Part 11

"Come, Emily," said young Walford, "your _brother_ has given you to Mr. Wentworth, and now your _doctor_ must take care of you for him. You are too weak yet to bear more excitement; we will leave you to your repose." He then took my arm, and bidding Emily adieu, we went into the other room, where we found the most exhausted of the party stretched on the floor in various attitudes, giving audible notice that their lungs had not been materially injured by their late submersion; while the shuddering moans and convulsive starts of some of the number showed that fancy was busy within them, acting over again the dreadful scenes of the night.

When day had begun to break, the whole party hastened out to the beach. Not a vestige remained of our unfortunate ship: the hull was completely broken up, and the shore was strewed for miles with portions of the wreck. We found Captain Darby, Wildman, and the survivors who had taken refuge in the other cottage, busily employed in the sad duty of collecting the dead bodies of their less fortunate shipmates. Young Walford and I had a long and interesting conversation together, in the course of which he told me that his mother and the rest of the family were living in the neighbouring town, in which he was practising as surgeon. He was obliged to return home immediately, he said, to attend to his professional avocations; and, leaving me to apologise to his sister when she awoke, he promised either to come or send for her as soon as possible. I returned to the cottage. Emily was sleeping, and remained for three or four hours in a sound slumber, from which she had only just awakened, when a post-chaise drove up to the door, a handsome middle-aged lady stepped out, and in a moment Emily was in the arms of her mother. For some time they embraced each other in silence; but their lips were moving, and the tears were streaming down their cheeks.

"Dear, dear mother!" at last sobbed Emily.

"Blessings on my darling!" replied she, holding Emily from her, and then hugging her to her heart; "let me look again on thy sweet face, my child!" she continued, gazing earnestly and affectionately at her, and then murmuring, "Oh, if I had lost you, Emily!" she again burst into an agony of tears. At last recollecting herself, she exclaimed, "Edward has told me all--where is _he_--where is the gallant man who saved your life?"

"This is Mr Wentworth," said Emily.

Mrs Walford took my hand in both hers, and pressed it to her heart, and, with a broken and trembling voice, she exclaimed--

"The blessing of a widowed mother be upon you, sir. You have saved my grey hairs from going down in sorrow to the grave."

I was greatly affected by her warm expressions of gratitude, and by the almost maternal cordiality with which she urged me to accompany them home. This invitation, it may be readily supposed, I was not at all unwilling to avail myself of; and, as none of the party were encumbered with baggage, nothing having been saved from the wreck, we soon left the cottage, carrying with us the good wishes and blessings of its inmates, whom Mrs Walford had most liberally rewarded for their hospitality. Three months afterwards, Emily Stacely became my wife; and, as I said before, sir, I owe the greatest blessing of my life to a storm and its consequences.

The steamboat soon afterwards entered the Mersey; and, when we parted on the quay at Liverpool, it was with mutual regret, and with a promise to renew our acquaintance as soon as possible. I have since had reason, like Mr Wentworth, to bless a "storm and its consequences;" for the next greatest blessing to a good wife is a good friend, and such he has ever proved himself to be, since our "stormy" meeting in the steamboat.

THE HEIR OF INSHANNOCK.

The ill-fated struggle of the partisans of the House of Stuart, in the year 1745, terminated, as our readers know, in the total ruin of almost all who were engaged in that unfortunate rebellion. The scaffold was deluged with the noblest blood in Scotland; and even those who were so fortunate as to escape the axe of the executioner, became penniless wanderers in a foreign land, meeting with little sympathy, and still less relief.

Amongst those who preferred the risk of hanging in their own country, to the certainty of starvation in a foreign one, was Reginald, or, as he was usually called, Ranald Grahame of Inshannock--a gentleman who was distantly connected with the Viscounts of Dundee. His estates were extensive, although his rental was small. He resided in an old building called the Tower of Gloom, which stood on a ridge of a terrific defile overhanging Loch Lomond.

Great rewards were offered for his apprehension by the Duke of Argyle, who entertained towards him a very hostile feeling, not founded in any patriotic desire to put down a rebel, but from an old grudge, either real or imaginary, which the great M'Callum Mor was not disposed to stomach. Hitherto, every effort to capture Reginald had been fruitless; for, secure in the devoted attachment of his tenantry, and the difficulty of an approach to the tower, he laughed at the threats of the chief of the Campbells, although backed by formidable government proclamations. It was to this security that Reginald became a victim. In his earlier years he had been intimate with Donald Campbell of Dungyle, who, although the nominal proprietor of these lands, derived nothing from them, as they were burdened by what is called, in Scottish law-language, a wadset. Now, Donald found it somewhat inconvenient to live upon nothing, or next to it; and he thought it no bad speculation to exchange his nominal estate for a real one, by handing his friend Reginald over to the tender mercies of the ministers of George II.; and, in return, quietly taking his place in the Tower of Gloom.

Having thus made up his mind on the propriety of bettering his condition, and having reconciled his conscience to the betrayal of his friend, by assuming that, as Reginald would, one day or other, be infallibly taken prisoner and executed, it was much better, although it might shorten his life a few weeks or months, that a friend rather than a stranger should get whatever recompense was to be got. Indeed, if any scruples still lurked in his breast, his duties as a citizen at once put an end to them, for, as he said, "a true patriot must sacrifice every private feeling to the public good." Influenced by these mixed considerations, he applied for, and obtained a promise, if he should be able to surprise the Tower of Gloom and its proprietor, that he would be rewarded with a gift of the forfeited estate of Inshannock.

Having made every arrangement, in the event of success, Donald Campbell, with a body of retainers, proceeded to the Tower of Gloom. Hiding his followers in a copse of wood in the immediate vicinity, Donald hastened to the abode of his friend, and, claiming his hospitality, was readily admitted as an inmate. The result may be easily anticipated: Reginald found himself a prisoner, for the first time in his life. Resolved rather to perish than surrender, the unfortunate laird ran to an apartment overlooking the loch, and leaped from the window into the water. His false friend, seeing his desperate efforts, threw him a rope as if in kindness, to support him, while a boat came near.

"That rope was meant for my neck, and I leave it for a traitor's," were the last words that came from the lips of the betrayed one.

The pangs of remorse penetrated the heart of the insidious Campbell. He leaped himself into a boat, held out an oar toward his drowning friend, with real oaths of fidelity; but Reginald pushed it from him, and abandoned himself to death. The waters of the lake are singularly transparent near the rock on which the Tower of Gloom was perched; and Campbell beheld his victim gradually sinking, till he seemed to lie among the broad weeds under the waters. Once, only once, he saw, or thought he saw, him lift his hand as if to reach his; and that dying hand never left his remembrance.

Campbell having thus successfully accomplished the enterprise he had projected, applied for and obtained the reward he had stipulated for. He received a grant of the lands of Inshannock; and the long-wished-for Tower of Gloom came into his hands, together with the sum of money offered for the capture or death of Reginald. So far, therefore, as worldly matters went, Donald Campbell, Esq. of Inshannock, had no cause to complain. But he was far from happy, for he could not but reproach himself with the death of one who, trusting to his honour, had been basely betrayed; and those reasons of expediency which had satisfied him when he contemplated the deed, after its accomplishment lost all their previous efficacy. He had another and separate cause of distress; his only son, Roderick, a promising youth, above sixteen years of age, had suddenly disappeared in the year 1745, and no traces of him whatever could be found. Every effort had been made to discover his fate, but in vain; thus, although Donald Campbell was, apparently, a man of opulence, he was in reality a much less happy man than when he lived from hand to mouth, and knew not one day where he was to look for provision for the next.

Although this enterprise had been successful, Campbell did not reap all the fruits of his perfidy; for some of the remote portions of the Highland estate which he had procured a gift of from the crown, were altogether unproductive, the tenants refusing to recognise any other chief than the son of the deceased proprietor. William Grahame was, at the time of his father's death, a boy of fifteen. He had been removed from the Tower of Gloom by his mother's relations, about the time of the suppression of the rebellion, and placed by them in the Marischal College in the city of Aberdeen.

The lad, who had no great taste for classical literature, was by no means comfortable, and longed to return to the purple heath of his native hills. So long as his father lived, William behaved himself with considerable propriety, and made some progress in his studies; but no sooner did the tidings arrive of the untimely fate of the ill-starred Reginald, than his son disappeared from the university, and the anxious search of his friends was unable to obtain any traces of his flight. Some time afterwards, a body was found in the river Dee, in a state of great decomposition, which generally was supposed to be that of the young man, and was duly interred as the corpse of the last Grahame of Inshannock.

Time hurried on; and the new proprietor of Inshannock had begun to feel the effect of its rapid transit: he was no longer the vigorous man of forty; and as he passed towards the period of threescore, the effects of age told severely upon him.

For a series of years, Donald Campbell had been very much exposed to the depredations of a set of caterans or gipsies, who frequently kept him in a state of siege in his tower.

This tower was of the true Scottish fabric, divided into three storeys: the highest of which contained the dormitories; the second or middle served as a general refectory; and the lowest contained his cattle, which required this lodgment at night, or very few would have been found next morning.

The leader of the gipsies frequented the fairs on the north side of the Frith, well mounted--paying at inns and ferries like a gentleman; and attended by bands of gillies, whose green coats, cudgels, and knives, were sufficiently feared by the tenantry of the Lennox. The gipsy chieftain had also a grim cur of the true black-faced breed, famous for collecting and driving off sheep, and therefore distinguished by his own name. In the darkest cleughs or ravines, or in the deepest snow, this faithful animal had never been known to abandon the flock commited to his care, or to fail in tracing a fugitive. But, as sight and strength began to fail, the four-footed chieftain was deposed, imprisoned in a byre loft, and finally sentenced to be drowned.

In one of those drear midnights so awful to travellers in the Highlands, a man, wrapped in a large coarse plaid, strode from a stone ridge, on the border of Loch Lomond, into a boat which he had drawn from its covert. He rowed resolutely and alone, looking carefully to the right and to the left, till he suffered the tide to bear his little bark into a gorge or gulf, so narrow, deep, and dark, that no escape but death seemed to await him. Precipices, rugged with dwarf shrubs and broken granite, rose more than a hundred feet on each side, sundered only by the stream, which a thirsty season had reduced to a sluggish and shallow pool. The boatman, poising himself erect on his staff, drew three times the end of a strong chain which hung among the underwood. In a few minutes a basket descended from the pinnacle of the cliff; and, having moored his boat, he placed himself in the wicker carriage, and was safely drawn into a crevice high in the fissure of a rock, into which he disappeared.

The boat was moored; but the adventurer had not observed that it contained another passenger. Underneath a plank, laid artfully along its bottom, and shrouded in his plaid of the darkest green, another man had been lurking more than an hour before the owner of the boat entered it, and remained hidden by the darkness of the night.

His purpose was answered. He had now discovered--what he had sacrificed many a perilous night to obtain a knowledge of--the mode by which the owner of the Tower of Gloom gained access to his impregnable fortress unsuspected. He instantly unmoored the boat, and rowed slowly back across the loch to an island near the centre. He rested on its oars, and looked down into the transparent water. "It is there still," he said to himself; and drawing close among the rocks, leaped on dry land. A dog of the true shepherd breed sat waiting under the bushes, and ran before him till they descended together under an archway of stones and withered branches. "Watch the boat," said the Highlander to his faithful guide, who sprang immediately away to obey him. Meanwhile his master lifted up one of the grey stones, took a bundle from beneath it, and equipped himself in such a suit as a trooper of Campbell's regiment usually wore. He then looked at the edge of his dirk, and returned to his boat.

Having thus acquired an accurate knowledge of the secret mode of access to the tower, the stranger returned to the place where he had seen the basket descending for the purpose of conveying its present possessor to the tower; climbing up its rough face with the activity acquired by mountain warfare, he hung among furze and broken rocks like a wild cat, till he found the crevice through which the basket had seemed to issue. It was artfully concealed by tufts of heather; but creeping on his hands and knees, he forced his way into the interior. There the deepest darkness confounded him, till he had laid his hands on a chain which he rightly guessed to be the same he had seen hanging on the side of the lake when Campbell landed. One end was coiled up; but he readily concluded that the end must have some communication with the keep; and he followed its course, till he found it inserted in what seemed a subterraneous wall. A crevice behind the pulley admitted a gleam of light; but, striving to raise himself, he leaned too forcibly on the chain, and he was somewhat startled to hear the sound of a deep-toned bell.

Donald Campbell was sitting alone in the chamber, from the windows of which, fifteen years before, his betrayed friend, Reginald Grahame, had precipitated himself into the lake below. His eyes were fixed on the blazing logs on the hearth. The thoughts of former times were flitting before him: he pondered on the days of his youth, before ambition and avarice had fixed their poisoned arrows in his heart; ere the world had banished those notions of virtue and religion that his excellent parents had, in his boyhood, so unceasingly inculcated. Many minor delinquencies had he committed; but the crime which now preyed upon his mind was the betrayal of his friend, embittered as it was by the reflection of the sordid motive that induced it.

In this state of mind he was startled by one of those figures which fancy so frequently suggests to a disordered mind. In the masses of the burning embers, he traced the outline of a face: imagination lent its aid; and he recognised a resemblance of Reginald. He started up:--"Avaunt, base mockery; am I to be daunted with a mere figment of the brain? Alas! trifles now disturb me. If I have sinned, I have suffered: the loss of my only son has been the penalty. I have paid for my misdeeds." So saying, he sat back on his chair quite exhausted; and at that moment the bell rung. At the deep and hollow sound he cast his eyes fearfully round, but made no attempt to rise, though he stretched his hand towards a staff which lay near him. The stranger saw the tremor of the dismayed Lord of the Tower; and, putting his lips to the crevice, murmured, "Father," in a low and supplicating tone. That word made Campbell tremble. But when the other added, "Father! father! save me," he sprang to the wall, drew back the iron bolts of a narrow door, invisible to any eye but his own, and gave admission to the muffled man, who leaped eagerly in. Years had passed since Campbell had seen his son, and many rumours had been spread that the younger Campbell had not really perished, but had engaged in the service of the Pretender. The hopes and love of the father all revived in one moment; and the sudden apparition--the appeal for mercy--had full effect on his imagination. The voice, eyes, and figure of the stranger resembled his son: all else might and must be changed by the lapse of so many years. He wept like an infant on his shoulder, grasped his hand a hundred times, and forgot to blame him for the rash disloyalty he had shown to his father's cause.

Roderick, in explanation, mentioned a variety of circumstances explanatory of the reasons of his evasion: how he had escaped, after the battle of Culloden, to France, where he had endeavoured to earn a scanty livelihood; and how he had at last resolved to revisit his native land, in hopes of obtaining the forgiveness of his father. His narrative was much abridged, by the fond delight of the old man weeping and rejoicing over the return of his prodigal son.

Old Campbell eagerly asked by what happy chance he had discovered the secret entrance, and whether any present danger threatened him. Roderick answered the first question by repeating what our readers are already acquainted with; and he added, in answer to the second, that he feared nothing but the emissaries of the government, from whom he could not be better concealed than in the Tower of Gloom. Old Campbell agreed with joyful eagerness, but presently added--

"Roderick, my boy, we must trust in Annette: she's too near in kin to betray you; and ye were to have been her spouse."

Then he explained that his niece was the only one person in his household acquainted with the secret of the basket and the bell; that by her help he could provide a mattress and provisions for his son; but without it he would be forced to hazard the most dangerous inconveniences.

Roderick was commanded to return into the cavern passage, while his delighted father prepared his kinswoman for her new guest; and he listened greedily to catch the answers Annette gave to her uncle's tale. He heard the hurry of her steps preparing, as he supposed, a larger supper for the old laird's table, with the simplicity and hospitality of a Highland maiden. He was not mistaken. When the bannocks, and grouse, and claret were arranged, Campbell presented his restored son to the mistress of the feast. Roderick was pale and dumb as he looked upon her. She came before him like a dream of some lovely picture remembered in his youth; and with her came some remembrance of his former self. The old laird, forgetting that his niece had been but a child, and his son a stripling, when they parted, indulged the joy of his heart, by asking Annette a thousand times whether she remembered her betrothed husband; and urging his son, since he was still unmarried, to pledge his promised bride.

Annette, whose predilections in favour of her cousin had been created by association--for she remembered him as far back as her recollections went--rejoiced at his reappearance, after so long an interval, and seemed by no means disinclined to listen to her uncle's proposition.

Besides the persons just mentioned, there were present in the apartment an old woman, and a dog, also evidently advanced in years. The latter, upon the entrance of Roderick, saluted him with a loud bark; but, strange to say, suddenly paused in the middle of his hostile demonstrations, and, after smelling for half-a-minute, as if he was investigating what sort of person the intruder was, quietly retreated to his place by the fireside, apparently satisfied that all was right.

The fire on the hearth was replenished, and burned cheerfully. Immediately opposite to the dog, on one side of the ingle, sat the woman. She was aged, and bent almost double, with no apparent sense of sight or hearing, though her eyes were fixed on the spindle she was twirling; and sometimes, when the laird raised his voice, she put her lean hand on the hood that covered her ears.

"Do you not remember poor old Moome?" said Annette; and the laird led his supposed son towards the superannuated crone, though without expecting any mark of recognition. Whether she had noticed anything that had passed, could not be gathered from her idiot laugh; and she had almost ceased to speak. Therefore, as if only dumb domestic animals had been sitting by his hearth, Campbell pursued his arrangements for his son's safety, advising him to sleep composedly in the wooden panelled bed that formed a closet off this chamber, without regarding the half-living skeleton, who never left her corner. He gave him his blessing, and departed, taking with him his niece and the key of this dreary room, promising to return and watch by his bedside. He came back in a few minutes; and, while Roderick couched himself on his mattress, took his station by the fire and fell fast asleep, overcome with joy.

The embers gradually sunk on the hearth, and the light diminished in proportion. Roderick, who had lain awake for some time, began to feel the approach of sleep; and, whilst in a state of transition, he observed, by the dying embers of the fire, the old woman cautiously rise, and, removing the dirk from the side of her sleeping master, approach his bed with cautious step and silent tread. The astonishment of Roderick at beholding this infirm creature advance, with a purpose so evidently hostile, was so great, that, in place of jumping from his couch, and wresting the weapon from the hands of its weak and attenuated possessor, he lay fascinated, as birds are said to be by the eyes of the rattlesnake, until the actual advent of the apparent assassin. The motions of the beldame were carefully watched in a quarter which she little suspected; for she barely reached the couch on which her intended victim reposed, and was about to raise her arm to strike, than the aged dog sprang at her throat, and brought her to the ground, from which she never rose again: the frail thread of her existence had been snapped by the suddenness of the onset.

This unexpected occurrence awoke the lord of the tower, who, springing up, beheld the nurse lying on the ground, with the dog growling over her.

This at once aroused Roderick from his trance; and he briefly explained to his father the singularly mysterious scene he had witnessed, and the fact of his rescue by the wonderful sagacity of the dog.