over the wilds, did we deliver up ourselves entire, and pursue our
pastime like one doomed to be a wild huntsman under some spell of magic.
Let us, ere we go away from these high haunts and be no more seen--let
us away far up the Great Glen, beyond the Echo-cliff, and with our
rifle--'twas once the rifle of Emilius Godfrey--let us stalk the
red-deer. In that chase or forest the antlers lay not thick, as now they
lie on the Atholl Braes; they were still a rare sight--and often and
often had Godfrey and we gone up and down the Glen, without a single
glimpse of buck or doe rising up from among the heather. But as the true
angler will try every cast on the river, miles up and down, if he has
reason to know that but one single fish has run up from the sea--so we,
a true hunter, neither grudged nor wearied to stand for hours, still as
the heron by the stream, hardly in hope, but satisfied with the
possibility, that a deer might pass by us in the desert. Steadiest and
strongest is self-fed passion springing in spite of circumstance. When
blows the warm showery south-west wind, the trouts turn up their yellow
sides at every dropping of the fly on the curling water--and the angler
is soon sated with the perpetual play. But once--twice--thrice--during a
long blustering day--the sullen plunge of a salmon is sufficient for
that day's joy. Still, therefore, still as a cairn that stands for ever
on the hill, or rather as the shadow on a dial, that though it moves is
never seen to move, day after day were we on our station in the Great
Glen. A loud, wild, wrathful, and savage cry from some huge animal made
our heart leap to our mouth, and bathed our forehead in sweat. We looked
up--and a red-deer--a stag of ten--the king of the forest--stood with
all his antlers, snuffing the wind, but yet blind to our figure
overshadowed by a rock. The rifle-ball pierced his heart--and leaping up
far higher than our head, he tumbled in terrific death, and lay
stone-still before our starting eyes amid the rustling of the
strong-bented heather! There we stood surveying him for a long
triumphing hour. Ghastly were his glazed eyes--and ghastlier his long
bloody tongue, bitten through at the very root in agony. The branches of
his antlers pierced the sward like swords. His bulk seemed mightier in
death even than when it was crowned with that kingly head, snuffing the
north wind. In other two hours we were down at Moor-edge and up again,
with an eager train, to the head of the Great Glen, coming and going a
distance of a dozen long miles. A hay-waggon forced its way through the
bogs and over the braes--and on our return into the inhabited country,
we were met by shoals of peasants, men, women, and children, huzzaing
over the Prey; for not for many years--never since the funeral of the
old lord--had the antlers of a red-deer been seen by them trailing along
the heather.
Fifty years and more--and oh! my weary soul! half a century took a long
time to die away in gloom and in glory, in pain and pleasure, in storms
through which were afraid to fly even the spirit's most eagle-winged
raptures, in calms that rocked all her feelings like azure-plumed
halcyons to rest--though now to look back upon it, what seems it all but
a transitory dream of toil and trouble, of which the smiles, the sighs,
the tears, the groans, were all alike vain as the forgotten sunbeams and
the clouds! Fifty years and more are gone--and this is the Twelfth of
August Eighteen hundred and twenty-eight; and all the Highland mountains
have since dawn been astir, and thundering to the impetuous sportsmen's
joys! Our spirit burns within us, but our limbs are palsied, and our
feet must brush the heather no more. Lo! how beautifully these
fast-travelling pointers do their work on that black mountain's breast!
intersecting it into parallelograms, and squares, and circles, and now
all a-stoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death! Higher up among the
rocks, and cliffs, and stones, we see a stripling, whose ambition it is
to strike the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair in the misty
cloud, pursuing the ptarmigan now in their variegated summer-dress, seen
even among the unmelted snows. The scene shiftsand high up on the heath
above the Linn of Dee, in the Forest of Braemar, the Thane--God bless
him--has stalked the red-deer to his lair, and now lays his unerring
rifle at rest on the stump of the Witch's Oak. Never shall Eld deaden
our sympathies with the pastimes of our fellow-men any more than with
their highest raptures, their profoundest griefs. Blessings on the head
of every true sportsman on flood, or field, or fell; nor shall we take
it at all amiss should any one of them, in return for the pleasure he
may have enjoyed from these our Fyttes, perused in smoky cabin during a
rainy day, to the peat-reek flavour of the glorious Glenlivet, send us,
by the Inverness coach, Aberdeen steam-packet, or any other rapid
conveyance, a basket of game, red, black, or brown, or peradventure a
haunch of the red-deer.
Reader! be thou a male, bold as the Tercel Gentle--or a female, fair as
the Falcon--a male, stern as an old Stag--or a female, soft as a young
Doe--we entreat thee to think kindly of Us and of our Article--and to
look in love or in friendship on Christopher in his Sporting Jacket, now
come to the close of his Three Fyttes, into which he had fallen--out of
one into another--and from which he has now been revived by the
application of a little salt to his mouth, and then a caulker. Nor think
that, rambling as we have been, somewhat after the style of thinking
common in sleep, there has been no method in our madness, no _lucidus
ordo_ in our dream. All the pages are instinct with one spirit--our
thoughts and our feelings have all followed one another, according to
the most approved principles of association--and a fine proportion has
been unconsciously preserved. The article may be likened to some noble
tree, which--although here and there a branch have somewhat overgrown
its brother above or below it, an arm stretched itself out into further
gloom on this side than on that, so that there are irregularities in the
umbrage--is still disfigured not by those sports and freaks of nature
working on a great scale, and stands, magnificent object! equal to an
old castle, on the cliff above the cataract. Woe and shame to the
sacrilegious hand that would lop away one budding bough! Undisturbed let
the tame and wild creatures of the region, in storm or sunshine, find
shelter or shade under the calm circumference of its green old age.
TALE OF EXPIATION.
Margaret Burnside was an orphan. Her parents, who had been the poorest
people in the parish, had died when she was a mere child; and as they
had left no near relatives, there were few or none to care much about
the desolate creature, who might be well said to have been left
friendless in the world. True that the feeling of charity is seldom
wholly wanting in any heart; but it is generally but a cold feeling
among hard-working folk, towards objects out of the narrow circle of
their own family affections, and selfishness has a ready and strong
excuse in necessity. There seems, indeed, to be a sort of chance in the
lot of the orphan offspring of paupers. On some the eye of Christian
benevolence falls at the very first moment of their uttermost
destitution--and their worst sorrows, instead of beginning, terminate
with the tears shed over their parents' graves. They are taken by the
hands, as soon as their hands have been stretched out for protection,
and admitted as inmates into households, whose doors, had their fathers
and mothers been alive, they would never have darkened. The light of
comfort falls upon them during the gloom of grief, and attends them all
their days. Others, again, are overlooked at the first fall of
affliction, as if by some unaccountable fatality; the wretchedness with
which all have become familiar, no one very tenderly pities; and thus
the orphan, reconciling herself to the extreme hardships of her
condition, lives on uncheered by those sympathies out of which grow both
happiness and virtue, and yielding by degrees to the constant pressure
of her lot, becomes poor in spirit as in estate, and either vegetates
like an almost worthless weed that is carelessly trodden on by every
foot, or if by nature born a flower, in time loses her lustre, and all
her days leads the life not so much of a servant as of a slave.
Such, till she was twelve years old, had been the fate of Margaret
Burnside. Of a slender form and weak constitution, she had never been
able for much work; and thus from one discontented and harsh master and
mistress to another, she had been transferred from house to
house--always the poorest--till she came to be looked on as an
encumbrance rather than a help in any family, and thought hardly worth
her bread. Sad and sickly she sat on the braes herding the kine. It was
supposed that she was in a consumption--and as the shadow of death
seemed to lie on the neglected creature's face, a feeling something like
love was awakened towards her in the heart of pity, for which she showed
her gratitude by still attending to all household tasks with an alacrity
beyond her strength. Few doubted that she was dying--and it was plain
that she thought so herself; for the Bible, which, in her
friendlessness, she had always read more than other children, who were
too happy to reflect often on the Word of that Being from whom their
happiness flowed, was now, when leisure permitted, seldom or never out
of her hands; and in lonely places, where there was no human ear to
hearken, did the dying girl often support her heart, when quaking in
natural fears of the grave, by singing to herself hymns and psalms. But
her hour was not yet come--though by the inscrutable decrees of
Providence doomed to be hideous with almost inexpiable guilt. As for
herself--she was innocent as the linnet that sang beside her in the
broom, and innocent was she to be up to the last throbbings of her
religious heart. When the sunshine fell on the leaves of her Bible, the
orphan seemed to see in the holy words, brightening through the
radiance, assurances of forgiveness of all her sins--small sins
indeed--yet to her humble and contrite heart exceeding great--and to be
pardoned only by the intercession of Him who died for us on the tree.
Often, when clouds were in the sky, and blackness covered the Book, hope
died away from the discoloured page--and the lonely creature wept and
sobbed over the doom denounced on all who sin, and repent not--whether
in deed or in thought. And thus religion became within her an awful
thing--till, in her resignation, she feared to die. But look on that
flower by the hill-side path, withered, as it seems, beyond the power of
sun and air and dew and rain to restore it to life. Next day, you happen
to return to the place, its leaves are of a dazzling green, its
blossoms of a dazzling crimson. So was it with this Orphan. Nature, as
if kindling towards her in sudden love, not only restored her in a few
weeks to life--but to perfect health; and ere long she, whom few had
looked at, and for whom still fewer cared, was acknowledged to be the
fairest girl in all the parish--while she continued to sit, as she had
always done from very childhood, on the _poor's form_ in the lobby of
the kirk. Such a face, such a figure, and such a manner, in one so
poorly attired and so meanly placed, attracted the eyes of the young
Ladies in the Patron's Gallery. Margaret Burnside was taken under their
especial protection--sent for two years to a superior school, where she
was taught all things useful for persons in humble life--and while yet
scarcely fifteen, returning to her native parish, was appointed teacher
of a small school of her own, to which were sent all the girls who could
be spared from home, from those of parents poor as her own had been, up
to those of the farmers and small proprietors, who knew the blessings of
a good education--and that without it, the minister may preach in vain.
And thus Margaret Burnside grew and blossomed like the lily of the
field--and every eye blessed her--and she drew her breath in gratitude,
piety, and peace.
Thus a few happy and useful years passed by--and it was forgotten by
all--but herself--that Margaret Burnside was an orphan. But to be
without one near and dear blood-relative in all the world, must often,
even to the happy heart of youthful innocence, be more than a pensive--a
painful thought; and therefore, though Margaret Burnside was always
cheerful among her little scholars, yet in the retirement of her own
room (a pretty parlour, with a window looking into a flower-garden), and
on her walks among the braes, her mien was somewhat melancholy, and her
eyes wore that touching expression, which seems doubtfully to
denote--neither joy nor sadness--but a habit of soul which, in its
tranquillity, still partakes of the mournful, as if memory dwelt often
on past sorrows, and hope scarcely ventured to indulge in dreams of
future repose. That profound orphan-feeling imbued her whole character;
and sometimes when the young Ladies from the Castle smiled praises upon
her, she retired in gratitude to her chamber--and wept.
Among the friends at whose houses she visited were the family at
Moorside, the highest hill-farm in the parish, and on which her father
had been a hind. It consisted of the master, a man whose head was grey,
his son and daughter, and a grandchild, her scholar, whose parents were
dead. Gilbert Adamson had long been a widower--indeed his wife had never
been in the parish, but had died abroad. He had been a soldier in his
youth and prime of manhood; and when he came to settle at Moorside, he
had been looked at with no very friendly eyes; for evil rumours of his
character had preceded his arrival there--and in that peaceful pastoral
parish, far removed from the world's strife, suspicions, without any
good reason perhaps, had attached themselves to the morality and
religion of a man, who had seen much foreign service, and had passed the
best years of his life in the wars. It was long before these suspicions
faded away, and with some they still existed in an invincible feeling of
dislike, or even aversion. But the natural fierceness and ferocity
which, as these peaceful dwellers among the hills imagined, had at
first, in spite of his efforts to control them, often dangerously
exhibited themselves in fiery outbreaks, advancing age had gradually
subdued; Gilbert Adamson had grown a hard-working and industrious man;
affected, if he followed it not in sincerity, even an austerely
religious life; and as he possessed more than common sagacity and
intelligence, he had acquired, at last, if not won, a certain ascendancy
in the parish, even over many whose hearts never opened nor warmed
towards him--so that he was now an elder of the kirk--and, as the most
unwilling were obliged to acknowledge, a just steward to the poor. His
grey hairs were not honoured, but it would not be too much to say that
they were respected. Many who had doubted him before came to think they
had done him injustice, and sought to wipe away their fault by regarding
him with esteem, and showing themselves willing to interchange all
neighbourly kindnesses and services with all the family at Moorside. His
son, though somewhat wild and unsteady, and too much addicted to the
fascinating pastimes of flood and field, often so ruinous to the sons of
labour, and rarely long pursued against the law without vitiating the
whole character, was a favourite with all the parish. Singularly
handsome, and with manners above his birth, Ludovic was welcome
wherever he went, both with young and old. No merry-making could deserve
the name without him; and at all meetings for the display of feats of
strength and agility, far and wide through more counties than one he was
the champion. Nor had he received a mean education. All that the parish
schoolmaster could teach he knew; and having been the darling companion
of all the gentlemen's sons in the Manse, the faculties of his mind had
kept pace with theirs, and from them he had caught unconsciously that
demeanour so far superior to what could have been expected from one in
his humble condition, but which, at the same time, seemed so congenial
with his happy nature as to be readily acknowledged to be one of its
original gifts. Of his sister, Alice, it is sufficient to say, that she
was the bosom-friend of Margaret Burnside, and that all who saw their
friendship felt that it was just. The small parentless granddaughter was
also dear to Margaret--more than perhaps her heart knew, because that,
like herself, she was an orphan. But the creature was also a merry and a
madcap child, and her freakish pranks, and playful perversenesses, as
she tossed her head in untamable glee, and went dancing and singing,
like a bird on the boughs of a tree, all day long, by some strange
sympathy entirely won the heart of her who, throughout all her own
childhood, had been familiar with grief, and a lonely shedder of tears.
And thus did Margaret love her, it might be said, even with a very
mother's love. She generally passed her free Saturday afternoons at
Moorside, and often slept there all night with little Ann in her bosom.
At such times Ludovic was never from home, and many a Sabbath he walked
with her to the kirk--all the family together--and _once_ by themselves
for miles along the moor--a forenoon of perfect sunshine, which returned
upon him in his agony on his dying day.
No one said, no one thought that Ludovic and Margaret were lovers--nor
were they, though well worthy indeed of each other's love; for the
orphan's whole heart was filled and satisfied with a sense of duty, and
all its affections were centred in her school, where all eyes blessed
her, and where she had been placed for the good of all those gladsome
creatures, by them who had rescued her from the penury that kills the
soul, and whose gracious bounty she remembered even in her sleep. In her
prayers she beseeched God to bless them rather than the wretch on her
knees--their images, their names, were ever before her eyes and on her
ear; and next to that peace of mind which passeth all understanding, and
comes from the footstool of God into the humble, lowly, and contrite
heart, was to that orphan, day and night, waking or sleeping, the bliss
of her gratitude. And thus Ludovic to her was a brother, and no more; a
name sacred as that of sister, by which she always called her Alice, and
was so called in return. But to Ludovic, who had a soul of fire,
Margaret was dearer far than ever sister was to the brother whom, at the
sacrifice of her own life, she might have rescued from death. Go where
he might, a phantom was at his side--a pale fair face for ever fixed its
melancholy eyes on his, as if foreboding something dismal even when they
faintly smiled; and once he awoke at midnight, when all the house were
asleep, crying, with shrieks, "O God of mercy! Margaret is murdered!"
Mysterious passion of Love! that darkens its own dreams of delight with
unimaginable horrors! Shall we call such dire bewilderment the
superstition of troubled fantasy, or the inspiration of the prophetic
soul!
From what seemingly insignificant sources--and by means of what humble
instruments--may this life's best happiness be diffused over the
households of industrious men! Here was the orphan daughter of forgotten
paupers, both dead ere she could speak; herself, during all her
melancholy childhood, a pauper even more enslaved than ever they had
been--one of the most neglected and unvalued of all God's
creatures--who, had she then died, would have been buried in some
nettled nook of the kirkyard, nor her grave been watered almost by one
single tear--suddenly brought out from the cold and cruel shade in which
she had been withering away, by the interposition of human but angelic
hands, into the heaven's most gracious sunshine, where all at once her
beauty blossomed like the rose. She, who for so many years had been even
begrudgingly fed on the poorest and scantiest fare, by Penury ungrateful
for all her weak but zealous efforts to please by doing her best, in
sickness and sorrow, at all her tasks, in or out of doors, and in all
weathers, however rough and severe--was now raised to the rank of a
moral, intellectual, and religious being, and presided over, tended, and
instructed many little ones, far far happier in their childhood than it
had been her lot to be, and all growing up beneath her now untroubled
eyes, in innocence, love, and joy inspired into their hearts by her,
their young and happy benefactress. Not a human dwelling in all the
parish, that had not reason to be thankful to Margaret Burnside. She
taught them to be pleasant in their manners, neat in their persons,
rational in their minds, pure in their hearts, and industrious in all
their habits. Rudeness, coarseness, sullenness, all angry fits, and all
idle dispositions--the besetting vices and sins of the children of the
poor, whose home-education is often so miserably, and almost necessarily
neglected--did this sweet Teacher, by the divine influence of meekness
never ruffled, and tenderness never troubled, in a few months subdue and
overcome--till her school-room, every day in the week, was, in its
cheerfulness, sacred as a Sabbath, and murmured from morn till eve with
the hum of perpetual happiness. The effects were soon felt in every
house. All floors were tidier, and order and regularity enlivened every
hearth. It was the pride of her scholars to get their own little gardens
behind their parents' huts to bloom like that of the Brae--and, in
imitation of that flowery porch, to train up the pretty creepers on the
wall. In the kirkyard, a smiling group every Sabbath forenoon waited for
her at the gate--and walked, with her at their head, into the House of
God--a beautiful procession to all their parents' eyes--one by one
dropping away into their own seats, as the band moved along the little
lobby, and the minister, sitting in the pulpit all the while, looked
solemnly down upon the fair flock--the shepherd of their souls!
It was Sabbath, but Margaret Burnside was not in the kirk. The
congregation had risen to join in prayer, when the great door was thrown
open, and a woman, apparelled as for the house of worship, but wild and
ghastly in her face and eyes as a maniac hunted by evil spirits, burst
in upon the service, and, with uplifted hands, beseeched the man of God
to forgive her irreverent entrance, for that the foulest and most
unnatural murder had been done, and that her own eyes had seen the
corpse of Margaret Burnside lying on the moor in a pool of blood! The
congregation gave one groan, and then an outcry as if the roof of the
kirk had been toppling over their heads. All cheeks waxed white, women
fainted, and the firmest heart quaked with terror and pity, as once and
again the affrighted witness, in the same words, described the horrid
spectacle, and then rushed out into the open air, followed by hundreds,
who for some minutes had been palsy-stricken; and now the kirkyard was
all in a tumult round the body of her who lay in a swoon. In the midst
of that dreadful ferment, there were voices crying aloud that the poor
woman was mad, and that such horror could not be beneath the sun; for
such a perpetration on the Sabbath-day, and first heard of just as the
prayers of His people were about to ascend to the Father of all mercies,
shocked belief, and doubt struggled with despair as in the helpless
shudderings of some dream of blood. The crowd were at last prevailed on
by their pastor to disperse, and sit down on the tombstones, and water
being sprinkled over the face of her who still lay in that mortal swoon,
and the air suffered to circulate freely round her, she again opened her
glassy eyes, and raising herself on her elbow, stared on the multitude,
all gathered there so wan and silent, and shrieked out, "The Day of
Judgment!--the Day of Judgment!"
The aged minister raised her on her feet, and led her to a grave, on
which she sat down, and hid her face on his knees. "O that I should have
lived to see the day--but dreadful are the decrees of the Most High--and
she whom we all loved has been cruelly murdered! Carry me with you,
people, and I will show you where lies her corpse."
"Where--where is Ludovic Adamson?" cried a hoarse voice which none there
had ever heard before; and all eyes were turned in one direction; but
none knew who had spoken, and all again was hush. Then all at once a
hundred voices repeated the same words, "Where--where is Ludovic
Adamson?" and there was no reply. Then, indeed, was the kirkyard in an
angry and a wrathful ferment, and men looked far into each other's eyes
for confirmation of their suspicions. And there was whispering about
things, that, though in themselves light as air, seemed now charged with
hideous import; and then arose sacred appeals to Heaven's eternal
justice, horridly mingled with oaths and curses; and all the crowd,
springing to their feet, pronounced, "that no other but he could be the
murderer."