Their conversation ended by this mysterious sage leading Wat away by a path which he did not know, which was all covered with a cloud of exceeding brightness. At length they came to a house like a common pavilion, which they entered, but all was solemn silence, and they heard nobody moving in it, and Wat asked his guide where they were now.

“This is the place where heavenly gifts are distributed to humanity,” said the reverend apostle; “but they are now no more required, being of no repute. No one asks for them, nor will they accept of them when offered, for worldly wisdom is all in all with the men of this age. Their preaching is a mere farce—an ostentatious parade, to show off great and shining qualifications, one-third of the professors not believing one word of what they assert. The gift of prophecy is denied and laughed at; and all revelation made to man by dreams or visions utterly disclaimed, as if the Almighty’s power of communicating with his creatures were not only shortened, but cut off for ever. This fountain of inspiration, once so crowded, is now, you see, a dreary solitude.”

“It was, in truth, a dismal-looking place, for in every chamber, as we passed along, there were benches and seats of judgment, but none to occupy them; the green grass was peeping through the seams of the flooring and chinks of the wall, and never was there a more appalling picture of desolation.

“At length, in the very innermost chamber, we came to three men sitting in a row, the middle one elevated above the others; but they were all sleeping at their posts, and looked as if they had slept there for a thousand years, for their garments were mouldy, and their faces ghastly and withered.

“I did not know what to do or say, for I looked at my guide, and he seemed overcome with sorrow; but thinking it was ill-manners for an intruder not to speak, I said, ‘Sirs, I think you are drowsily inclined?’ but none of them moved. At length my guide said, in a loud voice, ‘Awake, ye servants of the Most High! Or is your sleep to be everlasting?’

“On that they all opened their eyes at once, and stared at me, but their eyes were like the eyes of dead men, and no one of them moved a muscle, save the middlemost, who pointed with pale haggard hand to three small books, or scrolls, that lay on the bench before them.

“Then my guide said, ‘Put forth thine hand and choose one from these. They are all divine gifts, and in these latter days rarely granted to any of the human race.’ One was red as blood, the other pale, and the third green; the latter was farthest from me, and my guide said, ‘Ponder well before you make your choice. It is a sacred mystery, and from the choice you make, your destiny is fixed through time and eternity.’ I then stretched out my hand, and took the one farthest from me, and he said, ‘It is the will of the Lord; so let it be! That which you have chosen is the gift of the spirit of prophecy. From henceforth you must live a life of sufferance and tribulation, but your life shall be given you for a proof, in order that you may reveal to mankind all that is to befall them in the latter days.’ And I opened the book, and it was all written in mystic characters, which I could not decipher nor comprehend; and he said, ‘Put up the book in thy bosom, and preserve it as thou wouldst do the heart within thy breast; for as long as thou keepest that book, shall thy natural life remain, and the spirit of God remain with thee, and whatsoever thou sayest in the spirit, shall come to pass. But beware that thou deceive not thyself; for, if thou endeavour to pass off studied speeches, and words of the flesh for those of the spirit, woe be unto thee! It had been better for thee that thou never hadst been born. Put up the book; thou canst not understand it now, but it shall be given thee to understand it, for it is an oracle of the most high God, and its words and signs fail not. Go thy ways, and return to the house of thy fathers and thy kinsfolk.’

“And I said, ‘Sir, I know not where to go, for I cannot tell by what path you brought me hither.’ And he took me by the hand, and led me out by a back-door of the pavilion; and we entered a great valley, which was all in utter darkness, and I could perceive through the gloom that many people were passing the same way with ourselves; and I said, ‘Sir, this is dreadful! What place is this?’ And he said, ‘This is the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Many of those you see will grope on here for ever, and never get over, for they know not whether they go, or what is before them. But seest thou nothing beside?’

“And I said, ‘I see a bright and shining light beyond, whose rays reach even to this place.’—‘That,’ said he, ‘is the light of the everlasting Gospel; and to those to whom it is given to perceive that beacon of divine love, the passage over this valley is easy. I have shown it to you; but if you keep that intrusted to your care, you shall never enter this valley again, but live and reveal the will of God to man till mortality shall no more remain. You shall renew your age like the eagles, and be refreshed with the dews of renovation from the presence of the Lord. Sleep on now, and take your rest, for I must leave you again in this world of sin and sorrow. Be you strong, and overcome it, for men will hold you up to reproach and ridicule, and speak all manner of evil of you; but see that you join them not in their voluptuousness and iniquity, and the Lord be with you!’”

There is no doubt that this is a confused account of the prophet’s sublime vision, it being from second hands that I had it; and, for one thing, I know that one-half of his relation is not contained in it. For the consequences I can avouch. From that time forth he announced his mission, and began prophesying to such families as he was sent to. But I forgot to mention a very extraordinary fact, that this vision of his actually lasted nine days and nine nights, and at the end of that time he found himself on the very individual spot in the glen where the voice first spoke to him, and so much were his looks changed, that, when he went in, none of the family knew him.

He mixed no more with the men of the world, but wandered about in wilds and solitudes, and when in the spirit, he prophesied with a sublimity and grandeur never equalled. He had plenty of money, and some property to boot, which his father left him; but these he never regarded, but held on his course of severe abstemiousness, often subsisting on bread and water, and sometimes for days on water alone, from some motive known only to himself. He had a small black pony on which he rode many years, and which he kept always plump and fat. This little animal waited upon him in all his fastings and prayings with unwearied patience and affection. There is a well, situated on the south side of a burn, called the Earny Cleuch, on the very boundary between the shires of Dumfries and Selkirk. It is situated in a most sequestered and lonely place, and is called to this day the Prophet’s Well, from the many pilgrimages that he made to it; for it had been revealed to him in one of his visions that this water had some divine virtue, partaking of the nature of the Water of Life. At one time he lay beside this well for nine days and nights, the pony feeding beside him all that time, and though there is little doubt that he had some food with him, no body knew of any that he had; and it was believed that he fasted all that time, or at least subsisted, on the water of that divine well.

Some men with whom he was familiar—for indeed he was respected and liked by everybody, the whole tenor of his life having been so inoffensive;—some of his friends, I say, tried to reason him into a belief of his mortality, and that he would taste of death like other men; but that he treated as altogether chimerical, and not worth answering; when he did answer, it was by assuring them, that as long as he kept his mystic scroll, and could drink of his well, his body was proof against all the thousand shafts of death. His unearthly monitor appeared to him very frequently, and revealed many secrets to him, and at length disclosed to him that he was STEPHEN, the first martyr for the Gospel of Christ. Our prophet, in the course of time, grew so familiar with him, that he called him by the friendly name of Auld Steenie, and told his friends _when_ he had seen him, and _part_ of what he had told him, but never the whole.

When not in his visionary and prophetic moods, he sometimes indulged in a little relaxation, such as draught-playing and fishing; but in these, like other things, he quite excelled all compeers. He was particularly noted for killing salmon, by throwing the spear at a great distance. He gave all his fish away to poor people, or such as he favoured that were nearest to him at the time; so that, either for his prophetic gifts, or natural bounty, the prophet was always a welcome guest, whether to poor or rich.

He prophesied for the space of forty years, foretelling many things that came to pass in his lifetime, and many which have come to pass since his death. I have heard of a parable of his, to which I can do no justice, of a certain woman who had four sons, three of whom were legitimate, and the other not. The latter being rather uncultivated in his manners, and not so well educated as his brethren, his mother took for him ample possessions at a great distance from the rest of the family. The young blade succeeded in his farming speculations amazingly, and was grateful to his parent, and friendly with his brethren in all their interchanges of visits. But when the mother perceived his success, she sent and demanded a tenth from him of all he possessed. This rather astounded the young man, and he hesitated about compliance in parting with so much, at any rate. But the parent insisted on her right to demand that or any sum which she chose, and the teind she would have. The lad, not wishing to break with his parent and benefactor, bade her say no more about it, and he would give her the full value of that she demanded as of his own accord; but she would have it in no other way than as her own proper right. On this the headstrong and powerful knave took the law on his mother; won, and ruined her; so that she and her three remaining sons were reduced to beggary. Wat then continued—“And now it is to yourselves I speak this, ye children of my people, for this evil is nigh you, even at your doors. There are some here who will not see it, but there are seven here who will see the end of it, and then they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.”

It having been in a private family where this prophecy was delivered, they looked always forward with fear for some contention breaking out among them. But after the American war and its consequences, the whole of Wat’s parable was attributed thereto, and the good people relieved from the horrors of their impending and ruinous lawsuit.

One day he was prophesying about the judgment, when a young gentleman said to him, “O, sir, I wish you could tell us when the judgment will be.” “Alas! my man,” returned he, “that is what I cannot do; for of that day and of that hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels which are in heaven, but the Almighty Father alone. But there will be many judgments before the great and general one. In seven years there will be a judgment on Scotland. In seven times seven there will be a great and heavy judgment on all the nations of Europe; and in other seven times seven there will be a greater one on all the nations of the world; but whether or not that is to be the last judgment, God only knoweth.”

These are dangerous and difficult sayings of our prophet. I wonder what the Rev. Edward Irving would say about them, or if they approach in any degree to his calculations. Not knowing the year when this prophecy was delivered, it is impossible to reason on its fulfilment, but it is evident that both the first eras must be overpast. He always predicted ruin on the cause of Prince Charles Stuart, even when the whole country was ringing with applauses of his bravery and conquests. Our prophet detested the politics of that house, and announced ruin and desolation not only on the whole house, but on all who supported it. The only prophecy which I have yet seen in writing relates to that brave but unfortunate adventurer, and is contained in a letter to a Mrs Johnston, Moffat, dated October 1st, 1745, which must have been very shortly after the battle of Prestonpans. After some religious consolation, he says, “As for that man, Charles Stuart, let no spirit be cast down because of him, for he is only a meteor predicting a sudden storm, which is destined to quench his baleful light for ever. He is a broken pot; a vessel wherein God hath no pleasure. His boasting shall be turned into dread, and his pride of heart into astonishment. Terror shall make him afraid on every side; he shall look on his right hand, and there shall be none to know him; and on his left hand, and lo! destruction shall be ready at his side—even the first-born of death shall open his jaws to devour him. His confidence shall pass away for ever, even until the king of terrors arrive and scatter brimstone upon his habitation. His roots shall be dried up beneath, and the foliage of his boughs stripped off above, until his remembrance shall perish from the face of the earth. He shall be thrown into the deep waters, and the billows of God’s wrath shall pass over him. He shall fly to the mountains, but they shall not hide him; and to the islands, but they shall cast him out. Then shall he be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the land.

“Knowest thou not this of old time, that the triumph of the wicked is of short duration, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment? Though his excellency mount up into the heavens, and his pride reach the stars, yet shall he perish for ever, like a shadow that passeth away and is no more. They who have seen him in the pride of his might shall say, Where is he? Where now is the man that made the nations to tremble? Is he indeed passed away as a dream, and chased away as a vision of the night? Yea, the Lord, who sent him as a scourge on the wicked of the land, shall ordain the hand of the wicked to scourge him till his flesh and his soul shall depart, and his name be blotted out of the world. Therefore, my friend in the Lord, let none despond because of this man, but lay these things up in thy heart, and ponder on them, and when they are fulfilled, then shalt thou believe that the Lord sent me.”

From the tenor of this prophecy, it would appear that he has borrowed largely from some of the most sublime passages of Scripture, which could not fail of giving a tincture of sublimity to many of his sayings, so much admired by the country people. It strikes me there are some of these expressions literally from the Book of Job; but, notwithstanding, it must be acknowledged that some parts of it are peculiarly applicable to the after-fate of Charles Edward.

When old age began to steal on him, and his beloved friends to drop out of the world, one after another, he became extremely heavy-hearted at being obliged to continue for ever in the flesh. He never had any trouble; but he felt a great change take place in his constitution, which he did not expect, and it was then he became greatly concerned at being obliged to bear a body of fading flesh about until the end of time, often saying, that the flesh of man was never made to be immortal. In this dejected state he continued about two years, often entreating the Lord to resume that which He had given him, and leave him to the mercy of his Redeemer, like other men. Accordingly, his heavenly monitor appeared to him once more, and demanded the scroll of the spirit of prophecy, which was delivered up to him at the well in the wilderness; and then, with a holy admonition, he left him for ever on earth. Wat lived three years after this, cheerful and happy, and died in peace, old, and full of days, leaving a good worldly substance behind him.

THE SNOW-STORM.

BY PROFESSOR WILSON.

In summer there is beauty in the wildest moors of Scotland, and the wayfaring man who sits down for an hour’s rest beside some little spring that flows unheard through the brightened moss and water-cresses, feels his weary heart revived by the silent, serene, and solitary prospect. On every side sweet sunny spots of verdure smile towards him from among the melancholy heather; unexpectedly in the solitude a stray sheep, it may be with its lambs, starts half-alarmed at his motionless figure; insects, large, bright, and beautiful, come careering by him through the desert air; nor does the wild want its own songsters,—the gray linnet, fond of the blooming furze, and now and then the lark mounting up to heaven above the summits of the green pastoral hills. During such a sunshiny hour, the lonely cottage on the waste seems to stand in a paradise; and as he rises to pursue his journey, the traveller looks back and blesses it with a mingled emotion of delight and envy. There, thinks he, abide the children of Innocence and Contentment, the two most benign spirits that watch over human life.

But other thoughts arise in the mind of him who may chance to journey through the same scene in the desolation of winter. The cold bleak sky girdles the moor as with a belt of ice—life is frozen in air and on earth. The silence is not of repose but extinction; and should a solitary human dwelling catch his eye, half buried in the snow, he is sad for the sake of them whose destiny it is to abide far from the cheerful haunts of men, shrouded up in melancholy, by poverty held in thrall, or pining away in unvisited and untended disease.

But, in good truth, the heart of human life is but imperfectly discovered from its countenance; and before we can know what the summer or what the winter yields for enjoyment or trial to our country’s peasantry, we must have conversed with them in their fields and by their firesides, and made ourselves acquainted with the powerful ministry of the seasons, not over those objects alone that feed the eye and the imagination, but over all the incidents, occupations, and events, that modify or constitute the existence of the poor.

I have a short and simple story to tell of the winter life of the moorland cottager—a story but of one evening—with few events and no single catastrophe—which may haply please those hearts whose delight it is to think on the humble underplots that are carrying on in the great drama of life.

Two cottagers, husband and wife, were sitting by their cheerful peat-fire one winter evening, in a small lonely hut on the edge of a wide moor, at some miles’ distance from any other habitation. There had been, at one time, several huts of the same kind erected close together, and inhabited by families of the poorest class of day-labourers, who found work among the distant farms, and at night returned to dwellings which were rent-free, with their little gardens won from the waste. But one family after another had dwindled away, and the turf-built huts had all fallen into ruins, except one that had always stood in the centre of this little solitary village, with its summer-walls covered with the richest honeysuckles, and in the midst of the brightest of all the gardens. It alone now sent up its smoke into the clear winter sky—and its little end window, now lighted up, was the only ground-star that shone towards the belated traveller, if any such ventured to cross, on a winter night, a scene so dreary and desolate. The affairs of the small household were all arranged for the night. The little rough pony, that had drawn in a sledge, from the heart of the Black-moss, the fuel by whose blaze the cottars were now sitting cheerily, and the little Highland cow, whose milk enabled them to live, were standing amicably together, under cover of a rude shed, of which one side was formed by the peat-stack, and which was at once byre, and stable, and hen-roost. Within, the clock ticked cheerfully as the fire-light reached its old oak-wood case, across the yellow-sanded floor; and a small round table stood between, covered with a snow-white cloth, on which were milk and oat-cakes, the morning, mid-day, and evening meal of these frugal and contented cottars. The spades and the mattocks of the labourer were collected into one corner, and showed that the succeeding day was the blessed Sabbath; while on the wooden chimneypiece was seen lying an open Bible ready for family worship.

The father and the mother were sitting together without opening their lips, but with their hearts overflowing with happiness, for on this Saturday night they were, every minute, expecting to hear at the latch the hand of their only daughter, a maiden of about fifteen years, who was at service with a farmer over the hills. This dutiful child was, as they knew, to bring home to them “her sair-won penny fee,” a pittance which, in the beauty of her girlhood, she earned singing at her work, and which, in the benignity of that sinless time, she would pour with tears into the bosoms she so dearly loved. Forty shillings a-year were all the wages of sweet Hannah Lee; but though she wore at her labour a tortoise-shell comb in her auburn hair, and though in the kirk none were more becomingly arrayed than she, one half at least of her earnings were to be reserved for the holiest of all purposes; and her kind, innocent heart was gladdened when she looked on the little purse that was, on the long-expected Saturday night, to be taken from her bosom, and put, with a blessing, into the hand of her father, now growing old at his daily toils.

Of such a child the happy cottars were thinking in their silence. And well, indeed, might they be called happy. It is at that sweet season that filial piety is most beautiful. Their own Hannah had just outgrown the mere unthinking gladness of childhood, but had not yet reached that time when inevitable selfishness mixes with the pure current of love. She had begun to think on what her affectionate heart had felt so long; and when she looked on the pale face and bending frame of her mother, on the deepening wrinkles and whitening hairs of her father, often would she lie weeping for their sakes on her midnight bed, and wish that she were beside them as they slept, that she might kneel down and kiss them, and mention their names over and over again in her prayer. The parents whom before she had only loved, her expanding heart now also venerated. With gushing tenderness was now mingled a holy fear and an awful reverence. She had discerned the relation in which she, an only child, stood to her poor parents, now that they were getting old, and there was not a passage in Scripture that spake of parents or of children, from Joseph sold into slavery to Mary weeping below the Cross, that was not written, never to be obliterated, on her uncorrupted heart.

The father rose from his seat, and went to the door to look out into the night. The stars were in thousands, and the full moon was risen. It was almost light as day, and the snow, that seemed encrusted with diamonds, was so hardened by the frost, that his daughter’s homeward feet would leave no mark on its surface. He had been toiling all day among the distant Castle-woods, and, stiff and wearied as he now was, he was almost tempted to go to meet his child; but his wife’s kind voice dissuaded him, and, returning to the fireside, they began to talk of her whose image had been so long passing before them in their silence.

“She is growing up to be a bonny lassie,” said the mother; “her long and weary attendance on me during my fever last spring kept her down a while—but now she is sprouting fast and fair as a lily, and may the blessing of God be as dew and as sunshine to our sweet flower all the days she bloometh upon this earth.”

“Ay, Agnes,” replied the father, “we are not very old yet—though we are getting older—and a few years will bring her to woman’s estate; and what thing on this earth, think ye, human or brute, would ever think of injuring her? Why, I was speaking about her yesterday to the minister, as he was riding by, and he told me that none answered at the examination in the kirk so well as Hannah. Poor thing—I well think she has all the Bible by heart—indeed, she has read but little else—only some stories, too true ones, of the blessed martyrs, and some o’ the auld sangs o’ Scotland, in which there is nothing but what is good, and which, to be sure, she sings, God bless her, sweeter than any laverock.”

“Ay,—were we both to die this very night, she would be happy. Not that she would forget us all the days of her life. But have you not seen, husband, that God always makes the orphan happy? None so little lonesome as they! They come to make friends o’ all the bonny and sweet things in the world around them, and all the kind hearts in the world make friends o’ them. They come to know that God is more especially the Father o’ them on earth whose parents he has taken up to heaven; and therefore it is that they, for whom so many have fears, fear not at all for themselves, but go dancing and singing along like children whose parents are both alive. Would it not be so with our dear Hannah? So douce and thoughtful a child—but never sad or miserable—ready, it is true, to shed tears for little, but as ready to dry them up and break out into smiles! I know not why it is, husband, but this night my heart warms towards her beyond usual. The moon and stars are at this moment looking down upon her, and she looking up to them, as she is glinting homewards over the snow. I wish she were but here, and taking the comb out o’ her bonny hair, and letting it all fall down in clusters before the fire, to melt away the cranreuch!”

While the parents were thus speaking of their daughter, a loud sough of wind came suddenly over the cottage, and the leafless ash-tree under whose shelter it stood, creaked and groaned dismally as it passed by. The father started up, and, going again to the door, saw that a sudden change had come over the face of the night. The moon had nearly disappeared, and was just visible in a dim, yellow, glimmering den in the sky. All the remote stars were obscured, and only one or two were faintly seen in a sky that half an hour before was perfectly cloudless, but that was now driving with rack, and mist, and sleet, the whole atmosphere being in commotion. He stood for a single moment to observe the direction of this unforeseen storm, and then hastily asked for his staff. “I thought I had been more weather-wise—a storm is coming down from the Cairnbrae-hawse, and we shall have nothing but a wild night.” He then whistled on his dog—an old sheep-dog, too old for its former labours—and set off to meet his daughter, who might then, for aught he knew, be crossing the Black-moss. The mother accompanied her husband to the door, and took a long frightened look at the angry sky. As she kept gazing, it became still more terrible. The last shred of blue was extinguished, the wind went whirling in roaring eddies, and great flakes of snow circled about in the middle air, whether drifted up from the ground, or driven down from the clouds, the fear-stricken mother knew not, but she at least knew that it seemed a night of danger, despair, and death. “Lord have mercy on us, James, what will become of our poor bairn!” But her husband heard not her words, for he was already out of sight in the snow-storm, and she was left to the terror of her own soul in that lonesome cottage.

Little Hannah Lee had left her master’s house, soon as the rim of the great moon was seen by her eyes, that had been long anxiously watching it from the window, rising, like a joyful dream, over the gloomy mountain-tops; and all by herself she tripped along beneath the beauty of the silent heaven. Still as she kept ascending and descending the knolls that lay in the bosom of the glen, she sang to herself a song, a hymn, or a psalm, without the accompaniment of the streams, now all silent in the frost; and ever and anon she stopped to try to count the stars that lay in some more beautiful part of the sky, or gazed on the constellations that she knew, and called them, in her joy, by the names they bore among the shepherds. There were none to hear her voice, or see her smiles, but the ear and eye of Providence. As on she glided, and took her looks from heaven, she saw her own little fireside—her parents waiting for her arrival—the Bible opened for worship—her own little room kept so neatly for her, with its mirror hanging by the window, in which to braid her hair by the morning light—her bed prepared for her by her mother’s hand—the primroses in her garden peeping through the snow—old Tray, who ever welcomed her home with his dim white eyes—the pony and the cow;—friends all, and inmates of that happy household. So stepped she along, while the snow diamonds glittered around her feet, and the frost wove a wreath of lucid pearls round her forehead.

She had now reached the edge of the Black-moss, which lay half-way between her master’s and her father’s dwelling, when she heard a loud noise coming down Glen-Scrae, and in a few seconds she felt on her face some flakes of snow. She looked up the glen, and saw the snow-storm coming down fast as a flood. She felt no fears; but she ceased her song; and had there been a human eye to look upon her there, it might have seen a shadow on her face. She continued her course, and felt bolder and bolder every step that brought her nearer to her parents’ house. But the snow-storm had now reached the Black-moss, and the broad line of light that had lain in the direction of her home was soon swallowed up, and the child was in utter darkness. She saw nothing but the flakes of snow, interminably intermingled, and furiously wafted in the air, close to her head; she heard nothing but one wild, fierce, fitful howl. The cold became intense, and her little feet and hands were fast being benumbed into insensibility.

“It is a fearful change,” muttered the child to herself; but still she did not fear, for she had been born in a moorland cottage, and lived all her days among the hardships of the hills. “What will become of the poor sheep!” thought she,—but still she scarcely thought of her own danger, for innocence, and youth, and joy, are slow to think of aught evil befalling themselves, and, thinking benignly of all living things, forget their own fear in their pity for others’ sorrow. At last, she could no longer discern a single mark on the snow, either of human steps, or of sheep-track, or the footprint of a wildfowl. Suddenly, too, she felt out of breath and exhausted, and, shedding tears for herself at last, sank down in the snow.

It was now that her heart began to quake with fear. She remembered stories of shepherds lost in the snow, of a mother and a child frozen to death on that very moor—and in a moment she knew that she was to die. Bitterly did the poor child weep, for death was terrible to her, who, though poor, enjoyed the bright little world of youth and innocence. The skies of heaven were dearer than she knew to her—so were the flowers of earth. She had been happy at her work, happy in her sleep,—happy in the kirk on Sabbath. A thousand thoughts had the solitary child,—and in her own heart was a spring of happiness, pure and undisturbed as any fount that sparkles unseen all the year through, in some quiet nook among the pastoral hills. But now there was to be an end of all this—she was to be frozen to death—and lie there till the thaw might come; and then her father would find her body, and carry it away to be buried in the kirk-yard.

The tears were frozen on her cheeks as soon as shed; and scarcely had her little hands strength to clasp themselves together, as the thought of an overruling and merciful Lord came across her heart. Then, indeed, the fears of this religious child were calmed, and she heard without terror the plover’s wailing cry, and the deep boom of the bittern sounding in the moss. “I will repeat the Lord’s Prayer;” and, drawing her plaid more closely around her, she whispered, beneath its ineffectual cover,—“Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Had human aid been within fifty yards, it could have been of no avail—eye could not see her, ear could not hear her in that howling darkness. But that low prayer was heard in the centre of eternity—and that little sinless child was lying in the snow, beneath the all-seeing eye of God.

The maiden, having prayed to her Father in heaven, then thought of her father on earth. Alas! they were not far separated! The father was lying but a short distance from his child; he too had sunk down in the drifting snow, after having, in less than an hour, exhausted all the strength of fear, pity, hope, despair, and resignation, that could rise in a father’s heart, blindly seeking to rescue his only child from death, thinking that one desperate exertion might enable them to perish in each other’s arms. There they lay, within a stone’s-throw of each other, while a huge snow-drift was every moment piling itself up into a more insurmountable barrier between the dying parent and his dying child.

There was all this while a blazing fire in the cottage, a white-spread table, and beds prepared for the family to lie down in peace. Yet was she who sat therein more to be pitied than the old man and the child stretched upon the snow. “I will not go to seek them—that would be tempting Providence, and wilfully putting out the lamp of life. No; I will abide here, and pray for their souls!” Then as she knelt down, looked she at the useless fire burning away so cheerfully, when all she loved might be dying of cold; and unable to bear the thought, she shrieked out a prayer, as if she might pierce the sky up to the very throne of God, and send with it her own miserable soul to plead before Him for the deliverance of her child and husband. She then fell down in blessed forgetfulness of all trouble, in the midst of the solitary cheerfulness of that bright-burning hearth, and the Bible, which she had been trying to read in the pauses of her agony, remained clasped in her hands.

Hannah Lee had been a servant for more than six months, and it was not to be thought that she was not beloved in her master’s family. Soon after she had left the house, her master’s son, a youth of about eighteen years, who had been among the hills looking after the sheep, came home, and was disappointed to find that he had lost an opportunity of accompanying Hannah part of the way to her father’s cottage. But the hour of eight had gone by, and not even the company of young William Grieve could induce the kind-hearted daughter to delay setting out on her journey a few minutes beyond the time promised to her parents. “I do not like the night,” said William; “there will be a fresh fall of snow soon, or the witch of Glen-Scrae is a liar, for a snow-cloud is hanging o’er the Birch-tree-linn, and it may be down to the Black-moss as soon as Hannah Lee.” So he called his two sheep-dogs that had taken their place under the long table before the window, and set out, half in joy, half in fear, to overtake Hannah, and see her safely across the Black-moss.

The snow began to drift so fast, that before he had reached the head of the glen, there was nothing to be seen but a little bit of the wooden rail of the bridge across the Sauch-burn. William Grieve was the most active shepherd in a large pastoral parish; he had often passed the night among the wintry hills for the sake of a few sheep, and all the snow that ever fell from heaven would not have made him turn back when Hannah Lee was before him, and, as his terrified heart told him, in imminent danger of being lost. As he advanced, he felt that it was no longer a walk of love or friendship, for which he had been glad of an excuse. Death stared him in the face, and his young soul, now beginning to feel all the passions of youth, was filled with frenzy. He had seen Hannah every day—at the fireside—at work—in the kirk—on holidays—at prayers—bringing supper to his aged parents—smiling and singing about the house from morning till night. She had often brought his own meal to him among the hills; and he now found that, though he had never talked to her about love, except smilingly and playfully, he loved her beyond father or mother, or his own soul. “I will save thee, Hannah,” he cried, with a loud sob, “or lie down beside thee in the snow—and we will die together in our youth.” A wild whistling wind went by him, and the snow=flakes whirled so fiercely round his head, that he staggered on for a while in utter blindness. He knew the path that Hannah must have taken, and went forwards shouting aloud, and stopping every twenty yards to listen for a voice. He sent his well-trained dogs over the snow in all directions—repeating to them her name, “Hannah Lee,” that the dumb animals might, in their sagacity, know for whom they were searching; and, as they looked up in his face, and set off to scour the moor, he almost believed that they knew his meaning (and it is probable they did), and were eager to find in her bewilderment the kind maiden by whose hand they had so often been fed. Often went they off into the darkness, and as often returned, but their looks showed that every quest had been in vain. Meanwhile the snow was of a fearful depth, and falling without intermission or diminution. Had the young shepherd been thus alone, walking across the moor on his ordinary business, it is probable that he might have been alarmed for his own safety; nay, that, in spite of all his strength and agility, he might have sunk down beneath the inclemency of the night, and perished. But now the passion of his soul carried him with supernatural strength along, and extricated him from wreath and pitfall. Still there was no trace of poor Hannah Lee; and one of his dogs at last came close to his feet, worn out entirely, and afraid to leave its master, while the other was mute, and, as the shepherd thought, probably unable to force its way out of some hollow, or through some floundering drift.

Then he all at once knew that Hannah Lee was dead, and dashed himself down in the snow in a fit of passion. It was the first time that the youth had ever been sorely tried; all his hidden and unconscious love for the fair lost girl had flowed up from the bottom of his heart, and at once the sole object which had blessed his life and made him the happiest of the happy, was taken away and cruelly destroyed; so that, sullen, wrathful, baffled, and despairing, there he lay cursing his existence, and in too great agony to think of prayer. “God,” he then thought, “has forsaken me, and why should He think on me, when He suffers one so good and beautiful as Hannah to be frozen to death?” God thought both of him and Hannah; and through His infinite mercy forgave the sinner in his wild turbulence of passion. William Grieve had never gone to bed without joining in prayer, and he revered the Sabbath-day and kept it holy. Much is forgiven to the human heart by Him who so fearfully framed it; and God is not slow to pardon the love which one human being bears to another, in his frailty—even though that love forget or arraign His own unsleeping providence. His voice has told us to love one another—and William loved Hannah in simplicity, innocence, and truth. That she should perish was a thought so dreadful, that, in its agony, God seemed a ruthless being. “Blow—blow—blow—and drift us up for ever—we cannot be far asunder—Oh, Hannah—Hannah, think ye not that the fearful God has forsaken us?”

As the boy groaned these words passionately through his quivering lips, there was a sudden lowness in the air, and he heard the barking of his absent dog, while the one at his feet hurried off in the direction of the sound, and soon loudly joined the cry. It was not a bark of surprise, or anger, or fear—but of recognition and love. William sprang up from his bed in the snow, and, with his heart knocking at his bosom even to sickness, he rushed headlong through the drifts with a giant’s strength, and fell down, half dead with joy and terror, beside the body of Hannah Lee.

But he soon recovered from that fit, and, lifting the cold corpse in his arms, he kissed her lips, and her cheeks, and her forehead, and her closed eyes, till, as he kept gazing on her face in utter despair, her head fell back on his shoulder, and a long deep sigh came from her inmost bosom. “She is yet alive, thank God!”—and, as that expression left his lips for the first time that night, he felt a pang of remorse: “I said, O God, that Thou hadst forsaken us—I am not worthy to be saved; but let not this maiden perish, for the sake of her parents, who have no other child.” The distracted youth prayed to God with the same earnestness as if he had been beseeching a fellow-creature, in whose hand was the power of life and of death. The presence of the Great Being was felt by him in the dark and howling wild, and strength was imparted to him as to a deliverer. He bore along the fair child in his arms, even as if she had been a lamb. The snow-drift blew not; the wind fell dead; a sort of glimmer, like that of an upbreaking and disparting storm, gathered about him; his dogs barked, and jumped, and burrowed joyfully in the snow; and the youth, strong in sudden hope, exclaimed, “With the blessing of God, who has not deserted us in our sore distress, will I carry thee, Hannah, in my arms, and lay thee down alive in the house of thy father.” At this moment there were no stars in heaven, but she opened her dim blue eyes upon him in whose bosom she was unconsciously lying, and said, as in a dream, “Send the ribbon that ties up my hair as a keepsake to William Grieve.” “She thinks that she is on her deathbed, and forgets not the son of her master. It is the voice of God that tells me she will not now die, and that, under His grace, I shall be her deliverer.”

The short-lived rage of the storm was soon over, and William could attend to the beloved being on his bosom. The warmth of his heart seemed to infuse life into hers; and, as he gently placed her feet on the snow, till he muffled her up in his plaid, as well as in her own, she made an effort to stand, and, with extreme perplexity and bewilderment, faintly inquired where she was, and what fearful misfortune had befallen them? She was, however, too weak to walk; and, as her young master carried her along, she murmured, “O William! what if my father be in the moor?—For if you, who need care so little about me, have come hither, as I suppose, to save my life, you may be sure that my father sat not within doors during the storm.” As she spoke, it was calm below, but the wind was still alive in the upper air, and cloud, rack, mist, and sleet were all driving about in the sky. Out shone for a moment the pallid and ghostly moon, through a rent in the gloom, and by that uncertain light came staggering forward the figure of a man. “Father—father!” cried Hannah—and his gray hairs were already on her cheek. The barking of the dogs, and the shouting of the young shepherd, had struck his ear, as the sleep of death was stealing over him, and, with the last effort of benumbed nature, he had roused himself from that fatal torpor, and pressed through the snow-wreath that had separated him from his child. As yet they knew not of the danger each had endured, but each judged of the other’s sufferings from their own; and father and daughter regarded one another as creatures rescued, and hardly yet rescued, from death.

But a few minutes ago, and the three human beings who loved each other so well, and now feared not to cross the moor in safety, were, as they thought, on their deathbeds. Deliverance now shone upon them all like a gentle fire, dispelling that pleasant but deadly drowsiness; and the old man was soon able to assist William Grieve in leading Hannah along through the snow. Her colour and her warmth returned, and her lover—for so might he well now be called—felt her heart gently beating against his side. Filled as that heart was with gratitude to God, joy in her deliverance, love to her father, and purest affection for her master’s son, never before had the innocent maiden known what was happiness, and never more was she to forget it. The night was now almost calm, and fast returning to its former beauty, when the party saw the first twinkle of the fire through the low window of the Cottage of the Moor. They soon were at the garden gate, and, to relieve the heart of the wife and mother within, they talked loudly and cheerfully—naming each other familiarly, and laughing between, like persons who had known neither danger nor distress.

No voice answered from within—no footstep came to the door, which stood open as when the father had left it in his fear, and now he thought with affright that his wife, feeble as she was, had been unable to support the loneliness, and had followed him out into the night, never to be brought home alive. As they bore Hannah into the house, this fear gave way to worse, for there upon the hard clay floor lay the mother upon her face, as if murdered by some savage blow. She was in the same deadly swoon into which she had fallen on her husband’s departure three hours before. The old man raised her up, and her pulse was still—so was her heart—her face pale and sunken—and her body cold as ice. “I have recovered a daughter,” said the old man, “but I have lost a wife;” and he carried her with a groan to the bed, on which he laid her lifeless body. The sight was too much for Hannah, worn out as she was, and who had hitherto been able to support herself in the delightful expectation of gladdening her mother’s heart by her safe arrival. She, too, now swooned away, and, as she was placed on the bed beside her mother, it seemed, indeed, that Death, disappointed of his prey on the wild moor, had seized it in the cottage and by the fireside. The husband knelt down by the bedside, and held his wife’s icy hand in his, while William Grieve, appalled and awe-stricken, hung over his Hannah, and inwardly implored God that the night’s wild adventure might not have so ghastly an end. But Hannah’s young heart soon began once more to beat—and, soon as she came to her recollection, she rose up with a face whiter than ashes and free from all smiles, as if none had ever played there, and joined her father and young master in their efforts to restore her mother to life.

It was the mercy of God that had struck her down to the earth, insensible to the shrieking winds, and the fears that would otherwise have killed her. Three hours of that wild storm had passed over her head, and she heard nothing more than if she had been asleep in a breathless night of the summer dew. Not even a dream had touched her brain, and when she opened her eyes, which, as she thought, had been but a moment shut, she had scarcely time to recall to her recollection the image of her husband rushing out into the storm, and of a daughter therein lost, till she beheld that very husband kneeling tenderly by her bedside, and that very daughter smoothing the pillow on which her aching temples reclined. But she knew from the white steadfast countenances before her that there had been tribulation and deliverance, and she looked on the beloved beings ministering by her bed, as more fearfully dear to her from the unimagined danger from which she felt assured they had been rescued by the arm of the Almighty.

There is little need to speak of returning recollection, and returning strength. They had all now power to weep, and power to pray. The Bible had been lying in its place ready for worship, and the father read aloud that chapter in which is narrated our Saviour’s act of miraculous power by which He saved Peter from the sea. Soon as the solemn thoughts awakened by that act of mercy, so similar to that which had rescued themselves from death, had subsided, and they had all risen up from prayer, they gathered themselves in gratitude round the little table which had stood so many hours spread; and exhausted nature was strengthened and restored by a frugal and simple meal, partaken of in silent thankfulness. The whole story of the night was then calmly recited; and when the mother heard how the stripling had followed her sweet Hannah into the storm, and borne her in his arms through a hundred drifted heaps—and then looked upon her in her pride, so young, so innocent, and so beautiful, she knew, that were the child indeed to become an orphan, there was one who, if there was either trust in nature or truth in religion, would guard and cherish her all the days of her life.

It was not nine o’clock when the storm came down from Glen-Scrae upon the Black-moss, and now in a pause of silence the clock struck twelve. Within these three hours William and Hannah had led a life of trouble and of joy, that had enlarged and kindled their hearts within them; and they felt that henceforth they were to live wholly for each other’s sakes. His love was the proud and exulting love of a deliverer, who, under Providence, had saved from the frost and the snow, the innocence and the beauty of which his young passionate heart had been so desperately enamoured; and he now thought of his own Hannah Lee ever more moving about in his father’s house, not as a servant, but as a daughter—and, when some few happy years had gone by, his own most beautiful and loving wife. The innocent maiden still called him her young master, but was not ashamed of the holy affection which she now knew that she had long felt for the fearless youth on whose bosom she had thought herself dying in that cold and miserable moor. Her heart leapt within her when she heard her parents bless him by his name; and when he took her hand into his before them, and vowed before that Power who had that night saved them from the snow, that Hannah Lee should ere long be his wedded wife, she wept and sobbed as if her heart would break in a fit of strange and insupportable happiness.

The young shepherd rose to bid them farewell—“My father will think I am lost,” said he, with a grave smile, “and my Hannah’s mother knows what it is to fear for a child.” So nothing was said to detain him, and the family went with him to the door. The skies smiled as serenely as if a storm had never swept before the stars; the moon was sinking from her meridian, but in cloudless splendour; and the hollow of the hills was hushed as that of heaven. Danger there was none over the placid night-scene; the happy youth soon crossed the Black-moss, now perfectly still; and, perhaps, just as he was passing, with a shudder of gratitude, the very spot where his sweet Hannah Lee had so nearly perished, she was lying down to sleep in her innocence, or dreaming of one now dearer to her than all on earth but her parents.

LOVE AT ONE GLIMPSE; _OR, THE GLASGOW GENTLEMAN AND THE LADY_.

Some years ago, there used to be pointed out, upon the streets of Glasgow, a man whose intellect had been unsettled upon a very strange account. When a youth, he had happened to pass a lady on a crowded throughfare—a lady whose extreme beauty, though dimmed by the intervention of a veil, and seen but for a moment, made an indelible impression upon his mind. This lovely vision shot rapidly past him, and was in an instant lost amidst the commonplace crowd through which it moved. He was so confounded by the tumult of his feelings, that he could not pursue, or even attempt to see it again. Yet he never afterwards forgot it.

With a mind full of distracting thoughts, and a heart filled alternately with gushes of pleasure and of pain, the man slowly left the spot where he had remained for some minutes as it were thunderstruck. He soon after, without being aware of what he wished, or what he was doing, found himself again at the place. He came to the very spot where he had stood when the lady passed, mused for some time about it, went to a little distance, and then came up as he had come when he met the exquisite subject of his reverie—unconsciously deluding himself with the idea that this might recall her to the spot. She came not; he felt disappointed. He tried again; still she abstained from passing. He continued to traverse the place till the evening, when the street became deserted. By-and-by, he was left altogether alone. He then saw that all his fond efforts were vain, and he left the silent, lonely street at midnight, with a soul as desolate as that gloomy terrace.

For weeks afterwards he was never off the streets. He wandered hither and thither throughout the town, like a forlorn ghost. In particular, he often visited the place where he had first seen the object of his abstracted thoughts, as if he considered that he had a better chance of seeing her there than anywhere else. He frequented every place of public amusement to which he could purchase admission; and he made the tour of all the churches in the town. All was in vain. He never again placed his eyes upon that angelic countenance. She was ever present to his mental optics, but she never appeared in a tangible form. Without her essential presence, all the world beside was to him as a blank—a wilderness.

Madness invariably takes possession of the mind which broods over much or over long upon some engrossing idea. So did it prove with this singular lover. He grew “innocent,” as the people of this country tenderly phrase it. His insanity, however, was little more than mere abstraction. The course of his mind was stopped at a particular point. After this he made no further progress in any intellectual attainment. He acquired no new ideas. His whole soul stood still. He was like a clock stopped at a particular hour, with some things, too, about him, which, like the motionless indices of that machine, pointed out the date of the interruption. As, for instance, he ever after wore a peculiarly long-backed and high-necked coat, as well as a neckcloth of a particular spot—being the fashion of the year when he saw the lady. Indeed, he was a sort of living memorial of the dress, gait, and manners of a former day. It was evident that he clung with a degree of fondness to every thing which bore relation to the great incident of his life. Nor could he endure any thing that tended to cover up or screen from his recollection that glorious yet melancholy circumstance. He had the same feeling of veneration for that day, that circumstance, and for himself, as he then existed, which caused the chivalrous lover of former times to preserve upon his lips, as long as he could, the imaginary delight which they had drawn from the touch of his mistress’s hand.

When I last saw this unfortunate person, he was getting old, and seemed still more deranged than formerly. Every female whom he met on the street, especially if at all good looking, he gazed at with an enquiring, anxious expression; and when she had passed, he usually stood still a few moments and mused, with his eyes cast upon the ground. It was remarkable, that he gazed most anxiously upon women whose age and figures most nearly resembled that of his unknown mistress at the time he had seen her, and that he did not appear to make allowance for the years which had passed since his eyes met that vision. This was part of his madness. Strange power of love! Incomprehensible mechanism of the human heart!—_Edinburgh Literary Journal_, 1829.

NANNY WELSH, THE MINISTER’S MAID.

BY DANIEL GORRIE.

There are now—so far at least as my experience goes—fewer specimens of homely, odd, and eccentric characters to be met with in Scotland than in former years. In solitary nooks of the country, away from the boom of cities, and the rush of railways, many doubtless still exist, and contribute largely to the amusement of their rural acquaintances; but it cannot be denied that the race of originals is fast disappearing, and threatens ultimately to become altogether extinct. Into the cause or causes of this I do not intend to enter; it is sufficient to chronicle the melancholy fact. There may be a beauty in similarity, but there is a higher beauty in diversity. Men and women are now so very much alike, that the study of mankind is not such a difficult task after all. The greater facilities for intercourse which the present generation enjoys have tended to rub off the angularities of individual character, and to create a fusion, or confusion, of all classes in the community. Such being the case, it is pleasant at times to revert from the present to the past, and to recall the peculiar aspect, the odd sayings, and eccentric doings of persons with whom we were familiar in former years.

Among a number of others, Nanny Welsh stands prominent in my recollection. She was maid-of-all-work in the old home-manse of Keppel, where I first saw the light of day, and for many years afterwards. A rare specimen Nanny was of the departed or departing race of familiar domestics. She had herded the cows of neighbouring farmers, almost from her childhood, until she entered upon domestic service, and she had well nigh attained the prime of life before she became minister’s maid, an honour which she highly esteemed and long enjoyed. She was big-boned and masculine in the build of her body. Her face was long and hard, almost grim, and well freckled, and deeply browned by frequent exposure to the sun and air. A white “mutch,” with a high horse-shoe shaped crown, surmounted her head at morning, noon, and night. With her gown tucked up behind in the old familiar fashion of domestics, and a youngster strapped on her back with a shawl, and peering with his little “pow” over her shoulders, she went to work, as if the fate of empires, not to speak of the honour of the old manse, depended upon her exertions. She used to boast that she could “pit mair through her hands in an hour than ony ither woman i’ the parish.” She was, in truth, a capital worker; and while her hands went her tongue wagged. Nanny could never endure either to be idle or silent. When engaged in scrubbing pots and pans, the bairn on her back was not forgotten, but received all the benefit of her sayings and soliloquies. In the discharge of her domestic duties she liked to carry everything her own way, and generally managed to take it, whatever orders might be given to the contrary.

This good woman had the welfare of the family at heart, and a great favourite she was amongst us youngsters, although she had a very summary mode of disposing of us sometimes when we attempted to teaze her or became unruly. I remember well an advice she gave us, on more than one occasion, when we were invited out to juvenile tea-parties in the neighbourhood. “Noo, bairns,” she would say, after our faces were scrubbed, and our hair was smoothed, “see an’ eat weel when ye’re at it, an’ no come hame garavishin’ an’ eatin’.” We not unfrequently paid the penalty next day of adhering too strictly to the letter of this advice; but when children see heaps of buns, cookies, and shortbread piled up on the table, who can blame them if they take no thought of the morrow? Nanny used to relate with great glee a saying of one of us manse bairns. It was the custom at the communion season in those days (and it may be the custom in some places still) for the wealthier members of country congregations to send the minister some substantial present for the bodily benefit of his officiating friends. One of us, standing at the garden gate, had seen an expected arrival approaching, and running with breathless haste to the kitchen, had exclaimed—“Nanny, Nanny! here’s a salmon comin’—this is the _rale sacrament_!” Nanny, honest woman, never forgot the sentiment, and often repeated it to the discomfiture of its juvenile author.

In the fulness of time, and when our domestic seemed doomed to a life of single blessedness, a wooer at last appeared in the person of Peter Pearson, the pensioner. Peter had lost his wife; and six months after her decease, he came to the conclusion that it is not good—that it is utterly uncomfortable, in fact—for man to be alone. And so he looked favourably upon Nanny Welsh, admired her proportions, estimated her energy at its true value, and finally managed to make his way into the manse kitchen of an evening. It must have cost him a considerable effort to effect this at first, as he regarded the minister with great awe. Peter had been in the artillery force. He had served in Spain and South America, and returned home, not disabled, but “dull of hearing,” to enjoy his hard-won pension. He was a quiet and stolid, but kind-hearted man. He was very uncommunicative as regarded his military service and exploits. It was impossible to force or coax him to “fight his battles o’er again” by the fireside. Whether it was owing to want of narrative power, or to some dark remembrance that overshadowed his mind, Peter invariably maintained discreet silence when soldiers and war became the topics of conversation. On one occasion he was asked if he had ever been at Chili, and his answer was, “I’ve been at Gibraltar at ony rate!” This sounds somewhat like the reply of the smart youth who, when it was inquired of him, if he had ever been in Paris, quickly responded, “No; but my brother has been to Crail!”

The wooing of Peter Pearson, pensioner, and Nanny Welsh, spinster, might have formed a new era in the history of courtship. No sighs were heard. No side-long, loving glances passed between them. There was no tremulous pressure of the hands, or tingling touch of meeting lips. Peter was “senselessly ceevil,” although, I verily believe, if he had attempted to kiss Nanny she would have brained him on the spot with the beetle, and left the warrior to die ingloriously on the hearthstone. No, they did not wish to make “auld fules” of themselves. They wooed in their own way, and understood each other perfectly well. Peter sat by the hearth, smoking his twist peacefully, and squirting out the juice as he had done at camp-fires in former years; and Nanny went about cleaning dishes, lifting tables, and arranging chairs, and only exchanging occasional words with her future husband. She was never so talkative when Peter was present as when he was absent. It was only on rare occasions that she ventured to sit down on a chair beside him. She seemed always afraid of being caught doing anything so indecorous in the manse kitchen. I scarcely think that Peter required to propose. It was a tacit understanding, and their marriage-day was fixed, apparently, by mutual uncommunicated arrangement.

On the night before the bridal some of the neighbouring domestics and other women invaded the kitchen, and subjected Nanny to the painful pleasure of feet-washing—a ceremony somewhat different from the annual performance at Vienna. She kicked furiously at first, calling her tormentors impudent hizzies and limmers; but she was compelled at last to succumb, and yielded with more reluctance than grace.

The marriage was celebrated quietly in the manse next day, and the youngest of the family sat crowing on Nanny’s knee, while she was being told the sum and substance of her duties as a wife. No sooner was the ceremony concluded, than she tucked up her wedding gown, and expressed her desire and determination to “see a’ things putten richt i’ the kitchen afore she gaed awa’.” Peter had leased a cottage in a little way-side village, about two miles distant from the manse, and this was the extent of their marriage jaunt. No doubt the evening would be spent hilariously by their friends and acquaintances, who would drink the health of the “happy pair” with overflowing bumpers.

Peter and Nanny lived very happily together, although “the gray mare was the better horse.” She continued to be as industrious as ever, and the pensioner managed to eke out his government pay by what is called, in some parts of the country, “orra wark.” Nanny came regularly every Sabbath to the manse between sermons, and took pot-luck with the family. We were always glad to see her, and hear her invariable, “Losh, laddie, is that you?” Many a time and oft we all visited her cottage in a body, and what glorious teas she used to give us! Still do I remember, and not without stomachic regrets, the mountains of bannocks, the hills of cakes, the hillocks of cookies, the ridges of butter, the red congealed pools of jelly, and the three tea-spoonfuls of sugar in each cup! It was a never-to-be-forgotten treat. Compare Nanny’s tea-parties with the fashionable “cookey-shines” of the present generation! But, soft; that way madness lies! The good woman had a garden too; and how we youngsters pitched into her carrots, currants, and gooseberries, or rather, to speak correctly, pitched them into ourselves. We remembered her own advice about not returning home “garavishin’ and eatin’.” She prided herself greatly upon her powers of pig-feeding, and next to the pleasure of seeing us feasting like locusts was the delight she experienced in contemplating, with folded arms, her precious pig devouring its meal of potatoes and greens. “Isn’t it a bonny beastie?—did you ever see sic a bonny beastie?” she would frequently exclaim. I never saw so much affection bestowed before or since upon the lowest of the lower animals. The pig knew her perfectly well, and responded to her laudatory phrases by complacent grunts. Between Peter and the pig, I am verily persuaded, she led a happier life than imperial princes in their palaces. No little artilleryman ever made his appearance to disturb the harmony of the house by tying crackers to the cat’s tail.

Nanny’s first visit to Edinburgh formed a rare episode in her life. This happened a good many years after her marriage. The ride on the top of the coach through the kingdom of Fife, she described as “fearsome;” and the horses dashing up hill and down, excited her liveliest compassion. When asked how she felt after her sail between Kirkcaldy and Leith (the day was pleasant and the water smooth), her reply was—“Wonnerfu’—wonnerfu’ weel, after sic a voyage!” The streets of the city, the high houses, the multitudinous shops, and the crowds of people, excited her rustic astonishment beyond all bounds. “Is’t a market the day?” she would interject—“whaur’s a’ the folk gaun?” Her own appearance on the pavement attracted the notice of passers-by; and no wonder. Figure a big-boned, ungainly woman, with long, freckled face and open mouth, and dressed in defiance of the fashion of the time, striding up the Bridges, and “glowering” into everybody’s face, as if she expected to see her “aunty’s second cousin”—figure such a person, and you will form a respectable picture of Nanny Welsh, _alias_ Mrs Pearson, as she appeared many years ago on the streets of Modern Athens. She could never go out alone from the house where she was staying without losing herself. Once she went to the shop next door, and it took her an hour to find the way back again. On another occasion, when she had taken a longer trip than usual, she went completely off her reckoning, forgot the name of the street, mistook the part of the town, and asked every person she met, gentle or simple, swells or sweeps, “Gin they kent whaur Mrs So-and-so stopit!” I never learned correctly how she got out of that scrape. All she could say was that “a ceevil man brocht her to the bottom o’ the stair.” She was perfectly dumfoundered when she saw and heard that the people of Edinburgh had to buy the “bits o’ sticks” with which they kindled their fires in the morning. She protested that she could bring “a barrowfu’ o’ rosity roots frae the wuds that would keep her chimley gaun for a fortnicht.” Going to the market to buy vegetables she looked upon as perfectly preposterous. “Flingin’ awa,” she would say, “gude white saxpences an’ shillin’s for neeps, carrots, ingans, an’ kail—it beats a’!”

The open-mouthed wonder of Nanny reached its height when one night, after long and urgent solicitation, she was persuaded to go under good protection to the Theatre Royal. Mackay was then in the zenith of his fame, and attracted crowded houses, more especially by his unique representation of Bailie Nicol Jarvie. Nanny was taken to the pit. The blaze of light, the galleries rising one above another, the gaily-dressed ladies, the sea of faces surging from floor to roof, the whistling, hooting, and laughing—all these mingled together produced a bewildering effect upon the poor woman, and her bewilderment increased as the curtain rose and the play proceeded. She was speechless for about an hour—she did nothing but gape and gaze. A human being suddenly transported into some brilliant and magical hall, or into another world, could scarcely have betrayed more abject astonishment. At last her wonder found vent, and she exclaimed in the hearing, and much to the amusement, of those who surrounded her—“Tak me awa—tak me awa—this is no a place for me—I’m just Peter Pearson’s ain wife!” She would not be persuaded to remain even when the Bailie kept the house dissolved in loosened laughter. The idea seemed to be strong in her mind that the people were all laughing at _her_. She was the best actress, although the most unconscious one, in the whole house. What a capital pair the Bailie and Nanny would have made! She would have beat Miss Nicol. Her first appearance on the stage would have been a perfect triumph—it would have secured the fame and fortune of Mrs Pearson. Nanny never liked to be asked her opinion of the Edinburgh theatre. She only shook her head, and appeared to regard it as something akin to Pandemonium.

Nanny’s stories about the sayings and doings of the Edinburgh people served her for fireside talk many a winter evening after she returned home to Peter Pearson. Peter, who had seen more of the world, used to take a quiet chuckle to himself when she finished her description of some “ferlie” that had excited her astonishment or admiration. The gilded wonders above shop doors—the Highlanders taking pinches of snuff—the wool-packs—the great glittering spectacles—the rams’ heads and horns—these had excited her rustic curiosity almost as much as they attract the interest of a child. Poor honest Nanny! she has now slept for years where the “rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,” and Peter, after life’s fitful fever, sleeps well by her side.—_Pax Vobiscum!_

LADY JEAN: _A TALE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY_.