Part 28

“Then I deny it emphatically,” said the accused, almost smiling. “I cannot believe you to be in earnest. Steal it! why should I do that? It was put there for the general benefit of the church, I suppose, and that includes me, doesn’t it?”

“So you thought when you took it, I’ve no doubt,” angrily returned Aikman, “but you will find yourself grievously mistaken. Constable, I charge that man, in the name of the managers, with the theft of £5. Do your duty.”

Matters had now become serious, but the gentleness of the constable smoothed away much that might have been painful.

They walked together to the house of the Fiscal, and, after an account of the circumstances had been gone over, the young minister was allowed to go back to his home on his own recognisance.

The next day I had a visit from the young minister, in at the Central, in Edinburgh. I have but a faint recollection of the interview, but I remember that he appeared greatly excited and agitated, and ended his somewhat incoherent statement of the facts by imploring me to take up the case with a view to—what think you?—with a view to convicting Mr Aikman of perjury or conspiracy! The reasoning of the young clergyman was this:—No one but the deacon had seen a £5 note in the plate, and he alone had reported the note stolen—therefore the note might never have been there at all! From this followed the deduction—the deacon from his old grudge had got up the whole as a revenge on the young preacher to injure his reputation and force him out of his post. In consequence of this appeal I went out to the place and made some inquiries, but was met almost at the outset with clear proof that a £5 note had been put into the plate. The lady who had been the donor was gone, but at the hotel in which she had been staying the landlord had heard her mention the gift to her husband.

The case was tried shortly after at the Burgh Court, the accused conducting his own case. From the evidence led few could doubt the guilt of the poor preacher the deacon was so cool, and clear, and positive in all his statements. On one point alone did he show confusion, and that was regarding his noting the number of the note while it lay in the plate. Here the deacon, from his very evident desire to make all clear and firm, contradicted himself slightly, and then floundered worse under a very simple question from the Sheriff, and was put down in confusion. The result was that the case was dismissed—quite an unsatisfactory result to both parties. The deacon was enraged—having recovered from his momentary confusion, and being now ready with a clear and minute explanation—and the poor minister was quite broken down under the disgrace. When he returned to the town which had brought him so much suffering, he met with so many cold looks from those whom he had believed to be his warmest friends, that he was almost forced to resign his charge. The resignation was accepted with a promptitude even more crushing to his spirit; and then, while he was making preparations to leave the place, his creditors swooped down on his few possessions, and left him and his family with little but the clothes in which they stood.

Morrison appeared to bear it all with calm dignity, but his wife, who was a quick-tempered, high-spirited woman, though delicate, felt the disgrace keenly. They moved in to Edinburgh, and Morrison tried hard to get another appointment, but in vain. The ban was upon his reputation—his name had appeared in connection with an accusation of mean thieving, and he was looked upon with suspicion even by strangers. At length he got employment for a few hours daily in keeping a tradesman’s books, for which he got nine shillings a week, and with that and a little copying and tuition he managed for a time to keep himself and his family alive.

But poor diet and a mean habitation among the very roughest characters soon broke the spirit and constitution of his wife, and she passed out of his arms into her long rest before a year was gone. One of the children followed in three months, and he was left alone with the baby. He struggled on quietly and without complaint, shunning all, but ever ready when sought for to go and pray and converse with any of the sick or dying among the very poor who might express a wish for his presence. He became gaunt and thin, and the tradesman who employed him told him he needed a change of air.

I met him more than once in some of the lowest slums, but I failed to recognise the bloodless face and stooping figure. I knew him as “the broken missionary,” and it was dimly understood that he had either been in prison or found guilty of some offence against the law, though the poor wretches with whom he conversed and prayed declared their firm belief in his purity and innocence.

One day, at that time, I found a stout, red-faced man waiting for me at the Office, who nodded to me, and appeared greatly pleased at seeing me. I had to tell him that he had the advantage of me, and then he introduced himself as Mr Aikman, the deacon who had figured as such a prominent witness in the case against the minister.

“I have been a cruel wretch, and I deserve ten years in prison for the misery I have brought on an innocent man,” he said, shedding tears freely—great hot tears, genuine as genuine could be. “A lady in delicate health belonging to our congregation was ordered to live abroad, and came back only yesterday. The moment she heard of Mr Morrison’s disgrace, she came to me and said that it was she who had sent the £5 note to the minister. She sent it from Edinburgh just as she was setting out. I am a sinful and wicked man! God help me! If I could only find out where he is—if you could help me to that—there is no atonement or reparation I should think too great to make to him and his poor wife and bairns. Every penny I have shall be spent in the effort.”

I remembered the case then, and immediately set about tracing Morrison, a task which would have been easy indeed if I had thought for a moment of him being identical with “the broken missionary.” At length I came upon a solicitor who occasionally employed Morrison to copy deeds, and by him was referred to the tradesman who employed the broken man to keep his books. It was only when we were near the hovel which Morrison called his home that the idea flashed upon me that the broken missionary was the man I was after. I knew where he lived, and went straight to the house, which tallied perfectly with the description given by the tradesman.

When we knocked at the door a low voice told us to “Come in,” and on entering we saw only a child of eighteen months creeping about the floor in great glee, with a doll of rags in its hands. But a glance round showed us where the voice had come from. There was a bed behind the door, and in that there was a pale, bloodless face, and a pair of shiny eyes, bearing a shadowy resemblance to the man we sought. The broken missionary feebly attempted to raise himself upon his arm, while the deacon rushed forward, dropped on his knees before the bed, and hid his face and tears in the thin wasted hands he had clasped.

“My poor wronged minister!” he exclaimed; “say you forgive me. We have found out the lady who sent you the £5 note; and I know I have been cruel and wicked——”

A strange convulsion passed over the ghastly face and sunken features of the missionary, while his great eyes appeared to shine out with a perfect radiance.

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name!” he fervently exclaimed, as the great eyes became soft and beautiful with tears.

The child on the floor crowed with delight, and hammered vigorously on the floor with the head of its doll of rags. The deacon gathered the thin form of the sick man in his arms, and hurriedly breathed out all his plans for reparation. He would carry him back with him to his own home; he would care for him, and send him away to the country, to fresh green fields and cool shady woods, where he would have nothing to do but take his fill of the balmy air, and draw health from the glorious sunshine. But the grey head was shaken on his breast in quiet demur, with a pitiful look in the great eyes as they rested on the laughing face of the neglected child on the floor.

“I am going to fair fields and a glorious country,” he feebly gasped, “but not there—not there. God has sent his sunshine into my soul, and I can depart in peace.”

He fainted away as he spoke, and it was long before he could be restored. The deacon had a nurse and a doctor there in an hour, but they came too late. In the dead of night, with the deacon clasping his hand and wetting it with his repentant tears, the missionary went quietly to his rest.

The child was taken to the deacon’s house, and trained and educated, and finally sent to college, and now promises to occupy a distinguished position in the profession which proved so disastrous to his father.

The stolen bank note was never traced, but it was believed to have been taken by a woman who had acted as chapel-keeper, and who was afterwards sent to prison for a theft quite as mean, though less disastrous in its results.

A MURDERER’S MISTAKE.

A toll-keeper on the main road some miles south of Edinburgh was standing at his open door watching the gambols of his two children, when a weary traveller approached and arrested his gaze. There was something uncommon about the dusty tramp when his appearance could rouse interest in an old toll-keeper, accustomed to look with indifference on every kind of wanderer that God’s earth can produce. This one was an old man, tall and gaunt and white-haired. So far there was a bond of interest between them, but with age the comparison ceased, for the toll-keeper was stout and well-clad, and had a comfortable expression beaming from every part of his face; while the stranger was haggard, worn, and drooping, like one who had got all that earth was likely to give, and did not care how soon the giving ceased. Above the toll-keeper’s happy face was a ticket intimating that he was licensed to sell tobacco; while in one window a few bottles of confections and biscuits, and the words “Refreshments and Lemonade” on a show card, summed up his efforts at trading. The dusty tramp halted in front of the toll-keeper, giving the stout man a full view of his poor clothing and fragile boots, from which his toes were peeping, and his sharp eyes eagerly devoured the intimation above the doorway.

“Good evening, sir,” he said quietly, as he fumbled among his clothes for a pocket, and at length produced a penny.

The toll-keeper in general was gruff enough with tramps, even when they seemed disposed to buy his wares, but there was a ring in the tones of this one which struck a chord of pity in his breast, and he returned the greeting kindly. In front of the window showing the biscuits and sweets was a wooden bench. The haggard one limped towards this bench, saying in the same quiet tones—

“Might I rest for a bit on this bench?”

There was nothing arrogant or bold in this request, but rather a ring of indifference or despair. It was as if he had said—“It doesn’t matter whether you say yes or no, or whether I sit down or move on, or drop dead by the way. The end is not far off either way.”

“Oh, ay, sit as lang as ye like; ye’re welcome,” said the toll-keeper, heartily. “You look like you had come a far way?”

“I have, sir—a matter of four hundred miles,” said the white-haired tramp, knitting his brows; then recovering himself, he said in his former quiet tones, “I suppose you couldn’t let me have a penn’orth of tobacco? I’ve on’y a penny left.”

“Hout, ay;” and the toll-keeper brought a liberal length of roll tobacco, which the weary traveller grasped eagerly and paid for promptly with his penny. He bit off a piece and chewed it fiercely, his eye resting steadily the while on the face of one of the toll-keeper’s children, a rosy-cheeked girl of seven or eight, who was gazing on the gaunt face and figure in a species of awe.

“It’s good for killing hunger,” he observed, with his eye still meditatively fixed upon the child; “not that I’ve felt much of it,” he hastily added, as if in fear that the toll-keeper would think that he meant to beg; “I haven’t had time to think of that. That’s a pretty child,” he abruptly added, alluding to the girl.

“Yes, but she’s not looking so well as she did,” answered the toll-keeper, with a father’s pleased look at the compliment. “We nearly lost her with fever a while ago.”

“Imphm!” grimly returned the white-haired tramp. “Mebbe some day you’ll wish she had been taken. She’ll grow up to a fine lass, and then some one will envy you of your bonny flower and crush it up in his fingers, never thinking or caring to think that your heart’s inside of it. You’ll go mad, then, and think how happy you could have been smoothing the turf on her grave when she was a little child.”

“God forbid!” fervently exclaimed the toll-keeper, catching the child up in his arms, as if to shield her there.

“God? What’s God got to do with it, I’d like to know?” cried the white-haired tramp, with his hard tones rising to a despairing snarl. “Is there any God? I never see him, though there’s plenty of devil about—that everybody can see with their eyes shut. Look you, sir!” he added, clenching one bony hand and smiting the palm of the other in fearful excitement, “I’ve done with God for ever! When my girl was like that little one I used to go to church o’ Sundays, and feel pious and good, and have my heart full of softness and gratitude. I’ve felt as if I could have took the whole world into my arms to bless it. But that’s all gone now, and the devil’s the one I speak to. He’s been with me all the way, cheering and helping me over the weary miles, and I won’t turn agen him now when I’m near the end of it.”

The toll-keeper shrank back before the terrible words and sudden hurricane of passion which convulsed the speaker; then he gathered the two children in his arms, and said softly to them—

“Run round into the garden, bairns, and pull some bonnie flowers, and make a fairy’s feast in a corner, with rose leaves for plates. I’ll come round and see it when it’s done. Haste ye now!” and, with a kiss and a smile, he dismissed them.

“Excuse me, sir; I forgot about the little uns,” said the tramp, falling back into his former subdued tones, and evidently perfectly understanding the toll-keeper’s haste to get the children out of hearing. “I’ve seen the day when I’d ’a’ been horrified at such words myself. It’s the way the world goes. We’ve good occasion to look mercifully on them as is far down, ’cause we may get into their state afore we die. I knew a man once—a Methody he was—who preached a sermon on that man that was hanged for killing his sweetheart up in London. It would have done you good to hear it—how he pitched into that poor chap in the condemned cell. Well, that same Methody quarrelled with a man about some furniture, and went home and got a log of wood, and came back and struck the other over the head till he died, and he was had up for murder, and convicted and hanged for it, as sure as you stand there. I wondered, when I saw him brought out, if he had been pitching into himself when he was in the condemned cell;” and the white-haired tramp laughed a hard, sardonic, unmusical laugh, without a vestige of merriment in the sound.

The toll-keeper fidgeted uneasily, and began to wish this man of such changing moods gone.

“Are you going far?” he asked, wishing to change the subject.

“I’m going on—on—to be hanged,” said the stranger, absently; then, recovering himself on noting the toll-keeper’s look of horror, he said, abruptly, “What do you call this ’ere town?”

The toll-keeper named the place.

“That’s it!” cried the tramp, rousing up and speaking with a kind of triumphant ferocity. “That’s the place—I’m not going far past that. I’ve come to find a man out and pay a debt.”

To pay a debt!—a man who had just parted with his last penny! The toll-keeper’s suspicions were confirmed—the old man’s brain was affected; his wrongs, if he had any, had deprived him of reason. At this stage there came an interruption to their conversation from a field on the opposite side of the road. There was no gate or stile at that part of the field, but over the wall there came clambering a gamekeeper and a gentleman, who had evidently been hard at work with the gun among the woods and coverts further back. The gamekeeper, after a word or two from his companion, walked on with the heavy bag of game, while the gentleman strolled forward familiarly to the toll-keeper’s door, wiping the sweat from his brow, and looking almost as tired as the tramp there seated. As he did so, the tramp noted what a fine face the gentleman owned—not so very pretty or finely proportioned, but full of sympathy and gentle courtesy, and altogether likeable and attractive even to a man old, soured, and broken in spirit.

“A warm day, John,” the new-comer said, with just one swift passing glance at the tramp on the bench. “A glass of lemonade, as quick as you can, for I’m dying of thirst.”

“Will you no come in an’ sit doon, sir?” returned the toll-keeper, obsequiously.

“No, thank you—this will do nicely. Now, hurry!” and the gentleman seated himself easily beside the tramp on the bench, where they formed a queer contrast—the tramp old and done, the gentleman in the full flush of youth and strength, and evidently with everything at his command that could make man happy.

“A warm day this,” he added pleasantly to the white-haired tramp. “You look tired and thirsty too. Will you have a drink with me? John, another glass of lemonade and some biscuits,” he imperatively called out, as the tramp refused the proffered gift, with an instinctive touch at his fore-lock. The lemonade was brought and decanted, the first glass being handed to the gentleman, who politely handed it to the white-haired tramp, who, with another protest, not quite so firm as the first, and the words, “Long life to you, sir!” placed the grateful beverage to his lips and drank it off, the gentleman then following his example. The biscuits had been brought out on a tray, and the frank sportsman lifted one of these, and then crammed the remainder bodily into the hands of the tramp.

“Eat away; I only want a bite. I shall be having dinner when I get home,” he said, in a careless, yet kindly manner, which disarmed the gift of anything calculated to offend the most sensitive. “You’re English, I think?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the white-haired man, in so soft a tone that the toll-keeper felt inclined to rub his eyes to see if it was really the same man.

“London way, eh?” continued the gentleman, toying with the biscuit.

“Yes, sir—Rotherhithe,” said the tramp, eating as if he had not eaten for some time.

“Ah, I’ve been often there myself—a fine place,” said the gentleman, with kindling eyes; and then they talked pleasantly of London and its attractions, the gentleman never once showing by word or look that he considered the tramp his inferior. At length he rose to go, took up his gun and paid the toll-keeper, and then, with a pleasant nod to both toll-keeper and tramp, he walked off towards the town.

The tramp looked after him in silence, munching the while at one of the biscuits.

“Who is that?” he said at length, with less gloom on his face and bitterness in his tones.

“Oh, that’s young Gowlieden.”

“Gowlieden? Good heavens! what a name to go to bed with!” said the tramp. “Well, anyway, he’s a good fellow; God bless him, and send more of his kind into this hard world!”

“Gowlieden isn’t his real name,” said the toll-keeper with a smile. “It’s the name of one of his father’s estates, and it’s our fashion here in Scotland to give the big folks the name of their land. That’s the heir, you know, and we call him young Gowlieden. His real name is Stephen Barbour. They live at a place called Frearton Hall, on the other side of the town.”

“What!”

The tramp had started to his feet, and given out the word with a shout which almost drove the breath out of the toll-keeper’s body.

“Yes, Frearton Hall—what’s wrong with that?” stammered the toll-keeper.

“And Stephen Barbour, you say, is his name?” cried the tramp, with every feature of his face gradually overspreading with horror and loathing.

“Yes, that is his name.”

“My God!” moaned the white-haired tramp, snatching the bite from his own mouth and dashing it down on the road, and then trampling on it with insensate fury; “my God! and I broke bread with him, and took the drink from his hands, and thought him so kind and noble-looking! And I said ‘God bless him,’ not knowing any better. Why did the words not blister on my tongue?”

“You know him, then? You have met the young laird before?” said the astonished toll-keeper.

“Never, never! But I know him, the scoundrel! I know him too well.”

“He’s no scoundrel,” cried the toll-keeper, warmly. “He’s as good and true a man as any that breathes. Everybody likes him far or near, and never yet did I hear any but yourself say a word against him.”

The tramp did not seem to hear the words. He sent the last of the biscuits skimming as far as he could throw them, and, wringing his hands, he dropped on his knees on the dusty road.

“Forgive me, Meg, forgive me!” he muttered in a frantic fashion, with his thoughts evidently far away. “How could I know any better?”

Tears were flowing down his cheeks, and these stopped the harsh words which were rising to the lips of the toll-keeper. The tramp tugged out a ragged handkerchief to wipe away the tears, and in doing so dragged out something hard and shiny, which dropped with a metallic clank on the road. The toll-keeper looked round just in time to see that the dropped article was a pistol, which the tramp was hurriedly putting out of sight again. All his sympathy vanished at the sight of the weapon.

“You had better be going,” he said coldly, “for if the police saw you carrying that, they’d soon give you a place to sleep in.”

“I’m going,” said the tramp calmly, rising and moving off. “I haven’t far to go now. Oh, if I had only known!”

Thus he limped away, still wiping his eyes with the ragged handkerchief; and if the county constable had chanced to pass the spot that night, the toll-keeper would certainly have warned him to look after the mad old man, as he thought him. As it was, he got leave to go on to the town, and further. On the north side of the place, and but half a mile from the toll, Frearton Hall stood within its own grounds. There was a lodge at the entrance, kept by the gamekeeper already alluded to, but if the tramp entered there, he had opened the gate and walked in unseen. The dinner at the hall was just over when one of the servants brought a message, which she whispered into the ear of the young laird.

“Wants to see me? Who is he? Did he give no name?” he was heard hurriedly to say.

“No, sir; and he’s such an awful-like man—just like a tramp or a beggar,” answered the girl.

“A tramp? Oh, I see! Is he old and white-haired?” said the gentleman, remembering the scene at the toll-keeper’s house, and the queer character he had assisted there. “Excuse me; I’ll be back in a minute,” he said to the others in the room; and he ran out, expecting to find the man in the hall.

“He wouldn’t come in; he said he’d wait outside,” said the girl, noticing her young master’s look of disappointment. “P’r’aps he’s away by this time.”