For though, seduced and led astray,
Thoust travell'd far and wander'd long,
Thy God hath seen thee all the way,
And all the turns that led thee wrong
The Hall of Justice.
After the space of about three-quarters of an hour, which the
uncertainty and danger of their situation made seem almost thrice as
long, the voice of young Hazlewood was heard without. 'Here I am,' he
cried, 'with a sufficient party.'
'Come in then,' answered Bertram, not a little pleased to find his
guard relieved. Hazlewood then entered, followed by two or three
countrymen, one of whom acted as a peace-officer. They lifted
Hatteraick up and carried him in their arms as far as the entrance of
the vault was high enough to permit them; then laid him on his back and
dragged him along as well as they could, for no persuasion would induce
him to assist the transportation by any exertion of his own. He lay as
silent and inactive in their hands as a dead corpse, incapable of
opposing, but in no way aiding, their operations. When he was dragged
into daylight and placed erect upon his feet among three or four
assistants who had remained without the cave, he seemed stupefied and
dazzled by the sudden change from the darkness of his cavern. While
others were superintending the removal of Meg Merrilies, those who
remained with Hatteraick attempted to make him sit down upon a fragment
of rock which lay close upon the high-water mark. A strong shuddering
convulsed his iron frame for an instant as he resisted their purpose.
'Not there! Hagel! you would not make me sit THERE?'
These were the only words he spoke; but their import, and the deep tone
of horror in which they were uttered, served to show what was passing
in his mind.
When Meg Merrilies had also been removed from the cavern, with all the
care for her safety that circumstances admitted, they consulted where
she should be carried. Hazlewood had sent for a surgeon, and proposed
that she should be lifted in the meantime to the nearest cottage. But
the patient exclaimed with great earnestness, 'Na, na, na! to the Kaim
o' Derncleugh--the Kaim o' Derncleugh; the spirit will not free itself
o' the flesh but there.'
'You must indulge her, I believe,' said Bertram; 'her troubled
imagination will otherwise aggravate the fever of the wound.'
They bore her accordingly to the vault. On the way her mind seemed to
run more upon the scene which had just passed than on her own
approaching death. 'There were three of them set upon him: I brought
the twasome, but wha was the third? It would be HIMSELL, returned to
work his ain vengeance!'
It was evident that the unexpected appearance of Hazlewood, whose
person the outrage of Hatteraick left her no time to recognise, had
produced a strong effect on her imagination. She often recurred to it.
Hazlewood accounted for his unexpected arrival to Bertram by saying
that he had kept them in view for some time by the direction of
Mannering; that, observing them disappear into the cave, he had crept
after them, meaning to announce himself and his errand, when his hand
in the darkness encountering the leg of Dinmont had nearly produced a
catastrophe, which, indeed, nothing but the presence of mind and
fortitude of the bold yeoman could have averted.
When the gipsy arrived at the hut she produced the key; and when they
entered, and were about to deposit her upon the bed, she said, in an
anxious tone, 'Na, na! not that way--the feet to the east'; and
appeared gratified when they reversed her posture accordingly, and
placed her in that appropriate to a dead body.
'Is there no clergyman near,' said Bertram, 'to assist this unhappy
woman's devotions?'
A gentleman, the minister of the parish, who had been Charles
Hazlewood's tutor, had, with many others, caught the alarm that the
murderer of Kennedy was taken on the spot where the deed had been done
so many years before, and that a woman was mortally wounded. From
curiosity, or rather from the feeling that his duty called him to
scenes of distress, this gentleman had come to the Kaim of Derncleugh,
and now presented himself. The surgeon arrived at the same time, and
was about to probe the wound; but Meg resisted the assistance of
either. 'It's no what man can do that will heal my body or save my
spirit. Let me speak what I have to say, and then ye may work your
will; I'se be nae hindrance. But where's Henry Bertram?' The
assistants, to whom this name had been long a stranger, gazed upon each
other. 'Yes!' she said, in a stronger and harsher tone, 'I said HENRY
BERTRAM OF ELLANGOWAN. Stand from the light and let me see him.'
All eyes were turned towards Bertram, who approached the wretched
couch. The wounded woman took hold of his hand. 'Look at him,' she
said, 'all that ever saw his father or his grandfather, and bear
witness if he is not their living image?' A murmur went through the
crowd; the resemblance was too striking to be denied. 'And now hear me;
and let that man,' pointing to Hatteraick, who was seated with his
keepers on a sea-chest at some distance--'let him deny what I say if he
can. That is Henry Bertram, son to Godfrey Bertram, umquhile of
Ellangowan; that young man is the very lad-bairn that Dirk Hatteraick
carried off from Warroch wood the day that he murdered the gauger. I
was there like a wandering spirit, for I longed to see that wood or we
left the country. I saved the bairn's life, and sair, sair I prigged
and prayed they would leave him wi' me. But they bore him away, and
he's been lang ower the sea, and now he's come for his ain, and what
should withstand him? I swore to keep the secret till he was
ane-an'-twenty; I kenn'd he behoved to dree his weird till that day
cam. I keepit that oath which I took to them; but I made another vow to
mysell, that if I lived to see the day of his return I would set him in
his father's seat, if every step was on a dead man. I have keepit that
oath too. I will be ae step mysell, he (pointing to Hatteraick) will
soon be another, and there will be ane mair yet.'
The clergyman, now interposing, remarked it was a pity this deposition
was not regularly taken and written down, and the surgeon urged the
necessity of examining the wound, previously to exhausting her by
questions. When she saw them removing Hatteraick, in order to clear the
room and leave the surgeon to his operations, she called out aloud,
raising herself at the same time upon the couch, 'Dirk Hatteraick, you
and I will never meet again until we are before the judgment-seat; will
ye own to what I have said, or will you dare deny it?' He turned his
hardened brow upon her, with a look of dumb and inflexible defiance.
'Dirk Hatteraick, dare ye deny, with my blood upon your hands, one word
of what my dying breath is uttering?' He looked at her with the same
expression of hardihood and dogged stubbornness, and moved his lips,
but uttered no sound. 'Then fareweel!' she said, 'and God forgive you!
your hand has sealed my evidence. When I was in life I was the mad
randy gipsy, that had been scourged and banished and branded; that had
begged from door to door, and been hounded like a stray tyke from
parish to parish; wha would hae minded HER tale? But now I am a dying
woman, and my words will not fall to the ground, any more than the
earth will cover my blood!'
She here paused, and all left the hut except the surgeon and two or
three women. After a very short examination he shook his head and
resigned his post by the dying woman's side to the clergyman.
A chaise returning empty to Kippletringan had been stopped on the
highroad by a constable, who foresaw it would be necessary to convey
Hatteraick to jail. The driver, understanding what was going on at
Derncleugh, left his horses to the care of a blackguard boy, confiding,
it is to be supposed, rather in the years and discretion of the cattle
than in those of their keeper, and set off full speed to see, as he
expressed himself, 'whaten a sort o' fun was gaun on.' He arrived just
as the group of tenants and peasants, whose numbers increased every
moment, satiated with gazing upon the rugged features of Hatteraick,
had turned their attention towards Bertram. Almost all of them,
especially the aged men who had seen Ellangowan in his better days,
felt and acknowledged the justice of Meg Merrilies's appeal. But the
Scotch are a cautious people: they remembered there was another in
possession of the estate, and they as yet only expressed their feelings
in low whispers to each other. Our friend Jock Jabos, the postilion,
forced his way into the middle of the circle; but no sooner cast his
eyes upon Bertram than he started back in amazement, with a solemn
exclamation, 'As sure as there's breath in man, it's auld Ellangowan
arisen from the dead!'
This public declaration of an unprejudiced witness was just the spark
wanted to give fire to the popular feeling, which burst forth in three
distinct shouts: 'Bertram for ever!' 'Long life to the heir of
Ellangowan!' 'God send him his ain, and to live among us as his
forebears did of yore!'
'I hae been seventy years on the land,' said one person.
'I and mine hae been seventy and seventy to that,' said another; 'I
have a right to ken the glance of a Bertram.'
'I and mine hae been three hundred years here,' said another old man,
'and I sail sell my last cow, but I'll see the young Laird placed in
his right.'
The women, ever delighted with the marvellous, and not less so when a
handsome young man is the subject of the tale, added their shrill
acclamations to the general all-hail. 'Blessings on him; he's the very
picture o' his father! The Bertrams were aye the wale o' the country
side!'
'Eh! that his puir mother, that died in grief and in doubt about him,
had but lived to see this day!' exclaimed some female voices.
'But we'll help him to his ain, kimmers,' cried others; 'and before
Glossin sail keep the Place of Ellangowan we'll howk him out o't wi'
our nails!'
Others crowded around Dinmont, who was nothing both to tell what he
knew of his friend, and to boast the honour which he had in
contributing to the discovery. As he was known to several of the
principal farmers present, his testimony afforded an additional motive
to the general enthusiasm. In short, it was one of those moments of
intense feeling when the frost of the Scottish people melts like a
snow-wreath, and the dissolving torrent carries dam and dyke before it.
The sudden shouts interrupted the devotions of the clergyman; and Meg,
who was in one of those dozing fits of stupefaction that precede the
close of existence, suddenly started--'Dinna ye hear? dinna ye hear?
He's owned! he's owned! I lived but for this. I am a sinfu' woman; but
if my curse brought it down, my blessing has taen it off! And now I wad
hae liked to hae said mair. But it canna be. Stay'--she continued,
stretching her head towards the gleam of light that shot through the
narrow slit which served for a window--'is he not there? Stand out o'
the light, and let me look upon him ance mair. But the darkness is in
my ain een,' she said, sinking back, after an earnest gaze upon
vacuity; 'it's a' ended now,
Pass breath,
Come death!'
And, sinking back upon her couch of straw, she expired without a groan.
The clergyman and the surgeon carefully noted down all that she had
said, now deeply regretting they had not examined her more minutely,
but both remaining morally convinced of the truth of her disclosure.
Hazlewood was the first to compliment Bertram upon the near prospect of
his being restored to his name and rank in society. The people around,
who now learned from Jabos that Bertram was the person who had wounded
him, were struck with his generosity, and added his name to Bertram's
in their exulting acclamations.
Some, however, demanded of the postilion how he had not recognised
Bertram when he saw him some time before at Kippletringan. To which he
gave the very natural answer--'Hout, what was I thinking about
Ellangowan then? It was the cry that was rising e'en now that the young
Laird was found, that put me on finding out the likeness. There was nae
missing it ance ane was set to look for't.'
The obduracy of Hatteraick during the latter part of this scene was in
some slight degree shaken. He was observed to twinkle with his eyelids;
to attempt to raise his bound hands for the purpose of pulling his hat
over his brow; to look angrily and impatiently to the road, as if
anxious for the vehicle which was to remove him from the spot. At
length Mr. Hazlewood, apprehensive that the popular ferment might take
a direction towards the prisoner, directed he should be taken to the
post-chaise, and so removed to the town of Kippletringan, to be at Mr.
Mac-Morlan's disposal; at the same time he sent an express to warn that
gentleman of what had happened. 'And now,' he said to Bertram, 'I
should be happy if you would accompany me to Hazlewood House; but as
that might not be so agreeable just now as I trust it will be in a day
or two, you must allow me to return with you to Woodbourne. But you are
on foot.'--'O, if the young Laird would take my horse!'--'Or mine'--'Or
mine,' said half-a-dozen voices.--'Or mine; he can trot ten mile an
hour without whip or spur, and he's the young Laird's frae this moment,
if he likes to take him for a herezeld, [Footnote: See Note 8.] as they
ca'd it lang syne.' Bertram readily accepted the horse as a loan, and
poured forth his thanks to the assembled crowd for their good wishes,
which they repaid with shouts and vows of attachment.
While the happy owner was directing one lad to 'gae doun for the new
saddle'; another,' just to rin the beast ower wi' a dry wisp o' strae';
a third, 'to hie doun and borrow Dan Dunkieson's plated stirrups,' and
expressing his regret 'that there was nae time to gie the nag a feed,
that the young Laird might ken his mettle,' Bertram, taking the
clergyman by the arm, walked into the vault and shut the door
immediately after them. He gazed in silence for some minutes upon the
body of Meg Merrilies, as it lay before him, with the features
sharpened by death, yet still retaining the stern and energetic
character which had maintained in life her superiority as the wild
chieftainess of the lawless people amongst whom she was born. The young
soldier dried the tears which involuntarily rose on viewing this wreck
of one who might be said to have died a victim to her fidelity to his
person and family. He then took the clergyman's hand and asked solemnly
if she appeared able to give that attention to his devotions which
befitted a departing person.
'My dear sir,' said the good minister, 'I trust this poor woman had
remaining sense to feel and join in the import of my prayers. But let
us humbly hope we are judged of by our opportunities of religious and
moral instruction. In some degree she might be considered as an
uninstructed heathen, even in the bosom of a Christian country; and let
us remember that the errors and vices of an ignorant life were balanced
by instances of disinterested attachment, amounting almost to heroism.
To HIM who can alone weigh our crimes and errors against our efforts
towards virtue we consign her with awe, but not without hope.'
'May I request,' said Bertram, 'that you will see every decent
solemnity attended to in behalf of this poor woman? I have some
property belonging to her in my hands; at all events I will be
answerable for the expense. You will hear of me at Woodbourne.'
Dinmont, who had been furnished with a horse by one of his
acquaintance, now loudly called out that all was ready for their
return; and Bertram and Hazlewood, after a strict exhortation to the
crowd, which was now increased to several hundreds, to preserve good
order in their rejoicing, as the least ungoverned zeal might be turned
to the disadvantage of the young Laird, as they termed him, took their
leave amid the shouts of the multitude.
As they rode past the ruined cottages at Derncleugh, Dinmont said, 'I'm
sure when ye come to your ain, Captain, ye'll no forget to bigg a bit
cot-house there? Deil be in me but I wad do't mysell, an it werena in
better hands. I wadna like to live in't, though, after what she said.
Od, I wad put in auld Elspeth, the bedral's widow; the like o' them's
used wi' graves and ghaists and thae things.'
A short but brisk ride brought them to Woodbourne. The news of their
exploit had already flown far and wide, and the whole inhabitants of
the vicinity met them on the lawn with shouts of congratulation. 'That
you have seen me alive,' said Bertram to Lucy, who first ran up to him,
though Julia's eyes even anticipated hers, 'you must thank these kind
friends.'
With a blush expressing at once pleasure, gratitude, and bashfulness,
Lucy curtsied to Hazlewood, but to Dinmont she frankly extended her
hand. The honest farmer, in the extravagance of his joy, carried his
freedom farther than the hint warranted, for he imprinted his thanks on
the lady's lips, and was instantly shocked at the rudeness of his own
conduct. 'Lord sake, madam, I ask your pardon,' he said. 'I forgot but
ye had been a bairn o'my ain; the Captain's sae namely, he gars ane
forget himsell.'
Old Pleydell now advanced. 'Nay, if fees like these are going,' he
said--
'Stop, stop, Mr. Pleydell,' said Julia, 'you had your fees beforehand;
remember last night.'
'Why, I do confess a retainer,' said the Barrister; 'but if I don't
deserve double fees from both Miss Bertram and you when I conclude my
examination of Dirk Hatteraick to-morrow--Gad, I will so supple him!
You shall see, Colonel; and you, my saucy misses, though you may not
see, shall hear.'
'Ay, that's if we choose to listen, Counsellor,' replied Julia.
'And you think,' said Pleydell, 'it's two to one you won't choose that?
But you have curiosity that teaches you the use of your ears now and
then.'
'I declare, Counsellor,' answered the lively damsel, 'that such saucy
bachelors as you would teach us the use of our fingers now and then.'
'Reserve them for the harpsichord, my love,' said the Counsellor.
'Better for all parties.'
While this idle chat ran on, Colonel Mannering introduced to Bertram a
plain good-looking man, in a grey coat and waistcoat, buckskin
breeches, and boots. 'This, my dear sir, is Mr. Mac-Morlan.'
'To whom,' said Bertram, embracing him cordially, 'my sister was
indebted for a home, when deserted by all her natural friends and
relations.'
The Dominie then pressed forward, grinned, chuckled, made a diabolical
sound in attempting to whistle, and finally, unable to stifle his
emotions, ran away to empty the feelings of his heart at his eyes.
We shall not attempt to describe the expansion of heart and glee of
this happy evening.