Part 3

The threatening storm did explode; a bigoted king overstepped his prerogative, set at nought the rights and the liberties of the subject, and an indignant people stained their hands with blood. A political convulsion shook the empire to its centre. Families and individuals became involved in the general catastrophe; and the house of Clennel did not escape. In common with the majority of the English gentry of that period, Clennel was a stanch loyalist, and if not exactly a lover of the king, or an ardent admirer of his acts, yet one who would fight for the crown though it should (as it was expressed about the time) "hang by a bush." When, therefore, the parliament declared war against the king, and the name of Cromwell spread awe throughout the country, and when some said that a prophet and deliverer had risen amongst them, and others an ambitious hypocrite and a tyrant, Clennel armed a body of his dependants, and hastened to the assistance of his sovereign, leaving his wife and his newly-found daughter with the promise of a speedy return.

It is unnecessary to describe all that he did or encountered during the civil wars. He had been a zealous partizan of the first Charles, and he fought for the fortunes of his son to the last. He was present at the battle of Worcester, which Cromwell calls his "crowning mercy," in the September of 1651, where the already dispirited royalists were finally routed; and he fought by the side of the king until the streets were heaped with dead; and when Charles fled, he, with others, accompanied him to the borders of Staffordshire.

Having bid the young prince an affectionate farewell, Clennel turned back, with the intention of proceeding on his journey, on the following day, to Northumberland, though he was aware, that, from the part which he had taken in the royal cause, even his person was in danger. Yet the desire again to behold his wife and daughter overcame his fears, and the thought of meeting them in some degree consoled him for the fate of his prince, and the result of the struggle in which he had been engaged.

But he had not proceeded far when he was met by two men dressed as soldiers of the Parliamentary army--the one a veteran with grey hairs, and the other a youth. The shades of night had set in; but the latter he instantly recognised as a young soldier whom he had that day wounded in the streets of Worcester.

"Stand!" said the old man, as they met him; and the younger drew his sword.

"If I stand!" exclaimed Clennel, "it shall not be when an old man and a boy command me." And, following their example, he unsheathed his sword.

"Boy!" exclaimed the youth; "whom call ye boy?--think ye, because ye wounded me this morn, that fortune shall aye sit on your arm?--yield or try."

They made several thrusts at each other, and the old man, as an indifferent spectator, stood looking on. But the youth, by a dexterous blow, shivered the sword in Clennel's hand, and left him at his mercy.

"Now yield ye," he exclaimed; "the chance is mine now--in the morning it was thine."

"Ye seem a fair foe," replied Clennel, "and loath am I to yield, but that I am weaponless."

"Despatch him at once!" growled the old man. "If he spilled your blood in the morning, there can be no harm in spilling his the night--and especially after giein' him a fair chance."

"Father," returned the youth, "would ye have me to kill a man in cold blood?"

"Let him submit to be bound then, hands and eyes, or I will," cried the senior.

The younger obeyed, and Clennel, finding himself disarmed, submitted to his fate; and his hands were bound, and his eyes tied up, so that he knew not where they led him.

After wandering many miles, and having lain upon what appeared the cold earth for a lodging, he was aroused from a comfortless and troubled sleep, by a person tearing the bandage from his eyes, and ordering him to prepare for his trial. He started to his feet. He looked around, and beheld that he stood in the midst of a gipsy encampment. He was not a man given to fear, but a sickness came over his heart when he thought of his wife and daughter, and that, knowing the character of the people in whose power he was, he should never behold them again.

The males of the Faa tribe began to assemble in a sort of half circle in the area of the encampment, and in the midst of them, towering over the heads of all, he immediately distinguished the tall figure of Willie Faa, in whom he also discovered the grey-haired Parliamentary soldier of the previous night. But the youth with whom he had twice contended and once wounded, and by whom he had been made prisoner, he was unable to single out amongst them.

He was rudely dragged before them, and Willie Faa cried--"Ken ye the culprit?"

"Clennel o' Northumberland!--our enemy!" exclaimed twenty voices.

"Yes," continued Willie, "Clennel, our enemy--the burner o' our humble habitations--that left the auld, the sick, the infirm, and the helpless, and the infants o' our kindred to perish in the flaming ruins. Had we burned his house, the punishment would have been death; and shall we do less to him than he would do to us?"

"No! no!" they exclaimed with one voice.

"But," added Willie, "though he would have disgraced us wi' a gallows, as he has been a soldier, I propose that he hae the honour o' a soldier's death, and that Harry Faa be appointed to shoot him."

"All! all! all!" was the cry.

"He shall die with the setting sun," said Willie, and again they cried, "Agreed!"

Such was the form of trial which Clennel underwent, when he was again rudely dragged away, and placed in a tent round which four strong Faas kept guard. He had not been alone an hour, when his judge, the Faa king, entered, and addressed him---

"Now, Laird Clennel, say ye that I haena lived to see day about wi' ye. When ye turned me frae beneath your roof, when the drift was fierce and the wind howled in the moors, was it not tauld to ye that _ye would rue it!_--but ye mocked the admonition and the threat, and, after that, cruelly burned us out o' house and ha'. When I came hame, I saw my auld mother, that was within three years o' a hunder, couring ower the reeking ruins, without a wa' to shelter her, and crooning curses on the doer o' the black deed. There were my youngest bairns, too, crouching by their granny's side, starving wi' hunger as weel as wi' cauld, for ye had burned a', and haudin' their bits o' hands before the burnin' ruins o' the house that they were born in, to warm them! That night I vowed vengeance on you; and even on that night I would have executed it, but I was prevented; and glad am I now that I was prevented, for my vengeance has been complete--or a' but complete. Wi' my ain hand I snatched your son and heir from his mother's side, and a terrible chase I had for it; but revenge lent me baith strength and speed. And when ye had anither bairn that was like to live, I forced a lassie, that some o' our folk had stolen when an infant, to bring it to us. Ye have got your daughter back again, but no before she has cost ye mony a sad heart and mony a saut tear; and that was some revenge. But the substance o' my satisfaction and revenge lies in what I hae to tell ye. Ye die this night as the sun gaes down; and, hearken to me now--the young soldier whom ye wounded on the streets o' Worcester, and who last night made you prisoner, was your son--your heir--your lost son! Ha! ha!--Clennel, am I revenged?"

"My son!" screamed the prisoner--"monster, what is it that ye say? Strike me dead, now I am in your power--but torment me not!"

"Ha! ha! ha!" again laughed the grey-haired savage--"man, ye are about to die, and ye know not that ye are born. Ye have not heard half I have to tell. I heard that ye had joined the standard o' King Charles. I, a king in my ain right, care for neither your king nor parliament; but I resolved to wear, for a time, the cloth o' old Noll, and to make your son do the same, that I might hae an opportunity o' meeting you as an enemy, and seeing _him_ strike you to the heart. That satisfaction I had not; but I had its equivalent. Yesterday, I saw you shed his blood on the streets o' Worcester, and in the evening he gave you a prisoner into my hands that desired you."

"Grey-haired monster!" exclaimed Clennel, "have ye no feeling--no heart? Speak ye to torment me, or tell me truly, have I seen my son?"

"Patience, man!" said the Faa, with a smile of sardonic triumph--"my story is but half finished. It was the blood o' your son ye shed yesterday at Worcester--it was your son who disarmed ye, and gave ye into my power; and best o' a'! now, hear me! hear me! lose not a word!--it is the hand o' your son that this night, at sunset, shall send you to eternity! Now, tell me, Clennel, am I no revenged? Do ye no rue it?"

"Wretch! wretch!" cried the miserable parent, "in mercy strike me dead. If I have raised my sword against my son, let that suffice ye!--but spare, oh, spare my child from being an involuntary parricide!"

"Hush, fool!" said the Faa; "I have waited for this consummation o' my revenge for twenty years, and think ye that I will be deprived o' it now by a few whining words? Remember, sunset!" he added, and left the tent.

Evening came, and the disk of the sun began to disappear behind the western hills. Men and women, the old and the young, amongst the Faas, came out from their encampment to behold the death of their enemy. Clennel was brought forth between two, his hands fastened to his sides, and a bandage round his mouth, to prevent him making himself known to his executioner. A rope was also brought round his body, and he was tied to the trunk of an old ash tree. The women of the tribe began a sort of yell or coronach; and their king, stepping forward, and smiling savagely in the face of his victim, cried aloud--

"Harry Faa! stand forth and perform the duty your tribe have imposed on you."

A young man, reluctantly, and with a slow and trembling step, issued from one of the tents. He carried a musket in his hand, and placed himself in front of the prisoner, at about twenty yards from him.

"Make ready!" cried Willie Faa, in a voice like thunder. And the youth, though his hands shook, levelled the musket at his victim.

But, at that moment, one who, to appearance, seemed a maniac, sprang from a clump of whins behind the ash tree where the prisoner was bound, and, throwing herself before him, she cried--"Hold!--would you murder your own father? Harry Clennel!--would you murder your father? Mind ye not when ye was stolen frae your mother's side, as ye gathered wild flowers in the wood?"

It was Elspeth Faa.

The musket dropped from the hands of the intended executioner--a thousand recollections, that he had often fancied dreams, rushed across his memory. He again seized the musket, he rushed forward to his father, but, ere he reached, Elspeth had cut the cords that bound the laird, and placed a dagger in his hand for his defence, and, with extended arms, he flew to meet the youth, crying--"My son!--my son!"

The old Faa king shook with rage and disappointment, and his first impulse was to poniard his wife--but he feared to do so; for although he had injured her, and had not seen her for years, her influence was greater with the tribe than his.

"Now, Willie," cried she, addressing him, "wha rues it now? Fareweel for ance and a'--and the bairn I brought up will find a shelter for my auld head."

It were vain to tell how Clennel and his son wept on each other's neck, and how they exchanged forgiveness. But such was the influence of Elspeth, that they departed from the midst of the Faas unmolested, and she accompanied them.

Imagination must picture the scene when the long-lost son flung himself upon the bosom of his mother, and pressed his sister's hand in his. Clennel Hall rang with the sounds of joy for many days; and, ere they were ended, Andrew Smith placed a ring upon the finger of Susan, and they became one flesh--she a respectable woman. And old Elspeth lived to the age of ninety and seven years beneath its roof.

THE RIVAL NIGHTCAPS.

BY ALEXANDER CAMPBELL.

In the neighbourhood of the suburban village of Bridgeton, near Glasgow, there lived, a good many years ago, a worthy man, and an excellent weaver, of the name of Thomas Callender, and his wife, a bustling, active woman, but, if anything, a little of what is called the randy. We have said that Thomas's occupation was the loom. It was so; but, be it known, that he was not a mere journeyman weaver--one who is obliged to toil for the subsistence of the day that is passing over him, and whose sole dependence is on the labour of his hands. By no means. Thomas had been all his days, a careful, thrifty man, and had made his hay while the sun shone;--when wages were good, he had saved money--as much as could keep him in a small way, independent of labour, should sickness or any other casualty render it necessary for him to fall back on his secret resources. Being, at the time we speak of, however, suffering under no bodily affliction of any kind, but, on the contrary, being hale and hearty, and not much past the meridian of life, he continued at his loom, although, perhaps, not altogether with the perseverance and assiduity which had distinguished the earlier part of his brilliant career. The consciousness of independence, and, probably, some slight preliminary touches from approaching eild, had rather abated the energy of his exertions; yet Thomas still made a fair week's wage of it, as matters went. Now, with a portion of the honest wealth which he had acquired, Mr Callender had built himself a good substantial tenement--the first floor of which was occupied by looms, which were let on hire; the second was his own place of residence; and the third was divided into small domiciles, and let to various tenants. To the house was attached a small garden, a kail-yard, in which he was wont, occasionally, to recreate himself with certain botanical and horticultural pursuits, the latter being specially directed to the cultivation of greens, cabbages, leeks, and other savoury and useful pot herbs.

But Thomas's mansion stood not alone in its glory. A rival stood near. This was the dwelling of Mr John Anderson, in almost every respect the perfect counterpart of that of Mr Thomas Callender--a similarity which is in part accounted for by the facts that John was also a weaver, that he too had made a little money by a life of industry and economy, and that the house was built by himself. By what we have just said, then, we have shown, we presume, that Thomas and John were near neighbours; and, having done so, it follows, of course, that their wives were near neighbours also; but we beg to remark, regarding the latter, that it by no means, therefore, follows that they were friends, or that they had any liking for each other. The fact, indeed, was quite otherwise. They hated each other with great cordiality--a hatred in which a feeling of jealousy of each other's manifestations of wealth, whether in matters relating to their respective houses or persons, or those of their husbands, was the principal feature. Any new article of dress which the one was seen to display, was sure to be immediately repeated, or, if possible, surpassed by the other; and the same spirit of retaliation was carried throughout every department of their domestic economy.

Between the husbands, too, there was no great good will; for, besides being influenced, to a certain extent, in their feelings towards each other by their wives, they had had a serious difference on their own account. John Anderson, on evil purpose intent, had once stoned some ducks of Thomas Callender's out of a dub, situated in the rear of, and midway between the two houses; claiming said dub for the especial use of his ducks alone; and, on that occasion, had maimed and otherwise severely injured a very fine drake, the property of his neighbour, Thomas Callender. Now, Thomas very naturally resented this unneighbourly proceeding on the part of John; and, further, insisted that his ducks had as good a right to the dub as Anderson's. Anderson denied the justice of this claim; Callender maintained it; and the consequence was a series of law proceedings, which mulcted each of them of somewhere about fifty pounds sterling money, and finally ended in the decision that they should divide the dub between them in equal portions, which was accordingly done.

The good-will, then, towards each other, between the husbands, was thus not much greater than between their wives; but, in their case, of course, it was not marked by any of those outbreaks and overt acts which distinguished the enmity of their better halves. The dislike of the former was passive, that of the latter active--most indefatigably active; for Mrs Anderson was every bit as spirited a woman as her neighbour, Mrs Callender, and was a dead match for her in any way she might try.

Thus, then, stood matters between these two rival houses of York and Lancaster, when Mrs Callender, on looking from one of her windows one day, observed that the head of her rival's husband, who was at the moment recreating himself in his garden, was comfortably set off with a splendid, new striped Kilmarnock nightcap. Now, when Mrs Callender saw this, and recollected the very shabby, faded article of the same denomination--"mair like a dish-cloot," as she muttered to herself, "than onything else"--which her Thomas wore, she determined on instantly providing him with a new one; resolved, as she also remarked to herself, not to let the Andersons beat her, even in the matter of a nightcap. But Mrs Callender not only resolved on rivalling her neighbour, in the matter of having a new nightcap for her husband, but in surpassing her in the quality of the said nightcap. She determined that her "man's" should be a red one; "a far mair genteeler thing," as she said to herself, "than John Anderson's vulgar striped Kilmarnock." Having settled this matter to her own satisfaction, and having dexterously prepared her husband for the vision of a new nightcap--which she did by urging sundry reasons, totally different from those under whose influence she really acted, as she knew that he would never give in to such an absurdity as a rivalship with his neighbour in the matter of a nightcap: this matter settled then, we say, the following day saw Mrs Callender sailing into Glasgow, to purchase a red nightcap for her husband--a mission which, we need not say, she very easily accomplished. Her choice was one of the brightest hue she could find--a flaming article, that absolutely dazzled Thomas with the intensity of its glare, when it was triumphantly unrolled before him.

"Jenny," said the latter, in perfect simplicity of heart, and utter ignorance of the true cause of his wife's care of his comfort in the present instance--"Jenny, but that _is_ a bonny thing," he said, looking admiringly at the gaudy commodity, into which he had now thrust his hand and part of his arm, in order to give it all possible extension, and thus holding it up before him as he spoke.

"Really it _is_ a bonny thing," he replied, "and, I warrant, a comfortable."

"Isna't?" replied his wife, triumphantly. And she would have added, "How far prettier and mair genteeler a thing than John Anderson's!" But as this would have betrayed secrets, she refrained, and merely added, "Now, my man, Tammas, ye'll just wear't when ye gang about the doors and the yard. It'll mak' ye look decent and respectable--what ye wasna in that creeshy cloot that ye're wearin', that made ye look mair like a tauty bogle than a Christian man."

Thomas merely smiled at these remarks, and made no reply in words.

Thus far, then, Mrs Callender's plot had gone on swimmingly. There only wanted now her husband's appearance in the garden in his new red nightcap, where the latter could not but be seen by her rival, to complete her triumph; and this satisfaction she was not long denied. Thomas, at her suggestion (warily and cautiously urged, however) instantly took the field in his new nightcap; and the result was as complete and decisive as the heart of woman, in Mrs Callender's circumstances, could desire. Mrs Anderson saw the nightcap, guessed the cause of its appearance, and resolved to be avenged. In that moment, when her sight was blasted, her pride humbled, and her spirits roused, which they were all at one and the same time by the vision of Thomas Callender's new red nightcap, she resolved on getting her husband to strike the striped cap, and mount one of precisely the same description--better, if possible, but she was not sure if this could be had.

Now, on prevailing on _her_ husband to submit to the acquisition of another new nightcap, Mrs Anderson had a much more difficult task to perform than her rival; for the cap that John was already provided with, unlike Thomas's, was not a week out of the shop, and no earthly good reason, one would think, could therefore be urged why he should so soon get another. But what will not woman's wit accomplish? Anything! As proof of this, if proof were wanted, we need only mention that Mrs Anderson _did_ succeed in this delicate and difficult negotiation, and prevailed upon John, first, to allow her to go into Glasgow to buy him a new red nightcap, and to promise to wear it when it should be bought. How she accomplished this--what sort of reasoning she employed--we know not; but certain it is that it was so. Thus fully warranted, eagerly and cleverly did Mrs Anderson, on the instant, prepare to execute the mission to which this warrant referred. In ten minutes she was dressed, and in one more was on her way to Glasgow, to make the desiderated purchase. Experiencing of course as little difficulty in effecting this matter as her rival had done, Mrs Anderson soon found herself in possession of a red nightcap, as bright, every bit, as Mr Callender's; and this cap she had the happiness of drawing on the head of her unconscious husband, who, we need scarcely add, knew as little of the real cause of his being fitted out with this new piece of head-gear as his neighbour, Callender.

Thus far, then, with Mrs Anderson too, went the plot of the nightcaps smoothly; and all that she also now wanted to attain the end she aimed at, was her husband's appearance in _his_ garden, with his new acquisition on.

This consummation she also quickly brought round. John sallied out with his red nightcap; and, oh, joy of joys! Mrs Callender saw it. Ay, Mrs Callender saw it--at once recognised in it the spirit which had dictated its display; and deep and deadly was the revenge that she vowed.